¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 reflections on conscious experiences
during
a conference on consciousness

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 This morning, 4/28/2016, I set my alarm, which didn’t go off – but I woke anyway, to attend one session of a scientific conference on the nature of consciousness.  I stayed for only this one session. It was worth my time and effort,  for a variety of reasons. I chose not to attend the second session (on a topic of low interest).

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 In SUMMARY, I gained:

1) Useful information, in a quality presentation, on the limits of the 50 years experimental research that proposed to demonstrate that the brain makes a decision a short duration before a person becomes aware of making the decision.  More recent experiments demonstrate that the rise in readiness potential is not caused by a subconscious (brain) decision, but is only part of the random variation of brain processes. This doesn’t confirm the existence of “free-will”, but removes one, often cited, argument proposing “free-will” is an illusion. The value of this research was acknowledged by many.

2) The professional debate about consciousness, agency and free-will remains as confused and divided as before. All panel presentations were from different contexts. Yet, no one appears to consider “context” as affecting their experiences leading to their own ideas. This is not the place to survey all the variety of opinion (as there is no hard evidence), or hypotheses as to why these opinions arose and are defended.

3) The topic of “retro–time” or “backward flow of time” were mentioned frequently, from both interpretations of Quantum Theory (translation) and from  the psychology and neuroscience of the experience of the Flow of Time (FOT).  I need to followup on the work of Ron Gruber  (who said TIME will be the next major scientific revolution”, which I have been claiming for a long time). In one panel presentation, I comprehended nothing (due to accent), but did note the important distinction between spatial and temporal entanglement , which I had not thought of before. I realize that I have not attempted to relate these findings with my ideas of temporal texture and feedpast bootstrapping.

4) A reinforcement of my long-term analysis that large conferences of this type are both obsolete and grossly ineffective in furthering the spread of knowledge. They are better than nothing, but violate all our best knowledge about learning and communication.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0  

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 QUALIFICATION: Even with a hearing aide, my comprehension of speech is poor. However, I did comprehend 90+% of most presentations; two were mostly unintelligible. Comments/Questions during Q&A were mostly unintelligible.  But, mostly unintelligible to the panel, as well. Almost all who spoke from the standing line tried, at length, to promote their personal opinions. I had an association with the quality of comments to many online blogs, although missing the negative smears.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 The Session:

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 The Presentation (short): Consciousness Needs the Flow of Time and Therefore Perceptual Completion, Ronald Gruber (& Richard A. Block)

“Penrose suggested that consciousness needs time to flow. We chose experimentally to examine  what is required. We assert that the flow of time has two components, or kinds of processes. Lower-level processes result in perceptual completion and provide the dynamic experiential phenomena between discrete observations in all fundamental perceptions, such as motion perception.  Upper-level processes result in objects (including the observer) appearing to move from the present into the past. If perception is discrete, not continuous (and current evidence suggests that is so), perceptual completion for continuity is required to fill the gaps. Object persistence is then deduced from the percept of continuity. Unless objects are perceived as persistent (“same”), the conscious observer cannot perceive himself or herself as moving “through time.” To demonstrate that the brain is capable of providing perceptual completion of continuity, we examined the spatial limit of the classic  phi phenomenon with overlapping stimuli flicker. We discovered that by appropriately adjusting  the stimulus duration and interstimulus interval, the flicker disappeared, and an apparent singular stimulus was perceived. This is an illusory percept that fills the gap between the overlapping stimuli.  The illusory percept seems to be one of visual persistence, not iconic memory. Thus, under the  discrete-perception theory, observation of any continuously appearing stimulus is in effect a series of discrete percepts separated by illusory percepts to fill the gaps. A somewhat similar phenomenon  is color phi. Our newly revealed illusory percept occurs “backwards in time.” In short, consciousness needs the illusory percept of perceptual completion.”  C6[220]

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 THE CRITICAL INADEQUACY OF SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 From the above, it appears I DID GAIN considerably from my few hours at a realtime, large audience conference gathering. Most of this was because of the special relevance to my areas of interest, and were not part of the conference intention. I cannot assess the valuable, but incidental values of large gatherings of intense collective minds, and the opportunity for making new & refreshing old contacts, and for small, more intimate, dialogs. Yet, it appears that the presentation mode has not significantly changed since the advent of computers. (PowerPoint notwithstanding)

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Decades ago I was introduced (by George Por) to a powerful critique of conferencing researched by Anthony Judge.  Two examples (just now searched): Minding the Future:Thought experiment on presenting new information, and Development beyond ‘Science’ to ‘Wisdom: Facilitating the emergence of configurative understanding in ‘Councils of the Wise‘ through computer conferencing dialogue. In conjunction with my larger UPLIFT proposal, this issue needs serious re-examination. I could write books on this.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 The inertia for continuing conferencing as usual results from many factors. 1) the money made by conference facilities and conference planners, 2) the prestige of conference organizers and stars, 3) the role of making conference presentations for employment security/advancement, 4) ability to get funded travel and “vacation”, 5) habit and unconcern about the need for significantly advanced learning, 6) limiting societal paradigms, 7) lack of useful tools and quality tool-use-training for participants in alternative information-sharing/learning modalities. But, primarily, 8) most conference organizers/presenters/attendees are unaware of the greater potentials missed, and for their “normal” needs, the traditional conference venue is probably sufficient.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 My imagination explores new/nu modes of human-human interactivity, cyborg-like coupled with semfields, in a cyclical emergent UPLIFT via OLLO (Organizing-for-Learning=&=Learning-for-Organizing). Verbal dialog will be intimately integrated with new, more powerful visual displays (which represent the structure and relationships of the content explicated by speech). Internet linked COLAB STUDIOS will be distributed for team/community realtime participation. All activity will be recorded/edited and made accessible in a hyperlinked web of sems (the emergent semfield). A RT/DT (RealTime/DelayedTime or Synchronous/Asynchronous) Synergy will emerge.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 After devoting hours to this blog post, I am now motivated to attend the next two day sessions of the Consciousness Conference. Yet, for all the new insights gained today, they are not high priority for me to pursue at this time. I don’t know whether I will actually read, let alone study, most of the long documents linked by url above.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 My current task is to compose on my insights from reading Peers INC by Robin Chase, The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, by Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit, and (of somewhat lesser importance) Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Surprising Insights into How You Think, by Stephen M. Kosslyn.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Then, there is the exploration of anything I can possibly do to catalyze a shifting of path of the USA in the near future. Why persons follow our “leaders” worries me much more than the “leaders”.