And in the Discussion, I Fit Where?

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And in the Discussion, I Fit Where?

 Hey all,

So I consider myself a Deist in that I believe there is a higher power. For me, that higher power is the massive, near-infinite, incomprehensible (ultimately, by any life-form in this reality) mathematical formula that guides the physical laws of this universe. It's not a granddaddy in the sky, but a force that guides the way this universe has composed itself. My belief system also allows for the supernatural, in that I've had experiences that cannot be explained away by current science, though I feel, if they weren't stigmatized and were analyzed, they could be explained by science. I have also had minimal experience with things like telepathy and telekinesis, which I believe can also be explained by (potentially testable) electro-magnetic phenomena and the powers of the human mind, but which i fear contribute to the illusion of a "God." I won't go on and on.

Problem is, I have a hard time knowing where I fit into this discussion. Should I stay out of the forums that say "No Theists?" I find myself unable to address questions posed to theists because the questions often assume premises to which I don't hold.

Honestly asking...feedback encouraged.

Ryan


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HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

smartypants wrote:
But then we need to determine what actually constitutes reproduction.

Any self-replication will do. If you're going to go with the idea that abiogenesis is legit, then anything that exercises a negative entropy (as deludedgod pointed out) and is self-replicating is alive.

smartypants wrote:
Is an artificially intelligent robot building a replica of itself of its own volition "reproducing?" What about nanobots designed to replicate themselves?

Sure, but neither of those things actually exist, so let's talk about self-replicating software instead. The only thing about self-replicating software that makes it once-removed from life is its inability to survive outside of a computer environment. However, the argument could be made that we would have a pretty hard time living in a outer space, so a limitation on environment might not be a good way to think about it.

The other thing we associate with life is a "volition" to persist. I don't think you need to get as complicated as "volition" if you again consider abiogenesis. The action of chemistry encourages persistence of certain forms, and those happen to replicate. So all you would need to do is make a program that, through "natural" processes in a computing environment, persisted long enough and replicated.

You may be thinking "virus" if you're not a computer person, but that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting "bacteria".

I doubt you would find many programmers willing to go beyond simple genetic algorithms and produce something like that, because that program would find a way to capitalize on the resources of the world's computing systems in order to continue its replication (just like we push the boundaries of the earth's ability to carry us). Or it would produce more complicated structures that "wanted to live". Either way, that would be taking up a lot of computing power with a living piece of software.

Well, as you said, your self-replicating program doesn't exist either, since it'd be dangerous for a programmer to put something like that out there. In any case, I can't help thinking that aliveness requires an opposite state of being "not alive," and I don't think a computer program could be dead. Rather, it could be made to stop operating, more like dormancy, which is something else altogether. But it could be made to start up again at any time if activated to do so.


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Quote:Just to save you the

Quote:

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

I know. I find it very hard to imagine that we could reverse-engineer something modelled on human intelligence without it emulating the reproduction of discrete units the way biological systems do.Think of it this way. What would an AI need to have that a computer does not?

When I was studying neuroscience, I was constantly told not to think of the brain as a computer. The brain is not a computer. It has a feature that no computer has: (actually, I believe some now have a rudimentary version). Dynamism. A computer has a black-box system. The process by which inputs are mapped onto outputs is predetermined. However, in a brain, this is not the case. Neurological structure are said to have dynamic input-ouput. There are two primary components of this:

1) Plasticity and neurogenesis: Neural connections largely depend on stimulus. In a computer, the inputs determine the immediate state. However, in a brain, the inputs determine (a) new inputs and (b) long term outputs. Because of this, the brain does not actually have a machine state. The concept of a machine state was first put forth by Putnam in his paper on Machine-State Functionalism, but is largely considered inaccurate today by most philosophers of mind.

2) Computational dynamism: The stimulus of neurons by other neurons, the rate, pattern, etc. can determined the structural and functional nature of the other neurons. LTP is an example of this.

To put it another way, if we had a real AI you would be able to construct an injection map between "brain" states and outputs, but not between inputs and brain states, which means that the brain doesn't qualify as a computer. That's why I didn't like your suggestion of a "self-aware computer". It's a contradiction in terms.

Quote:

In any case, I can't help thinking that aliveness requires an opposite state of being "not alive," 

Really, why? It's actually not known why biological organisms die. It was thought for most of history that they just suffer from wear and tear as they get older. But that's wrong. The formalization of the second law of thermodynamics showed that an open system can continue to maintain a low entropy state as long as the raw material for the metabolic processes that export entropy can continue.

 

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

Books about atheism


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Yay! You didn't leave.

Yay! You didn't leave.

smartypants wrote:
This is probably the wrong place to have introduced that "higher power" concept, but the reason I use it is because I think the reasons people are able to believe that there is a granddaddy in the sky is explainable by much more complex phenomena than just mass delusion.

To be honest, I do feel that mass delusion is a fairly good unscientific summary of organized religions. But, of course, vast amounts of research in fields such as psychology and neuroscience is required to fully understand it.

Quote:
I also don't necessarily believe that some mystical entity consciously designed our universe this way, no. I suppose that's possible, but for reasons stated above, I think it's useless to bother with such a question that can never be definitively answered.

Hmmm, that sounds rather agnostic.

Quote:
I'd use the same sarcasm to describe the faith healing that you did. What I'm proposing, though, is the possibility that even if there is no god, the belief in one might be able to explain medical "miracles" (people defying all probability to recover fully from cancer for instance) by some other means altogether, unrelated to religion or theism. Whatever those other processes are, they contribute to theists being able to reject other conflicting evidence. I have great respect for neuroscience; I don't think this concept is in conflict with that field.

I'm rather skeptical of that idea. I don't see how being closed-minded could stimulate new discoveries. Also, as my signature demonstrates, when people propose supernatural explanations for things they don't understand, it's basically an intellectual cop-out. Their approach can summed up as: if they don't understand it, then it must be impossible to understand. Unfortunately for the religious, any supernatural explanation I could possibly think of would be equally valid. The girl might think that God healed her leg, but what proof does she have for this? None. In all seriousness, I can claim with equal force that it was the deity of a mock religion. 

Quote:
I'm not going to go into my whole background with Linguistics here. I was just feeling defensive, getting the impression I was being dubbed an idiot since, although I'm very familiar with scientific method, my area of study has been in communications, not physics.

Most people on this forum are extremely intelligent, but they're not scientists either. I doubt that I know much more than you about physics.

We don't have any qualms with lack of knowledge; that can be easily remedied. What we despise is anti-knowledge.

Quote:
Irregardless =) my OP was not fully fleshed out, because I wasn't expecting to get into a debate about it. It was intended as merely an introduction. That was my ignorance.

R

Hahahahahaha, that happens a lot. People are alway surprised by the level of discussion here.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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deludedgod wrote:Quote:Just

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

I know. I find it very hard to imagine that we could reverse-engineer something modelled on human intelligence without it emulating the reproduction of discrete units the way biological systems do.Think of it this way. What would an AI need to have that a computer does not?

When I was studying neuroscience, I was constantly told not to think of the brain as a computer. The brain is not a computer. It has a feature that no computer has: (actually, I believe some now have a rudimentary version). Dynamism. A computer has a black-box system. The process by which inputs are mapped onto outputs is predetermined. However, in a brain, this is not the case. Neurological structure are said to have dynamic input-ouput. There are two primary components of this:

1) Plasticity and neurogenesis: Neural connections largely depend on stimulus. In a computer, the inputs determine the immediate state. However, in a brain, the inputs determine (a) new inputs and (b) long term outputs. Because of this, the brain does not actually have a machine state. The concept of a machine state was first put forth by Putnam in his paper on Machine-State Functionalism, but is largely considered inaccurate today by most philosophers of mind.

2) Computational dynamism: The stimulus of neurons by other neurons, the rate, pattern, etc. can determined the structural and functional nature of the other neurons. LTP is an example of this.

To put it another way, if we had a real AI you would be able to construct an injection map between "brain" states and outputs, but not between inputs and brain states, which means that the brain doesn't qualify as a computer. That's why I didn't like your suggestion of a "self-aware computer". It's a contradiction in terms.

Quote:

In any case, I can't help thinking that aliveness requires an opposite state of being "not alive," 

Really, why? It's actually not known why biological organisms die. It was thought for most of history that they just suffer from wear and tear as they get older. But that's wrong. The formalization of the second law of thermodynamics showed that an open system can continue to maintain a low entropy state as long as the raw material for the metabolic processes that export entropy can continue.

 

 

Well, just because most computers at this stage are hardwired doesn't mean that eventually they couldn't be designed to be just as fluid and flexible as the human brain. In fact, from what I understand, that's the direction computer science is going now, what with quadruple processors or whatever, allowing them to multitask like the human brain (albeit in far more rudimentary amounts).

The other thing is, however plastic the human brain might be, the way it processes information is sort of predetermined by our biology. Including the case of brain damage or major surgery: the way the brain detours its damaged parts to find new pathways and restore functions, though a sign of its flexible (evolved) design (I know to be careful with that word), is still a set process with its own set of limitations.

On top of that, I see no reason why an intelligence needs to mimic the human brain, at all, to be as good or better at the job. 

What its opposite might be helps define what aliveness is. There is a difference between "dead," that is, once alive and not anymore, and "inanimate," as in never was alive and has no capacity to ever be. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the latter because it describes way too many things that have no relationship to aliveness whatsoever.

I just can't resist asking how you could be so certain of your explanation as to why corpses can't be reanimated when here you say we don't actually know why organisms die. But I have heard this idea that genetics programs a sort of "expiration date" into individual cells (thought to be a possible key to unlocking cancer, as well), and when compounded over an entire body, may lead to the organism shutting down completely. The point remains, however, that a human body that thinks and breathes is in a different category of being "alive" than an articulate, self-replicating robot with AI. That was the issue I was trying to raise.


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Quote:Well, just because

Quote:

Well, just because most computers at this stage are hardwired doesn't mean that eventually they couldn't be designed to be just as fluid and flexible as the human brain.

Then it would no longer be a Turing Machine (which is actually what I've been referring to when I said "computer", a terminology mix up for which I apologize).

Quote:

The other thing is, however plastic the human brain might be, the way it processes information is sort of predetermined by our biology. Including the case of brain damage or major surgery: the way the brain detours its damaged parts to find new pathways and restore functions, though a sign of its flexible (evolved) design (I know to be careful with that word), is still a set process with its own set of limitations.

I know. I never suggested otherwise.

Quote:

On top of that, I see no reason why an intelligence needs to mimic the human brain, at all, to be as good or better at the job.

You're talking about two different things. An AI could emulate the process by which the human brain works in order to be intelligent and self-aware but could still be better or as good at the job. The former is qualitative and the latter is quantitative.

Quote:

I just can't resist asking how you could be so certain of your explanation as to why corpses can't be reanimated when here you say we don't actually know why organisms die.

Because those are two seperate questions. This is just basic thermodynamics. We don't know why organisms die, but we do know that once they do, the loss of negentropy is impossible to retrieve.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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butterbattle wrote:Yay! You

butterbattle wrote:

Yay! You didn't leave.

smartypants wrote:
This is probably the wrong place to have introduced that "higher power" concept, but the reason I use it is because I think the reasons people are able to believe that there is a granddaddy in the sky is explainable by much more complex phenomena than just mass delusion.

To be honest, I do feel that mass delusion is a fairly good unscientific summary of organized religions. But, of course, vast amounts of research in fields such as psychology and neuroscience is required to fully understand it.

Quote:
I also don't necessarily believe that some mystical entity consciously designed our universe this way, no. I suppose that's possible, but for reasons stated above, I think it's useless to bother with such a question that can never be definitively answered.

Hmmm, that sounds rather agnostic.

Quote:
I'd use the same sarcasm to describe the faith healing that you did. What I'm proposing, though, is the possibility that even if there is no god, the belief in one might be able to explain medical "miracles" (people defying all probability to recover fully from cancer for instance) by some other means altogether, unrelated to religion or theism. Whatever those other processes are, they contribute to theists being able to reject other conflicting evidence. I have great respect for neuroscience; I don't think this concept is in conflict with that field.

I'm rather skeptical of that idea. I don't see how being closed-minded could stimulate new discoveries. Also, as my signature demonstrates, when people propose supernatural explanations for things they don't understand, it's basically an intellectual cop-out. Their approach can summed up as: if they don't understand it, then it must be impossible to understand. Unfortunately for the religious, any supernatural explanation I could possibly think of would be equally valid. The girl might think that God healed her leg, but what proof does she have for this? None. In all seriousness, I can claim with equal force that it was the deity of a mock religion. 

