That is huge, and might even be on topic!Quote:
Originally Posted by OutlawPig
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That is huge, and might even be on topic!Quote:
Originally Posted by OutlawPig
Thank you for restating. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
OutlawPig,
I think that experiences like the driver's license incident are actually not that rare, though they're rarer for modern westerners because they don't fit into our observer-invariant worldview very easily. I think if I were to describe it to a randomly selected person from some other time or place, they would likely regard it as like something that could happen to themselves, though their interpretation of it would be different. For instance, rather than thinking of it as a y-intersection of alternative histories, they would more likely interpret it as a direct teleportation of an object from one place to another. And noting the relative uncommonness of the event, they might try to interpret it as a sign, or connect it with a spirit of some sort. Scanning briefly though section 3 of Patanjali's yoga sutras I don't see object teleportation mentioned, but it definitely falls within the realm of the kind of things that ancient Indians regarded as achievable with mental training. Other modern people do experience these things also though. When I mentioned the anecdote to coworkers, two of them shared similar experiences.
For myself, I saw it as a simple answer to a question. Can the causal rope move 'laterally'? The only way to answer that with physical evidence is to move it in an inconsistent way and produce a contradiction. In other words, 'Yes'. My reaction wasn't all calm and matter of fact like this though, the experience scared the shit out of me (so to speak).
A natural question is "who" answered the question? That I don't know. It wasn't "me" in the narrowest sense. A future me? A more knowledgeable, alternative universe me? A "master" from another realm? A god? A demon? A "spirit guide"? A mind reading alien? My "higher self?" An intelligent entity that has no fixed being, and wears people's thoughts like clothing? Nobody answered, it was a mechanical consequence of some natural law expressing as a sort of "questions get answered" principle? Its something that happens all the time, but the way we qualify our attention screens it out of our reality somehow, so it only happened when my question changed the way I qualify my attention? None of these ideas are right I don't think, though I think there's an element of truth to several of them.
As I experience it, 'answers' of this type, in dreams or otherwise, almost always contain multiple insights packed into one image. The 'answerer', such as it may be, seems to be remarkably efficient. It also seems to be remarkably patient, often its years before other pieces fall neatly into place. I think that the teleportation anecdote also contains a clue about the sense in which history has inertia, I'm just not able to interpret it yet.
I care about the 'inertia' question for a couple of reasons. One, I value and desire change, and it seems to be important to recognizing the extent of my power to change. Secondly, my ability to make reliable sense of my premonitions is clearly limited by my awareness of how all this works.
One direct consequence of the aforementioned experience is I got a lot happier. It was as if I had always felt that there should be something more to reality than what I see, and that the seeming absence was disturbing, like how you might feel horrified if you felt you should have a body but your senses told you that you were just a detached head. Afterwards, I could just trust that what I felt was really there, I didn't have to fear because I couldn't couldn't see or make sense of it yet. There is some sort of multi-verse, apparently, even if I don't understand what it is.
Thinking about all this now, another obvious lesson is the need to trust that the 'inertia' that keeps history on track is there, even if we don't understand it. I don't have to be scared just because there's nothing in our mathematical models that holds back chaos. (In a similar way, Hilbert was shaken at a deep personal level By Godel's theorem.) That kind of fear seems very similar to me to the reaction people have when they feel they are being attacked intellectually. Its as if one's 'I' feels it will come apart if any of the ideas underpinning one's thought of oneself get undermined. Is this fear entirely delusional, or is there really something to it? A lot of things that people are afraid of in life are actually dangerous. To some extent this fear must be delusional though, and involves some kind of confusion of 'I'.
In any case, thanks for the thoughts, I think I'm making some headway as a result of this exchange.
Another, at least equally valid way to look at that would be to say that my growing trust/happiness/awareness is part of what made the experience possible, not the other way around.Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
I think you have a worthwhile thought there, thanks for sharing. I can't say that's precisely what I was thinking, since so much alternative nuance is possible, but clearly it fits with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Singularity125
I also found the dominoes analogy from OutlawPig to be useful, even though he partially repudiated it afterwards. I think people shouldn't be afraid to toss thoughts into the arena without worrying too much about making a coherent point. I'm always hoping for a paradigm shifting insight that's not just another way of combining and expressing what I already think. If we try to make too much sense, we get locked into our existing understanding. But if you're willing to say something without even understanding why you're saying it, that could be a piece someone else needs.
I understand you. I find that a worthwhile thought, thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
What bugs me now is, hypothetically you being right, that the history chain shifting appears inconsistent and unpredictable. In other words, it doesn't have a why or how. Just the assumption that it does. Is it a "better" outcome that your licence wasn't in your hand? Is there some goal that history is trying to achieve and it's seeing what outcomes are best? I obviously don't think that.
A more apparent question in dealing with these hypothetical lateral shifts in the position of historical threads: If history changed and the corresponding links in the chain moved with it so that it all still appeared causal, why was the memory still written in the folds of your brain of something that "didn't happen"? Does your brain have its own thread, independent of the licence's thread? As an extension to that, how does history define an object? Does your brain as a whole have an identity, or does each individual fundamental particle making up the subatomics, atoms, molecules, cells of your brain? Or your entire body or sections thereof? More questions of identity.
