Consciousness, Death, Existentialism etc.

[Dent]

OMG admins what did you do

[Dent]

Mental properties to the left of me, physical properties to the right.

Definitions

Substance Dualism - There are two kinds of substances each with their own distinct properties; the physical and the mental.

Property Dualism - There are two kinds of properties, mental and physical of a single higher substance.
2. property dualism - i.e. experience in its most primitive form is "attached", in some poorly understood sense, to physical properties as normally understood.

Monism - There is only one kind of substance, this may be mental (idealism) or physical (physicalism).

Reductive Physicalism - There is only one kind of stuff and that is the physical. We can explain mental phenomena by reducing them down to their physical components.

Non-reductive Physicalism - There is only one kind of stuff and that is physical. We can explain mental phenomena in physicalist terms without reducing them down to their physical components.

Epiphenomenalism - Mental and physical are separate substances but mental phenomena are simply bi-products of physical phenomena. They play no causal role in the system (like exhaust from a car) and hence don't break the laws of physics.

Emergentism - Mental states emerge with new properties over and above the properties of the parts producing it - 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts'.

There’s also Russelian (His name stuck on this one) Monism - that the intrinsic nature of reality is neither mental nor physical

[Mr. Blonde]

Terror management theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In social psychology, terror management theory (TMT) proposes a basic psychological conflict that results from having a desire to live but realizing that death is inevitable. This conflict produces terror, and is believed to be unique to human beings. Moreover, the solution to the conflict is also generally unique to humans: culture. According to TMT, cultures are symbolic systems that act to provide life with meaning and value. Cultural values therefore serve to manage the terror of death by providing life with meaning.

You're Dead!

Dead Man's Tetris

[Saint DH]

Not really related, but the term terror management made me think of it. Apparently humor is one of the most effective ways to prevent panic and remain calm in life/death situations.

For example, Navy pilots doing aircraft carrier landings often make morbid jokes about their own potential fatality during the mission briefing. Soilders do similar shit. I think it's probably pretty easy to see how it works, but it's interesting nonetheless.

[Mr. Blonde]

I think it's related, as comedy is part of culture, and I can easily see comedy (along with acting and many of the other expressive arts) essentially evolving from the "base emotion" of playfulness. We see playfulness in other mammals, it makes sense that comedy branched from that in humans to cope with suffering and death.

And that is pretty interesting. Sometimes I think about how terrifying flying/being responsible for a jet must be. As cool as the job would be, don't think i'd want that responsibility.

Pilot dies after military jet crashes in California | Fox News

[SittinOnDubsWGW]

Definitely interesting.

Being a military pilot was really the only other profession I felt any desire to pursue. There are times I wish I would've given it a shot. I'm sure it would've been terrifying at war, but ultimately badass.

[Mr. Blonde]

I could totes see you as a jet pilot. Didn't you go dressed as one once?

Character mask - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of character masks refers to the assumption of functions in which people "act out" roles, whether voluntarily, by necessity, or by force. In those roles, some or all of their true characteristics and intentions may be partly or wholly masked. Their activity may have broader social effects that they would rather not know about, which they wish to be unknown or presented in a certain light, or which they are unaware of, and therefore the effects are mentally disconnected from their real causes. Accordingly persons and their relationships may no longer be quite what they seem to be, and there is a difference between their personal and their functional (or formal) relationships. Even if the "masking" is readily observable and known, what the true character is, may remain unknown. The ultimate in acting is achieved when the actors and actresses are able to impersonate characters so well and so completely, that their audience cannot distinguish the act from the real thing (and the actors and actresses themselves start to believe they really are someone else).

[Dent]

Sleep - They Might Be Giants - YouTube

Sleep - They Might Be Giants - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

Spooky.

[Mr. Blonde]

The Eternal Return is basically the theory that there is infinite time and a finite number of events, and eventually the events will recur again and again infinitely. Consider the world as a super-complex chess game. If games of chess are played one after another forever, eventually a game will be repeated since there is only a finite number of possible games. It is the same with the world; eventually events will recur in the same order. The world is an eternal process of coming to be and passing away. The process, however, has no beginning or end. Eventually every combination of matter and energy will be realized and repeated an infinite number of times.

Nietzsche-Eternal Recurrence

Eternal return (also known as "eternal recurrence") is a concept that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. The concept is found in Indian philosophy and in ancient Egypt and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. With the decline of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept fell into disuse in the Western world, with the exception of Friedrich Nietzsche, who connected the thought to many of his other concepts, including amor fati.

Eternal return - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Dent]

h+ Magazine | Strict Finitism and Transhumanism - h+ Magazine

^ A++ must read/skim
What physically realised infinity?

[Mr. Blonde]

Alan Watts - existence is weird - YouTube

Alan Watts - existence is weird - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

The Nature Of Consciousness (by Alan Watts) - YouTube

The Nature Of Consciousness (by Alan Watts) - YouTube

[Dent]

This years Edge question:
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK? | Edge.org
[179 Responses—124,000 words:]

Robert Sapolsky
Neuroscientist, Stanford University; Author, Monkeyluv
It Depends
What do I think about machines that think? Well, of course it depends on who that person is.

[Mr. Blonde]

Oh shit, that's an awesome response.

Just saw Sam Harris post his today. I'll try to read some this weekend

[Saint DH]

Machines will never have consciousness because a spirit is prerequisite for conscious thought.

Durty transhumanist is scum of Earth.

[THEINCREDIBLEdork]

holy spirits

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Johnny Richter

Machines will never have consciousness because a spirit is prerequisite for conscious thought.

Durty transhumanist is scum of Earth.

Nobody even knows what consciousness is, nigga. Liek u kno

[Dent]

It's good to see the Edge contributors coming to a consensus, lol.
I think Sam overlooks a few things here.

"Yes, other fields pose extraordinary risks—but the difference between AGI and something like synthetic biology is that, in the latter, the most dangerous innovations (such as germline mutation) are not the most tempting, commercially or ethically. With AGI the most powerful methods (such as recursive self-improvement) are precisely those that entail the most risk."

vs

How recursively self-improving organic robots will modify their own
source code and bootstrap our way to full-spectrum superintelligence
The Biointelligence Explosion

[Dent]

Edge.org

Lee Smolin
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, Time Reborn
Our Concept Of Nature

"If an event or process has internal properties, you cannot learn about them by interacting with it or measuring it. If there are internal properties, they are not describable in terms of position, motion, charges or forces, ie in the vocabulary physics uses to talk of relational properties.

You might, however, know about a process's internal properties by being that process."

[Repugnant Abomination]

100 quid for anyone who can prevent me from dying.

[Mr. Blonde]

psychedelic-information-theory.com

Why Psychedelic Information Theory?

The bulk of human consciousness exists in a linear range which goes from highly focused and alert to deep asleep and dreaming. Most states of consciousness are experienced uniformly and independently of each other along this linear spectrum. For instance, when you are asleep you are not awake; when you are focused you are not daydreaming; when you are anxious you are not relaxed. The fact that consciousness exists in only one state at one time is an indication that the system is linear and stable. When two distinct perceptions or states of consciousness overlap at the same time this is an indicator that the system of consciousness is unstable, and in most cases where divergent states of consciousness overlap the output is viewed as a pathology.1 State-divergent pathologies are typically treated with drugs targeted to amplify the positive traits and/or dampen the negative traits.

The term psychedelic means “mind manifesting,” which implies that all potential states of mind may be manifested under the influence of psychedelic drugs. If normal consciousness moves in a straight line along a spectrum of many possible states, psychedelics represent a unique and reversible destabilization of this linear spectrum where consciousness can assume multiple points of consciousness simultaneously. The most extreme divergent state of consciousness is described as being wide awake while simultaneously dreaming, a state clinically referred to as psychosis or hallucination. The emergence of multi-state consciousness under the influence of psychedelics represents a system that has destabilized from linear output and has become nonlinear and exponentially complex. Thus, in psychedelic perception the linear functions of consciousness diverge into a complex nonlinear state where multiple perspectives and analytical outputs may be experienced simultaneously. According to PIT, this destabilized state of nonlinear complexity is where new information is generated in the human mind. Understanding the dynamics of this unique nonlinear function is essential to understanding the informational limits and potential complexity range of all human consciousness.

Originally Posted by William James, often called Father of American psychology

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

100 quid for anyone who can prevent me from dying.

Land of the empire builders, land of Golden West
Conquered and held by free men, fairest and the best
Onward and upward, ever forward on and on
Hail to thee, the land of heroes, yours when dead and gone

Hail to thee, land of heroes
It's all yours when you're dead and gone

The afterlife, hey, we know how to make life go on
The afterlife, death is not the end of this song
The afterlife

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmK3EnX8EQM"]YACHT - The Afterlife - YouTube[/url]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

psychedelic-information-theory.com

Why Psychedelic Information Theory?

This be the guy who wrote the genomic boddhisatva. I don't know what the pasted bit is getting at, have you read into it and should I?

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dent

This be the guy who wrote the genomic boddhisatva. I don't know what the pasted bit is getting at, have you read into it and should I?

The pasted bit (and psychedelic information theory in general) seems to be a more rational (in the classical sense) and materialistic explanation of what psychelics are and what they do, and by what mechanisms.

I have only read into it a bit but it is the best material science attempt I've seen so far at digging into the psychedelic phenomenon.

Regardless of the explanations, I think a psychedelic resurgence and more mainstream acceptance of substances with these alkaloids (already in the process of happening) is crucial to the survival and evolution of humankind.

Empire Of The Sun - Alive - YouTube

Empire Of The Sun - Alive - YouTube

Freedom is within you
Giving makes us feel good
Hello to our people
Say hello to the future

[SittinOnDubsWGW]

EotS are awesome and put on a helluva show.