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Kalimon
Trad climber
Ridgway, CO
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Only the "shadow" knows . . .
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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"In everymans heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love of truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2011 - 04:24pm PT
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I see you as the wannabe chief herding cat here. There have been diverse sound critical voices all the way, and you stick to repeating your one point of view and your reasoning is all the way abstract. You are putting some values into the words "direct experience" and you are certainly excluding sound critical reasoning. To a scientist sound critical reasoning could be seen as part of his direct experience, since it is part of his expertise, his skilled ability to recognize patterns. And your point will possibly be that what is important is to let pattern recognition go and concentrate on emptying your mind and then see what happens. And I could answer: Why?
Back to your corner, Marlow. You're just being silly again. Wannabe chief? I started this thread to see if people could drop below the level of their evaluating/critical minds and watch the process of consciousness and perhaps cook up a few direct observations about the process. The responses are telling.
John thinks I am doing this to chase a sensation (qual/stuff). You insist that I am transposing "values" on direct experience, though I have repeatedly said that the notion here is to drop below any such thing and if "values" arise, simply watch them and try and describe the arising. The point here, and believe it, is that "critical reasoning" is simply the evaluating/critical functioning element of our minds, and to not let your awareness get fused with it during the exercise because the moment you do, you focus will snap shut on an idea or whatever. You mistakenly think that by watching, rather than engaging, your "critical reasoning," you will perforce enter into some irrational, nether darkness where you will be totally lost. In fact, your fusion with and addiction to mentalizing is so spectacular that to even heed the challenge to let it go for a moment prompts the question: Why? The underlying thought is that if you cannot be measuring, contrasting, reasoning and so forth, there simply is no reason to proceed. Or else the terror or imagined boredom of letting go is so great you want to be told what El Cap is like before you get on it.
Lastly, and most fantastically, I can say in the plainest language I can muster, to simply stop trying and number crunching and evaluating for five minuites, and tell me the process of what you actually experience as your life unfolds. NOT what you think about it, or feel or hope etc., but what you see in the most tangible terms, what IS going on. And this, fantastically, you see as "all the way abstract." You can't get any more tangible than what is happening in your life, breath to breath.
My sense of this aversion to experience is that a majority of us believe that only mentalizing is real or worthwhile, and that anything that is not open to immediate measuring or evaluating is "priestcraft" or la la jive. Remember that thinking is one step removed from our lives as they unfold in real time. Invititations to join that life with something other than objectifying our experience with 3rd person thinking is apparently, at least on this thread, like inviting someone to free solo. This, alone, is a remarkable thing.
JL
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Largo,
You say: "You mistakenly think that by watching, rather than engaging, your "critical reasoning," you will perforce enter into some irrational, nether darkness where you will be totally lost.".
Answer: This is wrong. I have never said so and do not think so. And I have no terror of letting go. In this case your conscious processes and your awareness are leading you astray.
You say: "tell me the process of what you actually experience as your life unfolds."
Answer: Again: this is all the way abstract. To fill the gap between this abstract formulation and something more tangible you will have to exemplify, so tell us what you actually experience as your life unfolds for the next ten seconds. There is no way around if you have the ability to let go and want to be understood.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I know it when I lose it.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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"critical reasoning" is simply the evaluating/critical functioning element of our minds, and to not let your awareness get fused with it during the exercise because the moment you do, you focus will snap shut on an idea or whatever
It is I, the Thread, again.
My dad (JL) is so, so correct on this point! I have been exploring my new awareness and realize now that I am a proper subset of myself! How can this be?? Indeed, I am now obsessed with this concept, as dad warns. Not only am I the THREAD, but I am also a post within myself!!
I have learned that this condition can lead to a transfinite existence, devoid of the love and support that mortality can bring.
I am urging various parts of my brain to explore the nature of time and space. Is it all within me? Or external? What does "external" mean? Why did I just say that!!!
