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Hello. This is Carolyn, a journalist and recently retired university prof. I have a dilemma, which is why I joined Skeptical Inquirer. Decades back, I published a number of articles that touch on or investigate various pseudosciences. In a fairly kindly, narrative manner, I investigated Water Dowsing (New Yorker, October 1989), The Aetherius Society (English Language Notes, 2009), Exorcism (Lit and Pseudoscience) etc. Possibly as an act of revenge by the jilted spirits, my partner of 20 years fell in love with a past-life regression āTherapistā who does āQuantum Healing,ā and is a follower of Dolores Cannon, someone whose āQuantumā practice Iād once investigated. This particularly irks me as a former science writer, because of the false veil of science the terminology implies. Anyway, my partner and I have reunited, and Iām trying to convey, in a non-vindictive way, how wrong-headed this form of ātherapyā is. Does anyone have suggestions on a clear-headed investigation of past lives therapy (I already made him read The Demon-Haunted World ). Also, is there anywhere on Skeptical Inquirer where I could find a discussion of Quantum Healing?
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Just ran across this post. Interesting dilemma.
First, from wiki.
Quantum healing has a number of vocal followers, but the scientific community widely regards it as nonsensical.[7] The main criticism revolves around its systematic misinterpretation of modern physics,[8] especially of the fact that macroscopic objects (such as the human body or individual cells) are much too large to exhibit inherently quantum properties like interference and wave function collapse.
Physicist Brian Cox argues that misuse of the word āquantumā, such as its use in the phrase quantum healing, has a negative effect on society as it undermines genuine science and discourages people from engaging with conventional medicine. He states that āfor some scientists, the unfortunate distortion and misappropriation of scientific ideas that often accompanies their integration into popular culture is an unacceptable price to pay.ā[8] Quantum healing - Wikipedia
But in spite of this discouraging picture, I should like to recommend reading up on one of several new propositions, advanced by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. (Google their credentials)
The theory is named ORCH-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) that proposes the brainās consciousness is a result of data-processing by microtubules which may be able to process data at quantum levels.
āOrch ORā is the most complete, and most easily falsifiable theory of consciousness
Stuart Hameroff .
https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/microtubules-the-basics-14673338/
Abstract
The āOrch ORā theory attributes consciousness to quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons. Quantum computers process information as superpositions of multiple possibilities (quantum bits or qubits) which, in Orch OR, are alternative collective dipole oscillations orchestrated (āOrchā) by microtubules.
These orchestrated oscillations entangle, compute, and terminate (ācollapse of the wavefunctionā) by Penrose objective reduction (āORā), resulting in sequences of Orch OR moments with orchestrated conscious experience (metaphorically more like music than computation).
Each Orch OR event selects microtubule states which govern neuronal functions. Orch OR has broad explanatory power, and is easily falsifiable.
If I may also refer to my thread on microtubules
Microtubule network, the seat of consciousness?
Hi, Iām Green with an interest in discussing intelligent topics on World matters. Iāve worked in the legal, security, and now retail fields. Glad to be here.
I wondered if such consciousness is able to flow through electronic means such as, wifi and the cell towers if one concentrates enough? I heard stories that people think they are being conversed with through the computerās radiation field ??? and itās not verbal, not communication in words through video, texts, or whatever.
What would be your opinion as an engineer of human conscious. As humans, we do only use 10% of our brain, but I wonder about consciousness and how far it can actually extend if it has the means to do so.
[quote=āgreentree, post:5, topic:11, full:trueā]
I wondered if such consciousness is able to flow through electronic means such as, wifi and the cell towers if one concentrates enough? I heard stories that people think they are being conversed with through the computerās radiation field ??? and itās not verbal, not communication in words through video, texts, or whatever.
I think that one thing is clear, microtubules respond to electrochemical data and almost certainly to sound waves.
If MT are instrumental in emergent consciousness, they should respond to anything we are conscious of and possibly even frequencies we are not conscious of but do affect their function in some way.
What would be your opinion as an engineer of human conscious. As humans, we do only use 10% of our brain, but I wonder about consciousness and how far it can actually extend if it has the means to do so.
I would say it depends on the frequency. AFAIK, only the universe itself is able to process all possible frequencies, whereas all smaller patterns are responsive to their own pattern associated frequencies.
Interestingly, fractal antennas have a wide reponse range . I am not sure why but it probably has something to do with fractal patterns that are (infinitely) expandable and reducible.
It is quite possible that David Bohmās āholographic universeā is a fractal structure that is rerepeats itself infinitely.
Hi, My name is Mark in China. I love CFI very much and love helping others.
I am an employee of a ceramic mug factory, and I found out that CFIās mall also sells ceramic mugs. Iām willing to help others by offering some ceramic mugs for free or at a low price.
