UFO Impulsivity & Paranormal Phenomena

[SRL+]

This is an excellent example that demonstrates pretty conclusively that we do not directly experience the real world at all. Clearly, what we experience as the world and ourselves in it (including our thoughts) is actually a brain/mind system 3D virtual reality simulation occurring at a very different time and a very different physical location than the real world it presents itself to be! The real self and world and the experienced self and world for all practical purposes exist in two separate dimensions, realms, places or however you care to label it. What are the implications of this?

There is traction gaining in the science community by some highly credentialed researchers suggesting that in fact time and space do not exist. In other words there’s no “out there,” out there. The universe is so exquisitely fine tuned for our existence (more than 200 parameters), some researchers suggest that our form of life could only exist here. From planets (including the universe), to your kitchen table, are created within you’re conscious, and do not reside anywhere else. Just by observing the light from stars which was emitted billions of years ago, you can retroactively, and instantaneously, change the path in which that light took billions of years ago to get here. With Kepler discovering more Exoplanets than anyone could ever have imagined, you would think that the ETH hypotheses would be stronger than ever, where are they? This goes back to the Fermi-Hart Paradox. Scientists keep conducting the same experiments over, and over, and over, with the same results showing this to be the case, but are too embarrassed to admit what their results bare. In other word's ET’s phone is busted.

 

[hak]

There is no sleeping on this thread that's for sure!

You ever heard of Phantom Limb?

I am aware of the Phantom Limb issue, which is why i stated a "baby" as a baby's brain is in rapid development and that is a time when we develop most of our neural wiring..
When we are born, we have all these jumbled up neurons that haven't made any connections.. and (from what I've gathered through the years) there is die-off of neurons that aren't being used. As babies learn, the neurons (being used) develop the connections and live. Therefore I am assuming that a baby will never develop Phantom Limb syndrome and that is relegated to people with hard-wiring for the limb in place. I could be wrong.

(on a side note...) this die off may explain why many of us have a very difficult time learning languages and developing things like perfect pitch. The Asian culture, in particular the Chinese, have a much more tonal sing-song language and therefore, their neurons (as children) develop the wiring, and don't die off (of course this is just conjecture) and viola, they have a higher tendency to develop perfect pitch. I love Radio Lab, here is their perfect pitch segment
They also have a segment on Phantom Limb Syndrome.

When I stated that if a babies limb was chopped off, I assumed everyone would understand that the brain would be setting up it's neural structure in this time. I should have been more clear.
I must admit it has been a long time since I've read Oliver Sacks and my brain books so my memory on all this is quite fuzzy.

I do believe that science is revealing that the brain is much more plastic then originally thought, and that neurons do come back (to some degree) after being damaged.. HOWEVER, if the specific neuron set that governs a certain thing (for example speech ) if they die off.. They can't spring into being.

Mike,
you stated

The Guardian piece ran as follows:
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
‘Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,’ said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.

Do you have a link to said article? I'm still thinking that we aren't "reading" anyone's mind. We can map minds, we can build AI brains.. but I'm really having a difficult time with this mind reading issue..
The video you posted of the study of where people could eventually activate the image they wanted to see (through thought) that was pretty awesome, but it leads me to ask.. how did they CHOSE what they wanted to see?

I think the problem with the "mind-reading" issue is that, you would have to "map" a persons mind to be able to read it. So the idea of the military engaging the enemy with their mind-reading helmets is silly, because they would not have been able to sit their enemy down in a chair and "map their brains" over god knows how many experiments and how much time. Then they have to understand the person emotionally, and understand their emotional motivators... has their been trauma in their past that makes them act a certain way? If you know anything about somatic therapy you really begin to wonder if we keep everything in our brains alone.
I don't think it is realistic.