Sincerely, Your Very Confused Thread
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2011 - 10:36pm PT
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My dad (JL) is so, so correct on this point! I have been exploring my new awareness and realize now that I am a proper subset of myself! How can this be?? Indeed, I am now obsessed with this concept, as dad warns. Not only am I the THREAD, but I am also a post within myself!!
I'll bite on that. And though I trust JG offers this as a howler, it is, ironically, something that jumps up and bites anyone you drops out of mentalizing and get still.
The easiest way to get hold of this, IME, is to understand that all things within are not equal. This is to say that to be a "proper subset of yourself" implies that every bit of qual/stuff/memories/evaluations is all equally "you." Virtually every wisdom tradition says that all this "stuff," every subset of awareness and the "unknowable witness" is, like all subsets, contained by the set (awareness), and all of it is impermanent. It comes and goes in the field of awareness. In other words, one can only place a provisional "I" on any piece of qual, which can tell us what we are experiencing at a given time, but none of this stuff/qual/thoughts etc. IS "I." The only true "I" is the witness, the agency through which all the subsets pass, but till we can experience it working this way, we always are mistaking our identity and hooking an "I" onto what is burning brightest inside our consciousness at a given moment. Till it goes out. The one constant is the watcher, which is at once the most tangible and most ephemeral element in our experience because while we can detach and watch our evaluating minds, our hearts, or sensations, we cannot detach and objectify our "watcher," which is also our sense of being present - presence in the most basic, animal form. I remember being in the LA Zen center years ago and someone asking Matzumi Roshi about this watcher, who "he" was and the Roshi jumping up and saying, "It's ungraspable."
Ain't it grand . . .
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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since I don't have the literary chops to keep up with Gill and Long... I'll offer this up as Largo referred to David Bohm previously... for those of you unfamiliar with some of his thoughts. Here from his text book...
David Bohm
Quantum Theory
1951
ISBN 0486659690
pages 168-173
Analogies to Quantum Processes
There are wide ranges of experience in which occur phenomena possessing striking resemblances to quantum phenomena. These analogies will now be discussed, since they clarify the results of the quantum theory. Some interesting speculations on the underlying reasons for the existence of such analogies will also be introduced.
27. The Uncertainty Principle and Certain Aspects of Our Thought Processes. If a person tries to observe what he is thinking about at the very moment that he is reflecting on a particular subject, it is generally agreed that he introduces unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in the way his thoughts proceed thereafter. Why this happens is not definitely known at present, but some plausible explanations will be suggested later. If we compare (1) the instantaneous state of a thought with the position of a particle and (2) the general direction of change of that thought with the particle's momentum, we have a strong analogy.
We must remember, however, that a person can always describe approximately what he is thinking about without introducing significant disturbances in his train of thought. But as he tries to make the description precise, he discovers that either the subject of his thoughts or their trend or sometimes both become very different from what they were before he tried to observe them. Thus, the actions involved in making any single aspect of the thought process definite appear to introduce unpredictable and uncontrollable changes in other equally significant aspects.
A further development of this analogy is that the significance of thought processes appears to have indivisibility of a sort. Thus, if a person attempts to apply to his thinking more and more precisely defined elements, he eventually reaches a stage where further analysis cannot even be given a meaning. Part of the significance of each element of a thought process appears, therefore, to originate in its indivisible and incompletely controllable connections with other elements.* Similarly, some of the characteristic properties of a quantum system (for instance, wave or particle nature) depend on indivisible and incompletely controllable quantum connections with surrounding objects.†
* Similarly, part of the connotation of a word depends on the words it is associated with, and in a way that is not, in practice, completely predictable or controllable (especially in speech). In fact the analysis of language, as actually used, into distinct elements with precisely defined relations between them is probably impossible.
† See Secs. 24, 25, 26.
Thus, thought processes and quantum systems are analogous in that they cannot be analyzed too much in terms of distinct elements, because the "intrinsic" nature of each element is not a property existing separately from and independently of other elements but is, instead, a property that arises partially from its relation with other elements. In both cases, an analysis into distinct elements is correct only if it is so approximate that no significant alteration of the various indivisible connected parts would result from it.