OutlawPig,
The contradiction between my memory and the end result was the 'global inconsistency' I referred to.
To clarify what I mean by 'global'....In the Schrodinger cat illustration, the cat is definitely either alive or dead for an observer who can see inside the box, even while the whole system remains in an indeterminate state for a second observer who can not see inside. (That's the point of that illustration, which is literal, its not just a metaphor for a particle that can be described by a single, coherent, 'uncollapsed' wavefunction.) But when the second observer looks into the box, everything gets reconciled in a way that eliminates any contradictions. By 'local consistency' I mean that the cat is alive or dead for the first observer, its not in some zombie state. By 'global consistency' I mean there is one, universal, coherent history, completely distinct from any 'alternative' histories, as opposed to a semi-contradictory patchwork of locally consistent histories. This isn't my area of expertise, but in an e-mail exchange a subject matter expert agreed that such a splicing of histories seems theoretically possible. Not that he's necessarily right either of course, though the drivers-license anomaly seems to be evidence of something.
As another, slightly different illustration of how I'm using the words local and global....Locally, the surface of a torus is isomorphic to the surface of a sphere. You can draw a little circle around any point on either object and measure it in the same way, no problems. Globally its a different topology - the torus has a hole in it and the sphere doesn't.
As for the question of 'why' the experience happened....Without the inconsistency between memory and present state, I wouldn't have had any way of knowing that anything strange had happened, except for a vague feeling of disconnect between my intuition and external events. The inconsistency was necessary to clearly answer the question about whether strands drift, because otherwise I would not have recognized the answer. Of course this just leads to the question of 'why' nature cares about answering that question, how getting an answer is in some sense a lower energy state than not getting one.
Why did I even have the question to start with? I can tell you how it ties into a lot of other questions I have, and how its relevant to goals that I care deeply about. But these other questions and goals flow from other experiences which were not entirely of my choosing. So I can't say that nature is responding to my desire, it would make as much sense to say that my desire is responding to it. I can say though that for whatever reason there seems to be fate for certain questions to be answered. Try it and maybe you'll see what I mean. Ask something, not something pointless or relevant primarily to partisan advantage, but ask to understand something, particularly something related to your moral ideals. Then pay attention to your dreams and other experiences, and you'll get answers, at least partial ones. Process the results and keep asking and you'll get better, more complete answers. Of course there is filtering going on with this, where you're paying attention to what seems relevant. But try it for a few years and there might be more to it than that. That's my experience anyway, and other people have observed this also.
I think another neat feature of Feynman's physics, is the way a particle is everywhere at once, but in infinitely many contradictory states which cancel each other out everywhere except for where it is actually observed. Its 'coherent' in that location, like being in focus, and out of phase with itself everywhere else. To horribly misapply this idea to desire, it sort of makes sense that a person would have trouble with something like psychically forcing a particular result for a lottery drawing. Consider that from the standpoint of a more abstract identity. Why would it possibly care which of the millions of clamoring participants win? Any outcome mostly amounts to the same thing. So one might expect a uniform probability distribution in multiple experiments like that. Suppose on the other hand that a particular type of outcome leads to a radically different future. For instance, suppose that in another half billion years humanity evolves into something, or creates something, that has such an advanced understanding of physics that it can influence the past. Now there is a real difference between what leads to its emergence and what doesn't.
Maybe that's not quite the real situation. But my experience with premonitions compels me to agree that the 'future' is constrained in some way beyond what randomly flows from past conditions. And that leads back to the question about inertia, what is causing it and how it works. One thought I have had about that, is that there are a lot of similar universes that are interrelated somehow. Not parallel universes in a Copenhagen sense, but more like parallel universes in an m-theory multiverse sense, but which affect each other in some subtle and unknown way. These universes drag each other along, as if like atoms stuck together with electrostatic forces. In this view, when a person gets a premonition, they're not really seeing the future, they're seeing the present in another world that's 'ahead' of ours by a few hours, like bubbles moving through a tube. I don't think this is quite the situation though. Its more like we're embedded in something deeper and subtler that doesn't interact with us in any of the ways we know how to recognize. Like maybe we're looking for domino like causes, and its an underlying table.
Within the realm of 'known' physics there are dynamics that are very, very weak, almost unrecognizably weak, but which have powerful macroscopic effects because they act in the same direction. Gravity is one example, which is almost immeasurably weak compared to electrodynamics, but since the effects are cumulative it dominates on large scales. Reconciling things that are important on different scales is always a hard problem in physics. One example would be air flowing over a wing. What happens on a microscopic scale on the surface of the wing is important to the behavior. But what is happening on much larger scales, centimeters and meters, is important also. Try to write down equations for that and solve them, and they're really, really nasty, requiring all kinds of exotic techniques. A person might not initially recognize that the effects on a particular scale are even important, even if they dominate in some regards. I think that whatever is real outside of 'known physics' is like this. Whatever it is, its not easy to pin down on human-scale controlled experiments, so we barely understand it. Like air to a fish, we may not even be aware its there. But its still very important.
