Guess Who? Part Two

Humans share 98% of their DNA with their closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. That 2% difference however was enough to put man on the moon while the chimps still frolic in and around the forest trees. So, humans should pat themselves on the back, right? We’re king of the mountain; top of the tops, lord and master over all we survey. But what else has that 2% difference bestowed upon us? Perhaps a closer comparison to the rest of the species inhabiting Planet Earth should deflate our massive egos a might.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Sex and all that Jazz

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Nudity or appearing in the nude. Why is this important? Is this really important at all, full-stop? No.

* Some of their members engaging in homosexuality. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless every human were gay, then the birth rate would tend to go down the gurgler, but clearly that’s not happening.

* Practicing birth control, which upsets other members of that species no end. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless each and every potential pregnancy is thwarted and the population plummets which again clearly isn’t happening.

* Practicing abortion, which upsets even a larger proportion of other members of that species. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless each and every pregnancy is aborted and the population plummets which yet again clearly isn’t happening.

* Those who practice abortion and not usually in an understanding way but rather by damning them, and often not just verbally. Since abortion isn’t important in the global scheme of things (i.e. – population), opponents are an irrelevancy.

* Pornography. Guess which species!

Fun and Games

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Sports, both as participants and/or as spectators. This is not important. This contributes bugger all to your health, education and welfare.

* Sports teams and their fate. This too contributes bugger all to your health, education and welfare. So why is this important?  

* The Olympic Games (winter or summer). This contributes absolutely nothing to your health, education and welfare. So is this really important at all? Not in the slightest.

Traits

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Pats themselves on the back and awards themselves with unearned honorary titles like “Saint” or “Sir”, “Honourable” or “Right Honourable”,  “Your Excellency” or “Your Highness” or “Your Honour”, etc.

* Is a racist species.

* Is a sexist species.

* Gives a damn about making things go ka-boom, blowing things up and reeking destructive havoc in general.

* Makes it their business to butt into the affairs and business of other members of that same species. Curiosity is one thing but this species goes way, way, way beyond that.

* Needs a sense of history.

* Feels a need to shave or have haircuts.

* Feels a need for privacy when going to the bathroom.

* Rationalizes their idiocy.

* Tends not to learn from their mistakes.

* Has the highest rate of obesity which is ever increasing.

* Has the ways and means of driving themselves to extinction.

* Needs to use an alarm clock.

* Thinks they know how to manage an entire planet and the only species who has stuffed everything completely up.

* Deliberately fouls their very own nest.

* Engages in self-harming activities like using drugs, alcohol, tobacco, playing excessively loud music, speeding, over-eating, eating foods extremely high in sugar and salt, suicide, etc.

* Litters, does graffiti and engages in deliberate acts of vandalism.

* Kills his own and other species too just for fun.

* Kills for fashion, like for fur coats.

* Engages in acts of terrorism.

* Engages in acts of torture both of their own kind and other species.

* Builds and used weapons of mass destruction.

* Is totally obsessed with being in constant communication 24/7/52 with other members of that same species.

* Drives around the car park for five minutes just to avoid walking an extra 100 feet.

Economics

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Imposes and cheats on taxes (boo, hiss).

* Will use and misuse money (the root of all evil?).

Legal Matters

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Has a need for a Ten Commandments, a constitution, a Bill of Rights, and an entire legal system, and guess what, it’s not your average puppy dog.

* Needs to utilize policemen.

* Needs to utilize prisons.

Conclusions

Now, should humans continue to pat themselves on the back as lords and masters of life, the universe and everything, or perhaps pat themselves on the back as being the lone idiot species inhabiting the Planet Earth?

Guess Who? Part One

Humans share 98% of their DNA with their closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. That 2% difference however was enough to put man on the moon while the chimps still frolic in and around the forest trees. So, humans should pat themselves on the back, right? We’re king of the mountain; top of the tops, lord and master over all we survey. But what else has that 2% difference bestowed upon us? Perhaps a closer comparison to the rest of the species inhabiting Planet Earth should deflate our massive egos a might.

There are millions of species living on Planet Earth right now (and untold millions that have lived on Planet Earth but have gone extinct). Humans are just one of those millions of here and now species, so you’d think other species would mirror our traits, or vice versa. Alas, humans are unique, and it’s not something to pat ourselves on the back about.

When it comes to what is important, for all practical purposes it boils down to filling what’s empty; emptying what’s full; scratching where it itches. A good night’s sleep doesn’t go astray either or a good role in the hay (though that might qualify under the ‘empty what’s full’ criteria). In fact to be honest, there’s only one thing that’s really important and that’s your own health and personal well being. All else, with the exception I guess of the health and wellbeing of family, is irrelevant.

Guess Who?

Dress & Fashion

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Clothing fads and fashion. Why is this really important?

* Hairstyles. Is this really important?

* Wearing makeup. Why is this really important?

