[Madness]

It's no conspiracy. Wikipedia is an open-source information network. It seems obvious that vested interests would corroborate together to affect the biased dissemination of information.

By the way, I always follow the citations . I tend to treat everything academically at this point.

And, Royce, any person, regardless of training, is qualified to critique scientific endeavors. Don't let anything convince you otherwise.

[Royce]

Yeah,not a conspiracy in that sense,but people are definitely conspiring to affect the information provided for us .This just goes to show that you should be careful and always check the sources thoroughly,which I suspect many people do not do.

And, Royce, any person, regardless of training, is qualified to critique scientific endeavors. Don't let anything convince you otherwise.

I totally agree with that,I was just pointing out that I am not promoting his views,neither do I dismiss them .I have read one book(the science delusion) and that was not about his morpho teories,but rather general attacks on materialist sciences,which I think we have discussed quite a bit on this tread

[Royce]

Anyway,guerrilla skeptics does sound more like a terror group than anything else.It sounds like they are willing to blow up arguments and nuke everything that is weird in the world

[Madness]

http://dailygrail.com/Skepticism/2013/10/Maverick-Biologist-Rupert-Sheldrake-Criticizes-Attacks-Guerilla-Skeptics-Wikipedi

Lol - Please, keep following the rabbit hole, if you like.

[Royce]

Lol,they actually are an intellectual terror group,executing their right to edit information without good sources to back them up

[sciborg2]

Given how often I encounter skeptic assholes, despite largely agreeing with their position, it wouldn't surprise me to see them slobbering over the chance to defame Sheldrake.

But then I also encounter believer assholes, and I think a big part of this has to do with the nature of the internet.

[anor277]

...................
But then I also encounter believer assholes, and I think a big part of this has to do with the nature of the internet.

Who likes arseholes in general?  As you say, it is a question of common courtesy.  The sort of person who uses the internet to make insulting or gratuitous comments is the same sort of person who would flip you the finger in a car for driving too fast/slow/on a bicycle etc.  Should internet users be forced to forgo anonymity?  Quite possibly not; at least I would not support such a move.  On the other hand, we should all strive to converse on the internet as if we were talking personally (i.e. face to face). 

[Madness]

On the other hand, we should all strive to converse on the internet as if we were talking personally (i.e. face to face). 

I do, though I think kinetic communication accounts for much as well - many aspects of communication are lacking in this thought space of words.

And to be clear, my words and mannerisms seem to piss a fair number of people off in real life too .

[Royce]

Who likes arseholes in general?  As you say, it is a question of common courtesy.  The sort of person who uses the internet to make insulting or gratuitous comments is the same sort of person who would flip you the finger in a car for driving too fast/slow/on a bicycle etc.  Should internet users be forced to forgo anonymity?  Quite possibly not; at least I would not support such a move.  On the other hand, we should all strive to converse on the internet as if we were talking personally (i.e. face to face).

I totally agree with this,though I am not sure what point you are making in regards to what we are discussing here. If you read the links madness posted a few posts back,you will see these so called "guerrilla skeptics" using wikipedia to defame him.

I think that most people look up information on wikipedia and see it as valid without checking the sources.In this case you will see the sources are not explaining anything,they are ridiculous.

When it comes to the internet,I think we all are infants.

[Royce]

You see? I am an infant when it comes to communicating in forums(the internet in general really),always forgetting to highlight quotes and so on

Got my first PC when I was 26 years old(8 years ago), and this is the first forum I have ever interacted on.

[anor277]

I confess that I was not reading the prior links.  Mind you, I've never yet let ignorance deter me from forcefully advancing a position.  As regards the wolf-pack of sceptics who are allegedly giving Rupert Sheldrake a hard time, surely the best riposte would be for him, Rupert Sheldrake, to publish a series of papers in reputable journals that would show there is something to his claims afer all?  That would show them.

[Royce]

As regards the wolf-pack of sceptics who are allegedly giving Rupert Sheldrake a hard time, surely the best riposte would be for him, Rupert Sheldrake, to publish a series of papers in reputable journals that would show there is something to his claims afer all?  That would show them.

