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Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

sheldrake.org

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

#331

Post by cess11 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #308
cess11 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dionysian mysteries were popular in large portions of the Mediterranean at the time. Very little of what you mentioned was unique to dionysian practices and beliefs, so you'd need to have more than the immediate likeness as evidence. What do you mean by "the Church would actively integrate local cultural iconography into the bible to make it's spread more palpable", can you give some examples of such iconography?

My goal here isn't construct some theory I cooked up, my goal is to make you aware of scholarly research that links what is assumed to be old psychedelic driven religion with providing many of the inputs to what became christian lore.

OK then, maybe name some monographies and articles?

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

#332

Post by figassis »

chaosbolt wrote: post #237
theptip wrote: post #217

People tend to have strong opinions about this sort of thing, but the fact of the matter is there’s no way (currently) to know. (But also, it’s effectively metaphysics as it makes no testable/falsifiable predictions.) We could in principle discover a physical process that causes subjective experience, and a detector for same (say, it’s a particular string vibration in one of the coiled up dimensions). But it’s also p…

We have neurons and other cells doing their jobs and working with each other and the emergent system from this are humans, a different structure creates a different animal. We have circuits and 1s and 0s (which is as dumb as simolifying a human to atoms) and programs and structuring those in a certain way creates an emergent system of a computer with a language model installed on it. Would it be far fetched to say th…

I once had a discussion with a friend where we hypothesized that the universe is God, discovering Him/Itself through the experiences of its constituent systems, like atoms, cells, humans, solar systems, galaxies, etc. it’s all one consciousness, and it’s omnipresent because it is literally existence, all knowing because it’s knowledge is the sum of all other knowledge. So religious people aren’t wrong, but neither is everyone else.

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

#333

Post by smokel »

card_zero wrote: post #226
smokel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge is too broad a concept to protect all of it. Taking it to the extreme would probably mean that all output of /dev/random should be treasured in multiple backups, to avoid any bits to die.

It's straightforward to reject random noise as having no information content.

Not at all. If you had rejected the pretty much random processes in the primordial soup that eventually led to life (and then knowledge) from the start, then where would we be?

I think that it is almost impossible to determine randomness in an ongoing process.

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

#334

Post by smokel »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #282
smokel wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that language is fundamental to all understanding. May well be true, and it probably is according to Wittgenstein, but it is just one of many perspectives, and I'm not convinced.

No, I don't assume this. Concepts and understanding can exist independent of language. But sometimes concepts and understanding arise ONLY because of language. I am saying "consciousness" is a specific case of the later.

Thanks for clarifying that.

However, what makes some concepts mundane and others profound? Is that up to an individual to decide, based on, for example, taste? Or is there some objective notion?

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

#335

Post by afarviral »

titzer wrote: post #120
afarviral wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a kook and holding degrees in science are not mutually exclusive. His theories are intriguing nonsense in the sense that they have little to no evidence to support them. Their deeply conjectural nature is what defines them as kooky.

I've seen him give a talk. He continues to persist with pseudo-scientific theories that posit forces for which there are no evidence that purport to explain phenomenon that we have completely adequate scientific explanations for. His theories routinely fail Occam's razor, his experimental design is garbage, and he is never skeptical of his own conclusions. He's a kook.

> purport to explain phenomenon that we have completely adequate scientific explanations for

Exactly! I think he is just lining his pockets on this stuff as all the many other pseudoscience and snake oil salesman before him.

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

#336

Post by blooalien »

flqn wrote: post #296
zaphod420 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if praying uses spooky action at a distance and isn't bound by the speed of light?

It still can't communicate information faster than light and the sun god can't know your prayers earlier than 8min after you made them

Note that if this particular "theory" pans out to be true, any response will require a round-trip, thus making it more like 16 minutes to even matter. Any prayer during an emergency had best take that delay into account.

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

#337

Post by card_zero »

smokel wrote: post #333
card_zero wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's straightforward to reject random noise as having no information content.

Not at all. If you had rejected the pretty much random processes in the primordial soup that eventually led to life (and then knowledge) from the start, then where would we be? I think that it is almost impossible to determine randomness in an ongoing process.

Biological life itself embodies some knowledge. It uses trial-and-error evolution instead of thinking, but it arrives at solutions. Sometimes it arrives at the same solutions from different directions. This is different from randomness and the arbitrary results of random processes.

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

#338

Post by chongli »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #168
chongli wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a subjective experience? To me, this seems like an infinite regress problem.

Subjective experience is the awareness of an internal representation.

What is awareness then? Do you see my point? Either you end up with a circle of references or an infinite regress of definitions to describe the ineffable.

It’s the problem of qualia [1]. They can’t really be defined, only pointed at. My experience of seeing the colour red is non-universalizable. Thus the word red can only point at it, it can’t describe or define it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

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

#339

Post by kaashif »

jbeninger wrote: post #166
dsego wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why we’re not just automatons, behaving the same on the outside, but without the conscious experience.

Wait, you have a conscious experience?

I'm with you. Not sure what they're taking about, I'm not conscious and I've never seen any evidence others are conscious.

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

#340

Post by smokel »

card_zero wrote: post #337
smokel wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. If you had rejected the pretty much random processes in the primordial soup that eventually led to life (and then knowledge) from the start, then where would we be? I think that it is almost impossible to determine randomness in an ongoing process.

Biological life itself embodies some knowledge. It uses trial-and-error evolution instead of thinking, but it arrives at solutions. Sometimes it arrives at the same solutions from different directions. This is different from randomness and the arbitrary results of random processes.

How will a system know all this initially? It seems this requires quite a competent judge and a lot of data.

The idea of knowledge being something to protect is interesting, but I don't see a practical way of accomplishing it.

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