Thanks for the link, I enjoyed listening to Alison Gopnik (who is smarter than all her brothers). The sound was so bad on the original file I watched, that I must have skipped over the "qualia" references from some other lecturer, but then again I can only really apprehend that concept when playing around inside a cardboard box.

- L.M. 12-04-2005 9:33 pm

Gopnik was great! I love how she comes out all schoolmarmish and dressed like Laverne and Shirley, talking about children, oooh the children...and then it turns she's thinking about these children as robots we might send to Mars! And then in the Q&A she gets into gender-based banter with Christoph Koch and wipes the floor with him. hah.

It was Koch who mentioned qualia. He said something like, "I'm not going to talk about qualia." He also said this, "Neurons, as you may know, talk to each other using individual pulses..dit, dit-dit-dit, dit, dit, dit-dit, dit... You can put them on an audio monitor and you can actually listen to them...""
- sally mckay 12-04-2005 10:14 pm

Haven't listened but it's timely: David Lynch on Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain with those What the Bleep guys. There was a lot of qualia--or something--in Eraserhead.
- tom moody 12-05-2005 5:36 am

Thanks for the link, am checking it out now. But What the Bleep was baaaaaaaaaaaad.

update: David Lynch has foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. He's big into "diving within." Yike.

- sally mckay 12-05-2005 6:04 am

I only got as far as Skeptical Dude's intro to the Debunking Conference but he trashed What the-- pretty thoroughly. Neurological effects on a whole different order of magnitude from quantum effects? Who knew?
- tom moody 12-05-2005 6:14 am

Are you saying Lynch journeys into the interior?
- tom moody 12-05-2005 6:16 am

As an artist I should stop joking and say that only *we* have the power to bend space and time with our minds.
- tom moody 12-05-2005 6:17 am

my favourite bit of badness in that movie is that they have a bunch of talking head expert types going on about how the Uncertaintly Principle proves that you can control reality with your mind, but they don't tell you who they are til you get to the end credits. Turns out one of them is a chiropractor, and another is channelling some ancient spirit.
- sally mckay 12-05-2005 6:20 am

Yes, I believe he used those exact words "Journey Into the Interior." Its such a bizarre coincidence - must be parallel universes overlapping or maybe the wave function on this blog collapsed and opened a wormhole and now we're all telekinetic.
- sally mckay 12-05-2005 6:21 am

oh yeah and we can travel backwards through time too.
- sally mckay 12-05-2005 6:22 am

I think Lynch is a bit like John Nash, who said he had to trust the hallucinatory spirits that were deviling him because they came from the same place where he got his mathematical insights. Lynch's unconscious has been *very* good to him. I do kind of forgive an artist believing in extraordinary powers of the mind.
- tom moody 12-05-2005 6:36 am

I am no longer just agreeing with your exchange, I am actually thinking it simultaneously with your thinking of it. (but at a higher elevation because I tend to soar)

I would have mentioned this sooner but I was eating a bag of cheetos, and wanted to wash my hands before I used my keyboard.
- L.M. 12-05-2005 6:44 am

"I do kind of forgive an artist believing in extraordinary powers of the mind."

Not me. I should be kinder, since I'm prey to the same follies. I do believe I can control the world with my thoughts - I just don't think anybody else can. Speaking of which...don't say "cheetos"! Now I gotta go out and buy a bag. damn.

- sally mckay 12-07-2005 7:35 pm