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jstan
climber
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Jun 25, 2014 - 07:43am PT
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Speaking of minds....
Here is a really excellent one. Funny too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc
Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and who recently passed.
A scream.
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MH2
climber
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Jun 25, 2014 - 06:53pm PT
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I'm 15 minutes in to the Douglas Adams talk. It is hilarious but alarming the way much of Adams' work is. I have read Last Chance to See, which seems to be what he is talking about. (Also read Long Dark Teatime of the Soul which he just mentioned.)
I pause there to tell an anecdote about another thing Adams says in his talk; that we all carry around a lot of history we don't know about. Today I was walking our dogs and an old guy asked me if I was wearing a Tilley Hat. I was and he was, too. He said he had bought his first hat from Tilley himself.
Old guy asked me if I carried anything in the hat's pocket. I did not know it had a pocket. I also do not know where the hat came from. Old guy said that the pocket was for keeping a bit of money, "In case you needed bus fare." As I was being told this I was finding that there was a pocket in my hat and that it held a bill for 1,000 something-or-others in Tanzanian currency.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jun 26, 2014 - 06:07am PT
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"In that sense I'd say it is like the robot, it's behavior will become more and more sophisticated, and it might, eventually, appear to us as if it has sentience and consciousness. At that point it is really a mote point whether or not the circuitry is the biology of neurons or of silicon circuits."
Water based life forms = neurons = us.
Silicon based life forms = silicon circuits = them.
'An Us or a Them?'
When the travelers come,
Be they foe or be friend,
A more humanoid race,
Or robots that offend,
Will we be at all odds,
Or all ever depend,
On our faculties to join,
As an us and a them?
-Bushman
06/26/2014
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 26, 2014 - 09:41pm PT
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^^^Good One Bushman! You could add some more to it.
I dunno. How about staying on subject for once? Energy... is a thing. Right?
i'd like to hear your deffinition.
If it's matterless, is it a thing? Would Horsepower be considered a Thing?
i know it's an amount of energy it takes to move something. And it takes a body of matter to cause it, but what's the "thing" that drives the force?
Then there's the big G(gravity). If there's no such thing as a "Gravitron",
what's the "thing" pulling us to the center of the planet?
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MH2
climber
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Jun 27, 2014 - 07:18am PT
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Easy does it, people. All this transfer of information is increasing the entropy. I am chastened after listening to the rest of Douglas Adams' Parrots, the Universe, and Everything.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jun 27, 2014 - 07:48am PT
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'An Us or a Them'
When the travelers come,
Be they foe or be friend,
A more humanoid race,
Or robots that offend,
Will we be at all odds,
Or all ever depend,
On our faculties to join,
As an us and a them,
As robotic implants pulse,
Embedded in our crowns,
Our biology the backup,
When the mainframe crashes down,
Not mayhem, nor drama,
Or Weltschmerz brings us down,
So hardwired is mother's nurturing,
We're impervious to a frown,
As our conclave of new scientists,
Of all cybernetic designs,
Search for distant 'things' or 'acts',
In all frequencies 'it' finds,
Searching out the galaxies,
We 'Humandroids' in kind,
Will find we've already joined with 'them',
If only in our 'minds'.
-bushman
06/27/2014
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2014 - 08:57am PT
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Dingus said: "If it's in the universe, it's a thiing."
My scientist friend said that he believes Dingus hasn't yet distinguished the difference between an observable "thing" and the effects of unobservable forces. What's more, where do these forces come from? he asked. It is not so cut and dry and our Dingus might believe. He referreed me to this article:
In January 2010, Erik Verlinde, professor of Theoretical Physics and world-renowned string theorist, caused a stir.
"Everyone who is working on theoretical physics is trying to improve on Einstein," says Robbert Dijkgraaf, UvA University Professor and current director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (where scientists including Turing, Oppenheimer and Einstein have worked) In my opinion, Erik Verlinde has found an important key for the next step forward."
