[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: Thanks for your responses. Its good to get some push back. However, I think we still have different views on the crucial role of Imperialsm and Education. You response sites two specifics to make a generalization about very broad initiatives. Point taken. Comparatives in the area of man's inhumanity to man are dubious. Killing and exploitation are not on a sliding scale really. So your points are a reminder. The strong exploit the weak on this planet. Always have Yes. always will. I hope not. I am crazy or hopeful enough that we can flip that. All we can do is put laws in place and do some triage. Ah, a hobbsian. :) The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. TH Ever since I really acknowledged in detail that we have more slaves today than ever before in history (I just read the guy's book on Vaj's suggestion) I have been feeling decidedly less Age of Enlightenedy about my fellow man. Slavery was a direct offshoot, often a direct intent and effect of imperialism. Historically, and up until recently imperialist took over lands not theirs -- and in effect, if not literally (e.g., spanish and native americans) enslaved the populance. And slaves from Africa were need to work the vast colonial lands that the imperialsts seized. (True, Britain ended the slave trade, and outlawed slavery before the US. And while I consider Britain a far larger imperialist, the US has had its share of it. Thu one imperialist doing the right thing before another imperialist is not a compelling argument for imperialsim. Some large corporate structures, large multi-nationals are another form of imperialism. Multi-nationals, IMF, World Bank, gov'ts collectively have and are still pillaging sovereign nations through out the world. Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a good introduction t osome of the shenanigans of the neo-imperialists. http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/1576753018
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. Neither of you is very good at it, then. Chortle. snip Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. It would really be some Old Thing It would be new from the scientific perspective. Just never noticed it before, hmmm Is it possible there would have been more and worse earthquakes without people sitting around with their eyes closed? Hey, this is in my top ten list of reasons why the technologies of consciousness don't appear to worth two cents along with: we're in the wrong yuga and there is too much stress in collective conciousness etc. It's a funny list this entry first came by me during the run up to Gulf War 2, on a major rounding course (one of many worldwide) designed to prevent the invasion of Iraq come the day the tanks set off there was major disappointment that we hadn't averted the shock amd awe. Ah, said the course leader, just think how much worse it might have been if we weren't here! To which I thought it would be exactly the same because all the missiles were fired, the bombs dropped and I didn't hear of any allied troops refusing to fight. You might think it's impossible to prove either way with earthquakes, I don't think so, it's getting easier to predict the next one as stress appears to move along fault lines. If we have a group of meditators where a quake is predicted and it doesn't appear... Besides, people meditating in groups is supposed to prevent problems so you'd have to predict which way it's going to fall before you start. It's all crap isn't it? On that scale, it's unfalsifiable. And as to political upheaval, one person's disastrous chaos is another person's liberating revolution, so that's unfalsifiable as well. We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. The trouble really is that there doesn't appear to be anything to measure other than outdated beliefs. If there really was a signal. snip Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. I wouldn't say incredulity, I have given it a lot of thought, a chance to work in my life and observed how it fails to demonstrably fails to affect world as predicted. Yeah, but it's still personal incredulity to believe that because you haven't seen any evidence that convinces you (even for very sound reasons), therefore there *can* be no such evidence. Evidence here could be something like: No earthquakes unless people are meditating or no problems once coherence is increased. Fact is there isn't a correlation in either direction not that having it both ways is any way to go about proving anything obviously. Be a lot easier if earthquakes *always* happened during periods of war or recession, but then thats just the sort of thing that got the omen business up and running in the first place. Suppose we didn't know about plate tectonics, then you might be able to say things are happening for reasons unknown and search about for mystical reasons which is how we got here in the first place I'll wager. The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. Why couldn't earthquakes happen without human participation? I'm not following you. If it's caused by consciousness then they couldn't happen without conscious beings being around to cause the fluctuations in the first place. All the old belief systems think man has always
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. If Chopra and the Maharishis of the world would admit this I would have no problem with them. Their claim is that they DO know. In some cases they are claiming a special state of mind of knowingness where all of life's secrets are obvious. (Except the secret for cancer which for some reason they can't come up with or even more reprehensibly have decided NOT to reveal. How about just kid's cancer, huh?) There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Interesting choice from whom to quote but I have to admit he did nail something interesting. The context of when he said it is revealing. His statement is irrefutable and in some senses profound. In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. But then there was Iraq. And the problem there was not that we were subjected to unknown unknowns, it was ignoring the knowns. When dealing with statements by Chopra and Maharishi I don't believe that the most important option to keep alive is that they might be right about everything. Their claims are too grandiose and self-serving. Our mind doesn't have to stay so wide open that our brains fall out and we forget that by now, most of us have come up with some sense of what is likely or probable for us. It is an individual vision of how the world works and is hard earned. It will most likely be wrong in many specific ways. So we all aim our world view grid on guys like Chopra and Maharishi and see what fits. For me I see patterns of bullshit techniques in Chopra, the king of the equivocal non-assertion assertion. I find it unlikely that he will be the source of any profound insight into how the world works. I'm putting my chips on other bets. With all the brilliant people whose ideas I follow, Chopra is at the bottom of any of my lists. (except bullshitter, he ranks pretty high there and I have a bunch of those lists) Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO. Even though there was a chance that we might be greeted as liberators and a stable American loving democracy might have been created in the Mid-East after finding huge stockpiles of WMDs. But it wasn't probable given what we did know. It was a massive blunder of group consciousness gone wild and groups that should have been looking out for us (Democrats and the media) drinking the wine coolers like a co-ed on Spring break at Daytona. And on my low probability scale are meditator's mental states affecting anything outside their own skulls. (At least I got the distinction between affecting and effecting re-established from this series!) YMMV --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. Neither of you is very good at it, then. snip Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. It would really be some Old Thing It would be new from the scientific perspective. and we can see where the belief comes from and it isn't experience. We don't know that. We can't tell at all whether the mind can affect things so why the big hoo-ha in the TMO about the marshy effect? Because you can't have a belief in consciousness as the unified field without accepting that outcomes like earthquakes and political upheaval are somehow connected with people sitting around with their eyes closed. Is it possible there would have been more and worse earthquakes without people sitting around with their eyes closed? On that scale, it's unfalsifiable. And as to political upheaval, one person's disastrous chaos is
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Trouble is Maharishi has introduced a new category called the unknown knowns whereby things that we don't know anything about are considered true. Good one. Good point and way of putting it. Applies to many things - much of religious doctrine, new ageie stuff, cults...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: Trouble is Maharishi has introduced a new category called the unknown knowns whereby things that we don't know anything about are considered true. Point of the week! If I had read this first I wouldn't have bothered to write all my drivel on this topic. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. Neither of you is very good at it, then. Chortle. snip Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. It would really be some Old Thing It would be new from the scientific perspective. Just never noticed it before, hmmm Is it possible there would have been more and worse earthquakes without people sitting around with their eyes closed? Hey, this is in my top ten list of reasons why the technologies of consciousness don't appear to worth two cents along with: we're in the wrong yuga and there is too much stress in collective conciousness etc. It's a funny list this entry first came by me during the run up to Gulf War 2, on a major rounding course (one of many worldwide) designed to prevent the invasion of Iraq come the day the tanks set off there was major disappointment that we hadn't averted the shock amd awe. Ah, said the course leader, just think how much worse it might have been if we weren't here! To which I thought it would be exactly the same because all the missiles were fired, the bombs dropped and I didn't hear of any allied troops refusing to fight. You might think it's impossible to prove either way with earthquakes, I don't think so, it's getting easier to predict the next one as stress appears to move along fault lines. If we have a group of meditators where a quake is predicted and it doesn't appear... Besides, people meditating in groups is supposed to prevent problems so you'd have to predict which way it's going to fall before you start. It's all crap isn't it? On that scale, it's unfalsifiable. And as to political upheaval, one person's disastrous chaos is another person's liberating revolution, so that's unfalsifiable as well. We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. The trouble really is that there doesn't appear to be anything to measure other than outdated beliefs. If there really was a signal. snip Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. I wouldn't say incredulity, I have given it a lot of thought, a chance to work in my life and observed how it fails to demonstrably fails to affect world as predicted. Yeah, but it's still personal incredulity to believe that because you haven't seen any evidence that convinces you (even for very sound reasons), therefore there *can* be no such evidence. Evidence here could be something like: No earthquakes unless people are meditating or no problems once coherence is increased. Fact is there isn't a correlation in either direction not that having it both ways is any way to go about proving anything obviously. Be a lot easier if earthquakes *always* happened during periods of war or recession, but then thats just the sort of thing that got the omen business up and running in the first place. Suppose we didn't know about plate tectonics, then you might be able to say things are happening for reasons unknown and search about for mystical reasons which is how we got here in the
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: snip You might think it's impossible to prove either way with earthquakes, I don't think so, it's getting easier to predict the next one as stress appears to move along fault lines. If we have a group of meditators where a quake is predicted and it doesn't appear... Well, when we get to the point of being able to infallibly predict earthquakes, we can talk about it again! (On the other hand, if we could predict them infallibly, they wouldn't be nearly as disastrous--to human life, at least, because folks could evacuate.) snip The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. Why couldn't earthquakes happen without human participation? I'm not following you. If it's caused by consciousness then they couldn't happen without conscious beings being around to cause the fluctuations in the first place. Oh, I see what you're saying. I've been thinking of it more in terms of *prevention*--i.e., in the absence of any influence from human consciousness, earthquakes happen according to what's going on with plate tectonics; but *with* such an influence, they could be prevented or adjusted or mitigated via manipulation of plate tectonics. (Caveat: I put a VERY low probability on this. All I'm arguing for is not ruling it out completely.) All the old belief systems think man has always been here and not just a newcomer. Remember, it's our stress that causes us to operate away from natural law. when we are at one with all the laws of nature there aren't any earthquakes or problems at all. Vedic Science 101. Yeah, away from natural law is an oxymoron, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. Basically, it's impossible by definition not to be at one with all the laws of nature. and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if we could nail down that mental states *can* affect the physical world, and how this occurs. Like preventing earthquakes or improving the stock exchange and preventing war? I shall remain happy sceptic until that happy day. You're entitled, but be a *skeptic*, not a skeptopath. You mean cynic of course. I actually meant skeptopath, pathological skepticism. Could well manifest as cynicism, but not necessarily. Often it manifests as self-righteousness. snip There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Trouble is Maharishi has introduced a new category called the unknown knowns whereby things that we don't know anything about are considered true. grin But you see the point, right? Wikipedia actually has a page on Unknown unknowns. I thought Rumsfeld had invented it, but it turns out it's a concept in epistemology. Back in 2003, Hart Seely of Slate.com did a wonderful piece called The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, in which he laid out quotes from Rumsfeld as if they were poetry. Here's his version of the quote above (slightly different wording; I suspect Seely's is closer to verbatim): The Unknown As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know. Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing Can't resist; here's another one: A Confession Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think, What in the world am I doing here? It's a big surprise. May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times Oh, heck, two more: The Situation Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous Ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won't see. And life goes on. Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing Clarity I think what you'll find, I think what you'll find is, Whatever it is we do substantively, There will be near-perfect clarity As to what it is. And it will be known, And it will be known to the Congress, And it will be known to you, Probably before we decide it, But it will be known. Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Interesting choice from whom to quote Right, as we all know, I'm a warmongering right-winger who fully supported the Iraq War, so Donald Rumsfeld is my hero. but I have to admit he did nail something interesting. With all your great expertise in epistemology, I should have thought you'd know unknown unknowns is an important concept in that field, not something Rumsfeld invented. (I didn't know that until I noticed there was a Wikipedia page on it as I was searching for the exact Rumsfeld quote.) snip When dealing with statements by Chopra and Maharishi I don't believe that the most important option to keep alive is that they might be right about everything. Their claims are too grandiose and self-serving. Our mind doesn't have to stay so wide open that our brains fall out Which is why I've repeatedly referred to keeping the door open a crack--i.e., so that our brains *don't* fall out, but they might let something new in. It shouldn't be a choice between wide open and closed tight.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. If Chopra and the Maharishis of the world would admit this I would have no problem with them. Their claim is that they DO know. In some cases they are claiming a special state of mind of knowingness where all of life's secrets are obvious. (Except the secret for cancer which for some reason they can't come up with or even more reprehensibly have decided NOT to reveal. How about just kid's cancer, huh?) There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Interesting choice from whom to quote but I have to admit he did nail something interesting. The context of when he said it is revealing. His statement is irrefutable and in some senses profound. In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. The short of it, big problems don't just manifest out of thin air. They are the results of decades of doing stupid things. If the world community had come to the aid of heros (now our enemies -- this type of casting people in extremes to fit the current occasion or propoganda campaign is an elements of the stupid path.) and helped rebuild the nexus where a strong, longterm disruptive, exploitive aggressive force was finally stopped and put to rest (may sounds a little right-wingy, but these are not talking points handed to me to read -- and progressives have usually been against raw aggression -- its how you resist it that counts and perhaps distinguishes various groups. And large banks are as disruptive, exploitive and aggressive as the soviets -- they just dress better) -- then the Afghan hot spot would not be bubbling over now. And it goes much further back in time than that - the roots of disruption and poor collective action of the world community. Bottom line if the united world community (not a facade of the coalition of the duppped and arm twisted) spends 50 years building schools, and a strong education infrastructure in impoverished and raped over lands, you won't find wastelands like Afghanastan emerging as world trouble spots. It will not happen. Badness typically stems from mass ignorance (have you been to the US lately!!? as Bill Maher would ask emphaticly) ). And aggression/violence always results in more aggression and violence. I pray (to nature or course) that this is a Known Known. Or will soon be. But then there was Iraq. And the problem there was not that we were subjected to unknown unknowns, it was ignoring the knowns. When dealing with statements by Chopra and Maharishi I don't believe that the most important option to keep alive is that they might be right about everything. Their claims are too grandiose and self-serving. Our mind doesn't have to stay so wide open that our brains fall out and we forget that by now, most of us have come up with some sense of what is likely or probable for us. It is an individual vision of how the world works and is hard earned. It will most likely be wrong in many specific ways. So we all aim our world view grid on guys like Chopra and Maharishi and see what fits. For me I see patterns of bullshit techniques in Chopra, the king of the equivocal non-assertion assertion. I find it unlikely that he will be the source of any profound insight into how the world works. I'm putting my chips on other bets. With all the brilliant people whose ideas I follow, Chopra is at the bottom of any of my lists. (except bullshitter, he ranks pretty high there and I have a bunch of those lists) Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO. Even though there was a chance that we might be greeted as liberators and a stable American loving democracy might have been created in the Mid-East after finding huge stockpiles of WMDs. But it wasn't probable given what we did know. It was a massive blunder of group consciousness gone wild and groups that should have been looking out for us (Democrats and the media) drinking the wine coolers like a co-ed on Spring break at Daytona. And on my low probability scale are meditator's mental states affecting anything outside their own skulls. (At least I got the distinction between affecting and effecting re-established from this series!) YMMV --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. Curtis: Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO... Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. We didn't know for sure until after the invasion of Iraq that he didn't have what everyone thought he had. So, maybe you thought it was a stupid idea, but many others, who are supposedly a lot smarter than you are, such as Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, didn't know for sure, so they voted to authorize the president to use force to find out. So, how did you know *for sure* that Sadaam didn't have WMD and would not use them? And, what would you have done instead? On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others... After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege... Read more: 'Judging the case for war' The Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2005
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, WillyTex willy...@... wrote: Curtis: Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO... Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. Almost everyone was deliberately misled by Bush and Cheney, who pretended the evidence was much more conclusive and certain than it actually was.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: snip You might think it's impossible to prove either way with earthquakes, I don't think so, it's getting easier to predict the next one as stress appears to move along fault lines. If we have a group of meditators where a quake is predicted and it doesn't appear... Well, when we get to the point of being able to infallibly predict earthquakes, we can talk about it again! (On the other hand, if we could predict them infallibly, they wouldn't be nearly as disastrous--to human life, at least, because folks could evacuate.) The recent quake in Turkey was accurately predicted. Well, in terms of place anyway. Without real accuracy with timing evacuating millions of people is too expensive and disruptive. The prediction only applies to some running along fault lines there's always the sudden completely unpredicted one that's been brewing for years. snip The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. Why couldn't earthquakes happen without human participation? I'm not following you. If it's caused by consciousness then they couldn't happen without conscious beings being around to cause the fluctuations in the first place. Oh, I see what you're saying. I've been thinking of it more in terms of *prevention*--i.e., in the absence of any influence from human consciousness, earthquakes happen according to what's going on with plate tectonics; but *with* such an influence, they could be prevented or adjusted or mitigated via manipulation of plate tectonics. (Caveat: I put a VERY low probability on this. All I'm arguing for is not ruling it out completely.) Don't worry, I got it that you aren't one of those who really think they affect the world in this way, you'd never sully your consciousness by rolling in the dirt of this place if you were! All the old belief systems think man has always been here and not just a newcomer. Remember, it's our stress that causes us to operate away from natural law. when we are at one with all the laws of nature there aren't any earthquakes or problems at all. Vedic Science 101. Yeah, away from natural law is an oxymoron, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. Basically, it's impossible by definition not to be at one with all the laws of nature. So you didn't believe a word of the SCI course either? This oxymoron is what keeps the whole spiritual show on the road, this weird fear that we aren't achieving our ultimate potential and that somewhere out there is a utopia where we are at one with the laws of nature is the point of TM ultimately isn't it? It's our stress that keeps us in ignorance. That and our unwillingness to believe everything we are told but that's caused by stress too, which is why people put up with me in the TMO, they thought that with time I would evolve to the point of undertsanding the knowledge As ever I feel like I had a lucky escape! and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if we could nail down that mental states *can* affect the physical world, and how this occurs. Like preventing earthquakes or improving the stock exchange and preventing war? I shall remain happy sceptic until that happy day. You're entitled, but be a *skeptic*, not a skeptopath. You mean cynic of course. I actually meant skeptopath, pathological skepticism. Could well manifest as cynicism, but not necessarily. Often it manifests as self-righteousness. Slap me if that ever happens. snip There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld Trouble is Maharishi has introduced a new category called the unknown knowns whereby things that we don't know anything about are considered true. grin But you see the point, right? Wikipedia actually has a page on Unknown unknowns. I thought Rumsfeld had invented it, but it turns out it's a concept in epistemology. Back in 2003, Hart Seely of Slate.com did a wonderful piece called The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, in which he laid out quotes from Rumsfeld as if they were poetry. Here's his version of the quote above (slightly different wording; I suspect Seely's is closer to verbatim): The Unknown As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: Almost everyone was deliberately misled by Bush and Cheney, who pretended the evidence was much more conclusive and certain than it actually was. How the wisdom of You break it you bought it got drowned out is one of our generation's biggest tragedies. I remember reading a few articles about how fractionated the groups in Iraq were. We knew enough to understand what a fool's errand this was. It reminded me of a white South African who told me while apartheid was being ended that Americans had no idea the bloodbath it would unleash between people who hated each others guts for generations. And he acknowledged how immoral apartheid was, he wasn't defending it. It was one of my first wake up calls to the complex reality of life that sometimes you are only negotiating the thickness of bread on your shit sandwich. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, WillyTex willytex@ wrote: Curtis: Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO... Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. Almost everyone was deliberately misled by Bush and Cheney, who pretended the evidence was much more conclusive and certain than it actually was.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Vaj: Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. Judy: Almost everyone was deliberately misled by Bush and Cheney, who pretended the evidence was much more conclusive and certain than it actually was. On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others... After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege... Read more: 'Judging the case for war' The Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2005
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, WillyTex willy...@... wrote: I was never for the war Richard. Even with Saddham's fantasy WMDs. And I get it that plenty of people are smarter than I am but that doesn't make them right or so agenda driven that they couldn't do a really stupid thing or even an immoral one. My overriding fear had to do with what happens in an unnatural country held together by a dictator. And many of my fears did not turn out to be true. But plenty did. And I don't believe that the trade-off between potential threat and certain civilian casualties was humane. When I heard our leader incapable of articulating the actual divisions between the groups in Iraq with precision, I knew the mission was fucked. We were diving into another culture without a clue. And the Vietnam comparison has been overused but it is vivid for me because I have Vietnamese friends. And their descriptions of the divided loyalties of that country has been a wake-up call for me about wading into another country blowing things up and believing we will make it all better. The reaction to 9-11 was classic overreaction and we exchanged hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian's deaths so we could feel safer at home under the illusion that we have done anything to stop a group of yahoos from doing something similar. Our 3,000 American lives were precious but the scale is now overbalanced on how many innocent people we have killed or whose lives we have turned into turmoil. I hated Saddham and his evil minion sons, but I wouldn't choose to pour that much money into a country whose future is still on the precarious balance of people who hate each other. I despise the security theater that goes on in our airports. We are so easily put back to sleep. Once again we have mistaken our ability to connect the dots after the fact with our ability to predict the future of complex events. It is a fundamental cognitive flaw we are vulnerable to. I don't see a conspiracy. And the groups I hold most accountable are the Democratic party and the press who gave Bush a free pass. A man who in my opinion should not have been given a free pass key to the executive bathroom. We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. Curtis: Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO... Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. We didn't know for sure until after the invasion of Iraq that he didn't have what everyone thought he had. So, maybe you thought it was a stupid idea, but many others, who are supposedly a lot smarter than you are, such as Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, didn't know for sure, so they voted to authorize the president to use force to find out. So, how did you know *for sure* that Sadaam didn't have WMD and would not use them? And, what would you have done instead? On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others... After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege... Read more: 'Judging the case for war' The Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2005
