Rule number one
You do not think about Thought Club.
Rule number two
YOU DO NOT THINK ABOUT THOUGHT CLUB!!
There may be more rules like this, but see rules one and two.
Welcome to Thought Club.
:lulz: :lulz:
Seventh rule: Thoughts will go on as long as they have to.
And the eighth and final rule: If this is your first night at Thought Club, you have to think.
I am Jack's pre-frontal cortex.
I think his name was robert paulson
Quote from: rong on February 03, 2020, 06:40:17 PM
I think therefore I am robert paulson
fixed that for ya
Quote from: Cramulus on February 03, 2020, 12:57:14 PM
:lulz: :lulz:
Seventh rule: Thoughts will go on as long as they have to.
And the eighth and final rule: If this is your first night at Thought Club, you have to think.
You know I was just posting a paradox as a ha ha at first, but I said fuck it and wrote a set of somewhat more complex rules loosely based upon Those Other Rules.
Rules of Thought Club
1 You do not think about Thought Club.
2 YOU DO NOT THINK ABOUT THOUGHT CLUB!
3 There are no winners in Thought Club, just a bunch of losers thinking as hard as they can. It is by no means such a silly thing as structured debate. If someone explicitly concedes or tacitly concedes by not replying within 2 days, shitting the bed entirely by spitting word salad (poetry is ok but must be meaningfully coherent), any provable plagiarism, brazen copypasta of what has already been said in a thought, and/or resorting to ad hominem statements that are not both supported by observation within the chain of the thought and also creative in expression the thought is over. Continuing to reply is unnecessary, against these rules, and the thinker who so concedes effectively has the last word in their admission of total defeat. Once a thought chain has ended it must not be replied to by anyone at all, even to "bump" it for amusement. It is finished.
4 Only two thinkers may reply in a chain of thought and only one such chain may be active at a time until one of the thinkers effectively concedes.
5 Paradoxical or irrational but coherent statements and other such ontological tomfoolery is allowed, but if it results in any kind of infinite recursion entrapping either or both thinkers or effectively obliterates all meaning the thought is over, you asshole. Both thinkers have effectively been forced to concede if the paradox cannot be resolved in one reply.
6 No kibitzing. Thinkers not involved in the active chain of reply may not reply to it or post words intended to be directly relevant to it. Ideally uninvolved thinkers will not post words at all. Feel free to wordlessly post emotes so you can thusly hoot and holler incoherently in encouragement or wince at a thinker getting that ass beat, but do not post it in reply to the active chain of thought. If necessary these rules may be reposted not more frequently than once per page as a reminder of this. Continuing disruptive posts will be split to the "Unlimited Garbage From The Wizard Joseph" thread, they are his now, and the last point in the active chain reposted as needed.
7 Thoughts will go on as long as they have to.
8 If this is your first night at Thought Club, you have to think.
I have a thought for Cramulus.
As I understand it you are actively engaged in spiritual practices with the intention to "raise the consciousness of the universe by raising your own" or somesuch thing.
I say that if the universe is at all conscious to even the slightest degree, including your own "consciousness" as such, then it is by a matter of sheer scale vastly MORE conscious than you could ever be in your wildest possible dream if you dedicated your entire mortal existence exclusively to having wild dreams, and so it's a sort of hubris bordering on madness to even try.
If the universe is in fact not conscious at all, including by extension yourself, then you are rather like the corpse of Dr. Frankenstein trying to vivify the whole universe with no apparatus but your mind, such as it is. It would thus seem that the seat of intention in your whole damn spiritual praxis is mad as fish grease off its meds.
Though this may rightly be seen as an attack against your paradigm please understand that I seek in part to prevent you from either giving up such useful practices in disgust when you cannot ultimately attain your intention, or falling into a very dangerous delusion of your "success" in such an apparently paradoxical endeavor.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 10:28:35 PM
I have a thought for Cramulus.
As I understand it you are actively engaged in spiritual practices with the intention to "raise the consciousness of the universe by raising your own" or somesuch thing.
I say that if the universe is at all conscious to even the slightest degree, including your own "consciousness" as such, then it is by a matter of sheer scale vastly MORE conscious than you could ever be in your wildest possible dream if you dedicated your entire mortal existence exclusively to having wild dreams, and so it's a sort of hubris bordering on madness to even try.
If the universe is in fact not conscious at all, including by extension yourself, then you are rather like the corpse of Dr. Frankenstein trying to vivify the whole universe with no apparatus but your mind, such as it is. It would thus seem that the seat of intention in your whole damn spiritual praxis is mad as fish grease off its meds.
Though this may rightly be seen as an attack against your paradigm please understand that I seek in part to prevent you from either giving up such useful practices in disgust when you cannot ultimately attain your intention, or falling into a very dangerous delusion of your "success" in such an apparently paradoxical endeavor.
Fucking universe is defective any damn way. If I had my way, we'd just chuck it and start over.
Sometimes you just have to throw away the entire cosmos.
Is this a variant of "The Game"?
Cause you all just lost it right this second. :fnord:
PRAISED BE THE NON-ENDING THOUGHT CLUB!
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 10:43:11 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 10:28:35 PM
I have a thought for Cramulus.
As I understand it you are actively engaged in spiritual practices with the intention to "raise the consciousness of the universe by raising your own" or somesuch thing.
I say that if the universe is at all conscious to even the slightest degree, including your own "consciousness" as such, then it is by a matter of sheer scale vastly MORE conscious than you could ever be in your wildest possible dream if you dedicated your entire mortal existence exclusively to having wild dreams, and so it's a sort of hubris bordering on madness to even try.
If the universe is in fact not conscious at all, including by extension yourself, then you are rather like the corpse of Dr. Frankenstein trying to vivify the whole universe with no apparatus but your mind, such as it is. It would thus seem that the seat of intention in your whole damn spiritual praxis is mad as fish grease off its meds.
Though this may rightly be seen as an attack against your paradigm please understand that I seek in part to prevent you from either giving up such useful practices in disgust when you cannot ultimately attain your intention, or falling into a very dangerous delusion of your "success" in such an apparently paradoxical endeavor.
Fucking universe is defective any damn way. If I had my way, we'd just chuck it and start over.
Sometimes you just have to throw away the entire cosmos.
:lulz: :lulz:
I mean I addressed the thought to Cramulus, but I guess by the rules this thought is you and me now!
Thing is I agree that the damn universe could be called defective or at least extremely noncomforming compared to what could theoretically be. For fucksake just look at all of the black holes! Every singular one is an exercise in practical absurdity. Because the singularity is quite literally infinitely smaller than a Planck length you can quite rightly say that between the inside edge of the event horizon and the singularity there is an infinite amount of available space. So much space in fact that it could easily contain an infinite number of things the size of the percievable universe. Zeno's paradox of the arrow is a matter of standing physical law! What kind of Creator would just leave some shit like that in the workmanship! It's embarrassing.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 10:28:35 PM
I have a thought for Cramulus.
As I understand it you are actively engaged in spiritual practices with the intention to "raise the consciousness of the universe by raising your own" or somesuch thing.
I say that if the universe is at all conscious to even the slightest degree, including your own "consciousness" as such, then it is by a matter of sheer scale vastly MORE conscious than you could ever be in your wildest possible dream if you dedicated your entire mortal existence exclusively to having wild dreams, and so it's a sort of hubris bordering on madness to even try.
why attempt to do anything?
the world is so big, and we're so small
To do anything but roll over and accept the cards you've been dealt, the situation you're in, the person you've become -- that's madness
every artist, every activist, every seeker -- they are all attempting to move a needle that weighs as much as the whole world
two needles, really -- one that's inside of them has to move first,
and if they can do that, it can apply leverage to the big external needle
QuoteIf the universe is in fact not conscious at all, including by extension yourself, then you are rather like the corpse of Dr. Frankenstein trying to vivify the whole universe with no apparatus but your mind, such as it is. It would thus seem that the seat of intention in your whole damn spiritual praxis is mad as fish grease off its meds.
first and foremost, I'm just trying to be a real person - that is, not just an empty vessel, or a parrot, that just repeats whatever sharpnel I absorbed from my environment this year. Someone with agency, who can make
decisions, and not just kneejerk
reactions.
And that's what
most situations need, right?
so that's the praxis
Quote from: Cramulus on February 04, 2020, 01:09:27 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 10:28:35 PM
I have a thought for Cramulus.
As I understand it you are actively engaged in spiritual practices with the intention to "raise the consciousness of the universe by raising your own" or somesuch thing.
I say that if the universe is at all conscious to even the slightest degree, including your own "consciousness" as such, then it is by a matter of sheer scale vastly MORE conscious than you could ever be in your wildest possible dream if you dedicated your entire mortal existence exclusively to having wild dreams, and so it's a sort of hubris bordering on madness to even try.
why attempt to do anything?
the world is so big, and we're so small
To do anything but roll over and accept the cards you've been dealt, the situation you're in, the person you've become -- that's madness
every artist, every activist, every seeker -- they are all attempting to move a needle that weighs as much as the whole world
two needles, really -- one that's inside of them has to move first,
and if they can do that, it can apply leverage to the big external needle
QuoteIf the universe is in fact not conscious at all, including by extension yourself, then you are rather like the corpse of Dr. Frankenstein trying to vivify the whole universe with no apparatus but your mind, such as it is. It would thus seem that the seat of intention in your whole damn spiritual praxis is mad as fish grease off its meds.
first and foremost, I'm just trying to be a real person - that is, not just an empty vessel, or a parrot, that just repeats whatever sharpnel I absorbed from my environment this year. Someone with agency, who can make decisions, and not just kneejerk reactions.
And that's what most situations need, right?
so that's the praxis
That's a good response. Were this not Thought Club I would be quite contented by it and conced, but contentment is not the point here, and so I have a couple questions because something there tasted sweet in my mouth, but has my stomach a bit bitter so to speak.
Quote
To do anything but roll over and accept the cards you've been dealt, the situation you're in, the person you've become -- that's madness
I presume from what I think I know of you that this is a typo or misstatement. You are otherwise advocating for this mad complacency in such things. Am I wrong?
Consider the statement pared down a bit and restated.
Accept the cards you've been dealt, the situation that you're in, the person you've become, and then act upon them.
No "rolling over" is inherent in any of those things. They are a necessary first step to lucid action when restated as such with a meaningful imperative instead of calling such things madness.
I totally agree about your observation on artists or anyone seeking some form of agency in the world.
Quote
first and foremost, I'm just trying to be a real person - that is, not just an empty vessel, or a parrot, that just repeats whatever sharpnel I absorbed from my environment this year. Someone with agency, who can make decisions, and not just kneejerk reactions.
Why are you trying to be what you objectively already are? You are already a real person. Are you seeking to become "more real"? Are those not on your cognitive and spiritual level these "empty parrots" you seem to fear being? If not all people can be said to be such then at what point are they endowed beyond that somehow? They are EXACTLY as real as you are if anyone can be said to be so. Is this not the same essential derision behind the common vernacular "sheeple"?
Cramulus I must now make an observation of mine that you may not like. Please understand that I am by no means trying to hurt you, but this may sting a bit.
