Economic Devastation

[CoinCube]

Yes, you are right, socialism is unstoppable unfortunately, because it seems that nature has a hidden force that tries to equalize things.

...

So if the endgame financial collapse will come, and the banking sector collapses, the elites losing their money, then maybe socialism will get weaker, and we can get back to traditional capitalism.

What do you think??

I agree with the concept of a hidden force. This force is Group Selection as outlined by Charlton. It is also the same fundamental force that was discussed from the perspective of entropy in Anonymint's Thesis on Life.

Group selection is the process of promoting sustained reproductive success (lineal survival) of the group, in face of the spontaneous tendency for random change to promote the individual (and other lower level, below group) levels of selection. From an entropic frame of reference it is the interaction of ordered lifeforms to create a system of yet higher information content via a system of evolution. Entropy in this context is the sum of the logarithmic relation of the number and probability of the possible configurations (a.k.a. states) in the system, i.e. it is measure of the granularity and uniformness of possibilities in the system, i.e. the availability to fitness (to receive work) of the system. Group selection and entropic force are simply two ways of describing the same phenomenon.

The goal of nature is not equality but progress and progress is clearly a knowledge age as described in The Rise of Knowledge. There is a functional role for socialism in a healthy economy as I have argued elsewhere in my Defense of Socialism. Sadly our extreme socialism is something else entirely. Modern socialism appears to be more of a population culling mechanism and it is likely to continue for some time for the reasons discussed in Understand Everything Fundamentally. In its wake it will leave a population selected for a knowledge age. Socialism will not fundamentally undermine the current global financial elite who's power and influence will grow in tandem with it. It is the gradual rise of a subsequent knowledge age that will not only herald a return to traditional capitalism but also dilute the power of the current elite.

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[picolo]

2016 is a US presiential election so the FED will not let the market crash but the dollar will crash as the FED keeps printing, the US government keeps borrowing and the rest of the world is loosing faith in the ability of the US to end up in front

[CoinCube]

I have to disagree here, i think the goal of nature is to maintain the zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean, whatever that mean is: politically, socially, economically.

However in this framework, humanity is progressing, and consolidating it's efforts, and becoming centralized, in whatever current political structure we live in.
You could say it's somehow a spooky effect of gravity, since gravity is the only physical force in the universe that creates planets from spacedust, so it's the only coercive force that exists. So perhaps gravity has this effect on lifeforms, centralization of politics...

There is a very real possibility that gravity is simply an emergent phenomenon of entropy.

Quantum Mechanics is not simply a mechanism for guessing things. It offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality.  

In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity.

These ideas are difficult to grasp and at this stage they remain theoretical physics. However, there are a growing number of scientist who are taking them very seriously.

Below is a simple but nice introductory video on the topic...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU
(part I only)

The goal of nature is a very abstract topic but if we limit ourselves to the subset of nature we consider life we see fairly quickly that it's goal is not to maintain a zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean. The essay on entropy below is incomplete and focuses too much on the effect of entropy on individual organisms rather then species as a whole. It also fails to examine the idea of entropy as information. Nevertheless it is sufficient to demonstrate this point.

Entropy

Entropy is both beloved ally and mortal enemy of life.

To understand the dichotomy of entropy we must delve deep into the heart of thermodynamics.
There are two fundamental laws of thermodynamics

Law #1: The total quantity of energy in the universe must remain constant.
Law #2: That the quality of that energy is constantly degraded irreversibly.

From these laws we can derive some general principals:
1) Ordered energy -> Disorganized energy
2) High quality energy -> Low-grade energy (heat)
3) Order -> Disorder
4) Improbability -> Probability

These principals outline a grim universe. At first glance they seem more compatible with a barren wasteland than a vibrant jungle. Thermodynamics demands constant and progressive degradation yet somehow we live in a world teaming with life and growth. Lets explore why.

The Genius of Life

Life is able to increase its internal order while simultaneously satisfying thermodynamics. At first glance this appears to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Instead of disorder and death life forms order and birth. Instead of probability and cessation it does the improbable and continues. Rather than disorganized heat it forms the ordered thought and action. Life is able to do this because it is a dissipative structure. It is a structure that achieves a reproducible state operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium in an environment in which it exchanges energy and matter.

