We’ve been discussing (admittedly on a hit and miss basis) the idea that there’s a global mass consciousness awakening/emerging right here on the internet. So for your further ponderings, here’s something else to toss into your thinkery: A 63-minute video (categorized as edu-tainment/documentary)…x-out the pop ups before you play…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pMh8oBdKkK4
So what comes into focus (better than I could put into words) is this whole idea of the internet becoming something of a Super Self for the whole world.
Unfortunately, that’s problematic. What happens if the global self turns out to be crazy? I mean it is possible that when all of humans are averaged we’re a bit bonkers, isn’t it?
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In the weekend’s Peoplenomics report on “luck” we ended by asking an interesting rhetorical question: Is is possible that the reason we don’t all see the wind that drives luck around, or for that matter, we don’t seem to sense auras, the stream, and so forth….well, could that all be because our selections of words and thought tools are not quite exactly right – and might those things cause us to miss a lot of what’s obvious?
I mention this because the internet’s emergent mass consciousness may actually point in a particular direction toward refining how we use words and symbols such as math as a way of getting a little closer to the Larger Truth which Scully assures us is out there, somewhere.
Not like any language is perfect. and in fact mathematics as the West thinks it, is founded on the notion of objects and counting, instead of sets, unions, intersections of unions (vesicas) and so forth. Maybe it’s not a big error in thinking – we do manage to fly and build nukes and such, but is it a big enough blind spot to keep us from rising to greater heights? A reader comment very much on point:
“Hey George,
Interesting concepts in the last few paragraphs today. I think there are a lot of concepts in human thought that we may have missed by channeling things down a practical road.
For example, I have often wondered, for instance, what is really the speed of light.,( I suppose that is why Einstein defined it as “c”, a numerically unassigned constant, rather than the common 186,282 miles per second. (Besides, equations don’t usually do well utilizing numbers in the theoretical realm, until practical applications arise, which is the purview of engineers and technicians, more along my field)).
Definition seems to be a matter of the practical , so often. But why is there a speed, and what is it really, outside the human influenced realm? And after all, what is a mile ( or what is a second for that matter)? Simply randomly assigned values based on subdividing a common factor in our local environment down to a manageable size component thereof, to be crunched further using other more practical aspects of our ubiquitous “number mill”.
I’ve often thought that perhaps instead of “thinking with words( or numbers)”, as we all have to do based on our personal language experiences, we must miss a lot of information and waste a lot of time. How often do we really think in concepts anyway?
My proof of this is my wife, who is Canadian, with both French and English as her native tongues, in which she is very fluent. Indeed you could not tell she spoke French, being quite fluent even in social slang idioms, for the most part, but often her French thinking shows up in her use of similes, which she unmercifully butchers. (Also, shows up her math training and some other things, such as knowing right from left, linguistically.
She has to hold up her left hand, which forms an “L”, then she knows and can visualize it. Otherwise, to her it is “gauche and droit” which she can visualize immediately.)
My overall point being, we generally ( at least I do) tend to think as though we were speaking, which makes us take the time to form sentences in our heads, such as “ I’m going to the store now”, at least in part, if not in whole. Do we really ever just visualize the gestalt of “I’m going to the store now” as an action in our minds, to be completed as though it already exists, without the intervening language?
We probably do but at some point in the action, language asserts itself, almost as though we have to validate the thought with the language pattern itself. Just habit I guess.
Perhaps you or someone else might not follow this pattern, but in analysis of my habits, I do, and being a relatively normal guy, I feel I am pretty close to the norm. I think we probably all do this to some degree.
The point being, we waste so much time in the processing of our thoughts, more so than if we grasped and moved the concepts along immediately as actions, until we absolutely needed to insert the language, much in the way we move our bodies when we perform natural muscle motion.
For example, when I play guitar, and do a solo, I move to where my ear knows the sound that I want resides, without having to consciously think : “ I will now move my third finger to an “A” on the sixth string, then slide it up a fret, then bend it ½ step, and back down, then etc.,etc.”
If our thoughts in communication were as fluid as that of our “animal” body movements, who knows how much farther afield we might be by now not only in physical knowledge of our universe, but in the inner knowing of the deeper realms that still remain unattainable to us. In addition, we sometimes restrict ourselves even in our private thoughts because we feel we are treading on socially established mores of thought that are inappropriate for exploration by virtue of the fact they are not approved by society in general, such as deeper spiritual thought, etc.
That is probably why the Eastern philosophies are so much more advanced and non-religion biased than Western standard “Christian “ thought. ( which by the way I think is responsible for a huge degree of the inhumanity of man to mankind, (counter-intuitively it seems), just sayin’….)
Not really any purpose to this rambling, other than pondering along the same lines you were following ( at least I think I am). But wanted to see if you had any other thoughts on the matter yourself. I hope I have made sense, and not wasted your time. You just got me going with your article today…”
No waste of time, at all! It’s that socially imposed thinking stuff that likely keeps us all from being more god-like in our thinking. I wonder if minds like Tesla or Leedskalnin somehow managed to break into that “rarer realm” of right thinking that was somehow better fitted to seeing the world a bit more clearly than the rest of us.
If you want a little something to work on when the boss ain’t looking today, I’d table this as a worthy exercise. We already know from working with Clif’s linguistic project that how humans think (and act) is at least some x number of degrees out of phase with the larger reality. Problem comes down to “How to solve for x?”
Which is why I’m focused for now on the matter of “luck” since if there’s to be any ripping of the veil between this realm and another, the fabric should wear thin along a particular seam.,..and I’m guessing that between statistical probabilities and real-world experiences is as good a place as any to go mining.
