UFO Impulsivity & Paranormal Phenomena

softbeard · Feb 25, 2011

If quantum physics is anything to go by, then the observer is essential for reality and our 3D + time universe. And by observer, that means us, or other sentient beings. My interpretation of this is that, for now, conciousnesss is unique and distinct from matter. Whether artificially conciousness observers (true A.I.' s) can be created is another debate.

SRL+ · Feb 25, 2011

Your correct, according to over two hundred documented experiments it appears that until the collapse of the quantum wave field matter does not come into existence, and takes an observer in order to collapse the quantum wave field, producing matter. This has profound implications in UFO and paranormal research which haven’t been discussed as much as needed.

TClaeys · Feb 25, 2011

I know this thread has gone off on some tangents but here's an interesting recent article concerning the Singularity.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/438/...y,_and_Removing_the_Ghost_in_the_Machine.html

SRL+ · Feb 25, 2011

TClaeys said:
I know this thread has gone off on some tangents but here's an interesting recent article concerning the Singularity.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/438/...y,_and_Removing_the_Ghost_in_the_Machine.html

This may interest you. Ray Kurzweil Explains the coming singularity. It speaks to the article concerning singulaity.

SRL+ · Feb 26, 2011

plumbbob12 said:
 I’m sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine. I, along with many others find Terrence McKenna’s lectures interesting, but he was a creative word-smith. The term: “neurotic energy dynamic” really means nothing. When one connects this neurotic energy dynamic as being the result of a: “repression of legitimate modalities for exploring consciousness” – I am left speechless. What “repression”, what “modalities”? What kind of “neurotic energy dynamic”? How is this “dynamic” expressed, and where does it originate in our mind/brain? As I have said in the past, words have meaning. I could just as easily say that “our perception of the UFO mythology is a direct result of subliminal oscillations in our prefrontal cortex”. This would mean nothing. If we want to engage in an intelligent conversation on the UFO enigma, we have to discuss it in terms that everyone can understand, and relate too. Our language is built on analogy, and sometimes our analogies are way too weak to express paranormal events. We need to simplify our language, and not complicate it in order that others can understand what we are attempting to say about something that is out of the ordinary. pb

Looking back at your response to this thread, I don’t think I’m going to let you off the hook. You being a paranormal master and all. I am going to place a mirror up to your brain/mind so you can see what ignorant, myopic, dismissive, statements you have made concerning a quote in which I included from Terrence Mckenna in this thread. I quote "plumbbob”. “I, along with many others find Terrence McKenna’s lectures interesting, but he was a creative word smith”. With all due respect, what the hell does that mean to either you, or your world of “many others”? What is wrong with being a “creative wordsmith”? Unless your grammar was incorrect, and you meant to say “he was “just” a creative wordsmith”. In that case maybe you could use a little “word smith ing” yourself. You can see the irony in your statements already.
For those of you who don’t know who Mr. Terrence Mckenna was, I’ll give you a little background.( pay attention plumbbob this includes you). He was much more than a “creative word smith”. Quoting Wikipedia, “Mckenna was an American writer mainly on the subject of psychedelic drugs and their role in society, and existence beyond the physical body. He was also a public speaker, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, art historian, and self-described anarchist, anti-materialist, environmentalist, feminist, Platonist and skeptic. During his lifetime he was noted for his knowledge of psychedelics, metaphysics, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, mysticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, biology, geology, physics, phenomenology, and his concept of novelty theory”. Hmm..a little more than “a creative word smith”, wouldn’t ya’ say there plumbbob?
Moving right along, speaking to another quote of yours, “the term neurotic energy dynamic really means nothing”. If in fact you found Mr. Mckenna’s lectures interesting, you should have known what he meant, and yet you are “left speechless”. Quite frankly, I am left speechless by your speechlessness. "Shamanic Approaches to the UFO” was arguably Mckenna’s single most compelling lecture given. Discussing consciousness, the way humans communicate, (another irony in your post), and the UFO phenomenon. ..And the ironies continue. To quote you “plumbbob”“If we want to engage in an intelligent conversation on the UFO enigma, we have to discuss it in terms that everyone can understand, and relate too”. How can you say this when it appears that you don’t even have enough information to make an informed opinion concerning Mckenna or his contribution to UFO and paranormal research ? You would have been better off by saying , I don’t’ know what your trying to relate, would you please explain this? Or I don’t care what your trying to relate, or I’m to lazy to research what your trying to relate. That’s fine, if I don’t know what something means, I’ll look it up, that’s what the web’s for..Sorry plumbbob, this is just a pet peeve of mine. Peace out

