REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

God is an Iraqi

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 09:01
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005 6:55 AM

DREAMTROVE


Anytime someone uses the word spiritual I cringe :)

I can't recommend anything per se. I think the explanation in jurasic park is probably good enough if you want a non-mathematical one. Otherwise, I suggest boning up on that math. Like when I said I like presidents with a military background, and a lot of folks attacked me, and I said, military background is experience anyone can go out and get before running for president, if they so desire; likewise I say, rather than accept a weakness in mathematics, go attack it again. What was daunting in 9th grade will seem much less so now.

By random, I meant random. I think that everything is basically planless randomness, and only applied rules like natural selection turn the randomness into anything else.

Evolution, I hope you grasped, is essentially a branch of statistical mathematics, and not one of biology, a fact often obscured by some backwards debate by religious extremists against darwins evolution of species.

Conventional black hole theory I'm pretty sure is pretty much just flat out wrong, and I can more or less prove it. What a black hole really is is a dimensionally transendental region of space. I would not, however, recommend flying a spaceship into one to find out. I'm not sure it's a crossable barrier in either direction, and the nature of the internal space may not be one we are use to, it might be, say, a 10 million degree see of plasmic protomatter.

Wormholes make for fun sci-fi. I liked farscape. The reality is again probably less hospitable. The gravitational pull of wormholes is what creates galaxies, at least in theory, so I'd say it's pretty intense. It's possible that for a short period of time a wormhole of farscape size might exist, but not as a permanent fixture. Whether one coudl appear at seeming randomness or on a regular basis, I don't know. The theory suggests that rather extreme circustances are needed to create a wormhole. I wouldn't suspect that outdside of science fiction that wormholes will find an actual space travel application.

Re: Chaos and String theory, a decade ago's fringe theory is todays gospel. We just need to accept it and move on. If something late proves it false, then we'll adjust, but we're at the very least in the general ballpark of the truth here. Both theories have a more solid footing than the big bang.

Lawrence Krauss. No. I'll google him later. You shouldn't worry about offending anyone here. If you're using mysticism to trump science, it's liable to be poorly received. If you use science to trump beliefs, you're probably going to be more offensive, but then people probably need some offending to jar them from rigidly held beliefs that might be wrong.

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7:31 AM

DREAMTROVE


Quote:
Originally posted by Signym:

FINALLY!!! I found a kindred spirit!

Don't suppose this will help me on the political issues :)

So you came up with something similar yourself?

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005 2:20 PM

LIMINALOSITY


Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Anytime someone uses the word spiritual I cringe :)

I can't recommend anything per se. I think the explanation in jurasic park is probably good enough if you want a non-mathematical one.
rather than accept a weakness in mathematics, go attack it again.

By random, I meant random. I think that everything is basically planless randomness, and only applied rules like natural selection turn the randomness into anything else.

Evolution, I hope you grasped, is essentially a branch of statistical mathematics, and not one of biology

Conventional black hole theory I'm pretty sure is pretty much just flat out wrong, and I can more or less prove it. What a black hole really is is a dimensionally transendental region of space. I would not, however, recommend flying a spaceship into one to find out. I'm not sure it's a crossable barrier in either direction, and the nature of the internal space may not be one we are use to, it might be, say, a 10 million degree see of plasmic protomatter.

Re: Chaos and String theory
Both theories have a more solid footing than the big bang.

Lawrence Krauss.

Sp***t***ity is a staked word. Will entertain all suggestions for a substitution.

You got staked for suggesting high office holders should have military experience? Missed that. But W has the Secret Harvard Club instead, shouldn't that be enough? Ooops!

"Evolution is essentially a branch of statistical mathematics, and not one of biology," Yeah, statistics made visible on a biological canvas, I get that. I think "random" in statistical definition is a misapplication of unpredictibility ("-equal chances- or probability of occurrence for -each- member of a group" so says my dictionary, emphasis mine), I think there are rules about chance, even when we don't recognize them. You say "only applied rules like natural selection turn the randomness into anything else", I'm saying the application of natural selection reveals the inherent structure in something that -seems- unpredictable. Also saying that plan (the dread G concept) and structure are not the same thing. But this one I'm going to let go of now. Fly away little bird.

9th grade geometry was good. A+ and the teacher told me I had a gift (ha ha ha). I enthusiastically ran to sign up for algebra, which was taught by a podperson, got D's and chalked geometry up to a fluke with a gifted teacher. I can calculate really quickly using sort of bunching techniques I make up. But that's arithmetic, different thing. Ok, I'll look into it. I do have a friend at Uni who might be able to recommend a good teacher, I would like to...I mean math is all mystical to me, and I can see where it would be a fabulous tool if properly understood. Drastic Park, ok, I'll bite next time I see it on the movie schedule. Drat. Math. I need a dimensionally transcendant math teacher now.

Yeah, the scientist-type who thought I was torching him...I was saying that science and religion are the same study. Not trying to trump, mind, still not well received.

Glad to hear that String and Chaos are in the forefront. I've hated Bang theory since the first time I heard of it, always chuckled at the part where they'd get .0000001 millisecond from the event, and it all fell apart.

I want to hear new theories on gravity as well, I think gravity is a misunderstood force (she says, going straight on to a new heresy). Black hole theory is as bad as bang theory. in my bratty opinion. I share your dimensionally transcendant theory of holes. (From my featherhead perspective.) It might only -look like- a 10 million degree sea of plasmic protomatter. It might actually be the midnightbomber what bombsatmidnight on the other side. Anyway, I don't think I'l be planning any vacations near one soon.

Krauss. Physics for SF fans
http://www.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss/krauss.html

And see, I thought you were a entemologist all this time.


Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005 5:16 PM

DREAMTROVE


I would like to spend as little time as possible discussing the antichrist. Oops, I mean the president. And he's my own party's candidate. How sad is that?

Spirituality isn't spun. The problem isn't spin. Just in general. The problem with news is spin. But words don't really change meaning. Sorry, a dispute from another thread getting me down.

It's the concept, spirituality. Some sort of mystical connotation. Great for fiction. Not for science. It brings with it the idea that it's okay to put your preconceived notions to work, and also the concept that it's okay to come up with magical connections not written out by known scientific explainations.

Okay, let me put another one out there.

I call this one "I think, therefore I am not."

I don't exist. Neither do you. It's sad in it's way, but also a happy thought.

Each brain cell has within it a network of microtubules that common science believes to be a cell skeletal strucure. They're just wrong again. There are some fringe people who point out that these structure don't span the cell and can't support the cell, but do have a lot of electrical activity.

This is because they are a network, a circuit, a sort of brain for the cell. Because each cell does exists, and does have a consciouness.

But communication between cells is such that as soon as one cell says something that other cells agree with, it takes over. Pretty soon no one can tell who had the original thought. As it exists in all of us cells, any one of us is just as like to have had the idea. More or less.

If we can't pass it on, the thought stops and we move on to the next. And so it goes. This is why if you remove some brain cells, the others continue to function more or less normally.

This also pushes a somewhat evolutionary process on thoughts. Since all brain cells, or a decent portion, need to agree, random destructive thoughts are overcome in normal brains.

So what about suicidal thoughts? Well, this happens when there is something wrong with the brain, in particular, there's no serotonin. Without serotonin, it is impossible to gain perspective on long term consequences of actions.

So all thoughts are had by random cells, and are randomly collective, and then evolutionarily selected. The random thought "if I turn right here off this cliff, I would die: all I'd have to do is pull this wheel" but that thought is trumped by everyone else in my head saying "so don't do it"

So I get all this, collective non-existance.
Yet some nagging notion that I am aware and surfing through time forwards rather rappidly still bugs me.

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005 5:25 PM

DREAMTROVE


JP. I meant the book. The movie doesn't really approach chaos theory as soundly. Gravity is tricky. it's like best explaination is probably as an extension of string theory. All the energy strands get tangled, and pull on one another.

Black holes, I meant it IS possible protomatter, or it IS possible universe, any black hole, you don't know what it is. A lot of stuff from big bang is decent, possible, and much of it may happen, but probably on a smaller scale. The whole "unverse came from one bang" I am pretty sure is bogus.

So million degree protomatter plasmic soup is one possible type of universe that may exist, and if you walk into it unsuspect then ... OW!

