Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[turingtest]

Hey, blame Slowvehicle. I know I do!

Khaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn! SlooooowVeeeeeehiiiiiicle!

 

[dlorde]

...The process nonetheless is evidently intelligent and therefore consciousness is involved.
...
What I am claiming is that there is obviously conscious intent involved with the process of evolution.

It's not evident or obvious to me. Can you explain precisely what it is about evolution that you feel evidently and obviously suggests intelligence and consciousness?

 

[Pixel42]

You keep saying this; now comes the part where you produce the actual evidence to support the "evidently."

It's common sense - the same common sense that says the earth is evidently flat, and the sun evidently goes round the earth.

Seriously, why is the principle of evolution by natural selection so difficult for some people to grasp? I know it looks intelligent but everyone knows looks can be deceiving, and it's only necessary to overrule your instincts for a few seconds to understand the true nature of the process.

 

[Navigator]

So, did you fail at being unbiased or do you claim not to be human?

Because as humans, we are incapable of acting without bias. The scientific method devloped, in large part, to limit the biases that we all have and counteract their effects.

Much like the easiest person to fool is the one sure he can't be fooled, the person with the most bias is the one who's sure he has no bias.

Whether the process involves introspection or extrospection, if bias is involved then the results won't be accurate.

It is not impossible for an individual to set aside bias (or "limit the biases and counteract their effects.")?

 

[Navigator]

You keep saying this; now comes the part where you produce the actual evidence to support the "evidently." No waffling with "philosophically," now- and please note that arguments from inference (or necessary circles) do not constitute evidence. I mean, you do realize that a "product" can be either simply an outcome or a goal, right? And that "outcome" covers both definitions, but that you need additional evidence to narrow it down to only "goal"? Your burden, not mine...

What would you consider acceptable as evidence?

 

[Navigator]

It's not evident or obvious to me. Can you explain precisely what it is about evolution that you feel evidently and obviously suggests intelligence and consciousness?

I have given enough examples.

 

[Donn]

I have given enough examples.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on..

 

[dlorde]

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on..

Invisible ink?

 

[Jodie]

Just do the best you can.


Firstly, bear in mind that holography is a widely used technique for encoding 3D information on a 2D surface. That it can be applied in many different areas doesn't imply those areas are related or have anything in common. There are a number of 'holographic universe' ideas, the most recent coming out of String Theory and the maths of black holes, where it was found that the information in a 3D volume can be represented as hologram on a 2D surface of area proportional to the volume (e.g. a sphere enclosing it). This was speculatively extrapolated to the visible universe, with the cosmological horizon as the putative surface. At least one suggested prediction of this idea has failed experimental testing.

Regarding Pribram, yes, I used to think holographic memory was a very good candidate, but it doesn't seem to have gained any traction in recent times, and it's hard to see how it squares with what we now know about the associative performance of memory and the discovery of categorising neural hierarchies which look like a much better fit.

I've got Bohm's book 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'. It's an interesting metaphysical exploration of ideas about reality based on quantum mechanical principles and latterly using a holographic analogy he calls the 'holomovement'. He deals with consciousness in the last chapter, using even more speculative analogies. He was a great physicist in his time, but had a reputation for credulousness regarding psychic and other fraudsters (he apparently treasured a spoon bent by Geller) and a penchant for Eastern mysticism, which may put the scientific value of his later musings into perspective.


Nope; that is a total non-sequitur. I can see nothing in the holographic principle or Bohm's implicate order that would remotely suggest such a thing. Holographic principles and Bohm's musings don't change the character of physical law. I'm aware that a lot of web sites peddling pseudoscience and mysticism have latched onto the romantically esoteric appeal of the Holographic Principle, quantum weirdness, speculative metaphysics, and pop-eyed candidate theories-of-everything; chucking it all together and stirring; cherry-picking whatever authoritative sounding snippets they can find to make it sound sciency. But it's generally a load of wishful thinking, unsupported bollocks, and publicity seeking.


All unsupported fantasy. Just make it up as you go along and ownership bias and confirmation bias will do the rest.


What 'computer augmentation' would that be?


Where are you getting this stuff from? it's not even plausible as science-fiction.

Where am I getting this from? From the AI research that I posted earlier. We already place pacemakers in people, there is development in computer tech that will allow spinal cord injury patients to walk, cochlear implants are another example. Computer augmentation of the human brain is plausible, possibly through nano technology in the future.

http://io9.com/humans-with-amplified-intelligence-could-be-more-powerf-509309984

I found Tom Campbell, he's pretty plain spoken, he says we are both wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RMOGFaOLSQ

 

[Slowvehicle]

And it's a non-falsifiable ideodowsed omphalic onanism, to boot; just the sort of thing that merits the label "evidently," evidently.

(If someone had told me even just yesterday that I would ever be typing a phrase like "ideodowsed omphalic onanism," I would have laughed; it's funny, the turns that the evolution of conversations can take, without ever meaning to.)

Hey, blame Slowvehicle. I know I do!

We gotta start using the © and ^TM...

Non-falsifiable ideodowsed omphalistic onaninsm^©TM

 

[Slowvehicle]

Khaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn! SlooooowVeeeeeehiiiiiicle!

...you bleated?

 

[Donn]

Thilliness ith happening.

 

[steenkh]

Your whole life is a subjective experience. Do you consider that to be unreliable?

Of course. It is not so unreliable that I cannot in general work with the assumption that what I experience is real, but I am well aware that it does not need to be so.

It is well-known that memory is unreliable. I have memories from my childhood that cannot have happened, and others where people tell me that what I remember did not happen. our powers of observation are not so great as people generally think, and this is why eye-witnesses are not to be relied on exclusively, even if they do not lie. Think of the famous "gorilla-suit" clip, or the experiments where people who see a violent event remember it based on their biases, and not on what really happened.

Our senses can be fooled in many ways, and we can see and hear things that do not exist, or see patterns that do not exist. We can even be fooled into thinking that we make decisions voluntarily that have actually been forced on us.

However, I have not seen any research on this, and I do not consider it unlikely that lucid dreaming could have more clarity than other dreams because the presence of self-consciousness might open access to some mind processes that provide clarity that normal dreams do not. Without research on the issue, I do not feel compelled to believe that there is anything special to lucid dreams.

Different. Special in that way, because they are unusual. At the very least, those who have never experienced these should refrain from too much opinion as to what might be happening. Everyone should refrain from believing.

In favour of what? Experiencing something yourself is not the same as gaining knowledge that is not based on belief. You yourself speak about the experience of entities that you can sense, although it is quite obvious that you are just experiencing a recurrent hallucination, not something that is actually real.

The mind process has something to do with the consciousness I speak about in relation to ideomotor.
You will not know this until you can verify it through the same process

Again, your personal experience, though convincing to yourself, is not actually evidence that this is real.

Assuming I understood what you were saying, the three separate experiences were connected with the first of the three.

The first time I became aware of the entity was not connected to any other experience (which is why it was the first time)
The second time I recognized it was the same entity I had encountered due to the laugh.
The third time I recognized it was the same entity because of the symbolism.

1st - I did not see the entity. I heard the entity.
2nd - I both heard and saw the entity
3rd - I did not see the entity but felt the entity when my wrists were grabbed and I was pulled upright from a reclining position.

2nd occasion I identified immediately (while experience was happening) that I was dealing with the same entity as in 1st time. This was not something I came to the realization of after the experience but during the experience. The 1st experience happened some months before the second.
3rd occasion happened the night after the 2nd.
Again, at the time of the experience I was aware that all three experiences were connected in relation to the entity.

But you still have not presented any evidence that what you experienced was real, and not a hallucination. I have experienced people who hallucinated, and who were quite convinced about something that was at odds with reality. A very good example was of a lady who had been given some wrong medication, and who was convinced that there was a light switch on a wall where there was none. Your sense of what is real cannot be relied upon.

To reiterate, I have made the claim that one can communicate with what is refereed to as 'the subconscious mind' To clarify that, I will say that the idea of it being the subconscious mind is as close as I can get in order to give some kind of meaning, but it is nothing particularly like how the subconscious mind is commonly thought or otherwise is assumed to be. There are similarities.

However, since it can communicate, it is conscious and since it is not, in any obvious way, an external intelligence "subconscious mind" will have to do for the purpose of clarity.

So your claim is that you can communicate with your own subconscious mind? This is not controversial at all. Schizophrenics do it all the time. But that does not turn your subconscious mind into a real "entity".

I have also claimed that whatever it is, because it is a conscious self aware reality, it is capable of explaining to the individual exactly what it is.

Really? Why on Earth should you believe a hallucination?

Okay so 'evolution' is a natural process regarding a thing which is called 'the universe.
The universe is the product of a process called evolution. Evolution is not a thing, but produces the thing.

Evolution is a natural process that is observed in biology. It has nothing to do with the universe as a whole, and the universe is not the product of evolution.

Or. The universe is not a product of evolution but aspects of it are.

Bingo. More specifically, all life forms that we observe today are the products of evolution.

Most people I have spoken with tend to think of movement as part of the process of things evolving, especially in relation to the universe, but also in relation to learning, growing, changing etc.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. What movement? What relation to the universe?

'We are evolving as a species' is not just describing physical changes (like we had tails and outgrew them etc).

'We are evolving as a species' is a vague expression that can mean a lot of things. Biologically, it mostly means that we gain immunity to some diseases. Outside biology, it can mean that we have invented the internet, or that we have we have refrained from using nuclear bombs against each other for 50 years.

The process is describing actuality. The process is the description (related to a thing) and the thing is the effect of the process.

The process nonetheless is evidently intelligent and therefore consciousness is involved.

Er, what? How do you determine that "the process" is "evidently intelligent"? Try to avoid the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy when you answer.

No it is not. If something is something, then it cannot be nothing. That is plainly the truth.

No it is not. If something is something, then it cannot be nothing. That is plainly the truth.
Whatever.

If there became a need to switch to flies, then the process of evolution can oblige.[/QUOTE]
As a matter of fact, you are wrong. This plant would become extinct if there were no bees but only flies. So, no consciousness is evident. Evolution might change things over lots of generations, but only if the change in insect life happens over a long time. Evolution does not display intelligence any more than water running downhill display intelligence in picking the route of least resistance.

All in all though, the process can be seen to serve consciousness. Apart from the fact that the process can be seen to have intelligence and therefore signals the presence of consciousness, the process can be seen to serve more obvious forms of consciousness.

Sorry, "the process" does not display intelligence, so your argument falls flat.

I agree. What I am claiming is that there is obviously conscious intent involved with the process of evolution.

Any more than the example of gravity? Why do you see a difference?

You see, as I have said before, everything to do with consciousness is subjective. It is here nor there that groups of subjective individuate consciousness get together and decide 'this is this and that is that' because it is all done subjectively anyway.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Although I do agree that everything to do with consciousness is subjective.

And subjectively, if you are someone who does not want to see intelligence in the process of evolution, it will most likely be influenced by your own bias to do with the implications of such observation which would naturally challenge the bias. Also, since the implications are very narrow due to the opposite bias, who accept the observation of intelligence involved in the process but who also conjure up all sorts of fantastic myths related to exactly what the nature of said intelligent consciousness must be, such implications simple serve to further strengthen the walls of the bias and prevent the individual from exploring the possibility free from the opposing bias.
Such is the power of belief.

That is why we have science to overcome the bias.

Set all that aside, and with a simple "no batteries necessary" device, one can discover for oneself.

No.

 

[Donn]

No.

We all tend towards Pixy Misa ishness. You arrived there first. Salute!

 

[steenkh]

We all tend towards Pixy Misa ishness. You arrived there first. Salute!

Yes, I know. But I do think that I had addressed this point several times above.

 

[dlorde]

Computer augmentation of the human brain is plausible, possibly through nano technology in the future.

Ah, OK. You wrote as if it was being done today.

I found Tom Campbell, he's pretty plain spoken, he says we are both wrong.

Yes; it's another interesting idea, but I'm prepared to wait until he produces convincing evidence

 

[turingtest]

It's common sense - the same common sense that says the earth is evidently flat, and the sun evidently goes round the earth.

Seriously, why is the principle of evolution by natural selection so difficult for some people to grasp? I know it looks intelligent but everyone knows looks can be deceiving, and it's only necessary to overrule your instincts for a few seconds to understand the true nature of the process.

I think that what it comes down is not so much an inability as an unwillingness to grasp the concept, because of its implications- that man, including themselves, is no more an aim of the process than any other outcome. The idea seems to be that this demeans them, makes them less worthy than being a special goal of a conscious design would; as if being a subservient pawn of some god's creation would somehow be less demeaning than standing on your own two legs.

 

[turingtest]

What would you consider acceptable as evidence?

Well, I'll put it to you like this- you apparently accept that evolution happens, so you accept the evidence for it; and that should give you an idea of the sort of evidence we're talking about. But you want to make evolution a process directed by a conscious intelligence. So what you need is evidence for your add-on- not for evolution itself, but for the separate guiding intelligence behind it.

Why don't you just show us what you've got, and we can discuss its value as evidence then?

 

[Donn]

Yes, I know. But I do think that I had addressed this point several times above.

Oh, you did! I wasn't snarking at you. The Sisyphean effort can overwhelm. I sometimes want an automated Pixy Script that just posts "No." to every paragraph.

 

[dlorde]

...Seriously, why is the principle of evolution by natural selection so difficult for some people to grasp?

My theory is that it is too simple and elegant. People new to it come expecting some big, difficult, complicated theory, and can't get to grips with the simplicity of the core concept.

Of course, there are a lot of complications in the various ways the core concept takes effect...