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Synchronized Virtual Reality Heartbeat Triggers Out-of-Body Experiences
Zothecula writes "New research demonstrates that triggering an out-of-body experience (OBE) could be as simple as getting a person to watch a video of themselves with their heartbeat projected onto it. According to the study, it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body and manipulate a person's self-consciousness by externalizing the body's internal rhythms. The findings could lead to new treatments for people with perceptual disorders such as anorexia and could also help dieters too."
Even when out-of-body, you can't escape the machine!
How about a solution to the hassle of an "In-My-Body-Experience" (IMBE) ? Trick my mind into thinking I am not having a prostate exam - that's the kind of medical research I'm interested in.
That's not an out-of-body experience.
Required reading for internet skeptics
cant believe is
So, when does this technique get declared illegal, like all drug-based methods of altering mental states (other than alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine)?
And the worms ate into his brain.
The most realistic Sim experience ever!
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body
I'll go ahead and read this as "consciousness is designed to remain functional with the associated body being arbitrary".
Sounds like direct intentional design of a functional, physically-reassignable (hence "resurrectable") soul to me.
Someone enlighten me on why this, being merely a "trick", would have evolutionary advantage such that all the neurological complexity required to remap perceptions to arbitrary point in space would naturally "emerge".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm putting this out there:
Tactile suit that stimulates you in various points, synchronised to the vision of someone else being stimulated in the same way.
Who is that someone? Someone of the opposite gender? A furry animal? Who knows?
Psychologist advised.
I see discoveries about how easy the mind is susceptible to manipulation as useful to certain three-letter government agencies.
Rhythmic group interaction.
Any tennis or squash player knows that you treat the racquet as an extension of your body. Likewise a musician treats the instrument as an extension of their body and that as an extension of their mind and emotions. Feeling one with your instrument is of great benefit to playing, and it is a similar 'illusion'.
A common misperception, according to what is taught in classical disciplines that involve serious mind training, like raja yoga or taiji, is that we are not our bodies, nor is our mind and consciousness really seated in our heads. After significant self-development, that illusion eventually dissipates.
What we perceive to be our body is that part of reality that appears to be strongly correlated to our minds. Thus it is easy to mistake ourselves to be our bodies, and our minds for our brains.
The problem with much of this research is that the researchers have not developed a detailed understanding of their own mind before trying to experimentally analyse someone else's. This is akin to trying to study an advanced maths paper when you haven't learned maths past high school level: the result is naive researchers whose qualifications and professional position give an illusion of greater research competence than they have.
John_Chalisque
Just putting this out there:
Wearing a tactile suit that stimulates you in certain points. Watching with VR goggles someone else being stimulated in exactly the same way.
Who is that someone? Someone of the opposite gender? A furry animal? Who knows? You can now feel exactly how you imagine it is felt for someone else.
Psychologist advised.
Not certain your meaning here, but I'm not arguing there are no other ways to induce the phenomenon. I'm asking why the capacity for the phenomenon came to exist in the first place.
You're a few dozen gnomish-underpants class causal steps between group pastimes and the DNA creating brain structure, if that's what you intended to "explain".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
There's another application that is being overlooked: Porn videos. Now you can have an "in another body" experience. -_- And to think, we thought we'd have to wait for holodecks....
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Not every trait or implication of traits that we have is based on some evolutionary advantage. Some of it is simply accidental.
Technoli
Perhaps because the easiest way to have accurate perceptions using a relatively common set of software for all sorts of bodies (including the varying one I carry with me) is to have it so flexible as to remap arbitrarilyish.
And because it doesn't happen in normal existence, it isn't a flaw?
And the idea that this would happen accidentally is absurd.
Perhaps you can whip up a quick program that will randomly overwrite bytes on your Windows OS such that it will interact with you as if it is the Commodore 64 sitting in the corner.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
it's easy to trick the mind into thinking it belongs to an external body
I'll go ahead and read this as "consciousness is designed to remain functional with the associated body being arbitrary".
