At last I understand...

I think on reflection I have got everything wrong about there being an afterlife. We desperately want an afterlife, but we have to face facts. Just consider the radical personality changes that may be brought about by injury to the brain. Phineas Gage, to take the most famous example. If his new obnoxious personality was caused by his damaged brain, it would be silly to deny that his normal personality wasn’t caused by his pre-damaged brain!

And what is this thing, this “supernatural soul”, which is supposed to survive anyway? It’s invisible, has no mass or indeed any other physical properties. In fact it cannot be detected by any means whatsoever. What is left by saying it exists??

Since the birth of modern science in the 17th Century, science has been stunningly successful in furnishing us in with knowledge about the world, and has been an extraordinarily fruitful one in terms of the subsequent prediction and manipulation of our environment and in the creation of our technology. This strongly suggests that modern science pretty much accurately describes reality. OK, we have yet to fully explain consciousness. But the brain is the most complex object in the Universe. Give science a chance! Eventually we should be able to understand how the brain produces consciousness. There is no need to invoke a magical soul.

Are we really to suppose there might be supernatural and spooky entities and influences -- such as souls, magic, spirits, demons and what have you-- which somehow escapes the steely gaze of science, and to achieve this by having such supernatural entities exert no measurable influence on reality whatsoever! Why should we believe in the existence of the non-physical, which, by definition, our measuring instruments cannot detect?

People need to get real!

I have got real . .at last, finally I have got real. I now fully admit to my previous error in thinking there is an afterlife. Or sky daddies, or anything else magical. Let us henceforth trust what SCIENCE is telling us about the world.

HA HA!!!....No, not really ...APRIL FOOLS!!! 

Technological and Scientific Predictions

From here.

[E]ngineers working on quantum computing at both Google and IBM say that a quantum “dream machine” capable of solving computing’s most vexing problems might still be decades away. 

So much for all the hype about Quantum Computers. Press accounts always wildly overstate the progress of scientific discoveries, technology etc. Quantum Computers are just around the corner? No one will be driving cars soon? Earth-like planets are being discovered left, right and centre? Conscious robots indistinguishable from humans will soon be here? We'll soon be able to upload our consciousness to computers and achieve immortality? Man will soon land on Mars? The singularity is almost upon us? It's all nonsense. All of it. Be very cynical of reports of rapid technological progress.

Conscious robots? Well, for a kick off they're assuming that brains produce consciousness.  So if brains can do this, and we replicate their function, then we should, in principle, be able to eventually have conscious computers too. But how do we know that brains produce consciousness?

I stress to add that I do think certain technological breakthroughs will eventually happen. Autonomous cars for example. I predicted 4 years ago that all cars on the roads will be autonomous by 2060. But 2060! That's a long time away. Also I think Virtually Reality will eventually completely change everything.

Children's novels

As an adult I scarcely ever reread novels. But as a child I used to reread novels all the time. I used to read all the Enid Blyton books I had maybe once every 2 years or so. Same for the Narnia books (all 7 of them), and the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, and the Oz books (well 3 of them -- The Wizard of Oz, The Marvellous Land of Oz, Glinda of Oz), didn't know about the existence of any others). And reread "Tom's Midnight Garden" countless times and each time I cried at the end.

I think because reading children books as a child was so much more enjoyable than reading adult novels as an adult. Children books had a kind of magic, they instilled in me a yearning to be there, to experience what the protagonists in the novels were experiencing. I identified and emphasised with the characters. That doesn't happen now.

Insouciant about being cold

Apparently people are baffled why people voluntarily go out in the cold without being well wrapped up.

This student went out in freezing weather wearing shorts and people can’t get enough of it

According to the above link a woman on twitter said:

[T]he same boy was on the 80 with me this morning again in a t-shirt and shorts. I'd love to know his reasoning!

I would imagine the reason is to demonstrate one's indifference to the harsh elements. Not to be craven and shiver and slink into a hole to get warm, but to walk erect, be proud, shake a fist at the Gods' who try to break our will with inclement weather. To be a man. To be special!  To be a hero.

Enjoyable work

What makes one's job enjoyable? What makes us work hard? I think essentially one needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product you're creating or the service you're providing.

Our society tends to assume how hard we work, how much effort we put into something, is closely related to how much we get paid for that work. I disagree. I reckon what motivates people to work hard is not so much how much you get paid, but rather the sense of achievement in producing something that other people really appreciate together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do what you've done. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will make one very much enjoy the work they're doing.

But much work under capitalism tends to be repetitious just doing one task. You're not creating the object, only part of it. Hence you're a cog in the overall machine as I said in this blog entry. And the object is not ours. It belongs to someone else. Hence we are alienated from that we are creating, or the service we're providing.

Enid Blyton.

I used to absolutely love reading Enid Blyton books as a child.  When I was around 7 years old or so I was absolutely enthralled by her Faraway Tree books and Wishing chair books.  And as a slightly older child I think what I refer to as the Fatty (five find-outers and dog) books were my favourite series of books.

