• Michael McMahon
    508
    The image in a mirror is unusual because an object looks to be in the same location but it's horizontally facing the other direction. If our consciousness is looking backwards inside the brain to see an image then it would be like our perception is rotated halfway round a circle in a straight angle of 180 degrees such that it's pointing the other way round at the opposite end of the diameter.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    "So if I'm doing the flipping, then the mirror is not. Take an arrow and point it to the right. The reflection in the mirror goes to the right. Point it up, it goes up. Left, it goes left. Down, it goes down. Forward, it goes-- wait a minute. If I point the arrow forward, the reflection goes backward. So the mirror is flipping the image, but it's flipping it in the z direction."


    What if the page she flipped was see-through where we could still see the letters? Then we'd observe the word spelled right to left on the page and it'd be no surprise the mirror reflects the letters in that direction. A mirror would be like having an eye on the back of your head! Sadly I'm a bit angry so I might resort to name-calling anyone who dares to disagree with me a "doof-us"!

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/koons/48205397436/in/photostream/
    Glass buildings can serve as huge mirrors to observe direction reversal of reflections on the street.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    We're all living different lives. So how do we know how closely our conscious timelines are located to each other? For all we know another conscious mind might be a full lifetime away relative to our own. It'd be like the physical body and mental sphere were in different temporal realms. Another way to think of it would be that consciousness were like a spirit in the literal sense of the word; that is to say everyone's mind being separated by the oblivion of death.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If our visual perception were entirely in our brain, then the further out we look the deeper we are seeing into our brain,
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Is someone's consciousness invisible and in front of their face in an undetectable manner? Or is it hidden from view behind the face inside the brain?
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Maybe it's possible to combine both options where our perception is in front of our face while our rational thoughts are behind us.
  • Michael McMahon
    508

    Pulp Fiction 1994 - Wolf

    Notice how the lower camera resolution in older movies doesn't always detract from the atmosphere and the way the colours appear highlighted can actually increase the tone, flow and ambience of the film. It gives it a subtle and almost indescribably different vibe in how the scenes temporally transition from one to the next. Walking around with sunglasses all day long doesn't have a major effect on your self-awareness but it can alter your visual concentration.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism
    https://www.lomography.com/magazine/339223-the-monochrome-effect
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Each of our eyes has a different degree of perspective since different parts of an object right in front of us will be closer in diagonal depth to one eye over the other other.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If we're looking in a slanted direction towards an entity then the distance we're see is the hypotenuse and we can infer the depth by approximating the hypotenuse and the width back to a position right in front of you.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If you know one depth value then you can work out the rest of your perception to the same scale using familiar size. For example you know the objective length of your body so you know what an arm length ahead of you corresponds to in distance.

    "Familiar size: Since the visual angle of an object projected onto the retina decreases with distance, this information can be combined with previous knowledge of the object's size to determine the absolute depth of the object. For example, people are generally familiar with the size of an average automobile. This prior knowledge can be combined with information about the angle it subtends on the retina to determine the absolute depth of an automobile in a scene."
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    What if our mind moves our body in a similar way to a dancer trying to rhyme their motion to the the beat of music; except for us our body moves relative to our thoughts and emotions.

    What if intense beats could force you to dance by possessing you and twitching your muscles?!
    Bob Sinclar - Rock This Party (Everybody Dance Now)

    Kelly Rowland - Commander ft. David Guetta

    There are caveats to this drumbeat possession logic in case we were to all lose the run of ourselves:
    Neo & Trinity Sex Scene - The Matrix Reloaded 2003
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    What if the brain itself isn't conscious but that it's perceiving your own consciousness through the senses?
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    "Diffusion is the net movement of anything from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in concentration."

    Perhaps consciousness diffuses as far into empty space as your senses allow.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    When we vividly remember an event from weeks ago it might feel like our consciousness hasn't moved spatial position between now and back then.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Evolution is cited as a materialistic and deterministic explanation for the creation of species. But then is psychological romance also a mentally deterministic process? If so, could personality traits that we find attractive be indirectly and subconsciously cemented into our own emotions through romance? Or is it only physical traits that can be important when it comes to evolution while emotional romance is mere recreation? Other species are far less monogamous than humans because without self-awareness romance to them can only be physical.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Understanding why a dream was irrelevant still requires use of your critical reasoning skills. That is to say in order to understand why it's irrelevant you first need to know what would've been more relevant. So having an absurd dream isn't as pointless and time-wasting as it may seem. I'd a non-lucid dream about trying to find these fiery pellets on the ground while trying to avoid being seeing by a snake. That morning I remember myself saying that I couldn't have had a more irrelevant dream. What has that got to do with my current situation? That soon got me thinking, "What actually is my current situation?". So a totally irrelevant dream can actually make you focus on thinking about what would have been a more helpful and relevant dream. Our conscious response to a dream is unpredictable to our subconscious.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Come to think of it I could probably take off my glasses and I'd feel like I was watching some 1970's video. I'm short-sighted and I'd be like one of those dark comedy movies with the unspoken irony. Then I could focus on the colours, time durations, motion blurs, relative velocities, spatial volumes and emotional vibes instead of the spatial resolution. The bokeh of street lights are less dangerous to stare at when the luminous glare is unfocused. The uncertainty principle means the more we know about location the less we know about velocity when it comes to both quantum photons and unfocused images. This is because we can focus on the entire blur of a moving car instead of a detailed part of it like the bonnet in one look. Colours will be brighter during the day and darker during the night. Colour contrast will vary as they diffuse into each other at the perimeter of objects. Depth will shorten in scale into the distance where blurred entities at the horizon will look equidistant and holographic. I might miss all of my tennis shots but at least I'll get to know my opponent better! You only live once!


    Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancing - Saturday Night Fever
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    A dream is like a remix of a song where events in our past are mixed together randomly and then played out to see what would've happened under different circumstances.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Some of our subconscious metaphysical beliefs are non-verbal. I interpret some of my free will and decision making in an analytical way but there's still an ineffable feel about my baseline consciousness. It's like the way a background beat can affect the tone of the lyrics without actually changing the content of the lyrics. If I could switch my consciousness momentarily with someone else's then perhaps by contrast we could spot immediate differences of sensation in our free will that we previously left unstated and unexamined. Different countries have unique spiritual and religious beliefs about death although for all we know some foreign cultures could have different metaphysical beliefs and implicit tendencies about free will or determinism. It'd merely be that we currently lack an understanding of the nuances of what that would entail and we don't as yet have a full description of the subconscious and unconscious. International societies were historically far more isolated before the advent of modern communication. It took thousands of years for languages to develop which is enough time for metaphysical beliefs to leave an imprint on. If I were perfectly bilingual then maybe I might notice a subtly different shade of personal agency between the two languages. I only know a small bit of French so my experiences are limited. The happier fluent rhythm of French contrasts with the impartial monotone of the English language.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    For example there are lots of different regional accents and colloquialisms within the English language that convey slightly different emotions and busy intensities. Some accents might have an impression of humility or industriousness while others are more neutral and geographic.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    "(An) anti-realist can come in a number of flavors. As always the out and out anti-realist might just (be) a skeptic. Or an eliminativist is the term that's often used. I mean somebody just thinks we ought to eliminate this branch of discourse. So for example take say theological talk: some people might believe that there's a God they think God is an element in reality. They're realists about god. Other people might go to the other extreme and say you know all this theological talk is just junk. (That) We should not be thinking in these terms (is) eliminativism. In between there are people who say well i'm not quite so hostile to the discourse, i don't mind people talking and thinking in god terms but you mustn't think in terms of realism. You mustn't think in terms of a three decade universe with heaven up there the earth here and perhaps hell down below. You ought to see god talk in different terms for example poetical, symbolical, metaphorical and religious... Now the claims of anti-realism go beyond gods or theology to where if i were a full-blown anti-realist I might think that the whole world is a construction of my own mind... That's the position known as idealism... That would be a general position usually associated with bishop Barkley in the early 18th century."


    It's also possible to a be an anti-realist about God along with being an anti-realist about the physical world. One way to describe visual anti-realism would be that the quantitative outline of empty space which we see is the same for each of us but our impression of the colours within the objects are individualistic. The colourful empty space I perceive is in a different conscious location to the void that you perceive. Consciousness in this context would be equivalent to the vacuum of empty space.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If dreams can be perceived as visually real to our consciousness while lucid dreaming then why don't we have the focus to become lucid in every dream? Maybe it's because there's too many unexpected events in dreams where we're continuously distracted by the changing storyline:


    The Monkey Business Illusion

    "This finding was a particularly dramatic example of "inattentional blindness," the failure to see something obvious when focusing attention on something else."
    https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/205580
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If consciousness were equivalent to empty space then it'd feel like your visual consciousness literally moves forward when you look at something in the distance and it then retreats back when you focus on something closer where the background is now blurry. If you are one with your perception then the most vivid segment of your perception is where most of your flowing consciousness is located.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If our own visual screen of all the objects in front of us is larger than the size of our head and yet still remaining equivalent to our consciousness, then it'd seem like the visual phosphenes that make up our sentience is an out-of-body experience so to speak. Then our visual perception could be both 3D and internal.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    If consciousness is located outside the body then it'd be movable instead of being in a constant location within the brain. Therefore the mind could affect the brain in separate areas depending on what part of your perception is being activated and most focused on. Perhaps our own mind is spatially scattered and denser in those sensory regions we're being attentive to.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Maybe a panpsychist point of view would be that light has colour qualia even before it hits your eyes while a materialist however would say the photons are colourless and it's only added on afterwards where the photons are detected in the eye.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Is colour made of photons or are photons made of colour?
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    Hedonistic and rebellious pop songs can sound even more energetic and intense when it's remixed in another language:

    Sexy B*tch - Versión en español
  • Michael McMahon
    508

    Eiffel 65 -- I'm Blue (Mister Perfect Remix)

    I remember years back I went through a stage of listening to every remix of this trance song. I was even inspired to buy a grey jumper afterwards! Even though the verse's lyrics of "I'm blue da ba dee da ba di" is semantically nonsensical it's still catchy somehow. It adds to its theme of confused wonderment. This emphasises how much the emotional tone is appreciated of whatever is being sung no matter what the actual written content is even if it's ridiculous.
  • Michael McMahon
    508
    The original brains in vats!
    Kang and Kodos - Simpsons Aliens

    Imagine speaking to a visible brain without a skull in real time!
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