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WBraun
climber
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May 27, 2015 - 04:53pm PT
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there is no right or wrong.
Then you're stoopid, impotent and dead stone .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 27, 2015 - 06:03pm PT
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Nietzsche.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 27, 2015 - 06:40pm PT
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6001
Anyone catch Charlie Rose's Brain series? Here's the first one on Babies. Excellent.
5 top brain researchers collaborate on brain development starting from birth. The single most important need a newborn brain requires; Care, from the exterior environment. Without it, parts of the brain won't even develop..
It's very exciting!
I think science will soon be chanGing its theory of how much of our evolution is genetic v environment.
[quote]http://charlierose.com/watch/60566831[/quote]
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 27, 2015 - 08:21pm PT
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Why would it matter if one bundle of electricity and atoms shoots a hole through another bundle of electricity and atoms?
Shoot the baby! Shoot the baby!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 27, 2015 - 08:31pm PT
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Largo, I think you are ready to admit that trying to connect meditation with quantum physics was a mistake (moose)
I'm not sure how you've come to this conclusion, moose. I think he is just getting warmed up. With his prodigies urging him on we may find ourselves deep in the rabbit hole, encountering some entertaining notions.
A little straight talking would be helpful to me (ML)
You ask What is at my core? What kind of question is that, Mike? How can any of us know what is at our "core?" Bones, blood and tissue? Ethical and moral sensibilities? Our deepest secrets and fears? Is this a forum thread or an episode on a psychoanalyst's couch? I have a suspicion you want to elicit a reply like There is nothing there . . . emptiness! But I am probably wrong.
Of course if you try to get to some sort of definitive "bottom" of things
you will be disappointed. As you will if you continuously ask What comes before the beginning? Infinite regressions are delightful in mathematical analysis, but unsatisfying in the "real world." To attempt to spiral down beyond Planck levels to confirm there is nothing there is a somewhat dubious course of action. But, again, "action" doesn't seem to have a prominent place in your vocabulary. If I am wrong in any or all of this, please explain the errors of my thinking.
Over and over you have admonished that we can know nothing (as opposed to knowing no-thing I guess), that there are no truths, that we cannot make choices, that to strive and to do is futile, that nothing is provable, that academic research is all deeply flawed and the researchers all frauds and engaged in bourgeois efforts, and the list goes on . . . with you finally advocating a kind of drifting existence, surfing through life and delighting in what pops up (actually this begins to sound a little appealing after a while!) This is why, to me, you appear to be wandering in some sort of existential maze. But you infer you are not. So I am wrong again.
Meditative ectoplasm refers to panpsychic attempts to relate a "spiritual" phenomenon to actual physical science. It failed for ectoplasm in the 1920s and 1930s and I'm guessing it will fail with regard to unifying meditative no-thing with virtual particles (which themselves might be merely artifacts of mathematical formulae) If I'm wrong, then Well done, Largo!
On the other hand, when you share your professional expertise, speak of the ins and outs of meditation, and relate your experiences as a soldier (I thank you for your service) you add a richness to this and other threads most of us cannot match.
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WBraun
climber
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May 27, 2015 - 08:33pm PT
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Is this a forum thread or an episode on a psychoanalyst's couch?
LOL hahaha
Funny ......
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 27, 2015 - 09:48pm PT
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jgill: . . . . “action" doesn't seem to have a prominent place in your vocabulary. If I am wrong in any or all of this, please explain the errors of my thinking.
I can’t explain anyone’s errors in thinking. Thinking is whatever it is. I don’t know that anyone has said what thinking is or what it should be.
Action is fine conventionally. I have nothing to say for it or against it.
If you have no idea what is at your core, that’s ok. I don’t know why the question is characterized as a form of psychoanalysis. What do you feel you’re referring to when you say “I” or “me”? That’s all I was probing. Maybe you have never thought of such things.
I’m not trying to elicit anything in particular. I’m honestly asking. I don’t know what the answer might be for you. In my teachings about organizing, the implicit assumption of what people are (what they offer, how they should be viewed, how they should be treated, what the purpose of any of it is) comes up on my classes from time to time, and the answers vary and sometimes lead to interesting conversations. :-)
I’m not attempting to pull out any tricks to trip you up. I’m not that sophisticated. I’m just asking what you believe, see, or feel. If there is nothing to report, I’m fine with it.
