@Baden

Speaking badly of moderators, is that 'Baden' like I'm a baden (bad guy or badass)?

Seemed fairly well educated and knowledgable, from what little I read from him. The weirdness of his comments on race surprised me though! I suppose had they not been a surprise, it would not have seemed so weird! — creativesoul

I read through quite a few of his posts (here and Facebook) to get a better sense of him, because I questioned honesty. I believe he’s sincere. And yeah, educated and intelligent, though emotionally... off, perhaps somewhere on the spectrum.

Never underestimate the importance of banning ernest.

The artist stated that he doesn't "want the dogs of Manhattan to feel left out of the pee party." Seems pretty decent of him.

How so?

The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor
A fascinating book, well written, and important for anyone's good health.

At the risk of being indelicate, if you’re living in the same neighborhood it would be somewhat irresponsible of you to get another cat, being that if the circumstances haven’t changed it may suffer the same fate.

What if you shrunk people down to the size of an electron and used them in the famous "double slit experiment"? Would you get the same results? What would the experiences of the people be? — RogueAI

Either wavey or particley, depending on if you checked on their progress through the slits.

Banned in the midsts of my rapport building. :sad:

Taking Nuke’s advise...

You are clearly non-whites who want to see the west fall. — rec

Hello, rec, and welcome to the forum. That’s a valid point and indeed I am myself a quarter Mexican. My inclination to wish western downfall is of course based on a bad case of TDS. Know any good therapists?

It's a curious thought that a majority is required to make something real.
– praxis

Well this is what I observed, I may have been mistaken in assuming that everyone had to be in on it for it to be real. It just was, and appeared not to be at home, that's all. — Punshhh

It makes sense, it just initially struck me as odd, then I recalled how religion can tightly bind a community, and, necessarily exclude all outsiders. You were there of course and partook, as anyone who follows the narrative can, until they don't.

And did these remote Himalayaians validate your experience?
– praxis

Yes they did — Punshhh

Did you need them to?

The way I saw it was in the way they all believed in a divine presence — Punshhh

And you experienced this divine presence, as something separate from yourself?

It also enabled me to put into some kind of focus how my society at home had lost this. This is not to say that there weren't people at home who realised this, or who had faith, but rather the society as a whole had lost this and it relied on everyone, or at least most of the people for it to be, to be real. — Punshhh

It's a curious thought that a majority is required to make something real. Very disturbing in that it invalidates minorities. Some don't like to talk about tribalism when romanticizing the past. It seems that some things are never forgotten and impossible to imagine.

I don't want to speak for Wayfarer — Punshhh

I wouldn't worry about it. His position is so tenuous that he's rendered himself speechless.

I see it is that it is a situation where one can't see the wood for the trees. — Punshhh

Funny you should put it that way because I was thinking that emersion in nature could be like experiencing the forest, for example, as "an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive." Unfortunately, being a modern person I cannot validate such an experience for myself, having unshackled myself from the great chain of being and the all-to-human authorities that reign supreme in that divine domain, I stand alone in a nihilistic wasteland.

I have experienced what was lost in the way he puts it while spending time with people living in remote areas of the Himalaya. — Punshhh

And did these remote Himalayaians validate your experience?

How do you deal with prejudice? Firstly, the prejudiced need to want to overcome their prejudice.
— praxis

Yea man, that's what I'm trying to discuss. Do we lefties wish to overcome our prejudices? — Nuke

No, only three sentences after this you say the objective is "reaching policy objectives." Can that be achieved by everyone but Trump supporters overcoming their prejudices, and if they're not an obstacle to that objective then why bother? If it's true that "few to none of their [non-Trump supporter] objectives can be reached without lots of Trump voters on board," then the prejudices of Trump supporters might need to be somehow overcome.

Not denying biases on both sides, and personally, I've been working on trying to understand Trump supporters from day one, and studying the situation from various angles.

Unfortunately, my personal Affect is rather flat. I don't have strong emotional swings. That's not a sign of depression, but of a stable happy-go-lucky temperament. I am by nature rather Buddha-like in the sense of a peaceful state of mind. I suppose that's why my general mood seems rather two-dimensional to more emotionally volatile people. — Gnomon

I can appreciate your personal assessment and acknowledge the quality of equanimity in your manner. Nevertheless, your brain is irrevocably linked to a body that experiences fluctuations in energy and satisfaction, or arousal and valence, respectively. That is affect. What your brain does with that information is largely dependent on your conditioning, and that is largely dependent on whatever culture you were raised in. Earlier you asked what the difference was between Possibilities fifth (personal conditioning) and sixth (shared cultural conditioning) dimensions. Both are essentially about adaptively regulating energy, though the sixth dimension is collaborative between 'relational structures' in nature.

What would it take for me to experience the Fifth Dimension stage of enlightenment? — Gnomon

Note how you're feeling and realize that at its core it's simply a state of arousal/valence, and whatever emotions you might be experiencing are just so much conditioned prediction to your current situation.

If you need to fart, you must first file a 17 page application with the EPA. :-) — Nuke

You joke, but it’s not a joke for the people you’re talking about, who’ve been lead to hold all sorts of absurd prejudices.

How do you deal with prejudice? Firstly, the prejudiced need to want to overcome their prejudice. Then they can dissolve their prejudice by merely getting to know what they’re prejudiced against.

Obviously.

I guess that if you addressed the question at all you would be arguing against yourself.

Maybe @Punshhh is braver than you?

Part of the implicit condition of modernity is the sense of oneself as an intelligent, separate subject in a domain of objects (and other subjects), whereas in the pre-modern world, the world was experienced as, or realised as, an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive. Having fallen out of that, it is impossible to recall or imagine what has been lost or forgotten. — Wayfarer

I hate to state the obvious but if something is impossible to recall or imagine then how can you recall or imagine it? You just described it as the world “experienced as, or realised as, an intrinsically alive presence with which one had a relationship beyond the merely adaptive.” What is so outlandish about that?

I've interpreted what Possibility has written about it to be like a dimension of measurement, if that makes sense. Affect is a dimension like depth is a dimension. There is depth information available to perception as there is affect information available to perception. Make sense?

That's my take on it, for what it's worth.

Feeling uncomfortable about it I scanned through some of his Facebook posts to try and get a sense of Ernest. Best guess is that he's entirely serious.



Never underestimate the importance of getting a sense of Ernest.

I still don't know how the hypothetical Fifth Dimension might fit into my theory of Information. I don't understand how it differs from the spiritual New Age notion, or from the mathematical universe of String Theorists. My Enformationism thesis has a lot to say about space-time, but doesn't mention higher or multiple dimensions. That's because I have no personal experience with anything beyond the mundane dimensions of apparent reality. — Gnomon

I'm sure it would help if you familiarized yourself with: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

I just hope he posts more after returning from the ER so I can watch this play out.

If you want more ideas, why not get off your butt and share some? — Nuke

Cuz I'm not sitting on any.

Poster intent matters. — fdrake

The intent is interesting to consider. The guy's not psychotic so, what's the cool intent about?

According to moral foundations theory, liberals primarily value care and fairness, out of all other moral intuitions. Philosophers value reason. So here we have a forum largely comprised of individuals who value care and fairness (and is part of their identity) and also reason. So where does one end and the other begin? It could be a fun game to see where the line is drawn.

If?

children all across the neighborhood were starting to hate me — ernestm

That part made me laugh, thanks. :point:

No time now but I'll check it out.

Each of these dimensionally rare relational structures suggests a weak impetus towards increasing awareness, connection and collaboration (or exposure, transmission and integration of information) beginning with the most fundamental elements of the universe. Without it, the universe as we know it would not have existed, and neither would we. — Possibility

I got this gist when I read through a collection of your posts on various topics, and you now explicitly say, "it has nothing to do with survival, dominance or procreation." I think we can collapse that into just procreation, by the way. I think it might help if you could explain where procreation fits. It fits somehow.

Maybe a good approach is with genes. It's easy to see how genes are information, and that it appears the one goal of genes is procreation.

The fact that there are no Trump voters here does not stop us from considering how we might productively engage them when we do encounter them. — Nuke

There are, as Michael pointed out, but the few hardcore ones of the kind you've been describing tend not to last long, and their motivations are dubious. That's my experience anyway.

You've been promoting the idea of reaching across the aisle to this 'tribe' but have yet to offer any good ideas about accomplishing this difficult task aside from validation, which, by the way, can come off as condescending.

It's a matter of realistically appreciating that little of significance can be accomplished without them. — Nuke

Actually, I think they only account for about 30-40% of Americans. Half the nation didn't vote in 2016.

I don’t follow, there really are no Trump supporters on this forum of the sort you describe.

what we lefties do need to do is reach out to Trump voters and publicly acknowledge that they have reasonable concerns. — Nuke

Somehow I don’t think that a public “there there now, you have reasonable concerns” will do the trick. Validation may be a good starting point but it only goes so far. Got any other ideas?

When I share this on Facebook, I am told I am a 'privielged white sh*t who is exactly causing the problem.' — ernestm

I don’t know Facebook that well but don’t you still have to accept ‘friend’ requests? Or maybe you can’t read a room so good?

our capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration well beyond the importance of our own existence, species, planet and galaxy that is of the most value to a universe whose ultimate purpose seems to have always been to matter. — Possibility

This is the essence of my issue with your theory, at least as far as I currently know or understand it. We value awareness, connection, and collaboration, and I suspect that this is due to our being a social species. Why would these qualities be of value to the universe, or even a non-social species? It’s like anthropomorphizing the universe, but if I’m not mistaken, you said that’s laughable, so, not sure where I’ve gotten lost.

Also, I can’t grasp the idea of how the universes ultimate purpose could have been to matter, or rather, I don’t know what that means.

Praxis has simply been trolling. — Gnomon

I wrote a sincere post about my impression of information theory as you requested. It's your choice to respond, of course, but it's indisputable evidence of non-trolling interest and conduct.

Granted I've been unnecessarily rude. I've gained interest in the topic and would like to be more cooperative. You cannot fault Possibility's conduct, by the way, which has been remarkable by any standard.

You're speaking in riddles again, Gnomon, which is fine, but it's getting old.

Is there any legislation in the works along these lines that you know of? Anything that someone might contact their representatives to support?

For what it's worth, Trudeau admitting systemic racism. Remarkable by comparison to POTUS.

I don’t recall claiming sainthood. Anyway, shouldn't you be dismantling my narrative? Trump isn’t divisive? The divisiveness is not strategic? and whatever else.

Is there something preventing you from responding for your fallen hero and righteously defending his honor?