Dr. David Skrbina, Unabomber, Panpsychism and Jesus |510|

Right on. All of these modern revolutionaries/anarchists are just spoiled pukes who use - and would literally die without - the technological and social structures that they rebel against like two year olds having a hate tantrum.

IMO Kazinski was exactly - and merely - one of those and a deranged sociopath on top of that. That is all.

Haha, so true, my brother! Also, I never really understood this Mandella in terms of being caused by Nelson Mandella dying in prison, then suddenly he is alive becoming the president of a country in Africa. Granted, I know the monopoly guy had a fucking monocle on the board game in the 80's, but I am pretty sure Mandella did not die in prison, but was simply released from prison to become president of his respective country later. However, I am almost 100% sure that Ted Kazinski hung himself with his own underwear in prison many, many years ago. I remember people talking about this because of the kid's uncle that was blown up from my high school, in the 90's! People talked about this guy hanging himself with his own underwear in prison, after the fact. Nevertheless, I look up Kazinski after this interview, and he is still alive? Total Kazinski affect!
 
agreed... and one step further... this is just unsupported philosophical bullshit... where was the data to support this idea..."

It might be true for some people maybe even most people and not others. Those who have a predisposition to be curious and enjoy learning and who have the ability to self-direct and set goals for themselves probably thrive in the environment where physical needs are easily met and there is a large amount of autonomy and the social fabric is somewhat weak allowing more freedom of choice and mobility. Those who don't have these predispositions probably are less psychologically healthy or happy in this environment... that might even be a majority of people (some call them NPCs) and the elites might even justify the planned de-industrialization on the premise that they are making the majority of people happier... "By 2030, you will own nothing and be happy." -World Economic Forum


https://www.forbes.com/sites/worlde...ifferently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=51243e501735
 
Last edited:
who the fuck is censoring all the curse words on this forum! Fuck that guy, let language bloom!
haha... it's just the transcription software I use does that.

OK, as far as measurements go, let me elaborate: it doesn't matter how careful you are or how exact that you try to be, nothing ever turns out to be exactly as it is measured. For a while, I thought I was losing my fucking mind. There are always constant, slight variations that cause the idea to not quite line up with the installation. Construction is the business of finger pointing for sure! The architect has his elaborate visions, called the God of the project, and is somewhat aloof to the designer, yet further removed from the various construction trades. The interior designer is often confused with the interior decorator, but they are two totally different modes of thinking.....such as a sculptor to a painter in some respects. I learned to respect everybody's particular trade; whether architect, interior designer, interior decorator, electrician, tile guy, cabinet guy, countertop guy, flooring guy, painter, etc., but most of these people only see things from their point of view......and see everybody else as an idiot! It is amazing how shit still gets built!
very interesting

I like the mathematician guy you interviewed concerning discernment, and whether or not we should just be silent forever because that was the language of God. In the interview, he was talking about some philosopher that shut the fuck up for 20 years or something like that. I thought that he was figuratively speaking, but it turned out that this "shut the fuck up and don't say anything guy" actually existed. Also, this mathematician, his name escapes me in this moment, said something on the lines of the following: if we are going to speak, and use language, let us be as precise as possible....and so mathematics is the best format for this.

I agree with him on many levels, but I also think that description through language is just as important as mathematics, and maybe even more so because it allows for imagination.

here it is:
Dr. Donald Hoffman, Materialism's Final Death Blow ... - Skeptiko

and I much as I love Hoffman's pushback, I can also see another side of it that relates to your point above. I mean who's to say a mathematical equation crafted song... or poem.
 
Those who don't have these predispositions probably are less psychologically healthy or happy in this environment... that might even be a majority of people (some call them NPCs) and the elites might even justify the planned de-industrialization on the premise that they are making the majority of people happier...

wow... great point... I guess I never really considered this other than in a cynical/ condescending way.
 
haha... it's just the transcription software I use does that.


very interesting



here it is:
Dr. Donald Hoffman, Materialism's Final Death Blow ... - Skeptiko

and I much as I love Hoffman's pushback, I can also see another side of it that relates to your point above. I mean who's to say a mathematical equation crafted song... or poem.

What fascinates me most on this journey toward non-dualism or spiritualism is how easy the perspective becomes lost. I was about to say "lost in the weeds," but that is a bromide far overplayed in the corporate conundrum. What you do that is absolutely unique is constantly point back to God. I don't think that most people can see that you are doing that because you fight so hard with that sword in the battle field.

