It's interesting that 1) insists you didn't claim anything, then 2) insists that you stand by your claim. ;-) Well, fine, it's not a courtroom, it's a conversation, and I'll try to be useful.
1) It's a natural question. Many people wonder about it, and each new generation will ask it all over again. People who think that because it has already been answered (many times) it should never be asked again need to grow up. They don't have to answer.
My background is physics, and for what it's worth I believe there is no value in combining QM with spiritual systems. I could be wrong, of course, and if you want to pursue it, just do some googling and find some good books, because it has been a popular topic for decades.
Warning: you will find mountains of pseudoscience. If you are most interested in amazing-sounding ideas and not how well supported the ideas are by repeatable measurements, favor books by non-physicists. If you care less about how amazing it sounds and more about what is best supported by repeated measurements, favor books written by people who know QM best: physicists.
2) Sure, be skeptical about everything, though not EQUALLY skeptical of all claims. (Less evidence -> more skepticism.) Real science needs to welcome skepticism (though real, human scientists often don't, unfortunately), while most spiritual practices don't, insisting that you have more faith or "first empty your cup" or otherwise overcome the weakness / character flaw of your skepticism. So, if you want to be skeptical, real science is a better approach for you (and me).
You can claim literally anything, and not all things are true, so you should have an approach to deciding. Mine is the scientific approach; you choose what you like.
You did suggest that we don't know everything about QM or spiritual systems, so maybe there is a connection. While philosophically true, such things are empty conjectures in science. We don't know everything about anything, so that argument supports all claims "A might be related to B", no matter what A and B are. Again, philosophically true but scientifically empty, because science doesn't consider something to be real until you actually observe/measure it. If you speculate about a connection between QM and something else, think of a way to measure it. Until someone does, there is nothing there, scientifically. It doesn't mean there never will be, just nothing so far, and nothing (in my opinion) to suggest there ever will be (again, scientifically).
Also, if you enjoy this type of discussion, you might enjoy reading more about the philosophy of science in general. You'll see more in-depth justifications for much of what I've been saying that aren't restricted to any particular field of science or non-science.
All of what you said is perfectly reasonable. I've studied the scientific method in the past and I've found it pretty much perfect -- but some of the very influential people in it are minds set in stone (as you yourself implied). But hey, as a programmer I am perfectly well aware that even a perfect system might be "flawed" due to the people applying it in the wrong manner (bias, credentialism, spheres of influence).
I am only vaguely aware of the term "pseudoscience" but I can assure you that I am anything but a wacko who wants to "kill the system" or believe in conspiracies that make zero sense, and for that matter also think our scientists are idiots for "not being spiritual". Not at all! Long gone are the times where I was amazed by alluringly-sounding "what-ifs" in all those trash books with triangles and eyes in them. I'm not even sure I ever was into them -- they were intriguing but I dismissed them as bullshit by the time I was only 16...
(That's why I was very disappointed by the downvotes. Seems like I projected a very wrong image of myself. That stung me hard, I admit.)
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I agree on the levels of skepticism, it's something I definitely missed in my comment and I thank you for bringing it up. I am not putting the spiritual methods above the scientific method, but I don't go the other way around as well. As a technical guy myself I can see clearly why science has a big advantage, too.
Let's face it: the spiritual practices will never be scientific -- not in the current form of the scientific method for sure. They require experiences on different levels of the brain / mind / consciousness / what-you-wanna-call-it. Many scientists strongly disagree these altered states of mind even exist. So there's that. (I have to wonder if they ever smoked pot or got drunk in their lives?)
I have no real point to prove in this comment. I can't disagree with a single thing you said.
It's more like me being sad that many people don't want to integrate human-level experiences into science. There are many things science announces in the last 1-20 years that many common people react to with "no shit Sherlock" and laugh (sorry, can't think of a good example right now). I believe such a mix could help science a lot.
Intuitive semi-revelations aren't scientific, yes. You won't ever hear me argue that! But those can and should be used as a starting point for a legitimate scientific research, wouldn't you agree? (Of course not all of them; nobody could care less if somebody's marijuana-induced hallucinations mean something really profound for physics).
I never heard of a scientist who actually tried really hard to study meditation; is there an official theory (and proof) about why does it seem to kill part / all of your negativity and stress? Is it because you can release dopamine into your brain by a conscious effort? Or is it because a part of the brain cleansing process which occurs naturally while sleeping is artificially caused by you with the meditative practices? A lot more can be asked.
I admit I have to do additional reading, that's a fact. But no, I am not interested in the BS stories about opening third eyes or merging with the Universe, etc. I am simply curious if the quantum foam is the hardware on which our consciousness runs and if the brain isn't simply a remotely-controlled computer; same like an SSH session to a powerful server, you know?
I am simply curious if the quantum foam is the hardware on which our consciousness runs and if the brain isn't simply a remotely-controlled computer; same like an SSH session to a powerful server, you know?
Wouldn't the existence of the drugs you mentioned kind of suggest that the brain is the mind, and not a remote controlled shell? Scientists don't ignore these experiences. Some scientists even came to their insights while under the influence of one substance or another. But that doesn't mean there's anything to them other than a straightforward process following the same laws of physics as everything else. Scientists have implanted memories into the brains of lab animals by altering proteins. Optical implants can be used to alter the brains of lab animals. Partial brain damage results in partial loss of function. All that seems to suggest very strongly that the mind is the brain, and the brain is physical.
