"What happens to a man when
He spills his heart on a page
And he watches words flow away
Then his feelings lay on a page alone.
There, waiting for someone who cares to read them,
To open their eyes to see them,
To see if they can make his thoughts their own."
"The way we see the world is changing. The way we see ourselves is also changing." (q, h/t) Most of us are used to seeing ourselves as isolated, solitary beings. I may be able to physically push you, but we don't generally believe that I can intrude upon the essence of you. However, as the data continues to paint a picture of mind's effect upon perceivable matter, will we be able to hold on to that perception of solitude? As we see how the mind manifests itself in what we experience as reality, will we also be forced to question the nature of other individuals? How can our minds affect reality without also affecting the other individuals who inhabit that reality?
"Distributed cognition is a branch of cognitive science that proposes that human knowledge and cognition are not confined to the individual. Instead, it is distributed by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on the objects, individuals, and tools in our environment." (q)
I am interested in a similar idea - that of a distributed self. The idea being that the memories, facts and knowledge held by other individuals all contribute to one particular individual's actions and sense of self. This would be true for each 'self', and such an idea, when pushed to its logical conclusion, would suggest that each of us are, at least in part, manifestations of a collective consciousness, extended mind, or some other unified whole. And of course, in keeping with the data that give rise to these thoughts and that speak of nonlocal relationships between mind and matter, such influences upon an individual's actions and sense of self would be of a similar nature, meaning that they occur in the absence of verbal or other local feedback from the other individuals. I would also suggest that such changes in one's own sense of self are noticeable to an individual who is using an appropriately developed introspective ability.
The idea of a collective consciousness (or unconscious) is not new to science. Science has even found an experimental illustration that resembles the idea of a collective/hive mind. Take a look at The Jelly Bean Experiment. (h/t) Picture each person who participated in this experiment as a node in an interconnected web where the connections between them are information related to the guessing experiment. Not explicit I-told-you-what-I-guessed connections, but exclusionary forces say that Person A's guess determines Person B's guess in a non-local way that is governed by the observations and consequences of the group's collective behavior. And each individual's action strengthens the output of the collective.
Here is another analogous image that corresponds quite well to the distributed self model that's slowly building itself in my mind. Picture one 'self' on each side of the pegboard. An 'action' on one side of the pegboard shows up as a change in the pegs on the other side of the board. Is the individual 'self' simply the configuration of the pegs on each side of the board, or is it the configuration of the pegs plus something else? That's an open question for me, as far as this particular analogy goes, though I'd like to think that it is a question that can be answered once we better understand the recursive nature of memory within the stream of consciousness.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Closer to the Edge
"Can you imagine a time when the truth ran free
The birth of a song and the death of a dream"
Sleep Journal
June 26th, 2011
Woke up at about 4:30 AM, very abruptly, after approximately 5 – 5 ½ hours of sleep. Had not set alarm.
Had the residual image of my dream still in my head. Of course it was more than an image... In fact, there was an auditory component (as if one were hearing the sentence spoken), a visual component (as if one were seeing the sentence written on paper), and a meaning component (one's understanding of what the sentence actually meant.) For a short period, just after waking up, the three had a sense of unity – meaning, they felt the same, they felt as if they had the same meaning.
Only upon further waking did something (memory?) kick in which allowed the three elements to be parsed apart, which allowed for the recognition that in fact they weren't saying the same thing at all. The auditory element was roughly “The paycheck isn't coming back good.” The visual element was a sentence beginning with the word “It.” The meaning of both of these (which felt the same) was that my reference checks from previous employers were not coming back favorable.
The sense of unity these elements possessed was clearly not based on memory. But a sense of unity they had, and an unimpeachable one at that. Meaning, without memory to illuminate the subtle distinctions between the three elements of the seemingly-coherent experience, it might easily have been acted upon.
While waiting for memory to kick in – a process that always takes some time when I have been abruptly awakened, and a process of which I am aware – I desperately wanted to know the origin of that element of the dream. Was it a sign, or some indication of a subtle awareness on my part that there was (or was likely to be) a problem with one or more of my references? I remember waiting and waiting for memory to kick in, and when it finally showed up – which is to say, when the contents of episodic memory were finally available for conscious analysis – there was a distinct awareness of that information merging into the stream of consciousness. As if it were simply arriving late to the party, but mingling perfectly well with the throng once there.
After – not simultaneous with – the arrival of memory to the stream came the ability to imagine. To project and anticipate and visual completely hypothetical outcomes.
So distinct were these elements in there arrival to the stream of consciousness that it was as if I were seeing the 'waking up' of certain brain areas, or the removal of whatever obstacles had prevented them from feeding information into the dream state. What was clear was that I could not activate them immediately by will alone. I could query, but the response took time to arrive. For a time I simply had no access to the contents of episodic memory.
(end entry)
"Yet the human spirit is restless and nature forever compliant, willing to answer as yet undreamed questions, capable of opening up vast new vistas, revealing still undisclosed parts of her being."
The birth of a song and the death of a dream"
Sleep Journal
June 26th, 2011
Woke up at about 4:30 AM, very abruptly, after approximately 5 – 5 ½ hours of sleep. Had not set alarm.
Had the residual image of my dream still in my head. Of course it was more than an image... In fact, there was an auditory component (as if one were hearing the sentence spoken), a visual component (as if one were seeing the sentence written on paper), and a meaning component (one's understanding of what the sentence actually meant.) For a short period, just after waking up, the three had a sense of unity – meaning, they felt the same, they felt as if they had the same meaning.
Only upon further waking did something (memory?) kick in which allowed the three elements to be parsed apart, which allowed for the recognition that in fact they weren't saying the same thing at all. The auditory element was roughly “The paycheck isn't coming back good.” The visual element was a sentence beginning with the word “It.” The meaning of both of these (which felt the same) was that my reference checks from previous employers were not coming back favorable.
The sense of unity these elements possessed was clearly not based on memory. But a sense of unity they had, and an unimpeachable one at that. Meaning, without memory to illuminate the subtle distinctions between the three elements of the seemingly-coherent experience, it might easily have been acted upon.
While waiting for memory to kick in – a process that always takes some time when I have been abruptly awakened, and a process of which I am aware – I desperately wanted to know the origin of that element of the dream. Was it a sign, or some indication of a subtle awareness on my part that there was (or was likely to be) a problem with one or more of my references? I remember waiting and waiting for memory to kick in, and when it finally showed up – which is to say, when the contents of episodic memory were finally available for conscious analysis – there was a distinct awareness of that information merging into the stream of consciousness. As if it were simply arriving late to the party, but mingling perfectly well with the throng once there.
After – not simultaneous with – the arrival of memory to the stream came the ability to imagine. To project and anticipate and visual completely hypothetical outcomes.
So distinct were these elements in there arrival to the stream of consciousness that it was as if I were seeing the 'waking up' of certain brain areas, or the removal of whatever obstacles had prevented them from feeding information into the dream state. What was clear was that I could not activate them immediately by will alone. I could query, but the response took time to arrive. For a time I simply had no access to the contents of episodic memory.
(end entry)
"Yet the human spirit is restless and nature forever compliant, willing to answer as yet undreamed questions, capable of opening up vast new vistas, revealing still undisclosed parts of her being."
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Time Pressure
The future speaks to us in the language of the past. And no two people hear it the same.
Many years ago I participated in an ESP experiment. I use the vague term 'ESP' deliberately at this point because my experience during the experiment allowed me to examine competing ideas about what 'extrasensory' meant. I've previously written about this experiment, and briefly touched on the two competing hypothetical explanations: 1) Telepathy - I had some kind of 'access' to my partner's mind and/or the contents therein. 2) Futuresense - Identifying those images/ideas in my stream of consciousness that correlated strongly to my future subjective experience.
Here is what I wrote in my previous post... "The most vivid image that I 'received' was actually an image that my friend had drawn during the 'sending' phase of the experiment. After the judging and feedback portions of the experiment were complete, I had the opportunity to see these drawings and discuss the session with my friend. Naturally I had a strong reaction to that image when I saw the drawing of it, as it was the image I had 'received' during the experiment. Had I gotten that image telepathically from my friend? If so, why hadn't I gotten the actual target image telepathically? Or had I been drawing on my startled reaction to the image when I was casting about for information during the 'receiving' portion of my session? If so, why hadn't I pulled the target image, which I subsequently saw and knew to be the correct image? (And so on.)" In assessing my subjective experience during the testing phase and the feedback phase of the experiment, I came to prefer the futuresense explanation. (And it's actually a lot simpler than telepathy.)
I'm not going to pretend that I subsequently worked out a complete (positive) definition of psi/ESP. (And to be clear, I'm referring to what is commonly perceived to be a receptive faculty, as opposed to an influencing agent, although at some level this distinction may vanish.) In fact, I only mention this at all because I got suckered into watching Beyond Belief last night. What started me thinking was the reading that took place about 39 and a half minutes (hulu time) into the program. Bits of the reading were interspersed with feedback, including a relevant picture of David (the reporter's) mother. With my futuresense hypothesis in mind, I couldn't help but think that the psychic (Rebecca) had awesome future feedback to draw upon during the reading. Not only were relevant images and details given to the psychic immediately during the reading, but they were also broadcast on network television to a huge audience. [ASIDE: The huge audience is relevant when one wants to consider multiple observer hypotheses. And I'm of the opinion that you have to consider the effects of each observer, including the skeptical ones.] Contrast this to the type of feedback that the tarot card reader and palm reader received at around 18 minutes. For the purposes of this program, comparing the feedback that was given in Rebecca's success and in the skeptic's failure is like comparing apples to... well, rocks. But if psi/ESP is in some way a sensitivity to the 'flavor' of the future, then the proper way to test that is to give all psychics an equal amount (and quality) of feedback, regardless of whether they hit or miss.
Of course a proper skeptic would immediately point to the Sylvia Browne incident at 29:50, wherein Sylvia's reading to the couple was (painfully) incorrect. Surely the media coverage of that was comparable to Rebecca's feedback, right...? Hey, I don't have all the answers.
But I am very interested in developing a positive definition of psi/ESP, and I have to wonder... Is there an architecture in the brain that might be sensitive to influence from the (subjective) future? (For clarification, I'm not referring to an architecture in the sense of, say, the amygdala, but more along the lines of the microtubule.) From analyzing the subjective experience of psi/ESP, I would think that such an architecture would have to pervade the same regions of the brain that contain memory, as information acquired via psi/ESP appears to often (if not always) come as the activation of existing knowledge structures (memories). This may also explain why two people never have the same 'psychic' experience with respect to a given event; they are operating with a different set of knowledge structures and interconnectivity among the structures.
Is there a way to distinguish between the activation of this architecture in response to pressure from the future, as opposed to the influence of the past? I wouldn't necessarily expect to see an architecture that is dedicated to - will only respond to - influence from the future, but I would expect there to be a way to differentiate the influences of past and future within an overall pattern of signalling.
How does this hypothetical architecture change as one becomes more 'sensitive' to the influence of the future? I'm drawing primarily on my own subjective experience (again) in suggesting that, over a period of time, and with practice, some relationship between signals from the past and the future is/can be modified. This results in what is effectively a 'signal boost' for information/influence from the future. It also fits the pervasive meme that one can learn how to become psychic, and can develop ESP abilities with practice.
Overall, in watching the program last night (and again this morning for the purposes of obtaining names and time markers), I saw such a confusion of information and methodology that it doesn't surprise me that skeptics find it impenetrable and want to chuck it all out the window. But perhaps the better approach is simply to search for the commonalities of experience amidst the chaos of expression. Is sensitivity to elements one's own subjective future one such commonality?
I realize that I'm not saying anything particularly new with this post. But every once in a while you just have to stir the pot. Bonus points if you boosted a signal to get here. ;)
Many years ago I participated in an ESP experiment. I use the vague term 'ESP' deliberately at this point because my experience during the experiment allowed me to examine competing ideas about what 'extrasensory' meant. I've previously written about this experiment, and briefly touched on the two competing hypothetical explanations: 1) Telepathy - I had some kind of 'access' to my partner's mind and/or the contents therein. 2) Futuresense - Identifying those images/ideas in my stream of consciousness that correlated strongly to my future subjective experience.
Here is what I wrote in my previous post... "The most vivid image that I 'received' was actually an image that my friend had drawn during the 'sending' phase of the experiment. After the judging and feedback portions of the experiment were complete, I had the opportunity to see these drawings and discuss the session with my friend. Naturally I had a strong reaction to that image when I saw the drawing of it, as it was the image I had 'received' during the experiment. Had I gotten that image telepathically from my friend? If so, why hadn't I gotten the actual target image telepathically? Or had I been drawing on my startled reaction to the image when I was casting about for information during the 'receiving' portion of my session? If so, why hadn't I pulled the target image, which I subsequently saw and knew to be the correct image? (And so on.)" In assessing my subjective experience during the testing phase and the feedback phase of the experiment, I came to prefer the futuresense explanation. (And it's actually a lot simpler than telepathy.)
I'm not going to pretend that I subsequently worked out a complete (positive) definition of psi/ESP. (And to be clear, I'm referring to what is commonly perceived to be a receptive faculty, as opposed to an influencing agent, although at some level this distinction may vanish.) In fact, I only mention this at all because I got suckered into watching Beyond Belief last night. What started me thinking was the reading that took place about 39 and a half minutes (hulu time) into the program. Bits of the reading were interspersed with feedback, including a relevant picture of David (the reporter's) mother. With my futuresense hypothesis in mind, I couldn't help but think that the psychic (Rebecca) had awesome future feedback to draw upon during the reading. Not only were relevant images and details given to the psychic immediately during the reading, but they were also broadcast on network television to a huge audience. [ASIDE: The huge audience is relevant when one wants to consider multiple observer hypotheses. And I'm of the opinion that you have to consider the effects of each observer, including the skeptical ones.] Contrast this to the type of feedback that the tarot card reader and palm reader received at around 18 minutes. For the purposes of this program, comparing the feedback that was given in Rebecca's success and in the skeptic's failure is like comparing apples to... well, rocks. But if psi/ESP is in some way a sensitivity to the 'flavor' of the future, then the proper way to test that is to give all psychics an equal amount (and quality) of feedback, regardless of whether they hit or miss.
Of course a proper skeptic would immediately point to the Sylvia Browne incident at 29:50, wherein Sylvia's reading to the couple was (painfully) incorrect. Surely the media coverage of that was comparable to Rebecca's feedback, right...? Hey, I don't have all the answers.
But I am very interested in developing a positive definition of psi/ESP, and I have to wonder... Is there an architecture in the brain that might be sensitive to influence from the (subjective) future? (For clarification, I'm not referring to an architecture in the sense of, say, the amygdala, but more along the lines of the microtubule.) From analyzing the subjective experience of psi/ESP, I would think that such an architecture would have to pervade the same regions of the brain that contain memory, as information acquired via psi/ESP appears to often (if not always) come as the activation of existing knowledge structures (memories). This may also explain why two people never have the same 'psychic' experience with respect to a given event; they are operating with a different set of knowledge structures and interconnectivity among the structures.
Is there a way to distinguish between the activation of this architecture in response to pressure from the future, as opposed to the influence of the past? I wouldn't necessarily expect to see an architecture that is dedicated to - will only respond to - influence from the future, but I would expect there to be a way to differentiate the influences of past and future within an overall pattern of signalling.
How does this hypothetical architecture change as one becomes more 'sensitive' to the influence of the future? I'm drawing primarily on my own subjective experience (again) in suggesting that, over a period of time, and with practice, some relationship between signals from the past and the future is/can be modified. This results in what is effectively a 'signal boost' for information/influence from the future. It also fits the pervasive meme that one can learn how to become psychic, and can develop ESP abilities with practice.
Overall, in watching the program last night (and again this morning for the purposes of obtaining names and time markers), I saw such a confusion of information and methodology that it doesn't surprise me that skeptics find it impenetrable and want to chuck it all out the window. But perhaps the better approach is simply to search for the commonalities of experience amidst the chaos of expression. Is sensitivity to elements one's own subjective future one such commonality?
I realize that I'm not saying anything particularly new with this post. But every once in a while you just have to stir the pot. Bonus points if you boosted a signal to get here. ;)
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Pathfinder
"Spacetime is being very naughty right now."