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's sometimes. How about never? War is necessary only if and when you have F'ed things up so bad for so many years that it takes war to clean up the massive sewage left by the inept for generations. I throw out the challenge. I believe a case can be made that every war the US has been involved in could have been avoided. (I was in the TMO for years. I am adept at making bold claims) No, not avoided one month before the outbreak. But avoided by many prior years of good work and good policy. The short of it, big problems don't just manifest out of thin air. They are the results of decades of doing stupid things. If the world community had come to the aid of heros (now our enemies -- this type of casting people in extremes to fit the current occasion or propoganda campaign is an elements of the stupid path.) and helped rebuild the nexus where a strong, longterm disruptive, exploitive aggressive force was finally stopped and put to rest (may sounds a little right-wingy, but these are not talking points handed to me to read -- and progressives have usually been against raw aggression -- its how you resist it that counts and perhaps distinguishes various groups. And large banks are as disruptive, exploitive and aggressive as the soviets -- they just dress better) -- then the Afghan hot spot would not be bubbling over now. And it goes much further back in time than that - the roots of disruption and poor collective action of the world community. Bottom line if the united world community (not a facade of the coalition of the duppped and arm twisted) spends 50 years building schools, and a strong education infrastructure in impoverished and raped over lands, you won't find wastelands like Afghanastan emerging as world trouble spots. It will not happen. Badness typically stems from mass ignorance (have you been to the US lately!!? as Bill Maher would ask emphaticly) ). And aggression/violence always results in more aggression and violence. I pray (to nature or course) that this is a Known Known. Or will soon be. But then there was Iraq. And the problem there was not that we were subjected to unknown unknowns, it was ignoring the knowns. When dealing with statements by Chopra and Maharishi I don't believe that the most important option to keep alive is that they might be right about everything. Their claims are too grandiose and self-serving. Our mind doesn't have to stay so wide open that our brains fall out and we forget that by now, most of us have come up with some sense of what is likely or probable for us. It is an individual vision of how the world works and is hard earned. It will most likely be wrong in many specific ways. So we all aim our world view grid on guys like Chopra and Maharishi and see what fits. For me I see patterns of bullshit techniques in Chopra, the king of the equivocal non-assertion assertion. I find it unlikely that he will be the source of any profound insight into how the world works. I'm putting my chips on other bets. With all the brilliant people whose ideas I follow, Chopra is at the bottom of any of my lists. (except bullshitter, he ranks pretty high there and I have a bunch of those lists) Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO. Even though there was a chance that we might be greeted as liberators and a stable American loving democracy might have been created in the Mid-East after finding huge stockpiles of WMDs. But it wasn't probable given what we did know. It was a massive blunder of group consciousness gone wild and groups that should have been looking out for us (Democrats and the media) drinking the wine coolers like a co-ed on Spring break at Daytona. And on my low probability scale are meditator's mental states affecting anything outside their own skulls. (At least I got the distinction between affecting and effecting re-established from this series!) YMMV --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: ---
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, WillyTex willytex@ wrote: I was never for the war Richard. Even with Saddham's fantasy WMDs. And I get it that plenty of people are smarter than I am but that doesn't make them right or so agenda driven that they couldn't do a really stupid thing or even an immoral one. My overriding fear had to do with what happens in an unnatural country held together by a dictator. And many of my fears did not turn out to be true. But plenty did. And I don't believe that the trade-off between potential threat and certain civilian casualties was humane. When I heard our leader incapable of articulating the actual divisions between the groups in Iraq with precision, I knew the mission was fucked. We were diving into another culture without a clue. And the Vietnam comparison has been overused but it is vivid for me because I have Vietnamese friends. And their descriptions of the divided loyalties of that country has been a wake-up call for me about wading into another country blowing things up and believing we will make it all better. The reaction to 9-11 was classic overreaction and we exchanged hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian's deaths so we could feel safer at home under the illusion that we have done anything to stop a group of yahoos from doing something similar. Our 3,000 American lives were precious but the scale is now overbalanced on how many innocent people we have killed or whose lives we have turned into turmoil. I hated Saddham and his evil minion sons, but I wouldn't choose to pour that much money into a country whose future is still on the precarious balance of people who hate each other. I despise the security theater that goes on in our airports. We are so easily put back to sleep. Once again we have mistaken our ability to connect the dots after the fact with our ability to predict the future of complex events. It is a fundamental cognitive flaw we are vulnerable to. I don't see a conspiracy. And the groups I hold most accountable are the Democratic party and the press who gave Bush a free pass. A man who in my opinion should not have been given a free pass key to the executive bathroom. Actually, I think he should have been given a key and green light to the bathroom. And locked inside. It would have prevented a lot of pissing on and shitting over the US and world. And don't forget the NYTimes -- which I love -- but hate their role in the war. Judith Miller and all. Getting all caught up in the Hubris of access to power. We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. Curtis: Going into Iraq was a stupid idea from what was known IMO... Maybe so, but almost everyone thought Saddam had WMD and would use them. We didn't know for sure until after the invasion of Iraq that he didn't have what everyone thought he had. So, maybe you thought it was a stupid idea, but many others, who are supposedly a lot smarter than you are, such as Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, didn't know for sure, so they voted to authorize the president to use force to find out. So, how did you know *for sure* that Sadaam didn't have WMD and would not use them? And, what would you have done instead? On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others... After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege... Read more: 'Judging the case for war' The Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2005
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's sometimes. How about never? I only meant the part about us having stuff we didn't know we didn't know. I don't buy Obama's position on Afghanistan either. Especially since we are putting war on our credit card! War is necessary only if and when you have F'ed things up so bad for so many years that it takes war to clean up the massive sewage left by the inept for generations. I throw out the challenge. I believe a case can be made that every war the US has been involved in could have been avoided. (I was in the TMO for years. I am adept at making bold claims) No, not avoided one month before the outbreak. But avoided by many prior years of good work and good policy. One problem with analyzing wars after the fact is that the pieces fit together perfectly giving us the illusion that we might be able to use this insight in the future. But the problem with looking ahead in complex systems is that there are too many variables with no organizing principle of 20/20 hindsight. So for all the signs that would have led us to avoid WWII that seem obvious now, at the time we were too swamped in conflicting info. But if you have expansionistic pricks on the move there is a humanitarian element. As much as I hated the Vietnamese war and believe it was misguided, I am moved by the stories of what happened in South Vietnam when the Communists did take it over. And I would not be happy with a German speaking Europe or Japanese spoken all over Asia. So I'm with you in principle but in practice I'm not sure that is an option. Sometime countries just act like complete assholes, ours included. The short of it, big problems don't just manifest out of thin air. They are the results of decades of doing stupid things. If the world community had come to the aid of heros (now our enemies -- this type of casting people in extremes to fit the current occasion or propoganda campaign is an elements of the stupid path.) and helped rebuild the nexus where a strong, longterm disruptive, exploitive aggressive force was finally stopped and put to rest (may sounds a little right-wingy, but these are not talking points handed to me to read -- and progressives have usually been against raw aggression -- its how you resist it that counts and perhaps distinguishes various groups. And large banks are as disruptive, exploitive and aggressive as the soviets -- they just dress better) -- then the Afghan hot spot would not be bubbling over now. And it goes much further back in time than that - the roots of disruption and poor collective action of the world community. Bottom line if the united world community (not a facade of the coalition of the duppped and arm twisted) spends 50 years building schools, and a strong education infrastructure in impoverished and raped over lands, you won't find wastelands like Afghanastan emerging as world trouble spots. It will not happen. Badness typically stems from mass ignorance (have you been to the US lately!!? as Bill Maher would ask emphaticly) ). And aggression/violence always results in more aggression and violence. I pray (to nature or course) that this is a Known Known. Or will soon be. But then there was Iraq. And the problem there was not that we were subjected to unknown unknowns, it was ignoring the knowns. When dealing with statements by Chopra and Maharishi I don't believe that the most important option to keep alive is that they might be right about everything. Their claims are too grandiose and self-serving. Our mind doesn't have to stay so wide open that our brains fall out and we forget that by now, most of us have come up with some sense of what is likely or probable for us. It is an individual vision of how the world works and is hard earned. It will most likely be wrong in many specific ways. So we all aim our world view grid on guys like Chopra and Maharishi and see what fits. For me I see patterns of bullshit techniques in Chopra, the king of the equivocal non-assertion assertion. I find it unlikely that he will be the source
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's sometimes. How about never? I only meant the part about us having stuff we didn't know we didn't know. I don't buy Obama's position on Afghanistan either. Especially since we are putting war on our credit card! War is necessary only if and when you have F'ed things up so bad for so many years that it takes war to clean up the massive sewage left by the inept for generations. I throw out the challenge. I believe a case can be made that every war the US has been involved in could have been avoided. (I was in the TMO for years. I am adept at making bold claims) No, not avoided one month before the outbreak. But avoided by many prior years of good work and good policy. One problem with analyzing wars after the fact is that the pieces fit together perfectly giving us the illusion that we might be able to use this insight in the future. But the problem with looking ahead in complex systems is that there are too many variables with no organizing principle of 20/20 hindsight. The one thing that is not variable is education. Raise the world's (and tea partyers) level of education and wars will not happen. Or be far less. So for all the signs that would have led us to avoid WWII that seem obvious now, at the time we were too swamped in conflicting info. Sure a year before. Six months before. hard to stop a Tsunami once its rolling. I am looking further back. US entering WWI allowed the British and French and other allied imperialsts (bad guys) [thats a hint -- when you ally your self with blood sucking murderous imperialsits, you are going down the wrong road -- a road that will invitably end in war)] in a position to literaly butt fuck German imperials (bad guys). After a decade of massive and continued rape, and bearing the consequences of it via hyper inflation etc, the tea-partier/skinhead faction of Germany of the time, thugs, were able to take power because the shit had been totally kicked out of rational, good intentions thinking Germans -- and they thought -- well it can't be any worse. And they (the skinheads, aka brown-shirts) have great music, marches and architecture. Lets give it a try. And it could happen here. But if you have expansionistic pricks on the move there is a humanitarian element. When the dam breaks you gotta clean it up. What I am talking about is building stronger dams. 50 years before the fact. As much as I hated the Vietnamese war and believe it was misguided, I am moved by the stories of what happened in South Vietnam when the Communists did take it over. And I would not be happy with a German speaking Europe or Japanese spoken all over Asia. Would Japanese being spoken all over Asia be worse than English, French and Dutch being spoken all over Asia. One form of imperialism is not much better than another form of imperialism. At least the Japanese were intent on kicking out European Imperialists. So I'm with you in principle but in practice I'm not sure that is an option. Sometime countries just act like complete assholes, ours included. The short of it, big problems don't just manifest out of thin air. They are the results of decades of doing stupid things. If the world community had come to the aid of heros (now our enemies -- this type of casting people in extremes to fit the current occasion or propoganda campaign is an elements of the stupid path.) and helped rebuild the nexus where a strong, longterm disruptive, exploitive aggressive force was finally stopped and put to rest (may sounds a little right-wingy, but these are not talking points handed to me to read -- and progressives have usually been against raw aggression -- its how you resist it that counts and perhaps distinguishes various groups. And large banks are as disruptive, exploitive and aggressive as the soviets -- they just dress better) -- then the Afghan hot spot would not be bubbling over now. And it goes much further back in time than that - the roots of
