Astral projection is bunk.
Hypnos: Astral projection is utter nonsense. There is no evidence for it. If you choose to believe it as part of some religious faith, be my guest, but please do not try to pass it off as credible like theories from physics or chemistry. Do not even consider it on a level with the experimental results and conclusions of clinical psychologists. It is not even as believable as the some of weirder economic theories. It is not even a soft science.
It is barely possible that some military or political nut proposed using astral projection to obtain intelligence data. It is remotely possible that they got funds and fooled around a bit. I do not believe they ever really tried. Further more, I consider it a total misrepresentation of fact that they ever got any plausible results.
do you refuse logical derivation?
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Things don't have to be physical to exist!
This is unfortunately a contradiction. Physical == Existent is a commonly accepted axiom in science.
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Anger definitely exists in some people
Anger is an emotion and emotions are states and states are information and information doesn't exist without a context and there is no context without consciousness, which doesn't exist because it isn't physical. Anger doesn't exist
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What about beliefs? Are they physical? No, they're not, but they do exist; every single one of us is expressing ours in this post. Well you get the point...what kedaman said was bull s***.
Beliefs are axioms, axioms are information... Beliefs doesn't exist.
Bunk by any name is still bunk!
Hypnos: Remote viewing, Astral projection, Ancient astronauts, ESP, et cetera. It is all bunk.
Sorry to confuse Astral projection with remote viewing. I assumed they were different terms for the same nonsense. The URL you supplied related to Astral projection, so I wrongly assumed that the reference to the military being foolish had something to do with that site. I do not keep up with the jargon associated with nonsense, although I happen to read a fair amount of mystical and occult crap for amusement. Weird, off the wall beliefs fascinate me.
If you claim to believe in Astral projection or remote viewing due to personal experiences, I would say that you are delusional. I just hope you are not dangerously delusional. If you believe due to being told of the experiences of others, you are incredibly gullible and I would love to sell you some real estate about 100 miles east of Miami Beach.
I am glad you do not consider it a religious belief. In that case, I do not mind calling you a fool for believing in occult nonsense. I must say that your violent name calling reaction suggests that it is some cherished belief. Those who recognize their beliefs as faith based are usually the ones who rant and rave when questioned. After all, they have no evidence to back them up, so what else can they do?
The stupidity of the military never ceases to amaze me. Did they really try remote viewing? I do not suppose you mean they used something like a telescope or a scientific device. I assume you meant some mystic phenomena.
BTW: I enjoy fiction dealing with the mystical, magical, and the occult. While watching Star Trek I was even willing to believe in the Transporter, although the Matter Transmitter in the Fly movies was just a tad more believable.
Kedaman: In answer to the following.
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I thought you disliked mentioning proovability, or are you just keeping safe distance from between going nuts and being reasonable?
In a previous post I acknowledged that there was no such animal as an absolute proof or disproof, since all proofs depend upon unproved axioms and some undefined terms. I did not mean to imply that I did not accept the truth of certain valid proofs. In addition to accepting various proofs as indicating truth, I also view a lot of reasonable conclusions as true until contrary evidence is discovered.
I do not consider myself infallible. Holograms showed me that I was wrong when (in about 1955) I explained that true 3D perception would always require some mechanism which presented separate images to each eye. While I could quibble a bit on this issue, I realized that a hologram provided a 3D image in a way I never imagined. It was neither the first nor the last time I believed in something invalid, and if I live another 10-20 years, I might discover some other errors in my belief system.
So far, my disbelief in the mystical and the occult has never been shaken, and my belief in mainstream science has been pretty much justified. To the best of my knowledge, mainstream physics has not been shown to be wrong in the last 300 or so years. It has only been shown to be invalid when extrapolated to situations beyond the scope of the available experimental evidence. Sorry, I just remembered an exception to the above. For a year or two, mainstream physicists called Einstein a fool for believing that energy was quantized: They preferred to believe Planck's interpretation.
Perhaps it is subjective.
Nucleus: Perhaps the believability scale (my own term) is merely the subjective opinion of intelligent people. The more intelligent the people, the better the scale.
For me, ESP, Bermuda triangle phenomena, Ufology, alien abductions, Astral projection, the Star Trek transporter, magic, et cetera are at the bottom in any old order.
Farther up are research projects relating to Stem cell based cures for various diseases, artificial hearts, neural networks, other AI projects, room temperature super conductivity, clinical psychology projects of various types, and I cannot think of any more without further thought.
If you feel the above is an unreasonable assessment, let me know.
