Carlos Castaneda

[moralist]

Sure. Mindless chaos by definition includes infinite options... but they're all still mindless chaos.

So feel free to pick whatever you want from that infinite chaos buffet. But if you pause for a closer look, you just might discover that all of the choices are coming off of the same mindless plate...

...while in contrast, on the mind plate is a singularity.

A Big Bang?

--Brant

That was just a spontaneous play on words.

I was referring to the singular truth of an infinitely intelligent Mind behind the design of all of the physical (light/space/time/energy/matter/gravity/chemistry/etc.) laws which govern the universe... as well as all of the moral laws which govern human behavior. Not to mention the infinite power to bring everything into existence from nothing.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] the singular truth of an infinitely intelligent Mind behind the design of all of the physical (light/space/time/energy/matter/gravity/chemistry/etc.) laws which govern the universe... as well as all of the moral laws which govern human behavior. Not to mention the infinite power to bring everything into existence from nothing.

Greg

Did the "infinitely intelligent Mind" bring itself into existence from nothing?

Too hard to resist asking.

And too hard to resist mentioning: there are more than one theory on the "mind" side as well, including some early versions of Christianity which subscribed to the idea of an evil demiurge as creator of the physical world and forever locked in battle with the good god of which Jesus was a non-physical emanation.

Ellen

[moralist]

Did the "infinitely intelligent Mind" bring itself into existence from nothing?

Too hard to resist asking.

Feel free to ask, Ellen. But not me, because I'm the wrong person to ask. Choice is non-transferrable, and is the sole property of the chooser. If you like the choice you have already made then there's no need to ask. And if you don't, when you least expect it, your life will provide you with an experience possessing enough seismicity to offer you the opportunity to let go of your choice so that you can choose again.

And too hard to resist mentioning: there are more than one theory on the "mind" side as well, including some early versions of Christianity which subscribed to the idea of an evil demiurge as creator of the physical world and forever locked in battle with the good god of which Jesus was a non-physical emanation.

Ellen

Please pick your favorite from the never ending all you can eat buffet of lies. Where do you hide a needle but in a pile of needles. But to a peculiar singular eye that looks into the mind and heart from the objective external point of view of an impassive stranger... the single real needle glistens like the Sun among the infinite number of dark tarnished fakes.

There is Something that loves us far beyond your wildest imaginings, and patiently waits to give us our hearts true desire. Almost no one ever asks the right question. But for whoever does... the answer is always yes.

Greg]

[Selene]

You mean a Paul on the way to Damascus event? Or, a Sargeant Alvin C. York event. I know you do not mean Alan Funt and Candid Camera...

And if you don't, when you least expect it, your life will provide you with an experience possessing enough seismicity to offer you the opportunity to let go of your choice so that you can choose again.

[tmj]

Does that mean that god has no proof of my existence, in order to love me? Before anyone answers ,think if the answer may presume to know the will of god.

[moralist]

You mean a Paul on the way to Damascus event? Or, a Sargeant Alvin C. York event. I know you do not mean Alan Funt and Candid Camera...

I don't know.

I only know that it takes a genuine life altering experience for a person to let go of the choice they had already made so that they can choose again. Short of that, you die with what you already chose. But that's not as dire as it might sound, for you're certain that you had already made the right choice so there is no reason why you wouldn't be perfectly content to live and die by it.

Greg

[Serapis Bey]

Eric,

What in hell is a "Good Jew"

Poor elocution on my part. I was pretty deep into the bottle at that point.

What I was trying to get at (in my inebriated way) was the issue of personal selfishness vs. social cohesion. You guys spill lots of ink lambasting our sociopathic elites and their loss of noblesse oblige towards the country as a whole. You dress up the debate in terms of "altruism", "collectivism", "reason", etc., but lets be real. The progressives (hi Carol) have your number on this point. In reality it comes down to "I.G.M." -- "I Gots Mine". Those with power will do what it takes to consolidate that power because it is IN THIER INTEREST TO DO SO. They feel no obligation to give a damn about those lower on the pecking order. The Constitution is now a dead piece of parchment, as Ba'al has often noted. What force does your "Rea$on" have in lieu of this fact?

