LastThursday

What I wrote a bit later above ^^^ again for reference: Nothing enforces it except awareness itself. Awareness cherry picks order out of chaos.

What is life? Scientifically, there are a number of observations which help in understanding it. Firstly, all life is made is made of the same components: proteins and DNA or RNA. Secondly, life copies itself through reproduction. Lastly, life evolves and changes over time. The first observation is profound. What it says is that all life is connected. You are somehow related to a plant or an octopus or a fly. That is truly astonishing. Why is it connected that way? Why is a plant or a fly so different yet uses the same chemical components? The second observation supplies the inductive step needed to answer the why of the first one. If life keeps ever copying itself over and over then there is an unbroken chain of generations of life stretching back into the past. That explains why all Sycamore trees look alike, they are all related through their distant ancestors. The third observation is no less profound than the first. In the act of reproduction the copying process is not perfect. Imperfections or mutations build up over time and this causes the organism to change its form and function over successive generations. Mutations affect the survival chances of the organism and in turn that affects the chances of reproduction. The net effect is that beneficial mutations are more likely to be copied. What is "beneficial" can be extremely subtle indeed, but mostly the environment the organism finds itself in dictates this. Evolution is the solution to why all life is connected through proteins and DNA. The wide variety of organisms alive now, evolved from a slightly smaller variety of organisms in the past. Each successive generation increases the chances of divergent evolution. One type of single celled organism eventually gave rise to the plant kingdom and the same cell the animal kingdom. All life arose from a single source. It's right to take a moment to appreciate that idea. If life is simply chemistry and physics then one chemical reaction started billions of years ago has produced all life on Earth. In essence that single first chemical reaction has never stopped; it's still going on in you and me and my spider plant. When you eat a chicken that same chemical reaction is devouring itself, even Vegans are guilty of this. It's like a single spark that caught the whole planet ablaze. Life is like a throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the ripple as it expands out. It is one ripple through all time. It is all the same ripple. When you sit on a wooden bench in a park, you are not just related to the bench and grass, but in a sense you are the same thing as them. You are them. Looked at this way, a bacterium is no less advanced than a human: they a simply just different aspects of the same chemical reaction. There aren't a trillion organisms there is only one. The copying aspect of reproduction is very much like the self-similarity of fractals. Fractals can be infinitely detailed and absolutely unique spacially and temporaly. This is what life is really like: The equations which governs the fractal of life is made of atomic forces and the elements: Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen. They are much more complicated than those for the Mandelbrot set. But the mechanism is the same, life sits on the boundary between order and chaos. Because life is a chaotic system it's infinitely sensitive to initial conditions. This high sensitivity allows the copying process and evolution to use everything at its disposal. This is because anything that confers an increase in reproductive chance will be selected for. This includes not only the makeup of the organism, but in turn the effect the organism has in the makeup of the environment it finds itself in. In other words the organism will evolve its environment if it confers reproductive success. This is exactly what humans do. This is why the Earth itself could be seen as a giant organism, its environment is not at all "natural" - just look at Mars or Venus for natural. No, life has changed it drastically for its own benefit. Life is suited to its environment and the environment is suited to life. Other effects that evolution co-opts may be quantum ones. For example the capture of photons in photosynthesis. And ultimately consciousness itself. If consciousness confers reproductive advantage then life somewhere will have used it. Humans anyone? It is food for materialist thought: consciousness is a property that mutations affect (but note that mutations don't produce consciousness). It is no accident that you are both conscious and a living organism. Life is intelligent, not in a designed by a god sense, but because it is infinitely sensitive to both itself and its environment. Given enough time life will intelligently take over the whole universe. Perhaps by starting on Venus.

@Mu_ ?

@Meta-Man your relativity has worn me down. I tap out. I cannot define a man any more than I can define being smart. They are both as relative as each other. Sometimes you're a man, sometimes not, it all depends on who knows what. I have learned one thing though: not to argue with a relativist. Anyway I re-iterate:

Consistency? Ok I'm teasing. There's definitely a fine balance between order and chaos in our universe. Which might be labelled as "time" or even "consistency". The world of asleep dreaming is less consistent and more chaotic. But can appearances actually be infinitely chaotic? Is it possible for awareness to operate in an infinitely chaotic universe? If not then there must be a finite limit somewhere on chaos - so its brother Order must always be present in some way. And if there is always some sort of order, then not everything is possible.

