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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 20, 2014 - 01:34pm PT
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I think Ed in his scientific method has tried to bring about some very good questions. That is until he gets attacked.
The idea of 1+1=2 is a truth. Why couldn't that be ingrained throughout the universe without having matter attached to it? The fact that we discovered 1+1=2 doesn't necessarily make it a thing?
Is magnetism a thing? The power that causes the repletion a thing? Is gravity a thing? The power to attract, is there little pieces of matter pushing that apple to the ground?
This is a good one;
which is much less than the 98 MeV energy each quark has by moving around inside the proton, but still not enough to make up the 938 MeV/cē mass of the proton.
We are missing atleast one piece to the puzzle. And God does say He is in ALL things..
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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May 20, 2014 - 01:37pm PT
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From the all powerful Wiki.
There is a growing amount of information that has shown that memory depends largely on the brains synaptic plasticity, with a large part of this being dependent on its ability to maintain Long-term potentiation (LTP).[13] Studies on LTP have also started to indicate that there are several molecular mechanisms that may be at the basis of memory storage.[14] Thus a more recent approach to erasing memories and the associations the brain makes with objects is disrupting specific molecular mechanisms in the brain that are actively keeping memories active.[15]
As you were ....
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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May 20, 2014 - 04:38pm PT
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Matter of fact, everything Largo has written on this thread is just as good as it gets. I actually read his posts out loud to my wife for laughs
I'm still completely unclear as to the infatuation of jgill and mh2 . . .
???
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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May 20, 2014 - 06:06pm PT
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WBraun
climber
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May 20, 2014 - 06:35pm PT
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When one has a clear mind everything becomes clear.
Largo and MikeL only wanted to show how to clear the mind nicely.
Instead all the mad scientists went ape sh!t on them with their egotistical woo woo is wrong spew.
The mad scientists do not have a clear mind.
It's full of data, numbers, theories, and tons of other sh!t clogging the pathway of enlightenment.
Just like they've done to this planet, clogged it all up, polluted the the sh!t out of it and put it on the brink of destruction.
Just see the full view extent of their ridiculous pursuits ......
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 20, 2014 - 07:35pm PT
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I just saw a 'Thing 1' T shirt about an hour ago.
Must be the universal sentience field, doing its thing.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 20, 2014 - 07:45pm PT
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Regarding the neutron star dense treatise on experiencing the color blue, there seems to be some assumption that we experience 'blue' differently.
Except that we don't, unless there's some deficit (color blindness, etc) in one's visual system.
Turns out we're all using pretty much the same sensory equipment. You see pretty much the same RGB value as I do. You hear the same notes - if you didn't, we couldn't play music together.
So, it would seem that addition of this extra meta layer - the 'experience of blue', is more likely a fiction than some undiscoverable country.
In fact, subjectivity itself may be an illusion born of the fact that we simply can't access each other's consciousness yet - admittedly a daunting problem, considering all the moving parts involved in that process.
Paring the problem down a bit - could we someday port what another person is seeing, hearing, or tasting (without all the memory and emotional associations - just the sensory experience itself). Is the woo crowd stating in 2014 that that will forever be impossible?
For if it were, their thesis of consciousness as some unknowable layer in between the neural goo and der weld outside evaporates.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 20, 2014 - 08:24pm PT
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TVash Said "Except that we don't, unless there's some deficit (color blindness, etc) in one's visual system.
Turns out we're all using pretty much the same sensory equipment. You see pretty much the same RGB value as I do. You hear the same notes - if you didn't, we couldn't play music together.
So, it would seem that addition of this extra meta layer - the 'experience of blue', is more likely a fiction than some undiscoverable country."
Zen Master Seung Sahn said the same thing tvash, he said "your before thinking mind and my before thinking mind are the same " as in the same experience. He said the problem is our thinking minds are vastly different and we are often/usually attached to our idea as in STFU , I am right and you are wrong etc. etc.. So thinking becomes a hinderance rather than a tool for peace and you end getting war and suffering.
One of the coolest things about meditation is with a little bit of work you can experience this "before thinking mind " and realize there is a completely different perspective than the discursive.
