That’s because we prefer to assume that consciousness, and therefore human experience, is something non-physical rather than metaphysical. As scientis...
I grew up in a Catholic community in Australia - God was rarely mentioned in public, only in personal and private arenas. I think it’s not so much tha...
And yet the battle lines between secularism and religion are drawn, and the argument on both sides cites ‘separation of church and state’ as their bas...
That’s an interpretation - in the US particularly, it depends on your position in relation to religion. Realistically, the intention is to protect BOT...
Not significant enough... Too true. The US system of political power relies on taking a position in relation to ‘God’ as a reference point, even if it...
Agreed. I like that you brought up the ‘neutral’ position of the UK Royal Family, as head of both church and government. In Australia, there appears (...
Sorry - I should point out that my personal experience of democracy is external to the US system. I wasn’t referring to the ‘separation of church and ...
I think we tend to forget that the democratic system is not just about who we vote in t represent us, but also the process of discussion, debate and d...
That was what I said - information is the capacity, not actuality. It exists as a variability in the state of an electron. The particular meaning we a...
Not sure that ‘by a process of logic’ is quite correct. Reason and rationality are not identical. Reason is at least capable of acknowledging the limi...
A ‘bit’ of information in a computer system, as I described earlier, refers to the capacity or potential for an event in a specific system. The differ...
This is a useful example to work with, although the details are unclear, and I don’t want to make assumptions. I can understand how you would interpre...
To be honest, this is an idea that I’ve been piecing together from an understanding of the temporal process of Darwinian evolution in a broader, multi...
The cosmic process of evolution is based on the variable stability of system structures. Humans evolved from highly variable (yet sufficiently stable)...
This is a reduction, and can lead to inaccurate thinking if not understood as such. Wisdom is more than words, and knowledge is more than a subject. T...
Actual existence (observed, measurable, inactive or changing) Potential existence (perceived, valuable, improbable or attributed power) Possible exist...
I agree that thinking about knowledge seems rather pointless. I would define philosophy as ‘thinking in the context of a desire for wisdom’. Wisdom is...
Toxic: harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way. It’s not really about ‘improper’ behaviour, but about harmful or potentially harmful beh...
I tend to see depression and anxiety as signs of a highly adaptable mind, at least. It’s both a blessing and curse. How that adaptability translates t...
Information is arrangement. We assume that it’s arrangement of material stuff. Information describes the qualitative relational structure, or internal...
I think the reason we can make sense of the Way is more to do with the logical and qualitative structure of the text in relation to the world than any...
Agreed. The choice may be simply to avoid the whole ‘bad’ situation in future, but personally I think we learn more when we don’t judge at the level o...
The lack of reference to ch’i in the TTC I think is deliberate - it is human interaction that contributes ch’i to language, bringing life-energy, affe...
Shannon was trying to measure (quantify) the capacity of a telephone line to carry intentionally ordered messages. He defined this capacity - informat...
Self indulgent? Yes, I agree. But does that make him a ‘pig’ or a ‘dog’? Well, that’s your opinion. He’s still human - ‘human dog’ is a contradiction ...
There are many different languages, and some have more logic to them than quality. Logic, in the sense that Banno uses it, is a written language that ...
Information was quantified by Shannon, in a very particular qualitative reduction, as change vs no-change. But information, regardless of this particu...
Language has both a logical and a qualitative aspect to its structure. When we use or relate to it (in time), we contribute directional energy (ch’i)....
Error and mistakes are how we learn, so if we focus too much on avoiding the risk of mistakes, then we reduce the information we can gain from enactin...
I think this chapter refers to recognising and trusting our temporary nature within Tao. The previous chapter described how the sage manifests effect ...
I think you’re still missing the point. There’s obviously a part of us that is keen to isolate someone who behaves in this way as something ‘other’ th...
I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing the point. Diogenes wasn’t advocating the behaviour itself, I think he was aiming to incre...
I think Diogenes was wise, although considered ‘mad’ in his behaviour by society’s standards. He was fool, prophet and sage, and made of his life a cr...
The point was that the evaluation of an act is not just about time, but about the distribution of effort and attention in relation to time. Patience i...
For me, wisdom is less about pursuing knowledge - a consolidated ‘answer’ - than understanding, which is more fluid, lacks certainty, yet is ultimatel...
I think that when we seek to know the world as separate from our selves, we’re not going to know if this is correct unless we also know our selves. Th...
We play a card game called ‘Rage’, where each player predicts the number of tricks they expect to win per round, and is penalised for winning more or ...
Not ‘yay’. Why does everything have to have either a positive or negative value? It’s a statement of relational structure, not actuality. Populate it ...
Prediction error feeds back to us as pain, humiliation/humility and loss/lack in our relation to the world. It’s just an indication that something nee...
This is not about better or worse, positive or negative - these are value structures. A distortion is about accuracy of information. We will always co...
I’m not claiming any ‘higher way of being’, nor a ‘better way of life’. I’m simply describing an alternative to vocal pessimism. We can acknowledge ho...
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