Saturday, January 23, 2010
Trusting Seth
Believing Seth is one thing. Trusting Seth is a whole other thing. As mentioned in a previous post, we spend a fair amount of time investing. Curiously, this is one place where Seth's ideas (or ideas like his) have made very little penetration. We're not counting any of the "Gospel of Wealth" type ideas. They may or may not work. What we're thinking about here are people who already have money to invest. Let's say a bottom number of $100,000. While these folks may believe Seth's ideas (we've never come across anyone who said so) there's absolutely no evidence that any of them trust Seth's ideas. Why is that?
Monday, January 11, 2010
Seth and Science
The Seth community, at least the part that I've known, has always had a strange and ambivalent relationship with science. One the one hand, there have been numerous attempts to link Seth's ideas to the ideas of Quantum Mechanics. That seems to be a fruitful line to pursue. Deep in quantum mechanics things get pretty weird and seem very Seth-like. I was just reading an article the other day called "Reality Tests" from Seed magazine about how the Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI, pronounced “ee-ko-kee”) tested the basic tenets of realism and found them wanting.
We want to build a link to quantum mechanics precisely because that will lend legitimacy to Seth's ideas. Quantum mechanics is the most tested and most successful scientific theory ever developed. How did we get quantum mechanics? Via a deep trust in, and allegiance to, the scientific method. Make an hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, do the experiment, record the results, then be ruthlessly honest about whether the results support the hypothesis. And, make sure that your hypothesis is falsifiable. There has to be some conceivable experiment that you could do that would prove the hypothesis wrong.
One of the things I've noticed is that most Seth folks just aren't willing to put Seth's ideas to that kind of test. All of a sudden science is too confining and too linear. The implication is that there's actually something wrong with trying to get reproducible results out of Seth's ideas. I think this timidity has held back our understanding of YCYR. We have to have a lot more courage than we've shown so far. Personally, about 90% of my Seth experiments have been busts. I freely admit that. But, I've learned so much from them.
I'll have a lot more to say about this as time goes on.
We want to build a link to quantum mechanics precisely because that will lend legitimacy to Seth's ideas. Quantum mechanics is the most tested and most successful scientific theory ever developed. How did we get quantum mechanics? Via a deep trust in, and allegiance to, the scientific method. Make an hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, do the experiment, record the results, then be ruthlessly honest about whether the results support the hypothesis. And, make sure that your hypothesis is falsifiable. There has to be some conceivable experiment that you could do that would prove the hypothesis wrong.
One of the things I've noticed is that most Seth folks just aren't willing to put Seth's ideas to that kind of test. All of a sudden science is too confining and too linear. The implication is that there's actually something wrong with trying to get reproducible results out of Seth's ideas. I think this timidity has held back our understanding of YCYR. We have to have a lot more courage than we've shown so far. Personally, about 90% of my Seth experiments have been busts. I freely admit that. But, I've learned so much from them.
I'll have a lot more to say about this as time goes on.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
How and Why
How folks get sick is the same for everyone. This is the stuff that modern medicine knows so much about. Cells, genes, germs and viruses. Why people get sick is different for everyone. This is what we know almost nothing about. Hope, fear, desire, love, guilt - we know almost nothing of the rhythm and flow of these things.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Where's Seth?
It's been 35 years since I discovered Seth. It's closing in on 50 since Jane and Rob started the whole thing. I don't know about you, but I figured to be living in a more "Sethic" world by now. What happened? I imagine the answer to that is anything but simple. Here are a couple of things I've been thinking about lately.
The idea that we create our own realities is radical. No question. Still, I don't think we ever realized just how radical Seth's ideas were and how much they went against the grain of ordinary common sense. Take our legal system for instance. A wholesale adoption of Seth's ideas would put it out of business. How could we try anyone for a bad act when the "victim" agreed to participate? If the legal system went away would that mean brutal chaos, a society where the thugs and bullies were the winners? Our assumptions and beliefs about human nature run awfully deep.
Then there's the idea of probabilities. Among other things, I'm an investor. The market came a cropper in 2008 (we were mostly in cash then rode oil and gold back up in 2009 so no harm done). But wait, that's the probability I experienced. There are, surely, others in which Lehman didn't fail, folks didn't go crazy with over-leveraged CDOs. In fact, there must be other probabilities which other versions of me experience that are not marked by the worldwide cultural circumstances I'm experiencing - an increasingly polarized world, the ongoing Middle East powder keg, the deadening aspects of statistics, etc.
So, it seems the deepest question must be something like, "Why am I experiencing this particular reality?"
The idea that we create our own realities is radical. No question. Still, I don't think we ever realized just how radical Seth's ideas were and how much they went against the grain of ordinary common sense. Take our legal system for instance. A wholesale adoption of Seth's ideas would put it out of business. How could we try anyone for a bad act when the "victim" agreed to participate? If the legal system went away would that mean brutal chaos, a society where the thugs and bullies were the winners? Our assumptions and beliefs about human nature run awfully deep.
Then there's the idea of probabilities. Among other things, I'm an investor. The market came a cropper in 2008 (we were mostly in cash then rode oil and gold back up in 2009 so no harm done). But wait, that's the probability I experienced. There are, surely, others in which Lehman didn't fail, folks didn't go crazy with over-leveraged CDOs. In fact, there must be other probabilities which other versions of me experience that are not marked by the worldwide cultural circumstances I'm experiencing - an increasingly polarized world, the ongoing Middle East powder keg, the deadening aspects of statistics, etc.
So, it seems the deepest question must be something like, "Why am I experiencing this particular reality?"
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