Rocky

Emotions are contagious.

Oh. Okay, thanks. I appreciate that you provided more insight on your reason for starting this thread.

Did something happen?

To clarify, if I wasn't adequately clear, At this point, my understanding is with machine learning (ever increasing base of data from which to make inferences), computers can indeed make reasonable and in some cases quite accurate predictions about an individual's preferences. YouTube and Netflix are pretty aggressive in doing so. Neither gets my preferences right all the time. I'm not sure what Netflix does about the fact that I'm enthralled with a documentary about how babies learn and come out of the womb ready to engage other humans. Otherwise, I have been enjoying the dark crime drama series Ozark lately. It's like each episode is it's own short story with the same setting and characters, but new dilemmas each time. Oh, and notably I watched American Hustle last night. I've been wanted to view that movie since it came out about ten years ago. Main reason? Amy Adams' beauty... and seductiveness (and being scantily clad plenty of times in it. For a decade I didn't realize there was actually a story to it. The story is a fictionalized version of the ABSCAM scandal. Frankly, I don't expect to watch it a second time because it drags and other than the overdramatized confidence game angle, it was mostly boring. But Amy Adams was very hot in the movie. OTOH, Netflix is prompting me to watch a couple of Bourne movies... which I do enjoy. I'm not uncomfortable with you introducing this tangent. I'm confident the issue with distraction is VERY common these days. Maybe not limited to sexagenarians like us. I will not be surprised to read in The Loop about distraction and increasing attention deficits. I don't see it necessarily in the table of contents of this book. There's no index so I can't look it up. I also, I appreciate the humor in some of your comment.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. - Søren Kierkegaard

I infer that you and I as homo sapiens, members of the human race, aka humanity, do have free will AVAILABLE to us. For thousands of years, a clever segment of cultures and societies, con artists used confidence or con games to manipulate us. Wierwille was that kind of clever individual. It's not so easy to parse his motivations. Hence, biblical references to only God being able to discern what's in a person's heart. Among the research described in The Loop (noted above) it IS available to read people's faces, other nonverbal cues, and actions to make snap judgments with a degree of accuracy. Further, in reflecting on Shoshana Zuboff's research in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, we know there's lots of clandestine surveillance going on online. Beside tracking cookies (which can be minimized and suppressed to some degree), it is wise to never open spam emails and other dubious items on social media. It is obviously possible for various sources to plant more sinister tracking software on one's computer that way. The rivers of my understanding bring these things together to infer the truth about points in my OP above. Knowledge is power. Truth shall set you free... or at least help you get and stay as free as possible.

Some time ago, Mike posted about, let's say, limitations on human free will. While I didn't find the case he made to be particularly compelling or coherent, I did start to recognize some of my actions IRL did not and do not match what I thought I intended. In the course of my (somewhat compulsive) reading explorations, I found a book The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. Some notes I've made from the book: if we don't familiarize w/mechanisms of our brains we'll be vulnerable to those who prey on us and will run the risk of being blind to the effects thereof. our unconscious (subconscious) minds powerfully shape our lives unconscious tendencies are the control surfaces by which technologies will shape our lives cultural forces work to convince us we make independent choices when we do the opposite even years before scientific consensus on controversial findings, nascent understanding becomes bases for entire industries; hence, surveillance capitalism two researchers (as a team) wrote key papers 1971-1979 and their findings are still challenged, but have become foundation for industries in behavioral guidance unconscious biases manifest (in decisions) under pressure and moments of uncertainty research subjects (people) faced with situations they didn't understand were powerfully influenced to make choices they didn't understand, producing scenarios likely to constrain future thinking 99% of our waking activity is strictly automatic and habitual our brains are shortcut machines, desperate to hand off difficult cognitive tasks many (nearly all) of what we think (believe) to be well-considered choices are, in fact, offhand, instinctive decisions "although research has show inferences from [observing] thin slices of nonverbal behaviors can be surprisingly accurate, there is no good evidence trait inferences from facial appearance are accurate. There are two (decision) systems at work in our brains. System 1 makes snap judgments, without conscious analysis/effort; System 2 involves actual analytical intelligence. These notes are from the first couple of chapters. Intuitively, it seems to me this research and reporting, with overtly stated focus on technology, can be used to take new looks at historical events to recognize patterns involving the pervasive nature of cults worldwide in contemporary times. Notably, twi, the LDS church, and JWs... but also many more. I have long recognized the significance of my younger life exposure to the Catholic Church/religion as having "primed" me for PFLAP and twi.

Now THAT is funny. I saw this just now and I thought of everybody on this thread and this platform/website.

