Kuhn and geniuses getting lost within their own mindscape

You know Einstein was an atheist, yet he spoke of wanting to know the mind of god.
I think it’s fair to say Max Tegmark’s talks carry on that same tradition.

The fast and fancy free talk that transfers quantum level weirdness into our macroscopic plain of existence (hey check it out, this rock is mostly empty space, you’re just imagining it’s solid, and so on…), with all its philosophical baggage, is likewise seeking that ideal, be it math or the spirit of god.
That ‘answer to everything’, that you’ve even brought up now and then.

Whereas, what I’m focused on, is simply understanding what it means to be a human on this Earth during my time. God and the ultimate answer seems to become less and less interesting as my years have added up.

Seems to me way more interesting stuff is happening right down here, within my own living flesh with it’s interaction with myself and others along with what’s happenings around me, as I live my day to days. It’s what I’m writing. {Oh Write, kudos on proving every metaphor has its limitations and is bound to bit one in the ass sooner or later. :+1:t2:.}

Someday I’ll stumble across someone who gets it.

Thanks for helping me finally nail that bit of confusion

But that doesn’t change the Reality of the situation!

It’s, dare I say, wonderfully summed up within the thoughtful phrase:
Appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.

We are all creatures. All creatures have their suite of sensing, processing and manipulatory abilities. They are observation & perception instruments. It is the nature of any observational instrument to be limited by its particular components and configuration.

That is why your reality is relative and uniquely so. Because it is made up of your particular sensory impressions, and it’s all you or any other creature has to work with.

Where’s the mystery or marvel in that configuration? What’s the tail that the dog is chasing?

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I absolutely agree with you on everything you said.
It is a worthy endeavor and a great teaching tool for finding one’s place in the greater scheme of things.

My efforts are an attempt to contribute some of my areas of interest.
Nothing I say is designed to argue against but argue in support.

The following video may illustrate what I mean.
It is a classical music teacher listening and analyzing a composition played by my favorite guitarist and the “discovery” of new chordal changes and uses in a modern little musical masterpiece.

As an ex-musician (not a composer) myself, when I first heard the composition, I really liked it and heard some really different little nuances, but just could not put my finger on it.
In this analysis, the classical teacher explains how and why the composition is so compelling and his admiration for the composer’s insight of “tension and release” in the execution.
Do give the analysis a listen and then listen to the piece played without commentary. You will recognize the subtle and compelling emotional nuances and gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the composer’s artistry.

Here is Pat Metheny under the critical ear of a classical music master.

I do believe that trying to find greater understanding of fundamental properties and potentials from utter chaos to complex life may well assist in gaining a deeper appreciation of our sensory experiences.

It’s like you still haven’t grasped the fundamental difference between the perceived and the perceiver. It doesn’t matter that how I compose a particular scene, will be different from how you perceive it, or how a mouse would perceive it.

The point I’m trying to make and you do everything you can to distract from is that, the scene, the physical reality, is what it is. All the wavy gravy happens after the data is introduced into our particular biological sensing organ that is my body. My consciousness has been honed for over a billion years and counting.

W, stop ignoring the reality you exist within.
W, stop ignoring that you are an evolved biological creature!
W, stop ignoring that consciousness is a biological imperative as old a life itself!

You keep offering up examples of what I mean by being trapped within your mindscape. Every time you discuss science you grab what you want to share, pull it into your bubble and hammer away at your math as god, or all, or whatever.

Fancy argument based speculations about the tiniest of tinies or games with color spectrum are, shall we say anemic, when it comes to describing, let along appreciating our human experience. It is not the ideas of the physical of the tiny that interest me anymore, it’s our humanity I’m interested in at this point.

Also Write, listen to some Kuhn videos and start discussing that at this thread - your snipping is more distraction than constructive.

And what the hell does that have to do with Kuhn and his “search for God” or whatever it is he’s doing with his pod cast?
What’s it got to do with recognizing that we are EVOLVED BIOLOGICAL CREATURES and our drive toward increased cognition is a biological imperative that has been mapped back to the beginnings of complex cells with organelles?

Then you ignore my comment instead tossing in yeah-but distractions.

Every living creature is a perceiving instrument - every brain is connected to every aspect of its body and the internal communication is nonstop, and every component has a say. All processed real time and involved in decision making that leads to consequences, that leads to assessment and so on.

Every observational instrument is unique according to it’s hardware and software - that is why we perceive the world differently - even though we are looking at the same world.

That is exactly what I said… :clap:

Problem is you’re making it sound like it begins with the underlying reality being wavy gravy - rather than the fact that living biological creatures are basically individual observation platforms. Molded by cumulative change over time to be conscious of their surroundings, according to individual needs.

I believe it sounds exactly as it should, succinctly and objectively.

You’re sure about that?

ps. Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” and Beyond - #15 by citizenschallengev4

I’ve read Dennett. Nowhere did I read that it is impossible to look at something objectively.
After all, it is just another way of looking at things. Looking at things from several perspectives makes for greater understanding.

