Off to get a checkup.

We’re heading to Christchurch this morning, to see Stewart Sinclair and check on cancer. Also to catch up with Will and do a bit of shopping.

Last week went to Auckland in Thursday to see my biggest client.

Slowly getting out of holiday mode and back into work.
A big rain is due later today, which is going to dampen all the firewood I have cut but not yet put away.
Got up on the roof last night and cleaned the gutters, and replaced a few loose nails, and repaired a couple of holes. 6am here, and we need to be on the road by 6:30.

My posts for the last week:

Followup post on 8th QOD

Hi OM

I agree with you completely that colour beyond “ROY G BIV” is delightful and beautiful, we just have different ways of dealing with it I guess.

For me, I would much rather go deeply into understanding and labeling the things that underly the physicality of our existence, and simply appreciate the aesthetic.

I can understand the theory of how there are an infinite number of possible colours, and an infinite possible range of intensities, giving a large infinity of possible intersections of those two infinities of colour and intensity. I can train (and have trained) my systems to distinguish and appreciate these infinities, but I am not interested in cluttering my mind with labels for those things.

For me, I am much more interested in distinguishing and labeling (where absolutely necessary) the systems and structures that underly life at all levels (which includes much that makes up the physical universe right on through levels of awareness that few achieve). For me, this is of far deeper interest and significance in the old adage “know thyself, and to thine own self be true”. And I can see how that might not be so for others.

Same goes for sound and music, and touch, and taste, and smell, and electric/magnetic senses, and kinesthetics.

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http://anewgaia.ning.com/group/questionoftheday/forum/topics/question-of-the-day-for-283?commentId=5269550:Comment:131383&xg_source=msg_com_gr_forum

Hi OM and Dawn

I have read what you have written, and have spent some time contemplating it.

What is there for me that brings conflict is the evidence for some of the attributes of light.
These attributes appear to have a lot of evidence, and therefore must also be included.

Light appears to be timeless in a sense.
In another sense, it seems that it is light that gives us our sense of time.
Matter can be converted to light.
As light, existence seems to experience no time, holding a timeless state as it travels “at the speed of light” from matter to matter across space.
Our existence seems to be firmly based in matter, though we can interact with light in many ways, and light does seem to play many important roles in our existence ie we seem to need both aspects matter/space and light – it seems that neither can be separated from the other and retain integrity.

OM
I acknowledge the existence of deep relationships, and of infinite unmanifest potential; yet prior to the existence of human minds, the creative ability seems to have followed very simple sets of probability functions, played out in massive parallel over eons of time.

I also acknowledge the sense of alignment and creativity that exists when one “surrenders” the ego to alignment with the deeper levels of the holographic connectedness and creativity that exists within every human mind.

I can see how people can have characterised it as god, it has that sort of a sense to it, yet in another sense, it too is but a relatively simple and straight forward set of rules (of probability functions) but it has this absolutely profound outcome.

So there is a sense in which we seem to completely align; and there is another in which we are about as far apart as it is possible to get.

Arohanui
Ted

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previous question continued

Hi Thomas

This discussion is clearly demonstrating some of the limitations of language.

I like the feel of most of what you wrote, and I am left with more questions than answers about what you actually meant.

I have tried to give a feel of how I see light and time and space, and it is hard when the concept I am attempting to convey breaks the assumptions that underly most of language and cultural understanding we are born into.

One has to give up notions like “universal time” as it seems that “time” (in so far as the notion has any meaning) is a local manifestation of “something”.

It almost seems like experiential reality has two distinctly different sorts of “field” underlying it, but language alone is entirely inadequate to explore the ideas; and mathematics equally runs out of conceptual “horsepower” at the transmission level.

[Followed by]

Hi Thomas

It seems to me that we differ on one issue – that of light’s particulate existance.

It seems to me that light does very definitely particulate.
It seems that the in the twin slit experiments, it is the slits themselves that are acting as filters to transverse momenta. All such similar experiments seem to have similar interpretations possible.

