Scientism

[pbrower2a]

(07-09-2019, 08:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-09-2019, 02:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(07-08-2019, 10:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: So what accounts for you having been brainwashed into trickle-down, free-market economics?

I wasn't.  In fact, I used to think that stuff was voodoo economics and I voted for Anderson and against Reagan in 1980.  I even wrote Reagan a letter saying "raise my taxes" in 200 point type.

Then the 1980s proved that supply side economics worked.  And Bush then proved that his nonvoodoo economics didn't work.

With the evidence hitting me in the face, I accepted the truth that supply side free market economics was the best way to go.

Of course, to get free market economics, you have to do something about excessive concentration of wealth to the point of oligopoly.  That's why I'm glad to see the Justice Department starting to probe today's tech oligopolists.

In other words, you don't know who brainwashed you into accepting this free market, supply side, Reaganomics trickle-down bullpucky and phony evidence, but you seem to know exactly who "brainwashed" those who can see beyond the propaganda and know for themselves how wrong it is.

It did put an end to stagflation, if only by lowering expectations of lots of young workers. It kept wages down and ensured that rigid low glass ceilings would be the norm in Big Business which would get to further dominate the economy. On3e gives credit for ending stagflation, but the long-term consequences are more intense economic inequality with the proles having to assume the entrepreneurial risk while entrenched elites got the entrepreneurial reward. If that isn't ass-backwards capitalism, then what is? Workers got to commit themselves to huge private debt just to have a chance to get anything other than minimum-wage work.

For people not in the economic elite, economic results are far worse than those of the 1950s. Sure, we have some nive technological gadgets and some slick entertainment to numb us.  I would suggest that most Americans would be happier if they were transported back to the 1950s (except for the removal of the Red Scare, residual Jim Crow practice, homophobia, and sexism -- none of which had any connection to the rise of Reaganomics).

Quote:The fact is that free market economics is always oligopoly. Oligarchy and wealth concentration is not only the inevitable result of free market economics, establishing that oligarchy is its purpose. That's indeed why the Justice Department is needed to act as a countervailing influence on the free market. You have lurched uncontrollably into a little bit of truth, despite yourself. There really is no free market without some government regulation in the mix.

Reagan's tax policies promoted further concentration of wealth and greater inequality of income. It promoted vertical integration because it established a near flat tax on business income. A mom-and-pop restaurant might end up paying the same rate of corporate income taxes as Exxon-Mobil. Bureaucratic elites got paid very well for treating people badly, which is perverse economics. This 4T wilol force change upon this society. Either the inequality intensifies and morphs into such a monstrosity as debt bondage in a system that treats most people as serfs in peace and cannon fodder in wars for profit -- or we get institutional change that mitigates the inequality if we do not get a violent revolution. We may be close to the resolution of the 3T mess that we have (and so far as I can tell, most 4Ts solve the mess that a depraved 3T allowed to fester.

Like most liberals I see Donald Trump as an unmitigated disaster. But he presides, in a way, over a hoard of the oily rags that people have let grow for no obvious reason. Oily rags can combust spontaneously.

[Ragnarök_62]

(07-09-2019, 10:23 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I've never argued that there should be no government in the mix.  Government is needed to adjudicate contracts, for example.

The tendency to oligopoly is, however, a result of putting the government in the mix.  Government regulation provides an avenue for business success other than free market competition - namely, lobbying for regulation that will help particular companies, usually the incumbents, against competitors.

Since government inevitably sides with existing companies due to lobbying, some countervailing efforts to prevent existing companies from getting too big is necessary.

What about externialities like pollution, hogging up all the water, and natural monopolies?  I reckon the Gilded Age would be an example of free market nirvana, would it not?.  Then of course is a big fat problem, namely multinationals. Since these monsters have no actual country, who is gonna protect us from their predations? How on earth would contracts fix all these problems?

So , would anyone like to live next to a rank stinky feedlot or hog farm?  I've past them a few times on the road and they reek for miles and miles. 

As for fixing some government overstretch.  Any law that is corporate welfare must be repealed. This includes subsidies either for the company or it's customers. Yup goodby for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, The FED which is corporate welfare for banksters, student loan guarantees, and for a cherry on top.  The US should cease and desist patrolling sea lanes unless those who benefit pay for it. I'd also withdraw from the Mideast because all the costs there are for oil unless Big Oil pays for it, etc. and etc.  

So I think we agree with tossing lobbyists and cut the uncle sugar for entities who certainly don't deserve it. Sugar?  lessee that kinda rings a bell right now.

And just think,  what was old is new again.






It's the new mother nature
It's a new splendid lady taking over.
She's getting us all.

Since both political parties have serious issues with agendas that have no future, perhaps a new party is needed.  Let's call it the no sugar for big business party.

Then we'll have some dough left over for good shit like infrastructure, *resiliency implementation, single payer healthcare, and the usual safety net this and thats.

*Mr. Market hates this because this forces redundancy, localization, and stockpiles. This also means ending globalization, but if we don't , you know that the new mother nature is gonna whack us good for being true believers in assorted ideologies to nowhere.

[pbrower2a]

(07-10-2019, 12:19 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-09-2019, 10:23 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I've never argued that there should be no government in the mix.  Government is needed to adjudicate contracts, for example.

The tendency to oligopoly is, however, a result of putting the government in the mix.  Government regulation provides an avenue for business success other than free market competition - namely, lobbying for regulation that will help particular companies, usually the incumbents, against competitors.

Since government inevitably sides with existing companies due to lobbying, some countervailing efforts to prevent existing companies from getting too big is necessary.

What about externialities like pollution, hogging up all the water, and natural monopolies?  I reckon the Gilded Age would be an example of free market nirvana, would it not?.  Then of course is a big fat problem, namely multinationals. Since these monsters have no actual country, who is gonna protect us from their predations? How on earth would contracts fix all these problems?

It's all power, and the bureaucratic corporations clearly believe in market economics until they can find something 'better'  for themselves -- maybe fascist brutality as an enforcement of their will.

Quote:So , would anyone like to live next to a rank stinky feedlot or hog farm?  I've past them a few times on the road and they reek for miles and miles.

 
If you work in a rank, stinky feedlot you probably live nearby. If you live in a hog-raising area, you will smell pigs.

Quote:As for fixing some government overstretch.  Any law that is corporate welfare must be repealed. This includes subsidies either for the company or it's customers. Yup goodby for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, The FED which is corporate welfare for banksters, student loan guarantees, and for a cherry on top.  The US should cease and desist patrolling sea lanes unless those who benefit pay for it. I'd also withdraw from the Mideast because all the costs there are for oil unless Big Oil pays for it, etc. and etc.  

Such broke down in the meltdown of 1929-1933 and came close to breaking down in 2008 and 2009. People used to have to renegotiate mortgages every year, and that depended upon people having bank savings accounts as the basis of lending. The bureaucratic-capitalist way of doing things depends upon the FED.  Maybe it will take another really-nasty depression to bring down the corporate behemoths whose owners and executives can wax fat while insulating themselves from mass suffering that they enforce. The FED will no longer be able to finance speculative activities of any kind, including borrowing for questionable education. You know what is questionable education -- the rip-off schools that charge Harvard-like tuition for vocational education suspect in value. That seemed to die under Obama, but Trump and the GOP seek its revival.

...if Big Oil pays for patrolling the sea lanes, then such will come out of heavy taxes on petroleum. Ultimately it will be the people who use the oil who pay. We end up subsidizing long commutes so that people can avoid having to live in urban densities such as those in East and South Asia.

So what is the alternative to the bureaucratic capitalism that has the inequality of Gilded plutocracy melded with a Soviet-style nomenklatura, arguably the worst of both worlds? It will be back to small business -- local in geographic scope and attentive to customers. I live where there are lots of Old Order Amish: businesses are small, but there are no bureaucracies. The Amish world has few white-collar jobs. Hmmm.

Quote:So I think we agree with tossing lobbyists and cut the uncle sugar for entities who certainly don't deserve it.

Government by lobbyist is a novel form of dictatorship. This must go if we are to have what Abraham Lincoln called a "new Birth of Freedom".

Quote:Since both political parties have serious issues with agendas that have no future, perhaps a new party is needed.  Let's call it the no sugar for big business party.

Destroy the economic basis for a corrupt or sold-out politician, and that politician becomes irrelevant.

Quote:Then we'll have some dough left over for good shit like infrastructure, *resiliency implementation, single payer healthcare, and the usual safety net this and thats.

Yes. Make sure that government operates to facilitate prosperity and give aid to people who truly need it. We will need to address poverty instead of to cultivate it as a means of giving super-rich types more control over us. What many forget about the Great Depression is that it was a great time for starting a business, if little else. Rents became incredibly cheap. Inventories were for sale at fire-sale prices without the fire. People who started businesses could find plenty of people available for employment, and by employing one person in a small business one got the extended family as reliable customers intent on keeping their relative employed. People who recently had been looking for highly-liquid, short-term, high-yield investments that they didn't have to work to foster now found themselves being stuck with low-yield enterprises that might pay off handsomely in fifteen to twenty years but that would require intense activity (including cultivation of customers in hard times) in operations that one could not run from. That is practically a reversion to the cottage industry.

Quote:*Mr. Market hates this because this forces redundancy, localization, and stockpiles. This also means ending globalization, but if we don't , you know that the new mother nature is gonna whack us good for being true believers in assorted ideologies to nowhere.

The Trump ideology does lead somewhere -- wars for profit followed by civil unrest. The highway to Hell has a destination even if that destination is one that no wise person seeks.

[Warren Dew]

(07-10-2019, 12:19 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(07-09-2019, 10:23 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I've never argued that there should be no government in the mix.  Government is needed to adjudicate contracts, for example.

The tendency to oligopoly is, however, a result of putting the government in the mix.  Government regulation provides an avenue for business success other than free market competition - namely, lobbying for regulation that will help particular companies, usually the incumbents, against competitors.

Since government inevitably sides with existing companies due to lobbying, some countervailing efforts to prevent existing companies from getting too big is necessary.

What about externialities like pollution, hogging up all the water, and natural monopolies?  I reckon the Gilded Age would be an example of free market nirvana, would it not?.  Then of course is a big fat problem, namely multinationals. Since these monsters have no actual country, who is gonna protect us from their predations? How on earth would contracts fix all these problems?

I gave contract adjudication as one valid use for government, not as the only one.  I agree that externalities are another such area, though I think they should be dealt with through uniform taxes rather than regulation, as taxes are less subject to regulatory capture by large corporations.  Multinationals still have to pay taxes, and are still subject to antitrust law, as witness the European antitrust rulings against Microsoft.

I would absolutely take the 60% wage growth over the 30 years of the Gilded Age over the less than 20% we've actually gotten over the past 30 years.

Quote:As for fixing some government overstretch.  Any law that is corporate welfare must be repealed. This includes subsidies either for the company or it's customers. Yup goodby for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, The FED which is corporate welfare for banksters, student loan guarantees, and for a cherry on top.  The US should cease and desist patrolling sea lanes unless those who benefit pay for it. I'd also withdraw from the Mideast because all the costs there are for oil unless Big Oil pays for it, etc. and etc.  

 I agree with most of that.  The US does get "paid" for patrolling sea lanes, though; this is why dollars are the standard for international trade, and with everyone holding dollar reserves, dollar inflation acts as a tax on all the other nations.  It might or might not be a coincidence, but the value of this "inflation tax" is just about the same as the entire budget for the US Navy.

[Eric the Green]

(07-09-2019, 10:23 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I've never argued that there should be no government in the mix.  Government is needed to adjudicate contracts, for example.

The tendency to oligopoly is, however, a result of putting the government in the mix.  Government regulation provides an avenue for business success other than free market competition - namely, lobbying for regulation that will help particular companies, usually the incumbents, against competitors.

Since government inevitably sides with existing companies due to lobbying, some countervailing efforts to prevent existing companies from getting too big is necessary.

Yes, we need that, and we need very much to revive the idea that government regulation to restrict bad behavior by big business is needed too. That means putting liberals instead of conservatives and "neo-liberals" in office. Because a conservative is susceptible to lobbying for regulation that helps business or the particular company in his district or a business that pays his campaign contributions or for his lobbyist, while a liberal (though he may also be lobbied and contributed to by business for these reasons) also wants regulation to not only keep competition in the free market open, but to make sure that what companies do is what is best and not worst for consumers, workers, the environment, and the safety of the economy from unwise speculation, and provide for the safety of the people from the effects of business bad behavior (welfare, social security, medicare for all, etc.). And a liberal rather than a conservative wants and votes for our elections to be free from the influence of big money, gerrymandering, lobbying, vote suppression, manipulation by other countries, war contracting, the electoral college, etc. so that government reflects the will of the people, more than the will of the wealthy special big business interests that it reflects today under our conservative rulers.

[Eric the Green]

Just some speculations for the morning of my usual kind. No, I am not claiming I have proved anything; just interesting possibilities and connections. Just understand and enjoy them, and taste them with a grain of salt.

Michael Pelizzari and I were talking about quantum theory and entanglement, and how the disagreement between Einstein and Bohr was resolved in Bohr's favor by testing Bell's theorem, as described toward the end of this video: https://youtu.be/TftGVf5345g

And it mentions the polarized relationship between two entangled particles. Sometimes this is described as one particle pointed up in their spin, and the other pointed down. Or one spinning one way and one the other, which we find at the time when the particles are observed. Quantum entanglement has been speculated by Brian Greene, who does PBS programs, as possibly leading to the ability to teleport, like we see on Star Trek.

https://youtu.be/mhfdwH5Kdbc?t=2072
https://youtu.be/mhfdwH5Kdbc

And then, of course, I remember my favorite lyric from my favorite rock song, Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who, which says "and the parting on the left, is now a parting on the right" https://youtu.be/SHhrZgojY1Q

lyric here: https://youtu.be/SHhrZgojY1Q?t=289

And then of course, there's Bach's Toccata in F, BWV 540, my favorite music, which enfolds within it the secrets and the map of the universe. And there's The DaVinci Code too. What I call the "chariot" section of the Toccata 540 features two chords alternating with a pedal note, one higher note pointing up and the next lower note pointing down. That always struck me as pretty amazing, and later I figured out why when I made this connection. This is polarization of the "particles" at a distance in quantum entanglement.
https://youtu.be/U6fgRfrTb78?t=205

As The Da Vinci Code mentions, Jewish mystics called this figure, a combination of one triangle pointed up, and the other pointed down, as the star of David, the symbol of all the 4 elements together, and of the "merkabah," which means chariot, which in the Bible is said to take the prophet Elijah up to heaven. We also know it as the chariot of the gods, or the chariots of fire. The merkabah is a star tetrahedron with the two triangular components counter-rotating.
https://youtu.be/ncGSwQ3sQ9c
https://youtu.be/NavYGcjjWto

So, quantum entanglement might, I say might, presage human development of the ability to teleport, or to transcend. It is the 9th and 10th insights in the #1 runaway best-selling 1990s new age novel The Celestine Prophecy, which was the hidden prediction that humans can learn eventually travel back and forth between embodiment on Earth and the other side after death, just what Elijah was supposed to have done.

And we have the apparently random selection of #540 by Schmeider as the BWV number for Bach's Toccata in F. And yet in the Toccata the first two canons, which I used as background music for our spiral snake dance at the Summer Solstice Celebration, turning first clockwise, and then the other counterclockwise, just like entangled "particles," and just like the seasons, each have 54 bars, which adds up to 108.
https://youtu.be/U6fgRfrTb78

And 108 is the number of degrees in each of the angles of a dodecahedron, which Plato and some cosmologists say is the design of the universe, degrees which add up to 540 on each of its 12 five-sided spaces. And according to Plato and Plotinus it is the element of spirit, the 5th element or all the elements together, aka consciousness, toward which quantum theory points as the nature of reality. And near the divine proportion point at the length of the Toccata in F, Bach writes what amounts to a 5-pointed star. The "uplifting" melody line that is repeated 5 times, has 12 notes. Of course each angle in a 5 pointed star, the symbol of Venus and the goddess in The DaVinci Code, and of the heart chakra, is 108 degrees; and so it goes....
http://philosopherswheel.com/toccata.htm#ChakraFour

Keep the spirit alive!

[Eric the Green]

The question Brian Greene raised in his PBS doc (linked in the post above) was why if all the smallest things in nature are so "chaotic" and impossible to fix in one place, and seem to be in many places at once, why do larger things seem to stay in one place? I don't think from a consciousness point of view, that human beings can be fixed to one location. He used the example of us humans, but all the larger things seem to stay in one location and not several places at once. But that is likely because at the larger scale, the probabilities easily average out to the place that we see them in. The other thing about quantum theory though, is that amazingly enough, the equations about these chaotic probabilities are exact enough to be used to create all the high tech of the 20th century. So quantum theory seems to apply to all these things on the larger scale that we use every day. Greene's doc said that if it were not for quantum theory, our technology would be stuck in the 19th century.

But materialists are not satisfied with all this, and still want to explain away the "chaos." They use the "many worlds" interpretation to suggest (but not prove at all) that the quantum "particles" that exist in many places at once in our world, are actually located in one place in many separate alternate universes. But actually, as their application to high tech proves, it is the probabilities that are perfectly real, and that all exist in our world, and it is measurement that is the illusion. In reality, philosophers have always known that the location of moving objects can't be fixed and measured. That's the truth in Zeno's Paradox. It is a distortion to claim that quantum probability waves can be fixed to a location. Calling them "particles" (when they are actually quantum energy states) is false to begin with. They are only "particles in one location" when we succumb to the illusion that we can measure them.

Still, the relationship between the probabilities and the measurement is a basic equation in quantum mechanics called Planck's constant, so measurement does have its place. That measurement is also called our observation or awareness of them, which remains fuzzy until we try to pin it down.

[Bill the Piper]

(07-13-2019, 01:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The question Brian Greene raised in his PBS doc (linked in the post above) was why if all the smallest things in nature are so "chaotic" and impossible to fix in one place, and seem to be in many places at once, why do larger things seem to stay in one place? I don't think from a consciousness point of view, that human beings can be fixed to one location. He used the example of us humans, but all the larger things seem to stay in one location and not several places at once. But that is likely because at the larger scale, the probabilities easily average out to the place that we see them in. The other thing about quantum theory though, is that amazingly enough, the equations about these chaotic probabilities are exact enough to be used to create all the high tech of the 20th century. So quantum theory seems to apply to all these things on the larger scale that we use every day. Greene's doc said that if it were not for quantum theory, our technology would be stuck in the 19th century.

