What would it be like to be caught between worlds?
The world of the living and the world of the dead.
The world of the living and an other world of a distant alien planet.
Both are plausible explanations of the island in LOST. It is true because of the lack of concrete canon to support the sci-fi story lines with actual physics.
Peppered throughout the discussions of the island are scientific concepts like "portals," "worm holes," time travel experimentation, psychological conditioning, and unique electromagnetic properties. But to suspend belief in a science basis for the island, what do we have to consider?
An island that cannot be seen or mapped from the sky is not an island. It is something else.
An island that can move and disappear is not an island. It has to be something else.
But since Eloise Hawking could calculate its apparent location (with some assumptions), the island's movement must follow a pattern. Nature follows patterns. So does the Earth's electromagnetic grid. The island could be moving to intersection points along with Earth's electromagnetic grid. This makes the island a ship and not an island.
Electromagnetism and bending of light are principles in research for stealth technologies. To make things appear invisible, magicians use mirrors and distraction (such as a pretty assistant) to make the illusion complete. Mirrors, distractions and illusions were all story points in LOST.
What is the purpose of an island moving along an electromagnetic grid? It could be "recharging" itself from specific deep core entry points. It may need a certain amount of energy or flow to "contain" its own power system (which malfunctioned several times to create time skips and purple skies).
Some viewers believed the island was a space-time portal. The teleportation of Locke and Ben to Tunisia was proof of it (in a small scale). The capture of Flight 815 from the sky could be another example as well as all the ship wrecks. It could also explain the "immortality" of Jacob since he controlled the island and thus controlled time itself. One could equate Jacob to that of being a Time Lord.
No one has really thought about the island as being a TARDIS like device piloted by aliens. But in a UFO observatory conspiracy theory, an island would be a good cover to house a base to spy on human beings. A remote island would be a great place to bring humans to do experiments on. You don't need to be gray aliens to poke humans; as shape shifting beings you can create yourself in the image of your laboratory animals.
Jacob and the Man in Black did admit that bringing humans to the island was part of their grand game. An experiment on how humans react to the island conditions, with MIB lamenting that humans always screwed up in the end. MIB was so frustrated with it that he wanted to go "home." But Jacob would not let him - - - basically making him/it a prisoner on the island. So MIB used the corrupt humans in order to rebel against Jacob, to seize control of the island ship to leave Earth.
It does sound like a Dr. Who story line: who controls the TARDIS can control the universe. As Widmore desired control of the island, there were others like Ben who tried to protect it from becoming a weapon of power. But Ben was corrupted by that same power when he purged Dharma.
Therefore, we have the literary means of the island being the center piece between two worlds. The debate is what is the other world? Is it the religious connotation of the after life (as adored by the temple and the Egyptian mythology)? Or it is a sci-fi based drama based upon the Faraday notebook and Dharma stations?
In either situation, it puts our castaways not as lost survivors of a transportation disaster, but human guinea pigs in a science fiction fantasy world.
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Monday, June 19, 2017
THE UNDEAD
The first attempts to bring people back from the dead are slated to start this year.
This controversial plan was thwarted last year in India.
Bioquark, a Philadelphia-based company, announced in late 2016 that they believe brain death is not 'irreversible'. According to the Daily Mail, CEO Ira Pastor has revealed they will soon be testing an
unprecedented stem cell method on patients in an unidentified country in
Latin America, confirming the details in the next few months.
To
be declared officially dead in the majority of countries, you have to
experience complete and irreversible loss of brain function, or 'brain
death'. According to Pastor, Bioquark
has developed a series of injections that can reboot the brain - and
they plan to try it out on humans this year.
They have no plans to test on animals first.
Medical science has tight protocols before experimentation can begin on humans. There must be peer review on research, animal trials, then clinical trials. At each stage of the process, the results are published and reviewed by authorities before permission can be granted to proceed. Here, the company is going straight to the end game without any factual foundation.
There is no precedent for what researchers plan to do. It may be a very expensive (the article did not say) method with no chance of success (but some families will pay anything in the hope of getting their loved ones back). So critics and cynics have raised concerns that the company is not going through normal protocols to test their theories before using human beings as test dummies. That is the reason why the medical boards in India stopped the company from doing work in that country.
The ramifications of re-booting a brain dead patient can be severe. What if it only partially works and the patient only has minimum brain activity (such as in a deep coma state with no communication skills). Is that really a quality life? What if it does not activate brain memories, speech, eyesight or senses but merely pain? Then what happens to the patient? What are the unintended consequences of playing god?
It seems LOST also played fast and loose with medical ethics on the island. It used mind control and chemical weapons experimentation which hit its evil zenith after Ben's coup. The concept of immortality by regular brain reanimations is in the realm of science fiction. But there appears to be some researchers who dare to try it in real life.
Friday, August 5, 2016
BRAINS IN JARS
The London Daily Mail had a recent article describing what an Australian professor claims that our entire existence could be an elaborate illusion controlled by a genius evil scientist.
The premise is that you are not where you think you are.
Your brain has been expertly removed from your body and is being kept alive in a vat of nutrients that sits on a laboratory bench.
The nerve endings of your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds you all the sensations of everyday life.
This is why you think you're living a completely normal life.
Do you still exist? Is the world as you know it a figment of your imagination or an illusion constructed by this evil supercomputer network?
Could you prove to someone that you are not actually a brain in a vat?
As the article states, the philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this famous version of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment in his 1981 book, Reason, Truth and History, but it is essentially an updated version of the French philosopher René Descartes' notion of the Evil Genius from his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy.
While such thought experiments might seem glib – and perhaps a little unsettling – they serve a useful purpose. They are used by philosophers to investigate what beliefs we can hold to be true and, as a result, what kind of knowledge we can have about ourselves and the world around us.
Descartes thought the best way to do this was to start by doubting everything, and building our knowledge from there. Using this skeptical approach, he claimed that only a core of absolute certainty will serve as a reliable foundation for knowledge.
He said: If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
It is from Descartes that we get classical skeptical queries favored by philosophers such as: how can we be sure that we are awake right now and not asleep, dreaming?
To take this challenge to our assumed knowledge further, Descartes imagines there exists an omnipotent, malicious demon that deceives us, leading us to believe we are living our lives when, in fact, reality could be very different to how it appears to us.
This premise has been discussed as a possible explanation to the LOST mythology.
For example, who did Patchy of the Others survive being killed by the sonic fence and the island visitors to somehow come back to kill Charlie with an underwater explosive? To have nine lives, a human has to be unrealistically lucky or be reincarnated many times over. Or in this premise, he never really died because he was never really alive. He was a computer simulation, a reusable prop, to infuse the subject jar brains with conflict, reality, drama and emotional responses.
Another explanation of the evil genius controlling everything was inferred from the huge military industrial complex that was the island. Human experiments were part of the mission of the island scientists. It is not a great leap to see how an unseen overlord could have been directing the action, just like the man behind the curtain in the series nod to the Wizard of Oz.
And this article does touch upon the embedded theme throughout the series: philosophy. Characters like Locke and Hume were named after famous philosophers. The characters had to make philosophic decisions between right and wrong, free will or capture. LOST could be viewed as an interactive thesis of philosophic questions being run through various programs in a supercomputer.
Because of the various continuity errors and story line red herrings, many LOST fans questioned the truth of the series story lines. There was doubt that the story writers and show runners actually knew what they were doing. Many have been searching for answers to explain or cover-up the show's big flaws. So, in a way, many continue to do a philosophic autopsy on the show to glean new information and explanations to make the show better in their own minds.
The mind is a powerful but not very well understood thing. It is an intangible element incorporated in the tangible brain. Our current science studies state how we "think" the mind works, but no one has shown the ability to download, in real time, the mental images of a human being onto a monitor. It is merely speculation, educated guess, theory. But what if there were a higher being who could actually tap into the conscious and subconscious mind of human beings - - - for entertainment or research purposes? That would put the human race on par with gold fish in an cosmic aquarium.
The premise is that you are not where you think you are.
Your brain has been expertly removed from your body and is being kept alive in a vat of nutrients that sits on a laboratory bench.
The nerve endings of your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds you all the sensations of everyday life.
This is why you think you're living a completely normal life.
Do you still exist? Is the world as you know it a figment of your imagination or an illusion constructed by this evil supercomputer network?
Could you prove to someone that you are not actually a brain in a vat?
As the article states, the philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this famous version of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment in his 1981 book, Reason, Truth and History, but it is essentially an updated version of the French philosopher René Descartes' notion of the Evil Genius from his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy.
While such thought experiments might seem glib – and perhaps a little unsettling – they serve a useful purpose. They are used by philosophers to investigate what beliefs we can hold to be true and, as a result, what kind of knowledge we can have about ourselves and the world around us.
Descartes thought the best way to do this was to start by doubting everything, and building our knowledge from there. Using this skeptical approach, he claimed that only a core of absolute certainty will serve as a reliable foundation for knowledge.
He said: If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
It is from Descartes that we get classical skeptical queries favored by philosophers such as: how can we be sure that we are awake right now and not asleep, dreaming?
To take this challenge to our assumed knowledge further, Descartes imagines there exists an omnipotent, malicious demon that deceives us, leading us to believe we are living our lives when, in fact, reality could be very different to how it appears to us.
This premise has been discussed as a possible explanation to the LOST mythology.
For example, who did Patchy of the Others survive being killed by the sonic fence and the island visitors to somehow come back to kill Charlie with an underwater explosive? To have nine lives, a human has to be unrealistically lucky or be reincarnated many times over. Or in this premise, he never really died because he was never really alive. He was a computer simulation, a reusable prop, to infuse the subject jar brains with conflict, reality, drama and emotional responses.
Another explanation of the evil genius controlling everything was inferred from the huge military industrial complex that was the island. Human experiments were part of the mission of the island scientists. It is not a great leap to see how an unseen overlord could have been directing the action, just like the man behind the curtain in the series nod to the Wizard of Oz.
And this article does touch upon the embedded theme throughout the series: philosophy. Characters like Locke and Hume were named after famous philosophers. The characters had to make philosophic decisions between right and wrong, free will or capture. LOST could be viewed as an interactive thesis of philosophic questions being run through various programs in a supercomputer.
Because of the various continuity errors and story line red herrings, many LOST fans questioned the truth of the series story lines. There was doubt that the story writers and show runners actually knew what they were doing. Many have been searching for answers to explain or cover-up the show's big flaws. So, in a way, many continue to do a philosophic autopsy on the show to glean new information and explanations to make the show better in their own minds.
The mind is a powerful but not very well understood thing. It is an intangible element incorporated in the tangible brain. Our current science studies state how we "think" the mind works, but no one has shown the ability to download, in real time, the mental images of a human being onto a monitor. It is merely speculation, educated guess, theory. But what if there were a higher being who could actually tap into the conscious and subconscious mind of human beings - - - for entertainment or research purposes? That would put the human race on par with gold fish in an cosmic aquarium.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
SIMULATION
One premise of LOST was that it was only a simulation of reality.
It could have been a video adventure game with the characters being avatars.
It could have been an interconnected dream experiment.
It could have been a mock mental warfare simulation by Dharma and the U.S. Military.
It could have been an imaginary dream of a coma patient.
Or it could be our reality which itself is not real.
Scientists work to find out how our world actually works.
Recently at the American Museum of Natural History, scientists debated whether or not the universe is a simulation. The answers from some panelists may be more comforting than the responses of others.
Physicist Lisa Randall said she thought the odds that the universe is not "real" are so low as to be "effectively zero."
