Tuesday, August 12, 2014
voices from within: gut microbes and the central nervous system
By CNu at August 12, 2014 1 comments
Labels: as above-so below , essence , microcosmos
Sunday, July 27, 2014
the biology of ideology
By CNu at July 27, 2014 0 comments
Labels: essence , neurotypes , What IT DO Shawty...
Sunday, July 13, 2014
to understand a thing is to know whether or not to waste your breath in futile conversation with it...,
pbs | On Making Sen$e this week, we’ve been publishing Paul Solman’s never-aired conversation with economic historian Gregory Clark about his 2007 book,“A Farewell to Alms.” In Friday’s installment, we get to the really controversial part: that genetics may explain why some societies, specifically industrial England, grew economically.
But, first, a recap of the journey Clark has taken us on this week. In the beginning of human history, population was limited by the limited resources to keep humans alive (this is the “Malthusian” economic view developed by Thomas Malthus.) And so with more violence (not to mention fewer working hours), hunter-gatherer society, Clark argued in part one of this interview, was easier than life in pre-industrial England, where material life was harder.
But that changed with the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, the West got rich. One of the world’s intellectual puzzles has been, why and how did England break out of that Malthusian trap? In part two, Clark explained how human nature – indeed our very patience for gratification – changed as we moved from hunter-gatherer society to 1800.
England wasn’t the site of fast economic growth, as the economics literature has long preached, because of the existence of political and market institutions. No, Clark said in part three, England’s economic growth stemmed from the “survival of the richest;” those who personalities were best suited for capitalism thrived.
And now for the truly controversial part. Those traits, like being materially-driven and being able to wait for gratification (think of the marshmallow test), vary by class, and even if Clark believed (and hoped) that cultural transmission explains the class variance, he saw nothing to rule out a genetic explanation.
Paul Solman: The reason that the New York Times science section did this whole big story on you, even before this book came out, surely is because of the genetic part of this explanation, yes? Is that fair?
Greg Clark: Absolutely. And it is a fascinating possibility. Most of the assumption has been that basically human nature was completed in the hunter-gatherer era, that there wasn’t enough time between the hunter-gatherer era and the modern world for any further significant changes in people’s basic nature.
I think the data from somewhere like England, and this is just suggestive, and also the information about these fairly fundamental changes in features like people’s patience, or the amount of work that people do, at least raises the possibility that there was a further change in people, booting the Neolithic revolution and the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
By CNu at July 13, 2014 12 comments
Labels: essence , global system of 1% supremacy , What IT DO Shawty...
the detroit experiment: evolve or die...,
Species develop characteristics which give them competitive advantage. Dinosaurs get big so no predators can eat them up. Saber tooth tigers develop monster jaws so they can chomp on mastadons and other large prey.
But the problem is that species continue to develop these characteristics beyond the point of maximum advantage. Dinosaurs get so big that they need to get a second brain in their midsection to manage their bodies and they die of anatomical schizophrenia. Saber-tooth tiger become such efficient killers of large prey that they begin to wipe them out, and their hypertrophied jaws are badly adapted to killing smaller prey, so they die of starvation. And humans have developed overly large brains and are in the process of thinking themselves to death.
By CNu at July 13, 2014 2 comments
Labels: Collapse Casualties , essence , What IT DO Shawty...
to understand the machine is to be able to control and exploit the machine...,
By CNu at July 13, 2014 0 comments
Labels: cognitive infiltration , essence , Livestock Management
Saturday, July 12, 2014
attention as an effect not a cause: (the basic function you cats typically conflate with consciousness)
- •Current models of attention are based on the premise of limited sensory resources.
- •We propose that attention arises as a byproduct of value-based decision making.
- •Decision making requires estimating the current state of the animal and environment.
- •Filter-like properties of attention arise from weighted inputs to the current state.
- •The brain mechanisms involve a subcortical circuit motif that predates the neocortex.
By CNu at July 12, 2014 0 comments
Labels: essence , What IT DO Shawty...
Saturday, June 28, 2014
chimps prefer african and indian music
"Chimpanzees may perceive the strong, predictable rhythmic patterns as threatening, as chimpanzee dominance displays commonly incorporate repeated rhythmic sounds such as stomping, clapping and banging objects," said de Waal.
The different types of music were at the same volume but played in random order. Each day, researchers observed the chimps and recorded their location every two minutes with handwritten notes. They also videotaped the activity in the enclosure. The chimps' behavior when the music was played was compared to their behavior with no music.
By CNu at June 28, 2014 0 comments
Labels: essence , ethology , music? , What IT DO Shawty...
