Emoto’s “experiments” should not be mistaken for science, nor should his “doctorate” be mistaken for an actual degree. It’s from the Open International University for Alternative Medicne in Mumbai, India, a diploma mill for quacks that has been shut down.
In case you try the “experiment” and coincidentally get the same results Emoto claims to have gotten, there is a rational explanation:
https://foodretro.com/debunking-the-rice-experiment/
^^^^ Notice the bit about the sequencing described in the 8th paragraph giving a very good reason why the last jar to be filled (and the one relegated to being insulted) might get more contaminated than the ones filled prior to it.
This guy did the experiment and got the opposite results. His neglected jar did the best when it should have done the worst:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/a-grain-of-truth-recreating-dr-emotos-rice-experiment/
The Wikipedia page on Emoto will give you more information about him. Basically, he’s a charlatan. James Randi invited him to do the experiment under controlled conditions but Emoto declined to answer. That’s always the way it is with these guys, they won’t do it in front of people who know actual science.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto
“Science literacy will inoculate you against the charlatans who would take advantage of your ignorance.” Neil DeGrasse Tyson
I’d say honestly if there’s a universal consciousness it could really use some ADHD medication.
@stormydaycuddle lol
Just gonna drop this here. I'll let people smarter and with a better grasp on the laws of physics and applied mathematics, than Tesla refute his thoughts on the subject. 😅
Tesla was an electrical engineer, wasn't he?
I get the it, though. I like to drop quotes from Shigeru Miyamoto whenever people talk about meteorology. He's such an intelligent man.
What profound insight.
To be clear: I am being ridiculous. Shigeru Miyamoto is a clever man, but he's a video game designer. Not a meteorologist. And that quote is fake. The point being: really smart people are usually really smart in one or two particular fields. Their being insightful geniuses only applies to their area(s) of expertise. If this thread were about electrical engineering, then using Tesla as a sort of gatekeeper would sort of make sense. This is not a thread about electrical engineering. Dropping Tesla into this conversation is both hilarious and ridiculous.
@MrPaul
Is it possible to know if a thing or organism is conscious if you are not yourself that thing or organism?
Yes. Consciousness affects behavior. If someone trips over a stool, for instance, that's evidence that they weren't conscious of it—if they step around it, that's evidence that they were.
And, of course, you can always monitor brain function.
@MCcuddles2
Tesla was a brilliant electrical engineer. That was his area of expertise. His understanding of other things was less concrete. To quote from his autobiography:
The sun rays, when periodically intercepted, would cause blows of such force on my brain that they would stun me.
Now, as a photosensitive, I understand how someone who has never studied light might think that was happening. But no—light does not actually hit you in the brain, walking under a bridge does not actually put "crushing pressure on the skull," and there is no means by which a human can "detect the presence of an object at a distance of twelve feet by a peculiar creepy sensation on the forehead."
Tesla had his area of expertise. Physics was clearly not it.
I don't want to accept anything without an evidence as well, however to me that evidence could be a proven test at a scientific lab or the ones that are true to my experience.
The most common term that we use every day like “Love” could only be personally experienced and don’t think any number of scientists could accurately measure it in a lab or provide an evidence.
It’s a possibility that the word Consciousness interpreted differently across the world. To me Consciousness is not just mental alertness rather a subtler platform on which Intelligence, Mental alertness, Emotions and memory or experienced or developed.
@vivlnnw: This is off topic, so I'm putting it in a spoiler.
“Love” could only be personally experienced and don’t think any number of sentients could accurately measure it in a lab or provide an evidence.
You may be interested in this article.
This bit is on topic, so I'm not spoilering it.
Those are also products of a physical brain with neural connections. Intelligence, memory, emotion, and awareness all require a functioning brain.
That sack of electrified meat is your very first "subtle platform" which all the rest rely on.
@DaringSprinter
I don't have a medical background to comment on brain functions, however I use to be a firm believer that everything is created in the brain including the Consciousness and it goes off at the time of death something like turning off a computer.
However now (probably due to reading certain books or by personal experience or by both) I feel there is much more to that, I don't have any evidence to show but wanted to remain open to the possibility of understanding more.
@vivlnnw: I see. Personally, I prefer to rely on the evidence provided by medical experts—personal experience and "certain books" strike me as markedly less dependable—but it's certainly your choice whether to believe things based on reliable evidence or not.
