Consciousness, Death, Existentialism etc.

[Mr. Blonde]

All that talking and no mention of beauty!

Flying Lotus - Coronus, The Terminator - YouTube

Flying Lotus - Coronus, The Terminator - YouTube

[Dent]

Trump and Hillary won the election

https://medium.com/@alexvikoulov/the...r-79b697a5179d

Back in 1961, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner devised a thought experiment that exposes one of the most notorious paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The “Wigner’s Friend” experiment demonstrates how the same quantum mechanical principles applying to the quantum domain and to the Universe at large allow two observers (Wigner and Wigner’s friend) to experience alternate realities that are forced to coexist. In their paper, Experimental Rejection of Observer-Independence in the Quantum World, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, with collaborators attest that they have performed the first real-life experiment that proves the Wigner’s gedanken experiment: They have created different, conflicting realities and compared them. And their conclusion is that Wigner was correct — these realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on the objective status of the facts about an experiment.
Wigner’s original thought experiment goes like this: It begins with a single polarized photon that, when measured, can have either a horizontal polarization or a vertical polarization. But before the measurement, according to quantum mechanics, the photon exists in both polarization states at the same time — a so-called superposition. Wigner imagined a friend in a different lab measuring the state of this photon and recording the result while Wigner is unaware of that. For Wigner, the photon’s superposition remains factual, while Wigner’s friend measures which polarized state the photon is in, which forces it out of superposition and into a definitive state, and records the result without ever conveying this information to Wigner. They then compare notes and find that something very strange has then happened. At the exact same time, Wigner and his friend recorded two different versions of reality and they are both correct.
Experimental evidence confirming The Wigner’s Friend thought experiment, and with it confirming QM interpretations stemming from the Copenhagen interpretive camp, such as RQM and Qbism, has significant implications for how researchers may do science going forward. “The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them,” say Proietti. And yet in the same paper, authors undermine the infallibility of scientific method. With the scientific method and other alternative methodologies (like ‘quantum neo-empiricism’ from the book) we’re discovering the “rules of the game,” and knowing those rules well may be indispensable for further progression in the game.

[Orgazmo]

Quantum experiments like this interest the shit out of me.

Trump and Hillary won the election

We need to jail the bastard that observed the election and forced it out of superposition.

[Saint DH]

Originally Posted by Orgazmo

Quantum experiments like this interest the shit out of me.

Me too. It’s truly fascinating. We are making some great progress. So much in fact, that one day you might be able to find your penis.

[Dent]

“Full recognition of the reality of experience, then, is the obligatory starting point for any remotely realistic version of physicalism. This is because it is the obligatory starting point for any remotely realistic (indeed any non-self-defeating) theory of what there is.
It is the obligatory starting point for any theory that can legitimately claim to be ‘naturalistic’ because experience is itself the fundamental given natural fact; it is a very old point that there is nothing more certain than the existence of experience.”

Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism (2006)

[Dent]

“You might see the rise of panpsychism as part of a Copernican trend—the idea that we’re not special. ... [W]hy should we think that creatures with brains, like us, are the sole bearers of consciousness?”
- Tam Hunt

(Panpsychists look at the many rungs on the complexity ladder of nature and see no obvious line between mind and no-mind. )

[Dent]

“How is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.”

- Thomas Huxley

[Dent]

“If there is any sense in which these philosophers are rejecting the ordinary view of the nature of things like pain … their view seems to be one of the most amazing manifestations of human irrationality on record.

It is much less irrational to postulate the existence of a divine being whom we cannot perceive than to deny the truth of the commonsense view of experience.”

- Galen Strawson

Mental Reality, 1994

[Dent]

“There is only one class of intrinsic, nonrelational property with which we have any direct familiarity, and that is the class of phenomenal properties.”

- David Chalmers

[Dent]

“Panpsychism is unitary. There is only one substance, not two. This elegantly eliminates the need to explain how the mental emerges out of the physical and vice versa.”

- Christof Koch

[Dent]

“[R]eal physicalism can have nothing to do with physicSalism, the view — the faith — that the nature or essence of all concrete reality can in principle be fully captured in the terms of physics.
Real physicalism cannot have anything to do with physicSalism unless it is supposed — obviously falsely — that the terms of physics can fully capture the nature or essence of experience.”

- Galen Strawson

[Beebs]

"A Bavarian is halfway between an Austrian and a human being"

Otto von Bismarck

[Dent]

More world in your head stuff, I like Lehar a lot.
https://youtu.be/WPZ9WMvtbi0

[Dent]

There's now a nice YouTube video explaining the symbol grounding problem.
Fun fact I met him in Berlin like 6 years ago and he was nice. The paper has a lot of citations.

Originally Posted by Dent

“How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system, rather than just parasitic on the meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol tokens, manipulated solely on the basis of their (arbitrary) shapes, be grounded in anything but other meaningless symbols”.
(Steven Harnad, The Symbol Grounding Problem, 1990)

[Dent]

Can there exist any form of (dis)value that isn’t - directly or indirectly - parasitic on the pain-pleasure axis?

Without the pleasure-pain axis, could anything matter?

[Orgazmo]

I feel like there are plenty of people in the world that don't feel pain. Certainly someone has done a study on them to see how it impacts their positivity/outlook on life, ya?


Sorta related, I read an article recently about a girl who didn't feel fear. She had some sorta of disease that affected the fear part of her brain which led to her simply not feeling fear in any situation...with one exception, the doctors somehow simulated the feeling of suffocation and she freaked out.


Interesting stuff. Dent, I'd suggest you turn your studies away from plants and start focusing on this woman.

[Orgazmo]

^


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ant-feel-fear/

[Baron Hill]

I think the guy from Free Solo had something similar.

[Dent]

Correct answer is no

[Dent]

Evolution by natural selection favors sensory systems that completely hide the true structure of objective reality, and simply guide adaptive action, much like a user interface.
- Donald Hoffman

[Dent]

"Our sensations... are fully constructed by our brains to present the world to us in just the form we need to make our way in nature. Beyond those sensations, nature hovers, fundamentally mysterious and just at the edge of what we can know." -Lee Smolin

[Dent]

https://youtu.be/jAYNqD_6wyQ

https://youtu.be/jAYNqD_6wyQ

https://youtu.be/jAYNqD_6wyQ

https://youtu.be/jAYNqD_6wyQ

[Dent]

I can see clearly now

[Dent]

Russellian panpsychism is the dogs bollocks number 1
Naturalistic
Monistic
Parsimonious
Simple
Elegant way of explaining the relationship between consciousness and matter!
Explains the most
Gives up the least

Still time to sign up guys, you can be a panpsychist!

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Dent

guys guys I still buy this and it's fucked up what you think of as being outside of your head is actually inside damn

Lehar's site on his university page has been down for the last few years.. library of alexandria take 2

If you find cool stuff save it to your harddrive and make backups, don't trust that cloud monster.