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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 21, 2011 - 12:41am PT
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I'm back. Okay, Marlow. Quit being truculent and get back to my original question and contrast 3rd person objective function with 1st person subjective. Don't adopt the sackless, feckless, shameless tactic and dodge my question by proffering one (a poor one, granted, but a question nonetheless)of your own. And if you lack the essential minerals to tackle the question, contrast "making sense" (by your own definition) with quantifying.
JL
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Nov 21, 2011 - 01:56am PT
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much of this discussion is sort of like studying the nature of fish while denying the existence of water
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 02:41am PT
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you said that before, Tom, it would be interesting for you to elaborate on it...
what is the water? there are a couple of different answers from the various points-of-view on this thread... one answer could be the brain... with the mind swimming around in it, but otherwise not really noticing it.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Nov 21, 2011 - 03:32am PT
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Ed, i have a lot of respect for your point of view and your expressions of understanding
this is a subject that has been of high interest to me since i was a child
and yet i can not claim to be expert in neurophysiology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, religion, biochemistry;
although i have read widely in those fields
nor even claim to be expert in related fields where i have worked professionally: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language translation, and computer systems design
language is one of our best tools, yet has serious limitations that we tend to overlook
languages tend to be weighted towards the philosophies of the societies that develop the language
i was raised in a church with a priest father; yet plunged into teaching myself the sciences and adopted what i thought was a scientific viewpoint of reality
i took up climbing as a laboratory to try and better understand certain aspects of the mind and the capabilities of intelligence; and the results were completely unexpected and surprising to me
and i grew up in a family of professional writers; where i learned the english language has great depth and width of expressiveness
because of this, we tend to think the language can be used to express anything
yet i find it very difficult to express myself on this topic without resorting to analogies such as fish in the water; or using terms that are so overloaded as to be useless to express my thoughts; such as spirit, soul, god, or the like
others here, and notably Largo, seem to be struggling with some of the same limitations; with more success, and perhaps from a broader knowledge base
with that introduction, i'll just try to point out once more that a basic to this conversation is understanding whether consciousness and awareness arise from properties of the physical universe
or vice versa
i am unable to fathom how the physical universe can arise as a purely physical phenomena, and the more we delve into its structure, the more that is true for me
perhaps you could say that is my personal delusion; but if so, i didn't come by it easily
on the other hand, it is relatively easy for me to imagine how an underpinning world of spiritual thought (please excuse the heavily overused and easily misunderstood terms) can create a physical universe
i do not think it is necessary to think in terms of god or souls or etc; in order for this to be true
in my way of thinking it's perhaps a bit more like the 'luminiferous aether' that Michelson and Morely were looking for with their interferometer experiments
i tend to look at the brain as just the puppet strings for the body; certainly not as the source of intelligence and awareness
my perception is that intelligence and awareness are omnipresent; with or without any special manifestation of a physical body or even a physical universe
hence the analogy of fish in an ocean; with the ocean present, with or without the fish; and the fish composed of water
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 21, 2011 - 08:42am PT
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I let you go, Largo.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 11:39am PT
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Tom:
Thanks for a heartfelt and thoughtful response. It will probably do nothing to convince anyone of anything. But it brought a smile to my face.
Happy Holidays, all.
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 21, 2011 - 11:50am PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 12:06pm PT
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to extend your analogy, Tom, the search for the æther was an interesting idea which dated back to Newton. If we look at the what happened during that time in Largo's human competitiveness model for science, the idea that light was "corpuscular" came out of Newton's thinking as he wrote it in the Queries section of Opticks, where he argued that light travels at a high speed and if a wave, the medium it travelled through must be very dense, yet the planets travel along orbits which indicated that the medium was very rare... a paradox for MikeL...
the "continental" view was that light was a wave, and the entirety of classical optics was developed, successfully, without having to resolve the Newtonian paradox.
The development of electrodynamics in the mid-1800s led Maxwell to synthesize Faraday's ideas of "field" and the predominantly German mathematical formulation of the parts of electrodynamics into a unified theory... note that this is the first "unification" that of electricity and magnetism, manifestations of a single force, and Maxwell saw this first.
