An antenna dish, large and unwavering, sits in a valley of old-growth trees whose bark foretells the legacy of layering and unlayering, whose silent constructions shape and determine the confines and apparent boundary-points of the natural world. Long live the flow of boundless energies: that focal point of nature whose gift predates the workings...
Oh how the collective intelligence of the members of this website blows my mind... The recent posts about the illusion of individualism and the collective nature of the universe, I think, fit well with the topics discussed in this book I recently came across. I have only skimmed through it quickly, but as soon as I saw it I knew it would of...
Sorry if this is a newbie question, but can someone tell me the difference between past and future? I've never experienced time from past to future, as many people say they do all the time, and I'd like to try it. How will I know if it worked?
Here's what I've heard from people who claim to have experienced time:
* There is a lot more...
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Free will does not and cannot imply without cause, randomness or unpredictability. All those qualities, although present in complex systems, would contradict the notion of willful intent. What we want, and therefore do, must be based on reasonable ground....
The Peaceful Resistance
Whenever I'm feeling blue about domestic politics — there is plenty about which to despair — something great happens that reminds me of the long-term case for optimism, which is all about the astonishing expansion of the division of labor globally and in ways that weren't even possible just a few years ago.
The...
In Buddhist philosophy, desire and mental attachment are what keeps you stuck here on Earth, but I have a much easier way to explain it. There are many philosophies I think are mostly true. Anyone can do this.
In 2002 for a few months, I had it a small amount, compared to most people who rarely have it enough to notice it exists. Then because...
A group of physicists in Spain has shown how to make a quantum measurement that overcomes a limit related to Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The researchers confirmed a theoretical prediction of how to beat the Heisenberg limit by using interacting photons to measure atomic spin, and they say that their approach could lead to more...
Video lecture... Jack Cowan: Spontaneous pattern formation in large scale brain activity: what visual migraines and hallucinations tell us about the brain (2006)
“Social media has come to be understood as little more than a marketing opportunity. However, we see it as quite possibly the catalyst for the next stage of human evolution and, at the very least, a way to restore bottom-up participation, p2p value exchange and decentralized innovation to the realms of culture, commerce and government.” –...
Previously on BWBW:
” But what happens when the very task that we set to compute is an iterative branching of meaning?
What happens when the arrangement itself of matter re-coheres itself continuously to fit the desire of the task at hand which is a non-given in chaotic poetry?
I’ll tell you what happens, because I saw it with my very...
For whatever reason, I got to go to a pre-screening of the movie Limitless, and cognitive enhancement is central to the plot. Without revealing to much, the film is about a man who finds a drug that makes him incredibly smart and then some shenanigans happen. The science in the film is nonexistent, but this wont stop me from trying:
The Science...