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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 29, 2018 - 04:33pm PT
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Digesting that illustration, jogill...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 29, 2018 - 05:35pm PT
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Speaking of which, I’ve no idea but suspect physics is the best positioned to dig ever farther into the building blocks of reality. Physics and computer concepts like replication, recursion, and hierarchy, IMO. I mean, come on, we know that combinations of 4 bases in DNA are ultimately responsible for all life on earth. Take anything that you can think of biologically and you can bet that it was coded in DNA. And that's a fact, Jack! To think that mind is different is wrong-headed thinking.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 29, 2018 - 05:40pm PT
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astral projections
I don't have any such nade up horsesh!t.
That's exactly what you've been doing as evidence of that statement you just made.
You people just constantly prove that you are just pure clueless mental speculators making up daily horseshiT in those tiny runaway minds of yours.
Because you have zero clues to "What is Mind" ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 29, 2018 - 06:02pm PT
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I never did answer Jan's latest post to me adequately. I guess my main issue with the idea that organisms need to evolve to a certain threshold in order to communicate with some pre-existing higher mind is that, if you really start sketching it out, it seems way more complicated than the currently- accepted, purely evolutionary model. The purely evolutionary model easily explains childhood, mental illness, old age, and pretty much all of the other aspects of the human life cycle. This other model introduces all sorts of dependencies that are not clear at all. It seems very much like MB1's contention that parts of evolution don't make sense without some guiding hand (my interpretation of his view). My retort to him was that it sure made the science of evolution a lot more complicated trying to incorporate this, seemingly whimsical other mover in the mix. One of the mantras of science that I have always used as a guiding principle is that simpler is more likely.
Edit: In the software programming world, it would be simpler is better. If you don't get this, you are not long for the discipline.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 29, 2018 - 06:47pm PT
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If you hear hoofbeats...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine);
But it depends (Lord Slime trademark).
edit:
Not exactly better, Jan, but more likely to be the right answer to a question.
second edit:
Consider how the descriptions of the paths of the planets changed from epicycles to ellipses.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Aug 29, 2018 - 06:52pm PT
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Yes, simpler is better in science but is parsimony reality or a human convenience ? I see no reason why the universe would have to be simple just because humans would prefer it that way.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Aug 29, 2018 - 07:03pm PT
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Jan, it's your mind making this contention that doubts simplicity. How does that work, exactly? How can you speak for generality, being an individual, human mind and all?
In your defense, Jan, it certainly always doesn't turn out that the simplest way is the way that happened. The thing about evolution is that it is contingent on starting conditions. These conditions put constraints on what evolution can do. Sometimes, what ultimately emerges is more complicated than what a designer would have designed (and what we might assume in hindsight).
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 29, 2018 - 09:31pm PT
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"I suggest that the true source of macroevolutionary change lies in the non-linear, or chaotic, dynamics of the relationship between genotype and phenotype – the actual organism and all its traits. The relationship is non-linear because phenotype, or set of observable characteristics, is determined by a complex interplay between an organism’s genes – tens of thousands of them, all influencing one another’s behaviour – and its environment."
"Not only is the relationship non-linear, it also changes all the time. Mutations occur continually, without external influence, and can be passed on to the next generation. A change of a single base of an organism’s DNA might have no consequence, because that section of DNA still codes for the same amino acid. Alternatively, it might cause a significant change in the offspring’s physiology or morphology, or it might even be fatal. In other words, a single small change can have far-reaching and unpredictable effects – the hallmark of a non-linear system."
From:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827821-000-the-chaos-theory-of-evolution/
Continuing:
"Third, the history of life is fractal. Take away the labelling from any portion of the tree of life and we cannot tell at which scale we are looking (see diagram). This self-similarity also indicates that evolutionary change is a process of continual splitting of the branches of the tree."
This seems a bit simplistic. Some of my efforts in infinite compositions might be applicable, since the iteration functions change slightly over time. Wishful thinking!
;>)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 30, 2018 - 12:32am PT
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To think that mind is different is wrong-headed thinking.
