DP/DR is quite possibly the worst mental disorder you can ever fall into. It is the feeling where you are convinced everything around you is not real, you see people you know, you know they are significant, but they just feel like actors in a show and you don't care. You look in the mirror, and you don't recognize yourself as you, you just see a body. Worse, your body just moves around the world and accomplish things on autopilot, while you watch everything unfold on what feels like a screen, completely detached. If you died, you wouldn't care much, because you wouldn't feel it's you dying, in fact you want to die, because you are trapped in a hell from which there is no escape.
I've never suffered from this disorder, but I investigated it for some time and am convinced it reveals something we do not yet understand about our existence in this world. The source of our existence may not be where we think it is.
I have a serious medical condition. I frequently suffer somatopsychic side effects. It's incredible what chemistry can make you feel.
I happen to also believe in a lot of woo stuff. But the reality is that no known cause is not proof that there is a spiritual explanation or cause.
the money they’ve raised so far is due to the possible improvements this proposed technology will bring to neuro research.
From Reddit:
"DPDR is just your brain's ways to help you survive a situation you're unable to escape/fight. It tries to make you unaware of what's going on so you can endure it until it's over. It isn't supposed to be permanent. DPDR itself isn't anything to fear."[0]
[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/83vm5k/yikes_intense_...
I've tried for years to recreate the effect with no success.
I prefer to believe instead that I'm a character in an MMORPG. But if that's true, my consciousness still resides within the simulation. At best, the entity controlling me has some superset of my consciousness. At worst, my consciousness is still totally disposable, and my player is just interested in a fun ride.
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-medical-mystery-of-a-man...
Also, there's probably usually a lot of brain matter dedicated to redundancy, memories, and enabling connections between ideas to foster creativity, and this person may be lacking in these areas in hard-to-measure ways. If most of our brain truly had no purpose, evolution would have selected against it forever ago. (Instead, evolution went through large lengths to keep our heads so big.)
You're just an NPC
My favourite argument against this idea is that it would violate the law of conservation of energy. In any case it looks to me that all these dualist theories of mind are non-falsifiable
Rather, the brain's processes themselves are probably what makes you you. Regardless of whether they generate consciousness, the biochemical sensory-processing, storage-and-modelling, and decision-making algorithms (which we can detect by looking at synapses) are where you lie.
If your brain was somehow modified to take completely different decisions and make different statements ('dumb' magic-less rewiring), with the magic/antenna/emergent/quantum/whatever consciousness part kept intact, I am pretty sure that I would not consider the resulting being 'me'.
Of course everyone is free to believe otherwise.
In other words, we know with certainty that there is no physical mechanism by which some "external consciousness" could influence the brain. So the answer to that hypothesis is a definitive "nope, that's not how it works."
CalTech quantum physicist Sean Carrol explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x26a-ztpQs8&t=836
https://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-m...
Plus, there are all kinds of problems and contradictions if the mind reduces to matter.
This has never been a good proxy for truth. It is also completely irrelevant given that the majority of the world has never studied neuroscience.
>science has no idea what consciousness is
Not true. Neuroscience has discovered a lot about consciousness. I recommend Principles of Neural Science if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kande...
>Plus, there are all kinds of problems and contradictions if the mind reduces to matter.
Such as?
Perhaps you can explain what science has discovered about consciousness. As far as I know, the closest is a network analysis metric used to signify whether something is conscious. But that does not tell us what consciousness is, only some of the necessary conditions, if that.
Here is a list of problems off the top of my head regarding material minds:
- Math is inherently immaterial. I cannot destroy the number 1. Infinity cannot physically exist. Negative numbers, zero, imaginary numbers, the real number line do not correspond to physical objects.
- If our mind is material, there is no way we can know any kind of truth. Truth doesn't really have meaning. Yet we do know some degree of truth.
- If consciousness is a particular configuration, then the same configuration is the same consciousness, which would imply instantaneous awareness of two completely distinct parts of the universe by the same consciousness with two copies of the configuration.
- Free will and qualia have no meaning in a materialistic worldview, yet are essential to just about everything we do everyday.
What problems and contradictions?
And then there are the normal people walking around with almost NO brain...
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-medical-mystery-of-a-man...
Still, I find it at least as likely as the "consciousness just sort of happens when information processing gets complex enough" explanation.
You might find this interesting https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-spin-on-the-quantum-bra...
