Sunday, February 24, 2019

It's ridiculous to ignore progress


Begun "Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy" by Jonathan Haskell & Stian Westlake.
This book has good reviews, I'm looking fwd to learning more about how nations' economies, norms of accounting & capitalism itself has evolved in the past three decades... https://t.co/HsZCoferQt
"Over the years intangible investment steadily increased. Tangible investment as a proportion of the economy grew slower & in some cases decreased. In the US, it looks like intangible investment got the better of tangible investment by the mid 1990s. In the UK, by the late 1990s" https://t.co/5iybc1Njk0
"These differences across countries seem to line up with intuition. Broadly, the Mediterranean countries are at the bottom of the intangible investment pack, with the Nordics, the United States and UK being at the top, & the rest of continental Europe in the middle." https://t.co/5iybc1Njk0
"It also seems intangible investment as a fraction of GDP is higher in more developed countries. Per capita expenditure on brands is 1% of GDP in the US, but only about 0.1% in China." https://t.co/5iybc24UIA
"Smaller markets, eg. countries surrounded by trade barriers, would be less attractive places to make intangible investment. This can be shown by the share of GDP accounted for by intangible investment, plotted against the OECD index of restrictiveness of trade in services." https://t.co/5iybc24UIA
"The objection to treating training as an intangible investment is not that it's not valuable or lasting, but that it is an asset of the employee, not of the firm. {But in some specialised cases, training is specific to the firm (say in proprietary systems) that is not portable}" https://t.co/5iybc24UIA
"A business that is reliant on intangibles will behave differently from a business with mainly tangible assets. Managers and workers will face different incentives and rewards. And an economy made up of many such businesses will perform in distinctive ways." https://t.co/5iybc24UIA
"If we want to incr productive investment in ideas, we shd encourage interdisciplinarity: casual exchanges btwn ppl working in diffrt fields & diverse places. These exchanges happen a lot in large, walkable cities w/plenty of public spaces & opportunities for social interactions" https://t.co/5iybc1Njk0

Begun "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" by @HansRosling @OlaRosling & @AnnaRRonnlund
Seems to be in the mould of @sapinker's books, and has received high reader reviews. https://t.co/gbrnyDRBkd
"What are people thinking when they say the world is getting worse? They aren't thinking, but feeling. If you feel uncomfortable with data showing world improving, it's bcz thr are still huge problems & it feels ridiculous.
I agree. But it's just as ridiculous to ignore progress" https://t.co/v3IQT7osQW
"Almost every activist i have ever met, either deliberately or unknowingly exaggerates the problem to which they have dedicated their lives. Desperately trying to make people care, they forget about progress." https://t.co/v3IQT7osQW
Outstanding! 1 of the best books I've read in years.
My own outlook resonates with its championing of "a fact based world view," distinguishing facts from opinions & feelings.
Will help you see the good in the world without glossing over the bad or being binary. A must read https://t.co/v3IQT7osQW

USA & China control 85% of AI startups/patents. They will control the new economy while others try to catch up in old economy. Massive unemployment ==> surplus humanity ==> dangerous situation https://t.co/A1mUFNGIFV
https://twitter.com/RajivMessage/status/1097686948930498560?s=19
Sadly, many (not all) in the next-gen cant take criticism, want instant limelight, cut corners & focus on social media fame without the foundation of tapasya. Such a society is hollow inside - like eaten by termites. Soon u will find clashes among them for petty matters. https://t.co/wlx3YOksBv
https://twitter.com/RajivMessage/status/1099529627360419840?s=19
I am merely responding to repeated calls from well wishers to:
1) Prepare successor scholars to continue.
2) Collaborate w other thought leaders.
3) Build institution that outlasts personalities.
In the process I uncovered critical failures in our community. https://t.co/9aTZXBcnDv
https://twitter.com/RajivMessage/status/1099138464665104384?s=19

I think "companies" will become powerful not "government" or "nations". Even US govt will have less control on monopolies of AI, such as Google , Amazon. Examples we can see already, when Google did not cooperate with US govt on face recognition system.
https://twitter.com/vinay6_jay/status/1097696016147537920?s=19

Abolishing the Companies Act might give rise to new forms of ownership with transparency and responsibility. Gambling in the guise of stock trading also needs to be reined in. Seat of power must exercise control upon business and not the other way round, as is the case at present
That's of course a long term approach and it's not easy to implement nor there's any surity as regards the outcome. My proposal is at the conceptual level: whether it's feasible to abolish the Act and whether modern life of a Nation is possible without the existence of Companies?

Companies are already powerful. It's the lobbyists sponsored by companies that influence policy making.
Be it government or company, it's people that are going to take these decisions. What values drive these people is going to shape the future. We must be addressing the education system which is not holistic, just intellect oriented. Thats where India, the vishwaguru, comes in :)
Short answer is no. Economic sustenance is of utmost importance. Humans have achieved this much clarity at least, for now. Economic decisions will shape the immediate future. My point is. The only way I see this working, is if humans approach consciously. Value upgradation.
https://twitter.com/seekingmischief/status/1098165490868994048?s=19
One's own values pushing one towards taking a conscious decision rather than being told what to do is more convincing to any human being.

https://t.co/EQyfdbeAij On the eve of his 10 years as Sarsanghachalak @RSSorg, an assessment & appreciation: no one has been as quietly influential & effective as Mohan Bhagwatji. Mainstreaming the RSS & internationalising Hindutva may be summed up as his greatest achievements.
https://twitter.com/MakrandParanspe/status/1099211574546444289?s=19
“Bhagwat has endeavoured to rescue Hindutva from the narrow straitjacket..dubbed & slandered as a supposedly fascist & chauvinist ideology. Bhagwat has rehabilitated it as the proud identity badge of new age Indians and globalised Hindus.” https://t.co/65RJllm6SK

@davidfrawleyved's 1997 call for intellectual or Bauddhik Kshatriyas still resonates: "An intellectual Kshatriya must not merely be defensive but creative and expansive...based upon deep thought [not] mere rhetoric, character assassination, or slogans." https://t.co/Ge4Niwlt7m
https://twitter.com/MakrandParanspe/status/1098785362724433925?s=19
What is remarkable is that this call was given by @davidfrawleyved some 22 years back, long before today's activists, who mouth this sort of rhetoric without even mentioning this essay of his, let alone reading it. https://t.co/06PzsDGVBp
https://twitter.com/MakrandParanspe/status/1098898294426689536?s=19

Confused "ChaturBania" follower will end up destroying our nation. We want a leader with clear vision like #Netaji and not confused Gujju #Gandhi  bhakts. People should read what #SriAurobindo had to say about Gandhi...his #Ahimsa and #Satyagraha . https://t.co/9UuH50iivY
https://twitter.com/PhoenixIndranil/status/1099585730400051205?s=19

#multilearning On January 1, 1969, Sri Aurobindo’s Integral yoga co-worker and disciple, The Mother (at age 90) announced the "arrival" of the "superman consciousness" – "the intermediary between man and the supramental being".[9] https://t.co/01bL90Nbrz
https://twitter.com/RobDreamrealist/status/1099465311936491520?s=19

47.  With national unity as its goal, Indian nationalism would produce much disunity.
48. It would avow with passion, in Sri Aurobindo’s words as its essence, that ‘the return to ourselves is the cardinal feature of the national movement.
https://twitter.com/Janamejayan/status/1097898627433926656?s=19

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

States must get Sovereignty and UN membership

Vinoba Bhave https://t.co/mhIWVlmR63 
Jayaprakash Narayan https://t.co/mlHqfr5vGe 
[ARYA Vol.3. No 8—March 1917: Integral Knowledge, Oneness, Sankhya & Yoga, PSD VIII, 2nd Hymn to Mitra-Varuna, IHU & Heraclitus (4)]
Savitri Era Party: India must split due to overpopulation https://t.co/pX4rxSPXJd 
Savitri Era: At seventy India must retire https://t.co/fYo2k49F2s #SriAurobindo
1) Say yes to Free Market, 
2) Oppose Mythology and Reservations, 
3) Demand Sovereignty to the States; & 
4) Follow The Mother & Sri Aurobindo.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

The myth of mythless modernity

Accordingly, thinkers like du Prel and William James were crucial to the process of redefining mysticism as a universal aspect of human experience.42 Die ... But rather than being a unfathomable remainder, du Prel thought that the Kantian thing-in-itself made itself available to us in mesmeric and somnambulistic states.

The Myth of Disenchantment

MAGIC, MODERNITY, AND THE BIRTH OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

400 pages | 5 figures | 6 x 9 | © 2017
A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted?

Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world.  

By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

60 In claiming the contrary Kant makes the same mistake that he made when trying to distin–guish the unity of the understanding from the synthesis of the ... 66 These doctrines were summarized by Carl Du Prel in his Kants mystische Weltanschauung (Pforzheim: Rudolf Fischer Verlag, 1964), first published in 1889. 67 See ...

F. X. Charet - 2015 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
It was simply that the alleged facts as data supporting an actual world of spirits were inadequate.75 On the basis of this conclusion, Kant indicated that an ... given in 1788—89.80 The spiritualist, Carl Du Prel, published an edition of these lecture notes in 1889 under the title Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen u'ber Psychologie.

purpose in nature, recommending to link Darwin to Kant, while Vai- hinger discussed Otto Liebmann's neo- Kantianism.8 Even the aforementioned lecture on the ... of appearances.13 It was only 8 See Carl du Prel, “ ̈Uber die notwendige Umbildung der Nebularhypothese,” and Hans Vaihinger, “Ueber Liebmann's Analysis  ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Irina Paperno - 2014 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
Prelviewed such dreams in thecontext of post-Kantian thoughtand in opposition to the positivistic trends ofhis day. (Du Prel followed Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, the author ofThe Philosophy ofthe Unconscious.) For him,the “seeming duration” oftime not only provided empirical evidence of Kant's idea ofthe ...

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that implies all knowledge begins with experience though “it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.” Massey summarized du Prel's philosophy as the existence of a “ second consciousness in man, familiar to all in its weakest degree as common dream, but rising in clearness,  ...

Anna Akasoy, ‎Guido Giglioni - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
6 In the field of Kantian studies, the first scholar who noticed the existence of strong similarities between Averroes's rationalism and Kant's criticism was Carl du Prel, in his 'Kants mystische Weltanschauung' published in 1889. Du Prel wrote his essay as an introduction to the Vorlesungen über Psychologie, part of Kant's ...

Kant's “ Dreams of a Spirit-seer," a translation of which is published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Du Prel's work has been, with loving labour, admirably translated by the late Mr. C. C. Massey, not the least valuable part of the work being the translator's own suggestive preface. Mr. Massey has also rendered great service to  ...

Corinna Treitel - 2004 - ‎Preview
Searching for an alternative, they pursued the psychological as well as anticlerical and antimaterialist implications of Schopenhauer's philosophy.27 Du Prel continued to develop these interests with an 1868 doctoral ... What had long remained occluded— nothing less than Kant's transcendental subject — now lay revealed.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
David Leary notes that in setting strictures on psychology, Kant had inadvertently set out prescriptions that were to be taken up in the nineteenth century by figures who ... In his introduction to his edition of Kant's lectures on psychology, the spiritualist and philosopher Carl du Prel argued that dreams, somnambulism, and ...

Fiona Steinkamp - 2002 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
Yet it seems also to reveal the importance he placed on fostering a meditative awareness of his immediate experience: philosophy for Kant was ultimately not an abstract ... Du Prel (¡885) develops an elaborate theory of “somnambulism” (including hypnotism) based explicitly on Kant's philosophy (see e.g., Du Prel ¡885, vol.

G. Glen Wickens - 2002 - ‎Preview
'We hear,' Felix Adler also commented, 'much nowadays of the necessity of a return to Kant' (192).41 It seemed to one commentator in 1901 that 'all the thought of ... system of Idealism' (1:109),45 Hart- mann's ' Ideal-realism' (1:xxv), Carl Du Prel's Transcendental Realism' (1^T),46 Spencer's 'transfigured realism' (First 170; ...

Paul Bishop - 2000 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
Dr. Carl du Prel', Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 100 (1892), pp.293-95. + Paul von Lind, "Kants mystische Weltanschauung", ein Wahn der modernen Mystik: Eine Widerlegung der Dr. C. du Prel 'schen Einleitung zu Kants  ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal - 1997 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
... is hardly an area of interest that has not been related to cosmism, whether it be icon painting, yoga, Kant's philosophy, the ethnic question, or the ozone layer. ... history," and "cosmic philosophy" (philosophic cosmique) go back to nineteenth-century mysticism and occultism (Carl Du Prel, Max Theon [Louis M. Bimstein], ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn...
Paul Bishop - 1995 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
the five), Kant appears in some rather unusual Company such as Carl du Prel (1839——1899),2'* Johann Zöllner (1 834- 1882),25 Gustav Fechner (1801 —1887)26 and other assorted spiritualists such as Alexander Aksakov (1833-1903)27 and William Crookes (1832—-1919).28 The conundrums posed by recent scientific ...

Emanuel Swedenborg's Mystical View of Humankind, and the Dual Nature of Humankind in Immanuel Kant Gottlieb ... Du Prel referenced this quote as from Swedenborg's "On the Spiritual World, " 1 432, which was most likely taken from ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?id...
Johannes Jacobus Poortman - 1965 - ‎Snippet view
been struck by the fact that Kant and Swedenborg used the same terms for these worlds, viz. mundus sensibilis and mundus intelligibilis. But the ... As stated above, Du Prel republished Kant's Vorlesungen iiber Psychologie in 1889. He was of ...

Harold W. Percival - 1917 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
It is not to be denied that Kant, in his Psychology, deals principally in hypotheses and leaves it to the future to find the proofs of experimental researches. He could not do otherwise in his time, but that he intuitively found the truth deserves our appreciation and admiration. Dr. Carl du Prel, to whom we are indebted for this new ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?id...
Frederic William Westaway - 1938 - ‎Snippet view
Plato's " ideas " Zollner regarded as spatial objects of more than three dimensions and as " real existences ", and he also regarded Kant's " thing-in-itself " as a real thing in the fourth dimension. Carl Du Prel went even further than Zollner: " Just as the shadows of three-dimensional objects cast on a wall are controlled in their ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?id...
Camille Flammarion - 1923 - ‎Snippet view
Charles du Prel, a Bavarian savant (1839-99) of French extraction,1 to whom the psychic sciences owe important investigations, reached the conclusion, after thirty years of study, that the soul is not spirit alone but a ... In this connection, it reminds us of Kant's idea that "after this life the human soul is bound simultaneously to ...

Sir William Barrett - 1918 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
... the spiritual world is where the angels are, and the natural world is where men are. Plotinus, who lived in the third century, also held a very similar belief, speaking of men as "amphibia," who live partly in the 'Kant: " Werke" (Rosenkranz), vii, 53, 59, quoted by Dr. Du Prel in his "Philosophy of Mysticism" (Redway, London).

It is _a remarkable fact that long ago the philosopher Kant instinctively stated the same truth. ... In connection with this subject may I commend to you the perusal of Dr. Du Prel's Philosophy of Mysticism, which has been translated with loving labour by one of the earliest and best friends of our Society, Mr. G. C. Massey:' ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?id...
1905 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
He whom Kant has made worthy of a humorous discussion, and whose thought has become a part of Faust, he lives for that period of time which we in mortal fashion ... Carl du Prel. Kant's Vorlesungen iiber Psychologie. 1889. Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. tr. by Emanuel F. Goerwitz, edited with introduction and notes by ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?id...
Andrew Lang - 1909 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
sions are eagerly welcomed by Du Prel in his ' Philosophy of Mysticism ; ' but they are only part of Kant's joke, and how far they are serious, Kant himself does not know. If spiritualists knew their own business, they would translate and publish Kant's first seventy pages of ' Traume.' Something like telepathy, action of spirit, ...

Frank Sewall - 1906 - ‎Snippet view
The extraordinary revelations of Swedenborg " from things heard and seen," whose profound influence upon Kant, Goethe, and Herder is at this late day coming into full recognition,* are only other instances of the same kind of opening of ... London : Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., with citations from Heinze, Du Prel, et a/.

Edward Douglas Fawcett - 1893 - ‎Snippet view - ‎More editions
With these (his admirable services to the cause of psychology notwithstanding) must be classed Carl du Prel. ... And most assuredly it does not warrant the statement that " we, who know somnambulism, which Kant did not know, . . . could no longer rightly say that the Transcendental Subject is empirically unknown to us.