Thursday, June 26, 2014
the importance of feelings
By CNu at June 26, 2014 0 comments
Labels: essence , subrealist oeuvre... , work
a nugget obscured by a muddled puddle of shyte...,
The fight-or-flight response—a.k.a. the adrenaline rush—cocktails adrenaline, cortisol (the stress hormone), and norepinephrine. It’s an extreme stress response. The brain switches to reactive survival autopilot. Options are limited to three: fight, flee, or freeze. Flow is the opposite: a creative problem-solving state, options wide open.
Yet there are reasons for the confusion. The two highs are linked. Risk heightens focus and flow follows focus. This means that the fight-or-flight response primes the body—chemically and psychologically—for the flow state. Athletes report moving through one to get to the other. [Skateboard legend] Danny Way, for example, has a phrase he uses to remind himself of the importance of this transition. “Never a glitch on takeoff,” he says. He means that when you’re teetering between flow and fight-or-flight, all it takes is one errant thought to send you in the wrong direction. When Way pushes off onto the megaramp, he has seconds to flip this switch. If he can follow his focus into flow he lives to ride another day. But if panic swamps the circuitry? “The greatest slams of my life took place when that happened,” he says. “Almost every time, I’ve ended up in the hospital.”
By CNu at June 26, 2014 0 comments
Labels: bushido , essence , objective strength , What IT DO Shawty...
Monday, June 16, 2014
killa-bee-el-zebub
By CNu at June 16, 2014 2 comments
Labels: essence , stigmergy , What IT DO Shawty...
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
are you just soft machines?
“Pig valves.” Rabbit tries to hide his revulsion. “Was it terrible? They split your chest open and ran your blood through a machine?”
“Piece of cake. You’re knocked out cold. What’s wrong with running your blood through a machine? What else you think you are, champ?”
A God-made one-of-a-kind with an immortal soul breathed in. A vehicle of grace. A battlefield of good and evil. An apprentice angel …
“You’re just a soft machine,” Charlie maintains.
By CNu at March 11, 2014 12 comments
Labels: essence , scientific mystery , subrealist oeuvre...
Friday, November 29, 2013
the neverending eugenic quest...,
By CNu at November 29, 2013 0 comments
Labels: cultural darwinism , essence , music?
Sunday, April 28, 2013
that neural default mode network again...,
By CNu at April 28, 2013 0 comments
Labels: essence , point source , Possibilities
Saturday, April 27, 2013
when do babies become conscious?
By CNu at April 27, 2013 5 comments
Labels: essence , point source , Possibilities
Friday, April 19, 2013
measuring consciousness?
By CNu at April 19, 2013 1 comments
Labels: essence , point source , Possibilities
Monday, March 11, 2013
what is a person?
Historically women and slaves have not been considered persons, even in my own country. Others wish to consider animals as persons and wish to grant them moral and legal rights. Science mixes it up with tradition, religion, and law to give us a mind-numbing view of what a ‘person’ is.
When we have an opinion and seek facts to prove it, we are not being honest with truth. Only when we seek facts first and keep an open mind can we seek truth. Let’s examine some facts then consider what we mean when we say ‘person’.
Person
There is no legal definition of person agreed upon by states or nations.
In most societies today adult humans are usually considered persons.
If you look-up dictionary definitions of human and person they are circular. A human is a person and person is a human.
To many a ‘person’ can include non-human entities such as animals, artificial intelligence, or extraterrestrial life.
There are even legal definitions that include entities such as corporations, nations, or even estates in probate as ‘persons’. In some legal definitions those with extreme mental impairment or lack of brain function have been declassified as ‘persons”.
Religious fundamentalists want to push the definition of person to the moment of conception.
Meanwhile science is struggling to find a clear definition of what constitutes a human.
Some lawyers and politicians maintain that corporations are legally persons.
By CNu at March 11, 2013 2 comments
Thursday, December 20, 2012
we want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand...,
Personality is developed by Life and has to be. But Life does not develop Essence. Why not? This is what the attention must be focussed on. Why should not Life bring Essence to its full development ? How is it that a man in whom Life has developed a full Personality cannot proceed smoothly to a full development of Essence ? Surely, if Life can do the first it can do the second equally easily ? Not at all: Life cannot. Life can provide the food for the development of Personality but not the food necessary for the development of Essence. The secret is that Personality and Essence need different foods for their respective development. They need different kinds of truths. For example, the education of Personality is developed by a knowledge of the truths of science, but Essence is not. A knowledge, say, of the world-markets and the political situation develops Personality, but Essence is not developed by knowing truths of this kind.
