A phrase I learned from Branden which has helped me at certain times: I am (name) and I am enough. There is more to being a hero than a particular moment. I think childhood and parental influence can be crucial. But that's another discussion. "heroes are made, not born."

Greestein & Zajonic, The Quantum Challenge tries to describe the relevant locality experiments and deductions from them. Not enough is known about what is happening to draw fundamental conclusions.

Observation creating reality is a favored "interpretation" but most physicists go about their work without regard to that.

Herb, I think it may have been a case of two people typing at the same time. While I certainly am interested in hearing your thoughts about the matter, as you shared them, my original question was intended for dukem.

I've also noticed that when I hit "reply," this forum software doesn't always position the comment where I thought it would be!

You're asking me? When it comes to human consciousness, what does "existence" mean? This is where we need to differentiate between thought and reality. Because reality can be a product of consciousness or not, it is very easy to screw up and confuse one with the other.

Your story could be mine. And, probably that of many others. Because children tend to see things in a greater black and white fashion and kids whose brains are not mature until at least their mid twenties the world around them seems insane. Nothing makes sense When my father would berate me for not being a kid who could earn money, I worked out a lawn mowing scheme, but then he wouldn't allow me to use the lawn mower. I flipped out almost to the point where I totally lost it. I thought he would be proud of me but instead just the opposite occurred. It didn't make sense to me that adults could be so entirely irrational. So - growing up in an irrational world, Quantum Physics ' apparent contradictions didn't faze me.

My initial reaction to Quantum physics re: entanglement was the same as yours, but as T find more the degree of improbability expands and gets more fantastic I realize that we are in the situation of the blind man trying to describe an elephant by touch alone.We have so little data that what we do have prevents us from "seeing" the whole picture.

Yup is correct.
You can imagine many very different scenarios.I have a couple of favorites.

Yup.

Have you ever tried to figure out the non locality nonsense from quantum mechanics where two entangled objects somehow lose locality when far from each other so that some signal has to travel instantaneously between them.To me locality is the identity of an object at the time of measurement. EPR was right in that an object which has no ability to change its identity and that has not been interacted with will keep its identity and be measurable as it would have been when created. Quantum mechanics as usually interpreted discards an objective reality and pretends that an object pops into existence when a consciousness observes or measures. Sheer nonsense.

I was in grad school having panic attacks and wanted to see whether it would help. It didn't, it made them worse. Shortly after that a guy in my computer class in 1965 introduced me to Atlas Shrugged even though he had his Objectivist subscription canceled for not asking a question correctly. I find that many of those who find problems with Objectivism still find it an excellent philosophy. It is probably why I am still alive because of the individualism rationality of the heroes. I always was a science and math guy and other than reading novels that my dad had, I had no interest in the political or philosophical. Then with Rand I could build a sense of life that was worth the effort of living. Having no forced religious training, I was happy to read stuff which did not have to be backed up with a god. In my early years there was no intervention in to the lives of children who would now be in the autism spectrum. I was most probably within that as a high IQ kid but one who never tried to make friends, just had acquaintances, just liked reading though I never was able to spell well but getting much better because of capitalism producing all the useful things such a built in spell checkers.
Sorry, that was more than you wanted.j

A number of psychedelics were abused, as we all know, which I define (I could write a book, actually) as taking the materials in an unsafe or unsupervised situation, or in other circumstances that can lead to paranoia.

All my sessions were attended by professionals in the field, and so I did not have to worry about things that others did who mis-used it/them, in more open and uncontrolled settings. Later on, I was able to administer my own, and in very few words, my experiences were very transforming at the most, and quite penetrating at the least.
I saw aspects of my behavior and life in ways that I had not before, and while not always pleasant (some were stark terror, in fact), I was able to work through those experiences and learn a great deal from them.
I found them a great tool for learning very deeply about any issues or problems I had with my life, could see other people differently and more benignly, and my experiences ranged from the aforementioned terror to extreme bliss and satisfaction.
In a phrase, I learned, not always pleasantly, to take responsibility for my life and for my experiences, whatever they were, and to integrate them into my life so that I came out more satisfied, more appreciative, more loving, more kind, and more aware.
And I have the ability to move between those spaces and less pleasant spaces, and be in control of my experience, rather than let it control me.
Another phrase that I would use is: I learned to take responsibility for my life and for my experience.
This was a time when I had credentials of two masters degrees in engineering, had served as a naval officer during Vietnam (never at that location), had a quite responsible job in Silicon Valley before it was known as such.
One final thought: Many of the ideas that came out of Silicon Valley were hatched during or after hallucinogenic trips.
I consider psychedelics a great tool when handled knowingly and responsibly. I do not think I would be alive today were in not for those experiences. I am 75.
To answer the question that started this rambling of mine, I never did learn the answer to "where would I be had I not been born" because it is unimportant to me know. I know that I exist, and that is good enough.
By the way, my associates in these experiences jokingly called flashbacks (which no one ever experienced other than as memories, "free lunches." :-)

You can conceive of not being through conceptual understanding. You can't imagine being in a state of non existence, not being aware, because when that happens you aren't.

Yes, the value of the "trillion dollar question" is greatly inflated. Consciousness in its varying forms, including our advanced form, evolved in life on earth relatively recently, not in whatever established the form of the physical universe.

Inferring what happened too far way for light to have reached us to make it directly observable is the same principle as everything else in physics that requires inference of theoretical entities not directly observable. Our conceptual consciousness makes such inferences possible.

Either Rand or Branden once said that it is not death that is important but how one is to live in that one can have more a problem with fearing living compared to fearing what comes when one dies. Of course religion tends to screw up the importance of the fears.

Yes, hallucinations are not perception; they are internal. They may lead to a "different outlook" of some kind, but not for the good and not an outlook on reality, as you found out the hard way. Why did you do it?

Having come from large number of changes, that is with time, all that can be said generally for the about 165 billion light year diameter Universe, is that all is related but not observable because the finite speed of light keeps certain information from ever reaching our part of the Universe. For the hidden part of the Universe it is necessary to extrapolate from far away matter which is still seen to be affected by what is beyond our observational horizon.
If the value of a question is whether the need for knowledge has anything to do with living on the Earth, then I would put a very low value on a great many questions, including that one.

I'll vote for that! Congratulations on your recovery. As far as drugs are concerned, I've never been bored enough to try any!

Thanks. Even though I was a child of the sixties, for some reason LSD never tempted me. I appreciate your answer!

I had 5 low doses of LSD in 1965 and found that, without all the real craziness, that it just makes life harder because one's perceptions need be reinterpreted. They are changed by having a different chemical neural transmitter but are distorted. What you get is a different consciousness which has to be interpreted with respect to your previous memories. Of course, if the dosage is large enough, one's consciousness is distorted enough, because the brain has been poisoned by the large dose, that all one can do is wait 12 or so hours to return to a more rational mind. I do not recommend experimenting with any drug and LSD has the problem, even at low dosage, of having possible flash backs where perception gets a bit wavy.

So you are of the 'ghost in a machine' mind, with consciousness hanging around with a body and going off after the body dies to maybe bother other consciousnesses maybe as a ghostly spirit?
Oxygen is definitely not unlikely, being the most common element of the Earth's crust at about 46%. Oxygen is the most common element in the Universe after hydrogen and helium.

reference...."knowledge and certainty" vs :faith and ignorance"...and lecture 4 by NBI.(Nathaniel Branden Institute...free on you tube)...The God Concept...then email me at: mia767ca@aol.com ...john kelly

Need a consciousness to have any "we won't care". End existence then any we is not. Fade out as "weeee.............. "

Never mind Stallone, just take care of yourself and stay in the first half of that.

"To be, or not to be,
That is the question..imagine Stallone reciting it:
"To be, or what?"

Which is why they are fools.