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jogill
climber
Colorado
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They can't even save themselves but want to save everyone else. If you can't save yourself you'll never save anyone else
BS. Duckfail. There have been times when a person, knowing they are doomed, nevertheless saves others.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/are-we-already-living-in-virtual-reality
The philosopher, Thomas Metzinger, had several out-of-body experiences (OBEs) when he was an undergraduate and they made such an impression he pursued the subject later in his academic career. Attempts to produce OBEs on demand failed, so he turned to the technology of virtual reality , hoping to mimic if not duplicate these strange mental states.
The result of his collaboration with the neuroscientist, Olaf Blanke, is more appropriately called virtual embodiment, and is a serious step along a path to discovering the underlying nature of “Self” or “I.” Technology is used to shift the feeling of self from one’s own body to a virtual being, that may or may not be identified with the subject.
I've spoken before of my Art of Dreaming adventures from BITD, so I can feel the impetus that propels this investigative effort. However, one essential difference between the "normal" OBE and my experiences is the powerful feeling of control in the latter. The sensation that one's "I" separates from the bodily host and is freed from all physical restraints.
Catalonian scientists have applied these procedures to men who have been convicted of domestic abuse. The man is essentially transformed into the victim and experiences the emotions of that person.
Metzinger has practiced meditation twice a day for over forty years, and is familiar with Zen’s No-thingness, and thus can be considered a researcher who creates a new and promising approach to Mind, one that incorporates the meditative arts with modern technology.
A fascinating article.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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evidence that a specific neuroreceptor (5-HT2A) is involved in constructing the sense of self.
Putting that against Metzinger's and John Gill's out-of-body experiences, do we need to distinguish between a sense of body and a sense of self?
I think that Ed once posted about various ways your sense of the extent and location of your body can be modified.
Do children report out-of-body experiences, or is it mainly young male adults?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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I don't know specifically about young children and out of body experiences, but I do know from the mystical literature of many traditions and my own experience, that women have them too.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I would speculate that it is a common occurrence, and associated with the parts of the brain that calculate our body position in space. Those networks are responsible for coordinating motion, our sense of physical presence is associated with the types of mathematical transformations required to move.
Depending on the specific implementation of those transformations one would have a very different perception of our physical presence. The phenomenology of "out of body experiences" is consistent with an alteration of our perception of physical presence, which could be attributed to the calculations that the cerebellum performs.
The interesting part, for me, is why we have a particular sense of physical presence at all.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Weak Emergence gets criticized by some around here. But, there are unpredictable golden treasures, covered with diamonds, that arise from infinite compositions of linear fractional transformation forms . . .
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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A remarkably elaborate and appealing pattern.
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WBraun
climber
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When you finally get to the actual source of those patterns, math and everything else in the whole cosmic manifestation only then will be the end of the fleeting mind and come to the actual mind .......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Largo,
The thing for me about the New Yorker article is that it assumes that there are unequivocally right answers or clear and complete “facts” that science exposes. I know some of that literature in the article (coming from the cognitive science community, which has little weight here). Kahnemann and Tversky started most of it, almost brilliantly. Yet, it always seems to be the case that there are very critical underlying assumptions being made that end up dictating what right answers will result. For example, rationality (reason buttressed by metrics) or even just “reason” in a classical Greek sense, plain and simply. The major question is not so “what is reasonable / rational?” but rather why things *must be* reasonable or rational to be acceptable. In my view, reason is a consideration.
Secondly, I would complain about research experiments that are deceptive and untruthful on ethical basis. Manipulating people’s feelings, thoughts, and intentions—for whatever reason—seems instrumental and egregious. It’s difficult enough to live honestly, sincerely, in a fully engaged manner in this kind of world. People first; science second.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Good question. What happened?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Someone said that post number 20,000 should be reserved for Largo. That didn't happen. Now we must push the rock up the hill, again.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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For example, rationality (reason buttressed by metrics) or even just “reason” in a classical Greek sense, plain and simply.
That is an incomplete sentence.
The major question is not so “what is reasonable / rational?” but rather why things *must be* reasonable or rational to be acceptable. In my view, reason is a consideration.
Proper English and coherence are other considerations.
A poem does not need to be reasonable or rational to be acceptable.
A painting does not need to be reasonable or rational to be acceptable.
A symphony does not need to be reasonable or rational to be acceptable.
Even science does not need to be reasonable or rational to be acceptable.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2018 - 08:09pm PT
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The interesting part, for me, is why we have a particular sense of physical presence at all.
And behind, so to speak, the physical presence, or sense of the physical, is the presence itself - here before we think about it or conceptualize
- in which the physical is embedded.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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xCon: doesn't the observation of what species can recognize themselves in the mirror shed light on that?
Yes, I’d say it’s a surface feature.
I remember an article in a book, Similarity and Analogic Reasoning (Stella Vosniadou and Andrew Ortony, 1989) from Medin and Smith (I think) that argued wonderfully that surface features are what best expresses “what is”: surface features most point to what underlies what is. Science on the other hand you see, is most concerned with deep-structured explanation . . . not what we see. What Medin and Smith were saying was not at all spiritual or deep—at least that was what we understood when we read it. But, it could have been understood as wisdom from babes.
We can run around in circles in games we make up on the playground, and nothing really happens other than the activity, the excitement, the fun of it. There’s nothing in it but the fun. The Bhagavad Gita refers to it as the Lila. It’s just Shiva (the destroyer and creator) dancing with wild abandon. That’s why his hair is portrayed sticking out like that little black kid in The Little Rascals. It’s crazy wisdom.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FbD_ojWWXw
Is Our Universe Someone Else's Computer Simulation?
Linda Moulton Howe, Emmy Award-winning TV Producer and Reporter; Editor of the award-winning news website Earthfiles.com; and Investigative Reporter for Coast to Coast AM with George Noory on the iHeart Premiere Radio Networks opens up her investigations with human abductees and scientists about the possibility that our universe is Somebody Else’s computer simulation. Some people in the human abduction syndrome have reported that E.T.s describe our universe as a 3-D hologram projected from another dimension by a Super Intelligence. Quantum computer engineers and astrophysicists ask in scientific papers: “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation Universe?” On April 5, 2016, the Hayden Planetarium in New York hosted a debate on the question “Is the Universe A Simulation?” One of the panelists, James Gates, Ph.D., a theoretical physicist at the Univ. of Maryland said: “If the simulation hypothesis is valid, then we open the door to eternal life and resurrection and things that formally have been discussed in the realm of religion.” Human abductee Michael Talbot wrote in his 1992 book, The Holographic Universe, about what he learned from an alien.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 5, 2018 - 08:27am PT
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doesn't the observation of what species can recognize themselves in the mirror shed light on that?
---
Who, or what, observes?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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my head spins...
If the universe is a computer simulation and we're agents in that simulation, then perhaps those agents who've convinced the funders of scientific research that creating a "brain/mind" in computer simulation aren't selling snake oil after all.
The possibility of recursively generated simulation universes, in which the one universe, in simulation, creates another (or many) which in their own turn, create more, simulated universes, ad infinitum, could be considered mind boggling (if such a state is allowed in the program). Maybe they display their work in the fascinatingly beautiful images like those of our own jogill.
Or worse, perhaps jogill is unwittingly creating and destroying whole universes on his computer, a veritable Shiva, wielding his lap-top instead of a trishula, and a Corgi in his lap rather than a snake around his neck. Where is Ouch! when you need him? (On the other hand, we don't want to scare wbraun with such a depiction.)
The philosophical train wreck of The Matrix movie franchise seems tame in comparison. But apparently this sort of Hollywood "deep thought" passes for intellectually convincing argument. Oh, this was in reference to "Investigative Reporter for Coast to Coast AM with George Noory", obviously an attempt at authoritative attribution.
...on the other hand, perhaps all that's spinning is the cooling fan.
we could go into the energy requirements and physical limitations of such simulations, but why waste the time?
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