In defense of close mindedness
Posted by daydreamer at 10:03, 21 Aug 2010I thought I’d go with a provocative title, but don’t worry, it isn’t going to be that bad.
4 days ago the lack of a basis for understanding reality was bugging me, so I thought I’d have another crack at it. Then it bugged me some more…. Then it really bugged me.
Descartes was wrong. ‘I think therefore I exist’ looked like a good starting point, but a consciousness might be simulated – being able to think (or, more importantly, being able to think that you think) does not prove your own existence, though I think it does prove ‘existence’. I seem to be able to prove ‘existence’, but not my own... oops.
So anyway, it seems hard to prove reality if there isn’t even a definition of it. If we simulate consciousness in a computer, even if the simulation is perfect, is it real? Money is real, but it disappears if we do. Meanwhile mountains probably remain. Is an artificial consciousness real? If not, is it unreal only because it cannot exist outside of the computer, unreal because if we shut the computer of it no longer exists? Because it is a ‘simulation’? What is a ‘simulation’?; especially if it is perfect?
It seems that to use the word ‘simulation’ we are already making a value statement based on what is ‘reality’ – or real, and what is not, but we have not yet defined ‘reality’. Again, oops.
So, are we stuck?
Maybe not.... Maybe. It occurred to me this morning after waking up from a dream in which I was trapped in a burning building that if we can go as far as proving ‘existence’ because we feel we think then perhaps the existence of different experiences of consciousness provides grounding for building a definition of reality upon.
This still isn’t up to the standard of a perfect philosophical get out, and needs further thought, but perhaps the existence of waking and dreaming states provides a good initial step for that illusive definition of reality.
In Seth’s model it may be akin to separation of the telepathic link between our isolated spacetime bubbles, and then the freedom of the bubble to float and change more willy-nilly, yet throw quantum mechanics language back in and the telepathic connect is what collapses the individual bubbles back into a cohesive reality. Are people in coma’s broken from telepathic links and confined to their own reality? Is reality the collapse of all of our bubbles into one bubble and is that where the consistency of measurement comes from in the waking world? - without the consistency of measurement in the dreaming world?
Close mindedness becomes a way to investigate the barrier (and definition?) between an emergent reality while awake, and a non emergent (though still experienced) unreality while asleep. The mind is open while awake, collapsing experience into reality as our individual bubbles of reality touch each other (through telepathy or quantum mechanics or whatever), but while asleep our minds (or an important part of them) are closed and we roam free in our own worlds.
Hence the importance of the closed mind in the first step of a definition of reality.
As ever… From brain spew to page…. Hope everyone is well.
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Comments
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
Not giving this line of thinking the time it deserves (right this minute, I'm sure I'll get back to it), here are some thoughts that sort of have to do with it.
"I think, therefore I am" - this is still true even if I am part of a simulation. I have proven my existence, but not my nature. I am a mind, but I have no proof what kind of mind. And solipsism can't win here either, since I have no proof that I am an isolated mind.
Pretty much unconnected to that point, let's move on to telepathy. This is generally said to be a more or less direct link to other people's minds. One currently fashionable idea is that this is done with quantum something or other. While my phrasing here is imprecise, the current state of the art in explaining how this works with quantum physics is probably at about the same level.
Be that as it may, let us suppose it works, and we have a connection from/to other people's minds. Nevermind how, let's jsut suppose we have that.
It is generally agreed that our mind gives us only an interpretation of the real world based on our senses. A "virtual reality" is a modern term for this, the concept is older. In any case, the world in our minds is different from the real world, distorted if you want, due to limitations of our senses, and limitations of our minds.
What makes us think that the telepathic sense is not subject to this interpretation process? With a telepathic sense, we should expect to get an interpretation of other's thoughts, as opposed to their thoughts.
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We are the cat.
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Hi Earthling,
Obviously I am putting this forward for fun, though I do think the goal of some sort of firmer definition of reality is a worthy one.
I agree with you about 'I think therefore I am', but for it to be the case we have to allow that real in the sense of a simulation does not differ than for that external to the simulation. This is sort of important if modern biology leans more towards the idea of consciousness or the soul being a simulation in matter, rather than 'reality' being imparted externally to the universe in the same way as the distinction between real and computer simulated occurs.
Not sure I have put that well, let me try another way. I have seen the argument put forward that if we are 'just' a pattern occuring in matter and 'nothing else' then we do not really exist. Almost as if real existence can only occur if coming from 'outside'. Simply being is not existing. Along those lines anyway.