plumbbob12 · Feb 26, 2011

S.R.L: I did not mean to make an ad hominem attack on McKenna. There is nothing wrong with being a word smith, and while I have not researched McKenna as deeply as I would like, I have listened to several of his lectures, and find that I agree with a large percentage of his insights into the nature of mind. However, I do not agree with his idea that the UFO phenomenon is Jungian in nature, or a manifestation of our group consciousness.
Having said that I do not agree is not a slight. The way science works is by being a skeptic of a new, (or in this case a regurgitated old), idea, and making the people who develop it support there idea with experimental data. Just because I hold someone’s feet to the fire, does not mean that I don’t respect them, or am trying to discredit them in some way. As far as my “pet peeve”, yes I think McKenna was over wordy. He used language that many in his audience could not understand. I don’t know if this guy was just so darn smart that he did not think about it, or if he was trying to impress the crowd. It is important for an educator to gauge the knowledge base of the group he/she is speaking too, and use language that will convey an understanding of concepts. Sometimes this will make for a less exact lecture for the sake of getting the basic point across to as large of a cross section as possible. This is why universities have upper level classes on subjects. The 100 and 200 level classes give a basic level of comprehension, while the 300 and higher classes tune in on definitions, and require a bit more specialized verbal comprehension.

---------- Post added at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 PM ----------

Kurzweil is an interesting guy. His father died at 58 and he is already in his 60’s, but claims his “biological age” never changes. The truth of the matter, (in my view), is that The Singularity is the religion for technology geeks. Science is seen as some kind of divine solution to the age old battle against the reality of death. He says that we will have easily reverse engineered the brain by 2023, but moved up the singularity from 2028 to 2045. Who knows, this is the kind of bet that says that one if either correct or dead, and most will not be around in 2045 to prove his hypothesis. I suppose I do like the guy. Everyone needs a faith, and he has his. I like it that he is an optimist, and I guess it would be cool if my “self” was put in a super powerful robot that would live forever. I guess time will tell. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

ffice

ffice" /><o

></o

>
<o

> </o

>

Gene Steinberg · Feb 27, 2011

Interesting story about longevity. My brother, Wallace Herbert Steinberg, was written up in something called Longevity magazine in the 1990s, explaining why he wanted to live forever. He died not long after that at the age of 62.

That put a crimp in family's style, since most of my immediate relatives had long lives. My late grandfather hung out till his 90s, though it wasn't in terribly good shape by then. But that was decades ago, so I hope the gene pool is better now.

SRL+ · Feb 27, 2011

plumbbob12 said:
S.R.L: I did not mean to make an ad hominem attack on McKenna. There is nothing wrong with being a word smith, and while I have not researched McKenna as deeply as I would like, I have listened to several of his lectures, and find that I agree with a large percentage of his insights into the nature of mind. However, I do not agree with his idea that the UFO phenomenon is Jungian in nature, or a manifestation of our group consciousness.
Having said that I do not agree is not a slight. The way science works is by being a skeptic of a new, (or in this case a regurgitated old), idea, and making the people who develop it support there idea with experimental data. Just because I hold someone’s feet to the fire, does not mean that I don’t respect them, or am trying to discredit them in some way. As far as my “pet peeve”, yes I think McKenna was over wordy. He used language that many in his audience could not understand. I don’t know if this guy was just so darn smart that he did not think about it, or if he was trying to impress the crowd. It is important for an educator to gauge the knowledge base of the group he/she is speaking too, and use language that will convey an understanding of concepts. Sometimes this will make for a less exact lecture for the sake of getting the basic point across to as large of a cross section as possible. This is why universities have upper level classes on subjects. The 100 and 200 level classes give a basic level of comprehension, while the 300 and higher classes tune in on definitions, and require a bit more specialized verbal comprehension.

