Karl

When you say 'heart' Des, what exactly do you mean ? Do you mean emotional capacity and not memory? If so, then what is the purpose of reincarnation exactly. If we are born as blank slates with cognitive and emotional capacity, then there is no requirement for reincarnation or karma.

Be honest Michael. Doesn't your philosophy feel a bit fuzzy to you ? A bit floaty and patchy ? You are not fully an intrincisist and you have demonstrated pragmatism to paper over the cracks, by suggesting knowledge is partially intrinsic ( from memory of past life) and partially cognitive-which is a pragmatic view point. It's a compromised philosophy. If pushed you will be forced to slide into full subjectivism. Does it make sense that you are born with some intrinsic knowledge, but not all intrinsic knowledge ? What specific memory is retained ? How is that selected ?

Right, so you do not mean pre programmed. That wouldn't have been a non sequitur mind you, because it follows that self determinism would be an illusion if the mind was fully pre programmed.

Joe 90 got there before the matrix did in regard to downloading skills. :-) Hypnotism, like alcohol, can relax a person sufficiently to make them more creative, more confident and less inhibited. There isn't anything controversial in that, but hypnosis cannot 'download' something without some sensory input and some conscious, voluntary integration on behalf of the subject. I know, I've done it many times.

Production improves because production techniques improve. That there are more and less efficient ways to produce isn't even in need of an argument- consequently I don't need to offer any alternative. A guy sat in a hut in Africa is, like as not going to be a farmer of something. I don't know what he will farm, but I know that he will be more productive with a water pump, irrigation system, tractor, trailer etc. All of these things require more power than he currently uses. To say his energy requirements are limited to running his hut alone will deprive him of the opportunity to produce sufficient to sell to meet his needs and accumulate sufficient additional capital for expansion/hard times. I'm unsure why you say that you used to believe it was true and now you don't ? Production takes energy. The higher up the production ladder, the greater the input. Mining, forestry, refining, drilling, ore conversion take enormous quantities of energy. There are parts of the processes that can be made more efficient and these are attended to as part of the producers need to keep his overheads as low as possible. No one wants to spend more on energy than they need to. Efficiency and innovation are built into laissez faire markets by competition. Managing the commons is impossible, the only way to allocate scarce resource is by private ownership of all productive space. The market- when it is allowed to-takes care of resource allocation and the law takes care of those who trespass/cheat. The reason countries remain poor is that the government refuses to let people buy land on which to begin production, or it taxes them so heavily they are unable to ever accumulate sufficient capital. These two things; private property and capital accumulation are absolutely essential to wealth creation, but a thug with a government badge and gun can destroy that possibility by continually looting the productive until they cease to try and support themselves.

As you have read my 'warts and all' auto biographical philosophy I can't exactly hide anything from you :-) That book was based on that particular time and space. Several readers have asked how things have progressed. I married well because I applied logic and reasoning without realising it. I matched values with several women-even to the point of severe ridicule by women who were keen to introduce me to their friends. When I stuck to my principles things went well, if I tried to evade them, then things went badly. I spent years conforming to other people's whims and compromising my own principles-such as they were-which landed me in a self made hell. I have discovered that it is necessary to develop a principled approach to life and to apply total, rational, rigorous integrity and honesty. That means life is now completely satisfying and full for me. I am home, unified and complete. It was a long, bumpy road but I got there in the end-a bit worn, but that can't be helped. Thats enough about me :-)

Don't you simply enjoy that life is full of these uncertainties ? It's as if you are synthesising and rationalising everything in an attempt to make it conform with your view point. We can muse, but it seems you are adding unnecessary complexity to something which occurs naturally. I don't use science to ask a girl on a date. Instead I talk to her and find out if we have enough in common to take things further. I'm not sure what all that timelessness, awakening or going into the heart has to do with anything ? If we click then we let things progress whilst finding out a little more at every meeting. It's been done like that since we came down from the trees. I'm happily married for 26 glorious years and still very much in love. I did that all on my own without any reference to logic, science, mysticism or any other ism. Seems like we have been managing to forge relations that way for millennia so why try and re- invent it ?

Its about economics. The best way for a population to improve their living standards is to increase productivity. To increase productivity there needs to be an increased use of energy to replace man power. If you had to power a plough it would require a field full of panels, or perhaps a farm full of panels. So, by using batteries, it is not so much that the energy is stored to run overnight, but that in becomes, in effect, capital energy-a store of unconsumed power which can be invested in automation improvements, increasing efficiency and therefore productive output. The farmer can use fewer solar panels, occupying less space, at reduced cost in both panels/wiring/land area and have the propulsive power at exactly the right time needed for ploughing.

Perhaps you are describing how you once thought by comparing it to how you currently think ? I certainly don't have any need for rambling thoughts unless I want them, or substituting 'feeling' for a reasoned conclusion.

Right, but I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that science and maths are the only methods of gaining knowledge-that is an empiricists view. I'm saying science is the product of philosophic work which lead to the adoption of a specific methodology called the scientific method. It is the application of inductive logic in a repeatable framework. Prior to this inductive method, the gathering of knowledge was totally empirical, or it was entirely mystical. This inductive leap is certainly not omniscient. It could be, by an large, considered intuitive but backed by a logical methodology that does its best to remove the errors inherent in intuitive guesswork and reveal reality. I'm not at all sure that you aren't simply inventing new words to describe a change in your own understanding of how the world works ? The meat of your post 'science and maths cannot answer everything' I agree with, but by the same logic that a hammer cannot be made to calculate PI. The cognitive mind comes first and the scientific method is the best way we have at present for error free knowledge of the universe. I do not understand 'timelessness' or 'awakening' but you do say that it doesn't lead to omniscience so I don't have any trouble accepting that this is how you describe some aspect of internal cognitive integration. Thoughts don't have a specific time or place and 'awakening' could be a description of a succesful integration of concepts. I don't know if either of those is true for you, I can only guess at the descriptions as they pertain to my own cognitive processes.

How do you even know what a women is except through past experience ? How can you identify self/woman as seperate items or that causality ? How did you get where you are now except by active cognitive integration of your past sense experiences ? As a baby we are unable to even focus our eyes, only being dimly aware of entities and existence. We have not yet established identity or causality. Are you saying that this isn't true ?

Do you mean sub conscious ? I ask because unconscious would mean exactly what I previously alluded to-that there was no issue that could not be solved by simply staring into space for a moment and up pops the answer ? The question must surely be part of a conscious, voluntary and active one. We are looking at future goals and must use our minds to get there. If you need to buy a house, car, make an investment, decide on a health regime etc are you telling me that you need no experience of these things at all, that you are born fully installed with a set of predetermined actions that only need the mind to become quiet in order to hear them ? That rather than being born tabla rasa, we are actually born fully loaded so to speak ? Are you then ruling out any free will to determine any action and brcause all thinking is simply an illusion ? I do not find I am troubled by endless argumentation. It seems inherently simple for me to arrive at a course of action. It does not mean I make the right choice, or that I'm correct in every conclusion of course, but it certainly isn't the mass of befuddled thinking you claim is normal for a rational person. For instance It would seem to me an impossibility to pick up an instrument-having never been familiar with music- and pick the right notes to play in order to convey a composition. A whole lot of thinking would be going on in order to gain the experience to play the music and master the instrument. It seems impossible to me that this would be an entirely intuitive activity. Someone entirely familiar with music and skilled with an instrument through conscious effort would require little processing or thought, but that isn't intuition, but learned capacity.

Arent you really talking about decisions based on experience and the review of those actions towards future decisions ? It certainly isn't necessary, and likely impossible to be fully conscious of every single aspect, of each and every thread of a decision making process. Our minds have evolved the ability to hold concepts in order that we can build towards our own futures without simply acting like animals which have the luxury of acting only at the immediate moment. Indeed, during the introductory logic course I took, it was certainly part of logical reasoning to take the time to allow the mind to make the necessary connections after examining a problem. This is how we come up with solutions. Part of that might well be a logical intuition that serves to illuminate some aspect of a problem in light of previous experience. I'm highlighting this as the difference between pure feeling intuition in which a person says they use no logical reasoning at all-it just comes to them-and the kind of intuition which is part of a subconscious process , but which springs from an active, voluntary conscious grasping as opposed to staring blankly into space in order that something will automatically direct action without any requirement to think.

Yes, I realise that is the case, which is why there is no reason not to use those words if that is the philosophy that is followed. I am fine with all attempts at gaining a knowledge of reality and building on it. That includes humanities. How do you train for greater intuition ?

I would certainly agree with it being intuition. How do you apply method to intuition ? Surely intuition is a feeling ?

