Comments by "nuqwestr" (@nuqwestr) on "Big Think" channel.

  1. Love to hear the near-death experience of a person who was deaf and blind from birth. If they describe the experience in the same way, with similar " sounds and visions", I will alter my thinking. This should not be difficult to explore.
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  2. "The Well" has been around for decades, why call it "new"? The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities.
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  3. "The First Casualty in War is the Truth" - paraphrase to Samuel Johnson. It seems in a Culture War, the first casualty is also, The Truth, Mr. Gladwell. Glibness and cynicism is not wisdom.
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  4. "so many labels, yet they hate labels" - ivan OMG, should be a T-Shirt, buddy.
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  5. "false consensus" has origin in "false consciousness", but you can reach much further back to Socrates, "An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living". However, there's a high cost to self-examination, most people will not pay the price, and prefer to appropriate the consensus consciousness.
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  6. "Battle" ? Gladwell says there were battles in WW1 with over 1 Million dead. There was no single "DAY" where 1 Million were killed, so his statement is disingenuous without explaining a "Battle" can encompass a large time-frame, as the Battles of the Somme and Battles of the Frontiers do. If this is what they are teaching kids these days, we are in trouble. Oh wait, we have been for 40 years, and Gladwell is the effect, not the cause.
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  7. Rationality is synonymous with coherence, and coherence is a "moral standpoint".
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  8. (◔_◔) Careful, your Cluster B personality disorder is showing.
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  9. El Nino will bring water to California and the Big Basin, we are out of drought already. Gaza could easily be a paradise, it has 40 kilometers of Coastline. There was a ceasefire on Oct 6th, life was getting better. Then Oct 7th happened.
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  10. Big Think and Pinker only describe one brand of "irrationality", thereby expressing their own inherent lack of rational thought. More to the point, rationality "hurts", is painful, and requires more energy than most people want to invest. Easier to offload that to others.
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  11. The Japanese also planned for weapons of mass civilian destruction, and would have used them, too, as they did in China. Gladwell's type of historical finger wagging and blaming is just the sort of human expression that leads to war, not prevent one.
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  12.  @Band_Of_The_Falcon  Humans who were blind at birth have through medical devices connected to their brain been given a version of sight, some have real sight connected, and the descriptions are worth seeking out. Sight is a developmental process in the brain, things like depth perception, etc., but if the NDE is universal and metaphysical, they should be able to describe the experience just as sighted people, or at leas like those who have had their brain connected to sight later in life.
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  13. In 1968, age 13, hitch hiked with my friends to the beach in Malibu all summer, a year later Charles Manson moved in down the street at Spahn Ranch, we still hitched everywhere until we got DLs. Different now, my high school has drive-bys at bus stops, and where my parents were born 100 years ago in Los Angeles, English is no longer the primary language and not safe for me to visit. Very different.
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  14. Any war is a crime against humanity, all war is the mutual failure of all parties, and it is people like you, who wag fingers and mindlessly blame, which assure another failure, and another war.
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  15.  @RichLuciano1  Our perceptions and judgements are subject to error by deception and misinterpretation. A bee does not see a flower the same way we do, it can perceive light wavelengths we do not. Our sense of touch, taste, sight, hearing, can all be fooled. We perceive patterns our brains interpret as reality, most of the time this perception has a common coherence, sometimes, and for different reasons, that coherence is disrupted, and the perception of reality becomes somewhat deformed.
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  16. Love to know the NDE of a person deaf, dumb and blind from birth. If their experience is similar to a sighted and sounded person, you may have something?
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  17. "Understanding is outside of computation" - Sir Roger Penrose
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  18. Don't blame your failure as a human being on others, or a system.
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  19. That's closer to the truth than what this Bolshevik says it is.
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  20. ACA was imperfect, and Trump, who has kept his promises, will not take that protection away, you are either being lied to, or you are lying to us. Even the upcoming court case will take months, if not a year to get a decision, and even then, there are protections in ACA which can be retained. I am a registered Dem in California who is self-employed and could not afford ACA, and my choices became less, not more, then I faced an IRS penalty, which Trump took away, so thanks to Trump, and why this Dem is voting for him in Nov.
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  21. Yes, experiments by Dr. John C. Lilly in the early 1970s on "K" confirm your experience. Anesthesiologists have theories about quantum states in microtubules within brain neurons that may explain these experiences, and how they are able to turn consciousness off with chemically produced gasses in the brain. The idea is the gasses interfere with the coherence of quantum states, NOISE, much like DMT, LSD, and other hallucinogens do, but more research is required.
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  22. We already have 50, but this guy wants to shove you into his one house so you work for him, a slave to the new Bolshevism. Electoral College, use it, or lose it, and all your freedoms with it. Time to push back on these wolves in sheep's clothing.
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  23.  @mactastic144  The combining of quantum computing and DNA will assure we evolve into a new species, and the meek shall inherit the earth.
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  24. Yes, all war is failure, but your comment about the US is anti-historical and the kind of finger wagging that leads to war in the first place.
