Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

What is a human being? What is life? Can science give us reliable answers to such questions? The electricity of life. The meaning of human consciousness. Are we alone? Are the traditional contests between science and religion still relevant? Does the word "spirit" still hold meaning today?

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rcglinsk
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Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by rcglinsk » Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:31 pm

First let me define my terms.

Experience: what you've been doing your whole life. Taking in the aroma of fresh coffee in the moring, feeling the heat flow into your chest, and feeling refreshed is an experience.

Electricity: for these purposes I mean the electric currents that flow from neuron to neuron in the brain and nerves.

Consciousness: The conceptual relationship between a "soul" and experience.

I bet we've all seen the question "what is the nature of consciousness?" I've always thought that was an odd question. It seems to assume humans are all stuck in the Matrix, that a small part of our brain exists inside the rest and is given inputs. I imagine a child watching a TV that displays what our eyes see, with headphones pumping what our ears hear, various needles to prod and simulate touch etc. Couldn't our brain itself be that little kid in the matrix? Perhaps the experience of pain is directly and without intermediary caused by electricity. So the reason people incapable of crying are also incapable of feeling terribly sad is that sadness literally is puffing cheeks, swelling eyelids and the various electric currents we normally only associate with it. Our experiences are simply what it's like when the currents flow in particular ways.

I didn't make this idea up, I just like it. Here's a link to the article I originally read.

http://total.eclipse.co.il/2006/05/05/t ... ciousness/

altonhare
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by altonhare » Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:47 pm

Thank you RCG for that fascinating article.

It is very interesting, conceivable, and intuitive that a system may appear chaotic or unpredictable yet still be deterministic. It is far more parsimonious to say that we cannot predict with 100% certainty because our ability to measure and our mathematical models are imperfect than to say that Nature is inherently random. The latter doesn't make any sense at all.

I think it partly has to do with the fact that one object/entity does not always react to the motion of another object/entity instantly. There are delays. Anyone who is familiar with process control engineering understands how unaccounted for delays in your system make it appear chaotic. The analogy here is really good, and I think it may even be a perfect analogy. In a given system there is a delay between every object's action and any other object's reaction. There is a fundamental limit on how much delay there can be while maintaining the system's integrity.

http://www.controlguru.com/wp/p51.html

This means there is a fundamental upper limit on the size of an entity capable of life/consciousness!!!

If an entity is too large there will simply be too much delay, to much dead time. While one part of the entity is sending a signal to the other part to do something that will keep the entity intact, that part is breaking down. If the signal takes too long to arrive, the entity does break down.

Interesting stuff.
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altonhare
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by altonhare » Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:59 pm

This also reminds me of studies on "crowd intelligence/wisdom":

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/col ... s_the.html

Crowd intelligence is based on the phenomenon that many *random* people giving their opinion on something give an averaged answer that is closer to correct than a single individual "expert". For instance at a county fair 30 attendees were asked to estimate the weight of a cow. When their answers are averaged the result is closer to correct than if a single expert estimates the weight.

Crowd intelligence tends to fail, however, if there is too much communication between the individuals! In this case individuals start basing their opinions on each other. The charismatic individuals tend to sway the majority one way or the other and the averaged answer is now usually more wrong than an individual expert's estimate.
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junglelord
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by junglelord » Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:55 pm

That is the kind of governement I envision.
Not one man speaking for a country.
Rather the country speaks for itself.
A true democracy.
Stats show the average result is the right decision.
:D

However that would take the power from government and the industrial military complex and put it in the hands of the people and that is never going to happen....not in the near future. So we are going to have more really bad decisions as one man decides for all. Some democracy....see how easy man is deceived? A brain is an easy thing to wash...
:?
If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.
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Casting Out the Nines from PHI into Indigs reveals the Cosmic Harmonic Code.
— Junglelord.
Knowledge is Structured in Consciouness. Structure and Function Cannot Be Seperated.
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mague
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by mague » Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:58 am

rcglinsk wrote:First let me define my terms.

Experience: what you've been doing your whole life. Taking in the aroma of fresh coffee in the moring, feeling the heat flow into your chest, and feeling refreshed is an experience.
You have to look closer. There are multiple levels of experience. Basically it is like that: Something was taken. That something accumulates something else. At some point the something is going back to its source and delivers the accumulated something to its source.

The coffee is a multilevel experience. Your body accumulates the memory and energy of the water, the coffee molecules, the sugar and the milk. While some parts of the coffee burn as fuel or leave the body untouched the spirit/essence of this coffee is accumulated in your body forever. Once you die your corpse desintegrates and is giving back all matter to the source of matter (the planet) but also gives back the accumulated essences. This is how self-preserving systems fight the "burn-out" with cycles.

