New HBO series

Whoa, deep, dudes.

I'm open to anything, although I usually just conclude that humans are crazy monkeys howling at the moon.

I think that thought operates at the quantum level, personally. It seems to work like that, where future events can determine past patterns.

Mind is always remembering and predicting, it acts like a four-dimensional object.

What with probability fields collapsing all over the place and chaotic patterns emerging backwards and forwards in time, one man watching future cartoons is the least of a universe of wonders.

PS - I would add my own anecdotes about dreaming of the future to yours, Gross, but since I'm also a pot-smoker with autism, I don't think it would add credibility in this debate.

 

TL;DR

 

What's TL;DR?

Er, um... On-topic, I especially like the character, Danni, who became Mother of Dragons. Unfortunately, the author bit off more than he can chew and until he finishes the damn story, I'm over the Game of Thrones.

 

TL;DR = Too long; didn't read. Referencing the last almost 2 pages of the thread talking about dreams, logical fallacies in philosophy, and I think there was some physics thrown in at one point.

 

Can we STFU about Gross refusing to take his meds and discuss how great ASIAF will be on television?

 

Chill Winston.

 

Science is the study of the observable universe. Grossenschwamm's dreams are observable phenomena. Therefore, science can study Grossenschwamm's dreams.

It's not enough to keep on saying "There is no logical connection" - you have to actually explain where the error lies in my reasoning above. And going off on a tangent about miracles where you effectively disprove the possibility of them existing (well done, by the way) doesn't explain it adequately to me.

"Merely"? That's the issue though really. Just because there are a lot of people, it doesn't mean that anything is possible. I assume you can see the flaw in the reasoning that "There are 6 billion people, so one of them is bound to be able to fly." The same flaw is present in the reasoning that "There are a lot of crazy people, so one of them is bound to be clairvoyant rather than actually crazy."

In what sense could it possibly work like that? Thought is an emergent property of neurons firing, which are a result of chemical reactions, which depend on atomic interactions, which can be broken down into quantum level events. Thought is as far removed from the quantum level as flying a plane is from aluminium mining.

 

But note that I'm not saying anything is possible. I'm suggesting one thing. Not flight; precognition. Two completely different animals. If it doesn't make sense to you that some people out of 6.5 billion might have an additional sense, then I'm not sure what to say. Certainly you would desire proof, as would anyone else. However, flight is not in any way analogous to precognition, so your example is erroneous. Certainly, if someone suggested they could fly, I'd be skeptical. Or I'd assume they meant on a plane, or helicopter. Though, since I can't even see future events at will, one could say it's hardly a power, and more like a coincidence. I'm willing to say it's a coincidence.

 

They're analogous in that they are both violations of the laws of physics.

You probably don't mean that in the way that I understand it. Because I think it's a coincidence too. Mixed with a bit of pattern matching.

 

No, I think our definitions of a "coincidence" are similar. I wouldn't have said it if I thought it would be anathema to your coincidences. But you're going to need to specify which laws precognition breaks, because I've reviewed all of them, and none of which clearly state that precognition is impossible.
You do know that occasionally electrons orbiting an atom, after absorbing and emitting photons, will travel back in time and re-absorb the photon that was emitted, correct? The eye is activated by quantum-driven photon signals, who's to say that a person's eyes in the future don't have electrons traveling back in time to the present? Photon absorption is a quantum process that takes place in the rods and cones of the eye, and everyone knows that the cells making up these structures have electrons.
However, since no real information can be obtained from the future, these events are simply recorded as dreams. Then, it simply takes time for them to actually happen.

 

I'm honestly at a loss to comprehend why you can't understand this; and my only conclusion is that you won't, rather than shan't. I'm simply inculcating at this stage, when I say that there is no logical connection because science is a theoretical, physically-related practise, and so cannot transcend itself as a closed logical system! The two are completely unrelated, and if you'd understood the logical implications of the impossibility of crediting would-be miracles, you'd understand that. If you simply cannot grasp this, the relevant information you need is merely that this does not, in any way, state that Gross can predict the future, but it does absolutely, categorically, indiscriminately, unquestionably, logically mean that no sub-related discipline (which theoretical science is, definitively, or else it couldn't function as it does) can deal with it in whole (and this is the fallacy in your syllogism) — ever: logically.

 

I'd just like to add that there is no science of dream studying. Parapsychology is hardly a science, it's more of a philosophy. And no one ever really put much stock in it in the first place, because even if it was attempted to form it into a science, the focus of study, the human mind, is too unpredictable. So unpredictable that theories cannot be properly ascertained regarding its workings.