" So if we accept that these psi phenomena are real, how then can we explain them without throwing out our entire understanding of time and physics?" - Melissa Burkley, Psychology Today [Popular idea, but at least this time it was stated as a question. (sigh)]
Given that Daryl Bem's article "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect" has been discussed in blogs and the popular press for over three months now, my response is a bit delayed. But I promise that it will contain none of that ever-present blah blah blah (old, boring, tired) debating about the reality of ESP. ;)
My response to Bem's article was more in line with Burkley's question: "If we suspend our beliefs about time and accept that the brain is capable of reaching into the future, the next question becomes 'how does it do this?'" The question in my notes was... What, if any, is/are the neurological, neurochemical, and/or neuroelectrical correlates of the salience of information that has significance in the future? (Note that I didn't say 'information from the future', for good reason.)
If you remember this modest post, you'll understand what I'm getting at with that question and where I hope researchers like Bem will go next. Which brings me to...
Suggestion 1: I would like to see a database of psychological and neurological characteristics for high-performing (and no-effect) subjects. Bem had some psychological data in his results (e.g., stimulus-seeking) but there is room for a much more comprehensive workup involving more-detailed psychological profiles. I would also like to see EEG responses at various points during this testing paradigm. (And, of course, appropriate control data.) With the collection and comparison of appropriate EEG data, it might be possible to isolate an element of the response that indicates the 'path' from the future. Further testing could then see if this element of the EEG response alone could predict a successful trial. [Note: I picked EEG data largely because I am already familiar with EEG and ERP testing paradigms and data collection. And, one might expect to see clean/robust differences in EEG data if differences in 'stimulus-seeking' are involved.]
Suggestion 2: Train subjects with the goal of improving their performance. Ideally, these would be the same subjects from which you have created the aforementioned database, as it would also be interesting to know if/how the aforementioned EEG markers covaried as the brain adapted to using this 'source' of information.
Suggestion 3: Something in Bem's results made me wonder if there wasn't something within the timing of the response to the stimuli which could illuminate the 'path' that this information took. No solid ideas yet, I can't quite shake the notion that there's something there...
Daryl, this post is for you, because I admire the clean and elegant design of your experiments, and I hope you'll follow them up with additional research.
My response to Bem's article was more in line with Burkley's question: "If we suspend our beliefs about time and accept that the brain is capable of reaching into the future, the next question becomes 'how does it do this?'" The question in my notes was... What, if any, is/are the neurological, neurochemical, and/or neuroelectrical correlates of the salience of information that has significance in the future? (Note that I didn't say 'information from the future', for good reason.)
If you remember this modest post, you'll understand what I'm getting at with that question and where I hope researchers like Bem will go next. Which brings me to...
Suggestion 1: I would like to see a database of psychological and neurological characteristics for high-performing (and no-effect) subjects. Bem had some psychological data in his results (e.g., stimulus-seeking) but there is room for a much more comprehensive workup involving more-detailed psychological profiles. I would also like to see EEG responses at various points during this testing paradigm. (And, of course, appropriate control data.) With the collection and comparison of appropriate EEG data, it might be possible to isolate an element of the response that indicates the 'path' from the future. Further testing could then see if this element of the EEG response alone could predict a successful trial. [Note: I picked EEG data largely because I am already familiar with EEG and ERP testing paradigms and data collection. And, one might expect to see clean/robust differences in EEG data if differences in 'stimulus-seeking' are involved.]
Suggestion 2: Train subjects with the goal of improving their performance. Ideally, these would be the same subjects from which you have created the aforementioned database, as it would also be interesting to know if/how the aforementioned EEG markers covaried as the brain adapted to using this 'source' of information.
Suggestion 3: Something in Bem's results made me wonder if there wasn't something within the timing of the response to the stimuli which could illuminate the 'path' that this information took. No solid ideas yet, I can't quite shake the notion that there's something there...
Daryl, this post is for you, because I admire the clean and elegant design of your experiments, and I hope you'll follow them up with additional research.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Time Travelers Never Die
I been hit with the future but I don't walk with a limp. (I'm alright.)
"For it is true that we often discover meanings and reasons for things many years after they mattered quite so much to us."
(This one's for the Doctor Who ringtone.)
Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to talk about information from the future. I've held off on that because the ideas in my head haven't solidified into a coherent picture yet. But what the hell... This post has marinated long enough. Let's cook it up and serve it to the unsuspecting masses. :)
I've tried (in this blog) to create a picture of time that has our conscious experience arising from a struggle between information/influence from the (subjective) past and information/influence from the (subjective) future. I don't know quite how to conceptualize this information/influence... Some have call it a 'wave' (in the quantum sense), and that seems as good a picture as any, for the moment.
In working to create this picture of time and its relationship to experience, I occasionally indulge in bizarre thought experiments like the one that prompted my earlier mention of information from the future...
Thought Experiment: Assume that there is an influence traveling 'back in time' from the subjective future. (This is not an unreasonable assumption; the idea has been out there for a while.) Further assume that consciousness as we experience it is somehow critically tied to that biochemical mass we call the brain. (Not an unreasonable assumption, but certainly not a given either.) Assume that the brain would retain its capacity to produce exactly the same experience of consciousness after a period of cryonic suspension. (I doubt that this is possible, as I believe that a critical portion of our conscious experience arises from a non-local 'entanglement' (if you will) with other minds.)
With all these assumptions in place, it stands to reason that a person who has successfully extended his lifespan via cryonic suspension would also have extended the potential for information from his subjective future to influence him now. What would this person have access to, and how would it affect his behavior in the present? If one can reasonably assume that he would use (though perhaps not consciously) information from the future to enhance his own survival, what would you expect to see him doing now? (Hmmm...)
Thinking about the influence of the future brings up other interesting questions as well...
Is time an illusion? How do we experience this influence/information from the future? Is our perception of 'free will' nothing more than an incomplete awareness of the continually shifting balance between the information/influence of the past and that of the future?
What property of the substrate of consciousness creates/enables our awareness of the passage of time? (You want to say 'Memory, duh!', but why should there not also be a corresponding neural/neurochemical structure to harness and/or 'display' information from the future?) Without this property/structure, how would we know about time? What would we know about time? Is our particular kind of temporal perception really nothing more than a reverberation property within the mechanism/substrate of consciousness?
And that's not even the best part...
Now come questions like: How can we deliberately capitalize on our ability to access information from the future? Is our lifespan of moments of conscious experience simply one giant bi-directional temporal computation, such that events in our past can be perceived as having been 'caused' by events (or needs) in our future? Is it possible to willfully use the 'future' in the present to achieve a specific outcome now? In my head, I refer to this as 'borrowing against future entropy', though physicists might have a beef with the way I'm using the word 'entropy'.
I've mentioned things like this before, and I'm slowing solidifying an ontology for... (pick one)
"For it is true that we often discover meanings and reasons for things many years after they mattered quite so much to us."
(This one's for the Doctor Who ringtone.)
Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to talk about information from the future. I've held off on that because the ideas in my head haven't solidified into a coherent picture yet. But what the hell... This post has marinated long enough. Let's cook it up and serve it to the unsuspecting masses. :)
I've tried (in this blog) to create a picture of time that has our conscious experience arising from a struggle between information/influence from the (subjective) past and information/influence from the (subjective) future. I don't know quite how to conceptualize this information/influence... Some have call it a 'wave' (in the quantum sense), and that seems as good a picture as any, for the moment.
In working to create this picture of time and its relationship to experience, I occasionally indulge in bizarre thought experiments like the one that prompted my earlier mention of information from the future...
Thought Experiment: Assume that there is an influence traveling 'back in time' from the subjective future. (This is not an unreasonable assumption; the idea has been out there for a while.) Further assume that consciousness as we experience it is somehow critically tied to that biochemical mass we call the brain. (Not an unreasonable assumption, but certainly not a given either.) Assume that the brain would retain its capacity to produce exactly the same experience of consciousness after a period of cryonic suspension. (I doubt that this is possible, as I believe that a critical portion of our conscious experience arises from a non-local 'entanglement' (if you will) with other minds.)
