Waking Up to Reality

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svetlu

Mindship
It is through this dream we pose such daunting questions.

WrathfulDwarf
I don't know in which way to address this dilema....should I use Ryle's Ghost in the machine idea...or should I go with Descartes mind and body dualism?

Alright, whoever wakes me up first gets my choice.

DigiMark007
Hell, if it were a dream I'd wake up and write a book about all the crazy sh*t I've seen, heard, and read from this life....since none of it would be known, I could get rich off of others' cool ideas.

Or maybe books wouldn't exist. Then I'd be screwed.

~Forever*Alone~
Originally posted by DigiMark007
Hell, if it were a dream I'd wake up and write a book about all the crazy sh*t I've seen, heard, and read from this life....since none of it would be known, I could get rich off of others' cool ideas.

Or maybe books wouldn't exist. Then I'd be screwed.

then you could invent books...

svetlu
If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, did it really fall? And does that tree even exist? Classical science has changed its mind about this again and again, and lately it has taken a direction that is remarkably similar to what the wisdom of Kabbalah has been saying for thousands of years.

But first, a brief history detour. For centuries, scientific research was based on the belief that reality and the observer are two distinct entities. Reality was thought to be objective, to exist regardless of whether there is someone observing it or not. In other words, scientists thought that the tree exists in the forest whether there's anyone to see it or not. But further research in the 20th century proved this to be wrong, and that reality is relative - it depends on the observer.

In the 1920s, Albert Einstein was the first to introduce this concept. He showed that the observer's velocity causes his reality to change. Later on, scientists went even further and concluded that reality does not depend just on the observer's velocity, but that it is altogether subjective and exists exactly to the extent that the observer perceives it. In other words, we perceive everything through our own properties, so that if our properties change, our perceived picture of the world changes as well.

This discovery revolutionized the scientific world; however, it was no innovation to the world of Kabbalah. For centuries, Kabbalah books have described that reality is relative, subjective, dependent on the observer, and changes according to his attitude to it. Kabbalah has always advanced the idea that the picture we perceive depends solely on us and does not exist outside of us. In fact, the reality we see is a reflection of our inner qualities, and if we change our qualities, we will perceive a completely different reality.


So both Kabbalah and science aim to broaden our picture of reality through scientific research, but when it comes to changing the observer's qualities in order to do so, they part ways.

Even though a scientist may know that the findings of his research depend on his own qualities, he doesn't work on developing himself as a part of his research. In other words, whatever an ordinary scientist investigates understands and reveals, remains as something that is "outside" him.

A Kabbalist, on the other hand, develops himself as a part of his research. He doesn't just recognize the fact that reality is subjective, that it depends on the observer's qualities, but actually utilizes it. Hence, a Kabbalist's new finding is a profound feeling and understanding. It becomes an actual part of his reality. This is why Kabbalist's call it an "attainment" or "Hasaga" in Hebrew, meaning that one tangibly "grasps" the feeling and knowledge the way one grasps something with his very hands.

DigiMark007
Originally posted by ~Forever*Alone~
then you could invent books...

rock

Shakyamunison

Bardock42
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=22bfff4070a81187&ex=1344744000

DigiMark007
Originally posted by Bardock42
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=22bfff4070a81187&ex=1344744000

Wild.

Deja~vu

Blue_Hefner

Mindship
Originally posted by Blue_Hefner
I used to think I was the only real person and everybody else were robots or something. How do you know everyone else on KMC is not software which can pass the Turing test?

Turing Test
- You are sitting at a terminal linked to another terminal which you can't see. If, by interacting with that other terminal, you can't tell whether it is operated by a person or a machine, then the machine has passed the Turing Test.
- A hypothetical test for computer intelligence, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, involving a computer program generating a conversation which could not be distinguished from that of a real human.

smokin'

Schecter
matrix forum

DigiMark007
I'm not a fan of the Turing Test. There's plenty of iterations that could fool a humans without sufficiently establishing sentience. It's a fun intellectual exercise for various cognitive psychologies, but not something that gives us a clearer picture of the mind or reality.

