[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Sun Feb 23 09:00:06 EST 2020

Here's a dream Dave I was in the University medical area of Pittsburgh
where there are about a dozen hospitals and University buildings including
dormitories as well as academic buildings I was in a hurry to get somewhere
my friend Jeff from Pittsburgh with me I had to my credit card wouldn't
work and I had to buy a new one that is a physical card and I was in line
at a cashier and some guy was in a hurry and wanted to let me wanted me to
let him in line in front of me but I was also in a hurry so I wouldn't let
him in then Jeff and I we're trying to decide how to get back to our car so
that we could get to the place we needed to go and on the way we ended up
in a room with a bunch of Jewish people doing a religious service that I
wasn't familiar with that Jeff is Jewish and so he was familiar with it so
we decided to stay for the duration because it was interesting they were
elderly Jewish people and they were very welcoming of course we're elderly
to at this point we finally left the service and had to figure out a way
back to our car which was an efficient way and at that point I woke up

now I have some ideas about what a Freudian would say about that dream but
I'm not sure what a union would say I apologize for the lack of punctuation
I don't have time to type all that in so I decided to dictate it and if
you're familiar with Android dictation it doesn't put in punctuation

---
Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:15 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Eric, Nick, et.al.,
>
> "Well, [Dave] here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."
>
> My issue/problem/quest — I have a body of "stuff" and I want to determine
> if there are ways to think about it in a "useful" manner.
>
> The "stuff" appears pretty mundane: assertions, observations, conjectures,
> metaphors and models, even theory. The problem is provenance: directly or
> indirectly from, loosely defined, altered states of consciousness. Examples
> of indirect would be reports from enlightened mystics or dream experiences
> (ala Kekule or Jung). Direct would be psychedelics.
>
> Nick might have me dismiss the entire corpus; stating it has the same
> value as the latest Marvel universe movie.
>
> I disagree. But, by what means, what method, can "fact" even "truth" be
> discovered and shared. Peirce offers no real assistance. Nor does any other
> school of epistemology I have encountered.
>
> Is there an approach to thinking about my "stuff" that would, at minimum,
> enable more consistent discovery of examples like Eric cites in #8 of his
> list. Would it not be useful to be able to quickly identify and focus on
> insights with the potential to "hold up pretty well."
>
> Eric states there are reasons to believe (in #7) that altered states are
> less reliable, but I would argue, in some cases, the exact opposite.
> Especially with regard the ability to perceive stimuli of which perceive
> but never consciously "register" because our brain has filtered them out as
> being irrelevant. Mescaline can be an instrument as revealing as a
> microscope or a telescope and it would be worthwhile, I think, to learn how
> to make effective use of it.
>
> The crux of my dilemma remains, I think there is gold in them thar hills,
> but don't have a means of mining and refining.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, at 10:41 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>
> If we are willing to go back and forth a bit between being philosophers
> and psychologists for a moment, there are far more interesting things to
> talk about regarding "altered states".... here are the some of the issues:
>
>
>    1. When someone claims to be responding to something, we should
>    believe they are responding to *something*.
>    2. People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even
>    in highly mundane situations.
>    3. It is worth studying any types of experiences that lead fairly
>    reliably to other certain future experiences, because in such situations
>    one has a chance discover what it is people are *actually *responding
>    to.
>    4. As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by
>    all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
>    5. There is no *a priori *reason to discount the insights one
>    experiences under "altered states of consciousness", but also no *a
>    priori* reason to give them special credence.
>    6. The degree to which a someone has a sense of certainty about
>    something is not generally a reliable measure of how likely that thing is
>    to hold up in the long run, unless many, many, many other assumptions are
>    met.
>    7. There is likely good reason to think that altered states of
>    consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
>    8. There are many examples that suggest certain
>    insights-that-turn-out-to-hold-up-pretty-well, which were first experienced
>    when under an altered state, were unlikely to have been experienced without
>    that altered state.
>
> Is that the type of stuff we were are poking at?
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
>
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 2:30 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Agreed
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly, PhD
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
> Frank writes:
>
>
>
> <It would constitute proof that Marcus exists if he were to admit that I
> was correct in our years-ago argument when I said that gender defines an
> equivalence relation on the set of people.>
>
> Definitions.  Notation.  Argh, who cares.  Where’s that neuralyzer, let me
> get rid of them.
>
> (That should at least be evidence of continuity!)
>
>
>
> Marcus
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200223/de54f6ab/attachment.html>