Martin. I think you are a multitasking being. PhD = Piled higher and Deeper!

Take care, and I am looking forward for some interesting posts from you (in the worst case after you are done with your PhD).

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

LMAO. I wonder what does a joke to entropy ...

Who said: "What is important is in the inside"?

Answer: Drag the mouse here -> Jack the Ripper

Probably he was looking for "change" :)

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

krimson,

You said, "A ToE would have to describe precisely how our 'mechanistic brains', e.g., neuronal activation, are correlated to conscious experience."

To repeat a pertinent comment of Tom's to someone regarding MBT making a prediction regarding quantum mechanics anomalies requiring conscious observations to be created, you don't have to know everything to know something. Being part of our virtual reality existence, our brains are based upon our minds as they exist within Consciousness Space and represent a combination of the rules that define the VR and feedback from the state of our minds. This has been discussed before on these forums. We have had links posted to research involving neural networks simulated in computers used to control soccer playing robots that I think is very interesting and pertinent to the likely originating source for this kind of configuration serving as a model for our VR brains and they as a model for these neural networks. A circular relationship. Posts on the work that you refer to would probably be of interest and valued here.

The timeless state that you refer to is probably that state know as the Void that has been experienced by mystics from beyond recorded history. In my understanding and experience, that timelessness would be the result of time being quantized rather than continuous so you are not experiencing time but rather an instantaneous state and from before any time that you could have in fact observed by 'being there and then'. You visited a record, not the original state and time. Experiencing contact with the Reality Wide Web, aka Indra's Net, is another such common contact point. This 'timelessness' might lead some to think that since there is no time, then everything exists as a 'block' and thus predestined/predetermined and there is then logically no such thing as free will. People traveling mentally into Consciousness Space in meditation also contact data bases of branching possible futures. See the Akashic records. That people contact branching future states implies that some kind of decisions are being made to produce them: the result of free will. The future of a VR is generated state by state, delta t by delta t, based upon the collapse of probabilities of the new state based upon past states integrated with the free will choices of the participating Individuated Units Of Consciousness or IUOCs. Thus free will is inherent to reality and our nature within it. A timeless chunk of reality without free will is not compatible with Tom's MBT. The problem comes in the interpretation of the timelessness of the Void state, not Tom's model.

When people say that they have experienced God, universal consciousness and were one with all, they are providing their understanding and not the reality of their experience. I know that I cannot realistically bring anything from my own previous experience of the Void or the RWW into a realistic description here in the PMR VR. I know I had these experiences and have some kind of feeling as opposed to precise description available from the experience. If I felt a compulsion as many do to put things like this into words, I think that I would be using many of those used by others. Not feeling this compulsion which I think is largely based upon ego, your conception of who and what you are, I think that I come closer in understanding thereby as I do not have to force a fit into a box made of words. This fits with much of my experience.

Ted

All,
I was just watching the Science Channel and they were showing this AI called Cleverbot http://www.cleverbot.com/, that also led me to this AI http://www.icogno.com/. See if any of you can have an intelligent conversation with either, if you want. Good luck.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

From what I understand having just finished book 1, third time through, having fun is not only allowed; "Just for fun" can reduce entropy, per Tom and MBT, and per my experience.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

First of all I want to say thank you again for all your replies. I appreciate it, as this isn't easy to get across. Before I waffle on though I just want to make it clear that I'm not here to critisise MBT just for the sake of it, to play the role of 'cynical skeptic'. I'm actually here because I believe the consensus accepted self-and-world-view is largely ego-driven, inaccurate and self-destructive, and I want to get to the truth. My problem is what to replace this model with.

I want to get to the truth so I can then present it in such a way that it can be acknowledged by Western science. You could say I have a certain degree of faith that the consequences of revealing this truth to the world would be massively beneficial. It's of course not a one-man job.

I'm not going to go into details here, but in my opinion if we're going to avoid catastrophe we're going to need some kind of revolution in this department, the department of consciousness. Spirituality (particularly insight meditation) needs scientific support. I'm not a prophet, but it's pretty damn obvious to me that if we don't develop ourselves in this respect soon we're on a one-way path to destruction. I'm optimistic that this can be avoided if people work together and don't give up. People need to start talking. I really do believe everyone can make a massive difference, it's only a matter of self-belief, communication and coordination. Who's with me? ;)

Now...