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: Would Japanese being spoken all over Asia be worse than English, French and Dutch being spoken all over Asia. One form of imperialism is not much better than another form of imperialism. At least the Japanese were intent on kicking out European Imperialists. I'm not pro imperialism but yes I do believe that the Japanese were worse. If you look at what they did in Nanking as one well documented example I think you can see what happens when a country believes that they descended from gods and everyone else is an ape. So I do believe that there are levels of worse. That said the French behavior in Vietnam was disgusting as well as every other occupier. But our occupation of Japan after the war, which my father participated in, was pretty enlightened. And we handed them the tool (updated steel mills) to hand us our asses economically for a while. My father who had fought all the way to Japan through the islands was amazed at their cooperation and friendly reception. When the Emperor hit the switch to cooperate, they really did, with enthusiasm. The rebuilding of Japan after the war is something we can be proud of as Americans. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's sometimes. How about never? I only meant the part about us having stuff we didn't know we didn't know. I don't buy Obama's position on Afghanistan either. Especially since we are putting war on our credit card! War is necessary only if and when you have F'ed things up so bad for so many years that it takes war to clean up the massive sewage left by the inept for generations. I throw out the challenge. I believe a case can be made that every war the US has been involved in could have been avoided. (I was in the TMO for years. I am adept at making bold claims) No, not avoided one month before the outbreak. But avoided by many prior years of good work and good policy. One problem with analyzing wars after the fact is that the pieces fit together perfectly giving us the illusion that we might be able to use this insight in the future. But the problem with looking ahead in complex systems is that there are too many variables with no organizing principle of 20/20 hindsight. The one thing that is not variable is education. Raise the world's (and tea partyers) level of education and wars will not happen. Or be far less. So for all the signs that would have led us to avoid WWII that seem obvious now, at the time we were too swamped in conflicting info. Sure a year before. Six months before. hard to stop a Tsunami once its rolling. I am looking further back. US entering WWI allowed the British and French and other allied imperialsts (bad guys) [thats a hint -- when you ally your self with blood sucking murderous imperialsits, you are going down the wrong road -- a road that will invitably end in war)] in a position to literaly butt fuck German imperials (bad guys). After a decade of massive and continued rape, and bearing the consequences of it via hyper inflation etc, the tea-partier/skinhead faction of Germany of the time, thugs, were able to take power because the shit had been totally kicked out of rational, good intentions thinking Germans -- and they thought -- well it can't be any worse. And they (the skinheads, aka brown-shirts) have great music, marches and architecture. Lets give it a try. And it could happen here. But if you have expansionistic pricks on the move there is a humanitarian element. When the dam breaks you gotta clean it up. What I am talking about is building stronger dams. 50 years before the fact. As much as I hated the Vietnamese war and believe it was misguided, I am moved by the stories of what happened in South Vietnam when the Communists did take it over. And I would not be happy with a German speaking Europe or Japanese spoken all over Asia. Would Japanese being spoken all over Asia be worse than English, French and
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: The one thing that is not variable is education. Raise the world's (and tea partyers) level of education and wars will not happen. Or be far less. I am a believer in education but I can't go this far. One of the myths about terrorism is that it is caused by ignorance and poverty when some of the worst acts were done by people with higher education. So short of brainwashing I can't view education as the solution to war. That said we need as much of it as we can get particularly in the critical thinking department. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's sometimes. How about never? I only meant the part about us having stuff we didn't know we didn't know. I don't buy Obama's position on Afghanistan either. Especially since we are putting war on our credit card! War is necessary only if and when you have F'ed things up so bad for so many years that it takes war to clean up the massive sewage left by the inept for generations. I throw out the challenge. I believe a case can be made that every war the US has been involved in could have been avoided. (I was in the TMO for years. I am adept at making bold claims) No, not avoided one month before the outbreak. But avoided by many prior years of good work and good policy. One problem with analyzing wars after the fact is that the pieces fit together perfectly giving us the illusion that we might be able to use this insight in the future. But the problem with looking ahead in complex systems is that there are too many variables with no organizing principle of 20/20 hindsight. The one thing that is not variable is education. Raise the world's (and tea partyers) level of education and wars will not happen. Or be far less. So for all the signs that would have led us to avoid WWII that seem obvious now, at the time we were too swamped in conflicting info. Sure a year before. Six months before. hard to stop a Tsunami once its rolling. I am looking further back. US entering WWI allowed the British and French and other allied imperialsts (bad guys) [thats a hint -- when you ally your self with blood sucking murderous imperialsits, you are going down the wrong road -- a road that will invitably end in war)] in a position to literaly butt fuck German imperials (bad guys). After a decade of massive and continued rape, and bearing the consequences of it via hyper inflation etc, the tea-partier/skinhead faction of Germany of the time, thugs, were able to take power because the shit had been totally kicked out of rational, good intentions thinking Germans -- and they thought -- well it can't be any worse. And they (the skinheads, aka brown-shirts) have great music, marches and architecture. Lets give it a try. And it could happen here. But if you have expansionistic pricks on the move there is a humanitarian element. When the dam breaks you gotta clean it up. What I am talking about is building stronger dams. 50 years before the fact. As much as I hated the Vietnamese war and believe it was misguided, I am moved by the stories of what happened in South Vietnam when the Communists did take it over. And I would not be happy with a German speaking Europe or Japanese spoken all over Asia. Would Japanese being spoken all over Asia be worse than English, French and Dutch being spoken all over Asia. One form of imperialism is not much better than another form of imperialism. At least the Japanese were intent on kicking out European Imperialists. So I'm with you in principle but in practice I'm not sure that is an option. Sometime countries just act like complete assholes, ours included. The short of it, big problems don't just manifest out of thin air. They are the results of decades of doing stupid things. If the world community had come to the aid of heros (now our enemies -- this type of casting people in extremes to
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Curtis: I don't see a conspiracy. Neither do I - and I've seen no convincing evidence that would lead me to think that Bush 'lied' about the reasons to go to war in Iraq. Judy and Bhairitu seem to see conspiracies when there isn't the slightest reason to think that anyone was not telling the truth as they see it. Based on that kind of reasoning, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were liars, since they both believed that Saddam had WMD, so they voted to authorize the president to use force to depose Saddam from power and to find out if Saddam had WMD in his possession or not. Invading Iraq was the only way to find out *for sure* if there were any WMD, after Saddam expelled the inspectors. If the U.S. had not called Saddam's bluff, he could have blackmailed everyone and could have taken over the oil fields of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and he could have brought the free world to it's knees. And the groups I hold most accountable are the Democratic party and the press who gave Bush a free pass. A man who in my opinion should not have been given a free pass key to the executive bathroom... Maybe so, but Bush was elected with over a fifty percent of the U.S. voters AFTER the Iraq invasion. If Al Gore had won the election, he would have lied about human causes of global warming, but he probably would have done nothing to save the lives of the Afghan or Iraq people. From what I've read, Saddam was responsible for the death of over a million people, some who were murdered with the use of WMD. Was there any reason to think that he wouldn't use WMD again? How many people have to die before someone does something to stop a dictator from murdering his own people? It may have been a mistake to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and maybe even Kosovo, but what were the alternatives? US President Bill Clinton sent U.S. forces into the Balkans in the Kosovo War in order to put a stop to Serbia's massive campaign of ethnic cleansing. Thousands of lives were saved by the use of force against Serbia. In my opinion, it would have been a crime against humanity NOT to put a stop to the genocide in Kosovo.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, WillyTex willy...@... wrote: I certainly don't have an more insight than you do concerning these complex matters Richard. Obama said something early in his presidency that I can only paraphrase but it was something like: the truth is not as bad as the detractors say or as good as the supporters say. I apply that to every political decision I can. Curtis: I don't see a conspiracy. Neither do I - and I've seen no convincing evidence that would lead me to think that Bush 'lied' about the reasons to go to war in Iraq. Judy and Bhairitu seem to see conspiracies when there isn't the slightest reason to think that anyone was not telling the truth as they see it. Based on that kind of reasoning, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were liars, since they both believed that Saddam had WMD, so they voted to authorize the president to use force to depose Saddam from power and to find out if Saddam had WMD in his possession or not. Invading Iraq was the only way to find out *for sure* if there were any WMD, after Saddam expelled the inspectors. If the U.S. had not called Saddam's bluff, he could have blackmailed everyone and could have taken over the oil fields of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and he could have brought the free world to it's knees. And the groups I hold most accountable are the Democratic party and the press who gave Bush a free pass. A man who in my opinion should not have been given a free pass key to the executive bathroom... Maybe so, but Bush was elected with over a fifty percent of the U.S. voters AFTER the Iraq invasion. If Al Gore had won the election, he would have lied about human causes of global warming, but he probably would have done nothing to save the lives of the Afghan or Iraq people. From what I've read, Saddam was responsible for the death of over a million people, some who were murdered with the use of WMD. Was there any reason to think that he wouldn't use WMD again? How many people have to die before someone does something to stop a dictator from murdering his own people? It may have been a mistake to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and maybe even Kosovo, but what were the alternatives? US President Bill Clinton sent U.S. forces into the Balkans in the Kosovo War in order to put a stop to Serbia's massive campaign of ethnic cleansing. Thousands of lives were saved by the use of force against Serbia. In my opinion, it would have been a crime against humanity NOT to put a stop to the genocide in Kosovo.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Thanks for your responses. Its good to get some push back. However, I think we still have different views on the crucial role of Imperialsm and Education. You response sites two specifics to make a generalization about very broad initiatives. Nanking was horrible. So was Dresden, the complete firebombing and total destruction of 100 Japanese cities and their CIVILIAN populations, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the 7 million (subject to check) Filipinos who died by US hands (and handling) during our occupation of the Phillipines (early in 20th century) -- after a nasty Imperialist grab (Mark Twain was a hero, IMO, for standing up to that nasty shit.) British massive rape and pillage of India (including modern Pakistan and Bangladesh) and much of Asia. British, French, Dutch, their slaughter of Asians, and their pillaging the economy are far worse than Nanking.I could go on and on. A fair comparison is look at the damage of European and American Imperialism in Asia vs Japanese. i venture Europe scores way higher -- but that misses the point. Who is the worst imperialist (and by implictions the others are sort of ok because they are not as bad) doesn't swing it with me. It doesn't matter per the point I was making. All Imperialism is bad and in my view, the core source of most wars in the last 3-400 years including ALL US wars (though thats a separate, longer discussion.) (Wow synchronicity. I am watching a Smithsonian special on the bombing of Japan and I think I may have just saw my uncle -- who was part of all that (I am sorry I didn't get a chance as an adult to probe him on that.) If Imperialism died a worthy death in 1700, the world would have far less wars from then to now. And I could argue possible few to none in the past 100 years -- given that one can see the devastating effects of Imperialism, and Imperialist fighting Imperialist with lots of collateral damage -- as the source of most if not all wars. On education, the fact that some of the 9/11 terrorists were college educated doesn't dent (even scratch) the core argument that if the entire world population had a modern education, war (and violence) would be far less. Uneducated masses, clinging to ancient myths, weak in basic logical skills, without a grasp of history, economics or psychology (and far more) are easy (easier) targets of manipulation and domination by bad bad people. Universal education is like the Meisner Effect for bullshit. (Colgate Shield if Miesner doesn't ring a bell.) And I enjoy our discussions. I am not arguing with you, but I am articulating my different view. And your points sharpen my thinking. Thanks for the interaction. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: Would Japanese being spoken all over Asia be worse than English, French and Dutch being spoken all over Asia. One form of imperialism is not much better than another form of imperialism. At least the Japanese were intent on kicking out European Imperialists. I'm not pro imperialism but yes I do believe that the Japanese were worse. If you look at what they did in Nanking as one well documented example I think you can see what happens when a country believes that they descended from gods and everyone else is an ape. So I do believe that there are levels of worse. That said the French behavior in Vietnam was disgusting as well as every other occupier. But our occupation of Japan after the war, which my father participated in, was pretty enlightened. And we handed them the tool (updated steel mills) to hand us our asses economically for a while. My father who had fought all the way to Japan through the islands was amazed at their cooperation and friendly reception. When the Emperor hit the switch to cooperate, they really did, with enthusiasm. The rebuilding of Japan after the war is something we can be proud of as Americans. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues In the context of our involvement in Afghanistan it has quite of bit of validity. Polite but firm challenge. I am probably using a mistaken understanding of your point to rift off into my own thing. So apologies there. However, I also challenge Obama's (and many before him) who say sometimes you just gotta fight. Sometimes armed violent conflict is inevitable and necessary Fascists (not to use explosive terms) may say the same -- just argue about when its necessary. For the later -- it's almost always. For the former, it's
