This reframes something I’ve long felt but never seen put so sharply. I’ve come to think of the brain, first of all, as a survival filter — it shows us not the world but the thin slice of it useful for staying alive. Your essay follows that thought to its beautiful conclusion: if the filter were lifted, what’s underneath might be closer to wonder than to neutrality. In my own small way I’ve glimpsed this in meditation — not awe added, but the ordinary mental noise subtracted, and something quietly astonished left behind when it goes. Thank you for this — I’ll be sitting with the Metzinger thread for a good while.
Oshan, some very smart people are spending quadrillions of dollars on massive data centers that consume gigawatts of power to create agents trained on (more than) all the data that exists in the world -- to emulate ordinary mind. Even superintelligence, should it ever be developed, will still be confined within the mirror that surrounds our consensus reality. Meanwhile, some other very smart people are training their 20-watt wet machines on nothingness, to become aware of what lies beneath the mind and beyond this world and this life. Large Language Models may talk about the ineffable, but I'll choose the normal human struggle to experience and express it any day.
Your grandmother Mildred was a brilliant woman, a top teacher and organizer of teachers. She appreciated living in Brooklyn, and was very reluctant to move with your grandfather to Senior Housing in New Paltz. even though it was award-winning. She'd be pleased you are in Brooklyn now. When your father asked me to visit her at Woodland Ponds, a deluxe senior residence, she only came to be with her husband... Rick asked me to visit them both - as I was a Hospice Chaplain at the time but not reveal my occupation, and that was ok with me. Your grandfather said I was a peach and welcoming. Mildred, of the high IQ and brilliant advocate of Teachers, would have nothing to do with me for several reasons - mainly she thought I was, ahem, not bright and of the wrong religion. But when I beat her, unintentionally, at Scrabble, she relented and we became close. I loved her, so strong, brilliant and fierce! (Let me know if I'm repeating myseld and you aready knew this!) Love, g
In 2009, arch debunker (I choose not to honor him by calling him a "skeptic") psychologist Richard Wiseman acknowledged that the scientific evidence for telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis and precognition had reached the point that it was as good as the evidence in ANY other area of science. His debunking friend, psychologist Christopher French, agreed. They also did not (are you surprised!!?) accept this as proof of psi; they just moved the goal posts (despite the fact this is all they were asking for over the past 20 years; they just never expected psi research to reach that point).
"proof? No, psi is extraordinary, so we need extraordinary proof" (why didn't they ever ask for this before? And why have they never since then, defined what makes psi extraordinary? Because they were lying about it all for decades and still are - except for the part where it's been proven)
And the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association - long the home of some of the most prominent psi debunkers - published a positive review of 100+ years of psi research in 2018 (they could only find Arthur Reber to write the rebuttal - Arthur made Richard and Christopher look like the poster boys for open minded examination of psi by comparison. To paraphrase Reber, "I never bother to look at psi research. There's no need to - it violates the laws of physics therefore it's impossible.' The old churchmen who refused to look through Galileo's telescope had nothing on Arthur!)
Needless to say, Metzinger doesn't accept psi, and most of the other spokespeople for consciousness studies either don't accept it, or ignore it.
But imagine if not only telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and remote viewing are perfectly valid human capacities, and in fact, the overwhelming positive research results for rebirth are accurate too.
1. This eliminates 99% of modern speculation about consciousness.
2. This, if admitted, would, by his own account, lead Bernardo Kastrup to give up on philosophy. he insists if he accepted remote viewing he would have to completely revise his philosophy and he finds it too painful to do that (Sheesh; we could have saved him the trouble; along with at least a dozen other members of his online forum back in 2013 and 2014, we practically begged him to stop relying on semi vitalist philosophers like Schopenhauer who profoundly misunderstood the Upanishads and actually look at the writings of genuine contemplative philosophers, even contemporary ones like Alan Wallace - but no, he wanted a "naturalistic" philosophy and wanted it to appeal to his friends in analytic philosophy - thus dooming his attempt to come up with a coherent world view.
Think about it - if psi is potentially something we could develop, it would dwarf anything Ai could do, and we also then have access to an intelligence infinitely greater than the human mind (another fundamental flaw in Bernardo's view, since he sees "Mind At Large" as some kind of creepy super instinctive blind, lumbering idiot)
And if we first developed universal love and compassion before playing with the dangers of psi, all of the prognostications of the post-Trump world would fall apart.
The line about popular science getting wonder backwards has been following me since I read this. There's something about the reductive framing — wonder as a cognitive reward mechanism — that forecloses the very thing it's supposed to explain. You're pointing at the structure of the problem, not just the content.
Just thinking of you today, wishing with my mind, to be in touch. THANK YOU FOR SENDING. Missing Mildred et al.
Hey Garnette — sending love your way.