Sounds like direct intentional design of a functional, physically-reassignable (hence "resurrectable") soul to me.
Someone enlighten me on why this, being merely a "trick", would have evolutionary advantage such that all the neurological complexity required to remap perceptions to arbitrary point in space would naturally "emerge".
Supposing that a soul-like thing exists and it is the seat of consciousness, then the evolutionary advantage is that you'd be lying down unconscious if you didn't have one. It's much too easy to get eaten that way. So evolution went with souls (or whatever we might call them, supposing they exist).
I could say it's for attracting aliens for mating purposes and it would still be more realistic that your soul theory.
The brain has the ability to remap and reroute it's perception of itself. This is useful if you ever loose a leg or arm, your brain can think of your body differently to get past it. Sometimes this does not work correctly (phantom limb pain). There have also been some attempts in robotics to have the robot recalculate the best form of movement through simulation when one of its legs is damaged.
Your brain also has the ability to imagine future scenarios, even impossible ones. Some people have had dreams where they were flying of their own power. There is not really any biological cause that I know of that could cause you to fly, sometimes the brain just has a good imagination.
Easiest way were it designed, yes.
Definitely not likely as an adaptive selected trait where the situation literally never comes up in a biology-only context.
(Slashdot's new allowed-posts-per-time-unit is ludicrous. It is now directly impossible to have a meaningful thread discussion. Since I can't continue, I won't.)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'll go ahead and read this as "consciousness is designed to remain functional with the associated body being arbitrary".
i'll go ahead and read this as "i'm desperately seeking any evidence that the man in the sky isn't a fairy tale."
This is just like an optical illusion, just a consequence of how our 'hardware' processes information. One hypothesis of how our conscious minds emerge is based on the constance of our internal organs (proprioception), which perceptually change much less than our body's exterior (visual and somatosensory perception) while we age.
My take on this: when you sync your proprioception with your visual perception, you allow the exchange of properties (in this case location) between the two entities (self and external object). Just like it happens when you look at phantom limbs as reflections of real ones on a mirror, and you can actually feel the phantom.
For more on these, look for a TED talk by Dr. Antonio Damasio (about consciousness) and Dr. Ramachandran (phantom limbs).
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
We aren't talking about anything nearly that complex, and you know it.
In order to cause an OOBE, all it has to do is cause part of your brain to stop working properly, at least temporarily.
Technoli
Perhaps it was just easier for the nature to do it that way, instead of introducing the concept of identity integrated into the body? Also, notice that our bodies keep changing during the life. We get mature, then grow older, some of us get multilated or something. It could just be the simplest way to implement the tolerance for the changes. I see nothing spiritual there.
So a neurological mass can understand and interact with arbitrary physiology? That seems like a HUGE evolutionary advantage to me. I wouldn't be able to type on a keyboard if I couldn't form a link between language and key presses, which is about as arbitrary as it gets.
You're coming at this from the wrong side. You're assuming this exists to allow a consciousness to be detached from a physical body. I'd say it's more likely that this allows a consciousness to form, to emerge, from any and all 'proper' physical bodies.
In other words, the development of a foetus just needs to create the physical neurons in the brain. Conscience will then emerge from the firing neurons on its own. And because it wasn't tied down to the actual physical body to begin with, some leeway remains to project it outside.
You're asking how we evolved from a consciousness tied to a body to one that isn't. What proof do you have that consciousness was ever tied to a body to start with?
That this by happenstance would result in a particular, consistent, complex perceptual result is, again, absurd.
Try shorting out a half dozen PC's and see if they all spontaneously generate Doom 5 for you because of it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This news item and the gizmag.com link both confuse the study's method of tricking the body into being confused about where the body is and the near-death experience of being outside the body completely.