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Now if he wants to retract all his statements about his power over the world with the state of his mind I will happily retract my accusation of hubris. And I don't think you should be making accusations when you can't tell the difference between what he believes and what he doesn't believe. And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris. If he didn't actually believe that his state of mind affects the world you might have a point. He doesn't actually believe his meditation caused the earthquake. That's why his tweets were funny. But the fact is he does. I wasn't saying how dare he anything. I was just showing how people with wacky beliefs about their place in the world sometimes mask them with humor about a straw man wacky belief. You were asserting that this is what he was doing. You were, in other words, mind-reading. You get *really* upset when folks do that to you, but you have no problem doing it to others. It seems to have worked on you among many others. That old Chopra is so full of common sense wisdom how could we doubt his claim that his mind is working on the quantum mechanical level! We can certainly doubt it, but it's probably not real smart to rule it out. I point my finger at him as a charlatan because I paid $700 in his doctor's office to get the magic word amrita to repeat to cure physical conditions. Medical conditions. Health related issues that he discussed with me in his doctor's office before prescribing me a magical word to repeat to cure medical physical, health conditions. So when I view him as a con man it is after having him con out of actual money me a long time ago. Charlatan, maybe, in the sense of being deluded about the validity of his claims. But not a con man.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Most likely not, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. And then there's always absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Seems to me it makes sense to hold open, even if only ever-so-slightly, the possibility that evidence is absent because we *don't know how to test for it*. You and I were discussing awhile back Lawrence LeShan's recent book about researching telepathy, in which he makes the point that we can't prove it doesn't exist, all we can prove is that it doesn't show up reliably in controlled laboratory experiments. He says we should focus instead on studying instances of purported telepathy to see whether we can get a better idea of the characteristics of such instances, their parameters, which might help us figure out better ways to test for it. You ask above what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling 'spiritual' nonsense. Couple of big assumptions there, and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if we could nail down that mental states *can* affect the physical world, and how this occurs.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: snip true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. Yeah Judy he was mocking people who call him on his fantasy that his state of mind affects the world. Really got me! Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. My opinions are huffing and puffing? What an odd characterization. Oh, I don't think so. Is that what you are doing here by communicating your opinions, huffing and puffing? Sometimes I huff and puff, sure. Or were you trying to characterize opinions this way to diminish them? Just pointing out the contrast. He made a joke, and you're having a tizzy *because he made a joke*. I used it as a platform to express my views. The term tizzy is another mischaractorization mean to diminish my post. The intent of my post seems to have been missed by you but concerns a technique of cold readers to make their other outrageously unsupported statements seem more plausible. I find those techniques fascinating as I do your inability to even get the point. It worked on you. If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! The reason the joke works is because part of his teaching actually states that his state of mind affects the world. It isn't hubris to make the joke, it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. Yeah, seems to me there's a pretty gigantic difference between somebody thinking their meditation causes earthquakes and thinking a lot of people meditating together might facilitate world peace. Not at all. None in fact. A whole group of people with no effect is no more anything than one person with no effect. This is a common mental fallacy that draws on our natural tendency to believe that more of something will produce a bigger effect. The problem here is that there is no proven mechanism that is being multiplied, it was just asserted by an authority figure. One whom you claim you do not take at face value, and yet here you have. You have fallen for his routine as effectively as any Purusha. More of nothing is still nothing. You might want to write that down. But he doesn't believe that, you see. Hhe has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Pretty low bar. Some limits. Amazing, I'm so proud of him. Those were your words, toots. Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. BREAKING NEWS: I know that. But you aren't defending any unfair attack here you and we both know it. If I hadn't thought it was unfair, I wouldn't have spoken up. And if you'd known that one doesn't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack, you wouldn't have suggested I was defending him because I thought he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. This twist wont work. I never asked you if you believed he could cause an earthquake with his mind and you know it. I was asking yo to clarify your own position on his teaching about the influence of our minds on the world and you dodged it. But you answered that you wouldn't rule it out (it wouldn't be smart) showing me that you did actually understand the question even though you are mischaractorizing it now to make it seem as if I was suggesting that I thought you believed in his ability to cause earhquakes which I have never done. It is your straw man, your pretending I don't understand his joke. But is is s silly ruse because my understanding it lies at the basis of my point. One you have either missed or are pretending to miss. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Yeah well I'll give it a very low probability OK? We know quite a bit about how powerful thoughts are on the outside of our skulls because we can measure the electrical energy of our brains. Low probability is fine, but I wouldn't make up idiotic reasons for it. BREAKING NEWS: It doesn't go into the environment. We don't know that. We do know that it has no measurable effect on the environment. You are buying into woo woo speculation and I am not.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
-- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. This mischaractorization would have worked better if you had not already conceded that we currently know of no mechanism. My position is just stating the state of science today and has nothing to do with my personal credulity. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Most likely not, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. And then there's always absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Seems to me it makes sense to hold open, even if only ever-so-slightly, the possibility that evidence is absent because we *don't know how to test for it*. You and I were discussing awhile back Lawrence LeShan's recent book about researching telepathy, in which he makes the point that we can't prove it doesn't exist, all we can prove is that it doesn't show up reliably in controlled laboratory experiments. He says we should focus instead on studying instances of purported telepathy to see whether we can get a better idea of the characteristics of such instances, their parameters, which might help us figure out better ways to test for it. You ask above what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling 'spiritual' nonsense. Couple of big assumptions there, and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if we could nail down that mental states *can* affect the physical world, and how this occurs.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Thinking about this just having dwelled on and posted (comments on a Turquoise post) )my interpretation of what I term interaction with a high-shakti person -- I offer up the possiblility -- in my experience - that such a person can make you tangibly feel their presence -- and that thing can get transfered to others / me. The experience makes quite credible (to me, one person, not exactly science) the lion lay down with the lamb thing. That some people can radiate a universal love shakti thing that does rub off on the environment and people and animals are affected by it. (when I started mediation I had a dog who would lie down outside my door and calmly wait for me to finish my med. Maybe it was simply a natural dog affection thing. But my dog didn't sit outside my door at other times. Again, not science, but an anecdotal dot.) Even if this experience is only cognized by humans and animals (and my experience hardly proves that such occurs) -- my sense is that it could affect inanimate physical things too. Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees).
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Most likely not, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. It would really be some Old Thing and we can see where the belief comes from and it isn't experience. We can't tell at all whether the mind can affect things so why the big hoo-ha in the TMO about the marshy effect? Because you can't have a belief in consciousness as the unified field without accepting that outcomes like earthquakes and political upheaval are somehow connected with people sitting around with their eyes closed. Which is why I always say a completely non-snarky thankyou to the TMO for the IA course and pundit programme because they convincingly demonstrated once and for all that it's a load of old toss and should be abandoned to save a lot of people a lot of money. That's one advantage of science over belief, helping us work out the best way to improve our lot. It turns out praying to the gods and hopping up and down turned out not to be a hugely reliable way of doing that. I know I sound like a scratched record but it has to be said. Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. I wouldn't say incredulity, I have given it a lot of thought, a chance to work in my life and observed how it fails to demonstrably fails to affect world as predicted. Suppose we didn't know about plate tectonics, then you might be able to say things are happening for reasons unknown and search about for mystical reasons which is how we got here in the first place I'll wager. The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. This is something the vedas (and most other religious texts I know of) are confusing about because they claim was always man here. Knowledge moves on. But perhaps consciousness affects earthquakes as well as general shifting about due to a spinning core surrounded by molten rock? That'll be the one to test for! Good luck I say. And then there's always absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Seems to me it makes sense to hold open, even if only ever-so-slightly, the possibility that evidence is absent because we *don't know how to test for it*. You and I were discussing awhile back Lawrence LeShan's recent book about researching telepathy, in which he makes the point that we can't prove it doesn't exist, all we can prove is that it doesn't show up reliably in controlled laboratory experiments. He says we should focus instead on studying instances of purported telepathy to see whether we can get a better idea of the characteristics of such instances, their parameters, which might help us figure out better ways to test for it. I'm all for it. You ask above what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Thinking about this just having dwelled on and posted (comments on a Turquoise post) )my interpretation of what I term interaction with a high-shakti person -- I offer up the possiblility -- in my experience - that such a person can make you tangibly feel their presence -- and that thing can get transfered to others / me. The experience makes quite credible (to me, one person, not exactly science) the lion lay down with the lamb thing. That some people can radiate a universal love shakti thing that does rub off on the environment and people and animals are affected by it. (when I started mediation I had a dog who would lie down outside my door and calmly wait for me to finish my med. Maybe it was simply a natural dog affection thing. But my dog didn't sit outside my door at other times. Again, not science, but an anecdotal dot.) Even if this experience is only cognized by humans and animals (and my experience hardly proves that such occurs) -- my sense is that it could affect inanimate physical things too. Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees). I won't lock you up. I've been there, it's a good trip. A positive mood changes your day completely, people look at you in the street and smile, doors open. All of a sudden it's a beautiful world, nothing goes wrong all day. Sigh. Amazing how much stress and anger can cloud how we see and think about things. I'm sure all the understanding trees and animals bit is a projection but at the time it never feels right to get critical and dissect it as it robs the sensation of its wonder. Spring is coming to England, joy of joys. I'm sure I'll do much wandering through enchanted forests full of bluebells with my happy little dog. Might even send in a photo coz there is few sights as perfect as a beechwood in spring IMHO.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_re...