It's interesting to note that some time after writing this, Sagan became aware of the work of Jim Tucker, at the University of Virginia, attempting to validate the "past life" reports of children who've offered verifiable details in their accounts. Many children make such claims, but, as Sagan observed, “Young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”
I won't assert the truth of it, and I can think of a couple plausible vectors that don't involve consciousness surviving death and into another body (however unlikely they might be), but if it's compelling enough for the author of The Demon Haunted World to suggest it deserves "serious study", I'm the last person in the world to gainsay him.
I think he is not asking a "serious study" because he think it's real, but because at some point we must make the experiments to verify or falsify the theories. (I think that the problem is that there is finite time and finite money for the experiments, so we must select only some of them.)
I think we're in agreement. This is him saying, "I think it's interesting enough to expend that effort." No one else has to agree, but that a mind like his thinks so, and based on what I've read of these accounts, I'm inclined to agree.
I have no idea how to go about falsifying that, though. You'd at a minimum have to strictly monitor the information flow into a child's environment, probably from birth, to control for any other vectors for verifiable details. All in the hopes that some of the study population's children will mention something you can confirm they didn't overhear, or whatever, which turns out to comport with the life of someone who's passed. That's perhaps a tough sell to the ethics committee.
So that's as far as you got? Didn't like the domain, therefore the study results are bunk?
75% of the authors are affiliated with other institutions, only 3 are with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
NIDA itself is well-grounded. There have been some instances where they take a more conservative stance given uncertainty in results, but this is still a national scientific institute - not DARE or the DoJ.
Would you care to speculate again about how much time I've spent reading their literature before this discussion? I promise you, it's non-zero. Please try not to dismiss people's positions that shallowly; it's a disservice to the conversation we're trying to have, and it's rude.
I am involved in a number of communities that engage intentionally, even sacramentally, with psychedelics. The amount of sheer bullshit they continue to promulgate on that matter, about which I consider myself advanced-lay to burgeoning-expert, is staggering, and is sufficient for me to be default skeptical of anything else they might have to say. When you lie to me about things I know something about, I'm obligated to trust the rest of your oeuvre somewhat less, aren't I?
Finally, I said nothing whatsoever about the conclusion of the paper under general discussion. In point of fact, I generally agree with it.
Not OP, but FWIW your italicizing of drugabuse.gov also gave me the impression that you were dismissing it purely by domain. I did not ready any rudeness in your parent.
Thanks for your perspective, I appreciate it. I can see that being a legitimate read of the comment, if one punts on the guideline to assume good faith, and interpret people's arguments in the strongest light, rather than, e.g., dismiss them on the basis of formatting.
It's just disappointing when that happens, because I try to engage that way, and assume my comments will be treated the same.
EDIT: That said, I didn't exactly offer much in the way of argument there, did I?
oh thank the cosmos there is someone else who notices. im absolutely fascinated with psychedelic inspired communities, but that being said i certainly do notice a lot of people that tend to just devolve into a mostly coherent glossolalia in order to fit into some perceived archetype of a "woke shaman" or some such, and as someone with a vested interest in the pursuit of shamanism as an aspect of spiritual pursuits, it certainly frustrates me. i mean, to each their own, but i think it kinda poisons the well a bit. words and stuff ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I'm not quite sure what you're referring to with "glossolalia", offhand. The shamans I work with variously use a mix of Spanish, English, and Quechua, or Shipibo-Conibo, and although all of those (if moreso the indigenous tongues) have what seem to be "filler words" with no specific (known) meaning, the overwhelming majority of the sounds they utter are recognizably from those languages, or whistling, or whatever.
your statement is soundly countered in a similarly unsupported opinion above. You may not like their domain name but the paper and science behind it appear pretty sound.
The association between cannabis and schizophrenia remains, as far as I'm aware, primarily statistical, and other factors like familial history are significantly more predictive.
EDIT: That is, I don't think we have sufficient understanding to say whether pot abuse causes schizophrenia, or schizophrenics are more likely to abuse pot. Given what I know of how awful a ride that is, self-medicating that devolves into abuse seems far more plausible to me. Further, there's research that takes into account family history of these mental illnesses out to 3rd — and further — degrees, and which suggests a much stronger link between that and the illness, than the drug use.
This is correct. But we do have sufficient statistical evidence to rule out _large_ negative effects. We do know that cannabis is very unlikely to be as harmful to physcal and mental health as alcohol.
The thing for me is the fact that it might lead to schizophrenia is still scary. I've met a lot of people on the "it's not proven so I'm going to assume it's safe" side and I never understood it but then again I'm fairly risk averse.
It's broken thinking to assume something is safe on the basis of a lack of proof otherwise. We have a pretty substantial body of research exonerating cannabis of a lot of the harms other drugs of abuse can bring. Literally no-one ever has died of a cannabis overdose, that we know of. We know it's safe that way.
There is of course a risk with any mind-altering substance that it might trigger a latent or occult mental illness. Those odds go up, sometimes significantly, with more powerful substances, and even more so when the user has any genetic predisposition towards those conditions. There's also a risk of having a difficult or traumatic experience, which can likewise increase with dose or different substances. That said, those of us who work with these substances intentionally often find that those experiences can be where the really transformative stuff happens.
Anyone who's taken it should have no problem understanding how easily this drug can create a disturbed state of mind. It has quite powerful psychoactive effects.
I do a lot of work with psychedelics. I'm very, very well aware of the power of consciousness-altering chemicals to have profound effects. That's kind of the whole point of using them. They should be respected but I don't see how that implies they should be feared.
I have worn a beard nearly continuously for approaching three decades, now.
I used to keep my beard neat enough with a pair of scissors, a mirror, and few minutes every few days. Then I got a wet-dry trimmer that I used periodically in the shower. Now I'm just growing it out (about 5 months in), and I work a dab of shampoo in occasionally.
Beard maintenance really isn't that onerous. I spend vastly more time grooming my untrimmed whiskers than I ever spent trimming them. Being clean-shaven takes significantly more frequent effort, and though I have no data points, given all the process involved in shaving, it probably takes a lot more time, all-in, too.
EDIT: Yes, that creates a data point that police could also search for — "give me all the phones in the vicinity that were turned off and then back on surrounding the incident." Okay, how far away? That would be a massively larger search, geographically, wouldn't it? How far before and after is your window for turning off and back on events?
That's still an additional search. It's also probably got a far worse signal:noise ratio than proximity to the incident — assuming the robbers were dumb enough to have their phones on them (and on) in the first place.
Turning it off could leave a trace: "this phone was turned off 15 minutes before the robbery started, and was turned on 15 minutes after the robbery ended, both events in a location which is 15 minutes by car from the bank".
Leaving it at home, without turning it off, leaves no such trace; it's consistent with "this phone's user simply stayed at home today".
Is it possible to auto answer a call? In that case you could call the phone and there would be proof not only that you were at home, but that you were having a conversation.
Google could probably detect atypical usage patterns. If you’re always on your phone and suddenly there is no accelerometer delta then you’re likely not at home with your phone but somewhere away from it.
Better to just have the kid play with it all night. And, of course, tell the wife (assuming she's in on it) to watch a lot of Jackie Chan movies on Netflix all night.
> The researchers Joy Buolamwini at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Timnit Gebru, then at Microsoft Research in New York City, showed that some of the most advanced facial-recognition software failed to accurately identify dark-skinned women 35% of the time, compared to a 1% error rate for white men. Separate work showed that these technologies mismatched 28 US members of Congress to a database of mugshots, with a nearly 40% error rate for members of colour. Researchers at the University of Essex in Colchester, UK, tested a facial-recognition technology used by London’s Metropolitan Police, and found it made just 8 correct matches out of a series of 42, an error rate they suspect would not be found lawful in court.
I dont see why it should be difficult to debug unless you think this is all some kind of conspiratorial plot by white people or the "white system" who are all secretely racist against black people and that's why the detection rate was purposefully kept low by these evil people.
And implying that we have to be irrational to be ethical is also pretty weird.
It's not a "conspiratorial plot", no. But time and again, research has shown that the implicit biases held by the people building these tools [0] are observable in the tool's results — and all people hold implicit biases.
It's not the tool we need to debug; it's us.
[0] Where, by "these tools", I mean machine learning writ large.
EDIT: I highly doubt your comment's parent was suggesting we had to be irrational in order to be ethical. Rather, I believe they meant we should be rational and ethical. Wouldn't you agree?
> ...for suggesting sea mammals have a "gland" that filters salt from water.
No-one made any such suggestion. One person lamented that such a gland didn't exist; they did not assert its existence. The other person didn't mention glands at all.
You are mixing up the words “infer” and “imply”. But anyhow, no the other commenter did not imply that sea mammals have extra salt glands that humans do not.
> But anyhow, no the other commenter did not imply that sea mammals have extra salt glands that humans do not.
The other commenter clearly implied 2 things:
1. sea mammals have salt glands
2. their bodies have solved the problem of removing waste salt from said glands
There's no way to interpret the commenter's statement otherwise without it being nonsensical. Sea mammals manage (what exactly) just fine?
If you can't see that, then I'm sorry, here's a simpler analogy to illustrate my point:
Me: "Pancakes can't be made without flour"
Commenter: "French chefs manage just fine"
A rational person would deduce that what Person 2 is implying is: "French chefs [are able to make pancakes without flour] just fine", not: "French chefs [are able to make pancakes] just fine"
> ...if I wasn’t going to be with her, I had to let her go so she could find someone else.
That's not an ultimatum, though I can see how it might read that way. She felt a need, which he wasn't meeting. She told him that if he wouldn't meet it, he needed to let her go seek its fulfillment elsewhere.
>She told him that if he wouldn't meet it, he needed to let her go seek its fulfillment elsewhere.
This seems like a vague sense of displaced blame, however; so I can understand how people will view it as a red flag: There's nothing preventing her from leaving of her own volition but it's inferred that she has no possibility of choice (without him having to have made a choice) - even though he's already signaled his desires multiple times before.
In that sense, it is an ultimatum but one that tries to absolve guilt by making the "decision-maker" the "owner" of the result/consequence - even though, in reality, both would suffer the consequences of the choice.
Further still, is the impression inferred that she's a prisoner because she's "bound" to him because he needs to "let her go" if he won't fulfill her desire[s]; inferring that, somehow, he - alone - wields power over her self-agency.
That doesn't quite make sense - when a healthy relationship should be two independent people sharing in the relationship "power" dynamic. In other words, it should not be so skewed that one has power/control over life, destiny, etc. of another.
In this perspective, it does seem to be a very troubling red flag.
Well, i would much prefer a partner that explicitly states what are his/her show-stoppers for the relationship, than one that states preferences but not their importance and then just leaves when key preferences are not satisfied.
Also, i do not understand why ever speak about guilt in this case - if there is no commitment then there is no guilt when relationship is dissolved.
Just because you don't see a particular value in something does not mean it lacks that value for others.
Frankly, I find this to be far more a "My way or the highway" kind of attitude than the quoted bit from The Fine Article — you don't seem even to concede the possibility of marriage being more than a "contract", when, for most people, that's among the least of what it's about.
