Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#21

Post by ghthor »

dmingod666 wrote: post #4

Not only is the theory seeming a bit too large fitting but the article tries to stuff some cool 'vibe' nonsense.. if the original problem is Hard and you have some insight into a solution you have a ton of value already. But then maybe you dont have that insight and want to sell some snake oil level article. for something so important it just ends up looking like bad satire or onion type material. what are you trying…

Materialism, the scientific doctrine that describes the world as a machine of particles, is a fairly new way to think about the universe, 16th century. It's been very successful in producing machines, repeatable machines. But it's not the only way to think about how the universe is organized.

Rupert Sheldrake is a very interesting scientist who's re-introducing an much older model for how the universe is organized, called panpsyicism, where all matter is considered conscience. Conscience is defined as having a probabilistic future,and maybe being able to make choices about that future. He has some other interesting hypotheses that build on top of this, such as morphic resonance as which is like a memory for conscience. He doesnt expect materialist science to be able to explain the forms of plants, believing that DNA is not going to be able to account for how the plant is shaped. I find that a very interesting idea, that there we are something more then our DNA

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#22

Post by goldenkey »

whatshisface wrote: post #10
saalweachter wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure. There are a ton of people who get taken seriously who really, really don't like the "consciousness is what the brain does" consensus of modern neuroscience, and they say a lot of stupid things trying to come up with an alternative.

That's not a concensus of modern neroscience, that's a philosophical consensus that perhaps neuroscientists have. Consciousness is not eligible for science because it can't be observed. For example you might think someone under deep anethesia is not conscious, but how do you know that they aren't completely conscious while not experiencing anything, doing anything or forming memories?

You can't observe consciousness in even living beings. Consciousness can't actually be verified for anyone but yourself. And that is actually a point of contention. Some people believe that their consciousness is an illusion too...

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#23

Post by ghthor »

saalweachter wrote: post #6
dmingod666 wrote: post #4

Not only is the theory seeming a bit too large fitting but the article tries to stuff some cool 'vibe' nonsense.. if the original problem is Hard and you have some insight into a solution you have a ton of value already. But then maybe you dont have that insight and want to sell some snake oil level article. for something so important it just ends up looking like bad satire or onion type material. what are you trying…

I wouldn't be so sure. There are a ton of people who get taken seriously who really, really don't like the "consciousness is what the brain does" consensus of modern neuroscience, and they say a lot of stupid things trying to come up with an alternative.

It's less of consensus, more of an IOU. Materialist science just says, we can't explain it now, but we will explain it in the future. Materialist biology is saying the same about the forms of plants being caused by the DNA, we can't explain it now but we will in the future. There are some scientists that aren't materialists, Rupert Sheldrake, that dont expect materialistic science to be able to explain consciousness or why life has complex forms.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#24

Post by king_magic »

csomar wrote: post #17
flossball wrote: post #3

What did I just read??? I can't help but feel stupider for reading it. This is complete garbage. Some relationship to the internal frequencies of the brain, ie. its various analog clock tree mechanisms means that because all matter is based on subatomic vibrations rocks and atoms have a degree of consciousness too? Wow, my laptop running at 2.2GHz(and various other frequencies) must be a supreme being. Yes, obviously…

The hypothesis is worthy of pursuit, in my opinion. The article is not well written, however. If you say matter can't have consciousness then how does your brain have one? Your brain in made of matter. There are definitively varying degrees of consciousness and self-awareness. I don't think that someone who is an 1. atheist 2. knows that consciousness is made by the brain neurons or some processes; has the same self-…

Why is it so incredible to think that consciousness couldn’t emerge from the brain? All sorts of complex phenomena emerge from plain old non-magical matter.

Why would matter be magically “conscious”? What possible physical mechanism could that magic be? (beside the absurdity of vibration, I suppose?)

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#25

Post by saalweachter »

amelius wrote: post #12
whatshisface wrote: post #2

I'm not sure if it should be called a theory, given that it's completely unfalsifiable. It is totally impossible to determine through observation whether or not anything beyond yourself is conscious, unless by conscious you mean physically awake.

I suppose it can be called a theory, just not a scientific theory. Otherwise, it would not be possible to find any theory for consciousness, but in fact people are still trying to find one.

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory.

Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth.

But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be observed, tested, and used to discard incorrect hypotheses.

Where science ends is when there are no observations you could make which would disprove your hypothesis. For instance, intelligent design basically says, an intelligent designer could have done things in whatever weird way they are, so any observations are just how it happened.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#26

Post by ghthor »

flossball wrote: post #3

What did I just read??? I can't help but feel stupider for reading it. This is complete garbage. Some relationship to the internal frequencies of the brain, ie. its various analog clock tree mechanisms means that because all matter is based on subatomic vibrations rocks and atoms have a degree of consciousness too? Wow, my laptop running at 2.2GHz(and various other frequencies) must be a supreme being. Yes, obviously…

What is your definition of consciousness?

Mine is the ability to see a probabilistic future and maybe make decisions about that future. Under that defination all matter is conscience due to its quantum probalistic nature.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#27

Post by Nasrudith »

whatshisface wrote: post #13
amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it can be called a theory, just not a scientific theory. Otherwise, it would not be possible to find any theory for consciousness, but in fact people are still trying to find one.

Why can't it be impossible to find any theory of consciousness? Unless you define the word theory to mean something it doesn't mean to scientists, it is impossible to have a theory of consciousness. At best there could be speculation about consciousness.

Technically you could but it depends on definitions of consciousness and ability to affect, disassemble, and replicate - never mind the ethics.

To be a smartass with multiple definitions of consciousness we have concrete theories already. Given that xenon gas is capable of anesthetizing even plants it appears that the process is electrochemical in known life and disruption leads to unconsciousness - pain can't go anywhere. That tells us basics but building from there is difficult.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#28

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

_Schizotypy wrote: post #19
csomar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hypothesis is worthy of pursuit, in my opinion. The article is not well written, however. If you say matter can't have consciousness then how does your brain have one? Your brain in made of matter. There are definitively varying degrees of consciousness and self-awareness. I don't think that someone who is an 1. atheist 2. knows that consciousness is made by the brain neurons or some processes; has the same self-…

Your brain has consciousness because of the networking of the neurons that make it up

How many neurons does it take to make a consciousness?

The thing about consciousness is that you can't really define it. You know you have it because you experience it. You assume that other humans have it because they are like you. You might further assume that certain other beings have it because they are also like you in many ways (though you'd likely disagree with the idea that theirs is as meaningful as yours).

But you can't prove any of it. You can only say that certain things react to certain stimuli in certain ways, which describes everything in the universe. Is it really that much of a stretch, then, to suggest that perhaps everything in the universe has some form of awareness, some experience of things, albeit probably too different from our own to comprehend?

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#29

Post by whatshisface »

Nasrudith wrote: post #27
whatshisface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it be impossible to find any theory of consciousness? Unless you define the word theory to mean something it doesn't mean to scientists, it is impossible to have a theory of consciousness. At best there could be speculation about consciousness.

Technically you could but it depends on definitions of consciousness and ability to affect, disassemble, and replicate - never mind the ethics. To be a smartass with multiple definitions of consciousness we have concrete theories already. Given that xenon gas is capable of anesthetizing even plants it appears that the process is electrochemical in known life and disruption leads to unconsciousness - pain can't go any…

You're talking about sleep, I'm talking about "the experience of qualia," or whatever you want to call it. Sure, you can have a scientific theory of anesthesia. "The experience of qualia," categorically cannot be studied because it inherently makes no predictions about the behavior of anything in the physical world. It isn't like the idea of free will, where something is being decided, it is just about how things are being passively observed.

Re: The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man

#30

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

saalweachter wrote: post #25
amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it can be called a theory, just not a scientific theory. Otherwise, it would not be possible to find any theory for consciousness, but in fact people are still trying to find one.

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth. But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be ob…

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.
Post reply on HN