As you grow your body changes, in some species drastically. If the "consciousness" were to freak out and stop functioning when this happened you would most probably die (or be eaten (which ever comes first)) so the mind evolves to cope and the organism lives on. No big mystery really (well... all life is, but you know what I mean).
You have a particular interpretation of the phenomenon, understood. You are still not specifying a rationale of how this would come to be, given your premises.
And, "emerge" is not a causal explanation, regardless of how frequently it used to handwave such without being such.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm unclear from the article whether there was a control group that was exposed to the same VR environment without a projected heart beat indicator and/or whether the researchers tried projecting the heart beat indicator on one or more images that were not the user's own image.
I also didn't see any indication this was related to an article being published in a pier review journal, which essentially just makes it complete hearsay. On the way home I think I'll ask the sasquatch who lives next to the bike trail whether he thinks claims like this deserve journalistic coverage.
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
I replied to the wrong post, this should be a reply to you.
But I'll add to it.
Sounds like direct intentional design of a functional, physically-reassignable (hence "resurrectable") soul to me.
It would be nice if that was true, but actually all the evidence we have so far is to the opposite of that. Brain disorders such as Alzheimer's (and dementia in general), Parkinson's, as well as injuries leading to comas, locked-in syndrome, etc., all show that our consciousness depends directly on our body. Supposing you had something that was not body-bound, you would expect that knowledge (memories) could be rerouted, but that doesn't happen. When you injure one part of your brain, that information is forever lost.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
More likely, body identity is a useful evolutionary trait while mis-identifying not-self as self is a disadvantage. Much like experiments with genetic algorithms, the problem was solved by drunkard's walk in an off beat (to us) manner curiously specific to the situation at hand.
It just happens that we have found a flaw in the identification of self that can be exploited to create the sensation of floating outside of self. If this came uop often in our lives AND if it created an evolutionary disadvantage (seems unlikely), we would eventually evolve to not be fooled.
You assume it is forever lost, that is. In fact information is never destroyed (well, there's a debate regarding black holes...).
I see no reason not to suppose that like you "could" throw a fastball but cannot because your arm is broken, you "could" think with your highest level capacity, but cannot because of your neurons.
I see no real barrier to why the consciousness, running on "new hardware", could not be reconstructed in full. If there is data redundancy, or the equivalent of "metaphysical backups" (something of an assumed stipulation given my argument), it seems little different from standard means of data recovery.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
More fundamentally, the process of growing up is a constant adjustment for changing anatomy. Not being able to make that adjustment would result in an incredibly clumsy adult.
I think you have the question backwards. The "trick" is that billions of cells somehow perceive themselves as a unitary thing in the first place. Just as with vision, identifying optical illusions reveals the limitations of the trick, but subjecting us to conditions that were rare or unimportant to survival in a natural environment.
Stop trying to compare this with specific programs being generated randomly. The analogy is completely non-applicable.
Technoli
You are still not specifying a rationale of how this would come to be, given your premises.
It would take a lot of time to explain this, that's the reason I pointed you to the TED talks. But if you want I may give you the links, so you don't have to search for the videos.
And, "emerge" is not a causal explanation, regardless of how frequently it used to handwave such without being such.
That's something orthogonal to the discussion at hand. We don't need to know the causes of something to observe that it indeed happens.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Feel free. But as you're lying to yourself, do note that I have nowhere stated this is my only argument or experience on the matter--and it isn't.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm the AC GP here.
I would think that a flexible self tuning system is more likely to result from natural selection than a perfectly programmed system to match the actual body rigidly.
I think AI and robotics research goes in that direction for the same reason. There's no reason that this "bug" as a side-effect would be problematic, so the more rigid (and therefore complex system, with extra rules to how it operates) is not selected for.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You mean we are just avatars, and we're stuck inside until it dies?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I want an app for that. Please get right on it.
We have bluetooth heart-rate monitors, so it shouldn't be all that hard.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Suppose you have a file "X" in a hard disk, then you ''cat /dev/random >X; rm -f X', then you hammer the disk, and throw it into a volcano. I guess you will not be able to retrieve the information from that hard disk anymore.
