Guarding the Wall: tunnels, bridges and tendrils

Sun Apr 21 11:23:18 CDT 2013

But when do those who oppose the idea that only a scientific method may be
put on the ballot get to be heard? It's not democraric if the only ones who
get to vote are those who hold scientific credentials and who hold to the
established mantra that science is a superior field and indispensible to
all others. Granted, we can no longer do much of our work well without
science. The methods of science are indispnsible to almost every human
endeavor. This is a danger in itself. More dangerous then primacy, the
dominance, the often totalitarian position of science in our democracy. It
is, at times, a gnostic force, a scientific modernity without
restraint. Isn't this the warning of Pynchon's GR? That the Germans were
sick; their science had come to dominate their culture and once wedded to a
gnostic, modernity without restraint, set out to dominate, systematize,
control, others, and to take control, even if this required the
construction of an artificial earth, of Nature's spontanious beauty, to
make of live a death-kingdom. The warnings from the youngman who studied at
Cornell, then whent off to work for what is today the largest and most
powerful American defense company, against the scientific, against the
application of science and scientific methods to every human action,
thought and passion....so scientific management, and Taylor,  and the new
scientific values and virtures, such as speed and efficiency. Humans are
slow. Slow Learners and slow at most that we do. This is a virtue that
science has made a vice. A Smart Phone or computer is only so because with
it we can calculate quicker than without it. And, it is a binary machine.
It disuade us from thinking about excluded middles and complexities, shades
of grey, and it retards the use of human judgement. Compassion and Charity
are slow and take deep thought and a spiritual (or whatever...the
heart) empathy, this can't be calculated or given a weighting in a formula.
The rule of thumb is a powerful method of ordinary men and women, but the
scientist would dismiss it as feeble minded or superstitious, not
scientific. Oh Murphey!

On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Prashant Kumar <
siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a line: it's when you contravene a body of experimentally
> established evidence for some causal theory. Explaining how and or why is
> usually very complex and so any communication is using simplified hand wavy
> explanations; there is a certain appeal to authority on matters of quantum
> physics in popular media. Of course, DC his cabal of "non-local
> consciousness" evangelists (that's what I think) claim legitimacy partly by
> virtue of their outsider "maverick" status. They've supposedly been ignored
> by the mainstream --  the same mainstream whose authority we should trust?
> Now we have a dilemma! and a certain percentage of the lay public will go
> for the underdog. What can we do?
>
> Scientific truth is democratic established democratically. After a
> fashion, anyway: we vote, but with justification attached, and suffrage
> isn't universal or evenly distributed. And each vote changes the field. A
> stretch perhaps, but you'll agree there is the important element of an open
> forum, and some notion of representation. It is part of DC's sell that he
> tries to manipulate opinion with ridiculous claims and the associated
> marketable crap. He places himself above the milieu and so supposedly able
> to bridge a divide by seeing connections unavailable to others. But the
> thing is that so what if quantum consciousness is true? what if our brains
> are entangled with one another, and this vast sea of consciousness is
> itself reality? What then? What does that really say about the human
> experience? that we're connected? Well, yes, but we knew that. We are part
> of systems we don't understand: economies, ecosytems, weather systems; all
> of which themselves interact in complex ways. We are connected. And we
> don't need Deepak Chopra's brainfarts to tell us so.
>
> P.
>
>
> On 22 April 2013 00:03, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I generally agree, but would mention that scientists of the sort you
>> would consider legitimate, in general, have not done a particularly good
>> job of making clear where "the line" is, and by remaining, too often,
>> aloof, have left the field wide open for DC, et. al. Dawkins and company
>> have successfully muddied the waters, and turned the debate into something
>> worthy of Jerry Springer, and profitably so.
>>
>> "Academic jobs being the way they are..." is a dilemma which bridges the
>> cultural divide between The Arts and the Sciences, much like sexism and
>> racism, especially in the area of advancement. You have broadened the
>> discussion to include the economic dimension. Fair enough. It becomes the
>> market place of ideas.
>>
>> Scientific Truth may not be something which is amenable to a democratic
>> vote, but in the first world economies- where most Big Science is carried
>> out- allocation of funds comes down to politics and sociology, which
>> includes, to a large degree, Defense spending. It is worth considering what
>> that means for a civil and sustainable society, by people who are capable
>> of understanding and respecting both sides of the debate. That's what DC
>> pretends to be, and not without some legitimacy. He at least understands
>> the urgency for a greater mutual recognition and cooperation between The
>> Arts and Sciences, even as he capitalizes on it. There are other
>> signatories to column in response to TED's supposed censorship. What is
>> your take on them?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Prashant Kumar siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com
>> To: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sun, Apr 21, 2013 7:55 am
>> Subject: Re: Guarding the Wall: tunnels, bridges and tendrils
>>
>>  My take on it is this: what DC and others does is manipulative (in that
>> it does prey on people who must necessarily "trust the experts") and shits
>> all over a nascent field; applications of quantum mechanics in the life
>> sciences is only slowly being studied for all the damage new agers have
>> done (academic jobs being the way they are, no newly minted PhD wants to
>> risk his or her reputation on something so fringe. It's unreasonable to
>> expect people to live as tortured maybe-geniuses). It's a technique of the
>> right: teach the controversy. DC et al. in this article are attempting to
>> blur the line (and there is one) between his horseshit and actual
>> speculative science which exists outside the norm.
>>
>>  Quantum consciousness is a prime example: there is no way to maintain
>> quantum coherence at the energy scale at which the brain operates.<http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009> Now,
>> this doesn't mean that quantum physics has no role in biology. Here<http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v9/n1/abs/nphys2474.html>is a wonderful review article detailing various applications. Turns out,
>> magnetoception in pigeons *may *be quantum mechanical in nature! This is
>> the kind of research which we don't hear about, thanks to these arseholes.
>> I'm willing to bet reality is more interesting than anything Chopra could
>> come up with.
>>
>>  P.
>>
>>
>> On 21 April 2013 21:28, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  You mean... It's just another rope trick?  : )
>>>
>>> Thinking about it in general terms, I guess there're lots of "cracked
>>> pots"- scientific, religious, artistic, etc. Some are endearing, some more
>>> consciously manipulative and willing to prey on people's niavete. But I
>>> maintain that - if I can be excused the royal "we" here- we are all a
>>> little cracked in our own way, and its probably okay to embrace our inner
>>> crack-pot, just not too vehemently, lest we seal the cracks and it becomes
>>> a pressure cooker- just enough to foster a little empathy.
>>>
>>> I was going to say something about the Liberty Bell, but I'm uncertain
>>> now. It's Sunday here. I'll go meditate on it for awhile.
>>>
>>>
>>>   -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
>>> To: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Sun, Apr 21, 2013 5:31 am
>>> Subject: Re: Guarding the Wall: tunnels, bridges and tendrils
>>>
>>> This guy and his quantum mechanical snake oil...in the language of my
>>> people: "madarchod".
>>>
>>>  P.
>>>
>>> On Saturday, April 20, 2013, wrote:
>>>
>>>> "...On the other side of the wall are lethal enemies and malefic magic.
>>>> For centuries, no one has seen the zombie-like White Walkers who live on
>>>> the other side of the wall, nor the dragons that once ravaged Westeros
>>>> .
>>>> Even so, after magic and zombies fell into disbelief, a hereditary band
>>>> of guardians swore an oath to keep watch at the wall, generation after
>>>> generation. TED has put itself in rather the same position. What the
>>>> militant atheists and self-described skeptics hate is a certain brand of
>>>> magical thinking that endangers science. In particular, there is the
>>>> bugaboo of "non-local consciousness," which causes the hair on the back of
>>>> their necks to stand on end. A layman would be forgiven for not grasping
>>>> why such an innocent-sounding phrase could spell danger to "good science."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/dear-ted-is-it-bad-scienc_b_3104049.html
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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