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Making art and music, spirituality

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  A reply on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 21 2013: You seem to have disagreements of varying degrees with about on-third to one-half of Sheldrake's talk. If TED has not removed the talk, then your points could have been discussed in comments following the the talk.
  
  Can you support your claim that it is no longer true that "almost scientists no longer maintain a mechanistic view of the world?
  
  If non-mechanistic medicine were the prevailing dogma, then companies would be finding ways to profit from that.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Why do you describe the talk as inept ??
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Consider these three scientific tenets that Sheldrake questions:
  1 Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
  2 Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
  3 Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.
  
  Can Krisztián Pintér or any other participant in this thread convince us that Sheldrake's questioning of these is misguided?
  I also wonder if any of the participants in this discussion have had experiences which violate any of these tenets.
  
  I used to ask others if they ever had a metaphysical experience, about one third respond affirmatively.
  Examples of metaphysical experiences include
  a) Visiting a city or town or place for first time, but knowing the location of landmarks or buildings or homes.
  b) Having a vision of someone, and subsequently discovering the person died or experienced some mishap about the time of your vision.
  c) Suddenly performing an artistic or athletic skill at a level higher than you have ever done before or done subsequently
  d) Dreaming about a subsequent event.
  e) Having a voice, possibly of a deceased relative or acquaintance, warn you, and thus allowing you to avoid, a hazard or danger.
  f) Having dream involving another, and later having that person tell you s/he simultaneously had the same dream
  
  I keep a list of the several such experiences I have had and those that acquaintances have reported to me.. For example....I used to have dreams of my walking in colorful forests with the trunks and leaves of trees being all sorts of bright colors. I subsequently attended an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which contained paintings from the last 2 years of Van Gogh's life, most of which strikingly resembled the types of scenes from my dreams. I never again had such dreams.

• A comment on Talk: Rajesh Rao: A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script

  Jun 30 2011: Another possible, bu as yet unused, means to investigate ancient cultures might be hypnotic regressions to past lives.
  Here are some references
  The Complete Idiot's Guide to Past Life Regressions
  http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Past-Regression/dp/1592570658
  Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671657860
  Same Soul, Many Bodies by Brian Weiss
  http://www.amazon.com/Same-Soul-Many-Bodies-Progression/dp/0743264347
  A link about researcher and professor Ian Stephenson
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson
  
  I wonder if others studying ancient cultures considered such approaches.

• A comment on Talk: Charles Limb: Your brain on improv

  Jan 12 2011: I wonder if Dr Limb has pondered how the brains of prodigies function

• A comment on Talk: Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

  Aug 3 2010: The experiments' most serious flaw is that the monkey participants, having made it to Yale University, are atypical from the general population of such monkeys.
  
  The speaker implicit assumes, for both monkeys and humans, that the marginal change in worth to an individual (monkey or human) of gaining or losing an an additional object (grape or dollar) is linear. If one instead assumes that the the marginal change in overall worth decreases with the gain or loss of successive objects, then the described behavior of both monkeys and humans is rational
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  A comment on Talk: Diane Benscoter on how cults rewire the brain

  Jun 19 2009: Diane mentioned that she felt her capture by the Unification Church was caused in part by a desire for quick answers. I wonder if children who succumb during the marshmallow test
  (http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html)
  are more prone to become deeply religious or to exhibit extremist behavior as adults. Do adults who are religious or exhibit extreme behavior less capable of delaying gratification ?

• A comment on Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius

  Feb 22 2009: Although much creativity derives from unconscious processes within the physical confines of an artist's head, the metaphysical phenomena suggested by Ms Gilbert certainly contribute. Individuals who personally have (not) had 'metaphysical experiences' will (not) agree with the previous sentence.
  
  Examples of metaphysical experiences include (a) a vision or dream of an event, personal encounter or danger which subsequently occurred; or (b) a dream involving involving an acquaintance and later during a conversation with that friend, discovering that the friend shared the same dream with you, or (c) a vision or dream that an acquaintance or relative was in danger, and subsequent discovery that such was true.
  
  To those who have not had such experiences, I can only suggest that you privately and individually ask 20 or so acquaintances if they ever had such experiences. You should discover that 1/5 to 1/3 of those you ask indeed have had such.
  
  The novel "Daughter of Fortune" by Isabel Allende delves into the differences of world views of those who have and those who have not experienced the metaphysical. I suspect Ms Gilbert and readers of this discussion would enjoy this novel.