"Infinite are the arguments of mages."
We are, as a people, quite obsessed with what will happen to us after death. Many, if not most, of us need to believe that we are certain about what will happen to us when we die. Whether the 'afterlife' is a non-corporeal paradise called Heaven, or a futuristic utopia here on Earth, we seem desperate to want to ensure our continued survival in it.
Survival for the pragmatic atheist means technology that extends or revives one's life in the face of death. Two increasingly-popular approaches to death nullification are cryonics and the idea that one's consciousness could be uploaded to a computer. Ironically, embracing these technologies doesn't always come with a corresponding interest in studying consciousness to make sure that nothing would be missing when one's mind is uploaded to computer, or revived from cryogenic stasis. (sigh)
From a 5-dimensional viewpoint, I see several obstacles to successfully preserving/continuing the 'self' in these ways. These obstacles aren't necessarily consistent with each other, but in light of the model that's developing, I feel there is some potential benefit in attempting to work through them.
The first obstacle involves the very idea of 'self'. We have a very strong, persistent, subjective feeling of being an independent and self-contained 'self'. I'm not talking about a sense of identity that is defined by socially-contingent labels, but rather a sense of being separate from that which is around us. This sense of self exhibits a strong continuity that 1) defies physical damage or illness, and 2) (usually) reconciles contradictory information and personal actions in a way that doesn't damage itself. (If you are tempted to argue that the sense of self is an unimportant epiphenomenon, then I have to wonder what it is that you are arguing for preserving.)
If the sense of self is an epiphenomenon, then are we sure that we understand the primary phenomenon that gives rise to it? We don't (generally) feel as if any portion of our expression of self arises as a result of any non-local connection to others. We tend to assume that the locally-isolated brain is solely responsible for our feelings and actions as a 'self'. But what if our expression of self were entirely (or even partially) a function of our non-local connection to others? If I, as an isolated observer, can choose/create which outcome I experience, then is it not possible that I in some sense am a product/expression of similar choices made by others? What if the very heart of multiple-observer interactions tells us that we are creating each other in the same way that we 'create' our experience of coincidences? And the critical question for technological-survivalists... If this were true, what would happen to my 'self' when it is displaced in time to a point in the future where no one who knew me exists?
The thing that bugs me about the arguments for cryonics is that they tout the fact that "dynamic brain activity can be lost and regained without loss of personal identity." (q) (My emphasis.) However this argument doesn't recognize its own limitation... To date, we have only ever succeeded in reinserting a person back into the information/observer grid that contained enough information about the person to enable such a comparison. Without such a network of other observers who have information about me - who are perhaps creating their consistent experience of me - will the 'who' that wakes up in 200 years be the same? If the surviving/revived consciousness has a sense of self, who would know (and how) that it was exhibiting the same personality for the same reasons as it did before?
(I have previously expressed skepticism about technology that would interrupt our connection to this admittedly poorly-defined grid. When I begin to think about longer intervals of time, I am confronted with the idea that the information contained within the grid might change significantly or, if no information is lost, that its availability/accessibility has been altered in some way. Yeah, I know - that's too vague to be useful at this point.)
That a sense of self can arise from the appropriate re-electrolyzation of a brain is not the argument I'm attempting to have here. And I can't say what, if not the brain, is the substrate of consciousness, or how another observer would hold the information that enables them to influence my expression of self. I suspect much of the problem in defining/identifying these things has to do with our limiting perception of time. Time - specifically, accessing information from the future - is the next stop on this flash forward vision of technological survival.
And time is the one thing that I don't have more of right now, so I'll sign off.
Yours truly,
Rational, With Different Data
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Substrate of Coincidence
"One cannot take truth by force, but perhaps indirectly, through phenomena, sign, and symbol we may approach her."
"In any case, jumping from one theory to another is an important part of the art of doing physics."
Yesterday I posed the questions - "And if a coincidence is not meaningful, why does it appear? Why should I experience any greater frequency of 'coincidences' than anyone else?" Today I'm going to add the question - What has changed about me that has caused/supported my ability to experience a higher frequency of 'coincidences' now than I did previously?