--
You might want to look into that a little closer. You are pitching for a certain kind of thinking/reasoning. Kant and others would say that thinking is already in place BEFORE the thoughts arise - that is, your brain is made in a way that provides certain thought patterns and ways of organizing "reality" a priori (beforehand) to any particular thoughts. What's more, Ludwig W. sent shockwaves through the math/philosophy world when he proclaimed that this a priori thinking cannot "explain" anything whatsoever (in terms of determined causes), and Bertrad Russel (and many since) have written off determined causation as merely an artifact of that thinking.
Yours is an approach looking to construct an image of reality from fundamental bits and parts observable as sense data. Insofar as your experience itself is not observable, directly measurable, and so forth, claims that the first person life you actually lead is selfsame, in sum and substance, with, say, computer tech, bring chuckles from certain corners.
The tricky part here is coming to realize that this thinking is not derived from observing"reality" or mind, but was in place before you ever started thinking about same. This is underscored by the man's words per QM: If you think you understand it, you don't.
It's my sense of it that "understanding" as used above is understanding by way of our automatic, sense data, linear causal, bit torrent way of thinking. That, in my opinion, is what Chalmer's Hard Question is in fact a trick question, because it assumes a mechanistic "explanation" is waiting in this wings to once and for all nail mind down ... once the new experimets and data are in.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 30, 2018 - 03:13am PT
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My goodness, a wholesale acknowledgment of a dominant role of the subconscious mind in conscious thought.
Very surprising given it undermines most of your arguments around mind.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Aug 30, 2018 - 03:40am PT
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Thanks for the read jogill. It fits with some of the questions I was asking.
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Aug 30, 2018 - 07:02am PT
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I doubt that either lucid dreaming or lsd would provide real tools for the study of the brain. They answer the question "what's it like to have your brain malfunction" but not much else. Although just today there is a news story about how cbd in marijuana could be a treatment for psychosis. The bad news is, the same study says thc causes psychosis. So, the cbd cannabis strains actually protect you from marijuana. Also a few years ago there was a psilosin study with mri's of the subjects brains, that showed that the drug actually reduces activity in some parts of the brain. Test subjects may have thought their brains were more active, but the opposite was true. People who've experienced religious transformations after over indulging in psychedelics are a little worrisome, although I understand the perspective that seeing is believing.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Aug 30, 2018 - 07:57am PT
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Largo: It certainly works well with technology.
You mean, “well enough.” (When’s the last time you bought a technology? How’d it work? Perfectly?)
As more than one teacher has told me, “you can’t fix samsara.”
Everything is a metaphorical approximation.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 30, 2018 - 08:33am PT
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Everything is a metaphorical approximation.
Throwing blanket statements like this is st00pid and definitely not true.
There are many absolute word sound vibrations that you and the gross materialists are completely clueless about.....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Aug 30, 2018 - 08:40am PT
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your experience itself is not observable, directly measurable, and so forth, claims that the first person life you actually lead is selfsame, in sum and substance, with, say, computer tech,
You began by talking about how thoughts that one is aware of have sub-conscious precursors. In this sense, the above statement is a foregone conclusion. You cannot observe your experience before you have it.
However, there is nothing to prevent someone else from observing and measuring your experience, including your pre-conscious experience, and your first person life (if you can define that without the starting presumption that it is unknowable).
Neither neurophysiology or computer tech seem likely to have reached the limits of their development. The snide dismissive knower has bumped its head against the same wall many times.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Aug 30, 2018 - 08:46am PT
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You can't fix samsara, but you can fix yourself.
As for absolute sound vibrations, I think some may be more efficient than others, but intention is still more important. I say this because I've heard Japanese and Taiwanese Buddhist priests chanting Sanskrit with such heavy mispronunciations that it was unrecognizable to anyone who knows the original. Still, they manage to get enlightened and produce meditation masters in China and Japan.
Each major religion is associated with a particular language and there are always adherents who are sure that language is the only one, or at least the most effective one for reaching the Divine.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 30, 2018 - 09:59am PT
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Absolute sound vibration is not fixed to any religion period ever.
That's why it is absolute.
That is why it works even if kind of mispronounced ......
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 30, 2018 - 10:45am PT
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DP: " People who've experienced religious transformations after over indulging in psychedelics are a little worrisome, although I understand the perspective that seeing is believing."
Is the same not true for those who meditate?
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Aug 30, 2018 - 11:15am PT
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Could be. For me, meditating just put me to sleep lol.
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