Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
At 10:39 PM 12/12/2012, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:50:54 -0500: Hi, [snip] Great minds think alike, could be the saying, but, of course, this is just the ordinary human mind! We can think alike, in unexpected ways. My own theory is that the intense visual concentration that accompanies this exercise, people are sitting face-to-face, watching each other, leads to an entrainment of the two mental processes, through observation of much more than what is said. The movements of eyes, the fine-muscle movements of the face, lead to something that I'd call presence. It's not individual, it is collective. ...in the case of humans, I think telepathy is actually real (and the Schumann resonance is the medium). It may also be real for birds, but I don't think it's necessary to explain flock behaviour. It's also not necessary to explain human behavior, AFAIK. Look, that resonance is ELF. Possible data rate, a few Hz, maybe. No mechanism known for even emitting signals. No signals observed. However, there are obvious communication links between human beings. Visual, very high bandwidth. Audio, relative low bandwidth, with most information being contained in tone. (and this would precede language, per se, developmentally, i.e., as evolved. Language content (as text), low bandwidth, it would mostly serve as confirmation of information being transmitted and received at high bandwidth through visual cues and tone. What is not normally noticed is what I called entrainment, where we anticipate what the other person thinks, because we are thinking using roughly the same information and response patterns. We do this in understanding the spoken word, all the time, i.e., anticipate what the other person is about to say. We often -- maybe even usually -- have it exactly right. We don't have to think about it, and there would be no time to do so. Where rapport is weak, i.e., *entrainment* is weak, these predictions can be off. If there is a physical communications medium, it would not ordinarily be called telepathy, but my point was that it can seem so. When the mechanism I've described is operating, full-blown, it *seems* like mindreading. The colors exercise blows people's minds. Landmark doesn't emphasize that. It's used in training to show how there is communication that isn't about text. It's about presence, the presence of what Landmark calls the Self, which is not individual, though, again, that is not emphasized. The Self is the collective human intelligence, it appears to operate on an entirely different level than the individual. The individual intelligence is concerned with individual survival, mostly, or at least about survival of a closely-defined group. The Self is not personally attached. How to awaken this Self is the focus of much Landmark work, beginning with the Advanced Course. It's transformative, it is not merely some improvement (which would be judged within the realm of survival). In the Advanced Course, the activity of Self is called the realm of enrollment, because of the effect as to expression and the inspiration of others. The whole next course is called the Self Expression and Leadership Program, and is about developing community projects -- not about Landmark! -- using the technology developed. Community projects are about how to inspire and lead people to some activity that benefits the whole community, or some other community. How to avoid the traps that small-self-survival will set up. How to inspire others to support the project and even to lead it. (The program encourages people to turn their projects over to someone else and so people see their inspirations move out of the realm of personal achievement into community achievement, where they become. personally, still valuable, maybe, but no longer necessary. John Rohner should take the Landmark Curriculum for Living, eh? Or, for that matter, Steve Krivit. Either of them might have done this work, very creative/very active people often have, but abandoned it before getting to the critical understanding of moving beyond personal survival into community expression. Except John Rohner is *very* caught up in story, to the point of practical insanity. People believe their own stories, it's routine and heavily habitual, but it's very limiting, and when taken to extremes, crazy.)
