Post: #51

The hard and simple truth is that you can simply put your body into a MRI Scan, You will easily observe
that all your thoughts are electrical brainwaves between your biological neurons.

That if you hit yourself hard in the head, or you go into deep sleep,
your conciousness will be turned off, because conciousness is a part of your biological brain.

And you can observe the direct and absolute relation between your thoughts and
the measurements of the brain waves in the MRI scan that they are.

Of course it is easier to philosophy anything that you want to hear, but reality does not change if you imagine that things are different than they really are.

And the beauty is that with a MRI scan you can verify exactly how biological your connections between your neurons really are,
they are called your thoughts

Post: #52

(01-03-2018 12:47 AM)Super_Fire Wrote:  

(01-02-2018 04:41 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  first we should define what real means.

If I stub my toe, that's real, no matter what some Scottish empiricist tells me.

And yet phantom limb is a thing, as is my dreaded tinnitus, which is a false sensation of sound.

Post: #53

(01-04-2018 12:20 PM)questor70 Wrote:  

(01-03-2018 12:47 AM)Super_Fire Wrote:  

(01-02-2018 04:41 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  first we should define what real means.

If I stub my toe, that's real, no matter what some Scottish empiricist tells me.

And yet phantom limb is a thing, as is my dreaded tinnitus, which is a false sensation of sound.

Of course the mind can fool itself into things for a variety of reasons.

But once again, this sort of existentialism is a by-product of atheism, which is a theological justification for narcissism and hedonism. If you guys want to go down that path then you will be lost, and will have to one day be found.

Post: #54

The daunting materialist conundrum.

Take information for instance. Is it real? Depends.

in terms of written words on a sheet of paper
in terms of colors contours that convey a meaning to the recipient.

Are numbers real?

it depends on how you see it.

the frequency of a light beam is a number. It conveys an message.

Thoughts?

It's subjective. It's as real as it is immaterialist.

Our thoughts are nothing more than electrical impulses jostling from node to node in a very sophisticated manner.

Post: #55

The daunting materialist conundrum.

Take information for instance. Is it real? Depends.

in terms of written words on a sheet of paper
in terms of colors contours that convey a meaning to the recipient.

Are numbers real?

it depends on how you see it.

the frequency of a light beam is a number. It conveys an message.

Thoughts?

It's subjective. It's as real as it is immaterialist.

Our thoughts are nothing more than electrical impulses jostling from node to node in a very sophisticated manner.

Post: #56

Is electricity not real then?

What is the lightning that strikes in a thunderstorm? Nothing more than charged ions and particles?

You see: everything can be reduced down to "nothing more." But everything comes from something.

And what gave you that spark of consciousness? Where does your mind come from?

Eternal order. The geometry of all existence has a heart and spirit. Look for it within you.

Post: #57

Thoughts are real because the brain is real, and they are a part of the workings of a human brain.


That simple OP.

Post: #58

@Super Fire. Something can come from nothing.

Quantum fluctuations lead to particles literally jumping out of nowhere to collide with each other.

Post: #59

An interesting book to read is Homo Deus, which discusses the "self" and what it means to be human. The author has an interesting comparison to supercomputers and AR on the one hand and to lesser creatures like animals. The distinctions are less clear than you would think. And they are important questions, because in our lifetimes we will see the merging of computers and humans, and in the next 100 years we will see biotech and medicine improvements that may make life nearly perpetual.

A related question is whether all of our reality is a simulation. A lot of technologists and Silicon Valley tech types have concluded that it is.

A popular argument for the simulation hypothesis came from University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrum in 2003, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors. They would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistics suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds.

And there are other reasons to think we might be virtual. For instance, the more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Perhaps that is not a given, but a function of the nature of the universe we are living in. “If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical,” said Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.”


https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...imulation/

Post: #60

(01-05-2018 04:50 PM)Hypno Wrote:  A related question is whether all of our reality is a simulation.

The problem with this theory is the Hawthorne Effect - once we become aware that we are part of an experiment we will change our behaviour simply because we know we are being studied.

Of course only a micro-percentage of the population will even consider the possibility...but would that be enough to invalidate the purpose of the simulation?

Post: #61

(01-05-2018 04:31 PM)Stonk Wrote:  @Super Fire. Something can come from nothing.

Quantum fluctuations lead to particles literally jumping out of nowhere to collide with each other.

From what I gather, quantum fluctuations show that all matter expanded from the Big Bang, but that all matter was still condensed at a single point, and existed.

Let me know if that's inaccurate though.

Post: #62

That "single point" is a fluctuation. Its constituent particles jump from nowhere and collide to form the "single point".

Post: #63

(01-05-2018 08:05 PM)Cane Toad Wrote:  

(01-05-2018 04:50 PM)Hypno Wrote:  A related question is whether all of our reality is a simulation.

The problem with this theory is the Hawthorne Effect - once we become aware that we are part of an experiment we will change our behaviour simply because we know we are being studied.

Of course only a micro-percentage of the population will even consider the possibility...but would that be enough to invalidate the purpose of the simulation?

I think that possibility is part of the simulation.

Post: #64

Time only exists when things seem to change from moment to moment like the ticking of a clock. The mind or consciousness has its own sense of time, a biological clock. Computers do as well (CPU clock).

After the heat-death of the universe then nothing will be around to observe change and nothing will be changing and hence time will effectively stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death...e_universe

So you can think of the universe as a living organism (hence heat DEATH of the universe). Entropy is the net energy wasted (through heat) of interesting things happening. It's a big spring that is slowly unwinding. We exist because our planet formed out of a little oasis of elements and energy from the sun that has been stable long enough (save periodic meteor strikes) to allow for evolution, but in a cosmic scale, it's a small blip.

You can all get depressed now:




Enjoy your bangs. They are the highlight of life.

Post: #65

(01-06-2018 10:31 AM)Stonk Wrote:  That "single point" is a fluctuation. Its constituent particles jump from nowhere and collide to form the "single point".

Why did the particles jump out?

This takes me back to E. Michael Jones as he visited a museum and on the board it said something like, "In the beginning, atoms formed." Why? How? Or the Hindu cosmology of the world resting on four elephants, which are standing on a turtle's back. What is the turtle standing on?

Post: #66

This is where I'm at right now: