Yet another 'I am the lord of the wind...'

[m4ster r0shi]

Albatross wrote:

And I wonder where r0shi ran off to...

I'm here. I won't be posting very often from now on, since I'll be busy with my courses.

I didn't want to do it back then (after all, I said that I wasn't going to post there anymore) and I didn't want to do this in Disch's thread (it would be off topic) but since this discussion re-emerged, I'll do it here just so some people don't think that I stopped because I ran out of arguments.

The reason I chose not to reveal the author's name is simple. What is important is the ideas in the book themselves, not the one who writes them. As for the authenticity of the author, FYI there have been various tests and the results of all of them were in favor of the author.

I quote from here -> http://ramtha.com/coasttocoast/research.pdf

At a conference in Yelm, Washington in February 1997, a distinguished panel of 12 scholars — including scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and religious experts from such diverse institutions as Chicago Theological Seminary, Temple University, Colgate University, the University of California, the University of Oregon,and Birkbeck College at the University of London — concluded that JZ Knight, who had been channeling Ramtha the Enlightened One, a spiritual teacher for the previous twenty years, “is not a fraud,” according to Dr. Stanley Krippner, a psychologist and the leading parapsychology researcher in the U.S. who rigorously tested Knight at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (RSE) in Yelm over a period of 18 months.

[...]

Wickramasekera explained how eight standardized, physiological, psychological,and behavioral tests were administered. “When you go fishing you use a big net,” Wickramasekera said. “What we didn’t expect was to find fish in all eight nets.” The results of the physiological tests showed that when Knight is channeling Ramtha, her muscle tension, pulse, and galvanic skin response increase while skin temperature and blood volume both decrease. Wickramasekera affirmed that Knight could not have voluntarily changed or faked all eight of these results.

As for the ideas, these ideas are not new. They have always been there.
The thing is that the scientific community has started to accept them too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRQeIsfQtE4

helios wrote:

Thinking requires restriction, or you just end up producing noise such as "A is true and not A is true". If that makes sense to you, you have officially lost your mind.

Heh...

two physics students discuss during lunch:

-Will you eat that?
-No, take it, I don't mind. Dude, you have to hear this, this is some awesome shit!
-What are you talking about, dude?
-You know that both relativity and quantum mechanics are good at explaining things each in its own domain but if you mix them there arise inconsistencies, right?
-Well, yeah, so?
-I had this craziest idea last night. You can't get rid of these inconsistencies. They will always be there. If you want to have the whole truth, you'll have to contradict yourself at some point. But what you can do is take them and put them in a more fundamental level of the theory: in the axioms themselves! Then, you can rebuild the whole theoretical model on top of them.
-So, you essentially say that you can't get rid of the inconsistencies but you can minimize their occurrences by placing them directly in the axioms. I kind of like it.
-Yes, yes, and I've already had some cool ideas on how to do this. I suggest that the subatomic particles are not actually particles but tinny-tiny strings that vibrate. And the vibration frequency and amplitude are the factors that determine properties of the particles like mass, charge etc...
-The more I listen to you the more interesting it sounds!... And, let's say that your initial approach doesn't explain some things. All you have to do is add some 'special' kind of string or some 'special' string property and then rebuild the whole thing until it does.
-Exactly. And everyone will be so fascinated by the fact that it explains everything that they will omit the fact that what I essentially did was take the inconsistencies and hide them in a deeper level of the theory! And, ah, I just thought of this! I'll tell them that these strings are sooooo tiny that you can't see them no matter how powerful tools you use!
-Dude, you're such an evil bastard!...
-Indeed, indeed!... Ah, I'm stuffed... So, where are we going tonight?
-I'm going at Coco Bongo with Mary.
-Ah, is that cute cousin of hers in town?
-Who? Ann? Yeah, I saw her the other day and she said she was going to stay for at least a month.
-Cool. Tell Mary to bring her and I'll come too.
-Kk, dude. Cu later.
-Later.

@Disch: I don't know if you noticed this. I posted it for you :P Just in case you didn't notice:
http://cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/27464/page2.html#msg162891
You can easily get it from a torrent.

As for hamsterman's question, I believe you already know my answer:
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/24744/#msg130996

I'm glad this is re-opened :) (even if it is in the form of the question "what's right and what's wrong?")
After all, as a friend of mine says:

If it didn't matter, you wouldn't be thinking about it.

PS:

hamsterman wrote:

You my friend are a hypocrite.

Close. He is not your friend. He is you ;)

EDIT: typos

[hamsterman]

Firstly, coder777, you claim that you know the value of things. I wonder how you measure it. It seems that you don't value morale at all.. Maybe that's because your life is too good for you to care about this. You wouldn't be saying the same thing few hundred years ago. These kind of things have reasons.
Anyway, do read the post m4ster r0shi linked to. http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/24744/#msg130996

m4ster r0shi, I may not agree with many things you say, but your answer is the most solid one yet.

I'm glad this is re-opened :) (even if it is in the form of the question "what's right and what's wrong?")

I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes this stuff. And by the way I didn't quite intend to make a "what's right?" thread. I'm not sure what I intended. It was just something I wanted to say..

Close. He is not your friend. He is you ;)

He is all of us. He is the reflection of whole human culture. That is what I wrote..

[helios]

etc. etc. quantum etc. etc.

Ugh. Don't get me started with quantum physics. And string theory is a joke. Almost, but not quite, the kind of noise I was talking about.

coder777: Careful. That line of thinking leads to certain uses of the word "savage" and the notion that some cultures are better than other ones. Racism and bigotry are just around the corner from there.

[coder777]

hamsterman wrote:

I wonder how you measure it.

well: humanity, ethics, logic, rationality.

helios wrote:

Careful. That line of thinking leads to certain uses of the word "savage" and the notion that some cultures are better than other ones. Racism and bigotry are just around the corner from there.

how could this possibly be

[hamsterman]

humanity, ethics, logic, rationality

These things are too abstract. They don't really define anything. They themselves need to be defined by something. Will another person who uses these same words come to the same conclusions as you?

how could this possibly be

Well, when you look down on people different from yourself it's called bigotry. And you're pretty much did that. Don't. These kind of things have reasons.

[sargon94]

Humanity and ethics don't mix. Our entire evolutionary history works against us. We got stronger by picking on the little guy, that's the way things work. I'm not saying it's right, moral, ethical or whatever, I'm saying it is. We can delude ourselves by saying we have minds/souls/[insert dualistic worlsview here] but we don't. We aren't more than the sum of our parts and our parts are tailor made to enable us to beat weaker humans and animals. I think we should try to be moral, righteous and such but I doubt we'll succeed.
I gotta go I'll continue later.