"Today young men on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather...."
this was xposted to the neurotheology community spotlighted yesterday and today. Sorry to neglect to put that in.
And Spaz: flippant as that excerpt is, given that it's spoken by someone obviously ranting while high on life, it is nevertheless, imho, true to some degree.
A bit reductionist, perhaps, but essentially true.
Upon reading the rest of your post..leviathan3kAugust 7 2008, 01:52:25 UTC
I very much see the point of having to look at an entire population or community for its behavioral characteristics.
I think of the ant and the ant colony. A single ant is relatively quite weak and unintelligent. It carries simple instructions around in its head, but taken as a community, these little insects can tear apart a much larger creature, or create a nest taller than a human.
I also certainly see the point in applying this idea to any alien lifeforms. We don't know what other paths could lead to intelligence, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that something we'd consider sentient actually consists of many smaller entities. Even we consist of much smaller interdependent entities in cells, not all of which even share the same set of DNA.
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And Spaz: flippant as that excerpt is, given that it's spoken by someone obviously ranting while high on life, it is nevertheless, imho, true to some degree.
A bit reductionist, perhaps, but essentially true.
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I think of the ant and the ant colony. A single ant is relatively quite weak and unintelligent. It carries simple instructions around in its head, but taken as a community, these little insects can tear apart a much larger creature, or create a nest taller than a human.
I also certainly see the point in applying this idea to any alien lifeforms. We don't know what other paths could lead to intelligence, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that something we'd consider sentient actually consists of many smaller entities. Even we consist of much smaller interdependent entities in cells, not all of which even share the same set of DNA.
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