Back to measurement, I know, I wasn't using a photon beam and so forth, but I am telling anybody, you cannot platonically transcribe reality into a viable digital format. Reality will just shit in your face. However, somehow, things still get built and life goes on. My father, who was a genius builder, spelt it out for me plainly one day. He built this three story treehouse in our backyard around an apricot tree. I helped him do it, and he did it with nothing but old pallets that we would pick up from trash yards. I said, dad, how do you do this? - And he replied, how does a spider build a web?

When I listen to you, Alex, and the way you challenge these scholastic geniuses, I see somebody not afraid to build something great.
 
It might be true for some people maybe even most people and not others. Those who have a predisposition to be curious and enjoy learning and who have the ability to self-direct and set goals for themselves probably thrive in the environment where physical needs are easily met and there is a large amount of autonomy and the social fabric is somewhat weak allowing more freedom of choice and mobility. Those who don't have these predispositions probably are less psychologically healthy or happy in this environment... that might even be a majority of people (some call them NPCs) and the elites might even justify the planned de-industrialization on the premise that they are making the majority of people happier... "By 2030, you will own nothing and be happy." -World Economic Forum


https://www.forbes.com/sites/worlde...ifferently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=51243e501735

Man, you are a fucking genius and I hope you get on Skeptiko with an interview with Alex.
 
wow... great point... I guess I never really considered this other than in a cynical/ condescending way.

I think that, for the most part, this so called "elite" are habitual animals, as most of us must be. They have never suffered extreme hardship that gives them any perspective whatsoever. I don't think that they chose their situation, just as the poor have not, either. Nevertheless, there is a strange brew of personalities that can exist upon both strata. For this to happen, one must separate oneself from anything expected. In reality, not a one of us is any greater or less than another.
 
wow... great point... I guess I never really considered this other than in a cynical/ condescending way.

Recent personal anecdote... I was going for a walk the other day and came across a little old beat up BMW with a young guy in it, a retail worker from Dick's Sporting Goods who had apparently just gotten off work and had rolled up against a curb at a somewhat busy intersection and appeared to be stuck.

I walked over there to see if he needed help. A few seconds later another guy walked up and then another guy in a truck stopped and got out to help. So in short order we had a team of 3 men ready to provide assistance. The kid explained that his gas pedal had stopped working. I told him to put it in neutral and we would push him into the adjacent parking lot.

All 3 of us men started pushing on the little car and it wouldn't budge.
We heaved and grunted and one guy slipped and skinned his knee. Our pride and egos were all a bit shocked for a moment or two.
Then the kid yelled out, "Should I take my foot off the brake?"
"YES!" we all shouted back in unison. And instantly the little car rolled off.

As we three strangers jogged along pushing the car, one guy scoffed aloud as he replayed the young man's air-head moment, "Hah... SHOULD I TAKE MY FOOT OFF THE BRAKE???" We all laughed.

We rolled him into a parking space as two police cars and a firetruck showed up, so our impromptu team immediately dispersed without another word to one another.

And as I walked on, I experienced a feeling of elation that is pretty rare in a world where I spend 40-60 hours a week staring at a screen working fully remote on a computer. A team of men working together exerting physical effort, accomplishing a goal, helping out, and having a good laugh... Such moments would be much more common in the native life... Again, I'm not arguing that we can or should go back to the Garden state just that we have to be conscious of the fact that there is a trade off here.
 
wow... great point... I guess I never really considered this other than in a cynical/ condescending way.

I have heard rumors from some who would know that, yes, certain mover/shaker elites think they would be doing the majority a big favor in the "great re-set" and doing themselves a good turn too, of course (funny how the elites always manage to eek out some "well deserved" benefit to themselves). In fact, growing up among elites, as a child, I heard similar ideology expressed quite openly. The elites have much disdain for the unwashed masses.

The idea is that the masses will get all the drugs and virtual entertainment that they want and their material needs will be allocated by the state (global state). They will be passive, stress free and protected as long as they stay in line. What they want will be shaped by the 5g media attached to their heads 24/7. And that, in turn, will be directed by central planners, resource availability, etc. It's all very Matrix/Brave New World.

Of course those not down with the plan are rebels and will need to be destroyed.

The lack of education in the humanities and history (old school definition, not gender studies and Roots) among the elites never ceases surprise me. Those that do have some background take away the wrong lessons.

Anyhow, it won't work because Americans are not used to being subjects; balless wonders like the Euros, Canucks, Brits and Aussies. There are at least 100 million well armed Americans that will fight back in all ways. When that happens - and it will - it will be a terrible bloody mess. But the conservatives - the freedom party - will prevail. I digress.
 
