IN understanding and defining consciousness should ideologies within natural selection be discussed?
It is my motive to provoke questions and disturb "logic"
The brain is a sponge of collected senses
You cannot see a new color
You cannot invent anything
You cannot "know" what your keyboard feels like until you type upon it.(You can draw past memmories of similiar objects with similar geometries and textures; you cannot know or store anything until you sense it.)
agreed
good
With this in mind, is consciousness a mediary between memmory and computation?
In all reality what does our sponge do...?
You can actively sense
You can actively mesh senses...(ie art/creativity) Compare and contrast
You can unactively mesh senses....(ie sleeping)

Unfortuneately i must be cliche and use the computer model.
You are either storing data, using it or searching for more data
data = senses
The present searching and storing of data is this consciousness we define
But why would that be naturally selected for?

pain vs pleasure = consciousness
these polar opposites have much to do with the origin of consciousness

If one could actively identify and distinguish between what was painful and what was pleasurable and actively absorb that they themselves could become more dominant...

I leave it at the view of a plain ordinary stove.
Once the stove is on and the burner turns red, your mood slightly changes, you acknowledge the "power" or pain that burner can create. You only know this if you have been burned.
So not knowing the burning power of a stove one might touch it...but why?
that cannot possibly be a dominant factor

The need for things to make sense..... is it innate?
Why does this consciousness burn us into being curious?
Does our curiousity burn us into being conscious?
Is curiousity innate and if so, is it dominant?, is this a social function?
what connections does our brain have with the physical world?


Or are we just a complex vehicle for our amino acids and genes?
I might be inclined to state that a species is only successful if it can procreate
Is consciousness just an advanced tool for more successful reproduction?
Or is it just a tool to help aid the raising of complex weak species?

Dinosaurs evolved for millions of years...did they have consciousness?

Consciousness researchers are finding many things and debates range all over the place. Gary Hillis thinks his own soul will be put into the sentient robot that includes his brain contents.

I think the soul exists in greater and more complex ways starting at sub atomic muons (per the deep Inco mine research I have mentioned many times). Thus I think Gary will have the robot soul to deal with and I am pretty sure the brain contents from a discorparate brain will not include his soul (as Does Bill Joy). Collective energy entities of elemental rocks and plants include such things as leprechauns and shape-shifting shamans that know the ethereal reality of our cosmos.

Nothing passes into memory without first passing through consciousness.

No mental reflex is overridden without conscious thought.

Finally, as whatdowehavehere mentions, pain and pleasure have no repulsion nor attraction without consciousness.

These three things are hints as to the need for consciousness. Any organic being that exhibits these features will have some. If you imagine that a dinosaur might not recoil in pain from injury, then you can imagine an uncouscious dinosaur.

So that leaves the giant question: assuming that artificial computers are unconscious, how is it that we can imagine computer-driven robots that behave intelligently?

Dear Rick

You say:

So that leaves the giant question: assuming that artificial computers are unconscious, how is it that we can imagine computer-driven robots that behave intelligently?

Quite a lot of assumptions there - both explicit and implied. The work 'artificial' implies something that may not be fully factual. For example - it is a mystical premise that each chakra in the human body is a nexus of lesser consciousnesses all of which are not on the radar screen of what our original poster here seems to think are conscious. In fact there is evidence of a lesser brain in the solar plexus or stomach area chakra that physiologists have described briefly operates with headless people such as I have posted here.

The issue of consciousness being collective goes to what is called Intelligent Design - I hope I do not have to explain.

The collective is operating according to the same laws of reality (science - such as in the Law of the Magi As Above, SO Below) that show us the microcosm and macrocosm have similar design constructs (and adepts use these archetypes or constructs to affect Matrices through Myths and more subtle means).

The last part of your question I presume relates to Gary Hillis and the sentient robots he is working on that we have discussed before.

In that discussion we must again ask what is consciousness and the soul - as Bill Joy and others have properly done. You perhaps used the phrase 'behave intelligently' to mean that - although it would have been better to word it differently. If you did not mean that and work in the area you do - I would be amazed. I say that because the matter of behaving intelligently is implicit in the whole idea of AI.

At Berkeley and Arizona universities (going from memory) there are people who posit that consiousness is a purely synaptic issue and this can be created and the robots will soon replicate themselves to the same end. Some of these people clearly do not believe in a soul which I think is collective despite some interesting regressions I have witnessed and can explain within the hierarchies of layers of organizationally attuned lattices and wells of energy.

Needless to say I have written volumes on these matters.

What I mean by the great question is this:

Conscious seems to be necessary in living things in order to have intelligence (memory, rational thought, and desire all seem necessary for intelligent behavior in people, for instance).

Yet consciousness does not seem necessary in robots. The only robots we know how to make right now are driven by computers. I said "artificial" computers earlier to distinguish them from "natural" brains, which are also computers, among other things.

Further, why do the researchers you referred to seek to put consciousness in robots if it is not necessary for robotic intelligence? Further still, how would they know if they succeded? I can program a robot to say it is conscious when it is not (a Republican robot, perhaps?).

Dear Rick

In the case of Gary Hillis and many of the elite there are numerous benefits to having consciousness in a sentient computer.

Aside from the old homonunclus fighting machine such as you saw in Lord of the RIngs or as the Hebrew Sephardim make their 'golem'; and usages to travel in space we have the fact that the human brain contents add something mere programming does not achieve. Now that could be argued - but it appears to be part of it.

Maybe is is a case of wanting to get people to willingly commit their life and brain to such an endeavour.

Gary says he looks forward to an immortal life with all the benefits of being a robot like Data on Star Trek plus his soul and memories.

But his definition of soul - is different than mine I think.

I am not sure but I would wonder if you believe consciousness is all there is and what people call their soul is merely a variation on it.

Again - the question I think is paramount will come down to the conflict of consciousness that will not have the chakras to mediate. There is consciousness in matter and the robots will have refined and advanced matter plus intellect which in itself organizes energy.

CL: So, is it still possible to carry out unconscious behavior and not be conscious?

