An idea worth censoring: 'The Science Delusion'

Originally posted by ImaFungi
this is the only real information regarding telepathy I have watched, and there are 2 parts, i didnt even make it all the way through admittedly. The experiments he mentions and results are interesting.

That is an extremely interesting video actually, some of the experiments discussed in part 2 are exceptionally impressive. For some of the telepathy experiments he mentions that his subjects were isolated in electromagnetically shielded rooms. It would seem that most of this phenomena actually relates to quantum mechanics rather than basic electromagnetic activity. To be honest I never really put much stock in the electromagnetic theory of telepathy, but it's still important to understand the brain does emit EM waves which can be picked up and interpreted, even by technological devices such as the ones used in the experiment to reconstruct images and video from brain waves. I mean there's probably an aspect to telepathy which involves electromagnetic signals but a quantum phenomena probably creates the bulk of the effect. And when it comes to how our brains can sense near-future events, the only plausible theory, as I mentioned earlier, is one involving a quantum explanation.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


I think quantum material has electromagnetic properties. So if you say its not a phenomenon of EM field, instead it is a quantum phenomenon, what do you mean by this? That quantum particles leave the brain and travel through space without affected the EM field, and enter into someones head and is interpreted as the same signal that left the persons head?

I have not done much research into neurology, but I would be interested to know if its thought or known, if the minds information, memories and thoughts, are stored and formed analog or digitally. are memories like photos and videos, ingrained in material and stored, to later be projected, or are memories replicas, some material or digital computation in the brain neatly stores coded and symbolic data which represents the data retrieved through the senses. Its amazing how I can recall so many memories just at the snap of a finger, so many thoughts and information. How do I use this system of memory though, how do I just snap my fingers and remember extreme details of a specific day many years ago?

maybe also there is a relation between telepathy and language. Because noone can make sure everyone grows through life building themselves the same imagination and thought capabilities and pictorial memory and internal aesthetics, maybe we do all store language the same way, my words = the words you are reading right now and know, so if I think 'dog', but i am also saying the word, and thinking of the language along with the image, maybe it is the language which can be interpreted and evoked the imagery of a dog in another person.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Energy = clustered reactionary group of God's word(energy that shares the same grouped procedure)
Concepts = Stored Instructions/memory of said reactionary cluster
Instructions = Information used to change concepts(moves instantly)
All of the above = different forms of God's word

What if information, as I described, travels instantly and all we really measure is different energy forms' reaction/reaction time to receiving the information.

It will allow for everything including Mossbridge effect, if thats okay to call it that, and it will account for quantum entanglement. (Everything must be one subject or the equation will not balance.)

...and I hope you guys do not mind me jumping in to your convo.

eta: better to think that everything has already happen, and what we experience is just reaction to what has already happen. It is a learning process. We must learn to have faith. When you finally get that it's all to learn to have faith, you will laugh and laugh. All these things are like signs.

#why is religion such a taboo?

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
I already proved to Bedlam that our brains emit EM waves due to the electrical firing of neurons on the last page, but he chose to ignore my comment and continue spreading ignorance. The chemical signals associated with brain activity are extremely slow compared to the electrical signals. Most of the brain activity is an electrical process.

Neurons communicate to each other through the exchange of chemical packets, called neurotransmitters. They do not communicate by electrical signals. At all. When the neuron fires, a wave of depolarization moves down the axon, but it is not a current flow down the axon. It's an exchange of ions across the membrane, at right angles to the axon's length. It's not like neurons are wires. Most of the brain activity is NOT electrical. And the charge redistribution you get during a depolarization wave is purely chemical - it's sodium, calcium and potassium ions streaming through little valves called ion channels in the walls of the axon.

Do you guys ever, say, pick up a book on basic anatomy and read the neuron chapter, instead of looking for keywords on wikipedia?

Radio waves and brain waves are both forms of electromagnetic radiation—
engineering.mit.edu...

Right. Now, you have to understand, this is dumbed down for kids in grade school. It's not a physics or engineering level response. So if you're trying to extend it there, you have to understand who it was aimed at, and where it's not quite thorough.

So let's think about your 'psi as radio' theory. How many neurons do you think you have? It's thought to be about 100,000 million (100 American billions). You don't have one neuron per thought or something. Any single thought will involve millions of neurons, all firing at odd times. Perception of sensory input certainly does, and I wouldn't expect a thought to be less complex. These neurons are lined up every which direction.

