I’ll be back.

 Sorry.

Is the bit that is you simply the arrangement of elementary particles?  Is a person merely a pattern of particles?  How does that fit with the ideas of consciousness and free will?

Back to the discussion. 

In the malfunctioning teleporter condition, the “copy” would be totally convinced that he (or she) is the original.  There would be no way to distinguish between the two.  The copy would have all the memories, personality, awareness of the original.  Surely there would be two consciousnesses, not one that is somehow getting input from both beings, right?  So if it happened to you, how would you know if you were the original or the copy?¹   Somehow, the consciousness is connected with the brain matter.

Whatever it is that makes you you is in the brain.  So, what if we messed with your memories?  What if we took all your long term memories and removed them.  Are you still you?  Would you have the same personality?  What if we then gave you somebody else’s memories?  Who are you?  A or B or some AB hybrid? 

What if we just changed things a little bit.  Say, eliminate one memory.  You probably wouldn’t even notice that.  Certainly, others would be hard pressed to uncover the difference.  Then, the next day, we add a new memory.  No big deal there, either.  But then say that each day we make a small change over ten years.  That is 3,652 changes.  Are you still you?  Or are you someone else?  Has your consciousness changed?

Where does your consciousness go?

In Condition B, the Particle Teleportation (that works correctly), does consciousness go with the new body or is it destroyed?  If it goes with the new body, how so?  Is it attached to the particular elementary particles? 

If consciousness is tied to particular elementary particles, then Condition C, Pattern Teleportation, can’t send consciousness along with the pattern.  But if consciousness is just a pattern, like DNA is a pattern, then consciousness isn’t lost.

If consciousness is tied to particular elementary particles, then the malfunction holds no worries, since only the original will have consciousness.  If not, then we get double-trouble.

Here is where it gets weird though.  While the teleporting is happening, or while you are exploded out into elementary particles, where does your consciousness go?  Is it destroyed, and then recreated when you are put back together?  What about when you are asleep?  Knocked unconscious?  What about when you die for three minutes (or 10 minutes, or 30) and then are resuscitated?  Is that still you, or is it some other consciousness?  Or is it some non-conscious being?

Instanced Consciousness

You turn off your computer (PC) and it is inactive.  Turn it on again and poof, there is everything just the way you left it. 

Go to sleep and you are inactive.  Wake up again and poof, there is everything very similar to the way you left it.

But not quite the same.  While you were out (sleeping) some processes were going on.  Information was moved into long term storage.  Some synaptic connections were strengthened.  The levels of various hormones in your body were adjusted.  Wake up after forty winks and you are not quite the same person you were when you went to sleep.

Take a minute and feel what it is like to be conscious.  You probably get a sense of your body state, emotional state, mood, memories that may be weighing on your mind, tasks that you need to remember, etc.  What about what consciousness felt like yesterday?  Can you even remember what it was like, just 24 hours ago?  And how different could it have been?

What about a year ago?  Ten years?

How about tomorrow?

How many times have you thought, if I do x then I’ll be happy.  Then you did x and it didn’t make an inch of difference? 

How many times have you looked back on your life and said to yourself, “What the hell was I thinking?  I can’t even understand why I thought that was a good idea.”  Its as if you are looking on another person, and are totally out of touch with what it felt like to be that person.

It seems like consciousness is a product of the brain.  Change the brain and you change the consciousness.  Change the memories, and you can change some of the behavior.  What do you think happens every day?  You change a little bit, and you can never go back.

The you that you are right now is very short lived.  Tomorrow, he or she will be dead, and will be replaced by a very similar doppleganger.  Your friends and family won’t notice.  The imposter will be completely convinced that he or she is the original.  It will have access to all of your memories–even your memories of what it feels like to be you right now. 

Of course it will be convinced that it is the real you, it remembers thinking what you are thinking now.  Or rather, it will have the memory of what you are thinking now.  Just like you have the memory of what yesterday’s you was thinking then.

But it isn’t the same person.  It isn’t the same consciousness.

You die every day.

