I would say misanthropy is a conditioned response to repeated unsatisfactory interactions with other people. It very much depends on one's experiences, the interaction between an individual and their physical/social environment.

One would expect misanthropy to increase with overcrowding.

I think Trump has stuffed up in his latest argument with Iran. In the past leaders have just allowed Islamic leaders like Rouhani to huff and puff and then they just get on with it behind the scenes anyway.

It seems to me that, by engaging Rouhani publicly and giving an opportunity for war, Trump is empowering Iran. It's not as though the US needs to throw more lives and resources down the Middle Eastern black hole. Any conflict would cost both Iran and the US dearly. Meanwhile China will forge ahead with its strategic goals without such distractions.

Then again, he might be figure that a war usually guarantees a win at the next election via patriotic fervour and a wish not to disrupt the war machine. A war wouldn't hurt his fossil fuel investments either.

My guess is that qualia does not stem from the brain but the metabolism, hence its elusiveness in searching the brain. The brain may in fact just control, regulate and guide qualia rather than generate it.

The brain's capacity to switch consciousness on or off may be mistaken for the actual generation of the qualia, like an intelligent home system being mistaken as the generator of the electricity it regulates.

AI makes clear that intelligent activity is possible for nonliving entities, and by the same token qualia may be possible in living entities without them having intelligence.

Thank you for your clear demonstration of irrational behaviour by way of meaningless use of rhetoric in lieu of addressing issues.

You, Kanye, and The Don - paragons of rationality in this age of reason. jk

So you are not prepared to select one thing to back your statement other than link to a gossip mag? — raza

We are conducting a lightweight and pointless conversation from which I have been keenly hoping to extricate myself so, in context, a gossip mag is an appropriate reference.

Having checked your postings I note that you are of the Trumpian faith, and thus would probably be about as responsive to rationality and reason as the man himself. This is not a meeting of the minds.

Wayfarer, it was just a game. Analyses of games treated as though serious are not going to yield much other than simple strawperson criticism. Krauss was being rational enough, just that he can't help having a dig.

All he is saying is that there is always "something", but that "something" is relative. That relativity means that something very much less dense material can be perceived as "nothing" by more dense material.

Some creative people function excellently while tending to be largely irrational. Isn't that right MJ and Kanye? — Greta

I don't know who MJ is, but are you able to rationalize your mention of Kanye? — raza

Michael Jackson.

Does anyone consider Kanye West to be a man of reason? A few quotes of his here: http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/entertainment/people/the-best-kanye-west-quotes-80943

"Give us one free miracle, and we'll explain the rest". Firstly, Krauss's use of the word "nothing" was intended to bait theists claiming that God was needed to bring something from nothing. His exact point was that nothing is not actually nothing. It's true he doesn't try to explain how the quantum foam came to be and so forth, but that's just because no one yet knows.

It depends on one's circumstance. Some creative people function excellently while tending to be largely irrational. Isn't that right MJ and Kanye?

Meanwhile, just one irrational astronaut could easily destroy billions of dollars' worth of equipment, not to mention wasting the passion and stress that large teams of people go into every major space project.

I am concerned about the economic bubble he is currently inflating by releasing so much previously protected land. Companies naturally use the "low hanging fruit" - but once that is gone, taken with no thought towards regeneration - there will be a sharp contraction.

Unsustainable practices are always a temptation for those with ostensibly short term interests, such as politicians and CEOs. It requires character to eschew those gains for future generations.

A decent sci fi story lurking in there :)

Lawrence Krauss would say that nothing is not actually nothing. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it's postulated that before the big bang was the quantum foam - endless perturbations winking in and out of existence at the smallest of scales. However, 13.8b years ago one of the fluctuations did not wink out of existence ...

On the other hand, mystic physicist John Hagelin would postulate more or the same thing, except that he would say it was intelligent - "pure intelligence, pure awareness etc" and termed it the "unified field".

String theory would posit this as hyperspace or, "the bulk". A different kind of space that is not subject to normal rules of space and time.

Meanwhile, as Krauss points out, it's not lost on physicists that the only postulated singularities happen to be the BB and in black holes. Does that mean the universe is a black hole? Maybe.

Not sure but I suspect that Machiavelli would have been taking notes, though he'd devote more time to studying Rupert.

