Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Re: [metatuning] Digest Number 1309

> A godless universe doesn't have to imply 'lack of purpose'.

This is interesting. I wish you'd elaborate.

> To ask me to have faith in such things is asking me to believe that Apollo carries the sun around the Earth in a chariot.

I'm not asking you to believe anything. In fact, I'm not asking you NOT to, I suppose.

I ask you in return not to expect my imagination to march lockstep to your "scientific" view of "reality". If I like the story, I'll believe that Apollo does what he does. Thank you.

My logic, my science, and my beliefs are as well-considered as I can make them. That a lot of others people's (apparently) aren't is "the rub", is it not?

That's where I think "scientistists" and "religionists"arrogantly intrude, all too often. People's STORIES, no matter how they are framed, are what's interesting. I completely agree with anyone who resents government (or government mixed with "theology") enforcement of some more or less arbitrary morality or "ethics"... or "science", for that matter. But "theology" in the sense of comparative religion is fascinating, and full of wonderful stories.

> Indeed, at the risk of speaking for Kraig, i think the point he is making is that *all* perception of reality is subjective, and therefore objectivity is inherently impossible. -monz

It speaks for me, at least in part. At the risk of setting science back 200 years or more, I think that what we can quantify by unaided sensory-perception is as close as we get. If you tell me a particle can be in two places at once, I say, "That's sounds great." You can show it to me and I'll say, "That's great showbiz. Maybe I need to talk to your producer. Or at least your financier!" Hee! I can get a group of kids in a room, all with their clarinets and get them to play (at least one note in unison) in tune. They can hear, regardless of what you tell them about science or faith.

Edward Teller was a great one for saying, (paraphrase) "If we can do it, we should." So we have particle accelerators and nuclear weapons. That's great?

Well, I just need a few bucks to get my rig up, and I GUARANTEE it won't kill anybody, let alone millions. Where do I sign? ;-)

What say we give Erv Wilson $500 billion a year, and see what HE comes up with? Hee!

Life without art & music? Keep the arts alive today at Network for Good!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/iuUuID/dnQLAA/n1hLAA/RrLolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->

There are 24 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT
From: "Carl Lumma"
2. Re: a 12-equal post-jazz improv....
From: Kraig Grady
3. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
4. Re: Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT
From: Kraig Grady
5. Re: Re: global warming
From: Kraig Grady
6. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
7. Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT
From: "Paul Erlich"

8. Re: Re: meaning and science
From: Kraig Grady
9. Re: Re: meaning and science
From: Kraig Grady
10. Re: global warming
From: "Paul Erlich"

11. Re: gore speech reproduced on the drudge report/ironically a great example of what he says
From: "Paul Erlich"

12. Re: global warming
From: "Carl Lumma"
13. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
14. Re: meaning and science
From: "Paul Erlich"

15. Re: global warming
From: "Carl Lumma"
16. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
17. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
18. Re: gore speech reproduced on the drudge report/ironically a great example of what he says
From: "Carl Lumma"
19. Re: global warming
From: "Carl Lumma"
20. Re: meaning and science
From: "monz"
21. Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT
From: "Carl Lumma"
22. Re: In defense of science (I can't believe it's still neccessary)
From: "monz"
23. Re: meaning and science
From: "Carl Lumma"
24. Re: global warming
From: "monz"

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:58:40 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT

> One must concede in arguing against science , in the sense if one
> uses 'logical' arguments, one is applying science.
> to be really anti-science one would have to use illogical arguments

That was Aristotle's attempt to convince us to use logic.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:00:33 -0700
From: Kraig Grady
Subject: Re: a 12-equal post-jazz improv....

quite nice and ever changing view of the tune.

Aaron Krister Johnson wrote:

>from a March 2005 production of Inge's 'Natural Affection':
>
>http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/tea_for_two.ogg
>
>-Aaron.
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:01:40 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

> smoking actually reduces alheimers.

It reduces the number of people who get to experience
it, that's for sure!