I suspect that many of our currently accepted theories were not even imagined 100 to 400 years ago, rather than disbelieved in. For example: Relativity, quantum physics, radio, TV, lasers, the expanding universe.
Once again, I must insist that the errors of the past do not lend credibility to every crazy idea that can be imagined today.
Furthermore, the mainstream scientists of the late 19th century were not as smug as many people at this forum think they were. For example they were aware of the following each of which indicated the existence of serious flaws and/or omissions in their theories.- The Michaelson-Morley experiment which led to special relativity. None of them believed that the earth was stationery, which is a possible explanation for the experimental results.
- The ultraviolet catastrophe, which was later explained by Quantum Theory.
- The sun’s energy output. It was known that the sun was at least millions of years old since they had geological data for the earth being at least that old. The most energetic phenomenon known then would have used up the entire mass of the sun in about 50,000 years. This indicated some unknown energy producing process orders of magnitude beyond known processes.
- Obler’s paradox, which has been explained by the expanding universe cosmology.
- There might have been other problems they worried about, but those are the major ones.
It was high school teachers and pseudo scientists who thought they knew it all.
One parting remark: A paraphrase of something said by either Asimov or Sagan.
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I know of no evidence for ET's visiting the earth. I know of much evidence for people having poor powers of observation, for people having hallucinations, and for people telling outright lies.
Many other subjects could replace the bolded phrase, such as ESP, astral projection, Bermuda triangle mythology, et cetera.
Do you know what you are talking about?
Simon (and now also hypnos), you haven't given me an explanation to why you decide a computer is not concious while another human is.
Your definitions are still useless and you don't admit it. Why?
Hypnos, you haven't explained why all entities exists, do you know what it means?
Nucleus
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Yes, I now take it you are saying that drawing a graph can never be considered interpretation, whether performed by human or computer is this correct? If so, I would agree with you.
However, computers can do more than draw graphs, they can, to keep the Deep Blue theme running, play chess for example.
To play chess the computer takes in data, interprets the data and then even acts on its interpretation by itself. Although we bestowed it with the ability to interpret the data, I don't see how you can suggest it does not have this ability.
I think you are being a bit inconsistent. How can you both argue that computer does interpretation when interpretation is basically processing data in Deep Blue's case and at the same time agree that the processing performed when interpreting data for drawing a graph? Do you care to explain me why, and come up with a definition for interpretation that somehow differs from mine but also from simon's?
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In a previous post I acknowledged that there was no such animal as an absolute proof or disproof, since all proofs depend upon unproved axioms and some undefined terms. I did not mean to imply that I did not accept the truth of certain valid proofs. In addition to accepting various proofs as indicating truth, I also view a lot of reasonable conclusions as true until contrary evidence is discovered.
The problem is to decide what absolute proof actually means. That is the only undefined term I think I know of. As mere information we are not refering to it at all. The axiom true is for expressing constant relations between information, but we prefer refering to an objective reality.
Mainstream science frame of information may explain a variety of phenomenons, making it usefull, however that does not implicate radical theories should be avoided. There are certain key phenomenons that science cannot explain indicating there is something fundamentally flawed in it. That's why new theories are born to try to cooperate with that phenomenon.
Guv
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So far, my disbelief in the mystical and the occult has never been shaken
Mystical and the occult? Isn't that some kind of category where you put everything that you think is bunk. If a lot people put something there, you prefer to put it there, however you have in your signature: "If 100 million people believe a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea!"
I have this vision that one day, we will look back at us and think that we were disgustingly unintelligent. That if there was a scale say IQ for a normal person would be 100, the IQ of a human in these days would be less than 1. Consider now a whole society of these people with intelligence around IQ 1 and some with close to 2 or so, what kind of scientific perspective would they have? Very miserable, and lot's of beliefs in mystical and the occult. Information is a unlimited source for intelligence so there's no bound to how intelligent we can be.
If our material resources wont exhaust until we can start building on the next information empire, evolution is going to show us the way.
Off thread thoughts and comments.
Simonm: The following might relate to another thread. I reread a previous post of mine to verify my memory. A lot of you folks seem to scan rather than read posts. I am referring to your following remark.
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An I'm sorry if my distrust of big corporations conveys a lack of intelligence.
I have always considered you and most others who post at this site to be very intelligent. Did the following imply that I did not think you were intelligent?
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Simonm: It saddens me when I see intelligent people more worried about big business than big government.
I thought I was implying intelligence and saying that I disagreed with your opinion.
