Derek Lambert, Mythicists, Atheists and True Believers |506|

Alex,

I quite liked that interview, though a fair bit of it was 'inside baseball'.

I liked your point that people - particularly Biblical scholars - come primed with a set of indoctrination that warps their insight.

The explanation for the Roman coin finds (that someone lost a coin collection) is really weak. If you GOOGLE 'second century roman coins found on US beach' you cann see some of these coins - it doesn't seem to be a super rare phenomenon.

David
 
anyone who was ever entertained the idea of a flat earth needs to slow down and really relearn science... I mean the basic s*** you slept through in high school... newton and the apple and the tree (probably not a real story but you get the idea).

Certainly I didn't sleep through that shit in high school....I mean mathematics and science. You had to be awake in fuckin algebra to understand algebra, let alone chemistry. Chemistry, I would say, was the most riddled shit of any class. It isn't enough to simply experience and understand the fact that substances interact and change while humans meddle with them, but we had to have a language to comprehend them that made understanding Chinese writing look like Duck, Duck, Goose?!? For certain, I happily slept through stupid classes like social studies and aced them easily.

Do you believe all the basic shit that you were taught in school? I mean, here you are, on the cutting edge of so many different topics, interviewing all these interesting people and so forth, but you think that near death experiences are better validated than the flat earth theory? I really don't ascribe to either in their entirety. Any asshole can have a near death experience, just like any asshole can think the earth is flat and provide plenty of evidence. Who gives a shit if an apple fell on Newton's head or not? He didn't discover gravity! Shit has been falling since the end of time! How are either of them different?
 
Masterfully put. 100% agree. And thank you for letting me go out on that limb.

I think I can tie this back to the Gloria Steinem effect.

Picture how easy it would be to lovingly provide a satisfactory demonstration so that any Flat-Earther, and/or Five-Year-Old could verify/confirm for them selves.

Doesn't it seem peculiar that this is just just barely radical enough a debate to cleave a ravine between State-sanctioned Science and otherwise-intelligent Anti-State wannabe scientists?

It's just stupid enough that nobody will lend it serious concern... Therefore it guarantees longest possible shelf life.

I feel like this has some interesting tie-ins to the religion thing I'm working on. I got some good interviews coming up. I'll be curious to see what you think.
 
I feel like this has some interesting tie-ins to the religion thing I'm working on. I got some good interviews coming up. I'll be curious to see what you think.

Bullshit! It deserves serious concern right now! Listen, I am not saying the fucking earth is flat, but there has been an enormous push, in the media for a long period of time, to make us think that "space is some kind of final frontier." However, these space "conquests" have failed miserably over and over again. What is equally laughable is the huge push to go to mars and all the media coverage that a rich, government subsidized asshole, like Elon Musk gets for talking about it. How long has it been since we have been to the moon? Over 50 fucking years, and we can't even build a base there? What is that shit? If we can't build a fucking base on the moon, and all this is real, what right do we have to go to Mars? This is like saying that I live in California, I have been to Nevada once, but I can't get there again, however, we are going to land on China 50 years later! Who gives a shit about Gloria Steinem's lesbian campaign in the light of these issues?
 
Another example of a contorted explanation is the super-psi concept that mediums do not contact dead people, but have incredibly powerful psi that can extract information from many sources and construct what the dead person could plausibly have said if he still exists.

David

Come now, David. If there are non-material explanations, all of them will appear just as unlikely to materialists.

Both a) NDEs and b) the existence of "Akashic records" (i.e. some kind of universal repository of information that cannot be destroyed) which mediums and clairvoyants etc. are hypothesised to be able to access (perhaps modulated by their prior conditioning and expectations), are equally crazy notions to materialists. You deem b) contorted, I suspect, mainly because it's not an idea you personally ascribe to.

In my view, NDEs, and veridical out of body experiences, are no more likely (or unlikely) than a hypothetical repository of information that could account at least in part for many other paranormal experiences. To me, it could be considered a more parsimonious explanation than positing the existence of lots of different human faculties and unusual phenomena.
 
