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The simplest interpretation is that there is no such thing as matter. Physicists are studying consciousness. It is actually the only explanation that is consis

The simplest interpretation is that there is no such thing as matter. Physicists are studying consciousness. It is actually the only explanation that is consistent with experience, since there is no experience outside of consciousness.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arnoooooo 7y ago
I wished people offered a rebuttal instead of just downvoting. I understand Einstein himself entertained the idea.
eloff 7y ago
This is a new agey woo kind of idea that comes probably from a layman's interpretation of the effect of the observer on changing the quantum system being measured. However, it does not scale to macro systems. As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. The universe was before consciousness and will continue to be afterwards.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  > As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. That’s a silly statement. How do we know that, if we aren’t looking at it?
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Because we have object permanence. People like Deepak Chopra select magical assumptions specifically because they can't produce any verifiable predictions, and waste everybody's time promoting meaningless nonsense.
    - arnoooooo 7y ago
      I'm not sure Deepak Chopra is the best representative for such ideas. Donald Hoffman or Bernardo Kastrup make a much more serious case. But still, the number one unverifiable prediction is that there is a thing called matter that exists outside consciousness and that somehow, consciousness emerges out of it. Nobody can prove matter exists, nobody has ever had a direct experience of it, and nobody has any idea how consciousness could come out of it, yet it's still the default hypothesis…
  - eloff 7y ago
    Object permanece is a silly statement? On the contrary it's the mainstream view. Anyone wanting to challenge it has the burden of proof on them to demonstrate otherwise.
    - arnoooooo 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure the mainstream view is that the moon "as a glowing disc" is entirely created by your brain. It does not mean that there is nothing when no one is looking, just that what we see is a representation by our brain of something objective that we can't directly assess. The representation stops to exist when we stop looking. What part is representation and what part is objective is debatable. Assigning more to the representation and less to the objective solves some problems neatly, like that of quantum entanglement. Take Donald Hoffman's example of a cube drawn in perspective as lines on a piece of paper. In your mind you see a cube, but nowhere is there actually a cube. The front and back faces of the cube are entangled : if your mind has decided on the projection in which one face is the "front", the other face has to be the "back", and vice-versa if your mind has decided on the other projection.
- vokep 7y ago
  But the moon does disappear. The moon as I understand it is a glowing disk with particular patterns on it. That disc and patterns only ever existed in my mind. When not looking at the moon, it goes back to being a very large number of particles near each other and nothing more.
  - arnoooooo 7y ago
    To go even further, "particles" are also a construction of ours, a representation of an even more "diffuse" reality. "Spacetime is doomed. There is no such thing as spacetime fundamentally in the actual underlying description of the laws of physics. That is very startling because what physics is supposed to be about is describing things as they happen in space and time. So if there's no spacetime, it's not clear what physics is about." - Nima Arkani-Hamed Cornell Messenger Lecture 2010.
- arnoooooo 7y ago
  It's actually a very old idea in Eastern philosophy called "non duality" : everything it but one big consciousness. Sam Harris of all people should know. Deepak Choprah is clearly not the right person with which to discuss such things, and debating him is just Sam Harris being full of himself or a publicity stunt, not an actual serious look at these ideas.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Perhaps there is no experience outside of consciousness (depending on exactly what you mean by that). I take it to mean that consciousness is the only thing that we (directly) experience. Fine. But that doesn't mean that "studying consciousness" is the only explanation that is consistent with "no experience outside of consciousness". It's the only explanation that's limited to that. A real external world is perfectly consistent with us not experiencing anything outside of consciousness, that is, that our consciousness is how we experience what we experience. There's still something out there - an external world - that we experience, though. The alternative way of taking your words - that there is no external world at all, that all we are is consciousness, that we aren't actually experiencing a real world - is the total death of science, because there's nothing actually there to study.
- arnoooooo 7y ago
  "It's the only explanation that's limited to that." Indeed, and that's what makes it the simplest explanation. People posit matter, which nobody has ever had a direct experience of, then can't find a way to explain how consciousness comes out of it. Starting with consciousness is much in line with experience and solves the problem. I think it's reasonable to assume that an "external" world exists, but it doesn't mean that it's not all consciousness : as Donald Hoffman posits, what we perceive is the combined output of other conscious agents. I don't see how that means the death of science. I suppose you meant physics, which could indeed be seen in this context as a rather convoluted way of studying consciousness, but I'm not so sure : it would become a study of the regularities of consciousness.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

arnoooooo 7y ago

I wished people offered a rebuttal instead of just downvoting. I understand Einstein himself entertained the idea.

eloff 7y ago

This is a new agey woo kind of idea that comes probably from a layman's interpretation of the effect of the observer on changing the quantum system being measured. However, it does not scale to macro systems. As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. The universe was before consciousness and will continue to be afterwards.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago
> As Sam Harris put it when debating this idea with Deepak Chopra, the moon does not disappear when we're not looking at it. That’s a silly statement. How do we know that, if we aren’t looking at it?
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Because we have object permanence. People like Deepak Chopra select magical assumptions specifically because they can't produce any verifiable predictions, and waste everybody's time promoting meaningless nonsense.
  - arnoooooo 7y ago
    I'm not sure Deepak Chopra is the best representative for such ideas. Donald Hoffman or Bernardo Kastrup make a much more serious case. But still, the number one unverifiable prediction is that there is a thing called matter that exists outside consciousness and that somehow, consciousness emerges out of it. Nobody can prove matter exists, nobody has ever had a direct experience of it, and nobody has any idea how consciousness could come out of it, yet it's still the default hypothesis…
- eloff 7y ago
  Object permanece is a silly statement? On the contrary it's the mainstream view. Anyone wanting to challenge it has the burden of proof on them to demonstrate otherwise.
  - arnoooooo 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure the mainstream view is that the moon "as a glowing disc" is entirely created by your brain. It does not mean that there is nothing when no one is looking, just that what we see is a representation by our brain of something objective that we can't directly assess. The representation stops to exist when we stop looking. What part is representation and what part is objective is debatable. Assigning more to the representation and less to the objective solves some problems neatly, like that of quantum entanglement. Take Donald Hoffman's example of a cube drawn in perspective as lines on a piece of paper. In your mind you see a cube, but nowhere is there actually a cube. The front and back faces of the cube are entangled : if your mind has decided on the projection in which one face is the "front", the other face has to be the "back", and vice-versa if your mind has decided on the other projection.
vokep 7y ago
But the moon does disappear. The moon as I understand it is a glowing disk with particular patterns on it. That disc and patterns only ever existed in my mind. When not looking at the moon, it goes back to being a very large number of particles near each other and nothing more.
- arnoooooo 7y ago
  To go even further, "particles" are also a construction of ours, a representation of an even more "diffuse" reality. "Spacetime is doomed. There is no such thing as spacetime fundamentally in the actual underlying description of the laws of physics. That is very startling because what physics is supposed to be about is describing things as they happen in space and time. So if there's no spacetime, it's not clear what physics is about." - Nima Arkani-Hamed Cornell Messenger Lecture 2010.
arnoooooo 7y ago
It's actually a very old idea in Eastern philosophy called "non duality" : everything it but one big consciousness. Sam Harris of all people should know. Deepak Choprah is clearly not the right person with which to discuss such things, and debating him is just Sam Harris being full of himself or a publicity stunt, not an actual serious look at these ideas.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Perhaps there is no experience outside of consciousness (depending on exactly what you mean by that). I take it to mean that consciousness is the only thing that we (directly) experience. Fine. But that doesn't mean that "studying consciousness" is the only explanation that is consistent with "no experience outside of consciousness". It's the only explanation that's limited to that. A real external world is perfectly consistent with us not experiencing anything outside of consciousness, that is, that our consciousness is how we experience what we experience. There's still something out there - an external world - that we experience, though. The alternative way of taking your words - that there is no external world at all, that all we are is consciousness, that we aren't actually experiencing a real world - is the total death of science, because there's nothing actually there to study.

arnoooooo 7y ago
"It's the only explanation that's limited to that." Indeed, and that's what makes it the simplest explanation. People posit matter, which nobody has ever had a direct experience of, then can't find a way to explain how consciousness comes out of it. Starting with consciousness is much in line with experience and solves the problem. I think it's reasonable to assume that an "external" world exists, but it doesn't mean that it's not all consciousness : as Donald Hoffman posits, what we perceive is the combined output of other conscious agents. I don't see how that means the death of science. I suppose you meant physics, which could indeed be seen in this context as a rather convoluted way of studying consciousness, but I'm not so sure : it would become a study of the regularities of consciousness.