That which underlies light, is of some other nature, we have no direct access to that level with any of our tools or technology.
I have my doubts that we ever will have any direct access.
Perhaps we need a “little” mystery in life!
Arohanui
Ted

---

Best book followup

Hi Amber

I love the 4 agreements, and for many people I think a bit more explanation is useful – to quote from Ruiz:

1st Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word

“The first agreement is the most important one and also the most difficult one to honor. It is so important that with just this first agreement you will be able to transcend to the level of existence I call heaven on earth. The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds very simple, but it is very, very powerful.”

Ruiz defines the word impeccability: “Impeccability means “without sin.” Impeccable comes from the Latin pecatus, which means “sin.” The im in impeccable means “without,” so impeccable means “without sin.” Religions talk about sin and sinners, but let’s understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.”

This definition really changes what most people would understanding – adds real depth.

2nd Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… if I see you on the street and say, “Hey, you are so stupid,” without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, “How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?””

3rd Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions

“We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking we take it personally then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word. That is why when we make assumptions, we’re asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.”

4th Agreement: Always Do Your Best

“There is just one more agreement, but it’s the one that allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits. The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.”

Ruiz continues: “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good.”

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Question of the Day January 12th 2011

Is there any particular thing you wish to accomplish before you leave the planet? Have you accomplished it already?

While I have spent a few hours over the last half century in the state described by Mark and OM, and making it a more frequent part of my existence is on my agenda, I have a few other things I’d like to achieve too.

I’d like to have it be possible not to leave the planet – as in live on indefinitely in a body with a physiological age of about 25, and all the accumulated wisdom and experience of a life well lived.
This would involve all the changes to culture, institutions and technologies to enable us to live in harmony with the natural ecosystems with all things existing in abundance (this is anathema to economic development, and requires a major rework of governance models, restricting the use of economics to limited realms of technical production).

I’d also like to have it be possible to leave the planet without dying – as in enable space travel for all people.

Both of those are projects I would enjoy working on – both at the highest level and on some aspects of the fine scale detail.

Then I could live here on earth for a few thousand years, and when all the space travel technology is thoroughly tested, and we have sent a few probes to the nearest stellar systems and they have returned with their reports, we could set off and do a bit of exploring, around this galaxy, and perhaps a few others.

[Followed by]

Hi OM, Jon, Mark & Co

OM – I see it kinda differently.
I don’t see us being able to separate ourselves from this bodily matrix and survive any time soon.
At the same time there are a few of thoughts to put into the mix – one from Arthur C Clark – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Just imagine a stone age hunter gatherer being confronted with cell phones, TVs, jetpacks, and aircraft.

The second thought is around laws of nature. In my experience, we don’t break the laws, we simply find deeper laws that tell us how to circumvent what was stopping us at the higher level. To my mind it is a matter of another old saying “Nature to be commanded must first be obeyed”.

The third thought is around our relationship to nature. At a cultural level, we still seem to be at the “toddler” stage of development. Our language and technology are a thoroughly natural development, and also a development into a completely new “sphere of operations”. We have little experience that is directly relevant to guide us. Most of the things that worked well at lower densities (like war and economics) are not viable, or have perverse outcomes at the densities we are now approaching.

To my mind, evolving our systems and our awareness is a “natural” product of our increasing awareness of “what is” at many different levels.

What seems to be rare is the ability for individuals to integrate across all levels and domains of awareness and experience. Many people seem very comfortable and confident within the narrow confines of some subset of cultural or technical life, yet fail to see patterns across what most see as widely divergent or unrelated fields. To my mind, all things are related, at many different levels.

To my mind, bringing the Zen concept of “big mind” – seeing the big picture, the widest possible awareness, encompasses all branches of science, history, culture, technology, mathematics and logic.
This is not to say that I see any sort of “end point of inquiry” – quite the opposite. The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know, and the less confident I am about many things that I was once certain of. It seems to me that this trend could continue into infinity, without any chance of boredom.

