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Sept. 14, 2006 This article is in response to Fred Smith and also to Robert Paul Reyes, who recently wrote in his article, "Useless-Knowledge: Then And Now," "When I started writing for UK in September 04, this Web site was a friendly place where writers with varying degrees of experience and skill shared their musings, rants and editorials with a world-wide audience….. But nothing ever stays the same, and UK soon became infested with sharks who took a perverse delight in attacking their fellow columnists." Well, in May of 2005 John Waters began writing to Useless-Knowledge Magazine hoping to find some persons genuinely interested in his unusual independent research on rejuvenating, integrating, and stimulating the brain. John has have found a few correspondents, but most of his U-K activity has become involved with a few skeptical hard-liners who are stimulating him to learn more about argumentation by doing it. John is one of those persons who has to learn by doing. John is also a hard worker, so you can expect more articles from him. Reyes adds, "UK was no longer a literary magazine, but a glorified message board where flaming wars raged, driving away gifted writers like Sher Zieve and earnest amateurs like Judy Ramsook." Well, with due respect to these two writers, John Waters argues that each person who writes for U-K is gifted in certain ways. John also argues that no matter how talented, we all can use some correction in our writing, and believe me, arguers are whetstones that sharpen John’s knife. John has learned a lot by writing for U-K! John is handicapped cognitively and in other ways and he finds the U-K "rebuttals" section difficult to follow and physically painful to scrutinize. John realizes that is just his own personal problem. On the other hand many U-K writers are even more argumentative than John is and even if John were to withdraw from U-K, he doesn’t think that would cause Fred Smith and the other argumentative columnists to withdraw from the U-K arena. And so with this in mind, John Waters now addresses Fred Smith and anyone else who is interested in this topic. ------------ In his article, "Exposing John Waters: Part 2" after spending several paragraphs making numerous derogatory remarks about John, and making claims that Fred doesn’t support, he writes, "Many people are distrustful of science, especially in the USA." Many? How many? What percent of the population? Fred, that’s a broad claim that you don't back up. Where did you get this information? Can you give us a reference so we can independently review your source? Fred continues, "It has long been my view that John dislikes humanism and transhumanism mainly because those schools of thought rely, when possible, on the factual and the rational, neither of which John's "research" approaches." This is merely Fred’s opinion. Fred doesn’t prove this claim, and it is also true that John has written several U-K articles exposing both Fred and t411sh as hypocritical writers. Fred must have read these articles and so he knows John’s actual reasons for being critical of Fred and t411sh. Moreover, even though Fred Smith isn’t honest in his writing, he hopes that you, the reader, won’t notice this dishonesty or won't care about it. More errors occur in Fred’s long and partially fallacious derogatory tome against John Waters. In one part of his article Fred is trying to make a big deal of neural development and base his ethics and morality on neural development. That is not science. That is just Fred’s own personal opinion. Yet Fred goes on and on about octopi, wasps, and lobsters and tries to prove that it’s reasonable and ethical to be more kind to octopuses than to plants, lobsters, and wasps. But this is just Fred’s own personal opinion. John can just as easily argue that in several ways plants support human life and so plants have rights commensurate with humans. Plants provide food, shade, water storage, building materials, and vital oxygen. Therefore John might argue that we humans had better respect plants even more than octopi, even though octopi have well developed nervous systems but plants do not. Also, many kinds of bees and wasps either prey on plant pests or fertilize flowers and so we need to be very respectful of wasps and bees. Again, that is just John’s personal opinion. More arguing with Fred might follow these assertions by John, but amongst the vast U-K readership, who really cares? Further testing of John’s research on the self-healing and rejuvenating brain is what’s relevant. With respect to that issue, John appreciates Fred’s including a lucid definition of science that Fred says he copied from the WikiPedia Science portal front page. Here it is, one more time: "A science, from the Latin, scire, to know, is a body of knowledge that is constructed via observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and logic for the purpose of explaining and predicting events or behavior. Observation, experimentation and critical reasoning all play crucial roles in the advancement of scientific knowledge. A discipline is widely regarded as a science if its practitioners apply the 'scientific method'. According to falsificationists, this involves the formation of a testable hypothesis, followed by ongoing attempts to refute this hypothesis via critical reasoning, experimentation and observation. A hypothesis that has been rigorously tested under a wide variety of conditions, and which remains unrefuted, is tentatively accepted as a useful approximation to the truth, and attains the status of theory; future observations may yet refute it". Fred’s above cut-and-paste makes shows the starting point for science: OBSERVATION. Consequently Fred knows just what to do to present his own first-hand valid evidence that John’s theory is wrong. Fred has to observe the "yogic force" himself by training with a yogi. Some yogis call this "kundalini" instead of "yogic force." No amount of blathering by Fred has anything to bear with proving or disproving John’s theory of "yogic force" because when yogis are transmitting "yogic force" and when disciples are receiving "yogic force" no one is talking or even thinking at all. This suggests that to become a yogic observer Fred would have to make a MAJOR adjustment and quiet his very argumentative verbal brain. This probably would take Fred a long time. But science doesn’t care. Fred is just an experimental subject, as is John Waters. Without focusing on the central issue, Fred blathers on: "Note that the scientific meaning of theory differs significantly from the colloquial meaning. Note also that John's Yogic super powers "theory" doesn't qualify as science – it's plain to me what motivates John's dislikes. What would falsify John's Yogic hypothesis? What evidence do we have that John's idea is correct? What predictions has John's idea made, and, have any of those predictions tested positive? Whoa! Hold your horses, Fred. Start with making the relevant observations for, in, and by yourself. Don't just be a big bag of wind. Now to Paul, and to Fred, and to all the rest of the U-K readership, I say, visit this page on the inspired yogi Ramana Maharshi and then make a careful study of six or more inspired persons who themselves either transmitted what yogis transmit (you can call IT anything you like, but many call it "kundalini the serpent power" rather than "yogic force") and consider each one of those persons a specimen in your hobbyist collection. As was entomology before it became called a science, enthusiastic students of insects made large insect collections. As more people study yogis and note similarities in the behavior of yogis and the perceptions of yogis, the science of yoga will emerge. But just vilifying and denouncing a healing and rejuvenating perception you yourself have not made an effort to cultivate is hypocritical and non-productive. You are like those pseudo-scientists [but claimed they were real scientists] who claimed meteorites do not exist just because they never found and studied any real meteorite. Eventually all the pseudo-scientists died and the younger generation was more objective, observant, and scientific. Fred, the first step in this science is your own personal direct observation. Stop being a vilifier and a hypocrite. Study Maharshi and other prominent yogis and learn some yoga yourself. Begin by studying meditation and read about recent peer-reviewed brain research on adept meditators. ------------ About the author: sixty-six years young, and vigorous in mind, body, emotions, and spirit, John L. Waters is an independent researcher on self-healing, integration, creativity, and unity. To help demonstrate the effectiveness of his research, John has created thousands of drawings, paintings, instrumental music pieces, songs, prose pieces, poems, and other inventions. John has used his research to help persons remove a mental block and solve a problem. John also gives personal presentations which illustrate his research results. Each one of these works demonstrates the effectiveness of John's research. For more information, read John's letters of recommendation: about John's self-healing and integration: about the mystical energy or yogic force and related topics: about John's independent research: about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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