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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Now that we're hacking ourselves - our bodies and biology - with ever more depth, precision and success, maybe it's time to ask, Do we want to keep aging?
After all, aging, in a way, is a choice - decided in the past not by us but by natural selection. Dogs 15 years, humans 80, greenland sharks 400 years.
The great physicist and naturalist Sean Carroll discussed this with Coleen Murphy, biologist and C. elegans expert...
Coleen Murphy on Aging, Biology, and the Future...
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/10/01/episode-16-coleen-murphy-on-aging-biology-and-the-future/
PS.
A long period of abstinence: Greenland sharks do not reach sexual maturity until about 150 years old.
What's it like to be a... 200 year old Greenland Shark? You wonder if it thinks much. You wonder if it ever reflects on its youth.
PPS
International Podcast Day, Sept 30: an international celebration of the power of podcasts.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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^^^
I like this idea:
"What if we write a paper saying we should train men like we do dogs — to prevent rape culture? Hence came the “Dog Park” paper."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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These trends were interesting...
Another interesting term of late is "intuitive." As in "intuitive physics," for example. Meaning some intuition re physics/ physical processes (e.g., re rock avalanche, building bridges across streams, jumping over crevasses) though having little if any academic or formal instruction in physics.
One can sense how terms get "bent, broken, blended" (David Eagleman) and repurposed over time and usage...
Rather surprising is this (rather steady) off and on usage of "intuitive science" over many decades. Not sure why. When I get more time, I'll try to look up a few books old and new to see how it's been used.
...
What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia
"...if we are to be serious about remedying discrimination, racism, and sexism, we can’t ignore the uncomfortable truth these hoaxers have revealed: Some academic emperors—the ones who supposedly have the most to say about these crucial topics—have no clothes."
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/572212/
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WBraun
climber
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HFCS -- ".. my father once told me when I was a little boy: "Jimmy, beware of people educated beyond their intellect".
Your father was actually referring to YOU, yourself as a perfect example of educated beyond intellect!
Your intellect is so backward masquerading due to illusion as advanced.
You never saw it coming .....
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
moving thru
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I don't think it needs to be religion VS science. We have a creation. Look at it and think about it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Lynne +1
. . . all except for that “think about it” guidance.
Thinking (conceptualization) only partializes creation.
But, yeah. It shouldn’t be an issue of science vs. religion. Both can be somewhat informative.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Thinking (conceptualization) only partializes creation.
Quack, quack...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 10, 2018 - 03:05pm PT
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re: discovering reality/truth
"It is extremely hard to discover the truth when you are ruling the world. You are just far too busy. Most political chiefs and business moguls are forever on the run. Yet if you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, to explore dead ends, to make space for doubts and boredom, and to allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time – you will never find the truth."
Source: Yuval Harari, 21 Lessons, Chapter 15: Ignorance
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 10, 2018 - 03:15pm PT
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The maid of a famous mathematician when asked what her employer does: "He scribbles on pieces of paper, then wads them up and throws them away."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 11, 2018 - 12:14pm PT
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So when it comes to words written in books, English books, the Science vs Religion square-off looks something like this...
One wonders how these curves will look around 2100.
...
"Scientists, for their part, need to be far more engaged with current public debates."
"Silence isn't neutrality; it is supporting the status quo."
Harari, 21 Lessons
Chapter 17: Post-Truth
...
This looks interesting.
Living in the Future's Past...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/K0zoAl9i6YM
"What kind of future would you like to see? What are you willing to contribute towards creating that future?" -Jeff Bridges
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 12, 2018 - 10:47am PT
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Vintage Harari...
"By the middle of the twenty-first century, accelerating change plus longer lifespans will make the traditional model obsolete. Life will come apart at the seams, and there will be less and less continuity between different periods of life. ‘Who am I?’ will be a more urgent and complicated question than ever before.
This is likely to involve immense levels of stress. For change is almost always stressful, and after a certain age most people just don’t like to change. When you are fifteen, your entire life is change. Your body is growing, your mind is developing, your relationships are deepening. Everything is in flux, and everything is new. You are busy inventing yourself. Most teenagers find it frightening, but at the same time, it is also exciting. New vistas are opening before you, and you have an entire world to conquer.
By the time you are fifty, you don’t want change, and most people have given up on conquering the world. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt."
