Turtles All The Way Down

You know that is not an easy question?:)

Maybe the better question is freedom from what? Kieslowski made a whole film on the concept of the psychological state of freedom, and if one can ever be truly ‘free’. It is called Blue.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1D7153CF931A25753C1A965958260
In some sense, I’ve adopted that film as the film of my “soul” (for lack of a better term).

What is reality?

Hmmmm……I’d have to think about this some more.

If for one moment you seen something that did not fit reality, and you know you have your wits about you as a scientist. Then how would you process that anomaly? You might not be able to “repeat it” yet you know your not delusional.

So you forever remain the skeptic and this sits in the back of your mind. You know the world is much different then all the laws you are investigating. Do you deny it?

Or, would that spur you on to understand something which you have accepted as the laws of physics, to find out what you had missed?

[...] this influence is totally negligible and doesn’t affect the outcome of what I do or think.

(i.e. if there’s any influence, it’s negligible compared to more dominant processes that take place)

That’s a tough question. If you want to hear my opinion on the ‘far reaching’ communication let me put it like this. I think there’s no doubt that our brains detect much more input than we are consciously aware of. Some people know how to deal with that and have a natural talent for getting on ’somebody else’s wavelength’. That’s got nothing to do with being psychic.

I’d even go so far to say that in a certain way, everything I do and think is influenced by everything everybody else does and thinks. But I am quite convinced for almost all people and events in this world, this influence is totally negligible and doesn’t influence anything of what I do or think. It’s kind of a macroscopic version of the cluster decomposition principle.

Now if you ask me if mind reading or seeing into the future can be performed by a single human brain, I’d put all my bets on no. The information that would have to be processed for that is too incomplete, too weak, and too complex to be reliably evaluated by our neural synapses.

What’s your opinion?

Best,

B.

PS: Kind of funny that you mention it, friends have warned me repeatedly not to commit ‘political suicide’. But it seems it’s not so easy to do. As my mum used to say: Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert, lebt man gänzlich ungeniert which means roughly: If your reputation is gone, you’re free. I’m still trying to be free.

Maybe you two as scientists could give your opinion about that subject on psychics in particular, from a scientists perspective, or would that be political suicide?

Surely many scientists joke, but sometimes I wonder “why and if” still holding to the values of science there can be anything said, while the brain communicates from it’s neural synapses. How “far reaching” is such communication?

Anyway, fiction is always a good way to protect yourself with pen names. If you “feel” or “think” that such a strain could exist.

Don’t kid yourself Clifford, people are reading.

-cvj

P.S. I knew you’d type that.

-cvj

Maps of Mars

Best,

B.