CK: Yes. The claim is that much of what you actually do in your daily life is totally unconscious. For example, when you talk, you have sort of a vague idea of the idea that is in your head that you now want to transmit. But, it’s not that I, Christof, am sitting inside of my head as it were saying, “Okay. This is the noun. This is the subject. This is the adjective. Now I conjugate it and then send it out to my larynx.� I just have a vague idea and the next thing I hear these words come tumbling out of my mouth. It’s a very complicated thing. Yet, I don’t have any conscious access to it. You know there are myriad of examples like that. For instance, most people don’t know that down in their stomach, in their guts, they have a nervous system called the enteric nervous system, sometimes called the second brain. It’s quite sophisticated. There are neurons, synapses, and neurotransmitters. Yet, for the most part, and happily, you are oblivious of all of that activity down there, that regulates your digestion and all of that. Well, there are probably as many neurons in your enteric nervous system as are in your dog. Most people are perfectly happy with the idea that a dog is conscious, so why is my enteric nervous system conscious? It’s a good question. Right now, we don’t have the answer. Why are there no feelings generated there, with very few exceptions.

CL: You bring up the issue, if we are able to go about activities without being conscious of them, why indeed have consciousness at all?

CK: So, this is the eternal question of the function of consciousness. Many people have speculated on it. If you go back to all the things that your unconscious zombie can do, those things are all stereotypical. Now if suddenly something happens that hasn’t happened before. Let’s say I’m in southern California and an earthquake begins to shake. I quickly have to see where’s the danger? Where’s the door? How do I quickly get out of the house? For those untoward and unplanned things that happens all the time, because the world is so complicated, and I can not plan for every possible contingency, that’s exactly when I would need consciousness. I need a concise summary of what’s going on right now in the world, of things that are happening to me right now in this second. That’s what I’m conscious of.

CL: So, it helps deal with an ever changing and novel environment.

CK: Exactly. So, the claim is that if you live in a total stereotypical world where nothing changes, then for the most part you could be totally unconscious, because you wouldn’t need consciousness. Your body could perfectly do all of those routine things.

CL: I see. You talk a little bit in your book about whether other animals might have some degree of consciousness. Is there some minimal architecture that’s necessary for consciousness.

CK: It’s unclear. So, most biologists would assume that certainly mammals are conscious. Their behavior is very similar, with the exception of language, which is certainly pretty much unique to ourselves. But, certain aspects of self-consciousness, knowing that I’m Christof, knowing I’m an American citizen, knowing that I’m going to die. Even monkeys or apes are probably not nearly as self-conscious to the extent that we are. But, there’s no doubt that if you look at the behavior of whether they see, hear, or smell things, they behave very much similar to us. If I gave you a little piece of monkey brain, a little piece of human brain, and a little piece of mouse brain, only very few experts on the planet could tell the difference. The structure and evolutionary history is very similar. So, most of us assume that at least mammals are conscious, which would imply that you may need a neocortex. But, at this point, we simply do not know to what extent a “simpler� organism, such as a bee, which after all is very complicated and has roughly one million neurons, how do we know that it doesn’t feel like something to be a bee? That the bee can’t experience the world by feeling. Right now, we just assume obviously it’s not, but that assumption is totally unwarranted. There’s really no evidence either way to back it up. Right now, it’s a question that’s difficult to answer empirically in any sort of satisfactory way. That’s why again the research strategy is to focus on things where most of us can agree are conscious, humans certainly, and similar creatures such as monkeys or maybe mice.

CL: Is there a difference between the sort of perceptual consciousness or the self-consciousness that most of think about when we say “consciousness�.

CK: Well, we don’t know. The assumption that we make is that consciousness is something that was evolved by natural selection a long time ago and then was adapted. Probably the earliest form of consciousness was for pain, way back in evolutionary history, then for pleasure, then for simple forms of smelling and then maybe seeing. And then as we evolved, it became more elaborated and we developed not only a picture of the outside world but also a model of ourselves. We began to manipulate that, and we call that self-consciousness. So, our claims is that it shares a lot of commonalities among all of these different forms of consciousness. Ones that are all about sensation, feeling, experience, subjective states. And then of course there’s specialization, like for us having to do with language, but the assumption is that at rock bottom they all share a great deal of similarity.

CL: So, what really needs to be done to get at the heart of this issue?

CK: Well, the brain for it’s size is by far the most complicated system in the known universe, and what we really need to understand is at the detailed level of the components, which are neurons. Unfortunately, you don’t really see neurons if you do a brain scan, what you’re looking at is a comparatively very large fraction of the brain that includes probably a few million neurons. We really need to understand the working of the brain at the detailed level. Just like molecular biology we now know we need to understand individual molecules, proteins, enzymes and how they interact. Likewise with the brain. This, by and large, can not be done in humans, but requires appropriate experiments in monkeys or mice or other model organisms.

CL: Do you think the two approaches will converge at some level where the global activity patterns will meet with the neuronal activity patterns.

CK: Yes. We can begin to see that very faintly the outline where people may record in brains from individual neurons. And then at the same time they are studying global patterns to try and relate the two. Ultimately that’s what needs to happen, but right now we’ve got reasonable tools to study global patterns like EEG or imaging devices. We’ve got pretty good devices called microelectrodes and arrays of them where you can study individual neurons. What’s missing is trying to bridge that giant intermediate scale. We really need to be able to understand and record from a hundred thousand or a million neurons, identify them, and try to understand how do these neurons interact with each other. And, that’s really what’s lacking right now.

CL: As a final note, I’m curious how did you become interested in this whole question of consciousness?

CK: Well, I think it’s a problem that most intelligent people at some point in there lives ask themselves. Where do we come from? And, in particular, why is it that we can have feelings? It’s not really apparent why it should feel like anything. I first thought about this a long time ago when I had a toothache, and I was lying in bed, and I asked why did my tooth hurt. I mean, I could see why evolutionarily it makes sense for it to hurt. But, I couldn’t understand and still don’t why is it that the electrical activity of neurons in my brain gives rise to this feeling? I could take my computer and connect a thermometer to it, and if the temperature goes about 100 degrees, the computer will say “hot�. But, nobody will actually believe that it actually feels like anything. People will just say, “Well, that’s just electrons flowing onto the gate of a transistor. That’s not really about feeling hot.� In my case, and your case, and the case of my dog, when we have pain, we actually have these bad feelings. So, how is that they arise in brains that’s what we are trying to understand.

CL: Maybe as a hypothetical note, how long do you think it will be before we have a clear understanding?

CK: It’s very difficult to say. I mean, the answer may be around the corner, within the next few years there might be significant breakthroughs. Or, it may take us another 50 to 100 years. It’s very difficult to say in problems of this nature, when you’re not really sure exactly what the solution looks like, how long it will take.

CL: Well, we’ll have to wait and find out.

CK: That’s correct.

CL: Prof. Koch, I just want to thank you joining us on Berkeley Groks and for a very fascinating discussion.

