As suggested by Wrenj, here's what we've distilled:
- Claims of OBE/NDE experiences are abundant.
- These and other experiences, indicate the existence of other sources of and bridges for data to the human being, apart from purely biological structures.
- These claims need investigating.
- The question is how?
Just an observation; be it a child with a fantastic event story, the likeness of jesus on a cheese sandwich, or a bleeding statue, it illuminates the extreme lack of evidence religions have to justify themselves. You would think that a deity would provide overwhelming evidence that such things would be largely ignored by the mainstream. Just an observation.
ReplyDeleteSo then, if a fantastic realm does exist (sans deity), then it falls to us to provide the evidence for such a place. This logic can be extended further to include what those religious really believe deep down inside. By their very excitement, it's as if they're saying, "Finally, maybe there is some proof to this otherwise organized imaginary friend sort of thing.". Just saying...
ReplyDeleteChris, could you help us find those operating room accounts? I seem to recall reading something like that too but it stopped short of an actual experiment.
ReplyDeleteBefore we even go into the issues, I have a confession to make:
ReplyDeleteI had to google every term in Chris's statement about what he needs for light sabers and all.
I'm still trying to figure it out. And I thought I was good in Physics.
I find truth in the statement "the more we know, the more we know about how little we know."
Here's potential for confusion:
ReplyDeleteWhen we talk about a person handling data in the context of an OBE/NDE, I don't think the term "seeing", "hearing" etc. apply any more.
Those refer to activities that are outside this context and have a strong biological element, as far as the bridge goes.
So to avoid confusion, we must use the right terms distinguishing between the capture of data in contexts that have "materiality" and purely immaterial contexts. This immaterial context is what, I think, is commonly referred to as the spiritual context.
I think first and foremost Wrenj helped open our eyes to the fact that you can throw terminology around thinking you have it all figured out and then you find out you really were only considering one facet of the whole ptcture. Case in point the term "Singularity". I have never understood this term because it seems to be more of a colloquialism specific to each seperate type of research.
ReplyDeleteLight sabre = a standing wave of sufficient amplitude to impart enough energy to a non-resonant body by means of static reactance to cause vaporization.
ReplyDeleteThe light effects would be secondary
If the light effects were primary, then radiation would injure the user
The energies required would be enormous. At best, the device would be viable for only a few seconds at today's battery technology.
Ray Kurtzweil defined his use of the word Singularity as when technological advances accelerate so fast that the outcome is unknowable. Like the event horizon of a mathematical singularity. Something is happening, and it involves known parameters, but we're getting something unique as a result. In essence, we're facing a new stage in our evolution and we ARE going to change. Exactly how is not known.
ReplyDeleteHowever, understanding what is included in the formula, we can be pretty sure that if we are willing, our very existence will stand to be improved. If we are not willing then we will die. It is simple economics (again) -lol
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I discovered through all of my experiences to date has been a "gift" of seeing the really big picture. I have come to realize that all religions are here and apply only to this earth realm.
ReplyDeleteReligion is necessary to maintain order in sociaty. The fear of judgement and going to hell is the only thing man has to fear. Religion is the only way to keep our society somewhat civil. The ultimate spanking is to go burn in hell for ever right? If man were to realize that once he leaves this realm for the etheric spiritual plane that he was his own judge through life lessons and karma he would totally abuse it.
A man has no real concept of karma on the scale that it potentially operates at, but when thought about it is a perfect system of cause and effect-yin and yang. It is so beautifully simple and yet assigns complete responsibility for all of a man's actions good and bad.
So if you were able to isolate consciousness and remove a man from his body how would he still be able to be acountable for his actions? And would his actions in a virtual setting still be subject to a set of standards and morals?
ReplyDeleteWrenj, people that "travel" are aware of "real-time" events though they are suspended in another plane. In theory (according to Astral Travel adherents), I should be able to travel into your house and have a look around. Then I could blog about what you have hidden in that wooden box on your bookshelf next to the brass candle holders.
ReplyDeleteBeing "spiritual" should not necessarily mandate a separation from the rest of us anchored here in "this reality". This is the very crux of this line of thinking.... that the spiritual and physical can share the same space-time while remaining exclusive of each other. To put it more simply, differing dimensions of the same locale.
Chris, from what I've read re: Astral Travel, you are free to do as you wish. However, like attracts like they say. If you're immoral, then you will attract other immoral beings. If you're moral, then likewise with other moral beings. I am not sure what happens after that but I can imagine the various groupings find their own center of gravity and form their own systems... provided that is the only mechanism for segregation. I'm offering only pure speculation here though.
ReplyDeleteChallenge: I own some very unique things. In fact, I have quite a collection of very unique things at my house. If anyone feels that they have travelled spiritually to my house, I will be more than candid to verify or discredit any statements as to what I have.
ReplyDeleteChris, I have added several unique and obvious things to my inventory since you've last been here so this experiment is open to you too.
Wrenj, your query regarding seeing and hearing reminded me of a question I asked myself about a year ago....