But individually, many may have rules very similar to our universe.

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Wednesday, November 16, 2005 11:37 PM

LIMINALOSITY


Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Okay, let me put another one out there.
I call this one "I think, therefore I am not."

I don't exist. Neither do you. It's sad in it's way, but also a happy thought.
Pretty soon no one can tell who had the original thought. As it exists in all of us cells, any one of us is just as like to have had the idea. More or less.

So random cells, randomly collective,The random


Oh, sure, take it to a whole new level of eerie ass weird discussion. Especially since it's just you and I noodling around in an -apparently- empty thread. I've lit campfires in these things before so I know there are other eyes glowing in the dark around the fire. Want a beer? My cells agree that it's time for mysticism. You started it. I have proof that you had the original idea, so don't go blaming me for that later, you republican you.

No speaking Latin, and let's try to keep the blood pressure under control because we're going straight into that heresy that I unwittingly used to offended an other scientific American. At least I think he was American.

Yup, I avoid all discussion of the antichrist in this happy place, FFF. It goes straight to an epic unpleasantness like that other thread you mention. I keep reading that thread and remain ambivalent about adding my .02 On the other hand I will never again feel as terrible about hijacking a thread.

"But communication between cells is such that as soon as one cell says something that other cells agree with, it takes over. Pretty soon no one can tell who had the original thought. As it exists in all of us cells, any one of us is just as like to have had the idea. More or less."

Have you heard the story of the hundredth monkey? Of course you have. This is one of my favorite things. I think the paragraph above also speaks directly about the hundredth monkey concept.

Original thought? No such thing. We're all just electro-magnetic receptacles, and don't think I'm invoking the G, because we've been over that ground. I'm talking about group consciousness. We might each have one syllable of an original thought, but creation on any real level is by the group imagination, not by individuals. Just my opinion.

I think, therefore, big deal.

Ideas are hard to prove in a scientific way. All ideas, not just ideas about the nature of consciousness. I think it takes someone imagining a thing is possible before it can be brought into reality. Until imagination is allowed, proof can't be found. Oh oh getting cryptic again. All right, I'll provide a concrete example then. Until someone imagined flight, planes couldn't be built. Once the idea took shape, it took many many trials of piles of outrageous designs that didn't really understand the principles involved before a method was discovered to get a plane to stay in the air. Along the way, some of the principles of flight were discovered. Then with slow motion photography (to take one example of information that introduced a new perspective), other possibilities emerged. We continue to find ways to make advancements in the tech of flight. In the area of consciousness, I think there are many possibilities for which we modern humans are only beginning to allow an exploration. We know so little about the workings of the brain in real terms, much less about the mind contained within that collection of cells. If you're right about the separateness of cells, that adds even another dimension to consciousness, where each individual cell is having its own separate experience of the world.

"Some sort of mystical connotation. Great for fiction. Not for science. It brings with it the idea that it's okay to put your preconceived notions to work, and also the concept that it's okay to come up with magical connections not written out by known scientific explainations."

Science also brings with it preconceived notions to try to prove them. That is the heart of science - the hypothesis - isn't it? Of course you then apply the clearest methods you can conceive to prove/disprove the argument, but at the beginning there is the 'hey, what if' idea. Then there are the applications of method to try and discover the truth of the idea.

There are plenty of people out there actually doing the mystical. It's just hard to prove by scientific method, and prove it over and over and over by different methods to prove that you have proved it. Consciousness is slippery. Facility for...oh, I'll just grab teleportation out of the hat...varies from one instant to the next because of a fistful of factors that are currently undescribable in our language, and not accepted as possible in the current scientific paradigm. Factors that aren't even recognizable by the person who claims to be able to teleport. Indescribable, and sometimes un-replicatable, partly (I think) because current language and scientific paradigm doesn't allow it to be possible.

You've written about ancient earth-based belief systems enough that I'm sure you understand they were doing some pretty hefty stuff in their work, much of it very scientific. We don't have the understanding of what they were doing in current scientific terms. We don't understand their process, rules, math, abilities to focus, drugs they used, or how they worked together as a group (to name just a few factors) well enough to recreate much of what they were accomplishing. We don't eat the same food they did, and that may seem like a tiny thing, easily discounted, but you know that saying 'you are what you eat', well what if that were a factor in what they could do? We eat a lot of junk, and even the plain food we eat is significantly altered from what it was 1000 years ago. Ok, I suppose that's going to seem like a rabbit out of a hat, but I use it to illustrate all the many factors we just aren't currently able to take into account when we look at things mystical. I think much of what looks mystical by current standards, was quotidian practice to those ancients; practices they would have considered to be science.


I think this modern world includes many factors that depress serotonin levels. I know a few reasons, but I'm not going to insert a list of random speculations. There's plenty of evidence of it being a big problem, and it is not fun at all. Ok, back to being cryptic for just a sec. People who suffer from a lack of serotonin can jump-start their levels by some method, there are several that are not illegal. Then it is possible to juggle the base level up quite high by pretending to be happy. After a short time of focused practice (pretending to be happy), levels will remain high and become self-reinforcing. Being happy makes you happy in other words. One only needs to be willing to find a way to jump-start serotonin levels and then be focused enough to practice staying happy long enough to get the levels to stabilize. This only takes a few months, but it takes a big initial boost. Did that make sense?


"Yet some nagging notion that I am aware and surfing through time forwards rather rappidly still bugs me."

I like that surfing part in case you haven't noticed. Blithely surfing the unknown. and speaking of books, or rather writing of books, which I will be doing again in a sec, have you ever read Zelazny's Amber series? As a series, I think it weakens at the end, but some of it I enjoy very much. A part of his mythology for his characters is that they can alter reality in baby steps, a little at a time, by concentrating on small physical changes in the world around them to get to different realities. Your surfing reference reminded me.

Time is non-linear! Ha ha! I'm about to go sideways on you again. It's not healthy to accept that we only go forward in time. It's much more fun to go backward and heal your past, and explore sideways (ok, yeah, this is imaginary, but what is imagination?) and explore other paths you could have taken. I know it helps me appreciate exactly where I am much more than if I didn't. Also, serendipity. If there were ever an argument for the non-linear nature of time, that's it right there.


"JP. I meant the book. The movie doesn't really approach chaos theory as soundly."

OH, the book. Ok, haven't been to the book. Is it any good, or should I just ask for where to find the explanation, read that and be done with it? I'll put it on the list for the library, but the lists have all gotten longer with the time I've spent here, so if the good part of the book is that explanation, tell me.

Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!

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Thursday, November 17, 2005 7:02 PM

DREAMTROVE


Lim,

Not sure I have this all figured out exactly what you're saying, but here goes.

1st, JP, the book, is okay. It's Chrighton so it's kind of probably limited, but in the way that spielberg is fun without being truly deep, so was, for me, jp, the book.

Now to mysticism. My mind read this in funny order because, well it will become obvious why, so I'm answering it in random order.

Some things are not possible because they are out of the framework of the universe, that is to say the region of space in which we live. Every dimension, whatever you want to call it, has its own rules.

We live within a collection of stars trapped within a very large black hole. That universe has certain rules. One rule is that time travels forwards through a system of events. The event model define us and cannot be escaped. I can't determine if outside of those rules if it can be escaped or not, but inside it, it's certainly not possible.

Another thing is teleportation is only possible under some fairly peculiar circumstances that don't particularly apply to us. It's clearly far more possible than time travel, but it's not something that a human could reach via meditation or spellcasting.

I'm familiar enough with the rules of this universe that there are a good number of things I can say with absolute certainty. Though everything can be disproven, with that disclaimer, it is sometimes better to be certain of certain things than to fog the possibilities by taking as unknown what is known. The are other times when just hte opposite is true.

This hundredth monkey?

http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html

Basically I feel there are several levels of magic.

1. First, comes the lack of understanding. Nothing in the world makes sense.

2. Then as things start to come in to focus, there is a logical part of the world, and everything outside of that falls into the realm of the mystical.

3. Next you start making rules about the magic, and new kinds of mysticism and superstition are born.

4. You find random spot evidence which seems to support your mystical model, or change its course, and you follow this.

5. After that, you begin to notice that ultimately the scientific model seems to trump the extant mystical models, and you lose faith completely.

6. Finally you realize that the true nature of the universe is far different from the mainstream scientific understanding.

Stage 6 is the starting point for discussion, but it looks exactly like stage 3. So on every single issue and subtopic even the most knowledgable must closely reexamine their understanding to see if perhaps they aren't at stage three on that point. It happens to me frequently.

That said, moving on.

There are several elements of mental state:
Main among these are Focus, Perspective, Noise, Instinct and Sleep.

Dopamine is the agent of focus. A low level causes disorientation. This leads to memory loss, and various other degenerate and vague states of mind. High levels cause halucination, a state randomly produced by dumb kids who don't know what they're doing.

The important thing here is focus is the opposite of perspective, but they are controlled by different mechanisms.

The mechanism of perspective is serotonin. You are absolutely right that modern society depresses serotonin levels. Many food additives can do this, as does stress, and serotonin precursors are actually quite rare.

A lack of perspective IS depression. They are actually the same thing. Both psychologically and chemically.

In normal health levels, these two mechanisms will fight for dominance. At unhealthy levels, one will win.

Chemical relations here are important.

Serotonin is closely related to Melatonin, the agent of sleep. Taking melatonin can cause a reduction in serotonin production, causing depression. The best supplements to take for this are 5-HTP, the direct serotonin precursor, or Tryptophan, which is banned in the US by an immensely stupid or crooked govt. These supplements compete with SSRIs, which are profitable and highly dangerous.

Dopamine is closely related to norepinephrine, the agent of instinct. High dopamine levels are likely to lapse in to norepinephrine, particularly if serotonin levels are low. Heightened senses, instinctive responses, and perception of time, will likely occur, causing the illusion of time slowing or stopping. If unchecked it can lead to extreme anxiety and ultimately seizures.

Noise is controlled by GABA, which lowers the levels of all neurotransmitters, silencing noise. Long term GABA booster use, which may cause other problems, will result in a serious reduction in noise, creating the silent mental state. This is similar to what is experienced by some 'schitzophrenics' and extreme autistics, such as rainman, et al., and also by tibetan and other east asian TM monks. Contrary to what psychiatrists believe, the silent state is not "bad," it is simply different. An alternate way to be.

This is the basic start of my mental primer.

Many people use various street drugs to alter their mental state. This is somewhat analagous to performing chemistry by taking a bunch of bottles and mixing them in a lab and watching to see if they blow up.

Even among herbals there can be some very dangerous things. Like those of you in America will have access to Kava, a powerful norepiniphrine inhibitor, which creates a "calm" state which is the opposite of the "anxiety" state created by high norepinephine levels. While I like the idea of this being freely available because it can be life saving, it can also be abused and can cause liver damage. It's banned in europe.

Gaba is promoted by Benzos, which you probably know, another very dangerous set of drugs, or by an herbal called valerian.

Anyway, I have experimented with a fair number of these, you can actually gain quite a bit of control over your mental state. Next I want to learn how to do this with meditation.

There is really only one safe way to boost your serotonin levels and that is with a supplement of 5-HTP, or Tryptophan if it's available.

Serotonin precursors simply are too rare in a normal diet, and taking high amounts of TP-rich foods might lead to other problems if the foods contain high levels of other things.

Without the raw material of serotonin, it is impossible for your brain to make it. No zen practice can solve that for you, it simply would be against the laws of chemistry.

SSRIs will adjust uptake, which is really probably a blatantly bad idea. It can lead to more functional serotonin at the expense of reserve serotonin, be reserve serotonin is needed for dealing with crisis situations. In addition, SSRIs are likely to have unexpected effects on norepinephrine and dopamine in particular. This can lead to extreme anxiety or alternatively memory loss.

Generally, I just think most of psychology and psychiatry is just flat out wrong. Psychology has very little influence on mental state. Not to say none, but someone who believed it had no effect would be far closer to the truth than one who believed it had a significant effect.

Psychiatry largely relies on the idea that there is such a thing as chemical imbalance which causes a series of psychiatric conditions that we call mental illness. What's really going on is much more similar to vitamin deficiency. The precursors are the vitamins here, and the neurotransmitter levels are deficient in some area. Becuase neurotransmitters are necessary to survival, the brain compensates by boosting other neurotransmitter levels giving the appearance of an innate imbalance. The strength of the imbalance is not the problem though, it is simply a symptom of a deficiency elsewhere. Most commonly this would be a Serotonin or a GABA deficiency or both. It's possible but rarer to have a dopamine or norepinephine deficiency, or even melatonin. The latter would lead to a tremendous insomnia, causing other mental problems.

The conditions themselves simply don't exist. They are just random conjecture of assessing disassociated symptoms to attempt to make them into a scientific system which is really much more of a mystical stage three type analysis as I said above.

So, delusions, paranoia, all real, but not part of a larger picture. They're specific to a particular deficiency or compensating overdose.

Okay, that was a long rant.




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Thursday, November 17, 2005 7:11 PM

DREAMTROVE


About ancient beliefs I have to say, I'm no mysterian. Mysterians like to exaggerate the unknown. I think that modern knowledge falls into two streams:

1) Mainstream knowledge. This is what most of the people know and understand. Their world is notably shallow and built on misconceptions. They eat non-food, and practice non-exercise, and have a mental state of a tv-watching vegetable. They understand little.

2) Experimental Science. These people usually work with mice and understand a great deal. In theory they could easily reconstruct whatever was done in the past if there was a reason to do so.

Ultimately there is, a reason to do so, but it becomes a tricky process of knowing what to recreate. Such a society would know why it was doing what it was doing, which would likely give it a one up on its ancient counterpart, which may have understood, or may have simply been following a pattern of behavior that had value in a system of darwinian evolution. It's really hard to say which. Likely it was a matter of being one or the other on a case by case basis within each society. Eg. The ancient Mayans may have done X, Y and Z which gave them a more aware mental state, and they understood how X worked, and they knew Y was beneficial but didn't know how it worked, and had no idea that they were doing Z and let alone its effect or workings behind that effect.


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Friday, November 18, 2005 10:19 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


That was an interesting set of associations between neurochemicals and basic responses. I would need to think about it more before I could comment on it. Though I think of myself as fairly knowledgeable, your statements are so uniquely constructed I will need to translate them somewhat.

I would like to state a small caveat: there are issues of faulty brain wiring per se that have nothing to do with chemical imbalance, and that cause brain/mood malfunction.


Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

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Friday, November 18, 2005 1:12 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Signym: FINALLY!!! I found a kindred spirit!
DT: Don't suppose this will help me on the political issues :) So you came up with something similar yourself?
We observe a phenomenon where the frequency of light seems to get longer with increasing distance. So rather than accept the simple explanation- that there is a distance-related affect on light of some unknown mechanism-people proposed that the universe is accelerating away from us in all directions. Then we get to posit dark energy and dark matter and explain away why there appear to be some VERY OLD galaxies in far distance, presumably "younger" regions of the galaxy. DUH!

I have a very unformed notion that basically we have got our dimensions all wrong and that it's messing up our understanding. What is so fundamentally different between x,y, and z that they each require a different dimension? And isn't time just a complex function of distance?

I'll give you a couple of... mmm..."glimmers". Our gaze encompasses a larger and larger swath of the universe the further "out" we look. When we look out at infinity, does our vision wrap around so that we see ourselves? Why is is that some mathematical operations are "orderless" or "commutative" while others aren't? Maybe one dimension has more to do with "sequence-dependent" versus "unordered".

I have no idea where this is going. I haven't had time to pursue it. Like I said, it's just a nagging feeling that our understadnign has been limited by the fact that we are simply looking at things from the wrong angle.



---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.

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Friday, November 18, 2005 6:54 PM

DREAMTROVE


Rue,

Granted, there is such a thing as a neulogical flaw. Some of these can be quite major, others may be fairly minor. There are those which have their impact on neurochemical production and others that effect only one particular function, and still others that cause widespread problems. But all of these conditions are decidedly rare. The vast majority of people do not have serious physical problems with their brain. I didn't mean to be address this situation, which admittedly is more complex. Even so, many of these problems can be adjusted via supplements.

