Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits, and today we're going to discuss
Speaker 1: a semi scientific, pseudo scientific magical mystery tour. I'll leave
Speaker 1: the rest to Jonathan. Jonathan, what do you have for us?
Speaker 2: This story summarizes a hypothesis put forward by a physicist
Speaker 2: who has a PhD from Harvard in physics. Doctor Michael
Speaker 2: Pravoca has specialties in explosives, high pressure science, raman spectroscopy.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make a problem with that word infra
Speaker 2: red and nuclear magnetic residence and X ray spectroscopies and
Speaker 2: accelerator physics. He believes not. He does not profess any
Speaker 2: proof here that hyperdimensionality more than four dimensions of space
Speaker 2: time may hold the key to explaining consciousness. He expands
Speaker 2: on his hypothesis to say that string theory uses up
Speaker 2: to eleven dimensions to make it possible mathematically to exist
Speaker 2: as a viable model. That's my paraphrasing. The article says
Speaker 2: that string theory would allow for extra dimensions required for
Speaker 2: a dimension of consciousness. Is this just speculation or a daydream?
Speaker 2: Or is there any there there?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: What do you think? The story is? From earth dot
Speaker 2: Com by Eric Rowls on September twenty first, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jonathan Neil for me, it sounded like another example
Speaker 1: as we usually see a religion hijacking an understanding of science.
Speaker 1: Are often a misunderstanding of science and using those scientific
Speaker 1: methods or those scientific hypothesis or theories and trying to
Speaker 1: comblet together to explain something that religion says happen but
Speaker 1: doesn't explain. What do you think?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: What you think that this guy's doing?
Speaker 2: Well? When I read this article, it started out pretty good,
Speaker 2: you know, like, Okay, this is this, this is this,
Speaker 2: this is what you know? And I know not a lot,
Speaker 2: but a little bit about string theory, and yeah, there's
Speaker 2: in some versions of it, there's eleven dimensions that are
Speaker 2: wrapped tightly around strings and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 2: to say that it has anything to do with your consciousness,
Speaker 2: to me is a huge leap with no evidence. And
Speaker 2: then he goes into and admitting that he is a Christian,
Speaker 2: He's an orthodox Christian, and it makes me believe that
Speaker 2: this is to say is trying to say his mythology
Speaker 2: might be true if this theory is true, but he
Speaker 2: has no evidence that consciousness has anything to do with
Speaker 2: other dimensions or what the connection is between them, and
Speaker 2: at least none that I was able to discern, and
Speaker 2: other dimensions if they actually exist anywhere else but in
Speaker 2: the math. At this point and his imagination, it still
Speaker 2: doesn't prove that consciousness has anything to do with it.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that he's not really qualified to
Speaker 2: talk about consciousness. That bothers me a lot because he
Speaker 2: has no information about brain chemistry, brain function. fMRI studies,
Speaker 2: you know, all the current theory on that's and being
Speaker 2: developed on consciousness and the brain and how that interacts
Speaker 2: and how it emerges from the complex system. So it's
Speaker 2: like they're still researching all that, but he has no
Speaker 2: experience in any of that. So how are you going
Speaker 2: to tie consciousness into abstract theoretical physics which has not
Speaker 2: been actually proven to be correct yet. It's kind of like, okay,
Speaker 2: you know quantum you know, they need a theory of
Speaker 2: quantum gravity to complete the unification of general relativity and
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics. But completing that would we'd have the you know,
Speaker 2: the complete life, the universe and everything. And the answer
Speaker 2: is not forty two. For those of you were fans
Speaker 2: of Douglass, that.
Speaker 1: To everyone who heard Jonathan say that it's not forty two.
Speaker 1: Just disregard that he does not speak for the ACA
Speaker 1: or the rest of the people on this program, because
Speaker 1: everyone knows it actually is forty two. But you know,
Speaker 1: I know somebody.
Speaker 2: Else who says that all the time too. Everybody knows that,
Speaker 2: I mean, because it's true.
