Is there anything more powerful than the human mind?

Gardenlover

Gardenlover

The world needs more love
We raise up gods and devils, war and peace, love and hate - all within the same mind.

Our thoughts and perceptions become, at least, our own reality. We "may" even convince others to accept them as their own.

We can be in a room full of people and feel alone or be alone and feel that we rule the world, it all takes place in our minds.

As a wise man here (@bobcat, I believe) once said - "Look to the light in front of you, not the shadows behind you."
 

Gardenlover said:
We raise up gods and devils, war and peace, love and hate - all within the same mind.

Our thoughts and perceptions become, at least, our own reality. We "may" even convince others to accept them as their own.

We can be in a room full of people and feel alone or be alone and feel that we rule the world, it all takes place in our minds.

As a wise man here (@bobcat, I believe) once said - "Look to the light in front of you, not the shadows behind you."
Click to expand...

Yes, it's true what you say, @Gardenlover

And true again, it is @bobcat
Who shares that poignant view point with us.

Always good to see you post, @Gardenlover
 
The story of the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng, is a significant tale in Zen Buddhism. Huineng was an illiterate peasant who became the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism. The Fifth Patriarch, Hongren, challenged his disciples to write a verse expressing their understanding of "original nature" to determine his successor. The head monk, Shenxiu, wrote:

"The body is the bodhi tree.
The heart-mind is like a mirror.
Moment by moment wipe and polish it,
Let no dust alight."

Huineng, despite being illiterate, composed a verse that challenged Shenxiu's view:

"Bodhi originally has no tree.
The mirror also has no stand.
Buddha Nature is always clean and pure.
Where is there room for dust?"

Huineng's verse demonstrated profound insight into the nature of enlightenment, leading Hongren to secretly pass the robe and bowl of succession to him, marking Huineng as the Sixth Patriarch[1][2][3][4].
 
Stupidity .......... ---------- .......... __________ (there is only one answer for most all things that go wrong) ------

Its easy to say Evil Do'er. Greed, selfishness, more greed, Wealthyness, the birthright, thoughts of status, social rules and responsibilities but only
one word really sums it up.
----------
STUPID there is no fix, not a pill, surgical procedure, new leadership, social conversions, religious anointments, clan meetings, conversions to joining clubs, counciling, Jail time, hangings, sodium pentanal, gains of wealth!
-----------
stupid is fo-evah !
 
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No, and this is why we really should act more responsibly. We are the most mentally advanced creatures on Earth and yet we behave as though everything exists for our benefit. We are currently destroying the very thing which sustains all life...Earth itself.
 
IMHO We all have our own internal map of the universe that is built up from experiences, eyesight, emotional thinking and feelings we have experienced through life.

I guess it is as powerful as we allow it.
 
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Is the human mind powerful? I don't think so. How it works is something we cannot fathom, but you don't have to look very far to understand how flawed the human mind is. The human mind is great at solving problems, but don't get too excited about that. It creates more problems than it solves, and it doesn't even know it most of the time. But that's just my opinion. All I can say is that I'm not impressed.
 
I appreciate that now we are achieving great scientific insights, but it took us about 250,000 years to do that. On one hand we have impressive accomplishments, but , on the other, we are damn slow starters.
 
On this board, I've tersely posted some of my ideas on neuroscience, anthropology, religion, and psychology that I have been a long time science enthusiastic for. One idea I lean towards is our Earth within our Milky Way Galaxy and Big Bang Universe is actually a rare engineered organic DNA zoo by a race of ancient Ultimate Intelligent Entities most otherwise described as "god" that if so are more likely at least mostly non-organic in order to be immortal if not physically destroyed.

Although there is much to criticize negatively upon what homo sapiens have done in the last 8,000 years, a mere moment in geologic time, it is also true humans have accomplished incredible science and philosophy that more validly reflects our true potentials IF we can overcome our baser natures as many of us can indeed.

Many current AI scientists expect within a few decades, humans will create a vastly more intelligent singularity level AI entity. However I also envision another possibility. Due to the nature of the way neural electromagnetic brains seem to work, it may be that we organics are in fact, a key component of ultimate thinking entities possible, that further must be complemented by non-organic AI to reach ultimate levels. Due to molecular size limitations using any atomic elements, I doubt there will ever be other ways to so densely package what brains do. And that may in part be our zoo purpose for such secretive ancient entities that remain hidden for ethical reasons.

Ray Kurzweil in his best seller How To Create Mind proposes to model the brain with a unified parallel processing paradigm that consists in a hierarchy of self-organizing pattern recognition routines that constantly predict the future and hypothesize what we will experience. Over our lifetimes from birth, we fill nearly 500,000 identical cortical columns by adding connections and pruning away others by what we do and experience. So in effect, we make ourselves.

