Understood. My point is that there is no evidence, as there should be, if energy were added from or leaked to anything, let alone a cosmic emotion generator.
The concepts are called "Pass it on" and "Pay it forward". They are well known human actions that I'm sure a psychologist could explain better than I.
However, the scan wouldn't be able to show the effect of the meme planted by Frank's action that resulted in Joe's kindness to Nancy, connecting the two events.
Not at present but, as with everything else in this universe, any action (like the mental formation of a meme) leaves its mark on the universe (in this case your brain). If we had the tech we could very well follow the physical paths in the minds of all three of your friends.
Driven by our brains? What else would we be driven by? “We” are our brains enclosed in our own personal life-support system.
quote: If we are driven by our brains, then are we really free to make decisions or are we simply driven by the chemical reactions within? On these grounds, how can anyone be held responsible for their actions, good or bad?
Determinism in this universe only limits the range of possible future actions. That also limits your free will.
Within those limits, we humans don’t just act for deterministic reasons like a dragonfly or a bacterium. Our brain apparatus is well advanced. We act for reasons we consciously represent to ourselves and can explain to others. In that extended act of consciousness we find we have the agency to be responsible for our reasoning and therefore for our actions.
That’s the limit of determinism in generating the illusion of free will.
She also talks about how in her experience how people in a totally vegetative state, (I don't like that term either), or essentially brain dead. still can be aware of everything going on around them.
Then she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She is demonstrably wrong since a persistent vegetative state is a state of wakeful response to stimuli with no conscious awareness of the stimuli or the response. That is its definition. “Brain dead” is something totally different.
If she is this sloppy in her neurological definitions, with her training and experience, I have to question her reasoning in a wide spread of areas, especially those on consciousness.
Are you saying then that free will is an illusion and that what I will have for dinner a week from Monday is pre-determined, and that I am not really choosing what it will be?
A week from now? I wouldn't think so, no. That is too far into the future to determine so precisely. There are too many variables still available before the march of time constricts those choices even more.
Through all of that she was very aware of what was going on around her. Even with all of the trauma the brain had experienced she was still conscious.
The damage was not enough to destroy her consciousness. So she was neither vegetative nor brain dead. So what the hell was that part in Message 791 about?
Through all of that she was very aware of what was going on around her. Even with all of the trauma the brain had experienced she was still conscious.
So what? This reveals no great cosmic truths. What does it mean that she lived and was conscious despite all the damage? I see this like hurting your hand but not enough to preclude masturbating.
Is it predetermined that the batter will swing? Doesn't the batter have a choice right up to the last split second?
I'm going to blow your mind.
GR is unforgiving in this regard.
Think of a loaf of bread. It is the universe. The longer length is time, the width is space.
Take your knife and cut across the space, width, dimension. This is a "now" slice. That is us right now along with everything that happened everywhere in the universe at the same time.
Again, General Relativity. If a far off alien is walking in your direction then his time slice is off skew from yours. His "now" slice includes events you haven't experienced yet. The moving alien's now includes what you would see as your future.
From the moving alien's perspective your batter's single-to-left has already happened while you still see him in the on-deck circle. And a single-to-left is exactly what you're going to see because that was the conscious effort to swing by the batter. In addition to exercising the batter's free will the event was recorded in time well before the conscious effort was made.
This is all beyond me but it seemed important enough for this woman with a PHD in brain imaging to find it significant in the discussion of consciousness.
This says nothing about any gods nor does it say anything revealing about consciousness. Is this a smoke screen to cover something because it doesn't seem related to anything we're talking about?
If she marvels at a brain trauma patient maintaining active human consciousness then she is not very experienced.
If that is the case then it is the chemical reactions that you can measure in the brain and not the thought itself.
If the reaction occurs the thought is manifest. If it doesn't then no thought forms. Seems to me if we can see the reaction the we have seen the thought.
The thoughts can be the result of our life experiences but there might also be an undetectable external influence.
Of course! Majik! Why didn't I think of that? Can't find a source when you need one? Just make one up! Undetectable external influence. Voilà! Who needs evidence!
Only an observation causes the wavefunction to collapse. As for what exactly qualifies something to be an observer to do so: at a minimum it's something that can experience/register information and has some capacity of memory and choice.
Yes, I know Ψ is a probability function without any material form. That has nothing to do with the measurement problem or your interpretation of “observer”. And I submit wave functions do not collapse but evolve to include your observer and all his charts and graphs.
Your interpretation is Copenhagen. The math is wonderful but the interpretation is muddled and incomplete. Accordingly to your definition, the first hydrogen atoms in a condensing cloud could not decohere to form the classical object we call a star. No Copenhagen certified observer present.
There are other more realistic views.
Yes, decoherence is key to classical structures and that has been going on in this universe (trillions of stars and planets) for quite some time. All without any “something that can experience/register information and has some capacity of memory and choice” to observe. Just other particles banging into them.
Decoherence does occur when two entangled systems hit each other. You have seen this in the lab wonderfully observed and recorded. We know decoherence is required for these classical systems to form. And we have an entire universe full of the results with no PhDs having been involved for billions of years.
Your interpretation, Son Goku, is not complete.
Yes, a puff of air with its speeding molecules banging into everything or the condensing of a hydrogen cloud with its particles banging into everything does force decoherence with the result being stars.
What textbook are you getting this from? Have you seen actual decoherence calculations? Decoherence and collapse are two completely different things.
Decoherence, as I understand the math I've seen, causes what you call collapse. It resolves the wave function into classical probabilities. The math is in the density matrix calculations.
And please excuse my faux pas in confusing superposition and entanglement. I get both ways at times.
I'm not so good at regurgitating that in my present addled state. If you and admin allow I would answer with a Sabine Hossenfelder video. She explains it better than I ever could.
She gets over the basics and gets into the good stuff at about 4 mins in.
Yeah British colonialism is just some silly rabbit hole.
Do you think the crown would enforce a required tithe without the constant demands of the priests? By constant I mean for centuries. I would think for most monarchs the church was too influential to not be attached at the hip. Gotta keep the priests happy.
I'll echo Tangle on this. It doesn't matter whether it had the enforcement of the crown behind it. The church (I don't care - pick one) forcibly took money from the people impoverishing the entire society.
™ Version 4.2
(1)