Just read what I thought was an extremely interesting article that poses the following question: Or even just discuss the question

Lets advance to a point of time where we know everything there is to know about the intricate circuitry and functioning of the human brain. With this knowledge, it would be possible for a neuroscientist to isolate your brain in a vat of nutrients and keep it alive and healthy indefinitely.
Utilizing thousands of electrodes and appropriate patterns of electrical stimulation, the scientist makes your brain think and feel that it's experiencing actual life events. The simulation is perfect and includes a sense of time and planning for the future. The brain doesn't know that its experiences, its entire life, are not real.

Further assume that the scientist can make your brain "think" and experience being a combination of Einstein, Mark Spitz, Bill Gates, Hugh Heffner, and Gandhi, while at the same time preserving your own deeply personal memories and identity (there's nothing in contemporary brain science that forbids such a scenario). The mad neuroscientist then gives you a choice. You can either be this incredible, deliriously happy being floating forever in the vat or be your real self, more or less like you are now (for the sake of argument we will further assume that you are basically a happy and contended person, not a starving pheasant).

Which of the two would you pick?


For the full article:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html


Wayne

*Chews on a nice juicy steak while surrounded by beautiful half naked women holding up questions from world leaders about the truth of the universe and ethics.*

Ignorance, is bliss.

So it's back to the Red Pill or the Blue Pill again then?

John

Life is simply about the survival of self-replicating instructions for self-replication

So it's back to the Red Pill or the Blue Pill again then?

John

If your sorting for similarities then maybe...

Consider the following thought experiment that used to be a favorite of philosophers (it was also the basis for the recent Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix):

So i'll rephrase, which one would you swallow?

Wayne

MrDigital wrote:

If your sorting for similarities then maybe...



So i'll rephrase, which one would you swallow?

Wayne

Would any NLP'er ever take the Blue Pill?

John

When you have only two pennies left in the world,
buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other

Depends if they had read the full article and weighed up the pro's n Cons

MrDigital wrote:

Depends if they had read the full article and weighed up the pro's n Cons

Who would do such a thing?

John

Christmas is the one time of year when people of
all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ

MrDigital wrote:

Just read what I thought was an extremely interesting article that poses the following question:

This idea has been around for almost 2500 years, when Zhuangzi said something along the lines of, "As I slept, I dreamed I was a butterfly. When I awoke, I did not know whether I was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or I was a butterfly dreaming of being a man."

The purpose of a koan is not to answer the question, because the question is unanswerable.

Seems like I'm a bit behind the times then...

Time for my favorite EDIT button and based on previous feedback...

Anyone watched the new movie that has stunning effects and is full of examples of NLP apps (for training purposes) like parts integration/Conscious/unconscious/rapport with animals etc?

If so i'll change the Original Post from VAT to ...

AVATAR or the REAL YOU...

Wayne

Wayne,

That is a fascinating post. I have spent quite a long time over the last few days playing with this idea in my head and I am finding it very thought provoking. Most prominent for me is a question of,

If you can have anything (or at least believe you have anything as would be the case in the vat!) what would you ask for?

It would be pointless for the brain to ask for more money, a better job or any material good as it would have no actual benefit, only a percieved feel good factor which of course is a useless request for a jar bound brain. Anyway, if the brain wants it, consider it done.

So ...

Brain ... I'd like the feeling of great sex.

(operator tinkers the output of the computer controlling your brains input- send button pressed...)

Brain ... Great! Can you double that feeling?

(operator reformats cell C4 to become C4*2)

Brain .. Great! mmm, what next? can you give me .... ummm.... er.. the feeling that if every wish I ever made came true, give me the belief that I never experienced and pain or loss, give me the belief that everyone is happy and healthy....

(operator .. unzips a block of html code and applies it to your brains input circuit, 10 seconds later all your requests are done)

Brain.. umm now what?

It is a tough question, what do you ask for? Do we need the pain of life to be happy or does the pain lower our expectations so that we are content with the mediocre just because the remote chance of pain coming back is too bad to tempt?

Is it possible for the human brain to feel contented?

Wayne, this dilema you set has made me think, do we set goals that we cannot achieve just to give us the impression we are moving forward when the reality on a daily basis we are just justifying why we are not happy today and why we are doing nothing about it?

Thanks,

Matt

Redsimo wrote:

Do we need the pain of life to be happy or does the pain lower our expectations so that we are content with the mediocre just because the remote chance of pain coming back is too bad to tempt?

The short answer is "We need the pain."

Our nervous systems can habituate to anything. If we maintain a state of extreme bliss all the time, we lose the ability to experience it as extreme bliss.

Then we'd only NEED pain if we NEED to experience bliss.


Brain.. umm now what?

Me: Continue!

simpcore wrote:

surrounded by beautiful half naked women

"Whatever you do, don't do it halfway." - Bob Beamon

We're already in a vat, or at any rate something analagous to one, since we interact not with the 'real' world but that model of it created by our neurology. And we have the potential to achieve the greatness of Leonardo, Einstein etc through our heritage and bootstrapping.

simpcore wrote:

Then we'd only NEED pain if we NEED to experience bliss.

Point taken. And if you WANT to experience bliss?

For some reason, I'm reminded of verse 20 of the Tao Te Ching.

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

"Whatever you do, don't do it halfway." - Bob Beamon

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short. ~Confucius, Analects

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

Point taken. And if you WANT to experience bliss?

For some reason, I'm reminded of verse 20 of the Tao Te Ching.

Indeed.

Everything in moderation, including moderation. ~Author Unknown

simpcore wrote:

Everything in moderation, including moderation. ~Author Unknown

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in church was to be careful what you pray for... that God doesn't grant wishes, but provides known-good solutions.

If you pray for compassion, God sends you suffering, because that's how compassion is developed. If you pray for wisdom, God sends you lots of difficult decisions, because that's how wisdom is developed. If you pray for wealth, God sends you lots of hard work, because that's how wealth is developed.

Can you tell I was raised Southern Baptist? Viktor Frankl didn't invent the idea of giving meaning to pain; he just introduced it to therapists.

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

The short answer is "We need the pain."

Our nervous systems can habituate to anything. If we maintain a state of extreme bliss all the time, we lose the ability to experience it as extreme bliss.

hah bravo.


yeah, It seems like the question is a little ridiculous, but if it wasn't, and it would be possible to escape into a world of bliss for ever, I think it would be a spiritual question.

I really have no idea why my body is wired the way it is, but when I look around me, i see that human values, beliefs, etc, seem to be becoming more complex over time. we could refer to this process as creating new "structures in consciousness".. i think that these structures are important. my body is really just a tool for that... at least that's how i see the world lately. to me, It doesn't matter what body i'm in -- as long as I can find new truth and share it with other human beings, so that those ideas become real and practical..

that's why I'm here. If i can do that, I don't care what body I'm in... as long as I can continue to embrace a wider and wider truth, including as much as i possibly can.

this of course is all presupposing that i'm IN a body, of course, and that i'm not the universe just building consciousness structures through a body that has an ego that thinks it's seperate.

but that's hippie bullshit, right? i guess i dont know yet.