Quote:
I'm not going to go into my whole background with Linguistics here. I was just feeling defensive, getting the impression I was being dubbed an idiot since, although I'm very familiar with scientific method, my area of study has been in communications, not physics.

Most people on this forum are extremely intelligent, but they're not scientists either. I doubt that I know much more than you about physics.

We don't have any qualms with lack of knowledge; that can be easily remedied. What we despise is anti-knowledge.

Quote:
Irregardless =) my OP was not fully fleshed out, because I wasn't expecting to get into a debate about it. It was intended as merely an introduction. That was my ignorance.

R

Hahahahahaha, that happens a lot. People are alway surprised by the level of discussion here.

LOL So glad you're excited I'm staying.

Agnostic? Perhaps.

Oh, please. I'm with you on the "too complicated" bit. As far as I'm concerned, "the human eye is TOO complex to NOT have been intelligently designed" is the same as saying "I'm too stupid to understand how it works, so it must be Skydaddy." That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm suggesting is that idols receive some qualitative...something...by being fetishized, in the Venus of Willendorf, totem pole sense of fetishization. I've been cut down on every word I've tried to put to it, so I don't know. But my belief is that if you truly, 100% believe in the spaghetti monster (which, of course, no one does), that your brain has the capacity to alter the physical universe using Belief as a conduit for its actions. I don't know what it is, or how it works, but that's what I'd like to find out.

So what I'm saying is that Belief--in anything, my belief is in the human mind itself--has the power to heal or destruct (i.e. ulcers). So that crazy evangelical might actually experience a "miracle" that suddenly she can walk, but it was actually the power of her own mind, fetishizing an idol in which she believed 100%, that allowed her mind to do whatever it is it can do to heal her.

I realize I'm getting into some dangerous territory here, talking about things science doesn't address. But what I'm proposing is ultimately testable, I believe, by some method or another. I also think it could restore to these people a belief in themselves, rather than pandering to some cockamamie holy book and the nonsense...not to mention violence...it creates.

At this point, I'm settled in. I'd just prefer people deal with me without condescension and attitude, so we can just start to talk. I have "faith" lol that we'll get there.

And thank you for getting the irony of "irregardless." People get SO ANGRY about that joke...which is why I love saying it of course.

R

 


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deludedgod wrote:Quote:Well,

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Well, just because most computers at this stage are hardwired doesn't mean that eventually they couldn't be designed to be just as fluid and flexible as the human brain.

Then it would no longer be a Turing Machine (which is actually what I've been referring to when I said "computer", a terminology mix up for which I apologize).

Quote:

The other thing is, however plastic the human brain might be, the way it processes information is sort of predetermined by our biology. Including the case of brain damage or major surgery: the way the brain detours its damaged parts to find new pathways and restore functions, though a sign of its flexible (evolved) design (I know to be careful with that word), is still a set process with its own set of limitations.

I know. I never suggested otherwise.

Quote:

On top of that, I see no reason why an intelligence needs to mimic the human brain, at all, to be as good or better at the job.

You're talking about two different things. An AI could emulate the process by which the human brain works in order to be intelligent and self-aware but could still be better or as good at the job. The former is qualitative and the latter is quantitative.

Quote:

I just can't resist asking how you could be so certain of your explanation as to why corpses can't be reanimated when here you say we don't actually know why organisms die.

Because those are two seperate questions. This is just basic thermodynamics. We don't know why organisms die, but we do know that once they do, the loss of negentropy is impossible to retrieve.

Well, fooling a human being would be interesting, but confounding a human being would be even better. But then, I suppose calculators already do that to most humans.

I don't know, though, qualitative and quantitative could be awfully confused if our computers start devising theories of physics we didn't even imagine. You never know.

Well, you know, the idea of how the physical body degrades after death is not really pertinent to the philosophical question I was posing.

Anyway, you're not all that bad of a guy, I probably prejudged. My apologies. I do think we'll have a tough time of trying to find a common platform on which to base debates, but I'm willing if you are.


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HisWillness wrote:deludedgod

HisWillness wrote:

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Imagine a computer as smart or smarter than the human brain, that's self-aware

If it was indeed self-aware then it would no longer be a computer. It would be AI. So, yes.

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

Would the last human man on Earth, who obviously cannot replicate, not therefore be alive?

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan


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Luminon wrote:I hope you're

Luminon wrote:
I hope you're not trying to understand in one day what must be studied and practised for years. But this is a very interesting, though diffcult problem of communication, one that should be solved.

It does not take years of study and practice to understand the meaning of terms, and their evidence to support that meaning.

 

Luminon wrote:
Of course I mean natural things,

Which must mean we can detect them.

 

Luminon wrote:
but they're unlike anything you've ever seen or thought of.

All that matters is whether science can detect them? If you and other claims they exist, I presume you have some knowledge, some basis for these claims. Present that knowledge.

 

Luminon wrote:
For the sake of initial learning, it is necessary first to take some premises as given, to understand the point later and verify it in practice personally. We can see some parts of the teachings in practice, some not, for purely technical reasons.

Can you give an example of this using the claims you are currently making.

 

Luminon wrote:
For example, you believe scientists the discoveries they made at LHC, but you can't go there and see it for yourself. Even if yes, you wouldn't understand much from the readings on computers there.

Right, but I am well aware of the scientific method and what it entails. And I am well aware of the peer review process and what that entails. And I am further aware of scientists who have demonstrated that they are objective and fair and willing to correct their mistakes, making them trusted sources. So even though I cannot understand something, I can place trust in others to interpret and transmit the results to me.

 

Luminon wrote:
As for the seven rays, that's a pretty high stuff, not easy one to verify without a lot of studying and effort. Basically, each of the rays has certain effects. They usually come in two forms, perfectly expressed and imperfectly expressed, shortly said, virtues and vices. If all things consists of the three rays (the three are main, the four are sub-rays of the third one) then they express the "virtues and vices" and they express them cyclically. By observation of the objects like a state, a person, a historical period, we can see a dominant qualities of rays coming in and out of manifestation cyclically. Knowing one's rays thus gives a lot of insight into our natural tendences, virtues, vices and virtues-to-be-achieved, even on a national level. This is getting very complex... I'd only add a technical detail for curiosity, the second of the three main rays is callded Love-Wisdom, and is esoterically equated with all things attractive, not only love, but also gravity and cohesive forces of atoms.

All I want to know is two things:

1. Its identity/ontology. e.g. What exactly are these rays? Are they something different to anything scientists currently understand about the world?

2. Exactly how you know this; the evidence this idea is based on. e.g. Exactly how do you know there are three rays/four sub-rays?

This 'ray' thing reminds me an awful lot like astrology and similar pseudosciences. Saying things like "Knowing one's rays thus gives a lot of insight into our natural tendences, virtues, vices and virtues-to-be-achieved, even on a national level" sounds very suspect? What does that sentence actually mean? Do we all have 'rays'? How to we know about them? How do they affect our 'natural tendencies'? How do the effects of these rays differ on an individual and national level?

This should not be hard if both a) this 'ray' theory actually means anything and has actual evidence, and b) you actually understand it as you give the impression that you do. Someone for instance can say that our genes influences who we are. They can then explain what exactly genes are, what they do, how they are passed on, and most importantly, how we know this. I want you to do the same.

P.S. I also sense a fallacy of equivocation in this 'Love-Wisdom' business, namely, the use of the world 'attractive' to link love with gravity and atoms. Both employ the world 'attractive' in different contexts. Maybe someone else can confirm my suspicion?

 

Luminon wrote:
Yes, I'm talking about natural things, but as for the material, you have to understand, that there are degrees of materiality, a different qualities of materiality.

Doesn't matter. It's still material, and therefore still detectable and potentially understandable.

 

Luminon wrote:
The estabilished branch of science knows well only the most dense three of them

Three what? Three types of material?

 

Luminon wrote:
and rather recently made a first steps to what will eventually be a discovery of another, finer forms of matter. But the development is still in very early stage and the study you expect would be possible no earlier than in a few decades.

Source for this please. Which universities or institutes are conducting this research?

 

Luminon wrote:
It is something that becomes a part of consciousness naturally when a person evolves past a certain point in development.

What exactly does this mean? You are making an empirical claims; this entails that you have empirical evidence. If you do not have empirical evidence, then you have no right to the claim.

 

Luminon wrote:
Such a people then gave this information to their less developed co-workers who published a books and made lectures.

Which people? Which books? Which lectures? Presumably they are all qualified scientists?

 

Luminon wrote:
Raders of these books then had tried this information in practice as rationally they could, and if it worked, they recommended it, otherwise not.

Practiced what exactly? And how did they confirm that it worked or not? What was supposed to happen and not happen?

 

Luminon wrote:
The methodology is similar to the scientific one, but the tools are mainly our own body, mind, intuition and consciousness.

What exactly is the methodology and protocols of the studies? How exactly does that mind, body, intuition and consciousness play a role? How to we objectively validate the results? I don't see how using your 'mind' and 'intuition' is really a sign of an effective study.

 

Luminon wrote:
They perform the experiments, they verify and store the results, they passes the results to other people for a peer-review.

What experiments? How do they verify the results? Which peer-review journals?

 

Luminon wrote:
I wouldn't say it rejects the evidence. Rather, it transcends it, it fills the gaps.

There are gaps in science for a reason: they're yet to be filled, i.e. the evidence simply is not there? So either you have some unknown way to know things that science does not employ, or you merely have a god-of-the-gaps.

What does it mean to say it transcends it?

 

Luminon wrote:
For example, the relatively recent discoveries of quantum mechanics are similar to ancient notions of world illusion, called maya.

Red alert: invokes quantum mechanics!

 

Luminon wrote:
The estabilished science knows now only a tiny part of what the esoterics promises to be discovered, and it also offers a hints of where to search.

Which means you're basically saying science is limited in its knowledge, and the mystics have some transcendent way of 'knowing'. (I put the assertion in bold.) The point is, to understand the empirical world requires empirical evidence, in other words: scientific evidence. To put it bluntly, if scientific methods does not confirm something then it is highly unlikely that something else will. That is not to say that we do not nor cannot experience truths about the world that science cannot yet confirm or understand, however that is quite a bit different to making empirical claims about these as-of-yet speculative and scientifically unverified experiences.

 

Luminon wrote:
Wait a little. We're talking here about the science/philosophy concerned with the greatest mysteries of the universe, with many of them being unspeakable, overreaching our little neural speech centres by many orders. Mere putting of something in words makes it unprecise at best, a lie at worst. By the development, the words are being replaced by experience.

How else are we to communicate ideas if not by word or voice? Even if it can only be understood by experience we must first inform people what it is the are supposed to be experiencing, how to go about it, and how to evaluate at the experience.

 

Luminon wrote:
It means to cooperate with more evolved human beings.

"More evolved human beings?" What the fuck does that mean!!

 

Luminon wrote:
Yes, but in the end, everything you have is a personal experience. Even the investigation itself becomes a personal experience. This means, don't underestimate the personal experience, and don't overestimate your objectivity, it may be not so objective as you think.

We have ways to ensure we are objective. You're trying to inflate personal experience in to something greater than what it is, and I suspect you're conflating/equivoquating the concept of personal experience too. You say: "everything you have is a personal experience" however there is a vast difference between establishing something objectively, and establishing something subjectively. I suspect you think that because we must personally examine, interpret and take in the objective data, that therefore entails subjectively. It doesn't. 

You also say that "the investigation itself becomes a personal experience" however if we are dealing with external facts about reality, then we must turn to objective methods, not subjective methods, so there is no need for the investigation to become a person experience.

 

Luminon wrote:
Experience is the key. You can read about something as an intellectual idea, but unless you experience it personally, you may never comprehend it. Just words won't allow you to put something in your pocket, as Buddhists says, the finger pointing at the Moon is not the Moon.

The point however is confirming whether the theory is truth or false, and we can confirm this scientifically, not subjectively. Again, if we're dealing with external truths about the world, then we must be able to detect and examine it via objective methods. The fact there may be some subjective facet to this is another issue. For instance, we can objectively and scientifically study consciousness and how it is the result of physical brain processes. That is what it means to say we are scientifically studying consciousness. The inherently subjective and personal nature of conscious experiences does not negate that objective study. Your argument however appears to be like someone saying consciousness is inherently personal, therefore we cannot objectively/scientifically study it, therefore we can only look it as a personal experience.