I didn't say discursive is bad, it is only one side of the coin.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 20, 2014 - 08:55pm PT
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I'm only referring to sensory experience - sight, hearing...as one sub function of consciousness, to illustrate the idea that we're using substantially similar equipment for that sub function. If that is so, porting that sub function from one person to another does not seem impossible - daunting, but not impossible.
This would indicate that, at least with regards to these sensory subsystems, there is no 'extra meta layer' - the neural firings ARE the experience, and subjectivity is an illusion born of a simple lack of access from the outside.
If porting sensory-only experience is not impossible, then porting more complex sub functions of consciousness - the emotional and memory mapping that correlates with certain sensory experiences, like the positive emotional response I get from seeing aquamarine because of an early childhood memory of browsing through a book on minerals, for example, seems more like a matter of complexity, but not impossibility.
And if THAT is true, then the subjective layer of experience that floats above the physical, the one some posters here posit cannot be studied conventionally, begins to evaporate. At such a point it will not only be examined, but replicated to be experienced by others.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 20, 2014 - 09:34pm PT
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I'm only referring to sensory experience - sight, hearing...as one sub function of consciousness, to illustrate the idea that we're using substantially similar equipment for that sub function. If that is so
The "sub function" is ur default. Am I right in saying you think the brain(matter) created the mind, thus created consciousness?
What came first, the idea. Or the brain?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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May 20, 2014 - 11:08pm PT
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10,000 quatloos!
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MH2
climber
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May 20, 2014 - 11:28pm PT
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I think bought into this neighborhood at about post #800 on Politics, God, and Religion versus Science. It isn't where I would choose to live but you get to know the neighbors, and even though your business doesn't overlap their business much, you talk about things anyway.
It is strange that Largo claims to have learned the fundamental nature of mind through meditation and that there is no objective test of it. When I noticed him making fun of other posters I started to make fun of him. However, a useful assumption is that Largo was responding in kind to the posters he derided. I never stopped to consider that possibility. That would make me the same as him when it comes to tone on this thread. Being alike in this separates us rather than brings us together. It isn't good enough just not being the one who started it.
Largo is respectful towards jgill, Ed, and jstan though they disagree. Those who might characterize JL as bully or blowhard should run that test on their own words first.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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May 21, 2014 - 07:28am PT
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MH2 and jgill, you're right. I was out of line. Something about that tone of Largo's in this and other threads gets my bully meter sensitized. Alas, I responded in kind and worse. I'll just refrain from reading anymore of these threads. My apologies to all. Carry on...
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MH2
climber
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May 21, 2014 - 09:52am PT
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Oops. Shoulda took my own medicine, Greg.
repost
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 21, 2014 - 12:13pm PT
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I always approached this and the other threads using or borrowing the tone of science which normally delivers their insights via proclamations. This, I knew, would rile because to many, only instrument-based insight is valid. But it was sure to get people thinking, which was the point. Other than dissing Fruitcake, who deserved it, I have only had fun with people on this thread. This is not easy material, and IMO everyone, myself included, is guilty of conflating the issues, normally to keep the conversation on our home turf.
Tvash wrote: In fact, subjectivity itself may be an illusion born of the fact that we simply can't access each other's consciousness yet - admittedly a daunting problem, considering all the moving parts involved in that process.
This was a popular notion in the Mind discussion circa 1995. People had to acknowledge that subjectivity ITSELF was not something we could objectify by a 3rd party ("we simply can't access each other's consciousness"), nor was subjectivity it in and of itself a physical thing, no matter the strength of the physical footprint. In other words, brain and mind were not exactly the same thing.
Problem was, Tvesh's statement, "In fact, subjectivity itself may be an illusion," can only be known and written down and so forth as it arises from our subjective experience, without with the world itself never arises.
So if you insist that our subjectivity is not real, what is it that you are experiencing right now, and what would you call it - making certain to avoid reverting to an objective breakdown of objective functioning.