I've been thinking about this stuff for many years, and like I said, I've got only a couple of toothpicks to build a house with. So we might make some real personal strides talking about it, but its not like we're going to suddenly have answers to all of these riddles and apparent impossibilities. Many scientifically inclined people I know don't even think about it, not because they don't believe its real, but just because it seems too intractable, and they'd rather work on something they can achieve something definite with.
The way this is going, it seems that history cares about morals. As if the universe cares about morals, as if it could possibly even have a concept of them. It doesn't even make sense to ask if the universe cares because it's not equipped with any sort of consciousness, let alone one tuned to humanity's range of morals. This is assigning intent to history, to time and the universe. If I asked a personal question about something I was having troubles with, and then dreamed of an answer, that would be so obviously my own mind working out things on its own. It would be called growing as a person. It would be maturing and learning more about myself, and it does not mean "divine" intervention from the universe as a whole. I don't like disempowering humans. I don't like saying that they can't fix their problems as well as the rest of the universe can and they can't control tiny things like their wallets. Obviously, the greater universe doesn't care what I don't like-- it doesn't even make sense to say the universe doesn't care because is not a conscious thing. And in some sense it has fixed my problems, because I am a piece of it. My identity is an individual piece in the fractal of things, and so I am a part of everything.
I have already strayed from talking about history to talking about the universe, but it is my opinion that history(time) goes hand in hand with the universe. From what we know, time had its beginning with the universe-- which is dumb to say because the universe would require time to begin at all-- so.. well now I'm questioning whether the universe is required for time to pass. Certainly according to classical scientists it wasn't, time is just a clock that keeps ticking. But it isn't so with modern science. I don't know anything about this and invite you to share what you know, or if somebody else knows better.
My point is that it seems as though you are implying that:
- The Universe possesses a human's idea of a consciousness.
- The Universe recognizes the passing of time.
- The Universe cares about the passing of time.
- The Universe can alter time.
- The Universe is working towards some general goal in time.
It boils down to my not being comfortable with that. It gives too much room to be right about religious ideas.
because its not that simpleQuote:
Originally Posted by Sageous
I've been trying to dream share for months. I haven't even been lucid at the same time when my target was, let alone having a REM cycle as my target is. And when my target was lucid and tried to dreamshare with me, I didn't remember any dreams that night
There are a lot of challenges
OutlawPig,
Over on Inner Sanctum there's a recent thread on astrology started by Omnis Dei in which I argue at length that history does not care about morals. If that seems to contradict what I implied here, this goes back to the meaning of identity again.
If you ask a question, and an answer comes in a dream, it seems to me that its obvious that you worked it out for yourself only in the exact same way that its obvious that shared dreaming is impossible. In other words, you're just assuming that from the outset. To know, you have to consider whether a particular insight contains any information that objectively comes from outside your previous experience. If it does, there's nothing disempowering about that, because you still have to work out what's true. If you 'trust' the intuition based on a presumed source, then you just enslave yourself to other people's religious beliefs, which are shared as easily as anything.
Exploring the nature of identity, and extending your thought of identity to something that was more than what you thought before, is more empowering than anything else I can conceive of. If there's a mind out there somewhere that knows more than you, that doesn't reduce what you know. If that mind wants you to worship it as a god, or look to it as an authority on anything, you can just tell it to piss off, just like you do in relation to other people's gods now. Otherwise, if you let the goal of human power limit what you're willing to see about what is possible, it seems to me you're just trying to make yourself bigger by making everything else smaller. Our power is already strongly limited by physics, natural selection, etc. Discovering that you have more mental power than you thought you did makes those limitations less, and doesn't introduce other limitations as far as I can see.
I always thought it was funny that Carl Sagan strongly believed that no god created the universe, but was quite open to the idea that it was created by super powerful aliens, as if those categories of ideas don't overlap at all. Why be a prisoner of other people's religious ideas?
In any case, I'm not implying that the universe is or does any of the things in your list. I'm implying that I do some of those things, and that you do also, and that our awareness of the meaning of 'I' and 'you' can become subtler and more intelligent if we explore that.
It seems to me that scientific approach would not to be to reject a piece of data, such as apparent lack of control over a wallet, based on whether or not it seems personally agreeable.
Keep in mind though that I asked the question, that I consented to this, its something that I wanted. And I chose what to do with the result. It seems to me that I have more power and freedom for having done that. Its true that I said that my choice is to a large extent shaped by events. But like I said, that's obviously true for everyone anyway, in fact its almost the whole story from a Darwinist perspective. If free choice is the goal, then that means expanding that area of personal will, which can be achieved by exploring issues of identity.