I mention "The Jew Thang" because this clash of values has been at the heart of Jew/Gentile conflict throughout history. (Consider the debate over usury laws.) This aspect of Jew/Gentile conflict serves as an object lesson in clashing moral values. The issues I raised in my previous post need not remain abstract and untethered from reality -- we can simply look at HISTORY and place a microscope on the petri dish of two worldviews colliding. We can SEE, on the chessboard of life, how these abstruse concepts play out. That's all I'm saying. I don't mean to bang the Jew drum, but there is a tension between competing weltanschauungs that deserves a closer look. End the Fed!

(I should point out that my friend Robert Baratheon left this forum after he made a good faith effort to address the very issue of amoral oppurtunism, how it plays out in reality, and what injunctions, if any, Objectivism had to offer. For the most part, he was handwaved away, if not misrepresented. He was eager to roll up his sleeves and get down to brass tacks in order to address this moral thicket. I'm not surprised at the response here: the Prudent Predator argument is one of Objectivism's "thermal exhaust ports". Just saying.)

It seems both MSK and Greg have thrown their lot in with Da Jews:

His David DeAngelo material still sells in the tens of millions of dollars every year, drip drip drip, and for every detractor you mention, he has 100's of supporters...

A sucker is born every minute...

I don't like the PUA stuff except where the techniques transmute into busines

It doesn't matter if the product is legit? As long as it makes money?

http://scambust.org/david-deangelo-is-a-scam-heres-why/

btw - Eben is the reason I believe Nathaniel Branden has a good-sized nest egg in the sunset of his life. He got a bunch of top direct-response guru-type marketers to sell a Self-Esteem package of several products to their email lists, some of which have millions of subscribers, and those that don't have hundreds of thousands, at $600 a pop.

Oh, I don't doubt lots of money was made in the selling of "information". I'm certain those appraising their bounty "experience themselves as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness." Quite certain.

Returning now to the more significant topics in this thread, I would very much like to hear Stuttle's or Kolker's thoughts on the issue I raised a few posts back. This thought experiment is so elegant that I am surprised I hadn't encountered it -- I'm sure it originates with Searle of Dennett or some philosopher I haven't read before. Craig Weinberg elucidates it thusly:

“Consciousness allows us to do these things better.”

No, it doesn’t. It only seems that way because we are conscious. If our immune system could argue, it would say that unconsciousness is certainly superior to consciousness in every way.

Once you have conflated your own sense of human consciousness with the principle of awareness in general, it is very hard to separate the success of the human species from that misguided equivalence. Humans have a high quality of consciousness, so we have an advantage in more cases than disadvantages. That is not to say that an unconscious creature could not behave in exactly the same ways as we do, simply by making computations and without having some kind of presentation of those computations.

It doesn’t even have to be about consciousness. Let’s make it easy. A computer can drive a car without installing a TV screen inside the CPU to project images on. The computer need not render its detections of the outside world graphically. It certainly would not invent graphics or geometry to do such a thing, and we know that computers don’t do that already. If they did we wouldn’t need video monitors, we could just tap right into the computations themselves and look at them, or taste them, or listen to them. But it isn’t like that. Information processing is anesthetic and abstract. It has *no possible* means or motives to actualize itself aesthetically or concretely.

So yes, richer, deeper aesthetic qualities correlate to deeper quantitative nestings, but while you can derive quantites as a base level quality, no degree of computational complexity, in and of itself, will ever have need of a single quality. Computation is one dimensional – binary. Survival only benefits by more sophisticated programming, not by any kind of qualitative experience. Why feel pain when you can simply have a physical mechanism which enforces the behavioral logic which we associate with pain? In the end, the idea that pain can cause behavior change is circular. Why do we change our behavior because something hurts? Well, because if it hurts that means it is threatening our health. How do we know that that sensation of hurting means anything at all? Well, it’s hardwired into our brain. So why does our brain need to tell itself what the message means directly instead of converting it to an unexplained “hurt” and then converting it back into a receiver of hurt who changes the behavior which could have been changed in the first place directly by the brain? Pain hurts because hurt is painful. There’s no getting under it. There’s no reason why some signal should be felt as anything at all – it’s simply information to be classified with a high priority in the processing queue, nothing more. To suggest that consciousness offers more than unconsciousness demands that we see unconsciousness from this other vantage point. From a more neutral, scientific view however, it is clear that consciousness is functionally inert and redundant.

