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

"So, you're saying I'm brainwashed, even though I had to shake off a fundamentalist religious upbringing, and am still pretty much in a minority of one in my chosen metaphysical position?"

Heh. Wondered if I get you on that one, Noggin.

"That does seem like a bit of an unfair claim."

OK, OK: IT WAS TONGUE IN CHEEK.

I suppose it's my own fault: too dry a sense of humour on top of a normally serious exterior.

Re: yesterday's news.

And if you *do* end up posting your favourite Guardian story link and either no one is interested or you don't get the response you were hoping for, well, perhaps you need to find a better link. And learn from the responses. Doesn't mean you have to give up reading the Guardian altogether . . .



az

"What samuel pepys and HS seem to be missing is that though the reactions of the human body are limited when you take intensity and combinations of diferent reactions into account you can end up with an amount of discernably different reactions that cant al be experienced in a mortal life span."

I'd argue it's still down to interpretation of the physical reaction, Blicky.

"Morover the attribution of these different feelings and emotions are subject to shody communication by language."

Hmm, I wasn't talking about language at all. That's a whole different kettle of herrings.

"Heathen do you ever think about finding a parking space when you're not in a rush and tally up how often that happens? Is the fact that the thought and reality are very close sometimes something that sticks with you while the opposite situation is so common it melts into everday mundane unremarkable and unmemorable information?"

Wrong set. The set is not "finding a parking space when in a rush", but "finding a parking space when one has asked for one", so it does pretty much tend to be memorable, as I so rarely ask for special favours that way.

" To one of the groups it was suggested that they would feel aggressive, to the other - elated. And so it was! Yet another bridge between the physical and mental. If anyone insists, I shall dig out the reference to that study."

I don't deny the power of suggestion. I've spent most of my adult life trying to prevent it or weed it out. Like Noggin, i dislike brainwashing in any form.

"Quite so. But do more coincidences happen to some people than others? Or do some people notice them more and read more meaning into them?"

I think what I was trying to explain was synchronicity. To me synchronicity is simply 'coincidences' which people notice. But it is also that, if you become aware, you do notice coincidences more. but I'm not sure whether they occur more often to those who are aware or not. I'm not in a position to count and I'm agnostic on the issue. What I'm not agnostic on is that, to me, the coincidences/synchronicities have meaning. but I can't necessarily prove that to you because, for evidence, I'd have to conduct research into how many coinicidences people notice (and how does one measure the ones they don't notice), and how many of those which are noticed have meaning (and how do we classify the meaning into degrees of quality?)

"If the interaction is not significant to be codified thus, then it would probably not be significant enough to produce macroscopic effects."

Hmm, dunno if I've lost the plot (or, more likely, never grasped it in the first place in these philisophical interactions!) but what if some of the pieces perceive the interaction as significant and some don't?

Well perhaps I should rephrase that.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the more two 'planes' or whatever we want to call them interact, the more information is going to pass between them.

A macroscopic (large enough to be detectable by human observers) interaction holds some statistical signficance in that a number of different types of stuff in non-quantum amounts would be involved. So I would classify anything noticable by any human as a significantly large event.

This would indicate to me that if you get one crossover on a macroscopic scale then you will get lots more, and so any interaction between planes noticable to humans would just be subsumed into our view of the rules of our own universe.

Unless someone designed it that way, in which case the statistical step goes completely out of the window.

Noggin. I think it's sufficient that the interactions not be information opaque. You seem to be confusing 'black hole' and 'black box' which can't be cool!

toxx

Breakfast bar contains

New bread, freshly-baked and out of the machine ten minutes ago

Hawthorn jam

Chocolate spread

Peanut butter - smooth - for Noggin

Peanut butter - crunchy with cyanide lumps - for the trolls

If anyone wants something other than fresh newly-baked bread, then they need their head examined

--

PS - has anyone else been too busy to read this thread properly, and has now lost the plot?

