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Hellfire and Buggery Part III: Telekine-what-inosis???
So picking up from where my last blog left off - my debate/rout/argument with AR took a turn from the merely strange and unusual into the TOTALLY WEIRD.
We begin things up with a small area of overlap, he's telling me how reality is a matter of perspective,
and I give an example of how my own colour-blindness is an example of altered perception but doesn't mean that what I see is necessarily real.
As I think you will see, what he considers 'real' versus what I am trying to defend don't quite match.
And he thinks humans can have super-powers, and he's dead serious.
Here are the unedited exchanges.
AR:
re: Well by definition a delusion is not real or it wouldn't be a delusion.
AR:
RH:
It depends, I am missing the colour receptors in my retina so have only a shortened spectrum, short version is lots of colours look very similar even when they are not. so my orange and my green aren't that distinct: I can confuse them. My pink and my grey are frankly interchangeable, red and black I can confuse. blue and purple I regularly confuse.
Colour is a mixture of brightness, hue and saturation, I can confuse hues, and depending on how
saturated or bright a colour is (which modulate the hue) that process becomes harder and harder.
I cannot tell pastels apart at all.
AR:
AR:
RH:
re: We use a very small amount of our brains
----------------------------
I read an article in scientific American recently about how that wasn't true. Basically the brain is a lot more active than had previously been thought and the difference is more subtle than on/off - it's more akin to on and more on.
The thing actually under investigation was the network deep in the core of the brain which had the most activity - and was hypothesised as being a centre of particularly important neurological actions as people with advanced alzheimers who were loosing function, tended to have damage which crossed into that region (although various kinds of dementia can occur in various parts of the brain - one of my favourite authors Terry Pratchett has diagnosed alzheimer' on the rear of his brain which is affecting his vision.
The kind of alzheimer's this research was looking at was the kind where the person seems to vanish. I'll see if I can find a link on the web for you.
The article in full:
http://www.drjamesghoodblog.com/?p=1127
Ain't the internet, grand?
AR:
^ You speak of the hyperthallamus , epicenter for memory OOh I had a biology brainwave (hyper
thallamus/thallium) (cold fusion)if thoughts are flashes of neuclear energy within a liquid , thallium would be a bi product(as it is with all neuclear fusion) . if the thallium is result of decision and is
heavy so falls to centre/hyper thallamus hmm.....So thallium could be the solid evidence of thought .
RH:
re: Using the schitzophrenic example , these people tend to have higher than average intelligence , if they have stumbled on the doorway to this "teleport" area/skill ? I perceived/ witnessed with my own eyes (during my first breakdown) Alchemy , telekenesis , teleportation . Many
different dimensional states 1d,2d, 4d and more.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I don't know about the higher than average intelligence thing. What they are is trouble by a very difficult neurological disorder, be they intelligent or not.
As for 'stumbling onto some secret unknown talent' I highly doubt it.
Teleportation I'll come back to but telekinesis and telepathy for example there is no known mechanism to even think why this would work, indeed let's just think about telepathy for second, we know thoughts aren't like that. So not only is there no causal explanation (or evidence, I might add) for telepathy there's no reason to think it would work and that we just don't know something
important.
The 4th dimension comes straight from Einstein and his his equations for describing space-time (yes maths - again!) in which a 4th axis can be drawn.
This gets almost immediately very confusing and it's very similar to what I was saying yesterday about
quantum. It's not that one reality is 'more real' than another an an explanation for the fundamental behaviour of the universe but that the mathematics for describing it have multiple solutions which gives rise to this popular idea of many realities.
A nice idea I heard a while back was that time is not a fundamental property of the universe
but might be - yes, you guessed it, emergent.
I can only really go a gloss on this but the idea ran something like this.
Once the universe is up and running as it were, there are enough separate systems, oscillations and repetitions, decaying orbits and so that you can by various measures discover a great many systems that serve as clocks, but that at a fundamental level, the particles of which those things are composed do not obey laws they have time written into them as some kind of variable rather time (and our perception of it) emerges from out of all these particles interacting and is a sort of higher-level phenomenon but not actually fundamental, ie a part of the universe yes but if you right down the (simple) rules for describing the complex whole you don't need explicit time built it.
Oh relativistic physics in a few sentences can it be done?
Um... imagine a sliced loaf stood upright, the slices stacked horizontally. the area of the bread is in three dimensions and horizontal axis is time, each of the 'slices' akin to any sequences of successive instants of 'time.'
Is one way of viewing time.
And Einstein kind of turned it on it's head becuase he said these things arent' separate, if
an object moves in space it also move in time. so what this means is two observers of the same event won't agree on how long it took., how long the event lasted or when it finished, becuase the time between them is relative.
There is always a problem with the way in which you interpret the mathematical description of a physical system. Becuase there are often many mathematically equivalent ways of saying the same
thing, many logical ways of saying the same thing but the difference lies in the interpretation.
Einstein's picture was of a particle moving in space and time traces out a curve in the space-time diagram
If I put a pencil on a piece of paper, the vertical axis is time, the horizontal space, wiggling the pencil back and forth up the page and you'll draw a curve.
That curve has a mathematical description equivalent to my moving the pencil. But the difference is the mathematical equation is a finished object going all the way up the time axis: it's the whole history in one go. Whereas while I was drawing it, only the beginning of the curve existed the next bit didn't exist yet. Now becuase the rules of relativity predict the future uniquely in terms of the present. There is only one way that curve could have gone there is only one path I could have drawn according to the rules on how it moves.
So there are two different descriptions: either it's moving and creating it's future as it moves or the future is already sitting there waiting we're just not seeing it. Those are two VERY different physical
statement of the same mathematics.
It's that same kind of confusion that I think bedevils the mis-apprehensions of quantum events
of which you (and not exclusively) are so fond.
So, almost finally - Teleportation.
This has happened and is a real phenomenon - BUT... wait for it... NOT in the sense of Nightcrawler
from X-men or Star Trek
But it relies and depends on quantum entanglement to work.
You can read up some about the experiments that confirmed quantum teleportation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
But please note, my preamble about the interpretation of the mathematics was not a vain one - this too is a situation where there are multiple interpretations of the SAME mathematics.
Now really finally
Temporal Lobe Epileptics when the electrical processes in their brain go haywire, they experience a kind of shedding of the vale, an intense universal oneness, some eve come to believe they have had god revealed to them or that they are god - able to see deeper and further into reality than anyone else.
When the fit ends, they return to "normal"but during the epileptic seizure they are beset by intense,
overwhelming sensations of religious awe and insight, which probably has something to do with a misfiring of the systems for identifying significance.
This perception they experience is a function of their disorder - yet another example of a phenomena apparently real to them occasioned by piece of pathology that, this aside, has no further
external reality.
You can hear a temporal lobe epileptic talk about what it is like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpLZ3Cf2I_s
AR:
--------------
I think we are still learning about how active the brain is, and no I don't share the conception of the brain as being mostly inactive and that activating newer parts will lead to new abilities. Brains don't work like that.
AR:
AR:
AR:
RH:
re: It doesn't support a case for telepathy but it does give an inclination toward the possibility .
-----------
I'm not sure what the "it" you refer to is, but almost regardless - I don't think based on the evidence that such a claim is possible as there is no likely explanatory mechanism for telepathy.
RH:
re: We developed our imagination for a reason during evolution. It is for design . First we imagine then we create . Psychology affects design so therefore affects future reality,society, devices and everything.
&
What you see in your imagination is what you get after effort . Ask and you shall receive of quantum physics seems to state the possibility of removing effort , simply picture and bring into being
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
All highly speculative. I don't think if we are honest that we know exactly why many of our cognitive faculties including imagination evolved? Though we can be sure they did. It's not even clear if imagination is purely a human characteristic. It's probably got something to do with the pre-frontal lobes, at a guess our most overly-develop neurological feature.
Your skirting around what I think is a genuine question about representing realities, but many
animals get by just fine on instincts without this high level skill of representation.
RH:
re: phenomenon film with John Travolta shows him using telekinesis, the character states it works by him having an agreement or collaboration with the energy that makes the pencil. Now if collaboration with this energy is possible(future present whatever) then picturing someone's face accurately enough and you energies could communicate . Or any other psi talent for that matter.
----------------------------
Yes you showed me the clip. I don't wish to belabour an obvious point - but that is fiction.
As I've now said repeatedly there is no explanatory nor causal mechanism for that to happen and it contradicts other already better established areas of knowledge.
So I do not think it is at all likely.
I enjoy a good bit of fiction as much as the next guy, but I am able to distinguish fantasy from reality. You are too. I'm unsure why you therefore persist in thinking a movie fake tells us anything about the
world proper.
The mechanism you describe isn't a mechanism at all and there's no reason t suppose it would work and no evidence it does work.
Show me that it works and how it works and I'll maybe change my mind, but until then.
re: Evolution is not purposeful. It is if we control it .
---------
And evolution can be run in the lab and cell lines 'evolved' - just recently the first synthetic cell was created and synthetic biology looks to be very promising and exciting science, but what you are talking about is far outside the bounds of what is feasibly possible at the moment, possibly ever.
It's hypothetical at best and if you are talking about engineering humans - ethically suspect and very
illegal.
AR:
For something to be written and read it exists in this reality same with film and memories of delusion. Whether it's concept is real or not can only be proved/disproved by time and study.
A reality with no options other than solid facts would not require imagination and would never evolve or need to. Which would leave us eternally suffering the laws of that stated reality.
I know what exists now as far as psi talents are little more than options/directions for study.
But I would not discount options purely because I can't evidence them now.
Science has turned on its head before , so has the chance of doing it again .
Facts/reality is far different today than 200 years ago . What we see as complex may well be simple we are
just approaching from the wrong angle (perspective).
AR:
re: It's hypothetical at best and if you are talking about engineering humans - ethically suspect and very illegal.
----------------------------------
We begin things up with a small area of overlap, he's telling me how reality is a matter of perspective,
and I give an example of how my own colour-blindness is an example of altered perception but doesn't mean that what I see is necessarily real.
As I think you will see, what he considers 'real' versus what I am trying to defend don't quite match.
And he thinks humans can have super-powers, and he's dead serious.
Here are the unedited exchanges.
AR:
re: Well by definition a delusion is not real or it wouldn't be a delusion.
Oh yeah what was that about 'mental breakdowns' from before?
---------------------------
reality is a matter of perspective !
During a delusion the deluded understand the delusion as reality, so for them it was, and the memory always will be real .... During my breakdown I challenged everything I experienced /read/saw overheard , all of it . God/Satan and what they may or may not entail was just a part of my experience.
RH:
Ooh-hoo, we have a disagreement.
I do not agree that reality is a matter of perspective. if you think that then I invite you to try stepping out of your window on your way to work tomorrow morning and seeing if you float.
Okay not really, but reality is not a matter of perspective. That's ludicrous.
I was not aware that you had had a breakdown. (I was starting to suspect from the way in which you were talking about it, and I am sorry to hear that but this is the first time you have confirmed it.)
I understand delusions may seem real but this is not the same thing as them being real.
I really don't know what happened to you or if you feel happy talking about it. I sense it's a sensitive topic so if you'd rather leave it be then that's fine by me. I'm not in the business of treading on private grief.
But I can talk in abstract, that delusional beliefs even if they are perceived to be real, lack any kind of external verifiable quality.
Schizophrenics have problems with disorganised thinking and hallucinations. Now I accept the reality of the hallucination for the schizophrenic is a real experience, but the content of the hallucination has no external reality - it is an hallucination caused by the disorder.
Paranoia, is another example - a feeling of deliberate persecution by others, we can distinguish between a person feeling paranoid and whether or not they are actually being persecuted by others. There is a separation between reality perceived and reality as is.
---------------------------
reality is a matter of perspective !
During a delusion the deluded understand the delusion as reality, so for them it was, and the memory always will be real .... During my breakdown I challenged everything I experienced /read/saw overheard , all of it . God/Satan and what they may or may not entail was just a part of my experience.
RH:
Ooh-hoo, we have a disagreement.
I do not agree that reality is a matter of perspective. if you think that then I invite you to try stepping out of your window on your way to work tomorrow morning and seeing if you float.
Okay not really, but reality is not a matter of perspective. That's ludicrous.
I was not aware that you had had a breakdown. (I was starting to suspect from the way in which you were talking about it, and I am sorry to hear that but this is the first time you have confirmed it.)
I understand delusions may seem real but this is not the same thing as them being real.
I really don't know what happened to you or if you feel happy talking about it. I sense it's a sensitive topic so if you'd rather leave it be then that's fine by me. I'm not in the business of treading on private grief.
But I can talk in abstract, that delusional beliefs even if they are perceived to be real, lack any kind of external verifiable quality.
Schizophrenics have problems with disorganised thinking and hallucinations. Now I accept the reality of the hallucination for the schizophrenic is a real experience, but the content of the hallucination has no external reality - it is an hallucination caused by the disorder.
Paranoia, is another example - a feeling of deliberate persecution by others, we can distinguish between a person feeling paranoid and whether or not they are actually being persecuted by others. There is a separation between reality perceived and reality as is.
AR:
re: I understand delusions may seem real but this is not the same thing as them being real.
--------------------------
Like nightmares :o) I mean like dreams are not real events .
I question your ethos. Reality for a chicken is not the same as our perceived reality even your and my
realities differ by psychology, physical form, mental abilities, capacity for emotion, sensitivity of
senses etc. etc.
RH:
Hmmm. I should have thought the word reality was clear enough but perhaps it is becoming confusing.
I think we need to be clear to distinguish between the Real World and any variation on perception (or
for that matter delusion)
A personal example: I am colourblind - this means for example sometimes the tomato soup I'm heating in the pan will becuase it is orange will look to me like it's green.
Now, it isn't (in The Real World) green but to my perception (my own personal subjective reality, if you
will) that is how it looks.
However I can separate knowing what I am seeing isn't true from how The Real World must be, and one way I can do this is to share my observation with someone else.
"What colour is this soup?" I may say.
and They'll say "red"
and I'll say "not green?"
and they'll say no definitely red, it's just your eyes."
Okay so I get the whole 'altered perception' thing.
I have it every day.
my point is the tomato soup was never green even if I thought it was.
AR:
I only know a colour by its name by what I have been taught . How do I know if my brain sees yellow as blue but I call it yellow by education . My mind can see things differently to how other minds perceive them . As indeed we are all entitled to our opinion. So Orange is not always green for you?
--------------------------
Like nightmares :o) I mean like dreams are not real events .
I question your ethos. Reality for a chicken is not the same as our perceived reality even your and my
realities differ by psychology, physical form, mental abilities, capacity for emotion, sensitivity of
senses etc. etc.
RH:
Hmmm. I should have thought the word reality was clear enough but perhaps it is becoming confusing.
I think we need to be clear to distinguish between the Real World and any variation on perception (or
for that matter delusion)
A personal example: I am colourblind - this means for example sometimes the tomato soup I'm heating in the pan will becuase it is orange will look to me like it's green.
Now, it isn't (in The Real World) green but to my perception (my own personal subjective reality, if you
will) that is how it looks.
However I can separate knowing what I am seeing isn't true from how The Real World must be, and one way I can do this is to share my observation with someone else.
"What colour is this soup?" I may say.
and They'll say "red"
and I'll say "not green?"
and they'll say no definitely red, it's just your eyes."
Okay so I get the whole 'altered perception' thing.
I have it every day.
my point is the tomato soup was never green even if I thought it was.
AR:
I only know a colour by its name by what I have been taught . How do I know if my brain sees yellow as blue but I call it yellow by education . My mind can see things differently to how other minds perceive them . As indeed we are all entitled to our opinion. So Orange is not always green for you?
RH:
It depends, I am missing the colour receptors in my retina so have only a shortened spectrum, short version is lots of colours look very similar even when they are not. so my orange and my green aren't that distinct: I can confuse them. My pink and my grey are frankly interchangeable, red and black I can confuse. blue and purple I regularly confuse.
Colour is a mixture of brightness, hue and saturation, I can confuse hues, and depending on how
saturated or bright a colour is (which modulate the hue) that process becomes harder and harder.
I cannot tell pastels apart at all.
AR:
Does it affect your 3d vision or can you see shade better than colour ?
RH:
I'm fairly hopeless with shades. I have difficulty telling colours apart as it is. If we're getting into shades of a hue I'm useless.
No it does not affect my perception of 3-dimensional space only my sensitivity to long wavelengths of light.
That is why I can perceive red as black but it doesn't stop there, it changes your entire sense of all the colours even those that aren't long wavelengths of light.
There's actually a lot of complicated science behind it, which I could explain but it's getting kind of late.
If you'd genuinely like to know more
I wrote this article about what being colourblind is like:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/A63242679
and this is a really good website with loads of articles and information about the different kinds of colour blindness (there are three spectral colours of light: red, green, and blue. I am insensitive to red light but you can be insensitive to green or blue.)
http://www.colblindor.com/
RH:
I'm fairly hopeless with shades. I have difficulty telling colours apart as it is. If we're getting into shades of a hue I'm useless.
No it does not affect my perception of 3-dimensional space only my sensitivity to long wavelengths of light.
That is why I can perceive red as black but it doesn't stop there, it changes your entire sense of all the colours even those that aren't long wavelengths of light.
There's actually a lot of complicated science behind it, which I could explain but it's getting kind of late.
If you'd genuinely like to know more
I wrote this article about what being colourblind is like:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/A63242679
and this is a really good website with loads of articles and information about the different kinds of colour blindness (there are three spectral colours of light: red, green, and blue. I am insensitive to red light but you can be insensitive to green or blue.)
http://www.colblindor.com/
AR:
I have had 2 breakdowns each leaving me in hospital for 6 months each. I have no trouble talking of my experiences.
re: " I can talk in abstract, that delusional beliefs even if they are perceived to be real, lack any kind of external verifiable quality. Schizophrenics have problems with disorganised thinking and hallucinations. Now I accept the reality of the hallucination for the schizophrenic is a real experience, but the content of the hallucination has no external reality - it is an hallucination caused by the disorder."
--------------------
Oh so much to say but how. We use a very small amount of our brains , I like to entertain the idea that these areas could potentially unlock psi talents, mental abilities.
To make a delusion or imagined thing/place come into being would be teleportation of sorts .
Using the schizophrenic example , these people tend to have higher than average intelligence , if they have stumbled on the doorway to this "teleport" area/skill ?
I perceived/ witnessed with my own eyes (during my first breakdown) Alchemy, telekinesis, teleportation . Many different dimensional states 1d,2d, 4d and more. The fact that these were real
to me at the time gave hope to the possibility of them working in a parallel universe/afterlife .
AR:
AR:
I have no problem in defining what is real or not in this life but I do like to ponder about what it could be , through scientific breakthrough or genetic mutation.re: " I can talk in abstract, that delusional beliefs even if they are perceived to be real, lack any kind of external verifiable quality. Schizophrenics have problems with disorganised thinking and hallucinations. Now I accept the reality of the hallucination for the schizophrenic is a real experience, but the content of the hallucination has no external reality - it is an hallucination caused by the disorder."
--------------------
Oh so much to say but how. We use a very small amount of our brains , I like to entertain the idea that these areas could potentially unlock psi talents, mental abilities.
To make a delusion or imagined thing/place come into being would be teleportation of sorts .
Using the schizophrenic example , these people tend to have higher than average intelligence , if they have stumbled on the doorway to this "teleport" area/skill ?
I perceived/ witnessed with my own eyes (during my first breakdown) Alchemy, telekinesis, teleportation . Many different dimensional states 1d,2d, 4d and more. The fact that these were real
to me at the time gave hope to the possibility of them working in a parallel universe/afterlife .
AR:
I got a thing for dragons , folk tales d&d , fantasy novels etc. To get a better grip on how the teleportation thing would work I once tried to decide how a dragon (with all psi skills) would see.
I thought about the eye , multi faceted (millions of tiny pin prick receivers), each receiver set to a different range of magnification, so it could see what is around it, what that is made of and the energy that formed that . With this and only this kind of detail would teleportation be plausible .
4D example standing in front of someone but using perception to see what would be obstructed in 3D .1D (similar or near teleport region) Existance only occurs in front of your eyes. (quantum physics area).
^^ Realities based upon perspective .
Teleportation as a mental power
RH:
re: Thank you for the colourblindness info , I can perceive how colourblindness could fuel your desire for clear definition .
--------------------
Well it has rather made me who I am. I'd never really thought about it fuelling a desire for clear definition - I suppose, perhaps - but it is a useful reminder to me that perception can be faulty but light wavelengths can be measured, I know which wavelengths of light I am insensitive to, and why my therefore my perception is altered. To me this is the kind of confirmation I mean of an external measurable reality. A spectrograph will tell you what wavelength a light beam has. It is a physical property.
Perhaps colour vision isn't the best example to alight upon becuase the mechanics of how we see what we do are still especially in the neurology of it to be worked out and when you get into it colour is really, really complicated.
And it's sort of trivially true that everyone has different colour detection by virtue of the fact that no two eyes are exactly alike. (In general the clear majority of people are trichromats - 3 spectral colours - I'm a dichromat - two spectral colours; there are some people who are tetrachromats and can see *more* colours than you. (as incidentally can fish and turtles who are also tetrachromats)
Mammals as a whole are dichromats, trichromacy evolved in very few mammalian species, which happily one of which the humans evolved from, I've been born with a genetic fault that knocks out
the code for developing the opsins and light sensitive cells in my retina which makes me a dichromat, I have that in common with about 1% of the population
I thought about the eye , multi faceted (millions of tiny pin prick receivers), each receiver set to a different range of magnification, so it could see what is around it, what that is made of and the energy that formed that . With this and only this kind of detail would teleportation be plausible .
4D example standing in front of someone but using perception to see what would be obstructed in 3D .1D (similar or near teleport region) Existance only occurs in front of your eyes. (quantum physics area).
^^ Realities based upon perspective .
Teleportation as a mental power
Thank you for the colourblindness info , I can percieve how colourblindness could fuel your desire for clear definition .
RH:
re: Thank you for the colourblindness info , I can perceive how colourblindness could fuel your desire for clear definition .
--------------------
Well it has rather made me who I am. I'd never really thought about it fuelling a desire for clear definition - I suppose, perhaps - but it is a useful reminder to me that perception can be faulty but light wavelengths can be measured, I know which wavelengths of light I am insensitive to, and why my therefore my perception is altered. To me this is the kind of confirmation I mean of an external measurable reality. A spectrograph will tell you what wavelength a light beam has. It is a physical property.
Perhaps colour vision isn't the best example to alight upon becuase the mechanics of how we see what we do are still especially in the neurology of it to be worked out and when you get into it colour is really, really complicated.
And it's sort of trivially true that everyone has different colour detection by virtue of the fact that no two eyes are exactly alike. (In general the clear majority of people are trichromats - 3 spectral colours - I'm a dichromat - two spectral colours; there are some people who are tetrachromats and can see *more* colours than you. (as incidentally can fish and turtles who are also tetrachromats)
Mammals as a whole are dichromats, trichromacy evolved in very few mammalian species, which happily one of which the humans evolved from, I've been born with a genetic fault that knocks out
the code for developing the opsins and light sensitive cells in my retina which makes me a dichromat, I have that in common with about 1% of the population
AR:
RH:
re: We use a very small amount of our brains
----------------------------
I read an article in scientific American recently about how that wasn't true. Basically the brain is a lot more active than had previously been thought and the difference is more subtle than on/off - it's more akin to on and more on.
The thing actually under investigation was the network deep in the core of the brain which had the most activity - and was hypothesised as being a centre of particularly important neurological actions as people with advanced alzheimers who were loosing function, tended to have damage which crossed into that region (although various kinds of dementia can occur in various parts of the brain - one of my favourite authors Terry Pratchett has diagnosed alzheimer' on the rear of his brain which is affecting his vision.
The kind of alzheimer's this research was looking at was the kind where the person seems to vanish. I'll see if I can find a link on the web for you.
The article in full:
http://www.drjamesghoodblog.com/?p=1127
Ain't the internet, grand?
AR:
^ You speak of the hyperthallamus , epicenter for memory OOh I had a biology brainwave (hyper
thallamus/thallium) (cold fusion)if thoughts are flashes of neuclear energy within a liquid , thallium would be a bi product(as it is with all neuclear fusion) . if the thallium is result of decision and is
heavy so falls to centre/hyper thallamus hmm.....So thallium could be the solid evidence of thought .
I love my imagination
Have you ever heard the telephone ring and know who's calling before picking up the phone ?
Have you ever been thinking of someone and suddenly they call you out of the blue?
Where do you think evolution will succeed with the human race in future , physical or mental ability ?
With the new views seen through quantum physics , I put my money on mental .
With the new views seen through quantum physics , I put my money on mental .
RH:
re: Using the schitzophrenic example , these people tend to have higher than average intelligence , if they have stumbled on the doorway to this "teleport" area/skill ? I perceived/ witnessed with my own eyes (during my first breakdown) Alchemy , telekenesis , teleportation . Many
different dimensional states 1d,2d, 4d and more.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I don't know about the higher than average intelligence thing. What they are is trouble by a very difficult neurological disorder, be they intelligent or not.
As for 'stumbling onto some secret unknown talent' I highly doubt it.
Teleportation I'll come back to but telekinesis and telepathy for example there is no known mechanism to even think why this would work, indeed let's just think about telepathy for second, we know thoughts aren't like that. So not only is there no causal explanation (or evidence, I might add) for telepathy there's no reason to think it would work and that we just don't know something
important.
The 4th dimension comes straight from Einstein and his his equations for describing space-time (yes maths - again!) in which a 4th axis can be drawn.
This gets almost immediately very confusing and it's very similar to what I was saying yesterday about
quantum. It's not that one reality is 'more real' than another an an explanation for the fundamental behaviour of the universe but that the mathematics for describing it have multiple solutions which gives rise to this popular idea of many realities.
A nice idea I heard a while back was that time is not a fundamental property of the universe
but might be - yes, you guessed it, emergent.
I can only really go a gloss on this but the idea ran something like this.
Once the universe is up and running as it were, there are enough separate systems, oscillations and repetitions, decaying orbits and so that you can by various measures discover a great many systems that serve as clocks, but that at a fundamental level, the particles of which those things are composed do not obey laws they have time written into them as some kind of variable rather time (and our perception of it) emerges from out of all these particles interacting and is a sort of higher-level phenomenon but not actually fundamental, ie a part of the universe yes but if you right down the (simple) rules for describing the complex whole you don't need explicit time built it.
Oh relativistic physics in a few sentences can it be done?
Um... imagine a sliced loaf stood upright, the slices stacked horizontally. the area of the bread is in three dimensions and horizontal axis is time, each of the 'slices' akin to any sequences of successive instants of 'time.'
Is one way of viewing time.
And Einstein kind of turned it on it's head becuase he said these things arent' separate, if
an object moves in space it also move in time. so what this means is two observers of the same event won't agree on how long it took., how long the event lasted or when it finished, becuase the time between them is relative.
There is always a problem with the way in which you interpret the mathematical description of a physical system. Becuase there are often many mathematically equivalent ways of saying the same
thing, many logical ways of saying the same thing but the difference lies in the interpretation.
Einstein's picture was of a particle moving in space and time traces out a curve in the space-time diagram
If I put a pencil on a piece of paper, the vertical axis is time, the horizontal space, wiggling the pencil back and forth up the page and you'll draw a curve.
That curve has a mathematical description equivalent to my moving the pencil. But the difference is the mathematical equation is a finished object going all the way up the time axis: it's the whole history in one go. Whereas while I was drawing it, only the beginning of the curve existed the next bit didn't exist yet. Now becuase the rules of relativity predict the future uniquely in terms of the present. There is only one way that curve could have gone there is only one path I could have drawn according to the rules on how it moves.
So there are two different descriptions: either it's moving and creating it's future as it moves or the future is already sitting there waiting we're just not seeing it. Those are two VERY different physical
statement of the same mathematics.
It's that same kind of confusion that I think bedevils the mis-apprehensions of quantum events
of which you (and not exclusively) are so fond.
So, almost finally - Teleportation.
This has happened and is a real phenomenon - BUT... wait for it... NOT in the sense of Nightcrawler
from X-men or Star Trek
But it relies and depends on quantum entanglement to work.
You can read up some about the experiments that confirmed quantum teleportation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
But please note, my preamble about the interpretation of the mathematics was not a vain one - this too is a situation where there are multiple interpretations of the SAME mathematics.
Now really finally
Temporal Lobe Epileptics when the electrical processes in their brain go haywire, they experience a kind of shedding of the vale, an intense universal oneness, some eve come to believe they have had god revealed to them or that they are god - able to see deeper and further into reality than anyone else.
When the fit ends, they return to "normal"but during the epileptic seizure they are beset by intense,
overwhelming sensations of religious awe and insight, which probably has something to do with a misfiring of the systems for identifying significance.
This perception they experience is a function of their disorder - yet another example of a phenomena apparently real to them occasioned by piece of pathology that, this aside, has no further
external reality.
You can hear a temporal lobe epileptic talk about what it is like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpLZ3Cf2I_s
AR:
1D , 2D stands for dimension(state of reality/psychology) . The parts of the brain which communicate with each other outside of our concious thought could help understand what dimension we live in .
1 voice 1d
2 voices 2d
3 voices 3d
I refer to philosophical not mathematical dimensions , although they correlate to an extent . Just the numbers dont match so well Say each section of the brain were a separate brain with each element (part of whole) we have more comparisson to ascertain our perception. Sub divisions are possible within the concious _ see schitzophenia and multi personality disorder. Although both these conditions could actually be a short circuit from the concious to another element(voice) of the brain.
Basically you can create personalities , or , you can get in direct contact with another part of your psyche(say not just overhearing your conscience but hearing your rational as well etc).
RH:
Have you ever heard the telephone ring and know who's calling before picking up the phone ?
Have you ever been thinking of someone and suddenly they call you out of the blue?
--------------
I cannot say that I have, but even if I did, this isn't terribly convincing - try googling "regression to the
mean"
What this means is lets say throughout a year I might be thinking of someone and the phone never rings. Or I'll be thinking
about a cheeseburger and the doorbell goes and it's the window cleaner - and let's say 98 times this happens with no correlation at all , and these events are all imminently forgettable.
Then one time I happen to be thinking of my boyfriend and 5 minutes later he calls.
Well the odds of that were staggering but how strange is it really that a) I'd be thinking about someone I like and b) that they'd call me in the afternoons like they often do - and that these two events would coincide?
The point about the regression principle is the undue significance accorded to a very small set of events disregards the imprecise number of outliers where there was no correlation.
Humans, tend to as a rule, be very very bad at calculating probability and mis-read significance where none is called for all the time.
Now even if there was a correlation between my thinking of someone and them calling: correlation doesn't imply causation.
So even if it were true that my thinking of someone and them calling were correlated - and I've given examples of how that could happen and what it means - you've still all your work ahead of you to explain how this supports a case for telepathy - when the more parsimonious explanation and by far
simpler, is that it is simple coincidence. Which is far more likely than the alternative.
RH:
re:Do you not think that the mind is more capable than we understand it now?1 voice 1d
2 voices 2d
3 voices 3d
I refer to philosophical not mathematical dimensions , although they correlate to an extent . Just the numbers dont match so well Say each section of the brain were a separate brain with each element (part of whole) we have more comparisson to ascertain our perception. Sub divisions are possible within the concious _ see schitzophenia and multi personality disorder. Although both these conditions could actually be a short circuit from the concious to another element(voice) of the brain.
Basically you can create personalities , or , you can get in direct contact with another part of your psyche(say not just overhearing your conscience but hearing your rational as well etc).
RH:
Have you ever heard the telephone ring and know who's calling before picking up the phone ?
Have you ever been thinking of someone and suddenly they call you out of the blue?
--------------
I cannot say that I have, but even if I did, this isn't terribly convincing - try googling "regression to the
mean"
What this means is lets say throughout a year I might be thinking of someone and the phone never rings. Or I'll be thinking
about a cheeseburger and the doorbell goes and it's the window cleaner - and let's say 98 times this happens with no correlation at all , and these events are all imminently forgettable.
Then one time I happen to be thinking of my boyfriend and 5 minutes later he calls.
Well the odds of that were staggering but how strange is it really that a) I'd be thinking about someone I like and b) that they'd call me in the afternoons like they often do - and that these two events would coincide?
The point about the regression principle is the undue significance accorded to a very small set of events disregards the imprecise number of outliers where there was no correlation.
Humans, tend to as a rule, be very very bad at calculating probability and mis-read significance where none is called for all the time.
Now even if there was a correlation between my thinking of someone and them calling: correlation doesn't imply causation.
So even if it were true that my thinking of someone and them calling were correlated - and I've given examples of how that could happen and what it means - you've still all your work ahead of you to explain how this supports a case for telepathy - when the more parsimonious explanation and by far
simpler, is that it is simple coincidence. Which is far more likely than the alternative.
RH:
--------------
I think we are still learning about how active the brain is, and no I don't share the conception of the brain as being mostly inactive and that activating newer parts will lead to new abilities. Brains don't work like that.
AR:
It doesn't support a case for telepathy but it does give an inclination toward the possibility .
We developed our imagination for a reason during evolution. It is for design . First we imagine then we create . Psychology affects design so therefore affects future reality,society, devices and everything.
What you see in your imagination is what you get after effort . Ask and you shall receive of quantum physics seems to state the possibility of removing effort , simply picture and bring into being .
Phenomenon film with John Travolta shows him using telekinesis , the character states it works by him having an agreement or collaboration with the energy that makes the pencil. Now if collaboration with this energy is possible (future present whatever) then picturing someone's face accurately enough and you energies could communicate . Or any other psi talent for that matter.
RH:
re: Where do you think evolution will succeed with the human race in future , physical or mental ability ? With the new views seen through quantum physics , I put my money on mental .
----------------
Is to misconstrue what evolution is. Evolution is not purposeful. If anything since birthrate tends to
decrease as education and intelligence rise (due to economic and contraceptive factors) - the human spcies might well get on average stupider again.
But I don't honestly know what we will evolve into, whatever it is will not be I think recognisably human, in the same way that 100,000 years separates us from the skeletal remains of our ancestors so our eventual descendants will be potentially as different again.
I don't think it will be predictable like that and will depended greatly on the selection pressures that act upon us.
And who if anyone survives.
I'd warrant that within the next 100,000 years, say, that a global natural disaster *might* (stress *might*) occur which will provide just the sort of reduction in numbers and an evolutionary battle for survival, combined with isolation and the general genetic drift that humans as we know recognise ourselves will undoubtedly change but how and into what I do not know and could not guess.
The kinds of things I can imagine that might involved:
Climate change - could provide a selection pressure, by changing the acidity of the oceans, different weather patterns crop failures - it's a plausible mechanism. Certain regions might become uninhabitable or less so.
Catastrophic eruptions could also be involved. Yellow Stone National park is scheduled to erupt maybe tomorrow maybe in the next 600,000 years but when (not if) it goes up that's going to put survivability under a lot of pressure.
We might also have an asteroid impact, that also is assuredly just matter of time - the question of when how large and where will determine how that plays out.
Lastly if we manage the canny trick of the dinosaurs and hang on for a few millions years and unlike 99% of everything else that has ever lived avoid becomign extinct ourselves we may yet live to see the consequences of continental drift change the way we live and survive.
We'll loose The Mediterranean and the Pacific for certain a new Pangea will form, that's going to change weather patterns, sea currents, the availability of fresh water, the occurrence of deserts, the likelihood of a new ice age.
What is certain in the haunting words of the former Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Reese, "the eyes that gaze upon the dying days of our star, will not be our own."
RH:
re: Where do you think evolution will succeed with the human race in future , physical or mental ability ? With the new views seen through quantum physics , I put my money on mental .
----------------
Is to misconstrue what evolution is. Evolution is not purposeful. If anything since birthrate tends to
decrease as education and intelligence rise (due to economic and contraceptive factors) - the human spcies might well get on average stupider again.
But I don't honestly know what we will evolve into, whatever it is will not be I think recognisably human, in the same way that 100,000 years separates us from the skeletal remains of our ancestors so our eventual descendants will be potentially as different again.
I don't think it will be predictable like that and will depended greatly on the selection pressures that act upon us.
And who if anyone survives.
I'd warrant that within the next 100,000 years, say, that a global natural disaster *might* (stress *might*) occur which will provide just the sort of reduction in numbers and an evolutionary battle for survival, combined with isolation and the general genetic drift that humans as we know recognise ourselves will undoubtedly change but how and into what I do not know and could not guess.
The kinds of things I can imagine that might involved:
Climate change - could provide a selection pressure, by changing the acidity of the oceans, different weather patterns crop failures - it's a plausible mechanism. Certain regions might become uninhabitable or less so.
Catastrophic eruptions could also be involved. Yellow Stone National park is scheduled to erupt maybe tomorrow maybe in the next 600,000 years but when (not if) it goes up that's going to put survivability under a lot of pressure.
We might also have an asteroid impact, that also is assuredly just matter of time - the question of when how large and where will determine how that plays out.
Lastly if we manage the canny trick of the dinosaurs and hang on for a few millions years and unlike 99% of everything else that has ever lived avoid becomign extinct ourselves we may yet live to see the consequences of continental drift change the way we live and survive.
We'll loose The Mediterranean and the Pacific for certain a new Pangea will form, that's going to change weather patterns, sea currents, the availability of fresh water, the occurrence of deserts, the likelihood of a new ice age.
What is certain in the haunting words of the former Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Reese, "the eyes that gaze upon the dying days of our star, will not be our own."
AR:
re: Is to misconstrue what evolution is. Evolution is not purposeful.
-----------------------
It is if we control it .
-----------------------
It is if we control it .
A change in perspective could theoretically change how we view,interract and control our environment
I like the idea of desalination plants using hydrogen fuel .
AR:
re: I think we are still learning about how active the brain is, and no I don't share the conception of the brain as being mostly inactive and that activating newer parts will lead to new abilities. Brains don't work like that.
-----------------------
I did not say anything about inactive parts of our brain . We compartmentalise and
divide our concious (not physical brain) this often occurs due to traumatic event .
Those with personality disorders "hear" more of the decision making
process (that for those who don't suffer goes on in subconscious) hence
why they talk to themselves. We all talk non stop in our subconcious .
-----------------------
I did not say anything about inactive parts of our brain . We compartmentalise and
divide our concious (not physical brain) this often occurs due to traumatic event .
Those with personality disorders "hear" more of the decision making
process (that for those who don't suffer goes on in subconscious) hence
why they talk to themselves. We all talk non stop in our subconcious .
RH:
re: It doesn't support a case for telepathy but it does give an inclination toward the possibility .
-----------
I'm not sure what the "it" you refer to is, but almost regardless - I don't think based on the evidence that such a claim is possible as there is no likely explanatory mechanism for telepathy.
RH:
re: We developed our imagination for a reason during evolution. It is for design . First we imagine then we create . Psychology affects design so therefore affects future reality,society, devices and everything.
&
What you see in your imagination is what you get after effort . Ask and you shall receive of quantum physics seems to state the possibility of removing effort , simply picture and bring into being
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
All highly speculative. I don't think if we are honest that we know exactly why many of our cognitive faculties including imagination evolved? Though we can be sure they did. It's not even clear if imagination is purely a human characteristic. It's probably got something to do with the pre-frontal lobes, at a guess our most overly-develop neurological feature.
Your skirting around what I think is a genuine question about representing realities, but many
animals get by just fine on instincts without this high level skill of representation.
RH:
re: phenomenon film with John Travolta shows him using telekinesis, the character states it works by him having an agreement or collaboration with the energy that makes the pencil. Now if collaboration with this energy is possible(future present whatever) then picturing someone's face accurately enough and you energies could communicate . Or any other psi talent for that matter.
----------------------------
Yes you showed me the clip. I don't wish to belabour an obvious point - but that is fiction.
As I've now said repeatedly there is no explanatory nor causal mechanism for that to happen and it contradicts other already better established areas of knowledge.
So I do not think it is at all likely.
I enjoy a good bit of fiction as much as the next guy, but I am able to distinguish fantasy from reality. You are too. I'm unsure why you therefore persist in thinking a movie fake tells us anything about the
world proper.
The mechanism you describe isn't a mechanism at all and there's no reason t suppose it would work and no evidence it does work.
Show me that it works and how it works and I'll maybe change my mind, but until then.
re: Evolution is not purposeful. It is if we control it .
---------
And evolution can be run in the lab and cell lines 'evolved' - just recently the first synthetic cell was created and synthetic biology looks to be very promising and exciting science, but what you are talking about is far outside the bounds of what is feasibly possible at the moment, possibly ever.
It's hypothetical at best and if you are talking about engineering humans - ethically suspect and very
illegal.
AR:
For something to be written and read it exists in this reality same with film and memories of delusion. Whether it's concept is real or not can only be proved/disproved by time and study.
A reality with no options other than solid facts would not require imagination and would never evolve or need to. Which would leave us eternally suffering the laws of that stated reality.
I know what exists now as far as psi talents are little more than options/directions for study.
But I would not discount options purely because I can't evidence them now.
Science has turned on its head before , so has the chance of doing it again .
Facts/reality is far different today than 200 years ago . What we see as complex may well be simple we are
just approaching from the wrong angle (perspective).
AR:
re: It's hypothetical at best and if you are talking about engineering humans - ethically suspect and very illegal.
----------------------------------
Brainwashing , reprogramming goes on with some prisoners. Genetic medicine exists, nanocomputers, Volunteers for possible psi talent experimentation would gather in hoards .
Can you imagine the size of the hoards after the first successful psi talent is manifest ?
All comes back to scripture , follow the "path" . (tele , psycho , etc). Lol
AR:
AR:
RH:
re: This could fix your colour sight eventually
----------------
Hmmm maybe.
I gather there's also been some recent successful trials of restoring trichromatic sight to colour-blind
monkeys by injecting into the retina the missing gene for the red (long wavelength) pigment opsins.
http://www.colblindor.com/2009/09/18/the-cure-of-color-blind-monkeys/
Which is truth raises for me quite a quandary - as you have previously pointed out, being colour-blind is very much a part of who I am. Strange as it sounds I'm not sure I'd want it "cured"
It's a stumper, for me, that one.
AR:
AR:
RH:
re: For something to be written and read it exists in this reality same with film and memories of delusion. Whether it's concept is real or not can only be proved/disproved by time and study.
------------------------
I disagree with what I sense is the ontological argument in the way you have made this point. - Just because something imagined is written down or visualised it exists?
This would mean, surely that Rhoal Dahls BFG, The god of the bible and the Cottingly Fairies would all be - by this definition "real" (the first two having been written about and the latter having been photographed)
It is my contention that in all three cases these are fictitious and in one, possibly two, are
cases of outright fraud.
RH:
re: A reality with no options other than solid facts would not require imagination and would never evolve or need to. Which would leave us eternally suffering the laws of that stated reality.
-------------------------
In case you missed it, I am not arguing for an "imaginationless" universe, but one without delusional thinking and quiet to the contrary I think imagination is very important and to be highly prized, however I alsoadvocate strongly for shedding ourselves of delusions the better to handle and decide (and yes imagine creatively solutions to) the facts of our world and the universe.
Starting - oh 200 message or so ago, I don't think the delusional message of he bible as regards how we should treat other humans is either fair, just, or for that matter based on reality. gods don't hand out moral commands. We are not obliged to follow them.
RH:
re: I know what exists now as far as psi talents are little more than options/directions for study. But I
would not discount options purely because I can't evidence them now. Science has turned on its head before , so has the chance of doing it again .
Facts/reality is far different today than 200 years ago .
What we see as complex may well be simple we are just approaching from the wrong angle(perspective).
-------------------------
I disagree but only sort of but in a way that ends up being important..
I think where err is in thinking science "has turned on it's head." I
mean, in one sense that's true Khunian paradigms shifts and whatnot, but I want to focus on this other sense which I think is more important.
There is one reality. And all our attempts to describe and model it and recently via the scientific method bring us closer to understanding it. (it might be that it's a reality with some seriously weird shit going on, but in spite of that I think all weird shit has an explanation rooted in the physical and the natural and never the supernatural.
Now models can be refined, and altered and adapted, added to and changed. You only have to study the history of chemistry for instance to see the gradual transition from alchemy (which is flat out wrong) to elemental science through to the early 20th Century with the atomic structure of chemicals and the ability to synthesise novel chemicals and materials.
Now all of that proceeded sometimes through invention and genius but often through patient and dedicated study of physical phenomena, the gradual interactions of observation, hypothesis, test and theory. leading to new hypothesises, new tests, new discoveries - new comparative models.
In this sense you are right that we should not discount potential lines of evidence.
However the key thing I think you are missing is what call the universality of a new theory. in that it explains new observations **as well** as retaining the explanatory power for old explanations, often doing so better. I'll come to an example in a moment.
You also say "What we see as complex may in fact be simple we are just approaching it from the wrong perspective."
Again, I agree and I refer you to my examples earlier in this discussion about how complexity is derived from simple rules in nature. That, I think you'll find, has been my position all along!
A good example of this question might well be gravity.
I really promise not to go on at length, but we all know right that newton develops the inverse
square rule for fields and uses it to describe how objects are affected by gravity in predictable ways.
He is criticised at the time for 'spooky action at a distance' and his critics had a point - there is no
obvious reason why the earth remain tethered to the sun or the moon to the earth or us to either.
It took Einstein to say that the force we feel is illusory (careful with that word - not an illusion the force is real - but it's the consequence of something else - namely the geometry of space|time. Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to bend, basically.
While Newton could described how gravity worked, he couldn't describe why it worked. The why is
Einstein's contribution and - this is critical - he could explain observations Newton could not as well as those he could, AND make future predictive hypotheses which could be tested (like gravitational
lensing)
However, this model of gravity breaks down at our beloved quantum scale. Gravity and mass and warped space|time doesn't work, neither conceptually or mathematically.
So something is wrong with this model it accounts for most but not all of the
observations.
So the science of gravity will have to be overhauled. A new theory will have to emerge.
However, I want to point out the difference between this and the kind of sci- fi psi-powers
you are talking about.
A new theory of gravity while being all that you said, a new perspective, 200 years of new facts, would STILL INCLUDE all the previous observations and be able to explain them, would produce new observations and make future testable predictions.
Psi powers don't meant this criteria. The contradict what we already know of how the brain works. There's no evidence in proper studies that shows they are real or anything more that coincidence. (you have evidence of psi powers? - bring it - the Nobel prize committee awaits your letter) and I can certainly imagine testing psi powers, I am highly sceptical that there'd be anything to find.
In short, if science is about finding better and more accurate and precise ways of modelling reality - I don' think psi powers advance us in a way that is more accurate and precise.
RH:
AR:
The advancement of tools came from imaginative leaps(inspiration).
RH:
re: Psi fi is never so far fetched most is based on what exists in reality or a small push away from , take shapeshifting , octopi do it (our imaginations is really quite limited rarely stretching more than a single leap because as we get further from fact into imagination we trust the information less. Changing your colour and appearance just by deciding to do it . Bringing your new shape to this reality by thought(and physical ability - this being the jump/push that made mimic in x-men).
------------
Okay two points to make here.
First of all the x-men is fiction. genetics doesn't work like that.
There are already multiple alleles of various genes in any given population. A single change does not lead to
incredible super-powers like flight, magnetism or telekinesis.
Secondly, as fiction, I can see what you are saying about such powers being ... um enhancements or extrapolations of things we see around us.
So the example of octopus skin is quite fitting but that is all down to the chromataophores in their skin (I think they are called) it allows the generation of colour pigments through conscious control and their ability to deform the surface texture. It is an incredible and marvellous evolutionary trick.
Telekinesis isn't like this, octopus skin that's real for starters - telekinesis I've said before it requires mechanisms and techniques that contravene how we already understand the brain to work, and the new-age kind of thing vibrating energies via that john travolta movie does not cover the distance.
RH:
RH:
re: wouldn't it be good if we could choose to use our eyes as projectors , to aid advancement , share ideas, show someone exactly what you want them to do etc. or telepathy that simply requires agreement of both parties to work
--------------
I actually think it would be annoying and rather unwelcome but there we go.
AR:
AR:
RH:
re: An episode of house showed a girl who grew(cancerously) a kidney that grew on and consumed the infected original . I know the likelihood is that this story is fictional , it must be based within some fact
---------------
And I saw an episode of Stargate where the entire SG1 team phase shifted out of alignment with the rest of everybody else and no-one could see or here them.
Now phase shifting is real enough but that IS FICTION!!
A kidney is a highly specialised organ, there is simply NO WAY a tumour could replace that.
(people can survive the loss of a kidney however...so it needn't have been fatal)
but why must an episode of House and Hugh Lorries funny accent have an element of truth? Show me a journal from pub med, that says a tumour can replace the functioning of an organ, and I'll maybe change my opinion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
RH:
re: 1 guy had a complete lower jaw equipped with teeth set out exactly to his dental records that had grown in his brain .
----------------------------
Actually that's weird but without my truly understanding much about how cancers operate, it may not be totally strange - as I said cancers begin with cell division. Cells divide to replace structures within the body. They are supposed to follow the genetic instructions for building a "whatever" but the process goes awry, so maybe at the ehart of some tumours are structures which resemble and
mimic structures within the human body (like a tooth) because cells build teeth.
The detail that it was "his dental pattern" well who's else would it be, if his jaw line is also an expression of is genes.
AR:
Nearly half of our gene code is taken up with the i-virus . Maybe these rungs are potential new codings waiting for us to design what we want
and how to use it .
RH:
re: The I-Virus and extra rungs.
----------------------------
Okay you've lost me. What???
AR:
AR:
Time has gone by our brains have grown , background radiation has dropped medicine has advanced , maybe our evolution is up to us . Especially now we have discounted God :P.
RH:
Well we certainly sit at a point in history where we are able opt out of passing n our genes via contraception. We can alter and change our environment and with the advent of genetic science to reform ourselves (I spoke earlier of a gene therapy for colour-blindness for example), the recent creation of an artificial cell will herald the next Industrial Revolution, I believe this not in the synthesis of chemicals and materials but in biology.
That all may happen..
but we are still going to evolve naturally on our own. That probably won't change.
For instance there are documented cases of prostitutes in Africa who have evolved resistance to
the AIDS Virus. That's a selection pressure, a few, very few have the right set of genes for having an immune response that can resit the virus. So do their children. Give a few generations and you'll have an evolving strain of humanity with genes the rest of us lack.
AR:
There are tribes where the majority are resistant and there are cases of westerners with immunity too.
RH:
AR:
People are designing their children already !!!!!!!!
RH:
re: his jaw was not mutated it was perfect , just in the wrong place.
------------------------------
Ah well - try looking up HOX genes.
These are genes that tell other genes were to build what they build.
Scramble the hox genes in a fruit fly and you can have eyes instead of knees and legs growing out of the head instead of antennae.
So - and now I am guessing, this is not something I know a great deal about - but if the gene expression system went wrong it's not inconceivable that you could have body structures in odd places, which by definition as malformed invading tissue would be tumours and if aggressive expanding could be malignant.
re: Why not an eye or a kidney?
------------------------------
I don't know.
That's my honest answer.
AR:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2008/Dec/Week3/15185924.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Colorado-Springs-Baby-Sam-Esquibel-Has-Tiny-Foot-And-Hand-Inside-Brain-Tumour-Doctors-Say/Article/200812315185873&usg=__fkp36Ere98fiDbg48NLfzRTim8o=&h=225&w=400&sz=23&hl=en&start=3&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Mbf7qz-8zZw5PM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfound%2Binside%2Btumours%253F%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7SKPB_en%26tbs%3Disch:1
BLOG AUTHOR'S NOTE (It's safe to click - it's a URL that leads to a SKY news story search)
RH:
Ah yes - I do remember now the foot story, now you've reminded me.
With the caveat that this is news report - and I'd like to see if we can find any medical reports on
it that clarifies what happened - I would refer you to the quotes in the
article:
"To find a perfectly formed structure (like this) is extremely unique... unusual... borderline unheard of".
and the possible explanation:
There is speculation it could be a congenital tumour or a rare case of "fetus in fetu" - where a baby begins to grow inside the body of its twin."
---------
Now that does happen you can also get babies who start to develop along side a twin who they then literally "absorb" - these people are called chimeras becuase of the genetic blending where some structures in their bodies have a different (but related) genetic code than the rest of them - for that belonged to their brother or sister.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29
Very rare in humans.
However this combined with the novel structures in tumours are I suppose you might call them boundary cases - things at the edge that are very strange, however I think what **probably** unites
them is some kind of corruption or misapplication of the normal genetic process and cell division.
It's weird certainly but it does not strike me as being so incomprehensible as to fall outside of what I must only imagine is that kind of an explanation.
That's why if we wanted to pursue this as a topic, I'd like to see if we can track down any authoritative medical reports on why these cases occur, as it will gives us something (other than a news report) to refer to.
AR:
AR:
re: Didn't he also have a growth in his brain ? Perhaps another lobe.
"Without wishing to sound repetitive, brains don't work like that"
really?
http://freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/what_is_the_inn.html
RH:
I looked at that blog. I found it really annoying that he refers throughout to the limbic system as "The Inner Eye." That was just superfluous waffle.
He's onto something about the general plasticity of the cortex and the general fixedness of the more "text_exposed");''>fundamental parts (again speaking generally) the deeper you go, the older, evolutionarily-speaking the structure is, and hence the more fundamental to survival.
It is hardly surprising therefore to find that things like the endocrine system (which controls all hormones - the chemical triggers for the body) are controlled there.
Now I find neurology fascinating; I've a few books on my to-be-read shelf about it in fact but I am not an expert by an stretch so don't feel competent to start talk knowledgeably about what different structures do, or two what they connect and why.
However - having read it, and finding nothing much to object to apart from an undue emphasis I thought was totally barmy - I don't see how that in any way props up your suggest of cancer-born stem cells leading to new areas of brain growth with novel, hithertofore unseen functions like
tele(pathy/kensis) It doesn't mention that at all. And as I said
brains don't work like that.
As so often happens, the point you were intending to make escapes me.
AR:
With regard phenomenon film , I am merely suggesting he got lucky enough to get another piece to his ever growing/evolving brain . A successful mutation . Rare as they are they have happened in the
past.
RH:
re: I am merely suggesting he got lucky enough to get another piece to his ever growing/evolving brain . A successful mutation
You are going to grow weary of me saying this: but that isn't how evolution works. Fully formed structures don't just pop into existence - and neither do mysterious super powers. Its about grindingly slow modification over time.
Evolution affects the genes, not the individual - it is an error to imagine in a pool of guppies, for example that one day one guppie is born who is guppie 2.0
Now you'll get a generation of guppies 1.1s and guppie 1.2s - if it's big enough pond
you may not even get linear breeding: the 1.0 might mate with the 1.2s if they are similar enough , chromosomally What's more likely to happen is existing structures get re-purposed (over a very long time)
Evolutionary relationships in terms of development can be quite complicated like that.
Evolution can modified existing structures and repurpose them - or rather this happens and we call it evolved. That's why the light-sensitive cells in the retina are just in fact highly evolved and
specialised brain cells - the eyes are a bit of the brain that for want of a better term 'blobbed off.'
The same goes for the adrenal glands atop the kidneys - specially adapted nerves which instead of transmitting the neurotransmitter adrenaline between cells, pump it into the dense vascular network of the kidneys (next stop the heart) - once in the blood, the neurotransmitter becomes effectively a hormone.
The cells in the adrenal gland are specialised and highly adapted neurones that link all the way back under the ribs to the central nervous system of the spine and the brain.
AR:
AR:
Psychosis is a state where you believe everything (i mean everything you have experienced overheard,studied, everything- all that you have ever imagined or thought . I have existed in this state/reality for 5months of my life . I have seen my life flash before my eyes in it's entirety twice !
Every theory, plausibility even all that fiction conjures . Hence my past need to redefine , I thought why not
choose 2 answers instead of just yes. First answer based on fact
second based on desire.
So I defined my reality and afterlife. My emotional decision was based on how much I accept,support,want whether fact or nay.
Every theory, plausibility even all that fiction conjures . Hence my past need to redefine , I thought why not
choose 2 answers instead of just yes. First answer based on fact
second based on desire.
So I defined my reality and afterlife. My emotional decision was based on how much I accept,support,want whether fact or nay.
I cannot accurately describe but suffice to say I have evaluated myself too much ;)
AR:
Areas for research have to be decided upon, places where new possible future ideas have been explored is in sci fi , take robots for example . What will be next is decided upon representation of little more than ideas and partial science at that stage. We make the rest work by trial and error.
RH:
re: we compartmentalise and divide our concious(not physical brain) this often occurs due to traumatic event . Those with personality
disorders "hear" more of the decision making process
The compartments made in conscious,are psychological not physical. Maybe as we learn more they could be made by design not flaw .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well this is passing beyond what I could nominally call my expertise. I try to stay well versed in many areas but you may have the best of me when it comes to psychology.
That being said let me call attention to one thing.
About which we may disagree, I'm not entirely clear, that's why I bring it up to help refine it.
I don't think consciousness is any sort of special 'stuff' - it is just the brain operating. to 'be' conscious' to experience 'consciousness' is to have a brain capable of it (whether that be by neurone density on number of connective pathways - I don't know - but I just want to establish the
philosophical and methodological monism: the brain is the mind, the mind is the brain. And no other.
So now onto why I think that, and really examples are abundant so I'll name just a few.
*MRI and PET scanners can monitor electrical activity in the brain (PET scanners even use anti-matter to accomplish this, how cool is that?) In spite of their horrible resolution it is a phenomenal marvel to see in real time, the brain's activity as the person undergoes specific tasks to engage the mind. This might mean act act of reading or picture and sound recognition, maybe solving a puzzle - but you can see the way mind and brain and linked.
*Secondly, You can temporarily affect the brain and change conscious control of for-example motor control.
Here is a video (only short) from a fantastic BBC series which shows the presenter Michael Mosley undergoing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - and this so addles his motor cortex (but only temporarily) that he find it impossible to write his name. (or a host of other motor skill
tasks)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwDFR5FFBa0
That's all quiet fun - the important part comes right at the end, when they note that the effect of the intense magnetic field only works in that one spot - a centimetre left or right and there'd be no effect, becuase - and this is key BRAIN FUNCTION IS LOCALISED. The brain although one organ is comprised of many sub-units, and within the structure of the neuronal tissue different areas of the brain are modular. (this is how come patients with brain injury going all the way back to Phinneas Gage and
the rail-road spike, are sometimes able to survive grievous injury but with concomitant loss of function. The same goes for stroke patients. It is the contributions of each of these "modules" - and crucially - how they are synthesised which form conscious experience. We also saw this in the video I sent to you about temporal lobe epilepsy - which was a heightening of emotional sensitivity to the significance of objects. When recovering from a git, TL Epileptics conscious experience is
modulated by this increased sensitivity and their conscious experience is this outright trip of demi-god sensation.
Now HOW the synthesis of these modules of course is still not fully understood but it will be down to HOW THE BRAIN WORKS and nothing else.
*Thirdly, in my the mind-is-the-brain argument: Anaesthetics. I don't know if
you've ever had general anaesthesia - I have and it is kinda creepy and weird and not just a little bit scary but also fantastically cool!
General Anaesthetics go to the nervous system and switch off the higher functions and leave the fundamental one untouched so you keep breathing. They sometimes also give you a paralysis inducers and various muscle relaxants - this is why anaesthetics is such a skilled craft and it is
also how you are able to have - open heart surgery without feeling a thing (until you wake up , when I gather it'll sting a little)
There is also the weird -as-hell- phenomenon of pain relief via hypnotism. No-one's quiet sure how that one works yet (and I imagine you'll find the comment at the end about "dividing consciousness an appealing one), whatever it is it seems to be some route into deactivating certain brain processes. That that occurs via conscious suggestion only is further evidence for the collaboration and unity of brain and mind not their their distinctness and separation.
Here is Micheal Mosely (again - in case you can't tell I enjoy his documentaries)
Inhaling Nitrous Oxide (starting at 4 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50zjapTQCOI
Hypnosis for Pain relief.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqYpc8FAb64
--------------
Okay so those are some of my reasons for thinking the the mind is nothing over and above the physical operation of the brain.
I want to repeat back to you your comments that sent me off down this elaborate
track and ask do you agree with me or not?
"We compartmentalise and divide our consciousness **(not physical brain)** "
The compartments made in conscious,are psychological **not physical**
Comments?
RH:
re: we compartmentalise and divide our concious(not physical brain) this often occurs due to traumatic event . Those with personality
disorders "hear" more of the decision making process
The compartments made in conscious,are psychological not physical. Maybe as we learn more they could be made by design not flaw .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well this is passing beyond what I could nominally call my expertise. I try to stay well versed in many areas but you may have the best of me when it comes to psychology.
That being said let me call attention to one thing.
About which we may disagree, I'm not entirely clear, that's why I bring it up to help refine it.
I don't think consciousness is any sort of special 'stuff' - it is just the brain operating. to 'be' conscious' to experience 'consciousness' is to have a brain capable of it (whether that be by neurone density on number of connective pathways - I don't know - but I just want to establish the
philosophical and methodological monism: the brain is the mind, the mind is the brain. And no other.
So now onto why I think that, and really examples are abundant so I'll name just a few.
*MRI and PET scanners can monitor electrical activity in the brain (PET scanners even use anti-matter to accomplish this, how cool is that?) In spite of their horrible resolution it is a phenomenal marvel to see in real time, the brain's activity as the person undergoes specific tasks to engage the mind. This might mean act act of reading or picture and sound recognition, maybe solving a puzzle - but you can see the way mind and brain and linked.
*Secondly, You can temporarily affect the brain and change conscious control of for-example motor control.
Here is a video (only short) from a fantastic BBC series which shows the presenter Michael Mosley undergoing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - and this so addles his motor cortex (but only temporarily) that he find it impossible to write his name. (or a host of other motor skill
tasks)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwDFR5FFBa0
That's all quiet fun - the important part comes right at the end, when they note that the effect of the intense magnetic field only works in that one spot - a centimetre left or right and there'd be no effect, becuase - and this is key BRAIN FUNCTION IS LOCALISED. The brain although one organ is comprised of many sub-units, and within the structure of the neuronal tissue different areas of the brain are modular. (this is how come patients with brain injury going all the way back to Phinneas Gage and
the rail-road spike, are sometimes able to survive grievous injury but with concomitant loss of function. The same goes for stroke patients. It is the contributions of each of these "modules" - and crucially - how they are synthesised which form conscious experience. We also saw this in the video I sent to you about temporal lobe epilepsy - which was a heightening of emotional sensitivity to the significance of objects. When recovering from a git, TL Epileptics conscious experience is
modulated by this increased sensitivity and their conscious experience is this outright trip of demi-god sensation.
Now HOW the synthesis of these modules of course is still not fully understood but it will be down to HOW THE BRAIN WORKS and nothing else.
*Thirdly, in my the mind-is-the-brain argument: Anaesthetics. I don't know if
you've ever had general anaesthesia - I have and it is kinda creepy and weird and not just a little bit scary but also fantastically cool!
General Anaesthetics go to the nervous system and switch off the higher functions and leave the fundamental one untouched so you keep breathing. They sometimes also give you a paralysis inducers and various muscle relaxants - this is why anaesthetics is such a skilled craft and it is
also how you are able to have - open heart surgery without feeling a thing (until you wake up , when I gather it'll sting a little)
There is also the weird -as-hell- phenomenon of pain relief via hypnotism. No-one's quiet sure how that one works yet (and I imagine you'll find the comment at the end about "dividing consciousness an appealing one), whatever it is it seems to be some route into deactivating certain brain processes. That that occurs via conscious suggestion only is further evidence for the collaboration and unity of brain and mind not their their distinctness and separation.
Here is Micheal Mosely (again - in case you can't tell I enjoy his documentaries)
Inhaling Nitrous Oxide (starting at 4 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50zjapTQCOI
Hypnosis for Pain relief.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqYpc8FAb64
--------------
Okay so those are some of my reasons for thinking the the mind is nothing over and above the physical operation of the brain.
I want to repeat back to you your comments that sent me off down this elaborate
track and ask do you agree with me or not?
"We compartmentalise and divide our consciousness **(not physical brain)** "
The compartments made in conscious,are psychological **not physical**
Comments?
re: This could fix your colour sight eventually
----------------
Hmmm maybe.
I gather there's also been some recent successful trials of restoring trichromatic sight to colour-blind
monkeys by injecting into the retina the missing gene for the red (long wavelength) pigment opsins.
http://www.colblindor.com/2009/09/18/the-cure-of-color-blind-monkeys/
Which is truth raises for me quite a quandary - as you have previously pointed out, being colour-blind is very much a part of who I am. Strange as it sounds I'm not sure I'd want it "cured"
It's a stumper, for me, that one.
AR:
http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/brain.gif
The brain is divided into area physically and psychologically .
Right side of brain logic , left side emotion, frontal lobes associated with reasoning, planning, parts
of speech (conscious?) . And the others .