Speaker 1: But you know, I noticed that Michael implied that Jesus
Speaker 1: may be a hyper dimensional entity. I know he said,
Speaker 1: according to the Bible, Jesus ascended into heaven forty days
Speaker 1: after being on earth. How do you ascend to heaven
Speaker 1: if you're a four dimensional creature? Well, yeah, I'd like
Speaker 1: to know that too. So I thought they had enough
Speaker 1: trouble to prove in Jesus in four dimensions. I don't
Speaker 1: know why they're trying to throw a few extra ones on.
Speaker 1: But what do you think about him saying that, Eli,
Speaker 1: What were your thoughts?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, firstly, I'm really kind of just hoping that
Speaker 3: the article just didn't do him justice in his argument,
Speaker 3: because I would expect somebody with such a pedigree to
Speaker 3: formulate a better hypothesis for anything, to know that like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is not this doesn't hold out. There's a huge
Speaker 3: leap here, and like, the question is that the sparks
Speaker 3: from me, like, Okay, hold on, what does like? I
Speaker 3: don't even know where to start. Honestly, it's so difficult.
Speaker 3: It leads me to what does like? How what is
Speaker 3: the correct number of dimensions to ascend to heaven? How
Speaker 3: do you know that? How do like? It's just there's
Speaker 3: it's really hard for me to figure out where to start,
Speaker 3: and he it's I don't know what it is about
Speaker 3: four dimensions that makes you incapable of visiting to heaven.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is about other numbers of
Speaker 3: dimensions that make you capable. And the article quotes some
Speaker 3: of pravacas peers as saying, like, well, that linking consciousness
Speaker 3: to hyperdimensionality and therefore to religious concepts is blurring the
Speaker 3: lines a little bit. And I don't agree at all.
Speaker 3: I think it's completely ignoring the lines that between empirical
Speaker 3: science and personal beliefs. It's he seems to have this
Speaker 3: idea that Okay, Jesus went to and Jesus is different
Speaker 3: from us? How is Jesus different from us? Well, he
Speaker 3: must have more dimensions and you just have to ask him.
Speaker 3: Where are you getting that how do you get from
Speaker 3: Jesus as different to more dimensions? We need that work
Speaker 3: in between, and maybe he has it. And like I said,
Speaker 3: the article just didn't do him justice. But it's not
Speaker 3: it's at least not here.
Speaker 1: If that is the best that he has to offer,
Speaker 1: he's not doing very well. But also, in fairness to
Speaker 1: the writer of the article, I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: ever heard anyone lay out anything even remotely cogent trying
Speaker 1: to rationalize a proof for evidence that Jesus ascended to heaven. Now,
Speaker 1: you might make a case for Jesus being a person
Speaker 1: that existed, that's one thing, and I'm a little dubious
Speaker 1: on that admittedly, But when you say Jesus ascended to heaven,
Speaker 1: then you've created a whole new thing because we know
Speaker 1: people existed. We know people name you're sure existed in
Speaker 1: that timeframe. So that's not that much of a stretch. Well,
Speaker 1: once we jump in, once we jump into heaven, we're
Speaker 1: in a whole different ball game. Then we don't even
Speaker 1: know what that means. Yeah, how many dimensions? As Eli said,
Speaker 1: how many dimensions do we need to go to? Heavens?
Speaker 1: Is one the thor of Hammer and two voltron sword
Speaker 1: and three toz. How does this work? It really doesn't
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. But honestly, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I chose this article initially was the sheer number
Speaker 1: of logical fallacies in it. So I just want to
Speaker 1: kind of throw it out to you, starting with you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: what are some of the logical fallacies you saw in
Speaker 1: this guy's argument, because he really made some serious leaps.
Speaker 1: Forget God of the Gaps, this is God of the dimensions.
Speaker 2: Well, I know, yeah, just a couple of them are
Speaker 2: the obvious ones. Appeal to authority, hasty generalizations like you
Speaker 2: said in your notes, and the intentional obscuring of any
Speaker 2: source of where his ideas come from as they jumped
Speaker 2: from one place to another. And there's just this, you know,
Speaker 2: a huge gap between it's a huge red herring between
Speaker 2: this and that. You know, it's either a red herring
Speaker 2: or just a huge non sequitur, you know, And and
Speaker 2: that's kind of like the non secutor is probably the
Speaker 2: biggest one I see, because Jesus, as a fifth dimensional
Speaker 2: being is a non secutor from eleven mensions and Jesus,
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's how do you get there? You know,
Speaker 2: there's nothing in between. You know, it's like, please, just
Speaker 2: because some old mythology says something does not mean that
Speaker 2: it actually happened, and therefore you can take it and
Speaker 2: and and try and plug it into some new fangled pseudoscience,
Speaker 2: trying to tie it into a one of many theories
Speaker 2: that are being tested to give us the parts we
Speaker 2: need to get a theory of everything. There are other
Speaker 2: ones as well, so it's like, yeah, okay, if this
Speaker 2: one makes it easy for you to up around and
Speaker 2: and gyrate and and make your twist your ideas to
Speaker 2: fit into even roughly into this, which I don't think
Speaker 2: it does very well. But it's just come on, guys,
Speaker 2: you know better than this. Give us some more. Give us,
Speaker 2: give us, you know, do your work, show us your work.
Speaker 2: Where did this come from? You know, if you don't
Speaker 2: show us your work, we don't know how you got there.
Speaker 2: And if we don't know how you got there, I
Speaker 2: am really not going to believe you. So that's pretty
Speaker 2: much all I have to say on.
Speaker 1: He lighted, he covered pretty much all the logical fallacies
Speaker 1: that you saw. Is one that stuck out to you
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there is sort of it seems like it's
Speaker 3: sort of based on this idea that I feel like
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot where it's like, oh, well, the
Speaker 3: cause is just something that we just we God works
Speaker 3: in mysterious ways sort of thing, right, So it gives
Speaker 3: this actually kind of gives me the opportunity to clarify
Speaker 3: something that I was talking about in the comments of
Speaker 3: another clip. So he kind of bakes his idea that,
Speaker 3: like our our senses are limited, we can't sense everything
Speaker 3: about the universe, and therefore our perception is limited. So
Speaker 3: there's going to be some things that we miss, some
Speaker 3: things that happen with some phenomenon in the universe that
Speaker 3: we just don't notice right away. I don't think that
Speaker 3: that means that things are unmeasurable, just means that because
Speaker 3: like to detect, to observe something directly with our senses
Speaker 3: is not the only way to know that something exists,
Speaker 3: Like most of modern physics is either is the mathematical
Speaker 3: result of something else that has been experimentally confirmed that
Speaker 3: just has not yet been experimentally confirmed but is close
Speaker 3: to being, or or not it's hard to say close
Speaker 3: to being, but like very likely going to be because
Speaker 3: it fits with the rest of the theory that we have.
Speaker 3: What he has here is basically saying that like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: these extra dimensions, we just can't see them for some reason.
Speaker 3: And then he's making up that reason by saying, and
Speaker 3: a quote from the Arquay here is saying, is the
Speaker 3: extra dimensions aren't easily observed because they might become past
Speaker 3: defied or curled up. Its skills so small they're beyond
Speaker 3: our current ability to detect. And that's just conjecture. It's
Speaker 3: it's this sort of it's honestly sort of this reskin
Speaker 3: of turtles all the way down, because if you're saying, like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know the cause is something, it's just so small,
Speaker 3: like well, there's a cause for this, and a cause
Speaker 3: for this, and a cause for this, but what's the
Speaker 3: fundamental cause. Well, it's just so small that you can't
Speaker 3: see it. God works in mysterious ways. Turtles all the
Speaker 3: way down. It doesn't like you pick the way you
Speaker 3: want to phrase it. It's it's probably yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: John didn't cover it's argument from ignorance, and they're just
Speaker 3: reskinning it in different ways.
