Sure, that's all good and useful stuff and it's true to a large degree as well. However, I do not buy large chunks of bhuddism and Taoism both.. I can recognize in large part the futility of trying to "impart" knowledge/wisdom/understanding to others, it must come within. However, teachers are helpful as well, and as long as that is true, someone must, at some point, speak what they know. Or speak towards what they know in a way relevant to the listener, to be more exact.
I also disagree that it is impossible to explain an experience. You can't perfectly replicate an experience, but the idea of sharing an experience with others through language is a large and important part of human interaction. True, you can only do this at a relatively shallow level in most cases... but that level is very adequate for a lot of purposes.
I'm very empathic to the "power of now", and "being here now" as well. But, all things in moderation, including moderation, and including being present. The past deserves reflection in some cases, and the future demands consideration as well. There is other "now" times to be aware of beyond the one you're in right now. It is important to be ABLE to center as needed, to know WHEN to be here now and when it's ok to slide out a bit perhaps.. and that comes through developing your self to get beyond neurosis and the like, absolutely.
I don't think I am or have ever been truly enlightened, but I also think that the idea of many of these teachings are taken way too rigidly. You start from a base of joy, peace, healthy center. But then, the question is still, what to do? Unless you buy into reincarnation and all that stuff, which I don't, you are still left with this one life and how to live it. You work on yourself, that's all you can do.. except for the other stuff you do as well;)
Funny you mention bloodletting. Google Leech Therapy lately?;)
many therapies are untested. Many are tested under fallacious circumstances or with poor understanding of the overall effect. Regardless; waiting for someone with big bucks to come by a test a therapy that won't make a pharmaceutical company a single thin dime might take awhile, no?
You're saying there is "no reason" to believe they are better than snake oil or bloodletting. I put forth that those are two different things, first of all (bloodletting was actually used for awhile, and in seriousness, leech therapy has validated that it has a place, though of course it was misused). When evidence based medicine gets around to checking something out, over time it will improve the practice, or debunk it, no doubt. That does not mean that all other therapies should be ignored until that day comes. Otherwise, then who is doing the testing, or trying anything at all that would even indicate what should be tested?
It all has to start with testimonial, for any direction significantly different than is already undertaken.
I imply nothing of the kind. I am simply suggesting that instead of dismissing this stuff out of hand (which western science did for a long time.. think leeches), that instead a base assumption be made that for something to last two thousand years it might be worth looking at... and then look at it. Maybe it's nothing. But there is probably *something* worth learning in there.
That's all. I agree fully that the "meridian" concept is extremely weak and one more time, I don't subscribe to it. That in itself does not mean that acupuncture has no uses, any more than the bow stance in tai chi isn't particularly stable because its inventors hadn't studied engineering and they use "chi" to describe things.
I stated flat out I am an "energy meridian" skeptic, so half of your post is really a straw man. I'm not advocating for the actual explanations in use with any of the stuff. The point is simple:
1. While explanations may have been wrong, martial arts and much of eastern medicine had practical, strong effects for practitioners for a couple of millenia now. People were generally better served by using the "technology" than not using it, wrong or not. This is not restricted to acupuncture (in fact I'm primarily thinking along the lines of martial arts here, but other eastern medicinal practices and therapeutic techniques like kidney rubbing and the like seem useful too).
2. Restricting our understanding of these phenomena EITHER by simply accepting the existing explanations OR by dismissing them utterly as "unscientific" are equally fallacious, when there is instead a 3rd path: examine, explore, remain skeptical but not dismissive.
Acupuncture is controversial, no doubt, and I'm not going to be the guy that resolves it. It's not a strong medicine in most cases. I don't plan to ever use it myself and I suspect that most people using it aren't looking too closely at the fact that they never seem to stop... I don't particularly care about it, really. But if medicine restricted itself ONLY to what is thoroughly vetted and understood by scientific rigor, then medicine would have its hands tied when it came to actually treating people. I care about that. I have personal experience with other aspects of eastern "mysticism" that, while again I DO NOT ACCEPT THE BASE EXPLANATION, I do accept that *something* of interest is happening that is also not explained in current scientific understanding.
your link is interesting, and personally I think Reikki and Homeopathy are both at best placebos. Reikki is kind of a scam, really... However, there is still a lot of room for complimentary therapies out there, especially as a replacement for high-side-effect drug usage. It gets trickier outside of the scientific method, absolutely. That doesn't mean there is nothing of value out there though.
absolutely; however, that doesn't mean anything pre-scientific is simply imagination. Science moves very slowly. its surety is nice, but being able to function in a sphere outside of certainty... maintaining curiousity as well as skepticism... is useful.
to go back to acupuncture; you can poo-poo meridians, and I personally think it's wrong. But science still hasn't come up with anything better to explain its functionality yet. So the choice is, use something that works to some degree or don't use it at all because you're not "sure"... even though that same unsurety exists with many modern drugs... with much shorter track records.
the whole point is not to ignore the pre-scientific. Use it as a guide for future scientific exploration.
what's interesting, is the precepts of many martial arts are explains in an "esoteric and mystical" way (chi, an explanation I have always hated), and yet a large majority of them have come to be verified, not debunked, by modern science... even though the precepts were developed long before modern physics or biology. While the scientific method may not have been used, that does not mean their knowledge was wrong in essence.
that is not to say that they are all correct presumptions. However, in the case of "energy meridians", of which I am also a skeptic, there does remain the fact that acupuncture is an AMA-approved treatment for several ailments now... even though it cannot be explained with our current understanding, even by the placebo effect. In general, I do not find it incredible that early eastern understanding of many things was far beyond what one would expect given a lack of scientific rigor... they would often have the "right idea" explained "strangely". don't mistake my lack of conviction that it is all "fakery" make you think I am an advocate for either a chi or meridian based explanation for any kind of phenomena... but neither am I going to dismiss and ignore it all when it has worked for thousands of years to some degree at least, without a serious look.
