Music and Intelligence
Trump
Should I vote for Trump because at the very least he won’t be corrupt?
Writing Now: Ike DavisBrendan Donegan
- He built casinos in New York City and Atlantic City in the 1980s. He entered Atlantic City by buying land from a Philadelphia mafia made man at twice the market value. He then hired a construction firm owned by the same mafia to build the casio, and they then controlled the bartenders union. Not to put to fine a point on it, but in the course of developing and operating that one casino, Donald Trump was on a first-name basis with multiple mafia dons.
- Several of Trump’s buildings in New York were built by the Genovese crime family. He shared an attorney with the head of that crime family and had at least one face-to-face meeting with the two of them.
- Trump Tower in New York was built by a mix of mafia laborers and illegal immigrants, and his company was later convicted of conspiring to avoid paying pension and welfare fund contributions.
No. Lack of corruption does not make you qualified to be president. Otherwise, the vast majority of Americans would be qualified. My next door neighbor is a mechanic for the post office. Totally not corrupt. Would not make a great president. I agree that honesty and independence from special interests are very desirable in a candidate. But so are foreign policy acumen, economic policy positions, and a strong commitment to the inclusiveness and dedication to human rights that has made this country stand apart. Trump fails on all counts, especially the last. Also, I would point out that Sanders is equally well known for his honesty, lack of corporate ties, and ‘speaking his mind.’ I’m guessing you’re not a fan of democratic socialism, but if it’s honesty you’re looking for, you can get it from Sanders without the sexism, racism, xenophobia, bullying and megalomania.
Anonymous
Feynman Approach to Reading a Book
Books..
Open AI
The enigma’s of the open source economy never stop giving.
Elon Musk introduces open AI
Super Booyabase
Overall quite a stunning dish. One objection may be that it is perhaps just a bit too intense.
Ingredients:
-one cup chopped fresh Ontario leeks (still available on Dec 31!)
-one cup chopped Ontario french shallots
-one cup chopped celery
-one medium fine chopped jalapeno pepper
-fresh cup chopped dill (forgot but would have worked)
-3 heritage carrots chopped
-about half a pound of small (tender) octopus cut up
-A couple of garlic cloves chopped
-a bit of dried basil, dried parsley
-enough olive oil to simmer all of the above together in a large covered pot
When hot…
– 3 or 4 small live crabs
– a couple of pounds of mussels
– a couple of pounds of clams (optional – flaverful but tough and expensive)
– a pound or so of precooked skate (perhaps not next time.. seems there may be sustainability issues here!)
– two or three cups of Italian crushed tomatoes from a bottle (not can)
– half a cup of white wine
– two lemons and a lime
Poor in the wine and crushed tomatoes along with the crabs, mussels, clams and steam away.
When shellfish is done add lemon and lime juice. I remove the shells then add the precooked fish (skate in this case) and voila.
Oh, sprinkle in cayenne to taste. This is a great dish for a cayenne kick!
Serve with the best fresh French bread you can get and a glass of crisp white.
Conservative appointments dominate CBC BoD
Stephen Harper’s legacy lives on at our national public broadcaster through the many Conservative Party partisans and donors he has appointed to CBC’s Board of Directors – all devoted to Harper’s plan to shrink it.
Right now, 9 of 11 current Board members have been financial donors to the Conservative Party – complicit in Harper’s plan to diminish and control the CBC. And none of their appointments expires for at least eighteen months. As things stand now, some of them are slated to be on the Board until 2020 – well after after the next general election!
NAGEL’S NESCIENCE OF NUN’S GNOSIS
It is satisfying to see a serious Philosopher of Mind acknowledge the notion that science has hitherto failed to solve the central problem conceptually confronting cogitant Mankind: namely, how inert matter gives rise to consciousness. Nagel correctly contends that consciousness is the most complex, most astounding accompaniment of life extant in our corner of the Cosmos. He understandably argues that the nature of scientific investigation necessarily impairs its ability to offer an adequate explanation of the emergence of awareness from insensate matter and, further, that the invocation of Evolution does not diminish this deficiency. Impressively, irrespective of his acknowledged atheism, he encourages intellectuals to take certain arguments advanced by advocates of Intelligent Design seriously (however sentimental and self-serving such simple-minded statements seem). In essence, what Darwinian theorists unduly dismiss is the difficulty, indeed apparent impossibility, of naive Natural Selection sufficiently accounting for the creation of consciousness prior to the origination of organized life. While Natural Selection can clearly explain the efflorescence of intelligence (owing to its inherent adaptability) after the emergence of self-replicating structures, it cannot conceivably account for the factors that would have made this property productive prior to the appearance of Life.