I agree TWI was (is, I suppose still) a Pharisee-LIKE organization. To me, this topic is ripe for an understanding enhancing discussion. Indeed, Skyrider's OP presents salient food for thought. Twinky counters by saying she doesn't think she can agree on the apparent main point, and then proceeds to enhance discussion with other salient points. I appreciate both but hope readers can look beyond terminology which might inadvertently shift focus to a win-lose posture. It doesn't have to be adversarial at this point. Defining terms can be helpful to clarifying discussion.

As WE know, the twi authoritarians tried to project strength, and for a time, we bought it. Your comparison to the Wizard of Oz is incredibly APT. It occurs to me how twi authoritarians are culturally a couple of centuries behind the times. Thomas Paine (who, when I once mentioned his name in a small group situation w/Wierwille, he started to get agitated), in a time when church leaders had remarkable control over their congregations, wrote The Age of Reason. In American culture/society after WW2, the level of education in society grew exponentially, for a few reasons. Public education was a growing phenomenon AND the GI Bill spurred veterans to get post-secondary education. One would think Wierwille/TWI, if ANYONE in leadership had done any introspection they might have been able to recognize this trend. So, it's not surprising to me at all they didn't get it and probably still don't get it.

He didn't explicitly indicate, anytime or place I am aware of, how the two concepts contradicted (or may have) each other. I see this as just another notion Victor "borrowed" from someone else.

Yes, he said it. But he got it from Oral Roberts. https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/24477-red-thread/

Therein the ultimate CON JOB just had, once again, the curtain go up so we could all see it for what it was nearly 50 years ago that pulled us in. The sense of belonging kept us there (for me, it did so for 12 years), but... was the hook, from the start.

True that!

Yes, it seems so.

I emphatically recommend to you to read Jacob Ward's book (I linked in my earlier comment) The Loop. The end of the chapter on The Reality Gap: "Unconscious choice is still very much in its infancy as a scientific field, but that hasn't held back efforts to turn its findings against us. People outside the sciences--especially in the world of business and politics--have been catching on to the idea that humans have an unconscious "code" by which they make choices. More and more, companies and political operatives have sought to use that code to shift our behavior. And while the first wave of that sort of research was fairly primitive, there are now whole courses taught at top universities around the world about how to use these findings to persuade customers and sway voters, as we'll examine in the coming chapters. "Now that we've seen how powerfully our unconscious brains shape our lives, let's look more deeply at how they tell us what to do. Because if we don't familiarize ourselves with the mechanisms of our brains, we'll not only be vulnerable to those who prey on us, we'll be blind to the effects." I'm reading The Loop because I have been increasingly aware of the actions I take and decisions I consciously make which do not actually end up being what I thought I intended. Further, I'm increasingly concerned about the adverse impacts social media has in my life, most notably in terms of procrastination and efforts to focus on actual goals. Therefore, while I am not inclined to use the same words as you about the matter, I'm beginning to put 2 and 2 together independently, recognize, and recall your writing on the subject. This is also why I have been almost obsessive about avoiding online ads (I use adblockplus, Kamo, and anything else I can find to suppress/minimize the impact of surveillance capitalism, religiously), I loathe broadcast ads, don't listen to any radio station other than my local public classical music station, subscribe to television programming which blocks commercials, and watch/listen listen to clips on YouTube for music. Yet, I am also aware of AI on Netflix, and on YouTube. I believe you will find clarity and further insight on this subject, which you began writing about some time ago.

Might Mike have been onto something when he started telling us we may not really have free will? On page 16 of The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back, author Jacob Ward writes, "Our actions feel voluntary, and therefore must be under the direct control of our will, right?" (emphasis in the original) "Well, no. Goodale and Milner [a team of neuroscientists] found, in carefully crafted lab experiments, that our perception is not under direct control of our will." (emphasis mine) This is in a chapter titled The Reality Gap. Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember reading where Mike may have made a distinction between what we perceive and how we act. This relates to this current thread because how we perceive determines whether what we see, perceive, and recognize might cause us to define something as a miracle or not. BTW, you might be able to find The Loop by Jacob Ward in your local public library. I did, in mine.

