Consciousness

pepe said:
I think there is one speed for all.
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I think everyone starts this life with the same time on the scoreboard, some eat up the clock fast with short inbound runs whilst others go for the long pass plays with quick outs to keep more time on their board...

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But as well, think of events that change metabolism, such as stress. People in stressful situations often report time going in slow motion. While it could just be a perception, what if it's an evolutionary boost. Again, we can't change how fast we move, but we'd have more time to take note of surroundings, options, impending threats. It could be an advantage.

Like I said though, I can remember when I was a kid, a week seemed like a long time, and a year seemed to last forever. Now, the years fly by so fast I can't keep track of them. I put something down and go back to it what seems to me a short time later, only to realize I put it down years ago.
 
baleeber said:
Lol, I don't believe the Earth was waiting for us at all. I think it's here, and we're here, and that's about it.

Besides, what's time?

Scientific studies show that different beings may experience time differently. Let me tell you about this experiment. They wired up a whole bunch of different animals, including insects and people, to machines to study their brains. Then they started a strobe light. Brain lights up every time it perceives a flash. So they increase the rate. They want to know, at what point do creatures stop seeing a flashing light and just see once continuous beam. They find a direct correlation to metabolism. The higher the metabolism, the higher rate they can perceive. Highest was a housefly. Lowest among those they measured was an old tortoise. Humans were towards the lower end.

I expect, from my own experience, that the younger the human (and therefore the higher the metabolism), the fast the light can be.

They theorize that maybe creatures with a higher metabolism may experience time more slowly.

This would have an evolutionary advantage in the case of, say, a child vs an adult. The child experiences things moving more slowly, and so while they can't actually force their body to move faster, they have more time to react.

This might be why our ability to catch a ball, or drive a car decreases with age, why now that I'm old, everything seems to move so quickly ... but I feel so slow. This may be why the years pass so fast now compared with when I was a kid.

But imagine for a second how the extremes might experience time.

Imagine a housefly, that only lives for about a month, maybe. So what if it doesn't FEEL like the way a month feels to me. What if a month, for a housefly, feels like 70-80 years. So let's round off and say they experience 75 years in 25 days. What if one day feels like 3 years? An hour of our time would feel like 45 days. A minute would feel like 18 hours. Each second of our time would feel like 18 minutes for them. A housefly might not think it's buzzing around all crazy-like. It might think it's soaring majestically like an eagle while all life around it moves so slowly they almost can't see us moving.

A turtle would be the opposite. Maybe turtles don't realize they're slow. Maybe they think they're just trucking along at normal speed while all us monkeys are blurring around them at high speed.

But what about the Earth? What if the Earth were conscious? The whole history of human existence would last about as long as a sneeze.
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There is a nice book which discusses a theory about this, whether all things live around the same time but existing in differing rates of time...Here it is in the attachment below, Theory of Celestial Influence by Rodney Collin, although this book discusses planetary influences in our lives and activities here on Earth, he starts getting to this discussion living in time within chapter 2...Enjoy...
 

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pepe said:
That spider has many eyes and is seeing you as you the same see him.

The speed of an animals' reactions during a fight or flight situation is size aided. With electricity travelling at a fixed maximum in the brain, size becomes a huge advantage for the smaller brained underdog.

I don't think metabolism changes perception and I think there is one speed for all.
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If I only lived a couple of days I don't know about my metabolism buy my 'to do' list would be amped up just a bit.

This is why a bug can never leave through the same opening it came in through no matter how big. Too much to do and it's already been there.
 
I think about these things constantly. The longer I live, the more I feel like this life I am living is just one existence of many, and it may not even be my main contribution to the universe. Is it the first existence I have had or only the most recent one? I have no clue!
 
Been listening to an Astonishing Legends treatment of Edgar Cayce. One of those things you've heard of but never paid much attention to. He certainly seems to have been in touch with something. If we weren't out of sync by several decades I'd love to have had a reading from him.

He's not saying anything much different than what we've said here, except he said stuff while in some kind of state and was apparently disturbed by what was coming out of his mouth. A very matter of fact 'yup there's an afterlife and here's how it works' is a little disquieting. He's far from the only one to claim they have insight, it's just the way he does it that's creepy.
 
pigfarmer said:
How we agree on consensus reality is beyond me.
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It's truly astonishing, but I have to wonder if there are also a lot of 'stand ins' to make it all work...

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Since this is the only science thread, interesting new sciency stuff.

First experiments had been done that slightly suggest that consciousness is quantum, as British mathematician Rodger Penrose proposed back in 90's. There are some micro-tubules in our brain cells that make very long tubes that are completely uniform like crystals. Now, these micro-tubes are fluorescent, meaning that they make their own light, and that light creates consciousness. Its explained better in the video:


View: https://youtu.be/QXElfzVgg6M
 
Dejan Corovic said:
First experiments had been done that slightly suggest that consciousness is quantum, as British mathematician Rodger Penrose proposed back in 90's. There are some micro-tubules in our brain cells that make very long tubes that are completely uniform like crystals. Now, these micro-tubes are fluorescent, meaning that they make their own light, and that light creates consciousness. Its explained better in the video:
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Hameroff's theory is interesting, and might have something to do with how consciousness arises, but it doesn't "explain consciousness" and most certainly the term "Quantum" is being used in a very chameleon like manner in the video.

More specifically, Hameroff's theory doesn't explain what's called "The Hard Problem of Consciousness", which is basically the situation that the phenomenon we call consciousness is intrinsically different from everything else, and therefore no "quanta" of something other than consciousness, whether it be a microtubule, or a component of a microtubule, or an atom. or a photon, or an EM wave — whatever the case may be — is consciousness. At best it can only be associated with consciousness by way of facilitating it in some as of yet not understood way,

The question of whether or not consciousness itself is composed of quanta ( a bunch of tiny bits of consciousness all grouped together ), is an entirely different question and is more in the territory of panpsychism — but again, even if that theory is true, it still doesn't explain consciousness. At best it's just another model.

These days I tend to lean toward Mysterianism a.k.a. “transcendental naturalism”
 
"The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is."

- G. I. Gurdjieff

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nivek said:
"The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is."

- G. I. Gurdjieff
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Okay — Let's have a closer look . . .

Gurdjieff's Teaching on The Four States of Consciousness​



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So far, it's coming across to me more as a mystical belief system than a coherent line of thought.
Obviously that must mean it's because I'm "asleep" :p
 
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nivek said:
Popular Mechanics posts an ignorant, irresponsible article as this, then puts it behind a pay wall lol...

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Human Consciousness Is an Illusion, Scientists Say​


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Figures. Last time I checked consciousness wasn't Mechanical :)

I have been ready some freaky stuff that suggests we live in a double slit experiment where what we consider consciousness is the result of the Observer Effect. Careful what you wish for.
 
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