Islam: I have shied away from crticizing islam because I thought live and let live. I now acknowledgeit was from fear of inviting violence from fanatics. But I am now encouraged by open debate and conversation on social media. This post is to mark the shedding of my acquieiscence about anti human character of islam.

   Objective analysis of islam is very easy to do; read quranic verses and the evil is explicitly stated;

0 those who believe, do not take Jews or Christians as friends (for) they are friends among themselves. And whoever has friendship with them, he is one of them. (5:51)

Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, as Fitnah (to create disorder) is more severe than killing. However, do not fight them near Al-Masjid-ul-Harām (the Sacred Mosque in Makkah) unless they fight you there. However, if they fight you (there) you may kill them. Such is the reward of the disbelievers. (2.131)

Clearly, islam is an impediment to good social life among diverse people. Other religions had undesirable teachings in the past. But they are not as closed to reform as islam. I have cultivated an outlook absent of enimity towards religion in general. Though religion militates against intelligicence, the common religiouninsts do not invoke ill feelings. When it comes to muslims, they get offended and angry when confronted with cruel and unjust teachings of that religion.

 Evidently, islam has prevented muslim countries in flourishing in this world. Islam forbids many harmless joys and pleasures of life - music, art, alcohol, friendships. It condemns the female half of humanity to an inferior status.

This bubble of fear about critizing islam, mohammed, hadiths has been pierced. It my duty at the minimum to confront the injustices when any body brings it up. I may also voice my opinions ithout taking undue risks. 

 Apr27, 2024  Production, Consumption and Distribution.

Does anybody have a right to claim more than they produce in a just society?

Finding a way to organize society may be done heuristically.

Axioms for life: 

•   Humans by nature want to live in freedom, the reason for individual rights.
  
•   Freedom to live by one's own values.
  

 Before civilization, might was right. Weaker members were subjugated and made to suffer. In time, the majority realized that all could be made to follow some rules to make life fairer for all. As the majority was stronger than strongest individuals, it laid out rules.

Monarchy, tyranny, theocracy, communism, democracy were adopted and are still in operation.

To me, democracies that guarantee individual rights, facilitates unforced production and trade approaches the best way possible to organize human life. An individual's right to live in freedom without violating another's rights to the same, to trade and relate to freely with other individuals is the lynch pin of making it the best.

Nicholas Humphrey- How did consctiousness  evolve?

Dec21, 2023: 

In his brain model - stimuli arrive causing reflex behaviour. There are adaptive benefits to monitor and direct behavior. There are adaptive benefits to simulating the stimulus followed by  behavior, followed by evaluation of outcome, followed by simulating modified behavior to change outcome.

This feedback loop, Nicholas Humphrey claims, manifests consciousness.

I don't agree. There are man made machines that have adaptive controls. Imagine adaptive computer programs that can designed. When a problem does not yield to available analytics, the program may be designed to simulate a state, inputs and outputs. Then evaluate the output against requirements. If not goof it, resimulate changing the controllable variables. The machine is not conscious and we did not hit the necessity of consciousness to produce such machines.

Nicholas Humphrey uses the term attractor to mean what I call objective towards improved being.

Consciousness is not necessary for survival of organisms.

Perhaps conscious beings gain an evolutionary advantage by being interested in well being as in they become interested in avoiding pain (harm). Can an organism be interested in avoiding harm without being conscious. Can it not arrive at the same goals by internal representations of the world and computations on the representation?

 

Meaning of Life,  Dec 09, 2023

T.V Mathews:  Guys does anyone know the bloody meaning of life...All are falling apart with all the plans out

…life with sickness age taking its toll.….why on earth 🌐 are we born to this earth.. All human 🚶 beings what's 

the  purpose we r here…. Stress strain , running for money ….material world 🌍..ONE DAY Out .. Great guys 

all falling apart ..what a world 🌍 are we in …NO meaningful answer to life … any answers.. ONE Day we r 

gone with the wind .., All the hard work and the toll will be wiped out with a rubber ..✏️

TV,

  Only you can give meaning to your life.

 

Be kind to your self, you may or may not find meaning but you will improve your chances;

• healthy diet, exercise, rest

• add regular little experiences that give you pleasure; chat with friends, take walks, enjoy music, 

  sex, porn etc.  Interrupt the state of gloom frequently.

• align your goals with your ability rather than other people's standards.

  Correct people’s expectations of you by being very open and honest with them.

• if you are in the habit of saying yes when you want to really say no, stop it.  

• accept that you do not need to find a bigger meaning to life, most people do not and that is ok. 

  You are on your own and you do not have to answer to anybody.

• everyone’s experience after death is the same, I think, which is no awareness at all.

This is exactly like deep sleep, devoid of any awareness. 

An ordinary old man that died in London today, Mahatma Gandhi and Hitler have all gone into the 

same deep sleep forever. You have practiced deep sleep yourself everyday.

 

Sleep and Death

 

We wake up refreshed from sleep. In deep sleep, we are unaware of the self. In fact we are without self awareness, ego. The ego in a dream is indistinguishable from the ego in wakefulness. 

expressions: awkei = I when awake,  sleepi = I in deep sleep, dreami = I in a dream

The sensed physical world, memories, imagined future and transient body chemistry sets up the ego's  experiences. Origin of the ego remains a mystery to the scientific world. Involuntary body processes such as respiration, digestion, circulation and sub conscious activities continue normally regardless of sleep/dream/awake state. 

The ego appears to be deactivated during deep sleep. The ego in sleep is equally devoid of experience as the ego in death. Yet we fear the cessation of experience in death but not in sleep. The cause of the fear is future continuity of the ego.

Hindu philosophy describes a state of being in awareness but unperturbed by sensations, emotions and thoughts. It is claimed to be the most blissful state. Being wholly subjective, this state appears not to have objective properties and hence beyond the scope of science. People who describe this state have appeared from ancient times to the present. Inquiry into the truth of this state calls for accepting precepts by faith and indefinite investment of time spoiled by the knowledge that it may ultimately lead to no new awareness. For these reasons, I do not want to invest the time.

 I hear that psychedelics produce ecstatic states that are otherworldly. This is promising, I want to have the experience.

Imaginig Future

Jun/09/2019 :

    We experience expectation of future events. I suppose the mind integrates information from the present and associated memories from the past to generate expectations. This ability promotes survival. When future events turn out to be different from expected, the mind has to do the work of reimagining a new future and ways to negotiate it. We experience this gap between reality and expectation as frustration, anxiety, stress, fear or any of the other negative emotions. Perhaps the value of the negative emotion is to induce one to seek remedies for the failed event. I imagine that we may not be motivated to seek remedies if the failure did not cause us a negative emotion. 

    Negative emotions drives one into a fight or flee mode where rationality is overridden. A better way to deal with failed expectation is to simply adjust the expectation, remember that there is no way but to close the gap between expectation and reality - check if the gap can be closed by communication, what was ignored or not understood at the time of experiencing the expectation. Every confrontation with a negative emotion is a time to adjust expectation. Such a practice should make one skillful at negotiating unexpected turn of events.

The mystery of consciousness

Symbols sequenced to a syntax can represent a body of knowledge.
But they cannot represeent a sensation. Thus, we do not have the laguange to express sensations, perform opertions on sensation etc.. The fact that we have not been able to represent a sensation in a symblic language establisheshes the fact that we have not uncovered the mechanism of manifesting sensations. Had chat with Loen at Austin Osis tooday. He seems to imagine that  sensations are logical problems and witll be algorithmically solved one day. But like others, he is not able to show a prototype of the mechnism.