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:01:56 -0700
From: Kraig Grady
Subject: Re: Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT

wel like harry, i am a greek revivalist in disguise.
Although i prefer diogenes

Carl Lumma wrote:

>>One must concede in arguing against science , in the sense if one
>>uses 'logical' arguments, one is applying science.
>> to be really anti-science one would have to use illogical arguments
>>
>>
>
>That was Aristotle's attempt to convince us to use logic.
>
>-Carl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:07:00 -0700
From: Kraig Grady
Subject: Re: Re: global warming

you think the republican are not biased against science when it
threatens the people who pay to put them in office?

also the article i posted on this subject was outside of what the left
was saying about global warming.
The sun has been really active, it is a bad assumption that it is a
steady constant and will always be so.
Geological evidence has shown that the last two hundred years has been
exceptionally mild.

Carl Lumma wrote:

>
>This assumption of cultural bias seems as bad as Kraig's.
>You really don't think there are any climatologists that
>doubt the proposed severity of the problem?
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:47:56 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

> > If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do,
> > you might say that problems like pollution and such are
> > non-problems, because they create the technology to
> > solve them in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
>
> Pollution creates technology? That's a new one.
>
> (And no, I don't know what you really meant.)

You burn and use everything willy-nilly to innovate as
fast as you can, thereby creating less total pollution
than if you'd stayed in a lukewarm coal age for 200
years. And you don't catastrophically exhaust a resource
because you use it ever more efficiently until you
transition to a technology that doesn't even require it.
By 2030 or so, AI will have solved all of today's
problems (there will no doubt be new ones).

I'd always taken Kurzweil as an optimist about all of
this (Moravec certainly is), but he seemed very matter-
of-fact about it. 'It's basically unstoppable; I don't
know if it's good or bad' kind of thing. (I saw him
speak last week.) Another surprising thing was, as
opposed to Moravec's "Robots will inherit the Earth",
Kurzweil sees all these technologies as human, regardless
of their form or scope. ''They will arise in our culture.
People have cell phones; 5 years ago they didn't. But it
wasn't a devastating shock... it happened naturally.''

His biggest conern is protecting against catastrophe.
He said he's going before Congress to suggest a
"Manhattan-style" project to create a defense system
against biological warfare. He says every generation of
technology creates its own defenses in time, but getting
ready ahead of the curve is a good idea. When asked
about malevolent AI, he said, with a smile, the thing will
be to create AI to protect us from it.

> > But the real answer is not to have cities.
>
> How I agree with you there!

Really? I always took you for a city slicker! (And I
mean no offense by that!) Well, I'm glad to learn this
today.

> > > But then, all this complexity theory - is it actually
> > > having much impact on the worldviews of all the numerous
> > > schools of science?
> >
> > A tremendous impact. But you don't see much of it in
> > grade or undergraduate school unless you're in the sciences,
> > because you're just getting the stuff from 200 years ago.
>
> Exactly. The way that even most scientists, let alone laymen
> (laywomen?), talk about stuff shows that, philosophically, the
> lessons of modern science haven't even begun to sink into our
> worldview yet.

Interesting.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:11:29 -0000
From: "Paul Erlich"

Subject: Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady
wrote:
>
> i knew you weren't going to let me off the hook!!!
> so logic is considered a part of philosophy,
> so is science possible that is not logical?

Well, there are some philosophers like Hilary Putnam who try to
explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics by trying to invoke some
kind of "quantum logic" rather than standard logic and saying that
that's what applies to these entities.

To Putnam, logic is an empirical question, its structure is to be
determined by observing the world.

"This proposal, however, is widely regarded as mistaken."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog/

Most scientists *and* philosophers in the field are dissatisfied with
this approach, claiming that it merely disguises our ignorance as to
the real mysteries of quantum mechanics. On this view, logic is
essentially a set of tautologies that are true by definition, like
mathematics but even more fundamental, and science can have nothing
to say about logic per se. Denying a purely logical proposition, or
accepting an alternate form of logic, would therefore imply a
contradiction, which would allow you to prove any premise whatsoever.
So deviating from classical logic would make science, or any
deduction at all, impossible. This is my view.

Yet there's nothing in logic itself that says science should be
possible. The world has to "help us out" with some
repeatability/regularity.

