Hallucination

[David Bailey]

Excuse me butting in on the cat reference. For me, while cats are cold-blooded killers who get away with murder, so that definitely puts them on the Dark Side, there must be some reason why they were revered by the Egyptians.

We like cats, but I have a friend who takes exactly your view - he hates them! I have often tried to reconcile this in my head.

I suppose some people do much the same - think of bull fighters - and anyway, producing meat (and dairy products) involves cruelty that may last a lot longer than the time it takes for a cat to dispatch a mouse. Even vegetarians aren't guilt free - I mean those vegetables need land to be cleared with little concern about the animals that have made their homes there.

Cats have an outdoors personality, and an indoors personality, they are amusing and individual. I like the fact that although they are pets, they have a life of their own, and are free to clear off and leave us at any time if they wish!

David

 

[David Bailey]

I like Hoffman's metaphor about our sensory experience being like icons on a computer screen. The linked article goes over my head quite a bit. I watched one of his videos years ago; may be time for me to revisit his ideas.

Sorry, I grabbed a Hoffman link rather carelessly, and that particular link is on my "to read" list - it does get difficult. I suspect a lot of his ideas could be expressed in a simpler way, but he works with a pure mathematician!

He takes evolution by natural selection as a given, and as you may have noticed, I don't, so I see his ideas as:

1) Illustrating a totally different way in which materialist ideas break down.

2) As a reductio ad absurdum argument that proves that evolution by natural selection cannot be correct.

David

 

[Dan_LastName]

Sorry, I grabbed a Hoffman link rather carelessly, and that particular link is on my "to read" list - it does get difficult. I suspect a lot of his ideas could be expressed in a simpler way, but he works with a pure mathematician!

He takes evolution by natural selection as a given, and as you may have noticed, I don't, so I see his ideas as:

1) Illustrating a totally different way in which materialist ideas break down.

2) As a reductio ad absurdum argument that proves that evolution by natural selection cannot be correct.

David

I had a chance to brush up slightly more in-depth with his ideas. I guess he's proposing some kind of network of consciousness agents that basically use space/time and the physical universe as a venue for interacting with each other?

Not sure if I have that right .... I'd be interested to hear more about what you think of that idea.

I like that he says he doesn't know what objective reality is, beyond our sensory experience. It kinda sorta jibes with some models I like to play around ... At the very least, it's fun to think about some "objective reality" that's significantly different than what we experience from day to day. In my mind at least, his way of articulating that piece takes some of the spiritual gloss off of the idea of other realms, which I rather appreciate. It's a pleasing idea to think that some other realm may actually be "objective reality" instead of thinking of some other realm being some ethereal "woo woo" version of this realm .... That's not to say that I agree with what he's saying, but they are fun and compelling ideas. There's still some slipperiness to it. I see he's a got a book coming out in August. I will have to keep an eye out for it. Hopefully it's readable.