2009.11.20 01:00 - The mind is massively parallel

Wol Euler was guardian for this session.

Calvino Rabeni: Wol,hello
Wol Euler: good morning, calvino
Calvino Rabeni: You attend a lot of these sessions
Wol Euler: I might say the same to you :)
Wol Euler: but yes, I do.
Calvino Rabeni: Recently. I have lots of time, but becoming employed could change that. :)
Wol Euler: ah!
Wol Euler: yes, that old "work" thing. (shudders)
Calvino Rabeni: ack
Wol Euler: how long have you been unemployed, if I may?
Calvino Rabeni: You know the idiom of the cobblers children (they go barefoot)
Wol Euler: or are you a student?
Wol Euler: heh, yes.
Calvino Rabeni: That's me. An info / knowledge engineer who never (yet) organized my OWN stuff.
Wol Euler laughs.
Calvino Rabeni: So this is my opportunity - I'm not really in that much of a hurry to seek work.
Wol Euler nods.
Calvino Rabeni: Although it will be necessary sooner or later.
Wol Euler: it sounds like a good idea
Calvino Rabeni: Hope I use the time well.
Wol Euler: well, you know, the world is eager to find a sorting/filing/containing system that actually works well
Wol Euler: perhaps you will not need to get a job...
Calvino Rabeni: Hints / ideas?
Wol Euler: yes, ensure that the system you create for yourself can be sold, as an idea or an object :)
Wol Euler grins
Calvino Rabeni: I'm on it.
Wol Euler: :)
Wol Euler: and start a blog too, telling the truth about what you are doing and how it's working. Put in your failures as well as your successes, in all the sticky dirty detail of why they failed.
Wol Euler: people can earn quite comfortable livings from helping others get organized
Calvino Rabeni: That goes against the grain, but might be good.
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Calvino Rabeni: How to market it though.
Wol Euler: it's certainly good for building a reputation for honesty and transparency.
Calvino Rabeni: True
Wol Euler: and the internets are all about reputation.
Wol Euler: as you were saying here last night, or the night before, in the discussion of identity and avatar shape
Calvino Rabeni: PAB and Kira are a kind of lab / case study for me.
Wol Euler: mmm?

Tarmel turns up, and the conversation starts in earnest.

Calvino Rabeni: I am as interested in "Kira as laboratory" as I am about "Life as Laboratory"
Wol Euler: a meta-lab, you mean? studying studying?
Wol Euler: tarmel! hello again
Calvino Rabeni: That is one way to put it, yes.
Calvino Rabeni: Interested in the issues of intersubjectivity.
Tarmel Udimo: hey there Wol and Calvino, who I haven't met yet

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni: Tarmel, good to meet U
Tarmel Udimo: yes I've seen you name pop up in the chat logs
Tarmel Udimo: and how are you my dear Wol?
Wol Euler: prety well, thank you! work has calmed down a lot, that helps.
Tarmel Udimo: good
Tarmel Udimo: pls don't le me stop the conversation, you were talking about meta-labs?
Wol Euler: we'd got around to taht, yes :)
Wol Euler: [1:12] Calvino Rabeni: PAB and Kira are a kind of lab / case study for me. [1:13] Wol Euler: mmm? [1:13] Calvino Rabeni: I am as interested in "Kira as laboratory" as I am about "Life as Laboratory" [1:14] Wol Euler: a meta-lab, you mean? studying studying?
Tarmel Udimo: ahh
Tarmel Udimo: aren't they the same
Calvino Rabeni: Methodology? Sure, kind of.
Calvino Rabeni: It doesn't appear that for most people they are the same.
Tarmel Udimo: if life is laboratory, then everything in it is also;)
Tarmel Udimo: but I know what you mean, this is taking perhaps a buddhist slant on life
Tarmel Udimo: about most people not seeing it that way
Wol Euler nods
Calvino Rabeni: yes, it is a different perspective.
Tarmel Udimo: for me its the only persepctive - life as laboratory
Calvino Rabeni: I think I'd like you to understand, I'm not resistent to the awareness-oriented effort of this group - but I focus on that level as well as on a conceptual level. I've done a lot of the awareness stuff in the past so it does not need my complete focus.
Wol Euler: interesting!

A new question arises. 

Tarmel Udimo: what's the difference between being aware and being conceptual?
Calvino Rabeni: In an ultimat sense, I don't have a comment except that they could be unified
Calvino Rabeni: But in a practical sense I think for many people they are dissociated.
Tarmel Udimo: OK
Tarmel Udimo: when you use the word conceptual do you mean abstract?
Calvino Rabeni: In that :)
Calvino Rabeni: I meant, not always but just then.
Wol Euler: well, to me that is where they become separate.
Calvino Rabeni: Perhaps they don't have to.
Wol Euler: to be aware of something is a stage before having an abstract conception of what it is/does/means
Wol Euler: (perhaps this is just about words ...)
Calvino Rabeni: If you think things are in stages, that is kind of true.
Calvino Rabeni: Suppose people have limited "bandwidth" or conscious capacity.
Calvino Rabeni: Then they have to forget stuff from stage 1 to go to stage 2.
Calvino Rabeni: Then abstraction becomes (and is defined as) loss of information.

