Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Daily Dedroidify: The Paradox of our Age

Daily Dedroidify: Paradox

"We have bigger houses but smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, but more problems; more medicines, but less healthiness;

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication;

We have become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are times of fast foods but slow digestion; Tall man but short character; Steep profits but shallow relationships.

It's a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room."
Tenzin Gyatso

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge,
governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality."
Michael Ellner
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"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,
when we all ought to be worried about our own souls, and other people's bellies."
Rabbi Israel Salanter

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts,but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit “Skip Ahead”…"
Source Unknown
(Thanks to Om for clarifying in comments, I wondered why the hell Carlin would mention praying haha. Georgy, so damn grumpy... :p)

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Daily Dedroidify: Believe Nothing!

Daily Dedroidify: Believe Nothing!

...I began to develop a strong suspicion that there was, somewhere in space-time, another Adept of Brain Change, or perhaps a School of Adepts, helping and guiding me. This is not at all unusual. In most human societies, historically, the shamans have used similar brain-change drugs and soon became convinced they have "allies" [for instance Animal Guides, which are archetypical forces aswell] helping them. Even a man with such a long and orthodox scientific career as Dr. John Lilly confesses that he thought he had super-human "Guides" on some of his LSD voyages.
My teachers seemd to have a damned peculiar sense of humar at times. At one point I was almost totally convinced that my teachers were a school of extraterrestrial adepts resident in the double-star system of Sirius. Strange coincidences - or Jungian synchronicities - then accumulated around me, supporting this theory.
Later, a "psychic reader" told me I was "channeling" the spirit of an ancient Chinese sage. Coincidences or "omens" supporting this model then obligingly appeared.
Then, another "psychic" told me I was channeling a medieval Irish bard. More synchronicities followed.
This sort of things always happens to people who mess around with Cabala (even if they don't use Acid) [Or those who mess around with consciousness alteration and conscious evolution in general]
The late Dr. Israel Regardie, a psychotherapist and Cabalist, often distinguished two ways of looking at this phenomenon, when it happens to you. The objective theory, as he called it, assumes an external reality to these "entities." The subjective theory, on the other hand, assumes the "entities" exist only in our brains, as anti-selves or Jungian archetypes or something of that sort. Dr. Regardie believed you will get the best results when you are not committed to either theory but just open yourself to whatever happens.
Somewhere along the way I got concerned with the direction all this was taking and decided to safeguard my sanity by choosing the subjective theory (it's all in my head), and ruthlessly repressing any tendency to speculate further about possible objective theories (there are super-human forces at work here...). In terms of the neurological model then current, I explained everything as my over-developed left brain learning to receive signals from my usually "silent" right brain. (We now know that this left brain/right brain model does not quite explain everything, and Karl Pribram's hologram model of consciousness seems more inclusive.)
Robert Anton Wilson: Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth

Some other thoughts, maybe our unconscious is so powerful that we can let it guide us (another useful metaphor is maybe we are all God like in the Hindu sense that if we want can lead our unconscious, or Higher self, or God, etc etc to guide us out of the maze we got ourselves into), this comes in whatever forms we prefer consciously or have imprinted unconsciously and can change if we so 'intend' it. Intention and Archetypes are powerful stuff! Maybe the subjective side of reality as we filter it with our nervous systems is much more powerful than we now think after the one-sided objective materialistic age which has obviously not made us happy to our fullest potential. Sometimes it seems help from 'outside' no matter how strange is required for our growth. The moral of the story however is BELIEVE NOTHING; It is the highest form of intelligence =)

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
Hassan-i Sabbah

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations ; of Gods, Spheres, Planes and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow ; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
Aleister Crowley - Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, reprinted in Magick

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Boltzmann Brain Paradox

A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of chaos. The idea is named for physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844 - 1906), who had advanced an idea that the known universe arose as a random fluctuation, similar to process through which Boltzmann brains might arise.

The concept arises from the need to explain why we observe such a large degree of organization in the universe. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy in the universe will always increase. We may think of the most likely state of the universe as one of high entropy, closer to uniform and without order. So why is the observed entropy so low?

Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world are a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe. Even in a near-equilibrium state, there will be stochastic fluctuations in the level of entropy. The most common fluctuations will be relatively small, resulting in only small amounts of organization, while larger fluctuations and their resulting greater levels of organization will be comparatively more rare. Large fluctuations would be almost inconceivably rare, but this can be explained by the enormous size of the universe and by the idea that if we are the results of a fluctuation, there is a "selection bias": We observe this very unlikely universe because the unlikely conditions are necessary for us to be here.

This leads to the Boltzmann brain concept: If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which is only just able to create a single self-aware entity. For every universe with the level of organization we see, there should be an enormous number of lone Boltzmann brains floating around in unorganized environments. This refutes the observer argument above: the organization I see is vastly more than what is required to explain my consciousness, and therefore it is highly unlikely that I am the result of a stochastic fluctuation.

The Boltzmann brains paradox is that it is more likely that a brain randomly forms out of the chaos with false memories of its life than that the universe around us would have billions of self-aware brains.