The coffee also generates emotion. Those have nothing to do with your physical body. Your body only feels hot, sweet and tasty coffee. But your emotional body feels joy from a fresh and tasty coffee (or disgust from a cold and bitter one). The emotion of joy is another win and is accumulated by your spirit. Once you die the spirit is going back to its source and delivers the accumulated emotions. I tend to say the source is gaia.

Your soul is watching and connecting. The soul is the source of consciousness. It is part of the All or god if you prefer that term. It is what connects you to the "powerlines" and enables you to be alive. Your soul gains not much as part of All. There is no All+1 ;) Its working lossless so to speak and needs no gain.

The brain is a temporary tool and belongs to the body. It cant sense anything. All it can do is storing informations and make simple decissions concerning your existance. Like learning how you like your coffee most. It is doing little empirical experiments until it found out how much coffee powder, sugar and milk you need for the optimal coffee. Once it found the reciepe it stores it and closes the case. All informations go either back to the soil or to gaia.
rcglinsk wrote: Couldn't our brain itself be that little kid in the matrix?
Yes. In our modern civilisation the soul connection is weak and we tend to be brain-heavy. The brain is in love with individuality and if your situation in life is good you dont want to let go. Thats the satan concept. The brain that doesnt want to let go and return to it source. Its a ghoul that disconnects and creates his own "pocket universe". This pocket universe is the matrix. And the more it resist the universal flow, the more it is hooked into the matrix.

Of course there is a conspiracy to some degee. This is old news. The satan concept is very old. And the concept of ghosts and deamons is even older. All "units" who cant or who dont want to return. And of course you need a lot of slaves to suck out energy if you want to power and preserve your own pocket universe, because your soul connection doesnt power you anymore. This is nothing new. However, the concept is flawed and doomed from the beginning. In the end its just a matter of time and the All has lots of it.

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junglelord
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by junglelord » Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:01 am

The coffee is a multilevel experience. Your body accumulates the memory and energy of the water, the coffee molecules, the sugar and the milk. While some parts of the coffee burn as fuel or leave the body untouched the spirit/essence of this coffee is accumulated in your body forever.
In that case I am therefore a combination French Vanilla, Hazlenut, Irish Cream laced with The Green Genie.
I should live in Holland. :lol:
If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.
— Nikola Tesla
Casting Out the Nines from PHI into Indigs reveals the Cosmic Harmonic Code.
— Junglelord.
Knowledge is Structured in Consciouness. Structure and Function Cannot Be Seperated.
— Junglelord

rcglinsk
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by rcglinsk » Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:05 pm

mague wrote:
rcglinsk wrote:First let me define my terms.

Experience: what you've been doing your whole life. Taking in the aroma of fresh coffee in the moring, feeling the heat flow into your chest, and feeling refreshed is an experience.
You have to look closer. There are multiple levels of experience. Basically it is like that: Something was taken. That something accumulates something else. At some point the something is going back to its source and delivers the accumulated something to its source.

The coffee is a multilevel experience. Your body accumulates the memory and energy of the water, the coffee molecules, the sugar and the milk. While some parts of the coffee burn as fuel or leave the body untouched the spirit/essence of this coffee is accumulated in your body forever. Once you die your corpse desintegrates and is giving back all matter to the source of matter (the planet) but also gives back the accumulated essences. This is how self-preserving systems fight the "burn-out" with cycles.

The coffee also generates emotion. Those have nothing to do with your physical body. Your body only feels hot, sweet and tasty coffee. But your emotional body feels joy from a fresh and tasty coffee (or disgust from a cold and bitter one). The emotion of joy is another win and is accumulated by your spirit. Once you die the spirit is going back to its source and delivers the accumulated emotions. I tend to say the source is gaia.

Your soul is watching and connecting. The soul is the source of consciousness. It is part of the All or god if you prefer that term. It is what connects you to the "powerlines" and enables you to be alive. Your soul gains not much as part of All. There is no All+1 ;) Its working lossless so to speak and needs no gain.

The brain is a temporary tool and belongs to the body. It cant sense anything. All it can do is storing informations and make simple decissions concerning your existance. Like learning how you like your coffee most. It is doing little empirical experiments until it found out how much coffee powder, sugar and milk you need for the optimal coffee. Once it found the reciepe it stores it and closes the case. All informations go either back to the soil or to gaia.
rcglinsk wrote: Couldn't our brain itself be that little kid in the matrix?
Yes. In our modern civilisation the soul connection is weak and we tend to be brain-heavy. The brain is in love with individuality and if your situation in life is good you dont want to let go. Thats the satan concept. The brain that doesnt want to let go and return to it source. Its a ghoul that disconnects and creates his own "pocket universe". This pocket universe is the matrix. And the more it resist the universal flow, the more it is hooked into the matrix.

