Parallel Universes Are Real 1066
It's in Scientific American, it must be true. This month's cover story:
Parallel Universes.
"The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 1028 meters from here." That number's a lot bigger than 10 to the 101.42 meters, which are the farthest observable objects in what we call our universe. And anyway, twin or not, anyone outside my light-cone is dead to me. That's just a rule I have. If you're skeptical of the multiverse, go read our discussion of a similar article from
two days ago.
Video Game Analogy (Score:4, Interesting)
Scientific Omnirican (Score:5, Interesting)
I let my subscription lapse a couple of years ago and when I got around to re-subscribing last year I found quite a few unpleasant surprises.
The last page of the old rag was always the Connections column, which was really interesting and entertaining. It's gone.
Gone also are all of the even vaguely scientific articles. There seemed to be a slant towards ridiculous stories on the edge of pseudo-science, much like in Omni magazine (is that in print anymore?). And every issue featured a sensationalist story centered around the threat of terrorism - stories about dirty bombs, biological weapons, new wiretapping technology, etc. It felt like they were desperately trying to attract readers by featuring stories with the same kind of scare tactics that the 11:00 news (which I haven't watched voluntarily in many years) resorts to.
Needless to say, I've let my subscription lapse again. Too bad, I used to really like that mag.
Asuumptions..assumptions and assumptions! (Score:5, Interesting)
- Scientists debate on wether universe is finite or infinite
- There is debate on uniformity of matter also, mostly it is thought that matter is distributed uniformaly over observable space
So the debate lives on! And i guess calling these as parallel universe is a misnomer, this is the same universe, not in another dimension(like we have the in the movie "The One")This is riduculous (Score:2, Interesting)
David Deutsch's theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Buddhism and science tie together reasonably well (Score:4, Interesting)
The Buddhist concept of the universe's energy and rebirth of life actually tie in pretty well with science. The belief is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted between types.
That's why Buddhists don't believe you diw and.. that's it, game over. They believe the energy ('lifeforce' for want of a better term) merely transposes into another form of energy, which then may be mix with other energy and turn into other life or matter later on. While scientists would not particularly go for the whole reincarnation game, there is a lot of logic in it, and obviously a lot of anecdotal evidence (how do the child prodigies know stuff they shouldn't know? etc.. how comes some people remember fragments of what happened in the past and then verify it to be true? and so on)
Buddhism also presents the theory of the 'middle way'. That is, it is not good to be swung to one side or another on issues, but to steer a middle path only. Our universe shows that nothing exists in a place that is too cold, or a place that is too hot. Psychology shows major issues with people who are too egotistical and people who have no sense of self esteem. The middle way works in all disciplines. You should not be too lazy, but you should not be a workaholic either. And so on.
Another concept is experimentation, which was prevalent in Buddhism way before modern science. Buddhists do not generally believe anything blindly, the Buddha said that it is unwise to believe what someone says without knowing it is true yourself. Therefore you must experiment and prove your own truths. Yet again, another bond with the modern scientific process. Even the Dalai Lama (as a spiritual head of a branch of the religion) has changed many of his views upon being exposed to the West and our different way of life.
Religions and science may never walk hand in hand, but if you pay attention you can find a lot of close bonds and even areas where religion has helped science, rather than hindered it.
Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:5, Interesting)
Up to this point in nearly all discussions of extreme/speculative tech what we are trying to do is maximally stretch our imagination as to what is possible within the realm of currently known scientific law. And for those of us who've been frequenting transhumanist circles for any period of time, we know the current limits of science portend a lot - uploading, indefinite lifespans, traversible wormholes, jupiter brains, basement universes, etc.
Now lets assume that our current understanding of the known laws of physics are invariable. Lets assume that the Grand Unified Theory really is the grand theory they claim it to be.
I have been engaging in some discussion lately about the begining of the universe, and for the first time (amazingly enough) I pushed the 'Where did it come from' question through as far as it can go. And, not surprisingly, it doesn't go anywhere. No matter how you try to explain the origin of the universe, none of the theories can account for the cause of it. What caused the big bang? Where did 'God' come from? etc.
From this, i concluded that there cannot be a begining. If there was a begining, then something must have caused that begining, and so something was there before the begining.
This doesn't answer anything, but I am yet to see another way around the causality problem (defining something as 'acausal' doesn't solve it, it just dodges it).
