Why the brain isn`t you

[Hans Blaster]

Not that I want to spam with videos but here is another good short one (last one) to get you guys thinking

Then you should have stopped a few posts back.

 

[Sorn]

Then you should have stopped a few posts back.

I couldn't help myself. There plenty more videos I could have posted, those are very good & each is short & are relevant to this discussion, especially the 1st one. They can express the points far more eloquently than i can

 

[Hans Blaster]

I couldn't help myself. There plenty more videos I could have posted, those are very good & each is short & are relevant to this discussion, especially the 1st one. They can express the points far more eloquently than i can

That seems unlikely -- one of them was Frank Turek.

 

[Larniavc]

And if its just a contrivance of scripture writers, how lucky that for thousands of years they all stuck to the same line.

They haven’t. Christianity has thousands of different variations each claiming to be the right one.

 

[Larniavc]

You can't say
"So we must acknowledge that we can never be 100% sure of anything. This is the tentativity of the scientific method."
which means, in reality we all MUST act on faith (see above video again) whether we like it or not or admit it or not & then take issue with a God who just happens to ask of humans the one thing He knows we must do, as in the only thing we can really do in order to operate int he world, ie put your faith in something. In this case of course its put your faith in Him for what follows this existence.

And if its just a contrivance of scripture writers, how lucky that for thousands of years they all stuck to the same line.


Yes, it may have been what the writers wanted you to believe, they clearly did BUT it may also be what God actually wants you to do too because He knows it really is the ONLY thing you can do & you do it all the time in operating in this world.

It may be a lot of things.

 

[Larniavc]

But the pain is just an illusion, its not real, man up for goodness sakes!!.

If pain is an illusion why does it hurt?

 

[Sorn]

That seems unlikely -- one of them was Frank Turek.

You are saying Frank isn't eloquent? He seems ok to me.

 

[Sorn]

They haven’t. Christianity has thousands of different variations each claiming to be the right one.

Don't know about thousands, dozens certainly, perhaps some hundreds, but however many there are they all agree that faith in Jesus Christ is core and it is essential to be called a Christian

 

[Sorn]

It may be a lot of things.

not sure what you mean here

 

[Sorn]

If pain is an illusion why does it hurt?

it doesn't, you just think it does, thats part of the illusion. Even your feelings are an illusion, its the matrix remember.

 

[Larniavc]

it doesn't, you just think it does, thats part of the illusion. Even your feelings are an illusion, its the matrix remember.

It’s not though. It might be. But it’s not.

 

[Hans Blaster]

You are saying Frank isn't eloquent? He seems ok to me.

Can't say about his eloquence as his wrongness gets in the way.

 

[Halbhh]

Exactly! No matter how sure we are of something we know that new information can stroll along and bring our sureties crashing down around our ears.

So we must acknowledge that we can never be 100% sure of anything. This is the tentativity of the scientific method.

The human brain is necessarily simpler than the vast complexity of the world around us.

Therefore, our conceptions of how things are in the world around us are most all just theories/approximations/guesses/oversimplifications.

And mostly unrealistic compared to a much more intense effort to objectively observe extensive observables.

In another wording, we oversimplify by necessity.

But of course, there are other categories of knowing than only observations/conceptions of the world around us.

I can objectively know that I exist, as an example, without any qualifications on that. Pure fact, and not an oversimplification, etc.

So, keeping in mind differing categories, I'd simply say most all people have little to no precise perception of the world around them, excepting for example many physicists who realize because they've learned a lot of physics that we all know very little about reality outside of ourselves.

Instead, people (many people at least) gradually learn some useful representations about the world that often work ok much of the time, until they don't. So I think wise people realize they know very little, while those that are younger/less wise naturally think they know more than they do.

 

[Halbhh]

I'm still trying to figure out why people voted for Trump, not just once, but twice!!!!

I thought best to address this separately from the broader discussion we are having, so I'll make 2 posts.

Why many would believe/follow Trump was quite a puzzle for me also in the past, so I focused on figuring it out. I began to see one main thing is simply that Trump being a confidence man style salesman, is pretty able in that one area (not so much in other areas), and is able to trick a portion of the population. It's apparently what he's spent a large part of his adult years working on -- being able to trick people with words, paint a false picture.

But he's also losing a step lately on that too it appears to me, making more obviously wrong slips that threaten to dispel the illusions he spins.

 

[Halbhh]

But seriously, why people believe what they believe... I don't know. Perhaps they just look at the cyclicality of the earth, and of the heavens, and they assume that that's the way it must be. Because from the stars, to the seasons, to life itself... all around them, everything that dies is inevitably reborn. In such a world is it really that difficult to understand why people would believe in reincarnation?

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.

So, therefore reincarnation in that way is a reasonable notion, even if the details are different than many know.

 

[partinobodycular]

Why many would believe/follow Trump was quite a puzzle for me also in the past, so I focused on figuring it out. I began to see one main thing is simply that Trump being a confidence man style salesman, is pretty able in that one area (not so much in other areas), and is able to trick a portion of the population. It's apparently what he's spent a large part of his adult years working on -- being able to trick people with words, paint a false picture.

The subject of Trump may seem off topic in this thread, but in some respects it really isn't. Let me try to explain. As a solipsist I've often wondered about the nature of reality. Is it completely natural, governed solely by the laws of physics? Is it purely mental, the inevitable byproduct of a conscious mind? Is it the handiwork of a divine creator? Or is it, as some have suggested, actually a computer simulation?

Physics Revelation Could Mean We're All Living in a Simulation

Now such theories are interesting, but as a solipsist I approached the question from a different perspective. If we're actually living in a simulation would the behavior of the people in it inadvertently betray the fact that it's a simulation. For example, the creator of the simulation would probably have a storyline that they need the characters in the simulation to stick to, if everyone could just go rambling off doing whatever they wanted to, then keeping the simulation on track for any significant period of time would be nigh on impossible.

