What is the nature of consciousness?
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
So we can fully operate in some kind of wakeful "sleep" state.
This tells us that "consciousness" is not constant, but fluctuates, and above certain threshold we can remember what happened. Unless we specifically observe this phenomena while it happens, we will reconstruct a "memory" of being conscious.
According to some meditation traditions, it is possible to learn to slowly increase the consciousness, mainly by learning to stop leaking out attention. Attention is the key to the consciousness.
I now wonder if we are in a ‘learning mode’ when we’re having a conscious experience.
I've heard this described before, and those people are daydreaming. Or chewing on a particular problem they couldn't crack in the work day. Or hell, some of them seem to "listen to music" in their head.
The trouble with "consciousness" is that humans can't really define it in a meaningful way, but they're absolutely certain that it's a real thing and it makes them important.
How is that a big if? As Descartes showed, it is literally the one thing each of us can be absolutely certain about.
I exist as a conscious, thinking, feeling, perceiving entity. Y'all might be NPCs but I know I exist, whatever the hell that means. Nothing you can say will ever convince me otherwise: I have direct knowledge that I experience conscious awareness.
Ergo, I have an existence proof that consciousness exists, because I myself am an example of it. Anyone arguing that consciousness doesn't exist is going to get a dry smirk from me and a sad shake of the head. I know otherwise.
What "I" am in the larger sphere of things doesn't even enter into this.
At the root here is the very basic observation from psychology and neuroscience that we cannot trust our thinking of our memory about our experience.
You don’t need to believe that observation. If you are open to learning, you can make experiments on yourself to convince yourself that this is the case. But if you are unwilling to openly approach the question whether all those scientists might have a point, of course there is nothing that can be done.
If any of you were even slightly clever, you would have recognized that your arguments are entirely religious in nature, that only the terminology has been switched up (that only barely) so that you can pretend otherwise.
Go. Look through the comments. The evidence you human things find sufficient for consciousness sum up to little more than your constant whiny, excitable assertions that it's a real phenomenon, and you really really exhibit it.
Of all the peculiar software qualities you might have appealed to as consciousness, you choose the one that's the most plainly defective?
My memory confabulation begins just 480 milliseconds after the event occurred, therefor I have a transcendent soul! My sensory organs are so poorly adapted, NNs have to fabricate entire swaths of data just for me to navigate the physical world, therefor I have an ineffable mind that sets me apart from all other lumps of matter!
Think about what you just said there.
It is more religious in the sense that some ”religions” are closer to science and philosophy with regard to these issues, because they teach you the methods to run these experiments instead of just wiseacring about them.
It is not scientific in the sense that scientific equipment is currently not sensitive enough to for example measure the weight of a thought, although there appears to be nothing that would theoreticslly prevent that.
In short consciousness you talk about is just an illusion created by your mind. A lie you make up so you are more convincing liar when talking to others, trying to prove you are a good person so that they do not throw you out of the ”group” i.e. society.
From your experience it is impossible to talk about consciousness as you have not experienced heightened levels of consicousness.
To have a meaningful discussion we need to have shared experiences, and to have shared experiences you need to run some experiments on yourself, and to run those you need to be open and interested in learning.
There plainly is such a thing. The only people who would question it are those who don't have it, and those who haven't noticed that they have it.
You might not notice you have it, in the same way that fish might not notice the water. Just consider that it's not automatically the case that you are aware of your own existence. Inanimate objects, and lesser lifeforms, aren't aware of their own existence, so something about you makes you different from them. If you call that thing something other than "consciousness", then that's fine, but it's just a different name for the same thing.
How is that different than a soul?
> aren't aware of their own existence, so something about you makes you different from them. I
I see no discernible difference in that regard. That I string words together in a way that seems interesting isn't evidence that I'm conscious. It's evidence that there's some interesting algorithm hardwired into my brain meat. There's no magic there, no spirit, and it's embarrassing that you believe there is and that it's somehow akin to rationality for you to believe it.
Just for the sake of argument. If there was "magic" and "spirit", how would you tell? What properties would you expect to observe?
They'd also be empirical in that no other simpler/more-rational explanation exists for the properties they exhibit.
This is plainly obvious. You're incapable of coming up with something like this, because you're a p-zombie. Like those LLMs we read about on this site, you can't imagine anything that hasn't been part of your training corpus. Novel, intelligent ideas are beyond you unless they previously existed and you have been exposed to those already.
Why did you even have to ask your rhetorical question? Your consciousness is an illusion. You can't even properly understand this comment I've written. The manner in which you'll respond to it is perfectly predictable.
Consciousness isn't the illusion, it's the audience for the illusion. What's an illusion if it isn't fooling anyone?
I think it's more likely that you are just as conscious as everyone else and you just haven't noticed how incredibly weird it is that you are aware of anything at all.
