Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 02:34pm PT
|
Fructose and PSP, I'm in complete agreement with you both.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
|
HFCS:
You often criticize or call out the ideology of ISIS and Islam. Yet, you must admit that whatever it is or isn’t, it is impressive in its effects given the resources it has available to it.
I’m ok with your choice of issues to talk about, but I can’t help but notice a few things.
There are other issues to talk about when it comes to ISIS or Islam. Your choices are (like everyone else’s) consistently singular (representative?) to your view. You tend to ignore the power of the effects.
What if I were to do that with traditional science? I mean perhaps the philosophy or the ideology of science has its problems, but within that paradigm, should we overlook the power of its effects?
This post is honestly meant as a friendly comment. People here see and read what they feel drawn to, and they tend to ignore everything else.
From my side, I have respect for the effects of Al Qaeda, ISIS from a managerial and organizational points of views. So did Stanley McChrystal and in time his task force of special operatives.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 04:35pm PT
|
my knowledge of "no-thing," or emptiness in Zen language, comes from spending years being present in the space between thoughts, of empirically observing the dance between content and awareness, between macro and micro.
This is a claim that is not open to dispute.
|
|
PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 05:42pm PT
|
If you read much Zen lore it is filled with zen teachers testing each others view to expose if they truly have a clear open mind or unhindered or unattached mind. One ploy in their questions is to ask a question where the premise is completely flawed from an all things are one point of view. They are waiting to see if you recognize the flaw or naively attach to the content.
i.e. A great famous diamond sutra master (knowledgeable of the Buddhist writings) is traveling several days south to a zen monastery to teach them the diamond sutra because they only sit and know nothing of sutras. He thinks this is ludicrous.
On the way he comes upon a tea house run by an old women (beware of old women in zen stories) who runs the tea house and he asks her for lunch; he is very hungry. She says she will give him lunch for free if he can answer a question correctly and if not no lunch for him. He is quite insulted that she would challenge his great knowledge but go ahead. so she asks : The diamond sutra says that present mind can't get enlightenment, past mind can't get enlightenment and future mind can't get enlightenment. With what kind of mind will you eat your lunch with? The sutra master couldn't answer the question. She exposed that he may understand the map but he hadn't experienced the territory.
It gets at the understanding or calculating no-thingness versus experiencing no-thingness . Zen puts very little value in understanding things it's about experiencing or doing.
The literature is loaded with warnings of don't take anyone's word for things but experience them for yourself. Bodhidharma (the father of zen)in Red Pine's translation, has scathing remarks for charlatans, he doesn't call them woo masters he calls them demons.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 05:45pm PT
|
If we look at the history of religion and mass movements, the most extreme examples of it tend to occur when society is under the most pressure. The Ghost Dance movement is one of the saddest examples. Having lost everything, Natives went back to the ways of their ancestors giving up everything western, danced to see their dead relatives again and believed that if they did so the earth would open up and swallow all the white people and the buffalo would come back. I personally think ISIS plays on these same fears and in the end will be no more successful, but given their greater numbers and the fact they inhabit lands which have a commodity we want, it will go on for a long time - beyond our lifetimes.
As for organization and motivations, there is nothing like the power of an idea. Men die for them and in the present case, teenage girls leave the comforts of the western world to find a husband among them. That goes back to MikeL's video on evolution vs reality. And also that actual reality is something beyond what we can perceive. We are all deceived at one level or another. Think how recently we were obsessed with the Cold War and its ideologies and how far away that seems now. The Berlin Wall and Communism fell quickly once people no longer believed.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 23, 2015 - 06:02pm PT
|
If you cannot recognize where observation (or machine registration of stimulus) ends and individual awareness (sentience) of that observation begins, then you will struggle to participate in nuanced discussions per “mind,” and will forever equate sentience with tasking, data processing, calculating and objective functioning – however you want to define it. From this muddled POV, the zombie and the sentient human being, the bucket of bolts (spaceship) and Dr. Ed, are qualitatively selfsame per what they “experience.”
JL
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 06:03pm PT
|
But my knowledge of "no-thing," or emptiness in Zen language, comes from spending years being present in the space between thoughts, of empirically observing the dance between content and awareness, between macro and micro. You seem to believe that the only way to "know" the micro is through measuring.
OK Largo, I'm not really able to continue with this conversation productively... if you want to believe you are "empirically observing the dance between ... macro and micro" in your meditation practice I certainly can't refute your "first person experience."
I'd just say that we disagree, which would be objectifying something you said cannot be objectified by "normal methods" which are the ones you rightly accuse me of using.
Best of luck with this thread in the future...
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 06:42pm PT
|
I generally put off posts when the content may need a second look. I think I'll post it.
my knowledge of "no-thing," or emptiness in Zen language, comes from spending years being present in the space between thoughts, of empirically observing the dance between content and awareness, between macro and micro.
This is a claim that is not open to dispute.
In the 1500's AD we had a use for high priests. Not so much since Galileo. Well I'll take that back a bit. The high priests found temporary employment in deciding which wretches would die for refusing to "believe". More recently they have been active in covering up scandal. A job's a job even for such grandly elevated people.
On another somewhat speculative topic.
I spent this afternoon picking up trash downwind from the Joshua Tree Mentalphysics Center. It is basically a spiritual meditation retreat providing hotel service. Every bush I cleaned had a high percentage of styrofoam one side of which was coated with a black adhesive. What a puzzle! Never seen this before.
Styrofoam first came into use in the early forties when sulfur dioxide was still being used as a refrigerant. It is a nasty substance to breathe and has a tendency to explode when tanks of it are exposed to high temperature. The observations cause me to wonder if the center, that started off with grand hopes, may have tried to use SO2 for climate control in the residential spaces and there was a fire and an explosion at the refrigeration plant. What a mess. The stuff is everywhere some seventy years later.
Just wondering.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 08:03pm PT
|
my knowledge of "no-thing," or emptiness in Zen language, comes from spending years being present in the space between thoughts, of empirically observing the dance between content and awareness, between macro and micro (JL)
EDIT: Hopeless. Why waste words on this?
;>\
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jul 23, 2015 - 08:05pm PT
|
Oh you're full of sh!t now .....
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 10:12am PT
|
Very interesting and thought provoking reference MikeL.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2015 - 01:34pm PT
|
OK Largo, I'm not really able to continue with this conversation productively... if you want to believe you are "empirically observing the dance between ... macro and micro" in your meditation practice I certainly can't refute your "first person experience."
I'd just say that we disagree, which would be objectifying something you said cannot be objectified by "normal methods" which are the ones you rightly accuse me of using.
---
Such a peculiar response to what was actually said.
I might have more accurately said that I have spent years watching the dance between emptiness and form, or nothing and things, or open awareness and content.
"Empirically" means, by strict definition, "...relying on or derived from observation or experiment. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment."
That is, I said I am "observing" as just described, the dance previously described. What throws you about this? What do YOU do when you do whatever practice you do?
Everyone who ever shuts up and stops calculating engages basically the same process: Detaching from thoughts, feelings, etc., and finding your awareness attached to them once more, as your focus goes from fully wide (empty/infinity) to narrow (ON some thing).
Exactly what part of this process are you disagreeing with? What aspect? Are you thinking I'm claiming to be doing quantum mechanics with no instruments? Of course I am not. Anymore than you can investigate awareness ITSELF through measuring.
The dance I mentioned is the same as described by many over the centuries. It's not a claim but more of a trip report. Again, I invite you to describe what part of this you find false or misleading, and based on what empirical data?
JL
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 06:41pm PT
|
Many ST denizens are highly expert in financial matters. I’d like to pose a question and a hypothesis.
The following Reuters article reports the yield curve in treasuries is flattening in prospect of the Fed’s expected increase the over night rate from its present value, nearly zero. The report:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/markets-bonds-usa-idUKL1N1032MH20150723
Here’s the conundrum. Long term yields to maturity(YTM) are expected to respond to the Fed’s increase more strongly than will the shorter maturities. Not more weakly as the long dated issues have to be held longer at the disadvantageous old rate. The value on long term should drop more and YTM in the secondary market should rise more. The yield spread should increase not decrease.
The opposite seems to be happening. What’s your explanation?
Here’s my hypothesis. Since the disaster in 2008 no one feels confident they can assess risk. This is particularly true for those investing in AAA. That investor group consists of wimps, hedge fund managers, and Chinese. If you are sitting on short term issues it is a comparison between apples when considering these issues and the overnight rate. But where can you jump? Well you tell yourself a comparison between longer dated and the overnight rate will involve oranges against apples. It is all AAA so you might as well get the bump in YTM and figure to abandon the long issues on short notice. If this is the case when a little time has passed we might expect a bump in long YTM and a delayed decrease in value.
There a better hypothesis out there?
Various managers have tried to float the argument that because of limited liquidity a rate increase will damage people. Roughly translated Janet's reply was, "suck it up." Love it.
(There Sully. You like that better? My original submission was parenthetical by the way.)
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 07:23pm PT
|
Jan: . . . interesting and thought provoking reference . . . .
Well, Jan, it’s not so much that engineers are more often terrorists but that engineers tend to see things with an eye to certainty and definitiveness. (Give an engineer a problem, and they will usually report that engineering is needed to fix it.)
I think psychologists argue that anger is a response to a perception of a lack control, don't they?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 09:01pm PT
|
jstan,
I don't recognize the subject matter of your post. Are you talking about money?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 09:45pm PT
|
Probably more productive to look into the "Mind of the Federal Reserve" than to continue the nonsense of no-physical-extent or argue whether engineers make good terrorists.
A breath of fresh air . . .
Thanks, jstan.
;>)
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Jul 24, 2015 - 09:53pm PT
|
Andy:
Yes. Money. The Fed is thinking of raising the interest rate charged by the central bank for over night loans to banks. A single bank can have such loans in the billions. Around 2008 the Fed lowered that rate to just about zero in hopes of getting banks to make loans that would pump up the economy. Didn't happen as almost everyone kept their money under their mattress. Eventually the Fed had to go so far as to get a lot of money printed so the government could buy its own debt. That was the Quantitative Easing program finally ended a few months ago. People did not spend that money either so the "velocity of money" still stayed very low. The Fed probably has a bottom line in their account in the trillions. Presumably all that debt will be resold.
You probably know more about this stuff than do I. Thanks to advice from my mother I have never paid much attention to all of this. She gave me a secret that allowed me always to double my money. She told me when I have my wallet out to buy something, just double the money over and put it back into my wallet. Has worked like a charm.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Jul 25, 2015 - 06:34am PT
|
I learned about money years ago, too. You worked and got paid and had a checking account and savings account at the bank.
Then Carl Icahn rewrote it all. I no longer know enough about money to take responsibility for it.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 25, 2015 - 07:58am PT
|
Kindly tell me what fiscal policy has to do with "What is Mind?" I'm not saying it doesn't, but I'd like to hear it from someone.
EDIT: The Fed doesn't have a mind. No social organization does.
Geez, first it's machines that travel to Pluto, and now it's the federal reserve that has a mind. You guys could really use some more discerning notions. Next it will be rocks, routes, and pasta.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!