 

Luminon wrote:
A knowledge of matter, energy, life, time and space, mind-bogglingly deeper than we have now.

Although we've more to learn and understand, how much 'deeper' can it get? It seems we understand quite a lot, so on what basis, other than speculation, can you say we can go "mind-bogglingly deeper."

When I say some 'other way' of knowing I mean are you suggesting we must move beyond what our current epistemology and science allows, and turn to 'something else'?

 

Luminon wrote:
Not even by machines, for now,

Well if nothing can currently detect is (i.e. not human or machines) then how can you say anything about it, including that it even exists? To speak of it entails you have some knowledge of it, and therefore some way to know about it.

 

Luminon wrote:
These are technical questions. As I mentioned, the finer-than-material forms of matter

What does it even mean to say "finer-than-material forms of matter"? If it is matter, then it it makes little difference as to how 'fine' it is: it is still matter. Also, 'material' as I used it merely denotes all that substance that exists, so saying "finer-than-material forms of matter" make little sense since it denotes something other than material, when in fact what ever it is would entail materiality.

 

Luminon wrote:
are arranged in such a way that they form a spectrum, with such a "levels". We, humans live on several such a levels simultaneously, but if we are unevolved, we are not aware of it.

How do you know this?

 

Luminon wrote:
They know because they know because they know. Such is a nature of intuition. And then, ocassionally, they verify it in practice, so they see that it works.

So they just know... ??!!

I do not want to hear that they intuitively think it exists, I want to know the empirical evidence they have for thinking it exists, and you have still not presented it.

 

Luminon wrote:
Here I would recommend you to study a set theory. There are sets, sub-sets, and so on. One set can contain a several of items... etc.

Even if something belongs as a sub-set of something else, it still follows that there is a distinction; a difference. If there isn't then you're speaking of exactly the same thing, which is what you implied when you maintained that there was no difference between god, humanity and nature. If alternatively you think there is a distinction between the three, can you tell us what it is.

 

Luminon wrote:
Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
God is not an old man spying on us from the upstairs, it's a sum of all energy of the universe and a sum of the laws governing that energy.

How do you know this?

It's a quote from one esotericist and my intuition confirms it.

So your own internal intuition confirms a specific aspect of 'something' that is not only external to your self, but also external to nature?! How exactly does you intuition do this, and how do you know it is valid? Are you aware of just how faulty our intuition is?

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan


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Quote:Would the last human

Quote:

Would the last human man on Earth, who obviously cannot replicate, not therefore be alive?

Hmmmm.

I don't think that's what he really meant. I think he was referring to the fact that the individual carries a gamete. Although, this is quite a hard point to wrestle with. What if he didn't carry a gamete (i.e he had been castrated)? Would he still be "biological life"? Ultimately, in this case, even though the organism has lost the ability to pass on its genetic material, it is ultimately still composed of self-replicating chemical units which compute logical responses to their environs. In The Third Revolution I spelled out, more  or less, what biology is in chemical terms:

Quote:

Biological systems are sets of integrative computational feedback processes of chemical systems controlling and allowing for the growth and replication of chemical systems which have the computational capacity to compute responses to their external and internal environments.

As an overall property of the biosphere, passing of genetic material from parent to progeny is an essential component of this, for without that process, such replicative chemical systems could not exist, but it would be possible for some organisms within the pool to be sterilized and lose that ability and still be called "biological".

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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smartypants wrote:Oh,

smartypants wrote:

Oh, please. I'm with you on the "too complicated" bit. As far as I'm concerned, "the human eye is TOO complex to NOT have been intelligently designed" is the same as saying "I'm too stupid to understand how it works, so it must be Skydaddy."

Yup.

Quote:
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm suggesting is that idols receive some qualitative...something...by being fetishized, in the Venus of Willendorf, totem pole sense of fetishization. I've been cut down on every word I've tried to put to it, so I don't know.

Wow, that is some horrendously ambiguous terminology. Lol.

(Aaahh, why did you make me do a google image search!? The horror!)

So, let me see if I understand this. The religious have an "attraction" towards this...wood thing. And, because they love it a lot, the wood thing receives...something...qualitative.

Quote:
But my belief is that if you truly, 100% believe in the spaghetti monster (which, of course, no one does), that your brain has the capacity to alter the physical universe using Belief as a conduit for its actions. I don't know what it is, or how it works, but that's what I'd like to find out.

So what I'm saying is that Belief--in anything, my belief is in the human mind itself--has the power to heal or destruct (i.e. ulcers). So that crazy evangelical might actually experience a "miracle" that suddenly she can walk, but it was actually the power of her own mind, fetishizing an idol in which she believed 100%, that allowed her mind to do whatever it is it can do to heal her.

Interesting concept. I think there may some validity to that. I don't know anything about neuroscience, but surely, a little adrenaline and placebo effect can go a long way.

Quote:
I realize I'm getting into some dangerous territory here, talking about things science doesn't address.

Science addresses anything that can be addressed objectively.

Quote:
But what I'm proposing is ultimately testable, I believe, by some method or another. I also think it could restore to these people a belief in themselves, rather than pandering to some cockamamie holy book and the nonsense...not to mention violence...it creates.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/914

Quote:
At this point, I'm settled in. I'd just prefer people deal with me without condescension and attitude, so we can just start to talk. I have "faith" lol that we'll get there.

I can't promise anything, but thanks for sticking around.

Quote:
And thank you for getting the irony of "irregardless." People get SO ANGRY about that joke...which is why I love saying it of course.

R

Why would people get angry about that?

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Topher wrote:HisWillness

Topher wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Imagine a computer as smart or smarter than the human brain, that's self-aware

If it was indeed self-aware then it would no longer be a computer. It would be AI. So, yes.

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

 

Would the last human man on Earth, who obviously cannot replicate, not therefore be alive?

 

... or someone impotent, or infertile, etc.

No, Jerkpants, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we don't tend to label types of things that can't reproduce "alive", not one example of that type.

Nice try, though. You were totally trying to get me to say "yes, impotent people are dead", weren't you?

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deludedgod wrote:Quote:Just

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

I know. I find it very hard to imagine that we could reverse-engineer something modelled on human intelligence without it emulating the reproduction of discrete units the way biological systems do.Think of it this way. What would an AI need to have that a computer does not?

Desire. In the case of an abiogenesis-modeled AI, that would by necessity be based in the desire to continue. That is, to continue to live and replicate. Without desire, you have no AI. It's as simple as that.

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smartypants wrote:Well, as

smartypants wrote:
Well, as you said, your self-replicating program doesn't exist either, since it'd be dangerous for a programmer to put something like that out there.

I'm sorry if I mislead you, but such software does exist in the form of genetic algorithms. That's much closer to a finished product than either a robot that can repair itself or a dynamically re-assigning synthetic brain.

smartypants wrote:
In any case, I can't help thinking that aliveness requires an opposite state of being "not alive," and I don't think a computer program could be dead. Rather, it could be made to stop operating, more like dormancy, which is something else altogether. But it could be made to start up again at any time if activated to do so.

In general, that's not really the case with the type of computing environment I have in mind. But then, I've been a programmer, so we might be talking in different streams of thought. The environment in which a program finds itself is considerably different than our physical environment, so if you like, you can call it "artificial life", in the sense that "artificial selection" is something where humans do the tweaking rather than nature.

With our idea of organisms, the adaptation process that has played out thus far incorporates a death into the cycle. A life form stops the process of life for whatever reason (I defer to our resident biochemist on that issue) after some fuzzily defined period of time, and entropy takes hold.

What actually happens when a computer runs a program is more similar than you may be aware. An operating system allocates memory space for a program to operate, and when it's finished, that program no longer lives in that memory space, and chances are, it won't ever be in the same place again. You're not reanimating the program, you're creating a clone. The code has to be compiled into something that the computer environment can use, but the only "live" instances of programs are the ones running and in memory.

In the case of a genetically reassembling program, it's even closer to the process of life, and there are versions that die all the time. Programs that write slightly varying copies of themselves only exist for long enough to make copies, and then they're finished. As long as the memory exists as their environment, they can persist in the memory. Making a program that only wants to optimize its adaptation to that environment has been done, but like a life form, it's hard to get rid of something that "wants" to use the same resources you do.

I've actually written such programs, with surprising results. (The most surprising is that they're so easy to write.) I devoted a Linux box to these simple programs and ran into the odd problem that they would eventually write programs I couldn't understand! NASA has used this technique to design antenna systems that work well without anyone really knowing why at first, so I suppose if I were working in a computing department of a university, I might pursue it. But with the limitations of a single memory space, the programs don't do much other than increase their populations and then "starve" when they hit the limits of their environment. The resulting program populations reach the starvation point slower, however, and different programs "evolve" from those population crunches.

Are those populations not alive?

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HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

smartypants wrote:
Well, as you said, your self-replicating program doesn't exist either, since it'd be dangerous for a programmer to put something like that out there.

I'm sorry if I mislead you, but such software does exist in the form of genetic algorithms. That's much closer to a finished product than either a robot that can repair itself or a dynamically re-assigning synthetic brain.

smartypants wrote:
In any case, I can't help thinking that aliveness requires an opposite state of being "not alive," and I don't think a computer program could be dead. Rather, it could be made to stop operating, more like dormancy, which is something else altogether. But it could be made to start up again at any time if activated to do so.

In general, that's not really the case with the type of computing environment I have in mind. But then, I've been a programmer, so we might be talking in different streams of thought. The environment in which a program finds itself is considerably different than our physical environment, so if you like, you can call it "artificial life", in the sense that "artificial selection" is something where humans do the tweaking rather than nature.

With our idea of organisms, the adaptation process that has played out thus far incorporates a death into the cycle. A life form stops the process of life for whatever reason (I defer to our resident biochemist on that issue) after some fuzzily defined period of time, and entropy takes hold.

What actually happens when a computer runs a program is more similar than you may be aware. An operating system allocates memory space for a program to operate, and when it's finished, that program no longer lives in that memory space, and chances are, it won't ever be in the same place again. You're not reanimating the program, you're creating a clone. The code has to be compiled into something that the computer environment can use, but the only "live" instances of programs are the ones running and in memory.

In the case of a genetically reassembling program, it's even closer to the process of life, and there are versions that die all the time. Programs that write slightly varying copies of themselves only exist for long enough to make copies, and then they're finished. As long as the memory exists as their environment, they can persist in the memory. Making a program that only wants to optimize its adaptation to that environment has been done, but like a life form, it's hard to get rid of something that "wants" to use the same resources you do.

I've actually written such programs, with surprising results. (The most surprising is that they're so easy to write.) I devoted a Linux box to these simple programs and ran into the odd problem that they would eventually write programs I couldn't understand! NASA has used this technique to design antenna systems that work well without anyone really knowing why at first, so I suppose if I were working in a computing department of a university, I might pursue it. But with the limitations of a single memory space, the programs don't do much other than increase their populations and then "starve" when they hit the limits of their environment. The resulting program populations reach the starvation point slower, however, and different programs "evolve" from those population crunches.

Are those populations not alive?

This is kind of interesting. What's the purpose of them doing this? To repair glitches? Or is it about going where they're needed without taking up more memory than necessary? Do the original, cloned versions self-destruct once the clone is up and running?

 


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butterbattle

butterbattle wrote:

smartypants wrote:

Oh, please. I'm with you on the "too complicated" bit. As far as I'm concerned, "the human eye is TOO complex to NOT have been intelligently designed" is the same as saying "I'm too stupid to understand how it works, so it must be Skydaddy."

Yup.

Quote:
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm suggesting is that idols receive some qualitative...something...by being fetishized, in the Venus of Willendorf, totem pole sense of fetishization. I've been cut down on every word I've tried to put to it, so I don't know.

Wow, that is some horrendously ambiguous terminology. Lol.

(Aaahh, why did you make me do a google image search!? The horror!)

So, let me see if I understand this. The religious have an "attraction" towards this...wood thing. And, because they love it a lot, the wood thing receives...something...qualitative.

Quote:
But my belief is that if you truly, 100% believe in the spaghetti monster (which, of course, no one does), that your brain has the capacity to alter the physical universe using Belief as a conduit for its actions. I don't know what it is, or how it works, but that's what I'd like to find out.

So what I'm saying is that Belief--in anything, my belief is in the human mind itself--has the power to heal or destruct (i.e. ulcers). So that crazy evangelical might actually experience a "miracle" that suddenly she can walk, but it was actually the power of her own mind, fetishizing an idol in which she believed 100%, that allowed her mind to do whatever it is it can do to heal her.

