SPUN OUT BY THE SCOOP! Are we actually all mutually, collectively experiencing the deja vu that I spoke of a couple of days ago? Remember when last year, Burners.Me brought you the news that the permit was increased? Well, now we’re bringing it to you again – and it looks like we will be for the next 4 years.
Good news, more tickets! Even better, just as I’m about to post this one here, Whatsblem the Pro ducks and weaves and slips in a three pointer from the halfway line (ie midnight). I do feel scooped. And yet…
Are you ready for a trip? Did you see the trippy video? Did you read my throwing down of the gauntlet (via the powers of morphic resonance, Superdistribution/Cox and Supernature) to Whatsblem the Pro’s Rationalist view of the world? You know, the one where Newton is just some random dude under a tree and an apple falls on the head? And not a member of the Royal Society, an elite secret society based on the false world of clockwork mechanics? A chaining of irrational time to the human spirit, against natural time. This is what the prophecies speak of. A Golden Age, when truth and justice and peace and love and abundance and wellness and prosperity and living in tune with Nature prevail. Harmonic Convergence. AKA GOOD FUCKEN TIMES BABY!
Whatsblem and I’ve been having a jocular , well, not flame war, perhaps we’ll call it “mild stoush” both offline and in the comments, which to both of us is of course one conversation occuring via the Internet. We’ve never actually met, but we see eye to eye on almost everything so far. Not this one though. Magical thinking (c’est moi) versus _____________________ …I’ll leave it to him to respond with his position to clarify the starting point of our debate. Think of it as the grumpy old guy up the hill (aka The Shaman) not quite seeing eye to eye with the Town Crier. I’ll call him Town Crier because he is batting a pretty good average right now on the popularity of his posts with y’all. I think a more moderate and eloquent viewpoint than my own. Whatever, I’m the grumpy old guy up the hill. Who’s actually pretty cheery.
I would never try to convince anyone of anything. I don’t actually think that’s possible. However, I am a living example of the power of positive thinking, and so is every other person I know who believes in positive thinking. Which I have to say is almost all of my friends and most of my family.
That’s not to say I’m a believer in any old shit that comes my way. Although, they say you can always sell a sales guy. When I first encountered Nassim Haramein, I was intrigued…but wanted to check out for myself if the guy was for real. I went to the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma. Edgar Mitchell was one of the Apollo astronauts, and he had an experience with an angel/alien on his way back to Earth from the Moon. This experience moved him to set up the Institute, which is a real place. It’s based on science, you might remember having read about it in the Da Vinci Code. Experiments that prove telepathy exists. 3-star generals, the former head of the US Special Forces, investing heavily in this interdimensional consciousness technology as a military capability. Maybe they’re all wrong, and the people who haven’t reviewed the material but cling to what they know are right.
Or, maybe, just maybe, the classified US black ops and the 50 years of peer-reviewed Russian science that David Wilcock outlines in the Source Field Investigations, actually has something to it. Maybe it’s worth looking into before you dismiss it, even if at first it sounds like nonsense. I looked into the idea of “everything came from a single spec of dust in the big bang and we can’t explain consciousness so it doesn’t matter, there’s no maths for it”…and concluded that worldview could not appropriately explain my own experience of the Universe. If science couldn’t explain what I’ve seen with my own eyes, then it’s science that’s wrong, not my eyes.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences is trying to produce peer-reviewed, academically acceptable science in the areas that science can’t explain – magic, the paranormal, the power of prayer. It’s a Burner type of place, the kind of place where shamans from all around the world could fly in and dance unseen in a forest grove next to you, while you’re listening to a guy like Nassim share deeply personal experiences with incredible passion and authenticity, about quantum physics. And, you could camp, although I’m not sure about getting an RV up there…I stayed at the nearby Sheraton Petaluma, right on the 101 with it’s own Marina. I spent a weekend with the guy, he spoke non-stop with passion and without hesitation, he drew a great crowd of about 100 people all in for the full 3 days…and I came away convinced. So did the two angels that were with me. I don’t have the maths or physics to say if he’s right or wrong, he certainly has some detractors on the Internet – as does every good scientist. But he seemed like a genuine and positive person to me, someone trying to make the world a better place even if he had to make some waves to do so. I’ve put a lot of hours into watching his material now, look around YouTube pretty much everything is out there. You can get right into it. I recommend it all, to me part of this guy’s gift is he makes this stuff simple.
So, here we go. I’m gonna take it slow. Ease in with the flow. Coz it’s only one post, there could be many more, we could go in many directions with this stuff. To me this is the best half hour introduction I’ve ever seen, I just tried it on a guest audience new to the material. DeeM iT so.
On this blog we do not advocate taking any drugs, prescription or otherwise, without speaking openly about everything that’s going on with your wellness to a good medicine man first. Or woman. The shaman. Take medicine in the right context, as Timothy Leary said in the 60’s, set…and setting…make sure you know who’s really dosing you, even if your dose is just Starbucks. You know, there’s a star on the logo, they make buck$…that one…
This, though…this we advocate. You don’t need drugs for this. You don’t need rigid dogmatic scientifc beliefs for this, and you don’t need zealous absolutist religious views the other way either. Who’s to say, who’s right, who’s wrong? Most likely, we’re both a bit right, we’re both a bit wrong. My point is… EXPAND YOUR FREAKING CONSCIOUSNESS. You wanna be a golf ball, you wanna be a melon, you wanna be the whole Universe? BE ALL YOU CAN BE
We live in a holographic Universe, and life’s what you make it. But it isn’t what the official schoolbooks tell you. Miracles happen. The more you notice they happen, the more they happen. If you’re reading this but you haven’t been to Burning Man before, this is why people like us Burners care so passionately about it. Here we get to experiment. A Temporary. Autonomous. ZONE OF SEPARATION
Anyway I’m talking about solutions to Einstein’s field equations.
Before you say “why don’t you present your evidence” – I have, it’s an 800 page book I just linked to. The guy spent years collating the evidence that used to be classified military secrets in this country, and accepted academic knowledge in others. There’s no point me repeating it here, now it’s a George Clooney movie, but Wilcock summarizes some of the key research in this video:
Over to you, WTP. You might lose me on the maths in your debunking, or indeed logic (!) however I think there is enough brainpower attached to this blog now that someone (eg my Knight in Shining Armor 5thfool) might step up to my “hippy intelligentsia” defense.
Say it!
At this time it sounds like WordPress is the best blogging platform out there right now.
(from what I’ve read) Is that what you’re using on your blog?
Gad…
I…I love you, Pro. I kinda want your rational babies.
Aww, that is so sweet, thank you!
“I have never seen a scientific explanation about karma, if anyone has one I’d be fascinated to take a look. Probably 20% of the entire human population of the planet believes in this unscientific philosophy. Are they all wrong too, and have been for thousands of years…just so the Mechanical Rationalists can be right? Or are they right, but the Mechanical Rationalists just have to clean up a couple of errors in their calculations?”
Argument ad populum. Lol and you call yourself a philosopher. I’m a fucking GED graduate and I know what that logical fallacy looks like.
errr…so do you have a scientific explanation for karma?
You sound like a kook more and more. Try working on one topic at a time and not this Gish Gallop wall of text lol.
What iruparazzo said! When you leap from topic to unrelated topic, dropping gigantic assumptions like a rabbit drops pellets, it both makes you look like a kook, and makes it exasperating to even attempt to respond to you.
Your conclusions are far from self-evident, and you need to take them one at a time so we can explore them and point out the gaping holes in them to you. That ways lies greater understanding; this shotgunning of misapprehensions and logical fallacies is like some kind of rhetorical intestinal blockage.
And I definitely don’t call myself a philosopher. One of my buddies went to school at Hogwarts, I don’t even call him a philosopher. Same for my (love you) Dad who has a degree in it. However, I know I’m right. So that is some sort of philosophy…let’s call it, Buddhism.
Two last things real quick… “That’s the thing about philosophy, there’s never a conclusion.” Then that means its a useless tool and we have no need for it. Next.
“Science can’t explain consciousness. Consciousness is the main point of our existence. It’s the only thing of it that we actually experience. Therefore, science is inherently flawed.” Solipsism is inherently flawed. Your first 2 premises are flawed. Premise one assumes science *should* explain consciousness (also assumes consciousness even is a thing); Premise Two assumes that ‘we’ have a purpose, you have to demonstrate that first. Premise 3 is a little grammatically confusing, but seems to assume that consciousness is the only thing that is real (ie. solipsism).
life’s a journey, not a series of making destinations
consciousness IS the only thing that exists. It’s yin/yang, if you like I’ll let you call it matter/antimatter, but really I prefer space/vacuum, or (truly) LIGHT/absence of light. Something either exists, or not. And, before you hit F3 for Debunk, Whatsblem the Pro asked me earlier today to explain computers and the Internet, I just did, and quantum computing too. Let me put it back on you guys:
how the fuck can Emirates Team New Zealand, sail at 41 knots, on a 72 foot long catamaran with like 20 people on it, in 19 knots of wind?
Apple falling on head of Newton, therefore gravity is true: can understand the arguments from the other side. Kiwis can go faster in the SF Bay than Larry Ellison? That’s blowing my frigging mind, dude
From Wikipedia: “Solipsism (Listeni/ˈsɒlɨpsɪzəm/; from Latin solus, meaning “alone”, and ipse, meaning “self”) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner.”
Mate there is value in Epistemology, Solipsism, Nihilism…even Anarchy. [I used to drive around the back roads of Australia where they filmed Mad Max, there is a town there called Anakie. This is slaves escaping from The Man, in the gold rush days just like SF, 19th century. Convicts sent to the ends of the earth in slave ships, for such crimes as stealing potatoes and reciting politically incorrect poetry. All the things Austral-aliens still do now, then! Just because their skin was white, didn’t invalidate their slavery. But the black fellas had been their before them for 60,000 years, living in anarchy but without even such a concept as slavery.]
…back to philosophy, and the way it is now segmented and categorized…before all these Greeks supposedly came up with this classification system for knowledge, there were Druids, there were Pagans. Worship trees, worship fire, worship stars. There were the fundamental energies and Nature of the Universe. Are the “definitions of a philosophy” by some white dudes, relevant to “the nature of the Universe” which by definition is a philosophical discussion? Perhaps, I’m open to it, please make your case.
I can see wisdom in those schools, as I can in all the positions of philosophy and almost all of those of science; you could maybe argue that I’m an Empricist, however I stopped trying to argue that one myself years ago. Reading books doesn’t give you academic qualifications, but it also doesn’t subtract from your knowledge.
In terms of the above, my metaphysical position is a) reality’s a cloud, we’re all at the heart of our own clouds, it gets fuzzier the further you get to the edge; b) the mind’s a trickster; c) the heart is the organ that connects space, time, other dimensions; d) other worlds exist, other minds exist, but Google/Burning Man/[any]Man should not be the ones to own it, it should be Open Source…and we need to get at least 50% women running it, we’re living in a new Age now. A Golden Age.
That’s my position and I’m sticking to it! Please refute 😉
BTW I don’t agree with Wikipedia’s Latin translation. Minor point.
And, for further clarification, in my view of what for the purposes of this discussion we are calling “Science/Physics”: knowledge of anything is unsure, patterns exist, we don’t know how the patterns are created, but knowledge of what happened in the past is not a reliable predictor of what will happen in the future”…cf., dinosaurs, Nicholas Nasim Taleb “Black Swan”, “Antifragile”
I would translate it as, “one is brought forth into being as a whole from the light of the sun”, and refer you to Virgil.
if you believe that “everything is one” (ie consciousness) then if you also like logic, you will come to the conclusion that “only mind exists”. I would refer you to The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black which is a truly mind-blowing book, some of it even I don’t agree with, but from the historical point of view he outlines, he’s hard to argue with.
I guess I’m to ignorant to realize that consciousness is a thing. My worldview doesn’t require purpose, there is only 1 thing, but 2-dimensions can happen in 2 ways. Let me try a bit harder to explain my “lunar-tic” beliefs (it’s a full moon, and I’m in Jack London’s Valley of the Moon).
There is only one thing. Light. Also, absence of light exists. Is that two things? I’m not sure…but if you allow that it is, then mathematics can exist. Binary, enables other mathematical systems. The Romans didn’t have the concept of Zero, but the Arabs did.
To me, light attracts light. The Nature of the Universe is abundance, an infinite amount of light resonating and merging and “quantum entangling” with the other “beams” of light (which are actually vibrating waves). There is all this light, in abundance…and then there is the absence of light, the vacuum. The Abyss. It generates gravity, and hence there are negative energies, but you can let go of those and you will be energetically pulled up the spiral closer towards light, and further away from the Abyss.
Or, you could just go punish yourself through whatever form you take, and send yourself closer to the Abyss. Snakes and Ladders, which at RehabRX in Vegas would be called Water Slides and Upgrades. Whatever worlks for you, we’d love to hear about it. Is “philosophy” differerent from “life operating philosophy” and are one or the other or both different from “science’s explanation which we live our lives by”. Intrigued by the journey of us all trying to figure out the answer.
Also I can’t find your ” 800 page book I just linked to”.
“Experiments that prove telepathy exists. 3-star generals, the former head of the US Special Forces, investing heavily in this interdimensional consciousness technology as a military capability.” Do you have a reference for this?
This word salad makes you (and by proxy this entire community) look like kooks.
the references are in the videos and links on the story. In the first video, they discuss the 3-star general. In the third video, he discusses some of the scientific experiments. The link to the 800-page book is the picture of the book on the page, click it.
The post is about the videos, so watch the videos, then the “word salad” might be more palatable.
