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12 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

So did I!

Society doesn't much care for people with visibly missing or damaged body parts. Witness Donald Trump's grotesque, hand waving mockery of a reporter with damaged joints, which got enthusiastic applause from the adoring crowd.

I meant parts no one sees but you; like a spleen or that second kidney; or a man's left nut; is the person still the same sum of parts (per your statement) if the parts count is reduced? I don't care what society thinks, I'm just responding to your previous "sum of parts" statement. 

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1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I meant parts no one sees but you; like a spleen or that second kidney; or a man's left nut; is the person still the same sum of parts (per your statement) if the parts count is reduced? I don't care what society thinks, I'm just responding to your previous "sum of parts" statement. 

My sum of parts statement was in response to this from FairreLilette...

On 4/1/2021 at 4:48 PM, FairreLilette said:

...much of what comes out of the subconscious mind is utter drivel.  My conscious mind is me, me, the real me.  All that mind-expansion peoples have talked about for decades within the drug cultural it's a complete and utter waste of time.

My subconscious mind produces utter drivel, just like hers. But, that's as much me as anything I think that makes sense. My subconscious mind associates dark skin and men with badness. White skin and women? Not so much. Should I just wave that away as "not the real me" or make some conscious effort to both prevent those biases from adversely affecting my decision making and to educate the biases? Could I argue that my conscious self is a premeditated sham, designed to hide the subconscious, real me?

As for the loss of body parts that nobody sees. I've done that. I have no ovaries and I'm missing a sugar cube size chuck of breast tissue. I don't see myself differently as a direct result of that, but I'm aware of other changes as the result of both early menopause and my ongoing drug therapy.

At the end of the day, I am the stories I tell myself. I have my curiosity, my sense of humor, and fairly good health. I'm good to go.

Edited by Madelaine McMasters
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6 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

While in engineering school during exam week, I'd have dreams that I'd forgotten to attend one of my classes for the entire semester and was completely unprepared. Most of my classmates reported having similar dreams.

I had those in school and still get them! Only now they're about work...or entering a hospital or college for a check-up or exam, but getting completely lost...going up and down in elevators and only finding abandoned floors that all look the same...

I used to have lots of air crash dreams, I don't know why? O.o I'm not scared of flying and the dreams weren't that scary. But they stopped a few years ago. 

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21 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

My subconscious mind associates dark skin and men with badness. White skin and women? Not so much. Should I just wave that away as "not me" or make some conscious effort to both prevent those biases from adversely affecting my decision making and to educate the biases?

Yeah, but I was specifically addressing the drug culture as well as the subconscious being over-rated due to the drivel (absolute nonsense) it does produce.  Plus, if you found yourself pregnant or with herpes after a drunken sexual encounter, would that really be the real you?

*****************

FAIRRELILETTE said:..."much of what comes out of the subconscious mind is utter drivel.  My conscious mind is me, me, the real me.  All that mind-expansion peoples have talked about for decades within the drug cultural it's a complete and utter waste of time."

*****************

 

Me, continuing...however, reading a bit about it, I see Freud thought the subconscious was the ID (animal instinct area) as the ID develops first when we are newborn.  So, it's our basic instinct but the ID also holds our libido and our basic wants of survival - eating, drinking, etc.  

Also according to Freud, our ego is like our mediator and the super-ego like our parent.  So, the ego mediates between the ID (child) and super-ego (parent/G-d/Thou shall not over-seer) to help us find a balance.  But, to answer to what I quoted you about above, I think the ID must hold our fears as well in that basic animal instinct area.  Your thinking black man are bad could come from fear.  So, then implicit bias may come from fear?  

However, after several courses of pain killers and weird utter drivel dreams, I felt all this subconscious stuff was a bit over-rated, especially in relation to those who wish to pioneer this part of the mind as some kind of hidden treasures of the universe to reveal through using illegal drugs, and that's where I said I think that's a load of crap and may be causing brain damage, not brain-expansion.

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I always thought the subconscious was just the things you do that become second nature.. The conscious is the things you are concentrating on while doing something like, this dishes..