Why qualia, Kolker?

[moralist]

You guys spill lots of ink lambasting our sociopathic elites and their loss of noblesse oblige towards the country as a whole.

I'd just like to weigh in that I'm not one of "you guys", as I've never disparaged the "elites". Regardless of anyone else does, no one can prevent me from living a good life, because wealth is not a zero sum game.

Sadly, it seems both MSK and Greg have thrown their lot in with Da Jews:

Although none of those subsequent quotes were mine, nevertheless you're quite correct in your observation that my lot is indeed thrown in with the Jews.

There is a basic spiritual goodwill of shared moral values between Jews and Christians. They're God's chosen people, and I've been honored to serve God's chosen people for decades. There is no better basis upon which to do business than shared morality. For it allows honoring the trust of the trustworthy by upholding their trust.

Ever wonder why Jews tend to be generally more successful than other groups? In Judaism, making money is regarded as a moral virtue... and it truly is. Success will naturally come to anyone who puts doing what's morally right first because that's God's promise to man. You don't even need to believe God exists to enjoy the rewards of His promise, because it is not based on what you believe... but on what you do.

Greg

[Serapis Bey]

You guys spill lots of ink lambasting our sociopathic elites and their loss of noblesse oblige towards the country as a whole.

I'd just like to weigh in that I'm not one of "you guys", as I've never disparaged the "elites". Regardless of anyone else does, no one can prevent me from living a good life, because wealth is not a zero sum game.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game? We will see.

Peak Oil (and the concomitant scramble for resources) might have something to say about that.

Sadly, it seems both MSK and Greg have thrown their lot in with Da Jews:

Although none of those subsequent quotes were mine, nevertheless you're quite correct in your observation that my lot is indeed thrown in with the Jews.

Do you realize Jews have been instrumental in the de-Christianization of your country? Does your love of money blind you to this social fact? This is of no concern to an Objectivist, but it ought to give someone like you pause. Unless you have already sold your soul, that is...

There is a basic spiritual goodwill of shared moral values between Jews and Christians.

On the topic of Israel, perhaps.

Otherwise, any Christians you encounter who feel this way have already been Judeaized.

(BTW, who was that black preacher who Rand lauded...you know, the one who said the best way to help the poor was to not be one of them?)

They're God's chosen people, and I've been honored to serve God's chosen people for decades.

You're what they call a "shabbos goy"

Ever wonder why Jews tend to be generally more successful than other groups?

I certainly have. Given your quasi-karmic view of morality it is no surprise you would attribute this phenomenon to their "hard work". It is a salutary belief. Fits in nicely with the idea that people are equal and only differ based on how "hard they work".

Calvinist.

Unfortunately for you, the biological reality is not so cut and dried:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/kim-beder.pdf

Read it and weep.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Unfortunately for you, the biological reality is not so cut and dried:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/kim-beder.pdf

Read it and weep.

SB,

Oh for God's sake.

I skimmed it and I only wept at the ignorance. The damn thing is based on IQ speculations goosed up with a scientific-like veneer.

Any idiot knows that IQ is no longer valid for just about anything in measuring cognition. It's at best a highly defective rule of thumb.

You should have known that if you want to prance about as the intellectual superior to everyone else around here.

What in the hell is wrong with you?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

(I should point out that my friend Robert Baratheon left this forum after he made a good faith effort to address the very issue of amoral oppurtunism, how it plays out in reality, and what injunctions, if any, Objectivism had to offer. For the most part, he was handwaved away, if not misrepresented. He was eager to roll up his sleeves and get down to brass tacks in order to address this moral thicket. I'm not surprised at the response here: the Prudent Predator argument is one of Objectivism's "thermal exhaust ports". Just saying.)

SB,

Does this gobbledygook mean anything?

Besides, nobody was "handwaved away." RB was preaching. I said he was preaching. He got pissed and left.

In poker, that's called a tell because that's exactly what preachers do when you don't agree with them and say they are preaching.

A person without hidden issues like preaching agendas, vanity, etc. laughs it off. They know who they are and are not threatened by disagreement. The preacher needs compliance and shadows. Sunlight makes him scurry away.

I know you want to stand up for your friend, but, jeez, can't you do a better job?

All this gobbledygook doesn't impress anyone if you miss the obvious.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Well, Michael, you really uncorked the bottle.

A "good Jew" is not a bad Jew aka a "New York Jew"?

Because of his comments about RB it's obvious that SB is serially disingenuous. Someone like Greg merely sticks to his guns and provides a solid point of reference. No matter what you think of his various positions you know what they reduce to. This guy, though, slip-slides all over the place. It's almost like SB is your reward for RB's leaving. Maybe it's a cosmic revenge thingy or this is some kind of one-time tag-wrestling.

--Brant

[moralist]

Wealth is not a zero-sum game? We will see.

I already know zero sum is a lie by my own personal experience. Serving others in goodwill with useful products and services creates wealth, because each voluntary equitable value for value business transaction betters both parties lives.

Peak Oil (and the concomitant scramble for resources) might have something to say about that.

( http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/11/the-remarkable-shale-oil-bonanza-in-saudi-texas-oil-output-has-doubled-in-only-29-months-to-a-33-year-high-in-september/ )

The remarkable shale oil bonanza in ‘Saudi Texas’: Oil output has DOUBLED in only 29 months to a 33-year high in September

Do you realize Jews have been instrumental in the de-Christianization of your country?

You're not talking about the religion of Judaism... but the secular political religion of leftism. It is by far the most dynamic, fastest growing religion in America.

Does your love of money blind you to this social fact?

I love doing what's right more than money... and whoever puts doing what's right over money, never needs to worry about money.

Otherwise, any Christians you encounter who feel this way have already been Judeaized.

The Christians I know love Jews,

for our Messiah is a Jew.

You're what they call a "shabbos goy"

I wear that title proudly.

Greg

[moralist]

Well, Michael, you really uncorked the bottle.

A "good Jew" is not a bad Jew aka a "New York Jew"?

Because of his comments about RB it's obvious that SB is serially disingenuous. Someone like Greg merely sticks to his guns and provides a solid point of reference. No matter what you think of his various positions you know what they reduce to. This guy, though, slip-slides all over the place. It's almost like SB is your reward for RB's leaving. Maybe it's a cosmic revenge thingy or this is some kind of one-time tag-wrestling.

--Brant

Tag Team... great image.

[Serapis Bey]

Any idiot knows that IQ is no longer valid for just about anything in measuring cognition.

That's something Progressives say, you know. Paging Stephen Gould...

It's at best a highly defective rule of thumb.

Despite the debates over the exact nature of "g", those in the field are unanimous on one point: this "property" measured by "g" is consistently correlated with life outcomes. I'm not interested in having this debate, but as Cochran says in the paper:

Whatever the reality or nature of g, for our purposes the important observation is that IQ

test scores work in the sense that they are the best available predictor of academic success

and job performance, especially for complex jobs (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994;

Gottfredson, 1997, 2002). They are also one of the best predictors available of family

stability, criminality, health, and lifespan (Gottfredson, 2004).

Word to the wise, Mike: don't speak too loudly about this line of thinking -- you won't get invited to the Cool Parties.

You should have known that if you want to prance about as the intellectual superior to everyone else around here.

I hardly think I'm an intellectual superior. Irreverent? Yes. I prefer to think of myself as an embodiment of hormesis, stress-testing smarter people's ideas.

Others might say I'm just a contrarian misanthrope.

As far as "prancing" goes...well...

Truth is after all a moving target... - Neil Peart

What in the hell is wrong with you?

