Night musings.

[peter]

It's an awsome feat to take an assorted 40lb bag of mixed chemicles, four or five buckets of water and mix them into a human being. Then it's an even more astounding one to overlay a few billion billion electrochemical reactions and cobble them into a self aware mind [and one that can have no 'feeling' of this activity that results in it's existence.] Biology is in essence physics and chemistry at a massively organised level. Stephen Hawking said it was an inherent property of matter to organise itself into ever more complex structures and on the evidence of this I guess he was correct. That the mind has no sepparate existence from the matter of the brain is I guess by now a pretty much 100% established and accepted fact, but damn, the matter does a pretty good job of hiding it.

[edit 1 day later; Maybe the working machinery of the mind is not so far below the surface as we think. Here's a little story from yesterday. I was serving a guy over the counter and completed the transaction, said thank you and waited for him to go. Instead of making his goodbye's and dissapearing he stood looking blankly at me in a sort of confused manner. His confusion immediately transfered itself to me and a sort of sureal altered reality emerged for a momentary fraction in which neither of us seemed to understand what or where to go from there. He turned away ald left, in turn leaving me bemused and discomfited. This illustrates how much we are continousely subconciously monitoring the responsess of those with whom we interact and how the interaction is in fact a dance of response followed by appropriate counter response. The moment that chain is broken in an atypical way the entire edifice of perception and understanding crumbles away leaving confusion and chaos in its wake. Our brains grasp on its situation is it appears, eggshell thin and easily disrupted [as would be expected of a system of the complexity I noted above]. One more thing; we spend much time as sentient beings worrying about death. If our sense of dualism, of being a mind within a body, is so easily foisted upon us in complete opposition to the facts [and as said above, few would now deny this] is it just not as easily possible that the feeling of 'life' we experience is equally illusory. ie That qualitatively there is in fact no real difference between the animate and inanimate and that the property we prize so highly under the title of 'life' is in fact just so much smoke and mirrors.]

[Cord Hurn]

One more thing; we spend much time as sentient beings worrying about death. If our sense of dualism, of being a mind within a body, is so easily foisted upon us in complete opposition to the facts [and as said above, few would now deny this] is it just not as easily possible that the feeling of 'life' we experience is equally illusory. ie That qualitatively there is in fact no real difference between the animate and inanimate and that the property we prize so highly under the title of 'life' is in fact just so much smoke and mirrors.

Strangely comforting.

[peter]

Phew! That must have been a long night - but dang! it was a good post

[Avatar]

In some or other way, the two of you accidentally disrupted each others OODA loops.

Something you did or something that he perceived interrupted his loop, confusing him. That interrupted your loop, since you were expecting him to say cheers and leave. Then your confusion interrupted him while resetting his loop, and so on.

As for the mind having no separate existence, I'm not so sure. Or at least, while it is dependent on the matter, at the same time it clearly somehow transcends it. (Does a vehicle have a separate existence from the fuel?)

Are we not more than the sum of our parts?

--A

[peter]

When the wind blows nor-nor'east I think so, but......

[Avatar]

--A

[wayfriend]

I am the sum of my credit card bills. Plus one.

[sgt.null]

I have never had a credit card in my name, I am co-listed on any that Julie has had during our marriage. I have never had a driver's license. yet I own a house. I have owned three cell phones in my lifetime.

[peter]

I have no cell phone - there isn't anyone I want to talk to that much that doesn't know how to reach me immediately or isn't with me. I won't be hog-tied to a monster in my pocket - well, not another one at least!

[sgt.null]

no cell phone!?!?!?!?!?

no computer/camera - nope. I have embraced the smart phone. I now needs the precious.

[peter]

Here's the transcript of a letter I read in a satirical magazine that just about hit's the spot for me.

"Last night I came home from work on the train as usual, and sat next to a guy who had been to the hairdressers that day for a cut and blow-dry. He'd had a tiff with his manageress at work and was on his way home to get changed before heading over to his mothers for tea [probably chicken pie] and an hour or two watching telly.

Interesting? No - I didn't think so either, but thanks to the stupid ****er who invented the mobile phone I didn't have any choice but to listen to it either!"

This about sums up 99.9999% of all mobile phone conversations to me.

[ussusimiel]

Psssst, peter! That's why God invented headphones and gave us mobile phones with music and radio on them

[I'm Murrin]

Wait, why would you waste a device like that on making phone calls?

[peter]

Got a feeling that this is an argument I'm not going to win!

[I'm Murrin]

You just seem to be fixated on the idea that they're for making phone calls. Peter, despite the name "smartphone", what we're talking about are pocket computers. Don't you want books, music, video, games, a word processor, calculator, alarm clock, calender, internet browser, and multiple forms of communication all right there wherever you are?

[Savor Dam]

What I object to is that while it is all that Murrin mentions, it also becomes an electronic leash, allowing no refuge from the world...unless you have the fortitude to turn it off and bear the consequences.

[Avatar]

My cell phone is just for making calls. Or sending messages. That's it. It doesn't even have a camera.

All those things Murrin mentioned...I'm rarely more than a few feet away from them all, at home or at the office.

The rest of the time, it's quite nice not to have to bother.

--A

[peter]

I think for me the point is wherever I am I'm doing what I'm doing. At work I'm working. At home I'm leisuring. I guess I just wouldn't have a place to do all that stuff. Take music - when I listen to music I listen to it in exclusion to doing other things, not as a background activity to say walking. When I'm walking I like to see, hear and feel the vibrancy of the place I'm in. I'm not saying to be different is wrong - just that it's not for me.

[ussusimiel]

Then I'd say that when you travel on public transport these days one of the things you are going to hear is other people's personal phonecalls. In the past you might have been forced to listen to the conversation of the people behind or in front of you, which could be either interesting or boring. There used to be some sort of etiquette about mobile phone use on public transport when they first started to proliferate, but we now live in a world of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat etc. where people display the most intimate details of their lives to the world.

I travelled on public buses in Dublin for many years and I noticed this transformation. Like you, peter, I liked to soak up the atmosphere of where I was so almost always travelled with my ears open to the world. When people talking on the phone became too intrusive I adapted and would pop in the earbuds and listen to the radio or music when someone's conversation made for uncomfortable or boring listening. Other times I would listen intrigued by someone's pet or landlord troubles. And just because I put in my earbuds didn't mean I couldn't take them out again.

Our world continues to change and even public buses are not immune!

u.

[Fist and Faith]

Insert yourself into their conversations. They can't tell you to mind your own business, after all. Tell him his hair looks good, his manageress is a bitch, and to say Hi to his mom for you.