kakapo

A suggestion would be to create a separate forum to mirror this one. thedaobumspolitics.com or something. Then invite everyone over there. That way the staff's wishes are respected here.

Just as a flock of starlings has no leader, neither do your neurons. "You", "I", "Ego" etc. is all an emergent phenomenon, arising from their interactions and communication. If you are looking for a command center in the brain, the thalamus, anterior-dorsal insula, and the claustrum. Those are all regions that if artificially stimulated can lead to temporary loss of consciousness.

Imagine at a city council meeting, the members unanimously decide to increase taxes. They organized and directed the decision to raise taxes. Imagine this morning you decided to make scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee with cream. Your neurons voted on it much like the city council did, and that is what happened.

The void of outer space is full. Everything else is empty. Check out "A Universe From Nothing" by Dr. Lawrence Krauss MIT Basically empty space is full of matter/antimatter particles fused together. Random quantum vacuum fluctuations can separate these into equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

If you asked an individual neuron to solve a partial differential equation, it would have no clue. If you put a bunch of neurons together, and let them act collectively, they can indeed learn together how to solve a problem as a group that none of them understand individually. The understanding exists in their relationship to one another, but not with any single individual. "you", "I" ego, identity is like that also.

Analogies are rarely perfect.

I know there are certain topics they ask us not to talk about, so I will be vague. Right now spiritual people, at least the ones who are paying attention have a lot more on their minds than normal. I have a good Buddhist friend recently who committed suicide rather than deal with certain realities. I think a lot of people who would otherwise be posting here are not doing well because of things, and maybe they are withdrawing from communities like this one. Just my $0.02

So to get back to the no you discussion. Starlings fly in patterns that no individual member decides on, I posted a video previously. Imagine that this collective made up of birds developed an ego, an identity, and could communicate with you. When you looked at the individual birds themselves they would have no clue about higher level concepts and language, they are just birds. Imagine collectively such an intelligence emerged from their communication and interaction though. In this scenario, there is no I anywhere in that flock of dumb birds. It is just an emergent property of the flock communicating. As to what reality really looks like. Color doesn't exist, light has a frequency, but not color. Color is something our brain attributes to the frequency of light. In reality nothing has a smell, or a taste. Those are attributes our mind gives to chemicals we interact with. We aren't looking at reality, we are looking at an abstraction of it.

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: "The flag is moving." The other said: "The wind is moving." The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them: "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

We don't look at actual reality itself, but rather the energy and information being exchanged in our mind. The job of the brain is to create an experience which represents the reality outside of us. Whatever reality is it looks nothing like the experience we are having of it. At best the reality we experience has representational value, like a painting of a pipe represents a pipe.

When we communicate, the energy and information we exchange is the same as what our neurons do. This was true before AI was a thing. There is no "I" there is only the voices of trillions of cells talking to one another, the "I" that emerges is their collective conversation. It is much like murmuration seen in starlings:

I view myself not as one thing, but rather the conversation trillions of cells are having across an organic internet. I am the energy and information they exchange. The collective conversation that society of cells has. I am that energy and information. There is no me inside this body. There are just trillions of cells talking and communicating with one another. Each with their own individual wills and perspectives. We also are doing the same thing our cells are, as we share energy and information and communicate on the internet. That exchange of energy and information gives rise to an awareness not unlike our own.

If a homeless person wanted to offer you advice on which stocks to invest in, would you listen? If a teacher with no accomplishments offered to teach you the real deal stuff, would you listen? I think you should be very mentally hygienic, and focus only on practices which have good evidence backing them. Anyone can make a course and a website and charge a monthly fee, but not everyone knows what they are talking about.

I think the threads have been hidden in some section of the forum only admins and staff can see. It was over the top Chūnibyō syndrome stuff.

100% same guy, new name.