I'm just trying to understand why you don't use apostrophes when the situation obviously calls for them.

I blame Obama (the prince of Hawaii) for not giving you a good education.

Names are not words, unless the word is a name.

.. but I'm the one that doesn't make sense...

Sorry Verthex, I was fooled by the V.

Yeah, ok, sorry. I meant to say, you sound like a conspiracy nut, but I guess you knew that.

Of course you do.

Oh yes, absolutely! I agree.
But I do think it's funny, or it would be funny if it weren't so tragic, that people will tell you you're close minded and not open to new ideas if you say that something is wrong.
If someone says that pixies took the money from the biscuit jar, that the gnomes did the dishes, that they have succeeded in converting base elements into gold, do you go "oh yeah, well, maybe all these things are real", or do you tell them that their imagination runs away with them? Either way, the burden of proof is on them.
So when someone starts spouting nonsense about "the singularity", "the galactic consciousness" or how "the church" is part of a mass conspiracy involving calendars, then you tell them their mind is playing tricks with them - and if they have good reason to say what they do, then it's up to them to provide it, not up to the other party to provide counter arguments (hard to do at any rate if you don't know what the arguments are).
Look, I understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and pseudo-scientific spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Really, I do. It makes for fantastic and scary stories and mysteries. But just because someone believes it doesn't make it true - and it certainly doesn't mean you can't call them on it not being true.

But hey, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you!

Now its Obamas fault that people dont know where to put those dam'n apostrophe's.

Says the man with an apostrophe hanging out above his last name.

"The Singularity Is Near" is a book which claims to be founded in science. It was mentioned mostly as a joke in that instance, because it is the answer the "sciencey community" is giving for "what's coming"... but something certainly is about to happen.

All I said was that consciousness is relative to matter and falls under the E=MC^2 idea. You never argued that or said anything about where you think it comes from, and probably have no opinion of your own -- you may not even know what consciousness is, for all I know. I think consciousness also evolves, like everything else, and gains a greater understanding and awareness of the universe (reality) and is also subject to entropy, which is about to hit a sharp curve (Of course, it's probably cyclical). It's not a conspiracy, though people who have said this stuff are always attacked by the media.

I never said they were conspiring, I said it is happening. People in power are taking advantage of the psychological effects of going from a 1900 mindset to a 2000 mindset. The calendar does shape your reality (and mine) and how we go about our day, and the one we use was enforced by the church. So you're saying it's a conspiracy, I'm just saying it happened. I didn't say it was planned by a group of people in secret, even if it was, but it's quite open and in plain view if you ask me. It's far more complex than you seem to be considering. People certainly do conspire, but that's neither here nor there, I'm only interested in the effects and what's actually happening. It just happens to be that there are groups who are influencing these things that have been around for a very long time and are often the target of conspiracy theorists.

I've only written out my opinions about it. You're not disagreeing with me to any significant degree, or even providing opinions of your own. You're just saying it's a "conspiracy", and given that you're calling me a "conspiracy nut", I can only assume you think my opinions are unreasonable for some arbitrary reason.

.. but all of this is super deep. It doesn't travel well by forum.

heh, yes, that idea does seem to get criticism of that type... since he's crazy (though I suspect his brother's death was of significance to why he does what he does the way he does). I didn't hear this idea from that page at all, but have been referred to it. I started reading the bible -- but that was after I got into Carl Jung, Timothy Leary, Buddhism and other controversial 'psychology'. Of course, this was all after my evolution kick and learning about NLP and hypnotism... not to mention trying to figure out what the hell the "The Secret" craze was all about. I've just spent way too much time reading about "unentertaining" things.

This just started happening one day. Literally everything was perceived differently. Maybe that day will be later known as 'Tumor day'

I do not deny how insane these ideas appear to be, but feel that doesn't discount the possibility.

I can buy frozen, breaded chicken breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn and a brownie, put it in a metal box powered by harnessed electricity and be eating a hot meal in 5 minutes. Dreaming up all of those things must have been considered insane at some point in history.