I read recently that almost half of American teens are on some sort of pyschotropic medication. A full 60% are taking illicit drugs of some kind. If we assume no statistic relation between the two, which is probably safe, that means 76% of American teens are taking one or more mind altering substances. Almost all of these are balance-altering. Taking of brain booster among teens is rare. Neuropathy among teens is exceedingly rare. So roughly 3/4 of American teenagers are starting out with normal brains, and creating artificial imbalances in neurotransmitter levels as the result of the use of psychoactive drugs.

Consider this. If a teenager takes an SSRI to boost low serotonin levels most likely caused by the typically unhealthy American diet, they create an artificial imbalance which may not at first be noticeable. SSRIs reduce the vesicle reserves of serotonin. While in-play serotonin levels may return to normal, the low reserve levels indicate a possible poor response to stress, and extreme stress could cause serotonin levels to plummet well below what would be probable or even possible in a normal teen. This could lead, and study show does lead, to an elevated suicide risk. In addition, SSRIs can have unexpected effects on the levels of other NTs. I've read reports that Paxil may have an agonist effect on NE in some patients, and even a fairly extreme one.

If someone wants to say 'evil corporation' here, it's probably fair, but please bear in mind that without these companies, medicine would still be in the stone age. But definitely there is a case to be made. If people dealt with the dietary and exercise deficiencies that cause these problems, and addressed them appropriately, the number of people taking drugs could be greatly reduced. Even a fair number of illicit drug users see themselves as 'self-medicators.' An educated public would understand that persistant problems like depression or mental fatigue could be treated with diet, exercise, and dietary supplements, rather than go off to shoot up with heroin.

Just some more food for thought.

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Friday, November 18, 2005 7:06 PM

DREAMTROVE


Signym

Quote:
We observe a phenomenon where the frequency of light seems to get longer with increasing distance. So rather than accept the simple explanation- that there is a distance-related affect on light of some unknown mechanism-people proposed that the universe is accelerating away from us in all directions. Then we get to posit dark energy and dark matter and explain away why there appear to be some VERY OLD galaxies in far distance, presumably "younger" regions of the galaxy. DUH!


I see you've been paying attention to the holes in the theory. Yeah, agreed. It does resemble the epicycles of the geocentric model, doesn't it? When the priests had to keep appending the old theory to fit the extant data, rather than accept that it might be wrong.

Quote:

I have a very unformed notion that basically we have got our dimensions all wrong and that it's messing up our understanding. What is so fundamentally different between x,y, and z that they each require a different dimension? And isn't time just a complex function of distance?


Huh? I gather space is 3 dimensional, which I have seen derived mathematically. Random chaos predicts the 3 dimensionality of space. It's the minimum necessary to explain all posible mathematical relations which occur or are possible in energy strands.

We measure space by these interactions, and being as these interactions made up of these energy strands, where they are more frequent, there will be a warping of space, this dimensionally transendental effect.

Since gravity is in effect a tangle of strands, a gravity well such as a black hole would have a rather extreme density of strands, sufficient to lead to a whole new set of dimensional parameters.

Son't know if this related to what you were saying.

Quote:

I'll give you a couple of... mmm..."glimmers". Our gaze encompasses a larger and larger swath of the universe the further "out" we look. When we look out at infinity, does our vision wrap around so that we see ourselves? Why is is that some mathematical operations are "orderless" or "commutative" while others aren't? Maybe one dimension has more to do with "sequence-dependent" versus "unordered".


Again I say "Huh?"

It would be possible that space could be so warped that we would see ourselves, but this isn't the case in the space we live in. It's more warped like a dent. As if we were seeing the small circle of curve somewhere on the edge of a deep bowl, rather than at the bottom of a deep bowl. At least that's how I understand it.

What's all this ordered, non ordered?

Quote:

I have no idea where this is going. I haven't had time to pursue it. Like I said, it's just a nagging feeling that our understadnign has been limited by the fact that we are simply looking at things from the wrong angle.


I guess I don't see ultimate understanding as anywhere approaching our grasp. I have a reasonably decent understanding of the situation. I mean logically you could say the universe is an information network, and we and all we see are the signal. That would be the closest thing to the truth that I could presently understand. If there was a why beyond that, it would be beyong me, presently.

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Saturday, November 19, 2005 1:10 AM

LIMINALOSITY


Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Every dimension, whatever you want to call it, has its own rules.

One rule is that time travels forwards through a system of events.

Another thing is teleportation is only possible under some fairly peculiar circumstances that don't particularly apply to us. It's clearly far more possible than time travel, but it's not something that a human could reach via meditation or spellcasting.

This hundredth monkey?

Next I want to learn how to do this with meditation.

There is really only one safe way to boost your serotonin levels and that is with a supplement of 5-HTP, or Tryptophan if it's available.

Serotonin precursors simply are too rare in a normal diet, and taking high amounts of TP-rich foods might lead to other problems if the foods contain high levels of other things.

Without the raw material of serotonin, it is impossible for your brain to make it. No zen practice can solve that for you, it simply would be against the laws of chemistry.

The conditions themselves simply don't exist. They are just random conjecture of assessing disassociated symptoms to attempt to make them into a scientific system which is really much more of a mystical stage three type analysis as I said above.

About ancient beliefs I have to say, I'm no mysterian. Mysterians like to exaggerate the unknown. I think that modern knowledge falls into two streams:

1) Mainstream knowledge. This is what most of the people know and understand. Their world is notably shallow and built on misconceptions. They eat non-food, and practice non-exercise, and have a mental state of a tv-watching vegetable. They understand little.

2) Experimental Science. These people usually work with mice and understand a great deal. In theory they could easily reconstruct whatever was done in the past if there was a reason to do so.

Ultimately there is, a reason to do so, but it becomes a tricky process of knowing what to recreate. Such a society would know why it was doing what it was doing, which would likely give it a one up on its ancient counterpart, which may have understood, or may have simply been following a pattern of behavior that had value in a system of darwinian evolution. It's really hard to say which. Likely it was a matter of being one or the other on a case by case basis within each society. Eg. The ancient Mayans may have done X, Y and Z which gave them a more aware mental state, and they understood how X worked, and they knew Y was beneficial but didn't know how it worked, and had no idea that they were doing Z and let alone its effect or workings behind that effect.


Oh for crying out loud, I wrote teleportation when I meant to pull telekinesis out of the hat of unbelievable things. Teleportation more than stretchs the boundaries of the possible, even for me. Techniques I've heard referred to as remote viewing, ok, awareness of people who are far away, yes, teleportation, not likely. Sorry about that, I was experiencing verbal difficulties.

Absolutely, I believe that every dimension has its rules, but I also believe that the dimensions are interleaved, and individual rules of a particular dimension don't necessarily apply to all forms of consciousness.

Along those same lines, I think that the perception that time only flows forward is a matter of perspective; rather than being a rule of the dimension it's a rule for some levels of consciousness. It lets us learn how to quit kicking the crap out of each other by keeping us in the classroom long enough to learn the lesson. I'm not saying I think time travel is possible, but I do think we greatly hamper ourselves by thinking that you can't heal your past, or that it's difficult to create transformative effect on your future possibilities.

Yup, that hundredth monkey.

Many traps in your 1-6, aren't there? Not just thinking you're at 6 when it's actually 3, but opportunities for getting stuck anywhere along the line. Plenty of charlatans and charismatics on both sides of the aisle to confuse things, as well as ego, assumption, misunderstanding or manipulation of data, laziness, fear, pride and secretiveness to trip you up in this kind of study. I usually like simple and elegant solutions best. When I hear answers that stray far from those two qualities (always in combination), when I see a lot of buttressing to make an idea work, I look harder at how a solution was attained. Focus and intent, constant re-evaluation, always working to refine one's thinking, playfullness, and the ability take the time to noodle around are (I think) essential to this kind of commitment. I'm looking into math options this weekend, BTW.

