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jstan
climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 01:39pm PT
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Jan:
Apparently the Neanderthals would not survive our modern inflammatory diet. MacDonald suicides.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 01:45pm PT
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Edit:
HFCS:
The same speaker, you dog. Was one month ago, actually.
Actually, what I alluded to was 7 months ago...
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=3051545#msg3051545
This guy: Anil Seth (neuroscientist, AI researcher, etc) was just on Harris last week. Only three hours. They covered a lot! Including the predictive brain and "controlled hallucinations".
Here he is at TED where he also discusses "controlled hallucination." I think it's got merit.
You're behind, brother jstan. Catch up! :)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 01:54pm PT
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Spending several hours spent watching this one hour talk...
Cool! I wish somehow more people could find this time. Despite their busy lives.
Probably a wish too far though.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 24, 2018 - 02:31pm PT
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And still no definitive consensus for an answer. ;)
We fear that if we give a definitive answer we will be put to some real work, like coming up with a unified field theory.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 04:08pm PT
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How was glycolysis encoded in our DNA and bodies?
So who IS the encoder?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 24, 2018 - 04:58pm PT
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So who IS the encoder?
Who is Mother Nature, Alex? Mother Nature is nothing less than evolution playing itself out in a changing world.
Don Paul wrote:
Wondering if anyone would explain precisely how something like fear of spiders & snakes is encoded in DNA. Or if it's not encoded, then what?
Second question first, it IS encoded. It is an algorithm, like everything else related to behavior. The algorithm (the answer to the first question) goes something like this: when you see a thing that looks vaguely snakelike, that sends a message to a more general algorithm -- the get the f*#k outta there algorithm. Of course, the details are more complicated.
Another example: when you see a vehicle profile that looks vaguely like a police car behind you while you're driving, that kicks in the more general, slow the f*#k down algorithm.
I believe that these algorithms are all subconscious, btw. The conscious algorithms would only kick-in after the fact. In the future, the conscious algorithms are what you actually remember about the incidents.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 05:07pm PT
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Material Nature is NOT the encoder.
Try again ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 24, 2018 - 06:27pm PT
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Although it has always seemed obvious to me that mind is something that is a construct of evolution, I do believe that I have learned a thing or two since participating on this thread.
My current thinking is, first of all, to think of mind as a form of consciousness. Currently, I would break up consciousness into three hierarchical levels; the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious.
The unconscious is responsible for basic survival functions that do not involve imaging the world.
The subconscious level deals with other agents in the world. If you are a predator, you have algorithms for anticipating what your prey is likely to do. If you are a prey species, you have algorithms for evading your predator. What we call intelligence works at the subconscious level.
The conscious level deals with responsibility. I did this because of that. This may be unique to humans at this point in Earth's history. This is mind, IMO.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2018 - 07:20pm PT
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The unconscious is responsible for basic survival functions that do not involve imaging the world.
Unconscious means you are dead, no life.
Consciousness is life itself.
Guessing is useless .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aug 25, 2018 - 09:10am PT
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jogill: Or, we sit in a mental vacuum contemplating nothing.
Your characterization is imaginary, John. I understand it.
When a business person or group puts on a conference about this or that competitive issue, they might put up ads or posters illustrating some figure in a pair of slacks, rolled-up shirt sleeves, and a tie planting a flag at the top of a mountain. Business is like climbing a mountain: what it takes is smarts and will.
Yup, climbing is just like that, isn’t it?
“Yeah, but how do you get that rope up there to begin with?”
It’s like Don Paul wrote: I could be interested in it for a few minutes then would want to challenge myself more.
If challenge is what one is interested in, then try controlling a mind: one’s own, one’s spouse’s, or one’s child.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 25, 2018 - 09:15am PT
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try controlling a mind: one’s own, one’s spouse’s, or one’s child.
A grim thought.
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Trump
climber
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Aug 25, 2018 - 09:29am PT
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In every case the point of focus is always found to be empty In my experience this is the natural conclusion Youre either a gross materialist or the intelligent class
Oh.
