tar

Ten oz,

So I get it, since everything dies there is no big deal dying yourself, but I think it is a tremendously big deal.  I am mixed as to whether I am OK with it or not.  And the people around you dying or you dying and leaving a wife or loved ones is a big deal.  Not so big a deal as some groknoid dying in 600 billion years on the other side of the universe.  And I think Lucy matters to me because she was my great great...grandmother.   What has happened is part of us in a way that what is to happen is not.  That is, the sun blowing in in millions of years does not matter to me or you, where the Earth producing life matters completely.

I wonder why we somehow are placated by the fact that there will be a final end...like somehow that gives us a sense of completion, when we will not be there to enjoy the finish...except of course if you eat at the restaurant at the end of universe, you can experience it multiple times...

Regards, TAR

Ten oz,

well yes, but as brief and fleeting as life on Earth has so far been, its been a substantial ride, with billions of victories and joyful moments along the way

We are well insulated from the end of the universe, I don't think we need to feel bad about it, 'cause it will not happen within our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children or their children, or their children...

In other words nobody that matters will have to experience the end of the universe, so that death is nothing to worry about or come to terms with\

Regards, TAR 

Ten oz,

Well yes.  I was responding to the OPs request to talk about some other ways people look at death, and one of the ways I have formulated for myself is to consider that I am part of a continuum of human life and life on Earth.  I am just a temporary point of focus consciousness, but I can feel part of the whole chain, and consider myself a step in the ladder that future humans will have used to climb to where they find themselves.

Like others have mentioned in this thread, one is remembered by the people they touched in their life, and by the works they leave behind.  Grog back in whatever BC that first strapped a rock to the end of a stick was something "we" did, earlier.   It is not like we are separate from reality, from the world.  And like the OP mentioned we melt back into the constituent chemicals that make us up and are still part of the place.  But however one looks at it, metaphorically or literally or figuratively, in general or in specific, it matters much that we are here, now, alive experiencing the place.   And that we did it earlier, and we will continue to do it even after TAR is dead, means a lot to me.   It is still my universe.   There is not an existence which does not include TAR, that we have any access to, and there is not any other TAR in the entire universe.  The place is mine, and I am of and in the place. 

Some phrase this as when you die you go back into the loving embrace of Jesus, or you rejoin the "Force", or you turn to dust and blow off into the wind and water and soil and rejoin the Earth...whatever, it is the same thing.  My addition to jcme11's request for ways to look at it, ways to cope, is that it is OK and realistic to love life, and love the place, before birth, during life and after death.

Why else would we have such a thing as life insurance or make laws to protect the environment, or concern ourselves with our history. It is our place.  Always has been, is now, and will be forever.

Regards, TAR

We have no other universe and jcme11 has no other me.

One saying I have liked ever since I heard it was "to the whole world you are just somebody, but to somebody, you are the whole world." 

Ten oz,

I think a little of us was actually there during the migration out of Africa and during the rise of the Roman Empire.  The mitochondria in Lucy indicates we all were there, with Lucy.

A female is born with a full complement of eggs that will last throughout her fertile lifetime. One or two or more released every month after she is 12 or so.  Half the pattern that was destined to become you, that you would strive to maintain throughout your life, was existing when your mother was in your grandmother's womb.  One quarter of the pattern was existing when your grandmother was in your greatgrandmother's womb.

So while I am with you, that consciousness wise, the particular identity that is TAR, this particular pattern came into existence when my one of my father's sperm joined an egg of my mom,   half my pattern is as old as my mom would have been were she alive today, and 1/??????????...????th of me is as old as Lucy.  So that is were jcme11 was during the rise of Rome...in the belly of an ancestor female, living at the time.

Regards, TAR

I could say the probability of something that does exist, of existing, is 1.  That would give me very little information.

Strange,

Consider what Doctordick is implying.  Two opposite things.  

One, that there is information to be gleaned from the analysis of a dead language's characters.

The other that the information content of the dead language is not as important as the fact that it can be reduced to a number.

While I can agree that every person that ever existed on the planet has left some signature on the planet that can be discovered if the right investigation is performed, that fact is similar to deducing that a deer has passed by seeing its footprints in the mud, or by recognizing a deer path had to be created by the repeated passage of deer, both deductions requiring assumptions, the overall process requires that the world be very complex and interrelated and therefor the actual information or facts to be gleaned must be similarly complex and interrelated and not reducible to a probability equation.

Regards, TAR

Strange,

Perhaps not relevant, but to me exactly relevant, because the meaning of the numbers is lost once the two minds sharing a common language are lost.  His example of the lost language is a good example of my point.  It does not matter that you can come up with a number to graphically represent the characters of the language, that number has no relationship to the thought the symbol was representing.

Regards, TAR

DoctorDick,

Or consider another human way of thinking.  Another part of language and thought.  Grain size shifts.   We often take a whole collection of stuff and call it one thing so we can manipulate it and collect a bunch of the new collection into a third entity in our minds.  We can thusly conceive of an entire universe inside a relatively tiny skull using a 100 billion brain cells.  But what you can deduce by fitting ideas together on one level, at one scale, may or may not be completely transformable to another scale.  And a number or label is not going to work or fit together in the exact same manner as the "fact" you wished to represent by the label.   You can't for instance deduce that if a cow gives a gallon of milk a day, that half a cow will give two quarts. Cause a half cow would be a side of beef, not giving any milk at all.

The assumptions and presumptions and definition of terms are required for communication of a thought between two minds, a nd information does not exist as a thing, it is more of a process.   It requires a form and the moving of this form from without to within.

So I think you can deduce information, but you do it by analogy, saying that if this aspect is like this other, and it must logically have meant this other thing was required and this other thing existing would mean this third thing was needed, then you can deduce a fact, or in essence presume a fact.  So your OP is defeated in one direction or in the other, depending on your presumptions.

Either you are saying we cannot communicate which is obviously a false statement, or you are saying we cannot think, which is obviously a false statement, or you are saying we are not capable of sensing the world and recording it in an analogous fashion in amongst our neurons, which is obviously a false statement.  So in which manner, from which direction is your thesis faulty?

Regards, TAR

Area54,

But DoctorDick says this.

 "You miss the significant issue. I am not discussing the communication of information; I am discussing the mechanism which stands behind that communication. The significant issue is that "it can be labeled and numbered" not that relevant labels and numbers are either available or understood. That they must be in derstood is just another presumption "YOU" want to make. There are many written examples of ancient languages which are no longer understood. Those writing may none the less be represented by numeric graphic representations. That in no way requires the language be understood! "

And I don't think you discuss the mechanism behind the communication as having the same intrinsic meaning as what was being encoded.  Or that the numbers and labels would fit together flawlessly and have attributes that you could gleen from the labels that were more important  or more meaningful than the meaning behind the language.  The mechanism is a sterile carrier of meaning, the meaning is real and full and holistically understandable.  True in more than one way.  A number or a label is a place holder, a carrier of meaning, and one code system could use 32 to signify a space and another could use it to mean you are just 10 digits away from 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything...depending on the code system you are using.    To a Japanese person yuki means snow, or happiness or a girls name, and they don't even usually use our characters they use Kanji or Hirigana or Katakana.  Distilling this to a number, as DoctorDick suggests is possible and meaningful is not notably helpful, unless you mention first the language you are speaking, the code system you are using, and then, only after the code is stated and the code is learned by both parties, can two parties proceed with communicating an idea between them.   The number 32 by its self is sterile and free from any meaning.  Much like the equation DoctorDick suggested with the xs.   It means nothing until you define the terms.

When I was little I spoke in a language that only my sister understood.   It was goobledygook,  nonsense, babytalk to my Dad, but my sister knew what I was saying, before I could speak English.   But my sister knew what I was saying because I knew what I was saying, and she learned my language.

Regards, TAR

Consider how physicists can talk to each other about Hilbert space and transforms and such and the sounds coming out of their mouths are just grunts and groans to some of us.

Einstein's field equations are very full of meaning and understandable to many who know the language, but to me, they don't mean anything until you tell me what is standing for what, and what relationships you wish to show me...in English.

There is much in many fields that is esoteric and can not be "figured out" logically.  I have never been good at learning any languages other than my native one, because languages don't make sense, in and of themselves.   You have to learn what is standing for what, the tone and context and all, by seeing it in operation and using it, with a native speaker.  Otherwise you are very likely to get it wrong.

On ‎7‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 10:07 PM, jcme11 said:

I believe that life is a long chain of chemical reactions. Therefore, when we die, the electrical impulses in our brains (and any other reactions occurring in our bodies) are converted into other forms of energy and are recycled back into the universe. I think death is something like a dreamless sleep. We close our eyes, everything goes black, and we simply cease to exist. I know it sounds depressing, but it's the scenario that makes the most logical sense to me. The part I am struggling with is how to come to terms with this idea of what death is. It upsets me to think about it because it makes me feel like we're living out our lives just to be forgotten. I know I will eventually lose everyone I care about to death, I just wish it wasn't such an abrupt and definite end. I don't want my theory to be the truth, but it's what I believe and I want to find a way to be okay with this.