* Wearing high heels. Is this really important?

* Wearing a suit and tie. Why is this really important?

Special Calendar Dates

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Holidays and the need for them. Is this really important at all?

* Anniversaries. Is this too really important at all?

Some Personal Stuff

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Their family history. This is totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* What their neighbour thinks of them. This is also totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* Craving “Likes” on social media sites.

The Larger Context

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Deities. Unless you really believe and are convinced there’s any possible relationship between your invisible friend and your post-demise fate of which there’s not the slightest shred of evidence, far less proof, then this too is irrelevant.

* Their nationalism. “My country right or wrong” has not exactly been a philosophical key to the establishment of peace on earth, goodwill towards men (and women).

* Their race (or breed). The concept of all DNA is equal but some DNA is more equal than others is chemical claptrap.

* Philosophy or metaphysics or the meaning and purpose in life. It maybe interesting, but it’s hardly important.

Special People

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Royalty. Why are they important? Are they really important? Absolutely not! You earn you position in life; you’re not born into it.

* Celebrities. Why are they important? Are they really important at all? Absolutely not! Everyone sits on the commoner’s throne in the exact same way and puts their leggings on one leg at a time.

Entertainment

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* The Academy Awards (and the thousands of related entertainment awards). Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Apart from the recipient, does anyone else really give a damn? This too is totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* Reality TV. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? You only have a fixed amount of hours in your life – why waste them of this sort of drivel? 

* Rap, hip-hop and heavy metal and thinks this represents something known to that same species as music. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

To be continued…

You Are A Mystery: Part Two

There’s something very odd about you. You have self-awareness about you, but not self-awareness about anyone else (human or animal). How did that happen? How did you acquire your own sense of self-awareness? You began at conception, so presumably self-awareness was programmed in at that moment yet didn’t eventuate until later. When it comes to the concept of you, there’s a lot of explaining required.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

WHY ARE YOU, YOU?

Presumably prior to your conception every other conception resulted in a not-you, that is, every other conception resulted in someone else (human or animal). Now that might not be the case since 1) you wouldn’t remember if once upon a time you were a T-Rex or a Woolly Mammoth or a Neanderthal or Queen Cleopatra, or 2) an historical conception that would have been you naturally or spontaneously aborted before any memory could set in.

Presumably every conception that has eventuated since yours has been a not-you, or in other words someone else (human or animal). [Since plants don’t have minds or self-awareness I’ll eliminate them from consideration here.]

The question arises, why was your conception and your conception alone you and not a not-you, that is, why wasn’t that conception too someone else (again, human or animal). 

Presumably every conception after your demise will result in a not-you, or someone else (human or animal). But if there could have been a self-aware you in the past, then also presumably there could be another self-aware you in the future – I guess you’d call that reincarnation.

But a puzzle arises here. If there could have been you in the past, and/or you in the future, then what’s preventing the conception of another you here and now? You would have to know, or so I suspect, otherwise you couldn’t call that other you, you. In other words, it’s apparently okay that there can be multiples of you in time, but not in space. Since that makes little sense, it’s more logical to suggest that in the history of all conceptions, past, present and future, one and only one turned out to be you and all others were not-you, or rather someone else (human or animal).

I think it is safe to say that there’s not another you in existence right now, otherwise you would know it by experiencing it.

You are your brain. You go where your brain goes. If I destroy your brain (while the rest of your body is kept artificially alive on life support), I destroy you and your self-awareness or consciousness. If I destroy your big toe, I do not destroy you and your self-awareness or consciousness. If your body is about to go kaput – now say it is riddled with cancer, and say someone else with a healthy body that is brain dead. Then if your brain is transplanted into that healthy but brain dead body, then that self-aware you goes along for the ride and you are the proud owner of a new body – sort of like moving house. You retain your self-aware you-ness. That would apply if your brain were transplanted into a machine (cybernetic organism) or even into that sci-fi staple, the brain-in-a-vat.

So where does the self-aware you go when the brain runs out of puff? The self-aware you will end up going where the brain goes, so that self-aware you too will run out of puff at the same time to decay or be pickled in a jar, or whatever. That also raises an interesting question – as I said above, if I destroy your brain I destroy you: but what if I destroy your brain by picking it off one cell at a time. Surely there would come a point where you would lose your sense of self-identity while still having some grey matter left intact.

Speaking of ‘what if’ scenarios, it’s not difficult to copy information, from the fax machine to the Xerox machine to making copies and backup copies of documents on your computer. It’s easy to make copies of CDs and DVDs (legally and illegally). It’s easy to download audio and video (legally and illegally). The question arises; eventually it should be possible to copy you, or your brain – all the information, memories, knowledge, experiences, etc. storied there – while leaving the original data in your grey matter intact. You would still be you in terms of that ‘you are your brain’ observation, but would you now also be a ‘you are your software’ housed inside some hardware inside some machine or computer? Would this be the ultimate self-aware dual-you that seemingly couldn’t apply to you and your clone, or to you and your identical twin?

