Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

Thanks, Steve.

Here you go, discussion of hidden sector matter and subtle bodies from the BATGAP interview #213 of John Hagelin

Buddha at the Gas Pump -

62:13

Hidden sector matter/shadow matter and subtle bodies


63:42 JH anyone who has for a variety of reasons and it can happen for a variety of reasons, finds themselves projected outside their physical body and are seeing and perceiving and functioning from a different place where you could literally turn around and observe your physical body sitting there, can’t deny the existence of levels of our human, say subtle physiology, that are independent of the gross physical physiology, connected to a degree, but more or less independent.

So I must say from a from a physics perspective that has been very hard to accept for physicists because What we know about the universe, what most physicists know about the universe is that its comprised of four forces, light, gravity, etc its comprised of known particles, like quarks and leptons, electrons, protons, neutrons and we pretty much know, nothing else. Whatever this subtle body’s made of – some kind of subtle matter - you can almost rule it out from the standpoint of physics and experiments that have been done.


But there’s a loophole and the loophole is there is a certain type of matter predicted by superstring theory, never predicted before superstring theory to exist. And its called “hidden sector matter” its, you’re starting to hear reference to it as shadow matter in the scientific literature, but it is a whole 'nother category of matter with its own set of forces and its own set of particles of a very different kind and that exists almost independently of us, fills this room, this is what had been thought - only interacting with us, by virtue of whatever gravitational mass it might have and due to its mass, any gravitational influence – but the gravitational influence between things of ordinary size, between you and me, even at this proximity is essentially zero, negligible – never measure it

RA You have a little bit more gravity than I do.

JH I’ve got twice the gravity you do, in every respect, um but the loophole in these calculations pointed out by I forget whom, but still relatively unknown fact is that this extra set of matter, extra forces, extra particles, and we don’t know a whole lot about the details of what those are like, but the caveat has now shown in most cases, in addition to its negligible gravity influence upon us and vice versa, there will be a weak electromagnetic tie a weak electromagnetic influence for reason that are comlex to go into and b/c of that electro-magnetic influence on us we could subtly see and feel the presence of these things.

But b/c that influence is rather weak its probably not something that the human eye is going to see well its not something that particle detectors have yet been able to discern although we’re looking the variety of tests looking mostly for what’s called dark matter in this hidden sector matter is in effect a form of dark matter a specific form predicted by superstring theory so were looking for dark matter we may find evidence of this stuff but the interesting thing about it is b/c it interacts with us electromagnetically it is really through a subtle, an alternate form of light that it could be perceived in principle . . . dimly perceived dimly perceived (sic) now the eyes, may be too dim for the eyes however through complicated mechanisms this stuff b/c its attraction to us electromagnetically it’s a little bit like cling-wrap.

It’s an electro-static attraction a faint electro-static attraction between this stuff and ourselves so for example its very easy, relatively easy to take a piece of glad wrap off of a cantaloupe even though it tends to cling its removable like that this subtle body if it were made of this HS matter or shadow matter could be removed from our physical body and could live quite independently of it – hidden sector matter would be very cold, cold is a relative thing, but it would be less than two degrees above absolute zero which is a good thing in a sense because it means it would be a deeply quantum mechanical world, a world that’s covered by quantum mechanics and if these HS particles happen to be bosons and there almost certainly would be some they would be super-fluid bosons and they would have all kinds of properties that would be very reminiscent of mind these bodies might be very much an aid to the physical human brain in the process of thinking maybe even in the process of transcending.

So could a body made of this stuff firstly cling together into a body and not just a pile of gas? Yes, it could. Could such a body be a vehicle of thought? That is it could think independently of the human brain if the human brain were to have a problem, maybe it even brings elements to the human brains ability to think that the human brain wouldn’t be very good at itself including possibly the ability to transcend? Yeah, so there’s very little known about it, very speculative area, not a lot of people thinking about it besides myself, but provided such people are seeing such things and for anybody who’s ever found themselves outside the physical body, as a physicist if you’re willing to admit such experiences exits, you kind of have to, as a physicist you should know right away this must be a body made of HS matter or shadow matter.