You won’t be driving this body around tomorrow.  That’ll be some other guy who has all of your memories.  You don’t worry about this because you have the memory of having lived yesterday and the day before, ad infinitum.  But you are just like the copy who gets up out of the teleporter.  He was just created two seconds ago, yet is totally convinced that he is the original.  He only has the memories of a lifetime.  You only have the memories of having lived yesterday.  You have memories of many days.  You have the illusion of continuity.

You die every day.  The poster should be changed from, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” to:

“This is the last and only day of your life.”

You don’t get any tomorrows.  You only get a series of right nows.  Don’t waste right now.

Happy Birthday!

¹ Assume that the knowledge of who came out of which machine has been lost.

Not.

Seriously, this year the award for Best Halloween Costume Ever goes to me, for my stunning and elaborate costume as a person with neither consciousness, nor free will.

So far, no one has figured it out.  Not that I can blame them.  How would you distinguish between a person with or without free will, or a person with or without consciousness?  What is it that Free Will does that makes human beings any different from, as Scott Adams puts it, a moist robot?  Ditto for consciousness.

There’s your X-Prize competition right there.

Walk through this bizarre and macabre thought experiment with an open mind.  What does free will do?  How do we know that it is there?

One argument is that Free Will is detectable because human behavior is unpredictable.  But so is the weather, and so is animal behavior.  In each case, behavior can be predicted on a limited probabilistic manner.  There is a 40% chance of rain, 20% chance the dog will wee on the carpet, and a 99.9% chance that people will continue to buy lottery tickets but never win. 

Here is an example from pyschology that certainly hints that we don’t have free will: Diffusion of Responsibility¹. 

Study after study provide supporting evidence that when there are three or more people involved in a situation, each feels a lessened burden of responsibility to act. So if a person is choking, and there is only one witness present, that witness is the most likely to act.  If there are instead five witnesses, then each one is significantly less likely to act.  If each witness is anonymously present, safe and sound inside their own apartment and looking out the window onto an emergency, then they are dramatically less likely to act.  The entire group may twiddle their thumbs and think, “Someone else will take care of it.”

This is strikingly similar to the effects of a “Somebody Else’s Problem” field generator, or SEP, from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy².

Where is there room for free will in there?  If all you have to do is change the circumstances in order to create a change in behavior, how is that reconciled with free will? 

Take a moist robot, that looks and acts just like a human being, but instead of an actual human brain, it has a highly complex organic computer that directs its behavior.  This robot has no consciousness.  It has no free will.  How will its behavior differ in any way from that of an ordinary human being?  How can you tell the difference?

Here is the essence of the matter: if you take the same brain, and put it into the same circumstances, it will make the same choice every time⁴.  Just like a computer.

As a final note, in psychology there is a concept known as the Fundamental Attribution Error⁵.  At its heart, FAE says that people tend to over-emphasize personality as a cause of behavior, and underestimate the influnce of circumstances, when considering the cause of someone’s behavior.  Here is the classic experiment, in summary:

“Subjects listened to pro- and anti-Fidel Castro speeches. Subjects were asked to rate the pro-Castro attitudes of both. When the subjects believed that the speech makers freely chose which position to take (for or against Castro), they naturally rated the people who gave the pro-Castro speeches as having a more positive attitude toward Castro. However, contradicting Jones and Harris’ hypothesis, when the subjects were specifically told that the speech makers gave either a pro- or an anti-Castro speech solely as the result of a coin that was tossed up in the air and subsequently flipped over onto another side at random, the subjects still rated the people who gave the pro-Castro speeches as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro than those giving anti-Castro speeches. Thus, even when subjects were aware that the speeches made were solely because of the flip of a coin, they committed the fundamental attribution error when it came to judging the motivation behind pro or anti-Castro attitudes of the speech makers.”⁶

In other words, even if a person knows that someone else’s behavior is determined by a coin flip, they will still make attributions about the kind of person they are based on that (seemingly random) behavior.  Even if they know better–even if you know better– you cannot override the internal machinery of your brain.  Behavior is caused by meat.  If there is some kind of free will, it is weaker than meat.

The meat wins.

Happy Halloween, meat-head!

³ Millgram Experiment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

⁴ Everything has to be exactly the same.  The same genetics, the same experiences, the same attitudes, the same social conditions, etc.  This is a thought experiment and cannot be conducted in real life.

