Happy New Year Gil!
"g"
earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:en7jb9$17td$1@darwin.ediacara.org...> One thing I found highly intriguing was the fact that the mind normal...
> tends to try to connect and attach some meaning to such things as random
> dots on a piece of paper, abstract art, nonsense syllables, and even the
> thoughts of paranoid schizophrenics, when they tend to insert parts of two
> or more sentences into one another.
Michael Gazzaniga is a neuropsychology type researcher
who have more than most have uncovered and recognized our innate (and of
course AEVASIVE) compulsion to rationalize.
[moderator's disclosure: Unless I'm mistaken, I believe Dr. Gazzaniga
was a colleague of my father's back in the 1960's and 1970's. I don't
think that will alter my moderation strategy, but so you should know.
-JAH]
(He gained this recognition very strongly by help of studying the people
whose corpus callosum had been surgically severed in an irreversable effort
to prevent the spread of seizures from one hemisphere to the other. You can
read about some of this reasearch in his book The Social Brain.)
>
> One thing we are advised against, should we need to relate to a
> schizophrenic, is to attempt to rationalize what they say. One problem
> with
> doing that is that we might find ourselves making sense of something that
> never had any sense to it to begin with.
For most people (including intelligent ones - like you) there is a risk of
getting oneself stuck on parts of a picture or proposal (one painted or
written by at least one scientifically high-powered person) before one has
had time to evaluate the whole of it from a philosophical-potency-maximizing
position of overview.
However, don't think I am not aware that too much philosophical potency can
be off-putting. :-)
>
> As with "speaking in tongues" there is some advantage, and pleasure, for a
> (not sick) person in babbling. It seems to induce a release of
> endorphins,
> for some reason... to lower blood pressure... to vent stress, somehow. In
> fact, when done together with deliberate random rapid eye movements,
> actual,
> measurable physical benefits result.
I don't think you should rule out that "sickoes" can also benefit from (or
stay alive a bit longer because of) their babbling.
;-)
>
> I have read, even, that the fact that babies appear to engage in free-form
> vocalization and eye movements is associated with the proper post partum
> "wirings" of the brain.
>
> On the other hand, if a person tries to rationalize free-form babble, that
> creates stress in the rationalizer. And that stress can be reflected back
> upon the schizophrenic, baby, speaker in tongues, or healthy free-form
> babbler.
I often enjoy sizable chunks of your computer-aided chatting.
Some of it I think is delightful reading; and
the bits I don't feel I can befriend don't seem to cause me chronic pain.
:-)
I am glad you seem to handle most of what I write in a similar way - i.e.
without
to many ill effects. :-)
>
> An interesting experiment I have engaged in, on my own, is to listen to
> something, such as a television program at a volume I cannot understand
> and
> to not try to rationalize it, but just listen to the "music" of the
> language. In fact,
> I find I can easily discern between the German language, Japanese,
> Spanish,
> French and English at a volume so low that I cannot identify more than an
> occasional syllable, or one-syllable word.
When I was young, and much more philosophically inEPT than I am now, I
(also?) discovered (thanks to a book by Krishnamurti - one with a photo of
him on its cover) how incredibly easy and benficial it was to muffle my
mind's mumblings.
>
> Another experiment I have enjoyed is that of listening to audible words
> without rationalizing them... that is, listening to the music that is
> there -- especially where the author is one who writes in a way that
> produces beautiful sounding phrases and sound combinations which are
> distinct as separate and apart from what they say.
>
> And the really amazing thing is that some authors' shaping of the rhythms
> and sounds of the words can work WITH the word meanings to produce certain
> emotions, to create suspense, to give the reader a subliminal feeling
> about
> a character whom the author wants the reader to like, dislike, feel
> anxious
> about... etc.
>
> Where the sound of the words and the rhythmic phrasings of them add
> dimension to what the words are saying, that -- in my estimation -- is
> what
> distinguishes a GREAT writer or speech writer from one who merely
> organizes
> ideas into optimal order... psychological, emotional, logical or
> chronological.
>
> Oddly, some of the phrasings of GREAT song lyrics are NOT conversational,
> but flow more smoothly than do conversational conventions. For example,
> in
> the song, You'll Never Walk Alone, I can almost hear the lyricist saying,
> "And the sweet silvery song of a lark." That would be correct English and
> quite clear in its literal meaning. However, the lyricist wrote, "And the
> sweet silver song of a lark." Somehow that line transcends correct or
> conversational speech. In fact, as one song analyst surmised, words can
> be
> put together in such a way that, when sung to music, they bypass the side
> of
> the brain that tries to edit and rationalize, and are received by the side
> which translates them DIRECTLY into empathy and emotion.
>
> But then, too, a good propagandist is one who also has mastered the art of
> dealing directly with the part of the recipient's brain that does not
> recognize the need to edit or rationalize, and simply allows
> himself/herself
> to be
> moved emotionally... especially to like what the propagandist wishes to
> persuade of, or dislike whatever target the propagandist wishes to
> demonize.
>
> Is the wandering far from the subject of bio-evolution... I THINK NOT.
> And here is why...
>
> Some writers (some deserving the title theorist, and some deserving little
> more than the title propagandist) are able to sway the thinking of their
> reader -- even very INTELLIGENT readers -- through techniques more suited
> to
> the
> caging of propaganda.
>
> As the well-known Dr. Michael Shermer (of Skeptic Magazine, The Skeptic
> Society, and author of some books
> telling what is wrong with certain non-science, or anti-science
> dogma-based
> pseudo-scientific arguments) has noted... con artists often find the most
> intelligent individuals the MOST GULLIBLE... once, that is, the con
> artist
> has found a way past that individuals first line of defenses against being
> duped.
>
> Examples abound of highly intelligent people who have been drawn into
> cults,
> conned out of fortunes, AND... which is VERY MUCH ON SUBJECT in
> present
> forum... who have become converts to one or another
> dogmatic school of thought beyond the farthest reaches of empirical
> evidence.
Because my EPT position of opinion is more Janovian (than Freudian) I
maintain that the crucial background and factor that makes most ordinarily
AND extraordinarily intelligent people easy to fool (or easy to lead astray
in all the ways you implied) is that their respective brains (actention
selection systems) are insidiously biased by CURSES (-type memory states, or
"primal pain" ) that were caused by traumatically negated (unfulfilled)
early needs.
>
> But, before I go, please note that I am not an enemy of reason nor a
> person
> without religious faith. What I maintain is that much I read and hear in
> defense of the concept of evolution is empirically well established, and
> some of it is not empirically supportable; and the same is true of much
> reasoning in support of an assertion that faith in something beyond human
> knowledge has been found each and every time some layer of ignorance is
> peeled away by progress in science. This is no more than a way of saying
> that again and again and again things that were not previously known, have
> been discovered, and became known... and there is zero evidence that the
> worlds brightest and bets informed individual knows all there is, beyond
> the
> CURRENT frontiers of human knowledge. Therefore, "faith" could be
> defined
> as a belief that there REMAINS beyond human knowledge some things which
> have
> not yet been discovered by humans, and eventually will be. NOTHING in
> science indicates to the contrary.
However, even by your defintion it remains that nearly all "faiths" are
irrational and or naive.
> Where debaters get hung up in a shouting match saying to one another...
>
> .... with one saying, "You can't prove it so."
>
> .... and the other saying, "You can't prove it NOT so."
>
> BOTH impress me as both correct, and as childishly futile...
I concur - excEPT that I am inclined to think the latter debater is likely
to be more so than the former.
> , an open
> mind
> is an open mind, and looks at nature, AS IT IS, without trying to stamp
> it
> with ANY non-empirically-based preference for belief in what the "other
> side" of the opague *ontological curtain" is like. Let us push that
> curtain
> (or envelope) every chance we get, and SEE what is there.
I concur.
> And, meantime,
> if
> we want to base our lives and our pursuit of happiness on some personal
> preferences in what to believe is there, then that should not be allowed
> to
> DISTORT what we have on this side so far... as of any given moment.
>
That last sentence was a little to vague for me.
> Do you concur?
You just left enough room for me to slightly suspect that I might not be as
much in favor of religious and cultural and personal freedom as you are. %%-|
Cheers,
P
>
> g
>
>
>
>
> "Entertained by my own EIMC"
fairyland.org> wrote
> in message news:en3l2h$2ign$1@darwin.ediacara.org...>> "Carsten Thumulla"
thumulla.com> wrote in message
>> news:200612271433.27309.carsten@thumulla.com...>>> Hello g!
>>>
>>> Am Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:03:30 -0500 schrieb g:
>>>
>>>> Glad you asked my (a layman's) opinion.
