Heath Ledger died at 28.... Mel Gibson is still alive and churning out crap !

Bill Hicks dead at 32...  While Yakov Smirnoff is still packing out his very own concert hall in Branson, MO, giving brain dead xtians a chuckle w/ the same stupid material he used during the Reagan administration.

John Lennon liked the idea of Karma, yet he was shot dead by an idiot at age 40...  Air Supply is still touring.

Karma is a great concept and there is certainly something to be said for recriprocal altruism, but I see no evidence for any of its suggested "divine" aspect.

If you haven't heard, that same sex offender was beaten with an iron pipe shortly after.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/59638.html

Karma is nothing more than wishful thinking.

In Soviet Russia, 32 is dead at Bill Hicks!

Oh.  Oh wait, that doesn't work.

Karma, or the law of action and reaction is diffcult to understand without seeing it in a broader context. It's diffcult to guess for what did we deserve good or bad things in our life. If a bad thing happened to us, it may be either a reaction on something bad we did, or a reaction for something good, which just saved us from something much worse we did later or earlier... There are many other examples refuting this naive idea of karma. Good deed = good karma, bad deed = bad karma? Maybe, but there are many factors changing these equations into almost unrecognizable picture, of which we can see only a tiny part. Law of Karma is only one of many, affecting the human life. If you try to explain the human life just by karma, it won't work. You guys here actually mixed to it a free will, game theory, and single examples, where maybe a large-scale statistic overview might show it better.

All right, it's not necessary to know the whole millenial image, we can live well just by following the Golden rule and accepting the consequences. The details are there for those interested.

I would definitely argue that they don't exist. At least not in the sense that I think you're using them in.

And what's with the U in forces? I know British English has a lot of Us in words that US English doesn't, but I've yet to see it in forces.

Well, and according to theory, these three forces if I understand you correctly, are much more diffcult to discover than etheric planes, which are basically still physical. So I hope that you as a Hindu believe in reincarnation, if you want to see a scientific proof of them in future. I personally prefer to focus on the etheric worlds, and the etheric body of mine, mainly. (the one on which the chakras are) I do some interesting experiments and exercises with it, which works when I train them, so I have my own irrefutable evidence, but what you describe, is far from my verifying abilities.
 

To answer your original questions IamChappy:

The notion that doing good things means that good things will happen to you is one which belongs in the field of behavioural science and especially in the complex study of intercommunal behaviour. An anthropologist, taking the long view, will probably assert that the evidence suggests otherwise. A psychologist on the other hand will probably readily provide clear and demonstrable reasons why, in many instances, the notion has merit. What both have to allow for however is the marked absence of an objective standard for "good" and "bad" in the context of the equation. The question therefore addresses qualitative subjective assessment on the part of individuals which rarely extends to a socially common standard and is therefore unmeasurable. Put simply, we as individuals presume a lot regarding how much our individual values are shared, but we do so in the face of daily refutation from the evidence of others' behaviour that we should.

When it comes to the thief you refer to who availed of your then relationship to extort $300 from your person you have therefore hit the nail on the head with regard to why talk of "karma" (and many other individually subjective assumptions regarding justice) are largely superfluous when compared to the reality of how people behave and what might happen subsequently. For you the experience was understandably "bad" and therefore you wish something equivalently "bad" should come her way. But for her the experience might have been exquisitely "good" in which case, according to what is euphemistically called karmic "philosophy", she has every right to expect goodness to be a feature of the effect her action has caused. The truth however is that her action may or may not initiate a causal sequence resulting in something happening at all, there is no way to objectively anticipate that such an effect should it happen be "good" or "bad", and given her apparent disregard for socially standard moral principles, will most likely never become a cause for anything (except irritation to you when you think about it).

So my advice to you would be that, if you really want to dwell on this event and not simply put it down to experience, you should approach the subject in the manner which talk of "karma" subverts - that of justice and injustice. If her action results in a heightened sense of justice in you, and if that in turn leads you to behave in a way which enhances the possibility of justice for you and others around you, then - karma aside - you have taken some logical and worthwhile steps towards deriving benefit from the otherwise "bad" experience. The psychics and delusional idiots can call it what they want and ascribe your action to whatever irrational or supernatural "force" they want, but in reality you have just proved yourself a social animal and done what (to our great benefit) many other individuals have done before you - translated an individually subjective experience into a common social principle whose adoption benefits everyone.

More practical advice: never extend a loan without demanding some form of collateral (with girlfriends this can be quite fun collateral too). But then you've probably worked that bit out for yourself already!

I think you misunderstand my statement, DG, and have assumed "divided" to mean identifying constituent parts and not, as intended, the accepted categories into which states of matter are divided. Phases, in other words, and not components.

