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> Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing I mentioned those cells bec

> Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing I mentioned those cells because they are considered to be part of the brain and they are extremely well understood (and clearly not something we can be conscious of). The fact that they take input from the outside world isn't really relevant to the point. The output of those cells is input for the next level, whose output is again input for the next level. Point begin, the brain actually has a lot of processes going on, which are mostly things we can never be conscious of. If you could actually be conscious of it all, you'd probably revolutionize the field of neurology.

vinceguidry 8y ago
We don't really have the tools to investigate meditation. Just hooking a brain up to an MRI only goes so far. If I told you I'm conscious of my own heartbeat and how the brain makes the decision that it happens, there wouldn't be any way to validate those claims. They would be unfalsifiable given our current level of tech. We have no way of determining where experience comes from, we can only look at where the brain is lighting up. It gets even weirder. If some scientist decided to make me a research subject, and we explored what my brain does in fine granularity when I'm meditating, then he's basically got a sample size of one and it won't be all that different from me just giving the world my own conclusions by writing a book myself. No, science earns its validity from scale. A sample size of one isn't sufficient. All I'd be able to do is point the way for further experimentation. Exactly how much of our experimentation would make it into the further process, assuming it even happens? Probably very little. Rightness and wrongness exists on a scale, and that scale is multi-dimensional. You're not only fractionally right, but you're fractionally right in different ways. Timothy Leary's lived experience is a certain kind of right, and a certain kind of wrong. But when it comes to science, the only kind of truth that sticks is the kind that's right in all ways all the time. So little of anything sticks. And where that little bit comes from doesn't have to be me. I'm happy having my own little piece of it all to myself.

vinceguidry 8y ago

We don't really have the tools to investigate meditation. Just hooking a brain up to an MRI only goes so far. If I told you I'm conscious of my own heartbeat and how the brain makes the decision that it happens, there wouldn't be any way to validate those claims. They would be unfalsifiable given our current level of tech. We have no way of determining where experience comes from, we can only look at where the brain is lighting up. It gets even weirder. If some scientist decided to make me a research subject, and we explored what my brain does in fine granularity when I'm meditating, then he's basically got a sample size of one and it won't be all that different from me just giving the world my own conclusions by writing a book myself. No, science earns its validity from scale. A sample size of one isn't sufficient. All I'd be able to do is point the way for further experimentation. Exactly how much of our experimentation would make it into the further process, assuming it even happens? Probably very little. Rightness and wrongness exists on a scale, and that scale is multi-dimensional. You're not only fractionally right, but you're fractionally right in different ways. Timothy Leary's lived experience is a certain kind of right, and a certain kind of wrong. But when it comes to science, the only kind of truth that sticks is the kind that's right in all ways all the time. So little of anything sticks. And where that little bit comes from doesn't have to be me. I'm happy having my own little piece of it all to myself.