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

ok whats a Neurological-Model Agnostic?

Aha! Glad you asked, my friend. Long post. Be prepared.

The Copenhagen Interpretation in physics holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself.
NMAism is where you apply the CI to the mind. Everything we experience is just a model based on our minds and can be revised using chemicals or psychological shock imprinting.
"Reality" is plural and mutable.
"Reality" is a word in the English language which happens to be used as (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English language therefore subliminally programs us to conceptualize "reality" as one block-like entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which every part is just another "room" within the same building. This linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot "think" outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.
It is no such thing.
"The notion that "reality" is a noun, a solid thing like a brick or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into such block-like "things," probably as instant bio-survival cues. Such "things," however, dissolve back into energy dances -- processes or verbs -- when the nervous system is synergized with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises or aided by scientific instruments. In both mysticism and physics, there is general agreement that "things" are constructed by our nervous systems and that "realities" (plural) are better described as systems or bundles of energy functions."
The idea that reality is a singular, like a planet, does not fit with current scientific findings that reality is more like a wandering and shifting river.
So reality is mutable.
Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest, and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends. I feel sorry for people who persistently organize experience into sad, dreary and hopeless reality tunnels, and try to show them how to break the bad habit, but I don't feel any masochistic duty to share their misery.
NMAism is the realisation that reality is mutable; that beliefs and dogma inhibit intelligence. NMAism encourages followers to recognise the fallacy of "reality" and realise that it is just another representation, not yet revised. Also it encourages drug abuse, but what the hey.

NMAism?

So the matrix would be somewhat possible?
Oy if you're really good you could perceive yourself doing amazing backflips and kung fu just for the heck of it.

Is perceiving things or such your way, making your own reality, very hard?

Sometimes the truth hurts, but that's not a bad thing, it's a motivation for change.
It's time to stop confusing the real world with our perception of it, not the other way round. One attitude is as negative as any, it's like wanting to use this devilish ability to use the truth to try and make everyone else wrong, while ignoring the truth itself. Perhaps less drugs, not more. What are you afraid of?
People are generally afraid of the truth because they know they are not living in it. They don't want to admit the truth because it would make their life a farce, and they would look small or selfish. People bring down the people around them because of an ignorant instinct that somehow it brings them up. They need to look inside themselves, at what it is they dislike so much, and do something about it, make some changes in themselves, and make themselves the person they can be happy with, proud of.
People are great, and have incredible potential, and have no real justifiable reason for despair, or anger or fear. You see a problem, you research the contributing factors, you use the information collected over history to realize what changes you can make to what factors in order to create a workable solution, and how. This is real life, and you can make it a good thing, there is no reason to dance around it.

SS,

The 'truth' often hurts because it is a difficult world we live in.

I make my life a good thing every day - as much as I can.

I don't believe there is one real 'truth' about anything. And this does not make me unhappy. Rather, it opens up the possibility to many forms of happiness.

I get the feeling you are looking for some sort of utopia. Well, good luck to you. I am quite happy living in my world of oppposites and experiencing everything life has to offer.

az

With regard to the interupted experiment thing..

Deep Thought's answer predates the experiment, so, it must be "correct" - the question raised by the interupted experiment is wrong ("What is six times nine?")

As to what is the actual meaning of life - I don't know but I hope it isn't "Mate, Spawn and Die" as it appears to be. Maybe optimism is the meaning?

SolelySuffering; if it appears I have been a little less harsh about your beliefs recently, it is because I have come, through little fault of yours, to believe that such a utopia may be possible. It lives in the hearts and minds of the people, after all; a thing that can be imagined can be made.
I do so wish you'd stop this "Peoples of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains!" stuff. The only stuffs to lose is your mind.
The truth hurts? What truth? I know no truth, and obviously neither do you. The truth isn't an ideal, it's a dirty fact. A politician may use the truth of implication for his own uses; the truth can hurt, if it is blunt.
The truth in my matrix is not a great thing that inspires change; it can be, but you cannot show people the way, as Morpheus would have it. Do you know why, in most adventure novels/films, the hero/ine has an argument or something with hir spouse, or meets someone they instantly dislike, and then go through a load of conflict before realising that they actually love them, at the end? It's because art represents life, and in life, no one believes anyone else, and those who do are fools. It's because in life, people have to find their truths out for themselves; otherwise they aren't their truths, but the truths of the teacher.
No one is leaving in the truth. What exactly gives you the arrogance to claim that you alone, out of all the many millions of human history, do?
Well, I know what it is *I* dislike so much; the only dogma I allow myself is that I dislike dogma. And you, my friend, are as much an incarnation of it as JTP.