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
our capacity to use hiden channel of information to get data on other people is surprising. any actor know that if you don't feel what you say, spectators can see it instantly. more surprising it have been show that humans can detect som mental states characteristics throug the walking move. In fact humans can detect if the walking human is male/female, dominant/dominated personality, the mood, just with the move of the ankle and foot. they tested that with motion capture transforming a real human move into few point, and found out that reducing up to the foot only was enough to get the data. the TV serie, lie to me is based on similar research on face move detection, even if there is exaggeration. As I said before it won't surprise an actor, who know that you have to feel your character and the situation when you play. Liars do that naturally, and microexpression detection is just a way to detect failures in that fraud about feelings (liars modify their mental state like actors, it is not just statement but acting). more surprising any driver, especially urban bicyclist like me know how to detect intention of drivers, even without signaling lights, and at least the unclear intentions that might be dangerous. When our survival depend on detecting others intent and mood, we use all fuzy data we can. Not surprising that it work, if you look how some fraud detectors work in finance and banking. to fall back to cold fusion, i notice that many of those competence are inhibited by believers and denialists around LENR. Some people restrict their intelligence to conscious and clear messages, or filter out them with a huge bias, to avoid seeing the facts (most also often use sophism to help if needed). Only people who will potentially invest much wealth (money, fame, credibility) in something, but did not yet invest it, can be openmind enough to use all data to take the good decision... very transient situation, since soon after having decided to commit or reject, they will be biased to justify their decision, and thus unable to see inconvenient facts (see Roland Benabou Groupthink/Denial theory). people who just talk are not motivated enough to analyze well. people who have invested already, are no more balanced and protect their mental comfort. I'm not an exception. That is a problem. See the people who jump into LENR as evidence that it is convincing. Warned of my usual bias, I observe that there are enough of such jump to trust LENR and industrial LENR+ to be convincing. More convincing than calorimetry papers for me. 2012/12/13 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com mix...@bigpond.com wrote: The point I have been trying to make, is that no telepathy is required for this, just sharp eyes and a sense of self preservation. Probably. But you never know with birds. They can sense magnetism, for example, which they use to migrate. Who knows what else they can sense. It is not inconceivable they use some sort of RF signaling. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:31:04 -0500: Hi, [snip] It's also not necessary to explain human behavior, AFAIK. Look, that resonance is ELF. Possible data rate, a few Hz, maybe. No mechanism known for even emitting signals. No signals observed. [snip] I agree, it isn't necessary to explain human behaviour, however I have personal reasons for believing that it is real nevertheless. As for the Schumann resonance, yes, I know it's ELF, but it is nicely synced with the human alpha brainwave rhythm, and I suspect, though I don't have the math background to back it up, that it may be possible to invisibly encode a high frequency signal in a low frequency medium, though it may not be EMF but perhaps just EF or MF?? Perhaps something along the lines of a modulated AharonovBohm effect? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 10:15 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:31:04 -0500: Hi, [snip] It's also not necessary to explain human behavior, AFAIK. Look, that resonance is ELF. Possible data rate, a few Hz, maybe. No mechanism known for even emitting signals. No signals observed. [snip] I agree, it isn't necessary to explain human behaviour, however I have personal reasons for believing that it is real nevertheless. As for the Schumann resonance, yes, I know it's ELF, but it is nicely synced with the human alpha brainwave rhythm, and I suspect, though I don't have the math background to back it up, that it may be possible to invisibly encode a high frequency signal in a low frequency medium, though it may not be EMF but perhaps just EF or MF?? Perhaps something along the lines of a modulated Aharonov–Bohm effect? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html besides frequency and amplitude modulation, phase shifting is another way to encode information in a waveform. harry Harry
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Frequency and phase modulation are fundamentally the same. They are directly related to each other since frequency is the derivative of phase with respect to time. Amplitude modulation is independent. Dave -Original Message- From: Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, Dec 14, 2012 12:38 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 10:15 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:31:04 -0500: Hi, [snip] It's also not necessary to explain human behavior, AFAIK. Look, that resonance is ELF. Possible data rate, a few Hz, maybe. No mechanism known for even emitting signals. No signals observed. [snip] I agree, it isn't necessary to explain human behaviour, however I have personal reasons for believing that it is real nevertheless. As for the Schumann resonance, yes, I know it's ELF, but it is nicely synced with the human alpha brainwave rhythm, and I suspect, though I don't have the math background to back it up, that it may be possible to invisibly encode a high frequency signal in a low frequency medium, though it may not be EMF but perhaps just EF or MF?? Perhaps something along the lines of a modulated Aharonov–Bohm effect? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html besides frequency and amplitude modulation, phase shifting is another way to encode information in a waveform. harry Harry
