Guilty pleasures
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Well, at least you're no so lost in woo-woo that you don't claim that
> there is no time to run out of! You're demonstrating something I've
> seen in folks, when you just do navel-gazing without critical
> thinking, then meditation serves as 30 years of cementing and
> hardening of your dogma and beliefs. I suppose if you're not in pain
> and not hurting anybody else, this is ok, but I prefer using
> meditation to help let go of dogma and beliefs.
And his dogma and beliefs are ... what? That there's a spiritual
contiguity from personal mind to extrinsic mind?
Same for Keynes.
Now you're doing battle with two spiritual agnostics, accusing them of
minor crimes of noumenal and expansive mind formations (not that
they're guilty, but the accusation is thus...).
Do you believe in justice and compassion, Trollpa? Because if you do
then you're up to your eyeballs in a similar kind of woo, almost the
same as what you're accusing Boddhidumba or Keynes, or for that
matter, lowly me, of committing.
Justice, compassion & other fine ideas are only principles, reified by
convention, habit, passion, intellect, & devotion. They are guiding
lamps against chaos. As is any system of principles, such as the
dhamma. But they only exist in the human mind**.
The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
What's overly reified to you is a strong metaphor for most spiritual
agnostics who practice Buddhism.
The extrinsic existence of contiguous mind is the same for an
anabaptist or an antitheist. What is, is, regardless of what the
intrinsic belief system is, the actual coarising contiguity of mind
within and without is the same. It's indifferent, empty.
Riddle me this: Can you measure how much Woo is being committed by
Bodhidumba or Keynes?
And what mote of ill reason lurks in their belief system how does that
compare if their practice makes them happy? Or for that matter,
happier than you?
Happier than you I say? Yes, since you don't see them inconveniencing
so many electrons trying to dissuade some other soul from the trifling
delusion of the guilty pleasure of a slightest mote of "faith" (lower
case 'f' ).
As for scripture, show me where Gotama forbade believing in
reincarnation. You can't. He never explicitly persecuted the notion of
reincarnation. Instead he used it as an example of rebirth *AND* he
allowed for some - if they so elected - to *NOT* believe in
reincarnation. It was optional in his mind, good empiricist, but the
woo-woo of reincarnation is a BIGGER FATTER PILE OF WOO than anything
that Keynes or Bodhidumba are suggesting.
And your empiricist hero, Gotama, used it as a teaching tool!!!!
Maybe you ought to take the same approach, instead of this fruitless
didactic ranting where everyone's been trying to steer you into a more
thoughtful and compassionate approach?
> Well, to each his own.
<Bugs Bunny vox>
Ehhhh, it's a free country.
<Bugs Bunny vox>
It's all about who's method is superior.
That's competitive.
If you were arguing ball teams you'd be talkin' sports. But instead
you're arguing religion when you push the triumph of materialism
against noumenal theosophy.
It's same old atheist mistake as ever, the piety of naive
materialism.
Please, for the sake of Gotama's phony finger relic pointing to the
moon, can't you stop foisting dialectics like a cable TV agitpropist &
take a more positivist tack than this?
Or is being a royal PITA your guilty pleasure? Ahah.... ego, good ol'
ego. Ego's the dumbass who leads us around looking for affirmation for
our hobby horses, and when we get resistance we knock down the person
holding the opposing views (instead of incorporating the view into a
teaching moment using gentle suasion...) so we can get the affirmation
we sought.
Who's it all about, Trollpa? If you're gonna keep debating with the
denizenry over such a minor point, then if it isn't ego, then what is
it? Could it be you're seeking their salvation?
You'll say you're not but you might as well be.
/l
( Ahah! Caught ya! )
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 26, 8:44 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > Well, at least you're no so lost in woo-woo that you don't claim that
> > there is no time to run out of! You're demonstrating something I've
> > seen in folks, when you just do navel-gazing without critical
> > thinking, then meditation serves as 30 years of cementing and
> > hardening of your dogma and beliefs. I suppose if you're not in pain
> > and not hurting anybody else, this is ok, but I prefer using
> > meditation to help let go of dogma and beliefs.
>
> And his dogma and beliefs are ... what? That there's a spiritual
> contiguity from personal mind to extrinsic mind?
>
> Same for Keynes.
>
> Now you're doing battle with two spiritual agnostics, accusing them of
> minor crimes of noumenal and expansive mind formations (not that
> they're guilty, but the accusation is thus...).
No, I'm not accusing anyone of 'crimes'. I'm just statin' that
meditation without critical thinking leads to becoming more of a
believer, just as going to church every week tends to do the same
thing -- I'm not accusing churchgoers of being 'criminals', either.
I'm just saying that if you think you can follow some system and
meditate in some repetitive way, that doing such will necessarily lead
you to 'truth' or 'objectivity', that you're wrong, and wrong in a big
way, that's all.
> Do you believe in justice and compassion, Trollpa?
No, I believe in kickin' Brahmanist Buttinski! Yeah! Yeah!
> The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
eternal life.
> Riddle me this: Can you measure how much Woo is being committed by
> Bodhidumba or Keynes?
You want me to count their posts? Or their meds?
> And what mote of ill reason lurks in their belief system how does that
> compare if their practice makes them happy?
Look, lots of folks also are made to feel happy when they believe they
are drinking the blood of Jesus H. Christ every week. What the hell
does that have to do with anything? If being a superstitious dolt
makes you happy, then do it, you say? You live in Southern California,
I bet, don't'cha?
I'm asking what evidence is there for what really is going on, not
which kind of deva-dung puts smiles on fools' faces!
> As for scripture, show me where Gotama forbade believing in
> reincarnation.
Gotama didn't forbid believing in flying saucers, either. Or astrology
or acupuncture or voo-doo dolls. What the hell does that have to do
with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
for their superstitions?
> Maybe you ought to take the same approach, instead of this fruitless
> didactic ranting where everyone's been trying to steer you into a more
> thoughtful and compassionate approach?
Maybe I oughta kick your ass, you politically correct do-gooder!
> If you were arguing ball teams you'd be talkin' sports. But instead
> you're arguing religion when you push the triumph of materialism
> against noumenal theosophy.
Noumenal theosophy? What a crock of shit. And UFOlogy too.
Where do you nutters come up with these nonsense terms?
> It's same old atheist mistake as ever, the piety of naive
> materialism.
No, it's an educated critical thinker flushing the skeptical toilet.
I say eff your ineffable noumenal theosophical woo-woo.
--DharmaTroll
"Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but
there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool
of reason on the altar of superstition."
-Some Famous Dude
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Oct 27, 7:06 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 26, 8:44 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > > Well, at least you're no so lost in woo-woo that you don't claim that
> > > there is no time to run out of! You're demonstrating something I've
> > > seen in folks, when you just do navel-gazing without critical
> > > thinking, then meditation serves as 30 years of cementing and
> > > hardening of your dogma and beliefs. I suppose if you're not in pain
> > > and not hurting anybody else, this is ok, but I prefer using
> > > meditation to help let go of dogma and beliefs.
>
> > And his dogma and beliefs are ... what? That there's a spiritual
> > contiguity from personal mind to extrinsic mind?
>
> > Same for Keynes.
>
> > Now you're doing battle with two spiritual agnostics, accusing them of
> > minor crimes of noumenal and expansive mind formations (not that
> > they're guilty, but the accusation is thus...).
>
> No, I'm not accusing anyone of 'crimes'. I'm just statin' that
> meditation without critical thinking leads to becoming more of a
> believer, just as going to church every week tends to do the same
> thing --
Believer? In what? Direct experience?
For many people I know direct experience leads to apognosis &
disbelief.
> I'm not accusing churchgoers of being 'criminals', either.
Of course you weren't, but you certainly tackle it thusly in a manner
tantamount to prosecution of one.
> I'm just saying that if you think you can follow some system and
> meditate in some repetitive way, that doing such will necessarily lead
> you to 'truth' or 'objectivity', that you're wrong, and wrong in a big
> way, that's all.
Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
tantamount to delusional belief.
> > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> eternal life.
No it's not a belief.
You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
existing.
Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
phenomena from within and without.
> > Riddle me this: Can you measure how much Woo is being committed by
> > Bodhidumba or Keynes?
>
> You want me to count their posts? Or their meds?
As always, we must start with ourselves.....
> > And what mote of ill reason lurks in their belief system how does that
> > compare if their practice makes them happy?
>
> Look, lots of folks also are made to feel happy when they believe they
> are drinking the blood of Jesus H. Christ every week. What the hell
> does that have to do with anything? If being a superstitious dolt
> makes you happy, then do it, you say? You live in Southern California,
> I bet, don't'cha?
LOL. Nice try.
> I'm asking what evidence is there for what really is going on, not
> which kind of deva-dung puts smiles on fools' faces!
Ask away. But that's not the bone of contention, now is it?
You're insisting that everyone needs to only look for material answers
and as such should stick only to material questions.
> > As for scripture, show me where Gotama forbade believing in
> > reincarnation.
>
> Gotama didn't forbid believing in flying saucers, either. Or astrology
> or acupuncture or voo-doo dolls. What the hell does that have to do
> with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
> for their superstitions?
>
> > Maybe you ought to take the same approach, instead of this fruitless
> > didactic ranting where everyone's been trying to steer you into a more
> > thoughtful and compassionate approach?
>
> Maybe I oughta kick your ass, you politically correct do-gooder!
Like to see you try, bubba!!!
> > If you were arguing ball teams you'd be talkin' sports. But instead
> > you're arguing religion when you push the triumph of materialism
> > against noumenal theosophy.
>
> Noumenal theosophy? What a crock of shit. And UFOlogy too.
Now I see your problem.... mental constipation. It mistakes crocks of
shit for interesting experiences. Splendor & UFO's, Love and rockets.
> Where do you nutters come up with these nonsense terms?
I made it up.
OK, how 'bout existential awe?
Same thing.
<am I arguing with a serious person here?>
> > It's same old atheist mistake as ever, the piety of naive
> > materialism.
>
> No, it's an educated critical thinker flushing the skeptical toilet.
He who smelt it dealt it.
Too bad you paid your dime & only farted.
> I say eff your ineffable noumenal theosophical woo-woo.
Oh yeh! Well, scrute you !!!!
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Trollpa wrote:
> For many people I know direct experience leads to apognosis &
> disbelief.
>
> > meditate in some repetitive way, that doing such will necessarily lead
> > you to 'truth' or 'objectivity', that you're wrong, and wrong in a big
> > way, that's all.
>
> Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> tantamount to delusional belief.
Which is to say that I know of no humanly apprehendable metric by
which a person can claim truly objective experience. It's always
penultimate, never truly quintessential. We are always, constantly
constrained by the limitations of our faculties.
And such truisms leave us empty handed.
So what's next? What's emptiness all about then, if it isn't about
stating the fucking obvious that there's more to things than we can
observe?
It's about *openness* to the continguity of all coarising phenomena,
since extrinsic and intrinsic phenomena are contiguous. Why say that
intrinsic phenomena that affect neural wetware - leading to memories -
constitute "experience" whereas extrinsic phenomena do not constitute
"experience."
Information is experienced through time, on the cusp of existential
essence. Conscious awareness - much less sentient - is not required
for information-awareness to absorb information as experience.
Example: An atomic clock experiences time dilation in orbit around the
earth as it transits through a different information frame.
> > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > eternal life.
>
> No it's not a belief.
>
> You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> existing.
>
> Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> phenomena from within and without.
And there are many models that are only conceptual frameworks. Who of
anyone can actually profess a *belief* in quantum mechanics? Quantum
mechanics predicts certain things that can be verified by experimental
tests, such as superposition and entanglement, but it's no basis for a
belief b/c it shows no fundamental underlying structure. It's a model,
a conceptual framework.
> > What the hell does that have to do
> > with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
> > for their superstitions?
Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
you claim has been demonstrated here.
If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
experience into another kind of belief.
IOW you're just as guilty of your own kind of material superstition as
any of the cargosophies you turkeys chase around here day after day on
B'ist use(less)net.
> OK, how 'bout existential awe?
On the matter of existential awe: These are often fleeting epiphanies
characterized by the recognition of emptiness and contiguous mind,
often felt with a sense of noumenal openness and liminal transit.
It's an experience, and it can be as direct an experience as any human
mind is capable. But it's still not, nor will it ever be, objective
reality.
/l
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 27, 4:02 pm, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 27, 7:06 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 26, 8:44 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Well, at least you're no so lost in woo-woo that you don't claim that
> > > > there is no time to run out of! You're demonstrating something I've
> > > > seen in folks, when you just do navel-gazing without critical
> > > > thinking, then meditation serves as 30 years of cementing and
> > > > hardening of your dogma and beliefs. I suppose if you're not in pain
> > > > and not hurting anybody else, this is ok, but I prefer using
> > > > meditation to help let go of dogma and beliefs.
>
> > > And his dogma and beliefs are ... what? That there's a spiritual
> > > contiguity from personal mind to extrinsic mind?
>
> > > Same for Keynes.
>
> > > Now you're doing battle with two spiritual agnostics, accusing them of
> > > minor crimes of noumenal and expansive mind formations (not that
> > > they're guilty, but the accusation is thus...).
>
> > No, I'm not accusing anyone of 'crimes'. I'm just statin' that
> > meditation without critical thinking leads to becoming more of a
> > believer, just as going to church every week tends to do the same
> > thing --
>
> Believer? In what? Direct experience?
>
> For many people I know direct experience leads to apognosis &
> disbelief.
That's begging the question. You mean their belief in direct
experience leads to apognosis and disbelief.
> > I'm not accusing churchgoers of being 'criminals', either.
>
> Of course you weren't, but you certainly tackle it thusly in a manner
> tantamount to prosecution of one.
No, I'm just askin' for evidence. Now confess!!!
> > I'm just saying that if you think you can follow some system and
> > meditate in some repetitive way, that doing such will necessarily lead
> > you to 'truth' or 'objectivity', that you're wrong, and wrong in a big
> > way, that's all.
>
> Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> tantamount to delusional belief.
Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
> > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > eternal life.
>
> No it's not a belief.
Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
> You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> existing.
No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
a property of an already posited god.
> Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> phenomena from within and without.
Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
> > > Riddle me this: Can you measure how much Woo is being committed by
> > > Bodhidumba or Keynes?
>
> > You want me to count their posts? Or their meds?
>
> As always, we must start with ourselves.....
Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
beasties.
> > > And what mote of ill reason lurks in their belief system how does that
> > > compare if their practice makes them happy?
>
> > Look, lots of folks also are made to feel happy when they believe they
> > are drinking the blood of Jesus H. Christ every week. What the hell
> > does that have to do with anything? If being a superstitious dolt
> > makes you happy, then do it, you say? You live in Southern California,
> > I bet, don't'cha?
>
> LOL. Nice try.
Heh.
> > I'm asking what evidence is there for what really is going on, not
> > which kind of deva-dung puts smiles on fools' faces!
>
> Ask away. But that's not the bone of contention, now is it?
Yeah it is.
> You're insisting that everyone needs to only look for material answers
> and as such should stick only to material questions.
You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
ones, such as,
Is the world eternal? or not?
Is the world finite? or not?
Is the self identical with the body?
Or is it different from the body?
Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
thing? D'oh!!!!
> > Maybe I oughta kick your ass, you politically correct do-gooder!
>
> Like to see you try, bubba!!!
I'll blast your ass with my Pali Cannon.
> > > If you were arguing ball teams you'd be talkin' sports. But instead
> > > you're arguing religion when you push the triumph of materialism
> > > against noumenal theosophy.
>
> > Noumenal theosophy? What a crock of shit. And UFOlogy too.
>
> Now I see your problem.... mental constipation. It mistakes crocks of
> shit for interesting experiences. Splendor & UFO's, Love and rockets.
Nah, "noumenal theosophy" may be the biggest crock of shit ever. But
it might make a great name for your band. If you play bass, Keynes
will play the banjo. Boddhidumba can bang on drums.
> > Where do you nutters come up with these nonsense terms?
>
> I made it up.
Well, then, like I said, you have a name for your band!
> OK, how 'bout existential awe?
>
> Same thing.
Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
> <am I arguing with a serious person here?>
No, certainly not serious, and arguably not a person.
Or are you making fun of my tights?
> > > It's same old atheist mistake as ever, the piety of naive
> > > materialism.
>
> > No, it's an educated critical thinker flushing the skeptical toilet.
>
> He who smelt it dealt it.
>
> Too bad you paid your dime & only farted.
>
> > I say eff your ineffable noumenal theosophical woo-woo.
>
> Oh yeh! Well, scrute you !!!!
>
> /l
Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
said: "Mouths are flapping!"
Bwahahahahahah.
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"Cynicism, as a state of mind, produces more accurate observations
about the universe than practically any other."
-Michael Wikoff
DharmaTroll
>
> So what's next? What's emptiness all about then, if it isn't about
> stating the fucking obvious that there's more to things than we can
> observe?
Stating that there's more to things than we observe is not the same as
claiming to 'directly experience' magical woo-woo that we make up. In
fact, claiming that there's more to things that we observe (which is
what science claims) doesn't mean "so that means it's a free-for-all
and make up Transcendental Super-Realities and Magic Fairy Dust and
Ineffable Beasties".
Why not just have a sense of mystery and awe without making up answers
to cling to? That's what I keep getting at over and over.
> It's about *openness* to the continguity of all coarising phenomena,
> since extrinsic and intrinsic phenomena are contiguous.
Why do you keep saying contiguity? Why add words like that?
> Why say that
> intrinsic phenomena that affect neural wetware - leading to memories -
> constitute "experience" whereas extrinsic phenomena do not constitute
> "experience."
I didn't say that. What I said is that extrinsic phenomena are seen,
heard, smelled, tasted, and felt, and then we create from that an
interpretation called experience. There is no evidence for woo-woo
psychic powers and osmosis.
Now either the nutters claim there ain't no external anything, or they
claim there is external woo-woo that they magically grok. Or in the
case of nutters on this list, both. No, what's experienced and known,
is known through the senses. There is no evidence for any woo-woo not
known through the senses.
> Information is experienced through time, on the cusp of existential
> essence. Conscious awareness - much less sentient - is not required
> for information-awareness to absorb information as experience.
> Example: An atomic clock experiences time dilation in orbit around the
> earth as it transits through a different information frame.
No. Atomic clocks don't 'experience'. You're just babbling nonsense
and using the word 'experience' wrongly. What's called a category
mistake.
> > > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > > eternal life.
>
> > No it's not a belief.
>
> > You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> > existing.
>
> > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > phenomena from within and without.
>
> And there are many models that are only conceptual frameworks. Who of
> anyone can actually profess a *belief* in quantum mechanics? Quantum
> mechanics predicts certain things that can be verified by experimental
> tests, such as superposition and entanglement, but it's no basis for a
> belief b/c it shows no fundamental underlying structure. It's a model,
> a conceptual framework.
It's not a 'belief' because it can be verified, as you just said.
'Belief' is pretending something you don't know is true. And as Mark
Twain put it, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
> > > What the hell does that have to do
> > > with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
> > > for their superstitions?
>
> Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> you claim has been demonstrated here.
>
> If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> experience into another kind of belief.
Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
> IOW you're just as guilty of your own kind of material superstition as
> any of the cargosophies you turkeys chase around here day after day on
> B'ist use(less)net.
Nope. I only claim to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and I can
demonstrate and verify these things. Furthermore, I have good reason
to posit the existence of mind-independent thing-events, such as
trees, and I can demonstrate and verify this by climbing them and
swinging from them and making monkey noises.
As Sid put it: "Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: in the seen
will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is
heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized
will be merely what is cognized. Practicing in this way, Bāhiya, you
will not be 'because of that'. When you are not 'because of that' you
will not be 'in that'. And when you are not 'in that' then you will be
neither here not beyond nor in between the two. Just this is the end
of suffering."
> > OK, how 'bout existential awe?
>
> On the matter of existential awe: These are often fleeting epiphanies
> characterized by the recognition of emptiness and contiguous mind,
> often felt with a sense of noumenal openness and liminal transit.
Balderdash! Existential awe is the absence of all that dogmatic crap.
It's when you are awed by the beauty of a sunset or the swoosh as your
roller coaster goes down the first hill. No noumenal liminal blather.
> It's an experience, and it can be as direct an experience as any human
> mind is capable. But it's still not, nor will it ever be, objective reality.
Sounds like masturbation to me. Objective reality is when you actually
kiss a real girl. Of course you can close your eyes and continue your
masturbatory transcendental fantasy and pretend she doesn't exist. Or
you can open your eyes and kiss the real girl.
> /l
--DharmaTroll
"The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to
believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great
advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it
is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of
the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The
uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually
compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and
religious truth will never acquire both in full measure."
