Editor's note: 

Interesting article Rand, and I totally agree with your conclusion that it is not power that corrupts, but rather that the corrupt seek power.

However, as a neuroscientist I wish Paul Maclean's “Triune brain” theory would just go away. Modern neuroscience has moved way beyond that fairytale. Without boring you to tears, all of the basic parts of the vertebrate nervous system were present in fish, and have been dramatically elaborated through evolution. Fish have homologous brain parts to our cortex, despite being much simpler in design. 

Further, primates are among the most aggressive animals in part because of their highly elaborated neocortex, not because of lower limbic or brain stem structures. The entire premise that reptiles are more aggressive than primates is clearly fallacious. I could go on.

Nonetheless, none of this has any bearing on your thesis. I’d just like to set the record straight on the triune brain theory. 

Link 

by John R Moffett (89 articles, 18 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 697 comments [14 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 6:36:20 AM

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  I have read that everything in the universe is a hologram of the universe. The whole is written in every part. Left-brain verbal labeling has the unfortunate characteristic of labeling and thus causing separation and to an extent accidentally giving the impression that all that hologrammatic stuff is somehow less important. In reality it is immensely more important. That said left brain labeling is still OK. As long as you can realize its limitations you are not going to go too far off. 

  Just so science is now seeing past the limitations of the triune brain labeling idea to a slightly more inclusive view. Science is realizing that all life is immensely related to all other life and nothing can be totally stuffed into any category. Fine. That does not make the triune brain theory rubbish, I do not feel. All verbal labels are rubbish if carried too far. 

  Furthermore when we evolve past a certain stage we take it with us. As Carl Sagan said in his book Dragons of Eden, Nature never reinvents anything. Nature only builds on what she has already done in the past. We all have a Terranasaurus Rex in us ready to gobble up the other guy. But we do do it with a bit more intelligence as we evolve. Why else evolve????

  The last thing I ever thought I would hear is the argument that higher life forms are just as animal as lower live forms...period. I think the correct way to think of it is that higher life forms are just as animal as lower life forms and they are more. 

We do not become less animal, we become animal and much more than animal. It is bad enough listening to a backwoodsy person get miffed by the idea of evolution, and the steps of evolution. Now I have heard it from a brainy scientific type. What next???

  If humans are to evolve now, and God knows we need to do that now to save this planet, we need to look back and see and label where it is we have been. We have evolved a good way and when we see that, and the continuum we are on, we can guess that there is a next step. True we do have to have faith and jump off of a cliff to some extent because a lower life form can not sense deeply a higher one, and we are not yet aware of where we are going. But at least we can see beneath us where we have been and have enough guts to try for more. 

  We have evolved up an evolutionary tree of reptile mammal primate and human and we desperately need to take the next step now, wherever that leads us. Evolution and the cosmos do not stand still. If we stand still now we go extinct. And getting lost in nit picky verbal labeling is not that helpful.

by Theresa Paulfranz (23 articles, 1 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 326 comments [35 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:22:00 PM

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that Nicola Tesla is not recognized on an equal footing with Albert Einstein as one of the two most brilliant men of the Twentieth Century.

by John Sanchez Jr. (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 25 diaries, 1791 comments [148 recommended, 3 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 1:01:40 PM

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  I would like to say thanks for the article and its description of Tesla. He was truly a fascinating  person. I believe that Tesla also talked about  the idea that one day we will use mind-over-matter far more than we can today. And this mind-over-matter stuff could harness power. And when we can do this we will not be as exploitable as we are now. But even now if more of us were wise and brave the mischief in human society that we are witnessing today would be impossible. It would be impossible even without mind-over-matter capabilities that we do not now possess. 

   I  happen to like the idea of a triune brain. I also feel that most humans listen far too much to their reptilian basic desire to survive over their mammalian capability for emotional caring. I think a good many of us act quite reptilian a good part of the time. To an extent that is good for we all have basic survival issues. But when we focus on them too much we can stifle the inner mammal and not even get around  to feeling the inner primate and inner human. 