RESOLUTIONS & CONCLUSIONS

The entity that is you began at conception. That’s the bedrock fundamental given. The only thing unique about you at conception was your DNA – I’m not aware of any chromosome or gene that has been identified as the “you” or “mind” or “self-awareness” chromosome or gene as opposed to the sex chromosome or a gene that gives you this or that trait. Your DNA is unique. It can point the finger at you in evidence if you commit a crime.

But that doesn’t really work since you’d then also be you if you were cloned or you would share your self-awareness with your identical twin, and that’s clearly not the case. Your clone or your identical twin has their own unique sense of self or identity. 

Every conception has the potential to turn into identical twins. If it doesn’t eventuate, out pops one unique being with that one self-awareness. If it does eventuate, out pops two unique beings each one with an unshared self-awareness. Very strange, except if the brain is you and there are two brains (one each for each twin) then there will be two separate-and-apart beings with self-awareness. The caveat is as long as the split into identical twins happens before the brain develops in the embryo then two separate-and-apart beings with self-awareness will result. 

So what does that leave?

Barcodes! We’re all familiar with barcodes. Each barcode or ISBN or ISSN or credit card number or social security number or account number or tax file number identifies a unique product or book or serial or credit card or social security recipient, etc. Now let’s just suggest that each and every self-aware you that was, is and will be IS (not HAS) a barcode. Of course if you are just a one-off, that lone conception that resulted in you while all others resulted in a not-you, well the same applies. You have a barcode. Your clone would have a unique but different barcode; your identical twin ditto.

You can have more than one you or self-awareness per mind when you consider dual, split, multi-personality syndromes. But you cannot have one you in dual or multi minds. You don’t wake up now and then again 12 hours later halfway around the world with another identity and another set of self-awareness. It’s odd you can have the one but not the other. But perhaps you can (accidentally) be given more than one barcode though two individuals wouldn’t be given the same barcode.

Two identical minds cannot view the same reality since they have different barcodes. From the moment of conception on, or at least from birth, identical minds will diverge into diverse separate and apart mindsets because of that.

That sort of applies in the inorganic world too. All non-living, inorganic bits, would have a unique barcode too – all electrons would share the same barcode; all grains of table salt, ditto, and so on. Yet, one grain of salt or one atom of oxygen can not experience the same sense-of-self (if that has any real meaning) as another grain of salt or another atom of oxygen. Since electrons and oxygen atoms and salt crystals have no self-awareness, it boils down to things that have the same barcode can have vastly different cosmic histories.  Each electron is identical (same barcode), yet each electron has its own unique cosmic history. Be that as it may.

What’s a barcode? A barcode is mathematics, or a mathematical number. That’s also what computer software code is – a sequence of mathematical numbers (in this case in binary code).

So, my theory is that there is a software subroutine that’s your barcode, and when that runs and interacts with other subroutines, well, that’s you and that’s your sense of identity and your self-awareness and your day-in-day-out life. When your subroutine starts running, that’s your conception. When your subroutine terminates, you do too – that’s your death.

Now that implies a software programmer but that doesn’t of necessity translate into something supernatural – like God.

All this certainly explains why you have self-awareness while not having self-awareness of anything or anyone else. You may have a partner, children, siblings, etc. but their minds are as foreign to you as your mind is to them, just like your big left toe cannot know what it’s like to be somebody else’s big left toe.

I guess, by the way, calling you unique because you have a unique barcode, well to some people that barcode could be called a soul – a rose by any other name.

There is one other explanation. There only exists one self-awareness full-stop and that single consciousness is you. All else is a figment of your imagination or a creation of your dreams. Nothing really exists apart from you (or rather your mind) and you alone. If that’s the case, I guess that makes you God! 

You Are A Mystery: Part One

There’s something very odd about you. You have self-awareness about you, but not self-awareness about anyone else (human or animal). How did that happen? How did you acquire your own sense of self-awareness? You began at conception, so presumably self-awareness was programmed in at that moment yet didn’t eventuate until later. When it comes to the concept of you, there’s a lot of explaining required.

Before we start, just a brief note that for all practical purposes, the terms “you” and “mind”; “self-awareness” and “consciousness”, is all pretty interchangeable and synonymous. 

SOME YOU, YOU, YOU TRUISMS

Assuming the Universe was created some 13.7 billion years ago, ‘you’ that will come to pass were in a state of non-existence for that duration – then ‘you’ undergo or underwent a phase transition to existence for roughly 100 years or so, then ‘you’ will undergo another phase transition back to non-existence for another lot of billions maybe trillions of more years. What’s the point? However, think of all those might-have-been self-aware entities that never were and never will come-to-be. These never-ever entities have had and will have a state of non-existence from alpha-to-omega. The question now is might your ever-so-brief phase transition be a positive or negative aspect of your overall alpha-to-omega state of non-existence? I guess only you can answer that philosophical point-of-view. Now you have to admit that there was nothing overly distressing or traumatic about your 13.7 billion year pre-natal non-existence. So, that being the case, there’s unlikely to be anything overly distressing or traumatic about your post-existence non-existence. Rest assured it will be just as peaceful, quiet, stress and tax free.

