Philosophy, Science, & The Unexplained - Main Thread

[smcder]

You refuse to provide supportable examples or reasonable explanations for your criticism. Why should I respect that? Tolerating it is another matter, and your comments haven't come anywhere near testing my tolerance level. So far as I'm concerned you're simply expressing your opinion and it hasn't really gotten nasty. I draw the line when accusations are not only unsupportable, but also show a clear intent to damage my character or reputation. When that happens, I ask for an apology, followed by moderator assistance and/or legal recourse. To date, I've only alerted the moderators here to one poster who had been flaming a thread for several days. I think in any reasonable person's book, my behavior demonstrates a fair-minded and reasonable level of tolerance.

We don't need no stinkin' moderators!

 

[Randall]

We don't need no stinkin' moderators!

Treasure of the Sierra Madre right? Gotta love Bogie, and I like the spirit of that post, but I have to add that our mods are good people here. While we're alluding to movies, we saw Ender's Game today and it was excellent ( in case you're into sci-fi ).

 

[smcder]

Treasure of the Sierra Madre right? Gotta love Bogie, and I like the spirit of that post, but I have to add that our mods are good people here. While we're alluding to movies, we saw Ender's Game today and it was excellent ( in case you're into sci-fi ).

My wife is reading Ender's Game now - my sister-in-law gave it to her. I haven't seen the film, will probably have to come to video as we are a long way from a theatre out here. I read the book at the suggestion of a friend many years ago - and wanted to go on and read more in the series but never got to it.

 

[Randall]

My wife is reading Ender's Game now - my sister-in-law gave it to her. I haven't seen the film, will probably have to come to video as we are a long way from a theatre out here. I read the book at the suggestion of a friend many years ago - and wanted to go on and read more in the series but never got to it.

I had the book years ago but never got through it, but the movie was excellent. It seems like it might be aimed at the teen audience, and to be fair, that can't be overlooked, but there's much more to it than that. It was nice to be pleasantly surprised rather than simply entertained. Where are you that you're so far away from a theatre?

 

[smcder]

I had the book years ago but never got through it, but the movie was excellent. It seems like it might be aimed at the teen audience, and to be fair, that can't be overlooked, but there's much more to it than that. It was nice to be pleasantly surprised rather than simply entertained.

Where are you that you're so far away from a theatre?

I live in an isolated section of one of the most rural and conservative (and well armed) states in the country, at the end of a long, dark drive, behind electric fencing, five dogs and a couple of shotguns (and then, there is my wife), surrounded by fundamentalists who mostly read the Old Testament . . . I exaggerate, but not by much.

Actually, I believe Arkansas still has one, if not two operating drive-in movie theaters

Kenda Drive In

mostly, though - it's not just the distance, but I'm anti-social and found it best for my chances of avoiding a criminal record (and best for the health of other patrons) that I not try and sit through a movie where folks are constantly blabbing and playing with their I-phones.

 

[smcder]

Look forward to seeing it, Steve.

I listened to the first part of this trialogue and the bit I'm looking for isn't in this - maybe in the second, but this is worth a listen on its own and relevant to the thread:

Two part "trialogue" with McKenna, Sheldrake and mathematician Ralph Abraham (

Light and Vision Part 1
Podcast 067 – “Light and Vision” (Part 1)

(no transcript, Constance but there are program notes)

the first part is Sheldrake laying out his theory of vision and Terrance's response, here we have photons and anti-photons, or photons being reversible, "the Grok wave" Visio-ons (carriers of vision) and then Abrams weighs in (playing the voice of reason and exposing maybe some of Terrance's limited understanding on the topic at hand, respecting Sheldrake but also questioning his theory) at 25:41 Abrams discusses fields and it gets interesting for this thread - at 41:30 he discusses why he thinks the electro-magnetic field isn't sufficient to explain the mind and the "m-field" is introduced, he makes a good point about models of reality and the role of economy as not being the only consideration - he does something interesting in relating fields to the traditional notion of the mental, physical and spiritual being on three planes . . .

oh, and don't forget about pheromones - that's one of Terrance's favorite ideas.

Light and Vision Part 2
Podcast 068 – “Light and Vision” (Part 2)

I haven't finished this yet, if the part I'm looking for is on this - I'll post specific quotes -

 

[smcder]

Light and Vision Part 2
Podcast 068 – “Light and Vision” (Part 2)

This starts off with a discussion about proving the paranormal and the "sense of being stared at" - this must be before Sheldrak's online experiments, because they aren't mentioned:

Sheldrake's Online Experiments Portal
Online Experiments - Portal to Online Experiments - index

15:40 "there's some sense in which our imagination, our image-making facilty, is self-luminous"

and the discussion from this was of particular interest to me because the brightest, clearest light I have ever seen has been at night, in a dark room with my eyes closed (something along the lines of intentional hypnagogic imagery)

ok, this is what I was looking for - after this discussion of "inner light" around 19:08 or so - Terrance riffs on one of his favorite cosmological fantasies - there is no anti-particle for the photon . . . "disturbing asymmetry" - Hans Allman (?), Sweidsh cosmologist, anti-matter . . . oh well, just sit back and hear Terrance do what he does best . . . since it's a trialogue, he is only able to expand for about 3 minutes - I'm sure there is an extended version somewhere, I'll keep looking - but it's a beautiful vision of the apocalypse.

somewhere around 28,29 minutes in - Sheldrake starts talking about "divine omniscience" and there is a bit of a theological discussion - (Sheldrake, I believe, identifies as an Anglican, or did at one point)

44:00

Abrams: "the fact is that our mind is primarily unconscious and consciousness is not a necessary consideration of omniscience and its, I think, a major fallacy of the modern system to emphasize the grandeur of consciousness, to imagine that our mind is primarily conscious is to deny the existence of the unconscious , which is part of the rationalist approach - the denial of the irrational, the fact is that consciousness is a drop on the bucket of the individual mind - "

 

[Randall]

I listened to the first part of this trialogue and the bit I'm looking for isn't in this - maybe in the second, but this is worth a listen on its own and relevant to the thread:
Two part "trialogue" with McKenna, Sheldrake and mathematician Ralph Abraham - Light and Vision ...

Oh sure ... morphic fields, resonance and other alleged pseudoscience. It's one thing to suggest that our subjective experience is related to fields that are closely associated ( physically ) to the brain, and another to suggest that what we experience subjectively is actually projected outward through our eyes to manifest an outward reality. Sheldrake also has a tendency to "morph" his ideas around, depending on what seems convenient, but then again sometimes that's how freely discussing ideas works, so I'm not sure how fair it is to call the kinds of discussions we hear in the podcasts pseudoscience. Instead, I think such discussions may be a sort of primordial soup containing the basic elements of what's really going on, but they have yet to coalesce into something coherent and measureable in a consistent manner.

Where these ideas cross the line from general discussion to pseudoscience is when it is claimed to be or is presented as science, but doesn't measure up to accepted scientific standards. For example when the content is put into a paper or book or presentation and labeled as science ( in itself ), but isn't really researched or compiled in a manner acceptable to those responsible for maintaining scientific standards. Does that mean we're doing pseudoscience here because we've included the word "science" in the title of this thread. I don't think so. We don't claim to be doing science here, only including it in general terms as part of the discussion. I think that where the ideas in the podcasts, and what we've touched on here intersect, is on the idea of organized fields ( EM and whatever else may be applicable ), and how they might be responsible for producing unexplained phenomena.

For that feeling we get that we're being watched, Sheldrake seems to be posing a sort of feedback effect along the trajectory of the photons entering our eyes that is produced by the field associated with our brain's visual processing center, and if I've got it right, he suggests that the carrier is "antiphotons". I'm not so sure I'd buy into that specific idea, but the idea of antiphotons is strikingly similar to the idea of "virtual photons", so at least it's in keeping with a physical model. Suppose we replace the idea of antiphotons with virtual photons. Does that make more sense? I think so.

However I'm not so sure that I would call it a "scientific theory" with supportable evidence. I would ask those who do the physical experiments with the brain and have experience measuring the range of the EM fields associated with the brain, how far away from the brain those fields are detectable. Some years ago when I was looking for that information, EEG sensors were very weak. Now they can be built into helmets for use in video games. Is the brain far more sensitive than we know at detecting changes in EM fields at specific frequencies? I think that is a reasonable question to ask and explore, and if it turns out to be true that brain waves can be detected some meters away, then we'll have something to explore further.