Hrm, I just read the wikipedia article on timecube and it seems like the site is legit, as in not a parody. I always assumed it was a parody on other sites because its so unbelievably stupid. A new low for humanity..

Define black. Define white.

Anyway, using popular definitions: About 20% of the U.S. Army are black, but less than 3% of all presidents had some African heritage. You'll need 9 more African-American presidents just to catch up.

The problem is not that there's a (partly) black president, it's the people who still believe in the "white America" nonsense.

You're right. I'm about to make lunch and head out to work.

That sentence doesn't even make sense. What does "relative to matter" mean and how does that relate to "consciousness"?

And what's that? What's the "E = Mc^2 idea"?
In science there's no such concept as an "E = Mc^2 idea".

Oh, I certainly have ideas about where it comes from. I'm sure they're not particularly original, and possibly somewhat naive as it's not my field of expertise.
But I'll bite.
First things first. Define "consciousness" precisely and accurately. That's a tricky question that people (philosophers, scientists) have not agreed on. The simplest definition is probably something along the lines of "possessing self-awareness" or "being aware of one's own existence". Animals and plants are certainly aware of the world around them, but it's not clear that they have a mental image of "self". Humans and Chimpanzees do, so do Octopuses and possibly other animals. The animal brain coordinates input from the sensory organs and translates those into actions. These can be simple and autonomous (in which case you only need a very simple brain, or even no brain at all) or complex, depending on the complexity of the brain. Make the brain complex enough its range of responses to stimuli increases. At some point it becomes reasonable that it's important to distinguish between parts of yourself and parts of the world around you: that's a branch, I can stand on that, this is my tail, I should not stand on that, or as simple as, my arm is this long, so I can reach that branch over there but not that one; in other words, it becomes increasingly important to have a mental map of oneself. Make the brain complex enough to generate its own stimuli and I have no problems in seeing that the end result will operate somewhat similarly to the human brain.
As I said, that's probably a simplistic picture and I'm no expert, but there you have it.
On to you. How do you define consciousness?

By that, do you mean "consciousness is an animal trait that can evolve, just as a tail or a pair of legs would" or do you mean "someone's consciousness changes over time"?

Why? What does that mean?

And what exactly does that mean?
Entropy is a measure of the number of possible realisations of a physical system. This definition comes from statistical mechanics; within classical thermodynamics entropy has always been somewhat mysterious and hard to understand intuitively.
Left to evolve by itself (in isolation) a closed system is most likely to be found in the state with the largest number of realisations if observed some time after it was last looked at. That's the state of highest entropy. In other words, the entropy of a closed system either increases or stays constant. That's the second law of thermodynamics.
You'll pick up on the use of the word "statistical" in "statistical mechanics". This is something that happens on average to macroscopic systems.

Which brings us back to my original question. What exactly do you mean? Everything in the universe (indeed, the universe itself) is subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Do you mean "a consciousness develops to the state with the largest number of possible realisations?" If so, what does that mean? What's a "realisation of consciousness"?

What does that mean? How does "the number of realisations hit a sharp curve" and why is it "probably cyclical"?

That's the problem: you use words and scientific concepts and string them together in sentences that don't actually make sense given the meaning of said words and concepts. It's what they call "technobabble" in science fiction series. It reads no different from the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of crackpots who think they can "prove Einstein wrong" with a few pages of dodgy algebra and by dropping some technical terms.

I did not. There is no conspiracy.

Yes, and we call those people conspiracy nuts.

Maybe you do get it Evert, you just don't like the way I'm presenting the idea
As I said, it doesn't travel well by forum.

It made sense. I am proposing that matter (stars, planets, and grains of sand) has an unseen, non-local, active property of consciousness. It is present in every atom, but I'm considering the macroscopic bodies like stars and planets.
Under this idea our Sun would have the largest consciousness in our solar system, while the super-massive black hole we're spinning around has considerably more of the mysterious property. That's what I mean by "relative to matter".