Chemists can create complex high energy molecules in reactions that would not occur naturally by coupling those reactions with others that degrade other high energy molecules in low energy ones. As long as the combination of both reactions leads to an overall higher level of entropy the laws of thermodynamics are satisfied.Life has mastered this same process with stunning majesty. By coupling its existence to reactions that increase the entropy of the universe life is able to swim upstream against the tide of entropy. Plants harvest the energy of the sun. Animals consume that same energy indirectly.

Entropy is Mixedupness

There are numerous definitions of Entropy. When talking about the mechanics of life the most useful is the one given by statistical mechanics.

Entropy is the amount of additional information needed to specify the exact physical state of a system, given its thermodynamic specification.

Entropy is a measure of the uncertainty which remains about a system after its observable macroscopic properties, such as temperature, pressure and volume, have been taken into account. For a given set of macroscopic variables, the entropy measures the degree to which the probability of the system is spread out over different possible microstates.

The simple system of four balls traveling in the same direction, has less entropy than an otherwise identical system with 4 balls traveling in random directions as it takes more information to describe the exact physical state of the second system.

Entropy Devourers Life

All life struggles to avoid its eventual guaranteed entropic end.

The conditions of death, decay, cessation are higher entropy then the conditions of breathing, growth, and body integrity. Therefore life is always in constant danger of death able to delay it's destruction only by constant feeding. Deprived of energy for a prolonged length of time life quickly falls to the laws of thermodynamics.

In reproduction this gives rise to a great need for fidelity. When reproducing life must protect the integrity of its information. Unless both the ability to gather energy and the ability to reproduce is successfully transmitted that branch of life will cease.

The genetic information transmitted from parent to child is not immune to entropy. Random mutation's introduce variations into genetic code. These mutations increase entropy as they increase the spread over different possible microstates. This mutation is very dangerous to life as the vast majority of mutations either have no effect or have a detrimental one. Life acts to minimize the danger by purposefully limiting this entropy. Most multicellular organisms have DNA repair enzymes that constantly repair and correct damage. Fidelity of information is thus largly maintained between generations.

Fidelity, however, can never be 100%. The environment is not static but dynamic. Life must be able to adapt in response or life will cease. An organism with 100% fidelity of reproduction would never change improve or evolve. It would stand still while its predators and competitors grew more efficient. Long term survival requires mutation and change. For this life needs entropy.

The tradeoff between fidelity and adaptability can be best thought of as the balance between search and exploitation. If replication was without entropy no mutants would arise and evolution would cease. On the other hand, evolution would also be impossible if the entropy/error rate of replication were too high (only a few mutations produce an improvement and most lead to deterioration). Increasing the entropy results in the potential sacrifice of previously acquired information in an attempt to find superior information. Life must master the deadly dance of harvesting entropy. Absorb too much and the species succumbs to mutation tumors and death. Absorb too little and the species stagnates and succumbs to more agile competitors. Life it seems walks the razors edge.

Multicellular Organisms and Collectivism

The single celled organism is an anarchist. The multicelled organism is a collectivist.

Life is in constant search of frontiers for it is only at the frontiers that competitive advantage can be found. The single celled organism is in a constant war for survival. It lives in the base state of nature and any advantage may mean the difference between life and death. The cell with improved locomotion may find food or escape predators, the efficient cell may avoid starvation in lean times, and the larger cell may eat its smaller competitors. As a cell increased its internal complexity, however, diminishing returns accumulate. A single flagella allows a cell to move but having two does not double cellular speed. A larger size may be advantageous but cellular volume increases at a faster rate than its surface area making it difficult to transport enough materials across cellular membranes. Once a cell reaches this point it is economically more efficient to form multicellular organisms and specialize.  

High levels of specialization requires collectives composed of many cells. In the multicellular organism cells trade independence and degrees-of-freedom in exchange for the benefits of size, specialization, and efficiency. Cells in a multicellular organism lose the freedom to independently move and reproduce and their survival becomes dependent on their fellow cells. In exchange they get to be a part of something larger and can benefit from the development of specialization including specialized neural tissues.

Not all cells toe the collective line. Some cells throw off their chains and do whatever they want. When the rebels cells decide they want to divide and keep dividing the process is called cancer. In multicelled organisms cancer is simply the result of accumulated entropy gone wrong. Multicelled organisms like their simpler cousins need to adapt, change, and  evolve. A species with 100% fidelity would have no cancer but it would also never change.

Civilization and Collectivism

Civilization is collective of mutually interdependent multicellular organisms.

