As someone who's lived in Beijing for 5 years, it's not all that heroic. There are millions of people posting things, and they just get deleted wack-a-mole style if the content is not "harmonious". The only people that get arrested are serious critics of the government who get a lot of exposure. The average middle class person in Beijing is definitely more informed about a lot of things that your average American Fox viewer. Anyway they don't care too much about the smaller upper and middle classes - the firewall and the scare tactics are mainly targeted at the masses.
Youtube/google appears to be complying with some government request to control this information. They've locked the view count of the video at around 300 views.
The computer screen in front of you is all in your brain. The concept of science is all in your brain. EVERYTHING is all in your brain. It doesn't prove or disprove the existence of anything. It seems that no one who posts on Slashdot has studied even a modicum of philosophy! Plato and his cave anyone? Descartes?
The fact that the brain generates our experience of reality + the fact that the brain is mutable says nothing about existence or nonexistence.
You lost me right there. No proper scientific study "takes shots". A study presents a hypothesis then tests it. This particular study makes no statements about the existence or nonexistence of heaven, it only states that modifying the brain correlates with a subjective experience. If you poke someone in the right spot in their brain, a chair in front of them would disappear. What does that say about the existence or nonexistence of that chair? nothing. Science does not make ontological statements.
I am not religious, and don't believe or disbelieve in a soul, and made no indications otherwise. I only am commenting on poor interpretations of scientific results. Who exactly are you addressing with your post?
When did I speak of faith? You assume that because I say that this research doesn't disprove heaven or supernatural events, that I believe in heaven or supernatural events. Your assumption is wrong. I neither believe or disbelieve, and in fact have no opinion. You are in fact the one displaying faith in your own interpretation of neuroscience and occam's razor as if it is some fundamental law of the universe.
The flaw in your thought is that you see the world in black and white, the scientific view point vs every other view point pigeon holed together as religion, and every other way of modeling reality is wrong. Furthermore, science is a tool for gaining knowledge, and makes no ontological claims. Besides science and religion, there are other ontological systems. I am neither a believer in religion or a believer in science as describing truth, and I've never taken any choice from you, or forced any faith on you. Where do I fit into your narrow world view?
Sorry about replying to myself, but the following quote of a statement made by the researcher referred to in the article that conducted the ketamine experiments is relevant to this discussion:
Dr. Jansen has the following to say about the journal article that follows: 'I am no longer as opposed to spritual explanations of these phenomena as this article would appear to suggest. Over the past two years (it is quite some time since I wrote it) I have moved more towards the views put forward by John Lilly and Stan Grof. Namely, that drugs and psychological disciplines such as meditation and yoga may render certain 'states' more accessible. The complication then becomes in defining just what we mean by 'states' and where they are located, if indeed location is an appropriate term at all. But the apparent emphasis on matter over mind contained within this particular article no longer accurately represents my attitudes. My forthcoming book 'Ketamine' will consider mystical issues from quite a different perspective, and will give a much stronger voice to those who see drugs as just another door to a space, and not as actually producing that space'.
heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event, but rather something that happens in your brain as you die
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc. What this experiment is testing for is a correlation between chemical processes in the brain when a person nears death and the subjective experience of said person. Where does the existence of heaven or supernatural events even come into this? Those are questions that shouldn't come into play when speaking of science. Whether an objective explanation of a subjective experience nullifies the "reality" of it or not is philosophical has nothing to do with the experiment in question. This is a bunch of horseshit.
Asking "is open source a democracy" is like asking "is music a dictatorship". It's a flawed question. Democracy refers to a system of management and control. Open source refers to software with available source code. Anyone can take the source code and manage it anyway they want. It makes more sense to say "Are groups that release instances of open source projects democracies?"
A friend of mine was accused by his father of general nerdiness, and threw him on the street every day to hang out with the local thugs. He's still a nerd at heart, but he can handle himself in a fight and bench 300 lbs now, though he still obsesses over the latest linux distros. Probably worked out better than any RPG therapy could, but he's quite a riven guy.
Perhaps there has been a point in evolution where epilepsy was the trade-off for enhanced sensory perception, similar to how the survival of sickle cells is a result of malarial immunity.
No flaming please folks, this is just idle speculation. I make no claim to scientific theory or fact. But I do confess to believing that there is obviously more to the world than meets the eye, and future scientific research will uncover other phenomenon that would currently be considered in the realm of pseudo-science. Take a point in history during the last few hundred years, and if a person made claims for things we know have scientifically verified, they would be called quacks or heretics. What I'm getting at is that a subset of unexplained currently untestable phenomena may be testable in the future with.
those warm fuzzies you get from spiritual enlightenment will one day be regulated with a drug
It has already been happening for millennia, in Africa, the Americas, Ancient Greece and India, and in the last 100 years throughout the whole world through modern psychedelics.
MDMA is a great experience, but hardly strong enough that it could be considered spiritual, at least from my own experimentation. It took LSD/mushrooms + a balloon of NO2 to finally get a fully-conscious out-of-body experience for my logical positivist materialist ass.
The "free thinking" group, artists, musicians, and the like are using the best tools available for their endeavor. It's not about free-thinking. That's like saying an artist is closed minded because his paint brush was made by south-east asian slaves. The "fan boy cult" group, geeks and the like, are not necessary the same set of people. No contradiction here people, move along.
You are lying about still being in China. Wikipedia has been unblocked for a LONG time now. I'm sitting here in my apartment in Beijing reading about Descartes on Wikipedia.
Also, the censorship aspect of Youtube and Facebook etc is a ruse. The main reason for them being blocked in protectionism. Control of information is a great secondary benefit. It's no coincidence that Facebook was blocked right around when it started gain traction outside of the US, including China, and several local sites here also began to pick up traction.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess you never lived outside the US. SMS is WAY more popular than Blackberry. And it's been a standard since before Blackberry existed.
As someone who's lived in Beijing for 5 years, it's not all that heroic. There are millions of people posting things, and they just get deleted wack-a-mole style if the content is not "harmonious". The only people that get arrested are serious critics of the government who get a lot of exposure. The average middle class person in Beijing is definitely more informed about a lot of things that your average American Fox viewer. Anyway they don't care too much about the smaller upper and middle classes - the firewall and the scare tactics are mainly targeted at the masses.
His user number isn't even all that high... I'm flabbergasted as well.
Bring in the guards!
They didn't put a gun to their heads, they put money in their hands.
Youtube/google appears to be complying with some government request to control this information. They've locked the view count of the video at around 300 views.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=player_embedded
LS
FINALLY someone here who gets it!
The computer screen in front of you is all in your brain. The concept of science is all in your brain. EVERYTHING is all in your brain. It doesn't prove or disprove the existence of anything. It seems that no one who posts on Slashdot has studied even a modicum of philosophy! Plato and his cave anyone? Descartes?
The fact that the brain generates our experience of reality + the fact that the brain is mutable says nothing about existence or nonexistence.
This line of study is taking shots
You lost me right there. No proper scientific study "takes shots". A study presents a hypothesis then tests it. This particular study makes no statements about the existence or nonexistence of heaven, it only states that modifying the brain correlates with a subjective experience. If you poke someone in the right spot in their brain, a chair in front of them would disappear. What does that say about the existence or nonexistence of that chair? nothing. Science does not make ontological statements.
I am not religious, and don't believe or disbelieve in a soul, and made no indications otherwise. I only am commenting on poor interpretations of scientific results. Who exactly are you addressing with your post?
LS
When did I speak of faith? You assume that because I say that this research doesn't disprove heaven or supernatural events, that I believe in heaven or supernatural events. Your assumption is wrong. I neither believe or disbelieve, and in fact have no opinion. You are in fact the one displaying faith in your own interpretation of neuroscience and occam's razor as if it is some fundamental law of the universe.
The flaw in your thought is that you see the world in black and white, the scientific view point vs every other view point pigeon holed together as religion, and every other way of modeling reality is wrong. Furthermore, science is a tool for gaining knowledge, and makes no ontological claims. Besides science and religion, there are other ontological systems. I am neither a believer in religion or a believer in science as describing truth, and I've never taken any choice from you, or forced any faith on you. Where do I fit into your narrow world view?
Sorry about replying to myself, but the following quote of a statement made by the researcher referred to in the article that conducted the ketamine experiments is relevant to this discussion:
Dr. Jansen has the following to say about the journal article that follows:
'I am no longer as opposed to spritual explanations of these phenomena as this article would appear to suggest. Over the past two years (it is quite some time since I wrote it) I have moved more towards the views put forward by John Lilly and Stan Grof. Namely, that drugs and psychological disciplines such as meditation and yoga may render certain 'states' more accessible. The complication then becomes in defining just what we mean by 'states' and where they are located, if indeed location is an appropriate term at all. But the apparent emphasis on matter over mind contained within this particular article no longer accurately represents my attitudes. My forthcoming book 'Ketamine' will consider mystical issues from quite a different perspective, and will give a much stronger voice to those who see drugs as just another door to a space, and not as actually producing that space'.
heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event, but rather something that happens in your brain as you die
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc. What this experiment is testing for is a correlation between chemical processes in the brain when a person nears death and the subjective experience of said person. Where does the existence of heaven or supernatural events even come into this? Those are questions that shouldn't come into play when speaking of science. Whether an objective explanation of a subjective experience nullifies the "reality" of it or not is philosophical has nothing to do with the experiment in question. This is a bunch of horseshit.
LS
are astronauts allowed to drink any alcohol?
Asking "is open source a democracy" is like asking "is music a dictatorship". It's a flawed question. Democracy refers to a system of management and control. Open source refers to software with available source code. Anyone can take the source code and manage it anyway they want. It makes more sense to say "Are groups that release instances of open source projects democracies?"
LS
A friend of mine was accused by his father of general nerdiness, and threw him on the street every day to hang out with the local thugs. He's still a nerd at heart, but he can handle himself in a fight and bench 300 lbs now, though he still obsesses over the latest linux distros. Probably worked out better than any RPG therapy could, but he's quite a riven guy.
And precisely how does China's human rights record compare to north american countries? Let's have specifics here.
Perhaps there has been a point in evolution where epilepsy was the trade-off for enhanced sensory perception, similar to how the survival of sickle cells is a result of malarial immunity.
No flaming please folks, this is just idle speculation. I make no claim to scientific theory or fact. But I do confess to believing that there is obviously more to the world than meets the eye, and future scientific research will uncover other phenomenon that would currently be considered in the realm of pseudo-science. Take a point in history during the last few hundred years, and if a person made claims for things we know have scientifically verified, they would be called quacks or heretics. What I'm getting at is that a subset of unexplained currently untestable phenomena may be testable in the future with.
LS
those warm fuzzies you get from spiritual enlightenment will one day be regulated with a drug
It has already been happening for millennia, in Africa, the Americas, Ancient Greece and India, and in the last 100 years throughout the whole world through modern psychedelics.
MDMA is a great experience, but hardly strong enough that it could be considered spiritual, at least from my own experimentation. It took LSD/mushrooms + a balloon of NO2 to finally get a fully-conscious out-of-body experience for my logical positivist materialist ass.
* vacuum, vacuum very much! *
I like this game, let's try another one:
Social problem: Corrupt government
Technological solution: ?
Result: ?
Put a time limit on the contest, i.e. on the escrow.
The "free thinking" group, artists, musicians, and the like are using the best tools available for their endeavor. It's not about free-thinking. That's like saying an artist is closed minded because his paint brush was made by south-east asian slaves. The "fan boy cult" group, geeks and the like, are not necessary the same set of people. No contradiction here people, move along.
It IS blocked in China.
You are lying about still being in China. Wikipedia has been unblocked for a LONG time now. I'm sitting here in my apartment in Beijing reading about Descartes on Wikipedia.
Also, the censorship aspect of Youtube and Facebook etc is a ruse. The main reason for them being blocked in protectionism. Control of information is a great secondary benefit. It's no coincidence that Facebook was blocked right around when it started gain traction outside of the US, including China, and several local sites here also began to pick up traction.