Observations

An article in Science News, Can you hear me now?, explored issues around the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) program. I see a Taoist twist on this, but first here is the editor’s take on this: An intelligent ET would probably just stay home. Apart from jokes about how hard it is to find intelligent […]

Google [Odds Are, It’s Wrong] for a look into how science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics. It reminds me of chapter 71’s, Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. The patient search for truth pales next to our hunger for the answer, or any answer. Science is […]

Truth? What’s truth? This is really about what passes for truth. More people are able to agree on scientific truth than any other truth. Interestingly, science is proving through brain imaging that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving (1,2,3). Wise people have known this for ages. It is an essential pillar of most […]

There are many people out protesting against spending cuts in education. This state, California, as well as the country as a whole, is massively in debt. However, all that I hear are frantic cries for “no more spending cuts” and “no more new taxes”. Now, just how is that supposed to work? On top of […]

Research reported in Science News (google [Slime mold is master network engineer]) helps exemplify the drive to maintain self-integrity that I discussed in my last post on Extinguishing Self. First, consider this quote from that research. “The slime mold has no central brain or indeed any awareness of the overall problem it is trying to […]

One of the main themes in Buddhism is the extinguishing of self through enlightenment… or is it the other way around? Both ways work if we’re referring to ‘original self’. So, are they the same thing? Initially asking such basic questions on word meaning often helps when pondering life. The more basic question here is, […]

Asking how happy we are, or wish to be, is an important question seeing that we spend much of life seeking happiness. Are you as happy as you would be if…? could be if…? should be if…? The answers to these questions hinge on what you think will do the trick. This suggests why chapter […]

First, we should ask, “do idiot savants run things?” I’d say so according to the second definition of “idiot savant” in Merriam-Webster Dictionary, i.e., 2: a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else. Of course, “knowledgeable about one subject” and “knows little about anything else” is relative and […]

In some ways, being a true believing Christian might hinder fulfilling Christ’s message to the world. Believers in anything, Christian or otherwise, rely on their tenets of belief to substantiate the very belief they hold. Approached this way, one has little incentive to challenge one’s own understanding. Rather, the understanding becomes the pillar of proof. […]