Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality (A TedTalk)

[sagesnow]

On the edge research from Anil Seth
https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality?utm_campaign=tedspread--a&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Not sure whether to post this under Science or Metaphysics, so I posted it in General Discussion.
I have been researching these new scientific studies in Science and NonDuality. Are we living in a huge phenomenally complicated hallucination or hologram? Many scientists think we are.

[Odoreida]

1. Wow. I never met another solpsist before.

[sagesnow]

7. Definition of Solopcism:

1.
Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2.
extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

I do not subscribe to the notion of Solipsism because I do not think that I am the only projection of Self present in this Universal Hologram. I am only one of many projections of Self interacting with each of the other holograms in my vicinity.

[SweetieD]

2. So Trump is part of this grand hallucination. That is terrifying.

[sagesnow]

8. I am at a loss as to why

individuals collectively are choosing to project Trump into our Consciousness.

[MFM008]

3. I wish my illusion

Had less pain.

[defacto7]

4. A grand full circle in mythical concepts...

Some of our earliest mythology states similar concepts of reality as a dream, dream as reality or that everthing is an illusion.
Who knows. Maybe there will be a headline that says, "Scientists prove Buddhism".

Still thinking... hallucination, hologram, reality... we know the definition of these words but in the context of this proposal it becomes a play on words. One way of looking at it is that all thought is contrived in the brain. Call it an hallucination or reality it really doesn't matter. Where it seems metaphysical is when we don't differentiate between agreed factual observation and individual conflicting observation. As far as holographics is concerned, it's a fascinating subject and easily misconstrued since it doesn't fit most people's natural view... unless you've studied it enough to understand it.
Another aside : any article that states, "many scientists" as a talking point is suspect to me. That's like, "most people agree". Kind of meaningless.

[utopian]

6. It's already happening

Not reincarnation or any of that mystical stuff, but how brain science seems to back up the illusory nature of what we perceive as reality.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenment/dp/1439195455

[defacto7]

10. I can relate.

I made an edit after your comment but I don't think it contradicts this.

[sagesnow]

12. Thanks for the link

I'll check it out.

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

5. I think Lily Tomlin said this

"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch."

Don't know if she did say that, but I think it may be true.

[sagesnow]

9. Love Lily!

[hunter]

11. Nahhhhh... it's a lot simpler than that.

The human mind is a big toolbox. In that toolbox, there are tools that pick the tools.

There are also tools that explain and remember "why" we picked the tools, but these tools always operate after the fact. Our rational sentient selves are forever doomed to live in the past; we feel the misfire that causes us to bite our tongue or twist an ankle, but we are powerless to stop it. Or we can't hold back the words we will later regret.

I have a very mechanistic view of the human mind, maybe because I have to take psych meds to be functional in this society. My mind seems to have gone a little sideways in adolescence, and it got worse in my forties, as if whatever mental muscles I was using to feign normalcy began to fail from overuse. Or maybe I just got tired.

If I quit my meds, or the effectiveness of my meds begins to fade (as sometimes happens), then my personal reality begins to diverge from the reality of those around me. About a year-and-a-half ago I landed in a locked psych ward experiencing vivid hallucinations that included voices that were not mine. These hallucinations were not the worst of it; my entire perception of the world was distorted.

With new meds the walking nightmare quality to my existence simply went away, evidence that it's all just physics and chemistry.

I don't worry about my place in the universe. I'm just another temporary swirl in an ocean of life. The universe will do what it does, and it doesn't give a flying fuck what we humans think; it doesn't care about the voices in our heads, disordered or not. A million years from now nothing will be left of humans but a peculiar layer of trash in the geologic record and some dead junk floating around in outer space. This earth has seen many innovative species come and go, experiencing exponential population growth and then crashing, often into extinction. We are not the first, we won't be the last.

We don't need religion, metaphysics or anything else to explain our place in the universe; our uncaring universe is reason enough to be kind to one another, and why we should be kind to the other sentient non-human creatures we share this planet with.

I did not waste my time watching the video. It's a shortcoming of the human mind that we feel video is more "real" than writing. The tools in our mind evolved before television, some of them can't tell TV from reality. That's what makes TV such an effective tool for spewing bullshit. Wave your arms and make it so. I don't watch television news either.

So I found this article by Seth:

https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

Personally, I think arguments about "consciousness" are as useless as arguments about the Trinity in Christianity. Human language is very loosely coupled to reality. Just because a word exists does mean it represents anything real. I do not believe the universe is a hologram. Holographic universes are answers to questions as useless as "what is consciousness?"

Current research in artificial intelligence is slowly adding to the "mind" toolbox of machines. These machines may someday be sentient. When these mechanical creatures start exhibiting the same complex behaviors as biological sentient creatures (dogs, elephants, orcas, parrots, etc.) then there won't be any reason not to attribute sentience and consciousness to them.

[ananda]

13. I tend to think that the brain is a holographic filter.

It projects our world from the quantum soup behind it, so to speak.