• [deleted]

Margatita,

1.Thank you for 'translating'. There is a hierarchy of needs. Many of the things you mention would be high up on the hierarchy while basic needs for survival would be at the base. It is only when the lower down needs are fulfilled that higher ones become relevant to the organism. You ask "Why does corporeal life exist"? The answer depends upon whether one is taking a scientific or spiritual point of view, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins,Oxford university press, 1976, does a good job of addressing that why question from a biological point of view. I have also heard it said that we are spiritual beings having a human experience,and have also said and heard words to the effect that life forms are the universe observing itself, which may be closer to your standpoint.

2. thanks again for the 'translation'. So you are saying the future of humanity is alteration of the collective consciousness of mankind and alteration man's morphology. Yes I expect we will think differently in the future. In what way optimized and how is that brought about? Do you mean learning the error of our ways? Education? Learning from research? Or some kind of selection pressure affecting both form and consciousness? That might happen if mankind goes through an evolutionary bottle neck, and the survivors become founders of a new species.

3.I beg to differ on the enlightenment question. I was not necessarily talking about illegal drugs but any means of attaining alteration of normal brain chemistry that makes a person feel (and "know" )that they are one with all of nature. 1/Serotonergic and trytamine overstimulation, 2/Serotonon and spirituality,3/ Can our level of serotonin affect how spiritual we are

Hello John

Please excuse me from this conversation.

I do not want to say what I think about your post.

Regards,

M

  • [deleted]

Hello Georgina:

1... Biochemical changes come before morphological changes. Example - rise in consumption of sugars (saccharides)

2." Yes I expect we will think differently in the future" Who are those "we"?

Since humankind would change, we become they. They will think differently.

Education is important because people must know that they can learn things. Teachers are important for showing how to learn things.

3. Please note that my essay is primarily about analogous imagining.

Sorry, I am not a biochemist or a molecular biologist and I am not interested in discussing the "brain chemistry" (I do not know what do you mean under "brain chemistry").

I used examples from the different knowledge fields to rather explain other things.

If you really want to know about enlightenment and for some reason you cannot reflect on enlightenment phenomenon yourself, I recommend you to ask (of course, not in writing) composers and poets. About the drugs - most drug users are elusive liars; the more they use drugs the more they lie (also about how they feel). They fool themselves. I do not know about anybody doing something creative (say, discover a proof of mathematical conjuncture) under the influence of psychedelic drugs. What is true, drugs affect behavior and mood. Under influence, people feel in a strange way and feel to do things differently. The same effects can be obtained without drugging. Take love. Love is often compared to drugging (elixirs of love); on the other hand, while drugs cannot lead to enlightenment, love can.

Please note this is not my topic at all.

A last word about hormones and psychedelic drugs - I really think that Tom Leary was a criminal. After serotonin levels go up, they will go down. Serotonin has many effects, so the precursors of serotonin do and so on, so on.

Regards,

M

Dear Margarita,

I have read your essay with great appreciation. I have read several others, though not all. I feel certain though at this moment that your essay is the best essay. It is free of ideology. It is free of the mechanical restraints imposed by theoretical physics. It is free of political and economic narrow-mindedness. It reaches into the depths of scientific learning and produces needed direction for humanity. Thank you for submitting your essay and sharing your ideas. I am immediately rating your essay an easy, deserving TEN.

James Putnam

Dear Ms. Judin,

I read your essay four times and I have to ask your forgiveness for I did not understand any of it.

For instance, you wrote: "Nonlocal consciousness is phenomena common to all." I am sure that my grasp of reality only exists here and now, once. I do not believe that I have the option of selecting any specific part of local consciousness or nonlocal consciousness. I cannot confirm that there can be a greater or lesser amount of local consciousness than there is of nonlocal consciousness. Here is immeasurable. Now is immeasurable. That is what makes here and now and me and my consciousness real. Being by nature a charitable sort of bloke, I truly feel that everyone else on the planet thinks as I do, although they may keep it to themselves.

Hesitatingly,

Joe Fisher

    Margarita,

    An intriguing essay. I almost now feel I like a visitor here! But are we not all temporary 'guests' in our present form? I've written a paper which implies we're anyway all 'recycled' with our galaxies at regular intervals, re-ionized to grow new molecules and new cellular life.