In addition to coping methods and mind sets, I would love to discuss different theories and approaches.

Thanks,

x

jcme11,

Just read the comic linked, and it appears that whatever anxiety one of us has had or will have is a human thing.   That is, whatever causes us to not want to die is probably the same set of things that causes us to survive.  So the chemicals you talk about, the neurotransmitters and the memories and the itches and scratches that make up our lives, are really our lives.    We have to come to terms with loss, because people die.  Our loved ones die.  One day we will die.

This thread I have been reading but not responding to because my dad, like zapatos' father in law is 91 and in hospice.   I have to deal with it myself, for real, real soon, and now. Talking to my Dad, who is a psychologist and a gerontologist about his own situation is interesting, to say the least.   He is in hospice, but he is a survivor.  He lived a night of tremendous pain and fear and anguish under some bushes, by himself after a German machine gun bullet entered his shoulder, severed a nerve and lodged in his side. He relates with occasional sobs of disbelief and anguish how he was transferred to an orthopedic hospital rather than a neurological one, and was not operated on, because of infection until months after his return to the states on the Queen Mary, which resulted in the loss of functioning of his left hand and the dashing of his dreams of becoming a surgeon.  He has helped many face much and continues...but he is a man, a survivor, and although he has dealt with his imminent death rationally and with great strength as zapatos's father in law did, he is still a man and has those chemicals coursing through his brain that tell him to live.  I have taken the hospice people's words to heart, about how he is actively dying and in the disease process and such, but if he had the will to live with the morphine and pain and blood and fear on a hilltop where the lines between enemy and friend where scrambled and he was alone, and he has lived through open heart and brain surgery during his long life, I think he is a survivor, who loves life, and will fight it (death)...until he cannot.   Our family has decided not to think of him as dying, but to consider we have him to enjoy for as long as he lives.

Much I think is the way you might consider dealing with death.    By fighting it, 'til it takes you.  By enjoying life, and making it possible for others to do the same.

As others have already mentioned, life is brief and fleeting, and we are fragile beings to be sure.   But life is the only thing we have, it seems highly inappropriate that it should end.  Why bother coming to terms with death?  Live.   It is the only power over death we have. So I doubt I will have the strength and calm of Zapatos's father in law.  I would like to, but I think I will hate the feeling of life slipping away.  I want to be able to tell my loved ones, that survive me, that it will be OK, because even when I die, the rest of the world will continue.  But that is just me thinking.   I think for me, being dead will be like it was for me before I was born and all the world is still mine, even if I don't have TAR to experience it, It will continue.  But that is just me thinking.  Feeling, I think will probably be a problem.  Like my dad urging me to get the heavy cat (no cat visible) off his chest, the other day, I think I will fear death and fight the darn thing, 'til I can't.

Regards, TAR

was talking to my friend's son the other week and he told me the funny story of having his dad take him to a Seahawks game and he had asked his Dad where the first down line was

and you cannot represent an analog voltage in an exact manner in ones and zeros you are always limited (wrong) because you could have been more exact had you had an additional bit

another flaw in your logic is something I don't know if you are aware of, not knowing your age

When I was growing up, we lived in an analog world.

A sound was recorded in an analog fashion on some vinyl, to where the vibrations of the needle that made the impressions in the wax that were transferred to the vinyl would cause a needle riding in the hardened grove to vibrate in the same analog fashion.  You needed no encoding and uncoding.   Microphones similarly vibrated and the signal was amplified directly in an analog voltage with could be carried on a wire to an electromagnet that vibrated a sinew in a speaker in an direct analog manner.    

Now we don't do much in computers and electronics without analog to digital and digital to analog conversion.  This labeling takes one, one step further away from the actual facts you wished to record.   So with a vinyl record, you could make some deductions as to what creature was uttering the sounds, and what emotions and thought were being recorded.  Now, with digital enhancement and synthesizers you don't know if its real or if its Memorex, or if it is computer generated.

you can take a piece of paper with E=mcsquared written on it and throw it against the wall and it will not create a nuclear explosion.   The labels do no work as the thing they represent, do.  So no, you can't deduce a darn thing from the number 32.

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2017 at 9:35 AM, Doctordick said:

Comprehending the relevant language is part and parcel of understanding itself. What I wish to discuss are the underlying facts the solution to any collection of information MUST obey. 

My opening assertion is that there exist relationships within those facts which can be deduced without making any assumptions as to what those facts actually are.