If the Author is inclined to agree with Dr. Nagel’s aforementioned analysis, wherein does the distinguished Philosopher err? To elucidate the intellectual indictment of his heuristic enterprise we must mention the main metaphysical muddle—the Mind/Matter Mystery. Simply stated, matter is marked by properties such as ponderosity (weightiness), extensibility (space occupation), and ostensible insentience (absence of awareness). Obversely, the mind is immaterial—it occupies no space and possesses no mass. Further, it feels. To employ Nagel’s apt ideational imagery, there is “something it is like to be” aware, sentient, conscious. Despite their undeniable dissimilarity, the immaterial mind is dependent upon the physical brain. Though the best thinkers in the Western tradition have systematically studied this thorny issue since Descartes, it is arguable that the Ancients of the East and elsewhere also appreciated the problem and sought to effect a synthesis of soul and soma, spirit and substance. And yet, even in our advanced age of scientific sophistication, we seem no closer to an edifying understanding of this most fundamental philosophical problem. Persons privy to the pronouncements of “Mind, Matter, Mathematics, & Mortality (M4)” may not be so pessimistic in their assessment of our understanding however.
M4 maintains that modern science has established the infinitesimal (hence immaterial) essence of matter on its minutest level (i.e. that of leptons and quarks). This eradicates the alleged incommensurability of matter and mind in the materialistic sense—for fundamentally, there is no such thing as “matter”. M4 maintains that modern science has established that elementary particles exhibit irreducible awareness (as indicated, for instance, in the modified Double Slit Experiment). This eradicates the alleged incommensurability of matter and mind in the subjectivist sense. Admittedly, I am biased, possessed of pride and prejudice alike. What else could I be? M4 is my “Baby”, my Magnum Opus, and is arguably the most elegant exposition of Metaphysics since Plotinus’ “Enneads”, perhaps Plato’s “Timaeus”, mayhaps even the monumental “Memphite Theology” of the ancient Egyptians secured Shabaka, that Sudanic Sovereign of Nubian nativity. [Aristotle’s Metaphysics is anything but elegant, but this is purely the opinion of a professed Platonist.] It would be easy for an objector to eschew my self-appraisal as excessive intellectual egotism. However, a real refutation of my work would require a repudiation (or reinterpretation) of the sound science and substantive empirical evidence upon which it is based, not an unreasoned, reflexive rejection of my grandiloquent claims. Regrettably, my relative academic obscurity makes the task of kindred colleagues somewhat difficult, especially given my disciplinary dalliance in diverse areas of investigation. However, my manifest (and ambivalently desired) obscurity has not prevented prominent scientists and intellectuals from appropriating my ideas without proper attribution or acknowledgement. It is incumbent upon intellectuals (especially if they endeavor to ensconce their musings in a manuscript) to know what is known and already articulated, if indeed intellectual novelty is among their ideals—as it ought to be. In short, Dr. Nagel should know the nature of my work and adjust his arguments accordingly, even if he ultimately opposes them. Like Dr. Colin McGinn, with whom he shares a modicum of Mysterianism, he would be disinclined to dismiss the principle of Proto-Mentalism (or what I call ‘Immaterial Monism’) if he understood the implications of the inherent awareness (or ‘Proto-Percipience’) of elementary matter. But his inattention is altogether innocent, not malicious, and I take no umbrage thereat. But what, we may rightly wonder, would he say about this excerpt from M4 concerning the crucial Quantum Mechanical experiment cited previously:
“If the particles that certain suitably contrived machines detect are somehow, in some sense, ‘aware’, being cognizant of the conditions under which they exist, it should come as no surprise that a collection of quanta, atoms, molecules, cells, organs, and organ systems should, over the course of hundreds of millions of years, under the influence of a selective, guiding principle aimed at ensuring survival, result in the accretion of awareness and the emergence of what we call consciousness. Consciousness is the epiphenomenal result of the assemblage of molecules whose very elementary constituents are demonstrably possessed of the capacity for awareness. We do not know what it is like for a quark or an electron or an atom to be aware, but there seems to be little reason to doubt that they are in some sense aware. We know, moreover, that we are composed of these very entities. The key to consciousness may lie in the rudimentary awareness of the constituents of which we are composed. Animism is alive (pun intended).” (M4, p.46)