Confession time: I still foster/entertain competing models. I've previously mentioned that if external knowledge (knowledge about what is 'out there') does not represent something permanent/absolute, then it might ultimately prove to be problematic to create a model based on that knowledge. So I have two models right now that compete with each other to 'claim' new pieces of evidence/experience. The first model is brain-based, and reflects everything I've learned about contemporary neuroscience. The second model allows conscious experience to develop from/be anchored to something other than the brain. The nature of the thing that is 'other than the brain' changes to accomodate new information.
As I am essentially mapping my conscious experience into these models, it's possible that the second model would be of little use to anyone other than myself. The first model is what would generate excitement. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the brain is a perfectly adequate substrate for consciousness, although it remains to be seen how a materialistic model involving the brain would reconcile with the non-materialistic implications of the 5-dimensional model.
So what then is the substrate for experiencing coincidence? What triggers memories and fuses information together in a way that signals something important, and perhaps reflects information from the (subjective) future? Is there a wiring pattern within my brain that has changed over time to facilitate this type of experience? A chemical balance (or imbalance) that facilitates this type of perception?
The process of fusing all the clues together is messy. And it doesn't pay to go too long without reminding yourself of the big picture. A strictly subjective, introspective analysis of experience yields important pieces of information that demand explanation, but you must pay equal attention to the clues that have nothing to do with coincidence perception if you want to find a comprehensive model. For example, there is a period of a few seconds after I wake up in the morning where I have a sense of identity and I can recognize the familiarity of locational cues, but wherein I am unable to recall the day of the week or the date. This information invariably takes a few extra seconds to 'kick in'. Why should that happen? What do we know about the brain that supports an explanation for that experience? And why would a model of consciousness tethered to something other than the brain support such a phenomenon?
But I digress... Introspective analysis is wonderful if you want a model that works for you. Arguably, all that really matters is that you have a model that enables you to function as effectively as possible. However, science demands something that transfers beyond the experience of a single individual. And so begins the struggle to incorporate subjective experience into a larger model.
Assuming for a moment that the ability to experience 'coincidence' parallels other human abilities in that its expression can be plotted along a continuum, we can ask the question - What would that continuum look like? Rather than attempt to collapse the continuum of expression down to a simple dichotomy (such as skeptics/believers, crazy/sane), why not embrace a bit more of the collective human experience? Perhaps the continuum looks something like this...
(reading Low Expression --> High Expression)
Normal --> Highly lucky/unlucky --> Pathology/Inability to function
Let's assume that there is an optimal expression of 'experiencing coincidence'. Let's call it 'Magickal' just to mess with our physicist friends, and differentiate it from simple 'luck' by an element of control that can be exerted over the experiencing of coincidences. What can we learn about that category from the data available from the other categories on the continuum?
Baseline data --> Psychological data --> Psychological/Neurological data
What types of psycho/neuropathologies most closely correspond to an over-expression of 'experiencing coincidence'? Note that we're not asking about hallucinations. We're asking about two things that may contribute to pathology/inability to function with respect to experiencing coincidences. The first is simply the frequency of the experienced coincidences. The second - and possible the true source of the inability to function in society - is the beliefs that are held about the experienced coincidences. It's possible that a high frequency of experienced coincidences is tied to and/or fed by incorrect beliefs based on the experience of those coincidences. If given a better belief structure, would the experience of coincidence cease to result in a pathological condition? Or is the frequency of the experienced coincidences itself the crippling element? It's hard for me to know to what degree modern psychological treatments even attempt to separate the two.
Once we have identified the most appropriate pathologies for study, we can also ask - What can we discover about the underlying substrate of coincidence from neurochemical attempts to treat these pathologies?
We are far from a comprehensive understanding of the brain, and there are always the nagging placebo/nocebo effects demanding an explanation within a comprehensive model. The purpose of this post isn't to attempt to comprehensively answer any of these questions. Rather, this post is supposed to make you think about what I'm thinking about. :)
[Interesting Aside: In March you should see three articles targeting quantum paradigms of psychopathology being published in the online journal Neuroquantology. Could be interesting...]
"In any case, jumping from one theory to another is an important part of the art of doing physics."