ReplyDeleteDoes a blind-from-birth person know what "beautiful" is? If we can travel out of our bodies and into the spiritual, then what of it? When I've "travelled" out of body (or so I thought), I saw all kinds of fantastic things. Does the blind-from-birth see the same things? Hmmm.
Almost like asking why doesn't god heal amputees?
Re: the blind, I got close to an answer but I never found the "smoking gun" answer I was looking for. I'm glad I remembered it for this blog though.
Chris, "And would his actions in a virtual setting still be subject to a set of standards and morals?... yes. During my time in Virtual Reality, I have been subject to a few miscreants and they have all been held accountable by one certain aspect of the environment... "others". When there are numbers of individuals, they combine to form societies that have norms and offer protection. We see this among different species in symbiotic relationships too. It just seems to be a natural law that works in this universe.
ReplyDeleteI think peer pressure still has it's origins ultimately in fear of punishment at some level.Fear of punishment is purely a earthly issue. You are assuming that the beings that you encounter in the astral are of earthly origin and opperate in a similar way with common drivers behind their motivations.
ReplyDeleteHow do you maintain order in an environment where you have all sorts of different beings/entitys with varied motivators and ethics.
ReplyDelete?
You should re read Hellen Keller if you never did it's really a great read.
ReplyDeleteI was visualizing the ocean re: symbiotic relationships... That's a varied grouping of individuals but I understand your question goes quite a bit further than such a lifeform grouping.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I was pointing to that grouping because it also shares the same rules as other groups that are radically different. Trying to support a universality theory of morals/ethics underlaid by a foundation of simple economics (as described on the first page of this blog).
So then, to answer your question in a word, "economics". Every group seeks to maximize its return on investment to further its own existence. Even altruism has basis in economics. I believe that to be the very least common denominator for everything we could possibly encounter.
Pat, maybe you could look into Edison's "ghost talker"(he probably stole the idea but...) he had made some observations and had some ideas on how to bridge the immaterial with the material and establish communication in real time full duplex. I think it was something involving magnetics and inductive devices. I believe he was even issued a pattent on it
ReplyDeleteShe (Helen Keller) did describe seeing incredibly beautiful things but she was born sighted. She lost her sight at a young age due to illness I believe. So her data is not valid for my question.
ReplyDeleteSounds cool! Sounds familiar though. I think I've heard about it before. I'll look into it again though.
ReplyDeleteThomas Edison 1928
ReplyDeleteThe quote actually comes from a 1920 interview Edison gave to B.C. Forbes (founder of Forbes magazine), published in the Scientific American (Gardner 213). In context, the quote reads:
“If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical and scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, and other faculties and knowledge that we acquire on earth...
“...I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected, moved, or manipulated...by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.”
In 1933, “Modern Mechanix Magazine” went back into history to tell of a secret 1920 gathering of Edison and associates where the inventor demonstrated a “photo-electric cell” that revealed spirits in a beam of light4. However, the article is the only document that contains this tale and is contrary to a supposed 1920 “diary” record where Edison discussed his “spirit communication device”. (Bear in mind though, that this “diary” record is found only in Dagobert Rune’s Philosophical Library publication, “The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas A. Edison.”)
ReplyDelete“I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.”
The remainder of the “diary entry” is almost a verbatim account of the Scientific American Interview, except for the statement, “I am engaged in the construction of one such apparatus now, and I hope to be able to finish it before very many months pass.”
He never built it, but he was thinking about it. I can imagine what it would've been like though. A speaker with enough current flowing through it's leads... the amplifier gain as high as it will go, with no signal input. Try it at home.... take your amplifier, chose an unused input and crank the volume. Put your ear next to your speaker. You will hear all kinds of things, even though there isn't a proper signal being processed by the amplifier. In fact, if you did hear some talking or whatever, your amplifier may not even react as having a load. Why? The speaker leads are acting as inductive antennas and you're hearing local radio stations or telephones. The potential present on the speaker wires from the amplifier are enough to set up a reactive field. Interference will cause this field to vary. You hear the net result.
ReplyDeleteOk but as stated above it was a light beam device coupled to some sourt of amplifier.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he did build it?
ReplyDelete....attach a mirror to the cone of your speaker and hit it with laser?
ReplyDeleteI have hear that it got buried and is still in the collection at large. Also you have to consider that in the 1920's radio was in it's infancy and there was just not that many transmissions coursing through the environs to intercept regardless of the reciever.
ReplyDeleteYes but what transmitters were on the air were like "frequency grenades" splattering harmonics all over the spectrum. It wouldn't take many of these things to have interesting effects on a speaker with any kind of current flowing through it. Also, his laboratory was in New Jersey. He was surrounded with RF.
ReplyDeleteyou know those "ghost boxes" are super hot right now and sell for hundreds. They are just an AM radio with an autotune locked in with a 1/2 second delay in the return to scan mode. Probably do the mod on a $10 radio and sell it for $99 as a ghost box.
