There is a pretty good chance that it is an invested modeling system (belief system) conflict.

It's as natural as dirt for anyone to react to data that threatens the supremacy of a favored model by getting defensive.

*My* current philosophy is that people shouldn't be heavily pressured (by other humans, at least) to abandoned their belief systems anymore than chick prematurely should be sprung from the egg.
(And that's just my notion, not suggesting that others ought to follow it.)

I've also said that Satan himself should be welcome to post so long as he was civil about it~

(THAT will teach me to keep my mouth shut!)

;-D Just kidding.

Nothing, though, at this point, that we can say, no evidence can be brought, that will convince Randy of anything he doesn't WANT to be convinced of.

That makes him very much like anyone else.

Makes for an interesting moral question, though, especially if he still has any input regarding piping GM into prey countries, or is inclined to amplify mildly anti-social (loud noise, reckless driving) youthful behavior into imagining that it will result in the death of his wife and dog.

This may seem non-sequiter...

Occasionally it is as though there is a certain person living here on earth that shares his impressions in my direction .... he is black, somewhat radicalized, has not had things easy... but likes the TOE philosophy. The one problem he has is that it is so very, very VERY white, at least as we give the impression here as a group. The image that comes in is somewhat mocking .... very white people are sitting high up in the stands, watching, with opera glasses, the 'data', a tennis game, far below. Their lips are pursed, and their faces show no traces of emotion. But, he says, the real deal with data is when you get into the ring with it, like World Federation Wrestling: Just you and the data: Screaming, posturing, gesturing, wrestling and punching and stomping. And either you win, or the data wins. (The actual way this last comes through is a little too crude to post). His point is that, I guess you could say, we are often way up in our heads (modeling systems) with it all; But in fact, the data are real, intense, and very 'in your face'.

Montana

Montana, So if you ran things what would you do to the farmers who wanted to grow GM crops? What would you do with people like Kroeran who didn't agree with you and wished to eat GM products?

_________________
I eat ego's for breakfast!
Sincerely, Ego.

Montana,

You and others forget perhaps what is 'real'. We are really not natives of here and now. We are transients. We pass through periodically with each time being different, not just in perception of the 'world' and society but in terms of who we are to our selves and in our own understanding of our own selves. Where we are from in truth, there is no black versus white. There are no males and no females. No children and no biology. There are no things and no senses. There is only data and its interpretation. That is our native habitat and native perception, not this that you perceive now. This NPMR experience is what we are in our most long term experience. What we perceive here is transient and ephemeral. Every bit the Illusion of the Buddha. It may be all that you can perceive and consider in the here and now. That however is your limitation and not the actual situation.

Our monetary system, spavined drayhorse that it is, does not even exist in other PMRs. Our sacred economic system ideas do not exist in other PMRs. It is all local fantasy and so much gossamer. What does exist is IUOCs and their interactions. Whether they uphold the free will of other IUOCs or deny and attempt to control that free will. Whether they act to raise or lower entropy and improve or degrade Quality of Consciousness. These interactions are why we are here and not the trivialities of our conceptualizations of economic systems, governmental systems, sacred honor, religious systems, our families or anything else that you care to categorize and name. All of these things are totally and utterly trivial in the face of our true purpose for being here. They are props in the VR, not fundamental.

Part and parcel of what Uncle Tom never hit you over the head with. As he did tell you later on the board rather than in MBT, you/we are all integral to AUM in the consciousness engine as the working fluid. Remember: Chug, chug, chug; do your part! That is where our even more basic existence and purpose is centered.

Ted

I agree that in many parts of the public educational system several factors undermine its effectiveness.

There is an aspect of lowest common denominator as far as world view that is transmitted - basically you are feeding the population the mean meme that the average public school teacher carries around in their head...and you have to ask the question, how far is that mean meme matrix from reality? Can a school teacher get their head around the ethical framework of national nuclear defense? Can such a person understand the role of the the financial sector in a modern economy?

When I was a young socialist, I remember challenging the party leader on the question of why he sent his kids to the national elite private snooty school (as does Obama), as this seemed so incongruent with the socialist dream of his speeches - I can't remember the answer, but I remember this being one nail in the coffin of my socialist phase, and I began to understand that socialism in application, is a clever lie, at its very core. Indeed, the elite and the wise do not expose their children to the damaging indoctrination of public education.

I agree with your intent regarding congress, but I am trying to focus and redirect your effectiveness toward an action that is meaningful and doable, which at the same time is not destructive to the MBTOE project. Intent must pass through many filters of consideration to be effective.

I have worked for low entropy managers like Tom, and what I think is going on here is you are getting the 100% encouragement and 0% criticism treatment, which is a profoundly powerful management style.

I strongly believe that any social or political action that is undertaken by TOEism must be bi-partisan, and that MBTOE must not be associated with deeming one party the enemy...similar to the direction to not make religion the enemy. In actuality, no-one is the enemy, in anything.