For the benefit of the other less smart people reading this thread. Would you like to clarify even further?

I think I smell a relativist argument in the air. Would you like to qualify the comment further?

It is daft to think that anything is possible in absolute infinity. There are rules and regulations to duality you know.

There's a world of difference between saying something like "I'm a man" and "I'm smart". You can be smart in many different areas but very dense in others. Whereas you are man in all contexts (if you are one). Basically smartness is relative and multidimensional, and as such can't be mapped to a one dimensional datum. IQ is bollocks. There's also the question of being able to regurgitate facts, is that really smartness? Is a virtuoso pianist smart? Or just well practiced? It's not so obvious what smart means. Also, using fancy words ^^^ doesn't make you smart

Call me conventional, but music that gets me emotional every time and reminds me just how beautiful and astonishing people can be: And yes Bach is greedy:

I like to say that consciousness is not in time, time is in consciousness. But that's just being a smartarse and nobody likes that

I think we're basically in agreement. My angle is that there exist platonic ideals which function as templates for "similar enough appearances". The feeling or recognition that something is consistent is a manifestation of this. You have a template of your dog in consciousness. To recognise anything at all, there must be a "similar enough" system built into consciousness, so we can dissect the world into different parts, people, things, emotions, thoughts, and so on. In other words it's a base function of consciousness. If you think about it, that is what awareness is. Awareness is not devoid of meaning, but quite the opposite, everything has a meaning. It's not just appearance, but recognition too. As to how these templates are kept in consciousness over time, it's simple: there is no time. But that's a different conversation.

What mental gymnastics? Appearences are fearly similar. A baby can't think much and still can recognize appearences as his "mother" or his "toys" becouse they're fearly similar to previous ones. And that's how consistency works. Two appearances are consistent if they're "similar enough". Then we make an unconscious leap and say they are the same dog, person, thing etc. Of course context is hugely important. You expect your dog to be in your home. If you saw exactly the same dog in someone else's home, it wouldn't be your dog. Hopefully, you can see how consistency is entirely constructed in your imagination. The number 2 in that context is not an appearence, but an abstraction. Very different. I disagree, but it's fine if your definition is different from mine. My definition is that everything is an appearance, including mental abstractions, thoughts and so on. I used the 2 example as a form of platonic ideal. I'm just pointing out that direct experience is not what you think it is. There's nothing direct about it, because there's always layers of interpretation over the top of it. I didn't mention anything about time or evidence or cages.

Some ideas: Can science say anything at all about unrepeatable phenomena? Can we have a science that is non-material - instead of particles and fields, have consciousness as its base? Can the process of science be improved so that it doesn't suffer so much from paradigm lock? Is there anything blatantly obvious that science is missing because of paradigm lock? There are many areas considered fringe science that science could explore. How do we reduce the stigma of investigating them? Can science be done without any maths at all? Should science be divorced from engineering and corporate interests? If so, how does it get funded? What are the benefits of the scientific method - as compared to say introspection and self contemplation or taking psychedelics? How can we make science inclusive, so that anyone can do it and understand it? How do we get the different branches of science to synergise and talk to each other?

But that slow rate of change also applies to things that are outside of my direct experience. For example, I'm not seeing my dog right now but if I check he'll probably be relatively the same How do we reconcile this with "nothing being hidden"? Where is my dog "stored" when I'm not seeing him? All that is happening is that you see appearance A and call it "dog". Then later you see appearance B and call it "dog". You then do a load of mental gymnastics and infer that appearance A is the same dog as appearance B. See it this way: where is the number 2 stored? The number 2 is completely consistent. You can apply it to any appearance "out there". But it doesn't really exist "out there". Two ducks are not two horses. Consistency is overlaid onto appearances. Consistency itself exists, but not "out there" in the world. If you look up "Change Blindness" you can convince yourself that consistency is an illusion.

Is the "my" in your sentence the same as the "observer" or different from it? Does "imagination" belong to the "my"?