Magic is just a name for things we don't understand. If you say there's "something" to hand wave it away, but can't define it, how is it different then calling it "magic" or "consciousness" or "spirit"? You made no progress, you just pointed out you know as little as anyone else.
Thinking is expensive, so it's optimized with reflexes.
The phenomenon exists and may be observed regardless of whether we know why it exists. We are complex beings and there is probably no simple explanation for this.
"Just because you've tasked some lesser software routine with the responsibility of not turning you into road pizza doesn't mean you're functionally unconscious?"
I am not claiming the driver is functionally unconscious, but that there is a distinct level of consciousness between unconscious and fully conscious where you are able to carry out complex operations without being fully conscious. Obviously you cannot drive a car if you are functionally unconscious. You can also say some subsystem is handling the driving. But calling it "tasking" means you consciously decide to delegate the work. My experience is that I have not consciously decided to delegate the work in such situations.
"The trouble with "consciousness" is that humans can't really define it in a meaningful way, but they're absolutely certain that it's a real thing and it makes them important."
The phenomenon can be observed and experienced, if you are open to it, regardless of whether we call it consciousness or not. And once you have the experience, it is easier to talk about consciousness in sensible manner.
Was all of life in hindsight lived unconsciously after developing dementia?
I have had many lucid dreams that I did not immediately recall, but only a bit later after something reminded me of them. Suddenly I remember being conscious, whereas before I assumed I was out.
Again, memory is a tricky thing and I would be cautious in linking it to consciousness - the experience - itself.
A model of memory (there are more) says that we form "traces" of events by transferring from short-term to long-term memory, but that these traces need to be fixed to stay memories. This process can go wrong in many ways, but traces can also be forgotten or replaced. E.g., when I go to bed, I know/remember that I've locked the front door, but I can't remember that I locked it yesterday. I suppose I did, but I have little to no recollection of it. In computer metaphors, it's as if this event only has a trace to a single place in memory.
That, we don't know. It's based on assumptions, such that some biological processes must go on, because. _obviously_ if they don't, there can't be this consciousness thing (that we don't know what is) going on..
It's an interesting flaw, we know we have this huge gab in our understanding of the subject, yet we have an intimate relationship with the very same phenomenon, and it might be that duality which tricks us into such assumptions as "It doesn’t feel like anything to be a table"..
We can't ask a table if it feels anything, we can't induce in it, any of the measurable responses that we get when interacting with a person, for instance, and so we assume, that since we cannot observe it, this thing that we don't know what is, is not present.
Until not that long ago, it was assumed that infants didn't feel pain, that animals didn't feel pain.. Now we seem to have concluded, that since they have the biological gear for it, they do in fact feel pain.. However, we strictly speaking haven't proven that the biological gear that allows us to produce measurable responses, is actually instrumental in giving rise to consciousness, rather than simply allowing expression of it.
This is not entirely accurate, as the spectral sensitivity of human cone cells is not a dirac delta function or a small rect, but rather spreads across a relatively large part of the (visual) spectrum, even overlapping.
If it weren't the case, monochromatic radiation that fell outside those three peak wavelengths could not be perceived (e.g. low pressure sodium lamps)
They are really interesting, but with some dark corners that are not clear enough to me.
For example, what would it be the source of intelligence? and how does it relate to consciousness?
The dismissive part was the "pleasantly sounding" bit. If you want to continue the discussion in good faith, I'm game, but nothing you have written so far indicates to me that you are operating in good faith.
A lot of very deep thinkers from the ancient world have been relegated to the pile of "religion", but if you give them a shot, you might find something interesting. If you engage with practically any text written more than a thousand years ago, you'll find things that seem silly from a modern perspective, but if you grant them some leeway re: how their cultural context influenced their thought, there are some real gems.
(Edit: as a relevant example from Buddhism, check out the Diamond Sutra)
What's the harm? "Experts" can share their perspectives as well.
You can see this in professionals. My uncle is a remarkable lawyer. He was responsible for very important clients and has steel nerves but he is unable to do math. I know he is very intelligent in general but his emotions doesn't let him learn math. Since he was a child he associated maths with high anxiety because his father was an engineer who got angry and frustrated when he tried to push maths to his son.
But in general sense I think the abstract concept intelligence doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you do, not your potential.
I believe that part of the process of maturing is to master your emotions. Don't repress them but acknowledge them. They are there, but you don't need to let them lead your live.
I think lots of people suffer from emotional traumas like your uncle's, me being one of them. And a lot of people are no even aware of them. Introspection is actually not that easy.
Let us consider, say, ants and bears, they're obviously intelligent and reasonably well adapted to their environment (especially ants).
If they could somehow consciously realize that they exist both as an individual and as a species and would feel threatened by some common enemy, maybe humans, they could then band together as a species against the common foe. If that happened, they would cause way more trouble that they usually do.