@... wrote: Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees). I believe these mental states do have a value (even if it is just for entertainment) but that value is not in the content of the beliefs that are spontaneously generated such as, trees are reflecting my love. Taking their content seriously is the mistake the ancients made. We don't have to take the content of these states of awareness literally and seriously (trees actually do love us) to enjoy the state of union through love or your being or whatever else you want to call it. In fact trying to draw literal conclusions diminishes the potential value for our creativity and artistic expression from having these experiences. If you talk to a tree you are a poet, if it talks back you are a nutter in society! But being able to drift into the states of mind where you can have conversations with trees is a wonderful tool for creativity that gets squashed when someone claims that this experience is evidence for the highly developed sentient nature of trees. We can and should visit the holy tree in the Avatar movie but we shouldn't forget that it is a movie and once the 3-D glasses come off, what we have gained is not definite ontological information about how the world really is. We have gained a shift of perspective that we can then use to spark actual tests on the world if we are scientists or expressions of art if we are an artist. I am an advocate of people having more of this type of experiences through many different means including psychedelics and meditation but hope we can not make the mistake our religiously minded and bound ancestors did concerning what they mean. We need to approach that with the starting point that we do no already know what they mean. But to assume that they serve as a self-evident source of knowledge about the world is the lamest choice of all. It discards a whole body of knowledge and perspective that has served us well in building human knowledge to this point. Artistically and creatively inspired altered states of mind have a place. But they aren't remotely close to being the source of man's deepest knowledge yet. Historically they have led us astray as much as they have inspired us. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Thinking about this just having dwelled on and posted (comments on a Turquoise post) )my interpretation of what I term interaction with a high-shakti person -- I offer up the possiblility -- in my experience - that such a person can make you tangibly feel their presence -- and that thing can get transfered to others / me. The experience makes quite credible (to me, one person, not exactly science) the lion lay down with the lamb thing. That some people can radiate a universal love shakti thing that does rub off on the environment and people and animals are affected by it. (when I started mediation I had a dog who would lie down outside my door and calmly wait for me to finish my med. Maybe it was simply a natural dog affection thing. But my dog didn't sit outside my door at other times. Again, not science, but an anecdotal dot.) Even if this
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. My opinions are huffing and puffing? What an odd characterization. Oh, I don't think so. Is that what you are doing here by communicating your opinions, huffing and puffing? Sometimes I huff and puff, sure. Or were you trying to characterize opinions this way to diminish them? Just pointing out the contrast. He made a joke, and you're having a tizzy *because he made a joke*. I used it as a platform to express my views. The term tizzy is another mischaractorization mean to diminish my post. Oooh, you're so *sensitive*. Sorry you don't like the term. Again, my point was the *contrast*. Chopra makes a wisecrack, and you immediately start lecturing about how his making a joke is evidence of his duplicity. The intent of my post seems to have been missed by you but concerns a technique of cold readers to make their other outrageously unsupported statements seem more plausible. No, Curtis, I got your point. It wasn't that complicated. I'm suggesting it's not well founded and just plain unfair as applied to Chopra. I find those techniques fascinating as I do your inability to even get the point. It worked on you. It worked on me only if your point is *valid*, Curtis. But that's just what we're disagreeing about. BTW, here again you're asserting *intention* on Chopra's part, after having said in your previous post that your point *didn't* depend on his intention. snip It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. Yeah, seems to me there's a pretty gigantic difference between somebody thinking their meditation causes earthquakes and thinking a lot of people meditating together might facilitate world peace. Not at all. None in fact. cackle A whole group of people with no effect is no more anything than one person with no effect. Circular argument. Now you're really hauling out the sophist tricks. This is a common mental fallacy that draws on our natural tendency to believe that more of something will produce a bigger effect. The problem here is that there is no proven mechanism that is being multiplied, it was just asserted by an authority figure. One whom you claim you do not take at face value, and yet here you have. You have fallen for his routine as effectively as any Purusha. Not sure if you're referring to MMY or Chopra. You seem to be saying that not taking someone at face value means one can't possibly entertain any of their ideas as possibilities, but that's obviously not the case. Plus which, you got all upset because I used the words huffing and puffing and tizzy, but look at how you're using the phrase fallen for his routine to diminish my opinions. Practice what you preach! More of nothing is still nothing. You might want to write that down. ROTFL! As to no proven mechanisms, see my post in response to Hugo in this thread. snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. BREAKING NEWS: I know that. But you aren't defending any unfair attack here you and we both know it. If I hadn't thought it was unfair, I wouldn't have spoken up. And if you'd known that one doesn't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack, you wouldn't have suggested I was defending him because I thought he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. This twist wont work. I never asked you if you believed he could cause an earthquake with his mind and you know it. I was asking yo to clarify your own position on his teaching about the influence of our minds on the world Except that you just got done insisting there was no difference between these two. Ooopsie! and you dodged it. But you answered that you wouldn't rule it out How is that dodging it?? Two sophist tricks, one right after the other. (Note that my main point wasn't addressed at all.) And here comes another one: snip It is your straw man, your pretending I don't understand his joke. Never even *vaguely* suggested you didn't understand his joke. You just think there's something sinister behind it, and I don't. Sometimes a joke is just a joke, as Freud might say. snip BREAKING NEWS: It doesn't go into the environment. We don't know that. We do know that it has no measurable effect on the environment. What we know is that if it has any effect on the environment, we haven't been able to measure it. You are buying into woo woo speculation and I am not. No, I'm leaving the door open a crack, not buying into it. (Another loaded phrase, BTW.) And framing
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Thanks for the reply. More later. But I do classify such experiences in the realm of poetry and art. its like is a simile -- like that -- not a metaphor (is that). But I am open to the possibility that it is metaphor. (sorry if I hosed the use of these words, simile an metaphor) --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain no_reply@ wrote: Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees). I believe these mental states do have a value (even if it is just for entertainment) but that value is not in the content of the beliefs that are spontaneously generated such as, trees are reflecting my love. Taking their content seriously is the mistake the ancients made. We don't have to take the content of these states of awareness literally and seriously (trees actually do love us) to enjoy the state of union through love or your being or whatever else you want to call it. In fact trying to draw literal conclusions diminishes the potential value for our creativity and artistic expression from having these experiences. If you talk to a tree you are a poet, if it talks back you are a nutter in society! But being able to drift into the states of mind where you can have conversations with trees is a wonderful tool for creativity that gets squashed when someone claims that this experience is evidence for the highly developed sentient nature of trees. We can and should visit the holy tree in the Avatar movie but we shouldn't forget that it is a movie and once the 3-D glasses come off, what we have gained is not definite ontological information about how the world really is. We have gained a shift of perspective that we can then use to spark actual tests on the world if we are scientists or expressions of art if we are an artist. I am an advocate of people having more of this type of experiences through many different means including psychedelics and meditation but hope we can not make the mistake our religiously minded and bound ancestors did concerning what they mean. We need to approach that with the starting point that we do no already know what they mean. But to assume that they serve as a self-evident source of knowledge about the world is the lamest choice of all. It discards a whole body of knowledge and perspective that has served us well in building human knowledge to this point. Artistically and creatively inspired altered states of mind have a place. But they aren't remotely close to being the source of man's deepest knowledge yet. Historically they have led us astray as much as they have inspired us. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of selling spiritual nonsense. Something Chopra does rather well out of. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. How about 5000 people? Thinking about this just having dwelled on and posted (comments on a Turquoise post) )my interpretation of what I term interaction with a high-shakti person -- I offer up the possiblility -- in my experience - that such a person can make you tangibly feel their presence -- and that thing can get transfered to others / me. The experience makes quite credible (to me, one person, not exactly science) the lion lay
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. This mischaractorization would have worked better if you had not already conceded that we currently know of no mechanism. Sophist trick. There's no contradiction there, sorry. My position is just stating the state of science today and has nothing to do with my personal credulity. Oh, Curtis, have some self-respect! You've stated over and over in this exchange that there *is* no effect, not just that we haven't measured any effect. E.g.: You say you are agnostic but you have already bought in to the biggest bogus jump, the fallacy that a lot of people will have a bigger *effect of nothing* than one person (emphasis added). More where that came from.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
On Apr 7, 2010, at 9:33 AM, tartbrain wrote: Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees). tart, there's a woman here in FF who supposedly talks to stones--let me know if you're ever in the area and I'll see what I can do about setting the two of you up. Bet it would be quite a conversation. :) Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. My opinions are huffing and puffing? What an odd characterization. Oh, I don't think so. Is that what you are doing here by communicating your opinions, huffing and puffing? Sometimes I huff and puff, sure. Or were you trying to characterize opinions this way to diminish them? Just pointing out the contrast. He made a joke, and you're having a tizzy *because he made a joke*. I used it as a platform to express my views. The term tizzy is another mischaractorization mean to diminish my post. Oooh, you're so *sensitive*. Sorry you don't like the term. I call you on every personal slight just to underline your style of conversation here. Again, my point was the *contrast*. Chopra makes a wisecrack, and you immediately start lecturing about how his making a joke is evidence of his duplicity. Sorry you missed my point, I have explained it enough times. The intent of my post seems to have been missed by you but concerns a technique of cold readers to make their other outrageously unsupported statements seem more plausible. No, Curtis, I got your point. It wasn't that complicated. I'm suggesting it's not well founded and just plain unfair as applied to Chopra. If you had stated that without the obfuscation of your mischaractorizations it would have helped make this point. So far all you have demonstrated is that you misunderstood what I was saying. I find those techniques fascinating as I do your inability to even get the point. It worked on you. It worked on me only if your point is *valid*, Curtis. But that's just what we're disagreeing about. BTW, here again you're asserting *intention* on Chopra's part, after having said in your previous post that your point *didn't* depend on his intention. It doesn't but I can still speculate. Maybe he is just completely whacked out and doesn't know what he is saying half the time. snip It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. Yeah, seems to me there's a pretty gigantic difference between somebody thinking their meditation causes earthquakes and thinking a lot of people meditating together might facilitate world peace. Not at all. None in fact. cackle Interesting image you are invoking. Doesn't take the place of a reasoned response. Let's see if you can address my point... A whole group of people with no effect is no more anything than one person with no effect. Circular argument. Now you're really hauling out the sophist tricks. So you think the term sophist trick is a catch all term that replaces actual response huh? It is not circular in any way it is a fact of nature and even math. Zero times any number is still zero. This is a common mental fallacy that draws on our natural tendency to believe that more of something will produce a bigger effect. The problem here is that there is no proven mechanism that is being multiplied, it was just asserted by an authority figure. One whom you claim you do not take at face value, and yet here you have. You have fallen for his routine as effectively as any Purusha. Not sure if you're referring to MMY or Chopra. You seem to be saying that not taking someone at face value means one can't possibly entertain any of their ideas as possibilities, but that's obviously not the case. Plus which, you got all upset because I used the words huffing and puffing and tizzy, but look at how you're using the phrase fallen for his routine to diminish my opinions. Practice what you preach! I respond with parity. I made the request and you ignored it. And you do appear to have fallen for the fallacy I don't know how to sugar coat it. More of nothing is still nothing. You might want to write that down. ROTFL! So you have nothing to add, gotcha. As to no proven mechanisms, see my post in response to Hugo in this thread. snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. BREAKING NEWS: I know that. But you aren't defending any unfair attack here you and we both know it. If I hadn't thought it was unfair, I wouldn't have spoken up. And if you'd known that one doesn't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack, you wouldn't have suggested I was defending him because I thought he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. This twist wont work. I never