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
In reply to OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson's message of Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:47:21 -0600: Hi, The point I have been trying to make, is that no telepathy is required for this, just sharp eyes and a sense of self preservation. From Robin: ... In either case, it's obvious that each bird takes it's queues from the others in one way or another, otherwise there would be no flock at all. The flock appears to be the leader. Here's a great You Tube flick of a small flock of starlings defending themselves against an attack by a hawk. The behavior of the flock in making in what appears from our perspective to be making singular decisions becomes more apparent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8eZJnbDHIg Of course each of the individual starling are reacting collectively by bunching up closer together to stymie the Hawk, but that's the whole point. Visually speaking, it appears to be the resulting collective behavior that is most startling and apparent. The collective behavior is greater than the sum of its parts. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
At 04:01 PM 12/12/2012, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson's message of Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:47:21 -0600: Hi, The point I have been trying to make, is that no telepathy is required for this, just sharp eyes and a sense of self preservation. Just millions of years of evolution. Humans do something with culture which also evolves. I don't know that the birds have a sense of self preservation. They just do what they do, and what they do is conditioned by genetics (this is probably not learned behavior), and that has an *effect* of genetic preservation. The birds react to an incoming object, and they are sensitive to each other's movements, obviously. Human beings can display some similar traits, and it can be eerily like telepathy. Essentially, when we do this, it's *like* mindreading, it can be mindblowing for those who haven't encountered it. There is an exercise I saw at a Landmark Education Communications Course introduction. It's called the Colors Exercise. People work in pairs. One of the pair says, at random, -- it isn't random, of course, but that's the instruction -- the name of a color, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green. The job of the other person is just to echo that back. So this starts out as Red, Red, Green, Green, Blue, Blue, etc., or the like with the initiator being followed by the imitating partner. The same excercise was done in a Relationships seminar. And every time I've seen this done, this is what happens: the two people, after a time, start saying the name of the color together, with high accuracy. That is *not* the instruction, it just happens. *Try* to do it, if the trying involves predictive thinking, conscious pattern recognition, it doesn't work very well! It just happens. Great minds think alike, could be the saying, but, of course, this is just the ordinary human mind! We can think alike, in unexpected ways. My own theory is that the intense visual concentration that accompanies this exercise, people are sitting face-to-face, watching each other, leads to an entrainment of the two mental processes, through observation of much more than what is said. The movements of eyes, the fine-muscle movements of the face, lead to something that I'd call presence. It's not individual, it is collective.
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
mix...@bigpond.com wrote: The point I have been trying to make, is that no telepathy is required for this, just sharp eyes and a sense of self preservation. Probably. But you never know with birds. They can sense magnetism, for example, which they use to migrate. Who knows what else they can sense. It is not inconceivable they use some sort of RF signaling. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
In reply to Abd ul-Rahman Lomax's message of Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:50:54 -0500: Hi, [snip] Great minds think alike, could be the saying, but, of course, this is just the ordinary human mind! We can think alike, in unexpected ways. My own theory is that the intense visual concentration that accompanies this exercise, people are sitting face-to-face, watching each other, leads to an entrainment of the two mental processes, through observation of much more than what is said. The movements of eyes, the fine-muscle movements of the face, lead to something that I'd call presence. It's not individual, it is collective. ...in the case of humans, I think telepathy is actually real (and the Schumann resonance is the medium). It may also be real for birds, but I don't think it's necessary to explain flock behaviour. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Vorts, Flocking seems to be a bottom up emergent property of lots of natural systems that can be modeled using complexity theory. It's been awhile since I read it but I belive it's covered in: At home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman. A really interesting book by the way. A quick search turns up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(behavior) It looks like Craig Reynolds is the originator of the modeling. Ron --On Monday, December 10, 2012 9:07 PM -0500 David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Your post brings back a memory from a year or so ago. Someone made a model of bird flocks similar to what you are describing where they tried different behavior criteria. I think that they actually came up with a good match to what is observed. I wish I could remember where that article was located. Dave -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, Dec 10, 2012 8:12 pm Subject: RE: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? From Harry: it would be interesting to track the position of one bird within the flock. Yes, it would! I suspect technology is advanced and miniaturized enough that we could easily fit locator chips on several starlings. Start collecting data. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
RE: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
From Robin: ... In either case, it's obvious that each bird takes it's queues from the others in one way or another, otherwise there would be no flock at all. The flock appears to be the leader. Here's a great You Tube flick of a small flock of starlings defending themselves against an attack by a hawk. The behavior of the flock in making in what appears from our perspective to be making singular decisions becomes more apparent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8eZJnbDHIg Of course each of the individual starling are reacting collectively by bunching up closer together to stymie the Hawk, but that's the whole point. Visually speaking, it appears to be the resulting collective behavior that is most startling and apparent. The collective behavior is greater than the sum of its parts. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
it would be interesting to track the position of one bird within the flock. harry On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 8:47 AM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: From Robin: ... In either case, it's obvious that each bird takes it's queues from the others in one way or another, otherwise there would be no flock at all. The flock appears to be the leader. Here's a great You Tube flick of a small flock of starlings defending themselves against an attack by a hawk. The behavior of the flock in making in what appears from our perspective to be making singular decisions becomes more apparent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8eZJnbDHIg Of course each of the individual starling are reacting collectively by bunching up closer together to stymie the Hawk, but that's the whole point. Visually speaking, it appears to be the resulting collective behavior that is most startling and apparent. The collective behavior is greater than the sum of its parts. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? Flocking birds
Last week it was my luck and great pleasure to stand by the side of a country road in deepening dusk, and watch perhaps 200 birds wheel and gyre for 3 1/2 minutes. They formed a wildly malleable globe, elongating on any axis at random, while moving on another axis. There was no single leader. Several times a bird would break out in a new direction, and his near neighbors follow, forming a pointed protuberance which however soon sank back into the mass. Real direction change seemed to be more of a mass decision, with all turning nearly together, and the lack of perfect sync causing the shape changes. I saw birds inside the globe sometimes going in quite a different direction, with no effect on the greater number. I do not clearly recall whether the apparent density was greater in the center (uniform blob of birds) or at the edges (hollow globe), but I think the latter. At the end the flight pattern gradually lowered, accompanied with greatly increased chatter, then rather suddenly they all swooped to the cat tails below. I think they were having a ball, drunk with the power of flight, sociability and life. Two days later they were gone, off South probably. Getting cold here. Ol' Bab On 12/9/2012 4:29 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Sun, 9 Dec 2012 14:42:32 -0500: Hi, [snip] However, their ability to respond with speed and precision to signals from others members of the flock is astounding. Like many other biological phenomena, it seems almost supernatural. ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? Flocking birds
David L Babcock ol...@rochester.rr.com wrote: Real direction change seemed to be more of a mass decision, with all turning nearly together, and the lack of perfect sync causing the shape changes. I saw birds inside the globe sometimes going in quite a different direction, with no effect on the greater number. What you probably did not see was two or more birds whacking together. People have watched thousands of hours of birds flocking, live and on video. As far as I know, no one has ever seen that happen. That is what is so amazing about flocking, and it is why we get the feeling there must be some sort of ESP involved. Animals do have accidents from time to time. Squirrels sometimes fall out of trees, for example. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? Flocking birds
In this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/ Curtis saw the bird swarms as a prelude to doom. Some fantastic swarms on the web. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJjeHLcbQJ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6nvvFkbRkY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE
RE: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