Verlinde, who received the Spinoza prize (the Dutch Nobel Prize) from the Netherlands Organisation for Science, is famous for developing this new theory, or idea, on gravity in which he says that gravity is an illusion.
"Gravity is NOT an illusion in the sense that we know that things fall," says Verline." Most people, certainly in physics, think we can describe gravity perfectly adequately using Einstein’s General Relativity. But it now seems that we can also start from a microscopic formulation where there is no gravity to begin with, but you can derive it. This is called ‘emergence’."
"We have other phenomena in Physics like this," Verlinde continued. "Take a concept like ‘temperature’, for instance. We experience it every day. We can feel temperature. But, if you really think about the microscopic molecules, there’s no notion of temperature there. It’s something that has to do with the property of all molecules together; it’s like the average energy per molecule."
To Verlinde, gravity is similar. It’s something that only appears when you put many things together at a microscopic scale and then you suddenly see that certain equations arise. "As scientists," he observes, "we first want to understand nature and our universe. In doing so, we have observed things that are deeply puzzling, such as phenomena related to dark matter. We see things happening that we don’t understand. There must be more matter out there that we don’t see. There’s also something called ‘dark energy’. And then there’s the whole puzzle of the beginning of the universe. We now have what is called the ‘Big Bang’ theory.
Verline belives his ideas will shed new light on the concept of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ and why they’re important in relation to gravity.
"We think we understand gravity in most situations," he says "but when we look at galaxies and, on much larger scales, at galaxy clusters, we see things happening that we don’t understand using our familiar equations, like Newton’s equation of gravity or even Einstein’s gravity. So we have to assume there’s this mysterious form of matter, which we call dark matter, which we cannot see. Now dark energy is even weirder, in the sense that we don’t even know what it consists of. It’s something we can put in our equations to make things work, but there’s really a big puzzle to be solved in terms of why it’s there and what it’s made of. At present, we have not really found the right equations to describe it. There’s clearly progress to be made in terms of finding a better theory of gravity, and understanding what’s happening in our universe."
For example, the Big Bang theory is the idea that at a particular moment things suddenly started exploding and growing, and that our universe got bigger, which Verlinde finds illogical to think it came from this one moment.
"It’s illogical to think there was nothing and then it exploded. We use concepts like time and space," he adds, "but we don’t really understand what this means microscopically. That might change. The Big Bang has to do with our understanding of what time should be, and I think we will have a much better understanding of this in the future. I think we will figure out that what we thought was the Big Bang was actually a different kind of event. Or maybe that we should not think that the universe really began at a particular moment and that there’s another way to describe that."
Verlinde believes that the information we have today and the equations we now use only describe a very small part of what is actually going on. "If you think that something grows, like our universe, than something else must become smaller," he observes."I think there’s something we haven’t found yet and this will help us discover the origins of our universe. In short, the universe originated from something, not from nothing. There was something there and we have to find the equations. It has something to do with dark energy and how that is related to dark matter. If we understand the equations for those components of our universe, I think we’ll also have a better understanding of how the universe began. I think it’s all about the interplay between these different forms of energy and matter.
The Big Bang theory works well in the sense that it gives us some understanding of how particular elements in our universe came about and there are other things that we can observe, like the radiation that came from the Big Bang. But the whole idea of an expanding universe that started with a big explosion will change. "You need to think about the equations in a bigger setting," Verlinde observes. "You need to describe more than just the matter particles. You need to know more about what space/time is. All these things have to come together in order to be able to explain the Big Bang."
Quantum mechanics took approximately 26 years to develop, Verlinde concludes. "We’ve had string theory for 40 years and nothing yet has come out of that which can be directly tested with observations or experiments. I think my idea has a greater chance of being tested with observations, which is an exciting thing. I think it will take no more than 10 or 15 years."
The end result be belives will lead to a paradigm shift in how people think that the universe was created.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 27, 2014 - 09:41am PT
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i'd like to hear your deffinition.