Civilization represents the next stage of evolution beyond the multicellular organism. Like the transition from the single to the multicelled organism it arises from the specialization and resultant interdependence of the sentient organisms that comprise it. With the onset of civilization environmental selection gives way to the selection of self-organization. The organization of the system increases spontaneously without this increase being controlled an external system. Civilization is a state of vastly higher organization and specialization. This increase in organization can be looked at objectively as an increase in potential energy.

Civilizations must change, grow and adapt or face stagnation, decay and collapse. They must maintain fidelity (stability over time) while also allowing for adaptability (growth). Self-organization to higher levels of potential energy in a self organizing system is triggered by internal fluctuations or noise aka entropy. These process produce selectively retained ordered configurations and is the order from noise principle. Search and adaptability must be maximized subject to the constraint of maintaining fidelity through time and not losing the information that has already been gained. It is only through balance that optimal outcomes are achieved.

[RealBitcoin]

There is a very real possibility that gravity is simply an emergent phenomenon of entropy.

If you dissect it, then its probably a binary system.  Order & chaos, to balance the universe.

Order = Gravity
Chaos = Entropy , Dark energy, whatever name you wanna give it

It's the 2 side of the same coin, but they are opposite to eachother.

Quantum Mechanics is not simply a mechanism for guessing things. It offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality. 

I`m skeptic about QM, i think the entire theory is flawed, since most scientists are too rigid to their beliefs and they are doing data fitting.

For example string theory in my opinion is just a big load of crap, because it's just data fitting to your theory. They cant explain how relativity and QM is linked, so they use string theory and other crap to support their theories, when it's just data fitting.

In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity.

I think the holographic universe theory is also a big crap, it's just a high-tech version of the brain in a jar theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

Which is impossible to prove, but it's so trendy and makes scientists popular if they talk about it, that they get more tax dollar funding.

They have to come up with trendy ideas like this to get more tax money, while these philosophical ideas were already being debated for centuries.

The goal of nature is a very abstract topic but if we limit ourself to the subset of nature we consider life we see fairly quickly that it's goal is not to maintain a zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean. The essay on entropy below is incomplete and focuses too much on the effect of entropy on individual organisms rather then species as a whole but it is sufficient to demonstrate this point.

I dont, i dont think life is a subset of nature, but all of nature. It's only life from human point of view, but how does it look from a rock's point of view?

It's just random events, there is nothing special about humans, only we think that it is, humans are no more special than a rock on a shore.

[CoinCube]

The goal of nature is a very abstract topic but if we limit ourselves to the subset of nature we consider life we see fairly quickly that its goal is not to maintain a zero sum game, and to revert back the probability distribution outcomes to the mean. The essay on entropy below is incomplete and focuses too much on the effect of entropy on individual organisms rather than species as a whole but it is sufficient to demonstrate this point.

I dont think life is a subset of nature, but all of nature. It's only life from human point of view, but how does it look from a rock's point of view?

It's just random events, there is nothing special about humans, only we think that it is, humans are no more special than a rock on a shore.

This is a very good question. I did not go into the distinction between life non life because it takes us far from the realm of economics and deep into metaphysics. This is simply not a question you can answer with science for it is a question of metaphysics. For example one can make the metaphysical choice that “it’s all just random events” but this choice has significant nihilistic implications. Lets examine some of the other choices we can make.  

TELEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with basic assumptions – descriptive of the fundamental nature of reality. Science takes place within metaphysics, and therefore the results of science (any possible results of science) can neither prove nor refute any metaphysical description – although some metaphysical systems will more clearly and simply make sense of (or ‘explain’) science than others.

In this sense metaphysics (which is to say a ‘paradigm’) is not ‘testable’ by science. This is because metaphysics itself underpins the definition of science (or a specific science such as biology); metaphysics determines what counts as a test, what observations to make and also how to interpret observations. For instance, no amount of biological research can ever decide whether biology is 1. the science of alive things or 2. the science of replicating things. This is not possible since definition 1 leads to one kind of biology using one type of expertise and methods; but definition 2 to another kind of biology with very different personnel and methods, as we have seen emerge over the past 70 years.