When I said 'A ToE would have to describe precisely how our 'mechanistic brains', e.g., neuronal activation, are correlated to conscious experience.' I meant you cannot throw out contemporary Western science so easily. This is the sticking point. We know for sure that conscious experience is correlated to the 'physical' structure of our brains, particularly neural activity. To name some specific examples, there have been numerous experiments where people's brains have been stimulated with electrical current while they were conscious and they reported a huge variety of very specific but different experiences, such as seeing lights, having particular feelings induced, experiencing memories. Another example: we know from patients with brain damage that physical changes in certain brain regions impact on conscious experience in specific ways, e.g., damage in the visual cortex may lead to blindness, hence why it is called the visual cortex. We can even see regions of the visual cortex 'light up' in areas that map topographically to the experiential visual field. People's personalities, memories, consciousness can change when their brain is damaged in specific ways and we understand this well. The list is endless...

You might find this interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_w ... minds.html
(a video about people with different syndromes that cause very unusual and vivid hallucinations, and they map each brain region responsible)
- they even talk about an area in the brain they found that is correlated to perception of people's teeth and eyes!

The reason I'm going into so much depth here is that neuroscientists consider mystical/spiritual experience as pathological and hallucinatory, arguably for good reason. It's not because it sounds 'crazy', I think it's just because we KNOW that conscious experience is very closely correlated with the 'physical' mechanisms of the brain, and that this mechanism is macroscopic, causal, and obeys the laws of physics: specifically Newtonian mechanics in this case. Yes, chaos theory implies any 'quantum randomness' may be amplified (in Schrodinger's cat sense) to the macroscopic scale, but as we have yet to solve the measurement problem we cannot say whether non-determinism even exists in our universe, or what impact QM might have on behaviour. Unpredictable and/or chaotic do not imply non-determinism (e.g., 'deterministic chaos'). Importantly, there are still viable non-local hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics, which are completely deterministic (David Bohm's).

I won't go into an argument about free-will because it's never clear what people mean by 'free'. Your actions are based on your personal history of interactions with the environment and in this sense (perhaps only this sense) you are autonomous. The deterministic nature of natural phenomena on the macroscopic scale is inescapable; what's ironic is we don't mind being seen as deterministic machines when our doctors treat us using Western medicine, which assumes that we are. For example, we know from thousands of trials that paracetamol minimises the conscious experience of pain, and we understand how the brain changes physically when this occurs.
....

To then talk about experiencing `real' alternate realities or obtaining information from the future, ancient past, distant locations, or from other dimensions, etc, only sounds crazy because it seems as though the phenomena correlated to these experiences is local, confined in space-time to your brain and body. It's not obvious how information could pass from future to present or distant past to present. The way I see it all psy-phenomena are problematic to Western science for this reason.

What you will hear is most people saying 'it's just a hallucination, it's not real', 'you only think you can', or 'you only think you did'. Perhaps the reality of the situation is a little more complicated, but when people hallucinate such absurd things along lines of flying handkerchiefs and translucent kermit the frog cartoons overlaid in their vision it's no wonder.

How can you determine whether a 'hallucination' is real? Where is the boundary between insane and sane, normal and pathological, perception and hallucination? The way I see it everything is a hallucination (yes, it is indeed virtual), it's a matter of coordination between what we call brain and what we call non-brain (environment), to me it doesn't seem logical to even discuss ultimate 'ontological reality' as you can only know what you experience, and that is constructed from your brain, and your brain is a construction of your mind! I do believe that consciousness is primary in this sense, but to understand your world you have to structure it. We've done such a good job of this that we have convinced ourselves that there is this 'independent' physical ontological reality out there beyond our senses.

If you want to reach a wider audience with this stuff you have to play the game. You have to play the game of the Western scientists, and you have to prove to them what you're saying, on their terms, or if not explain coherently to them why doing so would be impossible. As far as I can see, what is necessary is evidence that non-local or acausal phenomena are at work in the brain on a macroscopic scale, such that patterns of neural activity can be correlated to distant events in space-time.

Providing experimental evidence for psy-phenomena might be a step forwards, but transpersonal and parapsychology have little funding. What a pickle!

The only thing that will convince people that these states are 'real' and not hallucinatory is an accumulation of data that shows information can be reliably obtained from distance space-time events. Does anyone know if there is a website doing exactly this? I'm imagining a categorised/summarised list of papers/experiments/experiences.

This would be a potential first step in bridging the gap between mainstream Western science/thought and mystic/spiritual paradigms. Even if there are no non-local phenomena there may be many other mechanisms we don't currently acknowledge, such as interacting electromagnetic fields (e.g., possible non-verbal communication).



The problem is one could say that the timeless experience people have is more 'ultimate' or primary than the experience of a branching universe, it is certainly more simple conceptually. Nonetheless, as I haven't delved into the details of MBT I do not know how the Void experience (if this is the same phenomena) is represented within the theory. If the interpretation of the 'Void state' is ambiguous then it could be argued MBT is not complete. One could also argue that experiencing branching universes are hallucinatory (as with anything else, same old story).

