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Do you think communicating through thoughts is the communication of the future? Is it a bit one sided though? Only one person can hear the other? Can all people communicate mentally or some?

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I guess I don't see how that differs from what I said.

Sorry bro! I read your statement:
Synchronicity has the flavor of cause and effect at a distance that's missing from coincidence.

As being opposed to:
There is an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time.

But now I see where your comparison comes from.

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@ Olly: And in looking at it again, I don't think I had it quite right. I'm going to have to dust off and re-read Jung to see how (his translators) express it.

@ Avy: Robt. Heinlein addressed this in one of his novels, where he proposes that the only practical form of communication between distant vessels and Earth would be some form of mental communication, which (again, he proposes) is instantaneous over any distance.


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Originally Posted By: beck123
@ Olly:
the only practical form of communication between distant vessels and Earth would be some form of mental communication, which (again, he proposes) is instantaneous over any distance.
... which brings to mind the question whether one thinks in a language or in electric impulses. If language, then my thoughts in Tamil would not be understood by the Gorgonzolas who think in Gorgozolian.

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Originally Posted By: Avy
... which brings to mind the question whether one thinks in a language or in electric impulses. If language, then my thoughts in Tamil would not be understood by the Gorgonzolas who think in Gorgozolian.


Just my own unsupported thoughts on the matter: I think we think in electric impulses over which we lay our understanding of reality as represented by our language. I guess this means in the Tamil/Gorgonzolian example (or any translingual example) that the communication could be very easily misunderstood completely.

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In this whole discussion I keep thinking about the movie
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind", musical notes.


----please, draw me a sheep----
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What? Are there those who still think that "thoughts" are not physical? How can they (meaning "thoughts") be otherwise?

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Cognitive bias.

Last edited by TheFallibleFiend; 08/26/10 10:01 PM.
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This is more philosophical than biological. Imagine a modern astronomer sitting on a hillside watching the sun come up. Next to him sits a 7th-Century stargazer. Do they see the same thing? (Not my question, but I've long forgotten where I read it. And, curiously, "watching the sun come up" reflects what the medieval guy would see, not the modern astronomer.)

The physical things that are happening in their visual pathways are the same, but I don't believe they see the same thing. We see what we know. Likewise, I believe, we "think" what we know.


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@jj: Thoughts may not be physical in the same way that heat is not physical. Heat occurs in the physical world, but it is our perception of the underlying movement of molecules or infrared photons that is what the average person means by "heat." Just like "purple" or "happy," we are not able really to know how another person perceives "heat."


"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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