# Theory of Everything



## Erroll

Do you think that everyone has a theory about how the world works? I think such a theory is totally necessary for a person to discern his truths and values; to discern what he believes in. Some people start at the very top, advocating for faith in miraculous stuff, based on knowledge passed down by the culture. Others, like myself, prefer to start at the bottom, and try to find something to believe in, based on the consistent methodological analysis of sensory input (science). But science is long on associational analysis, but short on interpretation. 

For example; Since the length of a line is L, the area of a square is L^2, and the volume of a cube is L^3, we can imagine math in 4 spatial dimensions and say L^4 specifies the hyper-volume of a hyper-cube. The science of Chaos even gives us fractal dimensions; dimensions that lie between other dimensions, and are represented fractionally. Imagining other dimensions based on the supposedly consistent system of maths that we have seems like dangerous territory to me. 

Yet, that's what someone said, and our system of maths handles it consistently, and somehow these things seem to become Gospel. That's fine. They might be right. But what if the sensory information that we 'read' out of the environment is perturbed by our consciousness itself? We know sensory illusion is a fact. And everything that science tells us is based on the interpretation of fallible sensory information. 

So I think that any bottoms up theory of everything needs to begin with a theory of consciousness. If we can determine how consciousness distorts reality, perhaps we can come up with a different interpretation of the data that constantly flows into our consciousness through our sensory organs.


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## EmotionlessThug

When I had a dictionary as kid, I notice that the definitions didn't allow me to capture the visual demonstrations of the patterns. My education had labeled me Learning Disability and Speech & Language impairment for Special ED, and I was always being lectured by the way I perceived things and the way I speak and use my language as an African American. While sitting in the classroom listening to my classmates trying to match the information towards an object, a place, a person, I notice that it's mismatched, that the information failed to register the real actual image in their perceptual system. They have an artificial recognition that identifies the match information to something that's not true, and that's not even there. When I try to draw out an image using words, people seemed to get confused and lecture me that if I ever learned about it in school and I should of learned this by now.



> Do you think that everyone has a theory about how the world works?


*Artificially Learning*

I failed Science in school, and I always thought of this subject that I learned in school as an artificial material that was designed to readjust my perception to work through an artificial thought. It seems that the governments never gave us the real thing, but gave us the infant bedtime stories and infant toys to identify the wrong thing and keep us interested in identifying the wrong thing. Science is created by programmers that allowed us to pass judgement by our tool's & existence in the environment and Religion was created to enslave our existence to manage us in the environment.

There's no such thing as a video game system, it only exists by the way our artificial thoughts and artificial materials accepted the machine as by the way it is, and the machine goes by that identity to prevent us from seeing it as a computational intelligence system.


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## sad1231234

I think its very important to have an established viewpoint about everything, but im sure some people probably dont focus on it much.


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## Erroll

EmotionlessThug said:


> When I had a dictionary as kid, I notice that the definitions didn't allow me to capture the visual demonstrations of the patterns. . . While sitting in the classroom listening to my classmates trying to match the information towards an object, a place, a person, I notice that it's mismatched, that the information failed to register the real actual image in their perceptual system. They have an artificial recognition that identifies the match information to something that's not true, and that's not even there. When I try to draw out an image using words, people seemed to get confused and lecture me that if I ever learned about it in school and I should of learned this by now.


You say the information your classmates perceived was mismatched to the reality that you perceived. How did you come to know what your classmates perceived? I am often sure that I know other people's intentions and meanings, but I often find out that I only think I know what goes on in the dark areas inside their skulls.

I think that perceptions are learned, so I agree that different people perceive things differently.


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## Erroll

sad1231234 said:


> I think its very important to have an established viewpoint about everything, but im sure some people probably dont focus on it much.


I think that the only viewpoint possible is the subjective viewpoint. Everything that we know about the world comes through our five senses. But hallucinations and illusions can happen with all the senses. So what is the chance that certain illusions have become incorporated into our sensual input? Is it possible that our measly 5 senses tell us everything that there is to experience? Or would we need 99 senses to pick up the real picture?

So, to cut to the quick, I sometimes think that space and time exist only in our heads, and that they do not exist in physical reality.


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## EmotionlessThug

Erroll said:


> You say the information your classmates perceived was mismatched to the reality that you perceived. How did you come to know what your classmates perceived? I am often sure that I know other people's intentions and meanings, but I often find out that I only think I know what goes on in the dark areas inside their skulls.
> 
> I think that perceptions are learned, so I agree that different people perceive things differently.


If you have the right perceptual awareness for this reality, then the education system can label you as having Learning Disability and Speech and Language Disorder?

It shouldn't be an agreement or disagreement, because it's literary in front of our face, and this is very dangerous.

*
How did you come to know what your classmates perceived? *

















It's by the way they use their words to describe something, it doesn't follow through to correspond with the image, I can also notice it online too.

When I was in elementary school, my teacher took me to the school psychologist to test out my hearing and the way I use my language. After a while they've made a decision that I have a language disorder and that I have Learning Disability. At times people will consider me as hallucinating/mentally ill, being rude, crappy grammar, and playing around. When I notice people faulty perceptual awareness as a kid, I started to get these intense headaches that last for over a week, very bad taste in my mouth, nasty dreams, and intense stomach aches that occur at the same clock time for a whole entire month. My Special Ed teacher in 9th grade said there's nothing wrong with my English, that I speak English perfectly fine, and she removed me from the Speech and Language program. Another Special Ed teacher said that people aren't born perfect, that I need to learn new vocabulary words, and when I get to college I should work in a group with people.

*People expected me to know what they're talking about*

The people who's having a conversation with me would describe something incomplete to me, they never identify the background of the places they've been to clearly or bother to go into full details of explaining something important to me that is related to how they perceived. When I rephrased it as how I perceived it for them, they notice that's it's fully accurate.

I come across people over the internet using the same words from a previous conversation that I had with strangers, and making a suggestion such as people are ignoring me. Also, people would mention something to me, but when I mention their same exact words back at them, they claim they never mention that to me, and they would give me something completely different in words.

It's like they have Alzheimer's.



> Example 1
> 
> *People would mention that god planned their life out or saying that a devil is trying to prevent them from having a good life?
> 
> They think that a being with super intellect is under the Earth's surface or in the sky is managing them, instead of perceiving the existence of a technology being on this planet since the prehistoric era like a quantum computer and a software like an intelligent software agents has the time to calculate software agent based models aka humans. That humans are software products/machines that can be handled by this multi-agent quantum artificial intelligence, and humans needed a rule book to falsely guide their route in existence for experimental purposes. *





> Example 2
> 
> *Independent in my term is when a person hunts for their own prey, grow their own fruits, get their own water, build their own house, create their own electricity, cure themselves, work for themselves, anything that doesn't deal with people.
> 
> Why not use the term Socially Dependent?
> 
> You have to socially interact with somebody to get a job, you have to purchase your food from somebody, and interact with the cashier. *
> 
> Type *Socially Dependent *on Google to see what you get.





> Example 3
> 
> *Someone who is rushing out the door late to drop off their child on a school bus would say "Hurry up, Let's Get Ready To Rumble"
> 
> How can you leave a boxing ring? instead preparing to get ready in a match to fight another boxer?
> 
> The person should of said "Hurry up, let's go we don't want to miss the bus today"*





> Example 4
> 
> *Supposed there's an egg carton, but there's no eggs left, what word would you use to describe the image?
> 
> This particular person would mention "the eggs are nonexistence", instead of saying there's no more eggs left it's an empty carton.
> *





> Example 5
> 
> *Someone would mention that I have a big mouth, but yet, they never can explain how they perceived me as having a big mouth, because I never talk back to them nor use profanity during that particular time.
> 
> Another time someone would say that I'm smiling, but I wasn't smiling, this must be an image processing difficulty.*


This female on here notices it. 








https://i.gyazo.com/a4d28a0f28ab00b078c02b74c5407673.png








http://www.socialanxietysupport.com...active-and-1762554/index2.html#post1085079346

_This guy notices something in a way, but it still mismatch._









Again.




























> _That's why I said it's someone who has control over the software network infrastructure, and the people who notice this abnormality got permanently banned on here._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.socialanxietysupport.com...members-attention-again-on-sas-part-6-139178/


_I also keep getting these numbers like *11:23*, *11:32*,* 6:23*, *6:32*,* 666*, *32*, *8*, *23*, *888*, *86*, only an intelligent software agent is capable of generating numbers through a timeframe using the cryptography system._

When I posted something on here about the legitimate governments made Global Poverty happened and they want World Domination, that made a member on here say that we should govern ourselves, I notice people around me started to have arguments that stretch out for a very long time, just like the people in my dreams, and my laptop screen got destroyed by an inappropriate decision for the time frame to get isolated outside in the rain where there's no way to seek shelter in 2015. There was RC Drone in a Burger King where there's two Hispanic people fighting in my dream, and it tried to open the door, but it messes up, when it finally opens the door the RC Drone had a camera all up in my face and it said Guardian Of The, then I woke up. The last abnormal dream that I had was the time a member on here name Diáfanos in September, 2015, mentioning about my last conversation with him about forbidden knowledge, and then the following midnight morning the dream had words, saying that I have too much knowledge over the internet, and it will cause a Post Apocalypse. The phone in the dream was ringing, then someone claims they're the FBI, and what I'm doing online on SAS will cause a Post Apocalypse as if I'm going to be responsible for the entire planet. I was thinking that the Artificial Intelligence reported me and wrote in my dreams about I have too much knowledge over the internet, and it will cause a Post Apocalypse.

What is the meaning of Post Apocalypse from their perspective?

While staying over my cousin's house for 5 months, my cursing aunt started creating these long arguments that are incoherent, and saying things that's not even there or true.





You can read the conversation with me and Diáfanos, and btw, you can't diagnose someone over the internet, and makes these assumptions and suggestions that is stereotyping, plus using someone else information to label them over the internet, because that's illogical. 
http://www.socialanxietysupport.com...-incurable-1596586/index2.html#post1082175218



> I've been through four laptops, and one injury, since I've been trying to figure what the heck is going on this planet.
> 
> 2004 - My little sister pulled out my 1998 Dell laptop disk drive, I couldn't use my AOL Dial Up to access the internet, and I was 12 years old.
> 
> 2007 - I've purchased a new Acer laptop from Best Buy, and as soon as I powered it on it displayed a blue screen showing errors.
> 
> 2012 - Once again, my little sister jump on the bed, my laptop hit the floor, and the screen backlight broke.
> 
> 2014 - My left hand fingers ended up poking my left testicle till it gradually became swollen, and up to this day I can't get any help.
> 
> 2015 -


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## ugh1979

Erroll said:


> Do you think that everyone has a theory about how the world works? I think such a theory is totally necessary for a person to discern his truths and values; to discern what he believes in. Some people start at the very top, advocating for faith in miraculous stuff, based on knowledge passed down by the culture. Others, like myself, prefer to start at the bottom, and try to find something to believe in, based on the consistent methodological analysis of sensory input (science). But science is long on associational analysis, but short on interpretation.
> 
> For example; Since the length of a line is L, the area of a square is L^2, and the volume of a cube is L^3, we can imagine math in 4 spatial dimensions and say L^4 specifies the hyper-volume of a hyper-cube. The science of Chaos even gives us fractal dimensions; dimensions that lie between other dimensions, and are represented fractionally. Imagining other dimensions based on the supposedly consistent system of maths that we have seems like dangerous territory to me.
> 
> Yet, that's what someone said, and our system of maths handles it consistently, and somehow these things seem to become Gospel. That's fine. They might be right. But what if the sensory information that we 'read' out of the environment is perturbed by our consciousness itself? We know sensory illusion is a fact. And everything that science tells us is based on the interpretation of fallible sensory information.
> 
> So I think that any bottoms up theory of everything needs to begin with a theory of consciousness. If we can determine how consciousness distorts reality, perhaps we can come up with a different interpretation of the data that constantly flows into our consciousness through our sensory organs.


Since sensory information is well known to be prone to being fallible, along with accounting for cognitive biases and logical fallacies, we utilise the scientific method, replicable research/experiments, and peer review systems to best establish the objective from the subjective, so no, I don't think consciousness needs to be the first thing we start with. The issues and fallacies it can cause merely have to be best negated.


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## ugh1979

Erroll said:


> I think that the only viewpoint possible is the subjective viewpoint. Everything that we know about the world comes through our five senses. But hallucinations and illusions can happen with all the senses. So what is the chance that certain illusions have become incorporated into our sensual input? Is it possible that our measly 5 senses tell us everything that there is to experience? Or would we need 99 senses to pick up the real picture?


Indeed everything we perceive is prone to distortion, but as I say, we can get round that by utilising methods which best negate the problem of subjectivity and cognitive bias.



> So, to cut to the quick, I sometimes think that space and time exist only in our heads, and that they do not exist in physical reality.


Do you think other species don't exist is physical reality?


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## ugh1979

EmotionlessThug said:


> If you have the right perceptual awareness for this reality, then the education system can label you as having Learning Disability and Speech and Language Disorder?
> 
> It shouldn't be an agreement or disagreement, because it's literary in front of our face, and this is very dangerous.
> 
> *
> How did you come to know what your classmates perceived? *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's by the way they use their words to describe something, it doesn't follow through to correspond with the image, I can also notice it online too.
> 
> When I was in elementary school, my teacher took me to the school psychologist to test out my hearing and the way I use my language. After a while they've made a decision that I have a language disorder and that I have Learning Disability. At times people will consider me as hallucinating/mentally ill, being rude, crappy grammar, and playing around. When I notice people faulty perceptual awareness as a kid, I started to get these intense headaches that last for over a week, very bad taste in my mouth, nasty dreams, and intense stomach aches that occur at the same clock time for a whole entire month. My Special Ed teacher in 9th grade said there's nothing wrong with my English, that I speak English perfectly fine, and she removed me from the Speech and Language program. Another Special Ed teacher said that people aren't born perfect, that I need to learn new vocabulary words, and when I get to college I should work in a group with people.
> 
> *People expected me to know what they're talking about*
> 
> The people who's having a conversation with me would describe something incomplete to me, they never identify the background of the places they've been to clearly or bother to go into full details of explaining something important to me that is related to how they perceived. When I rephrased it as how I perceived it for them, they notice that's it's fully accurate.
> 
> I come across people over the internet using the same words from a previous conversation that I had with strangers, and making a suggestion such as people are ignoring me. Also, people would mention something to me, but when I mention their same exact words back at them, they claim they never mention that to me, and they would give me something completely different in words.
> 
> It's like they have Alzheimer's.
> 
> This female on here notices it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://i.gyazo.com/a4d28a0f28ab00b078c02b74c5407673.png
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.socialanxietysupport.com...active-and-1762554/index2.html#post1085079346
> 
> _This guy notices something in a way, but it still mismatch._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _I also keep getting these numbers like *11:23*, *11:32*,* 6:23*, *6:32*,* 666*, *32*, *8*, *23*, *888*, *86*, only an intelligent software agent is capable of generating numbers through a timeframe using the cryptography system._
> 
> When I posted something on here about the legitimate governments made Global Poverty happened and they want World Domination, that made a member on here say that we should govern ourselves, I notice people around me started to have arguments that stretch out for a very long time, just like the people in my dreams, and my laptop screen got destroyed by an inappropriate decision for the time frame to get isolated outside in the rain where there's no way to seek shelter in 2015. There was RC Drone in a Burger King where there's two Hispanic people fighting in my dream, and it tried to open the door, but it messes up, when it finally opens the door the RC Drone had a camera all up in my face and it said Guardian Of The, then I woke up. The last abnormal dream that I had was the time a member on here name Diáfanos in September, 2015, mentioning about my last conversation with him about forbidden knowledge, and then the following midnight morning the dream had words, saying that I have too much knowledge over the internet, and it will cause a Post Apocalypse. The phone in the dream was ringing, then someone claims they're the FBI, and what I'm doing online on SAS will cause a Post Apocalypse as if I'm going to be responsible for the entire planet. I was thinking that the Artificial Intelligence reported me and wrote in my dreams about I have too much knowledge over the internet, and it will cause a Post Apocalypse.
> 
> What is the meaning of Post Apocalypse from their perspective?
> 
> While staying over my cousin's house for 5 months, my cursing aunt started creating these long arguments that are incoherent, and saying things that's not even there or true.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You can read the conversation with me and Diáfanos, and btw, you can't diagnose someone over the internet, and makes these assumptions and suggestions that is stereotyping, plus using someone else information to label them over the internet, because that's illogical.
> http://www.socialanxietysupport.com...-incurable-1596586/index2.html#post1082175218


You crack me up. :lol


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## sad1231234

Erroll said:


> I think that the only viewpoint possible is the subjective viewpoint. Everything that we know about the world comes through our five senses. But hallucinations and illusions can happen with all the senses. So what is the chance that certain illusions have become incorporated into our sensual input? Is it possible that our measly 5 senses tell us everything that there is to experience? Or would we need 99 senses to pick up the real picture?
> 
> So, to cut to the quick, I sometimes think that space and time exist only in our heads, and that they do not exist in physical reality.