Yesterday I posed the questions - "And if a coincidence is not meaningful, why does it appear? Why should I experience any greater frequency of 'coincidences' than anyone else?" Today I'm going to add the question - What has changed about me that has caused/supported my ability to experience a higher frequency of 'coincidences' now than I did previously?
Confession time: I still foster/entertain competing models. I've previously mentioned that if external knowledge (knowledge about what is 'out there') does not represent something permanent/absolute, then it might ultimately prove to be problematic to create a model based on that knowledge. So I have two models right now that compete with each other to 'claim' new pieces of evidence/experience. The first model is brain-based, and reflects everything I've learned about contemporary neuroscience. The second model allows conscious experience to develop from/be anchored to something other than the brain. The nature of the thing that is 'other than the brain' changes to accomodate new information.
As I am essentially mapping my conscious experience into these models, it's possible that the second model would be of little use to anyone other than myself. The first model is what would generate excitement. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the brain is a perfectly adequate substrate for consciousness, although it remains to be seen how a materialistic model involving the brain would reconcile with the non-materialistic implications of the 5-dimensional model.
So what then is the substrate for experiencing coincidence? What triggers memories and fuses information together in a way that signals something important, and perhaps reflects information from the (subjective) future? Is there a wiring pattern within my brain that has changed over time to facilitate this type of experience? A chemical balance (or imbalance) that facilitates this type of perception?
The process of fusing all the clues together is messy. And it doesn't pay to go too long without reminding yourself of the big picture. A strictly subjective, introspective analysis of experience yields important pieces of information that demand explanation, but you must pay equal attention to the clues that have nothing to do with coincidence perception if you want to find a comprehensive model. For example, there is a period of a few seconds after I wake up in the morning where I have a sense of identity and I can recognize the familiarity of locational cues, but wherein I am unable to recall the day of the week or the date. This information invariably takes a few extra seconds to 'kick in'. Why should that happen? What do we know about the brain that supports an explanation for that experience? And why would a model of consciousness tethered to something other than the brain support such a phenomenon?
But I digress... Introspective analysis is wonderful if you want a model that works for you. Arguably, all that really matters is that you have a model that enables you to function as effectively as possible. However, science demands something that transfers beyond the experience of a single individual. And so begins the struggle to incorporate subjective experience into a larger model.
Assuming for a moment that the ability to experience 'coincidence' parallels other human abilities in that its expression can be plotted along a continuum, we can ask the question - What would that continuum look like? Rather than attempt to collapse the continuum of expression down to a simple dichotomy (such as skeptics/believers, crazy/sane), why not embrace a bit more of the collective human experience? Perhaps the continuum looks something like this...
(reading Low Expression --> High Expression)
Normal --> Highly lucky/unlucky --> Pathology/Inability to function
Let's assume that there is an optimal expression of 'experiencing coincidence'. Let's call it 'Magickal' just to mess with our physicist friends, and differentiate it from simple 'luck' by an element of control that can be exerted over the experiencing of coincidences. What can we learn about that category from the data available from the other categories on the continuum?
Baseline data --> Psychological data --> Psychological/Neurological data
What types of psycho/neuropathologies most closely correspond to an over-expression of 'experiencing coincidence'? Note that we're not asking about hallucinations. We're asking about two things that may contribute to pathology/inability to function with respect to experiencing coincidences. The first is simply the frequency of the experienced coincidences. The second - and possible the true source of the inability to function in society - is the beliefs that are held about the experienced coincidences. It's possible that a high frequency of experienced coincidences is tied to and/or fed by incorrect beliefs based on the experience of those coincidences. If given a better belief structure, would the experience of coincidence cease to result in a pathological condition? Or is the frequency of the experienced coincidences itself the crippling element? It's hard for me to know to what degree modern psychological treatments even attempt to separate the two.
Once we have identified the most appropriate pathologies for study, we can also ask - What can we discover about the underlying substrate of coincidence from neurochemical attempts to treat these pathologies?
We are far from a comprehensive understanding of the brain, and there are always the nagging placebo/nocebo effects demanding an explanation within a comprehensive model. The purpose of this post isn't to attempt to comprehensively answer any of these questions. Rather, this post is supposed to make you think about what I'm thinking about. :)
[Interesting Aside: In March you should see three articles targeting quantum paradigms of psychopathology being published in the online journal Neuroquantology. Could be interesting...]
Sunday, January 10, 2010
From 'Meaningless' to 'Meaningful'
"A love relationship takes on an added dimension." - yesterday's fortune cookie
"I almost always think things will turn out well, and even when they break I am confident that I can fix them." - Michael Shermer, Scientific American, January 2010.
My life is riddled with coincidences. (They seemed to have increased in frequency as I have moved further into a 5-dimensional mode of being.) However, not all of these coincidences are equally meaningful to me. What determines whether a coincidence is meaningful or not? And if a coincidence is not meaningful, why does it appear? Why should I experience any greater frequency of 'coincidences' than anyone else?
Let's start with the first question, as it's easier to answer. The two quotes above represent two coincidences that I experienced yesterday. (Which one do you think I'm going to attribute more meaning to, and why?) First, it is necessary to establish why these things represent coincidences.
Coincidence: "A striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance." The primary defining element of a coincidence has to do with time - the proximity of the two events in time. Time is also the most objective element of a coincidence. You and I can agree that these events coincided in time, even though we can disagree as to the explanation of why they coincided and the meaning (if any) of the coincidence.
So let's establish why the Shermer quote is a coincidence. Yesterday, in my head, among other things, I was crafting a follow-up blog post (for a different blog) on Idealism vs. Pragmatism. I had intended to express the conflict that I personally feel between wanting to see/believe the best about a situation (Idealism), and knowing the realistic limits of a situation (Pragmatism). Specifically, I had crafted a sentence about how Idealism can lead you to try to fix what was broken. Yesterday I also took the time to trawl through a collection of low-frequency update internet sites, including the Scientific American site. And, of course, I had to read Shermer's column. This month it's called "Kool-Aid Psychology: Realism versus Optimism", and he leads in with the following "I am, by nature, an optimist. I almost always think things will turn out well, and even when they break I am confident that I can fix them." (My emphasis.)
How meaningful is this coincidence? Not very. I already know that Shermer and I agree on quite a bit more than you'd think. (The major disagreement being, of course, on the reality/nature of ESP/psi and what it represents.) So while the coincidence was enough to make me raise an eyebrow, it's not meaningful enough to cause me to change any of my previously planned actions. And by 'meaningful' I mean that 1) it didn't give me any/enough information that I didn't already have, 2) it didn't cause me to give additional thought to any aspect of a situation, and 3) it didn't resolve any underlying uncertainty that I had about anything.
Now the fortune cookie... Yes, I read the fortunes in fortune cookies. I eat Chinese food about twice a month, if that, so I don't read a lot of fortune cookies, but I do enjoy the fortune as an opportunity for unexpected information or insight to present itself. And when my fortune cookie mentions "an added dimension," and in light of the specific situation I was thinking about at the time...
That's the kind of coincidence that's just loaded with meaning. Yes, the meaningfulness of that coincidence is entirely subjective - that is, it's entirely specific to me. No, I don't interpret it as anything other than the workings of my mind reflected back to me via the selection of a highly-improbable outcome. Like the man said, "The cookie is in no position to know that." It's not a magical cookie, and it's not any kind of supernatural communication from the Beyond. It's just my mind, working things out: talking to itself, if you will.
People have called this type of thing 'communication with your Higher Self'. I prefer to think of it as a type of calculation that the mind is able to engage in - drawing information from the past and the future, condensing it, and reflecting it back via the process of outcome selection. This presumes, of course, that the mind/consciousness has an influence on the process of outcome selection, but then that is the premise of these blogs. It also presumes that information from the future can influence this process.
The process of blogging this idea has, itself, been riddled with coincidences. Books, articles, songs and images would present themselves at just the right moment in time to be used to convey a critical concept or idea. Often I was not even aware of their full impact/meaning until after I had posted. I attribute this to nothing more 'mystical' than being willing and able to access information from the future and trust the answer that showed up, usually in the form of an improbable coincidence. I realize that this sounds highly 'mystical' to a great many of you, and that it bespeaks a much different picture of reality than materialism presents, but it's a non-supernatural picture of reality nonetheless.
Of course the test of this picture of reality is in the practical consequences of accepting it. So sayeth my inner pragmatist. And the aforementioned consequences are still under investigation...
"I almost always think things will turn out well, and even when they break I am confident that I can fix them." - Michael Shermer, Scientific American, January 2010.
My life is riddled with coincidences. (They seemed to have increased in frequency as I have moved further into a 5-dimensional mode of being.) However, not all of these coincidences are equally meaningful to me. What determines whether a coincidence is meaningful or not? And if a coincidence is not meaningful, why does it appear? Why should I experience any greater frequency of 'coincidences' than anyone else?
Let's start with the first question, as it's easier to answer. The two quotes above represent two coincidences that I experienced yesterday. (Which one do you think I'm going to attribute more meaning to, and why?) First, it is necessary to establish why these things represent coincidences.
Coincidence: "A striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance." The primary defining element of a coincidence has to do with time - the proximity of the two events in time. Time is also the most objective element of a coincidence. You and I can agree that these events coincided in time, even though we can disagree as to the explanation of why they coincided and the meaning (if any) of the coincidence.
So let's establish why the Shermer quote is a coincidence. Yesterday, in my head, among other things, I was crafting a follow-up blog post (for a different blog) on Idealism vs. Pragmatism. I had intended to express the conflict that I personally feel between wanting to see/believe the best about a situation (Idealism), and knowing the realistic limits of a situation (Pragmatism). Specifically, I had crafted a sentence about how Idealism can lead you to try to fix what was broken. Yesterday I also took the time to trawl through a collection of low-frequency update internet sites, including the Scientific American site. And, of course, I had to read Shermer's column. This month it's called "Kool-Aid Psychology: Realism versus Optimism", and he leads in with the following "I am, by nature, an optimist. I almost always think things will turn out well, and even when they break I am confident that I can fix them." (My emphasis.)
How meaningful is this coincidence? Not very. I already know that Shermer and I agree on quite a bit more than you'd think. (The major disagreement being, of course, on the reality/nature of ESP/psi and what it represents.) So while the coincidence was enough to make me raise an eyebrow, it's not meaningful enough to cause me to change any of my previously planned actions. And by 'meaningful' I mean that 1) it didn't give me any/enough information that I didn't already have, 2) it didn't cause me to give additional thought to any aspect of a situation, and 3) it didn't resolve any underlying uncertainty that I had about anything.
Now the fortune cookie... Yes, I read the fortunes in fortune cookies. I eat Chinese food about twice a month, if that, so I don't read a lot of fortune cookies, but I do enjoy the fortune as an opportunity for unexpected information or insight to present itself. And when my fortune cookie mentions "an added dimension," and in light of the specific situation I was thinking about at the time...
That's the kind of coincidence that's just loaded with meaning. Yes, the meaningfulness of that coincidence is entirely subjective - that is, it's entirely specific to me. No, I don't interpret it as anything other than the workings of my mind reflected back to me via the selection of a highly-improbable outcome. Like the man said, "The cookie is in no position to know that." It's not a magical cookie, and it's not any kind of supernatural communication from the Beyond. It's just my mind, working things out: talking to itself, if you will.
People have called this type of thing 'communication with your Higher Self'. I prefer to think of it as a type of calculation that the mind is able to engage in - drawing information from the past and the future, condensing it, and reflecting it back via the process of outcome selection. This presumes, of course, that the mind/consciousness has an influence on the process of outcome selection, but then that is the premise of these blogs. It also presumes that information from the future can influence this process.
The process of blogging this idea has, itself, been riddled with coincidences. Books, articles, songs and images would present themselves at just the right moment in time to be used to convey a critical concept or idea. Often I was not even aware of their full impact/meaning until after I had posted. I attribute this to nothing more 'mystical' than being willing and able to access information from the future and trust the answer that showed up, usually in the form of an improbable coincidence. I realize that this sounds highly 'mystical' to a great many of you, and that it bespeaks a much different picture of reality than materialism presents, but it's a non-supernatural picture of reality nonetheless.
Of course the test of this picture of reality is in the practical consequences of accepting it. So sayeth my inner pragmatist. And the aforementioned consequences are still under investigation...
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