4am Musings on Consciousness & Trying to Lose It

The Strange Link Between the Human Mind and Quantum Physics
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics

I logged onto Facebook to say happy birthday to a friend and instead got sidetracked by the article above, which a different friend and fellow super-nerd posted on his page. The article talks about the link between consciousness and quantum mechanics (if you have a basic understanding of physics and quantum mechanics, no need to read the first part - scroll/skip down to where they start talking about Roger Penrose - he's on the Fibonacci spiral staircase). Just some light reading before bed to try to fall asleep - HAHA. This kind of thing has the opposite effect of shutting off my brain, but I knew if I didn't read it right now, chances are I would forget to read it tomorrow, and since I've spent the day thinking about energy and consciousness and such, off I went down the rabbit hole for some more. I mean really, what's a couple more hours when I already know I will have to sleep away half the day to catch up with myself? Stupid clocks.

I am proud (and a little surprised) to say that as soon as they started talking about the quantum superpositions of molecules involved in neural signaling, I was *instantly* at entanglement as a solution - which they outlined further down the article. :) (All Tom Swifties/puns intended.) In fact, I was just talking about entanglement and resistance today to a different friend, and even used plants as an analogy, so it's a bit quantumly freaky that this article pops up and mentions the same things tonight, although why am I surprised given the subject?

The problem I see with the direction Matthew Fisher is going with measuring phosphorus spin in Posner molecules is that he will loop back around on himself and find out that you can't determine a measurement on anything that we are creating ourselves - as described in the double-slit experiment, we (our consciousness) change the outcome based on our observation no matter how you try to measure it.

(And I seriously don't know why they think the idea or study of quantum consciousness is anything new... people have been discussing magick for eons. They've just slapped a different label on it lately.)

There is no perspective available from outside our own brains, which are making this up as we go along (and they already said in the article that they're considering solipsism, so duh). In order to create a definition, you have to have something to oppose what you are defining. In other words, you cannot say what is without saying what isn't (at least not in this realm). Consciousness and quantum mechanics both seem to deal with the space between - they are neither what is or what isn't, it always comes down to the cloud of possibilities, which is infinite and always affected by our choices.

One thing I disagree with in the article is:

"With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation"

Wrong. In the movie Mask back in 1985 starring Cher (the one about Rocky Dennis, who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia), there was a brilliant scene where Rocky helps his blind girlfriend understand visual concepts such as "red" and "billowy clouds" by using a warm rock and cotton balls (respectively) to stimulate the senses she has access to in order to create a definition of qualia previously unavailable to her brain. (In fact, it's the only thing I took away from that movie.)

However, I will give them this: proving that the mind affects the outcome of measurements (which we've already done) does not mean we can prove what's "real" (which is subjective anyway), but could give credence to the theory that we create our own realities. But again, that will loop back around on us because if we are creating everything as it happens, and it's only a product of our own minds (individual or collective), then consciousness and quantum mechanics is the same because there is no way for our brains to form an opposing definition of either one. It is, and we are, all one.

And now I really must sleep for pete's sake. The sun will come around the corner any minute. You know what would be really useful? Sleep mode in our quantum brains that you can select from a menu and click...

Oh shit. And I have to go back and say happy birthday to my friend!

I Am Grateful For Imagination

My habit of thought over the past couple decades has been that we have our salary rates all wrong in this society. We pay those in Hollywood or sports millions of dollars to create a couple hours of entertainment for us while our teachers and firemen and emergency response teams are doing their work mostly on good morals and shoestring budgets. It didn't seem fair.

However, today, I received a different perspective out of the blue. I was watching a YouTube video of a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and although I've realized this before, it was not quite in this way: science has created things that used to only be science fiction from Hollywood. Would they have created these technologies WITHOUT Hollywood first dreaming them up?

Einstein of course has the famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I've always believed that to be true in my head, and now I realize perhaps it has moved down to my heart.

Is the economic pay scale of the USA not a perfect example of that quote? Who do we pay the most? The ones with imagination (Hollywood at least), or the ones with knowledge (educators and heroes)?