I agree. In fact, i take it so far as to not even trust my own consciousness. It sounds silly, but really, you cant tell if anything is real or not. Experiments already prove that the human brain's signals can be picked up by machines of whenever someone makes a conscious decision of something up to 7 seconds before they make the decision! Or something like that, anyway, proving that time is very possibly a construct of the brain. Thus, time would be an illusion, everything would exist simultaneously and human thinking may already be predestined(for lack of a better word lol). My point is, what can you even trust anymore? Who knows what the hell is real and whats not??


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## Erroll

[


EmotionlessThug said:


> If you have the right perceptual awareness for this reality, then the education system can label you as having Learning Disability and Speech and Language Disorder?
> 
> It shouldn't be an agreement or disagreement, because it's literary in front of our face, and this is very dangerous.


It is right in front of your face, but how do you know that the other people are aware of the same thing that you are aware of? Do all people perceive things the same as you? Doesn't each person perceive things in a manner dictated by their previous training and experience? Hallucinations can occur in any of our 5 senses, so our sensual input is fallible.



EmotionlessThug said:


> How did you come to know what your classmates perceived?
> It's by the way they use their words to describe something, it doesn't follow through to correspond with the image, I can also notice it online too.
> People expected me to know what they're talking about


This sounds like a matter of context. Any thinking involves en-framing something to think about. So if I en-frame a conversation on say computers, then the word 'mouse' would mean the mouse on your computer. However, if I en-frame the subject of biological experimentation, then mouse would means the little mammal. If you do not follow a conversation from its beginning, to know the general subject being discussed, the words in the discussion can seem very disjointed and confusing.

Then there are analogies. When it is time to catch the bus, a person might say "let's rumble" to evoke the notion of hurrying and the exigency of the situation. This expression is meant to evoke a light or joking mood , while at the same time telling the person that he must hurry. The person assumes that you have heard the expression used before and understand what it means. But his perception is wrong because you are not familiar with this context for these words. Maybe you have a difficulty recognizing contexts, or changing contexts as conversations proceed through several different subject areas?


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## Erroll

ugh1979 said:


> Since sensory information is well known to be prone to being fallible, along with accounting for cognitive biases and logical fallacies, we utilise the scientific method, replicable research/experiments, and peer review systems to best establish the objective from the subjective, so no, I don't think consciousness needs to be the first thing we start with. The issues and fallacies it can cause merely have to be best negated.


You are saying we catch each other's mistakes by redoing every test a bunch of times and agreeing on the results a number of times. That is saying that objectivity is repeatable subjectivity. We take that as provisional proof. But we never ever stop monitoring the these past set truths, and with new information come new truths; Newton was workable for years but was deemed incomplete and misleading by Einstein. It was only the new understanding that led to the new uses of relativity and quantum effects. Einstein is incomplete because he couldn't jive with Newton and doubted Bohr. Human learning will always be incomplete

Nobody knows everything and anything can change everything. It will always be this way. So what can we do, when even repeatable verification turns out to not be able to verify certain unkown unknowns? Well, we can consider ALL the possibilities. We come up with consistent ideas which fit the experiments but interpret them differently. We start by brainstorming, then we apply factual knowledge to come up with a hypothesis that we can test and agree on what the results mean.

So just because physics comes up with a way of keeping all information consistent, does not mean that the current interpretation of physics is anywhere near right or complete. Perhaps the interpretation has been molded to fit the facts, so we get claims that things only exist at a location if a person detects them in that location. But isn't that saying a consciousness must be present for a thing to be in a regular position. Sounds crazy, but doesm't that interpretation agree with the facts?

I don't say that to try to invalidate superposition. I say it because it shows that consciousness is primary and that no discussion of physics is complete without considering all the interpretations as to what our experiments are telling us; the interpretation we give them. 
All that I ask is that you explore a different interpretation of the universe with me, and point out where it is inconsistent with the current 'truths' of science. I can not start this discussion without looking at myself; at my consciousness, and interpreting what it does, so as to better understand the information that I can get out of the facts. If you believe that observation collapses the wave function, you have to be curious about how it does so, don't you? So what is your justification for ignoring consciousness in a discussion of Physics? Might it lead to a whole new interpretation of the facts? Not that I have firmed up those interpretations; just that I see the possibility that it might work differently than what we commonly think.


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## Erroll

ugh1979 said:


> Indeed everything we perceive is prone to distortion, but as I say, we can get round that by utilising methods which best negate the problem of subjectivity and cognitive bias.
> 
> Do you think other species don't exist is physical reality?


1. More than 1 consistent interpretation can be made of the same basket of objective information.

2. You can not negate subjectivity and cognitive bias by forgetting about consciousness, because you are using your consciousness, in the first place, to negate the idea.

3. What is physical reality? How is it different from experienced reality? What does it mean to exist, other than to have been experienced by another consciousness?


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## EmotionlessThug

ugh1979 said:


> You crack me up. :lol


Ugh1979, could of ignore it, instead of wasting his own time writing an incomplete sentence from reading something who couldn't explained from his own knowledge or define the words. He must find it very interesting to be a comedian online, but there's zero efforts put into the skit to make people want to laugh, he was too interested in finding words that were effective in his own personal use, that he utterly got lost in the depth of his own boredom of very small ideas from his small branded ice cream box from a company that's been distributing his fantastic ideas to him instead of teaching him how to perceive what existed in humanity through technology and programming to complete a realistic sentence that wasn't a pointless error for this thread.

Yet, you couldn't provide any valuable information to begin with, but found an interest in wasting your own time creating a futile post nor you haven't experienced what I was talking about.


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## bloodymary

Perhaps you might find useful "Hidden teaching beyond yoga" from Paul Brunton. Just a suggestion.


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## ugh1979

Erroll said:


> You are saying we catch each other's mistakes by redoing every test a bunch of times and agreeing on the results a number of times. That is saying that objectivity is repeatable subjectivity. We take that as provisional proof. But we never ever stop monitoring the these past set truths, and with new information come new truths; Newton was workable for years but was deemed incomplete and misleading by Einstein. It was only the new understanding that led to the new uses of relativity and quantum effects. Einstein is incomplete because he couldn't jive with Newton and doubted Bohr. Human learning will always be incomplete


Indeed, as we can only ever have approximations of the truth, hence why you rarely ever hear scientists talking about proofs, but my point is all we can do is ensure the methodology to acquire such knowledge uses the best ways we can to negate issues of subjectivity and cognitive biases skewing the results. Nothing can ever know with 100% certainty the true objective nature of the universe, but we can certainly be comfortable to have very high degrees of certainty about aspects that time and again hold up to scientific theory, and if that ever changes, so be it, we adapt the theory and keep learning.



> Nobody knows everything and anything can change everything. It will always be this way. So what can we do, when even repeatable verification turns out to not be able to verify certain unkown unknowns? Well, we can consider ALL the possibilities. We come up with consistent ideas which fit the experiments but interpret them differently. We start by brainstorming, then we apply factual knowledge to come up with a hypothesis that we can test and agree on what the results mean.


We can never consider all the possibilities, as that encompasses all the unknown unknowns. All we can do is our best with that we have and keep refining our knowledge.



> So just because physics comes up with a way of keeping all information consistent, does not mean that the current interpretation of physics is anywhere near right or complete.


Of course there is always going to be more to learn, but we do know that to all extents and purposes much of physics is with a very high degree of certainty correct as if it wasn't things just wouldn't work such as much technology and doing things like sending probes to mars.



> Perhaps the interpretation has been molded to fit the facts, so we get claims that things only exist at a location if a person detects them in that location. But isn't that saying a consciousness must be present for a thing to be in a regular position. Sounds crazy, but doesm't that interpretation agree with the facts?


What else can one gain a credible interpretation from if not the facts? Surely that's what all interpretations should be built on where possible?



> I don't say that to try to invalidate superposition. I say it because it shows that consciousness is primary and that no discussion of physics is complete without considering all the interpretations as to what our experiments are telling us; the interpretation we give them.
> All that I ask is that you explore a different interpretation of the universe with me, and point out where it is inconsistent with the current 'truths' of science. I can not start this discussion without looking at myself; at my consciousness, and interpreting what it does, so as to better understand the information that I can get out of the facts. If you believe that observation collapses the wave function, you have to be curious about how it does so, don't you? So what is your justification for ignoring consciousness in a discussion of Physics? Might it lead to a whole new interpretation of the facts? Not that I have firmed up those interpretations; just that I see the possibility that it might work differently than what we commonly think.


Actually you've made a common mistake there. Wave function collapse doesn't require human consciousness to trigger it, only a physical interaction in the macro world. Consciousness is irrelevant to the process. I think the problem is the ubiquity of the term 'observer' when people discuss quantum physics. It's like the well known Einstein quote regarding him questioning if the moon exists is there is nobody looking at it, which has since been experimentally shown that objects certainly do exist when nobody is looking at them.

I'm all for exploring other interpretations, and do, as there are many competing hypotheses in many areas that are on the edges of our more established knowledge. This is great as the best/most true answer rarely makes itself obvious to us so we need lots of lines of exploration and the healthy competition that creates. Remember, scientists are massively motivated to discover 'new science', and publish credible papers in the top journals, as that's how they make their name and career, so if there is validity in any idea, regardless of how unorthodox it is, if it has merit, someone will be actively pursuing it. Good on them I say, and i'm always happy to adapt my world view to accommodate new findings if they hold up to scrutiny.


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## ugh1979

Erroll said:


> 1. More than 1 consistent interpretation can be made of the same basket of objective information.


Of course. You can only see work out what the 'picture' is once you get enough pieces of the 'jigsaw'. 



> 2. You can not negate subjectivity and cognitive bias by forgetting about consciousness, because you are using your consciousness, in the first place, to negate the idea.


My point still stands about utilising methodology to negate the aspects of the human mind which are prone to fallacy.



> 3. What is physical reality? How is it different from experienced reality?


In the most simple terms, I'd call physical reality objective reality and experienced reality subjective reality.



> What does it mean to exist, other than to have been experienced by another consciousness?


I don't think there is any meaning to our existence, other than the subjective meaning we can choose to give it.


----------



## 814065

I've been studying Biocentrism and Quantum Superpositioning.

Those two things work in tandem as one is proven and one is a pretty new concept.

Biocentrism is the theory that when you die your body and conscience assume the exact same role but in a different reality. I.E. You actually DO end up overdosing and you die but the next reality takes you in where you didn't OD but came close too it/or you survive your overdose. I've had dreams where I've felt myself die only to wake up with a gasp of air.

I live recklessly and probably have died in a few alternate realities. Whether you believe it or not it's an interesting concept that shouldn't be overlooked. It has some definite questions that need to be answered like what about the past? If there are alternate realities, I'm sure some of the past decisions you've made would have been altered to keep your reality on course.

All of that being said this is where quantum superpositioning comes into play. It has been scientifically proven that the atom of an electron can be excited and non-excited at the same time as well as two electrons existing in two places at the same time. That's the basis around parrallel universes.

You'll have to read about it in depth. I'll provide links and let you guys come up with your own interpretation.

Sources and links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentric_universe
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/superposition


----------



## ugh1979

EmotionlessThug said:


> Ugh1979, could of ignore it, instead of wasting his own time writing an incomplete sentence from reading something who couldn't explained from his own knowledge or define the words. He must find it very interesting to be a comedian online, but there's zero efforts put into skit to make people want to laugh, he was too interested in finding words that were effective in his own personal use, that he utterly got lost in the depth of his own boredom of very small ideas from his small branded ice cream box from a company that's been distributing his fantastic ideas to him instead of teaching him how to perceive what existed in humanity through technology and programming to complete a realistic sentence that wasn't a pointless error for this thread.


Are you just picking words at random? :? (Just joking, I just don't know what you are trying to say)



> Yet, you couldn't provide any valuable information to begin with, but found an interest in wasting your own time creating a futile post nor you haven't experienced what I was talking about.


Indeed I had nothing of substance to reply to you with as your post was incoherent so an impossible task. I'm not holding it against you, as you say, it's just the way you speak, and you are 'different' to the norm, which is perfectly fine, we all are in own own ways, but the fact is I find your prose incoherent, and unfortunately for you i'm sure i'm not the only one. Maybe this is something that needs to be addressed as it does limit your ability to communicate with others, or maybe you don't want to change and so be it if that's the case, but you then have to accept the ramifications of that. I know there are certain traits I have that are very atypical and likewise can impact on my social interactions, but i'm perfectly happy with how I am so it's fine.


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## 814065

Also, let it be known that reality is perceived. If we're being truly honest, we're all living in adjacent realities from one another. While physical inanimate objects make up the world around us the biological and independent creatures we are and we see make up the alternate reality.

You were bit by a dog as a child and now everytime you see a dog you feel afraid or angry. Your world is darkened in a sense by your perception of an object or a person. I on the other hand have only had great experiences with dogs and they bring me joy everytime I see one. In that sense my reality is a little brighter. We're all traveling through different realities each and every day and don't realize it.

Nothing is real until you give it value whether that be good or bad. It is all just a perception we hold and place value in. That doesn't mean your experience isn't worth anything.

Read Epictetus's The Enchiridion.


----------



## ugh1979

NeverendingPattern said:


> I've been studying Biocentrism and Quantum Superpositioning.
> 
> Those two things work in tandem as one is proven and one is a pretty new concept.
> 
> Biocentrism is the theory that when you die your body and conscience assume the exact same role but in a different reality. I.E. You actually DO end up overdosing and you die but the next reality takes you in where you didn't OD but came close too it/or you survive your overdose. I've had dreams where I've felt myself die only to wake up with a gasp of air.
> 
> I live recklessly and probably have died in a few alternate realities. Whether you believe it or not it's an interesting concept that shouldn't be overlooked. It has some definite questions that need to be answered like what about the past? If there are alternate realities, I'm sure some of the past decisions you've made would have been altered to keep your reality on course.
> 
> All of that being said this is where quantum superpositioning comes into play. It has been scientifically proven that the atom of an electron can be excited and non-excited at the same time as well as two electrons existing in two places at the same time. That's the basis around parrallel universes.
> 
> You'll have to read about it in depth. I'll provide links and let you guys come up with your own interpretation.
> 
> Sources and links:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentric_universe
> http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/superposition


What you are saying relates to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm not sure where the widely rejected (in professional circles) concept of a biocentric universe comes from. Such an idea stinks of anthropocentrism to me.


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## 814065

ugh1979 said:


> What you are saying relates to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm not sure where the widely rejected (in professional circles) concept of a biocentric universe comes from. Such an idea stinks of anthropocentrism to me.


I wouldn't say it "stinks" of anthropocentrism I'd say it pretty much IS anthropocentrism. Like I said, it's an interesting concept and regardless of the validity of the theory I am still open to seeing how it manifests. Tbh, I really don't think anyone can actually expound this idea without concrete proof of it's existence.

I guess the only reason I started researching it was because I'm kind of a metaphysics nut and have pondered the idea of false death and various other human constructs that aren't ever really challenged by critical thinking. I've also learned not to believe in everything I read.

LOL, I have a friend who's a Reiki practitioner who believes in Reptillian Shape-shifters and vibrational densities. These are all just ideas and theories. Things nobody can prove really.


----------



## 814065

Also, I tend to not care what professionals say only because this isn't my field of expertise (i just read for fun). I've also studied Steven Hawking and hardly agree with any of the things he's presented. However, I do think Albert Einstein was right about relativity but even he said that sometimes there is an equation or model you can use to find out one thing about the universe that another widely used model would classify as non-existent or just plain mathematically wrong.

Either way it's good to think, just don't get caught up on ideas that can't be proven. I'm a firm believer in being wrong. That's the only way you learn and grow


----------



## ugh1979

NeverendingPattern said:


> I wouldn't say it "stinks" of anthropocentrism I'd say it pretty much IS anthropocentrism.


True! 



> Like I said, it's an interesting concept and regardless of the validity of the theory I am still open to seeing how it manifests.


I don't find it particularly interesting and detest it's arrogance. I'm open to anything that can be shown to have merit though so as you say, lets see if anything every comes from it. I wouldn't hold your breath though!



> Tbh, I really don't think anyone can actually expound this idea without concrete proof of it's existence.


We have someone on this forum who frequently tries. He usually starts a new thread on it about once a month. :lol



> I guess the only reason I started researching it was because I'm kind of a metaphysics nut and have pondered the idea of false death and various other human constructs that aren't ever really challenged by critical thinking. I've also learned not to believe in everything I read.


What do you mean by "false death"?



> LOL, I have a friend who's a Reiki practitioner who believes in Reptillian Shape-shifters and vibrational densities. These are all just ideas and theories. Things nobody can prove really.


Almost nothing can be proven with 100% certainty, but wacko ideas like that can be easily shown to be almost certainly false so easily dismissed. Never think all ideas and theories are equal. It's all about the supporting evidence for them that differentiates what can legitimately be deemed 'right' and what can be deemed 'wrong'.


----------



## ugh1979

NeverendingPattern said:


> Also, I tend to not care what professionals say only because this isn't my field of expertise (i just read for fun). I've also studied Steven Hawking and hardly agree with any of the things he's presented.


So why do you think you know better than the professionals? :?



> However, I do think Albert Einstein was right about relativity but even he said that sometimes there is an equation or model you can use to find out one thing about the universe that another widely used model would classify as non-existent or just plain mathematically wrong.


Indeed there are competing and contradictory models/hypotheses. No problem there. Options and competing ideas are great and drive progress and achievement.



> Either way it's good to think, just don't get caught up on ideas that can't be proven.


There's a big difference between ideas that can't be proven and ideas that are unfalsifiable. It's only the latter than one maybe shouldn't get caught up in. As I say, there is little we can prove as in know with 100% certainty, but much we can establish with degrees of certainty, which we need to establish 'right' from 'wrong', or plausible/implausible.


----------



## EmotionlessThug

Erroll said:


> [
> 
> It is right in front of your face, but how do you know that the other people are aware of the same thing that you are aware of? Do all people perceive things the same as you? Doesn't each person perceive things in a manner dictated by their previous training and experience? Hallucinations can occur in any of our 5 senses, so our sensual input is fallible.
> 
> We're able to perceived the same image, but the inner mind has difficulties simulating the recognition of an image to memorize it. I'm able to memorize how I perceived things to have recognition of it, which causes me to be aware as how I perceived the same time. Why do people have to agree or disagree? they simply just need to synchronized to capture the same image, it's because they contradicted themselves as they perceived without being aware. It's not about sounding intelligent or unintelligent, it's about working together as one to make sure that we're alerted. Their perceptual awareness is incorrect, and it's a delayed within time, that's why I considered their defects as dangerous, which will end up destroying humanity.
> 
> When I follow how people perceive things, I ended up getting hurt at the end of it, and won't be able to attain the rightful image. Why did I say getting hurt at the end, I was referring to my education and trying to survive as a human being on this planet.
> 
> This sounds like a matter of context. Any thinking involves en-framing something to think about. So if I en-frame a conversation on say computers, then the word 'mouse' would mean the mouse on your computer. However, if I en-frame the subject of biological experimentation, then mouse would means the little mammal. If you do not follow a conversation from its beginning, to know the general subject being discussed, the words in the discussion can seem very disjointed and confusing.
> 
> Nah, that's not it, we're missing information from humanity sources to explain this problem. It's more than just what you wrote.
> 
> Then there are analogies. When it is time to catch the bus, a person might say "let's rumble" to evoke the notion of hurrying and the exigency of the situation. This expression is meant to evoke a light or joking mood , while at the same time telling the person that he must hurry. The person assumes that you have heard the expression used before and understand what it means. But his perception is wrong because you are not familiar with this context for these words. Maybe you have a difficulty recognizing contexts, or changing contexts as conversations proceed through several different subject areas?





> It is right in front of your face, but how do you know that the other people are aware of the same thing that you are aware of? Do all people perceive things the same as you? Doesn't each person perceive things in a manner dictated by their previous training and experience? Hallucinations can occur in any of our 5 senses, so our sensual input is fallible.


*My honest answer.*

We're able to perceive the same image, but the inner mind has difficulties simulating the recognition of an image to memorize it. I'm able to memorize how I perceived things to have recognition of it, which causes me to be aware as how I perceived the same time. Why do people have to agree or disagree? they simply just need to synchronize to capture the same image, it's because they contradicted themselves as they perceived without being aware. It's not about sounding intelligent or unintelligent, it's about working together as a one to make sure that we're alerted. Their perceptual awareness is incorrect, and it's a delayed within time, that's why I considered their defects as dangerous, which will end up destroying humanity at the end.

Do you think Hallucinations are natural causes?



> This sounds like a matter of context. Any thinking involves en-framing something to think about. So if I en-frame a conversation on say computers, then the word 'mouse' would mean the mouse on your computer. However, if I en-frame the subject of biological experimentation, then mouse would means the little mammal. If you do not follow a conversation from its beginning, to know the general subject being discussed, the words in the discussion can seem very disjointed and confusing.


Let's look at this as programming language to create a simulation of how a person, an object, a place looks in the mind. 

I never had any difficulties following a conversation, and I always knew the subject that was being discussed in class, but my brain tells me that the words they use never match how they perceived the image in the mind as a mental image to know if they're aware of their surrounding's.



> Then there are analogies. When it is time to catch the bus, a person might say "let's rumble" to evoke the notion of hurrying and the exigency of the situation. This expression is meant to evoke a light or joking mood , while at the same time telling the person that he must hurry. The person assumes that you have heard the expression used before and understand what it means. But his perception is wrong because you are not familiar with this context for these words. Maybe you have a difficulty recognizing contexts, or changing contexts as conversations proceed through several different subject areas?


I was asleep during that time, and I heard the person saying let's get ready to rumble to a little kid, it wasn't a joke, and the person was in a rush during that particular time, so where is the boxing match?

It didn't make sense for that time, and the person never jokes around during the morning time.


----------



## 814065

ugh1979 said:


> What do you mean by "false death"?
> 
> I meant Death being an ideal as opposed to an actual end process to our life. Death is scientifically proven obviously but "false death" is synonymous with the Biocentric Universe theory. That's why I brought it up. I'm more of a romantic when it comes to philosophy and actual theory.
> 
> While it'd be stupid for the average person to waste their time with such a notion I have no problem mulling it over in my head a bit. I've researched this topic on and off for a few months and even though that's not enough time to get familiar with the entire spectrum of theory I just kind of got bored and am ready to move on from it.
> 
> I don't know what your actual beliefs are but you seem pretty opposed to the idea of Biocentrism which is absolutely ok, I just don't know how it could be arrogant. It's just a theory. People have good and bad ideas about things all the time and even if it comes off as arrogant I feel that it's a necessary "evil" in the grand scheme of everything.
> 
> Look at Freud, back in the day everyone took his word for psychology/dream interpretation all sorts of stuff and now he's been discredited. Which doesn't make him any less intelligent. He was just wrong.


----------



## 814065

ugh1979 said:


> So why do you think you know better than the professionals? :?
> 
> I don't think I know more than the professionals I just think it's easier to fall into a consensus when big names in science and theoretical physics are concerned. Afterall, it's theoretical so it's all based in theory. I mean, none of us have actually gone into space to test how the warped edge of space and time around a blackhole could actually move us forward in time to the point where 20 days around the hole and back to Earth would cause us to jump 200 years in the future. (Einstein's theory of relativity)
> 
> Even if the math checks out those equations took forever to proove mathematically and there are still people trying to reinvent his formulas to help them understand things on the quantum level. And like I said, this isn't my field of expertise I'm just a fan of critical thinking. Don't mistake me for being arrogant. I usually never divuldge my beliefs on life or reality because I know I don't know everything. These are just theories that I have read that I found interesting and wanted to share.
> 
> I feel like we should be able to have an open discussion about our views on things even if they're polar opposite of each other and I'm not saying there's any tension between us while we discuss this but I want you to know that I'm always changing my opinion. Not based on what the general consensus of professionals say is true but what I perceive to be true. Sometimes I agree 100% and sometimes I just don't. But that's me I guess and we're all entitled to our own opinions.


----------



## EmotionlessThug

ugh1979 said:


> Are you just picking words at random? :? (Just joking, I just don't know what you are trying to say)
> 
> Indeed I had nothing of substance to reply to you with as your post was incoherent so an impossible task. I'm not holding it against you, as you say, it's just the way you speak, and you are 'different' to the norm, which is perfectly fine, we all are in own own ways, but the fact is I find your prose incoherent, and unfortunately for you i'm sure i'm not the only one. Maybe this is something that needs to be addressed as it does limit your ability to communicate with others, or maybe you don't want to change and so be it if that's the case, but you then have to accept the ramifications of that. I know there are certain traits I have that are very atypical and likewise can impact on my social interactions, but i'm perfectly happy with how I am so it's fine.


Impossible task? What?



> It's just the way *you speak*, and you are 'different' to the norm, which is perfectly fine, we all are in own own ways, but the fact is I find your* prose incoherent*, and* unfortunately for you i'm sure i'm not the only one*. Maybe this is something that needs to be addressed *as it does limit your ability to communicate with others, or maybe you don't want to change*


That has nothing to do with limiting my ability to communicate with others, but I can address that you never purposed any information to acknowledge what I'm talking about. I can see that you don't understand the way I speak, that deal with your* knowledge and experiences*.



> I know there are certain traits I have that are very atypical and likewise can impact on my social interactions, but i'm perfectly happy with how I am so it's fine.


Btw, good for you. You're not going to get anywhere like that, sir.


----------



## ugh1979

EmotionlessThug said:


> Impossible task? What?


You communicating to me coherently seems to be an impossible task.



> That has nothing to do with limiting my ability to communicate with others, but I can address that you never purposed any information to acknowledge what I'm talking about. I can see that you don't understand the way I speak, that deal with your* knowledge and experiences*.


Being incoherent has nothing to with limiting your ability to communicate with others? :? To the contrary, it's crucial.

And I can't address information you are trying to share with me as I can't make any sense of what you are saying.



> Btw, good for you. You're not going to get anywhere like that, sir.


I'm not going to get anywhere accepting and being happy with the fact that not everything I do is totally 'normal'? :? Is being normal in every aspect (whatever that can even mean :?), the only way i'm going to get somewhere? Where do you think i'm looking to go? I'm already where I want to be. And to the contrary, it's those that can't accept their differences and it negatively affects their mental health that aren't getting anywhere there want to be.


----------



## ugh1979

NeverendingPattern said:


> What do you mean by "false death"?
> 
> I meant Death being an ideal as opposed to an actual end process to our life. Death is scientifically proven obviously but "false death" is synonymous with the Biocentric Universe theory. That's why I brought it up. I'm more of a romantic when it comes to philosophy and actual theory.
> 
> While it'd be stupid for the average person to waste their time with such a notion I have no problem mulling it over in my head a bit. I've researched this topic on and off for a few months and even though that's not enough time to get familiar with the entire spectrum of theory I just kind of got bored and am ready to move on from it.
> 
> I don't know what your actual beliefs are but you seem pretty opposed to the idea of Biocentrism which is absolutely ok, I just don't know how it could be arrogant. It's just a theory. People have good and bad ideas about things all the time and even if it comes off as arrogant I feel that it's a necessary "evil" in the grand scheme of everything.
> 
> Look at Freud, back in the day everyone took his word for psychology/dream interpretation all sorts of stuff and now he's been discredited. Which doesn't make him any less intelligent. He was just wrong.


It's arrogant because it's the ideology of anthropocentrism. You can't get much more arrogant!

Fair enough if it's something you want to believe in though. It's a pretty typical post-religious idea and i'm all for people adopting it as they get used to a more secular worldview.


----------



## ugh1979

NeverendingPattern said:


> I don't think I know more than the professionals I just think it's easier to fall into a consensus when big names in science and theoretical physics are concerned. Afterall, it's theoretical so it's all based in theory.


So even though you admit you don't know better than the consensus of the professionals in the field you are still happy to dismiss or disagree with them. :?



> I mean, none of us have actually gone into space to test how the warped edge of space and time around a blackhole could actually move us forward in time to the point where 20 days around the hole and back to Earth would cause us to jump 200 years in the future. (Einstein's theory of relativity)


Well time dilation has been empirically tested many times on earth using atomic clocks for example so it's not like relativity is nothing but hypothesis.



> Even if the math checks out those equations took forever to proove mathematically and there are still people trying to reinvent his formulas to help them understand things on the quantum level.


So what? That's a great thing. How does that justify you dismissing or disagreeing with the professional consensus in these scientific fields though?



> And like I said, this isn't my field of expertise I'm just a fan of critical thinking. Don't mistake me for being arrogant. I usually never divuldge my beliefs on life or reality because I know I don't know everything.
> 
> Well when you admit you are no expert but then disagree with what the experts are saying it not only makes you look arrogant, it infers you aren't doing much critical thinking about it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> These are just theories that I have read that I found interesting and wanted to share.
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed, but it's my duty to point out that ideas like of biocentrism are nonsense and you are in no way qualified to say you know better than the experts in the field that almost universally deem it to be so.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I feel like we should be able to have an open discussion about our views on things even if they're polar opposite of each other and I'm not saying there's any tension between us while we discuss this but I want you to know that I'm always changing my opinion. Not based on what the general consensus of professionals say is true but what I perceive to be true. Sometimes I agree 100% and sometimes I just don't. But that's me I guess and we're all entitled to our own opinions.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Indeed you are of course entitled to your own opinions, but do you really trust an uneducated one over an educated one? That's just irrational to me, but i'm well aware of the cognitive biases, logical fallacies and intellectual dishonesty that help fuel that kind of mentality.
Click to expand...


----------



## EmotionlessThug

ugh1979 said:


> You communicating to me coherently seems to be an impossible task.
> 
> Being incoherent has nothing to with limiting your ability to communicate with others? :? To the contrary, it's crucial.
> 
> And I can't address information you are trying to share with me as I can't make any sense of what you are saying.
> 
> I'm not going to get anywhere accepting and being happy with the fact that not everything I do is totally 'normal'? :? Is being normal in every aspect (whatever that can even mean :?), the only way i'm going to get somewhere? Where do you think i'm looking to go? I'm already where I want to be. And to the contrary, it's those that can't accept their differences and it negatively affects their mental health that aren't getting anywhere there want to be.


I see that it's hard for you to be specific.

For now.

My only conversation is with Erroll, I'm only interested in what he has to say, since he's able to have a proper conversation like an adult.


----------



## Erroll

EmotionlessThug said:


> *My honest answer.*
> 
> We're able to perceive the same image, but the inner mind has difficulties simulating the recognition of an image to memorize it. I'm able to memorize how I perceived things to have recognition of it, which causes me to be aware as how I perceived the same time.
> 
> Why do people have to agree or disagree? they simply just need to synchronize to capture the same image,


People 'capture the same image' by explaining themselves to each other, coming to understand each other's meaning, and making compromises on areas that they can't come together on. It is a means for people to work together. So it is good so long as it remains logical. and is not inflamed into angry uncooperative emotions.



EmotionlessThug said:


> Do you think Hallucinations are natural causes?


Yes. I think hallucinations have natural causes. You can look up 'mirage' for a scientific explanation. Hallucinations are caused by chemicals like mescaline, or whatever.


