h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"In a previous paper we described the early inflationary universe in terms of quantum information. In this paper, we analize those results in more detail, and we stress the fact that, during inflation, the universe can be described as a superposed state of quantum registers. The self-reduction of the superposed quantum state is consistent with the Penrose's Objective Reduction (OR) model. The quantum gravity threshold is reached at the end of inflation, and corresponds to a superposed state of 10^9 quantum registers. This is also the number of superposed tubulins-qubits in our brain, which undergo the Penrose-Hameroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction, (Orch OR), leading to a conscious event. Then, an analogy naturally arises between the very early quantum computing universe,and our mind."

A year ago I wrote to someone suggesting that the world functions like the film the Matrix only without the computerised enemy writing the program. WE write the program ! conscious/spirit/soul writes the program to give us the 'exact' experiences we require.
Life is a cause and effect cascade, but for it to happen there has to be a will to energise the cause and effect.
The collective consciousness sustains the consensual reality.
the 'individual' separated consciousness sustains the individual realites.

I think the person I wrote to thought I was a suitable case for treatment.
They couldn't even 'see' the bhuddist/christianity story behind the story.

Noggin
I just found this quote from the link alji put up on the F or F site.

" consciousness may one day very well turn out to be a basic building block of the universe. " David Chalmers

HNM Chaiwallah:
'only psylocibin ever produced visions of "gods"...' I suspect that's more true of mescaline. Peyote cactus are much more associated with spiritual "trips" and religous ecstacies than magic mushrooms...

'...why did exposing the brain, specifically the temporal lobes, of Prof. Richard Dawkins to the magnetic field stimulation helmet produce no results?' - because some people are more sensitive to the phenomenon than others. Perhaps Richard Dawkins' staunch atheism is partly the result of having a brain structure which has never exposed him to that particular sensation of awe and majesty.

The functioning of the parietal lobes as a "firewall" has been mentioned a couple of times. This sounds about right to me, but I would guess that they don't start out that way; rather they develop as a natural part of a child's developmental process. Note how small children start out by seeming to look into space, their eyes apparently following objects that "aren't there". How toddlers have a "vivid imagination" for objects we can't percieve? I've often theorised that perhaps they are aware of more channels of "information" than an adult, but their survival instincts lead them to give proportionally more attention to the things their parents seem to see as "important", and less to the things their elders ignore, until a "firewall" has built up to prevent these extra channels of information from consciously intruding.

On another point, regarding the work of Doctor Persinger, the reactions of his successful subjects have been to report a feeling of awe, dissociation from their physical surroundings and a sense of a powerful and all-knowing "presence". Above all, the event feels more "significant" to them than anything else they have ever experienced. Their interpretation of this depends greatly on their pre-existing belief system; those of a religous nature believe they were in the presence of God or Buddha, while others may be convinced they have just experienced some form of alien abduction!

It's the latter interpretation that intrigues me. "Temporal lobe sensitives" can have such an experience with even a weak trigger, and many UFO/abduction scenarios are centered around areas with unusual magnetic fields, such as electrical storms, radar arrays, power lines or seismic activity. "Ghostly visions" are also rife in such situations, and could in many cases be another manifestation of this phenomenon just being filtered through a different set of preconceptions. I feel that Persinger may have found the key to a great number of "Paranormal" phenomena...

(I've written a couple of short articles at my website - http://www.paranormal.org.uk - look in the "Why?" section... )

Oooh, I just remembered; you might want to add this in a footnote:

Representatives of the local Catholic church picketed Doctor Persinger's laboratory, claiming that his findings were "devaluing" their faith. Some claimed they must be "the work of the devil"...

Hi Peet,

You have picked me up on stuff that I posted to the site so long ago I can't remember which thread it was on. Could you give me a link back. That stuff about psylocibin doesn't sound familiar ( or indeed correct ) as I took mescaline, psylocibin, and LSD in my day. I think that the only one I took which produced divine presences for me, was Psylocibin. That was probably the meaning I intended. Both LSD and mescaline produced visions ( divine, in the case of mescaline, rather less so in the case of the rather impure LSD we took...it was more than thirty years ago!), but not in the same league as Psylocibin.