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 8
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:12:15 -0700
From: Kraig Grady
Subject: Re: Re: meaning and science

cities are the perfect place for ideas. internet is fine , but if we
were in a cafe every night for a month, it would move faster,

Carl Lumma wrote:

>>>If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do,
>>>you might say that problems like pollution and such are
>>>non-problems, because they create the technology to
>>>solve them in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
>>>
>>>
>>Pollution creates technology? That's a new one.
>>
>>(And no, I don't know what you really meant.)
>>
>>
>
>You burn and use everything willy-nilly to innovate as
>fast as you can, thereby creating less total pollution
>than if you'd stayed in a lukewarm coal age for 200
>years. And you don't catastrophically exhaust a resource
>because you use it ever more efficiently until you
>transition to a technology that doesn't even require it.
>By 2030 or so, AI will have solved all of today's
>problems (there will no doubt be new ones).
>
>I'd always taken Kurzweil as an optimist about all of
>this (Moravec certainly is), but he seemed very matter-
>of-fact about it. 'It's basically unstoppable; I don't
>know if it's good or bad' kind of thing. (I saw him
>speak last week.) Another surprising thing was, as
>opposed to Moravec's "Robots will inherit the Earth",
>Kurzweil sees all these technologies as human, regardless
>of their form or scope. ''They will arise in our culture.
>People have cell phones; 5 years ago they didn't. But it
>wasn't a devastating shock... it happened naturally.''
>
>His biggest conern is protecting against catastrophe.
>He said he's going before Congress to suggest a
>"Manhattan-style" project to create a defense system
>against biological warfare. He says every generation of
>technology creates its own defenses in time, but getting
>ready ahead of the curve is a good idea. When asked
>about malevolent AI, he said, with a smile, the thing will
>be to create AI to protect us from it.
>
>
>
>>>But the real answer is not to have cities.
>>>
>>>
>>How I agree with you there!
>>
>>
>
>Really? I always took you for a city slicker! (And I
>mean no offense by that!) Well, I'm glad to learn this
>today.
>
>
>
>>>>But then, all this complexity theory - is it actually
>>>>having much impact on the worldviews of all the numerous
>>>>schools of science?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>A tremendous impact. But you don't see much of it in
>>>grade or undergraduate school unless you're in the sciences,
>>>because you're just getting the stuff from 200 years ago.
>>>
>>>
>>Exactly. The way that even most scientists, let alone laymen
>>(laywomen?), talk about stuff shows that, philosophically, the
>>lessons of modern science haven't even begun to sink into our
>>worldview yet.
>>
>>
>
>Interesting.
>
>-Carl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 9
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:09:10 -0700
From: Kraig Grady
Subject: Re: Re: meaning and science

now now nicotine does have it pluses too!
if only we could get it without smoking and in non lethal dose it would
be a good medicine

Carl Lumma wrote:

>>smoking actually reduces alheimers.
>>
>>
>
>It reduces the number of people who get to experience
>it, that's for sure!
>
>-Carl
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 10
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:23:02 -0000
From: "Paul Erlich"

Subject: Re: global warming

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" wrote:
>
> > > Global warming climatology has many
> > > hallmarks of an academic fad, with sloppy science that
> > > nobody can get an audience to challenge.
> >
> > This sounds uncannily like the Republican propaganda Aaron was
> > referring to. It makes a nice sound bite for liberal-haters to
> > digest and regurgitate, but has no basis in reality. Any science
> > whose conclusions doesn't support the right-wing agenda is
> > described as "sloppy science" by non-scientists, and other non-
> > scientists, not knowing better, believe them. This has been
> > going on with many, many fields of science for well over 5
> > years now and shows no signs of stopping. Soon, all real science
> > will be eradicated in this country, and many members of this
> > list will be happy . . .
>
> This assumption of cultural bias seems as bad as Kraig's.

Cultural bias?

> You really don't think there are any climatologists that
> doubt the proposed severity of the problem?

Proposed by whom? The severity is definitely uncertain, but the great
majority of climatologists now recognize that human activities have
contributed to some extent to global warming, and will continue to do
so for some time. That's all, and yet that's enough to sound alarm
bells in the Republican/Big-Oil halls of power . . . they'd rather
have it said that their activities are innocuous and don't affect
climate at all. Or, "more research needs to be done" before they do
something so drastic as to, say, modernize aging power plants to be
less polluting. So the administration takes the scientific studies,
usually researched and written by *its own agencies*, and rewrites
every single sentence until the meaning is completely altered to a
politically favorable one. Government scientists are quitting in
record numbers . . .

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 11
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:25:57 -0000
From: "Paul Erlich"

Subject: Re: gore speech reproduced on the drudge report/ironically a great example of what he says

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" wrote:

> I've haven't heard any
> reference to science out of the Bush administration of any
> kind, ever.

Well, then you're missing out on some of the most incredible
distortions of truth ever attempted in this country. I'll see if I can
dig up the relevant _Scientific American_ article . . .

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 12
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:28:26 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: global warming

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady wrote:
>
> you think the republican are not biased against science when it
> threatens the people who pay to put them in office?

Dude- I don't know!

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 13
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:32:37 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

It always just makes me sick, but maybe you're right that I
just haven't been able to titrate the dose properly.

A word of caution on the studies that show coffee and/or
tobacco improve concentration, or the performance of some
test, between groups of volunteers (not that this is what
you were referring to)... the effects seen in at least on
prominant coffee study have bene shown to be entirely
explainable by the *adverse* effects of caffeine withdrawl
on the control group! (since caffeine addiction is nearly
universal in America).

-Carl

> now now nicotine does have it pluses too!
> if only we could get it without smoking and in non lethal dose
> it would be a good medicine
>
> >>smoking actually reduces alheimers.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >It reduces the number of people who get to experience
> >it, that's for sure!
> >
> >-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 14
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:33:32 -0000
From: "Paul Erlich"

Subject: Re: meaning and science

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" wrote:
>
> > > If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do,
> > > you might say that problems like pollution and such are
> > > non-problems, because they create the technology to
> > > solve them in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
> >
> > Pollution creates technology? That's a new one.
> >
> > (And no, I don't know what you really meant.)
>
> You burn and use everything willy-nilly to innovate as
> fast as you can, thereby creating less total pollution
> than if you'd stayed in a lukewarm coal age for 200
> years.

Highly idealistic, the idea that burning and using everything willy-
nilly means that you're innovating as fast as you can!

> > > But the real answer is not to have cities.
> >
> > How I agree with you there!
>
> Really? I always took you for a city slicker! (And I
> mean no offense by that!) Well, I'm glad to learn this
> today.

I don't miss living in NYC at all; the Boston area is like the
countryside in comparion, but I truly prefer the country; that's why
I bike to the forest and go to camp-out festivals whenever I can.
Once "coming into the office" is made obsolete, I'd love to buy a
house in a rural locale . . .

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 15
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:50:11 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: global warming

> > > This sounds uncannily like the Republican propaganda Aaron was
> > > referring to. It makes a nice sound bite for liberal-haters to
> > > digest and regurgitate, but has no basis in reality. Any science
> > > whose conclusions doesn't support the right-wing agenda is
> > > described as "sloppy science" by non-scientists, and other non-
> > > scientists, not knowing better, believe them. This has been
> > > going on with many, many fields of science for well over 5
> > > years now and shows no signs of stopping. Soon, all real science
> > > will be eradicated in this country, and many members of this
> > > list will be happy . . .
> >
> > This assumption of cultural bias seems as bad as Kraig's.
>
> Cultural bias?

If the left is a culture. The belief that any dissenting voice
must be / have bene paid off by conservatives is just naive.

> but the great majority of climatologists now recognize that
> human activities have contributed to some extent to global
> warming,

To what extent precisely? Are you aware of any decent-looking
models? I wasn't able to find any. Agreed this criterion might
be too strong, BUT...

> and will continue to do so for some time. That's all, and yet
> that's enough to sound alarm bells in the Republican/Big-Oil
> halls of power . . . they'd rather have it

Sounds like a fanciful anthropomorphization of ... some entity
or other.

> said that their activities are innocuous and don't affect
> climate at all.

Did they? That's equally hard to show. However, ice core
samples reveal a full spectrum of climate change in geologically
recent times. One paper I saw said there's no reason to believe,
based on ice-core temperature data, that what we're experiencing
is unnatural. Another suggested that stimulation of ocean
flora would counteract any effect. Several papers argued that
human contribution to greenhouse gasses is small compared to
that of typical variations in volcanic activity.....

> Or, "more research needs to be done" before they do something
> so drastic as to, say, modernize aging power plants to be less
> polluting.

