Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I thought woo woo was simply the sound made by the Crazy Train. Perhaps I should seeking better evidence for the _true_ origin of the term. (* tongue firmly planted in cheek *) FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
But they do promise life everlasting. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:03 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 6:12 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/04/2013 10:03 PM: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N While I agree with you in the abstract, it still doesn't address the meaning of scientific evidence. My assertion is that the variance exhibited by the many meanings of evidence within science is wide enough to cast doubt on the stability (or perhaps even coherence) of the term in science. And if that's the case, then claims for the superiority of scientific evidence over other meanings of evidence are suspicious claims ... deserving of at least as much skepticism as anecdotal evidence or even personal epiphany. Rather than assume an oversimplified projection onto a one dimensional partial order, perhaps there are as many different types of evidence as there are foci of attention, a multi-dimensional space, with an orthogonal partial ordering in each dimension. -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna turn android FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
+1 On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Just one small teensy note of clarification: I usually only insult people who disagree with me when they are/have been complete assholes about it. Which fortunately narrows the field down a bit. -Doug I can testify to this, as I disagree with Doug often and he only insults me when he's being a complete asshole about it grin! - Steve On Apr 4, 2013 6:11 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
And given exponential growth in science, who knows first hand what the variance in accepted scientific evidence actually is? Any claims to know what science is and what scientists do, for the purposes of distinguishing between science and non-science, are claims to a revealed truth, not something that anyone has established empirically. Ouch. -- rec -- On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:12 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/04/2013 10:03 PM: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N While I agree with you in the abstract, it still doesn't address the meaning of scientific evidence. My assertion is that the variance exhibited by the many meanings of evidence within science is wide enough to cast doubt on the stability (or perhaps even coherence) of the term in science. And if that's the case, then claims for the superiority of scientific evidence over other meanings of evidence are suspicious claims ... deserving of at least as much skepticism as anecdotal evidence or even personal epiphany. Rather than assume an oversimplified projection onto a one dimensional partial order, perhaps there are as many different types of evidence as there are foci of attention, a multi-dimensional space, with an orthogonal partial ordering in each dimension. -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna turn android FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/05/2013 08:23 AM: And given exponential growth in science, who knows first hand what the variance in accepted scientific evidence actually is? That's a great point. It may help me articulate my objection to the concept of the singularity, the sense that technology will soon (has) outstrip(ped) purely human intelligence/understanding. It seems more like an explosion of effect[ors] than a super intelligence or anything cognitive, thought-based like that. Even if we constrain ourselves to the maker community (3d printers, arduino, etc.) and the recent pressure for open access to publications, it's difficult for me to imagine any kind of convergence, to science or anything else. It just feels more like a divergence to me. I wonder if there is a way to measure this? In absolute terms, we can't really use a count the people who participate in domain X measure. The ratio of the poor and starving to those who have their basic needs met well enough to participate is too high. It would swamp that absolute measure. We'd have to normalize it. To some extent, exploratory science has always been pursued most effectively by the 1% and those they patronize. Perhaps a measure of the variation in standards of evidence would correlate fairly well with the waxing and waning of the middle class? Any claims to know what science is and what scientists do, for the purposes of distinguishing between science and non-science, are claims to a revealed truth, not something that anyone has established empirically. Ouch. Absolutely! (Sorry, I had to slip in a contradictory affirmation.) This goes directly back to Popper, I think. There is no entry exam for science. Every speculation is welcome. -- == glen e. p. ropella Me and myself got a world to save FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 11:54 AM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Roger/Glen - Good stuff... I find both topics very compelling: 1. How do we define/recognize valid measures of evidence? In the case of the chemtrail faithful I can safely characterize their measure (singular) of evidence as: Look! See the chemtrails? 'They' are trying to poison us!!! 1. Is the current exponential growth in tech divergent or convergent? I believe that the true source of divergence (in what? you might ask, in everything, I might answer: politics, technology, religion, ...) is that too many people are complete, embarrassingly ignorant assholes. And thanks for asking. --Doug -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Steve Smith wrote at 04/05/2013 10:54 AM: 1. How do we define/recognize valid measures of evidence? 2. Is the current exponential growth in tech divergent or convergent? 1. I have worked on several projects involving the formal management of evidence and belief which makes me cynical when people suggest that there is one true form of evidence. Most of it ended up off in high dimensional pareto fronts with multiple measures of confidence. The underlying theory (much just beyond my grasp to regurgitate) is based in variants of Dempster-Shaffer and Fuzzy Sets/Intervals. There is always a Bayesian in the crowd that starts Baying (sorry) about how Bayesian Methods are the *only* thing anyone ever needs. This specific example in statistics and probability theory is but one. Similarly, it took a long time for anyone to accept far-from-equilibrium systems as being worth studying simply because their tools didn't work there. Like looking for your lost keys under the streetlamp because the light is too bad in the alley where you dropped them. Well, the first thing to cover is that the definition won't necessarily be pre-statable. In order for it to be an accurate measure, it will have to evolve with the thing(s) being measured. The second consideration is whatever you mean by valid. If I give you the benefit of the doubt, I assume you mean trustworthy or credentialed in some sense. And, again, I'd settle that by tying trustworthiness to the thing being measured. I typically do this by asking the participants in a domain whether any given measure of their domain is acceptable/irritating. Measures of local hacker spaces is a good anecdote for me, lately. With the growth of the maker community, it's informative to ask various participants what they think of things like techshop vs. dorkbot (or our local variants). Both these suggest skepticism toward the _unification_ of validity or trustworthiness. Evidence boils down to a context-sensitive aggregation, which is why Bayesian methods are so attractive. But I'm sure they aren't the only way to install context sensitivity. Recently, I've been trying to understand Feferman's schematic axiom systems http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/godelnagel.pdf and how a schema might be extracted from a formal system in such a way as to provide provide reasoning structures that are sensitive to application. (My complete and embarrassing ignorance slows my progress, of course.) 2. [...] What I'm equally interested in is if there is a similar divergence in thinking. [...] I believe that humans have a natural time constant around belief (and as a consequence, understanding, knowledge, paradigms?) on the order of years if not decades or a full lifetime. That time-constant may be shrinking, but I rarely believe someone when they claim during or after an arguement to have changed their mind... at best, they are acknowledging that a seed has sprouted which in a few years or decades might grow into a garden. Obviously, I'm still not convinced that _thinking_ is all that important. It strikes me that _doing_ is far more important. My evidence for this lies mostly in the (apparent) decoupled relationship between what people say and what they do. I can see fairly strong maps between immediate, short-term thoughts like Ice cream is good and actions like walking to the freezer, scooping some out, and eating it. But I see fairly convoluted maps between, e.g., Logging your data is good and what bench scientists actually end up writing in their logs. -- == glen e. p. ropella All the lies I tell myself FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Well, you may all soon tire of my attempt to channel the classical pragmatist, C.S Peirce, but it is an interesting perspective, one that has had broad influence on our thought, but whose foundations have gotten trampled into the intellectual midden in the last 100 years, and therefore, I think, worth digging up and dusting off. I think the classical pragmatic answer to Glen's comment would be, whatever produces consensus in the very long run is science. So, as glen would point out, this does not, by itself, produce demarcations between good thought ... experimental thought, in the broadest sense ... and the other kinds. But Peirce was much taken by the period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in which a tremendous amount of opinion was settled ... a consensus was reached ... on the nature of the elements, a consensus that mainly endures until today. So I think he would advise us to turn to the methods of that period and say, use these as a guide to conduct our search for the truth in the future. He would agree that such advice is provisional ... fallible is the term he would use ... but he is contemptible of anything that smacked of Cartesian skeptism. Nobody, he would say, is skeptical as a matter of fact. Doubt is not something we entertain (except as sophists); it is something that is forced upon us and it is a painful state that we try to resolve in favor of belief. So, it is important to talk not about what we can doubt, but what we do doubt. And when we do that, when we look at which methods we have confidence in and which we actually doubt, we will see that we have ways of arriving at consensus ... in the long run ... about which methods to use. And yes that is quasi-tautological. Nick The Village Pragmatist -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 9:12 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/04/2013 10:03 PM: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N While I agree with you in the abstract, it still doesn't address the meaning of scientific evidence. My assertion is that the variance exhibited by the many meanings of evidence within science is wide enough to cast doubt on the stability (or perhaps even coherence) of the term in science. And if that's the case, then claims for the superiority of scientific evidence over other meanings of evidence are suspicious claims ... deserving of at least as much skepticism as anecdotal evidence or even personal epiphany. Rather than assume an oversimplified projection onto a one dimensional partial order, perhaps there are as many different types of evidence as there are foci of attention, a multi-dimensional space, with an orthogonal partial ordering in each dimension. -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna turn android FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger, Speaking in my role as the Village Pragmatist, I think I would insist that your implication is incorrect that there is no purchase on the slipperly slope you describe. Your despair is premature. From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 9:24 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending And given exponential growth in science, who knows first hand what the variance in accepted scientific evidence actually is? Any claims to know what science is and what scientists do, for the purposes of distinguishing between science and non-science, are claims to a revealed truth, not something that anyone has established empirically. Ouch. -- rec -- On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:12 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/04/2013 10:03 PM: Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N While I agree with you in the abstract, it still doesn't address the meaning of scientific evidence. My assertion is that the variance exhibited by the many meanings of evidence within science is wide enough to cast doubt on the stability (or perhaps even coherence) of the term in science. And if that's the case, then claims for the superiority of scientific evidence over other meanings of evidence are suspicious claims ... deserving of at least as much skepticism as anecdotal evidence or even personal epiphany. Rather than assume an oversimplified projection onto a one dimensional partial order, perhaps there are as many different types of evidence as there are foci of attention, a multi-dimensional space, with an orthogonal partial ordering in each dimension. -- == glen e. p. ropella This body of mine, man I don't wanna turn android FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Glen - Steve Smith wrote at 04/05/2013 10:54 AM: 1. How do we define/recognize valid measures of evidence? 2. Is the current exponential growth in tech divergent or convergent? ... Well, the first thing to cover is that the definition won't necessarily be pre-statable. In order for it to be an accurate measure, it will have to evolve with the thing(s) being measured. This is an important point that I'd like to hear more about... I have my own views and ideas on it but get the feeling you may have a more formal or specific idea about this? Both these suggest skepticism toward the _unification_ of validity or trustworthiness. Evidence boils down to a context-sensitive aggregation, which is why Bayesian methods are so attractive. But I'm sure they aren't the only way to install context sensitivity. Recently, I've been trying to understand Feferman's schematic axiom systems http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/godelnagel.pdf and how a schema might be extracted from a formal system in such a way as to provide provide reasoning structures that are sensitive to application. (My complete and embarrassing ignorance slows my progress, of course.) I've downloaded and will read the paper and if my own complete and arrogant ignorance (thanks for the succinct description of this state Doug!) doesn't bog me down even worse, I'll try to respond to that under separate cover. 2. [...] What I'm equally interested in is if there is a similar divergence in thinking. [...] I believe that humans have a natural time constant around belief (and as a consequence, understanding, knowledge, paradigms?) on the order of years if not decades or a full lifetime. That time-constant may be shrinking, but I rarely believe someone when they claim during or after an arguement to have changed their mind... at best, they are acknowledging that a seed has sprouted which in a few years or decades might grow into a garden. Obviously, I'm still not convinced that _thinking_ is all that important. It strikes me that _doing_ is far more important. My evidence for this lies mostly in the (apparent) decoupled relationship between what people say and what they do. I can see fairly strong maps between immediate, short-term thoughts like Ice cream is good and actions like walking to the freezer, scooping some out, and eating it. But I see fairly convoluted maps between, e.g., Logging your data is good and what bench scientists actually end up writing in their logs. I *do* appreciate the harping you have been doing about doing vs thinking (or talking or posturing or gesturing) and take it painfully to heart. My prolificness (prolificacy? wot?) here suggests that I prefer to talk and think to do. That is not *completely* true, as a lot of my doing happens at the same keyboard and screen as my talking and thinking on the other hand, the new heating element to my dryer came in yesterday and I *still* haven't installed it. And Spring is springing and I *still* haven't bled the brakes on my dumptruck to go get my usual Springtime loads of manure and woodchips... and I am *still* yammering away here as April 15 looms over the horizon and my PL records are still woefully under-attended... and ... well, you get the picture. Talk *is* (relatively) cheap, though not without a price. I also appreciate what you probably *really* intended to illuminate... that what we *do* says more than what we *say*. But the two *are* duals... even if some of us *say* one thing and *do* another, there is a correlation. In fact, those of us who protest most loudly about this or that might be the best suspects for acting differently. Anecdotally it is a given that rabid homophobes are likely to be gay and it is easy enough for me to believe that those who proselytize most grandly might be compensating for their own lack of belief. But the point I was trying to make, independent of the measure (I think) is that human time scales, the time between beginning to accept/understand/experience/act differently and a full embrace of it can be quite long. This feels like a bit of a ceiling (more aptly floor) to constrain any runaway acceleration of thinking OR action? I could be arguing for your point (even more than intended) as I know that if I can encode an idea into an action and an action into a habit, it often doesn't take long for me to shift from one mode to another... there is a power of tactile/embodied habituation that mere thinking/talking doesn't touch. Thanks - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
It think the Village Pragmatist would insist, contra Roger, that even as there is an explosion of small doubts at the periphery of our collective understanding, so also there is an explosion of the stuff that we have come to agree about. Nick -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 10:58 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/05/2013 08:23 AM: And given exponential growth in science, who knows first hand what the variance in accepted scientific evidence actually is? That's a great point. It may help me articulate my objection to the concept of the singularity, the sense that technology will soon (has) outstrip(ped) purely human intelligence/understanding. It seems more like an explosion of effect[ors] than a super intelligence or anything cognitive, thought-based like that. Even if we constrain ourselves to the maker community (3d printers, arduino, etc.) and the recent pressure for open access to publications, it's difficult for me to imagine any kind of convergence, to science or anything else. It just feels more like a divergence to me. I wonder if there is a way to measure this? In absolute terms, we can't really use a count the people who participate in domain X measure. The ratio of the poor and starving to those who have their basic needs met well enough to participate is too high. It would swamp that absolute measure. We'd have to normalize it. To some extent, exploratory science has always been pursued most effectively by the 1% and those they patronize. Perhaps a measure of the variation in standards of evidence would correlate fairly well with the waxing and waning of the middle class? Any claims to know what science is and what scientists do, for the purposes of distinguishing between science and non-science, are claims to a revealed truth, not something that anyone has established empirically. Ouch. Absolutely! (Sorry, I had to slip in a contradictory affirmation.) This goes directly back to Popper, I think. There is no entry exam for science. Every speculation is welcome. -- == glen e. p. ropella Me and myself got a world to save FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Unfortunately I think I am coming into this a bit too late to read through the whole thread and respond, but I would like to present a couple of related topics and see what people think. The first is in response to 'would I like people to burst my placebo/nocebo bubble?': the latest issue of Science magazine has an article on recommendations by the American College of Medicine of whether people should be told without being asked that they have alleles that indicate an elevated risk of disease when looking at genes related to common diseases (mostly cancers and tissue defects) as a course of a full-genome analysis for another disease/syndrome/disorder (pointing out that people may already be in an emotionally fragile state from said disease). Link herehttp://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1507.full?sid=7561e634-f578-431a-8299-e86ef03891f4 . Secondly, I agree that how likable a belief is relies not on how close to reality it is (although that helps) but how 'humble' it is, how willing to admit that it could be wrong (put another way, beliefs that come with an accurate measure of where they came from and therefore how widely they can be applied). So there is likable woo (cold fusion or the new cold fusion, LENR; based on my [admittedly minor] perusing of websites and documents the proponents seem to welcome outside experimentation/verification, and open-source device plans. That doesn't mean the device works as advertised, though) and dislikable woo (iridology?) with chemtrails in between (while it seems very paranoid, I wouldn't put it past refineries that produce jet fuel to get rid of waste chemicals through their product; and although neither that nor any other intentional human activity [unless we can count GHG emissions as intentional just through negligence now?] has effectively controlled the weather, it is not for lack of trying. Contemporary benign activities like silver iodide cloud seeding, speak to this) along with homeopathy (my school tutor keeps recommending this method, whatever that means in practice, and I just politely change the subject; While I don't understand the fractionation thing, the idea that it contains the cause of what it is treating gets some mental preparation from the idea of vaccines). May be unrelated: the discovery of the sodium layer, and the ICEhttp://photovalet.com/181459[Ionosphere Communication Experiment] Station Otto [Not to be confused with Ice Station Zebra], outside Vaughn, NM. Similarly, there is likable and dislikable skepticism. I think the best part of science is the experimentation itself rather than the results per se (although obviously the fruitful part for society is the resulting tech or best practices); perhaps this is related to Feynman's pleasure of finding things out (I believe it was that book in which he stirs a pot of jello that he is holding out a window to see if it will congeal faster in the cold, or the one in which he and a classmate realise they have different ways of counting, one auditory, one visual). When this turns into ridiculing people, however justified, it becomes just no fun anymore. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
