If panpsychism is real, and I can't see why it's not, then consciousness is eternal. Even death is a kind of consciousness.

If you watch the Elton John movie Rocketman, it is implied that young Elton (or whatever his real name was) had the same sort of talent. He would just sit down at the piano and play a tune that he had heard, or seen played, without ever having practiced it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes! I didn't realize that! Elton is not autistic for sure. He controls the piano as if it is his voice! I haven't seen the movie though. I saw a film about Queen, a young Beatle in an alternative universe (think it's called yesterday), and many others ("The Doors" was good but Manzarek didnt like it at all). The movie about Joy Division was great (Anton Corbijn). Not too relevant for here though. I have a longing now to play the piano blindly. Expressing directly the melody I envision...

Too many unemployed and an economy not working will likely lead to violence and war. History has shown this many times. — ssu

I agree. It brought us WW2. After which economy bloomed. "Das Wirtschaftswunder". It even boomed. Globally. The depression of the thirties (banknotes of 500 billion German Marks were worth even less than their paper value!) subsided globally after the warbut was the war cause of this? Did an optimism spark this? During the economic depression though there was a pessimistic feeling. Did this increase the depression even more? What brings about depressions in general and in economy in particular?

Don't forget that ECONOMICS is at its heart about distribution of resources — I like sushi

Is this the litteral meaning?

Economic Growth is a rough measure of the avilability of goods and services avilable to everyone. — I like sushi

Growth is measurement of their increase.

. It doesn't make sense to say these non-human animals are by default not conscious, and we certainly shouldn't wait until we are overwhelmed by evidence to treat them as such. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Again: :100:

Don't get too smart! :smile:

I knew a guy once, maybe 30-40 years before you were even born, — Mww

Are you a 100 years young then? I mean, Piskas has 40. Plus 40 is eighty. Plus about 20 gives 100.

Is it possible that he had seen it played before, remembered the process with a photographic memory, then practiced the finger movements without a piano? — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly what I thought! There is a kid who drew the whole city view after seeing it from a helicipter!

Only the three B's are needed. And we are just our bodies, without brains!

Then you're lost — magritte

Magritte would disagree. Once lost you can only be refound by the truth. Experimental habitats exist only a few hundred years. If objective existence needs conscious observers to exist the n how could conscious beings develop in the first place. Quantum reality doesn't care about us nor our experiments. The latter can be discussed though.

An Analysis of the Shadows. — Amity

Sounds like a horror movie. A very refined one. Or the title of a book. "When you're walking down the streets at night. Turn around and die of freight. What's that in the shadows? Is it a dog? Is it a cat? What you think of that?"

am totally convinced by the power of your rationale Oh Thunderballs! — Daemon

Sometimes few words are needed... Oh Daemon 596796...

So you must be on Ulrich’s mailing list. It was only published yesterday. — Wayfarer

I know what he thinks. He is a "well-known" figurre!

He says:

"A quantum object has no way of being something in itself, independently of the experimental context in which it is observed"

Here I disagree.

the decay of science? — Bylaw

What decay? Bohr stood at the cradle of QM. That's not a decadent theory. In what sense is the word 'decay' used?

(Wow! I think I have overdone it! — Alkis Piskas

!!!!! !. :grin: It is there to pay attention? It must mean something... !

The first step is to visualize a vector field: — jgill

What's the purple line in your picture above? What's the green dot? A particle? Is it a trajectory (purple) of a particle (green) in a vector field? What do the vectors represent? What creates them?

It's the evidence, that non-human animals have brains which we know are used for thinking, we observe that non-human animals plan, become anxious, and depressed. This evidence isn't there for the rest of nature. — Down The Rabbit Hole

:100:

I know this article! Nice. In it:

"Why formless? According to the current (so-called) standard model of particles and forces, certain quantum objects, such as electrons and quarks, are fundamental in the sense that they are not composed of other quantum objects. While such objects are often described as pointlike (and many physicists take this to be the literal truth), this can only mean that they lack internal structure, which is another way of saying that they lack component parts and therefore are formless."

Points have no form indeed. Their relation wrt each other does though. Quarks and leptons might be composed and thus have a very small fuzzy form. The fuzziness relates to the strange property of particles (the image of a particle moving in spacetime is a popular view) that everypossible classical path is present, each one with its own probability amplitude. Particles can even be created. In the popular view, a gauge particle, like a photon, emerges (or is absorbed) from a a particle that's electrically charged. Pairs of particles can be excited from the fluctuating vacuum fields.

Especially when considering Nature as a whole, how vast, complex. How little we know and understand it. We can't know it possesses consciousness — Yohan

I like your humility. We now little of Nature indeed (though science paints a nice picture with quantum fields brushes, colors, and forms). It's a fact though that animals are conscious. When bitch Bo cries out her small lungs she is truly in pain (or just jealous maybe...). Is there panpsychism present? There has to be! How else can the hard problem (of consciousness) be explained?

It's stupid to call someone stupid. Though it must be admitted that even theoretical-mathemathical-high-energy-particle-quantum-fieldsincurvedspacetime professors can be rather stupid (but very sexy!).

