Leaderboard

I encourage fellow members to ignore the obvious troll

But the whole point is that Itoero claimed mass is not conserved "because it is information". Which is clearly wrong.

Since you can't seem to read either your own writing or mine let me try again I have underlined the part of my post where I told you just exactly where that incomplete bro lies.

As far as I'm aware, the equations of relativity relating to rest mass apply to particles at rest, ie, in the rest frame that is co-moving with the particle. I think that for a photon, there is no such rest frame available.

I would say the direct connection is momentum. The forces are equal (an opposite) and the time of interaction is the same, so the impulse on each is the same magnitude.

We say the photon is massless because that's how it behaves. If you are going to claim some deficiency in relativity, you need to show where its predictions do not match with experiment. Conflicting wth your preconceived notions is not a criterion used to assess this.

+momentum+spin angular momentum+magic

Ovi, I found a good explanation for what I think you might be asking in the works of Einstein. "In 1905, Einstein published 3 works on different areas (One about the 'Photoelectric Effect', other about the 'Brownian Motion' and the other was the famous 'Special Relativity' - actually these are not the true titles of his works, but it gives you a rough idea). In one of them, about the Photoelectric Effect, Einstein recovered the old idea that light was composed of 'tiny' particles, and this relationship emerged due to the failure of the classical wave description of light to explain some experimental results. The experiment was, in a condensed form, as follows: Imagine a certain piece of metal that, when you put ultraviolet light on it, you can measure the energy of some electrons 'escaping' from the the metal. From the very basical wave mechanics, one would expect that if you increased the 'intensity' of the light you would see more energetic electrons pulling off from it (picture a little paper boat in a lake where you make some waves - the more 'intense' you make them, the more the boat will jump up with greater velocities). Well, actually experimental results tell you that this does NOT happens. When you increase the intensity of the wave, only the NUMBER of electrons emitted from the metal will increase - not its ENERGY. The observed result is that only when you increase the FREQUENCY of the light you are applying, then the energy of the electrons will be greater. That sounds really strange for the wave nature of light. Looking at these results, Einstein proposed that light, 'when interacting with matter', interacts as a particle. Well, if it interacts like that, as a particle, you might think that it needs a certain mass. Not exactly. Using the Theory of Relativity, Einstein proposed that the particle of light, the so-called 'photon', had a ZERO 'rest mass'. It had only the relativistic mass (caused by its motion). Using as a 'glue' the work of Max Planck about the Black Body Radiation, Einstein suggested that the energy of the photon was related to the frequency of the wave by the equation: E=hf, where 'E' is the energy of the photon, 'h' is the so-called 'Planck's constant' and 'f' is the frequency. "

I am fairly certain this is impossible to do. Not sure if anyone in this thread is seriously suggesting some kind of a direct feedback mechanism. If they are I would very much like that idea to be backed up somehow. . I am not even sure if it is theoretically possible at some time in the future. It would imply that the brain was able to treat a brainwave pattern as an external stimulus that was immediately (re-?) incorporated as a thought or mentation. Bio-feedback works by the subject attempting to "move" his or her brainwave patterns in real time but I feel this has zero connection to what seems to have been brought up earlier in the thread.# Aside from that , I am not quite sure what this research actually has . It could be a powerful tool ,but quite what for I don't know.

Please rephrase this, it is quite garbled English.

Please show where this is part of the theory of relativity.

I have no problem with the word and find it apt. But what individuals see varies from virtually 100% illusion to 0%. I'd even agree that for the main part most experience is far more illusion than it is reality. For the main part most individuals see their belief, expectations, and experience rather than the reality itself. I maintain though this is not in any way natural. It is the result of how we think. The root cause is our symbolic languages. Animals don't see their beliefs nor have a language like ours. Everything they experience is reality itself though, obviously, they have a fairly limited understanding of this reality because none have a sufficiently complex language to pass knowledge through the generations. It is language that sets humans apart but this separation has no bearing whatsoever on what we are calling "consciousness". All living things are conscious to some extent. At the risk of going off topic, humans haven't always had a symbolic language. We had a natural representative language until it became too complex for the average man ~4000 years ago. An individual will generally have a weak grasp of what the "moon" is but to the degree he understands it he can see it. Indeed, even the new moon can sometimes be seen bathed in the light from the Pacific and it can be seen during the day. While most have a weak grasp of "moon" and it is largely an "illusion" most have a better grasp of "wet" and it is (for most) less an illusion.

