• James Webb Telescope
    ↪Agent Smith
    The redshift of the distant universe (most of the other galaxies) is due to the expansion of space over time. The more distant the source, the older the light, and the more stretched it has become as space expands. Radiation that has stretched so far as to become radio frequency, dates back to the early universe, before the formation of stars and galaxies, I think.

    https://www.space.com/25732-redshift-blueshift.html

    In relation to redshift due to expansion of space, the shifts observed due to actual relative motion are rather small.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/07/this-is-how-distant-galaxies-recede-away-from-us-at-faster-than-light-speeds/?sh=6f8ba9ed72a2
  • Bushido and Stoicism
    To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. — Dermot Griffin

    On the one hand, dogs are noble, brave and loyal, but on the other, fanaticism is rather disparaged these days. This is because science has multiplied the power of the human to previously unimaginable heights. Thus the fanatic, blowing himself up on a plane, or some such, has become very much a rabid dog, dangerous and out of control, and in need of immediate shooting. The days when a warrior needed long and arduous training and discipline to be much danger to others are long gone - any idiot in a car can be a suicidal serial killer, and there is nothing admirable about it.
  • Is Pi an exact number?
    The classical Greeks used to slaughter each other over just such heresies. But these days Ph.D's do not blink at irrational, transcendental, imaginary, and just fucking ridiculous numbers.

    Pi is irrational in the sense that it cannot be expressed as a ratio between two whole numbers, (known to the thought police under the alias of a vulgar fraction). But the square root of 2 is also irrational, and to the extent that 2 is an exact number, the number that, multiplied by itself, comes to 2 must also be exact. Therefore the accusation of congenital vagueness against irrational numbers fails, and the thought police are liable to investigate you on suspicion of irrationalist prejudice.
  • Coronavirus
    It's just how we are. — frank

    Let's change!
  • Coronavirus
    ↪frank
    Thanks for that, useful info.

    Perhaps there are reasons also for that. — ssu

    Reasons for being unreasonable:

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/10/15/five-zombie-economic-ideas-that-refuse-to-die/

    There are people profiteering from crisis, and from increasing disasters, and unfortunately they are dominating the world. Here in the UK, the government trumpets economic growth while presiding on a huge decline in living standards.
  • Truth Utility vs. White Lies
    A wife asking if she looks fat is testing you — Cobra

    It may be so. Then it is a dishonest question. She is asking for sartorial advice, but really she is asking if you love her. One should answer both questions honestly; there is no point in pretending an affection verbally that is not going to be enacted, and there is no point encouraging a size 18 to squeeze into a size 14. A relationship founded on flattery is a fantasy relationship, a real relationship is made of affection, truth and trust.
  • Truth Utility vs. White Lies
    we should assess when and how to tell the truth, instead of telling it indiscriminately. Is what determines the point of truth a matter of utility? — Cobra

    If you are asking, "Does my brain look big in this post?", I have to tell you it does not. Telling people what they want to hear when it is not true is fostering delusion, and thus insanity. And in the longer term, it undermines communication and community and the language itself, and the loss of trust produces paranoia.

    This does not mean that one should be looking to inflict the cruel truth on folks who have not asked for it, but when your wife asks whether her bum looks big in this, though she wants to hear that it does not, she wants more to hear the truth, rather than have folks sniggering behind her back, because you flattered her with a lie.
  • Look to yourself
    I became 'content' with the conception that I am not able to see the whole of 'me, myself and I' at any instant in time. — universeness

    So you are content with I {the seer} see myself {the seeable}, and theorise me {the unseeable} -- or thereabouts? Fair enough, if you are content. I simply say to anyone who is not content, that there is another way, that does not begin with thought and theory, and also does not struggle, but is willing to see whatever is there and accept it. Seeing can see itself whole, and it is instantaneous. I hope you all will come to it.
  • Look to yourself
    Ah, I see, now. It was my comment about brain-speak that is a problem for you. My apologies. If I might explain just a little, what I have been concerned with is what you put in the title "look to yourself" which I have been calling 'insight.' Now when I do that, I do not find a brain. And I think when other people do it they do not find a brain either. A brain cannot experience itself. So when someone speaks of 'my brain' doing this or having this structure or thinking such and such, they are not looking to themselves at all, but theorising according to what they have been taught.

    Now the reason I think this is important is that a theory is a way of looking, and while that is no problem when one is looking outwardly, when one looks inwardly, the theory that one has is part of the thing one is trying to look at; it is part of oneself. and this means that the theory through which one looks cannot account for itself and one can only have a partial incomplete view of oneself.

