mostly harmless

I am German. I have never heard of NGM. I did listen to talks about Psychosomatics that somewhat go in the direction you described. I'd like to point out though that this NGM is not the main paradigm that the medical profession in Germany operates by. Also cancer patients relying on their spiritual powers to heal themselves have died. That actually in my estimation is not even a contradiction, because maybe it is the universe's plan for a patient to die. From that perspective a terminal illness is not a problem. The individual of course may prefer to live another few years. The problem then is that the person does not except her/his imminent death. So, if you personally insist that when you're ill you want to be healed, then maybe mainstream medicine is not to be categorically discarded.

Rules are necessary as long as people are not enlightened. Someone who is enlightened does not act exclusively in their own interest but always thinks of everybody else's interests before doing something. In the utopian society where everybody does that, you need no rules or system to guide people.

What is a law? A law is required to direct actions. Does the universe ask a physics book what to do? These 'laws' of nature are meant to help human's understanding of the physical world. What we regard as laws of nature is just our current understanding. It happens occasionally that previous models of how the world works are replaced by new ones. That much to how solid laws of nature are. Not absolute. As I understand your question you ask yourself, if awareness is the biggest container of reality, then the physical world must be inside it and its rules must be set by awareness. Is that how you think of it? Maybe the physical world is not something within awareness. I would indeed suggest it isn't. Otherwise, why would awareness appear in the physical world, if the physical world is in principal already contained within awareness? My understanding is that it is a misunderstanding to assume that the physical world does not exist on its own outside of awareness. Awareness in an empty universe would not be able to be aware of anything. There needs to be something happening to be aware of. Awareness is not any thing. It is a space. In that space something can be. Like a universe with planets and suns and stuff. If that space is empty though, awareness would be in a dark, silent, eternal emptiness. It would be asleep.

Boiled eggs and regular quark with herbs (chives, dill) and salt Tomatoes and Mozarella cheese + Basilico leaves + Olive oil, Aceto Balsamico, salt Greek salad: Feta cheese, Tomatoes, Olives, Onions, etc. Scrambled eggs, Omelette Joghurt, pure or optionally with lemon juice Chicken legs

Options: Eckhart Tolle "Stillness speaks" or "New Earth" Stephen Covey "The 7 Habits of highly effective People"

Check Kelly McGonigal's book "The Willpower Instinct". Excellent. Some talks of her at youtube to give you a taste. The book has a very high density of information (in contrast to many other books that have 1-2 good ideas and the rest is pointless anecdotes).

The first 2 are not youtube channels but highly recommended: https://markmanson.net https://www.edge.org Now for youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc11676iKpKrJMYqNYHqNig?&ab_channel=BrianTracy https://www.youtube.com/user/electrickeye91?&ab_channel=ThomasFrank https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1cgjhGzsSYb1rsB4bFe4Q?&ab_channel=funfunfunction https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxObD2ivFPpq9Akna40s7Fw?&ab_channel=WadeAlters https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLTdCY-fNXc1GqzIuflK-OQ?&ab_channel=PrestonPysh https://www.youtube.com/user/LeeMilteer/videos?&ab_channel=LeeMilteer https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp8mr0kjVyVAmvexLDqB60A?&ab_channel=ChaseJarvis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTqAN5BB_YeHJwfpMDr5u6g?&ab_channel=CoreyFerreira https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClArOzhUBWBbxSMkZBCafcA?&ab_channel=JeffWalker https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHHYPa7xpAukYw73GQ3jP3g?&ab_channel=JohnChow https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBD5PmTS_6v2kuNmi3I7Igw?&ab_channel=LaurelStaples https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCznv7Vf9nBdJYvBagFdAHWw?&ab_channel=TimFerriss https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFxdcuY-S6yjZGq_2cjilHg?&ab_channel=SimpleProgrammer https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7csvNRWZzE3L6TR3RfCnCA?&ab_channel=ThePursuit And

The Dalai Lama comes into a Pizzaria and says: 'Make me one with everything.'

The moral problem with a vegan diet is that an animal can at least theoretically run away while a carrot can't. Therefore eating vegetables is more cruel than eating meat.

Your understanding of language and logic is too different from mine for me to have any meaningful discussion with you. But that's OK. But I'd like to express that you insinuate meaning in my posts when you have no idea what I am communicating because your palette of possible meanings is too limited.

Some thoughts about your blog post "Designing A Conscious Robot": There cannot be a conscious AI. A clock can show you the time, but it does not know the time. A computer is a complex machine. It can simulate intelligence as well as humans are able to teach it to do that (referencing Ada Lovelace). It can be a convincing simulation but never the real thing. Ray Kurzweil and other people frightened of death have invested all their hopes in the idea of emergence. This meme is valuable, but won't bring about consciousness in a machine that can only calculate. Why is that? Because there are questions that cannot be answered by calculation. The simple examples are the ones of taste. What is your favorite color? Yellow? OK, yellow you say, prove it! Show me the formula and calculation that proves that your favorite color is indeed yellow. A little harder are questions of ethics. You are in a situation where you can save one of two people. Who do you choose? Show me a mathematical proof for the correct choice! In Automata Theory you learn that there are tasks that can be computed and tasks that can never be computed. That's not a question of having a fast enough CPU. When we see a person in pain, we can have sympathy with them. What enables us to do so? We can because we experienced pain ourselves. An AI is not generated by a living organisms but by a machine. It does not know what it means to be alive, to be an organism, to have needs to stay alive, to want to stay alive, to experience conflicting needs, having to interact with the physical world to stay alive. It will never have agency. It can be given analytical means to generate concepts of these things well enough to output language or activate its actuators in the physical world in a way that appear to us like an intelligent being. But it never will be. I am not ruling out that scientists could artificially design and create a biological life form that gains true consciousness. I don't hope so, because there is no necessity. But that might be possible. A robot with an AI though won't be conscious, no matter how convincing the simulation may be. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2004-05/automata-theory/basics.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory Ludwig Wittgenstein: If a lion could speak, we could not understand him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, child of Annabella Milbanke and the poet Lord Byron She is often referred to as the first programmer. She imagined that through abstraction an "analytical engine" could not only make mathematical calculations but also solve other tasks with logic. "Considered under the most general point of view, the essential object of the machine being to calculate, according to the laws dictated to it, the values of numerical coefficients which it is then to distribute appropriately on the columns which represent the variables, it follows that the interpretation of formulæ and of results is beyond its province, unless indeed this very interpretation be itself susceptible of expression by means of the symbols which the machine employs. Thus, although it is not itself the being that reflects, it may yet be considered as the being which executes the conceptions of intelligence." "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us to making available what we are already acquainted with." [Describing Charles Babbage's machine.] In other words: The Analytical Engine (computer) gets input in form of numbers and its output is again numbers. The meaning of input and output is not in anyway understood by the computer. It does not know meaning. She gives an example what a computer might do some day: "[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent." This is science fact. But here's the question: Can the same computer listen to music? Penrose about consciousness and quantum mechanics:

That's not a fact in actual reality. That is a categorization which is a mind-made layer. Categories and models are thinking tools.

Watch 'Incorporated' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4118466/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Why would consciousness produce anything then? Consciousness as you think of it could just exist in a vacuum?

Well, as far as I am aware, I am not something that manifests through a CPU. What you write is generally vague and gives the impression like there was no connection between a biological life form and the consciousness of it. To me it seems evident that there is: Humans lose consciousness temporarily when sleeping for example. Also drugs allegedly have mind altering effects. In my estimation, not every inanimate object in the world is conscious. Obviously, when you look as the totality of the physical world as one entity, the perspective is very different, so different, that it makes no sense to ask for consciousness of any part of it. That however, wasn't what I was discussing in my initial posting, but rather zooming in on one specific part of totality.

I did not ask wether the (functionality of a) brain can be described (aka modeled) using logic or algorithms (or maths). A model is not the real thing. The map is not the terrain. The finger pointing at the moon, is not the moon.

A biological lifeform is not an artifact.

Why then would consciousness express its experience through a material form if it wasn't for a connection of consciousness and matter? Is there a connection? What kind? Could consciousness instantiate itself in the physical world in an inanimate object like a stone? If so, why would consciousness then still need a complex life form or a complex technical device like a computer?

I am interested in what computers currently are. Some major proponents of singularity basically think it is only a question of computational power. My estimation is that this is incorrect. If in the future we have a different device, that is more than an "Analytical Engine", and people still call it computer, then it will be something different than what we call a computer today. I don't see any point in discussing this now.

Does the brain only work mathematically? Can an organism without brain be conscious?

This is a suggestion based on a misunderstanding on your part. The difference is in what a computer does versus what a brain does. A computer can only compute. Any action or activity that cannot be done by calculation cannot be performed by a computer.