Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#161

Post by swader999 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

blacksqr wrote: post #98

swader999 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I wonder myself. I need to do a few more, maybe up to fifty before I have enough subjective data to be certain. What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? You can put your fingers on your nostrils and blow through fingers in lucid dream, irl the air stops, but in OBE, you might not have a full body. One time I did, other time I was just like a shadow, half formed. Really weird. There's…

>What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? For decades magician and debunker of supernatural claims James Randi placed a new object on his dining table every month, and offered a million dollar prize to anyone who could tell him what the current object was. Of course the prize was never claimed. Ask a friend down your block to put something on their dining table. Do your OBE thing and write down what y…

Yeah I could try something like that. Maybe even stick a playing card that I don't look at somewhere.

I don't really care about proving this to anyone else. My main reason is to try to talk to my daughter I lost last year. Been really hard...

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#162

Post by FollowingTheDao » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:00 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #75

mikhailfranco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is another way (perhaps the only way) to find some objective knowledge - by the interaction of many consciousnesses. This is the scientific method. Comparison of experiences, with agreement, or refutation, can produce more reliable knowledge than any individual. See Popper, Lakatos, et many al that you seem unaware of.

Which you will never be able to prove because we can never experience anything outside of our consciousness You can speculate all you want and create as many models as you please, yet you can never know what reality is to anyone else but yourself, nor what reality is outside of your own consciousness

Exactly. I do not know why this is so hard to understand. If conciseness was everywhere I would be able to know what someone else's reality is. Since I cannot, there is something separating my consciousness from someone else's.

We create consciousness.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#163

Post by wafer_thin » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:01 PM UTC

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #5

If consciousness is "the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings" then it depends on dualism, ie, this and that. Is the fabric of the universe dual or non-dual? If it is non-dual it can have no consciousness. Because the universe would be able to see a "non-universe". IMHO, consciousness arises out of the universe via the creation of duality by the human mind. The fabric is unknowable and that frustrates…

The connection of memory to consciousness is a fascinating thing to consider. If we had no memory whatsoever, then even with our huge brains I suspect we'd be as conscious as a plant, or possibly even less so (plants have timekeeping ability and thats a rudimentary memory of sorts). Perhaps 'blue' and 'chocolatey' are the interpretations a memory state makes of new input.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#164

Post by BasedAnon » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:03 PM UTC

orwin wrote: post #159

BasedAnon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies Actually this is backward, "I think therefore I am". There's no reason to believe consciousness is a state arising from a physical process, our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of sensory input and therefore the physical world. There is more evidence for the reality of consciousn…

No. Or rather what do you mean? We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it) I suppose here you're talking about the subjective sentation, the phenomenal experience, the 'hard problem', and you reference th…

>We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it)

What we prove is an evidence that is filtered through our sensory faculties and experienced by our minds. Our minds still remain judge, jury and executioner and in this same sense if we are to take seriously the faculties of our minds in assessing the physical world, then we must also take seriously our experience of conciousness which remains even when we are unable to sense the physical world. In this sense our experience of conciousness is more real than our looking at an MRI.

>then we do not need to think subjective experience really exist.

What would follow is that you do not need to think subjective experiences exist for others, but for you to make this assessment you at least must have a subjective experience.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#165

Post by swader999 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:06 PM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #94

swader999 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I wonder myself. I need to do a few more, maybe up to fifty before I have enough subjective data to be certain. What is this experiment to prove I'm not lucid dreaming? You can put your fingers on your nostrils and blow through fingers in lucid dream, irl the air stops, but in OBE, you might not have a full body. One time I did, other time I was just like a shadow, half formed. Really weird. There's…

You can see what's going on on your roof perhaps? I'm very interested in the subject and spend a lot of time meditating but have yet to experience anything one might consider mystical, outside of the use of psychedelics.

Gateway tapes but that book I referenced in another post here really works. Just takes a few nights. Essentially you go to sleep with intent to exit. Wake up six hours later. Get out of bed for a few minutes. Go back and practise exits as you get yourself in the mind awake body asleep state.

Doing it straight from meditation is quite advanced, takes decades but can be achieved for many in weeks with binaural beats that trigger the brain to get into theta state with a frequency following effect.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#166

Post by BasedAnon » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

jemmyw wrote: post #153

BasedAnon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies Actually this is backward, "I think therefore I am". There's no reason to believe consciousness is a state arising from a physical process, our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of sensory input and therefore the physical world. There is more evidence for the reality of consciousn…

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded community. If consciousness was not physical then where is it? Why would it switch on and off with physical changes to brains? Why would you be able to get altered states of consciousness with chemicals, disease and age? Why would be be able to marry some conscio…

The difference is that you do not experience ghosts, but you do experience conciousness.

>If consciousness was not physical then where is it?

We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it?

>Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know?

The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#167

Post by suggestion » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:10 PM UTC

jemmyw wrote: post #153

BasedAnon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies Actually this is backward, "I think therefore I am". There's no reason to believe consciousness is a state arising from a physical process, our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of sensory input and therefore the physical world. There is more evidence for the reality of consciousn…

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded community. If consciousness was not physical then where is it? Why would it switch on and off with physical changes to brains? Why would you be able to get altered states of consciousness with chemicals, disease and age? Why would be be able to marry some conscio…

>Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans?

Does the activity cause the changes on the scan or does the changes in the scan cause the activity? How does neuroplasticity result in physical changes to the brain through, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy? Do the thoughts alter the physical structure or does the structure cause the thoughts even before the structural changes?

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#168

Post by BasedAnon » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:15 PM UTC

saled wrote: post #149

BasedAnon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When a philosophy has enough proofs and credibility, it becomes a science I completely disagree with this notion of science. To me science is the practice of analysing findings from controlled experimentation and then deriving predictive, reproducible and falsifiable hypotheses.

Why do you think that collecting evidence from experiments leads to truth though? What about the process gives you certainty? What evidence is important to making progress and what evidence is irrelevant? What does progress in understanding an area look like? Why should we undertake it? These are questions of philosophy, no experiments can answer them.

>Why do you think that collecting evidence from experiments leads to truth though?

I don't, but I find that it produces results that are instrumental, and I assume that the past behaves analogously to the future, and similar situations behave similarly because this has generally been true in my experience.

>Why should we undertake it?

I'm religious, so certain science is useful to me in accomplishing my goal of attaining heaven.

>These are questions of philosophy, no experiments can answer them.

I agree.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#169

Post by swader999 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:18 PM UTC

czbond wrote: post #86

swader999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good grasp on this. Have you looked at Tom Campbell? He has a separate angle than Hoffman but very similar conclusions. The batshit crazy thing about Tom is that he shows you ways that you can individually experiment and prove through your own experiences the things he's positing. His My Big Toe trilogy goes into all this, but I shudder to recommend it. Tedious slog. If you really want to prove it to yours…

I've been interested for some time in Astral, thanks for mentioning it. I've had very intelligent, credible people suggest it is possible. Similar for remote viewing In the crux of Tom's argument - what can one prove via Astral?

To get an idea what's possible see this, it's an entertaining, educational look at it: https://youtu.be/Wly9_qN-jZ0?feature=shared

The CIA report is linked in the description.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#170

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 11:23 PM UTC

fatfingerd wrote: post #155

crazygringo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, ELI5: the only things we actually know are from our conscious experience. Everything else we have to logically infer from those conscious experiences. Literally everything is built upon our conscious awareness. We have direct experience of our conscious awareness before we can even do physics to determine the four fundamental forces at all. To clarify, consciousness isn't just a fundamental aspect of the univer…

You've just demonstrated the anthropic principle. Intelligent contemplation requires a lot of things so we will see them and can see them as fundamental, but they might be obscure in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

No, you are misunderstanding the anthropic principle. That merely explains statistical things such as why it might be hard to find intelligent life elsewhere.

The anthropic principle is a concept we've created out of our conscious observation of the universe. But take away our consciousness and you take away any and all of our knowledge of any universe whatsoever.

Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. Consciousness experience is fact; our conceptual understanding of the universe is mere theory. Well-tested theory, but theory nonetheless.