IWETHEY v. 0.3.0 | TODO
1,095 registered users | 0 active users | 0 LpH | Statistics
Login | Create New User
IWETHEY Banner

Welcome to IWETHEY!

New He was on Interfaith Voices last week.
I only heard bits and pieces of the show. What I heard didn't impress.

PZ isn't a fan.

FWIW!

Cheers,
Scott.

New It's an auto-generating conundrum, probably goes ^zoom^
on any desultory glance. (It's also an acquired.. taste) needing wading through metric tons of the deflection of Main Questions about the existence of Anything and ranging widely from that (which alone is, I deem: quite enough to bear Pondering.) Can't go back to square One on the largest 'Issues', so will just drop in the bits that find me in opposition to the POV (and especially the arrogance) of PZ' and cohorts. (From other discussions elsewhere)

(Probably silly to link DC's latest opus here; I am likely the only one here who has acquired the above 'taste' for agitating to get back to the Basic Questions and skip angels-dancing-on-pins doggerel du jour. It's not even a blip on normal radars.)

I've briefly looked-in on Chopra's (now many) essays across the years, but hardly at all, this decade. I think I see what his aim has been, and that he is no Charlatan Heston. My own reservations about "scientific faith" do not derive from whatever has been his gestation, though we seem to agree on many sub-issues: that the [my paraphrases] anthropo-God created by imaginations is, on sober reflection ludicrous, that the word-itself needs probably to just be retired. And: merely dumping that whole model, becoming anti- has no bearing on the Big Questions, (certainly as are not 'answered' merely by omission of the bogus approaches as characterize most-all Corporate/organized religions.) Which, I believe is also Chopra's point--in his own words--in theis PBS airing. He is diplomatic as is required for the audience of PBS (or any other mass medium.) Most people 'have' a 'religion'.

Dunno why PZ would be so dense as to elide The Questions extant, but his personal attacks demonstrate he has never actually followed what Chopra has said in a variety of ways. He clearly has no slightest interest in actually listening calmly/alertly to DC's POV.) And they bring along their *religion-of-atheism, complete with Certainties over matters (their 'faith') that they expect "the magic of Science" must inevitably 'solve'. Am well acquainted with the phenom and with the suppositions.

* Did we'unses not Have the big 'Label' discussion: agnosticism says I Don't Know. a-Theism says "it's all Woo;" I dis-Believe ergo.. You're Wrong (imagining there are really only Two views possible, etc.) That corporate religions are broken is one thesis; whether or not there exists a perpetual Agency (pre- and after our spawned-Universe) is ever a legitimate Query. Never mind trying to assign our local concepts of Form, as the query is in no way related to petty squabbles about My God's Bigger, however perpetual amidst our dominant species.

Did you audition the audio with Kripal in the link?
Methinks that PZ (and group) exemplify the arrogance of ad-hominem/juvenile attack-mode. Chopra has been educating self since a young age; his hypotheses are neither simplistic nor is he didactic in insisting they are more than just a means to encourage people to think anew aka differently, about the significance of our own Consciousness--within a Cosmos which merely seems to be mechanical/material ... and on auto-pilot for the 'duration' (if that word can even apply to an 'Agency" as creates a Time=0 and an elastic-"Space" in which to play.)

The amount of vitriol in the ad hominems surely suggests an emotionally-infantile insecurity in the (apparent beliefs of PZ et al) that their mere (and justified) disdain for the standard religio model: is necessary also sufficient. In sum, re PZ: Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much PZ possesses the familiar stink of Certainty, along with the felt-need to demonize: as usually denotes (unnoticed) feare within.

A listen to that (brief) link: (a calm and serious exchange) probably suffices to limn the basis for the Unanwered Questions about "Why is there Anything at All?" a question which can only emanate via Words communicated amidst Conscious beings. And in a space/time/now add: 'communications==Information theory Continuum, where both space and time may vary (certainly quite A Lot in the first fSec) there exists always the Question about "matters" prior to that Event, (not even to say, perhaps n-such events, even so numerous as to be almost numberless.) We know-not about these but we bloody well can contemplate. Unless cowed into ignoring the Questions, as most do.

tl;dr this topic always Is. As I've frequently commented, we don't know shit about Consciousness (its origins, its possible interconnection even with the 'Rules' of space-time as perceived,) That we Are and are Aware We Are is as pregnant an event as ... the (fortunate) skewing in the %matter/antimatter and all the other physics curiosities.

I am Not 'Certain' about anything relating to the bizarre Fact that {I seem to BE} in some {Here}, amidst septillions of tons of inert mere-matter (all of which exist under myriad Rulez and equations because: math also IS.) But none of the 'material' all around: even knows IT IS. (I only 'believe' that) I comprehend that koan about, "throwing the baby out with the bath water". I can work with that Uncertainty.

