You keep asking a lot of questions and saying that you will get back to some topic and starting new threads of thought. This is an argument technique that results in, well, not much resolution or understanding. You keep claiming I’m not responding to you, when I am. So, I will be limiting what I respond to in the future.
If a brain is fed a “reality that is not the true reality”, obviously, if won’t be aware of reality. That is not what we are talking about. Our brains are isolated in our skulls, and without the rest of our body, it would not get sensory input from the outside world, that is, reality. The question is about “knowing”, and we use our brains to “know”, so at this point, it gets a bit circular. DesCartes pondered this, and many have since, so let’s use that accumulated knowledge.
The ”I” that DesCartes talked about exists no matter the quality of our senses or the existence of gods or demons. If we are so wrong about reality that we aren’t thinking about ourselves when we think “I”, then this whole question is pointless. But let’s say we are 1% correct about reality, and we can process information. With that, we can experiment, and reason, and build our knowledge, and work toward knowing what we are. Again, if not, then the whole question just doesn’t matter. But it seems like we can, so why would we stop trying?
Getting back to a more realistic question, we do have sensory organs, we have memory, we can communicate with others. These are additional tools we can use to determine what’s real. Anil Seth uses the word “hallucinate”, and CC and I agree that is a bad choice of words. I agree with Seth that we have errors, we see things out of the corner of our eye, we forget, we age, drugs can change our perception, but I don’t think you and I would be using this computer to communicate if our brains and bodies weren’t working together to get some sense of this universe and how it works.
It would be a very strange system that sent input to my brain about another body with a brain on the other side of the world, doing something that affected my emotions, or saying something that changed my way of looking at the world. You are leading toward hard solipsism, and I don’t have a solution for that, nor does anyone I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I live my life.
Lausten first of all thank you for your answer and don’t limit your responses towards me because I like discussing these things with you.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand things in text without body language so let’s chip away until we get to the root.
So you explained a lot in your post and we are essentially in agreement.
We are basically in complete agreement that this guy Anil Seth who I’ve never heard of before until I saw the video, is using the wrong choice of words.
Because it seemed to me that he was driving Hard the fact that the brain is hallucinating this reality whereas as you’ve said we have accumulated knowledge and common agreement on some basic facts about reality.
So if this is a common mass hallucination, then what would be the explanation of large crowds experiencing another hallucination?
Thanks again and keep in mind that I’m approaching these discussions in good-will and not win/lose format because as I’ve said I also allow the possibility for my mindset to be changed when proposed with a new idea or logical reasoning.
It also seems to me that your reasoning style favors probability and my reasoning style favors Boolean reasoning.
So it’s all good.
Is this rhetorical? You spent the first part of the post saying you disagree with the use of the word “hallucination”.
You keep deflecting my answers and throwing out new questions about debunked ghosts. You don’t seem all that open.
It’s not good. I’m glad you labeled your reasoning as binary, that’s a correct description of what I’ve seen. You keep asking questions about things that are so low probability, the value of pursuing them is miniscule. It’s also why you just dismiss what I’ve said, it’s just an on/off switch to you, no subtlety.
Yes forget about “hallucination” we’re in agreement that the guy who used that, could have explained his theory better.
Also the reason you think I’m changing topics or posing new questions is because I think you’re not understanding my point or reason or logic sometimes.
As far as the approach goes …. I’m not sure what to say about that. That’s just our individual style which does explain how we reach different conclusions but I do allow a lot of grey area in my life .
This also explains a bit why you don’t seem to believe a lot of the reincarnation stories (in the other topic) because the probability seems low to you but one way for me to rationalize this from your point of view is like this:
- You say that the probability of getting a dice double six is low.
- I get a double six which gives me good confidence.
The chances of a kid knowing a lot of details about their past lives are like a double six to me.
We can both roll dice and see the sixes come up. The odds are 1/36. That’s pretty good odds. How many people in the history of the world have claimed to be reincarnated? How many have been verified? I think it’s zero. Maybe there are one or two, but if they were really verified, why haven’t I heard about them? Why do so few people believe it? The answers to these questions bring those odds down to one in billions. That does not give me good confidence.
What he is talking about is the “mirror function” of the brain.
This what we experience when we see someone hurt themselves and we grimace as if we are experiencing the paim ourselves. And it is true that our observation alone produces the exact same chemical response triggered by the mirror neurons in the brain .
This can be experienced during a home game in sports and the home crowd becomes the 12th man on the field.
Yes, it’s experienced as a reaction to a physical thing happening. We don’t have a reaction like that to someone claiming something happened to someone else, or a description of something that is unlikely to be accurate
IMO it can even be experienced when hearing something described in “vivid” terms.
When I hear someone talk about the holocaust experienced by the Jews in WWII, I shudder with fear even as I am comfortably sitting in my chair with a cup of of coffee in front of me.
The mirror function can be triggered by all sensory observational experiences. A mother can immediately recognize her child’s cry in a screaming crowd. A deer can immediately recognize the blating of her fawn in a large herd.
A school of fish act in unison to avoid a predator, a flock of geese veer in the same direction when attacked by a predatory bird.
I believe those are all the results of mirror functions.
IMO, the mirror function is an extremely important survival mechanism in learning and remembering adult behaviors.
When these adult behaviors are displayed in a child, we call it reincarnation.
Another miraculous service provided by microtubules.
That is the mechanism of the brain’s ability to create an image of reality.
Anil Seth uses the word “hallucinate”, and CC and I agree that is a bad choice of words.
