The Amateur's Guide To Life   "Most people would rather die then think." - Betrand Russell
 
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The Week That Is
2009-06-25 21:07:58
This week is, as usual, slipping away from me. I should be preparing for this Monday's show, but I'm not. Well, that's not completely true, I've had two excellent discussions with some very smart people that have restored my faith in humanity. One was with a good friend of mine who introduced me to the concept of atheism. And to pay him back, I accused him of being a 'fundamentalist athiest' the other night (a charge which I later withdrew).

After that discussion what I realized was that in the end you're free to think whatever you want about whatever you want, but if you have no evidence to back it up (which few of us really do) then you're engaging in science fiction-ism. Which I have no problem with, in fact, I rather enjoy. For instance I find the idea of a 'universal conscious force' that is ever present in the universe and that we're all tapping into, a very appealing idea, but I have no grounds for defending it beyond it being a neat idea. Same with my leanings toward 'idealism'. It feels to me like we're creating reality with our thoughts, that we're dreaming it all up, but I can't prove that. Just another neat idea.

Where I run into trouble with the atheists (hence the accusation of 'fundamentalism') is that I didn't understand that there is no room for middle ground. Religious people doing acts of kindness in the name of God is still unacceptable. As Dawkins writes in this interview:

In any case, the universe doesn’t owe us comfort, and the fact that a belief is comforting doesn’t make it true. The God Delusion doesn’t set out to be comforting, but at least it is not a placebo.


Well, I'm not there yet. This is 'zen scientist' front, a person like Dawkins who claims to be able to look into the void of unparalleled uncertainty and not blink. They say that they can grasp a world without meaning, but I'd like to know what lingers in their soul (hah!) late at night.

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In other news, finished an excellent interview in Salon by Robert Wright he has written a book called 'The Evolution of God'. What surprised me most was that for a guy who has done an amazing job of exposing the roots of religion, he still is a pretty spiritual kind of fellow. You'd think after engorging on the hypocrisy of a system that says it connects with a higher power when it is so blatantly set up to manipulate the masses that you'd be pretty cynical about any divine encounters. Fortunately Mr. Wright isn't afraid to get into himself with some meditation and introspection. This is the last question which sums it all up. I love the Weinberg quote.


As opposed to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who famously said, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

I think he's wrong. But it's not surprising. Physicists don't think much about the animate world. So he probably hasn't given a lot of thought to the human condition and the direction of human history. But I'd say even the realm of physics -- just the weirdness of quantum physics -- should instill in all of us a little humility. It should make us aware that human consciousness, designed by natural selection to do really mundane things, is clearly not capable of grasping some ultimate things that are probably out there.


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“Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.” - Stanley Kubrick

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I also listened to a great program on WNYU's Radiolab about Stochastisity, which is a fancy word for randomness. Statistical analysis is one of the main themes, about how we, as humans have a bias towards seeing patterns where the do not exist. Mostly because we love a good story. I will get one of these statisticians on the program and talk about how much the numbers rule our lives.

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From an article about the creation of 'sonic black holes':

"This is about understanding the basic laws of physics," said Steinhauer. "What this research is good for in day to day life I'm not sure, but we as humans want to understand how the universe works."


Exactly.
 
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  posted: 29 June 2009 at 06:48:22 PM | Article
EMAIL logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That's the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees.
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  posted: 29 June 2009 at 10:00:30 AM | Article
The answer appeared to be that our unconscious responses are far quicker than our conscious ones. A stimulus applied to the skin produces an 'evoked potential' or EP in the brain within tens of milliseconds, and that seems to be enough for it to register unconsciously but effectively. A series of experiments have shown that we register unconsciously a whole host of things which may influence our response to events but which never cross the threshold into consciousness. Among other evidence, Libet quotes experiments which show that a conditioned response - a blink - can be created to events which the subject is never actually conscious of. The remarkable phenomenon of blindsight might perhaps be seen as a related case.
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  posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:30:46 PM | Article
The hardback God Delusion was hailed as the surprise bestseller of 2006. While it was warmly received by most of the 1,000-plus individuals who volunteered personal reviews to Amazon, paid print reviewers gave less uniform approval. Cynics might invoke unimaginative literary editors: it has “God” in the title, so send it to a known faith-head. That would be too cynical, however. Several critics began with the ominous phrase, “I’m an atheist, BUT . . .” So here is my brief rebuttal to criticisms originating from this “belief in belief” school.
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  posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:11:08 PM | Article
This hour, Radiolab examines Stochasticity, which is just a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness. How big a role does randomness play in our lives? Do we live in a world of magic and meaning or … is it all just chance and happenstance? To tackle this question, we look at the role chance and randomness play in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, two friends whose meeting seems purely providential, and some very noisy bacteria.
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  posted: 25 June 2009 at 09:08:19 PM | Article
Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.
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"The Universe is not only weirder than you think — it's weirder than you can think."