I am not a big proponent of the imagery representing a "cerebellum" though (the same physical forces that create leaf/tree structures create everything else... similarities are inevitable). And I fully agree that many of the "feats" of martial arts is simply motor reflex training and conditioning. However, the mental discipline taught by many arts does eventually allow for a state beyond mere reflex, where you can invent new maneuvers and react in ways outside of your reflex conditioning, with something that is both conscious and also unconscious.. that is, just conscious enough to direct the overall intent and action, and simply "allowing" that action to come to pass rather than executing it consciously. It's a fine line, to be sure, but I think a significant one.
It's very similar to being "in the zone" with any sport, challenge, etc. You are not mechanically producing actions you have rotely programmed into your muscles or mind. Some part of what you are doing is that.. and some is still conscious, but without disturbing your ability to "unconsciously" make your intention happen, even when your intended maneuver is nothing you have practiced, or is a combination of several practiced movements broken down and reassembled in a new way.
That, I think, is what the OP is talking about. Perhaps it's not "calling 100% on the cerebellum", but it is definitely a different state of mind than normal, that allows for much faster and truer reaction speed to any given situation when "active". and the better you are, the more you can "turn it on" at will. Having reached that state only by accident, I can say it's not surprising that people tend to reach for anything they can to explain it, and that any attempt at explanation might sound a little weird to non-practitioners, but they are on the mark with noting that it's not just reflex at least and is something much more interesting. something we have not articulated in the west with our scientific predilections yet, and something that the eastern descriptions of which leave me unsatisfied as well.
That's not true at all. It's much more economical to load a bus up with people than a bus-load of people to drive individual cars. It just isn't as convenient, so people prefer to own their own cars and go when they want to go instead of having to go only when the bus is going.
If the economics dictate it, however, through rising gas prices... you might find people willing to schedule a bit more firmly in advance.
maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think you are mixing up the fact that you are older and your tastes are calcifying (and you already have a stable of media producers you know you enjoy, that you relate to, and that have grown as you have) with media over saturation.
I think you'll find that among younger listeners, if one finds something really good, they still have friends, they still share it, and being the one to "discover" a new band with your friends is still a social event prized by many.
But just because Joe Amateur doesn't have to impress a guy with a suit to make an album is no sudden guarantee that he is suddenly going to be a rock star either just because he can put together some mp3's. The game has changed, for sure. Making a living making music is.. you know.. work. Like making a living at anything else.
Furthermore, like in anything else, if you want to be your own boss, it pays to be good at business... and few musicians are.
So I don't think the game is going to be totally changed entirely... I think there will still be room for managers, promoters and the like in music. But your best bet is to have someone in the band who is good at that stuff;)
So, how do you propose to make better decisions in the current climate, without such sweeping changes? You think much is going to get developed unless something changes? It's starting to, but only because prices are rising.
I have a modest proposal. Make every cent Iraq is costing us get reflected in a gas tax. Get rid of this artificial subsidy that pretends that we are trying to justify a lengthy stay in the most important geopolitical sphere on the planet because of "democracy" or the "war on terror", accept that we are safeguarding our future oil supply, and pay for it honestly; with the gas.
I understand that people have to make hard choices sometimes. If gas doubled in price tomorrow though, you aren't suddenly unable to work. You can carpool. You can look up a bus schedule (or start a bus company if gas is that pricey). You aren't suddenly forced to quit your job and live in an alley, you are just forced to make decisions you DON'T LIKE.
well, too bad! I don't like paying for our bloated military to run around the world, killing civilians all the way, just to make sure that none of us have to make unpleasant choices. and that is what MOST of this boils down to: inconvenience and unpleasantness, not life-threating bullshit. Home heating is an exception, which takes time to fix (it doesn't change on a dime like your commuting habits could), but hey, if you buy a big, inefficient house, then you reap what you sow, eh? If you're so into independance, and personal decisionmaking, then go ahead and take responsibility for that one.
and, for what it's worth, i'm in the same boat. I could choose to structure my life around a carpool, and yet I do not, because it's inconvenient and I like being able to work late if needed (and, being the boss, it was more needed for a long time. Starting to change now though as the biz matures, finally...) But that's convenience and competitive advantage, not necessity. If I were presented with gas prices tomorrow that I just plain couldn't afford, what do you think would happen? I'd have to make a choice, an unpleasant one that so far I've rationalized not making. I'm not being holier than thou about this; just, IMHO, more realistic. You and your kids and your grandkids are and will be paying for the gas already with your taxes; shouldn't that be reflected in the gas price, so we can make better decisions regarding it's usage, rather than acting like the two are unconnected?