Worse, the electrical activity involved with a neuron is limited to propagation of ions across the wall of the axon, not down it, so any motion of charge carriers is very short - the depth of the cell membrane - and before and after the ion channel opens, the motion is chaotic and doesn't contribute to any radio emission at all.

Now, considering what you DO get, it's very limited - neurons don't have amps of charge carrier motion - and it's short, the depth of a cell membrane, so you have very little chance to have them lined up in the way you'd need to launch a radio emission. They're also immersed in a conductive solution, so any emission you DO get is going to be dissipated as heat.

Next, it's one of those pesky rules that you have to have an antenna that's somewhere near the wavelength you're trying to emit, a lot less or a lot more length and you get crappy emission. In fact, if you have an electrically very short antenna, you get no e and h field coupling at all and you do not radiate. You only get near field activity.

You'll note in your cite that they do not talk about radio waves when they discuss detecting them- they say they're using a SQUID, and they relate the brain activity to the earth's magnetic field. That's because they're only able to pick up the near field components, the h field to be specific, and even then they say it's 1e-9 of the Earth's field, which is pretty small anyway.

There is a very significant difference in saying that the brain generates EM signals and generating a propagating radio wave. You produce unreadably small e fields and nearly unreadable h-fields, but you do not make radio signals - the antenna for a 10hz signal would be thousands of km long. The width of a cell membrane does not really correspond well to a few thousand km.

More, each neuron, being all twisty and not aimed together in any way, would, if it emitted anything you could detect, do so in all different directions. The phenomenon you see as a 'brain wave' is a sort of blender-food combo of all the neuron activity lumped together. To derive the info that was added together in a dogs-breakfast wave like that is like saying you can stand outside a football pitch and separate all the conversations that are making up the roar. I can tell when someone's got the ball by the rise in the screams but I can't tell you that Joe is talking to Fred about his hot date. The resulting data you get from 'brain waves' is limited in detail.

As a rational comparison, consider Sanguine, Seafarer, and HAARP:

Project ELF had an antenna network with segments covering about 14 miles in length, with one 28 mile long antenna. It had an absolutely HUGE matching network, you could walk through the coil, and with several megawatts of input power, managed on a good day to put out about 6W of radiated power.

Think about that. Millions in, 6 out, and a 14 mile long antenna.

HAARP uses a swath of electrojet several km long, and using the current in the electrojet plus about 1.8MW of emitted power, they can get maybe 30W out on a good night.

You can see the really awful efficiency in radiating something in the 10-100 Hz range, and that's with a far less awful but still bad antenna. With an even crappier antenna like a neuron membrane wall, which is more butt-awful by orders and orders of magnitude, and near zero input power, your radiated power will set a new scale in 10E-(something really big).

Originally posted by Bedlam

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
I already proved to Bedlam that our brains emit EM waves due to the electrical firing of neurons on the last page, but he chose to ignore my comment and continue spreading ignorance. The chemical signals associated with brain activity are extremely slow compared to the electrical signals. Most of the brain activity is an electrical process.

Neurons communicate to each other through the exchange of chemical packets, called neurotransmitters. They do not communicate by electrical signals. At all.

Actually sometimes they do, but the chemical synapse dominates.

When the neuron fires, a wave of depolarization moves down the axon, but it is not a current flow down the axon. It's an exchange of ions across the membrane, at right angles to the axon's length. It's not like neurons are wires. Most of the brain activity is NOT electrical. And the charge redistribution you get during a depolarization wave is purely chemical - it's sodium, calcium and potassium ions streaming through little valves called ion channels in the walls of the axon.

Do you guys ever, say, pick up a book on basic anatomy and read the neuron chapter, instead of looking for keywords on wikipedia?

Sorry.

en.wikipedia.org...

More, each neuron, being all twisty and not aimed together in any way, would, if it emitted anything you could detect, do so in all different directions. The phenomenon you see as a 'brain wave' is a sort of blender-food combo of all the neuron activity lumped together. To derive the info that was added together in a dogs-breakfast wave like that is like saying you can stand outside a football pitch and separate all the conversations that are making up the roar. I can tell when someone's got the ball by the rise in the screams but I can't tell you that Joe is talking to Fred about his hot date. The resulting data you get from 'brain waves' is limited in detail.