Interesting concept. I think there may some validity to that. I don't know anything about neuroscience, but surely, a little adrenaline and placebo effect can go a long way.

Quote:
I realize I'm getting into some dangerous territory here, talking about things science doesn't address.

Science addresses anything that can be addressed objectively.

Quote:
But what I'm proposing is ultimately testable, I believe, by some method or another. I also think it could restore to these people a belief in themselves, rather than pandering to some cockamamie holy book and the nonsense...not to mention violence...it creates.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/914

Quote:
At this point, I'm settled in. I'd just prefer people deal with me without condescension and attitude, so we can just start to talk. I have "faith" lol that we'll get there.

I can't promise anything, but thanks for sticking around.

Quote:
And thank you for getting the irony of "irregardless." People get SO ANGRY about that joke...which is why I love saying it of course.

R

Why would people get angry about that?

LOL Yes, I know. All my attempts to be less ambiguous have led me into problems here.

Googled for what? The Venus? That's the oldest known sculpture in existence!

Paraphrased, yes. By being fetishized, worshipped, especially by large groups of people, the idol receives some kind of energy that enables it to perform acts on behalf of the worshippers. In fact, it's the worshippers themselves bringing these occurences into being, not the inanimate idol. I think it might be some complex form of mass socialized telekinesis, but that's another topic I'm sure will cause me a lot of problems here. I've got a couple books on my list coming that might help, but the relatively legitimate ones are understandably hard to find.

You know it's weird: I've never thought SP was the slightest bit funny but I consider Team America to a masterpiece of unbridled genius. I need a new version of flash requiring me to quit my browser to watch that, so I'll watch it next time.

"Irregardless" seems to be like fingernails on a blackboard for a lot of people. I often get "OMFG U RIDICULOUS MORON IRREGARDLESS IS NOT A WORD!!!!!!" And I'm like "um, yeah, I realize that. That's what the =) is for." It cracks me up.


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smartypants wrote:This is

smartypants wrote:

This is kind of interesting. What's the purpose of them doing this? To repair glitches? Or is it about going where they're needed without taking up more memory than necessary? Do the original, cloned versions self-destruct once the clone is up and running?

No, the design was such that it imitated life, so there was no specific point, it was just to see what would happen. The behaviour, though, was similar to bacteria. The cloning versions did, in fact, destruct, once they had "replicated" 2 versions of themselves (that is, expressed their code to a compiler with a single, minor change). They would also destruct if the program didn't persist. (That's maybe obvious, but the not-as-obvious result was that the "organisms" selected by this process lived longer -- they just wrote more code into themselves, regardless if it did anything or not.)

I should clarify that this was not my idea. I read it in a research paper, and wanted to try it. The artificial organism consisted of a compiled and uncompiled portion, in that it existed to spit out a new program (a text file) that was limited to certain functions. The functions were simply regarding space allocation in an artificial memory layer. The compiler (which was really just an interpreter) ran the program in that memory space.

As would be expected by any biologist, the population grew exponentially, but I had no way to deal with the space limitation, so the first time I ran it, my memory layer just called it quits very quickly. I never got it to work so that it was fun to watch, though, so I stopped.

What sucks is that I can't find the paper now. I'm sure I'll find it eventually.

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HisWillness wrote:Topher

HisWillness wrote:

Topher wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Imagine a computer as smart or smarter than the human brain, that's self-aware

If it was indeed self-aware then it would no longer be a computer. It would be AI. So, yes.

Just to save you the trouble of a confusing counter-argument: I thought we only considered things that were self-replicating to be alive. Is that not the case? I've never heard of something that is alive, that can't replicate itself in some form or another.

 

Would the last human man on Earth, who obviously cannot replicate, not therefore be alive?

 

... or someone impotent, or infertile, etc.

No, Jerkpants, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we don't tend to label types of things that can't reproduce "alive", not one example of that type.

Nice try, though. You were totally trying to get me to say "yes, impotent people are dead", weren't you?

No, I wasn't trying to get you to say that! In fact, infertility/impotence, or any other real-life example, didn't even enter my thought, hence the reason for the 'last man on Earth' scenario.

I agree that it's most appropriate to label whole classes as alive or not, however that was not obvious from your original comment.

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan


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Topher wrote:I agree that

Topher wrote:

I agree that it's most appropriate to label whole classes as alive or not, however that was not obvious from your original comment.

Haha! I thought you were messing with me. Well, I guess "Jerkpants" makes that obvious, but still ...

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Luminon

Luminon wrote:

pauljohntheskeptic wrote:
I tried to tell him, but . . .

...but I've watched this first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5NwRfMJgOQ

 

And I did the experiment myself, remember? You can't explain by air currents why the wheel can turn in the direction we want,  at the time we want. 

Anyway, I don't like the silence, trivial objections or ridiculing every time I get close to having the skeptics admit something. Generally, it seems that the skeptics consider other people with a different opinion mentally retarded whether they deserve it or not. And fellow skeptics seems to have a free pass. Really, an outsider may get such an impression, I'd suggest this is another example of people overly idealizing their own group. I don't write this just to be mean to you, this is what we outside of the skeptical community have to cope with, regularly. That observation may be very true, because it's one of easiest things in the world to see the others' mistakes.

Luminon,

I watched your video and have seen stunts like this done by Criss Angel in Vegas among other things. My problem with this is that one can't observe from all angles to insure that there is not a heat source or electrostatic generator above it out of the view of the camera. I'd need to either observe this myself or see 4 camera angles simultaneously. I tried this myself and the only way I could get the wheel to move at all was with static electricity after developing a charge on myself and putting my finger near it. If I was at ground potential or uncharged, no motion, but as soon as I charged myself, I could make the wheel turn.

As an engineer I learned not to accept the claims of others without verification and duplication. If you did this yourself, connect an ESD grounding strap to your wrist and ground it to Earth ground. When you do so, you will not be able to move the wheel as all static electricity on your body will be at earth ground. My conclusion from simple test is the motion can be from static electricity. My best efforts were done while wearing a sweater and rubbing briskly until I was highly charged.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.


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Topher wrote: It does not

Topher wrote:
It does not take years of study and practice to understand the meaning of terms, and their evidence to support that meaning.
The study may be limited by a lack of evidence. One can't just read the books without any evidence forever. If the evidence is scarce and attainable only through personal effort, then this effort may take years.
But there is also the huge amount of information to be learned. All this is full of new concepts and the ways how they interact with each other.

 

Topher wrote:
Which must mean we can detect them.
We may detect anything, the question is when. If tomorrow, in a few years or centuries. Another question is how. There were and are people who knew things centuries ahead of the culture they lived in, but the real "discovery" happened when the culture was developed enough to realize these ideas technically. There were and probably are many natural things, which we are not aware of, not yet. Fortunately, it seems that the humanity is entering an era of immense progress, so we will see some of these things I speak of maybe in our lifetimes.

Topher wrote:
All that matters is whether science can detect them? If you and other claims they exist, I presume you have some knowledge, some basis for these claims. Present that knowledge.
I have something in my sleeve, but it's indirect. It's only a sign. There is a lot of information to be learned what is the origin and purpose of the sign. I do not know how much more or less seriously will you start to take me. It is an evidence for something. I don't want to have a problem of telling those who are not interested, who peruse this forum mainly for DG's science or something other than this. It would really need a brand new topic and perhaps a few days of writing the text and presentation, so it will be clear. It is good to let people discuss about this sign, so I should do it, and hopefully it will be at least some evidence you want. I can of course give links on more evidence, but I'm unable to discuss a validity of each one such a thing with many doubting people simultaneously.

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
For the sake of initial learning, it is necessary first to take some premises as given, to understand the point later and verify it in practice personally. We can see some parts of the teachings in practice, some not, for purely technical reasons.


Can you give an example of this using the claims you are currently making.
Sure. Let's say, that you want an evidence of the existence of chakras, the centres at human body processing energy. The only way to give you the evidence is to make you feel the chakras by yourself, it's your body, after all. This is why you first must learn where they are placed, how to concentrate, what mantra or invocation to say in the beginning of meditation, what to visualize, and so on. Then, in the first or fiftieth meditation, you will start to feel the chakras working. Eventually, you can be aware of some of them like of any solid-material organ of your body.

 

Topher wrote:
Right, but I am well aware of the scientific method and what it entails. And I am well aware of the peer review process and what that entails. And I am further aware of scientists who have demonstrated that they are objective and fair and willing to correct their mistakes, making them trusted sources. So even though I cannot understand something, I can place trust in others to interpret and transmit the results to me.
So can do I, with esotericists whom the experience of years did show as reliable. They are always consistent with each other and with their own words, their predictions does often fulfil, and they have a lot of common sense. For me explaining to you the reliable authority of some esotericists is the same as you explainto me the reliability of scientists.

Topher wrote:
All I want to know is two things:

1. Its identity/ontology. e.g. What exactly are these rays? Are they something different to anything scientists currently understand about the world?
I don't know what scientists currently exactly understands about the world, but there seems to be parallels. If I remember, DG spoke of three fundamental principles in the universe, and so are the three rays of Aspect. They are, in my understanding, something like a natural laws and energies, carrying out that laws into all aspects of the universe. But in esotericism, the energy is considered to be living and intelligent (or better said, responsive), thus the rays may be also in some sense considered as a cosmic life forms. But the esoteric definition of life and life forms is a bit different than the one in DG's essay.

Topher wrote:
2. Exactly how you know this; the evidence this idea is based on. e.g. Exactly how do you know there are three rays/four sub-rays?
This is the diffcult part. I do not know it with 100% certainity, only as an intellectual idea, and as a model of the universe, which I seek to verify according to my opportunities. An intellectual idea can be read in a books, this is where I have it from. So I studied some chapters on these rays, and I expect to broaden my knowledge and evidence on this subject during my lifetime, but there are also other areas of esotericism like that, less or more available to verification. It requires patience. Of course, that's my personal effort, I think you'll know when it will become noticed also by your scientific authorities.

Topher wrote:
  This 'ray' thing reminds me an awful lot like astrology and similar pseudosciences. Saying things like "Knowing one's rays thus gives a lot of insight into our natural tendences, virtues, vices and virtues-to-be-achieved, even on a national level" sounds very suspect? What does that sentence actually mean? Do we all have 'rays'? How to we know about them? How do they affect our 'natural tendencies'? How do the effects of these rays differ on an individual and national level?
Astrology is something a bit different, that's one of many aspects of esotericism. These "aspects" are actually a full-sized (pseudo, if you want )sciences, often big enough to fill one's lifetime.
As for the rays, they are energies, quote: ...whose interaction at every conceivable frequency creates the solar systems, galaxies and universes, end quote. How exactly, on what frequencies or levels is that done, is described in the given theory. The theory says, that a human being is a monad, reflecting itself as a soul, reflecting itself as a personality, having mental, astral and physical body. Thus we have the monad, soul, personality, mental, astral and physical rays. The monadic is usually left out (I don't know why yet, probably a technical detail)  and the three latest have also their sub-rays which may change their influence during lifetime. We know, that having a certain ray influencing the physical body creates a certain type, if someone is tall or short, fat or skinny, clumsy or agile, etc. If we read up which ray is characteristic for such an appearance, we may find out what physical ray we have. Generally said, the soul and personality rays are the most important, but the personality's own rays decides, how are that qualities expressed. For example, a brain (physical body) on a right ray may be a relatively powerful brain, but it doesn't decide how and what is it used for.

Topher wrote:
  This should not be hard if both a) this 'ray' theory actually means anything and has actual evidence, and b) you actually understand it as you give the impression that you do. Someone for instance can say that our genes influences who we are. They can then explain what exactly genes are, what they do, how they are passed on, and most importantly, how we know this. I want you to do the same.
a) as far as I know, no scientist did even try to research that, probably because of a lack of scientific will. No scientist can risk his career by trying out every weird shit there is, for no reason.
b) I understand something of about it, but not nearly everything, specially not in relation to the scientific worldview. I can fail on what do you want from me also for a simple reason, that the science does not yet have these concepts. They are present in esotericism, but they're all relative. Everything is relative there, and there is no end to that relativity, so there may be still deeper, infinite understanding of everything. What I can say, are thus only relative truths, sounding shallowly to what you are used to hear in science. There's a theory, and I'm too busy to verifying if it even works as a whole. What you would want are things like Occam's razor, to make this theory as small as possible to see if it's still working, but we're not there yet. It's all in the beginning and it's only a sketch of future sciences, in this case, psychology.

