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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5612767 No.5612767[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Time for a thought experiment, /sci/

Imagine an alien comes to visit us. While talking to him you use the word "consciousness" and the alien asks you to explain what it means. What would you say?

>> No.5612773

>>5612767
I say, wait, you learned enough of the english language to converse with us but missed that one word? WTF?

>> No.5612777

Self-awareness and independent thought.

>> No.5612783

>>5612777
What does that mean?

>> No.5612799

I would point him to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

>> No.5612802

>>5612686
>>5612668
>>5612713
>>5612738

Rofl

>> No.5612825

I've got a better question.
An alien visits us, but can't see. The alien uses only sound to know where things are. Basically, it's blind. He hears us talk about color and asks us what color is. How do you explain to it what color is?

>> No.5612837

>>5612825
What I meant was, how do you explain to the alien what color looks like?

>> No.5612841

>>5612802
Is /b/ raiding /sci/ with aliens again?

>> No.5612849

>>5612841
idk w/e who cares

>> No.5612857

Imagine, for example, that a research team from the Andromeda Galaxy is sent to Earth. Hovering above our country, the researchers might report back to their home base something like this:

"We are scanning the Americans now. Night after night they sit still in dark rooms, not talking to each other, barely moving except to eat. Many of them sit in separate rooms, but even those sitting in groups rarely speak to one another. They are staring at a light! The light flickers on and off many times per second. The humans eyes are not moving, and since we know that there is an association between eye movement and thought, we have measured their brainwaves. Their brains are in 'alpha', a non-cognitive, passive-receptive mode. The humans are receivers.

As for the light, it comes in the form of images, sent from only a few sources, thousands of miles from where the humans are gathering them in. The images are of places and events that are not, for the most part, related to people's lives. Once placed into their heads, the images seem to take on permanence. We have noted that people use these images in their conversations with other people, and that they begin to dress and act in a manner that imitates the images. They also choose their national leaders from among the images.

In summary, this place seems to be engaged in some kind of weird mental training akin to brainwashing."

Jerry Mander, 1991

>> No.5612862

>>5612825
I've got a better question.

Let's stop being dumbasses, why would aliens even perceive the world with 5 shit tier senses. When you just need 1 universal sense.

Okay so aliens, will probably be very small as they would have had more time to evolve than humans thus they would be very efficient at using energy. In fact they would be so efficient they could live of extremely small portions of energy namely from photons, that would essentially be the ultimate life's food, no time wasting eating or processing, simple absorbing energy and using it. It would also be aware of it's surrounding, it could make logical decisions based on it's surrounding and long distances where photons allow it to reach this alien, you know like choosing which hole to go through and shit. It would also be about the size of a particle. And as you know particles are conscious, so no OP they would never ask that question.

>> No.5612873

>>5612783
The ability to question what that means.

>> No.5612887

>>5612862
YOUR FACE WHEN BACTERIA ARE ACTUALLY ALIENS

>> No.5612896

>>5612767
>pseudoscience

>> No.5612909

>pseudoscience

Seen from the future all science is pseudo.

>> No.5612911

We're not exactly sure what is this fuzzy line between consciousness and unconsciousness and sleeping and dreaming, it's all going on and on in one cycle. But we're not exactly sure what part we're playing all the time, we have to hit on things to be sure. I mean, how many times you have had dreams where you think "it's a dream, it's a dream". How do you not know that the knock knock things aren't in the fucking dream. The whole idea you can dream, the idea that you can imagine, the idea that there's some mystical part of your brain that sees things that aren't really there and puts them into position and moves them around and gives you a little fucking cartoon.

What the fuck is that?

We don't know shit. I mean, we know a lot, we're brilliant in comparison to cavemen, but in comparison to understanding the very nature of the universe, you mean sub-atomic particles... All fucking rules go out the window when you go sub-atomic, they have things where a particle can be in a superstate, where it's in a state of moving and it's still at the same time. What the fuck does that even mean?

>> No.5612924
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5612924

>>5612909
>>5612896
>>5612909
so the possibility of extra terrestrial life is pseudoscience now

Out of the entire universe, we are all alone.

makes perfect sense to me

>> No.5612936
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5612936

>>5612911

>> No.5612963

>>5612909
preposterous. science is a methodology for determining the truth, based in logic and mathematics.

pseudoscience is the practice of presenting logically unsupported theories in a scientific style to make them seem factual or legitimate.

science will never be pseudoscience -- not in 100 years, and not in a million years.

in other words, you are in the wrong board, go back to /b/ or /x/.

early edHero

>> No.5612968

>>5612767
It's the ability to think.

>> No.5612974

>>5612963

science can't find truths, only approximations that are useful

>> No.5612976

>>5612963

Yep. that's exactly what the Phrenologists said.

>> No.5612979

>>5612963
DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS TROLL. THE THREAD WILL BE DERAILED INTO NONSENSICAL SHITPOSTING IF YOU DO.

>> No.5612980

>we are all alone

Not at all. They were here before us, and they never left.

Alien interviews at:
cass.h1.ru/sessions/sessions.htm

>> No.5612996

>>5612841
Net yet...

>> No.5613008

>>5612980
Agreed, Russian scientists clearly know their shit. If they say aliens exist, they have clearly been in contact, so we must agree as a scientific community.

>> No.5613033

>>5613008
> Russian scientists clearly know their shit.

Are you 4?

>> No.5613052

>>5612767
State of being aware.

>> No.5613074

>>5613052
Define aware.

>> No.5613083

>>5613074
Thinking of something in your surrounding environment.

>> No.5613100

>>5613083
But one must be aware of its surrounding environment to think about it. Again aware has not been defined and a cyclical point has ensued.

>> No.5613131

Aware essentially means that something is not static. A tree is not conscious because, though it responds to stimuli such as light or availability of nutrients, it is not able to respond to abstractions like emotion. A human is aware because we not only respond to physical stimuli but to emotional/perceptual stimuli. Of course, this could possibly be reduced to very complex neurochemistry.

I'd say that consciousness is a very advanced form of "awareness." Even if we are all acting upon axiomatically defined neurochemistry, it is complex enough to give an illusion of freedom of thought and entirely syllogistic processing.

>> No.5613138

>>5613100
Define define.