[CoinCube]

Reconceptualizing the metaphysical basis of biology: a new definition based on deistic teleology and an hierarchy of organizing entities

By Bruce G. Charlton

https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities

Strikingly, there has been no success in the attempts over sixty-plus years to create life in the laboratory under plausible ancestral earth conditions – not even the complex bio-molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. It has, indeed, been well-argued that this is impossible; and that ‘living life’ must therefore have evolved from an intermediate stage (or stages) of non-living but evolvable molecules such as crystals – perhaps clays (Cairns-Smith, 1987). But nobody has succeeded in doing that in the lab either, despite that artificial selection can be orders of magnitude faster than natural selection.

Since there is no acknowledged boundary dividing biology and not-biology, then it would seem that biology as currently understood has zero validity as a subject. What are the implications of our failure to divide the living from the non-living world: the failure to draw a line around the subject? Well, since there is no coherent boundary, then common sense leads us to infer in that case either everything is not-alive or everything is-alive. If nothing is-alive, not even ourselves, there seems to be no coherent possibility of us knowing that we ourselves are not-alive, or indeed of anything knowing anything – which, I take it, means we should reject that possibility as a reductio ad absurdum.

Alternatively, the implication is that if anything is-alive, then everything is-alive, including the mineral world – so we dwell in a wholly animated universe, all that there is being alive but – presumably – alive in very different degrees and with different qualities of life. This inference I intend to regard as valid: it will be my working metaphysical assumption, and is one to which we will return later.

So; if life is to be regarded as universal, it seems that the presence of ‘life’ can no longer be used as definitive of biology; and since reproduction/ replication is also inadequate, then we need a new basis or principle around-which may be made a different definition of the subject ‘biology’. I will argue, below, why this new principle should be ‘development’.

…
THE NECESSITY FOR TELEOLOGY IN THE METAPHYSICS OF BIOLOGY
Natural selection is an inadequate metaphysical basis for biology because it lacks teleology - a goal, direction or purpose.

This lack of teleology means that the potential for meaning - for knowledge - is excluded from the system of biology, and from any other system which depends upon it.

Thus natural selection is radically too small a metaphysical frame - it leaves out so much that is so important, that what remains is not even a coherent subject. This is revealed in the un-definability of biology and the incapability of biology to understand the meaning of life and its origins, major transitions and categories. Without teleology, biology is self-destroying.

Indeed - without teleology we cannot know. I mean we cannot explain how humans could have valid knowledge about anything. No knowledge of any kind is possible. If Natural Selection is regarded as the bottom-line explanation - the fundamental metaphysical reality (as it is for biology, and often is with respect to the human condition) then this has radically nihilistic consequences. And this is a paradox – if natural selection was the only mechanism by which consciousness and intelligence arose then we could have no confidence that the human discovery of natural selection was anything more than a (currently, but contingently) fitness-enhancing delusion.

The reason is that natural selection is at best – and when correctly applied - merely descriptive of what-happened-to-happen. Since there was no reason why things had-to-be as they actually were, and there is no reason why the present situation should stay the same, then there will be no reason to suppose that the future outcome is predictable. There is no greater validity to what-happened-to-happen compared with an infinite number of possible other things that might have happened - so there is no reason to defer to what-happened-to-happen, no reason why what-happened-to-happen is good, true, just, powerful or anything else - what-happened-to-happen is just what led to greater differential reproductive success for some length of time under historical (and contingent) circumstances. Nothing more.

Therefore - if humans are nothing more nor other than naturally-selected organisms - then there is zero validity to: cognition, emotions, intelligence, intuitions, morality, art, or science - including that there is no validity to the theory of evolution by natural selection. None of the above have any validity - because they all are merely products of what-happened-to-happen (and are open-endedly liable to further change).

In sum - Without teleology, there can be no possibility of knowledge.

(This is not some kind of a clever paradox - it is an unavoidable rational conclusion.)

If, and only if, biology includes direction and purpose, is the subject compatible with the reality of knowledge. A new and better metaphysics of biology must therefore include teleology.

STATEMENT OF THE NEW TELEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS: THE HIERARCHY OF ORGANIZING ENTITIES
The chronological sequence of the new metaphysics is the reverse of the usual posited in biology. Current biology usually assumes that matter precedes life; life precedes the brain; the brain precedes cognition – in other words that a solid brain comes before cognition (thinking) - including purposiveness - emerged.

By contrast, I suggest that consciousness and purpose are the starting point – and that consciousness, with its ultimate teleology, therefore operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter - instantiation here meaning the specific and actual realization of an abstraction: building of abstraction into solid form. Therefore, (baldly-stated) consciousness ‘organized’ brains.

