Let's Marvel At The Great Unknown

[Howj Begg]

I think the lack of progress in spaceflight and space research is largely funding-based, during the Apollo years NASA's funding accounted for 5% of the US federal budget, nowadays it's about 0.5% - that's a huge drop, although understandable really. I mean it was literally a space race back in the 50s and 60s, and as soon as they'd landed a man on the moon it was pretty much game over for the soviets, and spending on space exploration and research just tailed off in both countries.

Here's a pretty good article on it: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1 - which contains a pretty startling fact that can quite easily be used to counter the "But we should solve Earth's problems first before we venture into outer space" crowd's agitating opinions - in 2007, for every $1 spent on NASA, $98 were spent on social programs in the US, so by those figures, if social programs' budgets were cut by just 1%, NASA's budget would be doubled, instantaneously. Space travel gets the tiniest of tiny slices of the US budget, and I'd imagine the same is true in other countries.

I'm not advocating screwing the poor over in favour of more space exploration, but it puts things in perspective.

And I think in the next 5 to 10 years we're really going to see an exponential rise in the number of extrasolar planets found, and hopefully a few more earth-like ones, rather than the preponderance of dull, hot gas giants we've got at the moment.

Tag/ I'm reading CaB, but Whitey's on the moon.

[Minty]

Almost contemporary:

'Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe and sometimes I think we aren't. Either way the implications are staggering'....

Arthur C Clarke. I love that quote.

[BJB]

Am i alone in thinking that, if* theres no afterlife, death will be VEEERY boring. Just empty blackness. Nothing. Unless the whole reincarnation thing comes into play.

But i dont think i want to be reincarnated either. I like my life as it is now. I woulden't want to start ALL over again. If i did, i'd prefer it to be in the past rather then the future because the way i see it, the future has nothing to offer.

*And thats only an if. I'm sure there COULD be a heaven.

[BJB]

I was thinking, can you remember before you were born? Like, if you think really hard, can you remember anything before you were born? How doses time and memory work in such a way that things like that are just blocked. And for that matter, where are we going? Its REALLY depressing to think that one day, you and everything you know isen't going to be there anymore. I cant block thoughts like these away. Its going to happen  one day.

[gmoney]

Am i alone in thinking that, if* theres no afterlife, death will be VEEERY boring. Just empty blackness. Nothing. Unless the whole reincarnation thing comes into play.

But you wouldn't be aware of it. You'd be dead. There be no watch checking, thinking "Fuck me it's been eons." You'd just not be around anymore with no conciousness.

[BJB]

But what would that be like? To just dissapear into nothing. I know theres no way of knowing without snuffing it, is there. I suppose that just fustrates me.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It will be exactly the same as what it was like before you were born

[Pylon Man]

No it won't. Before you were born, you would have been in a position of being born and of being alive and concious in the future. Not when you're dead.

[chand]

Am i alone in thinking that, if* theres no afterlife, death will be VEEERY boring.

And frustrating too, since every so often some medium pops up to ask you banal questions he inexplicably can't properly hear the answer to.

[rudi]

No it won't. Before you were born, you would have been in a position of being born and of being alive and concious in the future. Not when you're dead.

That depends on which direction along the time-line you're travelling, surely?

[El Unicornio, mang]

No it won't. Before you were born, you would have been in a position of being born and of being alive and concious in the future. Not when you're dead.

That's not what I meant. I meant it would be the same experience. Besides, we don't know that our consciousness isn't constantly reborn. It's hard to imagine it not.

[steven583699]

Am I alone in thinking that we are literally just DNA? There is nothing that makes 'me' 'me' outside the paths in my brain that have been created through experience and become memory. There is no soul, nothing special about humans, we're just stuff that wants to replicate itself.

[pk1yen]

There is no soul, nothing special about humans, we're just stuff that wants to replicate itself.

You say that, and logically I agree with you ... but then again, here I am, experiencing things, in first person, and conscious, of it all.

Looking at it from third person, everyone is just an animal, and there is no free will, or anything special about humans, except we have the ability to deduce more than other animals. But from first person ... you can, I don't know, just feel the consciousness.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Am I alone in thinking that we are literally just DNA? There is nothing that makes 'me' 'me' outside the paths in my brain that have been created through experience and become memory. There is no soul, nothing special about humans, we're just stuff that wants to replicate itself.

Probably, even an arch-materialist like Dawkins wouldnt go that far.

"It is a very helpful insight to say we are vehicles for our DNA, we are hosts for DNA parasites which are our genes. Those are insights which help us to understand an aspect of life. But it's emotive to say, that's all there is to it, we might as well give up going to Shakespeare plays and give up listening to music and things, because that's got nothing to do with it. That's an entirely different subject." - R.Dawkins

[pk1yen]

The poetry thread inspired me to look through Larkin again, and I found the second stanza from The Old Fools which sums up the difference between pre-birth and post-death pretty bloody well:


At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
         How can they ignore it?