I'm going to have to experience some of this for myself. As you might have guessed I have already had a few unusual experiences (but not enlightenment/oneness per se) which gave me the incentive to investigate this stuff in the first place. Ted, I sympathise with your difficulty in communicating the experiences. It's very tricky indeed. I found the only way I could explain my experience was to resort to geometric analogy; it was as if my life/consciousness went from 1-dimensional to 2-dimensional and I could then see my life up until that point as a line; until that point I was unaware it was 'a line', i.e., something expanded that I did not know could expand.

I will watch the videos when I get a chance! You've persuaded me now... haha.

Cheers.

Krimson,

Please read the books and listen to the lectures :-)


Peter

_________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know." - Tao Te Ching

You are welcome.



You want to reject one model to replace it with another? What about synergistic furthering of a model that includes and expands the on previous, a broader model?



I think you may be singing to the choir here.



la la la (see above)



Where would you start the list, with Phineas Gage? Here is another TED talk that you may enjoy about the personal side of having a major stroke. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_ ... sight.html




You can not measure the nonphysical with tools used to measure the physical. My Capstone project for my BS degree was titled: The Neural Correlates of Mystical Experience. My degree was almost disallowed due to a professors belief system limiting his reality to not include half of my data, the mystical half.



Search the term "absolute free will" here and pay attention to Tom and Ted's reply on the subject, to start, please and thank you. You, of course, have the absolute free will choice to do so or not.



It will become obvious once you've ingested MBT, why Western science is limited.



See above quote I used of Tom's



Well that was pretty easy, you must be ready for the info. :) Louis Pasture believed luck favors a prepared mind, you must be lucky then to comprehend MBT, in my opinion too. Please remember that the London lecture video's are a Reader's Digest version of MBT, the meat is in the trilogy.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Krimson: This is the sticking point. We know for sure that conscious experience is correlated to the 'physical' structure of our brains, particularly neural activity. To name some specific examples...
Tom: Be careful what you think you know for sure. Correlation, yes, but not in the causative way you are thinking. Brains do not cause consciousness but they can cause specific experience within consciousness - not necessarily useful or productive experience, but experience just the same. Consciousness is not derived from, or dependent upon, brains, but the expression of an individuated unit of consciousness within the Physical virtual reality is certainly limited by its brain.

Not a perfect analogy, but a useful one: Let's say that you are playing a multiplayer virtual reality game like World of Warcraft (WOW). Your character is your physical body and you are its consciousness. You decide what it does and how it does it (run, fight, stand , sit, jump, etc - there are some hard wiring (physical brain/body limits)) so when you say "jump" there may be only two ways to jump and each way is limited as to how high and how far that jump can carry you. You are the one experiencing - your character can do nothing without you guiding its every move, thought and intent. One day while you are gaining experience fighting monsters, the code defining your character and accumulating a record of "its experience" (which is actually your experience as you express yourself through your character) somehow gets corrupted and when you tell your character to fight, it lies down and goes to sleep. The next time you tell it to fight, it begins to dance and now it is only a level 3 where before it was a level 20. Your character has brain damage, it may even be considered insane. Its personal experience, sleeping instead of fighting, is a result of its brain damage as is its loss of memory and ability (attained level). Does this mean that you, the player of the game, your character's consciousness, must also be brain damaged and without your memory of the experience gained by expressing yourself through that character. That your character has brain damage does limit what you can do with that character - it limits your experience --you now experience your character going to sleep instead of fighting as you commanded. Your character can no longer raise its level because it refuses to fight. Your ability to learn, improve your skill and strategy and become more effective in playing the game through this particular player is greatly diminished but contrary to your present belief, you, the player, the consciousness directing, learning, and experiencing through this character, remain completely unaffected. Now reread the first paragraph and it will make much more sense than it did the first time.

Krimson: it's just because we KNOW that conscious experience is very closely correlated with the 'physical' mechanisms of the brain, and that this mechanism is macroscopic, causal, and obeys the laws of physics: specifically Newtonian mechanics in this case. Yes, chaos theory implies any 'quantum randomness' may be amplified (in Schrodinger's cat sense) to the macroscopic scale, but as we have yet to solve the measurement problem...

Tom: MBT has solved the "measurement problem" and derives QM from first principles - i.e., why particles are naturally probability waves. It also derives the basis for Relativity - why c must be constant. Free will is also derived within MBT and shown to be logically necessary for consciousness to exist, as consciousness is logically necessary for free will to exist - different sides of the same coin.

Krimson:If you want to reach a wider audience with this stuff you have to play the game. You have to play the game of the Western scientists, and you have to prove to them what you're saying, on their terms, or if not explain coherently to them why doing so would be impossible.

Tom: That has been accomplished.

