The Nature of Consciousness

Continued / forked discussion from here:
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/threads/my-four-cigarettes.18904/page-2#post-127603

To lead in, two quotes by Max Planck (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck#Quotes):

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."

Several decades after the great physicist, efforts were begun to break this paradigm and to try and get behind what that actually is, consciousness. Related phenomena like psychic abilities are researched in earnest since then, too, with some interesting outcomes. I can't describe all this in one go, just to start somewhere and if there is interest to add further pointers later, here goes.

Several years ago I found out about an online experiment by Dean Radin described here (further down in the article linked below after lengthy introduction). I still have trouble believing what I saw. By directing your attention to it, or taking it away, you could influence a value which got plotted on the screen, which was claimed to be derived from the "degree of randomness" of the output of a true random number generator, i.e. not a computer simulated pseudorandom sequence, but an actual hardware device based on measuring a quantum effect. With only your conscious attention you could actually influence it, and from a distance. Done enough times, on and off, to eliminate chance and until you have to believe that you're actually doing it. No microphone or camera or any feedback mechanism connected, or you would have been alerted if the website tried to access any peripheral device, so no idea how it could have been fraud. This has consequences...
https://thesearchforlifeafterdeath....tes-scientific-basis-for-mind-of-over-matter/
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
http://www.noetic.org/

 

Nice coincidence! I got to travel these parts both no earlier and no later than 1990, to come again and stay a few years in Jena from '92 onwards. Those were interesting times, not just for the potholes.

Some more material about the topics and names dropped in your thread -- sorry if it's overwhelming at once, it sure took me years to study and come to terms with it at all:

Heinz von Foerster: "Truth is the invention of a liar"
https://www.feldenkraisnow.org/truthistheinvent.html

Penrose & Hameroff
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/

Puthoff & Targ
http://www.espresearch.com/mindreach/
http://www.irva.org/remote-viewing/timeline.html

Ingo Swann
http://www.ingoswann.com/super-powers-of-the-human-biomind.html

Thomas Campbell
http://wiki.my-big-toe.com/Main_Page

And an o/t... I slept through this :(
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=22&month=04&year=2017

 

Again was setting out for a short answer and then it started flooding in your thread...

I don't have a definite answer to your question. Research is only just beginning to scratch the surface. The difficulty lies in the paradigm which appears in cybernetics and quantum mechanics: The observer is part of the observed system, cannot separate from it, even alters the system through the act of observation.

What we know is there seem to be two sides of it, an autonomous part which manifests in a sufficiently sophisticated physical body and creates individual entities (or what we perceive as individuality), and a common part, a "universe of consciousness" or "universal unconscious" as Carl Jung put it, which stays connected and keeps delivering information to us. This is evidenced by the finding that things like remote viewing actually work. Other cultures have found this, too, even long ago. Vedic tradition calls it "Akashic Records". Some writers postulate the universe "is" consciousness, like a field that permeates everything or constitutes the fabric at the most basic level, as opposed to our perception of being a dot of life in a basically dead space. I like to think of it from the angle that everything is information (Eckhart Tolle has a similar approach -- also good to help with coping). There is a lot more to discover, certainly.

AI is basically the effort to understand the system by attempting to create a simulation of it, just like every other model in physics. Whether it will be capable of becoming self-aware merely through sophistication or if the natural body has properties which we cannot replicate this way, is one of the big questions. That part about connection to the universe is not currently considered by the AI community. We don't yet have a theory or even a shred of understanding what the nature of that connection is.

 

Here is where I'm coming from with all this -- finding out (much against my established belief) that this actually works had a major impact on my world view and approach to paradigms and belief systems (- they tend to get in the way):

http://www.mprv.net/one20.html

A short introduction:
http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/TCUindex.html

A group I'm involved with has created a Discord channel just about a week or so ago. I can send invites in case someone is interested.

 

To both: Exactly!

 

They are getting better... and better...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...rtual-people-who-look-and-act-impossibly-real

 

Again a post by someone else triggered a waterfall which I realized at the last moment before making a fool of myself. Posting it would have seemed totally out of place to everybody else. It belongs in this context and has interesting implications. From here, below I tried (and failed) to summarize the above:
http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...nevitability&p=3610379&viewfull=1#post3610379

There is evidence that you can figure out a human's (or conscious entity's, to be precise, even a collective's) intent and actions this way, but not a machine, much less a simulation solely existing in software. Because they have no consciousness. There are protocols to work around this by remote viewing your future self looking at feedback based on actual outcome (e.g. http://www.appliedprecog.com/) but applying this to every single drop of a mining probe or other actions in this game is more than a little tedious. Too much effort for the potential gain.

If you want to accelerate it and bank on pure instinct guiding you (like dowsing), you need to at least set your brain in theta state for the duration, or recognize when it is and only act during that time. This is the state where you're capable of capturing the minute impulses given by subconscious without them being drowned in the noise your conscious mind makes all the time. The key thing to set your intent on is asking "Which path should I choose for optimum outcome?" rather than "What exists there hidden from my eyes I need to react to?" (For this hint alone people pay thousands of dollars in training courses).

This is a major feat, very few people master the degree of self-control needed. Serious scientific research is just beginning to look into how this is possible at all, after experimental statistics show something weird going on can no longer be refuted. Unfortunately the field is so littered with esoteric quackery that finding proven information is difficult. Until this is mastered by the masses, they who run the systems enjoy the advantage. After it is mastered by the masses, all gambling will cease to exist. You may need to re-evaluate what it actually is you enjoy doing -- I for myself eschew futility.

Fully aware how far out this post is...* and how hard to follow what triggered it. We're still in a game forum. Allow me to cross-post this in another place where the topic was more properly introduced. The consequences seem philosophical at first, but become very concrete and technical once you start implementing the methods found so far.

* referring to PCF where it was first written as reply

 

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710201058406380-ed-dames-sputnik-interview-psychic-spying/

 

Max Tegmark sees people as "food, rearranged." That makes his answer to complicated questions like "What is consciousness?" simple: It's just math. Why? Because it's the patterns, not the particles, that matter.

Video

 

https://www.dailygrail.com/2017/11/vale-professor-robert-g-jahn-giant-of-academic-parapsychology/
https://www.princeton.edu/~pear/jahn.html

 

This is how "rubber meets the road":

http://rvcommunity.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=59957

A demonstration of technique (there are different schools and protocols, some do it on paper only, some use various aides):

 

You're right to an extent, but this needs to be emphasized: He knew absolutely nothing about even the nature of the target. He had this alphanumeric reference code thrown at him and nothing else. It could have been a photo of an apple pie, an asteroid, a newspaper headline, a reference to an event far back in history, a mysterious echolot recording, someone's medical condition to be diagnosed, a question about the location of your lost car keys, or whatever. Identifying the nature of the target alone is a major feat, any detail on top of that is cream. You could argue that once he is beginning to produce a narrative, he could get sucked into it and continue in a plausible vein, but out of his own imagination. This would have to measure up against feedback of course, which may not be available in all circumstances. The video was meant for a demonstration of method, proof of concept is better found in statistics of similar attempts over a long time. These are given in some of the literature pointed out further above. Of course the successes always get the limelight, but the rest is still in the numbers.

Remote Viewing isn't perfect, there is a running error rate of at least 20%. Where it gets very powerful is when you work in a team and find corroborating elements between independent viewers who were given the same task. The other thing is, what you get is a description, not automatic identification. Identification must come from subsequent analysis. It is very much like police work, where you need to extract actionable intelligence out of a number of witness accounts.

But believe me, I share your skepticism... since discovering this and still today. It's when trying it for yourself creates some surprises you're struggling to explain, that you're beginning to think maybe the world is bigger than textbook wisdom has captured so far. Keeping a healthy disbelief ist vital for avoiding to get sucked into the numerous esoteric streams of which the field is littered. This doesn't make things easier for real scientific exploration. But it's getting tackled, slowly.