The six I had in mind were solid, liquid, gas, low-energy states (superconductors, superfluids, Boss-Einstein condensates), high-energy states (plasma, quark-guon plasma) and other states (Rydberg matter, degenerate matter etc).

Note the conspicuous omission of psychic "etheric matter" from both of our lists however. That, after all was the point of the statement though I thank you for pointing out my other unintentional omission - clarity sufficient to deter pedantry.

I agree. However when dealing with people who think that a blithe interjection of phrases such as "etheric matter" into (what is meant to be) a sensible discussion is an acceptable tactic, one should at least attempt to wean them from their stupidity and start with the traditional classifications.

Though based on thermodynamic context the same classifications also have their origin in early observational science and represent a significant step in humanity's ability to derive understanding based on rational deduction - as opposed to inventive claptrap which feigns explanation and thereby diverts comprehension from fact.

The alternative approach - jumping several cognitive leaps ahead of what they are capable of - tends to have the effect of entrenching them in their stupidity, their "logic" being that if the counter-argument is nonsensical to their ability to think, then the equally nonsensical argument spawned by their ignorance has, by inference (theirs, not logic's) equal validity.

I am sure you will agree that at least two candidates in the thread already require such disabusement. Jumping in lepton-first however is not the way to do it - and sadly so, I agree.

A brave, if stupid, attempt to counter ration with subjective crap - as usual. Let's take the central planks of your defence and look at them closely.

You claim your mention of "completely unknown space radiation never detected before" justifies your entirely subjectively-arrived-at inference that this must then represent "a part of the etheric world" of which you are so fond. Now, for a start you will have to explain your tendency to assume that anything "hitherto unknown" represents any part of your particular fantasy. This is subjectiveness gone mad, and an indicator that much else is wrong with the way you think. In my opinion it is, at best, a severe impediment to your recovering from delusion and, at worst, a sort of curse to be saddled with since the false rationale you employ is essentially that every new scientific discovery accelerates your descent into stupidity.

This would all be bad enough were it not for your gullible inclination however to see "scientific discoveries" where they don't exist - and a part of that problem must undoubtedly be your willingness (as is evident from the source of the quoted article) to "learn" what is happening in the world of science through the distorted prism of publications with an invested interest in propagating stupidity. In this case the publication was the website of "Share International Magazine", a magazine which boldly claims to "... bring together two major directions of contemporary thought ― the political and the spiritual." The article in question not only completely misrepresents the New Scientist in that it confuses the magazine's own articles investigatiing dark matter (and the ongoing refutations of its existence) with "unknown radiation" but then commits the unpardonable crime of pretending that its claptrap ramblings have a place in the debate.

You then, after insinuating that it is I who am impeding learning and not you, make the claim that I have no understanding of your "situation". I am afraid I do, having spent all too much of my life in the unfortunate but necessary position of having to correct fallacies propounded by people like you. Believe me, in doing so I have built up both an accurate and useful appreciation of your "situation" and can tell you that it is not as unique as you seem to think. In fact states of ignorance represent sadly a norm and while its manifestations might differ subtly in the afflicteds' choice of presentation, the underlying stupidity is a regrettable constant.

The extent of your stupidity is then conveniently revealed by the above remark, made apparently without the slightest sense of irony (again due to ignorance) that it is not I nor people like me who impede the "work" in question but inane and perverse pseudo-science masquerading as the real thing.

You claim not be dogmatic, which would be admirable if it were true. However being dogmatic is not your problem, is it? Instead you reveal your problem absolutely succinctly in your next sentences:

Here you claim that etheric matter (sic) is one of the things which constitute "your personal experience" and that others are free to "attempt to repeat (and thus confirm)" your personal experience for themselves.

You really can't see the stupidity there, can you? That personal experience itself is not enough to establish scientific fact - not by a long shot - should be plain enough. When that is compounded with the arrogance of inviting others to share your delusion of confirmation makes it into a far larger problem of course. Then you have become something worse than any simple dogmatist, you have become a proselytiser of bunkum.

And that's where the theist bit comes in, in case you haven't yet figured out such a simple and obvious analogy. That you choose not to have a supernaturally enhanced characterisation of a human as the object of your delusion does not make your delusion any more benign, or any less likely to potentially sabotage other people's quest for knowledge. That is the crime which theists share with all other purveyors of crapology pretending to be reasoned fact, and it is yours too.

You are the enemies of intelligence, whether you know it or not. Stated simply, you and they are liars. You lie to yourselves, which is understandable given the nature of your problem and almost forgiveable on that basis. But what is not forgiveable is that you lie even louder and with more conviction to others, probably simply to help reinforce the tenuous fallacies with which your intellect has been absorbed. This cannot mitigate your error however, nor alas does it negate its effects.