Of course there is a conspiracy to some degee. This is old news. The satan concept is very old. And the concept of ghosts and deamons is even older. All "units" who cant or who dont want to return. And of course you need a lot of slaves to suck out energy if you want to power and preserve your own pocket universe, because your soul connection doesnt power you anymore. This is nothing new. However, the concept is flawed and doomed from the beginning. In the end its just a matter of time and the All has lots of it.
Interesting idea. It really reminds me of the plot to Final Fantasy 7, especially the first part. You ever play that?

mague
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by mague » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:58 am

rcglinsk wrote: Interesting idea. It really reminds me of the plot to Final Fantasy 7, especially the first part. You ever play that?
No, i never played this game. It was produced in Japan ?

The idea is from animism and quite similar distributed over the planet. From asia over europe to south america. Its all based on observing nature. Living in nature means living in cycles. If you dont understand the concept of cycles you will starve in nature. Chistianity has the same roots. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And the soul travels back to gods domain. Cycles again. So its not really my idea.

rcglinsk
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by rcglinsk » Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:26 pm

mague wrote:
rcglinsk wrote: Interesting idea. It really reminds me of the plot to Final Fantasy 7, especially the first part. You ever play that?
No, i never played this game. It was produced in Japan ?

The idea is from animism and quite similar distributed over the planet. From asia over europe to south america. Its all based on observing nature. Living in nature means living in cycles. If you dont understand the concept of cycles you will starve in nature. Chistianity has the same roots. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And the soul travels back to gods domain. Cycles again. So its not really my idea.
Well, I guess my most enjoyable exposure to the cycles of nature philosophy was that game. It was made in Japan yes. It's for the PS1, though, so pretty tough to play right now what with the consoles so advanced and the emulators for PS1 still lacking.

Plasmatic
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by Plasmatic » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:55 am

I dont buy this crowd mind thing. The average is "right" by what standard? Hitler was elected democratically! thats the only difference between a socialist dictator and communist one, one gains control by election!
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Mague do you have ANY sort of evidence whatsoever for what you assert?
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mague
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by mague » Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:53 am

Plasmatic wrote:I dont buy this crowd mind thing. The average is "right" by what standard? Hitler was elected democratically! thats the only difference between a socialist dictator and communist one, one gains control by election!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mague do you have ANY sort of evidence whatsoever for what you assert?
Plasmatic,

i dont understand what you mean with crowd thing, Hitler, democracy and average. Where do you read about that in my text and what do you want me to answer ?

Hitler meets Stalin on Caligulas tea party. While Cesar is dancing with Montezuma and Dschengis Khan.

What has this to to with the life in nature and the universe ? Right, nothing at all. I dont care about politics. If they feel important and write down their importance in books for millenias then it is their bussiness. It doesnt make it relevant though. It is only an artificial framework (Matrix). All i know is that plants and animals live in perfect harmony with the universe and if i live in harmonic symbiosis with them i am as close to reality as possible. Close to my home is an oak one millenia old. It "saw" different tribes like the Sueben, Allemans, Celts and maybe a few Goths. Later austrians, prussians, napoleons army, the nazis, the french and american troups and the whole industrialization. It doesnt matter to her. It doesnt matter to the birds sitting on her and it doesnt matter to me either. Pure illusion about the importance of mankind. Trees want to inhale what we exhale and vice versa. Thats importance enough within the biosphere. A pyramid, Hitler statue, castle or title is of zero relevance to the biosphere and basically just a waste of time, power and resources.

Evidence is available if you choose to follow the path. Just as in science. If you dont dig deep you wont find answers. However, every civilisations has or once had the same view of the world. The shamans in siberia have the same view of things like the mystics in africa. The druids had the same view of the world as the witch doktors in new zealand and australia have today. A Lakota shaman easily understands what a japanese shinto priest is doing. The trace is leading through time and the continents. Thats not a scientific evidence, but a high percetage of probability.

Otherwise i am not a missionary. I write down my experiances, thoughs, visions and ideas. You dont have to buy then.

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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by altonhare » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:10 pm

Junglelord wrote:That is the kind of governement I envision.
Not one man speaking for a country.
Rather the country speaks for itself.
A true democracy.
Stats show the average result is the right decision.
Plasmatic wrote:I dont buy this crowd mind thing. The average is "right" by what standard? Hitler was elected democratically! thats the only difference between a socialist dictator and communist one, one gains control by election!
The problem with the "crowd intelligence" phenomenon is that it doesn't really apply to high-level decision making. It mostly applies to sorting out the details once the big decisions have been made.