ReplyDeleteThat's true but he was demodulating some sort of light.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'll do I'm going to make as many different types of "ghost boxes" as I can in a week and see what the outcome is.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I didnt intent to turn your blog into a "chat" site.
ReplyDeleteThought: if the technology won't be ready to accept our consciousness for another 35 years, what experiments can we do with what's available today that would help facilitate the desired future outcome?
ReplyDeleteThought: remember the liquid metal guy in Terminator II? Consider nanotechnology and just what that will look like.
ReplyDeleteIf Astral Travel / OBE's require relaxation techniques, then why doesn't opioid use bring a spontaneous OBE? In fact, I'm thinking opioids and other anesthetics inhibit OBE's with the exception of Ketamine. So then, this suggests a purely physical explanation for them right?
ReplyDeleteOpiate use is something I am very failiar with. Opioids act on the physical body and change our perception of a stimuli they do not affect the stimuli directly and do not negate the pain signal, they change how our brain interprets the signal.. I do think it is interesting how our brains have evolved unique keyway receptors for very specific molcules from all sorts of perception altering substances.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very interesting idea. The fact that we can induce/alter a "spiritual" expreience using a substance or magnetic field on the brain. Maybe you can do some magnet to head experiments and let us know the outcome. I can't due to my pace maker. But I'll bet you get results.
ReplyDeleteIf the purpose of religion is to control people's behaviour on this earth, how does that differ from all the tyrannies that currently dominate the earth?
ReplyDeleteIn some societies, it's the tyranny of rulers, in others, it's the tyranny of ideas. In still others, it's both.
We have seen the effect of tyranny, in a world that's suffused with consequences.
Take all the natural disasters of the 20th century. Compute the toll of dead people. Take all the killings resulting from the actions of tyrants in the 20th century. Compute the toll of dead people.
Usually, people scream asking "Where is God?" when natural disasters happen. Who do we turn to, what should we ask, what can we even say, when we compare the two death tolls of the 20th century?
Here are some questions:
ReplyDelete- Can the fish in the Caribbean appreciate the beauty of the beaches or the coral reefs?
- Can the birds in Yellowstone park appreciate its beauty?
- Can the Redwood tree (Sequoia) appreciate the grandeur of its presence?
Yet we humans can.
I am beginning to think that only beings that inhabit a moral universe (good and evil) can appreciate moral greatness and its lack. They too, are the only ones who can perceive and appreciate the grandeur of the physical universe.
So a camera used to take a picture, like Patrick's, has no appreciation for the picture. Patrick who took the picture, has not only an appreciation for beauty but the skills to capture beauty.
The implication is this: if I seek to escape the moral universe, I'm simply aspiring to become the equivalent of Patrick's camera.
At the core of most religions is the concept of eternal life as well as eternal judgement and punishment if men are evil in the sight of the diety. It isn't the religion doing any control it is the fear of death and the posibility of judgement and punishment that provides the ultimate motivator behind societal order. If most people wern't afraid of "hell", then I truely believe we would have much more extreme acts of "evil" by men. Of course there are always exceptions but for the most part religion provides the possibility of God's judgment.
ReplyDeleteMy outlook of God is that he is a diety in a higher place and does not interfere with the operation of the earth or it's inhabitants. The earth runs on a set of physical and demonstrable laws that cannot be modified or broken regardless of how bad men might want to.
Religion provides a way to break some of these laws to acomodate man's ideas of who God is.
So I guess what we need to answer is--Is death a bad thing? Why is it looked on negatively? We all have to die sometime so is dying from old age any different from being murdered at 39? The end result is the same and it comes down to what you believe happens after death.
ReplyDeleteWhy then do we sometimes wish for an existence beyond good and evil?
ReplyDeleteI'll speak for myself: I think it's because sometimes I get sick up to the eyes, not of good, but of evil.
I get sick of all the evil around me, and within me. I get sick of all the mass murder but also of the petty betrayals, cutting remarks or over-reactions.
Sometimes, I get so sick of things, that I just want to crawl into a hole forever, away from it all.
Then I get stumped coming across a word "Satyagraha" and how one man brought that word to life in the 20th century. I come across "I have a dream" of Martin Luther King.
These are the heroes who received public recognition. I look around and see ordinary heroes whose stories of heroism and courage will never get told, never be applauded, but whose memory will live on in the hearts of all whom they touched including me.
Chris, I have sometimes recommended two experiences to people:
ReplyDelete- Spend a week at the "Accident & Emergency" section of a hospital, watch and listen.
- Spend another week at the counter of a police station, watch and listen.
You may discover that, often the most potent motivators for human beings are not a future heaven or hell, but immediate rewards and threats.
You may also discover what was aptly described by the title of a book, "Dances with chance." People including us, far more often than we think, are literally playing a game of Russian roulette with all the consequences that follow.
Is death a bad thing? That's a deep question. Again it depends on one's world view.