I give you a state of “non-existence” rather than “no existence” pre-natal and post-death on the grounds that IMHO the fixed and absolute laws, principles and relationships of the newly formed cosmos – physics in other words – was established at the point of the Big Bang event and thus we have a deterministic clockwork Universe (as per Newton and Einstein) and where all subsequent events unfold according to plan (via those absolute laws, principles and relationships).

You had no say in being you. You had no free will in the matter, which is a bit unfair; a bit of a bummer in that you were drafted into being you. You are all alone trapped inside your own mind, from which, excepting death, there is no escape from. So who are you going to sue?

“You” is that which you call yourself “me”, or “myself”, or “I”: indicators of your own self-awareness.

I am to you “the other” and you are to me “the other”. We share lots and lots of traits from basic biochemistry through to organs and organ systems up through basic body shape and structure plus a basic knowledge and understanding of the workings of life, the Universe and everything. We do not share any sense of our own sense of self-awareness. We each have our own unique sense of self. We can’t get inside each other’s head – which is probably a good thing. I have no comprehension what it is like to be you, or be my cat or the bird feeding outside the window at the bird feeder. So be it.

Your brain, and my brain, in fact all normal human brains, share one thing. The brain is the only organ capable of studying itself! Now that’s profound!

WHY ARE YOU UNIQUE?

You are a one-off unique being among all humans who are and who have ever been; among all the animals who are and who have ever been. You are one shot in a trillion – then add in all those eggs and sperm, all those that might-have-been. But what really makes you unique? 

What makes you, you? At first glance it would appear to be memory, experiences, knowledge. But you became you at conception at which time you had no memory, no experiences, or knowledge. So, scratch that idea.

Perhaps what makes you, you – your uniqueness – is the unique way your brain, hence your mind, is hardwired; that plus your unique brain chemistry.

Though you are unique, in theory there can only be a finite number of ways of wiring up the brain and the mind it contains. There could in theory have existed or could now exist another duplicate set of your brain wiring – that too must be you but you and that other you would never know (or even probably suspect), or would you, and your alter ego. After all, if there are an identical two of you out there, each should be experiencing what the other is experiencing as well as what they are experiencing. If that doesn’t make your head hurt, nothing will!

But there has to be a connection between you at conception and you of today, be it 1, 10, 25 or 50 (plus) years on down the track. It’s not brain wiring or brain chemistry either since at your conception there was no brain, hence no wiring, and no brain chemistry.

So what does that leave if it is not memories, experiences and knowledge nor hardwiring of your neurons and brain chemistry, etc.?

Aha – What makes you unique is that you are hardwired by your unchangeable DNA (except here your identical twin and/or clone would be you too with the same arguments that should have made your head hurt earlier).

DNA apart, a clone isn’t you. DNA apart, an identical twin isn’t you. Even if I were to use my home chemistry set and recreate your mind – atom by atom; molecule by molecule; neuron by neuron; and house the finished product in some sort of receptacle (brain-in-a-vat), it still wouldn’t be you. You would still be you, separate and apart; as the you that is trapped inside of your own mind.

Yet, there are a finite number of combos of DNA, so again in theory there could have been, or currently is now, another you out there in la-la-land, but again you and that other you would never know (or even probably suspect), but then again, maybe not.

In any event, we can suggest that what makes you unique starts with your DNA at conception, then builds on that by adding hardwires and building your neural network as you grow up, culminating throughout the rest of your life by the accumulation of memories, experiences, and knowledge.

Yet, your body’s, even your brain’s atoms, molecules, entire cells are replaced on an ongoing basis. Why doesn’t that alter who you are or your self-awareness? You were not the same being at age five as you are, were or will be at fifty, yet you are the same. Very mysterious!

What is crystal clear is that self-awareness or mind isn’t something nebulous or intangible. It’s all grounded in matter and energy. You have no self-awareness at conception. It is debatable if you have any self-awareness at birth. You have no self-awareness when you are naturally asleep or when you are artificially put to sleep – say for surgery. Like the surgery example, you can change your own state of self-awareness artificially, legally or illegally. You have no self-awareness in a coma and there are other medical conditions, especially in the elderly, where self-awareness isn’t evident either.  

To be continued.

