He really is but the jealousy from people unable to present a better alternative is upseting and I can understand his frustration. Tegmark's behaviour was awful

@Sir Feynman not the ultimate nature of reality - stuart is not saying that - he is saying consciousness is received through the microtubules via quantum entanglement or quantum physics and hence the brain allows consciousness to be activated within these tubles and the neurons..there is no evidence neurons produce consciousness. or indeed brain produces consciousness. this idea died a long time ago with the birth of quantum physics in science. as hammerof said - neurons and cells are incredibly complex but complexity does not equal consciousness.

Absolutely.

ALL information is encoded into the universe at it's most basic level. This information is what creates patterns on the microtubules. Some follow string theory. However Dr. Penrose believes that "spin" is the basic "element" of the universe. These spin elements form spin networks. The information is encoded at that level and contains or creates the laws of physics and mathematical laws and very likely other laws governing existence as well. Such as perhaps the laws of economics and spiritual laws. These other forces are a transport mechanism of this information to the microtubules. All of this information is there creating moments of proto-consciousness at each "collapse of the wave function" when isolated from decoherence due to entanglement with environmental "noise". The brain evolved in such a way as to take advantage of the information already present in the universe.

Felix Gorney So where does Dr. Penrose even get that from...? What information leads to that hypothesis?

Gray The fact that irreducible constants in nature, such as math, spin, mass, etc., are embedded in spacetime geometry, so are the platonic valyes of love, truth, consciousness, etc., are irreducible constants embedded in spacetime geometry, as well; so that even atheists are influenced by platonic values, even if they have to deny their existence because of their materialist beliefs.

Ruby Foxx, In some of Dr. Hameroffs other videos He reports of some patients dying in operation and when brought back they sometimes report memories of what loved ones said outside in waiting room. The question is how far does the conscious go,where does it go, and how long does it continue to exist. I hope this helps some, i have been studying these things a long time to understand likewise experiences throughout my lifetime. Review video and start at 23:14 HE answers quite well most of what is current theory.

Jack Pullen hi many thanks for your reply. Yes I have read much on NDE and bedside visions so I do believe that for a while we still maintain the sense of self, so it was more to do with the question you posed, "for how long does this sense of self and "I" last?" But I guess my question is unanswerable really as no-one has returned after crossing that far into *literal* death. Eg; People have been revived but not resurrected. I just wondered if there were any ideas or theories I suppose.

I can share some of my personal experience, around 18 a friend of mines father pasted in an accident about 5 or 6 miles away and the moment it happened i felt his conscious or soul pass through my body and i started to weep and told my friend something was wrong, before the phone call came. Another time in 1986 my brother past in an accident also and this was over 20 miles away. The point being that quantum entanglement does in fact continue outside the body, at least to me i am certain of it, i am waiting for science to catch up and they are at least to the point of it being theory now. Another site for info is Institute for Noeti...

Jack Pullen thank you, how wonderful an experience for you, to have personal evidence

At first, no it wasn't wonderful. I had to deal with the loss, then later it was eased by knowing that it was not an ending for them, just the end of their time here.

Paddy Theosophist After the Buddhist payed money the cashier returned no change, the Buddhist complained. How did the cashier respond? *Change cometh from within!*

Alex Azazel ha ha! LoL. very good, and so very true.