Exactly right. Coherent motion causing collective firing of neurons and brainwaves is known as a "seizure" and associated with loss of consciousness. Neurons are organized though in various 'columns' so there is some geometric consistency alignment at a mesoscale (like magnetic domains) though not at a global scale.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Or it potentially doesnt have to be so specific as that with something like a dog, but even the sensing of "vibes" and emotions could potentially be sent through brainwaves

There were experiments done back in 2011 where scientists have been able to reconstruct images and video from brain waves. The reconstructions are a bit blurry but still the quality is quite mind blowing when one considers the abstract nature of thought.

The reconstructions are from functional MRI which is not measuring "brain waves" but metabolic activity directly in the brain.

The detectors for E&M, EEG and MEG are less precise and do not at all measure the far radiation field.

They require sensitive devices to be placed right on, or next to the skull. The MEG machines are pretty impressive, requiring cryogenically cooled (very expensive Helium I think not just liquid nitrogen temp) sensors, very close to the skull. This is in a highly magnetically shielded room. It's sufficiently sensitive that a truck driving a couple hundred feet away can mess things up.

reply to post by Bedlam


Dude what ever... do you realize how extremely slow the brain would process information if it were mostly a chemical process? Our eyes collect information using a photoelectric effect to send electrical signals to our brain. Do you realize how poor our vision would be if this was done as a chemical process? Regardless of everything you just said I'm still no where near convinced the majority of brain activity is a chemical process. I've built artificial neural networks which are supposed to be based on the way neurons handle electrical signals, and it's still no where near as fast as a human brain. Imagine if our PC's processed information using chemical reactions. We'd be here for hours just multiplying two large numbers. Nothing you say will convince me the majority of brain activity happens as a chemical process because it simply doesn't make sense when you consider the speed at which the brain functions and the speed at which chemical reactions happen.

EDIT: ok I just took the time to look deeper into this and the only real place where the chemical reaction dominates is when signals are sent through the synaptic space between neurons. I find it hard to believe that the processing of information in our brains is limited to the speed at which these chemical neurotransmitters work but the fact remains most of the process happens as an electrical process until the neurotransmitters are required to send information between neurons.

Neurons convey information by transmitting messages to other neurons or other types of cells, such as muscles. The following discussion focuses on how one neuron communicates with another neuron. Neurons employ electrical signals to relay information from one part of the neuron to another. The neuron converts the electrical signal to a chemical signal in order to pass the information to another neuron. The target neuron then converts the message back to an electrical impulse to continue the process.

Within a single neuron, information is conducted via electrical signaling. When a neuron is stimulated, an electrical impulse, called an action potential, moves along the neuron axon.5 Action potentials enable signals to travel very rapidly along the neuron fiber. Action potentials last less than 2 milliseconds (1 millisecond = 0.001 second), and the fastest action potentials can travel the length of a football field in 1 second. Action potentials result from the flow of ions across the neuronal cell membrane. Neurons, like all cells, maintain a balance of ions inside the cell that differs from the balance outside the cell. This uneven distribution of ions creates an electrical potential across the cell membrane. This is called the resting membrane potential.

Electrical signals carry information within a single neuron. Communication between neurons (with a few exceptions in mammals) is a chemical process. When the neuron is stimulated, the electrical signal (action potential) travels down the axon to the axon terminals. When the electrical signal reaches the end of the axon, it triggers a series of chemical changes in the axon terminal. Calcium ions (Ca++) flow into the axon terminal, which then initiates the release of neurotransmitters. A neurotransmitter is a molecule that is released from a neuron to relay information to another cell. Neurotransmitter molecules are stored in membranous sacs called vesicles in the axon terminal. Each vesicle contains thousands of molecules of a given neurotransmitter. For neurons to release their neurotransmitter, the vesicles fuse with the neuronal membrane and then release their contents, the neurotransmitter, via exocytosis. The neurotransmitter molecules are released into the synaptic space and diffuse across the synaptic space to the postsynaptic neuron. A neurotransmitter molecule can then bind to a special receptor on the membrane of the postsynaptic neuron.

science.education.nih.gov...

There is a very significant difference in saying that the brain generates EM signals and generating a propagating radio wave. You produce unreadably small e fields and nearly unreadable h-fields, but you do not make radio signals - the antenna for a 10hz signal would be thousands of km long. The width of a cell membrane does not really correspond well to a few thousand km.