Don't get me wrong, I think consciousness arising from sufficient complexity is also very much a possible answer, and I don't discount it. I'm just not totally convinced that there isn't more too it. Until a general AI arises, I don't think I will be convinced, and even if it did, who's to say it inst still just an approximation? Multiple AI intelligence domains slapped together with some approximation of a pre-frontal cortex. Even then, biology may still be something entirely different.
Sure, you start venturing into the supernatural realm talking about this, but who's to say that given sufficient time and study of this phenomena, the supposed "consciousness is everywhere" becomes the new natural science, and gives rise to new technologies we couldn't even conceive. It would be like discovering Electromagnetism all over again.
Then again, the last time I checked we don't actually know if time is quantized or not, or if that's even a meaningful question.
A slightly modified version of this idea is explored in https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
The concept of "multiple realizability" says that a brain/consciousness/mental state can arise from non-biological matter, like digital computers.
Modern proponents of this view do not view the brain as a seat of consciousness. To them, the view of a singular consciousness that houses in the brain like a theatre, is like a Descartesian illusion. Consciousness is distributed and all parts of "you" and your environment contribute.
As for "out there": I am always a bit worried when archeologists unearth some treasures with our current state of technology. Likely, in a 100 years they will have much better methods to research and preserve unearthed treasure, and so we may be spoiling their more effective methods by digging it up and putting it on display. What if, after the 8th great AI hype, another YC company claims it has found successful methods to upload your consciousness, which is 100% fatal to your preserved brain in the process? You'll be stuck in the MVP FORTRAN digital world of uploaded consciousnesses.
Or maybe they take our current infatuation with AGI to mean permission to create a huge ensemble of preserved brains, filling an entire room like did our 1960s computers, because it turned out that consciousness is only transferable to biological "organisms", and the only way to superhuman intelligence is to combine 20 human intelligences. The AI hype bubble will become a literal fulfilling prophecy.
I personally would either jail these consciousnesses (honor their will, but put them in a boring digital world with Archive.org access to the internet) or put them on display, much like we do with preserved Egyptian Pharaoh's. I'd call it Earth, and make Trump a president.
I myself worry that even if somehow we combine all these domain specific AI's with some approximation of a neo-cortex, and then every AI researcher says "See, there it is! Behold the AGI, told you there was nothing to it!", all we're REALLY going to get is an approximation of the real thing. Then we'll be too busy playing with our new AGI's to realize we missed the mark long ago. The new treasure preservation technology never even arises because victory was declared prematurely. We hit another mark instead of the real thing. Constant refinement of the bizarro superman version of real consciousness.
I hypothesize the REAL mark being that somewhere in the brain, quantum effects, maybe in microtubules, couple with some yet to be conceived discoveries or epithanies, act as a conduit to your real consciousness software existing somewhere "out there" in the simulation ether lets suppose. Extrapolate the AI hype and one day the super intelligent Matrioshka planet size brain emerges (YC backed of course), pours over ancient abandoned research and points out "Hey, you dumb monkeys missed something Yuge here eons ago..."
And of course you cannot will yourself to become drunk.
It is pretty trivial that the matter affects the mind, not vice versa.
We're at the point now where your 'receiver' is doing basically all the work and, if it's connected to anything else, that thing just supplies formless 'mojo' that has no identifiable effect on the working of the mind.
The "somewhere" is distinguished due to the fact that a given person is a specific person and not another person (if you deny this, this makes ethics and emphatic transfer unworkable, which doesn't seem right).
They are already finding quantum effects in plants:
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/vibrating-molecules-help...
And that our brain contains micro-tubules that exhibit quantum effects:
https://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-m...
Maybe they ARE the antenna.
This is like the guys who says "prove to me god doesn't exist". Well, it doesn't work that way. You came to me with the "god exists" or "there is an antenna that connects my brain to some magic world". You prove that it is there and show me how it works.
Of course, everything we perceive the material world to be is merely a concept we are holding in our mind.
DNA is an idea.
Similarly, if consciousness is a fundamental component of the Universe/reality, it may not supervene (a technical term in philosophy) on the physical structures of the brain. [2]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340425/
[2] See the arguments of the philosopher David Chalmers.
Erlangolem made that explicit assertion, and now has to back up that statement up.
If you really want that argument, life and the internet are overloaded with opportunities to have it until all parties are dead. Very little ever moves or happens, but occasionally someone gets a book deal.
