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On July 03 2013 02:56 oneill12 wrote:
I think it is but I wouldn't refuse the idea of soul and afterlife, everyone wants immortality in some other state of existence.
Why? What even separates "you" from the rest of the universe? Just because a certain insignificantly small chunk of the universe stops performing chemical reactions that function to receive and process its surroundings, doesn't mean the rest of the universe is going to stop doing stuff and being awesome. People think the end of their life is the end of everything. It's not; it's just another change. Fear of death is irrational.
If you keep deluding yourself with hopes of quantum whatever, you'll never realize this truth and will always be afraid.
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On July 03 2013 03:30 politik wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:56 oneill12 wrote:
I think it is but I wouldn't refuse the idea of soul and afterlife, everyone wants immortality in some other state of existence. Why? What even separates "you" from the rest of the universe? Just because a certain insignificantly small chunk of the universe stops performing chemical reactions that function to receive and process its surroundings, doesn't mean the rest of the universe is going to stop doing stuff and being awesome. People think the end of their life is the end of everything. It's not; it's just another change. Fear of death is irrational. If you keep deluding yourself with hopes of quantum whatever, you'll never realize this truth and will always be afraid.
I think what lies in the fear of death isn't "the end of everything" but the loss of your identity, feelings, sensations etc. However the world will still go on, you will be done for.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1353 Posts
On July 03 2013 03:30 politik wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:56 oneill12 wrote:
I think it is but I wouldn't refuse the idea of soul and afterlife, everyone wants immortality in some other state of existence. Why? What even separates "you" from the rest of the universe? Just because a certain insignificantly small chunk of the universe stops performing chemical reactions that function to receive and process its surroundings, doesn't mean the rest of the universe is going to stop doing stuff and being awesome. People think the end of their life is the end of everything. It's not; it's just another change. Fear of death is irrational. If you keep deluding yourself with hopes of quantum whatever, you'll never realize this truth and will always be afraid.
To be fair death does mean the end of your conciousness/ ability to process information / whatever you want to call it.
Necessarily this means that while, you might still exist, your experience of the universe is at an end. Assuming no conciousness after death, the end of your experience is functionally the same as the end of the universe for you.
So from a functional perspective, death might well be equivalent to the 'end of everything' for the subjective observer, given that, I don't think it's fair to say fear of death is irrational.
I also don't think EVERYONE wants immortality either, I know I don't unless the immortality takes a form that satisfies quite alot of criteria that would make it not terrible.
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"the problem of consciousness is not so much things such as memory or some parts of thinking, those we can understand; the problem of consciousness is why there is such a thing as "feeling" anything at all in the first place. Why is there qualitative aspects of conscoiusness in the first place, why isnt all this going on in the dark?"
Consciousness comes from the ability of the human brain to go ahead and back in time.(probably at a verry small scale)
Where this ability to go ahead and back in time comes from i dont know but my speculation is that it somehow comes from quantum or string physics.
I am strongly convinced that a concept like this can fully explain consiousness at one point and i wish some of the more knowledgeable people like daniel dennet would start researching in this direction, unfortunatly i lack the knowledge (and probably also intelect lol) to start working on this idea myself.
If we could make a computer wich could go ahead and back in time by verry small amounts, i do think it could have a similar consiousness as we do.
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On July 03 2013 03:30 politik wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:56 oneill12 wrote:
I think it is but I wouldn't refuse the idea of soul and afterlife, everyone wants immortality in some other state of existence. Why? What even separates "you" from the rest of the universe? Just because a certain insignificantly small chunk of the universe stops performing chemical reactions that function to receive and process its surroundings, doesn't mean the rest of the universe is going to stop doing stuff and being awesome. People think the end of their life is the end of everything. It's not; it's just another change. Fear of death is irrational. If you keep deluding yourself with hopes of quantum whatever, you'll never realize this truth and will always be afraid.
I don't give a shit if the universe ends with me or not, what I'm worried about is ME ceasing to exist. The end of ones life is not the end of everything, but it's the end for you. And that sucks.
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On July 01 2013 10:15 travis wrote:
I don't understand what any of you are saying. Obviously your experiences aren't physical. We can't measure experiences, we can only measure their correlates.