Unless and until we 'explain' the Fact of Consciousness, employing the rigors demanded in science >where possible
Expand Edited by Ashton Jan. 19, 2015, 06:33:41 PM EST
New PZ's got some raw buttons after years of debates.
He's got history with Chopra, too. He sees him as a charlatan. E.g.:

I am particularly amused by the topsy-turvy claim that modern science is all superstition, since this talk was given at a funny venue.

Deepak was speaking at an Indian Astrology Conference.

My comment: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa! Hee hee. HAAAA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ho, ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hee.

That guy. What a joker. I wish I were dishonest enough that I could make the kind of money he does marketing himself as a clown. He doesn’t understand physics, the brain, consciousness, or cells, yet he can still make big bucks standing up in front of a professional society of frauds and telling them a set of lies that they want to hear.


He clearly rubs PZ the wrong way. ;-)

I heard a few minutes of the show; more than enough to make me not want to spend more time on it. When someone starts using quantum-mechanical terms when talking about consciousness, it sounds much too much like Woo to me...

There are reasonable explanations why there is a universe instead of nothing. It doesn't require a god, and using quantum mechanics to explain or prove the existence of god is misuse of the tools, IMHO.

PZ has an interesting post on consciousness and some thoughts about how it is attached to structures in the brain. He (and I for that matter) do not accept that consciousness exists independent of a substrate (the brain for most of us; maybe some supercomputer 30 years from now).

YMMV! :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New I'm with you on this one.
Years ago, my wife (probably Oprah inspired) bought Ageless Body Timeless Mind and I read some of it. It read like a lot of arm waving about an alternate reality. It's not the kind of spirituality that makes sense to me. It didn't make much of an impression on my wife either.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New I probably was damaged as a kid, reading too much...
I vaguely remember reading Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, and several of Erich von Daniken's books as a kid. And seeing Uri Geller on various TV shows.

I eventually figured out that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. That if something cannot be explained (or if the explanation is not well known), that doesn't mean that a supernatural explanation is the best, or only, explanation. That amateurs in technical fields can occasionally make important findings, but they rarely turn a field on its head - especially these days. It's really hard for a no-name Joe off the street to pull the wool over the eyes of an expert who has been working in a field for decades - in that field. (Yes, brainiacs can get swindled by hucksters too, but you you know that's not what I'm talking about.)

:-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Understood, mostly.
I had omitted my conclusions, as already too long:

Unless and until we 'explain' the Fact of Consciousness, employing the rigors demanded in science >where possible along the way, we're still a few meters past the cave mouth.
Ontology, philology, epistemology, [Referents!] … are the tools via which we try to keep Word-transmissions correct thus believable. Consciousness needs those words. (The Higgs-Boson triumph describes a much simpler, successful search re. new material-rules. No words needed there. Except about applied-math.)

Our techno- accomplishments are large. But *few scientists possess more than word-recognition of the philosophical underpinnings via which 'societies' even became possible, and IME very few so-trained ever investigate what goes on in that discipline, except for kibitzing (recently a tad on Wittgenstein?)/everyone now has Rock Stars. (No time for 'humanities', remember?) Still, the Questions abide. And we speculate. (Or just collect stuff.)
* Oppie was an outlier (in many ways) but not the only one, historically.

Carrion. (Surely there's a mental equivalent, junk-food for the Mind?)

And now conclude: Science is a mental tool; I expect its well-refined methods to be applied where their rules of 'consensus' are adequate to the kind of Problem. It is also a philosophy and we possess orgs. of Philosophers, attempting to study "That which makes us Human". There, neither physics, math nor chemistry (macro or micro) can directly relate-to that "Humanness". I wot. Else: we wouldn't need Philosophers. Then, however we would see what sorts of machine-designed new-Humans would be like.

I guess where we part re 'the methods of study" of the Human Situation, is: that my 'faith' in the scientific method (especially in that consensus qualifier) does not approach that near-Certainty level, evident in PZ's MO.
SImplest: I do not Trust the exclusively science-educated to be capable of relating our Human-ness to the Cosmos (nor 'proving' that there can be no such connection: in any meaningful, convincing way.)
Some matters just don't yield to algorithmic thinking.. like Art, Music, Poetry, Humans and Love.
[partial list]


..And I want at least One of Me on any Board deciding huge new Rulez for humans to obey, in any next. '^>
New Much agreement.
At the moment, and maybe for a long time, science (physics, biochemistry, and related fields) has little hope in explaining love, good music, jealous rage, and lots more. Philosophy, ethics, and many of the classical ways of thinking about life still have a lot of value.

But...

I'm very, very wary of saying that science cannot go there. Or that mumbo jumbo and word puzzles and redefinition of terms (common techniques of popular advocates of "Eastern" philosophies and the like who claim to have figured things out) is the way to understanding. Don't misunderstand though - I've got lots of respect for the beauty and apparent peace that meditation and so forth brings. "One-ness" is appealing. But it's not science; and quantum mechanics can't explain consciousness.

I always try to keep in mind that our brain's model of reality is not unbiased. Our eyes aren't cameras, our memories aren't WORM drives, etc. But I also recognize that Chopra has books and seminars to sell, and that logic and appeals to similarities to other fields only goes so far.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of Bertrand Russell's writings. He was beautifully clear in how he explained his views and in the construction of his arguments. But he was also flawed (in his Principia, and in some of his ideas about education, and probably in other things). Science isn't infallible, but it's the best way to prevent us from fooling ourselves.

Even if we do find a way to define consciousness sometime soon, and find it's home in the brain, and reproduce it in a supercomputer, there will still be mysteries for us to wonder and argue about. The madness of crowds, for instance. And Economics. After all, physics didn't stop when Newton figured out the laws of motion.

:-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Thanks for U/Oregon link.. best yet aggregation
of the exceeding clever backwards deciphering partly-within t=0, *cough* on down to a round-bottom picture of τ=0 (Aren't we lucky that such puzzles
keep us off the Street and ..they pay us a stipend too !?) Have to check out the series, next: how vastly superior to yesteryear physics texts!

(I had grokked that the quantum vacuum contains numberless Potential Energies, all nicely invisible to an Observer: antithesis of 'emptiness', that Void)
Oddly, that concept is a pronouncement of some ancient Sages, too: ~~ "the dark blue Nothingness which is alive with energies." Small (intellectual) world, eh?
Seems all you need is One of 'these' for n clones of our own small Universe.

It's compelling physical deduction. Still, quite far afield from God-ness hypotheses, the physics view leaves us with (never mind n-Universes)
a perpetual quantum vacuum; we don't understand 'perpetual' of course, nor how That application of pre-Time "time" squares with any old τ=0 in any old
(or New! Universe on, say 1-31-15 Our 'Time'?) I so confused.

At any rate, the seeking of The Origin of It All (the vacuum) under unKnowable laws of Perpetuity: is clearly a fool's errand, unless: the vacuum too had an Origin.
One could argue that these imponderables trump any query connecting a Source, Origin? to this Consciousness apparition. Quite beyond simple chicken -vs- egg, that-all.

Unless..


I promise that--if I stumble upon Siva's tricks (opening/closing eyes) superseding Causality of Universes--I won't game the System
and make us all Wink-out in a fSec. (Though that would be a great Final science experiment, no?)
And we already know about the "ignition of Earth's atmosphere? possibility imagined" for a time.. at least they
*paused a bit for some better stats/probabilities, before Alamogordo :-)


* Now imagine if Dick Cheney had been a Dark-physicist there, then. :-/
New Agreed - we don't know a lot of things about the mind
But what Chopra et al do is fill the gaps with impressive-sounding bollocks that actually doesn't mean anything at all.

But it sure sells a lot of books.
New concience is a funny thing hard to define
recently read something about a man in a "vegetative" state for 12 years, then started talking, he had been sentient, unable to move for 12 years.

A movie a while back Awakenings with Dinero was based on a true story, what the movie couldnt show was that all the patient wanted to do was masturbate continuously, so conscience, sentience, and understanding is not really well understood from a scientific viewpoint.

Deepak is a traditional street hustler, Sharpton with a better schtick but that is my opinion.
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New You're spending more time on Chopra than he's worth
He's all about selling books and going on TV.

Complete and utter charlatan and woo-monger.
New Could be he's caved to affluenza.
When I last paid attention, he seemed to have some good ideas for defuzing the interminable Mine's Bigger fights.
(That was ~ ten years back.) This one added some more up-to-date refs to later physics things, and Title suggested he might create some sense for the masses.

In any event, he didn't make it to quantum vacuum, so not to my topic. Maybe it's too esoteric for modrin times.
Guess nobody much cares how you Start (Started..) EVERYTHING.
He'll have to be more adventurous, if there's to be any next..
New He's been a chiselling woo-monger for decades
Despite having been an actual proper doctor (and pretty darned good at the whole doctorin' lark, by all accounts), he went headfirst into "you can make this shit up as you go along, just make sure it sounds good" in 1981, and hasn't looked back since.
     Chopra on 'The Future of God' PBS. Where else? - (Ashton) - (13)
         He was on Interfaith Voices last week. - (Another Scott) - (12)
             It's an auto-generating conundrum, probably goes ^zoom^ - (Ashton) - (11)
                 PZ's got some raw buttons after years of debates. - (Another Scott) - (7)
                     I'm with you on this one. - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
                         I probably was damaged as a kid, reading too much... - (Another Scott)
                     Understood, mostly. - (Ashton) - (3)
                         Much agreement. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                             Thanks for U/Oregon link.. best yet aggregation - (Ashton)
                         Agreed - we don't know a lot of things about the mind - (pwhysall)
                     concience is a funny thing hard to define - (boxley)
                 You're spending more time on Chopra than he's worth - (pwhysall) - (2)
                     Could be he's caved to affluenza. - (Ashton) - (1)
                         He's been a chiselling woo-monger for decades - (pwhysall)

It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus.
132 ms