You reek of dishonesty, even when you are trying pathetically to justify it - in fact especially so. Just bear in mind that you are ultimately fooling no one except yourself.

Why is it that you always asume science is the one that is behind? Maybe it's your world view that is 100-200 years behind...

Ahem...

Umm... How long do we have to wait?  (Asked by the squeaky voiced, shy kid at the back of the class.)

What a load of crap.

Ok, so you admit you're stupider than your two brothers, and that for all your wishful thinking that science will catch up on you on the basis of similar fools to you sharing your exact "experience" (which as yet has obviously never happened) but which someday will prove you right and rational people wrong, no progress has been made on that front either.

Take your lies somewhere else. You are pathetic.

It is? Having worked with scientists all over the world, I can say that this is nonsense. You can't even specify what your "worldview" is and why these superfluous and useless notions you introduce should be considered at all. To most people working in any scientific discipline, especially physics these notions, as I said, are anathema.

You keep making these claims of extravagant nonsense that cannot even be meaningfully investigated, claim that you somehow have a more advanced understanding of the nature of reality than our current scientific one (which is the most rigorous and well founded in all human history) and then you claim that all these superflous concepts and entities exist which are not part of any meaningful scientific framework. Since you are making claims about the nature of reality which are directly contrary to scientific understanding, you are competing with science and losing badly because your assertions are  ill-formulated. A concept must make sense before it can even begin to fulfill testable predictions. And please don't try to outmanuevre me by claiming that you are special and that science will eventually catch up. An idea is only as good as its testability. Your continued special pleading fallacies effective demolish the idea that the notions you are trying to put forth from ever coming under the gaze of interested science because there is no way to gather valid data. The scientific community at large is and will continue to be uninterested in such ill-formed criteria.

Yes, and it's complete garbage too. As any student of physics will tell you, the more concepts being united under a unified theory (like mechanics, electrodynamics, electroweak gauge etc.) the harder and more brutal the mathematics become. Newtonian mechanics were extended by Lagrange and Hamilton and Euler (and later Stokes and Navier) the result being, prior to Relativity, a complete formulation able to describe the translational, oscillatory, rotational and orbital motions of rigid bodies, continuous fluids and point particles. This formulation was difficult enough mathematically but as any student will tell you, the modern vector formulation of electrodynamics is much harder, as you found out in the other thread where, in order to explain the nonsense of aether, I invoked the Green's function for the d'Alembert and Jefimenko's equation. Gauge theory is even harder and is one of the most brutal areas of mathematical physics, because fields that can operate under gauge transforms are undetermined to the addition of particular gauges making the obtainment of physical solutions very, very hard. So the notion that these purveyors of nonsense have managed to formulate a correct unified principle of physics is farfetched.

Do not insult the intellect of everyone present! Firstly, you throw out these vague and glittering generalities pertaining to your supposed "extremely complex worldview" acting as though this will impress anyone here, then you have the gall to suppose such things could even begin to be considered a "theory". For something to be called a "theory" it must meet a battery of conditions none of which you have bothered with, so you can't even begin to make the claim that what you propose is superior to "alternative theories" insofar as nobody knows what the hell it is you are proposing and why the label theory deserves to be applied to whatever this is. You have to work to get something called a theory.

This is both false and insulting. The concept of a "paranormal explanation" is a contradiction in terms. And the real explanations that fundamentally lie in human psychology are hardly unrelated. They are closely knit. Whole ideas in psychology have been coined on the basis of investigation of the genuine psychological basis behind paranormal claims. The idea of a double blind test arose when it was shown that dowsers claiming their abilities were incapable of detecting water when the test was blinded. It is for that reason that the notion is so important. Time and time again, these closely knit explanations have not only served better than paranormal hogwash but given insight into whole disciplines such as cognitive psychology and evolutionary cognitive neuroscience. That's why we have such things as double blind tests, and for such trials involving such claimed abilities by the vast array of paranormal hacks, this method is the only valid method to test such claims. No submission to double blind tests means that not only is your explanation not even considered (and rightly so), your data is completely invalid so there really isn't anything to explain as there is no reason to reject the null hypothesis. This is true of any sampling-based data gathering and the entire field would be rendered useless without it. If you think you are special and that your magical claims are held to higher standards and especially that the presence of skeptics taints the experiment then you might as well give up hope of being noticed by professional statisticians and scientists.