You make good points but it's only an illusion to the degree we don't understand it. Each individual sees his models, beliefs, or expectations but most individuals have some visceral knowledge of the "moon" and will see this as well. Perception/ consciousness is just as real as the moon. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the lack of agreement; consciousness is an individual experience now days. We each have different language and belief so we each have a different experience. Other animals have a shared experience and in most practical ways, a shared consciousness that we can't fathom.

iNow, I am not sure where I have not answered your question...or maybe I don't know which question I have not answered. It seems to me you were asking me what made me think, or how could I know that Bennett was using the term illusion in a negative fashion. I have read pieces of work that have some of Bennett's language or references to Bennett, that seem to indicate that our consciousness is less than perfect. I just watched a short talk of his and he used terms like "fooling yourself" and spoke like we did not know ourselves as well as we thought we did, and that somehow the tests people have run proved that we do not have the command over our own mind that we think we have. I found the things he said, about not having any way of knowing if we rotated the left figure to match the right figure, or rotated the right to match the left, completely incorrect. I knew, because I mentally held the left figure stationary and section by section rotated the right to match...so any further statement, attempting to forward the idea that we don't know our own mind, is suspect to me. I have many of the same interests as Bennett. Linguistics, the meaning behind language, the way neurology has correlates to human thoughts and emotions, and some others, as you know from being on the same threads with me over the years. What I don't have in common with him is his interest in AI or his opinion that a machine can become conscious, because our brains are just so many little switches. Personally I think our brains are much much more than that, and what is more, what our brains hold is not merely of our own creation, but is primarily the patterns and arrangements of the outside world, analogs of, written automatically in the synapses and folds of our brain, and one very important aspect is the timing, the distance between different parts of our brain, that allows there to actually be a working model, of the outside, inside. Bennett thinks its all information in, information out. I think it is information in and then being aware of, in connection to, containing the information, and being able to operate within the information, as if you were operating in the actual world. Any one of us (not blind) can close our eyes and imagine the walk, or bike ride, or train ride, or bus ride, or car ride or whatever to work or school or to the grocery store. Even a blind person can rehearse the path through the furniture and doorways, to the bathroom. I do not agree with Bennett that nobody is the expert on consciousness that we think we are. I think we are absolutely experts. Regards, TAR

Your table is solid from your scale of perspective. But if you could shrink yourself down to the size of a proton, you would witness the electron repulsion that actually stops your hand falling through the table. They are both real situations and not unsupported crap that you do seem to make up quite often. Science does not actually seek reality: It constructs models that describe and match the observational and experimental data that we have. If it happens to hit on this "reality"all well and good. Here is a short video: I hope you take the time to watch it and understand what I mean...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

Christmas arrived unexpectedly early that year and there was much rejoicing.

aiNow, I like the term "neural correlate" but I don't like the idea that anybody thinks there is a neural correlate to consciousness. Like some magic combination of a certain number of processors or memory chips wired together in a certain fashion, and poof there is consciousness. I think it is much more a holistic thing than that. Something you need a whole living organism, existing in an actual environment made of the same stuff, to achieve. I think Dr. Frankenstein would disagree, but I don't think there is a proper voltage, that turns a dead collection of stuff into a living collection of stuff. There does indeed have to be neural correlates to the various pieces of consciousness, and I think, to the thread title, one can trace the emergence of consciousness through the evolutionary trail, but I don't think we can "make" consciousness happen any more than we can create life. Regards, TAR

Simplistically, consciousness is merely the awareness suggested by the responses of an organism to stimuli; however, that simplistic awareness or consciousness doesn't always rise to the level of human awareness. I think most of us will agree that there are varying levels of consciousness with humanity defining the level and our general understanding of what consciousness may truly be. For this discussion and to most science-minded people, consciousness is expressed by observed and observable human-equivalent behaviors, responses to stimuli, and reactions. I say "human-equivalent" because that meter of consciousness is the only measure we are truly able to scientifically verifying and, therefore, truly capable of understanding. Consciousness is an expression of brain function and the equivalency of human brain structure and function enables our ability to test and verify our theories about the nature of consciousness in humans. That equivalency in structure and function can and does extend to other species as well, which suggests that non-human species are also capable of some meter of human consciousness. Regarding the OP, I think most of us of scientific mindset agrees that consciousness is indeed a product of evolution and that it's not a quality particularly unique to humanity.

iNow, Nice clip. Although I don't feel I am as far from an empirical understanding of consciousness, as the clip suggests "we" are. I think Gee and Tub and you and I are getting closer and closer to a nice explanation. One of the roadblocks I think people have, to determining what consciousness is, is considering it as something private and special and generated in some magical way. I think perhaps this idea is seeded by the creation story where god made the heavens and the Earth and the other creatures, and then created Adam and Eve, in his image. Obviously for those that believe in evolution, there is nothing "special" about us. We are in and of the universe and are not separate from it but by the envelope of our skin cells. The "illusion" of the world that the philosophers talk about, is, in my estimation, no illusion at all, but an analog representation of what is outside, within the folds of our brain. A piece of fruit hanging on a tree, that we see , must have a correlate in our brain or we would not be aware of it. So this is simple. The human machine, senses the world and registers it in the brain, and compares it with previous sense input to recognize change, and is able to both remember and replay, experience again, combinations of sensory input, AND predict how combinations of things, behaving as they did before, might behave in new arrangements, by putting those mental correlates together internally for planning purposes. Special in the sense that we can do it and rocks can't, but not special in that every other fully functioning human can do it and dog's can bark at you, knowing you will then notice it's six o'clock and time for dinner. (so dogs can do it too). The other roadblock is that scientists have no way to prove that what they experience as consciousness is also going on in another human's head. Silly roadblock. It is functionally obvious when everybody in the theatre jumps and gasps at the same moment, when the killer appears suddenly, that we are all experiencing the same world in the same manner at the same moment. Regards, TAR

