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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 30, 2017 - 09:23pm PT
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Is it within your imagination to consider not taking anything very concretely or seriously?
Absolutely! Especially awareness as I have consciously made you aware of in my post! However, beware of those who seem most aware of what's going on.
;>)
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 30, 2017 - 10:20pm PT
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the Absolute Truth is always full of variegatedness, has personality and is always ultimately graspable.
Everything in the material world is this way.
The materialworld is an imperfect reflection of the the absolute.
Thus emptiness and ungraspable are not ultimately complete and are only impersonalism.
Impersonalism is ultimately poor fund of knowledge.
The living entity is NEVER EVER impersonal, empty nor ungraspable ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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I was speaking globally, totally . . . not a word or some person or thing.
:-)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Does Cozmo have a mind?
Cozmo goes beyond 'machine registration' in that it does not always give the same output for the same input. It learns. The trick is to learn appropriate reactions, and that is easy to say but not easy to implement as software and hardware.
Cozmo is solving the same kinds of problems as Google's self-driving cars. They're hard problems: "The number one challenge" for a home robot, says Chelsea Finn, a PhD researcher at Berkeley, "is to see the unstructured environment, and make actions depending on the state of the environment." Luckily, researchers are coming up with answers. "There have been these huge leaps and bounds in computer vision with deep learning,"
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/anki-cozmo-ai-robot-toy/
From what they say it sounds as though human and robot are not that far apart:
Anki's still working out some bugs, trying to figure out the difference between delightful unpredictability and actual buggy software.
For the time being, Cozmo's big challenge is learning to move itself in an environment it has not been pre-programmed to know. Much like one of the earliest challenges for life on earth.
Cozmo has feelings, too. This may be a lesser challenge, because success can be had by fooling human beings.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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When Cozmo gets together with his robot buddies and they invent a religion to give meaning to their place in the universe, then I'll have to agree that robot minds and human minds are not so far apart.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Hmmmm. Could religion be buggy software? Or vice versa?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Beats me, but it seems to be fairly standard in the human model.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2017 - 09:50am PT
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However, beware of those who seem most aware of what's going on.
-----
The key thing to get here are the words, "of what's going on."
The "what," the content or awareness, is always open to debate. That's why some avenues of subjective adventures focus on awareness itself (likewise boundless space, nothingness, and beyond perceiving and not perceiving, to mention a few). The reason many doubt that awareness is itself empty is that they don't have any reference point to understanding this. But as mentioned, there are many instances of it in everyone's life, and I'll try to jot one out later if I can find time.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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So is Cozmo selling well? I never heard of it before, but apparently you can get one for less than 200 bucks. Any buzz about that?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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So be aware of where you stand, conscious or not, and wary of philosophical ramblings of which one grows weary, if not unconsciously so
Especially awareness as I have consciously made you aware of in my post! However, beware of those who seem most aware of what's going on
Wow! I think we have reached a level of machine registration in this thread. No matter how hard I try to insert nonsense it gets a reasoned reply. Like the security light on the Wizard's back porch.
;>)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2017 - 12:07pm PT
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In reference to what awareness is, beyond the CONTENT of WHAT we are aware of, Dingus asks: So.... what is it? Answer your own question, please.
Look at it this way…
Consider Gigi – tall, curvy, sassy, and just 19. She goes to one of those fussy little parties in a fussy Westwood bungalow where they play Bartok on the Bose and serve French pastries and Fat Tire ale in frosted mugs. And a southern smoothie named Dingus has some herb, which he offers Gigi who after two hits is circling the Crab Nebula, rather taken by Dingus’ smooth drawl, designer shirt and genuine I-talian calfskin loafers. They repair to Dingus’ Malibu digs, where Dingus spins some Neil Diamond and inveigles the comely Gigi out of her blue jeans and they perform the naughty till the sun breaks over the Pacific. Nine months later: viola. Little Eddie slides into the world.
At first, Gigi is totally attuned (fused) to every sound and whimper and shriek and blubber coming from Little Edie’s cakehole. But as their fusion starts to dissolve, and the months pass, Gigi becomes so habituated to Little Eddie’s sound track that, save for a certain kind of wailing, indicating danger, she hardly hears the noise, as though it was not even there.
Such is the process that happens with all parents, and if Gigi had some little instruction, and did a few specific exercises, she might come to realize that Little Eddie was never an inherent quality of her own awareness – nor yet was her Brentwood apartment, or the throw rub in the living room, or the street she lived on, or Dingus’ loafers, or the moon overhead. And being curious, as she let herself become increasingly immersed in awareness, she’d find that it had no “it,” no intrinsic nature, no content, no identifying features at all. Whatever she could think or feel or imagine was always subsequent to being aware in the first place.