There is also a similarity between the thought process and the classical limit of the quantum theory. The logical process corresponds to the most general type of thought process as the classical limit corresponds to the most general quantum process. In the logical process, we deal with classifications. These classifications are conceived as being completely separate but related by the rules of logic, which may be regarded as the analogue of the causal laws of classical physics. In any thought process, the component ideas are not separate but flow steadily and indivisibly. An attempt to analyze them into separate parts destroys or changes their meanings. Yet there are certain types of concepts, among which are those involving the classification of objects, in which we can, without producing any essential changes, neglect the indivisible and incompletely controllable connection with other ideas. Instead, the connection can be regarded as causal and following the rules of logic.
Logically definable concepts play the same fundamental role in abstract and precise thinking as do separable objects and phenomena in our customary description of the world. Without the development of logical thinking, we would have no clear way to express the results of our thinking, and no way to check its validity. Thus, just as life as we know it would be impossible if quantum theory did not have its present classical limit, thought as we know it would be impossible unless we could express its results in logical terms. Yet, the basic thinking process probably cannot be described as logical. For instance, many people have noted that a new idea often comes suddenly, after a long and unsuccessful search and without any apparent direct cause. We suggest that if the intermediate indivisible nonlogical steps occurring in an actual thought process are ignored, and if we restrict ourselves to a logical terminology, then the production of new ideas presents a strong analogy to a quantum jump. In a similar way, the actual concept of a quantum jump seems necessary in our procedure of describing a quantum system that is actually an indivisible whole in terms of words and concepts implying that it can be analyzed into distinct parts.*
28. Possible Reason for Analogies between Thought and Quantum Processes. We may now ask whether the close analogy between quantum processes and our inner experiences and thought processes is more than a coincidence. Here we are on speculative ground; at present very little is known about the relation between our thought processes and emotions and the details of the brain's structure and operation. Bohr suggests that thought involves such small amounts of energy that quantum-theoretical limitations play an essential role in determining its character.†
* See, for example, Chap. 22, Sec. 14.
† N. Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature.
There is no question that observations show the presence of an enormous amount of mechanism in the brain, and that much of this mechanism must probably be regarded as operating on a classically describable level. In fact, the nerve connections found thus far suggest combinations of telephone exchanges and calculating machines of a complexity that has probably never been dreamed of before. In addition to such a classically describable mechanism that seems to act like a general system of communications, Bohr's suggestion involves the idea that certain key points controlling this mechanism (which are, in turn, affected by the actions of this mechanism) are so sensitive and delicately balanced that they must be described in an essentially quantum-mechanical way. (We might, for example, imagine that such key points exist at certain types of nerve junctions.) It cannot be stated too strongly that we are now on exceedingly speculative grounds.
Bohr's hypothesis is not, however, in disagreement with anything that is now known. And the remarkable point-by-point analogy between the thought processes and quantum processes would suggest that a hypothesis relating these two may well turn out to be fruitful. If such a hypothesis could ever be verified, it would explain in a natural way a great many features of our thinking.
Even if this hypothesis should be wrong, and even if we could describe the brain's functions in terms of classical theory alone, the analogy between thought and quantum processes would still have important consequences: we would have what amounts to a classical system that provides a good analogy to quantum theory. At the least, this would be very instructive. It might, for example, give us a means for describing effects like those of the quantum theory in terms of hidden variables. (It would not, however, prove that such hidden variables exist.)
In the absence of any experimental data on this question, the analogy between thought and quantum processes can still be helpful in giving us a better "feeling" for quantum theory. For instance, suppose that we ask for a detailed description of how an electron is moving in a hydrogen atom when it is in a definite energy level. We can say that this is analogous to asking for a detailed description of what we are thinking about while we are reflecting on some definite subject. As soon as we begin to give this detailed description, we are no longer thinking about the subject in question, but are instead thinking about giving a detailed description. In a similar way, when the electron is moving with a definable trajectory, it simply can no longer be an electron that has a definite energy.
