Buddhists don't believe in 'reincarnation' in the sense that you are thinking.
In Buddhism, all things are said to be ephemeral -- which is just a fancy word meaning temporary. Even the soul is ephemeral. The concept of 'ephemeralness' (is that a word?) is central to Buddhism because Buddhism teaches that one should not become attached to things because all things are ephemeral. That's why life is so much suffering in the world -- suffering stems from attachment.
Anyway, to simplify the soul concept greatly: if you think of the ocean and you pull out a glass of water from the ocean, the water in the glass is what Buddhists call 'the soul'. When the glass breaks (death), then the water merges back to the ocean. That specific volume of water is no longer identifiable again -- if you were to dip another (or even the same) glass into the ocean, you'd get a different soul, because you'd have a separate distinct volume of water.
You've tossed the baby out with the bathwater in your list of where consciousness is not. It's clear from observation that consciousness exists in interaction between the nervous system and the world around it (and also the nervous system and the rest of the material of the body). It is an emergent property. Subjectively consciousness is unitary although this may not in fact be the case- there are multiple systems of consciousness (vision, hearing, haptic, cognition, etc).
Very good. You're the only one to notice, and possibly the only other person in this thread who can actually think for himself.;) Yes, I thought of that as well after I wrote it, but you can't edit your posts on Slashdot, so, oh well.
The works of James J. Gibson and Edward Reed- among others- are worth checking out in this regard.
Excellent! I'll have to take a look. Definitely.
The conceptual difficulty comes from the popular notions of "soul" present in various mythologies, especially the notion of an immortal soul that is somehow placed into the body at some point and which leaves the body at some point. The existence of this soul is non-demonstrable and its existence is an article of faith not observation; it becomes problematic when faith attempts to trump observable reality.
Exactly. Eliminate the non-observable faith-based aspects from the discussion and there is still something observable there. Definitely. That was the point of my original post, though I didn't put it quite as eloquently as you.
Interestingly the Buddhist conception of human functioning avoids these difficulties. It denies the existence of an immortal individual soul and identifies all aspects of existence as mutually emergent properties which are conditional, constantly changing and ultimately temporary.
Yep. Buddhism emphasizes that all things -- even the soul -- are ephemeral.
Over-simplistically, Buddhism proposes six types of consciousness: sight, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and mental formations. Each arises as an interaction between the properties of the organism and the properties of its environment. No permanent, immortal and highly problematic soul (which violates the laws of physics) is needed.
Mmmm...yeah, you are being over-simplistic, but that is nonetheless a good short explanation.
Of course that's not to say that the Buddhist philosophy is the only philosophy that approaches the concept of the soul in this way, but it is an excellent example.
(In case you were wondering: While I'm not a true Buddhist, I do find Buddhism and similar philosophies to be very helpful.)
Feel threatened in your religious beliefs much? Don't worry, that phenomenon you see around you whereby people abandon irrational creeds is called progress. It's slow coming, but it's coming.
Nope. But, then again, I'm not a Christian nor any other 'Abrahamic' religion, nor am I any other sort of fundamentalist whack-job. Next.
Have you considered that consciousness is an illusion of a human brain that has become powerful enough to reflect on its own existence? That's why you won't find it in the body or the brain, anymore that you'll find a tummy ache if you look inside your stomach.
Perhaps. The question is this: can we recognize consciousness in other living things? (The answer is 'Yes', and I'll leave it up to the reader to do his own research).
In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say most scientists believe consciousness is a physical brain process that has nothing to do with metaphysics or religion.
I never said consciousness had to do with metaphysics or religion. See how bigotted you are? Your bias is showing here. Also note that they can't prove it either. Which means, empirically, that science has no answer to what is or is not 'consciousness'. It also means that your logic is as faulty as mine.
This is one of those areas that hard science deliberately steers clear from.
Closed-minded. Uncompromising. Nevermind that most atheists will acknowledge that humans are 'self-aware' or 'sentient'. Then what is the self? What is the ego?
This is not a religious exercise. If anything, the article seems to be approaching this from the standpoint of secular humanism (which, despite popular belief, is not a euphemism for 'atheist').
Basically -- what is the ghost in the machine? Your body is a machine. Increasingly, your brain is seen as a neurological computer with neurons firing and whatnot. What is your consciousness? What makes you sentient? They've poked and prodded every orifice of your body and they have still not been able to determine where your consciousness -- this 'thing' in quantum physics called 'the observer' -- is. It's not in the brain, it's not the organs, it's not anywhere. Yet, most people seem to acknowledge its existence. Even many scientists, atheist or not.
Well, if you boil it down, everything comes back to greed then, based on yours (and some other/.ers) understanding of human nature. There's a school of thought within psychological behaviorism that says that most people act in ways that are more or less selfish -- the reason you do nice things for other people is because it makes you feel good, not because you have any sort of true benevolence or philanthropy.
Disclousre: my wife, who is a trained psychologist, is more or less a behaviorist, while my own thinking seems to be more in step with the cognitive revolution going on in psychology and neuroscience today. Maybe one day I'll have her convinced that we're not all a bunch of salivating dogs...;) *ducking* (Just kidding, honey!) Note I am NOT a psychologist, but I play one/.;)
Though I disagree with Apple profitting off OSS which they did not initially create. They might as well be Linspire, in that regard.
Well, if you're being intellectually consistent in your ethics, then you should be disgreeing with Red Hat, Canonical, TiVo, LinkSys, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft), Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, and a bunch of other big-name industry companies.
All these companies -- and more -- have profitted (well, okay, Canonical hasn't made a dime, technically;) from OSS which they did not initially create.
Believe me, there are plenty of other people out there who are willing to con you that don't rely on your greed.
Care to point some of them out?
Sure. Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Pat Robertson, etc., etc., These guys get people to give them money in the millions and even billions of dollars, and greed on the part of the suckered has absolutely nothing to do with their cons. Ever get suckered into buying a lemon car from used car salemen.
I won't comment on the 'fall guy' thing because I'm not sure what he's talking about, either.
Ever get suckered into buying a lemon car from used car salemen. Ever been suckered into being 'friend' that gets the 'ugly one' on a double date?
What does this have to do with a confidence game?
Lemon car: sually the used car salesmen knows when a car is a lemon. The con is get you (or some other sucker) to buy the car without the dealership investing money into fixing it up properly for sale. The friend for the ugly chick: A friend of mine was actually the con in this scenario and a mutual friend was the mark. In this case, the con asks a girl out but the girl won't go out with him unless he gets a date for her ugly roommate, whom no one will ever date because -- damn, this chick was just fugly. Anyway, he tells the friend that the ugly roommate was nice looking, but just shy. Anyway, clearly the situation was a con.
I doubt that post had anything to do with Slashdot moderation system or Slashdot groupthink. It looks to me a like a cut-and-paste of some pol with %s/Hated Individual or Group/Slashdot//g
First off, let me preface this by saying that I doubt you could call me a 'liberal'. I'm for smaller, less-intrusive government. I tend to be more of a free market capitalist, but one that recognizes the need for limited government controls on commerce in order to (primarily) keep markets competitive and eliminate, as much as can be within reason, natural monopolies. I'm also in favor of capital punishment. I think there should be fewer abortions, but I don't want to make them illegal, either. I'm a supporter of gun rights. I'm also an ardent supporter of the first amendment, which might make me seem liberal, but whatever.
But I will say that despite the fact that 51% of people in the U.S. are female, the fact is that society is still setup for white males, and, yes, white males still hold all the power in our society. It's fairly easy to see this if you talk to almost any career woman.
From someone a little bit more objective: I've managed AIX, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, Windows, SCO and *BSD boxes for many, many years.
Out of all of them -- Linux and AIX have by far the best command line and GUI management tools for enterprise computing. Smit and Smitty are at least as good (and in some ways better than) SuSE's YaST or Redhat's system-config-*. (HP guys, shut up. Smit/smitty blows SAM out of the water and you know it. Go back to the hole you climbed out of.;) For example, I have yet to find a GUI LVM tool that can do what smit can do as well as smit can do it.
If you were managing an all-AIX environment, you'd definitely want an AIX machine on your desk, not a Linux machine.
OTOH, if you're handy with scripting and whatnot, nothing beats a Linux machine in a mixed envrionment.;)
Wow that's old. But anyway...I'll reply here for the interested. Feel free to mod me offtopic (because I am):
What killed BBSes was none of those things.
1) That's why post/call ratios were invented. Duh. 2) The technical clique were often right there with the gabbers. We talked to the gabbers to pick up chicks. Most of us were successful, too. I went on a few dates. None of them ever turned into anything serious, but it was still fun. 3) Maybe. I lived in an area with lots of BBSes, and I don't think that having a number to choose from was a bad thing. 4) Not sure the 'loss of anonymity' ever occurred 100%. The last BBS I ever signed onto I signed on with a handle. My BBS had handles right up until I took it down in 1992. 6) Yes, the press were a bunch of arrogant pricks who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Don't think they had *that* much impact, though. 7) I tend to agree, but there were also plenty of technically competent sysops, too, and so I don't think that ignorant sysops killed BBSes, either.
Finally, what killed BBSes was cheap, widely available Internet access. After people saw 'Teh Intarweb!!!' BBSes just seemed to pale in comparison.
I doubt it. I do a LOT of image processing, and I have to say that after color correction, noise removal, etc., I very much doubt that this technique would hold up.
Or, maybe the one you know is an alternate sci-fi Universe...ever think about that? (Yes, as a matter of fact I AM trying to make his head explode. Should be hilarious)
Slashdot Mirror
Buddhists don't believe in 'reincarnation' in the sense that you are thinking.
In Buddhism, all things are said to be ephemeral -- which is just a fancy word meaning temporary. Even the soul is ephemeral. The concept of 'ephemeralness' (is that a word?) is central to Buddhism because Buddhism teaches that one should not become attached to things because all things are ephemeral. That's why life is so much suffering in the world -- suffering stems from attachment.
Anyway, to simplify the soul concept greatly: if you think of the ocean and you pull out a glass of water from the ocean, the water in the glass is what Buddhists call 'the soul'. When the glass breaks (death), then the water merges back to the ocean. That specific volume of water is no longer identifiable again -- if you were to dip another (or even the same) glass into the ocean, you'd get a different soul, because you'd have a separate distinct volume of water.
You've tossed the baby out with the bathwater in your list of where consciousness is not. It's clear from observation that consciousness exists in interaction between the nervous system and the world around it (and also the nervous system and the rest of the material of the body). It is an emergent property. Subjectively consciousness is unitary although this may not in fact be the case- there are multiple systems of consciousness (vision, hearing, haptic, cognition, etc).
Very good. You're the only one to notice, and possibly the only other person in this thread who can actually think for himself. ;) Yes, I thought of that as well after I wrote it, but you can't edit your posts on Slashdot, so, oh well.
The works of James J. Gibson and Edward Reed- among others- are worth checking out in this regard.
Excellent! I'll have to take a look. Definitely.
The conceptual difficulty comes from the popular notions of "soul" present in various mythologies, especially the notion of an immortal soul that is somehow placed into the body at some point and which leaves the body at some point. The existence of this soul is non-demonstrable and its existence is an article of faith not observation; it becomes problematic when faith attempts to trump observable reality.
Exactly. Eliminate the non-observable faith-based aspects from the discussion and there is still something observable there. Definitely. That was the point of my original post, though I didn't put it quite as eloquently as you.
Interestingly the Buddhist conception of human functioning avoids these difficulties. It denies the existence of an immortal individual soul and identifies all aspects of existence as mutually emergent properties which are conditional, constantly changing and ultimately temporary.
Yep. Buddhism emphasizes that all things -- even the soul -- are ephemeral.
Over-simplistically, Buddhism proposes six types of consciousness: sight, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and mental formations. Each arises as an interaction between the properties of the organism and the properties of its environment. No permanent, immortal and highly problematic soul (which violates the laws of physics) is needed.
Mmmm...yeah, you are being over-simplistic, but that is nonetheless a good short explanation.
Of course that's not to say that the Buddhist philosophy is the only philosophy that approaches the concept of the soul in this way, but it is an excellent example.
(In case you were wondering: While I'm not a true Buddhist, I do find Buddhism and similar philosophies to be very helpful.)
Personally, I wouldn't even feel threatened if they developed a machine with a soul. ;)
Feel threatened in your religious beliefs much? Don't worry, that phenomenon you see around you whereby people abandon irrational creeds is called progress. It's slow coming, but it's coming.
Nope. But, then again, I'm not a Christian nor any other 'Abrahamic' religion, nor am I any other sort of fundamentalist whack-job. Next.
Have you considered that consciousness is an illusion of a human brain that has become powerful enough to reflect on its own existence? That's why you won't find it in the body or the brain, anymore that you'll find a tummy ache if you look inside your stomach.
Perhaps. The question is this: can we recognize consciousness in other living things? (The answer is 'Yes', and I'll leave it up to the reader to do his own research).
In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say most scientists believe consciousness is a physical brain process that has nothing to do with metaphysics or religion.
I never said consciousness had to do with metaphysics or religion. See how bigotted you are? Your bias is showing here. Also note that they can't prove it either. Which means, empirically, that science has no answer to what is or is not 'consciousness'. It also means that your logic is as faulty as mine.
This is one of those areas that hard science deliberately steers clear from.
See what I mean, folks?
Closed-minded. Uncompromising. Nevermind that most atheists will acknowledge that humans are 'self-aware' or 'sentient'. Then what is the self? What is the ego?
C'mon. Answers, man! Let's go!
Damn. And atheists accuse everyone else of being closed-minded.
Maybe my wife is right -- people do have a tendency to see in other people their own intellectual defects.
And here come the knee-jerk atheists!
This is not a religious exercise. If anything, the article seems to be approaching this from the standpoint of secular humanism (which, despite popular belief, is not a euphemism for 'atheist').
Basically -- what is the ghost in the machine? Your body is a machine. Increasingly, your brain is seen as a neurological computer with neurons firing and whatnot. What is your consciousness? What makes you sentient? They've poked and prodded every orifice of your body and they have still not been able to determine where your consciousness -- this 'thing' in quantum physics called 'the observer' -- is. It's not in the brain, it's not the organs, it's not anywhere. Yet, most people seem to acknowledge its existence. Even many scientists, atheist or not.
Well, if you boil it down, everything comes back to greed then, based on yours (and some other /.ers) understanding of human nature. There's a school of thought within psychological behaviorism that says that most people act in ways that are more or less selfish -- the reason you do nice things for other people is because it makes you feel good, not because you have any sort of true benevolence or philanthropy.
Disclousre: my wife, who is a trained psychologist, is more or less a behaviorist, while my own thinking seems to be more in step with the cognitive revolution going on in psychology and neuroscience today. Maybe one day I'll have her convinced that we're not all a bunch of salivating dogs... ;) *ducking* (Just kidding, honey!) Note I am NOT a psychologist, but I play one /. ;)
Though I disagree with Apple profitting off OSS which they did not initially create. They might as well be Linspire, in that regard.
Well, if you're being intellectually consistent in your ethics, then you should be disgreeing with Red Hat, Canonical, TiVo, LinkSys, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft), Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, and a bunch of other big-name industry companies.
All these companies -- and more -- have profitted (well, okay, Canonical hasn't made a dime, technically ;) from OSS which they did not initially create.
Sure. Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Pat Robertson, etc., etc., These guys get people to give them money in the millions and even billions of dollars, and greed on the part of the suckered has absolutely nothing to do with their cons.
Ever get suckered into buying a lemon car from used car salemen.
I won't comment on the 'fall guy' thing because I'm not sure what he's talking about, either.
Lemon car: sually the used car salesmen knows when a car is a lemon. The con is get you (or some other sucker) to buy the car without the dealership investing money into fixing it up properly for sale.
The friend for the ugly chick: A friend of mine was actually the con in this scenario and a mutual friend was the mark. In this case, the con asks a girl out but the girl won't go out with him unless he gets a date for her ugly roommate, whom no one will ever date because -- damn, this chick was just fugly. Anyway, he tells the friend that the ugly roommate was nice looking, but just shy. Anyway, clearly the situation was a con.
Oh, you think the crash already happened? As they say, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
No, that those were just really awesome ANSI graphics.
*sigh*
Nevermind that others, myself included, have said more or less exactly the same thing?
I doubt that post had anything to do with Slashdot moderation system or Slashdot groupthink. It looks to me a like a cut-and-paste of some pol with %s/Hated Individual or Group/Slashdot//g
First off, let me preface this by saying that I doubt you could call me a 'liberal'. I'm for smaller, less-intrusive government. I tend to be more of a free market capitalist, but one that recognizes the need for limited government controls on commerce in order to (primarily) keep markets competitive and eliminate, as much as can be within reason, natural monopolies. I'm also in favor of capital punishment. I think there should be fewer abortions, but I don't want to make them illegal, either. I'm a supporter of gun rights. I'm also an ardent supporter of the first amendment, which might make me seem liberal, but whatever.
But I will say that despite the fact that 51% of people in the U.S. are female, the fact is that society is still setup for white males, and, yes, white males still hold all the power in our society. It's fairly easy to see this if you talk to almost any career woman.
From someone a little bit more objective: I've managed AIX, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, Windows, SCO and *BSD boxes for many, many years.
Out of all of them -- Linux and AIX have by far the best command line and GUI management tools for enterprise computing. Smit and Smitty are at least as good (and in some ways better than) SuSE's YaST or Redhat's system-config-*. (HP guys, shut up. Smit/smitty blows SAM out of the water and you know it. Go back to the hole you climbed out of. ;) For example, I have yet to find a GUI LVM tool that can do what smit can do as well as smit can do it.
If you were managing an all-AIX environment, you'd definitely want an AIX machine on your desk, not a Linux machine.
OTOH, if you're handy with scripting and whatnot, nothing beats a Linux machine in a mixed envrionment. ;)
At least we have a UID to date when that particular meme must of started getting popular...
Uhhhh....no. My original UID is in the low 5 digits. I can say that it was popular long before someone decided to create a 'New Here' account.
Wow that's old. But anyway...I'll reply here for the interested. Feel free to mod me offtopic (because I am):
What killed BBSes was none of those things.
1) That's why post/call ratios were invented. Duh.
2) The technical clique were often right there with the gabbers. We talked to the gabbers to pick up chicks. Most of us were successful, too. I went on a few dates. None of them ever turned into anything serious, but it was still fun.
3) Maybe. I lived in an area with lots of BBSes, and I don't think that having a number to choose from was a bad thing.
4) Not sure the 'loss of anonymity' ever occurred 100%. The last BBS I ever signed onto I signed on with a handle. My BBS had handles right up until I took it down in 1992.
6) Yes, the press were a bunch of arrogant pricks who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Don't think they had *that* much impact, though.
7) I tend to agree, but there were also plenty of technically competent sysops, too, and so I don't think that ignorant sysops killed BBSes, either.
Finally, what killed BBSes was cheap, widely available Internet access. After people saw 'Teh Intarweb!!!' BBSes just seemed to pale in comparison.
I doubt it. I do a LOT of image processing, and I have to say that after color correction, noise removal, etc., I very much doubt that this technique would hold up.
Or, maybe the one you know is an alternate sci-fi Universe...ever think about that? (Yes, as a matter of fact I AM trying to make his head explode. Should be hilarious)
Douglas Adams?
Not to mention what gets mixed into their beef after it's picked up off the slaughterhouse floor...
Why, back in my day....
No. Nevermind. I'm not going to go there.
Hi! You must be new here!
No! No! I refuse to believe it! *fingers in ears* nyah nyah nyah nyah! I better go read Mark's blog now, to clean my mind out ...