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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 13, 2015 - 07:24pm PT
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Everything is possible,
But is it likely?
Goin' down the road feelin' bad
Sittin' on top of the world
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 14, 2015 - 09:21pm PT
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A lull in the fascinating life of What is Mind?. . .
Is there an intellectual component in Zen?
Do Zen practitioners ultimately perceive the Hilbert space in quantum mechanics? Is it no-thing?
Should we all just wait for Godot?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 15, 2015 - 01:16pm PT
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If something is possible, isn't it inevitable over time?
How do you determine whether an event is possible, i.e., probablity >0? Would you say that anything you can imagine is possible? Ten ants typing Shakespeare in an hour? How would you assign a numerical value to that scenario?
Sometimes, there is a lot of the subjective in determination of probability distributions. It's not an exact science.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 15, 2015 - 01:21pm PT
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If something is possible, isn't it inevitable over time?
Well, at least until it becomes impossible.
I can wait, or I can't wait. Hmmm ... Which is more likely?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 15, 2015 - 03:40pm PT
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In a million years with nano-computers? Ants may still be here when humans are extinct.
How about this: what is the probability you will be in an auto accident the next time you drive to the grocery store? Be specific.
;>)
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 15, 2015 - 06:14pm PT
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^Except for the "next" part (which I think you snuck in) this would be estimated by the number of trips to the store which result in accidents over the total number of trips to the store.
It is complicated by those trips which may or may not have been to the store but in which the driver had an accident in which he/she died and cannot divulge just what the destination was.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 15, 2015 - 08:37pm PT
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The probability of Dingus getting wrapped up in some form of accident fu? Does the past dictates the future?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 15, 2015 - 09:19pm PT
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Yep. Sometimes the probability distribution function is clear cut, but many times it is an estimate based upon existing data. Once it's established, however, the mathematics is usually rigorous.
However, remember the old computer adage: Garbage in, garbage out!
;>)
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 15, 2015 - 09:33pm PT
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Ants may still be here when humans are extinct.
The gross materialists are always obsessed with extinction.
This is due to being clueless and devoid of focus.
They are are like a rider of a horse who gets on it backwards and tries to control it by grabbing it's tail.
No control.
This is how their minds work too.
All over the place and out of focus ........
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 15, 2015 - 10:20pm PT
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You seem awfully confident. I put the probability of you getting a flat tire next week at P=.175 (it just came to me out of the aether)
Drive carefully.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Oct 16, 2015 - 04:24pm PT
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My Consciousness Told Me
One day I asked myself again,
As I have sometimes done before,
When pondering my consciousness,
With curious intent, no more,
Who am I down at my core?
"Who are you?" I asked myself,
Wondering it a curious choice,
Why should I find it differently?
You'd think by now I'd know my mind,
In answer came my inner voice,
"You are only you, my friend,"
Not man or beast, but in the least,
Beyond the flesh and blood, no jive,
You're only who you are inside,
You think at heart, you're just alive?,
I asked, "Is not there more to me?"
The answer came although abstract,
"What more you ask? As you might think,
That you don't know much more than that,
But more shall be revealed in fact,"
Dissatisfied to myself in thought,
I replied in short, "That's all you've got?"
"No my friend, ask all you like,
Bit by bit, you shall extract,
Of what you ask, to be exact,"
And then my thoughts explained to me,
A vague idea, not yet complete,
I asked, "Was not my conscienceless,
Something evolving constantly?"
"Your right my friend, for now you see!
"You've grown through several stages now,
Experience reflects your views,
But deep inside each stage of life,
Constantly this fact rings true,
You'll never be who once was you,
"Adversity has changed your thoughts,
Your consciousness has followed suit,
It knows through strife how little you,
Could do to alter what may come,
Acceptance has been hard, it's true,
"Your consciousness has gone,
With every metamorphosis,
For reasons not yet known,
To where the mind has found new diggs,
Like the chambers of the nautilus,"
"While you're ego has been shrinking,
You're more humble now, you probably think,
It's not as simple as all that,
And there's the complicated fact,
This will require much more tact,"
"Is my mind just like the looking glass,
Reflecting the world back to me?
And are my thoughts somehow stored,
In a vast collective consciousness?"
I pondered this and said no more.