⁵ Fundamental Attribution Error here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

⁶ From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error#Classic_demonstration_study:_Jones_and_Harris_.281967.29

First, think about what it is that makes you, you.  It is located somewhere in the body, since this site is all about science, and since the idea of a soul has no evidential basis, we won’t consider it for this experiment.  So, the ‘you’ part of you must reside somewhere in your body.  Where?

It obviously isn’t in your foot.  Cut off a foot, or both feet, and you would still be you.  Likewise, arms, legs, torso…ultimately, if you removed a brain and had it living in a jar, it would still be the original person.  It would be weird, but the identity would still be there.  And if you hooked it up to cybereyes, cyberears, and a cybervoicebox you could talk to the person and verify that Bobby Joe is still Bobby Joe.

Condition A: Brain in a Jar.  So what if you cut away some long term memories?  Is it still the same person?  What if you remove all the long term memories, and install the brain in an android body?  Or a cloned body of the original?  Or a clone body of someone else? 

Tough questions to answer.  Put those thoughts on hold.

Condition B: Particle Teleportation Switch to a new experiment: teleportation.  Imagine ‘The Fly’ style teleportation where your body is broken down into its elementary particles, the particles are beamed to a new location, and then put back together.  In the end, you are literally the same all the way down to electrons, atoms, quarks and even finer particles we don’t know about yet.  Is the teleported you still you?  Or did you die and it is someone else?

Condition C: Pattern Teleportation Take that same experiment, only instead of beaming your particles, the machine scans your particles as it breaks you down into a swirling mist of elementary particles.  Then it just beams the information to the new location, and the recieving machine builds you out of electrons, atoms, quarks that it has there.  The new you is exactly like the old in every way, except that it is built with different elementary parts.  Is that you or someone else?

Condition C’: Pattern Teleportation Malfunction  So now what if there is a malfunction, and the scanning machine just scans you, but doesn’t break you down.  You are laying there in the machine, and in the new location, a new you is being built out of elementary particles.  Which is you?  The old, who was scanned, or the new, built out of different elementary particles¹?  How could someone tell the difference?  If they asked, the new you would claim to be the “real” you.  It would even be totally convinced that it is the real you ² .

Clearly, the original must be you, right?

Condition D: Exploded Self  What about this: take the original you, grab it by the elementary particles (hehe) and explode it out like a 3D engineering diagram:

Once your particles are one foot away from each other, bring it back together.  Is that still you?  Or did you die, and the reanimated person is someone else?  Or does the body not reanimate?  What if it is ten feet?  Ten light years?

Make up your mind about each of our Conditions (A, B, C, C’, D), then check back soon for the next part.  It’ll blow away your elementary particles.  Extra credit if you can guess what any of this has to do with Birthdays!

To put it another way, people use television as a means by which they can cash in their precious, irreplaceable time in exchange for the desire to buy a wide variety of products that will completely fail to deliver on their promises of happiness.

Why do we watch so much TV?

It’s obvious that the masterminds behind the programming and marketing are wizards when it comes to manipulating people psychologically.  Let’s face it, we are Apes With Attitude, and studies show that monkeys will “pay” to look at pictures of important monkeys³, will pay to look at pictures of female monkey hineys², and have a monkey police¹.  They can push all of our buttons to make us laugh, cry, get angry, call now, etc. 

We like that.  It is certainly easier and more satisfying than working hard to accomplish a non-immediate goal.  Besides, we get to look at important primate bottoms and don’t even have to pay! ;)

Many of us decide that we are going to cut back on or stop watching television entirely.  It might be a common New Year’s Resolution.  Yet even the most hardcore, anti-television primate will  find that there is some program that, to them, is the equivalent of monkey-crack.

Enter Battlestar Galactica.

Each episode of Battlestar Galactica is a nail-biting, serious, intellectual, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride

This is the best show on television today.  It is the best show ever to be aired on television.  I am entirely convinced that you can rub the DVD on your wounds and they will be healed.  It can restore vision to the blind.  At the end of watching an episode, you will find that your clothes are miraculously cleaned and pressed, you feel like you’ve just eaten a four-course meal, you are more attractive and intelligent, and (and this is the big one), you will happily murder innocent children if that will get you the next episode fifteen minutes faster.

