Although it is reasonable to assume that I am a walking encyclopedia, that is not the case. The amount of information in my head is really not much, but it appears to be significant because I spend a lot of time reading. Somehow, when I was 5 years old, I learned how to read. I do not remember how, because, I could not read and then I suddenly could read. Reading turned out to be pretty useful because I no longer had to guess what was happening in the pictures, nor did I have to ask someone else to read for me. So, I’ve been busily reading for the past 27 years and have learned an important fact. Few people care about the fact they have reading ability and they try very hard to not use it. This explains why some people think I’m smart. Since they don’t read, all the facts I know seem impressive. But those facts are not secrets - any damn fool can read the same books I read and know the exact same things I know. All of it. If I have a secret, then I’d like to know about it. But why did I not stop reading, like most people?
    Generally, people learn how to read and go to great lengths to ignore their ability by spending time watching TV or playing video games. The advantage of continuing to read is that knowledge accumulates and learning more becomes easier, but this does not mean that one can know everything, nor even come close. I quickly discovered that through reading, I could access information that school did not provide. For example, I read about dinosaurs when I was 5 years old, which was not part of the curriculum. It didn’t take me long to realize that in order to get educated I would need some source other than school. I’ve always been curious about reality and school offers no courses on that topic. Have you ever heard of an Introduction to Reality course?
    What is reality? Most people consider it to be what they consciously experience, such as rising from bed, going to work, watching TV, listening to music, going to restaurants, etc. But a conscious experience has many deficiencies, since we see a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, hear a narrow range of sounds, and can touch neither a plasma nor objects with most of the heat removed. The amount of information that we can extract from our surroundings without using technology is quite pitiful. For example, our eyes gather a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which we call “visible light”. But we are completely missing out on gamma rays, x-rays, ultra-violet, infra-red, microwaves, and radio waves unless we use technology. So, when we look at objects, we are getting one interpretation of their appearance. Those same objects look different under x-rays or radio waves, for example.
    I view reality as confinement. Analogously, this can understood by imagining sitting in a jail cell. If one is freely ambulating upon the surface of the earth, how can that possibly bear any resemblance to being trapped in a cell? Consider for a moment what is required to escape from a cell and you will see there is little difference. If one wishes to leave, then one may try any of the four forces. While sitting in the cell, you decide to try gravity first. You know that gravity is really strong, because it makes things fall. But the floor of the cell is not falling very far, since the ground is stopping it. So gravity is not that strong. It will not help you. The next force is electromagnetism, which powers your muscles and holds groups of atoms together. After a short while, it becomes apparent that electromagnetism will not help you either. The atomic bonds in concrete and steel are stronger than those in your skin and muscles and thus you tire and get many bruises. After several days of rest you decide to try the third force, the weak nuclear, which is responsible for radiation, or particle decay. Nothing happens for a while and then you start throwing up and become very weak. Weak nuclear decays seem to be more harmful than helpful. Surely, the fourth force will work, you think. After a month of recuperation, you begin to use the strongest force known - the strong nuclear. But nothing happens. You remain in the cell until your very bones turn to particles smaller than dust motes.
    I think of reality in terms of the forces. Gravity is actually the weakest force, by many orders of magnitude. An “order of magnitude” means 10 times. If something is 2 orders of magnitude weaker than something else, then it is 100 times weaker, for example. Gravity is roughly 30 orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces. This only becomes apparent when one conducts a very simple experiment. Just pick up a paperclip. The entire mass of the earth is holding the paperclip down, yet you are able to pick it up. Thus, your arm is able to defy the entire mass of the earth. Electromagnetism is responsible for all of chemical activity, since it moderates the behavior of electrons, through photons. Photons are commonly known as “visible light”, but they move through space like a wave, and have differing amounts of energy, like waves on the surface of the ocean. This is why photons can kill in the form of x-rays; they carry more energy. The last two forces are less common because we can’t directly see what they do; they operate at distances that are smaller than atoms. The weak nuclear force is responsible for radiation, or the decay of particles. The strong nuclear force holds the nuclei of atoms together and can only be broken at very high temperatures, usually exceeding one trillion degrees.
    Back to confinement, it is easy to see that gravity confines us to the Earth, electromagnetism confines our atoms to one place in the form of a body, the weak nuclear confines many particles to a short amount of time (since they decay), and the strong nuclear confines the cores of atoms. Through the notion of confinement, it becomes apparent that life exists in a cell, while life itself is made of cells. It’s not until many things that are similar collect in large numbers that new properties emerge. As an example, many of the cells in our bodies look the same, but they can form objects that look different and have different properties. At even lower levels, all electrons look the same, yet, through interactions with protons and neutrons, are responsible for all of the matter we can see. It’s not until many electrons interact together with many protons and neutrons that something different emerges.
    Emergence is thus a new hot topic in science. This can be extended rather easily to human behavior. While all humans look relatively the same, it’s not until many of them function together that a new property emerges. Just like one atom can not make a cell, one human can not make a prison. Atoms took many billions of years to finally form collections with the emergent property of thought. So, one can argue that a human is now the new particle. What will happen after many trillions of humans function together, for many billions of years? What new property will emerge?

Speaking of visible light and perceptions, I have horrible nearsighted vision, and if there was no such thing as glasses which correct my vision to "normal", then my basic perception of "what things are like" would be a very different life experience.

Once I had to (try to) finish the workday without them, as they had broken a few years back, and I couldn't even distinquish people from each other besides knowing what their voice sounded like.

If glasses weren't around my life experience would be a lot different, but since it's such a common thing (with a common fix) I had never really thought of myself as being handicapped before, but it turns out I am.  Everyone's version of reality is probably handicapped in at least some minor way, some just way more than others. 