-Edward O. Wilson
Beerlet Dhiblang
Perhaps. Not intentionally.
> You mean their belief in direct
> experience leads to apognosis and disbelief.
No, their direct experience triumphs against cognitive dissonance. The
process of disentangling internal contradictions entails apognosis and
then resolution into disbelief (disinterest).
> > Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> > can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> > tantamount to delusional belief.
>
> Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
> claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
> just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
> dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
Where does duality arise in the grand field of coarising phenomena?
Stand back far enough away and it's all one big unit. Macro vs. micro
are all fully entangled in an ecosystem of nested phenomena dolls.
Sentient attention filters out extraneous noise when observing
constrained phenomena. Without dualities we could not learn.
> > > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > > eternal life.
>
> > No it's not a belief.
>
> Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
> it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
Is it? Then what kind of belief? A belief stemming from direct
experience? One from intellectual analysis? Or a vicarious one
inculcated by social means?
> > You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> > existing.
>
> No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
> a property of an already posited god.
Good catch. But no, it's a joke, really, that you're just on the edge
of belief in your disbelief.
> > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > phenomena from within and without.
>
> Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
> model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
And once again, the type of belief you can cite as the error, the type
of belief you are objecting to ... is ... what?
Structurally here, what is it structurally about their belief that
exceeds the parameters of mere modeling?
And when do models get turned into beliefs?
> Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
> beasties.
And someone has cited immaterial realms that actually exist, or just
ones that can be experienced? Those are two different things - I can
experience an OOBE and other hypnogogic states, but I don't claim they
actually enjoy a separate tangible extrinsic existence, only exist as
a transient experience in my own intrinsic mind.
> You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
> ones, such as,
> Is the world eternal? or not?
> Is the world finite? or not?
> Is the self identical with the body?
> Or is it different from the body?
> Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
>
> Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
> questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
> thing? D'oh!!!!
Actually I think those type questions are a good exercise. Granted too
many stop short of the final analysis that reveals them as cul-de-sac
type dead ends, but like a koan the exercise if completed demonstrates
the limits of such analyses.
But it doesn't then prop up naive materialism as the answer to the
foisted dialectic of metaphysics vs. materialism.
> Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
> escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
> You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
> added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
> dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
> blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
> feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
> existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
:-)
Existential awe isn't limited to only those material experiences,
although it's obviously constrained by all of our cumulative
experience and mental capacities.
Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
experience needn't entail woo.
The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
reifiying woo.
Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
- tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
experience part of a functional information field that entails
contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
around in orbit & coming back to earth?
All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
information streams. They're all contiguous.
Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
heads as well!
Where *IS* mind? But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
The risk here is reifying Mind into a non-dualist woo of some mega-
gestaltic noumenal unarist openness that is so very groovy.
I don't see that here. I see that drawing a definite conclusion is
mistaken, but I don't see it as a philosophical dead end.
It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
the person becomes more personal.
It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
> Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> Bwahahahahahah.
What is the sound of three monks slapping?
A Trollpa crying!
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Oct 27, 11:36 pm, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Information is experienced through time, on the cusp of existential
> > essence. Conscious awareness - much less sentient - is not required
> > for information-awareness to absorb information as experience.
> > Example: An atomic clock experiences time dilation in orbit around the
> > earth as it transits through a different information frame.
>
> No. Atomic clocks don't 'experience'. You're just babbling nonsense
> and using the word 'experience' wrongly. What's called a category
> mistake.
Not at all. See my other post, same example.
The time dilation result demonstrates a recorded meta-information
state. The functional experience of a living observer or an atomic
clock are no different, both imbued with physical structures that are
subject to the underlying structures that yield time dilation. The
sentient observer experiences time dilation complemented by memory.
The metainformation recorded by the clock is its dissynchrony with the
planet surface. But experience is experience, if a biological entity
can experience it, so can the mechanical one, so the two experiences
are - at a very fundamental level - no different.
> > > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > > phenomena from within and without.
>
> > And there are many models that are only conceptual frameworks. Who of
> > anyone can actually profess a *belief* in quantum mechanics? Quantum
> > mechanics predicts certain things that can be verified by experimental
> > tests, such as superposition and entanglement, but it's no basis for a
> > belief b/c it shows no fundamental underlying structure. It's a model,
> > a conceptual framework.
>
> It's not a 'belief' because it can be verified, as you just said.
>
> 'Belief' is pretending something you don't know is true. And as Mark
> Twain put it, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Right, but then the view of non-dual is then a model.
If someone wants to make more of that model then where does the error
set in? Show me the inherent error in even elevating the idea of non-
duality or direct experience into a belief.
The error, IMO, creeps in due to something else, and that something
else is Self taking advantage of the idea, not the idea itself. A
belief is just a model or a framework with some personal stuff mixed
in.
> > > > What the hell does that have to do
> > > > with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
> > > > for their superstitions?
>
> > Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> > you claim has been demonstrated here.
>
> > If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> > be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> > experience into another kind of belief.
>
> Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
> woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
> touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
> about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
Ahhh. Evidence.
Independently verifiable, I suppose.
So if a half billion people say they all had the same groovy
experience in unison, that when they pray God, he talks to them.
And Trollpa might say that it's just woo & unsupported by evidence,
even though it's just very popular woo, it's still not evidence (even
though it's the kind of stuff that's also untestable).
Interesting problem. I don't see how to solve it. You can teach some
people to the contrary by hitting them over the head with a brick, but
in the case of such beliefs, they're the exception.
A different approach is required.
> > IOW you're just as guilty of your own kind of material superstition as
> > any of the cargosophies you turkeys chase around here day after day on
> > B'ist use(less)net.
>
> Nope. I only claim to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and I can
> demonstrate and verify these things. Furthermore, I have good reason
> to posit the existence of mind-independent thing-events, such as
> trees, and I can demonstrate and verify this by climbing them and
> swinging from them and making monkey noises.
>
> As Sid put it: "Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: in the seen
> will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is
> heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized
> will be merely what is cognized. Practicing in this way, Bāhiya, you
> will not be 'because of that'. When you are not 'because of that' you
> will not be 'in that'. And when you are not 'in that' then you will be
> neither here not beyond nor in between the two. Just this is the end
> of suffering."
Right. The present moment is just what it looks like it is, without
all the trappings of other stuff.
But it's helpful in the disentanglement process to observe how parity
exists between the extrinsic and intrinsic contiguous experiences of
things and people around us.
And yes, I'm deliberately saying that "experience" is a meta-level
record that describes the changes that resulted from interactions
between things.
> > > OK, how 'bout existential awe?
>
> > On the matter of existential awe: These are often fleeting epiphanies
> > characterized by the recognition of emptiness and contiguous mind,
> > often felt with a sense of noumenal openness and liminal transit.
>
> Balderdash! Existential awe is the absence of all that dogmatic crap.
> It's when you are awed by the beauty of a sunset or the swoosh as your
> roller coaster goes down the first hill. No noumenal liminal blather.
No, that's just beauty or thrill.
Those are not existential awe.
Existential awe is something else. There are a few experiences in that
category, like the disorienting dereferencing when self is observed as
something utterly arbitrary, abrogating the sense that it is in fact
unique or personal.
> > It's an experience, and it can be as direct an experience as any human
> > mind is capable. But it's still not, nor will it ever be, objective reality.
>
> Sounds like masturbation to me. Objective reality is when you actually
> kiss a real girl. Of course you can close your eyes and continue your
> masturbatory transcendental fantasy and pretend she doesn't exist. Or
> you can open your eyes and kiss the real girl.
Ahh. I believe that's time dilation.
/l
Keynes
wrote:
>
>"The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to
>believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great
>advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it
>is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of
>the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The
>uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually
>compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and
>religious truth will never acquire both in full measure."
>-Edward O. Wilson
Could it be that humanity has degenerated in historical times?
The physical strength of people who labored 200 years ago
far surpassed what we have today. We are weaker, and far
lazier than they were.
Preliterate people had phenomenal memories, and even recently-
literate civilizations have folks who can remember and recite
whole volumes. There are still places where huge recitations
from memory are preserved among a few. The works of Homer
(odyssey and Iliad) were from memory, as well as the chanted
sutras of the buddha that were only written down centuries later.
But the printing press and literacy has made such memory
unnecessary. Now movies and television are making literacy
unnecessary. (And what do we remember now? Music and
commercials.)
Possibly one reason for the hypothesis of gods is the natural
insight that no man can account for his own thoughts, feelings,
and actions. (Moderns think that they can, but that's just the
common secular religion that lays down the 'true-facts-of-life'.
In spite of all evidence to the contrary. It's un-holy writ.)
In Homer's works and greek mythology the gods are always
giving gifts and taking them away, and influencing the actions
of the actors who realize that they have no idea what they are
doing or why. It's even in the bible where God hardens the
pharaoh's heart over and over.
The greeks personified anger, lust, loyalty, etc as gods.
The greeks had the muses as the angels of all creativity.
Creativity is a mystery. It comes as inspiration and can
in no way be called on demand by anyone. No one earns
a fortunate birth or a long life. They are gifts given
regardless of personal worth.
All this is not to say there -are- gods. Those gods were
just a way for the ancients and so-called primitives to
rationalize the obvious insight that folks are not and
have never been their own masters. But these days
we are taught to believe otherwise. There are no gods
today. We think that -we- are the makers and knowers
of all creation. And we are very jealous gods too.
Let no one stand before us!
DharmaTroll
Nonsense. The claim of "direct experience" is a dogmatic belief that
"my woo-woo is objective truth". That is, when I say "I directly
experienced God", I'm claiming that a transcendental beastie
objectively exists, and that what I say about Him is objectively true
and infallible (otherwise it wouldn't be a direct experience), and
thus I'm a supreme authority, and anyone who disagrees with me is full
of shit." You can substitute "Undifferentiated Nondual Ultimate
Reality, or any other capital lettered terms for God, and it's still
the same.
Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
> > > Right, the argument about whether there's an objective reality that
> > > can be directly experienced and whether any substitute for it is
> > > tantamount to delusional belief.
>
> > Well, I can get to the serious discussion of why the Buddha rejected
> > claims of direct experience, and didn't assert such things, or I can
> > just have fun whacking the nutters around here who claim to open trans-
> > dimensional portals to Nondual Undifferentiated Fluff.
>
> Where does duality arise in the grand field of coarising phenomena?
> Stand back far enough away and it's all one big unit. Macro vs. micro
> are all fully entangled in an ecosystem of nested phenomena dolls.
Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
the interconnection between opposites and differences.
> Sentient attention filters out extraneous noise when observing
> constrained phenomena. Without dualities we could not learn.
Scrap the world 'duality'. It's a misunderstood term wrongly used.
> > > > > The concept of contiguous Mind is no different: It's a principle.
>
> > > > It's a belief, like that Jesus had magic powers and came back from the
> > > > dead like a vampire, and that if you drink his blood you'll have
> > > > eternal life.
>
> > > No it's not a belief.
>
> > Yes, it's a belief. You can't just say, "my belief isn't a belief,
> > it's da troof!" Well, you -can- say that, but it's nonsensical.
>
> Is it? Then what kind of belief? A belief stemming from direct
> experience? One from intellectual analysis? Or a vicarious one
> inculcated by social means?
First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
> > > You're acting like a petulant choir boy who's mad at god for not
> > > existing.
>
> > No, that would be question-begging again, and treating 'existence' as
> > a property of an already posited god.
>
> Good catch. But no, it's a joke, really, that you're just on the edge
> of belief in your disbelief.
No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
> > > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > > phenomena from within and without.
>
> > Ah, "when pressed for how I know my magical woo-woo, I say 'it's a
> > model'." No, the nutters believe it, even if it's a model for you.
>
> And once again, the type of belief you can cite as the error, the type
> of belief you are objecting to ... is ... what?
The positing of claims that have no evidence for them, again, that I
had a direct experience of God, and therefore I have the ultimate
truth and anyone who disagrees with me about God is necessarily false,
and so on. All that comes from the initial claim of objective
knowledge. There just ain't no such thing.
> Structurally here, what is it structurally about their belief that
> exceeds the parameters of mere modeling?
Well, it's the collapse between model and territory. Note that the
nutters both claim that the model is the territory (direct experience)
and then simultaneously that there is no territory (all is Mind), so
that really what we're left with is solipsism (masturbation).
> And when do models get turned into beliefs?
When we mistake them for the territory that they are intended to
model.
> > Well, I have posited zero transcendental realms or realities and zero
> > beasties.
>
> And someone has cited immaterial realms that actually exist, or just
> ones that can be experienced? Those are two different things -
Yes, unless they claim "direct" experience, and then they are the
same.
So if direct experience existed, then to claim one had it would be to
claim that such realms actually exist, and that one has infallible
certainty about them as well. And once you convince yourself of that,
you're forever locked into your own Private Idaho and need no
confirmation or verification and can just spew your story over and
over -- like that guy in your band, U.U. Keynes.
> I can experience an OOBE and other hypnogogic states,
> but I don't claim they actually enjoy a separate tangible
> extrinsic existence, only exist as a transient experience
> in my own intrinsic mind.
Then what you mean is that you have an experience that seems (could
interpret as) an OOBE. And there have been some excellent neuroscience
articles in just the past month on creating the sensation of OOBEs.
> > You mean, we should only ask real questions, and not metaphysical
> > ones, such as,
> > Is the world eternal? or not?
> > Is the world finite? or not?
> > Is the self identical with the body?
> > Or is it different from the body?
> > Does the Tathagata exist after death? or not?
>
> > Yeah, that's what I'm insisting, stick to real material, tangible
> > questions, not metaphysical ones. Guess who else insisted on the same
> > thing? D'oh!!!!
>
> Actually I think those type questions are a good exercise.
Only if you realize that they are meaningless. Yes, doing thought
experiments are quite valuable, I agree. Such as with being identical
or different with respect to the body, asking if you would survive
Star Trek teletransportation is a wonderful and valuable exercise, as
either way you answer uncovers what underpinning assumptions you have.
Sure.
> But it doesn't then prop up naive materialism as the answer to the
> foisted dialectic of metaphysics vs. materialism.
I'm not positing a naive materialism, you Brahmanist bully. Indeed the
nutters who posit "Undifferentiated Transcendental Reality" are
actually positing a naive materialism, and one which can be
"experienced directly".
I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
"we don't know yet".
> > Not at all. Existential awe is great. But you don't have to deny or
> > escape the world and posit Harry Potter stuff to feel existential awe.
> > You can be awed by the world as it is, without any magical fairy dust
> > added. And it's even more amazing if you don't add the magical fairy
> > dust of the Transcendental. Just like it's even more amazing if your
> > blissed out when sober and not drunk or stoned, even though you can
> > feel that way much more easily drunk and stoned. For an example of
> > existential awe without Transcendental Woo-Woo
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
>
> :-)
>
> Existential awe isn't limited to only those material experiences,
Since there is no other type of experience, it is. There is no such
thing as a "non-material experience". Unless you mean thinking, and
that's really just pseudo-auditory and pseudo-visual sensation which
is highly interpreted.
> although it's obviously constrained by all of our cumulative
> experience and mental capacities.
More blather. All experience is bodily experience, sensed by bodily
senses. We may have a disgust for bodies and create make-believe
transcendental realms and spooks, but that's just fantasy and denial,
and there is nothing to back it up.
> Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
> experience needn't entail woo.
"Noumenal", being a make-believe term, can be substituted here with
any other make-believe term, such as "Magic" or "God". It is the very
definition of woo.
> The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
> experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
> experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
> reifiying woo.
The problem is that you add an ineffable soul (Mind) into the mix
there, and again are question-begging and talking nonsense. If you
actually describe your experience, there is no woo-woo "Mind" to be
found, just visual sensation, auditory sensations, smells, tastes,
bodily sensations, and memories and thoughts, which are mainly pseudo-
auditory and psuedo-visual sensations, and emotions, which are
compositions of sensations and thoughts. No 'Mind'. No
Undifferentiated Fairy Dust. Don't believe me. Shut up and check it
out for yourself like I do.
> Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
No. Clocks do not 'experience'. They don't have sense organs and
brains to create experiences from those sense organs.
> Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
> - tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
> mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
> experience part of a functional information field that entails
> contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
> around in orbit & coming back to earth?
Why don't you try stating that better, instead of in a run-on
sentence. And don't add math terms like contiguous and apply them to
terms like 'mind' without an explanation. Otherwise you're just
spewing nonsensical sentences.
> All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
> anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
> contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
> set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
> information streams. They're all contiguous.
No. Clocks and rocks don't have brains, and don't feel and think and
experience. No amount of run-on sentences of yours suggests any
evidence otherwise.
> Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
> experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
I'd ground experience as a "brain function", as 'mind' is not a thing
with an interior or exterior, and such talk is nonsensical.
> What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
> It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
> and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
> heads as well!
Again question-begging. You have to assume that rocks have non-
sentient experience as a pre-supposition condition for your nonsense
sentence to make sense in the first place. And rocks and clocks don't
function as brains do.
> Where *IS* mind?
Another nonsense question. You're asking where is software, but
"where" only applies to hardware, such as the brain. You are now
reduced to sophistry by making category mistakes again and again, and
then concluding woo-woo from them.
> But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
> as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
> creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
> contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
You might want to consider being a writer for jargon talk in b-grade
sci-fi television shows.
> The risk here is reifying Mind into a non-dualist woo of some mega-
> gestaltic noumenal unarist openness that is so very groovy.
Whatever you're schmokin', save some for me.
> I don't see that here. I see that drawing a definite conclusion is
> mistaken, but I don't see it as a philosophical dead end.
>
> It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
> idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
>
> Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
> belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
> the person becomes more personal.
>
> It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
If it's a map of an Ineffable CandyLand, it can't produce erroneous
results, because it can never be tested.
> > Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> > a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> > monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> > flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> > said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> > Bwahahahahahah.
>
> What is the sound of three monks slapping?
>
> A Trollpa crying!
>
> /l
Nah, I'd kick their butts too.
--DharmaTroll
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
-H. G. Wells
herbzet
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> <am I arguing with a serious person here?>
No.
I've stopped reading most of what he posts.
--
hz
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> > Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> > you claim has been demonstrated here.
> >
> > If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> > be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> > experience into another kind of belief.
>
> Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
> woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
> touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
> about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
But the only thing that you accept as "evidence" is what you see, hear,
smell, taste, and touch.
You ask for evidence of the non-material, while rejecting experience of
the non-material as non-evidence.
Your belief system is a closed loop, secured from disconfirming evidence
by your definition of "evidence".
Most convenient.
--
hz
Keynes
wrote:
>
>Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
>something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
>beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
>Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
>or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
>
Whereas your position is completely different?
(Talk about incoherent irrational believers! heh.)
>Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
>poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
>everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
>the interconnection between opposites and differences.
>
Are you a magnet? (Or just naturally repulsive?)
Seriously, is there up without down, or good without bad?
No pole of a duality can exist except in relation to it's opposite.
The fact is that most named dualities don't actually exist except
as personal feelings-biases. Most words don't even have an
existing referent. As for the imaginary changes of time,
there is the mother and father of all woo woo.
(Called "clinging and grasping".)
Nowhere to go, and no time to get there.
If you were mindful, what else would you see?
>
>First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
>that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
>those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
You'd never do that. Except about trees, cats, and magic sofas.
>
>No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
Then show me tomorrow.
>
>I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
>evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
>add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
>"we don't know yet".
>
There is no such thing as evidence.
You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
Your atheistic crusade goes too far.
You accuse everyone of everything you hate.
How can this do -you- any good?
(Metaphysical question. heh.)
DharmaTroll
> DharmaTroll wrote:
> > Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> > > Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> > > you claim has been demonstrated here.
>
> > > If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> > > be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> > > experience into another kind of belief.
>
> > Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
> > woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
> > touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
> > about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
>
> But the only thing that you accept as "evidence" is what you see, hear,
> smell, taste, and touch.
>
> You ask for evidence of the non-material, while rejecting experience of
> the non-material as non-evidence.
You'd have to demonstrate an "experience of the non-material". Indeed,
even saying that is a contradiction. As non-material means
'imaginary'. If it's not imaginary, you can demonstrate it.
> Your belief system is a closed loop, secured from disconfirming evidence
> by your definition of "evidence".
>
> Most convenient.
No, You're just saying that by using magic, you can confirm that magic
exists. But that's just question-begging. You're starting with magical
existence claims, and then saying that I am in a closed-loop because I
can only use magic to confirm the existence of other magic. It's still
all nonsensical if you start by assuming magic.
What you'd have to do is to relate your woo-woo to the real, natural
world that we do experience. If you can, then whatever your woo-woo,
it can be objectively verified. If you can't then you're talking
fantasy that isn't grounded in our actual experiences.
--DharmaTroll
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 27, 11:28 pm, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 27, 11:36 pm, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Information is experienced through time, on the cusp of existential
> > > essence. Conscious awareness - much less sentient - is not required
> > > for information-awareness to absorb information as experience.
> > > Example: An atomic clock experiences time dilation in orbit around the
> > > earth as it transits through a different information frame.
>
> > No. Atomic clocks don't 'experience'. You're just babbling nonsense
> > and using the word 'experience' wrongly. What's called a category
> > mistake.
>
> Not at all. See my other post, same example.
Ok, you made the same category error in another post.
> The time dilation result demonstrates a recorded meta-information
> state. The functional experience of a living observer or an atomic
> clock are no different, both imbued with physical structures that are
> subject to the underlying structures that yield time dilation. The
> sentient observer experiences time dilation complemented by memory.
> The metainformation recorded by the clock is its dissynchrony with the
> planet surface. But experience is experience, if a biological entity
> can experience it, so can the mechanical one, so the two experiences
> are - at a very fundamental level - no different.
No. Once again, clocks aren't sentient (have experiences) and they
don't have brains. We do. All the run-on sentences you can muster
still don't turn clocks into critters. Recording information isn't the
same has having a conscious brain. All your woo-woo talk still doesn't
make a case that clocks have feelings or can write poetry.
> > > > Contiguous mind is a model, a conceptual framework to see coarising
> > > > phenomena from within and without.
>
> > > And there are many models that are only conceptual frameworks. Who of
> > > anyone can actually profess a *belief* in quantum mechanics? Quantum
> > > mechanics predicts certain things that can be verified by experimental
> > > tests, such as superposition and entanglement, but it's no basis for a
> > > belief b/c it shows no fundamental underlying structure. It's a model,
> > > a conceptual framework.
>
> > It's not a 'belief' because it can be verified, as you just said.
>
> > 'Belief' is pretending something you don't know is true. And as Mark
> > Twain put it, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
>
> Right, but then the view of non-dual is then a model.
Look, some folks cling to Jesus and the resurrection, and you cling to
'non-dual' and lots of capital letter terms. I'm saying that they
don't have anything to do with our experiences, our daily lives, the
real world. This 'non-dual' blather is just a way to pretend to have a
magic secret, a one-up-ness on others, no different from believing in
Allah or Jesus.
> If someone wants to make more of that model then where does the error
> set in? Show me the inherent error in even elevating the idea of non-
> duality or direct experience into a belief.
First of all, the idea isn't meaningful unless you can demonstrate it.
The claim of direct experience implies absolute certainty of an
objective reality, and there is no evidence we can have such things.
Rather, there's a motivation of fear here, fear of uncertainty, of the
unknown, of change. All your talk, I claim, is a reaction to fear.
Better to just feel the fear completely than to make up claims of
knowledge of make-believe woo-woo realms.
> The error, IMO, creeps in due to something else, and that something
> else is Self taking advantage of the idea, not the idea itself. A
> belief is just a model or a framework with some personal stuff mixed
> in.
What crept in was that you added a capital-letter woo-woo word,
"Self". And you add such nonsensical fluff just as one would add a
word like 'salt'. Again more nonsense.
> > > > > What the hell does that have to do
> > > > > with pointing out that superstitionists don't have any good evidence
> > > > > for their superstitions?
>
> > > Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> > > you claim has been demonstrated here.
>
> > > If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> > > be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> > > experience into another kind of belief.
>
> > Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
> > woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
> > touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
> > about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
>
> Ahhh. Evidence.
>
> Independently verifiable, I suppose.
>
> So if a half billion people say they all had the same groovy
> experience in unison, that when they pray God, he talks to them.
>
> And Trollpa might say that it's just woo & unsupported by evidence,
> even though it's just very popular woo, it's still not evidence (even
> though it's the kind of stuff that's also untestable).
No, that's exactly the kind of evidence that Berty Russell said would
take for him to believe in some sort of woo-woo. I'd go with Berty on
that one. But "God" wouldn't be my first choice. One might be a
subliminal message broadcast on cable TV to all of them. Mass hypnosis
has been demonstrated on occasion. A less likely, but worth checking
out if more standard explanations failed would be that aliens had set
up a set of telepathic satellites to send us messages to convince us
we were getting messages from God, so that we would be able to control
and conquer. But way down last on the list would be that this is the
doing of some particular religion's omnipotent God.
>
> Interesting problem. I don't see how to solve it. You can teach some
> people to the contrary by hitting them over the head with a brick, but
> in the case of such beliefs, they're the exception.
>
> A different approach is required.
Yeah, for you the approach is give up all critical thinking and drink
the Kool-Aid and go nutter. Give your soul to Jesus, or whatever. And
then add all sorts of nonsense terms and babble about them endlessly.
> > > IOW you're just as guilty of your own kind of material superstition as
> > > any of the cargosophies you turkeys chase around here day after day on
> > > B'ist use(less)net.
>
> > Nope. I only claim to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and I can
> > demonstrate and verify these things. Furthermore, I have good reason
> > to posit the existence of mind-independent thing-events, such as
> > trees, and I can demonstrate and verify this by climbing them and
> > swinging from them and making monkey noises.
>
> > As Sid put it: "Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: in the seen
> > will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is
> > heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized
> > will be merely what is cognized. Practicing in this way, Bāhiya, you
> > will not be 'because of that'. When you are not 'because of that' you
> > will not be 'in that'. And when you are not 'in that' then you will be
> > neither here not beyond nor in between the two. Just this is the end
> > of suffering."
>
> Right. The present moment is just what it looks like it is, without
> all the trappings of other stuff.
No, just to experience the present moment involves all sorts of
interpretations. That's why blind people from birth who suddenly are
given sight can't recognize things, even ones they've touched. They
can't pick out a cube from a sphere. Your experience this moment has
to do with lots of trappings. It's not adding particular kinds of
obsessive thoughts to the mix that's the problem.
> But it's helpful in the disentanglement process to observe how parity
> exists between the extrinsic and intrinsic contiguous experiences of
> things and people around us.
More nonsense talk.
>
> And yes, I'm deliberately saying that "experience" is a meta-level
> record that describes the changes that resulted from interactions
> between things.
That's called 'memory'.
> > > > OK, how 'bout existential awe?
>
> > > On the matter of existential awe: These are often fleeting epiphanies
> > > characterized by the recognition of emptiness and contiguous mind,
> > > often felt with a sense of noumenal openness and liminal transit.
>
> > Balderdash! Existential awe is the absence of all that dogmatic crap.
> > It's when you are awed by the beauty of a sunset or the swoosh as your
> > roller coaster goes down the first hill. No noumenal liminal blather.
>
> No, that's just beauty or thrill.
>
> Those are not existential awe.
Nonsense. You can feel existential awe eating a piece of broccoli. At
least I have.
> Existential awe is something else. There are a few experiences in that
> category, like the disorienting dereferencing when self is observed as
> something utterly arbitrary, abrogating the sense that it is in fact
> unique or personal.
More nonsense, just a bunch of interpretation. 'Self' is never
observed, because there is no such thing; there is only seeing,
hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. When you say "self is
observed as" you've already added your own fantasy and woo-woo. What
you think is 'self' when you observe is never self: it's like thinking
there is a snake, but look closely and you see a stream of marching
ants. There's never a 'self' or 'Self' or 'Mind' or 'soul' or 'Soul'
or whatever in experience: there is seeing, hearing, smelling,
tasting, feeling, and thinking about all the other senses. At least I
don't have one. Maybe you're a space alien and are totally different,
but I doubt that. I think you're simply unobservant and overwhelmed by
beliefs.
> > > It's an experience, and it can be as direct an experience as any human
> > > mind is capable. But it's still not, nor will it ever be, objective reality.
>
> > Sounds like masturbation to me. Objective reality is when you actually
> > kiss a real girl. Of course you can close your eyes and continue your
> > masturbatory transcendental fantasy and pretend she doesn't exist. Or
> > you can open your eyes and kiss the real girl.
>
> Ahh. I believe that's time dilation.
>
> /l
No, that's just pupil dilation. Happens when you're horny.
--DharmaTroll
"An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting
than sex."
-Edgar Wallace
Charles E Hardwidge
news:janfe5lcoqg19uutf...@4ax.com...
> There is no such thing as evidence.
> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
>
> Your atheistic crusade goes too far.
> You accuse everyone of everything you hate.
> How can this do -you- any good?
>
> (Metaphysical question. heh.)
Nobody reads that shit (or the other 67 similar replies in here).
Right Click->Catch Up.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
> > Atomic clocks experience compression of information as time dilation.
>
> No. Clocks do not 'experience'. They don't have sense organs and
> brains to create experiences from those sense organs.
>
> > Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
> > - tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
> > mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
> > experience part of a functional information field that entails
> > contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
> > around in orbit & coming back to earth?
>
> Why don't you try stating that better, instead of in a run-on
> sentence. And don't add math terms like contiguous and apply them to
> terms like 'mind' without an explanation. Otherwise you're just
> spewing nonsensical sentences.
>
> > All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
> > anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
> > contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
> > set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
> > information streams. They're all contiguous.
>
> No. Clocks and rocks don't have brains, and don't feel and think and
> experience. No amount of run-on sentences of yours suggests any
> evidence otherwise.
Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter inside your head is
superior to an animate object that records information?
And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
of other animate things that record information. This is the same
argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
*better* or superior to everything else.
That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
ghost back into the machine.
Which is awfully sweet of you, really, you closet romantic you.
/Beerlet "May I never achieve enlightenment" Dibhlang
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:51:41 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
about it all.
But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
years.
Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
LOL. I've called many things before, but not that. Has a nice ring to
it....
> Indeed the
> nutters who posit "Undifferentiated Transcendental Reality" are
> actually positing a naive materialism, and one which can be
> "experienced directly".
Oh, very good. Indeed they're wrong to take "direct experience" to the
level of absoluteness.
It's just an abstracted way of saying they can get to know God.
But framing experience and mind into the constant essence of the
moment and looking for a greater realm of absoluteness are two
different things.
You are conflating them and then knocking down experience and observer
mind along with God.
> > Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
> > experience needn't entail woo.
>
> "Noumenal", being a make-believe term, can be substituted here with
> any other make-believe term, such as "Magic" or "God". It is the very
> definition of woo.
Really? Look up the actual definition of the word. It's about opening
up to a broader view of things.
No woo there that I see.
> > The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
> > experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
> > experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
> > reifiying woo.
>
> The problem is that you add an ineffable soul (Mind) into the mix
> there, and again are question-begging and talking nonsense.
Observer mind - experience - is the same as an ineffable soul?
I'm beginning to see where a misunderstanding might have arisen....
> If you
> actually describe your experience, there is no woo-woo "Mind" to be
> found, just visual sensation, auditory sensations, smells, tastes,
> bodily sensations, and memories and thoughts, which are mainly pseudo-
> auditory and psuedo-visual sensations, and emotions, which are
> compositions of sensations and thoughts. No 'Mind'.
Agreed.
Mind is just simply an awareness of the experience of events.
But *what* is that awareness? And why is it distinct from an extrinsic
event if it's the same as an intrinsic thought?
Show me where the line is that separates intrinsic experience derived
from extrinsic events. I can't tell you where the line is that makes
systems fully separate as though they live in separate worlds. Just as
we inhale air from outside ourselves the data our senses process is a
continuous and contiguous stream of interaction. We're not mere
amorphous cytoplasms or virii, there's a far greater level of
organization and self-containment, but the complexity doesn't nullify
the problem of contiguity.
> Undifferentiated Fairy Dust. Don't believe me. Shut up and check it
> out for yourself like I do.
You first.
> > Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
> > experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
>
> I'd ground experience as a "brain function", as 'mind' is not a thing
> with an interior or exterior, and such talk is nonsensical.
OK, substitute "Experience" for "Mind."
What does a living organism with a neural network experience that a
living organism without one doesn't?
Events? Memories?
What differentiates the experiences of animate living things from non-
living animate things? Even slime molds can "learn," so experience is
available to them, but their learning is limited to chemical processes
in their protean appendages.
Oh, but wait, the brain of an animal is subject to the same
reductionist view, it's just that it's far more evolved a system for
taking in experience on a constant basis.
> > What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
> > It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
> > and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
> > heads as well!
>
> Again question-begging. You have to assume that rocks have non-
> sentient experience as a pre-supposition condition for your nonsense
> sentence to make sense in the first place. And rocks and clocks don't
> function as brains do.
Correct.
But they certainly respond to events, and in the physicalist view you
champion a complex system is only superior by token of its complexity,
not its capacity to store metainformation of past interactions and
events.
>
> > Where *IS* mind?
>
> Another nonsense question. You're asking where is software, but
> "where" only applies to hardware, such as the brain. You are now
> reduced to sophistry by making category mistakes again and again, and
> then concluding woo-woo from them.
>
> > But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
> > as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
> > creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
> > contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
>
> You might want to consider being a writer for jargon talk in b-grade
> sci-fi television shows.
Answer the question.
> > It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
> > idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
>
> > Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
> > belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
> > the person becomes more personal.
>
> > It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
>
> If it's a map of an Ineffable CandyLand, it can't produce erroneous
> results, because it can never be tested.
Prove it can never be tested.
:-)
> > > Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> > > a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> > > monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> > > flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> > > said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> > > Bwahahahahahah.
>
> > What is the sound of three monks slapping?
>
> > A Trollpa crying!
>
> > /l
>
> Nah, I'd kick their butts too.
What a secret life you live, Walter Mitty. And please stop x-posting
apz into the headers.
/l
Tang Huyen
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
>
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
>
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
> utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
> curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
> position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
>
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
> woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
>
> Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
The Christians who revolt against Christianity
(which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
are so incredibly funny to me. They seem stuck
in a time warp of around eighty or ninety years
ago. I went to French secondary school in
Vietnam, and my French teachers (who
presumably came from a Catholic background)
taught me a modern, secular worldview, and
coming to these boards, I fell over laughing when
Fu keeps saying that antibiotics, especially
penicillin, save more lives than prayers (he means
to the Christian God, that he carries in his head).
Of course, that is a settled issue, and it was settled
around eighty or ninety years ago or more. So Fu
and DT waste the major part of their time and
energy fighting a long-since settled war against
Jewish mythology, though both are walking
relicts of Jewish mythology. They have never
learnt to become calm and equable in front of
Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
less to think outside of its box. They are totally
framed by it, and they think in its terms, so when
they revolt against it, they revolt against it in its
terms. It keeps them tightly tethered to it, whether
they are for or against it. And Fu (or at least one
part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
only the values are turned upside down, e. g.,
positive is turned into negative, and vice versa, but
he is locked into the Christian worldview, so that
the part of him that revolts against Christianity is
Christian of bad faith. Still Christian, only of bad
faith.
<<Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter
inside your head is superior to an animate object
that records information?
And what differentiates a human brain from a
dynamic, animate physical recording medium?
Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
On the one hand you want to point to the physical
basis of the human mind and remove the spook.
Good, fine.
But then because of those additional dynamic
properties you now want to put the physical media
of human experience above the physical media
of other animate things that record information.
This is the same argument for God in religious
tomes, that man is qualitatively *better* or
superior to everything else.
That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist
argument to put a ghost back into the machine.
Which is awfully sweet of you, really, you closet
romantic you.>>
Likewisse, Fu still thinks in the magical worldview
that Christianity inculcated in him sixty years ago.
Now the two parts that are exact mirror images
of each other -- Christian of good faith versus
Christian of bad faith -- tend to share much in
common, as concave to convex, but both also share
some things *in the same direction* (i. e., not as
concave to convex), like magical thinking, and the
militant anti-Christian part that totally rebels against
Christianity is shrilly physicalist yet thinks magically,
as with Gene Roddenberry's ash falling from the sky
but carrying with it Gene's "godless" quality to
stupefy Christians who take Christ as their saviour,
and the part of Fu that is Christian of good faith falls
into the class of such unwitting recipients. The two
parts differ in content but share the same structure,
here magical thinking that Fu normally damns as
"woo". So Fu carries on this internal war, with one
part of him fighting another part of him, back and
forth, recursively. Christianity has him locked up
solid.
Tang Huyen
Charles E Hardwidge
something readable and relate to people better. But you can't do that so are
still locked in the same 10 year old pattern of smug I-told-you-so.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
keep rolling on is a bit twatish. When threads start turning into a
clusterfuck I just hit Right Click->Catch up so never read it. Mostly, I'm
not missing anything so it's no bother and easier than digging through that
shit.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
What else would I have meant? 4-D space gods hatching eggs in my
brain?
We're not automata that only responds to extrinsic stimuli. It's not
like we're going backwards to a sensorium & a lil' man in our heads &
that looks like B.F. Skinner.
We all experience intrinsic events, some more primordial than others.
The salient point about existential awe is that an observer can
recognize how both his experience and identity as a separate entity
are both unique and non-unique, separate and fungible in a momentary
epiphany of self-disassociation.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
I've been trimming apz from the headers when I catch it.
/l
DharmaTroll
wrote:
>
> The Christians who revolt against Christianity
> (which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
> are so incredibly funny to me.
More avoiding of the issues from the Tang-banger, just making up bios
about folks.
> And Fu (or at least one
> part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
> as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
> against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
More Doctor Evil ranting from Tang's closed loop. The Tang-banger sits
at his computer maturbating, in closed loop, while making up elaborate
fantasies about his fantasy lovers, Fu and DT. Doesn't matter what he
makes up, because, it's all fluff, all closed-loop eminating from
Tang's mind, and so there is no need to posit a real world or real
people, just repeat the fantasies while masturbating in closed loop.
--DharmaTroll
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> So Fu
> and DT waste the major part of their time and
> energy fighting a long-since settled war against
> Jewish mythology, though both are walking
> relicts of Jewish mythology. They have never
> learnt to become calm and equable in front of
> Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
> less to think outside of its box. They are totally
> framed by it, and they think in its terms, so when
> they revolt against it, they revolt against it in its
> terms.
Pretty close assessment, yeh.
> Christianity has him locked up solid.
Well, having been there & done that, it's hard to get over old
business as a "lapsed whatever."
You make a salient point about lapsed Christians but I'm not sure it
applies only to them. It's this weird either-or dialectic framing that
a great many people adopt. It goes with getting settled in a mental
framework. That's part of growing up & maturing.
The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks are
maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error, but he champions his anti-
theism to the point of creating new ghosts.
My daughter were joking about either-or thinking & she commented when
it comes to complicated ideas like religion that she likes to take a
neither-or approach.
/l ( still trimming apz from the headers )
Hollywood Lee
> like we're going backwards to a sensorium& a lil' man in our heads&
> that looks like B.F. Skinner.
>
> We all experience intrinsic events, some more primordial than others.
>
> The salient point about existential awe is that an observer can
> recognize how both his experience and identity as a separate entity
> are both unique and non-unique, separate and fungible in a momentary
> epiphany of self-disassociation.
So you both have an experience of existential awe, though your
after-the-fact interpretations of that experience differ, with DT saying
it is purely material, yet awe inspiring and you seeing it as not so
limited, but as a momentary epiphany of self-disassociation.
At the level of actual practice, at the point of understanding suffering
and the cessation of suffering, how does this difference matter?
Beerlet Dhiblang
In the context of whether anyone's guilty of woo, it's not just a nit-
pick, I'm trying to shine some light on something that Trollpa's
missing.
In one sense you are so correct that the difference is immaterial,
which works with my argument that minor differences in modeling
experience are also immaterial.
I brought it up b/c the ability to experience existential
disassociation exemplifies the recognition of fungible self and the
contiguity of experience, observer, and mind.
/l
Charles E Hardwidge
news:747f0b51-30f6-4f57...@z2g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
I have no idea where the traffic is and there's too many groups. Personally,
I'd rather people just made up their fucking mind and set headers
appropriately at the top then left the fuck alone. Tang cross-posting every
time he sneezes and the ABSFG trolling aren't helping. But once threads grow
too long or people start performing Right Click->Catch Up solves that.
I don't read 90% of the crap in these groups. Most of it's the same babble
or anti-social bullshit as it was yesterday, or last week, or last year.
Actually, there's been a qualitative drop over the past few years. Positions
are getting more entrenched and there's a general weakening of enthusiasm.
The groups are failing and stale, and the content reflects that.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Lee Rudolph
>They have never
>learnt to become calm and equable in front of
>Christianity (which they carry in their head), even
>less to think outside of its box.