Burnersxxx, My bigger issue with all of this is that it discredits us mightily to publish the kinds of articles that people like Sheldrake generate. If we’re going to dish out conspiracy theories, I wish we could stick to Burning Man conspiracy theories, like the Org’s plans for Fly Geyser. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen comments on Facebook to the effect of “Burners.me, those guys will publish anything, and it’s usually bullshit.” Not a fair assessment by any means, if you ask me, but those people do have a point when we’re putting out articles about guys who try to call Einstein and Newton into question with work that has consistently failed to pass peer-review.
You’re the man and I wouldn’t even mention any of this if you yourself hadn’t brought it up and asked me to go head-to-head with you on it. . . so while I would never presume to dictate to you what direction to take Burners.me, I just want to go on record saying that I think it hurts our circulation far more than it helps when we publish conspiracy theory and New Age psychobabble.
I think we’re comfortable enough with each other that I can say things like that, and even tell you that while I’m thoroughly impressed with your business acumen, which far, far outstrips my own, your grasp on science fundamentals is extremely weak and leads you into serious error, often. You’re the boss and your vision prevails here, but if I had my druthers you’d air your take on science topics someplace where it wouldn’t discredit your journalism. . . and mine.
I see this as a discussion of philosophy. Science is a bit like the BMOrg – they’re convinced they’re always right, when they’re proven wrong they just try to find a way to adjust the “we’re still right” lens.
The relevance of it all to Burners is that these are the types of conversations I tend to have most often within this community. People trying to figure out the meaning of life, and how it all works. To me, a much more useful and productive topic for discussion than Temple Shushing, even if we can never see eye to eye.
Maybe it’s irrelevant that military bases and government buildings are built on ley lines, or just yet another in a ginormous string theory of wacky coincidences, dismissed by the rational worldview which rejects what it can’t explain. Maybe it’s irrelevant that Burning Man is laid out in a Pentagon, and so is the Pentagon. Or, maybe the people who make the decisions and spend the budgets actually care about this occult stuff for some reason – so we should at least try to get an understanding of why.
Since this blog doesn’t make any money, I’m not too concerned with circulation. If people don’t want to get into the discussion, that’s fine, they can move onto all the other areas of the Burner world we cover. It’s amazing to me actually what posts turn out to be popular, which get the most shares, views, likes, and comments – it’s often not what we expect.
I have no problem with BMOrg, their agents, or anyone else calling bullshit on something they read in this blog. Since we do the same to them. In our case though, we usually make an effort to rebut such accusations, rather than denial or stone cold silence.
“Science is a bit like the BMOrg – they’re convinced they’re always right, when they’re proven wrong they just try to find a way to adjust the “we’re still right” lens.”
I don’t know where you get that idea, but it’s incorrect on a number of levels, and if it was true, you wouldn’t have a computer or an Internet to use to tell me about it. . . you’d have a bunch of trickery and mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t work, like all that New Age shamanism crap about crystals and homeopathy and colon cleansing. Science runs on exactly what you’re claiming it lacks: people calling bullshit. It’s what peer review is all about.
But like every science-questioning conspiracy theorist, you want to have it both ways. You applaud when Sheldrake calls bullshit, but boo and hiss when others call bullshit on Sheldrake. . . and you utterly ignore the fact that Sheldrake is side-stepping the bullshit-calling process that has given us by far the fastest, highest-reaching, most demonstrably effective progress in the entire history of humanity’s hungry quest for more knowledge. The people calling bullshit on Sheldrake are doing so for very good, very well-tested reasons that have succeeded wildly over and over and over and over and over again in filling the world with reliable miracles on demand, while Sheldrake in turn is just talking shit and nonsense that avoids every bit of the rigor applied to and by his critics. He does it to sell books and make money.
Basically, what you’ve been doing is restating a line of reasoning that I’ve heard many, many times, from kooks and frauds looking for a good line of hokum to lay on the laymen after their ‘work’ fails peer-review for things like bad methodology. That has NOTHING to do with the conclusions being drawn from the work, and EVERYTHING to do with the experiment itself being blatantly faulty. That’s how it is with Sheldrake; as I pointed out in that confab with Dennis Worden, Sheldrake is the only scientist on the planet — including the very people who assisted him in his experiments — who is satisfied that his experiments were designed and carried out properly. That being the case, it doesn’t matter what his conclusions might be; his terribly non-rigorous methodology reveals him as either a sloppy incompetent bungler, or a fraud, or both. If the man wants to be taken seriously, then he needs to be rigorous about how he gathers his data, because nobody gets a pass on that, nobody, no matter what their conclusions are, and that’s part of what peer-review is for. It’s a good thing and what makes science work so well, not something for you to protest.
“I have no problem with BMOrg, their agents, or anyone else calling bullshit on something they read in this blog. Since we do the same to them. In our case though, we usually make an effort to rebut such accusations, rather than denial or stone cold silence.”
My problem with it is that the pseudoscience/conspiracy theory material discredits the more solid (and more Burning Man related) information that we present. We won’t be credibly calling bullshit on anyone for very long if we continue to publish bullshit ourselves, and you can’t rebut an accusation of bullshit when the bullshit you’re slinging flies in the face of the well-tested foundations of classical physics. . . you end up having to agree to disagree, thus leaving a very large number of very credible people convinced that you’re utterly dismissable. I see it all the time: “Oh, that article is from Burners.me, I wouldn’t pay any attention, they’ll say anything.” We wouldn’t get nearly so much of that if we weren’t publishing these articles that fly in the face of very well-established science for no good purpose.
If what you want is a website that promulgates fringe science, pseudoscience, and broad conspiracy theories, then you’ll have one shitty dismissable website among tens of thousands of shitty dismissable websites that do the same damned thing, and will alienate everyone with a good grasp of science who reads them. You’ll have a tiny drop in a very big bucket that nobody credible is interested in looking at.
If, on the other hand, what you want is the planet’s premiere journalistic coverage of Burning Man, then all you have to do is drop the pseudoscience and conspiracy theory (or move it to another, separate blog). It discredits everything else we do, people who aren’t science deniers and conspiracy theorists have a low tolerance for it, and the people who eat it up can get that crap at any of thousands and thousands of other sites if it’s what they want.
There are a zillion ZOMG SCIENCE IS WRONG AND THE PRESIDENT IS A REPTILIAN ALIEN MONSTER websites out there. There’s only one Burners.me, and we should strive to keep it that way.
did you even watch the first video? The point that there’s no such thing as matter? How can you have a scientific discussion about something like that, if the science says “the act of observing it, changes it”? I understand “mathematics is the language of Nature”, I believe in mathematics; but physics is a series of simulations from which we infer absolute knowledge, and yet we weren’t at the Big Bang, so it’s all speculation. In my opinion, once physics gets to either very large or very small sizes, it becomes a discussion of philosophy. Or the scientists say “well, we don’t know, but we’re sure our methodology is right”.
No-one is striving to turn Burners.Me into a physics blog. OK, we know you don’t believe in magical thinking, but a massive percent of the people who attend the party do – hence the reason for your original article on the topic, I presume.
Burnersxxx said:
“did you even watch the first video? The point that there’s no such thing as matter?”
