>>
>> ^Enzoblue:
Did it do any good, make any difference?



You noticed, so therefore.

I don't think this is Thích Quảng Đức. The accounts of Đức's self-immolation differ from what's shown in the video, and photos purported to be of that event also show a slightly different arrangement of people and the gas can with respect to the car in the background - which, strangely, does show up with the same raised hood.

Aside from the aforementioned arrangement issues, Đức was said to have struck a match and dropped it on himself, while here a fellow monk places a trail of fuel as a fuse. Accounts also describe policemen attempting to reach Đức but being unable to penetrate the throng of monks - here they are at the front of the crowd, pushing them back and watching. (I disagree with the assessment that these cops were "shocked" - to me they seemed to possess a familiarity with the proceedings.) Đức's body is said to have slumped forward after "around 10 minutes," while here the body falls back and to the left. (No irony intended.) There's also mention of a policeman prostrating himself in reverence before Đức; while that may simply have been missed by the camera, I suspect this is actually video of a later demonstration, as there were several.

>> ^Enzoblue:
Even the cops were shocked did you see?

Yes, I saw.

I'm not sure if this was the same monk who set himself afire that I saw in Life magazine when I was about six years old...I think a few Vietnamese monks immolated themselves in that era...but it brings to bear many questions.

Could I do that? Would I do that? Did it do any good, make any difference?

Yes and no. I don't know.

With my newly earned Gold Star Sift Superpowers, I am about to invoke my first ever *promote with the hopes that Obi Wan Sift Bot will not regretfully tell me I have failed.

Secretly deep down, I've always wanted to be a monk but like a super cool one, after years of disciplined training I come back to the modern world, where a decisive martial arts tournament reunites two nations on the brink of war!

>> ^westy:
If they think its annyhting other ...that Meditation is meditation ...steady nerverse

Westy puts as much thought and care into his arguments as he does his spelling.

>> ^conan:
"the second"? looks to me as if it was the same guy


Don't they all look the same? Oooh

The problem is they're not really monks anymore, they're just a group of chinese acrobats sponsored by the government and sent to do shows around the world. The spiritual underpinning is gone, eaten by Mao.

Turn it back on them, Look at the definition of Religion:

re⋅li⋅gion
  /rɪˈlɪdʒən/

–noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.


Through that entire definition, Athiestic views on the subject would be protected, too.
If this passes, no more would Atheists get ragged on by any other type of religious nut because it's illegal. True, to gain that you'd have to give up disproving other religions.. but you could do it so much more tastefully instead.

Instead of going to a christian and saying "Your religion sucks and it's false, here's proof" release it as more information to the Atheist people, and common knowledge. Christians then can't dispute it or else they go to jail.

This being said, I hope this is never even a remote reality in the states or canada, but on the seriously small chance that it ever does happen.. least there's a technicaly up side to it.

Sorry it took so long to respond, I had a busy weekend.

They are not simple probabilistic events, and they are operating off the same basic principles, that does not mean that systems do not have qualities which their component parts lack.

Does a piston have the capacity to convert petrol into kinetic energy? Does an internal combustion engine have this capacity? Which part of the engine imbues it with this power?

Systems are qualitatively different from their component parts, and some sets of systems, such as systems which decide, are qualitatively different from systems which don't

I'm going to need a definition of "decide" I suppose. It seems like you are dancing around these squishy intuitive concepts instead of having a specific physical distinction to point out. The amoeboid is composed of a lipid bilayer membrane riddled with intricate protein micro-machines that detect changes in the environment, and behaviorally compensate. To discount the intricacy of the mechanisms of genetic expression and chemical signaling that exist even in the simplest of eukaryotic organism is foolish IMHO. Many of the modern models of genetic expression, and compensation for environmental factors look strikingly similar to the connectionist network models of the brain. The computations are similar in the abstract.


You are anthropomorphizing the mold, it does move, this motion increases its chances of finding food, it survives/reproduces. It in no way displays evidence of doing any of this "in order" to accomplish some goal. If you want to suggest that evolution, as a system, displays intelligence, by selecting molds which move in certain ways, I would be willing to acknowledge that intelligence, not a consciousness, but an intelligence.

Well, more likely I'm moldopomorphizing us. What goals do we have that are ultimately distinct from survival, reproduction, and the general continuity of our species? Even something as seemingly unrelated as making music, or art could be cast as some sort of mating ritual. When you somehow separate our behavior from the rest of life on Earth it's as though you want to draw a barrier between us and them. You want to somehow separate us from the natural order. I hate to break it to you, but it just isn't so. We are just demonstrate the spatial heterogeneity of the second law of thermodynamics.


Why is context necessary for experience? What do you experience in infinitesimal time? Why should we posit some sort of experience which is entirely distinct from the type we claim to have?

I experience the moment. In fact, that's all I'm ever experiencing, although my sensation of it may run a little behind. I never experience my memory, I merely compare my experience to memory. Further, what I'm suggesting is not entirely distinct from any experience we claim to have. Some autistic individuals, for instance, report an extremely chaotic existence, in which causal models can't be formed as sensory modalities are not unified in the same way as ours. They are experienced as independent inputs, not reflective of a coherent physical world. Still, they experience it.

Physical laws are not obeyed, they are enforced. electron movements are completely deterministic, like billiard balls, they roll down hill, they don't decide if/when to do so.

Things can not be enforced without an enforcer. Further, as you've conceded the determinism of our brains, again, how are we not passively allowing the laws of nature to push us around? What exactly are we deciding?


I don't believe that you are claiming that electrons have tiny field sensors which feed into a neural network which analyzes them for patterns and then attributes meaning to them by comparing them to earlier similar sensation patterns. Perhaps you can state this more clearly.

No, I believe that by some other physical mechanism, likely involving quarks and particle physics that I admittedly have a poor understanding of, the electron receives information from not immediately proximal locations, and physically displaces itself to a location with more desirable properties given its current energy state. I don't see how that's different than cuddling up to a warm fire.


You seem to be positing that the structure of the universe is not topological, but that it is instead the consequence of 10^80 atoms all working on concert to decide what the laws of the universe are at this moment. If this is your thesis I am inclined to ask on what basis you think it is even vaguely likely that they would came to a consensus, such as they must to allow the functioning of a universe like ours.

Something like that , although I still don't like the word decide. I don't necessarily think they do come to a consensus. It's just that, as with an attractor network, or similar guaranteed convergence dynamical systems, certain macroscopic states are just more likely than others, despite chaos at the subordinate level. The reason I'd rather drop the word decide is because I don't necessarily want to open the door to something like free will. To cast it in a "God" metaphor, I imagine more of an omniscient God, than an omnipotent God.


Please provide some basis to believe that there is a phenomenal experience.

I can't other than to refer you to what I presume you to have. I could suggest focussing on your breathing, or what have you. I can point you towards literature showing that people that claim to focus on their consciousness can perform physical feats not previous considered possible (for instance monks rewriting the books on the physical tolerance of the human body to cold). Otherwise, I can't. I will say this, however, I take it to be the atomic element of inductive reason. The natural "laws" you are taking as primary are secondary. There is a simple reason for this as Alfred North Whitehead pointed out. If suddenly we were to observe all bits of matter floating away from one another, and were to confirm we were not hallucinating, and perhaps have the experience corroborated by our colleagues, it would not be the experience which was wrong, it would be the laws of nature. Experience has primacy. Matter is merely the logical consequence of applying induction to our particular set of shared experiences.


And that will persist as long as we are not talking about anything. You say "X exists". I say "What is X?". You say "You can't disprove X". And here we are talking about nothing.

I told you, in the best english I can, what X is. It's the qualia of phenomenal experience. Now I can't provide you with direct evidence for it, but I can tell you that nearly everyone I talk to has some sense of what I mean.


You must be using an alternate form of the word "believe". How can someone believe something, and simultaneously be completely unwilling to assert that it is a fact?

I take the Bayesian sense of the word. All probabilities are subjective degrees of belief. I adopt this degree of belief based on anecdotal experience and generalizations therein. None of this would be accepted as evidence by any reviewer, nor should it, and thus I wouldn't want to risk my credibility by asserting it as fact. I can believe some hypotheses to be more likely than others on the basis of no evidence, and in fact do all the time. That's how I, and all other scientists, decide what experiment to run next. I should not, however, expect you to believe me a priori, as you may operate on different axioms, and draw from different anecdotal experience. Thus, I would not feel compelled to assert my beliefs as fact, other than in so far as they are, in fact, my beliefs.

Ok... I still see this line as completely arbitrary. How are our actions not "probabilistic events?" The amoeba is operating off the same basic principals. It's exerting energy to maintain certain ion concentrations. It's moving matter in order to seek out food, and even flexing its pseudopods along the shortest path between food sources in proportion to their delivery frequency. There is even a paper showing that it will respond to periodic stimuli (such as cold shocks at particular intervals) with predictive changes of behavior. How is that any different?

Further, comparison and recall? Why is memory necessary for experience? For the successful completion of certain cognitive tasks, sure, but I keep needing to remind you that isn't what we're talking about here. As for comparison, it's happening everywhere all the time. Electrons are "comparing" electric fields when they settle into a state, otherwise they couldn't obey their physical laws. I think the problem here is that your thinking is boxed into the human sensory modalities. As far as I'm concerned an electron is sensing an electrical field in the same way I am sensing visual band EM. It just can't image it as well, and thus can't respond to complex patterns at much distance. Again, not to diminish that extraordinary decrease in entropy, but I don't know why it should be so fundamental.

Also, to be clear, I've never claimed that what I'm looking for is something immaterial. I just believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Being matter, and conscious, I have no reason to think otherwise. Again, this consciousness is distinct from "thinking". It's the sheer fact that there is a phenomenal experience, not the particular nature of those phenomena. You've presented me no evidence that I should only expect phenomenal experience in a complex organism, as you have no test for phenomenal experience. This is why Chalmers, and others, have argued that consciousness is not necessarily best studied by traditional english empiricism. It's wholly inadequate to investigate the phenomenon. A better solution might draw on Eastern traditions of meditation, for instance. Many monks, including the Dali Llama have been interested in cooperating.

But you have made a claim, that for some particular X, P(X) > P(!X). On the basis of that statement, and the assumption that you are rational, I draw the conclusion that you have some concept of what X is, or at least what its consequences are, otherwise you are making a non-sequitur claim.

I do have some very general concept of what x is, but not such a certain idea that I would ever make a claim like P(X) > P(!X). That is, unless you toe a hard Bayesian line, and accept that my claim is completely a subjective degree of belief. Otherwise, my claim was something like "I believe that P(X) > P(!X)". Something you shouldn't really care to contest, but I'll defend my priors against your priors till you're blue in the face. I won't be bullied by the tyranny of some arbitrary model selection criteria.

That was a good doc, Monk. Dig! is a good "creative meltdown" doc as well.

As for Mr. Duffy's cinematic skillset, BS was an OK flick. Clunky in parts, inspired in others. Overall, pretty mediocre. I just hope the guy is embarassed to hell by his behavior in Overnight.

If you are interested in watching another fascinating documentary on the Aghoris, you can watch an excellent one here in full. If you want to watch an extremely gruesome video of the aghoris, you can do that here. Be warned, however, it contains video footage of cannibalism.

(again, via Cogitz)

Loved the Monk in Hellfire almost as much as killing everything that moved or intended to move - including my mates - in a chain lightning frenzy.

This one ... not my thing so far.

>> ^NordlichReiter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North#As_Blizzard_North
Formerly known as Condor, and now, formerly known as Blizzard North. They have since been consolidated into Blizzard Entertainment.
Most of the people who brought you the first two Diablo games are long gone.
Alas, the world of game design is ruthless, and very Capitalistic. You want to see Capitalism at work? Dip your head into the game industry.


I don't know the details of what happened during the Blizzard North exodus, but it seems like lots of people quit because they wanted to go off and create their own companies where they'd be in charge. So not really an example of people being screwed by a ruthless system, since they left freely to pursue larger ambitions. And with most of the company (30 people) having quit, Blizzard North could not have continued on it's own, it seems the merger with the rest of Blizzard Entertainment was necessary.

I still have a lot of hope for the game though. Even if it's not the original team, it seems they have some very talented people working on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_3#Development

Ah, the Sony technique... promote crappy games by only showing ridiculous cut-scenes and hope nobody notices.

They dropped the ball, though. The monk should have pulled out a mic and sang some j-pop after the fight. That would have been the clincher.