Terrence McKenna does have such a theory. I have a lot of disagreement with it. He basically claims that early humans were following and hunting herds of ungulates [read: deer] and began eating mushrooms that sprang up in their droppings. Mushrooms are an easy source of protein. Furthermore, studies have shown that a threshold dose of psilocybin ( so little that you don't feel any different or 'high' ) increases visual acuity -- which would help you in hunting. He then also goes into a theory about people preserving mushrooms in honey.
As far as the archaeological record, I'm not aware of any findings of honey-and-mushroom containers, so I can't say that there's any evidence for McKenna's theory. I don't see why it needs to be mushrooms over any other psychoactive plant, other than mushrooms seem to be McKenna's drug of choice;)
I kind of developed my theory before I heard of McKenna's theory (for the record, McKenna goes way beyond. He thinks that mushroom spores are instellar vehicles, mushrooms are an intelligent life form, and that any nervous system with psilocybin in it is part of a collective nervous system of all beings currently 'on' psilocybin. I can't follow him there;)
My personal theories aren't really collected anywhere, but a good starting point would be _Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice_ by Mark Plotkin, _The Food of the Gods_ by Richard Evans Schultes, or almost any book about ayahausca. Those are a good starting point, but they don't really go into human evolution.
I'm trying to recall, and I think there is some anthropology about cave paintings and rock carvings being inspired by drug usage. I don't know of any books -- I think I read them as articles in anthropology class. But this is probably the starting point in human evolution and consciousness and drug usage.
Also, I'm starting to research the food and medicine activities of bears. Bears are opportunistic foragers and eat a wide variety of plants. Baby bears learn what plants to eat when the mother allows them to smell what plant she just put in her mouth, so I would argue that bears have culture. Also, there are reports of bears using medicine. One hunter shot a bear that had packed willow bark around an abscessed tooth. Willow bark is the origin of aspirin. And in North American Indian mythology, bears are healers and shamans. So I think any understanding of how bears learn and use medicine would shine light on human experience.
"From a bachlors of science genetics/compsci perspective it would be more likely that there was a progressive selection for extra thought capacity and eventually we got the to this slightly insane monkey that your surrounded by."
I'm willing to go along with your theory, but you don't say what the selective pressure specifically was, other than that there was some. You have effectively said nothing other than "Human consciousness and intelligence evolved."
Plenty of other mammals on the Africa lived basically the same life as early humans -- hunting, foraging, living in intimate groups. For example, elephants, gorillas, baboons, chimpanzees, bonobos. Why are we the smartest?
My contention was that the selective pressure was plant toxins that our non-humans encountered in their foraging activities. If you're going to take risks and try eating new plants while strolling in the woods, the person who was able to get themself through a bad trip ( which is a sure bet when you're eating random plants ) without getting themselves killed would have increased reproductive success.
Just like the liver and the kidneys separate toxins from poisons, my contention is that a healthy mind separates reality from fantasy. Reality comes from our senses, and fantasy comes from poisonous plants and the malfunctionings of our minds.
""Several tribes in the Amazon use a mixture called ayahuasca to hunt monkeys at night. And anthropological-type question: how does a hallucinogenic potion ( a mixture of harmaline and harmine, psychoactive MAOIs, from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from the Chacruna bush, ) help you run through the jungle at night, wielding 9' long blow-guns to inject poison darts into monkeys fleeing through the top of the canopy?"
This is fascinating! Are there any measures of the effectiveness of this strategy compared to no using the potion?"
Not that I'm aware of. All that I know about is sort of anecdotal references in ethnography.
However, I just got back from an eco-tour in the amazon region of Bolivia, where were drank some ayahausca. My experience was that, along with hallucinatory and revelatory experiences, ayahuasca makes your senses extremely sensitive, and clears your mind. It was like I was in a state of meditation without being a Zen master. At certain points in the experience, I had an experience of bliss and peace. My mind was free of the chatter of everyday life; worrying about what this person said and what I would say, paying bills, buying gasoline, health insurance, retirement, etc. I had no agitation or anxiety, just peace. My mind wasn't doing, trying, or thinking; it was just sitting, resting, listening, open and receptive. I could feel food moving through my intestines and their rhythmic contractions; I could clearly hear the stream and insects all around me in 3D, and when I walked on the trail to go back to the cabins at night, it was extremely bright in the moonlight, like a movie. Now, I was in no state to be running around the woods with weapons, but maybe with experience and practice, I could do it.