So for now, I see an urgent need to evolve many of our systems and technologies to harmonise with the “natural” systems that were present prior to the perfectly “natural” emergence of “us”.

Nature is always trying out new life forms, new body plans, new ways of doing things. The vast bulk of these “natural experiments” end with extinction – well over 99.99% of them – such is the nature of evolution. Just consider what is now the accepted science of human history, that of all the women alive 60,000 years ago (several million of them) only one of them has any female descendants alive today.
I do not want to see our species (nor myself) join that long (and most probable) outcome – and it must be considered.

It seems to me that we do have a reasonable probability of making it through, and it is by no means a “sure thing”.

Nanobots may well play a part, but not in the short or medium term.

There are many threats from technology, nanobots are fairly well down my list of threats. After natural disasters like pandemic and large scale volcanism, the highest on my list is the emergence of AI into the world as it now exists, a world in which it would have little option but to assess humans as the greatest threat to its continued survival. Unlike the terminator movies, there would not be any sort of war, it would be all over before the vast majority had any idea there was even any a conflict. Part of why I am against research into AI at this time – wait until we have got “our act together”, and are demonstrating respect for each other, in diversity; and respect for the environment that supports us.

I am becoming quite confident that that will mean eliminating money, and simply empowering everyone to create whatever they responsibly choose.

Nuff for now – plane boarding soon.

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Question of the Day January 13th 2011

What is your distraction?
What interrupts your getting a job done or started? Jobs like doing the dishes, washing windows; painting a wall, room, house; mowing the lawn, fixing a fence.
Is it possible that “being with” the distraction can lead to another activity that may become a new, comfortable, lucrative career? Or reveal a power or talent that you didn’t know you had?

I get to a certain point and it suddenly feels like I don’t know what to do next, so I do something else (sleep on it), in the hope that the intuition will be present after a while.

Sometimes I seem to just get into the habit of doing something else, and it is no longer that I don’t know what to do, it is now that I know what to do, but the thought of the magnitude of what needs to be done just terrifies me, overwhelms me, so I find something else, which is also of value but easier to achieve, and do that.

I do get around to mowing the lawns, but trimming the trees takes much longer, so I tend to let them get away to the point that the view has gone, before I get them topped.

I have so many jobs to do around the section, and there are lot that I have done.
It is very easy to make myself wrong, and much more difficult just to accept me as I am.
I do so many things, that it is difficult to do any of them exceptionally well, which leaves me with feelings of adequacy and inadequacy at the same time.
I guess that most of us have our versions of something very similar.

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Question of the Day January 14th 20

What’s your first thought when you look up into the sky?

A feeling of being small, of the vastness of “out there”.
A sense of the beauty, the blue stretching off into infinity.

At night, with the stars above, the feeling of being small in the vastness of space is even more intense. The idea that some of those photons hitting my eyes left their suns billions of years ago, well before there was life on earth, some of them well before there was even an earth, and they have travelled unchanged across space all that time.
Just a feeling of awe.

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Reply to Thomas

Hi Thomas,

This is a very difficult area to discuss.

There is a sense in which I agree with much that you say, and there is also a sense in which I could argue against almost all that you say. Estimating the probability of which of the senses (if either) you actually intended, is difficult.

If you take a look at the site http://www.hotquanta.com you will see the work done by John Murphy. John is a far more competent physicist than I am, and a far better mathematician and logician. I have spent several hundred hours in conversations with John on this topic. I introduced John to Rachel Garden (who is Bertrand Russell’s granddaughter, and a double PhD in math-physics/logic) and they have had some discussions, some of which I was privy to, and could barely follow.

It seems to me that the rules of the deep magic (the very small) get very strange indeed. I do not pretend to understand them in detail. From the understanding I do have, it seems entirely possible that there could be an infinitely recursive series of deeper and stranger contexts within which things operate.

In a certain sense, I am interested in those, and in another sense, my priorities are mostly at a higher level at present.