* There are mental disorders, drugs, experiences that seem to imply dualism; those are entirely inside those people's mind with no way to prove those experiences are true, or simply products of the brain.
* Damage to a brain seems to change consciousness (this is falsifiable, and proven) which seems to suggest that it is where our consciousness is; damaging the receiver damages the connection, it's obvious that something must bind the consciousness.
This is a well thought about topic. If you have some sort of falsifiable test, please suggest it, otherwise, far wiser people have tried and failed to think of one (and as a note, it's up to you to prove that your hypothesis can be falsified, it's your claim).
You just made an assertion. Now you have to prove it.
If the idea that the spirit is another fundamental force of nature is true, then it can be tested and be falsifiable.
Science isn't about proof, if observations change (primarily improve) then we change what we think we know. Which is why the above is all the "proof" I need. you can falsify it very simply. Provide a test. I have met my burden.
Go back 90 years. How do you know there isn't a 4th fundamental force of nature?
Science isn't about making assertions and not being able to back it up.
I have backed up the assertion. I have pointed to the existing literature, and the many people who have tried and failed to write a test. I have a very basic hypothesis, one that could be broken by a very simple piece of evidence: a test.
But here is the real problem. You are treating this as an argument. And I am not. This isn't about winning or loosing to me, I am just trying to understand the universe better (as are the people above saying this isn't falsifiable), and you want to win. Besides if this were a proper argument, you'd have a clearly stated position I could argue against, and you don't seem to have one (outside of 'dualism can be proven', which is a ridiculous assertion, easily refuted).
> Go back 90 years. How do you know there isn't a 4th fundamental force of nature?
How do you know there isn't a fifth now? We have no clue how we would test for it, but there are unexplained phenomena which might involve a fifth force (dark matter and the perplexing way that gravity works for example). Saying something is non-falsifiable doesn't mean it's "proven" to be wrong. Just that science can't say anything about it yet. With more knowledge and more time we learn that our previous understanding was wrong, and that we can test for new things we couldn't even imagine before (and some that we could).
> Science isn't about making assertions and not being able to back it up.
You're right, it's not. Which is why I have been able to back it up, by pointing out that many very smart people (scientists among them) have tried to think of a way to test this and failed. My assertion stands with the caveat all science has: given what we know now. Science is wrong all the time - I don't mind being wrong about this - but for the time being it appears true. And that is what is useful.
https://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-m...
There’s zero evidence of quantum mechanical effects playing a role in any aspect of cognition. Worse, the classical model suffices. Far worse, the review you cited has been thoroughly trashed.
https://cyber.sci-hub.la/MTAuMTEwMy9waHlzcmV2ZS42MS40MTk0/te...
https://cyber.sci-hub.la/MTAuMTEyNi9zY2llbmNlLjI4Ny41NDU0Ljc...
The “quantum mind” is just another case of quantum mechanics being used as the new woo of choice where “because God said so” wouldn’t be well received. Believe me, I’d love to discover that we’re not just meat hurtling towards our own extinction, but the evidence doesn’t bear out a rosier hypothesis. Even with the surprising duration of coherent state in “hot” systems, the human brain is a poor candidate for a quantum mechanical system, and the math strongly supports that. Where quantum mechanics is concerned, math is God.
As an additional fun fact - we don't know how general anesthesia works.
It’s just not scientific or rational to point at some things we don’t understand with the assumption that it must mean God did it. That’s mysticism and religion, not science, and if it uses the language of science, but not the substance it’s called pseudoscience.
If you want to postulate a soul within the rubric of QM/GR complementary theories, it’s very much on you to hypothesize and test. What field is carrying the signal? What machinery is receiving it? What’s sending it? Why is there no lag? Why is it all totally undetectable? Why are we trying to add a whole new set of assumptions on top of existing ones? Occam’s Razor really applies here, especially when it’s science vs. “devoutly to be wished.”
Just because we want reality to conform to ancient beliefs and present desires doesn’t make it so.
We have unexplained phenomenon - consciousness, everyone (well, at least me) experience it. We don't have the mechanism for it, so we reject that phenomenon exists. I don't think it's a good idea to outright reject hypothesis, that have evidences behind it, but don't have a mechanism. Remember what happened to theory of washing hands for surgeons or to continental drift (it took half a century for it to be taken seriously!)