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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Aug 21, 2015 - 10:39pm PT
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Who's to say AI sans humans might not be an improvement in let's say, a hundred years sans humans?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 22, 2015 - 03:54am PT
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AI is not going to produce a conscious machine.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 23, 2015 - 01:04pm PT
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I am reposting a reference by Cintune on the religion vs science thread since it's very interesting and seems more appropo to this thread.
The article discusses the differences in size and convolutions and length of evolutionary time scale of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) compared to primates, especially humans. All physical measurements favor the cetaceans. Unfortunately, their intelligence has evolved so differently than our own, it is hard for us to even imagine how it works and how to test it. All researchers working with them however, have been impressed with how intelligent they are even though we are constantly held back by our own anthropomorphism.
I was very much reminded of my own observations of working with illiterate people in Nepal. I have often said some of the smartest people I know are totally illiterate, kept that way for exploitative political purposes. I was also reminded of my attempts to administer IQ tests developed for illiterates and my own attempts to invent yet more methods. In both cases, I learned so much more than I was trying to test.
http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-cetacean-brain-and-hominid.html
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 23, 2015 - 03:56pm PT
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Probably if more time were spent on What is Brain , questions about mind would gain clarity.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 23, 2015 - 04:03pm PT
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You’d still have to show a linkage between the two other than self-reporting and temporal measurements.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 23, 2015 - 04:24pm PT
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Well, as has been asked any number of times in this thread without a single answer, how do you account for the effects of brain damage on the mind if not by linkage.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 23, 2015 - 07:05pm PT
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Damaged brain -> Damaged mind
Damaged mind -> Damaged brain?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 23, 2015 - 07:42pm PT
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As Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, it is the invisible that unveils reality. We all hold secrets within our hearts, hidden from our eyes. It's a process worth experimenting with—to find the outer limits of this inner world and to learn how well we can prepare to face them.
An interesting idea.
I still need to try and answer Ed's questing: How do we learn how to meditate. But I need more time than I have right now. Hope to answer soon. It's an excellent question full of twists and turns and a good example of the notion that with mind, a direct path is sometimes the longest.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 23, 2015 - 08:41pm PT
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Damaged brain means the soul can not work correctly thru it anymore.
The consciousness of the individual soul is what makes the mind, intelligence and the brain function.
The modern western scientific mechanistic theory that the brain is the source of consciousness is based on completely defective and failed poor fund of knowledge.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 23, 2015 - 09:21pm PT
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Healyje: Well, as has been asked any number of times in this thread without a single answer, how do you account for the effects of brain damage on the mind if not by linkage.
First of all, there seems to be no single answer for anything.
Secondly, are you talking casually, or scientifically?
If you’re talking casually, what you’ve said is a reasonable thing to say as a broad generalization.
How does one, for example, account for falling pencils when let go of other than by the Law of Gravity? Gravity purportedly is the answer for almost every such event. But that doesn’t say what gravity is, and the statement glosses over so many important elements and dynamics.
If you’re talking scientifically about brains, minds, and damage, then you’re going to have to get a lot more specific and definitive. That would include indicating what mind is, as well as what constitutes “damage.” (One could say that birth is an unequivocal cause of death.)
If I said that nothing grows in the ground without sunlight, I’d be right, but I’d also be incomplete and inaccurate. There are so many other issues involved in plant growth. Yet most ARE related to the radiation from a star (the sun), around which a large ball of stone (the earth) revolves.
So, are you right about brains, minds, and damage? We should probably say you are right casually. Are you completely right? It’s unlikely. What “brain damage” IS, is a lot more complex scientifically than how you present it. And there are situations that confound simple, deterministic, views that casual observations do not “explain.” For example, holographic properties seem to assert themselves in the “damaged brains” that tend to contradict in part simple modeling.
To come to a conclusion about what mind is, what causes what, and what reality really is (e.g., “it’s physical / material”) through claims of obvious or apparent cause-and-effects would never had allowed science to stipulate all sort of things (most invisible to empirical senses) that it has proudly concluded. Such conclusions appear to be close approximations, useful, and predictive.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 23, 2015 - 09:24pm PT
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Damaged mind -> Damaged brain?
We already know that traumatic stress can alter DNA which is passed to the next generation, so I assume that includes the brain.
We also know that only two months of meditation shows new connections in the brain , so traumatic stress probably would as well.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 23, 2015 - 10:20pm PT
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Secondly, are you talking casually, or scientifically?
Neither. You asked about linkage and I'm still asking if you, Largo and others see linkage in the affects brain damage has on the mind.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 24, 2015 - 07:23am PT
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I think I said yes--partially. Did you not understand the distinction between casually and scientifically?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 24, 2015 - 11:01am PT
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We've talked about this before. Damage to the brain and its ability to reflect the mind, could well be like taking a hammer to a radio and later only being able to pick up and relay a few out of many possible radio programs. Damage to the brain is highly suggestive of damage to the mind, but not yet conclusive, it seems to me.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 24, 2015 - 03:21pm PT
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Interesting editorial in the New York Times, titled, The Case for Teaching ignorance.
The larger the island of knowledge grows, the longer the shoreline — where knowledge meets ignorance — extends. The more we know, the more we can ask. Questions don’t give way to answers so much as the two proliferate together. Answers breed questions. Curiosity isn’t merely a static disposition but rather a passion of the mind that is ceaselessly earned and nurtured.
It sounds like something MikeL would have written.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 24, 2015 - 03:30pm PT
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Really? Do we read the same posts? lol
Sounds like something Sagan to Dawkins to Tyson would write. :)
PS Thx for the clarification earlier, I'll check it out.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Aug 24, 2015 - 07:17pm PT
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. . . could well be like taking a hammer to a radio and later only being able to pick up and relay a few out of many possible radio programs (Jan)
This sounds like the mind as field , or universal mind proposal in which we only "tune in" to the cosmos. Could be, but I would not bet on it. I'm sure you are just speculating like we all do on this quixotic thread.
The larger the island of knowledge grows, the longer the shoreline . . .
In technical areas the longer the shoreline the more exotic and specialized the tiny inlets. Mathematics has seemed to me to be like a giant snowball that keeps accruing surface area and where each particular fragment is further removed from other fragments. Sometimes an important breakthrough forms a link between fragments, but mostly specialization leads to isolation.
The role of genius is to discover commonalities.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Aug 24, 2015 - 07:26pm PT
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I think I said yes--partially. Did you not understand the distinction between casually and scientifically?
I did, but was wondering if you did.
JGill is pointing out the obvious, either the mind is of the brain or someone would have to come up with some vaguely cogent arguments for how the mind comes to inhabit one and how it 'occupies' it (I know Werner, it's the heart...).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 24, 2015 - 07:28pm PT
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
Interesting stuff from Sam Harris. While I don't share Sam's views across the board, he has the basics covered pretty well and is skilled at making them clear to people alien to the experiential adventures. His notions that experience is not reducible to neural activity is not understood nor yet believed by people not jiggy with the work.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 24, 2015 - 07:29pm PT
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"The role of genius is to discover commonalities".
I think that's what we're struggling to do here. I guess the problem is that not too many of us are geniuses?
And yes, I am a mental speculator, as Werner says.
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