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

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 31, 2006, at 12:14 AM, The Avantguardian wrote:

>
>
> --- 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.

How so?  Conscious, as we think of it in human consciousness at  
least, requires specific types of processing.  Any old processing  
will not do.  I was under the impression that originally we were  
talking of human consciousness rather than any old consciousness or  
thing that some may want to call consciousness.

> 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.

This is irrelevant for the reason above.   As long as it is not  
measurable and not provably causative and it yields no useful  
explanation or predictions you may as well be talking 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.

I don't see that this hypothesis has enough meat to it to be even  
wrong.  It isn't testable.

> 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.
>

My beef is that it seems an empty idea.

>>> 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.
>

Not every particle-wave interacts with every other one.  That part is  
baloney.   Every cause-effect mechanism that exist is not an  
"information processor" in a way useful to the topic either.

- samantha