Your 'rant' on brain chemistry was pretty inspired, hey. I do think working on maintaining reasonable serotonin levels is the easiest way to begin to rebalance an out of whack system. Of course it would be ridiculous to try to do that while in a state of sleep deprivation, while never exercising, eating mostly junk food, on and on: in short, balance requires reasonable behavior. You didn't mention hormones, and I think they are another major factor woven into this interdependent balance, and another thing that is grossly affected by modern life and modern foodstuffs. I liked your vitamin deficiency analogy, thought it was right on the money. I wish we could get beyond the temptation to suppress symptoms and call it cure. I think for drugs in general the bottom line is that they are (usually) not helpful on many levels. I agree that re-uptake inhibitors can be very dangerous, and I didn't mean to imply that I think it's possible to create serotonin out of thin air. What I meant was: if your serotonin levels are depressed, and you can manage to boost them using an agent (I agree, 5-HTP can be good, not all brands), it can help you feel good enough to work on the self-reinforcing behavior of happiness, which will help you maintain higher levels. Give yourself a boost, while working on making happier choices to give your brain time to learn to reinforce a healthier pattern. Did that make better sense?

Many herbals are not well understood, and it's fairly easy to create other problems with herbals if one doesn't understand them. They like to work best in certain kinds of combinations for balance and support, and some require special handling, or respond best to particular methods of preparation, all of which doesn't necessarily happen for the stuff in capsules sold in bottles at the stores, as I'm sure you already know.

I always enjoy a good syndrome. Seriously, I think there's far too much of trying to lasso a bunch of symptoms and call it a disease, both in mental health and generally in medicine, and I've always thought no one is well served by the practice of the doctor issuing a prescription as closure to a medical visit.

Meditation is a wonderful thing to practice. It's much easier to do with supporting behavior: a physical practice to strengthen focus and attention, that also places emphasis on working with breath really helps develop the stamina needed for meditation. Healthy diet helps a lot. Yoga is my favorite supportive physical assist, though martial arts practice works just as well for plenty of people, and I've known others who use running to attune. You probably already knew this too.

Mysterians sometimes exaggerate to misdirect outsiders, to weed out those with less than an iron resolve, to jog loose faulty thinking, and to bring up fears so they can be confronted. Also, see charlatans, above (hee hee).

You present a pretty bleak view with your #1 & 2 above: saying there are only the somnambulant and those who work with mice kind of disses a few disciplines. For one thing, I'm very fond of several labrats who don't ever work with mice. I doubt you meant what I understood. I would love it if science got busy working on reproducing the results of the ancient disciplines, but I see a lot of examples of science being unwilling to abandon some of its own preconceived notions of the possible.

Oh, yeah, not all ancient cultures were created equal. Just as with modern cultures, some are less flawed than others, some placed a much greater emphasis on understanding than others, and some were more successful in their studies. I think you're right that for many ancient cultures, it was a matter of rote behavior patterns and evolution. I think that specifically the Maya, the Brits, and the most ancient Egyptians understood important practices other ancient cultures did not. I think we tend to come at much of this with an arrogance that we know better and are more advanced in our thought because we are their descendants, and that kind of thinking is only worthy of your level#2 (out of 6).

I would much prefer your ancient Maya understanding the effects of A-W (or at least T-W), with X and Y as the recognized but not well understood and Z as the unknown factor, than having only 1 well understood factor out of 3. I think they took a lot into account and understood most of it well.

Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!

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Saturday, November 19, 2005 7:13 PM

DREAMTROVE


Lim,

Quote:
Oh for crying out loud, I wrote teleportation when I meant to pull telekinesis out of the hat of unbelievable things. Teleportation more than stretchs the boundaries of the possible, even for me. Techniques I've heard referred to as remote viewing, ok, awareness of people who are far away, yes, teleportation, not likely. Sorry about that, I was experiencing verbal difficulties.


Understood. I also have problems with telekenisis, but if you want to go to magic, and what's possible through magic it can get complicated. Telepathy is more possible, though. There are certainly some unexplained things which can be accomplished.

Quote:

Absolutely, I believe that every dimension has its rules, but I also believe that the dimensions are interleaved, and individual rules of a particular dimension don't necessarily apply to all forms of consciousness.


I don't believe. Belief is a tricky thing. Sorry. Don't mean to hit you with another loaded word game. What do you mean interleaved? I'm not quite sure what your talking about a lot of the time, I mean there is some decent amount of space in all this abstraction, and so I have a hard time pinning it down. I don't want to say be more wordy, because all these posts are getting quite long, but try to explain not just re: this, but re:everything, because a lot of it I'm just guessing at your meaning.

Consciousness is a bizarre concept. I'm not sure what it means. I'm not sure I exist.

Quote:

Along those same lines, I think that the perception that time only flows forward is a matter of perspective; rather than being a rule of the dimension it's a rule for some levels of consciousness. It lets us learn how to quit kicking the crap out of each other by keeping us in the classroom long enough to learn the lesson. I'm not saying I think time travel is possible, but I do think we greatly hamper ourselves by thinking that you can't heal your past, or that it's difficult to create transformative effect on your future possibilities.


As I said, I don't believe. I try to understand, and if I can't understand, then I suspect.

I suspect that time moves forwards as a rule of the dimension we are in. I know to some extent how time moves forwards. To a great extent actually. It's the result of event systems built on the concept of uncertainty, the same as created the other 3 dimensions. But time is categorically different from other dimensions.

I suspect it is possible to see the future, to alter it through actions in the present, but that it is not possible to change the past.

Quote:
Many traps in your 1-6


Sure.

Quote:

I do think working on maintaining reasonable serotonin levels is the easiest way to begin to rebalance an out of whack system.


You're pretty sharp. Yes, particularly from an outside perspective, since the vague kind of losing one's mind is less of a problem for the rest of us, but also, sure I will conceded certainly that decent serotonin levels are more important than anything else.

The solution to this I'm sure said already is 5-HTP, possibly with some uptake booster like folic acid.

Quote:
Of course it would be ridiculous to try to do that while in a state of sleep deprivation, while never exercising, eating mostly junk food, on and on: in short, balance requires reasonable behavior.


Actually, it would help. Insomnia is related to TP deficiency since melatonin is also a tryptophan derivative. tryp. supplements would be a better long term sleep solution than melatonin, though less effective in the short term. Tryp. is also essential to maintain energy levels.

re:hormones

I tend to disagree with the conventional wisdom that hormone supplements in food are bad. I just haven't seen a lot of evidence that this is the case. I would still be very cautious with the idea, but even with our hormone bombardment, I think we're probably still more likely to have hormone deficiencies than overdoses. I more worry about preservatives, random non-biological chemical junk. I am a fan of the idea of radiation as being a lot safer than chemical preservatives. Bear in ming that these substances, and also pesticides, both work by virtue of the fact that they are deadly toxins. Deadly to very small things, but then again, there are many very small things that help keep us healthy like our bacterial simbiotes, our immune cells and our mitochondria. Mitochondrial death, which is often accellerated by the consumption of high levels of chemical toxis, is now considered to be one of the main factors in premature aging. The whole thing gets rather complex. It's possible that the hormones in your chicken may be helping to fight the debillitating effects of the toxins used on the vegetables in the salad before it. Not saying don't eat salad, just saying, it may seem one way, and yet because of all the complex interactions actually be another way completely.

Quote:

I wish we could get beyond the temptation to suppress symptoms and call it cure.


Bingo, again. What do you do for a living? You sure understand the matter well. Anyway, yes, I think this is one of our main diseases as a society. We try to alleviate symptoms. Have you ever read "the human use of human beings" by norbert weiner? It doesn't directly relate to this, but he talks at some point about how the failure to understand the underlying mechanisms results in broad scale complicated failures. This again later becomes a key element of chaos theory.

Anyway, sure I basically agree on mental health. Positive reinforcing patterns or at least avoiding negative reinforcing patterns is good. I think that mainly this is because thought patterns use up neurotransmitters, and if you have a serotonin deficiency and a type of mental condition that would use up serotonin rapidly, it might make matters worse. Curiously, exercise doesn't alway help either, as exercise also requires neurotransmitters, and can signal the creation of more. Like for instances, running, jogging, even long walks can burn serotonin and increat production of norepinephrine. There are many good reasons for healthy people to engage in a lot of leg exercises, but having it as a program for recovering "schitzophrenics" might be a bad idea. I put all these term in quotes because I don't believe these conditions exist. I think they're labels given to a group of at least somewhat dissassociated symptoms.

Quote:

Many herbals are not well understood, and it's fairly easy to create other problems with herbals if one doesn't understand them. They like to work best in certain kinds of combinations for balance and support, and some require special handling, or respond best to particular methods of preparation, all of which doesn't necessarily happen for the stuff in capsules sold in bottles at the stores, as I'm sure you already know.