I didn't fully understand the philosophy debate. Philosophy has never been a strong suit of mine; frankly it bores me immensely- and mostly appears as word games to my mind. Anyhow, why is it wrong or difficult to say, "Consciousness is fundamental and foundational. It's all there is. Sometimes consciousness expresses as what we commonly call 'material existence'. Sometimes it expresses in non-material ways"?
 
I didn't fully understand the philosophy debate. Philosophy has never been a strong suit of mine; frankly it bores me immensely- and mostly appears as word games to my mind. Anyhow, why is it wrong or difficult to say, "Consciousness is fundamental and foundational. It's all there is. Sometimes consciousness expresses as what we commonly call 'material existence'. Sometimes it expresses in non-material ways"?
I think when Einstein said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." He was reminding people where the bar needs to be.
Everyone took that as meaning that we just have to understand how to explain things well..
Nope.
It means if you REEEEAAALY understand something, it becomes effortless to explain, and that means you genuinely know it.
 
I didn't find the squabble about the Unabomber very interesting.

My take on the monism vs dualism is that all scientific theories are ultimately temporary. Dualism make a lot more sense of the NDE data and a lot of other things, so science should run with Dualism with some weak interaction that is needed to transmit information between the two realms.

Monism or Idealism may have their day, but right now they just create mountains of waffle that are unconnected with the actual data - e.g. Bernardo's whirlpools etc.

People who object that Dualism has insurmountable problems should reflect on the fact that the two fundamental theories of physics - GR and QM are inconsistent - at least one has to be wrong in some way!

Also, many theories in chemistry only have finite applicability - push them hard enough and they break. If you take a flask of nitrogen (say) the school physics formula PV=RT holds approximately, but compress the gas and/or cool it enough and that relationship becomes less and less accurate until it makes no sense to use the formula.

The study of the paranormal doesn't need a theory that will withstand 1000 years of study, it needs one that is reasonably simple and can be applied to begin to make sense of existing paranormal data and suggest new experiments - such as determining whether psychic forces travel at the speed of light, or transcend it.

David
 
Real Question: Where's the donate button to get Alex to STOP talking about Josephus?
Seriously though. He has a guest who has an awesome opportunity to talk about the dangers of technology and he doesn't do ANYTHING about it? That's a debate that's sorely lacking and instead we get the same old tired Josephus discussion.
Alex: "Josephus is a Roman psy-op"
Guest: "That's not exactly what the text would imply"
Alex Next Week: "Everyone agrees with me on Josephus"
Jack to himself: "What does this have to do with anything? We will NEVER have a satisfactory answer for certain on this.
It doesn't prove that just because the Romans even did a psy-op with Josephus that this is occurring today."

Why do we care if Jesus was a real person or not? If his teachings were real or not? Let me clarify.
It was a really interesting idea the first time.
A decent conversation to plumb the second time.
Getting over tired ground by the third time.
Now it's just the same thing over and over again. There's no new information. No new accounts. No new ideas that we can get from this.
Can you maybe rebook this guy to talk about the dangers of technology?

As for the evils of the unibomber. That's well known. Of course, the Nazis discovered vaccine technology. If we didn't have that most people would be dead from Small pox, or polio, or scarlet fever, or etc...
From bad beginnings can come good things. Ask anyone who composts.
I hate to disagree with this, but I do.
I thought this was Alex’s best job yet of actually connecting the dots and simplifying the implication of his pitch which is that this was the moment where the grand snowball at the very top of the mountain began rolling.
Now, I disagree that Jesus as we understand Jesus is a lie. However, I’m fully open to the stories being all crafted. The part which I think is missing is that Christ Consciousness doesn’t need a historical document to vouch for it. Nor will there ever be a highly “Christ conscious” human who’s story will reach the world without being co-opted.
So my argument is that a co-opted Jesus is the best Jesus the powers that be will allow to make it into the history books.
 
What fascinates me most on this journey toward non-dualism or spiritualism is how easy the perspective becomes lost.

agreed... especially when it happens to people like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or Pattabhi Jois, or any of a thousand Christian evangelicals preachers. It's almost as if they have it and then loose it.
 
Christ Consciousness doesn’t need a historical document to vouch for it.

totally agree.

co-opted Jesus is the best Jesus the powers that be will allow to make it into the history books.

yeah, and we're talking about a lot of history books. I mean we reboot movies every 20 years... we could be looking at a jesus that's been rebooted a hundred times :)
 
You're just displaying your ignorance, David -- speaking out of your backside. Why on earth don't you look at BK's course on the Essentia website? It's anything but waffle.

