smoking good for brain enhancement

Zero

I may or may not be imaginary...but I hope by showing Russ some truth, h I am being a friend to him.


He may see it differently, of course.

And, of course, I would NEVER suggest he start smoking to increase his psychic abilities.

iron~orchid

It does not embarrass me to explore different ideas or thoughts than you may have for yourself and your Earth life.

Men of Science once did believe in the magical realms but they were given a choice and they took it. That does not mean it is not still there.

The foundation of the Universe is material, but the essence of life is spirit.

Matter -- Energy

For these are but diverse manifestations of the same cosmic reality. Matter may appear to manifest inherent energy and to exhibit self-contained powers, but the lines of gravity involved in the energies concerned in all physical scientific phenomena are derived from, and are dependent on, the 'first' form of energy as its nucleus ~ spirit. Sure, scientists can clone the human body but can they give it a soul ?

The Medicine Men were the first human beings to be exempted from physical toil because they were the pioneer professional class (dealing with energy). The Smiths were a small group who competed with the Medicine Men as magicians. Their skill in working with metals (dealing with matter) made the people afraid of them.

The 'white smiths' and the 'black smiths' gave origin to the early beliefs in white and black magic. And this belief later became involved in the superstition of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spirits.

Smiths were the first nonreligious group to enjoy privileges. They were regarded as neutrals during war and this extra leisure led to their becoming, as a class, the politicians or primitive society. But through gross abuse of these privileges, the Smiths became universally hated and the Medicine Men lost no time in fostering hatred for their competitors.

In this first contest between science and religion, religion (superstition) won. After being driven from the villages, the Smiths maintained the first Inns, public loginghouses, on the outskirts of towns.

Eventually, religious ideas became compromises of spiritual knowledge. There was a great battle for truth then, just as there is today. The Roman Empire was the ruling order of the day; it purpose ws the unification of two powerful forces:

the management of spirit and the governing of existence.

The Christian Church, incorporated into the Roman Empire, began its tyranny of our minds by doling out spiritual truths and those in authority then began to change history by rewriting the books.

The management of minds became dominant in order to rule the souls, spirits, and energies of the people and a shift occurred from whole-brain thinking, which valued intellect and intuition -- to intellectual thinking only.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, new ideas were brought forth. An awakening of consciousness was occurring once again. However, before this new freedom of thought could take hold, there was the eruption of darkness -- The Inquisition -- which was filled with killing and destruction.

If you did not think according to what was correct, you were taken in the night and killed. Men of Science lived in fear of knowing secrets and of breaking the rules. There were very few who would stand forward and speak their truth. They were relegated to only those things of a physical nature and not allowed to explore other realms of existence.

So, they gladly took what was offered them and moved into their physical confinement by giving over the power of thinking about the great mysteries of the mind and spirit. Indeed, for human beings to have been sold such limitation and made complacent or be burned at the stake delineated each with a separate existence as Descartes and Darwin defined -- a life as isolated, compartmentalized, significant of itself perhaps, yet a marvel of meaningless wonder.

A mass marketing of separation took hold, not only separating us from the nucleus of energy but from Nature as well, achieving the complete control of minds. But the great thing about the game of life is that we do exist outside of time and we see what has slipped between the cracks of the history books.

Inner knowledge and ideas come with their own lesson which is the entire purpose of the experience of living. Many challenges of the ages resurrect themselves today in our day-to-day living which contribute to closed minds accepting a worldview. But there are, always have been, and always will be those who are open to change the agreed mode of living.

As much as the Church wanted to burn heretics like Galileo and Copernicus who dared to challenge its ideas, they did not burn Columbus because they could not make the roundness of the world go away.

You say we should think hard about what we really want. Having decided what we want, we then come to stage two.