 

[Constance]

All good points, but they aren't relevant to the original one, which was that the headline in the article posted by Constance is misleading. A true test of side by side power would be to pit human and a computer against each other in a side-by-side race to complete the same task ( 3D modelling of all the interactions that take place in one second of brain activity ) each using the same information as a starting point. Clearly there is a reason that a supercomputer is being used. It's not because the brain is actually faster at performing the same task we see in the article. It's because it's actually incredibly slow at performing such tasks, so slow in fact that it would be impossible for a human to do ever get the job done. If that weren't the case, then we wouldn't be needing a supercomputer to do it for us would we?

Maybe you can help clarify this for me (I at least am not clear about what this Japanese experiment was intended to show). My impression is that the intent was not to compare the speed of processing of the same information by a human brain and a supercomputer [e.g., a mathematical computation] but to find out the length of time required by the supercomputer to process [reproduce the processes of] the complexity of information processed in one second of actual activity in ten percent of a human brain. Thus it seems that the attempt was to download a model of a small slice of 'global' human brain activity into a supercomputer to see how long it took to reproduce it in a supercomputer. If that's not the correct interpretation, what is the correct interpretation?

No doubt supercomputers can carry out complex computational tasks far more efficiently than the brain of the most skilled human mathematician*, but could a supercomputer duplicate all the processing of various kinds of information processed in a human brain in one second of life, and moreover why would it need to {why would we need it to}? My guess is that the designers of AI machines/robots think it would need to do that in order to reproduce human-like 'consciousness' and human-like 'thinking'. But it seems to me that the human brain has evolved to process complex and dynamically changing information of many kinds, including that which is required to maintain the life of the whole human organism as well as enable the organism continually to cope with a changing environment as well as informing the organism about the nature of the subjective-objective reality in which it exists through its capacities to learn and think at increasing levels of complexity about the world {nature and culture and selfhood} as a whole and itself as the means of the worlding of the world {or of that world in which it exists, possibly within a complex of worlds/universes}. The first question is how many simultaneous informational processes does human consciousness/mind/brain sustain, enabling the kind of life we have and lead. The second question is could a machine intelligence carry on information processing at all those levels simultaneously the way we do? I doubt it since a machine intelligence would not receive the kinds of information we receive in our organically developed bodily and mental presence in the actual physical world at the macro and micro levels of nature to which -- being ourselves expressions, outgrowths of nature -- we are naturally attuned.

 

[Constance]

Welllll . . .

"Others may be morning gone an instant, so it seems like a very inefficient process and not one with a great deal of intelligence overhaul of intelligence or purposeful minute because it's so random. It does in string theory seem to have that element, but all those universes are filled with intelligence, although the universes follow more olive universes are proficient fascinating once a gap biological life would only exists as we know it anyway. Relative handful. What are we wasting anyway. I mean, these are all free lazy is the nature of his unified just by its very systems to percolate universes Sowell wasting anything is really in the middle of sperm reaches the cannot really say that's a really fairy could now see the intelligent design in the well know about this him also. I mean, work hard of thinking anthropomorphic live here."

I don't think we have to worry too much about computers eavesdropping on our conversations any time soon!

I gather the Joycean extract above is an example of what the computer software employed by Burnt State and you 'transcribed' from spoken language to written language? I've long suspected (since the first time I heard about computer intelligence propositions) that while computers might be able to communicate with one another at some point {in a language they themselves somehow evolved}, they would likely never be able to communicate with us in our language (or any naturally developed human language) because of the complexity and subtlety of human languages.

 

[smcder]

I gather the Joycean extract above is an example of what the computer software employed by Burnt State and you 'transcribed' from spoken language to written language? I've long suspected (since the first time I heard about computer intelligence propositions) that while computers might be able to communicate with one another at some point {in a language they themselves somehow evolved}, they would likely never be able to communicate with us in our language (or any naturally developed human language) because of the complexity and subtlety of human languages.

a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

I thought it looked familiar! Yep, thats the machine transcription, I posted mine a bit later. I agree that a computer would have to be an awful lot like a human to make use of human language.