But on the other hand, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was hosting the debate, said that he thinks the likelihood of the universe being a simulation "may be very high."
The question of whether or not we know that our universe is real has vexed thinkers going far back into history, long before Descartes made his famous "I think therefore I am" statement. The same question has been explored in modern science fiction films like "The Matrix" and David Cronenber's "eXistenZ."
But most physicists and philosophers agree that it is impossible to prove that we don't live in a simulation and that the universe is real. Tyson agreed, but said he would not be surprised if we were to find out somehow that someone else is responsible for our universe.
If someone else is responsible for our universe, then we would call those persons or things gods.
In any higher order planetary relationships, the most intelligent, strong, technological and adaptable species are the alpha species who can assert their will on the rest of the known world. In human evolution, mankind had to have come to the realization that it was the alpha species. But instead of adopting a self-sufficient, own legacy approach to species self-esteem, ancient and disconnected cultures adopted religion and worship of superior beings as being responsible for their own self-awareness and life cycles.
Some could argue that religion is a pagan belief system because they did not have the means to investigate their true world. Except, that ancient cultures did have the brain power to solve and predict thousand years of astronomical cycles with the accuracy of our current atomic clocks. Ancient people were more well versed in nature and the effect of cycles on human existence. They were the first to understand and to ponder the question of whether we are alone in the universe.
Ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids in 20 years. Our modern technology cannot replicate that feat. Generally, the public does not think ancients were very advanced in their thinking. But they pondered the same "big" questions we do today.
It could have been a video adventure game with the characters being avatars.
It could have been an interconnected dream experiment.
It could have been a mock mental warfare simulation by Dharma and the U.S. Military.
It could have been an imaginary dream of a coma patient.
Or it could be our reality which itself is not real.
Scientists work to find out how our world actually works.
Recently at the American Museum of Natural History, scientists debated whether or not the universe is a simulation. The answers from some panelists may be more comforting than the responses of others.
Physicist Lisa Randall said she thought the odds that the universe is not "real" are so low as to be "effectively zero."
But on the other hand, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was hosting the debate, said that he thinks the likelihood of the universe being a simulation "may be very high."
The question of whether or not we know that our universe is real has vexed thinkers going far back into history, long before Descartes made his famous "I think therefore I am" statement. The same question has been explored in modern science fiction films like "The Matrix" and David Cronenber's "eXistenZ."
But most physicists and philosophers agree that it is impossible to prove that we don't live in a simulation and that the universe is real. Tyson agreed, but said he would not be surprised if we were to find out somehow that someone else is responsible for our universe.
If someone else is responsible for our universe, then we would call those persons or things gods.
In any higher order planetary relationships, the most intelligent, strong, technological and adaptable species are the alpha species who can assert their will on the rest of the known world. In human evolution, mankind had to have come to the realization that it was the alpha species. But instead of adopting a self-sufficient, own legacy approach to species self-esteem, ancient and disconnected cultures adopted religion and worship of superior beings as being responsible for their own self-awareness and life cycles.
Some could argue that religion is a pagan belief system because they did not have the means to investigate their true world. Except, that ancient cultures did have the brain power to solve and predict thousand years of astronomical cycles with the accuracy of our current atomic clocks. Ancient people were more well versed in nature and the effect of cycles on human existence. They were the first to understand and to ponder the question of whether we are alone in the universe.
Ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids in 20 years. Our modern technology cannot replicate that feat. Generally, the public does not think ancients were very advanced in their thinking. But they pondered the same "big" questions we do today.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
BEN'S RAGE
We know this is not true: LOST was not about Ben.
Or was it? We know in reality that Ben was going to be a throw-away character; a leader of the villain clan who would have been killed by the survivors as they marched toward Lord of the Flies madness. But Michael Emerson's strong acting performance soon made Ben a fan favorite, and a new story engine for the series.
People have theorized that the LOST mythology centers around Jack, or Hurley but in the beginning we know from the preproduction notes that Kate was supposed to be the focal point for the series. But again, that changed when Jack in the pilot became the instance face of the series. Instead of killing off Jack to "bump up the island drama," Jack became the leader of the survivors instead of Kate.
So the show has a history of changing course in mid-stream.
You can apply just about any centrist theory onto Ben.
It can lead to a compelling case that the workings of the show were in Ben's head.
For example, Ben has spinal cancer. He dreams/prays/desires a miracle surgeon. And right away, a great surgeon literally falls out of the sky to save his life. How does that happen?
Considering that Ben had the means, opportunity and wealth to leave the island and do whatever the hell he pleased, why he was stuck on the island waiting for fate to take his life was odd. There are a few explanations for this behavior. One, he was scared of living the island because he may not be able to return. Two, he was the embodiment of the island's power, like Jacob, so he would be naturally healed because he was the island's native leader. Three, he really did not have cancer - - - it was a myth or phobia or a nightmare.
By putting the context of the show into the mental state of Ben could explain many contradictory aspects of the story lines.
We know Ben was an insecure child. He was raised by a drunken father. He was blamed for his mother's death. He was quiet and introverted, he made no real friends. Everything we saw and heard could have been the transcript of a lonely child's imagination.
A telling point is when Hurley invites Ben into the church reunion to "move on" to the next plane of existence. However, Ben passes on the opportunity. He has personal things to work on. Again, why would Ben even show up in the main characters' purgatory reunion world?
The sideways world appears to be one made for "second chances." In it, Ben is a lowly school teacher. He is taking care of his ill father. He does not have any friends, only colleagues at work. He is meek and naive. But there is a part of him that is a dreamer. He thinks he can help other people, that he can be a strong leader, and that he can find happiness (maybe as a step dad to Alex). But in this alternative universe, nice guys still seem to finish last.
But if you view the island world as a prequel to the sideways fantasy world, it could make some sense. Ben dreamed of being a powerful and wealthy man. He dreamed of the island fantasy because in his "real" life (which the sideways world is based upon) is so dull. When Ben dreams of being special, his mind races to create nightmares based upon his anxieties such as falling in love with women he could never have (Juliet and Kate were island examples.)
Each of the main characters could represent the problems in Ben's life. Hurley could represent the unlucky lottery winner. Locke could represent the trapped personality in both career and personal life. Kate could represent either women who don't find him attractive or his need to escape his routine. Jack could represent his fear of success. Desmond could represent his fear of failure. As he tries to figure out how to change himself, his dreams attempt to try to change these fictional characters into better, stronger people.
As we have discussed, researchers do believe that the purpose of dreams is to allow a person's mind to make calculations and "what if" variable runs to find solutions to waking problems. The variables in Ben's life could be represented by the main characters and how they are trying to cope with the various hard-wired problems in Ben's persona: including rage, desire, needs, fears. It seems that Ben's biggest problem is that he feels that he is not acknowledged or recognized as being a good person. He is merely a background player in the sideways school. Only one of his students finds him approachable and helpful. His colleagues dismiss his talk as being merely fiction or a wild dream. He is a dog without a bark or a bite.
So, the show is a series of dreamscapes showing Ben how he could be more like Jack, Locke, Kate or Hurley. How can he find love. How can he be more open and confident. How can he get people to listen to him. How can he get people to follow his lead. How he can lead a better life.
But it is Ben's pent-up rage that feeds a long pattern of nightmares. His mind is sidetracked by personal failure that he envisions himself as a diabolical tyrant who acts like a god-like figure over stronger willed people. Perhaps by the time he has the sideways church conversation with Hurley, Ben has learned that he has to let go of his inner rage - - - and to also let go of all the imaginary characters that he created to help him cope with his miserable real life.
Ben has to "wake up" from living in a fantasy world in order to "move on" in his real life. The sideways world was closer to reality than we thought; it was really the last act in Ben's elaborate self-examination. He decided that he no longer needed the main characters to help him figure things out in the real world. He decided to let them go (and symbolically be erased by the white light at the end of episode).
From that point forward, Ben had the mind-set of cleaning up his act. To begin to work on how mend his fences with his father (as Locke had done in the sideways world), and to work on finding true companionship with Rousseau and Alex.
Or was it? We know in reality that Ben was going to be a throw-away character; a leader of the villain clan who would have been killed by the survivors as they marched toward Lord of the Flies madness. But Michael Emerson's strong acting performance soon made Ben a fan favorite, and a new story engine for the series.
People have theorized that the LOST mythology centers around Jack, or Hurley but in the beginning we know from the preproduction notes that Kate was supposed to be the focal point for the series. But again, that changed when Jack in the pilot became the instance face of the series. Instead of killing off Jack to "bump up the island drama," Jack became the leader of the survivors instead of Kate.
So the show has a history of changing course in mid-stream.
You can apply just about any centrist theory onto Ben.
It can lead to a compelling case that the workings of the show were in Ben's head.
For example, Ben has spinal cancer. He dreams/prays/desires a miracle surgeon. And right away, a great surgeon literally falls out of the sky to save his life. How does that happen?
Considering that Ben had the means, opportunity and wealth to leave the island and do whatever the hell he pleased, why he was stuck on the island waiting for fate to take his life was odd. There are a few explanations for this behavior. One, he was scared of living the island because he may not be able to return. Two, he was the embodiment of the island's power, like Jacob, so he would be naturally healed because he was the island's native leader. Three, he really did not have cancer - - - it was a myth or phobia or a nightmare.
By putting the context of the show into the mental state of Ben could explain many contradictory aspects of the story lines.
We know Ben was an insecure child. He was raised by a drunken father. He was blamed for his mother's death. He was quiet and introverted, he made no real friends. Everything we saw and heard could have been the transcript of a lonely child's imagination.
A telling point is when Hurley invites Ben into the church reunion to "move on" to the next plane of existence. However, Ben passes on the opportunity. He has personal things to work on. Again, why would Ben even show up in the main characters' purgatory reunion world?
The sideways world appears to be one made for "second chances." In it, Ben is a lowly school teacher. He is taking care of his ill father. He does not have any friends, only colleagues at work. He is meek and naive. But there is a part of him that is a dreamer. He thinks he can help other people, that he can be a strong leader, and that he can find happiness (maybe as a step dad to Alex). But in this alternative universe, nice guys still seem to finish last.
But if you view the island world as a prequel to the sideways fantasy world, it could make some sense. Ben dreamed of being a powerful and wealthy man. He dreamed of the island fantasy because in his "real" life (which the sideways world is based upon) is so dull. When Ben dreams of being special, his mind races to create nightmares based upon his anxieties such as falling in love with women he could never have (Juliet and Kate were island examples.)
Each of the main characters could represent the problems in Ben's life. Hurley could represent the unlucky lottery winner. Locke could represent the trapped personality in both career and personal life. Kate could represent either women who don't find him attractive or his need to escape his routine. Jack could represent his fear of success. Desmond could represent his fear of failure. As he tries to figure out how to change himself, his dreams attempt to try to change these fictional characters into better, stronger people.
As we have discussed, researchers do believe that the purpose of dreams is to allow a person's mind to make calculations and "what if" variable runs to find solutions to waking problems. The variables in Ben's life could be represented by the main characters and how they are trying to cope with the various hard-wired problems in Ben's persona: including rage, desire, needs, fears. It seems that Ben's biggest problem is that he feels that he is not acknowledged or recognized as being a good person. He is merely a background player in the sideways school. Only one of his students finds him approachable and helpful. His colleagues dismiss his talk as being merely fiction or a wild dream. He is a dog without a bark or a bite.
So, the show is a series of dreamscapes showing Ben how he could be more like Jack, Locke, Kate or Hurley. How can he find love. How can he be more open and confident. How can he get people to listen to him. How can he get people to follow his lead. How he can lead a better life.
