by
Rod___
»
20.02.2016, 1:53
stardaisy wrote: are you really dreaming? or just think that you are dreaming?
Now there's a stumper. Shrug. If that was on a test...
blew that one. Or maybe I just
dreamed that I took that test?

I follow the world of physics and (blankity-blank censored), you'd think some of the theoreticians were dreaming in technicolor while flat-out hammered on LSD. Like...it's all a projection from the two-dimensional outer boundary of the expanding universe...just as a black hole carefully keeps all its information on the event horizon, like a good librarian, so no book ever gets lost, despite they're all VAPORATING. Are you dreaming this, or am I? Or have the high-brow physicists so
screwed reality that no one will ever sort it out now? I dream of a time when things made sense, and Humpty Dumpty was
one egg, instead of scrambled and blowed up. How 'bout you?

From reading in science magazines about how the brain operates...I learned something quite fascinating recently. How
neurons work...together...collectively...bears a strong resemblance to
ant colony behavior.
No ant is in charge. No ant ever gives an order to another. Yet they work together, collectively, extremely efficiently.
I see that very interesting scientific finding as further reason to reject the hierarchal, pyramid system humans devised long ago. Our so-called 'leadership' system does not work well, as the current geopolitical chaos and growing environmental problems attest.
I said: I think Asian carp are smarter than humans. But I can reasonably up that to
ants are smarter than humans. They have a better system. Whether it's ants or our own neurons...it's the same operating system. But that isn't the one at play in politics, geopolitics and that crap.
Ant behavior depends on (1) the
frequency of contact with others and (2) odors exchanged...principally from antenna contact. Their tiny brains can distinguish between
several hundred different scents. To my mind, that implies
a fairly substantial language. In 1930, Charles Ogden came up with Basic English, which was an 850 word list. Anyone who knows those few hundred words knows most of it. So imagine a molecular language that has about half as many words, as Basic English. That's Ant language.
Scents trigger algorithms in their little minds that have been built up over millions of years. I can see it in computer terms...as raw data and what data can cause to happen. For example, if the data is greater than or less than some value...or equal to some value...that's one example of nested logic. Data can control a program, in terms of how it operates.
In the same way...in the human brain...the
number of electrical signals from other neurons - (analogous to contacts with other ants) - triggers a response, or output - or not. Output depends on stimulus plus each neuron's built-in algorithms...constructed from molecules...guided by DNA. Such elaborate machinery...but all based on very
simple principles. Today it's known that cells are
molecular machines.
In neurons, one input alone may not trigger a response...but several inputs together do trigger a response. In the same way...isolated contact with an ant bearing a certain scent may not trigger a response, in a particular ant...but repeated contact with ants bearing that scent will alter its behavior.
Am I dreaming...that
ants have minds? Is this post evidence of yet another disorder...of the myriad I have? Let me tell you...science magazines can really mess with your mind. To the point where...shrug shrug shrug shrug.... Do you know you're dreaming when you're dreaming? What if in your dream, the person you are dreaming you are...is dreaming? A dream within a dream. Is that messed up or what?
Somehow our
primitive ant minds manage to perform sophisticated tasks, like imagining, or imagining while asleep...which we call dreaming. I say primitive ant minds because...none of it is appreciably more complex than what goes on in the mind of an ant, at the root level. It's just the number of cells in our brains is enormously greater. So that allows much greater complexity. Except for the people who are dumb as ducks...of course.
In many-to-one - many inputs equal one output - right there you have voting...filtering...and the basis for how very simple gives rise to complex. The simple being a chemical change in the gap between cells. Flood the gap with ions....current flows.
Brain asleep...
dreaming...I think of as some of the filters are turned off. So...dreams can be
quite bizarre. As an adolescent/young teen...my dreams were occasionally
right off the Cracker scale. One was...me trapped in a
huge rail yard (with hundreds of tracks)...truly the rail yard from Hell...lotta trains moving in it, of course...it was night...dark...and I was being chased there by two males, both carrying spears...and hurling them at me. A father and son, no less. Not people I knew. Strangers. I recall, the son wasn't so much into it...but the dad was. Freud? WTF???? As an adult...my dreams are more infrequent and humdrum. Boring.
stardaisy wrote: Slumberland is a peaceful place
Yes, agreed. Generally for me too. Thankfully, the spear-chuckers never showed up again. On the positive side...they missed. Because I prudently hid behind a rail car.