But materialists are not satisfied with all this, and still want to explain away the "chaos." They use the "many worlds" interpretation to suggest (but not prove at all) that the quantum "particles" that exist in many places at once in our world, are actually located in one place in many separate alternate universes. But actually, as their application to high tech proves, it is the probabilities that are perfectly real, and that all exist in our world, and it is measurement that is the illusion. In reality, philosophers have always known that the location of moving objects can't be fixed and measured. That's the truth in Zeno's Paradox. It is a distortion to claim that quantum probability waves can be fixed to a location. Calling them "particles" (when they are actually quantum energy states) is false to begin with. They are only "particles in one location" when we succumb to the illusion that we can measure them.

Still, the relationship between the probabilities and the measurement is a basic equation in quantum mechanics called Planck's constant, so measurement does have its place. That measurement is also called our observation or awareness of them, which remains fuzzy until we try to pin it down.

My idea is that we reached the point of discovering phenomena which cannot be explained by basic human intelligence. We cannot grasp them for the same reason a cat cannot understand the Pythagorean theorem.

And when future more intelligent augmented humans figure it out, they will be able to explain it to basics only by means of a metaphor, which for us will look like mysticism or magic.

[David Horn]

(07-13-2019, 02:08 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote: My idea is that we reached the point of discovering phenomena which cannot be explained by basic human intelligence. We cannot grasp them for the same reason a cat cannot understand the Pythagorean theorem.

And when future more intelligent augmented humans figure it out, they will be able to explain it to basics only by means of a metaphor, which for us will look like mysticism or magic.

We already have quantum mechanics and multi-universe theory that is typically explained that way. In fact, most of modern physics lies just outside the intellectual grasp of the average person, so yes: metaphor.

When Arthur C. Clark noted that "sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic", he was merely noting the same concept you have here. The human mind is limited in many ways. To be honest, enhancement may not alter that as much as you think. After all, we already have people of average intelligence but great insight. It's a phenomenon only partially related correlated with intelligence at most, so enhancement may not apply.

[Eric the Green]

It is not the human mind that cannot explain such things as quantum mechanics and entanglement, but simply the physicalist or materialist paradigm, which has been easily refuted by philosophy for 2400 years. And mysticism has been around that long as well, and is easily experienced by anyone who does not block it with assumed paradigms. Mysticism and magic can (sometimes, at least) easily explain what seems beyond the human mind to explain, when that mind is limited by its own mistaken assumptions.

As I mentioned, multi-verse theory or many worlds theory is not suggested by any data, but is merely an attempt to interpret quantum theory in a fanciful way in order to keep it within the bounds of physicalism and non-mysticism paradigms.

Quantum teleporting is on the march!
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/66601/chi...index.html

Of course, for most of us, the language of physics is beyond our purview, since we don't know the symbols or can't do the math. So metaphors like card games, coins, gloves, etc. can be used, as in the video.
https://youtu.be/TftGVf5345g?t=1858

And regarding the turnings and 2Ts, note the date of Bell's theorum: 1964.

[Warren Dew]

(07-15-2019, 11:56 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is not the human mind that cannot explain such things as quantum mechanics and entanglement, but simply the physicalist or materialist paradigm, which has been easily refuted by philosophy for 2400 years.

To the contrary, not only are quantum mechanics and entanglement entirely consistent with physicalism, but only a physicalist approach to them can use them to make accurate predictions.

Quote:Of course, for most of us, the language of physics is beyond our purview, since we don't know the symbols or can't do the math.

Those of you who can't do the math should refrain from commenting on things you know nothing about.

[Eric the Green]

Quantum mechanics is sniffing out the nature of life, and overturning Einstein and other physicalists and their desire to keep life Newtonian and making it spooky instead, as we always knew it was.





And understand the tree of life with another AOC!!

Isn't it about time that biology caught up with physics? I always thought it would, and now it is.

[Eric the Green]

See through the dominant worldview!









The 10 dogmas of scientific materialism
Scientists remain shackled to dogmas of a materialistic worldview. These dogmas include the following:

1. Everything is essentially mechanical.
2. All matter is unconscious.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is conserved.
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

None of these claims are actually scientific. Rather, these are philosophical beliefs grounded in an outdated science. Dr. Sheldrake goes on to illustrate how each of these dogmas has its own shortcomings, point by point.
https://www.space.news/2016-09-01-the-10...futed.html

[Bill the Piper]

I don't know if professional scientists actually think matter is unconscious. Max Tegmark doesn't:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0510188v2.pdf

[pbrower2a]

(10-30-2019, 05:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: See through the dominant worldview!