Topher wrote:
P.S. I also sense a fallacy of equivocation in this 'Love-Wisdom' business, namely, the use of the world 'attractive' to link love with gravity and atoms. Both employ the world 'attractive' in different contexts. Maybe someone else can confirm my suspicion?
From the esoteric point of view, organisms, planets and atoms are a different levels, where the 2nd ray expresses itself in a less or more different way, in this case, attraction. It doesn't have anything to do with an emotional attachment we sometimes mistake for love. Love is defined here an impersonal, neutral universal force, which affects the universe in countless ways on countless levels, one of three main such a forces. Love does not necessarily mean to have a nice feeling. Often, it does and should make people feel terribly, because they know that there are millions of their brothers and sisters suffering, somewhere far away.

 

Topher wrote:
 
Luminon wrote:
The estabilished branch of science knows well only the most dense three of them


Three what? Three types of material?
Solid, liquid and gaseous. There are four more states of matter, finer than gas. They are called etheric, still invisible to us, and there are life forms based on them. I know that for sure, because I am partially aware of the etheric world. It is tangible for me, and I'm not the only one, otherwise my opinion wouldn't be better than anyone else's.

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
and rather recently made a first steps to what will eventually be a discovery of another, finer forms of matter. But the development is still in very early stage and the study you expect would be possible no earlier than in a few decades.


Source for this please. Which universities or institutes are conducting this research?
I meant the American astronomic project ARCADE. In early January the astronomers discovered a previously unknown radiation, six times stronger than expected. But it is an information from my esotericist authority, whom I'll quote now:
I believe that the vibration which astronomers have discovered, the ‘orgone’ of Wilhelm Reich, and the higher etheric levels of matter are one and the same. Scientists today recognize matter as being solid, liquid and gaseous but esoterists know that there are four further states of matter above gas known as the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st plane of etheric matter. So instead of three planes, there are actually seven planes of matter.

All matter is a precipitation of light and so the field of matter is light precipitated into seven more or less material planes.

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
It is something that becomes a part of consciousness naturally when a person evolves past a certain point in development.


What exactly does this mean? You are making an empirical claims; this entails that you have empirical evidence. If you do not have empirical evidence, then you have no right to the claim.
This is a technical problem. I indeed have an empirical evidence, but it's based on a sensitivity of my body, or anyone else's body, if they make it so. I perceive the existence of chakras and other energetic centers in body. According to the theory, through a correct life and work they are being gradually activated, and thus more of faculties are made available to the consciousness. Through certain activities (like meditation) I indeed experience an increase in quality of my sensitivity and abilities, but also in quality of character, as the theory says. But it took me some time and discipline to do that, and much more is ahead of me.


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Such a people then gave this information to their less developed co-workers who published a books and made lectures.
Which people? Which books? Which lectures? Presumably they are all qualified scientists?
Now you've got me Smiling Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Alice Bailey. Helena Roerich. Benjamin Creme. Their books.

 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Raders of these books then had tried this information in practice as rationally they could, and if it worked, they recommended it, otherwise not.


Practiced what exactly? And how did they confirm that it worked or not? What was supposed to happen and not happen?
There are certain instructions on how to achieve the fastest self-development. It is the selfless service and meditation. It is also the honesty of mind, sincerity of spirit, and detachment. There is a lot to learn and practice about them. It means to become a disciple - the one who is disciplined.
We may see a person who gradually becomes (quote) kind, wise, full of knowledge and light and respect for all, filled with enthusiasm for life, justice and sharing. (e.q.) But that's rather an ending result. I can speak from many people's experience, that when someone begins a spiritual path (starts to meditate, for example) there often are all sorts of disasters coming at him or her. It is, because that path can not be entered, if there is too much of unresolved karma on that individual, and that must be "burned up", so there's no unnecessary burden to the self-development. That's why it's all triggered. Meditation is a way of this personality contacting a higher part of the human being. The person is a reflection of the soul in physical matter, and by meditation we attempt to put these two in contact, co-operation and eventually, in a full at-one-ment. However, before the co-operation is started, the soul decides to test it's reflection, the man or woman, by a series of trials to see if his or her interest is serious. The trials are a diffcult situations in life, which may involve overcoming our fears, vices, weaknesses, or just a sudden situations demanding a cold-blooded action. So this is what actually happens to people, when they begin to practice what they read.
There is much more to it, tenths of books, and I can't write them all here. You would have better to calm down, download the books and start reading patiently, one thing after another.

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
The methodology is similar to the scientific one, but the tools are mainly our own body, mind, intuition and consciousness.


What exactly is the methodology and protocols of the studies? How exactly does that mind, body, intuition and consciousness play a role? How to we objectively validate the results? I don't see how using your 'mind' and 'intuition' is really a sign of an effective study.
These things are very unofficial, done among the lesser or greater groups of friends or people of the same interest. They may be gathered together on a course or semminary, for example on a vacations, etc. Often, there is a supervising member or invited person, who is more experienced or able. (for example, is strongly clairvoyant or has many years of practice) It is generally based on a personal relationships and trust. Unsuitable people gets sorted out automatically by group dynamics. We don't need to keep many records, because we see and remember that what we do is working and how well. But the experiments are actually in minority. Once the necessary training is done, we work. We test people's problems, we work on them through various methods  (so-called family constellations, for example) and we have the results. As for the effectivity, it has far to convincing the whole world almost instantaneously, as the science does, it's meant to help the people in need. But I feel like this small-scaled sessions behind doors closed from the science should change in future.

 

Topher wrote:
 
Luminon wrote:
They perform the experiments, they verify and store the results, they passes the results to other people for a peer-review.


What experiments? How do they verify the results? Which peer-review journals?
The experiments may involve trying a telepathy or other form of extra-sensoric perception on each other. We verify the results by their mutual comparison or mutual observation. Rivalry, envy or greed have no place there. We are the peers, we may review with our groups the experiments we hear or read about. We're amateurs and the circumstances are modest, but that's the best how we can do without a help of the rest of the world - the science, for example. Science and politics, the two areas where the greatest amount of a real work is being done. The esotericists and so-called esotericists are indeed not very effective. The world of today is in a spiritual crisis, we don't know our purpose and the sense of our lives. But this crisis is focused through the areas of politics, economy and ecology, and may only be resolved there. So for these years the esoteric technical details aren't the most important thing. Saving the world is the most important.

 


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
I wouldn't say it rejects the evidence. Rather, it transcends it, it fills the gaps.


There are gaps in science for a reason: they're yet to be filled, i.e. the evidence simply is not there? So either you have some unknown way to know things that science does not employ, or you merely have a god-of-the-gaps.

What does it mean to say it transcends it?
Esoterics may serve as a sort of road map of what yet remains to be discovered. It can help to design a scientific theories, which can be then verified. So far, it seems to me like the theories which were also esoterically correct, were later proven as also scientifically correct. The reason why I wrote that it transcends the science is, that it is given. It's not made by a common human effort, it is a peek at science of a group of perfected men, called Masters of Wisdom. They are also scientists, and in recent decades they start to act more publically, which will eventually result in their full public appearance. For now, only one or two of them may be seen all around the world, visiting people, groups and crowds who can make a difference in the world. Our group and friends have had the honor of their visit for several times already, and we keep getting messages about their unending travels from the world. The general people's awareness of esoterics, the purpose of humanity and other essential things will, I believe, increase with their public appearance, but hardly sooner.

 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
The estabilished science knows now only a tiny part of what the esoterics promises to be discovered, and it also offers a hints of where to search.


Which means you're basically saying science is limited in its knowledge, and the mystics have some transcendent way of 'knowing'. (I put the assertion in bold.) The point is, to understand the empirical world requires empirical evidence, in other words: scientific evidence. To put it bluntly, if scientific methods does not confirm something then it is highly unlikely that something else will. That is not to say that we do not nor cannot experience truths about the world that science cannot yet confirm or understand, however that is quite a bit different to making empirical claims about these as-of-yet speculative and scientifically unverified experiences.
Please notice the difference between mysticism and esotericism. Mysticism is less focused on intellect, it is a counterpart of esotericism, while the more intellectual esotericism, or occultism always eventually prevails.
As for the transcendent way of knowing, there is a given information in books, and it's up to every reader to verify it according to his abilities, and decide for himself if it is correct and useful for the science. So far, things I've been able to verify personally, turned out positively, as for their existence, validity and importance. This gives me a certain confidence.

 


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Wait a little. We're talking here about the science/philosophy concerned with the greatest mysteries of the universe, with many of them being unspeakable, overreaching our little neural speech centres by many orders. Mere putting of something in words makes it unprecise at best, a lie at worst. By the development, the words are being replaced by experience.


How else are we to communicate ideas if not by word or voice? Even if it can only be understood by experience we must first inform people what it is the are supposed to be experiencing, how to go about it, and how to evaluate at the experience.
Of course by words, but we must keep in mind that they are relative, and must be replaced by better words and by experience or intuition. Initially, to start this, it helps if there is some authority, belief or something like that. It's not so standardized as in science, where you know before reading that this all is true exactly as it is written. Some books are inevitably, almost on purpose, written in such a diffcult way, that it is necessary to invoke intuition, to understand them, to assign meaning to the terms.

 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
It means to cooperate with more evolved human beings.


"More evolved human beings?" What the fuck does that mean!!
A technical question. Living the life correctly, evolving, doesn't mean only an improvement of character. According to the theory, it also means a change on atomic level. The matter of body is being gradually replaced by a matter, which, if seen occultly, does radiate light. The esotericists says, that this matter is light, though it behaves as a normal matter. But when this process is finished, when all the matter is replaced with "light", which also means that the chakras are brought on the same frequency with the soul, the personality, soul and monad becomes one being, totally interconnected and synchronized with all parts of itself. This is called a perfected human being, a Master over himself, wisdom and laws of nature. They are able to work physically and walk among us, but also work in higher planes of existence. Their life is a continual work for the betterment of humanity, and a part of that work may be to work with their disciples among us. Master then can, for example dictate books to a disciple. The activities of Masters in the world are one of main concerns of our group.


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Yes, but in the end, everything you have is a personal experience. Even the investigation itself becomes a personal experience. This means, don't underestimate the personal experience, and don't overestimate your objectivity, it may be not so objective as you think.


We have ways to ensure we are objective. You're trying to inflate personal experience in to something greater than what it is, and I suspect you're conflating/equivoquating the concept of personal experience too. You say: "everything you have is a personal experience" however there is a vast difference between establishing something objectively, and establishing something subjectively. I suspect you think that because we must personally examine, interpret and take in the objective data, that therefore entails subjectively. It doesn't.

You also say that "the investigation itself becomes a personal experience" however if we are dealing with external facts about reality, then we must turn to objective methods, not subjective methods, so there is no need for the investigation to become a person experience.
It seems to me that it is a problem in communication, rather than a real dissent. I think I am being objective and I work with objective facts, among my group. But that group doesn't include you or someone from the scientific community, so I assumed that you wouldn't consider that objective. For me, objective is when a group of people detects something independently. For you, objective is something obvious for the whole world. I don't have a global tools and standards, unlike you. We are amateurs. It is necessary to take a personal experience as a statistic unit, which may turn out to be actually also an objective phenomenon. Thus, the subjective may be unified with the objective.

 
Topher wrote:
The point however is confirming whether the theory is truth or false, and we can confirm this scientifically, not subjectively. Again, if we're dealing with external truths about the world, then we must be able to detect and examine it via objective methods. The fact there may be some subjective facet to this is another issue. For instance, we can objectively and scientifically study consciousness and how it is the result of physical brain processes. That is what it means to say we are scientifically studying consciousness. The inherently subjective and personal nature of conscious experiences does not negate that objective study. Your argument however appears to be like someone saying consciousness is inherently personal, therefore we cannot objectively/scientifically study it, therefore we can only look it as a personal experience.
I mean what I wrote. In addition, you seem to see the world very strictly differentiated. Everything is either true or false, objective or subjective, black or white. I don't think like that. For me, everything is a question of a degree, all is relative. As for the detection and examining, it is again the question of a degree. How many people did detect something, but they were discouraged and did not manage to bring a change in the society? The evidence builds up in background, until it is able to withstand a full impact of scientific method. Until then, it may be proven only subjectively, after that, it's objective.
As for my supposed argument, that would be more complex. According to my information, the consciousness is a soul quality, passed down and shadowed by many filters, like the mind, emotions and then the physical brain. There are thus more factors than just the brain, though it is the most obvious one. I don't have a major general objection, I'm just always inclined to use the esoterics as a road map for designing a scientific hypotheses and predictions.