If it's power generation that's got your goat, nuclear
technology has the answer today (though it's frankly fiddlin'
too deep for my taste... I'd MUCH rather just use less
electricity). Anyway, a friend of a friend and I had
a good discussion of the state of nuclear power over brunch
recently (she's a "nuclear physicist"). The fact that our
current system was funded (and then ceased to be funded) by
the weapons industry resulted in something non-optimal from
a power-generation point of view. Prefabricated microreactors
are only years away from delivery, potentially by air drop,
and run totally sealed for 20-40 years and then just go cold.
No control rods or chain reaction that can get away, just slow
heat; enough for a small town. I gotta admit it's tempting.

> So the administration takes the scientific studies, usually
> researched and written by *its own agencies*, and rewrites
> every single sentence until the meaning is completely altered
> to a politically favorable one. Government scientists are
> quitting in record numbers . . .

Really?

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 16
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 06:51:34 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

> I don't miss living in NYC at all; the Boston area is like the
> countryside in comparion, but I truly prefer the country; that's why
> I bike to the forest and go to camp-out festivals whenever I can.
> Once "coming into the office" is made obsolete, I'd love to buy a
> house in a rural locale . . .

Dit-too!

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 17
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:01:21 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

> > > > If you believe Ray Kurzweil, which I more or less do,
> > > > you might say that problems like pollution and such are
> > > > non-problems, because they create the technology to
> > > > solve them in ever-decreasing amounts of time. . .
> > >
> > > Pollution creates technology? That's a new one.
> > >
> > > (And no, I don't know what you really meant.)
> >
> > You burn and use everything willy-nilly to innovate as
> > fast as you can, thereby creating less total pollution
> > than if you'd stayed in a lukewarm coal age for 200
> > years.
>
> Highly idealistic, the idea that burning and using everything
> willy-nilly means that you're innovating as fast as you can!

Howabout this:

Fractional reserve banking stimulates growth by lowering the
cost of capital (the interest rate). If you don't practice
it, you can't have bank runs. But fractional reserve banking
so stimulates the economy that those who practice it have
literally wiped out those who don't.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 18
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:02:09 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: gore speech reproduced on the drudge report/ironically a great example of what he says

> > I've haven't heard any
> > reference to science out of the Bush administration of any
> > kind, ever.
>
> Well, then you're missing out on some of the most incredible
> distortions of truth ever attempted in this country. I'll see
> if I can dig up the relevant _Scientific American_ article . . .

I'd love to read it.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 19
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:03:41 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: global warming

> The only flat dismissal of it I've ever read
> was on Owsley's site (and wasn't very persuasive).

http://www.thebear.org/essays2.html

I wonder if the Republicans are paying him!

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 20
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:32:54 -0000
From: "monz"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Erlich"
wrote:
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "justinasia" wrote:
>
> > > Yes but didn't these ethnoi essentially suffer the same
> > > fate as native Americans did in the colonial period at
> > > the hands of the Empire?
> >
> > I believe not. One big thing is the difference between
> > an agricultural society conquering another Agricultural
> > society (eg England vrs India) and an agricultural society
> > conquering a unter gatherer society (England vrs Australia).
>
> I don't see Native Americans mentioned in either example,
> though that's what Carl brought up above. I was just reading
> in _Stolen Continents_ about vast fields of maize that
> belonged to a Native American tribe before being destroyed
> by the Europeans. I'll have to look it up and tell you
> which tribe, but that sure sounds pretty agricultural to
> me . . .
>

The fallacy in the response to Justin (who wrote that - Carl?)
is in assuming that all Native-American cultures were
hunter-gatherer.

"Native-American" simply refers to all those groups of
people who were already living on the American continents
when Columbus arrived, and while all those people did
share certain traits in common, the term covers a
vast array of different cultures, languages, religions, etc.

Yes, many Native-American peoples were hunter-gatherers,
but many of them were also agricultural. Many were
nomadic and followed the migrations of the animals they
killed for food, but others (i.e., Aztecs, Mayans) lived
in cities which awed the Europeans by their splendor.

I do realize that in this discussion, "Native-American"
is being used to refer to peoples who lived in what is
now the USA, and AFAIK those groups did not build cities;
the ones that did lived in what is now Mexico and Peru.
But my larger point is that we should avoid making big
generalizations in order to argue a position.

-monz

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 21
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:38:57 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: END OF SCIENCE ARGUMENT

> Well, maybe you don't want to debate this anymore, but I think
> this is quite wrong. Logic is far, far more fundamental than
> any science; it's taught in the philosophy department of the
> universities I know of. No one tests theories about logic by
> running experiments in the laboratory and observing the results;
> hence, logic is not science.