CK: It’s been my pleasure.

Related Interviews

Gary Marcus : Genes and Behavior
Richard Francis: Why Men Won't Ask for Directions
Shinsuke Shimojo : In the Eye of the Beholder
All Interviews



Berkeley Groks 2004 www.groks.net

Some philosophers say that - what do you say?

I say BS - consciousness is part of all structured energy. Have you read my piece on Affinity?

Far more than merely conscious is the soul and any person on the PATH will know this as they trip the light fantastic - which Leary surely did with Dr Alpert and a lady who was his control (also a Doctor of Psychology I was 'in love' with). I found it interesting when I learned that Uma Thurman's Mother was married to Leary before she married the Professor of Philosophy who fathered Uma.

What I say? Like Berkeley and Kant, I say that all we know directly is due to consciousness.

I haven't read your piece on Affinity. I am familiar with the theory that consciousness is inherent in matter and that the brain activity mereley expresses this latent property. However, this "theory" doesn't come close to describing any mechanism for consciousness.

The interview with Christof Koch is very interesting. I think the lower animals are conscious too,* but the question remains: why?

Nature is very efficient and wouldn't add an unnecessary property, so we conclude that consciousness is necessary to memory, reason, and motivation. However, we can see how to build robots that do not have consciousness. Therefore there is a contradiction: consciousness is both necessary and not necessary.



* Have you ever put a live worm on a hook when fishing? They don't like it very much and struggle to avoid it.

Rick,
Your points are valid, but I would add a vital extra component in human conciousness.
That is inventiveness relevant and useful to current circumstances.
This sits on top of the prerequisite memory, reason and motivation.

A computer will react as it has been programmed to react, whereas humans can be unpredictable with sensibilty! [sometimes].

Rhymer forgot to login yet agaiinnn!

Dear Rick will the robots that have the human brain sontents, nanobot AI and LAN holographic reality functions attuned through quantum teleporting be conscious? They might indeed be more than elementally conscious - we will see. In fact the materials seem to be saying they will be equivalent to humans in having a soul and they will be more than humans in many other ways.

That needs cleaning up!

Dear RickWill the robots that have the human brain's contents, nanobot AI and LAN holographic reality functions attuned through quantum teleporting be conscious? They might indeed be more than elementally conscious - we will see. In fact the materialists seem to be saying they will be equivalent to humans by having a soul and they will be more than humans in many other ways.

Does Kant say that all we know is limited to what we 'know directly'? I think not.

The brain and linear logical ego processes are shown to constitute just one third of what wisdom we gather through our senses and those tests were done without exploring ESP or adept insight.

Here is one perspective on how Berkeley (an empiricist but far more spiritual than some others) sees the whole issue after considering his total works.

It is from Philosophical Reflections by Dr. Abdul Lathief and edited by me.

Berkeley believed that all our knowledge is our sensations and ideas derived from sensations. We have no knowledge of external matter but only experience sensations. So matter and objects really do not exist. Matter is a mental condition or imagination. The objective world is our imagination of it. To be is to be perceived by us or by God. According to him as there was no object, both primary and secondary qualities belonged to the subject. According to some of his writings this does not mean world exists in individual mind but in the mind of God. His views were both of subjective and objective idealisms.

And here is a related tought expressed on Hypnosis and the human singularity on another site by my friend Eternum!.

From: Eternum1 Sent: 11/10/2004 6:54 PM
The other 'common belief' about hypnosis is that the subject cannot be made to act against his/her will.

I sometimes question this presumption in terms of mass hypnosis or mob psychology which in turn leaves me to question if surrendering our analytical abilities to the many conditional contracts formed as awakening adolescents in return for acceptance and physical pleasure isn't a form of hypnosis in itself. After, all if we can achieve a hypnotic state of suspended reality by recalling pleasurable aromas and erotic fantasy then we might be conditioned to suspend all reality in some form of mental projection.

This could easily digress into the context of free will and whether we are actually programmed to function with limited choices disguised as individuality.

Scientists are mapping the hard wiring of dna in terms of sensation and linking sensory signals to determined brain centres.

I'd then have to ask is memory merely a chemical imprint or could the chemical imprint be the carbon copy left from the real message...a message that serves a larger reality and one that transcends the mechanical function of physicality and the finite limitations of this 'state of hypnosis' called the human life span.

Et

Rick,
I agree entirely with you, and agree there may be more base-line adjuncts.

The idea I was trying to get across, was that once these 'fundamentals' are achieved or available, creativity [or inventiveness] becomes possible; responding adventurously to new situations based on all previous experince and sensation.
I am not aware of an artificial intelligence equivalent - but then, I am not well read on the subject - keen to learn!

Dear Rick

If you hesitate to add inventiveness (creativity) then how can you add memory or reason when computers certainly have that?

The non-local nature of consciousness as explored in my piece on The Third Eye and Thalami from The Wonder Child researchers and Erwin Paszlo of the Primer Project is indeed most telling.

If consciousness has that ingredient (which I think it does) then the soul should too and thus we are very much in the situation described by the QMWI that our resident debunking physicist says he cannot handle. (See the work I have mentioned and posted at least twice from Yale Professor of Microbiology Morowitz quoting all the top Nobel Laureates called Rediscovering the Mind.)

So you can do the math and see it works but don't believe it is real because you are fixed on your old theory - is that it?

You have seen where the universe is formed of energy that has many dimensions and has varying time event horizons and scalar topographic (Creative) changes plus the energy coming through at the center of the universe (from where?) but still must believe in a theory with limitations because those limits were established by men who thought they knew it all before all the great things produced as a result of Quantum Physics. Hmmm - and you can handle it yet you did not even know the term.

Fortunately we have astrophysicists (Like Rees) and String Theorists galore who see the world as it really is.

Don't you love it when people who can't DO it are telling others that it can't BE?

I am so sorry, RTB, for appearing stupid when I asked you what QMWI meant. I knew the idea, I just wasn't making the connection with the acronym at that moment. If you continue to ride my gaffe and spin it to your favor, I shall have to flog your past parallel self into an 'imaginary' inverse universe.

In any case, I have not come to my conclusion of the absurdity a diverging quantity of 'universes' and the consequent conclusions concerning energy because I am somehow dependant on authority. Quite the contrary, I am calling this absurd because of my own philosophical conclusions concerning infinities. I can see, though, that you are relying for credibility on non-sequiters peppered with 'alternative' authorities whom you claim 'see the world as it is'. I am not impressed or persuaded.

