Natural science beyond orange

In this thread we can discuss natural science beyond orange, and also post link to interesting stuff that is online.

This is what I posted at the Multiplex some time ago, and what Arthur/Adastra later reposted in this pod:

Re: Natural science beyond orange

This is my attempt to briefly summarize the videos above:

Orange biological science views genes as fairly stable entities over time. There is random mutation and natural selection, but this is a fairly slow process. Orange thinkers do acknowledge sexual selection as well but this is pretty much part of the natural selection concept. Orange biological science has no problem with environmental factors per se, but generally this is kept separate from the genetic makeup. They say that the environment might affect phenotype (ie not only genetic makeup but also local factors in the uterus shape the body of a “new human”), but that is as far as the environment can reach. So when your average doctor talks about disease she might say that a certain disease is a combination of inherited genes and the environment/lifestyle you have. For example your dad died from a heart attack and now you're eating lots of sugar and hydrogenated fats so you will likely get a heart attack as well. Both genes and environment matter, but they come from different directions so to speak. So far so good, and none of this is wrong, it is perfectly valid science.

Green goes one step further and says that not only do you have a certain genetic makeup, but your environment and even your perception of your environment, can actually affect your genes! Sounds crazy huh?
Let's say we have a certain gene, and we call it 21 (random number…). Now we usually do not only have one version of a gene, often there will be 21a, 21b, 21c for example. Which of these versions that will be switched on or off is decided by either local or global factors in the body. Let's take an example of global factors. If I perceive fear, then this will trigger the brain to tell the peripheral nervous system as well as the hypothalamus to send new neurological and hormonal messengers to the body, these messengers will eventually attach to the cell membrane, through membrane proteins the signal will be propagated to the nucleus, and within the nucleus a certain gene is switched on and another switched off. In other words: genes do not actively do anything, they are tools to be used by global, local or intracellular messengers/proteins. A gene does not have the power to regulate itself! It might be able to do some self-regulation through feed-back loops, but outside factors can always override this system.

Another interesting thing that can happen is that sequences of DNA called transposons can move around the genome (with the help of enzymes/proteins) and thereby change the structure of certain genes. How often this happens and to what extent this can be done intelligently by outside stimulus is still a matter open to debate or I should say green/integral research. My own belief is that this can happen to a considerable extent, especially if one does deep spiritual or healing work.

So as we would expect green to do they stress the importance of the environment, and that the individual (me me me) can change his body and genetic makeup by changing his perception.

An integral view would honour both orange and green insights, and probably add new stuff as well.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Sheila/Humblgodes sent me the following link:

Boundary Institute



Here is an excerpt from the site:

Since 1998, the Global Consciousness Project has been monitoring the outputs of 40 or more random number generators (RNGs) around the world. Each of these RNGs generates 200 bits of random data every second and sends them to a server at the GCP. The generators are based on physical devices considered fundamentally random, not merely deterministic computer algorithms. It is these data – not the “global consciousness” hypothesis – that we are most interested in.

Preposterous though it may sound, significant deviations have been noted in the randomness of data from these RNGs around times of major events in the world. Immediate questions, of course, include “Is this a real effect?” and, if so, “What is going on?”.

Roger Nelson, Director of the GCP, and Dean Radin at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and others have been analyzing data from the RNG network on and around September 11. Some preliminary analyses found striking anomalies, four of which are shown below. Note that the apparent deviation from randomness began several hours before the events in New York and Washington. See the GCP web site and especially Dean's draft report for more information on these graphs and extensive statistical analyses of the data before, during, and after the events.

Randomness and Causality

Why is this of interest to us at the Boundary Institute? Because our theoretical and experimental work have focused specifically and directly on the concepts of randomness and causality in physics. Our theoretical work strongly suggests, and we have been saying for some time, that certain random physical processes (such as the “collapse” of the wave function in quantum mechanics) may not be as random and indeterminate as assumed, and in fact may be dependent on other factors and thus influenceable at a fundamental level under certain conditions. And contrary to common assumption, these phenomena and new theory are not in major conflict with existing physics. A great deal of experimental evidence tends to support this hypothesis as well.

