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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">I wouldn\u2019t invest it in research, I\u2019d invest it in development and then hire a team that understood research. There is $5k spent per person (all persons)
by venture capital in San Francisco alone. That\u2019s not like the ~ $500k per person at a DOE government lab, but the total amount in the region is about like the combined DOE and NSF budgets, of which only a fraction goes to research anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From: </b>Friam <friam-bounces@redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthompson@earthlink.net><br>
<b>Reply-To: </b>The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com><br>
<b>Date: </b>Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:07 AM<br>
<b>To: </b>'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Steve,
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">If you had money to invest on research, and were hoping to make 5 percent on your money, would you give it to an nsf vetted project, or to a random project?
The former, surely. Yet, if everybody invests that way, all the money ends up being piled up in the middle and nothing novel is ever tried. We need the loonies, and we need some crazy people who have faith in loonies. They are the equivalent to \u201csports\u201d
in a breeding program. Without loonies and their cronies, there is no variation for selection to work on. Unfortunately, most people who bet on loonies loose. Yes, a few win big, but most lose. So, on average, it doesn\u2019t pay to be a loonie-croney. That\u2019s
the paradox. This leads me to the conclusion that madness is a form of altruism.
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Nick</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Nicholas S. Thompson</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Clark University</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/">http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/</a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext"> Friam [mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Steven A Smith<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, September 18, 2019 11:35 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> friam@redfish.com<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dave -<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">It seems like the ideas that seem to capture my imagination - Sheldrake, quantum consciousness among them - tend to be labeled as "pseudo." This is annoying, first because my hermeneutical hackles
bristle whenever anyone tries to assert their interpretation as privileged over someone else's; and because there seem to be so many cross-connections that afford all within the net to gain plausibility simply from being in the net.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p>Thanks for making this point and sharing this predilection. I find a duality in this experience myself which can be a challenge to manage. I deeply share your suspicion/resentment of "privileged interpretation". I also am deeply suspicious of persuasive
modes of communication (NLP as an extreme example, bad but conventional rhetoric second to that). I have been a direct "victim" of this in my life from time to time, but more chronically I have *observed* others being persuaded to believe things for which
there is either shaky evidence or which is highly contradicted by the evidence available. My judgement of this can sound or feel like my own positioning with "privileged interpretation" which is what makes manipulative rhetoric so insidious. I agree that
all that is labeled "pseudo" is not false or flimsy, or is only *contingently* so.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>On the other hand, one of the common tools I've seen in this type of manipulative rhetoric is to *claim* that dismissal by the mainstream is nearly "proof" of truthiness. For example, Climate Denial, AntiVax, ChemTrails, UFOlogy, etc. seem to hold up as
their prime (or at least significant) evidence the simple fact that the "mainstream" or the "establishment" dismisses them. The apparent bias of many to believe anything wrapped up in the trappings of a "conspiracy".<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>On the other other hand, new or changing or revolutionary paradigms in knowledge are *naturally* strongly or fundamentally counter to the common/standard "truth". Copernicus and Galileo and their move from geocentric to heliocentric astronomical models.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>You use the phrase "capture my imagination" which I find *also* holds a dualism for me. On the one hand, I believe that intuition is a critical element in my own understanding and knowledge of the world. On the other, I find that my "imagination" is vulnerable
to "whimsy" and a carefully constructed "whimsy" can be as compelling in it's own way as the biases of "conspiracy". The carrot to go with the stick.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Being trained formally in Science and Mathematics, I have a deep respect for the methods and sensibilities of those domains. Working in "Big Science" among a broad cross-cutting set of disciplines (27 years at LANL) also gave me a deep suspicion of "received
wisdom". While the largest portion of the work I observed stood on it's own merits, the largest portion of the *funding* for the work seemed to follow the biases of "privileged interpretation" and "received wisdom". I also felt that *publication* of scientific
work went through a similar but not as extreme biased filter. Peer review and reproduction of results are central to scientific progress, so this can be problematic. On the other, other, other hand, irresponsible publication of "hooey" without proper peer
review seems somewhat pervasive and corrupts the process in it's own insidious way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><ramble off><o:p></o:p></p>
<p>- Steve<o:p></o:p></p>
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