ReplyDeleteIf we believe there's nothing beyond death, that question could be answered one way. Again, if our lives have been a succession of tragedies, whose impact we are unable to overcome, then the way we view death would be very different from another, for whom life has been a succession of pleasurable experiences for whom death represents an end that must be postponed as far as possible.
See if you can find a film "Of gods and men". You'll see some very interesting perspectives on death and how that works out in the choices people make on how they'll live and die.
On a lighter note, how does the title of the last of the "Die Hard" movies go? "Live free or die hard", if I'm not mistaken. Now that's one perspective on death.
I consider this every time I get behind the wheel of my vehicle. We really are taking enormous risks with ourselves as individuals. Like I've said, future generations will marvel over the risks we've taken without having ourselves backed up first.
ReplyDeleteAgain you have brought up something very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think only a moral universe can accomodate the concept of risk of the order that goes beyond the immediate.
I remember reading about some rare tigers whom zoologists have been trying to get to reproduce because of the threat of extinction.
The tigers seem to have no such qualms. Their evaluation of risk seems limited to immediate threats and opportunities. They are unable to evaluate consequences that derive from the immediate.
It's humans again, that appreciate the value of the tiger's life and the value of the survival of the species. It almost seems inbuilt in our nature not only to seek our own survival, but the survival of others including other species.
And it seems only us, who are capable of consciously choosing to look the other way.
Another interesting sequence is coming up. Take transferring the immaterial dimension of a human being into an animal's body.
ReplyDeleteZapp! All of a sudden the moral universe disappears. And so does an appreciation for the physical universe.
Take it one step further. Imagine trying to transfer the immaterial dimension into a machine.
Again, Zapp!
One becomes a camera or a phone, unable to respond to even basic threats except if pre-programmed. Without an anti-virus program, a computer is helpless.
This brings out one aspect of Ray Kurzweil's notion of the singularity.
ReplyDeleteIt rests on the premise that the data and the bridges for the data are simply biologic structures that are still only known in terms of description. We're still a long way off, from understanding functionality.
We're nowhere near even such a level of understanding when it comes to other non-physical bridges to the human person: neither in terms of description nor understanding of functionality.
There's a story of Augustine of Hippo, after he became a Christian, walking along the beach trying to understand the Christian concept of the Trinity: three persons in one God.
ReplyDeleteHe comes across a little child, going to the sea, filling up a spoon, emptying it into a bucket and repeating this. He gets distracted by this and asks the child what he's trying to do.
The child replies that he's trying to empty the ocean into the bucket. Augustine replies that that's absurd and impossible. The child replies "Well aren't you trying to do the same by trying to encompass and understand God within the limits of your own mind?"
I wouldn't even go that far. We haven't even understood the dynamics of tiger reproduction completely, much less human beings not to talk of the Supernatural.
Maybe Ray Kurzweil is right. There is something distinctly unimaginable about when machines gain the upper hand if that should ever happen. It's only a little less scary than when a crocodile becomes master of the universe.
It must have been something like that, until human beings appeared on the face of the planet. The earth suddenly had actors playing according to a different world-view, a different universe. It may probably be the only time that something called a world-view even began to exist.
Oops. Error: I meant it's only a little more scary than when crocs becomes masters of the universe.
ReplyDeleteOops. Error: I meant it's much more scary...
ReplyDeleteWhen I say that fear of eternal damnation of the soul is the motivator for most men I mean that it would seem to be the ULTIMATE motivator being at the apex of all motivators be they economical or the smaller more imediate rewards and punishments. Relegion reinforces these thoughts by offering a convenient and somewhat sensical explanation.
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible to go any further into this area without introducing my own possibly wrong viewpionts and ideas as to the way man takes responsibility for his own actions through a set of karmic laws. These being simple---There's no free lunch all actions have karmic debits and credits and the account must balance no exceptions --no "get out of jail free" cards.
Reincarnation being at the center of this concept.
I come from an Extremely "christian" centered upbringing as Patrick can attest to.--Have you been to church lately Pat?
ReplyDeleteMy whole life I sat through UNTOLD hours of church and christian school teachings and they always seemed to be unfair. You get to be a total sinning evil rotten to the core human and then just believe that Jesus will take it all away somehow and Poof--you're off the hook and liveing it up and have shirked all responsibility for your sins. That just goes against the grain of all that is in nature.
ReplyDeleteWe really don't know weather or not animals are capable of percieving beauty. If I could put my soul into a dog I think understanding of the world would be relavent to my needs and my environment. Animals do "like" comfortable things. They do respond to affection from people and other animals.
ReplyDeleteDogs especially show their fondness for the out doors when they sit in a window yearning to go out into the yard. They just had on the TV tonight a show about some people who were establishing a "pet" relationship with a pair of crocodiles. Their was mutual "trust" and respect and the crocs denied their instinct to bite and eat their owners. Psychicly they appeared to look allot like dogs.
Cats demonstrate musical tastes too.
ReplyDeleteSo do plants
ReplyDeleteThink of when the first people of one race came in contact with people of a completely different race.