I have not once stated the brain emits radio waves, I mentioned radio waves once as an example of EM waves that we use to transmit signals. Our satellites transmit signals to Earth using yet another frequency of EM waves. There are many types of EM waves which can be used to transmit signals, it doesn't need to be the radio frequency for it to work. And if you bothered to read my previous post you would know I don't really believe in the electromagnetic theory of telepathy, I believe it's some sort of subtle quantum phenomena perhaps related to entanglement. I was simply mentioning it as one possible explanation for how we can pick up on the thoughts of other people. The brain waves we emit are not too weak to pick up despite what you claim, although they would be extremely difficult to interpret due to the complex and chaotic structure of the brain, I wont argue with that.

Tegmark was wrong because his data was flawed and effectively he applied reaction time to physical discomfort as the extent/speed of brain activity. The problem being this has nothing to do with actual reaction time in the brain.

Brain
Human brain cells fire electrical impulses to communicate with one another. Ion channels located in the membranes, some with calcium and some with potassium, work in sync to deliver messages throughout the brain.

Heart
Electrical impulses control the muscles that create the pumping motion in a person's heart. The sinus node is a section in the right upper heart chamber where the impulses are initiated. The electrical signals travel across the heart, causing the muscles to contract and pump blood throughout the body. When the impulses are interrupted, the condition is called bradycardia.

Maintenance
Electrolytes are minerals stored in the blood that carry electrical charges. If there is an imbalance of electrolytes, disruptions in electrical impulses can occur. Electrolyte balance can be maintained by drinking water, especially during times of heavy sweating. A lack of blood can also produce electrical irregularities in the body
Read more: Electrical Activity of the Human Body | eHow.com www.ehow.com...

Source

Any thoughts?

reply to post by mbkennel


A gap junction is still not like a wired connection, it's a ion channel that propagates the depolarization wave directly. The argument had been made that brains transmit propagating radio waves because electrons were running around in brains like wiring in a computer, it doesn't work that way.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Actually, neurons are pretty slow. It's why your eyes and ears reduce the data to symbols on the spot. You can't send the data fast enough otherwise.

reply to post by Bedlam


Do the ears and eyes change shape because the brain has told them to, or will they do this on their own?

e.g. the ears perk up and eyes dilate

'The TED situation has reached a sort of stable plateau with the extended “debate” times and without any further input from the anonymous science board which sprang into action to originally denounce Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock’s talks. Craig Weiler continues his detailed coverage of the proceedings.'

weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com...



'In an ironic twist to TED’s reaction to Rupert Sheldrake’s statement that the Speed of Light may not be constant, Science Daily reports on two upcoming peer reviewed papers that may support this idea.'

www.sciencedaily.com...

reply to post by BlueMule


Yeah exactly... I was just gonna post this article, and I saw your post..

Speed of Light May Not Be Fixed, Scientists Suggest (science daily)

That's already one of the assumptions that Sheldrake was challenging, that turns out he was right. He's probably right on all of them. Basically he doesn't even state anything. He simply asks, and he does have at least some form of evidence to support the right to question.

Why is it that people are so resistant to questioning in the first place? Isn't that what science is supposed to be about? If you're not allowed to ask something, you've already gone in the are of dogmatism. Ironically, these same people who hate on religious people for being dogmatic are themselves equally (if not more) dogmatic regarding the general scientific consensus.

All Sheldrake does is take these assumptions of science, and questions them, and everyone turns ape#. Ironically, by those actions, these people are expressing themselves in the exact way that Sheldrake says people are behaving regarding science. They are indirectly and unknowingly supporting him with their actions, even though their mouth (or fingers) say something else. It's quite sad actually, and I feel really ashamed to be human sometimes, because I am the same species who's so willing to conduct violence just because someone asks questions that they don't like...

Anyone who refuses to read his book, or is 'not interested', but has time to read stuff from people like Dawkins, will automatically fall into the category of closed-minded. I don't mean it as an insult. It's just that it indicates that you are not open to important questions, which means you will hamper progress. You are like the ones who were yelling that there would be no food if there were no slaves to work for the rich. You are like the ones who were yelling that flying is impossible. It has always been the people who were considered crazy, that changed the world for the better.

Also this whole 'pseudoscience' thing is simply another label to dismiss something based on ridicule, rather than sound arguments. Funny how people here were constantly ranting about strawman arguments blah blah, but then revert to appeal to ridicule as their own argument. Pot kettle much. In any case, going back to pseudo stuff, plate tectonics was at a time considered pseudo science. Just because something is labeled that, doesn't mean you should dismiss it. Stop being a goddamn sheeple, and do your own research as to what makes sense or not, and stop gobbling down whatever the media spoonfeeds you. Use the brain you think you have rather than repeating everything everyone else is saying. And when there are people asking questions, you should be supporting them, not ridiculing them.

reply to post by Bedlam

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: How does the brain produce electricity?
Area: Neuroscience
Posted By: Michael Onken, WashU
Date: Fri Nov 21 21:54:32 1997
Area of science: Neuroscience
ID: 878315793.Ns
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message:
ADMIN NOTE: We received two excellent answers to this question nearly simultaneously. Both of them appear below.


