But how do you know that this Gamma Ray Burst is not in itself a pre-emptive strike against possible future human aggression towards our interstellar neighbours.
While it is 6,500 light years away, you also have to remember that what we are seeing now is an image from 6,500 years ago. For all we know, it could have already cone supernova 6,499 years ago, and we wouldn't know until next year.
But its not just a case of seeing "all" the evidence, its also a case of asking "all" the questions.
Lets take the question of intelligent design, from a scientific point of view, without reference to "god", and work our way backwards.
Lets accept that evolution exists, and biology is controlled through genetics.
Daisyworld shows that there can be significant feedback loops between the process of natural selection and the environment.
Humans share 98% of our genetics with a chimpanzee, and 50% with a banana. From a programmers point of view, thats could be interpreted as a large amount of redundant library code. Is there a possibility that certain genetic patterns, such as eyes, already exist within this shared genetic library code, or can be quickly assembled from other shared fragments, Though this question would still leave the unanswered question of how these patterns got there in the first place (Could evolution have started before life on earth and been seeded here?).
Is random/dominant allocation of genes passed down from parents the one and only mechanism that determines an individuals genetics? Are there any other factors that may play a part in genetic selection, even its is only a fairly minor weighting of the randomness in generic inheritance that would only become significant over thousands or tens of thousands of generations?
Humans possess both conciousness and sentience. Animals are known to possess conciousness. Is it possible that individual cells are also capable of possessing some limited form of conciousness. Could cellular conciousness, if it exists, influence which segments of genetic code are run within the cell, and/or have some influence in gene selection during embryo fertilization and growth?
If cells have some form of conciousness, is it possible for them to exchange information with each other, such as through accessing shared quantum non-local information?
Are there other means of transferring biological information, such as the use of viruses to communicate genetic information cross-laterally between sexually incompatible species?
And now for the most important question, and the one that will really "freak out" the fundamentalists: How does our understanding of evolution and genetics help us to scientifically understand and define the nature of god?
Well Alexander Shulgin devoted a large chunk of his life to researching "better living through chemistry", he even took the trouble of publishing hundreds of his chemical recipies and the results of his initial taste-tests (he was his own guinea pig) in two books PIHKAL and TIHKAL to ensure that the government could never censor his work.
He's the sort of inspirational individual that would make me want to take a couple of years out to do a second degree in chemistry.
Case in point: this guy's argument could be made in favor of putting cameras on every street corner and requiring everyone to carry federal (or international) identification cards. That seems to be the current plan by the UK government.
Stallman's ideas do form a system of economics, just like money. Our current money based economics, attempts to optimize the allocation of scarce resources. If there is greater demand than supply, money is a proxy medium that restricts demand and attempts to optimize the distribution of the supply (ie who gets what).
Turn the question around, if we can find a way to increase the supply to meet and exceed demand, then wealth is maximized by increasing supply and decreasing costs to the point it stimulates extra demand. This is the economics of abundance.
The market economy should always work to maximize real wealth, and in the case of software, instead of trying to create an artificial scarcity, target the natural scarcities that arise from it.
Which is more valuable diamonds or air, which would you prefer to live without.
From MS perspective its not a document format, its just another component in the "user experience" that is MS Office. They trade clean data formats for tightly integrated software designed for a MS only environment. Part of the trade off may be week security, which may be unacceptable to you, but may be acceptable to the MS marketing department, which considers the lack of certain frivolous features to unacceptable.
From the churches perspective, the vast majority of people selling their emeters on ebay would be ex-scientologists who have left the church, and the people buying them would freezoners (aka squirrels) who practice scientology outside of the control of the church.
The church sees things in terms of "you are either with us or against us", and the at the head of the church RTC is there to protect the purity of the application of scientology auditing technology. The only reason someone doesn't want to be under the supervision of RTC must be because they want to pervert the tech, this is considered a high-crime and must be stamped out.
As a side note, E-Meters (at the Mark VII's) need to be sent back to Flag (in Clearwater, Florida) for a paid servicing once in a while (every year or couple of years), they even have a date on the back and you are not allowed to use them for offical scientology auditing if they are out-of-date.
Osama lives in a cave and despite the billions being spent by Bush and co, they haven't managed to blow him up. Guess living in a cave really is a safe place to be.
I encountered Robert Anton Wilson only a couple of years after leaving the church. I am a fan of his works. Having had my reality tunnel collapse around me, and more than once since leaving the church, I would almost describe myself as a universal agnostic (I believe in what I believe now [my map], but know that at some point in the future I will see in a completely different way) - everything is permitted, nothing is true.
It seems that similar patterns tend to repeat themselves in various places. Fundamentalism is not intrinsic to any religion or political ideology, but if left unchecked could potentually grow anywhere.
I guess the most important question is how do you personally react when put in a situation like that, do you take the path of least resistance and simply toe the line and don't raise any inconvenient questions, or do you have the certainty in yourself to question those contradictions, and follow your own path, and keep your own council, regardless of what everyone else tells you is the right thing to do.
I have already read the book, in fact I read it whilst still within the church (iirc it was actually the guthenburg ebook version). It didn't set of any alarm bells though, at the time.
The Church's reality tunnel is a fairly nice one to be in, you are rarely exposed to the contradictions that exist within it. But it is a fairly fragile one, as soon as you start questioning things and seeing the contradictions and trying to resolve them yourself, it all breaks down fairly quickly. That's one of the reasons the church tries very hard to cocoon its members from anything critical of the church. From its point of view, people who get exposed to critical meterial against the church, and if it doesn't get "handled" quickly, those people tend to end up leaving the church - its a matter of viewpoint if their leaving is due to their minds being corrupted with entheta, or them simply seeing the truth.
The two films that correlate with my emotional experiences, would be Equilibrium and in terms of having to rebuild your whole reality again from scratch: Fight Club.
The e-meter works by sending a small electrical current through the body and detecting small amount of change in the electrical resistance of the body. Your mental thought processes, or your bodies reaction to these thought processes, can subtly affect this electrical resistance.
In essence the e-meter is an over-engineered ohmmeter. The e-meter does not detect "lies" or "thetan levels", it is simply a bio-feedback device. It has been noted that various patterns of change in a bodies electrical resistance, happen to correlate with the presence of some fairly basic thought patterns, such as having your attention on something, or stress associated with being slightly uncomfortable about a thought (which may be unrelated to the question asked, or even the fact that question itself was asked at all).
The so called "lie detector" polygraph test, has several different sensors, but works on a similar principal, of detecting physiological factors that are correlated with stress or anxiety, which may be in part caused by a persons fear of getting caught in a lie.
I have heard descriptions of a couple of methods of psychotherapy, which sound similar to the basic principals of Scientology auditing, the purpose of the e-meter is simply to guide the auditor to focus his questions on areas where you still have attention on, and not to stop addressing an area until the e-meter indicated that you no longer have any attention on the area,
So yes, I believe that the e-meter actually does "something", but on the other hand its does not simply confer magical powers to the person behind the dial. Somebody who is fairly experienced with giving psychotherapy, would probably be able to get similar indications through observing a persons body language, facial expressions and various other sub-conscious signals a person gives off. Its a simple tool, and if used by somebody competent it can potentially assist in psychotherapy.
The Freezone http://www.freezone.de/ is "decentralized" organization of people practising LRH auditing techniques outside of the Church of Scientology. Some use "100% standard tech" and others using modified/extended versions of it.
The CoS considers anyone using the LRH tech outside the Church to be "squirrels" (you have to be nuts) and generally to be criminals (think of how the Catholic church considered the protestants during the reformation). Getting auditing within the Freezone will likely make you ineligible for any future services in the CoS.
I am not a member of the Freezone, but from reading their site it seems much closer to how Scientology should be. Their page on philosophy is good: http://www.freezone.de/english/e_philo.htm
Within the Church of Scientology, you are taught that Scientology is the one and only solution to all mankind's problems, and during this narrow window of opportunity in mankind's history it is possible to "clear the planet" (ie give everybody auditing) and save humanity from itself. Most other goals pale in comparison and anything that detracts from Scientology, or its expansion is in essence a mortal sin against humanity. This belief is strong enough to get people sign up the Sea Organization (LRH's private navy) on a billion year contract (ie you are in for the long haul... and not just this lifetime)
Anyone who attacks the church is either a suppressive person (2.5% of the population who
are evil - think Hitler), PTS due to a connection to an SP (Potential Trouble Source - 20% of the population), or has committed various other overts and withholds (ie sins and secrets) and it trying to justify their own actions by making the Scientology seem less (because if you admitted to yourself that Scientology was the "one and only solution" then your otherwise small crime would have to weigh fairly heavily on your conscience). Anyone who commits various sins and suppressive acts, will be subconsciously aware of this, and slowly do themselves in (ie get sick, have an accident) to prevent themselves from committing more crimes.
It is also taught that if someone encounters the OT3 materials before being ready for them, then as part of the psychological conditioning to create "prison-planet" earth, the person may get sick and die and this is the reason it is considered "confidential" and heavily protected, and only available to members of the church past a certain level. In the south park episode "trapped in the closet", they did a cartoon version of the OT3 materials labeled "This Is what Scientologists Actually Believe", if Matt and Trey has been members of the church, they would have been ex-communicated very quickly. The church would have almost definitely told Issac Hayes to "dissconnect" from them or otherwise become ineligible for any future Scientology services or auditing.
This "truth" or "reality tunnel" is slowly conditioned into you until you internalise it. There is a huge taboo against reading or discussing anything potentially negative or "entheta" against Scientology or the church, often the taboo will extend down to the point that you feel it is wrong to "think" about potentially negative things regarding Scientology. To do so would potentially detract from Scientology and is thus a mortal sin against humanity, or you might wind up making yourself sick. I know this, because I was brought up within the church, and through the process of leaving the church and the Scientology "reality tunnel", it took me around two years to fully confront this internal taboo to the point I could openly think and speak on the subject.
Part of the process for getting people into this state of mind, is that during Scientology auditing, if you have any undisclosed overts or withholds, or you have your attention stuck on something, the e-meter will pick up on this (that you have your attention stuck on something after you where asked a question - its the same principal behind the polygraph), Thus the auditor will be trained to uncover these issues, by continually asking questions on the subject, with the help of the e-meter, which may include turning part of the auditing session into a confessional. Auditing is essentially about being completely open and honest with yourself and your mind, and fully confronting (with the help of the auditor) any issues that where previously painful or unconscious about (this is actually the good bit about Scientology). Having out-ethics or keeping secrets is considered to be a barrier to your own spiritual growth.
It may be trivial to add one line of code to a file, if its a current or semi-recent project.
But if its an unmaintained website, running on an old server / web hosting account, then you have to factor in all the setup costs of fetching a current of the code and login, getting it up and running on your local machine, along with the whole dev enviorment required to support it (which may include things like: dreamweaver, php, perl, java), doing the change, testing the change hasn't broken anything elsewhere, and redeploying.
For a non-techie, who has paid for a website but knows little about HTML, telling them they have to change their existing site to deal with a new browser is just going to go over their heads.
MS's solution here is to maintain backwards compatibility with the existing non-standard web HTML, and allow new websites the option of building to the standards.
It was my 5th birthday in 1987. My parents had bought me an Atari ST, connected to a 14" portable TV, I remember my mother telling me that it had 16 bits, she was not quite sure exactly what a bit was, but that it definitely had 16 of them. That night I stayed up until 4am playing Nebulus and Carrier Command. I have been pretty much addicted to computers ever since, and now at 25, I work as a computer programmer.
I used to live in Indiana for five years, where the drinking age is of course 21. The number of drunk driving accidents I witnessed or heard about via people that caused them was substantially higher than in a place where alcohol is proudly sold every day and hour of the week (if you know where to get it), at gas stations (heh), movie theaters (which really rocks btw), and supermarkets (and none of that 3.2% crap, either). There is an obvious conclusion to all of this -- people like to drink, and they're going to do it anyways, includng kids. It's better to create an atmosphere where people learn how to handle this responsibility, and are encouraged to enjoy it without risking the lives of others. That seems to me to also be one of the best arguments for ending prohibition on all other mind-altering substances (ie drugs).
Well, if you imagine the brain as a neural net, that has been slowly trained to match meanings/significance to certain electrical nerve inputs. I don't think its pre-wired, but rather self-wiring as part of a constant feedback loop.
You suddenly re-route a large number of these nerve endings, this means that when you touch the tip of your finger, your brain receives a different set of nerve impulses than it was previous trained on. Thus the new inputs are patten matched to the closest set of inputs it has previously known, which results in a sensation/body location mismatch.
Over time, the brain can be trained on the new set of inputs, and learn to correctly pattern match the new nerve inputs with the correct physical sensation.
Slashdot Mirror
But how do you know that this Gamma Ray Burst is not in itself a pre-emptive strike against possible future human aggression towards our interstellar neighbours.
5) The political answer, it would cost too much, so lets forget about it and allow future generations figure something out
While it is 6,500 light years away, you also have to remember that what we are seeing now is an image from 6,500 years ago. For all we know, it could have already cone supernova 6,499 years ago, and we wouldn't know until next year.
But its not just a case of seeing "all" the evidence, its also a case of asking "all" the questions.
Lets take the question of intelligent design, from a scientific point of view, without reference to "god", and work our way backwards.
Lets accept that evolution exists, and biology is controlled through genetics.
Daisyworld shows that there can be significant feedback loops between the process of natural selection and the environment.
Humans share 98% of our genetics with a chimpanzee, and 50% with a banana. From a programmers point of view, thats could be interpreted as a large amount of redundant library code. Is there a possibility that certain genetic patterns, such as eyes, already exist within this shared genetic library code, or can be quickly assembled from other shared fragments, Though this question would still leave the unanswered question of how these patterns got there in the first place (Could evolution have started before life on earth and been seeded here?).
Is random/dominant allocation of genes passed down from parents the one and only mechanism that determines an individuals genetics? Are there any other factors that may play a part in genetic selection, even its is only a fairly minor weighting of the randomness in generic inheritance that would only become significant over thousands or tens of thousands of generations?
Humans possess both conciousness and sentience. Animals are known to possess conciousness. Is it possible that individual cells are also capable of possessing some limited form of conciousness. Could cellular conciousness, if it exists, influence which segments of genetic code are run within the cell, and/or have some influence in gene selection during embryo fertilization and growth?
If cells have some form of conciousness, is it possible for them to exchange information with each other, such as through accessing shared quantum non-local information?
Are there other means of transferring biological information, such as the use of viruses to communicate genetic information cross-laterally between sexually incompatible species?
And now for the most important question, and the one that will really "freak out" the fundamentalists: How does our understanding of evolution and genetics help us to scientifically understand and define the nature of god?
I bet you didn't say that when this guy put doom on his ipod.
Well Alexander Shulgin devoted a large chunk of his life to researching "better living through chemistry", he even took the trouble of publishing hundreds of his chemical recipies and the results of his initial taste-tests (he was his own guinea pig) in two books PIHKAL and TIHKAL to ensure that the government could never censor his work. He's the sort of inspirational individual that would make me want to take a couple of years out to do a second degree in chemistry.
Stallman's ideas do form a system of economics, just like money. Our current money based economics, attempts to optimize the allocation of scarce resources. If there is greater demand than supply, money is a proxy medium that restricts demand and attempts to optimize the distribution of the supply (ie who gets what).
Turn the question around, if we can find a way to increase the supply to meet and exceed demand, then wealth is maximized by increasing supply and decreasing costs to the point it stimulates extra demand. This is the economics of abundance.
The market economy should always work to maximize real wealth, and in the case of software, instead of trying to create an artificial scarcity, target the natural scarcities that arise from it.
Which is more valuable diamonds or air, which would you prefer to live without.
From MS perspective its not a document format, its just another component in the "user experience" that is MS Office. They trade clean data formats for tightly integrated software designed for a MS only environment. Part of the trade off may be week security, which may be unacceptable to you, but may be acceptable to the MS marketing department, which considers the lack of certain frivolous features to unacceptable.
Reselling indulgences is a sin... remember to get yourself covered for that one before you die.
From the churches perspective, the vast majority of people selling their emeters on ebay would be ex-scientologists who have left the church, and the people buying them would freezoners (aka squirrels) who practice scientology outside of the control of the church.
The church sees things in terms of "you are either with us or against us", and the at the head of the church RTC is there to protect the purity of the application of scientology auditing technology. The only reason someone doesn't want to be under the supervision of RTC must be because they want to pervert the tech, this is considered a high-crime and must be stamped out.
As a side note, E-Meters (at the Mark VII's) need to be sent back to Flag (in Clearwater, Florida) for a paid servicing once in a while (every year or couple of years), they even have a date on the back and you are not allowed to use them for offical scientology auditing if they are out-of-date.
The masochist says the sadist, "Hit me"
The sadist says "No"
Osama lives in a cave and despite the billions being spent by Bush and co, they haven't managed to blow him up. Guess living in a cave really is a safe place to be.
The problem is not Islam, or even religion per se. The problem is Fundamentalism.
I encountered Robert Anton Wilson only a couple of years after leaving the church. I am a fan of his works. Having had my reality tunnel collapse around me, and more than once since leaving the church, I would almost describe myself as a universal agnostic (I believe in what I believe now [my map], but know that at some point in the future I will see in a completely different way) - everything is permitted, nothing is true.
But if you place a copyright notice at the bottom of the page, it won't be a blank page anymore!
It seems that similar patterns tend to repeat themselves in various places. Fundamentalism is not intrinsic to any religion or political ideology, but if left unchecked could potentually grow anywhere.
I guess the most important question is how do you personally react when put in a situation like that, do you take the path of least resistance and simply toe the line and don't raise any inconvenient questions, or do you have the certainty in yourself to question those contradictions, and follow your own path, and keep your own council, regardless of what everyone else tells you is the right thing to do.
I have already read the book, in fact I read it whilst still within the church (iirc it was actually the guthenburg ebook version). It didn't set of any alarm bells though, at the time.
The Church's reality tunnel is a fairly nice one to be in, you are rarely exposed to the contradictions that exist within it. But it is a fairly fragile one, as soon as you start questioning things and seeing the contradictions and trying to resolve them yourself, it all breaks down fairly quickly. That's one of the reasons the church tries very hard to cocoon its members from anything critical of the church. From its point of view, people who get exposed to critical meterial against the church, and if it doesn't get "handled" quickly, those people tend to end up leaving the church - its a matter of viewpoint if their leaving is due to their minds being corrupted with entheta, or them simply seeing the truth.
The two films that correlate with my emotional experiences, would be Equilibrium and in terms of having to rebuild your whole reality again from scratch: Fight Club.
The e-meter works by sending a small electrical current through the body and detecting small amount of change in the electrical resistance of the body. Your mental thought processes, or your bodies reaction to these thought processes, can subtly affect this electrical resistance.
In essence the e-meter is an over-engineered ohmmeter. The e-meter does not detect "lies" or "thetan levels", it is simply a bio-feedback device. It has been noted that various patterns of change in a bodies electrical resistance, happen to correlate with the presence of some fairly basic thought patterns, such as having your attention on something, or stress associated with being slightly uncomfortable about a thought (which may be unrelated to the question asked, or even the fact that question itself was asked at all).
The so called "lie detector" polygraph test, has several different sensors, but works on a similar principal, of detecting physiological factors that are correlated with stress or anxiety, which may be in part caused by a persons fear of getting caught in a lie.
I have heard descriptions of a couple of methods of psychotherapy, which sound similar to the basic principals of Scientology auditing, the purpose of the e-meter is simply to guide the auditor to focus his questions on areas where you still have attention on, and not to stop addressing an area until the e-meter indicated that you no longer have any attention on the area,
So yes, I believe that the e-meter actually does "something", but on the other hand its does not simply confer magical powers to the person behind the dial. Somebody who is fairly experienced with giving psychotherapy, would probably be able to get similar indications through observing a persons body language, facial expressions and various other sub-conscious signals a person gives off. Its a simple tool, and if used by somebody competent it can potentially assist in psychotherapy.
The Freezone http://www.freezone.de/ is "decentralized" organization of people practising LRH auditing techniques outside of the Church of Scientology. Some use "100% standard tech" and others using modified/extended versions of it.
The CoS considers anyone using the LRH tech outside the Church to be "squirrels" (you have to be nuts) and generally to be criminals (think of how the Catholic church considered the protestants during the reformation). Getting auditing within the Freezone will likely make you ineligible for any future services in the CoS.
I am not a member of the Freezone, but from reading their site it seems much closer to how Scientology should be. Their page on philosophy is good: http://www.freezone.de/english/e_philo.htm
Within the Church of Scientology, you are taught that Scientology is the one and only solution to all mankind's problems, and during this narrow window of opportunity in mankind's history it is possible to "clear the planet" (ie give everybody auditing) and save humanity from itself. Most other goals pale in comparison and anything that detracts from Scientology, or its expansion is in essence a mortal sin against humanity. This belief is strong enough to get people sign up the Sea Organization (LRH's private navy) on a billion year contract (ie you are in for the long haul... and not just this lifetime)
Anyone who attacks the church is either a suppressive person (2.5% of the population who are evil - think Hitler), PTS due to a connection to an SP (Potential Trouble Source - 20% of the population), or has committed various other overts and withholds (ie sins and secrets) and it trying to justify their own actions by making the Scientology seem less (because if you admitted to yourself that Scientology was the "one and only solution" then your otherwise small crime would have to weigh fairly heavily on your conscience). Anyone who commits various sins and suppressive acts, will be subconsciously aware of this, and slowly do themselves in (ie get sick, have an accident) to prevent themselves from committing more crimes.
It is also taught that if someone encounters the OT3 materials before being ready for them, then as part of the psychological conditioning to create "prison-planet" earth, the person may get sick and die and this is the reason it is considered "confidential" and heavily protected, and only available to members of the church past a certain level. In the south park episode "trapped in the closet", they did a cartoon version of the OT3 materials labeled "This Is what Scientologists Actually Believe", if Matt and Trey has been members of the church, they would have been ex-communicated very quickly. The church would have almost definitely told Issac Hayes to "dissconnect" from them or otherwise become ineligible for any future Scientology services or auditing.
This "truth" or "reality tunnel" is slowly conditioned into you until you internalise it. There is a huge taboo against reading or discussing anything potentially negative or "entheta" against Scientology or the church, often the taboo will extend down to the point that you feel it is wrong to "think" about potentially negative things regarding Scientology. To do so would potentially detract from Scientology and is thus a mortal sin against humanity, or you might wind up making yourself sick. I know this, because I was brought up within the church, and through the process of leaving the church and the Scientology "reality tunnel", it took me around two years to fully confront this internal taboo to the point I could openly think and speak on the subject.
Part of the process for getting people into this state of mind, is that during Scientology auditing, if you have any undisclosed overts or withholds, or you have your attention stuck on something, the e-meter will pick up on this (that you have your attention stuck on something after you where asked a question - its the same principal behind the polygraph), Thus the auditor will be trained to uncover these issues, by continually asking questions on the subject, with the help of the e-meter, which may include turning part of the auditing session into a confessional. Auditing is essentially about being completely open and honest with yourself and your mind, and fully confronting (with the help of the auditor) any issues that where previously painful or unconscious about (this is actually the good bit about Scientology). Having out-ethics or keeping secrets is considered to be a barrier to your own spiritual growth.
It may be trivial to add one line of code to a file, if its a current or semi-recent project.
But if its an unmaintained website, running on an old server / web hosting account, then you have to factor in all the setup costs of fetching a current of the code and login, getting it up and running on your local machine, along with the whole dev enviorment required to support it (which may include things like: dreamweaver, php, perl, java), doing the change, testing the change hasn't broken anything elsewhere, and redeploying.
For a non-techie, who has paid for a website but knows little about HTML, telling them they have to change their existing site to deal with a new browser is just going to go over their heads.
MS's solution here is to maintain backwards compatibility with the existing non-standard web HTML, and allow new websites the option of building to the standards.
It was my 5th birthday in 1987. My parents had bought me an Atari ST, connected to a 14" portable TV, I remember my mother telling me that it had 16 bits, she was not quite sure exactly what a bit was, but that it definitely had 16 of them. That night I stayed up until 4am playing Nebulus and Carrier Command. I have been pretty much addicted to computers ever since, and now at 25, I work as a computer programmer.
Well, if you imagine the brain as a neural net, that has been slowly trained to match meanings/significance to certain electrical nerve inputs. I don't think its pre-wired, but rather self-wiring as part of a constant feedback loop.
You suddenly re-route a large number of these nerve endings, this means that when you touch the tip of your finger, your brain receives a different set of nerve impulses than it was previous trained on. Thus the new inputs are patten matched to the closest set of inputs it has previously known, which results in a sensation/body location mismatch.
Over time, the brain can be trained on the new set of inputs, and learn to correctly pattern match the new nerve inputs with the correct physical sensation.