william.scherk

Joel: Nope. It does not fit the template that is being advanced. I counted over 500 news stories that covered the solidarity rallies just now. Adam, with respect, you are going to find what you seek if you seek only to find things to confirm your beliefs going in.

Probably not for Neil, but definitely for the early Campbell -- who left Dianetics even before the e-meters were constructed and peddled. Neil spins Campbell's initial boosterism as somehow blessed by Szasz, Heinlein and other holies, and pretends that Campbell saw Dianetic's central procedure of auditing as "a brilliant suggestion of conducting psychanalysis while using a polygraph to detect peaks in patient stress." Hooey of the first order as well as a deeply stupid gloss on the basis of Hubbard's practice. Campbell was hands-down the woo-iest of the SF woo woos. I wish Neil could tell us what he thinks about Dianetics, auditing and e-meters, but he likely won't. Still, what impression is left from his comments? That anything paranormal should be swallowed whole. At the Buffet of Woo, Neil is a champion feeder.

Hoffman wrote a nice little brain-teaser at Edge.org titled 'A spoon is like a headache.' A spoon is like a headache. This is a dangerous idea in sheep's clothing. It consumes decrepit ontology, preserves methodological naturalism, and inspires exploration for a new ontology, a vehicle sufficiently robust to sustain the next leg of our search for a theory of everything. How could a spoon and a headache do all this? Suppose I have a headache, and I tell you about it. It is, say, a pounding headache that started at the back of the neck and migrated to encompass my forehead and eyes. You respond empathetically, recalling a similar headache you had, and suggest a couple remedies. We discuss our headaches and remedies a bit, then move on to other topics. Of course no one but me can experience my headaches, and no one but you can experience yours. But this posed no obstacle to our meaningful conversation. You simply assumed that my headaches are relevantly similar to yours, and I assumed the same about your headaches. The fact that there is no "public headache," no single headache that we both experience, is simply no problem. A spoon is like a headache. Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption is false. No one but me can experience my spoon, and no one but you can experience your spoon. But this is no problem. It is enough for me to assume that your spoon experience is relevantly similar to mine. For effective communication, no public spoon is necessary, just like no public headache is necessary. Is there a "real spoon," a mind-independent physical object that causes our spoon experiences and resembles our spoon experiences? This is not only unnecessary but unlikely. It is unlikely that the visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped to permit survival in a particular range of niches, should miraculously also happen to resemble the true nature of a mind-independent realm. Selective pressures for survival do not, except by accident, lead to truth. One can have a kind of objectivity without requiring public objects. In special relativity, the measurements, and thus the experiences, of mass, length and time differ from observer to observer, depending on their relative velocities. But these differing experiences can be related by the Lorentz transformation. This is all the objectivity one can have, and all one needs to do science. Once one abandons public physical objects, one must reformulate many current open problems in science. One example is the mind-brain relation. There are no public brains, only my brain experiences and your brain experiences. These brain experiences are just the simplified visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped for survival in certain niches. The chances that our brain experiences resemble some mind-independent truth are remote at best, and those who would claim otherwise must surely explain the miracle. Failing a clever explanation of this miracle, there is no reason to believe brains cause anything, including minds. And here the wolf unzips the sheep skin, and darts out into the open. The danger becomes apparent the moment we switch from boons to sprains. Oh, pardon the spoonerism.

You certainly could have fooled me. I have never met you and wouldn't know you from Adam. Yet, here you are making a bunch of judgments about me even though you know nothing about me. That's pretty typical behavior for anyone who calls himself an Objectivist. You may have missed my subsequent post and this: I am sure Chris regrets sounding so heartless, and wishes he had kept his mouth shut on this thread. He will also probably come back and apologize for his mistakes and I will apologize for calling him morally depraved . . .

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers? Let's give it a little time, like the weekend. Sounds good. I add this only to put the thread on the page again.

