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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 25, 2014 - 11:56pm PT
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Base, those were some good one's! i,m think,in
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jul 26, 2014 - 05:50am PT
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jul 26, 2014 - 08:55am PT
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At the risk of ridicule I'm reposting my bit of sci-fi, subtly humorous (at least to me, anyway) en-dabble-ment. Some of us, if not all of us, might take ourselves way too seriously from time to time and need to be reminded of it, or at least to have something offered up to scoff at or ignore.
'The Tzanckman Orb'
I am only an amateur astronomer and study of science but do have a friend or two with PhDs in astrophysics and another who is quite out there in a kind of theoretical physics research I definitely don't understand. This scientist friend is always traveling and we rarely meet face to face except at our model airplane club from time to time. I had an email from him the other day and I think he may have sent it to me by mistake because the subject matter was obviously of a covert and confidential nature which I am forwarding here.
Bushman,
Left for journey to Prax Xlychlomlaxis with my astroprojection advisor Jemfet this morning at 2:00 am and will not be experiencing a Chrono-birth evolvement in this realm. Please forward all messages to my associate:
Dr. Angmar Chan
U C Berkley
Dept. of Paraphysical Astrophenomonon
Box 666
Berkley, CA 94720
I am hoping to return with the Tzanckman Orb ASAP. This species specific therapeutic technology so far has been found in nature to be both unimaginatively exquisite and horrifically agonizing in all it's beauty, trauma, and depth at altering homicidal behavior in humanoid species. While searching from the distant galaxies to the inner sanctum of my mind for answers to such mysteries about the proclivity for war in humans, and as to the purpose of our existence, I have experienced multiple epiphanies and multi layered conundrums in pursuit of a cure for the violence gene. I have also stumbled upon pandora's boxes and secret vaults whispering warnings, and trip wires with booby traps, to find a beaches full of nautilus shells all containing the secrets, along with our expiration dates.
It was only through my research with Dr. Chan that I stumbled upon the Piscek Link, a secret government website with a link to the multi-verse internet scientific information co-op.
This was where I first heard about Tzanckman Orb technology. The Tzanckman Orb will hopefully nullify the violence gene in our species enough to allow for the advancement of planetary prosperity for the next ten million years. Wish me luck in my endeavor and the best to my friends and loved ones until my return.
-Dr Emery Fischer
07-19-2014
The Tzanckman Orb is no mystery to me because I've known about it for years but if anyone here can explain to me what's going on with this Piscek Link, the secret government website with a link to the multi-verse internet scientific information co-op, I would greatly appreciate it.
-bushman
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 26, 2014 - 12:00pm PT
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If you offer two choices to a mouse, a red button for food and a blue button which delivers an electric shock, can it be said that the mouse is self aware because it can learn the difference? Humans will obey the same experiment. Is this free will?
base
i'd say that's learned programming. He jus found a way to eat, which is instict, which is geneticly programmed. Some animals eat meat, some plants. I'd say that's from instinct?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:19pm PT
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On the topic of comparative biology, which apparently nobody here cares much about, I remember something I saw in the film "Blackfish."
That particular whale was one of the first captive Orcas. It was a juvenile, for obvious handling reasons. A biologist studied him closely as he grew up and found him incredibly intelligent. At one point the whale started answering all "questions" wrong," and it became obvious that the whale was training the trainer.
Orcas have huge brains. If brain size is any rough indicator of intelligence, then the whales would be more intelligent than humans.
Consider that. If other species were actually more intelligent than humans, our provincial focus on human intelligence may offer only a small key in the study of awareness and decision making. Perhaps we can learn something from whales, if we could only understand their language.
The idea that humans are in any way special is arbitrary. You need to dig deep into the ontological definition of reality or you are being dishonest.
Sure, we are the first species to build microwave ovens, but this is due to the evolution of human intelligence. Our brains evoloved, and this evolution can be measured and studied. Intelligence emerged slowly, and our brains are probably not that different from an ancestor who lived 20,000 years ago.
Anthropology has been greatly aided by the recent use of mitochondrial DNA. The genotypes of our ancestors has been gathered and can be compared to modern humans.
The earliest documented members of the genus Homo are Homo habilis which evolved around 2.3 million years ago; the earliest species for which there is positive evidence of use of stone tools. The brains of these early hominins were about the same size as that of a chimpanzee, although it has been suggested that this was the time in which the human SRGAP2 gene doubled, producing a more rapid wiring of the frontal cortex. During the next million years a process of encephalization began, and with the arrival of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled to 850 cm3.[4] Homo erectus and Homo ergaster were the first of the hominina to leave Africa, and these species spread through Africa, Asia, and Europe between 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago. This increase in human brain size is equivalent to every generation having an additional 125,000 neurons more than their parents. It is believed that these species were the first to use fire and complex tools. According to the Recent African Ancestry theory, modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, replacing local populations of Homo erectus, Homo denisova, Homo floresiensis and Homo neanderthalensis.[5][6][7][8][9
Look. We have only been around for 200,000 years. From the perspective of nature, this is a blink of the eye.
The only thing that prevents us from discussing the evolution of intelligence and morals is religion, which draws a clear line between humans and all other species. We are constantly thinking that we are special. We have technology. Whales do not. We have opposable thumbs and very specific scientific language, both of which enabled us to perform abstract acts limited only by our own intelligence.
However, 20,000 years ago, and more recently among aboriginal tribes, we were more primitive animals, despite the fact that our brains had already evolved to present day form. Whatever provided the spark of modern intelligence was probably a slow process with moments of great advance. The appearance of written language was very important.
No matter whatever metric you use to define intelligence, awareness, and intellectual introspection, it is a flawed position to take without considering sentience in species other than H. Sapiens.
Does a whale have the ability to experience no-thing?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:23pm PT
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Good one, Bushman!
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:54pm PT
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'Mostly Dogs Get Me'
Hide and seek with my dogs,
Always gets me going,
They run and they rout,
But always they're knowing,
They locate and find,
For the fun of the chase,
With such happy creatures,
There can be no disgrace,
Though wary of sharks,
I always would be,
As I walk through the night,
Or I swim in the sea,
But one thing for sure,
Before I say ciao,
Is whales never paid me,
No never mind no how.
-bushman
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:56pm PT
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Base 104, I am interested in comparative biology whether anyone else is or not, but I think from past comments there are several others here.
I would disagree with you though that "primitive" tribes are less intelligent. This is of course an old discussion in Anthropology. The easiest example is to consider is that of the Inuit/Eskimos. It's easy to see that their traditional life requires so much energy to sustain in that environment that they don't have much time or energy let alone resources, left for anything beyond survival.
For those living in less extreme environments, the question of why they did not advance technologically for many generations is more difficult. In some cases, it seems that survival was too easy so there was no incentive to change.In other cases, they simply chose to invest their intelligence in other pursuits by constructing elaborate community wide exchange systems or rituals, for example. And if you've ever studied kinship theory or non western languages, it's pretty hard to argue that their thinking is less sophisticated, though it certainly is different.
What seems increasingly clear as the world modernizes, is that those people who have endured more challenging environments, will be more resourceful by and large, in adapting to new circumstances.Those for whom life has been very easy and unchallenging from the natural point of view seem to have a much harder time of it.
Of course there are exceptions to every one of these general principles. One would think that the Arabs for example would be extremely flexible given their survival in a harsh environment, but this does not seem to be the case. Perhaps their problem also is a tradition of a harsh environment with few resources.
In any case, he only thing as complicated than trying to understand consciousness from the neuron level, is trying to sort out human intelligence and motivation from studying human societies.
It did occur to me however, when Ed was discussing consciousness as an effect of our social life and memory, that ants and bees ought to be way more intelligent than they are if that is the case, or we have way too much brain for the level of social organization we exhibit. Either way, interesting to contemplate.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 26, 2014 - 02:12pm PT
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Jan,
We have discussed this before. I don't mean to say that more primitive tribes are less intelligent in the sense you are.
We have all been sharing the same fully evolved brain for well over 100,000 years. The brain hasn't changed much. What has changed is what humans have been able to accomplish.
A lot of human technology has to do with communication. That is why we go to school. If we tried to re-invent the wheel every generation, it would be a great disadvantage.
We have the ability to communicate and learn from others. I would say that written language is more precise, and symbolic language such as mathematics is a great tool for learning.
We all share the same hardware, so in principle, anyone from any group should be able to learn in a formal school type setting. I'm not being a racist here. I am generalizing, as a species.
This is your realm more than mine. What do you think about the evolution of, say, technology among humans?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 26, 2014 - 02:21pm PT
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Technology was the backdrop to my comments, - why some groups seem interested in developing it and others not. Formerly it was assumed to be a matter of intelligence, social Darwinism and all that. Then there was a period of time when all were thought to be equal and everything was relative. Then intelligence was thought of in terms of energy expenditure in relation to environment (cultural ecology). Now again, we have been in a long phase in cultural Anthropology where it is politically incorrect to even discuss such topics, though biological Anthropologists do. In some departments there has even been a split between the biological and cultural Anthropologists into separate departments over the issue.Much discussed, but little agreed upon, and this is with all the same species- wide hard ware.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 26, 2014 - 03:40pm PT
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Well that was a crappy one Base..
First of all, your cut/paste is nothing more than hypathetical space and time filler. There is NO hard evidence for any of that. Yet it states those theorys as if it IS our history. Of the 5 or 6 important fossil finds of Homo's dating more than 10k yrs. Each are flawed. The guy with a "tool". That tool was 40 meters away and 5 meters higher. Yet they still say it was his?
There's alot of people that would love to find something that proves evolution being the origin of man. That would be history make'in.
i CAN understand if your without God, and trying to figure out how you got here. Trying to make sense of all this seemingly long spanse of time with which there is no recorded history. THose stories require just as much faith to believe as a belief in God.
i'm certainly down with discussing evolution. My idea of God's evolution would be opposite of that of man's. THe idea/consciousness for a tall, high limb, leaf eating organism came way before the Girraffe. The Girraffe was/is determanistic in becoming a Girraffe through evolution. There was a need and a purpose for a girraffe inorder for the world to harmonize. THe girraffe grew to fit that need, part of God's perfect plan.
Jesus says He's The God of LOve! Why would the creator of the universe choose that over say, The God of Science, or The God of Power? Why would He pick love as the most important feature?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jul 26, 2014 - 03:58pm PT
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THose stories require just as much faith to believe as a belief in God.
Oh. I forgot. God created man in his image, so man is special.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 26, 2014 - 05:51pm PT
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BASE104 -- "We have the ability to communicate and learn from others."
Yes .... But!! if your consciousness is not ready you will not be able to understand the higher knowledge yet.
You will reject it, you will be forced to reject it even if it will save your life.
The root key in life is consciousness, not technology .......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 26, 2014 - 06:42pm PT
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Ed said:
"but there is no way to access that "raw state"
you experience that state only through perception.
This is a discursive evaluation, and it is consistant within that framework. But you are mistaken if you think that framework or perspective dose not have limitiations, or that you cannot jump past those limitations by droppin that perspective. How so?
What happens when you allow the "you" to fall away. This is NOT advanced subjective science. It is the rudimentary stuff, which is about all we can work up to here without dufer's like Tvash repeating howlers such as "the space between thoughts is simply more thoughts." the poor sap can't fathom NOT thinking. That's being marooned in the Matrix for real - and then heaping virtue on being marooned.
But anyhow, when the "you" drops away there is no one or no agency to "access" or not access anything. All that remains IS the raw state. Put differently, there is no perceiving, only perception. Kant would say this is impossible, that we have no way to ever encounter the "thing in itself." He never learned that the "thing" in his statement provides the stumbling block, just as the "you" does as well, or that both are mental constructs with no independent existence. Both "me" and things are indespensible to living on earth. But there are other worlds having nothing to do with either woo OR things or "me."