Krimson:As far as I can see, what is necessary is evidence that non-local or acausal phenomena are at work in the brain on a macroscopic scale, such that patterns of neural activity can be correlated to distant events in space-time.

Tom: Was it required for your WOW character to have non-local phenomena in its software and memory so that you could interact with it? Perhaps, that depends on how you define non-local" One cannot define consciousness in terms of physical phenomena. Brains are virtual - they exist only as data and probability and function/evolve according to the rule-set. Just like the virtual brain inside the head of your WOW character - which functioned or malfunctioned according to the rendering engine and its rule-set.

Time is fundamental as is consciousness and free-will. It is all explained in the books.
One can tell if a theory is correct if it :
1) Explains ALL the existing objective data ( e.g., QM, relativity, the measurement problem, why geometric fractals represent physical reality so well, intuition, placebo effect, Metaphysics, theology, paranormal, "backwards causality" experiments)
2) AND explains all the subjective data.
3) ) Predicts new objective data (e.g., conscious computers, near-term genetic learning, and manipulating uncertainty).
4) The new data is tested and found to be true.
Specific subjective data can sometimes be verified by statistical inference.

Tom C

Anyone with access to research databases should read these peer reviewed articles, in my opinion.

Mureika, J. (2007). Implications for cognitive quantum computation and decoherence
limits in the presence of large extra dimensions. International Journal of
Theoretical Physics, 46(1), 130-142. doi:10.1007/s10773-006-9221-1

Manousakis, E. (2006). Founding Quantum Theory on the Basis of Consciousness.
Foundations of Physics, 36(6), 795-838. Retrieved October 31, 2008,
doi:10.1007/s10701-006-9049-9


I am sorry that intellectual property right laws disallow me putting the articles here for All.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

[quote="bette"]Anyone with access to research databases should read these peer reviewed articles, in my opinion./quote]
Great stuff, thanks. If you know about more let me know please.

m

_________________
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
www.martinpeniak.com

Hi Martin,
What exactly would you like references for? Give me a particular concept and I'll see what I can come up with. I love mining databases, and it would feel like I was doing my homework especially if I found something I could use in my thesis while doing it. Here are a few more for now from looking at my literature chart where I have many APA style citations stored:

Allport, F. (1920). The influence of the group upon association and thought. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 3(3), 159-182. Retrieved May 9, 2008,
doi:10.1037/h0067891 NOT PRINTED

Allport, F. (1942). METHODS IN THE STUDY OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
PHENOMENA. Journal of Social Psychology, 15(1), 165-185. Retrieved
November 20, 2008, from SocINDEX with Full Text database.

Arvidson, P. (1992). The Field of Consciousness: James and Gurwitsch. Transactions
of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 28(4), 833. Retrieved January 22, 2009, from
Academic Search Premier database.

Atwater, F. (1999, July). Brain Waves and Oxygen Saturation During and Ancient
Religious Ceremony. Journal of Religion & Psychical Research, 22(3), 123.
Retrieved December 10, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

Aydede, M., & Güzeldere, G. (2005). Cognitive Architecture, Concepts, and
Introspection: An Information-Theoretic Solution to the Problem of
Phenomenal Consciousness. Nous, 39(2), 197-255. Retrieved October 31,
2008, doi:10.1111/j.0029-4624.2005.00500.x

I'm barely out of the A's, but skipped down to get this last one for now (see below), let me know if I'm on the right track, or give me a specific concept, please. As you can see my interests are broadly related to consciousness. Thank you.

Freeman, W. (2004). How and why brains create meaning from sensory information.
International Journal of Bifurcation & Chaos in Applied Sciences & Engineering,
14(2), 515-530. Retrieved December 23, 2007, from Academic Search Premier
database.

Love to you and yours,
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Bette: Look into this one. Meaning is created by Consciousness, not by brains. How matter is able to create meaning?

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

I didn't write it Claudio, I am only sharing available references of others work for others to interpret on their own. I have a book in front of me called "Mind From Matter" by Max Delbruck (1986) that I used in a Power Point Presentation I made concerning the evolution of consciousness as I understood it then (2007 I think). Even though the title would make it seem this guy has it all bass ackards, there is still valuable data to be had by open-minded skepticism, I do not believe it useful to summarily reject something because of its appearance (title), do you? It seems like the subject we are talking about here is the brain-mind-consciousness connection, heck Claudio physicists can barely say "nonphysical" still. It would take some man sized 'orbs' to say "How Consciousness Creates Meaning" in a paper title in academia, hmm...I think I will check for that term next database search. I have been told I have such obs, metaphorically speaking. Thanks Clau.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I know you did not write it. That's why I included: Freeman, W. (2004) in the post, but you have access to that. I don't, so I cannot look into it, that's why I asked you. Answer me in a pm.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <