Perhaps someday the fields now being pioneered by todays geniuses will be as accessable to the general population as da Vinci's ideas are to the population of today.
Hopefully the designs will only seem as absurd as some of da Vinci's because of new progress:)
My point was that people who have used anaesthetics and hallucinogens recreationally would be more likely to recognize 'near death' experiences as drug-induced mental confusion, and so would be less likely to report them as near-death experience.
Therefore, the people who do report near-death experiances would most likely not have been users of such drugs, or perhaps had only used them in the distant past and have forgotten how vivid the experiences can be.
My inital research on Feyerabend reveals that he has some interesting points, however, so far they seem to be aimed more at debunking the popular idea of what science is than what it really is.
He seems to think that scientists think themselves alone in discovering truths about the world, and that science ignores myths and legend and all ancient knowledge, and would stamp them out without even examining them (to paraphrase him). Perhaps I was just taught differently, or have discovered for myself some small part of what he is saying, but this is not at all what I understand science to be.
To me, 'science' is simply the latest and best refinement of the method by which we gain knowledge about the world around us. It claims nothing and is simply a tool that can be used or misused by people.
Anyway, I'll investigate further, perhaps there will be some more enlightening bits in his writings.
You appear to be claiming that your knowledge of your own existence disproves the statement that reason is the only means by which man can gain knowledge.
If this is indeed what you are claiming, I don't see the connection. You are probably using reason in some capacity to arrive at the knowledge that you exist, likely something along the lines of 'If I can think, then I must exist'. I will agree that one can be quite certain of ones own existence, I don't see how this can be used to disprove the proposition.
You are also asserting that because people do not currently know how to determine that something is self-aware (be that thing human or otherwise), that 'science' is incapable of revealing this knowledge. What you are pointing out is simply human ignorance of the way conciousness works, which has no bearing on the validity of an philosophy that claims reason as the sole method of gaining knowledge.
While it may be true that humans with our intellectual capacity may not ever figure out how how to recognize various degrees of conciousness, I would be surprised if this was something that was, by its nature, unknowable through reason.
Unless said patient was deaf, I'm not impressed by his/her hearing things in the room.
Psycodelic effects can be very confusing to the mind. While in such a confused state the mind seems to grasp for explanations, and will often incorporate things that happen a bit later to explain earlier confusion. Often these connections occur with feelings of profound insight and strike one as being 'True'.
IMO this is one of the dangers of chronic usage of psycodelic drugs. Users tend to build up layers of bizzar 'insights', often interrelated and linked to cultural texts (such as the Tebitan Book of the Dead, a common reference in those groups).
Anyway, it is a facinating subject, it will be interesting to see how it develops in the future.
Quartz is silicon dioxide - it has no energy value or mineral nutrients in it. Quartz-eating bacteria?
The article didn't really say that the bacteria were actually digesting the quartz as food, just that they were able to colonize it. Perhaps they were drawing food from a coating on the window, or from elsewhere in the environment.
It's just a way of saying, "I don't believe that anything exists which transcends our ability to analyse scientifically"
I think its more of a practical statement than a statement of belief. I think the assumption is more along the line of 'Reason is the only process by which man can gain knowledge'. We ('scientismists') don't deny that there are things that are currently beyond our capability to analyse, but that is because our knowledge is currently incomplete and our power to reason is limited. Just as advanced mathmatics is closed to an imbecile, so are the more lofty subjects closed to even the most brilliant human.
While we could posit the existance of things that are unknowable through reason (even the reason of a superintelligent being), it does not make sense to do so, given the assumption of reason as the only process by which we can gain knowledge.
I'm not claiming that the assumption that man can only gain knowledge through reason is absolutely correct, just that so far it seems to be the best way we've found to gain useful knowledge (an analysis produced, of course, by reason itself). What one considers 'useful knowledge' is also debatable.
I also don't think that all reason occurs at a concious level. I think there are some reasoning skills 'hardwired' into our brains to allow us to learn basic skills required for life. Higher reasoning seems to me to be more 'software' based, where we conciously learn rules of math for instance, and must exaustively process them in order to reach a conclusion.
Perhaps the next step in conciousness will be to build this kind of reasoning into 'hardware' so that more time can be spent on creative processing with much less concious effort spent checking against the rules.
Grandparent post is correct. Nearly all near-death experiances sound very much like anesthetic/psycodelic experiances.
I'd be interested to see how many people who claimed near-death experiances have experiance with anesthetic and halluciogenic drugs. I'll bet very, very few.
I personally have had such experiances and found them to very closely match up with many near death descriptions, including a tunnel, bright lights, feelings of comfort and of having one or more close friends nearby or accompanying.
Thats an interesting position. If one is near death with very little chance of becoming a productive member of society, should one just go ahead and die?
The problem, I think, is that anyone who is wise enough to answer 'yes' is probably also wise enough that if they stuck around, they could at the very least contribute on-line as forum moderators or something similar that does not require much physical capability (particularly as brain-computer interfaces are improved).
And there are plenty of physically undamaged people who are not capable of answering this question truthfully.
I guess the question comes down to a question of resource usage. If I require an medical resources, is it resonable to think that the resources I provide back to society outweigh those of each of the other people also waiting for that same medical resource.
I think there was a Star Trek Voyager episode that addressed this. The Doc decided it was a dumb idea allocate medical resources based on the forseeable value of a person. I think I'd have to agree, mostly because I don't think there is any way to fairly make that grade. We've got a similar system already, in that the people contributing the most value tend to have the most money and can afford the best care.
Spain will most likely learn a painful lesson; they've just demonstrated that it only takes a couple bombs on a train track to derail the entire government. Our government was hit directly, the difference is we hit back
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Spain would have been a target if they didn't get involved with the whole thing. The US was attacked on home soil (very rare, and we like it that way), so a very strong response was made. If it had just been another embassy bombing or something it probably wouldn't have resulting in the occupation of two middle east countries.
I wonder if Irans leaders are feeling a little uncomfortable having so much US military power occuping two opposite borders?
I've never studies economics or sociology, so forgive me if I'm an ignorant fool, but its always seemed to me that as long as we are not experiancing large amounts of disease, drought or other reduction in the availability of natural resources, that economic slowdown is more a result of psycology than anything else.
As long as the money keeps moving and people keep producing, the economy should do pretty well. As soon as investors as a group loose confidence in 'the marketplace' and stop putting money in, things start to slow down and workers stop producing as much. Of course the economy is a complicated thing, but at its root are people who must work for each other to survive and make progress.
It would be interesting to see some analysis of the economy during times of recession or depression when the government has worked to eliminate the recession. I wonder how todays communication technology effects that cycle.
If the ground measurements are 0.34 degrees/decade, and the external measurements are 0.43 degrees/decade, then presumably the extra energy is contained within the circulating atmosphere.
Hmm, except according to the article its the ground temps that are increasing at 0.43 deg/decade.
I think 'unnatural' things and events are usually those things and events that are caused by human activity, particularly as related to technology.
Hydroelectric dams are unatural, the Great Wall is unnatural, huge areas of land cultivated with plants of highly uniform genetics are unnatural.
The fact that a thing is unnatural is not bad by most measures, but good and bad tend to be highly subjective. In the context of the environment good and bad relate mostly to the long-term impact of humanities activities. Bad things are things that disturb the ecology in ways that are not sustainable in the long term, such as reduction in genetic variety and depletion of topsoil.
These 'bad' things are acceptable in the short term, as long as they are properly managed. Take our current high rate of usage of fossle fuels. Its a bad thing in that it causes things like acid rain and perhaps contributes to global warming by disturbing the carbon cycle. However, the damage is probably not permanent and it was a necessary step to fuel the industrial age. Tempering the progess during that time with economy and efficency might have resulted in a different technological and social outcome. Now that we as a species have reached a new technological level, we may now be able to leave behind the unsustainable technology of the industrial revolution.
Related to your point about no one fully knowing what variables effect the system in what ways, I agree. That is one of the reasons why it is wise to try to keep our activities as low-impact as we can, and to keep a watch out for possible effects. I don't believe we all need to go live in yerts and become subsistance vegans, but we should make an effort to identify unsustainable resource usage and plan to keep it as short as we can without causing serious economic problems.
Wait.. So, the RIAA is going to help us block all their copyrighted content off the network... So all I'll get will be the stuff indy artists want to share, and I won't have to listed to RIAA music anymore...
Converting it to text is just a weak form of encryption. Any form of obfuscation that is used by very many people will be identified and the system will be modifed to handle it.
Even if encryption or some other difficult to identify transfer is used, there is still a gaping hole in the way p2p users seem to trust all other p2p users. I have no idea if the computer at the other end of a connection is just a regular guy or someone working for the RIAA.
Of course there are a lot more traders than there are enforcers, so if traders stick to their guns they'll win in the end, but thats not the way people usually behave. When the going gets tough, they'll probably scatter, but I hope I'm wrong.
We got hitched in a church [...] We then had a reception where we all got tipsy and silly. [...] I can't imagine having something that important in my life being tied to some crappy '70s TV show
So now you have something important in your life tied to some crappy, run-of-the-mill, just-like-everyone-elses event.
Great if thats what you want, different strokes for different folks.
Both my wife and I thought big weddings were dumb, particularly the kind where somebody has to spend thousands of dollars (screw the wedding, pops, buy us a house or something else useful).
The decision to be married is important, how you express it to others doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 insightful
:)
Perhaps someday the fields now being pioneered by todays geniuses will be as accessable to the general population as da Vinci's ideas are to the population of today.
Hopefully the designs will only seem as absurd as some of da Vinci's because of new progress
Thats what I've heard. So my question is why does the whirlpool in the sink always form going the same way 'round?
Is it the threads in the drain?
Both sides of my sink (connected via a 'T' pipe) spiral in the same direction, every time that I have taken note of the direction.
Certainly.
My point was that people who have used anaesthetics and hallucinogens recreationally would be more likely to recognize 'near death' experiences as drug-induced mental confusion, and so would be less likely to report them as near-death experience.
Therefore, the people who do report near-death experiances would most likely not have been users of such drugs, or perhaps had only used them in the distant past and have forgotten how vivid the experiences can be.
Thanks for the reference.
My inital research on Feyerabend reveals that he has some interesting points, however, so far they seem to be aimed more at debunking the popular idea of what science is than what it really is.
He seems to think that scientists think themselves alone in discovering truths about the world, and that science ignores myths and legend and all ancient knowledge, and would stamp them out without even examining them (to paraphrase him). Perhaps I was just taught differently, or have discovered for myself some small part of what he is saying, but this is not at all what I understand science to be.
To me, 'science' is simply the latest and best refinement of the method by which we gain knowledge about the world around us. It claims nothing and is simply a tool that can be used or misused by people.
Anyway, I'll investigate further, perhaps there will be some more enlightening bits in his writings.
You appear to be claiming that your knowledge of your own existence disproves the statement that reason is the only means by which man can gain knowledge.
If this is indeed what you are claiming, I don't see the connection. You are probably using reason in some capacity to arrive at the knowledge that you exist, likely something along the lines of 'If I can think, then I must exist'. I will agree that one can be quite certain of ones own existence, I don't see how this can be used to disprove the proposition.
You are also asserting that because people do not currently know how to determine that something is self-aware (be that thing human or otherwise), that 'science' is incapable of revealing this knowledge. What you are pointing out is simply human ignorance of the way conciousness works, which has no bearing on the validity of an philosophy that claims reason as the sole method of gaining knowledge.
While it may be true that humans with our intellectual capacity may not ever figure out how how to recognize various degrees of conciousness, I would be surprised if this was something that was, by its nature, unknowable through reason.
Unless said patient was deaf, I'm not impressed by his/her hearing things in the room.
Psycodelic effects can be very confusing to the mind. While in such a confused state the mind seems to grasp for explanations, and will often incorporate things that happen a bit later to explain earlier confusion. Often these connections occur with feelings of profound insight and strike one as being 'True'.
IMO this is one of the dangers of chronic usage of psycodelic drugs. Users tend to build up layers of bizzar 'insights', often interrelated and linked to cultural texts (such as the Tebitan Book of the Dead, a common reference in those groups).
Anyway, it is a facinating subject, it will be interesting to see how it develops in the future.
Quartz is silicon dioxide - it has no energy value or mineral nutrients in it. Quartz-eating bacteria?
The article didn't really say that the bacteria were actually digesting the quartz as food, just that they were able to colonize it. Perhaps they were drawing food from a coating on the window, or from elsewhere in the environment.
remember that social consensus doesn't dictate truth.
Sure it does. At least, thats what all my friends day.
It's just a way of saying, "I don't believe that anything exists which transcends our ability to analyse scientifically"
I think its more of a practical statement than a statement of belief. I think the assumption is more along the line of 'Reason is the only process by which man can gain knowledge'. We ('scientismists') don't deny that there are things that are currently beyond our capability to analyse, but that is because our knowledge is currently incomplete and our power to reason is limited. Just as advanced mathmatics is closed to an imbecile, so are the more lofty subjects closed to even the most brilliant human.
While we could posit the existance of things that are unknowable through reason (even the reason of a superintelligent being), it does not make sense to do so, given the assumption of reason as the only process by which we can gain knowledge.
I'm not claiming that the assumption that man can only gain knowledge through reason is absolutely correct, just that so far it seems to be the best way we've found to gain useful knowledge (an analysis produced, of course, by reason itself). What one considers 'useful knowledge' is also debatable.
I also don't think that all reason occurs at a concious level. I think there are some reasoning skills 'hardwired' into our brains to allow us to learn basic skills required for life. Higher reasoning seems to me to be more 'software' based, where we conciously learn rules of math for instance, and must exaustively process them in order to reach a conclusion.
Perhaps the next step in conciousness will be to build this kind of reasoning into 'hardware' so that more time can be spent on creative processing with much less concious effort spent checking against the rules.
Grandparent post is correct. Nearly all near-death experiances sound very much like anesthetic/psycodelic experiances.
I'd be interested to see how many people who claimed near-death experiances have experiance with anesthetic and halluciogenic drugs. I'll bet very, very few.
I personally have had such experiances and found them to very closely match up with many near death descriptions, including a tunnel, bright lights, feelings of comfort and of having one or more close friends nearby or accompanying.
Thats an interesting position. If one is near death with very little chance of becoming a productive member of society, should one just go ahead and die?
The problem, I think, is that anyone who is wise enough to answer 'yes' is probably also wise enough that if they stuck around, they could at the very least contribute on-line as forum moderators or something similar that does not require much physical capability (particularly as brain-computer interfaces are improved).
And there are plenty of physically undamaged people who are not capable of answering this question truthfully.
I guess the question comes down to a question of resource usage. If I require an medical resources, is it resonable to think that the resources I provide back to society outweigh those of each of the other people also waiting for that same medical resource.
I think there was a Star Trek Voyager episode that addressed this. The Doc decided it was a dumb idea allocate medical resources based on the forseeable value of a person. I think I'd have to agree, mostly because I don't think there is any way to fairly make that grade. We've got a similar system already, in that the people contributing the most value tend to have the most money and can afford the best care.
Spain will most likely learn a painful lesson; they've just demonstrated that it only takes a couple bombs on a train track to derail the entire government. Our government was hit directly, the difference is we hit back
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Spain would have been a target if they didn't get involved with the whole thing. The US was attacked on home soil (very rare, and we like it that way), so a very strong response was made. If it had just been another embassy bombing or something it probably wouldn't have resulting in the occupation of two middle east countries.
I wonder if Irans leaders are feeling a little uncomfortable having so much US military power occuping two opposite borders?
Ah, so its a vehicular arms race, everyone driving larger and larger vehicles until eventually a collision is MAS (matually assured squishing).
How about we all drive lighter cars so 3 ton SUV's won't squash us?
I've never studies economics or sociology, so forgive me if I'm an ignorant fool, but its always seemed to me that as long as we are not experiancing large amounts of disease, drought or other reduction in the availability of natural resources, that economic slowdown is more a result of psycology than anything else.
As long as the money keeps moving and people keep producing, the economy should do pretty well. As soon as investors as a group loose confidence in 'the marketplace' and stop putting money in, things start to slow down and workers stop producing as much. Of course the economy is a complicated thing, but at its root are people who must work for each other to survive and make progress.
It would be interesting to see some analysis of the economy during times of recession or depression when the government has worked to eliminate the recession. I wonder how todays communication technology effects that cycle.
Did he wear black slacks, a white shirt and a tie?
If the ground measurements are 0.34 degrees/decade, and the external measurements are 0.43 degrees/decade, then presumably the extra energy is contained within the circulating atmosphere.
Hmm, except according to the article its the ground temps that are increasing at 0.43 deg/decade.
I think 'unnatural' things and events are usually those things and events that are caused by human activity, particularly as related to technology.
Hydroelectric dams are unatural, the Great Wall is unnatural, huge areas of land cultivated with plants of highly uniform genetics are unnatural.
The fact that a thing is unnatural is not bad by most measures, but good and bad tend to be highly subjective. In the context of the environment good and bad relate mostly to the long-term impact of humanities activities. Bad things are things that disturb the ecology in ways that are not sustainable in the long term, such as reduction in genetic variety and depletion of topsoil.
These 'bad' things are acceptable in the short term, as long as they are properly managed. Take our current high rate of usage of fossle fuels. Its a bad thing in that it causes things like acid rain and perhaps contributes to global warming by disturbing the carbon cycle. However, the damage is probably not permanent and it was a necessary step to fuel the industrial age. Tempering the progess during that time with economy and efficency might have resulted in a different technological and social outcome. Now that we as a species have reached a new technological level, we may now be able to leave behind the unsustainable technology of the industrial revolution.
Related to your point about no one fully knowing what variables effect the system in what ways, I agree. That is one of the reasons why it is wise to try to keep our activities as low-impact as we can, and to keep a watch out for possible effects. I don't believe we all need to go live in yerts and become subsistance vegans, but we should make an effort to identify unsustainable resource usage and plan to keep it as short as we can without causing serious economic problems.
Wait.. So, the RIAA is going to help us block all their copyrighted content off the network... So all I'll get will be the stuff indy artists want to share, and I won't have to listed to RIAA music anymore...
Tell me again, how is this bad?
Converting it to text is just a weak form of encryption. Any form of obfuscation that is used by very many people will be identified and the system will be modifed to handle it.
Even if encryption or some other difficult to identify transfer is used, there is still a gaping hole in the way p2p users seem to trust all other p2p users. I have no idea if the computer at the other end of a connection is just a regular guy or someone working for the RIAA.
Of course there are a lot more traders than there are enforcers, so if traders stick to their guns they'll win in the end, but thats not the way people usually behave. When the going gets tough, they'll probably scatter, but I hope I'm wrong.
Little geek buddy, you're so cool, we gonna call you "cool-arrow"
We got hitched in a church [...] We then had a reception where we all got tipsy and silly. [...] I can't imagine having something that important in my life being tied to some crappy '70s TV show
So now you have something important in your life tied to some crappy, run-of-the-mill, just-like-everyone-elses event.
Great if thats what you want, different strokes for different folks.
Both my wife and I thought big weddings were dumb, particularly the kind where somebody has to spend thousands of dollars (screw the wedding, pops, buy us a house or something else useful).
The decision to be married is important, how you express it to others doesn't matter.
No I'm not!
As long as you aren't talking about that crap that Stephen Baxter writes. Long on science, short on skill.