We can't measure them with current technology.
When we build a device as complex as a brain, but based on computer chips, can that device feel? I think so. Does the device performs more than calculation which can be measured in the physical world? I don't think so.
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This post is phrased in an incorrect manner. "Is the mind all chemical and electricity?" A mind is abstract, it is ideas that people appeal to about the mind. If you want to debate on whether people have minds then you should rephrase. I think a more correct question would be "is the brain all chemical and electricity?" which would be yes...
Science can never determine what "the mind" is composed of unless people first assert a reductionist worldview, which would then become a faith claim (non-scientific statements).
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On July 01 2013 10:22 travis wrote:
Im attempting to use rhetoric to try to poke a hole in the way people think about this stuff. People are disturbingly materialistic.
Why does it disturb you?
And even if it disturbs you, are ones feeling a reliable way to truth?
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On July 03 2013 02:05 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 01:52 NukeD wrote:
Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics?
From what I understand, the whole spectator concept in quantum mechanics is just a way to say that there's no way to investigate something without affecting the result. It's a bit like the Schrodinger cat experiment, until you look inside the box the cat is both dead and alive, but it's either dead or alive when you open the box and check it. This is not because you actually changed something by looking, the cat was either dead or alive before you opened the box, but there would be no way to know until we checked so we say it's both until the effect is observed. At least, I think it's something along those lines, should be noted I'm far from an expert myself.
Unfortunately, it's more weird than this. We don't just "say" that the cat is both dead and alive. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, the cat is both dead and alive, until we open the box. And in that moment one of those realities vanish.
And that's really the biggest problem I have with quantum anything. If Schrödinger's cat can be both alive and dead, until someone looks inside and then it's definitely dead, what's stopping the earth from being both intact and destroyed at the same time? We could all vanish as soon as some alien decides to point their telescope our way.
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the question for me is simple ...
are you a robot who only reacts to impulses ? Or is there something else that can influence your decisions ?
to be exact i guess the brain is more of a GUI for the soul if u want to call it that 
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On July 03 2013 07:12 gedatsu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:05 Tobberoth wrote:On July 03 2013 01:52 NukeD wrote:
Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics?
From what I understand, the whole spectator concept in quantum mechanics is just a way to say that there's no way to investigate something without affecting the result. It's a bit like the Schrodinger cat experiment, until you look inside the box the cat is both dead and alive, but it's either dead or alive when you open the box and check it. This is not because you actually changed something by looking, the cat was either dead or alive before you opened the box, but there would be no way to know until we checked so we say it's both until the effect is observed. At least, I think it's something along those lines, should be noted I'm far from an expert myself. Unfortunately, it's more weird than this. We don't just "say" that the cat is both dead and alive. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, the cat is both dead and alive, until we open the box. And in that moment one of those realities vanish. And that's really the biggest problem I have with quantum anything. If Schrödinger's cat can be both alive and dead, until someone looks inside and then it's definitely dead, what's stopping the earth from being both intact and destroyed at the same time? We could all vanish as soon as some alien decides to point their telescope our way.
Well....actually the whole point of the Schrödinger's cat paradox isn't to say "The cat is dead and alive at the same time", it's meant as a paradoxical scenario that shows how quantum mechanics and macroscopic mechanics don't really mesh well. I don't think the intent was to convince anybody that the there were actually two separate universes within the box.
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On July 03 2013 03:15 Roman wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:08 knOxStarcraft wrote:
With roughly 100 billion neurons in the human brain with 100 trillion connections between them I don't understand why people find it hard to believe we are just a very complicated bio computer. Given all we know it seems logical to operate believing we are just bio computers until someone shows, with evidence, that there is something more going on. Similarly, we should operate believing there is no purple antelope running at the speed of light around Jupiter granting us miracles until someone shows that there is, with evidence. Also, evolution works pretty well... The human mind has always been explained through the paradigm of the technology of the moment. In the past, this was things like a book or a steam engine, and now its a computer. At the end of the day, we understand the function of the brain so poorly that its still a leap to make this comparison.
That's the beauty of science, isn't it? I didn't say I wasn't open to new evidence, just that, with what we know now it seems appropriate to make that comparison. Just like Newton's laws were improved upon, we humans will improve upon our understanding of the brain.