125. Kurzweil's Pattern-Recognition Theory of Mind – 1

Kurzweil (2012) hypothesizes that the basic uniform unit of action in the entire neocortex is the so-called pattern recognizer (PR); it is the fundamental component of the neocortex. Deviating a bit from Mountcastle's model, Kurzweil stipulates that the PRs are not separated by specific physical boundaries; rather they are placed closely one to the next in an interwoven fashion. A cortical column is simply an aggregate of a large number of PRs.

The PRs wire themselves to one another throughout the course of a lifetime. Therefore the elaborate connectivity between modules that is there in the neocortex is not specified much by the genetic code; rather it gets created to embody the patterns we actually learn over time.

Kurzweil estimates that there are ~500,000 cortical columns in the human neocortex, each being ~0.5 mm wide and ~2.5 mm long. Each contains ~60,000 neurons. Since each PR within a cortical column contains ~100 neurons, it follows that there are ~500,000 x 60,000 / 100 or ~300 million PRs in our neocortex.

How many patterns can the human neocortex store? With as many as 300 million PRs available, our brain can indulge in a huge amount of redundancy, resulting in our fantastic pattern-recognition capability, which is far in excess of what any computer system has been able to attain so far...
Kurzweil's estimate of the total capacity of the human neocortex is on the order of low hundreds of millions of patterns, which is similar to the number of PRs, namely ~300 million.

VM1.jpg
 
You do realize that the religiously-motivated "Big Bang" hypothesis always stood on very shaky ground and as time goes on loses more credulity every day, right?

It is barely on life support even with the constant hand-waving that adds more undetectable epicycles than the heliocentric model of the universe had in its heyday.
 


Neurology has recently found that human brains are capable of adaptation/change (neuroplasticity).

The neural network in humans (add all organisms ?) and cosmos network are remarkably similar.

We can no longer rule out the possibility that every organism is contributing to a cosmic consciousness that is self-aware.
 
David777 said:
On this board, I've tersely posted some of my ideas on neuroscience, anthropology, religion, and psychology that I have been a long time science enthusiastic for. One idea I lean towards is our Earth within our Milky Way Galaxy and Big Bang Universe is actually a rare engineered organic DNA zoo by a race of ancient Ultimate Intelligent Entities most otherwise described as "god" that if so are more likely at least mostly non-organic in order to be immortal if not physically destroyed.

Although there is much to criticize negatively upon what homo sapiens have done in the last 8,000 years, a mere moment in geologic time, it is also true humans have accomplished incredible science and philosophy that more validly reflects our true potentials IF we can overcome our baser natures as many of us can indeed.

Many current AI scientists expect within a few decades, humans will create a vastly more intelligent singularity level AI entity. However I also envision another possibility. Due to the nature of the way neural electromagnetic brains seem to work, it may be that we organics are in fact, a key component of ultimate thinking entities possible, that further must be complemented by non-organic AI to reach ultimate levels. Due to molecular size limitations using any atomic elements, I doubt there will ever be other ways to so densely package what brains do. And that may in part be our zoo purpose for such secretive ancient entities that remain hidden for ethical reasons.

Ray Kurzweil in his best seller How To Create Mind proposes to model the brain with a unified parallel processing paradigm that consists in a hierarchy of self-organizing pattern recognition routines that constantly predict the future and hypothesize what we will experience. Over our lifetimes from birth, we fill nearly 500,000 identical cortical columns by adding connections and pruning away others by what we do and experience. So in effect, we make ourselves.

125. Kurzweil's Pattern-Recognition Theory of Mind – 1

Kurzweil (2012) hypothesizes that the basic uniform unit of action in the entire neocortex is the so-called pattern recognizer (PR); it is the fundamental component of the neocortex. Deviating a bit from Mountcastle's model, Kurzweil stipulates that the PRs are not separated by specific physical boundaries; rather they are placed closely one to the next in an interwoven fashion. A cortical column is simply an aggregate of a large number of PRs.

The PRs wire themselves to one another throughout the course of a lifetime. Therefore the elaborate connectivity between modules that is there in the neocortex is not specified much by the genetic code; rather it gets created to embody the patterns we actually learn over time.

Kurzweil estimates that there are ~500,000 cortical columns in the human neocortex, each being ~0.5 mm wide and ~2.5 mm long. Each contains ~60,000 neurons. Since each PR within a cortical column contains ~100 neurons, it follows that there are ~500,000 x 60,000 / 100 or ~300 million PRs in our neocortex.

How many patterns can the human neocortex store? With as many as 300 million PRs available, our brain can indulge in a huge amount of redundancy, resulting in our fantastic pattern-recognition capability, which is far in excess of what any computer system has been able to attain so far...
Kurzweil's estimate of the total capacity of the human neocortex is on the order of low hundreds of millions of patterns, which is similar to the number of PRs, namely ~300 million.

VM1.jpg
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting read. Neurology is a fantastically complex field I too, enjoy immensely.
I had a visit with my neurologist in November. We spent more than hour discussing neurology related to why and how it works. The brain is as complex and fascinating as the universe.
 
