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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan wrote: The world is not perfect as it is, nor humans, but to be human means to ask the meaning of it all, and to struggle with making the best choices we can at any given time. To me, that's the philosophical underpinning of what our minds are for, whatever mind is.
I do think the world is perfect but that humans are far from it.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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The process of evolution seems far from perfect to me. For me personally, in a perfect world, there would be no predators, only peaceful animals living out their lives in safety. That's an old Buddhist prayer actually.
May all sentient beings be happy and at their ease
May they be joyous and live in safety.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Perhaps Ed Hartouni has some input on these quantum physics thoughts. Forgive me if it’s been discussed here already. I know there was some talk of quantum physics previously.
I don’t give complete allegiance to ideas from old books, gurus, or someone’s (including my own) observations or feelings. Not that they’re necessarily wrong but I don’t give them the same weight that I do to ideas that have been supported/scrutinized by the scientific method.
So the thing that really makes me think there’s something to this consciousness creates reality idea is the double-slit experiment.
From my layman’s perspective...
Double-slit experiment summary:
*photons are shot at a board with 2 slits.
*If you look at the target board behind the slits you see an interference pattern like two waves (or probability distributions) interacting with each other. Even if you shoot the photons one at a time it (or it's probability distribution) interacts with itself.
*But if you observe what slit the photon goes thru it collapses the probability distribution into a particle at the slit and the pattern on the target board becomes two vertical lines (like particles went straight the slits without interfering with each other, through according to Newton's law of motion> Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it) instead of an interference pattern.
*Now the really weird thing: If you leave the device to measure what slit the photon went thru but don't record the data, then the pattern reverts to two lines. The observation of the photon at the slit changes what happens on the target board.
*According to the Copenhagen interpretation (of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg) The act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce (collapse) to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement.
My questions are:
1. Has this experiment been done where they record the data, but then destroy the data before any human looks at it? I imagine it would still have to produce two lines, because you could look at the target board before the recorded data. But in that case no consciousness ever viewed the slit data.
2. Has this experiment been done where they record say every other photon? If so are the results an interference pattern and two lines?
My idea is (which I have put forth in this discussion before, but perhaps it may make more sense now in relation to the double-slit experiment) if you extrapolate this idea out to the universe and reality itself, if there is a perhaps an infinite or at least extremely large amount of time (and considering time is not really the universal constant we feel but is different for different observers / speeds), and the possibility of the multiverse where there are perhaps an infinite number of universes (possibly with different physics/time, etc.) if the presence of observers (consciousness) has collapsed all these infinite possibilities of time/physics possible into one universe or at least into the universe we are experiencing.
Was I able to explain that in a way that made sense? Or at least an understanding of what I am getting at?
Of course we run into issues extrapolating these quantum ideas and behaviors out into the macro world, so my idea may make little sense. Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment where a cat is put in a sealed metal box with a small amount of radioactive substance that may decay (a quantum event) and cause the release of a vial of poison that would kill the cat. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until you open the box and the state has been observed. Which of course doesn't make a lot of sense.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Beautiful post, Jan, but I would argue that 90 percent of what you said is entirely compatible with a scientific viewpoint on the origin of mind. What we do with our minds as a species is something altogether different. No need to invoke non-scientific hypotheses for how you were born with a brain that functions as mind when you are awake.
Which brings me to my personal award for the most important event on the way to mind -- invention of the neuron. The way that evolution works is that once something has been built and is now replicated across the generations, the new code for building the thing can be modified through mutation. It's how declarative memory arose and undoubtedly how self-referential consciousness arose in humans.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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As it turns out I have some experience with a real life application of Schrödinger's cat experiment.
In 2009 we remodeled our previous house. We removed the tacky vinyl siding and put on stucco. For a few days the screens covering the exterior vents were removed. A few weeks later we noticed a horrible death like smell in the laundry room. We figured a mouse or rat had got in the walls, got sealed in, and died. But it was SO bad. We had to leave the door to the rest of the house closed and the window open, and there were giant flys buzzing around that somehow made it out of the walls (through some quantum slits?). It took months for the mouse to dry out and the smell to go away.
We moved out in 2010 and rented the house out until 2017. We forgot all about the smell.
In 2017 we were getting the house ready to sell. We noticed a wet spot on the laundry room ceiling. Perhaps the line from the A/C condenser unit outside to the HVAC unit inside was leaking or condensation was coming off it?
So we opened up the sealed (box) area above the ceiling. See where this is going...
And found this.
I posthumously named him Schrödinger.
So based on the smell my theory is that the cat was always dead even before I opened up the box and observed that he was dead.
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Perhaps of interest to Ed
I have just finished reading "The Last Man Who Knew Everything"
the biography of Enrico Fermi, what a truly great read
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jan,
I'm not buddhist. I'm not anything. Kashmiri Saivisnm seems closer to what I see. But let's not confuse any interpretations with Reality. Right now my art has shown me more of What This Is than any point of view. I probably refer too often to Buddhism because it and Catholism is all I studied and practiced. I considered both seminary when I was in high school, and later thought about taking up robes (much to the chagrin of my wife). (I was also a consultant to the network of 11 FPMT dharma centers in the Bay Area.)