The logic class I took at IU was out of the Philosophy
dept (Barwise). My friend had one in the math dept., and it
sounds like Gene would agree they exist.

It looks like I favor a more inclusive definition of science
than you, Paul. As long as there's continual generation of
hypotheses, discarding of ones that don't match observation,
and application of Occam's razor, I call it science.
Observations in my view include things like proofs in math,
and I consider pure math a science. I see 'experiments'
as special cases of observation... they employ many
indispensible tools, but none of them are ultimately
fundamental to science.

I think this fits well with the way real science is done.
There is seldom all of the distinct textbook ingredients,
and they are seldom in textbook order. In the neuroscience
talk I attended today (describing the first in vivo
observation of spike timing dependent plasticity via open
cell recordings), my friend who was giving the talk admitted
that his experiment was done before any hypothesis was made.
When questioned, he said all such work is done under a
'we'll see something cool and tell a story around it'
paradigm.

Post- Standard Mmodel physics is an example of very active
field where measurements of what might be called physical
reality are sparse. It's also one of the fields showing
the existence of 'physical reality' apart from information
is questionable.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 22
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:38:45 -0000
From: "monz"
Subject: Re: In defense of science (I can't believe it's still neccessary)

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Erlich"
wrote:
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady
> wrote:
> >
> > objectivity is a myth, that one can observe without being
> > apart of what is being observed.

I believe that Kraig meant that the "myth [is] that one can
oberserve without being a part of what is being observed".
There's quite a difference if you put "a" and "part" together.

> OK,
>
> > All so called 'evidence' is tainted in this manner.
>
> Why is it tainted? If everyone who does a certain
> experiment, regardless of nation, language, religion,
> or politics, finds the same outcome, where does the
> "subjective" "taint" come in?
>
> > sure you can get rid of it one place, but it is going
> > to reappear somewhere else.
>
> Sounds interesting. Can you elaborate? I'd love to pursue
> this more deeply with you.

This is an idea that philosphers have discussed for centuries.
There mere fact that all results of scientific experiments
are being perceived by human senses renders them subjective.

Indeed, at the risk of speaking for Kraig, i think the
point he is making is that *all* perception of reality
is subjective, and therefore objectivity is inherently
impossible.

-monz

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 23
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:41:23 -0000
From: "Carl Lumma"
Subject: Re: meaning and science

> The fallacy in the response to Justin (who wrote that - Carl?)
> is in assuming that all Native-American cultures were
> hunter-gatherer.

I think the text you're referring to was written by Justin.

> I do realize that in this discussion, "Native-American"
> is being used to refer to peoples who lived in what is
> now the USA, and AFAIK those groups did not build cities;

There was a Discover article a few years back about this
giant mound of dirt in the midwest that is believed to be
the work of prolific city-builders. Also, I'd guess the
Anastazi would qualify.

-Carl

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 24
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:56:01 -0000
From: "monz"
Subject: Re: global warming

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" wrote:

>
> If it's power generation that's got your goat, nuclear
> technology has the answer today (though it's frankly fiddlin'
> too deep for my taste... I'd MUCH rather just use less
> electricity). Anyway, a friend of a friend and I had
> a good discussion of the state of nuclear power over brunch
> recently (she's a "nuclear physicist"). The fact that our
> current system was funded (and then ceased to be funded) by
> the weapons industry resulted in something non-optimal from
> a power-generation point of view. Prefabricated microreactors
> are only years away from delivery, potentially by air drop,
> and run totally sealed for 20-40 years and then just go cold.
> No control rods or chain reaction that can get away, just slow
> heat; enough for a small town. I gotta admit it's tempting.

And once they "go cold", then what? Radioactive waste that
sits around for thousands of years? If that's the case, then
however tempting, that's not the best solution for energy needs,
IMO.

One of the biggest problems with modern culture, and
specifically modern American culture, is the general
lack of concern over:

* how much garbage is produced,

* how toxic/lethal that garbage might be, and

* what to do with the garbage that is produced.

-monz

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Meta Tuning meta-info:

To unsubscribe, send an email to:
metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/

To post to the list, send to
metatuning@yahoogroups.com

You don't have to be a member to post.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Re: [metatuning] Digest Number 1309

🔗Pete McRae <peteysan@...>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>