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  25.  @eagleleft  What war did the U.S. start in South America? The U.S. has never declared war on a country in South America? Read about The Monroe Doctrine. Money has been made by some in every war, chaos is profitable, and we see that all through history. Why single out the U.S. when this is a human trait, not a nationalistic one?
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  26. Yeah, they leave that out of most conversations, or that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab, they serve on the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the IDF, 1.8 million, and that's their idea of "genocide" and "colonialization" There are also Vietnamese citizens of Israel, since they take in refugees. Show me the comparable in the region.
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  27. Common Enemy Identity Politics is why the Woke Left and Hamas have teamed up. The "common enemy" is liberal democracy and enlightenment values.
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  28. Agreed, Pelosi is nuts.
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  29. Get a bicycle, we rode 50 miles in a day, 1966, went from San Fernando Valley to Santa Monica Pier over Sepulveda Pass. I was only 11 years old. Grow some.
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  30. I'm a photographer and history buff, this is a fundamental change which will alter the social contract in ways we do not yet understand, not so random, thanks for mentioning it.
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  31. Look up "Nudge Theory" being put forward by Ginni, plagiarized I should say. ESG turned into a faith based social system, if you don't have a "good" score, you will be excommunicated.
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  32. You should publish the AI Prompt you used to cut and paste this crap.
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  33. Agreed, especially since 1967, they cannot abide Jews in control of Temple Mount. Arafat made that clear enough in 2001.
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  34.  @ruthhenry9577  Difference? The suffering is self-inflicted. Peace was possible in 1947 when partition was voted on, but was not, peace was possible when Israel declared a state in 1948, but was not, Nasser did not have to blockade Israel and send tanks to the Sinai in 1956, but he did, and again in 1967, and then Egypt and Syria again attacked in 1973. Egypt and Jordan made peace, other Arab nations have recognized Israel. Jews control the Temple Mount. There is no peace for some in that, and I doubt there ever will be. Make Jerusalem an international city open to all? I'd bet Islam would war on that, too. Islam needs to internalize the Jihad, stop killing others when it is yourselves you hate.
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  35. The industrial revolution was making slavery obsolete, it was the extremism of Abolitionist that pushed us into Civil War. Capitalism required consumers and technically trained workers, not illiterate body slaves. Carbon, and the invention of the electric motor in 1837, would have freed the slaves, and would have done a much better job of it. The South was done as an economic system, a war was not necessary, nor is the one being instigated now.
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  36.  @TheBestPrganator  The Culture War? It's well defined, but with many parts. It's Modernism vs Post-Modernism. Post-Modernist's don't believe in a "grand narrative", so it's ironic that an avowed "revisionist" post-modernist like Gladwell has one. LOL
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  37.  @froggystyle8270  •́‿•̀ hehe
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  38.  @artvsmachine  The power of myth is universal, Pinker knows that, but faces cancellation for saying so, he's been close to cancellation a few times, and walks a tight line because of it.
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  39. "mindfulness", as defined by these guys. is what Marx referred to as "The Opiate of the Masses" incarnated into a contemporary framework. It's religion, a medication to eliminate the affects of reality, to transcend the physical into some form of spiritual paradise. Yeah, I think this has been tried before, with disastrous results.
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  40.  @OsvaldoBayerista  I did imagine blind on DMT or LSD with anecdotal descriptions of the experience. Sir Roger Penrose says he's a "materialist", but goes on to say he doesn't really know what "material" is. We just don't know, but that's difficult for humans to except.
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  41.  @timflelter5566  I already knew the answer before asking, but you did not know the answer but gave one anyway.
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  42. Because Israel is an open, liberal democracy with free speech, and Gaza is not.
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  43. I was also L.A., 60's, Charles Manson was down the street from my Jr. High but we didn't know it. We had anti-drug campaign called SOS (Stamp Out Stupidity) with posters at schools and speeches in the auditorium, we all laughed because we learned more about POT at those speeches then we knew in real life. We are the generation who set the policies that those born in 1995 had to live in. MY APOLOGIES to you, I am so, so SORRY.
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  44. There's a framework for rationality. What's the framework for "emotional intelligence". Can it be taught? If so, what is your evidence that it can be taught?
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  45. "Debunked"?, sure, more than a billion years of evolution "debunked" by a thought experiment or matrix like simulation of an alternative reality, what most would call "pure fantasy".
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  46. He is not presenting a fully dimensional picture of either democracy or capitalism, but only the narrow view of a Bolshevik.
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  47. Does "Free Palestine" mean Tel-Aviv, too. Why use the name Palestine, it's the name invented by a colonizer, Rome, a Greek name, no "P" in Arabic. Please explain.
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  48. Don't miss Ian's point, there are NO honest/reliable brokers at this point and time. Who would you choose, the United Nations?
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  49. I worry that CBT is being used as a social sedative which blinds us to the real dangers in our World. CBT is produces a kind of entropy of emotion and drive when it should be about critical thinking, needs adjustment on that basis. It's the old story of how to cook a frog.
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  50. He's not KING, and what do you propose after he's out?
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