As for the telepathy fun I think it might require an infinite speed link between conscious and subconscious in all life forms in the entire universe, all at once, to collapse the 'telepathy function' into reality. Else how to argue about the consistency of measurement across all visible spacetime.
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
Aha! Now THAT is a very interesting symbolic dream you had there, amigo :-D
PS: As for the main theme of the post, I think we probably need an Einstein of the Mind ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Hay Amigo,
Actually the symbolism is even better. Me and my partner were trapped in a burning building up on the top floor saving our childrens toys; our children were not there. After gathering them up the dream jumped to the fire brigade saving the building and the fire never reached us at the top.
I woke up with a feeling of me and my girl winning in the face of adversity.
So the dream was actually a positive one, but it also had the affect of helping me see that we actually naturally have a distinction between real and unreal in our lives that might be a reasonable place to start when approaching a working definition of reality in the first place.
So though dreams feature concepts shaped by what occurs external to the dream, such as experiencing fire, they are an environment where causality is abnormal. They are psychologically causative, but not physically causative. A good place to investigate what we might mean by reality perhaps?
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
The dream obviously helped you realize this needed distinction between different levels of "reality".
However, IMHO, it kind of felt like it symbolized something more; like your subconscious is telling you that you need to escape the edifice of your cherished pre-conceptions, which are slowly crumbling apart in flames all around you.
Let's be honest here, what would the daydreamer of a year ago think of the daydreamer who just wrote that last post? It's clear to me that you've made a lot of growth —being possible, partially, by the fertile soil provided by TDG ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
I had this idea years ago and, for a moment it was blindingly clear but, alas, it quickly returned to murk and I still struggle with it. Nevertheless, I'll have a go:
Imagine four dimensions of space (I know we can't but just accept a fourth spatial dimension for now). I imagine an ocean with a surface that vibrates and produces finger-like nodules that rise above the surface. These nodules become self-aware but only aware in 3 dimensional space so, instead of being connected to to ocean from which they arise (in four dimensions), they become something akin to what you (Daydreamer) describe as bubbles. Self-contained in three dimensions and unaware of the connection to the whole via the fourth dimension.
Just as an acoustic signal traverses easily through an ocean, thoughts traverse easily through the ocean of consciousness, from one nodule to another. Telepathy?
Or call it some other form of energy if you will - the idea is still the same. Perhaps the signals travelling in the fourth dimension are unencumbered by three dimensional distances thus appearing instantly at some remote location. Non-locality?
Perhaps everything that we perceive in our familiar three dimensions are manifestations - forms - produced by countless variations of vibrations on the surface of the four dimensional "ocean".
As I say, my intellect is too small to grasp the concept fully and my ability to describe it even further limited. I have a suspicion that this idea is in some way similar to the implicate/explicate orders proposed by David Bohm, but I'm not confident that I understand his theory either.
Anyway, this might or might not have been related to what you had in mind but it seemed relevant.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
I guess it's going to be tricky trying to figure out what are perceptual errors and what are aspects of 'reality'.
From what I’ve read of non-locality changes of perception of physics along the lines of Einstein are necessary, for example such things as parallel and multiple universes over instantaneous data transfer.
I really hope we get a unified QM and relativity in our lifetimes and also that the LHC throws out something interesting. Obviously it is fun hypothesising, but it would be nicer to do it in a smaller box lest we end up with a correspondingly larger headache.
The big challenge is to explain accuracy of measurement across experiences while still keeping realities separate; once we say they have collapsed into a larger reality then, well, we have a larger reality. Also, even though our bubble interpretations are important to us the universe is so vast in scale and age that we need to explain a vast prehistory without our bubbles.
Arguably a great amount of mechanics occurs without our bubble interpretations. Is this the fundamental reality? The one we float on? In your model it would be the sea, and us the waves. A sea does not have to have waves (I have been a hundred miles out in the North Sea and seen it as flat as a pond; quite eerie..), but waves cannot occur without the sea.
As for bubble interactions and psychic waves (or whatever) collapsing into a fundamental reality, uniformity of measurement is going to be an interesting thing to explain, compared to just hypothesising that these things have existed on their own anyway. If we take my bubble idea or something Seth-like (forgive me for my Seth mistakes), if each bubble is a unique pocket of spacetime connected by information flow then an alien measuring the rate of nuclearsynthesis of a star a billion years ago receives the same information we do a billion light years away. To collapse our bubbles into the same event so that equivalence of measurement is preserved requires psychic information for each atomic interaction across all of time and all of space. Non-locality might be a difficult way to explain this. The speed of light is a good one, but it too must be communicated across our bubble islands. It starts to become far simpler to just say that what we see exists. Modern physics ends up far far simpler than the stupendous information flow through all points of space and all points of time simultaneously to allow uniform measurement across the whole visible universe for all of the probable trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of interpreters who would need their own spacetime bubble.