But more wonderfully, it resolves the Newtonian paradox, too, though it took Maxwell sometime to understand it, that is, light is a transverse wave, not a longitudinal wave, and because of that does not require a medium to propagate. Very quickly after Maxwell, all of classical optics was described in terms of electrodynamics, that is, the fundamental reason why optics was what it was could be explained.
The idea of "field" was also extremely important and provides a first answer to how gravity acts at a distance, to which Newton, in the same Queries, had famously offered: hypothesis non fingo.
The æther, which makes so much sense, is found to be not necessary. An experimental fact found by Michaelson & Morely that you refer to... yet they were trying to understand the peculiar properties of Maxwell's electrodynamics, which were invariant to Lorentz transformation, a fact they established... that the speed-of-light was the same in any inertial reference frame, though they didn't use that language, it was language invented by Einstein who correctly explained the invariance, the results of his Special Relativity.
So we live in a universe devoid of the luminiferous æther, but what replaced it were ideas more powerful, more insightful and more wonderful.
The loss of the "mystery" of the universe by this process of quantification, calculation and theorizing is certainly something that has its critics. There is a strange conflict that arises, a paradox in its own right, due to human nature, perhaps. That is: we want there to be mysteries, but we also want to know the answer to those mysteries...
...every line in Yosemite Valley has been climbed and the mysteries are no more... Robbins and Frost answered my question at the recent reunion, the question "did you leave anything you wished to have done." Both answered no, Robbins elaborated "there are three routes on El Capitan, left, right and center" (to paraphrase), "there didn't need to be anymore."
Now we scour the face looking at the details of the proximal mineral composition, 3,000' x 10,000' of surface... what is the mystery there?
Largo exhorts us to connect with the inner flow, so everyone confronting there own frontiers has embarked on a journey to resolve the mystery. But it is not like going into the unknown as those first teams did in the Valley to overcome the "impossibility" of finding a route on the face of those monolithic formations. We can climb them now, with exacting precision in hours, what once took months and weeks...
...mysterious no longer.
The increased understanding that science provides has had an effect on me that is opposite your's, that is, an increased belief that science provides more of an explanation of what and why things are the way they are in the universe. And even a peek at how that could be... how to resolve the "ultimate" questions of existence, and all physically based. It isn't at all an easy way out, it's a difficult, probably never ending path, but it alone among all paths, has a way to tell us when it is no longer the correct path...
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MH2
climber
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Nov 21, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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^^^^^
Mind by thoughtful and tangible example.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 21, 2011 - 03:29pm PT
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The loss of the "mystery" of the universe by this process of quantification, calculation and theorizing is certainly something that has its critics.
-----
I would reframe this slightly.
What Ed might have us believe is A), mystery is anything that we cannot quantify; B), anything we cannot quantify is not "real" (not material), C), any reference to the unquantifable is by definition supernatural hogwash.
At the base of this the belief, supported by no quantification or calculation but by plenty of theorizing, is the belief that the "map is the territory." This can be translated to several different POVs, the bottom line always being the same - that quantifying can deliver a complete and comprehensive Numerus Visum, or total view of everything, sans exception.
Even superficial examinations of this premise shows the various leaks in the structure. In our conversation we have two seemingly insurmountable hurdles to the materialists gospel. First, the belief that the evolved brain "creates" mind involves a line of causation in which one thing becomes quantitatively something entirely different. In the natural world we see matter create spectacular effects and results, from forces like gravity to a Kreb Cycle transmuting light into a catalyst for a different form of energy. The problem with consciousness is that no where in nature do we see matter suddenly becomming anything remotely as qualatively different as human experience. This leads the quantifiers to all kinds of improbable reframes that are not used to describe the causal relations of anything else. For instance, nobody says that gravity IS matter, or that a radio broadcast IS a radio, but by insisting that the Map is the Territory, in terms of mind, we are saying that mind IS mater.