Dear Dan

I am so sorry, RTB, for appearing stupid when I asked you what QMWI meant {I know you were just trying to get my goat and being absurd.}. I knew the idea, I just wasn't making the connection with the acronym at that moment. If you continue to ride my gaffe and spin it to your favor, I shall have to flog your past parallel self into an 'imaginary' inverse universe. {LOL}

In any case, I have not come to my conclusion of the absurdity a diverging quantity of 'universes'

{Neither have I come to any final conclusion - at present there are five models using the same theme - which is compatible with the mystical viewpoint and that heartens me greatly - because what I DO can not be done witout this kind of non-local and creatively manifesting universe. Of course that allows for many 'possibilities' including one where by sheer force of ignorance and DENIAL there can be lifeforms that absurdly structure their little world to fit their paradigm.}

and the consequent conclusions concerning energy {Frankly I see little conflict or that there is what you call infinite energy - just infinite [A Term used with the understanding of our limited perspective but not meaning infinite in some dogmatic way. In short the universe is constructed as a dimensional continuum where creative harmonizing of energy allows for Dark Energy and Dark Matter to transform on occasion with inputs outside the normal and towards manifestations that allow design to have purpose.] universes.}

because I am somehow dependant on authority. Quite the contrary, I am calling this absurd because of my own philosophical conclusions

{I humbly offer that you did not come to this through personal experience but rather it was a learned and tested hypothesis. You were graded and tested - not the kind of scientific testing that proves anything. Just the kind of thing that tenured approaches encourage. But if you can explain how you broke from the tenured testing environment and did not learn it from the paradigm I am open to listening.}

concerning infinities. I can see, though, that you are relying for credibility on non-sequiters peppered with 'alternative' authorities {Yes, all those crazy Nobel Laureates I quote.} whom you claim 'see the world as it is'.

{Are you suggesting that these people see a materialistic world that has no room or affinity with the mystical concepts including those on infinity that a Greek sage has had support from Wheeler through Lynds from?} I am not impressed or persuaded. {Not one iota? HMMM. I guess that is why you are able to come to your OWN conclusions so well - and yet [pardon me for noting] you do not seem to address the facts presented and rather engage in proclamations that these Nobel Laureates and full professors are 'alternative'?}

QUOTE
Neither have I come to any final conclusion - at present there are five models using the same theme - which is compatible with the mystical viewpoint and that heartens me greatly - because what I DO can not be done witout this kind of non-local and creatively manifesting universe. Of course that allows for many 'possibilities' including one where by sheer force of ignorance and DENIAL there can be lifeforms that absurdly structure their little world to fit their paradigm.

I believe consciousness to be a non-local property of the universe, and that 'creativity' is a subjectively determined action that operates as a 'chooser' on physical structure to the end of iterating the evolution of structure into increasingly desirable form.

I Think that is an elegant statement that I agree with. I might use words like design and I have a hard time with property and subjective.

QUOTE
Frankly I see little conflict or that there is what you call infinite energy - just infinite [A Term used with the understanding of our limited perspective but not meaning infinite in some dogmatic way. In short the universe is constructed as a dimensional continuum where creative harmonizing of energy allows for Dark Energy and Dark Matter to transform on occasion with inputs outside the normal and towards manifestations that allow design to have purpose.] universes.

A consequence of QMWI is of a continual increase in the quantity of available universes. This implies either a continual increase in the energetic content embodied in all universes or a decrease in the energetic content embodied in a single universe. According to the former, the increase in embodied energy is theoretically unbounded in the direction of infinite energy. Perhaps this is just a theoretical problem, and eventually the totality will reach an energetic upper limit where no more is available for embodiment although this implies that the totality will begin to exhibit strange properties. According to the latter, the relative decrease in embodied energy for a particular universe is theoretically unbounced in the direction of zero energy. Again, this might be a theoretical problem where a physical limit halts the process and strange properties occur.

Except that some of the universes are of limited duration and many are not material. But there is apparent gradual transformation of Dark Matter to Dark Energy and it will continue until there is no matter at all. Presumably then there will be the same 13 (or 11) dimensions and a hot and cold one (like Aristotle) will again meet and begin this all over again.

As for the meaning of 'infinity', it is quite straightforward. Imagine counting, counting, counting,...


But we have limited time


QUOTE
I humbly offer that you did not come to this through personal experience but rather it was a learned and tested hypothesis. You were graded and tested - not the kind of scientific testing that proves anything. Just the kind of thing that tenured approaches encourage. But if you can explain how you broke from the tenured testing environment and did not learn it from the paradigm I am open to listening.

I heard about conservation of energy, etc... but I did not have that sense of visceral understanding at the time. I would have to say that my experience via contemplating existence, reality, etc... led me to the direct sense of subject as prior to 'object'(structure). In that most mystical of states I identified suffering as the prime motive of creation, and understood as true the axiom that there is no free lunch. In the physical interpretation, this axiom implies conservation of energy.

This is the Hobbesian and sins and demons approach to reality which infects the world and denies what you said earlier about more 'desirable form' which I call harmonizing.

QUOTE
Yes, all those crazy Nobel Laureates I quote.

If only you stuck to the nobel laureates, we might not be having all these conversations.

No - we have these conversations because of other reasons.


QUOTE
Are you suggesting that these people see a materialistic world that has no room or affinity with the mystical concepts including those on infinity that a Greek sage has had support from Wheeler through Lynds from?

I am suggesting that you are projecting this conclusion onto them based on the appearance to you of a correspondence of their statements with your own worldview. I do not take this as evidence of them 'seeing the world as it is'.

I see little correspondence in infinity as you can see from the answers above - this is you projecting. The correspondence I see has to do with their stated support of Anaximander and ancient perceptions. This is because like our debates here about consciousness - the science of today is little progressed from the ancients (if at all). Thus through non linear wisdom and DOing we learn what is real and what layers of subjective to manifest potential there are - which is known for at least 13,000 years and to some degreee a lot longer.

I refer you to the admisson by Christof Koch of Cal Tech - another of those 'alternative' thinkers.


QUOTE
Not one iota? HMMM. I guess that is why you are able to come to your OWN conclusions so well - and yet [pardon me for noting] you do not seem to address the facts presented and rather engage in proclamations that these Nobel Laureates and full professors are 'alternative'?

I don't mind addressing actual facts, it's the 'funny' facts that I tend to ignore. Here's a fact for you. There is never been even one iota of evidence that uniquely supports the QMWI.