From the conversations I have had with John and Rachel, I am confident that it is possible to have useful models of reality based upon notions of particulate light. It is possible to frame all experiments to date within that model, and it is a very different interpretation of what the mathematics of QM are saying than is taken by most (including yourself it seems).

How close either model (mine or the one used by most practitioners) is to what is actually so, is an interesting conjecture.

Once we have established indefinite longevity, peace in diversity, and socio-politico-techno-institutions based upon abundance, I will return to delving into the depths of those conjectures, and perhaps designing a few experiments myself.

At present, all that I observe seems to be consistent with the particulate model I am using, at least to a degree of accuracy that is sufficient for my purposes. In this model, it acknowledges the fundamental uncertainties involved in all measurement, leading to fundamental levels of unknowability and uncertainty.

There is a sense in which the rules of the very small helps us very little, or not at all, in terms of modeling what is happening at our macro level.
The complexities of even a single human body is beyond the ability of the human mind, or any human made machine, to model.

Just think of the almost 7 billion people on the planet. If you were to spend 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, meeting 10 people every second, it would take 80 years just to glimpse them all in this manner.

Within each of our bodies are roughly 10,000 times as many cells as there are people on the planet.
Within each of those cells are roughly 10,000 times as many molecules as there are cells in a body.
Those molecules, are of some 50,000 different types within each cell, and some 80,000 types within various different types of cells.

Most of those molecules are water molecules, which have charge distribution, and a 3D banana like shape. Those water molecules have complex resonance in terms of their physical vibrations, and the electromagnetic effects of moving charges vibrating in space.

The vast bulk of the different types of molecules are large long chains carbon based molecules, with amazingly complex structures both in terms of shape and charge distribution and levels of vibration and the interaction between electrical and mechanical resonances.

We may be able to understand some of the very general principals of many of these interactions, and we cannot pin down the exact details of even one of them, let alone the whole lot.

What we do seem to be able to do, is to work with some of the higher level properties exhibited by these collections, and to be able to get a general sense for how these high level properties emerge, and what some of the other emergent systems might be like and how they might behave.

There does not seem to be any necessary upper limit to the number of layers of emergent systems, nor to their levels of complexity, nor to their “quantum” like properties.

I do know that it is possible to move around single atoms with certain forms of very advanced microscopes, and that atoms so moved seem to retain their positions for many years. So the particulate nature of reality is extremely stable down to atomic sorts of dimensions (which is very small by the standards of most people).

That we are building computers and other “Field Effect” devices that operate reliably at scales just a few atoms wide is evidence of a great reliability of the particulate nature of reality down to these sorts of scales.

Our bodies are of a much greater scale, and our minds are clearly an emergent property of those bodies, and all the various levels of systems within them (including some at the very small scale).

I agree that there are many layers and levels of connection and connectivity, many of which have properties that most people associate more with magic than with science, and they are scientific properties.

It seems to me that dualities usually exist as the first approximation of the distinction of some new infinity.

I mean this in the sense that when we first distinguish light, we say there is light and dark (a duality). Later we learn that there is actually a couple of different infinities at play, one of intensity and one of energy/frequency (colour).

Similarly, where we distinguish value as a concept, we start with a duality (right/wrong; good/bad; good/evil; or whatever), and it is only with much time and experience that we come to distinguish the realm of infinite possibility, and the intersection of possibility with reality through choice; and that every choice has an expanding “ripple” of consequence.

Once we gain that level of realisation, that choice and consequence are ongoing and responsibility is the embodiment of the infinite dance of/with consequence; then we have left good/evil for the acceptance of the ongoing dance. [Which brings to mind again Genisis 2:17 – “Of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil though shalt not eat, for in the day thou doest, thou shalt surely die”.]

If is not our job to judge in the largest sense, it is our job to choose, and to act; and to accept what is so.

Arohanui

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Does thought dictate our lives?

One paragraph in this seems to me to indicate an interpretive schema that is consciousness centered, rather than one which has consciousness as an emergent property of the systems that are our bodies, and brains immersed in a culture.