Now you have wrecked everything, Starbuckle! All I wanted to do was find out how the rest of the ghost story might go, but no . . . you just had to wreck everything again by making those dang dogmatic assumptions about consensual reality. You knock spirits off the table of discussion and close the door to honest explorations of alternate realities, sob sob. Is that how you would treat the Cottingley Fairies, or Chupacabra, or The Angel Moroni, or Mohammed flying his horse to Heaven? Huh? What about pixies, sprites, brownies, ghosties, spectres, ESP, claivoyance, precognition, spoonbending, astral travel, psychic surgery and Capgras Syndrome? Huh? What about magic? Huh? Do you think science can explain Magic? Magic is just Magic, then? Is Dowsing MAGIC? What about angels and demons and goblins and djinn and stuff? You think people just made this stuff up? Would you just sweep your Wand of Science and refuse to consider that Special Perception and Different Ways Of Knowing can Mean A LOT To People? Huh? How on earth are we going to advance human knowledge of Other Realms if you can't just be nice and pretend? I am so hurt and disappointed and hurt and bristling like a porcupine with outrage and all that. I mean, what about LIFE AFTER DEATH? HUH? Is that MAGIC, Mr Smarty Uptight Bossy Science Pope? You are just mean and hurtful and small and mean and biased and dogmatic and religious and everything opposite to Neil and Bach and Madame Blavatsky and Transcendent Levitation and UFOs and wormholes and Star Trek and everything! You are a PARTY POOPER! And now Neil is going to ignore my invitation and no one will come to my party . . . and nobody will ever have any fun EVER AGAIN!!!

Well, surely we both 'believe' in hallucinations, right? The note about grief hallucinations was written mostly for George. His experiences were distressing and he says he struggled with the notion he was losing his mind. But nothing in the explanation above explicitly rules out a 'paranormal' alternative set of assumptions. Indeed, I think you can accept, if only provisionally, that hallucinations can account for at least some visitation experiences. Is that correct? If so, then you could, if you wished, lay out details of an alternative that makes most sense to you, that offers a framework for understanding visitation experiences the rest of us can follow. Because you have explicitly set aside faith, have explicitly claimed reason as the best guide to coherent explanation, there is no doubt a coherent framework of explanation that undergirds the conclusion you have made. So, let's accept that your father's spirit did really appear to you in full sensory form, as told. Let's set aside faith and explore the assumptions that support an alternative explanation. What are the rough outlines of your explanation, then, Neil -- how do you sketch out how such a visitation is accomplished?

Emphases added. Well, I am willing to add you to the body of thought that finds meaning in Bach, who finds Bach to contain all music, who finds Bach to be divine. So, perhaps we should put a third explanation on the table for consideration. Bach was both messager and message on that uncanny night. In other words, using the music of the spheres, Bach reached out from Heaven to announce a connection between the divine and the Schulmans. Using a violin concerto, for a few brief moments, Bach parted the membranes between universes, sent a bolt of pure awareness from the Universal Consciousness to you and your mother, and so showed the whole world that not only are musical miracles possible, but that the Schulmans are antenna to receive the Universal Bach Consciousness. Isn't it possible, Neil, that Bach is god? that if only we tune our intenna, we can absorb the mystery that glorifies the multiple membranes? I think that is is most plausible that the voices you heard and the supercognition you experienced is actually the eternal genius of Bach moving in the world of J Neil Schulman! In some ineffable way 'GodBach' is 'RiggenBach' and 'Bach' is Music and Music is Knowledge and Quantum Superposition is Bach and violin concertos are proof of Superstring Theory and John Edward and Uri Geller and all the mysteries of the world. I get a chill down the spine just thinking of this . . . In support of this most plausible explanation, I list a few testimonies of the Power of Superstring Bach: Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars. - Friederick Chopin To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time. - Pablo Casals And if we look at the works of JS Bach - a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity - on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. And in his works we will search in vain for anything the least lacking in good taste. - Claude Debussy ...the greatest Christian music in the world...if life had taken hope and faith from me, this single chorus would restore all. - Felix Mendelssohn Bach is the beginning and end of all music. - Max Reger I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. - Niccolai Rimsky-Korsakov Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder. - Robert Schumann ...the most stupendous miracle in all music!. - Richard Wagner Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the most beautiful, Rossini the most brilliant, but Bach is the most comprehensive: he has said all there is to say. If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid. - Charles Gounod Study Bach. There you will find everything. - Johannes Brahms If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach... - Aaron Copland If Bach is not in Heaven.....I am not going! - William F. Buckley Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. - Karl Barth I do not honestly think there is the slightest possibility that [J Neil Schulman or I] could hear a Bach violin concerto and think it was written in the late 19th Century. - Jeff Riggenbach

There are many names for this kind of experience, and it appears to be quite common. It can be called 'grief hallucinations' or 'bereavement hallucinations' -- it is extremely common in the elderly bereaved and can also occur years after a death. Sometimes it can be as simple and as profound as a feeling of presence, or visitation, sometimes a fully sensory experience. There is a wonderful story in Scientific American that underlines the ubiquity of such things in human experience. The dead stay with us, that much is clear. They remain in our hearts and minds, of course, but for many people they also linger in our senses—as sights, sounds, smells, touches or presences. Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to bereavement but are rarely discussed, because people fear they might be considered insane or mentally destabilised by their loss. As a society we tend to associate hallucinations with things like drugs and mental illness, but we now know that hallucinations are common in sober healthy people and that they are more likely during times of stress.

There was an essential difference between the first god experience and the second, as Neil has recounted the two. In the first, the spirit was a voice in conversation, and in the second, the god thingy was entirely incorporated within Neil. The first spoke to him inside his mind, and in the second Neil awakened to being god himself. Going only from his waffly criteria for judging the reality of other folks' god experiences, either the first or the second was unreal by Neil's standards. I think we will be waiting a long long time for Neil to square that circle. An indication of how Neil approaches the reality of the pixies and sprites and psi-conductors is seen in his much-elaborated tale of psi-sprites at the audio lectures table in 2002. Here we are instructed that he is a world expert on violin concertos, and that it was pretty near impossible that he or his mom could fail to identify Bach. Since the evidence was that there was only Bach, Neil had the choice of 'I was mistaken' or the choice of mysterious intercontinua pixie-jokesters who played a special song that only he and mom could hear. Given the choice between pixies and human fallibility, he chose the least likely explanation. Apparently this was an example of his marvelous discernment. Folie a deux is the kindest way to characterize this kind of stubborn refusal to entertain the obvious. I am waiting for him to tell us about his astral travelling excursions, which also offered him proof of his specialness. From all of these made-up post-hoc justifications for spiritist beliefs, I conclude that Neil really believes he is pretty dang special. If he didn't hammer on about a crappy Twilight Zone episode, and a blacklist that kept him from achieving his due as a fine screenwriter, and if he didn't bang on about his specialness in every other endeavor he has attempted, I would be more inclined to accept his unique special connection with pixie world. But his entire identity and self-concept is at stake in every challenge to any aspect, so he resists to the point of delusion.

I wish I hadn't written that, actually. The callousness got me, and I didn't understand how a guy who opposes capital punishment can be so unmoved by this kind of assassination. I am sure Chris regrets sounding so heartless, and wishes he had kept his mouth shut on this thread. He will also probably come back and apologize for his mistakes and I will apologize for calling him morally depraved . . . +++++++++++ More news about the judge from the Wall Street Journal: The federal judge who was shot dead Saturday at a political event in Tucson, Arizona was there to thank U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for backing his effort to get more judicial support for the swelling numbers of immigration cases in his district, according to two U.S. federal judges.

You are misinformed on this, Chris. Roll's court did not uphold the lawsuit, but allowed it to proceed. The rancher won the lawsuit, and good for him. In any case, I think we all have sufficient information to judge your grip on events and on morality. It does not bother you one little bit that a judge was shot to death. It looks like you are amenable to extra-judicial killings. You know, I am not an Objectivist. I disagree with many Objectivist doctrines, but I admire Objectivists when they use reason to the best of their abilities and understanding and when they are curious and intelligent . . . I don't know if you call yourself an Objectivist. But I think you are morally depraved. I wish you a happy life, but I doubt anyone as stupid and hateful as you could be happy, unless you are also mentally handicapped and exist in a twilight zone of blissful fuckheadedness.