Now these parts of the brain communicate the info their recieve to each other without involving the conscious until it
reaches the point a decision that can't be made without action or
further information, then concious gets to do it's thing.
If a short circuit is made and the concious can overhear say logics interactions ,
then we have a voice in our head . I think emotional would be the
dangerous one .
The brain is divided into area physically and psychologically .
Right side of brain logic , left side emotion, frontal lobes associated with reasoning, planning, parts
of speech (conscious?) . And the others .
Now these parts of the brain communicate the info their recieve to each other without involving the conscious until it
reaches the point a decision that can't be made without action or
further information, then concious gets to do it's thing.
If a short circuit is made and the concious can overhear say logics interactions ,
then we have a voice in our head . I think emotional would be the
dangerous one .
AR:
To study how the mind works run comparisons with mental patients , or at least look at mental dysfunction to help ascertain mental functions.
RH:
re: For something to be written and read it exists in this reality same with film and memories of delusion. Whether it's concept is real or not can only be proved/disproved by time and study.
------------------------
I disagree with what I sense is the ontological argument in the way you have made this point. - Just because something imagined is written down or visualised it exists?
This would mean, surely that Rhoal Dahls BFG, The god of the bible and the Cottingly Fairies would all be - by this definition "real" (the first two having been written about and the latter having been photographed)
It is my contention that in all three cases these are fictitious and in one, possibly two, are
cases of outright fraud.
RH:
re: A reality with no options other than solid facts would not require imagination and would never evolve or need to. Which would leave us eternally suffering the laws of that stated reality.
-------------------------
In case you missed it, I am not arguing for an "imaginationless" universe, but one without delusional thinking and quiet to the contrary I think imagination is very important and to be highly prized, however I alsoadvocate strongly for shedding ourselves of delusions the better to handle and decide (and yes imagine creatively solutions to) the facts of our world and the universe.
Starting - oh 200 message or so ago, I don't think the delusional message of he bible as regards how we should treat other humans is either fair, just, or for that matter based on reality. gods don't hand out moral commands. We are not obliged to follow them.
RH:
re: I know what exists now as far as psi talents are little more than options/directions for study. But I
would not discount options purely because I can't evidence them now. Science has turned on its head before , so has the chance of doing it again .
Facts/reality is far different today than 200 years ago .
What we see as complex may well be simple we are just approaching from the wrong angle(perspective).
-------------------------
I disagree but only sort of but in a way that ends up being important..
I think where err is in thinking science "has turned on it's head." I
mean, in one sense that's true Khunian paradigms shifts and whatnot, but I want to focus on this other sense which I think is more important.
There is one reality. And all our attempts to describe and model it and recently via the scientific method bring us closer to understanding it. (it might be that it's a reality with some seriously weird shit going on, but in spite of that I think all weird shit has an explanation rooted in the physical and the natural and never the supernatural.
Now models can be refined, and altered and adapted, added to and changed. You only have to study the history of chemistry for instance to see the gradual transition from alchemy (which is flat out wrong) to elemental science through to the early 20th Century with the atomic structure of chemicals and the ability to synthesise novel chemicals and materials.
Now all of that proceeded sometimes through invention and genius but often through patient and dedicated study of physical phenomena, the gradual interactions of observation, hypothesis, test and theory. leading to new hypothesises, new tests, new discoveries - new comparative models.
In this sense you are right that we should not discount potential lines of evidence.
However the key thing I think you are missing is what call the universality of a new theory. in that it explains new observations **as well** as retaining the explanatory power for old explanations, often doing so better. I'll come to an example in a moment.
You also say "What we see as complex may in fact be simple we are just approaching it from the wrong perspective."
Again, I agree and I refer you to my examples earlier in this discussion about how complexity is derived from simple rules in nature. That, I think you'll find, has been my position all along!
A good example of this question might well be gravity.
I really promise not to go on at length, but we all know right that newton develops the inverse
square rule for fields and uses it to describe how objects are affected by gravity in predictable ways.
He is criticised at the time for 'spooky action at a distance' and his critics had a point - there is no
obvious reason why the earth remain tethered to the sun or the moon to the earth or us to either.
It took Einstein to say that the force we feel is illusory (careful with that word - not an illusion the force is real - but it's the consequence of something else - namely the geometry of space|time. Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to bend, basically.
While Newton could described how gravity worked, he couldn't describe why it worked. The why is
Einstein's contribution and - this is critical - he could explain observations Newton could not as well as those he could, AND make future predictive hypotheses which could be tested (like gravitational
lensing)
However, this model of gravity breaks down at our beloved quantum scale. Gravity and mass and warped space|time doesn't work, neither conceptually or mathematically.
So something is wrong with this model it accounts for most but not all of the
observations.
So the science of gravity will have to be overhauled. A new theory will have to emerge.
However, I want to point out the difference between this and the kind of sci- fi psi-powers
you are talking about.
A new theory of gravity while being all that you said, a new perspective, 200 years of new facts, would STILL INCLUDE all the previous observations and be able to explain them, would produce new observations and make future testable predictions.
Psi powers don't meant this criteria. The contradict what we already know of how the brain works. There's no evidence in proper studies that shows they are real or anything more that coincidence. (you have evidence of psi powers? - bring it - the Nobel prize committee awaits your letter) and I can certainly imagine testing psi powers, I am highly sceptical that there'd be anything to find.
In short, if science is about finding better and more accurate and precise ways of modelling reality - I don' think psi powers advance us in a way that is more accurate and precise.
RH:
re: Psychosis is a state where you believe everything (i mean everything you have experienced overheard,studied, everything)
------------------------
Really? Amazing.
AR:
Psi fi is never so far fetched most is based on what exists in reality or a small push away from , take
shapeshifting , octopi do it (our imaginations is really quite limited rarely stretching more than a single leap because as we get further from fact into imagination we trust the information less. Changing your colour and appearance just by deciding to do it . Bringing your new shape to this reality by thought(and physical ability - this being the jump/push that made mimic in x-men).
AR:
re: This would mean, surely that Rhoal Dahls BFG, The god of the bible and the Cottingly Fairies would all be - by this definition "real"
---------------------------
Just reading the title brought images to mind of a solid physical object that through other electronic equipment filled my mind with images . How can you say this is not real? You seem to think a film is only the concept within it . It is something
created by mankind(actors, directors, script writers) in this reality. Script writers will all tell you they have to get their inspiration(jump/push) from something.
------------------------
Really? Amazing.
AR:
Psi fi is never so far fetched most is based on what exists in reality or a small push away from , take
shapeshifting , octopi do it (our imaginations is really quite limited rarely stretching more than a single leap because as we get further from fact into imagination we trust the information less. Changing your colour and appearance just by deciding to do it . Bringing your new shape to this reality by thought(and physical ability - this being the jump/push that made mimic in x-men).
AR:
re: This would mean, surely that Rhoal Dahls BFG, The god of the bible and the Cottingly Fairies would all be - by this definition "real"
---------------------------
Just reading the title brought images to mind of a solid physical object that through other electronic equipment filled my mind with images . How can you say this is not real? You seem to think a film is only the concept within it . It is something
created by mankind(actors, directors, script writers) in this reality. Script writers will all tell you they have to get their inspiration(jump/push) from something.
AR:
The advancement of tools came from imaginative leaps(inspiration).
From an idea to reality .
supernatural , only means outside of natural(the facts we know so far). We only use einsteins theory of relativity because it's the best we have so far , but I have read of at least 6 fundamental flaws.
All of us use our frontal lobes to follow a logical sequence of events to work out what the consequences of our actions may be . Is this not akin to prophesy just rather reduced timeline generally.
RH:
re: Areas for research have to be decided upon, places where new possible future ideas have been explored is in sci fi.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Um.... no.
As I said in my last but one reply, and I should probably here elaborate, a theory is able to produce new, testable hypotheses for future research.
My favourite example is human evolution and genetics.
The theory of evolution has within it the hypothesis of common decent. With the advent of genetics it is
possible to count - literally count - the number of genetic changes between ourselves and our nearest ape relatives.
It also generates hypotheses which can be tested, like for example why do humans have a pair fewer chromosomes that the great apes?
The question was studied, and the answer as the species diversified two of their chromosomes from the common ancestor fused to become one while in the great apes they remained separate. You can even count the genes on their chromosomes and ours and they are the same. It is, as I said one
of my favourite examples becuase it so pisses off the creationists.
Now that doesn't mean that ALL scientific research comes from theory. Of course it does not. Some of it is the advent of some new technology (such as a telescope or a microscope) allows for new observations so it can come about that way.
Sometimes it might be a genuine eureka moment a time when inspiration strikes. but those are REALLY REALLY REALLY rare. and most often it's about years if not decades of patient sifting of data until the penny one day drops.
There is *some* research inspired by sci fi.
A good example is invisibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPVQal851U
Two ways so far of achieving this.
Project what it immediately behind you in front of you, so anyone looking at you 'sees straight through you'
or - and this is the really cool stuff - developing new kinds of materials that interact with the EM spectrum to divert it away so that it flows around the object.
This page will tell you all about the science of 'making stuff disappear' - and it comes with references!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm
But I would point out - amazing as this is - it's still a physical property being manipulated to incredible ends but not some sort of extrasensory, hyper-real thing like psi powers are.
This is a technology that straddles that awkward line between science and science fiction (you could well argue invisibility is an idea as old as Plato so the urge to disappear has long been with us)
But the more adept we become at manipulating reality the more we can use real science to ever more fantastic ends, it will be and shall remain science and a physical reality.
AR:
I feel that eventually psi talents could be no different to existing mental faculties . Whether through added bio computers or genetically enhanced. Reality is never the same long. stone to iron age , industrial , world war ! Reality is not so fixed .Another view of alternate realities on this planet , where do you get waterfrom ?
RH:
re:
AR:
AR:
re:in fact I've erred myself already today by tying mind only into the brain it isn't nerves are spread through out or body so it's really mind/body not just mind/brain.)
--------------------------
RH:
re: Areas for research have to be decided upon, places where new possible future ideas have been explored is in sci fi.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Um.... no.
As I said in my last but one reply, and I should probably here elaborate, a theory is able to produce new, testable hypotheses for future research.
My favourite example is human evolution and genetics.
The theory of evolution has within it the hypothesis of common decent. With the advent of genetics it is
possible to count - literally count - the number of genetic changes between ourselves and our nearest ape relatives.
It also generates hypotheses which can be tested, like for example why do humans have a pair fewer chromosomes that the great apes?
The question was studied, and the answer as the species diversified two of their chromosomes from the common ancestor fused to become one while in the great apes they remained separate. You can even count the genes on their chromosomes and ours and they are the same. It is, as I said one
of my favourite examples becuase it so pisses off the creationists.
Now that doesn't mean that ALL scientific research comes from theory. Of course it does not. Some of it is the advent of some new technology (such as a telescope or a microscope) allows for new observations so it can come about that way.
Sometimes it might be a genuine eureka moment a time when inspiration strikes. but those are REALLY REALLY REALLY rare. and most often it's about years if not decades of patient sifting of data until the penny one day drops.
There is *some* research inspired by sci fi.
A good example is invisibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPVQal851U
Two ways so far of achieving this.
Project what it immediately behind you in front of you, so anyone looking at you 'sees straight through you'
or - and this is the really cool stuff - developing new kinds of materials that interact with the EM spectrum to divert it away so that it flows around the object.
This page will tell you all about the science of 'making stuff disappear' - and it comes with references!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm
But I would point out - amazing as this is - it's still a physical property being manipulated to incredible ends but not some sort of extrasensory, hyper-real thing like psi powers are.
This is a technology that straddles that awkward line between science and science fiction (you could well argue invisibility is an idea as old as Plato so the urge to disappear has long been with us)
But the more adept we become at manipulating reality the more we can use real science to ever more fantastic ends, it will be and shall remain science and a physical reality.
AR:
I feel that eventually psi talents could be no different to existing mental faculties . Whether through added bio computers or genetically enhanced. Reality is never the same long. stone to iron age , industrial , world war ! Reality is not so fixed .Another view of alternate realities on this planet , where do you get waterfrom ?
RH:
re:
http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/brain.gif
[....]
Now these parts of the brain communicate the info their receive to each other without involving the conscious until it reaches the point a decision
that can't be made without action or further information, then concious
gets to do it's thing
------------------------
Ah right, I was with you right up until this bit.
Yes all that you described about the area of the brain functions in what I was saying
earlier about localised actions and modularity - so we agree on that part.
We diverge in the part I've quoted above, I think
It is not the case that "the consciousness" (what ever that is) is "not involved" and that at some later point this "stuff" called "consciousness" then "does it's thing" upon the multiform stream of
information.
That is to imbibe into the brain a dualistic philosophy that separates mind from body. (in fact I've erred myself already today by tying mind only into the brain it isn't nerves are spread through out or body so it's really mind/body not just mind/brain.)
The process of being conscious about anything I think is not that there is a consciousness lurking in our brains "to do something" to our sensations but that consciousness IS the different streams of conscious relayed from the various modules of the neuronal tissues to which attention is placed or diverted at various times and with greater or lesser degrees of emphasis.
That I think is consistent with why in stressful situations you don't hear the din of the fire alarm or necessarily feel the pain in you've been shot so called adaptive pain response in stress analgesia.
