Have lots of protected sex?

Oh, man. I'll try to elaborate later, but for now: RUN AWAY.

It's funny, I have completely unfair and inconsistent reactions to people with what I consider irrational beliefs. Some people, I take it as evidence that they really are idiots. Other people, my snap reaction is to play along respectfully -- I'm thinking of a woman I knew in law school, generally very bright and rational, who was really into Tarot cards and astrology. Something about the way she presented it made me put her into the same box I put conventionally religious people in: I don't believe it, and I think it's fundamentally kind of loopy to believe it, but I'll talk about it respectfully and with real interest (like, I know I'm a Leo with Leo rising because she told me, and have talked at length with her about Tarot cards.)

So, I'd say that if this really doesn't make you think she's crazy or stupid, and it doesn't bother her that you don't believe any of the same stuff, I don't see a real problem.

Also, dude?

I have no problem with meditation or even "energy healing" and the like -- I can make rationalist sense of people having energy and that energy being transferable, in fact I feel like I experience that regularly. If you want to refer to that using "auras" or "chakras" that's fine, it's just a different language.

We know what you are, we're just arguing about the price.

I think LB gets it right. This is Brigit loves Bernie for the 21st Century. Mixed religious relationships are fine, as long as one doesn't openly ridicule the other's religion behind the back.

My uncle and aunt are in a somewhat similar position, and they've been together and (I think) happy for ages.

This is what you should expect when you're dating someone in show business, Ogged.

LB, I can see more where Unique Snowflake is coming from. I grew up in Berkeley, land of hippy-dippies, after all. Some of the goofier stuff has a rational basis behind it, or around it, or whatever, and some of the practitioners can be sensible people in other ways. However, man, some of them are sort of pathetic weirdos.

When my honey and I were out in California last month, we stopped by the Eselan Institute, a rather famous place for that kind of stuff. We went for massages. Afterwards, I was sitting in one of the hot springs, looking out over the ocean, and eavesdropping on two middle-aged ladies who were doing one of the workshops. They sounded like completely awesome, hilarious people. One of them was talking about a class she'd done on something like how string theory influences your psyche or whatever, and she paused, and commented to the other woman, "it's really just about being mindful. Like in all of the other courses." I just thought that was wonderful.

I don't know how happy I'd be to have to remind myself not to be judgmental about this stuff on an everyday basis, however.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant -- it's about his reaction to her (and her reaction to his reaction). If he really is thinking "pathetic weirdo, but the sex is great", he should flee. If he's thinking, "Man, she thinks some weird stuff for someone who's basically sensible. Eh, I get along fine with Christians, and they believe weird stuff," they're fine.

My experience with this sort of pairing is that once the new sex excitement wears off, you'll find the other person deeply irritating and spend every conversation thinking "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP."

I, however, am rarely the most tolerant person in any given room, so YMMV.

I get along fine with Christians, and they believe weird stuff

I get along fine with Christians, but have learned the hard way that I shouldn't date them.

You changed this from Democrats and Republicans to test us, didnt you?

10: I, however, am rarely the most tolerant person in any given room.

That's the burden of your remarkable penis, I think.

You changed this from Democrats and Republicans to test us, didnt you?

LB is wily, but not sneaky. The setup would have been different if it were a trolleycar exercise.

I've expressed some gentle skepticism to her, and she just smiles and says so long as I care for her and don't actually think she's crazy, everything is good.

I want to say that if you can both hang onto this attitude you'll be okay. But I've had a hard time even being close friends with people like this. At some point it inhibits emotional closeness for me because it is crazy.

Then again, I suspect I'm even more intolerant than apo.

I suspect I'm even more intolerant than apo.

Fuck off, crazy person.

For the record, my mental image of Sir Kraab is of her painted and dressed like a mouse.

So I have a hard time when she starts calling other people crazy.

For me the Democrat/Republican divide is far more serious than the Empiricist/New Ager divide. I would be willing to date across the new age divide, but I almost invariably wind up unintentionally offending seriously New Age people right at the get go.

I think if she can tolerate your uptight ideas, you can tolerate her flaky ones.

A lot of New Agers are completely tolerant and accepting and don't care whether you share their beliefs. If they end up making weird choices, though, it can be bothersome.

I ended up believing that my ex-wife relied excessively on visualization as a way of getting things done. She felt something like that about me, too, however. There should probably be at least one practical person in each couple.

@10 nails it.

I did this for a while and it was totally bizarre. She was competent, down-to-earth, hot as hell, and otherwise intelligent, but when it came to New Age spirituality she would believe almost anything she read about it (or her psychic told her). We're talking angels, psychics, auras, energy - you name it, she was into it. I did the nod-and-smile thing for a while and that was fine, and, frankly, she never pushed it any farther than that, so I got the distinct impression we could have continued like that for a good long time. In the end, though, if it had come to thinking about marriage, I don't know that I could have gone through with it. But she ended up breaking it off over something totally unrelated, so it never got that far.

My advice: Roll with it for a while and see if it begins to bother you. If not, you're golden.

I refuse to get emotionally involved with someone who isn't at base a rationalist, but that's got a lot to do with the fact that being a rationalist is kind of core to who I am and how I interact with the world around me. I simply could not connect with a crystal energy type on a deep level.

That said, there's something to be said for getting into a relationship with someone you can't connect with on a really deep level because it makes it that much easier to walk away when the time comes. Just be sure that you are aware that the time is coming and be open to accepting it when the stars are appropriately aligned. Sticking around after that point will just make you and her miserable.

Also, I really want to hear the elaboration of 2 above.

Also, sacred dance retreat?! What bugs me about things like that isn't that people want to get together in some beautiful place to dance and sing and feel good and non-self conscious, but why does it have to be a "sacred dance retreat"? In my parlance it's "a weekend in the woods with friends, acting like total goofballs."

Also, sacred dance retreat?! What bugs me about things like that isn't that people want to get together in some beautiful place to dance and sing and feel good and non-self conscious, but why does it have to be a "sacred dance retreat"? In my parlance it's "a weekend in the woods with friends, acting like total goofballs."

See? Goofball.

I'd like to reraise my 4. The questioner isn't really a hardline rationalist -- he's messing around with beliefs in energy in the sense that you don't measure in joules. Which suggests that his mind is open enough to this stuff that there's a good chance he can manage not to be too weirded out by her beliefs.

15: I suspect I'm even more intolerant than apo.

I don't know what that's the burden of.

I'm sorry to invoke Standpipe, but I don't get 4.

I suspect that in a "sacred dance retreat" somebody is getting paid to lead the festivities. New Age nonsense is astonishingly expensive----unless you go pro!

23: I'm a pretty hardline rationalist, but I do recognize that one of the downsides of being one is that people who do things like "sacred dance retreats" do actually dance around in the woods more than people who are just acting like goofballs. If you really enjoy woods-dancing, believing it's spiritual will probably involve your doing more of it.

Shorter questioner: "I'm a boy, and my partner's a girl. Can we possibly get along?"

(Yes, LB & Kraab, I will start running now.)

I suspect that in a "sacred dance retreat" somebody is getting paid to lead the festivities.

When I hear the words "sacred dance retreat," I immediately suspect that the organizer is making a ton of money and having sex with many of the participants.

And yoga is good for your circulation and probably helps your body manage stress. Being open to these possibilities doesn't mean that you're going to be compatible with someone who believes in crystal healing.

27: On rereading, it is opaque, isn't it? I was thinking of that old joke about Shaw, maybe? asking a woman at a party if there were any circumstances, perhaps if offered a million pounds, under which she would have sex for money. And she said that probably under those circumstances she would, who wouldn't? And then he asked if she'd have sex with him for ten pounds, and she said "Certainly not, what kind of woman do you think I am?" "We've established what you are, now we're just haggling over the price."

The writer is a big ol' flake himself, by my standards. I don't see why he should be fussing about tolerating someone flakier.

I do recognize that one of the downsides of being one is that people who do things like "sacred dance retreats" do actually dance around in the woods more than people who are just acting like goofballs.

Lots of people who aren't new-agers go to the woods, LB. The park service doesn't care.

New Age nonsense is astonishingly expensive----unless you go pro!

This is my plan to survive GD2. L. Ron Hubbard will spin in his grave at my mastery of his simple plan. I will provide a couple of "tells" for the Unfoggedetariat, when the time comes.

That is, if you really think that it's "one of the downsides" of your being a big rationalist, you're thinking about things approximately the same way AWB's crazy "Millenial" friend does.

The writer is a big ol' flake himself, by my standards.

Dude.

Funny, my first thought was "Run away, PGD!"

After all, this is exactly how Kucinich went from facing down the mafia and standing firmly against corrupt privatization to summering with Shirley MacLaine and being the joke of the presidential primaries.

My instinct is that the fact that the writer is asking the question suggests it's a bigger problem for him than he wants to admit to himself. Which isn't to say, run! run away! There's something to be said for enjoying it for what it is (if that can be done without anyone getting hurt).

I've lost track of AWB's friend, but the thought process: (1) dancing in the woods would make me happy if I did it more, but akrasia interferes with my actually doing so; (2) the irrational belief that there was spiritual value to woods-dancing would help overcome my akrasia; so (3) having that irrational belief would make me happier, seems to me to make perfect sense.

I think you can make it work if:

1. you can object to each others' beliefs without having contempt for them

2. you can see those beliefs as the manifestation of something each of you values in the other. For example, she sees your analytic persistence as really caring about understanding world, and you see her spiritual pursuits as a strong desire for ineffable beauty

3. You can subscribe to a "non-overlapping magisteria" theory -- she doesn't try to explain physical phenomena with her beliefs and you don't ... well, I'm biased towards your side, but I'd say you accept that she's not explaining the same phenomena as you.

To make it work, you'll have to find something to actively value in her belief systems. That's not impossible, and I think an appreciation for mythic thinking and the creation of sacredness might be a place to start that least offends your own beliefs.

37: Not the kind of flake I couldn't date, or couldn't socialize with. But once you're talking about energy and you don't mean joules (calories, whatever), that makes you a flake.

I bet the energy in the stadium when Obama gave his acceptance speech was downright palpable, LB.

Don't overstate your case.

I've known pagans who took their spirituality seriously enough that they would call something a "sacred dance retreat", but not so seriously that they thought that a Goddess existed in a literal sense. I found it hard to understand, but once I got used to it, it didn't bother me that much.

I'm not ruling out metaphor, Ben. But the questioner doesn't seem to be speaking metaphorically.

40: I'm with LB here, it really helps to let go if you can call it spiritual. In some ways, this is like desiring to go crazy because you know crazy people have better sex.

I'm not sure that when I say that the energy was palpable, joules figure in anywhere.

30: And I liked you so much when I met you in D.C. Too bad.

Really, though, I don't get your point. If it's that women are irrational, that's too silly a notion to engage with.

Dude, stick it out. She probably has access to some fantastic peyote.

47: How else are you palping it?

While there is something to 39, I think LizardBreath has this right (not the calling people flakes part, but the there is no reason to think that this can't work part). I have cared very deeply and passionately about women who were different from me in a host of ways. There were problems, but none of them related to the differences (as far as I know).

44: Well, yeah. To take a commenter's name in vain, someone like McManlyPants. Clearly a reasonable, rational guy, with some religious beliefs that I'm not exactly sure how literal they are, that don't interfere with being a reasonable rational guy (a category which can also include people who are big flakes), but clearly might plausibly involve something you'd call a 'sacred dance retreat'.

I could date someone with beliefs like Pants, no problem, despite thinking that their religion was flaky, so long as they didn't mind my opinion on the flakiness.

47: No, Ben, you're using a metaphor.

Really, though, I don't get your point. If it's that women are irrational, that's too silly a notion to engage with.

I read it more like people are different, in order to get along one must develop tolerance to things one doesn't understand.

I know what a metaphor is, LizardBreath.

44: I have a much higher tolerance for that variety of flakiness. I could be with someone like that long before I could be with someone who says that everything happens for a reason. I HATE that. You stubbed your toe? It's all part of god's plan for you.

55: Cool. Then let me revise my 42 to include a parenthetical "(non-metaphorically)", and we can be on about our business.

How much of the weirding out is being caused by the fact that the partner's beliefs are hippyish, rather than the fact that they're non-rational? Would the advice seeker be that weirded out if his partner were a devout but liberal Christian? A Unitarian? A reformed Jew? There's a difference in the stigma we attach to unpopular weirdness (Dennis Kucinich says he saw a UFO) and stigma we attach to socially acceptable and even socially expected weirdness (George Bush and Barack Obama both claim to consult the divine spirit of a two thousand year old dead rabbi before making important decisions).

No, you don't understand. I know what a metaphor is, and I deny that when I say "the energy was palpable", I am making a metaphor on joules or calories or anything like that. (I may be speaking metaphorically in other ways—for instance I'm not really palpating anything, am I?)

The idea that we've now found out what "energy" refers to, to wit, joules, and that therefore any other use of "energy" is either metaphorical with reference to that use, or foolishness, offends me, and is a bit of philosophical simplemindedness.

George Bush and Barack Obama both claim to consult the divine spirit of a two thousand year old dead rabbi before making important decisions).

No, they both think the rabbi's still alive. But pretty close.

(For all its manifest flaws, Wandering Significance does contain bits of convincing polemic on related points.)

I believe in listening to your gut instinct. Enjoy it for now. When, or if, you start being uncomfortable around her, end it.

Heh heh. The 'sacred dance' people are some of my closest friends, and I deal with it by mocking their beliefs to their faces. But, we have fifteen years of closeness to fall back on and I strictly remember their current food preferences, so when they get back from their retreats, I feed them no-gluten raw dinner and ask them to tell me all about it.

They give marvelous hugs, full-body, long, fully present, so there's that.

56: See Alan Moore on why he worships a Roman snake god.

Crowd's energy was palpable = the crowd was noticeably excited in a way which creates a positive feedback loop.

I don't think I could be, long-term, with someone whose beliefs I didn't respect. And seeing as I'm somewhere along the Kraab/apo end of the intolerance spectrum, that's most people.

But then my parents have had a long (and mostly happy, apart from a blip in the middle where they got divorced for unrelated reasons) marriage, in which he's a proselytizing atheist and she's a fairly fundamental christian. So, it can be done.

Would the advice seeker be that weirded out if his partner were a devout but liberal Christian? A Unitarian?

She already sounds plenty Unitarian to me. Unitarians love them some sacred interpretive dance.

They give marvelous hugs, full-body, long, fully present, so there's that.

I recently represented the mother in a custody case. In a settlement conference, the father started talking about how he had been teaching their son that men had to keep an arm between them when they hugged.

I said "Are you flipping kidding me?" and opened my arms and asked him to bring it on in. He wasn't amused.

60: Right, but the point is it's still weird.

59: I understand the metaphor in "the energy was palpable" to be along the lines of: the sight and sound of the people in the audience led me to believe that their psychological state was such that they were prepared to take some sort of action that would literally involve energy in the 'joules' sense -- jump around, or shout, or march on Washington, or canvass for Obama -- literally doing something. I metaphorically refer to the conclusion I drew from my visual and auditory perceptions as if it were a direct physical perception of the stored energy that I understood the crowd to be prepared to expend. But the metaphor refers, ultimately, to potential physical actions -- energy in the "joules" sense.

No, you don't understand. I know what a metaphor is, and I deny that when I say "the energy was palpable", I am making a metaphor on joules or calories or anything like that. (I may be speaking metaphorically in other ways--for instance I'm not really palpating anything, am I?)

It's all about the mirror neurons isn't it?

Really, though, I don't get your point. If it's that women are irrational, that's too silly a notion to engage with.

Many relationships I have with otherwise intelligent, skeptical, political women require some negotiation of New Agey stuff, to the extent that "there's no sense in talking about astrology with girls" has become a rule of thumb. I would be surprised to find out that this was entirely an idiosyncrasy of my social circle.

More seriously, these kinds of interactions have led me to develop principles like those laid out in 41.

My ex-wife and I were frequently at loggerheads over this sort of thing. In time, I think we both developed intellectually and spiritually from the other's difference.

In a settlement conference, the father started talking about how he had been teaching their son that men had to keep an arm between them when they hugged.

Wait. How do you hug someone "at arm's length"? Do you just sort of grab their shoulders and shake?

The arm is placed on your chest to separate each other.

Jesus wasn't a fully accredited rabbi, was he?

Hips are kept very far apart because if they get close, the hips might suddenly go gay.

They give marvelous hugs, full-body, long, fully present, so there's that.

ha. this is precisely why the sex with her is so wonderful. It comes with emotional bonding, though.

I too would love to see Jesus expand on 2. As a Portland-ite, I would think he has a lot of experience with this situation.

LB are you using "energy" in the "first law of thermodynamics" sense?

I'm tentatively on Ben's side of this -- that "energy" has a technical definition, but that in common usage it can have other meanings.

67: You blaspheme. I've never sacredly danced in my life, and I'd lay bets that neither has snarkout. Heebie, now, that's another story -- I've long suspected that she's a secret sacred dancer.

Oh, and regarding 40, it seems that what you've identified is a disadvantage of being weak-willed, not of being rationalist.

All of Sir Kraab's dances are profane.

ha. this is precisely why the sex with her is so wonderful.

This suggests to me that you do have something to learn from her, and it's worth it to you to figure out how to synthesize your personalities in this relationship rather than compromise them. I think it's possible if she feels the same way.

I've never sacredly danced in my life,

I worship you, Sir Kraab. I really do.

But, you are a freakin' liar! I don't believe for a minute that you are not a secret sacred dancer. I'm calling you out!

59: I understand the metaphor in "the energy was palpable" to be along the lines of: the sight and sound of the people in the audience led me to believe that their psychological state was such that they were prepared to take some sort of action that would literally involve energy in the 'joules' sense -- jump around, or shout, or march on Washington, or canvass for Obama -- literally doing something

I think that is positively insane.

I bet the energy in the stadium when Obama gave his acceptance speech was downright palpable, LB.

Durkheim was right about this. (The collective effervescence parts, not the parts about why Parisian women have smaller heads than one would expect.)

Anyway, LB is right (as usual) to ask whether our questioner isn't on the bandwagon already. If so, enjoy and look forward to attending future sacred dance retreats yourself and gradually giving up your rationalist self-image. If not, GOTO Apo.

78: Yeah, what I mean by 'joules' you could say 'the first law of thermodynamics' sense. What I'm saying is that there's measurable energy, in the 1stL.ofT. sense. There's metaphorical references to energy in the 1stL.of.T sense, anything where substituting in 'the capacity to do work' would make the metaphor work just as well, and that covers the ordinary language sense of energy where it doesn't literally refer to the 1stL.ofT. sense.

And then there's "'energy healing' and the like -- I can make rationalist sense of people having energy and that energy being transferable", in which the questioner is talking about something non-measurable by conventional means but which has non-metaphorical effects. Flake.

Not all religious/spiritual beliefs are equally intellectually defensible & I deeply resent atheists implying otherwise....I have much more tolerance for liberal Christianity than for crystal-therapy new-agey stuff, and much more tolerance for new-agey stuff than other varieties of Christianity (including both fundy Left Behind stuff, and "everything happens for a reason" schmaltzy e-mail forward stuff). People who find Barack Obama's religious views comparable to Sarah Palin's, Reinhold Niebuhr's to Pat Robertsons, etc. etc. can pretty much bite me.

How large would one expect the heads of Parisian women to be?

Along with intellectual defensibility, consider ethical defensibility. Might be easier to get to yes.

LB in 59 is also right - ben's mental health diagnoses notwithstanding. Just because we don't necessarily go through that thought process consciously doesn't mean that it's not an accurate representation of what the phrase most rationally means.

When one talks about whether one has energy, one is usually talking about a kind of psychological potential energy, that is, whether one is willing to expend actual joules doing something.

84: Huh. Actually insane?

What do you see as the difference between a room in which "the energy is palpable" and one in which it isn't, in concrete physical terms? What's the perception you're describing metaphorically there?

Sadly for my eternal soul, I must concur with Ben. (Though I think that the scientific meaning is the original one, and it has been borrowed by everyone else.)

70: rather than giving long speeches like this, I just accept the New Agers use of energy as an acceptable synecdoche for a long-winded rationalist chain-of-causation explanation for why human moods and attitudes tend to be contagious and self-reinforcing.

88: Like a basketball.

80: Well, it's a disadvantage of being rationalist given that I'm weak willed. I can more easily visualize the counterfactual world in which I have irrational beliefs than the one in which I have a strong will in this sense. (Also, the earlier comment was the first time I ever used akrasia in a sentence. I'm very pleased about that.)

91: Boredom.

This discussion reminds me very much of the late-nineteenth century discourse around German nationalism, in which modernity was accused of sapping national energy, in a very scientistic fashion. Cf. Anson Rabinbach.

You can get there, but I think you lose a lot along the way. I'd go with absurd rather than insane.

93: Oh, from the "energy healing" I thought you were being more literal than that. If you're using a psychological metaphor derived from hanging out with New Agey types, I withdraw my "flake".

72: It may well be that there are more women flakes than men flakes, for different values of flakiness. (Tell me half you geeks didn't sort of believe in Middle Earth and that your D&D character didn't have an actual life of its own.)

Certainly a lot of what we call "new age" is safer behavior for women. (See will's caution about hip contact, above.) And women have more cause to look for an alternative, not-male-centric religion.

Your social circle may not be entirely idosyncratic, but, rationally, that hardly means it's typical. The women in my circles are far more likely to be atheists than anything else.

Did you ever consider that you're drawn toward these women in some way? Psychologically speaking, that it. (I'm half kidding, half not.)

||

A friend has enlisted me to help him sell his novel. I'm writing up a pitch -- both a paragraph for intro emails and a longer document for press packets.

If anyone has any experience with this or knows friendly publishers or literary agents, please drop me a line.

It's a very good novel.

|>

How large would one expect the heads of Parisian women to be?

Durkheim thought, in On the Division of Labor, that they should have been an lot larger than they were, based on earlier anthropological data about the size of women's heads in less developed societies, along with some general phrenological assumptions.

What's the perception you're describing metaphorically there?

Les Formes Élémentaires de la Vie Religieuse.

79: I'm sure there are some Pentacostals who roll their eyes when the speaking in tongues breaks out, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Interpretive dance is our speaking in tongues. Flaky hippies who dance sacredly is as Unitarian as lesbian ministers, Subaru station wagons, and non-gender specific references to the divine whatever.

In recent years, after a long time wandering back and forth across various thresholds, I've decided that I am...not happiest, but "feel truest to my fundamental values", perhaps in the way to put it, over on this side with the fruitbats. Rationalistically grounded frameworks don't seem to me capable of sufficient response to the kinds of tyranny facing us at the moment, and don't seem to me capable of doing justice to a lot of what I find best and most interesting in humanity, either. As a foundation for shared civic life, yeah, but there's more to life than that.

