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WBraun
climber
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Mar 21, 2018 - 10:06am PT
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"Magical" means they have no clue whatsoever and just use the term as a loose method of really saying .....
We have no fuking clue period ...... :-)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 21, 2018 - 10:19am PT
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This shows pretty clearly people's fear of taking the quote seriously.
Fear has nothing whatsoever to do with it but rather common sense and knowledge of the often fatal consequences of observerless interactions with objective physical reality.
Again, Wheeler overreaches in the extrapolation and oversells his proposition.
Here's more up your alley: The Radical Wing of Consciousness Studies: Idealism, Panpsychism and Emergentism
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 21, 2018 - 11:04am PT
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Fear has nothing whatsoever to do with it but rather common sense and knowledge of the often fatal consequences of observerless interactions with objective physical reality.
Again, Wheeler overreaches in the extrapolation and oversells his proposition.
--
Common sense? Does QM, or the fine grained data you get from the subjective adventures square with common sense, aka, folk wisdom? Does common sense tell us that the anvil is mostly empty space inside, or that awareness has no qualities?
But if we return to the original question, which has people circling like crazy, the request was to try and imagine what experiences Wheeler had to reach his conclusion, and if you disagree, to specifically list what led you to your conclusion.
It's fine to say you believe Wheeler overreaches in his extrapolation, but not without saying why you believe so, mentioning what you are drawing on to arrive at that conclusion. Like all valid investigations, specifics and indicated.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 21, 2018 - 11:42am PT
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The Universe existed for billions of years without humans.
We are late arrivals. Depending on how you define our species, it has been extant for less than 2 million years. A slice of time so narrow that geologists look at it as only a page in a book that is many thousands of pages thick. 2 million years is literally a blink in time.
The Dinosaurs were very successful. They filled nigh every ecological niche using walnut sized brains. They dominated 3 geologic periods, hundreds of millions of years.
The notion that humans are of the slightest importance in the history of life at all is only due to our fecundity. Humans have changed the Earth more than any other species of animals, and the only serious competitors are microbes. Plants are very successful. We modify a very few species for our food. The fate of many other plant species is certainly in question as we spread across the planet like bacteria in a dish.
We reproduce exponentially. The failure of most humans to understand exponential equations will lead us to peril. It is a basic idiocy that afflicts the populace. Simple exponential growth leads to certain peril. It is not stable.
Our importance boils down to our destructive nature. We fight nature even better than we war with each other. We truly seem to have moved beyond nature. We can destroy almost anything.
The thin strata which will contain our future remains will be a damned interesting one. In less than 50,000 years we grew from a super long period of hunting and gathering. Agriculture gave us time to think, and the Greeks broached most human problems in a short period. We still admire their contributions to this day. They had no instruments, so their contributions were of a description of thought, but now with machines we can destroy whole ecosystems if any profit is to be found. We are now more constrained by economics than technology. If we wanted to sterilize the planet, we probably could.
If there is enough wealth to be hoarded, entire ecosystems are destroyed with nary a thought.
The notion that we are important in the boggling vastness of the universe is simple hubris.
If we do not survive, the evidence of our existence will be filled with artifacts and show a mass extinction event. Whole sciences would arise in order to understand the thin strata marking the existence of man.
To me, how we are going to survive this technical adolescence, that will be our greatest challenge.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 21, 2018 - 12:13pm PT
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And Largo,
What makes people question your quote from a person far outside your field is your knack of cherry picking and taking things, washing them through your skewed worldview, and transplanting them out of context, which is a specific type of lie.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 21, 2018 - 12:14pm PT
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Common sense? Does QM, or the fine grained data you get from the subjective adventures square with common sense, aka, folk wisdom? Does common sense tell us that the anvil is mostly empty space inside, or that awareness has no qualities?
Here you overreach like Wheeler in projecting into the macro. The anvil doesn't need you to observe it to exist independently in objective reality. It similarly doesn't matter if it's mostly empty space inside if you put your hand on the anvil and hit it with a mostly empty space hammer. Feel free to attempt this non-thought experiment, but I suspect common sense would keep you from lowering the boom on that idea.