Now, far more significant events seem to have registered in random devices all over the globe. On the surface, these events seem to support the perennial and appealing idea that thoughts can have effects on physical reality. Perhaps so, but this remains to be properly established. It is still possible that some prosaic explanation will be found for the observed data, although none have been sufficient so far.

We do not know whether the effects shown in these analyses will hold up under further scrutiny. If they do, we do not necessarily subscribe to the hypotheses that the GCP or anyone else has put forth to explain them. In any case, anecdotal one-time occurrences, no matter how dramatic, are no substitute for careful scientific investigation and experimental replication. However, at the very least, this apparent deviation in the randomness of physical devices under certain conditions needs to be analyzed further and studied closely by science.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Here are more results and conclusions from studying the random number generators on September 11th. The hardcore statistics are very hard to ignore. Full paper is found here.



2. A significant increase in variance of more than 1/2 hour duration occurred around 9:30
UTC (5:30am EDT) on the morning of September 11. This anomaly is significant with
odds against chance of thousands to one across a wide range of low-pass filters. No
similar deviations were seen in four surrounding months of data. We have no immediate
explanation for the provocative fact that this anomaly preceded the primary events of
September 11 by over 3 hours.
3. A significant correlation among the EGGs and a dramatic increase in variance occurred
beginning early in the morning on September 11 and continued throughout the day.
Examination of several other days reveals no similar effects. This is perhaps the most
interesting of the anomalies, since these random number generators are believed to be in
principle independent.
In summary, something worthy of study occurred across the GCP’s network of random
number generators on September 11, 2001. Data from these RNGs were far more
unusual and far more correlated than would be expected by chance alone. This single day
can be uniquely and readily distinguished by statistical variance and correlation of the
RNGs from any other day in the four-month period examined. The techniques used were
simple, standard, and not specific to this data.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Thanks Pelle for this thread. I am still travelling around and have not got much time to write, but will later in the week. Again, we are circling around the issues of synchronity, non locality, randomness, non-linear “causality”, resonance, disonance. Stan Grof’s book, When the Impossible Happens, is mostly a personal account of synchronicities in his life, all of them amusing, non of them earth shattering, and none of which he claims in any way to have caused by his thoughts, though he ‘noticed’ them all the same as they transpired….and he is clearly moved by them and curious about them.

I also have an impressive list of ‘meaningful coincidences’ in my own life, with the odds on happenings of near impossibility. I have also been totally and acutely convinced that the ‘universe’ paying attention to me, even while I was seriously considering and aware of ‘delusions of reference’, and wondering about what the difference was between the latter and the former…..This is similar to what Stan Grof is writing about.

I also have never had a grandiose idea that I was creating external reality with my ‘wishful thinking’, (though I have tried this too on times with limited and humbling success….once was in the 150 miles from the nearest community, in middle of a 2mile long, class 5 rapid, with me on the shore, and the canoe overturned in a whirlpoolin the middle of a river which appeared to be holding it hostage, and the only apparent solution to retrieve the canoe was a helicopter). I am very cognizant of the sphere of influence of my power of intention, and where I am extended beyond this sphere to areas clearly beyond my personal control, and whether I am resonating within the larger sphere beyond my control, or not.

I will look forward to contributing further on this thread. It is interesting because we do need to get clear about ‘the power of intention’ and all the Wayne Dyerism as somebody said. Not all of this is hokey, in my opinion. And the territory that we are exploring is the event horizon of where our personal boundaries of influence stop and the rest of the world is waiting to take over. What brings us ‘into alignment’, so to speak? or is this just ‘new age wishful thinking’ talking?
Jane

Re: Natural science beyond orange

That's a beautiful post Jane, and I recognize many of your experiences. I love this phrase:

I am very cognizant of the sphere of influence of my power of intention, and where I am extended beyond this sphere to areas clearly beyond my personal control, and whether I am resonating within the larger sphere beyond my control, or not.

This is exactly what we're discussing. Or rather, what we're living, intuiting, exploring, open to finding out more about through our lives and maybe also through science.