As I said, the universe doesn't have any thoughts in relation to whether I like or dislike something, I know my opinion doesn't matter. I have expressed my personal opinion to you but it is separate from my 'facts' area, I'm still open to discussion and I'm willing to learn the same as I was before. I suppose I misunderstood you. It appears as though you have surrendered to a "higher power", but my automatic assumption that, by talking of connection with others through mysterious things greater than ourselves, you were speaking of some deity or spirit or other such nonsense, likely stems from my culture and previous experience with others talking about such things. It's a mistake that people have made, obviously, for eons.
It is my opinion(again, detached from my collection of truths) that despite our discussion, the influence of one mind on another, at will, with no physical connection or go-between messenger, seems mystic. I'm just trying to think of the biology behind it-- it's stupefying that we aren't aware of an ability that we posses that is apparently beneficial enough to be passed on through natural selection! And if it does not raise our chance of survival, then did it just slip through the cracks as a side effect of other beneficial genetic changes? When it is said that we only use a small portion of our brain, that's bull. We use pretty much all of it but at different times and for different tasks. I want a take on the actual physical process of this, not on the enlightenment expand-your-mind just trust it'll work sort of way. That isn't how I work, and I don't want to change to be able to say that that is how I work because I am comfortable with who I am(of course I'm still willing to grow and mature, etc). If it's a natural process that is open only to those who have a certain opinion about things then it's silly on evolution's part(not that evolution literally had a say). Furthermore, who would have sex with the people who did? ;)
I dunno. Ugh.
As for Carl Sagan, he talked many times about creation and nearly each time implied the use of Occam's razor, saying that if there were a god who created everything, and the god always was, why not skip a step and say that the universe always was? If the god's beginning is an unanswerable question, why not skip a step and say that the universe's beginning is an unanswerable question, etc. etc. The only time I heard aliens implied would be Contact, and even then he was just playing with ideas. If you know of a quote that I do not, please share. Even if he did, in his defense, the origins of faith in gods are illegitimate, but there is cause to believe in life elsewhere than Earth, and there is room for possibility that it possesses knowledge and power unfathomable to us. Of course, that is all speculation.
Well said outlaw pig, I agree with everything you say, Id love to read a well written article on someone that has done a study on it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OutlawPig
Outlawpig, I am in no way attacking you with this post. Why the need on your part for everything to be explained by simple straight forward biology and standard modern physics? I am getting that on your part you want to limit your ability to believe to a very narrow realm of understanding. You used the words "speaking of some deity or spirit or other such nonsense," as if you find all topics not firmly explained by science to be foolish and unlikely. I am thinking perhaps you have modeled yourself as a Atheist? It is ok for some to be a Atheist, if that is the case. However, can you tell me if I am getting the correct spin on what you are saying? Do you automatically claim (in your own mind) that all "mystical" things must be false? Can you accept that not even a small part of reality fits into the biological and modern physics way of understanding? I am going so far as to say, it does not need to spring from evolution.
Those are just points of curiosity, you can adress if interested. What proof do I have for claiming that science does not account for much? Two quick examples. Big bang scientists now suggest that it expanded at many many thousands of times the speed of light. In fact it really appears as if everything suddenly popped into existance instantly. Some say it was all pressed into a point smaller than an atom, but that is only due to them hating to say it suddenly appeared. The point, we live in a universe who's formation defies everything modern science understands. Next is the theory of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Both theories are becoming widely accepted, yet they are nothing more than unkown variables being accounted for with a question mark and cute name. Dark Matter is not something anyone has detected or even pictured. Dark matter is just the term used because none of the modern physics models can account for the universe being here. It appears as if empty space can have lots of gravity or little. It is guessed that 98% of the gravity needed to make the universe models work is just emminating out of empty space. We are currently in one of those gravity fields and can not see or detect any source for the gravity. Dark Energy is just another unknown variable. It seems that there is way to much energy out there coming from no appearant source. It is adding energy to the system in vast amounts, even though standard science was saying, you neither create nor destroy energy. It appears that a fabulous amount of energy is just pouring in from some unknown factor.
Ok, where am I going with this? I have a Doctorate in a Biologically based science, and Shadowofwind has an equally auspicious title in the realm of pure science, yet we are both able to accept that not everything will fall into the realm of Newtonian physics. If the universe at large is disobeying the very basis of our science, why not believe that locally, with in our lives experience, those laws do not govern everything. It actually appears to modern science as if 98% of what is going on is not based on the world of matter and physics, but on principles that lend themselves very well to the idea of "higher powers" beyond our understanding.
Again, no attack intended. I am honestly curious how you have structured your belief system, and if the atheistic spin I think I am picking up from you is accurate. If so, can you explain what process lead you to the conclusions you have?
Your comments about mysticism seem to me to mostly apply to modern physics also. Its is only 'open' to people who choose to do really abstract math, and is 'closed' to everyone else who's beliefs and other mental limitations preclude that. Its not obvious how the ability to think about things like limits to sequences of functions could have been favored by natural selection. Most westerners believe in principle in things like quantum mechanics, or relativity, or even radio, because these have been in our culture for a while now. But even now, put most people in a class where they study how these things actually work and their minds rebel; the ideas offend their common sense sensibility. And two hundred years ago all of it would have been quite mystic.