This need to control the storyline should lead to two things.

1. The majority of characters in the simulation would need to be NPC's. (Non-player characters)
2. These NPC's would occasionally appear to act irrationally.

The NPC's are necessary to assure that the simulation stays on track, and in so doing they may not always do what would seem like the reasonable thing to do, like not following Adolf Hitler, or Hamas, or not wasting hundreds of thousands of lives invading Ukraine, or not voting for Donald Trump... twice.

Now if one views reality with this hypothetical simulation scenario in mind, do certain behaviors make more sense? Are people really that incapable of living peaceful, productive lives that killing and mistreating their fellow man is accepted as normal? If you were living in 'Grand Theft Auto' would all the shooting and killing seem perfectly natural?

It's an intriguing, if unanswerable question, does the behavior of the world around you seem rational? If not, then perhaps it's because it's a simulation. The purposes of which may be manyfold... entertainment, education, rehabilitation, experimentation, procreation.

I'm not advocating for a simulated reality, I'm just wondering... it's what I do. But to be completely honest, I find the whole 'simulated reality scenario' to be far more likely than the 'omnipotent God scenario'.

 

[SelfSim]

.. I'm not advocating for a simulated reality, I'm just wondering... it's what I do. But to be completely honest, I find the whole 'simulated reality scenario' to be far more likely than the 'omnipotent God scenario'.

Acquiring a personal opinion for either of two untestable notions, is of no practical use.
I think you may have slipped too far into the never ending black hole of Solipsism there friend(?)

 

[Halbhh]

The subject of Trump may seem off topic in this thread, but in some respects it really isn't. Let me try to explain. As a solipsist I've often wondered about the nature of reality. Is it completely natural, governed solely by the laws of physics? Is it purely mental, the inevitable byproduct of a conscious mind? Is it the handiwork of a divine creator? Or is it, as some have suggested, actually a computer simulation?

Physics Revelation Could Mean We're All Living in a Simulation

Now such theories are interesting, but as a solipsist I approached the question from a different perspective. If we're actually living in a simulation would the behavior of the people in it inadvertently betray the fact that it's a simulation. For example, the creator of the simulation would probably have a storyline that they need the characters in the simulation to stick to, if everyone could just go rambling off doing whatever they wanted to, then keeping the simulation on track for any significant period of time would be nigh on impossible.

This need to control the storyline should lead to two things.

1. The majority of characters in the simulation would need to be NPC's. (Non-player characters)
2. These NPC's would occasionally appear to act irrationally.

The NPC's are necessary to assure that the simulation stays on track, and in so doing they may not always do what would seem like the reasonable thing to do, like not following Adolf Hitler, or Hamas, or not wasting hundreds of thousands of lives invading Ukraine, or not voting for Donald Trump... twice.

Now if one views reality with this hypothetical simulation scenario in mind, do certain behaviors make more sense? Are people really that incapable of living peaceful, productive lives that killing and mistreating their fellow man is accepted as normal? If you were living in 'Grand Theft Auto' would all the shooting and killing seem perfectly natural?

It's an intriguing, if unanswerable question, does the behavior of the world around you seem rational? If not, then perhaps it's because it's a simulation. The purposes of which may be manyfold... entertainment, education, rehabilitation, experimentation, procreation.

I'm not advocating for a simulated reality, I'm just wondering... it's what I do. But to be completely honest, I find the whole 'simulated reality scenario' to be far more likely than the 'omnipotent God scenario'.

Your post made me think of:

....the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

---
One of many such unexpected moments in the bible, where you learn that certain common ideas you've heard some Christians say are clearly contradicted by the text.

To me it comes across from the more full reading in the text of the bible we are reading that we aren't in a tightly controlled world nor anything like one, but something more like...an ongoing (at times sporadic, at times intense) war where there is a ongoing struggle to rescue (at times right off the battlefield) any who wish to turn to the ultimate good, and that humans are all active agents able to do whatever we choose (in a real way), both good and evil, even in great amounts. But this metaphor of a battlefield is only a metaphor regardless of seeming daily conditions (such as in Gaza or Ukraine), as the struggle is entirely in the human heart/soul/mind and is universal, involving all of us. Will we admit that all people should love all people, and stop fighting, and turn to Christ and admit these wrongs, and stop fighting for the red army or the white army. To become a noncombatant, be evacuated into shelter for a night or a fortnight, and even perhaps return to the battlefield we knew, but this time as a non combatant, to aid the wounded and show them a way out. Christ taught "love your enemy" but he also said that not many will, but only 'few' -- but perhaps 'few' could be even 20% or 40% at times it may be. How many are willing to stop trying to fight their old enemies and stop trying to knock down those wearing the red or white or navy or green? What would it be like if instead of enemies to fight a person found they only had brothers and sisters to love. That's the world we are offered, if we can admit our battles and enemies were our own wrongs and our own wrongness.

 

[Larniavc]

The human brain is necessarily simpler than the vast complexity of the world around us.

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.

 

[Tuur]

There are no PhD physicists walking around with this condition.

That we know of. I'm thinking of a young woman from Northern Europe (maybe) who act normally but was found to have a large void in the center of her brain. This was in a documentary back in the 1970s, maybe late 1970s, Maybe not an argument in favor of the soul, but still a testimony of the adaptability of the brain.

That we use the brain for processing (for lack of a better word) is evident by the effects of Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. But how much of that is us? I hesitate to voice my own speculation, as heresies go for a dime a dozen and some are bound to get the wrong idea. I will point out that we don't seem to be hardwired, as some mental illness doesn't appear to be due to physical causes.