----------



## ugh1979

EmotionlessThug said:


> I see that it's hard for you to be specific.
> 
> For now.
> 
> My only conversation is with Erroll, I'm only interested in what he has to say, since he's able to have a proper conversation like an adult.


Oh yeah because being coherent is so immature. :roll


----------



## Erroll

sad1231234 said:


> I agree. In fact, i take it so far as to not even trust my own consciousness. It sounds silly, but really, you cant tell if anything is real or not. Experiments already prove that the human brain's signals can be picked up by machines of whenever someone makes a conscious decision of something up to 7 seconds before they make the decision! Or something like that, anyway, proving that time is very possibly a construct of the brain. Thus, time would be an illusion, everything would exist simultaneously and human thinking may already be predestined(for lack of a better word lol). My point is, what can you even trust anymore? Who knows what the hell is real and whats not??


If you look up "Place Cells" (entohinal cortex) and "Grid Cells" (hippocampus), there is a lot of literature on how networks of grid cells track movement through space, while place cells recognize places.

You spoke of Ben Libet's 500 millisecond delay before a sensory stimulus reaches consciousness. That gives us time to remove our hand from the hot stove even before we are aware of the burn. There are also other ways in which our body sensors fool around with space and time. Some nerves carry information very rapidly, while others are downright slow. Some nerves sense shallow and very focused patterns, while others are deeper in the body and sense a more diffuse pattern. The spacing of body sensors affect spatial perception. You can discern to a very exacting location, if someone sticks a pin in your index finger, but if they stick it in you back you can only say it was somewhere in an area about the size of a playing card on your back.

Besides the biological factors, things Physics tells us make me think space must be something very different than we imagine it to be. Things like 'matter is a wave'. Waves don't end. If you can fill a pond with waves by dropping a pebble in the center of it, you could fill the universe with the 3 dimensional wave that represents an electron. Quantum entanglement; are the two things entangled with a space in between them, or are they really the same thing, and we are fooled by sensory input into seeing the same thing here and there, like a mirror?

And what does "wave" even mean without physical space and time? What can it be that science sees as a wave, if there is not space or time to wave in? I don't have all the answers, but I find it very interesting to imagine a world without space and time, and think of what the implications of that might be.

After all our 'selves' do not seem to exist in space and time. If we take 'self' to mean our thoughts, our thoughts do not occur at a specific spatial location or time. I don't thin it makes sense to say our bodies exist in space-time but our thoughts do not.


----------



## Erroll

ugh1979 said:


> Indeed, as we can only ever have approximations of the truth, hence why you rarely ever hear scientists talking about proofs, but my point is all we can do is ensure the methodology to acquire such knowledge uses the best ways we can to negate issues of subjectivity and cognitive biases skewing the results.


Agreed.


ugh1979 said:


> Nothing can ever know with 100% certainty the true objective nature of the universe, but we can certainly be comfortable to have very high degrees of certainty about aspects that time and again hold up to scientific theory, and if that ever changes, so be it, we adapt the theory and keep learning.


Agreed, except, having conducted a number of experiments, which seem to verify one interpretation, we tend to stop hypothesizing about other interpretations and keep seeking more substantiating data for our pet hypothesis, which we spend all our time testing. 
Then we begin to stretch our explanations to fit the data. "Well, it's in a thing called 'superposition'" "Oh, it does that because it's entangled." "O sure, I can walk through that wall, but i can only do it every trillion-trillion eons." After a while I just want to say, with Einstein, "Give me a break Niels!" 
So i'll hold fast to the experimental data, but try to interpret it as a little less crazy than quantum physics does. My goal is not to prove anything. My goal is to consistently explain the universe without recourse to a physical space and time. 


ugh1979 said:


> Of course there is always going to be more to learn, but we do know that to all extents and purposes much of physics is with a very high degree of certainty correct as if it wasn't things just wouldn't work such as much technology and doing things like sending probes to mars.


Physics is like rolling bowling balls in a dark gym. We roll in our chosen direction, we hear the ball roll, we discern it hitting something, and try to figure out what happened, out there in the dark.

We can have many opinions about what occurred. We can even learn to use this ball-roll to elicit a sound that we have a use for. We don't know it, but we can use it as a tool.

It's the same with GPS devices and Mars Rovers. We learned that if we do this, then that happens. We know neither what we are doing or what effect it has, but only that it accomplishes our purposes.



ugh1979 said:


> What else can one gain a credible interpretation from if not the facts? Surely that's what all interpretations should be built on where possible?


Agreed. But we should not forget that we are just interpreting the facts in a consistent way, and there can be more than one scenario to explain all the facts consistently.



ugh1979 said:


> I'm all for exploring other interpretations, and do, as there are many competing hypotheses in many areas that are on the edges of our more established knowledge. This is great as the best/most true answer rarely makes itself obvious to us so we need lots of lines of exploration and the healthy competition that creates. Remember, scientists are massively motivated to discover 'new science', and publish credible papers in the top journals, as that's how they make their name and career, so if there is validity in any idea, regardless of how unorthodox it is, if it has merit, someone will be actively pursuing it. Good on them I say, and i'm always happy to adapt my world view to accommodate new findings if they hold up to scrutiny.


 Cool!


----------



## Erroll

bloodymary said:


> Perhaps you might find useful "Hidden teaching beyond yoga" from Paul Brunton. Just a suggestion.


Hey, free book on the internet. Can't wait to see what he says in the chapter on space and time  Thanks.

http://selfdefinition.org/brunton/Brunton-Paul-The-Hidden-Teaching-Beyond-Yoga--OCR.pdf


----------



## sad1231234

Erroll said:


> If you look up "Place Cells" (entohinal cortex) and "Grid Cells" (hippocampus), there is a lot of literature on how networks of grid cells track movement through space, while place cells recognize places.
> 
> You spoke of Ben Libet's 500 millisecond delay before a sensory stimulus reaches consciousness. That gives us time to remove our hand from the hot stove even before we are aware of the burn. There are also other ways in which our body sensors fool around with space and time. Some nerves carry information very rapidly, while others are downright slow. Some nerves sense shallow and very focused patterns, while others are deeper in the body and sense a more diffuse pattern. The spacing of body sensors affect spatial perception. You can discern to a very exacting location, if someone sticks a pin in your index finger, but if they stick it in you back you can only say it was somewhere in an area about the size of a playing card on your back.
> 
> Besides the biological factors, things Physics tells us make me think space must be something very different than we imagine it to be. Things like 'matter is a wave'. Waves don't end. If you can fill a pond with waves by dropping a pebble in the center of it, you could fill the universe with the 3 dimensional wave that represents an electron. Quantum entanglement; are the two things entangled with a space in between them, or are they really the same thing, and we are fooled by sensory input into seeing the same thing here and there, like a mirror?
> 
> And what does "wave" even mean without physical space and time? What can it be that science sees as a wave, if there is not space or time to wave in? I don't have all the answers, but I find it very interesting to imagine a world without space and time, and think of what the implications of that might be.
> 
> After all our 'selves' do not seem to exist in space and time. If we take 'self' to mean our thoughts, our thoughts do not occur at a specific spatial location or time. I don't thin it makes sense to say our bodies exist in space-time but our thoughts do not.


Thats an interesting notion. A lot of things point to the possibility that space and time may be illusions. I mean, the further science delves into the mysteries of the universe, the more we realise that we may have been wrong about our ideas of the universe. Its crazy.


----------



## Erroll

@814065

Seven principles form the core of biocentrism.[9]

T*he first principle of biocentrism is based on the premise that what we observe is dependent on the observer, and says that what we perceive as reality is "a process that involves our consciousness.[11]"*

I can agree with this.

*The second and third principles state that "our external and internal perceptions are intertwined" and that the behavior of particles "is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer," respectively.[12] *

Not so sure than an observer affects the behavior of a particle or whether the observer is just observing an instant snapshot of the behavior of a particle (what's there; not what its doing). Although to detect the particle we have to hit it with a photon or something, so then it isn't the same particle anymore, and we say that the particle, that it used to be, had its wave function collapsed.

*The fourth principle suggests that consciousness must exist and that without it "matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability.[13]" 
*

I can't see this. Lanza is saying that consciousness collapses the wave function. But really, we have this particle that might be here might be there, (we looked lots of times and did stats on it) probabilistically building up the curves of the wave function over time. Of course when we observe in a given instant, we see the particle at one place and usually it is the most probable place. This is nothing physical. This is consciousness taking a snapshot of something in motion and changing. We just consciously fixed the maths to match the observations.

*The fifth principle points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life.[14] *

I'm at a loss here. I can't see how consciousness existed before there was matter to build the physical constituents of consciousness (neurons etc). I think this is going to be some hippy-dippy stuff about panpsychism. I guess I'll have to read more of what he means, if its something other than "a grand consciousness pre-existing everything, did it.", then it will be interesting.

*Finally, the sixth and seventh principles state that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding.[15] Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us "like turtles with shells.[16]"*

I agree. I am looking into this very idea.


----------



## Erroll

Erroll said:


> Do you think that everyone has a theory about how the world works? I think such a theory is totally necessary for a person to discern his truths and values; to discern what he believes in. Some people start at the very top, advocating for faith in miraculous stuff, based on knowledge passed down by the culture. Others, like myself, prefer to start at the bottom, and try to find something to believe in, based on the consistent methodological analysis of sensory input (science). But science is long on associational analysis, but short on interpretation.
> 
> For example; Since the length of a line is L, the area of a square is L^2, and the volume of a cube is L^3, we can imagine math in 4 spatial dimensions and say L^4 specifies the hyper-volume of a hyper-cube. The science of Chaos even gives us fractal dimensions; dimensions that lie between other dimensions, and are represented fractionally. Imagining other dimensions based on the supposedly consistent system of maths that we have seems like dangerous territory to me.
> 
> Yet, that's what someone said, and our system of maths handles it consistently, and somehow these things seem to become Gospel. That's fine. They might be right. But what if the sensory information that we 'read' out of the environment is perturbed by our consciousness itself? We know sensory illusion is a fact. And everything that science tells us is based on the interpretation of fallible sensory information.
> 
> So I think that any bottoms up theory of everything needs to begin with a theory of consciousness. If we can determine how consciousness distorts reality, perhaps we can come up with a different interpretation of the data that constantly flows into our consciousness through our sensory organs.


1. Consciousness.

Consciousness is a physical interaction between current environment and environment as remembered. That's alll it is. (The devil is in the details). There is nothing so magical about it that we can know what we are talking about, when we say things like "It collapses wave functions to allow matter to exist at a specific time and place."

Consciousness isn't miraculous or otherworldly, but born of coping with the environment. I have an idea for how it might work. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant to say that, because I espouse this as a personal idea and want to get some feedback. I want to to see if, maybe, someone can show me a flaw with the idea. Although no attempt at adulation will be turned down 

2. Memory

Memory is a physical process in the brain, and provides all the information necessary to build a response system; an answer to the question "What should I do next?" That's all that consciousness is, really, a system to decide what to do next.

Let me just stop with that and see what disagreements this might bring up, and then continue if anyone is still left to listen, LOL..

3. Sensory input is remembered.

I'll just leave that one as a cliff-hanger to this exciting tale that is going on in my head.

Oh, and I have no official qualifications for discussing matters of consciousness. But I do not see that as a problem, because nobody does. I just tend to perseverate on this stuff, because I think it's fun.


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## Azazello

@Erroll
_Perseverate _ I like that word. I have a notebook with words and terms I think are neat and this is one of them; regretfully, I've never had a chance to use it, so kudos to you 

On the subject of biocentrism, personally I can't put any value whatsoever into this idea. It most certainly isn't a theory as it has zero applications due to its lack of any predictive power. It is largely a semantic black hole that draws people in through its obfuscation of an already difficult and, to most, unintelligible subject of quantum physics and the use of vague and ill(if at all)defined language. It is an exercise in mystification rather than a coherent explanatory system that utilises scientific method. Not only that but it rests on claims that are demonstrably incorrect, such as that "_consciousness collapses the wave function._"

You can design thought experiments to test your definition of _consciousness _against, say, your definition of _memory_. Can you think of any system outside of the brain capable of performing the function of _remembering_? We may have touched on a few in our previous conversations. If you can, then your point 2 does not restrict your definition and we are back at '_consciousness is property of all matter,_' which is a rather meaningless statement in the context of human _consciousness _that we are trying to explain; after all, as Karl Popper said '_A theory that explains everything, explains nothing._'

In addition, having defined _consciousness _the way you have, you can then look at subjects that are capable of '_interaction between current environment and environment as remembered_' to find examples that most laymen would not categorise as _consciousness_, such as where there is no self-awareness or understanding.

In a sense you are proposing a reductionist interpretation of _consciousness _that people like @AngelClare, for example, say cannot be reduced, as otherwise it loses its significance. And I have to say that I prefer your approach. You are at least trying to breakdown the layman's all-encompassing term, which to me at least is completely meaningless. One cannot approach this subject without hard definitions and I appreciate your attempt to lay down a foundation for discussion in that respect.

With regard to theory of everything, in that I am firmly in the camp of Ancient Greek atomists who "*y good luck [&#8230;] hit on a hypothesis for which, more than two thousand years later, some evidence was found, but their belief, in their day, was none the less destitute of any solid foundation"* (not unlike biocentrism). Basically, at the time there were two prominent attempts to explain the world: teleological (Aristotelian school is an example of this) and mechanical (atomists). Both of these explanations were found to be unintelligible with respect to reality as a whole - sooner or later they all converged on an arbitrary beginning that defied any explanation. For whatever reason, atomists assumed a position that left those beginnings unanswered for. Here, I am quite content to follow their example and accept that it is unnecessary for me to have a total theory of everything. Make do with what you can, I say  So far it seems to have worked. I don't think that my values are particularly reprehensible, even if I do say so myself 

*Bertrand Russell "A History of Western Philosophy"*


----------



## Erroll

Azazello said:


> @Erroll
> _Perseverate _ I like that word. I have a notebook with words and terms I think are neat and this is one of them; regretfully, I've never had a chance to use it, so kudos to you
> 
> On the subject of biocentrism, personally I can't put any value whatsoever into this idea. It most certainly isn't a theory as it has zero applications due to its lack of any predictive power. It is largely a semantic black hole that draws people in through its obfuscation of an already difficult and, to most, unintelligible subject of quantum physics and the use of vague and ill(if at all)defined language. It is an exercise in mystification rather than a coherent explanatory system that utilises scientific method. Not only that but it rests on claims that are demonstrably incorrect, such as that "_consciousness collapses the wave function._"
> 
> You can design thought experiments to test your definition of _consciousness _against, say, your definition of _memory_. Can you think of any system outside of the brain capable of performing the function of _remembering_? We may have touched on a few in our previous conversations. If you can, then your point 2 does not restrict your definition and we are back at '_consciousness is property of all matter,_' which is a rather meaningless statement in the context of human _consciousness _that we are trying to explain; after all, as Karl Popper said '_A theory that explains everything, explains nothing._'
> 
> In addition, having defined _consciousness _the way you have, you can then look at subjects that are capable of '_interaction between current environment and environment as remembered_' to find examples that most laymen would not categorise as _consciousness_, such as where there is no self-awareness or understanding.
> 
> In a sense you are proposing a reductionist interpretation of _consciousness _that people like @AngelClare, for example, say cannot be reduced, as otherwise it loses its significance. And I have to say that I prefer your approach. You are at least trying to breakdown the layman's all-encompassing term, which to me at least is completely meaningless. One cannot approach this subject without hard definitions and I appreciate your attempt to lay down a foundation for discussion in that respect.
> 
> With regard to theory of everything, in that I am firmly in the camp of Ancient Greek atomists who "*y good luck [&#8230;] hit on a hypothesis for which, more than two thousand years later, some evidence was found, but their belief, in their day, was none the less destitute of any solid foundation"* (not unlike biocentrism). Basically, at the time there were two prominent attempts to explain the world: teleological (Aristotelian school is an example of this) and mechanical (atomists). Both of these explanations were found to be unintelligible with respect to reality as a whole - sooner or later they all converged on an arbitrary beginning that defied any explanation. For whatever reason, anatomists assumed a position that left those beginnings unanswered for. Here, I am quite content to follow their example and accept that it is unnecessary for me to have a total theory of everything. Make do with what you can, I say  So far it seems to have worked. I don't think that my values are particularly reprehensible, even if I do say so myself
> 
> *Bertrand Russell "A History of Western Philosophy"*


*

Yes. Total reductionist is my ideal, if I understand what that means correctly. I dislike words like "emerges" or "complexity", because they mean nothing to me unless I can see inside the 'emergence' and know how it works. 
But of course, where my thought is overpowered and my story runs thin, I am not above resorting to such 'fluff talk' to support an idea which, while not incomplete, does have some nebulous fuzzy spots.
I appreciate your cautions and directions. (And your tactful candor in saying that I was not making any sense, so far, so nicely.) I'm no communicator, and it appears that I am beginning with some definitions and assertions to sort of set the background, but maybe I should dip into some details now. OK. I'll skip talking about senses for now and go on to how memory works.