---------- Post added at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 PM ----------

Kurzweil is an interesting guy. His father died at 58 and he is already in his 60’s, but claims his “biological age” never changes. The truth of the matter, (in my view), is that The Singularity is the religion for technology geeks. Science is seen as some kind of divine solution to the age old battle against the reality of death. He says that we will have easily reverse engineered the brain by 2023, but moved up the singularity from 2028 to 2045. Who knows, this is the kind of bet that says that one if either correct or dead, and most will not be around in 2045 to prove his hypothesis. I suppose I do like the guy. Everyone needs a faith, and he has his. I like it that he is an optimist, and I guess it would be cool if my “self” was put in a super powerful robot that would live forever. I guess time will tell. fficeffice" /><o>></o>>
<o>> </o>>

I can see that evoking a meaningful response from you is like trying to shuck an oyster with a dull butter knife. If in fact your roll is forum educator, please let me know. I by no means want to discredit the forum, or its members. Having said that, I detect a definite disconnect in your last post. I never intended to say that “to disagree is a slight.” I fully understand that Jungian Theory is the third rail at the outer fringe of Ufology, which is in the fringe to begin with. Observation from the brightest scholars in varied disciplines, and the ability to fully comprehend the meaning of what they are relating is critical before making an informed opinion whether popular, or not. String Theory once abandoned has since has been “regurgitated”and now is at the forefront of Theoretical Particle Physics. Theories and spaghetti have a lot in common. You throw it at the wall, sometimes it sticks, and sometimes it doesn’t

softbeard · Feb 27, 2011

S.R.L. said:
I can see that evoking a meaningful response from you is like trying to shuck an oyster with a dull butter knife

S.R.L., you gotta understand, this is a forum, not necessarily a university-level setting. Debates like this, while very interesting, often evoke soft responses to points because not everyone feels comfortable precisely outlining their viewpoints in very sharp focus all of the time.

SRL+ · Feb 27, 2011

softbeard said:
S.R.L., you gotta understand, this is a forum, not necessarily a university-level setting. Debates like this, while very interesting, often evoke soft responses to points because not everyone feels comfortable precisely outlining their viewpoints in very sharp focus all of the time.

I suppose your right.

softbeard · Feb 27, 2011

Not to sound judgemental or self-congradulatory, I think the tone of the debates on this thread and forum, overall, is very high.

mike · Feb 27, 2011

The topic of synthetic intellect often makes me wonder .....
Given the vastness of space and time, two almost unimaginably long axis, that are the physical universe, Machine or Synthetic Intellegence is far better suited to that environment, than the mayfly spans of biological intellect.
When you mix that environment with the survival of the fittest adage, SI seems to be the more likely candidate to be the dominant form.
Which then makes me wonder how would such beings procreate ?
Simply making a copy of oneself would be akin to having a conversation with a mirror.
One way might be to recreate the circumstances of its/their creation. ie start with a biological species and have it (as we are now doing) create SI in its own image, thus the new SI would take on the mental "flavour" of its biological progenitors.
You might want to tweak the biological factory workers genetically for traits necessary for the task, and even seed them with physical technology to help them, but apart from that stay hidden so's not to directly influence the mental signiture of the SI under construction.
In this way a society of Machine intellects could create new members and grow.
It may be we are just the factory workers and not the finished product being created here

hak · Feb 28, 2011

It's a Very interesting thread.. love it keep it up!

---------- Post added at 05:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:33 PM ----------

Persinger

During the 1980s he stimulated people's temporal lobes artificially with a weak magnetic field to see if he could induce a religious state (see God helmet). He claimed that the field could produce the sensation of "an ethereal presence in the room".

Perhaps instead of the idea that stimulating the brain with the weak magnetic fields is forcing a human to feel god or whatnot.. perhaps the magnetic fields are stimulating our god or whatever "receptors".

Part of the brains job is to collect and interprate data from your sensory organs, maybe persinger is stimulating neurons receptive to gooey god (or whatever) feelings.
One has to ask why these gooey god neurons would even be in the brain?
Is it a just a trick of evolution? If as a baby my right arm was chopped off (gory I know), the common wisdom is that neurons for the arm, brain mapping etc, would die off. That area of the brain that is normally allocated to the arm would be altered and used in some other way.
So my question is.. why the heck our there neurons in our brains giving us gooey god feelings (or however you want to interpret them)?

As for those experiments of brain imaging that pick up what we (or the poor kitty) sees.. they can map what we see, or where we look, but they can't map how we interprate that data, how it strikes us emotionally, what we think about it, and how has our past and or cultural experience influenced what we see.

mike · Feb 28, 2011

but they can't map how we interprate that data, how it strikes us emotionally, what we think about it, and how has our past and or cultural experience influenced what we see.

How do you know this for a fact ?
Many of the articles i linked to suggest they will be able to do just that.

The Defense Department is continuing its push to reduce human thought and human action to a few lines of code. The latest effort comes from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which is looking to build “mathematical or computational models of human attention, memory, categorization, reasoning, problem solving, learning and motivation, and decision making.” The ultimate goal, according to a recent request for research proposals, is to “elucidate core computational algorithms of the mind and brain.”

Now fMRI is even probing the unconscious mind - distinguishing between real and false memories, detecting the responses associated with emotions elicited by visual images presented too briefly to be consciously perceived. We need to think now about the broader implications of the new neuro-technology. Not just because it might impinge on our privacy, on evidence in the courtroom or on shaping products to our preferences; but because it will challenge our fundental understanding of ourselves.
To René Descartes, conscious experience was the only thing that he was certain of - 'Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am’. But increasingly neuroscientists are casting doubt on the significance of consciousness. They are revealing that most of what our brains do happens below the privileged arena of awareness, and that conscious states are caused by nerve cells that have already 'made up their minds’, rather than conscious intentions which determine what our brains do.
Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.
Colin Blakemore is Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick

You say they cant, the professors say they can..........................

The bottom line is if its happening between your ears, they will eventually be able to simulate and then manipulate that same process.

Think of it like this, your brain is like a hard disk drive, its stores the data, your mind is like software it sits on top and organises that data , by changing the contents of the HDD the mind itself is manipulated.
For example if we swapped out all the memory/data relating to learning and speaking english with patterns from someone who was raised to speak japanese, your mind would then think in japanese.
The brain is just a data storage system, data is written to it by electro chemical process's.

I think the problem many people have ,esp the religious is if this technology pans out, it blows the whole god gave us free will meme.
Obviously if technology gives us the ability to read and re-write the data stored in your brain cells then the idea of free will becomes suspect.
There is nothing supernatural or spriritual about how our brains record data, its a physical process, and one that is subject to technological intervention as these experiments show.

---------- Post added at 02:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:36 PM ----------

on the topic of "voice of god"

Beyond directed sound, it’s long been known that microwaves at certain frequencies can produce an auditory effect that sounds like it’s coming from within someone’s head (and there’s the nagging question of classified microwave work at Brooks Air Force Base, that the Air Force stubbornly refuses to talk about).

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/12/the-voice-of-go

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20071217.aspx

LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?

Dr. Don R. Justesen published "Microwaves and Behavior" in The American Psychologist (Volume 30, March 1975, Number 3).
Research by NASA in the 1970s<SUP style="WHITE-SPACE: nowrap" class=Template-Fact title="This claim needs references to reliable sources from March 2009">[citation needed]</SUP> showed that this effect occurs as a result of thermal expansion of parts of the human ear around the cochlea, even at low power density. Later, signal modulation was found to produce sounds or words that appeared to originate intracranially. It was studied for its possible use in communications. Similar research conducted in the USSR studied its use in non-lethal weaponry
Sharp and Grove developed receiverless wireless voice transmission technologies for the Advanced Research Projects Agency at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, in 1973. In the above mentioned journal entry to The American Psychologist, Dr. Don Justesen reports that Sharp and Grove were readily able to hear, identify, and distinguish among the single-syllable words for digits between 1 and 10 . Justesen writes, "The sounds heard were not unlike those emitted by persons with artificial larynxes

hak · Feb 28, 2011

I have no doubt we will make a AI brain.

I just have serious doubts that you can understand a persons thought process by picking up images or sensations from any of their senses.
How a person thinks comes from much more then data imput.

---------- Post added at 07:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:17 PM ----------

The problem i have with we are just "our brains" is it's simplicity, life is not simple, the biological makeup of man in insanely complex. It is a flat 1 dimensional view of a very complex phenomenon.

mike · Feb 28, 2011

Serious doubts are fine, but you said as an absolute statement of fact "they cant"
That flys in the face of all the published reports suggesting they can.
Yes biological brains are complex, but that doesnt mean they are beyond complete understanding

To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.
"You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron," he said. "So you need ten thousand laptops."
<TABLE style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 13px; PADDING-TOP: 0px" border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=226 align=right><TBODY style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 13px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><TR style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 13px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 13px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">

The research could give insights into brain disease

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.
Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.
For example, they can show the brain a picture - say, of a flower - and follow the electrical activity in the machine.
"You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation," he said.
Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.

http://www.electropsychology.com/artificial-brain.php

Serious doubts are fine, people had serious doubts the Wright brothers could fly, people had serious doubts Dr Christian Barnard could transplant a human heart, but those who said these things "cant" be done.......were wrong

The ultimate hack: Reverse engineering the human brain

Blue Brain isn’t the only effort to reverse engineer the brain. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Defense Department’s research arm, last year gave the IBM Almaden Research Center $4.9 million for a project called “SyNAPSE,” an attempt to reverse-engineer the brain’s computational abilities to better understand its ability to sense, perceive, act, interact and understand different stimuli. Although the brain is still not well understood, “there is enough quantitative data for us to be able to begin putting together the pieces,” Dharmendra Modha, IBM Almaden’s director of cognitive computing, said earlier this year at an event celebrating the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) 125th anniversary. Modha predicted that by 2018 computers will be able to simulate the workings of the human brain.
In Scientific American‘s 2008 Special Report on Robots, Ray Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc., proposed that the fastest way to reverse engineer the brain may be to study the real thing. One condemned killer has already allowed his brain and body to be scanned, Kurzweil points out, and all 15 billion bytes of the now-digitized inmate can be accessed on the National Library of Medicine’s Web site. Another option, according to Kurzweil: microscopic robots (or “nanobots”) injected into the bloodstream and programmed to explore every capillary, monitoring the brain’s connections and neurotransmitter concentrations. — Scientific American

http://zikkir.com/science/4805

we are talking reverse engineering the brain right down to the molecular level

The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.

http://pediaview.com/openpedia/Blue_Brain

hak · Feb 28, 2011

I just have serious doubts that you can understand a persons thought process by picking up images or sensations from any of their senses.

Okay.. just to infuriate you even more..
There is no way in hell you can know what a person is thinking by knowing what information they are receiving. Poetry does not come by staring at something. Not even if it is a Thesaurus.

I'll review all your fascinating info when I have time, I do appreciate your effort.

tyder001 · Feb 28, 2011

One problem with the "it's all in da brain" stuff is this. Although, we like to "think" we are at the peak of scientifc discovery and it will all be explained it's just not true. We are in our infancy when it comes to "being" much less a science of what makes us "us." I notice on this board that some folks trot out a "sceintific" name or expereiment to "prove" their worldview but don't read much farther than that. I'm reminded of a science article I read in the paper some years ago. The headline read: PROOF OF (fill in the blank here cause this is just for example and I have forgotten what the proof was for.)
Anyway, I read the article and the sceintist they were referring to did not "claim" proof of anything. He and his team were conducting experiments to try to see if a certain theory could be applied to a certain hyphthosis. As a matter of fact some other researchers quoted in the article were already finding flaws in the research. Still, it makes you wonder how many people saw the headline and annouced to others that "PROOF" had been found? As a matter of fact very little has been proven about anything. The truth is the belief system of a human will always influence how we interpret data and how we see the world. It is always "My scientist can beat up your sceintist" Or my God can beat up your God or my world view is valid and rational while you believe in fairy tales. As for Prof Persinger I've already read some heavy criticism of his work. I've also read some supporting views of his work. But, as an old often maligned text has said. "Wisdom is known of all her children" and "Everybody heaps teachers to their own ears."

plumbbob12 · Feb 28, 2011

Hummm... Having been raked over the preverbal hot coals as to my "disconnect", you then inject your own disconnect by speaking about string theory. What does that have to do with my view of McKenna's ideas on the UFO issue, or his over use of 3 dollar words? But since you broach the topic of string theory, this is also a "pet peeve" of mine, (did not know that I had so many pets did you?). String theory is one of those improvable hypotheses, at least so far. While it is mathematically interesting, and very challenging, we have no experimental techniques to deal with such small "objects" as strings. So for now, it will remain in the realm of interesting ideas.
And, yes, I agree with soft bread. I enjoy talking about the UFO issue, and the rhetoric that goes along with it. I have no desire to take this issue so seriously that we start to “flame” each other over perceived misuse of ethos. This is the first forum that I have been on, and when it stops being fun, then I will find another recreation.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

ffice

ffice" /><o

> </o

>

softbeard · Feb 28, 2011

mike said:
LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?

Well, that will only work if you believe in God. If someone believes microwaves are putting voices in his/her head, then, if it were me, first I would tell them to shut up. If they didn't, I would start to question why they were not responding to my wish and why it sounded, very suspiciously, like a tape recording. Then finally, in desperation, I would take some aluminum foil, fashion a protective cap, put it on my head, and get some sleep.

UFO Impulsivity & Paranormal Phenomena

Free episodes:

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Forum Super Hero

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Paranormal Adept

Skilled Investigator

Skilled Investigator