As for the other awesome video of the 6 second decision time...
Your asking a person to make a random decision to press the right or left button.. Obviously there is alot more activity in that decision then we would think.. but what if you introduce another element.. for example, what if there was a screen in the mri machine that would blink red or green and you would have to press the right button for red and the left button for green... and they asked you to do that fast.. what happens then?
How would you view a persons brain and decision making abilities in a sparing situation?.. when you are reacting to another persons movements.. decisions are made, but they have to be made (obviously) very fast. I wonder if a fighters brain would have different decision making activity??

 

[mike]

Do you have a link to said article?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/09/neuroscience.ethicsofscience

http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-brain-scan-that-can-read-people-s-intentions

http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...read-this-story/2007/02/09/1170524298541.html

You are adamant it cant be done but.............Dr Rees is decoding the mind in terms of conscious and unconscious processes

How would you feel if someone could read your innermost thoughts? Geraint Rees of UCL says he can. By using brain-imaging technology he’s beginning to decode thought and explore the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind.

http://rinf.com/alt-news/sicence-technology/hacking-the-mind/2029/

As for the military needing to map the targets mind first, why would they ? they are looking for the core algorithms common to all human cognitive process

Heres another example using EEG, instead of MRI.
Same results though different time lag, clearly the MRI is more sensitive

 

[hak]

I think we have a different understanding of what "reading minds" is.
With this technology we may draw conjuncture on what someone may be thinking. And we may have limited success.

The big problem I see, is that in order to draw conclusions about what someone is thinking, we have to know that person in some depth. Which means, we would have to map their brains, brains are organic and elastic, brains will change through time Some neural connections will die back, and some will grow depending on what that person is doing at the time. So what may have excited some neurons a few years ago, might not have much of the same effect today.

You bring up algorithms, and I'll be honest I'm not sure exactly how this would fit in the picture? I'm not exactly sure how they function. I do know that Google maps often misplaces places and Google maps uses algorithms.

If the army made up some magical device that could read a soldiers mind... then I would raise an army of altered minds. Perhaps an army of hydrocepahlics(?), and maybe a sociopath or two, a female general in menopause. And my army would be comprised of people from as many different cultures as possible, everyone would speak a different language or two. Perhaps some of them might have had a stroke or one of the various brain diseases that would restructure the neurons. Maybe joey has adhd and sue ann has bipolar disorder... I'm hoping you can see the point.

I would propose that this technology will not be very accurate based simple on the number of variables, it might be a good base-line for a "normal" person at a certain age..etc..etc.. but it will run into some serious issues.

Your articles are very compelling.. but I think when they say "read minds" they really should say "infer thoughts with some form of success in a person from this culture, no brain disease, of this age and sex and whose brain has been pre-mapped", that I could believe.

 

[mike]

What you think they should say, and what they actually say and claim to be able to do are two different things.
You are entitled to your opinion, but the vast bulk of the data ive posted says otherwise.
The desktop of any numbers of computers are often different but the algorithms that are used to write the data to the HDD are the same, now you could as per your army of altered minds create new algorithms to write data to a HDD, but the human brain ? how would you alter the way data is written to the brain.
Libets experiment works on males and females of varying ages

Libet's results were eagerly adopted by the deniers of free will to indicate that the mind had been made up unconsciously, long before any awareness of "conscious will."
Psychologist Daniel Wegner thinks that conscious will may be just an epiphenomenon, something that is caused by brain events, not the cause of such events. As he put it in his 2002 book The Illusion of Conscious Will,

We don't know what specific unconscious mental processes the RP might represent....The position of conscious will in the time line suggests perhaps that the experience of will is a link in a causal chain leading to action, but in fact it might not even be that. It might just be a loose end — one of those things, like the action, that is caused by prior brain and mental events. (The Illusion of Conscious Will, MIT Press, p.55)
​

The Grand Illusion:
Different strands of research on the senses over the past decade suggest that the brave cognitive scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists who dare to tackle the problem of consciousness are chasing after the wrong thing. If consciousness seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts, then I suggest this is the illusion.
First we must be clear what is meant by the term “illusion”. To say that consciousness is an illusion is not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that it is not what it seems to be―more like a mirage or a visual illusion. And if consciousness is not what it seems, no wonder it’s proving such a mystery.

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm

[video=google;6958873142520847424]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6958873142520847424&ei=p9E3Ss_UN4Xt-AaKx5Fz&q=sue+blackmore+2005+skeptics&hl=en&client=firefox-a#[/video]


Study after study using multiple subjects shows a consistancy in data retreival

Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.
A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.
It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.
Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.
Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.
In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.
Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.
“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.

In a famous 2004 study, a research group at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, did a high-tech version of the Pepsi Challenge, scanning the brains of people drinking samples of Coke or Pepsi. For half of them, Pepsi produced more activity in the brain areas associated with pleasure and reward, and they said that they preferred it. But when the test was repeated, with the participants aware they were drinking Coke, many of them shifted their preference and the change of minds correlated with activity in brain regions involved in memory and decision-making. The knowledge of what they were drinking changed their choice. The bad news for Pepsi is that image and branding are at least as important as taste.
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.

Thanks to better brain imaging and biological insights, we're closing in on the neurons of consciousness and the subtleties of our mental machinery

http://www.newscientist.com/article...as-to-change-science-neuroscience.html?page=1

To overcome the above limitations, my laboratory has engineered a novel technology which implements transcranial pulsed ultrasound to remotely and directly stimulate brain circuits without requiring surgery. Further, we have shown this ultrasonic neuromodulation approach confers a spatial resolution approximately five times greater than TMS and can exert its effects upon subcortical brain circuits deep within the brain.
A portion of our initial work has been supported by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) where we have been working to develop methods for encoding sensory data onto the cortex using pulsed ultrasound

http://science.dodlive.mil/2010/09/01/remote-control-of-brain-activity-using-ultrasound/
​

 

[hak]

What you think they should say, and what they actually say and claim to be able to do are two different things.

They are using hyperbole, a common construct in language, and great for getting grants, backing, press etc...
I've reviewed the information you have showed me with at least one eye. Very cool stuff like I said, but the "mind reading" is a hyperbole, extrapolation and conjecture based on their experiments which seem to be very simplistic, and repeatable in a lab. I don't think you should be so literal in your acceptance and interpretations of writings and speech and even experiments.

Libet & Susan Black don't have answers, just more questions and i think that was the point in her lecture.. how do we get out of the Cartesian theater.. and I think (personally speaking) meditation is a great way to go about it. It only makes sense to me that you have to start the notion of activity before you have it. But there are many more questions that arise. The Libet's experiment is a very simple set of circumstances. And doesn't tell me anything more then, if someone asks you to make a choice, your decision circuits have to activate. Perhaps, our "feeling of consciousness" is simply delayed.. because our chemical impulses have to waid through the thick soup of biology, and neurons. That doesn't negate consciousness, it just says we are slow. However, before you make a decision, you are in a state of indecisiveness. Perhaps the delay in our circuits is our state of indecisiveness.

To first study consciousness, you have to set it down in concrete terms. It has to be something that is measurable and I think that is the big problem with trying to tackle this philosophical question with science. The science can help philosopher's in their arguments, and perhaps give them more of a focus. But there are still way to many questions before we can get answers. Perhaps if people could agree on a concrete understanding or even a mathematical equation of consciousness, perhaps then we could let the scientists define the way they need to.

All of this really brings to light that you can apply the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to any question and study you perform.

 

[SRL+]

There is no sleeping on this thread that's for sure!
I am aware of the Phantom Limb issue, which is why i stated a "baby" as a baby's brain is in rapid development and that is a time when we develop most of our neural wiring..
When we are born, we have all these jumbled up neurons that haven't made any connections.. and (from what I've gathered through the years) there is die-off of neurons that aren't being used. As babies learn, the neurons (being used) develop the connections and live. Therefore I am assuming that a baby will never develop Phantom Limb syndrome and that is relegated to people with hard-wiring for the limb in place. I could be wrong.

(on a side note...) this die off may explain why many of us have a very difficult time learning languages and developing things like perfect pitch. The Asian culture, in particular the Chinese, have a much more tonal sing-song language and therefore, their neurons (as children) develop the wiring, and don't die off (of course this is just conjecture) and viola, they have a higher tendency to develop perfect pitch. I love Radio Lab, here is their perfect pitch segment
They also have a segment on Phantom Limb Syndrome.

When I stated that if a babies limb was chopped off, I assumed everyone would understand that the brain would be setting up it's neural structure in this time. I should have been more clear.
I must admit it has been a long time since I've read Oliver Sacks and my brain books so my memory on all this is quite fuzzy.

I do believe that science is revealing that the brain is much more plastic then originally thought, and that neurons do come back (to some degree) after being damaged.. HOWEVER, if the specific neuron set that governs a certain thing (for example speech ) if they die off.. They can't spring into being.

Mike,
you stated
Do you have a link to said article? I'm still thinking that we aren't "reading" anyone's mind. We can map minds, we can build AI brains.. but I'm really having a difficult time with this mind reading issue..
The video you posted of the study of where people could eventually activate the image they wanted to see (through thought) that was pretty awesome, but it leads me to ask.. how did they CHOSE what they wanted to see?

I think the problem with the "mind-reading" issue is that, you would have to "map" a persons mind to be able to read it. So the idea of the military engaging the enemy with their mind-reading helmets is silly, because they would not have been able to sit their enemy down in a chair and "map their brains" over god knows how many experiments and how much time. Then they have to understand the person emotionally, and understand their emotional motivators... has their been trauma in their past that makes them act a certain way? If you know anything about somatic therapy you really begin to wonder if we keep everything in our brains alone.
I don't think it is realistic.

As for the other awesome video of the 6 second decision time...
Your asking a person to make a random decision to press the right or left button.. Obviously there is alot more activity in that decision then we would think.. but what if you introduce another element.. for example, what if there was a screen in the mri machine that would blink red or green and you would have to press the right button for red and the left button for green... and they asked you to do that fast.. what happens then?
How would you view a persons brain and decision making abilities in a sparing situation?.. when you are reacting to another persons movements.. decisions are made, but they have to be made (obviously) very fast. I wonder if a fighters brain would have different decision making activity??

Ingo Swann and other psychic spies who worked for the CIA, via the Stanford Research Institute, remotely viewed (RV), various targets including underground bases in Russia, with some degree of success during the cold war. There is an instance in which Ingo Swann recalls engaging another form of consciousness while performing (RV). So to a certain degree this has already been performed. Additionally in (RV), it appears that the viewers are able to traverse time to an extent. In the future it may be possible to scan and retrieve past memories and impressions. Even memories and impressions long ago forgotten.

 

[hak]

S.R.L.

I'm not sure I follow your point?
If your point is that people can (on some level) read minds. I do tend to agree. I don't know how successful these CIA programs were, but I've experienced enough personal weirdness to believe that there is more to this rodeo show.
Not to say that I don't try to be reasonable, remove my ego when learning something, but we are all mirrors of our beliefs.
Mike's info has me asking more questions then formulating answers, or drawing the same conclusions he has. I'm sure much of the debate is over semantics. But hey that's what good debates are about, developing understandings... learning (which i have), and critical thinking(which i'm trying to apply).

 

[SRL+]

Here’s Harold Puthoff PhD, Stanford U. In the 70's & 80's he directed a CIA/DIA-funded program. Puthoff relates how Ingo Swann was able to perturb a “imperturbable” instrument called a quark dectector, buried under ground. He shows the actual graph of the results. Because of the classification of the project, it could never be reviewed. The program initially began in 1972, and ended in 1990. The program may have held some validity having lasted that long. Perhaps someone could try to explain this. Also included with this clip is a technical outline of remote viewing. There's one part that states, "the TRV techiques result in an accurate transfer of information from the viewer's unconscious mind into concsious awareness". About Technical Remote Viewing

S.R.L.

I'm not sure I follow your point?
If your point is that people can (on some level) read minds. I do tend to agree. I don't know how successful these CIA programs were, but I've experienced enough personal weirdness to believe that there is more to this rodeo show.
Not to say that I don't try to be reasonable, remove my ego when learning something, but we are all mirrors of our beliefs.
Mike's info has me asking more questions then formulating answers, or drawing the same conclusions he has. I'm sure much of the debate is over semantics. But hey that's what good debates are about, developing understandings... learning (which i have), and critical thinking(which i'm trying to apply).

 

[trainedobserver]

As that experiment shows our subconcious mind makes the decisions, not our concious mind. Our concious mind is the last to know, but it takes credit for it anyway

I think it shows the physical brain rather than some subconscious element of the mind is making decisions. The mind seems to be like a consciousnesses organ of the human body that emerges from and feeds back into the machinery of the physical brain in a time delayed and physically remote manner. That is to say what is experienced is actually the experiencer themselves rather than the object detected by the senses. When I say physical brain I'm thinking of the real-world object that we cannot directly experience and which logically and scientifically speaking is invisible and largely immaterial. (scratches head) Given that what we think of as the physical reality that we directly experience is actually no different in substance than a dream or hallucination (whatever medium makes up consciousness) and the actual physical body is a organized mass of subatomic particles, wave-forms, or whatever the actual noumena of those phenomena actually are, the real-world sounds like the classical notion of spirit. Weirdness.

 

[hak]

SRL
All I can say is, if we assume that is true... whoa..
My next question is about the logo for PSI Tech, why do you suppose they use the eye in a triangle? Any idea?

 

[SRL+]

The eye of providence?

 

[hak]

Right, I've had a very odd experience with said eye, which I don't really want to go into in case someone thinks I'm crazy..
This experience led me to believe that the eye is perhaps a more tangible phenomenon rather then just an archetypal symbol. I'm just trying to find the right person to ask. So far, I've had no luck.
The experience did make me wonder if there might not be something more to many of our archetype symbols.

 

[SRL+]

That would be a question for Chris O'brien.

 

[hak]

I hadn't thought about that.
Thank You!

 

[SRL+]

He has Carl Jung's Red Book. I'm sure he's finished reading it by now.

 

[hak]

I know I'm not a good writer, but the last time I read anything from Jung, I couldn't help thinking he wasn't that good of a writer. Language is a harsh mistress.

 

[softbeard]

I watched Susan Blackmore's video presentation and she brings up interesting points and interesting experiments. But like most of these presenters, she trails off near the end, and I don't blame her. The subject is enormously complicated and it involves all areas of science simply because one is trying to explain, essentially, the existence of the universe and reality. And summing that up in a few paragraphs, or even in an hour talk, is a difficult proposition at best.
However, what I would note is that I think a meta-analysis of all science branches is essential in trying to address the question of what conciousness is. And I feel such a meta-analysis must include quantum physics at its heart for it to be meaningful, since quantum physics is what describes reality. In trying to describe what the brain is, you are dealing with an organ, that I feel acts as a kind of 'conciousness-amplifier'. The brain is itself, at its heart, is only dead matter, which exists in a quantum state. Conciousness, you, the observer is required to collapse the quantum probability wave-state into reality, whether we're dealing with the brain or any other organ of the body.
And all this gives me a headache.:redface:

 

[hak]

It makes me dizzy too. And I don't know much about quantum mechanics to even enter it into the equation.. but it seems that it needs to be in the equation to even contemplate the question with any understanding of it's weirdness. I totally can't spell either.. the joys of dyslexia.

 

[softbeard]

Your spelling seems fine to me, hak.