Posted inBooks Science

Relational view of quantum theory reeks of truth

If you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. Well, whether or not you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. At least a little bit. Because below I've shared an excerpt from physicist Carlo Rovelli's amazing new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The excerpt doesn't do justice to the entire book, but it will give you a feel for Rovelli's relational take on quantum physics -- which makes so much sense, it's hard to understand how anyone could disagree with it (though I'm sure many do). I'll have more to say about…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Reactivity amplifies our suffering in the moment

I'm an admirer of Jeff Warren's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. Here's how a recent offering from Warren starts out. I liked it a lot. His tar metaphor is great. When I react to a problem in my life with a strong negative emotion, it does indeed feel like I'm covered in a black sticky substance that makes it difficult to see what's going on with any sort of clarity.  But notice that Warren says we shouldn't fight what's happening. Rather, we need to accept everything both inside and outside of us.  The less we fight, and simply…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Be born again through science

Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, has written a compelling book about the universe: Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Here's a passage from his Afterword chapter that I like a lot. It is indeed strange that we make such a division between internal and external worlds, when in truth there is only one thing going on. The child of our introduction, now an adult, may come to understand the fundamental conclusions that science, following its radically conservative method, reaches about the physical world.  Then she is prepared to revisit the starting point of her adventure…
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Posted inReality

Radical embrace of reality

I like the sound of it: radical embrace of reality.  I'm not entirely sure what those words mean to me. They just popped into my head recently, and I've given them a home in my cranium until they decide to pop out and head somewhere else. As long as this notion is rumbling around in my mind, I figure I might as well try to describe why I find it so appealing.  Reality is a close relative of truth. I admire both -- reality and truth. When I used to give talks to fellow devotees of the Eastern form of…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Wear your identity lightly if you value truth

This morning I finished reading Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of three previous posts (here, here, and here). Her final chapters were great. Two had to do with how we sometimes hold on to beliefs so tightly, they become part of our identity. This is especially true of religious and political beliefs. Here's an excerpt  from the "How Beliefs Become Identities" chapter. The problem with our tendency to turn beliefs into identities isn't that it pits us against each other. At least, that's not the problem I'm concerned with here.…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Update your beliefs often as new information comes in

Every morning I read another chapter of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of two previous posts (here and here). I really liked her "How to Be Wrong" chapter. Along with most people, I don't enjoy finding out I was wrong about something. But it's a heck of a lot better than continuing on in my wrongness, which keeps me from learning a more complete truth about that thing. Below you can read excerpts from that chapter. They're in three sections, dealing with changing your mind frequently, the ease of…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Religions

You have options. In religions. In everything else.

I'm continuing to enjoy my reading of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of my previous post.  Her core idea is that motivated reasoning, where we ignore what's true because our motivation is to preserve our current belief structure, leads to a soldier mindset aimed at defending our beliefs from that unwelcome intruder, reality.  By contrast, a scout mindset values truth-seeking through accuracy motivated reasoning. Our goal is know what is really there, not what we hope is there, what we'd like to be there, or what others want us…
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Posted inReality

Embrace the Scout mindset, not the Soldier mindset

My new favorite book -- the latest in a countless (almost) series of favorites -- is Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't. Galef's key concept is the distinction between a Solider and Scout mindset. This chart shows basic differences between them. In an initial chapter, Galef talks about motivated reasoning, the basis for a Soldier mindset. The tricky thing about motivated reasoning is that even though it's easy to spot in other people, it doesn't feel like motivated reasoning from the inside. When we reason, it feels like we're being objective. Fair-minded.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Regret is a form of mental time travel

Regret is one of the more interesting emotions. Assuming that is what it is, an emotion.  I find that regret isn't like happiness, sadness, anger, love, or any of the other emotions with an obvious feeling component.  Regret is more subtle. It's like a raw ingredient for other emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Cooked in a certain way, regret can turn into an unpleasant emotional stew, though by itself regret often is rather cerebral. The foundation of regret is feeling that I should have done something differently, even though at the time I did that thing, it seemed like…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Equanimity is like a 360 degree openness

Most mornings I listen to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app. Fairly frequently Warren talks about equanimity. One way he describes equanimity is as a 360 degree openness.  I like that image. I picture myself sitting in a chair that rotates in a full circle so I can see everything through the panoramic window of my mind. The stuff I like. The stuff I don't like. Worries. Problems. Joys. Challenges. Pleasantness. Irritations. Whatever.  To alter the metaphor a bit, I picture my mind's panoramic 360 degree window as not being made of glass, but having…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 38 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Mother’s Day blog post points to fuzzy nature of “self”