Human Reality Revisited: Part Two

In these life and times of your day-to-day activities, going about your business in this four dimensional space-time you find yourself stuck in, I doubt whether you question that what you experience is anything but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What you see is what you get, and what you get is really real reality, absolute nuts-and-bolts no question about it reality. If that’s what you think, think again.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

REALITY OUTSIDE OF THE STRIKE ZONE: THE NEBULOUS OTHER

What if someone or something else is pulling your chain? So far I’ve gone on the scenario that there’s a really real reality out there for you to experience and absorb. You are pulling your own chain; dancing to your own tune. Now what if some significant other is calling the shots?

You are a natural entity with wetware rooted in carbon chemistry

- A bit outside the scope of normality or what passes for normality, there are whole textbooks full of case studies of brains that haven’t been hardwired up quite correctly and so you’ve cases of people hearing colors or mistaking their wife for a hat or who have multiple personalities or seriously believe they are Alexander the Great, Jesus, or say President Kennedy.

- Although it doesn’t necessarily follow, there are those who believe that those who see ghosts or aliens or angels or the Loch Ness Monster are fantasy prone; just internally generated visions that’s all in the mind. Can shamans, mystics, gurus, and related really visit an otherworld of alternate realities, or are they too just fantasy prone, with perhaps some help from smoking the good stuff. Of course if they are experiencing such things, well that in turn might be evidence for alternative realities.

- And don’t we as adults construct an entire fantasy world for children – Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, even the Bogyman who’ll, we say, do nasty things to naughty kids. Don’t children on their own construct fantasy worlds they live in along with invisible playmates? I wonder if there’s anything really different in principle between children believing in their invisible friends and adults putting their faith in invisible deities.  

- Adults too immerse themselves in fantasy worlds from putting on virtual reality helmets to boldly go (the 20^th Century version of the Star Trek holodeck), to actually dressing up in Star Trek or Star Wars outfits as various characters from those (and other) fictional worlds, to participating in all sorts of role-playing scenarios. Though one would hope that when doing dress-up for masquerade balls and attending fantasy conventions, the adults would be aware that they are doing make-believe. You’d hope that though some fans (fanatics?) can get really carried away to extremes, like naming their kids after their favorite fantasy character, collecting thousands of items of memorabilia, even say modeling and outfitting their home to resemble the interior sets of say the Starship Enterprise. It’s been done! Though I suspect this must be a modern phenomenon. I don’t recall ever hearing about people in the 17^th, 18^th or 19^th Centuries playing at King Arthur, holding mock battles and jousting contests, though maybe I’m wrong on that. It’s certainly common today for hundreds to play dress-up and reenact Civil War engagements, and there’s many a wannabe cowboy out there in suburbia. 

- Your natural brain-in-a-vat scenario might be where some ‘mad’ scientist has cultured some brain cells in a petri dish and eventually grown a full-sized brain-in-a-vat which is kept stimulated 24/7 with electrical impulses – your reality. Or, perhaps your body has aged and kicked-the-bucket but your brain – still alive and ‘kicking’ – has been removed and kept alive but in ‘storage’, but still requiring stimulation, pending a suitable transplant into another body whose brain has died.

- Your natural brain is being manipulated scenario. Say you’re a patient in a hospital in a coma, or undergoing a neurosurgical operation and your brain is being stimulated in an effort to determine what’s what. Perhaps that stimulation is what you take, while in your coma, or under-the-knife, to be your reality – but all you sense and remember is really being induced. There might even be a time dilation effect. Presumably you could electrically stimulate the brain such that the brain would experience or remember years worth of experiences but the applied stimulus is just taking a few minutes. 

- You’re dreaming. You are really a bug-eyed-monster from the planet Zork; or a pussy cat; or even a human; but you’re asleep and dreaming this alternative lifestyle which in this dream state you are interpreting as your actual reality. Until you wake up, your dream IS your reality.

- One or many? You could philosophically argue that the sum total of life, the universe and everything is illusionary and just the product of Your Mind. Life, the universe and everything (all else but your mind) is just Your Mind playing games, a created illusion or construction to keep Your Mind from being bored. Or, you see someone in the shops and you conclude that as you see them, they see you, and both of you have a perception that there’s a really real reality and both of you are a part of that. That’s the common sense worldview, but the universe doesn’t always play by common sense principles. Of course it’s possible that the both of you are all part of a larger mass hallucination; that you aren’t The Mind, but rather one of the creations of The Mind of someone else. 

There is no way you could distinguish any of the above realities from your perception of what’s really real.

WILD PITCH, ERROR ON THE THROW

You are an artificial entity

Needless to relate, there has been a massive amount of theoretical and practical research dedicated towards the goal of creating an artificial mind, a silicon chip mind or a mind made out of silicon chips, machine intelligence, otherwise more commonly known as artificial intelligence. The reasons are manifold, from just the academic pursuit of seeing if it can be done for the sake of seeing if it can be done, to practical applications like designing robots that can assist in making the lives of the handicapped or elderly or the lonely more bearable or beating the pants off of some egomaniac chess champion, to putting artificial intelligence to the same sorts of creative use that wetware intelligence is put to. Perhaps an artificial intelligence can put two and two together and come up with a Theory of Everything, the Holy Grail of physics. Artificial intelligence can also boldly go where wetware intelligence cannot since silicon chips are a bit more durable under extreme environmental conditions than flesh-and-blood.

