So I'm fiddling with my calculator during my Algebra class one day and we're talking about square/cube/fourth/etc roots and powers, concerning negative numbers. So, fiddle fiddle fiddle, and I attempt this:
-3^4 (or negative 3 raised to the fourth power) = -81
And then for some reason, I try this:
-3 x -3 x -3 x -3 = 81.
Two different answers for what is actually the same equation. Clearly my calculator has been programmed wrong.
The big deal about this? Well, the big deal is that I have the capability to reason mathematically, and the calculator does not. It's programmed to give the wrong answer, so that's what it's gonna do.
"Big deal," materialists say. "Humans can believe wrong things are true, too."
Philosophical questions over "what is true?" aside, the difference between myself and the calculator is that I, as a "closed system" have the ability to recognize something as wrong by myself, whereas for my calculator, another "closed system" to compute -3^4 as anything but -81, someone has to go inside it and reprogram it.
Even if you want to argue that my brain fixed the problem for me, the computer analogy isn't appropriate.
Consider also Dr. Pim van Lommel's quotation: "How could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death, with a flat EEG? Such a brain would be roughly analogous to a computer with its power source unplugged and its circuits detached. It couldn’t hallucinate; it couldn’t do anything at all. As stated before, up to the present it has generally been assumed that consciousness and memories are localized inside the brain, that the brain produces them. According to this unproven concept, consciousness and memories ought to vanish with physical death, and necessary also during clinical death or brain death. However, during an NDE patients experience the continuity of their consciousness with the possibility of perception outside and above one’s lifeless body.
[...]
For decades, extensive research has been done to localize consciousness and memories inside the brain, so far without success. In connection with the unproven assumption that consciousness and memories are produced and stored inside the brain, we should ask ourselves how a non-material activity such as concentrated attention or thinking can correspond to an observable (material) reaction in the form of measurable electrical, magnetic, and chemical activity at a certain place in the brain, even an increase in cerebral blood flow is observed during such a non-material activity as thinking. Neurophysiological studies have shown these aforesaid activities through EEG, magnetoencephalography (MEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. Specific areas of the brain have been shown to become metabolically active in response to a thought or feeling. However, those studies, although providing evidence for the role of neuronal networks as an intermediary for the manifestation of thoughts, do not necessary imply that those cells also produce the thoughts. Direct evidence of how neurons or neuronal networks could possibly produce the subjective essence of the mind and thoughts is currently lacking. It is also not well understood how to explain that in a sensory experiment, the subject stated that he was aware (conscious) of the sensation a few thousands of a second following the stimulation, whereas neuronal adequacy in the subject’s brain wasn’t achieved until a full 500 msec following the sensation. This experiment has led to the so-called delay-and-antedating hypothesis, and it is a challenge to our current neurophysiological theories, as well as phenomena like anticipatory activation, or presentiment, with changes on MRI up to 3 seconds preceding emotional stimuli.
[...]Some researchers try to create artificial intelligence by computer technology, hoping to simulate programs evoking consciousness. But Roger Penrose, a quantum physicist, argues that “Algorithmic computations cannot simulate mathematical reasoning. The brain, as a closed system capable of internal and consistent computations, is insufficient to elicit human consciousness.” Penrose offers a quantum mechanical hypothesis to explain the relation between consciousness and the brain. And Simon Berkovitch, a professor in Computer Science of the George Washington University, has calculated that the brain has an absolutely inadequate capacity to produce and store all the informational processes of all our memories with associative thoughts. We would need 10 operations per second, which is absolutely impossible for our neurons. Herms Romijn, a Dutch neurobiologist, comes to the same conclusion. One should conclude that the brain has not enough computing capacity to store all the memories with associative thoughts from one’s life, has not enough retrieval abilities, and seems not to be able to elicit consciousness."
Article that saved my life
Remind me why I never liked math?
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I do wholly admit I know nearly nothing of how a brain functions other than the electro-chemical drivel I got in biology when I was in middle school that felt all wrong. What drives these processes? Hmmmmmm..
Which supports what I said. We can think and realize that the answer is wrong - the calculator can't.
And I happen to be in agreement. I think I already talked about the whole neurons-trapping-light-for-a-fraction of a second before sending it on to produce the near simultaneous interception in the proper places.... or I might not have.
You did (I remember you discussing it, but I don't remember where). Lommel actually endorses the thought that photons are the carriers of consciousness (that physical life is the particle aspect, and spiritual life/afterlife is the wave aspect) that are affected by changing magnetic fields.
Now, what really piqued my interest in the article was this bit (and it has to do with the near-simultaneous aspect you pointed out): It is also not well understood how to explain that in a sensory experiment, the subject stated that he was aware (conscious) of the sensation a few thousands of a second following the stimulation, whereas neuronal adequacy in the subject’s brain wasn’t achieved until a full 500 msec following the sensation. This experiment has led to the so-called delay-and-antedating hypothesis
So instad it looks like the nuerons are playing catch-up while that carrier of consciousness--presumably the photon--has already got where it's going. To parody Les Mis: "Come on, body; what's a body for?"
(Though this gets very murky when you consider that all matter is essentially light particles, and photons display awareness of their surroundings, so it's light interacting with light rather than light competing with matter, and the whole thing is very confusing.)
At any rate what would happen if you added a quantum physics to the brain like light processes? would we still be unable to process 10 operations a second?
The thing about that is that our nuerons can't do it, but it's somehow managing to be accomplished nonetheless, ergo something must be going on that separates memory + associative thought from nueronal activity. I think van Lommel has already concluded that the mind is a quantum process.
:O Really? Wow. Light as a carrier of consciousness.. huh. XD Exciting!
*nodnod* I thought so too. And it's kind of a duh reaction if it really is light. Hmmm.... :D XD Yes. All matter is essentially light. However it's light in a different form. One that can slow down and say, savor reality and experience itself. I guess it's like comparing Plasma and a Solid...?
Ohhh. I see now. What you are saying is that we are physically incapable of 10 operations a second, but yet somehow we do miraculous things. XD Sweeeet~ And time for bed for me~ Oyasumi!
Glad to clear up. I thought I might have been vague.
It's a theory, one among many, o'course, but it's interesting when you consider that most people see God as a "Being of Light" and there are squillions of references to God as light in various religious texts.
*nodnod* I thought so too. And it's kind of a duh reaction if it really is light. Hmmm.... :D XD Yes. All matter is essentially light. However it's light in a different form. One that can slow down and say, savor reality and experience itself. I guess it's like comparing Plasma and a Solid...?
You should read this. An affirmation of panendeism if there ever was one.
Yep, pretty much.
Which supports what I said. We can think and realize that the answer is wrong - the calculator can't.
I'm sorry for saying this, but the answer is not wrong. When whoever originally programmed calculators did so, they decided that calculators would evaluate 3^4 and then multiply by -1. Just because we as people decide that -3^4 equals 81, the calculator reads it as -1*3^4 instead of (-3)^4. It's like how the average of 4 numbers on a calculator is (num1 + num2 + num3 + num4)/4 instead of num1 + num2 +num3 + num4/4. Now if the calculator had said the answer was the square root of 92, then the calculator would be wrong. Computers and calculators only do what we tell them to do, by which I mean how the original programmers decided how things would evaulate.
And I'm just someone who pops in now and then to read your YnM sporks, if you were wondering.
That is so true. :D Great point!