So I have a tendency to think and learn about other stuff too: family, friends, working out, personal diet, another language, the processes required to put up an at-a-glance monitoring display system on the wall at work, gardening, planned improvements to my home and grounds, learning to make stone-age tools, bowhunting, guns, basic survival kits, investing both locally and taking into account the macro-level of the world and trends, history and archaeology, a workshop in my basement, Japanese Katana sword construction techniques, and a shitload more.
A busy life us Manosphere guys have. As an MGTOW there is plenty to do - including passively resisting those damn girls who constantly attempt to insinuate themselves into my life. Playing dumb-and-clueless is my favorite tactic these days - less confrontational. They do not have the right to learn my thinking, though if respectful and pleasant they can earn it.
At any rate, in my wanderings I recently ran across this: A Proof that the Supernatural Exists
First warning: this is philosophy. It's not like a scientifically-measured proof - because once it's measured and tabulated scientifically then it becomes natural, not supernatural.
Second surprise: while the author states that someone with a natural verbal 150+ IQ could potentially understand it without reading several basics on philosophy (4 books are given) I found it surprisingly comprehensible. Note that I will resist to the death any suggestion that I magically have a 150+ IQ - it is more likely that he has expanded upon it to the point where it reaches my level of logical/reasoning comprehension.
Third thoughtfulness: I believe that it is worth reading over, if only to expand your mind. It looks as though I will have to read the books mentioned, if only to get the best out of this proof. In a greater level it will be worth learning something new thoughts-wise. Getting mentally stale or in a rut is a bad thing.
Fourth learning: in addition to learning something new, the comments on the above post are priceless. Where else can you watch with fascination the strange thinking systems of the academically-inclined who ask questions, request clarifications - or who cannot emotionally accept the reasoning nor logically refute it, and so descend into shaming/condescending/belittling attacks upon the writer in an attempt to make him lose his temper.
Note that deliberately goading someone into losing their temper is a favorite go-to tactic of women and leftists. Their strange reasoning is that if they succeed, then they have shown that they are superior to you, you are demonstrably lesser and by extension of you being demonstrably lesser your accomplishments/ideas/statements/etc have been annulled/refuted/overthrown. All are null and void and can be ignored from this point onwards.
Grief that's long-winded. You get the guts of it though.
At any rate, this is why it's a good idea to not flip your shit at people. It draws you out of your frame and into theirs, making you weak. Like with the ABC 20/20 interview that was never aired: there wasn't enough raving frothing lunacy no matter how much they goaded the guys. No controversy, no raving nutjobs to belittle, no show to air. Just reasoned and reasoning and reasonable/logical people with a well-thought-out stance on the subject. An emotional/sensationalist flop from their point of view, no smear-campaign possible.
Fifth lesson/take: there will always be something new for humanity/science to learn and explore. I don't know about you, I am personally very glad to know/realise this.
Oh, if you decide to join the discussion in the comments: please be respectful. We do not want to drop too far into the tactics of the lefties and women if we can help it. It's personally and spiritually degrading. (Yeah I'm not perfect - sosumi.)
Re: your link. A disagreement at the stage of definitions. Different definitions automatically lead to different conclusions. Human brains and minds are not suited to comprehending anything "as it is" without relating it toward themselves in some manner. Think of it as a "design" feature.
ReplyDelete[i][...]except when noumena and phenomena are identical[...][/i] - never? Stopped reading there.
Too much emotional investment in shared illusions. Descartes has proven nothing, because pure philosophy is incapable of proving anything. Brain lesions have direct effect on the mind of affected individual. That's all that I need to know. A terrifying prospect, by the way. We will know more once reliable brain-computer interfaces will be developed.
A nice try at implicit manipulation of the reader from The Koanic Soul: "If you agree with me you are an intelligent person, if you don't, well..."
At present, Gazzaniga and Damasio have more credibility in the area of "the mind-body problem" than Descartes.
DeleteHave you considered any example of comprehending the existence of any object without filtering your understanding of it through the sensory apparatus, qualia and conceptualization as an element of some set as related to your memory? A mystical revelation? Other alternate states of consciousness?
