Tal, a conversation with an alien (21 page)

Well, I think that if the reviews are the best, I could confidently choose it. However I would not be satisfied, as I still need to taste it. 

Armed with all of this knowledge, knowing all the physical parts, and knowing all the written opinions, you could describe to me in great detail what the lobster should taste like. If you wanted to, you could even make others who have never tasted lobster desire it also. But, in the end, you don't know how the lobster tastes until you have actually tasted it. You can stack and stack your logical knowledge about the lobster, process more and more details, and yet all of this finite knowledge does not add up to anything significant when compared with the knowledge you receive when you have actually tasted it. You see, there are things in this world that you cannot break apart, or fully describe.

Well you may not be able to describe them exactly, but you can get some idea, can't you?

Of the three types of knowledge, the first two, the logical, and the testimonial, do exactly that. They are social constructs that convey an idea about something. A tiger for instance, who does not socialize much, is a pure experiencer of its world. It does not care about other tigers' opinions about a subject. It garners direct sensory information; it sees things for what they are. Humans on the other hand are social creatures, depending on each other for survival, so it is beneficial for them all to be on the same page, to have similar ideas. You couldn't go planning a hunt and having even one person in your group act erratically. You would all starve. Humans developed ways to communicate; to describe objects, ideas, emotions, just about everything, in ways that others in their social group could understand. The reason for this is pretty obvious: humans cannot read the minds of other humans, they are all separate consciousnesses. Humans cannot directly observe the conscious thoughts of another as a whole. For them to have any idea what another is thinking, they must communicate their ideas through a medium they can observe, such as words or gestures, or art. They observe this more basic information, and using it, their mind will create an approximate picture, a mental simulation, of what someone else is thinking. Using social knowledge the society defines for the members who their friends are, who their enemies are, and who their God is. What happens in very large and highly organized societies is that the members tend to understand the world primarily through these social constructs. They listen to the stories of others and take up the ideas of others. In many societies, this imagined knowledge is considered as good, or even better, than personally experienced knowledge. 

Yes, you mentioned the power of our mental world earlier, but isn't it true that our senses often deceive us?

That is definitely a strong opinion in your current paradigm; your senses deceive you, are limited and can even be harmful.

Yes, and that is the teaching of many religions, not just science.

True, many religions use stories, testimonies, allegories and lessons, to teach you what you should think, but so does your society in general. Your personal experience is secondary to the accepted teachings of your paradigm, stated by your wise men and your books. When you experience something that does not conform to you society's beliefs, those experiences are discounted.

Well I don't particularly subscribe to other peoples opinions or to their holy books being forced on me. I prefer scientific fact.

Actually, science is in many ways the most advanced form of social knowledge. It uses both the first way of knowledge and the second. It elevates abstract knowledge through facts and figures, mathematics, logic and analysis to a much higher level than experienced knowledge. 

Per
haps it should then. Doesn't it tell you what a thing truly is, a pure form of knowledge, unblemished by opinion or personal perception or misconception?

Well I wasn't finished. Scientists then take these abstract numbers and results and proceed to create a theory or hypothesis interpreting them. Which is?

A story.

Or a testimony or a decree about how the world works
and what all of these numbers and formulas mean. So I guess I will add to my previous statement this: that in your paradigm, your personal experience is secondary to the accepted teachings of your wise men, books and scientists. But remember that neither the scientific method nor the religious method of describing a thing is the actual thing they are describing. They are representations, approximations, substitutes for direct experience. They are building blocks that are combined to manifest a mental image in your mind.

-
-Again I must have looked confused.

Let me make another attempt to get this through, lets try Music. Say we are dealing with sound now instead of taste. How different is the experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th in a concert hall, compared to reading a review in the New York Times. How different is it from an objective scientific description such as: A vibration in the air generated by a wooden instrument onto which four gut strings are attached, at the resonating frequency of
494 HZ simultaneously sounding with one at 440HZ for a duration of .5 seconds followed by a pitch at 523 HZ, resonating for .2 seconds played on a three foot long metallic instrument with a bell shape on the end.

I understand that science can't accurately describe music.

I would not say “not accurately” because these objective descriptions are perfectly accurate. I would instead say not meaningfully. These descriptions will put a mental image in your mind about an object, but it is not a meaningful image. Your mind will create a mental simulation of the 9th from this abstract knowledge, but it will be very different from the direct observation of the object itself. In essence, when you observe a description of something; that is what you are observing, not the thing itself, but the description.

--The point he was making seems very clear to me now, but at the time, I can only guess that I was not showing complete comprehension, because he continued with another approach.

I can see it is hard for you, in your scientific paradigm to understand the importance of the difference. Let me try to restate my argument in a scientific light, describe it in the words of your paradigm, perhaps that will clear it up for you. Think of it this way: We know every object has a Schrödinger wave function that describes its many possible coordinates in space. And we know that the wave function will collapse to one result when it is observed by a single consciousness. What this means in many worlds, is that an object has within it all the potential possibilities of motion, and a mathematical equation can describe those possibilities.

Yes.

