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189 lines
9.2 KiB
Markdown
189 lines
9.2 KiB
Markdown
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% There Is Only Quale
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> If you believe such nonsense
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> You'd better dream your dreams at night.
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> At last, it's really happened,
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> Though we don't know how.
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> The only miracles are in the storybooks
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> And they are lies.
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>
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> -- ジャックと豆の木 (engl. dub, Jack and the Beanstalk)
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Lucid Dreaming
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==============
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I was learning to dream lucidly[^lucid] again, so that I could use some of my
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sleep hours to meditate. Tibetan Buddhists swear on that kind of thing. As part
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of this learning process, I needed good dream recall, so I started keeping a
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dream diary. One night, I was having a weird dream where I was skipping classes
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by flying over a forest in a kind of space ship with 3 old friends who were
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ignoring me. (Almost all my dreams manage to be incoherent and awesome at the
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same time.) When I woke up, I was exhausted from other dreams that night and I
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didn't feel like writing this one down. I thought, half-asleep, that it was so
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vivid that I could remember it anyway.
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Several hours later, the dream came back to mind. "I was right", I thought. "I
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really *do* remember this dream clearly. If I had just written it down, then the
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essence of it wouldn't have been captured anyway." But then my mind kinda
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exploded when I realized something.
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**How can I remember that I remember it clearly?**
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Think about it. It's not that I remember what happened. It's that I remember
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how lucid I was at the time, how vividly I saw everything. I could recreate it,
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compare it and then knew, yup, this is the same thing.
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I immediately wrote down a couple of questions - the bold sentences - on my
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whiteboard before the rest of my brain caught on the fact that I just realized
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that it was cheating, right there and then. A sequence of rapid short-circuits
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went off and a minute later I realized I had just become lucid *without
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dreaming*.
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[Puredoxyk] once said that meditation makes your brain leaky, but in a good way.
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I think this is what she meant.
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> From this perspective, dreaming can be viewed as the special case of
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> perception without the constraints of external sensory input. Conversely,
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> perception can be viewed as the special case of dreaming constrained by
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> sensory input.
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>
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> -- Stephen LaBerge
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Some years ago, when I had just gotten serious about this enlightenment thing, I
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was experimenting with lucid dreaming for the first time. At the same time, I
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was reading up a lot on hallucinogenic drugs. One day, something happened that
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made me afraid; I have only been more afraid once in my life[^fear]. I was doing
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reality checks throughout the day, where you ask yourself if you are dreaming,
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and hopefully it becomes a kind of habit and you start doing it in your dreams,
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too, where the answer will be "yes" and you become lucid.
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I walk up some stairs, when suddenly the reality check fails and for a moment
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I'm lucid while awake. It's the weirdest feeling, like you just stepped through
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a mirror[^mirror] into another world. I am conscious in a way I was never
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before, then relapse right back. As if Picard in "The Inner Light" - when he was
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made to relive someone else's life and memories, so that towards the end, Picard
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really believed that he was always Kamin - as if he, just for a moment, woke up
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to the fact that this whole life is just fake, he's really on the Enterprise. I
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thought I went insane.
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This scared me so much that I didn't touch lucid dreaming again for years.
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Fortunately, I got over it.
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Qualia
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======
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**How can I know that I ever _was_ conscious?**
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To be able to tell how lucid I was would require for me to remember what I was
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conscious of at the time. But I can't do this. At best, I can recreate the
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perceptions as closely as possible and be conscious of them right now. But
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that's a different thing. I'm still only conscious now, just of similar input.
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So I'm essentially trying to compare two qualia, to see if they are the same.
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A quale (plural: qualia) is the direct experience of something that can't be
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communicated. It's the redness of red. I can tell you that an apple is red, what
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wavelengths red corresponds to and so on, but what red *looks* like to me, I can
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never tell you. This is a quale.
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The question is, do qualia really exist? Plenty of modern consciousness
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scientists reject the notion. The most common basic theory, functionalism, is
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incompatible with qualia, as is materialism in general. What exactly is a quale
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supposed to be in material terms? It can't be any information or you could
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communicate it. It can't be a property of things or your instruments could
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detect it. So qualia must be a powerful delusion, a mistake.