But it is Ben's pent-up rage that feeds a long pattern of nightmares. His mind is sidetracked by personal failure that he envisions himself as a diabolical tyrant who acts like a god-like figure over stronger willed people. Perhaps by the time he has the sideways church conversation with Hurley, Ben has learned that he has to let go of his inner rage - - - and to also let go of all the imaginary characters that he created to help him cope with his miserable real life.
Ben has to "wake up" from living in a fantasy world in order to "move on" in his real life. The sideways world was closer to reality than we thought; it was really the last act in Ben's elaborate self-examination. He decided that he no longer needed the main characters to help him figure things out in the real world. He decided to let them go (and symbolically be erased by the white light at the end of episode).
From that point forward, Ben had the mind-set of cleaning up his act. To begin to work on how mend his fences with his father (as Locke had done in the sideways world), and to work on finding true companionship with Rousseau and Alex.
Monday, August 10, 2015
WHOLE WORLD SIMULATION PART THREE
MNN.com reports that scientists have been baffled by a new cosmic discovery.
The sheer size of our universe is just about unfathomable, so you can imagine the surprise that researchers must have experienced when they recently discovered a structure within our known universe that measures 5 billion light years across. That's more than one-ninth the size of the entire observable universe, and by far the largest structure ever discovered by Earth scientists.
The mysterious structure is so colossal that it could shatter our current understanding of how the universe operates in size and shape.
“If we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe,” said Lajos Balazs, lead author on the paper. “It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all.”
Just what is this massive structure? It's not a single, physical object, but rather a cluster of nine massive galaxies bound together gravitationally, much like how our Milky Way is part of a cluster of galaxies. It was discovered after researchers identified a ring of nine gamma ray bursts (GRBs) that appeared to be at very similar distances from us, each around 7 billion light years away.
GRBs are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe, caused by a supernova. Their detection typically indicates the presence of a galaxy, so all of the GRBs in this ring are believed to each come from a different galaxy. But their close proximity to one another suggests that these galaxies must be linked together. There is only a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance.
A mega-cluster of this size shouldn't be possible, at least not if you think in terms of our current theories. Those theories predict that the universe ought to be relatively uniform on the largest scales, meaning that the sizes of structures shouldn't vary by much. In fact, the theoretical limit to structure size has been calculated at around 1.2 billion light years across.
If the Hungarian-American team's calculations are correct, then this giant new structure-- which measures in at over 5 billion light years across — would blow that classic model out of the water. In fact, either the researchers' calculations are wrong on this, or scientists will need to radically revise their theories on the evolution of the cosmos.
This discovery reminds us just how small our view of the universe really is and what it contains.
One can apply this new discovery to our recent discussion of our world being a simulation from higher species far, far, far away in space. If we are allowed to break through the fourth wall of our current illusion to find the reality of our existence, then this massive GRB, an electromagnetic event, could be the "projector" of all we know, understand and feel in our lives.
As Daniel observed, the electromagnetics of the island were "off." He could not explain it, but perhaps this was the focal point for the data stream from outside our world. In essence, the island would be the "router" of the illusion we call reality through our world. The light source is our planetary projector which provides us with all the elements of life.
But why would a higher intelligence beam an illusion to Earth? Perhaps, it is a method of augmented reality - - - overlaying additional information inside the heads of lower species. Whether that augmentation is supposed to help raise the consciousness of mankind or hinder its progress is a debate for another day. But it does fit into the notion that human beings, as biochemical computers, could be constantly fed "firmware" updates from their programmers (creators).
The sheer size of our universe is just about unfathomable, so you can imagine the surprise that researchers must have experienced when they recently discovered a structure within our known universe that measures 5 billion light years across. That's more than one-ninth the size of the entire observable universe, and by far the largest structure ever discovered by Earth scientists.
The mysterious structure is so colossal that it could shatter our current understanding of how the universe operates in size and shape.
“If we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe,” said Lajos Balazs, lead author on the paper. “It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all.”
Just what is this massive structure? It's not a single, physical object, but rather a cluster of nine massive galaxies bound together gravitationally, much like how our Milky Way is part of a cluster of galaxies. It was discovered after researchers identified a ring of nine gamma ray bursts (GRBs) that appeared to be at very similar distances from us, each around 7 billion light years away.
GRBs are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe, caused by a supernova. Their detection typically indicates the presence of a galaxy, so all of the GRBs in this ring are believed to each come from a different galaxy. But their close proximity to one another suggests that these galaxies must be linked together. There is only a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance.
A mega-cluster of this size shouldn't be possible, at least not if you think in terms of our current theories. Those theories predict that the universe ought to be relatively uniform on the largest scales, meaning that the sizes of structures shouldn't vary by much. In fact, the theoretical limit to structure size has been calculated at around 1.2 billion light years across.
If the Hungarian-American team's calculations are correct, then this giant new structure-- which measures in at over 5 billion light years across — would blow that classic model out of the water. In fact, either the researchers' calculations are wrong on this, or scientists will need to radically revise their theories on the evolution of the cosmos.
This discovery reminds us just how small our view of the universe really is and what it contains.
One can apply this new discovery to our recent discussion of our world being a simulation from higher species far, far, far away in space. If we are allowed to break through the fourth wall of our current illusion to find the reality of our existence, then this massive GRB, an electromagnetic event, could be the "projector" of all we know, understand and feel in our lives.
As Daniel observed, the electromagnetics of the island were "off." He could not explain it, but perhaps this was the focal point for the data stream from outside our world. In essence, the island would be the "router" of the illusion we call reality through our world. The light source is our planetary projector which provides us with all the elements of life.
But why would a higher intelligence beam an illusion to Earth? Perhaps, it is a method of augmented reality - - - overlaying additional information inside the heads of lower species. Whether that augmentation is supposed to help raise the consciousness of mankind or hinder its progress is a debate for another day. But it does fit into the notion that human beings, as biochemical computers, could be constantly fed "firmware" updates from their programmers (creators).
Saturday, August 8, 2015
WHOLE WORLD SIMULATION PART TWO
There was a fan theory that LOST was just an elaborate computer game. The main characters were merely avatars in computer worlds (which do not have to conform to science, laws of physics or even continuity). Most fans discounted the game theory notion because the series had live actors so it seemed real.
But for a long time, scientists and philosophers have debated our own understanding of the world around us. There has been some traction that everything we know may just be part of a Matrix-style simulation, according to physicists who claim that we could all be part of a giant GAME.
A new theory has suggested that our entire lives and memories may not be real, instead being part of a computer program played by advanced robots, according to Yahoo News article.
The so-called ‘simulation argument’ has been theorized for several years, with noted academics including Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, suggesting that the plot of The Matrix could be closer to real life than we think.
In the sci-fi classic, humans are bred in vats that are fed with simulations that make them believe they are living an ordinary life. Scientists say that we could all be living in the future, and our life in 2015 is nothing more than a series of numbers in a computer program.
It may sound like science fiction but scientists believe they may actually be able to PROVE that what you know isn’t what you know.
Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of artificial intelligence (AI) thinks that there may be tell-tale signs if the programmer of our mass simulation “has made some slips."
He said that some laws of physics that “aren’t quite right” could be the start of being able to prove that the universe is a simulation.
Silas Beane, from the University of Bonn, suggested several years ago that if humans were to build a small-sale simulation of the universe we would be able to identify any constraints. These constraints would include a cut-off in the spectrum of high energy particles - exactly the kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic rays. This would be the start of proving that our universe is not what it seems - and that it is part of a giant construct.
This is an interesting notion because of Daniel's express comments when he arrived at the island, that the light "acted differently" and the spectrum was off. This could be the biggest clue that the island itself was not what we viewed it as, but as another construct (with various other theories such as alternative dimension, time loop, mini-worm hole, alien space craft, different planet through a cosmic gateway, etc.)
These theories are not the first time that humans have debated whether we are actually real - French philosopher Rene Descartes theorized that nothing we perceive is true except our consciousness being aware of itself and its doubts - which is how the phrase ‘I think, therefore I am’ came about.
However, some believe that our own thoughts can also be part of a simulation or program that is being controlled by robots or aliens. The concept of "free will" may be artificial intelligence programming that allows people "choices" from various sets of rational, irrational, logical, illogical, emotional, intellectual, etc.
But what about us as human beings? In the U.S.-U.K series Humans, android AI robots called synths look and act like human beings but they are just complex machines. They are called synths because that is what they are programmed to be; so there is no reason why artificial intelligent machines could be called "humans."
But then what about our own perceptions and senses, like touch, smell, vision? Again, in theory we occupy three dimensional space because that is what our brains process as three dimensional space. WE touch, hold, feel objects because our brain processes the tactile responses from the sensors in our hands and fingertips. At its core, that is merely data being processed by an organic computer module which automatically sends back feedback in the form of conscious recognition of touch, smell or imagines of the world around us.
It does put an introspective question to any human being. What is our true reality?
We may be organic beings, but could some other advanced civilization have created organic computing machines? We could be nanobots in a different universe. There is a basis for that belief because every time a scientist puts a prepared glass plate under a microscope, he will find an invisible world of microbes and viruses which have no perception of our world view. So, logically, in some other world view, we are microbes and viruses to another alien world.
Even our current generation of video games have graphics that begin to rival HD movie films. So the idea that perception is reality is something that everyone thinks about daily at a subconscious level. It is when it reaches a conscious level discussion that things get strange.
In a logic program, the smoke monster may have been not a security system, but a software program to use to combat computer viruses (in the form of evil, destructive character avatars).
But if humans are part of a complex computer program or network, does that put doubt into the meaning of our lives? Perhaps. And that may be the main reason why human beings need to pair bond, to form communities, share resources and values and create religious principles to calm and comfort those desiring a better explanation of life and death. All machines have a useful life expectancy. So do human beings. Creating circuit pathways to lead to productive output is the goal of both man and machine. It may be the reason why some consider humans the greatest machines in history.
But for a long time, scientists and philosophers have debated our own understanding of the world around us. There has been some traction that everything we know may just be part of a Matrix-style simulation, according to physicists who claim that we could all be part of a giant GAME.
A new theory has suggested that our entire lives and memories may not be real, instead being part of a computer program played by advanced robots, according to Yahoo News article.
The so-called ‘simulation argument’ has been theorized for several years, with noted academics including Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, suggesting that the plot of The Matrix could be closer to real life than we think.
In the sci-fi classic, humans are bred in vats that are fed with simulations that make them believe they are living an ordinary life. Scientists say that we could all be living in the future, and our life in 2015 is nothing more than a series of numbers in a computer program.
It may sound like science fiction but scientists believe they may actually be able to PROVE that what you know isn’t what you know.
Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of artificial intelligence (AI) thinks that there may be tell-tale signs if the programmer of our mass simulation “has made some slips."
He said that some laws of physics that “aren’t quite right” could be the start of being able to prove that the universe is a simulation.
Silas Beane, from the University of Bonn, suggested several years ago that if humans were to build a small-sale simulation of the universe we would be able to identify any constraints. These constraints would include a cut-off in the spectrum of high energy particles - exactly the kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic rays. This would be the start of proving that our universe is not what it seems - and that it is part of a giant construct.
This is an interesting notion because of Daniel's express comments when he arrived at the island, that the light "acted differently" and the spectrum was off. This could be the biggest clue that the island itself was not what we viewed it as, but as another construct (with various other theories such as alternative dimension, time loop, mini-worm hole, alien space craft, different planet through a cosmic gateway, etc.)
