Further fairytales from Yaron Brook

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

From your reading and background knowledge, just how large was Oppenheimer's religiosity?  I haven't on first look found that he identified as Hindu.

William,

I've only read superficially about Oppenheimer. I'm not sure what religion he formerly belonged to. I doubt it was Hindu, but seeing the enormous variety of religious factions within the Hindu culture, he might have been one. (There are many more kinds of Hindu religions than Christian divisions.) I suspect he was a deist of some sort without a specific denomination.

btw - I know a little about Hindu because I'm on my second pass of a wonderful Great Courses course: Sacred Texts of the World with professor Grant Hardy. The way I study these courses is to listen to one lecture a day until the end (this course has 36 lectures so that means 36 days--each lecture is a half an hour). Then I print out and bind the PDF. Then for the second pass, I first read the chapter on the lecture I am going to listen to and mark the text up with stuff I find interesting or want to remember. After that, I listen to the lecture. As this is the second time and I have interacted with a written text, the information sticks--at least enough to know what I need to look up if I ever get interested in that again. And in a about two and a half months, I have finished an entire lecture series.

I'm doing this particular course to get a notion of the different religions. Man, was this an eye-opener. (Hardy even considers the Constitution of the United States to be a secular sacred text. And it works according to his criteria.  )

I know enough about Oppenheimer to know that he spent the last part of his life campaigning against the use of atomic weapons and fell out of political favor because of it. If I'm not mistaken, he died a bitter man. I actually have two books about him, Now it Can be Told, and American Prometheus.

I intend to read both, but I don't know when. Ah me, life is short and this stuff is long...

Oppenheimer's story makes one hell of a classic "scientist invents the monster" story. The atomic bomb was his Frankenstein Monster.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

54 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality. 
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
In Physics in the Contemporary World (1949), 20. 

William,

In the course I took on evil, this is one of the forms of evil--the kind tied to knowledge. (As an aside, there are several forms of evil throughout history. The most destructively ubiquitous kind is also the most banal--it's the kind where bureaucrats turn into mindless robots who destroy people and stuff because the only emotion they feel about it is that's their job.)

Back to point. Once the human community gains access to new knowledge, unintended consequences arise, often destructive ones. And there is no going back. This can be evil, but not always. It varies. Oppenheimer obviously felt the atom bomb was a case of evil.

On a symbolic level, this is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge myth in Genesis. Pandora's box is another. Or Arjuna seeing what Krishna's view was in the Bhagavad Ghita (albeit this story has a different nuance since duty to caste and dharma is bound up in it). 

Michael

[william.scherk]

I am glad I followed Michael's Great Courses note -- it is part of the regular advertizing on one of my favourite podcasts: The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.  The oldest of the SGU folks is Steven Novella, who has two Great Courses under his belt.

Today is the last day of some titanic savings at Great Courses. For example, one of the Great Courses by Novella, Medical Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths: What We Think We Know May Be Hurting Us, is not $251.95, but $69.95 (for the DVD version), until midnight. 

This is the one that Santa says he will buy me at today's low price of $29.95 (instead of regular $199.95): Earth's Changing Climate, by Richard Wolfson.

Here's what else helped me make the Xmas request, a review from someone who bought the course to discover "The Other Side's" views -- to reinforce his beliefs -- and in the process of learning, learned he was no longer quite so skeptical of basic premises ... if not quite up to speed with terminology.

Quote

This skeptic is now less skeptical...

 

Date:October 21, 2016

 

 

...about anthropomorphic climate change (or ACC, aka AGW = anthropomorphic global warming). Prior to listening (yes, I listened to the audio download) I was not a proponent of ACC, in fact I doubted its scientific validity (the man-made parts). Due to my background in earth science, I believed that the earth's climate can change...sometimes rapidly and drastically... and has changed countless times in the past. I have witnessed geologic evidence in a variety of environments, from 2.2 billion year-old rocks in the upper peninsula of Michigan to the breathtaking valleys of Yosemite. While not denying that global temperatures are rising, I doubted that it was man-made.I bought this set of lectures to reinforce my beliefs by learning more about what 'the other side' believed. Unfortunately, Dr Wolfson's lectures caused me to rethink my position and drill down a little deeper into the subject and check into the more current thinking of this controversy. The first six lectures examine the scientific methods by which the ACC theory is based (and the IPCC)...particularly in the measurement of CO2 in the atmosphere, and how it can be 'fingerprinted' back to a source using 13C/12C ratios (Lecture 7). That particular point triggered my curiosity, and pushed me onto other sources and beyond the scant notes and graphs included in the lectures. One must look at other skeptical science points of view. The web can provide the student with a list of points made by climate change skeptics accompanied by explanations and data supporting the ACC/AGW point of view. These arguments pick up where Wolfson leaves off, and updates and confirms his conclusions with data. Thank you Dr Wolfson for a stimulating set of lectures, presented in a high-energy, rapid-fire way. I'm glad I found this set on sale and with a generous coupon (it cost under $0.50/lecture). Recommended for all those who might be interested in learning. "

Santa found a coupon code for further savings: with free shipping, the entire cost is $22.34. 

 

[BaalChatzaf]

After  Oppenheimer said: Now I have become death the destroyer of worlds  etc....   one of the other physicists  added  "Now we're all sons of bitches". 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

51 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Santa found a coupon code for further savings: with free shipping, the entire cost is $22.34. 

William,

Go to Great Courses Plus. Click on "View Plans." (Not an affiliate link, but God knows why I didn't put one.  )

I get most of the Great Courses online that way (Plus is their streaming service) and they are adding more and more of the older ones (and making new ones) each month. As of now, there are over 8,000 lecture to choose from. That's probably around 250 courses or so. It's more than I will be able to go through.

I pay about 20 bucks a month. And the first month is free.

It's not as good as the DVD because you have to print out the PDF instead of getting an insert, and, of course, if you stop paying, you stop watching, but the trade-off is wonderful.

I do one or two lectures a day, depending on if I am doing one or two courses. (Right now I am doing two, one on Sacred Texts and the other on Storytelling--and I'm doing both on my second pass through). I don't like to do two lectures of the same course in one day because of the need for the information to settle in my brain.

Michael