From Harry: it would be interesting to track the position of one bird within the flock. Yes, it would! I suspect technology is advanced and miniaturized enough that we could easily fit locator chips on several starlings. Start collecting data. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Your post brings back a memory from a year or so ago. Someone made a model of bird flocks similar to what you are describing where they tried different behavior criteria. I think that they actually came up with a good match to what is observed. I wish I could remember where that article was located. Dave -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, Dec 10, 2012 8:12 pm Subject: RE: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up? From Harry: it would be interesting to track the position of one bird within the flock. Yes, it would! I suspect technology is advanced and miniaturized enough that we could easily fit locator chips on several starlings. Start collecting data. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: it would be interesting to track the position of one bird within the flock. Yes, it would! I suspect technology is advanced and miniaturized enough that we could easily fit locator chips on several starlings. Start collecting data. Ah. I think a high-res telescopic camera video of the flock and a computer to follow the individual birds might work better. You can examine the paths many different birds in one take. It would hard for a person to keep track of which is which. It would be tedious following an individual bird from frame to frame. Perhaps software could do it better than a person. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 5:47 AM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: Of course each of the individual starling are reacting collectively by bunching up closer together to stymie the Hawk, but that's the whole point. Visually speaking, it appears to be the resulting collective behavior that is most startling and apparent. The collective behavior is greater than the sum of its parts. Cool video. As a group, the starling flock seems to have as much intelligence, or more intelligence than, a slug. At that point the question of whether they're acting under a collective consciousness becomes a little academic. The flock (as one thing) would seem to be as or more intelligent than an actual living creature. A reductionist approach here would be to try to explain that thing in terms of its parts alone. A mystic approach would be to assert telepathy. A third possibility is to say that there's something weird going on and that the thing being observed seems to be more than the sum of its parts, and that whatever is going on is worth investigating. It takes great aim to hit the non-reductive, non-mystical sweet spot, assuming it's worth attempting. Eric
[Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
The following You Tube clip is heavily steeped in Judeo Christian holiday tradition. We witness a pre-planned and a well edited You tube Christmas Flash Mob happening. Nevertheless, while watching this clip... this flash mall happening if you will, it made me wonder if we might be watching an inkling of an emergence of Group Mind Consciousness. Is it possible we are witnessing another gestalt layer of consciousness stirring from its slumber within our species. Is it beginning to wake up? http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Vnt7euRF5Pgvq=medium Does the Collective have any thoughts on the matter? Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 12:45 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: Does the Collective have any thoughts on the matter? *Childhood's End* is the definitive book on hive mind. The Overlords are nursemaids to hatching Uberminds, themselves being never able to unite into such. I should re-read it. I don't recall if simple global communications played a part. *Chi*
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
The best evidence for hive minds are in hives -- bee hives and ant colonies. Among larger animals, the best evidence is in the coordinated movement of schools of fish and flocks of birds. Here is an astounding video of starling flocks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE Despite this, I doubt that birds or fish have any extrasensory communication. I suppose they communicate by ordinary senses, and they signal by sound or movement. However, their ability to respond with speed and precision to signals from others members of the flock is astounding. Like many other biological phenomena, it seems almost supernatural. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Hi, Very interesting video, it more or less proves my principle that Energy is equivalent to Communication. Hence the OT is definitely NOT OT !!! On 9-12-2012 18:45, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Does the Collective have any thoughts on the matter? Or as the Borg used to say resistance is futile you will be assimilated ??? Happy X-mas, Rob
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Sun, 9 Dec 2012 14:42:32 -0500: Hi, [snip] However, their ability to respond with speed and precision to signals from others members of the flock is astounding. Like many other biological phenomena, it seems almost supernatural. ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
The (Eu)Social Conquest of Earthhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/the-social-conquest-of-earth-by-edward-o-wilson.html?pagewanted=all On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 2:37 PM, Rob Dingemans manonbrid...@aim.com wrote: Hi, Very interesting video, it more or less proves my principle that Energy is equivalent to Communication. Hence the OT is definitely NOT OT !!! On 9-12-2012 18:45, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Does the Collective have any thoughts on the matter? Or as the Borg used to say resistance is futile you will be assimilated ??? Happy X-mas, Rob
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
