--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Jason" <jedi_spock@...> wrote: > > Salyavin, research in the past 20 years does indicate that > the "first person ontology" is not always a reliable and > accurate indicator of reality. > > It has to be corroborated with some objective scientific > data. > > Alteration of mental states and states of consciousness with > drugs, hallucinations, imaginations, delusions, dreams, none > of which actually reflect reality.
As far as I can tell, the only people who believe that anyone's subjective view of reality reflects any kind of objective reality are religious fanatics, narcissists, and madmen. The one thing I cannot forgive Maharishi or any of the "holy men" of history for is convincing millions of people that their "inner experience" constitutes not only an accurate view of existence, but the "highest" view. That's a terrible disservice that has been responsible for most of the wars and atroc- ities in history. What, after all, is the difference between Son Of Sam hearing voices telling him to murder people and the Dominican founders of the Inquisition claiming the same thing for their genocides? What is the difference between someone in an ashram having an "inner vision" of dancing gods and goddesses and a madman in an asylum experiencing the same thing, but with different dancers? In my view, *neither* one's subjective view *nor* the so-called objective view of science (which is anything but) constitutes an accurate view of "reality," if such a concept even exists. These days I spend as much of my time reviewing scientific studies as I do tech writing, and the experience has left me with as a strong a distrust of "science" and the "scientific method" as I have a distrust of inner "seeing" or "spiritual insight" or the "wisdom of the ages" passed along in supposedly holy books. The number of studies that cherry-pick data, perform self-serving selection bias when choosing subjects, or come to spurious conclusions based on "evidence" that isn't is simply astounding. And these are just the studies that get published. They represent another form of "cherry-picking," especially in drug trials, because the drug companies who pay for the studies reserve the right to keep the researchers from submitting their studies for publication if they don't show favorable results for their drugs. So, for example, for every favorable study of any new psychoactive drug (anti- depressants, mood elevators, etc.), there are on the average ten studies of the same drug, paid for by the same drug company, that the drug company kept from being published because it contradicted the favorable review they allowed to be published. It's a major scandal in the pharmaceutical industry right now. Just this week I was asked to write up a study on the health benefits of an "alkaline diet." I read the study, which was in fact a "review" of other studies, noticed how obviously cherry-picked the studies being reviewed were, and then read up on the "researchers." All of them are doctors or health-care quacks who make their living promoting not only the benefits of an alkaline diet, but a range of products to be sold to those conned into following it. I then looked up some of the research that they chose NOT to review, and found that there was about ten times the research indicating that there were NO health benefits to an alkaline diet. It was as clear a case of "starting with a conclusion and picking data that seems to support that conclusion" as I've ever seen, so I turned down the gig. The people who were offering to pay me to write up the study tried to double and then triple the amount of money they were willing to pay me, and simply couldn't understand why I was turning it down. I looked into the publication they wrote, and sure 'nuff they make *their* money by promoting products for "alkaline diet" junkies, too. So don't talk to me about the objective nature of science. It's as subjective and as prone to distortion, bias, and greed as anything coming out of the mouths of so-called spiritual or New Age types. If it provides any sense of "balance" on this Wussy Wednesday :-), I can say that from my experience drug studies are FAR more biased and inaccurate than even TM studies. Both are in most cases nothing more than drawing bulls-eyes around arrows, but in the case of the drug studies there is more money on the line.