My guess is that the people who use ayahuasca to hunt do so because it makes the hunt easier (maybe not more successful, but perhaps easier to pull off with heightened senses -- not only do you want to get monkeys, but you also want to avoid giant spiders and deadly ants). It takes some preparation to make the ayahuasca (a days' worth of cooking), and they are not going hunting because they are bored. They have to hunt to eat; they can't have a drunken hunting party for entertainment without going hungry later. Plenty of other tribes use ayahausca for healing ceremonies, shamanic journeying, etc. And I can tell you from personal experience that ayahuasca is no fun:) Challenging, yes; rewarding, too, but certainly not entertainment.
"No more "Hooveristic" than a camera at the local Quickie Mart. An action is filmed, the data trail is followed backwards until something useful is found."
You're telling me that every video camera at every little Quickie Mart has a wire leading back directly to the Pentagon where they have full DVR capabilities?
This is entirely different than a Quickie Mart. This is real-time wide-area surveillance capabilities.
Suppose you had an 'enemies' list and had a plot to disappear each of them in the course of one day. You could have goons following everyone on the list, or you could just have people in the pentagon watching video cameras where your 'enemies' are known to go on their daily routine. As soon as you see the 'enemy' appear on screen, call your goon and have them jump out of hiding and nab the 'enemy'.
"This is the clearest, simplest, Occam-obeying explanation for the basic acceptance of religion in most people regardless of culture."
Except that it's totally contradicted by the ethnographic literature of hunter-gatherers.
Hunter gatherers live in a society of political freedom where there is no government or "The Man" -- a stranger who puts down rules. Hunter Gatherer coming-of-age ceremonies involved setting kids off into the woods for a month, several months, even years. "If you make it back, you'll be a man then, and we'll find a girl in the next village that you can marry". They become independent and return to be recognized as adults. They have to deal with the demands and obligations of kinship and family, just like everyone else, but everyone is ultimately their own authority.
As westerners, we live in a society where our coming of age ceremonies are lengthy indoctrinations into the current orthodoxy. We read and learn what other people want us to believe, rather than going out and discovering our own truth and experience. We recite. At all times, we are subject to the teacher, the bureaucrat, the police officer, and our political leaders -- people who are strangers to us, who are not related to us, nor are they friends, but yet they make decisions that affect our daily lives.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that our current morphology evolved on the plains of Africa, living as hunter gatherers, having to hunt animals and gather plants in the woods for food, and then having to keep everyone else back at camp happy. I posit that 'religious' thinking, rather than being authoritarian, evolved as coping strategies dealing with wilderness survival skills ( hunting and trekking for long periods without food, water, or rest ) and interpersonal relationships ( a fight with your spouse, a disagreement with your neighbor).
Several tribes in the Amazon use a mixture called ayahuasca to hunt monkeys at night. And anthropological-type question: how does a hallucinogenic potion ( a mixture of harmaline and harmine, psychoactive MAOIs, from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from the Chacruna bush, ) help you run through the jungle at night, wielding 9' long blow-guns to inject poison darts into monkeys fleeing through the top of the canopy?
"And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?
I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law."
Are you referring to the Nazis, and their exalted leader Hitler, who believed that he was fighting for God?
Check this out:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."
""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Hitler, and the whole Nazi program, was extremely religious. Wikipedia says this:
"Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an "anti-godless" movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: "We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis' complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith."
You might think that they were wrong, or otherwise disagree with them, but that does not make them atheist.
Modern state-based religions rely on indoctrination of the kind you describe ( along with all of the other societal institutions, such as the military, taxation, the ruling elite, etc. ), but hunter/gatherers live a much more freer and explorative life than farmers. Evolutionary psychology posits that the human mind developed on the plains of Africa, naturally selected by the evolutionary pressures of dealing with hunting animals, gathering plants, and getting along with everybody else back at camp.
As part of my anthropology degree, I read a lot and also spent some time with modern hunter/gatherers. IF you read the literature, or do some field work, you will find that hunter gatherers are extremely mentally independent and have a world-view based on their own personal experience. "I went hunting, I saw the demon horse, and this is what happened... What!? You think I was imagining things? What the fuck do you know? I've been hunting these woods at night since I was a boy -- you think I can't tell the difference between a real animal and a demon? The shaman in the other village says the demon horse is not real? Who the fuck is he? What does he know? I am a man, a warrior, I make up my own mind, and this is my story." They live in an experiential meritocracy, not an awe-based authoritarian society.
Personally, I think our cognitive abilities evolved as a response to encountering plant poisons. Vegetarian animals, like deer and cows, have very a sensitive sense of smell and are *extremely* picky eaters. Opportunistic eaters, such as bears, human, and chimpanzees, aren't that picky when it comes to plants. This is a great opportunity to find new food sources, but can also get us into trouble if the plant has evolved poisons as a defense mechanism. And given that plants don't have many other defense mechanisms, the woods are full of poison.