Which gets me (a big long-windedly) into our next topic…
Personal Encounters with Luck
As I mentioned earlier, Elaine and I went flying this weekend…us to Shawnee, OK to spend some time with Robin (and Mrs.) Landry. Besides having a chance to compare notes on the markets, and such, the trip gave me a chance to check out some of the things I’d written earlier in the week since I’m doing a two-part report for Peoplenomics readers on luck.
There were two items of note in the luck department. One was, as we were sitting at the adult beverage place at Firelake Casino, noticing the local news doing a stand-up about a plane crash which claimed one life just on the other side of Oklahoma City from us.
It was one of those “shiver up the spine” moments, since we’d flown in about two hours after the crash and yes, due to the storms which had been through the area last week, and with strong winds, there was light to moderate turbulence from the Red River north. 25 to 30 knot headwinds… It all served to remind me that airplanes can be dangerous if you don’t keep an eye on them….and to always follow hunches and feelings. That was, near as I could tell, Good Luck Event #1.
Then, after the refreshments, since we’d had a pretty good-sized lunch, we decided to try out some of the luck theories I’d started covering in Saturday’s Peoplenomics report. I won’t go into the how and details here, but by the time our dinner reservations came up, I was $360 ahead for the night.
A hour, or so later, after a marvelous dinner, I decided to win just a bit more – and walked out with $450…which mostly paid for the weekend, at least the avgas and hotel.
But what was even more important, all this research & reading I’d been doing on “luck” was starting to come into focus, so this coming weekend on the Peoplenomics side, I’ll review some of the observations others have made on luck, how it flows, and most importantly: How some people are able to avail themselves of “luck” while others can’t or won’t.
Since this is ongoing research, please feel free to send in luck stories which we can kick around right here…as people like to hear about them…and don’t be too surprised if I send back some questions since I’m trying to figure out what about the luck stuff is real and what is not. Yes, I know the odds and so forth, but as of this morning I’ve got $450 reasons to think some aspects of luck are learnable and may offer some insights into how the world really works.
Health Notes
A reader sent in a link to a site that lists the vitamin deficiencies that come with various medications your doc may prescribe for you. Interesting stuff to read up on. This is not medical advice, just a resource to be noticed…
Slow Weather Clean-up
The Midwest isn’t the only place which will be cleaning up from Ma Nature’s onslaughts:
We drove down to Portland (OR) yesterday morning for a big indoor ‘antique’ sale (almost a flea market) and on the way I noticed that there were still trees down across railroad flat cars. The storm was some weeks back. This was down by Centralia, these flat cars are the type built to carry the ocean going containers (2 high), I kept watch to see the trees down on the train cars, that’s pretty unusual. It was then that I noticed I’d been watching these flat cars for some time… for 10, maybe 15 minutes at 70mph it’s been nothing but empty railroad flat cars, some with trees laying across them. That’s a lot of RR cars just sitting.
Miles and miles of train cars that used to hold double stacked ocean going containers. On the two hour drive we saw one train carrying containers south.
After the show ( I bought a cast iron waffle maker, told the guy I was looking for one to use not collect, it’s been a 2 yr search for one at a reasonable price) we went to “Fire On the Mountain Buffalo Wings” for dinner. The place was worth the trip, it’s a micro-brewery too. I mention this in case you find yourself tooling past Portland someday & really want some good wings.
Duly noted, Tums at the ready…
Write when you break even: george@ure.net
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Chasing the Winds of Luck: Vernunftschlüsse
We’re off on a hunt this weekend to connect some dots on why some people are decidedly more lucky than others and to reframe some “givens” of modern society which have been brought into question by our old friend, the I-Ching inbox, which has an uncanny way of delivering just the right dose of information from related fields at precisely our moment of need to break into new realms of thinking. But, as usual, before getting into our discussion which ranges from UFOs to Zurich, to Jung, and the floor of the exchanges, we’ll pick up the morning papers along the way to see what’s happening outside the lab.
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Safer Computing: Swearing Off Cookies
It has been a while since I roared the praises of the Maxa Cookie Manager which you can download and install for a free test drive by clicking here.
To upgrade from the demo to full working is still less than $50 and one heck of a bargain at that, if I do say so.
I am a high-reliability computing kind of guy – and near as I have it figured, the road to a hassle-free computing experience is (like flying an airplane) a matter of going through a proper checklist before popping onto the web:
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You need an active cookie manager – because sites you visit can put small bits of code on your computer and some of these are designed for Flash, have no expiration, and can really bugger-up the computing experience. This part gets handled by Maxa Labs’ product which on my system says 184,380 cookies have been removed, 73,881 “web bugs” which can track movement from site to site and such, and I have only 10-active cookies.
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Second thing you need is a good antivirus program – and I happen to really like Avira’s Antivir pro.
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Then you need to deal with Malware so for this Malware bytes is updated and run daily.
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And last, though certainly not least is the firewall and the one in Win 7 works fine.
Like anything in computers, updates are critical so before work every morning, the computer does its update ritual – Check of Maxa (5.3.02 is current) Avira, and Malware bytes.
Toss in a good bit of common sense (example: Don’t open email purporting to be from UPS, IRS, the US Post Office, or anything else that even has a hint of fishy odor to it) and first thing you know, the internet’s actually a useful tool.
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on $10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left. A bonus section called “How to Build Anything” should instill confidence if you’ve never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too….. Click here for the index and details.
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