"Don't worry — we'll get there. We're just going to play with this idea conceptually before we take it further.
Remember when I told you a living organism, like a human body, consists of a hierarchy of Markov blankets? A body is an intelligent system that is resisting entropy. Everything within the Markov blanket of the body — the cells, the organs, and everything else — work together to keep that body in a very restricted set of states. For example, if the body believes its temperature is too high, all the Markov-blanketed 'things' within the body will work together to bring the temperature back to homeostasis. Make sense?"
"Yep," Zac nodded.
"Good. We're going to represent a human body as a Sierpiński triangle, just like we did with our model of the universe. We're also going to add in our ruleset — 'Every Markov blanket is having a physical experience of its own consciousness i.e., it is maximizing evidence for its own mathematical model of Self.'"
"According to this model, if the outer Markov blanket changes its deeply-held subconscious beliefs about Who It Is, all the Markov-blanketed 'things' within the body should rearrange to restore homeostasis in the system. By that I mean, they should rearrange to give the body a physical experience of Who It Now Believes Itself To Be.
I'm going to read you an interesting section from The Holographic Universe that talks about Multiple Personality Disorder, which is now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. The same principle applies to the whole universe, but let's first examine it on a human body. A body is a much more tangible and discrete system for us to comprehend."
Another condition that graphically illustrates the mind’s power to affect the body is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In addition to possessing different brain-wave patterns, the sub-personalities of a multiple have strong psychological separation from one another. Each has his own name, age, memories and abilities. Often each also has his own style of handwriting, announced gender, cultural and racial background, artistic talents, foreign language fluency and IQ.
Even more noteworthy are the biological changes that take place in a multiple’s body when they switch personalities. Frequently a medical condition possessed by one personality will mysteriously vanish when another personality takes over. Dr. Bennett Braun of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality, in Chicago, has documented a case in which all of a patient’s subpersonalities were allergic to orange juice, except one. If the man drank orange juice when one of his allergic personalities was in control, he would break out in a terrible rash. But if he switched to his nonallergic personality, the rash would instantly start to fade and he could drink orange juice freely.
Dr. Francine Howland, a Yale psychiatrist who specializes in treating multiples, relates an even more striking incident concerning one multiple’s reaction to a wasp sting. On the occasion in question, the man showed up for his scheduled appointment with Howland with his eye completely swollen shut from a wasp sting. Realizing he needed medical attention, Howland called an ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, the soonest the ophthalmologist could see the man was an hour later, and because the man was in severe pain, Howland decided to try something. As it turned out, one of the man’s alternates was an “anesthetic personality” who felt absolutely no pain. Howland had the anesthetic personality take control of the body, and the pain ended. But something else also happened. By the time the man arrived at his appointment with the ophthalmologist, the swelling was gone and his eye had returned to normal. Seeing no need to treat him, the ophthalmologist sent him home.
After a while, however, the anesthetic personality relinquished control of the body, and the man’s original personality returned, along with all the pain and swelling of the wasp sting. The next day he went back to the ophthalmologist to at last be treated. Neither Howland or her patient had told the ophthalmologist that the man was a multiple, and after treating him, the ophthalmologist telephoned Howland. “He thought time was playing tricks on him,” Howland laughed. “He just wanted to make sure that I had actually called him the day before and he had not imagined it.”
Allergies are not the only thing multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the control the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it is banished by the pharmacological wizardry of the multiple. By changing personalities, a multiple who is drunk can instantly become sober. Different personalities also respond differently to different drugs. Braun records a case in which 5 milligrams of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had little or no effect on another. Often one or several of a multiple’s personalities are children, and if an adult personality is given a drug and then a child’s personality takes over, the adult dosage may be too much for the child and result in an overdose. It is also difficult to anesthetize some multiples, and there are accounts of multiples waking up on the operating table after one of their ‘unanesthetizable’ subpersonalities has taken over.
Other conditions that can vary from personality to personality include scars, burn marks, cysts, and left- and right-handedness. Visual acuity can differ, and some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of eyeglasses to accommodate their alternating personalities. One personality can be color-blind and another not, and even eye color can change. There are cases of women who have two or three menstrual periods each month because each of their subpersonalities has its own cycle. Speech pathologist Christy Ludlow had found that the voice pattern for each of the multiple personalities is different, a feat that requires such a deep physiological change that even the most accomplished actor cannot alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern. One multiple, admitted to a hospital with diabetes, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms when one of her nondiabetic personalities was in control. There are accounts of epilepsy coming and going with changes in personality, and psychologist Robert A. Philips, Jr., reports that even tumors can appear and disappear (although he does not specify what kind of tumors). [...]
The systems of control that must be in place to account for such capacities is mind-boggling and makes our ability to will away a wart look pale. Allergic reaction to a wasp sting is a complex and multi-faceted process and involves the organized activities of antibodies, the production of histamine, the dilation and rupture of blood vessels, the excessive release of immune substances, and so on. What unknown pathways of influence enable the mind of a multiple to freeze all these processes in their tracks? Or what allows them to suspend the effects of alcohol and other drugs in the blood, or turn diabetes on or off? At the moment we don’t know and must console ourselves with one simple fact. Once a multiple has undergone therapy and in some way becomes whole again, he or she can still make these switches at will. This suggests that somewhere in our psyches we all have the ability to control these things. And still this is not all we can do.
Michael Talbot
"What the actual fuck?" Zac said. "How come I haven't heard about this before? That data doesn't seem very compatible with materialism, so how come materialism is still the prevailing worldview?"
"That was my question, exactly," I smiled. "If you read that whole book, it's a treasure trove of strange research studies and phenomena that are completely incompatible with materialism.
Like, have these scientists made any effort to falsify materialism? Any effort at all? The data is there if you actually look. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is something very, very off about our current understanding of the universe. It just takes a little curiosity and critical thought, which the mainstream scientific community obviously lacks, given that they still dogmatically believe in something that is obviously not true."
"You're really having a go at the scientists tonight, aren't you?"
I crossed my arms. "Yeah, well, they deserve it. To be honest, it's a little embarrassing that an uneducated twenty-seven-year-old bystander is sitting here on a pier, having to do their job for them. And I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I mean that in an if-I-don't-do-it-then-who-else-is-going-to? way. The scientific establishment is so up to their eyeballs in their own bullshit that they can't see things clearly."
