What, Why & How do we Know ?
Research on psychedelics as part of the neuroscience of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is not new, but activity seems to be growing in this space again. Four blog links here from a couple of months ago, that bring a number of threads into one place.
Neurocritic, Neuroskeptic, Minds-Hacks,
and a potted summary from Neurophilosophy.
Plus the Shulgin (Erowid) PiKHaL and TiKHaL references.
Interesting reading whatever your perspective.
Excellent edition of Start The Week this morning guided by Andrew Marr, in stark contrast to John Humphrys’ incompetence interviewing his victims on the Today programme immediately before. Let’s hope we can forget Humphrys and talk about the balanced Religion vs Politics discussion between Stanley Hauerwas, Mary Warnock, Ray Tallis and John Gummer.
Note Start The Week is not podcast, so you’ll need to catch the repeat this evening.
Too much to summarize effectively beyond The Golden Rule / Stewardship / Human Nature being the fundamentals, but given the dangers of “dichotomising a continuum” and the apparent breadth of positions across these four, a very successful debate with much balance and agreement (and jokes from Hauerwas). Despite focussing initially on life and death (assisted termination – both start and end of life cases) it managed to get itself onto transcendent moral principles. Even Gummer, one in a long and intriguing line of Catholic converts, had the main point that the real problem was any one of them believing they had a monopoly on sense when it comes to the fundamentals. In fact the real debate is how to fit agreement on fundamentals into world governance without the slippery slope away from “the sanctity of life” and “the way of truth” being a part of it – checks and balances. (Theocracy clearly isn’t it, thank god. religion has no place in politics.)
“When Bush came to power I concluded he was sincere about his Christian faith. I also concluded it showed how little sincerity had to do with Christianity.” Hauerwas.
The only view missing from the debate was a PoPoMo like Zizek or Eagleton maybe. Agreement is quite straighforward when people stop demanding straighforward answers to simplistic questions – you listening Humphrys – in all these debates on fairness and priorities ? (Example – why is cybercrime significant ? System complexity that’s why. Ranking four political priorities in a list – Terorrism, Cybercrime, Natural Disaster and Foreign War – is a childish exercise if the list doesn’t recognize the holistic moral system they are all a part of.)
Now I think I understand what the Higgs particle is, and why it’s interesting. Lie groups will take a little more work. E8 has beautiful symmetry though.
The dangers of web access being too personalized. Hat tip to Johnnie Moore.
Like most things we need both in balance – totally open linking and personally (contextually) filtered channels. Clearly our personal filters need to be known to us personally …. or they are impersonal filters. So now you know, if you didn’t already.
The idea that it inhibits active dissent seems entirely spurious. Criticism is all too easy. Anyone wanting to dissent actively needs active intent to get off their ass, not find dissent opportunities on a plate. That’s a good reason for filtering.
Everyone takes pictures with phones these days, but these are pictures of people with phones. Particularly love the adjacent images 13 (Beatles) & 14 (Katharine Hepburn).
A Hard Day’s Night meets The Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Hat tip to The Slate. Talking of which, I love the “scientific” treatment of this taboo subject, and this “commercial” treatment of used books.
Discovery News article on the complexity of computer systems in domestic cars, prompted by the recent Toyota recall. Hat tip to Donald Firesmith for the link on LinkedIn.
More lines of code than F22 / F35 / B787 / A380 avionics systems.
I have experienced that complexity myself recently. Last year I bought a new car and was staggered to discover a 500-page manual explaining its operations, along with a 200-page companion manual for the GPS and radio systems. One of the new features touted was the much larger glove compartment, a size probably dictated by that of the required manuals.
And nobody reads the manual any more, anyway. Interesting to compare the modular replace vs repair consequences as “the system” gets this complex, with say Crawford’s messages in “The Case for Working with your Hands“. Will humans ever really “buy” the loss of control, the detachment from the real.
Post from Anecdote about Values, Direction, Identity and Purpose of an organization. Interested in how Values and Purpose are captured right now, but I thought the arrow diagram that separates Strategy (direction) from Strategic Goals / Targets / Plans is really useful. So many people confuse a strategy with a plan.
Chaos from Schelmish. Hat tip to Marsha.
I picked up once before on Karen Armstrong as a TED speaker; a breath of fresh air in the God vs Science fundamentalist debates. I bough a copy of her “The Case For God” yesterday and just started reading.
Yep, she’s good. She lumps Ditchkins (Dawkins / Hitchens) and Harris together but Dennett is listed separately. Thank god for people with imagination, says this atheist.
…. that neither CBGB’s nor The Marquee Club currently exist.
(Interesting this scrapbook page from Clemen Pull, has lots of gig adverts that also include Scarecrow, at The Marquee, The Lord Nelson, The Windsor Castle, Upstairs at Ronnies, and more … Pretty sure I saw Scarecrow only once at The Marquee, but I see they were there three times in 1976, according to The Marquee commemorative site.)