Tao And Science

[Pietro]

--Moderator's warning:

 

one too many posts of yours lately calling other members' thoughts "very dumb" and "absolutely crazy" in violation of the insult policy. Please cease and desist.

 

--Moderator's sword sheathed

 

While I am not a moderator, and I never will.

Yet, I cannot be silent.

 

Taomeow, I think and feel you are abusing your power in this.

You might be doing this while being fully in good faith. But it still feels abusive.

 

Strong disagreement is, and has always been, permitted.

Criticizing a thought is not the same as criticizing a person.

Calling a thought dumb or stupid does not imply calling the person having that thought dumb or stupid.

It might be an offer to rethink an argument or go deeper. In this, this site offers an educational occasion for people, while exchanging information.

We have participants of all age, some of whom learn here the fine art of dialectics and of looking at weak points in one's own and another's argument. While no one is dumb, not all thoughts expressed here are smart. Calling them on those thoughts is not just permissible (as it is), but laudable.

 

I invite you to reconsider your position.

 

Pietro

[That Guy]

They re at it again~

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100429/twl-man-survives-without-food-for-70-yea-3fd0ae9.html

 

"Indian doctors are studying a remarkable 83-year-old holy man who claims to have spent the last seven decades without food and water.

 

 

Military medics hope the experiments on Prahlad Jani can help soldiers develop their survival strategies.

 

The long-haired and bearded yogi is under 24-hour observation by a team of 30 doctors during three weeks of tests at a hospital in the western city of Ahmedabad.

 

Two cameras have been set up in his room, while a mobile camera films him when he goes outside, guaranteeing round-the-clock observation.

 

His body will be scanned and his brain and heart activity measured with electrodes.

 

"The observation from this study may throw light on human survival without food and water," said Dr G. Ilavazahagan, who is directing the research.

 

"This may help in working out strategies for survival during natural calamities, extreme stressful conditions and extra-terrestrial explorations like future missions to the Moon and Mars by the human race."

 

Since the experiment began on April 22, Jani has neither eaten nor drunk and has not been to the toilet.

 

"The exercise of taking this yogi under the medical scanner is to understand what energy supports his existence," Dr Ilavazahagan added.

 

"Jani says he meditates to get energy. Our soldiers will not be able to meditate, but we would still like to find out more about the man and his body."

 

Jani, who dresses in red and wears a nose ring, grew up in Charod village in the Mehsana district in Gujarat.

 

He claims to have been blessed by a goddess when he was aged eight, which has enabled him to survive without sustenance."

Edited April 29, 2010 by That Guy

[Taomeow]

While I am not a moderator, and I never will.

Yet, I cannot be silent.

 

Taomeow, I think and feel you are abusing your power in this.

You might be doing this while being fully in good faith. But it still feels abusive.

 

Strong disagreement is, and has always been, permitted.

Criticizing a thought is not the same as criticizing a person.

Calling a thought dumb or stupid does not imply calling the person having that thought dumb or stupid.

It might be an offer to rethink an argument or go deeper. In this, this site offers an educational occasion for people, while exchanging information.

We have participants of all age, some of whom learn here the fine art of dialectics and of looking at weak points in one's own and another's argument. While no one is dumb, not all thoughts expressed here are smart. Calling them on those thoughts is not just permissible (as it is), but laudable.

 

I invite you to reconsider your position.

 

Pietro

 

Um... OK, I'll try to explain myself, this one time, out of my respect for you. However, the idea of having to do it on any continuous basis doesn't appeal to me at all, that's not what I'm here for -- and if I am ever faced with the need to keep piling up explanations and excuses for the decisions I make to the best of my ability consciously and responsibly, I'll simply lay down the mod sword and let someone else do the dirty work.

 

It has been decided by the owner of the forum and the mods team that the free-for-all insulting unfriendly environment will not be ignored anymore and much less encouraged. Too many worthy participants, dedicated cultivators, people of taoist and human merit, simply left in disgust after their ideas were called dumb, stupid, crazy and so on, and frankly I don't see much difference between "you are crasy" and "your thinking is absolutely crazy," the latter being the entry I was objecting to. I have no power at all here beyond what has been agreed upon between Sean and all the mods in concert. I personally suspended one person, for one week, yesterday, for the first time in all of my moderatorship, even though other mods called for three weeks and the offending member himself was volunteering for 90 days.

 

The only thing I've done differently, and that's also recent, was to introduce the idea that moderators' work must be made public for everyone to see, i.e. instead of PMs with warnings, use posted warnings straight on the board in case a mod deems it necessary, and instead of a member simply disappearing, a public notification that he or she is under suspension for such and such period of time. This idea was supported by other mods, and so I acted on it, and so you saw it instead of being kept in the dark. The rationale behind my actions being to PREVENT abuse of power -- I don't like secrecy and I believe secrecy is conductive to abuse of power, although not one of our mods nor the owner is known or suspected to be prone to such abuse. Not one, and not me, far as I know. I have very strong convictions but I will express them as a regular poster only; as a moderator, I will simply do what has been agreed upon by the whole team, no more, no less.

 

Hope this makes sense to you.

[Guest paul walter]

Spoken like a true materialist Marxist...lol.

 

Have you ever heard of Niels Bohr, though? He was a well-known quantum mechanics physicist of the Copenhagen School who was heavily-influenced by Taoism. And thus chose the Taiji as the centerpiece for his coat-of-arms:

 

 

Bohr went to China and came back a changed man. Nobody knows what he was exposed to exactly but I suppose he learnt of the 'I Ching' etc just as Leibniz did and went from there. The whole binary system used in computers for example has it's provenance in Leibniz's work with the 'I Ching'. Einstein's thinking expanded much the same through exposure to 'eastern' concepts.