Hey, I didn't set out to write a philosophical Mother's Day blog post, but what emerged has enough philosophy in it to justify sharing here. In "My mother lives on in the back of my books" I talk about how we don't really need to think or feel our way toward being close to our deceased parents, for they live on as us in large part.  This is possible because the boundaries of our "self" are decidedly fuzzy. There isn't a firm boundary between us and everyone else, since who we are depends on our genetic heritage and experiences, both…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Another guest churchless post from John

Here's another guest post that I fashioned out of an email from John, a guy I regularly communicate with. I always enjoy his thoughtful responses to stuff that I've written about. I believe TNH stands for Thich Nhat Hanh. Hey Brian, how are you and yours doing? Hopefully as well as you can be. As always, I’ve been enjoying your posts. Especially the two about what we can learn from the internal arts. It is funny when I tell people that tai chi has legitimate martial applications for self-defense. They look at me like, right…. Like you, I trained in…
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Posted inHappiness

If there’s a universal happiness method, this might be it

Time for some grandiose thinking, an activity I excel at. Not that my grandiosity leads to grand ideas or wisdom, but, hey, it's the grandiose effort that counts. Tonight's Big Ponder is centered on the question, is there a universal method for being happy?  My first reaction was absolutely not. For if there was, seemingly we wouldn't have such a plethora of ways people seek happiness. The "self-help" category on Amazon would shrink to just a small number of books, each advising pretty much the same approach to being happy. Complicating my pondering was another issue.  Is happiness really what…
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Posted inScience

Marvelous putdown of supernatural nonsense

I really like this comment by Appreciative Reader.  To make the comment easier to read, I've italicized the quotes from a comment by someone else and left Appreciative Reader's responses in regular type. Being wordy myself, I admire succinctness in philosophizing, even though I'm rarely capable of it. Nice going, Appreciative Reader. "Empirical science is only concerned with the origins and evolution of the material universe" There is evidence for no other. "Our five senses which allow our minds to compare, contrast and analyze material forms are aimed outwards, toward the material universe." There is evidence for no other. "The…
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Posted inBooks God Science

“The God Equation” is about Einstein’s impersonal god

I bought theoretical physicist Michio Kaku's latest book, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, after seeing him interviewed by Stephen Colbert.  I enjoyed the book, though I agree with some Amazon reviewers that it doesn't really break new ground. But since my understanding of the old ground is shaky, I enjoyed Kaku's take on familiar topics. Particle physics. Relativity theory. Quantum mechanics. Big bang. The search for common ground between how relativity and quantum theories view reality. String theory. Spoiler alert: physicists haven't yet come up with a viable Theory of Everything. String theory is the…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

More thoughts about Tai Chi and martial arts

This is a follow-up to my previous post, "Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us."  I probably should have been more explicit about what I meant by a lot to teach us. What I meant to focus on, with semi-success, was the general applicability of internal versus external approaches.  Let me attempt a fuller explanation now. A few commenters observed that when it comes to fighting ability, an Ultimate Fighting dude (or dudette) almost certainly would kick the ass of a Tai Chi practitioner, even one skilled in the martial side of Tai Chi. I agree. But this…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us

For about thirteen years I trained in the external martial art of karate. For the past seventeen years, since 2004, I've trained in the internal martial art of Tai Chi. Yes, Tai Chi is a martial art. At least, it can be. Tai Chi Chuan is martial. (Chuan is translated as "fist" or "boxing.") Most Tai Chi instructors aren't interested in the Chuan part, and don't understand it well. I've been fortunate to learn Tai Chi from someone who started practicing it after many years of hard style martial arts experience, so he is expert in how Tai Chi can…
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Posted inReality

Have faith in the mystery of what we don’t know

Today Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog who, pleasingly, uses his real name when commenting, left a marvelous comment on a recent post of mine.  You can read it below.  What Tepper said reminds me a lot of what Alan Watts wrote about faith in one of my favorite books, The Wisdom of Insecurity.  Here's part of the Watts quotation from that book that I included in a 2008 post, "Real and false faith." We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind…
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Posted inCoronavirus India

India’s worsening Covid crisis partly due to religion

Since for 35 years I was a member of a religious organization headquartered in India, I have a special interest in how that country has been doing during the Covid pandemic. Recently I've been seeing dire stories about rapidly increasing Covid cases and deaths in India.  The reasons for the deteriorating situation are complex, but a big part of the blame seems to be related to factors that have been evident here in the United States, especially during the time Trump was president. Namely, poor leadership from those in charge of the country; declaring victory over Covid prematurely; allowing large…
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