Scientific basis for podcast #5 - "beliefs"

[phz]

I think that the thing related to podcast #5 that talks about how we create our own reality just by believing about it has some scientific basis as well and is not just a mumbo-jumbo.

Take a look at this - the reality for Bill Gates may be a million dollars earned every week or so. But in your reality to earn a million would take months or even years. So the reality is not something "fixed" it is based on belief. Aside the fact that Bill started earlier (but that's also again based on a belief so even that is debatable).

So on to the scientific facts - as you may or may not know, the universe is made of atoms, which are by the latest quantum theory not just small marbles spinning around each other but a concentrated form of energy. So basically, the whole universe is made of energy. Even your body. The body even has centers of energy called chakras. I think that they are nothing more than cross-sections of atom's energy due to the the body shape. They have specific locations because the body is shaped like it is.

And finally we have the brain. Which is again a system for controlling all those other centers and it also has a constant flow of energy (in form of electric impulses) and so.

So if the brain is the "mind" that controls a group of atoms that your body consists of - it can also control few other things around itself. It has been proven that certain energy can affect certain molecules. And guess what... brain emits... energy. So what would happen if we could channel or focus that energy into some specific goal or into some specific belief?

The matter around would begin to transform. Remember the matter is not made of tiny marbles but a form of energy. The energy to which we can influence on using our antennas we call the brain.

Anyway, if you are interested more on this topic you should study the quantum physics and how it works - you may be surprised how weird our reality actually is.

So back to the original topic - for the reasons I just displayed I think that the beliefs can really affect your life and the matter that surrounds you and that there are scientific evidences why this behavior happens.

BTW, a form of "proof" that brain really emits some energy can be found on various research - and I think one of the good ones is the one with Japanese scientists found that our thoughts can affect the water crystals. This post would be too long to explain all the things about that, you should probably google for "Dr. Masaru Emoto" on that topic. Anyway to make this short - when he placed words like "love" the clean and uniform crystals formed and when there was something like "hate" the crystals didn't form at all. The water is made of dipoles (like small magnets) so the energy could affect their configuration. Not the energy from the word - but I think the energy from our brains - associated with that particular word.

What do you think about my 'theory'?

[Akashic_Librarian]

Whilst what you say makes a bit of sense.

Science is not the ONLY way to look at the world. Just because something cannot be explained does not make it unscientific, it just makes it unexplained. Science is not as advanced as you might like to believe.

[phz]

I'm not even claiming to look on the world only through science eyes. I'm just proposing an idea that this behavior can be explained through science and therefore making it more acceptable to people that do look for scientific evidence and don't just want to take anything for granted (I'm such a person as well).

Also it is foolish and dangerous to not take a critics approach to everything because you might end up having a belief into a "religion" that does not have any meaning. It is good to explore things further and determine what lays beyond. If we didn't as a race take that approach, we'd still be believing that thunders come from "gods" but today's science goes to such levels that it is almost hard to distinguish what the scientific part is and what is not. Because things like super-strings and such stuff are not really something we can ever hope to see or measure. It's more like an idea or theory.

But the most important thing is that this beliefs system CAN really work to ones benefit and if using the practical approach this is the only thing that really matters.

[yossarian]

Since you brought up podcast 5 and science, I figure I'll repost the email I sent to Steve back in the day when I first heard that podcast. (Also Podcast 8)

I sent this email to Steve on Thursday April 13, 2006. Today it is Thursday April 12, 2007.

Exactly one year later, within about 16 hours.

This is the first time i've revisited this email since April 2006, just because of your post.

Creepy!

Anyway here it is...

Hey Steve,

I'm a physics major, and i've spent a good potion of my life
studying the true nature of reality, existential questions and the scientific method.

I have recently been reading and listening to your stuff that deals with mental models, consiousness, and the true nature of reality. Multiple times you have mentioned things along the lines of "if we don't know either way, and can't prove things either way, we should choose the empowering belief. The belief that gives us the best results."

I certainly agree with that, and that's because my training and education as a physicist has taught me precisely that that model which delivers the best results not only is advantageous, but literally and truly IS true, it IS the true nature of reality and it IS very much real.