Roll on unification and the LHC hay!
Perhaps everything that we perceive in our familiar three dimensions are manifestations - forms - produced by countless variations of vibrations on the surface of the four dimensional "ocean".
The irregular crystal structure of Teflon (the reason food doesnt stick to it) is not explainable unless you use a projection from a higher dimensional surface into our 3 dimensions. I guess what is maybe missed on people is that of the higher dimensions proposed by the likes of string theory we will already be living in them. We are not confined to 3 dimensions now, our matter and energy already exist and move in them. Probably they are just so small that photons do not travel in them, and so small that we do not notice any additional effort to move through them. They can still be as big as our more normal 3 dimensions though and still not be visible, though I confess to either not understanding, or having forgotten, how.
Either way, higher dimensions seem to be necessary to explain things we already see. It is just worth pointing out to those who might like to say that one day we might die and move into them that we already are in them! Perhaps that is the answer though.
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
From what I’ve read of non-locality changes of perception of physics along the lines of Einstein are necessary, for example such things as parallel and multiple universes over instantaneous data transfer.
You and I obviously read different books. Einstein didn't like non-locality so he tried to come up with a hidden-variable that explained away the "spooky action at a distance". The Alain Aspect experiments showed he was mistaken.
If you read Victor Stenger (as Shermer, Dawkins and most of the sceptical community seem to do), then you may well come away with the impression that we can ignore Aspect and Bell and get back to good old classical mechanics. But Stenger is one voice among many. He hates (and I mean hates) any suggestion of consciousness being involved in quantum mechanics. To side-step it he invokes those many-universe theories (where it suits his purpose) and things such as time reversal. For example, I believe he explains the two-slit experiment by proposing that a particle goes through a slit and then a time-reversed version of itself comes back in the other direction and interferes with itself, thus creating the interference pattern. Old Occam would love that, now wouldn't he?
Stenger also talks about the fact the the universe was around for billions of years before human consciousness. Here he gives away his prejudice: he cannot and will not envisage a universe born out of consciousness. His core assumption is that the starting point must be material. It is a philosophical stance, not a scientific one. If he could consider a reality manifested out of consciousness then he would have no problem with consciousness in quantum mechanics. In my view, consciousness has always been there ... it didn't just appear as a by-product of human neuronal activity.
I'm not saying that many-worlds is wrong. I quite like the idea, in fact (Seth calls them probable worlds, just as this world we live in is also a probable world - we just happen to be focused in it right now). But it is becoming used by sceptics and materialists in much the same way that God is used by fundamentalists - it fills the gaps. When all else fails, use infinite probability -- that will literally explain away any inconvenient observation or evidence.
By the way, I don't think I said that we are confined to three dimensions. In fact I think I was saying the opposite. We can only perceive and think in three dimensions however, as far as I am aware.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
I never understood the objection to the multiple universe interpretation.
Sure, it is a strange idea that there are multiple worlds. But each of the multiple universes is less strange than the single one we have if observation creates a universe that doesn't exists if nobody observes.
The Kopenhagen stuff applied to the entire universe also is circular logic - are we observers, or are we part of the universe? The universe exists in a particular state because it is observed from within itself - I don't buy that as a valid assumption. Nor as a valid conclusion. I don't buy it because it has to be both assumption and conclusion at the same time, and that's cheating.
Whenever a model shows inconsistencies, we have to re-examine. Some internal mechanism could be wrong, or some of the basic assumption. A lot of the inconsistencies come from the assumption that there is exactly one universe, so I would think investigating what happens if we remove that requirement is promising.
Some interesting questions for the multiple universe model:
- can we observe a different universe, perhaps close to the time of separation (slit experiment perhaps says we do this all the time)
- do separate universes ever converge again (I think vacuum fluctuations say they do)
And of course if someone can come up with an experiment to test whether there is only one universe, or many, that would be cool too.
The computer simulation model is a little bit like the conciousness-first model, except more lazy. And the computer simulation model is about as circular as it gets, and as lazy as it gets. It allows for any arbitrary inconsistencies in the observed universe. What makes this model so unlikely is that observed reality makes too much sense, and observed reality is too complicated.