Essence, before it is manifested in a human body, derived from the parents on earth, comes from a much higher level than the Planetary World under 24 orders of laws. It is said that it comes "from the stars". Our Sun is a Star in our galaxy of Stars called the Milky Way. Whether you say it comes from the level of the Sun or from outside our Solar System does not matter for the moment. The point is that it has a very high origin, in vertical scale. By comparison, Personality has a very low origin, whatever one's ancestry in the past in horizontal time.
Now Essence ceases to grow because it has not the right food from Life to grow by. But if a man, imbued with a knowledge of this Work (whose origin is the Conscious Circle of Humanity, which in the Gospels is called the Kingdom of Heaven) continually steeps his mind in its Truths and thinks and thinks again from them and perceives their depth and acknowledges them and applies them to his inner states, Essence will begin to grow. He is giving it the right food that the business of Life does not supply. His energies will cease to flow only downwards into his personal reactions but begin to flow upwards, like the mythical Jordan, to another level, where Essence lies.
For Essence and Personality are on different levels. We are also. One is under fewer laws than the other. This means it is on a higher level. Only the kind of Truth that the Work teaches develops Essence. If a man loves it, he eventually wills it, and if he wills it he does it. It is this willing to do this Truth of the Work that forms the New Will in a man—of which we have spoken recently. It is this willing to do the Truth of the Work that develops Essence. This is its right food, which it came down to receive. Essence is deathless. When the body of flesh and bones is laid aside it returns to the place from which it came, taking what it has received. This willing of the Work is not from the self-will, which comes from the self-love. The will of the Personality takes second place to this will. The will of the outer Personality obeys the Will of the inner Essence. It is content to say: "Not my will but Thine be done." Having made the Personality passive through the developed Essence becoming active, by the power that comes from doing the Truth of the Work, which is stronger than life, the man has now attained the secret end and hidden meaning of his creation. From being the semi-man that Life made him he is now a complete MAN.
By CNu at December 20, 2012 18 comments
Saturday, December 15, 2012
when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child
By CNu at December 15, 2012 4 comments
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
science knows and understands shockingly little about emotions...,
By CNu at December 11, 2012 117 comments
Labels: essence
Saturday, April 21, 2012
sociopathy is running the u.s. - part two
In essence, we're headed towards economic and financial bankruptcy. But that's mostly because society has been largely intellectually and morally bankrupt for some time. I don't believe a society can rise to real prosperity without a sound intellectual and moral foundation – that's why the US was so uniquely prosperous for so long, because it had such a foundation. And it's also why societies like Saudi Arabia will collapse as soon as the exogenous things that support them are pulled away. It's why the USSR collapsed. It's the reason why countries everywhere across time reach a peak (if they ever do), then stagnate and decline.
This isn't a matter of academic contemplation, for the same reason that it doesn't matter much if you're in a first-class cabin when the ship it's in is taking on water.
Economics and Evil
When I was a sophomore in college, I asked my father – a worldly wise man but one of few words – some cosmic question, as sophomores are famous for doing. His answer was, "It's all a matter of economics." Some months later I asked him another, similar question. His answer: "It's all a matter of psychology." They were unsatisfactory to me at the time, but those simple answers stuck in my mind. And I've since come to the conclusion that they comprehend most of what drives human action.
Let's look at the "matter of economics" only briefly, because it's covered at length elsewhere and because it's not nearly as significant as the "matter of psychology."
One definition of economics is: The study of who gets what, and how, in the material world. Unfortunately, it's been distorted over the years into the study of who determines who gets what, and how, in the material world. In other words, economic power has gradually been transferred from producers to political allocators. This has had predictably bad results, including not only the bankruptcy of the US government but of large segments of US society.
But what's happening today is much more serious than an economic bankruptcy; you can recover from financial woes by cultivating better habits. We're talking about psychological and spiritual bankruptcy. The word psychology comes from psyche, which is Greek for soul. When you look at the word's origin, it's clear that psychology is about much more than mental peculiarities. It's not just about what a person has or what he does. It's about what he is. The real essence of a man, his soul, is revealed by his philosophy and his beliefs.
In any event, it's rare that anyone goes bankrupt because of a single bad decision. It takes many missteps, and consistently bad decisions aren't accidents. Consistently bad decisions are the product of a flawed moral philosophy. Moral philosophy guides you as to what is right or wrong. The prevailing moral philosophy has so degenerated that Americans think it's OK to invade other countries that not only haven't attacked it but can't even credibly threaten to attack it. I'm not talking just about Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya – pitiful non-entities on the other side of the world. They were preceded by even weaker prey, closer to home, like Granada, Panama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Not only that, but they think coercion should be used to steal wealth from the people who produce it, and give it to those who've done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
By CNu at April 21, 2012 0 comments
Labels: essence
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