---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emily.mae50@...> wrote :
My goodness. I could afford to live in Fairfield. You wouldn't like the fact that it doesn't have beaches and ocean. But what it does have is community and retro wood framed houses and a town square. It has four seasons (barely). Spring never really happens. One minute it's minus 10 and the next minute it's 70 degrees F. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : I have never before seen the claim that the ME will not work in a community of under 10,000. I imagine it's one of those things that got invented on the spot to explain why things don't work. See also, too much stress in collective consciousness etc. Bit embarrassing for them that it's been made public. That's actually pretty odd, since Fairfield itself numbers only about 9,500 people, which would mean that the ME has zero effect here, but is able, so to speak, to jump over Fairfield and affect other places in Iowa. That's one weird-acting ME! Is FF really that small? You must know everyone in town! Must be a friendly place too, unless you're sick of the sight of each other and spend all day hiding. My friends who have lived there say it's weird being so far from other towns compared to the UK where you can't walk for an hour without passing through several villages. More data: http://www.city-data.com/city/Fairfield-Iowa.html http://www.city-data.com/city/Fairfield-Iowa.html ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Reading through that all I'm down fine enough with the rebuttals further below. Sorry Sal you're so disgruntled with your experience. Best Regards from Fairfield, Iowa Thanks, I always enjoy best regards as opposed to the abuse I often get from our fellow forum members but what puzzles me is what experience it is that you are sympathising with me for? If it's my experience in meditation then there's no need because I get the same wild, breaking-on-through trips that everyone else does. There wouldn't be much point doing it otherwise. I expect it's the fact I'm not totally "on message" about the Marshy Effect as you are, but as I try to point out in my post there isn't any reason to be enthusiastic about it at all so I don;t feel the need to help them with their advertorial. I'd hope at least that came across. What did you think of the Deux ex Machina I highlighted? Ever come across such a pathetic excuse for why independent research didn't replicate the results of the claim? "Sorry you couldn't achieve social harmony in your test of our technology, even though we told you what to do we must have omitted to mention the one illogical thing that makes your experiment pointless" And it makes no sense that the ME should only work on big groups does it? This is what I mean by scientific filters, or controls as they are also called. I did start writing an extra paragraph there but abandoned it as it would have made the post too long and I thought I'd covered the main points. Those being is that science is about gathering data to support a hypothesis and that process has to be carried out in a particular way, and it has to be consistent. Apart from the fact a lot of the complainants accusations make a mockery of the usual standards by which social monitoring is carried out - a fact not convincingly explained by OJ - means it's a lot less likely that their conclusions can be supported. Most science is actually done in someone's head long before it gets near a lab, whether that lab is a particle accelerator a test tube or a war zone, there's a set of questions you have to ask yourself to make sure that you aren't fooling yourself. These questions will vary according to what you are proposing but basically follow a similar path. Is there a signal to be heard or is it random noise? Am I sure the data doesn't have a simpler explanation or one that someone hasn't already covered? Is there any data present that contradicts my hypothesis? Is it possible for people to replicate? Is my idea the best - simplest - way of explaining any data gathered? Am I just kidding myself? You get the general idea. I have many interests that the mainstream passes over like evidence of bicameralism in early human self-representation, it would be easy just to look for data that confirms that and ignore the rest but what would be the point? I'd be the only one I'm fooling so I keep my eyes open for contradictory information. When I read Marshy Effect research it makes me wonder whether the scientists involved are asking themselves similar control questions before they even start because if they have to invent Deux ex Machina as howlingly embarrassing and illogical as the one they passed on to the poor guy who had actually gone out of his way to try and replicate their claims, then they aren't doing science properly at all. (Please note there was no attempt to explain this in OJ's rebuttal) You may say that it's a small point but it's pivotal to the way they do things. The goalposts constantly shift and failures - the yagya programme for instance - are ignored. You probably think I'm just getting at you lot for no reason but I'm not, I'm trying to show that science is a process trying to work out what is from what isn't and I rather suspect that people round here cheer it on when it supports what they want to believe and dismiss it as irrelevant, when it doesn't. But it gladdens my heart that everyone nowadays sees it as the standard they have to reach for intellectual acceptance, every New Age hopeful has to get a "quantum" in there somewhere. Trouble is you have to accept the conclusions when they don't support your ideas and move on to something else but there's so much money in keeping people believing in the dream that the TMO can't afford to do any serious research into the ME or yagya's because they probably know by now that it isn't working. But why would intelligent and well decorated scientists not apply any of the usual rigour to their work? It's that there are stronger forces at work in people than merely needing to check theories, especially to people who have been involved in strong cults. Larry Domash raised the point with Marshy that we shouldn't talk about the unified field as we don't know anything about it yet - this was before the SU5 experiments that debunked it - and Marshy apparently banged the table and shouted "We are the masters in this field!". So that's my explanation for the blinkered and poor quality research, you are either on the bus or you are off it. Domash and the others decided to stay on the bus and were henceforth duty-bound to believe and actively campaign for Marshy's teachings. They have blinded themselves to the possibility they are wrong because they believe utterly in Marshy's worldview of consciousness as some sort of field that can spread peace. That's how they can fail to ask themselves difficult questions and invent dubious excuses to fellow researchers trying to check their results. Funny how ironically that mirrors the English enlightenment with Isaac Newton and how the development of the modern scientific method broke free of religious interference by setting up the principles of free inquiry without anyone with a beard or funny hat telling what to think before you've even looked. They made dramatic gains in knowledge the minute they got away from revealed wisdom whereas the TMO scientists remain in their own ever decreasing circles trying to justify it! But thanks for reading anyway Buck, even if I haven't reached you yet ;-) But I reiterate, it's not about my experience, it's about explaining experience.