I'm not sure about the conciousness-first model. Most parts of the observed universe show no signs of conciousness at all, it all looks material and without purposeful behaviour. On a large scale, a few things are exploding (the stars), and most of it is just falling. Not much indication of purpose there. Then we look at life as we know it, and we see a little conciousness, and a lot of really complex chemistry. Then this bit of conciousness is a local manifestation of a universal conciousness that is the origin of all the falling stuff?
Or else the falling and exploding stuff is not really there as observed, it is only how our localized conciousness perceives whatever actually is out there.
Oh, one more thought. Dark Energy says that stuff isn't falling, it is being pushed?
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We are the cat.
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
I don't think folks object the Multiverse hypothesis per se. I think they raise opposition when said hypothesis is used —by some— as a reason to explain the mystery raised by the Anthropocentric principle found in *our* Universe.
When good scientists like Paul Davies point out that it would take a very small change in the laws of physics or the Universal constants to completely forbid the formation of Stars —and thus, complex life forms like us— some scientists resort to the Multiverse interpretation to say "Ah! see? there's no God, it's just that we are the jackpot winners of the Multiverse". How's that for cheating? ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
Actually the multiple universes I'm talking about all have the same laws of physics. They are differentiated only by events that happened in one and didn't happen in the other.
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We are the cat.
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
Well, the Multiverse interpretation I've read about assumes universes where the laws of physics may vary; and so in some there are no stars, or no Earth, or no human beings, and so on and so forth.
Obviously, with an almost infinite Multiverse there's plenty of room for almost-perfect copies of ourselves.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
Philosophically, I reject the idea that there is only a single multiverse interpretation.
I'm being pretty mundane actually. Just addressing the Schrödinger problem, not the origin of the universe.
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We are the cat.
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
And then there's the other type: the universe that branches off from its parent each time a decision is made. I think that, in simple terms, is the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Yeah, although I think Everett imagined it like an infinite number of unwritten books each being filled out. So the maths says that each decision is played out, but it is not like mother-daughter, just that you will always find a book somewhere close enough in content that it is the same except you made another decision one day.
Also, in one model, universes are born behind black holes through the pinching off and inflation of spacetime. Therefore there is a sort of natural selective force whereby universes capable of containing black holes come to vastly outnumber those that do not, since these are the ones capable of birthing 'children'. I guess in that sense the universal constants become a sort of genome. All fun and games in the world of theoretical physics hay...
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
I did try to make the point that I have no problem with the multi-verse idea, didn't I? So I'm not quite sure why you write as though I were trashing it. As RPJ pointed out:
I don't think folks object the Multiverse hypothesis per se. I think they raise opposition when said hypothesis is used —by some— as a reason to explain the mystery raised by the Anthropocentric principle found in *our* Universe.
Also, I did check my facts before posting about Everett and the theory does talk about "branching", splitting or bifurcation. In fact, this is one of the reasons it is criticised, according to Wikipedia:
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Sorry Dave,
Didn't mean to appear objectionable.
That splitting notion is definitely one of the interpretations. The pages in a book thing was in John Gribbins 'In Search of the Multiverse'. Thats how he tried to explain it and I think he said thats how Everett saw it. I intend to go back and read it again sometime in the near future so I'll check myself and tell myself off if i've remembered it incorrectly. The idea of new universes appearing every time a quantum probability wave collapses with the new universe being a perfect replication in every way except for that wave stretches the imagination somewhat!
Hopefully many of these ideas will be blown out of the water within our lifetimes so we can end with a little better an idea.
Back to my main premise: do you think that the difference in states between 'dreamworld' and 'awakeworld' can be used to help illuminate 'reality'?
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
It could be an interesting starting point. I've always pondered about the possibility that people could "meet" in each other's dreams. It hasn't happened to me, though.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
There's suspicion of linkage and interference in dreams, to be sure. That complicates things. But I think there is promise to it if we can spot what is imagination and what is not. Surely we deny ourselves the ability to dream of false realities if we say strictly that all imagination is 'real'.
So i'm heading off down the road of at least some of it is 'unreal' and imagined. If it is then we having our starting ground for defining 'reality'. That would be a big step compared to some philosophy.
I wonder.....
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
With time being as arbitrary and recyclable as it is in many models, there's no hurry.
I still think that memory and imagination are based on the same mechanism in the brain. Perhaps that mechanism isn't entirely mechanical (or electro-chemical), but it certainly looks as if memory and imagination are expressions of the same thing.
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We are the cat.