“The purpose of all this activity seems linked to the role of thoughts as the ‘carriers’ or ‘vehicles’ for the interpretive structures that give experience continuity. In thinking, we affirm certain connections and identities that allow us to make sense of what is happening. Apart from its specific content, a thought considered as an action aims to conserve and pass on the order given by the interacting presentations of the field communique (global communication). Just as breath sustains the body, so thinking sustains the world that we inhabit.”

As to the questions:

What counts as a thought?

Thought is what we experience.
It seems that our brains have many different processing centers, which deal with different aspects of interpreting and relating and storing sensory data.
It seems that aspects of our memory storage and retrieval systems are analogous to how LASER holograms work, in that they can instantaneously find related data and similar patterns from our past experience.

Does the self own thoughts? Generate them? If not, where do they come from?

Carrying on from the above, the self seems to have many levels of being.
The level of self which becomes aware of itself, and uses language, seems to be an emergent property of our brains, immersed in culture.
This self can “own” thought, through an act of choice, but it is not entirely (nor even mostly) responsible for creating those thoughts.
Most thoughts happen in response to stimulii.
The holographic relatedness just happens as sets of data (which includes data from senses, as well as data from other levels of thought process) are processed though the “holographic” systems.
These systems are very sensitive to context.
Our conscious self has no control over our past, or the culture we were born into – these things are just givens in a sense. What consciousness can do is add high level aspects to the context of being, and though these higher level contexts, can have an influence on the lower levels of brain activity, and bodily action.
There does not appear to be any limit to the number of levels that higher level awareness can abstract to/through, and thus influence the operation of lower levels of being.

What is the relation between thoughts and the world we experience as real?

This is a very complex question.
Our brains seem to create at least two nested levels of model of reality (whatever that “reality” actually is) and we get to experience the inner of these “models” as our personal “reality”.
As everything in the brain is electrically related to everything else, all things (all levels of systems) influence all other things.

What is the relation between thoughts and emotions?

Emotions seem to have many levels of relationship.
It seems that some emotions are primarily mediated by chemical systems in the brain, and others are primarily mediated by electrical (neural net) systems; and each of these is capable of influencing the other, through a raft of mechanism at different levels.

What is the link between the thoughts we have and the decisions we make?

As may be clear from the above, there is no simple answer to that question. For each of us, it is a result of many different probability functions, some of which are open to large influence by conscious work, some of which have very little conscious control.
There seems to be an infinite spectrum of possibilities, with cultural and genetic constraints at one pole, and high level awareness at the other, and everything in between being possible.

Between thoughts and the actions we take?

Similarly with action as to the above.

Can we control our thoughts – either their frequency or their content?

We can influence, and perhaps control is too strong a word.

Why don’t we do what we think we want to do?

Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.
Consciousness is simply the tip of the iceberg that is the human animals repertoire of possible actions.

What is the relation between thoughts and time?

Subject or objective time?
Too big a subject to even broach here – Sushi for dinner. Later perhaps

[followed by]

Hi Star

Apologies for having my own language, it comes from having my own thoughts for most of my life, and initially not being able to communicate them (due to flap of skin under tongue) and since then not being too concerned about whether anyone else understood them or not.

Yes – I am definitely saying “that consciousness is an emergent property of our bodies and brains as opposed to our bodies and brains being a manifestation of consciousness”. In my experience, this is proven beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt.

You said “On this idea that the self can own thoughts…the self is a thought, and everything you have said concerning the levels of this self is also a thought. Every thought you have about thoughts is a thought.”
In a limited sense I can agree with that, and in another sense I say no, we are much more than thoughts.
The self is not simply thoughts.
The self is a body, with a brain, and the brain has many levels of thoughts – some of which we are conscious of, and some we are not. All of those systems, the physical ones and the “thought” ones, are the self. They are linked.

And just as a body does not exist in isolation, but is part of the living systems on this planet, and part of this universe, so we are linked to everything that exists. There are influences between all things, and some influences are stronger than others.

I agree with you that we need to think about the questions, and it seems to me that there is a lot that is “left out” of TSK.