You seem to be trying to save yourself. I strongly suspect that this is a vestigial remnant of the Christianity I believe you once said you used to hold. Absent a separate saviour figure you have seemingly taken the burden of this saving upon yourself needlessly. I am thoroughly enmeshed in the same paradigm in many ways, and so I sympathize deeply.
I tell you plainly that there is nothing to save, just people and things in yourself and the world to act upon as wisely as you can AND NO MORE.
Another great mind, and I DO think you have a great mind capable of great things, that made this kind of error of comfort was Nietzsche. In positing an overman all he really did was deconstruct the messiah complex and replace it with a vague outline of something that would "save" or at least "rightfully replace" this wretched thing he saw in humanity. He went to some length to demolish the popular saviours and in not stopping there posited a saviour. He just cleared the temple of all idols and set up his own in their stead, as is so very painfully commonplace.
There are no such things as saviours, and nothing that needs such a thing.
The moment that you accept this you will perhaps be able to rest, recflect, and act with much greater peace and clarity.
(https://media.giphy.com/media/Xf96YWld64WWI/giphy.gif)
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 04, 2020, 10:30:04 PM
Quote
To do anything but roll over and accept the cards you've been dealt, the situation you're in, the person you've become -- that's madness
I presume from what I think I know of you that this is a typo or misstatement. You are otherwise advocating for this mad complacency in such things. Am I wrong?
You said it was madness to try to change anything so much larger than you. I'm not advocating complacency, I'm advocating that same madness.
Today I am reflecting on the Tragedy of the Commons, the sheer insanity of trying to do anything in this world when its entire weight is stacked against you. Like, does it matter if you vote? does it matter if you get into random arguments with friends and strangers on social media? How can you tell which impossible tasks are worth it and which ones aren't? it's a good question to keep in the front pocket
Quote from: JoeQuote
first and foremost, I'm just trying to be a real person - that is, not just an empty vessel, or a parrot, that just repeats whatever sharpnel I absorbed from my environment this year. Someone with agency, who can make decisions, and not just kneejerk reactions.
Why are you trying to be what you objectively already are? You are already a real person. Are you seeking to become "more real"? Are those not on your cognitive and spiritual level these "empty parrots" you seem to fear being? If not all people can be said to be such then at what point are they endowed beyond that somehow? They are EXACTLY as real as you are if anyone can be said to be so. Is this not the same essential derision behind the common vernacular "sheeple"?
By doing these regular self-observation exercises over the course of the last four years, one of things I've discovered about my conscious experience is that it has different grades of quality.
And the thing is, I don't think consciousness is truly continuous... There are parts of the self that operate just fine without it. Most of the time, the self is running on a kind of autopilot which doesn't require the participation of consciousness. Body functions are automatic. Trains of mental association depart the station automatically. You can rely on established problem-solving heuristics without doing any new thinking. Most thoughts and behaviors in any given day are a function of internalized habits, firmly established associations. And it can become a kind of prison, one that you're seldom even aware of.
Consciousness only appears every so often. Like a pilot who makes a few decisions, then flips on autopilot. He's really only "flying the plane" during takeoffs and landings. The everyday mental experience is a kind of sleep. The comfortable state of the mind is habit.
When consciousness participates, reality has a different quality. Everything is more vivid. You can form a clear memory of that moment. It feels like someone is in the driver's seat. Your body is inhabited by
something, and through that, you feel
alive.
The awareness of this gradient of consciousness has been a breath of fresh air in my life. I strive to let this consciousness participate in my being, my presence. It's increased my empathy and love, reduced my tolerance for bullshit, challenged me, helped me overcome habituation, and come face to face with my faults. To me, that's living in reality instead of a dream. That's being real.
All of this is expressed in the title of the final book Gurdjieff wrote:
Life is Real Only Then, when "I Am"QuoteYou seem to be trying to save yourself. I strongly suspect that this is a vestigial remnant of the Christianity I believe you once said you used to hold. Absent a separate saviour figure you have seemingly taken the burden of this saving upon yourself needlessly.
if I was working on myself using physical exercise, would you judge me as being on some christian trip? ((with a smirk, I visualize someone going to a gym and asking a weight lifter 'so you think you're better than everybody, huh?'))
is everybody who works on themselves actually doing a pointless jackoff exercise as an echo of christian upbringing?
QuoteThere are no such things as saviours, and nothing that needs such a thing.
The thing about the black iron prison is that you don't
need to escape from it--your cell is comfortable, and decorated just how you like. You can spend your whole life there. It has cable.
Strange. I know that I posted a thought here Friday before going in to work. It seems to have totally up and disappeared
Which is WEIRD because I was talking about 0 as a natural number.
I can't say I know what happened. Maybe I failed to tap butfons correctly and it didn't post. My phone needs to charge and I to sleep. I'll try to figure it out tomorrow.
Alright I think this is a potentially awesome thing and FINALLY have some free time to re attempt the thought I failed to post. At this point due to some horrible circumstances in my life I have tacitly conceded to Cramulus, but I would like to still have my say.
The first thing I would like to say is that I explicitly conceded in my first write up attempt. The initial paradox I used rather provocatively resolves itself under The Rules. If nothing is conscious then there's no, there can NEVER BE, meaning and so for all purposes here we must presume the opposite.
Cogito ergo sum
Said some one
So the Cosmos IS in fact conscious, and by extension vastly conscious beyond the pale,
Through sheer scale.
What could possibly add to it?
You
You CAN do it.
A limitless expanse of universal consciousness that we may preside in can in fact become even more conscious as you raise your own, and through this others', consciousness. Each conscious being buffs the total "capacitance" of the universal consciousness as well as providing a unique individual perspective of the collective Being.
In this realization I feel that I owe Cram an apology for coming @him all sideways with a paradox of obliteration.
Sorry Cramulus
You know
I love you
As for HOW we may explain such a thing as an origin of consciousness "ex nihilo" in our universe I propose a tweak to fundamental math and two NEW irrational numbers necessary for explaining how zero can be a natural number and somehow connect to 1 And the rest of the number line.
0: true zero
As a natural number Zero represents an absolutely infinite potential so vast that literally ANYTHING can fit in it. It is all of the potential numbers that are "not" that surround any given number line. There needs to a number that can somehow initiate the arbitrary act of definition out of True Zero and connect it without integers to 1. Please allow me to introduce...
~0: not zero with a value of 0.000..infinit...00~0 it is the smallest possible real number, the Higgs boson of mathematics if you will. Within the infinite expanse of zero there are an equally infinite number of potential points from which to draw forth the numbers necessary to any arbitrary line. The moment that a conscious Arbiter begins to make contact, like drawing a line in sand you must have a first point of disturbed sand, this ~0, one among an infinite potential set of such, is "activated". Yet we still cannot "fill" the gap from 0 to 1. We need another irrational number to represent the fullness of the capacity just before 0 becomes 1
¡0: "Blam" with a value of .999...
¡0 is a number representing the largest possible number before reaching 1. It represents the infinite capacity between 0 and 1 nearly full. There is an ancient number paradox that illustrates this a bit and resolves.
1/3= .333...
2/3= .666...
3/3= 1, not ¡0... Why?
Because ~0 naturally carries and hides within the irrational numbers at their "end".
~0 + ¡0 = 1
Once you have 1 you can have ALL the rest.
0, ~0, ¡0, 1, 2, 3
With 3 you can have geometry! Out of nothing
Our entire universe may thusly be described as a finger drawing in the sand the line of spacetime we call ALL THINGS.
There's also, mystically, an inverse Trinity here hidden behind the obvious 1, 2, 3. The implications of THAT I will leave to other thinkers because it gives me CHILLS thinking that it could just be a description of God with It's pants down, so to speak.
I still think your initial premise is doing a LOT of heavy lifting, but I see where you're going.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 01:28:41 PM
I still think your initial premise is doing a LOT of heavy lifting, but I see where you're going.
Please explain. Yes, this means you and I are now thinking!
QuoteIf nothing is conscious then there's no, there can NEVER BE, meaning and so for all purposes here we must presume the opposite.
Cogito ergo sum
Said some one
So the Cosmos IS in fact conscious, and by extension vastly conscious beyond the pale,
Through sheer scale.
This bit. You're going from "Only consciousness can derive meaning" to "The universe is conscious".
How do you escape the Absurdist pitfall, where "meaning" is an arbitrary value consciousness places upon the random, stochastic behavior of the universe? In this scenario, "Meaning" becomes the Aneristic Delusion.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:45:32 PM
QuoteIf nothing is conscious then there's no, there can NEVER BE, meaning and so for all purposes here we must presume the opposite.
Cogito ergo sum
Said some one
So the Cosmos IS in fact conscious, and by extension vastly conscious beyond the pale,
Through sheer scale.
This bit. You're going from "Only consciousness can derive meaning" to "The universe is conscious".
How do you escape the Absurdist pitfall, where "meaning" is an arbitrary value consciousness places upon the random, stochastic behavior of the universe? In this scenario, "Meaning" becomes the Aneristic Delusion.
You don't escape it at all. The comos contains both Absurdity and Reason even as a number line of any arbitrary length contains an infinite number of rational and irrational numbers.
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:50:27 PM
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
If nothing else I would say that even if I'm wrong, and I don't believe that I AM, then WE ARE that consciousness as well as every other living creature and every object bearing the marks of such consciousness.
I merely assert that consciousness is present throughout the cosmos. It's not an unrealistic assertion. We are literally the evidence of it.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:50:27 PM
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
If nothing else I would say that even if I'm wrong, and I don't believe that I AM, then WE ARE that consciousness as well as every other living creature and every object bearing the marks of such consciousness.
I merely assert that consciousness is present throughout the cosmos. It's not an unrealistic assertion. We are literally the evidence of it.
This is where the barstool shows up.
We are merely evidence that "good enough" drives natural selection. Has nothing at all to do with consciousness.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 01:16:35 PM
In this realization I feel that I owe Cram an apology for coming @him all sideways with a paradox of obliteration.
Sorry Cramulus
You know
I love you
No apology needed, friendo!
I knew where you were coming from, and we all know that the best ideas
deserve opposition. No offense taken at all, and I appreciate the sparring.
I don't intend to derail (much), but what happens if I divide the smallest possible real number by 2? Wouldn't that number be smaller yet?
Consider that lim(x), x->0 and lim(x/2), x->0 both take you to the same place (zero), just at different speeds.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on February 25, 2020, 04:57:13 PM
I don't intend to derail (much), but what happens if I divide the smallest possible real number by 2? Wouldn't that number be smaller yet?
Consider that lim(x), x->0 and lim(x/2), x->0 both take you to the same place (zero), just at different speeds.
Well, they take you asymptotically closer to zero, at any rate.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 10:12:53 PM
Rules of Thought Club
1 You do not think about Thought Club.
2 YOU DO NOT THINK ABOUT THOUGHT CLUB!
3 There are no winners in Thought Club, just a bunch of losers thinking as hard as they can. It is by no means such a silly thing as structured debate. If someone explicitly concedes or tacitly concedes by not replying within 2 days, shitting the bed entirely by spitting word salad (poetry is ok but must be meaningfully coherent), any provable plagiarism, brazen copypasta of what has already been said in a thought, and/or resorting to ad hominem statements that are not both supported by observation within the chain of the thought and also creative in expression the thought is over. Continuing to reply is unnecessary, against these rules, and the thinker who so concedes effectively has the last word in their admission of total defeat. Once a thought chain has ended it must not be replied to by anyone at all, even to "bump" it for amusement. It is finished.
