~ Hunting Down the Ego ~

[Bill Wiltrack]

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[Bill Wiltrack]

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.............................................................................................Consciousness
...............................................Being = -----------------------------------------------------------------
...................................................................................................Knowledge



............................................................................................................................................................~~~ Bill Wiltrack ~~~








* Please do not muddy the reality of this post by submitting a written response. This thread is meant to be observed and absorbed. Please do not react. Just witness.



Reguards


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[Greylorn Ell]

Mr. Wiltrack,

Your request to not reply to this post is way too arrogant for my taste. You've set yourself up as some kind of god whose insights are not to be questioned. That other posters are intimidated by your demand, or not competent enough to address it, simply tells us and them about the gutless quality of their spirit and inadequacy of their little minds.

That said, I love your insights.

Because of the growing trend of attributing the remarks of nitwits to Big Al, and my feeling that this "quote" of yours was inherently non-Einsteinian, I killed a couple of hours today looking for some reference to your first quote. I could not find one.

Nonetheless my time was well spent discovering a number of other insightful comments from Big Al. Thank you for pointing me in that direction.

The quote itself appears in various inet searches, but it appears bare, raw, and without references to the conference, letter, or paper in which it might have appeared. Therefore I distrust this quote, and request a deeper reference.

Whether you made up the Einstein quote, or got it from someone else who made it up, is not all that relevant to me. The quoted "equation" has a good sense of truth to it, with this exception:

Rather than Ego = 1/Knowledge,

I propose that Ego = n/Knowledge

where "n" represents the number of previous lifetimes one has experienced.

To be more accurate, "n" would be a more complex function, representing lifetimes experienced and lessons learned, lessons of the sort that can be conceptualized and carried through to a subsequent incarnation in which they can be developed in more detail.

Is the second equation yours? Nevermind that its terms are not mathematically definable, it represents an excellent concept. In future writings I will attribute it to the name you've given, unless you advise otherwise.

[Bill Wiltrack]

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Nice post.


You are some kind of god.




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[Greylorn Ell]

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Nice post.

You are some kind of god.

Nice follows thoughtful. And thanks but alas, do gods fart?

You've initiated a unique way of representing abstract concepts. Perhaps it could be expanded.

For example,

Consciousness = (Knowledge + Experience) / Programming

Rather than the formal "=" sign of mathematics, I'd prefer some kind of proportionality symbol, or perhaps a functional relationship, e.g:

Consciousness = f{ (Knowledge+Experience) / Programming}

By "programming" I mean the bullshit that we are taught by parents, schools, TV, and society in general, that most people accept as knowledge. Most of this programming is a function of culture. It also includes our brains' built-in instincts for survival and social tribalism which are the precursors of cultural propensities.

I'm tempted to square the "Programming" parameter. It seems to be a primary determinant of what passes in humans for consciousness.

[Bill Wiltrack]

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Again, I really like the way you think.


Consciousness = f{ (Knowledge+Experience) / Programming}


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[Arising_uk]

...
where "n" represents the number of previous lifetimes one has experienced. ...

Pardon? How would one quantify such a thing?

[Greylorn Ell]

...
where "n" represents the number of previous lifetimes one has experienced. ...

Pardon? How would one quantify such a thing?

I haven't a clue.

Skillfully done past-life regressions would identify a few of the more recent ones, but I suspect that someone who is conscious and intelligent enough to be interested would have as much luck discerning, for example, the first 90 of his 100 incarnations, as you or I would have dredging up recollections from our first year of life.

However, consider that if you asked someone two centuries ago to estimate the number of galaxies in the universe, he'd have asked, "What's a galaxy?"

Science, thanks to its ongoing (and stupifying) confrontations with religion, has refused to deal competently with any aspects of the paranormal, and cannot recognize the possibility of previous incarnations. Why should it? How can science identify the thing that is reincarnated, given that religions have defined the soul as something that science cannot detect?

Long after I'm dead someone will read my damned book and realize that its definition of "soul" is a definition of something that must be experimentally detectable.

They will then figure out how to perform the requisite physics experiments needed to verify my theories. When my (or a better) physical soul concept is scientifically established using the tools of physics instead of the teachings of religions, questions like yours can and will be addressed.

And please, let's not divert this excellent thread onto reincarnation and related subjects. Mr. Wiltrack's notion of algebraically representing facets of human personality deserves more contributions.

[HexHammer]

I love your insights.

LOL? What insights?
1) he don't know what's he's talking about, ever!

2) if you look at his other posts, it's pure random ramblings.

3) he might have come up with something that isn't complete ramblings, but it's only due to pure chance.

4) what he has written here doesn't make any sense, tho it might fool some naive people.

[Bill Wiltrack]

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All this is true.


We can see this in ourselves only when we honestly making repeated attempts at, Hunting Down the Ego.






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[Greylorn Ell]

I love your insights.

LOL? What insights?
1) he don't know what's he's talking about, ever!

2) if you look at his other posts, it's pure random ramblings.

3) he might have come up with something that isn't complete ramblings, but it's only due to pure chance.

4) what he has written here doesn't make any sense, tho it might fool some naive people.

HexHammer,

I have looked at some of Mr. Wiltrack's other posts and failed to find anything of interest to me, but others might.

Years ago I tried to study Aristotle, and found a disappointingly small brilliance-to-bullshit ratio. I waded through pages of Descartes' mostly uninteresting philosophical writings to learn his second most important insights, about the nature of consciousness and the equivalence of soul and mind. (His most important insights were his coordinate mapping math, previously learned in high school.)

