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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Science tackles all physical topics. A while back, Largo (I think it was him) posted a link to a story about a number of scientific studies that had faked their data...a cardinal sin in science, because a negative result can be as useful as a positive one.
The peer reviewed papers were mainly Psychology ones. The so-called soft sciences have it a little easier than the physical sciences. It is far harder to fake data in the physical sciences, you will eventually be caught, and besides: What would be the point?
Psychologists appear to have an ethical problem. It was a large number of papers, so it doesn't look good for psychologists, which is a shame, because most of them probably do good work.
If the thesis topic is important, it will receive more scrutiny. However, if it proves new ground, it will be important, no matter which field of study it is, and there will be a flat out race to see if your results can be duplicated.
If you follow the scientific method when trying to show results of a thesis, you should be OK. You might not be right, but your thesis will be consistent with data.
This brings up another topic: multiple working hypothesizes. We see a lot of these in petroleum geology. The way to test the thesis is to drill a well. You guys wouldn't believe the amount of data that can be extracted by a well, dry hole or not.
I will say this. Science is a wildly creative adventure. You are always juggling ideas in your head (my favorite is driving alone down a highway at 2:00am, as I've mentioned before), considering relationships between this and that. A guy like Einstein was super creative. He came up with relativity in his head. The anecdote is that it was the result of a thought experiment.
I constantly think of this and that. How someone missed something because of a lazy interpretation, or just something plain old new.
Every prospect is like a thesis. You explain your idea beforehand in a written document, supported by hints in the data. Then, after a lot of work, it gets drilled and tested. Sometimes you can be right even if it is a dry hole...the presence of an unmapped reservoir. You then go on, refining the idea and the tests until you are proved right or wrong.
Anyway, the best scientists have imagination.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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BASE said: The so-called soft sciences have it a little easier than the physical sciences.
Man, in my experience, it's not that big a deal to have a job in the soft sciences or to get a graduate degree, but to be top-shelf at, say, psychology, is a super difficult task and requires a kind of genius because of the vast gray area you have to work in. Nowhere else is reductionism so bankrupt, otherwise everyone with maritial problems on down could simply take the right medication, change up the biology that "causes" the behavior, or mood, and viola - fixed.
But it never works like that. IME, the sot sciences are really up against it.
JL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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The peer reviewed papers were mainly Psychology ones. The so-called soft sciences have it a little easier than the physical sciences. It is far harder to fake data in the physical sciences, you will eventually be caught, and besides: What would be the point?
The point of faked data is continued funding. The battle between the humanities and "hard" sciences is, I suppose, ultimately all about institutional money. The degree to which the humanities have tied themselves to the social sciences is in part a sense of inferiority to a perceived methodology of certainty and a need to assure funding. Sad. Science too often, certainly on this thread, presents itself with a kind of gnostic certainty, a priesthood of the knowing bestowing bits of enlightenment on an assumed dull public. Not sure I get that.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Kudos to science.
A mere 14 light-minutes away, a feast for the eyes...
"The Martian" was excellent.
.....
More Lawrence Krauss in the New Yorker today...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-neutrinos-reveal?intcid=mod-latest
"One might wonder why we should care so much about these ghostly particles, which barely interact with normal matter."
Krauss re the neutrino.
Neutrino behavior: Manifestation of simplicity? or manifestation of complexity?
.....
This is pretty cool...
How far is Mars from Earth?
"Mars and Earth orbit the sun at different speeds: Earth has an inside track and gets around the sun more quickly. Plus, both have elliptical orbits, rather than perfect circles. So the distance to Mars from Earth is constantly changing. In theory, the closest the planets could come together would be when Mars is at its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and Earth is at its farthest point (aphelion). In that situation, the planets would be 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers) from each other. But that has never happened in recorded history. The closest known approach was 34.8 million miles (56 million km) in 2003."
http://www.space.com/16875-how-far-away-is-mars.html
Hey is nature like an infinite onion?
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Ed; good questions. JL's response pretty much nails it.
But pursuing down the "wrong" path is also an issue in a group setting with a teacher. And you have interviews with the teacher to discuss what you are doing feeling etc. and they try to help guide you . But once you are on the cushion your on your own and it is up to you. Some people have very strong habits/karma and will pursue some path they "like" rather than pay attention to the teachers advise or don't have enough discipline to do what the teacher suggests. One of the things that can happen is you can encounter wonderfully ecstatic states every time you sit and think well this must be it "I have made it" this is enlightenment. This "I have made it" is attachment and it is very easy to get stuck in the ecstatic spot ; it is like a drug addiction with out the drugs/ IMO it isn't really bad but it is still a form of grasping/attachment.
The purpose of all of this is not to attain some special state; it is to be present and undistracted so you have a better chance to act clearly and compassionately in our lives. The trick is that to really be present you have to cut through the number one distractor "I". what is this "I" that doesn't like to be uncomfortable. And what is uncomfortable?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Some people have very strong habits/karma and will pursue some path they "like" rather than pay attention to the teachers advise or don't have enough discipline to do what the teacher suggests.
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This is insight right there. The reason I initially struggled with working under a teacher is that first, I was not interested in anything Japanese, especially Buddhism, or any religion, and second, it felt like I was going to give away my autonomy. And that was just my ego wanting to remain in control. But eventually I discovered it was a lack of discipline. I wanted to reserve the right to chase down whatever came up in my mind, and I didn't have the discipline or maturity to just hold my ground and let everything just pass - which is what the old Roshi kept yelling into my ears. In other words, I didn't want to give up the right to direct my own practice, so as long as I kept doing so, I wasn't doing meditation "wrong," I wasn't doing it at all.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Good perspectives on meditation, Largo and PSP also PP.
edit:
And Wayno
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Yes, nice commentaries about meditation, guys.
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I wasn't the one using the "right" and "wrong" language,
Largo and PSP also PP have used it on numerous occasions...
what Largo describes is pretty much my experience too, with my practice so far...
I don't practice zen, but what my yoga instructors have offered.
However, I should point out that neither Largo nor PSP also PP escape the issues of what constitutes a "correct" practice.
And "nothing" is not no thing, as they described, for there can not be a description of it. There cannot be a path to it, there is no it to go to.
but then I am fixed in my perspective and there is really no reason to engage in a discussion with me, since I will never get it...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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I think all intellectual problem solving is creative, not just science. I just spent three weeks of intensive brain work (including dreaming about it) to solve a long standing puzzle in genealogy and early American history. The answer involved reading all the scarce and fragmentary documents, all of the modern commentary I could find with different opinions, puzzling day and night if and how they could all be fit together, and then that aha moment when I had it. The documents, the commentaries, and the different DNA haplogroups all fit together finally.
As for social science and shades of gray, I'm just reading a friend's ethnography about the Nepalese valley I've been studying for the past 40 years. I'm marveling at the new details of stories I've already heard, reading one or two that I've never heard before, and thinking to myself, that some of his accounts are only partially true, the family's perspective is quite different than the community sanctioned version, and agreeing with the author when he notes there are at least three different versions of other stories and it's impossible to say if any of them are entirely correct. If you like certainty and definitive answers, forget history and social science.
As for meditation methods and the goal, it strikes me that men and women have very different interior content to deal with, so it's not just a matter of sect or school of meditation, but of gender as well. One of the things that always put me off of zen is that it seemed so masculine and macho. Nothing wrong with that, just not my style. I prefer the stories of women in both early Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism who went off by themselves and spent years meditating without any male supervision. Both traditions hold that the guru can be an internal one, not just an external master.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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And "nothing" is not no thing, as they described, for there can not be a description of it. There cannot be a path to it, there is no it to go to.
You're getting right into the teeth of it now, Ed. And believe it or not, most every thing you are saying betrays your progress.
You CAN describe the realm of no-thing, but the description is not the experience. The experience has no borders or limits of origin or end. Any description is a demarcation, a part, a take, a look at a discrete part.
There is no path to somewhere "enlightened" because we already have and are all that is, we just don't know it. Meditation is a process of deprogramming. Not learning a new and more better program.
Put differently, what happens when you eliminate that which can be eliminated - like "me," and attachment, and striving, and evaluating the process as right or wrong?
This, right here, is the process. The back and forth. And every time we sit we let go a little more, and once in a while when you hit the sweet spot, you'll know it.
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces - Sherlock Holmes
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dogmatic claptrap, start to finish.
That everyone relies on those who have gone before them--innumerably, ubiquitously, and rampantly--makes such assessments truly stupid.