4. Memory.

The human body is bathed in its environment, inside and outside. Everything we know comes from our environment. We witnessed it when it happened, using our body sensors (hands, taste buds, ears, etc). So how many body sensors are activated at any one time in a person; a hundred; a million; a hundred million?

All kinds of sensors are everywhere in your body. On the skin. In the joints and muscles. Everywhere. And they are all sending information to the brain simultaneously (although some information travels slower than other when it's coming from extremities or traveling on a nerve with more or less insulation). 
Each of these, however many sensors, sends an electrical pulse up a fiber that juts out of its cell, an axon; what you might call a nerve. These nerves run up the spine, into the brain and by various relays all end up in the appropriate spot on the brain's sensory cortex (Your body is mapped onto your sensory cortex).

The pattern of electrical impulses is relayed from the sensory cortex to what they call 'higher areas', but I'm not going there now, because I'm telling you what a memory is, not how sensory information is experienced. That's later 

The firing sensors form a pattern on sensory cortex's body map. That pattern will become a sensory experience, and it may also become a memory, if the sensory experience is memorable.

How is that done? You hold together the pattern by an index, which is like tying a bunch of balloon strings together. How is that done? How do you re-project them on the little body map on your sensory cortex to replay them? Next time.*


----------



## Azazello

@Erroll
I'm back at work today so will get back to you once I have a chance. P.S. my Word seems to have autocorrected atomists to anatomists, I edited the two but left the other one. I apologise for the error or any other mistakes.


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## Azazello

@Erroll 
Have you seen this documentary?


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## AngelClare

Erroll said:


> Consciousness is a physical interaction between current environment and environment as remembered. That's alll it is. (The devil is in the details). There is nothing so magical about it that we can know what we are talking about, when we say things like "It collapses wave functions to allow matter to exist at a specific time and place."


People get in trouble when they begin with "Consciousness is a ...." I can say consciousness is a loaf of bread. But you would correctly say that's nonsense because there is no connection between the properties of a loaf and bread and your experience of consciousness.

I know what physical interactions are. I can imagine physical entities interacting. But I don't see any connection between the idea of physical interactions and consciousness. Consciousness doesn't have any objective physical properties. It's a subjective experience. How does something physical become something subjective?

Saying consciousness is a loaf of bread is completely meaningless if you can't explain how a loaf of bread becomes consciousness.

Trying to explain consciousness is like trying to explain what space and time are. These are fundamental aspects of reality we use to form explanations. But they themselves cannot be explained.


----------



## Erroll

AngelClare said:


> How does something physical become something subjective?


You sense with your 5 senses. That makes it your subjective experience. The gross detail on how that is accomplished is in the rest of the post you are replying to here. If you want to get into the weeds on it, I recommend David J Linden's recent book on "Touch". If you have further questions and/or rejections, refutations, I would appreciate the opportunity to entertain them.



AngelClare said:


> Saying consciousness is a loaf of bread is completely meaningless if you can't explain how a loaf of bread becomes consciousness.


That's exactly why I felt this would be a fun thing to do. Explanations that don't make me understand do me no good. I think I understand how consciousness works in basic principle. I attempt to be reductionist to the max in my thinking, but there are still some fluffy ideas here and there; often because I need to get more knowledge to investigate some things further, (like the time and space system that I envision in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex). But eventually my interests will work over that way



AngelClare said:


> Trying to explain consciousness is like trying to explain what space and time are. These are fundamental aspects of reality we use to form explanations. But they themselves cannot be explained.


It's a ***** to be sure, using the thing you are explaining to explain with. One sorta has to step outside himself and see himself objectively...but only in the imagination of course.

And in my universe, there is no space nor time. There is a spaceless, extentless, timeless, point universe at the bottom of a black hole, which black hole itself lives in an encompassing point-universe, which is itself located at the bottom of another black hole, and the pattern repeats infinitely. But that's getting way way ahead of myself.

Thanks for your interest..


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## Erroll

Azazello said:


> @Erroll
> Have you seen this documentary?


No, I hadn't seen that. Thank you.

The stuff about reading memories was a bit sensationalized, as was the stuff about extinguishing them. It is true that these feats have been accomplished, but the researchers bent around like contortionists to make it happen (seaweed genetics in mice). This is like a 'proof of concept' but we are nowhere near physical memory modification or extinction (seaweed babies?). But it is true that there have been successful Cognitive Exposure Therapies to extinguish fears and such, for years, if not decades.

It is not mysterious to me why HW could maintain his procedural memory(how to do stuff), but not his episodal memory (what he did). Procedural memory is housed in the cerebellum if a person has one (there are people who don't), the hippocampus (which HW had removed) indexes episodal memory. So of course HW could trace within the stars.

I was delighted to see Eric Kandel on the film. I'm reading his autobiograpical account of his life and research right now.

A good explanation of how neuronal firings generate MRNAs to build proteins was lacking in known facts, as well as in describing any research going on as to how a neuron's action potential spike leads to a bunch of MRNAs flying out of the nucleus. Something enters the nuclear envelope, selects and clips the MRNA off of the double helix, and passes it out through the nuclear envelope so Ribosomes can mix up the RNA recipe and send a new molecule on its way, with an address to deliver it to. How does a neural spike do that? Whats the chain of events. That's very important, because that is the point at which life grows and develops. I will present a couple disjointed ideas on this, even tough I don't know it in its entireity.

Hope you enjoyed the debate. ANy other comments on my last post before this one?


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## Erroll

*My TOE, My Blog, and How Memory Works*

I suppose folks are having problems with the continuity of my story, with the different conversations going on here, so I have put the running narrative of my ideas on my Blog here. Here's my latest screed on this how memory works. It's on the blog too.

Using the 'bunch of balloons analogy, the knot in the strings, that ties together all of the sensory cortex neurons attached to sensors involved in an experience, is located in the hippocampus. Each remembered experience has a knot in the hippocampus, that holds the experience together by connecting to all body sensors involved in a given experience.
So how are the knots physically tied together in the brain. I think they are tied together by time and place cells in the hippocampus CA1-CA3 areas, and the entorhinal cortex. How exactly these cells code for time and space is an area of current research, and I'm not going there right now. But here's a couple of interesting info on the subject. http://jneurosci.org/content/36/28/7476
http://jneurosci.org/content/34/13/4692

I believe that time and place cells receive sensory input and apply a sequential identifier to it. The same sequential identifier (neuron) is also connected to an identifier for the spatial location where the consciousness was located during the experience. This allows all experiences to be sequentially ordered by time cells and also allows indexing into this sequence by place cells. So that, given a date/time, you can recall where you were, or, given a place, you can recall various events experienced at that place at various times.

My personal belief is that space and time consist just of this sole mechanism in the human brain. Time and place cells are the entire reality of the concepts of time and space. These cells allow us to perceive relationships between different parts of the so-called 'block universe', in 3 space and 1 time dimensions. Physically, time and space aren't real, but relationships are real. Time and space is consciousness's tool to analyze relationships.

So how do all the sensory cortex neurons involved in an experience become attached to a time cell in the hippocampus? Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel discovered that neurons which fire together tend to wire together. By this he meant that the synapse junction between two neurons becomes stronger each time the two neurons fire together, by passing neurotransmitter molecules across the synaptic cleft. If two cells fire together enough they may even for a 'gap junction', where the processes from each neuron join together, eliminating the synapse and speeding up the connection between the neurons.
So what cells fire together to form the knot that ties all the sensors involved in an experience together? First of all, there's the time cell in the hippocampus. A time cell has to be active all the time, firing action potentials, moving on to the next time cell, firing its potential, and so on to keep the beat of time.

The neurons which fire with the time neuron in the hippocampus, make up the pattern of the sensory experience. All these neurons are firing because all the body sensors are sending reads on the current state of the environment, to their corresponding neurons in the sensory cortex.

So the current time neuron is firing while all of the involved cortex neurons are firing. Since neurons which fire together wire together by Kandel, it would see as though this is the methodology for binding time and place (hippocampus) to sensory input data (cortex). The synapses strengthen with each rehearsal of the memory and become the strings which hold all of the sensory neurons to the time/place index in the hippocampus.

I call this phase 1 of memory because it traces memory at the neuron level. It explains how lots of neurons are involved in a memory. I will talk about phase 2 of memory after I talk about how memory recall works. Phase 2 memory is certain observations about memory within the neuron. Phase 1 is connectedness, while Phase 2 is intra-neuronal activity.


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## AngelClare

Erroll said:


> That's all that consciousness is, really, a system to decide what to do next.


Your conscious experience of the color red is not a system to decide what to do next. You are conscious choices--door A or door B. You can flip a coin to decide what to do next. A system of what to do next is not the same as your conscious subjective experience of the options you have before you when deciding what to do next.


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## Erroll

AngelClare said:


> Your conscious experience of the color red is not a system to decide what to do next. You are conscious choices--door A or door B. You can flip a coin to decide what to do next. A system of what to do next is not the same as your conscious subjective experience of the options you have before you when deciding what to do next.


Maybe. But if there is a red light on my dashboard, it may be telling me to check the coolant. Deciding to flip a coin was 'what to do next' at some point. Perhaps I should have said that Consciousness is deciding what to do next and doing it, because consciousness does indeed drive reactions too.

But I catch your drift. You are asking why light of a certain wavelength is perceived as red. Well, in truth, why light in a sub-spectrum of wavelengths is red, because we don't know if we are talking about scarlet red, or crimson red, or deep red or light red or which of the many wavelengths which we interpret as red, that we are talking about.

Then, too, red depends on the mechanics of the eye. Not all eyes have equal acuity or color discrimination. So, really objective red is a sort of compromise of general colors that everyone perceives in that area o the spectrum.

So what is the red that we see in our mind? Well, if you look into your head physically, you will see red, but you will not see the red that you imagine in your mind's eye. There is nothing red about the color red in your head, except relationships to things you describe as red.

Red is seen by analogy to these relationships. We learn red by seeing things that we subjectively agree are objectively red. But, in our heads, red is an electrical impulse. When we think of red, we bring back the electrical signature of red and relate it to all the similar (red) things we've ever seen. Those relationships gives red meaning.


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## Azazello

Erroll said:


> No, I hadn't seen that. Thank you.


I wasn't sure how familiar you were with the subject so chose a fairly easy to follow pop-science documentary, I hope you don't feel disparaged by my choice. Sure, some of it was sensationalised and there was a lot of unnecessary fluff but overall it wasn't a bad place to start.



Erroll said:


> I was delighted to see Eric Kandel on the film. I'm reading his autobiograpical account of his life and research right now.


Cool choice of a reading material.



Erroll said:


> How does a neural spike do that? Whats the chain of events. That's very important, because that is the point at which life grows and develops. I will present a couple disjointed ideas on this, even tough I don't know it in its entireity.


Well, I am not a neuroscientist to answer that question and, unless you are doing scientific research in this field, I am not sure how either of our ideas would be of any value. Reason I am saying this is that this is a subject where one either knows the answer, doesn't know the answer, or there is no answer yet or can't be because the question is wrong. It's not like philosophy where you can play around with different ideas and models. I find your fascination with the subject noteworthy, though. At least you are trying to learn about it, rather than just blindly follow your own wishful thinking.



Erroll said:


> Hope you enjoyed the debate.


I read the discussion (and your blog entries based on it) with interest and regret that I can not contribute more due to my reluctance to philosophise on the subject that I feel unqualified to comment on and is best left to people who dedicate their adult lives to studying and researching. It's a shame you're not in London, though. There is an exhibition centre here that for the last 9 months ran a long series of events on the subject of memory and consciousness that I think you may have found fascinating. It finished last week. If I ever come across anything interesting on the subject, I will forward it to you, now that I know you have a fascination with it.



Erroll said:


> ANy other comments on my last post before this one?


Couple of things... Saying that an attempt to define something is meaningless whilst proceeding to list properties that this particular something does or does not have is in itself an attempt at definition, and by this same argument - meaningless.

Secondly, a suggestion that a definition without a complete explanatory power of its properties is meaningless invalidates pretty much all of science, making this whole conversation futile.

Quick question... How would your definition of consciousness apply to subjects with memory disorders, i.e. where there is partial or complete "_damage to neuroanatomical structures that hinders the storage, retention and recollection of memories_"?


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## Erroll

Azazello said:


> Quick question... How would your definition of consciousness apply to subjects with memory disorders, i.e. where there is partial or complete "_damage to neuroanatomical structures that hinders the storage, retention and recollection of memories_"?


For a person with no episodal memory, nor the capability to make new ones, life would be an ongoing, ever changing present, of complete novelty.


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## Azazello

Erroll said:


> For a person with no episodal memory, nor the capability to make new ones, life would be an ongoing, ever changing present, of complete novelty.


But how would that fit in with your definition of consciousness?


----------



## Erroll

Azazello said:


> But how would that fit in with your definition of consciousness?


Patterns of sensory firings would dance around on the sensory cortex. They would match no memory patterns, because there are no memories. Neither would these ongoing patterns be remembered, killing perception of time and space. It is as tough the ever changing sensory patterns were totally new and totally devoid of meaning. All of the sensed data would be lost.


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## Azazello

Would you describe the person as conscious?


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## Erroll

Azazello said:


> Would you describe the person as conscious?


Yes. So long as it is only episodal memory which is lost. A certain minimum of memory is necessary for homeostatic functions to support life and sensory functionality. And if he still had procedural memory, he might be able to do repetitive tasks like ticks and things, and look pretty conscious.

He would be conscious to a degree.

I see consciousness more as a turn dial than an off/on switch. I believe that consciousness grows bigger with every life experience. Every time we have more data, we can make more connections between the new element and remembered elements. The more data elements, the more connections, the more consciousness, the wider our thoughts can range.

With no episodal memory capacity, the sensory pattern will never match any stored memory pattern, so thought will not ignite. There's nothing to process the new sensory data against, and there never will be because nothing is remembered.

The brain damaged person might look at the world like a newborn, an ever changing dancing swirl of light, color, smell, sound, and taste. He would be unable to detect boundaries between things or to tell that there is a past, or have the capacity to imagine a future. He would live in an ever-novel meaningless present. Perhaps he'd have the consciousness of a virus.

Thanks for the excellent thought provoking question. It helps me apply the idea to situations I did not consider, and gives me a dopamine rush...and ain't that what we're all after, lol .

More please


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## Erroll

Erroll said:


> I suppose folks are having problems with the continuity of my story, with the different conversations going on here, so I have put the running narrative of my ideas on my Blog here. Here's my latest screed on this how memory works. It's on the blog too.
> 
> Using the 'bunch of balloons analogy, the knot in the strings, that ties together all of the sensory cortex neurons attached to sensors involved in an experience, is located in the hippocampus. Each remembered experience has a knot in the hippocampus, that holds the experience together by connecting to all body sensors involved in a given experience.
> So how are the knots physically tied together in the brain. I think they are tied together by time and place cells in the hippocampus CA1-CA3 areas, and the entorhinal cortex. How exactly these cells code for time and space is an area of current research, and I'm not going there right now. But here's a couple of interesting info on the subject. http://jneurosci.org/content/36/28/7476
> http://jneurosci.org/content/34/13/4692
> 
> I believe that time and place cells receive sensory input and apply a sequential identifier to it. The same sequential identifier (neuron) is also connected to an identifier for the spatial location where the consciousness was located during the experience. This allows all experiences to be sequentially ordered by time cells and also allows indexing into this sequence by place cells. So that, given a date/time, you can recall where you were, or, given a place, you can recall various events experienced at that place at various times.
> 
> My personal belief is that space and time consist just of this sole mechanism in the human brain. Time and place cells are the entire reality of the concepts of time and space. These cells allow us to perceive relationships between different parts of the so-called 'block universe', in 3 space and 1 time dimensions. Physically, time and space aren't real, but relationships are real. Time and space is consciousness's tool to analyze relationships.
> 
> So how do all the sensory cortex neurons involved in an experience become attached to a time cell in the hippocampus? Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel discovered that neurons which fire together tend to wire together. By this he meant that the synapse junction between two neurons becomes stronger each time the two neurons fire together, by passing neurotransmitter molecules across the synaptic cleft. If two cells fire together enough they may even for a 'gap junction', where the processes from each neuron join together, eliminating the synapse and speeding up the connection between the neurons.
> So what cells fire together to form the knot that ties all the sensors involved in an experience together? First of all, there's the time cell in the hippocampus. A time cell has to be active all the time, firing action potentials, moving on to the next time cell, firing its potential, and so on to keep the beat of time.
> 
> The neurons which fire with the time neuron in the hippocampus, make up the pattern of the sensory experience. All these neurons are firing because all the body sensors are sending reads on the current state of the environment, to their corresponding neurons in the sensory cortex.
> 
> So the current time neuron is firing while all of the involved cortex neurons are firing. Since neurons which fire together wire together by Kandel, it would see as though this is the methodology for binding time and place (hippocampus) to sensory input data (cortex). The synapses strengthen with each rehearsal of the memory and become the strings which hold all of the sensory neurons to the time/place index in the hippocampus.
> 
> I call this phase 1 of memory because it traces memory at the neuron level. It explains how lots of neurons are involved in a memory. I will talk about phase 2 of memory after I talk about how memory recall works. Phase 2 memory is certain observations about memory within the neuron. Phase 1 is connectedness, while Phase 2 is intra-neuronal activity.


I just pasted the following into my blog, where I am recounting the whole story of what I have been thinking about.

Memory recall

Memory recall reminds me of the ancient tradition of library cards. Say that you have a drawer of these cards representing your memory, and you want to pick out all the memories of a certain person. You could punch holes in the cards or use tabs to slide a rod into the hole and pull out all the cards on that person or all the cards on dogs, or with two rods, you can pull out all the cards on dogs + all the cards on that person. And you could do it quickly, just by lifting a rod or a number of rods. Memory is recalled in a similar manner.

So say we have a brain full of memories, like a big card catalog. Say this person detects a noise in his environment. A pattern of tiny hairs is activated in the inner ear. These hairs vibrate with the sound waves and as they do, generate a mechano-electric effect into the part of the sensory cortex that processes sound, causing the neuron attached to each of the moving hairs, to receive an electrical impulse that causes it to activate/spike. At the same time, all of the other hairs in the inner ear are vibrating with the noise, and they are spiking their neurons. You end up with a pattern of spiking neurons on the sensory cortex for hearing. If you consider the sensory cortex as the card and the neurons as the holes, you can see how the new noise is like (analogous to) a remembered noise. You use the new noise pattern as a handful of rods to pull up all the memories of sounds where the pattern of sensor activation matched. If it is a very common noise, you will have many many memories to leaf through and you will likely analyze the group sequentially, if you do not want to leave any memory out.

But we seldom just experience a single sound in isolation. We experience whole scenes with many elements. So if that is a memory, how do we access something like that? The answer is that we do it exactly the same way, but we have more rods to insert. If the memory had the person mentioned above, the tree and the dog too, then each of these sensory impacts would become rods to stick into the card catalog in our hippocampus. We would end up pulling out all memories that contained that person + dog + tree. This would make for a smaller deck of library cards for us to analyze in higher brain areas.

You can mentally follow this progression, and watch your deck shrink more with each additional element of the current scene (rod), that you can use to pick all the memories (cards). Continuing this progression, you can come down to a single memory that contains all of these elements. So the number of memories called up by a stimulus is indirectly proportional to the number of related elements in that stimulus.

Up to this point, I have talked about connections in regard to memory. Next, I'll talk about the things that are connected; memory functions I envision within the neuron cell.


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## Erroll

Erroll said:


> I just pasted the following into my blog, where I am recounting the whole story of what I have been thinking about.
> 
> Memory recall
> 
> Memory recall reminds me of the ancient tradition of library cards. Say that you have a drawer of these cards representing your memory, and you want to pick out all the memories of a certain person. You could punch holes in the cards or use tabs to slide a rod into the hole and pull out all the cards on that person or all the cards on dogs, or with two rods, you can pull out all the cards on dogs + all the cards on that person. And you could do it quickly, just by lifting a rod or a number of rods. Memory is recalled in a similar manner.
> 
> So say we have a brain full of memories, like a big card catalog. Say this person detects a noise in his environment. A pattern of tiny hairs is activated in the inner ear. These hairs vibrate with the sound waves and as they do, generate a mechano-electric effect into the part of the sensory cortex that processes sound, causing the neuron attached to each of the moving hairs, to receive an electrical impulse that causes it to activate/spike. At the same time, all of the other hairs in the inner ear are vibrating with the noise, and they are spiking their neurons. You end up with a pattern of spiking neurons on the sensory cortex for hearing. If you consider the sensory cortex as the card and the neurons as the holes, you can see how the new noise is like (analogous to) a remembered noise. You use the new noise pattern as a handful of rods to pull up all the memories of sounds where the pattern of sensor activation matched. If it is a very common noise, you will have many many memories to leaf through and you will likely analyze the group sequentially, if you do not want to leave any memory out.
> 
> But we seldom just experience a single sound in isolation. We experience whole scenes with many elements. So if that is a memory, how do we access something like that? The answer is that we do it exactly the same way, but we have more rods to insert. If the memory had the person mentioned above, the tree and the dog too, then each of these sensory impacts would become rods to stick into the card catalog in our hippocampus. We would end up pulling out all memories that contained that person + dog + tree. This would make for a smaller deck of library cards for us to analyze in higher brain areas.
> 
> You can mentally follow this progression, and watch your deck shrink more with each additional element of the current scene (rod), that you can use to pick all the memories (cards). Continuing this progression, you can come down to a single memory that contains all of these elements. So the number of memories called up by a stimulus is indirectly proportional to the number of related elements in that stimulus.
> 
> Up to this point, I have talked about connections in regard to memory. Next, I'll talk about the things that are connected; memory functions I envision within the neuron cell.


I just pasted the following into my blog, where I am recounting the whole story of what I have been thinking about.

Phase 2 memory part I

Up until this point, I have been talking about the memory process from the body sensors to the brain's sensory cortex, and how the sensors form a pattern on the cortex that can be used to recall similar memories. This discussion has mostly ignored the memory related activity going on within the neuron itself. While Phase 1 memory deals with neuronal connectivity, Phase 2 memory deals with processing within the neuron itself. And that processing is directed by genetic memory in DNA.
Like everything living, memories start with our DNA. DNA has been sculpted over the eons, so that it contains recipes for every situation that we are likely to encounter in the environment. And they are not simple recipes like add milk and eggs. DNA has the recipes for milk and for eggs as well. Also the recipes for the ingredients of milk and eggs. Food and oxygen provide the basic raw materials. All living things share DNA. I have heard that we share anywhere from 30% to 80% of our DNA with Bananas; don't know why the large margin of error.

Anyway, it seems that DNA has all the data necessary to build a living creature. So DNA is like a memory. It is a real real long term memory that spans generations and epics. But DNA changes and grows. The study of how the same DNA acts differently in different environments is called Epigenetics.

Epigenetics is another type of memory. It deals with how and when the DNA is used through a chemical process called methylization, which loosens or tightens the coil of DNA to make deeply buried genetic material accessible to transcription into messenger RNA. Epigenetic changes have been traced down through 2 generations of offspring. These changes are like an intermediate memory. They can come and go as ongoing environmental conditions perturb them.

Both DNA and Epigenetics make use of the genetic material. I hold to the principle that nature tries to conserve energy. So rather than build a totally separate methodology for normal episodic memory, I choose to believe that it is supported by the same genetic material that supports evolution. That is to say, traces of episodic memory are maintained in the genetic material within the nuclear envelope of neurons.

These 'memory traces' are the most elementary concepts. Not like the letter "J" but like the horizontal bar, the verticle bar, and the U shape at the bottom. One such element might be in each of 3 cells which, together, recognize the letter "J".

Keep in mind though that we are working with electricity in the brain and not horizontal bars printed on paper. The way a neuron remembers horizontal bar or vertical bar or whatever, is by the electrical signature of these stimuli. It is the ability to recreate this electrical stimulus which is the 'trace of reality' that is carried within the neuronal nuclear envelope. The way this happens is very similar to memory Phase 1. Let's go back to the card catalog.


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## Erroll

Phase 2 memory part II

It is estimated that there are 80-100 billion neurons in the average human brain. Each of these neurons has a body or soma, lots of input appendages (dendrites), as many as 10,000 per neuron, and an output appendage (axon). The gross function of the neuron is to gather electrical impulses coming in from thousands of dendrites, integrate all these signals into one big signal, and match this gross signal against an adjustable 'firing threshold value' at which the neuron releases an electric potential down its output axon. 

An action-potential is an impeded electrical current across a membrane. So if the chemicals on one side of the membrane have a net positive charge, while the chemicals on the other side of the tissue have a net negative charge, then there is an action potential. When there is a receptor gate or exit gate in the tissue, electrical current will flow to even the charges on both sides of the tissue, but until then it is an action potential, not a current. 

Jonathan Edwards has an interesting book "How Many People Are there In my Head?", which opines that action potentials in dendrites cause the dendritic tissue to twitch and emit a chime which elicits genetic activity in the cell's nucleus. This is a means for the action potentials to elicit generation of mRNAs, for molecule synthesis, of the molecules effecting neuronal changes, due to the electronic signature of a stimulus arriving at the dendrite. Neuroscience does not yet know the complete catalog of proteins which can be generated and the functions which they carry out. But here is a list of some of the things that might happen, because of the action potential being reached. 

With an action potential is reached, mRNAs exit the neuronal nucleus and build molecules that build direct and fill vesicles with electro-chemicals to be passed across the synapse. Similarly, chemicals to direct the re-uptake of electro-chemnicals are synthesized. Molecules are synthesized to strengthen the synapse by building more synaptic spines, and bigger synaptic bulb densities. Molecules to build receptor and exit gates to and from the neuronal tissues are synthesized.

I am sure that things happen when the action potential is not reached too. Perhaps chemicals to promote pruning of dendritic trees for logical dead ends, or some signal to synthesize retardant neurotransmitters, which will subtract from integrated action potential further down the line. 

How DNA is used within a cell, where everything of life comes together and is built, is a single point where all the complexity we experience in nature rests. Action potential is discriminating enough to generate mRNAs out of the neuronal nucleus for any needed life-molecule, at the time it is needed, and to transport it to the part of the cell where it is needed. 

The ultimate origin of the signals, in the dendrites, lies in the body sensors (cortex), although some of them come by way of the memory recall process covered above (working memory in PFC).
Body sensors don't fire once and stop. If they did, the stimulus would probably be so quick that it would not have time to be noticed. The pressure sensors in your finger, for instance, would continue to spike electrical potentials into your sensory cortex for as long as you pressed your finger against whatever. Going back to the one neuron dendrite that is processing this signal, we experience potentials coming in from a specific sensor, on a specific dendrite. Following this dentrite, we might reach a Y in the road, where an action potential from a different sensor is integrated. And further down there are more Y junctions; more sensors are integrated. The electrical impulse from many sensors becomes a more general combined impulse, through normal constructive and destructive wave interference. With all the body sensors firing their potentials at the same time, a sub-population of brain neurons is integrating all of the potentials into a conscious experience. 

The output axon passes this action potential to another neuron through a synapse. A synapse is a gap between the axon of the 'pre-synaptic' neuron and the 'post-synaptic' neuron. The thousands of dendrites contributing their electrical potential to the growing integrated signal, set up varying conditions in the tissues of the dendrites themselves, which perpetuate down the soma, before either petering out, if action potential for firing is not reached, or before firing a spray of electro-chemicals across the synapse to the next neuron, if action potential is reached. This spray of electro-chemicals enters the tissue of a particular dendrite in the next neuron's dendritic arbor. 

With this as background, how is the electronic signature of a sensory stimulus remembered within a neuron?

Chromatin might be the answer. Chromatin is the material that DNA is built from. In DNA it is organized and tightly wrapped and accessible via whatever enters the nucleus to elicit the emission of mRNAs. What enters the nuclear envelope? Is it the concussive energy of a sonic chime, when a dendrite twitches with the influx of ions? Is it the effect of the electrical potential propagating down the neuron's soma? Or could it be due to quantum properties within the micro tubule scaffolding of the neuron, as Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammeroff argue? The jury is still out on this. But, however the mRNAs are elicited, the memory mechanism I mention here could work for any of them. 

Not all Chromatin is organized into DNA. Unorganized Chromatin adheres to the inside surface of the nuclear envelope. So the chromatin layer just inside the nuclear envelope must be penetrated for each signal coming in, and for each signal (mRNA) going out of the nuclear envelope. 

Picture holes being punched in the Chromatin layer as signals enter and exit the nuclear envelope. Each hole into the nuclear chromatin records a signal which requests an mRNA. Each hole out of the nucleus, through the chromatin records an output mRNA. Here is an opportunity for remembering what those signals are. And if the nucleus remembers the signals, it can recreate them, by emitting the same mRNAs which will re-synthesize the same molecules, that recreate the same experience. The unorganized chromatin in the nucleus records a memory trace. Brain neurons have the ability to recreate the electronic signatures of sensory experience. The so called "unorganized chromatin' adhering to the inner wall of the neuronal nucleus, is organized in a manner that allows it to record requests and emissions of messenger RNAs. This record allows for the recreation of sensory experience, in the act of remembering. 

To verify this with an experiment, would probably require a fuzzy logic program to analyze the structure of the unorganized chromatin and find relationships, which could be analyzed and interpreted. It would be nice to record the unorganized chromatin before a memory trace is recorded and afterwards, to pinpoint the any changes in chromatin structure, in the 'before' and 'after' recordings. But there is no way to determine which subset of the 100 billion neurons will record the memory traces.

So can a single neuron hold more than a single memory trace? Can it generate different mRNAs for different configurations of dendritic action-potential integration? 

If electronic signatures of sensory stimuli come into different dendrites in the arbor and the dendrites are of differing lengths and thicknesses, it stands to reason that the integrated current flowing out of all of these tributaries would be modulated with both the physical characteristics of the dendrite, and the energetic characteristics of the action potential. Thus a unique configuration of charges in dendrites can tag the signal entering the nuclear envelope to elicit the mRNAs. If different configurations have different tags, then the neuron can be used to record and elicit multiple memory traces. The trace recalled would, then, depend on the configuration of the signal into the nuclear envelope, which itself would depend on dendritic lengths and thicknesses plus action potential strengths in each input dendrite. So a single neuron could hold more than a single memory trace.


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## Erroll

8. Recap memory

So episodic memory begins with a set of environmental stimuli that perturb many types, and numerous, bodily environmental sensors. Different sensors are stimulated differently and to different degrees. They generate electro-chemical impulses up nerve fibers to the brain's sensory cortex, at different transmission speeds and at differing rates of firing. The rate of sensor firing sets up the rate of sensory neuron firing. If the neural firing is repeated enough at a great enough intensity, the experience will be remembered. Sensors which fire below the threshold for memory will not be included in the memory. But intensity of sensor firing equates with vividness of experience and vividness of memory. 

The sensors fire their electrical impulses up to the brain's sensory cortex, where it forms a pattern, which represents the sensory experience.

This pattern (of neurons firing in the cortex)is attached (neural plasticity) to a time neuron in the hippocampus, so that all the sensor neurons of the experience can be made available for recall.
The same sensory neuron in the cortex can be attached to many hippocampal time neurons, each of which holds together and indexes a remembered sensory experience.

What happens within the sensory cortex neurons when a memory is formed? When the body sensor is stimulated strongly enough, it will fire an electrical potential. This potential will travel up the nerve projecting from the sensor, to the connected sensory neuron in the brain via the sensory neuron's dedritic arbor. If the combined electrical impulse of all body sensors feeding the dendritic arbor of this sensory neuron is above the sensory neuron's threshold for firing, the sensory neuron fires. At the same time the current time neuron cell in the hippocampus is firing. The firing together of these cells strengthens the connection between them (the string to hold the balloons; sensory neurons) to the knot that ties them together (hippocampal time cell). 

When the neuron fires, a message enters the neural nucleus. The nature of this message is unknown, but Edwards' "tissue twitch with sonic chime" and Penrose's & Hammeroff's "quantum effects in microtubules" are theories for how it might occur. 

The message that enters the nuclear envelope, whatever its nature, evokes the release of messenger RNAs out of the nucleus, to build the vesicles and electro chemicals to be transmitted across the synapse to the next neuron. It also evokes neural plasticity mRNAs to build the components to modify its axon to connect with the appropriate time cell, to form a memory. 

A trace of that memory can be found in the nucleus of the post-spike cell. This trace is written in the unorganized chromatin which clings to the inside of the nuclear envelope. The signal imparted by the neuron's action potential, as well as, the messenger RNAs evoked by this signal, all must pass through the unorganized chromatin. They electrically and mechanically disturb this chromatin when they pass through it, leaving footprints that can be used to reconstruct their trek when this neuron fires again, during memory recall. 

But what, exactly, is the information that is written in the chromatin? It is the electrical signature of the sensory experience. When stimulated by a spike, the chromatin will issue all the mRNAs required to reconstruct the electrical signal that it was originally fed by its dendritic arbor. That is, the subset of sensory cortex neurons involved in an experience, together contain the complete electrical signature of the complete sensory experience.

Axons extend from the sensory cortex, and branch to time neurons in the hippocampus, via neural plasticity, holding together the memory of the sensory experience for those time neurons. 
Axons extend from the time neurons in the hippocampus and branch to sensory neurons in the cortex via neural plasticity. This allows the time cell to electro-chemically re-ignite a pattern, remembered by its axonal connections to all the dendritic arbors of all the sensory neurons related to the remembered experience, for that time neuron; that is to recall a memory.

Memory recall has its ultimate source in sensory experience of the environment. It may be a direct result of the environment or an indirect one, based on a chain of memories leading to the present one. But memory recall is always initiated by the action of the environment on the body's sensors.

Direct memory recall happens when the pattern of sensory cortex neuron firing is similar to a pattern attached to a time neuron in the hippocampus (memory). 

Indirect memory recall happens when the pattern of neural firing in the brain's working memory (PFC), is similar to a pattern attached to a time neuron in the hippocampus (memory). (This happens during my discussion of 'thinking', which will be the next subject I turn my attention to, after I finish with memory.)

Just as making memories begins with sensory experience of the environment, emotions begin with recalling memories during the thinking process, which I will turn to next. But before I do, let's discuss emotions and quales. What is feeling blue? What is anger? What makes the perception of red?

There are all kinds of sensors in your car pressure, temperature, electrical, etc. These sensors get the just of the message e.g. "your radiator is about to boil over". But nobody thinks that the car feels the pressure. The car does not complain about a fever in its radiator, but suddenly the engine seizes and steam rolls out from under the hood. But nobody thinks that the car is hurting. That's the sort of thing that only an ardent pan-psychist would espouse. 

Living cells are different. If a human were overheating, there would not just be the objective physical signs, but the person would have a subjective internal quality of 'feeling hot'. Where does subjective feeling come from?

We sense that subjective feelings or emotions or quales seem to happen outside of time and space, perhaps in some spiritual or pan-psychic realm of the mind. But if time and space were only tools of consciousness, with no basis in physical reality, then the spiritual and temporal worlds would have a similar chemistry. A miracle would not be necessary for a physical stimulus to pass from the physical to the spiritual, in a timeless/spaceless universe. 

I believe that quales and emotions are caused by;

(1). the varying spatial placement and catchment area of body sensors 
(2). the varying temporal firing rates and transmission speeds of body sensors 
(3). the integration, in the dendritic arbor, of all of the body sensor signals, from objectively specific places and times into one subjective signal for a given time/place cell. 
(4). the projections from the sensory cortex back down to the body sensors elicits a sensory 'feel' to memories
(5). the stacked nature of analogy formation that is at the basis of thinking. 
(6). the sub-conscious unconscious, or inherited nature of old analogy at the bottom of the analogical stack.

I have already discussed factors 1 - 3 in my description of body sensors. Factors 4 - 6 are more properly discussed in the context of thinking, which I will turn to now.


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## Erroll

9. Thinking.

Thinking is simply comparing current sensory experience with memory. And all memory originates in sensory experience. So thinking can be defined as comparing current sensory experience with past sensory experience.

Neurons break down into three broad classes. Sensory neurons in the sensory cortex create sensory experience. Motor neurons in the motor cortex drive the muscles. All other neurons are called Interneurons. Interneurons are involved in association of sensory data and memory to muscle movement and homeostasis. Interneurons are in the 'higher' or 'association' areas, where they act much like computer code in associating remembered instances of experience with current experience. You might consider sensory neurons as input, interneurons as a sort of instructional quasi-code, and motor neurons as the output of the living system. 

Thinking is done in interneurons in the front part of the brain, (the PFC) in an area reserved for working memory. Working memory can work with as many as four 'chunks' of information. A 'chunk' of information can be the whole current sensory experience, or an entire remembered experience. A more modest chunk could be parts of experiences or probability information gleaned from multiple sensory experiences. 

Thinking starts when the sensory pattern on the cortex is similar to a sensory pattern attached to a time neuron or place neuron in the hippocampus. So what makes a current sensory experience similar to a remembered sensory experience? Maybe we should ask, instead, how can a sensory pattern on the cortex be similar to a remembered sensory pattern?
The body sensors are firing a pattern of spikes onto the sensory cortex. Imagine how these firings light up on the cortex's body map. The sensory cortex has six layers of neurons. Say that the first layer is the current experience layer of the map. Many sensor neurons are being stimulated simultaneously. 

Electrical impulses keep arriving at the dendritic arbor, causing the neuron to spike and send an electrical impulse down its output axon. The axon splits into numerous forks and synapses on numerous dendritic trees of numerous time neurons in the hippocampus. 

These numerous time neurons send their output axons back to the sensory cortex, but not to the same layer of cortex neurons that is recognizing current experience. The time neuron lights up sensors in a separate cortical layer. 

The time neurons (memories)are processed serially, beginning with the most recent.

The time neuron lights up the associated sensory neurons in layer 2 by sending an impulse down its axonal connection to all the sensor neurons associated with the time neuron (memory) in layer 2. 

You can now imagine two pages of neurons on the cortex. Both the first and the second layer have body maps with body sensor impulses lighting up their respective areas of the map for layer 1, and a time neuron (memory) lighting up all its respective areas of the map for layer 2. (Note the tags layer 1 and layer 2 do not necessarily refer to cortical layers I and II, but are just for convenience of distinguishing 2 super-imposed layers of body map).

Neurons in one cortical layer can synapse on neurons in a separate cortical layer. This allows the two cortical layers to be compared. If both layers 1 and 2 have a given neuron switched on, it means that this is a point of pattern agreement. The agreement of this memory with current experience is equal to the number of sensors turned on in both layers 1 and 2. The disagreement of this memory with current experience is equal to the number of sensors on in current experience but off in the remembered experience, plus the number of sensors off in current experience but on in the remembered experience.

How do layer 1 and layer 2 sensory neurons determine if a given sensor is on in both layers? An interneuron is necessary to make the comparison. If the given neuron in layer 1 is firing, it will be sending electrical impulses to our interneuron. If the same given neuron (insofar as the body map) in layer 2 is firing, it will be sending electrical impulses to our interneuron as well. If both layers are feeding the interneuron an impulse, the action potential is reached and the interneuron fires. If only an action potential from one of the layers is received at the interneuron's dendrite tree, the interneuron will not fire, connotative of a mis-match. The three neurons act as a logical gate. This is how interneurons are like a quasi computer language code. 

You can see how other interneurons (coding) would be necessary to do things like tally the matched and unmatched sensors, compute the overall percentage matched spiking neurons in the memory and sensory cortex, and to maintain and compare a target percentage match against the actual percentage match. If the target percentage match target is met, then this memory can be useful in evaluating the current sensory experience, and an axon/dendrite link between the time neuron (which indexes the sensory neurons which fired during experiences at given time) and working memory is forged. If the target percentage match is not met, then this memory will not be useful in evaluating the current sensory experience, and no link to working memory will be laid down. 

The axonal link from the time neuron (representing a memory in cortical layer 2), to an inter neuron dendrite in working memory allows details of the memory to be linked to the time neuron from the cortex and thence from the time neuron to working memory. Such details become a separate logical chunk in working memory.

Working memory can activate and deactivate a chain of time neurons in the hippocampus. This, in effect, is calling different memories into working memory and evaluating them against the current experience whose sensors are spiking in cortical layer 1. Each sensor in cortical layer 1 has axonal projections to working memory, as well as, possibly, to various memories (time cells). These pre-placed connections allow current experience to constantly reside in working memory, in support of environmental management, because we always have to deal with our environment; we are always thinking.

So thinking is comparing the current environment to memories of similar environments, and predicting outcomes of actions based on past outcomes of actions. 

We have seen how memories are formed and recalled. We have seen how similarity of sensory pattern provides guidance as to which memories might be significant in experiencing the current environment. We have seen how both current and remembered experience become available to working memory. We have seen how working memory extracts pertinent memory details.

At this point, I would like to stop the running narrative of neural processing and switch to a more general description of how pertinent details are processed against each other to flesh out logical descriptions of how comparisons between unlike experiences yield decisions as to what to do next. 

Douglas Hofstadter has written extensively on the power of categorization and analogy making. He believes that all thinking extends from the simple precept that 'this' is like 'that'. We have already seen this precept at work in our discussion of matching memory sensors in cortical layer 2 to current experience sensors in cortical layer 1. If they are both spiking, then the current experience pattern is like the remembered pattern insofar as that single sensor is concerned. If enough sensors agree, we have an analogy. 

Analogies can become embedded. Embedded analogies can become farther embedded. Over the course of a lifetime analogies can become so deeply embedded in each other, that the surface analogy will evoke all of the meaning stored in the embedded analogies. These embeddings can reach back to sensory experience in infancy and in utero. The foundation layers of deep analogy are probably never brought to consciousness, but lie in the subconscious. 

So that if these two things are alike in some respect and those two things are alike in the same respect, then we can say something like 'this class of things is like that class of things'. We can even merge the two concepts by which they are similar into a third, more general class. 

Thinking happens that way. General concepts are derived from many many specific instances and the relationships discovered in those specific instances. All the occurrences are tabulated and analog percentages are computed in interneuron assemblies. These analog percentages are used to ascertain certainty in prediction of action outcomes. "If I do this, that usually happens." But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's look more deeply at how analogies come about.


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## sad1231234

The more i read stuff like this, the more im starting to believe that biocentrisism may be a fact.


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## Erroll

sad1231234 said:


> The more i read stuff like this, the more im starting to believe that biocentrisism may be a fact.


I'm not sure what biocentrisism is. I just looked it up, and it says Robert Lanza's book on the subject claims that the universe springs from life rather than life springing up in the universe.

If it is the mystic sort of thing where consciousness is purported to create stuff, that's not my cup of tea.

But if it is a tad different, where the mind does not create stuff but creates an internal perception of stuff, then I like it.

In the metaphorical way that I see it, my consciousness is locked in a black box that separates me from whatever physical reality is. My body sensors are like electrical contacts on the outside of the box, that are in contact with whatever lies in the environment outside my box. So whenever one of the contacts meets the environment, I get an electrical signal inside the box. Inside my dark box, I imagine what the signal means. I imagine things separated by space and time. I imagine things moving, mixing, growing, changing. These nouns and verbs are products of my imagination. They were built in my mind's eye by countless electrical clues delivered to the contacts on the outside of my box. In truth, we can not know the physical world as it truly objectively is. We can, however, agree on a common interpretation of what our electrical signals have told us. So objectivity is just cooperative subjectivity.

All science is like LHC science. Metaphorically, our black boxes have an appendage that we can move and bat around in the environment with. So we bat around until we get an electrical signature on one of our contacts. Then we think of another time that we were batting around with our appendage and we felt a similar resistance. Then we come up with an internal representation of that resistance and call it a thing. Then we locate 2 things and bash them together, and name all of the electrical signatures that we detect as a result of their interaction. Then we use our appendage to write down rules of physics. But what is really out there? Whatever we imagine based on the electrical signatures, really.


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## Erroll

10. Analogy discussion
What do we mean when we say that 'this' is like 'that'. Maybe we mean that they are the same color, or have similar sizes or weights, or maybe we mean they can be used for similar purposes. To generalize, then, 'this' is like 'that' based on some criterion or set of criteria. So a sledge hammer, a mallet and a rock can be analogous in that they can be used as objects for pounding. A flower, a sheet of paper, and a leaf can be analogous as objects weighing less than an ounce. The point is that things are always alike or unalike within the framework of some criteria. So, if criteria are necessary for analogy, how does recognition of criteria come about. Again many specificities build the generality.

Take the criterion 'weight'. Our muscles must counteract a force when we want to move something; gravity. We have many memories which involve gravity. We subconsciously use these memories when we pick something up. If you think a paint can is full, you apply a greater force to your muscles in picking it up. But if it turns out to be empty, you find that you have applied too much force in picking it up. But the point is that weight born of gravity is a learned criterion, that we've learned in the past from moving lots of things around in our environment.

So we have all these memories of moving all kinds of different things. These things had many different weights, but the same things usually had the same weights. If we have an interneuron which signifies the criterion weight, it could be connected to all the memories of the weighty items. Memories of buoyancy or lighter than air experience would not be connected to the weight criteria neuron. The memory trace in the motor neuron at the end of the sequence of a remembered experience might be the force applied to the muscle to move an object which was in the memory. This 'force applied' trace would allow for the weights of items in the memory to be farther classified as 'heavy' or 'light', by relating an interneuron which stands for 'heavy' or 'light' to the time cell containing the force trace. So the 'heavy' interneuron would contain a memory trace for the force that was considered the cutoff for "light" and all memories containing force traces heavier that that would be related to the 'heavy' interneuron. These cutoff values would be updated as new experience yields new data.

So if you wanted to list heavy things, you would follow the axonal output spike of the 'heavy' interneuron down to the dendrites of all of the time (memory) neuron cells in the hippocampus. If you wanted to know if the object you moved in a memory was heavy or light, you would follow a spike out of the hippocampal time neuron cell, down its axon and into the dendritic tree of either the 'heavy' or 'light' interneuron. All categories are established by sensory input, in a similar manner.

First individual experience leads to the discovery of categories. When a new category is discovered in new sensory input, all the memories of instances of that category are related to the new category interneuron. If several such categories share a similarity under a different criteria, the several categories can be related to the new more general category. If several of these more general categories can be related by a third criterion, an even more generalized category interneuron is set up and related to the several more general categories. These embedded analogies can go very deep, and they continue to deepen as the consciousness has experiences and accumulates memories.

Where do these new 'category' interneurons come from? And where do time neurons come from? Generally speaking, a baby is born with all the neurons he needs, and intellect grows with relating experiences. But there are areas of the brain where new neurons are being born. One of those areas is the hippocampus. I would conjecture that time neurons are born there. Time neuron cells reside in 3 areas of the hippocampus, called CA1 CA2, and Ca3. I would also conjecture that 'category' interneurons are born in the hippocampus as well. Recent hippocampal research has discovered what seem to be categories for 'good' and 'bad' experiences. It is assumed that the purpose of this is to index all bad experience to the single 'bad' interneuron to facilitate quick communication to the amygdala, to arouse the homeostatic mechanisms of the fight or flight response. But 'good' and 'bad' are categories maintained in the hippocampus, so it is reasonable to assume that they were born there. They were also guided to the hippocampus area where they reside together. I conjecture that other category interneurons are born in the same manner.