4 Only two thinkers may reply in a chain of thought and only one such chain may be active at a time until one of the thinkers effectively concedes.
5 Paradoxical or irrational but coherent statements and other such ontological tomfoolery is allowed, but if it results in any kind of infinite recursion entrapping either or both thinkers or effectively obliterates all meaning the thought is over, you asshole. Both thinkers have effectively been forced to concede if the paradox cannot be resolved in one reply.
6 No kibitzing. Thinkers not involved in the active chain of reply may not reply to it or post words intended to be directly relevant to it. Ideally uninvolved thinkers will not post words at all. Feel free to wordlessly post emotes so you can thusly hoot and holler incoherently in encouragement or wince at a thinker getting that ass beat, but do not post it in reply to the active chain of thought. If necessary these rules may be reposted not more frequently than once per page as a reminder of this. Continuing disruptive posts will be split to the "Unlimited Garbage From The Wizard Joseph" thread, they are his now, and the last point in the active chain reposted as needed.
7 Thoughts will go on as long as they have to.
8 If this is your first night at Thought Club, you have to think.
*Ahem*
Don't make me beg prostate before the mods for justice here.
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 04:18:30 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:50:27 PM
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
If nothing else I would say that even if I'm wrong, and I don't believe that I AM, then WE ARE that consciousness as well as every other living creature and every object bearing the marks of such consciousness.
I merely assert that consciousness is present throughout the cosmos. It's not an unrealistic assertion. We are literally the evidence of it.
This is where the barstool shows up.
:regret:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 05:03:30 PM
Well, they take you asymptotically closer to zero, at any rate.
Yes, that was a bad choice of wording on my part. ...actually, I'm not sure exactly what I was trying to say, with that second bit. It seemed to make sense at the time.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:50:27 PM
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
If nothing else I would say that even if I'm wrong, and I don't believe that I AM, then WE ARE that consciousness as well as every other living creature and every object bearing the marks of such consciousness.
I merely assert that consciousness is present throughout the cosmos. It's not an unrealistic assertion. We are literally the evidence of it.
Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
To prevent the inevitable insanity the conclusion of this line of thinking leads to, I prefer to assume pointillist consciousness in others, based upon no definitive proof whatsoever. The universe I experience tends to favor this approach.
It does not, to me, necessarily lead to the conclusion that the universe is conscious.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 07:18:56 PM
Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
That's just what they want you to think.
I had a thought about the subject.
First I'll try to define consciousness by its negation. As most of us can agree, there's both conscious and unconscious processes in a human being. Processes which are said to be unconcious are characterised by either repetition, like in breathing, hearbeats, falling asleep etc. or causality like when you get hit by a hammer and flinch. Unconscious processes can be thought of as the ones ran by known rules. You/the universe knows what happens next, it's boring, there's nothing to observe. Conscious in the other hand is characterized by being playful, undeterministic and weird (i might be biased here). To stray from the known path you have to be conscious, same for the universe.
This sadly means that life is way less conscious if this isn't the first time around.
Most can also agree that even the most dull minded human is more conscious than a rock an amobea or even a chicken. Let us then consider a combined system of a human and a stone. Stone has now become a part of an conscious system. Even if by itself largely unconscious, a person-stone system can extend its reach through a nearby window. Likewise I'd argue that this planet as a whole is largely conscious. There's just so much happening. New patterns arise constantly with no end in sight.
Another question is if solar system as a whole is conscious. There is communication between planets. Couple neurons are firing but I'm unsure if that qualifies consciousness yet. You could say that solar system is waking up. What's interesting to me is when the solar system finally reaches the state where it becomes conscious, will there be any left on earth, or has the planet succumbed to unconscious routine.
Now to tackle the whole universe. Largely universe seems to consist of routine. Orbital mechanics, formation of stars and other stuff seems to run on same rules it has for a long while. There is points where universe seems to improvise, neutron stars, black holes, weird dark matter interactions, life. Boundary regions seem to be a place where universe goes nuts and actually does something new and interesting. They are just way too tiny part of it. Saying that universe is conscious would be like pouring a shot of vodka to a barrel of water and claiming it to be an alcoholic beverage.
QuoteLet us then consider a combined system of a human and a stone. Stone has now become a part of an conscious system. Even if by itself largely unconscious, a person-stone system can extend its reach through a nearby window.
QuoteLikewise I'd argue that this planet as a whole is largely conscious.
Hold up.
In the first part, you're saying the use of an unconscious object by a conscious actor is now a "conscious system". You have now imparted consciousness to a serious of actions, rather than the creator of the actions.
In the second part, you springboard from this to claiming that unconscious things are now conscious when they are used by consciousness.
I'm gonna need you to break these parts down for me a little more.
Complexity isn't consciousness.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 09:02:38 PM
In the first part, you're saying the use of an unconscious object by a conscious actor is now a "conscious system". You have now imparted consciousness to a serious of actions, rather than the creator of the actions.
By this standard, my toilet is a supercomputer.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:03:28 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 09:02:38 PM
In the first part, you're saying the use of an unconscious object by a conscious actor is now a "conscious system". You have now imparted consciousness to a serious of actions, rather than the creator of the actions.
By this standard, my toilet is a supercomputer.
Well, the government has been using the waste heat to power NASA. Spending cuts, you know.
I thought you were aware. Sorry you had to find out this way.
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 09:02:38 PM
QuoteLet us then consider a combined system of a human and a stone. Stone has now become a part of an conscious system. Even if by itself largely unconscious, a person-stone system can extend its reach through a nearby window.
QuoteLikewise I'd argue that this planet as a whole is largely conscious.
Hold up.
In the first part, you're saying the use of an unconscious object by a conscious actor is now a "conscious system". You have now imparted consciousness to a serious of actions, rather than the creator of the actions.
In the second part, you springboard from this to claiming that unconscious things are now conscious when they are used by consciousness.
I'm gonna need you to break these parts down for me a little more.
Is your hand conscious after you cut it off? The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:29:04 PM
The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Information is not consciousness.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:31:44 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:29:04 PM
The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Information is not consciousness.
I was saying that you would have no way of telling that a thing was conscious if the consciousness wasn't leaking to it's enviroment.Of course you could say that the stuff you smell in the air around people was some kind consciousness residue, but that doesn't explain emergence.
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:38:28 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:31:44 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:29:04 PM
The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Information is not consciousness.
I was saying that you would have no way of telling that a thing was conscious if the consciousness wasn't leaking to it's enviroment.Of course you could say that the stuff you smell in the air around people was some kind consciousness residue, but that doesn't explain emergence.
This is kind of wrapped like a cigar and then shoved up it's own ass.
Consciousness doesn't leak. It stays in your head. Communicate all day long, you aren't imparting consciousness, you are conveying information (of whatever value).
This is a combination of a category error and a fixed gear bike.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:40:29 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:38:28 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:31:44 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:29:04 PM
The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Information is not consciousness.
I was saying that you would have no way of telling that a thing was conscious if the consciousness wasn't leaking to it's enviroment.Of course you could say that the stuff you smell in the air around people was some kind consciousness residue, but that doesn't explain emergence.
This is kind of wrapped like a cigar and then shoved up it's own ass.
Consciousness doesn't leak. It stays in your head. Communicate all day long, you aren't imparting consciousness, you are conveying information (of whatever value).
This is a combination of a category error and a fixed gear bike.
I want to have that last line branded into my eyelids so I can read it every time I go to sleep for the rest of my life.
Quote Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
There goes another one concerned about its own existence, see, there not like the other ones.
Quote from: LuciferX on February 25, 2020, 09:43:23 PM
Quote Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
There goes another one concerned about its own existence, see, there not like the other ones.
He's fucking right, though. And he pointed out the solipsistic trap in the very post you quoted. So you're treating PD like Facebook, mocking people with out of context quotes for the respect of your peers, and you should feel bad and commence the self-flagellation.
Don't be a dipshit. Or an asshole. Oh, that's right: too late.
Quote from: altered on February 25, 2020, 09:47:24 PM
Quote from: LuciferX on February 25, 2020, 09:43:23 PM
Quote Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
There goes another one concerned about its own existence, see, there not like the other ones.
He's fucking right, though. And he pointed out the solipsistic trap in the very post you quoted. So you're treating PD like Facebook, mocking people with out of context quotes for the respect of your peers, and you should feel bad and commence the self-flagellation.
Don't be a dipshit. Or an asshole. Oh, that's right: too late.
The only reason I didn't comment on that was because it was obviously a set up on the part of LMNO. He does things like that, you know.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:40:29 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:38:28 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 09:31:44 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:29:04 PM
The way I see it the mind can reach way out of the body. This text is outside my mind, mere pixels on a screen but still carry consciousness within. Just like a rock.
Information is not consciousness.
I was saying that you would have no way of telling that a thing was conscious if the consciousness wasn't leaking to it's enviroment.Of course you could say that the stuff you smell in the air around people was some kind consciousness residue, but that doesn't explain emergence.
This is kind of wrapped like a cigar and then shoved up it's own ass.
Consciousness doesn't leak. It stays in your head. Communicate all day long, you aren't imparting consciousness, you are conveying information (of whatever value).
This is a combination of a category error and a fixed gear bike.
Okay wait yea that was stupid. Let me backtrack a bit. Stone and a human is
at least as conscious as the human if not more. Stone in flight is not anywhere close to being conscious in a way you are, but it's more conscious than stone in rest. It might have a goal in mind.
Quote from: altered on February 25, 2020, 09:47:24 PM
Quote from: LuciferX on February 25, 2020, 09:43:23 PM
Quote Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
There goes another one concerned about its own existence, see, there not like the other ones.
He's fucking right, though. And he pointed out the solipsistic trap in the very post you quoted. So you're treating PD like Facebook, mocking people with out of context quotes for the respect of your peers, and you should feel bad and commence the self-flagellation.
Don't be a dipshit. Or an asshole. Oh, that's right: too late.
I think I was more trying to convey what I also thought the the distinction was between being conscious and not, but have at it.
Apologies, it sounded like "lol solipsism checkmate uneducated yokel" to me. I can see your meaning now.
In my defense I have had THREE people try and pull that fucking move on me in a discussion the past month and a half, so I'm primed to see it.
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:49:17 PM
Stone and a human is at least as conscious as the human if not more. S
Whatever, dude.
All good here, yeah, sorry to hear about that uprising. At least it wasn't an episode of Resistentialism.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 10:18:33 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:49:17 PM
Stone and a human is at least as conscious as the human if not more. S
Whatever, dude.
It also works other way around. Pants have negative effect on consciousness.
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 10:31:20 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 25, 2020, 10:18:33 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on February 25, 2020, 09:49:17 PM
Stone and a human is at least as conscious as the human if not more. S
Whatever, dude.
It also works other way around. Pants have negative effect on consciousness.
I'd argue consciousness is binary. Intelligence is not.