 

[Randall]

I don't want to get into a re-examination of some of your posts and engage in a personal argument ...

There is an alternative to that. People are often more complex than our first impressions, or even our second, third and fourth impressions, and we tend to react to situations before we have sufficient information. So instead of arguing, which is one way of validating a particular belief, but is uncomfortable for some people, you might try exploring the foundations of your assumed beliefs about someone by asking relevant questions, like what phenomena they believe in and why they believe that. You might be surprised to find that although they are very analytical in one respect, they aren't nearly as dismissive as you first thought. No pressure. Just a friendly suggestion.

 

[Tyger]

Where are you that you're so far away from a theatre?

I live in an isolated section of one of the most rural and conservative (and well armed) states in the country, at the end of a long, dark drive, behind electric fencing, five dogs and a couple of shotguns (and then, there is my wife), surrounded by fundamentalists who mostly read the Old Testament . . . I exaggerate, but not by much.

Actually, I believe Arkansas still has one, if not two operating drive-in movie theaters

Kenda Drive In

mostly, though - it's not just the distance, but I'm anti-social and found it best for my chances of avoiding a criminal record (and best for the health of other patrons) that I not try and sit through a movie where folks are constantly blabbing and playing with their I-phones.

Jiminies - sounds grim, Steve. Ever consider moving? There are some beautiful places in the country that are quite friendly and happy - no fear, no hate - those places do exist.

BTW I can't read the text in the picture - could you say what it is about and what it is showing and what it says?

 

[boomerang]

Where are you that you're so far away from a theatre?

I live in an isolated section of one of the most rural and conservative (and well armed) states in the country, at the end of a long, dark drive, behind electric fencing, five dogs and a couple of shotguns (and then, there is my wife), surrounded by fundamentalists who mostly read the Old Testament . . . I exaggerate, but not by much.

Actually, I believe Arkansas still has one, if not two operating drive-in movie theaters

Kenda Drive In

mostly, though - it's not just the distance, but I'm anti-social and found it best for my chances of avoiding a criminal record (and best for the health of other patrons) that I not try and sit through a movie where folks are constantly blabbing and playing with their I-phones.

There can be a kind of loneliness in your situation that is hard to describe. We went from twenty years in the Austin, Texas area to 5 years in an isolated part of the state. If Texas is red, the county where we lived would qualify as International Safety Orange. Non conformant attitudes in such places are most unwelcome. I'm happy that the people living "out there" are perfectly happy with the way they are. And even happier that we are back in Austin.

 

[boomerang]

Jiminies - sounds grim, Steve. Ever consider moving? There are some beautiful places in the country that are quite friendly and happy - no fear, no hate - those places do exist.

In my limited experience they tend to be pricey. Or perhaps we just didn't know where to shop.

 

[smcder]

Jiminies - sounds grim, Steve. Ever consider moving? There are some beautiful places in the country that are quite friendly and happy - no fear, no hate - those places do exist.

BTW I can't read the text in the picture - could you say what it is about and what it is showing and what it says?

We did move! And on purpose - out of "the city". Away from neighbor's racing their motorcycles on the same street that kids play, away from crime and noise and light pollution. It's not grim out here at all, it's achingly beautiful - I have 5 acres, my neighbor on one side 40 and horses and on the other 100 acres, behind us is woods that is not used for anything except a little hunting.

We hear coyote at night and you can actually make out the milky way because there is so little light pollution. I feel fortunate and grateful and selfish. People are just who they are out here - hard working and no-nonsense, they don't look for trouble but they won't tolerate any either. Thereare folks out here who believe it's the end times and they are prepared but mostly they do things for themselves, so if things get worse, they'll be OK. And yes, Arkansas still has "sundown towns": Sundown Towns - Encyclopedia of Arkansas

I make no excuses for the racism here, it can be bad. On the other hand, because of our history - I also see remarkable examples of people getting along and being tolerant.

the picture is actually from New Orleans after Katrina - we made a trip down there and then I would be working with lots of folks up from New Orleans at the homeless shelter. It says:

"don't try i am sleeping inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer"

an example of humor and self-defense going hand in hand -

 

[smcder]

There can be a kind of loneliness in your situation that is hard to describe. We went from twenty years in the Austin, Texas area to 5 years in an isolated part of the state. If Texas is red, the county where we lived would qualify as International Safety Orange. Non conformant attitudes in such places are most unwelcome. I'm happy that the people living "out there" are perfectly happy with the way they are. And even happier that we are back in Austin.

Yes. It can be hard to describe - it's comforting though to hear you acknowledge that. But loneliness is a state too, it's a quality of life that affects time and mood and it tempers you in some ways. You pass through anxiety and fear - long, dark dead quiet nights - and into a kind of acceptance. There is a sort of death in loneliness. I'm just now ending an extended period of aloneness but it came at a good time in my life and was healing - I have actually felt that could I live another life, I would have a hermetic existence. I keep good company with myself. (and there are always the dogs!) ;-)

As far as like-minded people I grew up disguising what I thought - I was in an academic family within a small town environment, so you learned a double-life. That kind of loneliness, I now realize, I have always taken for granted.

 

[smcder]

Jiminies - sounds grim, Steve. Ever consider moving? There are some beautiful places in the country that are quite friendly and happy - no fear, no hate - those places do exist.

BTW I can't read the text in the picture - could you say what it is about and what it is showing and what it says?

I believe you - but I have never lived anywhere that didn't have fear and hate and prejudice. The more education and social sophistication, the more complex the strategies to hide these things and the more complex the strategies to carry out the machinations that inevitably follow - in my experience. I would rather get a punch in the nose than a stab in the back. Here, good fences make good neighbors.

 

[Randall]

I believe you - but I have never lived anywhere that didn't have fear and hate and prejudice. The more education and social sophistication, the more complex the strategies to hide these things and the more complex the strategies to carry out the machinations that inevitably follow - in my experience. I would rather get a punch in the nose than a stab in the back. Here, good fences make good neighbors.

Wow, you've got Internet somehow, but there's still "sundown towns". This has got to be one of those examples where more people than myself simply can't wrap their "subjective personal experience" around that enough to begin to comprehend "what it's like" to be so completely irrational as to judge people based on the color of their skin . I know there are people who still do it, and whites aren't alone in it either. You don't want to be a "whitie" alone in some small coastal British Columbia towns either ( or so I've heard ), or you'll just mysteriously disappear.

My Dad was from Kansas city. He had nothing against the "blacks", but he said, "If you knew what was good for you, you stayed on the right side of town." These days, I see the justification for racial discontent taking the form of historical events long before my time, as if I was personally responsible for some crime against humanity because some white guy 100 years ago did something stupid. Meanwhile one of my best buddies ( before he moved to Toronto ), was a native ( First Nations ) from BC.

It's a complex issue. I think I've mentioned this one before, but my other half's father, Al Robertson, a wise man ( and one hell of a pool player ) from Toronto used to say, "If you want to know who the real minority is, go stand at a bus stop".

 

[smcder]

Wow, you've got Internet somehow, but there's still "sundown towns". This has got to be one of those examples where more people than myself simply can't wrap their "subjective personal experience" around that enough to begin to comprehend "what it's like" to be so completely irrational as to judge people based on the color of their skin . I know there are people who still do it, and whites aren't alone in it either. You don't want to be a "whitie" alone in some small coastal British Columbia towns either ( or so I've heard ), or you'll just mysteriously disappear.

My Dad was from Kansas city. He had nothing against the "blacks", but he said, "If you knew what was good for you, you stayed on the right side of town." These days, I see the justification for racial discontent taking the form of historical events long before my time, as if I was personally responsible for some crime against humanity because some white guy 100 years ago did something stupid. Meanwhile one of my best buddies ( before he moved to Toronto ), was a native ( First Nations ) from BC.

It's a complex issue. I think I've mentioned this one before, but my other half's father, Al Robertson, a wise man ( and one hell of a pool player ) from Toronto used to say, "If you want to know who the real minority is, go stand at a bus stop".

I used to think I had overcome my biases - the things I grew up with and took for granted - jokes based on race and racial slurs, gender based jokes - jokes about sexual preference - but this is an interesting site that I've returned to many times - it has online tests you can take to show the unconscious biases you may have, for me it was revealing and altered the way I saw myself:

ProjectImplicit

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science.