>>>
>>> :)
>>>
>>> ok -- layman to layman
>>>
>>>> Once again, I respond from a position of trying to avoid words that
>>>> mean
>>>> different things to different users and hearers.
>>>
>>> me to
>>>
>>>> It does not make sense to me that evolution is influenced ONLY by a
>>>> steady
>>>> uni-directional process of genes providing advantages which, over a
>>>> long
>>>> period of time, float -- as it were -- the "best" genes to the top.
>>>
>>> The evolution is not such a process.
>>>
>>> What we need is a more abstract view to the process of evolution.
>>>
>>> We need a more abstract level. There are two "experiments" to reach a
>>> higher level: Dawking and Hans Hass with the Energontheory
>>> But these levels are not abstrakt enougth to solve the problem.
>>>
>>> Dawking
>>> The genes are /not/ the essenz of the evolution -- the genes are the
>>> essenz of the /biological/ evolution -- that all.
>>>
>>> Hass
>>> The view to the energy reaches a more abstract level like the biological
>>> evolution and search a bridge between physics and biology.
>>> Energy drives the physical world and the life. But also this view can
>>> not
>>> show more than the flow of energy and the energy hunger of the
>>> biological
>>> systems.
>>>
>>> How we can reach a higher platform to describe what evolution is?
>>> The flow of energy is just a change of structure -- a potential
>>> reduction
>>> in the physical field. The physical system follows the physical field.
>>> The
>>> physical field transports his structure to the target. If we search the
>>> bridge between the dead world and the life we see the transmitted
>>> physical
>>> structure.
>>>
>>> The view of the information flow can give us the abstract description of
>>> the evolution process. Only this view can declare, what life is, how it
>>> developed and how life ist reflecting itself.
>>>
>>> Your 11 points are strictly oriented on biological evolution and
>>> mutation
>>> / selection. But i think, evolution is more. We have evolution in
>>> technics, social systems and so on. The developing of social systems is
>>> inseparable incorperated with the biological evolution. The evolution of
>>> technical systems follows also the shown "steps": selection, orientation
>>> on the reality, orientation on a theory, make the theory more abstract,
>>> go
>>> to action and make the environment fitting to me (reverse the
>>> information
>>> flow), make other systems running in the environment (construction),
>>> ....
>>
>>
>> What follows is a bit of my personal, presumably on-topically
>> overlapping'
>> (i.e. addressing
>> something of what you seems interested in), laymanish, and perfectly
>> obviously off-center, recipe for
>> a satisfying and fairly philanthropically oriented overview and
>> insightful
>> interpretation of the general (but by me unapologetically
>> anthropocentrically weighted) evolutionary aspect of What Is in_
>> self-patterning _formation.
>>
>> Try the following 'academically-politically incorrect' thinking about
>> evolution:
>> That evolution is a totality of (intrinsic and extrinsic - an important
>> dichotomy mainly in evolutionary biology and also though slightly less so
>> in
>> pre- and proto biological evolutionary chemistry) "evolutionary" (as
>> opposed
>> to - or in contrast to devolutionary) "pressures" (perceivable and as
>> realistically as possible conceivable evolution-facilitating
>> features/factors/forces.
>>
>> If you try my philosophical tack of thinking (I hope abstractly enough
>> for
>> you) in terms of an "Evolutionary
>> Pressure Totality" then you of course also have to reconcile yourself to
>> rely on the theoretically treacherous (or multifacetted) concept of
>> "complexity" - or, more specifically, all kinds of difficult (but
>> possibly
>> entertaining for you) to quantify
>> increases of this quality ;-).
>>
>> On the other hand, it will potentially become uncomfortably easy (not at
>> all
>> paradoxically so) to plot a mental picture of anthropologically
>> (neuro)psychologically relevant aspects of what has been produced by the
>> evolutionary pressure totality.
>>
>> The (by the concept "evolutionary pressure totality" constituted)
>> *aspect*
>> of
>> my 'EPT approach' [apropos which, EPT does not just stand for this
>> aspects -
>> I am using
>> other explanatory and philosophical tools and tricks too ;->] also make
>> possible an almost philosophy-finalizing (or, to put it more bluntly,
>> even
>> philosophy terminating) yet fairly philanthropically optimized (though
>> not
>> financially so ;->) overview of What Is.
>>
>> IOW, it is possible (or so it appears to me) to eclectically patch
>> together
>> an
>> excEPTionally totaling 'tableux' of more than the evolutionary aspect of
>> What Is going on - one that amounts to a (by me) conceivably
>> approximately
>> complete (or comprehensive enough) sampled assortment of approximately
>> particular (or even no less metaphorically and morally, "string or
>> M-theoretical") evolutionary (and naturally selective) pressures at play.
>>
>> [To me (and my EPT way of thinking ;->), the expression "evolutionary
>> pressures" refers primarily to potentials/factors/features/forces that
>> precede and can be seen to most directly and primarily cause (to have
>> caused
>> and cause in the future) constructive and complexifying (or at least
>> complexity
>> maintaining) changes within What Is.
>>
>> Hence, to me it also mainly refers to causes of changes (pressures) that
>> are
>> primarily or directly "positively selective" (or positively patterning).
>>
>> Moreover, in context of the evolutionary aspect of What Is going on,
>> positively patterning changes can be seen as outcomes of an
>> evolution-eventuating *predominance* - and most ultimately
>> "evolution-originating" primacy - of "positive selection/patterning
>> pressures"
>> [obviously as opposed to devolutionary, and decay-promoting, negative or
>> "naturally pruning" ;-) selection pressures].
>>
>> But *of course*, the resulting philosophical picture will be one that is
>> preferentially (or only) perceivable by the minds eye; and, it must be
>> allowed, or accepted, to be as hazy as is realistically required. %%-|
>>
>>
>>
>> In order for me to have satisfied my craving for a comprehensive
>> conceptual
>> rational-philosophical grasp [on/of "What Is (and have been and will be)
>> going on"] I had to learn to control (within myself) a tendency to become
>> trapped in *confusion/and tunnelvision-causing* attempts at resolving
>> greater than realistic details [of course, these attempts were doomed to
>> fail
>> also because of my limited personal knowledge of, and limited personal
>> capacity to grasp, things] of the satisfying total philosophical
>> picture that I was after.
>>
>> It is my intuitive interpretation of this tendency (i.e., to fall into
>> pits
>> of
>> overly reductionistic rational philosophizing) that it is indirectly
>> described by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and that is
>> phenomenologically relatable to Uncertainty Principle confirming
>> observations
>> in physicists' laboratories.
>>
>> So, because I had this insight (or did intuitively identify) that
>> Uncertainty Principle related constraints reach into the realm of
>> cognitive awareness and intellectual behavior (and into the corresponding
>> level and, most commonly, the left-brain-hemispheric mode, of
>> consciousness),
>> I deviced mental tricks and conceptual tools that to be accepted,
>> adopted, and habitually used, do require what I call a "Tolerance
>> Principled" (counterbalancing) intellectual/philosophical attitude.
>>
>> Consequently I have forged, forced myself to accept, and trained myself
>> to use, concepts that assist me in combatting my primitive myopic
>> cognitive
>> tendency to compartmentalize too much, and that helps me to avoid trying
>> grasping aspects of "What Is going on" too rigidly or too forcefully.
>> Either way, what I have thereby tried to avoid is a failure to get a
>> satisfying philosophical feel for (or that I only would get to get a
>> relatively false or less 'encompassingly philosophically true' feel for)
>> easily deformed "shapes" of aspects whose respective "shapes" can only
>> be defined by (or that can only be reflected on in a
>> rational-philosophical
>> conceptual way that involves a *fragile* [or, IOW, an all too easily
>> "collapsable" -
>> perhaps to be taken as more than just a metaphic reference(?) to the
>> "superpositions" of
>> states that can exist in the realm of Reality and that are described by
>> help
>> of
>> Shroedinger wavefunctions and more-than- metaporically explained by David
>> Deutch's "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics] *associative
>> state of mind*.
>>
>> In short, in order to obtain and retain (or to be able to reliably
>> regenerate) certain 'enlightenment provoking' thoughts or insights about
>> evolution pertaining things (and, to me not the least importantly,
>> insights
>> of evolutionary psychobiology type) it helps if one uses "conceptual
>> zooming
>> lenses" (or telescopic and otherwise reconfigurable-as-required
>> conceptual
>> grasping tools) by which one can avoid focusing too sharply - a sharpness
>> that would prevent one from achieving a (by me required and desired)
>> biggest
>> possible bredth and depth of one's 'philosophical field'.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