So, if we are going to live as opportunistic eaters, we have to evolve mechanisms that handle plants attempts to poison our system. A lot of these poisons affect our mind. It would be really handy to tell the difference between an actual lion stalking you, and a paranoid fantasy -- but that opens up a whole Pandora's can of worms. In order to understand the difference between reality and hallucination, you have to become self-aware. If reality is "out there", and hallucination is a product solely of your mind, then you must begin to understand what your mind is, how it works, and what it is capable of creating, if you ever hope to distinguish hallucination from perception. And then once you can perceive hallucination, the products of the mind that are not based on perception of external reality, you begin to understand your mind and how it works. You become self-aware.
"Are there really snakes all over the ground, or am I seeing this because of these leave I ate this morning? Is this really real or does it just seem real? Hey, what the hell is reality anyway? Where do these thoughts come from? Who am I, what is reality, and how is it that I can percieve it?"
It doesn't mean that he's not an expert, but it does mean that there's nothing really keeping him honest in the courtroom, other than his reputation. He could have sold out to the RIAA.
If you are a PE and you build a bridge wrong, you could lose your license, thus your livelihood, and even be thrown in jail. If Jacobson describes what he is capable of knowing about P2P filesharing that's not entirely accurate, what exactly does he suffer? Might that be outweighed by whatever compensation he was getting from the RIAA?
If you look at his testimony about how he determined who was filesharing, is a collection of self-research and ad-hoc methodology. There's no indication that anyone checked his work. Even if he had the best motivations and the purest intentions, he is human, and prone to mistakes.
Because he is not a professional engineer, there is nothing really keeping him from being a talking head in court. On the witness stand, he could be totally honest and forthcoming, or he could totally sell out the the RIAA and say whatever they wanted him to say. The only thing at stake is his reputation, if he is later discredited. However, a professional engineer would lose their license if they were shown to have acted fraudulently or negligently, and thus their career, profession, and ability to make a living.
It's fine to give a professor the benefit of the doubt when you attend his/her lecture. Doing so in a courtroom seems an act of extreme naivety.
True, the fact that he is not licensed does not mean that he is outside of his realm of expertise. The fact that he is not licensed sort of means that if he is caught lying or doing a shitty job, the only thing he loses is his reputation and standing.
He could have totally sold out to the RIAA and developed a bogus, faulty, or ambiguous method of identifying file-sharers. If he belonged to a professional organization, he would be legally responsible for his work. As it stands, he is not.
Professors are humans and can make mistakes -- even really smart ones with lots of degrees, research, and experience. If you read his testimony about how he created his methods to detect filesharing and identify file-sharers, it's just a patchwork quilt of self-research and ad-hoc methods. There was nobody looking over his shoulder, checking his work, saying "Hey, did you think about this", and most importantly, pointing out his mistakes. His work was not published nor reviewed in any way.
I'd like to give Jacobson the benefit of the doubt, but given his choice of employer -- the RIAA -- that option is not realistic.
The government 'knowing' that you exist ( i.e. driver's license, birth certificate) does not enslave you. Having to present identification to travel or go to the store puts serious restrictions on your freedom.
The US constitution does not specifically mention Freedom of Movement (though the Supreme Court has ruled that it necessarily exists), it is in the UN declaration of human rights and the constitutions of other Western nations. Wikipedia says this:
"Freedom of movement, mobility rights or the right to travel is a human rights concept which is respected in the constitutions of numerous Western states. It asserts that a citizen of a state, in which that citizen is present, generally has the right to leave that state, travel wherever the citizen is welcome, and, with proper documentation, return to that state at any time; and also (of equal or greater importance) to travel to, reside in, and/or work in, any part of the state the citizen wishes without interference from the state."
Currently, I can travel from Ohio to California without having to prove my identity. If I choose to drive a car, various law enforcement officers might want to see that I am licensed to drive a vehicle, but if I walk, hitchhike, or ride a bike, I won't need to identify myself.
In Soviet Russia, if I wanted to travel to or live and work in another state or town, I would need an internal passport. Wikipedia says this under the Propiska article: "
Under the Soviet rule, a valid propiska was required to apply for jobs, to get married, to receive medical treatment, and in many other situations. At the same time, it was almost impossible to get a local propiska in a major city without having a job (constituting a sort of Catch 22) or having relatives living in the city."
If we move to a system of internal passports here in the US, does that sound like we will have (a.) more freedom or (b.) less freedom than the current state of affairs?
"Fact is, on at least one occasion a high-ranking European considered infecting the Indians with smallpox as a tactic of war. I'm talking about Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War (1756-'63). Amherst and a subordinate discussed, apparently seriously, sending infected blankets to hostile tribes. What's more, we've got the documents to prove it, thanks to the enterprising research of Peter d'Errico, legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at (fittingly) Amherst. D'Errico slogged through hundreds of reels of microfilmed correspondence looking for the smoking gun, and he found it.