 

[Constance]

This NYTimes column is worth reading on the subject of AI:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/watson-still-cant-think/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

 

[Constance]

And as usual, there is no definitive evidence that OOBEs involve the real-time perception of objective reality. So the above is yet another example of an unsupported assumption used as a premise to connect elements of theoretical physics ( other unproven theories ) with the mystery of human consciousness ( another unexplained phenomenon ). So although it might be an interesting mental exercise to create some internally coherent theory out of these things to support some pet theory ( like continuity of consciousness ), it's very questionable as to whether or not any model that comes out of such discussion reflects the reality of the situation.

Theory is developed out of experience and experiment. New knowledge is forged out of experience and experiment in the testing of new theories. What is the alternative? Judging the nature of reality on the basis of the patchwork constituted by what we think we currently know about nature and mind?

 

[Constance]

Randall also wrote: "And as usual, there is no definitive evidence that OOBEs involve the real-time perception of objective reality."

My own perception of the visible objective reality of the back of my body, still sitting at the desk across the room facing the opposite wall, was definitive evidence for me that my consciousness and perceptual capacity had indeed relocated to the upper corner of the far wall which I suddenly occupied as a conscious point of view. As you may recall from my description of the event, my consciousness/point of view then moved to the left along the ceiling of the wall I now occupied for a better view of my 'objective' bodily self across the room, and then became aware of another point of view/consciousness attached to (or within) 'my' consciousness who/which was also aware of what had happened (relocation of my embodied point of view) and commented on the state of my biological self in the third person: as "she."

 

[Constance]

a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

I thought it looked familiar! Yep, thats the machine transcription, I posted mine a bit later. I agree that a computer would have to be an awful lot like a human to make use of human language.

Thank you for your transcription from that portion of the interview, which is fascinating. I will now listen to the whole interview (now or later tonight) and hope we see discussion of the whole of it take place here. I'm very glad you brought Hagelin up in this thread and also hope to find further writing by him that we can quote here.

 

[Constance]

My point was that the title of the article is misleading in that it implies that human brains are vastly faster than computers because it takes a supercomputer so much more time to model what is going on inside the brain than it takes the brain to actually do the same thing. However modeling a physical process is entirely different from evaluating how efficiently something can perform a specific task, or how smart something is. The same supercomputer might take just as long to model all the molecular interactions and transformations that take place a single blade of grass. Does that mean that a blade of grass thinks faster than humans? No. Does it mean it's smarter than humans? No.

Conversely, lets suppose that the task the brain was working on was to calculate the square root of 735 to 14 decimal places. Your desktop calculator can perform that calculation in a tiny fraction of a second, far faster than a human, and with far less complex a setup. So in that context, which is actually faster? There's no question that it's the desktop calculator. There's no question that neurochemical reactions are much slower than electronics at delivering signals. But does the speed of a desktop calculator make it smarter than a human? No.

So why are they doing these kinds of experiments? See the video I posted. In a nutshell it's main purpose is to facilitate the study of the brain to understand how various treatments affect it. That way doctors can simulate how various treatments affect the brain without any risk to a living patient. It has tremendous potential to facilitate medical research.

I'm all for medical research, Randall, and I also see the value of the speed of machine computation for many tasks useful for us.

You wrote: "The same supercomputer might take just as long to model all the molecular interactions and transformations that take place a single blade of grass. Does that mean that a blade of grass thinks faster than humans? No. Does it mean it's smarter than humans? No."

First a question. Did the K computer in Japan model "molecular interactions and transformations" taking place in that one second of activity in one-tenth of a human brain, or model pathways of information processing?