Well I just looked very briefly, and his talks are still packed with metaphors. Let me repeat, I think Idealism may ultimately be true, and yet be incompatible with science at present.

Science is built on theories which are ultimately believed because they give rise to technology of some sort - long range predictions of planetary positions, lots of technology based on Newton's laws of motion, electrical technology spinning out of Maxwel's equations etc. etc.

Science only develops sensibly if it can be used in some way - although the technological consequences of science are usually seen as a spinoff, I think they are vital to the health of the subject. When that link gets broken, science can veer off in all sorts of crazy directions (such as CAGW, a subject which I know we both agree on).

How would you use BK's course to better understand something like cosmology, or climatology, or anything practical? The String Theory hypothesis is now coming under severe criticism for not being testable - every hypothesis in science has to be testable, at least in the medium term.

We need a theory that moves some way away from hard materialism, but which is still rooted in verification and some sort of technology (I use the term broadly - Mediumship would count as a technology if it were done Julie Beischel's way).

David
 
Well I just looked very briefly, and his talks are still packed with metaphors. Let me repeat, I think Idealism may ultimately be true, and yet be incompatible with science at present.

Science is built on theories which are ultimately believed because they give rise to technology of some sort - long range predictions of planetary positions, lots of technology based on Newton's laws of motion, electrical technology spinning out of Maxwel's equations etc. etc.

Science only develops sensibly if it can be used in some way - although the technological consequences of science are usually seen as a spinoff, I think they are vital to the health of the subject. When that link gets broken, science can veer off in all sorts of crazy directions (such as CAGW, a subject which I know we both agree on).

How would you use BK's course to better understand something like cosmology, or climatology, or anything practical? The String Theory hypothesis is now coming under severe criticism for not being testable - every hypothesis in science has to be testable, at least in the medium term.

We need a theory that moves some way away from hard materialism, but which is still rooted in verification and some sort of technology (I use the term broadly - Mediumship would count as a technology if it were done Julie Beischel's way).

David

You know, David, you've just skimmed the course and are still spouting nonsense about it. BK is attacking materialism using science's own methods, providing hard evidence along the way, which you'd know if you'd bothered to look into it more deeply. I have little patience with someone who pontificates without bothering to investigate properly.

Your asking me to show how I would use the course to better understand anything practical illustrates my point. What is more practical than understanding consciousness? In the end, everything we think we know is mediated by it. As BK says, physics is the science of perception rather than of reality, and to repeat, he provides hard evidence from physics and other disciplines to show it.

Technology is a red herring: engineers don't care about what is true, but what empirically works. They simply use materialistic models of reality to produce working devices, and there's no reason that they couldn't carry on applying models if the general acceptance of materialism changed to an acceptance of a better description of reality, such as idealism.

But what continued acceptance of materialism does is automatically restrict what kinds of technology can be looked into. It leads to dismissal or ignoring of evidence that doesn't fit existing paradigms. It leads to a science that isn't interested in truth, so much as promulgating the authoritarian dogmatism of consensus.

That is why we can have continual nonsense being expounded in so many areas -- climate science, medicine, cosmology and all the rest. Why we keep coming up with technological solutions based on bullshit -- such as planting fuel crops, creating wind farms, and huge but largely ineffective solar power arrays that destroy environments and make the situation worse. I mean, they "work", but not in a good way because they aren't solving real problems.

Not only is idealism testable, it has already been quite extensively experimentally tested, but you evidently don't know that because you can't be bothered to really look at the evidence the course presents.

I'll say something else: I don't agree with BK on a number of issues -- he accepts global warming as being largely human-caused, for example. So I don't think he's superhuman by any means, but his basic premises in analytical idealism strike me as being parsimonious, consistent and cohesive -- and to provide a great deal more explanatory power than materialism ever has or ever could.

If we could turn the corner, science would open up and technologists might be able to have greater freedom to produce useful devices in areas that are currently beyond the pale. I mean, look at the placebo effect, for example. We've made progress in that it is accepted as real, but what if we really took it seriously and started to develop treatments based on it rather than just having it as a means of evaluating whether or not standard treatments were better than placebo? And what if people looked seriously at things like Jaques Benveniste's "memory of water"? It might or might not be true -- but that's not the point. No one is seriously looking at it precisely because materialism is the prevailing paradigm.

Change the paradigm, and potentially, a whole raft of new scientific and technological possibilities open up. We won't stop using satnavs, jet airliners and computers: they work, and in many ways for the benefit of people, but who knows what new technologies lie in wait if only science were prepared to change the paradigm that has gradually become more and more of a straitjacket for real progress?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ted
You know, David, you've just skimmed the course and are still spouting nonsense about it. BK is attacking materialism using science's own methods, providing hard evidence along the way, which you'd know if you'd bothered to look into it more deeply. I have little patience with someone who pontificates without bothering to investigate properly.

Your asking me to show how I would use the course to better understand anything practical illustrates my point. What is more practical than understanding consciousness? In the end, everything we think we know is mediated by it. As BK says, physics is the science of perception rather than of reality, and to repeat, he provides hard evidence from physics and other disciplines to show it.

Technology is a red herring: engineers don't care about what is true, but what empirically works. They simply use materialistic models of reality to produce working devices, and there's no reason that they couldn't carry on applying models if the general acceptance of materialism changed to an acceptance of a better description of reality, such as idealism.

But what continued acceptance of materialism does is automatically restrict what kinds of technology can be looked into. It leads to dismissal or ignoring of evidence that doesn't fit existing paradigms. It leads to a science that isn't interested in truth, so much as promulgating the authoritarian dogmatism of consensus.

That is why we can have continual nonsense being expounded in so many areas -- climate science, medicine, cosmology and all the rest. Why we keep coming up with technological solutions based on bullshit -- such as planting fuel crops, creating wind farms, and huge but largely ineffective solar power arrays that destroy environments and make the situation worse. I mean, they "work", but not in a good way because they aren't solving real problems.

Not only is idealism testable, it has already been quite extensively experimentally tested, but you evidently don't know that because you can't be bothered to really look at the evidence the course presents.

I'll say something else: I don't agree with BK on a number of issues -- he accepts global warming as being largely human-caused, for example. So I don't think he's superhuman by any means, but his basic premises in analytical idealism strike me as being parsimonious, consistent and cohesive -- and to provide a great deal more explanatory power than materialism ever has or ever could.

If we could turn the corner, science would open up and technologists might be able to have greater freedom to produce useful devices in areas that are currently beyond the pale. I mean, look at the placebo effect, for example. We've made progress in that it is accepted as real, but what if we really took it seriously and started to develop treatments based on it rather than just having it as a means of evaluating whether or not standard treatments were better than placebo? And what if people looked seriously at things like Jaques Benveniste's "memory of water"? It might or might not be true -- but that's not the point. No one is seriously looking at it precisely because materialism is the prevailing paradigm.

Change the paradigm, and potentially, a whole raft of new scientific and technological possibilities open up. We won't stop using satnavs, jet airliners and computers: they work, and in many ways for the benefit of people, but who knows what new technologies lie in wait if only science were prepared to change the paradigm that has gradually become more and more of a straitjacket for real progress?
I certainly agree that we need to change the paradigm from pure materialism. However, given that, I think we should look for the smallest new hypothesis that would explain one or two repeatable observations - say Dean Radin's presentiment theory, NDE's, and maybe reincarnation.

Science has no problem enlarging a hypothesis, the problem seems to be in finding something that is testable in detail. I have made an analogy before of Newton discovering the General Relativistic laws of gravity and motion rather than the laws he did discover. Assuming GR is correct, what could possibly be wrong, he would have shortcutted science by 300 years. Well this would go wrong:

1) The understanding of algebra and calculus was in its infancy back then, so nobody could have worked with his theory (let's call it NGR), or discovered its properties. The lack of computers would obviously have made this much worse.

2) It might have taken a long time before the approximate laws we now know as Newton's laws would have been derived. Since practically all calculations done today, are done with Newton's laws because they are so much simpler to work with, this would have been a major handicap.

3) The complexity of NGR would mean that all sorts of mistakes would propagate into the literature. As we now know, a science that is uncertain and struggling can easily be taken over and used for devious purposes.

Idealism - the theory that matter exists as a mental construct that is 'run' on mental hardware - clearly encompasses many different possibilities, most of which must be not what we observe. For example, the conscious stuff that ran it could have decided to calculate assuming a strictly materialist world! I see that problem as being vaguely like the problems I describe above, caused by primitive algebraic skills. Science would take decades to begin to make sense of a world in which consciousness is taken more seriously.

David
 
agreed... especially when it happens to people like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or Pattabhi Jois, or any of a thousand Christian evangelicals preachers. It's almost as if they have it and then loose it.

The only true, honest secret society is a lonely one, and it is comprised of those who do random acts of kindness, but never desire to become recognized for them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top