Counsciousness and reality

I hear so many people claiming it's the consciousness that creates reality and not the other way around. They sometimes refer to double slit experiment and how observation changes the outcome. I don't really understand it but I have some questions 1)If consciousness really does create reality then why we are unhappy with our lives? Someone will probably mention law of attraction and how we subconsciously wished such fate to ourselves. Ok then, but let's say from now on we are making a consciousness effort of changing our reality for the better, yet the results are disappointing. I assume the reply would be "well you are not trying hard enough" or that something inside you is blocking the change. But in that case we are balls deep into pseudoscience territory as we can dismiss any proofs always claiming something is not right, just like charlatans who claim to possess paranormal powers always mention "bad energy" from skeptics around nullifies their abilities 2)Is double slit experiment really relevant or is it some kind of new age misinterpretation. Some people say that consciousness of the observer is irrelevant, what we are seeing is just the physical act of observation, like shooting a particle toward another particle to measure it, changes the state of particle we want to observe. 3)Is there any way to scientifically prove there is some merit to such wild claims? Has someone tried?

>>8062 My thinking leans towards the analytical more so than the mystical, but I don't find the idea of the mind creating reality that crazy. Have you ever actually experienced anything that wasn't literally a construct of your mind? Your very sense of "realness" or "tangibility" is derived from subjective perceptions, subjective continuity, subjective coherence. Once you grow out of naive realism, you pluck this idea of "realness" out of its original context and turn it into a pure abstraction - now you can reason that the contents of your mind aren't the "real" reality (albeit their structure is presumed to reflect truths about reality), and conceive of something out there that's even more real than "real". But this "external" reality is in fact less real than your raw, subjective comprehensions. It's a pure abstraction hypothesized by a mind - one that imposes form on that which is without inherent form. If there is anything outside of the mind, it is, for all humanly conceivable intents and purposes, completely unreal.

>>8062 afaik the thing w the double slit experiment is that to directly observe something you must interact with it (like bouncing photons from a thing into my eye) and that interaction causes wave function collapse i'm not a physician though as a philosopher i'd say that these new idealisms stem from not having read kant

>>8079 >afaik the thing w the double slit experiment is that to directly observe something you must interact with it (like bouncing photons from a thing into my eye) and that interaction causes wave function collapse But why should any old physical interaction cause a wave function collapse? You could just as well say that the observer becomes entangled with the quantum system, causing it to end up in a superposition. This is consistent with QM. The reasoning goes that it takes an actual, conscious observer to avoid this.

ill try to answer in good faith from a yoga / advaita vedanta perspective > if consciousness really does create reality then why we are unhappy with our lives? the most irreducable substratum of reality has been identified by sages and seers as sat chit ananda -- existence consciousness bliss that consciousness, the awareness aspect is 'chit', also called mindstuff, or Knowledge or Gnosis the reality going on is full of ananda, bliss so why do 'we' (speak for yourself) experience unhappiness if that is really the case? it is the bodymind complex that experiences happiness / unhappiness, pleasure / pain, wet / dry the bodymind is *an appearance* ↓in↓ consciousness, the same way the sun reflected in a pot of water is an appearance of the sun, it has no existence of its own, its existence is borrowed falsely identifying with the bodymind, it is said, there is no greater ignorance i am factually not 'this guy' but why do we feel we are 'this guy'? you do until you don't, then there never was any guy or world or universe apart from yourself the body and mind are 'sheaths' which cover this reality and until you *intuit* to discriminate between the real and unreal you will still experience a limited 'you' and a 'world' of 'things' 'out there' apart from self see: taittirya upanishad as for 'the observer' the reality is unchanging, and it is not any object nor subject the mandukya upanishad points out that the real reality is unknowable unthinkable unimaginable, yet 'is' and must be *realized* the body changes it is born it comes into existence and dies going out the mind rapidly changes taking the form of its sense data again, the reality is unchanging -- you are that reality the stuff from the secret and what the bleep do we know is a bunch of horse soy to sell people vacation tickets to bali, the dollar is worth more there so you're treated like a king and think 'wow i'm a living god' because you can afford more. not to discredit synchronicity.