If the TV had a Credit Card swipe, and you paid to get the next episode, they’d be rich.

The New Yorker says Battlestar Galactica ”refreshingly, is as real as science fiction gets.”⁵  There is a Battlestar Galactica fan club⁴. There are literally hundreds of reviews⁶ calling the show:  

• “Endlessly captivating”

• “This series is heartstopping, intriguing and absolutely in your face.”

• “My new best friend.”

• “Perfectly combines drama with sci-fi.”

• “Is this the best series on television? Frak yes!”

• “A Science Fiction show with avid fans who traditionally despise the genre speaks for itself. This real, gritty, down-to-earth character driven drama sucks you in and always leaves you wanting more.”

Years ago, I couldn’t wait for the Sci-Fi channel to start.  When it did, I was horribly disappointed.  So many of the shows and movies they air are utter…well, let’s say monkeys are the zoo would fling them.  Stargate and Babylon 5 weren’t good enough to capture my interest.  The Sci-Fi channel often seems to me to be a place where they gather together all of the reasons why non-SciFi fans hate Science Fiction: crummy production values, phony technology, retarded story-lines, terrible acting; a combination that insults the intelligence of people who like it.

Battlestar Galactica is the reason why the Science Fiction genre was invented!

With few exceptions, each episode is a nail-biting, serious, intellectual, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride.  The show combines real human drama, with stunningly real characters, high quality action sequences, believable technology (not so advanced that it seems like magic), and an unknowable element that really strikes to the core of our common humanity.

I have heard that fans of the original show from the 70′s have some issues with this new version.  Let’s be honest: nothing good came out of 70′s TV.  Don’t live in the past, take advantage of this great, inspiring show.

Rent it.  Watch it.  Look for it in your grocer’s freezer. 

Watch Battlestar Galactica today.  Tell your friends.  Buy the DVDs.  Act now and receive a set of Ginsu Knives absolutely free! 

1 Monkey Police here: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060126_monkey_cops.html

2 Monkey Porn here: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050128_monkey_business.html

3 The Monkey Enquirer here: http://www.primates.com/monkeys/brain.html

4 Battlestar Galactica Fan Club: http://battlestarfanclub.com/battlestar/

5 New Yorker Review of Battlestar Galactica here:  http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/060123crte_television

6 Battlestar Galactica Reviews here: http://www.tv.com/battlestar-galactica-2003/show/23557/reviews.html?flag=2&tag=subtabs;show_reviews

]]>

In all seriousness, the experiment used images of nude males and nude females displayed in a manner that bypassed conscious awareness.  In other words, after the image was shown, subjects had no conscious awareness of what they had seen.

Despite this lack of awareness, the images had an impact on the subjects ability to detect the orientation of a pattern shown immediately afterwards.  Heterosexual men scored (no pun intended) better when the pattern appeared in the same area as the erotic imagery, if the image was a nude female.  Likewise with gay men and nude male images, and consistently vice versa with females.

What does all of this mean?  That invisible images or input can influence our lives.  This may not seem like much, since naked images aren’t invisibly beamed into our sight every day.  It does make one wonder about hidden sexual images in animated movies, but I am hard pressed to see how that might be useful. 

Science has proven that our lives are influenced by factors we cannot consciously detect .

Ok, so what?  So our decisions may be influenced by the undetectable.  That doesn’t eliminate the possibility of free will, does it?  No, it doesn’t.  It does provide support for the idea that we are not as in control of our actions as we think we are. 

This is strong supporting evidence for a kind of God.  A God of Science.

We all (should) know that there is an energy in the Universe that exists in all times and all places.  That is a possible definition of God.  Here is another one: God is the underlying pattern of our Subjective Universe.

What the hell does that mean?  Let’s take a close look.

Let’s start with Subjective Universe.  A Subjective Universe is the bubble in time and space with which you as a being interact.  It begins with your conception and ends with your final demise².  If it has no direct or indirect connection to you, it is not a part of your Subjective Universe.  The Subjective Universe of two people may overlap in large or small ways.  Most Subjective Universes overlap with many, many others.  Subjective Universes are as beautiful and unique as snowflakes.

