To vent or not to vent?

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Venting is a common concept in American English.

It is a metaphorical word connoting other metaphors with similar meanings: blowing off steam, getting something off your chest, getting something out, getting it out there, clearing the air, etc.

I think it would be much better if we greatly demoted these small metaphors and replaced them with plain speech, such as: I want to speak about something with you and hope you will listen to me and provide some feedback.

Speech is sacred. Speaking honestly to someone who listens honestly is always transformative. Our common metaphors for needing or wanting to speak with someone too often obscure the beauty and profound potential of these important speech acts.

Another distantly related point to this is all the deconstructing going on right now in American society.

What I want to say to you about this is simply: any technique used to deconstruct America can very easily be used against any society anywhere in the world during any period of time.

All groups can be deconstructed easily because all groups are fundamentally simple. They are lowest-common-denominator communication systems shared by their members.

A little deconstructing and intelligent analyzing can be good, but too much is destructive. It’s much easier to destroy something than build it. And building new or better things does not always mean destroying established things first; in fact that approach rarely works.

Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy

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A well-reasoned argument based on physics and peer-reviewed studies showing how and why masks don’t work.

Masks and respirators do not work.

There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.

Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.

The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history. (Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy)

 

Plants filter out green light to protect photosynthesis from “noise”

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Plants are able to make photosynthesis more efficient by filtering out spectra of solar light that change most rapidly in their environments.

Protecting themselves from such “noisy” input allows them to obtain “quiet” outputs of energy.

This provides “…a unified theoretical basis for the experimentally observed wavelength dependence of light absorption in green plants, purple bacteria, and green sulfur bacteria.”

That quote is from the study: Quieting a noisy antenna reproduces photosynthetic light harvesting spectra.

Nathaniel Gabor, one of the authors of the paper, said of it: “Our model is the first hypothesis-driven explanation for why plants are green, and we give a roadmap to test the model through more detailed experiments.” (emphasis added)

This general principle—turning noisy inputs into quiet outputs—can probably be applied to many other systems, including human psychology. In this respect, many human behaviors could be viewed attempts to achieve quiet, steady, or consistent outputs by reducing noise.

FIML is a super efficient noise reducer.

 

Personality disorders and signaling

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In my opinion, “personality disorders” are more easily understood as signaling problems.

All types of personality disorder involve dysfunctional signaling with other people. Signals are both sent and received in ways that result in suffering.

As currently defined, personality disorders “develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability.”

Thus, if there are no significant brain injuries or other biological problems, all personality disorders (PD) develop through experience.

This means that during childhood the PD sufferer has received many bad signals resulting in their failing to form a coherent well-functioning internal signaling system.

The way to fix this is work with the signals. And the best way to do this is FIML practice. A professional psychotherapist cannot possibly provide this level of treatment.

This brings me to a second point: is there anyone who would not benefit from improving their signaling?

Why do we view psychotherapy as treatment designed merely to make us look and feel “average”? Why don’t we instead work to optimize our psychologies every day?

The Buddha said we are all crazy. We are. We all need to work on our signaling—our personality disorders—all the time.

The distinctions between one PD and another and those who have PDs and those who don’t are vague. This is because all PD problems (absent significant biological deficits, which may include intelligence) are idiosyncratic varieties of signaling malfunctions.

If signaling is the core problem, it should follow that all acquired PD will be classifiable as some kind of signaling malfunction. And that is precisely what we see.

Narcissism is a too simple signaling system. Borderline is an unstable signaling system. Compulsive, passive aggressive, histrionic, avoidant, and so on all are variations of a poorly formed internal signaling system.

The way to study this is through interpersonal semiotics; that is interpersonal semiotic analysis of real-time, real-world communicative signs and symbols.

All people need to do this to optimize their psychologies (their internal signaling systems). Why would anyone not want to do this? Maybe not wanting to do this is the surest sign of PD there is.

The hardest part about doing FIML is finding a willing and able partner. To me, this shows how pervasive bad signaling is. Most people will do almost anything but examine their own signaling with the help of another person.

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first posted

Dangerous times, dangerous thoughts, dangerous acts

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

This fictional exercise appeared over three years ago but it rings even truer today. We are living in dangerous times. We’ve seen what China has done. We know what Antifa is doing. Here’s something else that might happen.

“Seven”.
The earpiece crackled in Jake’s ear from one of the handheld radios they were each tuned to. They’d picked up a couple of dozen surplused Motorola LE-only encrypted radios on eBay, and after a lot of work, Gene had programmed them all to use a normally unused simplex channel reserved for the authorities for tonight. All anyone else would hear was a brief bit of static with the factory encryption, but they still stuck to brevity codes.
Jake calmed himself. He knew the signs of buck fever, and he took a few moments to stretch his whole body, starting with his toes, and ending with his fingers. It wouldn’t be long now, and he didn’t want to be fighting adrenaline when the moment came.
The van he was in was non-descript. It was the twin of one belonging to a local business the next city over, and the plates on it would be back in the morning, with any luck at all. Inside was dark and quiet, but he could already hear the noise of the protesters as they moved down the main street, closing at the speed of a 6000-footed caterpillar, fueled by youthful exuberance, and a healthy amount of stupidity. Well, they were about to get a lot more education than what they’d gotten at U Cal, and he was happy to be a teaching assistant tonight.
He focused on the intersection, and checked over his gear one last time inside the darkened vehicle, as the sounds of yet another leftist temper tantrum grew louder by the moment. (Tomorrow)

Is USA facing a color revolution similar to Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union?

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This article discusses how Hungary is faced with many of the same problems as the USA: unaccountable NGOs funding leftist politics, the super-elite illegally siphoning gobs of unearned money, while all the while corrupt governmental bodies aid and abet both.

The author argues USA is facing a color revolution similar to those that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. He also shows how the US federal government in some ways resembles the EU and that moves are being made to thwart repressive behaviors in both systems.

The most recent move in USA was the firing of US Attorney Geoffrey Berman.

…Trump and William Barr have to go after the funding sources of Antifa, Black Lives Matter and all the other NGO’s operating to funnel money into this brewing civil war. In the process they will rein in the SDNY and create a real climate of fear for those put in power to protect it.

And that’s not going to happen if the SDNY is not under their control. From the outrage and the response from key players like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler and even Berman himself, it’s clear that’s what is on the table now — they are scared Trump and Barr got close here. (Black is the New Black in Color Revolutions)

Scientists reckon “active civilizations” exist in the Milky Way

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A new cosmic-scale estimate on the evolution of intelligent life figures that “there should be at least  a few dozen active civilizations” in the Milky Way.

Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Conselice who led the research, explains: “There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.” Conselice also explains that, “The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.” (Research sheds new light on intelligent life existing across the galaxy)

Buddhist cosmology has long claimed that the universe is teeming with sentient life.

Two other basic ways to figure the probability of intelligent “communicating civilizations” existing in the universe are:

  • from a strictly materialist point of view or
  • from the view that we are living in a “mental universe.”

From a materialist point of view, conscious life is a sort of ordinary phenomenon that could arise on many planets under a wide variety of conditions; therefore it must have arisen many times in the cosmos, including within the Milky Way.

From the “mental universe” point of view, thought itself is a fundamental part of the cosmos underlying everything in the universe; thus the evolution of many intelligent “communicating civilizations” besides our own would be expected.