General discussion

INTRODUCTION: Individual members of the fundamental or elementary particles are absolutely identical* with one another. In a police identification line-up, you couldn't tell them apart. Why? Rather than go into an exhaustive review of the entire particle zoo, I’ll just hit on the electron and its antimatter mirror twin, the positron.

The first human inhabitants of the island continent of Australia arrived perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years – just 10,000 years after some nomadic band(s) kissed their African homeland good day. Since there is, and never has been in human prehistory, a land bridge between the two geographical continents, the first Australians had to have mastered the ‘art’ of sailing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to back up what must be the obvious.

It's not your conscious mind that makes allegedly 'free will' decisions but rather some structure or something far more basic and primitive that all creatures great and small with what could reasonably be called a 'brain' share - a pleasure seeking; pain avoidance mechanism - the brain's 'pleasure centre'. Faced with either/or choices this pleasure centre will make you involuntarily or at least subconsciously choose that option which gives it maximum pleasure and minimum pain or discomfort or angst.

‘Beaming’, the near instantaneously conversion and transport of matter to energy and back to matter again is a staple of science fiction. Beaming technology is used extensively in “Star Trek”, but also for example in the TV series “Stargate: SG-1” as well, and no doubt in other sci-fi shows, films and novels. While obviously an extremely useful device in speeding up the action (just like faster-than-light warp drives and related), is it possible or is this just pure Hollywood sleight of hand?

As a personal philosophy I have tended to be of the opinion that within any mountain of mythology, there is a molehill of fact. The difficulty is trying to figure out what molehill fraction of the mountain is the factual bit. The other philosophical bit is that whenever you have a common mythological theme that cuts across all cultures, all societies, through all eras of time, then one needs to sit up and take notice and figure out why – is some facet of reality trying to assert itself? Might dragons be one of those cultural universals; one of those molehills of mythological reality?

Where is everybody?" was a question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi. The 'paradox' is that extraterrestrials should be here, yet there is no indisputable evidence to support that. Or is there? Those pesky UFOs just will not go away!

Though I find much admirable and compelling about the ‘ancient astronaut’ hypothesis of Erich von Daniken and a host of other converts, I just cannot accept the idea that ‘ancient astronauts’, that is aliens or extraterrestrials if you prefer built the Egyptian pyramids however difficult it may appear for ‘primitive’ humans without benefit of the wheel or the pulley to have constructed them.

What follows are extracts from an ongoing online debate I engaged in about the alleged concept that all things, not just living things, are, to a greater or lesser extent, conscious. That concept is known as Panpsychism. The extracts have been edited so as to be as meaningful as possible as standalone paragraphs. However, some previous knowledge about the Panpsychism concept would probably be useful.

Do the Fundamental Particles Like Electrons Have Consciousness?

Science fiction and predictive science ‘fact’ scenarios about human-alien First Contact are usually based around flesh-and-blood meeting and greeting flesh-and-blood, even if the blood colour is red meeting green. For the sake of thrilling sci-fi audiences, First Contact is often depicted as meeting and beating (to a pulp) flesh-and-blood by flesh-and-blood. There are far more sci-fi and predictive science ‘fact’ scenarios that explore alien invasion relative to a friendly and diplomatic “take me to your leader”.

Nearly everyone, if asked, will tell you that there is a really real universe out there and that they are part of that natural universe. However, that might not be the case. The case might be that there is a really real virtual universe out there and that you are a part of that simulated universe. In other words, you are akin to being just a character in what are commonly termed video games, only this video game that you are a character in was created by an unknown – let’s call this creator the Supreme Programmer; maybe a human; maybe not.

THE SIMULATED UNIVERSE!