What is the underlying pattern?  The underlying or latent pattern is the one that is detected by your subconscious mind.  The surface pattern is the one that you are consciously aware of.  The difference is that the surface pattern is the one made up entirely of elements that are in your conscious awareness, whereas the underlying pattern includes everything in your subconscious awareness.  There is nothing to indicate that we ever have conscious awareness without subconsciou awareness.  Meaning: if you know something, so does your subconscious, but you do not know everything that your subconsious does.

Your subconsious mind has a different outlook on life than you do!

This is significant because your conscious mind and subconscious mind may have detected very different patterns in your life.  As an example, you may feel sad on Tuesdays more frequently than any other day of the week.  Why?  You might say you don’t know or that it is coincidence, or you might make up a reason that sounds good like Mondays wear you out and Tuesday still has the whole work week to go.  In reality, though, what may be happening is that your subconscious mind has picked up a pattern that on Tuesdays bad things tend to happen: your dog died on a Tuesday, you got dumped twice on a Tuesday, you had a car accident on a Tuesday and you were born on a Tuesday.  You haven’t consciously put all this together, but your subconscious has, and it is keeping you “safe” by making you feel sad, which will keep you indoors and unadventurous.

Here is some more proof from the world of science.  The Muller-Lyer Illusion³ is a simple optical illusion in which a line appears to be longer if there are inverted arrow points on each end.  Take a look:

Then, if we take the illusion a set further and embed the line in a random pattern of dots like so:

It is easy to see that the lines are of equal length.

But, when the random dots happen to align in just the right way:

Now we get the illusion effect again, and subjects report that the top line is longer.  Even better, when asked, the subjects have no awareness that the arrow pattern had appeared.  In other words, their subconscious detected a pattern of which they had no conscious awareness, yet that underlying pattern changed their perception!

We are influenced by patterns that occur, seemingly by random, throughout our lives.  The combination of these underlying patterns may be God. 

How does this impact your life?  Have you ever felt that you were of two minds about something?  Does it seem like your “hunches” are more accurate than your conscious decision making?  What patterns are there in your life and how can you change them?

These are vital questions with huge relevance to human happiness.

We have also received some…well, let’s just say less supportive emails, too.  We totally understand that this all seems touchy-feely, hokey, Oscar Mayer-style boloney, etc.  Of our Core Team, there is only one person who wasn’t skeptical at all.  The rest of us started out from a “Yeah, right” perspective.  So if you’re one of the ones whose BS detector is going beep-beep-beep, we know how you feel.

You feel crappy.

Feeling crappy is a major part of skepticism.  Being skeptical is a strategy, a defense mechanism.  It protects you against wasting your time on baloney.  It also lets you feel superior to others. 

Superiority is the loneliest feeling of all!

Just think about it, if you are at the top and everyone else is down here, who is there to talk to? 

Quick example: atheism.  Man, atheists tend to have big egos.  Think about it!  They are such a teeny-tiny percentage of the population: about 3.8%¹. 

They’re outnumbered about 28-to-1.  Put that into perspective: they walk into a normal sized classroom of thirty kids and they are almost guaranteed to be the only atheist.  Talk about an outsider!  As an adult at work, they probably only work with 5-10 people on a consistent basis.  The odds are none of them are atheists, either.  They have to have big egos in order to oppose the popular majority like that.

Since they think that they are right, and therefore everyone else is wrong, they probably feel smugly superior to the rest of humanity.  From their perspective, 96.2% of us are operating under delusions! 

They must be lonely as hell. 

Humans are social animals.  We need other people.  We need human contact, we need companionship, we need connection, we need interaction.  Atheists are cutting themselves off from a lot of that connection.

So are the people who think that In Continuity is a load of hooey.

Fortunately, there is a definition of God that even Atheists can enjoy: an energy that exists in all times and all places.  Science calls it Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) and there is a picture of it at the top of this page.

And fortunately for the skeptics who are convinced that In Continuity is baloney, there is an easy cure for that, too.