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On July 03 2013 07:12 gedatsu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:05 Tobberoth wrote:On July 03 2013 01:52 NukeD wrote:
Okay ill take that as true than, but does the spectator play ANY role in quantum mechanics?
From what I understand, the whole spectator concept in quantum mechanics is just a way to say that there's no way to investigate something without affecting the result. It's a bit like the Schrodinger cat experiment, until you look inside the box the cat is both dead and alive, but it's either dead or alive when you open the box and check it. This is not because you actually changed something by looking, the cat was either dead or alive before you opened the box, but there would be no way to know until we checked so we say it's both until the effect is observed. At least, I think it's something along those lines, should be noted I'm far from an expert myself. Unfortunately, it's more weird than this. We don't just "say" that the cat is both dead and alive. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, the cat is both dead and alive, until we open the box. And in that moment one of those realities vanish. And that's really the biggest problem I have with quantum anything. If Schrödinger's cat can be both alive and dead, until someone looks inside and then it's definitely dead, what's stopping the earth from being both intact and destroyed at the same time? We could all vanish as soon as some alien decides to point their telescope our way.
Cat is more of an abstract object in that scenario. Real cat and earth both cannot be in any quantum superposition of states as the wave function collapses all the time due to interaction with multiple objects. In general unless some specific circumstances are reached macroscopic objects are not in any quantum states.
The disturbing thing about quantum mechanics is the thing that it is (even more than relativity) rather alien to our mind and that is where all the pseudo-paradoxes come from. All those things are problematic because we lack good concepts, aside from math, to actually work with it and quite likely our brains are incapable of ever internalizing this properly.
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On July 03 2013 06:02 grassHAT wrote:
This post is phrased in an incorrect manner. "Is the mind all chemical and electricity?" A mind is abstract, it is ideas that people appeal to about the mind. If you want to debate on whether people have minds then you should rephrase. I think a more correct question would be "is the brain all chemical and electricity?" which would be yes...
Science can never determine what "the mind" is composed of unless people first assert a reductionist worldview, which would then become a faith claim (non-scientific statements).
Ideas that emanate from the mind are often very abstract. But even the more severely abstract and complicated thoughts must stem from some mechanism at the brain. There is no magic or hand-waving at play. It only seems that way because currently we lack the means to pick apart the trillions of components of the brain. 100 billion+ neurons. Many billions of non neuronal cells. Hundreds of billions to trillions of connections and many many more interactions, most of which we simply dont understand yet, nor even possess the ability to attempt to understand anytime too soon. I do not believe there is any obvious reason to assume the mind at its more abstract states is separable from its physical underpinnings at the brain. Viewed in this way they are one and the same. The complexity of the mind is the complexity of the brain.
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On July 03 2013 02:27 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:08 knOxStarcraft wrote:
With roughly 100 billion neurons in the human brain with 100 trillion connections between them I don't understand why people find it hard to believe we are just a very complicated bio computer. Given all we know it seems logical to operate believing we are just bio computers until someone shows, with evidence, that there is something more going on. Similarly, we should operate believing there is no purple antelope running at the speed of light around Jupiter granting us miracles until someone shows that there is, with evidence. Also, evolution works pretty well... What the chinese room shows, if anything, is that no matter how complicated we make a machine all we seem to end up with is syntax. When exactly do we get semantics, ie meaning, into the picture. We have no answer to that question and it is unintuitive that we would end up with anything like that no matter how complicated the computer. Similarily, the problem of consciousness is not so much things such as memory or some parts of thinking, those we can understand; the problem of consciousness is why there is such a thing as "feeling" anything at all in the first place. Why is there qualitative aspects of conscoiusness in the first place, why isnt all this going on in the dark? There is indeed reason to accept physicalism, but it is more because of how nonsensical alternative theories are than because we can make sense of a purely physical mind. I would like to quote Nagel: Strangely enough, we may have evidence for the truth of something we cannot really understand. Suppose a caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later the safe is reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows that the safe has been shut the whole time, he has reason to believe that the butterfly is or was once the caterpillar, without having any idea in what sense this might be so. (One possibility is that the caterpillar contained a tiny winged parasite that devoured it and grew into the butterfly.)