"What is reality?" -- "A widely accepted fact. First the Earth was flat, then it become round." >>8062 I can recommend the book The Holographic Universe,,, by Michel Talbot,

>>8062 Above all, my belief is that New Age beliefs are desperate to reconcile their beliefs with 'science' (at least, the sort of science the general public could be aware of) so to feel credible. They would be more credible if they stood to principle, but the whole movement is precisely unprincipled, and made of whatever people want to make up. The use of scientific ideas to justify beliefs is always coupled with total misunderstanding of the former. It's not worth applying positive effort to such lazy statements.

>>8084 Well said, albeit I don't think it is nearly desperate enough to reconcile. In general, mystic belief usually involve some mix of fealty, getting caught in the spectacle of the unknown, and self help. There is a severe need to establish foundational evidence from which complex ideas can be further discovered and justified, and the few that claim to have evidence do so either with poor investigation and evidence, or just outright position themselves to make others trust substantial evidence exists without ever delivering. The most substantial thing any mystic belief has offered is an avenue to experience phenomenon, which at least shows there is *something* there. If that something is just from the mind, some unknown aspect of nature, or a cosmic glitch in the matrix, good luck and have fun choosing your assumptions for those "answers". The philosophies and cosmology of mysticism are entirely useless if they stay disconnected with known reality. We may be in any sort of reality, including one fundamentally dictated by consciousness, but that is a matter of belief and faith, and perhaps some wildly incomplete evidence. I do think various remote viewing experiments have returned something substantial, but having a scientific body that is made up of individuals that fear deeply of being ostracized by their collogues in a publish or perish environment that is almost entirely funded by institutional interests is enough to keep a lot of potential progress in limbo. There also is surely something substantial in the massive body of anecdotal accounts for where experiences overlap and where they do not, but anecdotal accounts are almost entirely disregarded in any "real science" context, despite them potentially offering a grounded framework to approach phenomenon with.

>>8084 >The use of scientific ideas to justify beliefs is always coupled with total misunderstanding of the former. fair point, but how sure are you that this isn't what you're doing, just like every other materialist?

>>8085 >albeit I don't think it is nearly desperate enough to reconcile Perhaps it is just the people I know. Someone close to me is very New Age, and I've flirted with it in the past; that is my impression, but it could only be a 'surface-level' problem, or less overt than I thought. >>8091 Why do you assume I am a "materialist"? I don't believe anything in particular, I'm suspicious of pure materialism at least, though it's not ruled out. I'm still on the road for truth. If you weren't assuming I am a materialist, then I don't understand what you're getting at. My original post is nowhere guilty of this.

Consciousness is among the recent evolutions of the human brain. It is said consciousness creates reality because we utilize our consciousness to understand our primary senses. We feel the warmth of the sun, see it's light, and smell the flowers; but those sensations are specific to us humans. A lizard feels warmth differently, as insects see light different, as dogs smell different from us. We assume evolution has primed us, along with all living things, as much as necessary to sense our surroundings appropriately. Unhappiness remains an ongoing philosophical topic, just as perception remains an ongoing scientific subject. Those are interesting topics OP, because they're at the frontier of those academic subjects. The best input I may give for this thread would be that in order of development as well as in our lives, first come the senses which transmit information to our brains for understanding. These are all physical interactions, including thought, since its based on us being healthy and alive. Its easier to think when we're relaxed, which is after all a physical condition of our bodies. The ethereal nature of thought, mind, perception, consciousness, etc... are what help maintain that science and philosophy relevant. It is believed the ultimate substance of all the universe is, like consciousness, somehow immaterial. You split an atom, then electrons, protons, subatomic particles etc... since they're physical matter no matter how infinitesimally small until eventually you reach an "indivisible singularity" which by reason of being indivisible is assumed to be something immaterial like consciousness. At this point, being we're contemplating a subject at the frontier of academic research, us Lainons can only speculate. Meanwhile the atom splitters at the hadron collider in Switzerland still collect data related to the slit experiment OP, once considered philosophy can help us understand the what that data means to us - if it might in fact help us become happier.