Relinquish the reliquary.
Lee Rudolph
Lee Rudolph
>On Oct 28, 7:05=A0am, "Charles E Hardwidge" <bo...@invalid.invalid>
>wrote:
>> Fucking around with the headers so old threads pop into other newsgroups =
>and
>> keep rolling on is a bit twatish. When threads start turning into a
>> clusterfuck I just hit Right Click->Catch up so never read it. Mostly, I'=
>m
>> not missing anything so it's no bother and easier than digging through th=
>at
>> shit.
>
>I've been trimming apz from the headers when I catch it.
Good ghod. I had no idea it was catching!
Presumably we in the older cohort have some residual immunity; that
would be why I haven't noticed. Pity about you sickly young'uns, though.
Lee Rudolph
PS My curiousity has finally been piqued. What is this newsreader
to the (presumable) GUI of which "Right Click->Catch up" refers?
And why does it constantly lie in its headers, claiming that Chas.'s
posts are only 1 or 2 or 4 lines long?
Hollywood Lee
Two questions, then:
1. Why is it necessary (or useful) to recognize the "fungible self and
the contiguity of experience, observer, and mind."
2. Is this recognition possible (or more likely) only if you approach
it from your perspective versus DT's?
Just trying to figure out what is at stake with the debate that has no
end. Maybe you are just saying what I've said in different terms, that
dogmatic adherence to one view in the materialism/idealism debate is
itself a potential impediment to a practice.
DharmaTroll
Unless you prefer Shamanist Sorcerer.
>
> > Indeed the
> > nutters who posit "Undifferentiated Transcendental Reality" are
> > actually positing a naive materialism, and one which can be
> > "experienced directly".
>
> Oh, very good. Indeed they're wrong to take "direct experience" to the
> level of absoluteness.
>
> It's just an abstracted way of saying they can get to know God.
So now it's all about God? You're piling it higher and deeper.
> But framing experience and mind into the constant essence of the
> moment and looking for a greater realm of absoluteness are two
> different things.
>
> You are conflating them and then knocking down experience and observer
> mind along with God.
No. We have complex brains and sense organs, and how the brain creates
experience, I have no idea. It's an amazing mystery, and we're
learning more every day. Adding 'God' or 'Mind' or Ultimate
Undifferentiated Fairy Dust doesn't explain anything or make anything
less mysterious: it just hides the mystery behind a veil of capital
letters.
>
> > > Transcendence without woo is eminently achievable and noumenal
> > > experience needn't entail woo.
>
> > "Noumenal", being a make-believe term, can be substituted here with
> > any other make-believe term, such as "Magic" or "God". It is the very
> > definition of woo.
>
> Really? Look up the actual definition of the word. It's about opening
> up to a broader view of things.
>
> No woo there that I see.
Actually, I read Kant. He used the word in a woo-woo way, to deny the
phenomenal world, by positing a mysterious woo-woo noumena. The
problem with Kant was, you can simply use Occam's Razor: if the woo-
woo noumena is removed from the world and can't be seen, heard,
smelled, tasted, or touched, then what's the difference between there
being a noumena and there not being one? And the answer is none. And
you can replace 'noumena' with Undifferentiated Reality, or Mind, or
invisible fairies that gently escort the colored leaves to the ground
in Autumn.
>
> > > The problem here is defining information and experience, as to whether
> > > experience of information is tantamount to Mind, or if elevating
> > > experience to the level of Mind is equivalent to the error of
> > > reifiying woo.
>
> > The problem is that you add an ineffable soul (Mind) into the mix
> > there, and again are question-begging and talking nonsense.
>
> Observer mind - experience - is the same as an ineffable soul?
>
> I'm beginning to see where a misunderstanding might have arisen....
No, now that we know about brains, no need to talk about souls or
Minds or Transcendental Realms or any of that.
> > If you
> > actually describe your experience, there is no woo-woo "Mind" to be
> > found, just visual sensation, auditory sensations, smells, tastes,
> > bodily sensations, and memories and thoughts, which are mainly pseudo-
> > auditory and psuedo-visual sensations, and emotions, which are
> > compositions of sensations and thoughts. No 'Mind'.
>
> Agreed.
>
> Mind is just simply an awareness of the experience of events.
Mind is simply what the brain does.
> But *what* is that awareness? And why is it distinct from an extrinsic
> event if it's the same as an intrinsic thought?
Again, I don't know that much about brains. But I know enough to know
that positing souls or Undifferentiated Woo-Woo doesn't explain
anything. You like the game of "if we don't know how something works,
then add magic".
>
> Show me where the line is that separates intrinsic experience derived
> from extrinsic events. I can't tell you where the line is that makes
> systems fully separate as though they live in separate worlds. Just as
> we inhale air from outside ourselves the data our senses process is a
> continuous and contiguous stream of interaction. We're not mere
> amorphous cytoplasms or virii, there's a far greater level of
> organization and self-containment, but the complexity doesn't nullify
> the problem of contiguity.
>
> > Undifferentiated Fairy Dust. Don't believe me. Shut up and check it
> > out for yourself like I do.
>
> You first.
I have. No self or woo-woo here. Just the seen, the heard, the
smelled, the tasted, and the felt, and a bunch of thoughts, memories
and emotions.
>
> > > Or is the alternative to de-mind experience by claiming that
> > > experience doesn't exist outside of interior (sentient) mind?
>
> > I'd ground experience as a "brain function", as 'mind' is not a thing
> > with an interior or exterior, and such talk is nonsensical.
>
> OK, substitute "Experience" for "Mind."
>
> What does a living organism with a neural network experience that a
> living organism without one doesn't?
Well, I'm always reading the latest articles and studies on the
subject to find out. I don't know much about such things. But I know
enough to throw out nutters who say, "oh, you don't know? Well, oh
goodie gumdrops, that means I can just posit my ineffable
undifferentiated magical fairy dust". No, just because I don't know
the details doesn't mean that woo-woo must be true. You and your
nutter band don't seem to ever get that point.
>
> Events? Memories?
>
> What differentiates the experiences of animate living things from non-
> living animate things? Even slime molds can "learn," so experience is
> available to them, but their learning is limited to chemical processes
> in their protean appendages.
>
> Oh, but wait, the brain of an animal is subject to the same
> reductionist view, it's just that it's far more evolved a system for
> taking in experience on a constant basis.
No, it's a matter of degree, from self-replicating viruses, which
aren't conscious, to critters like us. However, what you call
"learning" is an anthropomorphism again. There's no evidence that
slime mold is conscious, but there is that dogs are. As for insects,
who knows? If they are conscious, it's at a much lower level than we
are, but they still have a nervous system. You ask good questions
here, but they are science questions, not woo-woo ones. I have to make
a practical decision, when eating, as I don't want to contribute to
needless killing. I draw the line at fish, somewhat out of convenience
because I love eating fish and they are high in omega-3's and so on,
but they are way down there in terms of complex brain structure. But
there is evidence that they can feel pain. There's no evidence that
slime mold can feel pain, and if you think it does, I'd be surprised,
and probably it's because you'd make up a new definition for 'pain' as
you do 'experience'. But that's just a language game.
> > > What makes our own experience more equal than non-sentient experience?
> > > It's just a different locus of experience but compounded by emotion
> > > and memory. Might as well say that mind doesn't exist inside our own
> > > heads as well!
>
> > Again question-begging. You have to assume that rocks have non-
> > sentient experience as a pre-supposition condition for your nonsense
> > sentence to make sense in the first place. And rocks and clocks don't
> > function as brains do.
>
> Correct.
>
> But they certainly respond to events, and in the physicalist view you
> champion a complex system is only superior by token of its complexity,
> not its capacity to store metainformation of past interactions and
> events.
Responding to a stimulus does not an experiencing person make.
> > > Where *IS* mind?
>
> > Another nonsense question. You're asking where is software, but
> > "where" only applies to hardware, such as the brain. You are now
> > reduced to sophistry by making category mistakes again and again, and
> > then concluding woo-woo from them.
>
> > > But time dilation demonstrates experience compression
> > > as experience travels through higher speeds through information,
> > > creating an entirely different reference frame that is still
> > > contiguous with coarising phenomena on the planet's surface.
>
> > You might want to consider being a writer for jargon talk in b-grade
> > sci-fi television shows.
>
> Answer the question.
There was no question. Or do are you asking where your brain is? Well,
I'd sort of like to know that as well. You seem to have left it
behind, eh?
>
> > > It's a functional model of coarising phenomena, that's all, and the
> > > idea of non-dual is just an abstraction of that schema.
>
> > > Should anyone elevate that schema into some kind of cargosopher's
> > > belief doesn't make the model any less functional, just the meaning to
> > > the person becomes more personal.
>
> > > It's not an error unless it produces erroneous results.
>
> > If it's a map of an Ineffable CandyLand, it can't produce erroneous
> > results, because it can never be tested.
>
> Prove it can never be tested.
>
> :-)
Well, to test it, it would have to be tangible, and not make-believe.
You can't test imaginary things like souls, gods, astral planes,
ineffable beastes because they aren't grounded in reality to be
tested. If you do test something, then and it affects the real world,
then it's also going to be real, and thus physical, and so isn't
transcendental in the first place.
Mind/body Dualists have never been able to demonstrate how a soul
could even in principle interact with a body or with the world at all,
and this is just a general statement of the same problem.
> > > > Three monks and The Trollpa were meditating in a zen monastery. All of
> > > > a sudden the prayer flag on the roof started flapping. The youngest
> > > > monk said: "Flag is flapping." A more experienced monk said: "Wind is
> > > > flapping." The third and eldest monk said: "Mind is flapping." Trollpa
> > > > said: "Mouths are flapping!"
>
> > > > Bwahahahahahah.
>
> > > What is the sound of three monks slapping?
>
> > > A Trollpa crying!
>
> > > /l
>
> > Nah, I'd kick their butts too.
>
> What a secret life you live, Walter Mitty. And please stop x-posting
> apz into the headers.
>
> /l
What do you have against apz?
--DharmaTroll
DharmaTroll
Yeah, I figured you meant something along those lines.
> We're not automata that only responds to extrinsic stimuli. It's not
> like we're going backwards to a sensorium & a lil' man in our heads &
> that looks like B.F. Skinner.
No, that wouldn't work -- your little man would have to have a little
man inside his head, ad infinitum.
> We all experience intrinsic events, some more primordial than others.
No, I'd say we experience sensations. Some are caused by real objects,
such as seeing a tree, and some are merely brain experiences not being
caused by an extant tree, like when we visualise a tree.
> The salient point about existential awe is that an observer can
> recognize how both his experience and identity as a separate entity
> are both unique and non-unique, separate and fungible in a momentary
> epiphany of self-disassociation.
Blah. That sounds like a bunch of dogma. Experiencial awe doesn't have
such nonsense, just a sense of 'Wow!'
> /l
--DharmaTroll
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Nonsense. The claim of "direct experience" is a dogmatic belief that
> "my woo-woo is objective truth". That is, when I say "I directly
> experienced God", I'm claiming that a transcendental beastie
> objectively exists, and that what I say about Him is objectively true
> and infallible (otherwise it wouldn't be a direct experience), and
> thus I'm a supreme authority, and anyone who disagrees with me is full
> of shit." You can substitute "Undifferentiated Nondual Ultimate
> Reality, or any other capital lettered terms for God, and it's still
> the same.
Yes and no.
Among all reasonable people, there is a gentleman's agreement that
claims, including claims of Absolute Truth, will be regarded as a
matter of the speaker's belief, in principle possibly incorrect.
Either you are not aware of this convention, or you willfully choose
to disregard it for the sake of argument. Literally.
> Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
> something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
> beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
> Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
> or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
Of course, there have always been people who are nutz, ignorant, and/or
dishonest.
Can you think of any, hint hint?
[snipped unread rest of post]
--
hz
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> herbzet wrote:
> > DharmaTroll wrote:
> > > Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> > > > Seriously, I would very specifically like to examine the superstition
> > > > you claim has been demonstrated here.
> >
> > > > If you are referring to whether there's an objective reality that can
> > > > be directly experienced - or not - then you're trying to reify direct
> > > > experience into another kind of belief.
> >
> > > Not at all. I'm saying that if you want to say that you can have woo-
> > > woo experience that isn't seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
> > > touching, then demonstrate it, rather than just babbling the dogma
> > > about it. You can't, cuz there ain't no evidence for such woo-woo.
> >
> > But the only thing that you accept as "evidence" is what you see, hear,
> > smell, taste, and touch.
> >
> > You ask for evidence of the non-material, while rejecting experience of
> > the non-material as non-evidence.
>
> You'd have to demonstrate an "experience of the non-material". Indeed,
> even saying that is a contradiction. As non-material means
> 'imaginary'. If it's not imaginary, you can demonstrate it.
Et voila.
> > Your belief system is a closed loop, secured from disconfirming evidence
> > by your definition of "evidence".
> >
> > Most convenient.
[snip tap-dancing]
--
hz
DharmaTroll
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:51:41 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Again, what happened is "I saw something, I felt something, I thought
> >something, I mixed all those together with my interpretations and
> >beliefs, and I concluded that I 'directly experienced Ultimate
> >Reality." Except religious nutters, whether out of delusion, denial,
> >or dishonesty, leave out all but the conclusion.
>
> Whereas your position is completely different?
> (Talk about incoherent irrational believers! heh.)
Yup. I've never claimed to directly experience any woo-woo.
>
> >Duality is the nature of the world. Magnets have north and south
> >poles. Electrical circuits are on or off. Rather than blurring
> >everything in your noumenal blender, better to study and experience
> >the interconnection between opposites and differences.
>
> Are you a magnet? (Or just naturally repulsive?)
>
> Seriously, is there up without down, or good without bad?
> No pole of a duality can exist except in relation to it's opposite.
But that's just what I"ve been tellin' you, Nutter Dude.
But you insist on your magic NonDual fairy does with only one pole.
> >First, there is no 'direct experience'. Look inside at your belief
> >that your beliefs are the truth and others' are false. We all have
> >those. Except the nutters and superstitionists take them seriously.
>
> You'd never do that. Except about trees, cats, and magic sofas.
No. I make the most reasonable inference which I can test. If my hand
goes through the cat, then I wouldn't guess that I'm actually seeing a
cat.
> >No. Rather, I don't posit anything without evidence for it.
>
> Then show me tomorrow.
Ok, wait a day and then re-read this post.
Ok, here it is. This is yesterday's tomorrow.
> >I'm positing a robust naturalism, where only that for which we have
> >evidence is posited, and when we don't understand something, we don't
> >add magical fairy dust to explain, but instead say "we don't know" or
> >"we don't know yet".
>
> There is no such thing as evidence.
> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
Sure I can. You've never taken a lab course in biology, chemistry, or
physics, have you, Keynes? You may think you can make up your own
cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
apologized for calling me a liar, and then pretending that my post of
refutation of your nonsense was really posted, even though I gave you
the link, nor have you acknowledged that my answers were correct and
backed up by evidence, whereas you're babble was nonsensical. Admit
it, Nutter Dude: "I, Keynes was completely wrong and deluded and the
Trollpa was right about physics and the speed of light and Buddhism
and everything else, but I'd rather insult and accuse the Trollpa of
lying than admit that I'm clueless and thta the Trollpa has kicked my
butt yet again."
--DharmaTroll
herbzet
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
>
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
>
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo, but his
> utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics strikes me as
> curiously defensive. Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any*
> position, whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
He appears to following what in transactional analysis is called
a "negative script". In TA it is posited that many people tend
to follow life scripts adopted in childhood. Some people throw
down the script instilled in them by authority, and immediately
start living out a "negative" script: they adopt a life script
that is the precise opposite of the script they have thrown away.
Though this may supply some much-needed relief, this can be
just as neurotic, and possibly more (or possibly less) destructive
than the original script.
Of course, the goal of TA is to remove neurotic script-based behavior,
or preferably, to remove scripted behavior altogether.
You know, "Once burned, twice shy."
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian woo-
> woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
>
> Having been there, done that, I know what it's like.
I seem to recall he mentioned attending Catholic school.
That burns out a lot of people on Catholicism -- I meet
them now and then.
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
news:4AE84A96...@gmail.com...
>
> Among all reasonable people, there is a gentleman's agreement that
> claims, including claims of Absolute Truth, will be regarded as a
> matter of the speaker's belief, in principle possibly incorrect.
>
> Either you are not aware of this convention, or you willfully choose
> to disregard it for the sake of argument. Literally.
[...]
> Of course, there have always been people who are nutz, ignorant, and/or
> dishonest.
The lack of accountability and relativism is a drag in here just as much as
it is in politics. I took one look at some high traffic blog earlier and
there were the usual megaphone claims and nit-picking.
Personally, I'd rather just read something useful, and the rest of the
comment is collateral that gets passed over unread. That's the difference
between effective and mere posturing.
While there may be no guaranteed absolutes there are certainly things which
are true to a high degree of certainty and experts with a measurable
hit-rate. The rest is superstition and crowd pleasing.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
news:cf03294e-2426-4e92...@z2g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
> On Oct 28, 7:44 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> What a secret life you live, Walter Mitty. And please stop x-posting
>> apz into the headers.
>
> What do you have against apz?
I'm curious as well as I thought the bullshit/troll group was ABSFG. If
there's any group hat needs to keep it's shit in the box that's it, and
anyone who wants to be a clown should probably fuck off and join that group.
It would make life in the other Buddhist groups more reasonable.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
herbzet
Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks are
> maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
What a laugh. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, still rockin'
away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
selves out of existence.
--
hz
Hollywood Lee
In Buddhist newsgroups as in life generally, it seems that what we want
and what we get are often two very different things. Or to put it more
crudely, wish in one hand and spit in the other and see what you have
more of.
In that vein, I'd tell you to stop whining, but there is little chance
of that coming true.
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> "DharmaTroll" <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
absfg is the rumpus room, always has been.
But to the point, and in deference to you, which news group(s) do you
frequent then?
When Tang & DT x-posted to apz from this thread it confirmed prior
observation that you find that annoying. If your coverage extends to
az & trb then that's pretty much been the x-post range for on-topic x-
posts including absfg. But if apz is your home base I've never thought
it was really part of the B'ist n.g. 'tradition.'
However when it's off-topic & non-serious play I post to absfg only.
My suggestion again is to trim the headers back, but I can only do my
part.
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> > We all experience intrinsic events, some more primordial than others.
>
> No, I'd say we experience sensations. Some are caused by real objects,
> such as seeing a tree, and some are merely brain experiences not being
> caused by an extant tree, like when we visualise a tree.
LOL! Spectacular buck and wing.
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
I can't do much beyond reiterate the point people need to decide where the
traffic is and not cross-post to the ABSFG troll group. There's a similar
issue with the photography groups. The casual group is a.p, the elitist
group is slr, and the assholes are in rec-photo.
apz isn't my "home base". It's just the one at the top of my Buddhist
newsgroup list though I've been clicking on az more frequently. I'm just too
lazy to add the trb group and rarely (read never) subscribe to ABSFG because
it's a pile of wankage.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
It's useful b/c it lays open the extent of openness (emptiness) that's
available when taking self out of the picture. Although there is no
quintessential direct experience the recognition of contiguity is a
perfectly valid in the pursuit of cleaning up observer mind. There's
no woo in this at all, and from what I've observed the arguments here
have actually gotten hung up for lack of phrasing the method in a
different manner.
> 2. Is this recognition possible (or more likely) only if you approach
> it from your perspective versus DT's?
My gut reaction is that DT's approach stops short of being free to
play the different models against each other as metaphors and nostra
against embroilment.
> Just trying to figure out what is at stake with the debate that has no
> end.
Probably not much outside of the debate itself. If Keynes or
Bodhidumba successfully use the dharma with an ever so slight taint of
agnosticism then they're just as well off as DT.
> Maybe you are just saying what I've said in different terms, that
> dogmatic adherence to one view in the materialism/idealism debate is
> itself a potential impediment to a practice.
In the case of extremes, yes. But I doubt anybody here actually does.
DT does play the devil's advocate rather well though.
More than anything I'm questioning his seemingly anti-theist rhetoric
and attempts at dialectic pedagogy. But I did this 10 years ago with
him when he & Punnadhammo were mud wrestling.
It was amusing then too.
/l
DharmaTroll
> On Oct 28, 12:51 am, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>
> > No. Clocks do not 'experience'. They don't have sense organs and
> > brains to create experiences from those sense organs.
>
> > > Was that experience - as a metainformation record or functional memory
> > > - tantamount to an awareness as observer? And if sentient observer
> > > mind constructs such a test as an observer, is the beginning-to-end
> > > experience part of a functional information field that entails
> > > contiguous mind from the worker to the spaceship to the clock zipping
> > > around in orbit & coming back to earth?