 

Doctordick,

I do not agree with you, that nobody understands your question.  I think everybody here understands.  Your question is flawed in the manner already explained.   You cannot pretend you can understand any facts without a language.  You cannot pretend you can label anything without prearranging with someone else, or your alter ego, what is going to be standing for what.  Hence you cannot label anything without labeling it.  The number you can get that represents a graphic location, even three dimensional representation, with the color and the x, y coordinates can not be understood or transformed into another mind or paper or computer chip. or monitor or memory location without a plan that can be copied.  This I meant to prove to you, by mentioning the ASCII code.  Yes you can make a plan to represent anything, but someone has to know the plan to understand what you meant.  And the number 32 standing by itself does not mean a darn thing.  You have to tell somebody what language you are speaking before you open your mouth, or the sounds coming out will be grunts and hums and groans with no meaning whatsoever behind them.

Regards, TAR 

Doctordick,

Perhaps you are trying to say that the world fits together flawlessly without our help, and one can presume that the world will work and fit together, and one can just make this presumption and think through what then makes sense, given the total collection of evidence by experiencing the place directly, making no other predictions or assumptions.

This is what I have been arguing off and on for quite  a few years on this board.  That reality can carry its own weight and does not require our labeling.  But here your labels are not proof of you thesis, they are an example of your thesis being flawed. 

In science a good deal of how we proceed is off an agreement on the assumptions.  The presumptions are already set, together as to what we are calling what. And as Kant figures out in  Critique of pure Reason, all our judgements, all out thoughts are a synthesis of other thoughts, things we put together and build upon based on earlier judgments.  There are things we understand at once, and things we understand over time.  Things we compare and things we understand in terms of relationship between items.  A whole list, or labels, for various things we can say about the world or about any thing in particular,  types of judgements, or categories of thought.  The whole bunch is thought about and thought through based on two primary a priori   assumptions that can not be broken down into any more simple component thoughts or judgements.  Two things that have no definition.  Two things that are not made up of component ideas.  One is time.  And the other is space.  With these two presumptions we can construct every other consideration we make.  Everything we say about a thing in general.

And in all cases, what we say about a thing is what we can say about a thing, and does not imply a knowledge of the thing in itself.   So I think your thesis is defeated because you figure you can know the thing in itself without talking about it, when in reality, talking about a thing is all we can together do.

Regards, TAR

I just remembered I actually had some skin in the game because I was always barefoot, and they could and did bite and pinch me.  Although I am sure I was armed with  stick and could get them without having to step on them.

4 hours ago, Evgenia said:

Dear Tar, thank you for the answer

In Russia we have games we call Kauzal Intellect. It's an event for several people and a coach. Each person tell a problem of himself he doesn't see an answer for. Then with the help of game rules all the participants play and find these answers from theirs own subconscious.

For me it's an interesting thing but i don't know any of foreign analogue. Sorry

Evgenia,

The Kauzal Intellect game seems very useful.  We don't have a direct analog game but we have such games as "truth or dare" where you are asked a personal question and you have to give a truthful answer from your heart (emotions) or you can choose not to answer, but if you choose not to answer you have to take a dare from the questioner (daring you to do something else you might rather not do more than answer the hard question truthfully)

But I think, in reference to instinct and consciousness, Kausal Intellect requires that we have a theory of mind, where we can put ourselves in someone else's shoes and consider their problems our problems and our problems their problems.  In a survival sense, this might be why we have the junction in our brain that allows us to put ourselves in other people's shoes, because then we can problem solve together.  Also it might be part of the idea of games to begin with, that you can "play" being the other person.  Role playing, empathy, mirror neurons, feeling another's pain and such all have a similar ring to them, and might have similar basis in brain structure and ability.

The ants we were talking about before and the idea of games remind me of a game I would play as a boy at a summer lake we stayed at,  that was not a game at all for the ants.

Up on a rocky clearing hillside and the end of the road, ants would on occasion have a territory war.  There were red ants and there were black ants and there were these ants with half red, have black bodies.  They would fight and kill each other and drag the dead off the battlefield to eat, I presume.  Anyway my game was to fight with the black ants.  I would step on the enemy red and usually not the half black and half red because they sometimes seemed to be allies to the black ants, or at least both had the red ants as enemy.

But here in the instinct vs consciousness thread, I would have to say that choosing allies to assist in your survival is a good survival strategy.  And making the choice seems to require some ability to choose.  Whether that choice is driven by emotions or by rational thinking I am not sure.   I always wondered why I favored the black ants over the red, and partially favored the half blacks over the reds as well.  Maybe it was in retaliation to when my sister sat on a red ant hill and was getting bit so bad my dad had to grab her, take her suit off and throw her in the lake, to save her from the bites.  But I do not recall whether that incident was before, after, or during the occasional ant wars I would take part in.