Like doing the dishes while talking to my sister about other things on the phone.. My sub conscious is doing the dishes, my focus is on my sister and our conversation.

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19 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I always thought the subconscious was just the things you do that become second nature.. The conscious is the things you are concentrating on while doing something like, this dishes..

Like doing the dishes while talking to my sister about other things on the phone.. My sub conscious is doing the dishes, my focus is on my sister and our conversation.

I think you may just be doing what is called "multi-tasking".

This is a brief explanation of the three:  ID, Ego, Super-Ego

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical constructs that describe the activities and interactions of the mental life of a person. In the ego psychology model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual desires; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic agent that mediates, between the instinctual desires of the id and the critical super-ego.

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On 4/1/2021 at 11:31 AM, Madelaine McMasters said:

Sometimes a thing can't be explained in layman's terms because laymen don't have the knowledge framework upon which to rest an explanation...

That doesn't make the explainer haughty, that's just the way it is.

The posters arrogance was in the response of "Yeah cute. In the mean time, in the world of grown-ups..." when I observed that  "not many people seem to find an unguided evolutionary framework to be a believable model of our origins", based on the posted polls.  The linked paper was unintelligible and random as any sort of counter to what we were discussing.

Quote

 

My skepticism for supernatural explanations stems more from 50+ years of personal experience with cause and effect feelings bubbling up from my own subconscious, and my observations of the same thing happening in others. I've yet to have a feeling that couldn't be explained by discovering something new and wonderful about how the world, or my mind, actually works. I am, at once, a wide eyed child wondering about the strange feelings I get from interacting with the world and a "haughty" scientist, patting that intuition on the head as I put "Explain that!" on my to-do list.

I try not to "resort to believing" when I don't understand something. Instead, I resort to my favorite three word phrase, which rarely appears in online lists of "best three word quotes"...

"I don't know."

My own wide eyed wonder is in where I see new sciences intersecting with spiritual knowledge and writings written thousands of years ago. Those are considered supernatural and though even Feynman acknowledges that we may know the results of quantum mechanic experiments, we don't really understand it much like we don't understand what is considered the supernatural. Those who have studied both see a lot of parallels between them.

Edited by Arielle Popstar
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4 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

spiritual knowledge and writings written thousands of years ago. Those are considered supernatural

It is interesting to read what enlightenment thinkers like Newton and Liebnitz wrote and realise that they were still desperately trying to find ways in their explanations to fit in God's place in it (some would say I got that the wrong way round). Knowledge in that era still had to accommodate a deity or three, but it did mark the end of the supernatural explanations for a couple of centuries.

The problem always with old knowledge is this need to explain things in terms of the prevailing knowledge of the era. Pre-Mendeleev, chemistry was still gripped in the old alchemical ideas that related mostly to Gnosticism and the notions of guiding spirits. Post-Victorian physics struggled to break free of the clockwork-universe idea that had been growing following Newton's attempts to describe a deterministic universe. Because they were working with the unseen they found themselves in (once again for mankind) new territory where they had mathematical explanations for things that did not always have directly observable effects. Physics therefore had to shift from formulating rules to make sense of the world we observed all around us, to trying to describe an unseen world that fit in with their formulations. Schrodinger's paradox was his attempt to point out how absurd a path they (and he with them) seemed to be taking, and he was not expecting his idea to become one of the central tenets of QP. (But to my mind, this is what you get when you try and make the universe behave according to how you think it should behave.)

I've been reading the Quantum Physicists' attempts to make sense of the new science in relation to the known world around us for years now, plus all the spin-offs trying to relate it back to Indian writings, and to be honest, it's alchemy all over again. Some of it is inspiring stuff, but in general, unless you really understand the maths, it's a body of knowledge you have to take on faith. Providing they are not making precise predictions about a possible measurement, anybody can say whatever they like about QP and just put up with the brickbats and labels that come their way. At least there is no inquisition this time around.

In a few years we will hopefully get the physicists' equivalent to Mendeleev and things will once again become explainable and applicable to the world as we see it.

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15 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I always thought the subconscious was just the things you do that become second nature.. The conscious is the things you are concentrating on while doing something like, this dishes..

Like doing the dishes while talking to my sister about other things on the phone.. My sub conscious is doing the dishes, my focus is on my sister and our conversation.

While it's true that in a basic sense the conscious mind is simply what we're aware of at any given moment and our unconscious mind is what we're not consciously aware of in that moment, each of these states of consciousness also has properties or functions (for example, our conscious mind is involved with logic and reasoning).
(the subconscious mind, btw, is a liminal state containing elements of both conscious awareness and less typically unconscious ones -- there is a fluidity to this state and no clear demarcation between conscious and unconscious mind -- we are usually operating in this in-between state and become more or less conscious as our day-to-day needs dictate).

For example, when you're talking on the phone while doing dishes and your conscious mind is focused on your sister while the dishes are being washed without your awareness (for the most part, anyway), let's say you cut your finger on a rusty knife. Most likely your conscious awareness would then shift to the cut finger while what your sister was saying would take a back seat -- perhaps you'd even cease understanding what she was saying. You might even use this changed focus of the conscious mind and its properties to logically evaluate whether you needed a tetanus shot.

Edited by Luna Bliss
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22 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

If implicit bias exists in the subconscious then I'd say the subconscious is very debased and selfish and often times seems void of logic and ability to reason.

Using logic when reasoning is a great tool for the Sciences and all the amazing discoveries we've made via applying logical principles to the evaluation of physical matter, but assigning a moral value to 'rational' doesn't work for me. Serial killers are generally quite rational as they reason out what they need or want, and many have been highly intelligent and skilled in logic, for example. So there is something besides the tool of reasoning to consider when evaluating morality -- a conscience.

We don't quite know for certain what causes people to develop a conscience where a sense of empathy develops and guilt is felt when harming others. It's fairly agreed upon that the conscience develops through relating to others in childhood as a child struggles to manage pain and disappointment in life, and that there could be a brain component (either missing or defecting) affecting conscience development as well.

So I really can't get behind your notion that the rational mind is so great and that some evil lurks in the 'inferior subconscious or unconscious mind'. These facets of the mind are simply structures and none of them contain any 'evil' in and of themselves.

It's true I diss the conscious mind as I try to create, as it's only when my conscious mind takes a back seat and my subconscious and unconscious mind has primary control that I have a good result in what I'm creating. Plus, it's the conscious mind dissecting everything into parts which causes humans to feel separate from the whole, and I see this as the cause of our destruction of the planet -- what we don't feel a part of we don't value as much and tend to manipulate to our own ends instead of experiencing how humans fit into the larger picture. Conscious mind needs to take a back seat to the unifying subconscious and unconscious mind instead of being in primary control.

Edited by Luna Bliss
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21 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

Maybe we have more levels of consciousness than just two - the main ones thought of - the conscious and subconscious.  Perhaps we are mostly in a state of mid-consciousness but with creativity and other experiences we can achieve a higher consciousness beyond our mid range throughout the day?

Some do think that, yes -- that there are transpersonal states of consciousness. I like the theories in Transpersonal Psychology as they go beyond or expand the Freudian-type theories which mainly focus on our pathology or how sick we can be:  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal_psychology

I have had mystical experiences tied to deliberate spiritual practices, but I can't really say what's happening when creating say, a painting. All I know for sure is that my conscious mind needs to take a back seat during such endeavors as the result is much better.

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7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The posters arrogance was in the response of "Yeah cute. In the mean time, in the world of grown-ups..." 

I still sit at the kiddie table during extended family get-togethers and did see the arrogance that irked you. But, that's not confined to science or atheism.

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I observed that  "not many people seem to find an unguided evolutionary framework to be a believable model of our origins", based on the posted polls.

More polls...

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/

image.gif.fcfad11fc6aa9d7452008fe8ee782d2c.gif

image.gif.d48e08e80259a54ef20f33d88555a088.gif

I find this to be the most interesting data from the Pew polls...

image.gif.8c7771ab4ab51010b6c90131f7b2c55a.gif

Though I'm a mere anecdote, I've observed this in my own circle of friends.