DeleteInteresting stuff you put up - you think it's designed to be manipulative? I don't consider myself to be that intelligent. Simply try to apply horse-sense to things. Like I said, there was something else to stretch my mind a little - and I was surprised that I could even slightly follow it.
DeleteRegarding his overall blog though: not for me. I had a look through it and came to the conclusion that I cannot relate to him. Either he's incredibly intelligent or incredibly introverted - or both. His mind simply does not work the way that mine does in any shape or form.
I did find interesting the use of the shaming/belittling tactics though. It's prevalent.
Brain lesions and damage are indeed terrifying things to contemplate. If there is a separate soul then why does a simple scar or blood clot fuck things up so good? Probably unanswerable questions or questions that people don't want to look into too strongly. We do not do well when looking starkly at our personal ending of existence.
I did attempt to consider such things, coming to the conclusion that I have no clue what it might be like. Example: if you could somehow "perceive" the structure of an object. How fine would that perception go? Down to the atoms? Could you sense molecular bonds? What about the nucleus directly?
Getting right down to the level of quarks, leptons, quantum foam: would you even be capable of learning the wave/particle duality, since you are effectively constantly observing. It would seem that everything quantum-related would be a mystery, etc.
Then my head gets tied up in knots. XD And I decided to limit myself to possible enhancements of existing senses by allowing to see for eg: em fields, radiation, wider spectrum, heightened touch, stuff like that.
Mystical stuff - I'm probably far too grounded in my ISTJness for that. It comes down to "what is mystical", like that experiment with the Koren/God Helmet. If you're taking psychedelics, or running at redline exhaustion levels, or there's some chemical imbalance in your brain (like many chronically-depressed) then what real value mystical?
I don't like to shit over mysticism: there seems to be some value in it (relaxation for example). It simply seems to me that unless it's somehow measurable by others then it's a subjective thing. Like anything subjective, hard to measure - like self-reported studies of happiness and contentment.
A nice try[...] from The Koanic Soul
DeleteMy criticism wasn't targeted at you. Perhaps I should use "by" in place of "from" in the sentence above. English isn't my native language, so I tend to make a blunder from time to time.
If you want some food for thought, then more on the subject here: ""the map is not a territory"" and "shorthand abstractions" at Wikipedia.
DeleteI agree with your description of "head getting tied up in knots". Thinking about thinking (metacognition) is a headache-inducing activity for anyone. Most people don't even try and I don't blame them. Usually I too prefer simpler, more concrete targets for mental speculation. Finding anything useful to prove devout feminists to be the fools that they are, is high on my list (but after enough digging through evidence it has become too easy, lol). Trying to undermine beliefs in the supernatural, on the other hand, is an exercise in futility, so I don't even try (unless having them shoved in my face). Sifting through research articles online in order to find why the heck there are opsins (photoreactive proteins) naturally expressed in the brain tissue and not only in the retina is for me far more interesting, even if probably equally futile.
I didn't take it as a criticism of me so there's no need to apologise - and your English seems far better than my own. I hated my English teacher with a passion. At any rate, I attempt to see things written in the best possible light. A failing of mine, driven by my self-knowledge that I sometimes come across exceptionally cold and nasty when not meaning to be. See above comment re English lol.
DeleteI've grabbed all three links and will attempt to read some tomorrow at work. As I recall, the map is considered the territory in both Psionics and Magick. Thus anecdotal writings of photos being used as a focus for both. I am not personally convinced.
It is definitely easy to find things that can be used to prove to feminists that they're foolish - it appears to be a form of religion though. Trying to make it stick is like nailing jelly to the wall and often ends up with them putting fingers in their ears and singing "I can't hear you". Repeat infinitely with each devout feminist.
Interesting indeed, I'd heard of something done in rats along those lines. Was it mutation-induced to an extreme for testing, where the rats neurons were controlled/triggered by light? Cannot remember for certain. Admittedly my interest in science is from an observers stance only.
Interesting indeed, I'd heard of something done in rats along those lines.
