Carl-Richard

I think what you're trying to hint at is that neurons have been shown to correlate with experiences in different ways: population coding (e.g. many different neurons contributing to a movement of a limb), frequency coding (e.g. the frequency of firing coding for the experienced intensity of a stimulus), topographic maps (e.g. neurons in the visual cortex mirroring the topography of the visual field), etc. But again (and I will keep saying this), regardless of the myriad of different ways that neurons may correlate with experience, it's still just correlation. If you want to establish causality, you have multiple problems to solve: For example, you have to eliminate the type of empirical inconsistencies that I've demonstrated earlier, and you need to face the mysterious explanatory gap between neurons and experience (i.e. the Hard problem): how does the movement of ions across cell membranes, i.e. neuronal potentials (which is partially driven by active transport requiring ATP metabolism and thus glucose metabolism), lead to the experience of the color red? Whichever way you want to describe what the brain is doing (and which regardless probably boils down to glucose metabolism anyway), you're still left with at least these two problems. So I would suggest dropping the idea of causality for now and just stick with correlation. There is something called "top-down processing". For example, there is nothing inherent in the light hitting the retina that makes you perceive the dog in the first picture, or why you can switch between seeing faces and objects in the second picture: The reason you're seeing what you're seeing is because your perceptual systems are working to construct your experience, which now consists of your current normie state, including the experience of being centered in a body. The changes you see in the picture have fundamentally nothing to do with information from sensory organs. More generally, only some changes in your experience correlate with information from sensory organs. Normally, when people talk about the brain, "experiences are just changes in the brain" usually implies that the brain causes the experiences. If you want to concede that it's only correlation (which I don't know if you want), I wouldn't use that language. What do you mean by "already existing information"? Do you mean that your dreams are inspired by your past experiences? Well, sure, but these experiences still only correlate with what is happening in the brain (I won't stop repeating this ). Again, even if there aren't any current alternative explanations, that does not justify your explanation. But yes, of course, many things influence or alter (or correlate with) our state of mind other than our brain: when I stub my toe, I feel pain; when I see a sad person, I feel sad; when my tummy rumbles, I feel that. This is of course trivial, but it needs to be pointed out, because these things are indeed correlates of experience the same way the brain is. It's just that the brain is a particularly persistent correlate, and again, of some experiences. You keep repeating the same points (or assertions rather). If you're implying causality, I think you are making an extraordinary claim. If you are only implying correlation, then you aren't (but I don't think you are). And again, there are many things other than the brain that correlate with changes in experience. Again, you keep repeating the same assertions (they're not points because you're not giving an argument for them), like for the third time now Ok, so you're saying that I didn't experience seeing myself from 5-10 inches above my head? Then what actually happened do you think? And how do you "prove" or gather "actual evidence" for a subjective experience I had? Do you want to elaborate on that? The way I would put it is that the world looks the way it does because of your perceptual systems, and some of that correlates with brain activity. As for colors becoming sound (and vice versa), I would be interested in seeing the "proof" and "evidence" for that Again, it certainly seems like we need sensory organs to perceive some aspects of the world, and again, and you could make the case that they already have been exploited evolutionarily (but I haven't looked much into that; you'd have to consult Sheldrake for that). Again, some of our perceptions seem to correlate with sensory organs. As for your question, I'll answer with a question: why do animals evolve different sense organs and not just one? Why only fives senses and not a "sixth sense"? As for plants, what do you know about the experiences of plants? Again, how do you know they haven't? Even evolutionary biologists? I think you can choose something as a metaphysical grounding and still recognize that it's just a framework to understand the world, but other than that, sure: many (probably most) physicalists tend to be lost imo. What are they? I think that's exactly the question we've been grappling with, and yes, I think that's possible. Like I've reiterated ad nauseum throughout this exchange, I think you can gain information about reality independent of pure sensory information (you're doing it right now), if we define sensory information as the parts of experience that correlate tightly with the modulation of your current "normie" sensory organs (e.g. light hitting the retina). This is mainstream knowledge. The trouble I think you have is to take this knowledge outside the realm of ordinary experiences and use it to explain extraordinary experiences. For that, all I can say is: keep having them On a meta-communicative note: you commented on how tedious it is to go quote by quote (I half-assedly limited it here). Now, I think this would've been less of a problem if you didn't make so many assertions (points without arguments) and didn't repeat them sometimes 2-3 times. This is a strength with my approach, because we ended up identifying patterns like these. But it's up to you if you want to do something about it.

Why you eating no protein for breakfast?