    I then entirely agree nonlocal consciousness, but in a causal universe, not as the 'quantum nonlocality' which our incomplete understanding has left us believing in (the subject of my own effort).

    Thank you for an entirely original and refreshing perspective.

    Best wishes

    Peter

    PS. The rating buttons seem to be broken. I shall return!

    I'm like Mr. Putman, Margarita, I thoroughly enjoyed your essay; you high-light a really good point with your analogous imagining. Many have argued that the evolution of technology is a random walk across design space but I think you demonstrate that the walk is highly constrained by analogy. Radical Constructivists argue that mathematics, which, it could be argued, is the foundation of science and engineering, has its foundations in nature, with abstraction a type of analogy. The same argument could be made of logic; it would seem that most, if not all, logical arguments and connectives are abstracted from observation, even infinity if you consider it a generalization of the counting numbers.

    I certainly hope you're right about the restoration of balance with other cellular life forms but I sometimes wonder. I think such a restoration will require a major scientific breakthrough in energy production, containment, and transfer, something akin to cold-fusion. And the reason I find this to be so is largely due to your analogous imagining; with the advent of the global internet, wireless communications, and portable (wearable) smart devices, the human collective is transforming into an emergent global nervous system, analogous to the human nervous system, and this global nervous system is taking on a life of its own. Francis Heylighen (pg. 295) started the Global Brain Institute with a research objective aimed at generating a novel mathematical model to study this emergent phenomenon and Kevin Kelley from Wired has written a few blog posts about it. Viewed from the proper perspective, it can almost seem that humans are in servitude to this behemoth and it consumes relatively vast quantities of energy. But even the staunchest environmentalist cringes at the thought of giving up the internet; it would literally be a regress back to the "dark" ages.

    Anyway, a very nice essay . . .

    With regards,

    Wes Hansen

      Hello Wes,

      Thank you for your commentary.

      You can be sure that I am right about

      ... about the restoration of balance with other cellular life forms ... It is the matter of the health and well being; when I talk health I mean health of an individual and health of population.

      ..

      you mention an opinion about mathematics as a foundation for science and engineering ...

      David Hilbert in his time posed a set of questions about whether mathematics is a kind of language and whether mathematical approach and abstracts come from direct observations alone and what mathematical abstracts really represent

      If the answer is positive, the next question would be in what way math expression of physical and nonphysical experiences is better than other expressions the probable answer would be that math expression requires very little expense of physical energy

      However, I still doubt about that the expenses being small

      consider a path

      from math theory (knowledge of qualities) to numerical computations (quantitative knowledge) and

      from numerical computations to physicochemical processing

      and, then, start all over again

      Cheers,

      M Iudin

      Hello Joe,

      You did not need to read it more than once. If you did not understand at the first time, it means it was not for you. You should not bother.

      I only want to tell you that there is no such thing as all people thinking the same

      I do not understand what you mean under a charitable sort of bloke. If you are a social person - good for you. By the way, to be social does have nothing with being correct about certain things. I agree that it is more comfortable to stay with majority, but thus, you cannot become a true thinker. True thinkers are pulling the majority through.

      Regards,

      M Iudin

      8 days later

      Dear Margarita

      I found that your excellent essay in many ways incorporates much of James Lovelock's "Gaia" theory. Perhaps more directly, it reminded me of Fritjof Capra's 1996 book "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems" who wrote in the final chapter - Knowing That We Know:

      "Identifying cognition with the full process of life - including perceptions, emotions, and behaviour - and understanding it as a process that involves neither a transfer of information nor mental representations of an outside world requires a radical expansion of our scientific and philosophical frameworks. One of the reasons why this view of mind and cognition is so difficult to accept is that it runs counter to our everyday intuition and experience. As human beings, we frequently use the concept of information and we constantly make mental representations of the people and objects in our environment.

      However, these are specific characteristics of human cognition that result from our ability to abstract, which is a key characteristic of human consciousness. For a thorough understanding of the general process of cognition in living systems it is thus important to understand how human consciousness, with its abstract thought and symbolic concepts, arises out of the cognitive process that is common to all living organisms."

      I believe this underscores what you have communicated in your essay.

      You write:

      "Although human self-awareness, constrained and fallible, lacks knowledge about position of human life in the hierarchy of cellular life, there is an accurate understanding that this position has been changing with time. The Holocene climate conditions made possible the booming growth of human population and techno-scientific advances, especially in chemical, biochemical and information technologies. We suggest that ongoing extension of the limits of specific human consciousness has been predisposed by unknown needs and interests of total cellular life and the living Earth. It seems that human consciousness is impending great changes."

      I would like to speculate that humans do have an integrated purpose in life's overall hierarchical schematic that may not be obvious but is indeed driven by life's processes. From an evolutionary perspective, a possible explanation for the apparent dominance of the human species over the rest of nature, for its technological prowess, for its insatiable curiosity, for its creativity as well as for its unrelenting exploitation of its terrestrial habitat, is that all life on planet Earth must need this kind of species to enable its own evolution in order to insure its ultimate survival.

      The fact that every living organism is programmed to reproduce is a fundamental aspect of nature and only in this way does the survival of any life form have a chance in the world that nature has designed. Extrapolating this insight into a cosmic perspective, we know that sooner or later life on Earth will cease to exist. Accepting the interdependent and interconnected processes of nature as you describe, then an understanding emerges that life's chances for ultimate survival can only be enhanced by promoting its propagation beyond Earth. And today, life on Earth has actually reached the point in its evolution via the human species where it would indeed be feasible for it to propagate in other parts of the universe.

      Thus, if survival via propagation is the fundamental characteristic of life and that the web of life is indeed an integrated "Gaia-like" entity, then the arguments for spreading life beyond Earth are certainly more compelling than the arguments for not doing so. Life's expansion into the cosmos may or may not include humans but humans appear to be essential for that expansion to happen. By embracing this awareness and helping to propagate terrestrial life beyond the home planet, humanity could be fulfilling its ultimate purpose.

      Your thoughts?

      Thanks and best regards,

      Arthur

        Dear Arthur

        This essay is a digest of several articles of the Post-Gaia Doctrine. The Doctrine is indeed has to do something with the Earth's matters, but not only. Lynn Margulis is dead, and James Lovelock is about 95 years old. I am not sure that they would agree with me. They were attacked many times and over time their views had changed, had became more moderate.

        If you are interested to have a look at the Doctrine, let me know. Presently, I am trying to downsize to make it more accessible.

        Thank you for your comments.

        Q?..understanding emerges that life's chances for ultimate survival can only be enhanced by promoting its propagation beyond Earth. And today, life on Earth has actually reached the point in its evolution via the human species where it would indeed be feasible for it to propagate in other parts of the universe..

        A? human life [form] belongs here and it will not go anywhere; I believe that

        there are other forms of life on Earth, for instance, microbial life, non-organic life , etc. that can go (S. Arrhenius, 1903, "The Distribution of Life in...".

        Human life is definitely an intermediate life form, the one that has its own history of successes and failures. I am fond of sky watching, stargazing and I pray for the continuation of cosmos exploration, because it opens horizons of knowledge.

        This all does not matter. The submitted essay was about how people think and what people can get out of their thinking (imagining) facilities - to imagine and steer the future

        Good luck,

        MI

        10 days later

        Dear Margarita,

        I read with great interest your depth analytical essay with interesting original conclusions that I really patches of light:

        «Radical anthropocentrism made human consciousness too vulnerable and caused severe disconnection from other life forms. The most desirable for humanity is to change its views at cooperation of the life forms and the living Earth and to change human practices so these practices would be in spirit of natural engineering of the Earth by and large. In order to restore a balance with other cellular life forms and to live full-fledged lives and for sustained development humanity just has to have a push in the right direction.»

        «Though anthropogenic engineering has been one of the pinnacles of collective human consciousness, the truth is that it rigorously follows the footsteps of natural control engineering. Human engineers effectively experiment, imitate and adapt logic and material design of the pre-existent natural manufacturing schemes (e. g, biosynthesis of antibiotics in nature). Imitation can be technically complicated, but it does not require new ideas and does not go beyond the bounds of consciousness of the totality of cellular life.»

        «Maybe nobody yet knows what the imagining is and how it is resolved in cellular life as a whole, but humans and other cellular life observers use the imagining at all times.»

        «We assume that analogous thinking in humans (here the term also covers thought experiments, mathematical modeling, music composing and other imagining) is a peculiar kind of interacting processing between a source system and an image system. As so, thinking is phenomena of hierarchical relations and energy-information exchange between an image and its sources.»