The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed."
Re:Speaking of statistics
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· Score: 3, Informative
"Until someone steps forward and says "I did X & Y at the direction of Mr Z,""
"At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained , could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party.
West Palm Beach was named as an intended target, but used punched card ballots in the 2000 elections. Indeed, West Palm Beach was famous for the "hanging chad" recounts of that election."
Re:So who served the donuts?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"And NOBODY ratted them out?"
There is one guy, Clint Curtis, who testified before congress that he was hired to create an election-flipping program:
"At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained , could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party."
Here's a partial transcript of his testimony (video in link):
"Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]... It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win."
" Nothing connects a specific voter to his request for a vote tally. "
Your idea is pretty good, but there is a sort of way you can tell how someone voted. If you are in the voting area and can see who is around you, you could look at the tally and make a decent guestimate of which vote belongs to whom. Also, if you know someone voted immediately before or after you -- heck, if you know the sequence at all -- you can find out how they voted by looking at your vote, and then counting paces. The election workers might also have a good idea of who voted how, from knowing around what time people voted.
Also, if your boss knows *generally* when you went to vote ( i.e. during lunch ), he might learn how you *didn't* vote for. "Say Jones -- I know you voted during your lunch break, yet I didn't see any votes for Candidate Smith during that time. What happened?"
If you get away from time codes and start using arbitrary code numbers, then you can have a situation where the boss sits you down and says "You going to go out and vote, and your going to bring your voting code back, and we're going to look up just how you voted."
Re:What happened in 2006?
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Who won?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem is, you can only cheat just so much without making it terribly obvious. If your candidates win all the elections all the time, everybody knows you are cheating. However, if you use cheating just to give your team an edge, you can get away with it. If the elections are close, you can flip them; if not, you would attract a lot of attention if the outcome was wildly different than all of the polls.
I heard some story somewhere that there was the same level of 'discrepancies' in the vote in 2006; but that it wasn't enough to turn elections. The author claimed that there *was* cheating, but that the turnout was so great that the cheating didn't flip the election.
Secure tallying
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Who won?
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Mod me offtopic, but I believe this issue is important enough to burn a little karma. There are all kind of problems with current voting system. The only solution, as far as I see, is to put the power of counting the vote in the hands of the voter. Voting is basically allowing voters to affect the outcome of the election by exactly one vote for each office or issue. There is no kind of verified ballot system that lets the voter know that their ballot is counted in the official tally.
Here's what I wrote [slashdot.org] the last time this discussion came up on slashdot:
"What I'm envisioning is some kind of method where votes can be tallied, and the running tally can be periodically published during the count. I imagine it would have some kind of hashing technology, like PGP, where tallies are perhaps encoded in a string, and the string is published. The hashing token, or whatever mechanism allowed a vote to be legitimately added to the tally, would be passed from one voter to another, after they voted. This puts the power to count votes into the hand of the voters, rather than a poorly-trained election volunteer, a partisan, or a hackable machine. Because of the constraints of the token and hashing, a voter can only vote as they are allowed, without destroying the tally hash string."
One problem with secure tallying is that you want to make sure that your vote is counted in the official tally, but you don't want others to deduce how you voted from the official tally. At this point, I imagine one voter passing the official tally to the next voter. That way you can be certain you have affected the tally, and the design of the system constrains you to only one vote. Periodically, perhaps every hour, the official tally is publicly released. Nobody can then figure out how you voted; they only know how the crowd voted in the past hour.
The worst a business can do you is refuse to do business with you, spread bad word about you, or even sue you.
A government can arrest you, imprison you, and even kill you. Governments all around the world are waging wars, rounding people up, and torturing them. What business can do that?
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." -- George Washington
"That is an average of $370,000 each. The CEO is getting a lot, but the "peons" you talk about are still getting a huge bonus."
You're telling me that the janitors making $30k a year are getting a bonus of $370,000? I can't believe you let that bullshit fly.
The bonuses aren't evenly distributed throughout the company. You cite an average, which is a figure not worth looking at. You are trying to confuse the issue, making it sound like receptionists and janitors are getting almost half-a-million at Christmastime. A more enlightening number would be the median bonus. I'll bet that there are a very few executives and managers that are getting bonuses in the millions, which make up the bulwark of the $9.5 billion. Which just contributes to the income inequality, which is what we are talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrence McKenna does have such a theory. I have a lot of disagreement with it. He basically claims that early humans were following and hunting herds of ungulates [read: deer] and began eating mushrooms that sprang up in their droppings. Mushrooms are an easy source of protein. Furthermore, studies have shown that a threshold dose of psilocybin ( so little that you don't feel any different or 'high' ) increases visual acuity -- which would help you in hunting. He then also goes into a theory about people preserving mushrooms in honey.
