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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Maybe we should teach the chimps some democracy, or meditation?
What it seems you want us to answer:
Maybe we should go live where the bonobos or chimps live, with no fancy tools, and see how well democracy or meditation promote the propagation of our genes?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Here is a quote from T Merton (catholic monk/buddhist practitioner) regarding contemplation (meditation). Addresses those who think meditation is woo and IMO is Merton's explanation of Largos " doing the work".
“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning… Hence, is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe – for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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So many interesting ideas on this thread in the past few days!
Here's one of my favorites
I do admit, I am partial to general theories of everything.
"England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. “I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,” he explained. “On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”
http://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life
And I agree with healyje the comments to the article were as interesting as the article itself.
I also like the word perceptronium to describe consciousness. Makes it sounds like another element on the periodic chart. Maybe that's what we need - a periodic chart of consciousness.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^^ “This means clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean, should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or chemical work in their environments,” England explained.
he didn't provide much interpretation getting from here to the cell though.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Your correct DMT with an ad like that I would recommend RUN FROM THE MONEY
where I sit it is free and retreats are between $30 and $50 /day with three meals and a place to sleep.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Regarding Healyje's reference to Max Tegmark: This guy is a little weird, if not provocative.
From Wiki:
Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH) is: Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. That is, the physical universe is mathematics in a well-defined sense, and "in those [worlds] complex enough to contain self-aware substructures [they] will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world"
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Maybe we should go live where the bonobos or chimps live, with no fancy tools, and see how well democracy or meditation promote the propagation of our genes?
ihad the feeling we thought the bonobos were doing better than the chimps? and we might even learn something from the bonobos. since we have the ability of discernment, maybe we could enlighten the chimps also?
i mean evolutionary-wise, aren't we humans stoked to be out of the jungle! With all our reason, and creature-comforts and stuff. Seems like it should be our duty to reach back to our cousins and give them a hand up to a noble and dignified civilization.
i say this partly in jest, but mostly not! Before we can help the chimps, we gotta first learn to help ourselves. We could start by shipping boat loads of stuff to Haitii to allow those humans, people, brothers and sisters some dignity! Then maybe Mexico. Can't forget Canada.
NO! we'd rather spend our money controlling the price of oil
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Max Tegmark: This guy is a little weird, if not provocative.
i think this guy put him in his place;
When is the reduction - or rather the translation of a problem - to QM, possible and productive?
Sometimes, it is impossible. The planet's orbit stability problem isn't even translatable to QM, at all. Because QM doesn't do gravity.
I doubt it is always productive, even when possible. One could translate the game of tic-tact-toe to QM. But what's the point? A simple look-up table would do. Can we translate the look-up table optimization to QM? Maybe, but it would hardly give us any new insight in tic-tact-toe game.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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After the previous new age 'quantum consciousness' debacle, I'd say it's probably a given it's going to take someone slightly off center to take any kind of run at it at all.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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someone slightly off center to take any kind of run at it at all.
OK! Not that i am try ing to be that someone. But because i too believe "someone" out there does have the answers. And we but need ask in the right manner..
so trying to be slightly off center, IME, Consciousness is more than my Id feeling suffering. It extends outward to the outside world where my emotions have the tools to shape the earth. You Mr. Healyje are that earth. Just as i. If i were to see you, i would only see star-dust, Earth. Much more of what you are, is water. and a little bit electrical. But what we share with every living being today and yesterday is air. Well maybe not the life underwater? But atleaSt ALL life between the surfaces of Earth and water, and the Atmosphere separating us from Space. Wouldn't it be right to say, Air emerged here on Earth, and no where else in the Solar-System? Maybe Air hasn't emerged any where else in the universe? Vegas and her odds would say otherwise. And so would science, with the random factor, and luck! BUT, i'm here hucking myself off the centeredness is takes to walk a slack-line in saying; Air is more precious than Matter! And even though You and i may share star-dust from a common star. That is history! What we share today to shape the future is Breath! Every breath you take sitting there reading this icludes air that i, Largo, Hfcs, Jan, Jimi Hendricks, Nepoleon, Jesus, my dog Emma, Etc have all breathed before! More specifically, we(every living Cell) share Argon with each inhale..!!
Someone, or somewhere in here i can imagine a world wide web of consciousness
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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JGill, below is a link to a review of Max's book "Our Mathematical Universe" on Peter Woit's blog 'Not Even Wrong' (he also did the WSJ review of the book). Woit is clearly no fan of the concept of multiverses and usually takes its supporters to task with varying degrees of derision.
This post is also another case where the comments are more interesting than the blog post, in part because Max jumps into the comments dialog from the start...
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551&cpage=1#comments
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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I just came across an interesting Smithsonian website which discusses (reflecting their exhibits) different ways of integrating science and religion in the evolution debate. It lays out the various philosophical positions in a very clear manner, their perspective being that if 53% of Americans do not believe in evolution, they have to address this somehow in their exhibit on human evolution. They have also formed a committee of scientists and religious people to address this.
Science, Religion, Evolution and Creationism: Primer
http://humanorigins.si.edu/about/bsic/science-religion-evolution-creationism-primer
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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We can assume there are some fundamental problems with science education in general:
55 percent of adult Americans responded both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that it takes a year for that to occur.
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Meatbird
Social climber
Lindsay, OK
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Dingus, there are no doubt measurable properties happening in the brain. In attention schema theory these properties result from the neuronal activity of focusing attention. The awareness (consciousness) of this activity is the brains adaptational advantage in having a sense of self. We perceive colors but wavelengths are the measurable property. Likewise, we perceive a self but attention focused activity is what is measured. Awareness is the brains pragmatic modeling of a series of experiences strung together in time. They appear to be casually connected and unified but may only be correlatively linked. It's basically an extension of Hume's anti Cartesian philosophy by neurologist, Michael Graziano and others.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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We can assume there are some fundamental problems with science education in general:
55 percent of adult Americans responded both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that it takes a year for that to occur.
Or: 45 percent of adult Americans have a sense of humor.
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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Way cool link, Jan. Very positive to see thoughtful people trying to bridge the "Religion Vs Science" gap.
I ran across this interesting study: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141211124528.htm
Please excuse my knowledge deficit, but were the older, more primitive religions (e.g. Native American religions) not "moralizing" religions?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Please excuse my knowledge deficit, but were the older, more primitive religions (e.g. Native American religions) not "moralizing" religions?
What makes you think Native American religions were 'primitive'? I would argue the opposite...
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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I guess perhaps "primitive" was the wrong choice of words. What I meant was religions that were connected to civilizations composed of large groups of people organized in complex social orders compared to religions that belonged to small groups or tribes of people.
In other words, did the religions of Native Americans offer instructions for moral behavior, or did that moral direction come from somewhere else in the culture?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Innuit = Inca?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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I guess perhaps "primitive" was the wrong choice of words.
i'd say primitive works. Even though most NA religions did pray to One great spirit of the sky. Most of the tribe would rely on the 'priest', or 'shaman' to pray/talk to God. Nevermind all the ritual acts like the ghost dance, or peyote day, etc that where used to provoke an answer from God. These are very much in line with the primitive ways of the Catholic church today. And lets not forget the Very Primitive conduct the Catholics used to convert these early NA religions, that was taking the Tribes children into custody and forcing indoctrine upon them.
Todays modern christians anyway, know that God is in each of us and is accessible by every individual, anytime of the day, anywhere!
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