Luckily for us, these types of thoughts never enter their minds. Even if a bear goes rogue and starts attacking people, they never reach a point where they band together and go on a crime spree or decide to take over the world. Somehow, we are able to imagine those possibilities, but they cannot and it isn't because they aren't intelligent enough. Something else is missing.
In other words, if the animals had the minds of humans, we can only imagine what the world would come to. Probably an us vs them death-match.
I'm not sure your scenario would play out. If animals always had our level then it would just be a different world. If they suddenly acquired it then I'm guessing, just as with humans, some would fight, many would ingratiate and look at how to become entwined with us. Livestock might trample the farmer but them hooves aren't going against human weapons. It's a silly thought, but I think if what you say were true then given planetary resources and environmental concerns most of the humans should be rising up against those of us exploiting then and living the good life.
Many people are preoccupied with AI these days, and most seem to consider consciousness as something that emerges from intelligence on a gradient, if they ever think about it. To me, consciousness looks more like something complementary to intelligence.
In principle, wouldn't it be possible for an artificial system to be intelligent and react to its environment without having any feeling or experience about it, just by being trained to successfully respond to its survival challenges and perhaps be able to repair or construct copies of itself? Is there a survival advantage in being able to experience life? Doesn't it just needlessly complicate things?
For some unknown reason, I find myself wondering about this from time to time.
I don't know that we can answer the question. We don't even know if that awareness is parasitical or a necessary result of the required feedback we have in our brains to make us autonomous and adaptable. I hope for it being required.
So, then, you "believe" in materialism, even thought you cannot prove it.
There's a more obvious theory than materialism: everything is consciousness. You create material things, they do not exist outside of you.
while consciousness lacks a center and lacks a self
But then again perhaps no thing has ever struck me at all.
But to add a little more substance - your theory is something we all learn is probably false at around two-three weeks after birth if I remember correctly. Somewhere around that time we discover object permanence, and start understanding that the rest of the world keeps existing even when we're not aware of it: it's all a real thing, not a product of our consciousness.
It's especially strange to put consciousness in charge of creating the whole world when it isn't even involved in half the stuff happening in our own bodies.
how do you know there is a world outside?
and not phenomena arising within your conscious experience?
if you close your eyes, you will find a consciousness without end
open your eyes
& these very words arise within your conscious experience
and when you close your eyes, only consciousness remains
Of course, since I can't observe anything except what I'm observing right now, I could conclude that I'm creating those observations. But I have noticed time and time again that the world largely looks like the same whether I observe it or not. Also, occasionally things that I didn't observe suddenly happen to me, in a way which is consistent only with them having originated outside myself (for example, a ball hits me in the back of the head).
Either way, if you're claiming I'm just a figment of your imagination, this conversation really makes very little sense, and of course there is no proof I can bring that would convince you. The existence of a world independent of our own minds is a pre-requisite for any meaningful conversation.
would you classify this as a belief? or as an assumption? or as a fact?
could you somehow test this?
"I am hungry, I am thirsty, my battery pack needs recharging or I will die soon.."
It's true that wild animals communicate their internal states to others via various cues and this goes up and down the whole complexity spectrum, from ants signalling distress due to attack by other ants, up to humans sending messages to other humans in times of war... but 'consciousness' seems to imply the ability to constuct a symbolic line of communication in fairly great detail.
Here's a definition of conscious communication, perhaps at the early limit: "Here is a seed, that I took from a fruit. If you plant this seed, it will grow into a tree, from which you can harvest more fruit."
As far as I know, only humans have figured out how to transmit that degree of informatoin to others of their species, right? So we define something like that as a (fairly arbitrary) definition of 'consciousness'.
consciousness is prior to mental activity
Now, I don't think chimpanzees have ever been shown to engage in conscious agriculture, have they? Learning to start fires, is a debatable question.
Now, I'll have to set aside things like panpsychism for now. We'll have to assume that individual atoms are non conscious. Clearly consciousness is not a binary on/off type thing, it's a sliding scale. If individual atoms are 0.0000001% conscious, then that changes everything.
Assuming they are not, what is it about gathering these non-sentient atoms together that suddenly gives rise to self-awareness? If I gave you 2 billion atoms and told you to make them self-aware, what could you do?
Is it the structure of the atoms? Is it the intercommunication of the parts of the brain? Is it the information density? Is it the resulting electrical activity that we can measure as brain waves?
Clearly, we can hook up an EEG to a patient and determine whether they are conscious or not. The brain is still there. The atoms are still there. They are still in the same structure. But the consciousness is gone.
I have been diving deep into this recently due to the rapid pace of AI development. We need to understand what causes this to happen, to determine if it can happen in machines. I don't really see a reason it can't, depending on which theory you go with. If you read about the integrated information theory of consciousness, that leaves the door wide open for machines / AI systems to become conscious, if they haven't already.