The inability of modern science to adequately explain consciousness does not lend credibility to concepts like Astral projection.
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Whilst concepts like "astral projection" and "remote viewing" have not been proven to a satisfactory level, just remember that consciousness has not yet been successfully explained by reductionist scientists. It is still beyond the ability of scientists to explain how such a thing as consciousness could ever arise from the physical processes in the brain.
If you intend the above as an argument on behalf of Astral projection, it is a completely fallacious argument. First, Astral projection and remote viewing have not been proven at any level, and the above implies some evidence other the anecdotes of believers. Second, the lack of a successful explanation does not suggest that anything other than brain functions are responsible for consciousness. If not brain processes, what is responsible? The big toe? The pituitary? Leprechauns? No rational person doubts that brain processes are the basis of consciousness. It is just that they do not know how it works or how to create it artificially.
Hypnos: You are so off the wall that it is hard to argue with you.There is no need to expain the miltary research into ESP. I flat out do not believe that the military investigated ESP phenomena for 24 years. If by some weird chance that they did, it just shows how stupid they are to waste all that time. Where did you find this piece of information? You cannot cite any source other than some other crackpot.. This is the sort of stuff that one nut makes up and then others pass it around as valid data. No ESP phenomena has ever been validated by a properly controlled experiment. If you believe in Astral projection, you are not a reliable source of information on any subject. At least Kedaman and others who post here merely claim that various farout concepts are possible. None of them actually claim to believe due to experiences.
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I don't believe in astral projection because of any religious beliefs! I believe it because of experiences. You see, I'm smart enough to actually look into something before I pass a judgment. You should try it some time.
Where and when did you have these astral projection experiences? Were you smoking, snorting, or injecting something that made you think you had such experiences? Perhaps you can have hallucinations without chemical assistance.
Nucleus: What you are doing in the following quote is known as Setting up a Strawman. It is a well known ploy which attempts to win an argument by a subtle form of fallacious reasoning.
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Take two people of equal intelligence. One person's plausible theory is another person's hoax. You wouldn't argue that people with the same level of intelligence will never differ in the theories they consider believable would you?
Of course I do not expect two intelligent people to never differ in their opinions on theories! I never made or implied such a ridiculous statement. It is absurd for anybody to believe such a statement,. While not intended as an insult, it is an insult to suggest that I believe such nonsense. By implying(not actually saying) that I made such a statement, you easily attack my credibility in a rather subtle fashion. Anyone who reads your post and believes that I made or even implied such a statement would obviously consider me a nut, and side with you with little or no consideration of any other remarks posted by us. It is one of many well known fallacious arguments, and has not no merit. It is probably a more disreputable ploy than quoting out of context.
Perhaps I should reply in kind and ask if you believe that we have unlimited money, manpower, and resources allowing us to undertake any imaginable research project, requiring only that the proposer believes he is investigating a plausible theory. Tell me where to go to get the research funds, I can make up some interesting projects.
All kidding and quibbling aside, would you vote to allocate research funds for any of the following?
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ESP, Bermuda triangle phenomena, Ufology, alien abductions, Astral projection, the Star Trek transporter, magic, et cetera.
These are the subjects I mentioned as being at the bottom of my believability list. I doubt that you could fund any of the above for less than $100,000. A tenured professor, two assistants, a secretary to record results, a computer, some office space, various instruments, perhaps some travel, et cetera. Do you think you could find better uses for the money? I think I could find better uses for it.
There is not enough time to investigate every weird concept that somebody can imagine. Life is too short. You must discard a lot of ideas that seem to be nonsense without doing much analysis. Now and then, something like plate tectonics gets ignored for 20 years or so. The twenty years were not wasted because bright people spent the time developing and testing other good ideas.
BTW: I suspect that ESP research has eaten up many millions since Rhine started it at Duke university about 70 years ago. I consider the departments of parapsychology at universities to be scam or confidence games, with the university being the pigeon. The experimental design is guaranteed to show results in the absence of any phenomena, and I believe that the researchers are smart enough to know that their design is faulty. Due to my disbelief in such phenomena you might think that I have not studied any of the experiments. Actually, I have read articles by Rhine, Putoff, Targ, and others in the field.
Do you know what evolution is?
Nucleus
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Not quite. I said it had to evolve its interpretation, not merely change its interpretation.
define, explain and give a sample. It's hard to guess all the time. I think you must be confusing evolution with something else.
Harry
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Simon - I don't remember how ALICE was made, but that sounds about right. KBSs are a way beyond just algorithms.
What's beyond algoritms? It's purpose?