    This is the source of the triune aspect of the mind; not the structure of the brain, but the structure of outward looking turned inwards; the observer, the observed and the theory. The winner the loser and the referee, the id the ego and the superego, etc, etc. Here is the challenge: if I have a true insight, then I see the whole - all three. But if all three are seen, who is seeing?
  • Should Whoopi Goldberg be censored?
    Racism is like theism in this respect, that the reality of the 'ism is independent of its truth. What counts as a race, and what counts as a god are not questions that can be answered in any neutral or objective way.

    Still, if one were to speak of visible or measurable difference and, say, 'colour prejudice' and perhaps 'ethnic prejudice', one might be able to consider differences between the African, Asian, Arabic, Irish, and Jewish experiences of discrimination. But I don't think we need a league table of collective suffering, do we?
  • Look to yourself
    You get It! totally! — universeness

    I wonder how we have travelled from agreement to conflict?

    I might disagree with what you say but I respect your right to say it, as long as you are not inciting violence. — universeness
  • Look to yourself
    ↪universeness
    I'm somewhat underwhelmed by your generous respect for my right to be wrong. "Don't keep fighting the good fight!" he says, inciting the end to violence.
  • Look to yourself
    My advice to you would be to concentrate on thinking about why you have difficulty recognising the existence of your own brain. — universeness

    My advice to you is to inquire into the significance of this piece of meat you obsess about. Notice that it doesn't have as much control as it thinks over basic functions like the circulation of blood, including heart-rate, the digestive system, body temperature, reproductive system, - all the important stuff is controlled elsewhere, leaving the brain to play fingers on keyboards and make funny noises at other brains.
  • Coronavirus
    how it affects society and particularly the health care system. — Benkei

    I think we need to adapt our society as fast as the virus adapts its DNA. In particular, there are intersections with climate change measures that seem like obviously sensible precautions. Big reduction in international travel, a big move to level up access to basic hygiene, food, and medicine worldwide, routine hand washing and mask wearing when in close contact. A lot more care over domestic animal hygiene, and more protection for wilderness. There's probably more...

    But at the moment, the priorities are saving travel and tourism, levelling down, profiting from vaccine sales, and 'getting back to normal'. :death:
  • Coronavirus
    Here's a non-technical overview of the possibilities for the further evolution of covid. That it becomes rapidly insignificant to humans does not seem the most likely scenario.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03619-8
  • Look to yourself
    I don't like to employ anything invented in the theistic mind. But I could employ terms like single-minded and no psychological conflict when describing pure evil. — universeness

    Well if you have to speak of evil, then you seem to be already in a theological discourse, in which case you need to understand the way that language works. The term 'pure evil' is at best paradoxical, and liable to lead to contradiction. "How can evil be anything but impure?", I might ask.

    I hate fascism but I do not lack insight into its doctrine. — universeness

    I have been using insight in a restricted sense of inward seeing or understanding of oneself in a specifically undivided way. I'm sorry if that was not clear in the context. I do not suppose you are seeing the doctrine of fascism in yourself and as yourself?
  • Look to yourself
    If a person becomes too 'single-minded' and they have very little or no 'psychological conflict' then they can lose all empathy/compassion for others. — universeness

    Again we are not of one mind here. I say 'single-minded', and you hear 'bully' or 'tyrant'. But a tyrant is not single-minded but is deeply conflicted, dependent for his identity on having power over others, because he has no self-understanding. It is the lack of insight that leads to the loss of empathy.
  • Should Whoopi Goldberg be censored?
    I suspect that folks sometimes confuse being censored with being censured. If there is no censorship, you can say stupid and hurtful things, and when you do, or when you don't, you can be called stupid and hurtful. When you call someone out for being stupid and hurtful, and say you don't want to support them or work with them, you are censuring them not censoring them.
  • Look to yourself
    Tell that to the heroin addict. — Dijkgraf

    Firstly, the myth of the heroin addict is not all it's cracked up to be. After Vietnam, GI heroin addicts were generally able to give up the habit without too much trouble.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits

    But that aside, the point I am making is that people are conflicted. An addict will typically honestly claim to want to stop but by their action show that they want to continue. when you want to do something, then it is very hard not to do it. It is the ending of psychological conflict that is required; when one is single-minded, there is no conflict, and things become fairly straightforward.
  • Look to yourself
    We all have these three voices due to having a triune brain. — universeness

    I don't much like brainspeak. I have never seen or felt my brain and I am not convinced I have one. Nor do i believe that you or anyone else is more experienced wrt their own brain.