Uniquely supports? Why does one need a unique support if one has actual support?

And yes, they continue to learn.

Dear Rick

Semantics and word usages are a problem. We use words sometimes as weapons but they are not pure reflections of thoughts as people like Christof note.


Perhaps you and I are using words in different ways - I am not sure. But I do not see memory as necessary to consciousness and neither do I think of routing acts as unconscious. I refer you to the work of Wilder Penfield and cyberneticists for confirmation that all we hear may be contained in memory even though we do not remember or never even heard the words to begin with. When I say heard the words I mean to say we heard them but were not able to remember tham even when we had just listened to a song.

He attached electrodes to the lobes or sections of the brain and a song would be remembered in its complete and full text as I remember it (His research). In suggestopaedia (Dr Milan Ryzl) people with Alzheiner's recall 500 words of a new language two weeks later.

You say:

1. Nothing passes into memory unless it first passes through {Yes, but we may not remember it.} consciousness. If we can explain this, we may be onto something. {We also might do well to try to understand how we can recall things we never experienced with our normal senses and how past life regression works - when it may be many souls that are part of the memory and yet we did not actually live in physical form as each of these souls.}

2. Rational behavior {Responses programmed?} seems to require consciousness. {I tend to think rationality is a matter of intellectual usage and not all it is cracked up to be. The Heyoka have counter-rational processes that derive great benefit - for example.} Reflexive thought, zombie-like driving while talking on a cell phone, and knee-jerk liberal-dissers all have in common the fact that consciousness is absent. {Not as I see it per cybernetics above.}

3. Motivation: pain, pleasure, and more subtle feelings all have the ability to present themselves to our conscious awareness. There may be unconscious motivations, but the conscious ones seem to be able to override the unconscious ones. {Purely a learned or programmed response.}

Add to or explain these three, and progress will be made on the consciousness problem. {Is LOVE a conscious thing?}

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/defau...id=6829&ttype=2

Another Nobel Laureate

“Matter and Memory was the diagnosis of a crisis in psychology. Movement, as physical reality in the external world, and the image, as psychic reality in consciousness, could no longer be opposed. The Bergsonian discovery of a movement-image, and more profoundly, of a time-image, still retains such richness today that it is not certain that all its consequences have been drawn." – Gilles Deleuze

http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/onl...tml#metaphysics

On the confusion of terms from Cal Tech.

http://people.uncw.edu/puente/sperry/sperr...0s/274-1993.pdf

Dear Rick

Consciousness is necessary to memory and yet there are many things that are not consciously remembered though the cybernetic research shows they are in the brain.

Conscious (you call rational behavior) acts that are routine are somehow not consciously given thought to.

We have lots of examples including dreams which we learn from (rational does include learning) and these things are part of the conscious bandwidth of energy referred to as sub conscious.

I understand the reason you seek to simplify things and I would list an entirely different set of ingredients to consciousness such as this -

1. Knowledge and wisdom from all sources - per the article on The Third Eye and Thalami. They say part of the ether including past, present and from other dimensions.

2. Response and responsiveness - including things not processed through the brain first - eg. pain response. Motion and Bergson's Nobel Prize-winning thesis on Matter and time effects. Developed further in various physics theses including Uncertainty Principles and the comical 'cat' of Schrodinger. See my article on Affinity.

3. Openness - Intelitapping and what I call 'tap-ins' which is developed by Dr Gottfried per stuff I have posted here. Trip wanted to call it intuition but that is only part of it. Without this openness we are not connected to 'all that is' per Buddhist or Eastern thought.

Dear Dan

Actually I do not know that that combination of inputs is much related to String Theory at all. The only thing that is related to String Theory in that model is the 11 or 13 dimensions and in that regard I have personal variations or explanations for each dimenson which relate back to so-called Eastern thought.

I was dealing with astrophysical scalar topographical thought having to do with red shift analysis before the Hubbell saaw the energy coming through (Again from where) the center of the universe. At that time Rees (The Royal Astronomer must be another of my 'alternative' theory people eh?) was talking about ballooons and taking a part of them by twisting as an analogy. That book was as I said before the Hubbell and it was also partly based on various other scholars (All highly conventional) quoted in a S-A special in-depth study of around the same time. I read Rees at that time and found it very lacking but his recent book after the Hubbell photo seems more complete or likely even though he is talking about dopplegangers now.

Since you seem unwilling to answer the question of where that energy comes from - I dare to suggest something that ties in with Hawking's recent pronouncement on Black Holes (and I wrote this stuff long before his pronouncement). It is not a one way street and the escaping energy that comes through is superluminal squared.

Can I ask you how matter and anti-matter can co-exist as this flies in the face of the old models too? Where do these universes 'spawn' from as you put it?

Again - I am not into String Theory - I find it is no better than the very ancient thoughts and what you denigrate as paranormal. I do think it has challenged all science and it uses the same approaches and formulations but does not come to a conclusion as elegant or refined as other ancient models. I think it shows great promise and wish I were capable of doing the formulations as I have said. And yet advanced math people I have known find my explanations superior to their formulations and thus maybe I am better off not having gone through that process.

Your point about a structure maintaining itself to infinity is arging opposite to your lack of belief in infinity. As we should know - again not from String Theory - Dark Energy and Dark Matter are harmonizing. Thus the limit exists and I say also we have creative harmonization or Divine Providence. I suppose the infinity experiment you are talking about is a lot like Lynds did in support of the Greek sage - personally I think the ouroborous with the head eating the tail captures it just as I just said in reference to Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

As to 'free lunch' vs. Hobbes - get real - you have no idea what you are talking about and you completely bought the farm if you think Hobbes, Locke and the other Physiocrats are right about the ONE PIE that all must compete for. Co-operation and creativity through matching resource application will provide for 10 billion millionaires on earth without even colonizing space.

And your final excerpt - yes, M branes and Superstring and all the rest have not achieved the necessary Theory of Everything. And of course I am integrating (you could say projecting my viewpoint, except it is a long established viewpoint going back at least 13,000 years).

What are you trying to say with your example of 'astrophysical scalar topographical thought'? It doesn't seem relevant. Are you trying to present yourself as 'in the know'?

As for energy, I am saying that the origin of energy can be understood in subjective terms because energy is a function of will. To anybody who has ever gotten tired, they likely did not feel 'unlimited' in their own capacity to act.

As for where universes 'spawn' from, they 'spawn' from you. I say that there is only one 'being', and this being underlies structure. Structure 'spawns' under force of will as guided by need.

