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Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

sheldrake.org

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Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#71

Post by lukan »

prng2021 wrote: post #17
lakeshastina wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the concept of free will in humans, which many now accept as a possibility, what would be the fundamental difference between an entity such as the sun, a plant and a human? None, except the lifespan.

You think that human free will is the defining factor of whether all things in the universe are the same or not?

I don't think that was implied, but rather the sun does, what the sun does and we do, what we do. If we do not have free will, but every action, every thought is a determined reaction of the state of things, than we would also be "trapped". But we do not (normally) perceive it as such. We experience our lives and we live it. We act. Even though our actions might come from a deep automatism. For the sun it might be the same, just on a whole different level.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#72

Post by fractallyte »

aydyn wrote: post #63
fractallyte wrote: post #56

Sheldrake also studied a well-known phenomenon in dogs ['Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home']: https://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/dogs-tha... I personally witnessed this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295560 It is incredible (in the literal sense), and I don't expect anyone to simply believe me. What is one to do after experiencing something (literally) unbelievable? I'm scient…

I'm surprised no one offered yet another plausible explanation that the dog picked up on something else (bird! squirrel! another dog!) that just so happened at the same time as your friend leaving the building. Coincidences occur all the time.

It was a car park, near to other stores, and (I think) a highway.

The pup was too small to see out of the car windows.

It was more than a coincidence: it was a distinct change in behavior.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#73

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Vecr wrote: post #66
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what I mean is that if you and some other being happen to have parallel time arrows, then it's possible that you'll recognize them as conscious. They might have similar thermodynamic properties to yourself, for instance. If you prod at them, they squeal afterwards. That sort of thing. If you encounter one with an orthogonal time arrow, you're not going to be able to communicate with them. You're not going to h…

That's not what an arrow of time is, are you sure you're not thinking more about counterfactuals?

I only took one semester of thermodynamics, but I think what I'm after is indeed an arrow of time.

I experience reality in such a way that certain processes are irreversible. Eggs do not uncook, they only cook, that sort of thing. That's my arrow of time.

Conventional physics calls it "the" arrow of time. Much like how we used to call Earth "the" center of the universe. It feels like the kind of thing that we've gotten wrong before. Like maybe it says more about us than it says about eggs.

Could there be a process that is heading the opposite direction? A perspective for which eggs uncooking is the normal state of affairs? Who am I to shut the door on a possibility like that?

It's the kind of thought experiment that leads to theory creation: What if all events, and not just the small ones of particle physics, are symmetry-preserving? What might we have to change about our concept of energy to make that fit?

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#74

Post by lukan »

fractallyte wrote: post #56

Sheldrake also studied a well-known phenomenon in dogs ['Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home']: https://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/dogs-tha... I personally witnessed this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295560 It is incredible (in the literal sense), and I don't expect anyone to simply believe me. What is one to do after experiencing something (literally) unbelievable? I'm scient…

I am open for alternative explanations, but the smell theory, combined with subtle changes with you, as you spot your friend, are the more likely explanation. Dogs can easily pick up scents 100 m away (my sister trained rescue dogs).

"I can see flaws in the linked article, in regards to self-organization and emergence"

Can you share what you perceive as flaws?

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#75

Post by knightoffaith »

j16sdiz wrote: post #70
knightoffaith wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if LLMs can act like humans and not be conscious, then maybe humans aren't really conscious either. Isn't this like saying "if the man in the Chinese room can act like he understands Chinese and not understand Chinese, then maybe nobody understands Chinese."?

Yes. And that is one of the reasons why Chinese room thought experiment is interesting. We know how a Chinese-understanding human would respond -- they respond exactly like the room does -- but we don't know if he actually understanding anything.

If you understood Chinese, you probably wouldn't have any doubt about whether you understood Chinese or not. And it seems incredibly strange to think that only you understand Chinese and nobody else does.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#77

Post by lukan »

strogonoff wrote: post #55

The tragedy (depending on how you look at it) with discussions about consciousness is that any possible consciousness we envision is inevitably human-like. We wouldn’t see it as “consciousness” even if it was only somewhat different from ours (animals); a consciousness that is really different may look to us like any natural process. A question of “is X conscious?” has no meaning if you remove that constraint of “hum…

I am not so sure about it. The question is, whether consciousness also leads to changing behavior. Say we try to communicate with method X and the sun answers with a flare, would probably be proof.

But it could also be, it has consciousness, but simply would not care much about and ignore us.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#78

Post by barfbagginus »

If the sun is conscious, that could explain why humanity believes in a powerful god that can, eg, send floods.

Perhaps the flood was caused by a coronal mass ejection that boiled a section of the ocean, causing extreme rains in a valley region.

Let's imagine that the consciousness field of the sun encompasses all of our minds.. so thinking about it might let us talk to it. So prayer could be real too. They can probably talk to us too, if they want to. A form of stellar transcranial magnetic simulation.

Pov: Sun Cults now have a scientific basis, baby! Let's try to make mental contact with the sun!

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#79

Post by barfbagginus »

If the sun is conscious, that could explain why humanity believes in a powerful god that can, eg, send floods.

Perhaps the flood was caused by a coronal mass ejection that boiled a section of the ocean, causing extreme rains in a valley region.

Let's imagine that the consciousness field of the sun encompasses all of our minds.. so thinking about it might let us talk to it. So prayer could be real too. They can probably talk to us too, if they want to. A form of stellar transcranial magnetic simulation.

Pov: Sun Cults now have a scientific basis, baby! Let's try to make mental contact with the sun!

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#80

Post by Vecr »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #73
Vecr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what an arrow of time is, are you sure you're not thinking more about counterfactuals?

I only took one semester of thermodynamics, but I think what I'm after is indeed an arrow of time. I experience reality in such a way that certain processes are irreversible. Eggs do not uncook, they only cook, that sort of thing. That's my arrow of time. Conventional physics calls it "the" arrow of time. Much like how we used to call Earth "the" center of the universe. It feels like the kind of thing that we've gott…

I really don't think so, getting the arrow of time to go a different way requires more than entropy locally decreasing, despite various popular descriptions. In most current theories of cosmology it should only go one way. Obviously there's general and special relativity, but they still have time going in the same direction, just at "different speeds", if you want to call it that.

Edit: remember, we don't live in "The Clockwork Rocket", our GR uses the Lorentzian manifold, not a Riemannian manifold.

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