For the record, Seth uses the term “controlled hallucination” which results in a verified reality to the brain as opposed to the term “uncontrolled hallucination” which results in a false reality to the brain.
I agree with Seth that we have errors, we see things out of the corner of our eye, we forget, we age, drugs can change our perception, but I don’t think you and I would be using this computer to communicate if our brains and bodies weren’t working together to get some sense of this universe and how it works.
Hence the term “controlled hallucination”.
It would be a very strange system that sent input to my brain about another body with a brain on the other side of the world, doing something that affected my emotions, or saying something that changed my way of looking at the world. You are leading toward hard solipsism, and I don’t have a solution for that, nor does anyone I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I live my life.
I agree.
There are enough influences in one’s immediate environment to keep one fully occupied dealing with that which is in front of him.
Okay so you took that literally instead of applying it figuratively. Because if we shift goal posts I can say that the odds of a universe spawning or annihilating itself are so low … it’s not worth mentioning. But in comparison, the odds of reincarnation are better than a universe spawning on its own or annihilating on its own.
The dice example is to show rarity. So when I see jackpot I call jackpot and I’d like to investigate it more.
I’m assuming here the brain does the controlling of “normal” all on its own and when we take lsd for example we throw off-balance all the “normality”.
There … that’s the explanation I was looking for in terms of consistency. 
I don’t think you meant “shift goalposts”, that’s an illogical way to proceed. To debate in a way that leads to understanding, I think what you were trying to do is apply my line of reasoning to my claim. I have tried establish what your line of reasoning is, so we can work together, but you keep jumping all over the place.
Using my line of reasoning, using the odds of something happening, I agree, it is a rare thing for universes to come into existence. One problem I run into though is that it happens on a quantum level, where the rules of time don’t exist, so I’m not even sure how to calculate. The theory is, on that level, bubbles of some kind of energy form and go back out of existence all the time. This goes on a lot, I would say it goes on for billions of years, but that’s probably wrong in quantum math terms. But, the important thing is, something rare, plus a lot of time, equals that thing happening.
Homo sapiens have only been around for 200,000 years. You have never calculated the odds of reincarnation. You have never established any mechanism either. Unlike physicists who at least have some formulas to explain what they believe.
But you don’t. You take a couple sentences out of a wikipedia article that you like, and you ignore the rest. You ignore all the people who have investigated all of the other claims. When you do mention them, you say they are biased. Then you say that you don’t dismiss them. Then you say you want to discuss these things. I don’t think we’ve moved off of square one.
Well we shouldn’t really push each other into a position without reasoning.
- I’ve studied these cases in many formats so Wikipedia is not my benchmark.
I showed Wikipedia to illustrate that these cases exist while asking for a line of reasoning on your end. - You’ve told me that you’ve studied them using a statistical model.
- Bias exist. So do careers. People don’t want to waste their careers studying the paranormal. But some people like Tucker do it and I really appreciate them .
- If we want to move to square 2, we need to resolve some logical steps.
- The reason you think I jump to another place is because I think those are connected and related so I attempt to explain it to you.
So here’s a great example :
Homo sapiens have existed for 200,000 years.
If we are talking about an energy called “the soul” then maybe it’s not related only to our species. So I don’t restrict it.
I’m actually discussing this in the other thread if you’d like to comment there.
Thanks.
That’s true. But it’s still true that many people have investigated the paranormal. The ones who continue to accept it’s real don’t provide good arguments or evidence. The ones who once believed and now don’t can explain why they stopped. The ones who never believed and still don’t also present their facts and respond directly to those who do believe. Much of your argument rests on your point #3. It’s not really relevant to demonstrating the truth.
Lausten it seems to me that the majority of people who don’t believe in America or England for example are at war with Christianity.
But I’m not at war with Christianity or any other religion or group of people.
I’m at peace with my Creator.
So your answer seems a bit biased to me because it’s alluding to cases of conversion from one side, but conversion happens on the other side too . Atheist to Religious.
But I don’t care about conversions. I’m interested in reasoning and if people live up to it.
Because I see a lot of indoctrination from all sides and a lot of people who are angry on all sides.
So when I approach these things I would like to leave all that historical baggage outside.
That is because it isn’t true. The opposite is true .
Religions see themselves as representing “good” being at war with “evil” and that atheism is inherently evil because it does not believe in a god which is “good”.
Have you ever read the “Inquisition Creed”?
Let me remind you about the Holy war on Evil.
Inquisition Creed
The 1578 edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum (a standard Inquisitorial manual) spelled out the purpose of inquisitorial penalties: … quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur ** (translation: “… for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit”.
I have never heard of an atheist killing a theist because they believed in God.
But history is rife with theists killing atheists because they did not believe in God.
C’mon man, don’t come up with false superficial accusations . That approach doesn’t fly here.
Dude I don’t think you’re reading.
I’m not defending Christians for their acts but I’m at peace with my creator.
These are tired old arguments which are not interesting.
I’m interested in approaching an unknown without all the historical crap of human stupidity.
You are conveniently forgetting that the concept of God is a creation of human stupidity. In fact, the concept of God as an unseen powerful being in the sky is a creation of a non-human hominid mind, long before humans evolved. This can still be observed today in the passive-aggressive behavior of Chimpanzees during a thunderstorm.
Let me remind you that the oldest Gods are sky gods, like Anu, Thor, Odin, Jupiter…
Ok let’s follow this logic since I can see you’re not looking at things from a blank slate.
Are transgender people stupid? It seems like they have some major body/mind issues and their case it’s not even a mystery because they can LOOK but they don’t believe it.
I can see that you are looking at things from a blank slate.