These theories are not the first time that humans have debated whether we are actually real - French philosopher Rene Descartes theorized that nothing we perceive is true except our consciousness being aware of itself and its doubts - which is how the phrase ‘I think, therefore I am’ came about.
However, some believe that our own thoughts can also be part of a simulation or program that is being controlled by robots or aliens. The concept of "free will" may be artificial intelligence programming that allows people "choices" from various sets of rational, irrational, logical, illogical, emotional, intellectual, etc.
But what about us as human beings? In the U.S.-U.K series Humans, android AI robots called synths look and act like human beings but they are just complex machines. They are called synths because that is what they are programmed to be; so there is no reason why artificial intelligent machines could be called "humans."
But then what about our own perceptions and senses, like touch, smell, vision? Again, in theory we occupy three dimensional space because that is what our brains process as three dimensional space. WE touch, hold, feel objects because our brain processes the tactile responses from the sensors in our hands and fingertips. At its core, that is merely data being processed by an organic computer module which automatically sends back feedback in the form of conscious recognition of touch, smell or imagines of the world around us.
It does put an introspective question to any human being. What is our true reality?
We may be organic beings, but could some other advanced civilization have created organic computing machines? We could be nanobots in a different universe. There is a basis for that belief because every time a scientist puts a prepared glass plate under a microscope, he will find an invisible world of microbes and viruses which have no perception of our world view. So, logically, in some other world view, we are microbes and viruses to another alien world.
Even our current generation of video games have graphics that begin to rival HD movie films. So the idea that perception is reality is something that everyone thinks about daily at a subconscious level. It is when it reaches a conscious level discussion that things get strange.
In a logic program, the smoke monster may have been not a security system, but a software program to use to combat computer viruses (in the form of evil, destructive character avatars).
But if humans are part of a complex computer program or network, does that put doubt into the meaning of our lives? Perhaps. And that may be the main reason why human beings need to pair bond, to form communities, share resources and values and create religious principles to calm and comfort those desiring a better explanation of life and death. All machines have a useful life expectancy. So do human beings. Creating circuit pathways to lead to productive output is the goal of both man and machine. It may be the reason why some consider humans the greatest machines in history.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
WHOLE WORLD SIMULATION PART ONE
The notion that humanity might be living in an artificial reality — a simulated universe — seemed sophomoric, at best science fiction.
However, many scientists and philosophers realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic computer game of sorts, the creation of super-intelligent hackers existing somewhere else, is not a joke. Exploring a "whole-world simulation," Yahoo News reported:
David Brin, sci-fi writer and space scientist, relates the Chinese parable of an emperor dreaming that he was a butterfly dreaming that he was an emperor. In contemporary versions, Brin said, it may be the year 2050 and people are living in a computer simulation of what life was like in the early 21st century — or it may be billions of years from now, and people are in a simulation of what primitive planets and people were once like.
It's like the movie "The Matrix," Bostrom said, except that "instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses."
Bostrum is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his "Simulation Argument" seeks to show that one of three possible scenarios must be true (assuming there are other intelligent civilizations):
All civilizations become extinct before becoming technologically mature;
All technologically mature civilizations lose interest in creating simulations;
Humanity is literally living in a computer simulation.
His point is that all cosmic civilizations either disappear (e.g., destroy themselves) before becoming technologically capable, or all decide not to generate whole-world simulations (e.g., decide such creations are not ethical, or get bored with them). The operative word is "all" — because if even one civilization anywhere in the cosmos could generate such simulations, then simulated worlds would multiply rapidly and almost certainly humanity would be in one.
As technology visionary Ray Kurzweil put it, "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high school student in another universe."
Kurzweil's worldview is based on the profound implications of what happens over time when computing power grows exponentially. To Kurzweil, a precise simulation is not meaningfully different from real reality. Corroborating the evidence that this universe runs on a computer, he says, is that "physical laws are sets of computational processes" and "information is constantly changing, being manipulated, running on some computational substrate." And that would mean, he concluded, "the universe is a computer." Kurzweil said he considers himself to be a "pattern of information."
"I'm a patternist," he said. "I think patterns, which means that information is the fundamental reality."
If people are in a whole-world simulation, how could they know it? Brin suggests a "back door" in the simulation program that would enable the alleged programmers to control people (much like countries accuse each other of installing "back doors" in code to conduct espionage).
"If we are living in a simulation, then everything is software, including every atom in our bodies," Brin said, "and there may be 'back doors' that the programmers left ajar."
Marvin Minsky, a legendary founder of artificial intelligence, to distinguish among three kinds of simulations: (i) brains in vats, (ii) universal simulation as pure software and (iii) universal simulation as real physical stuff.
"It would be very hard to distinguish among those," Minsky said, "unless the programmer has made some slips — if you notice that some laws of physics aren't quite right, if you find rounding-off errors, you might sense some of the grain of the computer showing through."
If that were the case, he says, it would mean that the universe is easier to understand than scientists had imagined, and that they might even find ways to change it.
The thought that this level of reality might not be ultimate reality can be unsettling, but not to Minsky: "Wouldn't it be nice to know that we are part of a larger reality?"
Martin Rees, U.K. Astronomer Royal, is a bold visionary and hard-nosed realist. "Well, it's a bit flaky, but a fascinating idea," he said. "The real question is what are the limits of computing powers."
Astronomers are already doing simulations of parts of universes. "We can't do experiments on stars and galaxies," Rees explained, "but we can have a virtual universe in our computer, and calculate what happens if you crash galaxies together, evolve stars, etc. So, because we can simulate some cosmic features in a gross sense, we have to ask, 'As computers become vastly more powerful, what more could we simulate?'
"It's not crazy to believe that some time in the far future," he said, "there could be computers which could simulate a fairly large fraction of a world."
A prime assumption of all simulation theories is that consciousness — the inner sense of awareness, like the sound of Gershwin or the smell of garlic — can be simulated; in other words, that a replication of the complete physical states of the brain will yield, ipso facto, the complete mental states of the mind. (This direct correspondence usually assumes, unknowingly, the veracity of what's known in philosophy of mind as "identity theory," one among many competing theories seeking to solve the intractable "mind-body problem".) Such a brain-only mechanism to account for consciousness, required for whole-world simulations and promulgated by physicalists.
"That may be the kind of question that would demand a superhuman intelligence to answer," which, Rees said on whether human-level consciousness and self-consciousness can be simulated., "could be forever beyond our capacity."
Physicist Paul Davies has a different take. He uses simulation theory to tease out possible contradictions in the multiple universe (multiverse) theory, which is his countercultural challenge to today's mainstream cosmology.
"If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations," Davies said, "at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And assuming we're just typical observers, then we're overwhelmingly likely to find ourselves in a fake universe, not a real one."
Davies claims that because the theoretical existence of multiple universes is based on the laws of physics in our universe, if this universe is simulated, then its laws of physics are also simulated, which would mean that this universe's physics is a fake. Therefore, Davies reasoned, "We cannot use the argument that the physics in our universe leads to multiple universes, because it also leads to a fake universe with fake physics." That undermines the whole argument that fundamental physics generates multiple universes, because the reasoning collapses in circularity.
Davies concluded, "While multiple universes seem almost inevitable given our understanding of the Big Bang, using them to explain all existence is a dangerous, slippery slope, leading to apparently absurd conclusions."
Five premises to the simulation argument:
(i) Other intelligent civilizations exist;
(ii) their technologies grow exponentially;
(iii) they do not all go extinct;
(iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and
(v) consciousness can be simulated.
If these five premises are true, humanity is likely living in a simulation. The logic seems sound, which means that if you don't accept (or don't want to accept) the conclusion, then you must reject at least one of the premises.
Which to reject? Other intelligent civilizations? Exponential growth of technology?
Not all civilizations going extinct? No simulations ban or barrier? Consciousness simulated?
Whichever you choose, it must apply always, everywhere. For all time. In all universes. No exceptions.
Would the simulation argument relate to theism, the existence of God? Not necessarily.
Bostrum said, "the simulation hypothesis is not an alternative to theism or atheism. It could be a version of either — it's independent of whether God exists." While the simulation argument is "not an attempt to refute theism," he said, it would "imply a weaker form of a creation hypothesis," because the creator-simulators "would have some of the attributes we traditionally associate with God in the sense that they would have created our world."
They would be superintelligent, but they "wouldn't need unlimited or infinite minds." They could "intervene in the world, our experiential world, by manipulating the simulation. So they would have some of the capabilities of omnipotence in the sense that they could change anything they wanted about our world."
So even if this universe looks like it was created, neither scientists nor philosophers nor theologians could easily distinguish between the traditional creator God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.
But that leads to the old regress game and the question of who created the (weaker) creator-simulators.
At some point, the chain of causation must end — although even this, some would dispute.
But because the simulation argument seems to work, what it seems to do is to uncover deep discrepancies, or fundamental flaws, in how people think about deep reality — about this universe, multiple universes, consciousness, and even inferences for and against theism.
However, many scientists and philosophers realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic computer game of sorts, the creation of super-intelligent hackers existing somewhere else, is not a joke. Exploring a "whole-world simulation," Yahoo News reported:
David Brin, sci-fi writer and space scientist, relates the Chinese parable of an emperor dreaming that he was a butterfly dreaming that he was an emperor. In contemporary versions, Brin said, it may be the year 2050 and people are living in a computer simulation of what life was like in the early 21st century — or it may be billions of years from now, and people are in a simulation of what primitive planets and people were once like.
It's like the movie "The Matrix," Bostrom said, except that "instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses."
Bostrum is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his "Simulation Argument" seeks to show that one of three possible scenarios must be true (assuming there are other intelligent civilizations):
All civilizations become extinct before becoming technologically mature;
All technologically mature civilizations lose interest in creating simulations;
Humanity is literally living in a computer simulation.
His point is that all cosmic civilizations either disappear (e.g., destroy themselves) before becoming technologically capable, or all decide not to generate whole-world simulations (e.g., decide such creations are not ethical, or get bored with them). The operative word is "all" — because if even one civilization anywhere in the cosmos could generate such simulations, then simulated worlds would multiply rapidly and almost certainly humanity would be in one.
As technology visionary Ray Kurzweil put it, "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high school student in another universe."
Kurzweil's worldview is based on the profound implications of what happens over time when computing power grows exponentially. To Kurzweil, a precise simulation is not meaningfully different from real reality. Corroborating the evidence that this universe runs on a computer, he says, is that "physical laws are sets of computational processes" and "information is constantly changing, being manipulated, running on some computational substrate." And that would mean, he concluded, "the universe is a computer." Kurzweil said he considers himself to be a "pattern of information."
"I'm a patternist," he said. "I think patterns, which means that information is the fundamental reality."
If people are in a whole-world simulation, how could they know it? Brin suggests a "back door" in the simulation program that would enable the alleged programmers to control people (much like countries accuse each other of installing "back doors" in code to conduct espionage).
"If we are living in a simulation, then everything is software, including every atom in our bodies," Brin said, "and there may be 'back doors' that the programmers left ajar."
Marvin Minsky, a legendary founder of artificial intelligence, to distinguish among three kinds of simulations: (i) brains in vats, (ii) universal simulation as pure software and (iii) universal simulation as real physical stuff.
"It would be very hard to distinguish among those," Minsky said, "unless the programmer has made some slips — if you notice that some laws of physics aren't quite right, if you find rounding-off errors, you might sense some of the grain of the computer showing through."
If that were the case, he says, it would mean that the universe is easier to understand than scientists had imagined, and that they might even find ways to change it.
