I agree that while topics like, for example, reincarnation are far behind proven beyond reasonable doubt, saying to any research by Jim Tucker and ,during his lifetime, Ian Stevenson to the question, can science investigate "is there reincarnaton", "no, according to science there can be no reincarnation, we aren't having this discussion" based on what we know in biology and neuroscience is dogmatic. It is one thing to say that based on the evidence against the possibility of reincarnation, the evidence for it is not proportional to it to say, but we can conclude beyond reasonable doubt, it is real. It is another thing to say that the evidence against such possibility means it is not worth science's time amd money to evaluate the evidence for it and it legitimizes "harmful and dangerous belief". It shows that treating anything coming from religion is dangerous superstition shows that atheists in America have allergic reaction to religion (which is understandable, given how atheists are treated by religious right) and that undermines open minded discussions. While argument there were open minded discussions on matters of God and afterlife including reincarnation in the 19th and first three decades of 20th century, and it is just proponents lost, well but now it is 21 century and no they didn't disprove the paradigm. But I salute UVA, a prestigious university for continuing discussion. Now, when it comes to public research universities and National Academy of Sciences, because it is not objective establishef fact, and not a part of any established scientific theory, engaging public institutions like NAS or spending public money on it, compromises principle of separation of religion and state and therefore I think it was good idea for NAS to do away with public funding for any miracle and afterlife research. Let the private funds do it.
>> "I see strong parallels between Italian fascism and its leader and modern day American fascism and its leader"
> "Sorry, I don’t know who is the leader of modern day American fascism."
Benito Mussolini staged a coup d'état on October 28 1922 in order to become dictator of Italy, Donald Trump staged a coup d'état on January 6 2021 in order to become dictator of America. The only difference is Mussolini's coup d'état worked, Trump's didn't. But Trump hasn't given up.
>> "Nobody says somebody doesn't have a right to do psi research, but such people do NOT have a right to demand respect from scientists for such activities"
> "I’m sitting on the fence with an open mind. If I were a psi researcher, I wouldn’t demand respect. I would just demand to be left in peace, like, do your research and I’ll do mine, and let experiment decide."
If I was a professor and was on a committee to determine if somebody should get tenure at my university, and all they had done was conduct ESP research that had led, just like everybody else's ESP research, precisely nowhere, then I would definitely vote against granting tenure. This is because, due to finite resources, there's only a limited number of people who can receive it and there are plenty of good mathematicians, physicists. chemists and biologists who deserve it more. If that were to happen the rejected professor would undoubtedly scream that he was being discriminated against, and that would be true, we would be discriminating between good scientists and bad scientists, but he would even claim that he was the victim of censorship, but that would not be true. He's free to say whatever he wishes to say and is free to continue with his "research" ; it's just that the university has decided not to continue paying him to do it. If you pay somebody to conduct yet another investigation into spoon bending to go with the 6.02*10^23 ones that have already been done then you don't have the resources to pay somebody else to conduct research in an area that is almost certain to be more productive.
> Western culture could use an injection of vitality,
At least in the USA the problem is not a lack of vitality, it's a lack of rationality. And vitality is not necessarily a good thing if it's aimed in the wrong direction. I'm not usually big on poetry but I do remember something that W.B. Yeats said about that just before World War II started:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The center cannot hold."
> Italian futurism and fascism were not natural allies, but were essentially incompatible"
I once thought that American transhumanism and American fascism were completely incompatible, but around 2016 I learned to my sorrow I was entirely wrong about that.
> as emphasized by top representatives of both. That many futurists joined Benito Mussolini’s fascist party was due to realpolitik more than ideology.
I disagree with that, the foundation of realpolitik is practicality not ideology, and the foundation of practicality is rationality but, as events later proved, there was nothing rational about Benito Mussolini's fascism, things did NOT turn out the way his ideology predicted it would. I see strong parallels between Italian fascism and its leader and modern day American fascism and its leader.
> Italian futurists were anti-clerical, but not anti-spiritual. On the contrary, many participated in theosophical salons and were open to paranormal phenomena, life after death, spiritualism and all that.
The same thing could be said about American fascism except that they are pro clerical. And science is open to any idea, new or old, provided there is a rational reason to believe that it might be true.
> I’ll now translate some passages of “La Scienza Futurista” (1916) and comment. The manifesto begins with a strong condemnation of the science establishment that, “hypnotized by the stupid books of the countless university professors of Germany,” is “superficially precise, pettily accurate, idiotically sure of its own infallibility, without any brilliant explosion.”
And according to them one of those German professors who was stupid, petty and idiotic was Albert Einstein.
> I don’t intend to affirm that psi is real or defend any specific result of psi research. I just want to defend the right of scientists to do psi research,
Nobody says somebody doesn't have a right to do psi research, but such people do NOT have a right to demand respect from scientists for such activities if, despite centuries of effort, they fail to come up with anything that is both interesting and repeatable. Instead the interesting stuff is not repeatable and the repeatable stuff is not interesting.
< If it turns out that we really can send information faster than light then we'd have to dump both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into the trash…>
All depends on what you mean exactly by “send information.” Space itself can stretch faster than light in GR, naked singularities and closed timelike loop solutions exist in GR, and QM has entangled correlations.
< the directions are that you and I independently and arbitrarily decided to call "up"…>
The subtle point here is what “independently and arbitrarily” means exactly.
< Obviously an agent is not uniquely determined by the external environment but is also determined by the previous state the agent was in…>
According to conventional Laplacian determinism, both the external environment and the previous state of the agent are determined by the state of the universe long ago, long before the agent existed. Not so in global determinism, where past and future are codetermined in a timeless loop. The agent is an integral and irreducible part of the loop, and this is free will.
Sorry for the very short reply, lots of things to to this morning at the same time, I wish I could do them all in a timeless loop, more soon.
I agree that while topics like, for example, reincarnation are far behind proven beyond reasonable doubt, saying to any research by Jim Tucker and ,during his lifetime, Ian Stevenson to the question, can science investigate "is there reincarnaton", "no, according to science there can be no reincarnation, we aren't having this discussion" based on what we know in biology and neuroscience is dogmatic. It is one thing to say that based on the evidence against the possibility of reincarnation, the evidence for it is not proportional to it to say, but we can conclude beyond reasonable doubt, it is real. It is another thing to say that the evidence against such possibility means it is not worth science's time amd money to evaluate the evidence for it and it legitimizes "harmful and dangerous belief". It shows that treating anything coming from religion is dangerous superstition shows that atheists in America have allergic reaction to religion (which is understandable, given how atheists are treated by religious right) and that undermines open minded discussions. While argument there were open minded discussions on matters of God and afterlife including reincarnation in the 19th and first three decades of 20th century, and it is just proponents lost, well but now it is 21 century and no they didn't disprove the paradigm. But I salute UVA, a prestigious university for continuing discussion. Now, when it comes to public research universities and National Academy of Sciences, because it is not objective establishef fact, and not a part of any established scientific theory, engaging public institutions like NAS or spending public money on it, compromises principle of separation of religion and state and therefore I think it was good idea for NAS to do away with public funding for any miracle and afterlife research. Let the private funds do it.
Hi Giulio
>> "I see strong parallels between Italian fascism and its leader and modern day American fascism and its leader"
> "Sorry, I don’t know who is the leader of modern day American fascism."
Benito Mussolini staged a coup d'état on October 28 1922 in order to become dictator of Italy, Donald Trump staged a coup d'état on January 6 2021 in order to become dictator of America. The only difference is Mussolini's coup d'état worked, Trump's didn't. But Trump hasn't given up.
>> "Nobody says somebody doesn't have a right to do psi research, but such people do NOT have a right to demand respect from scientists for such activities"
> "I’m sitting on the fence with an open mind. If I were a psi researcher, I wouldn’t demand respect. I would just demand to be left in peace, like, do your research and I’ll do mine, and let experiment decide."
If I was a professor and was on a committee to determine if somebody should get tenure at my university, and all they had done was conduct ESP research that had led, just like everybody else's ESP research, precisely nowhere, then I would definitely vote against granting tenure. This is because, due to finite resources, there's only a limited number of people who can receive it and there are plenty of good mathematicians, physicists. chemists and biologists who deserve it more. If that were to happen the rejected professor would undoubtedly scream that he was being discriminated against, and that would be true, we would be discriminating between good scientists and bad scientists, but he would even claim that he was the victim of censorship, but that would not be true. He's free to say whatever he wishes to say and is free to continue with his "research" ; it's just that the university has decided not to continue paying him to do it. If you pay somebody to conduct yet another investigation into spoon bending to go with the 6.02*10^23 ones that have already been done then you don't have the resources to pay somebody else to conduct research in an area that is almost certain to be more productive.
John K Clark
Giulio Prisco Wrote:
> Western culture could use an injection of vitality,
At least in the USA the problem is not a lack of vitality, it's a lack of rationality. And vitality is not necessarily a good thing if it's aimed in the wrong direction. I'm not usually big on poetry but I do remember something that W.B. Yeats said about that just before World War II started:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The center cannot hold."
> Italian futurism and fascism were not natural allies, but were essentially incompatible"
I once thought that American transhumanism and American fascism were completely incompatible, but around 2016 I learned to my sorrow I was entirely wrong about that.
> as emphasized by top representatives of both. That many futurists joined Benito Mussolini’s fascist party was due to realpolitik more than ideology.
I disagree with that, the foundation of realpolitik is practicality not ideology, and the foundation of practicality is rationality but, as events later proved, there was nothing rational about Benito Mussolini's fascism, things did NOT turn out the way his ideology predicted it would. I see strong parallels between Italian fascism and its leader and modern day American fascism and its leader.
> Italian futurists were anti-clerical, but not anti-spiritual. On the contrary, many participated in theosophical salons and were open to paranormal phenomena, life after death, spiritualism and all that.
The same thing could be said about American fascism except that they are pro clerical. And science is open to any idea, new or old, provided there is a rational reason to believe that it might be true.
> I’ll now translate some passages of “La Scienza Futurista” (1916) and comment. The manifesto begins with a strong condemnation of the science establishment that, “hypnotized by the stupid books of the countless university professors of Germany,” is “superficially precise, pettily accurate, idiotically sure of its own infallibility, without any brilliant explosion.”
And according to them one of those German professors who was stupid, petty and idiotic was Albert Einstein.
> I don’t intend to affirm that psi is real or defend any specific result of psi research. I just want to defend the right of scientists to do psi research,
Nobody says somebody doesn't have a right to do psi research, but such people do NOT have a right to demand respect from scientists for such activities if, despite centuries of effort, they fail to come up with anything that is both interesting and repeatable. Instead the interesting stuff is not repeatable and the repeatable stuff is not interesting.
John K Clark
"An English translation of the manifesto doesn’t seem to exist." I found that surprising and hard to believe. Indeed:
The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (multilingual edition)
https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Manifesto-Futurism-Multilingual/dp/2322096792
Critical Writings: New Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Writings-Filippo-Tommaso-Marinetti/dp/0374531072
You can even get "The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking"!
https://www.amazon.com/Manifesto-Futurist-Cooking-Filippo-Marinetti-ebook/dp/B01DVDUFE8
John:
< If it turns out that we really can send information faster than light then we'd have to dump both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into the trash…>
All depends on what you mean exactly by “send information.” Space itself can stretch faster than light in GR, naked singularities and closed timelike loop solutions exist in GR, and QM has entangled correlations.
< the directions are that you and I independently and arbitrarily decided to call "up"…>
The subtle point here is what “independently and arbitrarily” means exactly.
< Obviously an agent is not uniquely determined by the external environment but is also determined by the previous state the agent was in…>
According to conventional Laplacian determinism, both the external environment and the previous state of the agent are determined by the state of the universe long ago, long before the agent existed. Not so in global determinism, where past and future are codetermined in a timeless loop. The agent is an integral and irreducible part of the loop, and this is free will.
Sorry for the very short reply, lots of things to to this morning at the same time, I wish I could do them all in a timeless loop, more soon.