Tag Archives: Consciousness

Applying Game Theory to the Largest Questions

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Volume 3, Issue 21

Recently a great friend sent me this link and these questions:

http://nyti.ms/12a3BJz

NY Times: A Quantum of Solace

Is time an illusion? Is there a universe, or multiverse? Finite or infinite? Will we ever know, and does it matter?

All of these are interesting questions. Let’s however focus on the last one — does it matter?

It matters because one’s view of the universe shapes one’s thoughts, feelings and actions.

If one is betting there is a multiverse and that individuals tune into certain branches and experience different lives as universes branch off into variations on themselves, one is always careful to tune one’s mind to the universe one wants to be living in. Such a person probably would have not built a bomb shelter following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because that degree of concentration on the universe in which the missiles would come could switch one into that branch, which — if multiverse theory is accurate — probably really exists having branched off back in the 60s.

If one is betting there is a single universe that happened by accident, such a person might have built that bomb shelter. If the person is wrong and it’s a multiverse, despite being wrong that person would be lucky enough to be living in this branch in which WWIII did not happen in the 20th century.

We are not saying one is right and the other is wrong — merely that there are reasons why it does matter which view of reality one is betting on. Because our view influences our decisions, implying that all of us should spend at least a little time reaching one’s own position on the largest questions — something that Aristotle advised a long time ago.

If one is truly betting there is a God that is benevolent and likes Good acts, one is more likely to perform those even at self-sacrifice. If one is betting that life is a free-for-all then one is more likely to take care of number one first.

Given the pragmatic importance of a view of reality, it is amazing how little conversation there is about the nature of reality, and how infrequently there are articles like the one in The New York Times that started this post. 

If one has no proof one way or the other about the nature of reality, what are the implications for optimal action and decision making?

Game theory dictates that one should adopt the position offering the greatest chance of success regardless of what reality turns out to be. In other words, if one had an optimizer running in one’s head, there would be a spreadsheet for every contemplated action in which the columns were the alternative possible natures of reality — Benevolent God, Accidental Materialism, One Self Living Many Lives at Once, Two Gods One Good One Evil, We Are All Gods in a Free-for-All, etc. The rows would be the alternative actions one could take in a given situation. Each cell in the table would contain a best guess about how well each action would fare in each type of universe. Calculations done instantaneously on the table would indicate the action with the greatest chances of serving one’s true long-term goals the best regardless of which type of universe we are living in.

This seems pretty far-fetched. Not only have people given up thinking about the largest questions, they have even given up self-observational/critical thinking about their own true long-term goals. This is the nature of the I Have No Time Culture.

Nevertheless it is probable that in the “gut” — the part of the intuition that manifests through the basal ganglia and holds a record of what has worked and not worked for us in the past (see last post) — something very similar to such a table is operating to provide realtime optimal recommendations in the way of gut feel.

Game theory in this case points to not foreclosing on any possible nature of reality. This puts the individual in the strongest position to be able to attune to intuitions, read minds or thought currents, and sense the future, because if one takes the more common assumption of Accidental Materialism (essentially a believed religion like any other), one tends to be shut off from the openness to having these useful experiences.

Now briefly to the other questions my friend posed:

Is time an illusion? I am betting that to the One Consciousness of which we are parts, everything is one instant, and the smaller minds of the slivers (us) have to break the whole down into a sequence in order to delectate it without being overwhelmed. That sequence is time.

Is there a universe, or multiverse? My bet: multiverse — otherwise one is assuming that we are naturally able to sense the entire universe through our instruments and senses — which seems to me to be just one more unwarranted assumption. Any processor capable of launching and sustaining the ornate universe we see is so awesomely powerful in terms of bits per second and other such objective information theory metrics that it is unreasonable to assume limits.

Finite or infinite? I’m with Heinlein on this — whatever is, must be finite, but a very large number so large that it might as well be infinity. Why “must” whatever “is” be “finite”? By definition of the word “is”. My definition is that something “is” if it is perceived by any consciousness. A consciousness alone in its own universe, since it perceives itself, is. A tree that falls in a forest in my view is, because the tree itself is conscious. So is a rock. Being made out of consciousness, everything must have some form of consciousness, no matter how rudimentary. We see evidence of “rudimentary”  or “essential” consciousness in the victims of dementia for example.

Will we ever know?

If your consciousness survives death, there will be a vast increase in your own certainty and knowledge as to which universe descriptions have to be taken off the table. However, those left behind will still be in the dark until they leave this life.

Or is that necessarily the case? Some individuals have unexplainable experiences of contacting the consciousness above, and this convinces them of the existence of an Overconsciousness. Often these are infused with the symbols of a specific religion and as a set these are called “religious experiences”. Others characterize people who have these experiences as having flipped their wigs. This is part of the reason why people don’t talk much about the largest questions any more.

That’s OK with me, I would just hope that people think to themselves about the largest questions some more. Returning to where we began, it matters because one’s view of the universe shapes one’s thoughts, feelings and actions.

Best to all,

Bill 

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Data Mining Your Own Intuition

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Volume 3, Issue 20

Intuition is when an idea (usually in the form of a feeling with cognitive elements embedded in it) pops into your head fully formed without being preceded by a step-by-step logical chain. These “cognitive elements” equate to meaning; that is, you know and comprehend the content of what it is you are saying to yourself. You know this without having heard words spelling it out and there is usually no image that you can see in your mind — although in heightened states of consciousness you may be able to see an image tied to this intuition.

Dan Goleman points out that at least some of these feelings — the ones we call “gut feelings” — are called that because we sense they are somehow coming from our gut, which is accurate because the part of the brain from which these intuitions come (the basal ganglia) is also associated with the nerve connections between the brain and the gastrointestinal system. These intuitions are really the net guidance stored from our experiences in the form of summary action implications that tell us the way we are going either worked or failed in the past.

These gut feelings are not the totality of the intuition but a subset of the intuition. Other intuitive packets come to us from other parts of the brain and some may not be directly traceable to our experiences in this life.

These ideas flash into our mind and usually flash right out again unless we have a strong and abiding mental intention to pay attention to and remember their content. Without such conscious intention, we probably won’t even notice these fleeting intuitions. They are a subtle guidance system that does not speak loudly in our mind.

By contrast, the ego voices that dominate most of our mind at most times are loud, strident and salient. These ego voices are the thoughts, inner dialog, and feelings that are linked to our base motivations. We are pulled around by our negative fears and anger reactions to events around us that we are attached to because we feel our livelihoods and social standing are at stake and at any moment something can be taken away from us. The ego is stressed out due to Acceleritis (Information Overload) on top of and thus exacerbating its own predisposition to worry. As a result of this inner competition for attention and the fact that most of our attention is at nearly all times cast outwards not inwards causes us to not even catch these intuitions in the first place.

If we do catch the event it is generally not heeded because of the jumble of subsequent louder thoughts giving us impulses to verbally fight, complain, argue, dismiss, or otherwise rain on whatever it was that somebody just said that may have triggered the intuition.

This is a testable hypothesis — you can experiment with the following to see whether it is the good advice I think it is, or not:

Start a program of paying attention to your own hunches and look for them to arise. When they do, put off the other business that seems so important to the ego and commonplace mind, and focus on what your intuition just told you. Make sure you remember the content by either writing it down or forming a keyword or key phrase or key image that will serve as a retrieval mechanism to bring back the whole content of the idea.

Then at an appropriate time in the proceedings taking place around you, if any, tentatively see if the application of that intuitive idea seems to contribute anything to the situation or not. Do this instead of — or at least before — offering any of the subsequent jumble of thoughts that came after the intuition to the company around you.

This is the reverse of the commonplace mind’s procedure, which is to speed past the intuitive event and come up with some other strategy for dealing with the present situation. Or even if we retain memory of the hunch our tendency is to edit and “improve” upon it, which often has the opposite effect. Stick with the way it appeared in the beginning — based on my experience, the odds favor this being the successful course of action.

On the other hand, you might see what the intuition is and realize that although triggered by the current situation, it really applies to another situation. You would then wait to tentatively apply the hunch until you are in the situation to which it refers. In this case also resist the tendency to edit that first flash — though using diplomatic language is always a good idea so long as you do not distort the original idea.

Sometimes the intuition gives us not the right answer but an answer that is wrong but which will lead to the right answer, one that might not be reached other than through this wrong answer. Socrates appeared to know this — he flowed with his intuitions yet by phrasing the ideas as questions he protected himself against error.

More on the complexity of intuition and its optimization in upcoming posts.

Happy Independence Day to all!

Bill 

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

How Do I Escape the Fear that I Am Growing Old?

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Volume 3, Issue 19

By realizing deep down, in a profound moment of inner silence and receptivity so it goes to the ground of your being, that we don’t know diddlysquat about what comes after this life.< /br>

I know that one has not normally spent the moment it takes to realize that the consciousness itself — you — are a jumble of information-processing programs, a biocomputer — implemented in a subtle energy field that human Earth consciousness collectively has yet to discover (gee, science hasn't discovered everything yet?! being the hidden assumption/block). So it is not impossible that consciousness can exist outside of a material body. If consciousness is an energy computer — a computer made out of energy — then why not.