mix...@bigpond.com wrote: ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. Except there is no leader. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Robin sez: ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. Jed sez: Except there is no leader. Indeed! Jed has hit it on the nail. For those who are still curious about this behavior, take a closer look at some of the individual birds within these gargantuan flocks as they swirl and morph about in the air. Whomever we might presume are the dominant leader birds, their leadership is quickly rendered irrelevant seconds later as the entire flock changes direction. There must be some other kind of universal behavioral patters perceived within the each and every single starling that is more likely responsible for managing this collective behavior we perceive within the flock. Sometime ago researchers tried to develop accurate computer simulations of Slime Mould behavior. Initially all of their computer algorithms assumed there had to be a collection of dominant mold cells that must be directing the behavior of all the rest of the mold cells. Eventually, they discovered they had made an incorrect assumption. All they really needed to do was program in a few simple behavioral rules into each and every slime mould. One that was done they were able to better model the intricate web-like patterns slime mold make. What interesting about this emergent behavior is the fact that it is thought that the nerve cells comprising our complex brains also follow a collection of simple behavior rules. All the nerves cells in our brains, collectively, appear to manifest the same kind of emergent behavior that ends up giving us a sense of our own individuality and autonomy. A philosophical question we might wish to ponder is: Does every single nerve cell within our own brains possess a unique sense of consciousness, their own self awareness? I vote yes, they probably do however fundamental or elemental it might seem from our perspective. I'm inferring that our sense of self-awareness is actually the manifestation of a collective hive mind derived from the collective activity of all our nerve cells working together as a unit - as a brain. And if that is the case, why stop with our own brains as being at the exalted top of the food chain of consciousness? Perhaps there is no end to the pyramid of consciousness, or self-awareness. Evolution will find a way. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
Ah, to relive the triumphant creation of the multicellular sexual organism's love/death with our own individual sexual being ultimately sacrificed on that most ineffable alter! Let the zombie apocalypse join us in perfect harmony, a planet with one mind! On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:48 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: Robin sez: ** ** ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. ** ** Jed sez: ** ** Except there is no leader. ** ** Indeed! Jed has hit it on the nail. ** ** For those who are still curious about this behavior, take a closer look at some of the individual birds within these gargantuan flocks as they swirl and morph about in the air. Whomever we might presume are the dominant leader birds, their leadership is quickly rendered irrelevant seconds later as the entire flock changes direction. There must be some other kind of universal behavioral patters perceived within the each and every single starling that is more likely responsible for managing this collective behavior we perceive within the flock. ** ** Sometime ago researchers tried to develop accurate computer simulations of Slime Mould behavior. Initially all of their computer algorithms assumed there had to be a collection of dominant mold cells that must be directing the behavior of all the rest of the mold cells. Eventually, they discovered they had made an incorrect assumption. All they really needed to do was program in a few simple behavioral rules into each and every slime mould. One that was done they were able to better model the intricate web-like patterns slime mold make. ** ** What interesting about this *emergent behavior* is the fact that it is thought that the nerve cells comprising our complex brains also follow a collection of simple behavior rules. All the nerves cells in our brains, collectively, appear to manifest the same kind of *emergent behavior*that ends up giving us a sense of our own individuality and autonomy. ** ** A philosophical question we might wish to ponder is: Does every single nerve cell within our own brains possess a unique sense of consciousness, their own “self” awareness? I vote yes, they probably do however fundamental or elemental it might seem from our perspective. I’m inferring that our sense of self-awareness is actually the manifestation of a *collective hive mind* derived from the collective activity of all our nerve cells working together as a unit – as a brain. And if that is the case, why stop with our own brains as being at the exalted top of the food chain of consciousness? Perhaps there is no end to the pyramid of consciousness, or self-awareness. Evolution will find a way. ** ** Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:OT (Holiday Spirit): Christmas Flash Mob... or Group Mind occasionally waking up?
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Sun, 9 Dec 2012 16:46:15 -0500: Hi, [snip] mix...@bigpond.com wrote: ..they only need to follow the bird in front of them, while keeping their position to the right or left behind, as the case may be. This way the motion of the flock leader propagates back through the flock. Except there is no leader. - Jed Another possibility is that each bird tries to get as close to the center of the flock as possible (i.e. as far from the edge as possible). Those on the edge are more likely to be attacked by predators. However there is clearly some degree of following occurring, which can clearly be seen when a wave passes through the flock as they change direction. In either case, it's obvious that each bird takes it's queues from the others in one way or another, otherwise there would be no flock at all. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