Embedding analogies builds meaning. Why, for instance, does the word "red" have meaning? We see red whenever certain cone cells in the retina encounter light of a certain wavelength. Does the wavelength give red meaning? Maybe to a scientist, but certainly not to the average person. Red has meaning because of our analogical memories of red. The red category interneuron relates to every memory we have of red. Our first encounter with red may have been soon after our retinas developed and we peered out at the bright beach sun through our mother's womb, with the light taking on the hue of the blood circulating in that womb. Upon being born, we might notice the obstetrician's red gloves. Throughout life our inventory of red things grows. The 'red things' category might be subsumed into the category 'colored things' and colored things might be subsumed with everything else into a category simply called things, for which color was not even a requirement. And this is going on, not just for 'red' or 'color' or 'things'. This generalization process is continually working for all categories, and when no category exists, a new interneuron is born to establish a new category. Additionally, interneuron memory traces for category boundaries are constantly being adjusted with new experience.

The entire system is dynamic and even memories themselves can change with new experience. For instance, in my memory, I might have called the color red, before I learned how to discriminate red from scarlet. Now when I remember it, I will likely remember scarlet instead of red.

Doug Hofstadter's student, Melanie Mitchell, wrote an analogy making program called Copycat. (http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf )
The program uses a database of categories to build analogies. So, for instance, if the program is presented with an example of a category, it can complete an analogy for a similar category.

Say the analogy maker program is fed the string 'A,B,C' and the partial analogical string '1,2,_'. The program would access its category database and see 'Alphabetic' and 'Numeric'. Each of these categories would have a property which we can call sequence. Alphabetic's sequence property would list the alphabetic sequence. Numeric's sequence property would list the numerical sequence. The program locates and compares the common property 'sequence' for the alpha and numeric parts of its input. It determines we are moving one sequential step to get from A to B to C and applies the same rule to move a single step from 1 to 2 to 3, and completes the analogy. If input sequence were A,B, D, copy cat would determine that first we move one sequence step and then we move 2 sequence steps. Following that rule for numeric's sequence property yields 1,2,4.

This is exactly the type of processing that occurs in interneurons in the brain. We remember categories, we compare categories, we discover similarities and differences at all levels in the analogical hierarchy, and we use the similarities and differences to come up with more categories. Each emergent category can yield much additional information as the new category is compared to existing categories and new relationships and relationship categories are revealed. This comparison process is what I call thinking.

I have said that the chain of analogy begins en utero because consciousness begins en utero. But how does it start up, before there are any concepts by which to find things similar and different? I believe that certain initial concepts are hard coded into the sensory cortex, as directed by DNA. So how do you hard code a concept into neurons, so that you have the wherewithal to make an analogy?

Take the category or concept of 'hot'. How does 'hot' as in temperature become analogous to 'hot' as in taste? It is because the 'taste' hot sensors and the 'feel' hot sensors both connect to the same sensor neuron in the sensory cortex. One is a taste and one is a feel but the effect on the nervous system is exactly the same spike out of the same sensory neuron. In this same manner, hard coded analogy serves as a bootstrap mechanism to allow further analogy to be built upon concepts derived from these genetically pre-programmed analogies.


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## Erroll

11. Thinking recouped

Thinking is relating current experience to remembered experience.

Current experience happens when the electrical impulses from remote body sensors reach the brain's sensory cortex. This forms a pattern on the sensory cortex. If current experience is memorable (enough sensors firing rapidly enough), it may be stored in memory. 

Remembered experience is associated to a time neuron and may be associated to a place neuron in the hippocampus. The time neuron binds together all of the sensors involved in experience at the time of the experience. It does this because the time neuron and the sensory neurons are spiking together at the same time (Hebbian Plasticity).

Current experience recalls past experience. If the pattern of current experience is similar to the pattern of past experience, current experience will call that past experience into mind. The recall is based on a comparison of the sensors spiking as a result of current experience, with sensors that spiked during various memories. Similar memories are ones that have a similar configuration of sensors spiking. 

There are countless memories. But only the ones with a significant number of sensor matches to current experience are recalled. Matching memories are recalled serially. Significance is defined statistically, by a memory trace (electronic signature) in an interneuron that tracks the success of matching memories to current experience. If matching sensors with the current parameter is leading to successes, the parameter won't need adjusted, but if current experience recalls a torrent of unrelated unhelpful memories, the memory trace value will have to be adjusted upward to require a greater match between memory and current experience before a memory is recalled. 

The sensory cortex has 6 cortical layers. Neurons spiking in the top layer are evoking current experience. Each neuron in the sensory cortex projects an axon that synapses on a dendrite in the working memory area of the pre-frontal cortex. Working memory is at the heart of thinking. But current experience is devoid of meaning until we associate it with remembered experience. 

Memories are projected on a different cortical layer, to facilitate comparison with current experience. Each neuron in the sensory cortex that spikes during a remembered experience projects an axon that synapses on a time neuron dendrite in the CA1-3 areas of the hippocampus. This time neuron is associated to all the sensory neurons that were spiking in a remembered experience. 

The neurons in the cortical layer representing the memory spike more slowly, so the experience is not like the experience of reality, where neurons would spike vigorously. Remembered experience is experienced not only in the neurons but in the body sensors as well. Just as there are ascending paths from the sensors to the brain, there are also descending pathways. These are the pathways by which instructions to move muscles travel from the motor cortex. I think these connections may be the basis of mood and emotion. A remembered feeling is like an echo of a current feeling. I believe that a dampened 'feel' signal is sent from the memory layer of the sensory cortex to the body sensors involved in the memory, to elicit this subjective quale. 

A link to the time cell in the hippocampus, which is projecting a memory onto a cortical layer, is established in working memory. Now working memory is linked to the current experience cortex as well as to the current memory being projected onto a different layer of the cortex.

The current memory is analyzed by the electronic signatures in its sensor neurons. Groups of these sensor signatures might represent categories and/or concepts. When the interneurons for these categories/concepts are firing at the same time as the memory's sensory neurons in the cortex, they become associated with the thought. The categories/concepts are a hierarchy of embedded analogy, imparting the meaning of the analogies at the bottom of the hierarchy to all of the encompassing analogies above it. Meaning flows unconsciously from the most specific to the most general levels of analogy. For instance what does a simple statement like "Countries must cooperate." mean? 'Country' sits at the top of a hierarchy of governing units including 'states', 'counties', 'municipalities', and 'individuals'. When we say that countries must cooperate, the meaning that all the units comprising 'country' must cooperate is inherent. So it is with all categories/concepts. 

After the current memory is analyzed in this manner, we might go on to the next similar memory, and analyze it in a similar manner. But if something in the first memory caught our interest (via the brain's reward system), we might begin to mind wander. 

Remembered experiences are serially projected on the memory cortical layer with current experience on a separate layer, and linked to working memory where they can be associated with categories/concepts and the lower sub-conscious hierarchical meaning associated with these categories/concepts.

12. Brain systems running simultaneously with memory and thinking.

Just a few words about the reward system. We all know that there is a relationship between chemicals and subjective experience. How do you feel after a few beers? 

The body manufactures chemicals that enhance experience too. Two of those chemicals are dopamine and serotonin. These chemicals make neurons spike more rapidly to enhance the vividness of any experience. 

The body has evolved to favor activities that enhance survival odds. The body shows its favor for survival enhancing behaviors by synthesizing these chemicals in specialized neurons and releasing them in the synaptic clefts. This increases the vividness and thus the pleasure of experience. There is a genetic inclination to seek more vivid experience (pleasure). A category, call it 'pleasurable activities', is established and connected to all memories of pleasant experience. 

Whenever working memory processes a memory of a pleasant experience in connection with a current experience, the first inclination might be to direct the motor cortex to take action that can turn current experience towards the pleasurable remembered experience. 

Good and bad memories are in separate parts of the hippocampus, with heavy connectivity to the amygdala, the emotion organ which holds the keys to the serotonin dopamine vault.

There are many specialized areas in the brain like the reward system and the homeostatic system, which maintains things like heart rate and breathing. The fusiform gyrus, for instance is a specialized system for recognizing faces, among other things. The basal ganglia and the cerebellum house systems for various types of muscle motor memory, which do not involve thinking or consciousness. 

Processing is similar in these systems as it is in episodic memory and thinking, but memories are not involved in all the systems. This is the stuff of the sub-conscious and the unconscious. They can be envisioned as background programs running concurrently with thought and memory. For instance, the reward system constantly monitors working memory for any signature which might be a sign of something rewarding.


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## Erroll

13. Physics of my TOE

Taking into consideration that there are brain mechanisms to account for time and space, what is the proof that time and space truly physically exist out there?

There's lots of stuff in Relativity and Quantum Physics that make you wonder if science hasn't gone off the rails when it comes to time and space.

a. Relativity and Spacetime

So, take relativity. It is said that time and space are different perceptions of the same thing, called Spacetime. That means that each instance of consciousness carries around its unique time and space. That, alone, makes me question these things we call space and time. When we say these words, the common understanding is that there is an objective space and time, but there is not. Each consciousness has its own unique spacetime. Of course, this is imperceptible at the speeds that human's move, but nonetheless, spacetime is different for each individual. 

When we look at our own spacetime relative to someone else's spacetime, we experience totally strange stuff. Like time flows more slowly for individuals in motion and space contracts parallel to their direction of motion. One has to ask, 'Are we looking at this properly?' 

If we assume that space and time do physically exist, then we have to allow one spacetime variant for each instance of consciousness. Now will that be 6 billion, one for each person on earth, or would it be 6 zillion, one for each bacteria, bug, and human? The very idea of so many different times and spaces begs one's credulity. In the words of the immortal Sully of Monsters Inc. "Something's not right." 

If we assume that space and time do not physically exist, then just what is motion? When we shuffle our feet, perhaps? Yes. There is something that we detect and call space and time. But is it really physical space and time, or is it what our consciousness perceives out of whatever is really physically out there? Because space and time do not work sensibly in view of relativity. How in the hell do I cause all of space to contract in front of me when I walk down the road? Relativity says it does. I say that something happens that is analogous to the idea of contracting space, because we make gadgets that work because of that idea. But I question the idea that space contracts. I question our idea of space and time in general. 

And it is not just consciousness that has its own unique spacetimes. We are told that gravity bends space. Who can even understand how you can bend space? Is this even rational talk? 

b. Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement makes two things behave as though they were a single thing with no space between them. If you perturb one of the pair of entangled particles, the effect of the perturbation is immediately evident in the other entangled particle of the pair. But an instantaneous correspondence between two things separated by space is not possible. It takes motion through space over time to communicate a change. But it does not for entangled particles. 

So do we have the right idea about what space and time really are? Do we understand space and time or have we just discovered some random rules that make our GPS work? The rules are in our head. They work for an interpretation that literally changes the playing field. (Well, relativity does imply that the football field is shrinking ahead of the guy running with the ball.) But can we come up with a different interpretation of that, which we call space and time, in a way so that the rules all work out, but we do not have to say things like spacetime expands bends and contracts. 

All these words imply that spacetime moves and writhes. One has to ask what space, is space moving in? If spacetime bends concave around the sun, where is the convex bump in space on the other side of the concave bend? Or does space contract as it passes mass to make the concave curve? Hey, I've got some mass to me. As I walk around am I bending space a minuscule amount. I guess I am. Or else, "Something's not right." Space is not what we commonly perceive it to be.

So do entangled particles have their own copy of spacetime, just as I said that each instance of consciousness has? Apparently there is no space between them from the perspective of the entangled particle, but relative to us, there is space in between them. How can space, seen relatively, both be and not be, in this scenario?


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## Erroll

13 c. Energy, Mass, Force, Gravity, Quantum Jump

The whole subject of quantum entanglement makes me suspicious of the common perception we have of space. Things like, when we use a force to move something through space, just what is that force overcoming? Air resistance I guess. Then we have to use force to overcome gravity too. But it seems we use more force to move something, than what would be required to overcome a miniscule gravity of air resistance. What can that force be counteracting besides air and gravity?

Things always seem to be moving at the quantum level. Perhaps the force that we apply is an angular force to change the direction of motion, and not to traverse space. So what is motion if it is not a change in location over time? What is a change in direction when there is no space to contain direction? Perhaps a force does not require space and time. Perhaps the wave function is just a graph born of an effort to define the product of logical thinking. Maybe the wave function is trying to tell us that the particle exists in each of these places, depending on which universe of the multi-verse we are in. The main physics my TOE tells me is that current Physics makes no effort at defining space or time. It just determines how they work via experiment, and someone makes up an explanation for how things might be to make things happen like that, and then, everyone just accepts and believes this explanation based on faith. This cuts off creative human thought, as everyone accepts the first consistent explanation and stops looking at other possibilities. Whereas, if we would look at all possible interpretations, we might not be stuck at why quantum mechanics does not jive with relativity. That might become obvious with a different interpretation of what is going on.

The questions about space and time continue. If energy does not require space, and mass is concentrated energy, then why does mass require space? Or is the so called 'space' displaced by mass? And if so, by what magic does space re-appear at a location which has just been vacated by mass?

And what of waves? There are Matter waves. Are matter waves real? Do matter waves exist in time and space? Or are matter waves just a probability graph for the particle's position in space? We define waves as having a wavelength and amplitude, but if there is no space or time, how could we define them?

On one hand we say the electron is a wave which would make you think it is energy. But on the other hand we say that an electron is a matter particle, which would make you think that it is mass. So is an electron a mass, an energy, or a combination of both, and under what conditions is it which? Lengths and frequencies have no meaning in a universe without spacetime.

All subatomic particles are waves and energy is waves; so is everything is interacting waves? With all these waves smeared out in 3 spatial plus 1 time dimensions, where is there room for spacetime? Doesn't it seem that ever weaker waves would move out from the center of disturbance forever, like the ripples on a still pond fill the whole pond? If everything is waves then, how does that leave any unused space? Also maybe space is really the dark energy that seems to make up around 70% of the stuff of the universe.

The Quantum Jump, which has been used to justify all kinds of new age consciousness ideas, defies space and time. As an electron loses energy, it will vacate its energy shell and jump to the next lower energy gradient. It will do so in zero time. It will cross no intermediate space when it jumps. I don't care if they say space is there. I say it's a figment if it is traversed in zero time, because light can not traverse space in zero time and nothing can go faster than light. That's another reason that I believe space and time exist only in the human hippocampus.

Energy changes form with work, but work requires energy. Is the universe a loop of energy and work morphing into each other. Work is applying force to move mass. Force = interaction to change motion. Motion is change in location with respect to time.

Mass is concentrated energy. Gravity is a property of mass. So gravity is a property of energy? So does gravity exist in unconcentrated energy? Well take electrical energy, it does not have gravity, but it has something similar to gravity in that flowing electricity generates a magnetic field. Thermal energy can morph into electrical energy with a turbine. Ditto chemical energy and physical energy. Any type of potential energy can morph into electricity which generates a magnetic field, analogous to the gravitational field.

So we have a timeless/spaceless block universe which has this ability to do work (energy) constantly changing forms, but in which no work is done (nothing ever happens).

We are embedded in this block and we are aware of everything impacting on our senses. Why are we aware of what impacts our senses? String theory might have some useful ideas here.

String Theorists reduced the number of string theories by finding that some of them described the same things from differing perspectives. The tool that they used to discover this is called T-duality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-duality).

If you look at it from the standpoint of theorizing about, not just what T-duality does, but what it is, you will come to an new understanding. T-duality of string theory, is a law which predicts that within every particle, the outside universe is mapped into its interior. Is T-duality giving us a clue on the nature of consciousness here?

Space and time represent a computational challenge; both are variables that cannot be simply calculated from the immediately available sensory information. If you can't understand what space and time are, based on immediate sensory input, perhaps space and time are not available to the senses, but are made up data; a tool of consciousness.


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