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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2014 - 08:18am PT
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Copy and pasting your little commandments dug up from the internet all while you bad mouth/ed gobee for his copy and pastes in the past.
Putting such huge amount of energy into this subject here all while remaining anonymous shows lack of commitment, courage, cowardliness all while others put themselves on the line.
There's no way around it dude.
You want to taken serious and at the same time you shoot from 3 miles away hiding in some bushes .....
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Dec 20, 2014 - 09:23am PT
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Irrelevant. Those of us who aren't big time rock stars might as well be anonymous, it doesn't matter. But if you can't really address the content of a post, it's an easy way out to take a pot shot at the messenger.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 20, 2014 - 10:33am PT
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Just to show my commitment, courage, and lack of cowardliness on this thread:
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Dec 20, 2014 - 11:37am PT
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WWIJD?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Dec 20, 2014 - 01:17pm PT
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WWCIJD?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Dec 20, 2014 - 02:10pm PT
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Data supporting what thesis, exactly? That the Chinese are superstitious status junkies? This is news?
The trend should be good for Tibet's balance of trade.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 20, 2014 - 02:19pm PT
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Tvash: That the Chinese are superstitious status junkies? This is news?
For you, religious = superstitious. That’s all you seem to see in the article, and probably in the world.
(I’d say Jan’s view might have more support than yours according to the author.)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Dec 20, 2014 - 02:37pm PT
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Methodology. Methodology. Methodology.
Naughty, naughty.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 20, 2014 - 02:47pm PT
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This one hits home...
"We live in an amazing time. There is now communication and sensor data and analysis capabilities that are magnitudes better in some cases than they used to be and this gives us for the very first time the opportunity to reinvent our society." - Alex Pentland Media Lab MIT
http://edge.org/conversation/jesse_dylan_edge_question_video
A documentary based on edge.org's 2014 question...
"What Scientific Idea Is Ready for Retirement?"
It should be more than a 4 minute montage though.
http://edge.org/annual-questions
And if there weren't already a hundred other great books out there along similar lines, already on the To Read List, this one would be another to add. What an amazing time this is.
.....
"...this gives us for the very first time the opportunity to reinvent our society."
and of course now we can all easily predict - can't we? - the anti-science-anti-innovation naysayer's reactionary response to this...
"That's social engineering!!! Fak you!!!!"
.....
As an aside, look how easy Pinker's inclusion in the video could be misconstrued and/or misdirected - twisted - by anyone if for whatever reason (e.g, a counter jab for attn) that were the goal. Which seems to be a never-ending one, a goal that is, nowadays not only on this thread but in social media at large.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Dec 20, 2014 - 03:02pm PT
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Mike,
I've been aware of the Chinese turn to Tibetan Buddhism for some time now. When I saw the Biography of Guru Rinpoche (Pema Katang) translated into Chinese and on sale at an academic conference in China, I knew the process was well under way.
Many people at that conference both westerners who work in China and the Chinese, mentioned that there was a huge spiritual vacuum among the young there as they had zero faith in poltics or the government and were looking for something deeper.
It will also be interesting to see if new forms of Buddhism similar to Falun Gang arise in modern China as they did in Japan after the war.
And yes, we do seem to be au courant in this thread with all the latest thought on these subjects.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Dec 20, 2014 - 03:27pm PT
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http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html
HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE
Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in “sacred mushrooms” can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.
In the study, more than 60 percent of subjects described the effects of psilocybin in ways that met criteria for a “full mystical experience” as measured by established psychological scales. One third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes; and more than two-thirds rated it among their five most meaningful and spiritually significant
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Dec 20, 2014 - 05:29pm PT
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I guess you were right. JL's intensive meditation might not be required to experience no-thingness, only a few pills. Curious. My adventures in the Art of Dreaming as well, although I found that I could enter those realms quickly and easily. In many instances the nature of the experiences seem profound and revealing of other dimensions of reality. John should comment on this.
I liked the movie "Renegade."