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
Just a final point about the multiple worlds idea. I think your/Gribbin's description of pages more closely resembles the Seth probable worlds thing. It is a long time since I read it but I think it is a question of focus. As you imply, all possible worlds are valid and, by our decisions, we select which one we are focused in. However, I could go on and on about this because all sorts of issues come up but I end up getting lost in a jumble of idea threads.
As for dreams and awake states, again I think they are both valid and just a question of focus. In this life our primary focus is in the physical ... a special environment with special qualities. Dreams are perhaps a hint at access to other (or extended) realities which are not apparent during wakefulness. In dreams we are less restricted by the physical and temporal but experiences can be very "realistic" nevertheless. I believe these experiences are vital to our physical well being too.
Imagination can sometimes approach dreamlike quality but it is usually (because we are awake) restricted by the physical processes in the brain. The brain is what keeps consciousness focused in the physical. That focus can obviously be damaged and disrupted by all sorts of physical injuries or chemical imbalances in the brain.
I think that memory (long term) can be somewhat dream like in that it seems to bypass temporal effects. I am getting on in life now but I was reminiscing with a school friend the other day and was instantly transported back to those times - almost as though I was in a waking dream. The phrase "as though it happened yesterday" is usually an attempt to describe this amazing facility we have.
It might be that short term memories are physical and contained within the brain while whole event memories pass into some kind of consciousness field.
It is an interesting subject and one that deserves further study. Unfortunately, again there is bias in the research with most neuro-scientists refusing to contemplate "extra-neural" aspects to consciousness. When Sheldrake proposed the kind of field I just mentioned, he was told his book should be burned.
Have to go to work now ... will look in later.
Postscript: Kat posted this link in the Daily News Scan which is relevant to our quantum discussions:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lan...
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Hay Dave,
All interesting stuff.
One of the articles in New Scientist recently defended the standard model against a cosmological feature that had a 0.05% chance of occurring naturally. The argument of those opposed to those related aspects of astronomy was that finding something of universal scale with only a 0.05% chance meant that the model had to be wrong, his argument back was quite clever.
Normally science applies to 'something' we have in front of us. Such as a fossil, or an engine etc. When we get to the scale of the universe current physics start to talk about entire sets of universes. So usually when a bit of science has a large degree of freedom in it we try and reduce it down to specifics, but if the universe is a multiverse then trying to do this to tailor the theories specifically to ours will be missing something grander, namely that physics is becoming statistical about our universe because it is starting to see beyond it.
Part of my trouble understanding QM is in trying to see where the maths is becoming statistical because it is describing whole sets of universes while we obviously only see one, and where it is becoming statistical within our universe.
The article in the Huff Post is interesting. I personally think it is scaling the quantum over the macroscopic threshold and ignoring the difference. It also has fun with the idea of the observer, whereas in reality the 'observer' shouldn't be used quite so poorly. After all, what we really do with these experiments is show that how you position matter and energy affects the quantum reality, not that it is 'consciousness' doing it. I've yet to see quantum reality change because we think about it and not just because we move matter around in some way so that it interacts - we do that in the macroscopic world too!
What I struggle with most though is trying to spot the statistical nature of multiple universes in the maths we create about this one, especially in QM.
- I'm also left feeling a bit sorry for all those fossils; I guess they don't get to be 'observers' at all!
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
...describing whole sets of universes while we obviously only see one...
But do we? Or do we see a lot of them when we observe diffraction?
I should update my math about this stuff.
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We are the cat.
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Thats the question exactly.
The maths tells us all possibilities, we see only one outcome, yet what we see in the theory we see in terms of the mathematical whole. So we have a contrast between what we see with our eyes and what we see with the maths, but then we also see interactions that look like interactions within a whole, but are they or do they look like that because we are looking at them through the lens of our maths.
Are universes interacting, or do we just have maths that covers the whole?
Sometimes it seems like we have multiple universes interacting, like with quantum computing and individual electrons producing interference patterns. I guess thats parallel universes and maybe like gravity is not bound to or 3D particles are not bound to the surface of this universe. Though statistics mean that we are bound here, like every macroscopic body.
It hurts my head.
I hope a unified theory is easier to understand and that it's holes in this theory that make it convoluted.
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
I haven't read up on this, but maybe it is the fault of the observer.
The older things I read assume the observer is in exactly one universe. Perhaps that is not realizable with our methods.
So is it really that the single electron is making a pattern, or is it that there are multiple "versions" of the observer, and therefore they see multiple outcomes?
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We are the cat.
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
God knows!
I think the problem is that there are many different interpretations of this and obviously they don't sit next to each other.
From what I 'get' there is a divide between the macroscopic and quantum that occurs because macroscopic objects are made of billions of atoms and statistically they are behaving in the way we term 'macroscopic'.
These funny affects happen normally on very small scales. Whether this means we are only statistically kept in one universe I do not know. It is the reason eyebrows should be raised when people start talking about the macroscopic and generalising the quantum ontop of it.
I guess the main point is that these are possibilities. We can predict these things with immense accuracy, but we don't know what's going on on a bigger scale yet. When you think you understand a principle you are only understanding it from the perspective of one model, so it is easy to throw in another and 'disprove' it.
Something makes the macroscopic behave differently. I think it is an emergence because of the high unlikelihood of unified quantum states in macroscopic entities. I think... that this means that an observer is tied to this universe, even if one or two electrons in you are fuzzy in this regard. However I don't understand how light from billions of years ago reacts to our experiments now. Are we (or more precisely is the matter we build our experiment out of) changing the light at the point it leaves, in its path, or by arranging atoms now into a configuration that matches the outcome we want are we selecting the.... argh, it drives me nuts. I'm gonna go read some more.
[edit] Ok, i've read. No help. Either something is missing in our knowledge of it (highly highly likely given lack of unification between GR and QM), even given the amazing precision, or it is highly unintuitive (though thats likely too). Oh well.
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Hay Dave,
Sorry, I didn't mean Einstein in a specific sense. I just meant in the way we moved from Newton to Einstein as more of a perspective change.
I haven't read Stenger's book, but I can imagine the argument.
I agree about a 'universe of the Gaps' approach, although lets not stretch the metaphor too much. God of the Gaps refers to hiding inbetween scientific theories or evidences. It is the shrinking God. Multiverses are similar in the way they allow a get out of the anthorpomorphic setup of the universe, but if they crop up in the physics and some solid measurements of the CMB then I don't mind considering them as a valid hypothesis. The point about them is that a perspective change occurs on the way we view quantum oddities as well so if it is true then as lay people we have some work to do on how these things work if we want to further our debate.
Once upon a time we thought there was only one solar system, and one Earth like planet. Describing the 'why here' question was hard. Now we know of trillions upon trillions of stars and likely more planets than that. 'Why here' is not so hard. 'Why this universe' is still hard, but who would really be surprised if there were vast numbers of universes? We do need some better evidence than Stenger likes the idea though if suspicions are to become more. I appreciate your skepticism though, I used to be more skeptical of multiple universes. Hay, consciousness waves would probably then just be spread across multiverses and we all get a bigger playground, no bad thing surely? Or maybe we are starting to measure the imagination of God and not just his creation?
Ah, no, you didn't mean we were purely 3D. I was just pointing out that 'normal' matter is not just 3D either. We are quite possibly already 11D, which is probably just what you said.
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
"I think, therefore I am"
This idea means so many things! It fits in everyday life to life itself, from irrational to rational, and illogical to logical. It's another marble slab in the Temple's foundation.
When ones view point is coupled with environment an Ouroboros or sorts is created. A never ending cycle between what you think and what the environment thinks of you. Their both one in the same really. Like you said above it's an emergent reality. There are innumerable amounts of thought processes one can go though in any given scenario but there can only be a single avenue one can take. Realizing there are other avenues is another story :D Also, it's the amount of avenues one can take that makes this idea even more true. Because that one avenue is you and only you. Yeah you may be going to get a cheeseburger for lunch but there's an encyclopedias worth of information on just how you came got to that moment and came to that conclusion.
Another way I view this idea deals mostly with emotion. Pretty self-explanatory. If you think your a good person then you are. Of course this requires some environmental influence but nonetheless it holds true.
In the end though, it all depends on what one believes. If you think this idea is loose and only holds merit in a passing conversation. Then guess what? Your right! XD
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
Many people have visions of the future, and cause those visions to become reality to some degree or other.
I don't do much that is particularly earth shaking myself. But some days I make up my mind that I will do something, and I know that it will happen. It's not that just the decision actually has made any difference, but I know that I won't change my mind, and that whatever I'm planning will work.
I wouldn't really say that in these cases this is feedback between me and the universe. It is much more likely that there are just times when I am pig-headed and self-confident.
But who really knows.
----
We are the cat.
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
Say what?! Even Hitler thought he was doing a pretty good job saving the Aryan race from the nefarious influence of Judaism and Communism.
Honestly, you severely underestimate the power of hypocrisy and self-delusion.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
I would say that there are plenty of dictators who really are, quite honestly, acting in what they believe is the best interest of their country. That their country suffers greatly seems an unavoidable cost to them, and of course other countries are secondary to these patriots.
----
We are the cat.
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
The idea still holds true though HAHA One for all and all for one. Obama still thinks he's doing a good job! I wonder why?
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
22 November 2004
5 weeks 17 hours
He is, in some ways.
For example, re-election is not until what, 2.5 years from now? If you're going to have low approval ratings, now is the time.
----
We are the cat.
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
If I'm ever found in a situation that's surrounding me with applause and praise then why should I change? Let's say the average lull for a president's term happens around the 2 year mark then why should they fray? It happens all the time right?. Well, it all depends on the avenue an individual is able to take depending on what the environment offers. One person may want to change this status quo and do something amazing while another may just say; that it's all good or why bother? It depend on the individual. I wish I could remember a Taoist quote about a river having many streams, from which one can choose a path. But anywho I agree with you Earthling :D
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
if you think your a good person then you are
I spotted that as well!
I'd like to replace it with if other people think your a good person then you are.
Allowing for relativistic morality of course...
Given that the above allows people like members of the Taliban or Hitler to believe they are good a better standard might be applicable.
I'm not so sure about coveting your neighbours anything as a drive to improvement is a good thing when released responsibly. What about just having basic human rights and countries that look after their poor and sick - that's my idea of base morality.
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
Like I said in the original post, thinking and believing is part of ones own Temple. Bringing morality and objective view points into the open is another cornerstone to the Temple. But they do go hand and hand don't they? Strange how so many laws are contradicting yet sublime at the same time. Discovering fundamental philosophical laws is an achievement, whether or not we have a quote to base it upon. It doesn't matter how you found out but rather that you found it to begin with... To each, their own :D
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
I'll go along with that, even if each of the sentences are really chapter headings of fuller and more difficult conversations.
This distinction people draw between a material world we are in, and an immaterial one where our 'consciousness' comes from/goes to is all good, but I like the raw reality of the idea that we really are existing in a physical body as a way to measure the affects of policies.
Since we can measure body fat and blood chemistry we really do have a way to measure hunger. We can measure illness caused by unclean water. Average population age etc etc. We have the means to measure physically the affects of moralities.
So it doesn't much matter if the Taliban or Hitler can make moralistic claims, or if their followers insist they were moral. We can measure real world suffering as a measure of biological suffering of physical bodies. This is a useful reminder when we play philosophers.
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
My bad, I'm not very good at explaining stuff..spoken and written :D
Anyways, the older I get the less I understand objectivity, even more so objective morality. How long have we been... waging war? releasing chemicals into the water? literally trashing our planet? There is no good there! But that's ME saying it's not good. What do you think Lockheed Martin executives would say if I stopped all military arms production? They would not like it, neither would their employees. But what about morality? Is there any here? Maybe the individual execs sure, but as a whole they are there for the money and morality is second if not last. Morals aren't on everyone's agenda.
You'd be surprised how much physical nature is connected to the intangible. I mean your brain is physical and without it there would be no physical. We can measure "intelligence" and that's not physical(at least I don't think it is).
That quote for me in my own laymen terms means... I believe this, so I am right...it's just one rule among others like... emotion. We learn to control our emotion throughout our lives and the way one feels is unique no matter the state. Let's say I've been dumped by girlfriends dozens of times, I've learned to cope with it and to move on. But take someone my same age who has had no relationships and gets dumped for the first time; probably won't cope nearly as well as I would. This is another fundamental philosophical law. Principle of Correspondence from The Kybalion I'm pretty sure. Correct me if I'm wrong please :D
P.S. I've been awake for a very long time so this comment may not be put together as well.
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
I guess we have strayed somewhat from the original topic but since we are on morality right now, I'd just like to mention the "law" of karma.
Many people - even some who claim to believe in karma - understand it to mean something like "an eye for an eye", or "what goes around comes around". My understanding is quite simple really: positive karma comes from loving intent and actions; negative karma comes from intent to do harm.
In practical terms, you can only "repair" negative karma with love. If someone does you harm, they carry the negative karma and you can't restore the balance by doing harm to them. Only they can restore the balance by loving action. All you can do is forgive (which is a loving action on your part).
I think these comments might be a bit too "New Agey" for many, even here, but I really feel that karma is a fundamental principle of conscious existence.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
What is new age? Karma?
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
I didn't mean that karma is new age. I meant that many in the west tend to lump new age and eastern philosophies together. Sometimes when I listen to self-proclaimed new age believers, I get a little cynical too. It is hard not to at times so I would understand some eyes rolling upwards at the mention of karma.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
9 May 2010
1 year 10 weeks
Yeah I kringe a bit whenever I hear chakras, wiccan, feng shui..etc. But I will say that if it wasn't for some of those I wouldn't have the understanding I do now.
And Karma is a favorite of mine, it's a good way to tone temperance.
"We're all puppets, Jesus. I'm just the one that sees the strings, the stage, the puppetmaster, and the audience." Exerpt from a dialog Jesus and I had in your kitchen a week ago • • •*• •°•
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Not my eye's Dave,
This concept of Karma is as obvious to me as volcanics.
I do split it though, so we have the human layer and the 'earth' layer. Karma sometimes gets used as a misnomer for behaviour, so if someone calls pouring chemicals into a stream, or melting the ice caps, bad karma then I call confusion. Pollution is not bad karma, it is chemistry and physics, even if people don't want to think that that is what they are talking about.
To me a good example of bad karma is when you mistreat/annoy people and then find it negatively affects you in some way. For example I joined a new company a year ago and they wanted to know if I knew anybody else as they needed more staff. I had a friend back in my old company; now it took me a while to get to like the guy as he just talks bulls'#t all the time (i'm talking on the level of sheer lies), but once you get past it he is a good bloke. I couldn't recommend him though as I know he drives everyone nuts even though I was one of the few that pierced through his nonsense, mainly because I was stuck on a contract in India for 1.5 years with him.
I couldn't recommend him and presumably lots of other people can't either, so he is missing out on all the little backroom chats that lead to you getting phone calls for employment or job offers from friends. To him he will look at other people and say they are all so lucky and he never gets companies ringing him up asking if he wants a job. Presumably it affects invites to parties and nights out so affects the number of women he meets, what their friends say about him - it affects the course of a life. All these back room events where people talk about you behind your back in either a good way or a bad way are karma - or at least to my definition of it.
Of course the planet bites back as well, but i'm not really tempted to use the word karma for it, there is proper terminology for what we do to the planet and how it behaves, although I guess the adoption of slang is nothing strange so I guess karma gets used as a slang umbrella term for the environmental sciences.
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
I see Karma not as spiritual taxation, but as a logical conclusion of Thermodynamics —what goes around, comes around is pretty much the same as for every action, there is a direct & opposite reaction ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
That's the laws of motion dude ;) I know what you mean though, although mixing physics and psychology is, I think, what causes the pop-culture slang and confusion with it.
You don't always get equal and opposite reactions with karma since we have free will and can turn a blind eye to indiscretion, or, if we want, massively overreact. Though i guess we could get fun with it and talk about positive and negative feedbacks in the world 'karma system'.
26 June 2005
3 days 2 hours
I see Karma not as spiritual taxation, but as a logical conclusion of Thermodynamics —what goes around, comes around is pretty much the same as for every action, there is a direct & opposite reaction ;)
I see the wink at the end there but, just in case I didn't make myself clear about how I understand karma, I certainly don't see it as divine retribution, opposites balancing the scales, punishment or the bad guys getting theirs.
Yes, karma is about negative and positive but in the arithmetical sense: you can only eliminate a negative with a positve:
(-5) - 5 = -10; while (-5) + 5 = 0
AKA "two wrongs don't make a right"
Thus, getting your big brother to beat up the bully who beat you up increases negative karma all round (much as you may well feel gratified at the time). This is why we still haven't learned to avoid escalating conflicts, either in the playground or between nations or cultures.
Sorry if the tone seems a little preachy.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
I don't mind preachiness when people have demonstrated they have a right to stand on a pulpit :)
Yeah, I think that abiding to the golden rule makes sense as a logic system, even if you're doing it out of personal gain. What I don't know is how they don't make an effort actually teach this in Economics class.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
12 April 2007
4 min 56 sec
That's pretty much what the Jebus dude said —using other words, of course ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
Jebus and me don't disagree too much on most things. He seems to have been a nice bloke. I only really differ when spiritual well being (read specific belief) is elevated above physical morality.
I have made the argument elsewhere (not here maybe) that the inclusion of narrative and fiction in moral codes has been one of our greatest moral failures concerning ethical philosophy.
- some fiction when it improves the base morality (physical morality) might be acceptable so long as it doesn't reduce that physical morality.