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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 25, 2017 - 08:37am PT
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I can't see how any ToM, the least bit scientific, can account for the spiritual aspects that JL describes.
For me, this seems close to the core of our human thinking patterns. When there's something that we can't see, we usually choose (arbitrarily, from a rational/informational perspective) to interpret that as evidence that "it doesn't exist", rather than as evidence that "we don't see".
We have an overwhelmingly strong need to believe in our belief processes - to believe that we see. Those processes are central to our survival/thrival. So we bootstrap our belief processes using self-confirmation bias.
If that means that we need to be masters of confirmation bias, then we're masters of confirmation bias. If it means that we need to be masters of survival bias ("the information that survives the filtering effects of the environment and my own capabilities of perception is all the information that exists"), then we're masters of survival bias.
If we need to put it all together and conclude that human achievements are rare and unparalleled in the universe, then that's what we do. If we need to conclude that what I believe is true and what you believe is nonsense, then that's what we do. If we need to admire the artistic and aesthetic creations and perceptions of humans above other creations and perceptions, then that's what we do.
IMHO, it's less about having a mind than it is about being a human. It's what we do.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 25, 2017 - 09:01am PT
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We are never ever masters.
We are eternally subordinate.
Even the gross materialist admit they are subordinate to the inferior energies (material nature) .....
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 25, 2017 - 10:54am PT
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How much further would you have to take this, to arrive at satire?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Note to self: remember to use the quote function, so that replies to other's posts retain context, in spite of erasure!
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Sep 25, 2017 - 11:00am PT
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Isn't this satire? Holy cow!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 25, 2017 - 03:49pm PT
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jgill: "I can't see how any ToM, the least bit scientific, can account for the spiritual aspects that JL describes."
For me, this seems close to the core of our human thinking patterns. When there's something that we can't see, we usually choose (arbitrarily, from a rational or informational perspective) to interpret that as evidence that "it doesn't exist", rather than as evidence that "we don't see".
I hope you did not interpret my statement in this way. When I say "I can't see how . . ." in no way do I mean that it is not possible, only that from my present perspective I see no way forward. I think you will find the scientific/mathematics contingent here is fairly careful in this regard.
On the other hand, there are those on this thread who state emphatically that a physicalist approach will never do the job. And it's possible they are correct, but no one really knows at this time.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 25, 2017 - 03:49pm PT
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Sorry MH2. Nah I'm not laughing at anyone really at all. You're making some sense to me and my awesome way of seeing things. Maybe making fun of myself, sometimes.
Yes the smiley face is meant to indicate that it's a playful joke about us humans and our wacky human natures and thought processes, and usually harkens back to something that we humans said somewhere along the line. My bad if I offended you. I don't see it as being about you. Or me, or anyone else really. I try to see it as more about humans, and what humans are. What the person said (as a reflection of who/what humans are) is funny to me. And my reaction to what the person said is funny to me too..
Yes I believe very strongly that we often feel personally insulted by the idea that humans and our awesome belief processes may not be quite as awesome as we believe they are. Probably kind of mostly the point of most of what I say. We need to believe in the awesomeness of our belief processes, or they don't do us much good, so we don't like the idea that maybe they're not quite as awesome as we think.
IMHO, how we interpret information is just information about who/what humans are.
Yea jgill nah again. I'm just referencing that statement as a launching point to say what I want to say :-) (This smiley face kind of means aren't we humans silly? Me as a human. You as a human. All of us wacky humans) I think it was you maybe who once helped me out a lot by asking what's a belief if we don't believe it's true? Maybe I used your statement as an example because it's easier for me to see the rightness of the scientific side, and I'm usually trying to show myself how I, and my side, maybe don't see the whole picture - trying and failing (thankfully, for my survival/thrival) to transcend my own relentless self-confirmation processes. When other people try and fail to transcend their relentless self-confirmation, it just looks a little different.
You guys are cool. I appreciate listening to your conversation, according to my ability. Please don't be offended by me - I'm just another human :-)
Best y'all!
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 25, 2017 - 04:32pm PT
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Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion once remarked that, "satire can be dangerous." That was because some people might not recognize it as humor and could believe that the story was true.
We now have help with that:
http://satiredetector.fims.uwo.ca/lies.html
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 25, 2017 - 04:59pm PT
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Right? Humans, and their communication styles, can be dangerous.
No way a guy with Trump's communication style will ever get elected :-)
(That's a joke, because a lot of us believed that was true, based on his communication style. But then we were proven wrong. But still, do we believe that we were wrong? Maybe not. Maybe we still believe it, even though we were proven wrong. Maybe we didn't notice that we were proven wrong. I expect that we have a belief about other people's communication style one way or the other. Aren't humans great? :-) )
There's a right way to be a human and a wrong way. Don't get it wrong :-)
(I don't really believe this. I believe there's only a right way. I just like to joke about it, as a way of tuning in to the absurdity of our human belief processes. I mean the absurdity of other people's belief processes :-) Joking, again. My absurd belief processes too. Why do I do that?! Maybe in general we take our beliefs too seriously. But maybe until we have a better alternative we're stuck with other human's wacky belief processes. And my wacky belief processes too.)
My sense of myself is that I'm somewhat less of a jerk than I used to be. I feel like maybe I used to kind of laugh at other people for being human, and now I laugh at humans, including myself. It's really not much of a difference.
Though when you only laugh at other people, you're representing a self that believes it's right, and that others are wrong. It's kind of hard not to believe that, and for a human, it's maybe a good idea to believe it.
In general, I think we misunderstand, and overestimate, the differences between ourselves and what/why we believe, and other humans, and what/why they believe.
Laugh, don't laugh ... You be you :-)
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 25, 2017 - 06:10pm PT
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I tried the "Satire Detector" on an article from the Onion and got this:
The article seems to be an example of:
SATIRE
The Satire Detector is 84% confident of the prediction.
Is this prediction
Incorrect?
Correct?
Unsure?
Based on its text features, it is considered NOT ABSURD and HUMOROUS
The article has a high occurrence of Pronouns, Prepositions, Verbs
Then I tried it on some of Gwen's stuff (the Christian diet lady) and got this:
The article seems to be an example of: NON-SATIRE
The Satire Detector is 84% confident of the prediction.
Is this prediction
Incorrect?
Correct?
Unsure?
Based on its text features, it is considered ABSURD and NOT HUMOROUS
The article has a high occurrence of Prepositions, Verbs, Commas
Not bad!
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 25, 2017 - 06:24pm PT
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Subterfuge Detector Alert!!
yanqui directed us to Poe's Law which first showed up on christianforums.com
then we get Gwen Shamblin
probability 17% that yanqui is a fifth column Christian proselytizer
could be sixth column
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Sep 26, 2017 - 03:55am PT
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When you have N different views as to a ToM for N minds there is no convergence. Convergence = 0 %. When people neglect all and any scientific aspects of brain findings without equivalent support there is no standard for admissible evidence.
An example of convergence: [as measured by the results of scientific studies]
Statistical Significance? There have been over 11944 independent scientific studies done & confirming on the effects of C02 warming [" about 97 percent concluded that climate change is real and caused by humans] and for the other 3% of these studies: "That is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything." One study did show warming but the investigator could not figure out what years this happened. See Skeptic by Michael Shermer, Scientific American about Dec 2016.
We on ST What is Mind have no standard for admissible evidence. Largo might be able to print his meditative take of a ToM in the Christian Science Monitor [he would be rebutted here too] but not the Journal of Neurology.
Welcome to the soups of minds where any idea is sort of equally valid. "This is how I perceive it", from another soupy mind?
It seems that once one gets the "Aha" feeling about a mechanism for consciousness they see how counterintuitive the explanation is and that others will cling to their ideas and feeling about what goes on in the conscious awareness showcase. I now see there are likely several to many ways of making a form of conscious awareness.
We [human minds] have a well done array of feelings that bounce through the body and back to mind enriching any and all thoughts/feelings. This idea for the making of awareness employs many of scientific findings of Damasio and Metzinger and possibly a little of Largo's? The brain tells the awareness showcase moment by moment, "Within your boundaries this and this is going on ... And we say, "I am aware of ..."
The mistake we make is believing that something is observed [by the self module] as opposed to understanding that something sensed by the brain )of unconscious awareness( has been sent to the conscious awareness showcase [self module] by the brain. The making of conscious awareness is aided by using a persistence of awareness [and of course the feeling modules and the brain/body loop]. That is awareness images last for about 1/7 second when wide awake and hence the slow bit rate of conscious awareness.
But Largo never returns reports but says, "When I get some time I will tell you ... " An example of 1st person neglect for solving a mystery.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 26, 2017 - 08:28am PT
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The making of conscious awareness is aided by using a persistence of awareness [and of course the feeling modules and the brain/body loop]. That is awareness images last for about 1/7 second when wide awake and hence the slow bit rate of conscious awareness.
I have always liked jstan's idea about the fundamental nature of consciousness:
from 4 Oct 2009:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=972999&tn=102
more recent:
There is survival value if a creature has some sense of time. Threats evolve over time. Look at Jeff Hawkins' work on how the brain is layered so as to provide temporal resolution of stimuli.
8 Sept 2017
I can't get a strong grip on what it means to have an expectation that the present moment will be followed by a next moment, even though I am pretty sure that I exhibit such an expectation often, without really thinking about it as such. Perhaps this idea of an expectation of persistence could be pursued in the artificial intelligence realm.
Whether or not we have a sense of time, timing in neural pathways is crucial to appropriate movement. Back in Chicago the dauntingly talented Jon Art boiled it down to, "Timing is everything."
One notable difference between most simulated neural networks and biological neural networks is the way in which timing matters to them.
In time delay neural networks samples of the input are saved for correlation across time. There is a researcher at Chicago whose work I am especially interested in, who has brought time delay neural networks into some of his publications:
http://margoliashlab.uchicago.edu/
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 26, 2017 - 12:00pm PT
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yanqui is a fifth column Christian proselytizer
Well I have to admit, I love the story of Jesus. I imagine the possibility of a historical Jesus, without all the magical details. I don't care much if he's ficticious or not. It's the story that matters to me. An illegitimate child, abandoned by his father, who grows up to reject the established church and find resolve in his belief of God as a forgiving father. A father who loves all people: the outcasts, the downtrodden, the prostitutes (even the cheesemakers, according to one man, standing in the back, at the Sermon on the Mount, in the movie "Life of Brian"). In his teachings, Jesus replaces the monotonous heap of rules from Deuteronomy with the clear simplicity of the Golden Rule. A moral genius! Then there's that tremendous tragic ending. Hung out on a cross, by the rich and powerful, for being a subversive, he cries out to his God, but there is no answer. Abandoned in the beginning, abandoned in the end. What a story! But does it tell us anything about "Mind"? (I just realized the quotation marks in the thread title appear to be closed incorrectly. Are we talking about "Mind?" or are we talking about "Mind"? Speaking of awareness!)
But alas, my attempts to proselytize are in vain. The only one who would listen, was this:
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 26, 2017 - 12:20pm PT
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An illegitimate child = 100% wrong
Abandoned by his father = 100% wrong again
He cries out to his God, but there is no answer = 100% wrong again
Abandoned in the beginning, abandoned in the end = 100% wrong again
The only one who would listen was this:
No wonder as you got this 99% wrong ......
But does it tell us anything about "Mind"?
Yes, ...... that the gross materialists should stop guessing on sh!t they know nothing about.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 26, 2017 - 12:29pm PT
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Discourse with Burro reminds me of discussions with my late Corgi, Jake, about The limit concept in calculus. It's amazing what he digested.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 26, 2017 - 02:50pm PT
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I can't see how any ToM, the least bit scientific, can account for the spiritual aspects that JL describes.
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What "spiritual aspects," and what, specifically makes them spiritual? Are you equating non-observable with spiritual? As in "spirit?" Isn't spirit some phenomenon that has qualities we normally attribute to observable external objects, but no material stuff to grasp onto?
Another thing pointed out by John G. is the question of physicality, and how far can we expect physical descriptions to go in explaining mind. In my view - a very long ways. Objective functioning IS physical functioning. How are we to deny that? What else would you call - for example - the mechanical physical functioning going on when we are in deep, dreamless sleep. This surely is an aspect of our reality that jibes almost if not perfectly with what I call machine registration, which accounts for the majority of our functioning as human beings. Just not ALL of it - in my experience.
