burden of proof,we are all ignorant Deepak Chopra Life after Death

Deepak Chopra Life after Death

posted by persephone

2 years 6 months 4 weeks ago • 1403 views

tags: burden of proof, we are all ignorant

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Deepak Chopra talks about his latest book.

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Deepak Chopra is a flimflam artist like so many other woo-woo new-age spiritualists who use what physicist Murray Gell-Mann aptly calls "quantum flapdoodle". Throw in a few complicated sounding terms from quantum physics, stir in a couple 'spiritual one-ness with the universe' phrases, add a dash of 'love is the mind experiencing conscious creation' and bam, you have a best selling tome of intelligent sounding yet totally vacuous and empty rubbish that the masses, uninitiated in critical thinking skills as they are, lap up like so many $7 lattes. His simplistic denunciations of rationalism and science as 'merely another fundamentalism' betray a near perfect ignorance about how science actually works and simultaneously resonate with an audience desperate to be absolved from the burden of having to analyze the complexities of the real world in any logical fashion. And so for frilly appeals to the cessation of reason and rational thought such as this, I downvote. Fashionable nonsense is an immature impulse which intelligent modern societies shouldn't have to suffer gladly anymore.

written by gluonium

| 2 years 6 months 4 weeks ago | CH

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Although I find the interviewer quite simpering, I like Deepak's observation that we are all totally ignorant anyway. "The mystery is too big". We think we are so intelligent. The fact that we can't live without killing each other and the planet reminds me that our intelligence has a long way to go. We're not much more than cockroaches on the scale of the evolution of consciousness.

written by persephone

| 2 years 6 months 4 weeks ago | CH

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That's exactly the line that tipped me over to downvoting. We are not TOTALLY ignorant. We are deeply ignorant about most things, but that is fundamentally distinct from being totally ignorant. Just throwing up our hands and saying 'oh fuck it, the universe is just too much of a mystery, let's just sit here and navel gaze instead' is the worst type of willful ignorance there is. The fact that we are living in a golden age of astronomy and computers is alone proof enough that the mystery ISN'T too big. The universe IS understandable if you study it rationally. Einstein had it precisely right when he said "One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.". The mystery of the cosmos is not that it is so complicated that we may not be able to FULLY understand it but rather the mystery is that we can understand it at all.

written by gluonium

| 2 years 6 months 4 weeks ago | CH

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written by dag

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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There are some pretty learned people who might disagree with you, Glui. Lawrence M. Krauss' article "The World May Be Fundamentally Inexplicable" is an interesting read. It's in John Brockman's "What is your dangerous idea?". I bought it for Dag for Christmas gone past, but only got 'round to reading it myself, just now.

I believe that scientific inquiry is an excellent tool to help us explore our universe, but that it is blinkered-thinking to say that so long as we stick to scientific theory, always applying rational thought, one day we'll finally GET what it's all about.

"The end of 'fundamental' theoretical physics....might very well occur not with a theory of everything but with the recognition that all so-called fundamental theories that describe nature are purely phenomenological-that is, derivable from observational phenomena-and don't reflect any underlying grand mathematical structure of the universe which would allow a basic understanding of why the universe is the way it is". Krauss.

Chopra is saying the same thing: Fundamentalism offers no guarantee for a handle on the ultimate truth.

written by persephone

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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I read L. Krauss' article. Seems to be in no way in conflict with my thoughts at all. Chopra is not at all saying the same thing as Krauss' article. Chopra is merely using the boo word "fundamentalist" to attach to something he doesn't like. Rationalism and earnest inquiry based on solid verifiable evidence. He doesn't like these things of course because they deny him the luxury of believing in whatever nonsense of the day makes him feel good and more importantly, what sells his books. This is simultaneously intellecutally dishonest, deceitful and ignorant. So I still don't regret the downvote.

written by gluonium

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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It must feel very satisfying to be so SURE in your ideas Glui. You lucky guy.... Downvote away, I say, and be sure to keep targeting my posts, you wouldn't want to appear inconsistent in your beliefs now!

written by persephone

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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upvote for the comment thread

written by rickegee

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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Oh please, no one is targeting your posts, I downvote promotions of pseudoscience non-prejudicially. And as far as being "SURE" of my ideas; yes I am often strong in the convictions that I hold, yet I have always been and will always be willing to revise and even discard those convictions in the face of an adequate measure of evidence which contradicts them. But this video just isn't it.

written by gluonium

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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I learnt a wonderful meditation technique from one of Deepak's books years ago, that I still use frequently. Great wisdom.

written by Eden

| 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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Upvote for the video, comments, and Perseph.

written by CrushBug | 2 years 6 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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*dead

written by looris

| 2 years 2 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by looris.

written by siftbot

| 2 years 2 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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This is only an excerpt from the original post. I couldn't find the whole thing. Is that allowable?

written by persephone

| 2 years 2 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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*dead

written by jonny

| 9 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by jonny.

written by siftbot

| 9 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Awarding Sagemind with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

written by siftbot

| 9 months 1 week ago | CH

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