Pseudo-science is acceptable ;-) or magik/Alchemy.

Which is exactly my point, a subjectivist thinks entirely that way. Certainly it is possible to say that every search for knowledge in any respect is a science, but where does that leave us exactly ? I can lie on my back and search for knowledge in the shape of clouds, or the remnants in a tea cup, but this is not 'doing science', it's naval gazing at best and it is performed without rigour. It's a retrenchment of philosophy before Aristotle (the father of science). Maybe a better term is simply 'alchemy' or 'magik because that is what it is and those espousing it are surely not ashamed to use those words ? Psychology is surely an infant science. As yet it has not proven repeatability, because, unfortunately it has somehow regarded man as a kind of robot in which inputs are directly related to outputs. Anyone familiar with their own minds knows just how wrong that is.

I was responding to the Tesla power wall post and not about the general connectivity of the charging stations.

There are no 'trade mark terms' but there are widely understood definitions. A word is not defined by its etymology, but by its current definition. Changing definitions quite obviously changes the premise of the argument, so, that's why it's necessary to define the words in advance and agree on them. We cannot begin a game in which each side has entirely different rules or no rules at all. We may as well speak gibberish and then nod and shake our heads at any convenient moment. That's the equivalent of the writing of children who cannot yet form letters, but try to imitate the style of writing with a series of regular scribbles to which they impart a meaning, but from which no reader can.

Where they are not 'tied to the grid' then they are forced into using diesel generators rather than reliance on solar cells and battery storage. I have yet to find an example of his wholly, solar powered supercharger station.

Which is exactly what the church, or any religion offers, yet they do not pretend to be something they are clearly not. There isn't a 'new science' anymore than there is an old science, it's a specific method. Invent a new word to represent your philosophy by all means, but I see little point in trying to mutilate the definition of a word in order to give your philosophy added credence. Saying something is the truth does not make it so. The truth is the truth and science is science. I won't argue against your philosophy, that's your business and for any others that find it attractive.

Is that a direct cost benefit of using your solar panels as opposed to using grid power, or does that include a 'feed in' subsidy ? obviously the amount of solar power is related to geography. In the UK solar power only pays due to subsidised installation cost, subsidised solar technology paid by all energy users as 'green tax' and a subsidised feed in tariff which completely negates any investment/maintenance cost for running the entire grid. In other words it's another state boondoggle which shifts the cost burden of solar energy onto those who don't have/can't afford solar energy. Tesla is another state subsidised boondoggle, but it's apparent that saying so is tantamount to blasphemy. Their much heralded super fast charging stations are powered by full time diesel generators. It's actually more polluting to run a Tesla if an owner makes use of these 'fast charging' stations than it is to run a big old V8 gas burner. Essentially a Tesla is a rich mans play thing, or pennatance for the environmentalist 'sinner' who seeks to assuage his conscience whilst jetting around the world, or playing on his yacht.

How you fit this to your own philosophy makes it difficult to fit universally. Science is a specific, logical methodology. Any philosophy that relies on fully floating conceptualisation isn't something that can be comprehensible to anyone but yourself. It is not possible to communicate it to others, hence 'to those that do not know, then no explanation is possible. To those who know, then no explanation is necessary'. It becomes- for me at least-impossible to discuss a philosophy of this kind, it's as if you have defined science as &@//-, a lot of buzzes, squeaks and noises that make no sense at all to me and I can only say this is how it seems. I see no purpose in you giving the word 'science' in your philosophy any fixed definition whatsoever. If it works for you, then I'm glad for you.

We live in a universe of objective reality which can be experienced with our senses directly. What we sense is what is-though we can misinterpret what we sense cognitively. We do, however, live in a world in which the control of definitions-and therefore words/concepts-are controlled by our own need to control others. We have created our own prison, appointed guards and commissioned walls to a design which we have deemed acceptable and necessary. We don't exit, because we live in fear of the consequences and yet we are the creators of that fear.

Depending on the philosophic view point-in a totally practical sense, if land cannot be owned then this means that property cannot be owned. Why and how would any form of trade be possible if no one owned anything ? This would be the tragedy of the commons writ large-there would be no incentive to produce in the first place if everyone claimed the right to consume everything anyone produced. No proper allocation of resource would be possible. It would be as if locusts were eating the land. Humanity would consign itself to the animal world, but worse, they would surrender ownership to anything that demanded it. This would be self sacrifice to the point of mass suicide.