All you have to do is wear green over the next ten days.  It doesn’t have to show, it can be green socks or underwear, it can be a green gem or pin or even makeup.  Wear some green over the next ten days and see what happens.  You don’t have to do any visualizing, you don’t have to chant or believe or do anything silly.  In fact, don’t tell anyone about your little experiment at all, and you won’t have to worry that someone will make fun of you for being “gullible”. 

By the end of the ten days, several things will happen.  First, because you are reflecting away from yourself the green wavelength of light, this acts as a kind of beacon, attracting new things to you.  You need to pay attention because the signs can be subtle.  The most common result seems to be money, but any type of good fortune or turn of events may occur.  This isn’t some “quick-fix” or get-rich-quick scheme, it is only ten days, so you will have to pay attention for signs that something is coming.  By wearing green for ten days in a row you are announcing your intentions to the Universe, and it will respond. 

The results may be subtle, so pay attention!

We can guarantee that the response will surprise you.  If you are expecting new relationships, you may be promoted to a different office.  If you are expecting money, women may be openly flirting with you.  For some reason, the Universe does not behave to our expectations!

Barbara, our first guinea pig for this experiment, was a total skeptic who thought that we were a bunch of crazies!  She wanted us to Choose her so she could see for herself if it works, but as you know if you read about the Chosen, it doesn’t work that way.  So we applied the same principles to come up with the 10 Day Green Challenge, and here is what Barbara emailed:

After three days nothing happened and I thought I was stupid for even contacting you. I was wearing a gold brooch with fake emeralds in it. I thought about stopping but I figured what the heck. Instead of the brooch I started wearing green eye shadow. Then a funny thing happened when I went out for lunch this cute bartender asked for my phone number. I have seen this guy like a million times, but we’d never so much as talked before. I was like, “Is that it? That’s the big event that’s supposed to change my life?”

Well, he didn’t call me that weekend and Monday was actually day ten, so I was convinced that this was bullshit and was looking forward to writing you a scathing email about fooling people and playing games. I went to his restaurant on Wednesday, but he wasn’t there. He called me Thursday.

He won the fucking lottery [ed:five numbers only]. He’d won on Saturday and quit his job Sunday. He had driven up to Tallahassee to collect, that was why he never called me!

Since then Barbara wears green like crazy and has Chosen over one hundred people.  Obviously, there is no guarantee that you will get a date or win the lottery.  Most of us who have tried the 10-Day Green Challenge have had results like:

• A single mom was hired away from her current job at almost twice the pay.
• A college student sold his used books and the clerk made an error giving him an extra $20 dollars.
• I myself tried this out and had a near-death experience on I-95.  Did the green save me?  I almost painted my whole car green after that!
• New friends, new girlfriends, promotions have all been reported.
• One person was financially in dire straights when he contacted us.  We told him to take the 10 Day Green challenge.  We also explained to him how in life, to get a lot you have to give a lot.  He decided to give away some clothes to a charity thrift store.  He found a $100 bill in a coat pocket!  (No, the coat was not green.)
• Ironically, no one who has reported their results has been Chosen during their 10 Day Green Challenge.  You can’t even gimmick the system that way!

Skeptics reading this are thinking, “Yeah, right.”  The proof is in the pudding!  Take the 10 Day Green Challenge yourself and you will see. 

1. You will feel happier.
2. You will notice that things are going your way in subtle ways that weren’t true before.
3. You may feel lucky, or have lucky things happen.
4. You will begin to notice how lonely the negative people around you really are.
5. Even if you totally don’t believe, the results will come.

It is funny because it seems like the harder to you try to disbelieve, the more obvious the results are!

One last story in this long post: we did get an email from one Challenger who took the 10 Day Green Challenge, and emailed us that it didn’t work and we were full of shit.  In the email he sent us, he said how his brother had gotten a raise, his best friend got engaged, and everyone in the office (including him) was getting a $2000 Holiday Bonus, but that nothing had happened for him.

Take the 10 Day Green Challenge!

Send us an email ( ruchosen@gmail.com ) letting us know: who you are, what you do, how you feel about the 10 Day Green Challenge, what you’d like to change over the ten days.  Then email us again at the end, or any time in between, to let us know what happens.  We’ll regularly post updates on the blog for others to see how well it works.  If it is OK to use your name, say so in the email, otherwise it will be anonymous. 