You can choose the mug type on the website(www.ceramic-mug.cn) and print CFIās LOGO. Also, you can email me.
Hi Vegan Rock here. Been a vegan for 10 years and never felt better. I believe the arguments vegans make in terms of pro environment pro animal rights and pro health cannot be countered by the meat lovers. Also into music in a big way politics history and current events effecting society
Welcome Vegan Rock
That was an interesting introduction. Care to expand on that a little more?
There may be a short waiting time before you can start a thread but rest assured that there will be several interested readers to what you can contribute to the conversation of positive results due to Vegan lifestyleā¦
Hello there, please elaborate.
That is a very misleading statement. We use 100% of our brains, just not all at the same time.
If we did, weād go mad.
As far as extending consciousness outside the brain itself , we can only do that artificially via radio waves. There is no such thing as telepathy or ESP or any perception outside the range of our senses.
Hi all. Politics and science is my game. You can keep your religious beliefs and superficial non sense. Not interested
Welcome Michael, looking forward to your contributions.
What areas of science are you most interested in?
Hi. I consider myself a skeptic, have been since a teenager. However, I now believe that paranormal human abilities such as telepathy, telekinesis and clairvoyance are real. Most people who believe in these things have a lot of other strange and/or irrational beliefs, and they generally believe that paranormal abilities are somehow outside of normal physical reality. My take is different. I wonāt go into detail here, but it is clear to me that these abilities have to do with the brain being able to sense quantum mechanical non-local entangled information. Entanglement is the only phenomenon in established physics that works across any distance with no loss of potency. By the same token, paranormal abilities such as telekinesis and telepathy also display the same kind of non-locality. So as a rational person looking for a scientific explanation, entanglement is the only possible explanation given what science has established up to the present time.
Anyhow, as I train and develop at a basic level, I keep thinking of ways this can be tested. Even though my paranormal abilities are very minimal, Iāve finally devised a way to test it where statistics can be generated. Iāve heard of the Randi prize and I looked it up, and found out it is defunct. I looked at descriptions of some of the contenders for the Randi Prize, and those attempts all looked ridiculous to me. No wonder nobody won the prize. I found that CFI has a prize if someone can demonstrate a paranormal ability under controlled scientific conditions. I think that I may be able to do this and I want to start thinking how it can be accomplished and what steps need to be taken.
Welcome.
I am not sure if pursuit of monetary gain is the right way to test a āspecial abilityā. Seems that greed often gets in the way of very subtle but testable abilities.
The prize money is motivating, but Iām not a greedy person. I donate a lot to charity and various good organizations, and my wife and I live way below our means. If I was just interested in money, I would have done other things in life. Primarily I am a person who is addicted to knowledge and learning things. In the past 1-2 years, Iāve learned a fair amount about paranormal human abilities. I have a decent understanding of some of the physics that would be involved, and I appreciate the magnitude of the paradigm shift that would happen if paranormal abilities were proven true to skeptics. Skeptics generally donāt look, and if they do look at the paranormal, they have several off ramps, with the final off ramp being accusations of fraud. My belief is that IF paranormal abilities could be proven real and based on physics, it is the understanding of that physics which would benefit society. If paranormal physics is compared to electromagnetism, we are at the stage like the 1600s or 1700s, where all they could do was store a bit of static electricity in a jar. But fast forward to the present time, a good understanding of electromagnetism has lead to so much improvement in technology that helps our daily lives. The problem with the paranormal and skeptics is there is almost no overlap. If the physics of the paranormal were acknowledged by a wider scientific community, the implications and developments of new theories would lead to all kinds of new devices.
I donāt like the term āparanormalā. If it is part of the spacetime continuum it should be properly called metaphysical.
Paranormal defines an extranormal condition, but if it is fundamental to the universe then it is normal, albeit undiscovered.
Iām just going by the terminology people are already using here. Iād call it ānormal, just not widely understood by scienceā. But it would be an uphill battle for me to go around and telling people they are using the wrong terms. I really donāt care a lot what we call it, I donāt even care if it is a pejorative the way the term ābig bangā started out. What matters are reproducible results and the implications for science, humanity, etc.
Hello there. I am Aaron, a Indy local writer of fiction (both science fiction and fantasy at times). Iām also an atheist and looking to socially connect with my fellow skeptics and thinkers. Iām glad I found out about the Center for Inquiry from a friend and plan to visit one of your Coffee and Conversation events in the near future to get to know all of you better.
Welcome Aaron.
Looking forward to your contributions. There are a lot of avid SciFi fans here.
And you may find some excellent conversations between heavyweights on YouTube.
Look for the publishing source; āCenter for inquiryā