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Nice :)
Ive always found the first person perspective pretty interesting too - i.e. why am i self-experiencing as this particular lump of matter and not another one? Its a question as broad and as taxing as anything going on in astrophysics atm.
It could of course be that the self is just an aggregate of processes.
A system which emerges, asserts itself for a short period of time then collapses again. In which case there's really nothing to stop 'you' from reappearing within another system at a distant point in time.

Another way of looking at it could be that the only real self is the gross total sum of the unverise (i stole this from this from some Chinese guys) and what we think of as 'the self' is more like a biological guard rail, a perceptual constraint on the wider process at work.

[Pylon Man]

Yes, it is a fascinating subject. One I've always wondered is, if the entire molecular structure of your body was replicated so there were two exactly alike beings (even down to exact memories), which one would "you" be? And why? I'm tempted to say the "original" copy would remain as "you" but there's no logical reason why as far as I can see.

Indeed, am I the same "me" as I was 10 years ago?

[Marv Orange]

Ive always found the first person perspective pretty interesting too - i.e. why am i self-experiencing as this particular lump of matter and not another one? Its a question as broad and as taxing as anything going on in astrophysics atm.

Because its your brain in that lump not another one.

Yes, it is a fascinating subject. One I've always wondered is, if the entire molecular structure of your body was replicated so there were two exactly alike beings (even down to exact memories), which one would "you" be? And why? I'm tempted to say the "original" copy would remain as "you" but there's no logical reason why as far as I can see.

From the point of the creation of the double you'd both be creating different pathways in the brain. So 1 would be you and the other other.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Because its your brain in that lump not another one.

Youre switching the specific terms of ownership, but it doesn't really address the problem. There's no objective quantifiable 'me'ness' about my brain compared to say, yours. This is why its impossible to say why any of us should be self-experiencing as our current selves and not something entirely different.

Yes, it is a fascinating subject. One I've always wondered is, if the entire molecular structure of your body was replicated so there were two exactly alike beings (even down to exact memories), which one would "you" be? And why? I'm tempted to say the "original" copy would remain as "you" but there's no logical reason why as far as I can see.

I believe the self (contrary to popular belief) is nothing more than your sense of interiority. I am whatever it is im self-experiencing, any further attributes are superfluous (imo).

[Marv Orange]

Youre switching the specific terms of ownership, but it doesn't really address the problem. There's no objective quantifiable 'me'ness' about my brain compared to say, yours. This is why its impossible to say why any of us should be self-experiencing as our current selves and not something entirely different.

Your brain creates your selfness my brain creates my selfness.

There's no objective quantifiable 'me'ness' about my brain compared to say, yours

Other than the fingerprint like pattern of uniquely created synapses?

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Your brain creates your selfness my brain creates my selfness.

Yep brains create self-models and its probably fair to say both our self-models will be different. But thats not really the same thing as experience or interiority.
There's nothing about the physical object of the brain that will tell you why i experience as 'mine' and you as 'yours'.

Other than the fingerprint like pattern of uniquely created synapses?

So if i showed you a brain with the exact same synapse patterns as yours youd be happy to conclude that brain was 'you'?

I kind of get the feeling youre not really clicking with this, i'll try and find some articles tomorrow that go into it in some greater depth.

[Marv Orange]

There's nothing about the physical object of the brain that will tell you why i experience as 'mine' and you as 'yours'.

They're separate and not the same we're not a collective and although we can be affected and effect others we are more or less closed systems which creates self.

So if i showed you a brain with the exact same synapse patterns as yours youd be happy to conclude that brain was 'you'?

It or me would be a copy he would be him and me be mim.

I kind of get the feeling youre not really clicking with this, i'll try and find some articles tomorrow that go into it in some greater depth.

I only read the posts I replied to.

[pk1yen]

The problem, as far as I see it, is this:

If a "teleporter" system was invented, whereby it recreated "you" exactly, atom-for-atom at the other end, and the "you" here was destroyed, we'd probably agree that "you" would effectively die and be replaced by a doppelgänger, who would, however, be identical to you in every conceivable way. No-one else would be able to tell the difference, but "you" would experience death.

However, if you actually "transported" each atom of you and re-assembled them on the other side ... maybe "you" would still be "you"?

Takes a leap of faith to assume the facts about the "teleporter", of course.

[Pinball]

God is a terrorist paedophile. Prove me wrong. As soon as I've fucked myself a big congregation I will be right and you cynical low fertility rate secularists will be wrong. Nothing beats the righteousness of reproduction. The ultimate rewriting of history.

[Pylon Man]

pk1yen's post is a better way of putting what I was trying to say. But I can't really see how it would make any difference either way, as the only conclusion from your sceneraios there is that "you" is defined by specific atoms. Which when you think about it is complete nonsense. Most of the atoms in your body get completely replaced every few years I think anyway.

I can only conclude that conciousness doesn't really exist as concretely as we imagine. I wonder if by thinking about this too much, "I" am going to stop existing and be replaced by a conciousness that isn't "me" but thinks it is.

[pk1yen]

The only thing that stops me from taking a wholly atheistic view of the world is this issue of the "self" and what makes "me" conscious.

I find it hard, for example, to come to the conclusion that the "consciousness" we experience first-hand is just an illusion, created by the sheer complexity of our deterministic thought processes.
But then again, I can't think of another explanation, besides ideas based on pure conjecture.

I think the behaviour of animals can be explained by this, just as the behaviour of a computer can be explained by looking at the cause-and-effect route from it's programming code.

But people ... - while people's behaviour (certainly physical bodily functions) can be mostly explainable by various theories of survival of the fittest ... I find it hard to see how a "consciousness" such as the one I am experiencing right now (and I presume you are too ... but there's no way to prove that), could have arisen from inanimate matter.

As I say, the only non-magical explanation I can think of is that it is all an illusion, created by the sheer complexity of human brain function; and that our free will, our consciousness, our love, and our art, is just complicated determinism. 

Maybe the reason I find it hard to accept, is because our brains just aren't designed to understand it. If we were fully able to accept that free will and consciousness were all an illusion, then there wouldn't be much point in making any effort ... not that we'd have a choice. It's a bit of a Catch-22 conclusion that goes nowhere.

Evolution caused us to evolve a belief in a conscious free-will, so that we'd belief in a meaning to life, and breed? A direct effect of our enhanced intelligence, maybe?

Oh, I give up.

[Pylon Man]

As I say, the only non-magical explanation I can think of is that it is all an illusion, created by the sheer complexity of human brain function; and that our free will, our consciousness, our love, and our art, is just complicated determinism.

I think that's it to be honest. While it is difficult to reconcile that belief with the feeling of being "you" that you have, imagine if you could make a computer programme react as complexly as a human brain; it would act as though it had consciousness and thus there'd be no way of telling that it didn't.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

pk1yen's post is a better way of putting what I was trying to say. But I can't really see how it would make any difference either way, as the only conclusion from your sceneraios there is that "you" is defined by specific atoms. Which when you think about it is complete nonsense. Most of the atoms in your body get completely replaced every few years I think anyway.

Yeah i think that's why absolute reductionism doesn't really work- 'we've just atoms/cells/carriers for our dna' at the level we experience at it provides no explanation atall.
Its like trying to appreciate a film as photons hitting a blank canvas. Yes that's part of its reality, but it doesn't really describe the emotional quality or content of the film or the performance itself. A reviewer for instance couldn't critque a film by saying 'photons were abit lacklustre but canvas put in a Sterling preference of commendable professionalism'

I think our best bet is to adopt nagel's 'double vision' - overlapping the scientific idea of something with its subjective representation. We have to build a complete picture of phenomena with all the numerous forms of representation at our disposal.

But people ... - while people's behaviour (certainly physical bodily functions) can be mostly explainable by various theories of survival of the fittest ... I find it hard to see how a "consciousness" such as the one I am experiencing right now (and I presume you are too ... but there's no way to prove that), could have arisen from inanimate matter.

People like christian de quincy, and infact alot of other scientists and philosophers, posit that matter is imbued with interiority/vitality (whatever you want to call it) from the outset.
This solves the problem of consciousness quite neatly - subjectivity doesnt appear from out of nowhere at some infinite point, its a quality there from the beginning which builds upon itself. Which means we've not stuck with the problem of explaining why at a finite point matter suddenly and inexplicably takes on the quality of subjectivity.
This isnt to its the right answer, just that it solves the subjectivity problem particularly well.
Either way we've still got a long way to go in understanding how consciousness works. We're only just starting to realise that brains aren't a requirement of consciousness - Jellyfish for instance can defend territory, attack  prey, evade predators without a single neuron to their name. Quite incredible when you think of the painstaking networks we have to build just to get a robot to walk in a straight line. There's something fundamental to consciousness and organic behaviour that continues to elude us.

[Goose Step Mama]

Following on from the Drake equation posted above, I wonder what the estimated odds are of being born with intelligence similar (or greater) to our own? I.e, in relation to how many life forms will live and die over the course of this planets life, and then assuming a fraction of the 100 billion planets within the 100 billion galaxies in our universe will contain complex life similar to our own, what might the probability be?

[Pylon Man]

If intelligent life is discovered, how long will it be before the Daily Mail whines about them getting "preferential treatment"?