Of course it is reductionist to say that consciousness is just an energy computer. It must be more than that in the sense that it is self-aware. The human race has not come close to understanding what it would really take to cross the great divide between an amazingly smart supercomputer made out of energy — a biocomputer that is alive and able to draw power from its interactions and sustain its life and reproduce, a living computer — to something that experiences self-awareness. The experience of self-awareness cannot be reduced to anything else, neither scientifically nor even philosophically, yet.

So let’s say one has this moment of epiphany that lasts, in which one accepts that the universe may be a sentient thing and that each of us is a little face looking out from it.

If so, the idea of a permanent death caused by a happenstance in this current stage set has no binding effect on the parent consciousness that is playing this role.

This at least opens the door to consider as a real possibility that death may not be the end. How does that change the fear of becoming old? Profoundly. To its roots. Who cares if the setup is that there is incipient slowdown and decay at the end of one of these rides? Small price to pay. One can only hope that not every ride ends with a downslope. In fact, why imagine that a downslope has to be inevitable even in this life? If one is still functioning effectively, why project to oneself the repeated imaginary thought feeling that one is going downhill, getting old. The repetition of any thought feeling draws to oneself the reality that one is imagining. We make it come true by dwelling on it. We expect to start to break down, so we start to break down. We spend more and more time discussing the ills of old age. Given the possibility that my theory is correct and everything is made of consciousness, it is inevitable that the body cell consciousnesses will hear the operating system tell them to get old.

Let’s tell our body cell consciousnesses something else. Let’s vow to ourselves that we will make the effort to keep getting better on the inside every day for as far as the ride lasts, whether or not this body is the last chariot we ride in.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.

Humanists May Not Be Using All of Their Powers

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Volume 3, Issue 16

Humanism is a wonderful thing. As a teenager I came to the conclusion that people’s decisions reflect not only pragmatism and ethics but also one’s aesthetics. Based on all three sets of criteria, pragmatic (getting the job done), ethical (doing so with least harm and most gain to all), and aesthetic (delectation of the beauty of the solution as it unfolds), I loved Humanism.

I was still an atheist and worshipper of science at that point. The realization at age 12 that “I am God and so is everybody else” was still an unassimilated revelation in my mind, not integrated with everything else in there. (The word “God” turns a surprising number of people off and so I typically say “Universe” instead.) I had experienced the Conscious Universe but could not explain it logically to myself. Humanism was therefore to me the highest philosophy on the planet. I still love Humanism, but now see that the Conscious Universe perspective gives me more ability to achieve the aims of Humanism.

With the Conscious Universe, one is open to get creative solution ideas from events around oneself that would have no special meaning to a Humanist not open to the Conscious Universe. It is as if the Universe is trying to clue you into something. It goes right past you unless you are open to the possibility. I call this Noia, the suspicion that the universe is out to benefit you. This word popped into my head in the mid-70s and I’ve been using it ever since. In 2005 Rob Brezsny came out with a book Pronoia about the same idea.

Openness to the Noia-type event reveals that synchronicity is actually happening a heck of a lot more to each of us that we notice in our pre-Noia state. Noia is not the totality of why the Conscious Universe tends to lift time spent in Flow more than Humanism does. Noia is a subset of the use of intuition. Intuition is actually ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Carl Jung listed intuition as one of the four functions of consciousness (intellect, feelings, and perception being the other three). To science, intuition is the sudden synthesis of an idea in our mind without the intervening steps that intellect would take, and as such the scientific definition does not link intuition to ESP. However, my sense is that the continuum of intuition starts at the lower end in the subconscious/autonomic mind simply putting ideas together for us, and moves up into drawing information from outside the local mind we call our own. The upper end of intuition is blocked if one’s worldview does not allow for it, and this is why the Conscious Universe is a useful theory linked to decision making.

Again, the Conscious Universe is put forth not only as a theory explaining the world including consciousness, the paranormal and Quantum Mechanics, but mainly as a useful lens for staying observant of second-to-second experience. Unlike religion there is no command to believe based on faith or authority or tradition. Instead the idea is to keep an open mind and not to lock oneself into Material Accidentalism, because if the Universe is Conscious (which, contrary to popular belief, Science has not ruled out) one is limiting one’s powers unnecessarily by taking a fixed action stance based on what turns out to be, ironically, faith in an anti-religion religion. Some have dubbed this anti-religion “scientism”, the layman’s mistaken belief that science has ruled out the possibility of an intelligence behind the universe (I usually refer to this as Materialist Accidentalism) — which by definition is a faith-based belief since there is no proof for its position.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.