For example if you take an electron. Current theory posits that an electron is a type of particle of ordinary matter that has a few specific wave characteristics. But no one has ever seen an electron, and in fact there is absolutely nothing that says that an alternative to this theory cannot exist. Maybe instead of being a particle it's a pink unicorn and we just haven't figured out the exact physics of pink unicorns yet so we can't distinguish pink unicorns from particles of matter. This certainly can be true and the nature of science is that these theories constantly change.

However, it's very true to say that this electron not just seems to be real, and it's not just a working model, but that it IS truly real, as most people have come to agree. People regard electrons as being real things.

Fundamentally, EVERY scientific belief about the universe is based on results of mental models. If the results work, if the results provide _utility_, we declare the mental model to be real. The counterintuitive part about this is that mental models constantly change, which means our reality literally and truly is constantly changing! Science advances all the time and people figure out new more accurate models, and these are taken to be correct, and those scientists who most deeply understand their craft immediately take these new advances to be truly real. Not "just" a model or "just" a theory, but 100% real.

This scientific method applies equally as well to electrons as it does to Buddhism. If a conciousness decides to take the Buddhism model and determines that that model is providing him the most utility, by the principles of this thing called "science" he must take that model to be the true nature of reality! He is acting scientifically to declare that Buddhism is real!

So when it comes to rationality vs. spiritualism, the "rational" models that scientifically oriented students of the universe take is actually completely congruent with spritual beliefs, and in the sense that you described it in Podcast 8, your mental model IS very much testable by the scientific method! In fact it takes nothing more than just observing that some arbitrary belief system is the most useful for you to determine that it is real! By declaring that the universe has one consiousness, you aren't saying something that is untestable at all. It's very easy to test it, all you have to do is determine that that model is the most useful of any model you've seen.

Another interesting thing about this is that reality can, and truly is, different for different people. For example maybe you have a different definition of useful, maybe it's more useful to your personal life to believe that electrons don't exist. If this is honestly more useful to you (ie. you aren't being intellectually dishonest) then it can be and IS truly true that electrons don't exist. The greatest physicists study the deepest nature of reality, and as part of this huge challenge they've had to confront these ideas right up close. There are some physical theories where you cannot have a deep understanding without confronting these issues of the universe. Once a physicist is confronted with this challenge, to resolve it he eventually must change his own mental model to understand that reality IS the mental model. Reality, in the most accurate sense, is nothing more than what you believe it to be.

There are a number of contradictory theories in fundamental physics that are simultaneously real. This seems like a contradiction until you realise that mental models of reality ARE reality.

Question: How can two contradictory models both be true?
Answer: They both provide equally useful results!

Many scientists struggle with this idea, and many spend their entire lives not believing it but using the results anyway. However the greatest scientists have shown, several times over, how this truly is true, and it fits exactly what you yourself practice. If you're interested in similar ideas, and specifically the greatest ideas on science and mental models in general up to now, I would recommend the first 3 chapters of Richard Feynman's "The Feynman Lecture's on Physics, Vol. 1"

They are absolutely fascinating. In fact with your background in math you might love the whole series, which is the best and deepest treatment of the fundamentals of physics to date. For a deep understanding all you need is basic college math which you obviously have. Since your ideas brush so closely to this stuff I think you would highly enjoy the first three chapters especially.

- Yossarian

Steve replied with some interesting stuff and there were a few more emails but i'll leave them out for now.

[mysterygal]

interesting! I wish I could add something, but I'm not very scientific!

[Brutha]

So on to the scientific facts - as you may or may not know, the universe is made of atoms, which are by the latest quantum theory not just small marbles spinning around each other but a concentrated form of energy. So basically, the whole universe is made of energy. Even your body. The body even has centers of energy called chakras.

Just because both theories call something energy, it doesn't follow that they are about the same thing.
It doesn't matter whether you call the thing of which electrons are made possibility, energy or pink unicorns.
It's semantics.

[Jacobm]

Originally Posted by yossarian

Steve replied with some interesting stuff and there were a few more emails but i'll leave them out for now.

Thanks yossarian, I found that really interesting! Would love to hear what Steve had to say about all that...

[yossarian]

Ok, Steve won't mind, I don't think.

These emails were written exactly one year ago, April 12-14 2006.