Now, linked to this 'where did the universe come from?' problem is, 'Where did the incredible laws, which make our universe a coherent place come from?', which is what I think underlies it all. Once the universe began, it is easy to say 'the laws guided the evolution of everything from there'....but how did the laws come to be? Why are they so perfect? (weak anthropic principle could be an acceptable argument here).
When you think of an omniverse that has no beginning, then we are talking about something that is temporally at least infinite in duration, something ultimately beyond time itself, where concepts of a beginning and an end have no meaning. I think what this also means is that any one set of properties/laws we experience are also ultimately entirely arbitrary. If they are not then we must ask ourselves what meta-laws are behind it governing what types of laws are allowed and which are not? And then we have to ask ourselves where did these metalaws come from? And then meta-meta-laws and so on to infinity. And, not surprisingly, it doesn't go anywhere. No matter how you try to explain the origin of any laws, none of the theories can account for the cause of those laws. From this, I concluded there can be no fundamental laws.
So if there are no fundamental laws, no limts, then everything is possible. If not, why not? And we are right back to an arbitray set of laws with no explanation. And since we are used to applying the metaphor of technology to such things, we could (at least for fun) call such tech based on a lack of laws nada-technology or onto-technology. The technology of reality itself. I like to call it nadatech becuase ulitimatly it's based on nothing... no laws, no limits, nothing at all.
So what do we do with nada- or onto-technology?
Anything. Everything.
Either way, the ultimate lack of any fundamental laws implies that everything is possible and probably already exists exists in a timeless standing quantum probability wave in eternity.
Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.
Re:Scientific Omnirican (Score:1, Interesting)
Scientific American got a new editor several years ago (not sure exactly how long it has been) and has been in a steep downhill dive ever since. I was in high school when this happened, and it even pissed *me* off. I don't think I'm particularly unusual, rather I think Scientific American has simply turned in to a pile of flashy and sensational brain jelly -- it has lost credibility. You won't find any subscriptions to it around my house, nor my parent's home, nor even the homes of most of their friends -- all of whom are scientists.
It used to be that you'd see a copy of Scientific American on the coffee table belonging to most anyone with a strong college science backround or who was an active researcher. The articles made a good approachable introduction to interesting aspects of modern research outside the person's particular field of expertise. Not anymore; most serious researchers would be embarrassed to be seen with a copy of this rag.
It's sad too, because Scientific American has such a long history. It would be unfortunate to see them disappear just because some whiz bang new editor decided that glitz and excitement was more interesting than content.
Really, if I wanted to see this stuff I'd just turn on Fox.
Omni is dead. Who's next?
- Anonymous Coward
SciAm, the most credible source of scientific data (Score:1, Interesting)
How could space not be infinite? Is there a sign somewhere saying "Space Ends Here--Mind the Gap"?
And what about Olber's paradox [schoolsobs...ory.org.uk] which asks the question that why is the sky dark? If universe is infinite and reasonably uniformly distributed with matter, we should see a star at every point in the sky. The article seems to cover this by making up some mind-boggling distances between the universes so that our light cones do not overlap. However, having "universes" distributed uniformly in same infinite space would mean that there are infinite amount of universes, too. And this would mean that the probability of not having another universe (in fact, infinite other universes) close enough to see approaches zero.
In other words, glancing upwards and noting the, well, space between stars is enough to undermine the foundations of the article, thus reducing it to a load of crap.
Re:But Mohammed Al Sahaf says.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com site was set up as a joke on a small comercial website. That was fine, except that they /.ed themselves, with about, they said, 4000 hits per second. Way more than they could handle. It took down the websites of a fairly large number of businesses and (I assume) cost the owners quite a bit of money in bandwidth. That's why they are selling t-shirts.
(Source for this: the page they put up while the server was down.)
Infinite space *and* Big Bang? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Buddhism and science tie together reasonably we (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an excellent point. I think you may have answered your own question though. Science has only become revered and far reaching in secular societies.
The other reason is that while Buddhism accepts science and, in some cases, follows it, it is ultimately a faith whose believers are trying to break away from the 'human realm'.
Why do we spend so much time on science and discovery? Even if we made contact with aliens, managed to grow crops on the moon, and all had cellphones, what good is that? When you're dealing with faith, issues of science and technology are almost irrelevant. Buddhists are trying to reach Nirvana, not NYC on their cellphones.
