[FairfieldLife] Gored man claims karma kept him alive By Andr
http://www.startribune.com/news-of-the-weird-gored-man-claims-karma-kept-him-alive/489351131/ http://www.startribune.com/news-of-the-weird-gored-man-claims-karma-kept-him-alive/489351131/ Gored man claims karma kept him alive By Andrews McMeel Syndication July 27, 2018 — 11:21am Walt Dean King, 69, just wanted to take a look at a used car for sale on July 4. But when he approached the vehicle in the small California town of Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco, he was suddenly knocked off his feet by a bull that had gotten loose. King felt the bull's horn go through his side and crawled between a bush and a house as the bull stood over him snorting for about 20 minutes. Fox 40 reported that King underwent three hours of surgery, after which doctors told him his belly fat had saved him from worse injury. King believes karma kept him alive: "Back in the '70s, I had pulled a lady out of a burning building, so now I think I'm being paid back, by not dying," King said.
[FairfieldLife] Irreversible Climate Change -- Newsroom Clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U Fro the HBO series the Newsroom from around 2014
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ethics and Non-Dual Teachers and Organizations
Some research on the effects of meditation on cognitive biases. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797613503853 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797613503853 In the research reported here, we investigated the debiasing effect of mindfulness meditation on the sunk-cost bias. We conducted four studies (one correlational and three experimental); the results suggest that increased mindfulness reduces the tendency to allow unrecoverable prior costs to influence current decisions. Study 1 served as an initial correlational demonstration of the positive relationship between trait mindfulness and resistance to the sunk-cost bias. Studies 2a and 2b were laboratory experiments examining the effect of a mindfulness-meditation induction on increased resistance to the sunk-cost bias. In Study 3, we examined the mediating mechanisms of temporal focus and negative affect, and we found that the sunk-cost bias was attenuated by drawing one’s temporal focus away from the future and past and by reducing state negative affect, both of which were accomplished through mindfulness meditation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513203/ Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of meditation to improve cognitive performance, emotional balance, and well-being. As a consequence, research into the psychological effects and neural mechanisms of meditation has been accumulating. Whether and how meditation affects decision making is not yet clear. Here, we review evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies and summarize the effects of meditation on social and non-social economic decision making. Research suggests that meditation modulates brain activities associated with cognitive control, emotion regulation and empathy, and leads to improved non-social and social decision making. Accordingly, we propose an integrative model in which cognitive control, emotional regulation, and empathic concern mediate the effects of meditation on decision making. This model provides insights into the mechanisms by which meditation affects the decision making process. More evidence is needed to test our explanatory model and to explore the function of specific brain areas and their interactive effects on decision making during meditation training. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_ways_mindfulness_can_make_you_less_biased https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_ways_mindfulness_can_make_you_less_biased Today, prejudice against people who don’t share our race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or political persuasion is creating an atmosphere of distrust and hostility that is dividing the United States. Citizens and researchers alike are desperate to understand where these divisions come from and how to heal them. Some answers might be found in the scientific literature on mindfulness. For those who don’t know, mindfulness is a state of being—often practiced through meditation—that involves an increased awareness of our emotions, thoughts, and surroundings, accompanied by a sense of acceptance and non-judgment. Several studies have suggested that practicing mindfulness can reduce prejudice and bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias_modification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias_modification "Cognitive bias modification (CBM) refers to the process of modifying cognitive biases in healthy people and also refers to a growing area of psychological (non-pharmaceutical) therapies for anxiety, depression and addiction called cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT). CBMT is sub-group of therapies within a growing area of psychological therapies based on modifying cognitive processes with or without accompanying medication and talk therapy, sometimes referred to as applied cognitive processing therapies (ACPT). Other ACPTs include attention training,[1] interpretation modification,[2] approach/avoid training,[3] imagery modification training,[4] eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy[5] for PTSD."