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

My own wide eyed wonder is in where I see new sciences intersecting with spiritual knowledge and writings written thousands of years ago. Those are considered supernatural and though even Feynman acknowledges that we may know the results of quantum mechanic experiments, we don't really understand it much like we don't understand what is considered the supernatural. Those who have studied both see a lot of parallels between them.

Of course they have. Scientists are every bit as human as priests, and subject to the same evolutionarily evolved foibles.

Feynman also famously said this...

“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

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15 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

So I really can't get behind your notion that the rational mind is so great and that some evil lurks in the 'inferior subconscious or unconscious mind'. These facets of the mind are simply structures and none of them contain any 'evil' in and of themselves.

I couldn't quite buy it either but that's what an article brought up about implicit bias, our subconscious, and that's why I clearly stated 'IF' implicit bias exists in the subconscious mind...  

I don't fully buy it either that implicit bias is generated solely from the subconscious or unconscious mind (unconscious meaning that which we are not aware of). 

18 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

We don't quite know for certain what causes people to develop a conscience where a sense of empathy develops and guilt is felt when harming others. 

It's probably nurture and environment.    Freud called our conscience the super-Ego, which is like the parent/G-d/Thou Shall Not part of the mental person and thought processes.   However, I also do not believe fear is only generated from the subconscious either.  I was speaking about the link provided in this thread about implicit bias which is not my own view of it, thus the 'IF'.

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40 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Using logic when reasoning is a great tool for the Sciences and all the amazing discoveries we've made via applying logical principles to the evaluation of physical matter, but assigning a moral value to 'rational' doesn't work for me. Serial killers are generally quite rational as they reason out what they need or want, and many have been highly intelligent and skilled in logic, for example. So there is something besides the tool of reasoning to consider when evaluating morality -- a conscience.

I'd hardly use outliers like serial killers to suggest that logic and reasoning are not to be relied upon. Those have saved a hell of a lot more lives than serial killers have taken.

40 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

We don't quite know for certain what causes people to develop a conscience where a sense of empathy develops and guilt is felt when harming others. It's fairly agreed upon that the conscience develops through relating to others in childhood as a child struggles to manage pain and disappointment in life, and that there could be a brain component (either missing or defecting) affecting conscience development as well.

We don't quite know a hell of a lot for certain, but we're making progress, through logic and reason...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

40 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Conscious mind needs to take a back seat to the unifying subconscious and unconscious mind instead of being in primary control.

While there is value in making space for our subconscious to work its "magic", I'd hate to live in a world where we let that take primary control. Every time I watch the animals in my yard, I'm thankful I can reason.

My subconscious mind bubbles utterly stupid self harm ideas into my conscious all the time. I'm still alive because I ignore them. My subconscious mind also automatically saves me from things my conscious mind doesn't notice. I'm still alive because they work even if I ignore them.

It takes two to tango.

ETA: Our conscience doesn't have things quite worked out either...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

ETA2: Logic and reason are what have allowed us to detect, and potentially reduce, implicit bias.

 

Edited by Madelaine McMasters
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39 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

ETA2: Logic and reason are what have allowed us to detect, and potentially reduce, implicit bias.

Okay, so this is my first time reading about implicit bias.  So, there is explicit bias (conscious) and implicit bias (unconscious).  I never knew that.

I was never raised with biases and have lived in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environments all my life.  I'm not sure I have implicit bias which is the mind somewhat stereotyping others for a simple explanation of it.  I didn't even like that new stereotype that came up here on the forums regarding this "Karen" thing and found it dumb frankly as well as of no use to discussion nor even the person but rather it reflected back to the person calling someone a Karen, imo.  

Here's a bit about implicit bias.  But, like I said, I was raised in a very open environment of every kind of people.   I can see how one might train implicit bias as you have been speaking about Madelaine.  It may be similar to something substance abuse counsellors use and for an example:  I feel sad, I need a drink, and changing that to - I feel sad, I'll take a walk.  

Here's a bit about implicit bias and it says it definitely does come from the subconscious.  However, the people doing the Karen thing were, imo, fully conscious of what they were doing.  Which leaves me???????????

