Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?

Consciousness is consciousness, whether the brain is damaged or undamaged. The key part is having it, and It stems from the soul. The quality of the consciousness is effected by the relative performance of the medium, but if access to information is lost in the physical, it doesn't mean it is gone. It's purely your assumption that it can be destroyed in any way. The access may be lost in the physical, but it still exists in eternity. God knows everything, so He is the ultimate memory storage for our souls.

As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.

The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.

The point is that his experience contradicts everything which is taught in this video. By all accounts he lived a normal life, with feelings and relationships and struggles, but did not have anything approximating the brain structure described in this video. Clearly you can see much that is being spouted here is just a materialists wet dream. The attempt to approximate all human experience into mechanistic terms.

Let's put it this way..If you believe you're nothing more than material machinery then you don't have free will and you can't even trust your own rationality. You don't have free will because all of your choices are preceeded and caused by unconscious material processes. Here's a quote from Sam:

"For [many people], freedom of will is synonymous with the idea that, with respect to any specific thought or action, one could have thought or acted differently. But to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought, “I could have done otherwise” after doing whatever I, in fact, did. Rather than indicate my freedom, this thought is just an epitaph erected to moments past. What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, inscrutable to me. To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”

And this is why the last objection is just another way of not facing up to the problem. To say that “my brain” has decided to think or act in a particular way, whether consciously or not, and my freedom consists in this, is to ignore the very reason why people believe in free will in the first place: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about."

You can't trust your own rationality because it is based upon on chemical reactions in the brain, a process which evolved from the lower animals and with guarantee of any truth. Here's what darwin said about it:

"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

So, if I am speaking to someone who can't make independent choices, with rationality that came from monkeys, why should I believe anything that you're saying?

>> ^Skeeve:
Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?
As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.
The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.
Next time you try to discredit science, point to something we don't know about instead of something that happens to 1 in 25000 live births.
@braindonut, you might find the following links interesting:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy%E2%80%93Walker_syndrome
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dandywalker/dandywalker.htm
>> ^shinyblurry:
Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.
There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Shiny, that sounds an awful like the same garbage Deepak Chopra spouts and that Sam Harris addressed in this video.

If consciousness is "entirely transcendent of its wiring" then why can damage to that wiring change/destroy the conciousness?

As for the French civil servant with Dandy-Walker syndrome, let's get some facts straight: firstly, he has a lower than average IQ and secondly, his brain is not a "small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick", it is pushed up against the sides of the skull with an empty cavity in the center.

The fact that he isn't lacking in consciousness isn't what makes it newsworthy either. It was newsworthy because he went so long without it being diagnosed and without having the common problems associated with it. The mortality rate for people with this disorder is high, but it isn't uncommon for a survivor with the disorder to have a normal cognition. The reason that is, is because their brain is misshapen and missing pieces, but those missing pieces tend to be the ones that deal with more basic functions like muscle control as opposed to those parts used for consciousness.

Next time you try to discredit science, point to something we don't know about instead of something that happens to 1 in 25000 live births.

@braindonut, you might find the following links interesting:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy%E2%80%93Walker_syndrome
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dandywalker/dandywalker.htm
>> ^shinyblurry:

Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.
There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Consciousness is entirely transcendent of its wiring, and how an individual processes reality is categorically unique from everyone else. If you let them dice you up into stupid machinery, like some kind of advanced parameciam, it will just make you more automated, not less. You are more than the sum of your parts. Some of these things may be superficially true, on a superficial level, but the patterns of our lives go much, much deeper than this. We're not just rats in a maze, but rather we are spiritual beings that transcend the raw material.

There is a civil servant in Europe with a normal IQ who got a brain scan one day and found out that his brain is just a small slice in the center of his skull about one inch thick. Clearly none of this "science" (and wild conjecture) applies to him. Ignore the psycho babble and discern your own individual nature. You are not your thoughts. That monologue in your head can be turned off, and there can be silence. Search out the patterns of your thinking, the automation of your being, and break the chain.

Could it be that we're getting sooo used to immediate answers at our fingertips that we're giving up on all opportunities that think critically? I'm surprised they weren't mad that Google Maps couldn't get them out of the Maze or their wasn't a fucking app for navigating it.

Hey! There should be a Corn Maze App! Just some suggestions on figuring one out...that would be cool!!! Shut up I'm onto another subject!

it's likely that this family has .. shall we say.. "other" things on their mind... the corn maze was simply an expression of feeling lost... something that's not uncommon for most people.

How long before they outlaw corn mazes?

I dunno, I kinda feel bad that people are making fun of them. Sure, it may be obvious to listen for cars, look for telephone poles etc but I dont know the lay of the land and just how obvious it could have been from their perspective. She was obviously panicking and once a person begins panicking well a person can lose all sense including common sense as the situation feels to them like it spirals out of control. She could be claustrophobic, she might have a severe anxiety disorder... plus add in a youngin and looming darkness for extra concern.

Of course I LOVE feeling lost, especially in a maze, especially peaking on mushrooms.... and boy, even if I dont take mushrooms in a maze or on a crazy hike... I get lost all of the time. Its like my mind is always trying to enable me to get lost by forgetting landmarks, directions, distance on purpose; which is usually pretty AOK by me.

Sometimes it sucks if youre hiking with someone and they get too far ahead and you start thinking to yourself that they took the wrong path... and then you think youre taking the wrong path and then the only way to find out is just to keep on going and you just hope that other person is OK... and then you meet up and you both were on the right trail, and its all good.

G&S style

I am the very model of a disembodied headical
eating up the pellets, dots and ghosts until their deadical
When day is done I return home to boink Ms P in bedical
(chorus)
When day is done he returns home to boink Ms P. in bedical

R&H style

Chomp every pellet
Eat pinky and inky
Swallow every fruit bonus
Till. You. Reach. Kill. Screen.

Sondheim style

Into the maze you have to go
with fruits and ghosts and dots in tow
Into the maze get on your way, you must begin your journey
Into the maze and out of the maze and home before dark

-or-

There's a hole in the maze like a great black pit
And it's filled with ghosts who are filled with shit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it.
But not for long...

They all deserve to die.
Tell you why, Mrs. Pacman, tell you why...

Wealth disparity is a red herring. It is one economic indicator out of literally thousands. Neolibs like to harp on it, but when the poorest schlub in the US has 2 cars, 2 flat screens, air conditioning, and more food than they can possibly eat then it holds very little meaning. I'm a statistician, and there is always a curve in wealth with extreme ends. Deal with it.

Again - they're focusing on the wrong problem. The problem is a corrupt and powerful government. Lobbyists push for bad laws, but bad laws can't get passed without corrupt legislators. In the past, the robber-barons just did what they wanted and government was too toothless and feckless to stop abuses. Today the robber-barons are back, but they are aided and abetted by a powerful, corrupt government that creates a maze of loopholes, exemptions, and laws to pick and choose which company gets to be the one to get away with murder.

The first thing that has to happen is that government needs to be reduced in size and power so that they cannot be the kingmakers. Then you pass a set of simple reforms that are clear and basic so everyone knows 'the rules'. Companies get away with crap because government passes laws that allows it (like the repeal of Glass/Steagall). Peel the lobbyists out of such a system, and all you do it create an all-powerful government that crushes (or blesses) specific industries according to its whimsy.

For example - Obama has been literally shovelling cash at the 'green' industry. Solyndra (and others) have shown that it was all a subsidy-scam. There was no possible way these solar companies could possibly turn a profit. Not to mention ethanol subsidies, et al... They all lobbied big time and got a pile of political payola. It is modern day patronage. Meanwhile Obama is doing all he can to slap down oil and coal. The government is picking some industries to grow, and others to punish. That is totally bogus. And (just so you neolibs don't get mad) it is bogus when it happens to companies like Exxon or Haliburton too.

The government should not be this power broker that picks and chooses which industries get favoritism, and which ones get the thumbscrews based on the political preference of the legislators in power. That creates an unpredictable, uncertain, arbitrary system where industry is more beholden to politicians than the public. Who cares if a company makes a lousy or unprofitable product when they can just pay a lobbyist, or donate to a candidate, and end up getting piles and piles of taxpayer cash?

THAT is the real problem here. Wall Street, Solydra, Enron - all these companies are just symptoms. The disease is the government.

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^Maze:
(Hopefully not derailing the thread..)
Use light at a known wavelength, let's say 475nm (blue), then record your response and my response. If we both say "blue" then it would indicate we're both seeing the same blue.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I can't even prove that the color blue I am seeing is the same for you as it is me, proof is hard


I think you're wrong so i'll try and help out.. The point is that the blue that you know may not be the blue i know. Although the wavelength of light is the same, our perception of that wavelength of light as it is translated by our brains may not be the same. We will always agree that blue is blue if all other things are equal, however blue to you may look like what i think red is.


Indeed, there is a difference between collaborative subjective experience, and objective distinction. David Hume has wreaked my world, and I find myself unable to put it back together in any meaningful shape. Proof, to me, seems to be something our minds weren't meant to do.

>> ^Maze:

(Hopefully not derailing the thread..)
Use light at a known wavelength, let's say 475nm (blue), then record your response and my response. If we both say "blue" then it would indicate we're both seeing the same blue.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I can't even prove that the color blue I am seeing is the same for you as it is me, proof is hard



I think you're wrong so i'll try and help out.. The point is that the blue that you know may not be the blue i know. Although the wavelength of light is the same, our perception of that wavelength of light as it is translated by our brains may not be the same. We will always agree that blue is blue if all other things are equal, however blue to you may look like what i think red is.

a-mazing.

Caution: I just got into a 12-minute long YouTube maze of wire-bending videos.

A-Fucking-Mazing. Or not... it IS fox news. They are definitely spiralling down a black hole of stupidity and lies.

Ah. Lost in a maze. Got it. Thanks. You little mother%&#$@* grumble grumble grumble...