On the relationship issue, I go with those suggesting the standard of respectful disagreement. I can coexist happily with a lot of views and values I don't share, but not with all.

What do you see as the difference between a room in which "the energy is palpable" and one in which it isn't, in concrete physical terms?

What makes you think that the difference is relevantly described in concrete physical terms? If I were unable to satisfy your request, would that mean that when I say "the energy is palpable", I'm talking about capacity to do work? Couldn't I be aware that as soon as the speech ends, the energy will be gone in a whiff, so that really, there isn't much capacity to do work? (In 70 it seems as if you're not even making a metaphor at all, but rather accurately describing the crowd's capacity to do work—admittedly in a roundabout fashion.)

Just because we don't necessarily go through that thought process consciously doesn't mean that it's not an accurate representation of what the phrase most rationally means.

What the phrase "most rationally means"? Please. (We put to one side that you could have a society in which no one had ever heard of the first law of thermodynamics—say because no one had discovered it at all yet—in which people spoke of the energy of a room.)

There's metaphorical references to energy in the 1stL.of.T sense, anything where substituting in 'the capacity to do work' would make the metaphor work just as well, and that covers the ordinary language sense of energy where it doesn't literally refer to the 1stL.ofT. sense.

Well, it's not at all clear to me that it would work just as well to construe the phrase as a metaphor along these lines, nor that, if it would, that would therefore mean that that construal was correct. This looks to me like a lot of ex post facto rejiggering to suit a certain (dare I call it scientistic?) notion of how things ought to work.

(Though I think that the scientific meaning is the original one, and it has been borrowed by everyone else.)

What do you mean by "the original one", that would make you say this? You're not going to refer, I assume, to "energeia".

I really can't believe I'm involving in this discussion.

98: that it is

It's, like, bad for my blood pressure.

98Did you ever consider that you're drawn toward these women in some way?

She put a spell on him. This dancing thing is a way to take the cursespell to the next level, binding him to her for all eternity. They'll be sacrificing goats and stuff.

Did you ever consider that you're drawn toward these women in some way?

No, but totally fair. You broke that down very nicely.

And I was the DM.

(I'm perfectly happy to concede that men have much more pernicious flakey beliefs if you include, say, missile defense, or for that matter, capitalism.)

Making Light has discussions on "how to get published and not to get scammed by faux-agents" fairly often. I'd send him over there: http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ and have him search the archives for "agents" and such. What I understand the main points to be are that no real agent will ask you for money other than a percentage of sales, and if what you've written is publishable, it's not rocket science -- look up submission guidelines, call agents from the phone book... publishable stuff is noticeable enough that someone who gets a look at it will help you through the process.

108 to 99.

Slightly OT: My newest client isn't a New Ager, but he has a Ron Paul sticker on his Prius.

Whoa.

Of course, I met with him today after dropping off Iris at Waldorf School, and tomorrow is the Michaelmas Festival, so....

Actually, I just spent an hour researching Michaelmas, so I don't think I'm initiated just yet.

95: And I think that's the first time I've ever seen a non-philosopher use the word akrasia.

We'll have you writing ∃s and ∀s in no time LB!

Wrongshore, what LizardBreath says in 108. Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who run Making Light, are two of the best fiction editors in the country, and between them edit a lot of the best genre fiction writers going at the moment. Their readership includes a staggering array of people with useful information about the whole writing and publishing process. You will not go wrong by starting with their consensus advice; nor will your friend.

And best sure to ask questions.

105: ben, take some deep, cleansing breaths. Breathe in positive energy from the universe, and breathe out your upsetting thoughts. Visualize those thoughts actually leaving your body. Everyone else, send your healing energy thoughts to ben.

What makes you think that the difference is relevantly described in concrete physical terms? If I were unable to satisfy your request, would that mean that when I say "the energy is palpable", I'm talking about capacity to do work?

I think that the difference is describable in concrete physical terms because I don't believe in magic. Some difference between the two rooms is perceptible to you through the agency of your five senses -- I would expect that it comes down, physically, to a difference in the posture and movements of the audience members, and a difference in the sounds they make. I could be wrong about what exactly you think the difference is, but if you're not talking about something physical and perceptible with your five senses, I don't know how to engage with it.

My advice to "anonymous questioner" is to walk away now, before he finds himself hosting an Iron John workshop.

I really can't believe I'm involving in this discussion.

I'm glad you are; it's an interesting point and one that gets slippery the more I think about it.

114: LB, what about emotion? Do you believe in emotion? What if you said the room was happy? Wouldn't that be closer to the intended meaning than "the room is capable of doing X amount of work?"

Thanks for the Making Light rec.

I think that the difference is describable in concrete physical terms because I don't believe in magic.

I feel like this is answered by Ben's

This looks to me like a lot of ex post facto rejiggering to suit a certain (dare I call it scientistic?) notion of how things ought to work.

The debate isn't over whether the difference between the two states could be described by noting physical differences and the resulting sense impression but whether that's doing a lot more work than is necessary to unpack the meaning of the phrase.

If I were smarter, I would try to make a distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realms, but I am not smarter.

The man who has obeyed his god and who for this reason, believes the god is with him, approaches the world with confidence and with the feeling of increased energy ... since society cannot exist except in and through individual consciousness, this force must also penetrate us and organize itself within us; it thus becomes an integral part of our being and by that very fact this [our being] is elevated and magnified. ... There are occasions when this strengthening and vivifying action of society is especially apparent. In the midst of an assembly animated by common passion, we become susceptible of acts and sentiments of which we are incapable when reduced to our own forces; and when the assembly is dissolved and when, finding ourselves alone again, we fall back to our ordinary level, we are then able to measure the height to which we have been raised above ourselves. History abounds in examples of this sort. It is enough to think of the night of the Fourth of August, 1789, when an assembly was suddenly led to an act of sacrifice and abnegation which each of its members had refused the day before, and at which they were all surprised the day after [i.e., the abolition of feudalism by the assembly of nobles and commoners in the French Revolution]. That is why all parties, political, economic and confessional, are careful to have periodic reunions where their members may revivify their common faith by manifesting it in common ...

Not all religious/spiritual beliefs are equally intellectually defensible & I deeply resent atheists implying otherwise

Who said I'm an atheist?

I have much more tolerance for liberal Christianity than for crystal-therapy new-agey stuff

Would you mind explaining why? The thing is, Christianity makes a lot of weird claims - that is, claims that would look weird to pretty much anyone who isn't a Christian and hasn't grown up in a majority-Christian society. Miracles are weird. The trinity is weird. The entire concept of original sin, and its redemption through the crucifixion and resurrection, is pretty weird. I really am not trying to offend anyone, and I'm sorry if I offended you, but it seems pretty obvious to me that we weigh non-rational beliefs differently based on how prevalent they are in our culture. My own spiritual/religious beliefs are weird. They're mine, and I believe in them, but I can't pretend they're not weird, and I can't pretend that anyone who doesn't already believe in them has any reason not to think I'm sort of crazy for holding them. That's just the way non-rational beliefs work.

Flee. Don't look back, just flee.

This person is not rational. Now there are plenty of ways one can make a living while not being rational, but all of the non-rational ways have the 99% poverty 1% Gazillionaire model.

As John says, every relationship really needs at least one rational person, but two rational people are even better.

If you mate with this person you will get no credit, you will support the entire clan, and your children will be taught to dislike you because magical thinking is so much nicer than rational thinking.

I am the voice of personal wisdom. Run. Run like the laxative you ate last night.

120: more Durkheim?

One can add to that quote the sense in which we all live in assembly, all the time, even when alone, because our heads are crowded with the thoughts of others.

I think that the difference is describable in concrete physical terms because I don't believe in magic.

Let me try this: If I said that I burned my finger and that it hurt, you could define that "hurt" as a bunch of electrical and chemical activity in my nerves and brain, but it would still be wrong to say that "hurt" is a metaphor for a certain kind of chemical and electrical work.

They may be two different descriptions of the same phenomenon, but that doesn't make "hurt" a subset of the physical description.

Now, I'm not sure that's analogous to the current dispute because "hurt" very clearly describes an emotional state, and I'm not sure whether "energy" does so in a non-metaphorical way, but I think it does.

117: I dunno about that. When I see an audience described as 'energized', I see the implication as that they're going to go do something. "Happy" could mean peaceful and calm, or it could mean something more like "energized".

Anyway, metaphors are imperfect. I'm not saying that physical energy, in the sense of the capacity to do work, is a perfect metaphor for 'that constellation of sights and sounds that would lead us to say "the energy in the room was palpable"', it's imperfect. I am saying that that metaphoric usage -- "my perception of the room was such that I thought the people in it had the capacity to go do something at some impressive level" is what's going on, as opposed to the use of some different meaning for "energy" other than "the capacity to do work".

Ben -- to the extent you disagree with me, what's your definition for "energy" in the alternative sense in which it neither means literally nor metaphorically "the capacity to do work"?

LB, whether there is a physical difference between an engaged and an unengaged crowd and whether I am talking about joules, even metaphorically, when I say the room is full of energy are rather obviously different.

I'm off to swimread Anscombe.

This review of the Rabinbach I mentioned above may prove germane, though not exactly on point. Our ideas about energy and human experience are long intertwined, but it's a mistake to think of the two uses as synonymous. A mistake with a cultural-historical pedigree.

Too late! Off to swim!

One can add to that quote the sense in which we all live in assembly, all the time, even when alone, because our heads are crowded with the thoughts of others.

Indeed:

Moreover, without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence. Though very strong as long as men are together and influence each other reciprocally, they exist only in the form of recollections after the assembly has ended, and when left to themselves, these become feebler and feebler; for since the group is no longer present and active, individual temperaments easily regain the upper hand. But if the movements by which these sentiments are expressed are connected with something that endures, the sentiments themselves become more durable. These other things are constantly bringing them to mind and arousing them; it is as though the cause which excited them in the first place continued to act. Thus these systems of symbols and emblems, which are necessary if society is to become conscious of itself, are no less indispensable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness.

124: I agree with what you're saying about "hurt", the subjective sensation, rather than the physical processes that lead to the sensation, is the referent of the word. I'm just still digging my heels in over the lack of an alternative non-metaphorical definition for 'energy'.

93 is very good, and LB's retraction in 97 reassures me - her prior exchanges with ben sure sounded nuts to me, but she was evidently starting from a weird premise in 4, and carrying it forward from there.

"Palpable energy" is just as concrete an idea as "romantic/physical chemistry," and anyone who denies the existence of these things is nuts. BUT, we don't actually know the mechanisms for these things, and I see no reason to get all uppity* about how people want to talk about it. If/when we ever discover the charisma nodes, and the attraction ducts that bear the empathons to the surface, then New Age and other quasi-spiritual wording may have to go away, but for now, that's a totally legit language AFAIC. Obvs. it can go off the rails, or go too far, but that's always a danger.

Tangentially, did any of you see that the placebo effect for PEDs is huge? Recent study in Australia showed improved endurance, strength, power, and sprint is they believed they were on HGH, even if they weren't. Positive energy flows, obviously.

* Am I correct in believing that this word can, in fact, be used in a non-loaded way, but we're all really touchy about it right now? Not that it can ever be used in a non-loaded way about blacks and other oppressed groups, but that, in a sentence like the one above, it's fine? Also, is that last question mark there correct, or just an indication of spoken tone?

126: Yes, of course those two things are different. I'm trying to figure out what your position is on any level beyond simple contradiction, and so I'm asking you questions about it piece by piece.

77: You are so right. Maybe you shouldn't run away just yet, but I'm basically with Apo, Sir K and JM. I've known many sweet New Age-identified people (and been involved romantically, however briefly, with two or three), but I've also known many who turned out to be among the most uptight, passive-aggressive people I've ever met, which is why I have an instinctive reaction to keep my distance. Granted, I bring a combination of self-loathing and intolerance to relationships (...laydeez), so YMMV, but since you said you're a rationalist, that's what I'd be concerned about. The utter lack of intellectual rigor in the New Age stew of eastern religion, astrology, mysticism and whatever else—not to mention the intolerance of intensity and emotional darkness, or the forced "spirituality" and "sacredness," or the uncritical acceptance of the commercialism of the whole enterprise—drives me fucking nuts. Once the glow of new sex wears off, how will the conversations go?

Yes, I'm a lapsed Catholic who won't call myself a former Catholic. When you have a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition backing up your nonsense, New Age person, I'll reconsider. Until then, I have the afternoon free—wanna get naked?

Dancing in the streets is good on the value of communal dancing. I am not a big new age fan though.

I'm just still digging my heels in over the lack of an alternative non-metaphorical definition for 'energy'.

but there are a huge number of such definitions possible. The difficulty would be settling on one, not coming up with one. We directly perceive lots of emotions as changes in muscle tension, which one can use electrodes to directly measure if one cared to do it. But just like it would be scientistic to insist that invoking the sensation "hurt" always had to be accompanied by a map of nerve impulses, one shouldn't have to apologize for using the term "energy" to refer to the subjective sensation of emotion.

Oh, I semi-retract 131: looks like LB is still being weird on this point. Trying to catch up.

"laydeez" in 133 nearly made me spit coffee all over my keyboard.

131: It's funny -- it's not that "uppity" sounds racial to me out of context, but it seems to me to identify a concept I wouldn't ever use except to disagree with. I understand it to mean something like "behaving as if you were someone's equal when you're not," or "as if you properly belonged to a higher social station when, although that social station does exist, you're not a member". Like, packed into the word is the assumption that inequality between people was real and appropriate to behave in accordance with.

I agree with what you're saying about "hurt", the subjective sensation, rather than the physical processes that lead to the sensation, is the referent of the word. I'm just still digging my heels in over the lack of an alternative non-metaphorical definition for 'energy'.

How about this: It's common to describe a performance (music, stage, etc . . .) as "high energy" or "low energy" in a way that is related to the amount of physical work the performer is doing, but not in a direct or linear relationship.

Would you say that is a metaphorical use of "energy"
?

When you have a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition backing up your nonsense, New Age person, I'll reconsider.

As I recall, this was at the core of some rather controversial comments from Cala back in the day.

138: Yeah, that's how I've used it, more or less always phrased as "don't get all uppity about X." And it's all about people imagining themselves virtuous for holding some position or having some trait.

When you have a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition backing up your nonsense, New Age person, I'll reconsider.

But the New Age person's intellectual tradition goes back to teh Ancient Wisdomology Fromma Dawna Time.

135: So come up with one. I think any plausible definition of 'energy', as an emotional state, is going to come down to 'an emotion that makes you more likely to do stuff actively', which looks to me like a straightforward metaphor derived from the physical meaning.

I think any plausible definition of 'energy', as an emotional state, is going to come down to 'an emotion that makes you more likely to do stuff actively'

Huh? What about an emotional state that relaxes you or calms you down, thereby making you less likely to be active?

131.2 is very good. We all know emotions are contagious, and in crowds can go absolutely crazy. Most of us have no pressing need to explain this phenomenon, and indeed for the most part, we don't. Talk of energies doesn't explain; it merely renames.

If we wanted to develop a real explanation, we could start looking at all kinds of methods of unconscious signaling, but these aren't explanations yet either. Just promises of an explanation of a certain type later.

139: That's right on the line between literal and metaphorical. When I think "high energy" in terms of performance, I think literally stuff that meant that the performer was doing more physical work -- louder noise, more motion and dancing, and so on. I could imagine a 'high energy' performance, I guess, that didn't actually involve the expenditure of more physical energy, and then that would be metaphorical -- the performance as a whole produced emotions in the audience similar to those that would be produced by a louder, dancier, more physically energetic performance.

I think any plausible definition of 'energy', as an emotional state, is going to come down to 'an emotion that makes you more likely to do stuff actively'

Okay, but thinking about the use of "energy" to describe performances it seems really, really odd to say that "high energy" music is more likely to make you dance and that the "energy" referred to is the Jules required for the listeners to dance.

That's where I'm convinced that you're going too far to fit everything into the scientific definition.

When I think "high energy" in terms of performance, I think literally stuff that meant that the performer was doing more physical work

Can't it also mean emotional intensity?

If someone said they saw a performance of Hamlet that "sustained a remarkably high energy level for the entire performance" would you think that everyone was jumping around on stage?

if you're not talking about something physical and perceptible with your five senses, I don't know how to engage with it.

Which of the 5 senses is engaged when you are in the presence of someone with whom you have serious chemistry? I can only assume that you have had the experience of sitting beside someone in a non-romantic context and feeling an intense, subrational desire to do the hott monkey love, but there's no external sensation that we can identify with this.

I think any plausible definition of 'energy', as an emotional state, is going to come down to 'an emotion that makes you more likely to do stuff actively', which looks to me like a straightforward metaphor derived from the physical meaning.

The trouble with this is that people also describe "calming energy."

I'm really not sure why 93 didn't end this tangent; aq pretty clearly laid out that, for reasons that all of us rationalists can grok, humans-as-animals have all sorts of subconscious ways of relating emotionally, and that, while we use metaphorical language for them, that doesn't mean that the metaphors are literal (we still use "animal magnetism" even though the theory behind that phrase has been debunked).

147: That's where I'm convinced that you're going too far to fit everything into the scientific definition.

This may just be a difference of opinion about what 'metaphor' means. I don't know exactly what you mean by 'going too far' -- all the uses of 'energy' I've seen so far seem clearly to me to mean either 'characteristic of actively doing stuff, or of having the potential to actively do stuff in the future,' which doesn't seem like a stretch at all in terms of the physical definition of energy. (Other than maybe PGD's 144, which confuses me, and I'd like to see him use it in a sentence.)

all the uses of 'energy' I've seen so far seem clearly to me to mean either 'characteristic of actively doing stuff, or of having the potential to actively do stuff in the future,' which doesn't seem like a stretch at all in terms of the physical definition of energy. (Other than maybe PGD's 144, which confuses me, and I'd like to see him use it in a sentence.)

Chill out, LB, you're too uptight about this.

Which of the 5 senses is engaged when you are in the presence of someone with whom you have serious chemistry?

Sight and Smell.

The trouble with this is that people also describe "calming energy."

Okay, calming energy still works as the physical metaphor. Say I'm in frictionless physics-land, and I'm in a room with a lot of heavy stuff careening around and crashing against the walls. What am I going to have to expend to stop everything moving? You got it, physical energy.

I could imagine a 'high energy' performance, I guess, that didn't actually involve the expenditure of more physical energy, and then that would be metaphorical -- the performance as a whole produced emotions in the audience similar to those that would be produced by a louder, dancier, more physically energetic performance.

One more thought on this sub-thread: one of the things that can cause a performance to feel high energy is making the transitions between different emotional states crisp and clearly defined (as opposed to vague and meandering) which makes the performance feel more purposeful.

I think it does take more (emotional) work on the part of the performer to do that, but it isn't physical work.

How does that fit into your definition.

Sight and Smell
Possibly hearing as well.

Ancient Wisdomology Fromma Dawna Time.

Yeah, and that whole Mary Mother of God stuff is just co-opted goddess worship.

But the New Age person's intellectual tradition goes back to teh Ancient Wisdomology Fromma Dawna Time.

Oh yes. The Morrigan.

When you have a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition backing up your nonsense, New Age person, I'll reconsider.

This is my view as well. But I'm not prepared to defend it, I suspect it's mostly Catholic chauvinism. The religious-denominational equivalent of Old Money disdain for the vulgar nouveau riche.

Chill out, LB, you're too uptight about this.

That seems unnecessary. I for one am enjoying this.

I would understand if LB was tired of it, but I think there's a real discussion happening (albeit one about semantics).

148: W/r/t the emotionally energetic performance of Hamlet, see the last sentence of my 146. It's a metaphor -- the performance had the capacity to do emotional "work", appeared to involve the expenditure of emotional "effort".

People are reacting as if metaphor meant something insulting, or belittling. I really don't intend it to -- metaphorical use of language is perfectly conventional.

152: Which of the five senses do you use to identify your own emotional state? Do you look in the mirror to see if you are smiling?

Sight and Smell.

Are you positing pheromones, which AFAIK have never been attested in humans? Certainly in a smoky bar the smell of the attractor is not discernible. Sight is dubious, IMO - I see lots of women who are not only attractive in theory, but also in practice (to me specifically), but I rarely feel that chemistry.

I'd like to see him use it in a sentence

She brought a wonderful, calming energy into the room.

I might add that this is what Obama is known for in non-rally situations: coming into a situation, getting everyone to settle down and focus on the relevant issues - conflict resolution stuff. And it has not a thing to do with joules.

I suspect it's mostly Catholic chauvinism

Ya think?

Sight and Smell Possibly hearing

ridiculous. Romantic chemistry is created by intense imaginings about the wonderfulness of the other person. It's the mental process of weaving a fantasy around them, a process that may be inspired by but is hardly exhausted by your sense perceptions of them.

I agree with JRoth that the whole argument about whether to insist on materialist reductionism is reaching diminishing returns. I mean, we can laboriously and boringly engage in such reductionism but there's no reason too.

161 You don't have to posit pheromones to know some people smell nice.

158: she asked me to use a sentence referring to relaxing or calming energy, so I did.

People are reacting as if metaphor meant something insulting, or belittling.

Eh, I don't have much skin in this game, but I still think W-lfs-n's use of "scientism" was apt. You may not intend "metaphor" to be belittling but it does suggest a hierarchy in which the scientific definition is the reference point for every other usage.

161: She brought a wonderful, calming energy into the room.

I addressed this in 153. To spell it out a different way, 'agitation' is a emotional word, derived from a physical metaphor of jittery motion -- shaking something up is agitating it. If something is physically agitated, it takes physical work to bring it to rest. If people are emotionally agitated, it takes emotional work to bring them to rest. "Calming energy" is a physical metaphor for the capacity to do that emotional work.

Which of the five senses do you use to identify your own emotional state?

Well the five senses are external senses, but something close to touch would almost work. I don't tend to think about what my emotional state is without first noticing my physiological response. Right now I am nervous, but I didn't think about it until I realized my foot was tapping a mile a minute and my hear rate was elevated. I also have that keyed up feeling adrenaline gives me.

158: she asked me to use a sentence referring to relaxing or calming energy, so I did.

Got it.

161.2 posted before I saw 153, obvs.

I guess that where I see what LB is getting at is that the metaphor came from a fairly direct analogy: a dynamic (!) speaker excites the listener, who feels more energetic, regardless of whether they start jumping around. From there - using "energy" to denote a specific set of emotions that one person can elicit in another - you extend the metaphor to other situations where energy levels are actually lowered, or emotions are otherwise modified

"Calming energy" is silly.

High energy in the emotional/performance sense can either mean kinetic energy (jumping around, screaming, yelling) or potential energy (the perception that something is about to happen, for example, a barely suppressed rage).