 

It doesn't break causality because it becomes my present during the duration of my dream, and I don't receive any information regarding what leads up to the event. What's broken? As for the second law of thermodynamics, may I point you to the third, in that it's impossible to create a perfect thermodynamic system, meaning it's possible for parts of a normally forward traveling system (in the time stream) to travel backwards, seeing as all events in the universe are occurring simultaneously across spacetime. Meaning, all past, present, and future events exist simultaneously on one stream of time. You do know that antimatter is regular matter traveling backwards in time, don't you?

You keep saying things are statistically impossible, but anything is possible on a quantum scale. We might be macroscopic organisms, but we still owe our very existence to the quantum.
Also, the brain is the one part of the body that doesn't renew itself. Only what you've said about electron transfers via chemical reactions is real in the brain.

No, I'm saying that when I dream the event, it's actually happening, and then it happens again in my waking life. Every time I encounter one of those days when I've dreamt the events entirely, I wonder if it's the day I'm going to die, because I don't entirely remember the dream by the time it occurs. Also, these days are accompanied by great physical pain.

Really? How did they find out all this stuff about dreams then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream
Forgive my ignorace, I had just looked up parapsychology and when I said "dream studying," I literally meant precognitive dreams.

 

This is just becoming absolute madness. On the above: yes, of course, obviously! However, you are using this you infer something which does not actually follow when you say that Gross does not dream the future. If you remember, I said before that the above was completely valid (and I was being liberal, too, as it is an induction-based process, and so not deductive), and then went on to point out that your inference was one of material implication; not material equivalence; so while you can test for something and (inductively) 'prove' it, you cannot test for not-something and draw a conclusion from that.

This nonsense is dealt with above.

 

Clearly if Grossenschwamm records hundreds of dreams and none of them accurately predict the future then we can draw a conclusion from that. Even if, logically, we can't disprove anything, in every practical sense we can rule out future-dreaming as a possibility.

If you want to disprove it logically you have to show that being able to dream the future causes a paradox, and so cannot occur. e.g. He dreams he's watching a future episode of Family Guy, then wakes up and decides never to watch the show again. So he doesn't subsequently watch the episode that he dreamt, which means he couldn't have dreamt it. Since this is impossible it cannot happen.

 

Dammit I'm so tired of being a moderator. I edited your post, Smuel, thinking I was quoting it and making my own post. Read it to see what I was trying to say.

 

Now I see the problem: No; no you cannot. This is the material implication I mean. It is an elementary facet of logic that you're simply misunderstanding or ignoring.

 

It does break causality because you end up knowing about something before it's happened, and could therefore change the event - e.g. by not watching the show. Causality is broken.

This view of spacetime doesn't change anything, because your brain is still subject to the same laws as everything else in the stream of time, i.e. moving through it at the rate of one second per second.

Actually I only said it once. And I used the word "improbable". To get even a few electrons undergoing quantum events in synchrony would be unlikely. To get the billions involved in brain pattern activity to do it multiple times involves one of those numbers that couldn't be written down on all the grains of sand in the world. Plus, as you seem to agree, they aren't even the same electrons any more.

For one thing, you don't seem to have a consistent opinion about whether "anything is possible." For another thing, I've said before that just because screwy stuff happens at the quantum level, it doesn't mean you can choose some cool-sounding aspect and scale it up to the macro level and then say "this must be how time travel works". The process of dreaming in your brain is many levels removed from the quantum level.

Events only happen once. And if you're asleep at the time then you wouldn't be aware of them anyway.

Okay, it was a mistake, don't worry about it...

Yes we can. (Hey - wouldn't that make a good political slogan?)

You're just indulging in philosophical masturbation. To take a more concrete example - we know that it is impossible for a man to levitate using the power of his mind. We know this for two reasons - one is that we understand gravity and the brain in enough detail to know that there is no way that such a thing would be possible. The second is that nobody has ever successfully levitated using the power of his mind. Now if you want to chuckle knowingly to yourself and say "Ah, but neither of these logically disproves levitation" then fine, but that is a line of thinking that has no practical use.

The same applies to future dreaming.

 

I can't really understand the GameofThrones Twitter account. Is it just a guy driving about delivering lunch?

 

In what sense is thought itself like a quantum object? Its ways are very strange indeed.

It may be driven by neurons firing, but it is in essence a pattern copying machine which scans the chaos around it, including patterns of events which reflect quantum-scale events.

As far as I can tell, the argument here is: "There is no currently-published, commonly-accepted mechanism to account for your experience, Grossenschwamm, and therefore I will not adjust my world view to account for it!"

Which is fine, but then: "Now adjust your world-view to discount your experience!" Which is the same-old step-too-far.