An implicit bias is an unconscious association, belief, or attitude toward any social group. Due to implicit biases, people may often attribute certain qualities or characteristics to all members of a particular group, a phenomenon known as stereotyping.1

 

It is important to remember that implicit biases operate almost entirely on an unconscious level. While explicit biases and prejudices are intentional and controllable, implicit biases are less so.   A person may even express explicit disapproval of a certain attitude or belief while still harboring similar biases on a more unconscious level. Such biases do not necessarily align with our own sense of self and personal identity. In many cases, people can hold positive or negative associations with regards to their own race, gender, religion, sexuality, or another personal characteristic.

 

https://www.verywellmind.com/implicit-bias-overview-4178401

Edited by FairreLilette
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5 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Well, here is an example of some I got from the article above and what it is basically then is generalizing.   I honestly cannot think of any towards people other than I may believe something along the lines "all governments are corrupt in some ways".  So, I'm sure I have some that stem more towards authority than the human race though.

 For example, one common bias is that women are weak (despite many being very strong). Another is that blacks are dishonest (when most aren’t). Another is that obese people are lazy (when their weight may be due to any of a range of factors, including disease).

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15 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

implicit bias (unconscious).

It is important to not focus on the negative aspects that the word "bias" can invoke. We all of us (apart from a few to be mentioned in a second) carry around a large amount of cultural behaviour patterns that are largely under our radar, until we find ourselves perhaps alone in a group of many other people from a different upbringing and experience a sense of not-fitting-in.

 

What is called bias is often a survival mechanism, we make a decision in a fraction of a second because, in a way, its already been made by the ingrained patterns in us. If we had to stop and think through every decision we have to make or every attitude wee must display, we could end up taking far too long to respond, and just like Madelaine McMasters getting in her reply while I am laboriously typing this, we would be too slow for the situations.

 

There have been some interesting studies carried out on people who have to think through everything they do, and do not resort to the quick unthinking responses that "bias" allows us to make effortlessly. They don't have favorites. Put them in a restaurant where they have to decide which of several vacant tables to choose to sit at and they freeze up as they laboriously try to weigh up each and every aspect that could bear on the decision. Normal "biased" people simply avoid a table because it's not their favourite colour, or pick a table because there is a picture of a seahorse on the wall close to it...

Edited by Profaitchikenz Haiku
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52 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'd hardly use outliers like serial killers to suggest that logic and reasoning are not to be relied upon. Those have saved a hell of a lot more lives than serial killers have taken.

You have misinterpreted my meaning. I'm not saying logic and reasoning should NEVER be relied on -- I'm saying they are not the ONLY facet of consciousness to rely on.

52 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

We don't quite know a hell of a lot for certain, but we're making progress, through logic and reason...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

Woot...keep defending logic and reason. I never said they were "all bad" and in fact praised the progress in the Sciences via our use of logic and reason.  Please stop debating in black and white terms.

53 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

While there is value in making space for our subconscious to work its "magic", I'd hate to live in a world where we let that take primary control. Every time I watch the animals in my yard, I'm thankful I can reason.

My subconscious mind bubbles utterly stupid self harm ideas into my conscious all the time. I'm still alive because I ignore them. My subconscious mind also automatically saves me from things my conscious mind doesn't notice. I'm still alive because they work even if I ignore them.

It takes two to tango.

ETA: Our conscience doesn't have things quite worked out either...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

When did I ever say our conscious mind should totally vacate or imply that it does not take two to tango?  Haven't I always said it should simply take a "back seat" in certain endeavors -- this doesn't mean I think conscious mind would ever be COMPLETELY gone.
Of course the rational mind is involved with the human conscience as well -- I have only ever said that rationality ALONE is not enough when considering morals and how our conscience relates to them.

Now if you want to debate how our more modern Western mind with its over-emphasis on the conscious mind (via believing it should have primacy along with its derision of other facets of consciousness)  has screwed up the world this could be interesting. However this bizarre bifurcation and its orgy of black and white thinking, created by your own mind and projecting onto me, isn't.

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