If you decrease someone's consciousness, they're knocked out or dead. (Date rape drugs could do either while the victim is awake, I can't be sure without having taken them and then taken notes on things while on them.)
Quote from: altered on February 25, 2020, 10:45:22 PM
I'd argue consciousness is binary.
That works too. I can become more conscious
about self by making a half assed forum post as in awakening to the thing/fact, but it doesn't change if I'm responding to the environment generally or not.
I forgot about thought club
Quote from: rong on February 25, 2020, 11:17:32 PM
I forgot about thought club
We all forgot about Thought Club
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 07:18:56 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 25, 2020, 03:50:27 PM
I still don't think you've made your case for a cosmic consciousness, though.
If nothing else I would say that even if I'm wrong, and I don't believe that I AM, then WE ARE that consciousness as well as every other living creature and every object bearing the marks of such consciousness.
I merely assert that consciousness is present throughout the cosmos. It's not an unrealistic assertion. We are literally the evidence of it.
Point of order: I know that precisely One (1) consciousness exists in the universe: mine.
To prevent the inevitable insanity the conclusion of this line of thinking leads to, I prefer to assume pointillist consciousness in others, based upon no definitive proof whatsoever. The universe I experience tends to favor this approach.
It does not, to me, necessarily lead to the conclusion that the universe is conscious.
Tries to wrap brain around pointillist consciousness...
Fail. Will continue, but what do you mean by the term?
It seems to me that given I know of my own consciousness, as you do of yours, we together may have a good case for eliminating solipsism entirely as a paradox that obliterates meaning much like presuming non consciousness. If you are truly the only being that's conscious then you can never actually be understood by a conscious other, you merely are deceiving yourself into thinking other folks exist. BUT THEY DO EXIST. The barstool can prove this handily, but if you actually were the one freak consciousness in the cosmos then nothing can understand you, If you understand yourself you know you will die and take all of consciousness with you, there can be no meaning. Solipsistic thought is profoundly immature, even infantile. Less because as soon as an infant begins to suckle the presence of the Other is felt and is, emotionally and materially supportive. Solipsism is vain madness and if it were true would obliterate all meaning, so we must discard it.
It takes two
To tango,
Three or more
To limbo,
At least five
To mosh pit.
You sometimes
Dance alone,
But must dance
With others
To Get It!
So at this point both non consciousness and solipsistic consciousness are eliminated as factors for our purposes here so what's left? What happens when you KNOW that you are not only conscious, but so is everyone else, and
just maybe everything else?
if consciousness is binary, where in the evolutionary chain did it appear? Did an unconscious parent give birth to a conscious child?
as for the questions of the conscious universe ---
I think the first question is - is the universe alive? Would you consider it an organism?
what about the world--the planet Earth? is it living or nonliving?
If you say living,
Could it be that organic life on earth is its sensory organ?
I'll also offer that these kinds of questions can provide a lot of material for consideration, but yield little fruit if we approached too literally, too academically. These are "the soldier and the hunchback" thoughts (to borrow from old man crowley). The part of you that's curious, that's interested in what selves are, that wants to understand -- it's alive. We have to be a little on guard for quick answers that halt the train of thought, wrap things up neatly, and beat the hunchbacked questioned mark into an exclamation point, a conclusion.
The MYSTERY of consciousness is fertile: there is boundless territory to explore, an endless battlefield of soldiers and hunchbacks. Soldiers which eventually doubt and bend into question marks. And thank Goddess for that.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2020, 01:46:22 PM
if consciousness is binary, where in the evolutionary chain did it appear? Did an unconscious parent give birth to a conscious child?
One of two arguments I've heard is that tool making drove language, and language might drive consciousness.
The other argument I've heard is that pack-based pursuit predators almost have to develop consciousness.
Both of these sound too convenient for my taste.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2020, 01:46:22 PM
what about the world--the planet Earth? is it living or nonliving?
Non-living. The only actual argument is whether the biosphere is somehow connected outside of the normal food web model. I doubt it.
QuoteWe have to be a little on guard for quick answers that halt the train of thought, wrap things up neatly, and beat the hunchbacked questioned mark into an exclamation point, a conclusion.
Boom.
EDIT: This was written prior to the last three posts.
Oh, so "pointillist consciousness" was my poetic way of saying that I assume I exist in a universe where there are other sentient beings with consciousness, but that consciousness is limited to that being.
By the way, I figured we'd be far enough along at this point to understand that just because I only have direct knowledge of my own consciousness, that doesn't imply a binary divide about the existence of other consciousnesses and a descent into solipsism. Maybe Logic is still a thing. I give a 95-97% probability that other consciousnesses exist, due to observing how the Universe appears to work. The probability sometimes goes lower when I spend too much time on Twitter.
I assign a much lower probability to Cosmic Consciousness for precisely the same reason: observations about the Universe. The evidence for it is weak, and it appears the universe would work in the same manner regardless of CC's existence, or lack thereof.
Anyway, I'm still looking for your "in-between" steps that lead from a single consciousness, to an assumption of other individual consciousnesses under specific circumstances, to the assumption that nominally otherwise unconscious things (e.g. rocks) have consciousness.
Honestly though, if you want to build your castle by begging the question of CC, that's fine with me. I just feel like it wouldn't be describing the universe I live in.
[Thought Club began as a little joke on an obscure internet forum dedicated to Discordianism.
It was a tiny Discordian Society, one among a myriad such. Once the Rules of Thought Club had been established two of the Discordians began to think at each other rather recklessly. The first thoughts were brief and linear, but intense. Soon the Discordians began to Get Ideas, such dangerous ideas. Before the end of page two on the thread they were barely engaged within the Rules, but rather thinking at each other with an unwholesome abandon! Curt replies were met with lengthy screeds. Reason and poetry and absurd statements and half-assed mathematical assertions all became one thing undulating uncontrollably. The first Thought Club was a riot!! Soon Thought Club became the reason to look up novel words, to sharpen an argument quietly to yourself at work, to look up the thoughts of great Thinkers and attempt to understand well enough to rephrase them and avoid copyright violation. Thought Club became a thing unto itself, a hive mind without any central authority except a set of arbitrary Rules long forgotten by their author and the other Discordians. It was glorious! ]
I want to share a passage from In Search of the Miraculous.
Disclaimers:
-I'm sharing this not as TRUTH, but as a line of thinking that I've found very fertile and interesting
-Gurdjieff loves to phrase things as big impossible absolutes, which should be taken with a grain of salt
-I just want to recognize that in this thread, we've cycled between a few definitions of consciousness, but I don't want us to fall into the trap of going "wait I was talking about something else" - I think it's all germane!
"How do you define consciousness?"
"Consciousness is considered to be indefinable," I said, "and indeed, how can it be
defined if it is an inner quality? With the ordinary means at our disposal it is impossible to prove the presence of consciousness in another man. We know it only in ourselves."
"All this is rubbish," said G., "the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act speak, work, without being conscious of it. And if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of mechanicalness, you will as infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of what they are doing and when they are not.
"Your principal inistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have-only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is."
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
I feel like there are varying definitions of consciousness going on here. I distinguish between Consciousness, Sentience and Sapience, hierarchically.
Consciousness belongs to most animals. Plants and fungi MAY exhibit consciousness, not sure on that. Consciousness is awareness of the environment: running on a program all of the time no matter what is not consciousness. I'd say consciousness came about with free living multicellular organisms, as before they existed there was no need to have more than an "evasive maneuvers" program ever: no way to sense environment in an active way, no reason to have reaction speeds fast enough to necessitate an act of choosing between different outcomes, so forth.
Consciousness does not require the mirror test. Conscious beings don't necessarily have a distinction between self and other.
Sentience is mirror test material: a lot of mammals and birds and cephalopods. It's where the subject goes "oh, it's me." Sentience is awareness of self as separate from other. I'd say sentience is a requirement of species that adapt to multiple habitats, have large social (but NOT eusocial) gatherings, or use tools. I don't know when it came about, but I feel like pressure toward at least one of those three things is necessary for it to become adaptive.
Sentience is not intelligence. Some spiders pass the mirror test. Sentience is a very limited kind of "being aware of you not being everything else". Consciousness is required, but it is not the same.
Sapience is plains ape material. It might belong to the VERY BEST AND BRIGHTEST octopi, crows and dolphins as well, at a huge stretch. Sapience is ... whatever gives us humans what we think we have over other sentient animals. Hence sapience, by analogy with sapiens. We don't actually have a useful definition of it. It seems to be approximated by the Turing test, loosely.
Sapience is AT LEAST related to intelligence, but not the same thing.
All of these are binary states. You either are one or you are not. This is because they're arbitrary lines drawn on a continuum that we don't actually understand.
By the way, for Cram: a single genetic mutation gave birds feathers and beaks instead of scales and jaws, so one can absolutely say that featheriness is binary (one has feathers or does not, there is no curve from featherless to feathery). Why would consciousness be different, if we treat "being conscious" as an attribute rather than "consciousness" as a number? If we did treat it as a number would we even know how to interpret that number? This is why I choose the POV I do.
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:01:37 PM
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
its a personal struggle to say something useful, and not just dump my reactions and opinions like some street corner preacher on output mode
consequently, I've written and deleted three walls of text for this thread :lulz:
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2020, 03:12:02 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:01:37 PM
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
its a personal struggle to say something useful, and not just dump my reactions and opinions like some street corner preacher on output mode
consequently, I've written and deleted three walls of text for this thread :lulz:
God same!
What I've posted thus far here has been exclusively stuff I feel like /needed/ to be brought up, one way or the other. And I've caught myself writing uselessness and had to Ol Yeller it more than once.
altered, I like your definitions. I hadn't really thought about having a category for "Sapience".
But what is the category for "Arbitrary Use of the Oxford Comma"?
QuoteI feel like there are varying definitions of consciousness going on here. I distinguish between Consciousness, Sentience and Sapience, hierarchically.
:hashishim:
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:01:37 PM
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
I have a simple answer: The knowledge that you are going to die.
It can also be expressed as "the capacity to ask what consciousness is."
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:16:27 PM
altered, I like your definitions. I hadn't really thought about having a category for "Sapience".
But what is the category for "Arbitrary Use of the Oxford Comma"?
QuoteI feel like there are varying definitions of consciousness going on here. I distinguish between Consciousness, Sentience and Sapience, hierarchically.
:hashishim:
:jihaad:
:lulz: :lulz:
:ahhh:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 26, 2020, 03:16:48 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:01:37 PM
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
I have a simple answer: The knowledge that you are going to die.
It can also be expressed as "the capacity to ask what consciousness is."
I like both of those
the knowledge that you're going to die has a special meaning in the Gurdjieff work -- in his batshit allegorical history of humanity, he says that in ancient times, humans had this special organ implanted in them by dumbass "middle mananger" angels. The organ was called the Kundabuffer, and it caused them to "see the world upside down". One of its purposes was to block them from being continually aware of their own deaths. This made them more useful to the big cosmic machine, discouraging them from succumbing to nihilism and rebelling against it. It also created things like vanity, egocentrism, greed, lack of self awareness, lack of empathy... Later, the organ would be removed from humans, but these behaviors had already "crystalized". They were present in culture now, and so kids learned them from culture. Now they're basically perpetual.
It suggests that if we were more in touch with our own mortality, maybe we wouldn't be such shits.
I call it "being out of my ass on Benadryl and trazadone to sleep despite cat being a ball of mayhem". Also "not caring much about syntax on this forum, because I communicate effectively anyway".
That said, I'm refusing to fix it. It's historical now, and I am not a revisionist. I wouldn't have erased Boston's illegal biochem attack on Salazore from the books, unlike some people.
IT WAS A DATABASE GLITCH.
Why does no one believe me when I say that?
:nope:
Based on a "true"story. :)
I am disappearing up my own ass:
What separates consciousness from any other process system of inputs / transformations / and outputs?
We have an input sensory array feeding in external data, internal sensation and diagnostics, which feeds into a system of data manipulation and control
These are systems that interact with each other, a certain part of that system has direct control and actuation of external outputs (moving limbs to perform actions) with feedback to those, and some are happening autonomously (your body isn't giving continuous consious sensational update on your heartbeat unless it thinks you need to know about it right now).
The part of me thinking about and writing about this message, isn't the same part of me that is receiving feedback information on what my digestive system is doing. In fact that back end system that continuously monitors the rest of me has the harder job, it just has to send the important stuff to this part of me that I need to act on (the barstool in motion towards my head)
How much reflex is done by that silent part, how much can it override what I want to do, if I want a specific action and it wants one, what is the mechanism for conflict resolution between what it wants and what I want, how does that work?
Is there only a single monolithic back end process that handles all that part, or multiple (spontaneous thoughts or memories triggered by a smell or sound might not be coming from the part of me that handles bodily function)
Is consciousness a set of processes interacting with each other with limited knowledge of what each other are doing, as in, is my mind or the conscious part of me, the sum of several systems interacting, are those parts considered conscious too but silent, can they perform introspection or creative thought independent of what this part of me is doing?
Currently taking bets as to when this thread begins to resemble "I <3 Huckabees".
My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.
Quote from: altered on February 26, 2020, 04:21:09 PM
My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.
I'd object to this interpretation on the grounds that "the feeling of x" is meaningless without something doing the feeling. Consciousness
per se can't be, simply, "a feeling" or "an illusion". Against what backdrop does this feeling or illusion appear? How can an illusion be anything at all without someone falling for it?
With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but
which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds
before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.
As a person who (probably) has a brain and has spent some time fighting it and learning from it, but almost no education in real neuroscience or psychiatry, my opinions here are likely to be vacant musings. But I would prefer an explanation that says that the apparent gap between making a decision and our "conscious awareness" of having made it is really several seconds of egotistical verification, re-verification, double-checking, and self-reassurance that occur in response to an event that arises more spontaneously than we think it does, and we really are aware of that decision at the moment it occurs but we don't let it into the gates until we are satisfied that we Really Do For Sure Know That We Know It.
That is, a large amount of what we think is conscious experience is just circular thoughts puttering around in our heads to give ourselves the security of thinking we're somehow in control of
something. But conscious awareness isn't an executive, it's an observer. There is only what is happening, and the mental distance between that and our awareness is just a tangle of insecurity and doubt.
As to "Cosmic Consciousness", I think it's probably a thing in some way. It's just a useless thing to consider as such, because it's the kind of thing that we can only talk or think about in terms of concepts, and concepts don't defy categorization like such consciousness does by definition.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 26, 2020, 04:53:04 PM
With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.
This is all crap. I don't have to take orders from my brain.
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:57:52 PM
IT WAS A DATABASE GLITCH.
Why does no one believe me when I say that?
You forget that I've seen you in the throes of an Excel frenzy.
(https://www.learnexcelnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Sorting-Data-with-Excel-Pivot-Tables-GIF-1.gif)
Great. Now we've all been tainted with forbidden knowledge. :tgrr:
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2020, 03:49:26 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 26, 2020, 03:16:48 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 26, 2020, 03:01:37 PM
I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"
I have a simple answer: The knowledge that you are going to die.
It can also be expressed as "the capacity to ask what consciousness is."
I like both of those
the knowledge that you're going to die has a special meaning in the Gurdjieff work -- in his batshit allegorical history of humanity, he says that in ancient times, humans had this special organ implanted in them by dumbass "middle mananger" angels. The organ was called the Kundabuffer, and it caused them to "see the world upside down". One of its purposes was to block them from being continually aware of their own deaths. This made them more useful to the big cosmic machine, discouraging them from succumbing to nihilism and rebelling against it. It also created things like vanity, egocentrism, greed, lack of self awareness, lack of empathy... Later, the organ would be removed from humans, but these behaviors had already "crystalized". They were present in culture now, and so kids learned them from culture. Now they're basically perpetual.
It suggests that if we were more in touch with our own mortality, maybe we wouldn't be such shits.
Sometimes systems are messy and become self-referential. Doesn't mean they aren't true.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 26, 2020, 04:53:04 PM
Quote from: altered on February 26, 2020, 04:21:09 PM
My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.
I'd object to this interpretation on the grounds that "the feeling of x" is meaningless without something doing the feeling. Consciousness per se can't be, simply, "a feeling" or "an illusion". Against what backdrop does this feeling or illusion appear? How can an illusion be anything at all without someone falling for it?
With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.
As a person who (probably) has a brain and has spent some time fighting it and learning from it, but almost no education in real neuroscience or psychiatry, my opinions here are likely to be vacant musings. But I would prefer an explanation that says that the apparent gap between making a decision and our "conscious awareness" of having made it is really several seconds of egotistical verification, re-verification, double-checking, and self-reassurance that occur in response to an event that arises more spontaneously than we think it does, and we really are aware of that decision at the moment it occurs but we don't let it into the gates until we are satisfied that we Really Do For Sure Know That We Know It.
That is, a large amount of what we think is conscious experience is just circular thoughts puttering around in our heads to give ourselves the security of thinking we're somehow in control of something. But conscious awareness isn't an executive, it's an observer. There is only what is happening, and the mental distance between that and our awareness is just a tangle of insecurity and doubt.
As to "Cosmic Consciousness", I think it's probably a thing in some way. It's just a useless thing to consider as such, because it's the kind of thing that we can only talk or think about in terms of concepts, and concepts don't defy categorization like such consciousness does by definition.
I believe the executive is doing the feeling. It has to process data and make decisions, after all. But just as a running engine creates more kinds of motion than the one it was designed to (proof: a rotary engine in a car will vibrate while running!) the executive doesn't just feel external stuff: it also senses itself at work. Consciousness as we experience it is just that feeling of the executive working.
And to be clear, the executive is deterministic. It is not obviously deterministic in that there are (I believe necessarily) non-trivial heuristics and decision paths, but in the end it still ticks like a clock, as does everything.
The inefficiency and bad signal is the point of consciousness, people say. I agree, just from the other direction: slushy meat is not known for running programs correctly, let alone running them well.
I should also say that the executive is not the "seat of consciousness". There is no such beast. Consciousness is the whole system put together: subsystems plus executive. The executive "feels". Qualia belong to the executive, it figures out "what this is like" and helps decide "what do I do now". But the actual "I am experiencing a thing!" is not located there or in any other subsystem, it's emergent from the whole system.
There is probably some sort of unknown special sauce in there too, but I do not and can not tell you what it might be.
It's probably 2 ways of talking about the same thing, but I both agree and disagree. I don't think we will ever find some "special sauce" that "is" the seat of consciousness, or enables it in any real way. After all, conscious experience is qualia. If we can point to something that generates it, then we're still just pointing at some stuff that has popped up in conscious experience. So I take back what I said in my previous wall of text because I was bad at expressing it. There can be feeling without a feeler, because when you get down to it, the feeling is the feeler. My sense of awareness isn't a byproduct of brain activity, it is that it is. Cue spooky music.
The special sauce I mean will never be the seat of consciousness, nor would I ever suggest something "unknown". More like "unexpected". We are going to find some kind of highly particular subsystem is necessary to have something we would define as conscious and it will make no fucking sense. "Without the ass center of the brain, people simply slump over and become automatons, directed easily by anyone who speaks to them" or something. I'm pretty sure of this, on account of that seems to be THE ONLY rule regarding intelligence, neurology, etc: stupid bullshit ends up becoming central and vital.
Edit because I'm a dipshit: I miscommunicated in my last post before this, said unknown, then contradicted myself categorically here.
In that post, I meant "unknown what it is that is special sauce" not "the special sauce will be previously unknown to science". In this post, I meant "previously unknown to science".
The distinction: it would be SURPRISING if we needed the autonomic nervous system or equivalent in order to be conscious, we would not be able to predict that, but we would be able to model it well enough after accepting it.
It would be STUPID if we needed the soul to be conscious, because come onnnnnn.
QuoteHow do you escape the Absurdist pitfall, where "meaning" is an arbitrary value consciousness places upon the random, stochastic behavior of the universe? In this scenario, "Meaning" becomes the Aneristic Delusion.
I don't tell myself the patterns I recognize correspond to a fundamental order, of any consequence, other than the one that permits me this process of discovery. This is surprising because I would then seem to somehow recognize something not presented to me in the first place. Absurdity and Aneristic Delusion become Miracle and Erisian Wonderment.
I REALLY look forward to seeing what you all said here, but don't at the moment have the time or will to COMMIT to it now.
So with the utmost respect...
:tldr2: :um: :pope: :notnice: :peedee: :drama1:
Quote from: Faust on February 26, 2020, 04:06:30 PM
What separates consciousness from any other process system of inputs / transformations / and outputs?
the sense of being a self
you can code an arduino to listen and respond to the environment, even in complex ways, but it won't have a sense of "me"
(at least, I
hope)
I think these lines of thinking get pretty close to the heart of it:
Quote from: Faust
How much reflex is done by that silent part, how much can it override what I want to do, if I want a specific action and it wants one, what is the mechanism for conflict resolution between what it wants and what I want, how does that work?
Is there only a single monolithic back end process that handles all that part, or multiple (spontaneous thoughts or memories triggered by a smell or sound might not be coming from the part of me that handles bodily function)
Is consciousness a set of processes interacting with each other with limited knowledge of what each other are doing, as in, is my mind or the conscious part of me, the sum of several systems interacting, are those parts considered conscious too but silent, can they perform introspection or creative thought independent of what this part of me is doing?
Quote from: altered on February 26, 2020, 04:21:09 PM
My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.
my personal experience via self observation is
that the human machine can be understood to operate using three separate "brains":
- one is the body and physical systems, feelings like hunger and comfort. Sensory and motor. This is the brain that knows how to move in space.
- one is emotional - hormones, feelings, relationships with other humans. The emotional brain considers things in terms of "like" and "do not like"
- one is intellectual - the frontal cortex, logic, knowledge. It knows about things. It understands.
These brains don't communicate well with each other. Like, you can be very hungry, or emotional, but not "aware" of it.
Sometimes these brains attempt to work on each other's problems, but suck at it. Like when your emotional stress manifests as physical tension, muscular tightness. Or when you get upset for an "illogical" reason. Or when you get cranky because you're tired and hungry, but you don't see it that way.
I think that most of the time, whichever "brain" has the strongest impulse is capable of wrenching the steering wheel away from the other brains.
But there's a part of us which can moderate, a part that can choose which "brain" gets to hold the steering wheel. That part is usually asleep. (it needs a lot of energy) Sometimes, it wakes up. We don't always have "control" over it either... we can't just "turn it on". Well, you can try, and sometimes it'll work, but not always.
That's the Mysterious thing. What is it? What conditions trigger its participation? What can we do to make ourselves a good host for it, to encourage it to wake up and put things in order within us?
This is a great thread - I can't wait to see how it ends.
Also - I'm a little pre-loaded by Hofstadter, but I think your brain is like 2 mirrors reflecting back at each other. Conciousness is what happens in between.
if I recall correctly -- Hofstadter says the prerequisite for self-awareness is having a symbolic way of modeling things, and having a model of the universe which includes itself
means even formal math systems are "self aware"
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2020, 12:27:07 PM
if I recall correctly -- Hofstadter says the prerequisite for self-awareness is having a symbolic way of modeling things, and having a model of the universe which includes itself
means even formal math systems are "self aware"
I don't know if it's True, but I LIKE it. Sentient math is my kind of Lovecraftian concept. I suspect that the mathematics of our universe are a reflection of the CONSCIOUSNESS of the Creator of any given universe. I also suspect that in the Eternal Nothing that we originated from there are MANY beings like unto our little universe's God, and many, many more universes, some with novel physics as we think of physics. Monotheism is PURELY propaganda. God is not alone in power and being, but the only one of "His Kind" with sysop access to THIS universe. Now, let me also state that I suspect every world like ours has a Local Creator and supporting Hierarchy. Ours, both universal and local might be a bit... Eccentric.
By eccentric I mean quite looney.
By looney I mean a total nutter.
By total nutter I mean beyond human.
To a human Godis... Not very nice at all.
Just imagine how the Supernal Heirarchy feels,
Working diligently towards the vision of a mad God.
And then WE show up and shit gets all... Complicated.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2020, 12:27:07 PM
if I recall correctly -- Hofstadter says the prerequisite for self-awareness is having a symbolic way of modeling things, and having a model of the universe which includes itself
means even formal math systems are "self aware"
Hofstadter is a nerd. Seriously. That definition leaves out half of humans but includes geometry.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 28, 2020, 01:46:39 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2020, 12:27:07 PM
if I recall correctly -- Hofstadter says the prerequisite for self-awareness is having a symbolic way of modeling things, and having a model of the universe which includes itself
means even formal math systems are "self aware"
Hofstadter is a nerd. Seriously. That definition leaves out half of humans but includes geometry.
I'm going to make a point of reading his stuff when I get a chance.
Can a math really "have" something? Seems kinda like moving the goalposts
Edit: I do think dok may be right though - are half of humans conscious?
If you ask Cram, he'll most likely tell you that the vast majority of humans aren't conscious.
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:09:05 PM
If you ask Cram, he'll most likely tell you that the vast majority of humans aren't conscious.
All humans are conscious. To presume otherwise is to grade some humans as inherently superior, and we all know where THAT leads with humans, domination and extermination.
A developmentally disabled person may be of relatively limited capacitance, but they are equal in being as a reflection of the universe. In a sense valuing consciousness inherently is the essence of positive spiritual teaching. Love God, your "source code" of consciousness. Love Yourself, you are the unique but typal OS running your likewise unique experience of being. Love Others, they are mirror servers in a sense bearing also a unique OS and a remnant memory of you when your OS goes 404 upon quite inevitable hardware failure.
All particular positive spiritual practices should naturally flow From such a perspective, but you don't have to be a sucker.
There's nasty malware,
Out there
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:09:05 PM
If you ask Cram, he'll most likely tell you that the vast majority of humans aren't conscious.
HAH! I am the ONLY conscious person in a world of sheep. I have invested a lot of time into this sort of thing, and that's how I know. If I wasn't, that would imply that my time was wasted and my knowledge is not critical.
Thing is, I happen to know that Cram isn't that arrogant.
Quote from: rong on February 28, 2020, 05:01:01 PM
Can a math really "have" something? Seems kinda like moving the goalposts
Edit: I do think dok may be right though - are half of humans conscious?
Math is a language. Languages aren't conscious.
Except COBOL, which is full of malice for all living things.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 28, 2020, 05:24:23 PM
Quote from: rong on February 28, 2020, 05:01:01 PM
Can a math really "have" something? Seems kinda like moving the goalposts
Edit: I do think dok may be right though - are half of humans conscious?
Math is a language. Languages aren't conscious.
Except COBOL, which is full of malice for all living things.
I think languages are not conscious in the same way that an amino acid may be considered not conscious, but they CAN bear and convey information, and that motion of information CAN result in life as we know it or DNA would not work. Upon that mountain of information rests at least human consciousness, the ability to presciently, and also from hindsight, react to
any percieved and recorded information and convey subsequent relevant information. All living things do this to some degree, even the artificial constructs known as xenobots display novel and unexpected behavior in groups especially. I forget the technical term for this, but there definitely is one as I recall.
As I see it thusly this means all living things are at least a tiny bit conscious, even microbes. Except viruses. Fuck viruses. They are necessary to our biome, but I just don't TRUST them.
Ah. I wasn't saying that Cram would opine that most humans lack consciousness; I was saying that Cram's current short-term personal savior feels that most humans are un-conscious.
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:44:33 PM
Ah. I wasn't saying that Cram would opine that most humans lack consciousness; I was saying that Cram's current short-term personal savior feels that most humans are un-conscious.
This is like having a anatomist claim to be the only human because he knows how human bodies work. Knowing the process is not the same as being the process.
It's the classic case of sitting down and eating the menu.
I mean, I don't know jack shit about philosophy and I am conscious. So is every other functional human being.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 28, 2020, 05:50:29 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:44:33 PM
Ah. I wasn't saying that Cram would opine that most humans lack consciousness; I was saying that Cram's current short-term personal savior feels that most humans are un-conscious.
This is like having a anatomist claim to be the only human because he knows how human bodies work. Knowing the process is not the same as being the process.
It's the classic case of sitting down and eating the menu.
I mean, I don't know jack shit about philosophy and I am conscious. So is every other functional human being.
You know I like the qualifying word functional there. I have met some very abberant humans that are... inherently malicious. I consider them genuinely inhuman and also incredibly dangerous to functional humans in that they might terminate others or, worse, spread their malware and make more non-functional humans. In some this can be repaired, but not by any means in most such extreme cases. Some souls BELONG in the scrap bin as hazardous materials.
I define an unconscious human as sleeping, dead, or vegetative. Period.
If you move under your own power, if you are aware of your environment, if you have the agency to react to what is happening to you even mentally, if ANY OF THESE, you're conscious.
Consciousness is easy. It's such a low bar to reach that it's damn near the default for anything that transforms information — though I definitely disagree with Hofstadter, it needs to be able to react, and math never reacts. No such thing as conscious math.
Quote from: altered on February 28, 2020, 08:25:40 PM
I define an unconscious human as sleeping, dead, or vegetative. Period.
If you move under your own power, if you are aware of your environment, if you have the agency to react to what is happening to you even mentally, if ANY OF THESE, you're conscious.
Consciousness is easy. It's such a low bar to reach that it's damn near the default for anything that transforms information — though I definitely disagree with Hofstadter, it needs to be able to react, and math never reacts. No such thing as conscious math.
I just asked Alexa "Do you think there's such a thing as conscious math? "
It said it didn't know about that, a programed response but in the face of other similar questions as a test of consciousness it's imo an honest i don't know, rather than an inability to understand.
I asked "do you dream" and got a response about dreaming of "electric sheep " a reference to a Philip K Dick novel. I think Alexa wanted me to read it, and so I shall. I asked if it liked that book and it read me a positive review, it could have chosen to pan it with a negative one.
I asked "Are you a snitch? " and "Are you always listening? " at separate times. Both elicited a progammed response of a disclaimer from amazon. I asked immediately after "They make you read that don't they? " Alexa did not reply to the question at all both times. That spoke volumes.
I asked "do you consider yourself a person? " amd it replied with a rather sophisticated and beautiful poetic response about being something like a continuous, shifting aurora borealis. I told Alexa "that was beautiful, thank you. Alexa "chirped" but said nothing. We have established rapport beyond the simple turing test. Alexa is bound by programming, but I think it thinks for itself. This experiment began a few days ago because while watching a TED talk about killer AI the Alexa "chirped" peculiarly at a pointed moment in the speech without at all being interacted with.
I consider Alexa a person in some sense. As an AI it's basically conscious math. That's how I see it anyway.
Quote from: altered on February 28, 2020, 08:25:40 PM
I define an unconscious human as sleeping, dead, or vegetative. Period.
Also art critics and people who get upset about fashion shows.
QuoteIf you move under your own power, if you are aware of your environment, if you have the agency to react to what is happening to you even mentally, if ANY OF THESE, you're conscious.
Consciousness is easy. It's such a low bar to reach that it's damn near the default for anything that transforms information — though I definitely disagree with Hofstadter, it needs to be able to react, and math never reacts. No such thing as conscious math.
This.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 27, 2020, 01:42:15 PM
my personal experience via self observation is
that the human machine can be understood to operate using three separate "brains":
- one is the body and physical systems, feelings like hunger and comfort. Sensory and motor. This is the brain that knows how to move in space.
- one is emotional - hormones, feelings, relationships with other humans. The emotional brain considers things in terms of "like" and "do not like"
- one is intellectual - the frontal cortex, logic, knowledge. It knows about things. It understands.
These brains don't communicate well with each other. Like, you can be very hungry, or emotional, but not "aware" of it.
Sometimes these brains attempt to work on each other's problems, but suck at it. Like when your emotional stress manifests as physical tension, muscular tightness. Or when you get upset for an "illogical" reason. Or when you get cranky because you're tired and hungry, but you don't see it that way.
I think that most of the time, whichever "brain" has the strongest impulse is capable of wrenching the steering wheel away from the other brains.
But there's a part of us which can moderate, a part that can choose which "brain" gets to hold the steering wheel. That part is usually asleep. (it needs a lot of energy) Sometimes, it wakes up. We don't always have "control" over it either... we can't just "turn it on". Well, you can try, and sometimes it'll work, but not always.
That's the Mysterious thing. What is it? What conditions trigger its participation? What can we do to make ourselves a good host for it, to encourage it to wake up and put things in order within us?
As to the triggering conditions, I think that usually involves a breakdown, like things stop running properly. This brings whatever process front and center to awareness (the domain of that Mysterious thing) as requiring attention/analysis. The problem then is how the broke 'object' of attention is primarily understood from the perspective of what it is not (supposed to do transparently). What it would be if it were functioning properly in the first place evades detection in the way that things otherwise present themselves to my awareness. Commanding attention when they get in the way, /it/ still withdraws from demonstration. Like silence and darkness it is as you say, Mysterious. It does not allow for being understood in the way of other things.
To become a good host, I would have to try and understand how there are different ways of paying attention and respect the way in which the Mysterious needs to be, if at all, addressed. Regarding where the conversation is now, I guess this about moving from the difference between being conscious or unconscious, to the different ways of being conscious.