So, within the Schrödinger wave equation there is information about every possible position. When observed, the other possibilities fall away and there is indeed one definite position in each world.

Yes.

Now think of an object or an event, like the lobster, or the act of eating the lobster. Imagine that it can have many potential qualities; a feeling, taste, smell, emotion. To each consciousness that interacts with it, the lobster has a different quality. Just as we could not pinpoint a wave's exact location, so we cannot pinpoint a lobster's definite quality. The lobster's value is spread out over all the consciousnesses that can observe it. Therefore, you can imagine that each object, event, or concept, has a mathematical representation. Not one that defines its position in the multiverse, but one that defines its quality in the multiverse. Defining the actual sense and feeling it is capable of producing to a consciousness that interacts with it. You could call it its Quality Function. Each object has within it a myriad of possible qualities, and depending on who is observing it, will provide a unique quality for each observer.

I am not sure I follow.

Imagine again the Beethoven's 9th. The piece as a whole has within it many possible qualities, and will manifest a different quality in each person that observes it. People of the same social group, say western music lovers, will have relatively similar yet unique reactions. Some will think Beethoven is great but prefer Mozart, some will think it is great but too long, some will think it is the greatest thing ever created by a human. People from other paradigms will probably just be confused by it. An African musician may find the harmonies strange, and the rhythms simple and uninteresting; so plain compared to the complicated drum rhythms he is used to. Eastern music lovers may find it is too active, since its heroic nature does not allow for the meditative and peaceful experience music is supposed to create. A dog, who's brain doesn't process music in the same fashion as a human will be far more interested in chewing on the seats of the concert hall. No one will experience the 9th in the same way; no one will feel exactly the same thing about it since everyone has different pasts, opinions, and moods. The 9th has within it all of these potential qualities, and will manifest differently for each observer.

I understand that all things have their unique interpretation and their unique meaning to each person. But I guess I still don't see why you think abstract or learned knowledge is not important, especially since within our paradigm, we agree on what these things mean.

Because all of this information and deduction about a thing serves to create in your mind a mental approximation of something, you could call it a dream. Neither the information, nor the image created in your mind has the same quality as the thing itself. Think of how you imagine the future and the past. These are indeed mental approximation of actual worlds, but they are not the same as being present in, and observing an actual variation of the multiverse. Similarly, the image that manifests from social knowledge is not the same as a directly experienced observation of the thing. Hence, a description of Beethoven's 9th in the New York Times will have its own quality function, but one that is different from the quality function of any actual performance of the 9th. Just reading more reviews of the performance will not get you any closer to the experience of hearing an actual performance. Now think of all of these quality functions as wave functions. As I had explained before, just adding waves doesn't necessarily make a bigger wave. Thus piling on a lot of facts or testimonies doesn't necessarily create more meaningful knowledge. Just as gathering more and more facts does not necessarily lead to a better decision, it often leads to information overload. Contrary to popular belief, more is not always better. Sometimes you even have to unlearn what you have learned. Sometimes you need to remove some waves so you get less interference and less confusion.

But what about the most basic concepts, the building blocks. Can we at least agree on those?

All mental concepts, from abstract scientific concepts, to the most basic sensory information like color, touch or sound have their own unique quality function for each observer. This is one of the reasons humans are always fighting. Though you may all hear the same words, the thoughts and images those words create in your mind are very different for each person. The physical sound of the word is the same, but its mental manifestation is different.

What ab
out these mental images that we create; you said they are similar to our mental images of possible futures. Is the mental image we create in our mind, the one we observe, actually real or just imagination?

T
here is information in your mental image, therefore it is real. The mental images created by your mind have a physical representation in the firing patterns of neurons and chemical reactions in your brain. All the bits of information you are using to create the ideas in your mind each have their own quality function, as does the final mental image you observe. They all exist.

But no one else can actually observe my mental image. It is my creation.

It is created by your mind, and you certainly feel that you are the only one privy to it, but that is actually not the case. Since it is information, like all information, it is available to those that can gather it. Just like you can gather information about an object because you have a way of sensing the light reflecting off of it. The mental images in your mind are also available information to those beings that have developed the senses to observe them.

You mean like mind readers? 

Why do you act so surprised?  Of course there are beings that can do this, but don't worry I can't read your mind. Though it may seem that I can, because I see your future actions. I observe many possible worlds, but I observe them all as myself. As powerful as I am, I cannot see the world the way you do. Think back to Tal playing blindfolded chess. Though he plays many games at once, he plays them all as Tal. He does not play one game as Tal, one as Kasparov and one as Korchnoi. He can mimic their styles to keep himself interested, however he is always in the end, Tal. There are beings in the multiverse that do directly observe the mental activity, perceptions, and emotions of others. While I play chess as Tal, such a being could be playing chess against me as all of the Russian youths. Such a being could observe one world, but many versions of it as seen through many different consciousnesses.

That sounds like a very interesting
power.

Yes, where I see many physically possible events with one consciousness, they see one event but with many consciousnesses. I observe many worlds and they observe many minds. In some sense I think this type of observation is even more interesting than my own. To be able to actually observe the world through the consciousness of another.