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Chapter 19: Education
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 13, 2018 - 04:32pm PT
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Great to meet up with @clairlemon in Melbourne after admiring her work with @QuilletteM from afar. The impact of her efforts to discover new voices and stimulate high quality public discussions on important topics will continue to grow! -Jeffrey Flier
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 14, 2018 - 10:03am PT
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"Is there any idea so outlandish that it won't be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/"Theory" journal? Helen Plucrose et al. submitted a dozen hoax papers to find out." -Steven Pinker
It’s easy to assume a self-righteous and traditional stand on such issues.
Who takes post-modern stands on issues of identity and what might be termed “political correctness?”
See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ The article in the Atlantic purports:
▪ All social groups, other than the the particular group defined below, are fed-up, tired, and deeply skeptical of the idea of “political correctness”
▪ Political correctness advocates are
⁃ . . . young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white “allies” do their dutiful part)
⁃ . . . activists more likely to be rich, highly educated—and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree.
⁃ . . . probably [an] approximation for a particular intellectual milieu . . . : politically engaged, highly educated, left-leaning Americans—the kinds of people, in other words, who are in charge of universities, edit the nation’s most important newspapers and magazines, and advise Democratic political candidates on their campaigns.
Rather than criticize political correctness and postmodern ideas, it might be instructive to ask: Why does political correctness and postmodern ideas continue to have legs to it? What do those highly educated, left-leaning scholars and advisors see that others don’t?
What they see is the the subtlety and impact that assumptions and doctrine make on minds.
How and what people think (or imagine) create their worlds. How one sees him or herself creates and maintains what one is and becomes.
Reality is what each of us makes of it in our minds. It goes far far beyond the so-called “facts” of technologies and physical sciences.
Perhaps you know someone who has a confidence problem about their lives in one form or another. Most of the time, there is no facts that one can bring to bear to help them see themselves and their world differently. No resource can help them see their depression, their self-loathing, or their twisted self-conceptions.
How did such people get that way?? Political-correctness idealists think that the people got made that way because they’ve been categorized and abused socially. “If the world were kinder, more inclusive, more positive, more accepting, more respectful, then people could be all that they are capable of.”
Anyone who has any sensitivity to social construction can see how little—but invisible—social mores and assumptions have huge influences on what and who people are.
Postmodernism isn’t nihilistic, fatalistic, or solipsistic. It merely suggests that people could see more openly if they could really think and feel for themselves rather than accepting doctrine of any sort. It challenges the dominant social factions and their ideas and says, “Are you sure?”
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Oct 14, 2018 - 10:10am PT
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Sorry: In the real world, the world of praxis, Postmodernism is primarily nihilistic, manipulative and solipsistic. In a few real world instances and in the generally oriented theoretical imagination of MikeL, not so...
Postmodernism is often ruling in what is seen as platinum standard science these days...
Science is often no longer connected to truth, but to:
... money...
... and prestige/fame...
Science... truth... and ethics... are closely connected...
... but often manipulated in this new speak postmodern world of alternative facts...
Bernie Sanders know that. Hillary and Donald have no idea... or are well served by manipulation of the masses...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 14, 2018 - 03:26pm PT
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^^^^^^^^^^
Would you say that you’ve read much in the vein?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 14, 2018 - 08:48pm PT
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MikeL -- "Reality is what each of us makes of it in our minds."
Not true.
What each of us makes of it in our minds is only a partial distorted projection of reality.
Only when the individual dovetails their own mind with the complete whole can reality be understood.
The gross materialists never dovetail nor do they even know how.
That is why they are ultimately so clueless and incomplete .....
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Oct 14, 2018 - 10:54pm PT
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Yes...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 16, 2018 - 10:24am PT
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Duck: What each of us makes of it in our minds is only a partial distorted projection of reality. Only when the individual dovetails their own mind with the complete whole can reality be understood.
And who here can make that claim knowingly, you know . . . as they *see it* in their own life? (Who’s liberated?)
What can be seen personally in many ways and in reading literature in sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. that there is a lot of evidence that projections are ubiquitous. There is no intellectual or conceptual sanctuary where one can see the truth of “what this is” without an immense amount of self-inspection and self-reflection. What goes around comes around, . . . yea, even in every hallowed hall of science: projections abound. Postmodernists have simply made the intellectual observations and claims that there is no privileged place of seeing *what the truth is.*
For most everyone on the planet, a person’s truth is personal and within one’s own consciousness.
Sometimes it pays to read a little bit in a vein of conversation. Making assessments without reading or direct experiences in a topic area tends to be regarded as stupid and ignorant. Look at detailed observations among any two people of a so-called single event, and note how those observations are different as given (without coaching) by those two people. What is the truth that they’ve experienced and reported?
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