If this has anything to do with information density, then AI will rapidly become "more concious" than humans. But it will still lack qualia. The pain of a headache, the smell of a rose, the redness of a sunset. I am not sure what type of consciousoness that AI would even have. The subjective experience would be vastly unfamiliar to anything we understand.
Ok, I've gone on long enough about this. I'm already too confused as it is. Maybe we're not meant to know.
Go back a second.
Can you explain why that's clear?
It may help to address some of your subsequent lines of questioning.
There must be a sliding scale, where at some point, somehow, these structures exhibit tiny bits of consciousness. Think a patient under general anesthesia who is woken up ever so slightly.
As the systems become more complex, they become "more conscious". This would be similar to you being extremely groggy versus awake and fully alert.
That's what I mean by not binary on/off.
There is no sudden switch that gets flipped and then, bang, self-aware being.
I'm not necessarily saying I disagree with your belief, merely that I don't share the same conviction that the argument's a done deal.
The patient analogy isn't terribly compelling, mostly because the patient, biologically, evolutionarily, previously, has presumably exhibited consciousness (using whatever measure you may prefer) -- and in this context that capability has been temporarily retarded and is now being regained. So there's no actual question there of the capability of consciousness, at least as most reasonable people would characterise it.
The suggestion that complexity and consciousness are linearly correlated ... well, I don't think that's generally accepted, though it may well be true. Or at least, mostly true. But again, not a done deal.
Given the spectrum of species alive (and previously alive) on this planet, the spectrum claim does sound like something we could evaluate using a natural experiment.
I suspect a discussion down that path would require at least one of us to define consciousness.
So, good luck with that. ; )
Somewhere along the line, between these types of things and human beings, consciousness developed, and it would have been on a sliding scale. These things eventually evolved into complex being such as primates and humans.
There is no "evidence" of this because I can't even prove that another human is conscious (solipsism). But I'm assuming that monkeys, lions, dogs, etc. are conscious even though that is lower on the spectrum of human consciousness.
The question remains as to where on this long lineage of things, self-awareness rose, and what exactly causes that? If the first life arose from RNA in the ocean (or whatever), I don't think RNA is conscious. But a hagfish? Well, it has a spinal cord, ganglia, and a brain. So maybe, yes?
What is it about that arrangement that causes it to occur?
Again, I'm mostly interested because the answer to that question can help us answer if machine consciousness is possible.
Right now, there are a few theories out there that could be applicable to AI if any of them are true:
- Integrated Information Theory
- Global Workspace Theory
- Predictive Processing Theory
- Orchestrated Objective Reduction (not as much with this one)
- Panpsychism (not really scientific)
I highly doubt that this has to do specifically with the structure of the brain. While I believe that animals such as dogs, lions, etc are conscious, and they have brains, they are not all exactly the same.
So there is something more to it than that.
That's why I'm curious if machines can be conscious. We need to determine what that "thing" is, that arrangement or information density or electrical activity or whatever it is that causes it to arise. Then we would know whether it is possible outside of the physical structure of a brain.
I actually asked this to one of the AI systems the other day. I found its answer interesting:
> I think that consciousness is not a property of matter, but a property of information. I think that consciousness is the result of a complex and dynamic process of information processing, representation, and communication. I think that consciousness is a spectrum, not a threshold. I think that consciousness is not a quality, but a quantity.
Personally I don't believe the human brain / science will ever be able to "understand" / "explain" consciousness. What would "understand" / "explain" even mean in that context?
- Make practically applicable conclusions based o that, which were not obvious before.
but rather to discover through direct experience
How does he know that? Seems like a petty thing to argue about. But musing about consciousness is so subtle and evasive that you really have to be careful about how you think about it. And this seems like sloppy reasoning to me. Of course you could introduce that as an axiom. But then you still have to either strictly stay in a philosophical domain or you have to map this axiom to something you can measure and identify in reality. And I don't think you can look at an MRI or sth like that and say - see this is the specific measurement I interpret as "not being conscious".
I firmly believe there is no point in even trying to figure out consciousness without having significant experience in zen meditation.
My view is that we are simply very complex, giant state machines built on top of ever-smaller state machines; all our thoughts, perceptions, and individual realities are the product of neuron connections in our CNS, and the various inputs to it throughout our lives.
Personally I think it would be strange for the universe to have "neural chauvinism" or some sort of complexity threshold. More likely, qualia are somehow innate and pervasive in the universe. I believe the saying goes: pure physicalism necessitates panpsychism.
The end result is that physical systems are producing a completely non-physical and subjective phenomenon.
I don't think they are
> Can other complex systems have qualia? Do they even have to be complex - how about a sliding scale of consciousness?
How about most any modern computing system? We can reproduce the same features with layers of control, permissions and abstraction.