There definitely was an idea that mass and energy are relative, and the common representation of it is E = mc². I know you know, and are just being shy, but I'll explain.

E = mc², or the "theory of relativity", was an idea by Albert Einstein which proposes that mass and energy are relative. In other words, more mass means more energy, less mass means less energy. Always. It is a theory, but is considered to be a solid one. It's a commonly accepted idea and referred to as Mass-energy equivalence by wikipedia. The theory lead to the development of the atomic bomb, which is a weapon sort of like fire, but Albert Einstein's "mass/energy magic" is applied to make the fire out of weapons grade plutonium.

You couldn't have said it better. That's a tricky question that people (philosophers, scientists) have not agreed on. The simplest definition is probably something along the lines of "possessing self-awareness" or "being aware of one's own existence". Because there is no clear definition of it, I say it's open to interpretation. Consciousness is whatever you think it is. What I'm describing is my interpretation based on my experiences and what I've learned.

I define consciousness further to be a mysterious, unknown and unobservable force which has the ability to animate the physical world, observe it, and make choices within it. I am consciousness and I have a body which I am using. The body is finite, and will cease to exist, but I am part of a larger and infinite force at work.

It's effects range greatly in complexity. Microscopic bacteria can make very limited choices and observations and are entirely dependent on the environment - the most "primitive" form of consciousness. Humans are capable of making the most choices of anything else we've knowingly encountered, and are able to observe photon projecting screens in front of them, or other star systems thousands of light years away. A sort of "Consciousness++". Still dependent on their environment, but capable of changing it by their own will to suit their needs and goals, which are more diverse than those of bacteria.

You explained it quite well, but wikipedia's article is quite extensive.
The reason I think this applies to consciousness, and thereby to us, is because the amount of change that occurs is increasing at an exponential level and can be viewed quite easily by considering the history of our species before and after the industrial revolution. The rate of change increased, and our ability to affect the rate of change also increased. As the wikipedia page says, this is irreversible without work and will continue with this trend unless acted on by another force.

Consider the technology we use that did not exist 10 years ago, and the technology around us that did not exist 100 years ago. Then consider the same question as if it were the year 1800. There is far less around in 1800 that wasn't there in 1790 than when compared with what is here in 2009 that wasn't here in 1999 (or even 1999 and 1989). As an example, consider how many people own laptops and cellphones now, with some countries averaging nearly 2 cellphones per person.. and that's just one example. You can go through time like this and there is a clear trend of increasing advancement, all the way back to the life stages of single celled organisms.

Exactly. The system we're in falls under that too. As we move through time more and more realizations are made in this closed system.
If we were to leave and come back in 1000 years, we would observe that thousand years of change as instant and complete, but the consciousness that created the change would have observed it as it happened progressively through time, which is essentially what you are doing with your consciousness at this very moment, and have been doing in all of the moments that preceded it.. and right now, you're older than you've ever been.

It's not really a "conspiracy". I mean, people are conspiring about this and other matters of course, but when you label it a conspiracy it's thought of as negative. It's just happening, and has always been happening, and will always happen so long as the Sun rises. That is, if consciousness is real. If it's not real, and the rich really are the ones who rule the world, then .. this place sucks.

Black = higher melanin production, with an original OCA2 gene. White = lower melanin with the "new" OCA2 gene, sort of like they evolved underground, in the shade, or in some other environment where less sunlight was present.

I'm not sure what the "white America" nonsense is, but denying that whites make up the majority of Americans or pretending that there are no differences between the races is silly. I say our differences are important and we should be aware of them and even proud of them. We don't need to hate each other or kill each other because we are different, but we must be more careful with race and I think the future will reveal that.

.. and that's my book of a post..

-"Captin, we are loosing Derezo"
-"Hell ya, he met the stellar professor who gave him a galactic punch"
-"Can we eventually save him ?"
-"Only if we still have molecular glue"
-"You finished it when replanting your hairs on your head capt'n"
-"So I guess he's lost"