Why Books are Better than Drugs

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

I think that of the thoughts that you are conscious of, the ones you "will" into existence, such as your plans, you have some control. The others - I guess they just occur as part of one's being; in the same way you can't control your own birth.

Now wait a minute Arathorn seems like your contradicting yourself. Earlier you said you have a storehouse given to you by your mother. This is what you said...

I think this problem of looping (where you need to get materials for a thought and you need a thought to get the materials) occurs if you assume that you don't have "stored thoughts" a.k.a. memory and stored food/materials. To start off, when you were born, your body is given energy reserves from your mother's body. And before your body and brain dies due to lack of materials/food, you crave to retrieve more than you need. You thus either grow up or grow fat.

How could you have control over things your mother gave you? You could have no more control than you do over the changing of protiens into ATP energy for our cells. Or the results of your genotype on your phenotype. You could not have control over your thoughts if this theory were true. Because all thoughts would be assimilated into OrganX before you were born. If she just gives you the material to make thoughts than you would also have to have the material telling you how to form that material into a specific thought. And then material telling how that material needs to form the material that needs to form the material that tells how to organize material into a thought and so on...

I am in no way insulting your theories, as they are completely viable, but ONLY under the pretense that we do not have any control over our thoughts. Do you not agree?

[Arathorn]

So, is the soul the presence that makes us think: "wow! I never thought that about me!" (self awareness)

[mirrille]

what is OrganX?

[Arathorn]

CardenIAntauraNauco,

Now wait a minute Arathorn seems like your contradicting yourself. Earlier you said you have a storehouse given to you by your mother.

Forgive me for not being clear. When I said...

I think this problem of looping (where you need to get materials for a thought and you need a thought to get the materials) occurs if you assume that you don't have "stored thoughts" a.k.a. memory and stored food/materials. To start off, when you were born, your body is given energy
reserves from your mother's body. And before your body and brain dies due to lack of materials/food, you crave to retrieve more than you need. You thus either grow up or grow fat.

...I meant that these initial materials and thoughts (you could say hardware and software, respectively) are but necessary seeds to one's existence when born. We build up on them. By feeding, we add to the hardware and grow up or replace damaged or dying cells (hardware/brain/body). By using our senses and practice we feed experience into the mind (the whole software/ your so called organX, perhaps) to replace/revise/add on to both fresh and fleeting thoughts (modular programs that are added to the software). I hope I made things clearer here.

BTW, I was assuming that thoughts and consciousness are not the same thing. Perhaps this where we should start.

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

what is OrganX?

It was something I used in a previous post. The post that started this whole thought debate.

...I meant that these initial materials and thoughts (you could say hardware and software, respectively) are but necessary seeds to one's existence when born. We build up on them. By feeding, we add to the hardware and grow up or replace damaged or dying cells (hardware/brain/body). By using our senses and practice we feed experience into the mind (the whole software/ your so called organX, perhaps) to replace/revise/add on to both fresh and fleeting thoughts (modular programs that are added to the software). I hope I made things clearer here.

Wait..no.. You cannot use your senses to take in thoughts if all they our is matter and energy. OrganX would have to have the information to process material into trillions(which is a severe underestimate) of different thoughts. So many thoughts and combinations of thoughts. It's unreasonable. Just so you can get a picture of how difficult it that would be let's look at the english language(a VERY small portion of possible thoughts. There are 26 letters and your software has to have the potential to decode EVERY possible combination. It has to have the potential to decode any length of letters. What is the largest word you know of. Let's say antidisestablishmentharrianism you have potential to know all combinations of letters up to that length (and further but this is the largest attested example)and the ability to change that into meaning if someone assigns a meaning to it which is possible of any combination. For example I say now that AaBBABFDBFDJFAOGJAFLEHCJEji = Carden's dog. You have now assigned those letters to my dog. And suppose AaBBABFFGBFDJFAOGJAFLEHCJEji = Carden's cat. You have now assigned that to my cat. Your ability to do this has to be programmed by your mother. She has to give you the ability to transcribe everypiece of software to decode anything according to your theory. Because each transcription would be a differnt thought. That is too say that you as a human being must be able to have the software to decode ANY combination of letters up to 29 letters long. 26 to the 29th power. A whopping 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,
or 1.6 x 10 to the 29th. And that's JUST the alphabet lets look at words you would also have to have the potential to combine any of those we'll say theres only 100 words in the english language for the sake of convienence there are 100 to the 100th power things you mind can asscoaiate those 100th to 100th power of words to. That's a one followed by 200 0's. or 1 X 10 to the 200th. Can you see how it would be impossible for your mother to give you "software" to decode material into every seperate thought you could ever have? The numbers would be HUGE.