Which of the 5 senses is engaged when you are in the presence of someone with whom you have serious chemistry?

CJB nailed this, but with a big assist from The Biggest Sexual Organ In The Body.

Romantic chemistry is created by intense imaginings about the wonderfulness of the other person. It's the mental process of weaving a fantasy around them, a process that may be inspired by but is hardly exhausted by your sense perceptions of them

But why do you fantasize about person A and not person B? There has to be a trigger.

"Calming energy" is a physical metaphor for the capacity to do that emotional work.

I say that analyzing the work of bringing agitated muscles to rest is a physical metaphor for the introduction of calming energy, which is the underlying process. Prove me wrong!

I mean, why this insistence on laboriously tracing out chains of mechanical causation as though they were the most significant way of describing something? Isn't the choice to describe things that way driven by an irrational committment to scientism?

You don't have to posit pheromones to know some people smell nice.

That's why I followed up with the smoky bar. I bet that people with stuffed-up noses still feel chemistry with others at times.

I couldn't personally stand to spend any time at all with someone who _completely_ bought into various creduluous New Age beliefs. It's the smorgasbord approach that's crazy when combined with the belief in the literal truth of the various beliefs.

That said, I'm not completely dismissive of some of the practices that are associated with it. I can be convinced that various 'Eastern' movement practices: tai chi, qi gong, yoga, etc are pretty effective as tools. I just don't buy the idea that there is literally qi or prana, or whatever.

I'm perfectly happy, though, with interpreting terms like qi, prana, and so on instrumentally.* If someone wants to call a particular pattern of bodily tension and relaxation 'channeling the qi to the dan tien' or whatever, fair play to them, especially if it works.

* in the philosophical sense - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism

the performance had the capacity to do emotional "work", appeared to involve the expenditure of emotional "effort".

I think this begs the question.

You're saying that if we assume that "emotional work" is a metaphor (analogy?) for "physical work" we can then talk about all sorts of uses of "energy" in emotional contexts as referring to "emotional work."

But whether or not "emotional work" is explicitly metaphorical is the question under discussion.

I suppose I'm just a very intolerant person; I can't even imagine being a good friend of someone with New Age beliefs, much less romantically involved with them. It's not quite as repulsive as right-wing attitudes, but it's pretty far up there. That sort of deep credulity just really troubles me, and it tends to make me view the believer as insincere, because how can they really mean the crazy things they say?

But why do you fantasize about person A and not person B? There has to be a trigger.

well of course we have to interact with the world in some way to get the raw material for our thoughts. But people live in their heads much more than their senses, is my point.

I can't help but be reminded of this from "Cargo Cult Science" by Richard Feynman:

One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?"

I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?"

"Sure", she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.

I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it", he says. "I feel a kind of dent -- is that the pituitary?"

I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!"

They looked at me, horrified -- I had blown my cover -- and said, "It's reflexology!"

I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.

Which is actually talking about his trip to Esalen, incidentally.

I could date someone with beliefs like Pants, no problem, despite thinking that their religion was flaky, so long as they didn't mind my opinion on the flakiness.

I'm totally cool with someone thinking I'm a flake. I don't invite others to do anything that I do, spiritually, because it's not something that requires or benefits from outside validation and it isn't my business to encourage or discourage any spiritual activity or lack thereof in anyone else's life. I was at a Christian wedding recently where the minister made a point of saying "the union between a man and a woman" three times and I didn't bat an eyelash because, guess what, it wasn't my wedding and it wasn't about me.

Most of my friends are either some variety of flaky neopagan, as am I, or staunch atheists. We don't talk about one another's beliefs because nobody's beliefs are anyone else's business. This has the added benefit of letting us all hate together on anyone who evangelizes for any belief at all.

Seriously, though, I just don't get the big deal. I can name at least three marriages I know between fiercely analytical, highly rational atheists and sacred spirit dance types and none of them break down over it because nobody lectures anybody on what to believe and good humor is met with the same. If you and she like each other and she doesn't tell you your rationalism is wrong (which would be (a) incorrect and (b) stupid and (c) an excellent reason to run the fuck away) then I'd say as long as you don't tell her that her irrational beliefs are wrong, well... what's your beef? Is it that your beliefs have revealed a truth you can't tolerate someone else sharing? Hrm... I think I've heard that somewhere before. (That's meant as gentle ribbing, not a flame.) Tell her you disagree if asked, or if you're expected to participate or if you get the impression she expects to win you over to her own way of thinking, yes. You are clearly capable of not allowing someone else to tell you what to think; don't let love blind you to more subtle sales jobs but don't see a wall where there isn't any.

ha. this is precisely why the sex with her is so wonderful. It comes with emotional bonding, though.

I'm not sure I'm reading this right, so I'd like some clarification. Are you saying, 'hey, the sex is great but why does it have to be emotional?' or are you saying, 'hey, the sex is great but I think it's because we're emotionally bonding, not because of her religion?'

I'm only halfway through the thread but am about to leave work and thus be un-Unfogged (Befogged, I guess) for the weekend and could feel my ears burning so figured I'd check in.

173: I see myself making a linguistic, rather than a philosophical point here. People use physical metaphors for emotional states because physical metaphors are easy to communicate, while emotional states are private. "Agitated" is a description of physical motion that can be pointed to, and so when one person has an emotion, and want to communicate it to another person, the first person can use the physical metaphor to describe his internal emotional state. That doesn't make physical motion more significant or important than emotional states, but it does mean that with respect to the word "agitated", the physical meaning is the original meaning, and the emotional meaning arose out of a metaphoric usage -- "my emotions were such that I felt as if I were being shaken to and fro."

Likewise, the original meaning of 'energy' is the physical meaning -- the capacity to do work. All the emotional meanings arise out of metaphorical uses of that original physical meaning. I do not by this mean to denigrate the emotions, or to say that people who use metaphors are silly people. All I mean is that the use of 'energy' to describe an audience, or a performance, can be traced back to people using the physical meaning of 'energy' to describe an emotional state that seemed to them to be similar to physical energy.

re: 177

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you in terms of my gut reaction to people who genuinely believe certain things.

As I said, I have no problem with some of the things that New Agers practice, although those things are not rooted in New Ageism, just co-opted by it.

There has to be a trigger.

Agreed. But I think it's dumb (no offense) to reduce it to Sight and Smell, or other gross senses. My point - the reason I responded as I did in 149 - is that I think that it's pretty obvious that we respond to all sorts of environmental cues that are subconscious - we couldn't identify them if we tried, and insofar as we try, we are rationalizing, in every sense of the term.

IOW, no team of scientists, with all the recording devices in the world, could show why one half of blind double date between two pairs of twins ends up with one couple in bed and the other in separate cabs by 8 PM*. There's so much shit going on, and our 5 gross senses are wholly inadequate to dealing with it. And that's fine! There's really no benefit to applying scientism to this situation, and we all live with it and understand it viscerally - we're animals, and deal with one another socially and physically based far more on preconscious brain activity than on anything that can be pinpointed

* Yes, there will be obvious cues like head tilts and arm touches and the like. Those are effect, not cause. And underlying psychology is beside the point - presuming that everyone is willing and able, it becomes secondary to personal chemistry that develops in the event. Just trying to head off some of the more obvious responses.

The Biggest Sexual Organ In The Body

Maybe among *your* people.

179 is a good for both sides of the argument, as the new-age couple are vacuous and Feynman is vastly less entertaining and witty than he believes.

Further to 182: To make me believe that I was wrong about this, you'd have to make me believe that I was wrong about it as a historical matter of language use -- that uses of "energy" in the emotional senses didn't originally derive from metaphorical uses of "energy" in the physical sense.

To make me believe that I was wrong about this, you'd have to make me believe that I was wrong about it as a historical matter of language use -- that uses of "energy" in the emotional senses didn't originally derive from metaphorical uses of "energy" in the physical sense.

What's the link to W-lfs-n's OED script?

That doesn't make physical motion more significant or important than emotional states, but it does mean that with respect to the word "agitated", the physical meaning is the original meaning, and the emotional meaning arose out of a metaphoric usage -- "my emotions were such that I felt as if I were being shaken to and fro."

The etymology of "agitated" is an empirical question. I truly doubt the original meaning for words like these, in general, is the more naturalistic one. I can easily envision how the physical meaning was originally derived as a metaphor from the emotional one.

Crossed with 187.

As long as people are complaining about thoughtless, scientistic complaints about the use of the word "energy," I'd like to report that while I've never used the word "spiritual" to describe an experience of mine, I have attended sacred dance events and had experiences it would be perfectly rational to describe as "spiritual"; I just don't come from a culture where I learned to use that word to describe the subjective state I was in. I think when LB or anyone else calls participation in sacred dance events irrational, they are being both irrationally scientistic and irrationally tribal. It would do everyone a lot of good to consider that they don't know how many of their own beliefs are entirely irrational, and I say that as a rah, rah science type. FTR, one did have to pay a not insignificant amount of money to participate, though I was a guest. You also have to pay for drugs, another means to experiences that can reasonably be described as spiritual. I certainly danced in a different way than I would just being goofy with my friends, not because I used the word "sacred" but because the norms of the gathering called for a different, more rigorously abandoned kind of dance. People don't generally call contact improv sacred, but it establishes norms for movement that are unlike how most people behave with their friends. And finally, I'm rather mystified at the mockery of the idea of dance as sacred; it seems to me that dance as worship has a long and venerable tradition.

someone else sharing

Someone else not sharing, of course. My people suck at preview; we're all too busy humping crystals in the woods.

Agreed. But I think it's dumb (no offense) to reduce it to Sight and Smell, or other gross senses. My point - the reason I responded as I did in 149 - is that I think that it's pretty obvious that we respond to all sorts of environmental cues that are subconscious - we couldn't identify them if we tried, and insofar as we try, we are rationalizing, in every sense of the term.

OK, I don't think I disagree with PGD or you basically. I would agree that "Chemistry" between people happens mostly in their heads. I was just saying that what sets off whatever it is that gets set off is coming from one of the 5 senses there isn't some nebulous energy that you are sensing from the other person.

I wasn't positing pheromones just that smell is a very strong trigger for memory and emotion.

Likewise, the original meaning of 'energy' is the physical meaning -- the capacity to do work.

The oldest meaning I know is the Greek word "Energia," which actually means activity or actuality. In Aristotle it is often translated "action." It is considered the opposite of "Dynomous" is generally translated potential, and is in some ways closer in meaning to our word "Energy."

The meaning "potential to do work" or MV^2 is basically from Leibniz, and is a really very recent.

To make me believe that I was wrong about this, you'd have to make me believe that I was wrong about it as a historical matter of language use -- that uses of "energy" in the emotional senses didn't originally derive from metaphorical uses of "energy" in the physical sense.

OED suggests that you might be on the losing side here. The earliest use is

With reference to speech or writing: Force or vigour of expression. ... This sense (found in late L. and in Romanic) is originally derived from an imperfect understanding of Aristotle's use of (Rhet. III. xi. §2) for the species of metaphor which calls up a mental picture of something 'acting' or moving.

I'll go back to a more pragmatic level, and say that if a person is high functioning, the new age-y belief system doesn't matter much. I could probably procure a friend for any of the deprecated beliefs above, but you know what? I met them all in the naked vegetarian co-op at Berkeley and they all got graduate degrees. They're living good professional and personal lives now. They have their shit together and have goddess shrines.

Mind you, these are also the people back in college who also convinced me that it is possible to do all sorts of recreational drugs and ace your classes. If you're good, you have the leeway for drugs or spirituality.

189: With respect to "agitated", it's an empirical question that I know the answer to -- it's from a Latin word ago, agere, which means to set in motion but which was used in all sorts of idiomatic senses in Latin.

With respect to "energy", I'm sure the word predates the current physical definition, but I'd bet a fair amount that all our current usages derive ultimately from a use of it in a physical sense.

Elbee's basic problem is that "energy" was discussed in the sciences back when an "God is pure energia" was a scientific question. The physicalism and divide between religion and science she assumes are all very recent.

Oudemia or W-lfs-n could help here

Pwned by 194 and 195, but: the technical meaning of "energy" is really quite late. After all, physics didn't exist until the 17th century or so. A relatively modern concept of energy didn't exist until, I don't know, Hamilton? Emmy Noether?

Amazingly, we don't actually speak ancient Greek. Modern European languages borrowed an ancient Greek word for some mysterious reason. I claim that it wasn't originally borrowed by New Agers, but by scientists.

I'm pretty sure that 182 agrees with 170, so: Comity!

Getting back to the original question, the strongest argument I see in favor of New Agey stuff is the things that they've gotten right before mainstream rationalists. I'm not trying to pick a fight or make extravagant claims (I really know very little about it), but for one big example:

Visualization. 45 years ago, if you told Mickey Mantle to "visualize" hitting HRs as a path to success, he'd probably have called you a faggot. Now it's SOP for athletes. It's incredibly effective - I've read things indicating that, for fine motor skill type activities, visualization is more effective than additional practice (ie, you're better off with an hour in the batting cage + an hour visualizing than you are with 2 hours in the batting cage).

It's not that rationalists necessarily were anti-visualization - AFAIK, there were no pogroms against visualizers in academia - but it's something that came from New Agey practices*, was viewed as being just as dubious as aromatherapy and chakras, but turns out to be awesome. Which suggests to me that there's a lot more to New Ageism than a number of people here would admit.

* As phrased in ttaM's 183, with which I substantially agree

Right now I need to work up the energy to go running, and if there were someone else here for me to run with we would find this much easier to do.

Thanks Gonerill, that's just the sort of thing I'm talking about. Aristotle would use the word Energia in physics and rhetoric and in talking about the soul and not think twice.

197: Hrm. I'm too lazy to dig up quotes over time, but I would guess rather that the "metaphorical" uses of energy and the technical ones all stem from the earlier definition which just meant some sort of activity or motion.

I think the conversation is slipping a bit. What sense Aristotle used the word "energia" in isn't relevant (or, at least, I don't concede that it's relevant) unless the current usages of "energy", to mean an emotional state, or a characteristic of a performance, or what-all, derive directly from Aristotle's usage rather than from a physical usage. "I felt energetic", e.g., clearly is a physical metaphor -- "I felt filled with the capacity to go do stuff".

181: Thanks for a great response, McManly. The "what's your beef" question is a good one. Two issues. First, the concerns about magical thinking Tripp expressed in comment 122. Second, my ideal relationship includes a pretty deep level of mutual understanding and a lot of communication about how we see the world. Not for the sake of conflict resolution but just, you know, to share, which is fun on its own. I'm wondering the extent to which that is possible across this kind of divide.

I suppose both of these concerns are best addressed by, you know, getting to know her better. But it's more fun to ask y'all.

Are you saying, 'hey, the sex is great but why does it have to be emotional?' or are you saying, 'hey, the sex is great but I think it's because we're emotionally bonding, not because of her religion?'

more the second, although I think there's a sense in which her spiritual practices make her better at bonding (sex as sacred dance?). That's fine, though, it's part of her as a person. But the reason I noted the emotional bonding is because some people seemed to be suggesting sticking with the sexual fun temporarily and then splitting later. Bonding makes that more difficult.

OK, I said in 201 that I was turning back to the ATM question, but didn't actually do so.

What I was getting at in 201 wrt the question is that, if you view New Ageism as having some validity (which aq seems to do, with his thread-derailing acceptance of energy), then it shouldn't be a deal-breaker, even if the Sacred Dancer also adheres to some stuff that's crap. There may of course be deal-breakers - if she actually starts sacrificing bunnies to Eostre, or won't leave the house without checking the auspices of tonight's seitan - but as long as spending time with this woman isn't a full-time New Age carnival, it's probably worth laying back a little bit and enjoying the ride.

Either she'll settle down about some of this stuff (putting it into perspective), or you'll discover that you can't handle it after all. But I'm not convinced that, as long as you can resist condescension, you can't learn to love her, embracing some of her flakiness and giving a pass on the rest.

dancing in the woods would make me happy
that's minus ions are working calmingly
my latest theory is that people also maybe could emit those under certain circumstances
the nature of one's positive energy was explained by endorphins iirc

IOW, the emotional sense of "energy" isn't any more metaphorical than the physical sense. Neither is metaphorical, because they're both so well established. The emotional sense is more nebulous, but that's not the same thing as being metaphorical. The physical sense has the potential to be more specific, but nebulous handwaving about body motions and muscle movements isn't specific at all. And in principle, if we understood the brain more thoroughly, we could describe it very accurately and precisely in psychological terms (as well as neuroscience terms).

LB's physical description of the meaning of "energy" may be pointing to the right place, but a description that points to a meaning isn't the same thing as a meaning.

201: (I would note that, to the extent I've been coming off as a 'scientism'-filled snob (I don't know that word -- I'm understanding it as a sneer, and what it roughtly refers to, but not exactly) I said pretty much exactly this way, way, way upthread.)

"I felt energetic", e.g., clearly is a physical metaphor -- "I felt filled with the capacity to go do stuff".

Disagree. The word "energetic" here is used in one of its primary sense, without implicitly being based on any others.

210: In my experience people use "scientism" either as a way of attacking the hand-wavy application of "science" to things science hasn't really explained yet (think evolutionary psychology), or as a way of sneering (sans argument) at the idea that everything in the world ultimately has a scientific explanation. It is sometimes difficult to tell which is in use.

210: I wouldn't say scientism is snobbery, exactly, but that it's reductionist. Sucks the juice out of life. I mean, I'd argue that certain human experiences are ineffable and understandable only on their own terms. I wouldn't want to reduce the first time I heard Beethoven's 9th to my eardrums vibrating at a particular frequency and then happy juices being released because of early patterning of my brain to recognize certain harmonies. Same for many other experiences. I don't see the point of it. It seems not so much snobbish as oddly defensive.

209: Neither is metaphorical, because they're both so well established.

I'm not rolling over for this one on the basis of one cite to Aristotle -- when I get home to my OED, I'm looking for more history.

While I know the KE=1/2MVsquared formula is no earlier than eighteenth, maybe seventeenth century, that doesn't mean that the history of the word in English isn't primarily about doing physically perceptible work or engaging in physically perceptible activity.

whatever it is that gets set off is coming from one of the 5 senses there isn't some nebulous energy that you are sensing from the other person.

(Almost) certainly. But since we can't identify which sense are involved, I think it's sciencey at best to say, "We can precisely explain emotional chemistry - it comes through the normal 5 senses." Not that anyone said that, but I thought LB was shading that way, and I wanted to register objection.

I've had 3 dogs, 2 of which were absurdly empathetic - crawling into your lap at the least show of emotion. My current dog is reasonably tuned in to me, but doesn't act that way. I don't think it's because he lacks any senses, but is just less emotionally attuned, so to speak. It's nothing that science can pin down, but it's real. I personally don't need New Ageism or spirituality in order to think about this, but I wouldn't sneer at someone who did (even if I might roll my eyes a bit at people who act as if dogs are people).

211: I challenge you to describe the emotion named in the sentence "I felt energetic" without using physical metaphor.

I think we need to decide whether deciding if a word's usage is metaphorical in principle needs to appeal to history, or whether being metaphorical or not is something that can be determined entirely by current usage. I would learn toward the latter.

From the Wikipedia definition of scientism.

The term is also used to pejoratively refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry," with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience". It thus expresses a position critical of (at least the more extreme expressions of) positivism

I challenge you to describe the emotion named in the sentence "I felt energetic" without using physical metaphor.

"Excited"? Doesn't pass the LB test, but not a metaphor by my lights. Eager, anticipating, ready, willing, happy, ecstatic. To some extent emotion is hard to describe without using physical language, because to some extent emotion is sensation. Being "full of energy" means you can feel the energy in your bones.

210: Funny, I think understanding that the visceral response that I had to Beethoven's 9th is purely due to a extremely long string of physical and scientific occurrences makes the whole thing that much more wondrous.

I will be leading a retreat in the Grand Tetons during which we shall perform a sacred dance to The Invisible Hand, wherein we shall solve the banking crisis and stave off GD2. I expect attendance from Paulson and Bernake, but Barney Frank has already declined. The fees involved are several billion less than the current bailout plan.

217: Oh, there are certainly dead metaphors -- "evolve" just means change, now, rather than "unfold", even metaphorically, despite the fact that it was originally coined from a Latin word meaning "unfold". I am certain (in the could be wrong, but I'm certain sense) that the emotional uses of "energy" are historically derived from physical metaphor, and I don't think (but am less dogmatic about) that metaphor is dead.

Modern European languages borrowed an ancient Greek word for some mysterious reason. I claim that it wasn't originally borrowed by New Agers, but by scientists.

Not to pick on Walt, but this seems to be pretty clearly 100% wrong - the word evidently developed as part of Greek from Indo-European and by the time of Aristotle was used to describe non-Joule things, including emotions, etc. It's been in continuous usage since then - the Romans borrowed it, the Romance languages spread it, and the Normans (presumably) brought it to England. At none of those times was it exclusively a technical term for scientific or mechanical things.

And this makes perfect sense! The exhilarating feeling that comes from, say, seeing your smiling baby feels just like the exhilarating feeling of running down a hillside (a non-metaphoric high energy situation). Your heartrate's up, your endorphins are flowing, etc.

re: 214

The OED gives 5 senses in the etymology. And attributes two of them to Aristotle and 'energia'. One is rhetorical and used "for the species of metaphor which calls up a mental picture of something 'acting' or moving".

The other sense attributed to Aritotle, is:
"Exercise of power, actual working, operation, activity; freq. in philosophical language"

219: Eager, anticipating, ready, willing

All these words are forward-looking -- you are eager for something, anticipating something, ready to do something, willing to do something. They're all truncated phrases that seem clearly to me to refer to action of some sort.

happy, ecstatic

These don't seem to me to describe "energetic" well -- I wouldn't call either of them synonyms or near synonyms.

197

With respect to "energy", I'm sure the word predates the current physical definition, but I'd bet a fair amount that all our current usages derive ultimately from a use of it in a physical sense.

I think you are incorrect about this. Physics borrowed a number of words (force, energy, work, power etc) from standard English and gave them technical meanings which were related to but not exactly the same as the common meaning. Jumping on people for continuing to use the common meaning seems wrong.

As is so often the case in these convoluted Unfogged arguments, I don't understand what's at issue any more or why it matters.

BTW, according to the OED, the earliest use in English seems to be for force of expression in writing.

224: Eh, 100% wrong I would disagree with. The modern technical usage is a modern technical usage. But the conventional English usage is one relating to activity or motion, and by metaphorical extension non-physical activity or motion.

according to the OED, the earliest use in English seems to be for force of expression in writing.

Hmmm, LB's comments frequently possess great energy?

I don't understand what's at issue any more or why it matters.