Yes the act of choice has components that are thought, and there are many other components also. None of those components can be considered entirely in isolation from each other, all are connected, at several levels.

Yes our awareness does involve thoughts and it involves a lot more besides. Pretending otherwise doesn’t do anyone any good.

Does anyone in the TSK fraternity seriously believe that guns and bullets are simply figments of imagination?
Reality, for all of our uncertainties about what it actually is, exists; as it is, and as it isn’t.

There are definitely subjective and objective time.
The subjective is time as we experience it (at times of great threat, it can seem that time goes very slowly).
The objective is time as measured by the vibration of cesium atoms (as currently defined) .

I am doing well – how well we will find out on Tuesday, when I go back to see the surgeon.

Much love to you too Star
Arohanui

[followed again by]

Hi Star

It seems that what is left out is all the evidence about evolution.

If you look at evolution of life on this planet, there is now a massive body of evidence to indicate that it probably started from simple replicating RNA molecules, and then went to simple cells. After a couple of billion or so years of single celled life, more complex life emerged.
The details of how that appears to have happened are fascinating.
Over and over again, changes occurred that allowed more complex systems to emerge, as new capacities became available – via a process of evolution by natural selection acting on variations produced by a host of mechanisms.
After a time, even the mechanisms of variation became part of the evolutionary process.

This process happens over and over.

What do we mean by consciousness?

If we mean the sort of consciousness that you and I experience, that allows us to use language and experience time as a future possibility, then that sort of consciousness seems to be quite a recent phenomenon – probably within the last last 100,000 years, and possibly within the last 10,000 years.

It seems that language and culture must evolve via natural selection to a point where the sort of awareness we have can evolve.

It seems that animals have simpler forms of consciousness, forms that do not involve language, and have only the eternal present.

I have no evidence that the universe is conscious in any sense.
Quite the contrary.
If the universe had any sort of consciousness that was in any way similar to our own in terms of intentionality, then it would employ mechanisms other than the randomness of evolution by natural selection to “climb mount improbable”.

I say very clearly that there is no evidence at all for a “field communique (global communication)”, quite the contrary – there is a huge amount of evidence that communication is very slow, and very prone to error.

It seems very clear to me that the idea expressed in “Just as breath sustains the body, so thinking sustains the world that we inhabit” is pure fantasy if it refers to anything more than the tautological idea that thinking sustains thought.

Just as I can write computer systems that interact with the world, and even modify themselves as a result of those interactions, so our thoughts at various levels of awareness are capable of influencing the structure of the systems that underly them, and thus change the environment (the levels upon levels of context) that give them being.

Mostly we are not conscious of our thoughts.
Our brains process vastly more information than we can possibly become conscious of – our consciousness is too slow; and we can gain direct access to many of the intuitive (“holographic”) systems that underlie our consciousness, without directly consciously controlling them; and we can influence them, though the mechanism of context.

I do not have a direct neural interface to a 3D graphics generator, or I would produce pictures of what I see in my minds eye as the layers of systems and their interconnections. Each layer dependent for its existence on the layer below, and each layer also has degrees of freedom from the influences of the lower levels, and the ability to feed back and influence those lower levels.

There is no contradiction in connectedness.

Consciousness is not present in sperm or young fetus. As the nervous system develops, so do levels of consciousness.

The sort of languaging consciousness that you and I are experiencing now first emerges at about age 5 in most children. Prior to then, their consciousness was of a different, simpler type (actually a succession of types).

There are many layers of consciousness prior to the emergence of the sort of consciousness we have now.

Does a computer system have the ability to run windows when it is just still just grains of sand on the beach?
No. Of course not.

Why then do so many people have a similar problem with consciousness?

[followed again on the morning of the 17th by]

Hi Star

OK
When you say “This is not a thread or a group concerning consciousness or evolution” yet claim it is a thread about “Time Space and Knowledge” it is abundantly clear that it is a thread that takes as a given a primacy of consciousness, and does not invite or welcome any challenge to that assumption.

