Questioning Consciousness

[minime]

...love the silence.

What silence?

[Harvey]

WIRED

How Plants Secretly Talk to Each Other

Up in the northern Sierra Nevada, the ecologist Richard Karban is trying to learn an alien language. The sagebrush plants that dot these slopes speak to one another, using words no human knows. Karban, who teaches at the University of California, Davis, is listening in, and he’s beginning to understand what they say.

The evidence for plant communication is only a few decades old, but in that short time it has leapfrogged from electrifying discovery to decisive debunking to resurrection. Two studies published in 1983 demonstrated that willow trees, poplars and sugar maples can warn each other about insect attacks: Intact, undamaged trees near ones that are infested with hungry bugs begin pumping out bug-repelling chemicals to ward off attack. They somehow know what their neighbors are experiencing, and react to it. The mind-bending implication was that brainless trees could send, receive and interpret messages.

The first few “talking tree” papers quickly were shot down as statistically flawed or too artificial, irrelevant to the real-world war between plants and bugs. Research ground to a halt. But the science of plant communication is now staging a comeback. Rigorous, carefully controlled experiments are overcoming those early criticisms with repeated testing in labs, forests and fields. It’s now well established that when bugs chew leaves, plants respond by releasing volatile organic compounds into the air. By Karban’s last count, 40 out of 48 studies of plant communication confirm that other plants detect these airborne signals and ramp up their production of chemical weapons or other defense mechanisms in response. “The evidence that plants release volatiles when damaged by herbivores is as sure as something in science can be,” said Martin Heil, an ecologist at the Mexican research institute Cinvestav Irapuato. “The evidence that plants can somehow perceive these volatiles and respond with a defense response is also very good.”

One of the earliest Green Man images can be seen disgorging vegetation not through its mouth which is certainly suggestive, but through its nose. Is this the earliest symbolic recognition of the carbon cycle? It wouldn't be until the dawn of the 20th century that we would begin to consciously understand the complex chemical interactions between plant and animal life but we seem to have dreamt of it much earlier.

[jakell]

...My impressions are that it is not the uncertainty of the quantum world that is the issue, but that this uncertainty 'collapses' to definite states after a certain point is reached. In the above vid Stuart mentions that Penrose connects this with underlying Platonic values, but also that the waveform collapses** when we 'look' at things, and there we have the connection with consciousness. (most people are familiar with Schrodinger's cat by now I think)...

** jargon alert!

It says... "this video is not available". Wondering who that guy is.


ETA: A 'creative' search found a working version:



He uses the term 'underlying pattern', but that's not quite correct, it's more of an overlying pattern in this case, and the fundamental level is still unformed. This seems an important distinction to me as it means the 'pattern' is more towards our end of things rather than being some sort of absolute (which opens the door to religions, new-age type or older)

[backtoiam]

these links are exactly the same. same vid.

https://youtu.be/SjSHVDfXHQ4

[chump]

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11284 ... -vr-review

VIRTUAL REALITY
ALWAYS ALMOST HERE

For a long time, the hopes and dreams of many virtual reality fans could be summed up with two words: Oculus Rift. Helped by the rise of cheap smartphone displays, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey took a technology that most people considered a retro curiosity and convinced them that it could change the world. The Rift let you skydive without a parachute. It helped artists show the world through another person’s eyes. It simulated beheading. It put you in fictional settings that ranged from kaiju-fighting robots to Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment...

https://youtu.be/9bfBV-x0ftM
Published on Mar 28, 2016

After nearly four years, it’s time to see whether the Oculus Rift VR headset is still on the cutting edge of virtual reality.

[jakell]

This is a long video, but I'm posting it mainly because of David Chalmers' section at the beginning. He draws a good framework around the various and competing approaches to consciousness, including the Quantum theories of Hameroff et al which may cause some to think WTF? (W being 'why' here).

He makes a very good move in talking of the hard problem of consciousness, thereby encompassing both the materialist/computational models (easy) and subjective, experiential mysteries of qualia etc (the hard problems), and giving both equal credence, so they don't have to be exclusive.



Daniel Dennett seems not to favour the inclusive approach, and states that there is no hard problem I found him quite clear and likeable and I reckon his stuff is worth a look (even if he is just considering the 'easy' problems)

A drawback with this video is that it cuts out the slides used, and they get referred to a lot. It was possible to 'imagine' these with Chalmers and Dennett as their talks included the necessary detail. Hoffman's talk was also good (the beer bottle beetles for instance...1:30:45) but I foundered in the mathematical modelling section which needed the slides

[chump]

"Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move"

[chump]

https://youtu.be/VNKyG4C2VlA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3BHRY8R4qI



https://youtu.be/02XirJA4Bbg



https://youtu.be/EcdN-ufyVL0


https://youtu.be/4oAloasl-8M



https://youtu.be/LpFaspVzbTo



https://youtu.be/ji77UYMWLU4



https://youtu.be/245Fo5zMA6Y


What do these dancing dogs and gorillas have in common?

===================

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://gizmodo.com/new-time-slice-theor ... 1770950927

Our conscious perception of the world feels like a continuous and uninterrupted flow, but a new study suggests that it’s actually more like the frames of a movie reel running through a projector.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about consciousness and how it arises in the brain. Even though perception—such as vision and hearing—feels smooth and uninterrupted, neuroscientists aren’t entirely sure if it flows continuously like water through a tap or if it’s more like the aforementioned 24-frame-per-second movie reel.

A team of European researchers now say it’s more like the latter—but with a twist. Their new conceptual framework, published in PLOS Biology, suggests that we initially process incoming sensory information in an unconscious state, which then shifts to full perceptual awareness. And it all happens in blips, or “time slices,” lasting for as long as 400 millisecond intervals.

The new model, developed by Michael Herzog from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Frank Scharnowski from the University of Zurich, proposes a two-stage processing of sensory information. During the first phase, the brain processes specific features of an object, say, its color or shape. This scanning is done semi-continuously, but we humans are completely unaware that it’s happening. During this first phase, even changes to the object (like a change in its color or brightness) aren’t consciously perceived.

But then comes the second stage: the transference of the stimulus to actual conscious perception. During this stage, the brain renders the perceived features after the unconscious processing has been completed. We experience all this as qualia (i.e. subjective) conscious experience arising from sense perception. It’s like that moment when a polaroid film reveals its hidden details and we’re finally aware of what we’re looking at—except this process happens so fast that we’re oblivious to the “developing” phase.

“When unconscious processing is ‘completed,’” the researchers explained in the study, “all features are simultaneously rendered conscious at discrete moments in time, sometimes even hundreds of milliseconds after stimuli were presented.”

That means there’s a lag from when we first experience something, to when we’re actually aware of it. (This might actually explain the flash-lag illusion.) This entire two-stage process, from start to finish, can last up to 400 milliseconds—which is a long time from a psychological perspective.

“The reason is that the brain wants to give you the best, clearest information it can, and this demands a substantial amount of time,” Herzog said in a statement. “There is no advantage in making you aware of its unconscious processing, because that would be immensely confusing.”

Herzog and Scharnowski’s model suggests we’re not as conscious as we think we are. If they’re right, it means we’re unconscious for a significant portion of our waking life. But like the gaps between film slides, we’re unaware of these “black outs.”

The implication is that there’s no such thing as a continuous and immutable self nor is there an ever-present soul. Instead, our brains are constantly churning out snapshots of perception, which to us feel real and consistent. Combined with other aspects of cognition (like memory), it gives rise to self-awareness and the impression that we live in a coherent universe.

This new model only considers visual processing. Something very different may be happening in the brain when it processes other information, such as sound, touch, or smell. That said, the reasearch offers a more complete picture of brain functioning than what’s presented by advocates if the simplistic “continuous or discrete” view of human consciousness.

[tron]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0nlygb1Qfw[/youtube]

fiddlestix, i cant work in code......

[jakell]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0nlygb1Qfw[/youtube]

fiddlestix, i cant work in code......

Remove everything from the Youtube address except the 'S0nlygb1Qfw' bit.

I have no idea why this board needs this special Youtube function though, it actually makes for more work.

[Sounder]

Keep the stuff after the slash. I used to sing and play this a lot (because of the simple chords, and it being great for a non-singer.)

[jakell]

That song used to embarrass me because I was a drummer, and often used to end up playing the beat 'backwards' ie, putting the bass drum where the snare should be and vice versa.

I could never quite get to the bottom of why I did this and concluded that there was an 'illusion' in the chord rhythm that affected me more than others. I think it was about that time that I decided that smoking dope was for listening to music, and not so much for playing it.

The embarrassment came about because it's such a simple song, we're not talking about Neil Peart or Bill Bruford type stuff.

[chump]

tesla quote.jpg

"Earth is a realm, it is not a planet. It is not an object, therefore, it has no edge. Earth would be more easily defined as a system environment. Earth is also a machine, it is a Tesla coil. The sun and moon are powered wirelessly with the electromagnetic field (the Aether). This field also suspends the celestial spheres with electo-magnetic levitation. Electromag levitation disproves gravity because the only force you need to counter is the electromagnetic force, not gravity. The stars are attached to the FIRMAMENT." ~ Nikola Tesla

[zangtang]

well. now i don't quite know what to make of that !........

but i'm all for disproving gravity if you can er.....counter the electromag.