These details are often quantitative, there is essentially a continuum of possible answers one could give (for the cow, 1000 lbs. 1500 lbs., anywhere in between, etc.). The high level decisions are very different, they're often yes or no, or perhaps A, B, C, or D. A high level decision is "do we go to war?" or "Do we elect him, her, that guy, or this one? A low-level decision is "Okay we've decided to go to war, how many infantry, tanks, ships, fighters, bombers, etc. do we send?" The latter lends itself to an "average" decision well, while the former does not. If the "average" consensus on going to war is .51, or .50001, that seems to indicate we "do it". So we've made a yes/no decision statistically. On the other hand if the "average" consensus on the number of infantry is 50000, well that's probably a reasonable number and having +/- 10% on that probably wouldn't make any difference in the end because we're already at war, we're already committed to that "big decision". But the difference between 0.4999 and 0.50001, while tiny quantitatively, has immense rammifications because of the binary nature of the result!

Yes/no decisions must be made with maximal information. A random crowd is not collectively informed in the sense that an individual expert is. It is true that if we "pulled out" all the military knowledge from a crowd of 1 million people it may add up to the knowledge of 1 expert by some measure, but these 1 million people do not exchange their little bits of information very freely. An individual military expert's knowledge is more localized and so each "little bit" of info is more freely exchanged to make a more cohesive network of information. The full weight of this information can be brought to bear on the question at hand in a way that 1 million people could not do.

The question of how many troops to send is different. A person with a little knowledge can get "in the ballpark". With enough people estimating near/around the right place a statistical average will generally give an answer near or even better than an individual expert. The number of troops is an estimate, an educated guess. It is not a yes/no decision.
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webolife
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by webolife » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:07 pm

altonhare wrote:Thank you RCG for that fascinating article.

It is very interesting, conceivable, and intuitive that a system may appear chaotic or unpredictable yet still be deterministic. It is far more parsimonious to say that we cannot predict with 100% certainty because our ability to measure and our mathematical models are imperfect than to say that Nature is inherently random. The latter doesn't make any sense at all.

I think it partly has to do with the fact that one object/entity does not always react to the motion of another object/entity instantly. There are delays. Anyone who is familiar with process control engineering understands how unaccounted for delays in your system make it appear chaotic. The analogy here is really good, and I think it may even be a perfect analogy. In a given system there is a delay between every object's action and any other object's reaction. There is a fundamental limit on how much delay there can be while maintaining the system's integrity.

http://www.controlguru.com/wp/p51.html

This means there is a fundamental upper limit on the size of an entity capable of life/consciousness!!!

If an entity is too large there will simply be too much delay, to much dead time. While one part of the entity is sending a signal to the other part to do something that will keep the entity intact, that part is breaking down. If the signal takes too long to arrive, the entity does break down.

Interesting stuff.
Alton, how did we ever get on opposite sides of philosphy :?: :?: :)
I agree with everthing in this post and also this one:
altonhare wrote:This also reminds me of studies on "crowd intelligence/wisdom":

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/col ... s_the.html

Crowd intelligence is based on the phenomenon that many *random* people giving their opinion on something give an averaged answer that is closer to correct than a single individual "expert". For instance at a county fair 30 attendees were asked to estimate the weight of a cow. When their answers are averaged the result is closer to correct than if a single expert estimates the weight.

Crowd intelligence tends to fail, however, if there is too much communication between the individuals! In this case individuals start basing their opinions on each other. The charismatic individuals tend to sway the majority one way or the other and the averaged answer is now usually more wrong than an individual expert's estimate.
When I'm researching an "opposing" viewpoint, I find it very informative to ask, "who first said that?" The old kids' game of "gossip" makes this principle very apparent... I actually gain some comfort from the realization that my own ideas don't fit the "crowd's", eg. the "scientific consensus."
Truth extends beyond the border of self-limiting science. Free discourse among opposing viewpoints draws the open-minded away from the darkness of inevitable bias and nearer to the light of universal reality.

mague
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by mague » Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:52 am

mague wrote:
Plasmatic wrote:I dont buy this crowd mind thing. The average is "right" by what standard? Hitler was elected democratically! thats the only difference between a socialist dictator and communist one, one gains control by election!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mague do you have ANY sort of evidence whatsoever for what you assert?
Plasmatic,

i dont understand what you mean with crowd thing, Hitler, democracy and average. Where do you read about that in my text and what do you want me to answer ?
The upper part wasnt about my post but about the crowd intelligence ? I did missread that :(

I agree with you.
30 attendees were asked to estimate the weight of a cow. When their answers are averaged the result is closer to correct than if a single expert estimates the weight.
This is actually a mathematical gag. The more attendees you ask, the more the calculation approximates. If you ask 500 then the result is within valid parameters even if one answered the cows weight is 2 gramm or one said the cows weight is 60 metric tons.

Plasmatic
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Re: Experience, Electricity and Consciousness

Unread post by Plasmatic » Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:07 pm

Hi Mague ,

I was asking about your comments on the "soul".

By the way are you from Japan?
"Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification"......" I am therefore Ill think"
Ayn Rand
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotle

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