You must either... have a set program like your heart does your cells do and have no control over them OR you must be able to create your own thoughts. Do you see that?

[Arathorn]

On how I believe thoughts are fed into the mind, the senses and bodily movements are converted into inputs into the mind. I would think that there are a great number of degrees by which information is remembered. The more desirable and repeated the info comes in, the more it is enforced as memory by stronger electrical impulses that fire and get stored as a chemical pattern in the brain.
If info is deemed trivial, less important to remember, impulses are weaker. If no further similar impulse are fired, the pattern decays and we gradually forget about it.

Memory, I believe, is supported physically by matter and energy but is really implemented as patterns stored in the matter/energy interation.

You must either... have a set program like your heart does your cells do and have no control over them OR you must be able to create your own thoughts. Do you see that?

I still don't think that these 2 premises are necessarily exclusive to each other. I dpn't think you need to understand how something is created to create it.

On your comment:

If she just gives you the material to make thoughts than you would also have to have the material telling you how to form that material into a specific thought. And then material telling how that material needs to form the material that needs to form the material that tells how to organize material into a thought and so on...

This is possible in software, btw. In source code, these are called recursive routines: functions that call themselves and run iterations of themselves.

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

I dpn't think you need to understand how something is created to create it.

Would you like to clarify that? Are you suggesting that our body doesn't need information to complete a task or are you saying we don't have to consciously know how to create something which is irrelevant to my suggestion.


Read the part about how many thoughts we would have to have we would have to have information that tells our Organx how to process material into every different thought. Our minds could not hold that much software. The numbers Iv'e mentioned would be a extremely small facet of consciousness.


[/quote]And then material telling how that material needs to form the material that needs to form the material that tells how to organize material into a thought and so on... [quote]

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clearer " and so on" indicates an ever backward moving infinite amount of things. Infinite you well know is incomputable number of stemps for a computer to take. That's my point it would extend along that line of reasoning for all infinity.

I realize this is confusing for us both.

(upon realization of the deragatory impression of his post I decided to brighten it up with a bunch of seemingly pointless Smilies


EDIT>>>>It was supposed to be THIS post not HIS post

[Arathorn]

Would you like to clarify that? Are you suggesting that our body doesn't need information
to complete a task or are you saying we don't have to consciously know how to create something which is irrelevant to my suggestion.

I was referring to the latter. Were you referring to thoughts as simply methods by which the body (or parts of it) processes information?

I think we're both struggling with each other's choice of symantics. Don't worry, I don't think you were being derrogatory and I hope I don't sound like I am either. These puzzles are fun.

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

Good..Glad to know we've got good sportsmanship. I'm tired it's 12:56 here and I need to go to bed. Yes I was just talking about signals like a MRNA or something of the like.

[Khadrane]

Umm... can we get back on the topic here? (What was the topic again?)

[FrodoFriend]

Hey, this old thread . . . I almost forgot about it.

[Imladris]

( scratches chin...) "hmmm", ( thinks about post reply-thinks better of it-backs away saying, "nice message board, nice message board".)

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Aragorn
I'm obviously not gonna read the bible because I don't believe in god. Never have, never will. It's all a load of bull to me.

Can I plege my undying love to you, Aragorn?

[Faramir]

Emplynex, I really agree with you. That was great! Drugs are stupid. I had to do a report on cirhossis of the liver, it's just DISGUSTING! You're liver gets swollen and begins to look like someones butt. Reading is great! It helps you do better in tests and gives you more options instead of eliminating options. That was great stuff.

[Nienna Grey]

This is a great thread. Although I've never taken drugs, I am definitely addicted to books. They allow you to escape into a fantasy world but there are no nasty after-effects. Books have helped me through some difficult times in my life.

[osszie]

back to the original question........

answer: because books last longer

[Arathorn]

Books are also reusable and the trip can last a lifetime.

[BeardofPants]

Yes, but people can die from books as well.

[Khadrane]

It is extremely rare that someone gets themselves beaten up because of an argument about a book.

Extremely rare unless you happen to have an argument about whether or not Balrogs have wings...

[BeardofPants]

Or the Bible, or the Koran...