If the 'mystic' tendency that you reject is blind faith, then by all means don't have blind faith, I'm with you 100% on that. But even in science you have to have enough confidence in a hypothesis to follow through with the experiment. That's all we're talking about here. If you're not willing to follow through, then that's perfectly reasonable, other things may be more worth your time. But then of course you won't be able to have a fact-based opinion on these subjects. Most people, even with a scientific mindset, don't rigorously understand most of the scientific facts they believe in, they accept the authority of other people who do. If you don't want to take someone else's word for something, then you have to do it yourself. Unfortunately, most people who have opinions on 'mystic' subjects can't be trusted, much how most scientists couldn't be trusted when the field was much younger. (For every solid result produced by someone like Newton there was a mountain of bullshit, and it gets worse the further back you go.) So on the leading edge of any field of endeavor, you can't really trust what other people say, you have to do it yourself. (That's true even if an area of inquiry is 'leading edge' in large part because it has been mostly abandoned for a couple thousand years. Ancient Vedic and Greek ideas about such things, while flawed, are considerably more developed and well reasoned than what most people are aware of today.)
(I didn't mean to imply that Sagan believed in alien creators, only that he didn't find the idea objectionable in the way that he would have with some minor tweaks to the characteristics of those aliens. In any case, I don't have a secret agenda here to advance worship of a god, I'm just describing what I know and how I got there. I have no objection at all to atheism. I'm just saying that if you want real answers about things like shared dreaming, you can't be deflected by what a bunch of bible belt fundamentalists might think about such things.)
The use of "defies" does not suit the point you are making. In modern science it is known that with the big bang was the creation of spacetime. Spacetime defines every aspect of modern science. It accounts for why all particles act the way they do. The formation of the big bang did not follow these rules because they are the result of the big bang. Where it came from no one can say but it does in no way violate the rules of our unniverse.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
Sivason, I think your statements there about the big bang are incorrect.
Where science appears to contradict the ideas that people use to explain their meditative experience, the tendency is to dispute the claims of science. I think that's a mistake. Mystics always loose that fight because they're actually wrong - the claims of science are rigorously right to quite an exceptional degree. The challenge is to find how the meditative experiences are compatible with scientific claims. You have to go outside of the existing scientific models, but you can't fight them where their models apply. Though the cosmological models aren't utterly unimpeachable, I think your criticisms are based on misconceptions.
[Ammendment: I think I spoke too strongly, too hastily. (Trying to multi-task again.) Maybe I misunderstood you. The big bang theory itself is solid, but anything that is left out is left out. A 'singularity' is math-speak for the math breaks down and yields no more information, even though it's good away from that limit. Likewise, anything regarded as random or attributed to the anthropic principle is outside the model. I don't think there's anything wrong with the models though, as far as they go.]
You and Dutchraptor have misunderstood my point. I am sying that the model probably is good, and reflects the science that happened, however, the conclusions being drawn would have no place in the standard science taught commonly to high school kids back in 1990. I am drawing a line between science that conforms to those standard principles (like ice being frozen water) and the really weird stuff like an unknown source of gravity and energy.Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
I know that anything I choose to think is evidence that more spiritual stuff is going on, can be broken down into science. A rainbow may be a sign that divine forces are creative and like pretty things, the simple fact that we know a science reason for it does not change anything. I have a point of view that makes it very very easy for me! That is that I honestly do not believe that the physical world is constrained by set laws. That is because I honestly believe the E in E=MC2 is dream like energy of a creative force. It suddenly appeared (in my version of things) because that was the point when the dream started. The creative force applied a set of basic guiding principles like gravity and electromagnatism, and then fast forwarded through millions of years guiding the formation of the universe. Not only does nothing about that oppose the newest science theories, it is actually the basis of the creation myths of the Hindus which are about 1/7 of the world population (just saying it is not a crack pot idea I made up).
Here is how that affects my life. I do believe that some laws are in place that hold the structure of our universe in place. I do believe in the science from high school in that radiowaves and chemistry are clearly fairly well understood. I however also hear all these noted scientists saying we are missing 98% of the equation, and that the missing answer seems to exist on a non physical level. Sounds like I can feel free to believe in science, and believe in things outside of what science can account for. I can be a 100% level headed scientist and still believe in 'mystical' things.
I also believe that if this universe complies more with the workings of a powerful dream, that an answer to any observable thing can be found (dreamt up) by man kind. Back to the rainbow,,, still a sign from above that we are meant to experience beauty and enjoyment. Higg's bosen? Sure, if mankind wants to find out what binds energy in a way to form mass, we will find it,,, still does not prove God did not just say "let there be..."
In my version (and a billion other people's) science is part of the dream. Clearly defined rules do not limit what can be, they just help structure the way thing act.