I'm going to wait until it drops down a level or three, or until half term. I haven't the mental energy after a day fighting the good fight with recalcitrant teenagers to deal with domain theory.

Jez - off to w**k

Jez.

HS



I think that's what we were saying too.
The experiment that Blicky mentioned probably involved the administration of adrenalin, which promotes general arousal rather than a specific emotion, which involves additional factors including expectation.



I have no problem with that at all. I seem to recall, somewhere way back in the blog (no, I'm not going to look for it ) some research was mentioned that seemed to indicate that people with positive, holistic worldviews (usually but not necessarily religious) saw more such synchronicities than others. (This may also be true of people with highly negative worldviews who see signs of God's anger or demonic powers at work everywhere.)



This is an extension of the questions posed in #19453 which no one has had a bash at yet.

Bouncy



And as our ability to look further into space/further back in time, and down into the world of the very small, so more and more of what goes on gets subsumed, leaving behind a shrinking "God of the gaps".

toxx

You can't see what goes on inside a black hole, so it's a reasonable candidate for a black box, though a black box doesn't have to be a black hole, IYSWIM

Noggin

ISWYM, Noggin. Hmmmmm.

I want to put a stop to the 'God of the gaps' idea by appealling to those things that are outside the scope of science. I've gone into this before, though.

How about if only the chess pieces are involved in a conventional game, but there's also a game involving pawns versus the rest based on a system of point scoring and, of course, not involving the colours of the pieces. This could be calculated for every chess game. Would we always know whether this other game was being played or not by analysing the moves?

toxx

Just checking in busy IRL in relocateing, much easier to dream job done than doing for real,when you dream you dont get tired.
two worlds and all that when dreaming can run half marathon not get tired, case of brain recieveing one set of signals the body not produceing the other, two world both intereacting, both covered by same rules, but seperate realitie non realitie.
There a lot to be understood when you barking woof woof

Working out how the game is played is one thing, toxx.

Working out to what objective it's being played for is something else

Noggin

Hi Toxx,

If the pawns are involved in a game of their own, presumably not allowing them to be 'taken', against an opponent invisible to the other pieces this would probably add some random or irrational element to their moves which might be detectable depending on the quality of the play without the invisible opponent.

Chess play is not the same as physical interactions though so the invisible opponent would be revealed if general physical principles were being examined. The mind (or brain), however, may be sufficiently complex for the underlying rules to remain indeterminate; and the opponent to remain invisible.

If we suspect the existence of the invisible opponent it might be possible to devise an experiment to test for it - I'll think about it for now.

F

Hi Fathom.

Suppose the pawns and the other pieces get points for being close to a queen of either colour. Their 'hidden agenda' is to maximise their score (or minimise it!). As Noggin hints, it will be easier to deduce the rules than the objective. Perhaps the side that scores closest to 1000 points win! This would inevitably affect the chess game intentionally - although the chess game might also need to be won.

I suspect that it would be impossible to deduce the objective without feedback to let us know which side of the 'pawns v the rest' game has won each time. This analogy of Noggin's seems to me to be a fair approximation of our task.

Noggin: you attributed something to Badge which came from me. Forget quite what now.

toxx

Administration of adrenalin?

Noggin

"How about if only the chess pieces are involved in a conventional game, but there's also a game involving pawns versus the rest based on a system of point scoring and, of course, not involving the colours of the pieces. This could be calculated for every chess game. Would we always know whether this other game was being played or not by analysing the moves?"

Wouldn't that depend upon the number of moves?

I recall a game the police used to play about 15 years ago which finally got rumbled when they kept stopping the same car. It was 'car billiards' i.e. you stopped a red, then a car of the appropriate colour, then a red etc. Unfortunately, a driver (presumably with a red car) who was black raised a complaint of racism - it was during the time when stop-and-search was giving rise to a number of complaints of racism - and someone grassed.