Come now, David. If there are non-material explanations, all of them will appear just as unlikely to materialists.
Yes, and it seems amazing that super psi is touted as an explanation at all.
Both a) NDEs and b) the existence of "Akashic records" (i.e. some kind of universal repository of information that cannot be destroyed) which mediums and clairvoyants etc. are hypothesised to be able to access (perhaps modulated by their prior conditioning and expectations), are equally crazy notions to materialists. You deem b) contorted, I suspect, mainly because it's not an idea you personally ascribe to.

In my view, NDEs, and veridical out of body experiences, are no more likely (or unlikely) than a hypothetical repository of information that could account at least in part for many other paranormal experiences. To me, it could be considered a more parsimonious explanation than positing the existence of lots of different human faculties and unusual phenomena.
Well to me the point is that if you have nothing better to go on, it is surely better to ask the mediums or OOB experiencers what they feel they are doing. I mean surely looking at an Akashic record would feel different from communicating with a consciousness that was a direct continuation of the consciousness that was a deceased person.

David
 
you're right... of course it does. but where you going to start? " consciousness is an illusion" is a perfect example of flat earth science. let's start there.

I don't know how it is possible to call consciousness an illusion when you need to be conscious to tell the difference between what is and is not an illusion in the first place. Let me break this down for the idiots that call consciousness an illusion: if consciousness is an illusion, than everything is an illusion! You will not be able to be aware, have consciousness, without only experiencing illusions. In this case, we live in Nick Bostrom's idiotic world of simulation theory. I actually think simulation theory is fuckin worse than flat earth theory. At least flat earth theory has practical applications to the way that we live our lives and build things. These absolute idiots that think everything is a simulation certainly haven't lived difficult lives.

However, I think that you are making a mistake when you reference "flat earth science" as an example of calling consciousness an illusion. Calling the earth "flat" is not a scientific endeavor without going about proving it as such. Nevertheless, I am not going to ascribe to a philosophy that whole heartedly believes the earth is flat for many reasons. That being said, I don't think public schools are a reputable source on any kind of information, whatsoever.

Where would I like to start? Let's get back to consciousness and the nature of what we are. I am listening to this really awesome book, and I think you should check it out. It is called "The Cosmic Serpent," written by Jeremy Narby. In tandem, I am listening to Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision." There are interesting intellectual parallels in both, yet from absolutely different perspective.

Also, don't forget, I love you brother! Keep up the good work!
 
Well to me the point is that if you have nothing better to go on, it is surely better to ask the mediums or OOB experiencers what they feel they are doing. I mean surely looking at an Akashic record would feel different from communicating with a consciousness that was a direct continuation of the consciousness that was a deceased person.

David

Everything we experience in the ordinary waking conscious state is interpreted. What our normal perceptual apparatus, similar in all of us, perceives, is a world of what we interpret as tables, chairs and stars. This is the root of materialism; we can't help but perceive the world in a certain way, hence the world must literally be that way.

And yet, the double slit and related experiments present to us in the normal waking state something that defies that interpretation. Evidently, the world isn't composed of tiny billiard balls that bang into one another and cause everything we perceive, either directly through the senses or indirectly through instruments we construct.

However, when it comes to more liminal phenomena such as certain paranormal ones, which often aren't experienced in the normal waking state, many a non-materialist tends to revert to an unrecognised form of materialism. The seeming deceased personality we see or hear or otherwise sense must be interpreted literally as we perceive it. There can be no valid different way of interpreting it.

Think about it: what you're saying is that the "Akashic record" (I only use the term because it's widely known -- a better term might be the "information repository" as I put it, accessible in certain states of mind), couldn't be experienced except as something akin to a book.

However, if we can only experience it in a particular state of mind as if it's a deceased person or a disembodied external/internal voice, that's no proof that an Akashic record doesn't exist. I see that as a reversion, in the liminal realm, to the same kind of interpretative logic that pertains in the normal waking state.

So is there a parallel to the double-slit experiment for the liminal realm? Something that might cause one to question the literal interpretation of certain paranormal phenomena? Maybe. In NDEs for example, different people perceive different entities, experience different kinds of event, etc. but, broadly speaking, there are commonalities in the NDE structure which may be interpreted by experiencers in the light of personal/culturally-induced conditioning. Incidentally, that doesn't exclude the possibility that some perceptions can later be verified, because in the NDE state, people may have access at different times to both the liminal and everyday world (as the latter is perceived in ordinary waking consciousness).