prescience: piles of random woo science: linear woo woo trains unity: fractal woos within woos = WOO ! Rich On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Arlo Barnes arlo.bar...@gmail.com wrote: Unfortunately I think I am coming into this a bit too late to read through the whole thread and respond, but I would like to present a couple of related topics and see what people think. The first is in response to 'would I like people to burst my placebo/nocebo bubble?': the latest issue of Science magazine has an article on recommendations by the American College of Medicine of whether people should be told without being asked that they have alleles that indicate an elevated risk of disease when looking at genes related to common diseases (mostly cancers and tissue defects) as a course of a full-genome analysis for another disease/syndrome/disorder (pointing out that people may already be in an emotionally fragile state from said disease). Link herehttp://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1507.full?sid=7561e634-f578-431a-8299-e86ef03891f4 . Secondly, I agree that how likable a belief is relies not on how close to reality it is (although that helps) but how 'humble' it is, how willing to admit that it could be wrong (put another way, beliefs that come with an accurate measure of where they came from and therefore how widely they can be applied). So there is likable woo (cold fusion or the new cold fusion, LENR; based on my [admittedly minor] perusing of websites and documents the proponents seem to welcome outside experimentation/verification, and open-source device plans. That doesn't mean the device works as advertised, though) and dislikable woo (iridology?) with chemtrails in between (while it seems very paranoid, I wouldn't put it past refineries that produce jet fuel to get rid of waste chemicals through their product; and although neither that nor any other intentional human activity [unless we can count GHG emissions as intentional just through negligence now?] has effectively controlled the weather, it is not for lack of trying. Contemporary benign activities like silver iodide cloud seeding, speak to this) along with homeopathy (my school tutor keeps recommending this method, whatever that means in practice, and I just politely change the subject; While I don't understand the fractionation thing, the idea that it contains the cause of what it is treating gets some mental preparation from the idea of vaccines). May be unrelated: the discovery of the sodium layer, and the ICEhttp://photovalet.com/181459[Ionosphere Communication Experiment] Station Otto [Not to be confused with Ice Station Zebra], outside Vaughn, NM. Similarly, there is likable and dislikable skepticism. I think the best part of science is the experimentation itself rather than the results per se (although obviously the fruitful part for society is the resulting tech or best practices); perhaps this is related to Feynman's pleasure of finding things out (I believe it was that book in which he stirs a pot of jello that he is holding out a window to see if it will congeal faster in the cold, or the one in which he and a classmate realise they have different ways of counting, one auditory, one visual). When this turns into ridiculing people, however justified, it becomes just no fun anymore. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Compare Urban Dictionary: woothttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot . -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Urban Dictionary: woot http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot . woot Share on twitter http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Share on facebook http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Share on more http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# *4635* up http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#, *1141* down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Woot originated as a hacker term for root (or administrative) access to a computer. However, with the term as coincides with the gamer term, w00t. w00t was originally an trunicated expression common among players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game for Wow, loot! Thus the term passed into the net-culture where it thrived in video game communities and lost its original meaning and is used simply as a term of excitement. I defeated the dark sorcerer! Woot! woot! i r teh flagmastar! (Think Tribes) Woot, I pwnzed this dude's boxen!' and there's wood, would, woof, Wookie, wool... On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:49 PM, Arlo Barnes arlo.bar...@gmail.com wrote: Compare Urban Dictionary: woothttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot . -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
1. http://woo-woo.urbanup.com/20579woo woo Share on twitter http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on facebook http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on more http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# *253* up http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#, *126* down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Unfounded or ludicrouse beliefs Belief in talking to the dead, belief in telikenesis, in fact any belief not founded on good evidence, the poorer the evidence the more Woo Woo the belief. buy woo woo mugs shirtshttp://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=woo%20woodefid=20579 by Russell http://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Russell Jan 14, 2003 add a videohttp://www.urbandictionary.com/video.php?defid=20579word=woo+woo 2. http://woo-woo.urbanup.com/2232939woo woo Share on twitter http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on facebook http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on more http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# *199* up http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#, *94* down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# extraordinary beliefs for which it is felt there is insufficient extraordinary evidence, and people who hold those beliefs. The date was going fine, then she started to talk about taking her cat to her Pet Psychic for an aura adjustment. Just a bit woo woo for me. buy woo woo mugs shirtshttp://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=woo%20woodefid=2232939 bunk http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bunk airy-fairyhttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=airy-fairy new-agey http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=new-agey insanehttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=insane vapid http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vapid by Daikenn http://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Daikenn Feb 3, 2007 add a videohttp://www.urbandictionary.com/video.php?defid=2232939word=woo+woo 3. http://woo-woo.urbanup.com/99377woo woo Share on twitter http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on facebook http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# Share on more http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# *219* up http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#, *166* down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo# The sound the whistle tip makes. Its dat woo woo, no what im sayin? Den you got da flows, aint dat trippy out da flowmastas and shit We do it fo da dekarayshunz man. Dats it and dats all man, fo dekarayshunz. You posed be up cookin brehfast fo somebody, its like an alarm clock- woo woo! On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 10:30 PM, Dean Gerber pd_ger...@yahoo.com wrote: I thought woo was a FRIAM local-ism for the Santa Fe local-ism woo woo now in urban usage: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woo+woo Dean Gerber -- *From:* Rich Murray rmfor...@gmail.com *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com *Sent:* Friday, April 5, 2013 11:13 PM *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Urban Dictionary: woothttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot . woot Share on twitter http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Share on facebook http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Share on more http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# *4635* up http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#, *1141* down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot# Woot originated as a hacker term for root (or administrative) access to a computer. However, with the term as coincides with the gamer term, w00t. w00t was originally an trunicated expression common among players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game for Wow, loot! Thus the term passed into the net-culture where it thrived in video game communities and lost its original meaning and is used simply as a term of excitement. I defeated the dark sorcerer! Woot! woot! i r teh flagmastar! (Think Tribes) Woot, I pwnzed this dude's boxen!' and there's wood, would, woof, Wookie, wool... On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:49 PM, Arlo Barnes arlo.bar...@gmail.com wrote: Compare Urban Dictionary: woothttp://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot . -Arlo James Barnes