Agreed. Everything we know right now fully supports what you say.
For the sake of the argument (note I'm not seriously believing the following): if I were to insist on the spiritual nature of our consciousness I'd then say that if the brain is a temporary physical manifestation of it and if it's damaged one way or another, our essence is "trapped" in the brain until we die.
...But quite frankly, that's an awfully long stretch even if one is a big believer.
It's more like me being sad that many people don't want to integrate human-level experiences into science.
No, no, many scientists do, but quantum mechanics is not "human level". Its weirdness at the fine-grained level usually averages out at the macro scale: probabilistic, jumpy, chunky, etc. at the atomic scale or smaller become (for all practical purposes) deterministic, stable, and smooth at the macro scale. Quantum mechanics is rarely useful for analysis of macro-scale phenomena. It would be like studying the human perception of time passing by resorting to relativistic time dilation: VERY unlikely to play any important role at the human scale.
There are exceptions where QM and relativistic effects are visible at human scale, but that's not a smart place to start looking for explanations of human-scale phenomena. It would be like losing my car keys and flying to Tahiti to look for them. As interesting as Tahiti is, if my real goal is to find my keys, I should start in the house, garage, car, office, etc., and ignore Tahiti.
The place to start looking for an understanding of meditative phenomena is cognitive science, not quantum science, in my opinion.
I never heard of a scientist who actually tried really hard to study meditation
Some are working on it. Go to scholar.google.com and search for meditation. Unfortunately, most of this work is done by the least scientific of the "science" departments. My (controversial) opinion of it is that a great deal of what is done in "psychology" is leftist junk science. What they discover often depends on the current political agenda they are trying to promote.
Though there is good work done by psych departments, too, the best real science in human cognition (of which meditation is a part) is being done by cognitive modelers using computers and algorithms, and AI researchers. They don't just claim to find things about people, they build cognitive systems and see what phenomena emerge. They explain phenomena by reproducing them--far more scientifically rigorous.
Cognitive modeling is too low-level to be ideal for investigating real human-scale phenomena, so it has to be combined with psychology, but it's much closer to human scale than QM. I believe that we won't have any solid, scientific explanations of meditative states until we can build working models of human cognition that are very close to the real thing and recreate ordinary mental states. Trying to just jump straight into it instead of slowly building up to it is like the ancient alchemists trying to make gold from lead with no knowledge of atoms or molecules.
RE: quantum mechanics, my mentioning it is mostly in the sense of wondering if the quantum plane is the "place" where our true "essences" truly live. Again though, that's just a wild speculation without any scientifical substance. I realize that, it's simply something I grew to wonder about in the last several years. I honestly can't claim any relation to anything spiritual, that's a fact that can't be denied.
RE: human cognition: IMO until science has a very detailed understanding on how is the brain temporarily altered while under the influence of various kinds of drugs, we can't do much progress there. I mean, that way your normal state would be a partial baseline, and the altered states would be something producing a different set of parameters compared to the baseline. Comparing both would give some insights, perhaps -- sounds hard as hell though.
It's interesting that 1) insists you didn't claim anything, then 2) insists that you stand by your claim. ;-) Well, fine, it's not a courtroom, it's a conversation, and I'll try to be useful.
1) It's a natural question. Many people wonder about it, and each new generation will ask it all over again. People who think that because it has already been answered (many times) it should never be asked again need to grow up. They don't have to answer.
My background is physics, and for what it's worth I believe there is no value in combining QM with spiritual systems. I could be wrong, of course, and if you want to pursue it, just do some googling and find some good books, because it has been a popular topic for decades.
Warning: you will find mountains of pseudoscience. If you are most interested in amazing-sounding ideas and not how well supported the ideas are by repeatable measurements, favor books by non-physicists. If you care less about how amazing it sounds and more about what is best supported by repeated measurements, favor books written by people who know QM best: physicists.
2) Sure, be skeptical about everything, though not EQUALLY skeptical of all claims. (Less evidence -> more skepticism.) Real science needs to welcome skepticism (though real, human scientists often don't, unfortunately), while most spiritual practices don't, insisting that you have more faith or "first empty your cup" or otherwise overcome the weakness / character flaw of your skepticism. So, if you want to be skeptical, real science is a better approach for you (and me).
You can claim literally anything, and not all things are true, so you should have an approach to deciding. Mine is the scientific approach; you choose what you like.
You did suggest that we don't know everything about QM or spiritual systems, so maybe there is a connection. While philosophically true, such things are empty conjectures in science. We don't know everything about anything, so that argument supports all claims "A might be related to B", no matter what A and B are. Again, philosophically true but scientifically empty, because science doesn't consider something to be real until you actually observe/measure it. If you speculate about a connection between QM and something else, think of a way to measure it. Until someone does, there is nothing there, scientifically. It doesn't mean there never will be, just nothing so far, and nothing (in my opinion) to suggest there ever will be (again, scientifically).
Also, if you enjoy this type of discussion, you might enjoy reading more about the philosophy of science in general. You'll see more in-depth justifications for much of what I've been saying that aren't restricted to any particular field of science or non-science.