Babi I am curious if you have tried the experiment yourself though. Cause it worked when I did it and I couldn’t believe it, really blew my mind and made it real for me. Everyone is too lazy to try it, yet wants to judge it. I’m like you can prove your consciousness can effect the world around you at home with some water and rice, that’s pretty dope, as soon as I heard of it I had to try it, I just can’t believe how many people are like “oh that’s interesting” but won’t give it a go. Like I am telling you you can prove to yourself you have super powers, how can you not even test it. Can’t judge what you haven’t tried. Have done it with preschoolers and plants. Talking hate to one, love to the other, and neutral (no energy) to the control subject. My rice that got no attention was almost as bad as the hate rice in the end. Which is a demonstration of why the silent treatment is so cruel. That’s why some people seek out getting negative attention over no attention at all. Love is necessary. How did my love rice only get one spec of mold on it over the course of a month while the others got nasty, the hate rice at a much faster rate in a matter of days. Also if our bodies are made of 70 something percent water, and someone receives love vibration while cuddling, imagine the effect that has. Make it real, try it, really give it a good go
@Babichev: It is amazing how people can be given proof that an experiment is faulty and still base their beliefs on the results of it.
This is why we can't have nice things.
And... waitwaitwait, dear lord....
Have done it with preschoolers and plants. Talking hate to one, love to the other, and neutral (no energy) to the control subject.
She's talked hate to a preschooler? Deliberately picked one out to verbally abuse?
One time, when I was a kid, I tried really hard to move things with my mind. Amazingly, I was able to get a broom to fall over. This meant, of course, that I was telekinetic. I've kept this ability to myself, however, as I don't feel such a power should be openly known—others might find that they have the skill as well, and use it for evil.
I don't care what anyone says: telekinesis is real. Because I have experienced it myself. All those egghead scientists who have conducted studies and found that the evidence for telekinesis is severely lacking? Ha.
This is a joke. This joke is meant to illustrate the fact that personal experience means basically nothing. The human mind is adept at fabricating all sorts of nonsense, usually in an attempt to feel good, or unique. This is why peer review is so damn important. Eliminating biases—yours included—is absolutely critical in understanding how the world and its inhabitants function.
Again, personal experience is practically worthless when it comes to figuring out pretty much anything on a concrete level.
I really can't stress this enough: your personal experiences mean almost nothing when it comes to discerning truths about virtually any subject. In discussions with rational human beings about any given topic, your personal experiences are the equivalent of yelling "Hey look at me! Look at me!" and then violently defecating on the floor, before disrobing completely and dancing around while imitating the metallic shriek of a train struggling to come to an unexpected halt, colliding with eighteen school buses, and the ensuing cacophony of agony and horror.
It only becomes conscious when it is being observed, within your mind.
Thank you everyone for your contributions to this discussion.
Observing the responses, I believe we are not all defining consciousness similarly.
My personal definition of consciousness is:
Being aware of being aware. It is the silent space where no thoughts are present. It is the observer of one’s own thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
I distinguish it from stimulus-response, and from biological processes.
I think a fundamental problem is that we don’t have a way to measure this definition of consciousness directly, only the derivatives of it.
Observe a tree. It is alive. It responds to the environment. It has been shown to care for its seedlings by diverting resources through roots to them. Does it possess consciousness? I do not know, and I’m suggesting that there is no way to know.
However, one can define consciousness differently, in such a way as to make it easier to divide that which exists into conscious or not.
How do you define consciousness?
@DaringSprinter I am not here to market anything just sharing my prespective and eager to know others, I beleive that's the way to know more on this less explored subject. If you have any articles from medical experts to share please do, that will be great.
All,
We might not necessarily be agreeing to everying posted here and can challenge them. However if we tend to ridicule that might discourage other from posting. Anyway continue your great discussions bye from this thread for now!
Now, as a photosentive[sic], I understand how someone who has never studied lite[sic] might think that was happening. But no—light does not actually hit you in the brain, walking under a brige[sic] does not actually put "crushing pressure on the skul[sic]," and there is no mean[sic] by which a human can "detect the presence of an object at a distance of twellve[sic] feet by a peculiar creepy sentation[sic] on the forehead."
Lmao, 😅🤣😂 did you just suggest that the father of AC current and electromagnetism didn't understand light? You can't be this dense? (But i suspect this might be the case 🤣).
Visible light is a particular form of the electromagnetic spectrum.
And your area of expertise is clearly physics? 🤣
Tesla was a brilliant electrical engineer. That was his area of expertise
Lmao, 🤣 electrical engineering is just the applied physics of electrons and elctromagnetic phenomenon.
I understand that physics isn't your strong suit(clearly 😆). I could very slowly explain things to you at pace that may be a little more palatable to your, erm, lower capacity and deficient faculties, but I have neither the time or inclination.