The thought that this level of reality might not be ultimate reality can be unsettling, but not to Minsky: "Wouldn't it be nice to know that we are part of a larger reality?"
Martin Rees, U.K. Astronomer Royal, is a bold visionary and hard-nosed realist. "Well, it's a bit flaky, but a fascinating idea," he said. "The real question is what are the limits of computing powers."
Astronomers are already doing simulations of parts of universes. "We can't do experiments on stars and galaxies," Rees explained, "but we can have a virtual universe in our computer, and calculate what happens if you crash galaxies together, evolve stars, etc. So, because we can simulate some cosmic features in a gross sense, we have to ask, 'As computers become vastly more powerful, what more could we simulate?'
"It's not crazy to believe that some time in the far future," he said, "there could be computers which could simulate a fairly large fraction of a world."
A prime assumption of all simulation theories is that consciousness — the inner sense of awareness, like the sound of Gershwin or the smell of garlic — can be simulated; in other words, that a replication of the complete physical states of the brain will yield, ipso facto, the complete mental states of the mind. (This direct correspondence usually assumes, unknowingly, the veracity of what's known in philosophy of mind as "identity theory," one among many competing theories seeking to solve the intractable "mind-body problem".) Such a brain-only mechanism to account for consciousness, required for whole-world simulations and promulgated by physicalists.
"That may be the kind of question that would demand a superhuman intelligence to answer," which, Rees said on whether human-level consciousness and self-consciousness can be simulated., "could be forever beyond our capacity."
Physicist Paul Davies has a different take. He uses simulation theory to tease out possible contradictions in the multiple universe (multiverse) theory, which is his countercultural challenge to today's mainstream cosmology.
"If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations," Davies said, "at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And assuming we're just typical observers, then we're overwhelmingly likely to find ourselves in a fake universe, not a real one."
Davies claims that because the theoretical existence of multiple universes is based on the laws of physics in our universe, if this universe is simulated, then its laws of physics are also simulated, which would mean that this universe's physics is a fake. Therefore, Davies reasoned, "We cannot use the argument that the physics in our universe leads to multiple universes, because it also leads to a fake universe with fake physics." That undermines the whole argument that fundamental physics generates multiple universes, because the reasoning collapses in circularity.
Davies concluded, "While multiple universes seem almost inevitable given our understanding of the Big Bang, using them to explain all existence is a dangerous, slippery slope, leading to apparently absurd conclusions."
Five premises to the simulation argument:
(i) Other intelligent civilizations exist;
(ii) their technologies grow exponentially;
(iii) they do not all go extinct;
(iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and
(v) consciousness can be simulated.
If these five premises are true, humanity is likely living in a simulation. The logic seems sound, which means that if you don't accept (or don't want to accept) the conclusion, then you must reject at least one of the premises.
Which to reject? Other intelligent civilizations? Exponential growth of technology?
Not all civilizations going extinct? No simulations ban or barrier? Consciousness simulated?
Whichever you choose, it must apply always, everywhere. For all time. In all universes. No exceptions.
Would the simulation argument relate to theism, the existence of God? Not necessarily.
Bostrum said, "the simulation hypothesis is not an alternative to theism or atheism. It could be a version of either — it's independent of whether God exists." While the simulation argument is "not an attempt to refute theism," he said, it would "imply a weaker form of a creation hypothesis," because the creator-simulators "would have some of the attributes we traditionally associate with God in the sense that they would have created our world."
They would be superintelligent, but they "wouldn't need unlimited or infinite minds." They could "intervene in the world, our experiential world, by manipulating the simulation. So they would have some of the capabilities of omnipotence in the sense that they could change anything they wanted about our world."
So even if this universe looks like it was created, neither scientists nor philosophers nor theologians could easily distinguish between the traditional creator God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.
But that leads to the old regress game and the question of who created the (weaker) creator-simulators.
At some point, the chain of causation must end — although even this, some would dispute.
But because the simulation argument seems to work, what it seems to do is to uncover deep discrepancies, or fundamental flaws, in how people think about deep reality — about this universe, multiple universes, consciousness, and even inferences for and against theism.
Friday, July 24, 2015
DELUSIONS
There is a difference between delusions and illusions as discussed in a recent Psychology Today article.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
REALITY SHRUGGED
"I'm not strange,
weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from
yours." - - - Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.
In the 1957 novel, author Ayn Rand depicts a dystopian United States, wherein many of society's most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, in response to aggressive new regulations, whereupon most vital industries collapse. The title is a reference to Atlas, a Titan, "the giant who holds the world on his shoulders". The significance of this reference appears in a conversation between the characters in which one asks another what advice he would give Atlas upon seeing that "the greater [the titan's] effort, the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders". His own response: "To shrug."
The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism.[ In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, capitalism and the failures of governmental coercion.
The story of Atlas Shrugged dramatically expresses Rand's advocacy of "rational selfishness," whereby all of the principal virtues and vices are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival (or a failure to apply it): rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride. Rand's characters often personify her view of the archetypes of various schools of philosophy for living and working in the world. A reviewer wrote, "Rand rejected the literary convention that depth and plausibility demand characters who are naturalistic replicas of the kinds of people we meet in everyday life, uttering everyday dialogue and pursuing everyday values. But she also rejected the notion that characters should be symbolic rather than realistic."
Rand herself stated, "My characters are never symbols, they are merely men in sharper focus than the audience can see with unaided sight. . . . My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings."
In addition to the plot's more obvious statements about the significance of industrialists to society, and the sharp contrast to Marxism's value of labor theory to the explicit conflict is used by Rand to draw wider philosophical conclusions, both implicit in the plot and via the characters' own statements to caricature fascism, socialism, communism and any state intervention in society, as allowing poor people to "leech" the hard-earned wealth of the rich; and Rand contends that the outcome of any individual's life is purely a function of its ability, and that any individual could overcome adverse circumstances, given ability and intelligence.
The concept "sanction of the victim" is defined as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the "sin" of creating values". Accordingly, throughout Atlas Shrugged, numerous characters are frustrated by this sanction, as when one appears duty-bound to support his family, despite their hostility toward him; later, the principle is that somebody's got to be sacrificed. Characters note "If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain;" "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us;" and, "I saw that evil was impotent ... and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it."
Is the island's own reality akin to a Cheshire Cat mash up with Rand's concepts? The permeation of evil, the lawlessness against control and structure, and the selfishness of the main characters as a means of survival are all deep roots in the LOST plot lines. The theme of a "sacrificial" victim, such as Charlie and his warning to Desmond, or Jack's final breath in the bamboo grove, is a homage to the forces of evil and not a heroic conduit to paradise. For the weight of the series was not carried on the shoulders of one titan character, but shoved through the meat grinder of selfish evil intent.
In the 1957 novel, author Ayn Rand depicts a dystopian United States, wherein many of society's most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, in response to aggressive new regulations, whereupon most vital industries collapse. The title is a reference to Atlas, a Titan, "the giant who holds the world on his shoulders". The significance of this reference appears in a conversation between the characters in which one asks another what advice he would give Atlas upon seeing that "the greater [the titan's] effort, the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders". His own response: "To shrug."
The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism.[ In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, capitalism and the failures of governmental coercion.
The story of Atlas Shrugged dramatically expresses Rand's advocacy of "rational selfishness," whereby all of the principal virtues and vices are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival (or a failure to apply it): rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride. Rand's characters often personify her view of the archetypes of various schools of philosophy for living and working in the world. A reviewer wrote, "Rand rejected the literary convention that depth and plausibility demand characters who are naturalistic replicas of the kinds of people we meet in everyday life, uttering everyday dialogue and pursuing everyday values. But she also rejected the notion that characters should be symbolic rather than realistic."
Rand herself stated, "My characters are never symbols, they are merely men in sharper focus than the audience can see with unaided sight. . . . My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings."
In addition to the plot's more obvious statements about the significance of industrialists to society, and the sharp contrast to Marxism's value of labor theory to the explicit conflict is used by Rand to draw wider philosophical conclusions, both implicit in the plot and via the characters' own statements to caricature fascism, socialism, communism and any state intervention in society, as allowing poor people to "leech" the hard-earned wealth of the rich; and Rand contends that the outcome of any individual's life is purely a function of its ability, and that any individual could overcome adverse circumstances, given ability and intelligence.
The concept "sanction of the victim" is defined as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the "sin" of creating values". Accordingly, throughout Atlas Shrugged, numerous characters are frustrated by this sanction, as when one appears duty-bound to support his family, despite their hostility toward him; later, the principle is that somebody's got to be sacrificed. Characters note "If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain;" "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us;" and, "I saw that evil was impotent ... and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it."
Is the island's own reality akin to a Cheshire Cat mash up with Rand's concepts? The permeation of evil, the lawlessness against control and structure, and the selfishness of the main characters as a means of survival are all deep roots in the LOST plot lines. The theme of a "sacrificial" victim, such as Charlie and his warning to Desmond, or Jack's final breath in the bamboo grove, is a homage to the forces of evil and not a heroic conduit to paradise. For the weight of the series was not carried on the shoulders of one titan character, but shoved through the meat grinder of selfish evil intent.
Thursday, December 18, 2014
THE LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE
Throughout human existence, mankind has been aware of a few absolute truths: people are born and people die.
It is how one perceives life is what has changed over the tens of thousands of years. In the past, ancient cultures mostly saw their lives in the cycles of Nature. Every year, like the seasons, would follow birth, harvest, death and rebirth. But in modern societies, the view is that life is a linear plane where each year of existence is another marker on a ruler.
Also, it is interesting that ancient cultures believed that there were present gateways from their creator gods to themselves on Earth. Ancient people looked to the stars in the heavens as the source of their own lives, including seeing the Milky Way as a portal to everlasting life. Modern religions have adapted some of those past beliefs into a system of morality, where the human spirit lives on after mortal death on Earth, to be transported to a new realm of existence (heaven or hell).
But in this modern view, there is debate on whether there are intermediate steps in the transition from human to soul spirit. The ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul is divided at death so one part has to suffer judgment through a long, dangerous journey through the underworld with the hope to be reunited with its other part in paradise. Modern theology tends to state that if a person is good in his or her life, they will be rewarded in some fashion: external bliss in heaven in angelic form or reborn as another person or life form on Earth.
It is the transitory nature of life to death to potential rebirth that keeps the human mind from going completely mad at the prospect of nothingness at the end game.
So how could LOST fit into this existence time line? The island was supposed to be the place of life, death and rebirth. It did not have the physics of an actual Earth island, so it is assumed that it is either a supernatural place or overlaps into another dimension of time-space. In other words, the island could be the space between human life and death.
For some viewers, that intermediate place makes sense. The characters pre-815 back stories show edtheir lives, troubles and sins. The sideways world showed the waiting room in the after life. The bridge between the two different existences had to be the island. It goes to show then that the characters could still be "alive" on the transitional island realm, but not able to "move on" to the after life unless certain conditions were met.
If you then view the island as a land of make believe, not of Earth but its own unique sphere of existence, it is easier to gloss over the factual inaccuracies or inconsistent story plot points because none of those really matter in a place which has no normal rules.
It is how one perceives life is what has changed over the tens of thousands of years. In the past, ancient cultures mostly saw their lives in the cycles of Nature. Every year, like the seasons, would follow birth, harvest, death and rebirth. But in modern societies, the view is that life is a linear plane where each year of existence is another marker on a ruler.
Also, it is interesting that ancient cultures believed that there were present gateways from their creator gods to themselves on Earth. Ancient people looked to the stars in the heavens as the source of their own lives, including seeing the Milky Way as a portal to everlasting life. Modern religions have adapted some of those past beliefs into a system of morality, where the human spirit lives on after mortal death on Earth, to be transported to a new realm of existence (heaven or hell).