Yeah I know this, but it's worth saying again.

In essence, this is spellcasting you're talking about. Really. This is what the ancient spellcasters did. In order to be any good at mixing potions and the like, you had to have a real solid understanding of the relative impacts and "interactions." There I am with the quotes again. Lately I've had problems with the concept of drug interations. I think it's a misnomer. Basically, sure. But more complicatedly, no. It's that drug A has an effect on system X and drug B has an effect on system Y and the alteration of X and Y causes Z but A and B never really interact with one another. But anyway, sure it pays to know what's happening. Drugs, Pharmaceuticals, are of course far less well understood in their impact than herbals, as a general rule.

I think that in terms of physical ailments, they're getting a lot better at calling a condition than in mental health. One Alzheimers patient is going to have a fair amount in common with another Alzheimers patient, and ditto for parkinsons. By contrast, a schitzophrenic may have nothing in common with the next schitzo, and so the definition becomes uselss. I'm aware that the whole condition/cure model is somewhat bogus, but still, for use with the general public, it can be useful, but only if there is alway a known correlation.

Quote:

Mysterians sometimes exaggerate to misdirect outsiders, to weed out those with less than an iron resolve, to jog loose faulty thinking, and to bring up fears so they can be confronted.

I think you've just defined religion :)
Not western religion of course. I don't actually believe Western Judeo-Christian religions have any truth to impart, they're a mass opiate. But other traditions, sure, they do this. I you are doing serious science with the human body, and you call it witchcraft, you can actually go on fairly unmolested; but if you call it medicine, people are liable to be coming down on your head fairly rapidly.

I didn't mean that litterally with the mice. I just meant, in general, I search on the word "mice" when I want to get a serious opinion.

like 'elevates serotonin levels mice' is bound to give you more accurate results than 'elevates serotonin levels' which in turn is better than 'cures depression' which in turn probably beats 'cures depression jesus.'

I think I was trying to say something else re: ancient cultures. There was no fact base or controlled experimentation system to work with and so a lot of evolution was taking place in practices. Those who ate pigs dies more often of trichinosis than those who didn't, stuff like that.

I guess what I was trying to say is not that the maya were more on track, though they were, on balance, but that any culture might be on target with A and B and way off base on C, or they might be on with all three, and that the understood A and B and just got lucky with C, but that they didn't really know when they knew because they lacked the methods to verify it. So Aristotles says insects are spontaneously generated and stuff like that, but it doesn't make him wrong about everything.

I think that there was a lot of stabbing in the dark, and a lot of accuracy and inaccuracy.

They knew the exact distance to Venus, and it's size, and everything. But on the other hand, they thought it was inhabited by the gods. A world, just like earth, where the gods lived. Given time, this probably would have driven them to build spaceships, but there was a strong randomness to what they were wrong on. Admittedly, if the ancient christians had known all this, they probably would have come up with the idea that jesus lived there. Instead they knew nothing of science and so came up with a silly notion of space and then had to shun science for many centuries.





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Tuesday, November 22, 2005 12:30 AM

LIMINALOSITY


*edit to connect quotes with responses...the small size of the 'reply' window creates some problems for me in visualizing how the whole post will read. This was -extremely- confusing, visually. I hope I have achieved at least a little more clarity.*

DT "I don't believe. Belief is a tricky thing. Sorry. Don't mean to hit you with another loaded word game. What do you mean interleaved? I'm not quite sure what your talking about a lot of the time, I mean there is some decent amount of space in all this abstraction, and so I have a hard time pinning it down. I don't want to say be more wordy, because all these posts are getting quite long, but try to explain not just re: this, but re:everything, because a lot of it I'm just guessing at your meaning."

Ok, if we try even a little bit harder, we could maybe get into the Guiness for longest post ever. And here you are suggesting that I get even more outrageously wordy that I already am.....Ok, then! No possibility of proof reading or spell check happening in this post. I'll try to be as clear as I can, and I'll try to censor my bizarre sense of humor as much as I can manage, and keep the non-sequiturs seated in the lounge car and amusing each other.

I also guess at your meaning a lot, especially when you cross into physics, but one thing I think we share is a view of the cosmos as an interconnected thing where there are similarities everywhere you look which resonate with and create reflections of each other.

We are having some problems with the exchange of terms, and I can't fault you at all for your patience in this. My mind doesn't work in the logical way scientific minds work.


DT "As I said, I don't believe. I try to understand, and if I can't understand, then I suspect."

Believe: much of my evidence is ancedotal and experiential, and connecting dots maybe no one else sees (gulp, I wrote that?), and therefore unreliable by scientific standards. So I use words like 'believe' to indicate that what I am stating is currently part of how I interpret the structure of life, the universe and everything, but not by anyone's standards logical. I am always searching for more information to refine my understanding, but I get caught in your #3 often enough. 'Believe' does not indicate a permanence, or rigidity of a concept in my lexicon. 'Suspect': I don't like some of the other connotations. 'Surmise' I could maybe use as an alternative. Allright I'll try surmise and see how it feels going into my keyboard. You aren't the only science guy who hears 'believe' as a music similar to fingernails on a chalkboard.

Dimensions being 'Interleaved': interpenetrating, interconnected, not at all separated, except by the perception of those involved. Equally accessible if one has the personal ability (the focus, magic, development, or in some cases -lack of development-, of consciousness) necessary to cross the boundaries. (One, indicating not just 'people', but consciousnesses, or hive mind, or the resonant field of 'rock' or 'star nursery'.) Ok, you have a jar, put some large pebbles into it, shake it and put some medium sized pebbles into it, then tiny pebbles, then fill it with water. You have several different kinds (sizes in this case) of thing in the same container. That's kind of what I mean, though the liquid water is only in a slightly different state from the solid pebbles: many, vastly different kinds of things existing in the same space.

If we had coffee and time enough, I think we'd get through some of this garbage and discomfort with terminology, and difference in focus, understanding and perception on fastforward, but the constraints of the online medium make for some interesting brick walls. Also, I think there are plenty of things we'd find that we just agree to disagree. You have physics, I have physics for poets with no math. That makes for some pretty big differences, but we have gotten farther down this road than I sometimes do without someone imploding or walking away. I do appreciate that. I am learning much from this exchange.


DT "Consciousness is a bizarre concept. I'm not sure what it means. I'm not sure I exist."

Yup, I'm pretty sure this experience I'm having is something that is happening on some level, and it's just so interesting that when it comes to caring whether or not I exist, I don't care.


DT "I suspect that time moves forwards as a rule of the dimension we are in. I know to some extent how time moves forwards. To a great extent actually. It's the result of event systems built on the concept of uncertainty, the same as created the other 3 dimensions. But time is categorically different from other dimensions."

Bwah haa haa, I surmise that time appears to move forward in third dimensional reality (as we perceive it, in other words -for humans-) as a result of our (human's) desire to completely the experience of the consequences of our choices. And to further illustrate my example above with the pebbles in the jar, I am pretty sure that there are creatures whose consciousness resides in other dimensions living on this actual planet, visible to our very eyes, and that the third dimensional rules (time appearing to move only forward) don't apply to them in the smae way that they apply to us.

How do you explain the part that as one gets older, time appears to speed up? Not baiting you, remember, never that.

I don't know what consciousness means either, but it is my favorite subject...well, that and art. Both bizarre, both enormous and impossible to explain one's views in regard to, but what fun trying.


DT "I suspect it is possible to see the future, to alter it through actions in the present, but that it is not possible to change the past."

Altering the past...happens not so much as something that one can go back and look at photographs or history books and notice. Actual time travel, steping into a machine, or willing oneself into the past, I don't think works in our idiom. I meant more along the lines of healing your own past to change your perception of it, which in turn helps you create a better future. By future though, I don't just mean a better future for you. yourself, but a better future for humanity. I think you might lump this into magic, but not only that either.

I think it's pretty easy to 'see' likely versions of the future, but the future is very personal and highly mutable, and the future is very easy to alter by altering either the present, the past, or both. Smile very genuinely at the next person you cross paths with and say something to try to create an authentic experience of connection with them, and you will see what I mean. I think it's easiest to alter self in the present, then to move into altering (amending, healing, changing) the past. Once you do these things, you put yourself on a different choice of paths for the future. ALL of this is very personal. I suspect infinity. Infinity in my view creates an infinite number of universes, including a distinct trajectory for every major life decision each one of us makes.