It is conceivable that we are in such a position with regard to physicalismhttp://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html
I don't think I understand everything you've said here but why do you assume feeling, or finding "meaning" in a picture, is anything more than the processing of input, the same way a computer processes input? Turn a computer off and it does go dark, just like it goes dark for us when our heart or brain dies because there is no more input, in both cases.
Why do we say a computer doesn't have a consciousness? Couldn't consciousness simply be the act of processing information?
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On July 03 2013 08:25 knOxStarcraft wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 02:27 Snusmumriken wrote:On July 03 2013 02:08 knOxStarcraft wrote:
With roughly 100 billion neurons in the human brain with 100 trillion connections between them I don't understand why people find it hard to believe we are just a very complicated bio computer. Given all we know it seems logical to operate believing we are just bio computers until someone shows, with evidence, that there is something more going on. Similarly, we should operate believing there is no purple antelope running at the speed of light around Jupiter granting us miracles until someone shows that there is, with evidence. Also, evolution works pretty well... What the chinese room shows, if anything, is that no matter how complicated we make a machine all we seem to end up with is syntax. When exactly do we get semantics, ie meaning, into the picture. We have no answer to that question and it is unintuitive that we would end up with anything like that no matter how complicated the computer. Similarily, the problem of consciousness is not so much things such as memory or some parts of thinking, those we can understand; the problem of consciousness is why there is such a thing as "feeling" anything at all in the first place. Why is there qualitative aspects of conscoiusness in the first place, why isnt all this going on in the dark? There is indeed reason to accept physicalism, but it is more because of how nonsensical alternative theories are than because we can make sense of a purely physical mind. I would like to quote Nagel: Strangely enough, we may have evidence for the truth of something we cannot really understand. Suppose a caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later the safe is reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows that the safe has been shut the whole time, he has reason to believe that the butterfly is or was once the caterpillar, without having any idea in what sense this might be so. (One possibility is that the caterpillar contained a tiny winged parasite that devoured it and grew into the butterfly.)
It is conceivable that we are in such a position with regard to physicalismhttp://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html Couldn't consciousness simply be the act of processing information?
Not really no :o
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So if i die, do i get ANYHOW the chance to kick you all in your "ass" then?
You people make me sick
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On July 03 2013 08:38 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2013 08:25 knOxStarcraft wrote:On July 03 2013 02:27 Snusmumriken wrote:On July 03 2013 02:08 knOxStarcraft wrote:
With roughly 100 billion neurons in the human brain with 100 trillion connections between them I don't understand why people find it hard to believe we are just a very complicated bio computer. Given all we know it seems logical to operate believing we are just bio computers until someone shows, with evidence, that there is something more going on. Similarly, we should operate believing there is no purple antelope running at the speed of light around Jupiter granting us miracles until someone shows that there is, with evidence. Also, evolution works pretty well... What the chinese room shows, if anything, is that no matter how complicated we make a machine all we seem to end up with is syntax. When exactly do we get semantics, ie meaning, into the picture. We have no answer to that question and it is unintuitive that we would end up with anything like that no matter how complicated the computer. Similarily, the problem of consciousness is not so much things such as memory or some parts of thinking, those we can understand; the problem of consciousness is why there is such a thing as "feeling" anything at all in the first place. Why is there qualitative aspects of conscoiusness in the first place, why isnt all this going on in the dark? There is indeed reason to accept physicalism, but it is more because of how nonsensical alternative theories are than because we can make sense of a purely physical mind. I would like to quote Nagel: Strangely enough, we may have evidence for the truth of something we cannot really understand. Suppose a caterpillar is locked in a sterile safe by someone unfamiliar with insect metamorphosis, and weeks later the safe is reopened, revealing a butterfly. If the person knows that the safe has been shut the whole time, he has reason to believe that the butterfly is or was once the caterpillar, without having any idea in what sense this might be so. (One possibility is that the caterpillar contained a tiny winged parasite that devoured it and grew into the butterfly.)
It is conceivable that we are in such a position with regard to physicalismhttp://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html Couldn't consciousness simply be the act of processing information? Not really no :o
Why not?
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EPT