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ethics and Non-Dual Teachers and Organizations
Some research on meditations influence on Five Factors of Personality. Some changes (not huge or transformational), particularly in reduced neurotic trains (anxiety, etc) which make sense given other studies that show that meditation tends to dampen activity of the Default Mode Network (which has been correlated with rumination, monkey mind tendencies, anxiety). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25904238 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25904238 Abstract Meditation has been associated with relatively reduced activity in the default mode network, a brain network implicated in self-related thinking and mind wandering. However, previous imaging studies have typically compared meditation to rest, despite other studies having reported differences in brain activation patterns between meditators and controls at rest. Moreover, rest is associated with a range of brain activation patterns across individuals that has only recently begun to be better characterized. Therefore, in this study we compared meditation to another active cognitive task, both to replicate the findings that meditation is associated with relatively reduced default mode network activity and to extend these findings by testing whether default mode activity was reduced during meditation, beyond the typical reductions observed during effortful tasks. In addition, prior studies had used small groups, whereas in the present study we tested these hypotheses in a larger group. The results indicated that meditation is associated with reduced activations in the default mode network, relative to an active task, for meditators as compared to controls. Regions of the default mode network showing a Group × Task interaction included the posterior cingulate/precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings replicate and extend prior work indicating that the suppression of default mode processing may represent a central neural process in long-term meditation, and they suggest that meditation leads to relatively reduced default mode processing beyond that observed during another active cognitive task. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222947112_Mindfulness_Big_Five_personality_and_affect_A_meta-analysis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222947112_Mindfulness_Big_Five_personality_and_affect_A_meta-analysis "Mindfulness is purposefully and nonjudgmentally paying attention to the present moment. The primary purpose of this study is to provide a more precise empirical estimate of the relationship between mindfulness and the Big Five personality traits as well as trait affect. Current research results present inconsistent or highly variable estimates of these relationships. Meta-analysis was used to synthesize findings from 32 samples in 29 studies. Results indicate that, although all of the traits display appreciable relationships with mindfulness, the strongest relationships are found with neuroticism, negative affect, and conscientiousness. Conscientiousness, in particular, is often ignored by mindfulness researchers; results here indicate it deserves stronger consideration. Although the results provide a clearer picture of how mindfulness relates to these traits, they also highlight the need to ensure an appropriate conceptualization and measurement of mindfulness. Mindfulness, Big Five personality, and affect: A meta-analysis. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222947112_Mindfulness_Big_Five_personality_and_affect_A_meta-analysis [accessed Jul 28 2018]." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146707/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146707/ Mindfulness meditation (MM) has often been suggested to induce fundamental changes in the way events in life are experienced and dealt with, presumably leading to alterations in personality. However, the relationship between the practice of MM and personality has not been systematically studied. The aim of this study was to explore this relationship and to investigate the mediating role of mindfulness skills. Thirty-five experienced mindfulness meditators (age range, 31–75 years; meditation experience range, 0.25–35 years; mean, ∼13 years) and 35 age-, gender-, and ethnicity-matched controls (age range, 27–63 years) without any meditation experience completed a personality (NEO-FFI) and mindfulness (KIMS) questionnaire. The practice of MM was positively related to openness and extraversion and negatively related to neuroticism and conscientiousness. Thus, the results of the current study associate the practice of MM with higher levels of curiosity and receptivity to new experiences and experience of positive affect and with less proneness toward negative emotions and worrying and a reduced focus on achievements. Furthermore, the mediating role of specific mindfulness skills in the relationship between the practice of MM and personality traits was shown.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ethics and Non-Dual Teachers and Organizations
Rick’s ethics article raises the question as to whether non-dual awakening results in spontaneous perfected, ethical actions. Some teachers and organizations have claimed this, or some variation of it, though there appears little empirical or even anecdotal evidence supporting such claims. That seems to be a premise with a rather steep hill to climb. Ethics is a rich, complex, interesting, nuanced, interrelated to many fields, area of knowledge. Develop a comprehensive ethical framework for one’s own life in a complex changing world, is a long journey. To further explore ethical frameworks issues relevant to whole societies and the world is a career task. Upon awakening, one doesn’t suddenly become adept at quantum physics (even though one is grounded in the vacuum state, ha.) Why would one become fully adept at ethical nuances and perfected behavior? Yet Pure Consciousness in activity does light up one’s life, pettiness, stressed behavior and reactivity diminish from day one of starting a good practice, compassion and empathy grow. And these qualities grow over time (and sometimes slinks away for a while). This points towards better behavior by the Awakened compared to where they began, however, it does not imply or necessarily mean perfected ethical behavior. There is a broader question: to what extent does the