Comes the Inquisitor

"In tribulation he will find his greatest strength and his utmost nobility."

At this point you are asking the obvious questions, but I'm afraid that some things shall have to puzzle you awhile longer.

But I will tell you this story...

I spoke elsewhere of my grandmother. Before she passed away, she was in a persistent vegetative state for many months. I was at a place in my studies where I knew that many people believed that some people had the power to heal others, not as a 'gift' but as a skill/ability. (I was not yet at the place in my studies where I knew that it wasn't always right to heal others.) I had never actually done such a thing myself, or witnessed it, but I believed that if such a skill were possible, then someone with sensitivities like mine should be able to acquire it. (Ah, the hubris of youth.) I had only a hodge-podge of knowledge, and no teacher, but a desperate desire to help my grandmother recover and thereby also to alleviate the suffering of her family who anguished as they watched her persist in this state.

Needless to say, I accomplished nothing. But not for lack of trying whatever haphazard technique I could think of when I was sure no one else was looking.

My grandmother died. At her memorial I was sitting right behind my grandfather, who was sobbing uncontrollably and unabatedly. In a moment of compassion, seeking to comfort him, I put my hand on his back. And I suddenly felt the most overwhelming sense of grief and heartbreak that I had ever felt in my young (and relatively unlived) life. At that same moment, my grandfather stopped crying.

You can say what you want about that experience (and I'm sure you will), but it was highly unlikely that what I felt at that moment was my feeling about my grandmother, to whom I was never particularly close. My grandfather, I later learned, was very much in love with her throughout their married life. Why did he stop crying at that particular moment? No one can say for sure, as he is now dead as well. I was never brave enough to ask him about it.

Perhaps you think I made too much of a simple coincidence, and perhaps I did. Or perhaps it was only the first such experience. Either way, it helped solidify my conviction that we are more connected than we think. My grandfather's suffering, and my perception that I had somehow fixed it, strengthened my need to understand how such a thing might be possible.

Likewise, witnessing what could make a difference in other instances of suffering strengthened my conviction that this research was important. In response to one such instance, I conceived of the idea that certain people might be trained to anchor and protect larger groups of people. (Okay, I had a little help on that one from the world of fiction.) Such an idea does no good if one keeps it to oneself, but without that particular experience I might never have been sufficiently motivated to discuss it or my research publicly (or semi-publicly, in an anonymous blog). Not that I've done a lot of that, as the skeptic rhetoric gets really tiring. (If you hadn't made it interesting, we wouldn't be here.) And it appears that I am not the only one who has thought of such a thing. (Ethical considerations of that proposal discussed here.)

At this point you probably think that I am rabidly delusional. :) I would be rabidly delusional if I thought that I could ever tell this story to a group of scientists/skeptics and be believed and/or presumed sane. (Not playing high-stakes poker.) But if you want to know why I'm here and how I was/am able to put so much time and energy into what I've studied, it's because my experiences have been powerful enough (to me) to make me believe that it is better to understand whatever 'forces' make such things possible than it is to languish in ignorance.

The Genesis of Ethics

"I used to roll the dice,
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes."

Sometimes, the only way you can play high-stakes poker is to pretend that you're not playing high-stakes poker. Ditto with living in 5 dimensions. What do you do when something bad happens? Who do you blame? What do you do when something good happens? How do you avoid a God-complex?

So by now you've figured out that I live somewhere between the 4-dimensional worldmap that I grew up in, and the 5-dimensional worldmap that I've created. The idea of 5 dimensions and its implications still freak me out every once in awhile. And when I think of what other people might do from thinking this way... [Brief pause for stress-induced eating.]

Frankly, I don't consider the 5-dimensional landscape to be complete yet, because it doesn't deal definitively with the very important question of the nature of multiple-observer interactions. More specifically, I have not resolved to my satisfaction the question of whether I am isolated from all other observers or whether I am anchored to and by other observers. I strongly suspect and believe in the latter, but let's discuss...

When something horrible happens, I can often see how I came to that universe/outcome in the same way as I can identify the forces that move me among much smaller and less significant sets of outcomes. I may not have wished for/intended others to suffer, but once sufficiently removed from the event, I sometimes believe that I can understand why I witnessed it. Even personal suffering can be viewed this way, once one is sufficiently removed from the suffering. (Not a popular idea. Don't discuss it with suffering friends.)