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. This mischaractorization would have worked better if you had not already conceded that we currently know of no mechanism. Sophist trick. There's no contradiction there, sorry. You continue to use this term with the intellectual subtly of poopy pants. My argument has nothing to do with personal incredulity or anytime a person stated the state of scientific understanding in a field they could be challenged on this basis. My position is just stating the state of science today and has nothing to do with my personal credulity. Oh, Curtis, have some self-respect! You've stated over and over in this exchange that there *is* no effect, not just that we haven't measured any effect. Your attempt to parse language this way is absurd. The difference between we have not measured it and it doesn't exist is important to researchers not to me. When they find something they will let me know. I don't have to keep the door open for every cockamamie assertion of guys like Chopra. The fact is we have no evidence for such an assertion. E.g.: You say you are agnostic but you have already bought in to the biggest bogus jump, the fallacy that a lot of people will have a bigger *effect of nothing* than one person (emphasis added). There is no measurable effect of individuals or groups. If you want to parse the language more carefully to keep you door open for Chopra claims be my guest. More where that came from.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip I call you on every personal slight just to underline your style of conversation here. Oh, for pete's sake, Curtis, it's just as much your style of conversation as it is mine. Again, my point was the *contrast*. Chopra makes a wisecrack, and you immediately start lecturing about how his making a joke is evidence of his duplicity. Sorry you missed my point, I have explained it enough times. That was *exactly* your point, and I got it the first time. The intent of my post seems to have been missed by you but concerns a technique of cold readers to make their other outrageously unsupported statements seem more plausible. No, Curtis, I got your point. It wasn't that complicated. I'm suggesting it's not well founded and just plain unfair as applied to Chopra. If you had stated that without the obfuscation of your mischaractorizations it would have helped make this point. I neither mischaracterized nor obfuscated, Curtis. Here's what I said to start with: Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. So far all you have demonstrated is that you misunderstood what I was saying. You've asserted that over and over, but I'm pretty sure you know it's false. I find those techniques fascinating as I do your inability to even get the point. It worked on you. It worked on me only if your point is *valid*, Curtis. But that's just what we're disagreeing about. BTW, here again you're asserting *intention* on Chopra's part, after having said in your previous post that your point *didn't* depend on his intention. It doesn't but I can still speculate. But you don't speculate, you *assert*, e.g.: This is part of his game. He makes it seem as if he is mocking the idea that his meditation could cause a quake to attempt rapport with people who don't share his actual belief that in fact his meditation does effect the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. snip It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. Yeah, seems to me there's a pretty gigantic difference between somebody thinking their meditation causes earthquakes and thinking a lot of people meditating together might facilitate world peace. Not at all. None in fact. cackle Interesting image you are invoking. Doesn't take the place of a reasoned response. And didn't. Let's see if you can address my point... A whole group of people with no effect is no more anything than one person with no effect. Circular argument. Now you're really hauling out the sophist tricks. So you think the term sophist trick is a catch all term that replaces actual response huh? It didn't replace an actual response. The actual response was Circular argument. Sophist trick was a characterization of Circular argument. It is not circular in any way it is a fact of nature and even math. Zero times any number is still zero. Sophist trick. As you know, the circular part is the assumption that there is zero effect in either case. If there were an effect with many people, but no effect with a single individual, zero times any number is still zero would be irrelevant. And in any case, even if there *is* no effect, there's still a big difference in the *degree of hubris* of the respective beliefs. Zero times any number is still zero doesn't apply at all. This is a common mental fallacy that draws on our natural tendency to believe that more of something will produce a bigger effect. The problem here is that there is no proven mechanism that is being multiplied, it was just asserted by an authority figure. One whom you claim you do not take at face value, and yet here you have. You have fallen for his routine as effectively as any Purusha. Not sure if you're referring to MMY or Chopra. You seem to be saying that not taking someone at face value means one can't possibly entertain any of their ideas as possibilities, but that's obviously not the case. (Curtis has no response to this.) Plus which, you got all upset because I used the words huffing and puffing and tizzy, but look at how you're using the phrase fallen for his routine to diminish my opinions. Practice what you preach! I respond with parity. I made the request and you ignored it. What request? You made no request. And you do appear to have fallen for the fallacy I don't know how to sugar coat it. snicker Like you
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. This mischaractorization would have worked better if you had not already conceded that we currently know of no mechanism. Sophist trick. There's no contradiction there, sorry. You continue to use this term with the intellectual subtly of poopy pants. sophistry = subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation Except, as I keep pointing out, your deception isn't all that subtle. My argument has nothing to do with personal incredulity or anytime a person stated the state of scientific understanding in a field they could be challenged on this basis. You're not making any sense. This isn't at all responsive. You implied I was contradicting myself, but that was a false accusation.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
On Apr 7, 2010, at 1:06 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote: So unless you are proposing that the mechanism of what affects the world is some new thing If it affects the world, *of course* it's some new thing. You and Chopra, masters of the innuendo. Huh?? Innuendo of what? Something new. Something borrowed, something blue? :) Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@... wrote: On Apr 7, 2010, at 9:33 AM, tartbrain wrote: Continuing on this woo woo ray tangent (I am generally quite rational and skeptical), in these universal love states i can sense the personality of trees and plants. Quite distinct entities. And my love for them seems felt -- and they seem responsive. (to be more specific, its like a lake of universal love, undirected, that is then directed at them. There is a focus on them. An adorational devotion kind of focus. But its not at all like the charismatic beaming discussed in my comments tot the Turquoise post.) Like they would protect me in their enchanted forest. (I know, lock me up, we can't have people walking the streets thinking they can talk to trees). I am reading this and thinking what whack job wrote this gibberish. Its a matter of what mode one is in. I wrote the above in the morning, and reread it after a long somewhat intensely analytical day. Two very different modes. I can go to that mode -- responding to turquoises post got me thinking along those lines -- but have not really become one with trees for some time. tart, there's a woman here in FF who supposedly talks to stones I am not rally talking about talking to trees. Its an appreciation at a deep level. Its almost a merger with the tree on one level, while appreciating its outward beauty similtaneously. --let me know if you're ever in the area and I'll see what I can do about setting the two of you up. Sort of a spiritual whack job Match.com. Interesting. That could be quite business opportunity in FF. Bet it would be quite a conversation. :) I am sure she is a lovely person and I am sure it would be a nice conversation. Particularly if what happens with her and stones is a similar non-verbal as what happens to me with trees (and its not limited to trees, but thats a good example) Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodle...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Hugo fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own is OK. Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and see whether it could actually be classified as an attack, as opposed to disagreement. If one is defending somebody from what one considers an unfair attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing disagreement. I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. Neither of you is very good at it, then. snip Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the physical world, it would have to be some new thing, because at this point we don't know of any way it could happen. But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of room for some new thing. It would really be some Old Thing It would be new from the scientific perspective. and we can see where the belief comes from and it isn't experience. We don't know that. We can't tell at all whether the mind can affect things so why the big hoo-ha in the TMO about the marshy effect? Because you can't have a belief in consciousness as the unified field without accepting that outcomes like earthquakes and political upheaval are somehow connected with people sitting around with their eyes closed. Is it possible there would have been more and worse earthquakes without people sitting around with their eyes closed? On that scale, it's unfalsifiable. And as to political upheaval, one person's disastrous chaos is another person's liberating revolution, so that's unfalsifiable as well. We just don't know what it is we're trying to measure or how to go about it. snip Yes, that's an argument from ignorance, at least in terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, which I'm not doing). But you and Curtis are countering it with an argument from personal incredulity as to whether such a new thing is possible, so I figure we're even. I wouldn't say incredulity, I have given it a lot of thought, a chance to work in my life and observed how it fails to demonstrably fails to affect world as predicted. Yeah, but it's still personal incredulity to believe that because you haven't seen any evidence that convinces you (even for very sound reasons), therefore there *can* be no such evidence. Suppose we didn't know about plate tectonics, then you might be able to say things are happening for reasons unknown and search about for mystical reasons which is how we got here in the first place I'll wager. The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. Why couldn't earthquakes happen without human participation? I'm not following you. snip and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if we could nail down that mental states *can* affect the physical world, and how this occurs. Like preventing earthquakes or improving the stock exchange and preventing war? I shall remain happy sceptic until that happy day. You're entitled, but be a *skeptic*, not a skeptopath. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know.--Donald Rumsfeld
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer r...@... wrote: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/chopra-blames-own-meditation-for-baja- quake/19426755?sms_ss=email _ Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake Sorry Haiti, Turkey, Chile and Baja. Your pain and suffering has been worthwile for the bit of transient bliss experienced by a few TMers. You can't make an omelete without breaking eggs.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
-- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer r...@... wrote:
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/chopra-blames-own-meditation-for-baja-
quake/19426755?sms_ss=email
_
Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake
This is part of his game. He makes it seem as if he is mocking the idea that
his meditation could cause a quake to attempt rapport with people who don't
share his actual belief that in fact his meditation does effect the
environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost
sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power.
But it is a carefully contrived image enhancing ploy. Similar to Jerry's aw
shucks I don't believe crazy things PR image.
It would take a bit of questioning to find out that in fact Chopra believes
that it is the collective (energy,vibrations,negativity, leprechauns...)of a
group of people in an area that DOES create natural disasters just like his old
buddy Maharishi used to believe. And that realized people (awakened,
enlightened, special {long bus not short bus}completely fabulous people) have
an even more powerful effect on everything around them just by (as Maharishi
told his Vedic Atoms) walking the land. He actually had them walk around to
bless their areas with their spiritual presence. (spell check first suggested
pretense for my misspell!)
My first interaction with this specific form of belief masking was with friends
at MIU from California. They had a way of expressing things in a slightly
snarky way that let them go either way with a belief if pinned down. It
allowed them to make outrageous claims with a wink,wink, nudge, nudge, that
said, no need to challenge my groundless assertions because if you do I'll
just make it seem as if I was making fun of the belief to stay in rapport with
your skepticism. And if you don't challenge the statement, then I mean it as
stated. Is this a common Cali communication style? I really don't know.
Both Jerry and Chopra have a habit of making fun of some outrageous belief and
making it seem silly for people to buy such an absurd thing. Meanwhile they
are slipping in their own brand of crazy under the covered wagon of nothing to
worry about here folks, just a few common sense principles of life that include
me closing my eyes and changing my mental state having a measurable effect on
the world.
Yup, sure you do. No really I'm sure you do, you betcha. Really, I mean it.
Oh yeah. Twinkle twinkle.
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http://www.aolnews.com/team/katie-drummond Katie Drummond
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(April 5) -- The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological
changes for Sunday's 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Deepak
Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental
meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened.
Had a powerful meditation just now -- caused an earthquake in Southern
California, Chopra wrote to his nearly 179,000 Twitter
http://twitter.com/DeepakChopra followers shortly after the quake.
And then, to clarify: Was meditating on Shiva mantra earth began to
shake, he tweeted. Sorry about that.
Author, physician and lecturer Deepak Chopra.
http://o.aolcdn.com/photo-hub/news_gallery/6/5/656653/1270487714243.JPEG
John Medina, WireImage
Deepak Chopra, here in San Jose, Calif., sent messages on Sunday to his
thousands of Twitter followers apologizing for causing an earthquake in
Southern California with powerful meditation.
Chopra might want to apologize directly to those in California, who haven't
suffered significant infrastructure damage but are still bracing for more
temblors, and to those in Mexico, where two are dead, hundreds are injured
and thousands are still without power.
Transcendental meditation (TM) was largely popularized by Chopra, who's been
dubbed McMeditation for the multimillion-dollar profits he's earned off
books, DVDs and his Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, Calif. -- where
a six-day mind-body wellness program runs around $2,500.
According to Chopra
http://www.5min.com/Video/What-is-Transcendental-Meditation-27282794 , at
the crux of the meditation practice is the field of possibilities,
creativity, correlation ... where intention actualizes its own fulfillment.
Let's hope he's wrong about that, or the guru might have some explaining to
do about what exactly his meditation session Sunday was hoping to actualize.
An hour
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/chopra-blames-own-meditation-for-baja- quake/19426755?sms_ss=email Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake This is part of his game. He makes it seem as if he is mocking the idea that his meditation could cause a quake to attempt rapport with people who don't share his actual belief that in fact his meditation does effect (affect) the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/chopra-blames-own-meditation-for-baja- quake/19426755?sms_ss=email Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake This is part of his game. He makes it seem as if he is mocking the idea that his meditation could cause a quake to attempt rapport with people who don't share his actual belief that in fact his meditation does effect (affect) Much appreciated correction. Damn, I can keep that straight for about one month at a time. the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. Yeah Judy he was mocking people who call him on his fantasy that his state of mind affects the world. Really got me! If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! The reason the joke works is because part of his teaching actually states that his state of mind affects the world. It isn't hubris to make the joke, it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? Now if he wants to retract all his statements about his power over the world with the state of his mind I will happily retract my accusation of hubris. And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris. If he didn't actually believe that his state of mind affects the world you might have a point. But the fact is he does. I wasn't saying how dare he anything. I was just showing how people with wacky beliefs about their place in the world sometimes mask them with humor about a straw man wacky belief. It seems to have worked on you among many others. That old Chopra is so full of common sense wisdom how could we doubt his claim that his mind is working on the quantum mechanical level! I point my finger at him as a charlatan because I paid $700 in his doctor's office to get the magic word amrita to repeat to cure physical conditions. Medical conditions. Health related issues that he discussed with me in his doctor's office before prescribing me a magical word to repeat to cure medical physical, health conditions. So when I view him as a con man it is after having him con out of actual money me a long time ago.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Curtis: I paid $700 in his doctor's office to get the magic word amrita to repeat to cure physical conditions... So, how much money do you estimate that have you paid out to various cult leaders since you were eighteen? $10,000? Barry says he gave the Maharishi over $5,000 just to learn 'Yogic Flying'. Vaj seems to have spent thousands of dollars flying all over the planet to get more gibberish whispered into his left ear. At least yours was a real word, not a nonsense monosyllable, right? But, this doesn't really do much to support your claim to being rational.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: [snip] it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. [snip] Huh? My state of mind goes I don't get that, I'll post my puzzlement; The world changes. Myriads of bits and bytes flip, flop, dance, embrace, reach their 1 and die to zero. Voila! What a privilege it is to lord it over matter, eh?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
Deepak believes he is non local (loco?) and fancies himself enlightened, so I'm sure he honestly thought that right after his meditation, the earthquake happened, he was the cause because he is all. At least he didn't say something good is happening --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/chopra-blames-own-meditation-for-baja- quake/19426755?sms_ss=email Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake This is part of his game. He makes it seem as if he is mocking the idea that his meditation could cause a quake to attempt rapport with people who don't share his actual belief that in fact his meditation does effect (affect) the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. Yeah Judy he was mocking people who call him on his fantasy that his state of mind affects the world. Really got me! Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! The reason the joke works is because part of his teaching actually states that his state of mind affects the world. It isn't hubris to make the joke, it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. But he doesn't believe that, you see. Hhe has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. Now if he wants to retract all his statements about his power over the world with the state of his mind I will happily retract my accusation of hubris. And I don't think you should be making accusations when you can't tell the difference between what he believes and what he doesn't believe. And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris. If he didn't actually believe that his state of mind affects the world you might have a point. He doesn't actually believe his meditation caused the earthquake. That's why his tweets were funny. But the fact is he does. I wasn't saying how dare he anything. I was just showing how people with wacky beliefs about their place in the world sometimes mask them with humor about a straw man wacky belief. You were asserting that this is what he was doing. You were, in other words, mind-reading. You get *really* upset when folks do that to you, but you have no problem doing it to others. It seems to have worked on you among many others. That old Chopra is so full of common sense wisdom how could we doubt his claim that his mind is working on the quantum mechanical level! We can certainly doubt it, but it's probably not real smart to rule it out. I point my finger at him as a charlatan because I paid $700 in his doctor's office to get the magic word amrita to repeat to cure physical conditions. Medical conditions. Health related issues that he discussed with me in his doctor's office before prescribing me a magical word to repeat to cure medical physical, health conditions. So when I view him as a con man it is after having him con out of actual money me a long time ago. Charlatan, maybe, in the sense of being deluded about the validity of his claims. But not a con man.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. Yeah Judy he was mocking people who call him on his fantasy that his state of mind affects the world. Really got me! Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. My opinions are huffing and puffing? What an odd characterization. Is that what you are doing here by communicating your opinions, huffing and puffing? Or were you trying to characterize opinions this way to diminish them? If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! The reason the joke works is because part of his teaching actually states that his state of mind affects the world. It isn't hubris to make the joke, it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. But he doesn't believe that, you see. Hhe has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Pretty low bar. Some limits. Amazing, I'm so proud of him. Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. BREAKING NEWS: I know that. But you aren't defending any unfair attack here you and we both know it. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Yeah well I'll give it a very low probability OK? We know quite a bit about how powerful thoughts are on the outside of our skulls because we can measure the electrical energy of our brains. BREAKING NEWS: It doesn't go into the environment. So unless you are proposing that the mechanism of what affects the world is some new thing, we know it doesn't with as much scientific confidence as we have supporting most of the modern scientific perspective. (one that Chopra rejects in favor of his brand of special knowledge.) But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. Straw man and you know it. But how about a whole bunch of people? Maharishi believes that groups of humans do cause these events. Chopra has said the same thing. Now if he wants to retract all his statements about his power over the world with the state of his mind I will happily retract my accusation of hubris. And I don't think you should be making accusations when you can't tell the difference between what he believes and what he doesn't believe. My whole post started with this distinction. You are trying to create your own straw man out of the earthquake thing and missing my whole point intentionally or unintentionally. And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris. If he didn't actually believe that his state of mind affects the world you might have a point. He doesn't actually believe his meditation caused the earthquake. That's why his tweets were funny. I started with this distinction why do you think this is news? It is a straw man that is being used to make him look less fringy. But the fact is he does. I wasn't saying how dare he anything. I was just showing how people with wacky beliefs about their place in the world sometimes mask them with humor about a straw man wacky belief. You were asserting that this is what he was doing. You were, in other words, mind-reading. You get *really* upset when folks do that to you, but you have no problem doing it to others. Not at all but you are getting a bit desperate here. It is my opinion about how he is using a straw man that is not dependent on his intentions. It is how his story appears to me. And with public figures we just guess at motivations. When we are posting here and can state them I object to someone claiming to know what my thoughts are better than I do myself. If he wants to log on I'll listen to his inner thoughts if he cares to share them. It seems to have worked on you among many others. That old Chopra is so full of common sense wisdom how could we doubt his
[FairfieldLife] Re: Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake - AOL News
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip the environment. It is a way to mask the hubris of his true beliefs. He almost sounds like he has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Actually, I think he was mocking people like you, Curtis, right down to your propensity to make something sinister out of a self-deprecating gag. Yeah Judy he was mocking people who call him on his fantasy that his state of mind affects the world. Really got me! Here you are huffing and puffing, and he's chortling. My opinions are huffing and puffing? What an odd characterization. Oh, I don't think so. Is that what you are doing here by communicating your opinions, huffing and puffing? Sometimes I huff and puff, sure. Or were you trying to characterize opinions this way to diminish them? Just pointing out the contrast. He made a joke, and you're having a tizzy *because he made a joke*. If he says he believes he can cause an earthquake by meditating, that's hubris. If he says he *doesn't* believe he can cause an earthquake by meditating--why, that's hubris too! The reason the joke works is because part of his teaching actually states that his state of mind affects the world. It isn't hubris to make the joke, it is hubris to believe that your state of mind affects the world. It would be hubris if he believed he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. You are welcome to your opinion. I think people believing their meditation causes world peace also qualifies. Yeah, seems to me there's a pretty gigantic difference between somebody thinking their meditation causes earthquakes and thinking a lot of people meditating together might facilitate world peace. But he doesn't believe that, you see. Hhe has some common sense about the limits of his personal power. Pretty low bar. Some limits. Amazing, I'm so proud of him. Those were your words, toots. Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you are so quick to defend him? BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack. BREAKING NEWS: I know that. But you aren't defending any unfair attack here you and we both know it. If I hadn't thought it was unfair, I wouldn't have spoken up. And if you'd known that one doesn't have to share a person's beliefs to defend them from unfair attack, you wouldn't have suggested I was defending him because I thought he could cause an earthquake with his meditation. That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can affect the world (depending on what you mean by world), and *neither do you*. Yeah well I'll give it a very low probability OK? We know quite a bit about how powerful thoughts are on the outside of our skulls because we can measure the electrical energy of our brains. Low probability is fine, but I wouldn't make up idiotic reasons for it. BREAKING NEWS: It doesn't go into the environment. We don't know that. So unless you are proposing that the mechanism of what affects the world is some new thing If it affects the world, *of course* it's some new thing. snip But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation can bring about an earthquake. Straw man and you know it. Funny, it's the same straw man you were using. But how about a whole bunch of people? Maharishi believes that groups of humans do cause these events. Chopra has said the same thing. He probably does believe that. (I'm agnostic.) But that's a whole different order of belief than that a single person can cause earthquakes. Now if he wants to retract all his statements about his power over the world with the state of his mind I will happily retract my accusation of hubris. And I don't think you should be making accusations when you can't tell the difference between what he believes and what he doesn't believe. My whole post started with this distinction. No, your post started--and has continued--by *conflating* the two. You are trying to create your own straw man out of the earthquake thing and missing my whole point intentionally or unintentionally. I'm *criticizing* your point. And how *dare* he have a sense of humor about himself? That's the *ultimate* in hubris. If he didn't actually believe that his state of mind affects the world you might have a point. He doesn't actually believe his meditation caused the earthquake. That's why his tweets were funny. I started with this distinction why do you