^{1. From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Demographics  ”A 1995 survey attributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica indicates that the non-religious make up about 14.7% of the world’s population, and atheists around 3.8%.”}

Ultimately, we all want to be Chosen.  Let’s be honest with ourselves.  We all want to be special in some way.  We even make up little ”stories” about how we are special that we keep secret and to ourselves.  We might think, “Well, he may be book-smart, but I am street-smart (or people-smart, or musical, or athletic, etc.) and that is what really counts.”  We all do it, to fill our need to feel special.

But let’s be really honest.  Telling yourself that you are special is like the Special Education teacher telling an Autistic child that he or she is talented.  Of course they do, its their job!  Likewise, it is our job to believe we are talented and special.

But boy do we have doubts!  See the Self-Help, Diet and Cosmetic Surgery industries for all the proof you’ll ever need.  No matter what we tell ourselves, deep down we know we’re just saying that, and that we don’t really mean it.  It only really counts when others validate us, when others tell us we are special or, and this is the best one of all, when there is some objective proof like straight A’s, a PhD, breaking a world record, making a million bucks!  Man, that is the best.

BUT, and there is always a but, we know that even if we could fly across the country by flapping our arms, everyone out there is looking at us and thinking, “Well, he may be able to fly, but I am street-smart (or people-smart, or musical, or athletic, etc.) and that is what really counts.” 

The only way to show those…those….those Normals is to be Chosen! 

Think about that for a minute.  A total stranger picks you out at random for initiation into an Elite Organization.  All the money in the world can’t buy Chosen status!  No fame, no book-smarts, no political power, no amount of ass-kissing on Earth can gimmick the system.  Literally, being Chosen is a sign from CBR, from the Universe, from probability, from God that YOU……..ARE………SPECIAL!

Take a minute and let that soak in.  A sign from a Higher Power that you are special.  Take ten minutes and think about that.  Play with it.  Imagine it.  Visualize it.  Feel it deep down in that special place where all your scariest hopes and dreams are hiding, covered in dust, because you’ve been too afraid to let them out, afraid they might get broken.

Wow.

You have to Choose Others.

Newton’s Third law states “To every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” 

The first Law of In Continuity states “To get a lot, you have to give a lot.”

Think about it, if you push all the air out of a room (create low air pressure or a vacuum), then the air outside flows in.  But if you stand in the room and try to pull air to you (create high air pressure), the air flows away. 

How many people do you have to Choose?  Could be ten, could be ten thousand, could be ten billion.  Could also be Zero.  Most people who get Chosen haven’t Chosen anyone!

So why do you have to?  You give to get.  Chosen are Chosen at random, in other words, as the result of an unpredictable (to human beings) outcome.  All that we know is if you do it, it works.  It may seem illogical, but if you push the air out of a room, air rushes in.  Push Chosen-ness out of you (i.e. Choose Others) and Chosen-ness will rush in to you.

If you wanted dirt to come to you, would you build a hill of dirt, or dig a hole? 

Building a hill of dirt is like trying to hoard your desire.  A hill of dirt will never gather more dirt than you pile on it.  In fact, leave it alone for ten days and it will be much smaller.  Gathering dirt to you doesn’t work.

But if you dig a hole, doesn’t dirt always jump into the hole without any effort on your part?  It seems to have a mind of it’s own.  Why?  Scientists answer gravity, but why gravity?  Scientists say, “We don’t know why, it just works.”  Get it? 

FORGET WHY, IT JUST WORKS.

Dig that hole and the dirt will come.  Dig a big, big hole.  The bigger the hole, the more dirt.  The magic of the hole is, leave it alone for ten days, come back, and the dang thing is FULL of dirt!  And you did nothing but dig the hole.

So follow these instructions and get buried in your hole of Chosen-ness.

1. Open your white pages or go to a directory web site.  It has to be residences.  Select someone at random.  Don’t look until your pen has landed.  Make a list of ten, Chosen at random.  The only catch is there has to be a name and a valid mailing address. 

