Random Topics

[Christine]

I have that happen a lot, dream of old homes. My great aunt and uncle's house is one I see a lot in my dreams. Went there so much as a kid that it's forever in my head. I've had dreams of my dog and the old house I used to live in. I dreamed I had to get back home in order to save my dog from being put down. The dream took a terrible twist and I found myself in the vet's office, already too late. I notice whenever I dream of my dog it's somehow attached with the house. It's as if he can't be anywhere else cuz that was the only place he lived. Poor Happy dog.

[blackjohn]

You only think they don't exist. Ever dream of places and then go to them in reality? Now that is bizarre! I've done that a few times, it's so freaky! I'll be looking around and saying how I've been there before, even tho it was the first time. I was there alright, but in a dream.

I believe one or two of these places do exist, or did exist. But then, I believe in some weird stuff.

Christine, here's something weird, whenever I read your messages, my mind always hears them in my sister's voice.

[Christine]

Maybe cuz....I am your sister! LOL!!!!!!

But seriously...lol! Maybe her and I are a lot alike perhaps.

[tishsparrow]

you guys are probably going to laugh, but for some reason i always picture the avatar talking. with people who have their picture up, its not so weird, but for people like Black John and Mission, its kinda silly... especially since when i first came on here, Mission still had yosemite sam as an avatar. still imagine little pirate sam yelling everytime he posts....

yea, this happens on other sites too. one site is penguin based (dont ask) and i imagine gnomes talking for the one guy and penguins for the other.

[Caraccioli]

for people like Black John and Mission, its kinda silly... especially since when i first came on here, Mission still had yosemite sam as an avatar.  still imagine little pirate sam yelling everytime he posts....

That's the same thing blackjohn told me recently.

What do you make of me now?

_________________

"I'm Pirate Sam.

The meanest blood thirstiest

Doggone worstiest

Shoot 'em up firstiest

Pirate to ever sail the Spanish Main."

[Duchess]

hmm, that a secret identity is no good, if everyone knows it is you.

[Capt. Marcus Keys]

I have a three or four second Deja Vu about twice a week. Very F'n wierd. My dad was very big into astrology until he used it to find a girl who had been kidnapped and buried. He plotted her location as a bet for the guys at his station who didn't believe him. A week later they found her and he was only one block away, he was off because he transposed a number. Scared him and he quit. Mom said he could move stuff when he really tried.

I have been able to tell when a deja vu is coming and it's very scary, like seeing the future abut to happen. I only get about a minute notice before it happens, but still scary.

[Caraccioli]

It's only secret from the Feds. They're auditing Mission. I'm posting from Brazil now.

(I'm protecting my Dread Pirate-ness and the lovely roundness of my post count. We are so enamored with nice round numbers, aren't we just?)

Ok, check this out, Duchess. It is true that the probability of electrons passing through one or the other of the two slits is affected by something which the clerics and mystics would call observation. But isn't it, in fact, the effect of the photons contained in the light required to see the electrons and not the act of observation itself? Or am I still missing something here?

______________

"Tah, Tey, Tee, Toe, Too."

"Tay, Tey, Tye, Tow, Tyo."

"No, no. Round tones. Now, say your line."

[Christine]

Anyone have trouble waking up from dreams? Where you feel paralysed? Such a creepy feeling! I've had it happen to me more than once. One time was really damn creepy! I dreamed I fell off some cliff running away from something. Instead of waking up just as I came to the ground I continued to dream. I heard voices around me telling me to just lay still, to give up trying to move. I felt pinned down. My sister woke me up, she said she could see me struggling in my sleep. That was just so bizzare!

[blackjohn]

Yes. Once. Extraordinarily terrifying. More later...

[Duchess]

It's only secret from the Feds. They're auditing Mission. I'm posting from Brazil now.

(I'm protecting my Dread Pirate-ness and the lovely roundness of my post count. We are so enamored with nice round numbers, aren't we just?)

Ok, check this out, Duchess. It is true that the probability of electrons passing through one or the other of the two slits is affected by something which the clerics and mystics would call observation. But isn't it, in fact, the effect of the photons contained in the light required to see the electrons and not the act of observation itself? Or am I still missing something here?

______________

"Tah, Tey, Tee, Toe, Too."