I've just read the following article.  It says:

"Apparently, the Famous Five and Secret Seven made the police look like buffoons, Noddy's sexuality was questionable, Golliwog was racist and making fun of Big Ears was insulting to people with big ears," she said. "After the meeting I told her that I had got a lot of pleasure from Enid Blyton's books, and she said 'Well, your literary tastes leave a lot to be desired'.

The literary tastes of a large percentage of people leave a lot to be desired then (including myself). Presumably it can't be because the stories are allegedly racist etc that it reflects badly on people if they enjoyed them? I knew nothing about that sort of stuff as a child. I'm guessing the stories are considered to be shallow? I wonder what children's books she considered to be superior? When I was 7 I wanted to read about magic trees with weird and wonderful lands at the top and magic flying chairs. I can't imagine at that age reading any other author who I would have enjoyed more. That might make my literary tastes dire, but I'm happy with them!  I might have been a very different person without Blyton stories to open up my imagination.

Venturing out in the dark

Just got in from walk. Was fairly darkish walking in hubbard hills. Deserted and dark. A eerie malevolent blanket of silentness enveloped me, suffused through my being. It seemed I might be the only living creature left on the Earth.

But suddenly I saw movement on the ground matching my pace. What was this? Were dark evil creatures of the night venturing forth from the underworld to attack innocent souls, such as myself, who dare have the temerity to venture out into the dark?

Nope, it was a robin.

The world is strange

Why am I living on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an infinite sea of nothingness?? We tend not to think reality is weird because we've lived in it throughout our lives. As children we thought our parents knew everything, and they didn't find such things surprising. So most of us just accept our situation, without thinking.

I sometimes think . .maybe we are all being systematically deceived. Something we're simply not getting.

Wikipedia

When I went to Wikipedia I saw a message at the top saying:

To all our readers in the UK, We will get straight to the point: This Thursday we ask you to protect Wikipedia's independence. Time is running out in 2017 to help us. We depend on donations averaging about £10. Only a tiny portion of our readers give. If everyone reading this gave £2, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of your Thursday coffee is all we need. When I made Wikipedia a non-profit, people warned me I’d regret it. Over a decade later, it’s the only top ten site run by a non-profit and a community of volunteers. Has it crossed my mind how much we could have made if it had ads? Sure. But it wouldn’t be the same. Wikipedia continues the legacy the internet promised us, that of collaboration, connection and neutrality. Can the internet have moral values? We think it can, but we need your help. Please keep Wikipedia growing. Thank you. — Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder

Independent from what I wonder? Is that just a polite way of saying that people can write any type of nonsense? It's continually re- edited by pseudo-intellectual young men providing information reflecting their biased views towards the world. I wouldn't even bother trying to put anything into it since it would just be deleted almost immediately. They won't be getting any money off me. The net would be better off without wikipedia.

Thoughts about psi

I've been asked why I think the burden of proof should lie with the skeptic to prove that psi doesn't exist. This is my response below (a little tidied up).

There's nothing else to add apart from saying people have experienced psi throughout all cultures and throughout history, and furthermore scientific investigation in the form of Psychical Research and parapsychology suggests the existence of psi.

I'm well aware of the standard dismissal of such anomalous experiences as being due to folly, delusion, cognitive illusion and pathology and so on, and yes, I think such a dismissal is justified in most claims. I'm also leery of scientific results in the soft sciences. We are all, including scientists, very easily fooled, especially when a certain result is desired (although it is my understanding that in parapsychology a double blind protocol is normally employed).

None of this makes any difference to my belief in psi. But I can’t say anything in addition to the foregoing to make you question your beliefs, or disbeliefs. I would just say that at this moment in time science cannot explain consciousness. Indeed, at least with the present concept of science as dealing with the quantifiable (measurable), it seems science cannot in principle explain consciousness. It’s why we have had the mind-body problem for millennia, a problem that has become especially acute with the birth of modern science in the 17th Century.

You might retort that materialism explains everything. But there are many varieties of materialism and materialists vehemently attack each other’s variety of materialism saying it’s nonsensical! Eg Searle and Dennett. But the bottom line is that since consciousness is left out in our scientific description of reality, then we simply are in no position to stipulate that consciousness can’t have certain abilities. That includes the denial of mental causation as well as psi. We can only go by experiences, whether they be anecdotal, or more formal scientific investigations. Yes, they might all be wrong, we might all be fooling ourselves. But why suppose we are?

I know why, it’s our modern culture's metaphysical beliefs regarding the nature of reality. For sure, people don’t know what variety of materialism is correct, but they feel that some variety must be correct, or at least something like property dualism or epiphenomenalism. But I think all these positions are absolute nonsense, so they don’t have any hold over me. Since both anecdotes and scientific research overwhelmingly suggest psi, that’s what I’ll believe until someone provides any reason to make me doubt my beliefs.