Put another way, if Mother Nature can evolve flesh-and-blood intelligence, then that flesh-and-blood intelligence can create and evolve machine intelligence (and ultimately that machine intelligence can further evolve and advance the capabilities of machine intelligence). The basic reason is that there is no difference in principle between a squishy neural network, and a silicon chip network. It all operates on electrical connections, complex connects it is true, but just wiring. Now, the question arises, is your mind a squishy neural network or a silicon chip network? There’s also a third possibility. Your mind isn’t physical at all – squishy or silicon – but mathematical. Your mind is just computer code. 

- Your artificial ‘brain’-in-a-vat scenario might revolve around the idea that you, or rather your mind, is just a processing machine sitting on a bench top or on a shelf, maybe as a prototype, being fed data (that’s your reality) to see if your silicon chips are able to ‘think’ outside the box relative to your mind just being a sophisticated adding machine.

- Your artificial ‘brain’ is manipulated (programmed) scenario might be akin to you being a fully functional robotic android though programmed not to know in order to better integrate into the society that created you. If you cut yourself and bleed and feel pain, that’s just a programmed illusion. When you ‘die’ (your programmed use-by date) you’re recycled/reassembled – a form of reincarnation. Most of your memories are false ones programmed into you, so you believe you had a childhood for example.

- Finally, you are neither flesh-and-blood nor silicon chips. You’re just bits and bytes inside a computer. You’re a piece of software. You’re a simulated being just existing in virtual reality, created by others; manipulated by others without any awareness of this on your part.

Human Reality Revisited: Part One

You are an electromechanical device or machine, even if it’s the product of biological evolution. You certainly operate on electricity (converted from the chemical energy in your foods); you’re certainly mechanical. Those bones, joints, muscles; your movements, are certainly mechanical in nature and biomechanical engineering is certainly an active academic pursuit, especially for athletes and those with skeletal-muscular abnormalities. 

Part of that electromechanical you is your brain – more electrical than mechanical, though engineered never-the-less. Your brain houses a very up close and personal part of you – your mind. Your mind is the key to your reality which will not be the same as anyone else’s reality and in fact your reality maybe totally unreal.

The only thing you know that is really real is your mind. Everything else could be an illusion to a greater or lesser degree. Even your mind could be an artificial construction rather than a natural one and you would be none the wiser, but at least an artificial mind would still be a really real mind to you.

Your mind is the gateway to your perceptions of reality. If you have no mind (like before your conception) you have no perception of reality.

REALITY INSIDE THE STRIKE ZONE (EVEN IF NOT RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLATE)

Your reality is twofold. There’s your here-and-now reality, reality as perceived by your five senses and channeled into your wetware; there’s your there-and-then reality, reality stored as your memory inside your wetware. 

In either case, your reality is all in your mind. Your brain chemistry; your neural network wiring are where you’re here-and-now and there-and-then reality lie.

But is that reality accurate? Would your reality match someone else’s version of the exact same events? No!

BRAIN CHEMISTRY

Your brain chemistry is never the exact same moment to moment. Ditto for every other odd bod and sod on the planet.

What determines your brain chemistry? Your age; genetic makeup and background heritage; foods and beverages; sleep patterns; what drugs and/or medicines you use; pollutants in your immediate environment; disease and/or injury to the brain or nervous system; even outside manipulation, say electrode stimulation by a neuroscientist.

Your brain chemistry isn’t the same as anybody else’s. If everybody’s brain chemistry were the same, if everyone were hardwired up the same (neural networks), then each and every one of us would like and dislike the exact same things equally. Each election would be a 100% landslide for all votes would go to one candidate. Even the opposing candidate would vote for their opponent, which is all nonsense as the two candidates (in fact all candidates) would have identical worldviews/policies. There would be no such thing as ‘different strokes for different folks’ and as such the world would be in one hell of a mess.

FIVE SENSES

When it comes to your five senses, your mind doesn’t receive the original stimulus or stimuli, only a crude copy that’s been translated into another language – one that your mind can interpret and come to terms with.

Your mind didn’t receive that photon of light – just an electrical signal describing the information that photon carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that sound wave – just an electrical signal describing the information that sound wave carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that molecule of food odor or taste – just an electrical signal describing the odor or taste information that molecule carried.

Your mind didn’t receive that cat scratch – just an electrical signal describing the sensation of receiving a cat scratch elsewhere.

Everything ‘real’ in the here-and-now is the sum product of the feed via electrical signals into your mind via your five senses. But the ‘real’ in your mind is a crude copy of the ‘real’ outside your mind as input gets translated in the process and any translation is never as good as the original.

Another facet to that is that your five senses can be tricked into perceiving illusions. You’ve experienced optical illusions. A common one is the perception that the Sun goes around the Earth. We still say that the Sun rises and the Sun sets as if the Sun were moving and not the Earth rotating. You’re also probably familiar with the Moon Illusion, whereby the Full Moon at the horizon appears much larger than when higher up in the sky, but it is not. Your perceived reality and real reality aren’t the same. There’s also taste and smell illusions that can be perpetrated. There are illusions with touch and no doubt audio illusions as well. Mankind’s technology helps confuse the picture too. A hologram looks 3-D and solid but isn’t. The mind, via the senses, can be fooled into accepting six (or more) impossible things even before you’ve sat down to breakfast!

You’d be well aware that witnesses in courtroom cases will have their ability to translate what they experienced via their five senses into reliable data that can be recalled into question when the guilt or innocence of the accused is at stake. You’d probably be aware that there are seemingly millions of psychology studies that prove again and again that eyewitness testimony isn’t worth squat and can be easily manipulated via the power of suggestion.

Using independent instrumentation to verify reality like a thermometer or Geiger counter isn’t any better as their readings are meaningless until you use your five senses to read the readings resulting in the same translation issues and thus you’re back to square one.

Even if you have absolutely perfect sensory apparatus, your reality will be relative, not absolute, to someone else’s reality as Einstein so aptly demonstrated. Without going into a longwinded example, just accept that you may see Event A happen before Event B. Someone else in a different frame of reference sees Event B happen before Event A. Yet another person sees Event A and Event B occur simultaneously. That’s why it’s Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Relativity, and not Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Absolutes. 

MEMORY

Your Reality: Strike One: Your brain chemistry isn’t reliable or consistent.

Your Reality: Strike Two: Your five senses that input to mind isn’t reliable.

Your Reality: Strike Three: Your memory is definitely not reliable. Memory is not infallible as those courtroom dramas often highlight.

So, if 100 people experience an event, and have to recall that event say ten years later, how many versions of really real reality are you going to get? What odds that even one of these recollections will be 100% spot on?  What odds that none reflect that really real reality (RRR) of that event (assuming such a concept as RRR in the first place of course)?

To be continued…

Natural History: Some Random Rambling

Theory of Consciousness: Actually I don’t think it’s all that mysterious; well it may be mysterious but it’s biologically universal. Every living thing from humble microbes to plants, jellyfish to frogs, birds to cats to primates have consciousness because all respond to external stimuli in ways that are not predictable by classical physics (unlike a rock expanding and contracting as the temperature rises and falls). From conception to brain death you feel and respond to stimuli 60/60/24/7/52, like gravity and temperature, etc.  If you respond, in un-rock like ways, you are self-aware or have consciousness. If you should have some different definition in mind, then perhaps look for a dividing line between that which is clearly not exhibiting consciousness by that definition and what is. What is the difference in biochemistry between that which is and that which is not? Explore that and you’re on the way to an answer!

Consciousness can be expressed as a series of Russian dolls, which probably doesn’t actually explain what it is, but it’s interesting. We start with: “I’m self aware”. Then, “I’m self aware that I’m self aware”. Then that string is followed by “I’m self aware that I’m self aware that I’m self aware” and so on down the line unto infinity.

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Dreaming: From the moment we wake up, until the time we go to sleep, our brain gets bombarded with sensory inputs – sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. When we go to sleep however, we’re in sensory isolation. Unless it’s a really loud bang, or super strong odour, or the pet dog jumps on top of you, you sleep soundly through it all. It’s not good to be in a sensory isolation tank for eight hours straight, which is what sleep is. So, how does the brain manufacture sensory input? Dreams! Apart from the automatic functions of the brain/nervous system, like breathing, your brain keeps active via dreaming. It’s generating images and receiving back those images – busy work if you will.  

The reason therefore that it’s hard to recall your dreams, well it’s akin to short-term memory. Once awake, once the brain is in forward gear, in high-drive, what was dreamt about is now as irrelevant as what you had for dinner 101 nights ago.

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Reality: Any alternative reality (i.e. – higher realms of existence; spirit worlds; non-corporeal beings; astral planes; etc.) expounded by those who have experienced that so-called ‘reality’ by deliberately altering their brain chemistry via ingesting, injecting or inhaling various brain chemistry altering substances (alcohol, LSD, marijuana, petrol/glue sniffing, pain killers, or just any old generic ‘magic mushroom’), or undergoing sensory isolation is totally suspect, has no credibility and is not to be believed. That equally applies to involuntary brain chemistry alterations (i.e. – exposure to bring flashing lights, lack of sleep, oxygen deprivation at high altitude, long-term fasting, or eating foods that inadvertently contain brain chemistry altering chemicals).

You certainly don’t accept your mind-generated alternative realities you experience in dreamland when your brain is in sensory isolation mode, so why accept the ‘magic mushroom’ variety?

It’s hard enough coming to terms with everyday reality when you are wide awake and stone cold sober, so who needs to unnecessary complicate things with alternative ‘realities’? In fact, even when you are wide awake and stone cold sober you cannot always trust your mind to reveal to you really real reality – optical illusions anyone?

This alone blows out of the water most of what lumps together as New Age claptrap, like altered states of consciousness. You may alter your consciousness, but that doesn’t expose you to really real reality.

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Telepathy Revisited: There just might be a (slight) case to answer after all. That telepathy isn’t, isn’t silent one or two way crystal clear communication over vast distances between two separate brains or minds. What telepathy might be is that vague sense that there’s another mind out there, close by though, that has some resonance with your own. The classic case is that sense that you just know that someone else is watching or staring at you even though you can’t see who it is.

There has to be a medium by which this transfer can well, transfer from them to you. That medium apparently is Earth’s electromagnetic (EM) field. Brain thoughts or activity is electromagnetic in nature. It perhaps might be barely possible for those brain EM waves to be carried via Earth’s EM field to another person’s brain. That other person would at best just have a quasi-vague sensation that they were sensing, well, something, without being able to put a definitive finger on the specifics to many decimal places.

The non-human evidence is how large flocks of birds or schools of fish can in near unison turn on a dime. Since the “turn” command isn’t vocal, and visual observations would make for unacceptable lag times, the idea is that the communication is EM in nature from brain to brain at light speed via Earth’s EM field as the in-between medium.

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The Wheel: When you think of the most important and fundamental inventions that humans are credited with only a select few really stand out. Taming fire is one. Cutting tools like stone flakes are another. Writing is a third. Coming up with the concept of nothing or the zero was a real breakthrough. And of course there is the wheel. However, there are a few anomalies when it comes to the wheel. In the ancient Americas for example, the wheel was both known, but unused. Translated, you find in the archaeological record children’s toys that have wheels. What you don’t find is that concept extrapolated into the adult world. Adults, be they Incas, Aztecs, Amerindians, etc. did tot make use of the wheel even though wheeled toys abound. Now the basic reason for that given is that they had no beasts of burden like oxen or horses to pull chariots, etc. so therefore no wheeled chariots. However, that doesn’t explain the lack of other practical adult applications like the wheelbarrow, or small wheeled wagons/carts/platforms or ‘shopping’ trolleys or even a primitive rickshaw that could be pulled by one person. Not everything wheeled has to be the size of a chariot, a covered wagon, a stagecoach. There’s not even a potter’s wheel and so on. The concept of round or rolling (as in logs) is obvious to the most basic of cultures, yet for the first half of their very lengthy empire, that super-civilization, at least for those times, the ancient Egyptians, didn’t make use of the wheel. The Australian Aborigines didn’t seem to have a wheel-eureka moment either.

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Orion’s Belt: It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintake The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as a belt. For some mysterious reason, several archaeological sites exhibit or mirror the positions of the trilogy of stars that make up the Belt of Orion. The most famous is the trilogy of those massive ancient Egyptian pyramids on the Giza plateau. The second is seen at Teotihuacán’s central pyramid complex in Mexico. The third is a trilogy of Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Okay, Orion’s Belt, that trilogy of stars, is fairly prominent in the night sky, but then too so is a lot of other star patterns. What makes these special to our ancient ancestors? A big deal of this is made by ‘ancient astronaut’ theorists. Somehow that trilogy of stars must be special, like perhaps home turf to ET. Alas, that doesn’t seem all that plausible. Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintake (Delta Orionis) are very bright stars (to the naked eye), but they are also very, very far away. That alone suggests that they are very un-Sun like. Alnitak is 736 light-years away and 100,000 times our Sun’s luminosity; Alnilam is 1340 light-years distant and 375,000 times as luminous as our Sun; and Mintake is 915 light-years away as the crow flies and is a whopping 900,000 times the Sun’s luminosity. Mintaka is also a double star system. Translated, the trio of stars that make up Orion’s Belt don’t seem to be likely candidates for extraterrestrials that would come a-calling as ‘ancient astronauts’. I very much doubt SETI scientists would target these stars as likely candidates to point their radio telescopes at.

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Human Language: Modern humans are one species, many breeds, but one species. Our single species has however thousands of languages, both in use and extinct. That’s an anomaly. Other animals, each a single species, whether of not they come in breeds like cats, dogs and horses, have one vocal language (supplemented, as in the case of humans too, by body/facial ‘language’). A Chinese cat can converse, that is making its intentions understood, with a French cat, or with an Egyptian cat or with an Australian cat. Why humans alone needed to or have developed a massive multitude of spoken languages is a bit of a mystery. Body/facial ‘language’ on the other hand is pretty universal, therefore singular.