DeleteIt's only a tangentially related issue. What you remember is about optogenetics, which utilizes microbial opsins engineered into transgenic animals in order to invoke action potentials (nerve impulses in common parlance) in chosen neurons with optic fibers. A very powerful technique with tremendously wide applications. Some are downright scary - like the distant possibility of mind control at some point in the future. At present, there are people living with artificial heart pacemakers. It's easy to imagine people living with brain implants that have the ability to modify selectively their brain activity and subsequently, their behavior. Definitely dystopian stuff, in short.
What I am curious about is the gene OPN5 and its expression patterns:
"This opsin gene is expressed in the eye, brain, testes, and spinal cord."
It would be strange not to have any importance for the brain development and function, right? On the other hand, what possible use is having photoreceptors inside your skull? Aside from "the third eye" origin of the pineal gland. Are you familiar with this feature of tuataras?
They are further unusual in having a pronounced photoreceptive eye, the "third eye", which is thought to be involved in setting circadian and seasonal cycles.
In human brains there are many neuropsins whose functions are still a mystery. Again, why would you need photoreceptive proteins inside your skull? Very peculiar...
Another interesting tidbit noticed in passing. I am amazed once again by amount of research that went into production of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, unarguably one of the most mind-expanding titles in gaming history. Apparently the color palette of xenofungus, the dominant lifeform that has a central role to the game storyline, was not chosen at random. This level of attention to details is simply unbelievable... Those videogame creators had to love their work, there is no other explanation.
I wonder what would be the reaction of The Koanic Soul to this bit of info... *
DeleteSee? Descartes is not infallible, is he? *smirk*
The Parietal eye? Yes, very strange creatures our Tuataras. With us too, it makes you wonder why we developed that "third eye" at all. Especially when in humans it is deep inside the brain.
DeleteYes, melatonin, but why do we refer to it ourselves as an eye? The temptation to go hairing off on an internet search is high - yet the local libraries are very lacking in worthwhile texts. In the old days we took pride in making things (games) with depth - it was because we were deep thinkers. Not so much these days.
I have no opinion re Descartes heheh - learning, an eternal battle.
It seems that people could literally "see the light" with their brains, as evidenced here. Amusing, isn't it? Still nothing about the function of OPN5.
DeleteI think that the idea of "The Purple Planet" was directly borrowed by the Firaxis Games team from the novel "Nemesis" by Isaac Asimov. A rather interesting guy. He succinctly coined the whole "less wrong" and "more wrong" distinction important to science (that nobody could claim with a straight face that the knows all the truth and nothing but the truth on any subject). You might Google for his essay on the matter, if you are curious about it. He also demonstrated the folly of a certain mental experiment involving "immovable object" and "indomitable force" that philosophers like to argue about. He pointed out that assuming the energy-mass equivalence (the famous E=mc^2 equation) "an immovable object" and "indomitable force" cannot exist simultaneously in the same universe. Neat, isn't it?
...that he knows...
Delete[tinfoil hat] Assuming that first living organisms gathered energy by thermosynthesis (a veeery big "if"), that early, "second" Earth atmosphere had higher percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than now (greenhouse gases prevent escape of IR photons into space), and that at that time our Sun radiated about 30% less of the energy that it does now (the faint young Sun problem) suggesting first sources of liquid water having volcanic origins (fumaroles and geysers), there is a strong possibility that retinal-based pigments would by necessity react more to infrared photons that chlorophyl based ones are transparent to. Following that analogy, it's possible that the product of OPN5 gene might serve as an early "overheating" detector. Its expression in the testes and CNS (both sensitive to overheating) surely seems suggestive...[/tinfoil hat]
DeleteFinally! I had it wrong, apparently. OPN5 detects UV, not IR. Is nudist sunbathing so "dangerous" that it caused evolution of a specific protection mechanism against it? I would never have guessed...
Delete[tinfoil hat]Perhaps it's a defense-mechanism against the increased UV radiation received when the magnetic poles disappear and the protective ozone layer gets stripped from the atmosphere by the solar wind.[/tinfoil hat]
DeleteVisual opsins and cryptocrones in the brain, still weird. I wonder if there is one which detects x-rays. I also wonder if there is any variation by racial makeup depending upon latitude.
Evolution does not predict. Natural selection explains genome changes in response to existing environmental conditions. I wonder how far ago OPN5 underwent mutation into its current UV-sensitive form. I also wonder about its sequence and function in various mammals besides rodents and primates. Your tinfoil hat hypothesis would apply to aftereffects of earlier episodes of magnetic reversal, not the future one.
DeleteImagine a following experiment: two groups of volunteers as close as possible to being identical in their make-up, both groups with completely shaved hair. Both ignorant of the purpose of the experiment. A control group without sunscreen applied to their heads, and the second one with a potent sunscreen applied. Ask them to carry a recorder connected with an UV sensor near the head. Assign both groups to the same open air activity without any headgear. Repeat the experiment several times to minimize unrelated influences and random variation. Of course, I assume that shaving also pubic hair and "going commando" would have more pronounced effects, but there are limits to things one could persuade people to...
The U.S. Army had similar experiments on their soldiers, testing effects of exposure to atomic bomb at various distances from the center of explosion. My imaginary experiment would be less dangerous, I presume.
I guess that not only the skin color but also the abundance of hair would have its effects...
As for relaxation/meditation aids, YouTube videos of Mandelbrot set zoom animation seem "trippy" enough.
DeleteAs an aside, this animation seems a litte "choppy", but it could make a good prank on an unsuspecting guest. I experience vertigo sensation if I leave it on for too long.
DeleteAh, and the subjects of my imaginary experiment would all wear some UV-blocking googles as well.
DeleteGoggles, lol
DeleteNotice that if you avert your attention from the center of this animation after looking at it for awhile, then any immobile object that your sight focuses on will seem to move away from you. Asking a self-declared philosopher whose property is that sensation and what is the cause for it can be very amusing.
DeleteCruelty hahaha!
DeleteAnother example.
DeleteThat's quite an interesting one, gaps being automatically filled-in by the mind. It makes me wonder what other gaps in reality around us are automatically filled-in by the mind.
DeleteOf course, by definition we would be unabled to comprehend the existence of such gaps.
Now a higher-order example. Do you think that The Koanic Soul would be able to apply this koan to himself? The rest seems less applicable, except the last (and that depends on the level of abstraction targeted).
DeleteOne of possible answers to "ice cream koan".
DeleteIn a similar vein, what percentage of people would notice that if I speak about "a coin toss", I don't necessarily have a fair coin in mind? It only means that I treat the particular relation as stochastic in its nature, not that it happens at the fifty-fifty probability if repeated enough.
DeleteMost people do have a preconceived notion of what a "coin" is from experience: two different sides so that one can be told from the other. Otherwise it would be considered not-a-coin, or an "unfair" coin (I wonder if it's possible to bias a coin-toss like loaded dice so that for eg heads would come up more often).
DeleteTake as an example the old con-man's trick of three disks in a hat, labeled on each side: +/+, +/-, and -/-. There are three "+" symbols and three "-" symbols, so superficially-speaking drawing a disk and guessing the symbol on the "down" side is purely at random, a 50:50 chance.
Reality is though that the probability is not 50:50, it's 2:1. The conman isn't randomly guessing at the symbol on the other side of the disk, he's guessing that the other side is the same as the symbol on the visible side:
2 = +/+ or -/-
vs
1 = +/-
So it then becomes what is the true probability of a process.
Let us take as an example that someone tosses a coin twenty times and it comes up as heads twenty times in a row. Yes this can potentially happen. Yet it might be a lot less naive to suspect that there is a 100% chance that the coin is actually biased in some manner, fake/loaded/weighted.
Anyway, interesting ramble from me - cheers Mindstorm.
As an interesting aside I was playing an online simulation game once and suspected that there was something wrong with the randomising sequence in the code. It was far too biased towards one particular resource.
DeleteUpon talking with the programmer about the code, we hunted through the internet - and found that yes, the function he was using was not quite as random as it was supposed to be. He changed it.
Using the phrase "it's a matter of a coin toss" it's not the same as using a physical coin. And yet most people replace this phrase with 50:50, unthinkingly.
DeleteAs for physical coins, it's possible to make a biased one to some extent (but not as far as 30:70, I suppose). Just weight one side more with a more dense material, creating unbalanced center of mass. Is it still a coin?
