Tub

Hello, Cap'n. Since the latest update, my Windows8 smartphone can't stay logged into the forum website for more than a few seconds. I can log in but then, after those few seconds, the whole browser shuts down. Other websites aren't affected at all, and everything worked perfectly on this website before the update. Any advice? Thanks. ( I'm logged-in on my PC at the moment ).

Hello, dimreepr. I'm sure Area 54 doesn't need the likes of me to defend his position, or put words into his mouth, but what i gathered from his remark about " consciousness in spades " is that he was suggesting that the content and achievements of our consciousness, as humans, is more varied than other species: apart from what Nature has blessed us with, we have all the sciences, technology, the arts, sports, advanced languages, medicines and hospitals etc. etc. In other words, we don't " live by bread alone ", whereas i don't think that most animals aspire to much more than food and shelter - of course, i might be wrong. I do agree with your point about intelligence and consciousness being linked - intelligence needs consciousness in order to be able to function and........consciousness without intelligence - maybe that's Area54's politicians. I agree, too, that native intelligence is not confined to humanity; unfortunately, we are the only species i am aware of that misuses that intelligence. Yes, maybe my remark needs qualifying: i should have said that relative to other life-forms on Earth, human beings may have the greater degree of self-consciousness compared with other creatures that may have self-consciousness: e.g I know i am a human being and i know that i am getting older and one day i will die; i don't think a chicken is aware of its mortality. Again, i could be wrong. On reflection,i think you're right about evolution being all-inclusive: the whole of Life must be on the crest of the evolutionary wave that's flowing into the future. P.S. If i was a hedgehog or some e.coli, i might be a bit insulted to be roped in with politicians! Thank you, Gee. There's a lot to consider so please allow me a little time to gather my thoughts.

First of all, let me say that, being aware of the Sagan Standard, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard ), i really wasn't making any assertions re " Cosmic Consciousness ", having no extraordinary evidence of my own to offer. Yet, despite the Latin phrase i recently discovered: " Quod gratis asseritur,gratis negatur ", ( in English : " Whatever is claimed without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence " ), i can't convince myself to dismiss completely out of hand those admittedly rare accounts of experiences of radically altered states of consciousness documented in times past and present, so i must say that even the slimmest of such evidence must be some proof against dismissal as a completely baseless speculation. Perhaps " Cosmic Consciousness " is not a very good phrase to use - it may have a hint of hippy pseudophilosophy to it - but if we can correctly say that there are different states of consciousness " lower " than ours, can we confidently say that there aren't any states of consciousness " higher " than ours? Perhaps even that speculative universal awareness of wholeness that isn't a by-product of evolution? I don't have the knowledge or confidence to disregard Panpsychism as insignificant. All i know of evolution can be seen in this great little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl89HIJ6HDo&pbjreload=10 so perhaps i should have said that this so-called " Cosmic Consciousness " is perhaps the psychological culmination of human evolution and it would be very vain to assume that material evolution had reached its peak on our little blue dot. The long and winding road from molecule to mankind, and then beyond, potentially still has billions of years to stretch, perhaps forever, so who knows what changes may occur - without any ultimate material goal, just endless improvement.

Thanks, Strange. Nice clear answer. Thank you too, swansont.

Hello, Gees. At my present level of understanding, i would suggest that it isn't Consciousness that evolves but what does evolve is the capacity to become more conscious of that of which we can be conscious. As life-forms evolve and nervous-systems and cerebral cortices become more sophisticated and sensitive, the spectrum of consciousness spreads from " simple ", primitive sense-consciousness to the present degree of self-consciousness which we have reached - which may be the pinnacle of self-consciousness but is most probably not the true pinnacle of Consciousness as a whole: mystics, philosophers and some scientists give credence to an actual, supreme " Cosmic " or " Universal " Consciousness which is primordial and timeless and which, in extreme circumstances, can overwhelm and displace self-consciousness. Perhaps this " Cosmic Consciousness " is the ultimate goal of human evolution - if Consciousness can be said to have distance, direction and destination. The link here is quite thought-provoking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

Just a couple of questions: as it accelerates, is the total mass of a galaxy increasing and, if it is, does this mean that the Dark Energy will also have to increase to provide more and more momentum to sustain that rate of acceleration? Also, if velocity is proportional to distance, does this imply that different regions of Space/Time are expanding at different velocities? Is that at all possible?