Serious scientific presentations are given in peer-reviewed journals, not as thought experiments in YouTube videos. . . and like all that algebra we had to do in junior high school, “show your work” is an absolute requirement.
You have to keep in mind that anyone can say absolutely anything in the popular media — books, movies, TV, newspapers, magazines, web sites, etc. — without damaging their reputation in the scientific community at all. It’s only in peer review that their feet are held to the fire over things like methodology; only in peer review that their findings have to be backed up with a strict, point-by-point elucidation of what data they gathered to substantiate the conclusion, how the data was gathered, under what circumstances, etc.
Thus, these videos signify nothing, unless it’s rank opportunism (“buy my books!”)
Burnersxxx said:
“How can you have a scientific discussion about something like that, if the science says “the act of observing it, changes it”?”
Easy! The science DOESN’T say that, at least, not in the way you mean. You’re regurgitating an oft-heard misapprehension that is part of a body of pseudoknowledge known to physicists who study quantum mechanics as “quantum mythology.”
The implications of QM are (A) highly controversial, with many competing theories that all account for the observed phenomena; (B) NOT APPLICABLE at any scale but the subatomic. FOR INSTANCE: Quantum entanglement doesn’t happen between people, and does not provide a possible mechanism for telepathy. Also note that Erwin Schrodinger was being facetious when he came up with his thought experiment about the cat in the box, and was trying to show how ridiculous the Copenhagen interpretation sounded to him, via reductio ad absurdum. QM is about the subatomic world, not the world in which cats and you and me and Rupert Sheldrake and his dog live.
This might be helpful, and I hope you read it with great interest: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/MythQC.pdf
Burnersxxx said:
“No-one is striving to turn Burners.Me into a physics blog. OK, we know you don’t believe in magical thinking, but a massive percent of the people who attend the party do – hence the reason for your original article on the topic, I presume.”
A large percentage of the people who read the New York Times believe that Jesus is coming back soon, but they don’t publish articles questioning the foundations of classical physics because “hey, Jesus might actually be real, and that means you really can turn water into wine by wishing for it.” If they did, they’d rightly be marginalized, and would be serving a niche market instead of having the much broader appeal they do have. Even worse, the Jesus thing is just one niche among many. You can’t serve all of them. . . you can’t even serve one of them without discrediting yourself in the minds of everyone who isn’t in that niche.
so you say – but I say, watch the videos. And I’ll read your PDF. That way we can perhaps have a more meaningful discussion.
The idea that “your video can’t possibly be right, so therefore I won’t watch it”…is small-minded, and IMO beneath you. We both bloviate, but from an informed position.
My basic issue with physics is I was taught in high school in the 80’s that the atom was the smallest unit of matter, and that came from Plato. It didn’t, it came from Aristotle, who took some of Plato’s work which is still true today, and corrupted it.
In the 1960’s they took a photograph of a quark. Thus proving the science I was taught in school was woefully obsolete. Later in life, I developed a worldview based on accumulating a lot of different theories about consciousness and the nature of reality, experimenting with some, and keeping the ones that work consistently. I understand that this is different from physics, but this blog is already riddled with articles about it . You can present the opposing perspective, and I encourage you to do so – there are worse ways to spend your time than philosophical debates, even if they go nowhere you can still get something out of it.
It almost feels like he’s arguing for solipsism :/ This claim that “matter doesn’t exist” ignores the fact that pepper makes me sneeze. If one can affect physical reality by “the power of positive thinking” why are people born into poverty? Is it just a failure of their imagination?
you’re crossing a few arugments over here, but let me take your one “if positive thinking exists, why are people born into poverty”. First, I never said anything like that. Second, I do believe in recincarnation – do you? In the Hindu caste system, if you’re a level 9 you’re lucky to get a job cleaning toilets. And that’s all you can ever hope to be reborn into. I don’t believe that. We’re born into this world of suffering to learn lessons, to get stronger, to evolve past our spiritual weaknesses and improve our experience of each moment, until we reach enlightenment.
Leaving all of that to one side, and simply addressing the fundamental thinking that seems to be in your comment: “if people are born into poverty, they can’t change that by thinking their way out of it”. My own life disproves that. I would recommend you read “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, which I first read around 7-8. It doesn’t take long to read, but it maybe takes some cojones to practice. I don’t know, I try to explain it to people, and then look around at the most vehement deniers, they’re always the ones who never even slightly try it. Those who try it, start to see it working, try it some more, see it working some more, then they realize that they just got a major competitive advantage in society, for free. For me, it was all pretty obvious, it was a no-brainer to try it, and of course it worked. It worked beyond even my already pretty wild dreams. For the other 3 people who listened to me since then on this topic and had the courage to try it, it worked too. So that’s 4/4. If you read the book, it worked for guys like Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie too. Of course, they didn’t have any idea about business, because physics in those days wasn’t very well developed.
Can science explain The Secret? Actually I think it can. Quantum physics and chaos theory have “strange attractors”, biology has “super spreaders”.
Right now, it seems that all the active participants in this discussion are a long way from delving into that. We’re living in a binary world, of “TRUTH | ABSENCE OF TRUTH”, where to you guys “what we know about Physics” equates to truth, and “what we don’t know” automatically leads to absence of truth. I’m more of a student of history, a field in which “facts” are almost never the same as “truth”…and yet the same patterns seem to emerge, predictably, repeatedly. Is history wrong, because it’s not scientific? Is the repetition of patterns throughout history wrong, because there is no scientific explanation for that (in peer-reviewed physics world anyway…the Shamans have it covered)?
Do you guys really not believe in anyway in karma, magic, luck, or any form of higher power that can’t be explained by today’s maths and physics? Have you never, ever, experienced instant/rapid manifestation at Burning Man?
To me, the things I consistently experience, become rules that I live by. Whether or not I understand all the maths for them. The things the teachers told me, which later turned out to be wrong, In my opinion come from a world of erroneous facts and hidden agendas. Even if the world of science is right 99.99% of the time, that doesn’t create truth. Truth is truth: there is no other agenda.
Burnersxxx said:
“In the 1960′s they took a photograph of a quark.”
Please substantiate that statement.
Burnersxxx said:
“Thus proving the science I was taught in school was woefully obsolete.”
That’s quite a leap, from a starting point that I think you might be confused about (“in the 1960s they took a photograph of a quark”). So you concluded from this that science has some fundamental problem that invalidates it all? It sounds to me like nothing more complicated than: you had a not-very-skilled science teacher, and possibly some badly-written textbooks. Maybe it was your textbook that was obsolete? I don’t see what it has to do with your mistrust of the scientific method and peer review.
Burnersxxx said:
“Later in life, I developed a worldview based on accumulating a lot of different theories about consciousness and the nature of reality, experimenting with some, and keeping the ones that work consistently. I understand that this is different from physics,”
It’s different from all science. It isn’t science; it’s you as a layman trying to sort out scientific data for yourself from third-hand sources or worse, as opposed to you being a scientist doing actual experimentation and participating in peer review. Anecdotes, being subjective, are not evidence of anything to scientists, except inasmuch as they point the way to something that might bear some objective study; thus, anecdotes aren’t even a starting point for valid inquiry; they may lead to starting points, but usually don’t, for excellent reasons.
