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WBraun
climber
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:18am PT
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I don't really know how seeing works or what it is. I feel sure there is no single model or theory of cognition.
As I've been saying all along you people have no real clue and just plain spend all your time guessing as mental speculation.
You don't even care as long as you make guesses and babble nonsense flowery language that pleases something in you.
You people really are lazy and just play in a sandbox and when things back into a corner resort to Buddhism and just say all we really need is love and compassion and Nobody knows.
Yes, love and compassion, all while you slaughter poor animals exactly what Buddha was preaching against.
You don't even have your Buddhism consciousness intact what to speak of what is mind.
You people are circling the drain into that black hole you so love ....
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:40am PT
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Mr Duck,
Sir. Do you really think telling everyone how stupid they are helps them to see?
Instead of getting frustrated and telling people how wrong they are all the time, how about some positive input? Maybe some guiding questions or something.
Your cosmic negativity is profound at times. It's like beating samll children.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:43am PT
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There's no stupid word in my post.
And you are guessing also to my motivation.
You just want flowery language too to please you at the expense of nothing ...
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:44am PT
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See.... there you go again.
Have a fun day.
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Trump
climber
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:46am PT
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You people are all “you people do it all wrong and need to do it more like me.” That’s cool - we people are like that too.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:52am PT
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"...but we don't yet have a good quantitative description of the structural, cellular, chemical, electrical, or functional makeup of a cubic millimeter of brain tissue. The inherent complexity of the brain is going to defy even rudimentary quantitative descriptions of any of those aspects of the brain for many, many decades to yet to come."
I agree that we don't have these descriptions. And while statements regarding the efficacy of applying our understanding, what theory does is organize the information and provides a means of making a quantified prediction, which can then be tested experimentally.
The quantification is important, both the precision and the accuracy, in determining the consistency of our description with observation. A successful theory makes predictions that agree with the observations, to the uncertainty of the observations.
Having accomplished this (and I am not saying we have yet) the theory provides a basis for not only predicting phenomena that have not yet been observed, but also to be implemented algorithmically in systems that behave in the manner described by the theory. This, in turn, allows a generalization of the theoretical description.
The theory that describes gravity, general relativity, provides the means to predict the behavior of masses and their interactions, which have been observed and are yet to be observed. We do not have to produce a black hole in a laboratory to do this, we have the theory. We might produce black holes in laboratories, more general than the popular conception of a black hole, as a possible consequence of the theory.
Search for Microscopic Black Hole Signatures at the Large Hadron Collider
CMS Collaboration
(Submitted on 15 Dec 2010)
A search for microscopic black hole production and decay in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been conducted by the CMS Collaboration at the LHC, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse picobarns. Events with large total transverse energy are analyzed for the presence of multiple high-energy jets, leptons, and photons, typical of a signal expected from a microscopic black hole. Good agreement with the expected standard model backgrounds, dominated by QCD multijet production, is observed for various final-state multiplicities. Limits on the minimum black hole mass are set, in the range 3.5 -- 4.5 TeV, for a variety of parameters in a model with large extra dimensions, along with model-independent limits on new physics in these final states. These are the first direct limits on black hole production at a particle accelerator.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1012.3375
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 19, 2019 - 08:55am PT
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Mike, solitude and the exploration and development of the unconscious go together. I have had periods where I focused intensively on either cognition or the unconscious so now at this stage of my life, I am trying to integrate them and treat each equally which I think is the true middle way.
Too much intellectualism or too much emotionalism either one, can lead a person astray. True believers who back up their dogma with emotion are the most difficult and dangerous of all.
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Apr 19, 2019 - 10:10am PT
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I don't really Mind getting a thwack by the Duck--it's kind of like a bad jolt, in a good way.
The subject/object or denotation(implied)/connotation(suggested) are purely up to my own Mind. Kind of like hearing double entendres anytime someone speaks.
The Duck reminds me of the Zen Master who is never tired of repeating himself, and not afraid to give the student a thwack with the stick.
When the assessment and evaluation stop I come back to just being. A rather homogenized state w/o flux and hence, an emotionless non animated boring blob. However, I find no good or evil in this state of being. All human constructs...Poof.