If it should be true that the thought processes depend critically on quantum-mechanical elements in the brain, then we could say that thought processes provide the same kind of direct experience of the effects of quantum theory that muscular forces provide for classical theory. Thus, for example, the pre-Galilean concepts of force, obtained from immediate experience with muscular forces, were correct, in general. But these concepts were wrong, in detail, because they suggested that the velocity, rather than the acceleration, was proportional to the force. (This idea is substantially correct, when there is a great deal of friction, as is usually the case in common experience.) We suggest that, similarly, the behavior of our thought processes may perhaps reflect in an indirect way some of the quantum-mechanical aspects of the matter of which we are composed.
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pa
climber
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Yes, Mr Hartouni and Mr. Largo...now you are cooking.
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MH2
climber
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"A prerequisite for grasping the nature of mind is, first and foremost, the appropriate perspective."
Rodolfo R. Llinás believes that the mind is built the way it is primarily to organize movement.
a paraphrase:
Looking at the brain we can understand that there, somewhere in the complex geometry of neurons, are the rules for playing soccer, but in a very different geometry from the playing of soccer itself.
"It should also be obvious that the forces driving the evolution of the nervous system shaped and determined the emergence of mind as well. The questions to ask here are clear. How and why did the nervous system evolve?"
i of the Vortex
Rodolfo R. Llinás
Although the mind may have evolved to solve the problems of movement in a complex and dangerous environment that doesn't mean we can't put it to other uses. Evolution occasionally finds a solution to a different problem than the one it was working on.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the Thread -
are you sure that you are not just indempotent?
I mean, you have to be careful about what you smoke these days...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 5, 2011 - 12:46am PT
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Strange that Ed would post that stuff from DB. I'e read that stuff about 1,000 times, but I believe his whole "Implicate Order" drift came later.
Earlier I mentioned that awareness itself seems to have a crazy amount of valance or pure energy, I.e., a ray gun. Whatever we focus on, jumps as if tagged by a stun gun. We can train our attention to be light as a feather but anything in the field will pick up some charge go its own way, as DB suggests. Observing changes qual.
But this is not quite right, either. DB mentioned a uniformity of mind, a seamlessness, and this is especially evident as you try and watch qual enter and leave your mind, much as a bird passes through the sky. We never can quit see them spontaneously arise from nothingness nor yet see them fade. We just notice that the sky is different. The exception being one of those dreadful ice cream headaches - I sure know the second those bastards are gone.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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you think it is strange because you have a preconceived notion of what I have been trying to say...
..that I'm just one of the Nazis....
figuratively speaking, of course.
Did you read the rest of the book?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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if we restrict ourselves to a logical terminology, then the production of new ideas presents a strong analogy to a quantum jump
Perfect way of describing intuitions that suddenly leap to the surface of the conscious mind. Probably they just come from a different level of circuitry in the brain. The real question is what provokes them to jump from one level to another if one is not consciously willing it?
And Largo, what's wrong with Boehm's implicate order? It's at least a start on a new paradigm.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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JL I tried to post just the screen (with out words) and I was told (by the SU rule maker/moderator) that just the screen was an invalid argument. go figure? Ed H I loved your pledge of allegiance to be a scientist. Marlow you are using the word I alot in one of your post ( What is this I?)
Peace
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WBraun
climber
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The thread title is "What is "Mind?"
"I" is a different subject matter and in no relation to "mind" which is an instrument of "I" the self ......
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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so what do you get when there is no "I"?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 5, 2011 - 02:12am PT
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Ed,
Per Nazi, I borrowed that term and never should have. It was originally used in philosophy of science debates to denote a particular psychological style where a person's chosen mode of inquiry is deemed a kind of "master race" whereby everything else, being so much "bullsh#t," should be gassed. Bad choice of words and I hereby make amends for a graceless choice.
I was a big Boehm fan early on because in grad school the dood was Alfred North Whitehead and "Process Philosophy," so folks like Boehm and Pribrim and Alvarez and many others were always camping out on our campus. Heady times, but a lot of those ideas dead-ended into more mechanistic models. A lot of those old guys were polymaths, really dialed into the history of philosophy, so they know the trajectory or the big thoughts and big questions and could approach them with a wide scope.