I'm not sure what it would mean for our bodies to take up a greater space than what's visible. There's no evidence that that's the case. — Sam26

A shade off topic but, actually, there is evidence. Our microbiome, for example, extends beyond our bodies; we carry a cloud of our microbes around us at all times, as well as an EM field and a heat field. There is also a mental field interpreted as personal space. There are also the fields of our senses that extend a long way from our bodies.

These things are not generally interpreted as as "I", not only because we can't see them, but we can't feel them - they don't trigger our nervous systems. Thus, we are not evolved to perceive all that we are, just the aspects that played the greatest role in survival.

No, he is distracting from his seemingly illegal interference with the Russian investigation - which he says is not illegal because he is POTUS and thus above the law.

If you agree with Trump's recklessly destructive approach to the environment then we have no common ground and I wish you a good life.

Trump is helping to promote what is called a "carbon bubble", artificially propping up the rapidly-devaluing assets of Republican fossil fuel friends and allies. One would expect a rapid lift in the economy when stripped environmental protections result in an upsurge of exploiting what is effectively "low hanging fruit" - but without regard to sustainability.

It's akin to a CEO raising the value of a company in the short term by slashing future-based programs for profits today. Then, based on the good figures, the lauded CEO finds a better paying job and leaves his successor to be blamed for the subsequent problems by a board in need of a scapegoat. Trump is helping to accelerate and worsen a crash that was probably coming anyway.

The Singapore summit looks like a sideshow to distract from Trump's recent claim of absolute power and legal impunity. I still want him to produce his tax records for audit and separate his business interests from office to a degree expected by CEOs.

Logically, NK aren't going to bomb anyone because their strength lies in the threat. Kim and co know well that if they actually nuke another nation, then their country as they know it will be destroyed. While they dangle the threat they can "punch above their weight" on the world stage, which is what they are doing.

I can't see any biological beings traversing interstellar space, not even in suspended animation. Even a a year in a space station, still protected by the Earth's magnetic shield and well within the heliosheath, is enough to leave astronauts physically harmed.

It would probably be easier to recreate humans a la Westworld than to make them capable of long haul space travel into deep space, although I suppose infestations of helpful nanodes might do the job.

A major limitation of human consciousness is the opacity of other minds, that we can only perceive reality from our single standpoint, here and now. In the future I can imagine more advanced consciousness stemming from multiple networked brains/intelligent entities.

Each of those multiple perspectives could theoretically be swept up into a larger single perspective in a manner somewhat analogous to the way as our brains collect the disparate information from our senses. That is, most of the information would be discarded, and the prioritised impressions would be patched together to create a single overarching cohesive moment-by-moment perspective of multiple, simultaneous viewpoints.

It would not be a hive mind as such because each networked person would still enjoy a personal, particular and independent consciousness - which would be used by some kind of advanced AI processor to make sense of each (extremely complex) input in real time.

Strictly speaking, the processor would be the owner of the higher intelligence, but there would surely be systems allowing for at least some of the "higher mind" to feed back and inform the networked people, the subsidiary minds.

It's hard to imagine how that would play out to us simpler beings if we met such a composite mind. Perhaps they would seem all-knowing in much the same way as our parents seem omniscient when we were toddlers? I can imagine composite-minded aliens to not have nearly the trouble communicating that's anticipated by NDGT. We humans don't understand the languages of other species because we are not yet advanced enough, either in conceptions or technology. It was not so long ago that most people naively (and sadly) believed other species to be akin to simple versions of Chalmers's philosophical zombies - utterly without sentience, emotion or even true sensation. Just reflexes.

A civilisation capable of interstellar travel may well have solved many problems with interspecies communication that still flummox humankind. It's a fledgling area of research.

Thanks for answering my second question. — Galuchat

Answers to the other two are much less clear, although I think it would be fair to say that a mind, or at least qualia, is not essential for a flexible controlled response.

As for the last, we have all been unaware and then reaching a level of complexity (or whatever) that brings awareness. I think it happens fairly early on because I have two unusually early memories, one in a pram and another on a high chair, where I was definitely aware. In each case I had a sense of what it meant to be in trouble with my parents, either for myself on being discovered scribbling on a wall from my pram or when I tried to get a disliked babysitter in trouble for breaking by special bowl in anger because I was refusing her feeding (by screaming and refusing to stop - I noticed that she looked worried!).

At a very early age, and as can be seen in some pets, babies already engage in small quasi-Machiavellian dealings :) That requires both a sense of self and a theory of mind. Mentality would seem to be present in all chordates, and some level of mentality seems present in many invertebrates like cephalopods, colonial insects, mantids and the like.

Cheers Wayfarer. Kind of you to say so.

Does a flexible and controlled response require a mind?

Which inanimate objects have the highest level of reactivity?

At what level of complexity do organisms have awareness? — Galuchat

Heh, we could then end up asking whether sophisticated learning AI has a mind since advanced machines respond in somewhat flexible and controlled ways. Nonetheless, we assume that the machines are "black inside", just imitating consciousness.

Proponents of IIT (information Integration Theory) figure that there must be a certain complexity and configuration type that lies behind conscious awareness and that this is theoretically achievable in AI. Others insist that "wetware", biology, is needed for awareness, probably based on the fact that so far we only know of awareness in biological entities.

Re: inanimate objects or, rather, animated objects. It's generally thought that complex organic chemicals are a precursor to biology. Until the advent of intelligent technology and viruses, they would probably be the most complexly reactive nonliving "things" (not counting natural viruses and prions that are not technically alive but could also be said to just be a different kind of life). It's though that chemistry underwent its own kind of evolution leading up to biological evolution.

There's some interesting written material and videos online regarding Martin Hanczyc's experiments with various chemicals - proto-life - that engage in some surprisingly lifelike dynamics.

Of course we have each been through the transitional steps from zygote to embryo to foetus to infant to toddler to child to teen to adult awareness. We have made the transition from a kind of microbe to a conscious human adult, but we can't remember how it happened - it just happened :)

Select the text, and click the quote button that appears. Shimples — unenlightened

Thanks :) I didn't expect a context sensitive button.

Amadeus, your thoughts don't seem too far from Michio Kaku's idea that consciousness can be quantified by treating each dynamic as a unit of consciousness. So, for instance, a thermostat measures only one thing - heat - and thus has consciousness of one unit. He posited that a plant might have ten units - detecting and processing light, water etc.

In truth, all matter has numerous interactions on different scales and MK appeared to be painting with an exceptionally broad brush for the sake of message clarity. After all, one may think that a rock is fairly inert, but when observed in detail one will find communities, cities even, of microbes, engaged in numerous chemical and physical reactions and interactions with the rock's surface, and sometimes its interior.

Now consider the microbial mind. Even in deep sleep, you are vastly more aware than microbes, because even in that most inert of states there are numerous complex processes occurring in the body - by entire "universes" of microbes - not just one microbe or a community. Also note that you have been a microbe before - a zygote - and you became an ever more complex entity as time passed but infancy and before is a blank. It's a relatively blind existence, utterly in-the-moment.

The basic level of reactivity in simple organisms (or things) is referred to be some experts as "proto-consciousness" - the building blocks of consciousness which, when assembled in ways we don't yet understand, produce our mental theatre.

Still, I find it more helpful not to think of everything as conscious, but reactive. The degree and nature of the reactivity varies in scale and complexity. Thus, on such a scale, entities like neutrinos would score very low because they interact with very little and those responses have no flexibility or control. Gradually one could us this approach to consider the increasing complexity of non living things until the emergence of life, then the emergence of multicellular organisms, and now abstractly intelligent ones.

Yes, I do think he believed I was just giving him cheery talk rather than logic, and thus dismissed it.

Being bright and articulate with a couple of minor savant gifts does not mean that one is emotionally stable enough to utilise the positive qualities. It is easy to gloss over one's shortcomings (which are often more clearly noticed by others), and then overrate our capacities and subsequently unfairly blame ourselves for not achieving.

I wonder if it's sometimes easier to blame our failings on lack of effort than to admit that one is actually more middling and less exceptional than one imagined?


PS. Sorry for not quoting but I don't know the protocols for quoting with this forum's software, which seems different to the kind of BB code I'm familiar with.

I don't see the subjective observation as a critique, Sam. I suppose I am differing with your prior point that, if NDEs were about subjective experience then you would not consider them so significant. My point was and is that the subjective at that end point of life effectively becomes the objective in lieu of objective input. It's not as though we have anything else we can do in the outside world at that time.