Speaker 1: I would have to say that for me reading the
Speaker 1: first time, I couldn't help but think that this is
Speaker 1: pretty much a status quo. Oftentimes Christians in particular will
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time talking about things other than
Speaker 1: their God and other than their Bible to prove their
Speaker 1: God's real, which seems odd to me, because if your
Speaker 1: God's real and so evident, it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine why you need to come up with half a
Speaker 1: dozen dozen more dimensions and abercadabra alek exam and here
Speaker 1: comes Baltimore. Because really it gets to the point where
Speaker 1: you're reading what this guy says and it sounds like
Speaker 1: mediocre science fiction. It's like, you know, damn, I think
Speaker 1: I saw that on MST three k once. That's really
Speaker 1: the field of some of the things he says. But
Speaker 1: I do think that oftentimes it's it is that attempt
Speaker 1: to avoid actually talking about their lack of evidence. And Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I was just kind of wonder what your.
Speaker 2: Thoughts were, just if you're going to if you're going
Speaker 2: to write a paper, or you're going to do something
Speaker 2: that's outside your field, because there are lots of sub
Speaker 2: fields within physics, and as I listed this gentleman's it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean he doesn't have information about that. But if
Speaker 2: you're only going to list those and not the ones
Speaker 2: that pertain to the subject matter you're doing, then theoretical
Speaker 2: physics covers things like string theory already in universe, things
Speaker 2: like that, various theories of everything that have not been
Speaker 2: substantially proven yet. So they call them a theory because
Speaker 2: they're well developed mathematically and they have no inconsistencies mathematically,
Speaker 2: but they're not all the same. So it's like when
Speaker 2: they finally figure out a way to test these things,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll find out which one of these several
Speaker 2: ideas and they may have eliminated a few by now.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's been a while since I've been
Speaker 2: doing a lot of reading on this. But then you
Speaker 2: can probably start working on connecting the dots between biology,
Speaker 2: which is the brain and how the brain functions, and physics,
Speaker 2: which is a bunch of forces and fields and particles
Speaker 2: and things like that. But biology's macro level a lot
Speaker 2: of what he's talking about, Like, of these dimensions, I
Speaker 2: think in string theory, they're tightly wound around the strings,
Speaker 2: which are a trillianth the size of anything visible with
Speaker 2: our most powerful electron scanners. So it's like you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking something so small, and these dimensions are supposedly
Speaker 2: intertwined and twisted around each one of these. We'll never
Speaker 2: be able to confirm or deny that as far as
Speaker 2: I know, at least not in my lifetime. But I
Speaker 2: only got ten or fifteen years left, you know, with
Speaker 2: all you young people, you're not going to sit in
Speaker 2: your lifetime either, you know. So it's unless we have
Speaker 2: you know, alien assistance or something. Not that I believe
Speaker 2: in aliens. But just like before, Just like before, right, not.
Speaker 3: Its dimensions all the way down.
Speaker 2: John, all the way down. But you know, so anyway,
Speaker 2: the whole idea is that how are you connecting the
Speaker 2: dots between biology and physics? At this point they're not.
Speaker 2: He's just he's fantasizing about how, when and if they
Speaker 2: ever do that, he'll find this consciousness dimension. Well, I
Speaker 2: don't know, there's there's there may be a universe somewhere
Speaker 2: where that's true. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let me say this, John, and this is very important,
Speaker 1: so you should probably listen closely. My god, he can
Speaker 1: wrap strings tight around anything he wants to, whether it's
Speaker 1: turtles are dimensions. Now take that?
Speaker 2: Okay, what did he say I didn't hear any of that.
Speaker 3: Can God build a guitar with so many strings and
Speaker 3: not even he can play it?
Speaker 1: Of course, But as long as he doesn't do it,
Speaker 1: we're good. But I've got faith that the extra mentioned
Speaker 1: dimensional Jesus could play it. So that's what I would
Speaker 1: put my money on.