If people perceive Jesus as a deeply loving person emitting glorious light, then that must surely show that Jesus is a deeply loving person emitting glorious light. If some perceived person like one's deceased uncle, who was close to one in life and greatly loved and admired, appears to one and acts as a guide, then it must surely show that one's deceased uncle is literally one's deceased uncle acting as a guide.

I doubt that. Just as I doubt that a materialistic interpretation of the world in the ordinary waking state is literally true. That doesn't mean that in our ordinary waking state, we don't actually perceive what we perceive. We definitely perceive tables, chairs and stars, although whether or not they are literally tables, chairs and stars is a different question entirely, asked by Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup to name but two.

Likewise, in the NDE state of mind, whilst I do not doubt that many NDE reports are genuinely perceived as described, I doubt that they are literal recensions of what actually happened. Something happened and is being honestly reported, to be sure, but interpreted in the only way it can be reported, which draws heavily on ordinary language and personal/cultural conditioning -- which offers, I maintain, a framework for interpretation in all circumstances, liminal or otherwise.
 
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I don't know how it is possible to call consciousness an illusion when you need to be conscious to tell the difference between what is and is not an illusion in the first place.
Right... That's what I'm saying. neil deGrasse tyson isn't a stupid guy. but he seems to have worked his mind into a place where he genuinely thinks consciousness is probably an illusion. this is what's happening with people who seriously believe in flat earth science.

 
Everything we experience in the ordinary waking conscious state is interpreted. What our normal perceptual apparatus, similar in all of us, perceives, is a world of what we interpret as tables, chairs and stars. This is the root of materialism; we can't help but perceive the world in a certain way, hence the world must literally be that way.

And yet, the double slit and related experiments present to us in the normal waking state something that defies that interpretation. Evidently, the world isn't composed of tiny billiard balls that bang into one another and cause everything we perceive, either directly through the senses or indirectly through instruments we construct.

However, when it comes to more liminal phenomena such as certain paranormal ones, which often aren't experienced in the normal waking state, many a non-materialist tends to revert to an unrecognised form of materialism. The seeming deceased personality we see or hear or otherwise sense must be interpreted literally as we perceive it. There can be no valid different way of interpreting it.

Think about it: what you're saying is that the "Akashic record" (I only use the term because it's widely known -- a better term might be the "information repository" as I put it, accessible in certain states of mind), couldn't be experienced except as something akin to a book.

However, if we can only experience it in a particular state of mind as if it's a deceased person or a disembodied external/internal voice, that's no proof that an Akashic record doesn't exist. I see that as a reversion, in the liminal realm, to the same kind of interpretative logic that pertains in the normal waking state.

So is there a parallel to the double-slit experiment for the liminal realm? Something that might cause one to question the literal interpretation of certain paranormal phenomena? Maybe. In NDEs for example, different people perceive different entities, experience different kinds of event, etc. but, broadly speaking, there are commonalities in the NDE structure which may be interpreted by experiencers in the light of personal/culturally-induced conditioning. Incidentally, that doesn't exclude the possibility that some perceptions can later be verified, because in the NDE state, people may have access at different times to both the liminal and everyday world (as the latter is perceived in ordinary waking consciousness).

If people perceive Jesus as a deeply loving person emitting glorious light, then that must surely show that Jesus is a deeply loving person emitting glorious light. If some perceived person like one's deceased uncle, who was close to one in life and greatly loved and admired, appears to one and acts as a guide, then it must surely show that one's deceased uncle is literally one's deceased uncle acting as a guide.

I doubt that. Just as I doubt that a materialistic interpretation of the world in the ordinary waking state is literally true. That doesn't mean that in our ordinary waking state, we don't actually perceive what we perceive. We definitely perceive tables, chairs and stars, although whether or not they are literally tables, chairs and stars is a different question entirely, asked by Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup to name but two.