Another thing that keeps coming up is the issue of free will. My sense of this is that from a discursive pov, free will can never make a bit of sense becuase mechanically speaking, all "things" emerge from antecedent, strictly material factors, influences, causes, and a million other factors, ALL determined. From this pespective, we can see where our actions come from - our evolutionary coding. A totally free will or a free choice means that a choice was arrived at by some means other than our determined, mechanical processing - does oit not. So where WOULD a free choice come from? By what means or mechanism would a free choice ever arise?
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 26, 2014 - 06:57pm PT
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So where WOULD a free choice come from? (JL)
From the space between thoughts?
;>\
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 26, 2014 - 07:07pm PT
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There is NO hard evidence for any of that.
There's alot of people that would love to find something that proves evolution being the origin of man. That would be history make'in.
i CAN understand if your without God, and trying to figure out how you got here. Trying to make sense of all this seemingly long spanse of time with which there is no recorded history. THose stories require just as much faith to believe as a belief in God.
Blue-
I challenge you to take a Physical Anthropology class and then tell us there's no evidence for human evolution. There are now thousands of fossils backed by plenty of dating whether going by the layers in the earth or more precise atomic methods.We have fossils, the study of other primates and DNA, all as physical evidence of our past.
Meanwhile, don't make the mistake of thinking that there has to be a conflict between the two viewpoints. You're mixing apples and oranges and calling both of them vegetables. Each has their place.
Just because some scientists say there is no purpose to anything and humans have no free will doesn't mean that they all think that way and it surely doesn't mean that you have to think that way. We can choose our belief systems and our personal ethics and none of those negates the evidence for man's evolution.
Evolution simply means change over time and yes, we have changed at many levels from brain size to social and spiritual mores.One of the greatest leaps in our consciousness was in fact the teachings of Jesus, easily understood and still so difficult to apply even by his followers.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 26, 2014 - 07:36pm PT
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all "things" emerge from antecedent, strictly material factors, influences, causes, and so forth. From this pespective, we can see where our actions come from - our evolutionary coding. nscious
i think everybody agrees with this. Our evolutionary coding or our "lifes programming" which brought us to where we are today, is as much our owns responsibility as it is everyone elses. We are as Henry Rollins sang "A Product of Society!" With that confirmed, looking back over my past. The "Free-Will" that bludgens my memory would be the choices i made that went against my conscious, or sub-conscious. (after reading so many of peoples opinions what conscious means, i'm afraid to use the word in a sentence). But as a simple example to Free-Will, if i made a last minute unrational "call in sick" to work. What i have progammed, and know down inside what is the "right" thing to do, and "i" decide to go climbing instead..
That's MY Free-Will explination. My decision to go against my own grain.
For the science types; Photons move in a straight linear line until a point when they turn perpendicular. No one knows why or when? Could it be Free-Will?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 26, 2014 - 08:04pm PT
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Thanks Jan!
Meanwhile, don't make the mistake of thinking that there has to be a conflict between the two viewpoints
I surely don't have this conflict! (I KNOW WHAT I GOT! i'm just trying to figure how it fits in) i understand my writing sucks, buti'm trying. Like Mh2 said it's hard to disolve a billion yrs in a few sentences, or somthin to that irk?
But Please, for us to KNOW what happened 10k, 100k, or a 100M yrs ago, i gotta take it with a grain of salt you know what i mean?
Sure there's lots of pointers and pieces to a puzzle. But there is NO picture!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 26, 2014 - 10:31pm PT
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Thanks for clarifying. It did seem like you were taking a throw back position there.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jul 27, 2014 - 03:07am PT
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It's nearly 3:00 a.m.
While you great minds are allowed (I hope) some respite from your deep thoughts, I thought it might be "Handy" to lay this "stud pile" (Haan's term) in here and sneak back out before I become engrossed.
All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.--Luis Bunuel
But who would instinctively trust any dog or cat on first meeting them, especially one from Andalusia?
More harassment for Luis, with that question.
I may be back. I'm starting to lurk and think and sh!t.
A bientot.
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