Zac6230 I puzzled over this same question for years. Eventually, after much investigation and philosophical exploration, I came to the conclusion that there must be only one mind. At your deepest level, you aren't just you. You are everyone. The ultimate Self in me is the same as the ultimate Self in you. The same being looks out through both of our sets of eyes. This mind inhabits all perspectives in all times. The reason we don't realize this is simply a matter of a failure to integrate information between the various perspectives. Consider split-brain surgery and its effects. It seems to result in something like two minds. But this is an illusion! Imagine a man with severe amnesia who can't hold anything in memory longer than a minute or so. Suppose that we put him in a room with a chalkboard. We show him things and he writes down what he observes on the chalkboard. If we ask him what he has seen, he consults the chalkboard and reports what he reads there. Now suppose we move him to another room, also with a chalkboard. Now, if we ask him what he has observed, he won't have access to any of the information about experiences he had in the first room. He is unable to carry information from room to room, and so doesn't remember being in the first room. All he knows that he has experienced is what is written on the board in front of him. And he is unable to coordinate things observed in one room with things observed in the other. If we give him a portable notebook, he can carry information back and forth. Or, if in each room, there is a TV screen showing an image from a camera in the other room of the chalkboard, he can coordinate information from both chalkboards. The corpus callosum in the brain is like this link. All strong information connections are like this. The fact that a split brain patient cannot integrate information between the hemispheres doesn't show that there are now two different minds any more than the amnesiac is two different people, one in each room. And the difference between separate people is just like that between the two hemispheres or the two rooms. I think that one mind is seeing through all of our eyes. But over here, in this brain, I don't have access to memories of being in your brain. In your brain, I don't have access to memories of being in this brain. So we make the mistake of thinking we are different minds. I think there is good reason to think that we are the same mind. For one thing, it is the only good way to answer your question. It also neatly solves the cosmic fine-tuning problem. Further, it solves the otherwise very puzzling binding problem in neuroscience. This idea also agrees with what many mystics and philosophers have come to realize. I could be wrong. But it is something to consider!

memetrader That cant be, no offence but Im not to ally sold on that idea, and I have heard it before. Could it be possible we have a soul? or is it possible that we had to exist, as in we had to exist due to the natural progression of the Universe, we were slated to exist?

Zac6230 Why do you think this idea wrong? Whatever the case, I do think it possible that we have a soul! And this could be the case even if at a deeper level, we are all one. But I do think that the fact that you find yourself being human should give you good reason to reject the standard scientific materialist perspective. If you are nothing but a collection of atoms, and it is really possible to BE a collection of atoms, of all the collections of atoms you could have been, how did you get so incredibly lucky to just happen to be a human brain? Nick Bostrom's Self-Sampling Assumption says that you should reason as though you are a typical case. If you really could be any three-pound hunk of matter, the odds against you finding yourself alive, much less human, are astronomical! Not only do you find yourself in an incredibly privileged position, but you are in just the right time in the history of the universe! What are the odds? If you just drew out of a hat some time and some identity as some hunk of matter, out of all the possible positions you might occupy, you are extremely unlikely to get a human perspective! But if it isn't possible to BE a hunk of matter, and the only sorts of perspectives it is possible to occupy are those of something like human souls, then it shouldn't be so surprising to find yourself being a human! The way I see it, regular old materialism makes the position I find myself in much, much too rare, surprising, and fortunate to believe that materialist worldview. Something is fishy about the privileged position we find ourselves in. If there is only one mind that experiences every possibly perspective, however, then there is no reason to be surprised at finding myself in this position. OR, if most of the physical world is not "inhabited" and experienced from a first-person perspective, then it might be that I am a fairly typical case of the sort of being it is possible to find yourself as. Consider an online role-playing game like World of Warcraft. You can only be an avatar of a certain kind. You can't find yourself as a rock or a tree. Maybe this world is like that. And maybe we aren't actually an arbitrarily-sized, finite collection of particles. That's another thing that is suspicious. If it is possible to actually BE a piece of matter, why just this much? Why not only a single elementary particle? Or why not a whole galaxy or the whole universe? There is no magical boundary around a human brain that somehow defines this much matter as something that will experience itself exclusively as that thing! How can you BE a collection of discrete things? And if you can be a collection, why only this much? What determines the extent of material that you are identical with? Somehow or another, I think our privileged perspective should lead us to suspect that we aren't mere dead matter that somehow, quite miraculously, finds itself temporarily conscious. It is one thing to hear another person express surprise at being human. From the third-person, objective perspective, you might say, "Of course you are you! What else could you be? A is A!" But from the first-person perspective, it is another matter entirely! Think of it like the lottery. Of course, someone wins! We shouldn't be surprised that someone in the world wins once in a while. That is highly likely! So we can rightly count on SOMEONE winning in the future. But we would be crazy if we were to expect that WE OURSELVES will be the one winning it! It is possible, but highly improbable. Similarly, it seems not so surprising, from the third-person perspective, that some rare hunks of matter in the universe find themselves as conscious human brains. But to actually find YOURSELF having won this cosmic lottery SHOULD be very surprising to you, just as finding yourself having won the lottery should surprise you! And the odds against being human are far, far greater than the odds against you winning the lottery! I think that a worldview that makes the position we find ourselves in so incredibly unlikely is probably the wrong worldview. One more likely to be true is one in which our perspective isn't very far from typical. And some of the NDE evidence out there, among other things, though largely anecdotal and hard to verify, is really rather suggestive of something like a soul that can survive bodily death. There are many other philosophical reasons that I have found to believe that materialism can't be true. So take heart! I think there is something really amazing going on with us that the materialists just don't recognize. Don't let them browbeat you into adopting their nihilistic worldview.