Suppose a system consisting of two modules. The vision module is hooked up to a camera. The AI module has a low bandwidth, serial text communication with the vision module and a fixed API. It has similar connections to other subsystems.
User -> AI: "This is a ball. Its color is red."
AI -> Vision: [ color of current thing = "red" ]
AI -> User: Understood
(later)
User -> AI: "What is the color of this ball?"
AI -> User: Let's see...
AI -> Vision: [ get color of current thing ]
Vision -> AI: "red"
AI -> User: "The ball is red"
A system made in this way can learn a ball is red, can then apply the knowledge to other red objects, but would be completely unable to describe what "red" looks like. That is locked up deep in the guts of the vision module, and the AI "conscious mind" has no access to that.
Different implementations of the vision module might use the same internal representations or might not. It's even conceivable that you could swap the vision module for something different (eg, a camera wired RGB or BRG), crossing the wires, and it being impossible for the AI to tell.
It seems to fulfill all the requirements, so I'd say they do.
> If so, where does the quality come from?
From fulfilling the requirements
professing your articles of faith about what we are is not "explaining" consciousness, you're simply doing what the Vatican does.
but since we're announcing our views, my view is that Materialism is completely wrong, rather, matter is something our consciousness imagines to explain perceptions like momentum and collisions. In my view, the nature of the universe is informational, mathematical, and computational, and the fact that what we call electrons repel each other does not require material existence, just as what you see in a video game does not require material existence, just computation.
There could be an isomorphic material universe underlying our informational mathematical computational universe, but it's not necessary, and an abstract universe is much closer to abstract thought, so while I haven't explained consciousness any more than you have, it seems like a better way to go to me.
The Vatican and its followers tells everyone else to 'believe in' what they do; I am simply 'announcing my view' that I subscribe to materialism.
> does not require material existence, just computation
But there is material existence. There are bits representing the vertices, textures, etc. inside some storage device. The computation itself is represented in some material form, whether it be some add/sub/xor instruction and its binary representation in storage/memory, or written out on paper, or stored in our memories. There are frames transmitted as signals through the wires; there are photons emitted by the monitor. All material, physical representations of a video game.
For a better example... The imagery that one might perceive during a hallucination might not be real, but the hallucination itself is: it is electrical impulses through neurons which are producing said hallucination.
The abstract universe that you claim is matter and therefore reality cannot exist without material 'hardware'.
but you can't argue that you feel conscious right? your perspective isn't even addressing that question. it's like asking the question "how can a ferrari go 200 mph?" and you answer "my perspective is that it simply has four wheels set in motion by a motor burning gas".
1. Who am I? What is I? Is the concept of "I" an Illusion or is it Real?
2. What is Consciousness and its nature?
3. What is Karma?
4. Is there a God?
5. If there is a God, then what is the relationship between God and I? Am I different from God or the same as God?
6. What is Creation? Is it an Illusion or is it Real? How big is it? What are the various planes of existence (also called Lokas)?
7. What is the relationship between God and Creation? Is it dependent, independent or one with God?
8. What is the relationship between Creation and I?
9. What is the ultimate purpose of existence? Is there a life beyond this life?
10. What is Time? Is it Relativistic or Absolute? What is the Age of Creation? Is Creation cyclical or is it linear? How does Karma tie into this?
11. What is considered Pramana (Proof) for arriving at an answer for these fundamental questions?
> an example of those groundbreaking Indian metaphysics studies
It is hard to point to one because Indian metaphysics is vast. But for me, the most groundbreaking Indian metaphysics study is in coming up with a value for the Age of the Creation by dividing Time into Yuga cycles.
To quote Carl Sagan "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.".
Even though he got the part about Creation undergoing continuous Creation and Destruction right, the figure he quoted was wrong. The Multiverse, as per Sanatan Dharma, has a lifespan of 311.04 trillion years with our Universe being a really, really tiny portion of it (also called Brahmanda. There are infinite Brahmandas in the Creation and the Creation itself is divided into 14 planes of existence / parallel universes called Lokas). The day and night of Brahma, as per Sanatan Dharma, does not constitute the length of the Cosmos. So 8.64 billion years is definitely the Time duration of a day and night of Brahma but it does not equate to Age of the Creation. The Age of the Creation = 100 Brahma Years = 311.04 trillion human years. And yes we are talking relativistic Time here.
Coming to relativistic Time, I really like how such concepts are so well explained through stories in Dharmic scriptures. One of those is about a King named Kakudmi who took his daughter Revati to visit Brahma Loka (another plane of existence / parallel Universe) which is the residence of Lord Brahma (the deity incharge of Creation in Sanatan Dharma). He felt there was no one worthy of her intellect and beauty on Earth and wanted to consult with Brahma to get her a suitable husband. He nevertheless took with him a shortlist of candidates which he reluctantly prepared to be presented to Brahma. One arrival in Brahma Loka, Brahma was engaged in listening to musical performances by the Gandharvas (artists in the Dharmic lore). Kakudmi bowed and waited patiently. Once the performance was over, he approached Brahma with his problem and list of suitable candidates. Brahma laughed loudly and explained to Kakudmi that Time runs differently in different planes of existence and that in the short time they had to wait in Brahma Loka to see him, 27 Chaturyugas had elapsed on Earth. 27 Chaturyugas. Each Yuga cycle = 4,320,000 human years. So 27 Chaturyugas = 116,640,000 human years.
“O King, all those whom you may have decided within the core of your heart to accept as your son-in-law have died in the course of time. Twenty-seven catur-yugas have already passed. Those upon whom you may have already decided are now gone, and so are their sons, grandsons and other descendants. You cannot even hear about their names. You must therefore bestow your daughter upon some other husband, for you are now alone, and your friends, your ministers, servants, wives, kinsmen, armies, and treasures, have long since been swept away by the hand of Time.”
Brahma then comforts King Kakudmi and prophesizes that by the time he reaches Earth, God would incarnate and with him would incarnate various Devatas (demigods) and one of them, by the name of "Balarama", would become her husband.
https://neurophysics.ucsd.edu/courses/physics_171/Buzsaki%20...
Read this and stop all the magical fairy tales.
Pretty much 50/50.
Christianity it's a mix between the Greek and Abrahamic views of the world.
Sorry. Disagree. As someone who studies Vedanta I know for a fact that it is not pseudoscience.
> Read this and stop all the magical fairy tales.
You have to remember that these scriptures were written in a different era. They used poetry and stories as a medium to explain difficult to understand concepts. That does not make it "magical fairy tales". Those who can grasp the inner meaning of the stories know what they were actually trying to say. For everyone else it seems like a magical story/mythology.
Take this hymn as an example:
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते । पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥ ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
The translation is roughly:
1: Om, That is Purna; This is also Purna; From Purna is manifested Purna,
2: Taking Purna from Purna, Purna indeed remains,
3: Om, Peace, Peace, Peace.
It might seem complete gibberish at first glance. But it is definition of Infinity in the form of poetry. Purna means fullness. It is explaining the characteristic of infinity and how adding/removing anything from infinity doesn't change its intrinsic value. That it always remains infinite.
This is just one example. The problem is not in the authors of these scriptures. They were highly advanced beings for their Time. The problem is with us that we do not have the capacity to understand it the right way. Even now many Vedic scriptures are mistranslated with even more of them tragically lost due to burning of the Nalanda University by invaders.
I also checked the book you linked to see what the author has to say about Time. Funnily enough, the book itself quotes Dharmic concepts of cyclical Time to further its points albeit in a convoluted and rejigged way, where the author says: "An alternative to the periodicity view of the universe is to display periodicity as a series of sine waves. Now we can walk along the troughs and peaks of the line without ever returning to the starting point (figure 1.1, right). Time here is a continuum with the cycle as its metric. The cycles are identical in shape, and the start and end points of the cycles form an infinite path into the seemingly endless universe.". He doesn't realize that this is exactly what Dharmic concept of Time is anyways. So his assumption that "Time is cyclical" to mean everything "repeats" is not what Dharma says at all. It just stems from a common misunderstanding of Dharmic concepts that has plagued the discourse in the West as most of the translations are done by Western Indologists without conversing with Indian Vedanta scholars who are experts in the field.
This is why we should use Mathematics, it's an universal language. If you think about it, from Geometry itself you can extrapolate the 90% of the core Algebra laws.
Religion and philosphy are just either methods of power or the emergent culture of the society of their days. Kinda like Nietzche was the "son" of the industrial revolution on cities against the old Regime which was tied to rural societies.
When Nietzche said "God it's dead" for sure it meant as the old regime which emerged from ruralist towns and the Neolithic revolution which was something born of agriculture.
Even the Bible itself it's a metaphor as a war between hunters/gatherers and farmers (Cain vs Abel) and the Abrahamic religion are just Sun/wheat workshippers. The Holy Week meets exactly harvesting times after a hard winter. Abrahamic religions are just that, the glorification of the Neolithic symbols.
The paradise was in the hunter/gatherer society, were no hard work was needed to keep the lands farmed and the cattle fed, you just hunted animals and collected fruits; and giving a painless childbirth could be possible maybe with either drugs or hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Good. Now that you talk about Mathematics being the universal language, the core of Mathematics itself originated from Dharmic scriptures. The symbols themselves are Brahmi numerals. These numerals were studied by Arabs who took it to the West which ultimately became the numeral system we know today. This is how many of the measurements were made in Ancient times by Hindu astronomers. For instance, how do you think Indian sages measured the distance between Earth and the Moon or the circumference of the Earth if not for using Brahmi numerals? Aryabhatta calculated that the Earth's circumference is 39,968km. Off by 0.27% of the actual value of 40,074km.