My conclusion of 'no free lunch' has nothing to do with anybody but me. I am not 'programmed' to think this. RTB, if you want to continue to believe in a 'free lunch', then by all means be my guest. There is much to be learned at the end of that road

“Brahman and the Fractal nature of the Universe due to the chaotic nature of
String Theory: a comparison of Hinduism to Western Science, by Aaron Smith, aka Yavin Koenigsberg.


Over the past couple of decades, there have been several attempts at comparing Hindu philosophy and science to Western Science. Some of these attempts to compare the two schools of thought have been valid, but unfortunately there have also been an overabundance of comparisons which simply did not go into enough detail to have any real scientific value. Some attempts at comparison turned out to be the attempts by Hindu traditionalists to trump up the so called ancient Vedic sciences. In his book, More Light on Less Known, Acharya Ratnananda tries, with little success, to show how the majority of Western Science is little more than a bad copy of the technologies found within the Vedas. While his reports of large 'solar-powered chariots' make good fiction, they do not however provide any sound comparison between hard science and Hinduism. Another recent comparison was the Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra. While his book does go into many of the poetical similarities between theoretical physics and the various mystic traditions of East Asia, he does not go into sufficient detail for it to have true scientific value. Weak as these attempts may have been, they still managed to raise the topic to the limelight in the mainstream of science.


The real question which is the root cause for all of this discussion, is why and how are these two vastly different subjects interrelated? Any deep, scientific analysis of Hinduism and Physics should be done by experts within their respective fields working together. Admittedly, I am not an expert in either field, therefore I will limit my comparison in both depth and scope. I will try to point out how, when one compares the Hindu notion of Brahman with the specific branch of Theoretical Astrophysics known as String Theory, that gross similarities appear between these two ideas due to the poetical, structural, and mystical nature of these two vastly different subjects.


In order to compare Brahman with String Theory, one needs to aptly define both ideas. Due to the intensively mathematical nature of String Theory, I will only briefly explain what it is in order to show its relevance to the comparison. String Theory is an attempt by Physicists to find a unified description of all forces in the Universe (Lederman 393). This is a baffling task at best, and many scientists are not satisfied with String Theory's explanation of the universe due to its unimaginable complexity. Leon Lederman, the renown director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, called String Theory ‘a structure that pushes the frontiers of mathematics and conceptual limitations of the human imagination to the extremes’ (Lederman 393). In String Theory, the basic units in the universe are not particles (such as neutrons, protons, quarks, and
other sub-atomic particles) which occupy a single point of space, but things that have a length but no other dimension, like an infinitely thin piece of string (Hawking 159). These `Superstrings', as they are often called, may have ends or they may be joined up with themselves in closed loops (159). In String Theory all the particles which we have so far discovered emerge as vibrations of these Superstrings (Lederman 394). In Newtonian physics, a string (such as one on a violin) has an infinite number of vibration modes (Kaku 153). Thus in String Theory, matter becomes nothing more than the harmonies created by these vibrating Superstrings (153). Since there are an infinite number of harmonies that can be composed for a string instrument, there are an infinite number of forms of matter that can be constructed out of the vibrating Superstrings (153). This explains the richness of the particles in nature (153). Out of this cosmic orchestra all
of the matter, energy, space, and time emerges and becomes all of the things that we see around us.



Now let us look at the Hindu corollary to this theory. In an interview with Swami Muktananda, he gives an interesting interpretation of the Upanishads. He comments, that ‘according to the Upanishads,... everything has come from the same source, called pure Being. From pure Being emerges pure space. When pure space begins to vibrate, air, the next element, comes into being. From the friction of air comes fire, and fire then produces water in the same way that we begin to sweat when it is hot. And when the sediment from water settles the element of earth arises’ (Muktananda 127). Here Muktananda points out
two similarities to String Theory, one: the vibrations of space give way to the ‘elements'. Two: the elements that he mentions, curiously enough, match the four different states of matter, which are plasma, gas, liquid, and solid. Although his explanation is poetical, it still manages to convey the same meaning if taken loosely. According to the Upanishads, ‘this whole world, verily, is just food and the eater of food,’ (Hinduism 91 the Upanishads Brhad-Aranyaka 1.4, 1-8). Here we see an example of Newtonian physics. The ‘food' can be thought of as energy, and in physics all action requires energy, therefore this statement holds valid. Muktananda later states in the interview that ‘consciousness has become matter and matter is only consciousness, and there was a time when the two were one,’ (Baba 123). If one considers consciousness to be a form or collection of energy, then Einstein's famous formulae E=MC^2 would likewise prove the
validity of the first half of this statement. In order to test the second half of this statement, let us examine the creation of the universe, for we shall see that there was a time when matter and energy were in fact one. Physicists believe that the universe began with the Big Bang, a time when matter and energy were in fact one (Kaku 27). According to String Theory, before the Big Bang, our cosmos was actually ‘a perfect ten-dimensional universe...this ten dimensional world was unstable, and eventually it ‘cracked' in two, creating two separate universes,’ one four dimensional universe one and a six dimensional one (27). We inhabit the four dimensional universe. The four dimensions are three spatial dimensions and one dimension in time. In the Hindu Song of Creation from the RgVeda there is an interesting poem which describes this state before the Big Bang.


‘Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it... Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this all was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of warmth was born that unit (RgVeda 10.129).’


After the Big Bang, the four dimensional universe expanded explosively, whereas the six dimensional one contracted violently in a Big Crunch until it was almost infinitesimal in size (Kaku 27). The Big Bang therefore, is only a minor ‘aftershock' of the separation of the two universes (27). In the Manu-Smrti, there is an account of the creation of the universe from a ‘world egg' {I may yet have to do a book on the Druid’s Eggs and Cosmic Serpent.} which splits in two causing the creation of the heavens and the Earth (Renou 123). Thus, even the Manu-Smrti account of the creation of the world is similar to the splitting of the original ten-dimensional universe into two separate universes.


During the Churning of the Ocean by the Hindu Gods, the deity Vishnu appears in numerous incarnations at the same time and plays different roles as the universal struggle between positive and negative is being played out (Hinduism 169). Throughout Hinduism, the appearance of numerous divine incarnations, or avataras, is a commonplace occurrence. Does String Theory likewise allow for numerous manifestations of a form at the same time, as in Hinduism? In order to find the answer to this, we must examine how String Theory causes the universe to act as one giant Fractal.