 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
A knowledge of matter, energy, life, time and space, mind-bogglingly deeper than we have now.


Although we've more to learn and understand, how much 'deeper' can it get? It seems we understand quite a lot, so on what basis, other than speculation, can you say we can go "mind-bogglingly deeper."

When I say some 'other way' of knowing I mean are you suggesting we must move beyond what our current epistemology and science allows, and turn to 'something else'?
Basically not, I'm just all for recognizing and scientifically following other sources, than just a mechanic rote or a guesswork. For example, the famous Einstein's work eventually known as E = M*C2 was created rather intuitively, without any evidence for it for years after it's formulation. We should not underestimate intuition. Also, we should check out some other things - like esoterics, for ideas of what the universe might be like. Expressed in scientific terms, it may form an useful hypotheses. Fortunately, we are becoming ready for that. Under the impression of changes in upcoming changes in all aspects of our lives, the science will improve also. I suggest a creation of a knowledge pool accessible to all, containing an useful science and technology. Know-how must not be withheld from any individual or nation. Currently, a technology is secreted away, if it would threaten the stability of market, or it is not profitable to innovate the products that way. The public pool of knowledge will speed up the scientific work immensely, this will be where a scientists may find a missing piece of puzzle into their work, found just recently by someone on the other side of the world, etc. Of course, such a thing must first come with a worldwide effort to remove hunger, extreme poverty and violent conflicts. It is the priority of our time, as Masters emphasizes all the time.

 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Not even by machines, for now,


Well if nothing can currently detect is (i.e. not human or machines) then how can you say anything about it, including that it even exists? To speak of it entails you have some knowledge of it, and therefore some way to know about it.
Again, it is a question of a degree. Some humans and some machines can detect the fine-material phenomena, less or more, it depends on them individually.

 
Topher wrote:

Luminon wrote:
These are technical questions. As I mentioned, the finer-than-material forms of matter


What does it even mean to say "finer-than-material forms of matter"? If it is matter, then it it makes little difference as to how 'fine' it is: it is still matter. Also, 'material' as I used it merely denotes all that substance that exists, so saying "finer-than-material forms of matter" make little sense since it denotes something other than material, when in fact what ever it is would entail materiality.
I don't know if it's scientifically sensible, but it can be said so. All particles (and atoms) does vibrate. If the vibration is somewhat relatively higher, the matter looks like it wouldn't be there at all. The atoms are basically empty, there is a plenty of space for them to co-exist, being too different in vibration than to interact at all. They are material among other atoms of the same or similar vibration, but not among these of too high or too low vibration. A life form of frequency sufficiently higher than our solid-material would appear to us like a ghost, or better said, disappear. This effect of dematerialization can be achieved both by personal and technological means, but that's something I don't know anything about.


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
are arranged in such a way that they form a spectrum, with such a "levels". We, humans live on several such a levels simultaneously, but if we are unevolved, we are not aware of it.


How do you know this?
The theory says so and it was then confirmed in practice by our group and me.

Topher wrote:
 
Luminon wrote:
They know because they know because they know. Such is a nature of intuition. And then, ocassionally, they verify it in practice, so they see that it works.


So they just know... ??!!

I do not want to hear that they intuitively think it exists, I want to know the empirical evidence they have for thinking it exists, and you have still not presented it.
Here I begun to be very sleepy and thus not so patient with writing, just like now. The evidence tends to be a consensus of life experience, followed by the life experience of other people somehow following a similar or identic pattern, and also an ocassional significant events. It's various, but reliable enough. I already described an example if you look up again the 'trials of the soul'.


Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Here I would recommend you to study a set theory. There are sets, sub-sets, and so on. One set can contain a several of items... etc.


Even if something belongs as a sub-set of something else, it still follows that there is a distinction; a difference. If there isn't then you're speaking of exactly the same thing, which is what you implied when you maintained that there was no difference between god, humanity and nature. If alternatively you think there is a distinction between the three, can you tell us what it is.
Again, it is a question of a degree. For me, these are a centers where a different divine qualities are being developed and expressed, but they all have the same origin and the same goal in which they eventually unify together. Between the beginning and the end, there is the body of this universe's cycle characteristic with many differences, but I should not forget that this is all a manifestation of one underlying principle. It can be interpreted in correct human relationships, as the sentence "I am as God as you".
 

Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
Topher wrote:
Luminon wrote:
God is not an old man spying on us from the upstairs, it's a sum of all energy of the universe and a sum of the laws governing that energy.


How do you know this?


It's a quote from one esotericist and my intuition confirms it.


So your own internal intuition confirms a specific aspect of 'something' that is not only external to your self, but also external to nature?! How exactly does you intuition do this, and how do you know it is valid? Are you aware of just how faulty our intuition is?
Here I became even more sleepy, and thus hasty to get to bed quickly. Like now. So, the important fact about this whole god-nature-humanity thing is, that it is BOTH internal and external, immanent and transcendent. We can theoretically know this, because we are it. Self-knowledge is the path to divinity. I know that this is a mystical stuff, but it is also esoterically correct. There are technical details like Monad, which is the highest part of human being, it powers the whole thing and it also maintains a being's an authentic divinity, so our mystical talk is technically still corect. As for my own experience, the monadic energy is very powerful, very fiery, and mostly not available to unevolved humans like me, except perhaps of rare ocassions.
As for the intuition, it is characteristic by it's inherent correctness. The problem is that we tend to mistake illusions and desires for intuition, it requires to purify the mind and character before it becomes really recognizable. We may act according to intuition and then we can see if the result is correct, and thus we develop our intuition and judgement.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


Nordmann
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Topher, you're talking to

Topher, you're talking to one seriously fucked up person here.

 

You can see the unintentional irony in the pile of shit you've just got as an "answer". I can see it. I have no doubt the proverbial dog in the street can see it. But luminom never will.

 

Stop fucking with his brain. It's under enough attack as it is.

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy


deludedgod
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Quote:For example, the

Quote:

For example, the relatively recent discoveries of quantum mechanics are similar to ancient notions of world illusion, called maya.

Quantum mechanics was discovered 100 years ago! Anyway, I have sat, thoroughly unimpressed, through people who gibber on about the ancient philosophical wisdom which is verified by "quantum mechanics". In such a discussion, you can always tell who the physicists are: They're the ones rolling their eyes. Because they know, first of all, that no one actually understands quantum mechanics on a philosophical level. People get very excited about the prospect of sitting around, smoking dope and discussing the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. But as a discipline of physics, quantum mechanics is something you have to be able to do. And the people who can do it are the ones who understand that no one understands it. The great Feynman himself pointed that out! I can do quantum mechanics. I know how to use Bessel functions and solve boundary value problems for a quantum system, how to compute probability flux or the expectation values of a system. But I don't claim to be able to understand quantum mechanics philosophically. You see the irony here? People who can do it know that they don't understand it and people who can't do it think that they understand it!

Quote:

It means to cooperate with more evolved human beings.

This doesn't mean anything.

Quote:

he matter of body is being gradually replaced by a matter, which, if seen occultly, does radiate light.

Humans, like every other black body at the Earth's temperature, do emit photons. They're just IR, as per the Wein displacement law, which is why you can't see them (and even if you could detect IR, the black-body curve ensures the intensity is so low that they would be undetectable anyway). That was discovered over 100 years ago! How can you possibly bandy about ridiculously, trumpeting your supposed vast stores of knowledge hitherto untapped by scientific investigation, when you haven't yourself kept pace with real discoveries, even those that occurred over a century ago!

Quote:

I'm just all for recognizing and scientifically following other sources, than just a mechanic rote or a guesswork. For example, the famous Einstein's work eventually known as E = M*C2 was created rather intuitively, without any evidence for it for years after it's formulation.

I beg your pardon?? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You can read Einstein's original paper (translated from German) in which he deduces the mass-energy equivalence from the first principle of special relativity and the Maxwell equations:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/

This paper was published in 1905. The same year of Einstein's formulation of mass-energy equivalence.

Quote:

If I remember, DG spoke of three fundamental principles in the universe, and so are the three rays of Aspect.

What? Please. Never ever put words in my mouth again. I said that at present, due to the lack of a completed unified field theory, there are three fundamental forces in the universe. Strong force, electroweak and gravity. The electroweak force, by the way, used to be three: Magnetism, electricty and the weak nuclear force. But two successive unified field theories swept that away. Maxwell presented the first gauge theory of electrodynamics which you can read about here:

Relative Motion in Electrodynamics

And Weinberg, Glashow and Salam presented the electroweak gauge theory in 1967. Those three forces becoming one was a consequence of two successive unified field theories.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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Luminon wrote:Solid, liquid

Luminon wrote:
Solid, liquid and gaseous. There are four more states of matter, finer than gas. They are called etheric, still invisible to us, and there are life forms based on them. I know that for sure, because I am partially aware of the etheric world. It is tangible for me, and I'm not the only one, otherwise my opinion wouldn't be better than anyone else's

What elements can change into the etheric state, and at what temperature does this occur? Why haven't scientists discovered this yet?How can we perceive or measure matter in the etheric state? What life forms are based on the etheric state? How do they stay alive i.e. what methods do they use to acquire energy, photosynthesis? Why are they invisible to us? You claim that they are tangible to you. What do they look like? Do they have any distinguishable effects on their surroundings? If so, what? 

 

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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Luminon, seriously. We've

Luminon, seriously. We've gone way beyond crazy town, here. Thinking maybe there might be something science hasn't discovered that will be slightly different than what we previously though is one thing. This esoteric "I know for sure there's bio-energy" thing is just making stuff up.

deludedgod wrote:
Quantum mechanics was discovered 100 years ago! Anyway, I have sat, thoroughly unimpressed, through people who gibber on about the ancient philosophical wisdom which is verified by "quantum mechanics". In such a discussion, you can always tell who the physicists are: They're the ones rolling their eyes.

Thank you! Well put.

deludedgod wrote:
Because they know, first of all, that no one actually understands quantum mechanics on a philosophical level.

This is the biggest problem that I have with discussions about quantum mechanics. The people who have done the math have this simple, pragmatic view about it, with the occasional comment like, "oh, that's weird, isn't it?" to the other guys who have done the math. All of a sudden, someone who hasn't done the math overhears that, and decides it's philosophy. Now it relates to a mystical principal that Plato came up with (or any of the Eastern modes of philosophy that say the same damn thing).

"Oh, that mean's we're in Shiva's dream"

"It's proof of the immaterial"

...

To which the scientist can only shake his or her head. Honestly, we were just doing math a second ago, and then people started banging tambourines and it got all rama rama ding ding in here.

It is the greatest testament to the scientific community that they didn't hide quantum mechanics. I'm totally serious. If the scientific community was really a big conspiracy to hide things that were inconvenient to them, they would have hid everything about quantum mechanics that turned out to be true. Who would want to hear amateurs go on and on about something they can't even do? That's like being a professional athlete without the paycheque!

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deludedgod wrote:Quantum

deludedgod wrote:

Quantum mechanics was discovered 100 years ago! Anyway, I have sat, thoroughly unimpressed, through people who gibber on about the ancient philosophical wisdom which is verified by "quantum mechanics". In such a discussion, you can always tell who the physicists are: They're the ones rolling their eyes. Because they know, first of all, that no one actually understands quantum mechanics on a philosophical level. People get very excited about the prospect of sitting around, smoking dope and discussing the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. But as a discipline of physics, quantum mechanics is something you have to be able to do. And the people who can do it are the ones who understand that no one understands it. The great Feynman himself pointed that out! I can do quantum mechanics. I know how to use Bessel functions and solve boundary value problems for a quantum system, how to compute probability flux or the expectation values of a system. But I don't claim to be able to understand quantum mechanics philosophically. You see the irony here? People who can do it know that they don't understand it and people who can't do it think that they understand it!

It seems that quantum mechanics was sort of re-discovered recently by the general public, including the pot-smoking philosophers... It is like time's spi- eh, zeit- uhm, I mean, the cultural atmosphere of this time, that people starts to put these things into connection.
You are probably always ready denounce all the scientists who appeared in films like What the BLEEP do we know 2 and say that the equations they've had written on backboards in background weren't theirs. But to me, they seem like people who can do both, the quantum mechanics itself and understand it philosophically.

deludedgod wrote:
Quote:
It means to cooperate with more evolved human beings.
This doesn't mean anything.