But you say that is not the case for the mind, because supposedly we have this "metaphysical backup", which you call soul, that keeps all the information, even if the medium (body) is damaged. If that was the case, you would be able to consciously reroute information through other ways. For instance, if you get a brain damage specifically and only on the naming areas, that shouldn't be a problem, right? You still have that information on your "meta-backup"! You should still be able to route that information to your motor areas, to vocalize it or write it down.
Only problem is it never happened. Or perhaps I'm just not aware of it, could you point me to a credible instance of that happening?
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
And the idea that this would happen accidentally is absurd.
...
In order to make that statement you'd have to know exactly how the phenomenom works.
Do you?
An explanation is fairly easy: rapid recovery from brain damage and use of redundant signalling pathways during impairment.
Not that I personally ascribe to the camp who considers an idea of a "soul" to be somehow unscientific, for some definitions of the term, but this is quite frameable as an evolutionary advantage. Also note that not all features of an evolved being necessarily have to be advantageous because random crap can persist in a genome for quite some time before a advantageous trait comes along that needs that particular peice of genomic real-estate.
Someone had to do it.
"In fact information is never destroyed"
You are thinking about energy, energy is never lost just changed. Sure information is stored in energy but that energy changes and so does the information that is stored in it... It turns to crap or as we physicist like to call it heat.
Not at all. The same 3-dimensional, interactive, perceptually-complete experience is reported under vastly different circumstances of death, affecting the brain in literally random forms of damage. Cancers, car accidents, asphyxiation, you name it.
The odds, again, if you don't like the PC analogy, is the odds of this--this in its complexity, this in its specificity--occurring after killing random sections of the brain with radiation. It's implausible that this in particular, a phenomenon happening to correlate so uncomfortably for you with certain worldviews--would happen as it does without intentional design.
What one would expect during generic "brain failure", is a completely random set of sensations and cognitive inhibition--much like an LSD trip. That isn't what is reported, and quantified in peer-reviewed studies, such as The Lancet's.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
There is not really any biological cause that I know of that could cause you to fly, sometimes the brain just has a good imagination.
Brains process information. Minds imagine and create ideas.
Information is never destroyed? How can you type this matter-of-fact statement with no supporting evidence whatsoever?
Let's just assume that what you've said is true, even though I think it's an obvious load of horse shit.
A building is constructed. The only existing plans for the building are stored inside the building itself. The only people who knew how to make the building live and work and spend all day inside the building.
Now, I'm not sure what arbitrary definition of "information" you're using to make your assumption that it can't be destroyed seem reasonable, but I'm just going to state that the building itself is an embodiment of information.
An earthquake swallows the entire building, followed by a gigantic meteorite crashing into what is left of the original site, followed by a flood, followed by a volcano that incinerates what pieces of left.
Nobody survived. Not a single shred of the building survived. The plans to construct it were also lost. The race of sentient beings who built it were all killed.
Are you seriously arguing that no information was destroyed? In the sense that a building could be reconstructed after knowledge of how to construct it was regained by some species capable of learning and building, then yes, no "information" is destroyed, but at that point you've defined "information" as something so general that it's useless to describe anything. You might as well have just gone to the "goddidit" argument immediately and credit it with the creation of all that is, will, or could ever be.
If you look at a mirror you know it's you because it reacts in the same way as you do when you move. This sounds nothing more than an advanced mirror. It seems the body on a subconscious level notices the reflection's heart beat and that's one way you brain thinks it's you. Neat. I'm really going to hate when advertisers start using this. It isn't hard to detect heat beats using a standard web cam.
that the experience is real. Doesn't mean that you are actually out of your body. (There's a similar effect with lucid dreaming -- the experience itself is very real, but it's a product of your brain.)
HAND.