JL
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jstan
climber
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May 21, 2014 - 12:41pm PT
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I always approached this and the other threads using or borrowing the tone of science which normally delivers their insights via proclamations. JL
John, you confuse tone with substance. In a book or other scientific text you need to take note of footnotes. These notes take the reader to sources providing data and history for the summary statement you take as being a "proclamation". In works at high levels authors do assume readers are practiced in the art and have studied the data and the history for years. In any event work is well documented and is readily available. Along these lines some students have opined that keeping one's texts from courses allow one to go directly to sources they used before. Now days with the internet it is quickest to find really good discussions there.
It is precisely this that I have found to vitiate your posts. They appear to be "revealed wisdom". Revealed wisdom carries no weight at all in a discussion. None. Since much of what you discuss involves your personal experience, something that is very difficult and often impossible to port between individuals, your practice has been doubly damned.
Numerous other people have noted this problem.
Personally I am of the opinion exploding research on the structure and function of the brain will be the surest path to increased understanding on these subjects. Neoclassical philosophy is an unlikely way to approach them. Starting before the Greek period, graced as it was by very sharp people, we have not made much progress. It is an attempt to debug the brain using only the brain. I have tried doing that with a voltmeter and it does not work even there.
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WBraun
climber
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May 21, 2014 - 01:07pm PT
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Revealed wisdom carries no weight at all in a discussion.
Remember all the talk in the past posts about reincarnation while you guys were all throwing woo woo at it as bullsh!t.
http://www.esolibris.com/articles/reincarnation/three_year_old.php
Bottom line is you guys are stuck in a deep trench of scientific dogma .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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May 21, 2014 - 01:15pm PT
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There is in fact a voluminous literature on the discovery, exploration and development of the subjective mind. Largo chooses not to footnote even the Zen literature which is large, because it's tedious and I'm sure because he feels it would be a waste of time with this group. In fact, Zen of all the traditions, has written the least about the process. I guarantee you that anyone delving into the mystical literature of India or Tibet will have at least a life time of reading ahead of them and plenty of footnotes.
It is true that this literature has not been catalogued in a cross cultural fashion yet although the Dalai Lama has initiated such a project. Once that is completed, then a standardized vocabulary and step by step instructions complete with footnotes for every tradition, can be recorded.
Science has had the benefit in this regard, of being 2,000 years younger than the written mystical/experiential traditions and thus belabored with much less cultural baggage.I would point out that western science has similar problems when trying to understand Chinese or Indian science and medicine. Of course it mostly just writes these off based on one or two studies.
One has only to consider the conflicting diet and nutrition advice provided by the scientific community the past 20 years, to see that even within their own tradition, western science is not as clear cut as some here would imagine.And everyone of those studies is backed up by previous studies and footnotes.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 21, 2014 - 01:33pm PT
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John, you confuse tone with substance.
The fact is, to some, "substance" will always be instrument-based findings matched by numerical representations. For a literalists like John S., everything else will be "revealed." The fact that ALL knowledge is "revealed" through mind is seemingly lost on people, or else they conflate direct experience with something trying to do science without the instruments or math.
When John S. made an early ascent of the West Face of Sentinel, the experience itself "revealed" to him things not possibly known by other means - not by reading, or interviewing others who had done the route, nor yet by studying the wall with binos. For years. Was there any objective experience or data revealed to John during his ascent, or is objective only something that can occur through the use of instruments. What was "inaccurate" about John's experience? What was "unrelable" in John's experience. What was there that we "shouldn't believe as viable" in John's experience? Do we ignore Freud's discovery of the unconscious because he did not use instruments?
In the same vein, what science has told us about sentience (NOT objective functioning) is largely a waste of time and is vastly inaccurate owing to one thing: As Tvash wrote, we cannot (3rd person) yet access another person's subjectivity. The idea that we can access our own subjectivity, and can do explorations accordingly, is not trusted by many because they have no experience in knowing how to navigate the terrain.
I would also be interested in knowing what issues John had with my description of sentience, and what, EXACTLY, did he find void of credibility per raw awareness, focus and attention. What's more, how would HE rephrase or recast my findings to make them credible.
JL
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