These words are not meant to communicate meaning, these words are for arguing. Communicating is the next blog over.

224: I have read otherwise (I'm not sure where). But it doesn't matter. People can borrow scientific words for non-scientific purposes.

228 describes a conversational equilibrium that we are much more likely to reach in any given thread than "comity". It should have a name.

When I was in high school, I let it be known that my mom was into various New Agey things. One time a friend was over and complained about a stomachache. "Do you have any mystical remedies, Wrongshore's mom?" My mom took the opening and made him lie on the couch with a 25-pound amethyst geode on his stomach.

The modern technical usage is a modern technical usage.

Sure, but I don't think it was borrowed from Greek - or we'd use energeia (no italics) when we were talking Joules, and energy for plain-English usages. Instead, with a 2000+ year history of energy as an everyday word that could refer either to Joule-type things or to emotional states, Newton (or whoever) went with 'energy.' (Or 'energie' or some shit)

Anyway, talk about quibbling.

Hey, what should we all talk about tonight? Any ideas?

My mom took the opening and made him lie on the couch with a 25-pound amethyst geode on his stomach.

HA! That'll teach the little shit to try to be smart.

98.4 and 234.2 are trying to tell me something.

As is so often the case in these convoluted Unfogged arguments, I don't understand what's at issue any more or why it matters.

I think the issue is people having different definitions of the word "metaphorical".

Argh. The conversation's moved around enough so that I think I've now, through over-simplification on my part on the front end, and then arguing with too many different people arguing too many different things throughout, gotten myself into a position where I'm saying things that I can't defend (and on which I seem to be historically mistaken in part).

Things I believe about the word "Energy": in any sense in which it's being correctly (that is, comprehensibly) used, it refers to some quality relating to the capacity to take action or to cause something to move, or to the process of taking action or causing something to move. (Cut me some slack on this grammatically, ktx?)

It meant something along these lines in a physical sense before the current scientific understanding of 'energy' was developed; when that understanding of 'energy' was developed, scientists used the English word as having an appropriate meaning.

Whatever the antiquity of non-physical referents for the term 'energy', current usages of 'energy' in non-physical senses generally derive some meaning from physical metaphor -- people think about energy flowing from one person to another, they say things like "the energy was palpable", it is conventionally linguistically treated, even when used in non-physical, as if it were a physical substance or quality.

234: Hey, I used to work in a New Age crystal shop. Amethyst is for headaches, not stomachaches -- purple is the color of the third eye chakra. Sheesh. No wonder you're all confused about this stuff.

241: My mom was a fraud.

Well, so was I, of course. But I was a fraud relying on the New Age reference books in the store.

LB, I think you're way out on a skinny limb here. As late as the 18th c. and into the 19th, mental movements like emotions and sympathies and whatnot were described in very much the same language as physical movements. This is partly because there wasn't a real disciplinary division between "physics" on the one hand and "psychology" on the other, and it was partly because nobody had any flipping idea how brains worked but knew it was really important to try to figure it out.

This is one of the reasons it's so interesting to go back and look at rhetorical manuals from before, say, 1820. People literally believed that words had certain physical properties to make audiences feel a certain way. Communication of any sort starts to look a bit like dark magic, if you don't have a modern conception of the way the brain works.

This may be the stupidest conversation I've seen really smart people having in a long time. All uses of the term "energy" in modern english usage really boil down to a "metaphor" for some kind of (nebulously) scientific meaning which (nebulously) ties into the first law of thermodynamics? Really? And any other use is irrational? Even though the usage clearly predated the scientific definition and is clearly used in a number of different ways that don't even remotely track the scientific definition, at least without a lot of ex post facto twisting and turning and justification.

When Ceasar Milan tells me to use "calm, submissive energy" with my dog, I have a clear sense of what he means. Also, the concept is practically useful. That doesn't mean that I'm transmitting "calm" joules to my dog or that I'm no longer a rational human being for following his advice.

This thread is, for the first time in my life perhaps, making me want to join up with team freaky new agers.

244, 245: See my 239, including particularly the first word, and including confessions of having been, in part, historically mistaken. If either of you want to disagree with something particular I said in an an identified comment, I'm all ears, and may agree that I'm wrong about whatever specific statement of mine you're addressing.

238: If I may, I haven't read the whole thread with perfect attention, so I apologize if this had been covered before, but what LizardBreath is calling a metaphor, some others might call a different level of explanation. The difference between calling it a metaphor and a level of explanation is that calling it a description a metaphor implies that it's at some remove from reality, whereas a different level of explanation may in fact be more apposite. If I'm right that it's Patricia Churchland who has the very obnoxious habit of saying it is more correct to say her seratonin levels are low than that she is feeling sad (maybe I'm confused about who that is), she is arguing that a more reductive level of explanation is necessarily *more correct*. In fact, emotions may never be fully productively explained at the level of neurotransmitters, much less atoms or particles. I don't think that it makes sense to think of "feeling the energy in the room" as a metaphor for joules. Energy is an emotion, that can productively be described at the same level we use to speak of sadness or anger.

This may be the stupidest conversation I've seen really smart people having in a long time.

You must be new.

I guess I'm still disagreeing that the anonymous questioner is a flake. But I think you already retracted that part.

Here is basically my position: it's possible to agree that "there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies [science]" but yet be alarmed by crystal healers. It's really not one thing or another. I accept, for instance, that Ancient Chinese Medicine might have found---probably through trial and error, unfortunately---some rather interesting neural pathways that are conceptualised as "chi." Doesn't mean I want to take up acupuncture, doesn't mean that I'm going to mock those who do.

I probably got the discussion largely off on the wrong foot when I used "joules" and then picked up someone else's usage of the first law of thermodynamics to identify energy in the physical sense -- I meant to use it as shorthand for physicality, rather than for scientific exactitude, but it seems to have been understood in the latter sense.

You must be new.

Yeah, this won't even crack the top 50.

Yeah, I withdrew calling him a flake when he said he wasn't talking about 'healing energy' in the sense of anything that would have physical effects. I'm still sticking with the position that had he said what I understood him to have said, that would be flaky.

then picked up someone else's usage of the first law of thermodynamics to identify energy in the physical sense

That was me, and I mentioned the FLoT specifically because of the implication that all forms of energy are interchangeable (and that changing the form of energy neither creates or destroys energy).

That might not have been helpful, but that was what I had in mind.

I think the main problem with crystal healing therapy is that it doesn't actually seem to actually work, at all, except maybe possibly as a placebo. It's not just that the theory behind it is wack, but that you have to be pretty wacked out to think that it's actually doing you any good.

That differentiates it from yoga, or tai chi, or accupuncture, or, for that matter psychotherapy, which also have self-justifying "theories" that seem incorrect, but which actually work wonders despite hokey foundations. I'm willing, for example, to cut yoga enthusiasts a lot of slack because they really seem to be onto something that works, and their terminology can be useful. I think someone said something similar upthread.

My main problem with new agey types is aesthetics: their clothes are hideous and I really can't stand those angel dolls.

206: I think Tripp's 122 raises a fine point, too. If she is incapable of drawing a distinction between the spiritual life she's inhabiting and the material world she shares with everyone else and that makes it impossible to share credit, give praise, ask for or offer help, etc., yes, hell of run. If she needs to consult the oracles to split a check, don't hesitate to get out. You are quite right, though; you will only find that out by getting to know her better. You undoubtedly know already that life is one big gamble but that doesn't make it easy to roll the dice, even when it's fun.

I don't blame you for thinking about these things, but don't let some negative experiences with others of similar spiritual persuasion dissuade you from seeing her as an individual. If you're just worried what other people might think, fuck what everybody thinks.

If you bond emotionally but her religion and your principled rejection of religion make it impossible, at least you tried; at least the thing that drove you apart wasn't money or a kid or an affair, y'know? Just as I don't see it as a reason to avoid her, neither do I think you're a bad person for thinking about it now or if it becomes a bigger deal in future.

With respect to the new age use of the term energy, my problem with it comes down to 2 points, and not matching the scientific definition is not one of them.

1. Energy is often used as a catch-all term, much like spirituality. You can't get a new ager to nail down what they mean by energy, whether it is something physically observable in the universe, or if it is supernatural, and even if you can, I'll bet that most new age types will disagree. It indicates unclear thinking.

2. Energy, as a term, is often used to try and gain some scientific credibility for new age ideas through equivocation. Who hasn't heard "I believe in life after death because energy is conserved". Energy by the scientific definition is conserved, but that has nothing to do with your soul or consciousness, much less life after death. I've had it argued that acupuncture's classical explanation is reasonable (not whether or not it works, which I am willing to grant that there is some evidence that it does work for some of the things it is used for, mainly pain) because who can argue that energy flows through your body. This is true, but misleading. Energy does flow through your body in the form of various chemicals, in a well know way scientifically. Acupuncture does not affect it.

I propose that new age uses of the term energy can be translated in to several different terms: a mood or feeling (such as calming energy, above), qi or chi or whatever other term you prefer for this supernatural belief, a soul or spirit, and probably a bunch of others I can't think of.

That was me, and I mentioned the FLoT specifically because of the implication that all forms of energy are interchangeable (and that changing the form of energy neither creates or destroys energy).

This brings back ancient memories of my high-school chemistry class. The two girls sitting next to me were chatting before class started. "So you really, like, don't believe in God? Then what do you think happens when you die?", the cheerleader-type asked. "Well, you know how, like, we have energy inside us? And like we learned in class, energy is never created or destroyed? I think when we die, our energy, like, becomes part of other people because it can't be destroyed," the New Agey-type replied. [Really, they were the epitome of their respective stereotypes.] Cheerleader-type's response: "That is so cool! I never thought about it that way! My energy can't be destroyed!"

At this point my face was buried in my hands, and when I looked up, the chemistry teacher winked at me.

Cynique hits it on the head in 247, except for "In fact, emotions may never be fully productively explained at the level of neurotransmitters, much less atoms or particles." But the rest is spot on.

I agree with LB's original position, restated in 252, I just don't think she explained it very well. I think that people who use the word "energy" in senses where they assert that the energy is physically real, but not the kind of energy that can be explained by science, they're flaky. And by "flaky", I mean "not a reductionist". I have high standards. (And I'm still single, unlike teo.)

I'm sort of with Halford in that the energy discussion makes me want to blow my brains out, but I'm sincerely glad if other people are into it. (Especially that they're into it in a place where I don't have to hear it.)

psychotherapy, [...] which actually work[s] wonders despite hokey foundations

Well, sometimes. On average, I guess it's marginally effective, about the same as meds in fact (for depression--meds for other disorders can be more or less effective).

To the original ATM question: Is the anonymous questioner fooling himself that he can be happy with the new agey woman? Of course only he (you) can answer that, and it has a lot to do with how important sharing things (thoughts and activities) is in a relationship, and whether your skepticism about her beliefs is respectful or shades into downright scorn and contempt.

About the sharing things in a relationship: I've tried a relationship in which my partner was my opposite in a lot of ways, and while it was refreshing and actually soothing not to be with someone who felt like my clone, it became seriously problematic after a while. He wasn't a talker, to use my mother's term for this, and became annoyed with all my talking. On the other hand, plenty of people say that they've made those sorts of relationships work.

I was involved with someone for a while who was new agey, though he didn't use that term, and was more pagan, to my mind. When I realized that I was really falling for him, I began reading quite a bit about Ye Olde Belief Systems Fromma Dawna Time. Hell, it's what I always do when I just don't get something; and I'm the sort who really does need to be able to share in a partner's world in some fashion. It helped, the reading. It was fascinating, and it didn't really matter that I needed to approach the subject from an intellectual angle.

I'd certainly give the new agey woman a lot more time, try to determine how much she might want to share her new agey thoughts/activities with you, and see whether you just come to a full stop at that prospect or not (hence the reading).

About whether new agey beliefs are downright Unacceptable: my feeling is that as long as they don't actively harm others, no big deal. It's one thing to want to pass a crystal over someone's broken foot, but another to refuse to bring that person to the hospital. Etc. The sacred dancing and such? Is healing to the practitioner, and is no more objectionable than any other tradition and ritual.

I'm sure glad I left when I did.

It's common to describe a performance (music, stage, etc . . .) as "high energy" or "low energy" in a way that is related to the amount of physical work the performer is doing, but not in a direct or linear relationship.

In fact, one can also describe a performance as "high energy" even when that is negatively correlated with the amount of work being performed. Sure: Brötzmann blowing his lungs out is likely to be "high energy", but so might a quietly intense, relatively low-volume but within that range well-modulated, performance. Some very quiet performances—music along these lines, for instance—can be "high energy", and you might well say something about the energy in the venue or audience; the "air" can positively "crackle" with "tension" (which isn't to say that the actual terms from materials science, as used in materials science, are imbricated, though their (possibly highly unscientific folk forebears (fore, pace Walt) probably are) and "energy" and shit, even though the audience is not in a state in which it's prepared to do anything, nor are the performers, and nor might anyone, ever, be tempted to think that that's what's meant.

258.1 is would be better sans proviso.

I guess since I haven't read any of the comments but a few since my last comment about swimming, this isn't likely to be apropos. I will say that I find LB's characterization of "my position" as "simple contradiction" kind of rude.

As an exercise for the reader, if it hasn't come up yet, who can identify the fallacy here? I think any plausible definition of 'energy', as an emotional state, is going to come down to 'an emotion that makes you more likely to do stuff actively', which looks to me like a straightforward metaphor derived from the physical meaning. (The fallacy isn't the screamingly obvious descriptive inadequacy of the proposed plausible definition of "energy".)

Oh shit, this thread had been quiet for a long time when I posted that. Now it'll probably start again. Fuck.

Well, for the record, I'm through.

262.last: As an exercise for the reader, if it hasn't come up yet, who can identify the fallacy here?

I can, I can!

Oh. Sorry.

I can, I can!

Parsimon is known for her energetic prose.

262.4: Ahh, but with the proviso there is opportunity for more heated discussion! Which is, after all, the meaning of life.

I think that the energy discussion was insane. It's a metaphor, and that's OK, and joules-energy is a fairly late concept and not the original concept, and the metaphor is meaningful even though not reducible to joules.

No one seems to have mentioned the XIXc period when electrical energy and metabolic energy were just being defined and spun off a lot of philosophical, mystical and cultural metaphors, sort of the way relativity and quantum physics did.

Recentlt I was trying to figure out whether Nietzsche used the metaphors "force" and "power" consistently with their definitions in physics. My guess is no, and that he might not have distinguished them clearly at all. But it might be worth looking into.

No one seems to have mentioned the XIXc period

Anson Rabinbach! Anson Rabinbach! See 96.

262.last: is it begging the question? Please don't make me show my work.

Also, ben, I may need you to write me a note to get out of either a) my writing group or b) Yom Kippur to catch the Joe Frank show.

266: LB also thinks that temperatures rise during heated discussion. I have some thermometers that can be used to test this hypothesis at a future meetup. It's a type of thermometer that allows you to continue arguing while your temperature is being taken, if you know what I mean.

is it begging the question?

Yes.

I alos think that some New age beliefs, like "ch'i", are meaningful and useful, and others are worthless or harmful.

"Ch'i" comes from a tradition of at least 2300 years, but almost certainly more.

At the same time, spiritual teachings in Asia are infested with quackery too, as is recognized by all Asians, including all Asian spiritual teachers. "Watch out for the fake swamis" said Ravi Shankar.

I'm sorry, but yeah: this is not destined for long-term happiness. Her reaction makes her sound like a cool person and all, and I can see being good friends with someone like that, but being part of a couple with them? She is going to embarrass you in front of your friends, a lot, and eventually that's going to piss you off, and it's going to piss her off that you're embarrassed.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Don't start planning the wedding.

I do often read about people in past ages who had happy relationships with almost no common ideas at all.

274: I was wondering whether John would react to this post by questioning the very idea of a mismatch, on the basis that all relationships are bling crapshoots so one can't be much worse than another. I find his relationship views rather bracing.

"Ch'i" comes from a tradition of at least 2300 years, but almost certainly more.

Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi.

(Incidentally 273 says all that needs to be said to the questioner.)

Ben, I am sorry if calling your position "simple contradiction" hurt your feelings; that was based on the fact that you told me I was wrong a bunch of times, and then left the conversation without explaining why you thought so. Given that you entered into our disagreement by calling mine "philosophically simpleminded" and later "insane", I had understood us not to be worrying about rudeness.

People who find Barack Obama's religious views comparable to Sarah Palin's, Reinhold Niebuhr's to Pat Robertsons, etc. etc. can pretty much bite me

Why?

They all have a slightly bizarre set of doctrinal formulae that are very similar. They all have to believe in strange forms of words that a bunch of rather nasty anti-semitic cultist from late antiquity had deeply undignified arguments over.

Religiously, they're all equally metaphysical. Practically, they're different, sure, but there's no real way to argue that Obama's got a better grasp on the nature of God than Palin does*. (I actually find that there's no real relation between religion that I personally feel religiously `true' and religion that produces beneficent effect.)

* Except on aesthetic grounds, at which point you've pretty much admitted you're not making a universal decision about their validity/defensibility.

good humor is met with the same

The whole thing right there.

Don't start planning the wedding
that's a little dissappointing for the nice lady dating the asker
if you develop some deeper feelings for someone you don't mind their little hobbies, but, really, if you feel you are going to be embarrassed by her, better to not develop any that feelings

When you have a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition backing up your nonsense, New Age person, I'll reconsider

Making two-thousand years the benchmark is awfully convenient. How about I say the only religious beliefs worthy of real respect are the ones that've been around at least six thousand years, and we'll just have to wait and see if these upstart Jesus cultists can stand the true test of time?

279: Charley's been married longer than any of us...is it really that simple?

This situation is similar to someone going on vacation to an exotic, foreign country and falling in love the with place. He begins to think after some time, "I like it so much, I wonder if I could live here?" Instead of asking American ex-patriots who live in the new community, he goes back home and asks his neighbors and friends in his home town- many of whom have only read about the country of interest, if they have heard of it at all, what he should do.

My advice:
if you are "analytic and intellectual" and you need permission from other intellectuals to date someone different from you- *don't* do it. Break up with her. Find someone you are more comfortable with. If she is, in fact, clairvoyant, her spirit guide will tell her what you've done here and she will probably dump you first.

She will be better off with out you.

is it begging the question?

Yes.

Pwned by 176 gosh darn it.

(not trying to re-open the discussion).

282: I suspect it also has alot to do with Charley and his bride having made wise choices on whom to marry -- and having had to good fortune to meet someone who was a wise choice.

283: This seems a little harsh. I think the questioner reasonably believed there might be some ex-pats in this crowd.

This situation is similar to someone going on vacation to an exotic, foreign country and falling in love the with place. [sic]

For example, me and exotic Vancouver BC. Thank God DS clued me in about the defective bar scene there. I had noticed it, but I thought it was just me. I could not imagine that there could be a major city other than Salt Lake City and Riyadh with inadequate tavernage.

285 -- There's no luck like dumb luck.

Seriously, though, I have a bunch of hobbies and interests of which my wife does not affirmatively approve. She could plausibly be embarrassed to tell her parents that I have a bunch of imaginary friends with whom I talk of such things when I supposed to be working. And worse.

The answer is: out of sight out of mind. I'm not secretive, really, but don't talk with her about things she's not interested in. Life's plenty full of stuff to talk about and do, and the walls don't cave in if you don't share everything.

288: I definitely think that relationships are better (assuming for the sake of argument that that is possible) if not everything is shared. I remember reading stuff about the checkered history of the "togetherness" ideal, but I can't remember them.

Togetherness was an important cause of the Great Depression. Fact.

I'm not secretive, really, but don't talk with her about things she's not interested in.

Which makes excellent sense -- unless the things you don't talk to her about are the things you are most passionate about, which I suspect is not so in your case.

In the case of the advice-seeker here, it sounds like the stuff that he is a bit uneasy about/not interested in is a very significant, central part of his girlfriend's life. Personally, I would find it incredibly disheartening if there was something I was deeply passionate about and I knew or sensed that was something my partner would be embarrassed for people to know about -- or even if I felt like he'd just be more comfortable not hearing about it. It seems to me (in my formidable relationship expertise... ) that it comes down to whether he can appreciate her passion, even if he cannot actively share it.

I think there are three distinguishable questions here: whether a couple can succeed long-term while being disinterested in a significant portion of each other's lives, whether a couple can succeed long-term while being secretly contemptuous of each other's interests, and where this couple falls.

I think the answer to the first question is yes. We all know couples like that. I think the answer to the first question is probably no in most cases. And I think the answer to the third depends on whether the Questioner will, after the excitement of hot new sex fades, find that he finds her to be ridiculous.

If that's the case, no, it's not going anywhere, but it doesn't have to do much with the content of her beliefs or whether believing in qi and remote healing is weird than believing in divine intercession or the Trinity. (My devoutly Catholic sister had a roommate who prayed for wisdom in every single decision, which left my sister torn between admiring the woman's faith and losing her mind, biting back saying "It's just LUNCH. It's a goddamn turkey sandwich. Use the reason God gave you! That's what your brain is FOR." ) It's about whether he's going to be cringing every time she opens her mouth when they're around his friends.

"second question" in second sentence of 2.2, obviously.

People are relating to reality again, I see. I hate that. Carnal motherfuckers.

I haven't read the thread yet, but I wanted to offer that the only way this relationship would be tolerable would not only require you to be really chill about her "thing," but also that she would have no desire to impose her beliefs on you. It's easy for an empiricist to go around saying, "Oh, sure, 'chakras,' 'energy,' whatever; we're all just using different words for things about existence that we don't fully understand." That's not something that your friend here is going to be able to tolerate you saying, I'm guessing.

I only warn because a dear girlfriend's mother is slowly going crazy due to a lifetime of spiritual retreats and the paranoid propaganda that comes with this sanctimonious hippiedom. It would be fine if she were just caring about protecting her own damn self from the negative energies all around, but it's gotten to the point that she limits every particle of food that goes into her husband's mouth (and has quit her job to cook full time--just for the two of them) and is constantly calling everyone she knows with dire warnings about how the government is poisoning rice with bad chi or what-have-you, and won't allow anyone to see doctors or whatever. She's not interested in politics in a general sense, because it takes all of her energy to be obsessed with her own body and the bodies of her husband and kids.

I would like to believe there are spiritual, metaphor-flinging hippie-types who don't insist on ruining the lives of everyone around them, but all the ones I've known end up becoming so wrapped up in their own worldviews that they become total fascists to everyone around them---or worse, condescendingly smug about their enlightened truth-having.

This is why one avoids having sex with people like this in the first place, so you don't end up juggling between wanting more sex and listening to intolerant bullshit.