In the same way, say something horrible is about to happen, and the horrible outcome seems so inevitable that statements are being made to the effect that "only divine intervention can save us now." If I am able to find the universe where said outcome does not happen, I can believe neither that I am 'divine', nor that I have 'intervened'. I can believe that I (in the aspect of myself that is unanchored to/by others) was able to change my trajectory through the multiverse/smear to avoid witnessing said horrible outcome. But I can also believe the following...

Such an event would undoubtedly command the attention of many observers, all of whom would do various forms of praying/wishing/thinking about the outcome. Assuming that all of these mental actions contribute to a cumulative bias-towards-outcome to which we are all anchored to the extent that we observe the outcome, then the thoughts of each individual are significant. Determining the most significant observer will always be close-to-impossible, as the influence of observers/observations from the future will not be known until later. (This involves the idea of retrocausality, for which I think there is much evidence and with which I believe I have had some personal experience. Hell, I can believe that certain elements of this [gesturing to my blogs] experience may only be explainable in terms of the significance that they had/will have at some point in the future. Ordinary 'signals' just aren't that strong - ever. But don't let that go to your head or freak you out. This isn't high-stakes poker. ;)

There has never been an event that I have experienced for which I seek to 'blame' any other observers. Frankly, I think that if you aren't willing to accept sole responsibility for everything that you experience, you will never truly live in 5 dimensions. In many ways, I can see my thoughts and experiences as a closed set wherein all the events explain each other without resorting to data from other observers.

However, there are experiences that have been both powerful and humbling, which convince me that other observers do exist. And yes, I'm referring to ESP-type experiences. I'm not sure that I would want (or should have) the capacity to select outcomes without the vulnerability of feeling the effect that that change has upon others. The nature of those experiences was quite important in determining how I currently think and behave, ethically speaking. I've done things in the past that, given my current ethical perspective, make me cringe. And I know enough about human nature to realize that everyone who comes into this way of thinking will have to test these things for themselves, which makes me reluctant to be too specific about what to do to achieve a specific outcome.

So here I sit - caught somewhere between 'it's all me' and 'it's all of us together'. I hope that I am currently using the best of both perspectives to guide my actions. If there is an ethical code for living in 5 dimensions, I would say that I am only beginning to see what it might be. Mostly though, what I've discovered is that the old wisdom about what is right and wrong is wisdom for a reason.

And now I'm going to go pretend that I didn't just say all that.

The Darkness that Comes Before

"Miracles to the unbelieving create awe, and sometimes obedience for a little space; then they are forgotten. They are reasoned away and man forgets... or else he becomes superstitious and seeks after signs to prove and to test..."

Every time I hear skeptics whine (you heard me, I said it) that there is no good controlled laboratory evidence for psi phenomena (you know, mind-reading, and so on), I roll my eyes. (Read the literature. Seriously.) Then I wonder what would happen if a 'psychic' gave a skeptic a personal demonstration/ass-kicking. Would the skeptic have the courage to embrace/acknowledge the experience?

Evidence suggests that the answer is 'no'. (Although some skeptics will change their responses if they think they will get something in so doing. I hate lying.)

"But controlled replication is the hallmark of science!" No - logic applied to experience to form and test hypotheses is the hallmark of science. If the evidence indicates that psi exists in everyday experience, yet fades under laboratory conditions, the correct question to ask is WHY does it fade under laboratory conditions? Not surprisingly, that question HAS been asked by parapsychological researchers. (Read the literature. Seriously. If I cared at this point, I'd give you a reference. I suspect though that you only feign ignorance to see what kind of a response you can get. See previous comment.)

I respect the role of the skeptic, I really do. It's just so damn hard to find a good one. (If you were really a good skeptic, you would do a controlled lab test with the psychic. ESP is a fairly significant issue (hell, you people keep writing about it) and one that not going to go away until science can explain the experience of ESP in one way or another. But if we can't trust you to tell the truth about what happened in the experiment... You see how that works? No pressure though. You have more important things to think about. Would've been fun though.)

Yes, there's a part of me that knows that I shouldn't care about 'proving' anything. There's plenty of data out there that supports the existence of psi. One more set of data wouldn't change anything. What's (mostly) missing is a model that explains psi results and makes testable predictions. But then you're not dealing with an enlightened being; you're dealing with a human being who is competitive and likes to win. [And at this point my computer froze and I had to unplug it from the wall. No joke. I spend several minutes wondering whether this was a sign from the universe reminding me that I really do know better. Really, I do.]

I spent all day assessing where, how, if, and to whom I wanted to keep communicating about my experiences and my ideas. (My job is boring and leaves me plenty of time for obsessive thought.) In the end, I conclude this - for the person I used to be, who desperately wanted information and not New-Age mumbo-jumbo, and who wanted to know that she was not alone in what she was experiencing... For that person, I'll leave a searchable record of my experiences and thoughts, freely accessible on the Internet. For now.

And I'll write some damn good science fiction. (A girl's gotta eat. ;)

The Quest for a Secular Morality

"We humans need a moral compass, we need guidance—now more than ever. The world is an astoundingly complex place, and even learning the basic science necessary to have a broad understanding of how the world functions is a life’s achievement. We can’t expect each and every individual to be a lantern unto themselves when it will ultimately lead to each of us clumsily reinventing the wheel or a regression into empty hedonism." - IEET guest post from Tim Dean

The irony of that statement is that Dean is suggesting that a system of guidance be developed and taught to those who are not educated or 'progressive' enough to reach those conclusions on their own, while explicitly rejecting religion as a source of moral values. He is convinced that "we need a moral compass", and that such a system "can serve as a replacement for religion in our society."

Umm... I think we call attempts to indoctrinate us with a specific code of morality by virtue of superior authority 'religion'. ;)

Religion isn't unacceptable because involves a hypothetical divine being. It is unacceptable if it requires that the individual subjugate his/her own experience and reason to 'authority' to the detriment of self and others. It is unacceptable if it will perpetuate ignorance in the face of contradictory evidence in order to maintain its structural integrity, to the detriment of self and others. It is unacceptable if it causes more harm than good.

Should we really be questing for the comprehensive code of secular morality to establish how we should treat each other and why? Do we know enough now about the nature of consciousness and the range of conscious experience that we can feel comfortable making definitive statements about what it means to be human? If it is right to reject all of the contents of religion as Dean suggests - "religion is no longer suitable as a moral compass in the modern world" - because you do not like how some of them are used to reason about gene therapy and artificial intelligence, is it any more right to assume a counter-posture that reveres the experience and ideology of a select minority of humans - namely, certain scientists and philosophers?

If your objective in creating a secular morality is to enhance the authority of science, then you will be creating something just as flawed and perhaps more flawed than the existing moral guidance that is available from religion. Science has not explained what we are as conscious beings, and how all of our experiences arise. Science, as an authoritative explanation for the why of things, may provide a better accounting of our empirical knowledge than its religious counterpart, but the evil of religion is not in the nature of the explanation, but in how it is taught and applied. Unquestioning adherence to the teachings is where we get into trouble with religion, and such adherence is only found when there are claims of superior authority. Are we justified in assuming that science progresses, and that a code of secular morality grounded in scientific knowledge will automatically adapt as well? What happens when scientific theories and/or data conflict? To whose authority do we appeal then?

[Pause for rational exercise: If a child has cancer, and the parents turn to faith-healing to the exclusion of chemo or radiation, and the child dies, we vilify the parents as criminally negligent. However if a child has cancer, and the parents turn to chemo and radiation to the exclusion of faith-healing, and the child dies, we don't question their rationality. Empirical data suggests that all of the proposed treatment options work some of the time, so why is one case of blind adherence to dogma acceptable while the other isn't?]

If the true objective of a quest for secular morality is to increase moral behavior, and we can agree that unjustified appeals to authority to the detriment of human beings are the primary reasons to reject existing religious systems of moral guidance, what system or code of moral 'guidance' can be created that will be any better, yet free of the same problems?

Perhaps the place to start isn't in worrying about is inherently right or wrong. Perhaps we need to back up a step and reinforce that, right or wrong, a person should accept responsibility for his or her own actions. As members of society, we may need to accept other responsibilities as well (such as responsibility for the welfare of those in our care, etc.), but our fundamental responsibility is to not seek to attribute blame elsewhere for our circumstances or actions. No 'the devil made me do it', 'the drugs made me do it', 'peer pressure made me do it', etc. Society may conclude that others maliciously manipulated your behavior or failed in their duty to you, but you are not allowed to seek to absolve yourself of responsibility for your actions in that way.

I'd like to think that such a guiding ethical principle would promote critical thinking. If there is no one to blame but you, do you not bear the responsibility of educating yourself to the best of your abilities? Are you not forced to think about the potential consequences of your actions that much more carefully? Would a society governed by this principle exist in a better state of moral/ethical equilibrium? Would it have been enough to have prevented this, or is fear of authority and/or retribution the only thing strong enough to do that?

This merits additional thought.