Some prominent quantum physicists -- including Von Neumann, the founder of Quantum Mechanics -- believed that consciousness plays the key role in the outcome of quantum events ("collapse of the wave function"). Your macro world is built from quantum elements, whether their fuzziness disappears at the macro level or not (we don't know). Today's science has no idea what consciousness is or how to measure it.
Given all that, is it really that ridiculous to try and see if there are any subtle effects of what we call consciousness on the macro world?
Like much of any religion, bad science is full of zealotry and fundamentalist attacking of anyone daring to question the dogma, the "implied" truth, the "what we believe in our heart" is truth -- in this case, that consciousness does nothing and there's no such thing as ESP.
Good science would be glad to see a few labs like this one running, occasionally offering to review their results and suggest improvements in methodology.
That's right: an art piece is not "objectively" good, it depends on the context where it's consumed, and that context is largely defined by the popularity of that art piece among other people. Look at famous classical musicians that became appreciated only after they died, for example.
...or Van Gogh's self-portraits, for another example: they are thought of as masterpieces but only because lots of other people liked his other stuff; if all he ever painted were self-portraits, no one would ever pay attention to them (or him).
Btw what would be an "objectively" -- standing in isolation from all else -- good music anyway?
I think choice of tools is just an excuse -- a rationalization -- to leave the job he disliked to begin with.
So barring an obligation to support someone else, I'd say it's a good thing he quit. Otherwise sitting in the office for years and feeling like you're wasting most of your waking time without a strong understanding why ("because you need to have a job") can be quite damaging.
You can do it with cheaper phones, too: with my Motorola v265 and Verizon service, I create a.wav file I want to hear on the phone (usually a cut of an mp3 file), convert it to a ".qcp" voice file with Quallcom's free Wav->QCP converter, rename it to ".mid" (so that Verizon's server doesn't reject the message), and email it to my account at vzwpix.com. When I get the message I "view" the attachment -- which the phone properly plays as a voice file -- and set it to be the ringtone.
The only $ I pay for such a ringtone is 25 cents for the "pix" message.
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Some prominent quantum physicists -- including Von Neumann, the founder of Quantum Mechanics -- believed that consciousness plays the key role in the outcome of quantum events ("collapse of the wave function"). Your macro world is built from quantum elements, whether their fuzziness disappears at the macro level or not (we don't know). Today's science has no idea what consciousness is or how to measure it.
Given all that, is it really that ridiculous to try and see if there are any subtle effects of what we call consciousness on the macro world?
Like much of any religion, bad science is full of zealotry and fundamentalist attacking of anyone daring to question the dogma, the "implied" truth, the "what we believe in our heart" is truth -- in this case, that consciousness does nothing and there's no such thing as ESP.
Good science would be glad to see a few labs like this one running, occasionally offering to review their results and suggest improvements in methodology.
That's right: an art piece is not "objectively" good, it depends on the context where it's consumed, and that context is largely defined by the popularity of that art piece among other people. Look at famous classical musicians that became appreciated only after they died, for example.
...or Van Gogh's self-portraits, for another example: they are thought of as masterpieces but only because lots of other people liked his other stuff; if all he ever painted were self-portraits, no one would ever pay attention to them (or him).
Btw what would be an "objectively" -- standing in isolation from all else -- good music anyway?
I think choice of tools is just an excuse -- a rationalization -- to leave the job he disliked to begin with.
So barring an obligation to support someone else, I'd say it's a good thing he quit. Otherwise sitting in the office for years and feeling like you're wasting most of your waking time without a strong understanding why ("because you need to have a job") can be quite damaging.
You can do it with cheaper phones, too: with my Motorola v265 and Verizon service, I create a .wav file I want to hear on the phone (usually a cut of an mp3 file), convert it to a ".qcp" voice file with Quallcom's free Wav->QCP converter, rename it to ".mid" (so that Verizon's server doesn't reject the message), and email it to my account at vzwpix.com. When I get the message I "view" the attachment -- which the phone properly plays as a voice file -- and set it to be the ringtone.
The only $ I pay for such a ringtone is 25 cents for the "pix" message.