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Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

scientificamerican.com

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

#261

Post by thomassmith65 »

BasedAnon wrote: post #88

What's the deal with these things being lumped in with physics? This isn't physics this is just regular philosophy with some scientific sounding language. I feel like this is people reaching for religion but not wanting to admit it to themselves.

It doesn't at all seem like reaching for religion to me; seems materialist as can be. If consciousness isn't a phenomenon that requires a soul to explain, surely it's appropriate for physicists to study its nature. To call consciousness 'part of the fabric of the universe' seems like a fancy way of arguing that consciousness is a property of matter - and does it make sense, to a materialist, to call it anything else?

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

#262

Post by lend000 »

jemmyw wrote: post #102
BasedAnon wrote: post #88

What's the deal with these things being lumped in with physics? This isn't physics this is just regular philosophy with some scientific sounding language. I feel like this is people reaching for religion but not wanting to admit it to themselves.

It's a shame to see so many comments engaged in this kind of pseudoscience. There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies. I'm open minded to hypothesis that are potentially testable, but people keep just repeating the implausible. I also hate that I keep reading that consciousness, or anything else, is a universe "hack" which is several levels…

Why is it pseudoscience to label the medium by which particles are entangled as consciousness? We have no better definition than that, since the observers of any delayed choice quantum eraser experiment are ultimately conscious, and we have no means of recording similar results without a conscious observer.

I used to think I was very clever for independently coming to effectively the same conclusion as Schmidhuber, that consciousness is a byproduct of data compression in the brain, and a brain needs to tell itself it has subjective qualia to do all the complex things we can do. And while that might be theoretically sound, I think it leaves high dose psychedelic experiences woefully unexplained, which I think really transcend any evolutionary or biological reason for happening and have incredible parallels across people and cultures (the consistency of seeing "machine elves" while on DMT, for example). Ultimately, an infinite consciousness experiencing infinite reality seems so much more elegant as a base level of existence than the Standard Model being the root of all existence. But, to each their own.

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

#263

Post by hnfong »

tsimionescu wrote: post #250
skissane wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing. Why is it not a "real coherent position worth discussing"?

Because to me it seems that if it were made consistent, it would extend into solipsism. And if it does, I don't think it's worth discussing then.

“the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about.

IMHO it is the only thing worth discussing.

And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone.

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

#264

Post by hnfong »

plonk wrote: post #234
MrYellowP wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine there's no internet and you don't have a dictionary. When you've never observed the Eiffel tower and someone tells you the Eiffel Tower exists, will you tell them that they're wrong? "There's no evidence that the Eiffel Tower exists." Do you have any evidence the Eiffel Tower does not exist? No? Then it makes no sense to assume you know what's reality. The reason, why you insist that it doesn't exist, is beca…

That's a weak argument. The reason some of us don't believe that consciousness is something else than the state of a brain following physical processes is that the latter is a much simpler theory and matches every objective observation we can make. If you try to explain consciousness as just the state of a physical brain, all the observations agree with you. The brain is known to be capable of computing. There are kn…

> The reason some of us don't believe that consciousness is something else than the state of a brain following physical processes is that the latter is a much simpler theory and matches every objective observation we can make.

I have personally seen and experienced things that cannot be explained by these physical theories, and while you may want to just throw those observations as delusions or fraud, consider how the standard process of deciding what counts as “scientific evidence” is biased towards those that are consistent with the status quo.

You actually don’t need to look too far to find things that don’t quite sit well with the established theories. Those that are not obviously fraud. People then just casually explain them away as coincidence or physiological illusions or the like.

I can totally understand how people can convince themselves that the established theories are sufficient unless and until they experience a dramatic event that throws them off course. That said the rabbit hole is truly deep if you actually spend time searching for info.

I’m just trying to tell you that the quoted sentence is just plainly wrong. I have no obviously better theories however, and to the extent that modern science can convince a large part of the population that the quoted sentence is correct shows how reasonably well the theories of modern science holds up to scrutiny. I just think it’s a disservice to all to brush away the weird bits that don’t fit.

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

#265

Post by hnfong »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #202
jemmyw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame to see so many comments engaged in this kind of pseudoscience. There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies. I'm open minded to hypothesis that are potentially testable, but people keep just repeating the implausible. I also hate that I keep reading that consciousness, or anything else, is a universe "hack" which is several levels…

> There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies. Just because you didn't don't know about X doesn't mean X doesn't exist. Simple logic that even children learn quickly.

This is sadly a recurring feature of how modern scientists make excuses. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this as an excuse from COVID fuckups

The infuriating part is how often the evidence is there, just not in the convenient peer reviewed format that scientists are addicted to these days

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

#266

Post by hnfong »

smokel wrote: post #99
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…

A thing with Out-of-Body-Experiences is that if you were able to shift outside of your body, then why would you still be constrained to the body of the earth? If you were able to roam around free of physics, then certainly you would leave not only your human body, but you would have to take account of the earth moving around the sun as well (at breakneck speed, mind you). You'd probably be either a few kilometers ins…

Your argument doesn’t even make sense. You posit that if the OBE person is free of physics they must have a particular absolute frame of reference (which does not exist in accepted laws of physics) that is totally different from the in-body one?

It’s trivially easy to make up flawed theories on how OBEs work without having that absolute frame of reference. Arguing that it requires one seems like a scummy straw man argument and a bad faith attempt to conceptualize the idea - it’s up to you what to believe but you need to try harder to think about possibilities on how it might happen if you want to reason about it.

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

#267

Post by hnfong »

Buttons840 wrote: post #115
swader999 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah all fair critism, except that experiment is involved and it does take that long to get rigerous results. You can actually do this. Takes about ten or so tries over a few weeks for most. I haven't tried to fly like a bird yet. Hopefully I'll get to experience that next.

They way you sell it, I gotta say, even if it's all imagination I want to try it.

That’s the idea. If “consciousness is part of the fabric of the universe”, then in a sense the universe is just the manifestation of the imagination anyway.

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

#268

Post by hnfong »

fishtacos wrote: post #198
gchamonlive wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think quality is real then you probably saw the dharma body's reflection already. It is as real as all the ghosts we perceive with our consciousness mind knife. Gravity, light, music... are they real? Why? Because they affect the world we perceive in meaningful ways? Then why is Santa not real when it manifests itself in the holiday every year? If the idea of the spaghetti monster makes you fast every fortnigh…

Quantity is "qualitatively" measurable. As is gravity, light, music, etc. That is something we can ascribe methods of discovery toward, we can measure, we can collectively, as human beings, or even otherwise (a cat has instincts to widen and flatten itself for reduction of acceleration via increasing its circumference, and braces itself upon landing before impact, e.g.) do so. Santa Claus, or any spiritual concept or…

Are you saying “if we don’t know how to measure something, we declare it as unreal and pretend it doesn’t exist”?

I mean, yes that’s precisely one of the main reasons why the spirit stuff is not accepted in science (can’t be effectively measured in a lab), but it’s surprising how people can just boldly declare a head in sand approach to things they don’t understand..

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

#269

Post by swader999 »

kozd wrote: post #205
swader999 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

How could you not care about proving this to others? You seem to harbor some hope that you can talk to a passed loved one via this or a related means? If you could prove this isn't just lucid dreaming then you could have the help of other people interested in taking the same path. Think how many people you could help and how this would revolutionize science. Don't you want to validate the method by which you're inves…

It's just not my driving motivation. The other thing to note is that its not the exact physical world, this plane is similar though. So these proofs might not even apply.

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

#270

Post by swader999 »

adammarples wrote: post #255
swader999 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

My friend I don't want to be critical, given that you have written that your are grieving, but you are likely dreaming, not astrally projecting. There's no way for you to tell them apart.

That's possible. I think it will take another year to truly know.
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