291 -- Humor and prudence. I was out of town for a short work trip near the first of the year. The following converation would have, but, because of some prudence on my part, did not take place:

CC: I met my internet friend Di* for lunch.
FC: Is she pretty? Did you kiss her?
CC: She is. What do you think?
FC: You're blushing!

This is every bit as cringe-worthy as something about crystal healing, in my book. And as harmless. While I fear that Cala is right about AQ's future, it's up to AQ to decide really whether the perfect should be the enemy of the good.

* I only use real names in conversation with the wife.

295: I would like to believe there are spiritual, metaphor-flinging hippie-types who don't insist on ruining the lives of everyone around them

There are.

I only warn because a dear girlfriend's mother is slowly going crazy due to a lifetime of spiritual retreats and the paranoid propaganda that comes with this sanctimonious hippiedom.

To me this sounds like it might also be that she is slowly going crazy for reasons of her own and that the spiritual retreats, etc. are mainly responsible for dictating the direction that her lunacy has taken, a la scrupulosity.

I only warn because a dear girlfriend's mother is slowly going crazy due to a lifetime of spiritual retreats and the paranoid propaganda that comes with this sanctimonious hippiedom.

You don't have to be a hippie to think the government is poisoning your rice. You just have to be crazy. It is, in fact, a classic delusion. I've known numerous crazy persons who hung around with the hippies because they were kind and tolerant. Eventually they get so crazy that even the hippies can't deal, like my acquaintance who thought she could evolve into a photosynthetic creature, and also that the CIA was spying on her.

oops, first para should have been italicized.

Okay, totally pwned anyway. Redfoxtailshrub! Why are you listening to my thoughts?

You forgot to wear your spider-silk cloak.

296: Wait, what? Carp kissed Di?

Do people still eat rice? Haven't they heard?

I was thinking more about the issues in this thread, so I thought I'd come back to it. I'm particularly peeved by the phenomenon of people noisily claiming the mantle of rationality while making fundamental errors in reasoning (and IME, the two frequently go hand in hand, cf. ev psych), so this engages me.

To say that it is irrational to believe dancing in the woods is spiritual is a category error. "Spiritual" is a word with many and diverse semantic associations (like, for example, "love"), but I think all or nearly all of them could be contained under this umbrella: that which I call "spiritual" makes me feel that I am transcending myself, either through an abandonment of self-consciousness, or a feeling of connection to a larger or strange other. To feel this is neither rational nor irrational. Is "arational" a word? Sometimes saying something is spiritual is accompanied by dubious empirical claims. If I say, "dancing in the woods is spiritual, and by that I mean the rabbit spirit, which is made of phlogiston, swirls in my liver until I enter an orgasmic trance" then we'd have cause to say the speaker was irrational. "This crystal feels spiritual": fine. "This crystal feels spiritual and therefore it will cure your cancer": not fine. Now, you can have as much aesthetic/tribal discomfort with the first statement as you want, but if you attribute that to your greater rationality, you're being irrational.

Also, 250 doesn't really fix the problem. To speak of an emotion is not to use a "shorthand" for physicality. In the same way that you can say "you can feel the anger in the room," and it is not a shorthand for physicality, saying "the energy in the room was palpable" is also not a shorthand for physicality. Saying, "he told me he was tired" is not a shorthand for the activation of muscle fibers causing the vibration of the vocal cords causing soundwaves impacting the ear drum, etc. You can be a materialist, an empiricist, and still not believe that the sole or best explanatory level on which to describe emotions is the physical, or that the non-physical is merely a metaphor for the physical.

The words "electricity", "energy", "chemistry" ("al-chemy" -- "al" is an article) all existed before they were scientifically defined, and these words all have prescientific and sometimes magical or mystical meanings.

The prescientific meanings didn't disappear when the scientific meanings appeared and in fact, the non-scientific meanings were enriched by the scientific discoveries, but without being made scientific.

Not much I can add to all this sense.

Some trivia - there are more than five senses, and there are more than 4 basic tastes. I used to hate those stupid little trivia books with bogus numbers about things we don't fully understand. I also dislike the entries that state a group of X'es is called a nightmare or whatever the hell stupid word the writer thinks is clever and funny.

But I think I am crabby because there is a ton of stuff we don't understand and I'm pretty bummed that the Hadron collider is offline until next year, is that right?

So what to believe, what to believe?

The way I look at it humans have been trying to make sense out of the physical world for, well, ever. We've gotten better and better at it, taking notes, keeping records (but not "Cecilia" because man I got tired of hearing that song), building on what we know, refining and clarifying murky areas. I love reading old encyclopedia's from the 1800's - it shows how our knowledge has grown.

So here's the deal. There is a physical world, and that's where things really matter. Our knowledge is increasing, relentlessly increasing, and that is a good thing.

Our weak-points are these - our brains are so good at recognizing patterns we will see patterns where they do not exist. Also, we've still got the remnants of our primitive brains embedded in us so we are a mish mash of all the thinking techniques from "sugar tastes good" all the way up to heuristacally programmed algorithmic constructs.

The physical world is bread and butter, the 'spiritual' world is diet Coke.

Some people try to live on diet Coke but while I agree that 'Coke is it!' sooner or later the old muscles will be crying out for some glycogen.

If you hook up with a diet Coke sweetie you'll either starve or you'll be sharing your bread for a long time. You better make sure it is worth it.

This is why one avoids having sex with people like this in the first place, so you don't end up juggling between wanting more sex and listening to intolerant bullshit.

Sex is like smoking -- you may tell yourself "just this one time," but unless you have really good self-restraint, "just this one time" can easily lead to knowing it's not good for you but having the damnedest time trying to quit. This will be, approximately, the sex talk I subject Rory to some day.

like my acquaintance who thought she could evolve into a photosynthetic creature

True story. My ex-MIL, when Rory was brand new, told us we didn't really need to be feeding her because kids these days can live on sunlight. Indeed, all that childhood obesity is because people don't understand this.

Wait, what? Carp kissed Di?

I'm nowhere near as attractive as Prudence. (Also, Carp is conventionally handsome and a genuinely decent human being -- so totally not my type.)

People don't know that kids can live on sunlight? People don't know that the rice has been poisoned?

i: the age of the modern exploration of electricity -- a new word in the 18th C but derived from the greek -- coincides with the age of DR MESMER, a brilliant quack who went round the world muddling together an active, physical (and effective, which is to say, real) practice (viz hypnotism), with a bunch of confused guesswork and outright nonsense about how it was working --- one point of interesting confusion being that, since static electricity could cause torn-off froglimbs to twitch, mesmer's ability to make people in trances do and say stuff they weren't in control of was possibly something to do with this new er er fluid* (the verbal bridgepoint was MAGNETISM, which they sorta kinda new was linked to electricity, but not how)**
ii: my guess another reason the word "energy" is locked tightly into eg "ch'i" is that at some point in the 18th or 19th century the early imperial translators of lots of chinese texts into [european] were casting around for the right word for "ch'i", and "energy" seemed to pretty good... for one thing s/he couldn't very well just say, "this word is totally untranslateable, ie only meaningful if you speak chinese", and for another, the "scientific" meaning wasn't yet nailed down as the only meaningful one (nor is it yet), and for a third, the people using it in literately scientific meanings were largely too parochial to be also patrolling how chinese literature was being translated, so the term was well bedded in without being disturbed by the close of the 19th century
iii: if bad magic wasn't a reality, there's be no need to excise ToS from unfogged -- to troll is PRECISELY to cast a spell; of course there's a scientific explanation for how you react to trolling, but knowing it won't stop you reacting; "power" is a good word for the hold the troll has on you
iv: nietzsche was certainly scientifically literate in the broad sense (he is also good on the hidden irrationalisms of people who declare themselves all-rational all the time)

*was this a good guess or a bad guess?
**key pop-cult image -- the lightning being harnessed to bring frankenstein's monster to life

electricity comes from the classical greek for amber (bcz rubbing amber produced static electricity) -- but while i've read and known that fact since i was a teen, i just realised i don't know when the post-amber meaning kicked in (in classical times? in the middle ages?)

chemistry derives -- possibly -- from the greek word for egypt, viz Khemia: bcz (as sun ra teaches us) egypt is where all science was first discovered, and we are only now rediscovering it

bcz (as sun ra teaches us) egypt is where all science was first discovered, and we are only now rediscovering it

I spent a year or so working as part of a research project on astrolabes and after a while it was pretty hard not to sympathise with Sun Ra's viewpoint. Hellenistic/Roman Egypt, though, mostly.

It's a fact that I've smoked one and only one cigarette my whole life.

This, AQ, is probably adequate basis to ignore my comments above.

Did anyone rub Amber at the meetup? That might have been a good idea.

This thread has been helpful to me and I want to thank everyone who participated in it. It's given me a great deal to think about, and also helped me articulate thoughts that were floating around before.

Wrongshore's 41 might come closest to my own overall perspective. I didn't connect to her randomly, there's something about (some) intensely spiritual types that turns me on. (I identify with Cynique's fine defintion of "spiritual" in 305). I'm attracted to people who are serious about bringing the sacred into everyday life, it enriches things, and I can really see it enriching a relationship as well.

The issue with my "scientific rationality" is also a spiritual one. It's not so much that I consider myself in possession of truth as that scientific empiricism is a spiritual stance for me -- it's an attitude of humility toward reality, a desire to be guided by the external world rather than imposing our fantasies on it through magical thinking. There's plenty of real magic out there just in observing things as they are. As Tripp said in 307, the real world is bread and butter, and escaping from it into fantasy is fast food at best. But I don't think all New Age spirituality does this.

Anyway, the implication is that the question is less whether she buys astrology and I don't as whether our deeper spiritual perspectives align, and how that shows up in our personalities and values.

A lot of peoples' comments above got at this in one way or another, pointing toward the implications of beliefs for deeper values. Don't have time to namecheck everybody, but thanks again -- they all offered helpful perspective. Even Fleur in 283 was useful in its way; I'm glad to have escaped the thread with only one person calling me an asshole. That's not bad for Unfogged.

Shit, I didn't realize we were so far behind. Anonymous Questioner, you're an asshole.

Holla! Wrongshore FTW!

That came out wrong. "You're welcome."

True story. My ex-MIL, when Rory was brand new, told us we didn't really need to be feeding her because kids these days can live on sunlight. Indeed, all that childhood obesity is because people don't understand this.

This is amazing. What really kills me is the brilliant touch of "these days."

Do people still eat rice? Haven't they heard?

Don't yuppies only import rice from ethnic grocers, artisanally produced in small batches by hand in time-honored ways at that feet of the Himalayas?

Maybe not.

I'm glad to have escaped the thread with only one person calling me an asshole.

I think it's because we were assuming -- benefit of the doubt and all that -- that you wouldn't actually seriously consider messing with someone's heart emotions if you don't respect her.

And I'd like to apologize for that extended sucking-all-the-air-out-of-the-thread digression I engaged in. Looking back over it, the only parts of what I was trying to say that I was at all successful in communicating were the ones I was wrong about.

This thread had really good energy until Walt called AQ an asshole.

intensely spiritual types that turns me on

Jungle Yellow Wicca fever.

Energy is conserved, Jesus. The less energy the thread has, the more for me.

Anyone remember the GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE?

Also Walt and Apo are assholes.

322: LB and Wittgenstein, both man enough to admit their mistakes.

"For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen
years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I
wrote in that first book [the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_]."

from the Preface to _Philosophical Investigations_ (translated)

Walt, your qi is all messed up. You should maybe go dance in a forest or put crystals in your nose or something.

His ch'i is blocked in his third chakra and has congealed to a ch'i version of blood pudding.

This seems like a Batsignal for the Unfoggedtariat.

Huh. I was guessing that Cala linked to the advice column about what to do when your boyfriend can only have sex while listening to death metal.

Clinging stubbornly to Wade-Giles is a sure sign of blocked qi, John, but I appreciate your effort to redeem the thread by raising the subject of food.

If it was good enough for Lau Tzu, it's good enough for me.

328: He probably has his furniture arranged in such a way as to block the flow of ch'i. Possibly he has no plants in the house.

Alternatively, he's insufficiently earthed, and needs to walk barefoot in the dewy grass, or wet sand, or mud, even.

Out of balance, in any case, it's clear.

[T]he only parts of what I was trying to say that I was at all successful in communicating were the ones I was wrong about.

new hovertext?

I say again, while that discussion about energy may have been trivial, I found it interesting.

Lao Tzu too.

what to do when your boyfriend can only have sex while listening to death metal.

That does sound like a batsignal as well.

What has happened to the Modern Love posts? A victim of Becks' time deficit?

From the link in 330:

2. Offers the post of "vice vice president" to Warren Buffett.

I think it's more likely he offers the office of Vice President to Lieberman, but allows Sarah Palin to remain as President of Vice.

I encourage Ben W-lfs-n to start writing posts about Modern Love columns

(apologies for the staccato commenting.)

when your boyfriend can only have sex while listening to death metal

Eros/thanatos, the ethernal dance of life and death, &c. Seems obvious, really.

If you see him building a funeral pyre, or if he starts talking about a horse sacrifice, it's possibly better to take a little timeout to see which way he's going with it.

when your boyfriend can only have sex while listening to death metal

At least they have a lot of choice. 21,908 death metal bands listed here at Encyclopaedia Metallum : The Metal Archives (out of 63,160 total). I suspect the only reason W-lfs-n doesn't really do metal is because he is afraid he couldn't keep up.

I believe it was, specifically, Cannibal Corpse. Their albums have pictures of dudes performing cunnilingus on rotting dead women, etc. Death metal is one thing, but CC is pretty hard not to be anti-orgasmically creeped out by.

I am somewhat amused to see, via the Metal Archives, that this year marks the release of the Cannibal Corpse DVD Centuries of Torment: The First 20 Years.

really funny link, to sell Alaska back for the billions actually sounds very pragmatic
Possibly he has no plants in the house
my jade died off completely during my two weeks absence, so no great money inflows for me this year until i'll find some other jade with which i'd feel some connection

345: Rolling Stone (I think) had a where-are-they-now feature on kids who modeled for famous album covers. The baby from the cover of Nevermind now picks up girls by saying, "Do you want to see my penis again?"

For those who care, the beloved grandnephew has segued from adorable to unbearable in the last two months. He's developed an annoying stutter, he talks ALL the time, and he is very insistent that you listen to him. We're working on the hitherto unknown concept "It's not always all about me".

347: Did they do this one?

334: A lot of feng shui seems pretty sound to me; it resonates with basic principles of good design. Also, everyone I know who has used acupuncture has found it at least partially effective. Coached by an acupuncturist of our acquaintance, we did moxibustion when one of our daughters presented breech, and it apparently worked. (The cited article appeared in an edition of JAMA devoted to alternative medicine, for which the editor was subsequently shitcanned.)

my jade died off completely during my two weeks absence

In just two weeks? My jade plant is suffering also, and I'm not sure why. I think I was vaguely aware that jade signifies wealth in some way, but really I'm just concerned with the care it needs, and with which I am apparently not providing it. I've had it with me for almost 10 years, and it was gorgeous, brilliant, in full glory a couple of years ago, but it's decided to trim itself back recently, it would seem.

Here is a good overview of Cannibal Corpse's work. In fact, I suggest that everyone spend the rest of their Sunday reading things at Prindle's record review site.

Having read part of 352, I'm pleasantly surprised that civilization hasn't declined already.

A lot of feng shui seems pretty sound to me; it resonates with basic principles of good design.

Yeah, it does. The stuff that gets into hanging crystals here and there may be a little hard to get a grip on, but simple things like not putting your bed against the wall, but in the middle of the room (air flow) just seems obvious. And plants, well, that's clear. To me, anyway. And don't block off the window with a 6-foot high bookshelf, silly person.

351 just in two weeks, it was getting weaker before my leave, my sister diagnosed that i was watering it too frequently
about acupuncture i think i've read some review on it that activating the nerve endings by acupuncture facilitates neurotransmitters' release, like endorphins so it works at least for pain relief
some of my classmates took Tibetan and acupuncture classes when we were to choose the optional courses in med school, i took German which i didn't learn
now i regret i didn't take those classes, could be getting relatively easy money

My jade plant is suffering also, and I'm not sure why. I think I was vaguely aware that jade signifies wealth in some way

Events on Wall Street are causing mass jade plant die-off.

349: You know, I think it was limited to albums of more recent vintage -- the little girl looking in the window on the Violent Femmes cover, etc. I did hear a rumor -- and I am sure it is just that, although her dad was pretty involved with them -- that Courtney Love love is one of these kids.

simple things like not putting your bed against the wall but in the middle of the room (air flow) just seems obvious
directed from North to South? coz if it's (the bed)East-West oriented, then one's dream, just normal sleep gets disturbed
i really felt it true like on myself
well, my cows, as we say 'ug ixsej uxer xoldloo' or
'words multiply, cows wander away too far'

my sister diagnosed that i was watering it too frequently

Yes, jade plants are weird that way. They're succulents, after all, and don't need frequent watering. On the other hand, letting them go without watering for 2 months doesn't seem optimal. I need to figure out how to prune them. Word is that one can find information about this on the internet.

Nonetheless, now that my (huge) jade plant has chosen to dump a few of its extended branches, and I've watered it, I pause to reflect upon and admire it on occasion (rather frequently); it's beautiful. I should probably repot it, but I worry that it will experience shock.

directed from North to South? coz if it's (the bed)East-West oriented, then one's dream, just normal sleep gets disturbed

Oh, no! My bed is currently oriented East to West. I don't sleep well, but I suspect that has to do with a bad back and the bed's hostility to my needs in that regard. Also it's against the wall.

I expect to be switching to a different bedroom and bed shortly, but that bed will be oriented South-North. Does it matter whether it's South-North or North-South?

North-South is the correct position i suppose, but maybe you can experiment :)
something about being along the magnetic lines, not across etc, but really after i switched to that position it seems to me i have less trouble sleeping

I suggest that everyone spend the rest of their Sunday reading things at Prindle's record review site.

I know that Prindle gets a lot of respect, and I can see why the site would be entertaining. But after just spending 10 minutes reading random reviews, I now feel dumber and more cranky.

361: I wasn't making fun of that viewpoint, you know. It just depends a lot on the orientation of your house or apartment, and whether it's even possible to put the bed in more than one orientation.

361: the Earth's magnetic field is pretty weak, so this doesn't sound plausible to me. Is there a known mechanism? Any literature on the subject? It sounds like cell-phone radiation fears; just not physically plausible.

From cynique's 305: You can be a materialist, an empiricist, and still not believe that the sole or best explanatory level on which to describe emotions is the physical, or that the non-physical is merely a metaphor for the physical.

An empiricist, a scientist, OK, perhaps even a good one, but not a top-notch one (by my lights). OTOH, a materialist, almost by definition, would say that everything can be reduced to the physical in principle and fact, though of course doing so is not practical or required or even preferred in all situations. A materialist would never say that the non-physical is more than a metaphor for the physical.

Of course, language and the world are not constructed so that phrases like "the room was full of energy" have any sort of physical reduction that can be captured in fewer than thousands of words, so to try to use physicalist language to replace those phrases is completely misguided, as you have said. But that's just a matter of language.

An additional note: I'm using "materialist" there as a synonym for "reductionist", which I consider as well a synonym for "physicalist" (though I would never introduce that term myself). For the record, I consider myself a reductionist, and as such, an atheist.

the Earth's magnetic field is pretty weak, so this doesn't sound plausible to me
how weak can affect or not affect the brain, i doubt anyone knows that
sorry i don't have any literature on that, maybe you can look up some feng shui books on the internets
the NS bed orientation worked for me maybe just like some placebo effect, so i said just try it, parsimon, i'm glad you don't ridicule me
those rational analytical types, they are scary, you know ;)

An empiricist, a scientist, OK, perhaps even a good one, but not a top-notch one (by my lights).

apparently your lights don't have anything to do with, you know, science.

Or maybe I think you can get a lot of good science done without being a top notch scientist?

My Japanese gf believed that sleeping with your head to the north was bad luck, because that's the way the dead are laid out in Buddhist funerals (in Japan, at any rate). I gathered that that superstition was widely held.

Was it on Unfogged that someone linked to something about the Japanese using blood types in roughly the same way Westerners use astrological signs?

That's come up here, and yes, many do.

"Hi, babe. You look like an AB negative to me. I'm O positive, and opposites attract!"

373: Japanese dating sites usually include blood type in the profile.

Or maybe I think you can get a lot of good science done without being a top notch scientist?

No, that's not it. I was just pointing out that the claims in 365 would not have been made by a top-notch philosopher of science.

375: Well, I'm not sure philosophy of science is relevant here. The philosophy of science doesn't mandate that scientists have above average IQs (or any IQs) and yet we find that the best scientists have higher IQs (though not always very high), and scientists as a whole have higher IQs than average. I'm saying materialism is similar. If materialism is true, then scientists will make less mistakes due to wrong thinking related to certain issues. Though of course this will affect some disciplines much more than others. On average, I don't think it makes a big difference, except in a few disciplines.

Bohr and Heisenberg had pretty woolly metaphysical notions. These metaphysical notions helped them invent quantum mechanics. You don't need to share those metaphysical notions to understand quantum mechanics -- most physicists don't -- but certainly metaphysics didn't stop them from being top-notch physicists.

Hmm. Here's a bit more. A scientist studying the world should learn truths about the world, and believe in those truths. One of those truths is materialism. Scientists that believe false things (e.g. not materialism) that they have evidence are false are not mature empiricists. No empiricist is ever completely mature, of course, but again I'm not putting these people down too much. Just saying they aren't perfect.

Walt: what were those, exactly?

Hi, babe. You look like an AB negative a universal recipient to me, IYKWIMAITTYD.

I'm not disposed to get too much into this, but you actually should read some philosophy of science, pdf23ds. You're making philosophical claims you don't understand. E.g. there are non-reductive materialisms, and even reductive materialisms that don't contradict anything Cynique was saying in 305.

I know the thread has mostly moved on, but to the questioner, I really think that the new-agey shit, especially in the incarnation you seem to be describing, can not only be annoying, but actively harmful. Especially when you start talking about clairvoyants and shamanism. One difference between your average sort of, say, Christianity (or Islam or Judaism) and the new-age religion is that most people in the former category don't really feel like they're getting direct instructions from the divine, not that they think are absolutely clear anyway.

Whereas when my new-age-spiritual godmother calls me up and says she's not going to come visit because her psychic told her not to travel, or that she's going to break her lease because her apartment's got a bad aura (and then does this another two or three times in the space of six months), I can't much argue with her, because the supposed direct experience of the divine makes it unassailable.

All of which is to say, that new-age spirituality is all fine and good as long as the person is happy and emotionally healthy and things are going great. But as soon as something starts to go badly, the karma/aura/chi/whatever explanation of the problem inhibits emotional and intellectual honesty about how to make your life better.

OTOH, a materialist, almost by definition, would say that everything can be reduced to the physical in principle and fact, though of course doing so is not practical or required or even preferred in all situations. A materialist would never say that the non-physical is more than a metaphor for the physical.

I think this is confused, pdf23ds. The first sentence is...well, not right, I don't believe, but better than the second. A materialist believes that the action of physical substances is sufficient to generate consciousness, but I don't think that means the same thing as "can be reduced to the physical in principal and fact". The issue of the kinds of interactions you'd need to describe an event is a principle. (Similarly, the argument that a computer can't generate the experience of interacting with the physical world because of problems of combinatorial explosion is a principle, not just some yet-to-be-solved minor implementation problem. Conceivably a wrong argument, but an argument from principle.)

As for the second sentence, once again, believing that the action of physical substances is sufficient to generate consciousness != believing that the non-physical is a metaphor for the physical. I'm starting to believe that there's some confusion about what metaphor means. But
just as even if you waved away the problem of complexity of description and explained population cycles between rabbits and wolves in terms of elementary particles, interactions between rabbits and wolves are not metaphors for particles. In precisely the same way, consciousness is not a metaphor for nerve firings and neurotransmitters. Consciousness is a phenomenon that results from nerve firings.

I don't want to be obnoxiously repetitive, but the most salient point is really that a metaphor is not the same thing as a level of explanation.

"non-reductive materialisms,"

Keyword?

"and even reductive materialisms that don't contradict anything Cynique was saying in 305."

Hmm. I'll believe it when I see it.

But just as even if you waved away the problem of complexity of description and explained population cycles between rabbits and wolves in terms of elementary particles, interactions between rabbits and wolves are not metaphors for particles.

Indeed. Nor are rabbits and wolves metaphors for the particles that constitute them. Listen to Cynique! Cynique is right.

382: OK, I agree that "metaphor" there was the wrong word. I was just echoing you, not realizing you were using it in a more restrictive sense than I was reading it in. How about: "A materialist would never say that a non-physical description cannot in principle be restated in terms of physical reality." This way, your issue with my second sentence reduces to your issue with my first. Progress!

but I don't think that means the same thing as "can be reduced to the physical in principal and fact". The issue of the kinds of interactions you'd need to describe an event is a principle.

You lose me completely here.

Similarly, the argument that a computer can't generate the experience of interacting with the physical world because of problems of combinatorial explosion is a principle, not just some yet-to-be-solved minor implementation problem.

Still lost. Can you explain the use of "principle" here? I would say that argument is an argument from ignorance. Because we can't explain consciousness, let's say it has something to do with quantum mechanics, which we also can't explain (Penrose) or combinatorial explosion or something. There you go, mysteriousness preserved. But that's a response to Penrose, not necessarily to you, because I don't understand what you're saying.

"A materialist would never say that a non-physical description cannot in principle be restated in terms of physical reality."

This is still not right. For clarity, I'm not taking a position on variants of materialism or whether there are bridge laws between mental and physical or what have you. I certainly don't know the answer to these questions. I'm just making a point about what the claims of materialism necessarily entail.

I'll try to be clearer about the combinatorics business. One could argue that it is impossible to describe mental states in terms of physical states because of the complexity involved and the impossibility of recording enough information. To describe a complicated belief I held (e.g. "I'd like to eat that ice cream but I ought not to because I'm watching my cholesterol but oh, butter pecan reminds me of when Jimmy and I used to eat pecan pralines in Alabama and that makes me want it all the more") in terms of a brain state you'd need to not only describe my current brain state, but need to know all my past brain states and how they correlated with events in my life; otherwise you wouldn't know how *my brain* instantiated Jimmy and butter pecan and pecan pralines, etc. This is an argument that it is in principle impossible to describe mental states in terms of brain states. It may be a wrong argument, but it's an argument that in principle the non physical cannot be restated in terms of the physical, and it doesn't entail any claim incompatible with materialism.

I'm really not well versed (to say the least) in philosophies of science or mind, but here is at least one example of a position that I'm pretty sure would be called non-reductive materialism:

What makes recording enough information impossible? I mean, your brain does. Impractically outside our current capacities, sure, but I'm missing the 'impossible in principle' argument there.

386 This is an argument that it is in principle impossible to describe mental states in terms of brain states. It may be a wrong argument, but it's an argument that in principle the non physical cannot be restated in terms of the physical, and it doesn't entail any claim incompatible with materialism.

I am utterly baffled. Isn't materialism, as applied to mental states, precisely the claim that they reduce to brain states?

"Non-reductive materialism" also is completely opaque to me. So, what, brains aren't made out of electrons and protons, but are still material? (I'm sure this isn't what it means. But is there a two-sentence version of what it does mean?)

Re. anomalous monism: sounds like philosobabble to me. Something Dennett could tear to shreds. I like Dennett, Hofstatder, and to some extent Dawkins on philosophy of consciousness. But other than that I don't hold a very high opinion of the field of philosophy. I think by and large the field's approaches and techniques have been superseded. The philosophy of math can be interesting, though, and in many was similar to the philosophy of consciousness. (In fact, I've been studying up on that quite a bit recently, as I have a programming project related to it.)

OK, I think I'm clearer on what you're saying with the combinatorics argument, though. But I think you would have to go further to make it an in principle argument--you'd have to figure out the theoretical limits to information transfer in a given density of matter and volume and other complicated things, but possibly it could be made.

But even if there is information out there that is in-principle inaccessible to us (and there is--check out quantum mechanics) that doesn't entail that statements don't have in-principle reductionist equivalents, just that those equivalents don't make reference to that inaccessible information. In fact, the equivalents may not even descend below a certain level of description, since any real physical system that met that precise, high-level description would satisfy all the properties needed to make the high-level statement. To be precise and reductionist, you don't have to go down to the level of quarks in infinite detail, you just have to specify (using potentially high-level properties) a set of quarks in certain configurations that satisfy whatever properties you need.

Damn. That philosophy of math stuff is actually getting to me. I'll refrain from making explicit the analogy to formal maths proofs.

To be precise and reductionist, you don't have to go down to the level of quarks in infinite detail, you just have to specify (using potentially higher-level, but still fully physically explicit properties e.g. using muscle tension to describe facial expressions and body movements in an energetic crowd)

Does this qualify as "non-reductionist materialism"? I would say not. But philosophy jargon confuses me.

It is perhaps one of the "surprises" of the modern era that something can exist and evolve in the world and yet be in-principle unsimulatable. E.g., one may takes the rules/laws and requisite information as given to actually forecast weather. One may even empirically validate the whole process for 1 day.

However, if the equations of motion sufficiently amplify noise over time, one may also calculate that to forecast 10 years might take a "computer" with more particles than exist on planet earth.

What is important here is that the lower level laws cease to be predictive in the same way. In some sense, building another Earth would be the only way, but this would be in principle impossible in other ways related to quantum mechanics and/or the limits of one subsystem of the universe cloning another subsystem. Even if it could be done, semantically it would hardly make sense to call this some reduced simulation or prediction machine, but rather merely a "copy".

So, a running live brain may be its own simplest simulation/reduction. At least this is a conceivable outcome with all "principles" in play. It may or may not be true, but Cynique's point was merely that it might be true vis-a-vis the entailments of materialism. One might be a materialist and yet allow in-principle/practice/and all manner of goings on the necessity of untranslatability of patterns in emergent phenomena and their more basic physical representations.

The Laplacian "God's Eye" observer outside the universe -- unbound by physical computational constraints -- is an abstraction occasionally used to discuss "fundamental laws". Sometimes this unrealizable perspective can underwrite conversational confusions between "in principle" and otherwise. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the crosstalk between pdf23ds and Cynique.

392: I would say it's just a bunch more philosobabble, and that unfortunately it probably does count. Just because I was using "reductionist" as a synonym for "materialist" means that I deny a distinction could be made. But I reserve the right to scoff.

complex physical systems may exhibit behavior that cannot be understood only in terms of the laws governing their microscopic constituents.

An unambiguous statement of non-reductionist materialism.

We strengthen this claim by proving that many macroscopic observable properties of a simple class of physical systems (the infinite periodic Ising lattice) cannot in general be derived from a microscopic description. This provides evidence that emergent

Using "emergent" as a magical explanation. -10. (Unless it's a very poorly written abstract.)

behavior occurs in such systems, and indicates that even if a `theory of everything' governing all microscopic interactions were discovered, the understanding of macroscopic order is likely to require additional insights.

Well, duh, you need additional insights to discover the macroscopic properties of large systems of microscopic elements. That doesn't mean that you can't in principle reduce the latter to the former, it just means you need more fancy math, or a hell of a lot more computing power (or practically speaking, both), to do so.

More really isn't different. These guys disagree. I'm willing to grant them some philosophical standing, because philosophical standing isn't worth much to me.

Oddly enough, that article gives me a serious sense of deja vu.

Oopsie! Bad blockquote, bad!

393: Actually, the other way I considered going with my last reply was to talk about computability and chaotic systems, but the "in principle" bit made me go the other way. Chaotic systems can, in principle (and practice), be simulated. The only problem is that even if our models are accurate, the initial parameters have to be completely accurate, down to the last bit. And unfortunately, we don't have access to measurements of the proper precision, or computational power on the right order, to do that sort of thing. Which is why chaos sucks. Fie on you, universe! It's supposed to be easier than that! But as I was saying, that balances on the edge of what is and is not possible in principle. And is probably part of what cynique was getting at.

Well, duh, you need additional insights to discover the macroscopic properties of large systems of microscopic elements. That doesn't mean that you can't in principle reduce the latter to the former, it just means you need more fancy math, or a hell of a lot more computing power (or practically speaking, both), to do so.

That's where you're probably wrong. According to some, in some cases you'd need infinite computing power.

I think that you're in a place where you should continue to argue your case, but ditch your condescending attitude.

"Emergence" isn't a magical explanation. It's a descriptive name for new properties not deducible from the lower level.

394: They aren't using "emergent" as an explanation, as far as I can tell. It's a result: these systems have emergent macrophysics that aren't obviously tied to their microphysics. But that's completely normal, and emergence isn't at odds with reductionism. What's bizarre is that they claim that to have examples of physical systems with formally incomputable ground states. Since nature is, as a rule, damned good at computing the ground states of physical systems (although it might take a long time), I suspect this means they're looking at pathological examples that couldn't correspond to any natural physical system. But I haven't gone through the paper carefully yet.

To conclude 396, I think that a materialist's default assumption would be that it would be possible in principle, with a quite expansive meaning of "in principle". If this universe is just a simulation running in some computer in another universe, then in that universe one could make a perfect copy of the first simulation and run it simultaneously. Given that both machines are digital, the results would be identical (if the programmers of the sim wanted it). That's a pretty strong meaning of "in principle", but it's probably the one I'm using. I might be able to formulate something a bit weaker that would satisfy, but I'm not sure.

I guess what I'm saying in 398 is that the paper I link in 392 would be a good example of "non-reductionist materialism", if it corresponded to anything actually material. But I'm pretty sure that in the real world we find ourselves in, the only sensible materialism is reductionist, if reductionism means what I think it means. (Everything is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws.)

"Possible in principle" can be pretty toxic. You prove your point while emptying it of any real-world meaning, usually without specifying that you've done the latter.

I think that you're in a place where you should continue to argue your case, but ditch your condescending attitude.

Coming from you? That's pretty rich. Not that I'm offended, or want to start a fight.

"Emergence" isn't a magical explanation. It's a descriptive name for new properties not deducible from the lower level.

Well, no. Your second sentence, in practice, reduces to "magic". Because it's used so often for things that are, in fact deducible in principle, only where it's extremely difficult to do so. So instance of admitting ignorance, these people invoke emergence. And I'm comfortable with people using "emergence" to mean "something that does not obviously follow from the lower level" or "something we can't yet figure out how to derive from the lower level". Like I said, I didn't read the paper, but it sounds like they're using it in the wrong way in the abstract.

402 works as a reply to 398, I think.

I don't think non-reductive materialism is incoherent or impossible in all worlds, but in this universe I think the balance of evidence pretty strongly favors reductive materialism. But I wouldn't say holding to non-reductive materialism is a stupid mistake, or that strong defenses aren't possible. The question is still open.

389: "Non-reductive materialism" also is completely opaque to me. So, what, brains aren't made out of electrons and protons, but are still material? (I'm sure this isn't what it means. But is there a two-sentence version of what it does mean?)

I can try three sentences:

Non-reductive materialism is the view that:
(1) Beliefs, desires, feelings, emotions, moods, etc. are real (i.e., when we say that "John believes Obama is lanky" we are speaking non-metaphorically about something that is true of John).
(2) Whatever beliefs, desires, etc. that someone has are entirely dependent on the state of her brain (or some combination of brain, body, physical and social environment, etc).
(3) There is no type of brain state (or brain + body + environment state) that types of beliefs, desires, etc. are reducible to (in the way that water is reducible to collections of H20 molecules).

The idea behind (3)--the non-reductive part of the definition--is that John and I can share the belief that Obama is lanky despite being in different kinds of brain states. Indeed, John and Cyborg-John (whose brain is made of silicon) can share the belief that Obama is lanky despite the fact that Cyborg- John's brain is made of a different kind physical material than organic John's. Likewise, both humans and octopuses can be in states of pain despite having very different types of nervous systems. That, under my understanding, is the flavor of the view.

405: 2 and 3 seem directly contradictory to me. How can a mental state depend entirely on a brain state but not be reducible to it?

Pdf, your "duh", which you intended ironically, made you seem like a genuine moron. That's why I suggested that you ditch the condescension.

Lots of discussions seem to wind up hinging on what words mean. When I say that the claims of materialism don't entail believing that mental phenomena reduce to physical phenomena, I mean this: the claims of materialism don't entail that mental phenomena are fully describable in terms of physical phenomena. This discussion started, as I understood it, with the question of whether it is irrational to believe that mental phenomena will never be fully, productively describable in terms of physical phenomena. As Socatoa said "One might be a materialist and yet allow in-principle/practice/and all manner of goings on the necessity of untranslatability of patterns in emergent phenomena and their more basic physical representations." I certainly do not mean anything that contradicts this: "Everything is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws" and I am fairly certain Donald Davidson didn't either (but I am far from prepared to debate the pros and cons of his position).

On preview, 404 seems reasonable to me. I don't take a position on what the balance of evidence favors.

Moby Ape seems right, though I'm not sure why one wants to call this non-reductive materialism rather than something else, like realism or something.

Also cynique is right.

When you describe something as "chance", chance isn't a magical explanation. It indicates a kind of partial knowledge of what happens.

The things I've read say that in some cases it's not "extremely difficult" but "infinitely difficult".

In practice, I'm also hostile to explanations that something is predictable in principle when it require a cimputer as big as the solar system running for ten times the life of the know universe. No payoff from that kind of predictivity, though it does allow you to salvage your metaphysic.

405: Leave me out of this.

But I reserve the right to scoff.

pdf23ds, I'm starting to find you rather annoyingly smug when talking about fields that you don't know much about. Clicking through to your site, I find you're A) very young, and B) a computer programmer, conditions conducive to both lack of knowledge and smugness respectively, so I'm probably just overreacting.

Anyway, reductionism is much, much more problematic and complex than you seem to think it is. No one here is saying that you can't produce physical correlates to emotion in the brain, that you can't point to physical activity that in some sense correlates with human experiences, in the sense that the experiences wouldn't occur without the physical activity. The question is whether the description of the physical activity allows you to dispense with the description of the experience in its own non-physical, experiential terms. Suppose I explain my mood by saying that I saw a beautiful sunset which made me feel spiritually uplifted, and you instead devote the entire scientific manpower of the human race over the next thousand years to producing a vast archive tracing out all the particle interactions that made that specific statement possible. What right do you have to say that you have "reduced" my brief statement to your vast archive? Why can't I say that my statement, at my emotional level of explanation, was a much better way of putting it than your vast archive? I could argue that my statement is more succinct, more comprehensibly descriptive, more useful, and even that it has more explanatory power. I could claim that I have reduced your ridiculously obtuse scientific definition to my much briefer and more useful one, and you only insist on your scientific definition because of an irrational religious devotion to some kind of science cult, or a desire to share in the glamor of working scientists, etc.

So anyway, to defend your claim, you need a definition of what it really means to "reduce" a non-material claim to a material one. The positivists tried to come up with such a definition, one which would allow them to successfully dispense with non-material terms within science itself, and the consensus is that they failed. Then things start getting more complex. Contemporary reductionisms are much more involved and modest, and also don't make the claim that they are reducing to material entities, since even scientific laws contain non-material or conceptual entities.

408: I don't take a position on what the balance of evidence favors.

I am finding this very funny, delightful, in light of its referent in 404: in this universe I think the balance of evidence pretty strongly favors reductive materialism.

(3) There is no type of brain state (or brain + body + environment state) that types of beliefs, desires, etc. are reducible to (in the way that water is reducible to collections of H20 molecules).

The idea behind (3)--the non-reductive part of the definition--is that John and I can share the belief that Obama is lanky despite being in different kinds of brain states.

Now this is just silly. The talk about brain states and beliefs is misleading; you can say the same thing about, say, ferromagnetism. The fact that completely different materials can be magnetic doesn't imply that you can't reduce it to underlying microscopic properties of the materials. Sure, in each case the underlying microscopic properties are somewhat different, and the large-scale behavior is similar. But that's not "non-reductive". It's a generic fact about nature that systems with completely different small-scale properties can have similar large-scale properties. So what?

Sorry, clearly the first two paragraphs in 414 should be italicized. My part begins with "Now this is just silly."

411: Huh?

406: You can't change beliefs without changing brain states. Thus, what beliefs you have is dependent on the state of your brain. However, you can change brain states without changing beliefs (as with John and Cyborg-John).

There is no type of low-level entity from science that = the belief that John and Cyborg-John share (or the pains that humans and octopuses share). So, the belief or pain is not reducible to some type of low-level entity from science.

No payoff from that kind of predictivity, though it does allow you to salvage your metaphysic.

Now, the reason I've been defending reductivism is not that I'm worried about discovering that quarks do something uncomputable in black holes or cosmic rays or something. The reason is that reductivism is a counterpoint to spiritualism and it's primarily the contrast between reductivism and various forms of theisms and mentalism that I'm interested in contrasting. So I'm not sure the details of chaotic systems are really relevant for that purpose.

416 is me.

416 There is no type of low-level entity from science that = the belief that John and Cyborg-John share (or the pains that humans and octopuses share). So, the belief or pain is not reducible to some type of low-level entity from science.

Wait, is that really what philosophers mean by "reductionism"? But that sort of reductionism is superficially stupid. Of course we invent coarse-grained terminology for large-scale stuff that has similar properties not immediately obvious in underlying microphysics. That doesn't mean that ultimately all of these things don't have some (hideous, complicated, not terribly useful) description in terms of the microphysics. The latter is what I -- and I think most physicists -- interpret "reductionism" to mean.

I never preview, so the conversation had progressed a bit before I made my giant mega-post, sorry. But anyway, the point is that this:

if reductionism means what I think it means. (Everything is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws.)

is definitely not what reductionism means, since one can easily hold to some version of the second sentence without believing that non-material descriptors can usefully be reduced to material ones.

The reason is that reductivism is a counterpoint to spiritualism and it's primarily the contrast between reductivism and various forms of theisms and mentalism that I'm interested in contrasting.

that contrast only exists in your odd private conceptual autodidactic universe, pdf23ds. In the broader one, reductivism is neither a necessary alternative to theism nor the only alternative.

You can't change beliefs without changing brain states. Thus, what beliefs you have is dependent on the state of your brain. However, you can change brain states without changing beliefs

Well, yes. That just means that the level of description needs to be quite a bit higher (and more abstract) and that the differing brain states that correspond to them are all isomorphic in the relevant properties. Then the referents of words describing mental states would be (reduce to) those abstractions, which can be implemented in myriad ways. Now, if we knew how to do that sort of thing, consciousness wouldn't be mysterious anymore. But that doesn't entail non-reductivism, just substrate-independence of an algorithm. After all, both humans and computers can play chess. (Although they use completely different algorithms.) It's (largely) the same game either way. (Although I never did like playing against computers. They spooked me.)

is definitely not what reductionism means, since one can easily hold to some version of the second sentence without believing that non-material descriptors can usefully be reduced to material ones.

What does "non-material" mean here? If you believe the second sentence -- "everything is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws" -- then everything is material, no? Some material things are incredibly complex and not easily described in the language of microscopic material things. But they're still material.

your odd private conceptual autodidactic universe, pdf23ds.

This is getting rather incendiary. I'd rather you cut it out. You may not know many people with this position, but I do. They tend to be much more libertarian than I am.

423 was me.

Ack. 421 was me too. Switched computers. need to save info.

As far as I can tell I mostly agree with pdf23ds. To separate arguments about terminology from actual arguments, let me state some things that I think are unambiguous, true facts about the world:

1. Everything in the universe is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws. Nothing occurs that is not governed by these laws.
2. These basic constituents, in large numbers or in different situations, exhibit a dizzying array of large-scale properties.
3. It is possible that similar large-scale properties (superconductivity, believing that Obama is lanky) can emerge from very different underlying configurations of physical constituents.
4. When this happens, we are free to group things in ways that are conceptually useful, like "superconductors" or "people who think Obama is lanky" on the basis of similar large-scale properties that are not easily (or perhaps even possibly, in practical terms) described in terms of their small-scale properties.

As far as I can tell, all the disagreement here is over whether fact #1 can be called "reductionist" in light of facts #2 and #3, and over whether the qualifier "in practical terms" should be inserted in #4.

What does "non-material" mean here? If you believe the second sentence -- "everything is made of the same constituents obeying the same physical laws" -- then everything is material, no?

OK, now we're getting into idealism vs. realism, a 2500 year old philosophical discussion. To bring it down to our disccussion, we're stumbling on the "everything". I believe all material things are made of the same constituents obeying the same material laws, and every process has a material substrate, but there is a meaningful sense in which concepts can be said to exist apart from their material substrates. The concept "five", for instance, has a real existence that is not reducible to any particular example of five-ness.

That doesn't mean that ultimately all of these things don't have some (hideous, complicated, not terribly useful) description in terms of the microphysics.

define "description". Does the microphysics description contain all the information present in the macro-conceptual description? I say no.

What happens in my brain when I see red is slightly different than what happens in your brain when you see red, but there's a real sense in which we're both sharing the experience of seeing red.

Also, as I noted above, your micro-physics description will contain non-material entities, so what you're really doing is not reducing to material entities but reducing to scientific description.

No one here is saying that you can't produce physical correlates to emotion in the brain, that you can't point to physical activity that in some sense correlates with human experiences, in the sense that the experiences wouldn't occur without the physical activity.