Regarding this whole area, temporal lobe stimulation ( according to the documentary which I watched ) seems to be of rather less interest than parietal lobe suppression. But it's very late now, and I'm off to bed, so we can pursue this discussion another time, OK?

No problem.

The quotes are from the first page of this thread, probably about the third or fourth post. (I can't be bothered looking - it's my bedtime too! )

Peet~

"Perhaps Richard Dawkins' staunch atheism is partly the result of having a brain structure which has never exposed him to that particular sensation of awe and majesty."

This looks to me like a particularly dangerous line of argument. What makes brains able to communicate is the amount of power they have to acquire and change their own internal structure in interaction with each other; that is, their relative freedom from hard-wiring, other than the essential hard-wiring common to all.

To say that one person can't understand another's experience on account of their brain structure is a bigger claim than it may look. It is valid to say that one person may not understand another because of their history, or even chemistry, but "brain structure" is in my opinion pushing it too far. It makes me think of the (now obsolete) cop-out called "computer error" once used to account for typos big and small.

Different brain structures would mean a basic impossibility of communication; Wittgenstein's "private languages" opened up all over again. God forbid.

I was thinking of "structure" in terms of a scale of "temporal lobe sensitivity". You might define that as a difference in chemistry, but I suggest that different brains producing different levels of control chemicals on an ongoing basis could be said to have a different structure - after all, it's not learned behavior...

Interestingly enough, I was watching a documentary on brain structure and sexual identity this very evening. It transpires that nature, rather than nurture,( hormones, not role models ) defines our sexual identity, as a result of hormones absorbed by the foetus in utero. There are various sexually determined distinguishable structures within the brain which are different in males and females, from rats right up to and including humans. These determine whether one feels/behaves male/female whether or not one's external genitalia are visibly male/female.[ This came out in the study of intersex babies who had been surgically assigned their gender, sometimes, tragically, to the wrong sex...as determined by their interuterine hormonal absorption.] Thus, there has now been sufficient time for enough cases of trans-sexual brains to have been studied, to show clearly that male trans-sexuals ( who feel themselves to be innately female ) have the characteristic brain structures of women.

Sorry, I can't remember what the correct name for these sexually determining "nodes" within the brain are, but they showed slides clearly demonstrating the difference.

All of this a propos Recumbentman's remarks concerning brain structure.

Coming back to "temporal lobe sensitivity", the documentary which demonstrated Prof. Dawkins' session with the temporal lobe stimulator quoted the researcher as saying that temporal lobe sensitivity was more like a talent for music than a pathology, a spectrum extending from insensitivity ( in Dawkins' case ) to hyper- sensitivity in the case of temporal lobe epileptics.

>>Different brain structures would mean a basic impossibility of communication<<

That's a very strange remark, Recumbentman. Different species plainly have different brain structures, but, for instance, a high level of communication has been achieved between, say, humans and dolphins, humans and other primates, not to mention humans and other animals. What exactly do you mean, therefore, by communication in this context?

Yet again it's rather late, so forgive me if I am being unusually obtuse.

Re: my post #65, I just looked up the article I created at the time I read the story, and it wasn't the Catholic church per se, it was "a local evangelical group", and specifically they referred to his work as "demonic". Sorry for the earlier inaccuracy.

Chai -- the trouble with taking brain differences as insuperable, is that you end up like Gerald Durrell (or was it his brother Larry) working out that to deal successfully with women you simply need to recognise that they are another species, and to approach communication with appropriate expectation levels.

We can certainly communicate with dogs and cats; no question. On the other hand we do so with great mental reservations.

Now this is completely off-thread, as no-one but me suggested that brain difference means incommunicability.

Now then what were we talking about?

Recumbentman,

That was Gerald Durrell. But it is your interpretation that implies lowered expectations of communication as a result. Gerald Durrell ( whose biography I can lend you with high recommendations ) was devoted to his wives, but ( possibly as the adored son of an alcoholic Irish mother whose husband had died when Gerald was very young ) really felt that women were much easier to understand if he did not assume that they thought the same way as he did.

Shades of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus..."

Have you not found, yourself, that life is much easier, and communication much more successful, when you do not assume that other people think the same way as you do, even other males? Peoeple like me, for example?