One of the ramifications of String Theory is that it dictates that the entire universe is an inconceivably large Fractal (Gleick 314). As we shall see, this ‘Fractal universe' is amazingly similar to the Hindu notion of Brahman. In order to compare aspects of Hinduism to the Fractal nature of the universe, a definition of Fractals must be given. A Fractal is a mathematical system that appears to be chaotic and random, yet in reality contains a fundamental order (223). Within this order, the Fractal ‘pattern' often emerges on various levels in similar forms, yet never as the same exact form. Weather, economics, ecology, even aspects of the human body have a Fractal nature. The most famous of all Fractals is the Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set is an amazingly complex collection of points which are calculated from what is called a recursive statement in mathematics. (Gleick 223). Within the set, there is a chaotic pattern which emerges from time to time when one magnifies the set. One could magnify the set to infinity, and one would still find repeating structures of the original, {Holography will integrate a lot when harmonics is studied more.} but yet never find the end of all the subsets of points within the set (224). Every collection of points within the Mandelbrot set are connected to each other in a web that binds all of the parts together, yet this web is only visible after extreme magnification (Gleick 228). If the universe itself is a Fractal such as this, then a number of interesting similarities begin to develop.


Now that we have defined Fractals and shown an example, let us give a definition of Brahman. In the Chandogya Upanishad, it is said that, ‘Verily, this whole world is Brahman. Tranquil, let one worship it as from which he came forth, as that into which he will be dissolved, as that in which he breathes,’ (Renau 97).


So Brahman is not only the entire universe, but every object within the universe is likewise part of Brahman. Just like in a Fractal, all parts are interconnected, and interdependent. Brahman too, is just as varied and complex as a Fractal. For instance, in the Bhagavad-Gita, when Sri Krishna reveals his true Brahmanic form to Arjuna, he cries out, ‘Behold... my divine forms, hundreds upon thousands, various in kind, various in color and in shape,’ (91). One could likewise use this quote to aptly describe the Mandelbrot set if one applies enough poetic imagination. In comparison to the Fractal universe, let us look at more of Sri Krishna's words to Arjuna, ‘this very day you shall behold the whole universe with all things animate and inert made out within this body of mine,’ (Bhagavad-Gita 91).


James Gleick, author of the book Chaos, describes the Mandelbrot set in equally poetic words when he says, ‘The Mandelbrot set is the most complex object in mathematics. An eternity would not be enough time to see it all, its disks studded with prickly thorns, its spirals and filaments curling outward and around, bearing bulbous molecules that hang, infinitely variegated like grapes on God's personal vineyard,’ (221).


Just as all things in this universe are Brahman, all things in this universe have a Fractal nature. When one magnifies a Fractal, one sees a smaller version of the set within the main set. Likewise, even in our universe, there must be smaller representations of the ‘main set'. Nature, for instance, may provide a clue to this. Michael Barnsley contended
that nature must be playing its own version of the chaos game when he observed that, ‘there's only so much information in the spore that encodes one fern. So there's
a limit to the elaborateness with which a fern could grow,’ (Gleick 239). So perhaps each
organism's DNA is like a ‘subset' of the larger Fractal. And what is this grand
Fractal? Verily, it must be Brahman. Swami Ram Tirth, who was a distinguished
professor of mathematics before he renounced the world and became a sannyasi,
wrote the following poem:
‘The wind that blows is in me, in me, in me.
That water that flows is in me, in me, in me.
The sun that rises is in me, in me, in me.’


Swami Muktananda likewise comments that ‘the human body is a microcosm;
the universe is the macrocosm. {‘As above, So Below’ or the Dictum of Hermes from alchemy.} Whatever you find in the universe, you will also find the body,’ (Muktananda 127). If the universe is a Fractal, then both of these poetic descriptions of the world around them hold valid, for all the information that is contained in the universe would, due to its Fractal nature, be contained within you. Possibly the most poetic descriptions of the universal Brahman are given in the Bhagavad-Gita. Sanjaya in the Bhagavad-Gita tries to give a description of the magnificence of Arjuna's vision of Brahman when he
said, ‘Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky: such is the glory of the shape of Infinite God. Then the son of Pandu beheld the entire universe in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods,’ (Bhagavad-Gita 92). Arjuna, after seeing Sri Krishna's true form, beheld, ‘Universal Form, I see you without limit... and find no end, midst, or beginning. Licking with your burning tongues devouring all the worlds, you probe the heights of heaven with intolerable beams, o Vishnu,’ (Bhagavad-Gita 92).


Yet out of all of the descriptions, Lord Krishna describes himself best
as the Fractal heart of the universe best when he says:


‘I am the Atman that dwells in the heart of every mortal creature: I am the beginning, the life-span, and the end of all... I am Vishnu... Marichi... the Sama Veda... Indra... Shiva... Mt Meru... I am the ocean among the waters... I am the sacred syllable OM... I am Time... I am Krishna among the Vrishnis, Arjuna among the Pandavas... I am the divine Seed of all lives. In this world, nothing animate or inanimate exists without me... There is no limit to my divine manifestations, nor can they be numbered... one atom of myself sustains the universe.’ (Bhagavad-Gita 88-90).


Here, in this short excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita, we see the closest similarities between the Fractal nature of the universe due to String Theory most aptly described in a simple Hindu parable. Yet even these vivid descriptions of the universe are not Hinduism's strongest link to String Theory.


Possibly the strangest link between Hinduism and String Theory is the mathematician who gave us this wonderful theory of everything. Curiously enough, String Theory is based off of a set of mathematical functions which were written down at the turn of the century by a young Hindu mathematician named Srinivasa Ramanujan. Ramanujan was born in 1887 in Erode, India which is near Madras. He was born into the Brahmin caste, and probably had read the traditional Hindu cannon (Kaku 174). As a youth, he vigorously studied mathematics, where he began to excel like no other human being has ever done before. His genius is only hinted at when Michio Kaku stated that, ‘Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive one hundred years' worth of western mathematics on his own’ (Kaku 172-73).