Secondly, I don't see the issue as one of the 'smartness' of computer intelligence vis a vis human intelligence. 'Smartness' about what? And the issue of speed of calculations of a mathematical nature is just that, and no doubt serviceable to our species for certain purposes. In my opinion, machine intelligence can never be 'smart' in the way human intelligence can be 'smart' because it cannot receive information from the world in the same way human intelligence does in the first place. Have you ever observed the way your own mind makes swift (almost instantaneous) connections among a number of ideas and concepts you are at the moment entertaining and pieces of information read months or years ago, and even events, moments from your previous life, that suddenly come to mind making sense for the first time? Are you familiar with the phrase "the speed of thought," which is often warp speed? Do we need computers to think for us about the nature of reality? and how can they do that when their experience of reality is so categorically limited by comparison with ours?

 

[smcder]

And as usual, there is no definitive evidence that OOBEs involve the real-time perception of objective reality. So the above is yet another example of an unsupported assumption used as a premise to connect elements of theoretical physics ( other unproven theories ) with the mystery of human consciousness ( another unexplained phenomenon ). So although it might be an interesting mental exercise to create some internally coherent theory out of these things to support some pet theory ( like continuity of consciousness ), it's very questionable as to whether or not any model that comes out of such discussion reflects the reality of the situation.

Yep, right there in the full text I posted above Hagelin indicates:

well its not something that particle detectors have yet been able to discern although we’re looking the variety of tests looking mostly for what’s called dark matter

and

Yeah, so there’s very little known about it, very speculative area, not a lot of people thinking about it besides myself,

 

[Constance]

I have no doubt that people have experiences which they interpret as disembodied consciousness, and I haven't completely ruled out that such a thing can happen. All I'm saying is that despite the fact that such experiences seem to have a simple answer ( your consciousness went floating out away from your body ), we have no definitive evidence that such an assumption is true. Our minds are powerful enough to create entire realities as vivid and lifelike as any waking experience, but while we're completely asleep. So it's also entirely possible that these OOBEs are some kind of "waking dream", a mental event that creates the perception that you are seeing things from a remote perspective, when in actual fact it's only your mind simulating that perception.

To prove that OOBEs aren't such simulations, what is needed is verifiable objective evidence, like a random printout of a series of symbols in another room that a person can float over to and see and come back and replicate with precision over and over again. To date, nobody I'm aware of has produced sufficient evidence to conclude that this kind of thing can be done.

Because I've had an OBE, I'm particularly interested in research concerning these experiences. Descriptions of these kinds of experience can be found as far back as Plato. They were pursued by the SPR in England from the earliest years of their research. Ingo Swann experienced sudden relocation of his consciousness and perception at the American SPR one day when he was extensively wired up to various monitors in a chair [at a distance from, and facing away from, the windows] waiting for the next experiment Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler was performing with/on him. Suddenly he found his mind/visual perception outside the building in which they worked in NYC, looking down on the street below, where he observed a woman in an orange coat walking toward the next intersection, carrying bulky shopping bags. He shouted out to the experimenters to look outside the window and see if they saw the individual he'd seen. To my current recollection (I read this about six years ago), they did. It's described by Ingo in his long biographical text on his website and I think was also reported by Gertrude Schmeidler. I think it's Robert Munroe who has also done extensive research concerning OBEs and obtained some veridical results with one individual in particular. NDE researchers are also conducting similar research in the hope that someone who experiences an OBE in an emergency room will notice and report an item or series of numbers placed on the top of the room's light fixtures. That research is ongoing and might produce convincing veridical confirmation of out of body consciousness and perception. Since an individual finding himself or herself suddenly out of the body, hovering high in the room over his/her body in a crisis situation, might be too shocked by the experience and focused on the body and what's being done to it, it's possible that less pressing information lodged on the top of a light fixture might not receive attention. But there is already more than enough OBE and NDE evidence of a veridical nature (in conversations overheard in other rooms, in hospital workers recognized when encountered later, etc.) to confirm the hypothesis that information is received anomalously by persons in crisis situations in hospitals.

 

[smcder]

Thank you for your transcription from that portion of the interview, which is fascinating. I will now listen to the whole interview (now or later tonight) and hope we see discussion of the whole of it take place here. I'm very glad you brought Hagelin up in this thread and also hope to find further writing by him that we can quote here.

Here's one more fascinating section I'd already transcribed so I'll go ahead and post it:


60:26

string duality – this way of viewing ourselves as three dimensional creatures living in 4 dimensional space, is absolutely equivalent to, the physics of it, everything about it, is absolutely equivalent to and indistinguishable from a completely different pt of view – in which we are two dimensional creatures living on a certain two dimensional geometry, a very specific two dimensional geometry that is topologically non-trivial multiply connected in a universe w/out gravity but with a different set of particles and forces called a four dimensional maximally super-symmetric yang mills theory and basically what I’m saying is that there are two ways of looking at what’s going on right now, at least two, one in which we are 3 dimensional creatures moving around in a four dimensional world with gravity, identical to it, with respect to every possible prediction and every possible detail, would be somebody else looking at us and saying no no no you are two dimensional creatures swimming on the surface of a two dimensional surface in a world without gravity at asymptotically high temperatures . . . so why is it, since they are both absolutely equivalent that nobody around us thinks of us as 2 dimensional creatures swimming around on a two dimensional surface at asymptotically high temperatures when we are that as much as we are this . . . why do we latch into the 3d concept and not the 2d concept of ourselves would a different educational sys have caused us all to collectively think we are two dimensional creatures living on a multiply connected two dimensional space on a world with gravity . . . maybe, no reason that favors one over the other (laughs)

 

[smcder]

This NYTimes column is worth reading on the subject of AI:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/watson-still-cant-think/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

I just had a look to notice it was by Sean Dorrance Kelly and Hubert Dreyfus, I listened to a whole series by Dreyfus when I was reading Moby Dick a couple of years back and thoroughly enjoyed his lecture style - he also has the lectures on phenomenology I mentioned to you too, but you felt his take on it was somewhat questionable - his "What Computers Can't Do" is a classic.

 

[Constance]

So what they are doing is modelling ( simulating ) a neural network with information obtained from the scientific analysis of brain based neurology, something that would be impossible for a human to do without the aid of a supercomputer. There's a huge difference between being a brain and simulating a brain. How long would it take an unaided human brain to simulate another human brain? That doesn't even seem possible.

Yes, "there's a huge difference between being a brain and simulating the structure of a brain." As I suggested, the K supercomputer experiment seems to have been an attempt to simulate the complex, multiple networks of information processing taking place in a moment of human consciousness via representing {in a different medium} the naturally evolved and dynamically changing pathways by which information is shared in the brain -- a global phenomenon involving both conscious and unconscious, bodily as well as mental, information available to the brain/mind from its evolved embeddedness in nature. Computers such as the K computer and its further developments might one day provide us with a picture (a 3-D chart) of the full complexity of the physical structure of brain, but that doesn't mean that those computers could become replications of the human brain. The brain is a living part of a living organism that carries along in its evolution both the informational orientations and memories of the life that has preceded it and the ongoing life it individually sustains and creatively develops in living. Understanding the intricate structure of the brain's parts in an objective way cannot reproduce its bonded, entangled, conscious, felt and thought relationship with life in the world in general, out of which we individually live more or less satisfying and productive lives, and also as a species share experiences of and proliferating thought about our commonly lived world and existence in it, which generates our increasing appreciation of the depth and complexity of the mind-world relationships we are part of.

That being said, despite its problems, there's still no doubt that the human brain is the most powerful processing system we know of. Nevertheless, IMO consciousness isn't simply a matter of sufficient processing power. I think it has something to do with the type of processing and how the structures are organized within the brain that allows consciousness to emerge.

You sometimes seem to think of the mind as a synonym for the brain, and of the brain as an information processor like a computer. But brain, consciousness, will, feeling, and spirit grow, along with the body, through experience in and of the world, and through this comprehensive entangled experience mind becomes part of the world, the world part of the mind, in an entangled whole. Your last sentence just above suggests that you also think that the brain's 'structures' become organized in an identical way for all humans despite the differences in their lived experiences, and perhaps you also think that consciousness is the same thing for everyone. But it seems to me that the range of activities and expression, interests, talents, gifts, etc., developed over the range of our species' history and and even within our current age speak against such a concept of uniformity in brain structure, consciousness, and thought. Situations affect consciousness (from the beginning of its development), consciousness can affect brain structure (as we see in advanced meditation practitioners), and mind flows into the world as much as the world flows into the mind and evidently in immense variety and difference from one human to another.

 

[Constance]

Do you remember the name of the researcher or the source of what you read about this experience in which she "drift[ed] up out of her residence and over the rooftops of this old university ..." Many people attempt to force OBEs or bring them about intentionally. It's a reasonable question to ask whether such experiments can bring about the same experiences as those that occur in spontaneous OBEs. There's quite a lot of OBE experimentation going on by parapsychologists and by ordinary people, and it would be interesting to follow current research on both.

 

[Constance]

I just had a look to notice it was by Sean Dorrance Kelly and Hubert Dreyfus, I listened to a whole series by Dreyfus when I was reading Moby Dick a couple of years back and thoroughly enjoyed his lecture style - he also has the lectures on phenomenology I mentioned to you too, but you felt his take on it was somewhat questionable - his "What Computers Can't Do" is a classic.

I don't remember what my objection was to something Dreyfus wrote, but he is a major American phenomenological philosopher and an expert on Heidegger. I'll try to search out that post and clarify what I was saying.

 

[smcder]

@Constance - an interesting talk by Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute

"I thought it was important to say that there were implications of this paradigm shift in cosmology for how we conceive of ourselves, for how we conceive of the future because how we think about time influences how we think about the future . . . for how we think about the possibilities of solving the problems that face us from personal issues in our family lives to economics to climate change"

a few notes below, I'll try to work up an outline - not directly related to consciousness, but you'll see the relevance I think . . .

Time Reborn
Time reborn - Big Ideas - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The notion that time is an illusion and that the laws of physics are fixed or eternal has been challenged by theoretical physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who offers a new theory of time and a new view of the world.

A panel discussion follows with AC Grayling Professor, philosopher and Master of New College of the Humanities, London and Dr Gillian Tett Author, and assistant editor of the Financial Times

• began with Life of the Cosmos
• background included conversations with Roberto Magabeira Unger of Harvard Law School; " . . . the view that we must live in a universe where laws of nature evolve and where time is real to permit human beings to have the kind of agency that we imagine we need if we are going to address the problems that we face"
• "I'm going to take as evident . . . that social thought is influenced by our cosmological ideas and vice-versa . . . proposing a large shift in our cosmological ideas . . . I thought it was important to say that there were implications of this paradigm shift in cosmology for how we conceive of ourselves, for how we conceive of the future because how we think about time influences how we think about the future . . . for how we think about the possibilities of solving the problems that face us from personal issues in our family lives to economics to climate change

 

[Constance]

That is a very rich and ramifying discussion you linked, Steve. I heard Smolin say twice that the larger cultural benefit of the revision he suggests in presuppositions in physics will be an overcoming of the widespread misapprehension that the universe operates like a computer and that we as a result are essentially computers. I looked up the computer theorist Jaron Lanier whom Smolin cited as influential in his thinking. Here are links to Lanier's two books:

Amazon.ca: you Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

 

[Constance]

There is an interview with Lanier on this page:

 

[smcder]

I don't remember what my objection was to something Dreyfus wrote, but he is a major American phenomenological philosopher and an expert on Heidegger. I'll try to search out that post and clarify what I was saying.

I think it was an issue with his take on Merleau-Ponty - he seems very cheerful and energetic, avuncular - I listened to several lectures on Moby Dick from his series: Man, God, and Society in Western Literature and thoroughly enjoyed the information and his style.