;)
;)
As far as the archaeological record, I'm not aware of any findings of honey-and-mushroom containers, so I can't say that there's any evidence for McKenna's theory. I don't see why it needs to be mushrooms over any other psychoactive plant, other than mushrooms seem to be McKenna's drug of choice
I kind of developed my theory before I heard of McKenna's theory (for the record, McKenna goes way beyond. He thinks that mushroom spores are instellar vehicles, mushrooms are an intelligent life form, and that any nervous system with psilocybin in it is part of a collective nervous system of all beings currently 'on' psilocybin. I can't follow him there
My personal theories aren't really collected anywhere, but a good starting point would be _Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice_ by Mark Plotkin, _The Food of the Gods_ by Richard Evans Schultes, or almost any book about ayahausca. Those are a good starting point, but they don't really go into human evolution.
I'm trying to recall, and I think there is some anthropology about cave paintings and rock carvings being inspired by drug usage. I don't know of any books -- I think I read them as articles in anthropology class. But this is probably the starting point in human evolution and consciousness and drug usage.
Also, I'm starting to research the food and medicine activities of bears. Bears are opportunistic foragers and eat a wide variety of plants. Baby bears learn what plants to eat when the mother allows them to smell what plant she just put in her mouth, so I would argue that bears have culture. Also, there are reports of bears using medicine. One hunter shot a bear that had packed willow bark around an abscessed tooth. Willow bark is the origin of aspirin. And in North American Indian mythology, bears are healers and shamans. So I think any understanding of how bears learn and use medicine would shine light on human experience.
"From a bachlors of science genetics/compsci perspective it would be more likely that there was a progressive selection for extra thought capacity and eventually we got the to this slightly insane monkey that your surrounded by."
I'm willing to go along with your theory, but you don't say what the selective pressure specifically was, other than that there was some. You have effectively said nothing other than "Human consciousness and intelligence evolved."
Plenty of other mammals on the Africa lived basically the same life as early humans -- hunting, foraging, living in intimate groups. For example, elephants, gorillas, baboons, chimpanzees, bonobos. Why are we the smartest?
My contention was that the selective pressure was plant toxins that our non-humans encountered in their foraging activities. If you're going to take risks and try eating new plants while strolling in the woods, the person who was able to get themself through a bad trip ( which is a sure bet when you're eating random plants ) without getting themselves killed would have increased reproductive success.
Just like the liver and the kidneys separate toxins from poisons, my contention is that a healthy mind separates reality from fantasy. Reality comes from our senses, and fantasy comes from poisonous plants and the malfunctionings of our minds.
""Several tribes in the Amazon use a mixture called ayahuasca to hunt monkeys at night. And anthropological-type question: how does a hallucinogenic potion ( a mixture of harmaline and harmine, psychoactive MAOIs, from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from the Chacruna bush, ) help you run through the jungle at night, wielding 9' long blow-guns to inject poison darts into monkeys fleeing through the top of the canopy?"
:) Challenging, yes; rewarding, too, but certainly not entertainment.
This is fascinating! Are there any measures of the effectiveness of this strategy compared to no using the potion?"
Not that I'm aware of. All that I know about is sort of anecdotal references in ethnography.
However, I just got back from an eco-tour in the amazon region of Bolivia, where were drank some ayahausca. My experience was that, along with hallucinatory and revelatory experiences, ayahuasca makes your senses extremely sensitive, and clears your mind. It was like I was in a state of meditation without being a Zen master. At certain points in the experience, I had an experience of bliss and peace. My mind was free of the chatter of everyday life; worrying about what this person said and what I would say, paying bills, buying gasoline, health insurance, retirement, etc. I had no agitation or anxiety, just peace. My mind wasn't doing, trying, or thinking; it was just sitting, resting, listening, open and receptive. I could feel food moving through my intestines and their rhythmic contractions; I could clearly hear the stream and insects all around me in 3D, and when I walked on the trail to go back to the cabins at night, it was extremely bright in the moonlight, like a movie. Now, I was in no state to be running around the woods with weapons, but maybe with experience and practice, I could do it.
My guess is that the people who use ayahuasca to hunt do so because it makes the hunt easier (maybe not more successful, but perhaps easier to pull off with heightened senses -- not only do you want to get monkeys, but you also want to avoid giant spiders and deadly ants). It takes some preparation to make the ayahuasca (a days' worth of cooking), and they are not going hunting because they are bored. They have to hunt to eat; they can't have a drunken hunting party for entertainment without going hungry later. Plenty of other tribes use ayahausca for healing ceremonies, shamanic journeying, etc. And I can tell you from personal experience that ayahuasca is no fun
"No more "Hooveristic" than a camera at the local Quickie Mart. An action is filmed, the data trail is followed backwards until something useful is found."