I, instead, am watching the dunning krueger effect play out here and chuckling to myself as I imagine you and hobgoblin having a conversation with Tesla and feeling intellectually superior to him because he doesn't subscribe to your, erm cute, view of the world. 🤣😂
Also, out off curiosity do you and goblin always follow each other around forums parroting the same talking points?
Do you ever disagree? Or are you incapabable of free will? Is it like an abusive partnership where goblin can't have his own thoughts? Are you one entity, like some kind of awkward and hillariously wrong, borg cube?
This is a personal attack. Do not do it again. - Babichev
@SpooniesBack You may BELIEVE that on your deathbed, you will achieve Total Consciousness. but is simply isn't possible for you to "know" that.
I see no evidence that the universe has consciousness, so I do not believe that the universe has consciousness. I also see no evidence that the universe does not have consciousness, but Occam's Razor suggests that the lack of consciousness if far more likely, so I will choose to believe that' in the same way that I choose to believe that the Easter Bunny does not exist.
It seems reasonable to believe that a honey bee has consciousness, but does the hive have consciousness?
The universe is a very large collection of objects. A junk yard is a much smaller collection of objects. Does a junk yard have consciousness? Not enough objects? Okay, our solar system has far more objects than does a junk yard. Does our solar system have consciousness" Still not enough objects? Okay, our galaxy has far more objects that does our solar system. Does our galaxy have consciousness?
How many objects are required, for consciousness to suddenly spring into existence?
@MrPaul - I would consider being aware of being aware as self-conscious.
Re: Nikola Tesla - Calling Tesla an electrical engineer is somewhat akin to saying Einstein was good at math. It would be more appropriate to say he almost invented electrical engineering. He was an inventor and a genius. Invented not only alternating current but the first remote controlled devices and too many other things to mention here. Just because he was a genius does not mean he was infallible. As far as the brain works (and this is a bit of an area of expertise of mine) it is both receiver and sender. We have about a million sensory nerve endings in our bodies that are responding to our internal and external environment. At any given moment the brain is receiving information from them, processing it, and then sending impulses out from the brain to the periphery.
There’s no reason to think that the universe had consciousness. As for Tesla’s take on it, he said that he thought of the universe as a great machine and that the “soul” was nothing more than the sum of the functioning of the body and ceased to exist after death. He also thought he was receiving messages from Mars. He was a bit mad and definitely obsessive-compulsive.
I’ve been a fangirl since I first discovered him in about 1977 as an apprentice electrician. A few years ago I had the good fortune to travel to Croatia, where my grandfather was born, and went to the Tesla Museum.
He is a fascinating person but just because someone is a genius in one area does not mean they can’t be wrong. Even Einstein was wrong - about physics! (He did not accept quantum physics.) Nature is the final authority.
If you want to know more about Tesla, here’s the Wikipedia article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
@StarFairy - I really have a hundred other ways I’d rather waste my time than repeating the Emoto experiment. Others have already done it and gotten different results. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to repeat it. If you want, I’ll try it with plants. I grow oat grass for my rabbit. I’ll start 3 pots today, treat them equally in terms of light, water, temperature, and soil, but talk nice to one, insult the second, and ignore the third. Is that good enough?
Added later: I’ve just started three batches of oats: 10 grams of dry oats (approximate 1 tablespoon) each in three identical plastic cups. 50 grams of water (approximately 3 oz.) taken from the same sample of tap water, so all at the same temperature, placed in each cup to soak overnight. One labeled “I love you,” one labeled “I hate you,” and one with a blank label. They will be soaked overnight and tomorrow put into three identical 3” pots filled with the same amount, by weight, of soil taken from the same batch so that the moisture content should be the same in each. They will be placed in the center of my grow lights so they all should get the same amount of light under the same conditions of temperature and humidity. I have already started “speaking” to them, which is, of course, ridiculous. To one I am saying, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, you are the most useless, ugly oats imaginable,” repeatedly for 30 seconds. To the other I am saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you, you are the most beautiful, wonderful oats imagineable.” The other will be ignored. I will do this twice a day and will reverse the order in which they are spoken to each time so that the first talking to will involve “I love you” being spoken to first and the second session will start with the “I hate you” batch. We’ll see how they grow and if there is any discernible difference.
You do realize that one obvious flaw is only having one test group. It would take a statistician to determine the number of samples one would need to raise the probabilities that one’s results are not the result of chance. However, I am not inclined to do several batches since I usually only start a pot every few days I would have a glut of oat grass.
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@atmosphere114 You appear to have a rather unusual concept of the meaning of consciousness, that is different from any generally understood definition. Can you elaborate regarding what consciousness means to you?
I don't think that the space inside of my ring is awawr of anything at all.