There is something superficially novel about one of Nagel’s arguments. This concerns Naturalistic Teleology. In Dr. Nagel’s estimation, Darwinian developmental doctrines that describe the emergence of awareness from insentient matter are unconvincing; there is, instead, an overarching Order, Intelligence, or Entelechy inherent in existence. This Entity appreciates and is oriented toward “value”—that is, it is able and inclined to discern “good” and “bad”; we sentient souls are manifestations of this Entity; any adequate Theory of Everything (TOE) must explain the irreducible value of value. M4 explicitly embraces Teleology—the idea of an overarching, Proto-Mental Entity inherent in the Universe. I call this abysmal, nebulous entity “Nun”. [See “Nun, Nous, & Numerous: Symbols, Science, & Supreme Mathematics”, in Ch IV of M4 (Amen-Ra, 2007).] Of course this idea is not entirely new, hence my employment of ancient Egyptian iconography to express it in M4. I could just as easily have employed the appellations Amen, Ishvara, Brahman, Purusha, Ptah or other ancient cosmogonic concepts conveying the primacy of consciousness in the Cosmos. What does make the M4 dispensation of Divine Teleology nearly novel is that it dispenses with a Divinity and offers naturalistic arguments and evidence for its principal postulates and conclusions. Thus, Nagel’s admonition to intellectuals to take Teleological Analysis seriously is appreciated though anachronistic. M4 has already introduced and explored the explanatory implications of Teleology for the mystery of Mind. Our case is cogent and compelling. It need only be considered.
Dr. Nun Sava-Siva Amen-Ra, Ascetic Idealist Philosopher
Damascus, Maryland USA
7 September MMIV
Linky
What secret sides to human nature do therapists see that non-therapists would be surprised by?
That 90% of humans are walking around with shot gun wounds in their psyche, like zombies.
They live their lives, repeating the same mistakes, believing the same things matter that actually don’t, and worry about the same problems that in reality don’t deserve the time of day.
They do this because they run away from the things they have problems with; they are afraid of believing something else.
They believe others care about what they do, what kind of people they are, or even what they are wearing, when in reality we are all just extras in everyone else’s movie of their own life; if we die, their life goes on. In fact 99.99999999% of the planet won’t even know you when you die.
Very few people see the world for what it really is; that nobody really gives a care about you in the long term; they simply can’t. And when they think they do, do they really even know you? The real you? You are more alone than most people think, you are stuck in your own little world, amassing your own success, chalking up points to what will soon be dust, getting offended by words, pretending people hate you or think about you when they really don’t, getting upset when someone cuts you off, worrying about winning a lottery or the size of your genitals, and all the while you can’t do anything to stop your forced march into the permanent abyss.
The truth is, you’re just visiting this spinning rock in a vacuum, with no life for at least trillions of miles besides here, and you’re not taking anything with you when you go. Making others lives better, including your own, is the only way you will ever matter in any positive way for any amount of time to anyone.
…and that this bleak belief system is actually really awesome and happy, perhaps the coolest thing anyone could ever realize, because it gives you the only real purpose you have; to make things better, for everyone, just because it’s the only thing that matters, not because God says, or because someone is watching, or to prove your self worth because your parents didn’t love you enough, but just because it’s “right”, and right being that it both feels that way when we think about it, and after we do it, and brings us joy and elation.
Thats the one change you can make that lasts forever; just doing “good” as in doing something besides causing suffering; it adds up and we all feel it, even though we may not know your name, what you looked like, or what your favorite song was… what you did mattered; your life mattered and will matter to all the life that is to come, and that’s enough. In fact that’s all it ever can be. Yet almost everyone is afraid to even think about life in terms like that, to let go of the illusions we think matter so much, even though we all seem to already know it’s true.
Nick Steele