Here is my own theory on how dream sharing works. You can not detect a wave or energy moving between two people because that is not what happens. I believe that it is a process of turning inward, away from the physical realm. If you figure out the method, then you can go inside your self to a place where you are conected to a new and different type of reality. It has its own rules, but physical distance in relation to the physical world is not part of the equation. Some one commented before that there would be a limit on distance; I feel that it would make no difference if the subject where in different galaxies. They reach an inner place where new rules apply, the other person does the same. Then they can meet at a location close to where both of them entered the new space. A simple way of turning sci-fi into an analogy of it follows,,, If a ship uses a worm hole and another ship use a worm hole and they meet across the universe for lunch, there would be no way to detect an energy linking the two, or an energy that was transmitted between them. I am not saying shared dreaming uses wormholes, but the method i believe I use and experience would not be detectable outside my body as a wavelength or radiation.
If some of the more atheist minded folk can accept that worm holes may be possable, why limit what else may be. I also feel that someday, some creature may have enough science to blame it all on some delta shift into etherial matrix type 5b, or some other thing that will make the scientists happy. I know that a motivated race of seekers can find New Science to describe why anything happens. However, it is still going to be the same as the Rainbow, those who choose to ignore a spiritual sign of grace and beauty, because we figured out how it was achieved, really only limit the wonder and comfort they may get, that others receive from such things.
Well what you believe is no longer science, you are turning so it suits your needs. Not that I mind, you can interpret it how you want. Science is ultimately trying to reach the point of the theory of everything so everything has to have rules. Also even your version of dream sharing could easily fall under theoretical science.
How can you believe in science and then proceed to say that we cannot detect it. The whole point is that we can eventually prove everything with science. If you believe in science than what you call "another reality" is just another type of dimension and would be detectable.
Sorry if it's hard to understand I'm kinda slow today.
Sivason:
Don't worry, I don't take any offense. I'm all for discussion. :)
If it were true that all topics not firmly explained by science were foolish and unlikely, then there would be no scientific knowledge. All new ideas would be dismissed because there would be no previous understanding of them. Obviously this is not the case, as science evolves continually. It is not my opinion, and I do not mean to imply it, but I see what you're getting at.Quote:
You used the words "speaking of some deity or spirit or other such nonsense," as if you find all topics not firmly explained by science to be foolish and unlikely.
Agnostic atheism is my opinion, and as such it is separate from proven fact. I am defined as atheist only as long as it is consistent with my convictions; I do not formulate my opinions on things based around my being called an atheist. The term atheist to me is nominal, it is not a set list of things that I believe and do not or cannot believe. Forgive my frankness but I believe that description is accurate for religion. Instead, it is just a useful word to better express my general opinion on the issue of gods and spirits. My opinion is that there are no gods or spirits in the sense of ethereal entities; I do not believe in ethereal objects.Quote:
I am thinking perhaps you have modeled yourself as a Atheist? It is ok for some to be a Atheist, if that is the case. However, can you tell me if I am getting the correct spin on what you are saying? Do you automatically claim (in your own mind) that all "mystical" things must be false?
Atheism literally means no god or gods, and that is as far as it describes me. Aside from atheism but related, I do not believe in heaven, hell, or similar rewards or punishments for human spirits or others. I do not believe that human beings have physical spirits, but would agree that we have spirits if spirits are defined as the personalities, thoughts, passions, and emotions of human beings. This is what deserves respect and preservation, and this is what will "live on" through the memories and experiences of our friends and families. In that sense, the human spirit, to me, is the legacy of a human being who has lived and struggled earnestly in their brief existence, and I call that beautiful.
Do I automatically claim that all "mystical" things are false? It is a fault of me when I do. I shouldn't, and try not to dismiss anything without giving it a fair look. However, I do automatically assume(I know assumptions are bad) that the "mystical" is not mystical at all, and can be properly explained. The origins of mysticism are ancient, practiced by ancient people with a poor understanding of the physical world. Of course, this is my poor understanding of mysticism and if it is more your area, then please explain its significance and why it is a proper and legitimate interpretation of the world.
I can accept that there is much more to be known, but the passion of scientists is honest and sincere. I am confident that with only our senses and intellect, man will grow to know the universe as it truly is. I know that I'm romantic about science and I have chided others for romanticism regarding faith, mysticism, etc. I don't want my passions to effect what I am willing to believe and disbelieve, I want rigorous study and experiment to leave me no choice. There are an unfathomable number of things not yet addressed adequately or at all by science. These are the things that I will form opinions on based on the evidence available. When they receive proper rigorous study, then the answer that comes forth from true science will have precedence over my own selfish opinion whether I like what's true or not. I think it's silly that so much care is given to coddle and make comfortable religious or other institutions with irrational belief, because they have the liberty to believe and I will defend that with my life, but they do not have the rights to step in the way of scientific discovery.Quote:
Can you accept that not even a small part of reality fits into the biological and modern physics way of understanding? I am going so far as to say, it does not need to spring from evolution.