This reframes something I’ve long felt but never seen put so sharply. I’ve come to think of the brain, first of all, as a survival filter — it shows us not the world but the thin slice of it useful for staying alive. Your essay follows that thought to its beautiful conclusion: if the filter were lifted, what’s underneath might be closer to wonder than to neutrality. In my own small way I’ve glimpsed this in meditation — not awe added, but the ordinary mental noise subtracted, and something quietly astonished left behind when it goes. Thank you for this — I’ll be sitting with the Metzinger thread for a good while.
Glad to hear that, thanks Rom.
Oshan, some very smart people are spending quadrillions of dollars on massive data centers that consume gigawatts of power to create agents trained on (more than) all the data that exists in the world -- to emulate ordinary mind. Even superintelligence, should it ever be developed, will still be confined within the mirror that surrounds our consensus reality. Meanwhile, some other very smart people are training their 20-watt wet machines on nothingness, to become aware of what lies beneath the mind and beyond this world and this life. Large Language Models may talk about the ineffable, but I'll choose the normal human struggle to experience and express it any day.
Thank you Oshan for binding these ideas together. I miss Musing mind so your papers are always welcome.
Thanks Mansuy, I appreciate that.
Your grandmother Mildred was a brilliant woman, a top teacher and organizer of teachers. She appreciated living in Brooklyn, and was very reluctant to move with your grandfather to Senior Housing in New Paltz. even though it was award-winning. She'd be pleased you are in Brooklyn now. When your father asked me to visit her at Woodland Ponds, a deluxe senior residence, she only came to be with her husband... Rick asked me to visit them both - as I was a Hospice Chaplain at the time but not reveal my occupation, and that was ok with me. Your grandfather said I was a peach and welcoming. Mildred, of the high IQ and brilliant advocate of Teachers, would have nothing to do with me for several reasons - mainly she thought I was, ahem, not bright and of the wrong religion. But when I beat her, unintentionally, at Scrabble, she relented and we became close. I loved her, so strong, brilliant and fierce! (Let me know if I'm repeating myseld and you aready knew this!) Love, g
In 2009, arch debunker (I choose not to honor him by calling him a "skeptic") psychologist Richard Wiseman acknowledged that the scientific evidence for telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis and precognition had reached the point that it was as good as the evidence in ANY other area of science. His debunking friend, psychologist Christopher French, agreed. They also did not (are you surprised!!?) accept this as proof of psi; they just moved the goal posts (despite the fact this is all they were asking for over the past 20 years; they just never expected psi research to reach that point).
"proof? No, psi is extraordinary, so we need extraordinary proof" (why didn't they ever ask for this before? And why have they never since then, defined what makes psi extraordinary? Because they were lying about it all for decades and still are - except for the part where it's been proven)
And the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association - long the home of some of the most prominent psi debunkers - published a positive review of 100+ years of psi research in 2018 (they could only find Arthur Reber to write the rebuttal - Arthur made Richard and Christopher look like the poster boys for open minded examination of psi by comparison. To paraphrase Reber, "I never bother to look at psi research. There's no need to - it violates the laws of physics therefore it's impossible.' The old churchmen who refused to look through Galileo's telescope had nothing on Arthur!)
Needless to say, Metzinger doesn't accept psi, and most of the other spokespeople for consciousness studies either don't accept it, or ignore it.
But imagine if not only telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and remote viewing are perfectly valid human capacities, and in fact, the overwhelming positive research results for rebirth are accurate too.
1. This eliminates 99% of modern speculation about consciousness.
2. This, if admitted, would, by his own account, lead Bernardo Kastrup to give up on philosophy. he insists if he accepted remote viewing he would have to completely revise his philosophy and he finds it too painful to do that (Sheesh; we could have saved him the trouble; along with at least a dozen other members of his online forum back in 2013 and 2014, we practically begged him to stop relying on semi vitalist philosophers like Schopenhauer who profoundly misunderstood the Upanishads and actually look at the writings of genuine contemplative philosophers, even contemporary ones like Alan Wallace - but no, he wanted a "naturalistic" philosophy and wanted it to appeal to his friends in analytic philosophy - thus dooming his attempt to come up with a coherent world view.
Think about it - if psi is potentially something we could develop, it would dwarf anything Ai could do, and we also then have access to an intelligence infinitely greater than the human mind (another fundamental flaw in Bernardo's view, since he sees "Mind At Large" as some kind of creepy super instinctive blind, lumbering idiot)
And if we first developed universal love and compassion before playing with the dangers of psi, all of the prognostications of the post-Trump world would fall apart.
But will we do it? I have no idea.
The line about popular science getting wonder backwards has been following me since I read this. There's something about the reductive framing — wonder as a cognitive reward mechanism — that forecloses the very thing it's supposed to explain. You're pointing at the structure of the problem, not just the content.