You're telling me that every video camera at every little Quickie Mart has a wire leading back directly to the Pentagon where they have full DVR capabilities?
This is entirely different than a Quickie Mart. This is real-time wide-area surveillance capabilities.
Suppose you had an 'enemies' list and had a plot to disappear each of them in the course of one day. You could have goons following everyone on the list, or you could just have people in the pentagon watching video cameras where your 'enemies' are known to go on their daily routine. As soon as you see the 'enemy' appear on screen, call your goon and have them jump out of hiding and nab the 'enemy'.
No, but I do take anti-depressants and stimulants daily.
"This is the clearest, simplest, Occam-obeying explanation for the basic acceptance of religion in most people regardless of culture."
Except that it's totally contradicted by the ethnographic literature of hunter-gatherers.
Hunter gatherers live in a society of political freedom where there is no government or "The Man" -- a stranger who puts down rules. Hunter Gatherer coming-of-age ceremonies involved setting kids off into the woods for a month, several months, even years. "If you make it back, you'll be a man then, and we'll find a girl in the next village that you can marry". They become independent and return to be recognized as adults. They have to deal with the demands and obligations of kinship and family, just like everyone else, but everyone is ultimately their own authority.
As westerners, we live in a society where our coming of age ceremonies are lengthy indoctrinations into the current orthodoxy. We read and learn what other people want us to believe, rather than going out and discovering our own truth and experience. We recite. At all times, we are subject to the teacher, the bureaucrat, the police officer, and our political leaders -- people who are strangers to us, who are not related to us, nor are they friends, but yet they make decisions that affect our daily lives.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that our current morphology evolved on the plains of Africa, living as hunter gatherers, having to hunt animals and gather plants in the woods for food, and then having to keep everyone else back at camp happy. I posit that 'religious' thinking, rather than being authoritarian, evolved as coping strategies dealing with wilderness survival skills ( hunting and trekking for long periods without food, water, or rest ) and interpersonal relationships ( a fight with your spouse, a disagreement with your neighbor).
Several tribes in the Amazon use a mixture called ayahuasca to hunt monkeys at night. And anthropological-type question: how does a hallucinogenic potion ( a mixture of harmaline and harmine, psychoactive MAOIs, from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from the Chacruna bush, ) help you run through the jungle at night, wielding 9' long blow-guns to inject poison darts into monkeys fleeing through the top of the canopy?
"And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?
I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law."
Are you referring to the Nazis, and their exalted leader Hitler, who believed that he was fighting for God? Check this out:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."
""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Hitler, and the whole Nazi program, was extremely religious. Wikipedia says this:
"Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an "anti-godless" movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: "We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis' complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith."
You might think that they were wrong, or otherwise disagree with them, but that does not make them atheist.
Modern state-based religions rely on indoctrination of the kind you describe ( along with all of the other societal institutions, such as the military, taxation, the ruling elite, etc. ), but hunter/gatherers live a much more freer and explorative life than farmers. Evolutionary psychology posits that the human mind developed on the plains of Africa, naturally selected by the evolutionary pressures of dealing with hunting animals, gathering plants, and getting along with everybody else back at camp.
As part of my anthropology degree, I read a lot and also spent some time with modern hunter/gatherers. IF you read the literature, or do some field work, you will find that hunter gatherers are extremely mentally independent and have a world-view based on their own personal experience. "I went hunting, I saw the demon horse, and this is what happened... What!? You think I was imagining things? What the fuck do you know? I've been hunting these woods at night since I was a boy -- you think I can't tell the difference between a real animal and a demon? The shaman in the other village says the demon horse is not real? Who the fuck is he? What does he know? I am a man, a warrior, I make up my own mind, and this is my story." They live in an experiential meritocracy, not an awe-based authoritarian society.
Personally, I think our cognitive abilities evolved as a response to encountering plant poisons. Vegetarian animals, like deer and cows, have very a sensitive sense of smell and are *extremely* picky eaters. Opportunistic eaters, such as bears, human, and chimpanzees, aren't that picky when it comes to plants. This is a great opportunity to find new food sources, but can also get us into trouble if the plant has evolved poisons as a defense mechanism. And given that plants don't have many other defense mechanisms, the woods are full of poison.
So, if we are going to live as opportunistic eaters, we have to evolve mechanisms that handle plants attempts to poison our system. A lot of these poisons affect our mind. It would be really handy to tell the difference between an actual lion stalking you, and a paranoid fantasy -- but that opens up a whole Pandora's can of worms. In order to understand the difference between reality and hallucination, you have to become self-aware. If reality is "out there", and hallucination is a product solely of your mind, then you must begin to understand what your mind is, how it works, and what it is capable of creating, if you ever hope to distinguish hallucination from perception. And then once you can perceive hallucination, the products of the mind that are not based on perception of external reality, you begin to understand your mind and how it works. You become self-aware.
"Are there really snakes all over the ground, or am I seeing this because of these leave I ate this morning? Is this really real or does it just seem real? Hey, what the hell is reality anyway? Where do these thoughts come from? Who am I, what is reality, and how is it that I can percieve it?"
It doesn't mean that he's not an expert, but it does mean that there's nothing really keeping him honest in the courtroom, other than his reputation. He could have sold out to the RIAA.
If you are a PE and you build a bridge wrong, you could lose your license, thus your livelihood, and even be thrown in jail. If Jacobson describes what he is capable of knowing about P2P filesharing that's not entirely accurate, what exactly does he suffer? Might that be outweighed by whatever compensation he was getting from the RIAA?
If you look at his testimony about how he determined who was filesharing, is a collection of self-research and ad-hoc methodology. There's no indication that anyone checked his work. Even if he had the best motivations and the purest intentions, he is human, and prone to mistakes.
Because he is not a professional engineer, there is nothing really keeping him from being a talking head in court. On the witness stand, he could be totally honest and forthcoming, or he could totally sell out the the RIAA and say whatever they wanted him to say. The only thing at stake is his reputation, if he is later discredited. However, a professional engineer would lose their license if they were shown to have acted fraudulently or negligently, and thus their career, profession, and ability to make a living.
It's fine to give a professor the benefit of the doubt when you attend his/her lecture. Doing so in a courtroom seems an act of extreme naivety.
True, the fact that he is not licensed does not mean that he is outside of his realm of expertise. The fact that he is not licensed sort of means that if he is caught lying or doing a shitty job, the only thing he loses is his reputation and standing.
He could have totally sold out to the RIAA and developed a bogus, faulty, or ambiguous method of identifying file-sharers. If he belonged to a professional organization, he would be legally responsible for his work. As it stands, he is not.
Professors are humans and can make mistakes -- even really smart ones with lots of degrees, research, and experience. If you read his testimony about how he created his methods to detect filesharing and identify file-sharers, it's just a patchwork quilt of self-research and ad-hoc methods. There was nobody looking over his shoulder, checking his work, saying "Hey, did you think about this", and most importantly, pointing out his mistakes. His work was not published nor reviewed in any way.
I'd like to give Jacobson the benefit of the doubt, but given his choice of employer -- the RIAA -- that option is not realistic.
The government 'knowing' that you exist ( i.e. driver's license, birth certificate) does not enslave you. Having to present identification to travel or go to the store puts serious restrictions on your freedom.
The US constitution does not specifically mention Freedom of Movement (though the Supreme Court has ruled that it necessarily exists), it is in the UN declaration of human rights and the constitutions of other Western nations. Wikipedia says this:
"Freedom of movement, mobility rights or the right to travel is a human rights concept which is respected in the constitutions of numerous Western states. It asserts that a citizen of a state, in which that citizen is present, generally has the right to leave that state, travel wherever the citizen is welcome, and, with proper documentation, return to that state at any time; and also (of equal or greater importance) to travel to, reside in, and/or work in, any part of the state the citizen wishes without interference from the state."
Currently, I can travel from Ohio to California without having to prove my identity. If I choose to drive a car, various law enforcement officers might want to see that I am licensed to drive a vehicle, but if I walk, hitchhike, or ride a bike, I won't need to identify myself.
In Soviet Russia, if I wanted to travel to or live and work in another state or town, I would need an internal passport. Wikipedia says this under the Propiska article: " Under the Soviet rule, a valid propiska was required to apply for jobs, to get married, to receive medical treatment, and in many other situations. At the same time, it was almost impossible to get a local propiska in a major city without having a job (constituting a sort of Catch 22) or having relatives living in the city."
If we move to a system of internal passports here in the US, does that sound like we will have (a.) more freedom or (b.) less freedom than the current state of affairs?
British general Jeffery Amherst commanded some of his men to give smallpox infested blankets to Indians during the French and Indian war.
from The Straight Dope:
"Fact is, on at least one occasion a high-ranking European considered infecting the Indians with smallpox as a tactic of war. I'm talking about Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War (1756-'63). Amherst and a subordinate discussed, apparently seriously, sending infected blankets to hostile tribes. What's more, we've got the documents to prove it, thanks to the enterprising research of Peter d'Errico, legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at (fittingly) Amherst. D'Errico slogged through hundreds of reels of microfilmed correspondence looking for the smoking gun, and he found it.
The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed."
"Until someone steps forward and says "I did X & Y at the direction of Mr Z,""
Here you go:
Clint Curtis testified before congress that
"At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained , could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party.
West Palm Beach was named as an intended target, but used punched card ballots in the 2000 elections. Indeed, West Palm Beach was famous for the "hanging chad" recounts of that election."
Here's a video of his testimony.
"And NOBODY ratted them out?"
There is one guy, Clint Curtis, who testified before congress that he was hired to create an election-flipping program:
"At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained , could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party."
Here's a partial transcript of his testimony (video in link):
"Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]... It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win."
" Nothing connects a specific voter to his request for a vote tally. "
Your idea is pretty good, but there is a sort of way you can tell how someone voted. If you are in the voting area and can see who is around you, you could look at the tally and make a decent guestimate of which vote belongs to whom. Also, if you know someone voted immediately before or after you -- heck, if you know the sequence at all -- you can find out how they voted by looking at your vote, and then counting paces. The election workers might also have a good idea of who voted how, from knowing around what time people voted.
Also, if your boss knows *generally* when you went to vote ( i.e. during lunch ), he might learn how you *didn't* vote for. "Say Jones -- I know you voted during your lunch break, yet I didn't see any votes for Candidate Smith during that time. What happened?"
If you get away from time codes and start using arbitrary code numbers, then you can have a situation where the boss sits you down and says "You going to go out and vote, and your going to bring your voting code back, and we're going to look up just how you voted."
The problem is, you can only cheat just so much without making it terribly obvious. If your candidates win all the elections all the time, everybody knows you are cheating. However, if you use cheating just to give your team an edge, you can get away with it. If the elections are close, you can flip them; if not, you would attract a lot of attention if the outcome was wildly different than all of the polls.
I heard some story somewhere that there was the same level of 'discrepancies' in the vote in 2006; but that it wasn't enough to turn elections. The author claimed that there *was* cheating, but that the turnout was so great that the cheating didn't flip the election.
Mod me offtopic, but I believe this issue is important enough to burn a little karma. There are all kind of problems with current voting system. The only solution, as far as I see, is to put the power of counting the vote in the hands of the voter. Voting is basically allowing voters to affect the outcome of the election by exactly one vote for each office or issue. There is no kind of verified ballot system that lets the voter know that their ballot is counted in the official tally.
Here's what I wrote [slashdot.org] the last time this discussion came up on slashdot:
"What I'm envisioning is some kind of method where votes can be tallied, and the running tally can be periodically published during the count. I imagine it would have some kind of hashing technology, like PGP, where tallies are perhaps encoded in a string, and the string is published. The hashing token, or whatever mechanism allowed a vote to be legitimately added to the tally, would be passed from one voter to another, after they voted. This puts the power to count votes into the hand of the voters, rather than a poorly-trained election volunteer, a partisan, or a hackable machine. Because of the constraints of the token and hashing, a voter can only vote as they are allowed, without destroying the tally hash string."
One problem with secure tallying is that you want to make sure that your vote is counted in the official tally, but you don't want others to deduce how you voted from the official tally. At this point, I imagine one voter passing the official tally to the next voter. That way you can be certain you have affected the tally, and the design of the system constrains you to only one vote. Periodically, perhaps every hour, the official tally is publicly released. Nobody can then figure out how you voted; they only know how the crowd voted in the past hour.
The worst a business can do you is refuse to do business with you, spread bad word about you, or even sue you.
A government can arrest you, imprison you, and even kill you. Governments all around the world are waging wars, rounding people up, and torturing them. What business can do that?
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
-- George Washington
Because there really aren't any other organizations that have the power of a government, aside from other governments.
What about the scenario of a computer that gets hijacked and becomes a zombie repository for a trading network?
It gets even scarier.
Those mothers actually had those kids in their vaginas at one point!!
Here are additional photos.
What about greed?
"That is an average of $370,000 each. The CEO is getting a lot, but the "peons" you talk about are still getting a huge bonus."
You're telling me that the janitors making $30k a year are getting a bonus of $370,000? I can't believe you let that bullshit fly.
The bonuses aren't evenly distributed throughout the company. You cite an average, which is a figure not worth looking at. You are trying to confuse the issue, making it sound like receptionists and janitors are getting almost half-a-million at Christmastime. A more enlightening number would be the median bonus. I'll bet that there are a very few executives and managers that are getting bonuses in the millions, which make up the bulwark of the $9.5 billion. Which just contributes to the income inequality, which is what we are talking about.