In fact, she’d find that she could never get behind or outside of awareness to ever see it 3rd person. Anything happening right this second, in whatever corner of the world or nook inside of her mind and body, she knew as much entirely because she was aware. Strangely, whatever she could say about awareness was not of awareness per se, but a thought ABOUT awareness. Awareness itself had no opinion, no shape or size, no substance or edges, in fact everything real or imagined presents itself to awareness, but none of this content was awareness itself.
Stranger still was the bizarre fact that the more she sank back into awareness and detached from thoughts, sensations, feelings , memories and plans, the more robust awareness became, while at the same time offering no handle to grab. Awareness, in this regards, was not a function or a thing or an aspect or any conceivable domain or “effect.” All that stuff happens WITHIN awareness, or because of it.
That left Gigi in the surreal position of knowing that awareness does not “exist” in the normal sense of the word, and yet everything under the sun (including ourselves) exists for us only because of awareness.
Stranger still was the notion that she might be “wrong” about awareness, when in fact right or wrong only applies to WHAT she is aware of, not the brute fact of awareness itself. So she could hardly be mistaken about what was not there.
If Gigi stuck with the process of accepting that awareness, her most basic nature, there BEFORE anything showed up to be right or wrong about, was totally ungraspable as an external phenomenon, she would realize that the adventure was just getting started, that there was still the issue of resolving the duality of aware and not aware, of nothingness and something, of cessation and arising.
Crazy thing is you can’t discursively analyze what has no delineating features (awareness), and you can’t attempt to “get into it” because you already are. Awareness is our most intimate and embodied aspect, so we can’t observe it since awareness is postulated by all observing. And what we observe within awareness is the content of awareness.
The adventure truly takes off when you jump off the cliff and let yourself "be" awareness, which you already are.
More later. This is just starting to get good.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Any buzz about that?
This is promising:
The "what," the content or awareness [of Cozmo], is always open to debate. That's why some avenues of subjective adventures focus on awareness itself (likewise boundless space, nothingness, and beyond perceiving and not perceiving, to mention a few). The reason many doubt that awareness is itself empty is that they don't have any reference point to understanding this.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2017 - 02:22pm PT
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You're not asking me what is awareness, Dingus, you're asking me about causal relations - that is, what I believe CAUSED awareness. Then you're layering on all kinds of woo to suggest that awareness exists in some nether world or something.
Unless I have that wrong.
I clearly stated that awareness is ungraspable as an object or thing or phenomenon we can observe from the outside, from a "view from nowhere," Nagle's imaginary 3rd person perspective. And yet it is through awareness that all things are known.
Those are also the direct observations of most any subjective school you can find, from the Buddha on down. I'm not sure what part of this you are not getting, and go ahead and try and shoot any of it down.
If you are grappling with the fact that awareness does not lend itself to a classical definition, join the club - then talk to the folks in QM. They're up against the same thing, except awareness is even more slippery because at lest with QM you have physical stuff to measure and causes thereof.
Most traditions refer to awareness as "unborn," meaning it was not caused by some more fundamental object or phenomenon or process.
So Dingus my brother, I cannot say, nor can anyone say, "awareness is this thing, this function, this widget, this arrangement of neurons," all of which depend on awareness to be known.
Our discursive minds cannot get hold of a non-thing. Ergo, "ungraspable."
If you ever took the plunge into this stuff yourself, you'd find awareness as just described.
But again, the fact that awareness cannot be explained in classical terms is no fault of awareness, nor is it some dodge tactic I am using to avoid answering your question "directly."
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WBraun
climber
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And a southern smoothie named Dingus has some herb, which he offers Gigi who after two hits is circling the Crab Nebula,
rather taken by Dingus’ smooth drawl, designer shirt and genuine I-talian calfskin loafers.
LMAO ......
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Are we going to be surprised when we find out we are simply bags of water and nutrients controlled by masses of bacteria using group think to animate us.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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the fact that awareness cannot be explained in classical terms is no fault of awareness
Strange phrasing. When in ungraspable terrain, use incomprehensible prose. Life was easier when we only had to know
si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sīcut ibī
St. Ambrose
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nice writing, John. Lisa liked it, too. (She thought for a moment that you could be Jed McKenna--whom nobody knows who it is.)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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MH2: When in ungraspable terrain, use incomprehensible prose.
There are some things that appear to be impossible to grasp (contrary to Werner's claim). It's my view that includes everything, but we could take it one baby step at a time.
What wow's you? Consider that. Now get that into a concept fully, accurately, completely. Or fully describe it.
Fully describe your feelings in a sexual climax. Don't say how it happens. Say what it is experientially.
You're in the realm of poets.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Are we going to be surprised when we find out we are simply bags of water and nutrients controlled by masses of bacteria using group think to animate us.
Wouldn't surprise me, although I always aspired for more (I think).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What wow's you?
If we are talking about the written word: vivid firsthand descriptions of the lives of plants and animals.
Or anything else I don't know much about, or what I do know something about but get to see again and differently through another's eyes.
Do you need a full accurate complete concept? Why would that be necessary?
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