My writing certainly wasn't entirely clear. The smugly irrational theocrats rub me the wrong way very strongly, and so my statement wasn't as balanced as I'd like.
I doubt progress is steady anyway. There is always a step back. But ultimately, I think MOST people are more free than they were 50 years ago. At least, most non-white people. Certainly chinese, japanese, and blacks in the west. The last decade seems a little darker though, sure. But not darker enough to outweigh civil rights and all that good stuff.
You're right, it could. And the last 50 years saw religion weaken more than it ever had previously in history. and the progress was exponential in the last 50 years. Now, I would argue that progress is by its nature exponential and so I would not say that religion's waning influence caused it; I would, however, say religion is irrelevant to progress except when it is actively opposing it. One of the two conclusions I pointed to as reasonable, I might add.
Social progress is subjective, but the world as a whole is more democractic than ever, slavery is less widespread than ever, civil rights are ON THE WHOLE better than they ever have been previously in history. That may technically be subjective, but I'm quite comfortable passing judgement on that as "progress", even if some bigoted jerks think that because we're not stoning gays to death we're doomed to an eternity swimming in a lake of fire. I'm not particularly concerned what such insane people think about what is and is not "progress". Sure, there are areas where these things are not true, but overall, across the globe, progress has been made.
Now, I think that may reverse as population continues to increase, but that's the future, not the last 50 years... we'll see..
Religion has been omnipresent for most of human history. By that definition, nearly everything humans have ever done have been done "when religion and religious influence where strong". Including our greatest atrocities, the dark ages, pogroms, crusades, witch hunts, etc...
However, the fact that the last 50 years has seen a diminishing influence of religion and also the greatest period of social and technology progress that humanity has ever seen, if you chose to be intellectually honest rather than extremely selective, would seem to indicate that perhaps religion and religious influence are not quite as helpful as you might seem to think. At best, you would be forced to conclude that it is irrelevant when considering its impact on progress, and more honestly you might have to conclude that it might actually be harmful to progress.
Oh sure, I get the gist of what he was saying (which is why I acknowledged that the final decision of the governing body is still debatable). But his argument was not really addressing the gist of the results of the study.
it's not about boost or power, it's about energy conservation. yes, those of us with two good legs of "on demand energy". But we have to expend that energy to use it. This fellow gets FREE energy, even if it's less energy than I am expending, he's not burning calories to get it or tiring his lower calf muscles.
In a 100M dash, that might be irrelevant. In a 400m dash such as the one this fellow raced in, or even longer, energy conservation plays a big role in how much energy you have to "push" at the end of a race. That is why he is deemed to have an advantage.
That's debatable, and your input is really awesome (and varied knowledge like this is why I love slashdot), but I think you missed the reason for the determination here. No one was insinuating this guy was wearing legs that would let him leap tall buildings or anything, or run hyper fast. Just that he would have more energy at the end of the race than a fully legged competitor.
so, let's ban TV, porn, cars that can travel over the speed limit, fat, and computer games too.
how far do you want to take this again? do you really think it's ok to dictate how everyone lives? really?
Most of my friends have been or are heavy drug users. I myself have been. Most of us are, if not business owners, successful professionals.
so on what grounds would you throw any of us in jail? that other people can't handle their shit, so we should do time?
well... then let's lock up anyone who ever kicked a puppy.. for murder. because they are much more likely to be murders than the rest of us. sure, we'll lock up some innocents. but, there will be a whole lot less murder.
first off, "drug offences" hardly means anything. If we make taking aspirin a "drug offence", our numbers go up too. Or, if our police are particularly good, or focused on drug enforcement.
what you really want to know is how many addicts are there?
unfortunately, that's a hard number to get. You know, since it's illegal and all, people don't like to walk up and volunteer that info. but every survey or report I've ever read has indicated no real difference between us and, say, amsterdam beyond the "drug tourism" factor of amsterdam's relative novelty among its neighbors. kids growing up there are LESS likely to do coke and heroin than kids here.
the fact is, i'm on vacation and i don't have time to educate you on this. the total fact is, find any real fact that backs up your belief and I'll applaud you. But sadly, you won't, beyond some meaningless stats about arrests that just further illustrate the violence and damage the drug war itself, rather than drug usage, does. but then, you don't care about the truth of the matter, not really.. you just want to feel like you can affect the problem. take action. It's a natural , but misguided impulse in this case.
You have no "observation", ironclad or otherwise. No casual relationship at all. You are only pointing at people who are addicts and claiming that if drugs were not illegal, we'd have more. But, again, countries that have more liberal rules about drug usage than we do haven't seen these epidemics occur. Do they have drug addicts? Sure... on parlance with us, or even less.
Somehow, telling people we won't throw them in jail if they do oxy, that means more people will decide that doing oxy is a good idea?
Really?
Legality isn't what holds most people back from trying drugs. You can keep pretending that's the last line between us and a sea of rampant addiction, but again, you're just pretending. Look at the facts sometime, not individual anecdotes.
You are completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. When, as a class of people, they are UNAWARE of the risks of drug taking, they take them in much larger quantities. Witness the 60s/70s. Witness how existing drugs slow down in usage after an initial spike, when people are confronted with the reality of heavy usage on a relatively wide scale. There are occasional spikes of reoccurrence, but not a generalized increase in usage. I"m not saying that you can educate people away from drug usage entirely. I'm saying you can prevent people from unknowingly flirting with disaster. There will always be those who flirt with it anyway, but education does make a difference. Mine came from knowing people with problems (since DARE was packed full of bullshit, I wrote that off pretty fast). So I didn't try anything really addictive other than cigarettes until after my love affair with drugs was over.
You are right that addiction is not rational. As such, treating it as a health problem rather than a criminal one should yield much more appropriate results than jailing people for a moment of weakness that, initially at least, didn't hurt anyone, don't you think?
You cannot cite any example of more exposure creating more addicts. You cannot say why people specialize in anesthesia in the first place, so while you do have a correlation if I assume you are correct, you do NOT have a causal relationship. And areas that have much laxer rules regarding heavy drugs haven't, according to any stats I've seen reported, seen an increase in hard drug usage as a result. I've met people studying pharmacy and chemistry specifically so they can play with drugs: that's not just a reach. I have no doubt whatsoever the anasthetically curious would gravitate that way in their studies.
So again: I understand what you want, and you want to believe that our system does something to help, but it doesn't. All it does is prevent people who could be productive members of our society from seeking help because of legal ramifications of their admission of their problem; period. That anasthesiologist you mention stands to lose an awful lot by admitting their problem. And the much more common, much less educated addict out there is unlikely to even know what is available to help them with their problem until a few rounds "in the system".
Addiction is not rational, it's true. And neither are drug laws.
because there is no ready alternative. Prohibition is not shown to reduce usage figures by any significant amount. All it does is create a large, violent, uncontrolled black market that costs all of us more than any reasonable number of addicts ever could in a system of regulated care.
I mean, if you want to go back to a feudal society and point to the social ills of drug abuse, I guess you're a little weak on modern data concerning the problem. Here, we have treatment that didn't exist then, such as the subject of this news story. If the "opium wars" are your justification, then when we can more cheaply cure addicts, I suppose you'll reduce your opposition to legalization? We also have seen that as people see the problem first hand, usage levels off on its own.
I understand what you WANT to do (reduce addicts). Understood: nice goal, very reasonable. Sadly, you have to come to terms with the fact that you have no power over that, beyond educating people (NOT lying to them), and making sure the dangers are known. You can set up all the black markets you want, but that does not stop usage, and does not even seem to slow it down much. Whether you WANT to do something or not is not relevant; you can't solve this problem with prohibition. You can just restrict your ability to affect it at all to jailing people, and paying for that (and the very high price of increased crime rates as a whole) instead of for treatment options.
There is a reason why many anti-abolitionists are economists. Unfortunately, many are active, oatmeal headed drug users as well, but it's not fair to lump to the two together any more than it is fair to lump you in with Puritans for your similarities in stance.
Yes, the high is the real reason I took up smoking. Thought process: "Why would anyone smoke? It smells bad, it's expensive, and it will kill you". Eventually, peer pressure got me to try it. When I did, I got a wild rush (probably mostly oxygen dep, but hey, maybe nicotine, I dunno). Click! "Ooooooh, THAT'S why people smoke!". That kept me playing with it long enough that when the rush was no longer present, I had a habit and a socially reinforced peer activity. I started and stopped several times in high school.
Then, on the third round of starting, I had an addiction, and couldn't stop any more. Took me 15 years to get around to actually stopping.
Not at all: it's not a safe drug, it needs to be handled with great caution or even better avoided entirely. and yet still, there is no such thing as a good reason why it is legal for you or anyone else to tell me what I can and cannot put into my own body. Should and shouldn't, sure. Can and can't? absolutely not.
Because we do prefer to abide by the rule of law, or at least a semblance thereof, rather than turning into a kenyanesque bloodbath over an election dispute, and our supreme court made its ruling.
Now, you can argue about their ruling... heck, I sure have. But ultimately you have to decide how far you're willing to go. Some protests, some rocks, maybe a broken window or two, that's one thing. Starting a revolution every time a closely split country has a disagreement is what you call "unstable". And stability does have its benefits to people who generally would prefer not dying to some warped mob justice situation.
But, I don't really *want* it to sound better. Why would you object to the reality that you murdered another human being, if you really did it for a good reason? If the good reason can't make it "ok" with you that you had to murder someone, then I would question the justice of your action.
To me, I think it's important to set that moral bar firmly in place. Watering down the killing of another person by changing the language is.. in my very humble opinion on this... a cop out. Justifiable Murder, is absolutely clear and correct; you intended to kill someone and you did. the reasons or justification behind it are separate from the action itself. Sanitizing the language just lowers the moral bar for justifying the action.
In short, I would call any killing of people with knowledge and intent (either individually, or by initiating action you know will result in deaths) murder. The only remaining arguement after that was whether it was ok to murder or not. Legal terms have no interest to me, and Murder predates any modern legal system by a good long measure. I'm much more interested in the underlying morality of it, which legal categories completely fail to address in any meaningful way.
I guess you kind of have to? Being an outsider though, I always regarded the ten commandments as being "less ambiguously" the word of God than some stories some random fellows "touched by god" wrote. That is, if you're going to err on the side of anything, the ten commandments would be it.
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Sure, that's all good and useful stuff and it's true to a large degree as well. However, I do not buy large chunks of bhuddism and Taoism both.. I can recognize in large part the futility of trying to "impart" knowledge/wisdom/understanding to others, it must come within. However, teachers are helpful as well, and as long as that is true, someone must, at some point, speak what they know. Or speak towards what they know in a way relevant to the listener, to be more exact.
;)
I also disagree that it is impossible to explain an experience. You can't perfectly replicate an experience, but the idea of sharing an experience with others through language is a large and important part of human interaction. True, you can only do this at a relatively shallow level in most cases... but that level is very adequate for a lot of purposes.
I'm very empathic to the "power of now", and "being here now" as well. But, all things in moderation, including moderation, and including being present. The past deserves reflection in some cases, and the future demands consideration as well. There is other "now" times to be aware of beyond the one you're in right now. It is important to be ABLE to center as needed, to know WHEN to be here now and when it's ok to slide out a bit perhaps.. and that comes through developing your self to get beyond neurosis and the like, absolutely.
I don't think I am or have ever been truly enlightened, but I also think that the idea of many of these teachings are taken way too rigidly. You start from a base of joy, peace, healthy center. But then, the question is still, what to do? Unless you buy into reincarnation and all that stuff, which I don't, you are still left with this one life and how to live it. You work on yourself, that's all you can do.. except for the other stuff you do as well
Funny you mention bloodletting. Google Leech Therapy lately? ;)
many therapies are untested. Many are tested under fallacious circumstances or with poor understanding of the overall effect. Regardless; waiting for someone with big bucks to come by a test a therapy that won't make a pharmaceutical company a single thin dime might take awhile, no?
You're saying there is "no reason" to believe they are better than snake oil or bloodletting. I put forth that those are two different things, first of all (bloodletting was actually used for awhile, and in seriousness, leech therapy has validated that it has a place, though of course it was misused). When evidence based medicine gets around to checking something out, over time it will improve the practice, or debunk it, no doubt. That does not mean that all other therapies should be ignored until that day comes. Otherwise, then who is doing the testing, or trying anything at all that would even indicate what should be tested?
It all has to start with testimonial, for any direction significantly different than is already undertaken.
I imply nothing of the kind. I am simply suggesting that instead of dismissing this stuff out of hand (which western science did for a long time.. think leeches), that instead a base assumption be made that for something to last two thousand years it might be worth looking at... and then look at it. Maybe it's nothing. But there is probably *something* worth learning in there.
That's all. I agree fully that the "meridian" concept is extremely weak and one more time, I don't subscribe to it. That in itself does not mean that acupuncture has no uses, any more than the bow stance in tai chi isn't particularly stable because its inventors hadn't studied engineering and they use "chi" to describe things.
I stated flat out I am an "energy meridian" skeptic, so half of your post is really a straw man. I'm not advocating for the actual explanations in use with any of the stuff. The point is simple:
1. While explanations may have been wrong, martial arts and much of eastern medicine had practical, strong effects for practitioners for a couple of millenia now. People were generally better served by using the "technology" than not using it, wrong or not. This is not restricted to acupuncture (in fact I'm primarily thinking along the lines of martial arts here, but other eastern medicinal practices and therapeutic techniques like kidney rubbing and the like seem useful too).
2. Restricting our understanding of these phenomena EITHER by simply accepting the existing explanations OR by dismissing them utterly as "unscientific" are equally fallacious, when there is instead a 3rd path: examine, explore, remain skeptical but not dismissive.
Acupuncture is controversial, no doubt, and I'm not going to be the guy that resolves it. It's not a strong medicine in most cases. I don't plan to ever use it myself and I suspect that most people using it aren't looking too closely at the fact that they never seem to stop... I don't particularly care about it, really. But if medicine restricted itself ONLY to what is thoroughly vetted and understood by scientific rigor, then medicine would have its hands tied when it came to actually treating people. I care about that. I have personal experience with other aspects of eastern "mysticism" that, while again I DO NOT ACCEPT THE BASE EXPLANATION, I do accept that *something* of interest is happening that is also not explained in current scientific understanding.
your link is interesting, and personally I think Reikki and Homeopathy are both at best placebos. Reikki is kind of a scam, really... However, there is still a lot of room for complimentary therapies out there, especially as a replacement for high-side-effect drug usage. It gets trickier outside of the scientific method, absolutely. That doesn't mean there is nothing of value out there though.
ha! You are absolutely right.
I don't have anything better in either case, but they both smack of "placeholder concepts" to me.
absolutely; however, that doesn't mean anything pre-scientific is simply imagination. Science moves very slowly. its surety is nice, but being able to function in a sphere outside of certainty... maintaining curiousity as well as skepticism... is useful.
to go back to acupuncture; you can poo-poo meridians, and I personally think it's wrong. But science still hasn't come up with anything better to explain its functionality yet. So the choice is, use something that works to some degree or don't use it at all because you're not "sure"... even though that same unsurety exists with many modern drugs... with much shorter track records.
the whole point is not to ignore the pre-scientific. Use it as a guide for future scientific exploration.
what's interesting, is the precepts of many martial arts are explains in an "esoteric and mystical" way (chi, an explanation I have always hated), and yet a large majority of them have come to be verified, not debunked, by modern science... even though the precepts were developed long before modern physics or biology. While the scientific method may not have been used, that does not mean their knowledge was wrong in essence.
that is not to say that they are all correct presumptions. However, in the case of "energy meridians", of which I am also a skeptic, there does remain the fact that acupuncture is an AMA-approved treatment for several ailments now... even though it cannot be explained with our current understanding, even by the placebo effect. In general, I do not find it incredible that early eastern understanding of many things was far beyond what one would expect given a lack of scientific rigor... they would often have the "right idea" explained "strangely". don't mistake my lack of conviction that it is all "fakery" make you think I am an advocate for either a chi or meridian based explanation for any kind of phenomena... but neither am I going to dismiss and ignore it all when it has worked for thousands of years to some degree at least, without a serious look.
I am not a big proponent of the imagery representing a "cerebellum" though (the same physical forces that create leaf/tree structures create everything else... similarities are inevitable). And I fully agree that many of the "feats" of martial arts is simply motor reflex training and conditioning. However, the mental discipline taught by many arts does eventually allow for a state beyond mere reflex, where you can invent new maneuvers and react in ways outside of your reflex conditioning, with something that is both conscious and also unconscious.. that is, just conscious enough to direct the overall intent and action, and simply "allowing" that action to come to pass rather than executing it consciously. It's a fine line, to be sure, but I think a significant one.
It's very similar to being "in the zone" with any sport, challenge, etc. You are not mechanically producing actions you have rotely programmed into your muscles or mind. Some part of what you are doing is that.. and some is still conscious, but without disturbing your ability to "unconsciously" make your intention happen, even when your intended maneuver is nothing you have practiced, or is a combination of several practiced movements broken down and reassembled in a new way.
That, I think, is what the OP is talking about. Perhaps it's not "calling 100% on the cerebellum", but it is definitely a different state of mind than normal, that allows for much faster and truer reaction speed to any given situation when "active". and the better you are, the more you can "turn it on" at will. Having reached that state only by accident, I can say it's not surprising that people tend to reach for anything they can to explain it, and that any attempt at explanation might sound a little weird to non-practitioners, but they are on the mark with noting that it's not just reflex at least and is something much more interesting. something we have not articulated in the west with our scientific predilections yet, and something that the eastern descriptions of which leave me unsatisfied as well.
That's not true at all. It's much more economical to load a bus up with people than a bus-load of people to drive individual cars. It just isn't as convenient, so people prefer to own their own cars and go when they want to go instead of having to go only when the bus is going.
If the economics dictate it, however, through rising gas prices... you might find people willing to schedule a bit more firmly in advance.
maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think you are mixing up the fact that you are older and your tastes are calcifying (and you already have a stable of media producers you know you enjoy, that you relate to, and that have grown as you have) with media over saturation.
;)
I think you'll find that among younger listeners, if one finds something really good, they still have friends, they still share it, and being the one to "discover" a new band with your friends is still a social event prized by many.
But just because Joe Amateur doesn't have to impress a guy with a suit to make an album is no sudden guarantee that he is suddenly going to be a rock star either just because he can put together some mp3's. The game has changed, for sure. Making a living making music is.. you know.. work. Like making a living at anything else.
Furthermore, like in anything else, if you want to be your own boss, it pays to be good at business... and few musicians are.
So I don't think the game is going to be totally changed entirely... I think there will still be room for managers, promoters and the like in music. But your best bet is to have someone in the band who is good at that stuff
So, how do you propose to make better decisions in the current climate, without such sweeping changes? You think much is going to get developed unless something changes? It's starting to, but only because prices are rising.
I have a modest proposal. Make every cent Iraq is costing us get reflected in a gas tax. Get rid of this artificial subsidy that pretends that we are trying to justify a lengthy stay in the most important geopolitical sphere on the planet because of "democracy" or the "war on terror", accept that we are safeguarding our future oil supply, and pay for it honestly; with the gas.
I understand that people have to make hard choices sometimes. If gas doubled in price tomorrow though, you aren't suddenly unable to work. You can carpool. You can look up a bus schedule (or start a bus company if gas is that pricey). You aren't suddenly forced to quit your job and live in an alley, you are just forced to make decisions you DON'T LIKE.
well, too bad! I don't like paying for our bloated military to run around the world, killing civilians all the way, just to make sure that none of us have to make unpleasant choices. and that is what MOST of this boils down to: inconvenience and unpleasantness, not life-threating bullshit. Home heating is an exception, which takes time to fix (it doesn't change on a dime like your commuting habits could), but hey, if you buy a big, inefficient house, then you reap what you sow, eh? If you're so into independance, and personal decisionmaking, then go ahead and take responsibility for that one.
and, for what it's worth, i'm in the same boat. I could choose to structure my life around a carpool, and yet I do not, because it's inconvenient and I like being able to work late if needed (and, being the boss, it was more needed for a long time. Starting to change now though as the biz matures, finally...) But that's convenience and competitive advantage, not necessity. If I were presented with gas prices tomorrow that I just plain couldn't afford, what do you think would happen? I'd have to make a choice, an unpleasant one that so far I've rationalized not making. I'm not being holier than thou about this; just, IMHO, more realistic. You and your kids and your grandkids are and will be paying for the gas already with your taxes; shouldn't that be reflected in the gas price, so we can make better decisions regarding it's usage, rather than acting like the two are unconnected?
My writing certainly wasn't entirely clear. The smugly irrational theocrats rub me the wrong way very strongly, and so my statement wasn't as balanced as I'd like.
I doubt progress is steady anyway. There is always a step back. But ultimately, I think MOST people are more free than they were 50 years ago. At least, most non-white people. Certainly chinese, japanese, and blacks in the west. The last decade seems a little darker though, sure. But not darker enough to outweigh civil rights and all that good stuff.
You're right, it could. And the last 50 years saw religion weaken more than it ever had previously in history. and the progress was exponential in the last 50 years. Now, I would argue that progress is by its nature exponential and so I would not say that religion's waning influence caused it; I would, however, say religion is irrelevant to progress except when it is actively opposing it. One of the two conclusions I pointed to as reasonable, I might add.
Social progress is subjective, but the world as a whole is more democractic than ever, slavery is less widespread than ever, civil rights are ON THE WHOLE better than they ever have been previously in history. That may technically be subjective, but I'm quite comfortable passing judgement on that as "progress", even if some bigoted jerks think that because we're not stoning gays to death we're doomed to an eternity swimming in a lake of fire. I'm not particularly concerned what such insane people think about what is and is not "progress". Sure, there are areas where these things are not true, but overall, across the globe, progress has been made.
Now, I think that may reverse as population continues to increase, but that's the future, not the last 50 years... we'll see..
wow, nice try.
Religion has been omnipresent for most of human history. By that definition, nearly everything humans have ever done have been done "when religion and religious influence where strong". Including our greatest atrocities, the dark ages, pogroms, crusades, witch hunts, etc...
However, the fact that the last 50 years has seen a diminishing influence of religion and also the greatest period of social and technology progress that humanity has ever seen, if you chose to be intellectually honest rather than extremely selective, would seem to indicate that perhaps religion and religious influence are not quite as helpful as you might seem to think. At best, you would be forced to conclude that it is irrelevant when considering its impact on progress, and more honestly you might have to conclude that it might actually be harmful to progress.
But, keep clinging to that fantasy, troll.
Oh sure, I get the gist of what he was saying (which is why I acknowledged that the final decision of the governing body is still debatable). But his argument was not really addressing the gist of the results of the study.
it's not about boost or power, it's about energy conservation. yes, those of us with two good legs of "on demand energy". But we have to expend that energy to use it. This fellow gets FREE energy, even if it's less energy than I am expending, he's not burning calories to get it or tiring his lower calf muscles.
In a 100M dash, that might be irrelevant. In a 400m dash such as the one this fellow raced in, or even longer, energy conservation plays a big role in how much energy you have to "push" at the end of a race. That is why he is deemed to have an advantage.
That's debatable, and your input is really awesome (and varied knowledge like this is why I love slashdot), but I think you missed the reason for the determination here. No one was insinuating this guy was wearing legs that would let him leap tall buildings or anything, or run hyper fast. Just that he would have more energy at the end of the race than a fully legged competitor.
so, let's ban TV, porn, cars that can travel over the speed limit, fat, and computer games too.
how far do you want to take this again? do you really think it's ok to dictate how everyone lives? really?
Most of my friends have been or are heavy drug users. I myself have been. Most of us are, if not business owners, successful professionals.
so on what grounds would you throw any of us in jail? that other people can't handle their shit, so we should do time?
well... then let's lock up anyone who ever kicked a puppy.. for murder. because they are much more likely to be murders than the rest of us. sure, we'll lock up some innocents. but, there will be a whole lot less murder.
great idea! keep them coming, stalin....
first off, "drug offences" hardly means anything. If we make taking aspirin a "drug offence", our numbers go up too. Or, if our police are particularly good, or focused on drug enforcement.
what you really want to know is how many addicts are there?
unfortunately, that's a hard number to get. You know, since it's illegal and all, people don't like to walk up and volunteer that info. but every survey or report I've ever read has indicated no real difference between us and, say, amsterdam beyond the "drug tourism" factor of amsterdam's relative novelty among its neighbors. kids growing up there are LESS likely to do coke and heroin than kids here.
the fact is, i'm on vacation and i don't have time to educate you on this. the total fact is, find any real fact that backs up your belief and I'll applaud you. But sadly, you won't, beyond some meaningless stats about arrests that just further illustrate the violence and damage the drug war itself, rather than drug usage, does. but then, you don't care about the truth of the matter, not really.. you just want to feel like you can affect the problem. take action. It's a natural , but misguided impulse in this case.
You have no "observation", ironclad or otherwise. No casual relationship at all. You are only pointing at people who are addicts and claiming that if drugs were not illegal, we'd have more. But, again, countries that have more liberal rules about drug usage than we do haven't seen these epidemics occur. Do they have drug addicts? Sure... on parlance with us, or even less.
Somehow, telling people we won't throw them in jail if they do oxy, that means more people will decide that doing oxy is a good idea?
Really?
Legality isn't what holds most people back from trying drugs. You can keep pretending that's the last line between us and a sea of rampant addiction, but again, you're just pretending. Look at the facts sometime, not individual anecdotes.
You are completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. When, as a class of people, they are UNAWARE of the risks of drug taking, they take them in much larger quantities. Witness the 60s/70s. Witness how existing drugs slow down in usage after an initial spike, when people are confronted with the reality of heavy usage on a relatively wide scale. There are occasional spikes of reoccurrence, but not a generalized increase in usage. I"m not saying that you can educate people away from drug usage entirely. I'm saying you can prevent people from unknowingly flirting with disaster. There will always be those who flirt with it anyway, but education does make a difference. Mine came from knowing people with problems (since DARE was packed full of bullshit, I wrote that off pretty fast). So I didn't try anything really addictive other than cigarettes until after my love affair with drugs was over.
You are right that addiction is not rational. As such, treating it as a health problem rather than a criminal one should yield much more appropriate results than jailing people for a moment of weakness that, initially at least, didn't hurt anyone, don't you think?
You cannot cite any example of more exposure creating more addicts. You cannot say why people specialize in anesthesia in the first place, so while you do have a correlation if I assume you are correct, you do NOT have a causal relationship. And areas that have much laxer rules regarding heavy drugs haven't, according to any stats I've seen reported, seen an increase in hard drug usage as a result. I've met people studying pharmacy and chemistry specifically so they can play with drugs: that's not just a reach. I have no doubt whatsoever the anasthetically curious would gravitate that way in their studies.
So again: I understand what you want, and you want to believe that our system does something to help, but it doesn't. All it does is prevent people who could be productive members of our society from seeking help because of legal ramifications of their admission of their problem; period. That anasthesiologist you mention stands to lose an awful lot by admitting their problem. And the much more common, much less educated addict out there is unlikely to even know what is available to help them with their problem until a few rounds "in the system".
Addiction is not rational, it's true. And neither are drug laws.
because there is no ready alternative. Prohibition is not shown to reduce usage figures by any significant amount. All it does is create a large, violent, uncontrolled black market that costs all of us more than any reasonable number of addicts ever could in a system of regulated care.
I mean, if you want to go back to a feudal society and point to the social ills of drug abuse, I guess you're a little weak on modern data concerning the problem. Here, we have treatment that didn't exist then, such as the subject of this news story. If the "opium wars" are your justification, then when we can more cheaply cure addicts, I suppose you'll reduce your opposition to legalization? We also have seen that as people see the problem first hand, usage levels off on its own.
I understand what you WANT to do (reduce addicts). Understood: nice goal, very reasonable. Sadly, you have to come to terms with the fact that you have no power over that, beyond educating people (NOT lying to them), and making sure the dangers are known. You can set up all the black markets you want, but that does not stop usage, and does not even seem to slow it down much. Whether you WANT to do something or not is not relevant; you can't solve this problem with prohibition. You can just restrict your ability to affect it at all to jailing people, and paying for that (and the very high price of increased crime rates as a whole) instead of for treatment options.
There is a reason why many anti-abolitionists are economists. Unfortunately, many are active, oatmeal headed drug users as well, but it's not fair to lump to the two together any more than it is fair to lump you in with Puritans for your similarities in stance.
Yes, the high is the real reason I took up smoking. Thought process: "Why would anyone smoke? It smells bad, it's expensive, and it will kill you". Eventually, peer pressure got me to try it. When I did, I got a wild rush (probably mostly oxygen dep, but hey, maybe nicotine, I dunno). Click! "Ooooooh, THAT'S why people smoke!". That kept me playing with it long enough that when the rush was no longer present, I had a habit and a socially reinforced peer activity. I started and stopped several times in high school.
Then, on the third round of starting, I had an addiction, and couldn't stop any more. Took me 15 years to get around to actually stopping.
Not at all: it's not a safe drug, it needs to be handled with great caution or even better avoided entirely. and yet still, there is no such thing as a good reason why it is legal for you or anyone else to tell me what I can and cannot put into my own body. Should and shouldn't, sure. Can and can't? absolutely not.
Because we do prefer to abide by the rule of law, or at least a semblance thereof, rather than turning into a kenyanesque bloodbath over an election dispute, and our supreme court made its ruling.
Now, you can argue about their ruling... heck, I sure have. But ultimately you have to decide how far you're willing to go. Some protests, some rocks, maybe a broken window or two, that's one thing. Starting a revolution every time a closely split country has a disagreement is what you call "unstable". And stability does have its benefits to people who generally would prefer not dying to some warped mob justice situation.
But, I don't really *want* it to sound better. Why would you object to the reality that you murdered another human being, if you really did it for a good reason? If the good reason can't make it "ok" with you that you had to murder someone, then I would question the justice of your action.
To me, I think it's important to set that moral bar firmly in place. Watering down the killing of another person by changing the language is.. in my very humble opinion on this... a cop out. Justifiable Murder, is absolutely clear and correct; you intended to kill someone and you did. the reasons or justification behind it are separate from the action itself. Sanitizing the language just lowers the moral bar for justifying the action.
In short, I would call any killing of people with knowledge and intent (either individually, or by initiating action you know will result in deaths) murder. The only remaining arguement after that was whether it was ok to murder or not. Legal terms have no interest to me, and Murder predates any modern legal system by a good long measure. I'm much more interested in the underlying morality of it, which legal categories completely fail to address in any meaningful way.
I guess you kind of have to? Being an outsider though, I always regarded the ten commandments as being "less ambiguously" the word of God than some stories some random fellows "touched by god" wrote. That is, if you're going to err on the side of anything, the ten commandments would be it.
But... interpretation. Can't escape it, it seems.