No words have a prominent place in my life other than, “I’m not sure.” That’s about all I ever have to say about anything. (I dunno.) Life might well present an existential maze to me at times, but at other times it doesn’t. I can’t explain why either shows up. What I feel or see in my world was not the thing I was trying to get at in my question. I was simply asking you what you thought.
I mean nothing important by my question. I was just wondering what your views were. I’m told (mainly by my wife) that’s what I’m supposed to do to generate understanding with other people: first establish common ground by asking questions and closely listening to what gets told to me.
The questions and issues are really not important.
Be well.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 29, 2015 - 10:14am PT
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Arguments of Good vs Bad seem to have taken the steam out of this thread. I'm not sure I should admit it but I much prefer Largo's quantum physics expositions. With the help of his Prodigies some interesting ideas and theories have been floated here. I poke at him, but he adds a spark to the thread that religious discussions dampen if not extinguish. Just mho.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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May 29, 2015 - 12:01pm PT
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Just when in the evolution of Man did human rights materialize? Did homo erectus have human rights? How about Australopithecus, did he have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Would a colonizing alien civilization been unethical to kill and eat him? How about the common ancestor of humans and chimps, any human rights then?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 29, 2015 - 12:36pm PT
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The language we normally use to speak and write developed long before we started to explore quantum events. We can learn the word 'photon' and see effects of photons but our understanding is limited if we only use words. Mathematics is needed.
Even stranger than quantum weirdness is the way mathematics can represent quantum-scale events. Maybe the Universe IS a mathematical construct or maybe the physics of the universe determines its math, the way Ed suggested. It is crazy the way a method we invented to count sheep, days, and other easily observable stuff now helps us to understand things too small to see.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 29, 2015 - 12:53pm PT
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Human rights have been around for a long time, but they were usually about your rights [and obligations] within your caste and station. That is unless you were property and then you fell under property rights.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 29, 2015 - 01:42pm PT
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Put my step-daughter through four years of an 'elite' private school here in town where all the kids of the area's CXOs all go. She was befriended by quite a few wealthy families. By the time she graduated, her parents were the only ones still together among all her many friends and most of her friends were heavily scarred by the ensuing vicious divorces.
During the first three years there I think she got accustomed to wealth and its trappings to the point of semi turning up her nose at our humble lifestyle, part of town and abode. But by the end she realized - quite literally - that money can't by you love [or happiness]...
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 29, 2015 - 01:43pm PT
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^^^ case in point.
did he have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
I think within this framework one must discuss what's Good an Bad.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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May 29, 2015 - 02:01pm PT
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All the wealth vs happiness stuff is because humans are a social species so it would make sense that we get a positive feedback when we support our fellow community members. After all, that is why humans dominate. So are those feeling of happiness or sadness really things or just chemical feedback to our instinct driven brain machines? I'm a late comer but I guess I disagree with the last part of the original premise: that there are subjective realities, in the physical world.
Moose,
How is that though experiment different from the "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it" question? Wouldn't the device measuring the photons only effect how we interpret their travel, and not now they traveled to begin with? It seems weird that the title implies our decisions can change the past when in fact it's just our perception of the past. In other words, as per the original post on this thread, those photons are intrinsic to reality and not observer-relative. So what would the observer matter?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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May 29, 2015 - 06:51pm PT
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Moose: I am not surprised Largo is trying to use those phenomena [quantum mechanics, photons] to promote his own philosophy.
I would say that what he's pointing to is not “his own philosophy.”
(What should one say about manifestations that cannot be defined or pinned down?)
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WBraun
climber
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May 29, 2015 - 06:58pm PT
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to promote his own philosophy
It's as old as the dirt itself.
It's the gross materialists who are inventing their own fantasy.
You can't invent reality.
It's already there .......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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May 29, 2015 - 08:05pm PT
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I would say that what he's pointing to is not “his own philosophy.”
I agree. He seems to be working toward a metaphysical theory that unites no-thing in meditation with virtual particles having "no physical extent." It's an interesting project.
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