A simpler question, if the brain is 100% responsible for all our actions, perceiving and responding to the environment, then why are we sentient? The brain can process the information that it is being chased by a bear, and process that moving the limbs to run and climb a tree is a strategy for survival. What advantage does experiencing any of this situation give? What's the point of sentience? Sentience is 100% redundant. Yet we are sentient. I have no idea why that is.
here is a nice Youtube like for your viewing pleasure.
Makes me think of the first "the Thing" movie.
Then you're reading it wrong.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It would be nice if that was true, but actually all the evidence we have so far is to the opposite of that. Brain disorders such as Alzheimer's (and dementia in general), Parkinson's, as well as injuries leading to comas, locked-in syndrome, etc., all show that our consciousness depends directly on our body.
This isn't actually true either. All the evidence we have (all the examples you gave) show that our body depends directly on our consciousness. There is no evidence to suggest that the opposite is true. As is so often said here, correlation does not imply causation. Unfortunately for you, there is no way to measure whether or not consciousness really is non-physical because we can only measure physical things. Therefore, the only correct answer is we can't -know- so stop acting like you do.
I'm wondering how this would work for agoraphobia -- the fear of going outside.
Or what if someone with stage fright watched himself giving a speech to a crowd of people? Harder or easier? -shudders-
Does anyone else already have 3rd person nightmares involving xenomorphs?
We all know what you are getting at and any person with over room temperature IQ can figure out what is flawed with your reasoning (you too if you take a deep breath and think for one second)
1. This is so complex that someone had to have made it.
2. Who ever made this must be at least as complex than the thing it has made.
3. Goto 1
See, your line of reasoning behind intelligent design does not hold up. You could say that somethings might be intelligent design but not all things since that thing that started it all would have had to be random. Complexity is NOT a valid argument for intelligent design for any person that is willing to think for just one second.
If a person says that their god were created by random chance and that that god then made everything else, it is possible that this is so. But there is not proof of this or even an indication of this. It is supposed to be believed on blind faith... Trying to find proof or arguments to prove religious beliefs is just stupid. Belief is belief, trying to argue and "prove" that what is in the scriptures is true is just polishing a golden calf if you ask me.
Imagine a beach full of pebbles. Each about the same size... except for the few oddballs. Are all the pebbles ``designed'' to be the same size?
Perhaps the simplest way to get intelligence/life is to have all the minds function in exactly the same way with exactly the same bootstrap process during childhood (e.g. we all learn to speak a language in more or less the same way at more or less the same age). There's evolutionary pressure for this. Imagine the chaos if everyone's brain developed differently from everyone else... half the people wouldn't be able to speak, see, talk, communicate, etc., they'd be complete outcasts as far as evolution of societies are concerned.
The self that is conscious of a self is not the self that is attached to a body: Therefore a posited self attached to a body is a conceptual projection of a subconscious or preconscious (post conscious, anyone?) state.
Give the west a break, they're relatively new at this...
Or perhaps there is an alternate theory like there is no human understandable concept of self at all (similar to Plato's Republic** TMA which apparently nobody studies anymore)... If it requires a "third" person to distinguish between self and non-self, then it is perhaps the concept of self is contradictory, unless the concept of self exists beyond human comprehension...
**It's a relatively new release, but sometimes the OTA update yields a better end-user experience...
On information never being destroyed (with one possible known exception).
Your example is quite appropriate regarding human reconstructability of information--it can be thought of as "lost" if we ourselves as a practical matter can't recover it.
I am using it in the stricter sense of the link above:
This is controversial because it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science--that in principle complete information about a physical system at one point in time should determine its state at any other time.
That is to say, the information is your example isn't -lost-, it's just -lost to us-. Given complete information about the state of all matter in your post-disaster scenario, every minute detail about the original building, is, in theory, recoverable.