But in this modern view, there is debate on whether there are intermediate steps in the transition from human to soul spirit. The ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul is divided at death so one part has to suffer judgment through a long, dangerous journey through the underworld with the hope to be reunited with its other part in paradise. Modern theology tends to state that if a person is good in his or her life, they will be rewarded in some fashion: external bliss in heaven in angelic form or reborn as another person or life form on Earth.
It is the transitory nature of life to death to potential rebirth that keeps the human mind from going completely mad at the prospect of nothingness at the end game.
So how could LOST fit into this existence time line? The island was supposed to be the place of life, death and rebirth. It did not have the physics of an actual Earth island, so it is assumed that it is either a supernatural place or overlaps into another dimension of time-space. In other words, the island could be the space between human life and death.
For some viewers, that intermediate place makes sense. The characters pre-815 back stories show edtheir lives, troubles and sins. The sideways world showed the waiting room in the after life. The bridge between the two different existences had to be the island. It goes to show then that the characters could still be "alive" on the transitional island realm, but not able to "move on" to the after life unless certain conditions were met.
If you then view the island as a land of make believe, not of Earth but its own unique sphere of existence, it is easier to gloss over the factual inaccuracies or inconsistent story plot points because none of those really matter in a place which has no normal rules.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
CROSS OVER
In television, the concept of a "cross over" is where a star from one show makes a guest appearance on another show, in character.
We have a similar concept in the LOST saga between the characters' island/flashback lives and the sideways presentation. There are some apparent irreconcilable differences.
For example, Jack.
In both worlds, Jack is a successful spinal surgeon.
In both worlds, Jack has had serious issues with his father.
In both worlds, Jack has gone to Australia to bring his father's body back home.
In the island world, Jack is divorced from Sarah. He is alone. He only has his mother left.
In the sideways, Jack is divorced from Juliet. He is not alone, he has his own son David.
For example, Locke.
In both worlds, Locke is paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair.
In the island world, Locke is bitter and hateful against his father for causing his injuries.
In the sideways, Locke has a relationship with his catatonic father.
In the island world, Locke has ruined every relationship he had including the one with Helen.
In the sideways, Helen is by his side as his loving spouse.
In the island world, Locke has bounced from meaningless jobs and has no career path.
In the sideways, Locke is a content substitute teacher who befriends a meek teacher, Ben.
There is such a continental divide between the character's foundational base in the sideways world as to question which realm is actually the true one.
It is more likely that the island/flashbacks are real because we saw them unfold for five seasons. The sideways world would be a collective fantasy, dream world for the island characters to deal with their anxieties, fears, stress and depression.
However, there is a possibility that the sideways world is the true foundation because the characters in that realm were basically good people living normal, good lives. And is that not the fundamental philosophy of all religions that good people can go to heaven or paradise after death? The sideways world was a place of death where the souls of the characters got together in the church. But if their shown lives were continuations of their true past lives (which makes some common sense if their souls did not want to acknowledge their own mortality), then the island and flashbacks were the collective fantasy and dream world created by the characters to continue to experience their fantasy lives or come to terms with their own deaths.
So, which cross over is correct?
In a linear thought process, the real characters crashed on the island and the sideways realm was mere purgatory fantasy holding pen until everyone lived out their lives on Earth.
In a non-linear thought process, the real characters sideways back stories were true, but their nightmare-fantasy-escapist adventures were captured in the island stories. Just like when people go on holiday, they can create new persona's or let their guard down to live a different kind of lifestyle.
So, one can cut and paste the various character time frames as follows:
SIDEWAYS BACK STORIES = TRUTH.
Island Back Stories = Fantasy/Adventure/Dreams/Nightmares
ISLAND STORIES = TRUTH
Sideways Stories = Fantasy Continuation of Lives until acknowledgement of own deaths.
This compares to the linear approach:
ISLAND BACK STORIES = TRUTH
ISLAND STORIES = TRUTH
Sideways Back Stories = Fantasy/Adventure/Dreams/Nightmares
Sideways Stories = Irrelevant Filler until all survivors died in real life.
The former approach is much more complex, which makes it highly unlikely thought process for the show's writers who seemingly too the easy way out in throwing a sideways after life to clean up the plot.
We have a similar concept in the LOST saga between the characters' island/flashback lives and the sideways presentation. There are some apparent irreconcilable differences.
For example, Jack.
In both worlds, Jack is a successful spinal surgeon.
In both worlds, Jack has had serious issues with his father.
In both worlds, Jack has gone to Australia to bring his father's body back home.
In the island world, Jack is divorced from Sarah. He is alone. He only has his mother left.
In the sideways, Jack is divorced from Juliet. He is not alone, he has his own son David.
For example, Locke.
In both worlds, Locke is paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair.
In the island world, Locke is bitter and hateful against his father for causing his injuries.
In the sideways, Locke has a relationship with his catatonic father.
In the island world, Locke has ruined every relationship he had including the one with Helen.
In the sideways, Helen is by his side as his loving spouse.
In the island world, Locke has bounced from meaningless jobs and has no career path.
In the sideways, Locke is a content substitute teacher who befriends a meek teacher, Ben.
There is such a continental divide between the character's foundational base in the sideways world as to question which realm is actually the true one.
It is more likely that the island/flashbacks are real because we saw them unfold for five seasons. The sideways world would be a collective fantasy, dream world for the island characters to deal with their anxieties, fears, stress and depression.
However, there is a possibility that the sideways world is the true foundation because the characters in that realm were basically good people living normal, good lives. And is that not the fundamental philosophy of all religions that good people can go to heaven or paradise after death? The sideways world was a place of death where the souls of the characters got together in the church. But if their shown lives were continuations of their true past lives (which makes some common sense if their souls did not want to acknowledge their own mortality), then the island and flashbacks were the collective fantasy and dream world created by the characters to continue to experience their fantasy lives or come to terms with their own deaths.
So, which cross over is correct?
In a linear thought process, the real characters crashed on the island and the sideways realm was mere purgatory fantasy holding pen until everyone lived out their lives on Earth.
In a non-linear thought process, the real characters sideways back stories were true, but their nightmare-fantasy-escapist adventures were captured in the island stories. Just like when people go on holiday, they can create new persona's or let their guard down to live a different kind of lifestyle.
So, one can cut and paste the various character time frames as follows:
SIDEWAYS BACK STORIES = TRUTH.
Island Back Stories = Fantasy/Adventure/Dreams/Nightmares
ISLAND STORIES = TRUTH
Sideways Stories = Fantasy Continuation of Lives until acknowledgement of own deaths.
This compares to the linear approach:
ISLAND BACK STORIES = TRUTH
ISLAND STORIES = TRUTH
Sideways Back Stories = Fantasy/Adventure/Dreams/Nightmares
Sideways Stories = Irrelevant Filler until all survivors died in real life.
The former approach is much more complex, which makes it highly unlikely thought process for the show's writers who seemingly too the easy way out in throwing a sideways after life to clean up the plot.
Monday, August 11, 2014
THE FUTURE IS COMING SOON
One small idea in the theme of mental or computer game theories of LOST was that what we were show on the television was "Avatar" like simulations in a virtual reality setting. \
Now science is coming through the sci-fi concepts to add another theory to the show's premise: robotic brain functions.
CNET reports IBM today unveiled what it's calling the world's first neurosynaptic computer chip, a processor that mimics the human brain's computing abilities and power efficiency.
Known as TrueNorth, IBM's chip could cram supercomputer-like powers into a microprocessor the size of a postage stamp. Rather than solving problems through brute-force mathematical calculations, like today's processors, it was designed to understand its environment, handle ambiguity, and take action in real time and in context. Plus, it could be among the most power-efficient chips in the history of computing, enabling new types of mobile apps and computing services, IBM principal investigator and senior manager Dharmendra Modha said in an interview.
Modeled after the human brain, the TrueNorth chip incorporates 5.4 billion transistors, the most IBM has ever put on a chip. It also features 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses. That's far lower than the 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion to 150 trillion human brain synapses but still enough, Modha said, to run devices that could, for example, proactively issue tsunami alerts, do oil-spill monitoring, or enforce shipping lane rules. And all that happens while consuming just 70 milliwatts of power, about the same as a hearing aid.
The TrueNorth chip is the core element of IBM's cognitive computing program, which is known as SyNapse.
IBM thinks other potential applications include powering small search-and-rescue robots; helping vision-impaired people move around safely; and automatically distinguishing between voices in a meeting and creating accurate transcripts for each speaker.
As with the leading question in the Terminator franchise, what happens if computers get the same brain processing skills of human beings - - - do they become self-aware? And if this realization is true, then do robotic brains begin to use "emotions" to help process information?
Then we get to the dream theories of LOST. Some believe that all the action in the series was inside the dreams of a character (most likely Hurley). But if one goes Ghost in the Shell, one can postulate that if robots had human brain capacity, then they could also dream. Then, what would robots dream about? Would they base their programs on human literature, culture, television and movie cliches? If so, they could dream a realistic adventure series like LOST.
Now science is coming through the sci-fi concepts to add another theory to the show's premise: robotic brain functions.
CNET reports IBM today unveiled what it's calling the world's first neurosynaptic computer chip, a processor that mimics the human brain's computing abilities and power efficiency.
Known as TrueNorth, IBM's chip could cram supercomputer-like powers into a microprocessor the size of a postage stamp. Rather than solving problems through brute-force mathematical calculations, like today's processors, it was designed to understand its environment, handle ambiguity, and take action in real time and in context. Plus, it could be among the most power-efficient chips in the history of computing, enabling new types of mobile apps and computing services, IBM principal investigator and senior manager Dharmendra Modha said in an interview.
Modeled after the human brain, the TrueNorth chip incorporates 5.4 billion transistors, the most IBM has ever put on a chip. It also features 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses. That's far lower than the 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion to 150 trillion human brain synapses but still enough, Modha said, to run devices that could, for example, proactively issue tsunami alerts, do oil-spill monitoring, or enforce shipping lane rules. And all that happens while consuming just 70 milliwatts of power, about the same as a hearing aid.
The TrueNorth chip is the core element of IBM's cognitive computing program, which is known as SyNapse.
IBM thinks other potential applications include powering small search-and-rescue robots; helping vision-impaired people move around safely; and automatically distinguishing between voices in a meeting and creating accurate transcripts for each speaker.
As with the leading question in the Terminator franchise, what happens if computers get the same brain processing skills of human beings - - - do they become self-aware? And if this realization is true, then do robotic brains begin to use "emotions" to help process information?
Then we get to the dream theories of LOST. Some believe that all the action in the series was inside the dreams of a character (most likely Hurley). But if one goes Ghost in the Shell, one can postulate that if robots had human brain capacity, then they could also dream. Then, what would robots dream about? Would they base their programs on human literature, culture, television and movie cliches? If so, they could dream a realistic adventure series like LOST.
Friday, August 8, 2014
TIME SHIFTS
On another tangent on the theme of Time, if one overlays the pivot points of the series time lines around the Flight 815 trip, this comes into focus:
One thing you notice immediately is that the sideways time line starts at two different points on the main island story time line. The sideways beginning point is the 2004 safe landing at LAX, but in the island time line the arrival is 7 days before the island time line ends in 2007, more than three years later in that relative time frame. Since island time memories were the key to the characters revelations in the sideways world, one can conclude that the sideways time line is not chronological.
Now, when the island time lines reunified, the island events lasted another 14 days; while concurrently the sideways time events lasted only 7 days. But even those characters, like Locke, who died before the time merger, retained their memories in the sideways world which apparently was "created" by the island time lines merging after the Incident.
What fed the strong personal memories that created the sideways holding station? One could assume that it is the time riff itself that caused strong emotional bonds to be severed (and thus strongly remembered) until they could meet again. This philosophical approach parallels the ancient Egyptian burial ritual where the soul and body are separated then reunited in the after life. So the concept of Time was not really actual time in the show's construction, by a emotional capsule to capture the strong character bonds in order for them to good friends to help them move on in the after life. Perhaps there is an alternative time for a collective soul to acquire enough life force energy in order to make it to the next level of existence.
Now, when the island time lines reunified, the island events lasted another 14 days; while concurrently the sideways time events lasted only 7 days. But even those characters, like Locke, who died before the time merger, retained their memories in the sideways world which apparently was "created" by the island time lines merging after the Incident.
What fed the strong personal memories that created the sideways holding station? One could assume that it is the time riff itself that caused strong emotional bonds to be severed (and thus strongly remembered) until they could meet again. This philosophical approach parallels the ancient Egyptian burial ritual where the soul and body are separated then reunited in the after life. So the concept of Time was not really actual time in the show's construction, by a emotional capsule to capture the strong character bonds in order for them to good friends to help them move on in the after life. Perhaps there is an alternative time for a collective soul to acquire enough life force energy in order to make it to the next level of existence.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
ALTERED REALITY STUDY
The BBC reported on a recent study that has LOST like aspects to altered reality, the observation of time and how certain people's brains may view time differently. It is something scientists refer to as "temporal trickery." The brain apparently freezes motion to make the world around you slow down.
The concept that certain people see things differently is not new. Professional athletes such as baseball players have keen eyesight and perception to pick up the spin and location of a 95 mph fastball within nanoseconds of release. Ballet dancers train their brain to allow them to perform pirouettes without feeling dizzy.
In a case reported in the NeuroCase journal, doctors recount the experience of a patient who one day had a headache, went to take a warm shower to relax but found himself staring at the water droplets hanging in mid air like something out of the Matrix movies. The patient said he could see each droplet hanging in front of him, distorted by the pressure of the air rushing past. The effect, he recalls, was very similar to the way the bullets travelled in the Matrix movies. “It was like a high-speed film, slowed down.”
The next day, the patient went to hospital, where doctors found that he had suffered an aneurysm. The experience was soon overshadowed by the more immediate threat to his health, but in a follow-up appointment, he happened to mention what happened to his neurologist, Fred Ovsiew at Northwestern University in Chicago, who was struck by the vivid descriptions. “He was a very bright guy, and very eloquent” says Ovsiew, who recently wrote about Baker in the journal article.
What authors, scientists, doctors and individuals observe in daily life is an assumption that time flows at the same rate for everyone; that time is a constant of nature and physics. But what if that assumption is wrong, or it has variables.
It’s easy to assume that time flows at the same rate for everybody, but experiences of the patient show that a person's continuous stream of consciousness is a fragile illusion, stitched together by the brain’s clever editing. By studying what happens during such extreme events, researchers are revealing how and why the brain plays these temporal tricks – and in some circumstances, they suggest, all of us can experience "time warping."
Although the journal's subject is the most dramatic case, a smattering of strikingly similar accounts can be found, intermittently, in medical literature. There are reports of time speeding up – so called “zeitraffer” phenomenon – and also more fragmentary experiences called “akinetopsia”, in which motion momentarily stops. Such experiences almost always accompany problems like epilepsy or stroke.
The question is why a person's condition affects time perception. Some clues could come from studies that have attempted to pinpoint the regions responsible for our perception of time. Of particular interest is an area of the visual cortex, called V5. This region, which lies towards the back of the skull, has long been known to detect the motion of objects, but perhaps it has a more general role in measuring the passing of time. When Domenica Bueti and colleagues at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland zapped the area with a magnetic field to knock out its activity, her subjects found it tricky to do two things: they struggled to track the motion of dots on a screen, as would be expected, but also found it hard to estimate how long some blue dots appeared on the screen. One explanation for this double-failure is that our motion perception system has its own stopwatch, recording how fast things are moving across our vision – and when this is disrupted by brain injury, the world stands still. For the journal patient, stepping into the shower might have exacerbated the problem, since the warm water would have drawn the blood away from the brain to the extremities of the body, further disturbing the brain’s processing.
Another explanation comes from the discovery that our brain records its perceptions in discrete “snapshots," like the frames of a film reel. “The healthy brain reconstructs the experience and glues together the different frames,” saysresearchers at the French Centre for Brain and Cognition Research, “but if brain damage destroys the glue, you might only see the snapshots.” We may all experience the normal smooth picture breaking down occasionally. For starters, if you’ve ever looked at overtaking cars on the motorway, their wheels appear to be standing still. This happens because the brain’s intermittent snapshots fail to capture the wheel’s motion fully. If, for example, it has made a full rotation between each “frame," it will seem to be in exactly the same position each snapshot, giving the illusion that it is stationary.
And users of LSD often report “visual trails” following moving objects, a bit like the trails of bullets in The Matrix movie. VanRullen suspects this might arise because the brain "overlaps" so sensory snapshots, rather than refreshing its picture anew to capture the actual motion.
Reports of time standing still are also common during a life-threatening accident; in one survey of people who had skirted close to death, more than 70% reported the feeling that the event occurred in slow motion. Some researchers claim that they are simply an artifact of memory, since intense emotions led people to remember more details, so that we believe that the event lasted for longer only in hindsight. But the descriptions certainly sound close to those reported by the neurological patients, suggesting there may be some overlap. In stressful situations, many subjects also report abnormally quick thinking. As one pilot, who’d faced a plane crash in the Vietnam War, put it: “when the nose-wheel strut collapsed I vividly recalled, in a matter of about three seconds, over a dozen actions necessary to successful recovery of flight attitude." Reviewing the case studies and available scientific research on the matter concludes that stress hormones trigger an automatic brain mechanism that may speed up the brain's internal information processing to help it handle a life or death situation. “Our thoughts and initiation of movements become faster – but because we are working faster, the external world appears to slow down,” researchers says. It is even possible that some athletes havetrained themselves to create a time warp on demand; surfers, for instance, can often adjust their angle in the split second it takes to launch off steep waves, as the water rises overhead.
For the journal subject, the experience was a one-off, and after surgery to remove the damaged blood vessels, he has now made a full recovery. The experience of time freezing around him, meanwhile, has given him new wonder at the fragility of our conscious experiences. “It was a really concrete example of how something very localised in brain can change your whole perception of the world,” he says. “One minute I was fine, the next minute I was in an altered reality.”
All of the elements of time warping, slowing down events in a life or death situation, and medical conditions affecting the brain and its processing, were part of the fabric of the LOST story. Real science has opened up the possibility that the altered reality that the main characters experienced "on the island" may have been caused or contributed by brain trauma, illness and/or massive stress hormones released by a person. So the show could have been set in the time altered illusion inside someone's mind during a major stressful event, such as a plane crash.
The concept that certain people see things differently is not new. Professional athletes such as baseball players have keen eyesight and perception to pick up the spin and location of a 95 mph fastball within nanoseconds of release. Ballet dancers train their brain to allow them to perform pirouettes without feeling dizzy.
In a case reported in the NeuroCase journal, doctors recount the experience of a patient who one day had a headache, went to take a warm shower to relax but found himself staring at the water droplets hanging in mid air like something out of the Matrix movies. The patient said he could see each droplet hanging in front of him, distorted by the pressure of the air rushing past. The effect, he recalls, was very similar to the way the bullets travelled in the Matrix movies. “It was like a high-speed film, slowed down.”
The next day, the patient went to hospital, where doctors found that he had suffered an aneurysm. The experience was soon overshadowed by the more immediate threat to his health, but in a follow-up appointment, he happened to mention what happened to his neurologist, Fred Ovsiew at Northwestern University in Chicago, who was struck by the vivid descriptions. “He was a very bright guy, and very eloquent” says Ovsiew, who recently wrote about Baker in the journal article.
What authors, scientists, doctors and individuals observe in daily life is an assumption that time flows at the same rate for everyone; that time is a constant of nature and physics. But what if that assumption is wrong, or it has variables.
It’s easy to assume that time flows at the same rate for everybody, but experiences of the patient show that a person's continuous stream of consciousness is a fragile illusion, stitched together by the brain’s clever editing. By studying what happens during such extreme events, researchers are revealing how and why the brain plays these temporal tricks – and in some circumstances, they suggest, all of us can experience "time warping."
Although the journal's subject is the most dramatic case, a smattering of strikingly similar accounts can be found, intermittently, in medical literature. There are reports of time speeding up – so called “zeitraffer” phenomenon – and also more fragmentary experiences called “akinetopsia”, in which motion momentarily stops. Such experiences almost always accompany problems like epilepsy or stroke.
The question is why a person's condition affects time perception. Some clues could come from studies that have attempted to pinpoint the regions responsible for our perception of time. Of particular interest is an area of the visual cortex, called V5. This region, which lies towards the back of the skull, has long been known to detect the motion of objects, but perhaps it has a more general role in measuring the passing of time. When Domenica Bueti and colleagues at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland zapped the area with a magnetic field to knock out its activity, her subjects found it tricky to do two things: they struggled to track the motion of dots on a screen, as would be expected, but also found it hard to estimate how long some blue dots appeared on the screen. One explanation for this double-failure is that our motion perception system has its own stopwatch, recording how fast things are moving across our vision – and when this is disrupted by brain injury, the world stands still. For the journal patient, stepping into the shower might have exacerbated the problem, since the warm water would have drawn the blood away from the brain to the extremities of the body, further disturbing the brain’s processing.
Another explanation comes from the discovery that our brain records its perceptions in discrete “snapshots," like the frames of a film reel. “The healthy brain reconstructs the experience and glues together the different frames,” saysresearchers at the French Centre for Brain and Cognition Research, “but if brain damage destroys the glue, you might only see the snapshots.” We may all experience the normal smooth picture breaking down occasionally. For starters, if you’ve ever looked at overtaking cars on the motorway, their wheels appear to be standing still. This happens because the brain’s intermittent snapshots fail to capture the wheel’s motion fully. If, for example, it has made a full rotation between each “frame," it will seem to be in exactly the same position each snapshot, giving the illusion that it is stationary.
And users of LSD often report “visual trails” following moving objects, a bit like the trails of bullets in The Matrix movie. VanRullen suspects this might arise because the brain "overlaps" so sensory snapshots, rather than refreshing its picture anew to capture the actual motion.
Reports of time standing still are also common during a life-threatening accident; in one survey of people who had skirted close to death, more than 70% reported the feeling that the event occurred in slow motion. Some researchers claim that they are simply an artifact of memory, since intense emotions led people to remember more details, so that we believe that the event lasted for longer only in hindsight. But the descriptions certainly sound close to those reported by the neurological patients, suggesting there may be some overlap. In stressful situations, many subjects also report abnormally quick thinking. As one pilot, who’d faced a plane crash in the Vietnam War, put it: “when the nose-wheel strut collapsed I vividly recalled, in a matter of about three seconds, over a dozen actions necessary to successful recovery of flight attitude." Reviewing the case studies and available scientific research on the matter concludes that stress hormones trigger an automatic brain mechanism that may speed up the brain's internal information processing to help it handle a life or death situation. “Our thoughts and initiation of movements become faster – but because we are working faster, the external world appears to slow down,” researchers says. It is even possible that some athletes havetrained themselves to create a time warp on demand; surfers, for instance, can often adjust their angle in the split second it takes to launch off steep waves, as the water rises overhead.