(The above conceptualization owes much to the work of Owen Barfield, who was himself expressing ideas of Rudolf Steiner, who was in turn JW von Goethe’s scientific editor for the standard collected works – so this theory has its ultimate roots in Goethe’s biology; see for example Barfield, 1982; Naydler, 1996).

So that (to put things simply); initially consciousness sufficed to organize undifferentiated matter into ‘physics’, ‘physics’ into ‘chemistry’, and ‘chemistry’ into what we recognize as the emergence of biological entities in their most basic forms. And the directing consciousness which drove biological evolution was further subdivided and specialized; for example regulating the basic transitions and divisions of life, and beyond them the further groupings down to species, then particular human groups.

This system of consciousnesses can be imagined as an hierarchy of organizing entities


Bruce G. Charlton is a British medical doctor and Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham. Charlton graduated with honours from the Newcastle Medical School in Newcastle upon Tyne, took a doctorate at the Medical Research Council Neuroendocrinology group, and did postgraduate training in psychiatry and public health. He has held university lectureships in physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and psychology; and holds a Master's degree in English Literature from Durham University in North East England. From 2003 to 2010, Charlton was the solo-editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses, published by Elsevier

[CoinCube]

I think the holographic universe theory is also a big crap, it's just a high-tech version of the brain in a jar theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
Which is impossible to prove.

The holographic principle does more than simply establish a non-falsifiable thought experiment. It also provides a mathematical model that reconciles quantum mechanics and gravity which up until this point physics has largely failed to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Gravity_and_quantum_mechanics

In the decades after the discovery of general relativity, it was realized that general relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics. It is possible to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory like the other fundamental forces, such that the attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of virtual gravitons, in the same way as the electromagnetic force arises from exchange of virtual photons. This reproduces general relativity in the classical limit. However, this approach fails at short distances of the order of the Planck length, where a more complete theory of quantum gravity (or a new approach to quantum mechanics) is required.

Below is a description of how the holographic principle reconciles quantum mechanics with gravity

http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/132

A new model in which gravity is not a fundamental force could—counterintuitively—give a controversial quantum gravity theory a boost. It may also change our picture of spacetime, and do away with dark energy.

Hawking and ’t Hooft had both worked on the so-called holographic principle, which relates the information content—or entropy—of a black hole to the surface area of its event horizon, the hypothetical sphere around the black hole where gravity becomes so strong even light can’t escape. It’s as if the horizon is a spherical television screen with all the information about the three-dimensional volume within encoded on the pixels on its surface. Verlinde has shown that by combining the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work, it’s relatively straightforward to derive Newton’s classical equation of gravity. (See "Decoding Entropic Gravity" for more details.)

The work has been causing a stir amongst physicists. "Verlinde’s paper is remarkable in that we all felt so stupid for not having seen it before," says FQXi’s Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, Ontario. "The mathematics involved is just high school algebra."

It might sound like re-inventing the wheel, but the approach implies that gravity is nothing more than the result of a system maximising its entropy, or disorder. At first glance, this looks like bad news for the quantum gravity crowd. If gravity is an "entropic force," there is no longer a need for physicists to attempt to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, or hunt for the hypothetical graviton (the particle posited to carry the gravitational force just as photons mediate the electromagnetic force), says Paul Frampton, at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Rather, all we need to explain the interactions of particles is the Standard Model of particle physics and entropy. "It means that everyone looking into quantum gravity is misguided," says Frampton.

Verlinde’s model is tied to earlier work by FQXi member Ted Jacobson, who had shown in 1995 that Einstein’s equations of general relativity could be derived using thermodynamics and the holographic principle. "The wonderful thing about the arguments of Jacobson and Verlinde is they give a deep reason for why a quantum theory of gravity should yield the phenomena of gravitation

[CoinCube]

Combining the above insights leads us to the idea that the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper fundamental reality. A universe with consciousness, as its ultimate teleology where consciousness operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter. A universe where entropy always increases and entropy is understood as information for consciousness to act upon.

This model cannot currently be proven true but neither can you disprove it or reject it as illogical for it for it is logically sound. Indeed one can even argue that this model better explains our universe for this model allows you to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics a task which traditional models have been unable to accomplish.

[RealBitcoin]

This is a very good question. I did not go into the distinction between life non life because it takes us far from the realm of economics and deep into metaphysics. This is simply not a question you can answer with science for it is a question of metaphysics. For example one can make the metaphysical choice that “it’s all just random events” but this choice has significant nihilistic implications. Lets examine some of the other choices we can make. 

Indeed, if you dig too deep you hit metaphysics and philosophy, science can only barely scratch the surface of reality.

The holographic principle does more than simply establish a non-falsifiable thought experiment. It also provides a mathematical model that reconciles quantum mechanics and gravity which up until this point physics has largely failed to do.

Of course but as of this moment it's only pseudoscience.

It's just the imagination of physicists + some spooky math from string theory and other quackeries.

You know string theory is like the keynesianism of physics, it all sounds very good but beneath the surface it's just a load of crap.


Seriously, physicists have hit a brick wall after QM, and now they desperately try to come up with explanations even if nothing backs them up but their own imagination.

Come on, string theory really?  So the fabric of the universe is bunch of strings that vibrate in 11 dimensions?

I guarantee you the theist explanation of the universe is more plausible than that. It sounds like you get this theory out of Star Trek or something, these physicists must be high or something.

[RealBitcoin]

I tell you man, scientists have become obsessed with their ideas, and they've let their imagination overcome their rational brain.

After you make quackery ideas so complex that nobody can understand them, of course it sounds plausible.

They become entagled in their own quackery theories, and after they find a logical hole in it, they start to justify it with even more complex and quackery ideas.

This is how modern science works, it's hardly based on rationality anymore, and scientists cant surrender if they fail to explain something ,so instead they just pull out wild ideas out of their ass to explain it.

[RealBitcoin]

Combing the above insights leads us to the idea that the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper fundamental reality. A universe with consciousness, as its ultimate teleology where consciousness operates upon matter with the proximate goal of sustaining and developing itself via instantiations in matter. A universe where entropy always increases and entropy is understood as information for consciousness to act upon.

Yes I agree with you, but if it's true then i dont think consciousness needs any matter to act upon, it's simply just a projection/simulation of it.

Just like the thoughts are a projection of the mind, and act as a building block to create things in your mind.

In the sense that the mind is the canvas, and the thoughts are the projection of it.

Consciousness may very well be the fabric, while matter is the thing projected on it.

This model cannot currently be proven true but neither can you disprove it or reject it as illogical for it for it is logically sound.
Indeed one can even argue that this model better explains our universe for this model allows you to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics a task which traditional models have been unable to accomplish.

If it's true, then forces like gravity and physics entire can just be thrown in a trash can.

Because they only explain the interaction of the projected things on the canvas, but they can never explain the canvas itself.

[aminorex]

Because they only explain the interaction of the projected things on the canvas, but they can never explain the canvas itself.

Every time such a claim is made, someone shows a way to route around the limitation.

[RealBitcoin]

Because they only explain the interaction of the projected things on the canvas, but they can never explain the canvas itself.

Every time such a claim is made, someone shows a way to route around the limitation.

What do you mean by that, i dont understand what you are saying?

[CoinCube]

Kant argued that free will requires a noumenal self which is causally undetermined an uncaused cause outside of and therefore not subject to the deterministic laws of nature.

Immanuel Kant on Free Will
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#ThePraAut

The most important belief about things in themselves that Kant thinks only practical philosophy can justify concerns human freedom. Freedom is important because, on Kant's view, moral appraisal presupposes that we are free in the sense that we have the ability to do otherwise. To see why, consider Kant's example of a man who commits a theft (5:95ff.). Kant holds that in order for this man's action to be morally wrong, it must have been within his control in the sense that it was within his power at the time not to have committed the theft. If this was not within his control at the time, then, while it may be useful to punish him in order to shape his behavior or to influence others, it nevertheless would not be correct to say that his action was morally wrong. Moral rightness and wrongness apply only to free agents who control their actions and have it in their power, at the time of their actions, either to act rightly or not. According to Kant, this is just common sense.

On these grounds, Kant rejects a type of compatibilism that he calls the “comparative concept of freedom” and associates with Leibniz (5:96–97). (Note that Kant has a specific type of compatibilism in mind, which I will refer to simply as “compatibilism,” although there may be other types of compatibilism that do not fit Kant's characterization of that view). On the compatibilist view, as Kant understands it, I am free whenever the cause of my action is within me. So I am unfree only when something external to me pushes or moves me, but I am free whenever the proximate cause of my body's movement is internal to me as an “acting being” (5:96). If we distinguish between involuntary convulsions and voluntary bodily movements, then on this view free actions are just voluntary bodily movements. Kant ridicules this view as a “wretched subterfuge” that tries to solve an ancient philosophical problem “with a little quibbling about words” (ibid.). This view, he says, assimilates human freedom to “the freedom of a turnspit,” or a projectile in flight, or the motion of a clock's hands (5:96–97). The proximate causes of these movements are internal to the turnspit, the projectile, and the clock at the time of the movement. This cannot be sufficient for moral responsibility.

Why not? The reason, Kant says, is ultimately that the causes of these movements occur in time. Return to the theft example. A compatibilist would say that the thief's action is free because its proximate cause is inside him, and because the theft was not an involuntary convulsion but a voluntary action. The thief decided to commit the theft, and his action flowed from this decision. According to Kant, however, if the thief's decision is a natural phenomenon that occurs in time, then it must be the effect of some cause that occurred in a previous time. This is an essential part of Kant's Newtonian worldview and is grounded in the a priori laws (specifically, the category of cause and effect) in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience: every event has a cause that begins in an earlier time. If that cause too was an event occurring in time, then it must also have a cause beginning in a still earlier time, etc. All natural events occur in time and are thoroughly determined by causal chains that stretch backwards into the distant past. So there is no room for freedom in nature, which is deterministic in a strong sense.

The root of the problem, for Kant, is time. Again, if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is the effect of a causal chain extending into the distant past. But the past is out of his control now, in the present. Once the past is past, he can't change it. On Kant's view, that is why his actions would not be in his control in the present if they are determined by events in the past. Even if he could control those past events in the past, he cannot control them now. But in fact past events were not in his control in the past either if they too were determined by events in the more distant past, because eventually the causal antecedents of his action stretch back before his birth, and obviously events that occurred before his birth were not in his control. So if the thief's choice to commit the theft is a natural event in time, then it is not now and never was in his control, and he could not have done otherwise than to commit the theft. In that case, it would be a mistake to hold him morally responsible for it.

Compatibilism, as Kant understands it, therefore locates the issue in the wrong place. Even if the cause of my action is internal to me, if it is in the past — for example, if my action today is determined by a decision I made yesterday, or from the character I developed in childhood — then it is not within my control now. The real issue is not whether the cause of my action is internal or external to me, but whether it is in my control now. For Kant, however, the cause of my action can be within my control now only if it is not in time. This is why Kant thinks that transcendental idealism is the only way to make sense of the kind of freedom that morality requires. For transcendental idealism allows that the cause of my action may be a thing in itself outside of time: namely, my noumenal self, which is free because it is not part of nature. No matter what kind of character I have developed or what external influences act on me, on Kant's view all of my intentional, voluntary actions are immediate effects of my noumenal self, which is causally undetermined (5:97–98). My noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time, which therefore is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature in accordance with which our understanding constructs experience.

Kant holds that we can make sense of moral appraisal and responsibility only by thinking about human freedom in this way, because it is the only way to prevent natural necessity from undermining both.

[CoinCube]

Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory
By Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188

Highlights
• The Orch OR theory proposes quantum computations in brain microtubules account for consciousness.
• Microtubule ‘quantum channels’ in which anesthetics erase consciousness are identified.
• Evidence for warm quantum vibrations in brain microtubules is cited.
• Interference of microtubule vibrations are ‘beat frequencies’ seen as EEG.
• Orch OR links consciousness to processes in fundamental space–time geometry.

Abstract
The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown. We proposed in the mid 1990's that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal synaptic and membrane activity, and that the continuous Schrödinger evolution of each such process terminates in accordance with the specific Diósi–Penrose (DP) scheme of ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) of the quantum state. This orchestrated OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments of conscious awareness and/or choice. The DP form of OR is related to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and space–time geometry, so Orch OR suggests that there is a connection between the brain's biomolecular processes and the basic structure of the universe. Here we review Orch OR in light of criticisms and developments in quantum biology, neuroscience, physics and cosmology. We also introduce a novel suggestion of ‘beat frequencies’ of faster microtubule vibrations as a possible source of the observed electro-encephalographic (‘EEG’) correlates of consciousness. We conclude that consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe.