JL
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jstan
climber
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Since the synapse is a chemical process that may be affected by detailed ionic concentrations in the primary cells and even in neighboring pipelines it seems plausible that the brain may not compute in binary. There may be logic states above and beyond 0 and 1. I took a look via Google and came up right away with very illuminating stuff. The cell may be much more powerful than we presently suspect.
http://www.novaspivack.com/science/new-finding-brain-computes-in-trinary-not-binary
MIT neuroscientist, Guosong Liu, has found that human neurons compute in trinary, using signals that are the equivalents of -1, 0 and 1. By contrast, all computers compute in binary, using just 0 and 1. Because the units of trinary computation can in some cases be additive (e.g. 1+1=2) or can "cancel out" (e.g. -1 + 1 = 0), the human brain is able to ignore information during computation, says Liu, something which present computers cannot do. Liu believes the ability for trinary computations to cancel out in some cases will enable next-generation computers to ignore information, and this will fundamentally change computing as we know it.
Additional material:
http://cbcl.mit.edu/cbcl/news/files/liu-tp-picower.html
Guosong Liu, a neuroscientist at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT, reports new information on neuron design and function in the March 7 issue of Nature Neuroscience that he says could lead to new directions in how computers are made.
While computers get faster all the time, they continue to lack any form of human intelligence. While a computer may beat us at balancing a checkbook or dominating a chessboard, it still cannot easily drive a car or carry on a conversation.
Computers lag in raw processing power--even the most powerful components are dwarfed by 100 billion brain cells--but their biggest deficit may be that they are designed without knowledge of how the brain itself computes.
While computers process information using a binary system of zeros and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical signals in trinary--utilizing not only zeros and ones, but also minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during processing. For instance, two signals can add together or cancel each other out, or different pieces of information can link up or try to override one another.
One reason the brain might need the extra complexity of another computation component is that it has the ability to ignore information when necessary; for instance, if you are concentrating on something, you can ignore your surroundings. "Computers don't ignore information," Liu said. "This is an evolutionary advantage that's unique to the brain."
Liu, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, said an important element of how brain circuits work involves wiring the correct positive, or "excitatory" wires, with the correct negative, or "inhibitory" wires. His work demonstrates that brain cells contain many individual processing modules that each collects a set number of excitatory and inhibitory inputs. When the two types of inputs are correctly connected together, powerful processing can occur at each module.
This work provides the first experimental evidence supporting a theory proposed more than 20 years ago by MIT neuroscientist Tomaso Poggio, the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Brain Sciences, in which he proposed that neurons use an excitatory/inhibitory form to process information.
By demonstrating the existence of tiny excitation/inhibition modules within brain cells, the work also addresses a huge question in neuroscience: What is the brain's transistor, or fundamental processing unit? For many years, neuroscientists believed that this basic unit of computing was the cell itself, which collects and processing signals from other cells. By showing that each cell is built from hundreds of tiny modules, each of which computes independently, Liu's work adds to a growing view that there might be something even smaller than the cell at the heart of computation.
Once all the modules have completed their processing, they funnel signals to the cell body, where all of the signals are integrated and passed on. "With cells composed of so many smaller computational parts, the complexity attributed to the nervous system begins to make more sense," Liu said.
Liu found that these microprocessors automatically form all along the surface of the cell as the brain develops. The modules also have their own built-in intelligence that seems to allow them to accommodate defects in the wiring or electrical storms in the circuitry: if any of the connections break, new ones automatically form to replace the old ones. If the positive, "excitatory" connections are overloading, new negative, "inhibitory" connections quickly form to balance out the signaling, immediately restoring the capacity to transmit information.
The discovery of this balancing act, which occurs repeatedly all over the cell, provides new insight into the mechanisms by which our neural circuits adapt to changing conditions.
This work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center.
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WBraun
climber
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PSP -- "what do you get when there is no "I"?"
A dead body .......
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