Likewise, in the NDE state of mind, whilst I do not doubt that many NDE reports are genuinely perceived as described, I doubt that they are literal recensions of what actually happened. Something happened and is being honestly reported, to be sure, but interpreted in the only way it can be reported, which draws heavily on ordinary language and personal/cultural conditioning -- which offers, I maintain, a framework for interpretation in all circumstances, liminal or otherwise.
I think the point is that even in the full Idealist picture - or maybe particularly from that viewpoint - interactions between conscious entities are pretty fundamental - they don't need reinterpreting! Viewed that way, there is an absolute difference between communicating to another human consciousness, and communicating with the information repository!

You can reinterpret everything else a la Hoffman or Kastrup, but not the conscious entities themselves.

David
 
I think the point is that even in the full Idealist picture - or maybe particularly from that viewpoint - interactions between conscious entities are pretty fundamental - they don't need reinterpreting! Viewed that way, there is an absolute difference between communicating to another human consciousness, and communicating with the information repository!

You can reinterpret everything else a la Hoffman or Kastrup, but not the conscious entities themselves.

David

It's precisely the point that what we perceive as conscious entities in liminal states aren't conscious entities at all. That may only be how we perceive and then interpret aspects of an information repository. You missed that point entirely and made a spurious and somewhat circular objection to it.
 
I think the point is that even in the full Idealist picture - or maybe particularly from that viewpoint - interactions between conscious entities are pretty fundamental - they don't need reinterpreting! Viewed that way, there is an absolute difference between communicating to another human consciousness, and communicating with the information repository!

You can reinterpret everything else a la Hoffman or Kastrup, but not the conscious entities themselves.

David
It's precisely the point that what we perceive as conscious entities in liminal states aren't conscious entities at all. That may only be how we perceive and then interpret aspects of an information repository. You missed that point entirely and made a spurious and somewhat circular objection to it.

Can we all just pause for a second and imagine what a visitor from a Type II civilization would be thinking if they were to eaves drop on one of our not-quite-yet-Type-I-civilization debates on the nature of reality??
Answer: No, we can't.

Let alone a Type III.

Because of this I chuckle a little whenever someone says a simulated universe wouldn't make sense. .. or that there aren't remaining any energy fields that we haven't detected.. or that everything must be explainable in linear fashion....

Not that I know any better.. I just laugh because nobody we know knows any better, or else we'd be Interstellar. Rather than watching a contemporarily-"elite" class scramble for stardom in what's probably the most pathetic narrative in human history.
 
Everything we experience in the ordinary waking conscious state is interpreted. What our normal perceptual apparatus, similar in all of us, perceives, is a world of what we interpret as tables, chairs and stars. This is the root of materialism; we can't help but perceive the world in a certain way, hence the world must literally be that way.

And yet, the double slit and related experiments present to us in the normal waking state something that defies that interpretation. Evidently, the world isn't composed of tiny billiard balls that bang into one another and cause everything we perceive, either directly through the senses or indirectly through instruments we construct.

However, when it comes to more liminal phenomena such as certain paranormal ones, which often aren't experienced in the normal waking state, many a non-materialist tends to revert to an unrecognised form of materialism. The seeming deceased personality we see or hear or otherwise sense must be interpreted literally as we perceive it. There can be no valid different way of interpreting it.

Think about it: what you're saying is that the "Akashic record" (I only use the term because it's widely known -- a better term might be the "information repository" as I put it, accessible in certain states of mind), couldn't be experienced except as something akin to a book.

However, if we can only experience it in a particular state of mind as if it's a deceased person or a disembodied external/internal voice, that's no proof that an Akashic record doesn't exist. I see that as a reversion, in the liminal realm, to the same kind of interpretative logic that pertains in the normal waking state.

So is there a parallel to the double-slit experiment for the liminal realm? Something that might cause one to question the literal interpretation of certain paranormal phenomena? Maybe. In NDEs for example, different people perceive different entities, experience different kinds of event, etc. but, broadly speaking, there are commonalities in the NDE structure which may be interpreted by experiencers in the light of personal/culturally-induced conditioning. Incidentally, that doesn't exclude the possibility that some perceptions can later be verified, because in the NDE state, people may have access at different times to both the liminal and everyday world (as the latter is perceived in ordinary waking consciousness).