For the journal subject, the experience was a one-off, and after surgery to remove the damaged blood vessels, he has now made a full recovery. The experience of time freezing around him, meanwhile, has given him new wonder at the fragility of our conscious experiences. “It was a really concrete example of how something very localised in brain can change your whole perception of the world,” he says. “One minute I was fine, the next minute I was in an altered reality.”
All of the elements of time warping, slowing down events in a life or death situation, and medical conditions affecting the brain and its processing, were part of the fabric of the LOST story. Real science has opened up the possibility that the altered reality that the main characters experienced "on the island" may have been caused or contributed by brain trauma, illness and/or massive stress hormones released by a person. So the show could have been set in the time altered illusion inside someone's mind during a major stressful event, such as a plane crash.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
OF THE CENTURY
Media editors like to reconstitute old stories on their anniversary dates, and throw the banner "something of the century" in order to get views.
We have passed the anniversary of the alleged "Trial of the Century," the O.J. Simpson murder case.
It is only mildly debatable of what the facts of the case disclosed to the public; but there are still a divide on whether O.J. was the killer of his estranged wife. He was found innocent by a criminal jury but found guilty in a civil wrongful death suit (in which the burden of proof was less).
Simpson sits today in a Nevada prison on an unrelated conviction.
The Simpson case does show America at its best and its worst. And television was the center piece of this cultural roller coaster ride.
Simpson was a star football player. He was a powerful running back who set records in the NFL when pro football was just starting to make its inroads onto American television viewing habits on Sunday afternoons. Sundays were the traditional day of rest; family time not television viewing time. Simpson's mad dashes for touchdowns helped solidify football as the new American pastime.
Simpson was a celebrity. He got national commercials. He was cast in movie roles. He was living the American dream. He was rich, successful, and had the perks of stardom even after his football career was over.
Just as the media likes to build up celebrity stories, it likes to tear them down.
When the slow speed Bronco chase was shown live on national TV, where a fleeing O.J. was attempting to avoid an arrest warrant, the birth of the new celebrity trial had began. This domino led to the LA trial being televised nationally. It led to attorneys playing to the camera and not to the court. It led to an extremely drawn out soap opera that in any other non-televised courtroom would have been slapped down to a one week trial at best. But the weeks droned on because it was "free" programming for the cable network "news" channels who were in the infancy of building audiences. It spawned a cottage industry of legal "analysts" doing play by play and color commentary like the trial was a football game. This led to the current malaise of over analysis and tabloid coverage of any legal case on television.
In some respects, the "reality" of a real man on trial for "real" murders was something that TV executives found "compelling" television. The concept of "reality" television was born in the midst of the muddy gray areas of the situation. Witnesses became quasi-celebrities which birthed the cable culture of the D-list celebrity who is famous for doing next to nothing. In certain respects, this was also the dawn of being rewarded for bad behavior - - - a reality show staple.
So with this backdrop, LOST hit the airwaves approximately 10 years after the Simpson circus. As such, some viewers may have found it a breath of fresh air - - - an intelligently written show with a large ensemble cast of relative unknown actors in a situation familiar to anyone with a basic education in literature: the castaway story.
Some critics immediately called LOST the show of the decade; a must-view show. Appointment television when you needed to actually plan to sit in front of the TV on an appointed day and hour in order to watch the program. The hype of the show did run up the flagpole some thoughts that LOST could be a show of this generation, but never got to the point of being accepted as the greatest show ever (because that opinion is too personal).
Just as people got caught up in the Simpson trial, LOST had the same elements: relationships, failed love connections, anger, murder, mysteries, misdirection, sleazy characters, bad blunders and an ambiguous moral compass. And just as with the Simpson trial, the conclusion of LOST still stirs some debates years afterward.
We have passed the anniversary of the alleged "Trial of the Century," the O.J. Simpson murder case.
It is only mildly debatable of what the facts of the case disclosed to the public; but there are still a divide on whether O.J. was the killer of his estranged wife. He was found innocent by a criminal jury but found guilty in a civil wrongful death suit (in which the burden of proof was less).
Simpson sits today in a Nevada prison on an unrelated conviction.
The Simpson case does show America at its best and its worst. And television was the center piece of this cultural roller coaster ride.
Simpson was a star football player. He was a powerful running back who set records in the NFL when pro football was just starting to make its inroads onto American television viewing habits on Sunday afternoons. Sundays were the traditional day of rest; family time not television viewing time. Simpson's mad dashes for touchdowns helped solidify football as the new American pastime.
Simpson was a celebrity. He got national commercials. He was cast in movie roles. He was living the American dream. He was rich, successful, and had the perks of stardom even after his football career was over.
Just as the media likes to build up celebrity stories, it likes to tear them down.
When the slow speed Bronco chase was shown live on national TV, where a fleeing O.J. was attempting to avoid an arrest warrant, the birth of the new celebrity trial had began. This domino led to the LA trial being televised nationally. It led to attorneys playing to the camera and not to the court. It led to an extremely drawn out soap opera that in any other non-televised courtroom would have been slapped down to a one week trial at best. But the weeks droned on because it was "free" programming for the cable network "news" channels who were in the infancy of building audiences. It spawned a cottage industry of legal "analysts" doing play by play and color commentary like the trial was a football game. This led to the current malaise of over analysis and tabloid coverage of any legal case on television.
In some respects, the "reality" of a real man on trial for "real" murders was something that TV executives found "compelling" television. The concept of "reality" television was born in the midst of the muddy gray areas of the situation. Witnesses became quasi-celebrities which birthed the cable culture of the D-list celebrity who is famous for doing next to nothing. In certain respects, this was also the dawn of being rewarded for bad behavior - - - a reality show staple.
So with this backdrop, LOST hit the airwaves approximately 10 years after the Simpson circus. As such, some viewers may have found it a breath of fresh air - - - an intelligently written show with a large ensemble cast of relative unknown actors in a situation familiar to anyone with a basic education in literature: the castaway story.
Some critics immediately called LOST the show of the decade; a must-view show. Appointment television when you needed to actually plan to sit in front of the TV on an appointed day and hour in order to watch the program. The hype of the show did run up the flagpole some thoughts that LOST could be a show of this generation, but never got to the point of being accepted as the greatest show ever (because that opinion is too personal).
Just as people got caught up in the Simpson trial, LOST had the same elements: relationships, failed love connections, anger, murder, mysteries, misdirection, sleazy characters, bad blunders and an ambiguous moral compass. And just as with the Simpson trial, the conclusion of LOST still stirs some debates years afterward.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
NURSERY
Homes and Hues had a recent article on theme baby nurseries.
LOST was featured in the article with this picture:
What every child needs: a Dharma tagged polar bear.
LOST was featured in the article with this picture:
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A delusion is a belief held by an individual or group that is demonstrably false, patently untrue, impossible, fanciful, or self-deceptive. A person with delusions, however, often has complete certainty and conviction about their delusory beliefs. They resist arguments and evidence that they are wrong.
People have illusions about smells (olfactory), taste (gustatory), temperature (thermoceptive), and touch (tactile). They may experience highly disgusting or very pleasant or unusual smells when meeting a particular person. They may find ordinary foods (oranges, chocolate, milk) have different tastes than others experience. They may find cool objects burning hot or warm objects frozen; traditionally smooth objects (like a balloon or cat's fur) may feel rough or uneven.
The most written about of all delusions, paranoia, has been shown to follow various stages: general suspiciousness; selective perception of others; hostility; paranoid “illumination” in which all things fall into place; and, finally, paradoxical delusions of influence and persecution. Delusions often totally preoccupy people and cause them considerable distress because they do not doubt their beliefs are correct.
Delusions differ from illusions. We have visionary and auditory illusions; for instance, that the sun goes around the earth or that ventriloquists’ dummies actually speak. We have selective memories /illusions of happy childhoods. These are things that seem true to the senses or memory, but are known to be false or have no basis in reality.
There are some caveats: Some religious delusions are impossible to verify and hence falsify. Other delusions have a self-fulfilling prophecy, such as a jealous person accusing and attacking an innocent partner, who then leaves them for another. In that sense, these people cause their delusions to come true.
An emotional charge, like jealous, can tap a person's brain process and imagination to create false presumptions and assumptions that feed fear and paranoia. If a girlfriend does not return a message, an insecure boyfriend could begin the dark road of self-esteem hits to his own ego: maybe she no longer likes me?, who is she with?, is she out with another man?, where is she? is she having a good time without me? This self doubt has a cascade effect which could lead to the irrational boyfriend to lash out at his innocent girlfriend who was merely too busy at work to respond to his messages. So his fear about losing her is a self-induced reality caused by his delusions about an event which he lacks sufficient information to make a rational decision. The idea of "self-fulfilling prophecy" comes to mind.
Psychiatrists may diagnose someone as having a delusion disorder under a number of very specific situations:
- The disturbance is not the result of physiological or medical conditions, like the medication or drugs a person is taking.
Sometimes psychiatrists say it is difficult to distinguish from other disorders like hypochondriasis (particularly among those with little self-awareness); body dysmorphic disorder (preoccupation with imagined bodily defects); Obsessive Compulsive as well as Paranoid Personality Disorder.The delusions of people with schizophrenia are often clearly bizarre, utterly implausible, not at all understandable; one might believe the brain has been replaced by that of another person or that one has shrunk to be three feet tall. On the other hand, non-bizarre delusions could be possible. For instance, people may feel they are being followed, photographed or recorded, that somebody is slowly poisoning them, that their partner is always cheating onthem, or that their boss or neighbor is in love with them. A person can easily project negatives onto any situation because their minds are free to make blind speculations about the world around them. A person with low esteem or is self-centered can channel these negatives into a web of "the world is against me" personality traits. Or that "I am cursed because I am unlucky at everything."
Some delusions cause people to make dramatic changes in their life: leave their job or partner, move from their house (or even leave the country), or dress very differently. The person with delusional disorder, however, appears normal when their delusional ideas are not being discussed.
People with delusions can become very moody, often causing their relationships and work to suffer. Interestingly, some cultures and groups have particular beliefs that may in other cultures be seen as clinically delusional.
It is a relatively rare disorder usually occurring later in life, particularly among people with relatives who have other disorders. Most appear argumentative and hypersensitive. Many do not seek treatment and become, over the years, more and more isolated.
Psychiatrists have noticed five clear types of delusions:
- Somatic. This is the delusion that one’s body is
somehow strange or not functioning properly. It may be the belief that
one smells odd, or that particular parts (nose, breasts, feet) are
particularly odd, misshapen or ugly. Often people with these delusions
believe they may have some internal bug or parasite that is destroying
or affecting some very specific part of their body.
The causes of delusions are unknown. Current interests in neuropsychology have lead some to speculate that malfunctioning biological features may cause or exacerbate the problem. Some have implicated basal ganglia, others the limbic system and still others the neocortex. Investigations continue.For others, genetic explanations are best because so many with delusional disorders have first-degree relatives with these and related disorders.Other researchers point out that many with the disorder have had difficult childhoods characterized by instability and turbulence, callousness and coldness. They consider delusions to be an impairment in the ego defense system aimed to protect and bolster the self. They see the paranoid or persecutory delusions as an attempt to project onto others things they do not like to admit in themselves.
People often lie, fake, or deceive, even to themselves. Psychologists call this dissimulation, but have recently distinguished between two very different types of dissimulation: