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The First Amendment protects the Second
It’s not an attack on the Second Amendment, but the First Amendment. I know this is going to sound crazy but, there was a time when liberals, not conservatives, were the champions of free speech. Today? Now in Colorado it is punishable to “mis-gender” someone. By speaking truthfully, say calling a man, “a man,” when […]
Colorado Springs man discovers business using his home address without permission
A Colorado Springs man is sharing his story after he discovered someone registered a business to his home address without his permission.
Here's how the new Portage Crisis Center hopes to bridge the mental health care gap
Where should someone go if they're dealing with a mental health crisis, needing the security of a jail but the care of a hospital?
The 3 Ways To Find Out If Someone Is Just Using You (In Business)
Someone asked you for a favour and their response told you everything. Three rules for knowing who's worth your time in business.
Farmers Are Aging. Their Kids Don’t Want to Be in the Family Business.
A fifth-generation farmer stares down a future in which his land is no longer tended by someone in the family. It’s new territory for everyone.
New Samsung Galaxy S26 smartphone reveals itself as someone tries to sell it for $1,650
A wild Galaxy S26 Plus has surfaced over a week before its release. Sporting Samsung's rumoured redesign, the device was allegedly being sold for a whopping $1,650 ahead of its official debut.
Best seat to choose on train, from frequent Amtrak rider
As someone who travels with Amtrak often, I think the café car is the best seat to choose on a train because it's spacious and comfortable.
The science of soulmates: is there someone out there exactly right for you?
For many, the idea of soulmates still shapes how love is understood.
The science of soulmates: is there someone out there exactly right for you?
For many, the idea of soulmates still shapes how love is understood.
Barbara Sharief bills strengthening safeguards against violence advance to Senate floor
The measures would create a new type of injunction for victims of serious violence by someone they know and expand confidentiality protections in court filings.
Investigators searching a location in Arizona in disappearance of Nancy Guthrie
Officials say a person has been detained for questioning in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement Tuesday night that deputies detained someone
Exclusive: MrBeast launches 'Million Dollar Puzzle' with Super Bowl ad
A Super Bowl spot starring the YouTube celebrity sets off a complex puzzle game. Someone will win $1 million at the end.
Whistle-Blower Report Involved Intelligence About a Trump Contact
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, moved to lock down an intelligence intercept that referred to someone close to President Trump, the report said.
Balch Finds Her Place Behind the Scenes of Sports’ Biggest Events
With the Super Bowl back in Santa Clara, Santa Clara alumna Nicolette Balch is watching from a different vantage point than the one she had nearly a decade ago — not as someone working the event, but as a former student-athlete whose career once took her to the NFL's biggest stage.
Scott Jennings on why Trump should add his name to things now: Someone’s ‘gonna do you dirty’
Man reportedly armed with gun shot, killed by LAPD near California Science Center
Los Angeles police shot a man after receiving reports of someone with a firearm in the parking lot of the California Science Center in Exposition Park Thursday morning. Fire officials said the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
How AI Answers Your Question May Depend on Your Politics
Modern statecraft may already involve manipulating artificial intelligence systems to produce different results based on someone’s identity or political activity.
They help police with mental health calls. So why are 'mobile crisis' teams in crisis?
Interactions between police and someone in psychiatric crisis can end in violence. Communities have been sending mental health professionals instead, but paying for that service has been a struggle.
Dad’s Early Bond May Affect a Child’s Health Years Later, Study Finds
By I. Edwards HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, Feb. 4, 2026 (HealthDay News) — For decades, researchers mostly blamed moms when children developed long-term mental or physical health problems. Now, a new study suggests someone else may play a bigger role than once thought: Dad. By age 7, children whose fathers were less attentive to ...
FBI Couldn’t Get into WaPo Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled
Lockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking someone's device. At least for now.
Local business owners speak out after receiving racist, threatening letter
Hispanic business owners in Belchertown are sharing their story after someone left a racist and threatening letter on their front door after during their first week in town.
Meet the un-Gavin. Kentucky’s governor sees a different way to the White House
Andy Beshear says voters want a healer in 2028, not someone who'll match President Trump insult for insult. His focus on nuts and bolts makes him a popular blue governor in a very red state.
Dominican-Mount Carmel gets settled in shootout, the winner by someone who put in extra work with dad
Dominican senior Kristian Champagne has not had many goal-scoring chances while in high school.
Here's the Secret Galaxy S26 Ultra Display Security Feature You'll...
You guys know what a privacy screen is, right? A privacy screen allows someone viewing a display straight-on to be able to view content, while any off angle brings a tint... #GalaxyS26Ultra #Samsung
Investment and Statecraft: The International Politics of Sovereign Wealth Funds - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
In 1953, Kuwait established the world’s first sovereign wealth fund to invest the country’s oil revenues and generate returns that would reduce its reliance on a single resource. Since then, over 100 separate funds have been created to preserve national wealth and ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. Today, they manage over $10 trillion in global assets. In this discussion with GJIA, political economist Kathryn Lavelle explains the increasingly novel dynamics that surround fund behavior and what the world can come to expect from their growing presence in international financial markets. GJIA: When it comes to the roles sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) play in global markets and politics, what would you say makes them unique? Kathryn Lavelle: Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) operate on behalf of governments as investors. That in itself is a strange relationship. Within them, a core contest takes place between the state’s interests (or sovereign) part of the dynamic, and the money interests (or wealth) part of it, and these two aspects are frequently in contradiction, serving fundamentally different goals. SWFs are also quite fascinating because when you talk to the people who manage these funds, they have an interest in convincing you that the decisions are made almost exclusively on a financial basis—they really will go to great lengths to differentiate their government owners and those who make the management decisions. At the same time, these people ultimately answer to someone in power. Therefore, for most SWFs, it remains deeply unclear who is actually making the investment decisions and for what purposes. Of course, it is not always clear how other vehicles, such as hedge funds and private equity make the decisions they do, but I think what a lot of people find particularly disconcerting about SWFs is that they seem to act on behalf of people who have a different identity from their own. People who could be trying to manipulate politics and markets in a way that would have a long-term effect on their own populations. Regular investors come and go at will, and they only share an interest in profit as far as most of us understand. However, SWFs have that extra “sovereign” part right behind them that obscures their true interest. GJIA: These funds can be found in countries all across the globe, in both authoritarian states and democracies. Would you say SWFs differ in their goals and structures between regime-type? KL: It is not necessarily regime type that makes the goals and structures of SWFs different. It has to do with their economies. Let’s look at a country like China. There’s going to be a debate about exactly how to characterize the regime, but it is a country with many different kinds of sovereign wealth funds, and a particularly opaque state connection to each. At one time, some of the state-owned Chinese oil companies created specialized investment vehicles listed outside Chinese markets that excluded parts of the firms that were more associated with human rights violations. At the same time, the China Investment Corporation (CIC)—China’s largest SWF—draws a lot of concern, not necessarily because of its investment activities, but because of the dynamics of global politics. So, I wouldn’t really tie differences to regime types themselves in a wholesale way, but rather to how such funds are perceived and how they are structured. Saudi Arabia’s SWF is getting all kinds of attention for its involvement in Hollywood, and this takes me right back to when I was a student in the 1980s, when people were concerned about Japanese investment entities buying assets in Hollywood. They aren’t quite the same in financial terms, but it’s the same kind of concern about foreign investment that drives people to be suspicious, and the whole idea that “foreigners are influencing Hollywood.” This holds true across industries, and it reflects where politics are in places like the United States right now. One metric we can try to look at is transparency, where all the funds will tell you, “we are transparent.” The problem you’ll keep running into with this approach is how you value things. When trying to do comparative studies of equity markets, you’ll find that every country doesn’t use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles like we do in the United States. A fund may appear opaque politically and not want people to show what they’re invested in or what their intent with that investment is, but they could also just not be able to report it because of the way it was purchased, or the kinds of shares they purchased. There are some assets out there that really are difficult to put a monetary value on. GJIA: To what extent do domestic politics shape SWF behavior in both the investing “home” country and the recipient “host” country? KL: This depends on the type of fund present and also on the extent to which voters’ political views are able to influence the fund. For example, in a democratic home state like Norway, the SWF doesn’t invest in nuclear weapons or tobacco because of social concerns, but there is a continuing debate over whether it should invest in oil, even though that’s where most of the money comes from. The degree to which Norway will continue to make those investments, and whether they contradict the government’s overall climate goals, is an open question in Norwegian politics. Because of the way the fund’s governance is structured, it may not be easy to resolve. On the other hand, some people consider pension funds, like the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) in Ohio, to be quasi-SWF. They have a very strict separation between the people who make up the management division and the fund owners. No teacher or professor would want to invest in things that may harm the future of their students. At the same time, a fund manager might see an opportunity in a diversified multinational corporation that offers a good return, despite it deriving part of its revenue from e-cigarettes. These contests are very apparent. Domestic politics can work in host countries too. A good example is Singapore’s SWF, Temasek, investing in Thailand’s telecommunications sector. If you study political economy, you already know that countries everywhere are uncomfortable with foreign ownership of their telecom sectors because a foreign entity could monitor or manipulate our communications with each other. In the case of Temasek, there was significant pushback from Thai citizens surrounding the deal, which went on to influence national political sentiment toward Singapore as a whole, underscoring the risks some SWFs may face with their investment choices. In this case, fund behavior led to the dissolution of the entire Thai government in 2006 and a subsequent coup d’état. GJIA: To address some of this unease, the Santiago Principles were established in 2009 to ostensibly promote trust and transparency. From your perspective, have these mechanisms actually changed fund behavior? KL: In international relations theory, we always like to have a clear set of norms and best practices—the orientation we want the proverbial ship to be going in. In that regard, the Santiago Principles at least got the discussion going about which direction SWFs should take at a time when people were very skittish about the growing size of these funds. Nobody wanted them to be out there and potentially destabilizing economies, so talks about disclosure, conditions for withdrawal, and the independence of managers were helpful when initiated. The biggest stumbling block was that there wasn’t exactly a good way to measure compliance with the Principles, let alone how to hold funds to them. If you read the Principles, they’re overall quite vague. In general, a fund doesn’t want to reveal how and why they make certain investment decisions because that information is proprietary—a fund makes money off of how and why it makes decisions—so how do you reconcile that with loosely-defined ideas of openness? Some decisions might have a political purpose. The bottom line is that trying to figure out and assign a score to compliance is not easy, and it is therefore the reason why the Santiago Principles never really got off the ground to the point where they could truly direct fund behavior. GJIA: Many emerging markets are looking to build their own SWFs from mineral and oil revenues. Historically, have funds shaped development trajectories in these countries? KL: I think the big story in international emerging markets investment is that the investment is increasingly no longer unidirectional. In the past multinational corporations of primarily Western background were the main form of foreign direct investment in a country. That has changed dramatically, to the point where you have companies from so-called “developing countries” taking over companies in the United States. Therefore, the landscape of international investment has changed, and I think SWFs are certainly a possibility to be the next step in the game. Historically, you didn’t need an entire financial vehicle to reinvest commodity revenues in your country, but as emerging markets get more financially sophisticated, their capacity to operate such funds has increased. SWFs would allow treasuries to move from relying on holding foreign exchange assets like cash or government bonds to having broader financial markets and targeted growth areas, while easing pressure on welfare expenditures. GJIA: With their increasing financial weight, do you see the presence of SWFs being a factor in the political choices leaders will have to make with regard to domestic and foreign policy? KL: It will depend on just how big the funds get. One of the reasons people are already apprehensive is because of their scale, and if certain SWFs in certain countries achieve a large-enough size, the presence will absolutely be cause for concern. The other factor political leaders will have to consider are their objectives. It’s not always clear how to define a SWF, or even where its activity is concentrated, but it is certainly a worry from the perspective of national security of opaque external investment. More than that, I think one of the most interesting questions going forward is whether the United States, the home to the world’s largest financial markets, will develop its own fund, for which the Trump administration announced a plan. There have also been several proposals in Congress. Were it to come into being, it would have tremendous weight. At the same time, one of the hallmarks of U.S. capitalism is a lack of government ownership of shares, so it would not be clear how such a fund would be received in domestic politics, or which direction it would take. Given how politically fragmented the country is, a Democratic administration would likely be concerned about different sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, and want investment there, rather than a Republican administration, which might prefer defense industries. No investment vehicle could thrive under conditions of such instability. Moreover, it remains unclear where the money to fund a theoretical U.S. SWF would come from. It would be a fundamentally different entity depending on whether it is financed with debt, economic surplus, commodities, or the sale of state companies, as in the case of Singapore. If it is debt, or government borrowing of some form, then the fund would have to outperform whatever the cost of that debt is, which is not an easy thing to do. I think our political leaders have enough on their plate. Our system has worked well keeping political and investment functions generally separate. We have seen different forms of business rise and fall, and even the perception of different countries, all of which funds are tied to. Unless a major SWF either starts—like in the case of the United States—or collapses—an issue that concerns the Saudis, I don’t see any political tsunamis on the horizon. . . . Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research explores the exchange between domestic and international and political institutions with a particular emphasis on political economy and multilateralism. Dr. Lavelle’s first book, The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets, explored the political circumstances that surround large issues of stock in the developing world. After being granted tenure at Case Western, she was awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship and named the William A. Steiger fellow, a designation given to the most promising political scientist in her class of fellows. While in Washington during 2006-2007, she worked on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services on issues related to domestic and international monetary policy. Dr. Lavelle holds a PhD in political science from Northwestern University; an M.A. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia; and a bachelor’s degree in international economics from Georgetown University. She is a permanent member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted by Sid Mehrotra. Image Credit: Jason Leung, Unsplash Content Licenses, via Unsplash
Gun-rights groups decried the administration’s rhetoric on Alex Pretti’s gun. Then Trump went even further.
The Trump administration didn’t have a whole lot to work with after a federal officer shot and killed someone again this weekend in Minneapolis.
In downtown Wilmington, Live Oak shutting down inclusive small business center
Live Oak Bank is turning Channel off. Described by Live Oak as an inclusive small business center, Channel opened in November 2021 to serve as a free resource for small business owners, helping numerous minority-owned and other small businesses from its headquarters downtown at 106 Market St. "After careful consideration, we’ve decided to bring Channel ... to a close at the end of this month. Live Oak determined that the needs of Wilmington’s small business community have evolved. Since Channel opened, the local small business ecosystem has grown significantly, with many strong organizations now offering education, technical assistance and community programming for entrepreneurs," stated Claire Parker, managing director of corporate communications for Live Oak Bank, in an email Monday. "With those resources firmly in place, Live Oak is refocusing on what we do best – providing banking and financing solutions that help small businesses grow and thrive." Channel's demise also resulted in the elimination of two positions – those of Channel's director, Chakema Clinton-Quintana, and Atiba Johnson, the certified professional business advisor (CPBA) at Channel. On Monday, Clinton-Quintana, who was elected to the Wilmington City Council in November, said of her immediate plans after Channel: "I will continue my work serving the public while I look for other full-time opportunities." She said Channel "served over 1,000 small business owners in the greater Wilmington area, as well as some of the surrounding areas, such as Brunswick and Pender. A lot of folks had reached out to us needing those resources because they were free, and we were able to assist them in that capacity." Johnson said he will be devoting his time to the Wilmington Minority Chamber of Commerce, which is not affiliated with the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce. The minority chamber is celebrating its launch from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Wilmington Sportsman Club, 1111 Castle St., Wilmington. Johnson, the founder and executive director of the new chamber, said about 50 businesses are on board to join the Wilmington Minority Chamber of Commerce. According to a news release, the new chamber "was established to foster growth, networking, and advocacy for underrepresented business owners. By providing essential resources and community engagement, the chamber aims to build a more inclusive and prosperous local economy." Johnson said the creation of the new chamber is in response to "lapses in funding, education, advocacy for minority businesses...Some of the things that are going on now just don't reach all the way down to those businesses." For Lynne Jones, owner of LJ Design Studio LLC, the loss of