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I agree with Feynman. Sort of, with a caveat to follow after a short digression. What about the placebo effect, a standard reference for FDA approval of medications? There's no money in it (actually, there's a lot of money in it) but the effects - 30% efficacy I heard once - are impressive, without side effects. A P Dijsterkuihttp://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?subpage=Ap%20Dijksterhuispage=Peoples is doing the Feynman thing with methods of decision-making and how the conscious - and unconscious - mind works. The obstacle as I see it is cultural - a sense of glee and see, we told you so on the part of the woo faction which is singularly unattractive; and on the other hand a harrumph...highly irregular (spoken with an English accent) on the part of the materialists, which also smells of crusty religion. To go beyond either, now that's a stretch. Back to Feynman, I agree with him, and also see that he's following his own bent, a love for analysis, that not everyone will share. Plus when you factor in Heisenberg and the observer's effect on the experiment, etc., at some point we just have to throw up our hands and shake our heads at our own humanity. Ron On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Bruce Sherwood bruce.sherw...@gmail.comwrote: Feynman had a nice comment on this, Nick. He suggests that faith healers don't take their faith seriously. Retrieved from http://faculty.randolphcollege.edu/tmichalik/feynman.htm There is an infinite amount of crazy stuff, which, put another way, is that the environment is actively, intensely unscientific. There is talk of telepathy still, although it's dying out. There is faith-healing galore, all over. There is a whole religion of faith-healing. There's a miracle at Lourdes where healing goes on. Now, it might be true that astrology is right. It might be true that if you go to the dentist on the day that Mars is at right angles to Venus, that it is better than if you go on a different day. It might be true that you can be cured by the miracle of Lourdes. But if it is true, it ought to be investigated. Why? To improve it. If it is true, then maybe we can find out if the stars do influence life; that we could make the system more powerful by investigating statistically, scientifically judging the evidence objectively, more carefully. If the healing process works at Lourdes, the question is how far from the site of the miracle can the person, who is ill, stand? Have they in fact made a mistake and the back row is really not working? Or is it working so well that there is plenty of room for more people to be arranged near the place of the miracle? Or is it possible, as it is with the saints which have recently been created in the United States - there is a saint who cured leukemia apparently indirectly - that ribbons that are touched to the sheet of the sick person (the ribbon having previously touched some relic of the saint) increase the cure of leukemia - the question is, is it gradually being diluted? You may laugh, but if you believe in the truth of the healing, then you are responsible to investigate it, to improve its efficiency and to make it satisfactory instead of cheating. For example, it may turn out that after a hundred touches it doesn't work anymore. Now it's also possible that the results of this investigation have other consequences, namely, that nothing is there. FROM: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, by Richard P. Feynman, Helix Books, 1999, pgs. 106-107. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
If the placebo is double blind I've heard the percentage shoots up. But the fact remains that a mere thought, or belief, is affecting something. If science were untainted that would be the basis for massive investigation. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Barry MacKichan barry.mackic...@mackichan.com wrote: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). --Barry On Apr 4, 2013, at 11:14 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: There's no money in it (actually, there's a lot of money in it) but the effects - 30% efficacy I heard once - are impressive, without side effects. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Ron Newman wrote at 04/04/2013 10:57 AM: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. No, I'm not missing that point at all. The primary clinical problems are if, when, and how to _intervene_. This is the first question you should be asking. Even in a scientific context, the first question is about how to manipulate the system so that cause and effect can be teased out of the noise. The point is if, when, and how to manipulate. The question of improvement only comes after addressing the question of manipulation. -- == glen e. p. ropella I'm a king ?? FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Actually, I think there is active scientific research trying to understand the placebo effect, because the effect and its benefits have been well documented. As Feynman points out, better understanding could lead to improved placebo effect. Bruce On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: If the placebo is double blind I've heard the percentage shoots up. But the fact remains that a mere thought, or belief, is affecting something. If science were untainted that would be the basis for massive investigation. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I've restricted my participation in this discussion because I started a new schedule of medications yesterday and I wasn't sure whence my enthusiasm came. That's sort of a transcebo effect, everything I take appears to have subtle side effects, but appearances can be deceiving, and you often see what you look for. -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I get your point, Doug. I had to suppress the desire to roll my eyes when once I met someone who looked up at the sky and spoke confidently of chemtrails. I'm reminded of something Joseph Campbell said - who looked as deeply into the beliefs of human beings across history as anyone. He said that the closer you get to something of distilled wisdom, the more crazies there are standing around. I try to keep that in mind when I'm tempted to throw something out while teasing the signal from the noise. I once knew an anesthesiologist who patented a device and started a company around it. The thing located nerves accurately for surgeons. As an anecdotal aside, he told me that the places where nerves crossed each other tended to correlate with acupuncture points. One possibility. Regarding placebo, if we were talking about solar power, 30% efficiency would be a great starting point. Ron -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.ideatree.us/ On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/04/2013 11:37 AM: you often see what you look for. I'll raise you and assert that you _always_ see what you look for ... which takes me back to Kauffman's paper and his failure to cite Robert Rosen's treatment of anticipatory systems (aka final cause). Our expectations are a kind of forcing structure or, at least, a box of constraints upon our dynamics. The fans of woo I _like_ tend to have big boxes within which they can wiggle a lot. They do not build prisons from their expectations. Many hard core materialists (e.g. the New Atheists) and many consipiracy nuts have such tightly wound expectations, such convictions, that they are no longer open enough to wiggle. -- == glen e. p. ropella I have gazed beyond today FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
There have also been scientific studies involving something called that nocebo effect, in which expectations of harm are self-fulfilling. I apologize that I can't at the moment find references to the following two examples. People who felt themselves sensitive or insensitive to cell phone radiation were put in a functional MRI machine with a cell phone near the head that could be turned on or off. The insensitives when told the phone was turned on showed no change in brain function, but the sensitives showed activity in the brain locations associated with real pain. Although in fact the cell phone was never turned on, the sensitives apparently experienced real pain. The pain is real, but not caused by cell phone radiation -- nocebo. An experiment was performed on the efficacy of prayer for those in need. People were recruited to pray for hospital patients, with various conditions of the study. The only effect that was found was that if patients were told that they were being prayed for, those patients did worse, presumably because they thought that if people were going to the trouble of praying for them, they must be in worse shape than they had thought. Again, nocebo. Bruce FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
All this contrasery over the sigh. I think sigh and sighing is a good thing it can lead to interesting conversations. :P On 4/4/13, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: I get your point, Doug. I had to suppress the desire to roll my eyes when once I met someone who looked up at the sky and spoke confidently of chemtrails. I'm reminded of something Joseph Campbell said - who looked as deeply into the beliefs of human beings across history as anyone. He said that the closer you get to something of distilled wisdom, the more crazies there are standing around. I try to keep that in mind when I'm tempted to throw something out while teasing the signal from the noise. I once knew an anesthesiologist who patented a device and started a company around it. The thing located nerves accurately for surgeons. As an anecdotal aside, he told me that the places where nerves crossed each other tended to correlate with acupuncture points. One possibility. Regarding placebo, if we were talking about solar power, 30% efficiency would be a great starting point. Ron -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.ideatree.us/ On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Ron - I get your point, Doug. I had to suppress the desire to roll my eyes when once I met someone who looked up at the sky and spoke confidently of chemtrails. I generally feel the same way, and this is usually abutted with something about crop circles and maybe a reference to the grassy knoll. I *did* get caught off guard recently when reading about technological remedies to global warming via releasing sulfur compounds into the upper atmosphere... someone suggested that the (govt, corp, etc.) was *already* doing it by introducing said chemistry into jet fuel. I was briefly a true believer. It still seems like too much to put past everyone (jet fuel providers, mechanics, EPA, etc.) but for at least a second I was ready to believe that large scale atmospheric manipulation was already underway. I think it is the confidence coming from someone who normally (usually) has no interest in anything technical or analytical claiming they know for a fact something that at best they have on good authority. - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day . an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor . and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, Call me nuts, but .. I guess, You're nuts! N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ..). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, ** ** Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day … an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor … and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, “Call me nuts, but ….” ** ** I guess, “You’re nuts!” ** ** N *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending ** ** Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. ** ** --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote:* *** But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. ** ** On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ** ** -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ** ** -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Yes but ... I didn't believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. You aren't telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters? I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell's thing at the UN; my wife didn't buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day . an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor . and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, Call me nuts, but .. I guess, You're nuts! N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ..). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter http://worldhappinessmeter.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Doug