If people perceive Jesus as a deeply loving person emitting glorious light, then that must surely show that Jesus is a deeply loving person emitting glorious light. If some perceived person like one's deceased uncle, who was close to one in life and greatly loved and admired, appears to one and acts as a guide, then it must surely show that one's deceased uncle is literally one's deceased uncle acting as a guide.

I doubt that. Just as I doubt that a materialistic interpretation of the world in the ordinary waking state is literally true. That doesn't mean that in our ordinary waking state, we don't actually perceive what we perceive. We definitely perceive tables, chairs and stars, although whether or not they are literally tables, chairs and stars is a different question entirely, asked by Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup to name but two.

Likewise, in the NDE state of mind, whilst I do not doubt that many NDE reports are genuinely perceived as described, I doubt that they are literal recensions of what actually happened. Something happened and is being honestly reported, to be sure, but interpreted in the only way it can be reported, which draws heavily on ordinary language and personal/cultural conditioning -- which offers, I maintain, a framework for interpretation in all circumstances, liminal or otherwise.

The problem is that paranormal shit does exist beyond any liminal, or personal/cultural conditioning. However, I like your writing! Keep it up, dog!
 
Right... That's what I'm saying. neil deGrasse tyson isn't a stupid guy. but he seems to have worked his mind into a place where he genuinely thinks consciousness is probably an illusion. this is what's happening with people who seriously believe in flat earth science.


Good video, but the guy is seriously not taking the thought process to the next level. For me, it doesn't matter if the Earth is flat or globular. We need to understand the parallel between those who push either interpretation so fervently. For anybody to believe that the earth is absolutely flat lacks any power of attention to detail, whatsoever. However, I am also saying that anybody who is going to completely buy into NASA's description of the earth is surrendering their critical faculties.

Essentially, we don't know who we are, why we are here, nor do we understand exactly what we live on. These are real facts.

If consciousness is fundamental, then the shape of the earth may very well be the shape of your interpretation of your life.
 
Further to our conversation, David, watch this video where the "holographic universe" idea is mentioned in relation to morphic resonance from about 1:00 --


The hypothesis is that information is available everywhere in the universe, which is somewhat similar to the notion of the Akashic record. This information wouldn't to my mind be conscious -- or more accurately, metaconscious (self-reflective, à la BK). Parts of it might have been associated with now deceased (and perhaps sometimes still living) entities -- that could be true. But this information wouldn't necessarily be metaconscious in its own right.

Ordinarily, we wouldn't have access to such information except in liminal states -- which could account for paranormal phenomena such as mediumship, clairvoyance, accurate intuitions, etc.

If this information sometimes seems to still belong to beings that have died, that could be because the receiver of the information is alive (and metaconcious) and may sometimes interpret it that way.
 
Further to our conversation, David, watch this video where the "holographic universe" idea is mentioned in relation to morphic resonance from about 1:00 --


The hypothesis is that information is available everywhere in the universe, which is somewhat similar to the notion of the Akashic record. This information wouldn't to my mind be conscious -- or more accurately, metaconscious (self-reflective, à la BK). Parts of it might have been associated with now deceased (and perhaps sometimes still living) entities -- that could be true. But this information wouldn't necessarily be metaconscious in its own right.

Ordinarily, we wouldn't have access to such information except in liminal states -- which could account for paranormal phenomena such as mediumship, clairvoyance, accurate intuitions, etc.

If this information sometimes seems to still belong to beings that have died, that could be because the receiver of the information is alive (and metaconcious) and may sometimes interpret it that way.
I have yet to listen to the video - but I will.

Do I take it that your conclusion is that when you die, the contents of your mind get deposited in the Akashic records in a non-conscious form?

That is a pretty extreme conclusion to reach from so little hard data. I mean all the best data - NDE's seem to point in the opposite direction, but as always if you theorise too much, you can reach any conclusion you want. That is why I think it is best to take the evidence as directly as possible.

I'm not sure self reflection is so very important. The most basic thing about consciousness is that it is aware of stuff (whether real or imaginary), such as what it is like to be a bat.

David
 
Do I take it that your conclusion is that when you die, the contents of your mind get deposited in the Akashic records in a non-conscious form?

No.