As for awareness having attributes - you're the king of nothing, exactly what attributes would those be?
But if we return to the original question, which has people circling like crazy, the request was to try and imagine what experiences Wheeler had to reach his conclusion, and if you disagree, to specifically list what led you to your conclusion.
I'd say he didn't reach a conclusion, rather he entertained a conjecture. How and why he came to entertain that conjecture I don't know, but the notion that observation kickstarts physical reality is a non-starter for me. I mean, and as BASE104 points out, what observer triggered the Big Bang? What observer jumpstarted the collapse of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way? What observer kickstarted Krakatoa? Too much anthropocentric who-woo, not enough common sense logic.
It's fine to say you believe Wheeler overreaches in his extrapolation, but not without saying why you believe so, mentioning what you are drawing on to arrive at that conclusion. Like all valid investigations, specifics and indicated.
I already did twice: observer-free objectively physical automobile kills non-observing young friend. That and my reference to the Big Bang and black hole above point to Wheeler's overreaching and overselling of his conjecture.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 21, 2018 - 12:53pm PT
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“Folk wisdom.”
That is good. I envision Largo writing an opus where he somehow ties particle physics with zen.
That would be folk wisdom. People eat that stuff up.
Folk wisdom may or may not be true. By definition it isn’t rigorous.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 21, 2018 - 01:20pm PT
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Ed,
Take a few seconds to go read the links that Largo posted for his Wheeler quotes.
I hesitate to be cruel, but the way those quotes were used is full blown Woo.
Meaning arm chair philosophy. The internet these days can reinforce any idea you have, and can lead you happily down a road which ends in an area void of truth of any kind.
I have a relative who believes in chemtrails. I got into an argument with 2 guys who swore that the Florida high school students actively affecting the gun control debate are actors. I went to politifact and showed them it was untrue. Even showed them an article about it from the Tampa paper.
Last night they told me that the FBI and CIA were setting Trump up. They would have fought over it.
These guys get everything from Hannity. I weep for the future.
The internet is the largest library of baloney invented by man. You have to be very careful.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 21, 2018 - 01:33pm PT
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I'd say he didn't reach a conclusion, rather he entertained a conjecture. How and why he came to entertain that conjecture I don't know, but the notion that observation kickstarts physical reality is a non-starter for me.
-
Still dodging there amigo.
Wheeler derived his conclusion from world class investigation of QM. You are citing references from the macro world to attempt to disquallify Wheeler's ideas. As Ed pointed out, the apparently contradictory aspects of QM with the meta world is an ongoing question, but it's not the questions I asked. Mine was:
If you disagree with Wheeler, what are you specifically drawing from QM that would lead you to believe in a fully-formed objective world existing "out there," independent of all observers? What, specifically is there in QM that suggest this?
And BASE, you're not going to pass any logic course ranting like that, the implication being that what Wheeler was saying is tantamount to believing in chemtrails, or that those actively affecting the gun control debate are actors. Or an even greater blunder is implying that the context in which the quotes were given bastardizes Wheeler's basic premise: That by his view, there is no objective reality "out there" independent of observers. Efforts to contextualize these ideas and perforce make it seem like Wheeler didn't really mean as much, or more absurdly, that he had no idea what he meant, require counter arguments not from evolutionary theory or biology, but from QM itself.
Crazy thing here is that I'm not endorsing or denying one view or the other, only acknowledging that Wheler's ideas were drawn directly from his work in QM, and if someone has contrary ideas also based on the QM, what might those be?
While many here profess to be progressive thinkers, clutching the classical model seems to suggest otherwise.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 21, 2018 - 02:46pm PT
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If you disagree with Wheeler, what are you specifically drawing from QM that would lead you to believe in a fully-formed objective world existing "out there," independent of all observers? What, specifically is there in QM that suggest this
Again, the fact that you can get killed by a car or a bullet you never knew was headed your way and that fact requires no knowledge of QM of any kind - that's the extrapolation into the macro part you seem to be missing. Again, I'd very much encourage you to take a subjective adventure and do my anvil/hand test then report back on the results.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 21, 2018 - 03:04pm PT
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OK
I got it now
... As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”
Well, some part of it anyway.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 21, 2018 - 03:13pm PT
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...ordinary circumstances...