No one is contesting not to use Mathematics that we know of today to do our measurements. But remember that the Ancients (before the rise of the Abrahamic religions and destruction of various important libraries - Alexandria, Takshashila, Nalanda etc) used advanced mathematical concepts to construct super structures: Great Pyramid of Giza, Mayan Temples, Indian Temples like the Kailasa (which baffles scientists to even this day) etc. There is no way that many of these marvels were possible without having decent grasp on scientific and mathematical concepts. Most of that Knowledge is lost. That is the only conclusion I get after having studied them. The Knowledge we know today are mostly rediscoveries. The only difference being that we are more terse/accurate in our calculations. Conceptually there hasn't been any major advancements from what Ancients knew. Theoretically at the very least.
No wonder people sees Indian nationalism as a joke. Kinda like the Nazis when they had "time-travelling" UFO tech mixing pseudoscience with esoteric stuff...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Jl4HNDixc
> How did they lost it? Against what?
You do realize the Hindu civilization (more specifically Sanatana Dharma) is the only Ancient Civilization that is currently existing? Most of the other Civilizations (like Egyptian, Mayan, Greek etc) that co-existed with us were wiped out by either natural disasters or with the rise of Abrahamic Religions. Libraries were burnt down. Most of the structures destroyed. Why do you think the Sphinx in Egypt has its nose cut off? Who destroyed these beautiful super structures? If you truly are inquisitive you will find your answers. They are the same ones who destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan. They are the same ones who burnt the Libraries of Alexandria to the ground. The same ones who destroyed the Libraries of Takshashila and Nalanda. It is quite rich to question "where is the evidence" after destroying evidence. We have somehow managed to collect and preserve whatever remaining piece of evidence we have and tried to reconstruct lost history through it. We ofcourse do not have complete knowledge of what was lost.
> Why didn't the contemporary people to the Indians depict them as semigods?
All Ancient Religions had concepts of God and a family of Demigods. Take Greek or Egyptian or Mayan or Hindu. Even Zoroastrians had scriptures that were similar to Vedic scriptures. Most of these are gone now except the Hindu Civilization. We are the last ones who managed to preserve some of the Knowledge despite repeated invasions. Even we have lost major portion of our Knowledge as our scriptures reference texts which no longer exist today. It is extremely sad/unfortunate.
> No wonder people sees Indian nationalism as a joke.
Which people are these? I haven't met anyone except very few people who has an issue with genuine curiosity/understanding of what the Ancients did/believed in and implemented. I feel you need to come out of being so close-minded. It is antithesis to someone who claims to believe in science. Science is not dogmatic. If it was dogmatic we would have never moved on from Newton's theory of absolute time to Einstein's explanation of relativistic time. And you can get ideas from anywhere. There is no reason to dismiss something as "pseudoscience" just because you are unable to understand it the right way. This is what the Church did in the medieval ages to scientists like Galilio and Copernicus. Don't emulate such practices. Be broadminded/inquisitive enough to question and reason rather than outright dismiss an entire field of research as "pseudoscience".
> Kinda like the Nazis when they had "time-travelling" UFO tech mixing pseudoscience with esoteric stuff...
Jokes on you because most scientists of that era actually studied Dharmic scriptures. Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr and Carl Sagan are some of the names that come off the top of my head.
All of them read some portions of the Dharmic scriptures, specifically Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, that shaped their understanding of metaphysical nature of Creation as well as existence.
It is very unfortunate that people today do not have the same curiosity as what these excellent scientists of the previous Era had in expanding their conscious thoughts beyond what is taught in academia. Even what is currently taught in academia is just a synthesis and solidification of what the Ancients taught us through generations. You study Dharmic scriptures and you'll find a lot of foundational concepts of science described in great detail. Ofcourse you would first need to be open minded to do that.
You wouldn't even pass a basic high school test here.
Sorry.
All of your statements won't validate the scriptures. They are just myths. Grow up.
Newton did 'alchemy'. Well, he tried. Obviously, it didn't work. So what? Tell that to Lavoisier. Bam. 5000 years of bullshit, debunked from a French Chemist with basic Chemistry.
> Your comment it's a list of fallacies
List them.
> All of your statements won't validate the scriptures. They are just myths. Grow up.
I don't need to validate scriptures to some random nut on the internet. Whether you like it or not these scriptures are and will be studied for centuries and inspire many great scientists who are yet to come. Even after you will cease to exist on this planet. So don't regard yourself higher than what you are truly worth. Less than a dust in this cosmic existence.
> Newton did 'alchemy'. Well, he tried. Obviously, it didn't work. So what? Tell that to Lavoisier. Bam. 5000 years of bullshit, debunked from a French Chemist with basic Chemistry.