Of course; I never thought otherwise. (Well, except that I think maybe cynique doesn't believe that, but it hasn't been discussed.)

The question is whether the description of the physical activity allows you to dispense with the description of the experience in its own non-physical, experiential terms.

Well, I wasn't aware that was the question. But that's a very vague way of putting it. Dispense how, and for what purposes? Pragmatically speaking, there's almost never a point in dispensing with them. If you're trying to build an AI or something, then yes, you need to dispense with them.

Suppose I explain my mood by saying that I saw a beautiful sunset which made me feel spiritually uplifted, and you instead devote the entire scientific manpower of the human race over the next thousand years to producing a vast archive tracing out all the particle interactions that made that specific statement possible.

Why the hell would I do that and why the hell would you think I would want to? All I'm saying is that reductionists think that it could be done in principle.

What right do you have to say that you have "reduced" my brief statement to your vast archive?

What, you think a complete reduction would somehow trivialize your experience, or subtract in some other way from the sublime? Why? Why can't a 1000 page formal mathematical proof be just as beautiful as a sunset? Answer: our visual cortex lets us bring much, much more of our brain to bear on the subject.

Why can't I say that my statement, at my emotional level of explanation, was a much better way of putting it than your vast archive? I could argue that my statement is more succinct, more comprehensibly descriptive, more useful,

You'd be right.

and even that it has more explanatory power.

Well, insofar as a low-level description is hard to comprehend and hard to manipulate, you'd be right. But with better tools that may not be the case.

and you only insist on your scientific definition because of an irrational religious devotion to some kind of science cult, or a desire to share in the glamor of working scientists, etc.

Strawman bullshit. Calm the fuck down.

So anyway, to defend your claim, you need a definition of what it really means to "reduce" a non-material claim to a material one. The positivists tried to come up with such a definition, one which would allow them to successfully dispense with non-material terms within science itself, and the consensus is that they failed. Then things start getting more complex. Contemporary reductionisms are much more involved and modest, and also don't make the claim that they are reducing to material entities, since even scientific laws contain non-material or conceptual entities.

Yeah, I can agree with that. I think I have a pretty good definition, though not an extremely practical one. (I doubt there is a good, general, practical one to be had at this point.) But I haven't gone around trying to reduce statements to atoms now, have I? Why are you so annoyed at me?

Hee! "The glamor of working scientists." I missed that one.

427: Yeah, I don't think we really disagree about anything. I'm a little uncomfortable calling our conceptual categories "non-material". Ultimately all this conceptual stuff is just physical processes happening in our brains, and the coarse-graining that's so useful for us is really happening because the vast array of possible sense data is triggering a relatively small number of patterns of our neurons firing. At some level it's all material. But ok, maybe it's useful to think of our conceptual categories as being "non-material" in some sense.

BTW, math can be reduced to 300 lines of python.

416, 419: I didn't claim the view was particularly sexy. The "materialism" part of "non-reductive materialism" is kind of a clue that the person holding the view thinks the world is made of the same kind of stuff that the physicist thinks it's made of.

If there is any interest in it, it comes perhaps in addressing what explains the fact that the mind is not reducible (i.e., Does it have something to do with subjectivity?) or what implications, if any, follow from the fact that the mind is not reducible (e.g., Does it have any implications for psychology and other higher-level sciences?).

Also, in terms of the discussion that initiated this, it means that someone can use the word "energy" perfectly literally without having to cash out that use in terms of joules or the capacity to do work.

while being disinterested in

Disinterested does not mean uninterested.

This has been a public service announcement.

433: It only took you 140 comments to notice that one?

If there is any interest in it, it comes perhaps in addressing what explains the fact that the mind is not reducible (i.e., Does it have something to do with subjectivity?) or what implications, if any, follow from the fact that the mind is not reducible (e.g., Does it have any implications for psychology and other higher-level sciences?).

But what I was trying to stress in several comments is that this sort of "irreducibility" is generic. It's extremely difficult to derive from, say, the Standard Model that water is a liquid and room temperature, even harder to derive that doped cuprates superconduct at low temperatures, harder still to derive that bacteria can live.... The mind is fantastically complicated, but is it somehow more irreducible than you expect such a complicated object to be? If not, why would you ever speculate that this has something to do with subjectivity?

"and room temperature" should be "at room temperature"

avant garde hepkraab.

434: Believe it or not, I don't always read threads in real time.

I can't figure out what this argument is about, other than the fact that pdf23ds feels very pugilistic about something.

If reductionism is to have any meaning (other than as a synonym for "realism" a la PGD), then it should be practically true that higher-level phenomena can be reduced to lower-level phenomena. For a long time, it wasn't clear that this wasn't practically true, so it was a live philosophical question. Now it's clear that that's not true, we know that reductionism as a general claim about the universe is false.

438: Still, you might mention the comment number when quoting a remark from way the hell upthread. House rules. The house. It does.

re: 426

The whole point of 'non-reductionist' materialist views is that 1 isn't sufficient for reduction.

For every single token event at one level there will be some set of material properties that underly that token. That's yer materialism, right there.

What the non-reductionist denies isn't that. What they deny is type-idenity, not token-identity.

None of that is incompatible with your 4 points, of course.

This has probably been multiply pwned above.

For a long time, it wasn't clear that this wasn't practically true, so it was a live philosophical question. Now it's clear that that's not true, we know that reductionism as a general claim about the universe is false.

Really? Links? Keywords?

396: Chaotic systems can, in principle (and practice), be simulated.

The point is that they may not be simulatable (in this universe) accurately enough (or for long enough which sort of amounts to the same thing in terms of bounding the phase space volume of the final system from the initial) to "deduce" the higher level rules.

This sad condition may, for some classes of rules, even be provable. So, some actual finite entity may be left only able to derive those (relationships between long run behavior of two chaotic systems, for example) by observation and statistical generalization.

For brains/minds it is presumptuous to assert either one way or the other at this stage of understanding. The only successful psychological predictors we have (namely us humans watchin' each other all our lives) are obviously of the statistical generalization sort. Maybe someday we'll be able to really simulate a brains approximately for some time frame of perhaps very short duration.

As per pdf23ds's 404 and the balance of the evidence and to elaborate on 439, let us attempt to construct an example of a rule which may not be deducible from lower level rules. This relies on what I believe is an uncontentious regularity of people on Unfogged, namely that people they invent rules for interacting with each other. :)

Suppose I conscript some in-principle un-simulatable randomness in the world -- a geiger counter reading, the maximum momentum of one of the couple dozen neutrinos from a distant supernova...what have you. I take this as input to my rule creation. E.g. -- ticks and I post as "MyTzLpLk" ever after but tocks and "Socatoa" ever after. The regularity of me deciding to do this, carrying through, typing, etc. may all be neuro-crypto-scrutable and even forecastable with some future a hyper MRI to garner initial conditions based on my life history. The *actual decided rule* -- "MyTzLpLk" vs "Socatoa" -- is externally visible behavior that is both highly regular statistically regular *AND* possibly quite interesting (er, at least minorly) for others to model.

Deducing *which* rule/regularity manifests is no less complex than simulating THE WHOLE UNIVERSE (which might well require a power set universe of universes, not that such talk is at all meaningful). This is beyond simply 426 and other's "practical terms" except in some unrealizable Laplacian God's eye view. A totally fair statment might be "nothing in the universe can predict the macro rule from all the micro rules in play".

So, to take the 404 position in strong form, one has to be quite careful about what can count as "rules" or regularities in psychological behavior. You end up needing to assert a rather continual "re-measurement" of brain state, if even the first "hyper MRI" is ever adequate for any amount of predictive time. But this example should show that there are interesting long term rule-like patterns only deducible from observations of the full system. How many "psychology" rules end up in this category (and how much any person cares about them) is an open question.

441: Yes, thanks, it quickly became clear that "reductionist" does not mean to philosophers what I had understood it to mean.

435: Right, the question would be whether the mind is an example of this "generic" kind of non-reductionism or whether it is special for some reason. All the arguments I mentioned were of a generic sort. You could make an argument that the mind is a special case because of the fact that mental phenomena are all essentially subjective or exist from a first-person point view, whereas that is not true of the physical stuff mental phenomena are dependent on/realized in/constituted by/identical to .

Why are you so annoyed at me?

This was not to me, but I'll answer anyway.

Dude. You:

1. Passed judgment on the entire community of scientists—stating that those who don't subscribe to your world view are not "top notch." (Am I understanding correctly that you evaluate scientists not be the quality of their work but by the purity of their metaphysics?)
2. Dismissed almost the entire field of philosophy.
3. Snidely dismissed the work of a physics group as magical thinking because they used the word "emergent" in a manner that you didn't think agreed with your definition—and then admitted that you had only read the paper's abstract, as if that made things OK, rather than indicated that you should keep quiet until you're informed.

It has sounded at times like you think yourself qualified to opine on just about everything. In my experience, very few people are. It does not seem like you have a deep knowledge of the topics you so confidently speak about. I find it less offensive when nonexperts present their opinions with a dose of humility. That's what I try to do.

I'm sure you mean well, perhaps I am overreacting, and I apologize for how the above may come across, but I thought I should state that it's not just PGD that your overconfidence has been annoying.

And now, I'll pull a mcmanus/ogged and state: Time to go for a run.

Suppose I conscript some in-principle un-simulatable randomness in the world -- a geiger counter reading, the maximum momentum of one of the couple dozen neutrinos from a distant supernova...what have you.

Isn't "in-principle un-simulatable" a bit too strong for your example? (I think the neutrino one is in principle simulatable, maybe, but we don't even know if radioactive decay is simulatable in any way at all ever, do we? It's about as close as we can get to purely random.)

Deducing *which* rule/regularity manifests is no less complex than simulating THE WHOLE UNIVERSE

Given the above, would even that be sufficient? You would have to suppose that the exact moment of decay could be determined by a whole-universe simulation. Which I don't know enough to say is the case.

Anyway, I still don't see how that gets you to A totally fair statement might be "nothing in the universe can predict the macro rule from all the micro rules in play".

442 - Pick your favorite popular or technical account of chaos theory.

Chaos theory is largely a red herring here, I think. One can't predict the detailed behavior of a chaotic system over time, but one can often characterize the different possible phases, derive statistical averages in each, etc. There's a lot that's at least potentially predictable in a chaotic system. The micro/macro distinction is more general and in some cases more pernicious.

449, just trying to construct a simple micro/macro example for people and point out that while some rules (your averages, etc.) might be deducible, it is overzealous to assert all interesting rules are.

447, if you accept any source of in-principle inability to simulate by something in the universe then you get to
non-deducibility of the outcome upon which future rules & regularities were contingent, and so the need to observe and induce to obtain them, even in-principle.

1. Passed judgment on the entire community of scientists--stating that those who don't subscribe to your world view are not "top notch." (Am I understanding correctly that you evaluate scientists not be the quality of their work but by the purity of their metaphysics?)

That would be incorrect. I think it's a descriptive fact that the top-notch scientists (especially in certain fields) are much more frequently materialists, and that this aids their work. I judge them all (insofar as I judge them at all) by their work.

2. Dismissed almost the entire field of philosophy.

Oh yeah. There is that.

3. Snidely dismissed the work of

Made fun of the abstract of a paper of

a physics group as magical thinking

No, the use of the word "emergent" was magical thinking, AFAICT from the abstract (which I mentioned at the time, not in a later comment. That's what's generally called a DISCLAIMER. I said "well, from the abstract it looks like they may be using "emergent" in a magical way." There's nothing wrong with that.)

It has sounded at times like you think yourself qualified to opine on just about everything. [...] I find it less offensive when nonexperts present their opinions with a dose of humility. That's what I try to do.

Well, the proper way to handle this is not to attack a strawman position of the statements of the uppity libertarian technobrat, but instead to comment that you're annoyed (e.g., for the reasons you listed) and then, if you feel like it, address the substance of their positions honestly. Which is not what PGD did.

I think it's a descriptive fact that the top-notch scientists (especially in certain fields) are much more frequently materialists, and that this aids their work.

Historically, this hasn't been true, and I'm not certain it would be true of contemporary scientists if we limit ourselves to the strong sense of materialism that you're using.

450: if you accept any source of in-principle inability to simulate by something in the universe then you get to
non-deducibility of the outcome upon which future rules & regularities were contingent

If you can use statistical regularities in those nodes of in-principle uncomputable processes, you can determine with high confidence the properties of the higher level system. That's why quantum mechanics and chaos don't mean that we can't, in principle, derive Newton's laws from string theory. If there are no such statistical regularities, then you've got problems. But then obviously there are in our universe, because there's plenty of order in it.

No, the use of the word "emergent" was magical thinking, AFAICT from the abstract

This just seems odd, unless you don't understand their abstract. They clearly state what they show ("macroscopic observables... cannot in general be derived from microscopic observables"). How is it "magical thinking" to call this "emergence"?

As I said somewhere above, I am skeptical about their claim that these systems are "physical", but that's a separate (and more subtle) issue.

453: amusingly, deriving Newton's laws from string theory is damned simple compared to deriving just about anything else from string theory.

Historically, this hasn't been true, and I'm not certain it would be true of contemporary scientists if we limit ourselves to the strong sense of materialism that you're using.

Yeah, I really should limit that statement to scientists of the past, oh say, 60 years. I think evolutionary biology and cognitive science contain a lot of that evidence, and both of those are pretty new fields. (Well, evo devo at least has only really taken off since then, anyway.)

And I would agree that it's probably not true of most contemporary scientists, and possibly even of the leading lights of fields where it doesn't really matter much.

This just seems odd, unless you don't understand their abstract.

I probably didn't. Once I read the first paragraph or two of the actual paper, I could see how the abstract would lead to certain people who are sensitive to abuse of the term "emergence" to unjustly malign the paper. I still dislike their use of the term, but perhaps it's justified.

443: You're interesting.

I fail to see (any more) what's interesting in the question, however. The fact remains that human life is enriched, indeed may well be constituted in some sense, by the plenty and possibility it provides itself through language use. And that language use makes fundamental use of what LB originally wanted to call metaphor, though it is not that. If someone wanted to push that, all language is metaphor. Oh noes! There is no ground! Etc.

Ev psych and cognitive science are not what I would call the pinnacle of science. I'm actually beginning to think the main product of cognitive science is the production of proclamations of the awesomeness of cognitive science.

From what I've read, the big names in quantum physics and relativity vary widely, but certainly weren't universally materialists. A lot of them were pretty dreamy. Which is odd, because they're the ones who specialize in material.

I just don't understand how emergence is magical thinking. Like chance (my point above, which I didn't make clear) it's pretty clearly the name for a kind of limitation on our knowledge. It's not a claim that some imaginary thing called Emergence makes things happen.

459: I didn't mention ev psych, didn't really intend to. I don't see what's so bad about cogsci. But anyway, sure, these fields are noisy, but that doesn't mean you can't improve your thinking through their genuine insights. And one of the skills of a top-notch scientist is knowing which science is good science.

I feel fairly confident in saying almost all of the competent scientists I know are materialists, though Cala in 452 is obviously right that historically this has not been the case.

The use of "emergence" as an explanation (as opposed to a one-word description) of a phenomenon that doesn't have a more detailed explanation is magical thinking. Other uses of emergence I will judge case by case. I grant that the paper linked above isn't a clear cut case of that at all.

A lot of topnotch scientists have had totally wacky ideas, including wacky ideas about science. This question can't be answered by polling the scientists someone knows. Two words: Kary Mullis.

If Mullis is a materialist, it strengthens my case.

When does anyone use emergence as an explanation? AFAIK emergence simply means the inability to explain the complex level by the simpler level. I guess that some people believe in a cosmological emergence tendency, but I'm not sure that even they think of it as a cause or an explanation.

"Kary Mullis"

Yeah, he looks pretty "non-conventional".

"If Mullis is a materialist, it strengthens my case."

What's your case, exactly?

"When does anyone use emergence as an explanation?"

Well, it's widespread in the AI community.

"How does your AI work?"
"Emergence!"
"OK, we'll fund you."

Beyond that, not sure.

"cosmological emergence tendency"

What does this mean?

468: I would guess, basically, that the universe has some sort of teleological direction towards greater complexity and intelligence, or something like that.

Mullis is evidently crazy. He doesn't believe the AIDS virus causes AIDS, etc. etc. But he has a Nobel Prize and a very serious top scientist.

I doubt that he's a materialist, but supposing that he is, he's crazy and polling him doesn't add significant support to the materialism hypothesis. In other words, scientists per se, including top scientists, can think anything they want, and a polling some group of scientists doesn't prove anything.

Based on what you said in recent posts, your thoughts on the topic are dominated by specific debates in AI, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and evo devo. Which means that there are people in those fields who disagree with you, and thus the consensus you rely on apparently isn't there. But in any case that's a fairly restricted group of disciplines.

Ask someone who believes in a cosmological emergence tendency what the term means. I was speculating as to what someone who thought of emergence as a cause would believe in.

440: It didn't seem particularly relevant.

then, if you feel like it, address the substance of their positions honestly. Which is not what PGD did.

sure it was. I was annoyed at you for the reasons Otto states in 446 (thanks for saving me the trouble, Otto!). Your definition of terms like "reduce" and even "materialism" is so incoherent that it's hard to argue with. But my comment in 412 was an attempt to walk you through the reasons why cynique was right in 305 -- the coexistence and non-reducible equality of different explanatory levels is perfectly possible even in a case where there are scientific correlates to every non-scientific form of description. From what you said in 428, you acknowledge the point, but instead of seeing the way it supports cynique's rather modest claims, you dismiss it as some kind of straw man.

There seems to be some kind of folk definition of "reduction" that you are operating with, where it means something like "science is true! anything that contradicts it is false!". I believe this too. But this belief in no way entails that scientific explanations are the only true explanations.

My knowledge of philosophy of science is at a real remembered phil 101 level, someone like ttam knows far more than I do, but you don't even seem to have read enough to see the issues being pointed to here. I have no doubt that you mean well, but a cheerful certainty of your own correctness that blinds you to the points others are making is something that will wear on people.

I think it's a descriptive fact that the top-notch scientists (especially in certain fields) are much more frequently materialists, and that this aids their work. I judge them all (insofar as I judge them at all) by their work.

Newton was a nutty mystic. Einstein was a theist. Walt has already commented on some of the key inventors of quantum physics.

You said the magic word, pdf: teleology. Can be viewed as an interjection of religiosity into explanations. I see what you might be objecting to.

470: Well, my arguments don't rely on a consensus, which makes them so much the weaker. They just rely on those fields containing the evidence that an ideal mind would immediately use to conclude [... materialism ...]. I'm not saying my position is a terribly strong one.

461: Sorry I misread.

Brian Josephson, a Nobel laureate in physics, believes in ESP. Serge Lang, a prominent mathematician who just died recently, was also an AIDS denialist.

your definition of terms like "reduce" and even "materialism" is so incoherent that it's hard to argue with.

AFAIRecall, I never really defined these. My definition is perfectly coherent, and I would have told you what it is if you had bothered to ask. At this point I won't be bothered.

Einstein was a theist.

I'm pretty sure he was, at most, a deist (which is in some versions compatible with reductionism), and even that's disputed. But it's all tangential. As to your main points, I'm just going to dismiss them, because I don't think we'd get anywhere to discuss them further. But thanks for going this far.

From what I've read, the big names in quantum physics and relativity vary widely, but certainly weren't universally materialists. A lot of them were pretty dreamy. Which is odd, because they're the ones who specialize in material.

no they don't. They specialize in modeling and predicting the effects of energies that are not directly observable. Newton's nutty mysticism helped him scientifically, because it helped him make the big leap of positing the magical action at a distance we now call "gravity". Something that contradicted all common sense at the time.

Also, the claim that "top scientists are materialists" is wrong because science is not reducible to material entities. In order to be a practicing scientist, you work with theoretical entities constantly.

I know people are using "materialism" as some kind of shorthand for "scientific", but that's not true and it's relevant that it's not true.

I'm pretty sure that Einstein was not a theist.

Brian Josephson made an important discovery as a grad student. He is now obviously insane. I assume his mental health problems began after his Nobel-prize winning work. It's sad, really.

PGD, I'm going to have to demand recognition of my 409 as having pwnd you. You owe me a drink, at least a coffee, or one of those bubble tea things.

hey just rely on those fields containing the evidence that an ideal mind would immediately use to conclude....[... materialism ...]

What I was trying to say is that you're talking in terms of specific arguments within a few related fields, and that there's a larger argument that you seem unaware of. I've read a tiny bit of the stuff from those fields on reductionism, eliminationism, the mind-body problem, etc., and it seemed to be pretty specific to the fields and not very generalizable.

478 Also, the claim that "top scientists are materialists" is wrong because science is not reducible to material entities. In order to be a practicing scientist, you work with theoretical entities constantly.

This I take issue with, though perhaps again philosophical terminology is throwing me for a loop. I would certainly call myself a materialist, despite working with theoretical entities. Quantum fields are theoretical entities. They're also the stuff we're all made of. That's material enough for me.

Einstein seemed to believe that he would meet a dead friend again.

A lot of the great German scientists 1900-1950 seemed to be idealists of a quasi-Platonist or quasi-Kantian type. I say "quasi" because I doubt that they bound themselves to Platonist or Kantian doctrine, just that they seemed to be in that ball park.

481: Right. I presume those would be the same philosophy of science issues PGD didn't have any time to give any links about.

483: Note that in response to Cala's comment I restricted my claim to scientists of the past 60 years.

475: Then why argue from the position that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? I mean, I'm a materialist who leans towards reductionistic explanations myself, but your style has been so pugnacious that it makes me want to argue the other side.

486: I think you're exaggerating my arrogance by an order of magnitude.

487: Your "duh" was what set me off. You just seemed unaware that your intuitive position wasn't universally accepted and wasn't obviously true. And since then you've seemed to say that the consensus within your disciplines of interest should be authoritative for everyone. And your understanding of reductionism and emergence seems to be limited to the way those terms are used within these fields.

Einstein seemed to believe that he would meet a dead friend again.

Source? That sounds incompatible with all the Einstein quotes on religion I've ever seen.

You just seemed unaware that your intuitive position wasn't universally accepted and wasn't obviously true.

I was aware. I didn't consider that a reason to state my positions with more qualifiers. You would probably call that "a lack of humility", while I'd call it "people being annoyingly sensitive". Both of which are literally correct. Oh, I might mention I've been in a bad mood the past few days.

And since then you've seemed to say that the consensus within your disciplines of interest should be authoritative for everyone.

I'm not referring to a consensus, I'm referring to evidence in those fields which will probably eventually become a consensus, but at this point it's still up to the individual person to research the evidence and come to those conclusions on their own.

And your understanding of reductionism and emergence seems to be limited to the way those terms are used within these fields.

