61–70 of 103 posts
1000$ around 1940 are about 17000$ today. I don't know what the point of converting them to today's British pounds is. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000%20usd%201940
This is from wired.co.uk, it's expected that readers know pounds better than dollars.
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In fairness, Parsons's occult history isn't particularly new, shocking, or politically dangerous ground in 2014. It's not mainstream knowledge, by any means. And I'm sure a lot of folks are reading about it in Wired for the first time. But Parsons's backstory has been covered pretty extensively -- most recently as a significant side chapter (or two) in "Going Clear," the NYT-bestselling book about L Ron Hubbard and S…
Prior discussions of the Parsons story are not confined to Scientology history. It was covered (in 2 or 3 pages IIRC) in Mike Davis's 1990 book "City of Quartz". This book was widely reviewed and widely discussed, and was re-issued a couple of years ago. That's where I first read the Parsons story, and I've seen it a few times since then.
True. I'm just pointing it out because it's a big vector by which a lot of mainstream audiences are likely to have discovered Parsons and his extracurricular activities. Especially in recent years, with "Going Clear" coming out and hitting the charts. My point was mostly that this stuff is not fresh scandal, hot off the presses.
There are a fair number of tech people I've encountered (mainly in the device driver and security subcommunities) who are part of OTO, Temple of Set, or other "left hand path" type occult groups or practices; a lot more who are just "pagan". Not too far off from any mainstream religions in concentration, which is way different from the general population.
As one of those OTO tech people I was excited to see this here, but a little disappointed that there wasn't any description of what Thelema is about - basically (elevator speech explanation follows) a religion of discovering who you are and being that person. The references to hedonism and the 'darker side of magic' without the context that these are means of self discovery and acknowledging the darker side of existe…
There are two different forms of scientific history. The history of science as used for future scientific development lives in academic papers, journals, conferences, and similar; those are preserved as a record of historical development progress. That history is, when functioning correctly, blind to outside issues like this. On the other hand, there's scientific history as captured by news and popular culture, which…
>You can complain about outside politics affecting science, but far too often, people like this will bring their politics into their science This seems incredibly one sided. By removing him, you've already brought politics into science. You're wrong, this isn't about politics in science, it's about "the right" politics or "the approved" politics in science. You have a point, but it's very defeatist. You're essentiall…
Ideally people shouldn't be bringing any politics into science. But as sad as it is, sometimes you have to deal with politics to get your research sponsored, funded, and widely accepted. That's reality; please feel free to tilt against that windmill, and more power to you if you can manage to change it.
Meanwhile, there's always going to be a subset of scientists (and affiliated non-scientists good at PR) who serve as the public face of a project, and like it or not, they'll be selected for criteria other than how good they are at science.
As much as you might wish that to not be the case, rejecting it will not lead to the outcomes you desire.
This is closely related to the issue of presentability and fashion. Many scientists and engineers object to notions of fashion and other social patterns that they rather reasonably believe should not matter; that objection is fine. But that then turns into a kind of is-ought fallacious reasoning, concluding that because those things shouldn't matter, caring about them isn't important, or worse yet that actively opposing them is worthwhile. And thus you have the stereotype of the engineer in T-shirt and jeans no matter the occasion. The rational reasoning says "OK, perhaps those things shouldn't matter, but in practice they do matter, so live with that and learn to use it when it benefits you".
When it comes to portraying science (or anything else) in popular culture, many problems are isomorphic to fashion, and like it or not the rational choice is to be fashionable.
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I can't speak to hardware, but there's certainly a certain similarity between occultism/esotericism and creating software - you have to be comfortable thinking about and working with things that, in a sense, don't exist. That doesn't mean they're not useful in their own way. It means that they don't have objective reality in the same way that a lake or a car or a building does.
in the software world powerful spell books are definitely real : http://www.lisperati.com/casting.html
Try googling for "the wizard book." See first result.
Marvel at the book's cover, http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
P.S. for a kinda-scientific treatment of "what if magic was real [and obeyed internally consistent laws]?", see ongoing scifi story http://qntm.org/ra
Still wondering how the heck that would ever find its way into an academic book about NASA or the JPL considering how people are up in arms about anything that goes into text books these days.
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Bravo. There's also something to be said for persuasion through friendship and tolerance. E pluribus unum and all that. There are many different textures in a good melting pot.
I imagine a world where the vast, arbitrary .. human .. distance between magic and science are embraced by the world at large, and not shunned by the ruling technocratic order. What if, in fact, we could discuss the vast magick order here on Earth so comfortably well that one day, we do it on the Moon? I wonder if we will go to Mars with purely scientific purposes in mind? I hope not.
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As one of those OTO tech people I was excited to see this here, but a little disappointed that there wasn't any description of what Thelema is about - basically (elevator speech explanation follows) a religion of discovering who you are and being that person. The references to hedonism and the 'darker side of magic' without the context that these are means of self discovery and acknowledging the darker side of existe…
Just looked briefly at Thelema. This appears to be yet another cult around a perfect, mystic founding document, like the Bible or Quran. Regardless of what that document contains, how can you justify originating your epistemology from a text in this way? This seems no different that any other religious ridiculousness.
There's a phrase you'll hear sometimes in Thelema: "The method of science, the aim of religion." This might appear at first to be absurd, but if you consider religion to be the process whereby we obtain genuine and personal spiritual experiences it makes perfect sense. You experiment, you keep records, you evaluate your results and seek to have the same kinds of experiences. I think that this attitude, when it's present, is what separates Thelema apart from other religions.