It may be that the brain is more of a filter and less of a generator than we once believed. My understanding is that, after a period of unusual lucidity, any sensing going stops pertaining to the external world.

Some rigorous experiments were conducted for some time without finding a single case of a dying person identifying things placed too high in the room for them to see without lifting up from the physical body. Not one. I was disappointed because I'd found the anecdotes convincing. Still, they were the results.

As regards heightened senses, witness reports of end-of-life blindsight and lucidity in the blind and senile suggest the brain-as-filter model, with the offending blockages released en route to the brain shutting down (it may well depend which parts of the brain shut down first).

An example of truly heightened senses without filtering is in Jill Bolte Taylor's well known account of her NDE, or at least the waking from it. When she re-emerged, she found all light and sound intolerably intense. That is an example of how brains filter incoming data to make it both comprehensible and, apparently, tolerable.

BTW, just by way of introduction or clarification ... people online have sometimes been unsure as to my agenda or point re: NDEs. I actually don't have an agenda or belief. Rather, I am just curious about NDEs and enjoy chatting about them :)

As the saying goes, "a part and yet apart" (also the title of an excellent jazz album by Earthworks).

I find myself less in need of company with age, loneliness has become solitude. I find dogs wonderful in that respect because you need not deal with the inevitable mental fritz of other nearby humans. Dogs simply don't have the mental power to intrude on one's space that humans have.

Watching the rise of misanthropy on social media for some years as overcrowded denizens increasingly get into each others' way, I am bemused by this human compulsion to live together in claustrophobic groups. Cities annoy their occupants no end, with endless complaints and bickering, yet here many of us are.

So Humanity, the question must be asked. If you find other people so problematic, why are you joining the huddle?

Humanity would then reply - did I have a choice? Who is more likely to survive - a large society of battle-hardened, cranky people with powerful immune systems or a slower, less intense, more sparsely populated society? Indigenous people displaced by overcrowded westerners and easterners know the answer to that one.

We humans have effectively been forced by natural, group and cultural selection to cram ourselves into societies that irritate us and have us dreaming of rural life away from the hubbub. Increasingly, though, we are separating within the larger group - with fewer extended families living together, fewer intact nuclear families, and ever more singles seeking to live alone.

Nonetheless, the innate existential panic of being apart from the group - having come from groups compelled to clump together - remains in us to a greater or lesser extent as gurugeorge said above. This compulsion somewhat masks the powerful destabilising effect people have on each other. We are intense animals that are not always prone to compromise. Hence the beauty, and increased popularity, of dogs :)

Many good observations above. Also, self sabotage stems from self loathing, the belief that one deserves to be punished for perceived shortfalls and then sobconsciously goes about administering the punishment.

To preserve privacy of individuals, I'll quote a recent conversation anonymously, which I think may encapsulate the dynamic of the OP:

Me: You should never have regrets. If you have not performed to your potential then you have just overrated your potential - probably failing to take into account factors that limited your potentials.

Him: That's wrong. There are definitely times when I should have done better but I took the easy way out.

Me: That just means there were factors in your personality that prevented you from putting in your best effort.

Him: No no no ...

He is determined to suffer. He believes he deserves to suffer - cause and effect. Karma. It would be great to find a way to crack the code but decades of ingrained negative thinking - of anything - creates a deeply ingrained habit of thinking.

We are all broken in some ways, but some more so than others.

Sorry for the slow reply, Sam, poor organisation on my part.

Ultimately Sam, no matter which way you look at this issue the answer always must be "maybe". While there is much fascinating anecdotal evidence for an afterlife, it's still only anecdotal. — G

The word anecdotal carries with it the idea of not being reliable, i.e., a story that may or may not be true. However, can we use the word anecdotal when describing millions of stories of the same experience? The answer would depend, but depend on what? It depends on whether the story is consistent, whether the stories come from a variety of sources (different cultures, age groups, different religions, different world views, occurring under a variety of circumstances, whether the stories can be backed up with primary sources, i.e., people who also were there, etc), this would put a higher premium on the stories. Under these circumstance on could say that we have good testimonial evidence. In fact, under these circumstance one could easily argue that this is exactly what it means to have good testimonial evidence. One shouldn't rule out the evidence simply because it doesn't fit a certain narrative or world view. — Sam26

Certainly anecdotal evidence is considered the weakest type in science or in courtroom but, as you suggest, if many witnesses provide similar evidence then credibility improves markedly. Yes, something interesting is definitely going on that's worth investigating, given the profundity of the end-of-life situation.

My reservations come from the gap between our perceptions and actual reality, noumena, which means that our common physiological characteristics may result in common end-of-life mental and emotional effects.
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Consistency is the most important part of these testimonials, and as I've mentioned before there is enough consistency coupled with enough objective verification to assume that there is something much more than just hallucinations taking place. — Sam26

I agree that NDEs are not just hallucinations or dream. In a hallucination or dream, our perceptions are inconsequential to our ensuing physical (if not, mental) reality. In an NDE, when the senses have shut down, the external physical reality is basically over and thus becomes almost completely inconsequential. At that point, subjective reality is everything; there is nothing else, no input, no external future.

How long does this subjective reality last and how long is it perceived to last? With time dilation, the few minutes it takes for the brain to die could conceivably result in increasing time dilation that might even feel like eternity.
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... given the extraordinary changes that occur in us between womb and grave, it's rather difficult to see continuity. Wipe our memories and we effectively become someone else. Where did the original "you" - who is now effectively dead or dormant - go? Where is it during deep sleep? — Greta

Good question, since there is no doubt that our memories play a large part in who we are as persons, and continuity of not only our memories, but also our experiences are extremely important in maintaining the continuity of who we are as individuals.

From my own studies of thousands of these testimonials it is clear that not only do we keep the continuity of our memories, but the stories that people have of encountering their deceased relatives is that the relatives also keep the continuity of their memories and their experiences. In fact, if anything is the case, more of our memories return when having the out-of-body experience. — Sam26

Just checking the objective (out there) situation, there is physical continuity from before life, to life, to after life which could theoretically be traced back forensically, understood and even reproduced with sufficiently advanced knowledge and technology - hence the various simulation hypotheses. While the memory of everything that has ever happened is still embedded in the fabric of evolving reality (or at least that which hasn't fallen into a black hole), access and organisation of it would seem another matter.

First thought: the difference between interacting like a lawyer or like a judge, between pressing points and wanting to better understand the apparent truth.

1) Seeing one's body from a third person perspective, i.e., from outside one's body. And hearing and seeing what's happening around their bodies.
2) Having intense feelings of being loved, and also intense feeling of peace.
3) Seeing a light or tunnel in the distance and feeling that one is being drawn to the light, or moving through the tunnel towards the light.
4) Seeing deceased loved ones [...] — Sam26

I haven't been through all comments on this long thread so I hope there's not much doubling up.

Ultimately Sam, no matter which way you look at this issue the answer always must be "maybe". While there is much fascinating anecdotal evidence for an afterlife, it's still only anecdotal.

Further, we know of no mechanism with which the information that makes you "you" can be preserved outside of a brain (or perhaps one day a quantum computer). Maybe the mechanism exists and we haven't yet discovered it? Again, maybe.

Also, given the extraordinary changes that occur in us between womb and grave, it's rather difficult to see continuity. Wipe our memories and we effectively become someone else. Where did the original "you" - who is now effectively dead or dormant - go? Where is it during deep sleep?

Why might we be more "awake" when dead than in deep sleep? Maybe if the brain is more filter than generator, then a broken filter would produce either a distorted or unadulterated consciousness.

All speculative, of course. More "maybes" :)

My understanding is the the Planck scale is theoretically the smallest scale where the predictions of the Standard Model, QM and GR no longer work. That is the scale of hypothetical strings, which would appear as a point to us - no top or bottom - while the rest of the string ran through other dimensions like a metaphysical iceberg, which perhaps just shifts the problem into speculative multi-dimensional realms.

So, to us, the string would appear as a vibrating point, like irreducible bits (as in bits and bytes) of reality.

I agree with apokrisis that the hardware/software and matter/form dualities seem hard to escape. While it seems logical to think of reality as all one thing that expends far beyond our perceptions in every respect, one can mentally break reality up in numerous ways, and not always just in two.