Which is probably why me and PGD didn't get anywhere. And still no links!

Some of the things Einstein wrote verged on the mystical and were hard to interpret. It's worth looking at his philosophical writings. Ultimately I think that his philosophy was nothing much, fairly conventional stuff for a German (Swiss?) of his generation, but it doesn't seem simply materialistic in the snippets I've read.

PDF, you're underestimating the annoyingness of your "duh" and some of the other things you've said. I don't think that PGD feels an obligation to help you out with links. He's just informing you that he's not impressed with your performance here. But I don't speak for him.

I find it annoying when people refer to my ignorance about a subject but then fail to even give any keywords that would provide a useful search. What PGD does is his business, of course.

He's just informing you that he's not impressed with your performance here.

No, he went beyond that, into the ad hominems.

480: I have a car now! I can come your way. Let's totally get together for a drink, email me.

This I take issue with, though perhaps again philosophical terminology is throwing me for a loop. I would certainly call myself a materialist, despite working with theoretical entities. Quantum fields are theoretical entities. They're also the stuff we're all made of. That's material enough for me.

yeah, I agree, I was overreaching myself a bit there. Using the ordinary rather than the philosophical definition of "materialist" -- philosophers have had no problem extending the definition of material in just the way you describe.

However, the point I was getting at is that when we extend the definition "materialism" becomes quite complicated. It means accepting a huge interlinking structure of theories, including all kinds of amorphous entities that we cannot directly observe but are inferred and posited as explanatory tools to predict the behavior of matter. It means taking all that on faith from the testimony of scientists, whose authority comes from success in predicting the behavior of matter. That's fine, but the whole unwieldy structure is given legitimacy and justified by its explanatory and predictive success, nothing else.

Given this, if we have a different, non-scientific ordinary languages that in no way contradict physical science, but within their spheres seem to have much greater explanatory and predictive power than physical science does, then how do we say that these languages are not legitimate and are just second-rate replacements for physical science?

I do think that science has a kind of primacy, in that if an ordinary language contention contradicts known scientific laws I don't believe it, while the reverse is not the case. But that's different from saying one can be reduced to the other.

And finally: the only reason I said something as impolite as "duh" is because the criticism was directed at someone(s) not present. I'm actually surprised anyone felt personally offended by it, considering that none of the authors are present.

what LB originally wanted to call metaphor

This is entirely unimportant, but when I said that the only things I had successfully communicated were the bits I was wrong about, what I largely meant was that the discussion of metaphor that led to this discussion of reductionism and so on is not strongly related to anything I was trying to say. (Not that anyone should feel bad about misunderstanding me, I wasn't being comprehensible.) But this conversation isn't one where I've intentionally taken a position on anything,

then how do we say that these languages are not legitimate and are just second-rate replacements for physical science?

That's not something I would say.

Einstein seemed to believe that he would meet a dead friend again.

He wrote something like this after the death of Michael Besso:
"He has preceded me briefly in bidding farewell to this strange world. This signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, if a stubborn one," but it's more an idiosyncratic description of Minkowski space-time than an avowal of life after death.

For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, if a stubborn one

Err, that actually looks like a wrong description of Minkowski space. Death is inside the future lightcone, not spacelike separated from us. Bizarre, coming from him. Sacrificing accuracy for poetic language, I suppose.

Crap. I was just about to take 500.

AQ, if you're still here, go get that Fritjof Capra book, read it through, and take your honey for a walk in the forest. Stop listening to people arguing on the internet.

go get that Fritjof Capra book, read it through

Oh dear god no.

I don't want to apologize for having unconventional opinions. If that makes people mad, I'll deal with it. If that means I'm not welcome here (if that day comes) I'll deal with it.

Says the guy who married an Irishwoman.

Err, that actually looks like a wrong description of Minkowski space.

Well, you could take it like as a rejection of the A-theory of time. That is, past, present, and future aren't objective features of time, though one event may be objectively before another (in a frame of reference).

504: Your opinion doesn't seem terribly unconventional. It strikes me as being in the normal range.

I don't want to apologize for having unconventional opinions.

As is usual for this place, these arguments seem always to be more about a failure of rhetoric than unconventionality of content.

Past and future are unambiguous (independent of reference frame) for timelike separated events.

508: On a deep level, you're right. On a surface level, it's all about how whacked this or that person is.

497: I know. I was using you as a placeholder.

505 -- If this is addressed to me, I'm the guy who didn't marry the Irishwoman, or kiss the pretty Chicago lawyer.

503 -- Come on, let AQ pursue this line a bit.

I imagine Einstein was talking about something like this.

510: I know it feels that way when one is the person being attacked. But any reconciliation that ever occurs happens not when one assimilates their opinions, but when they learn to present them in ways that don't push people's aggression-buttons. (Cf. all the fights with Stras, who kept insisting that it was his opinions that people hated, while everyone repeatedly told him it was the way he introduced them.)

Past and future are unambiguous (independent of reference frame) for timelike separated events.

I just mean that there's a certain theory of time according to which there's a moving 'now' and the past and future aren't objectively as real as the present. Perhaps Einstein thinks that physics is incompatible with that view (and I think maybe it is) and that that thought might be of some consolation to the children of a dead friend.

513: I doubt it. As a general rule, Einstein was not full of shit, as that is. I would guess it was just a misplaced, poetic flight-of-fancy.

514: Yes, you make a lot of sense. I'm just not in the mood to be conciliatory. I wasn't being that unreasonable, god damn it, and PGD *was* misreading me. (To put that last neutrally, his reading didn't match my intended meaning. There was a miscommunication.) I'm sick and tired of putting things neutrally. I'm familiar with what I would have had to do to communicate better. After all, I wrote this. But I'm just not that interested in what PGD has to say.

At some point, I just decided not to write here about the things that I couldn't be bothered to present in a non-offensive way. I don't enjoy inspiring people to tell me I'm irritating.

That is, YMMV. But it didn't make me feel good to be told I was obnoxious, and it eventually seemed an unavoidable product of my comments.

Hmm. If I can't feel free to be mildly offensive if it strikes me, I don't think I could really derive much pleasure at all from commenting. Who knows, that may be part of the reason I haven't commented much here in the past 6-9 months.

You can be mildly offensive, but people will, obviously, express that they are offended.

Come one, PDF. You've taken offense yourself at the way we responded, but you're accusing us of being too easily offended. If your comment is aggressive, the responses might be aggressive.

Well, if it stopped there it wouldn't be as much of a problem. But when it causes them to get mad enough at me that they stop being charitable, it's a problem.

IOW, I'm not interested in being charitable to someone who's not going to try to be charitable back. I'll sooner end a discussion, like I did here.

Thinking about it some more, it may be that some defensiveness (related to some of my views being habitually ridiculed around here, and having myself been treated very rudely in one discussion about them where I *was* being charitable) had a lot to do with my cockiness in this discussion. It seems as though I already expected the reaction to be irrational, and so I didn't bother to start out with my most charitable foot forward. Interesting how that works.

I mean, interesting, considering how I was completely unaware of the defensiveness at the time.

526 - I defended you in the discussion you're referring to, and several days later criticized the people involved for being so rude, so the fact that your experience makes me you feel entitled to be rude to me now pisses me off.

Well, I saw and appreciated your defense, but I was disheartened by the fact that you seemed to be alone. And, like I said, this was nothing conscious in the least. I'm not sure "entitlement" explains it. And was I rude to you?

(I saw your defense at the time, and the one in the other thread, too, which I am especially grateful for.)

408: Lots of discussions seem to wind up hinging on what words mean.

Shockingly!
I declare this the ur-mouseover.

528: Not particularly. But I do find generalized hostility almost as inflammatory as hostility directed at me personally. (This explains all of my interactions with stras.)

Lots of meta-discussions seem to wind up hinging on what people think words mean.

CAN I HAZ PROFUNDITY?

530: It'd sure be better than whatever's up there now.

I liked your old "offensive" posts, AWB, I often disagreed with them but thought they were interesting, provocative, not offensive, etc. The new toned-down AWB is a loss to the site, I think. I guess my opinion wasn't universally shared, although I think you could have continued if you wanted to.

pdf23ds, I was kinda mean to you, it's true. The particular kind of mild offensiveness you were showing pushes my buttons particularly hard, and I went with that, perhaps too much.

In terms of links, I'm really not a philosopher, I just have undergrad knowledge, so I can't easily hunt down some perfect single-page introduction to these issues. Nor were we really disagreeing on some single thing so much as I just saw you as missing the point and oversimplifying. But if you want to get a sense for the complexity of the issues, the best way is just to read a good history of the last hundred years of philosophy of science --or just Carnap and the positivists through the present.

Hmm. Reading that paper now. It looks like they're equating undecidability with non-reducability. Haven't gotten to the end yet, but...

Oh, and essear, they're not postulating any infinities so far, so it remains interesting.

534.1: Thanks, and I realize there were just a few people in whom I inspired intense hostility, but I'm happier without the stress. It makes me realize I just can't understand what motivates trolls; being hated feels awful, and I'm apparently extremely sensitive to attacks on my character.

OK, here's a summary so far. Ising lattices (whatever those are--some sort of physical system) are isomorphic to cellular automata, which are Turing complete. So you can encode an arbitrary algorithm onto an Ising lattice, which means that to figure out whether it has some arbitrary property (expressed as a function over the states of the lattice nodes) is undecidable. That has nothing to do with what I mean when I say something is irreducible, so I'm guessing this paper, while interesting (and with pretty pictures) doesn't really pertain to this discussion much, and will refrain from reading the last three pages.

"That has nothing to do with what I mean when I say something is irreducible"

or, more likely, reducible...

538: they show that, given a particular model of the microphysical description of some system (i.e. they postulate, from the beginning, all the underlying rules that should determine its behavior), it is completely impossible (i.e. formally undecidable) to determine what its macroscopic properties look like. This seems to me to be very much about reductionism. It's also really weird, and bothers me almost enough to make me want to try to prove that this doesn't happen if one makes a few reasonable assumptions about the microphysics one starts with. Almost.

completely impossible (i.e. formally undecidable) to determine what its macroscopic properties look like.

I don't think undecidable==impossible. Why can't you just run the cellular automata modeled by the lattice and see what happens?

This seems to me to be very much about reductionism.

Hmm. Probably our disagreement is semantic.

541: I don't think undecidable==impossible. Why can't you just run the cellular automata modeled by the lattice and see what happens?

Maybe. I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details here. I think the trouble with that is that in finite-time simulations you're never really sure you're seeing the true long-time asymptotics.

At any rate my intuition for how to get macroscopic behavior out of microscopic systems is crucially based on the microphysics being local, and I think they're allowing interactions of arbitrarily long range in their lattice. So I suspect there's an argument to be made that their result only applies to highly nonlocal systems.

540: Look at it this way. What they're saying is that you make a computer out of a Ising lattice, so you can program it in ways that make it really hard to figure out what it's going to do beforehand. If you've worked much at all in computer science, this is not surprising in the least. Interesting, yes.

So I suspect there's an argument to be made that their result only applies to highly nonlocal systems.

Yes, I would definitely agree. The kind of physical system in the paper is not usual at all. But it's not directly non-local, since each cell only interacts with its immediate neighbors. It's just that the logical properties of the system cause effects to ripple across the lattice in Turing-complete ways. I think Turing-complete systems are pretty special.

"in finite-time simulations you're never really sure you're seeing the true long-time asymptotics."

Nope, that's definitely true. Terminating algorithms can last a godawfully huge amount of time. Google Busy Beaver numbers.

I'll sooner end a discussion, like I did here.

says the author of comments 523, 524, 525, 526, 528, and 529.

If you're feeling at all blue, pdf's, I'll take this opportunity to say that this site would be much less tolerable without your comment-reading plugin.

Iyam what Iyam and that's all what Iyam.

pdf's

That's a good one! Not bad.

548: I think those are anapests.

I may be a physicist with no computer science background, but I have heard of the halting problem and of Busy Beaver numbers. The fact that you can build simple physical systems for which certain questions are undecidable does not surprise me. The fact that the ground state of the system is undecidable surprises me. In a vague sort of way, it seems to suggest the physical system itself can't figure out what it's doing. It's weird.

I was looking at the discussion surrounding the Hamiltonian and didn't notice that they really are specializing to nearest-neighbor interactions, so you're right that it isn't really non-local. So it passes a zero-order 'physical plausibility test', and still bothers me. On the other hand, it's more a statement that the ground state isn't computable in the presence of arbitrary external fields; for simple ones, it might be perfectly well-behaved. Maybe the 'physically plausibile' criterion has to be applied to the external fields instead of the Hamiltonian itself. But then it's trickier to know what makes sense. Hmm. At any rate, probably enough thinking out loud about this on Unfogged, unless someone has a brilliant insight and wants to write a paper on this.....

550: I'd never admit to those charges you fool.

I'll.

How do you decide where to put the feet? They could be amphibrachs.

Dammit. Your computer has wikipedia too. I always forget that.

your comment-reading plugin

?

556: I'd get a lot more done if I had a plugin that read all the comments for me.

You know, reading this last night, I was wondering whether pdf's defensiveness was related to what I will call with all good intentions and no dismissiveness intended "the robot thing" (only because I can't remember the name of the theory and "pdf is the twelfth cylon" sounds more dismissive even though it's funnier) from last time. But the thing is, there's a lot of space between materialism and dualism that wouldn't rule out robots, so saying "there's a lot of options besides reductive materialism" shouldn't be construed as "and I think your robot program is impossible, you fool."

The robot thing = "posthumanism"? That is, that's pdf's thing, as I understand it, but I'm not sure it's what you meant to refer to.

Yeah, that. Could not for the life of me remember the name. And at least, there's no reason to think one must be a strong materialist to be a post-humanist (it seems to work reasonably well with non-reductive materialism.)

||
Out for a walk with the kid yesterday, ran into a neighbor I hadn't seen in about 9 mos, even though he lives just a few doors down. Me: Hey, good to see you, blah blah blah, how are you and [your wife] doing these days? Him: It's been a tough year. We're getting divorced. Me: ...
|>

Oy. There's a conversation that sucks from both ends.

Isn't there a joke about that situation in A Fish Called Wanda? John Cleese describes what it's like to be English as living with the constant fear that one will ask "are you married?" and hear "my wife left me last Thursday."

Lots of discussions seem to wind up hinging on what words mean

I think one day I should like to teach (take?) a course in "How Countless Bitter Fights Could Have Been Avoided if People Took Time to Choose Their Words Carefully with Attention to Connotation, Denotation, and the Dictionary."

This course would be a prerequisite to "How Countless Other Bitter Fights Could Have Been Avoided if People Took the Time to Clarify the Intended Meaning of Poorly Worded Statements."

The advanced, advanced course would be: "Purportedly 'Poorly Worded' Statements are Sometimes a Tip-off to What People Really Think."

(Not directed at any portion of this thread, mind you; just reaction to the quoted bit above.)

561, 562: FWIW, may not have totally sucked from both ends. IME, anyway, there's that horrible phase where you know, and where you are quite certain that at least a few of your neighbors know, but you don't know who knows what. It can be quite a relief to just say it and know, for future reference, "Okay, Gonerill already knows."

I think one day I should like to teach (take?) a course in "How Countless Bitter Fights Could Have Been Avoided if People Took Time to Choose Their Words Carefully with Attention to Connotation, Denotation, and the Dictionary."

I taught a cle where we spent the entire 1.5 hours discussing the impact of language on problem solving (how words impact a domestic case).

there's that horrible phase where you know, and where you are quite certain that at least a few of your neighbors know, but you don't know who knows what. It can be quite a relief to just say it and know, for future reference, "Okay, Gonerill already knows."

Once you get to be a certain age, you will have lots of these conversations:

"How are you?"

"Terrible!! My wife/husband left me for the babysitter/teacher/co-worker/my best friend!"

15 minutes later you are still hearing much more than you want to be hearing.

Dear anonymous questioner,

Anyway, the implication is that the question is less whether she buys astrology and I don't as whether our deeper spiritual perspectives align, and how that shows up in our personalities and values.

I wish you could have simply stated up front that you are a romantic. On the other hand we would have skipped all this lively conversation, so maybe it wasn't a complete waste of time.

By all means, make one of the most important decisions of your life (and if you reproduce it may be the most important decision of your life) based on how your perception of your "deeper spiritual perspective" aligns with your perception of someone else's alleged "deeper spiritual perspective."

Heaven knows that makes for the strongest foundation a relationship can have.

Sigh.

Another sample of one of those conversations. Skating over the weekend, the little sister of one of Rory's friend takes me by the hands and starts skating with me. (She knows I'm not so skilled, and she's just learned to skate backwards, so she's going to help me improve.) Next to Rory, this is probably my favorite kid ever.

Kid: Do you have a boyfriend yet Mrs. Kotimy?
Me: No, not yet.
Kid: UNG has a girlfriend.
Me: Yes, he does.
Kid: They're going to get married.
Me: Yeah, I know.
Kid: Why don't you have a boyfriend?
Me: Um, I'm not really in a rush... You know, I think I'm going to go sit down and rest for a bit.

pdf/essear: I'm coming to probably too late, but will just note that Ising systems are interesting to study, being just about the simplest random field models, so lots of people have had a go at them, with some surprising results. If I recall correctly, this was also the original source of renormalization theory.

Anyway, even on finite lattices a lot of the asymptotic behaviour is computable but very, very slow. You can set these things up as a Gibbs distribution of a certain Hamiltonian/energy function, and it's relatively easy to show through a process called `simulated annealing' that you can move the system to a uniform distribution over all (global) minima of the energy function. However, you can only achieve this in a way that is sort of morally equivalent to exhaustive search, if you will. It involves a sequence of steps in a temperature-like parameter that are logarithmic, i.e t_k = A/log(k) to converge.

They're also used to study the process of phase transitions. I suspect Isings model was the first to demonstrate this in simlation.

In a few special, simple cases (Ising's original nearest neighbor magnetization in 2D, for example) these things have been solved analytically. In general though, frustratingly little is known, and while general proofs like the above mentioned are available, they mostly fall apart one you use computationally practical approaches. This doesn't stop the methods being used quite a lot in practice (engineering, CS, physical sciences) but makes it difficult to prove much. Often the root of the problem is a MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) approach that has difficult to analyse mixing properties, so many things are hard to pin down. Either that or renormalization-type approaches (where applicable) which are also quite challenging sometimes.

Kid: Why don't you have a boyfriend?
Me: Um, I'm not really in a rush... You know, I think I'm going to go sit down and rest for a bit.

You missed an opportunity:

"A smart woman doesn't need to have a man in her life at all times."

570 reads a lot like some of the bullshit I used to make up in literary theory classes.

A smart woman doesn't need to have a man in her life at all times.

A stupid woman is another story?

Hey, Kraab, are you in DC? I thought you were in Austin?

573: Well, yeah, actually. A woman (or man) who is not able to take care of her- (or him-) self does well to be hooked up at all times so as to have a caregiver on call as needed.

574: What, you think they don't have lit theory in the red states?

572: Well, all technical jargon sounds like bullshit when you don't know the language. I don't know the physics half, so the first half sounded like bullshit. But the second was crystal clear.

During my Terrible Horrible Really Bad Year, one of my chief comforts was those awkward conversations.

I still get satisfyingly surprising reactions from being a relatively young divorcé.

570: Yeah, sure, analyzing the behavior of simple lattice systems can be difficult, but it was "undecidable" that seemed deeply weird to me, not just "difficult". As I noted somewhere above, though, they're really making a statement about the system under arbitrary spatially-varying external fields (at least I think this is the field theory language version of how they encode the initial conditions of the CA), which makes my renormalization group intuition (e.g. about relevant/irrelevant deformations) utterly useless. So maybe it isn't so weird after all. I would feel better if I could clearly state the conditions under which I expect things to be better behaved and show that they are.

578 to 561 et seq.

What, you think they don't have lit theory in the red states?

Lit theory is a major blue state export. Forged in white-hot seminar rooms located in elite coastal enclaves, it is packaged and transported to obscure state colleges all over the country.

It was because of some stuff Wrongshore said. Drop me a line if you're in DC.

A smart woman doesn't need to have a man in her life at all times.

From a rational standpoint one can make the case that it is better to NEVER need a man in one's life.

That way one is free to explore the variety of ways one may (or may not) WANT a man in one's life.

Put another way, in relationships my goal has always been to be wanted and not needed.

569: Oh man. I suppose it depends on the age of your inquirer, but here are some possible responses:

1. Because boys are yucky. Yuck!
2. Because I'm having too much fun learning to skate with you!
3. I don't know, do you know any cute boys?
4. Because, sweetie, you are too young to know it yet but boys and men are selfish, evil, vile creatures who will lie to you and rob you of your youth and throw you aside in an instant, the bastards!

Well, maybe not number four if the tyke is too young. Let her have her fantasies for now. She'll learn the truth soon enough.

Terrible Horrible Really Bad

satisfyingly surprising reactions from being a relatively young divorcé

It's the Judith Viorst references that ID you as a youngish'un.

I told on you, Kraab. I said you were in our nation's capital, doing something real.

If I lived in D.C. I would wake up to that song every day.

564: You have to have a part about the arguments which can be postponed indefinitely by not trying to understand one another very hard and agreeing on ambiguous language.

I just read a book about the Russian conquest of the steppe peoples. It's a truism to say that the treaties they signed (as with the Native Americans) were uderstood differently by the two sides, and even sometimes said different things in the Russian version and the translated version. But this wasn't real misunderstanding. The agreements were temporary and for a particular purpose, and both sides retained the option of cheating, reinterpretation, etc. Treaty partners are normally frenemies who don't trust one another.

In short, it really wasn't that the two sides misunderstood one another, and the Russians didn't dupe that Tatars and Kalmyks. In the end the Russians had the power to overcome the others after playing them off against one another, and that was the story. Three centuries earlier the Tatars and the Kalmyks (roughly speaking) had had the upper hand over the Russians, but by 1800 or so the Russians were completely in command.

I expect things to be better behaved and show that they are.

Right... I was just pointing out that even under finite lattice conditions, things get pretty bad. Even for Ising models with not external field. In that case, the two base states are obvious (homogeneous, or checkerboards if your coupling in -ve), but locally this system finds one of two equivalent states .... in lots of places. So to get the entire thing settled down you basically have to do something like a bunch of 2d random walk on the boundaries of all regions until one of the two solutions `wins'. If you allow for infinite extent ....

This is the reason `undecidable' doesn't initially surprise me in your discussion here, but I haven't read the paper (I should, now).

570 reads a lot like some of the bullshit I used to make up in literary theory classes.

Yeah, sorry about the jargon. It doesn't belong here but those two were having a side discussion somewhat vaguely related to things I've worked on and the thread had cooled anyway, so.... I'll stop now.