If it's matterless, is it a thing? Would Horsepower be considered a Thing?
i know it's an amount of energy it takes to move something. And it takes a body of matter to cause it, but what's the "thing" that drives the force?
Energy is a quality, not a thing. Sure, every form of matter that I know of has some energy (help me Ed), you could think of energy as a quality of matter. I dunno about the nigh invisible particles such as neutrinos, which are barely detectable.
Horsepower is not a thing. It is a quantity of kinetic energy produced by, say your car engine.
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go-B
climber
Cling to what is good!
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Jun 27, 2014 - 10:01am PT
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I thought (E=M) was for Erik Erikkson + Many El Cap Routes!
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 27, 2014 - 10:04am PT
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No. E=MC2.
I'm not aware of mass arising from energy, but you can convert mass to energy. I suppose in theory you could create mass from energy, but it is probably at a subatomic scale in elaborate experiments.
Nukes, reactors, even unstable nuclei. All produce energy from fission or fusion. There are other cool things like the photoelectric effect.
I'm getting way out of comfort zone here. We all need a basic primer for dummies from Ed H. We would be lost without him.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2014 - 10:25am PT
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BASE said: Energy is a quality, not a thing.
There you have it. Other names are emergent functions, etc.
The reason that I quote my friends is that they speak the language of most on this thread, and I speak another language. I understand the former language just fine, having spend decdades writing technical manuals where if my quantificatios were wrong or misguided, people die. But quantifying is not my vocation per se nor yet my real study.
What my friend meant by energy and gravity and sentience NOT being things - in the normal, common usage sense of the word, is that none of these in and of THEMSELVES are observable physical objects = things.
In all cases you have to refer to an object that is held to either "produce" the quality in question (brain creates mind), or which is the effect-recipient of said quality (faling rocks are propelled by gravity).
I believe Dingus is suggesting that anything that exists is a thing, whereas most of us, I suspect, consider a thing and an observable object to be the selfsame, and as any schookboy knows, you can't see gravity, horsepower, energy, sentience, etc., only the direct effects of same.
JL
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 27, 2014 - 11:05am PT
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I believe Dingus is suggesting that anything that exists is a thing, whereas most of us, I suspect, consider a thing and an observable object to be the selfsame, and as any schookboy knows, you can't see gravity, horsepower, energy, sentience, etc., only the direct effects of same.
JL
Gravity falls into a different category. It is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Just throw a rock and you can see it in action. Oddly, it is by far the weakest of the 4 physical forces.
Energy can be measured very accurately. I don't call it a "thing". It is a property. It is very real and anyone with senses notices energy in every atom of our body. Like right now I am sitting in a chair instead of floating around in space. It is a cool day...about 75 F.
The term Heat gets tossed around too much. It is OK to use the word if you understand what it means, but all it means is transfer of energy from a high energy state to a low energy state. So you stick your hand above a hot stove and feel the energy.
DMT, you were right. All energy has some mass according to wiki.
The electromagnetic spectrum is really cool if you are curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jun 27, 2014 - 11:19am PT
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Interesting article, John. Thanks for posting it. Thought-provoking.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2014 - 11:24am PT
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Gravity falls into a different category. It is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Just throw a rock and you can see it in action.
What you observe is the rock as it is affected by gravity. You don't see gravity itself. Same thing with sentience. That's the point.
Per the energy ~ mass question, I was given this:
Energy and mass are not the same thing. This is a common misunderstanding, fueled by badly written text books.
Energy does contribute to the mass of an object, though. For instance, a charged capacitor, storing energy in its electric field, should have slightly more mass than the same capacitor after being discharged. The difference is so small, though, that it would be enormously difficult to measure.
A photon, on the other hand, has energy but no mass.
See http://www2.corepower.com:8080/~relfaq/m
Put differently: Energy itself does not have mass, but massive energy is theorised to CREATE physical mass.
E = MC^2
All theoretical, but the throry says that all the matter had to come from somewhere, when all there may have been is energy.
Tiz a puzzlement.