>
> > Why don't you try stating that better, instead of in a run-on
> > sentence. And don't add math terms like contiguous and apply them to
> > terms like 'mind' without an explanation. Otherwise you're just
> > spewing nonsensical sentences.
>
> > > All coarising, and it started with just an idea, right? Is this
> > > anthromorphication by imbuing mind onto things that aren't
> > > contiguously linked? But they are contiguously linked, otherwise we
> > > set a dualism where there's a disconnect of coarising experience and
> > > information streams. They're all contiguous.
>
> > No. Clocks and rocks don't have brains, and don't feel and think and
> > experience. No amount of run-on sentences of yours suggests any
> > evidence otherwise.
>
> Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter inside your head is
> superior to an animate object that records information?
The physical matter in my head certainly is superior to an inanimate
object that records information. (You made a spelling mistake: were it
an animate object, then it would probably be another brain, and my
brain is probably still superior to that brain, simply because I have
one of the most superior brains around, but I wouldn't know that for
sure.)
> And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
> recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
Again, you mean a dynamic, inanimate physical recording medium? You
are asking me what the difference is between a human brain and a tape
recorder? See, when you go all woo-woo you lose all common sense, and
you can't tell the difference from a human being with a brain and a
tape recorder. That's just plain silly.
> On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
> mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
>
> But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
> to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
> of other animate things that record information.
Well, yeah. Tape recorders have just a couple of moving parts. Human
brains have more neurons in them than there are stars in the entire
galaxy. And their complexity is so far unfathomable.
How, in that dynamic system with a trillion neurons or however many
their are, is consciousness produced? Hell if I know. That's why I
post amazing cutting-edge articles on it, because we're learning more
every day.
The mistake here is to say "Aha, we don't know yet, so lets add souls
and fairy dust and magic Undifferentiated Transcendental Realities and
Gods and..."
No, no need to add any of that crap which is fantasy and nothing for
which we have evidence. Just say "we don't know yet: it's a
mystery."
You don't have to fill in the mystery with woo-woo.
Let me repeat that:
You don't have to fill in the mystery with woo-woo.
Better no explanation yet, then to add woo-woo babble.
> This is the same
> argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
> *better* or superior to everything else.
No, it's not. Rather, I'm only suggesting that (1) the only sentient
critters we know of have brains, and (2) the human brain is the most
complex object/system in the known universe.
As for 'better', that's a value judgment. I'm just saying "smarter"
and "more complex". If we pretend that the world is an illusion and
just pollute it and multiply like a virus and run out of food, or blow
each other up, then we'll go extinct and not be so 'better' after all.
But we do have the greatest complexity. That's all I'm saying.
> That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
> ghost back into the machine.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that when the physical system of billions and
billions of neurons are organized into dynamic, functioning brains,
that no ghost is needed, that the system is conscious all by itself.
Now is it possible that really it is an inneffable spooky that is
'driving' the brain, as DesCartes suggests, or some other woo-woo
spook with a captital letter as some folks on this list suggest? Yes,
it's possible, but it's not likely. The problem of how Transcendental
Woo-Woo or ghosts could even interact with matter is much more of a
problem than simply saying that the matter when organized is
conscious, but we don't know how it works yet.
I'm not claiming to know; I'm just saying that highly complex brains
being conscious without needing ghosts or Transcendental Woo-woo is a
simpler explanation, and there is no reason to posit a ghost or any
other kind of woo-woo.
Similarly, if I find a dent in my car, it is possible that an
ineffable transcendental deva materialized and kicked it because he's
pissed that I don't grant him or his realm existence. But more likely,
somebody driving by bumped into my car. The latter is more reasonable,
like the brains being conscious, because I can explain the event
without positing an ineffable deva, much less the realm it comes from,
much less explain how the differing realms interact -- I can simply
say that brains are probably conscious and that when I see a dent,
that means that a tangible person in a tangible car probably bumped
into miy car.
I don't have certainty, just common sense.
I'm just 'playing the odds'.
--DharmaTroll
Hidden Draggin
>
> apz isn't my "home base". It's just the one at the top of my Buddhist
> newsgroup list though I've been clicking on az more frequently. I'm
> just too lazy to add the trb group and rarely (read never) subscribe
> to ABSFG because it's a pile of wankage.
Cannibalism and masturbation are always on-topic in ABSFG !
We don't even WANT the shit from the other groups, but I
don't see you trimming your headers either.
We are here to play rather than participate in the "serious"
(never ending bickering) in the other groups.
We have no pretense to serious discussion although it
does happen from time to time.
--
Hidden Draggin - Gilbert Hansford
Don't join dangerous cults, practice safe sects!
http://twitter.com/hiddendraggin
http://hiddendraggin.posterous.com/
Hollywood Lee
Yeah, I think that *might* be the result of your approach, though it may
just as likely result in an affirmation of a self right in the middle of
the awe, a result that is often te conclusion drawn from mystical
experiences. So, I'm not sure your approach necessarily results in your
goal, nor do I think it is necessary. But no matter, if it works to
help you ease suffering.
>> 2. Is this recognition possible (or more likely) only if you approach
>> it from your perspective versus DT's?
>
> My gut reaction is that DT's approach stops short of being free to
> play the different models against each other as metaphors and nostra
> against embroilment.
Perhaps. DT plays a hardball character in all of this, so don't know
whether the real life person behind the mask benefits from all of this.
I've had my doubts in the past, but that is likely just my own
imagining at work.
>
>> Just trying to figure out what is at stake with the debate that has no
>> end.
>
> Probably not much outside of the debate itself. If Keynes or
> Bodhidumba successfully use the dharma with an ever so slight taint of
> agnosticism then they're just as well off as DT.
Possible.
>
>> Maybe you are just saying what I've said in different terms, that
>> dogmatic adherence to one view in the materialism/idealism debate is
>> itself a potential impediment to a practice.
>
> In the case of extremes, yes. But I doubt anybody here actually does.
> DT does play the devil's advocate rather well though.
>
> More than anything I'm questioning his seemingly anti-theist rhetoric
> and attempts at dialectic pedagogy. But I did this 10 years ago with
> him when he& Punnadhammo were mud wrestling.
>
> It was amusing then too.
Yes. I find it amazing that he can write what I tire just thinking
about. It's like I have my own, energizer ghostwriter.
Hidden Draggin
Anything that endures must have some utility.
Very few people comment on the illusions such
as "Liberty" and "Justice."
There is very little evidence that these things exist
but they, too endure.
herbzet
Charles E Hardwidge wrote:
That's true of course.
But some humility is called for, in principle at least. One generation's
science is the next generation's historical curiousity.
I imagine a great deal of present-day science, particularly regarding
brain science, will be looked upon in the future as about as useful
as alchemy. We're punching around in the dark here.
--
hz
DharmaTroll
>
> I love the Trollpa, really I do, he's a gas & generally a good sport
> about it all.
I am totally awesome!
> But his naive materialist view has been lock-brained for the past 10
> years.
No, my sophisticated naturalist view was developed over years of
studying philosophy and science. Trollpa actually argues from about a
half-dozen 'materialist' views, switching from time to time, but you
don't notice, due perhaps to your 'naive' judgments. Really, the only
thing that Trollpa accepts is psycho-physical supervenience, and
beyond that, is very flexible and tries on all sorts of views.
> Actually I agree with most of what he says about spooks & woo,
Well I'd hope so. You sometimes appear to be one of the sane and
intelligent posters in these parts.
> but his utter dismissal of the agnostic view on metaphysics
> strikes me as curiously defensive.
Actually Trollpa takes an agnostic view on metaphysics, agnostic
meaning don't posit anything without evidence.
Once again, as Thomas Henry Huxley, the mentor of Trollpa's who
invented the term agnostic defined it:
"Positively the principle may expressed: In matters of the intellect,
follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any
other consideration. And negatively, in matters of the intellect do
not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or
demonstrable."
And this is exactly what the Trollpa does, following reason as far as
it will take him, and not pretending that conclusions are certain
which are not demonstrated or demonstrable (e.g., reject "direct
experience" which is a claim of certainty and a claim about woo-woo,
which is not demonstrable).
> Amusingly he assumes I'm advocating *any* position,
> whereas in fact I'm advocating examining all positions.
No, you came in defending the nutters on the list, so I'm assuming
you're defending nutter views in general.
> Just a half-assed guess since I don't make it my focus to know
> everything about Tom Trollpa but he's made mention Christian
> woo-woo'ers in his life that flex less than he does.
Well, Tang uses the ad hominem argumentum to say "Trollpa grew up
Catholic, therefore his reasoning must be wrong because he had a
Catholic background" and on and on and on.
No, more plausible is that the nutters who posit transcendental woo-
woo are replacing their own traditions' "God' and 'soul' with new woo-
woo words, and that this is the emotional appeal. But unlike the Tang-
banger, I only once in a while speculate on such things, and don't
write long fictional bios of them. I'd rather stick to showing that
they have no evidence for their woo-woo claims, regardless of what the
motivating factors are that lead them to cling to their claims.
That's what makes me more totally awesome than Tang.
DharmaTroll is the Alpha-Troll! Yeah! Yeah!
--DharmaTroll
herbzet
Lee fite!!!
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
>
> I imagine a great deal of present-day science, particularly regarding
> brain science, will be looked upon in the future as about as useful
> as alchemy. We're punching around in the dark here.
I don't obsess about the brain or Buddhist scriptures. If I wanted to do
that I'd be a psychologist or a professor. Beyond a certain point it's as
boring as watching fanbois argue over the merits of different consoles, or
politicians and armchair wannabes screaming in each others faces over
marginal policy issues.
Personally, there's more practical, relevant, and varied things to talk
about which obsessing on the brain and dusty scrolls just short-circuits.
Actually, someone wrote an article today which said the obsession with
banking versus cash for clunkers as an economic recovery strategy was down
to snobbery, and I'm inclined to agree there's something in that.
I've got way more pressing issues for me like, say, getting a new LED
backlit display versus another 2 TB hard disc. Or should I just focus on
something else I really need like some new furniture and letting some
baggage go. Why? It creates the world I live in plus how I go about this
does more than wanking over the brain or scrolls.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
herbzet
Hidden Draggin wrote:
> herbzet wrote:
> > Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> >
> >> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks
> >> are maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
> >
> > What a laugh. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, still rockin'
> > away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
> > our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
> > selves out of existence.
>
> Anything that endures must have some utility.
> Very few people comment on the illusions such
> as "Liberty" and "Justice."
>
> There is very little evidence that these things exist
> but they, too endure.
I take it you mean the illusions endure.
You're talkin' seriously, Draggin. Watch that.
--
hz
herbzet
May I be so bold as to make a suggestion?
Open an account somewhere and post under a phoney name. That way
you don't have to post in code, just lie about things related to
your identity. Just a suggestion.
Otherwise, I'm open to new on-topic topics.
--
hz
Charles E Hardwidge
> That's what makes me more totally awesome than Tang.
> DharmaTroll is the Alpha-Troll! Yeah! Yeah!
That sort of thing isn't necessary. It just makes you look a dipshit.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Julian
Get a grip Charles.
The subscribers to ABSFG are, on the whole,
scrupulously not crossposters.
Keynes
wrote:
>On Oct 28, 2:20 am, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>>
>> There is no such thing as evidence.
>> You can talk about it, but you can't -show- it.
>
>Sure I can. You've never taken a lab course in biology, chemistry, or
>physics, have you, Keynes?
Actually I have. So what?
You are always bragging about your education.
But your posts show you have no ability to think.
None. Why are you going on like this?
You haven't a clue.
>You may think you can make up your own
>cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
Just as those who accept other rules can argue
for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
rationalization based on baseless premisses and
proliferating thereafter. Making castles in the
air and then moving right in. Reason misleads
everyone who depends on it. Even and especially you.
How can the future matter right this moment?
Nor can the past harm you right where you are now.
You take time as a measure even though the very
idea of measuring the unreachable past and future
is the height of insanity. But you are stuck in
never-never-land as your first absurd premise.
Time uses you. Stuck in an unhappy dream.
But if you were mindful you could use no-time
and never use it up.
'Scientific truths' are totally beside the point.
Why do you wallow in such irrelevant trivia?
Even if you knew all the yet unknown answers,
what would that get you? It's pointless.
>Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
>apologized for calling me a liar,
You never refuted anything. You just make claims.
In the convo you cited, you chose to misunderstand what
I said, and your so-called refutation was my very own
argument from previous posts. Your knowledge of
physics is sketchy at best, and your ability to think
rather than recite that which you don't understand
is too weak for you to see what an ass you are.
You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
(And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
Your tactical sense is average, but your strategic
sense is totally absent. What do you think you're
doing fighting woo-woo with woo-woo?
Get real. Wake up!
Lee Rudolph
I, for one, am quite scrupulous about not *actively* crossposting.
But likewise I am quite scrupulous (read: inert) about not
discontinuing a crosspost that is already underway (and indeed,
isn't it Charles who has objected, in the past, to people *removing*
groups from the Newsgroups: header, on the grounds that it constitutes
"talking about me behind my back"? or is it somebody else, in which
case I apologize to both, though the point, broadly stands). Perhaps
passive crossposting is as deadly as secondhand smoke, but hey.
Lee Rudolph
Charles E Hardwidge
nobody cares about desiccated whining. It's unreadable crap and tacking the
obligatory special needs student kung-fu of "let go" on the end won't change
that. Fuck, I'd rather eat sandpaper.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Julian
Yeah, I'm not dead... carry on.
DharmaTroll
>
> He appears to following what in transactional analysis is called
> a "negative script". In TA it is posited that many people tend
> to follow life scripts adopted in childhood.
From metaphysical woo-woo to psychobabble???
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
So you don't have an intellectual response, and so, like the cowardly
Tang-banger, it's now resort to ad hominem argumentum and make a
personal attack on the character of My Divine Grace.
Not, "maybe the Trollpa studied all the views and did metaphysics in
college and grad school and has thought about all this shit intensely
and is having fun with fools who cling to simple-minded woo-woo
views". No, it's "he doesn't fall for my woo-woo and Capital Letter
dogma because he felt bad in Catholic School". What a wuss.
> I seem to recall he mentioned attending Catholic school.
> That burns out a lot of people on Catholicism -- I meet
> them now and then.
I've got at another half a century and probably longer before I burn
out. Yeah, when Sister Phyllis in 8th grade told us we'd go to Hell if
we married a Jew or a Protestant or Atheist, I asked, "but Sister, if
we were in China, wouldn't you probably be telling us not to marry a
Catholic or else we'd be reincarnated as a toad?" She threw me out of
class. And I knew, as I know with you pathetic woo-woo-ists, that she
didn't have a clue, and had the 'disease' of claiming to have some
objective truth when she didn't know anything. Such experiences only
made the Trollpa stronger, and probably led My Divine Grace to Eastern
Philosophy -- that and watching 'Kung Fu, the series', which next to
Star Trek was the most totally awesome series when I was a kid.
No, the Trollpa is going strong, and that's why he rolls over the lot
of you whiners like a bowling ball over duckpins.
So, what's next, are you going to babble in defeat like the Tang-
banger does with Fu by making up ludicrous biographies instead of
discussing the issues? Is that all you got?
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"You're a wuss. Part wimp, part puss."
-Dr. House
herbzet
Lee Rudolph wrote:
Secondhand smoke is not deadly.
http://www.joejackson.com/smokingissue.htm
http://www.forces.org/
--
hz
herbzet
DharmaTroll wrote:
If the shoe fits, wear it.
--
hz
Déjà Flu
> herbzet wrote:
>> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>>
>>> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks
>>> are maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
"error"? They're conducive to murder, pain, suffering,
environmental destruction, and a few other unhappy effects.
Do you have some privileged definition of "error" as well?
>> What a laugh. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, still rockin'
>> away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
>> our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
>> selves out of existence.
How does that privilege them and imply tolerance?
"Ignorance is common, therefore it must be good (accepted)"?
Why does it have to extinguish "in our lifetime"? No evolutionary
advance did that in a single generation, so far as we know.
Learn to think in fruit-fly time. In the evolution of mind and
culture, we're living in a nano-second of it. The seeds of
reason are growing. I think that's pretty encouraging.
What a laugh, indeed.
> Anything that endures must have some utility.
Tell that to your appendix, toenails, and wisdom teeth, for
starters.
> Very few people comment on the illusions such
> as "Liberty" and "Justice."
We're working on them, too.
"It's not true that you can't get blood from a stone.
It depends on how hard you throw it."
> There is very little evidence that these things exist
> but they, too endure.
Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
for it? Not me.
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
zenworm
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:53:34 -0700 (PDT), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
if he can not have it no one can?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
zenworm
has it been a long time since your last glimse/satori?
DharmaTroll
If the shoe fits, I'll kick your ad hominem butt with it.
--DharmaTroll
DharmaTroll
>
> > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > but they, too endure.
>
> Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> for it? Not me.
>
> --
> Ubi dubium ibi libertas
To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch. To
say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical. Rather, there is thinking you are
doing now, that is similar to thinking you are doing later or that I'm
doing. We have a rough sense of what we mean by 'justice' but to say
our ideas are 'the same' is insane. It's to suggest that justice is
like a cat. We can test the DNA of the cat to see if we are referring
to the same cat. 'Justice' has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of organizing our thinking; it
doesn't refer to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
--DharmaTroll
Déjà Flu
just so.
DharmaTroll
Well, Keynes, oh Priest of Prevarication, you've reached a new level
of dishonor tonight.
>
> >You may think you can make up your own
> >cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
>
> In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
>
> Just as those who accept other rules can argue
> for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
> rationalization based on baseless premisses
First, that's always been your line, that science/empiricism is
completely arbitrary, and that astronomy is thus always 100% reduced
to astrology, and is simply made up.
This is why I suggest to you to walk in front of a truck: if you
walked the walk you talk, you wouldn't believe science telling you
that the truck will run over you. Not that I wish you to die; I only
wish you to admit that you know you're in my universe and playing with
my rules and not in your "Nondual-empirical-physics-equals-cartoon-
physics" Woo-Woo World.
Now after pelting me with more insults, let's discuss my skillful and
laborious refutation of your physics claims last year:
> >Such as all your nonsense that I refuted a year ago. You still haven't
> >apologized for calling me a liar,
>
> You never refuted anything. You just make claims.
> In the convo you cited, you chose to misunderstand what
> I said, and your so-called refutation was my very own
> argument from previous posts.
No, it wasn't. Indeed, you claimed 'amnesia' about my post, and when I
posted it, with your reply and my rebuttal, you denied it still, and
accused me of lying twice, until I posted the link from google.
You claimed that space was curved positively, and I refuted that and
pointed out that space is flat. Your earlier posts had never once
reflected real science, and were all your own made up stuff, such as
claims that the speed of light was not constant, which I had also
refuted very clearly.
Now even if I take your 'amnesia' at face value, after calling me a
liar, you didn't retract it and admit that I refuted your cartoon
physics (admit being once again to insult me by saying that all the
books and physicists agree with me). Instead now not only do you have
amnesia, but you claim to have made my real physics claims in previous
posts which you now remember (and you never made any such real physics
claims). You've added a new lie which blatantly contradicts your
previous amnesia lie. This would be the climax of the case and you
would be discredited were I a trial lawyer on TV.
> Your knowledge of physics is sketchy at best,
Actually, because I always like to win and kick butt, I had sent that
earlier version to a friend with a Ph.D. in physics, who had confirmed
that all my points in that post were true and accurate, before I
spiced it up and posted it. I do have just a sketchy knowledge of
physics compared to a Ph.D., and the same with chemistry, biology,
astronomy, psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, history,
and mathematics, but I've studied all these subjects and I'm a Jackass
of all Trades, you might say, and know a hell of a lot more than you
do -- I mean I know more in this reality where trucks run over folks,
not in your Nondual Undifferentiated Cartoon Physics Land.
> You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
> spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
> (And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
Well, all of your denials, and your not even honorably admitting you
were wrong, as well as being wrong about my claims about refuting you
suggest that (as usual) your words most appropriately describe
yourself.
You hung yourself this time, Keynes.
I didn't even have to make fun of you.
"We find the defendant Keynes guilty of Nuttery in the First Degree!"
> What do you think you're
> doing fighting woo-woo with woo-woo?
Well, in the real, physical world, where astronomy is not astrology
and empirical physics is not cartoon physics, my assertion of the
former is not your assertion of the latter, and so there is a
dualistic difference between the empirical science I express and your
woo-woo. Turns out we're in my dualistic reality, and not in your
Nondual Relativistic fantasy. (If you question that, walk in front of
a truck, and you'll see that you're in my universe and not vice-
versa).
--My Divine Grace Yabba Dabba Dukkha Dharmakaya Trollpa
"LOL! Keynes, I hereby proclaim you totally nuts on at least
two subjects (the other is buddhism), even though you may be
a decent banjo player."
-Deja Flu
"I am a practicing physicist. Everything Dharmatroll has been
trying to tell you about physics is basically true.
Virtually every physicist I know would agree on this."
-Dr. Scott Oser
possum
i've never been able to work out whether cross-posting is good or
bad. i'm not at all scrupulous about it. i used to try to remember
to delete apz once upon a time, but i have become more unsrupulous (or
more forgetful) as i have been practicing buddhism.
*
as i haven't been able to work it out with any certainty, i stopped
bothering. apz gave a reason, which was one up on the other groups -
that they were a small group and got swamped easily. fair enough, and
i made an effort. however, not all groups are small groups, and
didn't find myself convinced on the question of crossposting - is it
good, ok, very naughty, heinous...etc? they sounded a little neurotic
about it, (the taoists werepositively aggressive it generally, but
have been very quiet lately) apart from tara, obviously, who has an
excellent border collie. tang is often awarded 'usenet's most
prolific x-poster status - it's very funny when people get upset with
tang about it. as a tangist, i tend to a view in favour of cross
posting. i also, (as a libertarian multi - 'ist' of passionate
unresolve) am inclined against the anti- x-posting philosophy. and
every so often, a bunch of cross-posters fall in through the walls
here, like blazing saddles into the gay musical and it's hilarious and
everybody feels better for it. i should have known better than to
doubt that evidence, could have saved myself a lotta time...
* i know you know Lee, but for chuck's benefit, talking about one's
practice which may lead newbs astray and get the poster arrested is
bad netiqutte and calls for the sensitive skills which are the
preserve of absfg. dearly missed Cupcake used to call them a bunch of
vajrayanist ass-holes, chuckie, so you're in good company. : ) pete
(aka Kupcakke, Cuppie), was imperturbably and hilariously rude and
insulting to people who deserved it, with an unrivalled poet's skill,
was a buddhadhama practitioner, who thought tang was the bizness. if
my brain didn't feel like its about to start bleeding i'd try to fill
you in on tang's excellent 'droppings' philosophy. i'm pretty sure i
couldn't do that is my brain wasn't metaphorically bleeding in some
other part of my body. Karl firkin Popper, my arse.
i don't always manage to get here, and i think my hot bath has gone
cold, i should go check. can you recommend any good homes for the
confused and bewildered, i might have to check myself into one soon.
see how difficult the moral metaphysics of x-posting is if you don't
do fluffy droppings? and of what practical use is it? well that's
another thing, sadly i've run out of time for now...tbc, no doubt...
possum
possum
> On Oct 28, 4:52 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > > but they, too endure.
>
> > Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> > Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> > obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> > of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> > nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> > past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> > for it? Not me.
>
> > --
> > Ubi dubium ibi libertas
>
> To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
> doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
> independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch. To
> say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical.
this may be dogmatically true. it's not helpful. ultimately talking
about anything is nonsensical, but less ultimately, talking about
existence is problematical. does a corpse exist? yes, according to
materialist you. but it's a fjordin' dead as a parrot. so what's the
point in talking like that? where does it get you? it get's you
denying the notion of justice, as an enduring virtue, or value. are
you right? yes, according to the buddha's 'no permanence, no essence'
teaching. are you happy? assuming you live on planet earth in the
world of man, i'd question how if it's a world in which the concepts
of justice and freedom are regarded as meaningless, and as a result,
not 'kept alive' by effort, synthesis and contact... err...absent any
woo..
anyway, have a bath to top up...
possum
possum
oh. i forgot to mention that the woo of these concepts, in relation
to my daily experience, is such that i find the metaphysical unborned
etc a handy space for the uncertainty (due to incomplete physical
knowledge about the nature of said concepts) conducivish to my
unmentionable practice. probably that's my ego in the way.
DharmaTroll
> On 28 Oct, 23:20, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 28, 4:52 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > > > but they, too endure.
>
> > > Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> > > Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> > > obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> > > of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> > > nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> > > past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> > > for it? Not me.
>
> > > --
> > > Ubi dubium ibi libertas
>
> > To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
> > doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
> > independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch.
> > To say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical.
>
> this may be dogmatically true. it's not helpful. ultimately talking
> about anything is nonsensical, but less ultimately, talking about
> existence is problematical.
Not at all. First of all, it's true, not 'dogmatically' true.
If you and I talk about a cat, again, we can test the DNA, check out
if we are referring to the same mind-independent unique critter. The
whacked-out religious folks around here both act as if cats are
created by the mind and if 'justice' is some thing 'out there'. So
the distinction is helpful, very helpful, as well as true in the super-
hyper-ultimate sense of true.
> does a corpse exist? yes, according to materialist you.
> but it's a fjordin' dead as a parrot. so what's the
> point in talking like that? where does it get you?
Well, if there is a dead body, it gets us to correctly refer to the
dead body. And knowing that the body is decomposing and dead, and not,
say a live person sleeping is enormously helpful. We wouldn't want to
cremate or bury a living person who was simply in a deep sleep.
You see, Possum, when you ask questions like this, I have to wonder
are you truly insane, or drunk off your gourd, or what?
> it get's you denying the notion of justice, as an enduring virtue, or value.
Now where the hell did you come up with that claim?
It does no such thing. Justice is a family resemblant term, in the
Wittgensteinian sense, in that there aren't fixed necessary and
sufficient conditions for what constitutes 'justice', but rather criss-
crossing and overlapping criteria. The same is true for the concept of
'game', for example. That doesn't mean that we don't play games. It
only means that games don't exist (i.e., before there were any
conscious critters, the Milky Way galaxy existed, but games did not,
they are a function of our minds and interactions).
> are you right?
> yes, according to the buddha's 'no permanence, no essence' teaching.
No. Just plain ol' linguistics. You can pet the cat. You can't pet
'justice'. It's a way of organizing our thoughts. Justice is not an
extant thing (if you think it is, then again, give an example of
justice before there were any living, sentient critters evolved).
> are you happy? assuming you live on planet earth
Earth? Hell, no. I always sleep on my cloaked starship in a geodesic
orbit around your pathetic shithole planet, in case I need to make a
hasty departure.
> i'd question how if it's a world in which the concepts of justice
> and freedom are regarded as meaningless
Why the hell is justice meaningless? Who said that? Nobody said that.
When did Flu or me or anybody assert "if something isn't an animal,
vegetable, or mineral, then it's necessarily worthless"? I don't know
what you're talking about when you make these bizzaro assumptions.
Just because justice isn't an extant thing in the universe doesn't
mean the term is meaningless. The term can have a sense without having
to have a fixed objective reference.
My advice to you is, better lay off the sauce, Possum.
DharmaTroll
What I note is that the metaphysical for most folks is a handy space
for the certainty of their dogma, rather than for uncertainty. By
hiding in the metaphysical, one can avoid the dreaded 'reality check'.
With LSD, you have to sober up the next day and do the laundry and
take out the trash. With metaphysics, you can hide in la-la-land
indefinitely.
As for the unborn or deathless, I don't see that as metaphysical at
all. What doesn't get born is obsessive thoughts, and along with them
a sense of solid self. There never was a solid self, just muddled
thinking. What isn't born never was born. What never is born cannot
die. Nothing metaphysical. All very practical and grounded in ordinary
experience.
--DharmaTroll
"Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on
the wall until his back is up against it."
-Adlai Stevenson, Jr.
Keynes
wrote:
>On Oct 28, 1:25 pm, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>
>Well, Keynes, oh Priest of Prevarication, you've reached a new level
>of dishonor tonight.
>>
But as always, you can top me.
>> >You may think you can make up your own
>> >cartoon physics, but real physics is demonstrated with evidence.
>>
>> In the scientific paradigm by the scientific rules.
>>
>> Just as those who accept other rules can argue
>> for angels and demons and miracles. It's all just
>> rationalization based on baseless premisses
>
>First, that's always been your line, that science/empiricism is
>completely arbitrary, and that astronomy is thus always 100% reduced
>to astrology, and is simply made up.
>
Your arguments are all a closed system.
You're stuck in your own trap, and can't see it.
Keep digging your slow hole to china.
>This is why I suggest to you to walk in front of a truck: if you
>walked the walk you talk, you wouldn't believe science telling you
>that the truck will run over you. Not that I wish you to die; I only
Oh sure.
>wish you to admit that you know you're in my universe and playing with
>my rules and not in your "Nondual-empirical-physics-equals-cartoon-
>physics" Woo-Woo World.
>
Your rules are delusion-samsara. Get yourself out.
>Now after pelting me with more insults, let's discuss my skillful and
>laborious refutation of your physics claims last year:
>
>You claimed that space was curved positively, and I refuted that and
>pointed out that space is flat.
You asserted that. You didn't prove it.
Neither did you deal with even -one- of my points.
"No, no, no" is not a rational argument.
"They say so" is not a good argument either.
(A herd of buffalo are not necessarily intelligent.
It's possible that every one of them is just as sharp
as you are.)
>Your earlier posts had never once
>reflected real science,
How would you know?
Why do you think the fossil background radiation
comes from all directions at once to land on the earth
(regardless of it's ever new position)? What is your
explanation of that?
In a flat 3D universe, that radiation would be on the
outer surface of a sphere, just like small explosions
on the earth. It would be expanding outward at the
speed of light, and we would never even see it.
The cosmos is self-contained, all inside without an
outside, and without a surface or a shape. Every point
is equally central. This is impossible to visualize, but
if one considers the properties of two dimensional
(euclidean) space extended in three dimensions (like
the two dimensional surface of the earth which has
no edge, shape or center) it becomes obvious. Three
dimensional space is curved in a higher dimension.
This ain't woo woo. There is evidence that even
'scientists' can see.
That's the only way to explain the universal expansion,
and the earth's apparent centrality. No point is privileged.
All points are equally the central scene of the crime, namely
the big bang.
>and were all your own made up stuff, such as
>claims that the speed of light was not constant, which I had also
>refuted very clearly.
You are an ignoramus. Not satisfied to be a fool just once,
you keep on repeating your lack of acuity. You have no
understanding at all of relativity. Even when it is explained
to you in small words. You must have cheated your way
through college and escaped as ignorant as when you went in.
>Now even if I take your 'amnesia' at face value, after calling me a
>liar, you didn't retract it and admit that I refuted your cartoon
>physics (admit being once again to insult me by saying that all the
>books and physicists agree with me).
Rather, it's you who agree with them.
(Catechism and all that, your Piousness).
>Instead now not only do you have
>amnesia, but you claim to have made my real physics claims in previous
>posts which you now remember (and you never made any such real physics
>claims). You've added a new lie which blatantly contradicts your
>previous amnesia lie. This would be the climax of the case and you
>would be discredited were I a trial lawyer on TV.
>
You'd get laughed out of any court, your honor.
>> Your knowledge of physics is sketchy at best,
>> You are a liar, a cheat, and an unhappy person
>> spreading as much unhappiness as you can.
>> (And then claiming to be a buddhist? LOL)
>
>"I am a practicing physicist. Everything Dharmatroll has been
>trying to tell you about physics is basically true.
>Virtually every physicist I know would agree on this."
>-Dr. Scott Oser
Most catholics agree with the pope too. So?
possum
> On Oct 28, 10:01 pm, possum <jhk00B0Sn3VdC...@spambox.us> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 28 Oct, 23:20, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 28, 4:52 pm, Déjà Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > > > > but they, too endure.
>
> > > > Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> > > > Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> > > > obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> > > > of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> > > > nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> > > > past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> > > > for it? Not me.
>
> > > > --
> > > > Ubi dubium ibi libertas
>
> > > To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
> > > doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
> > > independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch.
> > > To say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical.
>
> > this may be dogmatically true. it's not helpful. ultimately talking
> > about anything is nonsensical, but less ultimately, talking about
> > existence is problematical.
>
> Not at all. First of all, it's true, not 'dogmatically' true.
hey, why don't you just write your own reviews?
>
> If you and I talk about a cat, again, we can test the DNA, check out
> if we are referring to the same mind-independent unique critter. The
> whacked-out religious folks around here both act as if cats are
> created by the mind and if 'justice' is some thing 'out there'. So
> the distinction is helpful, very helpful, as well as true in the super-
> hyper-ultimate sense of true.
uh-huh...
>
> > does a corpse exist? yes, according to materialist you.
> > but it's a fjordin' dead as a parrot. so what's the
> > point in talking like that? where does it get you?
>
> Well, if there is a dead body, it gets us to correctly refer to the
> dead body. And knowing that the body is decomposing and dead, and not,
> say a live person sleeping is enormously helpful. We wouldn't want to
> cremate or bury a living person who was simply in a deep sleep.
the dead body is there in front of you. if you step forward you'll
fall over it. it is stinking, and is definitely not a figment of your
imagination. it is physically composed of matter, albeit breaking
down and transforming into different states. it undoubtedly exists,
in terms of material definitions. it undoubtedly is not alive,
extant, existing, in terms of our everyday understanding and use of
the word. it is a dead body of a once living creature who no longer
exists. i guess that was my linguistic point. justice, the concept,
endures, we know not how. notions of justice change, as we change, in
ways which resemble or have characteristics of living entities or
processes, are metaphorically or virtually alive, as in 'existing'.
>
> You see, Possum, when you ask questions like this, I have to wonder
> are you truly insane, or drunk off your gourd, or what?
i thought it was a good question. (one small spliff, plus knackered,
plus a number of stresses. probably crashing, truly insane just about
covers it. do you have a problem with that? )
>
> > it get's you denying the notion of justice, as an enduring virtue, or value.
>
> Now where the hell did you come up with that claim?
i have an interest in the subject, i read the news, and it's a logical
conclusion...
>
> It does no such thing. Justice is a family resemblant term, in the
> Wittgensteinian sense, in that there aren't fixed necessary and
> sufficient conditions for what constitutes 'justice', but rather criss-
> crossing and overlapping criteria.
nobody said it isn't complicated. but i don't have to accept it just
because witthenstein said it, that's freaking unbuddhist. if i have
to check it out for myself, it has to be simpler, say, the pitiful
funding offer from the equality and human rights commission in the
light of the global financial meltdown impact on public spending,
relative to other priorities, which is causing several undesirable
situations.
The same is true for the concept of
> 'game', for example. That doesn't mean that we don't play games. It
> only means that games don't exist (i.e., before there were any
> conscious critters, the Milky Way galaxy existed, but games did not,
> they are a function of our minds and interactions).
>
> > are you right?
> > yes, according to the buddha's 'no permanence, no essence' teaching.
>
> No. Just plain ol' linguistics.
oh i get it - a game of you switch whenever you like, the gamee is
stuck with it, you got the can't lose card...
You can pet the cat. You can't pet
> 'justice'. It's a way of organizing our thoughts. Justice is not an
> extant thing (if you think it is, then again, give an example of
> justice before there were any living, sentient critters evolved).
>
> > are you happy? assuming you live on planet earth
>
> Earth? Hell, no. I always sleep on my cloaked starship in a geodesic
> orbit around your pathetic shithole planet, in case I need to make a
> hasty departure.
a practical habit, as mother theresa would say... never be without a
tea-towel
>
> > i'd question how if it's a world in which the concepts of justice
> > and freedom are regarded as meaningless
>
> Why the hell is justice meaningless? Who said that? Nobody said that.
> When did Flu or me or anybody assert "if something isn't an animal,
> vegetable, or mineral, then it's necessarily worthless"? I don't know
> what you're talking about when you make these bizzaro assumptions.
it it doesn't exist, what meaning has it? am i expected to believe in
meaningful non - existent entities. do they still live under spheres
bed?
> Just because justice isn't an extant thing in the universe doesn't
> mean the term is meaningless. The term can have a sense without having
> to have a fixed objective reference.
i don't understand what you're saying...
>
> My advice to you is, better lay off the sauce, Possum.
i only occasionally drink, but consider me a lush if it makes you feel
better. i don't have to conform to your comfort zone, and it remains
a that's a palmistry level crack.
>
> > > We have a rough sense of what we mean by 'justice' but to say
> > > our ideas are 'the same' is insane. It's to suggest that justice is
> > > like a cat. We can test the DNA of the cat to see if we are referring
> > > to the same cat. 'Justice' has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> > > exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of organizing our thinking;
> > > it doesn't refer to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
you can tell me what it isn't. not what it is, though...
interesting...
possum
>
> --DharmaTroll
Love
>
>Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>
>> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks are
>> maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
>
>away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
>our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
>selves out of existence.
Zero chance of extinction period. What all these jurassic
positivists miss is that belief is not the purpose of belief
based religions but only a feature. They survive precisely
because what they do, including fostering belief, serves
their purpose well enough.
Belief is mainly about getting everyone to invest in a common
framework. It's a vehicle for expression and a shorthand for
situation recognition -- "say, did ya hear the one about the
Samaritan?" It's language at a higher state of play
Error-proneness, or imprecision, is actually an asset. It
leaves interpretive wiggle-room when the framework either
doesn't cover a situation or runs into an internal
contradiction. Error/mutation --> adaptation.
--
Love
May Shai-Hulud clear the path before you.
DharmaTroll
>
> > If you and I talk about a cat, again, we can test the DNA, check out
> > if we are referring to the same mind-independent unique critter. The
> > whacked-out religious folks around here both act as if cats are
> > created by the mind and if 'justice' is some thing 'out there'. So
> > the distinction is helpful, very helpful, as well as true in the super-
> > hyper-ultimate sense of true.
>
> uh-huh...
>
>
> > > does a corpse exist? yes, according to materialist you.
> > > but it's a fjordin' dead as a parrot. so what's the
> > > point in talking like that? where does it get you?
>
> > Well, if there is a dead body, it gets us to correctly refer to the
> > dead body. And knowing that the body is decomposing and dead, and not,
> > say a live person sleeping is enormously helpful. We wouldn't want to
> > cremate or bury a living person who was simply in a deep sleep.
>
> the dead body is there in front of you. if you step forward you'll
> fall over it. it is stinking, and is definitely not a figment of your
> imagination. it is physically composed of matter, albeit breaking
> down and transforming into different states. it undoubtedly exists,
> in terms of material definitions. it undoubtedly is not alive,
> extant, existing, in terms of our everyday understanding and use of
> the word. it is a dead body of a once living creature who no longer
> exists. i guess that was my linguistic point.
Ok. We agree about this. Now for the hard questions...
> justice, the concept, endures, we know not how.
Yeah we do. Individuals in a society pass it on.
We all die and so do our concepts of justice.
> notions of justice change, as we change, in
> ways which resemble or have characteristics of living entities or
> processes, are metaphorically or virtually alive, as in 'existing'.
hmm, are you saying that there is a transcendental 'form' called
justice, and that we each have imperfect notions of this immortal
concept?
Because if that's what you're saying, that's really cool. I mean, I
think you'd be wrong, but it would still be really cool. It would be
cool because that's how Plato looked at it. I don't know many
Platonists.
A famous passage in Plato's Republic claimed that “there is one Form
for each set of many things to which we give the same name”. That is,
when you use the word ‘just’ and I use the word ‘just’, what makes it
one and the same thing that we’re talking about? Plato’s said: the
Eternal Transcendental Form of Justice, the “one over the many.” Plato
believed there was a non-conventionalist answer to questions of
meaning: that there was exactly some one unique thing that is referred
to by ‘just’ whenever it is used. Hence, when you talk about justice
and I talk about justice, we are talking about the same thing. We
belong to the same world, not each of us in his own private world. If
we disagree in what we apply the term ‘just’ to, we cannot both be
right. And this one thing, justice, existed in his Transcendental Woo-
Woo Realm of Forms.
Cool idea, eh? Oh, wait -- except I don't go for woo-woo. But at the
time back in ancient Greece -- you know, before they had the internet
and cable TV -- it was a brilliant idea.
> > You see, Possum, when you ask questions like this, I have to wonder
> > are you truly insane, or drunk off your gourd, or what?
>
> i thought it was a good question. (one small spliff, plus knackered,
> plus a number of stresses. probably crashing, truly insane just about
> covers it. do you have a problem with that? )
No, not at all. Still puts you in the most sane 25% of posters around
here.
> > > it get's you denying the notion of justice, as an enduring virtue, or value.
>
> > Now where the hell did you come up with that claim?
>
> i have an interest in the subject, i read the news, and it's a logical
> conclusion...