Then there's Michio Kaku's book, The God Equation. Which I read and reviewed on Goodreads almost a year ago Clearly, I'm no physicist, though I did take physics (instead of chemistry) in HS... more than half a century ago. Kaku's book does kinda make sense to me, at least a little bit. But it really is over my head. Near the last few pages, he writes: So why is there something rather than nothing? Because our universe originally came from quantum fluctuations in Nothing. Much of the meaningfulness of Kaku's book (IMO) lies in or comes from the philosophical questions he sets the stage for and ultimately poses. Like, Will this theory of everything give us the meaning of life?... "However, I do believe the theory of everything might have something to say about the meaning of the universe," Kaku writes. Thankfully, Michio Kaku is not like the Sheldon Cooper character on the Big Bang Theory television show. However like the TV show and other literary artistic expressions, Kaku uses numerous illustrations to make abstract concepts more understandable for people like me. It's also important to realize this book is about the QUEST for a theory of everything which has not yet been discovered or figured out. Maybe one of your descendants or mine will be instrumental in finding such a beautiful, elegant, symmetry that can more fully enlighten us. Is it also possible Paul (or various bible translators) just didn't have words to express the message in ways humans could understand? Rather than the verse being the equivalent of Paul thumbing his nose at people who didn't want to believe him? Frankly, I VERY MUCH appreciate Hossenfelder's reflection on the situation (in the YouTube short post I posted in the thread about 45 minutes ago. I'm not claiming to be right. I don't need to "win." Rather, I'd prefer to expand the discussion on this subject.

More of the excerpt shared above, which I found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/616868/existential-physics-by-sabine-hossenfelder/ Of course, I want to know these things too. But somewhere along my path through academia I learned to avoid asking such questions, not to mention answering them. After all, I’m just a physicist. I’m not competent to speak about consciousness and human behavior and such. Nevertheless, the young man’s question drove home to me that physicists do know some things, if not about consciousness itself, then about the physical laws that everything in the universe—including you and I and your grandmother—must respect. Not all ideas about life and death and the origin of human existence are compatible with the foundations of physics. That’s knowledge we should not hide in obscure journals using incomprehensible prose. [...] However, my aim here is not merely to expose pseudoscience for what it is. I also want to convey that some spiritual ideas are perfectly compatible with modern physics, and others are, indeed, supported by it. And why not? That physics has something to say about our connection to the universe is not so surprising. Science and religion have the same roots, and still today they tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? When it comes to these questions, physicists have learned a lot in the past century. Their progress makes clear that the limits of science are not fixed; they move as we learn more about the world. Correspondingly, some belief-based explanations that once aided sensemaking and gave comfort we now know to be just wrong. The idea, for example, that certain objects are alive because they are endowed with a special substance (Henri Bergson’s “élan vital”) was entirely compatible with scientific fact two hundred years ago. But it no longer is. **** Not that I'm at all qualified to expound on the dichotomy between science and religion, but I find Dr Hossenfelder's insight compelling.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59695048-existential-physics Can I ask you something?” a young man inquired after learning that I am a physicist. “About quantum mechanics,” he added, shyly. I was all ready to debate the measurement postulate and the pitfalls of multipartite entanglement, but I was not prepared for the question that followed: “A shaman told me that my grandmother is still alive. Because of quantum mechanics. She is just not alive here and now. Is this right?” As you can tell, I am still thinking about this. The brief answer is, it’s not totally wrong. The long answer will follow in chapter 1, but before I get to the quantum mechanics of deceased grandmothers, I want to tell you why I’m writing this book. During more than a decade in public outreach, I noticed that phys-icists are really good at answering questions, but really bad at explain-ing why anyone should care about their answers. In some research areas, a study’s purpose reveals itself, eventually, in a marketable product. But in the foundations of physics—where I do most of my research—the primary product is knowledge. And all too often, my colleagues and I present this knowledge in ways so abstract that no one understands why we looked for it in the first place. Not that this is specific to physics. The disconnect between experts and non-experts is so widespread that the sociologist Steve Fuller claims that academics use incomprehensible terminology to keep insights sparse and thereby more valuable. As the American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof complained, academics encode “insights into turgid prose” and “as a double protection against public consumption, this gobbledygook is then sometimes hidden in obscure journals.” Case in point: People don’t care much whether quantum mechanics is predictable; they want to know whether their own behavior is predictable. They don’t care much whether black holes destroy information; they want to know what will happen to the collected infor- mation of human civilization. They don’t care much whether galactic filaments resemble neuronal networks; they want to know if the universe can think. People are people. Who’d have thought?

https://sabinehossenfelder.com/ It seems, Raf, you might be taking a harshly dogmatic approach to the subject of this thread.

Does it, really? I don't think so. Realizing it was just something some malignant narcissist made up is hardly a conundrum, IMO.

I don't understand why, if God has a budget shortfall, He doesn't at least pass a continuing resolution until the next fiscal year.

If it looks anything like this one, it's beautiful. Thanks for sharing with us, Twinky.