aaimnr

There's an easy and a hard problem of consciousness. You're addressing the easy one. These are technical terms, you can look them up.

Just to be clear, what you are talking about is different to what Chalmers and others are talking about. The "idealistic" monism assumes that matter doesn't actually exists, while "neutral" monism assumes that matter and consciousness have similar ontological status as they are irreducible properties of the 'real stuff' [0].

BTW it may be appealing to the HN crowd that Bertrand Russell, the uber geek, subscribed to neutral monism as well.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

The problem with 'qualia' and 'consciousness' is that these concepts seem to reify something existing separately from their content. The other problem here is that 'thought' is a complex and compound entity while 'qualia' seems to imply something atomic. So let's not use this concept.

Just realised that I seriously intended to argue with you about probably the single most mysterious thing known to humanity. Feels stupid.

Anyway, what is a thought in your opinion? Is it just a physical thing? What is 'experience of red'? An illusion? (Again, I feel stupid trying to achieve something here :)

I'm not sure your argument makes sense. To say there exists conscious experience doesn't add anything ontologically to 'it's self-evident that there are thoughts'. The self-evidence of thoughts and conscious experience are the same thing.

Your statement "There are just thoughts with 'I am experiencing X' content" could be rightly used as a counterargument to "'I' exist" statement. It could also be used against 'there exists pure consciousness without content' statement. But to say that may be used against 'there exists experience of thoughts as opposed to just eg. electrical impulses' doesn't seem to make sense.

The latter doesn't mean that the experience and thoughts are two different things, is it what bothers you?

Did you mean Dennett, instead of Chalmers? I agree that the Dennett's conclusions seems to be false almost on a logical level. The self is an illusion for sure, the consciousness for sure isn't (EDIT: not saying here that there exists 'pure consciousness without content').

> Don't just read about it. Go ahead and have the experience yourself. It changes a lot of perspectives. You don't even have to go all the way to the highest levels described in the literature - the intermediate stuff is revelatory enough already.

It is indeed. The more you meditate, the more you see that most of the things that you do 'outside' are meaningless, just playing with your representations of the world and pretending they are real. Of course we can't do anything to somehow reach the 'real' world, but at least we can drop the pretending part.

The title of this book may seem both scary and beautiful in this regard: http://www.buddha-heute.de/downloads/treeriver.pdf Not sure I'd recommend it for beginners, but I just love the title.

Indeed, it definitely is one hell of an assumption. Just as "matter is fundamental and consciousness is an emergent phenomena" is. Until we find a way to test it in any way (which may not be possible at all) the only thing we're left with is to play with the axioms and get a feel of what the resulting theory can and cannot explain.

However when we accept the 'panpsychist' axiom, we're free to come up with more detailed theories (as Integrated Information Theor) that eg. predict under what conditions physical systems and consciousness coincide in a way we can experience. And indeed they claim they can explain eg. why brain, as opposed to silicon circuits, coincides with it.

To be clear, I'm not saying this theory is correct - I've no idea. I'm just saying that this whole approach is as valid as the physicalist one.

I agree that it doesn't have to be in any way mystical and that it comes to redefining what's fundamental and what's merely constructed or emergent (although it's a very tricky term). In the panpsychist approach neither matter nor consciousness can be reduced to the other one.

For more engineering approach to the problem, there's lot we can do. One way would be to study in more and more details the correlates of consciousness to understand the "linking" mechanism better. Anil Seth describes this approach here: https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-....

On the other hand, if consciousness indeed is a fundamental attribute of reality, we should extend the 'engineering' to cover also the 'mind' part of reality. This is exactly what meditation is - to train the mind so that it can see more and more clearly all the components of conscious experience until it reaches the bottom. As a result you come up with a number of 'edge cases' - interesting states that can be used to reason about this reality conceptually.

There are eg. 'experience of space itself', experience of consciousness (so called immaterial Jhanas) or finally experience caused by calming the unconscious mind to the extent that it stops projecting any content into conscious mind, while the latter is still operating. This (supposedly) leads to realisation by the mind itself that the 'experienced world' is nothing but its creation. Of course we all can understand it conceptually, but this experience leads to permanent change in perception (you can't "unsee it") which becomes as objective as the human mind can possibly be. Meaning, that it realises in every moment that each experience is its own creation.

It may all seem mystical, exotic or plain crazy, but there's no other way to understand the mind than through the mind itself, if the discussed hypothesis is true.

I always point to David Chalmers when someone wants to understand the problem of consciousness. I like how casual he is about possible solutions and gives credibility to all the options (unlike eg. Daniel Dennett, who seems almost religious about how revolutionary his "there's no problem at all" approach is).

I really recommend this podcast in which Sam Harris talks with Chalmers about all the options currently in the game: https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-light-of-the-mind

One of the most promising theories (discussed in the podcast) assumes that consciousness is a fundamental attribute of reality, the other side of the coin (matter being the first one). Which leads to the conclusions, that consciousness is everywhere, but not as 'condensed' as in the brain. Seems crazy at first, but the more you think about it the more plausible it seems.

Here's a nice paper about it: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/2014...

Within this paradigm it starts to make sense to call the reality "The Mind", as some Buddhist schools do. There's also the crazy part, about how under some conditions it could potentially lead to experiencing other peoples' minds.

For the more adventurous, here's a talk by Culadasa, very experienced meditator and a neuroscience professor, in which he shares some thoughts about the problem and also some of these crazy experiences he had: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dharmatreasure/150430-tcmc--culadasa...

I'm surprised by the amount of comments denying even the sense of such critique as DHH presented in the article.

The problem comes from a very narrow understanding of how 'capitalism/free market economy/society' should work. In the original theoretical framework that laid the ground for the modern economical system, David Hume (and Adam Smith) talked about 'spontaneous order' that comprised multiple social signals, not just prices! Society and economy are complex adaptive system with multiple inputs and any public indignation like this one are perfect examples of signals that should act like 'invisible hand'.

The more such signals we'll allow, the better the optimisation will be, not just in terms of economical efficiency, but also environmental friendliness, quality of life impact etc.

Unfortunately neoclassical economy (including some Nobel price winners) seem to be blissfully unaware of where they are coming from and they tend to ditch social 'messiness' so characteristic for any complex system in favour of simplified mathematical models.

For anyone interested, I really recommend the below:

1) This talk about the missing forgotten part of Adam Smith thought ("The Theory of Moral Sentiment"), that significantly changes the understanding of his perspective: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/04/vernon_smith_an.htm...

2) This article by Yannis Varoufakis on the idea of Spotaneous Order and how it got oversimplified over the last 3 centuries: https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/02/25/on-spontaneous-order-v...

Have you seen these ads with guy sleeping with tablet etc? They are conveying the same message.

Yes, and by creating such a public resentment they won't satisfy their stakeholders.

So it's our job to write articles like DHH wrote and make them as visible as possible. No company is able to foresee all the negative consequences they can cause (they should try, however, because it will and should hurt them).

It's up to the society to create strong negative signals that will counteract and negate positive economic signals coming from any activities harmful to the society.

That's not true. One of the main objectives of Clojure was to be a hosted language. Not just 'language hosted on JVM'. So idea to make it work on top of Erlang VM is perfectly valid and consistent with original design assumptions.

"Curmudgeonly skeptics" love to think about themselves as realists. Skeptic is not a realist, however - when you think about yourself as a skeptic, you already set the limit to what you can experience and how your mind and skills can change and evolve. "Mindset" by Carol Dweck comes to mind.

I had similar experience myself. I wouldn't attribute the risk to the retreat itself, however, but to the vipassana method, which tends to evoke insight experiences as quickly as possible, without first calming the mind using single object samatha practice. If someone were to just use classic anapanasati even for 10 days, I think the results would be somewhat different, as when properly praciced anapanasati calms the body and essentially turns of thinking first, which leads to much calmer and more pleasurable transformation of the mind. Insight experiences with active mind during vipassana practice always feel to me like open brain surgery. With some increasing understanding of not-self, however, it gets less and less scary with time.

For anyone put off by the more esoteric stuff written on the topic, I'd recommend Sam Harris (as mentioned here already), Shinzen Young, but above all, Culadasa. He's a professor of Neuroscience and _very_ accomplished meditator. He's written THE definite book on meditation that uses models of the mind originating from both neuroscience and most noble meditation traditions.

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-...

It's suitable both for beginners and advanced practitioners as it describes the progress of the practice in 10 very clearly described stages.

For those that don't yet have enough motivation, I'd second the Headspace app created by a former Thibetan Buddhist monk. It's really well made and contains a number of different meditation techniques provided in a guided meditation format.

Still, I'd switch to the Culadasa book and unassisted practice as soon as you start grasping the benefits you're getting from meditation and your motivation increases.

The course mentioned by parent is definitely worth watching for anyone interested. Lot of valuable information both on neuro/psychology of meditation and Buddhism.

I wouldn't agree with the statement that medidtation requires profound changes in ones assumptions. One can start with just a simple instruction, eg. "don't think about the breath, but watch for sensations that constitute the experience of breathing" and, as they develop mindfulness, incporporate more and more conceptual knowledge about what Buddha called Right View while testing it in practice.

I guess you're right, though, that without right information you could possibly sit in your yoga pants and mudra (vide any stock photo with 'meditation' tag) and don't get anywhere for years.

What you mention about Jung/enneagram correlation is interesting. You'd think that since he's based on different partitioning scheme (2 * 2 * 2) he should end up without any types matching exactly, but you seem to suggest that it's the case and he's just missing one. I guess it could make sense provided he based his type descriptions on empirical evidence (clustering his patients) that he later artificially pushed into 8 categories. I don't know M-B well, but since it's a M-B thread and it may be useful to other readers, I tried to pursue your exercise and based on type descriptions tried to match it. Here's what I managed to do, based on vague Jung type descriptions I've found on the internet: ET - 1,IT - 5, EF - 3, IF - 9?, ES - 8, IS - ?, EI - 7, II - 4

Does it make some sense? Where are the gaps?

Are there any Eneagram specific resources that you'd recommend? I've found A.H. Almaas and Eli Jaxon-Bear books the most insightful. I'd love to read/hear something original on the topic that doesn't come from the echo chamber of people who are in these circles, make money from it etc.

As to the type, just as you said one of them "clicked" with me strongly and I'm almost 100% sure which one is mine.

Indeed the Wikipedia article doesn't paint it in a great light. The system itself seems to be quite old, but I'd love to see some serious studies of it. The only thing I can add here is that our understanding of human mind is really basic at this point and we have to wisely balance between what we can already measure and our intuitions. That's how all sciences evolved.

I understand your point about classifications, but it assumes that Enneagram spectrum is a result of random distribution of X values in some vector. In such case indeed each dimension should have 2 extremes. However, according to my vague intuition Enneagram is somewhat different. Rather than describing the whole space in which each solution (personality type) is equally possible, it seems to describe specific points in the space that seem to act like attractors. For some reason these specific behavioural patterns crystalize, because they tend to create very specific meaning/identity and way of making sense of the world around us. You can't create an identity/self around 'lack of something', it needs to be some specific quality that allows to interpret reality in given fashion.

The example you bring up (type 1, the Reformer) is not about reforming vs not reforming, but rather about seeing the world in terms of perfection: this is perfect and this is not perfect. Hence they may end up as a reformer or just someone overly pedantic. Other types have completely different perspective (eg. this is safe and this is not safe), so in a way each type is a separate according to which a given person interprets the same reality.

This is very subtle and more complex than M-B. In M-B we have one 'objective' world and set of values in which various types rank differently. In Enneagram each type has a different way of defining the world/experience so in each case the measuring axes are different. It's as if you had different formal systems based on different axioms - each would end up with different consequences and you wouldn't be able to compare their statements directly. You'd have to compare the properties of the systems as a whole.

Your last point about infancy - that was my mistake, I shouldn't write 'early childhood' (edited). The theories I heard mentioned some formative, sometimes traumatic (single, or repetivie) experiences in childhood/adolescence that shaped given perspective.

I also had incredible "fit" with Enneagram. I'm not sure I agree about it not being a good business tool, though. I've met a great Quality Manager who almost certainly was a type 6 (which is naturally focused on finding risks and things that might go wrong). The level to which his position matched his personality was striking - he was extremely good at what he was doing and he loved it. I know a type 6 girl who dropped her job as editor and became a software tester as well. She just liked doing it.

Similarly you could reason about type 7 and their ideal job position: they see more opportunieties and options than others (Steve Jobs was said to be 7w8), but they often dismiss any risks involved. They also hate repetitive day to day work. Hence they would make better Architect, Analyst, UX Designer or Salesperson than a Project Manager (unless they are eg. balanced by a 6 in their team).

I'm not saying that we should choose job solely on the type, it just offers lot of opportunities to understand what is it specifically in given activity that we like and what goes naturally against our habits. Whether we change the job or just work on the weaknesses is up to us.

Personality typing is obviously incredibly shaky ground because of the huge potential for the suggestion bias, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's almost obvious that there are patterns of human behaviour that are often distinctive and repetitive across society. It's hard to identify these regularities and we should be sceptical about any blatant simplifications, but we shouldn't stop trying to understand them.

There is another personality typing method called Enneagram, that takes a more interesting approach than static M-B. Rather than attributing some essential properties to each person, it assumes that personality is formed by a set of cognitive habits. These habits condition our attention to pick specific aspects of experience and giving it interpretation in line with this bias. Most people use all of these 9 identified patterns, but one is dominant, and hence it defines what we perceive as personality.

These habits are mostly crystalised in childhood and depend on the environment and upbringing. Eg. when a child is punished at random without any consequence there's a chance it will become type 8, on the other hand if there's great deal of regularity and rules at home, it may and up as type 1 etc. Seems like a gross oversimplification, but it's just an example of this type of conditioning.

The general approach seems legit (based on what we know about cognitive science), but what's more important, learning about these 9 habits/types usually leads to incredible insights into one's behaviour. There's lot of regularities that we suddenly find in our actions that fit specifically to one of these 9 types.

Unlike what article states about M-B, Ennegram mostly focuses on the dark, habitual and unconscious aspects of each personality, so it's much less susceptible to the "horoscope effect" (where we're more likely to attribute anything positive to ourselves).

I try to challenge it as much as possible, because as anything related to personality it may become a self fulfilling prophecy, but still I found it very hard to falsify, there's just a lot of positive evidence.

Since there's strong overrepresentation of rational thinkers on HN I'd love to hear some comments from anyone here who took Enneagram test or heard about it (there's a lot of free tests on the internet).

You could also write a quick script using their REST API, although that's a bit cumbersome (lot of IDs that need to be passed around after creation of each resource).

Still better than manual clicking in my opinion.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/api-reference/resource...

Have a look at this picture - it shows the total area needed to be covered by solar to power the whole world. With efficient energy transmission technology the area is negligilbe.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/07/17/2D2AF4010000057...

Isn't it amazing that they built a real-time diagnostic system for Boeing plane in Clojure with a team that haven't previously used Clojure? They basically were learning on the fly, coming from OO background, about map/reduce, immutability etc. Kudos for being really open when choosing the best tool for the job after initial research (among the reasons behind picking Clojure the guy lists functional reactive style and being able to easily parse DSLs). Code brevity was one of the positive side effects, which made code reviews much quicker. Impressive

AFAIR that's a swing of serotonin level (typical with MDMA).

Have you ever tried practicing meditation? Among other things it allows to notice and distance from ones current cognitive bias, including strong fear, delusions etc. It requires at least some stability at first, though, so that you can practice it when it's easy.

The most amazing example of such cooperation is Yanis Varoufakis, who was working for Valve on virtual currencies and economy of Steam Market before becoming Minister of Finance in Greece. In his own words: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a...

Drop of water is the best comparison, as its shape is a direct result of aerodynamic optimisation.

Could you expand on it a bit?

On the other hand one could say that it's a pretty shallow understanding of Zen, given that Buddhism assumes that everything in the mind - being a part of nature - is fully conditioned (deterministic), as opposed to Christian view of a human as a holy, God-like creature, distinctly different than the rest of nature.

I've seen a lot of praise about this one and I'm wondering whether it's worth reading it after Wisdom Wide and Deep (great titles btw :) or is the most important material from F&F repeated in the second one as well.