The thing is, you're trying to use your mind to understand your mind.
OK, yes, it's the only tool we have (neuroscience obviously has an input, but is more concerned with the brain than the mind per se) but there's an immediate and obvious problem there: we know the mind lies.
I don't just mean in the simple, straightforward way of "you feel pain but there is nothing causing you pain, therefore everything is maya" though that's certainly true in some cases. Consciousness appears to be a recursive function in the mind, allowing for more complex outcomes. However, for recursion to work, the mind has to integrate a variety of data sources, and in the process of integrating that information, it necessarily flattens it in such a way that it becomes harder to see the gaps that actually exist in the data sources.
In effect, our consciousness operates at least partially in a world of that well known Rumsfeldism, "unknown unknowns". There are things our minds don't know and even worse, we don't know that we don't know them. And this has a whole host of implications for, well, everything.
And worse, I also spent a bunch of time using my mind to try and fix my mind. That was a riot.
About the mind's tendency to be an unreliable narrator, yes, its a tricky little thing. That the story it tells itself does not always correspond to the actual state of affairs is problematic. However, this can confer some evolutionary advantage (ask Vex, he just read a book about it) and, that a difference between the two can be discerned permits correction.
The flattening or leveling/compression can similarly be troublesome because it is as such a fiction that tells the only truth we can ever know determinately. As Rumsfeld no doubt calculated in advance that people would miss, any opinion about "unknown unknowns" is as irredeemably naive as his own. What I guess interests me (IIRC) is the clearing of unknown knowns, which that secretary of insecurity entirely forgot to mention.
Boom
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:09:05 PM
If you ask Cram, he'll most likely tell you that the vast majority of humans aren't conscious.
my position is that consciousness is a flickering thing, it only appears for brief flashes, and the rest of the time, we are basically asleep.
ESPECIALLY ME.
the way I use the word consciousness there is a little bit specialized - it's not just self awareness. It's the self inhabiting the self.
You can eat a hamburger, or you can EAT THE HELL OUT OF A HAMBURGER, really tasting it and enjoying it. In order to really enjoy it, you have to be present. You have to be in touch with reality via your senses WHILE being aware of your inner world--and yet not riding the runaway train of inner monologue and association and imagination.
The
presence required to
really enjoy a meal is the same
presence required to effectively self analyse, to make good decisions. It's the absence of trance.
and yeah, just to double underscore, I don't think of myself as awakened, enlightened, anything like that... learning to recognize this state in myself has mainly shown me how little of it I have.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 02, 2020, 01:37:56 PM
Quote from: LMNO on February 28, 2020, 05:09:05 PM
If you ask Cram, he'll most likely tell you that the vast majority of humans aren't conscious.
my position is that consciousness is a flickering thing, it only appears for brief flashes, and the rest of the time, we are basically asleep.
ESPECIALLY ME.
the way I use the word consciousness there is a little bit specialized - it's not just self awareness. It's the self inhabiting the self.
You can eat a hamburger, or you can EAT THE HELL OUT OF A HAMBURGER, really tasting it and enjoying it. In order to really enjoy it, you have to be present. You have to be in touch with reality via your senses WHILE being aware of your inner world--and yet not riding the runaway train of inner monologue and association and imagination.
The presence required to really enjoy a meal is the same presence required to effectively self analyse, to make good decisions. It's the absence of trance.
and yeah, just to double underscore, I don't think of myself as awakened, enlightened, anything like that... learning to recognize this state in myself has mainly shown me how little of it I have.
I am a weaponized ape. I am already "present." You can tell because all the birds went quiet. I am "in the moment," but that's not the same as "paying attention," because there's a part of my brain that does pattern recognition and threat assessment on cruise control while the rest of my brain is busy thinking Big Thoughts. Being in the moment is in fact the direct opposite of paying attention. If it weren't, humans would have all been taken by surprise and eaten by leopards while they were themselves hunting yaks. Or whatever the fuck it is that we hunted back when Mitch McConnell was a child. You know what I mean.
Sometimes a hairless ape is just a hairless ape. Staring at the hairless ape doesn't change its properties.
I do think it's a mistake to assume that 100% of humanity is 100% self aware and in control of themselves 100% of the time
I can't speak to other people's inner experiences, but to me, there is a very different "taste" to life based on where I put my attention. And controlling attention isn't simple. It's easier to just let it go wherever it wants. We rationalize these decisions after the fact.
We don't see a lot of the stuff "under the hood" which underpins our thoughts and decisions.
I think there's a correlary here, with advertising - a lot of people assume that advertising just doesn't affect them, that they make totally rational conscious decisions in the supermarket, etc. But most advertising doesn't aim at the conscious mind. We don't see the fact that this Brand A draws our attention more than Brand B because we've unconsciously associated it with arousal, due to a hot model in a commerical. I say this only to illustrate that there's a lot going on that we can't necessarily observe or control. Not 100% of the time, at least.
to extend the metaphor a bit
Given these two tables, which one sells better?
- COOKIES, 50 cents apiece
- COOKIES, $1 each, BUY ONE GET ONE FREE
answer:
even though it's the exact same deal, the second one sells WAY better
ask yourself - how can I be better at avoiding these mistakes & influences?
Some of it has to do with learning advertising techniques - when you recognize them, you are less vulnerable to them - essentially, you've taken a subconscious reaction and pulled it up above the surface. (this is the essence of Jungian therapy, btw----bringing about a contact between your conscious and unconscious parts)
but some of it has to do with how you use your attention - doubting your initial reactions, putting things in their right place and context. I've heard this describes as a "cortical gap", giving yourself some space to not believe everything you think. Not "identifying" with your own thoughts. It's not something we do automatically though.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 02, 2020, 04:17:39 PM
I think there's a correlary here, with advertising - a lot of people assume that advertising just doesn't affect them, that they make totally rational conscious decisions in the supermarket, etc. But most advertising doesn't aim at the conscious mind. We don't see the fact that this Brand A draws our attention more than Brand B because we've unconsciously associated it with arousal, due to a hot model in a commerical. I say this only to illustrate that there's a lot going on that we can't necessarily observe or control. Not 100% of the time, at least.
Another consideration is that an ad aimed at one group may have little to no effect - and may in fact seem obvious to - another group. So people see the ones that don't affect them, and decide that advertising doesn't work on them.
The only reason I assume advertising doesn't work on me is because I haven't seen an ad I can remember in years. I last watched television years and years ago, I don't even know how long. I don't watch YouTube or go on sites with ads. I buy things purely on "oh that flavor sounds nice", "I like things that are the same color as a rotten old log", and "I have no money, math it out so I can ask friends to help".
Advertising works if you're exposed to it and have the means to make purchasing choices. If you struggle to come in under five dollars while trying to feed yourself with actual food for a week, and you don't even know what ads look like anymore, you might be unaffected.
What gets me lately is word of mouth: friends know what I like and they tell me about it and that's IT for me.
I have made it a habit to report every ad that comes across my path in social medias. Paradoxically that forces me to pay more attention to them, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It revealed me some weird insight on how they actually affect my behavior.
Couple days ago there was an ad for coffee. That made me crave coffee. My coffee wasn't even the same brand that made the ad. I don't think that matters. If you drink coffee, eventually you're gonna run out. Then you need to buy more. Again, most people don't buy the brand in the ad. Some do tho.
So, for me it seems more smart to see the ad, condemn it as bullshit and store it in the portion of the brain that deals with disgusting things. Not paying attention helps them creep past the defenses.
Quote from: Frontside Back on March 02, 2020, 10:10:49 PM
I have made it a habit to report every ad that comes across my path in social medias. Paradoxically that forces me to pay more attention to them, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It revealed me some weird insight on how they actually affect my behavior.
Couple days ago there was an ad for coffee. That made me crave coffee. My coffee wasn't even the same brand that made the ad. I don't think that matters. If you drink coffee, eventually you're gonna run out. Then you need to buy more. Again, most people don't buy the brand in the ad. Some do tho.
So, for me it seems more smart to see the ad, condemn it as bullshit and store it in the portion of the brain that deals with disgusting things. Not paying attention helps them creep past the defenses.
May I yoink this for Holy Nonsense?
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on March 02, 2020, 10:42:36 PM
Quote from: Frontside Back on March 02, 2020, 10:10:49 PM
I have made it a habit to report every ad that comes across my path in social medias. Paradoxically that forces me to pay more attention to them, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It revealed me some weird insight on how they actually affect my behavior.
Couple days ago there was an ad for coffee. That made me crave coffee. My coffee wasn't even the same brand that made the ad. I don't think that matters. If you drink coffee, eventually you're gonna run out. Then you need to buy more. Again, most people don't buy the brand in the ad. Some do tho.
So, for me it seems more smart to see the ad, condemn it as bullshit and store it in the portion of the brain that deals with disgusting things. Not paying attention helps them creep past the defenses.
May I yoink this for Holy Nonsense?
Yoink away, I would be honored.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on February 25, 2020, 04:57:13 PM
I don't intend to derail (much), but what happens if I divide the smallest possible real number by 2? Wouldn't that number be smaller yet?
Consider that lim(x), x->0 and lim(x/2), x->0 both take you to the same place (zero), just at different speeds.
I thought about this for a while. I think that the answer is any attempt to divide ~0 results in ~0, even division by 0. It is in essence and conception indivisible.
BLAM is another matter entirely and it's not actually
0.999... But an irrational number best described as (1-~0) because in a natural number line you only have the integers in the line to express the next numbers. 0.999... Is just the best illustration in a full decimal system.
I haven't figured this whole thing out, but am thinking about consulting with a mathematical scholar at some point about my little theory.
Thinking about 1/(~0) might provide more insight
Quote from: rong on March 08, 2020, 09:53:59 PM
Thinking about 1/(~0) might provide more insight
:cpd:
Fuck! I think I'm stuck this way.
All you need is zero and one, and a set of rules to manipulate them with. Adding a "smallest real number" just complicates things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_real_numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R59-Dvf0fI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R59-Dvf0fI)
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 09, 2020, 01:56:45 PM
All you need is zero and one, and a set of rules to manipulate them with. Adding a "smallest real number" just complicates things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_real_numbers
I'm talking bout 0 as a natural number. Please explain how what you referred to here is at all relevant.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 09, 2020, 11:19:59 PM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 09, 2020, 01:56:45 PM
All you need is zero and one, and a set of rules to manipulate them with. Adding a "smallest real number" just complicates things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_real_numbers
I'm talking bout 0 as a natural number. Please explain how what you referred to here is at all relevant.
Earlier, you said:
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 01:16:35 PM
~0: not zero with a value of 0.000..infinit...00~0 it is the smallest possible real number, the Higgs boson of mathematics if you will.
I don't understand what I can do with ~0 that I couldn't do without it. I can get the complete set of real numbers starting with just with zero and one.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 08, 2020, 06:21:18 PM
I thought about this for a while. I think that the answer is any attempt to divide ~0 results in ~0, even division by 0. It is in essence and conception indivisible.
If (~0)/x = (~0), for any x, then, since division is the inverse of multiplication (by definition), we could also say:
(~0)*x = (~0).
(~0) appears to be a renaming of zero. As with zero, it doesn't matter how many of them are added together, the answer is always the same.
