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Ideas on Consciousness/Spirituality (from Reggie Watts)

RobotRipping

RobotRipping

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So Reggie has this idea that is basically a form of pre-determinism whereby we are not really here right now but are only past memories of our future selves. perhaps after death or not. We drop hints and there to get us along to where we want to be. I find that really interesting for some reason (hindsight is always 20/20 right?).

what do you guys think?

Are we really here right now? here being the present, now being this moment and we being you and I. Future me says no, current me says yes, past me is unsure :)

i have some issues with the idea; how does consciousness evolve if it already has an end in mind? does this expand to other beings? the universe itself?

either way, super interesting thought from a great and funny musician that's been on my mind lately. Kind of helps me cope with how shitty things are right now.
 
Memories aren't real. The past is done.

His theory is no different than someone shouting in an empty gymnasium and then somehow conveying information to the echo about the experience it's going to have as it begins bouncing around the room. The echo is not a sentient being, besides which there is no mechanism by which we could really understand this concept of time travel. Our knowledge of physics demonstrates that time travel to the future is possible, but not the past.

That's not to say that there might not be a lesson plan in motion right now to serve as a configuration to guide you through this life. It just doesn't seem right to me that if this kind of greater planning happened, that we would concern ourselves with making sure the original learning actually happened, when we know it already did. It would mean we are responsible for getting the project started after we have already finished it, instead of moving on to the next project.

I don't believe in duplicate holographic lives. We're in this one now and regardless if something happens next or not, this particular life can't happen again.
 
^ I'm about what is possible to experience. I haven't experienced anything in this life that triggers the remotest intuition that this life was a do-over.
 
I don't fully believe we're actually here right now. I see us, the world, everything, as a kind of puppet show.. and for some reason "we", whatever we really are, is just animating the puppet and playing along inside the show. Like I believe time (and space) is non-existent, it's a kind of mirage or hologram, so essentially everything has already happened.. it is already played out.

In regards to consciousness evolving, I think we're trapped in human thinking by even asking that question. Why does it need to evolve and go from less to more? Isn't it equally possible that it was done and finished before we even came into the world? A man who's philosophy I trust very much was able to "get inside the head/mind" of people, and he remarked that when he did it to his grandchild he could see that inside that baby there was already a fully formed personality/being in there. I think the question of evolving consciousness has to do with our own bias in that we just assume that we were nothing before we were born, and of course no one has bothered to discover what we actually were (and I don't think it was nothing).
 
we're just little machines interpreting data. As Descartes once pointed out, it could indeed be a dream or another entity feeding us this information! we have no way of knowing really. Unless you go with that 'clear and distinct' idea bullshit which i never found convincing lol.

it seems to me that since the big bang our universe has been a process of matter evolving, consciousness developing and also evolving, everything following this one principle. To what end though? is the end already determined? could we calculate it? it must be logical right? then what of predeterminism in general? it all becomes true and we are nothing but along for the ride!

Ah foreigner, plausible and possible are terms that are so convoluted when it comes to discussing the ineffable. Keep an open mind ;) and just analyze the idea/thought and not whether it's plausible or not. It's an interesting idea that hits me profoundly, that must mean something at least.
 
there was never no thing btw; now talk about plausability!!! how could there be no thing and then some thing??? impossible i say.

sry for dbl post won't let me edit for some reason (using google chrome) ??
 
How could there have ALWAYS been something?

There are a few theories surrounding the birth of the universe..

I bring it up a lot but i love it so: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...rth-to-new-universes-todays-most-popular.html

Our universe is what is going on amidst the singularity of a black hole in a another universe.. which is happening within the singularity of another universe + infinite.

There's m theory that says something like our universe is the result of 2 "membranes" colliding.

There's the random particles popping in and out of existence hypothesis http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/07/how-the-universe-appeared-from-nothing.html

There's the "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" story

There the - we are living in a computer simulation - hypothesis.

Nobody knows.. so why not make up your own theory? ;)
 
My personal opinion: The Big Bang never happened, this has been proven (though dogmatic old guys refuse to budge) thanks to Halton Arp and his discovery of quasars being ejected from galaxies. They have different red shift values, therefore nullifying the red shit/distance hypothesis. Thus, no expanding universe, and no big bang. Matter is created at the centre of galaxies, proto-galaxies are formed and ejected. No black holes either, just intense electrical focus events. Very intense. 100 years from now we'll look back and this will be regarded as the dark ages of physics. Might seem unlikely, but it is true.

Regardless of the universe itself, one thing has and will always be. Awareness. Boom :)
 
Umm.. i think there's a lil bit more to the expanding universe theory than the red shift.

Any evidence for your intense electrical focus events?
 