[CoinCube]

Delayed choice quantum eraser experiments tell us that certain quantum phenomena operate outside of what we traditionally think of as time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

Delayed choice experiments raise questions about time and time sequences, and thereby bring our usual ideas of time and causal sequence into question.[note 1] If events at D1, D2, D3, D4 determine outcomes at D0, then effect seems to precede cause. If the idler light paths were greatly extended so that a year goes by before a photon shows up at D1, D2, D3, or D4, then when a photon shows up in one of these detectors, it would cause a signal photon to have shown up in a certain mode a year earlier. Alternatively, knowledge of the future fate of the idler photon would determine the activity of the signal photon in its own present. Neither of these ideas conforms to the usual human expectation of causality.

• Orch OR theory posits that conscious arises from quantum computations in brain microtubules.
• As noted by Kant in his model of a noumenal self free will requires a true self that is independent of time.
• Grounding consciousness in quantum mechanics provides this independence.

Therefore we have free will.
 

[CoinCube]

Why do we "ground consciousness in quantum mechanics"? Is there some experiment that proves consciousness is a phenomenon affected more by quantum scale effects? I'm astonished - I didn't even know we were at the point that consciousness was that well understood.

If OTOH you're just putting forward a conjecture then until there is proof we cannot know whether or not free will exists.

I have provided metaphysics that define what is necessary for free will Kant's noumenal self outside of time. Such a self is free because it is causally undetermined.

I have provided information on emperic and reproducable scientific experiments. Delayed choice quantum eraser experiments show that quantum phenomona can operate outside of what we traditionally think of as time and causal sequence.

I have provided robust scientific theory (Orch objective reduction) that argues consciousness is grounded in these same quantum phenomona that have been shown to operate outside of traditional time and causality.

Obviously from my stated conclusion I believe the Orch OR theory to be true. However this is not a question of metaphysics but one of science.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188

the Orch OR scheme has so far stood the test of time better than most other schemes, and it is particularly distinguished from other proposals by the many scientifically tested, and potentially testable, ingredients that it depends upon.

From this one can conclude that current emperic scientific theory supports the existance of Kant's noumenal self which is required for free will. Free will is thus entirely consistent with modern science and undeniably possible. If Orch OR theory holds up under further and in depth emperic testing I would argue that free will becomes overwhelmingly probable.

[RealBitcoin]

The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown.

Nope, I`ve read that theory a few years ago, and dismissed it instantly.

It's another nonsense sensational theory.


Tell me how can consciousness arise from the brain, if the consciousness experiences the outside world, including the brain...

It's circular logic.


Ok I have a question for you because I see that you are pretty intelligent, here it goes:

Code:

What you see with your eyes and interpret with your mind, is that the outside world or the inside world?
- You can answer outside, because its detached from your body, therefore it seems like it's the outside world, outside from your body 
- You can answer inside, because you experience it with the mind ,therefore everything you experience is filtered through your mind, so what you see outside is actually inside your head
- You can't answer both, because that's illogical, can't be both at the same time

So which one is it? Think about it hard because it's a very tricky question, and if you find the right answer then you will instantly see what i`m talking about...

[CoinCube]

"Physics of Life Reviews" is not a peer-reviewed paper I'm familiar with, and I couldn't see any other papers that were scientifically credible.

Can you link to any other papers that back your ideas?

Some Primary References:

Metaphysics of free will and life
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities
http://praxeology.net/kant4.htm

The holographic principle reconciles quantum mechanics with gravity
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.3668
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jmp/36/11/10.1063/1.531249
http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.4089

Quantum phenomona can operate outside of what we traditionally think of as time and causal sequence
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.1
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v353/n6344/abs/353507b0.html

Consciousness may be grounded in the same quantum phenomona that have been shown to operate outside of traditional time and causality
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23567633
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/102/12/10.1063/1.4793995

This will be my last post for some time as I have some projects that require my undivided attention. I have enjoyed this recent debate and found it informative. I hope others have as well. Until next time.

[thaaanos]

Now I think we must summon Carl Jung to help us break down consciousness.
To cut it short you are not alone in your brain, there are more processes running than the one that has tapped into the sensory information flow and feeds from it and dominates (Ego). Your Brain is an ecosystem.
I think that as energy flows give rise to life processors likewise information flows give rise to cognitive processes, that are to consciousness what cells are to organisms. Yes the brain provides the break from causality simply by providing a true RNG , but is simply a computation platform for yet another emerging phenomenon.