So while Buddhism may comfortably live alongside science, compared with other religions, it does not actively participate in developing it.
Re:Buddhism and science tie together reasonably we (Score:4, Interesting)
Al-Khwarizmi invented algebra around 780 (both "algebra" and "algorithm" are arabic words).The Bagdad physician, al-Razi, (865-925) produced a medical textbook that was the standard throughout the Islamic world. And Avicenna (Ibn Sina) was like the Isaac Newton of the Islamic world, who in 980 was making advances in medicine, physics and philosophy.
Many agree that many of the advances made in the Western World during the renaissance owe their beginnings to the science, math, and rational thought of the Islamic World.
In one of my favorite scenes from Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is talking with Prince Feisal of (Saudi) Arabia, the point is made:
Feisal: Do you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village?
Lawrence: Yes, you were great.
Feisal: Nine centuries ago.
Re:Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to wonder if there aren't different modalities for time. Linear, loop, and radial are the only ones I could find. There are probably others.
The radial one is very interesting to me. Pretty much co-opted from an Ellison story (well, at least I did). A singular event hapening in several different frames of time (kind of the Copenhagen idea in reverse). I muse that Passover might be akin to this (god looking at the world once, but being able to see it at different points in time= omnipotent). I wonder if this is what is really being stated by the multiverse idea.
But we are kind of stuck by the limitations of the measuring device. Kind of the Madelbrot set idea, you can have infinite possibilities within a defined framework, except you can't break free from the boarders. Tempest in a teapot. Maybe there was never a teapot. Maybe we are the teapot.
Maybe there is nothing beyond. We all find out eventually.
Or as I like to put it, you can do whatever you want (except maybe not be you). You just have to figure out how to get there. I think we are well on our way. Onward to the metaverse/panverse.
Re:A "Simple" Explanation (Score:1, Interesting)
So, if the universe contains a finite amount of matter in an infinite amount of space, does that mean that it has an effective density of zero?
Re:Religion (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some real nuts here who don't even realize that *every* belief system including science has to build on some basis. Let's call them axioms. These axioms may seem reasonable based on experience and verification through social groups, but they are not provable. You have to start with faith (with exceptions) in your eyes, ears, etc, and faith in the scientific method, and faith in Aristotelian logic in order to accept the results of science.
This is not inherently different than having faith that your religious experiences were given to you by your God and are evidence for your religious belief system. (Sartori, being touched by Jesus, whatever).
I of course find science more plausible, but that has a lot to do with my own upbringing and education. I consider it important to show tolerance towards people of almost all belief systems. Based on my own set of axioms, this only excludes people who believe harming others is morally acceptable.
For a more complete version of this argument try out William P. Alston's Perceiving God [amazon.com].
Specifically to the topic organized religion: Organized religion is a social institution, just like a state. Organized religion has often in the past performed many of the roles that a state takes. As such it has been used to justify and organize wars and injustices. This is not a problem inherent in organized religions themselves, but rather in social institutions as a whole. Take as an example, legalized slavery in the South until 1860. Or try out the Haulocaust as an example. People on the fringe may have tried to make religous justifications of these, but in reality it was the state that motivated and carried them out.
Organized religions have also, as often as not, been the victims of state intolerance for a potentially competing social institution. Take as an example, Soviet Russia. Or Turkey under Attaturk. Or Missouri against the Mormons.
Re:A "Simple" Explanation (Score:2, Interesting)
All we can talk about is really how many different ways we can pack the fermions (e.g. electrons, nuclei), but the fermions are not the whole picture.
2 cents from a particle physicist
Re:Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:3, Interesting)
I kinda like the way Douglas Adams explains all these theories alot simpler. By introducing "probability-dimensions".
It goes like this: If something could have happened, it did, and the results exist. It just happens to be located in a parallell dimension along the "probaility-axises".
Ofcourse that doesn't explain what you were rambling about, the origin of it all and the nature of universal laws, but I actually learned alot of the multi-dimensional theories reading Hitchhikers guide.
It actually sparked my interest for multidimensional theories.
I recomend anyone who want to a humoreous introduction to the theory of multidimensional universes to read the last Hitchikers book!