Channel also means a reduction in income. She had contracted with Channel to run the center's social media and to provide some marketing for small business owners. "It's pretty disappointing to hear that it is closing...it was a place to connect with other small business owners and collaborate. It was like a family for those of us who were there. If you had issues or things that you needed to talk through concerning your business, there was always someone there that you could sit down with and talk things through, recalibrate, and they set you off on your way to make that pivot and move in a different direction," Jones said Monday. She said she worked with many Channel participants creating their websites and will miss seeing the joy on their faces when those websites were up and running. Dawn McDowell, owner of Creatively Covered Co. LLC, credits Channel with helping her business grow and regrow after her social media pages were hacked and shut down in 2023. "Channel was a great resource for small businesses, for women-owned businesses, for minority-owned businesses; they provided a lot of assistance, especially when you needed it," McDowell said. "If it wasn't for Channel, I don't know if I'd be where I am now, in my business, and regrowing my business and even finding out about some of the certifications and things that were out there for small businesses that I just didn't know about ... because there was no one really sharing that information for small businesses, for minority- and women-owned businesses in particular." Parker said shutting down Channel was not part of an overall cost-cutting plan. She stated in the email, "Live Oak’s commitment to Wilmington remains strong. We are continuing to support entrepreneurs by focusing our efforts where we deliver the greatest value – through specialized banking and financing solutions aligned with our mission to be America’s small business bank." As for Channel's downtown office, Live Oak had leased the 5,000-square-foot space above Seabird restaurant in 2021. The bank’s lease for the office is up in March, Parker said.
How safe are spit hoods — and do they actually work?
Research on the use of spit hoods in real-world scenarios, like when someone is under arrest or being restrained in a medical setting, is virtually nonexistent.
The search is on for Business Report’s 2026 Influential Women in Business
Our sister publication Business Report is now accepting nominations for its 2026 Influential Women in Business recognition. The awards annually honor professional women in the Capital Region who have distinguished themselves in business or through government or nonprofit work. Get everything you need to know about nominating someone here. The deadline for nominations is 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6. Honorees […]
Aj’s Gentlemen’s Barbershop truck hit once again at intersection next to business
“It’s pretty alarming that this could get worse, or this could continue or end up hurting someone,” founder and CEO Aj Jalal said.
Commentary: They were like oil and water. Then Harry Reid wanted someone to tell his life story
The former Senate majority leader tried multiple times to have Jon Ralston fired before finally succeeding. Reid then turned to the veteran journalist to write his biography.
VOTE: Has the cost of health care kept you or someone you know from getting medical care?
Has the cost of health care kept you or someone you know from getting medical care?
Elden Ring: Nightreign Patch 1.03.2 Buffs All the Worst Nightfarers
Elden Ring: Nightreign just got a big balance patch, and even if you're not someone who's great at parsing patch notes, you might want to tune into this one, because basically every character that's been widely regarded as terrible for months now got a big buff.
Someone’s Galaxy Z TriFold display already spontaneously broke
Samsung’s new Galaxy Z TriFold looks incredible – all the more so in person – but also came with the...
Trump appears to flip someone off at a Ford plant. The White House says it’s ‘appropriate.’
President Donald Trump appeared to flip someone off as he toured a Michigan Ford plant in an incident caught on video Tuesday, and the White House defended the action as an “appropriate” response to someone screaming at the commander-in-chief.
Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s First AI Gadget May Try to Kill AirPods
Thank god someone is brave enough to take down many people's favorite wireless earbuds.
Police: Man kills 2 inside Boynton Beach business before taking own life soon after
Boynton Beach police say someone walked into a business on Monday afternoon and killed two people.
Favorite US national park, from woman who's been to all 63
As someone who's been to every US national park, Grand Teton is my favorite. From the mountains to the cute towns nearby, there's so much to love.
After over 13 years, owners of Westport business put it up for sale
After 13+ years, owners of a local business are hoping that the public can help them find someone that will carry the torch that they lit. Mother/daughter team Marcelle Gauvin and Kelsey Jacobsen have announced that Double Bar Music at 549 American Legion Highway in Westport is up for sale. "W
More than $8,000 in flooring stolen from Brecknock Twp. business: police
A Lancaster County flooring business is reporting someone stole more than $8,000 of flooring after a fraudulent credit card transaction, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Sorry Tamagotchi Fans, It's AI Time
It was only a matter of time before someone took a Tamagotchi-like toy and crammed AI into it.