DT "...the vague kind of losing one's mind is less of a problem for the rest of us, but also, sure I will conceded certainly that decent serotonin levels are more important than anything else."

The 'actual type' of losing one's mind, as opposed to the vague type we all experience, has to get pretty intrusive and objectionable for others before anyone steps in to do anything, and by then it may be nearly too late for help. Sucks a lot, that. The vague type of losing one's mind is a daily struggle, I suspect, for most of us. Especially most of us here at FFF, where people tend to think outside of many current paradigms. Ok, so I'm having an easier time of this 'I suspect' and 'I surmise' than 'I thought' I would.

The chemistry of being a creature is a fascinating thing, isn't it? I have studied herbs some, with a very gifted teacher who had also mastered several other disciplines. Not an expert, period. But it fascinates, and the information crosses over into other puzzles and touches them too. I'm sorry, I really don't mean to be cryptic, These subjects are just so enormous and they all interact with one another.


DT "Insomnia is related to TP deficiency since melatonin is also a tryptophan derivative. tryp. supplements would be a better long term sleep solution than melatonin, though less effective in the short term. Tryp. is also essential to maintain energy levels."

I suspect that it's as bad for one to have too much sleep as too little sleep, or interrupted sleep, insecure sleep, or sleep that varies in what hours one is able to do it, and that this one thing alone can easily upset the applecart of chemical balance and mood, and that we don't credit these factors about sleep enough for the influence it has on our wellbeing. Exercise, I don't think needs to be strenuous, if and when the organism needs just regular gentle motion to induce processing (thinking of rock the cradle), or to alleviate anxiety. I suspect regular, purposeful motion is key to wellbeing. Also, I don't like supplements in general when altering behavior will accomplish an objective. It's just more of the magic bullet theory on subtler levels as I see it.

When I wrote about hormones above, what I was wondering was if hormones and these other things (neuro receptor things like serotonin, dopamine et al) are related in keeping communication flowing through the physical body where the physical body creates an interface with consciousness. Did that make sense?


DT "re:hormones"

I really really don't like the idea of how much we use hormones in the animals we use as foodsources. Cow's milk, for example, may be a vector for us to take in hormones on a very unhealthy level, and I find our interaction with cows in general to be unhealthy and horrid. This is a whole other enormous subject. I wonder if some of the hormone problems we see are just evidence of a kind of cascade failure from some other kind of imbalance, being magnified when it gets to this reflection. Damn, cryptic again, I'm certain. Some of this stuff comes from the study of herbal remedies, so, maybe if you try to use that filter to view this particular asessment.

Chemical additives in our foodstuffs, bioengineering (on the level we've moved to recently) pesticides, abused soil, people who are abused and hate their jobs. I feel all of this contributes to an unhealthy experience on multiple levels, for -all- of us, including those at Walmart. Or. Ga. Nic. I don't want to be irradiated, I don't want my food irradiated, I would rather we not go for the magic bullet of the monoculture crop. We make this mistake over and over of trying to apply solutions to the challenges (of a large world population with a grat deal of mobility) with much too broad a brush....grrr, economics, laziness, Bechtel Corp. Why don't people find it more fun to think creatively and adaptably, to find solutions that can be adapted to fit the needs of smaller groups. We always want to think in terms of supertankers, that won't then pass through the canals built with the technology of the past couple of centuries. Then we're stuck with these ridiculous solutions that we've spent a pile of money on, and they don't actually work in a human world where the farmers in India don't own an f*ing tractor.
Ok, that was some more detail, re: everything. Did it help?


OK, mister, this whole passage is direct proof that your thinking is every bit as convoluted as mine...

DT "I more worry about preservatives, random non-biological chemical junk...Not saying don't eat salad, just saying, it may seem one way, and yet because of all the complex interactions actually be another way completely."

...but I get what you're saying, and except for the part about irradiation v hormones, I agree.


DT "Have you ever read "the human use of human beings" by norbert weiner? It doesn't directly relate to this, but he talks at some point about how the failure to understand the underlying mechanisms results in broad scale complicated failures. This again later becomes a key element of chaos theory."

OH BOY!
Sounds interesting. I will go stand in the bookstore and look at it. The part where it relates to larger maps is right up my alley. I think Occam's Razor only lacks the word 'elegant'. Your citing of this guy's work is a good example of what I mean. Fractals are another example of simple yet elegant.


DT "I don't believe these conditions exist. I think they're labels given to a group of at least somewhat dissassociated symptoms."

...recovering "schitzophrenics" (your passage above) is another example of us trying to extrapolate way too far from that magic bullet system of thinking. It is totally lacking the elegant. We try to create the elegant out of 'the syndrome" of unrelated symptoms that show up in some circumstances that seem to share congruence (bwah haa haa, I chose a math term!) when in fact all they might share is a sort of vector of visibility. grrrr, the oblique again!! I don't mean to be thick, and sometimes, honestly, _I_ am only guessing at what I mean, or rather at where the applications (or implications) of what I mean might lead.

DT "In essence, this is spellcasting you're talking about.
It's that drug A has an effect on system X and drug B has an effect on system Y and the alteration of X and Y causes Z but A and B never really interact with one another."

Holy epiphany, batman. Of course that's what it is. and it never occured to me. Thank you for that. How close are you to spellcasting? You seem to speak in that idiom a fair bit. I think we are maybe exceeding the limits of the forum here.


The rest of that paragraph, yup, yup, and yup to the misnomer. I like the word dissonance as it might apply to this concept. Like two musical instruments vibrating at frequencies that reflect off one another in a very unpleasant way. It's not that they're touching one another, they're bouncing off one another to cause unpleasant affect. With herbals, (to continue the musical metaphor) if you use the plants like different instruments to create a remedy, you can work with the key of C or B- and create an effect more in tune with the individual and their personal vibration, or music (so to speak). I think pharmas have a much less elastic application, and are far more inclined to blare off one another. This is an enormous area, and I only studued it for a little while. Just long enough to gain an appreciation, not long enough to find proficiency at it.

I think the mystery schools have a lot to impart, and they are a form of religion, or belief system (OS, ha ha) if you like. If the major religions hadn't been so distorted over the ages by individuals with agendas of power and control, they might still have more to offer than the watered down versions we see. But, I don't buy the personality with the long white beard, robe and keys who lives in the sky, and sends his minions to judge me, so I mostly jettison the whole of western religion on that account. That idea has made those religions a whole lot of coin over the years though, so it's workin' for somebody. Oh, I'm so cynical.

Medicine, yeah, the alopaths put a patent on that a little more than a century ago, so that word's out.


DT "I didn't mean that litterally with the mice."
OK, clarity about the mice comment.

I pounded the table pretty hard when I read "cures depression jesus" There is an art to the search.


But, um...
DT "There was no fact base or controlled experimentation system to work with and so a lot of evolution was taking place in practices."
DT "I think that there was a lot of stabbing in the dark, and a lot of accuracy and inaccuracy."

You saying you don't think they took notes of some kind, or passed on their results? I'll bet you $5 some cultures were at great pains to communicate; with the future as well as any other cultures they encountered (the cultures that were on a serious path of study anyway, I'm sure there were plenty of 'beer, bad' cultures that didn't do much beyond trading for or stealing trinkets). Oh, and by the way, I think human culture has been around for a lot longer than we are currently willing to understand, but I suppose you've seen some of that evidence for 40-60,000 years. (No, I'm not talking about Atlantis.)

But yeah, I do get your clarification about this...

"So Aristotles says insects are spontaneously generated and stuff like that, but it doesn't make him wrong about everything."

But they were right about this part!
(Venus) "But on the other hand, they thought it was inhabited by the gods. A world, just like earth, where the gods lived."
Good heavens, haven't you heard Wagner's "Ring Cycles"? Ok, ok, that part might have been off the wall, but we were ridiculing geologists for plate techtonics until, what, 50 years ago? *Just Kidding*

Ok, I hear the alarms going off. This post has exceeded all reasonable limits, and gone well beyond even Howard's ability to blather on and on. Sorry it took several days to get to it.

Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005 6:02 AM

DREAMTROVE


Quote:
Believe

Okay, gotchya. We mean the same thing here. You're right I was reading it in maybe a christian way, belief permanent, but I think we both meant more of an 'as far as I know' sort of thing, not a 'son of God save my soul' sort of thing.
Quote:
Dimensions

Ah. We were talking slightly differently here as well. I was being litteral, using 'dimension' to refer to regions of transcendental space, universes, as it were. I think you're trying to say different manners of interpretation of the same region of space. I usually say 'realms' for this, if I get you correctly, meaning a magical or mystical realm exists in the same space as our own physical one. This makes perfect sense from a scientific perspective to anyone openminded enough, because after all matter is simply a manefestation of the underlying energy.

Have you seen Serial Experiment Lain? There a reasonably good explanation of this concept scientifically in there mixed among the abstract existentialist anime of it all.

Quote:
If we had coffee and time enough


Just send me an email gmail at:

dreamtrove(put the 'at' here)gmail.com

There's a lot of interesting stuff to discuss I'd like to hear some more about you're universe theory, and the way the world maybe works (always possible I'm wrong, and usually am) and I'm always a little afraid that one of the partisan political squad is going to butt in with some incredible simplistic textbook rant of how the world according to newton works.

Quote:
Bwah haa haa


My astronomy professor took the same stance (as you have.) I guess my understanding is that time is created out of uncertainty much the way space is, and that if you have a property which can have value A or value B, then to distinguish between the two, either which might randomly be true, a dimension is created to fill the possibilities. This is as far as I know how space is created from the fluctuations of energy. But there are an inifinite number of energy strands fluctuating, and not an infinite number of spacial dimensions. The three dimensions exist to explain all of the possible interactions of energy freqencies, becuase 3 is the minimum number of dimensions needed to explain this, which implies some sort of minimizing force which would cause a fourth or fifth dimension from collapsing back in line with the three.

By comparison but also by contrast, time is made from the same factor of uncertainty, but builds differently. Time as we know it is built from little monomer events which interact with one another in a way according to chaos theory, and create larger events out of the smaller ones. This move from less complex vibrations to more complex interactions parallels the 'complexity' dimension of space, rather that the three dimensions of physical space. As complexity moves only forwards, I surmise that time also, in this universal state, moves only forwards. Hope that makes sense.

Though I grant the other possibility is niftier.

I have lots of trouble grasping time though. I don't understand why I am surfing this wave of time forwards. I agree it should be possible to see the past, assuming some signature is left behind.

Quote:
The 'actual type' of losing one's mind


Sorry I tend to get caught up in anti-psychiatry rants. I basically don't think they, collectively, really have any understanding of what they are looking at. The correllate symptoms, but all they really have is groups of symptoms which accumalte together with a degree of frequency, and a group of vague overlapping names they try to push them into. I guess if I were to say as what I think is wrong with their view, it's that the problems of the mind are only interdependent, but not pathological. One person may have 9 separate things going wrong, and so they give those 9 things a name. Someone with one or two things wrong they don't even notice, and so it gets no name, unless that person is in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now I'm ranting again.

Quote:
Sleep


Yeah, exercise is good, in a normal healthy body, mainly because we don't understand all of what goes down. But I feel pretty sure it can be simulated chemically. A lot of time the body doesn't produce the chemicals that would ideally result from an exercise, it simply sends the message to create that chemical, and that message can run out of supplies, or get corrupted, and produce even toxic side effects.

Studies show that more than 14 hours and less than 8 hours of sleep cause problems, which probably leaves the ideal around 11. Most people don't get 11 hours of sleep. The adverse effects of too little sleep are obviously way worse than too much sleep.

And yes, neurotransmitters, even the same ones do a lot of body regulating outside the brain, this is why heroin addicts get so thin. Dopamine in the stomach is also elevated, and is tied to the 'full' feeling. Countless other hormones are involved.

Quote:
hormones


This whole situation is very complicated. The rule keep it simple is good when you have nothing else to go to, live like the amish, whatever, and our society definitely doesn't go that way.

I do think that our hormones levels are more likely to be abnormally low, so I'm not too worries about being overhormoned. To a greater extent I think there's some worry to be had about being incorrectly hormoned. When you give male hormones to females or female hormones to males they basically act as steroids, and human race on steroids is not going to be very healthy, so to some extent I agree.

But it gets more complicated. Irradiation has a couple of advantages:

A) It improves the efficieny of food production. I think this is important because we are killing the earth.
B) Because of A, the world wants us gone. There is clearly some sort of natural balance in evolution. The ability of a species to survive is related to the size of its foodsource over it's own biomass. As humans become the largest animal foodsource, it behooves all that evolution applies to, to kill us. This is a major, major problem for humans. I figure our natural balance level for human population was passed about 5 billion people ago, and the natural balance will be back with a vengeance.

So this means, either we find an artificial way to sustain these 5 billion people, or one of two things will happen: Either they kill the Earth, or the Earth kills them.

I'm opposed to tractors. Really. Farming is one of the most environmentally destructive forces on the Earth, and bad farming is worse. Generally a tractor or any similar such thing is dangerous in well trained hands, and exceedingly dangerour in untrained hands. And by training I don't mean in a machinery operation way, I mean in a sustainable geology way. And I don't mean Agribusiness. I mean small farmers in India or Africa with machines might directly preceed the great sandy desert. What these countries need is a well organized enivronmental management program, and some sort of well organized farming or food supplying industry.

You're right this spellcasting stuff is outside the firefly forum, but send me an email and we'll talk more about it. A 17 year old witch introduced me to the whole thing. Magic isn't boulderdash, it's just a different tradition of science from, well, science.

Many pharaceuticals, especially psychotropic ones, almost entirely operate by one principle: They are all in some way, toxic. They work by shutting down some natural bodily function causing some sort of effect. The body is a system of checks and balances, and sometimes you can create a pretty powerful effect by removing one of those checks or balances. But there is a lot of room for some negative side effects.

I view the western religions as pretty much a bad idea. They're mostly just children of the cult of YhWh, god of war. To me, it's like, the warmongers saying either you serve my left hand or my right. It took me a long time to get to see this, because the idea could be construed as anti-semitic. My own ancestors were killed in auschwitz, and though not jewish (the holocaust did kill 6 million jews, but also 5 million non-jews) I've always had sympathy for the plight of jews. But the whole stem Judaism>Christianity>Islam I see now as basically a warrior cult with little actual truth in it. Mostly, at best it's a set of rules that keep a population in line, at worst it's blatant mass manipulation. The Bush Christians, Osama Bin Laden's Jihadists and Ariel Sharon's Israel are all basic followers of this same war god cult.

Since Yhwh was originally path of a pagan pantheon, the whole regious idea could be summarize as analagous to believing in the chemistry of iron but no other elements; or a language consisting only of verbs. Something like that. Part of a once whole, but now pretty systematically flawed. Desert religions also always bother me because clearly there was something not very earth friendly in their faith since they destroyed the land they stood on.

Beer, Foamy.

Okay, I'm sure there was a lot of science, but my point was there was random nonsense in every culture. I mean here we have one of the most pragmatic scientific nations ever and we collectively believe that there is a dead carpenter in the sky who loves everyone, gives them cloud houses and will someday come back just ot kill us all.

Does Howard ramble on? I thought he just posted an absurd amount of other people's ramblings.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005 9:01 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


"If people dealt with the dietary and exercise deficiencies that cause these problems, and addressed them appropriately, the number of people taking drugs could be greatly reduced."

It would be great, if we had the proper formula, but I don't think we do at this time. And I guess I know too many children with severe intractable problems. That seems to be on the increase, it leads me to believe there are pervasive environmental causes outside of personal control and responsibility.

I haven't had a lot of time to think about your previous post. For example there are two levels of 'distress' response from visual stimuli - one which comes through the normal perceptual route, the other which operates below the level of cognition and extracts salient features connecting directly to the limbic system. What is the major neurotransmitter of this system? Honestly, I don't know. And I haven't had the time to check it out, or generally if your neurotransmitter/function list correlates with what I know. That's what I meant by translation - making a map between what I know and what you say. Perhaps if you provided some detail it would help.


Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

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