I know, but Iâm on a roll with the liberal lefties who are in my sights. If Aaron doesnât answer your showdown challenge, Iâll defend the aliens (for additional practice).
^ This question, huh Wendy? I didnât see this at first.
Okay, well my point was that our origin and past donât change, but I suppose if time travel were possible, you could go back and erase your birth from ever taking place getting yourself stuck in a grandfather paradox. But then again, if Doc Brown from Back to the Future is right, this would only result time fissioning onto a separate branch. Youâd still be stuck in a grandfather paradox (Martyâs very existence being in jeopardy), but your original origins would still be pinned down to its original position in the grand blueprints of time and space.
Or how 'bout this: if all reality is subjective, then all youâd have to do is erase your memories of your origins and replace them with alternate memories. But subjectively speaking, you wouldnât look back on this as a change, youâd just forget your original origins ever happened and only remember your replacement origins which would not have changed according to your subjective point of view. Then, on the other hand, from the point of view of someone else who remembers your original origins, they would think youâve just deluded yourself, and according to them too (from their subjective point of view), your original origins never changed, youâve just convinced yourself that they have.
^ Thatâs all Iâve got for now. Maybe Iâll post some more later if I think of anything.
Well, in any case, I seriously canât think of any other way of altering your origins than time travel. I mean, whatâs in the past is in the past.
But this thread is about oneâs essence, which is a little different from oneâs origins, so if youâre asking how does one change oneâs essence, youâre asking how does one redefine oneâs self. â Iâll meditate over that one and get back to you.
Well, not to so much reveal anything or perhaps I will but I actually did have my origins altered in a sense, in a great sense.
I was inadvertently told by my grandparents (and not biological ones) that the man who I had actually believed to be my father, who I had loved and worshiped as my father (since I was too young at the time to know otherwise) since that is what my mother told me ~~ was not actually my father. I was absolutely devastated by that. I lost that father not only once but twice. That was revealed to me right after high school graduation. They thought that I knew the truth of my so-called origins. How my origins changed.
But that also explained something which happened between myself and my so-called father when I was around six or seven which also devastated me and which probably affected my life in many ways growing up.
It was one of the most utmost experiences of abandonment that I have ever had in my life.
.
HmmmâŠso you think that changing oneâs essence is as simple as re-defining oneâs self? Giving oneâs self a new self-identity in a sense?
I donât know about that.
Ah, so this is closer to the âsubjectiveâ account I gave earlier. Though I can see what you mean: it doesnât involve replacing memories, but being told a different story about your past.
You must live a life thatâs anything but ordinary.
Me neither. Itâs anything but simple⊠which is why I must meditate on it⊠might need a few months atop a snowy mountain in Tibet.
Pretty damn close. I would make up my own, mainly for aesthetics as follows:
O <â«> B <â«> C
I wonder if you can guess what it means . . .
Strange that . . . I wonder why we do that.
I would suggest the brain does it from pattern matching and differentiation - I would further conclude that this is also how new thoughts evolve - epiphanies.
I have witnessed a pattern matching algorithm based on the neocortex make a leap to identify an animal based on a similar animal - and that is not using all six layers - it kind of freaks me out what all six layers are capable of.
I really like what you have written here.
Yeah - I am not a huge fan of QM. I have also read some data that points to correlation implying causation - that tells me that there is something up with QM.
I am pretty certain the neocortex is involved in processing poetry and metaphor.
I find that if I have put an extreme amount of thought into the post when I write it - then I have to spend some time decoding my own writing.
I did actually make it up when thinking of what I would use based on the original logic . . . fuzzy at that.
O <â«> B <â«> C
<â«> = A stem
The stem is made up of three symbols, the âless thanâ sign, the âIntegralâ sign, the âgreater thanâ sign. It just means that what ever is to the left is smaller than that which is to the right but they are integrated.
A plant works the opposite way - the stem is larger than the branches - just an analogy.
I have put so much thought into this post nah, I am just messing with you
How do we keep ourselves in check? How do we regulate our own behavior?
Actually I was trying to think up a witty response to this post - I am not sure whether I have achieved that necessarily but I have now made an attempt prior to hitting the submit button. What if I have already hit the submit button and I am just not aware of it? If I have already hit the submit button then how is it possible that the words that I am now typing are making it into this post? And why is it that we only remember the past and not the future? So many questions and apparently I can still ask them after hitting the submit button and I can also laugh . . .
Is this a part of my essence - if so - what is this - and what part of my essence would this be - can we have parts to our respective essences?
Iâm gonna cheat. Iâm gonna look ahead to your response to Arc. You call it a âstemâ. You say that O is not only less than B but integrated into B. So maybe something like: if itâs a dog, then itâs an animal. And if itâs an animal, then itâs a life form.
What? Think of human brains as computers or design computers to not make mistakes or have opinions?
I remember listening to a lecture by John Searle once in which he quoted an ancient greek writer (I forget who): the brain is like a catepolt, he said. Searleâs point is that throughout history, weâve always compared the brain to the latest, most advanced, technology of the time. Why? Partly because we didnât understand how the brain works (thus comparing it to something âsophisticatedâ or âcomplexâ) and partly because in seeking out an explanation (of anything) we look for mechanical cause/effect accounts. We stay away from magic or spontaneous/causeless accounts because thatâs more akin to saying âthere is no explanation.â
But I think with computers, weâre not just repeating the same pattern. I think there is something to computers that makes them good for comparison to brainsânamely, internal information processing. When we design a computer to carry out complex mathematical algorithms, we are modeling the design after what we see going on inside our minds (introspection). Furthermore, like all other tools, we design computers to perform the tasks that we would otherwise have to do ourselves (laborously). Weâve built a machine that can solve really complex mathematical and logical problems so that we donât have to go through all the trouble of doing it in our heads (and possibly making mistakes). Therefore, of course the brain is like a computer⊠because we designed computers to be like brains.
Of course, weâve designed computers to model the brain in specific ways onlyâdoing math, solving logical problems, and even doing things like rendering art and running video gamesâall things that the human brain can do but much better. This more or less addresses the second part aboveâwhy we donât design computers to make mistakes or have opinionsâbecause at the end of the day, theyâre still tools. We design and used them as replacements to our own manual effortsâand not just because weâre lazy, but because we make mistakes. We also leave out the ability of computers to form their own opinions because, as tools, we want to have full control over them. We want them to do exactly what we tell them, like mechanical slaves. Programming them to have their own opinions which might conflict with ours (e.g. Me: I want you to allocate $500,000 to defense spending. Computer: in my opinion, I think that money would be better spent on education) is avoided because that too would make them less tool-like and more of an âequalâ (who could use us as tools just as much we can them).
You mean like: please go get [food item X]. â This matches past patterns of requests to get food items in which the person went to the grocery store to fulfill the request. And thoughts that evolveâepiphaniesâis this the brain doing the occasion break from following patterns? Finding whole new patterns? Like: I could go to the grocery store, but if I gut the neighborâs cow, the meat will be a lot more fresh and no unhealthy additives! â Or is that more insanity than novel thinking?
Wow, thatâs interesting. How do they scan the brain in order to identify pattern matching?
Thank you!
Hmmm⊠well, if you can remember the source, I sure would like to know about this. I took a course in statistics for my psyc undergrad, and I remember one of our projects was to look for studies and find at least 5 in which the authors made really blatant mistakes like that. Youâd be surprised how many articles out there draw causal conclusions based on a correlation only. It wasnât hard to find all 5. Other mistakes included âfudgingâ statistical significanceâas in: their study could not prove that their conclusions had a 99% chance of being right so they lowered the standard to a 95% chance of being right. Or increasing the sample size: did you know that you can prove a correlation exists between any two arbitrary variables you want so long as your sample size is large enough? (whether that correlation is positive or negative is another matter).
Anyway, back to QM, if theyâre really scrupulous about being scientific, then the way you establish a cause (and not just a correlation) is by setting up the experiment so that you clearly have a dependent variable (the effect) and an independent variable (the cause). The assumption is that the independent variable has its own cause which determines it (you!) leaving no other option than to identify the independent variable as the cause of the dependent variable. Philosophically speaking, you could question this assumption, but it seems reasonable enough to me to justify the identification of a cause. So long as QM experiments are adhering to this design, Iâd say they are in the right to identify the independent variable as the cause.
I would not doubt that. Though I would expect many parts of the brain to be involved in processing poetry and metaphor. Iâd also point out that the neocortex constitutes a huge portion of the brain, so itâs probably involved in a whole bunch of mental processing (in fact, itâs been proven). How it processes poetry and metaphor is a more interesting question (at least for me) and Iâm sure youâre on the right track in your investigations into pattern matching.
Well, that certainly makes sense. Makes me wonder: do you think this is typical of people who form their thoughts and opinions âon the flyâ so to speak? As opposed to people who draw from long held beliefs and opinions that have remained more or less âsolidâ over the years. In the latter case, I would expect those people to know exactly what they were talking about even when revisiting old posts after a long period of absence. But if you form your thoughts and opinions more or less âon the flyâ then theyâre more likely to be ephemeral, and you most likely wonât remember what you were thinking if you came back to the post after a long period of absence.