ReplyDeleteThere may have been mutual and mistaken assumptions about each other; things like these must be part of the local wildlife or those must be the representatives of the gods.
However, with time awareness dawned on both sides that they were both human beings but with different worldviews. How did this come about? Communication.
These, in my opinion, are among the key marks of beings who possess an order of knowledge as well as freedom that's completely different from plants and animals.
That's why over the centuries, people of different racial origins and cultures have arrived at a progressively deeper understanding of themselves and others.
Human-animal communication does exist. But the mark of this communication is its extremely limited nature. It takes much effort and training to get animals to embark on a relationship, that at this level, is free of misunderstanding.
Compare that to the ordinary conditions in which a child grows up learning, discovering and ultimately acting. The quality of the intelligence between the child and the adult is the same, although the adult's own may be more fully developed. In a short while, the child is capable of doing not only astonishing things but having astonishing opinions.
As for amicable relationships with crocs, that's part of the tremendous power humans wield, to condition not only themselves but almost any other life form on the planet.
Also, observe that it is people that condition crocs to let go of their predatory ways, not crocs conditioning humans to accept the crocs' ways of getting things done - LOL!
From experience and observation, I have come to conclude that fear is an insecure and unstable basis for the existence of any group be it a family, an organization, a community, a religion or a nation.
ReplyDeleteOrdinarily, we human beings have a partial and often incomplete view of things. Fear makes this only worse. The consequences are obvious, when thinking based on fear translates into action. I have lived this way, in the thick of "the dynamics of a mind and heart under siege!"
Look at the great confrontations in history: the hard won freedom of peoples and nations was always a confrontation between the truth and an intricate system of lies running on fear.
This is not to say that there have not been peddlers of false hopes too. In both cases, manipulation is the order of the day. Truth has long been cast by the wayside.
The antidote to both fear and false hopes remains truth. There comes a time, when each of us, must set about discovering the truth for ourselves. It's the least we can do, to make sense of much that seems senseless.
Sadly, we can choose not to.
Here is one of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Gandhi":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz9ojUFDAoc
The judge's actions and words, show an unusual response of power, when confronted by a man and the truth he is willing to live and die for.
I'm not sure if this actually happened. Such scenes are sometimes the only way to capture the drama, of Truth, which turns out to be grander than fiction.
Eventually Gandhi paid the price for the truth he stood for.
Thought: Perhaps it's a law of physics that any organism be it biological or constructed that has sufficient complexity and computational density combined with sufficient memory will act and behave identically?
ReplyDeleteWe will not know until we build a computer with the numerically equivalent mind of a human coupled with inquisitive software. The results will answer a lot of questions. I will put forth now that I believe the created entity will be very much "human" in every way that's comparable. Moreover, we will also know that we are nothing more than the biological equivalent to that which we had created.
After these things have been accomplished and all the questions about the nature of machine and man have been answered in a day, then the real work of our evolution can finally begin. As has been stated before by Kurzweil et al, the division of bio and silicon will be blurred until there is no perceivable difference at all. Much like my resemblance of the organisms that predated and facilitated my emergence is slight if nonexistent. We are now and will continue to become information.
What about freedom? What about free enterprise, what about justice? Put yourself in the place of the potential bad guy for a minute. You would have to ask yourself, to what end? You could create a simulation to have anything you could ever want. If you need to be a despotic tyrant over North Korea for example, then you can be exactly that. You can even nuke your neighbors and watch your simulated world come to an end. Great. Maybe I could help design the trees for that part of the world? Whatever.
ReplyDeleteThe very nature of what's wrong and right will change because our basic values will also change. We for the most part will be gods.
What about our sin nature to borrow a religious phrase.. What of it? I remember being assaulted in a virtual world once. It really had quite an effect on me. I really don't know why the man acted the way he did either. it was senseless and quite random. This reminded me of something I used to say about "heaven". I tried to understand how, when we all get there, will we get along without sinning? The only thing I could think of was that "we forgot how".
ReplyDeleteThis concept resonates with our current topic in how will such things be dealt with in our digital selves. If that behavior is understood and localized within everyone, would it be so bad to add a few extra lines of code to not destroy the ability but to make it easier to reason out of? That way we aren't lobotomized but rather, evolved.
Fear is a base instinct . Fear is inborn and permeates us to the core as a means of keeping us safe from the unknown which may or may not be harmful. I do not see fear in and of it's self being a negative thing. It is our ultimate survival mechanism.
ReplyDeleteMost all people are in fear of dying due to the unknown factor and the inability to see themselves as possibly ceasing to exist.
Ghandi was standing for his "truth" and principals. Much of the time our "truth" is relavent only to our individual perceptions and what is important to us as a people.
ReplyDeleteTo stand for truth is an interesting concept. Step back and look at the 911 bombers. They were adherant followers of their "truth" the koranic teaching and dogma. To them Alla really was going to bless their soul and family for their martyrdom. They were heros in the eyes of their peers.
Now you take it to America and our truth is that those people were cold blooded murderers and were comitting the highest acts of evil possible and will burn in hell or worse.
Who's truth is THE truth?
I think the concept of truth and its understanding and man's deep seated need--almost primal, to prostheletize it, spare no cost, is at the foundation of much that is wrong with this world. It is at the core of all great conflict all the way back to the beginning of written language.
I think culteral diversity is a wonderful thing but all to often this diversity comes with much lack of understanding much of which revolves around man's religious precepts--the spceulation of the unknown. Men kill each other over ideas that bear no real proof and lack any verifyable basis in reality.
That's what is wrong with this planet. But I try to keep telling myself they just can't see the really big picture and that's by a design that is out of my hands.
Very well put Chris.
ReplyDeleteIf Gandhi's principles and practice reflected "his truth", then...
ReplyDeleteHow did they inspire his fellow Indians?
How did they inspire Martin Luther King?
How do they inspire many around the world, even today?
How about Gandhi himself, when he discovered within him, the courage to get up and face the challenge ahead? How did he get inspired by what others had said?
If I'm not mistaken, the opening scene of the movie shows him fascinated by the Bible, and in a short while coming in rough contact with reality. It is said, that the Bible was a significant source of influence in his thinking.
How can a document that is at the very least 2000 years old, claimed by some to be a pack of lies told by people who were largely delusional, inspire this.
There's even more...
ReplyDeleteWhen the Indian constitution was being drafted, the drafters were dispatched to all parts of the world to learn from past practices. Among other places, they visited the United States.
How does one of the oldest civilizations in the world, find use in the principles and practice of liberal democracy from civilizations that are much younger and much more recent?
Now we have an arguable case for influence both ways: principles from India to the rest of the world and principles from other parts of the world to India.
Why is this so?
Truth is multi tiered. It bears relavence to all men in the most basic ways. These are "universal truths" and apply to humanity en masse.
ReplyDeleteNext comes seperate cultural differences. "Cultural truths" come as a result of the way every culture views the world and life.
Lastly you have "Individual truths" that reflect every man's unique experience and many common ones as well.
Individual and cultural truths are where we as men seem to get myopic and loose sight of the impact we may have by imposing our outlooks on other cultures.
There are many documents such as the Holy Bible the Koran ,Bagva Ghita,and Sumerian tales such as Gilgemesh and the like that all reflect universal truth within their writings hence the mass and lasting appeal.
These teachings are also interspersed with all sorts of cultural and individual truths of the authors. They were also largely written in a time when illiteracy was the norm. They were often the only word in town with little or nothing with which to compare.
This made it easier for the leaders of the time to have much more influence on the final message and this was used as another way to govern people through influencing their ideas and beliefs.
It would seem the drafters of the Indian constitutuion had some insight as to the value of differing culteral truths. I wasn't there but I suppose they were attempting to meld the most beneficial laws and ways from the major world governments. To me that only makes sense.
ReplyDeleteLearn from your brother's mistakes when you can. It goes back to economics. Let someone else pay for the mistakes that you might have made, just don't forget about your brother's mistakes.
Here's a summary of what I understand as Patrick's proposal along the lines what Ray Kurzweil says:
ReplyDeletehuman = f (x, y, z)
here,
x could be processing power
y could be memory
z could be algorithms
but what we're discovering about humans is
human =
f(personal philosophy/world view) +
f(biology) + f(psychology) +
f(good, evil) + f(religion) +
f(technology) + f(art) +
f(law) + f(education) +
f(so many others)+
f(unknowns)
Again,
f(unknown) =
f(not well understood bridges) +
f(not well understood dimensions) +
f(not well understood data)
The last three terms could mean anything, meaning more like even more things like religion, law, art, education...dimensions and aspects of reality that can't be fully captured in a purely material dimension.
By material dimension, I mean in contrast to immaterial dimensions or what are called spiritual dimensions.
What I was suggesting is, I strongly suspect that an artificial mind would envisage esoteric things that held magical and untouchable significance to it as well. I don't think we own the monopoly on such things. The flash of understanding that I suspect will come is when we realize this is so. I can easily visualize an artificial neural network believing in such things initially. Perhaps even going through a phase where it believes in a deity and religious principles. I'll bet such concepts are in fact facets of a predictable evolutionary course for a neural network that has achieved the critical mass of such logic. This was and still is my point. It is, I suspect, all very simple. Sure more complex waveforms emanate from it, like chaos but the core and it's processes are initially simple in comparison. It will be interesting to see if the artificial consciousness refuses to believe itself artificial.
ReplyDeleteLikewise for humans, that the core processes are themselves simple and the end results like fractal chaos can be wildly varied and mystical.
ReplyDeleteHow many different dimentions do we really occupy and or influence. Modern science has prooved 11+ dimentions relavent to string theory. I do not see why more than 3 dimentions can apply to humans as well.
ReplyDeleteHere's a new blog I came across tonight It seems worth looking at
ReplyDeletehttp://hackaday.com/2011/04/10/brainwave-based-assistive-technology-in-the-home/#more-39888
Wrenj I was never that good at advanced algebra but how do you quantify the intangible aside from making broad allowences in your potential outcomes?
ReplyDeleteChris, the equation doesn't work. It doesn't work because some of the elements within represent aspects of reality that have an impact on the material aspect but can never be captured by matter alone.
ReplyDeleteI only feel, that in comparison to the previous equation, which I feel represents Ray Kurzweil's view of being human, the latter takes into account more dimensions: both those that are being fairly understood and others where for millenia it feels like we've been scratching a massive steel door that seems to open at the rate of one death at a time.
The extraordinary thing ("extra"ordinary because it's not part of everyone's ordinary experience) is that some people, including you, seem to have had the door opened to get into some kind of antechamber.
ReplyDeleteThen it opened again, and you all came back to where we all are, and have some inklings of what lies not only beyond the door, but beyond the antechamber.
If all this is what we have before us, then can being human be reduced to processing power, memory size and algorithms?
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be an unspoken conclusion deriving from Ray Kurzweil's anticipation of a future singularity where machine capabilities surpass human capabilities by pure improvement of the three variables.
I watched a youtube show yesterday about alien implants. They profiled a foot surgeon in California who specializes in removing these alien implants from people. He has removed ofer 15 of them from 15 different people, years and miles apart, who all claim to have been implanted by multidimentional beings.
ReplyDeleteThe crux of the investigation was that all of the implanted metal chips had biological assymilation occur and not rejection as is the body's job when foreign materials wind up deep in the skin.
The doctor has had these metal chips tested. Most of them emit radio frequency using only the nominal power of a human body and some at very high frequencies one was at 17Ghz! Most of them were sent off to Los Alamos Labratory for mass spectral analysis and the finding was they are made up of primarily iron and other metals found in meteorites and outerspace exclusively.These chips also were able to attract eppithelial nerve tissue to them and this tissue in all of the cases was out of place for the location of the chip--it was non native nerve tissue.
So the doctor found these implants "hooked" into the nervous system and transmitting multi band signals (prior to the removal they took a frequency counter and documented the frequency and power output). Maybe this alien technology is really the jump start we need to be able to inter connect to the human mind.
This doctor is 100% not a lunatic or weirdo And has really raised allot of profound questions regarding interdimentional possibilities and also the possibility of a subcutaneous wireless hardware to human bridge network.
Oops!
ReplyDeleteIf these alien implants are true, then someone or some others are way, way ahead of us.
Here's something worth reading:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/john-lloyd/mightiest-for-mightiest-%E2%80%9C-net-delusion%E2%80%9D
Talk about the goings-on in the 21st century.
I still contend that an explosion in processing power, memory and algorithms can't trump or transform or replace purpose.
It would be cool if the alien thing was true. All of our suppositions and toilings on this blog would find instant resolution. -lol
ReplyDeleteInteresting read to be sure. To break it down however, iron curtains were an attempt to keep out uncontrolled information and keep everything inside under control. The net will probably evolve to assist the opressive as well as the free but for now, it is sweet anarchy. As long as it remains as such, it will serve to keep the world informed and as un-decieved as the reader chooses to be.
I wonder if we as artificially enhanced beings in the not so distant future will wonder how we ever got along so far without purpose? Who's to say that we're at the pinaccle of what's possible now? Increase ourselves several orders of magnitude and then take a look back and wonder. All I am contending is consider the idea that we don't harbor any secret magic. It may seem like secret magic to us, but what if it's not? What if we're just evolutionally on the very edge of something much more vast? As for algorithms, don't forget that one of the definitions of super-intelligence re:AI is the ability to reprogram yourself. So to assume a fixed set of algorithms would be incorrect. I believe that right there is where the "magic" comes from in both bio and silicon.
I've been going through our comments in this posting. Some questions keep coming to mind:
ReplyDeletePatrick talks about undiscovered laws of physics. Chris talks about laws that might apply in immaterial dimensions.
- How can we talk of laws if there is no law-giver?
As human beings we have some domains where we seem to exercise a bit of control. This is where Chris seems to be on the right track talking about a core Truth applicable to all humans and then "truths" in culture and "truths" in individuals.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to exercise some control and influence in the last two but absolutely none in the first.
Chris talks about the consequences of our actions. Again I fully agree. There seems to be no escaping this. This is a perennial principle enunciated as cause & effect but which every one of us learns very early as children: cry and we'll get cuddled and hugged. We seem unable to escape this no matter how hard we try.
However, there have been no shortage of denials of cause and effect and from history. Religion actually comes across as the smallest of culprits.
Actually, religion seems to spend most of its time reminding people of cause and effect: "Do not steal because if you steal then...", "Do not kill because if you kill then...". And some of us end up getting a headache wondering if we can ever get to do anything in this life with so many prescriptions in place.
I'm not even going to talk about government and regulations. That would be too tempting - LOL
ReplyDelete"If you do not pay your parking tickets and you will...", "If you do not have health insurance then we will...".
I couldn't resist:
Around Christmas time, most people working in big cities tend to go back to their hometowns. The cops come out with the usual warnings about overspeeding, drunk driving etc.
In one country, the marshall in charge of highways went on TV to inform the public that they had patrol cars all over the place. He said that they would catch those who broke speed limits or any other traffic laws: "If you over-speed, we will catch you. If we catch you, we will book you. If we book you, we will...". He went on and on with a list of fearful consequences for the naive.
Fully aware, though, of the decrepit conditions of his troopers' vehicles, he added "And even if we don't catch you, I can assure you, God will."
- How is it then that we humans remain at the discovering end of the stick?
ReplyDelete- Why can't we alternate between discovering laws and creating them at will?
Now, back to the analogy of the steel door which we seem to have been scratching from the beginning of the human race. There's an easy way to open it for others and for ourselves: killing (manslaughter, murder and suicide.) While we seem to exercise control in opening it to pass in one direction, we exercise none in moving in the other direction.
ReplyDeleteThis boils down to partial control, a control that almost smacks of having been granted to us: much like using an electronic pass to open a door. To claim then that we control the door is...not adequate.
Again, Chris's explanation of core Truth is very illuminating. We seem to be able to construct our own cultural "truths" and personal "truths" but any time these come into conflict with the core Truth, from history, core Truth seems to win.
ReplyDeleteI have experienced this acutely in personal relationships and political systems. Anything constructed on a framework of lies and manipulation ultimately falls apart, falls under the weight of its own contradictions.
It has almost felt like, the elusive, immaterial quality called Truth is actually the most solid support on which everything else rests. And when it was absent, the consequences of building on emptiness and lies were not long in coming.
Instinctively, we react against those who offer religion as the escape hatch from the world of consequences. How much has been offered in the name of religion? What were the tolls? Yet religion is not the only tool available to those who seek to manipulate.
ReplyDeletePolitics has been offered before and now. Recall, the promise of domination offered based on a false superiority of race and the death tolls. Recall, the vast empire constructed on the promise of liberating the oppressed and the death tolls that followed. Recall the promises offered in every election or political system seeking legitimacy. And recall the consequences, whenever these turn out to be false.
Science and technology seem to be making such offers all the time. And that too has come with its own toll. It may all have started long ago with the discovery of fire. Then tools and more tools until we now hear the promise of the Internet.
But like fire and sharp rocks in the beginning, it all depends on the purpose to which technology is used. A knife is imbued with potential for multiple purposes. The actual purpose is dictated by the user of the knife. Now imagine the tolls of science and technology in the service of evil.
This is not to say that science, politics or religion is intrinsically evil. They can, and have been, hijacked by clever operators for their own ends and purposes.
Intentions get revealed slowly because it's only when the pernicious effects of the manipulation are widespread and deep that human beings wake up and discover that though they can be manipulated, they retain, to the end, the capacity to overcome manipulation with one thing only: Truth.
It's only a matter of time before human beings become "undeceived" about every "Greek" gift, because we are the ones who pay the price of believing falsehoods, always. The price in history has often been grievous.
Patrick, I think technology is only working the other way. The most significant developments in AI are not only in the theoretical foundations of programming but the emerging applications in real life.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading about some amazing factory setups with robots, conveyor belts, lifts etc. where humans getting into the factory floor is forbidden for the disruptions this would cause not only to operation but other measures such as efficiencies and profitability.
Chris showed us how brain waves are now being used to control devices that assist those of us with handicaps. It's amazing, awesome to say the least.
Developments in the silicon-biological interface remember is not one-sided. We're not just developing silicon. To develop proper interfaces one must acquire more understanding of both sides of the interface. We are growing in our understanding and awe of biology.
The more technology develops in terms of algorithms and applications, the more you discover the magic of the other side: biology. We can talk about self-improving algorithms but never forgetting all along, that on the other side, we humans have been doing an incredible job of self-improvement in homes, food, shelter, clothing, materials, environment, medicine etc.
We get awed by the technology but sometimes forget the humans that are doing it.
If one self-improving algorithm is written and loaded by a programmer in the RAM of a computer, think of 6 billion plus potential self-improvers that descended from ancestors that seemed to have appeared at a specific point in history.
There is magic at work but like all magic, we are just beginning to have glimpses of the explanation.
Chris's trip behind the steel door was like a trip behind the curtain revealing even more magic that transcends biology. Motion, unhindered by biology or matter, seems to have been part of his experience. On this side of the door, that remains an aspiration that even Ray Kurzweil would be hard put to make predictions about. Actually, for us it seems like science fiction.
Many others like Chris seem to have had such experiences only to be propelled back to our side, before even getting to grips with what was going on. The magic: the core Truth or better still the whole Truth is what we're searching for.
If we do have alien friends, I'll take a bet, that even they are after the same thing.
Started a new sheet. Look for April 16, 2011 above on the right.
ReplyDelete