But we already live in the past, the brain reconstructing the experience of temporal continuity based on sensory-motor 'snap shots' of reality from a bit in the past (neural processing and consolidation take time). So how, operationally, would living entirely retrospectively, from a point after your experienced life, be different? Would the difference be causal, in that activity of consciousness could lead to actions in a future as of yet to be developed in the case of consciousness closer to real time but not for wholly retrospective consciousness? Well, if we decide that the universe is fundamentally deterministic, aren't the two types of retrospection causally equivalent? Does this approach also cohere with the many universes interpretation of quantum mechanics?

ebola
 
rickolasnice said:
Umm.. i think there's a lil bit more to the expanding universe theory than the red shift.

Any evidence for your intense electrical focus events?
Click to expand...

I don't think there is. Hubble formalized the idea. Halton Arp was Hubble's assistant earlier in his career by the way. In terms of actual evidence, the red-shift thing is pretty much all there is. Other evidence "seems" to justify the position of an expanding universe, in that it fits the hypothesis, but that it is not observational evidence in itself that shows an expanding universe. It all comes back to the red-shift, which Halton Arp proved was wrong.

Arp suggested that matter was born in the centre of galaxies, because this is what observational evidence was suggesting (quasars being ejected from the centre of the parent galaxy), though I imagine others have also come to a similar conclusion about matter formation. The evidence for intense electrical focus events is what we can acutally see. At the centre of galaxies are the most energetic events we've ever witnessed; black holes were essentially conjured to explain this because nothing else could explain it. Rather than waffle on I'd recommend you look into plasma cosmology :)
 
SS said:
Matter is created at the centre of galaxies, proto-galaxies are formed and ejected. No black holes either, just intense electrical focus events. Very intense. 100 years from now we'll look back and this will be regarded as the dark ages of physics. Might seem unlikely, but it is true.
Click to expand...

This stands at odds with what we've observed of activity at galactic centers and does nothing to explain the inflationary period of cosmic expansion of space, current inflation of space, or the cosmic microwave background.

rick said:
How could there have ALWAYS been something?
Click to expand...

Why not? Which conceptual alternatives are better and why?

ebola
 
^ I posted that simply as alternate yet very similar way of thinking about the question at hand..

I don't believe either way.. neither make sense to me :(
 
well if there is something now it stands to reason that there must always have been some thing according to my good friend Aquinas :) of course there could be an infinite regression, perhaps our logic is faulty, perhaps we just can't comprehend the nature of such a thing, who knows?

our reality lags due to our perception but it works for the most part - so where are we then? this is where my brain goes hay wire. Are we just consciousness machines? why do we even have a material world? is it necessary? why is there anything? why not just no thing?
 
We are a means for the universe to experience itself.

We are conduits for metaphysical consciousness or souls to inhabit the material world.

We are biological machines, built from random mutations that helped us survive, billions of times over.

We are here to live a good life, as to progress to the next stage/s in enlightenment.

We are the latests reaction to a very long change of causes.

It does indeed make logical sense that if there is something here now then there always was, but infinite is a mind fuck of a thing to wrap your head round.

Your questions can (or will) be answered with answers decided by yourself.. But my opinion?

*Don't understand first part.. why do you think reality drags?*..

We are biological machines and consciousness has arisen from a central nervous system that can understand its environment or the universe it is in because it helped a biological machine survive and reproduce (as programmed within it's DNA.. It's ultimately survival of the genetic coding, not species).. Feelings (happiness, sadness, love) are the result of such a complex machine being exposed to the right external stimuli.

We have the material world because it is our world. We inhabit these dimensions. We are made up it's laws.

Necessary? Well.. ultimately, no. But I'm guessing you are talking as if consciousness was not part of the material world, it's just interacting with it. Then I'd still say no. What's the point? Why would an immaterial conscious that lives, survives and exists without the material universe interact with matter in such a way as to embody biological machines that are the latest in a long line of evolving species.. shits and giggles?

Why is there anything? A question I don't think is possible to answer, not now and not ever. But a question I would love to know the answer to myself.
 
shits and giggles is all i can think of man - what is the point? i can't even think of one.

well the point to me is beauty, it is absolutely beautiful to experience existence as a whole. Think of art, a great film. Why do they exist? to be appreciated. Why would the universe split itself up and unfold according to a formula? beauty? sounds like a good enough reason to me.

the above statements you make all resonate with me, all thoughts i battle with in my head. I think it's mostly transcendental though, we can't get out of our heads to figure anything out. Why is it set up that way? on purpose? accident? it gets so damn abstract to think about. My intuitions just show me patterns flowing into patterns infinitely, it doesn't make any sense to me. But hey, life is certainly special, and i'd argue that because life is 'special' or feels that way, is the reason there is life today.
 
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