The wolves need to feed,and Rupert tastes delicious On a more serious note,I do not think that will happen...ever. Maybe he is our times Galileo Galilei,and the scientific establishment plays the role of the catholic inquisition. As time flies by we will know whether his theories show something or nothing. Either way,I think you are using rhetoric here to turn things upside down. I can do the same. Why do they feel the need to edit his bio on wikipedia,and defame him by discarding his theories by using unreliable and ridiculous statements as sources? If he is such a fraud,why not back it up with actual sources that prove him wrong?

In a world of words,deep confusion arises all the time. To me the game of words can be exhausting,since we invent these words and give them meaning.There is the world of words and the world that just "is". However practical words are,it is impossible to use them to describe things as they are, because they were what they are long before words existed We label them with words,and suddenly we can decide that some words fit more than others. It is confusing, but as Alan Watts said so beautifully: "To try to understand reality using words and descriptions,is like trying to catch the wind in a box,or trying to wrap up water with paper".

[Madness]

Mind you, I've never yet let ignorance deter me from forcefully advancing a position.

Lol.

Also, I'm sure either of you remember hashing out basically these exact statements for previous pages of this thread?

[Royce]

Yeah,I do feel we are biting our own tails a bit

[sciborg2]

Ted Dace relates how morphic resonance came about from Sheldrake reading about some interesting philosophical positions regarding time & memory:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Examskeptics/Dace_analysis.html

The job of the brain, according to Bergson, is to calculate possible actions in response to sensory data.7Inputs are converted in the most efficient possible way to outputs. That’s all there is to it. Within those cerebral folds you will find no representations of the world, no emotions, no thoughts, no desires, no psyche. For Bergson, locating the qualities of mind in the brain amounts to a kind of neural mysticism. Is the brain so special that it can simultaneously be a part of the physical world and yet step outside it to represent it?8

Rather than constructing images of the world, says Bergson, our brains simply facilitate our perception of it. Because the brain does its job, we directly perceive what is around us. But how does Bergson grapple with memory? In this case, the images we perceive are no longer physically given. Surely here we must rely on cerebral storage of images.

Just as he maintains that we actually apprehend what is around us, Bergson argues that in memory we literally perceive the past. Far from merely representing the past, a memory is the resuscitation of a perception.9 To explain how this can be, Bergson must reinvent time itself.

A half century after Russell’s investigation, the task of synthesizing Semon and Bergson fell to a young biologist-in-training at Cambridge University, a theoretical nonconformist who took a year off from his laboratory work to study philosophy at Harvard. Unlike Russell, whose reading of Bergson was colored by professional rivalry, Rupert Sheldrake was captivated by Bergson’s radical take on time and its implications for memory. By coupling Bergson’s time-as-duration with Semon’s mnemic homophony, Sheldrake obtained the basis for a scientific theory of mind, the very thing Russell had sought with his Analysis of Mind.

Flabbergasted by Sheldrake’s audacious proposal, neuroscientist Steven Rose designed an experiment that would surely dispose of it once and for all. The experiment involved day-old chicks divided into two groups. Test chicks could peck at yellow diodes, while control chicks could peck at chrome beads. After pecking, the test chicks were injected with lithium chloride, a toxic substance that made them mildly nauseous, while control chicks were injected with a harmless saline solution. The same procedure was followed for 37 days with a new batch of chicks each day. The data indicated that successive batches of test chicks became gradually more hesitant to peck relative to control chicks. While this finding indicated that test chicks were influenced by previous test chicks, the most clear-cut result concerned control chicks that were allowed to peck at either the yellow diodes or the chrome beads three hours following their injection of saline solution. Over the course of the experiment, successive batches of control chicks became increasingly reluctant to peck at the yellow diodes, indicating that they were influenced by the cumulative experience of chicks that had pecked at the yellow diodes and then been injected with lithium chloride. After stalling for months, Rose reneged on his agreement to write up the results with Sheldrake for publication.35