    Defeating any kind of addiction is a mammoth task. — universeness

    Alas, you have not understood me; it is so simple, that almost no one does. No one has defeated anyone or anything, and no task has been performed. There is literally nothing easier than not doing what one does not want to do.
  • Look to yourself
    I have "me" and "myself" on the ropes — universeness

    I am a little sad to read this. Whenever I try to to operate on myself, to judge myself or force myself to do or to stop doing or feeling something, what is happening is a fragmentation of the person, and the provoking of conflict. It is counter-productive. Please, you have told us that you are a boxing match, a violent damaging sport; ring the bell for the end of the last round, and call it a draw.

    I have told this story before here, but...
    I was a smoker from the age of 11 until my 60's. Many times i tried to stop and managed once for 6 months, but always fell back. Always there was this conflict: 'I want to stop smoking' but 'I want a cigarette.' and the more I forced myself not to smoke, the more I felt I deserved the reward of a cigarette. And the more I had a cigarette the more I condemned myself as a weak-willed foolish self-indulgent person.

    This went on until I had an insight. I have described the situation as though from the outside, but when I say 'insight' I mean an understanding that is not separate from what is understood. I understood the conflict as a whole, and from within. And in the moment of that understanding, there was a change without effort; if I want to smoke, I do not want to not smoke, and vice versa. And from that moment, I have not wanted a cigarette, ever, at all. It is finished.

    Of course one cannot force oneself to have such an insight that ends the conflict, gritting one's teeth and urging oneself on does not help, and nor does fighting oneself - even as one wins, one loses. It is a matter of looking without judgement, of looking at oneself without separating oneself between what is seeing and what is seen.

    On the outside, the world can be worked on, improved perhaps, cleaned and tidied and so on, but working inwardly does not make sense; insight and understanding is what can heal and transform.
  • Look to yourself
    ↪universeness
    I think you have the answer in your title, to this the most important question of philosophy: -- "How shall we live?"

    If you have the great good fortune to be already a kind and decent human being, then whether you are a protestor or a politician, a doctor or a plumber, a big cheese or a glass of fresh milk, whatever you naturally wish to do will spread joy and comfort around the world. No worries, and no measurement required.

    Alas, it is the mean spirited that spend their lives waiting for the best deal in the accumulation of virtue, and calculating how their act will influence the world. For damaged people like me, full of fear and greed and anger, it would be futile to try and heal the world; we must look for healing ourselves.
  • Black woman on Supreme Court
    wrong — god must be atheist

    Don't bore me with mere reality!
  • Black woman on Supreme Court
    I think drug addicts and alcoholics are seriously under-represented.
  • POLL: Why is the murder rate in the United States almost 5 times that of the United Kingdom?
    guns are inanimate. — Garrett Travers

    https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCxdCA_EK_saGT7JyiZ0MG4Q
  • POLL: Why is the murder rate in the United States almost 5 times that of the United Kingdom?
    The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. — James Baldwin
  • Brexit
    They won't be able to get that Cunt out. — The Opposite

    'They' ( conservative MPs) are debating quietly when to make their move. What no one wants is a leadership contest that The Cunt wins, because then he is safe for year. So are the numbers stacking up now, or do they wait for.... whatever, the Met report, the Gray report, possible prosecutions, the next scandal, a wave of mass starvation, WW3?
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    Likewise, Physics. "Shut up and calculate" is the discipline imposed on novices; only when the calculus has been mastered can one begin to discuss the mysteries within understanding.
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    The Shadow is hidden in moral knowledge. — frank

    Why do you say that? Consider the 10 commandments - an explicit enumeration of the dimensions of the shadow, surely?

    Perhaps I need to explain my own aphorism. Moral knowledge is esoteric because it requires an initiation, which is described in the OT as 'The Fall'. It means nothing to the uninitiated, who think it must be a species of desire or some such.
  • The Decline of Intelligence in Modern Humans
    ↪jamalrob
    One could cite this thread as evidence for its thesis. *runs away giggling foolishly.*
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    I want to consider for a moment what I will call 'altered states.' We might understand that there is something it is like to be a bat, that we cannot access because we ain't bats and ain't never been bats. Similarly, there is something it is like to be drunk, that one who has never consumed alcohol cannot access. One can talk about the symptoms, slurred speech, unsteady gait, disinhibition, and so on, but the beetle in the box of ecstatic drunkenness is esoteric, and a mystery impenetrable to teetotal sobriety.

    And what is true of alcohol, is even more so true of hallucinogens like LSD. The more so because prior beliefs and social setting so radically alter the experience, from heavenly to hellish, and from life-changing to rather dull, from a sense of unity with the world, to total paranoia. I describe, but only initiates will 'be able to relate to' what I say.

    Moral knowledge is esoteric knowledge.
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    ↪Noble Dust
    Well if you want, you can listen from the other end. I must say I am more frustrated at the extra members only casts that I cannot access without actually joining the mystery cult. They are staying esoteric!

    But seriously, I think even the episodes I have heard already offer a new understanding of modern esoteric revivals, and also the rather bowdlerised history of philosophy that dismisses all this as "irrational".
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    #12 on the mysteries which are distinguished from ...
    #13 & #14 on mysticism.

    These are particularly useful efforts at disambiguation - #13 and #14 really good. And then we arrive at #15 The birth of philosophy, which turns out to be a messy affair and saturated with the body-fluids of religion mythology cults and initiations.

    #16 Pythagoras. As you have never seen him, devoid of mathematics and the interpretation of Plato and later commentators.
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    The question still remains, how does one deal with the irrational with reason? — ChatteringMonkey

    I think that is a false question. Reason declares her other to be irrational, and then deals with her accordingly. Nor is the question of belief important. Think of the golden amulet worn on a particular finger by married folks. No supernatural belief is required for a wedding ring to be important and significant, and those who've not been initiated into the mysteries of marriage cannot really understand, because they have not experienced.

    #8, and #9 discuss esoteric orientalism.
    #10 is about the beginnings of astronomy/astrology
    #11 introduces Judaism
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    That's something that is lacking in Western philosophy, which tends to focus on mind/pure thought (forgetting the body), and which gets a whole lot more attention in eastern philosophy (rites, meditation, etc.). So I do think this is an important topic, but I would rather want to explore it from a psychological/physiological naturalist point of view, rather than from a magical supra-natural point of view... if that makes sense. — ChatteringMonkey

    The esoteric as whatever Western philosophy neglects or denies, is almost a tautology. But I wonder how a naturalist account of the supernatural, or a rational account of the irrational can possibly work. I'll have to wait and see I suppose...
  • I am starting my Math bachelors degree next week, any pointers?
    looking for some pointers. — Zolenskify

    1. don't be afraid to say "I don't understand" or to ask stupid questions.
    2. Keep a sugary snack handy as brain food.
    3. Have loads of fun!
    4. Ignore me and listen to fdrake.
    5. Congratulations!
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    Don't make me come down to NY and lay some Tao upside your head. — T Clark

    I haven't checked, but my guess is that it'll be #150 - #200 before we get to the time when Chinese philosophy had any significant impact on the West. Where we are at the moment is Classical Greece and the oriental influences are Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, and Judea. The Near East, not the Far East. Lao Tzu was contemporaneous give or take a few centuries, but the influence can only have been very tenuous and indirect gossip along a precursor of the silk road.
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    ↪Banno
    Not particularly. Take your time,; I zone out at times into old-man reverie. I'm expecting comments to range back and forth as people catch up or overtake - the thought police are going to be low profile here, I hope.
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4732/pg4732.html

    I leave this Here for those who prefer text, to introduce #11 of the podcast, https://shwep.net/podcast/the-long-secret-history-of-judaism-part-i/

    I'll comment or not later.

    Isn't that the world we live in? — Noble Dust

    Just so!
  • The Secret History of Western Esotericism.
    Each and every person on Earth, including you, gentle listener, enters into radically altered states of consciousness, ands visions on a regular basis. we've all experienced the kind of impossible occurrences in which magic specialises.
    Episode 7: We’re Together In Dreams: Dreaming and Western Esotericism

    Freud is prefigured but not discussed here. Now Freud has reached the nadir of his popularity and is now being allowed a small place in psychological discussion by some. But the connection between dreams and mythology is the explicit foundation on which Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis are built. So the notion that dreams are an esoteric communication (a communication in need of interpretation) should be comprehensible to all of us.

    The west interpreting the east in a western way. — Noble Dust

    That is shaping up to be a major theme of the series from #3 onwards, but if Aryan supremacy was the glamour of the last century leading to a distortion of Greek history I think the glamour for us will be more to do with atheistic superiority.
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