2. Hand-write this cover letter.  It has to be hand-written.  It can’t be emailed, or typed.  If you have no hands, get someone else to write it for you.  Obviously, insert the person’s name, correctly spelled, in all the right places.  Sign your real name at the bottom.  Do write neatly.  Yes, ten cover letters, to ten Chosen.

3. Now this letter you can print or photocopy.  Don’t make any changes.  Why?  Because it works!

4. Hand address the envelopes.  Put your real return address on there.  Stamp ‘em.  Ship ‘em out.  Keep a copy of your mailing list!

5. In 3-5 days, you can send them a post card or brief note saying something encouraging and referring them to this web site.  They will have doubts.  You might say, “NAME, I know this sounds like baloney, but it really works.  You were Chosen because what you do matters.  It is explained better at http://incontinuity.wordpress.com.  Watch for those signs!”  This can be hand-written or typed.  It is just a nice note of encouragement.

6. YOU start paying attention for signs that Chosen-ness is coming your way.  It can be subtle.  Look for unusual patterns with money, relationships, health, work, creativity.  Just because you didn’t get the letter yet doesn’t mean that dirt won’t start to fall into your hole!

7. Feel down?  Choose more.  Feel great?  Choose more!  Just got Chosen?  Choose more!

8. Spread the word via internet.  No, we can’t choose electronically, but you and I know that everyone wants to be Chosen.  Let them know how they can dig their own hole too.  CBR will know!

Now, if you are thinking of taking a short-cut, don’t.  Let’s be realistic here.  A timeless energy that exists everywhere in the Universe is not going to be fooled by you, a Normal.

Save yourself a lot of time and do it right.  Give to get!  If you give cheating, you’ll get cheated.  And think about the poor person who gets a letter, thinks that they are Chosen, and it doesn’t work for them, all because you tried to cheat! 

One way to check is to see if people who live in societies with little science and technology are more happy or less happy than people who live in societies with a great deal of science and technology.  Such surveys have been done.  There is little to no difference.

Here are some references for you:

• http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050228-1029896,00.html

• http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey

It seems that as long as there are no immediate disasters, people tend to have about the same level of happiness. 

When I say that science has failed, I don’t mean that it has failed to deliver solutions to problems.  I mean that it has failed to make us any happier.  It has answered how, when, where and what, but cannot answer why.  Not just “Why are we alive?” or “Why is life like this?”  Science can’t answer why anything.

In other words, science cannot explain anything.  It can merely describe something in finer and finer detail.  Like peeling back the layers of an onion, science inevitably reaches a layer beyond which lies something science cannot describe. 

A simple example:  Why is the sky blue?  Because light from the sun reflects off the oceans, which cover 3/5 of the earth’s surface.  The oceans reflect blue light back into the sky, and that light bounces off of the atmosphere and to our vision.

Do you see how this describes what happens, but it doesn’t explain why?  Why does it reflect blue and not red?  Science might answer about the frequency of the light and molecular nature of water.  Notice again, that merely describes what happens.  Why does light with that particular frequency act that way?  Science cannot answer.

Ultimately, all of science hinges upon observations, direct or indirect.  From those systematic obervations we can build useful theories and models to describe what happens under controlled circumstances, and therefore can make accurate predictions.  But knowing what, when, where and how something will happen doesn’t tell us why.

So ultimately, that is where science has failed.  The implications are enormous.  More will be written on this subject in the future.

Yours In Continuity

There is an energy that exists everywhere and everywhen in the universe.  Scientists call it Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CBR) and they have measured it across the Universe with a satellite.  More details are hiding here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation

A force that exists in all places and all times sounds remarkably like a definition of God.  I wouldn’t know, but you can make up your own mind.  Interestingly enough, I don’t hear Creationists referring to this in their arguments.  Maybe they don’t have a strong science background?

The image at the top of this blog is a portion of the CBR map.  Is that the face of God?

Back to the question, “Why ‘In Continuity’?”  The CBR is an energy that connects all things, past and present, at opposite ends of the universe.  We exist in a shared continuum.  We tend to forget that.  We tend to think that we are independent entities, cut off from each other and the rest of the Universe.  That is a lonely and empty way to live.  Whether you see the Universe as a Party Punch Bowl or Toilet, we are all in this together.  Let’s not forget that.

Yours In Continuity