Regards, TAR

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 3:53 AM, Evgenia said:

Dear all, i reread the conversations of this top again. And remember one aspect we didn't mention yet.

A game. The image of Gee's daughter playing with her grandmother reminded me that we have 1000 of types of different games. Some of them are logically constructed and are connected to consiousness, but some, as 1-year old kids with falling the food down,are not. Are these games an example of instinct? It's discussable.

In my mind, yes. It's an instinct not to be bored, to develop the mind and survive by not being dumb. It is one of the most important things leading us (and science) to the best future.

Even Elon Musk started one of his TED talks with the words he is bored. Thanks to his passion not to feel boring we have so many progressive projects he supports.

 

Evgenia,

Games are an interesting part of this.  Are games practice, where you are learning how to fight an adversary by tussling with your littler mate, or an instinctual bonding behavior made to associate yourself with your littermates and thereby survive as a group, or are games something else?

It seems games would be an indicator of a certain consciousness, because you have to know the difference between the effects on your littermate of having your claws retracted rather than out, as you would have them with an actual adversary.

But perhaps games show an innate ability to "pretend" and this in turn would require an ability to tell when something was actual or not.  And this would require some ability to remember the place and build an internal model of it.  That is, be able to recognize a littermate as "not to claw" and something not a littermate, a potential enemy requiring a fight or flight response...that "same or different" ability talked about earlier.

Also interesting about games in regards to instinct and consciousness is how, in a study I read years ago, female humans on the playground tended to play cooperative games where there is no winner or loser and males played team sports where a leader was chosen, teams picked and there was going to be a winning team and a losing one.  I wonder if a recent study, after the last 30, 40 years in America have redefined learned gender roles, and different types of games are played by an even mix of girls and boys, or whether there is still certain innate tendencies governed by hormones (emotion).

Regards, TAR 

or consider a dream, a kind of communication is going on within a dreamer, in their own private language talking to themselves, where a door could be standing for an opportunity or whatever...how you going to label that

or take the ASCII code for yuki and show me where studying the relationship between those numbers, one can gleen the meanings cold and white.   And where in the labels, in the numbers do you see exactly the same facts, the same meaning that taking the ASCII code for snow, would yield 

Doctordick,

"My opening assertion is that there exist relationships within those facts which can be deduced without making any assumptions as to what those facts actually are."

There is meaning behind language that is not actually contained in the language itself.  Consider your misspelling of role.  SwansonT knew what you meant, even though the numbers you put on the page would have added up to roll.

A language is a kind of secret code established between two or more "minds".  One thing standing for another.   You said your breakdown works because everything can be labeled and numbered.  Thing is, you have to know what is standing for what, and that can only be done with some prior understanding having had occurred between the two minds.  Even the IKEA pictures are based on "watch me, I'll show you" and the photos are standing for the arrangement the pieces of furniture  scattered on you floor, should take, if you want to build an arrangement similar to the one conceived by the designer.

So a label is already language.  The thing the label stands for, is a thing existing in reality, or in the other mind, quite unlike the number that is standing for the thing.  Your xs in your equation could stand for anything.  Therefore  your formula stands for no particular thing, or any particular thing, and therefore, in my mind, no particular thing.

So take the ASCII code for roll and add the numbers together and give a stranger, not privy to this thread that number and see if she can deduce what fact you wished to represent.

Regards, TAR

give a man a fish and he eats for a day

teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime

path finders are followed by path users but you don't even have to be the same species to use the same path through the brambles

I remember hiking through the woods as a boy and following paths made by deer.

So perhaps the ability to mimic or mirror neurons or something is the innate part of behavior, and what we assemble from these component abilities is the learned part.

So there still might be a little something in the brain of a modern human that does not exist in a Zebra.  Consider the defining ability humans have to use tools.  Now apes use tools, hit things with sticks, put blades of grass at the entrance of a termite hill to collect a spoonful of lunch, etc. but a Zebra doesn't use tools so much.  Opposable thumbs? Are they the innate part of tool use.  Perhaps.

Then how about language.  Is there a junction in the brain that allows for symbolization?  Maybe the same structure that allows for the theory of mind.  A certain thing says to me that whales might have this junction in common with us, as they talk to each other and teach each other the layout of the oceans.

These things that are innate, might not be innate as the thing itself, but innate as an ability to learn or remember, or compare or match or notice change and such, and thereby the ability is instinctual or innate, but the actual lesson is due to conscious involvement with the environment.  You still have to fit, either way, but some of your smarts as a species are passed down in ability and some is passed down by watching your parents survive.  And sometimes, like in the case of humans you can also live in the shelter your parents built.

makes me wonder how many years into the future is a person responsible for