This was before Steve introduced Subjective Reality as "Subjective Reality" and before he posted about Power vs. Force. ("Levels of Consiousness")

You can see how he was mulling over how he wanted to display LOC to people I didn't have any insights on his question so that was the end of the conversation.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Yup, the ultimate measure is basically effectiveness.

The challenge with using the scientific method to study consciousness is how you define the observer. If the results have to be repeatable from one person to the next, then you can't really investigate subjective phenomena except from the individual perspective. Even as an individual though, it's hard to know when you're perceiving vs. when you're creating. It's like we need a Heisenberg uncertainty principle of consciousness. I don't think you can really separate perception from creation when it comes to consciousness.

I haven't read the Feynman lecture, but I did read Genius by James Gleick, which was a biography on Feynman. I loved it.

--
Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People

Originally Posted by Yossarian

I would say that all phenomenon is observed from the subjective individual perspective.

I would say that while an electron is a lot easier to observe, fundamentally it is equally as arbitrary as a spiritual mental model. Let's say you have two experiments: one is the famous Millikan oil drop experiment where Millikan tested the existence of the electron, and one is much more difficult to describe, but it tests the "singular consciousness" theory. We could call it "Buddhism theory."

In both cases you do your best to assemble some data, and then you use a process to evaluate whether or not the the data supports the model. In one case, you're using a very fuzzy judgment about whether or not a Buddhism model is beneficial to you, and in the other case you're using some previously discovered math models.

You may look at the data for the oil drops, measure everything out, and say "Yes! Electrons exist!" But then your friend may come along, take a look, and say "No! You're wrong, they don't."

This is a difference of subjective opinion, and it happens all the time.

How do you solve the discrepancy? Conventional science simply uses peer review, and when the majority of parties are satisfied, most individuals will take that to indicate validity and declare that electrons exist. There is no better way! That's it! That's all we have. There is no mechanical, mathematical, whatever way to better determine the validity of something. A whole bunch of subjective opinions make scientifically valid theories.

And so, the subjectivity of the test on a "Buddhism theory" does not mean that it can't be proved scientifically. You can do the test for yourself, write out your experiment, and then your peers can review it and try the experiment for themselves and see what they get. This is the essence of the scientific method. And while pragmatically it might be beyond human scope to get a concrete feel for something that is so spiritual, it is not theoretically impossible to do so.

There is nothing that precludes religion from being a scientifically studied and peer reviewed topic. In practice we might find that people are so different from one another that we can't come to a consensus, but there are scientific theories and fields out there that suffer from the same problem! And even something as rigorous as fundamental physics is not exempt from this. Feynman's famous "sum-over-histories" theory itself is a theory that a notable amount of professional physicists don't "believe" in despite it's accuracy. It is not uncommon to hear, "It gets correct results, but that doesn't make it true." Einstein said a similar thing about quantum mechanics - "God does not play dice!"

There is another similar thing that deals with reductionism in math. Godel's incompleteness theorem in 1932 (and later Turing's Turing machine in 1936) showed that there will always exist mathematical theorems which cannot be proven either true or false. This is a death sentence for the classical formal view of mathematics where everything is laid out and proved mechanically. Godel proved that it just doesn't work for all math. There will always be theories where we can't say whether or not they can be proved, and yet those theories may be highly useful.

One theory that has been nominated for this status is the Riemann hypothesis. The useful result of Godel's incompleteness theorem is that it gives mathematicians the right to start using the scientific method in their work. They can't prove that the Riemann hypothesis is true based on the axioms of predicate logic, but they've tested it up to like a zillion numbers, so they just take the Riemann hypothesis itself to be an axiom! And from there they can advance formal math. This is actually extremely useful because there are many theories that can be proved if the Riemann hypothesis is true.

Right now we are in a very exciting time for science and math. The modern computer, and results such as Godel's incompleteness theorem are making people revisit fundamental existential questions, and they are getting good answers. Two of the premier people doing this right now are Gregory Chaitin and Stephen Wolfram. Chaitin is taking the mathematical approach and Wolfram is taking a very scientific approach (Reflecting their backgrounds: Chaitin has a doctorate in math, Wolfram in physics).