Believe it or not, someone tried this about 900 years ago! Maybe even before that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments M

Not so fast, Ted - you might still be perfect after all, lol. Here in Great Britain, we would always use " ensure " in the mentioned context but, in my ( American ) Webster's Dictionary, " insure " is defined as "... to make sure or certain "! Pax, DrK! Was it George Bernard Shaw who wrote something like: " Great Britain and America are two countries separated by the same language "? And, hanging onto the thread by a thread, wasn't it Shakespeare who wrote " Much Ado About Nothing "?

Ha,Ha. Hope it doesn't get too sticky for you!

I'll get a new keyboard before my crest falls any farther - not further, lol. Anyway, and before the Moderators pounce, back to " Nothing ": is "Nothing " necessary before " Something " can come into being? If there hadn't been " Nothing " before the BB, how could Space have expanded - just as you need an empty bucket before it can be filled with water? Although we know that the Universe isn't really expanding " into " anywhere, if " Something " was already in situ, could another " Something " have occupied the same volume as what was already extant? On a lighter note, is the hole in a doughnut " Nothing " and part of the doughnut at the same time? And where does it go when the doughnut is eaten?

Yes, that must have been my problem too,otherwise i wouldn't have made any mistakes at all. Thanks for clearing that up, SJ - i feel completely exonerated now, lol.

Ha,Ha,Ha. Mea culpa.

.........and you may also be right, DrK. That website is an American website and, though its Rule 4 on quotation marks says that periods/full stops and commas etc.always go inside quotation marks, it adds a caveat that other countries use different conventions so Ted, in America was correct; if you're in a different country you are correct too, if you go by those different rules. Everybody's happy. http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp Just to get back on topic, may i quote Oscar Wilde? " I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing i know anything about ". (Punctuated in England).

I always thought so too, but i checked " quotation marks " on this great website and Ted's right. http://www.grammarbook.com/

Hello,Dan. The distance of around 13.8 billion light-years is the current limit of the observable size of the Universe, relative to us here on Earth. It can possibly be seen as a sort of event-horizon,and an horizon is just the limit of our sight. Beyond this horizon, also called the Hubble limit, there could be countless stars, galaxies and other astronomical bodies that are so far away that their light hasn't had time to reach us yet - or may never reach us. Hubble's Law also permits sufficiently distant space to expand faster than the speed of light so, again, light from those far, far distant galaxies will never reach us here on Earth. Of course this doesn't mean that the Universe is definitely infinite....but it still could be. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record

Thank you, Strange, that's what i was thinking - that an infinite Universe would leave no " room " for expansion. Thank you too, Carrock. I must admit that i didn't have Bondi/Gold/|Hoyle in mind when thinking of a " steady state " Universe. I didn't see an infinite Universe as being " in stasis ", only thinking that, if it was infinite, it couldn't possibly expand " outwards " anymore, as it would have nowhere left to expand " into ", whereas, if it was finite, it would be able to keep expanding "into " empty space, which Strange has said is not what is actually happening. I hadn't considered eternal exponential volume increase/decrease either, only a simple scenario that would allow the Universe to continue to expand only if it had that " room " for expansion. As a non-cosmologist, then, i was simply using " steady state " to mean a Universe that couldn't expand any more. Sorry for the confusion.

Hmmm. Tricky; i imagine that, in the great scheme of things, and like the monkeys/typewriters, any two or more similar events could eventually coincide without it being considered paranormal or supernatural - after all, we are creatures of habit so many things must be continually replicated on a grand scale ,even daily. Then again, are coincidences at all significant anyway? Jung seemed to believe they are and i,at least,can't argue with him in such matters. He introduced his concept of " Synchronicity " to address the idea of separate events having a meaningful relationship without having any apparent causal relationship. He defined Synchronicity as " ... a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved ". So is Synchronicity normal or paranormal? Are all coincidences meaningful? Without having Jung's expertise, I suppose it boils down to a subjective reaction in each individual. I have had several strange cases of coincidence, ( and serendipity ), in my life, just as in my post above, all with a happy outcome, fortunately, but i can't explain them myself so I'll leave it to Jung's claim that events can be connected by meaning as well as cause, and those events connected by meaning do not necessarily have to have a cause. Is that paranormal? I really don't know.

Thanks, Carrock. Can i assume, then, that an infinite Universe would have to be a steady-state Universe, or have i misunderstood your post? ( I'm not a mathematician. )

In my last post on Wednesday, ( in Speculations ), i quoted from " Alice in Wonderland ", saying " Curiouser and curiouser " ; the next thread i opened, that very same day,was this one and the first thing i saw, in those bold capital letters, was " Curiouser and curiouser " and, what's more, my surname and initial are an exact anagram of " Lincoln " ! Ha,Ha! Yes,that's a lovely way to put it. I hope the Universe never gets tired of smiling.

I'd be happier believing that the Universe is infinite, that's a comforting thought, but i can't help feeling that it's finite, simply because what we can see of it is still expanding in space/time. If the Universe was already infinite,( and eternal ),wouldn't that prevent any further expansion of space/time? I hope i can be shown to be completely wrong.

......and, if i may add, by extension, " nowhere ". ( I'm assuming, perhaps mistakenly, that " something from nothing " includes " somewhere from nowhere " ). It's easy to imagine " something " and " somewhere " as i can hold "something " or go to/come from " somewhere ", but if i try to imagine " nowhere " or " nothing ", my poor brain just falls silent - is it possible to go to/come from " nowhere " and, if i put down my book, am i holding " nothing " in my hand? And what about " never " and "none "? More questions than answers, sadly. In another thread, i suggested that " nothing " could be defined as that which has no perceptible quality or quantity, so that's about as far as i can go for myself. The only instance i know of " something " coming from " nothing " and " nowhere ", is Lewis Carroll's wise Cheshire Cat. As Alice said " Curiouser and curiouser ". P.S. Who is your proof-reader, Ted? I have to admire your Orthography - defined, in Wikipedia, as " a set of conventions for writing, including norms of spelling, hyphenation,capitalization,word breaks. emphasis, and punctuation ". ( I bet you knew that already ). A lot of people, myself included, could learn from you - even at your age!

Namaste, Professor. May i suggest that you visit FreeSangha? It's a dedicated Buddhist forum and you can cast your stones there.

Thanks for all your help, Sensei. I have downloaded the free Audacity digital audio workstation and can use it to analyze the waveform and spectrogram of two ( or more ) wav files playing simultaneously. I have plenty of wav files on my PC so all i need to do now is find out when my radio is going to play something i already have on file: i can do this by monitoring my weekly radio-programme listings magazine which, for a specific radio station, ( BBC 2 ), lists forthcoming choices of 10 " Tracks of My Years " that are played at the same time every weekday, and which are usually very common popular songs by well-known performers. The same station also has an " Album of the Week " feature so i know on two counts what songs/singers are going to be played so i can record whatever is appropriate. ( It won't be piracy as i would have already purchased those same songs that i'd be comparing ).

Thanks again, Sensei. Raw looks like the best bet.

Just to add a little to DrP's levity, i would define " nothing " as what my partner finds in her wardrobes when she's looking for something to wear, even though the wardrobes seem to me to be full of clothes. That apart, could " nothing " be defined as that which has no perceptible quality or quantity?