Yes my text book was obsolete. I’m at dinner will find the quark link later.
Watch the first video at least
I watched the first video. Am I really supposed to accept “the Rap News” as a source of serious science info?
Hope you’re enjoying your dinner
on quarks, hadrons, and other sub-atomic particles (which, when I was taught that the atom was the smallest unit of matter, couldn’t possibly exist)
“The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
I get that you’re mad that what you learned when you were a kid changed over the course of your lifetime. I would ask you to consider the fact that science is a self-correcting process and is bound to change its models from time to time when new aspects are demonstrated to exist.
Also, I’m not going to watch any of those videos, forgive my bluntness. I’d rather ask you why you believe what you believe, and possibly suss out what your standard is on “knowing something”. Since it’s clear from the debate (and the available data) that the methodology surrounding these claims is in question, we have to set the claims aside and dig into how critical thinking works.
It’s late and I gotta sleep/work/school n stuff, so at the risk of seeming a hypocrite, I’ll leave you with a 5 minute video I urge you to watch; it’s just a short primer on critical thinking that I hope we can use as a basis for common ground to begin on.
hadron, parton, lepton, charm, strange, truth, beauty, top, bottom – it’s not me coming up with this fanciful BDSM-flavored esoteric bullshit, it’s Nobel prize winning physicicsts (who, BTW, I’m not dissing – MGM is the mann) http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/History_of_quarks
I read “The God Particle”, about the search for the Higgs Boson – a cover story for SLAC and LHC if I ever heard one. It’s a great book though, full of conventional thinking in physics which has been disproved by some experiments, and appears to be proven by others . To me, “the origin of mass” is philosophy, not science. Prove to me that mass exists, rather than that energy sources exert a gravitational force which varies based on object density and can be measured
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0314/God-Particle-Six-big-consequences-of-the-Higgs-boson-discovery
here we go…quark first discovered at Stanford in 1968. As the acid was kicking into high gear for the Bay Area hippies, like Engelbart and Jobs. Not long after Crick found DNA on acid. http://www.cracked.com/article_16532_the-5-greatest-things-ever-accomplished-while-high.html
What I called “photograph”, you might more accurately call “capturing energy waves of a particular frequency on an appropriate sensing device”…same same
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/documents/PUS/dis/SLAC.htm
the link to Rap News was just a segue between you busting this scoop out last night, as I was putting the finishing touches on my post. Nothing before and including that video, should be considered to have any relevance to the next. Sorry if that wasn’t clearer, it was 1 am. I wanted to acknowledge your scoop, at the same time that I was taking the blog on a different tack.
I am not attempting to present science via YouTube videos, to convert non-believers. However, I am presenting to you this scientific hypothesis:
Science can’t explain consciousness. Consciousness is the main point of our existence. It’s the only thing of it that we actually experience. Therefore, science is inherently flawed.
That doesn’t mean I disagree with the scientific method: I don’t. It just fails because it can’t explain consciousness, fuck Unified Field Theory of gravitational and electromagnetic forces. They can’t even explain the basics, let alone the infinite mind and the eternal soul. Which appears to be what your link was about, debunking quantum physics and consciousness, I couldn’t download from that URL but I found the paper elsewhere. When I have read it, I will feel that I can critique your position with more information. To be honest, it seems like it will be just a lot of bullshit that I’ve heard before and I’ve chosen (rationally, logically, based on facts and experiments) to disagree with. However, I will give you the respect to at least read and consider it.
What I mean is that, “mainstream science” contains slightly more truth than “mainstream media”. Is there truth in it? Absolutely. Is it “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”…ummm, I think you would struggle to find many scientists who would even go that far. The fundamental thing about truth is that it’s like the Highlander: “There Can Be Only One”. Truth is truth, everything else is a distortion (Plato again).
I have very close friends with advanced qualifications in philosophy (a PhD in PhD?)…who disagree with me on these matters: for hours. That’s the thing about philosophy, there’s never a conclusion. Who’s to say who’s right, and who’s wrong? Science has never been able to disprove philosophy, and vice versa.
I agree that we can come to a consistent and replicable conclusion in science – 99.99% of the time. Just because Science can’t explain it, doesn’t mean there is some great big universal “UNDO” on anything like healing, ESP, precognition, inference, remote viewing…that it can’t explain. “If I don’t understand it, it must not exist”…a small-minded position.
This stuff happens, again and again, it’s happened for thousands of years, the spirit world has been documented by almost every civilization…including the “Egyptians” who built astronomically aligned structures we would struggle to create today, with all our peer-reviewed scientific knowledge. I’m not saying all that knowledge is wrong: just that if it can’t explain everything, it can’t be all right either.
Then there are exceptions, like miracles. Someone had cancer, 10,000 people on Facebook prayed for them every month at the same time, and now their cancer has completely vanished. Doctors don’t know what to say, or what drugs they can sell now.
Did this only ever happen once, in the history of the Unvierse? Or, is this an inexplicable phenomenon that is consistently encountered, and reported, and dismissed by the “scientific” community?
Science should be about knowledge, not experiments. Experiments can be fooled, truth is truth. Sure, by the very nature of their replicability, experiments can bring us closer to truth. But, that is not the same as experiments=truth.
If the exceptions can be repeated by others in different circumstances with the same experiment, it’s starting to look like science. I’m not saying I’ve done the experiments – but I’ve read more than enough works from those who have, and experienced more than enough inexplicable things in my world before, to believe it’s true. My worldview doesn’t require an old man in the sky who makes decisions for me, and one of those is I can’t jerk off but I can meet some priests behind the bike sheds later, give them some gold for my sins, otherwise I burn in Hell for ever. But, my worldview does say, if something is working for you, and you’ve seen it work for others around you, even people who don’t believe it…then go with it. Fuck what science says. Show me a successful scientist and I’ll show you a businessman and sales guy…who probably employs scientists that no longer respect his science chops. Eg. Craig Ventner.
I have never seen a scientific explanation about karma, if anyone has one I’d be fascinated to take a look. Probably 20% of the entire human population of the planet believes in this unscientific philosophy. Are they all wrong too, and have been for thousands of years…just so the Mechanical Rationalists can be right? Or are they right, but the Mechanical Rationalists just have to clean up a couple of errors in their calculations?
ok nitpicker, I meant “the first video about consciousness and philosophy and quantum physics”…not the “first video that was Rap News”. My bad.
irupuazzo (and WTP)…you guys are hilarious. You’ll put your time into passionate arguments about how wrong I am, but won’t even watch the video that I’m trying to argue about. In the meantime, you send me links to your side’s views and think that of course I will take my time to read, watch and consider those. I will…but just watch the video mate. It’s only half an hour. After that, debunk me to your heart’s content. Right now your claims of “you’re ignorant, but I’m not going to even listen to the information you’re basing your claims on, because it disagrees with my worldview and therefore you’re ignorant”…this is the shit that got Gallileo in prison. You might even want to consider going to dictionary.com and typing “ignorant”. It means “does not have all the information they need, yet thinks they know it all”. BTW, “the earth is flat” is an argument you guys are definitely not ready to hear yet.