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Answer 1:
Electricity, particuarly in the form of nerve impulses called action potentials, is the main mechanism of signalling within the central nervous system. It works because the brain (and the body as a whole) contains a lot of charged molecules such as Na+, K+, Ca2+, Cl- etc. Membranes such as those which surround cells do not readily let charged particles across them. Membranes do however contain two important types of proteins, ion channels and transporters.

Transporters use stored energy in order to actively transport particular ions across membranes in particular directions, against the concentration gradient. This enables there to be much more of e.g. K+ on one side of a membrane than the other. This creates both a chemical (more potassium on one side) and electrical (more positive charges on one side) gradient across the membrane. The ionic difference means that cells normally exist with a difference in voltage across the membrane (a potential gradient). The electro-chemical gradient is the basis of nerve cell signaling, because it is basically potential energy.

When a nerve cell receives a stimulus, it responds by opening some of its ion channels. These are usually relatively selective for some types of charged molecules e.g. K+ can pass through them but Na+ can't. Opening of these channels allows e.g. K+ to flow across the membrane down its electrochemical gradient. This results in a change in the potential gradient across the membrane. Normally neurons have a potential gradient of e.g. -70 mV between inside the cell and outside. Opening of K+ channels results in a rapid change in this, rapidly causing the potential gradient to be positive. This in turn causes some potential-sensitive ion channels to open e.g. Na+ channels. The flow of Na+, which transporters maintain at high levels on the opposite side of the membrane from K+, returns the potential gradient towards normal.

So, transporters create electrical gradients, which are used by nerve cell ion channels to create rapid, transient changes in potential, resulting in what we call action potentials. Action potentials travel along nerve cells as channels consecutively open and close along the length of the nerve axon. At the end of the cell, the change in potential causes the opening of ion channels selective for Ca2+. Elevated levels of Ca2+ inside the cell causes it to release molecules into the synapse that initiate signals in other cells. This is how electricity is basically the mechanism by which we think!

Peter Simpson, Postdoctoral Fellow

Source

Further reading





Can you count the amount of Neurons in a thought do you see the separation in thinking about a particular thing?? You really have no idea as to what you are talking about.

Now what were you saying?

You are a realist?

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


in the average human thoughts occur in about 300 milliseconds (300 millionth of a second), but when it comes of geniuses it is way faster.

300 milliseconds is the time it takes for the average person to recognize something.

Bedlam should not quit his day job

reply to post by Kashai


I assume you're saying that our minds, memories, thoughts, basically everything, is stored in our brains. Correct? If so.. Explain something simple to me. People have hit their heads, and due to damage to their brain, they lose memories. In this case, the view that memories are in there, makes sense. You could say, the storage device got damaged, and the data was lost. However, there have been a lot of cases, where the memory slowly returns over time. If they are stored in the brain, and the brain got damaged, how exactly are the memories restored? Care to explain how that fits the materialistic paradigm? It's the equivalent of dropping your laptop and that damaged your hard drive so windows has trouble booting properly, and over time it starts working better on its own.

reply to post by Kashai


And if you understood what I said, you'd understand this is the long form but the same answer. You'll note that they're discussing ion flow through the membrane, not electron flow down the axon. The last sentence is dumbed down for you. Electrical fields cause ion channels to fire but "electricity" does not flow down the neuron.

Originally posted by Kashai
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

in the average human thoughts occur in about 300 milliseconds (300 millionth of a second), but when it comes of geniuses it is way faster.

300 milliseconds is the time it takes for the average person to recognize something.

Bedlam should not quit his day job

edit on 29-3-2013 by Kashai because: added content

So, tell me...what's the firing rate for an average neuron in the brain? The brain does everything in massive parallelism. You go read up on the cochlea, when you understand how it works (hint: you'll need to understand Fourier analysis) you'll understand how your brain manages wonderful tricks of perception with very slow hardware.

reply to post by Kashai


300 milliseconds is 300 thousandths of a second. You're only three orders of magnitude off.