>>8099 >Why do you assume I am a "materialist"? I don't believe anything in particular, I'm suspicious of pure materialism at least uhh... i sensed your vibrations and they told me so. or something. but alright, sorry for assuming. so you're not one of those people who use science to justify their belief in matter, their belief in there being separate objects, their belief in consciousness being generated by a lump of matter etc.? because that would be hypocritical

Our ability to discuss our consciousness by means of our body requires for our consciousness to influence the body, which requires for it to have the ability to produce energy. Refine this though to the limit, and you end up with everything being made of "energy," which is the same thing as "mind" and comes from someone's consciousness. Literally. And you don't even need to know anything about veridical reincarnation and OBE during NDE cases or things like terminal lucidity; they are just something to be expected and a natural consequence of the way our consciousness interacts with the physical world... And our inability to control this process is a natural consequence of our mind's inability to control itself... since every sensation that appears within our consciousness is the product of the flow of our mind through our body, and these sensations are what decide the properties of whatever energy our consciousness generates.

It's more your brain makes a universe just the same as the outside one but contained within quantum phenomenon contained within yo microtubules, which extend the time and raise the temp of quantum reactions which usually needs to be supercooled and isolated to work..... Ye, also we could be just 3d tracers of the main dimension, or be inside a black hole. Hell the sun can spawn a black hole as it concentrates dark matter with it's gravity and can make micro black holes that drink the sun from the inside The last three years have really been eye opening in science. To have data back the things I always thought is awesome Also Google white whole reverse time universe

>>8272 ALSO GOOGLE UNIVERSE MAKES A NEURAL NETWORK. It's exactly like one. Dendrites and synapses

>>8080 There is no "conscious observer" in physics. Wavefunction collapse is caused by physical interactions during a measurement. However the details of this remain quite a mystery. Collapse is "tacked on" to the theory of quantum mechanics and it's unknown whether it can be explained more fundamentally. There are various attempts and competing explanations (read the wikipedia page on quantum mechanics interpretations to get an idea). But the "conscious observer" stuff is bullshit as far as physics is concerned. There's no definition, model, or anything of consciousness within physics.

>>8282 > Wavefunction collapse is caused by physical interactions during a measurement. >There's no definition, model, or anything of consciousness within physics. This your magical head canon. As far as raw QM is concerned (without "interpretations" forced on it), there's nothing special about measurement, which consists simply of matter interacting on the quantum level. You simply get a more complicated wave function. Nothing "collapses". The founding fathers of this field were talking about "observers" for a reason, but this reason is apparently lost on you. In Classical Physics, measurement (as a theoretical construct, not the experimental practice) was conceived less as a physical interaction and more like a pinhole view into some realm of absolute truth about the world's state. It was part of Physics as a subject, but not the subject of Physics; i.e. it was formulated on a higher meta-level than whatever was being described by physical laws. Quantum Mechanics operates on a level so low that the idealized construct of measurement is no longer useful. That you cannot probe anything without changing it is integral to the theory itself, and so measurement is no longer above the laws, but subject to them. Even so, something needs to observe the results of measurements and be thought of as "outside" of the system being studied. Intuitively, they named it an 'observer'. The observer is not SUPPOSED to be modeled by QM anymore than measurement is supposed to be modeled by Classical Physics. It's part of the theory's meta. The appeal of this "privileged" observer construct is purely logical - the theory doesn't tell you anything about it or nail it down to consciousness; the 'observer' serves his limited function without it. However, when you try to map the theory to reality, beyond some limited experimental context, the 'observer' most naturally maps to consciousness, since only consciousness can testify that it is not in a superposition.