Mindship
Agreed. But since Blue_Hefner shared that particular thought, vat da hell...

DigiMark007
thumb up

Blue_Hefner
Originally posted by Mindship
Agreed. But since Blue_Hefner shared that particular thought, vat da hell...

Hey, man, I was five

Quark_666
Originally posted by Mindship
How do you know everyone else on KMC is not software which can pass the Turing test? I'm pretty sure there are some people on KMC who can not pass the Turing test.

Mindship
Originally posted by Blue_Hefner
Hey, man, I was five When I was 8, my best friend and I tried to convince each other we were robots. One day, I saw him get hurt and asked, "If you're a robot, how come you feel pain?" (I figured I had him with that one.)

He replied that his dad (who "built him"wink gave him the ability to feel pain...a good answer I immediately adopted.

Originally posted by Quark_666
I'm pretty sure there are some people on KMC who can not pass the Turing test. laughing out loud

Still...for software, "we" are all pretty convincing.

svetlu
Watch this interesting video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YG9FO7JGWq4&NR=1

svetlu
Originally posted by Bardock42
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=22bfff4070a81187&ex=1344744000

Cool!

dadudemon
Originally posted by Quark_666
I'm pretty sure there are some people on KMC who can not pass the Turing test.

hmm


ahhh!




evil face

DigiMark007
Originally posted by svetlu
Watch this interesting video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YG9FO7JGWq4&NR=1

Meh.

Most articles, essays, books on the philosophy of the mind do a better job of dealing with those issues....the video mainly just asks a bunch of questions to the viewer, then takes an enormous leap from the well-established idea of subjective reality all the way to the existence of something transcending material reality, without providing any basis to believe this other than the questions surrounding consciousness. They have no way of verifying this, either empirically or philosophically, and it is there that their bias is displayed. The next leap is possibly even greater, and goes from the existence of something transcending materialism, and says that this proves a Creator. By the end, it was only a step or two away from Creationism itself.

If one wants to believe in something beyond materialism based on the possible duality of consciousness, that is well and good, though it still has no basis in fact, only conjecture, and simply can't be dis-proven. But to then posit God would be like telling me there's an item behind Door #1, and me saying "Well, it has to be a record player." Any arbitrary item will do, but each is as likely as the other (or as unlikely as the other, to make it more poignant).

Gouki
Originally posted by Bardock42
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=22bfff4070a81187&ex=1344744000

Quite interesting. I've thought of it myself from the perspective of a gamer. "What if my life is a game?" "What if someone is playing 'me' through a game and I just don't realize it because it all seems so 'real' to me?"

Mindship
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=22bfff4070a81187&ex=1344744000 I guess Sonnenfeld had similar thoughts when directing the last scene of "Men In Black."

The idea of material existence masking over a vaster, deeper, transcendent reality is ancient, and also more ubiquitous than many realize (eg, "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream..."wink. Why the NY Times saw fit to print this is probably more a reflection of the man than the subject matter.

JediRobin23
Define Dream.

when we are asleep, we dream, and yes, we can know we are dreaming when were dreaming at times.

Our awake conciousness tells us that we dreamed after we wake up. Now, if we are in a dream right now, then there should be a different definition for dream. for example. I dont know I'm dreaming right now and never will

Darth Exodus
You'd go to a mental hospital. Or you'd already be in one. Either way your still screwed

Cartesian Doubt

svetlu

inimalist

Deja~vu
Dream a little dream of meeee




My opinion is that we only have a limited amount of information to what really is real and what we think is real.....

Atlantis001
Originally posted by svetlu
...What is it that keeps a person out of the Spiritual World? What is a person? Well, we have to understand how our perception of this reality, the way in which we perceive reality, causes a hiddeness for us.

We are too cocerned about creating abstract models to explain what do we see.


They are our creation. They are artificial... a fantasy we create for ourselves.


Truth and reality doesn't need abstractions.

Mindship
Originally posted by svetlu
...What is it that keeps a person out of the Spiritual World? Death terror.

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