The 10 dogmas of scientific materialism
Scientists remain shackled to dogmas of a materialistic worldview. These dogmas include the following:

1. Everything is essentially mechanical.
2. All matter is unconscious.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is conserved.
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

None of these claims are actually scientific. Rather, these are philosophical beliefs grounded in an outdated science. Dr. Sheldrake goes on to illustrate how each of these dogmas has its own shortcomings, point by point.
https://www.space.news/2016-09-01-the-10...futed.html

1. OK. I took a college course in philosophy, and I was able to conclude that even if the material universe can be reduced in theory to the interaction of sub-atomic particles, understanding of complex phenomena by deriving the behavior of large objects from a deterministic study is impossible. Philosophical materialism may be reality, but we lack the means (and always will!) to understanding many important things. 

2. Matter is unconscious. Even in a conscious body, much that goes on is done without conscious thought. The liver detoxifies what we take as food without us having to think of what is going on, and the immune system attacks pathogens without obvious mind. White blood cells act much like protist cells -- independently and without mind. A protist cell is incapable of thought. 

Unless one is a medical specialist or biologist whose focus is an organ other than the brain, the brain is the most interesting organ of a person. Certainly not the liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach, intestines, lungs, or whatever. In our practice we do not think of an internal organ unless it is pained due to disease or injury. 

3. E = mc^2, which explains how nuclear fusion in stellar interiors generate the heat that we feel and the light that we see, as well as some other energy. In our sun, two protons that strike despite magnetic forces trying to separate them transforms one of the protons into a neutron and a positron, the positron quickly striking an electron that has a magnetic charge attracting a positron; an electron and positron obliterate each other in the formation of energy as photons.  The proton and neutron  then join as a deutrerium nucleus and get really stabilized as an alpha-particle (a helium-4 nucleus). 

4. The laws of nature do not exist for our convenience, but we know some of them by instinct. Without them the universe would be incomprehensible chaos in which anything would be possible, like 2+2  can be something other than 4. Mathematical and physical laws are generally quite rigid.

5. Nature is purposeless unless one has some sort of God (or gods) attached.

6. Cultural identity is a consequence of upbringing. Were I raised in certain environments I might have very different tastes in music. It is not the partial German ancestry that causes me to find J S Bach awesome. It is also obvious that nobody born before Bach started creating music could ever be under his influence. 

7. It is our senses that give us information that our brains process. All of us process similar information somewhat differently. "Mind" is a philosophical construct.

8. True to the extent that we do not share those memories with people who can relate to them. Many memories are irrelevant to those who think such lore absurd or boring. Much of life is the obliteration of bad and useless memories. 

I do not keep a diary. My life is not that interesting. 

9. Telepathy is often best explained as body language. 

10. There is obviously more to medicine than surgery, pharmacology, and rehabilitation. Those are essential. I am a poor candidate for psychological treatment on some matters because most of my issues are philosophical.

[Mikebert]

(07-09-2019, 02:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(07-08-2019, 10:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: So what accounts for you having been brainwashed into trickle-down, free-market economics?

I wasn't.  In fact, I used to think that stuff was voodoo economics and I voted for Anderson and against Reagan in 1980.  I even wrote Reagan a letter saying "raise my taxes" in 200 point type.

Then the 1980s proved that supply side economics worked.  And Bush then proved that his nonvoodoo economics didn't work.

With the evidence hitting me in the face, I accepted the truth that supply side free market economics was the best way to go.

Of course, to get free market economics, you have to do something about excessive concentration of wealth to the point of oligopoly.  That's why I'm glad to see the Justice Department starting to probe today's tech oligopolists.

You weren't the only person brainwashed by supply-side economics. Most people believe that Reaganomics worked because 1. inflation went away, 2. The recession ended and we got a long expansion, 3. the stock market boomed. IN some ways it was a smaller-scale replica of the 1960's boom, except wages did not rise.

But it wasn't the Reagan revolution that made all three of these things happen.  Point No. 1 and the lack of wage growth was the product of the "Volcker Revolution". The long expansion DID come from Reaganomics, and the stock boom was the product of both.  So the 1980's is more properly described as the Reagan-Volcker Revolution.

Before 1979, the Fed did not use interest rates to control inflation. Inflation control was achieved through fiscal means. Inflation is bad for the investor class, whom the Republican party represents. Thus, for their entire history up to 1981, they were fiscal conservatives, that is they sought to prevent peacetime deficits and were willing to RAISE taxes, by a lot (e.g. in 1932 they raised the top rate from 24% to 63%, Nixon criticized the Kennedy's tax cut proposal in 1960)), to fight deficits.

Republican president Eisenhower kept top tax rates at the war-level rate of 91% because his peacetime military spending was at wartime levels. Kennedy was no fiscal conservation. He and his Veep opted for a tax cut and a war of choice (just what Dubya did 40 years later). They ignored the flow of gold out of Fort Knox during that decade.

Eventually inflation broke out, and Carter appointed Volcker who vowed to employ interest rate control to crush inflation. Interest rate control works by preventing real wage growth. People can't pay higher prices if they don't have the money, and that prevents inflation no matter how high deficits go.

The Reagan revolution was to take advantage of this by running deficits to fund tax cuts.  Big deficits can act as stimulus do this likely lengthened the 1980's expansion. Both the lower taxes and falling inflation drove the bull market.

[Hintergrund]

Neither supply-side nor demand-side economics always work. That's why different economic "schools" get popular and unpopular like fashion. Except that the time between is rather half a saeculum / two Turnings.

[Eric the Green]

(10-31-2019, 08:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-30-2019, 05:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: See through the dominant worldview!









The 10 dogmas of scientific materialism
Scientists remain shackled to dogmas of a materialistic worldview. These dogmas include the following:

1. Everything is essentially mechanical.
2. All matter is unconscious.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is conserved.
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

None of these claims are actually scientific. Rather, these are philosophical beliefs grounded in an outdated science. Dr. Sheldrake goes on to illustrate how each of these dogmas has its own shortcomings, point by point.
https://www.space.news/2016-09-01-the-10...futed.html

1. OK. I took a college course in philosophy, and I was able to conclude that even if the material universe can be reduced in theory to the interaction of sub-atomic particles, understanding of complex phenomena by deriving the behavior of large objects from a deterministic study is impossible. Philosophical materialism may be reality, but we lack the means (and always will!) to understanding many important things. 

2. Matter is unconscious. Even in a conscious body, much that goes on is done without conscious thought. The liver detoxifies what we take as food without us having to think of what is going on, and the immune system attacks pathogens without obvious mind. White blood cells act much like protist cells -- independently and without mind. A protist cell is incapable of thought. 

The thing to realize here is that consciousness is not restricted to "conscious thought." It is not rational, for starters. That's just a western belief. Western beliefs are as false as other beliefs. We just are used to assuming them.

We have a subconscious too. If we are conscious, where did this come from? The belief that it came from unconscious matter is just a belief, and a very implausible one. Consciousness can only come from itself. Materialism offers no explanation whatsoever. Sheldrake quotes Terrance McKenna who said that explanation amounts to, "give us one free miracle, and we scientists will explain the rest." That miracle was the notion that everything and all the laws came into being in an instant without any explanation.

Quote:Unless one is a medical specialist or biologist whose focus is an organ other than the brain, the brain is the most interesting organ of a person. Certainly not the liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach, intestines, lungs, or whatever. In our practice we do not think of an internal organ unless it is pained due to disease or injury. 

This is one of the biggest misconceptions we have. Western people, unless they are new agers, are blind to the fact that they are conscious throughout the body, and that many organs also have nerve ganglia which are mini-brains. The heart is actually our center, not our brains. We do not dangle down from our brains. The whole body and its entire environment is needed to explain human behavior. We are not skin-encapsulated egos. But that's what western society has come to believe in the last few hundred years. The Enlightenment worldview is a horrible scam, whatever it may have gotten right about human rights.

Quote:3. E = mc^2, which explains how nuclear fusion in stellar interiors generate the heat that we feel and the light that we see, as well as some other energy. In our sun, two protons that strike despite magnetic forces trying to separate them transforms one of the protons into a neutron and a positron, the positron quickly striking an electron that has a magnetic charge attracting a positron; an electron and positron obliterate each other in the formation of energy as photons.  The proton and neutron  then join as a deutrerium nucleus and get really stabilized as an alpha-particle (a helium-4 nucleus). 

That explains the process, but what Sheldrake points out is that the sun is self-organizing, and our science does not explain this. Gravity is not understood, and neither are the forces that hold atoms together. Where does this enormous energy inside atoms come from, and what is it? Nobody knows. God is as good an explanation as mechanical force; in fact a better one. Cause and effect is reductio ad absurdum, and explains nothing.

Quote:4. The laws of nature do not exist for our convenience, but we know some of them by instinct. Without them the universe would be incomprehensible chaos in which anything would be possible, like 2+2  can be something other than 4. Mathematical and physical laws are generally quite rigid.

