Wednesday, June 20, 2007

2/10/2006 - Letter to Matt

random thoughts cut and pasted from letters written to Matt Piper, whose podcast I listened to a few days back. (titled Let's Melt Our Brains on www.zerogenshi.com)

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people seem to think it unnecessary to voice their musings but i've come to the conclusion that this whole thing, where people stand up or sit down, or turn on a microphone and say "I am here and this is what I am thinking about" appears to be the only worthwhile thing to do.

It's like digging a tunnel to the people around you. Suddenly you're connected and you realize all these other people are here too, and there's an amusing moment when your synapses indirectly communicate with another person's synapses and you get a glimpse of the larger sentient being that we are a part of. I know that sounds weird, but after studying neuroscience in school it dawned on me that human communication functions almost exactly like neural signalling and now I always like to think of people as neurons in a giant brain made of people. Not to get all 'sci-fi' on you or anything.

Also, I think you have every qualification for doing what you do. If you have an interest and a desire to even attempt to wrap your mind around certain concepts, then that is qualification enough. It's a difficult task to tackle and very few people could claim to be experts at it. I always think it's silly when they do, anyway. We're all experts. We do this stuff all the time! Anyway, I'm glad you think it's fun, because then I get to sit at work and reap the benefits of you having fun by listening to some interesting talk.
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communication is echolocation, and it happens both internally and externally. Communication with other people helps us find a reference point- we are all parts connected, so understanding other people's perspective helps to establish an image of that otherwise invisible thing that connects us. and of course, internalization helps us to situate ourselves in all of this mess.

sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that things can be, and often are existing in perpetual contradiction. it's all both infinitely different and inescapably similar. we're all alone together.

My roommate had explained the whole podcast thing to me a few days ago and so i went to the iTunes store, and searched under 'science' for anything related to neuroscience. I was hoping there would be something like a weekly update on current research and theory. There were a lot of podcasts that sounded like they would be good, but were terrible upon listening. I never really found any good neuroscience-related ones, which surprised me. But I guess that's what Scientific American Mind is for. I was just hoping to have it read to me while I work.

There's this whole movement toward unified theory (which, of course, includes issues of consciousness) that's really fascinating to me. It's a little difficult for me to wrap my head around, but you should check out a book called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. It kind of blew my mind.

Anyway, podcasts like yours are always interesting because I really think that any human, voicing any lucid thought, can provide more profundity in a single accidental statement than any theory or clinical research ever could, and not even have to know it. At least that's what I've noticed.

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