So, I propose to focus your effort on the bipartisan problem of influence peddling in its many forms, rather than the narrow problem of the Norquist tactic.

That being said, redirection of spiritual movements toward political action is a common error and entropy, and a trick of ego.

Efficient analysis, intent and action in the area of investing in spiritual ecologies is very rare and very precious, and there is an element of spiritual criminality regarding redirecting attention from the founding purpose of this forum.

==

PS: there is another layer to the onion regarding public education - engaging in novel paths can create a disconnect from "normal" people. I spent most of my education in special education, which created some challenges for reintegration with normal society...

case in point, the "famous family" that mentored me in my youth picked up on the dangers of sequestered elite education, and had the wisdom to send their sons to public schools, which was a deviant thing for them to do, and insisted they take blue collar construction jobs in the summers, because, the family business model was to become low entropy leaders of men (and women), and learning how to interact with men and women of all social levels was a key factor in this training. They had fully integrated the value that leadership is service, and they had mastered not only the art of being loved by those they led, but more profoundly, had figured out how to replicate this across many generations. As a cynical socialist from the bad side of the tracks, I was profoundly startled that such a thing could exist, and this introduced me to the reality that each social class has a range from low entropy to high entropy.

_________________
Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Randy,

Tom is not me. I am not Tom. Tom as the creator of these concepts and propounder of the MBT principles would not advocate political action of any specific kind. I however am free to do so without any push back against this project. Even if I do post about it here on this board. There is a tendency for people interested in ideas like this and groups like this to hold themselves above politics and pay no attention to it. I have been acting, and with some apparent success, to point out to them that this is short sighted and contrary to the principles espoused in MBT in that we do have an obligation to protect those who cannot protect themselves against improper interactions for whatever reason to the extent that we can. I have also made an effort and in some cases been successful in pointing out to what extent normal "conservative" viewpoints violate the principles of MBT. That is, we should not ignore intentions of politicians to manipulate, control and even systematically rob the disadvantaged of our society as part of the 99% and we should realize that we are all, even upper middle class if you are so with substantial incomes, members of the 99% when you realize that the true 1%ers are not the 1% but the <<1% who are multi-billionaires with billion plus annual incomes, owners and controllers of huge international corporations and financial institutions through their stock ownership and board memberships and owners of the politicians through their PACs and lobbyists. I referenced research to document this as a world wide situation with ownership and control of the worlds major corporations and financial institutions, no matter where originating and headquartered, concentrated in an interlocking and very limited group of very wealthy individuals and families as majority stock owners, board members and the mutual ownership of shares in one corporation by many others of these corporations.

My conception of politicians is fully bipartisan. I believe that the slime comes with the system and none are exempt from being covered. However, there is a difference in terms of who is advocating that government services be shut down for those who need them most on a trumped up basis and blocking all action on an ideological basis and those who are not so doing. It happens that the 'guilty' in this case are the Republicans and Tea Baggers who are the ideologues who would shut down government if they could. My indictment was written based upon being a member of Congress, whether Senate or House, Republican or Democrat: Bipartisan in other words. It is up to the individual Congress member to decide whether the suit fits them or not and whether they realize that they should change their behavior or not. With the vast sums of money that it presently costs to run for public office at the national level, they all have their hand out to the PACs and are subject to the same pressures to favor this industry or that cause by the lobbyists. But that is another problem and question to solve. I have concentrated on one specific aspect of the denizens of the political swamp. We will have to try to drain it later when we are not quite so up to our collective asses in alligators. For the moment, I would be pleased if those who can wake up do so and those politicians who are capable of recognizing that their allegiance to Grover Norquist's pledge does in fact violate their oaths of office and place them in malfeasance. It has been hard enough to keep people's attention focused on just that one concept without hareing off after all of the other problems and thus doing nothing.

What any individual teacher might or might not understand has no bearing. What matters is that the schools are set up to provide no training to most beyond the most elementary, at least about 95% out of the 99%, in critical thinking and analysis. The majority are permitted to pass with no ability to even read and write with proficiency in their own native language. The ability to do so, real literacy, prior to the advent of our mandatory educational systems was actually higher than it is today.

That there are enlightened people with wealth does not negate what is happening and has happened in our society.

Ted

Ted Fred here, in your comments MBT principles I assume you basically mean positive evolution towards(LOVE) our intended direction? Fred searching for truth

The principles in question are that the basic reason that we are experiencing this or any VR is that in our interactions and attention to the feedback, we can reduce entropy and improve QoC. That is the purpose for the creation of VRs in the first place. That is so if our interactions are based upon optimizing the free will of all participants which includes the potential for some to attempt to control the free will of others and that we might take collective action, and have that as a responsibility, to prevent that from happening and to protect those who cannot protect themselves. In simple and ancient words, we are our brothers keeper.

When you talk about 'becoming love', you are getting into metaphor and the meaning of a particular English word. That is more limiting than the actual concept although not inaccurate in a sense. The actual principle can be stated more precisely as above and even more so if the MBT model is understood.