I'm not generalizing meditation to all learning in my comments and, as I stated a couple of pages back, I'm not saying groups and teachers aren't the right way to go for some people, maybe even a lot of people. You're generalizing out to all learning completely misses the point. And that point is:
No one has gone before you in your own mind.
Nothing about meditation or what Largo or PSP are talking about is in any way inaccessible to a person on their own. It's like addiction - sure groups and teachers who have been there can be an enormous help and probably a benefit for a lot, if not most addicts, but there are also folks who can kick completely on their own.
And yet again, I have no objection of any kind to groups and teachers; what I strenuously object to and find mindlessly stupid is Largo's claim that the only meditative experiences worth having happen in groups with teachers. It's actually beyond truly stupid, it's ignorance codified.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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I'll say again, the emphasis on group in zen comes from its Japanese cultural associations. There are plenty of hermetic traditions within other cultures. There are even a few Buddhist sects in Japan that emphasized individual effort.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Base: The so-called soft sciences have it a little easier than the physical sciences.
I’ll offer that to be a great scientist in any field requires one to be brilliantly creative in research design (or to have a proprietary database that others would kill for). You need more than simply “knowing [the content of] your field.”
Healyje: No one has gone before you in your own mind.
Ok. Let’s look at that. (There is much discussion here about teaching and teachers.)
We get born into this world, and almost from the get-go, we are being imprinted by others and those artifacts and inventions from those that have gone on before us.
We are being institutionalized, socialized, trained, educated, shown the way in probably more ways than we can readily point at. We learn our communities’ languages, and we come to notions about what those labels refer to. How we learn those languages and from whom in what settings guide us to come to ideas of what those labels refer to. We imagine or simulate experiences in our minds from those labels, and in no time at all, we hear stories, watch presentations (TV, radio, books, magazines), or even witness others talk and perform in those domains (whether real or not).
We also come upon the artifacts of a community (seeing a carabiner, a rope, or a piece of gear, for example), and our minds work at understanding and simulating how such things are used and their benefits.
As we move through our lives, we are bombarded by images, labels, conversations, and others’ behaviors that form the reality we think we live in.
I am claiming that all of these things, processes, experiences are our teachers, albeit not formal ones (such as I might be in the classroom). People follow others in many ways, most of which are insidious and influential.
From my experiences as a “spiritualist” (ugh, really need another label not to put you off), looking circumspectly at my own internal operations that arise spontaneously / uncontrollably within this midstream I call “me,” I see that those “teachings” are almost infinitely layered. Slowly but surely (once started, there’s no end to the loose threads one finds) I see how much I believe that I have not actually seen or determined myself, how much I have been taught by the groups I’ve found myself aligned with, even how much I think I know or understand for no reason whatsoever.
The didactic notion of self-teaching or self-management these days seems ridiculously naive living in the worlds that I’ve found myself. Hell, everyone is trying to teach me something—and that includes me! (And gosh, I can’t even find this thing I call “myself.”)
I’m probably wrong, but to be self-taught would seem to me to be properly claimed only if one were raised in a sensory deprivation tank. To find out what anyone truly is and can do require, to this mind, pulling every thread there is—that is, learning to unlearn everything I have been taught everywhere. Then perhaps I could truly teach myself from scratch, from a real beginning. In the meantime, it seems like I’m just piling new experiences on other people’s teachings.
Be well.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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And, yes, religion as well.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nothing about meditation or what Largo or PSP are talking about is in any way inaccessible to a person on their own.
--
I'd be interested in hearing Healje break down the experiences he has had that have led him to that pronouncement. You're basically saying, whatever all you can do, I can do just as well on my own.
Pushed to extremes, this being "bound by self" is the specie of self-reliance that fuels all addictions. It also precludes you from every finding something bigger than yourself, since self is held on as the end-all source of direction.
Another thing is that when you say no one else has ever gone in your mind, you are right, of course, but only in terms of content, which is not the focus of no-mind. Raw awareness is without texture or properties or personal shadings. It is the constant and the water - so to speak - that we all share in common. So while the white noise and wonderful things in our minds belongs strictly to ourselves, sentience and awareness itself belongs to eternity.
JL
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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So while the white noise and wonderful things in our minds belongs strictly to ourselves, sentience and awareness itself belongs to eternity (JL)
I can't think of a pun here that would top the statement itself.
A gift that keeps on giving . . . thanks, John.
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