dimreepr, I think the official definition of consciousness, with all its varied components, is absolutely helpful...for a starting point. Then, in the manner Gee is attempting, you have to look at each aspect, and imagine a precursor of human not having each aspect. What is the order that certain aspects of consciousness had to arrive in, in the march from single cell to human. What did you need to dream? Does a single cell dream? If not, why not? Are there things that are like sleep that are precursors or relatives of sleep. Why do we dream? Would we need to dream if we were not conscious? Could we dream if we were not conscious? How does a lifeform go from being not conscious, in the human sense, devoid of most if not all of the aspects in the definition of consciousness, to having something like one or several of the aspects. That is how and where did consciousness emerge during our evolution? Since it is admittedly complex, it had to have evolved in stages, in amounts in increments, but it also has to be made up of components we can witness in relatives on the scale, and various aspects have to be present in their precursor form, in each of our ancestors. To this communication with the world is evidently central. As you say obvious, but not as you say irrelevant. To be conscious of your hunger so you eat and gain energy for another move is crucial. To be conscious of your prey or a piece of fruit in a tree, is crucial to survival. Communication is the transfer of information from one entity to another. The light reflected off the fruit reaches the eye of the mammal and these wavelengths are focused on the back of the eye and chemical and electrical signals are generated from each rod and cone to where an analog representation of the fruit, in shape and size and color is established in the connections and neurons and folds of the brain. A bond is thusly formed between the fruit and the mammal. Communication is a central part of consciousness. As Gee suggests. Regards, TAR

Gees, Thank you for that. It makes me feel better. (got a little dopamine.) But that is actually pertinent to the topic. Why do pickers pick and jokers joke? I think it is because they get a dopamine reward when they win, or feel they have won or won by avoiding defeat. I think that survival wise it was important that we match up our model of the world with the actual world. It was good to get it right, to get the joke, to solve the problem to be right in the theory of mind sense, about what the other guy or animal was thinking. Helped one decide when to fight and when to run and when to hide and when to attack. Such has much to do with politics and human relations. Many feel better by making others feel worse. Or by imagining the other is evil and they are good. Like Area54 enjoying being the self appointed literary critic. Gives him or her a boost of dopamine to "be right" about their critique. They are right when they imagine they have proved the other wrong. I need this a little, but it is usually done by me in a cooperative sense. That is I want my team to win, my company, my town's football team, my political party, my country, and so on. I have on this board protected religious folk against atheists, even though I am an atheist, because so many of my fellow humans, that are on many of the teams I am on, are religious, and I give them the benefit of the doubt. Science folk call everybody fact deniers so they can be right about their model of the world, more right, because the other is so wrong about some fact. But again I allow this, expect this, because it is a human characteristic, an evolutionarily set up deal, where you feel good when you are right, when you match your model with the place, or match the place with your model (create something real). Area54 needs me to say, "I'm sorry, you are right". I would do this for my wife or my sister or for you, or iNow, because I know that it is more important to be a husband or a brother or a friendly fellow poster, than to be right about some detail. Most fights between loved ones have to do with who is right. Who left the silly thing behind when the other was told to not leave it behind, or whatever. It is OK to be wrong, that is, it is not useful to be right, when being right is the wrong thing to do. It is sometimes worth more personal dopamine to have the other receive dopamine by being right (and you wrong.) I have noticed these things because I have been thinking in terms of dopamine flow in myself and the people around me, since I quit smoking and am currently working with my town and county alliances on the opioid crisis. One of the aspects of the rTPJ that is involved with dopamine, is that we in general empathize with other humans, especially close humans, and want to make them happy (get them dopamine.) This is a survival coup in the sense of community building and tribe security and happiness and such, because in general a band of humans is more successful in the survival sense than a lone happy human. And what it sets up, in a human is this need to please an unseen other. God, your wife, your dead grandma, Socrates, Einstein, some favorite author, your pastor, your boss, your mayor...someone. But its all good . Regards, TAR

No. You don't seem to understand how EEG works. It doesn't give a measure of all brain activity. Have you been involved in EEG experiments? How rude. I think my knowledge gets in the way of your garbage. I'm done talking to you. Email some neuroscientists for a second opinion.

No I read it. It's about reading signals, not feeding them back in. You're quite intensely stupid.

Good luck getting these PC clowns to actually answer a simple question. Perhaps the gallows is the only solution to their cockiness.