Is it? I mean, the dead body is tangible. But you can't tell me what
justice looks like, how large it is, what color it is, or anything
like that. Strange you think it exists.
> > It does no such thing. Justice is a family resemblant term, in the
> > Wittgensteinian sense, in that there aren't fixed necessary and
> > sufficient conditions for what constitutes 'justice', but rather criss-
> > crossing and overlapping criteria.
>
> nobody said it isn't complicated. but i don't have to accept it just
> because witthenstein said it, that's freaking unbuddhist. if i have
> to check it out for myself, it has to be simpler, say, the pitiful
> funding offer from the equality and human rights commission in the
> light of the global financial meltdown impact on public spending,
> relative to other priorities, which is causing several undesirable
> situations.
Ok, forget Wittgenstein -- he's only the most brilliant philosopher of
the 2oth century. You want a Buddhist philosopher? Ok, how about
Susan? Susan Blackmore. She would call 'justice' a 'meme'. Do you know
what memes are?
The term meme (it's pronounced like dream or cream) was coined by
Richard Dawkins, but Susan's book _The Meme Machine_ is the definitive
work on the subject.
Memes are habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of
information that is copied from person to person. Memes, like genes,
are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with
variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive,
memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by
imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in
our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Large groups of
memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted
meme complexes, or memeplexes.
According to memetics, our minds and cultures are designed by natural
selection acting on memes, just as organisms are designed by natural
selection acting on genes. A central question for memetics is
therefore ‘why has this meme survived?’. Some succeed because they are
genuinely useful to us, while others use a variety of tricks to get
themselves copied. From the point of view of the “selfish memes” all
that matters is replication, regardless of the effect on either us or
our genes. Justice, then, rather than an existing thing, can be
thought of as human software, a meme, which is replicated and passed
down by human culture.
Like that? Want more? Read Susan's article where she demonstrates that
consciousness doesn't exist. She's absolutely fucking brilliant. Not
to mention that she's a Zen Buddhist and has purple hair like a punk
rocker yet is an old lady. Read her consciousness-smashing article at:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/jcs02.htm
She starts out: "What is all this? What is all this stuff around me;
this stream of experiences that I seem to be having all the time?
Throughout history there have been people who say it is all illusion.
I think they may be right. But if they are right what could this
mean?"
Sounds like she's going to go woo-woo there, and yet instead she
provides a surprisingly insightful discourse. Definitely not a
Platonist is she.
But I digress. You were saying?
> > The same is true for the concept of
> > 'game', for example. That doesn't mean that we don't play games. It
> > only means that games don't exist (i.e., before there were any
> > conscious critters, the Milky Way galaxy existed, but games did not,
> > they are a function of our minds and interactions).
>
> > > are you right?
> > > yes, according to the buddha's 'no permanence, no essence' teaching.
>
> > No. Just plain ol' linguistics.
>
> oh i get it - a game of you switch whenever you like, the game is
> stuck with it, you got the can't lose card...
No. Just no simple definition can lasso all games. But anyway, read
Susan's article.
> > You can pet the cat. You can't pet
> > 'justice'. It's a way of organizing our thoughts. Justice is not an
> > extant thing (if you think it is, then again, give an example of
> > justice before there were any living, sentient critters evolved).
>
> > > are you happy? assuming you live on planet earth
>
> > Earth? Hell, no. I always sleep on my cloaked starship in a geodesic
> > orbit around your pathetic shithole planet, in case I need to make a
> > hasty departure.
>
> a practical habit, as mother theresa would say... never be without a
> tea-towel
Heh
> > > i'd question how if it's a world in which the concepts of justice
> > > and freedom are regarded as meaningless
>
> > Why the hell is justice meaningless? Who said that? Nobody said that.
> > When did Flu or me or anybody assert "if something isn't an animal,
> > vegetable, or mineral, then it's necessarily worthless"? I don't know
> > what you're talking about when you make these bizzaro assumptions.
>
> if it doesn't exist, what meaning has it?
You haven't heard the saying "the pen is mightier than the sword"?
> am i expected to believe in meaningful non - existent entities?
Yes!!! Haven't you ever played poker? It's the imaginary non-existent
hand I make you think I am holding that I will use to get you to
fold.
> do they still live under spheres bed?
No, they live in spheres head, silly. Memes don't exist, like dead
bodies or cats. They are patterns replicated by brains.
Look, Superman isn't real -- we can agree on that, right? And yet
Superman took down the KKK in real life -- the non-existent superhero
from a make-believe planet called Krypton discredited and busted up
the popular racist KKK movement in real life. And yet technically he
doesn't even exist.
> > Just because justice isn't an extant thing in the universe doesn't
> > mean the term is meaningless. The term can have a sense without having
> > to have a fixed objective reference.
>
> i don't understand what you're saying...
>
Sorry, I'm using philosophy talk. Terms have a reference (what they
point to or refer to) and they have a sense (meaning). The two aren't
the same and there's all sorts of cool stuff and various theories
about how they operate. The key article is by a famous mathematician/
philosopher Frege who wrote a ground-breaking essay called "On Sense
and Reference" (Über Sinn und Bedeutung). I'm sure Tang's read it in
the original.
Frege's key example was about two objects, the morning star and the
evening star. What we mean by the morning star is the last star we see
disappear at dawn; and by the evening star the first star we see at
dusk. This is the 'sense' or meaning of the terms. Well, it turns out
both stars are Venus. And Venus is the 'reference' of the terms. So
even though both 'signs' point to Venus, they mean different things
(and they could have been referring to different planets). Anyway,
Frege pointed out that meaning and reference are different. You can
read his article, though really Bertrand Russell's later article "On
Denoting" is the most important essay to read if you're only going to
read one. But my point is just that what a term points to (it might
not point to anything existing) can still have lots of meaning.
You were claiming that the meaning was completely bound up in the
reference, so you assumed if there wasn't any existing reference, that
the term had no meaning. And that's not so. I can give you and endless
number of math examples of this. Suppose I talk about "the largest
prime number". Well, that term has meaning. But there is no such
thing. Prime numbers exist larger and larger without bound. So that
designation "the largest prime number" is meaningful, but the largest
prime number doesn't exist.
Another cool try was by Meinong. His view was that objects are
"indifferent to being" in that they stand "beyond being and non-
being". For Meinong "existence" was only a property, like being round,
or loud. I'm sure that Meinong's theory would appeal to lots of the
nutters around here. Meinong's idea was pretty much considered
eccentric, but he was also rather brilliant. Along came Berty Russell,
who published probably the most famous article on sense and reference,
titled "On Denoting". Everyone should read that one, and in it Russell
pretty much dispensed with Meinong and sent Meinong's theories into
the nutter bin.
> > My advice to you is, better lay off the sauce, Possum.
> i only occasionally drink, but consider me a lush if it makes you feel
> better. i don't have to conform to your comfort zone, and it remains
> a that's a palmistry level crack.
I was just throwing barbs at you because you called me 'dogmatic' for
pointing out that justice isn't an extant thing in the world.
> > > > We have a rough sense of what we mean by 'justice' but to say
> > > > our ideas are 'the same' is insane. It's to suggest that justice is
> > > > like a cat. We can test the DNA of the cat to see if we are referring
> > > > to the same cat. 'Justice' has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> > > > exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of organizing our thinking;
> > > > it doesn't refer to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
>
> you can tell me what it isn't. not what it is, though...
> interesting...
>
> possum
Well, I can give you the original positive definition -- to Plato,
justice meant the act of carrying out one’s duty to one’s station:
i.e., workers work, auxiliaries guard, and guardians rule. However,
the 'justice' meme has mutated and evolved a lot since then.
--DharmaTroll
Ron Fuller
8a83-7b1...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com:
> On Oct 28, 7:53�am, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
> wrote:
>>
>> The Christians who revolt against Christianity
>> (which they carry in their head) like Fu and DT
>> are so incredibly funny to me.
>
> More avoiding of the issues from the Tang-banger, just making up bios
> about folks.
>
>> And Fu (or at least one
>> part of him) is still a Christian of good faith, even
>> as he (or at least another part of him) revolts
>> against it, but the latter is still Christian to the core,
>
> More Doctor Evil ranting from Tang's closed loop. The Tang-banger sits
> at his computer maturbating, in closed loop, while making up elaborate
> fantasies about his fantasy lovers, Fu and DT. Doesn't matter what he
> makes up, because, it's all fluff, all closed-loop eminating from
> Tang's mind, and so there is no need to posit a real world or real
> people, just repeat the fantasies while masturbating in closed loop.
>
> --DharmaTroll
kind of like what you do about the "nutters". same plot,
different cast.
and yet both of you from time to time post insightful things.
and both of you will go of on your favorite pet peeve on a
regular basis.
at least tang likes to admit that it's all subjective. you on
the otherhand infer that yours is real because it's "science".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
rfu...@freeway.net rfu...@cainsquestion.org
if you and the universe are going in the same direction
you will find that the whole world conspires for your
benefit.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote:
> D�j� Flu:
>
> >Hidden Draggin:
>
> > > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > > but they, too endure.
>
> > Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> > Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> > obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> > of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> > nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> > past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> > for it? Not me.
>
> To claim that ideas like 'justice' exist, or even that 'ideas' exist,
> doesn't make sense (unless we're doing Plato). No idea exists
> independently of a thinking mind, as does a cat behind the couch. To
> say an idea 'exists' is nonsensical. Rather, there is thinking you are
> doing now, that is similar to thinking you are doing later or that I'm
> doing. We have a rough sense of what we mean by 'justice' but to say
> our ideas are 'the same' is insane. It's to suggest that justice is
> like a cat. We can test the DNA of the cat to see if we are referring
> to the same cat. 'Justice' has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
> exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of organizing our thinking; it
> doesn't refer to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.
As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by DharmaTroll):
�If men define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences.�
Iow, what people believe is real will have real effects.
It's like with paranoia: what people believe is real
(whether it is real or not) will have real effects. If
people believe that God rewards them for accepting
him and punishes them for rejecting him, then that is
what happens to them, even if they are raging
anti-God rebels. They just don't finish their rebellion,
but are stuck with both their God and their rebellion
against him. And their God (that they carry in their
head) keeps punishing them for their rebellion against
him, according to the rule that they learnt during their
inculcation into his monotheistic religion, which claims
exclusivity, not just with regard to his unicity (there is
only only one God, him, who therefore deserves that
word "God" all to himself alone, and nobody and
nothing else has the right to that word), but also with
regard to the the whole world, presumably created by
him, so that they still live on the earth created by him
and under the sky also created by him, soak in the
sun created by him, talk in the language laid down by
him and think in the thought invented by him, so on
and so forth, without end -- which explains why they
are so jumpy and edgy, as they are totally surrounded
by what they revolt against. Remember, they even
carry it in their head. They are locked up for good,
with dead finality. The locking up is permanent as it
has gained functional independence from its milieu of
origin -- it runs on its own, on the emotional fuel
invested by their dumb, thoughtless rebellion.
They may have learnt methods to get rid of him, but
they never bother to put any of them to practice to
really get rid of him (and all methods to get rid of him
are gentle, require subtility and non-resistance, and
basically unsubstantiate him to defuse his reality by
not lending him any imputed reality, slowly and
gradually -- letting sleeping dogs lie [but what reality
has he, other than imputed reality?]), because they
heatedly charge ahead into rebellion right off and
never have a glimmer that such hard-charging rebellion
only ensconces him more deeply into their mind, so
that he only becomes more real to them, as Thomas
says, even if only *in their mind*, but that is where it
counts, doesn't it? Doesn't the mind control everything,
as the very first verse of the Dhammapada (dear to
dar) says? Where does matter figure in there?
Anyway, the path to liberation is pointed out by the
Stoics: to disinvest from everything. It applies even
more poignantly in the release from all claims of
exclusivity. You have to disinvest from what you want
to let go of. But it has to be practiced, for real. Ardent
revolt is at antipodes with it. Lip service doesn't do
anything.
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph
>As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by DharmaTroll):
>
>If men define situations as real, they are real in their
>consequences.
I favor pairing that up with the slogan (attributed to Philip K.
Dick) "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in
it".
Together, they make the point that the 'reality status' of a
"consequence" is, across all pairs (situation, consequence),
related in no direct way (in particular, not in a 'truth-table'-ish
way) to the 'reality status' of the preceding (I won't say 'causal')
"situation".
In particular, things (including "situations") that do "go away when
you stop believing in them" can have "consequences" that don't (appear
to) depend on "believing in them".
I would put more on this sticker, but the margin of my bumper is
too small to contain it.
Lee Rudolph
Beerlet Dhiblang
> On Oct 28, 6:36 am, Beerlet Dhiblang <dodecapus...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Oh, so you're saying that the physical matter inside your head is
> > superior to an animate object that records information?
>
> The physical matter in my head certainly is superior to an inanimate
> object that records information. (You made a spelling mistake: were it
> an animate object, then it would probably be another brain, and my
> brain is probably still superior to that brain, simply because I have
> one of the most superior brains around, but I wouldn't know that for
> sure.)
>
> > And what differentiates a human brain from a dynamic, animate physical
> > recording medium? Memories? Motivation? Emotion? Ego?
>
> Again, you mean a dynamic, inanimate physical recording medium? You
> are asking me what the difference is between a human brain and a tape
> recorder? See, when you go all woo-woo you lose all common sense, and
> you can't tell the difference from a human being with a brain and a
> tape recorder. That's just plain silly.
Well, you're the strangest Turing device on the 'nyet anyone's ever
encountered ... so you could understand the confusion.... :-)
> > On the one hand you want to point to the physical basis of the human
> > mind and remove the spook. Good, fine.
>
> > But then because of those additional dynamic properties you now want
> > to put the physical media of human experience above the physical media
> > of other animate things that record information.
>
> Well, yeah. Tape recorders have just a couple of moving parts. Human
> brains have more neurons in them than there are stars in the entire
> galaxy. And their complexity is so far unfathomable.
Right-o.
The neural systems of creatures are nodes of complexity existing in
non-complex surrounds.
No, wait, their surroundings are complex too.
OK, the experience of conscious singularity is an emergent property of
that complexity.
But the complexity is all that it is, and conscious mind is a dynamic
abstraction of the constant flux of coarising phenomena, both
intrinsic and extrinsic, from within and without.
To say all coarising phenomena are fungible or equivalent would be too
simplistic. To say they enjoy parity on a fundamental level would be
true however. Given reasonable parameters everything coarises and
interacts simultaneously together and are capable of somehow storing
the information of past events and are changed in the process.
The events experienced by a non-conscious animate device can be
recorded. This is not a category error, this is fundamental to
information.
So an atomic clock orbiting the earth has a different record from an
earthbound equivalent, each experiencing different rates of coarising
frames. The equivalent astronaut experiences the same thing as his
atomic clock, he & it have traveled from the past into the future at a
slightly faster rate than everyone else.
So here's a case where the rate of experience passing through
extrinsic information is fundamental to all things, not just conscious
things. The medium of space-time imparts this constraint on existence,
that since the physical medium of space has a speed limit then
something has to give, and that something is the rate of experience.
The astronaut will always live 72.65 years (barring intervening fate
to the contrary) but by a solely earthbound metric he'll live 72.70
years. He & his atomic clock's experience lines are fixed, but to
everyone else their existence and experiences have been stretched
thinner across the fabric of time-space. To the astronaut and the
clock, the space-time world around them appears compressed (in the
case of speeds in excess of 0.9C, 1000's of years could go by in the
span of a few short months...).
The point to all this relativistic talk is that at a fundamental level
there is an essence in coarising phenomena - whether reflected in
conscious experience or not - that is directly experienced whether
there's a conscious mind to perceive and respond to the essence of
constant flux or not.
A housefly's neural system is many orders of magnitude more advanced
than a nematode - we know it enjoys some kind of basic experience,
there's some kind of basic ability to learn & make decisions. The
nematode is still experiencing flux and essence as well. Creatures
don't need consciousness in order to experience. There's an awareness
of extrinsic flux, even in simple creatures.
OK, take away an active neural network, what is left for a creature to
experience? Well, the essence of flux is still there, there's just no
biological medium (the neural system) that creates some partial
facsimile reflection of events in its surrounds.
Now enter the Buddhist use of the word "Mind." This is where "Mind,"
"experience," "flux" and material essence start sounding synonymous.
But the Buddhist meaning of Mind shouldn't be lost, because what Mind
is is a reflection of flux from one of the five aggregates. The
phenomonological flavors stimulating a conscious mind at the time are
immaterial (intrinsic, extrinsic, aggregate 2, 1 or 5 don't matter),
it's experiencing the constant flux of coarising interactions.
Conscious experience via the extrinsic aggregates is a bowdlerized
facsimile. Pure thought (reason or logic) might be considered more
pure (doesn't matter if the reasoning is flawed...) and so the
solipsistic experience proffers immaculate mind.
But the conceptual model of Mind is not woo-woo'ist. It's just a
conceptual model that levels the playing field of intrinsic mental
phenomena against external ones, showing the observer mind that it's
not so privileged in the realm of coarising phenomena.
> > This is the same
> > argument for God in religious tomes, that man is qualitatively
> > *better* or superior to everything else.
>
> No, it's not. Rather, I'm only suggesting that (1) the only sentient
> critters we know of have brains, and (2) the human brain is the most
> complex object/system in the known universe.
Well, you did say they were superior to a tape recorder above. But
I'll let you pass ... this time!
> As for 'better', that's a value judgment. I'm just saying "smarter"
> and "more complex". If we pretend that the world is an illusion and
> just pollute it and multiply like a virus and run out of food, or blow
> each other up, then we'll go extinct and not be so 'better' after all.
> But we do have the greatest complexity. That's all I'm saying.
Aaaaahah! So you admit we're not so special after all...
> > That is, Dear Trollpa, you're using your materialist argument to put a
> > ghost back into the machine.
>
> No, I'm not. I'm saying that when the physical system of billions and
> billions of neurons are organized into dynamic, functioning brains,
> that no ghost is needed, that the system is conscious all by itself.
But, if your argument is that conscious experience is qualitatively
different from material flux elsewhere then you do risk putting a
ghost into the machine.
> The latter is more reasonable,
> like the brains being conscious, because I can explain the event
> without positing an ineffable deva, much less the realm it comes from,
> much less explain how the differing realms interact -- I can simply
> say that brains are probably conscious and that when I see a dent,
> that means that a tangible person in a tangible car probably bumped
> into miy car.
Right, so animate consciousness can recall, interpret, and predict
events that less capable things cannot. But the basis for that ability
is still material and the material basis of it -- a neuron, the
molecules within the cell, etc. - has no more consciousness than an
atom from a stone.
Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity and is constrained
within the boundaries of an animate system more complex than its
surrounds.
But flux, essence, phenomena are not so constrained parametrically.
Semantic question moment here: Is flux mind or is mind flux?
So where is Mind, Trollpa?
/"May I Never Achieve Enlightenment" Dibbleebert
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>
> > On Oct 28, 7:51 am, Hollywood Lee <hollywood...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 10/28/2009 6:34 AM, Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>
> > > > On Oct 28, 7:24 am, Hollywood Lee<hollywood...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> On 10/28/2009 6:06 AM, Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>
> > > >>> On Oct 28, 12:51 am, DharmaTroll<dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > > >>>>> Existential awe isn't limited to only those material experiences,
>
> > > >>>> Since there is no other type of experience, it is. There is no such
> > > >>>> thing as a "non-material experience". Unless you mean thinking, and
> > > >>>> that's really just pseudo-auditory and pseudo-visual sensation which
> > > >>>> is highly interpreted.
>
> > > >>> What else would I have meant? 4-D space gods hatching eggs in my
> > > >>> brain?
>
> > > >>> We're not automata that only responds to extrinsic stimuli. It's not
> > > >>> like we're going backwards to a sensorium& a lil' man in our heads&
> > > >>> that looks like B.F. Skinner.
>
> > > >>> We all experience intrinsic events, some more primordial than others.
>
> > > >>> The salient point about existential awe is that an observer can
> > > >>> recognize how both his experience and identity as a separate entity
> > > >>> are both unique and non-unique, separate and fungible in a momentary
> > > >>> epiphany of self-disassociation.
>
> > > >> So you both have an experience of existential awe, though your
> > > >> after-the-fact interpretations of that experience differ, with DT saying
> > > >> it is purely material, yet awe inspiring and you seeing it as not so
> > > >> limited, but as a momentary epiphany of self-disassociation.
>
> > > >> At the level of actual practice, at the point of understanding suffering
> > > >> and the cessation of suffering, how does this difference matter?
>
> > > > In the context of whether anyone's guilty of woo, it's not just a nit-
> > > > pick, I'm trying to shine some light on something that Trollpa's
> > > > missing.
>
> > > > In one sense you are so correct that the difference is immaterial,
> > > > which works with my argument that minor differences in modeling
> > > > experience are also immaterial.
>
> > > > I brought it up b/c the ability to experience existential
> > > > disassociation exemplifies the recognition of fungible self and the
> > > > contiguity of experience, observer, and mind.
>
> > > Two questions, then:
>
> > > 1. Why is it necessary (or useful) to recognize the "fungible self and
> > > the contiguity of experience, observer, and mind."
>
> > It's useful b/c it lays open the extent of openness (emptiness) that's
> > available when taking self out of the picture. Although there is no
> > quintessential direct experience the recognition of contiguity is a
> > perfectly valid in the pursuit of cleaning up observer mind. There's
> > no woo in this at all, and from what I've observed the arguments here
> > have actually gotten hung up for lack of phrasing the method in a
> > different manner.
>
> > > 2. Is this recognition possible (or more likely) only if you approach
> > > it from your perspective versus DT's?
>
> > My gut reaction is that DT's approach stops short of being free to
> > play the different models against each other as metaphors and nostra
> > against embroilment.
>
> > > Just trying to figure out what is at stake with the debate that has no
> > > end.
>
> > Probably not much outside of the debate itself. If Keynes or
> > Bodhidumba successfully use the dharma with an ever so slight taint of
> > agnosticism then they're just as well off as DT.
>
> > > Maybe you are just saying what I've said in different terms, that
> > > dogmatic adherence to one view in the materialism/idealism debate is
> > > itself a potential impediment to a practice.
>
> > In the case of extremes, yes. But I doubt anybody here actually does.
> > DT does play the devil's advocate rather well though.
>
> > More than anything I'm questioning his seemingly anti-theist rhetoric
> > and attempts at dialectic pedagogy. But I did this 10 years ago with
> > him when he & Punnadhammo were mud wrestling.
>
> > It was amusing then too.
>
> > /l
>
> Lee fite!!!
Stop that... we're having a .... discussion. Now go play....
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> just as likely result in an affirmation of a self right in the middle of
> the awe, a result that is often te conclusion drawn from mystical
> experiences. So, I'm not sure your approach necessarily results in your
> goal, nor do I think it is necessary. But no matter, if it works to
> help you ease suffering.
As with all things, your mileage may vary.
Ease suffering?
No, this isn't the way. But what I want to demonstrate is that it's a
conceptual framework not necessarily a fetter leading to woooooooo
> Yes. I find it amazing that he can write what I tire just thinking
> about. It's like I have my own, energizer ghostwriter.
He's amazing, actively defending his ghostly writing in the machine...
/l
Hollywood Lee
But what is the purpose or function of this conceptual framework you
suggest? Does it open you up to something you value either in concept
or practice? Again, I'm just trying to understand what is at stake.
Certainly not just a label of woo/non-woo, is it?
Beerlet Dhiblang
I think it helps set the constraints on what observer is and isn't and
what other is and isn't.
Emptiness, openness and all that rot.
But you won't get me to swear to that....
/l
Hollywood Lee
Is it important that you have truly understood the nature/reality of
these constraints and the observer (what the observer is and isn't) or
is that just a faked up prop that is used because it is useful (in
easing suffering, in getting money in the collection plate, or something)?
Much like one of the pure land muckety mucks once admitted that the pure
land concept wasn't really talking about some actual place or dimension,
just a way to get people to break out of their "I" thinking. I think he
got slapped down for that little slip.
Julian
> On Oct 28, 11:27 pm, possum <jhk00B0Sn3VdC...@spambox.us> wrote:
>> On 29 Oct, 02:27, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>>> On Oct 28, 10:01 pm, possum <jhk00B0Sn3VdC...@spambox.us> wrote:
>>>> On 28 Oct, 23:20, DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> for each set of many things to which we give the same name�. That is,
> when you use the word �just� and I use the word �just�, what makes it
> one and the same thing that we�re talking about? Plato�s said: the
> Eternal Transcendental Form of Justice, the �one over the many.� Plato
> believed there was a non-conventionalist answer to questions of
> meaning: that there was exactly some one unique thing that is referred
> and I talk about justice, we are talking about the same thing. We
> belong to the same world, not each of us in his own private world. If
> right.
You can both be wrong though.
herbzet
D�j� Flu wrote:
> Hidden Draggin wrote:
> > herbzet wrote:
> >> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
> >>
> >>> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks
> >>> are maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
>
> "error"? They're conducive to murder, pain, suffering,
> environmental destruction, and a few other unhappy effects.
> Do you have some privileged definition of "error" as well?
Religions did not invent those things. As to whether religions are,
all told, conducive or resistive, I could not say.
> >> What a laugh. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, still rockin'
> >> away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
> >> our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
> >> selves out of existence.
>
> How does that privilege them and imply tolerance?
My remark did not address that point at all. It was directed
at the assertion that they were "maladative".
> "Ignorance is common, therefore it must be good (accepted)"?
A good healthy dose of stupidity seems to have survival value.
(How do you explain George Allen as senator/governor? :-) )
> Why does it have to extinguish "in our lifetime"?
I was just saying that they're non-mal-adaptive enough
to outlast you and me.
> No evolutionary
> advance did that in a single generation, so far as we know.
> Learn to think in fruit-fly time. In the evolution of mind and
> culture, we're living in a nano-second of it. The seeds of
> reason are growing. I think that's pretty encouraging.
Well, that's a good point. The dinosaurs ruled the earth
for 127 million years. We've been around as a species for
about 1 million years. (I wouldn't give you even money on
our being around for another thousand years.)
The features of an organism that favor selection -- well, what
period of time are you talking about? Sabre-tooth tiger fangs,
peacock tails?
For a time frame of a million years, there's no basis for
asserting either that religion is adaptive or non-adaptive.
We have no way of judging that.
> What a laugh, indeed.
>
> > Anything that endures must have some utility.
>
> Tell that to your appendix, toenails, and wisdom teeth, for
> starters.
Theoretically, you never know what features may become useful
again. Depends on selection pressure from the environment.
> > Very few people comment on the illusions such
> > as "Liberty" and "Justice."
>
> We're working on them, too.
>
> "It's not true that you can't get blood from a stone.
> It depends on how hard you throw it."
>
> > There is very little evidence that these things exist
> > but they, too endure.
>
> Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
> Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
> obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
> of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
> nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
> past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
> for it? Not me.
Approve, disapprove -- now you're getting away from scientific
fact and moving into the area of values -- traditionally
falling in the department of "ethics".
Perhaps you or the Trollpa would like to articulate a scientific
value system for humans?
Let me guess -- survival is paramount?
--
hz
Beerlet Dhiblang
Since half of it is metaphor then you could argue it's a prop. As for
its ostensible utility, or the importance of my having thought through
the value of my argument - I'm afraid you're suggesting far more
ambition in my discourse than intended.
I wouldn't propose you take my musings too seriously, I certainly
haven't. It would take some further reflection on my part to even
consider what impact such a model might portend. I'm just hashing it
as a one-off to give Trollpa & the denizenry a different angle to
consider.
> Much like one of the pure land muckety mucks once admitted that the pure
> land concept wasn't really talking about some actual place or dimension,
> just a way to get people to break out of their "I" thinking. I think he
> got slapped down for that little slip.
That takes us back to the problem of models-as-principles vs. models-
as-dogma: One man's gospel is another man's metaphor. I don't see the
problem in either use of any model, and although the latter is reputed
to be riven with internal contradictions, abuse does not nullify
proper use.
Or so it has been said.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> You can both be wrong though.
No, it has to be either-or. It says so right here, in the rules, there
must be a winner.
/l
DharmaTroll
Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
> OK, the experience of conscious singularity is an emergent property of
> that complexity.
I have no idea what you mean by 'conscious singularity'. You're again
adding terms without defining them. As for "emergent property" that's
one reasonable way of looking at it.
> But the complexity is all that it is, and conscious mind is a dynamic
> abstraction of the constant flux of coarising phenomena, both
> intrinsic and extrinsic, from within and without.
Now you've switched and are saying something else. In fact, you'd have
to write that run-on sentence in English for me to respond to it.
> To say all coarising phenomena are fungible or equivalent would be too
> simplistic. To say they enjoy parity on a fundamental level would be
> true however.
Again, unless you write this in English, I could interpret that in
about ten different ways as well.
> Given reasonable parameters everything coarises and
> interacts simultaneously together and are capable of somehow storing
> the information of past events and are changed in the process.
Another incomprehensible statement, from which you're trying to
conclude that clocks have feelings or whatever.
I'm just going to stop there. Try writing a post in English next
time.
Skipping down:
> The point to all this relativistic talk is that at a fundamental level
> there is an essence in coarising phenomena
Essences? Ok, you're arguing for souls or spooks of some kind, and
that clocks have souls or whatever. I don't see any evidence for any
essences at all, but I can't make sense of your talk to tell what
you're actually trying to say.
--DharmaTroll
Déjà Flu
>
> Dￜjￜ Flu wrote:
>> Hidden Draggin wrote:
>>> herbzet wrote:
>>>> Beerlet Dhiblang wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The irony here is that Trollpa claims that belief-based frameworks
>>>>> are maladaptive b/c they are conducive to error
>> "error"? They're conducive to murder, pain, suffering,
>> environmental destruction, and a few other unhappy effects.
>> Do you have some privileged definition of "error" as well?
>
> Religions did not invent those things. As to whether religions are,
> all told, conducive or resistive, I could not say.
That would be, "conductive", I presume? ("conducive" doesn't have
an opposite without a modifier - must be some electrical zen thang)
>>>> What a laugh. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, still rockin'
>>>> away strong, after all these millenia. Zero chance of extinction in
>>>> our lifetimes -- unless we have a major asteroid strike, or nuke our-
>>>> selves out of existence.
>> How does that privilege them and imply tolerance?
>
> My remark did not address that point at all. It was directed
> at the assertion that they were "maladative".
And I didn't ask it to. You said, "maladaptive", but should
have entered, "malad[d]itive" as a new word in the Post contest
(no knowing whether the necessary second "d" would have
disqualified it, but I might agree).
Back to, "maladaptive", though, there are many adaptations that
change from asset to liability in quite a short time.
>> "Ignorance is common, therefore it must be good (accepted)"?
>
> A good healthy dose of stupidity seems to have survival value.
> (How do you explain George Allen as senator/governor? :-) )
Probably the same way you explain George Allen.
>> Why does it have to extinguish "in our lifetime"?
>
> I was just saying that they're non-mal-adaptive enough
> to outlast you and me.
Of course. That doesn't mean we can't give 'em a little
assistance now and then. I'm busy cursing Halloween candy.
>> No evolutionary
>> advance did that in a single generation, so far as we know.
>> Learn to think in fruit-fly time. In the evolution of mind and
>> culture, we're living in a nano-second of it. The seeds of
>> reason are growing. I think that's pretty encouraging.
>
> Well, that's a good point. The dinosaurs ruled the earth
> for 127 million years. We've been around as a species for
> about 1 million years. (I wouldn't give you even money on
> our being around for another thousand years.)
Likewise. Even the US Defense (was that "offense?") budget
can't stretch that far.
> The features of an organism that favor selection -- well, what
> period of time are you talking about? Sabre-tooth tiger fangs,
> peacock tails?
>
> For a time frame of a million years, there's no basis for
> asserting either that religion is adaptive or non-adaptive.
> We have no way of judging that.
Some are claiming that it is adaptive in tribal formation
(and thus survival). It does look that way, even now, though
the paradigm of "survival" has shifted to memetic survival.
We (as a species) are no longer endangered by other species.
We are endangered by memes.
>> What a laugh, indeed.
>>
>>> Anything that endures must have some utility.
>> Tell that to your appendix, toenails, and wisdom teeth, for
>> starters.
>
> Theoretically, you never know what features may become useful
> again. Depends on selection pressure from the environment.
That's not a theory. It's a weak hypothesis that postulates
retention of (possibly) dangerous attributes (like religion).
It's a nice fiction but not a good argument.
>>> Very few people comment on the illusions such
>>> as "Liberty" and "Justice."
>> We're working on them, too.
>>
>> "It's not true that you can't get blood from a stone.
>> It depends on how hard you throw it."
>>
>>> There is very little evidence that these things exist
>>> but they, too endure.
>> Social agreements "exist" like "ideas" "exist"?
>> Maybe someday such things will be culturally and socially
>> obvious to barely deluded minds. We're hardly into 10,000 years
>> of recorded delusional history, Sandy. That's evolutionary
>> nano-time. And you want to just roll over and approve of the
>> past few millennia's fashion show because the MAJORITY votes
>> for it? Not me.
>
> Approve, disapprove -- now you're getting away from scientific
> fact and moving into the area of values -- traditionally
> falling in the department of "ethics".
I have no problem with rationality as the basis for ethics.
The problem I see is the New Dark Age, and not just on this continent.
> Perhaps you or the Trollpa would like to articulate a scientific
> value system for humans?
There are FAR too many rational points there for this small discussion,
but it is easier (set size and matrix vectors) to show where
irrationality (belief sets) are currently having very destructive
effects. In 25 years, assuming no turnaround, the population of
America will be as well educated and capable of reason as, say,
the population of Spain in the middle 1600's or today's Middle East.
Of course, I'm just predicting from current trends and being
pessimistic.
> Let me guess -- survival is paramount?
In many ways, yes.
Susan recently proposed that technology was the third replicator.
We had quite an argument there, since I proposed that reason
was shooting for #2 (vs memes) and no third had come up yet.
If reason's not, this discussion has been in vain. If we
(humanity) do not survive, perhaps the remaining cockroaches
will become compassionate. Does it matter? No. The answer to
your begged question has no meaning at all. You ask for purpose
and there is no answer to that, other than "Why does a dog lick
his balls?" (unless you propose to introduce The Cosmic Magician).
As I see the current struggle, it is now between reason and meme,
between belief (dogma) and science (a process). Those who accuse
science of belief or dogma are those who simply do not understand
the difference. We are, to put it simply, fighting over our own
minds and have been doing so for only ~10,000 years. Quite an
interesting evolutionary development.
I also think that Jaynes caught a glimpse of this in his seminal
book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
Mind". He had far less biological and evolutionary evidence for
his hypothesis, but he did notice that *something* had changed
in a relatively short period. It may have been the division of
belief and reason, possibly even the development of self-consciousness.
We dunno.
Know what sux? The lack of fossilized brains (not the current
living set - the long-dead ones) to study. But, hey, was there
something you wanted to say about buddhism? The best I can offer
there is great doubt and great determination - just like science.
Déjà Flu
> Their surroundings aren't anything as complex as brains.
I don't agree, but that's immaterial to the rest of this
"conversation". I've had something like this with leebert
before and couldn't figure out what he was trying to say.
Seems like some kind of apologist position while trying
to avoid out-and-out woo. It's been years and the only thing
I've been able to figure out is that he's definitely brighter
than a Karen Armstrong (that's two parts gin, two parts tequila,
one part creme de Y'vette, one part blue curacao).
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph wrote:
> Tang Huyen:
When one drops everything and opens up, one
suspends belief and disbelief, and it can be said
that in such moment, one stops believing in
everything, even if one is still aware that what
happens still happens and has not vanished. If
one stops chunking and bagging, one still
experiences what happens, though one no
longer believes (for the duration of such
stoppage) in the products of chunking and
bagging. One still experiences something that
is like the whole of sensation, the Hegelian
concrete universal, the Spinozan substance
that is the thing of all things (Spinoza does
not call his substance the thing of all things,
Ernst Cassirer does), with all its differentiation,
though one refrains from cutting it up and
chunking and bagging the bits, so that the stuff
from which the empirical units of normal life
(built up by chunking and bagging such bits)
would be produced is still there, in all its
vibrance, but the empirical units of normal
life are not produced. The concrete universal
is there, but the particulars that would be
produced from it by chunking and bagging
(by means of the abstract universals, like
concepts) into the empirical units of normal
life are not.
What is unexpected is that when one so
suspends belief and disbelief, iow when one
does not believe in anything any more,
Mother Nature comes in and fills one up
with serenity and wonderment, all unasked.
Not only does what happens not vanish, but
it happens in the company of serenity and
wonderment, none of which is actively
produced by one. It merely happens that
way (and one hasn't to believe in it). Any
belief or disbelief would instantly block it.
Such state of release is at antipodes with
what one can observe day in day out with
the locked-up people, like DharmaTroll
and Fu, with their incredible tension.
The morale is that if one stops believing in
the details, their whole does not go away
but shines forth all the more gloriously.
But such result is purely subjective, strictly
sentimental and there is no reality to it,
except the feeling. However one has to
drop all belief and disbelief to get there.
What one does (namely, suspending all
belief and disbelief) is purely subjective,
strictly sentimental, and what happens
thereupon is also purely subjective,
strictly sentimental.
<<We can test the DNA of the cat to
see if we are referring to the same cat.
'Justice' has no DNA or structure to
test. It doesn't exist. The word 'justice'
is just a way of organizing our thinking;
it doesn't refer to something the way
'cat' refers to a cat.>> DharmaTroll.
That is exactly what I mean when I
say that an experience is purely
subjective, strictly sentimental, in that
it is just a way of organizing our mental
space, whether the latter contains
thought (or anything else) or not, it
doesn't refer to something the way 'cat'
refers to a cat. If one organizes one's
mental space in harmony and accord,
then one organizes one's mental space
in harmony and accord. Same with
dysharmony and disaccord. The external
world is the same, only the way one deals
with oneself changes.
But a metaphysical question that is a
favourite with some philosophers is: you
can point to a cat, but you cannot point
to its existence. You can say that a ghost
does not exist, in that you cannot point to
something and say that it is a ghost, but
you cannot point to its non-existence,
either. Heh! Woo in full!
Tang Huyen
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Ron Fuller:
>
> > at least tang likes to admit that it's all subjective. you on
> > the other hand infer that yours is real because it's "science".
>
> Actually, Tang acts as if his bios of me or fu or sphere or jigme are
> real. My comments about people's personal lives are all barbs and just
> to get a reaction, on the other hand. Whereas I do try to talk about
> what is, in the real world and don't behind talk of closed-loop
> masturbatory idealism. Tang may say all is fluff, but I say that if
> you step out into the highway, the truck will crush you.
My bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you can be
all wrong factually, but their factuality (or
lack thereof) is not the point. The point is
that they make their intended recipients jump.
And if they make their intended recipients
jump, then they are real. Who knows what
the truth is with regard to such people?
Factual truth is perhaps inaccessible, even to
such people themselves. But with mere
words on the screen, if they can be made to
jump, then what makes them jump is real.
As W. I. Thomas said (this was quoted by
you):
�If men define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences.�
If Fu, Jigme, Sphere or you take my mere
words on the screen for real -- as something
real, to be reacted to accordingly -- then
they are real. No further requirement is
needed.
<<We can test the DNA of the cat to see if
we are referring to the same cat. 'Justice'
has no DNA or structure to test. It doesn't
exist. The word 'justice' is just a way of
organizing our thinking; it doesn't refer to
something the way 'cat' refers to a cat.>>
My mere words on the screen -- which
pretend to be bios of Fu, Jigme, Sphere or
you -- represent just a way of organizing the
thinking of said people in such a provocative
way as to make them jump; it doesn't refer
to something the way 'cat' refers to a cat. If
they make them jump, they have served their
intended purpose (sorry for the pleonasm)
and are therefore real. They, mere words on
the screen, have transmitted an intention, and
the latter is received and acted on, from mind
to mind. You can't point to an intention like
you can point to a cat, but an intention is
nevertheless transmitted and acted on. It is
woo and it works.
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll
I can't make much sense of Leebert, but I liked Karen Armstrong's "The
History of God". And even better, her "The Gospel According to Women"
where she argues strongly that Christianity's traditional hatred of
women and of the body still cripples woman's self-image today. That
may be her best book of all, and I think she gets it right in that
one. Haven't read her new "The Case for God" yet.
I don't know if you are calling Armstrong 'stupid' simply because
she's religious, or what. I see her as a good example of a highly
religious person who is sane rather than superstitious as are so many
transcendental whack jobs on this list. Don't get your dislike of her,
Flu.
--DharmaTroll
“It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of
thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have attained the
age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at history, and does
not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a novel, an opera or
a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game that transfigures our
fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to glimpse new possibilities by
asking 'what if?' -- a question which has also provoked some of our
most important discoveries in philosophy, science, and technology.”
-Karen Armstrong