With all these assumptions in place, it stands to reason that a person who has successfully extended his lifespan via cryonic suspension would also have extended the potential for information from his subjective future to influence him now. What would this person have access to, and how would it affect his behavior in the present? If one can reasonably assume that he would use (though perhaps not consciously) information from the future to enhance his own survival, what would you expect to see him doing now? (Hmmm...)
Thinking about the influence of the future brings up other interesting questions as well...
Is time an illusion? How do we experience this influence/information from the future? Is our perception of 'free will' nothing more than an incomplete awareness of the continually shifting balance between the information/influence of the past and that of the future?
What property of the substrate of consciousness creates/enables our awareness of the passage of time? (You want to say 'Memory, duh!', but why should there not also be a corresponding neural/neurochemical structure to harness and/or 'display' information from the future?) Without this property/structure, how would we know about time? What would we know about time? Is our particular kind of temporal perception really nothing more than a reverberation property within the mechanism/substrate of consciousness?
And that's not even the best part...
Now come questions like: How can we deliberately capitalize on our ability to access information from the future? Is our lifespan of moments of conscious experience simply one giant bi-directional temporal computation, such that events in our past can be perceived as having been 'caused' by events (or needs) in our future? Is it possible to willfully use the 'future' in the present to achieve a specific outcome now? In my head, I refer to this as 'borrowing against future entropy', though physicists might have a beef with the way I'm using the word 'entropy'.
I've mentioned things like this before, and I'm slowing solidifying an ontology for... (pick one)
- trans-temporal
- extra-temporal
- bi-directional temporal
... ways of describing and discussing conscious experience and the computations that give rise to it. Who knows what kind of questions such a perspective might answer...
(Crazy thought experiments welcome!)
(P.S. Sorry, 50 - I had to do that.)Monday, July 5, 2010
The Science of the Craft
"The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft... This is not to say that we understand magic, in the sense that physicists understand why subatomic particles do whatever it is that they do. Or perhaps they don't understand that yet. I can never remember."
"Anyone with a spark of the research spirit does not need to be exhorted to chase for all he is worth a really promising clue when one is found, dropping for the time being other activities and interests as far as practicable."
"To see what no one has seen before, look where no one has looked before."
(Because your response disappoints, on several levels.)
When I was a bit younger, in a used bookstore I came across a book on spells. Since I was investigating the effects of mind upon matter, I could not resist having a look. I came across a spell for attracting money (or some such), and I can remember thinking "I understand why that works." All the extra 'fluff' - the specific-colored candle (or whatever), etc. - fell away and it was clear how saying/doing whatever the spell 'required' simply created (and released) a specific set of visualizations/expectations/emotions about future outcomes. The 'fluff' is just a reinforcing support structure that works/helps because it taps an associated knowledge structure. (Yes, it works because you believe it works.)
Sounds like a load of 'useless crap' to many scientists. But why?
1) Perspective - It is difficult/unacceptable for the scientific method to make use 'data' that is only accessible from a subjective perspective. What goes on in my head is only really accessible to me. I can tell you about it, but you have no means of verifying anything I've said, other than to attempt to replicate it in your own mind. "To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." (q)
2) Evidence - What constitutes 'acceptable evidence' of certain phenomena is, by current scientific definitions, evidence that can be procured under circumstances that specifically discount any collective effect of mind. For example: what can be produced in an environment where one is alone is required to be exactly the same as what can be produced in a room full of skeptical observers. Only then is the phenomenon deemed to be a 'true' phenomenon.
3) Correlations - Scientists are taught to look for correlations. They are also taught that correlation does not equal causation. What they are not taught is to look inside for correlations - to dissect and examine their own mental processes. The assumption is that there is no need to do this - that 'science' stands beyond/above the (non-local) influence of mind.
With the above limitations on what is acceptable 'science', it is no wonder that religious/magical belief systems persist. If data persists, then the search for explanations (and the attempts to harness this knowledge) will also persist, even if it is not/cannot be called 'science'.
4) Replication - Replication of something that requires a specific type of subjective awareness can be achieved, but it involves teaching a naive subject. Then, of course, you have only your word and the word of your pupil. (See #1.) This might be worth something if you had a pupil with the appropriate background, reputation, and integrity... But most people still will not believe a thing like that until they have experienced it themselves. However, narratives like that produced by William H. Keith can be powerful stimuli for people to start/continue their own explorations. "I was well aware that my senses could deceive, that my will to believe could play tricks on my mind, that what I seemed to be experiencing - my subjective reality - might well be different from things as they really were."
5) Falsification - "No amount of experimentation can prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." (That's Einstein, not Keith.) Yes, we're still looking for that magical experiment that could prove this picture of reality to be wrong. (With a less-pedantic approach to things, you could be useful there. Skippy's best (though perhaps unintentional) contribution was simply asking the question 'Where does the entropy go?')
No doubt submitting this idea to peer-review in a journal would point out all these things, and more. But these are big enough problems to overcome, and we are already well-aware of them. If you can contribute nothing more than yet another 'burden of proof' argument, then you really don't bring anything to the table that wasn't already there and you should probably move on/back to some 'real' science. Best,
N
"Anyone with a spark of the research spirit does not need to be exhorted to chase for all he is worth a really promising clue when one is found, dropping for the time being other activities and interests as far as practicable."
"To see what no one has seen before, look where no one has looked before."
(Because your response disappoints, on several levels.)
When I was a bit younger, in a used bookstore I came across a book on spells. Since I was investigating the effects of mind upon matter, I could not resist having a look. I came across a spell for attracting money (or some such), and I can remember thinking "I understand why that works." All the extra 'fluff' - the specific-colored candle (or whatever), etc. - fell away and it was clear how saying/doing whatever the spell 'required' simply created (and released) a specific set of visualizations/expectations/emotions about future outcomes. The 'fluff' is just a reinforcing support structure that works/helps because it taps an associated knowledge structure. (Yes, it works because you believe it works.)
Sounds like a load of 'useless crap' to many scientists. But why?
1) Perspective - It is difficult/unacceptable for the scientific method to make use 'data' that is only accessible from a subjective perspective. What goes on in my head is only really accessible to me. I can tell you about it, but you have no means of verifying anything I've said, other than to attempt to replicate it in your own mind. "To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." (q)
2) Evidence - What constitutes 'acceptable evidence' of certain phenomena is, by current scientific definitions, evidence that can be procured under circumstances that specifically discount any collective effect of mind. For example: what can be produced in an environment where one is alone is required to be exactly the same as what can be produced in a room full of skeptical observers. Only then is the phenomenon deemed to be a 'true' phenomenon.
3) Correlations - Scientists are taught to look for correlations. They are also taught that correlation does not equal causation. What they are not taught is to look inside for correlations - to dissect and examine their own mental processes. The assumption is that there is no need to do this - that 'science' stands beyond/above the (non-local) influence of mind.
With the above limitations on what is acceptable 'science', it is no wonder that religious/magical belief systems persist. If data persists, then the search for explanations (and the attempts to harness this knowledge) will also persist, even if it is not/cannot be called 'science'.
4) Replication - Replication of something that requires a specific type of subjective awareness can be achieved, but it involves teaching a naive subject. Then, of course, you have only your word and the word of your pupil. (See #1.) This might be worth something if you had a pupil with the appropriate background, reputation, and integrity... But most people still will not believe a thing like that until they have experienced it themselves. However, narratives like that produced by William H. Keith can be powerful stimuli for people to start/continue their own explorations. "I was well aware that my senses could deceive, that my will to believe could play tricks on my mind, that what I seemed to be experiencing - my subjective reality - might well be different from things as they really were."
5) Falsification - "No amount of experimentation can prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." (That's Einstein, not Keith.) Yes, we're still looking for that magical experiment that could prove this picture of reality to be wrong. (With a less-pedantic approach to things, you could be useful there. Skippy's best (though perhaps unintentional) contribution was simply asking the question 'Where does the entropy go?')
No doubt submitting this idea to peer-review in a journal would point out all these things, and more. But these are big enough problems to overcome, and we are already well-aware of them. If you can contribute nothing more than yet another 'burden of proof' argument, then you really don't bring anything to the table that wasn't already there and you should probably move on/back to some 'real' science. Best,
N
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Art of Scientific Investigation
(This blog post is a spontaneous act of creation - because creating is fun, and wordplay while creating is double (entendre) the fun. ;)
"Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination,
the real relation, the underlying theme."
"What is more important - knowing, or being known for knowing?"
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
And from The Art of Scientific Investigation, by W.I.B. Beveridge (revised edition - 1957)...
"It is the duty of every scientist to give generously whatever advice and ideas he can and usually formal acknowledgement should not be demanded for such help."
"The chief incentives of research are to satisfy curiosity, to satisfy the creative instinct, the desire to know whether one's conjecture has led to new knowledge and the desire for the feeling of importance by gaining recognition."
You'd get the impression from some scientists that that last bit is their top incentive. And perhaps it is a powerful motivator to do research and to put great effort into explaining that research... But I would argue that the first three 'incentives' are in a different (and, IMHO, a far more rewarding and productive) class than the last one.
"If it becomes a standard procedure to use somebody else's work without mentioning it's not our own, in the end nobody will see the point of creating anything themselves." (q) So not true. People create because there is joy in the creative process. People create because there is satisfaction in knowing that you were the first to do a thing, and that others liked it well enough to use it. Or that what you did was better than whatever else was available, or whatever the other person could have created themselves. And in the end, only those who are willing to create matter anyway - they are the only ones who really challenge you/us to be better.
I'm not saying that recognition doesn't matter... I'm only saying that obsessing over recognition detracts from fully engaging in the process/joy of discovery/creation. Best,
N
(h/t WB, for our conversation about this most-excellent book)
"Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination,
the real relation, the underlying theme."
"What is more important - knowing, or being known for knowing?"
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
And from The Art of Scientific Investigation, by W.I.B. Beveridge (revised edition - 1957)...
"It is the duty of every scientist to give generously whatever advice and ideas he can and usually formal acknowledgement should not be demanded for such help."
"The chief incentives of research are to satisfy curiosity, to satisfy the creative instinct, the desire to know whether one's conjecture has led to new knowledge and the desire for the feeling of importance by gaining recognition."
You'd get the impression from some scientists that that last bit is their top incentive. And perhaps it is a powerful motivator to do research and to put great effort into explaining that research... But I would argue that the first three 'incentives' are in a different (and, IMHO, a far more rewarding and productive) class than the last one.
"If it becomes a standard procedure to use somebody else's work without mentioning it's not our own, in the end nobody will see the point of creating anything themselves." (q) So not true. People create because there is joy in the creative process. People create because there is satisfaction in knowing that you were the first to do a thing, and that others liked it well enough to use it. Or that what you did was better than whatever else was available, or whatever the other person could have created themselves. And in the end, only those who are willing to create matter anyway - they are the only ones who really challenge you/us to be better.
I'm not saying that recognition doesn't matter... I'm only saying that obsessing over recognition detracts from fully engaging in the process/joy of discovery/creation. Best,
N
(h/t WB, for our conversation about this most-excellent book)
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Expecting Synchronicity
"For a true magician there is no very clear line between what lies inside the mind and what lies outside it. If you desire something, it will become substance. If you despise it, you will see it destroyed. A master magician is not much different from a child or a madman in that respect. It takes a very clear head and a very strong will to operate once you are in that place. And you will find out very quickly whether or not you have that clarity and strength."
"When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world."
(I know, I'm on vacation... What can I say? When the spirit moves you, you gotta go with the flow. ;)
Just a quick post to say 'hi' to a new 5-dimensional friend. Welcome to the super-elite club!
Of course welcoming you to the super-elite club also means that I'm going to talk about your interpretation of the 5th dimension. As your interpretation bears a striking resemblance to my own, I'm just going to insert a key quote from your article before we move on to the part wherein we fight - er, politely disagree.
"Any situation that you have not yourself observed actually exists as a collection of possible outcomes in the Fourier realm... These things are undetermined , and until you experience them, there are many possible outcomes for each. The many possible outcomes of your future are what make up the fifth dimension." (my emphasis)
Well said. But now your article swings into something called Spiritual Mind Treatment (?), and you equate the Fourier realm with God. I'm not sure why. Don't get me wrong... I don't believe that I have complete conscious control over my trajectory through this realm, but my versions of the Higher Power(s) (that explain why I don't have complete control) are the Power of the Collective (the effects of other observers) and the Power of the Future (retrocausal influence of information/events in the subjective future). (FWIW, here's my two cents on free will.)
You state: "I don't believe we can control or manipulate the Fourier realm." At all? I would urge you to re-examine that belief in light of a range of data about human experience. Review psi experiments, the Global Consciousness Project, magick, or even a modest book on prayer called The Isaiah Effect, which deals with specific techniques for praying 'successfully'. Even your own descriptions of 'expecting' synchronicity bear closer examination. Just what is 'expectation', why is it critical, and are you really monitoring how your expectations are constantly changing?
"For me, prayer is a dance with physics, a give and take that allows me to guide my car with certainty to an 'as yet unknown' parking spot, appropriate for me." For me, it's no longer necessary to call this practice 'prayer'. 'Letting go and letting God' has another name - one that's well-known in the psi literature: 'release of effort'. Similar 'release' practices are discussed in magickal literature. Calling it 'God' at this stage of the game just seems to confuse things.
I enjoyed your article, and I hope that you, as a physicist, will find your way to taking that next step towards ownership of this natural aspect of the human condition. Namaste.
"When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world."
(I know, I'm on vacation... What can I say? When the spirit moves you, you gotta go with the flow. ;)
Just a quick post to say 'hi' to a new 5-dimensional friend. Welcome to the super-elite club!
Of course welcoming you to the super-elite club also means that I'm going to talk about your interpretation of the 5th dimension. As your interpretation bears a striking resemblance to my own, I'm just going to insert a key quote from your article before we move on to the part wherein we fight - er, politely disagree.
"Any situation that you have not yourself observed actually exists as a collection of possible outcomes in the Fourier realm... These things are undetermined , and until you experience them, there are many possible outcomes for each. The many possible outcomes of your future are what make up the fifth dimension." (my emphasis)
Well said. But now your article swings into something called Spiritual Mind Treatment (?), and you equate the Fourier realm with God. I'm not sure why. Don't get me wrong... I don't believe that I have complete conscious control over my trajectory through this realm, but my versions of the Higher Power(s) (that explain why I don't have complete control) are the Power of the Collective (the effects of other observers) and the Power of the Future (retrocausal influence of information/events in the subjective future). (FWIW, here's my two cents on free will.)
You state: "I don't believe we can control or manipulate the Fourier realm." At all? I would urge you to re-examine that belief in light of a range of data about human experience. Review psi experiments, the Global Consciousness Project, magick, or even a modest book on prayer called The Isaiah Effect, which deals with specific techniques for praying 'successfully'. Even your own descriptions of 'expecting' synchronicity bear closer examination. Just what is 'expectation', why is it critical, and are you really monitoring how your expectations are constantly changing?
"For me, prayer is a dance with physics, a give and take that allows me to guide my car with certainty to an 'as yet unknown' parking spot, appropriate for me." For me, it's no longer necessary to call this practice 'prayer'. 'Letting go and letting God' has another name - one that's well-known in the psi literature: 'release of effort'. Similar 'release' practices are discussed in magickal literature. Calling it 'God' at this stage of the game just seems to confuse things.
I enjoyed your article, and I hope that you, as a physicist, will find your way to taking that next step towards ownership of this natural aspect of the human condition. Namaste.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
When the Sleeper Wakes
"We have a rule... we never free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It's dangerous, and the mind has trouble letting go."
"It is not good to overwhelm another person with argument even when he is wrong and you are right. Yet it is also not right to give up easily, saying 'I am wrong,' when you have every reason to believe you are right. The best way is to drop the argument naturally, without pressing the other person or falsely admitting that you are wrong. If you don't listen to his arguments and don't let them bother you, he will do the same and not become angry. This is something to watch carefully."
"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds: do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire."
(For T, who keeps trying to understand this all because it's me who's doing it.)
Had a wonderful conversation yesterday about consciousness, the nature of reality, and modeling experience in 5 dimensions. By 'wonderful conversation' I don't mean that I 'won the day', but rather that it was gratifying to engage someone who was willing to challenge his (fairly well-entrenched) ideas about the universe. Mind you, this person watched The Primacy of Consciousness talk that I mentioned earlier, and concluded "I've decided that I believe in an objective reality." Okay.
How interesting to come upon you now reading Reading the Enemy's Mind, which is a substantial tome about the Stargate remote viewing project. The seeds of many previous conversations are germinating, perhaps, eh?
The major challenge for this person (and, I assume, for a great many others) is reconciling these ideas with the Bible. [Editorial Aside: You cannot productively engage a person of religious faith about things which appear to challenge that faith unless you are familiar with the faith and its doctrines.] Fortunately for this conversation, abilities like this are discussed in the Bible, so we are not sidetracked by disputing the reality of the abilities (according to the Bible), and are free to move onto the implications of such abilities. What do these things tell us about the nature of God, the nature of time, the nature of the universe?, etc. Though irrationality (in the form of accepting the Bible as primary/absolute truth) was present, the conversation was ultimately more productive than what one could have with a die-hard skeptic, whose irrationality is failing to see the implications of the records of these abilities that have existed throughout human history. Neither party has (presumably) had direct experience with such phenomena, but based on a few words in an old book, one of them is willing to engage the idea, while the other clings to dogma of a different kind...
I decided long ago that, for my own sanity, this would have to be a Johnny-Appleseed endeavor. Plant a seed if the ground appears fertile, foster it if the opportunity presents itself, but move on if nothing appears to be growing. Sometimes something does take hold, and blossoms when you least expect it.
"It is not good to overwhelm another person with argument even when he is wrong and you are right. Yet it is also not right to give up easily, saying 'I am wrong,' when you have every reason to believe you are right. The best way is to drop the argument naturally, without pressing the other person or falsely admitting that you are wrong. If you don't listen to his arguments and don't let them bother you, he will do the same and not become angry. This is something to watch carefully."
"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds: do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire."
(For T, who keeps trying to understand this all because it's me who's doing it.)
Had a wonderful conversation yesterday about consciousness, the nature of reality, and modeling experience in 5 dimensions. By 'wonderful conversation' I don't mean that I 'won the day', but rather that it was gratifying to engage someone who was willing to challenge his (fairly well-entrenched) ideas about the universe. Mind you, this person watched The Primacy of Consciousness talk that I mentioned earlier, and concluded "I've decided that I believe in an objective reality." Okay.
How interesting to come upon you now reading Reading the Enemy's Mind, which is a substantial tome about the Stargate remote viewing project. The seeds of many previous conversations are germinating, perhaps, eh?
The major challenge for this person (and, I assume, for a great many others) is reconciling these ideas with the Bible. [Editorial Aside: You cannot productively engage a person of religious faith about things which appear to challenge that faith unless you are familiar with the faith and its doctrines.] Fortunately for this conversation, abilities like this are discussed in the Bible, so we are not sidetracked by disputing the reality of the abilities (according to the Bible), and are free to move onto the implications of such abilities. What do these things tell us about the nature of God, the nature of time, the nature of the universe?, etc. Though irrationality (in the form of accepting the Bible as primary/absolute truth) was present, the conversation was ultimately more productive than what one could have with a die-hard skeptic, whose irrationality is failing to see the implications of the records of these abilities that have existed throughout human history. Neither party has (presumably) had direct experience with such phenomena, but based on a few words in an old book, one of them is willing to engage the idea, while the other clings to dogma of a different kind...
I decided long ago that, for my own sanity, this would have to be a Johnny-Appleseed endeavor. Plant a seed if the ground appears fertile, foster it if the opportunity presents itself, but move on if nothing appears to be growing. Sometimes something does take hold, and blossoms when you least expect it.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Primacy of Consciousness
"Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics."
With the current level of chatter on paradigm shifts, artificial brains/AI, etc. being what it is, it seems like a good time to throw this excellent talk into the mix. It was originally given at a Physics of Consciousness conference in 2004. (How did I miss that one?) It's worth watching in its entirety; don't cut corners and watch the edited versions. ;).
Go on and watch it. I'll update this post with discussion points later.
With the current level of chatter on paradigm shifts, artificial brains/AI, etc. being what it is, it seems like a good time to throw this excellent talk into the mix. It was originally given at a Physics of Consciousness conference in 2004. (How did I miss that one?) It's worth watching in its entirety; don't cut corners and watch the edited versions. ;).
Go on and watch it. I'll update this post with discussion points later.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Catching the Light
"If you are a physicist, you won't find it unusual to be confronted with a problem much too difficult for you to solve..."
"For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!"
(This one's for PR and BJ.)
Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to post all the questions that I had accumulated during the process of trying to explain certain experiences. But in the end there were really only a few questions that stood out. To me, they represent the crux of understanding the connection between mind and matter, and how mind emerges from matter and/or matter emerges from mind, as well as explaining the experiences that prompted my query in the first place. These questions reflect our/my current state of knowledge about the correlates of consciousness; the most substantial correlates that we've currently identified are specific energy dynamics within the brain, therefore it makes sense (to me) to focus on units of energy and their behavior. Most of my other (physics-related) questions can (currently) be subsumed under one of these over-arching themes.
What is the relationship between entanglement and the Pauli exclusion principle? (I'm currently trying to make sense of this, this and this, among other things, like boson-fermion correspondence.)
What enforces the dynamics underlying the Pauli exclusion principle, and what, if any, relationship does this have to certain dynamics of conscious experience that appear to forcibly exclude specific states?
Here's a special question for the psi-entists... Why is there still a time-dependent element in certain interactions that we like to label 'non-local'? Our understanding of entanglement is presented largely as 'spooky action at a (spatial) distance' in (essentially) zero time. But unless I've missed something, the unification of space and time suggests that entanglement should also occur across a temporal distance in (essentially) zero space. What would that look like? How would it show up in conscious experience?...
DISCLAIMER: Occasionally I'm tempted by the idea of information as a primary unit, and certainly information-transfer dynamics are a large part of what I look at, but I have a hard time ignoring the idea of a substrate upon which information is stored/transmitted.
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: As much as I'd sometimes like to throw up my hands and give in to some kind of mystical proclamation that 'everything is light expressing itself', I'm not ready to do that either. I think that there are very real dynamics that can tell us important things about exactly how we are connected to each other, and how to use those dynamics in beneficial ways. I think that those dynamics are worth exploring. In detail.
"For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!"
(This one's for PR and BJ.)
Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to post all the questions that I had accumulated during the process of trying to explain certain experiences. But in the end there were really only a few questions that stood out. To me, they represent the crux of understanding the connection between mind and matter, and how mind emerges from matter and/or matter emerges from mind, as well as explaining the experiences that prompted my query in the first place. These questions reflect our/my current state of knowledge about the correlates of consciousness; the most substantial correlates that we've currently identified are specific energy dynamics within the brain, therefore it makes sense (to me) to focus on units of energy and their behavior. Most of my other (physics-related) questions can (currently) be subsumed under one of these over-arching themes.
What is the relationship between entanglement and the Pauli exclusion principle? (I'm currently trying to make sense of this, this and this, among other things, like boson-fermion correspondence.)
What enforces the dynamics underlying the Pauli exclusion principle, and what, if any, relationship does this have to certain dynamics of conscious experience that appear to forcibly exclude specific states?
Here's a special question for the psi-entists... Why is there still a time-dependent element in certain interactions that we like to label 'non-local'? Our understanding of entanglement is presented largely as 'spooky action at a (spatial) distance' in (essentially) zero time. But unless I've missed something, the unification of space and time suggests that entanglement should also occur across a temporal distance in (essentially) zero space. What would that look like? How would it show up in conscious experience?...
DISCLAIMER: Occasionally I'm tempted by the idea of information as a primary unit, and certainly information-transfer dynamics are a large part of what I look at, but I have a hard time ignoring the idea of a substrate upon which information is stored/transmitted.
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: As much as I'd sometimes like to throw up my hands and give in to some kind of mystical proclamation that 'everything is light expressing itself', I'm not ready to do that either. I think that there are very real dynamics that can tell us important things about exactly how we are connected to each other, and how to use those dynamics in beneficial ways. I think that those dynamics are worth exploring. In detail.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Back From the Future
"Half my life I sacrificed
But I only came to party tonight."
"The idea was that ripples of the measurements carried out in the future could beat back to the present and combine with effects from the past, like waves combining and peaking below a boat, setting it rocking on the rough sea."
Those of you playing along at home might want to take a look at the April 2010 issue of Discover magazine. It highlights the work that Jeff Tollaksen and Yakir Aharonov have done on isolating/quantifying the effects of information from the future on the present.
If the arrow of time "may be not just an illusion but a lie," is it really so hard to believe that a mind, properly trained, can recognize subtle differences in its own states that reflect/reveal the influence of the future? Retrocausation is not a new idea (Aharonov himself has been 'pushing it for four decades'), and neither is the idea that a mind, adept at pattern recognition, might see (and exploit) the same types of correlations between past and future within itself. "This isn't airy-fairy philosophy - these are real experiments" applies to psi research as well as quantum physics.
"It is upsetting philosophically... All these experiments change the way that I relate to time, the way I experience myself." Amen, brother.
But Tollaksen manages to keep free will alive in the process - "You simply have to put it down to random error in your apparatus." "The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Aharonov. I've got to think a bit more about that one...
But I only came to party tonight."
"The idea was that ripples of the measurements carried out in the future could beat back to the present and combine with effects from the past, like waves combining and peaking below a boat, setting it rocking on the rough sea."
Those of you playing along at home might want to take a look at the April 2010 issue of Discover magazine. It highlights the work that Jeff Tollaksen and Yakir Aharonov have done on isolating/quantifying the effects of information from the future on the present.
If the arrow of time "may be not just an illusion but a lie," is it really so hard to believe that a mind, properly trained, can recognize subtle differences in its own states that reflect/reveal the influence of the future? Retrocausation is not a new idea (Aharonov himself has been 'pushing it for four decades'), and neither is the idea that a mind, adept at pattern recognition, might see (and exploit) the same types of correlations between past and future within itself. "This isn't airy-fairy philosophy - these are real experiments" applies to psi research as well as quantum physics.
"It is upsetting philosophically... All these experiments change the way that I relate to time, the way I experience myself." Amen, brother.
But Tollaksen manages to keep free will alive in the process - "You simply have to put it down to random error in your apparatus." "The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Aharonov. I've got to think a bit more about that one...
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Time Enough At Last
This is either the start of something big, or the end of something beautiful.
Having lost my protected status as 'society's asset', I'm beginning to look for a home for this research. There just isn't time enough right now to do all the things that need doing (like reading somebody's new book on time). Ironically, this search has forced me to confront the fact that theoretical modeling is neither my forte, nor a great source of enjoyment for me. (It is, however, what scientists are supposed to do after they run their experiments. Test and refine.) Me? I tend to get too hung up on what doesn't work, rather than celebrate what does work.
What I am really good at (and what I actually enjoy) is teaching/training. I've done it in a variety of settings and subject areas, so I know that it's not so much the topic as it is the process. (And not everyone has the special kind of patience needed to deal with wayward students. ;) So I'm looking to land somewhere that can provide excellent teaching/training opportunities.
The other thing I'm good at is asking questions. For some time now, I've wanted to collect and post all the questions I've come up with along the way. Had I 350 years, I might have a shot at answering them all, but more than likely the answers are obvious to someone who has a different background. And now that blogger has enabled jump breaks, I can post all the questions in this blog, and update the list on a regular basis. Look for that post to appear soon.
[Confidential Aside: Don't get too excited; you still haven't accounted for a critical aspect of the actual experience. But I will try to celebrate a minute or two of vindication for/with you. ;) ]
Having lost my protected status as 'society's asset', I'm beginning to look for a home for this research. There just isn't time enough right now to do all the things that need doing (like reading somebody's new book on time). Ironically, this search has forced me to confront the fact that theoretical modeling is neither my forte, nor a great source of enjoyment for me. (It is, however, what scientists are supposed to do after they run their experiments. Test and refine.) Me? I tend to get too hung up on what doesn't work, rather than celebrate what does work.
What I am really good at (and what I actually enjoy) is teaching/training. I've done it in a variety of settings and subject areas, so I know that it's not so much the topic as it is the process. (And not everyone has the special kind of patience needed to deal with wayward students. ;) So I'm looking to land somewhere that can provide excellent teaching/training opportunities.
The other thing I'm good at is asking questions. For some time now, I've wanted to collect and post all the questions I've come up with along the way. Had I 350 years, I might have a shot at answering them all, but more than likely the answers are obvious to someone who has a different background. And now that blogger has enabled jump breaks, I can post all the questions in this blog, and update the list on a regular basis. Look for that post to appear soon.
[Confidential Aside: Don't get too excited; you still haven't accounted for a critical aspect of the actual experience. But I will try to celebrate a minute or two of vindication for/with you. ;) ]
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Flashforward (Pt III)
It's not about watching the egg unbreak itself. It's about erasing/overriding the memory of having seen the egg break in order to observe the egg in another (unbroken) state.
(This one's for P, who broke her leg today.)
Over the years I have told you many stories. And I've waited and waited for somebody to get it. Because when it finally clicks, you'll realize that the applications go way beyond what I could tell you six posts into this story.
We have repeatedly discussed memory as the anchor of a particular outcome/observation - the thing which enables consistency in/of experience. I've discussed the idea of undoing an outcome that you don't like. I've vigorously tested these ideas, and am now waiting for someone else to do the same. Occasionally I grow impatient because I see possibilities that I need help in testing and exploring. For example...
Imagine a future where first responders to an serious injury are able to administer drugs that block the patient's encoding of the permanent/traumatic memory the incident. (Not necessarily that drug, but you get the picture.) Of course, blocking the patient's memories is not enough to ensure s/he is not seriously injured, but the patient's memory is the most likely (and probably the strongest) anchor to the injured state/outcome. First responders would also be trained in the kind of progressive information acquisition and framework selection that facilitates state selection, thereby giving them the best chance to choose the best possible outcome. They can also employ a deliberately-fuzzy encoding of their own observations - one that is more easily overridden if it presents information that conflicts with a desired outcome.
I've talked about the medical applications of this theory before, and I hope you'll think about this post the next time a skeptic whines about how 'prayer' has never helped an amputee regrow a limb. While I certainly don't claim that that is possible, I'll take any edge I can get on reducing the probability of a serious injury/illness. And I happen to think that the best time to exercise that edge is in the first observations relating to the injured state.
(This one's for P, who broke her leg today.)
Over the years I have told you many stories. And I've waited and waited for somebody to get it. Because when it finally clicks, you'll realize that the applications go way beyond what I could tell you six posts into this story.
We have repeatedly discussed memory as the anchor of a particular outcome/observation - the thing which enables consistency in/of experience. I've discussed the idea of undoing an outcome that you don't like. I've vigorously tested these ideas, and am now waiting for someone else to do the same. Occasionally I grow impatient because I see possibilities that I need help in testing and exploring. For example...
Imagine a future where first responders to an serious injury are able to administer drugs that block the patient's encoding of the permanent/traumatic memory the incident. (Not necessarily that drug, but you get the picture.) Of course, blocking the patient's memories is not enough to ensure s/he is not seriously injured, but the patient's memory is the most likely (and probably the strongest) anchor to the injured state/outcome. First responders would also be trained in the kind of progressive information acquisition and framework selection that facilitates state selection, thereby giving them the best chance to choose the best possible outcome. They can also employ a deliberately-fuzzy encoding of their own observations - one that is more easily overridden if it presents information that conflicts with a desired outcome.
I've talked about the medical applications of this theory before, and I hope you'll think about this post the next time a skeptic whines about how 'prayer' has never helped an amputee regrow a limb. While I certainly don't claim that that is possible, I'll take any edge I can get on reducing the probability of a serious injury/illness. And I happen to think that the best time to exercise that edge is in the first observations relating to the injured state.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Flashforward (Pt II)
"Every group of observers establishes a kind of local reality. It cannot deviate too far from consensus, from what the muses have ruled must be."
I'll subtitle this segment of futuristic flash-forwarding AI and Other Uberobservers. Among the many things I am not an expert in is artificial intelligence (AI), so take this post for what it is - an interesting speculation on what constitutes an observer.
There are currently 541 papers on the philosophy of artificial intelligence in the online repository of papers on consciousness. I have read exactly none of them. But a year or so ago, as I was writing about origins from a 5-dimensional perspective, a nagging thought took root and has stayed with me every since. Consider the following...
For example... At what point is the substrate of our consciousness advanced enough to act as an agent in the selection of outcomes? I am reminded of a study on baby chicks and other animals that were able to influence a random number generator so that target systems behaved in a way that benefited the animals. This suggests that even a human infant's consciousness may play some role in the selection of states. Could a fetus similarly impact a randomly-controlled system, provided it were able to interact with such a system? At what age could a fetus begin to exert an independent effect upon such a system?
Along the same lines, one might ask any number of questions about the optimal conditions of consciousness (COC) from which a noticeable influence upon random system might be obtained. Answering any of these questions requires, of course, that the question of multiple observers be settled definitively. (For what it's worth, and though it may leave me vulnerable to charges of ignoring a competing hypothesis, I believe, for various reasons, that the final model must be one that describes and accounts for multiple-observer interactions.) If our experience of this universe is a culmination of the effects of multiple observers, then our individual ability to choose outcomes may be severely limited at points of suboptimal COC.
Now take that same line of questioning and carry it to the other extreme... At what point does something that has access to the same observations that we do, and which has the ability to reason become an 'observer' in the sense that its effects on outcome selection must be accounted for? What attributes does an AI have to possess before it becomes a competing observer?
This question forces me to examine what I believe it means to be an observer, and what I believe about the importance/function of the substrate that connects us to other observers.
Would an AI need only to interact with us, using the same observations, in order to be an 'observer of influence' (OI)? Or would it also need to have the same substrate that we do as a base for its calculations? Is being an OI a function of what one can do 'mentally' with the observations/data one collects, or is it a function of some type of non-local connection we share to each other and/or some fundamental state of reality that I half-jokingly call The Smear? Or would it necessitate elements of both? This is not an appeal to dualism, but rather an attempt to understand the connection between substrate and the functional, predictable aspects of 5-dimensional navigation and multiple-observer interactions.
Let's presume we could determine an AI's status as an OI in much the same way as the baby chicks were tested for their ability to influence a randomly-controlled outcome. If strong AI is the name given to AI that strives to mimic such critical aspects of human-ness as consciousness, self-awareness, and sentience, then perhaps the strongest AI would be one that would directly compete with us in determining outcome states. Would a strong AI with the characteristics listed above be an OI by virtue of possessing those functions, or would it need to be based on a substrate that allowed for certain types of quantum interactions? (Yes, I said the 'Q' word. Hey, if you are willing to acknowledge that the warm, wet environment of plants can take advantage of quantum physics, then you really can't argue with the idea that quantum processes may play a fundamental role in consciousness.)
It's also worth asking another question... Given that most of us are mostly ignorant about any effects of other observers upon us, would we even recognize an uberobserver among us?
This definitely requires more thought...
This definitely requires more thought...
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Flashforward (Pt I)
"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
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
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...
Friday, November 13, 2009
Time Looks Like... The String Section
"The imagination must be allowed to express itself freely, otherwise it will die."
Nice! And challenging to answer.
I can try to do this with an analogy... I see a moment of conscious experience in much the same way we experience a moment in a symphony. There are many instruments that are playing (or not) at any given moment, and with varying degrees of loudness. And most of us don't stop to parse the whole moment into its component parts.
The violins are almost always playing, and it's fairly easy to detect their influence. To me, they are like the 'past', or the influence of memory upon an individual moment of conscious experience. The violas are much fewer in number relative to the violins, and to me they represent the influence of short-term and working memory - information that is not as firmly anchored as that which resides in long-term memory. Their contribution is generally much harder to detect or parse from the whole. The cellos represent the near-future - that is, the future for which critical events have already been set in motion. Occasionally someone writes a short cello solo, or silences the other instruments to the point where the cello is noticeable. The basses represent the far future. They are generally fewer in number, and their presence in the whole moment is usually more difficult to detect without training.
While each of the four string instruments has a different range of resonance, they all share the property of being a stringed instrument. (I.e., It's all time in some sense - change from one moment to the next.) One could also argue that an individual orchestra (brain/consciousness) can be organized (wired) with a different, though mostly overlapping, set of instruments from any other orchestra. But the strings are still the foundation of any orchestra.
While listening to a symphony, it's possible to momentarily lose track of the whole sound as you choose to isolate and pay attention to the sound of one particular instrument. But all the other sounds are still there. You recognize the sound of a particular instrument because of your previous exposure to that instrument. (I played the cello for four years.) It's easier to isolate and hear/see the influence of that instrument with practice.
In this sense, time to me is like a specific series of notes within a whole moment. Some of the notes may come of the cello, but most of the notes I'm conscious of probably come from the violin. This is quite a subjective, self-absorbed way of looking at time, because I'm parsing the composition of my orchestra, rather than assuming that we are all listening to the same orchestra. So how do I visualize the objective timeline of consensus reality - that thing that moves from the Big Bang through the Middle Ages and into the future?
When I'm thinking in 5 dimensions, I usually don't. I see those events/ideas primarily (though not entirely) as moments in my symphony that reflect influences from my subjective past/future. If an idea or event is something that I have been exposed to many times, then the moment reflects a strong influence from the past (violins). But it may reflect my subjective past in a variety of ways. (Think range of notes, and don't forget that there are other instruments playing as well.)
Sounds like an incredibly self-absorbed perspective, doesn't it? I haven't expanded this analogy to the point where I can explain how I see multiple-observer effects yet. But I'm sure some part of my brain will keep plugging away at it. Thanks - this was fun! :)
Nice! And challenging to answer.
I can try to do this with an analogy... I see a moment of conscious experience in much the same way we experience a moment in a symphony. There are many instruments that are playing (or not) at any given moment, and with varying degrees of loudness. And most of us don't stop to parse the whole moment into its component parts.
The violins are almost always playing, and it's fairly easy to detect their influence. To me, they are like the 'past', or the influence of memory upon an individual moment of conscious experience. The violas are much fewer in number relative to the violins, and to me they represent the influence of short-term and working memory - information that is not as firmly anchored as that which resides in long-term memory. Their contribution is generally much harder to detect or parse from the whole. The cellos represent the near-future - that is, the future for which critical events have already been set in motion. Occasionally someone writes a short cello solo, or silences the other instruments to the point where the cello is noticeable. The basses represent the far future. They are generally fewer in number, and their presence in the whole moment is usually more difficult to detect without training.
While each of the four string instruments has a different range of resonance, they all share the property of being a stringed instrument. (I.e., It's all time in some sense - change from one moment to the next.) One could also argue that an individual orchestra (brain/consciousness) can be organized (wired) with a different, though mostly overlapping, set of instruments from any other orchestra. But the strings are still the foundation of any orchestra.
While listening to a symphony, it's possible to momentarily lose track of the whole sound as you choose to isolate and pay attention to the sound of one particular instrument. But all the other sounds are still there. You recognize the sound of a particular instrument because of your previous exposure to that instrument. (I played the cello for four years.) It's easier to isolate and hear/see the influence of that instrument with practice.
In this sense, time to me is like a specific series of notes within a whole moment. Some of the notes may come of the cello, but most of the notes I'm conscious of probably come from the violin. This is quite a subjective, self-absorbed way of looking at time, because I'm parsing the composition of my orchestra, rather than assuming that we are all listening to the same orchestra. So how do I visualize the objective timeline of consensus reality - that thing that moves from the Big Bang through the Middle Ages and into the future?
When I'm thinking in 5 dimensions, I usually don't. I see those events/ideas primarily (though not entirely) as moments in my symphony that reflect influences from my subjective past/future. If an idea or event is something that I have been exposed to many times, then the moment reflects a strong influence from the past (violins). But it may reflect my subjective past in a variety of ways. (Think range of notes, and don't forget that there are other instruments playing as well.)
Sounds like an incredibly self-absorbed perspective, doesn't it? I haven't expanded this analogy to the point where I can explain how I see multiple-observer effects yet. But I'm sure some part of my brain will keep plugging away at it. Thanks - this was fun! :)
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