For example, one test that I took showed a strong association of Black Americans with Weapons compared to White Americans.

now, how this plays out in my every day life where I am very conscious (or try to be) of how I treat others - is of course, complex, I may even make reverse bias decisions - but it's very interesting to see the implicit bias I carry despite what I may know (consciously) better of - I'm a little afraid to take tests about gender bias, because I know I still have those attitudes and still catch myself in stereotypical reactions.

 

[Randall]

I used to think I had overcome my biases - the things I grew up with and took for granted - jokes based on race and racial slurs, gender based jokes - jokes about sexual preference - but this is an interesting site that I've returned to many times - it has online tests you can take to show the unconscious biases you may have, for me it was revealing and altered the way I saw myself:

Interesting site but I'm skeptical about the interpretations. For example, in the test I went to, it said the score was based on the speed in which I performed the tasks, not the choices made, however for me my speed was influenced by the way the test was setup and how quickly I adapted to the environment in which the tasks were assigned, so it took more or less time depending on the configuration of the task and how long it took me to get used to the idea and coordinate it with my keyboard responses, not with any "preference" within the content. If all the tests are equally as misleading, it makes me nervous because at the end I noticed that it asks how I found out about the test and offers a dropdown menu that includes employers. This implies that employers are using the data from these types of tests as criteria for hiring or employee evaluation. That's disturbing.

 

[smcder]

Interesting site but I'm skeptical about the interpretations. For example, in the test I went to, it said the score was based on the speed in which I performed the tasks, not the choices made, however for me my speed was influenced by the way the test was setup and how quickly I adapted to the environment in which the tasks were assigned, so it took more or less time depending on the configuration of the task and how long it took me to get used to the idea and coordinate it with my keyboard responses, not with any "preference" within the content. If all the tests are equally as misleading, it makes me nervous because at the end I noticed that it asks how I found out about the test and offers a dropdown menu that includes employers. This implies that employers are using the data from these types of tests as criteria for hiring or employee evaluation. That's disturbing.

I didn't log in or register, just went straight to the tests - I didn't see any questions about where I found out about the site either, so I think all of that is optional. There is information on the site about methodology and I think you can request more info on it. And there is this disclaimer:

Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT test that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done (at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University) with these tests. However, these Universities, as well as the individual researchers who have contributed to this site, make no claim for the validity of these suggested interpretations. If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further. You may prefer to examine general information about the IAT before deciding whether or not to proceed.

 

[Randall]

I didn't log in or register, just went straight to the tests - I didn't see any questions about where I found out about the site either, so I think all of that is optional. There is information on the site about methodology and I think you can request more info on it. And there is this disclaimer ...

I noticed the disclaimer and logged in a guest as well. Apparently the test is designed to detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations in memory. But how do they rationally equate association with preference? For example I took the racial "test" which includes pictures of different races and asks you to associate them with the left or right side of the screen. Facial recognition is faster than word recognition and they put several white ones in a row, so tap tap, tap, tap in rapid succession on the same key, then they hit you with a word or a change which takes more time to process, so it should take longer to hit that key than the four previous choices because the changed choices aren't loaded into your immediate memory. Had there been 4 ethnic pictures in a row it would have yielded the opposite result. Or even more succinctly, it could have just as easily been geometric shapes and colors as opposed to ethnic images.

So although the test may reflect a relationship between mental representations of whatever is in memory, it's a leap in logic to presume that substituting faces for neutral objects will result in some kind of racial "preference" or bias. My preferences when it comes to race and ethnicity are pragmatic or personal. For example I don't know a language other than English, so I prefer to do business with people whose ethnicity includes the fluent use of English. On a personal level, I'm attracted to various races differently, but I don't think that's being biased in the same way as we normally think of racial prejudice. And to be clear, when I say "attracted to", it's not that I don't appreciate the aesthetic beauty of various racial configurations. There's just some that don't "do it" for me on "that level". So what? If that makes me guilty in some way, then I'm guilty. That doesn't mean I think less of them, or wouldn't hire them, or would choose to exclude them from my community or circle of friends. That would be objectionable to me.