And that, I think, is one of the things that leads to so much confusion per mind. Machine registration DOES go on, extensively, but when we try and make that explain EVERY aspect of mind, we find ourselves on a slippery slope.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 26, 2017 - 04:28pm PT
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The experiences you have described (more or less) as empty awareness and/or no-thingness. I'm not sure what other category they would fall in. You can correct me, here.
The logical conundrum of empty awareness, assuming it is on the scene prior to conscious awareness, is that one must be aware or conscious of it in order to claim to have experienced it. Thus, one must be aware of empty awareness. Doesn't this seem odd? Is this like a koan?
It's good you have given our machine functioning an airing as constituting much of what we consider the mind. But do you continue to insist that there is more to mind that cannot ever be explained in this fashion?
Hope your daughters are doing OK.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 26, 2017 - 05:49pm PT
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The experiences you have described (more or less) as empty awareness and/or no-thingness. I'm not sure what other category they would fall in. You can correct me, here.
Hi John. Here is a stab at these questions. Nothing more than my take on it.
In my experience, awareness is the context in which all other categories come into existence, seeming that we tend to categorize stuff, things, objects or phenomenon that have measurable or at any rate qualities we can get hold of with our sense organs, or logically work over.
I think how this got converted into "religious" conceptions is that many contemplatives have the experience of watching stuff and ideas and content arise into awareness, giving one the impression that awareness births content, or "creates" content, ergo if you have a concept going in of God the creator, awareness can possibly fit that bill. I think this shows how we are predisposed to try and label and categorize every experience.
Another interesting thing is that metaphors don't apply to awareness because awareness itself (not WHAT we are aware of) has no qualities in the normal sense of the term. That is, awareness is not LIKE something else. That's why I get a kick out of people believing that awareness is a feeling.
The logical conundrum of empty awareness, assuming it is on the scene prior to conscious awareness, is that one must be aware or conscious of it in order to claim to have experienced it. Thus, one must be aware of empty awareness. Doesn't this seem odd? Is this like a koan?
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Not sure how to unpack that one, but my sense of it is you are setting up an unnecessary duality between an agency that is aware ("one who is aware") who has an experience OF awareness, and awareness itself.
Awareness is (IME) inherently empty - that is, it is nothing. We can provisionally view it as an empty, borderless movie screen. In deep sleep, awareness is not coupled to consciousness, so the brain cannot generate any content on the screen. In our waking state, consciousness comes on line and the movie screen lights up, so to speak. Our psychological function generates a sense of self because we need one to function in the world. One of the standard insights of prolonged meditation is that this self is seen as a provisional survival mechanism, and all that is really there is awareness itself. That's what we are in the deepest sense. When you read the old mystical texts, and they say we don't really die, what they mean is that what I normally consider to be "me" is actually just my ego self, my history and genetic makeup, which in a case of mistaken identity I believe is the real me. The Zen take on this is that this is a false belief. Your awareness was never "born" because it is empty to begin with. It is not "there" in the sense that an external object is there. So what was never born can never die.
That's a gross simplification of it, but it roughly squares with my training and experience.
It's good you have given our machine functioning an airing as constituting much of what we consider the mind. But do you continue to insist that there is more to mind that cannot ever be explained in this fashion?
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That deserves something more than a dashed off reply. So let me work up something on that one once I have time. Let me just say that in my experience, mind is that seamless unity of the born (created/physical/mechanical/determined) with the unborn. The tricky part is trying to explain the unborn in terms and words that by design are geared to describe stuff, objects, phenomenon that we can label and get hold in normal, classical terms. It underscores the fact that awareness is not a thing we can get out of and look back on and analyze in the normal way we objectify things and phenomenon. One Zen way of stating this is that we cannot kiss out own lips. What's more, awareness is indivisible. So this one is a task.
Hope your daughters are doing OK.
So far so good. I'm going to see them in Florida in a month. Thanks for asking. Here's the oldest one (pediatrician) working in the child oncology unit. She has a magic with kids.
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