  I can just imagine many religious people getting all bent out of shape with this kind of talk. I can not write a letter to the editor in the newspaper of the backwoods area where I live without getting some people in a huff about  creation vs. evolution.   I can not  say that we humans now need to "evolve". Heaven forbid. So it tickles me to see humans as described as on a continuum with all other life on this planet. 

by Theresa Paulfranz (23 articles, 1 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 326 comments [35 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:47:59 PM

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Rand, I enjoyed very much this article as well as the previous one "Alas, Babble On". I intend to read your other articles as soon as I have the time. You and Steve Windisch (jibbguy) are very talented writers and I (and many other, I'm sure) thank you for your courage to take on controversial subjects such as the exotic energy (FE) research. I wish I would have your talent or your help in my struggle to promote what I believe is the best remaining to be tested idea on what we all can/should do to break the gridlock in the breakthrough energy research (and not only). I will reproduce below my last post on my site (ZPEneregy.com) regarding the Xtreme Science Foundation project (XSF) in the hope that you and others may pick up on it and realize how important such an organization is in our times, and how ingenious its functioning mechanism is to guarantee its success once more people learn about it and join forces to promote the concept. Hope to hear from you soon.... Vlad

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Xtreme Science Foundation (XSF) - an Institution whose time has come

Here we are at the beginning of 2009, year that will certainly prove very challenging for all of us, wherever we are. Such a global economic crisis doesn't only hurt people where it seems to matter the most - their pockets - but it also provides some time for reflection, and creates an opportunity to re-examine the adequacy of many fundamental principles our society has been guided by in its chosen developmental model.

We may finally understand that money IS NOT everything, and that Earth provides enough to satisfy everybody's needs, but not everybody's greed. We may hopefully understand what Gandhi said about "The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.” And we should have understood by now that, in this WWW age, people are powerful, if they're not "asleep".

From the feedback I got, I know many have realized the urgent need and potential huge benefit of an organization such as the proposed Xtreme Science Foundation (XSF), not just for ushering a revolution in the energy research, but in general, for stimulating and recognizing any viable "out of the box" thinking that can help our society develop much faster and efficiently resolve many of the major problems our human race is facing right now. This is the most important thing that must/can/should be done to really change this world for better, at the same pace as brilliant ideas occur in the human mind.

We need an new real "institution"specifically designed to encourage & support scientists and experimenters to think & go beyond "innovation" (evolutionary improvements to existing technologies/procedures) into breakthrough "inventions"  (revolutionary, quantum leap advances in science and technology). This is what my proposed XSF is all about: ... actively searching and promoting the "Cinderella-s" of alt-sci/tech, those beautiful but ignored real, already existing products of human imagination and ingenuity that can change our future almost like magic (it happened before and will happen again, and the XSF can ensure it is not too late!).

Well qualified and open minded people are essential for such an organization to get credibility. I got many words of encouragement but what XSF needs is people who want to actually do something concrete to get it off the ground. I said from the beginning that I would help as much as my time and skills permit, but I can not be the one to lead this effort in the end. It won't be an easy start-up and only an experienced and dedicated person, who understands the importance of what we want to do, can pull this through. If you know such a person, point him/her to ZPEnergy.com to read about the XSF concept (the previous Executive Summary post and the next two posts and their comments).

If you feel capable to take on any one of the XSF management positions: General Manager (GM), Director Technology Assessment (DTA), Director Finance and Legal (DFL) or Director Media Relations/Web site (DMR), please contact me (use feedback) or, if you prefer, write about it in a comment below.  A professional web designer for the new XtremeScienceFoundation.org site is what is urgently needed. Please remember, I envisioned this foundation to start with exotic energy technologies but quickly expand its sections to other frontier science research (also struggling outside of the mainstream-science recognition and funding), where the same simple principle to establish the truth can be applied: proper scientific validation. Keep that in mind for the GM position.

I welcome any suggestions on how we can join forces to make this work, and turn the XSF into, possible, the greatest accelerator for the human progress from this day on.

I wish to all of us in the new year the serenity to accept those things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.


Happy New Year!



Vlad
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ZPEnergy.com
Owner/Moderator

by vlad aspel (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Jan 17, 2009 at 9:31:56 PM

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