The answer to the first koan I came with is that similar neural wiring produces similar preconceptions. And development of our brains produces certain variations of wiring depending on the specific mix of biochemically active compounds in the cerebrospinal fuid/extracellular matrix as the millieu of their neurons. Therefore, there are certain preconceptions that we are born with.
Delete... came up with...
DeleteThey aren't necessarily wrong, only more or less slightly wrong, in "objective" terms. On the other hand, they are right, as they formed the basis for heuristics that aided the propagation of genes (allele combinations, to be more precise) responsible for these preconceptions at the time of their emergence. The question remains, are they still equally useful in our technology-infused urban environments? Arachnophobia, for example, isn't. How would you combat it, if you, personally, would be affected by it? Trying to imagine the world from the perspective of a spider, while futile on most fronts, would reveal that spiders generally are not interested in humans as their possible fodder. For them we are, if not a menace, then an element of scenery at best.
Applying a similar line of thought to male-female interactions might produce interesting results... but not very flattering, I suppose.
As you might have guessed, both screen names Mindstorm and Exfernal are mine. I wanted to use consistently Exfernal, yet not long ago Google made it more difficult than before. Both use the same email account, so what's the problem with Google?
DeleteI hadn't guessed actually, though looking makes it a little more obvious once it's pointed out to me. Google has been a tricky and oddball bunch, who can tell what they do or why.
DeleteI have occasionally attempted to look at things from the viewpoint of a woman. At least, attempted it. On the whole I find that when I do so, my cynicism and disgust with women goes through the roof.
I suspect it is in some manner psychologically damaging to me. Trying to have empathy for someone who seems to be very much lacking empathy and is filled with a soul-sucking greed, expectations, neediness and complacency. Add to that incomprehension, naivety, and - once they reach the wall - varying degrees of horror depending upon how long they've been alone at the time. Older women become clingy and needy in my experience.
It's disturbing in a manner that I cannot convey. I fully expect any girls reading this to totally deny this, by the way. Deny all you want girls - when you look into that cold black abyss within, it is my icy cold dead eyes that are looking back out at you and judging you.
Typos again, this time fuid->fluid and millieu->milieu.
DeleteIt mildly surprises me that the notion of female "firmware" being "optimized" (or satisficed?) for different tasks than yours seems so much repulsive to you. As the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed, isn't it? It also reminds me of another saying attributed to Henri Estienne: "If youth but knew; if age could!". Worthy a chuckle or two, for various reasons.
Returning to the topic of metacognition, could you make a guess what's wrong with this approach? For me, it's because it exemplifies the top-down perspective, when it would be more useful to construct a grounds-up view. You don't build a pyramid starting at the top, do you? It's easier to consider a succession of pyramids, "each" slightly larger than the previous one, than "deus ex machina" produce The Great Pyramid Of Human Mind whose top "automagically" exceeds the sapience threshold. BTW, it's easy to prove that it's a pyramid - simply compare how much information is processed at each level, starting from the sensory inputs, ending with what one can juggle in his (their?) working memory.
DeleteI was inaccurate earlier. Radiation experiments were usually performed on prisoners and civilians, not soldiers. It was chemical weapons that were tested on soldiers once. I guess the USSR had similar policies, but it was kept under wraps more diligently, so less is known to the general public. People living close to nuclear testing sites have suffered in ignorance to what caused the rise in deformities and tumors among them.
DeleteIt is morally questionable to apply placebo to one group and a protective factor to another one. In the case of natural UV levels, the difference in danger for a day is minuscule.
As for hypothetical overabundance of UV, there is a possibility that geomagnetic reversals coincide with a temporary increase in volcanism, which in turn produces various gases contributing to ozone layer depletion. That's the kind of scenario that might happen quite "frequently", using geological timescales. Mass extinctions require more radical changes to happen.
DeleteWe don't know what caused the formation of Siberian Traps. Is it possible that an asteroidal impact generates seismic waves, meeting at its antipodes, which in turn heat the mantle and weaken the crust above, creating an enormous mantle plume/hotspot? Or was it something else?
An impact event of such scale would most likely sterilize Earth by itself. Any secondary effects would be rather unnecessary for such purpose.
DeleteYou might notice lava being degassed (similar to boiling water or carbonated drink shaken) in this footage.
Delete