JL
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 27, 2014 - 11:30am PT
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The idea that sentience is a "thing," (a very crude word we are using) depends on certain factors.
Does it possess mass or energy? If it does posses energy, then how come it is immeasurable (so far).
Sentience seems to be a quality rather than an object, although it obviously emerges from a very sophisticated object: the brain.
Why don't you Zen dudes talk more about what you are doing? I was reading the classic Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feynman the other day. There is a cool chapter where he talks about hanging out with these guys working with sensory deprivation tanks. They told him about vivid hallucinations and out of body experiences.
He goes on to describe total failure the first few times, but with effort and a little more experience he WAS capable of creating hallucinations and even move his "self" around him. He could move his sense of self down to his toes, for instance. Remember. He was a beginner in this, so the really experienced people could probably do far more.
This is a hardcore physicist having fun and checking things out. He wasn't afraid of ridicule.
After I read that, I thought of this thread, and why we almost never hear about the results of your ventures within your own minds. The actions and responses of this Zen meditation.
Don't worry about ridicule. At this point it would illuminate things greatly. Do away with this false dichotomy of language beneath which we struggle.
So Largo, ever had an out of body experience? Can you make yourself hallucinate?
This is very old stuff. Primitive man had a deep spiritual belief which was pretty universal. Consider the warrior who climbs a mountain and stares at the sun for days on a vision quest. This stuff isn't that different as far as I can see.
I have a brother in law who was an optometrist at the Pine Ridge Reservation. He said that he had to deal with a ton of early onset cataracts. They still go on vision quests.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jun 27, 2014 - 11:34am PT
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The stars burned with lidless fixity and they drew nearer in the night until toward
dawn he was stumbling among the whinstones of the uttermost ridge to heaven, a
barren range of rock so enfolded in that gaudy house that stars lay awash at his feet
and migratory spalls of burning matter crossed constantly about him on their chartless
reckonings. In the predawn light he made his way out upon a promontory and there
received first of any creature in that country the warmth of the sun’s ascending.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jun 27, 2014 - 12:49pm PT
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So Largo, ever had an out of body experience? Can you make yourself hallucinate? (Base)
My impression is that Zen practitioners consider this sort of thing an impediment to seeking their true nature. I have described such experiences several times on this thread and have either been ignored or answered with statements saying that such experiences can have a profound effect. Period. Polite but a little dismissive, perhaps. That's OK.
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MH2
climber
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Jun 27, 2014 - 12:54pm PT
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You don't see gravity itself. Same thing with sentience. That's the point. (JL)
What do you see directly, itself?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2014 - 02:22pm PT
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Why don't you Zen dudes talk more about what you are doing?
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Becuse most all constructive talking about Zen or any no-mind practice issues from the practive itself, not from guessing or specuating on the practice.
What most people want when they say, "Tell me about the practice," is to get some morsal of information they can discursively wrangle and work up an evaluation basied not on practice or the experiential fruit of practice, rather on nothng at all. And because the practice is not a cognitive or self-improvement program, most of the import only confuses people and leads to endless looping around and arguing about things people have no direct experience with, and which they are left to imagine or try and cram into discursive terms. Even the most basic aspects of "the work" become articles of contention that seem ridiculous and absurd to anyone who does practices.
Take the idea of no-mind. People try and get hold of this - which runs through every esoteric tradition there is - and end up with some imagined mental state (mind) or mode of consciousness, such as Ward thinking it is a kind of blank state, or brain dead vegitable awareness - in other words, folks are struggling to grasp no-mind in mental terms. When we say, No. That's not what we are talking about, they throw up their hands and say, Then what IS it? If it isn't some thing, as Dingus keeps shouting, it must be nothing at all, just some fairy dust that we are "preaching."
Who needs that? Ad John S. has said many times, it's a waste of time.
One way to possibly go about this is to reflect back on experiences you have had that are the very opposite of mystical, whatever that is, or "flow states" (which involve content), but which were different than your normal life, and then go from there. Without any commmon ground, we can only spin, IMO.
JL
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