What explains the fact that they vary, then? Math is a good and useful language, but it's all based on assumptions that the world is measurable, which it is not.

Quote:5. Nature is purposeless unless one has some sort of God (or gods) attached.

As Thales said, Nature is full of gods. Without spirit everywhere, nothing would exist. Evolution proves that Nature is purposeful. It shows clearly that it is moving toward greater consciousness and complexity, as Teilhard de Chardin showed.

Quote:6. Cultural identity is a consequence of upbringing. Were I raised in certain environments I might have very different tastes in music. It is not the partial German ancestry that causes me to find J S Bach awesome. It is also obvious that nobody born before Bach started creating music could ever be under his influence. 

This is not a direct response to dogma #6, but I don't think it's correct. Anyone can learn to appreciate Bach and Beethoven etc. This guy shows how:



"No-one is tone deaf." "Classical music is for everybody"

Plato was right; beauty is inherent. We only need to remember what we already know.

Quote:7. It is our senses that give us information that our brains process. All of us process similar information somewhat differently. "Mind" is a philosophical construct.

This is mere dogma. Nobody has proven this scientifically, so why do you believe it? Senses are also just objects in our minds. Nothing can be proven to exist unless it exists in someone's mind! All the evidence we collect exists in our minds. The philosophical construct is "Matter." Even materialists today realize that consciousness is the "hard problem" that exists and which they can't explain. It is not a construct. Without consciousness, you don't exist.

Quote:8. True to the extent that we do not share those memories with people who can relate to them. Many memories are irrelevant to those who think such lore absurd or boring. Much of life is the obliteration of bad and useless memories. 

I do not keep a diary. My life is not that interesting. 

I choose to believe instead that memories are forever, at least somewhere in the recesses of our minds.

Quote:9. Telepathy is often best explained as body language. 

Telepathy has been shown to exist by the scientific research which mainstream scientism hides and denies. It cannot be explained at all except as spiritual.

Quote:10. There is obviously more to medicine than surgery, pharmacology, and rehabilitation. Those are essential. I am a poor candidate for psychological treatment on some matters because most of my issues are philosophical.

Well, that is certainly true if you believe in these dogmas If your issues are philosophical, it may be an opportunity for you to expand beyond what scientism or any other belief has taught you. In any case, curiosity is always available, and it is a path to greater awareness beyond what we have been taught. What we have been taught is what restricts us all and screws up our lives. We have all been victims of our education and our brainwashing. We are all possessed and crippled by these and other dogmas and ideologies. I have much to learn still, and to integrate the new age worldview is the huge task that still begins, even after one has seen beyond the old age worldviews that we were taught.. But is it a great frontier to explore

If you read or listen to Sheldrake, he demonstrates that these 10 dogmas are not the result of any scientific study. They are simply beliefs. We don't have to believe them. And Sheldrake points out that science today can only be renewed by ditching this out of date worldview, which most people here on this forum still assume to be true, without any basis whatsoever.

It is our choice what to believe. It is our choice to open to the truth we already know. What are we pretending not to know?

[Eric the Green]

(07-14-2019, 09:29 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-13-2019, 02:08 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote: My idea is that we reached the point of discovering phenomena which cannot be explained by basic human intelligence. We cannot grasp them for the same reason a cat cannot understand the Pythagorean theorem.

And when future more intelligent augmented humans figure it out, they will be able to explain it to basics only by means of a metaphor, which for us will look like mysticism or magic.

We already have quantum mechanics and multi-universe theory that is typically explained that way.  In fact, most of modern physics lies just outside the intellectual grasp of the average person, so yes: metaphor.  

When Arthur C. Clark noted that "sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic", he was merely noting the same concept you have here.  The human mind is limited in many ways.  To be honest, enhancement may not alter that as much as you think.  After all, we already have people of average intelligence but great insight.  It's a phenomenon only partially related correlated with intelligence at most, so enhancement may not apply.

You guys seem on the right track here, while Warren Dew's point of view is off track. Whatever math symbols exist, are also just metaphor. Every language and its every word is generalization and metaphor. The basic truth of reality is plain to see; the details are useful but not necessary to reality. And contrary to what Warren says, quantum theory explictly refutes physicalism, and any prediction that works based on quantum theory proves that physicalism is false. What we know is always affected by our own observation of it, as quantum theory proves. Quantum theory itself is not mysterious or chaotic at all. It is just chaotic to the extent that it challenges materialist assumptions.

[Eric the Green]

Master philosopher Alan Watts on the Nature of Consciousness. I posted some of this before but I don't remember where.








Most of these video lectures correspond to this written version:
https://genius.com/Alan-watts-the-nature...-annotated