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Nick - There are two kinds of people in the world, those who take Gullibility to excess and those who take Skepticism to excess. I happen to be of the third kind, one who tends to take *both* to excess... I'm not sure if that helps me get on the world, but I'm not sure I have a choice anymore than the hardline Gulls or hardline Skepts do here. In deference to Glen's twitch, I guess I twitch both ways. Just don't tell me you look it up every time someone tells you Gullible isn't in the dictionary! - Steve Yes but . I didn't believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. You aren't telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters? I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell's thing at the UN; my wife didn't buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. Nick *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day ... an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor ... and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, Call me nuts, but I guess, You're nuts! N *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com mailto:ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name mailto:g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us The World Happiness Meter
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I personally find it disappointing that so many people are willing to adopt a belief set with no evidence, based solely on what someone said was The Truth. On a related note, now would appear to be an excellent time to start a church, impose mandatory weekly attendance upon the faithful, and charge $20 a head at the door each week. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Yes but ….. ** ** I didn’t believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. “You aren’t telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters?” I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell’s thing at the UN; my wife didn’t buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. ** ** Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending ** ** There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. ** ** --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day … an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor … and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, “Call me nuts, but ….” I guess, “You’re nuts!” N *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote:* *** But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:21 PM: I personally find it disappointing that so many people are willing to adopt a belief set with no evidence, based solely on what someone said was The Truth. Yeah, but the real problem is equivocation around the word evidence. -- == glen e. p. ropella It's already in their eyes. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Well, I suppose. I was using evidence in the scientific sense, rather than the political one, or the one which so many idiots prefer to use which could loosely defined as I choose to believe, so there is plenty of evidence to support my belief. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:37 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:21 PM: I personally find it disappointing that so many people are willing to adopt a belief set with no evidence, based solely on what someone said was The Truth. Yeah, but the real problem is equivocation around the word evidence. -- == glen e. p. ropella It's already in their eyes. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Doug - On a related note, now would appear to be an excellent time to start a church, impose mandatory weekly attendance upon the faithful, and charge $20 a head at the door each week. Clearly you haven't been to FRIAM (in person) lately... you are in arrears on your dues! We'll take it out of the royalties on your eBook. Tangenting again... my parents were both of Applachian stock where those who had Christ used their bibles to access him without benefit of a church or preacher. My mother liked to go to church Christmas and Easter and I think the last (and only?) time my father came with her, when the collection plate came by, he reached in, then pulled his hand back empty and said no thank you, I think I have enough and passed it on. - Steve --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Yes but . I didn't believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. You aren't telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters? I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell's thing at the UN; my wife didn't buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. Nick *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day ... an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor ... and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, Call me nuts, but I guess, You're nuts! N *From:*Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com mailto:ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name mailto:g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I'm guessing I would have liked your dad, Steve. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Doug - On a related note, now would appear to be an excellent time to start a church, impose mandatory weekly attendance upon the faithful, and charge $20 a head at the door each week. Clearly you haven't been to FRIAM (in person) lately... you are in arrears on your dues! We'll take it out of the royalties on your eBook. Tangenting again... my parents were both of Applachian stock where those who had Christ used their bibles to access him without benefit of a church or preacher. My mother liked to go to church Christmas and Easter and I think the last (and only?) time my father came with her, when the collection plate came by, he reached in, then pulled his hand back empty and said no thank you, I think I have enough and passed it on. - Steve --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Yes but ….. I didn’t believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. “You aren’t telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters?” I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell’s thing at the UN; my wife didn’t buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. Nick *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day … an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor … and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, “Call me nuts, but ….” I guess, “You’re nuts!” N *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Just one small teensy note of clarification: I usually only insult people who disagree with me when they are/have been complete assholes about it. Which fortunately narrows the field down a bit. -Doug On Apr 4, 2013 6:11 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I think the church of satan grotos do that. Maybe we can start a sith and or jedi temple. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: I personally find it disappointing that so many people are willing to adopt a belief set with no evidence, based solely on what someone said was The Truth. On a related note, now would appear to be an excellent time to start a church, impose mandatory weekly attendance upon the faithful, and charge $20 a head at the door each week. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Yes but ….. ** ** I didn’t believe Watergate the first few times I heard about it, either. “You aren’t telling me that a president that was going to win an election in a walk actually sent Burglars into the Democratic Headquarters?” I just could not believe that they could be so stupid. I fell for Colin Powell’s thing at the UN; my wife didn’t buy it for a moment. I have to say, that in most contexts, I believe in gullibility. I think a little bit of gullibility is the best program for getting on in life. But I have been known to carry it too far. ** ** Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 3:39 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending ** ** There are a surprising number of them on facebook, Nick. To nobody's great surprise, I guess. ** ** --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, Somebody laid the chemtrails thing on me the other day … an otherwise perfectly sensible neighbor … and I was left standing in the street with my jaw hanging open. What do you say when somebody your sort of like, touches you on the upper arm, points skyward and says, “Call me nuts, but ….” I guess, “You’re nuts!” N *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:14 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Well shoot, as long as we're talking about irrational belief sets, how about if we throw chemtrails into the mix. There is a not insignificant segment of the US population who fervently believe that they are poisoning us, on purpose. But only on those days that the jets leave con ... er ... chemtrails. No proof necessary, just *look* at those chemtrails. --Doug On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Ron Newman ron.new...@gmail.com wrote: But you're missing the point.: *something* is working for them if they believe it is, and is not for you or anyone who doesn't believe it is. The question is how does it work? No, that's not good enough, because it too easily leads back to premature assumptions. The question is: how can placebo be improved. Not set aside but improved. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:47 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Barry MacKichan wrote at 04/04/2013 10:29 AM: I've heard it is very effective, but only for a time until the patient discovers it is a placebo. Call it the Lincoln effect (You can fool all of ….). A friend of mine announced that she's now getting acupuncture for her chronic back and neck pain. There's a zealot in our local CfI (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/) group who continuously and loudly shouts about acupuncture being as quackish as homeopathy. (Seriously... is there anything as quackish as homeopathy?) The tiny amount of time I've spent looking into acupuncture indicates that it's mostly nonsense with some slight possibility of truth in regard to certain _pressure_ points and nerve clusters. But nothing that an evidence-based masseuse couldn't achieve more effectively. But I kept my mouth shut and let her talk about how well it's worked so far. My dad also used acupuncture for a racquetball associated injury. He claimed it worked very well... [ahem] ... even better than his chiropractor. I didn't want to introduce any doubt that might interfere with her placebo effect. Interestingly, I was trying to apply the Golden Rule in a post-hoc analysis of my lack of action. Would I want someone to burst my placebo effect bubble? If so, when? Immediately? Or perhaps after some window of time as the placebo effect decays and it bumps up against the hard biophysical/physiological limits? -- == glen e. p. ropella I can't get no peace until I get into motion FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Doug if I may observe that you and Howl(sp) seem to have a great noes for asshoelery though in your case from what I can tell your ire for at least google and people not linux friendly goes up almost instantly. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: Just one small teensy note of clarification: I usually only insult people who disagree with me when they are/have been complete assholes about it. Which fortunately narrows the field down a bit. -Doug On Apr 4, 2013 6:11 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
your certain kind of zeel would make for a great sith lord- Just need to figure out how get you intune with the force enough to get people to come attend at the new sith temple On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Gillian Densmore gil.densm...@gmail.comwrote: Doug if I may observe that you and Howl(sp) seem to have a great noes for asshoelery though in your case from what I can tell your ire for at least google and people not linux friendly goes up almost instantly. On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: Just one small teensy note of clarification: I usually only insult people who disagree with me when they are/have been complete assholes about it. Which fortunately narrows the field down a bit. -Doug On Apr 4, 2013 6:11 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Just one small teensy note of clarification: I usually only insult people who disagree with me when they are/have been complete assholes about it. Which fortunately narrows the field down a bit. -Doug I can testify to this, as I disagree with Doug often and he only insults me when he's being a complete asshole about it grin! - Steve On Apr 4, 2013 6:11 PM, glen g...@ropella.name mailto:g...@ropella.name wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Again, acting in my capacity as the Village Pragmatist, I would assert that science is the only procedure capable of producing lasting consensus. The other methods various forms of torture, mostly ... do not produce such enduring results. N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 6:12 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/04/2013 04:45 PM: I was using evidence in the scientific sense, You say that as if everyone agrees on the scientific sense of the term, which of course they don't. Even reputable scientists disagree on what constitutes evidence. I know you're willing to insult anyone with whom you disagree. But the fact remains that standards of evidence differ depending on the context of the discussion, the domain of inquiry, etc. Evidence in, say, cosmology or evolution is very different from evidence in, say, biology or physics. And that's without leaping out into the softer sciences. -- == glen e. p. ropella Looked pretty horny if I do say FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending (skeptics kill talks about wider views) -- Forwarded message -- From: The Weiler Psi comment-re...@wordpress.com Date: Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM Subject: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending To: rmfor...@gmail.com ** craigweiler posted: TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site vRespond to this post by replying above this line New post on *The Weiler Psi* http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sendinghttp://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-loud-and-clear-message-that-the-ted-controversy-is-sending/ by craigweiler http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ TED http://www.ted.com/pages/about talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site views by 500% over this past month and pushed my blog into the top 5% of internet blogs in general, by views. What's not to like? They have picked sides in a growing controversy, which has galvanized the pro-psi camp in ways that have never been seen before. Indeed, a lot is happening that has never been seen before and I'm delighted to be in the middle of it. My battle was never with TED, it's with the skeptics pulling the stringshttp://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/ted-revokes-license-for-tedx-west-hollywood-event/behind the scenes at TED. Which brings me to my point. The loud and clear message that has been sent is that there IS a major scientific controversy brewing and institutions, from TED to all of academia and the media need to stop taking sides. They need to step out of the way and let the controversy play itself out or suffer huge PR damagehttp://blog.ted.com/2013/04/01/a-note-to-the-ted-community-on-the-withdrawal-of-the-tedxwesthollywood-license/as a consequence. The new thing that is happening is that change isn't coming from within the hallowed, starched halls of academia and within the confines of scientific conferences, but from the outside. The ideas that skeptics so quickly dismiss are gaining mas acceptance and are starting to redefine the power structure. From what I can see, this is very confusing to everyone on the skeptical side of the debate. (For those not familiar with the debate, it can be oversimplified thusly: On the one side we have materialists/reductionists/skeptics who see the universe as a lifeless machine that can be understood by figuring out its mechanics. On the other side we have Biocentrists, for lack of a better term, who see consciousness and life as being fundamental to the universe. In other words, they see the universe as a giant thought. You generally won't hear much about the second theory, but the evidence is much better than most people realize. Mainstream science does not acknowledge this which is pretty much why there's a big controversy.) Science, after all, is decided by scientists, right? What gives the ordinary rabble the right to intrude on discussions about the fundamental nature of the universe? This needs to be decided by people with advanced degrees who have studied these matters their whole adult lives. Surely only they have the requisite knowledge to decide? That certainly holds true for most areas of science; the public is more than willing to just accept what they are told. What makes the psi debate so different? What the heck is *happening*? In a word, this particular area of science is being crowdsourced. While people obviously aren't out conducting experiments en mass and publishing them in scientific journals, they are able to substantially verify scientific claims such as there is no evidence for psychic phenomena. If this phrase is uttered by a scientist and turns up in a mainstream news article it is a relatively simple matter to browse the comment section to find more substantial sources of information. Often these days, links with real scientific information will be shared by a knowledgeable person effectively demonstrating that the statement was false. This scenario has gotten pretty common. It's precisely this kind of thing that has sent TED reeling these past couple of weeks. Just a few short years ago, this problem with Sheldrake and Hancock would have been easily managed. Drop the speakers, ignore the few protest emails and proceed as if nothing had happened. It would have been over before most of the public even knew what was happening. What happened a few weeks ago however, is something that will play out more and more
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
[psi] N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Rich Murray Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 12:41 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Rich Murray Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending (skeptics kill talks about wider views) -- Forwarded message -- From: The Weiler Psi comment-re...@wordpress.com Date: Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM Subject: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending To: rmfor...@gmail.com craigweiler posted: TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site v Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on The Weiler Psi Error! Filename not specified. http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ Error! Filename not specified. http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-loud-and-clear-message-th at-the-ted-controversy-is-sending/ The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending by craigweiler http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ http://www.ted.com/pages/about TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site views by 500% over this past month and pushed my blog into the top 5% of internet blogs in general, by views. What's not to like? They have picked sides in a growing controversy, which has galvanized the pro-psi camp in ways that have never been seen before. Indeed, a lot is happening that has never been seen before and I'm delighted to be in the middle of it. My battle was never with TED, it's with http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/ted-revokes-license-for- tedx-west-hollywood-event/ the skeptics pulling the strings behind the scenes at TED. Which brings me to my point. The loud and clear message that has been sent is that there IS a major scientific controversy brewing and institutions, from TED to all of academia and the media need to stop taking sides. They need to step out of the way and let the controversy play itself out or suffer http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/01/a-note-to-the-ted-community-on-the-withdrawa l-of-the-tedxwesthollywood-license/ huge PR damage as a consequence. The new thing that is happening is that change isn't coming from within the hallowed, starched halls of academia and within the confines of scientific conferences, but from the outside. The ideas that skeptics so quickly dismiss are gaining mas acceptance and are starting to redefine the power structure. From what I can see, this is very confusing to everyone on the skeptical side of the debate. (For those not familiar with the debate, it can be oversimplified thusly: On the one side we have materialists/reductionists/skeptics who see the universe as a lifeless machine that can be understood by figuring out its mechanics. On the other side we have Biocentrists, for lack of a better term, who see consciousness and life as being fundamental to the universe. In other words, they see the universe as a giant thought. You generally won't hear much about the second theory, but the evidence is much better than most people realize. Mainstream science does not acknowledge this which is pretty much why there's a big controversy.) Science, after all, is decided by scientists, right? What gives the ordinary rabble the right to intrude on discussions about the fundamental nature of the universe? This needs to be decided by people with advanced degrees who have studied these matters their whole adult lives. Surely only they have the requisite knowledge to decide? That certainly holds true for most areas of science; the public is more than willing to just accept what they are told. What makes the psi debate so different? What the heck is happening? In a word, this particular area of science is being crowdsourced. While people obviously aren't out conducting experiments en mass and publishing them in scientific journals, they are able to substantially verify scientific claims such as there is no evidence for psychic phenomena. If this phrase is uttered by a scientist and turns up in a mainstream news article it is a relatively simple matter to browse the comment section to find more substantial sources of information. Often these days, links with real scientific information will be shared by a knowledgeable person effectively demonstrating that the statement was false. This scenario has gotten pretty common. It's precisely this kind of thing that has sent TED
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Psi = sigh = psychology = pounds per square inch = ? Am I close? How were Galveston and the trip back? Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 mailto:wimber...@gmail.com wimber...@gmail.com mailto:wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:49 AM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending [psi] N From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Rich Murray Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 12:41 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Rich Murray Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending (skeptics kill talks about wider views) -- Forwarded message -- From: The Weiler Psi comment-re...@wordpress.com Date: Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM Subject: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending To: rmfor...@gmail.com craigweiler posted: TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site v Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on The Weiler Psi Error! Filename not specified. http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ Error! Filename not specified. http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-loud-and-clear-message-th at-the-ted-controversy-is-sending/ The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending by craigweiler http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ http://www.ted.com/pages/about TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site views by 500% over this past month and pushed my blog into the top 5% of internet blogs in general, by views. What's not to like? They have picked sides in a growing controversy, which has galvanized the pro-psi camp in ways that have never been seen before. Indeed, a lot is happening that has never been seen before and I'm delighted to be in the middle of it. My battle was never with TED, it's with http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/ted-revokes-license-for- tedx-west-hollywood-event/ the skeptics pulling the strings behind the scenes at TED. Which brings me to my point. The loud and clear message that has been sent is that there IS a major scientific controversy brewing and institutions, from TED to all of academia and the media need to stop taking sides. They need to step out of the way and let the controversy play itself out or suffer http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/01/a-note-to-the-ted-community-on-the-withdrawa l-of-the-tedxwesthollywood-license/ huge PR damage as a consequence. The new thing that is happening is that change isn't coming from within the hallowed, starched halls of academia and within the confines of scientific conferences, but from the outside. The ideas that skeptics so quickly dismiss are gaining mas acceptance and are starting to redefine the power structure. From what I can see, this is very confusing to everyone on the skeptical side of the debate. (For those not familiar with the debate, it can be oversimplified thusly: On the one side we have materialists/reductionists/skeptics who see the universe as a lifeless machine that can be understood by figuring out its mechanics. On the other side we have Biocentrists, for lack of a better term, who see consciousness and life as being fundamental to the universe. In other words, they see the universe as a giant thought. You generally won't hear much about the second theory, but the evidence is much better than most people realize. Mainstream science does not acknowledge this which is pretty much why there's a big controversy.) Science, after all, is decided by scientists, right? What gives the ordinary rabble the right to intrude on discussions about the fundamental nature of the universe? This needs to be decided by people with advanced degrees who have studied these matters their whole adult lives. Surely only they have the requisite knowledge to decide? That certainly holds true for most areas of science; the public is more than willing to just accept what they are told. What makes the psi debate so different? What the heck is happening? In a word, this particular area of science is being crowdsourced. While people obviously aren't
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Dang, I missed the thermodynamic reference. I think there's a parallel between Sam Harris being outraged that people think he's a racist islamophobe ( http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2/ ) and the woo peddlers being outraged that TED doesn't think their ideas are worth spreading. I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. -- rec -- On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Psi = sigh = psychology = pounds per square inch = ? ** ** Am I close? ** ** How were Galveston and the trip back? ** ** Frank ** ** ** ** Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 ** ** wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicholas Thompson *Sent:* Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:49 AM *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending ** ** [psi] ** ** N ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.comfriam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Rich Murray *Sent:* Wednesday, April 03, 2013 12:41 AM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; Rich Murray *Subject:* [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending ** ** The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending (skeptics kill talks about wider views) -- Forwarded message -- From: *The Weiler Psi* comment-re...@wordpress.com Date: Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM Subject: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending To: rmfor...@gmail.com craigweiler posted: TED talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site v Respond to this post by replying above this line ** ** ** ** New post on *The Weiler Psi* *Error! Filename not specified.* ** ** *Error! Filename not specified.*http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sendinghttp://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-loud-and-clear-message-that-the-ted-controversy-is-sending/ by craigweiler http://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/author/craigweiler/ ** ** TED http://www.ted.com/pages/about talks is actually pretty cool. Although I've been talking nonstop about the TED censorship for the past couple of weeks, I don't hold a grudge against that organization. Truth is, they've been pretty good to me. They've helped me increase my site views by 500% over this past month and pushed my blog into the top 5% of internet blogs in general, by views. What's not to like? They have picked sides in a growing controversy, which has galvanized the pro-psi camp in ways that have never been seen before. Indeed, a lot is happening that has never been seen before and I'm delighted to be in the middle of it. My battle was never with TED, it's with the skeptics pulling the stringshttp://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/ted-revokes-license-for-tedx-west-hollywood-event/behind the scenes at TED. Which brings me to my point. The loud and clear message that has been sent is that there IS a major scientific controversy brewing and institutions, from TED to all of academia and the media need to stop taking sides. They need to step out of the way and let the controversy play itself out or suffer huge PR damagehttp://blog.ted.com/2013/04/01/a-note-to-the-ted-community-on-the-withdrawal-of-the-tedxwesthollywood-license/as a consequence. The new thing that is happening is that change isn't coming from within the hallowed, starched halls of academia and within the confines of scientific conferences, but from the outside. The ideas that skeptics so quickly dismiss are gaining mas acceptance and are starting to redefine the power structure. From what I can see, this is very confusing to everyone on the skeptical side of the debate. (For those not familiar with the debate, it can be oversimplified thusly: On the one side we have materialists/reductionists/skeptics who see the universe as a lifeless machine that can be understood by figuring out its mechanics. On the other side we have Biocentrists, for lack of a better term, who see consciousness and life as being fundamental to the universe. In other words, they see the universe as a giant thought. You generally won't hear much about the second theory, but the evidence is much better than most people
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/03/2013 11:04 AM: I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. I don't grok the map to dyslexia. But the disconnect between the thoughts of the sender and those of the receiver is quite clear ... the best evidence against psi ... or perhaps with a softening like the rare earth hypothesis, that psi is so rare it may as well not exist. -- == glen e. p. ropella I learned how to lie well and somebody blew up FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
You're right, dyslexia is a bad match. Probably should have called it dysrhetorica, failure to recognize the significance of your own arguments, as evidenced by your dismay when people tell you what they heard you say. Or maybe it should be humpty-dumpty-itis, as in the words mean just what I meant them to mean, and it is very hurtful to me that you heard them mean something else. -- rec -- On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:24 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/03/2013 11:04 AM: I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. I don't grok the map to dyslexia. But the disconnect between the thoughts of the sender and those of the receiver is quite clear ... the best evidence against psi ... or perhaps with a softening like the rare earth hypothesis, that psi is so rare it may as well not exist. -- == glen e. p. ropella I learned how to lie well and somebody blew up FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
I like the two quotes: /What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. /- Carl Sagan /I think you think you heard what I said but I don't think you heard what I meant./ - a mentor - Robert C On 4/3/13 12:24 PM, glen wrote: Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/03/2013 11:04 AM: I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. I don't grok the map to dyslexia. But the disconnect between the thoughts of the sender and those of the receiver is quite clear ... the best evidence against psi ... or perhaps with a softening like the rare earth hypothesis, that psi is so rare it may as well not exist. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Roger/Glen - Dysrhetorica even better! Humpty-Dumpty-itis... more cynical perhaps. I am who you think I think I am also seems relevant. It is perhaps why the most stubborn of us in our own self-image seem to be the easiest to deal with (one way or the other). If we offer no doubt about who we think we are (or what our words mean) then others are not puzzled or confused about how to respond to us. This is the scant charm I find in those who stubbornly stick to their extreme positions (psuedoscientists, religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists) with or without effective argumentation or evidence in support of it. What this topic still leaves me open to seek is an understanding of what parts, if any, of the psuedoscientists and/or woo peddlers ideas that TED is trying to ignore/exclude/silence might have some validity. The whole baby/bathwater duality? - Steve You're right, dyslexia is a bad match. Probably should have called it dysrhetorica, failure to recognize the significance of your own arguments, as evidenced by your dismay when people tell you what they heard you say. Or maybe it should be humpty-dumpty-itis, as in the words mean just what I meant them to mean, and it is very hurtful to me that you heard them mean something else. -- rec -- On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:24 PM, glen g...@ropella.name mailto:g...@ropella.name wrote: Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/03/2013 11:04 AM: I think it's a form of rhetorical dyslexia -- what one thinks one is arguing is not the argument that others hear one making. I don't grok the map to dyslexia. But the disconnect between the thoughts of the sender and those of the receiver is quite clear ... the best evidence against psi ... or perhaps with a softening like the rare earth hypothesis, that psi is so rare it may as well not exist. -- == glen e. p. ropella I learned how to lie well and somebody blew up FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
A small personal comment on related matters: It's not uncommon to hear statements of the form Science can never explain X. Solving for X, one of the common solutions is consciousness, but there are other popular solutions to the equation. Step back about 500 years, and humans were not in a position to understand a vast range of phenomena, from orbits to lightning to disease to speciation to oxidation. Little by little, it was science that provided insight. Given this hugely expanded and rapidly expanding region of understanding, I would not bet on the validity of the equation for most values of X. Bruce FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
So far in this thread I hear opinions mixed with some desire to examine evidence, but no discussion of the evidence itself. We are ourselves demonstrating one of the points made in the original blog post that spawned this thread - that it's about culture and assumptions, not science. I don't have time to read the links to further discussion and experimental data given in that post, but would enjoy hearing on this list from those that do. -- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com http://www.Ideatree.us FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Feynman had a nice comment on this, Nick. He suggests that faith healers don't take their faith seriously. Retrieved from http://faculty.randolphcollege.edu/tmichalik/feynman.htm There is an infinite amount of crazy stuff, which, put another way, is that the environment is actively, intensely unscientific. There is talk of telepathy still, although it's dying out. There is faith-healing galore, all over. There is a whole religion of faith-healing. There's a miracle at Lourdes where healing goes on. Now, it might be true that astrology is right. It might be true that if you go to the dentist on the day that Mars is at right angles to Venus, that it is better than if you go on a different day. It might be true that you can be cured by the miracle of Lourdes. But if it is true, it ought to be investigated. Why? To improve it. If it is true, then maybe we can find out if the stars do influence life; that we could make the system more powerful by investigating statistically, scientifically judging the evidence objectively, more carefully. If the healing process works at Lourdes, the question is how far from the site of the miracle can the person, who is ill, stand? Have they in fact made a mistake and the back row is really not working? Or is it working so well that there is plenty of room for more people to be arranged near the place of the miracle? Or is it possible, as it is with the saints which have recently been created in the United States - there is a saint who cured leukemia apparently indirectly - that ribbons that are touched to the sheet of the sick person (the ribbon having previously touched some relic of the saint) increase the cure of leukemia - the question is, is it gradually being diluted? You may laugh, but if you believe in the truth of the healing, then you are responsible to investigate it, to improve its efficiency and to make it satisfactory instead of cheating. For example, it may turn out that after a hundred touches it doesn't work anymore. Now it's also possible that the results of this investigation have other consequences, namely, that nothing is there. FROM: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, by Richard P. Feynman, Helix Books, 1999, pgs. 106-107. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Rich: you never got back to me on Taize .. are you aware of the movement? -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: [New post] The Loud and Clear Message that the TED Controversy is Sending
Owen, I lost track of your question -- just used Google -- I like it! ... the natural resurgence of inner experience in a world religion that is capable, deep, complex, and subtle enough to evolve radically and swiftly to meet the remarkable, unavoidable opportunities of these decades: http://www.taize.fr/en_article15337.html *We encounter him in the very poor. Jesus had a special love for them.* “What you do for one of the very least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me” (Matthew 25:40), we would like to confirm the truth of these words of Christ for our gathering in 2015. *We can encounter him when we look to the witnesses who rely on him.* Let us go, alone or with a few others, to meet and speak with a woman or a man whose life was changed by an encounter with Christ. Or let us read together the life of a witness to the faith: Francis of Assisi, Josephine Bakhita, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero, Alexander Men, and many others. *They were all very different from one another, each one with their unique gifts. We should not try to copy them but to see how their trust in Christ transformed them.* They had their faults. But they all spoke to God in prayer, even if some of them experienced inner nights. Friendship with Christ made them free, and in this way what was best in them was able to flourish. -- Third Proposal - Look for ways of relying on God -- *Believing in God, trusting in him, means relying on him. Having faith does not mean being able to explain everything or having an easier life, but finding stability and a starting point.* It means not being dependent on our successes or failures, and thus ultimately on ourselves, but on Another who loves us. *Nobody can live without something to rely on and so, in this sense, everyone believes something. Jesus invites us to rely on God, as he did and because he did. He teaches us to pray “Our Father in heaven.”* Silent worship nourishes reflection and understanding. But more importantly, it places us before and within the mystery of God. Developing “Sabbath” moments, times when we stop and do nothing, offering our time to open a nearby church for a couple of hours a week, praying with others, joining the local Church each week to recall the death and resurrection of Christ...all this allows God to find a place in our daily lives. *In every human being there is an inner life, where light and shadows, joys and fears, trust and doubt mingle. Amazing breakthroughs can take place there.* When we know we are loved or when we love, when we experience bonds of friendship, or when the beauty of creation or human creativity touches us, it strikes us that life is indeed beautiful. These moments can take us by surprise; they may arise even in a period of suffering, like a light that comes from elsewhere. *In them we can see, in simplicity, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.* In our day, when many experience broken relationships and unexpected changes in their lives, the relationship with Christ can provide continuity and meaning. *Faith does not cause our inner contradictions to vanish, but the Holy Spirit disposes us to live a life of joy and love.* -- Fourth Proposal - Be open without fear to the future and to others -- *The conviction of faith does not close us up in ourselves. Trust in Christ opens us to trust in the future and to trust in others. It encourages us to face the problems of our time and of our own lives with courage.* Faith is like an anchor that gives us a firm attachment in the future of God, in the risen Christ with whom it binds us inseparably. The Gospel offers no room for speculation about life after death, but it holds out to us the hope that we will see Christ, who is already our life. *Faith leads us not to be afraid of the future or of others any longer.* The trusting of faith is not naive. It is aware of the evil that is present in humanity, and even in our own hearts. But it does not forget that Christ came for all. *Trust in God brings to birth in us a new way of looking at others, at the world, and at the future—a way of looking that involves gratitude and hope, and attentiveness to beauty.* Trust in God frees us to be creative. *And then we can sing with Saint Gregory of the fourth century: “You who are beyond all things, what mind can grasp you? All beings celebrate you. The desire of all reaches out to you.”* [image: PDF - 109.9 kb] http://www.taize.fr/IMG/pdf/proposals2013.pdf*Four Proposals 2013*pdf format Last updated: 18 February 2013 So, I flexibly fully agree with the above, while unable to appreciate unity as a person on any level -- in fact, I have no ability to appreciate anyone as a person -- person for me is a lovely poetic metaphor -- I indeed love these powerful, lyric, profound poetic hints -- I understand as experience what the code refers to --