And I put my mind at ease,
Giving thoughts like this a rest,
Concentrating on the now,
For today's efforts at soul searching,
I think I've done my best,
-bushman
10/16/15
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2015 - 07:40am PT
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What IS mind?
Supposedly, everyone has one. Everyone talks about it here. Everyone should be able to look for themselves. Yet no one has put their finger on it, on what it IS. Instead, now and then, someone will offer a theory of how it works or how one can know how it works.
Can’t folks just look at their own mind? If they did, what more could they come away with than pure subjectivity? If they did, what more could be possibly described about what it is than Everything, an unbounded awareness (that has no end, no limitations), an unbounded wholeness that is aware of itself (as everyone seems to believe or refer to).
This so-called thing that we occasionally talk about here (mind) has no measurements, no metrics, no color, no shape, no location (other than here), no time (other than now), no description (it’s indefinite?), . . . . It appears to be no thing at all. Yet the way we talk about it, it *seems* to appear.
Does not mind include everything: instinct, emotions, stories, theories, maths, subjects, objects, feelings, sensations, even concepts of contradiction, nothingness, emptiness, imagination, and beings / voices / intuitions / unconsciousness that we question whether they are our own?
“I” sense that “I” look at my mind, and the sense arises that it is unbounded, that it is everything, and that there cannot be anything or any not-thing or non-thing outside of it. If “things” are objects, then there is nothing objective about mind, . . . yet it appears to be everything.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 17, 2015 - 08:43am PT
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Because we don't know yet what "Mind" is,
You have a mind and you can't figure out your own self.
Pathetic
And you people call yourselves scientists just guessing and theorizing.
What a joke scientists ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2015 - 11:53am PT
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DMT: It is most definitely bounded.
Say what lies outside of mind. Stipulate that. The very stipulation indicates it lies in mind.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2015 - 11:55am PT
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Moose:
What’s with the “layperson” distinction in your statement? Are you suggesting there is some non-layperson physicalist who can say what mind is? (Could you bring them out, please?)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 17, 2015 - 01:57pm PT
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Say what lies outside of mind. Stipulate that. The very stipulation indicates it lies in mind
I'm sitting here looking at the tree in our side yard. I stipulate: it lies outside the mind. The image I perceive is of course not exactly the tree, and that certainly lies in the mind. It sounds as if you are returning to the old argument that objects are mental constructs, rather than existing independent of conscious conjuring.
Is that moon in the sky just in my mind?
Please don't go there.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Oct 17, 2015 - 04:24pm PT
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“I” sense that “I” look at my mind, and the sense arises that it is unbounded, that it is everything, and that there cannot be anything or any not-thing or non-thing outside of it. If “things” are objects, then there is nothing objective about mind, . . . yet it appears to be everything.
Is solipsism an object?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 17, 2015 - 04:51pm PT
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An unexpected image that appeared while experimenting with a composition structure I call self-generating reverse continued fractions in the complex plane.
Does this image exist only in my mind? Can you see it?
This is NOT a fractal!
;>)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 17, 2015 - 05:53pm PT
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Because we don't know yet what "Mind" is, doesn't mean it is outside the physical realm.
This kind of confused statement comes (IMO) from not understanding that the subjective is not reducible to the objective, and that there are fundamental differences from both, and that exhaustive understanding of one does not infer the same for the other.
For example, the above statement infers that once we have a physical explanation for mind, we will "know" what mind is. In other words, the subjective is reducible to the objective.
The reason you do not know about mind is you are not studying mind (subjective), you are studying an object, namely the brain. Much promise will come from studying the brain, but the belief that you will "know" what the subjective IS by studying an object is a belief that will never pan out.
Another fantastic idea, rarely thought through, is that unless we can reverse engineer all things back to a physical antecedent "it" must exist in some realm "outside of the physical." The Big Bang - at least some interpretations of it - suggests differently, that all objects emerged from nothing, much as on the quantum level, potential energy flashes in and out of existence, emerging not from some object, rather from ... nothing.
One angle is that there is no such "thing" as matter or material or objects or fixed mass, that only properties (gravity, charges, luminosity etc) exist and they are all emergent functions of nothing.
JL
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Oct 17, 2015 - 06:01pm PT
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And so..... what (are the consequences of this rhetorical breakthrough) ?
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