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 20, 2014 - 06:01pm PT
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Jgill:
Ok, . . . what’s with the incessant focus on “no-thingness,” John? Is it because it's a topic between you and Largo, or what? I mean, you poo poo the notion consistently and repeatedly, but I’m beginning to suspect there is something there for you . . . as it were. ;->
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2014 - 06:51pm PT
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intensive meditation might not be required to experience no-thingness, only a few pills.
Yes that's American way.
There's a pill for everything.
Just go to drug store or drug dealer.
Americans ..... love drugs .....drugs are the Americans imitator god.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Dec 20, 2014 - 07:03pm PT
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Well I am perplexed as to this no thing ness. What you are trying to convey is very foggy but fascinating to me Largo.
I have practiced at times not thinking..which I found complicated/difficult as there are verbal and non verbal thinking.. focusing attention on something tends to bring on verbal thought of some sort. There is a level of .....awareness? that is pretty quiet but still involves intention.
meh..I'm lazy and probably could practice this more. Not sure the purpose. I just started trying way back as a kid to see if I could stop thinking.
I certainly have not boned up on the vocabulary being slung around here. So my ability to communicate seems a bit limited.
non sequitor coming
Awareness is still the most fascinating and mysterious thing I can think of. Its real (almost the definition of real to me) and is clearly connected to physical material ie one or more aspects of at least some materials. If some materials (such as humans) can be demonstrated or are accepted to have this property I seriously wonder if "awareness" or it's components is to a degree inseparable from all materials (or substance)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Dec 20, 2014 - 07:24pm PT
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Perhaps god imitates drugs.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Dec 20, 2014 - 07:41pm PT
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If you look at human life as a mechanistic function, then Fruity's contention makes sense - all we have to do is input the right data, program the machine correctly by way of facts and figures, weed out all the pesky bad religions dead weight, and the machine operates on a much higher plane.
This is nothing more than the old hope that technology holds our salvation - something that has never panned out, and IMO underscores a misunderstanding of what human life is about in the first place. But again it does make sense from a deterministic POV.
And John, do you consider the space between your thoughts, and the space between the Mental Block and the Eliminator boulder, to be different. Both are marked not by what is there (stuff), rather the absence of all things. If one absence is different than another, how so?
Note how the mind seeks to make that space, that absence a thing, a qantum field, etc.
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 20, 2014 - 09:12pm PT
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WB: Americans ..... love drugs .....drugs are the Americans imitator god.
Let’s look out for hasty generalizations. All foods are drugs. Each contributes to a changed state of consciousness. (Compare the effects of eating ice cream to red meat to grains to leafy greens.) The thing, I’d say, is let things be whatever they are.
People cannot control or manage consciousness into stable states. The states change, and psychologically a being goes up and down or side to side with them, almost thrown into different realities. Walk into the next room and pay close attention. The feelings, tastes, images, sounds, ambience, etc. seem really different, don’t they? How can that be?
When my wife fell down the stairs (last year) and came out of the ICU 4 days later, she came out of it with a mantra: “it doesn’t matter”—which she applied to everything in the following months. It has set her partially into a nihilistic state of mind. A yoga teacher said, “Hey, that’s great! That’s where a yoga practitioner is supposed to be.” My wife replied, “I don’t think you understand. When nothing matters, there is of course no downs—but no ups, either. I miss those!”
Stumbling into a state of emptiness is like becoming a vampire . . . the world seems a lonely place—busy and populated, but strangely uninhabited.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Dec 20, 2014 - 09:13pm PT
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Ok, . . . what’s with the incessant focus on “no-thingness,” John . . . I’m beginning to suspect there is something there for you . . . as it were
No-thingness slips seamlessly from my attention until someone conflates it with the hypothetical void beneath all substance, a notion entertained as energetically by young physicists as was the aether by their predecessors. To which I say: maybe, maybe not. How can you be so certain?
And John, do you consider the space between your thoughts, and the space between the Mental Block and the Eliminator boulder, to be different?
Oh my, is this a trick question? Let's see: I would need a tape measure and a watch, two different metric modes, so in the macro physical world the answer is yes. However, in the metaphysical realm I wander as a child amongst the galaxies, wonderment in my every spiritual breath, and I haven't a clue, and even if I did, words are inadequate and confusing. A sharp blow on the back with a bamboo rod would help.
;>)
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