Is this the result in every case, or is it just the case in your experience, or is it just the case among the intelligent class?
Intelligent me, I’m pretty sure I just know stuff. Seems to have worked out pretty well for us so far. I’m not dead, or extinct, yet.
So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki.
Oh.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 25, 2018 - 11:49am PT
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The gross materialists have never improved anyone's life period.
For life itself is and was always perfect, to begin with.
The only thing the gross materialist can improve and simultaneously fuk up is the living entities meat package (body, mind).
The gross materialists can only keep screwing up themselves in their illusion of thinking they are the material body and all its material attachments......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 25, 2018 - 08:31pm PT
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“Yeah, but how do you get that rope up there to begin with?”
Seems like that was asked in the parking area when Rich was doing the FA of the Needle's Eye. But it's like an urban legend.
Mike, have you attempted to control the mind of spouse or offspring? It's beyond challenging, it's suicide, man!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aug 26, 2018 - 08:35am PT
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^^^^^^^^
LOL. (You slay me, brother.)
Yeah, I got a couple of divorces under my belt after my attempts trying to change the minds of my spouses. I think someone called it “The Pygmalion Effect.” I have no children, I believe, but I had students, like you. That teaching experience probably doesn’t count in this discussion.
It’s funny, though. What works in teaching, by my experience, seemed to be much more than simply transmitting “stuff.” It became an art form and an experience of flow from my side. I first had to come to see what their default views were, though, and I found those to be institution-specific; the students in the UK, in Canada, or at the 4-5 schools in the U.S. I taught at all presented somewhat different student cultures to me. It usually took me about 2 years to “get” those cultures before I could find a groove that worked for me and them.
I’d be interested in your and Jan’s views. I found that if I was almost brutally honest with them (exposing my own doubts, foibles, idiosyncracies), their minds would *tend* to follow.
When it happens, what is it about one’s own surety of being that communicates powerfully to others? Confucius points to Li and de (as in The Tao de Ching). When one is balanced or at-one with the moment, then one generates charisma that is almost hypnotic to people. All the immediately apparent universe seems to revolve around one with charisma, like the North Star. For Confucius, it was learning and perfecting social behaviors through incessant practice and study (he had many ideas about what was civilized). Social expertise (if there is such a thing) looks like that to me: ya gotta go with the flow.
So much spiritualism is high, ascetic, pristine, pure, transcendent, and other-worldly. In what seems like a final stage to me these days, all that spiritual stuff needs to be brought to the muddy earth in mundane everyday life. That’s what leads to de in practice, to me. (PSP might say something here about attachment and aversion, where less seems to be more.)
Cheers.
P.S. Anyone yet see Steve Jobs' daughters autobiography: Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs? It's interesting how someone can love (and not) a person with great charisma, even when treated cruelly by them. What a jumble of personalities we all seem to be.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Aug 26, 2018 - 01:27pm PT
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Yes, teaching is a mysterious process. Sometimes pearls of wisdom seem to flow effortlessly and other times no matter what, it is a struggle to pull those words out. I agree that the more open with the students, the more they pay attention.
I know a lot of people are critical of online teaching but I find it works even better there as you can reply individually to students and they to you, in ways that would make them shy to do before a whole class or face to face. Many students also feel more at ease posting online to other students than they would speaking up in class.
I find using phrases like "maybe you could look at it another way" or "have you ever thought about it like this", to be the best approach and online teaching also helps a person to perfect this technique as there is time to rethink, edit, and rewrite.
As for bringing spirituality back to earth, I've always been taught that was the ultimate (boddhisattva) goal.
And for mixed feelings about a charismatic personality, I definitely have experience of that too.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 27, 2018 - 02:03am PT
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First, suppose that the famous ship sailed by the hero Theseus in a great battle has been kept in a harbour as a museum piece. As the years go by some of the wooden parts begin to rot and are replaced by new ones. After a century or so, all of the parts have been replaced. Is the "restored" ship still the same object as the original?
Second, suppose that each of the removed pieces were stored in a warehouse, and after the century, technology develops to cure their rotting and enable them to be put back together to make a ship. Is this "reconstructed" ship the original ship? And if so, is the restored ship in the harbour still the original ship too?
In both philosophy of law and practical law, the paradox appears when the ownership of an object or of the rights to its name are disagreed in court. A notorious example was the band Sugababes whose original members all left, over time, and later re-formed as a different band, while the old band continued to replace members and exist under the original name.
The Theseus Ship thought experiment has been used per the philosophy of mind re: that brain - and by extension, our mind - is nothing more than a sum of it's physical parts. If so, given that all of our cells are "replaced" every seven or so years, is our brain the same brain as the one we were born with? If our essence somehow carries over, what is it?
So-called mysterianism has some novel replies to these questions.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 27, 2018 - 07:48am PT
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If our essence somehow carries over, what is it?
Our essence could be a moving average of our physical parts, changing with time but retaining recognizable features.
The question of changes in our brain and mind also connects to MikeL's mention of control over mind. Everything we experience probably leaves traces in our brain whether we are aware of them or not. Advertisers have very effective ways of influencing decisions we make about what to buy. Do they control some part of our minds?
This angle also relates to a question asked more than once here: Who or what is the observer? If an attempt is made to affect your behavior, and you don't like it, what part of you has become aware of the unwanted influence? Does that part of you remain the same over time?
What if brain editing became possible, like gene editing has. If your brain was edited, for example, to change you from a person who likes dogs to a person who likes cats, who or what would object? "You" would now be happy with cats and not so happy with dogs, and it would be part of your personality. Would there still be a part of your "essence" that preferred dogs to cats?
Less innocuous conversions might also be possible.
If some essential observer carried over during brain editing, we would conclude that brain and mind are not the same.
I don't say that brain editing will ever be possible, but
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/07/news-memory-manipulation-research-neuroscience/
How do memory-altered mice affect one's philosophical interpretaion of the ship of Theseus?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aug 27, 2018 - 09:38am PT
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Andy: What if brain editing became possible, like gene editing has. If your brain was edited, for example, to change you from a person who likes dogs to a person who likes cats, who or what would object? "You" would now be happy with cats and not so happy with dogs, and it would be part of your personality. Would there still be a part of your "essence" that preferred dogs to cats?
Talking about this topic re “brains” seems to force the conversation into the narrows of physicalism. Talking about this re “mind” opens the conversation so that readers can now bring in various approaches of influence described and documented. There are some books on sales techniques (Cialdini’s, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 2007) or Kahneman’s (and others’) research on biases and heuristics that have avoided the briar patch of Brain = Mind. So doing thus allows folks to focus on peoples’ views of reality might get shifted.
In this time of reflection with McCain’s passing, it might be interesting to look at studies that began back in the 1950s examining how patriotic veterans captured during the Korean War could be turned to making unpatriotic declarations about their country’s activities. (Sadly, the developments of academic findings over the decades have not provided solid conclusions.)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-brainwashing-and-how-it-shaped-america-180963400/
From a Wiki review of a decently received book on Brain Washing (2004) by a neuroscientist:
“[Taylor] explains the neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and brings the point across that the self itself is changeable. She describes the physiology behind neurological pathways which include [neurological] webs . . . [and] explains that certain brains with more rigid pathways will be less susceptible to new information or creative stimuli. . . . brainwashed individuals have more rigid pathways, and that rigidity can make it unlikely that the individual will rethink situations or be able to later reorganize these pathways. [Taylor] explains that repetition is an integral part of brainwashing techniques because connections between neurons become stronger when exposed to incoming signals of frequency and intensity. . . . Taylor explains that brain activity in the temporal lobe, the region responsible for artistic creativity, also causes spiritual experiences in a process known as lability.” (My emphasis added.)
Of course, there are detractors; the scientific claims have been doubted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing:_The_Science_of_Thought_Control
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Aug 27, 2018 - 09:57am PT
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I always thought the reason for meditation was to rewire your mind into a less conflicted, happier, and more useful self ?
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