Id we take the big jump and say that matter is not 1st person subjective experience, then we have to look at subjective experience in and of itself, and ask what it IS. If we should find something that, in and of itself, is qualitatively not measurable by standard means, then what do we do?
What we have seen are almost desperate attempts to try and wrangle mind back into constructs that are immediately quantifable, or silly efforts to try and reframe experience as something other than what we think actually experience, implying what we actually experience is a distortion of what is
"real," I.E., what is quantifiable.
The implications are many, but ultimately what you end up with is a truncated vision of reality by which only the material or quantifiable is held to be real and objective. You also have a subjective (or false/imagined/unreal) world that is believed to be "produced" by an actual, material world. However, as Liebnitz clearly showed with his thought experiment, there is no evidence of experience in matter at the level of atomic activity.
Perhaps the only answer to this "hard problem" is that it shows us the limitation of dividing the whole into bits, and that the whole is both subjective and objective, both 1st and 3rd person, both material and experiential. While these qualities are not selfsame, they seamlessly co-exist, as the centuries old Zen motto says: Emptiness is form and form is emptiness - exactly.
In this sense, material would not be something that mind does or something that mind creates of produces, but rather what mind IS, and visa versa.
The idea seems improbable, but so does experience arising out of matter, and matter arising out of mind.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 04:24pm PT
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Largo wrote: What Ed might have us believe is A), mystery is anything that we cannot quantify; B), anything we cannot quantify is not "real" (not material), C), any reference to the unquantifable is by definition supernatural hogwash.
which is not at all what I said in my note above, and it is significantly altering what I have been saying and what I believe... to wit:
A) mystery is anything that we cannot quantify there are plenty of mysteries that are the result of quantification, MikeL was harping on the "paradoxes" in science up thread, all of which are quantified paradoxes. Usually it is a mystery until we understand them. But more importantly, quantification is a step that occurs, usually after observation, but the role of quantification is to provide a logical basis for a prediction, that can be tested and used to test hypothesis of theories that arise out of observation.
There are plenty of mysteries that we cannot quantify, many of them are later found to be irrelevant to the initial question because they are based on a faulty idea of what gave rise to the mystery, e.g. the mind is complicated and can't be explained quantitatively, take 1st person experience as an example... but if we were to find out that "1st person experience" isn't relevant to the mind, then, while it remains a mystery, it is not relevant.
Further, there are "mysteries" that might be susceptible to quantification but for which we lack the details with which to do those calculations... even in "principle," certain non-linear dynamical systems have this sort of behavior which make detailed calculations not possible, weather is an example... we'll never be able to calculate the ferocity of a storm on the e.g. Gran Jorasse which led to climbing fatalities, so we cannot assess the role poor forecasting might have played, or the judgement to use those forecasts in a particular manner. Such things remain a mystery.
B) anything we cannot quantify is not "real" (not material); this is complicated, though it wouldn't seem to be... something could be "not material" but it could come from physical processes or properties. Take mathematics, for instance, it is real and a logical system, but is it material (in Largo's sense). The answer could be "yes" in the sense that the properties of the universe are such as to generate the logic upon which mathematics arrises, essentially because of the topology of the universe. This can be quantified, but it is not necessarily "material," it comes from a physical process, however.
I've also offered "thermodynamics" up a number of times, which is a property that is not material, but describes the behavior of a group of atoms, a large group, in terms that allows there group behavior to be quantified. Quantities we are very familiar with say "temperature" and "pressure" are not "real" or "material" but describe, in approximation, the physical system. We can figure out why thermodynamics describes things, even though the things themselves do not have the property of "temperature." By the way, there are still mysteries about these connections...
...but it is important to understand that thermodynamics developed over time by first observing physical systems, making measurements and then explaining those measurements...
C) any reference to the unquantifable is by definition supernatural hogwash perhaps Largo is being too defensive here, but he puts the horse behind the cart. The precept of science is that there is not supernatural, that everything has a physical explanation. "Unquantifyablilty" is a similarly complex idea, but we find, often, that our inability to quantify something has the desired effect of pointing out how ill-formed our questions are, if we are seeking some answers to those same questions. Why is the sky blue? why are sunsets red? have quantifiable answers even if we don't want to know, and even if we cannot describe the qualia red and blue.