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Pretty much everyone has thought about qualia, but probably not using this name.
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The most common approach is the Inverted Color Spectrum. Maybe, what you see as
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red, I see as green and so on. Because this difference would be systematic and
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all the relationships between colors would be identical, how can we be sure that
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everyone has the same color perceptions? (Of course, provided you're not color
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blind or something like that.)
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A lot has been said about qualia, but it all rests on the same basic assumption
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- if qualia exist, then they can be compared.
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But how exactly is this supposed to work?
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**How can I know that more than one quale - the one right now - exists?**
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There's a sleight-of-hand going on here, one that I only just noticed in that
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very moment. The thought process goes something like this: "I see A. I store my
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perception of A in my memory. I then see B. Finally, I retrieve A and compare it
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with B."
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But that's impossible by definition! **If memory could contain qualia, then
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so could third-person perspectives. They would be encodable.**
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It doesn't matter how you would try to wiggle out of this - if you can compare
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them, then you can store information about them, then you can communicate them.
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I could, with futuristic equipment, check your brain for this information - read
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your memories - and establish if we have the same qualia. If *you* can compare
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your own qualia, then *I* can compare them with my own ones, too.
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But that's exactly what is supposed to be impossible with qualia. They are the
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subjective experience, they can't be shared. So qualia can't be compared. Let
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this sink in.
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Only Now
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========
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**I was never conscious before and will never be conscious again.**
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**I am only conscious right _now_.**
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This is my only chance. I'll never see the world again. This all passes,
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forever, the very next moment. Already gone, already too late. But it is my only
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chance again, this time, to see this moment. How long will it last?
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Every moment is a gift. There are no second chances, so pay attention.
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[^mirror]:
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I literally once walked through a glass door. Don't do that.
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[^lucid]:
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[Lucid dreaming] is when you are aware during your dream that it is a dream.
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The moment you do, you gain great clarity and lots of control over the
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dream. Most people start flying around. Buddhists meditate, of course. We
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are one-trick ponies.
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[Lucid dreaming]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
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[Puredoxyk]: http://www.puredoxyk.com/
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[^fear]:
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This was the day I died, using Ayahuasca. Really, as long as you cling to
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reality and only *think* you *may* die, it's the most horrible experience
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ever. It's like years of Buddhist study condensed into one day, giving
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you the worst trip of your life as the reality of no-self, impermanence and
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suffering completely overwhelm you. Sure, this also happens during Buddhist
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meditation, eventually, but by then you have months, if not years of
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practice. But with Ayahuasca, you realize how ill-prepared you are for your
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own death and this vine is gonna kill you right now over the course of the
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next few hours, so *deal* with it.
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Once the nice effects have come and gone and the trip just keeps on
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accelerating, Ayahuasca throws away its mask and puts you on direct line
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with the rest of your brain. "So you wanna see what I do all day? The crap I
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have to put up with, that you are completely unconscious of? Let me *show*
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you!" It's like you are travelling aboard the Enterprise all your life and
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the worst you ever saw was being thrown around after a little Klingon
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attack, when one day Scotty decides to show you how mind-bogglingly fast the
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ship is by strapping you to the front while going to maximum warp.
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At first, there is only fear, fear of being poisoned, going mad or things
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like that, but then the fear gets so strong that there it isn't *about*
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anything anymore. There is just fear. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, your mind
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dissolves into a mess of colors and vertigo and you even forget to scream,
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or whatever one is supposed to be doing in that kind of situation. Then the
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fear goes away for a moment and you realize what is happening - you are
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being digested. Everything that enters your skull, before your mind can deal
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with it, has to be broken down and analyzed and so on, and *this is the raw
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data stream*.
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Then you die, but that's a story for another day.
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Damn, I really need to write this trip up some time, and repeat it. Not sure
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in which order. Until then, I watch Blueberry (aka Renegade) again. The only
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accurate depiction of Ayahuasca on film.
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