"Ordinary circumstances" being 100% of the time you are alive on this planet. And that's not merely "useful", it's both obvious and imperative. The 'mostly empty space', 'is it even there?' and 'an observer made me do it!' tropes are irrelevant to living in the world as is QM.
I get that you feel you need QM to support your 'inquiry' into your meditative experiences, but I fear in the attempt you've overreached much as Wheeler did.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 21, 2018 - 04:21pm PT
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Does QM, or the fine grained data you get from the subjective adventures square with common sense, aka, folk wisdom?
You keep bringing this QM stuff up as arguments, when we all know you know diddle about it. This goes back many thousands of posts to your fledgling efforts to convince us that Hilbert spaces are somehow connected to empty awareness. I even designed a simple HS in your honor, but you never acknowledged it: http://www128.pair.com/r3d4k7/JL%5B0,1%5D.pdf
Your CarPool prodigies must sit back and chuckle as they read what you write on this thread. But you are unrelentingly optimistic about your ability to steer readers into the Zen woo world. An admirable trait.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 21, 2018 - 05:23pm PT
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Hibert Space just simply proves that modern science can never give us a conclusive answer.
Therefore their methodology (modern science) always will ultimately render inconclusive knowledge with mountains of holes.
Nature and reality are infinite and science is finite.
These poor gross materialists scientists are deceiving themselves and anyone else following their defective methods ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 21, 2018 - 05:52pm PT
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Base: The notion that we are important in the boggling vastness of the universe is simple hubris.
. . . yours.
You see the universe as encompassing (your) consciousness. What is the basis for this perspective?
I’d say it’s concepts. You have a conceptualization of the universe, as well as a conceptualization of you in it. I’m not saying that those are necessarily wrong, . . . but can you see your own conceptualizations? Can you see that they are conceptualizations?
As an educator, I’d say if you can’t, then you won’t be able to see what’s there behind them.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Mar 21, 2018 - 06:01pm PT
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Your choices of action may be limited—but your choices of thought are not.
Excerpted from Chicago, IL on 5/25/02
Our Love
Esther (Abraham and Jerry)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 21, 2018 - 06:09pm PT
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Now, when you are introduced (to your own intrinsic awareness), the method for entering into it involves three considerations :  Thoughts in the past are clear and empty and leave no traces behind.  Thoughts in the future are fresh and unconditioned by anything.  And in the present moment, when (your mind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything,  Awareness at that moment in itself is quite ordinary.  And when you look into yourself in this way nakedly (without any discursive thoughts),  Since there is only this pure observing, there will be found a lucid clarity without anyone being there who is the observer; Only a naked manifest awareness is present.  (This awareness) is empty and immaculately pure, not being created by anything whatsoever.  It is authentic and unadulterated, without any duality of clarity and emptiness.  It is not permanent and yet it is not created by anything.  However, it is not a mere nothingness or something annihilated because it is lucid and present.  It does not exist as a single entity because it is present and clear in terms of being many.  (On the other hand) it is not created as a multiplicity of things because it is inseparable and of a single flavor.  This inherent self-awareness does not derive from anything outside itself.  This is the real introduction to the actual condition of things. 
from: “Self-Liberation by Seeing with Naked Awareness”, by Padmasambhava
. . . a truly extraordinary book that often generates views of reality when read attentively. Of course it's not for most. It can be another form of true investigation.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 21, 2018 - 06:12pm PT
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Truth seems to me to be a concept.
Damn. All that trial-and-error learning when all I needed was a concept.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 21, 2018 - 07:21pm PT
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Neil Young, non physicist, ordinarily silent on these issues
And then a new Rolls Royce
and a company car,
They went flyin' down the street.
Each one tryin'
to make it to the gate,
Before employees manned the fleet.
The trucks full of products
for the modern home,
Set to roll out into the street,
Of downtown people,
Tryin' to make their way to work.
Nose-to-the-stone people,
Some are saints, and some are jerks.
Hard workin' people,
Stoppin' for a drink
on the way to work.
Alcoholic people,
Yeah, they're takin' it
one day, one day at a time.
-Ordinary People
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