Yeah, we were bound to self organize — Pop

Pop! Enough! Go self-organize yourself! :joke:

Orson Welles, who I consider to be one of the great artists of the 20th century, — Tom Storm

I think his fooling of a whole nation was his biggest piece of art! Though as that citizen, Kane, he performed pretty good too. I have never understood though why that movie is considered the best of all times! I even rather look at the short movie of two men meeting at a deserted bar. They don't say a word (not exactly my style though) but their actions speak louder. Very loud! They start to undress, shit away on the bar, and even eat it! Made an impression on me! Is it realism? Is it a film noir? Fiction? Science fiction maybe? Or just shit?

What's so bad about being your body (you put an exclamation mark behind your statement that we're not our body!)?

Love is as real as the dick in my pants. Sometimes they are unrelated. Sometimes they coincide. Love and my dick that is. No spawning of genes required though. Love is not meant to assure the continued existence of my selfish genes, as Dawkinskians think. My genes are very altruistic. Merely helping me to be. I need those proteins!

After I found my true love I had indeed the desire to settle down, but that desire didn't inspire my love!

Relative space?

There's no emerging or coming from or going to for what is Fundamental; it is ever and always. The fields themselves fluctuate all over, always; there is no stillness—else naught could happen. Where there is a unit stable quantum it is directly an elementary particle; else there are just other fluctuations not amounting to a unit level. — PoeticUniverse

The field fluctuations and subsequent inflation and excitation of fields happens time after time again. And maybe even around a multiple of 5d Planck sized throats (from which our 4d universe inflates as a big bang to rush away to infinity, on the way spawning life every time, in every new big bang). You can say this eternity doesn't need a creator and it can exist as the fundamental, of course. I thought that too. Eternal, no beginning required. But then I got a bit more mature and softer and sweeter and riper... Though still a child...

Ok, I am not my body. — Richard B

But you are. How can you have a mind (if you are your body you can), and be your mind (in which case you don't have a mind)? What's so important about your mind that you wanna be it? Who do you see in the mirror? Your mind?

When I think about my dog's intelligence I see that he works by trial and error more than by reason, and I think that is because he lacks the flexibility provided by human style language and thought. Not only flexibility, but many other aspects of thought are available to us because of the nature of our language. — Daemon

Nonsense.

We are talking about decline theorists' estimate of..well..implosion of science. — Caldwell

Implosion? Science rules suppreme in the modern day. Look in what state it has brought the world! Its arrogance of understanding Nature and its positioning in front, vis a vis, Nature, is the cause. And it's even mandatory to learn at school. Colorfull children are turned in its obedient slaves. And kook at the so-calles objective and intelligent language spoken by the modern adult! Yakki!

This is a strange statement. — jgill

It has something to do with the infinitesimal, or maybe the differential. And the neglecting of the limit maybe, that is never reached. And zero enters the story too. What is meant by "a recharachterization of all values"? Instead of 1, 2, 3, pi, vu, e, we should call them by other names? @+$=÷?
Is not an asymptote a mathematical thing (a principal?)?

Widespread education, literacy, freedom to think (when and where possible) and communicate has unshackled masses of people — Bitter Crank

True. But the rise of the modern world has beaten a lot in submission or compliance too. How about people once living peacefully in harmony with Nature. They had their own non-western ways in dealing with all problems of life. They had colorful languages (even whistling!), worldviews (to use a very ugly word), ways of keeping peace (without thermonuclear devices!), their own way of raging a war (without an atom bomb or two), and in general respect Nature, of which they are part instead of standing vis a vis with.

The shadows cast by the western (Greek) way.

The only thing that differentiates facts from non-facts is knowledge gained by observation — Janus

I observed God speaking to me. I could hear them. Now I know they must be behind all this. God is a fact. "Naaaahh", says atheist, "an illusion". ???

The first step is to visualize a vector field: — jgill

Visual poetry! Tthanks for your contribution. Now it's going somewhere! Do you think we can speak of fields of particle trajectories? I know that a quantum field is formally, mathematically, a distribution of operators. Of creation or destruction operators (what expressions...). These create particles (or states in Fock space, excuse the language).

There's no question about the ever and always of the Fundamental. — PoeticUniverse

That's the question! Why shouldnt there be a question? Is the question. Because it is like you think?

The quantum fields exhaust Reality. There's no "coming from" for the Eternal Fundamental that has no beginning or end. — PoeticUniverse

That' s the question!

Spacetime is eternal. A 5d spacetime on which 4d big bangs occur one after another. But from where comes this? Onlu the gods can create this. Time and space don't exist for them. Time is maybe not even inherent to Nature.

Quantum Fields are the Ground of Determination — PoeticUniverse

But from where came the quantum fields, these simultananeity of all paths in phasespace (or Markov chains)? These fields in a spacetime. From where came spacetime in its eternity?

So if it's already a potential in matter, why postulate something "extra — Manuel

If the potential is the extra then there's no need.

Well, He's not needed any more since Existence has no alternative. No need to move up a level. — PoeticUniverse

It's not moving up a level. You can of course ask "but where did gids came frim". But that's a different question. I can't imagine the universe to be there without a creation by god(s). Even when it's eternal. There has to be someone behind it.

Who self organized first - God or us? :chin: — Pop

God

Self organization gives rise to order in the universe.

Who self organized first - God or us? :chin: — Pop

Yes, that's true. I need a bit more self-organisation myself... :smile:

Most structures in the universe are the result of an organization but not all are self-irganized. If I make a painting it doesn't self-organize. Nor do my photographs....

Of those like "Why anything?" or "What's it's all about?" — PoeticUniverse

Only God(s) knows that.