I would, naturally, be arguing a scenario in which an entity exists that has that complete information, and can "roll the clock back" therefore to any arbitrary point in time before that.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
There is a lot of stuff which pass for "great idea" but in reality turn out to be balloney. Science reject the empty idea and accept the one which works. Without science you are left with a collection of things, some dumb some good but you have no way to know which works. Common sense is not good at deciding what is good for us or not.
No, there is simply no reason to say that because complex physical things tend to be made by complex beings, that the complex beings must themselves be made by likewise complex beings.
In fact, you deny that right now, with regard to human beings.
Aside from that, saying the universe -logically must- be created by a complex being, is something you are saying, and are the only one here saying it.
Let me make my own arguments, rather than you making them up for me, please. Otherwise you are straw-manning me.
I am saying that it is a plausible conclusion regarding the complexity. And like you yourself would say "things humans make are designed, humans themselves are not", there is no reason to conclude that because one entity has the attribute attribute of being designed, all entities therefore must.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Never for, say, making an army of zombie slaves...
Well, considering that most organisms do in fact change shape throughout the lifespan, whether from development, diet, exercise, or injury, it's both adaptive and pragmatic to simply map your sense of agency to objects whose observable properties correlate with your sensations, or with your intended actions. This is how children learn to pick things up, to walk, and to talk. It's also the mechanism that subserves the extension of receptive fields during tool-use. This is just an elaborated instance of the practically-ancient rubber arm illusion (show someone a rubber arm, and hide their real arm. simultaneously stroke the fake and the real arm for a little while, and the person will come to view it as their own. hit the rubber hand with a hammer, and the person will get a gsr response greater than that for observing the same action without entrainment). Nothing new here.
That is to say, the information is your example isn't -lost-, it's just -lost to us-. Given complete information about the state of all matter in your post-disaster scenario, every minute detail about the original building, is, in theory, recoverable.
The problem with this as support for 'living on' or a 'soul' or what have you, is that the encoding is arbitrary for each individual. If you are willing to allow arbitrary encoding, then the only constraint on what is 'recoverable' is the number of bits. So this kind of a system could also 'recover' a great number of things which never existed. I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim that this is any kind of preservation or storage mechanism. And it certainly isn't a runtime-supporting environment. Humans aren't built of particularly interesting materials – it is the shape/configuration/topology/what-have-you that gives us our complexity. Saying that you can in principle reconstruct a human after it has deteriorated isn't an argument for the soul. It's a necessary conclusion for deterministic materialism.
NDE's themselves are an example of that happening, I submit.
Outside of that, since you're doing that cat /dev/random, I'll suggest that if you are on, say, Amazon's EC2 cloud, you do exactly that any time you create a new server instance from a snapshot. On a more mundane level, the equivalent should be able to be done with a couple PC's, a big flash drive, and a hammer.
For further possibilities, I'd suggest we really don't know the specifics in cases such as recovery from amnesia--but to answer in the broad sense we are entailing other questions such as "why aren't people made immortal" or "why aren't people always healed", which have their own domain of discussion and rationale.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Sounds like a false dichotomy to me. It is both an argument for the soul, and a necessary conclusion for deterministic materialism.
The particular sub-argument regarding the soul this represents is addressing what might be the means for "addressing" deterioration of the physical neurons and the apparent effects on consciousness per se--and the answer is that given complete information, all the data of all the neurons, all the configuration, all the topology, at any point in time (i.e. the complete consciousness at that time, even presuming material reduction) can be performed.
Naturally, pointing this out was primarily to address one of the first round of objections. The actual original argument for the soul was the implausibility of the brain having evolved in a naturalistic sense to "support" such specific during-death cognitive processes for little discernable biological advantage in the "normal world".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Why would one expect "a completely random set of sensations and cognitive inhibition"?
Since we all evolved in the same way, the brain's "experiences" right before it's dead would seem to me to be more likely to be *similar*, just like if you or I trip, we instinctively change our center of gravity to regain balance.
Also, don't some of those "different" causes of death really end up being lack of oxygen in the end, thus making it even more likely the experiences would be similar? Even in a car accident, one might bleed out, and not necessarily be direct head trauma causing the death.
Why do humans learn from other humans while other primates don't but those primates can learn from self-experience?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
lsd 'trips' are not random. It is reality perceived through a slow down or shutdown of various sensory processing apparati.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Someone has to figure how to work these computers and machines properly, i.e., direct the genetic algorithms, before they can take their place as caretakers of the earth.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The simplest explanation with the fewest (or smallest) assumptions.
"God" is a big motherfucking assumption. I'm willing to bet that Science will come up with an answer before "He" does, and I'm also willing to bet that Science's explanation won't depend on "magic".
Duh, the magic beard in the sky made it. Haven't you been paying attention?
I'll assume that the sentence fragment is an attempt to invoke Occam's Razor.
While you've misapplied it, as is usually the case, it does have the subjective advantage that Occam was theist.
So, I'll clarify. Occam's Razor in no way specifies what is true, or even more likely to be true. It simply indicates that for the purposes of conceptual economy, when -all else is equal-, the simplest explanation should be used. The slightest difference between two models either on the basis of evidence or reason disqualifies it from being applicable to a given situation.
And, well, it's not an assumption if you know it is fact. As usual, that you don't know something, never means no one else does either, for any topic. As usual, that you haven't experienced evidence, does not mean no one else has, nor is you having it required for it to be evidence. Again, as is always the case, for any topic.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
What one would expect during generic "brain failure", is a completely random set of sensations and cognitive inhibition--much like an LSD trip. That isn't what is reported, and quantified in peer-reviewed studies, such as The Lancet's.
What evidence do you have to support this? As long as we're pulling hypotheses out of our butts, I'd assume that a gradual brain shutdown (over minutes, as in massive circulatory collapse for whatever reason) would follow a stereotypical set of pathways that might well involve memory subsystems and proprioceptive issues. The fact that OBE experiences hew to a specific playbook suggests that indeed, it's hardwired and repeatable.
Nothing more, nothing less. No reason to invoke higher deities, higher consciousness or His Noodliness.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You've got it backwards. The evolutionary advantage is that your brain recognizes it's own body's parts. That recognition uses consistent sensory feedback to figure out what's part of you. Then some scientists come along and screw with that feedback.
Soul? Really? That's a bit of a leap, even compared to the other woo being slung all over these comments, no?
also help dieters too
Get read for the "30lbs in 30 days... Don't just be out of your body... transform your body!"
that the submitter said that this can help with anorexia, as well as help people lose weight?
What? Are you stupid? All living things "learn" from one another in one way or another, even bacteria. All mammals consciously and actively interchange information between one each other and learn from each others mistakes. Where did you get the crazy idea that they did not from?
There is a reason that the majority of the nation has agreed that Marijuana has medicinal functions even though the federal government vehemently denies any medicinal use is possible
Actually there's only a small subset of compounds that have medical properties. We could produce those in a lab and bypass most of the problem's Marijuana has.
!!!!!!!
THINK! It's patriotic
Reminds me of an execution method that I read about many years ago. The person to be put to death would have their pulse taken by a drummer while the drummer would beat a drum in-time to the victim's heartbeat. After a while, the drummer would suddenly stop beating the drum, then the victim's heart would stop too.
To deal with damaged and missing limbs, damaged and misconfigured perception systems, and misformed bodies.
We aren't hard wired to have fingertips x centimeters away from the spine, etc. Our brains adapt to our physical circumstances. That permits us to 'hack' the system and have the brain perceive lots of different configurations. It will prove very useful in the future for technology enhanced perceptions.
Doesn't prove a 'soul'.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
What if they don't bother with the video of the person's back, and just flash the light in sync with the previously recorded heartbeats?
It's not like flashing light by itself can't affect someone's brain.
Besides, how familiar is anyone with what their own back looks like that it matters that the video is of them?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.