Instead, here's someone else's view.
"The world's evolution is a wonderful play to convince us that there is a journey. There isn't. It's a play. It's a film, a film called 'The World'. The film looks as though it's going somewhere. You're in the film and you're the main character and we're all the characters that support that film star. That's how it appears.
"You are the light that allows the film to be. And if you see it all from another point of view, you begin to open up to the possibility of dropping the idea of a journey towards somewhere that you'll never get to. You'll never get there -- you already are there. And so in a way, the film is sacred.. It's telling you that you are that. I want to get you out of the idea -- or rather, I don't, but something wants to get you out of the idea that you're on a journey.
"When there is simply presence, all meaning ends. Meaning is always attached to a story -- 'We are going somewhere'.
 Tony Parsons in "All There Is," pg 97
Respectfully,
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jan: Buddhism recognizes that sometimes it is necessary to kill to save innocent life. The men who plotted to kill Hitler would fall in that category. Perhaps that is what Mike is getting at ?
I forgot to respond to this comment.
I was thinking more of my experiences having been a teacher. A teacher gives or provides what's needed by the student, and that requires a full range of skills and orientations. I'm not interested in talking about or arguing about killing. I'm a combat veteran, and even killing a gnat affects me. I only mentioned killing as an extreme example of what could constitute skillful means.
Skillful means appears to come from mysterious depths, not unlike intuition. When I am without intentions, loose and free, in the moment, then I *can* respond skillfully--but that happens all on its own. It's not anything that I *do.* It's sort of like flow (as most experience in climbing), but without the orientation to personal achievement or self-aggrandizement.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mike, thanks so much for the clarification. One of the problems we have is that there is no modern secular vocabulary to discuss these things and Buddhism seems to be one of the few organized systems that has such a vocabulary. However, as you can see from my comments as a social scientist and a human being, I can not separate the the philosophy of Hinduism and Buddhism from my lived experience in Hindu and Buddhist communities.
I would like to add that not all Hindu communities have the same problems as the one I lived in. Nepal is a special case as so many high caste people fled there after the Muslim invasions of northern India. You will appreciate if I equate it to an army constituted of 70% Colonels and Generals and only 30% enlisted. Imagine how inefficient and ego driven that would be. The government there is even more lopsided in favor of high caste privilege.
I understand what you are saying about being in the moment. What I can't figure out for my own life is how that equates with the future planning required for major writing projects for example. That's one of the many reasons I am intrigued by the Tibetan tulkus as they seem to manage both, being highly accomplished and efficient in the material world and yet not stuck in it either.
I'm sure meanwhile, that if we looked at art, it would be easier to understand and share a perspective than it is with words. Being and art come from the same place whereas language has added onto pure being and that, perhaps is the real human dilemma.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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One of the problems we have is that there is no modern secular vocabulary to discuss these things...
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Trump
climber
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And that .... Proves the Absolute Truth exists!
I think it’s hard for us to take any action without first declaring Q.E.D.
So we do. That’s what we do. We prefer information that confirms our beliefs. May the best belief survive! And it does. And those survival biased beliefs persist to influence future perceptions and beliefs.
But that doesn’t make the thing that we’re declaring to be true actually true - it doesn’t mean that we know what the absolute truth is any better than anyone else does. It doesn’t even mean that the best belief for us to have is the truth. It’s just part of what we do - part of what we declare to be our consciousness - we declare things to be true and then convince ourselves that we’ve proven them.
OK. That’s a useful skill to have, and some folks are better at it than others. And some folks like to assert that they know what’s true better than others, and that’s a useful skill to have too.
Truth is the chopping block. What we believe to be true is just a proposition.
To actually believe what’s true - yea I believe that’s valuable, and sometimes I seem to be wrong about that. Sometimes it seems like you might be better off being conscious of things that aren’t true. Most all people seem to be quite good at that. And in our current informational environment, we seem to be getting better at it.
That our individual consciousnesses, perceptions, and mental state are even in remotely the same ballpark is simply astounding.
If we say so, then I guess it is astounding. Maybe similarly to the way that it’s astounding that our individual bodies are all in the same ballpark of having two legs.
Or if we don’t say it’s astounding, then it just is. We seem to say stuff, one way or another.
Modern Indians however, strive for something more
Different maybe. But ok, if we say it’s more (rather than less) then I guess it’s more. If we say strive (instead of settle) then I guess it’s strive. If we don’t say, then it just is.
We seem to say stuff, one way or another. We don’t tend to just say that it is. Our choosing to say stuff one way or another for some reason or another seems to be something that is.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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The much-appreciated PTPP say, "Don't end sentences with a proposition." *burp*
See you guys next year. Enjoy this long-winded thread.
Ciao.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feynman - transcribed from the video
"In the beginning of the history of experimental observation or any other kind of observation on scientific things, it's intuition which is really based on experience with everyday objects that suggests reasonable explanations for things but as we try to widen and make more consistent our description of what we see as it gets wider and wider and we see a greater range of phenomena the explanations become what we call laws instead of simple explanations but the one important odd characteristic is they often become more and more unreasonable more and more intuitively far from obvious to take an example is the relativity theory in which for instance the proposition is that if you think that two things occur at the same time that's just a subjective opinion someone else could conclude that those two events one was before the other and that simultaneity is merely a subjective impression now there's no reason why this should be otherwise really the things of the direct everyday experience involves large number of particles or involve things moving very slowly or involve other conditions that are very special and represent in fact a very limited experience with nature it's a small section that one gets of natural phenomena that one gets from a direct experience it's only through the refined measurements and careful experimentation that we can get a wider vision and then we see unexpected things we see things far from what we would guess we see things that are very far from what we could have imagined and so our imagination is stretched to the utmost not as in fiction to imagine things that aren't really there but our imagination is stretched to the utmost just to comprehend those things which are there..."
"...what is necessary for the existence of science and so forth and what the characteristics of nature are are not to be determined by compass preconditions but they are determined by the material with which we work by Nature herself we look and we see what we're going to find and we cannot say ahead of time successfully what we are going to find the more reasonable possibilities often turn out not to be the situation what is necessary for the very existence of science is just the ability to experiment the honesty in reporting results the results must be reported without some saying what they'd like the results to have had been rather than what they were and finally an important thing is the intelligence to interpret the results but an important point about this intelligence is that it should not be sure ahead of time about what must be now it can be prejudiced and say "i don't like that" but prejudice is different from absolute certainty i don't mean absolute prejudice just bias but not strict bias you see not complete prejudice as long as your bias doesn't make any difference because if fact is true there will be a perpetual accumulation of experiments that perpetually annoy you until they cannot be disregarded any longer they can only be disregarded if you are absolutely sure ahead of time of some precondition that science has to have in fact it is only necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions..."
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Trump
climber
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the one important odd characteristic
Right. Like what exactly is odd about it? The thing that makes it odd - or rather I think the thing that makes him say it’s odd - is exactly the thing that he’s talking about - that it doesn’t match his intuition based on his experiences.
But it’s not at all odd in that context. He says they “often” do that, so it’s a common characteristic of the reference class, not an odd characteristic, and something that we should learn to expect as a reasonable result, even after seeing it happen just once. What he says his actual experience is is that it happens often, but still he characterizes it as odd. Maybe like the rest of us he hasn’t solved the reference class problem quite yet.
(I once had a PhD scientist tell me that the results of a study “reasonably” showed that the hypothesis (that they already had believed was true) was true. Like the hypothesis having been shown to be untrue would have been less reasonable. :-) A more reasonable expectation might have been that trying to replicate the results of the study would have yielded different results, or that the scientist would not have been able to interpret the results independent from their prior expectations.)
I think that it’s hard to transcend thinking like a human, and our 4 billion years of prior expectations, for all of us, even people I very much admire who are well versed in science and the scientific method and probability and information theory and all that awesomeness.
When push comes to shove, I think we think like humans. And I think that thinking like a human includes believing that we’ve transcended thinking like a human and admiring our awesome consciousness and it’s uniqueness in the universe, and all of the other self-confirming social emotional psychological pressures on our thinking.
Except maybe it’s just kind of not what our consciousness tells us it is? Maybe we’re just not all that? Maybe what would really be odd would be to NOT admire the awesomeness of our consciousness and our ability to transcend our human ways of thinking?
Truth might not be as flattering as we would prefer to believe is true, regardless of how strongly we believe the hypothesis.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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My all-time scientific hero is Charles Darwin. It's funny to me now that I used to think that Einstein was obviously the bigger thinker. Everyone on this thread should actually read Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The thing is, it's conversational. Whether you have a humanities bent or a scientific bent, you will understand what he is suggesting. He argues for evolution based upon a large assemblage of disparate environmental evidence. He is the quintessential admiring observer of nature.
Those disparate environmental evidence include;
* The fossil record (changes in organisms through time)
* The relative similarity of flora and fauna in separated but close-by locations (changes in organisms through space at a point in time)
* The implications of animal breeding (human-directed evolutionary change)
Darwin brought these all together into a beautiful synthesis that stands the test of time.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Have you read Alfred Russel Wallace's The Malay Archipelago? There are strong connections between geology and evolution.
Both Darwin and Wallace are good examples of the reference Ed gave us:
the characteristics of nature are are not to be determined by compass preconditions
When I see Largo say, "That's only objective processing," or MikeL say, "That's only an interpretation," I hear dogma.
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WBraun
climber
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You guys are the worst dogmatic of the bunch.
Total brainwashed .....
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