[extropy-chat] Physchogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time Travel)

[The Avantguardian]

--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> Actually, it the proof from various physical
> disorders and injuries  
> to the brain and their effect on consciousness as
> well as quite a bit  
> of research results monitoring healthy brains during
> many tasks  
> associated with "consciousness" are pretty
> compelling.  Where is the  
> evidence that consciousness is somehow separate from
> or divorced from  
> the brain?

Hold on. I did not say that consciousness was separate
from the brain. I said that it does not seem to simply
be explained by "information processing" in the brain.
Otherwise ANY complex information processing system
SHOULD be, to a greater or lesser extent, conscious
including the Internet. Moreover according to quantum
mechanics individual atoms process information in
deciding whether to jump to higher or lower energy
states. If this psychogenic field I am proposing is
generated by the brain then it may be altered by brain
injuries leading to altered consciousness. I am
talking a tensor field here, not hocus pocus magic.

> 
> > Everything in the universe processes information
> to
> > some degree or another.
> 
> That is rather pointless and trite.  The seat of
> consciousness is the  
> brain in human beings.  Do you deny this?  If so, on
> what basis?

I don't deny it. But I won't spare that assumption
from rational scrutiny based upon its popularity
either. I am just PROPOSING a hypothesis: That the
gradient of sentience all the way from minimal
bacterial environmental awareness "The pH is too
low... swim away!" to "cogito ergo ego sum" was just
the scalar magnitude of a tensor field. Just like a
gravitational field needs matter-energy to propagate
so too a psychogenic field may need a brain, or at
least a cell, to propagate it. Then again maybe not.
At this point I have more questions than answers so I
don't understand your beef over this. You can't
falsify a question no matter how well you argue. 

> > Every particle-wave
> > in existense is constantly updating its quantum
> state
> > based on information from every other
> particle-wave in
> > its light cone.
> 
> Baloney.

Samantha, the atoms in your body encounter photons
from distant galaxies on a routine basis. Each atom
then either raises, lowers, or keeps it energy state
the same. All that matters is the frequency of said
photon and the current energy state of the atom.
 
If it is of microwave frequency your atom will
probably ignore it entirely. If it is of an xray
frequency, it could ionize the atom completely causing
it to shoot out an electron. If that atom happens to
be in your DNA it could cause a mutation.
This decision is not very different from that made by
a transistor or logic gate.  I am not saying anything
that you can't glean from a text book here.  
 
> > Why are not all the atoms in the
> > universe conscious?
> 
> Why not go hold a conversation with a rock and ask
> it?

I would love too, I just haven't figured out the
language of rocks yet. After all a rock has been a
round a LONG time. Can you imagine the stories it
could tell? Paleontologists do.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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