You are misinformed on this, Chris. Roll's court did not uphold the lawsuit, but allowed it to proceed. The rancher won the lawsuit, and good for him. In any case, I think we all have sufficient information to judge your grip on events and on morality. It does not bother you one little bit that a judge was shot to death. It looks like you are amenable to extra-judicial killings. You know, I am not an Objectivist. I disagree with many Objectivist dogtrines, but I admire Objectivists when they use reason to the best of their abilities and understanding and when they are curious and intelligent . . . I don't know if you call yourself an Objectivist. But I think you are morally depraved. I wish you a happy life, but I doubt anyone as stupid and hateful as you could be happy, unless you are also mentally handicapped and exist in a twilight zone of blissful fuckheadedness.

Fair enough. The assassinated Judge was a GHW Bush appointee, best-known for ruling against gun control laws. Extrapolating from your neutral opinion on shooting this particular judge, I tentatively assume that you would be non-sad if other Republican judges who rule against gun control were shot dead by psychotic young people outside grocery stores. I do hope that covers your emotional range and your sturdy grip on the issues.

What is the use of this triple-patty hypothetical -- besides showing us you are familiar with Schopenhauer's 38? If you, Neil, did not believe god existed and so believed that god did not enter into communication with human beings, would you find a claim of god communication credible? If you, Neil, believed Pixies existed but that Pixies only rarely entered into communications with human beings using an inner voice, as William Scherk claims, would you still find a claim of Pixie-Meld to be credible? Yes or no only, please, Mr Pixie-Meld.

Fair enough. I will revise my "Sad and shocking day for Americans," in light of your blasé reaction. It is a sad and shocking day for many Americans. Some Americans, typified by Chris Baker, are actually not shocked, though they may be saddened. Tell us, Chris, so that we do not misunderstand your reaction. Are you saddened by the deaths?

Are you kidding me? If not, um, six people died at an open political meeting. Six people shot to death, including a child, and 12 wounded. Shock and sorrow is somehow inappropriate, Chris? What do you feel, if not shock and sorrow?

Not quite. But isn't it understandable that an assassination attempt invites scrutiny of the politician's declared opponents? I wonder if Brant and Pippi speculated in their own minds on the motives of the shooter when they first heard the news . . . What a sad and shocking day for Americans. To put Brant's truncated quote in context, as reported by the New York Post, her father was asked if she had any enemies. The congresswoman’s father Spencer Gifford, 75, was rushing to the hospital when asked if his 40-year-old daughter had any enemies. "Yeah," he told The Post. "The whole tea party." He added that politicians constantly faced danger. "They always get threat[ened]," Gifford cried. "We don’t really have any information. The Police department was supposed to call us but they didn’t." Here is Giffords herself, in an earlier MSNBC clip, talking about danger, rhetoric, and the kind of attacks she faced in her campaign. <object width="420" height="245" id="msnbc498069" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0"><param name="movie" value="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640" /><param name="FlashVars" value="launch=36033690&width=420&height=245" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed name="msnbc498069" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640" width="420" height="245" FlashVars="launch=36033690&width=420&height=245" allowscriptaccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 420px;">Visit msnbc.com for <a style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com">breaking news</a>, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;">world news</a>, and <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072" style="text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#5799DB !important;">news about the economy</a></p>

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers?

It is at least possible to get to that first step. But from my online reading over the past five years or so, I see debates proliferate in a kind of mad onrushing evolutionary explosion. I mean, the debates (such as they are) on just a couple of high-traffic sites -- e.g., Wattsupwiththat and Realclimate -- are hugely entailed. A single post at Realclimate (home of the AGWAs) can generate five hundred comments or more, and this with fairly stern moderation. Kind of makes the I Met God thread seem simple and easy to comprehend. It might be a good idea to exchange some information on 'where to start' first. I would ask you which climate books you have in your library, pro and con, from the two 'poles of contention.' I wonder also if we could each read the other's choice of a single volume, perhaps a history. With that in mind, are you acquainted with Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming"? That's a question for anyone interested in the controversies . . . I don't presume that opinion is monolithic here. Though it seems that the few who opine on climate tend to the anti-AGWA side of things, I bet there are more than a few here who are relatively agnostic, even if they don't express their doubts or uncertainties. I sometimes get the impression that there is a sort of Objectivish Party Line on global warming.