Speaker 2: Now that's not a guitar, it's a sitar. Okay.
Speaker 1: On that note, Is there anything you'd like to close
Speaker 1: up with Eli, any final thoughts?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of John kind of starting to touch
Speaker 3: on this. This guy, uh Pravac is basically just saying like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe the reason, like we have to grant first of all,
Speaker 3: which I didn't even say before, we have to grant
Speaker 3: that Jesus he probably existed. I can accept that, grant
Speaker 3: that he ascended to heaven and did all the things
Speaker 3: that all the things that he didn't as send to heaven,
Speaker 3: and then grant that the reason he was capable of
Speaker 3: doing that was because he had he was a poly
Speaker 3: hyperdimensional being. And but like he's just basically saying like, well,
Speaker 3: there's probably other dimensions. Some some theoretical physicists think there's
Speaker 3: other dimensions and there's consciousness. So he's like, so what,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't seem like and unless I haven't seen
Speaker 3: the paper, so maybe he does have some work that
Speaker 3: like mathematically demonstrates that there's some connection here. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: understand even if I did look at it, So I'm
Speaker 3: not so I would have to find someone to kind
Speaker 3: of help me understand that's the case. But I really
Speaker 3: think that it's so much more likely that consciousness just
Speaker 3: like every other thing that the living things do, because
Speaker 3: to my knowledge, every example we have of a conscious
Speaker 3: thing is also a living thing, and consciousness, I think,
Speaker 3: is an emergent property of the cells that make up
Speaker 3: the organ that facilitate it. Much like reproduction or digestion
Speaker 3: or excretion, all of those processes are a result of
Speaker 3: the interactions between the chemistry inside the living thing that
Speaker 3: is conducting that process. Consciousness has no reason to be
Speaker 3: any different. And as I kind of I was looking
Speaker 3: into that idea because I've never really looked much into
Speaker 3: consciousness before, so I was looking into it like for
Speaker 3: this this episode, and the the what I see as
Speaker 3: the primary pushback on it is like, oh, well, how
Speaker 3: does how do those chemical processes result in a subjective experience?
Speaker 3: And I just I don't see that as a problem.
Speaker 3: It seems like this, it's just a way that it is.
Speaker 3: You have, you know, sense neurons that send signals to
Speaker 3: neurons that interpret those signals, and then you have motor
Speaker 3: neurons and other things, and you have hormones, and you
Speaker 3: have you'r amigdala and tuitary glands and all these things
Speaker 3: that do a bunch of different stuff in response to
Speaker 3: environmental stimuli, and eventually it starts thinking about space.
Speaker 1: They try to give it this, how does it do this?
Speaker 1: How does it do that? How does our body define
Speaker 1: what pain is? Or any of these things are? They're
Speaker 1: they're chemical interpretations of it. So when it comes down
Speaker 1: to our consciousness and what it's a product of, it's
Speaker 1: that same thing. It's nothing unique. There's no reason to
Speaker 1: make it hyperdimensional turtles all the way down to figure
Speaker 1: out why we're aware and who we are, because really,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, I find it interesting
Speaker 1: that we have this. As you mentioned this group of people,
Speaker 1: well why is it this way? Well, not knowing why
Speaker 1: it's not another way isn't a disclaimer proving that it's
Speaker 1: not that way. So until someone showed me and Also,
Speaker 1: the other thing being is the fact that if we
Speaker 1: damage a physical brain, we get changes in that person's awareness,
Speaker 1: We get changes in that person's personality or what we
Speaker 1: want to loosely define as characteristics of consciousness. So if
Speaker 1: physical changing a physical entity can cause changes in this consciousness,
Speaker 1: what in the world could there be to imply that
Speaker 1: that consciousness itself is not a product of that entity
Speaker 1: that you injured and changed that consciousness. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 2: I like turtles.
Speaker 3: I do too, That's why there's so many of them.
Speaker 1: It's probably in soup.