Category: Uncategorized

Monkey Thoughts Move Cursor

Monkey Moves Computer Cursor by Thoughts Alone
By E.J. Mundell NEW YORK (Reuters Health)
It may seem like science fiction, but scientists say they have developed a technology that enables a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screen simply by thinking about it.

One Man (Ev) And His Blog(ger)

A Tale of One Man and his Blog
It is not often you can say a website has changed the face of the web,
and had an impact far beyond the confines of its own domain
Blogger has revolutionised personal websites.
Now Ev Williams, its only member of staff tells, Neil McIntosh
it’s time to take blogging to the next stage
The Guardian Thursday January 31, 2002

Library Resources
Blog capturing thoughts on new-age librarianship
T J Sondermann, MLIS at University of Rhode Island

Stapp on Science, Values & Human Nature

Science, Values, and the Nature of the Human Person. May 2001.
Paper by Henry Stapp of Berkeley Physics Labs
Stapp much quoted by Josephson.
As Nobel Laureate Steve Weinberg said recently: “The more the
universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”
Stapp “… intensive study of the properties
of matter has revealed fundamental flaws in our earlier
understanding of the basic nature of the physical universe
and our role in it, and this deeper understanding impacts
strongly on human concerns.”

Part I: The Physics of Consciousness (ala Bohr/von Neumann).

MIND
Mind plays a basic role in orthodox (Bohr/vonNeumann) QT:
The theory is about the mathematical structure of
connections between human actions and experiences.

MATTER
The stuff of the physical universe is partly mind like:
the physical universe is a CLOUD of possible classical
universes, and the shape of this cloud represents information. [WOW !!]

FREEDOM
There are TWO KINDS of “free” choices:
NATURE’S “free” choices are subject to statistical laws.
HUMAN “free” choices are subject to no KNOWN laws.

WILL
Human “free” choices are EFFICACIOUS:
[Ian – efficacious – having the power to produce intended effect !!!!!]
they can strongly influence brain activity.
[Ian – query this clause ??]

NONLOCALITY
Human “free” choices have “instantaneous” effects far away:
we are “nonlocally entangled” with rest of nature.

Part II: Moral Impact.

Science has shown the materialist conception of nature to be false.
By validating free will it has rescued “Personal responsibility”.
It has also resuscitated “Objective truth”.
And it has made our minds into efficacious aspects of the highly nonlocal process
that creates the growing informational structure that is the physical universe.

Beyond Quantum Theory

Beyond Quantum Theory –
“A realist psycho-biological interpretation of physical reality” by Conrad, Home & Josephson, (1988) quoting Stapp “the phenomenon of state vector collapse in the domain of quantum mechanics can equally be viewed as a phenomenon in the field of mind, namely a decision process”.
Revisited 2001 by Josephson

…. the idea from eastern philosophy that in certain states of consciousness the subjective states of mind, irrespective of learning, closely reflect objective reality ….

…. the parallel between quantum and biological views is not that the former underlies the latter on a human scale, but that both are in fact manifestations of some other underlying physics.

Biological Utilisation of Quantum NonLocality by Josephson and Pallikari-Viras (1991) Quote “The perception of reality by biosystems is based on different, and in certain respects more effective principles than those utilised by the more formal procedures of science. As a result, what appears as random pattern to the scientific method can be meaningful pattern to a living organism.” Quote “the knowledge possessed by biosystems and the knowledge possessed by science are qualitatively different.” Quote ” [Where] observed indeterminacy is a consequence of uncertainty of the actual state of a system whose …… laws in themselves are completely deterministic …. The strategy of science leads towards the accurate specification of form, while that of life leads in the direction of meaning. ……. Meaning is an aspect of reality tied to the achievement of goals and to specific context that is sufficiently subtle and complex as not to be representable by any closed formula. Furthermore, the technique of statistical averaging is especially irrelevant in the context of meaning, since its influence in general is to transform the meaningful into the meaningless. It is not useful to consider the meaning of a particular word averaged over all languages, and computing the statistics of word order and frequency in a discourse tells one very little about the meaning of the discourse.”
Interesting, but not everyone would agree with the last statement ?
(Heylighen for instance.)

Thinking Around Corners – Another thoughtful blog
A variation on thinking out of the box.
Quote “Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea,
it can never again regain it’s former shape.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Buckie Fuller’s Synergetics

Synergetics
as in the geometry of patterns of energy in nature
after Buckminster Fuller (yes as in Buckie Balls !)
covers fundamental / metaphysical world-view
Web resource maintained by Robert W Gray

Synergetics
as in a model of master system driving many slave systems.
quoted by Brian Josephson plus reference to Bob Ulanovicz No resources yet found.
[Update – Found via Haken reference – Plenty of material out there on Synergetics and complex systems involving human brains. Also tracked down Bob Ulanowicz – spelling variant I hadn’t tried.]

EPISTLE Generic Model – Metaphysical / Philosophical references.
“The study of the nature of things is likely to be relevant to Integrating data models and data sets from different sources.”
from Metaphysics – an Anthology – Blackwell, ISBN: 0-631-20279
Refs include : Quine, Russell, Lewis, Armstrong, Wittgenstein, Frege, Cantor, Peirce.
The classical / rational /objective stuff.