Of course it does - don't we all want to meet some great teacher and to learn from him or her?

deludedgod wrote:
Quote:
The matter of body is being gradually replaced by a matter, which, if seen occultly, does radiate light.
Humans, like every other black body at the Earth's temperature, do emit photons. They're just IR, as per the Wein displacement law, which is why you can't see them (and even if you could detect IR, the black-body curve ensures the intensity is so low that they would be undetectable anyway). That was discovered over 100 years ago! How can you possibly bandy about ridiculously, trumpeting your supposed vast stores of knowledge hitherto untapped by scientific investigation, when you haven't yourself kept pace with real discoveries, even those that occurred over a century ago!
Do you know what it means to 'look at someone occultly'? It's seeing that person's aura and chakras, it's a visual evaluation of how much he or she shines. There are people who ocassionally shines like that even visibly to a common person, but they're rare, I have seen only photographs. (or a video, recently) I have no idea if it has anything in common with things like ultra-weak photon emission on cellular level or the black body radiation as you say. That would need an investigation.

 

deludedgod wrote:

I beg your pardon?? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You can read Einstein's original paper (translated from German) in which he deduces the mass-energy equivalence from the first principle of special relativity and the Maxwell equations:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/

This paper was published in 1905. The same year of Einstein's formulation of mass-energy equivalence.

So where did I read that it took 7 years to be proven?  All right, pardon me, please. That was probably a result of the sleep deprivation.

 

deludedgod wrote:
 
Quote:

If I remember, DG spoke of three fundamental principles in the universe, and so are the three rays of Aspect.

What? Please. Never ever put words in my mouth again. I said that at present, due to the lack of a completed unified field theory, there are three fundamental forces in the universe. Strong force, electroweak and gravity. The electroweak force, by the way, used to be three: Magnetism, electricty and the weak nuclear force. But two successive unified field theories swept that away. Maxwell presented the first gauge theory of electrodynamics which you can read about here:

Relative Motion in Electrodynamics

And Weinberg, Glashow and Salam presented the electroweak gauge theory in 1967. Those three forces becoming one was a consequence of two successive unified field theories.

So the answer is, that I didn't remember. I was trying hard to get the damn post already finished, so I can go to sleep.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how this is any less mystical. I mean no offense, but are you a person who has a hard time believing Christians that their god is a three-in-one package? (a rhetoric question) Of course there's a difference that the scientific theories are real, but... one can't help but to see parallels. Actually, the parallels are very insistent, almost irresistible.

***********************************
Well, that's an awful lot of text again.
butterbattle wrote:

What elements can change into the etheric state, and at what temperature does this occur? Why haven't scientists discovered this yet?How can we perceive or measure matter in the etheric state? What life forms are based on the etheric state? How do they stay alive i.e. what methods do they use to acquire energy, photosynthesis? Why are they invisible to us? You claim that they are tangible to you. What do they look like? Do they have any distinguishable effects on their surroundings? If so, what? 

1) Presuming from such a transformations back or forth I heard of, (metallic, edible and even living objects) there seems to be no limitation for the elements. After all, it's still within physical world, not really a far leap in frequency, just a small one. It is also not a problem of temperature. Temperature is a kinetic energy of atoms, but the vibration I mean is rather an inner property of the atoms themselves, which they can have independently on temperature. And yet, for some reason, esotericists keeps equating the solid, liquid and gaseous with the first three "frequencies".
2) I am not a scientist so I don't know exactly. Probably because there is very little of etheric and dense interaction and none visible by naked eye. I believe this is also a question of time and a development of technology, it's succession. First a simple technology is invented, then the more complicated.

3) One of the most significant traits in esoteric notion of energy (and matter, under certain circumstances) is, that it is responsive to thought. If you want to make your consciousness include the etheric world for at least a bit, you must make it, by your effort. This means a concentration, visualization, mental exercises, and so on. This ability is usually just not awakened and may awake sooner or later through a correct kind of meditation, for example. (the one which I do works for people)  As for the measurement, (or so far, only detection) you can look at some youtube videos like this one. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence, what's happening there.
4) What life forms? My information is, that etheric world is very similar to this one. With higher "octaves", like astral or manasic there are huge differences, but etheric life reputedly gets born, eats, gets old and dies. Maybe the entropy is lower and life span is somewhat higher. What life forms again? We can expect less or more an ecosystem similar to ours, including humans, our neighbours, or Space Brothers, as they are called. We see them on our skies in massive numbers and their art on our crops, recognizable by molten, not bent stems and a presence of microscopic metallic globes in the soil, regularly dispersed.
5) Why they are invisible? Already answered, by a different vibratory rate of their atoms. However, their technology allows their spacecrafts to appear visibly, become solid so they appear on radar , and then disappear instantly, by raising the vibration again. Often, the space craft is not visible, except on a photograph. (works with digital camera as well)
6) It seems to me that what I regularly perceive is usually not the etheric world in general, but a sample of it's matter infused by my own energy, so it becomes almost like a part of myself for a while, or hours. But during meditation sessions we literally lend our chakras for technical purposes of someone else. (see: Masters) Our chakras are, with our permission, used for "stepping down" of higher energy on lower, which can be afterwards used for the betterment of humanity, otherwise hardly. This process is sometimes being supervised by at least one helpful guy. I don't know if he really looked like that, or if it was only my imperfect vision, but if I wouldn't be in a deep, calm meditating state, I would be probably scared, and later I indeed was, a little. A corny, lame drawings for ripping people off on nonsense usually contains angels (women in robes with bird wings). Well, I can say, this is not quite what should always be expected of a spiritual beings to look like. 
All right, hear my story. Who cares about an image anyway? My reputation can't probably be any worse Smiling

Besides our regular meditation group once per week, I meet with one or two members of that group on another day, for a shorter, separate meditation in a tearoom in a near city. So I meditated, with closed eyes, of course. It's necessary to say, that it meditation is about receiving and stepping down of high energies. This in result may have a certain visual, tactile and auditory characteristic effects, caused by flowing energy through our etheric body, but they're rather an abstract feelings. These feelings are anyway in minority, mostly it's dark, without vision.  So on that evening, I was sitting in the meditation. Suddenly, I had a vision of some being approaching me. It looked like a humanoid figure in a black or dark grey cape, but where the face should be, there was an oval, very intensely shining in blue color, like an electric spark. It was quite a sinister thing indeed. The being bent forward to me and I felt it's closeness like if I'd bring my facial hairs to a statically charged screen. "He probably has something to do here so I'll let him do his job and I'll continue in doing mine," I thought. The being reached out it's hand towards me. The hand reached my left side, under my arm, on the ribs, as I felt. Next, the 'hand' did a quick sequence of scratching-like gestures, finished by a longer, horizontal 'scratch' along my rib. Then the being rose up and went away from my vision. As I continued in meditation, I felt a long surge of energy on the left side of my body.

When we finished the meditation, I mentioned this 'visit' to my colleague (an older woman). She said she did not see anyone, but she felt something approaching to her, as I said. Do you know that feeling like someone's proverbially breathing on your neck? A bit like that, I guess.
Now the interesting part. As those of you good at anatomy know, the place on my body I described is the location of a spleen, which I wasn't aware of at the moment. About a month later, my mother did an esoteric semminary for our friends at our home. There I found out, that esoteric theory says, that the spleen is responsible for dissolving the etheric energy (prana) into a blood, so it's carried around the body into cells. When the spleen is cut out, it's etheric counterpart continues to function a little, but a part of it's function is taken over by solar plexus chakra and it's not a 100% job anymore. My mother then continued in lecture with an interesting information. She mentioned kinesiology. She said, that sometimes on a kinesiologic* session the energy flow through the spleen must be adjusted like ...that and she repeated the same scratching-like gesture as I saw before, in the meditation. Holy shit, I thought, so that wasn't a hallucination... I also suspect that someone or something like that tingles me on my knee when I start dreaming instead of meditating as I should. They obviously want to keep their human convertors awake and focused, so the energy doesn't get wasted. Possibly, they are devas, which could explain their not so human appearance - as for my information, they are 'of infinite variety and colour'.

(* here kinesiology is a method of detecting a sub-conscious information by feeling a responses of a patient's muscle tension. I have seen it to work on a yes-no signal basis )

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Luminon, your shit-producing

Luminon, your shit-producing capacity has gone into diarrhoea mode. Please tell your parents to stop feeding you on the stuff. In fact, please leave your parents and get out into the real world. Live a bit. Get a girlfriend. Get some sense.

Get a life.

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 Luminon, words escape me.I

 Luminon, words escape me.

I think you need to move to a more populated region and discover the real world.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.


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Quote:I'm sorry, but I don't

Quote:

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how this is any less mystical. I mean no offense, but are you a person who has a hard time believing Christians that their god is a three-in-one package? (a rhetoric question) Of course there's a difference that the scientific theories are real, but... one can't help but to see parallels. Actually, the parallels are very insistent, almost irresistible.

What?

Hang on. I'm just going to step outside for a moment.

*Steps outside*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHA

HA

HA

*Steps back inside*

Nordmann has been proven right again, for the umpteenth time. This is absurdity beyond all measure. What did I say? I said there are three seperate forces in the universe. Not "three forces in one". Nowhere did I say anything "mystical". I said something quite precise. There are three fundamental forces in the universe. THREE. Not "three in one". Sorry to repeat myself, but this is necessary to impart. I said that we should be able to unify the three forces under a unified field theory, and demonstrate they are all the same. Once we do that then we have ONE. Not "one in three" or "three in one" just ONE, understand? We have already gone through several unified field theories in which electricity and magnetism were shown to be the same thing, and then electromagnetism and light were shown to to be the same thing, and then electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were shown to be the same thing. If you are seriously drawing parallels between this exhaustive and rigorous process of forming a unified field theory (the unified field theories arguably represent the greatest intellectual achievements in the history of physics) and some mystical, theological nonsense, then your brain damage is such that it is beyond my ability to dissuade you from your delusion.

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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deludedgod wrote:Quote:I'm

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how this is any less mystical. I mean no offense, but are you a person who has a hard time believing Christians that their god is a three-in-one package? (a rhetoric question) Of course there's a difference that the scientific theories are real, but... one can't help but to see parallels. Actually, the parallels are very insistent, almost irresistible.

What?

Hang on. I'm just going to step outside for a moment.

*Steps outside*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHA

HA

HA

*Steps back inside*

Nordmann has been proven right again, for the umpteenth time. This is absurdity beyond all measure. What did I say? I said there are three seperate forces in the universe. Not "three forces in one". Nowhere did I say anything "mystical". I said something quite precise. There are three fundamental forces in the universe. THREE. Not "three in one". Sorry to repeat myself, but this is necessary to impart. I said that we should be able to unify the three forces under a unified field theory, and demonstrate they are all the same. Once we do that then we have ONE. Not "one in three" or "three in one" just ONE, understand? We have already gone through several unified field theories in which electricity and magnetism were shown to be the same thing, and then electromagnetism and light were shown to to be the same thing, and then electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were shown to be the same thing. If you are seriously drawing parallels between this exhaustive and rigorous process of forming a unified field theory (the unified field theories arguably represent the greatest intellectual achievements in the history of physics) and some mystical, theological nonsense, then your brain damage is such that it is beyond my ability to dissuade you from your delusion.

 

I can't help but be grateful that Lum has taken a lot of the pressure off of me in this thread. I haven't been reading all the comments, I haven't had time, so I don't know if they're valid or not.

And I made my personal peace with you, I stand by that, but really. This is why I got a bad first impression of you. You might not agree with him and think he's talking out his asshole, but being condescending with all the laughing does nothing but put people on the defensive. It's completely unproductive. It's also kind of unnecessary if you really are as knowledgeable as everyone says. If that's the case, then you should have no reason to mock him, because your own sense of self-esteem wouldn't require that kind of boost. Educating people is a skill unto itself.

I'm not referring to the substance of what you say, which I'm sure is sound in its own way, but to the method by which you deliver it.

R


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The thing you've got to keep

The thing you've got to keep in mind ( you've not been here for very long, but if you look around, you'll find out what we mean) is that we've had this conversation with him over and over and over again, over many months and many threads. The ridicule he finds himself on the recieving end from many members (Nordmann is far more acerbic towards him than I) is a consequence of exasperation, not condescension. Actually, I suppose his ability to take such constant ridicule and still continue is commendable.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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deludedgod wrote:The thing

deludedgod wrote:

The thing you've got to keep in mind ( you've not been here for very long, but if you look around, you'll find out what we mean) is that we've had this conversation with him over and over and over again, over many months and many threads. The ridicule he finds himself on the recieving end from many members (Nordmann is far more acerbic towards him than I) is a consequence of exasperation, not condescension. Actually, I suppose his ability to take such constant ridicule and still continue is commendable.

Okay, I didn't realize I'd stumbled into an ongoing feud. Sorry my post helped fuel those fires.

R


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smartypants wrote:Okay, I

smartypants wrote:

Okay, I didn't realize I'd stumbled into an ongoing feud. Sorry my post helped fuel those fires.

It didn't, really. Luminon is a veritable font of nonsensical ramblings about chakras or auras or cosmic whatsits. Pretty much anything can trigger a post wherein he describes his magical powers.

Now me, I'm a levitating psychic who speaks to the dead. If you believe that, I have some land you might be interested in.

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I might be acerbic - but I'm

I might be acerbic - but I'm the only one who gives the fool consistently good advice.

 

The guy has a perspective on reality akin to an amoeba in the bottom of a well, and that is not entirely his fault, judging by the details he has afforded the rest of us of his background. But if an amoeba can get it together to log on to the internet on occasion it can then at least go walkies before it opines on life again.

 

However there is also a more immediate and practical problem presented by luminon in terms of this site's effectiveness as a medium for debate. In regularly monopolising the attention and time of other contributors (whether he means to do so or not) he serves as a major distraction from the discussion of more apposite topics relevant to the primary issue with which this site is supposedly concerned. He also provides a convenient avenue of false reassurance for browsing theists who, upon reading his contributions, can console themselves with the knowledge that their own delusions are petty compared to his. Theists are conditioned to interpret this as validation for their own mistaken views.

 

Worse, and this has also been evidenced by theists' contributions in the past, they regularly interpret the committed and intelligent responses which he habitually garners from others as evidence that the sites' more intelligent contributors cannot distinguish between luminon's bullshit and what the theists consider as their own reasonably held views. This leads to two negative results; potential debaters who do not wish to be treated as total fools decline to contribute, and those who consider themselves self-appointed disseminators and defenders of religious delusional beliefs are content to see a site like this tied up arguing off-topic matters with obvious fools.

 

Which is a shame, since one of this site's strengths is displayed on the occasions when such people choose to engage atheists here in polemic debate and are consistently defeated on logical grounds - surely the most effective manner of convincing others who are perhaps wavering in their illogical beliefs but uncertain how a strict application of logic and rationality will benefit them greater than perseverence in the opposite. Witnessing theology being exposed as a sham is a crucial formative step in the construction of a philosophy grounded in reality, and the debates engendered all too often by luminon and his ilk do not produce it. The cynical and shrewd theists recognise this, and are more than content to let it continue without interference.

 

Luminon is therefore the quintessential example of the "white noise" which, in a rhetorical sense, stifles debate not by addressing the issues but by drowning out the conversation.

 

His mistakes (and they are legion) have long ago been identified, addressed and rebutted by this site's more intelligent and committed contributors. All subsequent interference from this source should now be regarded as at best, unwelcome dilution of the site's effectiveness, and at worst, sabotage of the site.

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Quote:I might be acerbicI

Quote:

I might be acerbic

I never disparaged it. I agree wholeheartedly with the approach. I was merely pointing out a fact.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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deludedgod wrote:Quote:I

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

I might be acerbic

I never disparaged it. I agree wholeheartedly with the approach. I was merely pointing out a fact.

The acerbic style also makes what would otherwise be an unfortunate talking-to entertaining.

For the record, my only real objection to Luminon's approach is talking about the limits of scientific knowledge without attaining enough scientific knowledge to know what those limits really are. It's my chief objection to pretty much any assertions along those lines.

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All right, I spare this

All right, I spare this topic of my hobbies. And there's some evidence I plan to post separately. Will the General conversation section be good enough for some news from the world?

Nordmann wrote:

His mistakes (and they are legion) have long ago been identified, addressed and rebutted by this site's more intelligent and committed contributors. All subsequent interference from this source should now be regarded as at best, unwelcome dilution of the site's effectiveness, and at worst, sabotage of the site.

Hmm... I thought it's not that bad, I usually avoid the discussions with theists, letting the Bible experts do their job.

In fact, I'm not a lone deranger. There's a worldwide community of such a people like me, of which I am a member. We have many common people among us, some with university degrees, well ran business (things like engineering or IT), or jobs like a teacher, nurse, neurologist, (I'm not kidding) and so on. That's us, our living room group, reputedly there's about 2 millions of us globally. I mean the specific, organized group, but there are millions of others, who shares the certitude which comes from experience, that there is more to reality, than meets the normal eye. I'm just the one on a special self-imposed mission of "first contact" with the species of skeptics. So far, there had been little of success. Only in the future there seems to be a hope, that someone greater and wiser than me will bring the good will.

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Luminon wrote:In fact, I'm

Luminon wrote:


In fact, I'm not a lone deranger. There's a worldwide community of such a people like me

Yes, and I think I've worked with some of your comrades.

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


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HisWillness wrote:deludedgod

HisWillness wrote:

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

I might be acerbic

I never disparaged it. I agree wholeheartedly with the approach. I was merely pointing out a fact.

The acerbic style also makes what would otherwise be an unfortunate talking-to entertaining.

For the record, my only real objection to Luminon's approach is talking about the limits of scientific knowledge without attaining enough scientific knowledge to know what those limits really are. It's my chief objection to pretty much any assertions along those lines.

Completely off-topic, but this avatar is much more attractive. The last one made you look like a pervert from 1986. Not that there's anything wrong with mid-80s perverts of course. But now you just look like an asshole who likes his ice cream, which is much better. 

=)

R


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smartypants wrote:But now

smartypants wrote:

But now you just look like an asshole who likes his ice cream, which is much better. 

Hey, I am an asshole who likes ice cream! I had no idea it was such an accurate depiction!

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HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

smartypants wrote:

But now you just look like an asshole who likes his ice cream, which is much better. 

Hey, I am an asshole who likes ice cream! I had no idea it was such an accurate depiction!

LOL! Go with it. I don't doubt there are hoards of folks into assholes and ice-cream. In fact, I could probably introduce you to a few. You might find yourself in some uncomfortably chilly situations, though.

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todangst wrote:Luminon

todangst wrote:

Luminon wrote:

In fact, I'm not a lone deranger. There's a worldwide community of such a people like me

Yes, and I think I've worked with some of your comrades.

Are you a mental health care provider?

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fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


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smartypants wrote:LOL! Go

smartypants wrote:

LOL! Go with it. I don't doubt there are hoards of folks into assholes and ice-cream. In fact, I could probably introduce you to a few. You might find yourself in some uncomfortably chilly situations, though.

That's starting to look more like the earlier discussion about anime elsewhere on this site. That's some bizarre shit.

Anyway, uh ... still believe in magic?

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


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Quote:Are you a mental

Quote:

Are you a mental health care provider?

Todangst is a psychologist. Also, although he hasn't been here for a while, he's pretty much the smartest guy on the forum.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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deludedgod wrote:Quote:Are

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

Are you a mental health care provider?

Todangst is a psychologist.

That would be a yes.

deludedgod wrote:
Also, although he hasn't been here for a while, he's pretty much the smartest guy on the forum.

I'm inclined to believe the same.

(Just don't tell him -- he'll get all uppity.)

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


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HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

smartypants wrote:

LOL! Go with it. I don't doubt there are hoards of folks into assholes and ice-cream. In fact, I could probably introduce you to a few. You might find yourself in some uncomfortably chilly situations, though.

That's starting to look more like the earlier discussion about anime elsewhere on this site. That's some bizarre shit.

Anyway, uh ... still believe in magic?

LOL What I consider magical, no. Some of what you presumably consider magical, possibly yes. 

I honestly wasn't expecting to be grouped with the Crazies in here, but if that's the way it has to be, then so be it. I can handle that.

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smartypants wrote:I honestly

smartypants wrote:

I honestly wasn't expecting to be grouped with the Crazies in here, but if that's the way it has to be, then so be it. I can handle that.

I somehow doubt you're on the crazy end of the scale. You may have not been introduced to the depth of information that making a decision may require in certain cases, but that's hardly crazy.

For instance, two well-known psychological mechanisms to look out for are confirmation bias and magical thinking. Confirmation bias is when you notice when your hypothesis is confirmed, but not when it isn't. This happens to us more than we tend to believe until it's shown to us unequivocally (and embarrassingly). Magical thinking is a throwback to an infantile stage where we believe that our thoughts can effect change in the external world. Adults are prone to believing this in several guises, including "manifesting" things, recently made popular by "The Secret", and believing that our intentions can change the cards drawn from a pack or the number rolled on dice.

Human beings fall prey to their own mechanisms all the time, and there are tons of ways in which we fool ourselves. Knowing that, it's easier to have a bit of skepticism about claims which take advantage of one or more of those mechanisms, for example "cold reading" or astrology (as rather extreme examples).

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


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HisWillness wrote:Pretty

HisWillness wrote:

Pretty much anything can trigger a post wherein he describes his magical powers.

Now me, I'm a levitating psychic who speaks to the dead. If you believe that, I have some land you might be interested in.

 

WOOHOO!

*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*

"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby


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Luminon wrote:1) Presuming

Luminon wrote:
1) Presuming from such a transformations back or forth I heard of, (metallic, edible and even living objects) there seems to be no limitation for the elements. After all, it's still within physical world, not really a far leap in frequency, just a small one. It is also not a problem of temperature. Temperature is a kinetic energy of atoms, but the vibration I mean is rather an inner property of the atoms themselves, which they can have independently on temperature. And yet, for some reason, esotericists keeps equating the solid, liquid and gaseous with the first three "frequencies".

2) I am not a scientist so I don't know exactly. Probably because there is very little of etheric and dense interaction and none visible by naked eye. I believe this is also a question of time and a development of technology, it's succession. First a simple technology is invented, then the more complicated.

3) One of the most significant traits in esoteric notion of energy (and matter, under certain circumstances) is, that it is responsive to thought. If you want to make your consciousness include the etheric world for at least a bit, you must make it, by your effort. This means a concentration, visualization, mental exercises, and so on. This ability is usually just not awakened and may awake sooner or later through a correct kind of meditation, for example. (the one which I do works for people)  As for the measurement, (or so far, only detection) you can look at some youtube videos like this one. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence, what's happening there.
4) What life forms? My information is, that etheric world is very similar to this one. With higher "octaves", like astral or manasic there are huge differences, but etheric life reputedly gets born, eats, gets old and dies. Maybe the entropy is lower and life span is somewhat higher. What life forms again? We can expect less or more an ecosystem similar to ours, including humans, our neighbours, or Space Brothers, as they are called. We see them on our skies in massive numbers and their art on our crops, recognizable by molten, not bent stems and a presence of microscopic metallic globes in the soil, regularly dispersed.
5) Why they are invisible? Already answered, by a different vibratory rate of their atoms. However, their technology allows their spacecrafts to appear visibly, become solid so they appear on radar , and then disappear instantly, by raising the vibration again. Often, the space craft is not visible, except on a photograph. (works with digital camera as well)
6) It seems to me that what I regularly perceive is usually not the etheric world in general, but a sample of it's matter infused by my own energy, so it becomes almost like a part of myself for a while, or hours. But during meditation sessions we literally lend our chakras for technical purposes of someone else. (see: Masters) Our chakras are, with our permission, used for "stepping down" of higher energy on lower, which can be afterwards used for the betterment of humanity, otherwise hardly. This process is sometimes being supervised by at least one helpful guy. I don't know if he really looked like that, or if it was only my imperfect vision, but if I wouldn't be in a deep, calm meditating state, I would be probably scared, and later I indeed was, a little. A corny, lame drawings for ripping people off on nonsense usually contains angels (women in robes with bird wings). Well, I can say, this is not quite what should always be expected of a spiritual beings to look like. 

Ugh, I can't say I'm satisfied with your responses, but thanks for answering.

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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peppermint wrote:This, right

peppermint wrote:

This, right here, is why it's obviously nothing to do with magic, and everything to do with getting women into bed.

"No, baby, it's your heart chakra ... yeah, do you feel that? Your heart chakra is blocked. I'm going to have to massage that whole area. We'll have to check your root chakra. They're connected. I, uh, went to school for this."

The bigger the lie ...

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence