>I don't think you should rule out that "sickoes" can also benefit from (or
>stay alive a bit longer because of) their babbling.
>;-)

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>

>>
>>

>
>
>
>