David777 said:
On this board, I've tersely posted some of my ideas on neuroscience, anthropology, religion, and psychology that I have been a long time science enthusiastic for. One idea I lean towards is our Earth within our Milky Way Galaxy and Big Bang Universe is actually a rare engineered organic DNA zoo by a race of ancient Ultimate Intelligent Entities most otherwise described as "god" that if so are more likely at least mostly non-organic in order to be immortal if not physically destroyed.

Although there is much to criticize negatively upon what homo sapiens have done in the last 8,000 years, a mere moment in geologic time, it is also true humans have accomplished incredible science and philosophy that more validly reflects our true potentials IF we can overcome our baser natures as many of us can indeed.

Many current AI scientists expect within a few decades, humans will create a vastly more intelligent singularity level AI entity. However I also envision another possibility. Due to the nature of the way neural electromagnetic brains seem to work, it may be that we organics are in fact, a key component of ultimate thinking entities possible, that further must be complemented by non-organic AI to reach ultimate levels. Due to molecular size limitations using any atomic elements, I doubt there will ever be other ways to so densely package what brains do. And that may in part be our zoo purpose for such secretive ancient entities that remain hidden for ethical reasons.

Ray Kurzweil in his best seller How To Create Mind proposes to model the brain with a unified parallel processing paradigm that consists in a hierarchy of self-organizing pattern recognition routines that constantly predict the future and hypothesize what we will experience. Over our lifetimes from birth, we fill nearly 500,000 identical cortical columns by adding connections and pruning away others by what we do and experience. So in effect, we make ourselves.

125. Kurzweil's Pattern-Recognition Theory of Mind – 1

Kurzweil (2012) hypothesizes that the basic uniform unit of action in the entire neocortex is the so-called pattern recognizer (PR); it is the fundamental component of the neocortex. Deviating a bit from Mountcastle's model, Kurzweil stipulates that the PRs are not separated by specific physical boundaries; rather they are placed closely one to the next in an interwoven fashion. A cortical column is simply an aggregate of a large number of PRs.

The PRs wire themselves to one another throughout the course of a lifetime. Therefore the elaborate connectivity between modules that is there in the neocortex is not specified much by the genetic code; rather it gets created to embody the patterns we actually learn over time.

Kurzweil estimates that there are ~500,000 cortical columns in the human neocortex, each being ~0.5 mm wide and ~2.5 mm long. Each contains ~60,000 neurons. Since each PR within a cortical column contains ~100 neurons, it follows that there are ~500,000 x 60,000 / 100 or ~300 million PRs in our neocortex.

How many patterns can the human neocortex store? With as many as 300 million PRs available, our brain can indulge in a huge amount of redundancy, resulting in our fantastic pattern-recognition capability, which is far in excess of what any computer system has been able to attain so far...
Kurzweil's estimate of the total capacity of the human neocortex is on the order of low hundreds of millions of patterns, which is similar to the number of PRs, namely ~300 million.

VM1.jpg
Click to expand...
@David777 , Interesting post, thanks. I've been a life-long student of neurophysiology and the mind.
 
I read a story in a Readers Digest quite a while ago where a brilliant Doctor was riding her bike and had an accident where she fell and hit her head against a curb.
After the initial wounds healed she went back to work in a hospital where she had others working under her.
She started noticing that her staff members would come to her and tell her how things turned out that she told them to do.
She didn’t remember telling them those things.
She had enough sense to seek help.
She slowly regained all of her faculties.
The gist of the whole story and what she wanted people to understand was that when you’re having problems like that you don’t know that you are because of the problem that you are having.
I hope I explained that so that you can understand what I meant.
Just so happens that she was lucky enough to fully recover from her injury and to realize what she had been through.
My wife was on pain medication for a while and she still doesn’t remember exactly how certain things occured while she was under the influence of those medications.
She got upset when I told her what she had done even though I told her there was no shame in it.
So I learned pretty quickly to not mention those things and agree with what she thinks happened.
It doesn’t matter if she is right or wrong about what she thinks happened while she was under the influence of the pain meds anyway.
What really matters is that she recovered from a near death experience and has had normal faculties since then.
 
dilettante said:
You do realize that the religiously-motivated "Big Bang" hypothesis always stood on very shaky ground and as time goes on loses more credulity every day, right?

It is barely on life support even with the constant hand-waving that adds more undetectable epicycles than the heliocentric model of the universe had in its heyday.
Click to expand...
What isn't on shaky ground? That's about the only way l see life.
 
GP44 said:
It doesn’t matter if she is right or wrong about what she thinks happened while she was under the influence of the pain meds anyway.
What really matters is that she recovered from a near death experience and has had normal faculties since then.
Click to expand...
Interesting! You are correct.
 
I think the human mind is pretty powerful. Bullets are more powerful. That's all really.
 

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