Some pointers for you: Solipsism is in imagination Solipsism requires an "observer" that is separate from the "observed" (how else do you know you are alone?) Paradoxically, Solipsism requires the absence of other observers (how else do you know you are alone?). But where did they go? DE by your definition is everything, so that would include both the observer and the observed - Solipsism is different in that case, because of the separation.

Confusion always happens at the start of something new and exciting.

The self is a complicated ragbag construct. It is not rational, it is not coherent, nor is it planned. Most of the time we just make do. We have to cajole, analyse, incentivise, accept, inebriate, self medicate and a thousand other activities just to get the self to do anything at all. Seen from a rational standpoint it really is insanity. If doing is your shtick, then finding ways to reduce the friction the self induces is critical. Fundamentally, there are only two ways to improve yourself and situation: do stuff to affect the outside world, and, do stuff to affect the world inside your head. The two are also closely connected. Further, the act of doing is really about change. The resistance the self puts up is about resistance to change itself. Why should the self be resistant to change? There are a number of reasons: Change is about death - in the broadest sense. One thing needs to give way to another for change to happen. If there is a strong need or identification for the thing about to die, there will be resistance. This is why addictions can be so hard to stop for example. Change is risky. There is always a chance that changing a situation or aspect of ourselves will make things worse. So there is often an informal cost/benefit analysis which happens in the face of change: "Will this make my life better? And is it worth the aggravation?". The best short term reaction is always to do nothing. The self is mostly reactionary and short-termist. Since the self is incoherent and grows organically, there will often be conflicts between different "parts". Don't be confused by the word "part", these are not well defined portions of self. Rather they are a fluid set of emotions and constructs which have been conditioned by innumerable outside influences over time. It's possible for one part to clearly want change, and yet for another part to not want that same change. This can cause paralysis - with the result that nothing changes. First and foremost the self is a survival machine. It is there so that your physical existence continues as long as possible. That means that there is a strong and deep connection between the self and the physical body. If the body rejects action because of a perceived threat, the self does not have much choice but to follow. Normally the body will signal threat through emotion, such as fear or anxiety. The body has to also balance energy expenditure and food intake, so there is a strong bias towards not using energy. This bias translates into inaction. This explains why starting that running habit can be difficult - and why food addiction is rife. Anyone interested in change and doing stuff for self improvement, needs to address the four points above. The self can be re-programmed to be more coherent and its parts aligned and processes put in place to manage the emotions of the body. And with planning and good habits change can be managed better. It can be done.

It's a good trick the ego plays isn't it? Equating meaning with motivation. It's also a good trick to equate motivation with doing stuff. Meaning, motivation and doing are not necessarily connected.

@VeganAwake you're right, we're none of those words.

Some other possibilities: Self hypnosis Caffeine (large dose, probably unwise with a heart condition) Nutmeg (again large dose) Alcohol (medium dose) Cannabis, I prefer edibles Quieting mental chatter mostly through meditation Meditative repetitive activity: walking in nature, running, painting, drawing, house chores, sex (ahaha) Going to foreign places or anything away from normal life Certain music. I like guitar music, must be my Spanish blood. Adrenaline activities: base jumping, extreme ironing. Performing rituals or being part of one Dressing up, performing, acting, playing music in public, public speaking Basically anything that gets you "out of yourself" or makes you more "present" and not lost in thought.

@Someone here it's much appreciated. There are some really interesting journals on here I read regularly, yours included. I was trying to be clever, but by my inversion of your statement I was merely trying to point out that if we actually existed as a separate self, one of our characteristics would be free (independent) will. Because we would truly be separate from outside influence. So it follows that if we don't have free will, then we can't be separate. In other words we are deterministic automatons who have been somehow "programmed" by outside influences - i.e. not separate. As regards your bolded paragraph above. I pretty much agree. I made a comment to that effect in the Compatibilsm thread, in response to Nahm: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/55172-proof-of-free-will-why-compatibilism-is-correct/?page=2 Always happy to discuss these things!

@Someone here indeed, you could invert what you say: you don't exist as a separate self because you don't have free will. I must admit my own view is pragmatic. Free will is really a non-idea. Whether you believe strongly in free will or completely in determinism, it still makes no difference to the outcome of your actions. It really boils down to taking responsibility for your actions: if it's all pre-determined then you can give up all responsibility, because you're not in control.