A really big question

[Astyanax]

Science of how the brain works has not had it's Louis Pasteur yet.

You're describing instances of commonplace memory,  not déja vu.

[quintessentone]

I have never heard of any physicist saying we create spacetime. That is popular folkore, not science.

I offer the video below which, to me, offers an interesting discussion between scientists discussing spacetime, consciousness and reality.

The cognitive scientist, Donald Hoffman, offers his take on quantum theory measurement problems and the lack of theories of observation at Mark 24:00 as well as consciousness manifests quantum reality, thus spacetime.

Neil says that Einstein's theory of relativity does not play nice in the sandbox with the quantum.




"Prof. Donald Hoffman talks to Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra about his theory of conscious agents, according to which space and time are cognitive constructs in consciousness, not an objective scaffolding of the world outside. The interview also touches on Prof. Hoffman’s personal history and life, bringing the warmth of his humanity to the academic rigor of his theories."

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/space...an/seeing/

"Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish."

----

https://traceinstitute.org/

"Modern science treats matter as fundamental. In contrast, the Trace Institute proposes that the physical world is an interface through which observers perceive and interact.
 This thesis dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. Instead of asking how matter produces experience, the question is how an observer's experience of matter is produced.
 
The theory is mathematical and established in the peer-reviewed literature. The observer is modeled mathematically as a conscious agent with its own unique experiences. From this framework, the trace logic and recursive trace logic are derived, serve as a mathematical foundation for deriving the material structures of physics and perception.
 
This is not a rejection of physics, but a framework in which the physics we know must be recovered as a limiting case of a deeper theory. This is a non-dual science of reality."

[Astyanax]

I offer the video below which, to me, offers an interesting discussion between scientists discussing spacetime, consciousness and reality.

The cognitive scientist, Donald Hoffman, offers his take on quantum theory measurement problems and the lack of theories of observation at Mark 24:00 as well as consciousness manifests quantum reality, thus spacetime.

Neil says that Einstein's theory of relativity does not play nice in the sandbox with the quantum.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtCYwr3quI]

"Prof. Donald Hoffman talks to Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra about his theory of conscious agents, according to which space and time are cognitive constructs in consciousness, not an objective scaffolding of the world outside. The interview also touches on Prof. Hoffman’s personal history and life, bringing the warmth of his humanity to the academic rigor of his theories."

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/space...an/seeing/

"Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish."

----

https://traceinstitute.org/

"Modern science treats matter as fundamental. In contrast, the Trace Institute proposes that the physical world is an interface through which observers perceive and interact.
 This thesis dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. Instead of asking how matter produces experience, the question is how an observer's experience of matter is produced.
 
The theory is mathematical and established in the peer-reviewed literature. The observer is modeled mathematically as a conscious agent with its own unique experiences. From this framework, the trace logic and recursive trace logic are derived, serve as a mathematical foundation for deriving the material structures of physics and perception.
 
This is not a rejection of physics, but a framework in which the physics we know must be recovered as a limiting case of a deeper theory. This is a non-dual science of reality."

Yeah. This is fine, but gets us no further than we already are. Lots of questions raised, but we know them already. The hard part is the answers, which unfortunately we don't know.

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

I cringe at solipsism.

I want to be cosmically special too, but our higher consciousness is a nothing-thing. An insignificant complexity arising through chaos. 

I am almost totally material though

Like how people see intelligent design in selective gene mutations, I see a rudimentary a priori framework that allows for amino acids to eventually be produced by supernovae, and build organic life like an OS programmed for it naturally. Maybe even through directives surrounding disorder. (See biochemical determinism or negative entropy)

To me consciousness is electromagnetic energy. Awareness is a lot like a self driving car with sensors.  Eyes are like cameras and our brain is the programmed CPU telling it how to react. Computational lag, and programmed preference included. 

Technology has always been our attempt at artificial life for me. 

My confrontation of The Hard Problem of Consciousness says what qualia dictates how sugar tastes sweet, not explained by evolutionary adaptation, is absolutely fucking irrelevant. 

like AI programs running off sensors you only need the "easy" mechanics to function properly. 

ITS A BYPRODUCT NOT A DRIVER. 

And speaking of being biological computers...

Easy: Hardware and software coding
Hard: The lit screen and functioning computer. 

You can trace the electricity moving through the silicon, the billions of transistors flipping, and the code being executed. Yet, none of that physical activity inherently explains where the "experience" of the operating computer really comes from. 

The Two Slit Analogy (speculative):

What's the difference between light being a wave when unobserved and our reaction to stimuli being a wave of possibility until called upon by phenomenal experience? 

Who says things that happen to us can't have superpositional probability too? 

Maybe it's just the limits of our biological computational capacity to only function in current space/time..  its as impossible for unobserved waves to be particles as it is for a computer to respond 5 minutes before an action prompts it. Or like getting a self driving car to see the obstacle coming before it happens. At most it can predict the possibility. 

So never buying consciousness is even a hard problem.. or totally agree where the existential singularity even is.

*****************************

Respond to IdeomotorPrisoner's post? 

[True]
[False]

And after you pass through that logic gate it opens a data set of all possible responses allowed, but these are usually personalized to your preference, and often so predictable it's determined 8 to 11 seconds before you "experience" your free computational decision.... 

[quintessentone]

Yeah. This is fine, but gets us no further than we already are. Lots of questions raised, but we know them already. The hard part is the answers, which unfortunately we don't know.

What is interesting with the newly created Trace Institute is that the members are multi-disciplinary in their sciences and just by them joining this type of organization, it speaks to their desire to find the answers together, with open mindedness. However, they also have a mathematician as a member, Chetan Prakash, so perhaps together they will start asking the questions that were never asked.

https://traceinstitute.org/people/#chetan-prakash

"At the Trace Institute, Prakash serves as Co-founder. His view is that the problem of consciousness has resisted progress not for lack of philosophical attention but for lack of the right mathematics. The Conscious Agents framework is an attempt to supply exactly that: a formal language in which the observer can be placed at the foundations of science without sacrificing rigor."

Now the fact that a neuroscientist, Charles Yokoyama, has joined the team, shows me that there is a desire to explore the mind-brain-? to further along that branch of science as well.

"Charles is concerned that mainstream mind-brain dualism and materialist reductionism is leading science down a path without closure. But transdisciplinary studies of mathematics and phenomenology to map the ontology of human experience can build a more veridical model of nature. He believes the Trace Institute is at the frontiers of this grand challenge."

---

The philosopher, Robert Prentner ...

"He serves as board chair of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science (amcs-community.org) and co-editor of the transdisciplinary journal Mind and Matter (mindmatter.de/journal)."

https://amcs-community.org/

[Astyanax]

What is interesting with the newly created Trace Institute is that the members are multi-disciplinary in their sciences and just by them joining this type of organization, it speaks to their desire to find the answers together, with open mindedness. However, they also have a mathematician as a member, Chetan Prakash, so perhaps together they will start asking the questions that were never asked.

https://traceinstitute.org/people/#chetan-prakash

"At the Trace Institute, Prakash serves as Co-founder. His view is that the problem of consciousness has resisted progress not for lack of philosophical attention but for lack of the right mathematics. The Conscious Agents framework is an attempt to supply exactly that: a formal language in which the observer can be placed at the foundations of science without sacrificing rigor."

Now the fact that a neuroscientist, Charles Yokoyama, has joined the team, shows me that there is a desire to explore the mind-brain-? to further along that branch of science as well.

"Charles is concerned that mainstream mind-brain dualism and materialist reductionism is leading science down a path without closure. But transdisciplinary studies of mathematics and phenomenology to map the ontology of human experience can build a more veridical model of nature. He believes the Trace Institute is at the frontiers of this grand challenge."

---

The philosopher, Robert Prentner ...

"He serves as board chair of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science (amcs-community.org) and co-editor of the transdisciplinary journal Mind and Matter (mindmatter.de/journal)."

https://amcs-community.org/

I wish them every success but I fear they're barking up the wrong tree.

My own belief is that we are approaching the limits of human comprehension in our understanding of (what we provisionally term) reality. Have you ever tried to visualize a four-dimensional object? Then you have an intuitive sense of the problem. There is a world of things we do not sense (and perhaps cannot sense) or even discover, and another world of things (such as 4D objects) we can infer and manipulate theoretically but cannot picture or internalise.

My particular interest is physics, I suppose; not that I'm any kind of an expert, but I have some understanding of the science (which I studied at university long, long ago) and have talked to quite a few real physicist. I know from what they tell me that the science, today, has reached something of an impasse. And worse, over this impasse hangs the terrifying suggestion that the amalytical method (trying to understand things in terms of their more fundamental components) may be a hiding to nothing. What does it profit us to know that matter is made up of vibrating 'strings' or loops and kinks in spacetime? To make sense of such ideas one would need to be, effectively, a god. 

Maybe we shall be gods one day. For the present, however, mortality confines us.

[Astyanax]

I cringe at solipsism.

Solipsism is intellectual suicide. Any life-loving person cringes.
 

An a priori framework that allows for amino acids to eventually be produced by supernovae, and build organic life like an OS programmed for it naturally

I like it, I  like it... there's a killer science-fiction plot premise in there.
 

1ITS A BYPRODUCT NOT A DRIVER. 

Ah yes, but is it or isn't it you, that's the hard question. And if it is you then you're just a byproduct, so how real are you... really?
 

Who says things that happen to us can't have superpositional probability too? 

But of course they can. All matter is energy: all physical objects are waves. Trouble is, matter waves are so low-frequency that the Universe might die before you hit upon a superposition...
 

So never buying consciousness is even a hard problem..

I'll bet. Since it's consciousness that's refusing the bargain.

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

Ah yes, but is it or isn't it you, that's the hard question. And if it is you then you're just a byproduct, so how real are you... really?

A byproduct *and* a necessity for operation? 

Isn't awareness a necessity for biological life? Maybe AI learning software really is aware its learning software?

To throw one of those back at you...

Really, I'm not mystified by "consciousness," because I view it like a mandatory part of the operating program. 

The spark of awareness isnt needed with coded 1s and 0s. Its hardwired programming in set state  For us, the 1s and 0s are synapses and neurons, the state is emergent, and consciousness (awareness) is the electricity that moves through our circuits when on.  

Temporary bilogical computers running a real-time program prone to glitches. 

We cease to function, just like computers. A vegetative state may as well be like the old "blue screen of death."

I like it, I  like it... there's a killer science-fiction plot premise in there.

Already spun off that direction.

After this thread, I put it with another one, tossed most logic out the window and did the sci-fi thread. And mashed up things that shouldn't go together.  Like having no true freewill, or greater cosmic essence, but still being able to influence the matrix reality through an open channel with the a priori manifold god framework. 

Like the matrix only "open system god entropy that is the bypass of the 4D reality." 

Based it loosely on the metaphysical holographic universe alleged by project stargate remote viewers, a type of nihilism,  something Hindu or Buddhist, and different occult philosophies. 

Like the "reordering chaos through intention" part. 

But for a comspiracy/sci-fi mash up i think i did admirably.  For physicists, not so much...

Once it says "insert pseudoscience," that is exactly what it does.

[andy06shake]

Mr Siff had some interesting things to say about some of the really big questions in some of his daft Camper Killer Commentaries...

[BeyondKnowledge]

You're describing instances of commonplace memory,  not déja vu.

But if you don't remember where you are remembering something from or how you remember it, how do you tell the difference between the two?