In the process of understanding things, scientifically, there is a methodology which works incredibly well. It might not tell you how to get a date with a desirable person, but it doesn't hurt either.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 21, 2011 - 08:15pm PT
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There are plenty of mysteries that we cannot quantify, many of them are later found to be irrelevant to the initial question because they are based on a faulty idea of what gave rise to the mystery, e.g. the mind is complicated and can't be explained quantitatively, take 1st person experience as an example... but if we were to find out that "1st person experience" isn't relevant to the mind, then, while it remains a mystery, it is not relevant.
----
Don't be fooled by the smooth taste - this is a whopper by any definition. Ed has basically said that whatever we ultimately cannot quantify - if there is such a thing - denotes not something real, but a human error in attributing causality to something other than a material machanism. And since experience certainly exists, it MUST BE entirely mechanistic.
Remember, there is only science and matter. No mas. Everything else is spooks and goblins and priestcraft. That is the truncated model of consciousness I spoke of earlier, where science bets against everything but its own game = Scientism.
Now look at this closely ladies and gentlemen. If 1st person experience is "irrelevant," by whatever definition you choose, you have dismissed the fundamental nature of human existence, the actual, concrete lives we lead, not the numerical abstractions drawn from and created by consciousness.
Note the simple questions per the absolute authority of measuring remain unanswered, or are vigorously reframed.
To wit:
Contrast 1st person subjective with 3rd person objective. What are the fundamental differences?
What is essentially quantitative about human experience itself - NOT the objective functioning/mechanism some believe "creates" it.
Where in nature is there a causal chain involving matter suddenly becoming anything remotely like human experience? Not a processing machine said to produce experience, which is a slight-of-hand escape from answering the question.
Without "helping me ask my question," in and of itself, is experience "material," and if you believe it is, how so? Show your work.
What is the limitation of quantifying in exploring mind/consciousness?
What is mind is, to me, another way of asking, what is experience. I never asked, What is quantifying, even though Ed and others keep insisting that quantifying and mind and everything else are all the very same. And if they aren't, they have yet to explain the qualitative differences.
These simple questions remain unanswered.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:14pm PT
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humans have got to be the most narcissistic species ever to have inhabited the planet...
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:23pm PT
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I'm down with the flu in Wisconsin, and only have a smartphone.
Numbers are real and can be quantified? Give me a five.
Ed, I don't deny you constructs all day long, but they are means of conceptualization by which to model things and make predictions rigorously and parsimoniosly. Numbers are fine in that effort.
But to claim that everything WILL be explained by science strikes me as over the top, just as the Bible being a historical and empirical document. (That comment will cause a problem for me.)
What in the devil compels you to go so far out on a limb without empirical support? You're being ureasonable. Don't let other goad you into taking such positions.
One little thing more. Some of us who argue with your point of view have experience and a modicum of training on both sides. It might give us a fairer basis for comparison--unless you want to argue that only experts can have a leg to stand on.
Happy Holidays., and may the god of wellness smile down on me before I get on another airplane.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:34pm PT
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but a more serious response:
Largo, for some reason, wants to frame my viewpoint as a precondition for reality, which I wouldn't be pushing since I don't actually know just how far you can push the scientific method, so far, it has been extremely good at explaining the universe in purely physical terms.
The method is one of observation, quantification, experimentation, and theories built to explain the observed systems are used to predict the outcomes of other experiments, and then tested...
...you know the drill by now.
I think this methodology will come up with an explanation of mind. In any case, whatever your philosophical stripes are, or whether or not you believe it could possibly succeed, it will be done, it is being done. Time will tell whether or not this can explain mind.
I am not a proponent of Scientism, whatever that is, it is the rebellion of the non-science part of the academy to try to put science on some debatable level, since science, itself, seems to shed the other criticisms... perhaps it is too bad that science is to successful that it has to be challenged for something it is not... Scientism is not science. I am a proponent for science.
