Four hour show with commercials. Now he says he's gone deeper in his other lectures, and I did come in 15min late so perhaps I've missed something I would hope.
My take away...
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With some of my own thoughts ]
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-Consciousness is a digital information system (ie data of the 5 senses)
-Digital just means the information comes in discreet chunks
-If consciousness is information, and information is not physical (information is only meaning and content), then we are in a virtual reality and whatever computes it must be physical.
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but who is to say that this system is not the human brain itself? Is all reality a system? ]
-If we were to live in a digital reality, we should be able to modify parts of reality, like future propability (the placebo effect)
-We create our own reality, but others intent and choices affect us (this is a "multiplayer game")
-Campbell's Theory of Everything, can use consciousness to explain all the fundamentals of subjective and objective reality
-Campbell has struggled to find things that it does not explain.
-"Paranormal" things are effects created by human consciousness altering their environment
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but I take that to mean "real" stuff, rather than only illusions?? ]
-If you were a character in a game, your world would be everything within the game. Things outside the game, would be "non physical" from your experience. The computer that runs your reality has to be somewhere else -it cannot be inside the computer. Likewise the player cannot be inside the computer either. They are 'nonphysical' or exist outside of the world from the player characters perspective. A player focused on a screen analyzes a data stream, they can focus on different elements within the game, connect to a different server, or even another game.
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but does that make it impossible for say, an artificial intelligence to have consciousness just like a human? If it did it would still be inside the virtual reality and have no "real" body or existence outside of it's "matrix". And yes, if this were a computer as we know it, copying itself from one system to another the sentient program would DELETE itself in one world after reproducing itself in another. I assume he's alluding to things like out of body experiences, astral projection, ESP. But what about explaining features of physical constants, etc? ]
-Meditation is the key for gaining information beyond your bodily senses. Anyone can access this information, you actually need no special talents -you only need not to get in your own way.
-Through meditation it is also possible to operate in other realities. You need to focus on another data stream, and connect to another it, in doing so you can interpret that stream as "reality". You don't so much leave your body, because you don't actually "live" in it. Your body is only a calculation, the way a game characters body is a polygonal manifold with no thickness and no substance.
-Has been exploring other realities this way since 1972. It's not like going to Chicago, and going to see all the same things most people see (Sears tower, observatory, train station, etc) it's very personal. You can't have expectations of what it's going to be like, having heard from others.
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but how can you be 100% certain that these other realities are not just virtual realities WITHIN the computer system...that is your own brain? ]
-Campbell tells us that if you try to judge it in terms of "is it real or not real?" You will interrupt the connect. It's the wrong question. You need to look at what you experience, and ask "What is this?"
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Campbell goes on to talk about dreams, and how they are one of these data streams. But what he hasn't answered is...what then is "death"? Do you "really" stop existing or not? Do you just "respawn"? And if the world is digital, would shear will be enough to hack reality? What the happens when you use LSD or DMT. Damn. DMT. Campbell is beginning to sound like he had some in the bowl. That or Ayahuasca.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/ ... in-the-u-s
What about shrooms? DMT is a funny thing, it can make believers in god and other realms out of atheists, and on ocassion real scientists while simultaneously making atheists of the the most zealous believers. Is DMT then a reality data stream you experience because you've interrupted the current feed? Also HOW CAN TEST ANY OF THIS? And would Talpamancer on Reddit or elsewheres then say that their Headmate/Talpa is a kind of "program" they CREATED? Would an occultist call themself a hacker? ]
Campbell says there is "purpose" to each reality, they don't exist by happenstance, and you can learn by going to these realities.
How does a digital information system, grow, live, or die? Randomness has zero information. Entropy is a measure of disorder.
The multiverse then, wants to evolve have more information, more order and hold onto that rather than totally dissolve. Social systems are apart of this. Cooperation, caring, these choices lead to lower entropy in the consciousness system. This system is ultimately a kind of school, and going from realm to realm is like going from classroom to classroom as individuated units of consciousness.
Beings like humans and others are apart of this multiverse system and are apart of it's survival strategy. If we lower our entropy being apart of the system, then the system has lowered it's entropy.
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So......he's saying that "God" or some equivalent is the computer system? I cant help but feel this is all musings really which...we could have done ourselves. Really anyone. And I don't think he's using some of these terms correctly. Can universes have children? Isnt it inevitable the system's entropy will increase? And can conscious choices made by beings within these universes really represent ]
There are 3 "sources" of information
1. Things created, from beliefs, assumptions
2. Things immediately in the environment from a stream with a ruleset like our apparent universe
3. Things from the higher consciousness system, executive parts of the system
He got his start exploring by meditating, and getting to a "point consciousness" state in which he could recognize himself as something very small in a vast empty space. With an empty mind he was able to ask the higher consciousness system how he could learn more about it.
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So basically 1. allows for human initiated magic, talpas, psychic effects positive or negative. 2. for the objective everyday world. 3. for supernatural effects at least on the positive side, including alens, contactees, guides, guardians. Maybe even the negative side, if take them to be like the Matrix's rogue programs. DMT comes up twice. It sounds like Campbell may have used it. He says that it can transport you to other realities. But as amazing as it seems it's very limited and you can reach these spaces without psychedelics, but it takes extraordinary work. I do know that once you use it, you access that space by dreaming. I think I've only personally read of one, maybe two psychonauts offhand who could go into it by meditating. ]
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Overall I like the speculation. However, what I would like is more spooky science others could do, and what he would like to see others do that could reaffirm what he already takes to be true. How spooky would they be? I mean since he has a masters degree in physics I would hope that we could do things that are objective and view able by everyone, rather than subjective world hopping. I doesn't hold my interest as much because it feels on the level of one of those channeling episodes with Seth/etc.
Here's something related I read a month ago:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160901 ... not-matter
If Terrance McKenna were still with us, I wonder what his take would be.
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