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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I've been pondering the nature of 'hive mind' or community mind and think about what it might mean about the decision process of the human mind.
That's a big topic, Dingus. Yes, the movements of bird flocks, herds of caribou, and swarms of army ants can be roughly reproduced in simulations based on a short list of simple rules for how each individual makes its own choices and how it responds to its neighbors. That doesn't mean that the groups work the way the simulations do.
The Hebb Synapse is a simple rule for how the strength of a connection between two neurons may change according to the activity of each neuron. However, it hasn't opened the door to building machines that can do what the brain does.
If there are simple rules for group behavior, it might be worth asking if they are inherited or learned, and also whether one of the rules is that any strictly rule-based behavior is easy for a predator to learn and take advantage of.
You mention randomness in behavior, but examples of truly random movement are rare.
Every night thousands of crows roost together in a woods in a suburb of Vancouver. Every day they fly for miles to find food. People have wondered whether the crows exchange information about food sources, what with all the noise they make at the roost. Bernd Heinrich in Mind of the Raven offers a simpler idea with evidence to back it up. Some of the birds will have found a good food supply the previous day. Those birds will know where to go the next day. They are more likely to get a head start because they know where the food is and want to get there early. Other birds only need to watch which birds leave first and then follow them. No vocal communication is needed.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I wouldn't call pain an objective truth but it is nonetheless a reality and I suppose that's the difficult point.
perhaps a reality, but perhaps it is something individual and "not real" who knows who is actually feeling pain, and who is just saying they are feeling pain? or who should be feeling pain?
do you?
Does a scientific measured analysis fail in this regard?
the very issue we're discussing is based on scientific analysis... which is objective... and the fact that there isn't a clear mechanism describing pain, and the conclusions of it's subjective nature, are due to those scientific analyses. If in the end we have an understanding of pain, and an understanding of the limitations of our popular notions of pain, it is not a scientific failure.
Or is this a realm simply outside the boundaries of science?
Nothing is outside the boundaries of science, nothing is outside the boundaries of art, etc... why not look at these phenomenon in all of the different ways we have to look at them?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The body is a biological apparatus that in various ways registers and displays the results of internal electrochemical processes. The degrees of pain are registered in an analogue rather than digital fashion, although when asked about the degree of pain we can place it roughly on a digital scale of one to ten.
Better not to activate this particular biological instrument. Stick with an ohm meter.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: Nothing is outside the boundaries of science, nothing is outside the boundaries of art, etc...
Science constructs its understanding, and that understanding is particular.
Nothing lies outside of Reality.
“A vikalpa is a thought-construct. Vikalpas are various mental counters through which man carries on the business of life. Vikalpas may refer to things of the external world like trees and flowers or various images, fancies, etc. of the mind. In vikalpa mind sets a limit to one particular thing or idea, and differentiates it from the rest; mind constructs a “particular” by means of thought which it marks off from the rest of the world from other ideas. Each vikalpa has two aspects; the positive aspect consists of the idea that is selected, and the negative consists of the rest that are set aside or rejected. Vikalpas are concerned with the particulars. Secondly, vikalpas are relational: i.e., there is always a subject-object in vikalpas. Reality is non-relational, there is no object outside of Reality. Therefore vikalpas are unable to grasp Reality.”
(Jaideva Singh, in his commentary on the “Vijnanabhairava” which was written around the 8th Century)
Largo, Werner, PSP, and others didn’t make this stuff up. Yet, this stuff can be seen by anyone who has the discipline to look. It’s not exactly hidden. It’s right in front of you; it’s your consciousness. But that is not amenable to objective measurement or consensus. It cannot be defined. Even Singh’s explanation is heavy-handed, as is mine.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 4, 2015 - 09:13am PT
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Ed, I haven't forgotten to get into "How to learn how to meditate," which is really, how to eventually not-do anything, including responding to our conditioned impulses.
But I've been swamped with stuff including my oldest daughter having a kid and wrangling the Adidas team over on the Eiger. I'm in Zurich now, and my girlfriend's (Swiss) dad went into the hospital for a procedure cha cha cha. Lotta sh#t coming down.
Anyhow, soon as I get a chance I'll jog down my ideas and experiences.
JL
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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But that is not amenable to objective measurement
Not true. If your skull was physically opened up and your cerebrum scrambled like an egg you would conclude that consciousness is associated with the proper biologic functioning of the brain and CNS.
This is a type of crude observationally-based association which tells us more about consciousness than any activity bereft of measurement.
Even cavemen must have deducted something like the same after obvious head injuries sometimes resulted in the altering of personality.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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my oldest daughter having a kid
Congratulations Grandpa!! 8^D
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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everything we talk about, including "no thing" is a construct...
to participate in the conversation we create constructs
to read an 8th century text is a way of extending that conversation, and including archaic constructs
I take it from the continued participation of the set of people engaged on this thread that we continue to create constructs to enable our engagement on this topic.
Anyone can see this who is sitting with their terminal in front of them reading and responding to this thread.
Reality as we know it is a construct...
reality as we don't know it escapes our conversation here... however we can speculate over methods to achieving knowing, which is OP's launching initiative.
What a method does to achieve that knowing requires a construct of both the method, and the new knowledge...
I guess we're all in construction here.
No rush Largo... we're all busy and this topic isn't time critical...
congratulations on the arrival of your daughter's child
best wishes to your girlfriend's father and family
bravo on your continued deanship of American climbing
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Before thinking mind, which can be experienced, in many different ways ; meditation being one of them, is without thinking constructs.
But more important is the recognition that thinking is a construct and not becoming attached to these constructs.
Your right Ed everything is a construct, most people don't recognize that and all you have to do is look at conflicts to see that. The old my idea (strongly held belief construct) is right and your idea (construct) is wrong so it is time for physical conflict! seems absurd doesn't it.
It is interesting when the thinking falls away (or takes a seat far in the back of the room) during meditation ; the next thing (for me) that becomes front and center are the emotions ( i am starting to think they are constructs also). They are raw and powerful; the tendency is to push the unpleasant ones away and grasp the pleasant ones (forms of attachment). The practice is to just observe and be with them not touching them not labeling them; typically the practice is to just stay with the breath no matter how ecstatic or unecstatic the feeling. if you can do that and not try to manipulate the process the emotional energy typically dissipates to an equanimity where things are just as they are; with no need to change or manipulate the moment.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think that the breathe centering is also an "attachment" and that eventually you have to give that up too...
emotions are highly tied to hormonal states in the body, and it isn't unreasonable that one can manipulate them in a practice... providing a physical link to the "subtle energy" my teachers talk about...
one will make a construct to understand and explain...
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: one will make a construct to understand and explain...
That’s probably how it looks to you. It’s probably what you believe, and hence it is what you see. You don’t have to believe anything to see, to hear, to feel, to taste, etc. Raw unelaborated pristine awareness needs nothing to be perceived. You can’t not-perceive.
Drop the conversation and see.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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perhaps a reality, but perhaps it is something individual and "not real" who knows who is actually feeling pain, and who is just saying they are feeling pain? or who should be feeling pain?
Here is a reality, just ask those experiencing this reality (pain), that can not be objectified as truth yet remains an experience of such a universal nature it can and must be accepted as the reality we all know it is.
Declaring the experience of pain as only a kind of subjective experience with all the faults of subjectivity as unverifiable or perhaps not real, denies the authority of the experiencer who is the only possible source of the observation and the ability of that source to communicate the reality of their experience to others on the basis of shared experience. Otherwise, what is the scientific basis of efficacy for a pain relieving drug if not the statement of the experiencer that his pain has lessened?
The observation is locked into subjective experience but that experience is of such a common nature and shared understanding it is naturally accepted as reality.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Drop the conversation and see.
you imply (in your usual dismissive manner) that I don't... how do you know?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Otherwise, what is the scientific basis of efficacy for a pain relieving drug if not the statement of the experiencer that his pain has lessened?
how about anesthesia, where you can watch your body being cut into, physically manipulated, etc... without the feeling of pain?
where is the reality?
where is the experiencer when "under anesthesia"?
where does reality go when you are under "general anesthesia"?
where does reality go when you sleep?
what does science have to say about that? (it's pretty simple, actually, under that particular construct)...
Declaring the experience of pain as only a kind of subjective experience with all the faults of subjectivity as unverifiable or perhaps not real, denies the authority of the experiencer who is the only possible source of the observation and the ability of that source to communicate the reality of their experience to others on the basis of shared experience.
you seem to equate my identification of "subjective" as a pejorative..
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Interesting thoughts on pain. In my experience with pain and trying to make it go away there are several approaches that I have used. One is locating the source of the pain and treating it either manually or medicinally and thus eliminating the source. Another is to use drugs that treat the pain itself and those have never really eliminated the pain, only lessen it or distract you from it. And then there is meditation. This can be difficult depending on the amount of pain but I have eliminated severe pain with a technique some might consider derived from meditation. Some might say otherwise.
It seems there are several different things going on with pain and Mind and to me it suggests that the mind can override certain natural functions of the brain with sheer force of will. It also suggests interesting potentials that could be further explored, either scientifically or in personal subjective experience and both approaches could bear fruit.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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you seem to equate my identification of "subjective" as a pejorative..
Not really, though it (the subjective) becomes problematic in the search for a shared reality.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the subjective becomes problematic in the search for a shared reality.
interesting statement... why a shared reality? and how does the "sharing" happen?
it would seem that anytime we start to "share" we are moving beyond our "subjective" experience towards an "objective" experience. That shared reality exists even when an individual among the sharers ceases to...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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And then there is meditation. This can be difficult depending on the amount of pain . . .
The question arises: how can meditation help reduce pain which occurs when one is physically active?
I work out several times a week, despite severe shoulder arthritis. I begin each session slowly and methodically with very easy exercises, and gradually the pain recedes after passing a critical point. After that point I lose attachment to the pain and/or it essentially disappears. How can (sitting) meditation help in this situation? Or, am I actually using a kind of meditation in motion? Are there other meditative techniques that might work better?
Incidentally, this technique did not work with rock climbing as the pain kept worsening - which is one reason I left the sport several years ago.
Finally, something of substance in this thread!
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