I had thought it was open.
As it is clearly not – I’ll go elsewhere.

In my understanding, from all of my explorations of many ways of thinking and looking at things, which covers many spectra, like that from the theosophical society to the rationalist society – it is clear to me that any understanding of knowledge or self that excludes a deep understanding of the many intricacies of evolution, operating from the atomic level right on up through to the mimetic level, is crippled.

The simplest analog I know to understanding how consciousness arises in this context is LASER holograms – and the deep connectedness, and deep ability to form abstraction and distinction that they provide.

I can explain consciousness relatively easily, what I cannot do is guarantee that the person listening to my words has an appropriate context of abstractions that the words I use to point to these abstractions (and abstractions of abstractions of abstractions) will in fact do so – as the other person may not have had a experiential context that allows the requisit abstractions to form in their brain.

In terms of “thinking sustaining reality”, “sustaining” seems far too strong to me. Influence certainly. Volcanoes and meteors will exist irrespective of anyone or anything thinking about them. What we think, as in the contexts of our higher thinking, certainly is a major influence on what the “holographic” processes of our subconscious deliver to us as possible choices (ie thoughts).

As to the issue of seed – the idea is out of place.
Seeds are highly evolved biological entities. Even so, they will only grow in very restricted environments. Most of the billions of seeds that a mature tree produces in its life will never arrive in an environment that allows germination.
The concept of seed cannot usefully be applied outside of a context of highly evolved systems.

The earth is definitely not a biological entity. It is not alive nor conscious. It is an environment in which life has evolved.

From what I see of TSK, it is not a New Vision of reality that I want much to do with, as it seems to be premised on very old assumptions – a trap that most thinkers fall into – which is primacy of consciousness.
Once anyone makes that assumption, and refuses to entertain any other possibility, then that mind is lost – unless some chance context manages to “break the spell”, and allows them to open a window to the infinite realm of possibility that is available from this finite universe of ours.

This juxtaposition of the finite and the infinite, and seeing clearly the linkages betweem them, is neither simple nor trivial.

All I did was accept the invitation to answer a set of questions with the best answers available to me at this time, acknowledging that all knowledge is bounded by probability functions and the only piece of knowledge that I have for which the probability is 1 is “I am” – everything else about the details of what I am, and the environment in which I exist has a probability of less than unity, though some of those things have confidence factors that are approaching unity for all practical purposes.

Looks like this seed may not grow (and this {set of words} definitely is a seed, a complex mimetic entity designed to grow, spread and replicate).
Such is life!

Arohanui

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Question of the Day January 16th 2011

What interesting people did or do you know?

I’m with OM on this one.
I have met many tens of thousands of interesting people.
My parents, my siblings, my wife(s) and children, friends, workmates, clients, associates, ….
I have met many of the rich and famous (presidents, prime ministers, billionaires, artists, professors, leaders in many fields), as well as drug dealers, and murders – and all manner of people in between.

I worked out about 20 years ago that there were around 50,000 people who expected me to know them on a first name basis (mostly from my involvement in politics, and owning a fish shop). It’s probably a bit higher than that now. I guess that comes from being active in so many different fora, including at one stage running 3 business, and being on over 30 different committees; and being active in many other “activities”.

Everyone I have met has been interesting in many ways.
I am convinced that I can learn from anyone – there is an infinite amount to learn.

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What Was The SINGLE Best Non-Fiction Book You Read In 2010?

My best non fiction read of 2010 is a hard pick Jared Diamond’s “Guns, germs and steel” – an amazing look at how we got to be who we are; and Mike Anderson’s “The RAVE diet and lifestyle” – probably the reason I am still here and writing this and not dead from advanced stage 4 metastasized melanoma – after 55 years a carnivore, I am now a struct vegan, and without any detectable signs of cancer (8 months ago it was in my face, neck and liver – they got some with surgery, and the rest I got with diet – my medical records are on my blog – https://tedhowardnz.wordpress.com/about ).

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