That’s not at all what I said, I just wanted to establish a common understanding of how critical thinking works. If you can’t demonstrate that skill, then indeed all the arguments beyond that would be completely invalid. This is why ‘research’ such as this gets ignored by science. You can’t even demonstrate your ability to understand the scientific method.
IP-man, that video is awesome. I hope Whatsblem the Pro watches it too. I know he and I like this one:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/poster
I completely agree with the argument postulated here, although there is even more knowledge in the world than just this YouTube video, if you had this YouTube video AND other knowledge, you would have more knowledge. As an alien, it saddens me that the US does not develop these types of critical thinking skills in its students. I was blessed that my parents encouraged me to read from a very young age, whatever I wanted. Once I went to a few schools in a few countries, my readings pointed me towards a classical education. They call it the trivium but IMO there is much, much more to it than that. The trivium diminishes what it really is, so I stick to “classical education”. Not something I’ve heard talked about very much in the Bay Area, not sure where you’re at. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education/
In this, logic is one of 7 (some would say 3) of the branches of knowledge to be educated in. Kind of like Daniel Goleman’s 7 kinds of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). I was always great at maths and terrible at sports, music, and – well, we would call it “arts and crafts”, eg woodwork and metalwork and cooking – Americans would call it “shop”. Like Tech Shop. Anyway, like the Dungeons and Dragons I played as a New Zealand nerd – too big to be a Hobbit – I scored very low on those types of skills, and very high on observation, analytics, memory, lateral thinking, empathy…different types of skills, different “sections of the mind” if you believe in that.
Whether you are a mystic or a rationalist, I think we can agree that everyone in life gets blessed in different ways, and probably cursed in some ways also. You can reduce the negatives and enhance the positives, both consciously and subconsciously.
For me the luckiest thing of all my blessings was reading. And being able to choose what I wanted to read, ie access to a library without parental supervision. They knew I was safe in a library, I didn’t even think about that, to me it was a world of free knowledge. Long before Burning Man, the Internet, and Google all started together in garages, I started my journey of research. What I learned about the mind and the complex system our minds exist in, eg from books like Fritjof Capra’s the Web of Life, Gregory Stock’s Metaman, or An Arrow Through Chaos: How we See into the Future by David Loye http://www.amazon.com/Arrow-Through-Chaos-into-Future/dp/0892818492 …I experimented with. If it worked, I tried it again. And again, and again. After a certain number of times of consistent success – even if the record wasn’t perfect, it just had to be better than 50%, my own criteria has been 70% worst case but we aim for 90% as a standard – after a certain number of times of that working out as you predict, you would start to think that maybe you should believe in it? Right?
My point is, I’m not angry at Mr Stuart, my gun-toting 4th form physics teacher. I was blessed with an amazing education, some amazing teachers in a government school, and the encouragement of both my parents to pursue whatever interests engaged my mind. My interest was money, and business, for a long time, and as part of my journey towards learning about that, the mind itself became my focus. Think and Grow Rich got me started, then Mind Power by John Kehoe, then Anthony Robbins. To me, these people weren’t selling snake oil: they were selling sunglasses. A different set of lenses, with which to look at the world. Whether or not my old worldview could explain it, it wouldn’t cost me that much just to try them on and try it. Which I did. And I never looked back.
Sometimes those experiments were costly. Regardless, whether I won or lost, whether history proved me right or wrong, I just did what I felt in my heart to be right. The heart knows, the mind is a trickster. The mind can make anything sound plausible, like they say “You can fool all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time” (why do they even say that?).
I do understand that I’m not talking about science now, you don’t have to correct me on that. I’m talking about LIFE – mine, to be exact. I took a scientific approach to my life, no-one can know anything so I can always learn more. The things I learned that seemed crazy, I experimented with in my own life. When they worked, I tried it again. It’s easy, anyone can do it. Negative thoughts yield, at best, nothing; at worst, more negative energies and problems that you’ll have to deal with. If you can only ever have positive thoughts, that’s enlightenment. Ask the Dalai Lama if he only ever has those thoughts, I’m sure even that guys has some days that are harder than others, and some days when he feels in the zone and on top of the world.
I’ve worked it out people, I don’t mean to preach I really want to share something that has taken an enormous life journey to figure out:
KARMA
That is everything. Be a good person, do good, and you will lead a good life. Miracles will happen. Even if you don’t believe me, just try it. Start making a list of things that happen in your day which could be luck, or guardian angels, or karma…or, they could be defined as “random” or “UFO” because we can’t explain them. Maybe put each one in 2 columns, let me know if you find anything. Do the experiment for a week in the default world, then do it again for another week at your camp in Burning Man.
If you start writing down the UFO’s (Unreal Fucken Occurrences) you encounter every day, opening your Self to the idea that they COULD happen, and then taking notice when they DO happen…well, my philosophical belief is that you will, after 3-12 months, see a significant result. Does that mean I write this stuff down? Fuck no. I’ve lived like this since I was a little kid, with increasing consciousness through research, and with total awareness since I was 24. I used to get frustrated when I couldn’t teach this to others, these days I am just happy when anyone seems to get any bit of it, in even the slightest way. Even when the critics hit me up, I’m stoked…because their anti-thesis, can either destroy or strengthen my thesis.
To me, there are other branches of what this YouTube calls “critical thinking” to pursue in addition to a Classical Education that I could suggest for the 21st century, mostly related to social skills and adapting to the Information Age. All the people I’ve ever met in my life, seriously a lot of people in 60 countries and 40 States of the US, from *all* kinds of different backgrounds… all the ones who got a classical education have turned out to be good people, happy with their lives whatever it is they’re actually doing, having been encouraged to follow their passions and associated with others who do so. Meanwhile, I’ve met plenty of Ivy Leaguers and trust funders who didn’t know shit from shinola and also didn’t want to be taught.
Sorry if this is TMI, but every time I take a dump at home, I have to read Vanity Fair or National Enquirer. While I’m taking a shit, and reading this shit…do I believe every single piece of shit? No. But, the reason I like those particular magazines, is they do their homework and they’re usually right. And, it’s just for the articles, of course.
Dennis Worden is the kind of person that gives burners a (bad crackpot) name. A sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe can very happily co-exist with a respect for science- meanwhile both Worden and Sheldrake completely dismiss the scientific establishment in the name of their own magical thinking. Blech.
Waffles, I agree with you, except that (A) Worden isn’t a burner, he’s a cartoonist with a philosophical bent; (B) Unlike Sheldrake, I regard Dennis Worden as an honest fellow expressing genuine interest and concern, so I’m more charitable toward him than I am toward bookmonger Sheldrake, who seems too canny to be crazy, and is therefore just profiteering from the poor grasp of science of his target audience. Dennis isn’t a science geek, he’s a philosophy geek, so maybe we can excuse him for having a rather fuzzy take on how science actually operates in the real world. Nobody knows everything, but in general he’s a pretty smart guy.
To clarify: Dennis Worden debates science topics the way one would debate philosophy topics. That puts him at a disadvantage with me, but if we were discussing philosophy he’d certainly at least give me a run for my money, and possibly run rings around me the way I do him when we talk science. Philosophical debate is a very different beast with miles more wiggle room, and its tropes are simply not well-suited for talking about science, but that’s not Dennis’ fault.
Uh, oh, called out by the editor, and me without an expense account!
Burnersxxx, I think my position and the points I have to make are all pretty clearly spelled-out in an exchange I had with my philosopher/cartoonist friend Dennis Worden (artist/author of STICKBOY comix) on the Burners.me Facebook Page.
(If comix interest you, check out Dennis’ website: http://www.dennisworden.com/)
Here is that conversation in all its copypasta glory:
==========================================
Shep
Blanca Sheldrake’s work on morphic fields/resonance is fascinating.
sheldrake.org
July 20 at 9:35am · Like · 2
Carol Blodgett
Hughes Maclaskey Wes Pearce I think we need to watch this…
July 20 at 1:29pm · Like · 1
Wes Pearce
Carol of course! you know i like anything that’s banned haha
July 20 at 9:32pm · Like
Carol Blodgett
Hughes Maclaskey Yeah…me too… That pretty much made it a “must see” for me
Sunday at 12:22am · Like · 1
Ethan Currens
The fact that something is “banned” because it expresses a controversial opinion, or “banned” because of information that might be dangerous to established power structures, or something along those lines- should attract all of us.
However, in this case, it is “banned” (which actually means not hosted on the TED website) because it is provably wrong.
Sheldrake makes countless errors/misrepresentations about science while putting forth his own emotionally-appealing nonsense without any sort of fact or basis. This is the sort of magical thinking that all of us need to be wary and critical of. Science- it works, bitches.
Sunday at 8:12am · Unlike · 6
M Otis Beard
Thank you, Ethan Currens, for making me not the only voice of reason around. Sheldrake is a clown and his ‘work’ is self-aggrandizing nonsense.
Sunday at 11:34am · Like · 2
M Otis Beard
Also, the TED people made Sheldrake’s talk available in their archives; they didn’t just delete it and pretend it doesn’t exist. They issued a press release about why it’s in the archives and not in the main body of TED talks, too. . . which seems like kind of a stupid move if you’re trying to cover something up and keep it out of the public eye. Conspiracy theorists need to come down off the ceiling and apply some rationality and critical thinking to their pet causes.
Sunday at 11:36am · Like · 3
Kurt Hauser
The hilarious thing about conspiracy theorists is their inability to apply skepticism to conspiracy theories.
Sunday at 11:50am · Like · 3
Dennis Worden
No conspiracy, just a clash of beliefs. Offhandedly dismissing him without presenting any facts to back it up is the sort of unscientific “thinking” that all of us need to be wary and critical of.
Sunday at 11:56am · Like
M Otis Beard
Ethan Currens: I used the same XKCD quote in the comments on the article itself at Burners.me, before I saw you using it here!
Sunday at 11:56am · Like
M Otis Beard
No, Dennis. The burden of proof is on Sheldrake, not on his detractors.
Sunday at 11:59am · Like · 3
Dennis Worden
And when he presents evidence it’s ignored or offhandedly dismissed by minds that have been made up beforehand.
Sunday at 12:22pm · Like
Dennis Worden
The burden of proof is on the one making claims. And he’s not the only one making claims.
Sunday at 12:25pm · Like
M Otis Beard
We agree that he’s making claims. . . but saying “your claims are false, show some proof” isn’t also making a claim that carries a burden of proof with it.
Sunday at 12:43pm · Like · 1
Dennis Worden
If only you’d extend that courtesy to him when he does the exact same thing. Or look at his evidence when he does present it… I’ve read the explanation TED gave for what they did and it was crap.
Sunday at 4:27pm · Like
M Otis Beard
It’s not a COURTESY, it’s the scientific method. Your emotional appeal for courtesy is inappropriate.
You don’t present ‘evidence’ to the scientific community in TED talks; you do it in peer-reviewed journals.
Sunday at 5:06pm · Like · 2
Dennis Worden
My appeal was for the courtesy of fairness. It was completely appropriate.
Sunday at 6:16pm · Like
M Otis Beard
Sorry, but the scientific method works very, very well, and there’s no room in it for accepting hogwash in the name of courtesy or some tortured idea of ‘fairness.’ Science isn’t art; it’s a context in which the idea that everyone’s opinion is equally valid and should be given equal consideration is not something that makes any sense.
Sunday at 7:47pm · Like · 1
Dennis Worden
Did you even watch his TED Talk?
Sunday at 8:50pm · Like
M Otis Beard
No, what for? This guy isn’t anything new to me; he’s been on my kook radar for some time now.
Monday at 12:07am · Like
Ethan Currens
I’m sorry, Dennis, but we (the rational scientific folk) hear what you’re saying on an almost-daily basis. Any “evidence” Sheldrake presents is either very selectively cherrypicked, horrifyingly wrongly interpreted, or just plain made-up.
Maybe try analyzing the way that you think- it’s SO easy to be seduced by ‘science’ that is emotionally appealing- all of Sheldrake’s points about ‘resonance’ and ‘vibration’ is just so easy and comfortable to believe, right? It just ‘feels’ right? That’s the danger. He is a fraud, just like every single charlatan who has gone up against the inconceivably large body of scientific consensus- hundreds of thousands of experiments and data, verified and re-verified by independent groups.
Monday at 10:30am · Unlike · 1
Dennis Worden
Sorry folks, it’s not rational or scientific to dismiss things you’ve never even heard or looked at. You really don’t know much at all about him or what he’s actually saying or claiming or what any of his research shows. You just dismiss because your minds are made up that something like, say, telepathy can’t exist so if he claims or even suggests it does he must be a kook to ridicule. Well I KNOW some sorts of telepathy exist because I’ve experienced them myself firsthand. I’m not seduced by “emotionally appealing” notions about it, I’ve seen it happen in a way where I couldn’t be mistaken. Your condescending attitude betrays the thing you yourself are seduced by, that you are superior to us fools that believe in the nonsense you dismiss. I don’t go in for all the stuff Sheldrake suggests, but I do like his attitude much better than yours. Your conceit is that you are “rational scientific folk”, but if you were you’d not put a label of “fraud” or “charlatan” on a person who might simply be honestly wrong or mistaken. You use those labels because they are “emotionally appealing” to you, not because you have proof they are accurate.
Monday at 1:18pm · Like
M Otis Beard
So not true, Dennis. As I said, he’s nothing new to me. I’ve heard what he has to say before, LOTS of what he has to say. It’s like you think I should be thinking “hey, I haven’t seen this particular video of [kook-ass bullshit artist], maybe he’s stopped being kooky and full of bullshit and THIS video will contain something worth knowing!”
I’ve already vetted him as well as I’m able, and I’m convinced he’s a fraudulent jerk. I don’t need to evaluate every single sentence he utters for the rest of his life in order to not be considered closed-minded. Track record counts.
Monday at 1:23pm · Edited · Like
Dennis Worden
We all are susceptible to believe falsehoods.
Monday at 1:26pm · Like
M Otis Beard
Science doesn’t operate on beliefs.
Monday at 1:30pm · Like
Dennis Worden
Ha! People do. And science doesn’t operate without people.
Monday at 1:32pm · Like
M Otis Beard
What a wretched over-simplification! That’s why we have peer-review. Did you think that science gets done by guys with crazy hair screaming “EUREKA!!!!” or something?
Monday at 1:33pm · Like
Dennis Worden
Does every thought in your head get peer-reviewed?
Monday at 1:37pm · Like
M Otis Beard
Dennis, do you have any non-irrelevancies for us to address? It doesn’t matter if our every thought gets peer-reviewed or not; this grasping at straws is irritating. Science doesn’t advance by people having thoughts by themselves and then deciding their thoughts are valid, it advances by people testing their hypotheses in rigorous ways, and then sharing all the details with other qualified people so they don’t have to rely on their lonesome selves to make sure there’s no blatant error in their work.
Monday at 3:06pm · Like
Dennis Worden
You are mistaken to think I’m arguing about science. Go back and reread my comments and perhaps you’ll see my actual target.
Monday at 10:40pm · Like
M Otis Beard
Dennis, you started out specifically referring to science, in your first comment:
“Offhandedly dismissing him without presenting any facts to back it up is the sort of UNSCIENTIFIC “thinking” that all of us need to be wary and critical of.” [emphasis mine]
The irony is that you seemed to be championing scientific thinking in the same sentence in which you revealed such a fundamental lack of understanding of science itself that you were under the impression that someone other than Smelldrake was under a burden of proof.
Yesterday at 1:12am · Like
Dennis Worden
My target was about offhandedly dismissing things unfairly. That wouldn’t be very “scientific”. Now, you are free to claim you are being fair and not offhandedly dismissing Sheldrake, since you say you did look into his stuff awhile back, that’s fair enough, but that doesn’t make my statement wrong or showing “a fundamental lack of understanding of science itself”. I also know that Sheldrake does do research and presents evidence to back up at least some of what he says, but it’s dismissed outright by people who have their minds made up beforehand. I’d also say that someone calling him a “fraud” is making a claim and is under a burden of proof to back it up. And one of the things he points out in that video and his new book is that there are commonly accepted beliefs/claims/dogmas in science that are not backed up with scientific proof. So he certainly isn’t the only one “under a burden of proof”.
10 hours ago · Like
M Otis Beard
Every kook selling a perpetual motion machine lays down the same kind of rap.
8 hours ago · Like
M Otis Beard
Once a set of observations have been confirmed to a high sigma of certainty, it becomes unproductive to continue investigating with a view toward the ever-shrinking uncertainties. Thus, when something like thermodynamics gets challenged by some garage inventor making claims about his car that runs on water, it’s perfectly fair and not offhand at all to reject what he’s saying without putting it to a rigorous test. Otherwise, scientific progress would grind to a dead halt as all the available working scientists became sidetracked into trying to verify assertions that are known to be so very unlikely that your chances are greater of being eaten by a Great White shark after scratching a winning lottery ticket just as your plane crashes into another plane on which someone else is scratching off a lottery winner too, because both planes were simultaneously hit by lightning.
8 hours ago · Like
M Otis Beard
I don’t want you to think I’m speaking in hyperbole. It’s no exaggeration: this guy tries to cast serious doubt on things with a sigma of certainty so high that the chances of his ideas having any validity at all are less than one in the number of atoms in the known universe. There’s nothing unfair or offhand about dismissing that kind of thing; it’s like complaining that we’re being unfair and offhanded by dismissing someone’s claim that maybe you really can fly just by taking off all your clothes and flapping your arms really hard.
8 hours ago · Edited · Like
Dennis Worden
I’m with you on the damn perpetual motion kooks and such but I think it very unfair to put Sheldrake in that camp of hustlers and crazies. I can’t speak for all of his ideas but I happen to know that last assertion of yours is not true about at least some of what he’s saying. And in one case I know he’s right, because I’ve done it myself. So forgive me if I don’t agree with the odds you gave. There’s still plenty science does not know and is quite clueless about. Some seemingly crazy ideas fall into those areas and you can’t play the science card to offhandedly dismiss them.
6 hours ago · Unlike · 1
M Otis Beard
Yes, true, science doesn’t know everything. If it did, it would stop.
The fact that science doesn’t know everything in no way indicates or implies that Rupert Sheldrake knows anything. . . and neither does your anecdotal, subjective experience.
2 hours ago · Like
Dennis Worden
But the fact science doesn’t know everything does show you can’t use it to dismiss anything at all you choose to, which was my point… As for my anecdotal subjective experience – I’m very aware it is only proof to me and not to anyone else who did not experience it themselves. But what it does for me personally is prove you are wrong, and in at least one thing, Sheldrake right.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1
M Otis Beard
Dennis, the sad fact is that Sheldrake is in the business of selling you books. Every one of his attempts to find experimental evidence of his pet theories — like morphic resonance — have failed peer-review, some of them by the very people he was working with on the experiments. When you’re the only one in both peer-review and on your own lab team saying the experiment was carried out properly, then you’ve got nothing. That’s not unfairness or closed-mindedness, it’s appropriate recognition of unacceptable sloppiness at best and probably outright fraud and/or delusion-driven pseudoscience.
Publishing a book outside of peer-review and selling it to people like your good self is not a sign of credibility no matter what kind of explanatory rap he lays down in his books. Biology isn’t philosophy.
I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere further at this point, do you? And I hate repeating myself.
about an hour ago · Unlike · 1
that’s your views on Sheldrake, got it…he has struggled with this scientific acceptance his whole career. What about your views on Harramein – his paper the Schwarzchild Proton has been peer reviewed – or the points raised in the first video about consciousness and aliens/angels/other beings communicating to our dimension via hallucinogens? A lot of incredible technological breakthroughs (eg DNA) have come to their inventors on acid trips.
Of course Sheldrake has struggled with scientific acceptance his whole career. . . because he’s a sloppy fudger who takes shortcuts and draws unjustified conclusions from unacceptable work. Nobody is just flatly rejecting his conclusions, like when he says he can demonstrate telepathy. . . they’re not saying “telepathy is impossible.” They’re saying his methodology sucks and that he’s not demonstrating telepathy, he’s demonstrating bad methodology.
I want to tell you some things about Occam’s Razor, but I’m a little tied up right now and will have to add to this later tonight.
There is a lot more data in Wilcock’s results about the repeatability of the experiments. I’ll send it to you if you want.