You are surely joking. The European scientific institutions are among the best in the world. In particle physics they lead the way with CERN. Europe has a tremendous scientific body and pursues highly innovative and ultra-advanced research in particle physics, molecular and evolutionary biology, nuclear physics, genetics (especially in the UK). "Rejection of your assertions" is not synonymous with "blocking innovative research". Your vague, meaningless propositions, and countless special pleading fallacies are utterly unacceptable to any rigorous scientific standard and for that reason you can never expect to get off the ground in that regard so you might as well just give up on that front.

 In trials of this sort we begin with experimenters and a group of subjects. The experimenters need to measure and quantify certain attributes about the subject sample population in order to put forth valid data. If the experimenter is testing something like the effects of a drug then the trials must be blinded to both the subject and the experimenter so that shifts from the null hypothesis cannot be put down to observer bias. That's the essence of double blinding. If the subject population claims to have certain "experiences" then...well what? First of all, it isn't even clear what the experimenter is supposed to be quantifying. If a sample population claimed to having particular "experiences" then the first thing the experimenter asks is "So what?" because an experimenter has to have something to measure and he's supposed to have a set of data from which conclusions can be drawn. The latter part requires the blinding. But it isn't even clear what the subjects and experimenters are being blinded to. In a normal randomized trial with real variables the subjects are blinded to their part in the control set. In a double blind trial the experimenters are also blinded to the control group. All they know is the frequency of the controlled subjects. You've just thrown some nonsense and expected it to be tested. What is there to test? What is being randomized? What is being controlled? What are the subjects blinded to? How does this blinding remove observer bias? If you go to an experimenter and claim that you and a sample population have had particular experiences you believe validate paranormal claims the experimenter is going to say "so what? There's nothing to test and quantify".

"Karma" is essentially a loaded euphemism for the more practical term "social capital".

If you consistently put yourself in a position of doing good things for people, you shouldn't be surprised if eventually someone does something nice in return for you. Mystical types commonly refer to this as "good karma", but there's nothing mystical about it. All you've done is simply accumulate some social capital.

Conversely, if you are consistently in a position of doing bad things - say, stealing money from people - then you shouldn't be surprised if eventually something very bad winds up happening to you. In other words, at some point you may not get away with it and you may wind up in jail. This is typically called "bad karma" - but again, nothing mystical here. By engaging in these acts, you've failed to build up any social capital. Therefore, you have none to spend when you need it.

Stories of child molesters winning the lottery or outstanding citizens dying in car crashes tend to skew this concept, because they are factors of probability that are not affected by the accumulation of social capital. There are plenty of child molesters who do not win the lottery, and there are plenty of outstanding citizens who do not die in firey car crashes.

I warn against such platitudes. I am quite sure that a lot of Nazis made that mistake when they took over Europe.

"Brave" is neither good or bad. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and both are "Brave".

All "brave" means is no fear of personal harm in hopes you are doing a greater good. You can be "brave" and wrong at the same time.

And just to play along. The tree makes a sound as long as there is an ear within ear shot. Having amnesia of the event is irrelevant.

I see your point. I'm just saying you generally don't get anywhere by standing still. Weather getting to the top is worth it or not, it probably required some effort on your part to get there. People usually don't end up Physicist or Engineers by accident. I don't think SC is a "Dumb and Dumber" kind of guy, but you're right to say that they exist.

I wasn't really concerned with anyone reading anything more into it, though I can see why you would think they might. The words fortune and brave can certainly conjure up images of the "righteous" waging war on their foes. And I can also see someone reading it as "do whatever it takes."

Luminon, if as you say you want "science" to be employed to humankind's and the planet's benefit then this is something we all share. If you want to contribute to this noble process then shut up, go away, and begin to learn something which might be beneficially used to that end.

And curb your excessive vanity. It's unpleasant to witness in a person and incredibly tedious to read when committed to text.

Adopt the mantra "bullshit holds me back" and don't commit finger to keyboard again until the truth of that aphorism sinks in.

If and when you ever recognise the concept of intellectual honesty, let alone achieve it, then you will find that most of the issues with which you have obsessed yourself have in fact been impediments to understanding, not an aid to it.

But really - begin with "shut up, go away and learn". Please.

Yeah, it's a shitty job, but I need money. Makei, the Korean god of work gives me a hard time. Or is it my karma?

No, karma does not exist in a "spiritual" sense. It does have some truth it to its roots, as someone who shuns others will most likely end up shunned themselves, but this is simply cause/effect and human psychology.

Every culture, no matter how small nor big, has their own ideas about right/wrong and what morality consists of. Morality doesn't exist outside of the "collective human conscious". Things just...are.

It's comforting, actually, that nothing cares or watches us and tallies our good and bad deeds.