I'm not sure why Largo is misrepresenting what I am saying, intentionally and repeatedly, as if by going over the same argument again and again I will have to cave in and say the scientific method for understanding mind is wrong.
If it is wrong, we'll know it's wrong. If Largo's approach is wrong, how would we ever know it? After all, it is a legacy of a method which is much older than science itself, and it has made much less progress than science has. This fact is evident in the central role this debate has revolved around, that what science is doing is not explaining the mind, rather than actually comparing the various explanations... which we have not been doing since Largo claims that none of our explanations, none of descriptions, none of it at all, is right.
I don't think he's all that interested in the answer at this point.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:41pm PT
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nasty bugs going around, MikeL, be careful...
as far as how far science will go, I have only said we'll take it as far as we can, and that we'll know when it doesn't work anymore...
this includes explaining things that seem beyond science's reach...
as I said, we'll see... but also note, science has a way of confronting it's limitations, philosophy seems to have no such ability.
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Oxymoron
Big Wall climber
total Disarray
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:43pm PT
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I don't mind & you don't matter.
Prove me wrong.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Nov 21, 2011 - 09:44pm PT
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mystery is anything that we cannot quantify - there are plenty of mysteries that are the result of quantification . . .
On target, Ed. I'm trying to unravel the mystery of a peculiar class of complex functions, now, that computer experiments show should behave a certain way, but are a puzzle to analyze theoretically. This activity is remarkably real to me, as I'm sure your quantified physics' research is to you. I love these mysteries, and when I solve one I seek out another - all within an abstract world that rivals "physical reality" in its appeal. This is why I will never regret my education as a mathematician.
I watched a Discovery Channel program a few days ago that concluded with an illustrated essay by some physicist who claims ultimate reality is mathematics. The physical universe is merely a projection of the underlying math. Scary, huh?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Nov 22, 2011 - 12:29am PT
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But to claim that everything WILL be explained by science strikes me as over the top, just as the Bible being a historical and empirical document.
I've been saying all along that both suppositions are matters of faith.
I love these mysteries, and when I solve one I seek out another - all within an abstract world that rivals "physical reality" in its appeal.
As do philosophers and mystics.
The strength of science is the scientific method which works extraordinarily well on matter. The strength of religions and the humanities is that they work extraordinarily well in their ability to inspire humans to rise above ape inspired matterial concerns.
(And no I'm not biased against chimpanzees and I do see humans as part of the natural order).
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Nov 22, 2011 - 01:22am PT
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Ed, i again very much appreciate your postings
The increased understanding that science provides has had an effect on me that is opposite yours, that is, an increased belief that science provides more of an explanation of what and why things are the way they are in the universe. And even a peek at how that could be... how to resolve the "ultimate" questions of existence, and all physically based.
perhaps it surprises you that i agree with pretty much all that you have to say; i do not see our viewpoints as being inconsistent with each other
just that i see some of the same things that you see in a somewhat different light based upon some very surprising personal experiences that lead me to understand the physical universe is in itself naturally sentient
i do not believe in something that can properly be called supernatural
just as magic has been defined as technology that is not yet understood
supernatural could be termed as natural phenomena not yet understood within the context of the sciences
the idea that science will come to understand such is just fine with me
it seems to me that with the current struggles around the five flavors of string theory and dark energy and matter and defectors from the standard model; physics may be a lot closer to a breakthrough in understanding here than most physicists would admit
particularly given some of the societal ramifications of such a breakthrough in understanding
yet the scientific community already has plenty of experience in rattling the status quot of commonly accepted understanding
most people in our society operate from a single viewpoint within a single human body in a relatively nominal fashion
our society also traditionally looks askance at someone whose experiences differ from that; i.e. multiple viewpoints within one body (possessed or schizoid), or an identity with awareness from outside a body or with more than one viewpoint (spaced out), or viewpoints not strictly limited by present time (seers and savants)
such tend to keep their differences to themselves; or if they persist in talking about it, are prone to face ridicule or worse
in some human societies such people are honored with special accord; rather than being burned at the stake
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