Wouldn't you like to know...

(that makes two of us, actually)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Eric,

I thought you knew what you were talking about and was playing a mind game. But the fact is, looking at this last post, you simply don't know what you are talking about.

Whatever...

I'll spar on the mind game, but not on garden variety dumbness trying to play gotcha.

Get up to speed and maybe we'll talk. Or better, go back to your drink and keep imagining you are above it all...

Michael

[moralist]

Of course not -- an individual (an ego) is a a mere diffraction of the Original Absolute Inertial Frame. Think of a prism diffracting white light into its component spectra. You consider this Absolute Inertial Frame to be Jeebus. Craig Weinberg and assorted Panpsychics hew closer to the Eastern Tradition in considering this Absolute Inertial Frame as Pure Consciousness... you say "Tomato"...

Nevertheless, each individual's (limited) capacity for Awareness is the exact same Awareness shared by The Big Guy. This is what I mean by "the Self is the seat of All That Is". It is a co-creation. Big Mind and Little Mind.

I have to admit that a lot of your words go right past me, Bey. As I'm not a highly educated nor a well read deep thinking intellectual who revels in complexity. Lord knows, the government bureaucracy has already cornered the market on that! My predilection is more to simple elegant profound equations that directly apply to, and refine, my everyday life. Such as: "People treat you as decent as you are." I get that and, refer to it every day to better understand the implications of my actions.

if the Witness is the Core of Who We Are

Yes, it is... but it is only able to see by virtue of the light of Something Else.

The Primordial Sense. The original consciousness whose sensory-motor interaction with the World brought Space and Time into being. Existence requires Observation.

My wife and I remember this touching saying from a love story movie: "I will be a witness to your life." Simple. Elegant. Profound. Our lives do not go unnoticed by What made us.

Forget about notions of The Big Bang, of Something arising from Nothing. You and I know that is nonsense.

It's perfectly logical and rational to me that God created everything from nothing with a Big Bang.

I think Weinberg and the panpsychics are onto something with their notion of a "Big Diffraction".

Consider:

http://multisenserealism.com/thesis/7-space-time/big-diffraction-sole-entropy-well-model/

...then the language we extrude into the collective unconsciousness determines ALL.

I see that differently. In my view, language is just wordy descriptions of what is... and, in itself, is not and can never be what it can only describe.

Yes, "the map is not the territory", "the menu is not the meal"

That is true if we are talking about "pure awareness" or "things in themselves" (whatever that may mean). But as individual egos in a material universe, all we have is language to bridge the gap between our little individual worlds. In THAT world, language is PARAMOUNT. Don't fall to sleep, don't fall back into the primordial soup -- it has no practical import, even if God does love the attention (that narcissist).

I see that exactly in the opposite. God demands nothing while giving His attention to us as a Witness to our lives.

Focus on the here and now and the co-evolution that is occuring among all these consciousnesses(?) and minds.

Welp. I'm wiped out at this point. This is probably all gobbledygook. I wonder if we can derive some practical actions from all this nonsense?

That's the only value:

How we live as a result of what we realize.

Greg]

(Sorry... for some reason I'm stuck in default primitive edit mode. I hope you can discern who is saying what. Glad you used red! )

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I split off a lot of garbage from this thread (see here).

Michael

[moralist]

Generally when a salesman comes into your home he intends to make about 30% of the sale as commission. Anything less than $500 is not worth his effort. He intends to stay there several hours for the longer he talks the more likely the sale and a sale not cancelled. I tried this once years ago but the customers and I had fun talking to each other telling our stories and I didn't make any sales that stuck. When I went with another salesman to learn the ropes, I felt degraded by the crap he put out trying to get the sale. So I quit. The salesman that legitimately comes to your home is the guy trying to sell you something that attached to the home becomes "real property," like replacement windows or a new a/c system and it's at your invitation.

Good move. I'd quit, too. I've never spent one cent on advertising nor ever needed to solicit work. People seek me out for my expertise and skills.

If it's someone trying to get you to list your home for sale, 70% of what he does is get you to sign, 20% to effectively aid in negotiations, and 10% put the property into Multiple Listing. Then, if you have 1000 re agents in your city most are working for you to get you a buyer. Never mind the listing agent and all the things he told you about how he'd "sell" your home. (He can't sell what he doesn't own anyway.) It used to be it was practical to sell your home without the aid of a broker if you knew what you were doing. Not any longer. A buyer wants an agent for legal and financial protection in these screwed up markets, especially as you not he pays the 6% off the sales' price.

About 20 years ago I sold a townhouse myself with no agent. And the person who bought it also had no need for an agent. We simply hired an escrow company to handle the title search, the money, and transfer of the deed. And in 15 days escrow closed and the sale was complete.

I tell you... a little bit of Paradise comes down to Earth when you uphold the trust of the trustworthy. And it is all made possible by the exquisite beauty of shared moral values.

Greg

[Selene]

All they do is try to discredit this and that, sell snake oil like racism, immorality as virtue, Rand's ideas are crap and things like that. And I'm also wondering how far my patience will go with this.

Present even one time I've advocated racism, or immorality as virtue, or called Rand's ideas crap. You can't. You're literally making things up.

Please stop misrepresenting.

Robert:

I am certain that he was not putting you in those classes of folks.

You are being well over sensitive on that one.

A...

Adam,

I was. And am.

Cass Sunstein suckups are not my kind of people.

Michael

I am certain that he is not a racist which was my point. You know that I detest Cass Sunstein and his brother.

That was what I was addressing when I said you were not putting him in that group.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

I don't feel like quoting the post, but go back and see for yourself. He openly said he worked for Sunstein. And he continues as a federal regulator to this day. Once in a while this dude kept making comments about the futility of OL and the way we discuss freedom values while he was in a position to "really do something about it." And veiled threats about government harassment if we got out of line.

You know I don't go off on people for nothing.

I agree he did not show signs of racism. (I should have said bigotry, but I didn't detect that out of him, either. I was talking about his sidekick, who, thankfully, toned the bigotry down a bit.)

I swear, I don't agree with just about anything Kacy says (albeit I respect him and like him), but I certainly understand his frustration with this dude. It's like that movie Fatal Attraction.

Michael

[moralist]

You know that I detest Cass Sunstein and his brother.

When people are mentioned by name many times I have no idea who they are so it's fun looking them up to find out.

"The 'cash for clunkers' program was a big success

in part because it gave people the sense

that the economy was moving."

--Cass Sunstein

Detest?... you're being charitable, Adam.

Greg

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Greg,

I've actually read Nudge.

You wouldn't believe the pretentiousness. Sunstein helped coin the phrase libertarian paternalism and discussed it in the book.

He's one of those dictatorship by technocrat folks with a smile on his face saying, "Let's call it something else, shall we?"

Michael

[Selene]

Adam,

I don't feel like quoting the post, but go back and see for yourself. He openly said he worked for Sunstein. And he continues as a federal regulator to this day. Once in a while this dude kept making comments about the futility of OL and the way we discuss freedom values while he was in a position to "really do something about it." And veiled threats about government harassment if we got out of line.

You know I don't go off on people for nothing.

I agree he did not show signs of racism. (I should have said bigotry, but I didn't detect that out of him, either. I was talking about his sidekick, who, thankfully, toned the bigotry down a bit.)

I swear, I don't agree with just about anything Kacy says (albeit I respect him and like him), but I certainly understand his frustration with this dude. It's like that movie Fatal Attraction.

Michael

Michael:

Fair enough.

Again, as individualists, we are suspect of "team" at a number of levels.

I was not always accepting of that role in terms of our needs of pushing a united front.

However, as you know, I step back from disputation when it comes to OL's overall health because I value this place.

A...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

You're one of the good guys.

And you're an individual who speaks for himself, not for a collective. Which is what OL is all about.

Not everyone likes that role. But they sure like OL's audience, don't they?

(I like to brag about our audience because we have one of the finest, most intelligent ones of the entire subcommunity.)

Michael