        «In our view, without exceptions, technoscience achievements of the modern human life are not more than an imitation and reflection on the pre-existed phenomena of nonhuman life forms. We believe that scientific and technological achievements have become possible due to analogous imagining in cellular life observers. Human thinking originates in analogous imagining. In fact, there is no principle difference between mental construction of analogs and actual construction of the functional analogs. To create mental analogs, human and nonhuman observers employ topological mapping, or Gestalt imagining. For example, human observers employ topological mapping over the physical network of brain cells and signals.»

        «The future of humanity is in an optimal transformation of the human conscience and physical body. Analogical imaging is essentially the methodology common to an exploration of the physical world and transformation of the life forms.

        It is possible to "steer the future" of humanity by means of analogical imagining.»

        In support of your ideas and the way to truth I give two quotations:

        "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." (Albert Einstein)

        «The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence.» (Alexander Zenkin «Scientific Counter-Revolution in Mathematics»).

        Basic science can overcome the "crisis of representation and interpretation" (T.Romanovskaya "Modern physics and contemporary art-parallels of style") is relying on imagination to make a more profound interpretation of accumulated Knowledge. Need to deepen in the "Dialectics of Nature", to see its original structure, to hear its voice and then draw the desired Eidos of the Universe. Picture of the world of physics should be the same rich meanings of the «LifeWorld» (E.Husserl) as the world picture lyricists.

        Profound imagination - first assistant for deep mind. Time has come and we have to start the path together with the new Generation of the Information age, going ahead

        I invite you to comment and appreciate my journey into the past and future

        where I draw the path of Protogeometer and new eidos of Universe, filled with limiting thoughts of the "LifeWorld".

        Best regards,

        Vladimir

          5 days later

          Margarita,

          I'm back with restored rating powers as promised above. I'm disappointed you haven't responded or read/rated mine but I know how much time it takes, even speed-reading. If you get the chance during the extension I think you'll enjoy the allegorical tale.

          Well done for yours.

          Peter

            Hello Peter,

            Please be patient, I promise to read your essay.

            Good luck,

            MI

            Hello Vladimir,

            I read your essay. I think it is a well cooked compote (this word has the same meaning in Russian and English). Actually, I can feel your caring personality and enthusiasm, but I think it was not a good idea to squash all your thoughts in the 9-pages essay.

            I did not rank your essay because I feel very far from globalization, UN initiatives ( frankly, what is UN?) and other conjecture - market topics.

            Sincerely,

            MI

            Dear Margarita,

            As I promised in my FQXi page, I have read your nice Essay. Here are my comments:

            1) I think that not only human life's position changes with time in the hierarchy of cellular life, but also other kinds of life.

            2) Acknowledge the consciousness of individual cellular life forms, the quorum consciousness and the great engineering skill of total cellular life looks consistent with anthropic principle.

            3) I agree with your statement that "for present humanity it would be better to match human interests with the interests of total cellular life and to anticipate climate change in the interests of total cellular life".

            4) I think that placing straightforward imitation before an understanding is a mistake.

            5) In my opinion, the greatest example of imitation and understanding of cellular life is nano-technology.

            6) Nonlocal consciousness is also consistent with anthropic principle.

            7) Concerning analogous imagining, you were correct in claiming that I used it in my Essay. I also agree with you that it is very important to "steer the future" of humanity.

            As your Essay enjoyed me a lot, I am going to give you an high rate accordingly.

            I hope you will find the time to read, comment and rate my Essay.

            Best luck in the Contest.

            Cheers,

            Ch.

              Margarita,

              With regard to my mention of temperature at my forum, It was with regard to thermodynamic entropy. I wrote a page titled the Unknown Thermodynamic Entropy. I wrote that thermodynamic entropy, discovered by and defined by Clausius is unknown to this day. The reason it remains unknown is because its definition includes temperature. Temperature is an indefinable property along with length and time and mass. Temperature, as well as was mass, was improperly declared to be an indefinable property. In my work I define both mass and temperature and explain what thermodynamic entropy is. As you can see, my work is very different from accepted theoretical physics. This is just to let you know what I alone think. My essay for last years contest explains all this and more.

              James Putnam