As a youth he spent all of his time thinking about mathematics. His devotion to it was so intense that he failed out of his senior year of high school and ended up working in a low-level clerical job in Madras. There, he spent all of his spare time working on mathematics. Eventually, he sent the results of his work to three well-known British mathematicians of the time. Two of them ignored the letters out of racist ignorance, but the third, Godfrey H. Hardy realized the genius, and had him sent for. After much difficulty, Ramanujan arrived at Cambridge in 1914 where he spent the next three years working on mathematics in collaboration with Hardy at Trinity College in Cambridge. Tragically, Ramanujan died at the mere age of thirty-three years old due to Tuberculosis. Yet, in those last three years of his life he filled up a volume of notebooks with what are called Modular Functions, ‘which are among the strangest ever found in Mathematics’
according to Michio Kaku (173). In total, he wrote 4,000 formulae on 400 pages filling 3 volumes of notes, all densely packed with theorems of incredible power, but without any commentary on how he derived them, nor proof of their validity (Kaku 176). Since his death, countless mathematicians have worked on proving them with only limited success due to the intricacy of the mathematics involved.


Godfrey Hardy later recalled after Ramanujan's death that proving some of these theorems ‘defeated me completely’ (175). He recalled, ‘I had never seen anything in the least like them before. A single look at them is enough to show that they could of only be written down by a mathematician of the highest class,’ (175). Years were spent proving his formulas, but then an amazing breakthrough occurred.


In 1976, 130 pages of Ramanujan's notes, containing the output of the last year of his life, were discovered by accident in a box at Trinity College (Kaku 176). Among these notes there is what is called the "Ramanujan Function" which is the fundamental backbone of String Theory itself (Kaku 173). This function has allowed Physicists to attempt to explain the fundamental workings of the universe, but unfortunately the function is still not completely understood (Kaku 173). The other mathematicians with whom Ramanujan worked often asked how he was able to come up with these formulae. It was said that, ‘Ramanujan used to say that the goddess of Namakkal inspired him with the formulae in dreams’ (Kaku 174). So perhaps Ramanujan's upbringing as a Brahmin, and his belief that this goddess was inspiring him like a modern day Rsi helped shape String Theory into a form which so resembles Hindu philosophy.


In conclusion, perhaps Ramanujan was a sort of modern day Rsi. If so, then his understanding of mathematics was directly brought about by his mystical perception of the universe. Perhaps he was like the many other modern day Siddhas who claim that, in the words of Swami Muktananda, ‘it is quite possible to see the different worlds of the cosmos... it is possible to see them distinctly through the grace of the inner energy... inside, all the different worlds are very, very close once you gain access to the inner space,’ (Muktananda 119).


This seems quite likely in Ramanujan's case. For Ramanujan's String Theory
and Hinduism share far too many parallels for the reader not to take notice. I admit, that I have not gone into as much detail on this subject that is needed for the final evaluation of the correlation. Others will, without a doubt, make more detailed comparisons between the two ideas. Perhaps science and mysticism have an inseperatable link which we have failed to acknowledge. Perhaps sometime in the near future scientific knowledge of the universe will show a clear picture for humankind to behold, or perhaps the Rsis of ancient India have already beheld the universe. In either case, I think that Muktananda says it best when he said that, ‘the fact is that scientific knowledge and spiritual knowledge
are already married’ (119). How true this statement seems when one looks at String
Theory.
Bibliography
Gleick, James. Chaos. New York: Viking, 1987.
Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1988.
Kaku, Michio. Hyperspace. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.
Lederman, Leon, and d*ck Teresi. The God Particle. New York: Bantam, 1993. Muktananda, Swami Baba, and Harold S. Streitfeld. In The Company of A Siddha.
Oakland: S.Y.D.A. Foundation, 1978.
Hinduism. Luis Renou, Ed. New York: George Braziller, 1961. "Rg-Veda." (10.129)
Renou 67.
"Upanishads." (Brhad-Aranyaka, 1.4, 1-8), (Chandogya, 3.14), (Kena, 3.1-
12, 4.1-5) Renou 91-99.
"Manu-Smrti." Renou 123. "Puranas." Renou 169.
The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita. Christopher Isherwood, and Swami Prabhavananda,
trans. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
"What is the Mandelbrot set?" fabioc@geocities.com, ed. 1998. Available
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2854/ http://everything2.com/?node_id=662887� (3)

Dan says:

What are you trying to say with your example of 'astrophysical scalar topographical thought'? It doesn't seem relevant. Are you trying to present yourself as 'in the know'? {Giving you reference to the terms used by those who are the experts causes you discomfort?}

As for energy, I am saying that the origin of energy can be understood in subjective terms because energy is a function of will. To anybody who has ever gotten tired, they should understand the idea that energy is not free. {Energy is a function of WILL? Splain that in physics for me.}

As for where universes 'spawn' from, they 'spawn' from you. I say that there is only one 'being', and this being underlies structure. Structure 'spawns' under force of will as guided by need. {That simple model is one which those who beliee in the collective (like me) can only wonder about. I am not likely to be found saying such a thing though . I say 'we are all part of it'.}

My conclusion of 'no free lunch' has nothing to do with anybody but me. I am not 'programmed' to think this. RTB, if you want to continue to believe in a 'free lunch', then by all means be my guest. There is much to be learned at the end of that road {But will you ever learn it?}

Dear Dan

Your whole cosmology is based on ego and the paradigm teaching that sees WILL or power as the necessary means to get ahead.

Here is a result of a quick browse to demonstrate it is not merely a galaxy which the Hubbell looked at and which was heralded as the number one scientific discovery in 1999.

Telescopes like the Hubble space telescope can look much further back in time. It has seen galaxies as they were 11 billion years ago.
The big bang itself can be "seen" if you look back far enough in time, 14 billion years.

This site says that a billion is not the American billion too. It is a thousand billion of the American variety.

Dear Dan

The center of the universe occurred at the event called the Big Bang (Which is there - or are you going to tell me you don't know about the accelerating outward movement from that event) - and you really are about as informed as Enki - I do not believe for an instant that you are employed in any physics role that produces results - you could be a teacher though.

A Person who does not know QMWI and thinks Hubbell only sees our galaxy is a very poor teacher at that.

As to your observations of the paradigm - yes - that is right - MIGHT IS RIGHT - go for it and destroy the world.

The opposite direction from the movement we are experiencing.

And the paradigm thinking that you are programmed by is indeed already destroying the world - it is not a case where there is much doubt. The funny thing is you actually think because you observed this paradigm that you were not programmed by it.

As I see the badge programmed is very popular on this forum.

Please read the thread on Hypnosis and deal in facts - rather than your fantasy kid's stories.

But agree Robert my program is so alluring.

There is a kid sitting in each man!

In you too.

I could have hung out a shingle as a Transactional Analyst when that was in vogue in the late 70s. Yes, we all have child, adult, parent aspects but balance requires one know themself more than mere children.

Well man should be balanced, but kid exists anyway.