Re:Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:4, Interesting)
Your flaw here is that you assume God is a created being. However, in order to be an all powerful god, God must have always existed. This follows the principle of the creator always being greater than the creation. So, to have an omnipotent god, you must also have God be infinite (always existed, always will exist). If time is a man-made creation and God is outside of time (think of time as a fourth dimension with God being "outside the 4-dimensional box") then, for all practical purposes, God is infinite.
Re:David Deutsch's theory (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a favorite fuck-with-your-head pop science story I tell to wig people out, I read it in The Illusion of Technique by William Barrett:
Okay, you know about the Heisenburg uncertainty principle -- can't know a particle's position and velocity simultaneously. But, Einstein, the clever fellow, asked "what if there are two particles?" and proceeded to construct an equation that would simulatenously tell you the relative distance between the two particles, plus the sum of their velocities, the two uncertainties cancelling each other out (superposition).
Therefore, the act of focusing your attention on something instantly causes all other particles to be exactly measurable, instantly, a faster-than-light phenomonon. So, all the quantum waves become exactly measurable everywhere when you look anywhere. Therefore, YOU (yes YOU!) are the only thing that exists in the universe, and the rest of us are figments of YOUR imagination!!
Bwahh hah hah pass the joint....
If you were an atom in a sea of cells (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course this wouldn't matter since you would never meet your counterpart.
You'd have a vague idea that maybe the universe was not infinite because perhaps it was one day going to end. But something would tell you that it was somehow cyclic, and it would come back.
So in a sense it would be infinite.
And if you could travel really far, maybe you'd come to the end of the sea of cells. But you'd have to travel so far that you can safely say that your sea of cells is infinite as far as you're concerned.
Ale
Re:Probabilities and reality (Score:3, Interesting)
However, when defining a system you have to start with a set of primitive concepts and axioms which govern them. You could say that these primitive concepts are "outside" the system, but really they are the core of the system.
For example, arithmetic on the natural numbers is usually defined in terms of Peano's axioms:
You can apply these axioms without actually knowing what a number or a successor is (although these can be defined in terms of set theory, but set theory just boils down to some primitive concepts and axioms). Using the concept of a successor you can define addition. With addition you can define multiplication and subtraction. With those you can define the rational numbers and the negative numbers and so on.
The important thing to remember is that in order to apply logic, you must first have some axioms which are assumed to be true. You can make whatever axioms you like, but it usually helps if they are consistent and are actually relevent to something.
Cause and effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Mostly bccause the arguments provided for them, at least on a layperson's level, are arrogant sci-fi that tend to fall into one of two categories. Either they just "assume" that another path is possible, e.g. life never formed and Earth is barren now, or they assume that universes differ through human choice, e.g. you choose not to go to the cinema, or whatever.
The first suffers as it completely ignores why anything happens. This would mean that there are universes created at every moment of time as gravity switches, or elements gain different properties. Why limit what can or can't happen?
The second suffers as it suddenly places the human freedom of choice at the center of its reasoning. This would mean that the human mind/soul/id was somehow *above* physical properties. Would new universes be created if an animal decided to do something differently? How about plants? As the lifefor, gets less complex, this rapidly decends into a form of the first argument - that some things can change, but others can't.
Maybe there's another way to work infinite multiverses into life, but I'm not convinced by anything I've seen so far, even if blinded by science and big numbers.
My 2-layman-pence, anyway.
Re:Buddhism and science tie together reasonably we (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, Don't forget Taoism. It's an 'old' religion too, which certainly doesn't smash with science.
Although, it's not any more of a religion then Buddhism, due to the missing deity.
Re:Buddhism and science tie together reasonably we (Score:1, Interesting)
It was simple divide and conquer. The hashemite kings were put in power and since then the arabs have been suffering under one dictator or puppet regime after another. The intellectual society of science and literature is gone. This downfall thanks to one asshole running around the desert on a horse.
Many contradictions (Score:5, Interesting)
Your argument rests on a few assumptions:
I can buy 1 and 2, I don't buy 3.
That said, there are physics models which negate even the concept of linear time. According to these models, past and future do not exist, there is only the ever-evolving NOW. "Beginnings" thus have no meaning, and the universe "always" existed and "always will" exist (I quote those terms because they imply some progression/regression of time which doesn't actually exist in the model, but they are really the only way we can conceive it).
You can find the professor and some of his work on http://edge.org
If you want some more interesting posturing on "beginnings" and logic, please read my post Do beginnings and endings actually exist? [kicks-ass.net]
I think what this also means is that any one set of properties/laws we experience are also ultimately entirely arbitrary. [...]