If I remember correctly, you have long experience in formal debate. So, I will leave it to you to propose formalities. Please let us wrangle backstage over that, and then we could start a fresh topic with the rules made explicit. I remember part of the fun of debating in High School was when in one round we didn't get to choose the side of the issue we were to debate, but were assigned to a team. It freaked out a substantial number of the kids in my class -- "But how can I argue for Abortion? Abortion is murder gnash snarl, snark crank bluster." Mixing up the composition of the teams led most of us to give the best shake we could to the opposition argument . . . it made some kids realize the value of research. I recall our Fundie Nutcase having a minor crisis of faith simply by having to put forward a rebuttal to her own deeply-held notions. I do wonder if we could get folks to sign up for that kind of thang . . .

I don't think we would disagree on a definition, Adam, but how about this: Anthropogenic: caused or produced by humans Global Warming: increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation If that doesn't seem a proper definition, please put forward another for consideration. Calculating a net negative requires balancing all putative positive effects with all putative negative effects and giving a sum. That's beyond my skill set. Anyhow, I am just letting you know what I believe. Judging from previous discussions and mentions on this list, debate goes haywire at about sentence five. Let me put it this way: I don't think it is a fruitful topic to pursue here, but I suppose I could be convinced . . . Care to try convincing me an AGW discussion on OL will be fruitful?

Not me, since I don't buy that there has been 'fraud' in climate science. In other words, the three things you note are not of the same thing, in my opinion. I was once a Global Warming agnostic, but tried hard to educate myself and now come down firmly as a believer in anthropogenic global warming. That of course doesn't entail any particular freak-out on my part. I have been watching the Wakefield controversy for a few years, and read all the documentation at the BMJ site. One thing I noted in the initial commentary threads following many news reports (at CNN/Fox especially) is that some who think that Wakefield was and is a hero use the trope of global warming to underline their rejection of the fraud findings against Wakefield.

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See my Message 537 Posted 31 December 2010 - 10:38 AM Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26132/?ref=rss and also http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html For those who haven't followed the original links, the evidence is quite interesting, but the jury is, as they say, still out. Before we can accept this stuff as a warrant for Neil's exuberant certainty about a god that operates in multiple universes, we should probably wait for him to explain the evidence and how it offers support for his theories about god, and how god operates between and among the varied universes. It's quite a stretch between the one and the other, of course -- and of course the two papers say nothing about Starbuckle's question to the reality of "apparent miracles/paranormalities." Beyond that, as one might expect, the headlines don't tell the whole story . . . here's a couple of paragraphs from the Physics.org story: In the most recent study on pre-Big Bang science posted at arXiv.org, a team of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the US, Stephen M. Feeney, et al, have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers think that these marks could be “bruises” that our universe has incurred from being bumped four times by other universes. If they turn out to be correct, it would be the first evidence that universes other than ours do exist. [ . . . ] Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to confirm this claim, which could come in short time from the Planck satellite, which has a resolution three times better than that of WMAP [ (where the current data comes from), as well as an order of magnitude greater sensitivity. Nevertheless, they hope that the search for bubble collisions could provide some insight into the history of our universe, whether or not the collisions turn out to be real. [ . . . ] This is the second study in the past month that has used CMB data to search for what could have occurred before the Big Bang. In the first study, Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan found concentric circles with lower-than-average temperature variation in the CMB, which could be evidence for a cyclic cosmology in which Big Bangs occur over and over. Not to burst Neil's bubble, but the 'evidence' is as yet only an intriguing finding, subject to confirmation/falsification by imagery from the Planck satellite -- and of course, subject to some rigourous critical evaluations, which have proliferated in the physic community. One reasonably accessible story in the New York Times puts the paper highlighted by Neil and the earlier Penrose/Gurzadyan paper into perspective. I suggest a gander at that precis to those who want some familiarity with the kinds of 'evidence' Neil is quick to accept. I do thank Neil for coming back to this thread, and for enduring the backstage communication with me. Neil, I suggest you put up a separate thread to introduce the book by Donald D Hoffman that you recommended to me. It would allow us to discuss a sort of 'universal consciousness' that doesn't entail god concepts.