"Tay, Tey, Tye, Tow, Tyo."

"No, no. Round tones. Now, say your line."

In that the extra "light" IS the observation. You are both right and wrong. The arguement Feynman was developed used light as an example because it is possibly the least invasive thing to use. The act of looking at something changes it completely. Its just that at classical scales the change is very small compared to everthing else. It is only on the quantum mechanical scale that it becomes seriously important.

[Caraccioli]

Ok, how?

Something must be interacting with the electrons, right? Otherwise it's our act of observing - isn't observing intangible and non-physical?

Observing is a mental process involving the thought that I should observe and the self-contained physical elements of my eyes (the targeting system) and my mind (the "engine"). If our act of observation is changing the electons physically, and the act is self-contained and shouldn't interfere...is our mind somehow producing...something tangible? Is this proof of the mind's ability to move things? Are there physical consequences of pure thought? ( Besides the obvious physical consequences...you know what I mean.)

Is this why Blackjohn and Christine dream future realities, because pure thought is manifested? It almost sounds like some of the Unitarian doctrine! Do you accept that?

[blackjohn]

Are there physical consequences of pure thought?

Yes. Can I explain it scientifically? No. Heck, I don't even understand it. I just accept it, and it happens. And... it doesn't even matter that it happens. It reminds me of a quote from Lao Tzu, something about the supernatural is just part of the natural. And it is very hard to explain. Lets see if I can give an example. It's like driving down a road, 20 miles long, and as you approach every light, it turns green. And it happens more often than not. And only when you are the one driving. Or, it's like standing next to a group of five elevators, and you blank your mind, and the one that you are standing closest to is the one that opens. More often than not. And... honestly, I'm stopping now, because I really don't like to talk about this kind of stuff. Feel free to not believe me, because I don't expect anyone to believe anything they haven't observed first hand.

[Duchess]

Ok, how?

Something must be interacting with the electrons, right? Otherwise it's our act of observing - isn't observing intangible and non-physical?

Observing is a mental process involving the thought that I should observe and the self-contained physical elements of my eyes (the targeting system) and my mind (the "engine"). If our act of observation is changing the electons physically, and the act is self-contained and shouldn't interfere...is our mind somehow producing...something tangible? Is this proof of the mind's ability to move things? Are there physical consequences of pure thought? ( Besides the obvious physical consequences...you know what I mean.)

Is this why Blackjohn and Christine dream future realities, because pure thought is manifested? It almost sounds like some of the Unitarian doctrine! Do you accept that?

Go back and listen to or read the first two chapters of Feynmans third volume. And stop using a literary definition of words, particularly observation. It's dangerous enough when applying them to classical mechanics, and totally erroneous when applying it to quantum mechanics.

[Caraccioli]

*sigh*

Yes, ma'am. I followed along with the frist tape of the third volume and started linking ideas to QM right after posting earlier, but I didn't understand the second tape of the third volume very well. As I mentioned to you (unless you deleted it as spam ), the equations are hard for me to visualize without seeing them in print. Everything behaves in a quantum fashion, except when it doesn't, except of course it does, but we don't realize it.

I am immensely enjoying the discussion of Quantum Mechanics (first volume), even though it just sends my little chaotic calculating machine awhirl and atilt.

[blackjohn]

(unless you deleted it as spam )

It was a mistake! Honestly!

Though I will admit my mind wrestled with the idea it was a freudian slip.

[Caraccioli]

She nearly did the same thing with an email of mine and, based on recent response, may have actually done so since then. ( ) Two of my three bestest pals on the pyracy site have me marked as a generator of spam. (Can I not take a hint, or what?)

[Phillip Black]

I'm only a novice at this stuff, but doesn't quantum mechanics suggest that by measuring something we are changing it? This is how the new quantum encryption systems work. By measuring the photon, you are affecting it and therefore creating an inconsistency in what could have been. This goes back to Schrodinger's cat as well, no? Am I way off here?

[blackjohn]

lol lol, dude, I'm sorry, but I really am laughing out loud right now!

Fwiw, I did get your re-posts. After I hit the spam button, right away I realized what happened, and I hit stop. I believe the result was your email got junked, but your address didn't get tagged as spam, since both messages came through. Sorry.

PS - happy birthday to Not So Young Jim Hawkins!

[The Doctor]

I had always taken it that in order to observe an event or phenomena, you end up changing the fundamental state of that which you are observing. Or was I reading drunk again?

[blackjohn]

I don't know what I dreamt of last night.

I do know that when I woke up there was a scratch across my stomach and the hair tie I slept in had been tossed across the room.

Weird.

Sounds like you are a... very active... dreamer. Which is sort of the opposite from the story I'm getting ready to tell.

Christine asked about dreams where you can't move. Back in the mid-90s I had one of those. I hit the sack around 10. My wife was downstairs watching tv. About 11:30 I woke up to the feeling that their was a presence hovering over me. A malevolent presence! The lights were on in the room. My wife was in the connecting bath getting ready for bed. And there was someTHING in the room, hovering over me, trying to take my life's essence from me, trying to smother me and steal my soul. I tried to move. I couldn't. I tried to call out. I couldn't. It was scary as hell, literally. My wife came into the room, and I don't remember what happened at that point, but I do remember having a feeling that IT had fled, and I was still alive through sheer luck.

I have goosebumps on my goosebumps right now.

Fortunately, science has an explanation.

http://www.nightterrors.org/paralysis.html

[blackjohn]

Maybe cuz....I am your sister!  LOL!!!!!! 

But seriously...lol!  Maybe her and I are a lot alike perhaps.

I knew I'd find you here!

It's possible that you are similar. Obviously, my mind thinks you are. Maybe your good nature translates in my mind as "family." Anyhoo... I hope you haven't been without power like she has been... her power has been out ever since Wilma. She told me things in her part of Fla are pretty bad; that she is tired of hurricanes. I think she wants to move to California.

[Caraccioli]

Yes, Mad Jack and Philip Black (sounds like a rhyme), you are both in essence right, but I am trying to understand why. Of course, the answer to that is quite simple: I can't understand why; that's fundamentally impossible. But then we are all slaves to our paradigms. Plus I'm studying a 45 year old text and I'm curious if we have progressed to the point where we actually do know things that weren't known then.

Feynman essentially says two things about the fool's errand I am on:

Quantum mechanics is like nothing you've ever seen and cannot be understood in terms of anything you've ever seen. Trying to understand it in terms of what you understand is impossible, so you must accept it theoretically and go on with your life, singing a happy tune, possibly in the key of C.

We will (most likely) never be able to predict what's going to happen on a quantum level because we affect things by "observing" (whatever the hell that actually means) them. So understanding quantum mechanics and being able to fully explain it would destroy our understanding of quantum mechanics, as Schrödinger explained.

[Duchess]

Okay, heres another quick response. Sorry for being terse, but I've got loads of work to do.

In QM an observable (some thing we can observe) is by definition something we can measure. And in measuring the system, we affect it. Mathematically it's called Collapsing the wave function. We've taken a system in a mulitude of states and found out which one it is in. No more uncertainty about it. The wave fuction (the fundemental description of the thing) is changed to reflect this, thus the thing is changed. Wether we use light or anything else to make this measurement it doesn't matter. System is still affected. Done deal, no way out of it. The text of Feynmans lectures I've got says Chapters one and two of volume three are nearly identical to chapters 37 and 38 of volume one. He explains it much better than I can do or have time to do.

Quantum encrption comes about because if you know the correct sequence and types to make a series of measurments (ie how to decode the message) you get a meanful result, otherwise, measured (or tampered with) in any other way you get gobollity gook. An this gook gets sent along so when the correct person attempts to decode the message the tampering is obvious because the legitimate receiver can no longer read the message. It's pretty neat stuff.

[Christine]

Now, here's another odd thing: whenever I dream I do not see the sunlight. When I dream of outside places it's either night time, or if it is during the day it's gloomy. I can't remember ever seeing the sun in my dreams, they're always dark. It's been like that since I was very little. I've been told that this isn't a bad thing, I still find it so odd.

blackjohn, hopefully yer sister will move to California someday, if that's what she really wants. She won't have to worry about hurricanes here. Very creepy btw about yer paralysed dream. And see, it's as if something was there, keeping you from getting up. It's what happened to me too. Extremely creepy stuff!