memetrader I just think its wrong, its not a bad guess but it doesn't sit well with me.So you dont think thee is an afterlife and why do you think materialism is not true?. The idea of a soul for whatever reason why seems to be the most logical to me. There has to be a mechanism that decides why you are you and when and not anyone else or in a different time. There could be an afterlife. but do we assume death is like before birth? what if it isn't?

Zac6230 "So you dont think thee is an afterlife" I am not sure where you got that idea. I did say I think it possible that we have something like the traditional idea of a soul. I mentioned NDEs. "why do you think materialism is not true?" There is no short way to answer that question! It would take writing a book to tell you why I think materialism can't be the correct position. But to make it as brief as possible, the reason is mainly the complete failure of psycho-physical reduction. "There has to be a mechanism that decides why you are you and when and not anyone else or in a different time." Does positing a soul solve this problem? This idea that there are a bunch of truly distinct entities that somehow get assigned to live certain lives seems problematic to me. I have a hard time articulating precisely why. For one thing, as Spinoza suggested, truly separate things could never interact. And if God created a soul that was truly separate from him, this makes God incomplete and limited in some way, which seems to violate the whole idea of God. And aren't you just deferring the problem of identity by positing a soul in this way? Why are you the particular soul you are? Is there something else, the soul of a soul, that explains that, and a soul of a soul of a soul that explains that? Your solution to the problem of why you are you leads you to an infinite regress. If there is only one Being ultimately, your problem just dissolves. It is everywhere and everyone. And it seems to me that at the ultimate level, there must be a Whole that is complete and so formless. This has to be the case physically and mentally. All form is just boundaries drawn within this Whole, making distinctions, something like G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form. The Whole in some sense might divide itself, reflect itself, or somehow insert itself into itself, which gives rise to a self/other distinction. Notice that every single thing you can say about the form of anything has to do with how it is related to other things. And this includes you. Absolutely everything, taken together, would basically be nothing. All oppositions would cancel. Do you know that even in physics, it is recognized that there are these deep symmetries and that opposites cancel? Remember the law of conservation of mass/energy? How much mass/energy is there that is being conserved? It is ZERO. See Wikipedia article on "Zero-energy universe". But all this difference and limitation of the Whole is probably just an illusion caused by having a limited view of the Whole. At the level of the Whole itself, there never is any distinction. The Whole isn't related to anything, as there is nothing else. It is everything. Notice that form can be captured by number. But if you sum all magnitudes, what do you get? You get zero! All numbers from negative infinity to positive infinity added together gives zero. It is as if everything is contained in this formless "nothingness". To get a particular magnitude, you have to take a limited part of this nothingness. You have to draw a boundary in it. Consider also that in set theory, you can derive all the numbers from the empty set. And all conscious experience is of distinctions. Blind people don't see black. They see nothing. You should read about Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory. His descriptions of how perception is built up by integrating different distinctions is very interesting. It is clear that prior to all distinctions, experience is just formless. What do you see through the back of your head? Blackness? No. Formlessness. This is your essential nature. You are rooted in it. Point toward your own eyes, at yourself, and ask what it is that is looking out. What is it that experiences the body? What is it that is prior to all thought, that is having the thoughts? What is it like, that being that is witnessing everything? In what is all this experience taking place? Isn't it just emptiness? I suspect that what you find at the ground of your being, your innermost essence, is nothing other than the formless Whole itself. Looking out, you find relation and partiality. Looking in all the way to the bottom of your experience, you find your ground, which is complete formlessness. And it cannot be seen. It isn't an object. Anything that can be observed isn't It. Ultimately, you aren't this body. If there is a soul, which would be kind of another sheath, or a subtle body, it too must not be what you ultimately are. All the distinctions and relations that make up its form have to be defined as divisions in something more basic and universal and ultimate. Consider that to be soul A and not soul B is such a distinction. I am A and NOT B. And B is B and NOT A. This is a boundary drawn in emptiness. And that part of the Whole that is on the A side of the boundary experiences A as itself and B as other. The reverse is true for B. Perspective and structured experience arises when you are falsely identified with a limited part of the Whole. Prior to all distinctions, there is no self or other. All apparent form arises in a way described by some as dependent origination or interdependent co-arising. No distinct thing has positive self-existence. And when you have the identity of a limited part of this whole, what is on the other side of that self/other boundary is EVERYTHING ELSE. Every way in which you are incomplete is over there on the other side of the boundary. Dissolve the boundary and you are complete. There is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. And this is exactly the condition you are always already in at the foundation. It is the background of all of your partial, perspectival experience. It might well be that after death, there is some continuation of your particular identity. The information that comprises your particular perspective might be preserved somehow. And it might remain related to other such beings. And it might well, in some sense, last "forever". But if this is the case, this still cannot be your ultimate nature. It is God playing a big game of finger puppets with himself! ;) And there might be a way to be fully aware of your true foundational identity while retaining that partial perspective and living in some sense in communion with others while recognizing that you share your essential Being with them. This might be the kind of love and compassion and agape that many mystics talk about. Love is when the well-being of another is essential to your own. But what if you recognize that you and all others are actually the same being? Wouldn't you feel united with them? Would you harm anyone? Would you make divisions of us versus them? Some people consider this kind of idea as blasphemous, that one is claiming to be God. This results from a misunderstanding. It isn't that John Doe is God. It is that what is living as John Doe and everyone else is God. That God-identity is prior to and completely transcends John Doe. No limited form like that of a human body-mind is God. But all forms are in God. Do you see what I mean? "For in Him we live and move and have our being." And of course, using words like Him and God are incredibly misleading. We just don't have a good language to talk about this stuff. And really, when talking about what is ultimate, all words necessarily fail, as all words indicate partiality.

how the fuck is that possible

nothing is definitely something, just not anything in particular ;)

tonyfalca and?

nothing is everything and everything is nothing

tonyfalca gah gah gah

Jo Ann Freeboom It's more that Roger Penrose, the most brilliant scientist alive, postulated his theory...but I definitely understand the fear of woo science. Helpful with the microtubles, less with convincing the quantum activity was predicted by models, had no other purpose than if orch or was an underlying feature, so... Yeah.

+Dylaneggs No. A part of your mindstuff goes on...

+nimim. Marko Mikkilä Mindstuff? Ok, I'll keep that in mind on my deathbed.

Keep it in your mindstuff.

Dylaneggs The information (memory) is not lost because it's embedded in the geometry of spacetime.

+Roy S phew.

Lmao he does

why say that?

Zac6230 LOGIC

John Gates and?

I said including mind in the theory of reality is not LOGICAL.That's it.I don't need to hear anymore.

+Devil's Advocate if mind is not real, why is the so called reality real then, just because it's called 'reality'?