Anyway hopefully this was fairly coherent, but my point overall is that with these new methods of looking at knowledge pioneered by Godel, Turing, Feynman, Chaitin, Wolfram and others it's actually quite possible to scientifically prove theologically oriented questions, and you yourself seem to be doing that.

As far as perceiving vs. creating goes, it sounds like an interesting problem. But I wonder if the same exact thing would apply to typical scientific theories, since they are still part of our concsiousness. They may simply have the advantage of lots of feedback whereas with something theology-oriented you have pretty limited feedback. Like astronomy except worse. It's hard to conduct astronomical experiments, but that doesn't make it impossible to figure it all out. It just makes it very hard and very slow-going. I wonder if the same can be said of consciousness.

If you're interested in digging deeper Chaitin and Feynman confront the issue head on. Chaitin in "The Limits of Mathematics" (as well as his other books) and Feynman in his 1963 lectures that I already told you about. They don't apply it to theology, they just talk about science and knowledge, but I think it extends very nicely into some of the stuff you are doing. Before finding your site I was exploring this intersection between spirituality and rationality, but it was always hard for me to make it clear. Your site has really fleshed it out well and given me lots to think about.

Thanks again,
Yossarian

Originally Posted by Steve

One of the benefits of math and science is that there are common and accessible tools we can use. A physical apparatus build by one scientist can (usually) be duplicated by another. Rules of logic used by one person can be taught to another. I can write a computer program on my PC, and you can run it on yours if you have compatible hardware.

But what evidence do we have of the compatibility of one human consciousness with another?

If I have a subjective experience within my own thoughts, what tools can I use to convey that experience to another person? Normal human communication seem inadequate to the task. We can also study the brain itself, but still the actual subjective experience is not conveyed.

Another issue is that different people seem to be at different levels of consciousness. Some people are more or less aware than others. As we mature our awareness usually expands, but not to an equal degree in everyone. Even in science and mathematics it is not always easy to identify someone as a genius vs. a crackpot -- history sometimes changes the answer. And yet we do seem to use something of a peer review model to identify the "gurus" in terms of the development of consciousness, but perhaps that's because of some outward manifestation we can observe through the senses: a particular lifestyle, service to others, certain daily practices, etc. How do we measure and communicate what actually occurs inside another person's consciousness?

This is one of the key challenges of Buddhism. The true experience of enlightenment cannot be described in human language. At best the words are only a pointer. Human language can describe repeatable experiences in math and science. Given sufficient plans, similar raw materials, and adequate skill, I can build whatever you can communicate to me. But with experiences of consciousness, this pattern doesn't seem to hold. Buddha can explain enlightenment, but even those who follow his instructions in earnest may not reach the destination he described. The instructions do not translate well into language.

What would be a "scientific" test to determine whether or not a particular person was enlightened... perhaps to the same degree Buddha claimed to be? Do we have no choice but to fall back on a vote by people who seem qualified to judge such a thing?

I can look at a baby and say, "I am more aware than this baby." But what would such a comparative test between adults look like? We can measure a person's height, weight, speed, etc. How can we measure someone's level of awareness?

--
Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People

[SecretSeven]

Interesting. Totally random, but I'm watching The Celestine Prophecy right now. Talks about how we all give off energy.....very interesting.

[shant121]

Interesting thread! havent read all the email xchange yet, I am too sleepy

phz, I can relate to your theory. If you have heard about the Law of Attraction, Secret and other stuff, the scientific explanation for all of the above is almost the same as what you've given.

[Jacobm]

Thanks yossarian for posting that email exchange. While I am not very up on my scientific knowledge I do find it fascinating to look at from a more philosophical perspective.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

Whilst what you say makes a bit of sense.
Science is not the ONLY way to look at the world. Just because something cannot be explained does not make it unscientific, it just makes it unexplained. Science is not as advanced as you might like to believe.

Perhaps you misunderstand what science is?

Science is not our current knowledge about reality, Science is a system for inquiring into how things work. If something (eg. LoA) works (ie. physically affects reality), then science can investigate and verify it.

There are a few things that are currently uninvestigatable by science: anything that exists outside the laws of the known universe (eg. "God") or anything impacted by human thought. The former will probably never be accessible to science, but as our understanding of the human brain improves, we should be able to scientifically test corrolation between particular thought states and other events.