Re: Magic 104 the empathic channel

[dsr@lns598.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Daniel S. Riley)]

In article <C4ptI3.Iwx@chinet.chi.il.us>,
jorn@chinet.chi.il.us (Jorn Barger) writes:
> Reagan and Bush and television and laziness were all *creatures of our 
> ignorance*!!!  If we'd been paying attention at all, we would have noticed how 
> each of these was presenting a seductive front while draining our resources 
> dry...  It's because they intimidate us into imagining that our *spiritual 
> resources* of responsibility and mutual respect (among others) are 
> economically irrelevant and consequently unreal!  Organized religion does
> exactly the same...

I actually agree with some of this, though I'm not sure what it has to
do with what's ahead.  But that's probably just a failing of my own
materialist outlook on life.

> Your (distorted) paraphrase "belief in the supernatural" makes it sound like I 
> want people to buy Ouija-boards and obey channelers-- what I want is to *win 
> general agreement* that *what we feel in our hearts* as kind and good and 
> healthful and responsible is *real* and *counts*, as a general rule, and to go 
> beyond the sort of Asimov-Drukman-Trump scornful-materialism that argues, 
> more-or-less, "My bad vibes are unassailable because science disproves vibes." 

Ok, I'll also agree that what we feel in our hearts is real and does
matter, in some sense.  Our emotional state clearly has a profound effect
on our own physical body, and, through our actions, affects those around
us.  But you lose me when you try to objectify this, converting internal
experience into external objects with some sort of corporeal existence
beyond your self.  This externalization of your internal reality seems
unecessary to me.

> I think it's related to the concept of *personal space*-- psychologically, 
> we're very sensitive to our personal territory, always needing to mark it 
> subtly with some sort of *imprint* of ourselves.

Agreed, but again, where's the necessity of externalizing this imprint?
How do you distinguish between your internal reaction to your own past
actions and the associated experiences, and your reaction to this intangible
"imprint"?

> It's not a fair test to condemn my argument on the grounds that the 
> information-channel is not 100% clear, or even 10%, probably.  MY experience, 
> though, is that under the ideal conditions of a soft medium that you imprint 
> on repeatedly in a time of intense emotion, abandoned for a longish period, 
> and then returned to after the emotion has faded, you may well expect stronger 
> sentiments from hearing that particular tape than a similar copy, and a hard 
> medium like CDs doesn't allow this effect.

This would be hard to prove, but the experiment to attempt to disprove it is
fairly obvious--pick one Jorn's favorite cassettes, buy a bunch of copies,
make a few copies, mix them up, and play them to Jorn in some random order.
Ideally Jorn should be in a room by himself with no contact with the person
changing the tapes, and the person changing the tapes should have no idea
which tape is Jorn's original.  You would want to pick a tape that is fairly
good condition to minimize the other cues available to Jorn, and, because
of the possibility of other cues, this method could never prove Jorn's
belief--just disprove it.  I have to admit, I'm not really interested in
the result of this experiment--just too much the materialist...

By the way, Jorn, how is this imprint communicated back to you, the listener?
Is it something in the sound, or is there some other channel?  If some other
channel, what happens if you turn down the sound all the way?  If it is
communicated by the sound, what happens if you turn the bass way down and
the treble way up, or otherwise process it?

> Notice, people, how strange and improbable these arguments sound, how tempting 
> it is to just *deny* them... but if you look without prejudice, they're 
> *perfectly plausible* both from the point of view of our daily, direct, 
> experiencing, and also, equally, plausible in terms of what 'Known Science' 
> should allow.  The kneejerk 'scientism' that pretends they're proven 
> impossible is *pure* egotism.

"plausible in terms of what 'Known Science' should allow" is, IMHO,
misleading.  Known science provides no mechanism for this kind of
influence, nor does it provide any reliable evidence (that I am aware
of) that such influence is a measurable effect.  But science is
descriptive, not prescriptive--phenomena are consistent or incosistent
with known science, not allowed or disallowed.  What Jorn is describing
is not disallowed by known science, but it also is not within the province
of phenomena described by known science.

-- 
-Dan Riley                          Internet: dsr@lns598.tn.cornell.edu
-Wilson Lab, Cornell University     HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr)
	      "Distance means nothing/To me." -Kate Bush