And doesn't require the nonsensical separation of consciousness from the body which is at the very least philosophically problematic as well as in all likelihood false.
[....]
Now these parts of the brain communicate the info their receive to each other without involving the conscious until it reaches the point a decision
that can't be made without action or further information, then concious
gets to do it's thing
------------------------
Ah right, I was with you right up until this bit.
Yes all that you described about the area of the brain functions in what I was saying
earlier about localised actions and modularity - so we agree on that part.
We diverge in the part I've quoted above, I think
It is not the case that "the consciousness" (what ever that is) is "not involved" and that at some later point this "stuff" called "consciousness" then "does it's thing" upon the multiform stream of
information.
That is to imbibe into the brain a dualistic philosophy that separates mind from body. (in fact I've erred myself already today by tying mind only into the brain it isn't nerves are spread through out or body so it's really mind/body not just mind/brain.)
The process of being conscious about anything I think is not that there is a consciousness lurking in our brains "to do something" to our sensations but that consciousness IS the different streams of conscious relayed from the various modules of the neuronal tissues to which attention is placed or diverted at various times and with greater or lesser degrees of emphasis.
That I think is consistent with why in stressful situations you don't hear the din of the fire alarm or necessarily feel the pain in you've been shot so called adaptive pain response in stress analgesia.
And doesn't require the nonsensical separation of consciousness from the body which is at the very least philosophically problematic as well as in all likelihood false.
AR:
wouldn't it be good if we could choose to use our eyes as projectors , to aid advancement , share ideas, show someone exactly what you want them to do etc. or telepathy that simply requires agreement of both parties to work
AR:
re:in fact I've erred myself already today by tying mind only into the brain it isn't nerves are spread through out or body so it's really mind/body not just mind/brain.)
--------------------------
The nervous system all meets up in the same place in the brain, that info is transmitted/accessed right there so why complicate the issue? The release of endorphins , serotonin etc. are not consciously controlled, The brain receives and interprets and acts without cognitive(concious) thought.
RH:
re: Psi fi is never so far fetched most is based on what exists in reality or a small push away from , take shapeshifting , octopi do it (our imaginations is really quite limited rarely stretching more than a single leap because as we get further from fact into imagination we trust the information less. Changing your colour and appearance just by deciding to do it . Bringing your new shape to this reality by thought(and physical ability - this being the jump/push that made mimic in x-men).
------------
Okay two points to make here.
First of all the x-men is fiction. genetics doesn't work like that.
There are already multiple alleles of various genes in any given population. A single change does not lead to
incredible super-powers like flight, magnetism or telekinesis.
Secondly, as fiction, I can see what you are saying about such powers being ... um enhancements or extrapolations of things we see around us.
So the example of octopus skin is quite fitting but that is all down to the chromataophores in their skin (I think they are called) it allows the generation of colour pigments through conscious control and their ability to deform the surface texture. It is an incredible and marvellous evolutionary trick.
Telekinesis isn't like this, octopus skin that's real for starters - telekinesis I've said before it requires mechanisms and techniques that contravene how we already understand the brain to work, and the new-age kind of thing vibrating energies via that john travolta movie does not cover the distance.
RH:
re: To study how the mind works run comparisons with mental patients , or at least look at mental dysfunction to help ascertain mental functions.
------------
Agree - some of the most interesting ways into seeing how a process works is to see what happens when it stops working for some reason.
All the examples I've given you about temporal lobe epilepsy and so on have been inspired of that same instinct.
------------
Agree - some of the most interesting ways into seeing how a process works is to see what happens when it stops working for some reason.
All the examples I've given you about temporal lobe epilepsy and so on have been inspired of that same instinct.
RH:
re: wouldn't it be good if we could choose to use our eyes as projectors , to aid advancement , share ideas, show someone exactly what you want them to do etc. or telepathy that simply requires agreement of both parties to work
--------------
I actually think it would be annoying and rather unwelcome but there we go.
AR:
re: Telekinesis isn't like this, octopus skin that's real for starters - telekinesis I've said before it requires mechanisms and techniques that contravene how we already understand the brain to
work, and the new-age kind of thing vibrating energies via that john travolta movie does not cover the distance.
Maybe john limited himself to a perceived limb . Powers would change with perceptive capability/psychology. Or just a field around himself. The strength / distance would be a choice of medium/perspective.
RH:
re: The nervous system all meets up in the same place in the brain, that info is transmitted/accessed right there so why complicate the issue?
------------
Well becuase it leaves one liable to make silly dualisitc reasoning, it's not the little ghost in my head that does the deciding it's the brain in my skull. Well yes - but that's repeating the same logic with a change of word.
To be intellectually rigorous and honest, although of course it is correct to say the concentration of
nerves are in the brain, the brain and the central and peripheral nervous systems are connected and interrelated throughout the body.
Our conscious experience is, on my view, born of the synthesis of all these sensations being processed.
And so there is no distinction between mind and body.
That is less of a complication and more of a clarification and indeed picks up on your point about
neurotransmitters and hormones all of which affect our experience and ergo the things of which we are conscious.
There is no division between our bodies and our minds.
It used to be that I'd think to reach out my hand and pick up the jug,but it's a whole body action
there are nerves in my finger tips as well as in my head which are invovled in the process and I am conscious and in control of that process by virtue of all of them functioning normally, it isn't the case
that my body is puppet controlled by a puppet master lurking somewhere in my brain called "consciousness" My body and me are one and the same.
RH:
re: Maybe John limited himself to a perceived limb . Powers would change with perceptive capability/psychology. Or just a field around himself.
The strength / distance would be a choice of medium/perspective.
------------------
That sounds like nonsense. Probably is.
And lacks, as I said, a causal and explanatory mechanism for how.
It's simply no good to say maybe he consciously controlled the strength of the field around him.
That sounds great but HOW?
AR:
His view of the world(perpective) after he had read and learnt so much was different from those around him. What he could see and his understanding were different , that's all
RH:
re: His view of the world (perpective) after he had read and learnt so much was different from those around him. What he could see and his understanding were different , that's all.
--------------------
That's still not a HOW.
and it brings us back to my point that telekinesis and other "psi skills" are ultimately fictional and lack
causal and explanatory mechanisms.
AR:
RH:
RH:
re: Didn't he also have a growth in his brain ? Perhaps another lobe.
------------------
Without wishing to sound repetitive, brains don't work like that
You wouldn't, I don't think get a novel function as all the cells have specialised functions as expressed
by the DNA in their nucleus and adaptive responses. You wouldn't just get 'a new lobe' that made you psychic.
A new growth into pre-existing tissue is usually called Cancer.
work, and the new-age kind of thing vibrating energies via that john travolta movie does not cover the distance.
Maybe john limited himself to a perceived limb . Powers would change with perceptive capability/psychology. Or just a field around himself. The strength / distance would be a choice of medium/perspective.
RH:
re: The nervous system all meets up in the same place in the brain, that info is transmitted/accessed right there so why complicate the issue?
------------
Well becuase it leaves one liable to make silly dualisitc reasoning, it's not the little ghost in my head that does the deciding it's the brain in my skull. Well yes - but that's repeating the same logic with a change of word.
To be intellectually rigorous and honest, although of course it is correct to say the concentration of
nerves are in the brain, the brain and the central and peripheral nervous systems are connected and interrelated throughout the body.
Our conscious experience is, on my view, born of the synthesis of all these sensations being processed.
And so there is no distinction between mind and body.
That is less of a complication and more of a clarification and indeed picks up on your point about
neurotransmitters and hormones all of which affect our experience and ergo the things of which we are conscious.
There is no division between our bodies and our minds.
It used to be that I'd think to reach out my hand and pick up the jug,but it's a whole body action
there are nerves in my finger tips as well as in my head which are invovled in the process and I am conscious and in control of that process by virtue of all of them functioning normally, it isn't the case
that my body is puppet controlled by a puppet master lurking somewhere in my brain called "consciousness" My body and me are one and the same.
RH:
re: Maybe John limited himself to a perceived limb . Powers would change with perceptive capability/psychology. Or just a field around himself.
The strength / distance would be a choice of medium/perspective.
------------------
That sounds like nonsense. Probably is.
And lacks, as I said, a causal and explanatory mechanism for how.
It's simply no good to say maybe he consciously controlled the strength of the field around him.
That sounds great but HOW?
AR:
His view of the world(perpective) after he had read and learnt so much was different from those around him. What he could see and his understanding were different , that's all
RH:
re: His view of the world (perpective) after he had read and learnt so much was different from those around him. What he could see and his understanding were different , that's all.
--------------------
That's still not a HOW.
and it brings us back to my point that telekinesis and other "psi skills" are ultimately fictional and lack
causal and explanatory mechanisms.
AR:
Didn't he also have a growth in his brain ? Perhaps another lobe.
RH:
I've never seen the movie.
RH:
re: Didn't he also have a growth in his brain ? Perhaps another lobe.
------------------
Without wishing to sound repetitive, brains don't work like that
You wouldn't, I don't think get a novel function as all the cells have specialised functions as expressed
by the DNA in their nucleus and adaptive responses. You wouldn't just get 'a new lobe' that made you psychic.
A new growth into pre-existing tissue is usually called Cancer.
AR:
I have a theory that cancer is evolutions physical tool.
For evolution to truly exist their should be differences,mutations,of all sorts occurring in all species .
The only thing that is present in most/all species(apart from a coral that i
know of doesn't get it) that causes mutation is cancer . Now cancer
can grow you a lower jaw or just a few teeth
to brain and limbs. Radiation has
always been around , more so as you travel back through history .
Volcanoes, forest fires, oil slicks . All the ingredients for cancer
have always existed .
AR:
AR:
RH:
RH:
re: Cancer....reverts a cell to a stem cell state, and from there the lottery of what it will turn into , successful or not begins.
-------------
Well now you're making stuff up.
RH:
re: You wouldn't just get 'a new lobe' that made you psychic.
It's not a new function its an awareness .
------------
Hmm still sounding like nonsense.
RH:
re: He referred to the way he moved the pencil as a collaboration there was no hint of effort or energy usage.
-------------
Still citing that movie? Alan - it's fiction!!
AR:
I did say it was a theory.
RH:
AR:
For evolution to truly exist their should be differences,mutations,of all sorts occurring in all species .
The only thing that is present in most/all species(apart from a coral that i
know of doesn't get it) that causes mutation is cancer . Now cancer
can grow you a lower jaw or just a few teeth
to brain and limbs. Radiation has
always been around , more so as you travel back through history .
Volcanoes, forest fires, oil slicks . All the ingredients for cancer
have always existed .
AR:
Cancer is like the radiation/poison , reverts a cell to a stem cell state, and from there the lottery of what it will turn into , successful or not begins.
AR:
re: You wouldn't, I don't think, get a novel function as all the cells have specialised functions as expressed by the DNA in their nucleus and adaptive responses. You wouldn't just get 'a new lobe' that made you psychic.
----------------------
It's not a new function its an awareness another visual cortex or imagination perhaps
----------------------
It's not a new function its an awareness another visual cortex or imagination perhaps
He referred to the way he moved the pencil as a collaboration there was no hint of effort or energy usage.
RH:
re: Now cancer can grow you a lower jaw or just a few teeth to brain and limbs.
----------------------
Uh no.
Cancer comes about largely becuase we have evolved the ability to heal. The trick of replacing cell through division is a really clever one and it's managed by genetic controls you get cancer when those genetic controls go awry and the cells divide out of control and kind of formless, but in the way that cells do that they link up with blood vessels and metabolise. It is this invasive tissue and the stress on the body that is ultimately fatal. So tumours are organised in this sense but they are not healthy functioning tissue so it won't 'grow you a new organ' or something like that.
RH:
re: I have a theory that cancer is evolutions physical tool For evolution to truly exist their should be differences,mutations,of all sorts occurring in all species. The only thing that that causes mutation is cancer
-----------------------
And once more, no.
For a start individuals don't evolve, evolution doesn't happen at the level of the individual (another reason why X-men is fiction) but at the level of the gene.
Selection pressures on individuals restrict the chances of successful reproduction for genes, they die out, the successful one have been 'selected for' and they form the next generation over time, with natural selection and sexual selection and mutation, changes creep into the genome and given enough time between two samples you can say example from B has evolved from A - but the genes of example B won;t be exactly the same as genes from sample C of the same species, even if they were let's say brothers becuase each would have different genes from their parents and each would have different (alleles) of the same genes from Samples D and E down the road.
That's evolution by natural selection.
Now I've been over this with you already (when I was discussing an example of obesity) so it's worth repeating. Genes interact with environment.
This is what it means when on the front of cigarette packets it says increases your risk of cancer.
The carcinogenic compounds in the smoke damage the DNA in the cells (typically around the lungs) and it is this damage that can lead to a cancerous growth.
Some pope, are more prone to cancer than others becuase of the genetics invovled - this is why family history is often sought to ascertain how common cancerous growths are. in your relatives.
This is why sunscreen is so ubiquitous because ultraviolet rays are powerful enough to penetrate
skin (in a way that slightly less energetic visible light bounces off of) and can change the DNA molecule.
Cancer happens to individuals, evolution happens to genes.
----------------------
Uh no.
Cancer comes about largely becuase we have evolved the ability to heal. The trick of replacing cell through division is a really clever one and it's managed by genetic controls you get cancer when those genetic controls go awry and the cells divide out of control and kind of formless, but in the way that cells do that they link up with blood vessels and metabolise. It is this invasive tissue and the stress on the body that is ultimately fatal. So tumours are organised in this sense but they are not healthy functioning tissue so it won't 'grow you a new organ' or something like that.
RH:
re: I have a theory that cancer is evolutions physical tool For evolution to truly exist their should be differences,mutations,of all sorts occurring in all species. The only thing that that causes mutation is cancer
-----------------------
And once more, no.
For a start individuals don't evolve, evolution doesn't happen at the level of the individual (another reason why X-men is fiction) but at the level of the gene.
Selection pressures on individuals restrict the chances of successful reproduction for genes, they die out, the successful one have been 'selected for' and they form the next generation over time, with natural selection and sexual selection and mutation, changes creep into the genome and given enough time between two samples you can say example from B has evolved from A - but the genes of example B won;t be exactly the same as genes from sample C of the same species, even if they were let's say brothers becuase each would have different genes from their parents and each would have different (alleles) of the same genes from Samples D and E down the road.
That's evolution by natural selection.
Now I've been over this with you already (when I was discussing an example of obesity) so it's worth repeating. Genes interact with environment.
This is what it means when on the front of cigarette packets it says increases your risk of cancer.
The carcinogenic compounds in the smoke damage the DNA in the cells (typically around the lungs) and it is this damage that can lead to a cancerous growth.
Some pope, are more prone to cancer than others becuase of the genetics invovled - this is why family history is often sought to ascertain how common cancerous growths are. in your relatives.
This is why sunscreen is so ubiquitous because ultraviolet rays are powerful enough to penetrate
skin (in a way that slightly less energetic visible light bounces off of) and can change the DNA molecule.
Cancer happens to individuals, evolution happens to genes.
RH:
re: Cancer....reverts a cell to a stem cell state, and from there the lottery of what it will turn into , successful or not begins.
-------------
Well now you're making stuff up.
RH:
re: You wouldn't just get 'a new lobe' that made you psychic.
It's not a new function its an awareness .
------------
Hmm still sounding like nonsense.
RH:
re: He referred to the way he moved the pencil as a collaboration there was no hint of effort or energy usage.
-------------
Still citing that movie? Alan - it's fiction!!
AR:
I did say it was a theory.
RH:
And yet you talk about it like it tells us something valuable about the way he brain works. It doesn't.
AR:
re: Cancer happens to individuals, evolution happens to genes.
------------------------
Successful mutation that breeds true from an individual can change a species over time.
------------------------
Successful mutation that breeds true from an individual can change a species over time.
An episode of House showed a girl who grew (cancerously) a kidney that grew on and consumed the infected original . I know the likelihood is that this story is fictional , it must be based within some fact
Another woman had a cyst removed from her ovary , looked like a skin ball. Pathology opened it up to find the inside lined with fine 6mm hairs densely packed like a pelt. Sitting on the pelt unattached to the skin was a perfectly formed (dry) molar, identical to one of the molars in her mouth.
RH:
re: An episode of house showed a girl who grew(cancerously) a kidney that grew on and consumed the infected original . I know the likelihood is that this story is fictional , it must be based within some fact
---------------
And I saw an episode of Stargate where the entire SG1 team phase shifted out of alignment with the rest of everybody else and no-one could see or here them.
Now phase shifting is real enough but that IS FICTION!!
A kidney is a highly specialised organ, there is simply NO WAY a tumour could replace that.
(people can survive the loss of a kidney however...so it needn't have been fatal)
but why must an episode of House and Hugh Lorries funny accent have an element of truth? Show me a journal from pub med, that says a tumour can replace the functioning of an organ, and I'll maybe change my opinion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
RH:
re: 1 guy had a complete lower jaw equipped with teeth set out exactly to his dental records that had grown in his brain .
----------------------------
Actually that's weird but without my truly understanding much about how cancers operate, it may not be totally strange - as I said cancers begin with cell division. Cells divide to replace structures within the body. They are supposed to follow the genetic instructions for building a "whatever" but the process goes awry, so maybe at the ehart of some tumours are structures which resemble and
mimic structures within the human body (like a tooth) because cells build teeth.
The detail that it was "his dental pattern" well who's else would it be, if his jaw line is also an expression of is genes.
AR:
Nearly half of our gene code is taken up with the i-virus . Maybe these rungs are potential new codings waiting for us to design what we want
and how to use it .
RH:
re: The I-Virus and extra rungs.
----------------------------
Okay you've lost me. What???
AR:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527451.200-i-virus-why-youre-only-half-human.html
RH:
Hmm sounds interesting - can you get a full copy online?
AR:
re: The detail that it was "his dental pattern" well who's else would it be if his jaw line is also an expression of is genes?
----------------------------
It is a mutation , his jaw was not mutated it was perfect , just in the wrong place. If it is genetic then why not an eye or a kidney ? I know of tumours that have attempted a brain but it cant curl up without the skull. I know of partly formed lungs in tumours.
RH:
Hmm sounds interesting - can you get a full copy online?
AR:
re: The detail that it was "his dental pattern" well who's else would it be if his jaw line is also an expression of is genes?
----------------------------
It is a mutation , his jaw was not mutated it was perfect , just in the wrong place. If it is genetic then why not an eye or a kidney ? I know of tumours that have attempted a brain but it cant curl up without the skull. I know of partly formed lungs in tumours.
AR:
Time has gone by our brains have grown , background radiation has dropped medicine has advanced , maybe our evolution is up to us . Especially now we have discounted God :P.
RH:
Well we certainly sit at a point in history where we are able opt out of passing n our genes via contraception. We can alter and change our environment and with the advent of genetic science to reform ourselves (I spoke earlier of a gene therapy for colour-blindness for example), the recent creation of an artificial cell will herald the next Industrial Revolution, I believe this not in the synthesis of chemicals and materials but in biology.
That all may happen..
but we are still going to evolve naturally on our own. That probably won't change.
For instance there are documented cases of prostitutes in Africa who have evolved resistance to
the AIDS Virus. That's a selection pressure, a few, very few have the right set of genes for having an immune response that can resit the virus. So do their children. Give a few generations and you'll have an evolving strain of humanity with genes the rest of us lack.
AR:
There are tribes where the majority are resistant and there are cases of westerners with immunity too.
RH:
Yeah, so genes evolve and people survive and reproduce - and the genetic trait gets passed on.
That was my point - that this will keep happening.
That was my point - that this will keep happening.
AR:
People are designing their children already !!!!!!!!
RH:
re: his jaw was not mutated it was perfect , just in the wrong place.
------------------------------
Ah well - try looking up HOX genes.
These are genes that tell other genes were to build what they build.
Scramble the hox genes in a fruit fly and you can have eyes instead of knees and legs growing out of the head instead of antennae.
So - and now I am guessing, this is not something I know a great deal about - but if the gene expression system went wrong it's not inconceivable that you could have body structures in odd places, which by definition as malformed invading tissue would be tumours and if aggressive expanding could be malignant.
re: Why not an eye or a kidney?
------------------------------
I don't know.
That's my honest answer.
AR:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2008/Dec/Week3/15185924.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Colorado-Springs-Baby-Sam-Esquibel-Has-Tiny-Foot-And-Hand-Inside-Brain-Tumour-Doctors-Say/Article/200812315185873&usg=__fkp36Ere98fiDbg48NLfzRTim8o=&h=225&w=400&sz=23&hl=en&start=3&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Mbf7qz-8zZw5PM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfound%2Binside%2Btumours%253F%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7SKPB_en%26tbs%3Disch:1
BLOG AUTHOR'S NOTE (It's safe to click - it's a URL that leads to a SKY news story search)
RH:
Ah yes - I do remember now the foot story, now you've reminded me.
With the caveat that this is news report - and I'd like to see if we can find any medical reports on
it that clarifies what happened - I would refer you to the quotes in the
article:
"To find a perfectly formed structure (like this) is extremely unique... unusual... borderline unheard of".
and the possible explanation:
There is speculation it could be a congenital tumour or a rare case of "fetus in fetu" - where a baby begins to grow inside the body of its twin."
---------
Now that does happen you can also get babies who start to develop along side a twin who they then literally "absorb" - these people are called chimeras becuase of the genetic blending where some structures in their bodies have a different (but related) genetic code than the rest of them - for that belonged to their brother or sister.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29
Very rare in humans.
However this combined with the novel structures in tumours are I suppose you might call them boundary cases - things at the edge that are very strange, however I think what **probably** unites
them is some kind of corruption or misapplication of the normal genetic process and cell division.
It's weird certainly but it does not strike me as being so incomprehensible as to fall outside of what I must only imagine is that kind of an explanation.
That's why if we wanted to pursue this as a topic, I'd like to see if we can track down any authoritative medical reports on why these cases occur, as it will gives us something (other than a news report) to refer to.
AR:
You know if its possible to control our genes , one of the best things we could manipulate would be a third set of teeth at 40-50yr . This would increase longevity massively .
AR:
re: Didn't he also have a growth in his brain ? Perhaps another lobe.
"Without wishing to sound repetitive, brains don't work like that"
really?
http://freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/what_is_the_inn.html
RH:
I looked at that blog. I found it really annoying that he refers throughout to the limbic system as "The Inner Eye." That was just superfluous waffle.
He's onto something about the general plasticity of the cortex and the general fixedness of the more "text_exposed");''>fundamental parts (again speaking generally) the deeper you go, the older, evolutionarily-speaking the structure is, and hence the more fundamental to survival.
It is hardly surprising therefore to find that things like the endocrine system (which controls all hormones - the chemical triggers for the body) are controlled there.
Now I find neurology fascinating; I've a few books on my to-be-read shelf about it in fact but I am not an expert by an stretch so don't feel competent to start talk knowledgeably about what different structures do, or two what they connect and why.
However - having read it, and finding nothing much to object to apart from an undue emphasis I thought was totally barmy - I don't see how that in any way props up your suggest of cancer-born stem cells leading to new areas of brain growth with novel, hithertofore unseen functions like
tele(pathy/kensis) It doesn't mention that at all. And as I said
brains don't work like that.
As so often happens, the point you were intending to make escapes me.
AR:
With regard phenomenon film , I am merely suggesting he got lucky enough to get another piece to his ever growing/evolving brain . A successful mutation . Rare as they are they have happened in the
past.
RH:
re: I am merely suggesting he got lucky enough to get another piece to his ever growing/evolving brain . A successful mutation
You are going to grow weary of me saying this: but that isn't how evolution works. Fully formed structures don't just pop into existence - and neither do mysterious super powers. Its about grindingly slow modification over time.
Evolution affects the genes, not the individual - it is an error to imagine in a pool of guppies, for example that one day one guppie is born who is guppie 2.0
Now you'll get a generation of guppies 1.1s and guppie 1.2s - if it's big enough pond
you may not even get linear breeding: the 1.0 might mate with the 1.2s if they are similar enough , chromosomally What's more likely to happen is existing structures get re-purposed (over a very long time)
Evolutionary relationships in terms of development can be quite complicated like that.
Evolution can modified existing structures and repurpose them - or rather this happens and we call it evolved. That's why the light-sensitive cells in the retina are just in fact highly evolved and
specialised brain cells - the eyes are a bit of the brain that for want of a better term 'blobbed off.'
The same goes for the adrenal glands atop the kidneys - specially adapted nerves which instead of transmitting the neurotransmitter adrenaline between cells, pump it into the dense vascular network of the kidneys (next stop the heart) - once in the blood, the neurotransmitter becomes effectively a hormone.
The cells in the adrenal gland are specialised and highly adapted neurones that link all the way back under the ribs to the central nervous system of the spine and the brain.
AR:
Whether this successful mutation would have to be a physic part of the brain or simply a matter of perception(mental programming/new method of using existing brain for other function/skill) is another matter of speculation.
RH:
It Wouldn't matter - it's already violating, as I've been saying, enough of what we know about how the brain works to be credible.
If we are not talking of new structures after all but new way of using the brain - that still isn't giving me a HOW for making it work. It's equivalent to saying 'and then the magic happens.'
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RH:
It Wouldn't matter - it's already violating, as I've been saying, enough of what we know about how the brain works to be credible.
If we are not talking of new structures after all but new way of using the brain - that still isn't giving me a HOW for making it work. It's equivalent to saying 'and then the magic happens.'
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- Any comments on how I did - stick 'em below.
- Any comments about ARs arguments or lack thereof - the same.
- Anything funny or witty observations - ditto
Comment
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Comment by Richard Healy on July 15, 2010 at 7:51pm -
Going to bed now, but it's still also strange to me that he thinks he's making sense.
Occasionally when I see something sensible I try to salvage a point out of it and maybe ask him 'is this what you mean?'
But most of the time it's borderline incomprehensible.
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Comment by Fabio on July 15, 2010 at 7:41pm -
Good to see things haven't changed, solipsism still makes me positively sick :P and if I read one more time the "we only use a small part of our brain" bogus one more time I might just burst into tears....
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