Enter the persona, the mask. Sure it's just a mask, a projection of me w/o really being who I really am, but there has to be some actor/action/conflict or the play is over. Peek ah boo isn't any fun if no one is hiding.
When I posted: Edit 2: I must be Insane! I did it as a preemptive strike from the Duck. I thought I was being funny but the joke was on me. I became anxious that someone might think I might be suicidal and worry about me--the last thing I want, lol.
Mind has an inherent need to fight and flight, struggle and retreat. It isn't a duality, it is a singularity. For most, W/o a balanced conflict comes mental illness. Very few can rest easily in a Blob non emotional state because most are not conditioned that way---I become uncomfortable with my comfort. Herman Hesse Siddhartha.
Carry on.
Edit; Peek ah boo isn't any fun if no one is hiding.Even if it is just hiding from myself.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 19, 2019 - 01:00pm PT
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I'm thankful for this thread and for JL for starting it. If this site were to become primarily climbing (e.g., to place a bolt on Superpin or not) I would likely abandon ship. Thanks to all of you for your contributions!
;>)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 19, 2019 - 07:06pm PT
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And you too, John. And everyone else. The conversations here are like the weather can be where I live in southern Arizona.
Thx, Jan.
Werner,
"Flowery language" is your complaint? Do you mean academic or articulated writing? I wonder: How do you sit with the writing in scriptures?
I am conscious, but cannot *say* what it is. You?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 20, 2019 - 08:57am PT
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Yes, I think we've all been made aware the past few days of how much we value this place and our friends here as we've seen both the worst and the best of Supertopo disappeared equally along with their historical and philosophical contributions.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 20, 2019 - 09:19am PT
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When your mind is no longer disturbed by the flowery language of the Vedas (scriptures) and when it remains fixed in the trance of self-realization, then you will have attained the divine consciousness ....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 20, 2019 - 10:20am PT
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I was watching a panel discussing physicist Art Hobson's controversial articles (AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIC) entitled, "There are no particles, there are only fields."
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.4616.pdf
People were going back and forth, each making credible arguments pro and con. Finally the opinion was asked of the youngest person on the panel (all scientists) and he said it was interesting to observe how people were in essence trying to "explain" all of reality according to whether or not they were particle folk or field folk. The implication being that one or the other was "more fundamental" insofar that either the chicken or the egg had to exist PRIOR to the other, meaning it (either the particle or the field) was in some wise the "fundamental cause" or first cause or efficient cause (however you might define that).
But it was what he said afterwards that intrigued me.
What, he wondered, if it was the case that fields and particles were inseparable and that the problem was that trying to "explain" reality using just one or the other eventually led to dead ends. It was undeniable, he said, that neither fields nor particles existed in any absolute form. Much as there is no such thing as "pure energy," he suggested, there are no empty fields nor particles existing independent of fields. And again, trying to explain reality using just one or the other was always problematic at some point.
For example, some want to a description of non-things that squares with the criteria used to quantify things, and barring that, cha cha cha...
There there's the difficulty of trying to ever "locate" mind by way of objective observations, which can only leave us with a description of objective functioning. Then there's the effort to consider things as fundamental and to "explain" mind by way of physical matter, but in every case mind gets left out of the equation.
While the young man had no solution, his sense of it was that fields and particles comprised an indivisible whole and that the fly in the ointment was the mistaken notion that any of this could be understood in terms of linear time. Like fields and particles, he sensed that the relation between timelessness and linear time was similar to the relationship between nothing (fields) and particles (stuff), and that both were in some yet grasped way, also indivisible.
Of course there were just fleeting comments making no attempt codify anything into theory, but it did remind me of the old Buddhist saw that "emptiness is form and form is emptiness ... exactly."
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 20, 2019 - 02:25pm PT
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Thought provoking post, John. I've wondered in the past if time and space can be thought of as separate entities. Spacetime, treated as a 4-dimensional "space" certainly involves a specific time dimension, but can one really consider it separate?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/splitting-time-from-space/
Are all the philosophical musings on the nature of time over the ages justified? And when Lynds proposes there are no "instants" of time does he have a leg to stand on?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 20, 2019 - 03:54pm PT
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Werner: When your mind is no longer disturbed by the flowery language of the Vedas (scriptures) and when it remains fixed in the trance of self-realization, then you will have attained the divine consciousness ....