This is the flaw in your "no fundamental laws" argument. It is circular reasoning: you use the assumption that laws are temporary to prove that there are no fundamental laws. There is no evidence to suggest that laws are temporary thus your argument falls apart.
Furthermore, your "no fundamental law" assertion is essentially equivalent to saying that the only law is: anything can change at any time in any way. Well in that case, at some point the very law that "anything can change" will change and you will then have a universe with immutable laws. One can view this as a contradiction of a fundamental premise, or perhaps as an anwser; perhaps our universe began just like that and then collapsed into the steady state we now see.
Finally, your "no fundamental laws" assertion is incompatible with your belief that causality holds even prior to the beginning of the universe. If there are no fundamental laws, then causality itself need not always apply!
Re:Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet science has not (to my knowledge) always explained what causes those neurons to fire, has it? Sure, neurons fire because other neurons connected to them fire... that only goes so far.
One of the things that I've found most fascinating is the theory that the mind can influence things at the subatomic level. During the 60s/70s, the USSR did some experiments with people who rumour said had strong psychokinetic abilities (ESP). Now, the Ruskies were into all kinds of bizarre things, they researched things that Western science wrote off as ridiculous.
Anyway, they found some pretty interesting things. Like, they didn't find anybody that could move objects with their mind, or anything like that. But, they did find a few who could apparently alter the rate of nuclear decay. As you're probably aware (you read slashdot after all), subatomic decay is essentially random according to todays science. What they found was that these "psychics" could, in controlled conditions, speed up or slow down a number of a screen that measured decay. I can't recall if they were told what the number meant or not, but they could seemingly control the process at will.
Interesting. Could the mind impose itself onto low level randomness? If so, that could be the missing link between mind and body.
I once saw a documentary with Dr Robert Winston, if you're in the UK you'll probably know who I mean. It described the internals of a neuron quite well, pity I can't remember any of the names. The one thing that struck me though was that a part at the core was described as being in a state of quantum instability - it's small enough to be affected by uncertainty.
If mind can affect quantum probabilities, and our brains are in a state of quantum instability .... aah. You have mind controlling body. Such a thing would answer many questions.
Re:Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:2, Interesting)
+2 cents contributed.
Re:Multiverse to Nadaverse to Omniverse (Score:3, Interesting)
Your flaw here is that you assume God is a created being. However, in order to be an all powerful god, God must have always existed.
I actually prefer Issac Luria's view on this whole matter (he was a Jewish mystic living in the 16th century in the town of Sefad (not too far from Jerusalem). He argued that an all-encompasing god could not have allowed room for creation because before creation God would have filled everything. This required the first creation which was a lamp of negative light which could create a hole in God where creation could exist. Part of this process was the creation of evil as we know it which are really shards of vessals which were designed to hold the Light of God but broke (the Klippoth, or husks). Then the ten vessels were recreated (which map btw to the Ptolomeic spheres), creation as we know it began.
This follows the principle of the creator always being greater than the creation. So, to have an omnipotent god, you must also have God be infinite (always existed, always will exist).
Although I agree with you in your assertion, ine has to note that it is predicated on the assumption that the universe could not evolve so as to become far greater than it began. This was the principle which was certainly expressed in Norse myth, but also likely in other Indo-Eropean myths as well which held that consciousness was evolutionalry in that cnscious action *actually helped raise the universe to a higher level." This was also present in traditional Chinese thought (see Meng Tzu's concept of the "Mandate of Heaven" which I wonder whether it could be a Tocharian influence).
But I think there is a larger question here.... In "Physics and Philosophy," Werner Heisenberg talks at length about how pre-existing philosophy is an undeniable factor in physics theory-- that data plus assumptions in interpretation lead to theory and these assumptions will always be part of physics theory. For example, he compared Heraclitus's idea that fire (that which moves) is the root of all matter with E=mc^2 pointing out that the latter quantifies the former. So our ideas about God do shape our scientific theory despite the illusion of a wall between them.
Re:Buddhism and science tie together reasonably we (Score:2, Interesting)
Buddhism was the most seriously pursued philosophic framework, and this was because it did not directly conflict with things I already knew to be true - such as the energy/matter/energy pattern. In fact, I once wrote:
"Energy can neither be created, nor destroyed. It is eternal, unchanging. Thus, you were never born and you will never die. You are a wave of energy, a temporary yet eternal pattern. Everyone is you, and you are no one."