Most books I have read in hopes of gaining insights provided nothing, just a rehash of old ideas and beliefs that I'd evaluated long ago. Forums are a less likely source of insight, yet in just a few words, Wiltrack offered a way of looking at subjective human properties that I'd not previously considered. I think that it has potential.

I disagree with his political beliefs, so we are unlikely to become friends, but so what? Agreement is often the booby prize of a winning conversation. If Bill never comes up with another useful idea again, he's earned my appreciation.

Now in what PNow Forum sections shall I look for your insightful contributions?

[HexHammer]

You can look in my profil and then view all my posts.

His OP does not account for very basic understanding of modern intellect, nor neurology.

Knowledge in itself does only make a person a "Rain Man", someone without rationallity, it's high rationallity that makes a person intelligent.

As usual Einstein don't know what he's talking about, he doesn't understand psychology, highly educated people are usually sickening arrogant when it comes to meet "savages", primitive people or just the low end of society, they will think themselves mightier than those so much lower than themselves, and treat them unjoustly, we all seen how "the white man" treated slaves back in the days, and saw them not as humans bust mere beasts of burden, treating them with cruelty and total disregard for safety.
Even in modern times just some centuries back, there was segregation in USA, everything was divided, white and colored toilets, buss seats, etc.

Einstein is for the most part completely clueless of how the real world works.

[Blaggard]

You can look in my profil and then view all my posts.

His OP does not account for very basic understanding of modern intellect, nor neurology.

Knowledge in itself does only make a person a "Rain Man", someone without rationallity, it's high rationallity that makes a person intelligent.

As usual Einstein don't know what he's talking about, he doesn't understand psychology, highly educated people are usually sickening arrogant when it comes to meet "savages", primitive people or just the low end of society, they will think themselves mightier than those so much lower than themselves, and treat them unjoustly, we all seen how "the white man" treated slaves back in the days, and saw them not as humans bust mere beasts of burden, treating them with cruelty and total disregard for safety.
Even in modern times just some centuries back, there was segregation in USA, everything was divided, white and colored toilets, buss seats, etc.

Einstein is for the most part completely clueless of how the real world works.

Absolute nonsense!

Einstein a Jewish German who had to flee Germany just before the war because otherwise he would of been gassed to death simply for being Jewish, does not know how the world works. I am not sure I follow your logic here...

I don't think Einstein is a psychologist or even qualified to comment on human psychology, but then he never does, so your post is little more than a straw man. Now he might of made some comments on human nature but that hardly makes him a psychologist any more than going to church makes you a Christian.

Einstein was a physicist, which means you can probably attack his physics, but attacking his contributions to human psychology is liable to be a very short exercise, since he made none or at least very little as far as I know.

Incidentally Einstein was not highly educated, he was lazy at university and only ended up with the equivalent of a third class degree in physics, which meant no one would take him on for more study ie PhD's Master's degrees etc. He ended up working in a patent office, and there he explained some of his ideas. He was equally lazy at school to the extent he barely qualified to attend university. When he was young he didn't speak very well until the age of 8, which meant his parents considered sending him to a school for the remedial or retarded.

Regardless your arrogance is unnerving, how do you know what Einstein knew, when you don't even know the first thing about him?

That seems to me to be mere scathing disdain in lieu of knowledge. Also how could Einstein have known the biology of the human brain, when no one knew anything remotely pertinent at the time about either how the brain worked, or how it as an overall system works, seems to me he is being unfairly judged under goal posts which are so narrow that you have failed to account for him.

Now I am not slavishly devoted to Einstein, he was wrong about many things, but I am at least knowledgeable about what he said, knew and did. Not that that makes me the worlds biggest authority on Einstein but it does at least make me able to make non specious comments on him. I doubt you however really have any authority, but please feel free to prove me wrong...

[Bill Wiltrack]

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The Gordian knot that we experience in Hunting Down the Ego is that we are forced to begin the hunt with the actual individual egos themselves.


This sounds like a contradiction and in some ways, it is.


Imagine a large hill made out of human beings...all actively fighting to climb to the top.


The individual who momentarily reaches the top is the narration that we experience upon our consciousness at that moment.


The only way to really overcome the myriad of egos that we identify with is to detach ourselves, to a degree, and observe them. As from an aerial shot.


This struggle of egos is evident even here, at the Philosophy Now Forums.

We can witness individual egos attack, what they perceive, as the other egos that are keeping our ego from attaining the top.






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[Blaggard]

Have you ever read the Three Fold Cord: Mind Body and World by Hillary Putnam, threefold knot aka Gordian Knot, it's about consciousness and how it works. It's a tentative thesis on how the brain might be conscious and how it relates to some sort of material concern if not absolutely duality free as such.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Threefold-Cor ... 0231102879

What is the relationship between our perceptions and reality? What is the relationship between the mind and the body? These are questions with which philosophers have grappled for centuries, and they are topics of considerable contemporary debate as well. Hilary Putnam has approached the divisions between perception and reality and between mind and body with great creativity throughout his career. Now, in The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World, he expounds upon these issues, elucidating both the strengths and weaknesses of current schools of thought. With his characteristic wit and acuity, Putnam offers refreshing solutions to some of philosophy's most vexing problems.

Putnam first examines the problem of realism: is objective truth possible? He acknowledges the deep impasse between empirical and idealist approaches to this question, critiquing them both, however, by highlighting the false assumption they share, that we cannot perceive the world directly. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin and William James, Putnam develops a subtle and creative alternative, which he calls "natural realism."

Just saying you seem to be almost referencing it although that might be a coincidence..?