This brings to mind a puzzle.
Supposedly, the scriptures were written by some of the most advanced teachers in history. Some were even liberated, it's said.
Hence, we see masters who know, writing in "flowery language."
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 20, 2019 - 05:26pm PT
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Mannnnnn ....
Michael, you're killing me.
You're like the guy arguing what color blue your underwear is and meanwhile the bus left .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 20, 2019 - 06:07pm PT
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While the analogy of "particle-field" to "mind" might be appealing, I don't think it is apt.
The particle-field duality has been around long time. Early on, field theory was thought to be a "pretty" formalism not appropriate for describing "real life" physics. It became the workhorse of theory providing the best framework for making accurate predictions.
Sometime in the 70's Schwinger decided to punk everyone and came up with "source theory" and a way to describe the same things as field theory. The sources are generally thought of as particles, though actually "charges" (and in particle physics there is a strong association between the "charge" and a particle, where "charge" is more general than electric charge, they are the sources of the fields).
The point is that, and it has been known for a long time, taking particles or fields, particles or waves, etc, either choice of formalism leads to the same results, and those results can be tested, experimentally.
We run into problems when we insist on explaining the realm of sub-atomic physics in terms of our everyday experience of stuff made out of huge numbers of atoms, our classical domain.
Dyson and Lenard started an industry in the late 1960s considering the "stability of matter." In their second paper they conclude that a Coulomb crystal of electrons sets the limit. So we have an electromagnetic field (quantum field), the electrons are infamous here for being a point particle, essentially nothing. From Largo's posts we have a nothing particle and a nothing field defining the stability of matter... which we take as something.
All very confusing if you insist on explaining things in terms of our everyday experience, assuming your everyday experience has nothing to do with atomic and subatomic phenomena. It isn't a surprise that someone with those experiences has difficulty explaining to someone who does not. Largo has this difficulty explaining his "mind adventures" to those who haven't "put in the work." He continuously points out how confusing it might seem to someone who doesn't have the same experiences as he does.
That is the analogy that is more apt.
As Feynman said in the lecture above, if the two theories predict the same things you can't distinguish the theories, they are equivalent. One theory might help you "guess" what direction to go, in understanding the phenomena the theories describe. Sometimes it's particles, sometimes it's fields... the theories provide equivalent explanations.
And this is because they make quantitative predictions of phenomena that can be measured in experiments and observations.
We can debate the philosophy of science, and what constitutes a credible theory, but in science it is the challenge of prediction by the experiments... the theory doesn't have to agree with "common sense," there is nothing "common" about these phenomena, few people have the experience.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 21, 2019 - 06:00am PT
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And for the macro world, that forces and particles are expressions, or the flip sides, of the same thing, is essentially irrelevant. It makes no difference to matter, life, biology, consciousness, or mind whether they are expressions of forces or fields; what matters is El Cap is a rock and it's there whether you or anyone else is around to observe it or not.
And, as Ed says, this, like most all of Largo's attempts to equate mind to the esoterica of quantum mechanics and particle physics, is simply a leap too far which simply doesn't hang together in any way beyond sounding and feeling right to him. Basically, it's another just another bleep take on the subject [appropriately without substance].
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 21, 2019 - 06:19am PT
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Werner: Michael, you're killing me.
I live to serve, Werner.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 21, 2019 - 06:59am PT
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Ed: a nothing particle and a nothing field defining the stability of matter... which we take as something. . . . explaining things in terms of our everyday experience . . .
I've put together these three phrases--which you may object to--but which expose the fragmented nature of research.
Correct me if I'm putting this wrong or poorly, but on the one hand, you consistently argue that the robustness of research lies in testing: good test and results ==> good science. On the other hand, as I read it, you seem to say that our common or everyday experience is not explained by the ideas (that we're talking about) supported by research. We repeatedly hear that the objective micro / quantum world does not explain or is connected to the macro world. It seems to me that at some point, the connection between the two worlds needs to be made, especially if we are to believe that research efforts *are* indeed driven by empirical observation.
Ideas and concepts arise, circulate, and fall almost solely within their own fields. Research is fragmented.
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