The first half, as mentioned, is one of the reasons I enjoyed Buddhist thought so much. The second half is why I eventually moved on (and found something much more appealing and applicable).
The problem with Buddhism is that it is almost entirely focused on the *negation* of self. The rejection of identity. The philosophy I discovered after a year or two of Buddhism is one I have held firmly for most of a decade - and it is entirely focused on self and reality.
Buddhism advocates two things, albeit in different ways than other religions/philosophies: faith and not-self. Objectivism is the direct opposite: existence and identity.
Buddhism is inherently flawed. Almost all other philosophies are, too, and in the same way. It's a little difficult to explain in a short slashdot post, but here goes:
Buddhism attempts to reject the existence of the self, and the mind, and speaks against the validity of desires. But in doing so, it uses those very things. A Buddhist says "I want to seek Nirvana" - and destroys the fundamental tenets of his own faith in the process.
First, he says "I" - a declaration of self. Second, he says "want to seek" - indicating a desire, and what's more, a mind capable of desire. In two strokes, he has destroyed 3 of his ideas.
It's like a man saying "I have no mouth". There is an excellent and concise statement of this:
"Existence exists. And the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one is aware of; and that consciousness exists, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness." (Ayn Rand, _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_)
I will give Buddhism credit, however, for being very original, creative, and intellectually challenging. I also appreciate the fact that so many Buddhists are so very open to reason, to fact, to proven science. I would much prefer to deal with a Buddhist than with most(all?) other religions.... except for the ridiculous rejection of self.
If you do not have your self, what do you have? A mass of carbon and water and heavy elements acting like a computer, accepting input and spitting out whatever society and environment has programmed? I don't like this view - I prefer to own my self, and to write my own internal software.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
As an engineer, philosopher, occultist, and someone who's taken issue with RealMike, I sincerely resent this statement. I do think, however, that because I prefer rigor to things that "feel deep", many would assume I want proof now in diagram form.
The original point that we don't know what happens in the brain, we don't really understand consciousness -- that is certainly isn't getting a fair shake around here.
There may not be a universal model of consciousness, but thanks to the work of people like Daniel Dennett, reasonable modes of inquiry and discourse are forming. Regardless of that, though, I don't know that understanding the "nature" of consciousness is necessarily all that paramount.
We ARE self-aware.
This is where rigor comes in. It's not clear to me that humans are necessarily self-aware. It may be that humans perceive self-awareness, though, as an illusion of the intelligence their brains give them.
We spend 6-8 hours a night DREAMING.
Not all sleeping time is spent dreaming, so you're off unless "we" spend 10-12 hours a night asleep. I get a good 4-6 hours a night, myself...
Either way, that's not uniquely human. Dreaming seems to be pretty nominal for mammals and, from what I understand avians.
We can get measurably better taking PLACEBOS.
For certain symptoms in certain cases (especially pain control and minor injury), yes.
But the fact is that YOU exist, you have a brain which shapes your moods, shapes your perception, shapes your store of information ... but it isn't YOU. That goes deeper than brain.
A lot of this is rather debatable, honestly. You're dogmatically setting up a consciousness/brain duality so that consciousness escapes the same demands of inquiry, which I consider to be a very serious pitfall on the road to understanding the human condition. DesCartes' duality of self still lingers unchecked in statements like yours, but it's still circular, evades the problem, and considered by many modern minds to be thoroughly problematic.
I'm all for going to a deeper level, but I say that a good reason is needed for it. A really good reason. Inventing "deeper levels" that evade standard modes of inquiry to enforce one's perceptions or dogma is not a good reason.
Re:Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
This is one of the most illogical retorts I've read in a while. It's nothing like that.
People aren't impossible to reason with if they sit in chairs. They are impossible to reason with if they believe their version of an invisible man is telling them what to do, no matter how much you suggest otherwise.
Do you think we should refrain from teaching our children such things as not to touch the stove, not to play with the outlet, not to run through traffic? These are all strong belief systems that most people seem to have and don't really want to be persuaded about.
Those things have observable cause and effect. Have you ever seen God?
Next.
Re:Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
Sitting in chairs isn't unhealthy for you.
I havn't seen God. Have you seen an electron?
I've seen an atom. Close enough for me.