Whew, this is getting serious. I’m just wondering if there is a single consciousness does that mean it may have a identity issue. Technically it’s arguing with itself right now.
@Babichev Actually, Tesla did not invent alternating current. In 1835 (well before Tesla's work), Hippolyte Pixii created the first alternator with a rotating magnet, but never found a practical use for it. Through the mid 1800s, several other people built alternating current motors, generators, and transformers. Unfortunately, the motors were not sufficiently efficient to be of practical use.
What Tesla did was to demonstrate the first, reasonably efficient alternating current motor, in 1888, which finally made alternating current practical. In 1890, Charles Proteus Steinmetz (who was the real genius) published the first mathematical analysis of alternating current devices.
Tesla was good, but he needed a lot of help from around twenty others who came before him..
You can read about the history of alternating current at https://edisontechcenter.org/AC-PowerHistory.html, which is rather ironic, since Edison himself, stubbornly resisted alternating current.
@GreatHornedOwl - thanks, I did not know that.
I do notice that the hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, which was based on Tesla’s design, is credited as being the first hydroelectric plant in the U.S. but then there are mentions of two other plants that also make the same claims and the dates are not consistent. At any rate, one can say “among the first.”
Edison, who favored direct current, gets all the credit when, in fact, it was alternating current that won out in the end. Even when I was an apprentice electrician we were taught about Edison but not Tesla, though I think there was probably mention of Westinghouse. I learned about Tesla from an article in a magazine.
When I went to the Tesla museum I kind of felt like I was visiting Mecca. The scope of his accomplishments was mind-boggling.
I noticed that you didn't touch upon some of the more strange ideas that Tesla held, that were referenced by @DaringSprinter.
The whole point being: while any genius might be able to provide a great deal of insight in their chosen field, there are areas where even a genius is lacking—due to the specificity of their field, the time in which they lived, etc. This...strikes me as pretty basic knowledge. Specialization, and all that.
This may seem like a strange concept to you, given that you have a clear inclination towards hero worship, but please do think on it.
Anyways, moving onward to the personal attacks.
@DaringSprinter and I don't think that we're intellectually superior to Tesla. We both found it exceedingly strange that someone should make use of him as a gatekeeper (of sorts) when it comes to consciousness.
Like...there are neuroscientists and psychologists out there who undoubtedly have a better idea of what consciousness entails. I kind of get it, though. You wanted to post a quote for intellectual clout. Not because you were interested in, or capable of, furthering the conversation at all. Hopefully you got your giggles, and a sense of vicarious genius.
"Also, out off curiosity do you and goblin always follow each other around forums parroting the same talking points?"
Nah. We have a special interest in Cuddle Comfort. I don't believe there are any other sites where we both use the forum. Furthermore, this is something that we do while lounging about with each other. We'll be in bed, one of us will chortle, and the other will ask something along the lines of "What's so funny?" Most of the time it's something completely unrelated to CC, but sometimes it's an unhinged screed on this lovely forum.
"Do you ever disagree?" Yes, and this results in some very fun, and interesting, conversations.
"Or are you incapabable of free will?" We're of the belief that free will doesn't exist.
"Is it like an abusive partnership where goblin can't have his own thoughts?" Any abuse in our relationship is consensual, talked about at length, and there are safeties in place to ensure that the activities are enjoyed by both persons. For example, I don't derive any enjoyment from blunt trauma.
"Are you one entity, like some kind of awkward and hillariously wrong, borg cube?"
Now, I know that @DaringSprinter has called you out on numerous logical fallacies in the past, and that this likely stings, but do try to maintain some composure, okay? This whole thing with Tesla (that you failed utterly to comprehend), really isn't a huge deal. I get why you might feel sore (again, you were going for intellectual clout with a quote from Tesla—who was neither a neuroscientist or psychologist), but there's nothing stopping you from fellating the corpse of your hero. We aren't trying to take that away from you. Again, we were just baffled that anyone would feel the need to call on the ghost of Tesla for a post about consciousness. It would be like me dropping quotes from Darwin at a mechanic—an entirely absurd and masturbatory gesture.
I’ve requested @MCcuddles2 to stop with the personal attacks, would request you refrain as well. Thank you. - Babichev
Oh, one more thing.
"Lmao, 🤣 electrical engineering is just the applied physics of electrons and elctromagnetic phenomenon."
Tesla didn't believe in electrons. Maybe he was too busy loving pigeons, or running away from women with pearl earrings.
While on that point: Tesla shouldn't be seen as an authority on orinthology—he had a fetish for pigeons. Or fashion. His genius didn't extend to those areas.
Are we clear? Good.