Is life run by coincidences or synchronicities? Both.
Is the universe neutral or personal? Both.
Local or non-local? Both.
Cause/efffect or non-linear? Both.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

What a great topic.  It's interesting too, since last year I read a number of books on potential “next steps” for natural science, and one of the books was Bruce Lipton's Biology of Belief.  Another one was Dean Radin's Entangled Minds, which gives a synopsis of the RNG readings described in the link pelle gives.  It seems (seems being the operative word here) that mental or noospheric elements are beginning to be acknowledged as significant components of reality in their own right–at least there seems to be a bit more evidence that holds valid weight even according to reductionist standards of inquiry.  Or maybe we're getting closer to actually verifying on the level of our collective consensual reality the subtle realms? 
I agree that Lipton's does seem to be a healthy green approach (a pluralistic harmony of multiple cells joined together in their mutual growth?), and he flirts with higher possiblities.  And what he says about  energy versus physical diagnoses-treatments in the lecture was inspiring, a lot more sensible in his applications of quantum theory than other “new sicence” thinkers like Fred Alan Wolf.  And you could really feel the depth of his ideas in his heartfelt statements toward the end of the video where he extends the power of perception to wider applications.  “Love is the maximum nourishment for growth.”  And he ties that statement in with research!  That bodes well for natural science, I think…
But, one theorist who comes to mind who I think goes farther in pointing the way toward a possible integral approach to natural science is Joseph Chilton Pearce in Evolution's End.  He gives an interpretation of the triune brain and its participation with, hmm, cosmic source-energy (I'm not sure exactly how to put it, but you know–sunyata, the All, etc.).  Here's a link to an interview where Pearce describes this a bit:

http://www.intuition.org/txt/pearce.htm

Pearce thinks of neural fields in our brains and central nervous systems in general as being like quantum translators of the potential-wave fields of what he calls the cosmic soup.  Essentially, we collapse certain wave-potentials of the source-soup into form (or particles) when it is translated by neural fields that complement these wave fields.  There's more, and a lot dealing with healthy/unhealthy development, but it's kind of a long story and I'm sure most people who are part of this pod know it.
I'm getting a little overly excited here, but I always thought that scientific studies of dreams is a very intriguing avenue for gaining insights into possible integral approaches to science.  Lucid dreaming alone is quite the vogue topic these days, but it really does hold interesting potentials–especially considering that people have been able to heal wounds and diseases both in lucid and non-lucid dream states.  Robert Van de Castle has done a lot of work in bringing legitimate scientific research to light regarding many levels and types of dream phenomena–from biological activity (physiological readings like EEG, fMRI, EKG) to psychological and sociological aspects to more seemingly paranormal phenomena (lucid, shared dreams, healing dreams, OBEs).  And then there are studies of many mental disorders, like multiple personality disorder.  I was trying to find an actual study that mentions this, but there was a multiple personality case where diabetes was observed in one persona but totally missing when another persona took over.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited to see where this thread goes.  There was more stuff I was thinking of, but I'll have to jog my memory to get it back.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Thanks for you contribution Blue!

Pearce seems to be pretty Green as far as I can tell, but healthy green and trying to move into integral thinking. I could be wrong of course, since I haven't read any books of his.

I definitely have to read the Dean Radin book, since he apparently sums up a lot of evidence.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Even Sam Harris is aware of current research on ESP/psi.

From the blog of Dean Radin:

On militant atheism

An op-ed on AlterNet takes author Sam Harris to task. Among other things, the author of the op-ed, John Gorenfeld, writes:

The thrust of Harris's best-sellers is that with the world so crazed by religion, it's high time Americans stopped tolerating faith in the Rapture, the Resurrection and anything else not grounded in evidence. Only trouble is, our country's foremost promoter of “reason” is also supportive of ESP, reincarnation and other unscientific concepts.

Another book he lists is The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. “These are people who have spent a fair amount of time looking at the data,” Harris explains. The author, professor Dean Radin of North California's Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is not accredited for scientific peer review, proclaims: “Psi [mind power] has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments.”

Gorenfeld's statement that IONS “is not accredited for scientific peer review” is not merely wrong, it is meaningless. The mistake suggests a bit of motivated inattention.

Gorenfeld presumably added his meaningless clause in an attempt to reduce the credibility of IONS, and by association the credibility of my book. While it is true that institutions providing academic degrees can be recognized by various educational accreditation organizations, IONS does not provide degrees and so accreditation is irrelevant. In addition, “scientific peer review” is not something that institutes do, rather it's what journals and granting institutions do. The IONS research staff has published numerous articles in scientific journals and have been awarded many research grants, including from the National Institutes of Health, so on that score our work is certainly vetted through scientific peer review.

But all this aside, what I find amazing is that some militant atheists, including Gorenfeld but not Harris, equate belief in religion to belief in psi. The fallacy of this belief is that the former is based on an unquestioned acceptance of dogma, whereas the latter is based on a rational, scientific evaluation of empirical evidence. One would think that atheists would support all efforts to understand the world through scientific means, regardless of controversial status. But apparently this is not the case.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Wow, I'm quite surprised to see Sam Harris giving credit to Dean Radin.  There's another interesting discussion given by a well-respected scientist, physicist Brian Josephson, regarding “unfounded criticism” by the journal Nature of another Dean Radin book.  Josephson apparently took a lot of flack for defending Radin's research.  The ad hominem nature of a lot of the mainstream scientific community's criticisms of psi research in general–lumping empirically rigorous in with more unfalsifiable or even outright delusive approaches–belies irrational faith in (more blue than orange?) or adherence to very narrow, socially sanctioned inquiry modalities.  The unacknowledged “subjective” motives, such as interpretational biases (i.e., beliefs), might be a big shadow of orange science.  For example: Radin's research isn't bogus, but his work is bogus because we don't like the idea of it in our model, and here's a few choice pieces of evidence to back us up at the exclusion of a pretty massive array of other, equally rational and valid evidence.  It reminds me of two lectures I went to hear, one by John Horgan when he released Rational Mysticism, and another by Daniel Dennett when Freedom Evolves had just come out.  Their responses to questions about even slightly deviant avenues of research–such as Lipton's ideas about cells “interpreting” their environment to some extent, or even therapeutic effects of meditation–much less psi research, were delivered with a kind of weary arrogance.  Like, oh not again, and Horgan even stated that psi phenomena of all varieties had been disproved a half-century ago.  Dennett just made jokes about how many meditators does it take to screw in a light bulb–none, they're so in the dark they couldn't even see where to screw it in.  That's not quite a direct quote, his punchline was a little wittier than that, I just can't remember it specifically.
But yeah, it's an interesting state of affairs, not because psi is really all that important to prove or disprove.  I think another poster, Julian I think, was somewhat right in his caveats concerning paranormal phenomena, although not because they don't happen or are intrinsically valueless.  But, abilities of that nature do seem to be irrelevant if they aren't part of a balanced, holistic sense of being, personally and interpersonally (and transpersonally?).  The point is, like you say pelle, why the research is denied, what the motives are in invalidating it when it's methodologies and injunctions are sound according to the standards of even our current predominant scientific establishment.
This also makes me think of an old blog entry by Stuart Davis regarding the “new atheists.”  Despite the fact that I thought his overall post was childishly abrasive, his points I found to be valid: the mainstream scientific establishment does not endorse any sort of developmental process of awareness personally or collectively (both left-hand quadrants).  Or at least no acknowledgment of the intrinsic integrity and correlation of such development with biological and physical developments–biological is tacitly or openly referred to as the causative level of individual awareness development.  It seems like incorporating developmental studies into the system is necessary for a higher-than-orange science.  But, this also seems to entail the admission of new research and interpretive methodologies.  Those which build on what came before, of course.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Not to diss Stuart Davis, I usually really enjoy reading his blog.  And love his show, it's hilarious.  It's just in that particular entry, I felt like his points almost got lost in his, hmm, “crazy wisdom” ranting.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

The arrogance of orange natural scientists can be horrible. I've been in that environment for ten years so I've seen it firsthand. The fact that they won't even believe in the existence of psi after a serious meta-analysis with sound statistics sort of says it all.

Re: Natural science beyond orange

Check out the research by Noetic Sciences, some of their main projects, and if you're interested - distant healing specifically.


Pelle