As I see it, whilst you are alive, what you think, perceive and do can make an impression in the universe. The sum total of all such impressions by living beings, past and present, is part of what some term the Akashic Record (AR) for want of a better term. This has nothing to do with what happens when we die, okay? That's another story.

The idea is that, in liminal states, people (especially psychics) can pick up on information in the AR. Sometimes, perhaps when information was generated in life by a now deceased person, it may become personified in the mind of the psychic; IOW, instead of being taken as snippets of information, it is interpreted as the spirit/soul of an (in a sense) still-existing person.

[BTW, I'm not saying that souls don't exist; I actually tend to believe they do, but I doubt that they communicate with the living. For one thing, I don't think they'd have an egoic structure with which to communicate; they'd be pure essence and not simply a rarefied form of what they were when alive.]

In some cases, AR information may be interpreted as just that, information; in others, as a communication from a once-alive person (mediumship). Other types of experience of the AR could account in whole or part for such things as clairvoyance, savantism, synchronicities, insights and intuitions, etc.

Where this relates to morphic resonance in currently living organisms/alters could be that they exist in a sea of information at all sorts of levels, generated at one time or another by related organisms/alters that once lived. They could, non-self-reflectively (instinctively), learn from this information and better adapt to their present environment.

For metaconscious alters, which possess self-reflectivity, they may still be subject to such instinctive processes; but because they're able to self-reflect, they may additionally superimpose conditioned structures. So for example, when you receive information associated with someone you think is dead, you may conclude that you're communicating with their soul or whatever.

[Information doesn't communicate, right? People communicate. It seems that this soul or spirit that is communicating with me must still, in a sense, be a person, yes? Well, no, not necessarily.]

I see AR is a "memory" property of the universe (M@L). It's just something it can't help but generate. It can affect both animate beings (alters) and also inanimate phenomena like crystallisation, "physical" constants, etc.
 
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No.

As I see it, whilst you are alive, what you think, perceive and do can make an impression in the universe. The sum total of all such impressions by living beings, past and present, is part of what some term the Akashic Record (AR) for want of a better term. This has nothing to do with what happens when we die, okay? That's another story.
Right - I'm glad we cleared that up!
The idea is that, in liminal states, people (especially psychics) can pick up on information in the AR. Sometimes, perhaps when information was generated in life by a now deceased person, it may become personified in the mind of the psychic; IOW, instead of being taken as snippets of information, it is interpreted as the spirit/soul of an (in a sense) still-existing person.

[BTW, I'm not saying that souls don't exist; I actually tend to believe they do, but I doubt that they communicate with the living. For one thing, I don't think they'd have an egoic structure with which to communicate; they'd be pure essence and not simply a rarefied form of what they were when alive.]
Yes, but why assume that what psychics say they do is actually something else? I mean typically this is the way materialists argue if (say) they want to argue that psychics use cold reading (maybe even fooling themselves). You could argue they have more justification for doing that - that step outside materialism is a very big one. So what is the huge step that you don't want to cross when it comes to psychics communicating with the dead?

I have come to really dislike the tendency to take reported facts and bend them any which way. We need to focus more on the best attested evidence
In some cases, AR information may be interpreted as just that, information; in others, as a communication from a once-alive person (mediumship). Other types of experience of the AR could account in whole or part for such things as clairvoyance, savantism, synchronicities, insights and intuitions, etc.

Where this relates to morphic resonance in currently living organisms/alters could be that they exist in a sea of information at all sorts of levels, generated at one time or another by related organisms/alters that once lived. They could, non-self-reflectively (instinctively), learn from this information and better adapt to their present environment.

For metaconscious alters, which possess self-reflectivity, they may still be subject to such instinctive processes; but because they're able to self-reflect, they may additionally superimpose conditioned structures. So for example, when you receive information associated with someone you think is dead, you may conclude that you're communicating with their soul or whatever.

[Information doesn't communicate, right? People communicate. It seems that this soul or spirit that is communicating with me must still, in a sense, be a person, yes? Well, no, not necessarily.]

I see AR is a "memory" property of the universe (M@L). It's just something it can't help but generate. It can affect both animate beings (alters) and also inanimate phenomena like crystallisation, "physical" constants, etc.

I'd say there is more evidence for souls communicating than there is for the AR.

David
 
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