What are we going to give ?

maximus

yes, and they also believed the earth was flat, and that the best way to cure somebody would be to bleed them.

prove it.

you're commiting the error that hundreds before you have commited by thinking of energy as a mystical element. it is as physical as its equilalent in matter.

if we cloned a person and didn't tell you which is which, i promise you that you cannot tell the difference.

the "magic" that these men created was nothing greater than explosions caused by combustable material.



do you mean what is science going to give humanity? look around, buddy! everything you have was made possible by science! and if you're asking about things beyond the physical, science offers that too: truth. a nothing but it.

eNtRopY

I think that other drugs including marijuana and alcohol can also improve test scores. For instance, once I was at a party, and I asked the crowd a few questions like:

Does anyone know what's in a Manhatten?

Which major brew company owns Schlitz?

What was the name of the girl with glasses on the Scooby Doo Show?

What was the name of Led Zeppelin's fouth album?

How many ounces in a kilo?

Oddly enough, the people who spent a great deal of time getting wasted seemed to be able answer these questions better than those who didn't.

eNtRopY

FZ+

It was once said that ignorance is bliss. The chinese has a wiser saying - that he who asks a question is foolish for a day, but he who does not ask, that remains ignorant, is foolish forever.
It is useless an exploration of ideas and thoughts if you ignore the clear evidence that burns them away. If you do not see the reason for the rejection of the same ideas, you are doomed to repeat your mistakes. All ideas are not equal.
Your attacks on science are idiotic, because you do not know what science actually is.
Belief means nothing in science. That is problem one of transposing mysticism onto knowledge. Man has at some point believed in all things. This does not mean all things are true. In general, the universe just doesn't care what we believe in.
Unproven and unprovable. It has been shown many, many times that we do not have a non-arbitary definition of what life IS. A soul, as far as we know does not exist. A child born in a test tube is just as much of a child as one born in the womb.
Also, bad idea of what energy is. Energy is material in the physical sense. It has relativistic mass and momentum. Spiritual energy is something unproven and irrelevant.

<SNIPPAGE>
A nice story, but completely unproven, without evidence etc etc. A fiction, not real knowledge.

No, that is not that. The reason for the heresy is that unlike science, religion and often mysticism in generally is diametrically opposed to the concept of sceptical thinking, that nothing is "holy" and inexplicable. Because Galileo challenged that the church was wrong, that the church CAN be wrong, he was excommunicated. In short, he was banished because he was a true scientist.

You cannot level the same objection at science, because you are fundamentally rejecting scepticism as an essential element of the process of knowledge. What you really want is not the truth at all, but to legitimise what you perceive as true. At all costs, including truth and open minds themselves.

iron~orchid

I am not attacking science. It is only you who say that I am doing so. I am only asking to expand on science in a way that feels like truth to me.

FZ+

Really?
You see, you fail to appreciate that your rejection of the scepticism part of science, what you term the limits, is 50% of the reason for it's success (the other 50% being wonder, enthusiasm and curiousity). It is much the essence of science itself. By attacking the sceptical procedure with an emphasis on belief, you ARE attacking science. The idea of science is simply in complete opposition to the idea that "feels like truth to me" has any meaningfulness in itself. You did not expand on science - you have ignored the contrary parts wholesale.

iron~orchid

Okay. Figure it out for yourself.

thanks

maximus

[:))] very well put. but the question is: if science were able to show you that the "truth that feels right to you" was not a truth, would you accept it? if the anwser is no, then you should never post here again.

iron~orchid

What is the point of giving accolades toward scientific accomplishments ? Of course there is much in way of progress and the recognition of such is in the very use of the materialistic perks. Invention is the only way man can keep from boring himself to death.

It is like another bothersome thing -- why are you always made to feel guilty for not expounding your love for your parents, siblings and other family members. Of course you love them -- that is a given by having the same blood flowing through your veins. That guilt trip is due to their own insecurities -- not because you have failed to produce or display my feelings to match their preconceptions of what love is.

Okay Okay, we need a lesson in Chicken Soup for the Scientist.

Guybrush Threepwood

ok, I'm really confused now.....
are you saying that science is the result of boredom?[zz)]
and what's with the chicken soup[?]

I think the question was (in short): do you accept the current results and methods of science? or do you prefer to believe in "the truth that feels right" regardless of the facts?

iron~orchid

Whose facts ?

Chicken soup -- ya know, like they do these books and short stories on television about Chicken Soup for the Soul where they have to use the guilt trip about how you are not living your life right and this is the way to make it all better with a sentimental representation that makes you cry or something and then feel all your remorse for not appreciating the what what.

FZ+

The facts of repeated experimentation by groups of scientists across the world, even by researchers working for tobacco companies. The facts of leaked reports of toxic additives to cigarettes to make them more addictive. The facts of toxicology tests on mice. The facts of biopsies of lung cancer victims. The facts of statistics.

If all you have is a conspiracy charge and a "feeling" you are true, then this is a waste of time.

iron~orchid

I have come to this sweeping conclusion ~!

Fact:

You are interested in expanding you thinking processes or you would not have opened the post to read it.

Thus, it is no waste of time.

Guybrush Threepwood

it's not somebody's facts, it's the "facts". Like what you can observe in the world around you. Ex: you don't believe the third law of mechanics - just take a friend, go to the ice-rink and push him...

or we are just a part of a conspiracy who tries to stop people from smoking.....bwahahaha[<:)]

iron~orchid

Should people smoke or not smoke ? What are the pros and cons ?
Questions about how people ought to live always end up becoming religious questions ~~ always end up being arguments handed over to the prophets.

For example, when abortion began to be legalized in the US, it was initially treated as a purely civil matter. But when people began to have second thoughts about it, they turned to their prophets, and it soon became a religious squabble, with both sides lining up clergy to back them. In the same way, the question of legalizing drugs is now being debated in primarily practical terms ~~ but if it ever becomes a serious possibility, people of a certain turn of mind will undoubtedly begin combing scriptures to see what their prohpets have to say on the subject.

Giving the power of thought away, once again, to government and organized religion.

We can argue about issues for a thousand years, but there's never going to be an argument powerful enough to end the argument, because every argument has a counterargument. So, it is impossible to know what we should do.

We know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how to splice genes, but we do not know how people ought to live. Culture allows us to have certain knowledge about things like atoms and space travel and genes, but there's no such thing as certain knowledge about how people should live. It's just not available. It's just not out there.

In other words, the best we can do ~~ since there's nothing 'out there' ~~ is to consult the insides of our heads and feelings. That's what's being done in the debate about legalizing drugs. Each side is preparing a case based on what's reasonable and whichever way they actually jump they still won't know whether they did the right thing.

There's simply no way to obtain any certain knowledge about how people ought to live. Doesn't that seem strange to you ? Considering the fact that this is by far the most important problem mankind has to solve ~~ has ever had to solve ~~ you'd think there would be a whole branch of science devoted to it. Instead, we find that not a single one of us has ever wondered whether any such knowledge is even out there to be obtained.

Not a very scientific procedure for such a scientific people.

FZ+

That still has no relevance to this current discussion.

Right argument, incorrect conclusion. It is perfectly true that there is no such thing as an absolute good and evil, and outside the case of defining something as true or false, it is by Godel's argument impossible to state something as absolutely true.

But we can still make judgement decisions, because the universe is not a case of black and white. Rather, we see in the particular context a transient balance which dictates the appropiate action we should take. At each moment, the brain must preform an assessment of all the data it has, and come up with the optimal conclusion according to the data. As the data is incomplete, and the judgement flawed, there is not one "right" universal answer that we can access. However, we must act pragmatically on the basis of what we know, than the assumption from personal desire of what may be. We must try to limit ourselves to deductive logic, than inductive reasoning.

And in this case, the balance of the evidence is overwhelmingly clear. Smoking is bad for you.

What are the government and the religion, but the thoughts of many individuals? We don't give away thought, we promote it to that level. Blaming the government is ignoring the ignorance of the people. It is undeniable that religion occupies the thoughts of a great number. Whining about imaginary entities doesn't work. Changing minds does.