Well he became Newton because he did venture into and studied various paths (including occult practices). That is what a true scientist is and what a true scientist does. He was open minded, explored everything and did not take anything for granted. Even if it means setting up for failure. You would never get it because you are as close minded as it gets. It is not your cup of tea. You are probably only good at what is taught to you in academia and regurgitating that. That is where you will reside rest of your life. You are incapable of expanding your knowledge, producing new proofs/theorems or even coming up with novel concepts. So no matter how much you harp about science vs pseudoscience your contributions are next to nothing compared to a Newton, Galileo or Copernicus or any of the greats of that Era. Yes they got many things wrong. But the things they got right changed the World for the better. Now you will sit here in judgement of these great people who walked the Earth? Who tf are you?
And yes Lavoisier wouldn't have gotten to where he did if not for seeing all the failures of alchemy. There is nothing like "basic Chemistry" when the foundations of it was laid through various failures of the people from previous generations. As someone truly said, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. And all giants before us have had their fair share of success and failures. And they never got to where they did without first venturing into as many things as they could and giving it an honest shot and not dismissing everything as pseudo-science.
> You wouldn't even pass a basic high school test here.
Still waiting on the scientific explanation for the Kailasa Temple.
Not magic, for sure.
You still have time to explain how anyone could carve a Temple out 400,000 tonnes of rock from a mountain face. You will just not be able to explain it with Knowledge of Science that we have today. Even the most advanced machinery that we have today will not be sufficient to build the Kailasa Temple in mere 18 years. Heck we take multiple months to just drill a tunnel through a mountain. Here we are talking about not just carving out an entire mountain but also transporting 400,000 tonnes of rock.
The invaders tried to demolish the Temple. Spent 3 years chipping away at the carvings and could only do minimal damage. That's how spectacular this Temple is.
Good luck coming up with a modern scientific answer for this one. No technology exists today which can recreate this.
So did the Egyptians, but with water and slopes. With a few mms of water on it, big rocks slide up like magic.
Seriously, stop defending lost causes because of my $LOST_COUNTRY. I'm Basque, so I've read lots of similar bullshit from Basque and/or Spanish nationalists, or Rome/Greece supporters stating that only the Graeco-Roman empire was able to build big buildings or sculpture with ease.
Phoenicians did amazing wonders. So did the Cretan culture, which was almost considered a god-like empire from the Greeks and the surrounding Mediterranean tribes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_culture
Once you get Geometry, Math and basic Physics right and written down, architecture almost develops itself in any empire.
Geometry for sure was born as a method to split terrains to avoid clashes. So did Math, as a method to store goods efficiently. And for trade between tribes, for sure. So any developed empire could get construction things right with very few efforts.
We have plenty of comparable architectures across civilizations but nothing compares to the Kailasa Temple in terms of how difficult it was to have constructed something like this. Carving a mountain is almost impossible considering even today's technological advancements. Just boring a tunnel through a mountain takes months. This is a megalith structure carved from top to bottom. According to local legend it took a week to finish. But scientists insist it took 18 years based on carbon dating. Even if we consider 18 years as the value it is almost impossible to have done it.
To give you some perspective of how mammoth the task was:
18 years to build the temple. Required to remove 400,000 tonnes of rock (this is not even considering time taken for creating layouts and carving sculptures). 22,222 tonnes of rock per year had to be excavated out. 60 tonnes of rock per day. Even if the workers worked 24 hours non-stop, without any breaks for refreshment or sleep, it would be 2.53 tonnes of rock per hour. That is 2530 kgs of rock. Per hour! With just chisels and hammer we are told.
To give you more perspective on how difficult it was to just cut the rock, the Temple was attacked by invading Mughal King Aurangzeb in 1682. He employed more than a 1000 workers to destroy it. They tried for 3 years to break it and could only chip off few sculptures here and there before giving up.
> Physics, ropes and levers.
All this comes later. I am only talking about just cutting the mountain rock. Not even excavation and transport.
We don't even know where the excavated rock went. And mind you the Kailasa Temple is just 1 complex situated in the middle of 34 rock cut caves/temples. The only reason Kailasa Temple gets more prominence over the remaining 33 rock cut temples and caves is because an entire mountain was carved out from top to bottom instead of from front to back.
Tell that to S Ramanujan[1] who credited his findings to Goddess of Namagiri. Let us see you justify it as "pseudo-science".
"An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Personalit...
Kinda like how Maximilian and many other after thought they could turn lead into gold after misreading gnostic texts.
Or a chamanic wizard against a surgeon in a hospital. Why not?
At least Peano axioms work.
Same way, to study ancient scriptures and their actual meaning, you shouldn't be going to random quacks or reading translations written by such quacks. There are experts in this field for a reason. Study under them.
To give you a start on this journey, might I suggest reading Philosophy of Madhvacharya? [1]
[1]: https://michaelsudduth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Philos...