How much larger?

https://open.spotify.com/track/4uEJMJq9FWJxHHbkPpGxcl?si=UMySUEPUQbqjrLQL0yruKA Such a monstrous song. Thordendal is a genius. If you were to describe these complex and long-distance rhythmically contorted riffs using a linguistics analogy: if you imagine a standard Metallica riff to be a 10-word sentence in 9th grade English, the riffs in this song is like a professor of analytical philosophy laying out proofs in 50-word compound sentences. It may take a while to understand what is going on, but damn, once you hook on to some of the patterns, it's like witnessing a mechanical alien laying out its code.

I sometimes feel this just by talking about my general values to people, certainly some of my old friends. If I just open my mouth about why I no longer drink or why I started implementing some structure into my life, people get self-aware about their self-destructive behavior or re-awaken some of their repressed insecurities, so I try to avoid even that. Or if I talk about meaning, people become aware of how meaningless their lives are. And that's not even touching on non-duality (explicitly). And imagine if they find out this, that I think I have to essentially treat people like a baby to not shatter their reality 🤣. I wonder if there are some things that I'm oblivious to that they have to treat me like a baby for as well 🤔 (probably some of my social insecurities).

@Schizophonia Wouldn't you say being sensitive to threats to the ego would be more accurately described by neuroticism (proneness to negative emotions, emotional instability?). If anything, a certain level of neuroticism may make you more prone to investigate a variety of different ideas because of the rapidly changing mental state, and being prone to threats could make you more prone to analyzing things in general (and also the way you analyze things could be particularly thorough). It could certainly make you more receptible to other people's emotional state as well.

I like to address all your points. Firstly, I don't understand what you mean by "neural structure of two" or "more distinctions between these states" or the points you're trying to make there. Secondly, what do you mean by "OBEs are just changes in the simulated reality of the brain" if you don't know what the brain does? What do you mean by "give rise to"? Again, we know that the brain correlates with certain experiences, but that's it. If you want to provide a causal mechanism, then go ahead: what is the mechanism? Again, if you don't know, then I don't see why you would invoke the brain to explain OBEs. You're invoking something you cannot explain to explain something else. It's a bit like invoking God. I provided the goggle analogy earlier, but I actually don't have to provide a mechanism for why it happens to suggest that you haven't provided a mechanism for how the brain makes it happen. Despite the lack of alternative explanations, the experience is still evidence against the assumption that the brain causes experience. Yes, it's extremely weird how it can be possible, but it's even more weird (or in fact impossible) if it were to happen when my brain and sensory organs cause that experience. The experience is the case (unless you want to claim that me and probably millions of other people are simply delusional and don't know how to report our experiences accurately). Your lack of explanation does not negate the experience. Again, explanatory in the sense that it correlates with dreams, or explanatory in the sense of a causal mechanism? Because that is a very important distinction as you might have guessed by now. The idea that we need a pair of "astral eyes" that interacts with photons is only an assumption, a physicalist one. Similarly to how brain states only correlate with certain experiences, sensory organs only correlate with certain experiences. It's tricky to see how much physicalist thinking can sneak into one's worldview even when you don't considers yourself a physicalist. Now, what sensory organs and neural states do seem to correlate with more than other things is so-called everyday consensus reality, or "sober normie consciousness". When we're sitting here looking into our screens and typing letters and thinking abstract thoughts, the idea that sensory organs may be the cause of our experience seems to be a plausible explanation. But when you experience altered states of consciousness, it's easier to see that this may not be the case. People like Bernado Kastrup say exactly this, that sensory organs and neural states mostly correlate with our normal egoic state of mind, or our normal state of "dissociation", i.e. the process of transpersonal consciousness individuating itself into a personalized consciousness. Now, in this model of reality, the world as we apparently see it through our sensory organs is actually "out there", but it's filtered by our current perceptual systems, which again tends to produce the "normie state". To be clear, the perceptual systems are not "in your brain", but they also just tend to correlate with some neural/sensory states. Now, when you remove some of the filtering, you might start to break down the normie state, and you might start to lose the usual boundaries of your body or the experience of being centered inside a physical body. In this situation, the world is still really out there, but you're seeing it without the usual filtering, and you might see beyond the usual boundaries that you thought were much more firm (or just reality). Then as you move over to this astral form, a slightly different set of perceptual processes take form, with a different sense of body and localization (and "sensory physics"). On the other hand, a complete deconstruction of perceptual processes are more likely seen in states like nirvikalpa samadhi (no localization, no colors, sensations or objects, no time or space). In other words, your sense of being inside a body right now is just a filtering of your current perceptual systems, and those systems can be altered or completely deconstructed, and you might end up losing your body. But yes, the world is still out there, evidenced by the fact that you can leave your body behind and look at it from the outside. That is what other people are doing after all (other people are just different versions of you with slightly different perceptual systems). This is how an idealist would explain what is going on. Earlier, I referenced the particular experiences of the survivors of cardiac arrests, which might satisfy your question. Other than that, there are many studies on other forms of extra-sensory perception that corroborate this. In the video I linked on this page, Rupert Sheldrake mentioned some studies that have been replicated around 30 times by independent researchers, and he also goes into how some psychic phenomena may actually have evolved because they were evolutionarily beneficial. The reason why the scientific mainstream doesn't throw themselves over these findings is because I believe their metaphysical convictions don't allow them to. Similarly to the conviction that brains cause experience, it has nothing to do with actual empirical evidence. And this stubbornness within science has been well-known since the 60s when Thomas Kuhn first wrote his famous book with many historical examples (Galileo didn't have it easy). Well, I recommend looking into these phenomena yourself if you want a more satisfying answer. I don't expect my limited sample of experiences to convince you (it didn't really convince me either at first; it took a bit more work to finally "ungaslight" myself ). Again, the stories from the survivors of cardiac arrest which Dr. Pim van Lommel talks about in the video I put in the hyperlink are a good start (not the Rupert Sheldrake video). Tom Campbell is someone who has actually done research on OBEs specifically, and he claims to be able to reproduce it on demand and exert a level of control over the experience. We only have our best guess, and my best guess is that physicalism is baloney Again, the experiences are real; whether or not they're explained is secondary to that. And you can explain them somewhat using an idealistic framework. These experiences are way more common than you may think. My mom talks about her precognitive experiences all the time. It's not for no reason that she went with me to see that Rupert Sheldrake debate . Also, that debate currently has a 3.5/1 like-to-dislike ratio at currently 580k views and rapidly climbing, and 2/3 panelists were researchers on extraordinary/psychic experiences. That could be indicative of how most people view these phenomena. We can observe people talking about such experiences, again irrespective of our explanations of them. And again, Tom Campbell is a good example of somebody performing this at will, specifically OBEs (not that it matters though; most of my experiences were outside my will, but they're still legitimate, in my experience ). By the way, if you don't like me going point by point, then don't make so many points. You do make a lot of them (and you sometimes repeat them as well)

Care to elaborate?

I can agree with that unless you hold those things as a proxy for spirituality (because it can be highly counterproductive for that).

Psychopaths tend to have limited affective empathy but normal cognitive empathy. People on the autism spectrum tend to have it the other way around. I think if you have problems with either, but especially cognitive empathy, then you're less likely to be openminded. Besides, whether a psychopath can or cannot be openminded is not really the question. Of course they can. We're talking about statistical correlations.

😂 I appreciate the reassurance. I think I'll go just a little more with my gut in the future, only if I'm not hopelessly sleep deprived 😝

The term you guys are looking for is "computationally intractable" 😉

You have dyslexia 😂

His description of diving is pretty nice though. Sounds like mindfulness.

This happened with my mom. She literally asked me "what did you do?" . We went to this debate together before Christmas (damn, it has over 500k views now):

The guy who asked the question about OBEs has said (in class while introducing himself to our seminar leader) that he describes himself as a physicalist, and when it was my turn to introduce myself, I said "and opposite to him, I'm maybe a little more skeptical of physicalism, but that's of course not that important ". And while walking home after class, we had a little talk about what I meant by that, and we touched a little bit on the difference between physicalism and idealism, intelligence vs. consciousness vs. meta-consciousness, the Hard problem and some kind of thought experiment he brought up that tries to illustrate the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and conceptual understanding. But other than that, he sort of ended up expressing in a chill and non-polemic way that he views these kinds of philosophical questions as kind of meaningless ("svada" in Norwegian) and that he didn't seem that interested in it after all. He strikes me as generally very openminded and grounded, but he is a bit different than me temperamentally and in terms of background. Interestingly, he has said he always struggled with science in school, yet he wanted to study neuroscience exactly because he thinks "it's the shit" (hence physicalism). He also has a background in politics (he is the former leader of one of the main youth parties in one of the counties and recently ran for office at a muncipality level). I've yet to ask him if he knows one of my childhood friends who used to be the deputy chairman of the same youth party at a city level (which would be a very fun conversation). But yeah, I'm not really interested in convincing anyone, although the point about choosing premises that land close to home could be something to have in mind for conversations in general, even without having a strong agenda (it could be a fun way to bounce arguments around).

I have been probing them a bit outside of this one situation, but they don't seem to take the bait

It would just be nice if I could share relevant things that spring to mind while talking with people. It's not like I'll try to convince them that non-duality is true and that enlightenment is the highest thing you can pursue. It's just like "ah yes, since you were asking, I've had an OBE, but it was when I was meditating, not when I was being hit by a car". I think I could say that in a way without even making it about metaphysics, but of course, it would be nice if I could share my metaphysical views as well I'm perfectly aware that if I'm talking to somebody who has basically zero chance of understanding something, it makes little sense to bring it up. My question is really only about how they will view me as a person if they find out that I have these views and these experiences. Like, if I were to ask myself back when I was an atheist if I met somebody at my school who talked about OBEs, would I think they were a little cuckoo? Maybe, but if I thought they were smart or sociable in other ways, maybe that would that make up for it? Isn't that how cults are made? Anyways, I'm rambling now.

That's the thing. The guy was asking for our experiences with OBEs, but it was in the context of colloquially "stressful" situations. I don't count my OBE as that (although you could probably classify it as a stress response in a more dry theoretical sense), so I would be changing the subject in a way and pulling it into truly woo-woo territory. Well, they're comparatively open-minded within the physicalist paradigm, although psychology has its own skeptical slant on it (although it's not quite where we're at here to put it that way). My bachelor's degree did touch on psychology of religion and mystical experiences, but I think that's rare for most degrees in my country, so I wouldn't expect many people in the field to be familiar with that outside of personal interest (which is also rare, although it's growing). I know of one other guy who is into meditation and spirituality in my university (he studies a different branch of psychology), but that's it.

If I wasn't so sleep deprived, I think I could've ended up saying it in a nice way without coming off like an absolute wizard at first, and then taken it from there. It's just that: I need to come to lectures less sleep deprived so I know how to function like a human being and not say stupid things like "not in a stressful situation" and without elaborating . Anyways, that's the real lesson here: never compromise on your mental clarity

Certain experiences seem to correlate with certain brain states. That is an uncontroversial statement. However, to say that experiences are caused by brain states is an entirely different statement, and it's usually based on metaphysical assumptions rather than empirical observations. As for empirical observations, there are many problems that should make you doubt such a claim, and there is no conclusive evidence that confirms it. For example, psychedelics lead to an overall decrease in brain activity, measured by correlates of glucose metabolism (e.g. blood flow in fMRI). Those images you see on Google where psychedelics make the brain light up like a Christmas tree are most likely showing functional connectivity, which is when different parts of the brain fire together. It's not the same as increased "brain activity", which again is measured in terms of correlates of metabolism. Now, if psychedelics decrease brain activity and we know that psychedelics are typically associated with an enhanced experience of reality, that is a problem for the claim that brain states cause experiences. Similarly, in near-death experiences (NDEs), particularly in cases of cardiac arrest where the heart stops pumping blood to the brain and brain activity ceases; according to a set of prospective studies involving 334 survivors of cardiac arrest, during the moments when the patient's brain showed no signs of functioning, 18% of patients reliably report having experienced an enhanced state of consciousness (NDEs). Again, if brain activity purportedly causes experience, it's weird that a complete lack of brain activity is associated with an enhanced experience, often life-changing experiences. Other examples include terminal lucidity, where dementia patients show a surprising return to normal functioning right before their death, despite their brain having been reduced to something you can hardly call a brain. Other than that, some of the experiences that the survivors of cardiac arrest report are especially puzzling if you believe the brain and sensory organs cause experience. There is no conclusive evidence that your personal dreams are caused by brain states either. Here is how: the world really exists out there, and our sensory apparatuses and perceptual machinery are like goggles that color our experience and limit it. When you take off those goggles, you go outside of those limits. Sadhguru describes spirituality as "creating a little distance between you and your physicality". In a very real sense, that is what is happening in certain states of meditation where all your sensory experiences and your sense of self and time disappears (which I've also experienced), and also in OBEs where your experience is decoupled from your "goggled" sensory experiences. That is also why some psychic phenomena are called "extra-sensory perception" (ESP). You go beyond your mere physicality, your mere goggled sensory experience of the world. Behold my tripartite precognitive dream bonanza: If you grant that I've described everything accurately (which you could doubt, but I sincerely tried my best) and you're doing your very best to be metaphysically impartial, I think it's pretty hard to honestly conclude that I did not gain information about the world extra-sensorily. And also one that is not that. I think it's mostly a metaphysical conviction you have rather than conclusive evidence. Why would you assume it hasn't?

Why tell anyone anything at all?

Some altered states of consciousness seem to throw you out of body. There doesn't seem to be any obvious mechanism you can point to, maybe other than how self-referential processing (DMN activity) is probably decreased, essentially decoupling your experience from the personal and dipping it into the transpersonal, gradually eroding the "center" of your experience. What is curious about this is that it seems to break with the idea that you necessarily have to experience the world through your senses, because you can start seeing yourself from where your eyes aren't looking. This goes well with the idea that your personalized experience (and the apparent sensory correlates) is a kind of dissociation, and that when you undo some of it, your experience simply expands.

I wonder what the insides of an average high school classroom looks like today in my country (Norway). Like, how many people have dyed their hair? How many teachers wear those obviously queer glasses?