broader spectrum of behavior change upon awakening? If the ethical awakening hypothesis is valid, should there also be other large changes in behavior upon awakening? Let’s step back for a moment. What other areas of behavior change might change upon awakening? Current psychological theory and research commonly use a Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality (Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extrovertism, and Neuroticism). These five factors have been found universally across all cultures, ages, genders, races, etc. and taking their five dimensions as a whole, describe the most salient features of most peoples’ personalities. For a wide range of behaviors, they have been shown to have strong explanatory and predictive power. And after youth, these factors have found to be relatively stable. They are resilient to change, though one can train to extend the range of each dimension, for example, introverts can learn more extrovert behaviors, though extrovertism typically still does not become part of their natural comfort zone. Do these five factors change upon awakening? Probably not, but it’s a ripe area for interesting and important research. If these five pillars of personality which underlie much of our behavior do not change upon awakening, why would a complex, nuanced set of skills such as perfected, spontaneous ethical behavior unfold? Cognitive biases are another set of powerful factors which substantially affect our behavior and are also quite resistant to change. Substantial research on these biases has significantly influenced a number of academic disciplines (into fields of “behavioral this and that” such as behavioral economics, and several Nobel prizes have been granted to researchers in the behavioral fields. Here is a link describing some of the more prominent cognitive biases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases It would be fascinating to see if the awakened have significantly less cognitive biases – which if true, would be a major finding. I believe that studies would not show a significant change from the norm, may some minor reductions. Such a finding of little change in cognitive biases would go a long way in explaining the quirks of the awakened and realized teachers – that is, they all still are subject to the evolutionarily ingrained cognitive biases embedded in the human nervous system and this will result in a number of imperfect decisions and outcomes. Thus, the premise of a “life without mistakes” claimed by some teachers may be dubious. And in a similar vein to the FFM, if awakening does not affect cognitive biases, a major driver of behavior, why would awakening bring about a radical shift in ethical behaviors?
[FairfieldLife] Spurious Correlations
There is a lot more randomness in the universe than we realize. Its common to be "fooled by randomness" as our minds seek to see patterns and connections that do not in reality exist. https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Incerto-ebook/dp/B001FA0W5W https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Incerto-ebook/dp/B001FA0W5W Here are some pretty funny spurious correlations -- graphs of two phenomena that are highly correlated but laughably not rationally, causally connected. https://hbr.org/2015/06/beware-spurious-correlations https://hbr.org/2015/06/beware-spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations "We all know the truism “Correlation doesn’t imply causation,” but when we see lines sloping together, bars rising together, or points on a scatterplot clustering, the data practically begs us to assign a reason. We want to believe one exists. Statistically we can’t make that leap, however. Charts that show a close correlation are often relying on a visual parlor trick to imply a relationship. Tyler Vigen, a JD student at Harvard Law School and the author of Spurious Correlations, http://www.tylervigen.com/ has made sport of this on his website, which charts farcical correlations—for example, between U.S. per capita margarine consumption and the divorce rate in Maine. http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703; It can be quite a challenge to establish causality, even for "obvious" correlated phenomenon such as global warming whereby heatwaves seems to be a natural and logical result of global climate change. However, the causal link between global warming and specific extreme weather events has only recently been established, despite extensive climate studies and modeling by top scientists over the past decades. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/27/heatwave-made-more-than-twice-as-likely-by-climate-change-scientists-find https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/27/heatwave-made-more-than-twice-as-likely-by-climate-change-scientists-find "Fingerprints of global warming clear, they say, after comparing northern Europe’s scorching summer with records and computer models" https://www.skepticalscience.com/heatwaves-past-global-warming-climate-change.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/heatwaves-past-global-warming-climate-change.htm "the growing risk from heatwaves is ignored by some who argue that heatwaves have happened in the past, hence current heatwaves must be natural. This line of argument is logically flawed, using a logical fallacy called a non sequitor (Latin for 'it does not follow'). This is a fallacy where your starting statement does not lead to your conclusion. For example, this is like arguing that people have died of cancer long before cigarettes were invented, hence smoking can't cause cancer."
[FairfieldLife] A Polar bear is starving in the wild and
one can say that this condition is being caused by climate change. But we cannot turn a blind eye on the obvious malefic effects of the planetary transits on earth at this time. As mentioned earlier, Rahu and Mars are negatively aspecting each other in the signs of Cancer and Capricorn. Cancer represents the oceans and the fish life living in it. It is apparent that the oceans and the wildlife living in or near it are being poisoned by Rahu and Mars which are considered malefic planets or grahas in Vedic astrology or jyotish. https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/d74006c2-cf31-32f5-b240-4179d1e8bd06/ss_photographer-behind-viral.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/d74006c2-cf31-32f5-b240-4179d1e8bd06/ss_photographer-behind-viral.html