"People are great, and have incredible potential, and have no real justifiable reason for despair, or anger or fear." Oh, dear god. Get over your own species!
Have you ever met a species that has caused more harm than we? Have you ever met a species who has more hate than we? Have you ever met a species that has killed as many of its own as we have, and *gloried* in it? Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?
Yes, we have potential. But is is by no mean incredible, less so infinite. We're just another form of LIFE, and LIFE has infinite potential, not us.
No reason for fear or anger or despair? Oh, and I suppose that your self-confessed feelings of not one but ALL OF THE ABOVE when you first came here didn't exist? You anger at the suffering in the world? Your fear that you could be killed tomorrow by a rampaging paedophile? Your despair at the plight of the human race? Don't deny it; I remember it well, for you criticised me for revelling in my life.
"collected over history". You know nothing of history. Not a put down, a fact. Everything you know of recent history is recorded by biased observers and repeated by biased historians. You know little of nonrecent history; paleolithic details are sketchy at best, and archao-paleolithic even more so, where they're not wholly theoretical. The past is not something to learn on or something to live by; just because someone did something a few years ago, should we do the same thing now? Equally, should we let the actions of a long-dead genius prevent us from doing something similar now? My answer is an absolutely equivocal no.
This is real life, yes; as I define real life by real life, it is. The semantics of defining abstracts are catch 22's; we define the thing by the thing; we forget that the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. And definatly, definatly, *your* menu is not *my* meal. Stop trying to cook my life; I always state in each of my posts that my views of your beliefs are just that, views. I will never agree with you on this, at least in this grid, and I'd take it kindly that if your were to infer that your beliefs are right and mine wrong, when I wasn't even comparing them, to do me the kindness of justifying that.

Mal (full of hormones and angst)

>>What truth?<< Good question! exactly a truth abotu what? About life and why we are here? We're here to exist, nothing more. WE exist because the situation to exist existed, and it goes back. and back. and back. the truth that we're doing everything wrong and not being good? maybe. the truth that there is no supernatuarl stuff like gods and such? maybe
The truth is simply the way things are. *technically* that coudl be said to include our thoughts but Im not going there.

"People are great, and have incredible potential, and have no real justifiable reason for despair, or anger or fear."

Um, what are we supposed to do if, suppose, someone leaps at us with a knife? Smile at them?

Potential? We have jsut as much potential as anything else. WE're goign to do what we can do. Sure we ahve potential, potential to wipe out other species, potential to do plenty of things. HOw in the world are we actually going to do them?
Time. Jsut wait. It'll happen eventually. Speed it up if you like but our role will play out. I hope

No time for more I was going to analyze half of everything said but I have to stop

A good summary of everything I spend pages procrastinating about! Cheers, AK!
Actually, when you think about it, things lower down the evolutionary have more potential than ourselves; potential to evolve into ourselves or something equal, PLUS the potential to do everything we can do.
Our race is already run; we know, within a few hundred million years, when our galaxy will be consumed by its black hole; we know the odds of the Earth being destroyed before that; we know the chances of our sun going 'nova, or us killing ourselves off or dying of disease. We have a time limit to achieve timeless enlightenment, and when the time's up, it won't matter.
By the way, does anyone else feel the way I do about death? I told some colleagues that somedays I couldn't wait for it, because it would reveal the answers to half the most important questions in my life, and they just looked at me strangely.

I don't want to know the answers when I'm dead. I want to know them now.

So we're all going to die in a few hundred million years? Anybody who's depressed by this is displacing.

Noggin

its a bit more than 100 million years. more like 5 billion if I'm not mistaken. And that black hole won't every do that, we'll jsut slowly spiral into the center of our galaxy. its our sun becoming a red giant star that'll wipe us out in millions and millions of years

Whatever the facts, I find that it is enough to live, and live well (and I definatly, definatly don't mean that in the moral sense); it is not enough to try to live for other people.

<>

Actually, I'm not even remotely depressed by the fact that *I'm* going to be dead probably within thirty years (if I'm lucky enough to live that long). As for the rest of humanity . . .

az

Well, I am!

Hey, you just said on another thread that you don't care about anybody but yourself. Make up your mind!

az

why worry about what's going to happen in 100 million years? we got plenty of time to die before that... pollution, starvation, disease, ice ages, etc...

Why should I make up my mind? That would just lead to dogma and faith, which, while venerated by some very very stupid people, paralyse intelligence and growth.

even still...

Mal,

I *was* kidding you earlier about making up your mind as you had said various things on various threads. Just teasing you a bit.

On the other hand, making up one's mind about some things after going through experiences in an open-minded manner does not necessarily lead to dogma and faith. At least, it has never done so with me.

Everything I think I know and believe is always open to new information and experience. But along the way one does come to believe in certain personal truths. You know that I don't belong to any sort of religion though I have my own personal god concept.

I never feel 'trapped' in my beliefs, but for the time they are my beliefs they are real to me. I personally prefer to choose certain things to believe rather than not believe in anything. Some have not waivered since I was a child. Others change when I acquire new information or have new experiences.

My beliefs have never yet paralysed my intelligence or growth.

az

Well, bully for you. But all ideas are battles between contagious memes, and when one takes over, dogma creeps in... Check out www.lucifer.com/virus/ for more meme stuff.
And a religion doesn't have to be official or generally acknowledged - the religion you belong to is that of Fred. Remember when I first came on Hootoo and we both classed ourselves as pantheists? You're not nothing just because we found out that pantheism was worshipping nature, you're just unnamed.