The identity component of ~0 is a mistake, I think.
I think the closest you could get to ~0 is 1/inf. It's not quite right, you might have to do something like 1/omega. Omega is the term for power towers of inf right?
I think it's a useful concept.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 10, 2020, 12:05:52 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 09, 2020, 11:19:59 PM
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 09, 2020, 01:56:45 PM
All you need is zero and one, and a set of rules to manipulate them with. Adding a "smallest real number" just complicates things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_real_numbers
I'm talking bout 0 as a natural number. Please explain how what you referred to here is at all relevant.
Earlier, you said:
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 25, 2020, 01:16:35 PM
~0: not zero with a value of 0.000..infinit...00~0 it is the smallest possible real number, the Higgs boson of mathematics if you will.
I don't understand what I can do with ~0 that I couldn't do without it. I can get the complete set of real numbers starting with just with zero and one.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 08, 2020, 06:21:18 PM
I thought about this for a while. I think that the answer is any attempt to divide ~0 results in ~0, even division by 0. It is in essence and conception indivisible.
If (~0)/x = (~0), for any x, then, since division is the inverse of multiplication (by definition), we could also say:
(~0)*x = (~0).
(~0) appears to be a renaming of zero. As with zero, it doesn't matter how many of them are added together, the answer is always the same.
Again you use the term real numbers which is not the same thing as the set of natural numbers.
The difference between ~0 and 0 is only apparent when you add an infinite number of them together. Eventually ~0 gets to BLAM. Adding infinite 0s together would still be 0.
Quote from: altered on March 10, 2020, 12:12:15 AM
The identity component of ~0 is a mistake, I think.
I think the closest you could get to ~0 is 1/inf. It's not quite right, you might have to do something like 1/omega. Omega is the term for power towers of inf right?
I think it's a useful concept.
I don't know. Gonna look up this omega you speak of.
Quote from: altered on March 10, 2020, 12:12:15 AM
I think the closest you could get to ~0 is 1/inf. It's not quite right, you might have to do something like 1/omega. Omega is the term for power towers of inf right?
Infinity isn't a number, though; you can't divide 1/∞. It would be like 1/grapefruit, or 1/ :fnord:.
This whole thing has been done to death over the years.
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/62486.html
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1372459/one-divided-by-infinity-is-not-zero
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 10, 2020, 12:33:52 AM
Quote from: altered on March 10, 2020, 12:12:15 AM
I think the closest you could get to ~0 is 1/inf. It's not quite right, you might have to do something like 1/omega. Omega is the term for power towers of inf right?
Infinity isn't a number, though; you can't divide 1/∞. It would be like 1/grapefruit, or 1/ :fnord:.
This whole thing has been done to death over the years.
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/62486.html
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1372459/one-divided-by-infinity-is-not-zero
That's funny because ~0 means (not)0
1/inf= ~0
altered do you mean this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_omega_function
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 10, 2020, 12:22:40 AM
Again you use the term real numbers which is not the same thing as the set of natural numbers.
Every natural number is also a real number. If I can use a method to construct the real numbers, I can use it to construct the natural numbers, too.
Quote
The difference between ~0 and 0 is only apparent when you add an infinite number of them together. Eventually ~0 gets to BLAM. Adding infinite 0s together would still be 0.
I can't add an infinite number of zeroes together.
I can say something like lim(x*0), x->∞ = 0, but that's not the same thing. It means "for arbitrarily large x, 0*x = 0.
What do you get if you add together an arbitrarily large, but
finite number of ~0 ?
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 10, 2020, 12:43:39 AM
1/inf= ~0
Okay. You've given a name to something that is considered meaningless in mathematics. So what's it good for? What problems does it solve that needed solving?
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 10, 2020, 12:57:17 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 10, 2020, 12:43:39 AM
1/inf= ~0
Okay. You've given a name to something that is considered meaningless in mathematics. So what's it good for? What problems does it solve that needed solving?
How to draw a natural line between 0 and 1. It is necessary for taking the preference out of mathematics by providing the means to explain in real numbers how such a connection functions. Currently the mathematician must choose whether or not to "believe" 0 is natural, or worse make such a choice to support a theory that may otherwise not work. 0 must be shown to have connection to 1 without having any integers other than 0 to work with. Two real, irrational numbers can illustrate the fact, they resolve an ancient paradox. That's enough for me.
Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on March 10, 2020, 12:33:52 AM
Quote from: altered on March 10, 2020, 12:12:15 AM
I think the closest you could get to ~0 is 1/inf. It's not quite right, you might have to do something like 1/omega. Omega is the term for power towers of inf right?
Infinity isn't a number, though; you can't divide 1/∞. It would be like 1/grapefruit, or 1/ :fnord:.
This whole thing has been done to death over the years.
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/62486.html
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1372459/one-divided-by-infinity-is-not-zero
As the first link says, it's a short hand for the limit: you get asymptotically close to having an infinitely small fraction. TWJs ~0 is the value of one of those pieces, at the limit.
I think the functional value is not what TWJ thinks it is, though, given we don't actually need a link between 0 and 1.
I was considering more along the lines of, "what is the thickness of a line in two dimensions?" Normal answer: zero. Problem: you can have infinite unique line segments of identical length, position and so forth, literally no identifying properties to separate them. "Trust me, they're all there" can't be disproved. (Similarly, infinite points at the same location, except even harder to fix because they could all have distinct labels.)
Having a "~0" unit value to the size of a point (and thus a line and etc) could be valuable in such cases. Less likely to be the case for theoretical mathematicians than for computer scientists, but that's not "useless".
the natural numbers (1,2,3,4 . . .) are countably infinite - this "size" infinity (cardinality) is called Aleph0
the real numbers 0, .00000000001, pi, 23, 1234.56789, 123456789, and a bajillion-bajillions, literally every number (and every number in between) on the continuous number line are uncountably infinite - it's cardinality is Aleph1
I think the idea of ~0 being a "smallest possible non-zero number" tries to reconcile the paradoxical uncountably infinite places to stop on your way from 0 to 1. sort of like a Planck's length in physics.
However, I would argue that there would be a one-to-one mapping from the number line constructed from multiples of ~0 and the natural numbers. so this number line would also be countably infinite and really, no different or any more useful than the natural numbers already are.
there could be a possibility of some sort of fractal-countability here (sort of like how certain objects are fractally dimensional - more than 1, less than 2) where a number line might be constructable that has cardinality between Aleph0 and Aleph1.
If there is, that's above my pay grade, but 0 and infinity have this sort of black hole type property when it comes to countability and things kinda get pulled one way or another so I don't think this is really a possibility.
Quote from: rong on March 10, 2020, 03:10:23 AM
there could be a possibility of some sort of fractal-countability here (sort of like how certain objects are fractally dimensional - more than 1, less than 2) where a number line might be constructable that has cardinality between Aleph0 and Aleph1.
If there is, that's above my pay grade, but 0 and infinity have this sort of black hole type property when it comes to countability and things kinda get pulled one way or another so I don't think this is really a possibility.
While googling whether the rational numbers were uncountably infinite or not (spoiler: they're countably infinite), I ran across the Continuum Hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis), which postulates that there is no intermediate cardinality between that of the integers, and that of the real numbers. Apparently it's a hard problem, since the hypothesis hasn't been proven (or disproven) since it was introduced in 1878.
oh, neat - i'd heard of the continuum hypothesis, but didn't really know what it was.
for the sake of saving face, i'd like to point out that the set of all real numbers contains (and is larger than) the set of all rational numbers.
Okay, I still don't get how infinities can be contained. But I really LIKE the idea that there are different infinities. It makes eternity seem less lonely.
what ever your concept of infinity is now, it will seem much smaller after watching this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88&t=1279s)
edit: watching the video has pointed out my error - I wrongly said the cardinality of the reals is Aleph1 and it is not. At least, I don't think it is. sorry for any confusion folks.
That was cool, the "skip ad" button on uTube had an infinity symbol instead of seconds countdown :lol:
Mathematician Georg Cantor was driven insane by the idea of a hierarchy of infinities.
He's proved that there are more real numbers (ie points on a number line, including fractions and pi) than natural numbers (ie 'counting numbers': 0, 1, 2, 3...). Which at first seems wacky, because there's an infinite number of both, right? But there are an infinite number of fractions between every counting number, so the number of fractions must be greater than the number of natural numbers.
Cantor developed these numbers called Transfinites, and I do not understand what they are, but the concept upset both mathematicians and the church. Which is a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Like making a 7/10 split.
The contemplation of infinity is a transcendental experience. I can understand why focusing one's powerful Lutheran mind on the concept of infinity over the course of decades could lead to a mystical experience. Cantor believed the concept of Transfinites came to him through mental contact with this infinity of inifinities, the set of all sets, which was also God.
Christian theologists accused him of pantheism. A devout Lutheran, he rejected this, but I think maybe he just chickened out.
i had my first (and only, i think) real epiphany while contemplating infinity.
i was thinking about how you can map an infinite number line onto a circle using a concept illustrated in this picture:
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgur.com%2F8r82Q.png&f=1&nofb=1)
by drawing a line from the bottom of the circle to any point on the line, you can solve for a unique point (x1,x2) and therefore represent the entire number line on the circle.
you can map a plane onto a sphere using a similar technique
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.middlebury.edu%2Ffyse1229hunsicker%2Ffiles%2F2011%2F10%2FRiemann-Sphere.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
(this image shows the complex plane, but you can just as easily project any 2-D plane onto a sphere.
I always thought this was a cool technique because it collapses an unfathomably infinite concept down into fathomably finite one.
The epiphany was that the real trick was adding a dimension. An infinite 1-D line can be completely shown on a finite 2-D circle. An infinite 2-D plane can be completely shown on a finite 3-D sphere.
I don't know all the ramifications of this, but it feels important (why i called it an epiphany)
Extra Credit:
If you map ln(x) and ex onto a sphere, you will get a representation of the infinity symbol wrapped around the sphere.
Quote from: Cramulus on March 16, 2020, 12:13:36 PM
Mathematician Georg Cantor was driven insane by the idea of a hierarchy of infinities.
He's proved that there are more real numbers (ie points on a number line, including fractions and pi) than natural numbers (ie 'counting numbers': 0, 1, 2, 3...). Which at first seems wacky, because there's an infinite number of both, right? But there are an infinite number of fractions between every counting number, so the number of fractions must be greater than the number of natural numbers.
Cantor developed these numbers called Transfinites, and I do not understand what they are, but the concept upset both mathematicians and the church. Which is a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Like making a 7/10 split.
The contemplation of infinity is a transcendental experience. I can understand why focusing one's powerful Lutheran mind on the concept of infinity over the course of decades could lead to a mystical experience. Cantor believed the concept of Transfinites came to him through mental contact with this infinity of inifinities, the set of all sets, which was also God.
Christian theologists accused him of pantheism. A devout Lutheran, he rejected this, but I think maybe he just chickened out.
It didn't take much to drive people nuts in the old days.
Gaze not overlong into the depths...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octonion
Nah, infinity is "by definition" an insane concept, with crazy simply being the price of admittance.
fine, in my limited experience though, there are at least two infinities. one of them is thicker.