Guess I should have been clearer.

A) Smirking at your conviction in your own objectivity.

Had nothing to do with B,
A link to what I’m actually trying to discuss, rather than all the wavy gravy about the tiniest, doubting time and colors and all that apparently fun philosophical stuff others can’t get enough of.

I know my strengths. I also know my limitations. I believe that is an objective assessment of my ability to be objective… :thinking:

I know you know a lot of stuff and have a better understanding of the natural world than most. :+1:

So trying to understand it is a waste of time?

What you just posited is absolutely right and well-known science.
The difference between you and I is that you focus on the “why” whereas I focus on the “how” which is less well known than the evolutionary path.
I believe one is not more important than the other.

Your perspective may yield greater wisdom, my perspective may yield greater medical applications such as combatting Alzheimer’s. Worthy goal?

Yeah, sure, that’s why I shared the link to the Allen Institute.

Trying to “Logic Together” consciousness without starting at the beginning is a fool’s errand.

No! Again a fundamental misunderstanding. I have not struggled with the “Why” questions for a couple decades. The answer is: “I am an element (an evolved biological creature) in the pageant of evolution”, that is plenty physically accurate and provides all the why I need. What more could I need? The why’s are all of our own making.

The difference between us is that you focus on the microscopic, I focused on the humanistic angle. That is our understanding and our relationship with what we think we understand of the world around us.

Well humanity has become one totally lost deluded mess, a little clarity of thinking might go a long way. Better appreciating evolution is the only hope for that.

So long as our geniuses just want to focus on the exciting provocative ultra tiny drifting into metaphysics, we’ll remain … well, we’ll just keep playing basketball in zero-gravity.

Pointless, so long as we don’t have a rational foundational understanding that goes beyond, he who dies with the most toys wins.
Oh, and if you want to get down to brass tacks, yes a better mass understanding and appreciation of what Evolution is actually about and what it means for us in this time, would go much further to ease global problems, than all the Alzheimers work done.

Mind you we really positively do live within a dying biosphere/climate regime, and the super-charged monster we are creating is not going to be good for living the coddled lives we’ve gotten used to.

Billionaires flying to Mars will only speed up the collapse, and not provide “hope.”

So science is useless? OK!

I wonder how we found out about evolution without studying the “small stuff”,
like single celled bacteria and slime mold that can “communicate” via “quorum sensing” and was the evolutionary beginning of consciousness.

What a wonderful comeback.

Is that supposed to silence me?

When I consider the state of the world today, do I blame science; or do I blame people; or do I just pretend nothing is all screwed up out there - and start dreaming of space ships to Mars?

There is a difference between using a tool - and abusing a tool.

And furthermore, I find the pretense amazing of how lay-people like thinking they are just as able to process complex mathematical information and concepts as well as the experts who have trained at it all their lives.

What makes you think I want to silence you? Au contraire, I want to encourage you. Your journey is entirely justifiable. I read everything you posit and I agree with almost everything you present.

We do not have opposing viewpoints! We come to the same question from different but complimentary perspectives .

I hope you are not trying to silence me?

I didn’t mean that as a cheap joke!

What you’re doing is ignoring what I’m discussing and constantly returning to your dog-chasing-tail repetitive worship of microtubules to the exclusion of everything else.

I think what I resent most is that you keep imply that I don’t accept the reality of microtubules, when what I don’t accept is the claim that microtubules are the end all to everything - which you’ve wound up sounding like.

It’s like being blown away at a Michelin Star restaurant by the sauces and soups and spending the rest of the evening talking about the fantastic Stock Pot they have always simmering away on the stove, to the exclusion of everything that happened to that stock between the pot and your plate.

You are misreading my posts. Perhaps it is my fault for not being clear enough.

NOWHERE HAVE I SAID THAT MICROTUBULES ARE THE END-ALL TO EVERYTHING!

I made the proposition that microtubules are the most likely candidate in forming the substrate for emergent conscious awareness as an evolved system of sensory reaction and autoinduction.

And what do you think is the end-all of everything.? Do you have all the answers? What you accuse me of, I could just reverse.

The difference is that I respect your perspective and you don’t respect mine.

Actually I don’t like to enter into these kinds of debates that ignore the science and end up in personal ad hominem. Why does it always have to end up in a cock fight?

Well then give it a break already.

Specially when it’s the past ~600 million years of Evolution, within our own scale domain that we humans need to be getting in touch with!

The microscopic will always be microscopic. The human doesn’t live within the microscopic realm, though apparently an awful lot seem to want to.

From my point of view in reaction to what you write and the way you present it, is that you really do need to spend more wrestling with the notion of:

Appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.
and its flip side
Earth and her Evolution being our Touchstone with reality.

Mindscape being the totality of all your thoughts, the constellation of memories, facts, ideas and arguments that get us through life.