It does not need to spring from evolution. By "it", I assume you mean life? Does life have to spring from evolution? Well, here on Earth it sure did, and he have developed the theory of evolution to describe it thoroughly. I can't say there are zero forms of life out there in the cosmos that were synthesized by something else, be that something else living things or machinery or something completely outside our conceptions of what exists. I cannot speak for the emergence of life elsewhere because I do not have the data to look at. But here on Earth, abiogenesis was the conception of life, and slightly flawed DNA and RNA reproduction is the mechanism of biological evolution. You have a doctorate, correct me if I'm wrong. I know lots of other things play in. You know how much evolution has permeated modern medicine, psychology, etc.
I'm not an astrophysicist, and apparently, neither are you. First of all, they've been suggesting that since the 1980s, and I suggest you look into the theory of cosmological inflation. I'll readily admit we don't know everything yet, but, as always, I will add that we're working on it. "...only due to them hating to say it suddenly appeared." Woah there, excuse me? You've mixed your personal opinion with the facts. Yeah, those damned astrophysicists, making up things willy nilly so they don't look bad. Those hundreds of thousands of astrophysicists. But of course, the BB theory isn't the only scientific theory concerning our universe. M-theory multiverse theorists and others have their own ideas, and it isn't fair of you condemn science's attempt to understand things by bringing up one theory you don't like among many, albeit the most popular, any more than I can say voodoo dolls are silly so mysticism has no place in the world. I can't argue this one out because I simply and sincerely do not know.Quote:
Big bang scientists now suggest that it expanded at many many thousands of times the speed of light. In fact it really appears as if everything suddenly popped into existance instantly. Some say it was all pressed into a point smaller than an atom, but that is only due to them hating to say it suddenly appeared.
I'll start by saying that these are separate theories, despite the name. "Dark matter has not been detected." Well, I don't know what you mean by detected because observing its effects is detection in my opinion, and observation of its effects lead Oort to hypothesizing it. "..or even pictured." Well, it sure as hell wouldn't be "dark" matter if we could take pictures of it. I don't think you have any concept of dark matter, because your argument doesn't take into account any sort of evidence. You seem to think people say it's there just to save their hides because they don't know. Here's the list of evidence from wikipedia:Quote:
Next is the theory of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Both theories are becoming widely accepted, yet they are nothing more than unkown variables being accounted for with a question mark and cute name. Dark Matter is not something anyone has detected or even pictured. Dark matter is just the term used because none of the modern physics models can account for the universe being here. It appears as if empty space can have lots of gravity or little. It is guessed that 98% of the gravity needed to make the universe models work is just emminating out of empty space. We are currently in one of those gravity fields and can not see or detect any source for the gravity. Dark Energy is just another unknown variable. It seems that there is way to much energy out there coming from no appearant source. It is adding energy to the system in vast amounts, even though standard science was saying, you neither create nor destroy energy. It appears that a fabulous amount of energy is just pouring in from some unknown factor.
Galactic rotation curves
Velocity dispersions of galaxies
Galaxy clusters and gravitational lensing
Cosmic microwave background
Sky surveys and baryon acoustic oscillations
Type Ia supernovae distance measurements
Lyman-alpha forest
Structure formation
Obviously that means nothing without looking into it and reading it but as I said, you're trying to prove that science doesn't know everything and that's exactly what science says about itself, then tagging on "but we're working on it." I can't post links yet, please read up on it though because your understanding is horribly flawed. One note on gravitational lensing though, I suggest looking up some pictures because it's pretty cool.
Dark Energy. I know even less about dark energy, but don't let my ignorance reaffirm your doubt in science. Wikipedia:
Supernovae
Cosmic microwave background
Large-scale structure
Late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect
I don't know what you're going on about way too much energy, that doesn't come up anywhere. What is your source?
I'd like to point out that while I believe you are sincere in not attacking, and I'm not offended or anything, you didn't do squat for research on your 'examples'. Also, they were permeated with your own biased commentary to seem more unlikely, similar to when I said "spirits and other such nonsense".
Newtonian physics? Newtonian physics are obsolete, and I believe shadow's background with some physics can confirm this. Newtonian physics works great for common experience, it accurately predicts what is familiar to us and is pretty intuitive. However. At this day and age we have advanced to the realms of relativity and quantum physics. Admittedly, these two theories(with plenty of evidence) don't play well together. There's a space in-between huge objects and minuscule objects where, when used together, the result is infinite percent-- that doesn't mean its sure to happen, that means NA, its broken. Luckily, we have thousands of physicists working on it-- there aught to be more-- and I'm confident that the theories will merge nicely or be tossed out and replaced by something altogether more bizarre.Quote:
...yet we are both able to accept that not everything will fall into the realm of Neutonian physics. If the universe at large is disobeying the very basis of our science, why not believe that locally, with in our lives experience, those laws do not govern everything.
"universe at large is disobeying the very basis of our science..." Science is busy at work on that right now. "...why not believe that locally, with in our lives experience, those laws do not govern everything." You mean just give up and say, "Whelp, I'm not gonna know so I'll just surrender to ignorance." Science is not selfish. Scientists often do not expect to see the fruits their theories bare, or see their theories destroyed. It's a long process to study and theorize and verify, but it would be stupid to expect instant gratification. It is larger than one's own self. It is the collaborative work of mankind, spanning thousands of generations into the past, from the time of the first humans who looked around and wondered what might be out there and why things are as they are-- and didn't write everything off as spirits.
"Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries; the questions that were once treated only in religion, and myth." Carl Sagan. Sagan has had a large influence on the person I have become. Especially Cosmos, with Carl Sagan. Wow, what a show. Please watch the first episode on YouTube. I swear, if I could only meet him, but he died like the rest of us will. That guy changed my outlook on life.Quote:
Again, no attack intended. I am honestly curious how you have structured your belief system, and if the atheistic spin I think I am picking up from you is accurate. If so, can you explain what process lead you to the conclusions you have?
Like I said, you are accurate in picking up on my "atheistic spin". "...can you explain what process lead you to the conclusions you have?" I swear I could write fifty pages on that. I believe, from the context, you are asking about what lead me to the state that could be described as atheist? I have had not traumatic experience with religion, as some have, and it bugs me when people cite that as their sole reason for atheism. What a silly reason. No, I was raised by Catholics and went to Catholic elementary and middle school. I served as an altar boy and had religion class and am confirmed. Even now I sometimes lector for mass, because they don't know about my opinions on things. That must seem like I'm lying, I know. But they really appreciate it and all the old people well up and tell me I do such a nice job and how proud they are. It makes them happy, and I know they're old and sad and they're going to die, and I don't have the heart to say no. I just want them to be happy. All I want is for everyone to be happy, and it would be selfish of me to pass up a simple opportunity like this to make some people smile and feel better, just because of my own private opinion. I've talked to my priest about science and religion and some difficulties I have with the Church(they are numerous). He doesn't know that I do not have faith.
It seems like I'm an atheist simply because of Catholicism-- I'm not. I've done religious studies the best I can, I've had an open mind on religious matters and at one time was a very strong believer in something, be it the Abrahamic god or something greater. I have looked into Hinduism and Buddhism and the eastern religions, and to Islam and Judaism and the freaking 33,000 sects of Christianity. I have wondered to myself about spirituality outside of the main religions of the world. I have taken something from each ideology I have visited and it has helped me to grow as a person, I think. One good idea in a sea of ignorance is not proof that any sort of faith is "correct". Partially what lead to my rejection of faith is that I take comfort in constants and facts and predictabilities(though at first glance the organized chaos of the quantum world seems to contradict this, Einstein had the same problem), and also find it foolish that there are hundreds of thousands of religious beliefs, new and old, indigenous, proselytized, evangelized, apocryphal, end-predicting, sun-worshiping, etc., and that each and every kind believes on some level that they are correct and that everyone else technically has to be wrong, and yet there is no way to measure how much one belief without reason is better than, or more correct than another belief without reason. From this observation we can derive that correctness comes from reason. Reasoning is mutually exclusive from faith, by the very definition of faith.
I'm very passionate about people. I try to feel empathy, I try to admire them in their ordinariness and learn from their struggles. I try to alleviate what pain I can and bring people to learn to love the sciences, to be amazed and to dream and to cry at the beauty of the universe as we know it, without having to make up special parts that make us feel more important. We are fucking important. We're made out of the stuff of the fucking stars. That is important to know.
I've done a shoddy job at explaining myself, I really could describe to you much better what I feel, but it's time to wrap up this post. I hope you get where I'm coming from a little bit more.
Read Unweaving the Rainbow by Dawkins, this addresses exactly what you just said. I would like to quote Feynman:Quote:
If some of the more atheist minded folk can accept that worm holes may be possable, why limit what else may be. I also feel that someday, some creature may have enough science to blame it all on some delta shift into etherial matrix type 5b, or some other thing that will make the scientists happy. I know that a motivated race of seekers can find New Science to describe why anything happens. However, it is still going to be the same as the Rainbow, those who choose to ignore a spiritual sign of grace and beauty, because we figured out how it was achieved, really only limit the wonder and comfort they may get, that others receive from such things.
"The beauty that is there for you is also available for me, too. But I see a deeper beauty that isn’t so readily available to others. I can see the complicated interactions of the flower. The color of the flower is red. Does the fact that the plant has color mean that it evolved to attract insects? This adds a further question. Can insects see color? Do they have an aesthetic sense? And so on. I don’t see how studying a flower ever detracts from its beauty. It only adds."
I see so much more in a rainbow than you do.
But this is not a scientifically valid approach. Yes, there are people who do not believe in evolution, either, yet it can be proven and demonstrated.Quote:
Originally Posted by Borislav
A little late to the party, Mindraker. You can read the responses to my post earlier in the thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mindraker
It seems like you've lost your post more than once. Try doing CTRL - A then CTRL - X then CTRL -V before you try posting. That way, if you lose your post, you can just repaste your post by pressing CTRL - V again.Quote:
Originally Posted by OutlawPig
Oh come on, you claim to have a Doctorate in Science, surely you know about Einstein?Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason