Why the brain isn`t you

Hans Blaster

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I think at least some (or perhaps most) people who believe in reincarnation believe that because they sense on some level it seems impossible that our consciousness can exist and then just cease as if it had not existed. Trying to put that into a wording -- why should consciousness be merely like foam on the ocean, here one day but gone the next, seemingly dissipating without lasting effects... Instead, why shouldn't consciousness be more like light traveling in space,

Because light is made of a fundamental particle (photons) and consciousness isn't.
or the nature of convection currents in the ocean: more like the parts of nature we can see just continue....(and now) we know that nothing just ceases to exist in an ultimate way, but instead any thing in nature we know merely transforms. (becomes an ongoing new thing, like transferred momentum -- the momentum itself isn't destroyed, but transferred)
Convective motions do dissipate to turbulence and then to heat. Momentum is conserved, but momentum isn't some kind of particle, its a property of matter.
Putting it into physics language: electromagnetic waves (light, radio waves, etc.) propagate across space billions of years, momentum isn't lost, and though some quantity of water in a convection current moves on, the convection itself continues in some way, as it's a part of nature itself.
Conserved things preserve, but "continues in some way" is just not
Things don't really cease to exist.
Sure they do.
So, therefore reincarnation in that way is a reasonable notion, even if the details are different than many know.
No, not really. Evidence is needed.
 
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partinobodycular

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Acquiring a personal opinion for either of two untestable notions, is of no practical use.

I never was any good at tests, so I'm happy to leave 'practical' to the smart people. Besides, if I have to be practical that'll take all the fun out of it. And at my age that's the only fun I've got left, so certainly you wouldn't wanna take that away from me.

But I tell you what, I'll keep coming up with stupid ideas, and you can keep critiquing them, and we'll both be happy. :oldthumbsup:

I think you may have slipped too far into the never ending black hole of Solipsism there friend(?)

It's not the solipsism that's the problem, it's the wandering around outside of it that's the problem. Fortunately I leave bread crumbs, so I can always find my way back. Unlike some people who wander off and never return.
 
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Halbhh

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Not true. The neural connections in the human brain are the most complex arrangement of matter known in the universe. There are more brain states than atoms in the observable universe.
While I'm not sure what you are referring to, and you might not have know what I was saying, I referred to the commonplace belief that people often have that their opinions about other people are accurate.


(but if you like the physical/computational side question of the complexity of nature vs the processing power of the human brain, that's a fun topic, and I'll write out a bit on it here in case that was your interest. The human brain is vastly complex and able to process great complexity also, but it's quite normal that people don't realize the complexity of just Earth as a whole (which of course includes all the life on Earth). First consider the implication if as most you think that the human brain is operating by physics/chemistry, that it is entirely just natural..... But next, consider that together all the atoms of the Earth are in literally physics relationship -- all of those atoms literally interact with the vast complexity of quantum mechanics, with the same laws of physics as a human brain. While sure, you can ignore most of what is happening in the Earth (or rather you have to do so, as you don't' even have a choice, as even reading all of research about all that is happening on Earth (if you could) would fall far short of all that is happening on Earth) -- and it's good and best if you do so, as you need to function.... But, back to the topic of complexity of nature vs the processing power of the human brain... We can consider that the quantum mechanical complexity of the Earth exceeds that of a much smaller part of Earth like a 3 pound brain, especially since Earth very vastly many complex subparts (such as billions of human brains for instance) as a part of itself. But even just the non-living total interaction of all the atoms of earth together is physics operating, so that the complexity in full total nuance of all the non-living parts of Earth (if we abstractly imagine totally knowing how all atoms will operated in relation over time) is proportional to their number of particle constituents. Literally all the atoms are like a vast network of physical interaction, so we can only look for simplified broad patterns we might discern that are useful, and so of course we choose to investigate and know those (those simplifications). We can find some useful very simplified patterns == for example weather patterns sufficiently broad/repeatable enough to make probabilistic predictions on a given day (though a couple of decades later we might have to have modified a weather forecasting model used quite a lot as climate changes altered patterns compared to some of the old models we used, so that rainfall amounts exceeded what older models from 20 or 30 years prior would have predicted, etc.) But finding some useful degree of probability in a broad pattern (like area rainfall over 72 hours) to be able to make an often ballpark useful prediction (not always reliable, but working pretty often...) isn't at all close to beginning to be able to predict the totality of Earth evolving over time in a full way (we have to try to model small parts that are more predictable in ways that we can use temporarily often enough to benefit).
See what I mean yet? We are only modeling very simplified limited bits of Earth at a time.... And attempting to model future climate or earthquakes or volcanoes or solar storms, etc., etc., -- that is the work of often dozens or sometimes even hundreds of minds over decades of time put into computer models, but still they are only of very limited accuracy, often predicting X, but Y happens instead (such as predicting rain in an area at 60% and then sometimes only 10% of the area gets even a trace, as such model failure happens at times).
Next though, Earth as a whole includes all the life on Earth, and therefore of course all human brains, etc.... See? Can one person know in detail all about all persons? (only yes for the most simplified things like about how many are alive right now within a certain degree of estimation accuracy probability, or what is the so far estimated mortality rate of the strain of covid that was first sequenced about only 2 or 6 months ago....).

So, overall, Earth's full complexity (which includes all human brains, all life on Earth) very vastly exceeds the processing power of a single human brain in regard to precise full detail.

But above in my prior post, I wasn't even talking of very simplified things like weather forecasting, but the more typically discussed things people think they know much about, like what other people are thinking politically and so on.... Like for instance, some people I talk to that speculate to me about the motivations of 'democrats' or 'liberals', and they have wildly wrong notions....

We know even less about what other people are thinking than we guess.
 
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SelfSim

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See what I mean yet?
...
Next though, Earth as a whole includes all the life on Earth, and therefore of course all human brains, etc.... See?
No.

Your notions of 'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness', as I read your recent posts, seemingly offer no operational, (or context for), meaning(s). Without those missing essentials, your appeals to seeing your pov is not feasible, (from my pov).
 
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Halbhh

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Sure they do.

I think you need to attempt to read with more contextual clues.

While I said that momentum isn't destroyed, but transferred (which is just physics...)

And I then summarized as a generalization of a sense/felt thought/ or vague idea many people have -- their belief that make be verbalized as "Things don't really cease to exist." -- from the context of my post as being a reason some people might believe in 'reincarnation'....

Look and see -- I'll repost it -- it's all there.

I'll add highlighting so that it's even harder to miss.

Same text as above, with extra highlighting:

I think at least some (or perhaps most) people who believe in reincarnation believe that because they sense on some level it seems impossible that our consciousness can exist and then just cease as if it had not existed. Trying to put that into a wording -- why should consciousness be merely like foam on the ocean, here one day but gone the next, seemingly dissipating without lasting effects... Instead, why shouldn't consciousness be more like light traveling in space, or the nature of convection currents in the ocean: more like the parts of nature we can see just continue....(and now) we know that nothing just ceases to exist in an ultimate way, but instead any thing in nature we know merely transforms. (becomes an ongoing new thing, like transferred momentum -- the momentum itself isn't destroyed, but transferred)

Putting it into physics language: electromagnetic waves (light, radio waves, etc.) propagate across space billions of years, momentum isn't lost, and though some quantity of water in a convection current moves on, the convection itself continues in some way, as it's a part of nature itself.

Things don't really cease to exist.

And then you responded:

"Sure they do."

See the 2 problems in your response yet?

Here you seem to have made 2 basic mistakes responding to my post.

First you seem to not realize I was talking about why some people might believe in reincarnation. Look for the highlighted words "believe" and "seems" above....

And then next you didn't seem to realize I used a classical physics law (conservation of momentum) to be an example of how people could think things don't just disappear without having an effect on other things (e.g. momentum doesn't just disappear, but gets transferred) and this as an analogy to their belief....

But you attempted to respond to my post as if it was a series of entirely unconnected paragraphs or such. As if when I wrote about why people believe in reincarnation, they are going on a felt sense or thought that "things don't just disappear" (which is at least close to reality in that all physical things interact before changing form or ceasing to exist, so that their effects continue after the thing is gone) -- but then oddly when I summarized that idea/belief/feeling/sense reincarnation believers might some have as a statement of their feeling: "things don't just disappear" you responded as if that was a full post by itself without any contextual meaning....

To avoid that kind of tilting at windmills response you wrote, just read more sympathetically. Try to get what a person is saying.
 
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Halbhh

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No.

Your notions of 'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness', as I read your recent posts, seemingly offer no operational, (or context for), meaning(s). Without those missing essentials, your appeals to seeing your pov is not feasible, (from my pov).
A great model that shows a very very simple system interacting is a single moon orbiting a planet (or a single planet orbiting a star is another such simplified system) where we ignore everything except gravity alone and assume the 2 bodies don't change in mass, etc. and that all other forces are zero.

Where the orbiting smaller body is alone, and has no other body interacting with it but the larger body. And there is no magnetic interaction, and no streaming stellar wind from the star, and so on.

We can oversimplify everything down to just 1 force alone and the run the model....

Because the system is very very simplified, it can be fully predicted out to a very lengthy timescale, like 1 billion years and 1 second later -- what will be the position of the planet in its orbit at that exact time in the future.

But in reality an actual star has a stellar wind, and a magnetic field that varies. And a planet has a magnetic field. Which can also evolve over time....

....see the problem yet?

So because of stellar wind and mass loss, the star's mass is slowly changing (so its total gravitation is changing over time in a way we cannot perfectly predict to within even just the limit of our observational accuracy), and also with the stellar wind, then there is drag on the planet from the stellar wind and the magnetic fields interactions with the stellar wind, and also the planet can lose some mass over time from that interaction, etc....

So that our initial simplified model will not even be close -- it will not predict an actual planet's location 1 billion years and 1 second later. If you wanted to know what side of the star relative to the center of the galaxy the planet will be at when observed in that future 1 billion years and 1 second later, you may as well flip a coin.

Sure, we can try to improve our model very much. If we include all the known effects we understand, with our best attempts to model them we have currently....we have to model many of them according to models we are still modifying pretty often....about how much stellar wind and CMEs (coronal mass ejections) etc. a given star may have.... So, obviously we cannot at this time get a prediction we can have much confidence in to give a result that will match reality over that long time scale.

Now, this is because we don't have perfect total information about the star to perfectly predict it's activity, its CMEs, etc.

Aka, "'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness', " -- even with all our computer power, we cannot get the accuracy of the full physical state of the star needed to model it with very precise accuracy (to the limits of our observational techniques) into the future that far. We don't have the precision/accuracy, or completeness.
 
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Hans Blaster

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I think you need to attempt to read with more contextual clues.

While I said that momentum isn't destroyed, but transferred (which is just physics...)
About the only thing in the post that was.

And I then summarized as a generalization of a sense/felt thought/ or vague idea many people have -- their belief that make be verbalized as "Things don't really cease to exist." -- from the context of my post as being a reason some people might believe in 'reincarnation'....

Whether it was your thoughts or a translation, translating such notions into "physics" was just plain abuse of physics.

Look and see -- I'll repost it -- it's all there.

I'll add highlighting so that it's even harder to miss.

Same text as above, with extra highlighting:



And then you responded:

"Sure they do."

See the 2 problems in your response yet?

Here you seem to have made 2 basic mistakes responding to my post.

First you seem to not realize I was talking about why some people might believe in reincarnation. Look for the highlighted words "believe" and "seems" above....
I feel like you're repeating yourself. (As I did when I got to the lower part of earlier post.
And then next you didn't seem to realize I used a classical physics law (conservation of momentum) to be an example of how people could think things don't just disappear without having an effect on other things (e.g. momentum doesn't just disappear, but gets transferred) and this as an analogy to their belief....
A horribly bad analogy.
But you attempted to respond to my post as if it was a series of entirely unconnected paragraphs or such.
How about sentences?
As if when I wrote about why people believe in reincarnation, they are going on a felt sense or thought that "things don't just disappear" (which is at least close to reality in that all physical things interact before changing form or ceasing to exist, so that their effects continue after the thing is gone) -- but then oddly when I summarized that idea/belief/feeling/sense reincarnation believers might some have as a statement of their feeling: "things don't just disappear" you responded as if that was a full post by itself without any contextual meaning....

To avoid that kind of tilting at windmills response you wrote, just read more sympathetically. Try to get what a person is saying.

I really don't care about people's perceptions of reality and mush expressions of such.
 
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Halbhh

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I really don't care about people's perceptions of reality and mush expressions of such.

Ok, but if you sincerely do not care about the topic of a post, it is probably a lot better not to try to respond to it (or worse, respond without seeing the context in the paragraphs so that your response to an isolated sentence becomes a mere tilting at windmills).
 
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SelfSim

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A great model that shows a very very simple system interacting is a single moon orbiting a planet (or a single planet orbiting a star is another such simplified system) where we ignore everything except gravity alone and assume the 2 bodies don't change in mass, etc. and that all other forces are zero.

Where the orbiting smaller body is alone, and has no other body interacting with it but the larger body. And there is no magnetic interaction, and no streaming stellar wind from the star, and so on.

We can oversimplify everything down to just 1 force alone and the run the model....

Because the system is very very simplified, it can be fully predicted out to a very lengthy timescale, like 1 billion years and 1 second later -- what will be the position of the planet in its orbit at that exact time in the future.

But in reality an actual star has a stellar wind, and a magnetic field that varies. And a planet has a magnetic field. Which can also evolve over time....

....see the problem yet?

So because of stellar wind and mass loss, the star's mass is slowly changing (so its total gravitation is changing over time in a way we cannot perfectly predict to within even just the limit of our observational accuracy), and also with the stellar wind, then there is drag on the planet from the stellar wind and the magnetic fields interactions with the stellar wind, and also the planet can lose some mass over time from that interaction, etc....

So that our initial simplified model will not even be close -- it will not predict an actual planet's location 1 billion years and 1 second later. If you wanted to know what side of the star relative to the center of the galaxy the planet will be at when observed in that future 1 billion years and 1 second later, you may as well flip a coin.

Sure, we can try to improve our model very much. If we include all the known effects we understand, with our best attempts to model them we have currently....we have to model many of them according to models we are still modifying pretty often....about how much stellar wind and CMEs (coronal mass ejections) etc. a given star may have.... So, obviously we cannot at this time get a prediction we can have much confidence in to give a result that will match reality over that long time scale.

Now, this is because we don't have perfect total information about the star to perfectly predict it's activity, its CMEs, etc.

Aka, "'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness', " -- even with all our computer power, we cannot get the accuracy of the full physical state of the star needed to model it with very precise accuracy (to the limits of our observational techniques) into the future that far. We don't have the precision/accuracy, or completeness.
No-one creates a physics model with the purpose of achieving 'perfect predictions' from a belief in the existence of 'perfect total information' (whatever those concepts are supposed to mean). I have no idea why you're choosing such a nonsensical hypothetical to illustrate the concepts of 'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness'??

Models in Physics are devised with only one purpose .. to be tested.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Ok, but if you sincerely do not care about the topic of a post, it is probably a lot better not to try to respond to it (or worse, respond without seeing the context in the paragraphs so that your response to an isolated sentence becomes a mere tilting at windmills).

The topic of this thread is the (repeated) nonsense about "people without brains". This same poster keeps posting this same junk.
 
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Tuur

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Models in Physics are devised with only one purpose .. to be tested.
Um...models are devised to model something. In physics, the scientific method is applied to verify models to see if they're an accurate representation of how something works, but it always begins with "That's interesting" and attempt to model it.
 
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Halbhh

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No-one creates a physics model with the purpose of achieving 'perfect predictions' from a belief in the existence of 'perfect total information' (whatever those concepts are supposed to mean). I have no idea why you're choosing such a nonsensical hypothetical to illustrate the concepts of 'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness'??

Models in Physics are devised with only one purpose .. to be tested.
I think if you read through that post fully, it's not likely you'd respond like the above, since the post lays out how such a simplistic model won't work well, etc.

Also, since pretty much everyone knows that scientific models are compared to observations and then refined (or sometimes discarded and replaced), it makes us wonder why you point out what we all know.

It's close to the level of pointing out that telescopes are used to make observations, so when you point out models will be tested, it's odd sounding in a conservation when the person you were responding to would already know that.

Make sense? Next, can you see how it makes you look as if you are trying to merely misrepresent the person you are responding to in a petty way, with a straw man even? It would be like responding to a math major by pointing out that integrals are meant to sum up the area under a curve -- rather basic, which the person would already know of course. It's best to avoid that, if you want any good conservations with people. (so for example, if it seems to you like all posts are debating just for show without ever any aim to have a good discussion, it would be far better to entirely stop posting and try to change your attitude entirely)
 
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The IbanezerScrooge

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But how much of that is us?
All available evidence says all of it is us. We have never conversed with a person without a brain (jokes notwithstanding).
 
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SelfSim

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Um...models are devised to model something. In physics, the scientific method is applied to verify models to see if they're an accurate representation of how something works, but it always begins with "That's interesting" and attempt to model it.
That's a common belief held by many scientific and non-scientific thinkers .. but the notion of 'the something' there, existing independently (commonly referred to as 'an object'), is still a belief. Science doesn't hone in on the 'accuracy' of beliefs.

(Its source is the intrusion of the untestable notions of philosophical Realism .. which are appropriately ignorable in science).

The term, 'model', of which I am speaking of here, can be defined as:
'A conceptual, mathematical, graphical, or otherwise idealized structure that is capable of generating predictions in hypothetical situations. Ideally, the predictions are quantitative at a useful level, and the hypothetical situation can be closely enough approximated to allow an experiment to check the model'.

Science only ever tests its hypothetical models .. and never 'the thing itself'.
Cheers
 
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SelfSim

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I think if you read through that post fully, it's not likely you'd respond like the above, since the post lays out how such a simplistic model won't work well, etc.
Whether its simplistic or not, doesn't alter that the model is still of hypothetical situations.
Also, since pretty much everyone knows that scientific models are compared to observations and then refined (or sometimes discarded and replaced), it makes us wonder why you point out what we all know.

It's close to the level of pointing out that telescopes are used to make observations, so when you point out models will be tested, it's odd sounding in a conservation when the person you were responding to would already know that.

Make sense? Next, can you see how it makes you look as if you are trying to merely misrepresent the person you are responding to in a petty way, with a straw man even? It would be like responding to a math major by pointing out that integrals are meant to sum up the area under a curve -- rather basic, which the person would already know of course. It's best to avoid that, if you want any good conservations with people. (so for example, if it seems to you like all posts are debating just for show without ever any aim to have a good discussion, it would be far better to entirely stop posting and try to change your attitude entirely)
Whatever ..
Are you going to demonstrate the concepts of 'accuracy', 'precision' and 'completeness', without invoking 'perfection'?
 
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Tuur

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All available evidence says all of it is us. We have never conversed with a person without a brain (jokes notwithstanding).
The inability to communicate isn't an indicator of lack of self. People in induced comas cannot communicate, but their self is still there. I don't think the answer is quite as pat as it may seem. To make horribly crude analogy, a computer's motherboard can fail, but its program still exist (and nobody make more of this analogy than what it is, an analogy).
 
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Tuur

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Science only ever tests its hypothetical models .. and never 'the thing itself'.
The scientific method lends itself to what can be repeatedly measured. No more or less. Science has yet to create an "Loveometer," but love is something every scientist has experienced at some point.
 
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SelfSim

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The scientific method lends itself to what can be repeatedly measured. No more or less. Science has yet to create an "Loveometer," but love is something every scientist has experienced at some point.
Yes 'love' is also model (of type: emotion). It has different meanings depending on the context at the time it is perceived. It means different things to different people. It can produce observable (and repeatable) outcomes. Scientists are humans too, so one might predict that a given scientist might perceive (their model of) 'love'.
 
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Tuur

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Yes 'love' is also model (of type: emotion). It has different meanings depending on the context at the time it is perceived. It means different things to different people. It can produce observable (and repeatable) outcomes. Scientists are humans too, so one might predict that a given scientist might perceive (their model of) 'love'.
A map is not the territory; a model is not the thing it represents. Love exist, though it cannot be measured. The only impression is the word the English language uses for different types of live.
 
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