Without glasses I would be forced to behave differently to compensate for my lack of vision, so I'm already living an altered or enhanced life.  And as you mentioned with all the stuff that's around us that we can't see, that would require another form of enhancement to appreciate.

I read that you'll get really good at estimation if you stop wearing glasses. Near-sighted people (before glasses) used to do small engravings, since their vision is superior at small distances. Not only is near-sighted vision a handicap, but it can lead serious problems. I've been to two different eye doctors within the past 3 years and they both confirmed what I've read. A near-sighted person has an elongated eyeball, which stretches the retina. This can make little holes or detach it. A hole in the retina (blind spot) is called a scotoma. If a scotoma gets big enough, it leads to false hallucinations. It has only been recently confirmed that the brain abhors blind spots in the retina. I have a scotoma in my left eye, but it's really small and does not lead to hallucinations. Rather, it fills in with whatever is nearby. For example, when a light flashes on that part of my retina, I won't see the light, but the material that is near it. My brain "fills in" the blind spot. My doctor showed me which light I missed and he explained that it hit the hole. When a scotoma gets really big, then the brain still puts something there. There are limits to what the brain can approximate, so when the hole gets too big, it fills it in with things you have previously seen, which are mistaken for hallucinations. Retinal detachment is much more severe than getting a little hole. Your brain can't approximate for the whole retina, so you'll go blind.

The information you extract from your surroundings by use of dedicated technology is also something which you consciously experience. The view of reality from this "scientific" perspective is no different, fundamentally from the most common perception of reality. But... To discuss what reality is, we first need an analysis of the term "reality".

From my viewpoint, reality is a biological construct which is here to aid survival and reproductive fitness. We will die if we don't perceive heat, struggles breathing - seeing colors aids our survival. If we stretch it further, seeing a gun will make us afraid. Reality is that guns are dangerous. Reality is, I think, whatever biological and social constructs which (if we were perfectly built,) would aid us taking the right discussions. 

From another perspective, as reality is a human construct, it's nothing "real", or "transcendent". It is nothing and everything, like a great paradox. This perspective can also be "mixed" with the one above, to make a kind of spiritual-materialistic duality which creates a feeling of being a solid human being with feet on the ground and a purpose in life (no comment about what that purpose is), and not only a fleeting schiup of nothing-somethingness.

As we CAN perceive and be affected by all the physical forces you describe, they certainly are a part of reality, but they aren't any more "real" than everything else that we perceive, and the physicist's way of seeing things isn't more "correct" than our everyday way. It's all about how we view it... Think about sound waves. The most correct way to perceive sound is for some reason to visualize it, to see it as waves moving through air. Mass and weight should be measured in numbers. Why shouldn't they be translated to "smell" instead? If we made a system for it, we could've measured the altitude from the sun to the moon in taste instead of visual-auditory numbers.

I guess this doesn't make any sense.

A miserable little pile of secrets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5Qdp5f … playnext=1

and sometimes one feels more comfortable in their confinement,, if you take them out they get all nervous, scared,, and wanting to run back into their cage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN04S3cDz7o

Emergence is NOT a new hot topic in science. The notion of emergence has been around for thousands of years. I'm guessing you read something about it and got inspired Hey, that's cool, but it's definitely not new. In fact, it's not really science, but more philosophy.

cheers,

-avatar!

LOL!

/thread

That's the electromagnetic force. In the jail cell I mentioned, one does not have access to explosives (devices that quickly change electron orbitals).

I first read about it here and then Frank Close kept referring to "emergence" in this one (and citing McLaughlin's book). I actually wasn't initially impressed with emergence, and then Mr. Close went ahead and wrote so enthusiastically about it that I decided it was a good idea and wrote something myself. From my point of view, emergence is brand new. But you're telling me it's very old, which I can definitely believe. It's very intuitive.

DNA is the program for biological structures and I feel it's contained within reality and is not a defining factor. Electrons are also in reality, but DNA does not describe their behavior, which means that biology can not be the final word. However, DNA has the code that builds our brains, which we use to interpret reality. That code is ultimately constructed of fermions, which obey the laws of quantum mechanics. This does not mean that our brain are quantum mechanical, any more than ants are quantum mechanical (the laws of quantum mechanics stop working somewhere between 1 nm to 1000 nm). I'm able to see that you are more interested in a macro-reality, while I am more interested in a micro-reality. I'm more concerned with what I can not see.

   I disagree that guns are dangerous. While they may be perceived as dangerous, it is ultimately the electromagnetic force that is dangerous. A bullet has enough energy to destroy the atomic bonds in your skin (both entrance and exit). The solution is to either engineer skin that has atomic bonds strong enough to repel bullets or to shoot the other guy first.

The purpose of life is to survive. You intimated that yourself, when you wrote that reality is a biological construct which is here to aid survival. Therefore, we are here to survive. I find that very reasonable, because dying is the alternative.

It does make sense. Perfect sense. It's just that it doesn't make any sense for us to make distance measurements using taste. An alien race might do that very thing, so it could make sense somewhere.

I figured, but i just thought it was kinda funny.

( :

Coincidences seem to be in style and shortly after reading your post I got to meet some aliens that use computers by tasting them. These aliens are called cheela and live on a neutron star, so they are very flat. They get around with treads, rather than legs, which they use to taste computers. Taste and touch can be combined into one sense, since they both rely upon the electromagnetic force. In fact, it seems that seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling are simply different ways of using electromagnetism, so they could be rolled into one sense. We sense by using electromagnetism, which is definitely not limited to 5 ways of gathering information. Bats and sharks use electromagnetism in ways that we do not, for example.

  The book about the Cheela is Dragon's Egg. It also has a sequel, which tastes very good so far.