Scientists' minds generally lean toward logic and fact finding - they want to prove things work or exist or figure out why something is true. We consider them "at the forefront of technology" but are they really? Maybe scientists are actually the ones at the end of the line. What if the creative geniuses in Hollywood are the ones blazing the trail of evolution and we don't even realize it?

A logical mind that seeks facts is not normally the same type of mind that envisions things so far out that the majority of people on the planet hadn't even dreamed of it. (There are always exceptions of course - Tyson being one of them I think - and those are truly remarkable people with minds that are balanced in both creativity and logic.)

A specific example is another YouTube video I saw about a guy that created a machine to turn plastic back into petroleum. Most people in first world countries now have also heard of biofuel - breaking down what we consider garbage into usable fuel. Where do these ideas come from (at least some of them)? Most people from the 80s will remember the movie Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist character uses garbage to fuel the DeLorean time machine at one point. (I'm sure there are earlier examples, but that's the first one that came to mind.) That is now POSSIBLE in our real world (and actually has been for some time). It's not affordable for most, or prevalent in our society yet, but neither was TV when it was first invented. Or cell phones. Or cars. Or dozens of other technologies that have become commonplace perhaps because a scientist saw a cool, convenient gadget in a movie or a tv show (or in the case of 19th century inventors, perhaps heard an idea from a storyteller of some sort) and said, "I can figure out how to make that real!" And let's not forget the creative minds in companies like Apple who can come up with a product out of seemingly nowhere (iPods!) that we never knew we couldn't live without.

So perhaps our Hollywood staff is not as overpaid as I thought. I mean what value would you put on evolution? On advancing our thoughts and ideas? On education? Does it even really matter if we advance and get smarter and make new things? IS it even "getting smarter" or just becoming different? I guess it depends on the roads we choose, which is based on creativity, not always logic.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads."

And in the opposite vein - what of our "heroes?" The firemen and policemen and EMTs that save lives (some would add soldiers to that, but war is a whole other subject I'm not getting into here). I'm always the first to admire and thank emergency response people for their "underpaid service," but is our ability to prolong our lives actually what's mucking up the planet? Should we be thanking the ones that save us? From this new perspective, I'm not sure.

Certainly I was grateful to everyone involved is saving my grandparents' lives when they had a car accident about a year ago, but then again maybe it's a selfish thing for me to want my grandparents to live forever. I don't think even *I* want to live in this particular body forever! How boring would that be? About as boring as only getting to read one book, or only watching one movie... forever. Why would I wish that on them? Forever is a VERY long time. (And if you get into the philosophical question of "why are we here" I can imagine only being able to "live" one story forever might have been the impetus for multiple lives... but that's a whole other blog!)

Perhaps we are playing God or not facing our fears by keeping people alive for so long, and the consequences are the typical collection of physical inconveniences that we now label "old age." Are years of incontinence and dementia something to celebrate? :\ Perhaps we have advanced in our physical technologies, and we pat ourselves on the back for our so-called advances in social sciences, but are we actually still in the dark ages about death and other lifetimes?

Who would we be if we did not fear death?

Perhaps my grandfather could've avoided all the indignities and challenges of emphysema and Alzheimers if he had not been wearing a seatbelt and was therefore removed from the trouble of dealing with all that for another several years. My grandmother was NOT wearing a seatbelt and would have died without the help of the Intensive Care Unit. It's really a miracle she survived. I am extremely grateful to spend a few more years pestering her over the phone (we live on opposite coasts), but was it fair to keep her here only to be trapped in the house with my grandfather who needs someone to babysit him like a child at all times due to the medical problems he has now? What kind of existence is that (especially for a woman that is still very mobile herself)? Obviously a car crash full of anxiety and fear as you transition into another state of being is not an ideal way to go (I am not saying I wish that upon anyone, especially not my grandparents!), but perhaps we've created the ways in which we most commonly leave this existence through our misunderstanding of death and consequential fear of it.

If you knew in your heart all deaths have the possibility of being peaceful and happy, would you be more accepting of it and therefore be okay when your loved ones take that journey? Many people pay lip service to the idea, but underneath their concept of death, and what they believe in their heart about it, is still based in fear. I believe it will take a shift in a majority of society's consciousness to change that.

Native American elders (from a century ago, before the casinos) would simply decide when it was their time to leave, and they would go out in the woods or plains or wherever and have a peaceful, purposeful death. Same with Buddhists. We don't have nearly enough movies about that. Instead the film industry makes the most money from perpetuating our imaginings of a violent death, which in my opinion just creates more violent deaths in our world. It's a vicious circle.

By the way, I still think our teachers are WAY WAY underpaid. They give us a basis for learning to survive in this society. The trouble with teachers is that we have a limited idea of who our teachers are. To me, EVERYONE on this planet is a teacher in some way to everyone they come in contact with. Should we all get paid appropriately for what we teach each other? Well actually, I think we do. We have a beautiful Earth as our school, friends and family to love and support us, and most importantly our imaginations which fill in all the space between. To me, those things are the best payment of all.

Well… now my thought associations appear to have come full circle in the edits, so YAY for that!

I still haven't justified sports - perhaps that's truly only entertainment - but now I can allow for the possibility that maybe we're not as screwed up as we think in what we put value on.

Time to Speculate

What would happen if everyone could choose, individually, how much time their day consisted of? For instance: you choose 30 hours for today and your friend chooses only 10, but both of you have the perception that your days are the same length.

At some point in our lives, we've all said (or at least thought): "there's not enough time in a day..." or "I wish I had more time..." or "what I would give for just another hour to get this done..."

Well what if you really could have all the time you wanted before bedtime? What if you could stretch or shorten your day as much as you wish? Would you ever sleep again? Would you ever wake up? Would it be like the Twin Paradox where you've only aged a day but everyone else aged years or decades?

Just a fun thing to think about. I'm sure there's an episode of Twilight Zone or something out there with this idea. Or perhaps this is already how it is and that's why some people are more productive in their days than others!

What's In A Name?

I'm proofreading a book on Oceanography. I love doing this stuff because you learn inane bits of trivia that make you much more interesting than you really are at random parties. For instance...

Early Mediterranean cultures envisioned that marginal bodies of water similar to the Mediterranean Sea surrounded most of the continents. The name “Earth” describes the portion of the planet that is inhabited by man in spite of the fact that the majority of the planet’s surface is covered by water. Our planet was named before ocean exploration began.

Which says to me that if fish had developed the ability to talk before they could walk, the third rock from the Sun would be called Water and perhaps Mars would be Earth. And they would've all drowned before evolving onto land due to an inability to keep their mouths shut. Oh wait...

Is Seeing Still Believing?

Check out this video and listen to what he's saying about aliasing (fast forward thru his demo of the tuning fork on the piano to :30):

Aliasing is the reason the tines of the tuning fork appear to be moving back and forth (fluctuating) when filmed at high speed. They're not really - he explains that the reason they LOOK like they are is because the video is filming at almost twice the speed of the vibration of the tines, therefore the Nysquist Frequency is in effect.

So what you're seeing is not really happening. (Well, the fork is vibrating, but the tines are not moving back and forth altho they certainly appear to be.) It is a false frequency. Your brain is being fooled into believing there is additional movement that is not actually taking place. Interesting that we are so easily misled by our eyes, yes? Also compelling that they use the term "aliasing" to describe this phenomenon. Google defines alias as: "as known or named at another time or place."

What other false frequencies are we subject to? What other time or place might we be living in?

If our brain is so gullible, why do we trust our eyes (or other senses) to define our world? I read an interesting tidbit the other day about how our brains have more activity when seeing something new than when receiving expected visual input.

"Predictable sights trigger less brain activity than unfamiliar stimuli, bolstering the view that the brain is not merely reactive, but generates predictions based on the recent past. 'The brain expects to see things and really just wants to confirm it now and again,' says Lars Muckli..." (NewScientist.com)

A thought to add to that is it is generally accepted by the scientific community that our body regenerates itself every seven years (some cells are closer to 15, but still not nearly the same as your chronological age). If that's true, why do we retain long-term illnesses for decades? For that matter, why do we HEAL? What makes things change or stay the same?

If our brains are unconsciously predicting the future for us, and therefore we are always re-creating our present situation without thought, it's no wonder the more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps we are the alias - the false frequency that isn't really happening. Who's to say the rate at which our eyes perceive is the same frequency at which our brain processes the information?

"Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." ~ Albert Einstein

That's What I Call Home