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni: And loss of presence
Wol Euler: I meant "stage" in the sense of thought-process, not a door to pass through
Wol Euler: but I think moving from aware to abstract does involve a loss of presence, as I see those three words
Calvino Rabeni: If it's not sequential there seems less of an issue
Wol Euler: if I think "this experience I'm having now is like that day in 1971 when Aunt Lucy came by", then I am not really in the moment any more, I am at laest partially in memory
Wol Euler: ((more trying to understand than disagreeing, btw))
Tarmel Udimo: yes me too...
Calvino Rabeni: Sure. I think the notion of "memory" is kind of limiting.
Tarmel Udimo: what is your notion of memory?
Calvino Rabeni: If you deconstruct it, there are aspects that (to me at least) bear scrutiny
Wol Euler listens
Calvino Rabeni: Well I'm interested in folk philosophy. So I try to figure out the implicit themes when people use a concept like "memory".
Calvino Rabeni: And there are spiritual or scientific notions of it that diverge from the folk version, but those are influential anyway even among specialists.
Calvino Rabeni: About memory, a folk idea is that it is a recording or representation of something that happened in the past.
Wol Euler: mmhmm
Calvino Rabeni: That is a poor copy.
Wol Euler raises an eyebrow
Calvino Rabeni: So with that view it starts to seem like "being present" would have a better representation of "what really is" than would memory.
Wol Euler: for certain values of "is" :)

Memory and dreams. 

Calvino Rabeni: I don't accurately remember, were you at the 7pm meet? I'd guess yes but cannot be certain.
Wol Euler: no, that's 4am for me, I can't attend those.
Calvino Rabeni: I see. Well I just think of you at all these meets.
Wol Euler: awwww :)
Calvino Rabeni: There was a discussion of dreaming.
Calvino Rabeni: :)
Calvino Rabeni: See, I have an image / concept of this, and it has you in it, even if you aren't.
Wol Euler: but surely that indicates the difference between memory and being present?
Wol Euler: you surely knew six hours ago that I was not there, but in memory you are unsure.
Wol Euler: *a* difference between…
Calvino Rabeni: Yes there is a difference based on current observation.
Calvino Rabeni: But one could say, it is overrated.

--BELL--

Wol Euler: overrated, how?
Calvino Rabeni: In the sense that, even with access to "current information" in the present, that perceptual "input" is a small part of the mental process, of what it it to be human.
Calvino Rabeni: It is important for certain things, like driving a car.
Calvino Rabeni: Or if you're going to be tested on it in some way.
Wol Euler: :)
Calvino Rabeni: And we're always being tested, but the particular tests emphasize certain culturally defined values.
Wol Euler: ok, I can see that. You mean that we "see" through filters of memory and ideation
Calvino Rabeni: Exactly :)
Wol Euler nods
Tarmel Udimo: nods

Waking dreams. 

Calvino Rabeni: We had a discussion of dreaming in the 7pm PAB.
Wol Euler: mmmm?
Calvino Rabeni: And then I tried to shift the idea of it away from "night dreaming" to the mind of the dreamer.
Tarmel Udimo: yes?
Calvino Rabeni: Via the idea of waking dreams
Calvino Rabeni: And whether the dreaming mind is awake during the daytime.
Calvino Rabeni: Or is perhaps, the same mind.
Wol Euler: the dreaming mind is perhaps where intuition and "brainwaves" come frm
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Tarmel Udimo: when talking to Maxine at the retreat, I was amazed that she could dream awake
Tarmel Udimo: and that dreaming was a state that she moved in and out of with ease while awake
Wol Euler: wow
Calvino Rabeni: That is a good skill
Tarmel Udimo: yes I was most inspired and impressed.
Wol Euler: I'll hve to ask about that when her dream workshop starts up again
Tarmel Udimo: I think because she has made it her life work and been doing it for so long, and no longer denying that it can happen it does
Calvino Rabeni: One interesting perspective is that of "confabulation" as a type of mental process. Hafe you heard of it?
Tarmel Udimo: happy to have an explanation
Calvino Rabeni: In a nutshell, the mind is massively parallel, but we don't observe it.
Wol Euler: absolutely.
Calvino Rabeni: There are different theories, it's not generally settled as a paradigm, but the different approaches are converging.
Calvino Rabeni: It challenges folk philosophy about mind.
Calvino Rabeni: Including, perhaps some views of nonwestern mind theory.

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni: And it kind of explains a range of phenomenological observations.
Wol Euler nods
Calvino Rabeni: It is also a cultural study.
Calvino Rabeni: I mean, revealing of attitudes and values
Wol Euler: I've had proof of that often in my own brain. My memories can be absolutely immersive, I see the memory instead of what is in front of me, I hear the sounds from then not what is in the room with my body
Tarmel Udimo: nods
Wol Euler: and yet, I can do that while I am walking down the street, and I do not stumble and fall
Wol Euler: I even turn corners :)
Wol Euler: while not seeing where I am.
Calvino Rabeni: And when you have experiences like that, it's mixed with past and present, if it's like mine.
Wol Euler: mmhmm
Tarmel Udimo: I think the majority of humans live in the world that way
Tarmel Udimo: There have been moments lately when i think nothing I imagine nothing
Tarmel Udimo: and hope I am not going senile:)
Wol Euler: no, you are achieving buddhaness.
Tarmel Udimo: :PPPPPP
Calvino Rabeni: Cultural value. People worry about that kind of thing.
Calvino Rabeni: Not to worry :)
Wol Euler: my dears, I am sorry but work is calling. Please continue, I've claimed the log and will post it.
Wol Euler: bye for now!
Calvino Rabeni: Bye, good talking with you
Tarmel Udimo: bye wol
Calvino Rabeni: Tarmel, do you have a guardian time slot?
Tarmel Udimo: I too must go Calvino, as take away food has arrived
Tarmel Udimo: yes i do for now thursdays at 1:00am
Calvino Rabeni: OK, glad to meet you!
Calvino Rabeni: Bye then.
Tarmel Udimo: likewise
Tarmel Udimo: bye for now