Ted

We seem to basically see the principles in the same way. Just a different way of describing them. Keep sharing your truth and oh!, I never liked a bully neither. Fred searching for truth

The Letter to the editor in this morning's NT Times, by

Lori Andrews is a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the author of “I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opini ... ml?_r=1&hp

Opinion
Facebook Is Using You
By LORI ANDREWS
Published: February 4, 2012


LAST week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook’s inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.
Enlarge This Image
Joon Mo Kang

Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States.

(truncated for copywrite)

Intelligence: my take,

Relatively "higher intelligence" = greater facility in assembling and manipulating model objects, sets of model objects, and model systems.

A more colloquial take, intelligence is like money or shamanic spirit power or prana or a variety of similar agencies: You tend to need an absolute minimum just to survive. A little more than that and you get by in a marginal, unsatisfactory fashion. A little more than that and the wolf is no longer at your door. A little more than that, and you are actually comfortable

There's a divide at this point....

And then a little more than that and you have some discretionary excess,
A little more than that and you're in some sort of middle-class zone

a little more than that and you have to start watching out more than before because others will want to co-opt the agency you have achieved.

And when you have a hole great big pile of the stuff: Watch Out! ...
Either you must learn to manage it, or it will manage you.

Particular to intelligence.... at the lower part of the range, 'you', your consciousness, actually has to be present and part of the scene for intelligence to assemble new forms, to learn new things, or to apply learning in new ways, etc. There comes a point, though, where intellegince starts operating on its own, even at complex abstract levels. And what starts to happen is that whole systems and systems of systems start evolving without consciousness having had much or anything to do with them .

It can be dangerous: different systems may use separate model objects and vocabularies and so may not be able to communicate with, or be aware of each other .... and poorly integrated overall personalities develop. These tend to constellate around circuits of emotions, positive or negative, especially ones relating to identity. But at any rate, the modeling system ("intelligence"), if it is more complicated and active than the consciousness trying to operate it, is a burden ... much like having a high spirited and very sensitive horse and a poor, inexperienced rider.

Montana

Back to news items of note:

Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... -near-you/

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

(Greatly truncated)

Relatedly:

Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16545333

Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?

(Greatly Truncated)

I ran into this interesting article on stupidity today.
http://www.gandalf.it/stupid/stupid.htm
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Ted you really do a good job at opening up peoples minds to a lot of problems in this PMR. You've done your home work, Now do you really see any real and lasting change on our present course. Don't you think things are going to have to basically fall and rebuild from the bottom up? Not making the same mistakes that cause all the unfairness. Putting these things in peoples awareness is no doubt a good thing and takes a lot of guts. Can you think of any other solution other than putting it in peoples awareness? It just does not seem like to me there's much we can do until people, Especially the 1% get hit hard in there pocket books. Don't get me wrong I think it is our duty to keep trying to inform people, And of course be the change we want to see. Sharing our truth and our visions may be the the only thing we can do. It just seems like it is going to have to get much darker before any real lasting (LIGHT) change shines. Fred searching for truth

Fred,

Until this becomes something other than the kindergarten level world that it is, we will not be able to go much beyond the present functionality. However that does not meant that change is not possible and occurring. We do have mass communication now with the Internet, not in the sense of passive listening to radio or watching of television but of everything that we can do in the way of social media and cell phone technology in terms of a mass communication and connectedness. Thus we can have an Arab Spring that leads into the Occupy movements and that have basically spread around the world. At least for much of the world. We are starting to see a 'push back' from the masses that is changing what our 'rulers' feel that they can get away with. Think about the fees that banks were going to charge for use of debit cards after the government limited what they could charge on a per transaction basis. They tried to make up this lost income but the people would not have it and the big banks backed down.

There were going to be laws passed that would have shut down web sites upon just the accusation of copyright violation which could happen because of a user, not because of the site. This could be used to shut down our site when some board member posts something pushing the boundaries of copyright law and someone objected. There was push back from many Internet giants like Google and Facebook and others and those laws suddenly lost many of their major supporters. The battle for change is not by any means over. As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There is much yet that must happen before the repressive forces are vanquished. Things have only begun to move in this way. But there are at least some signs of movement and awakening of the 99%. We must still get big money out of politics as the driving force. As Randy has told us, it was done in Canada. We have to do it here also so that Wall Street, big banks and big corporations do not control our future to maximize their profits and the further polarization of wealth and income between the 99% and the 1%. The 1% must effectively realize that their wealth arises from the efforts of the 99%.

And none of this gets into the questions of population and fixing the environment. That must all be done as well. Then there is the question of food supply and disease. The four horsemen are saddled up, booted and spurred; ready to ride. There are many threads leading into this nexus in our future. How we come out on the other side is very much an open question. As Tom said, we must learn to live gracefully with uncertainty. But as we here learn more about metaphysics and the nature of our reality as a VR within CS, I have been trying to steer towards a matching awareness of what is going on in our VR and what MBT can tell us about how we should engage with it and deal with it.

Ted