Commentary: Unhappy with the choices for California governor? Get real
There's a large and varied field to choose from, even if there are no celebrities or white knights riding to the rescue. Voters are looking for someone to lead the state, not entertain them.
Scientists Finally Know What’s Actually Happening When Your Mind Goes Blank
You know the feeling. Someone asks a question, your eyes are open, you’re technically awake, but there’s just nothing there.
California needs these mental health law changes after Reiner murders
OPINION: As someone with family who have navigated California’s system of care for serious mental illness, there is so much more that can be done to prevent tragic stories like the Reiners’.
California’s Starless Governor’s Race Could Get Very Weird
After a series of legendary governors, the state will be led by someone from a large field of lesser-known politicians, possibly even a Republican.
Opinion | Why New York City Needs Someone Like Mamdani
The new mayor is an entirely familiar type of New York politician.
Women Who Live Alone Are Sharing The Things They Do To Help Them Feel Safer In Their Home
"If someone were dumb enough to break in, they would be leaving in a body bag."
Why patients don’t care about health care prices
The U.S. health care system is unable to progress in pricing transparency due to the fact that most patients do not have a financial incentive to care about prices, as someone else is paying the bi…
Are opposing political views a bad thing at work? Ask Johnny
Opposing views can feel uncomfortable or even offensive. Discomfort is not the same as mistreatment and not a reason to avoid working with someone.
New issue: Don't count the calories | BBC Science Focus Magazine
January’s long nights, howling winds and unending drizzle that constitute a British winter all seem to scream: stay indoors, get under a blanket and stay very still. But every year, I reach January and the same conclusion as millions of others: it’s time for change. Christmas is what does it. There’s only so much indulgence the body can take. It starts on the 24th when, if you’re lucky, work’s finished and the fridge is full. Over the next seven days, I’ll feast like a Tudor monarch, picking at carcasses, stabbing at cheese and washing it all down with a bit of port (well, someone’s got to finish it). But by New Year’s Day I’ve had enough. Meaningful, lasting change isn’t easy. The science says so. Sure, a fitness influencer will scream at you until they’re Christmas-ham-pink in the face that losing weight is JUST SIMPLE MATHS: burn more calories than you consume, and you’ll lose weight. But your genes, biology and chemistry don’t work like a calculator. There’s more to it. So we’re here to help you construct bite-sized changes that will add up to significant improvements in your health and wellbeing this year.
5 tips for minority business owners looking for airport contracts
Here is some advice from someone who knows.
Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted U.S. political parties, memo says
The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the eve of Jan. 6, 2021 told investigators someone needed to "speak up" for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen, prosecutors said Sunday.
Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted US political parties because they were 'in charge,' memo says
The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol told investigators after his arrest that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen. He also said he wanted to target the country’s p...
Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted US political parties because they were 'in charge,' memo says
The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol told investigators after his arrest that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen
Newark Airport passenger may have exposed others to measles, NJ Health Department says
New Jersey's Health Department says someone with the disease passed through the airport on Friday, December 19.
Allegheny County implementing involuntary outpatient mental health care services
Officials were motivated by people's calls for helping someone before they reach the legal threshold of being a danger to themselves or others.
Hilton Head community swarms to support family that lost home, had business damaged in a matter of hours
For nearly 16 years, Delisheeyo on Hilton Head Island has been serving frozen yogurt to its customers. That was almost taken away when someone ran through their business, and then just hours later, an unexpected electrical fire destroyed the owner’s house.
Has ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Gone ‘Overboard’ This Christmas? Fans Debate
‘Surely they can find someone with good taste to decorate,’ one viewer ranted.
MQTT Pager Build Is Bringing Beepers Back
Pagers were once a great way to get a message to someone out in public; they just had to be cool enough to have one. These days, they’re mostly the preserve of doctors and a few other niche o…
Massachusetts health officials warn of possible measles exposure in Boston, Westboro - Boston News, Weather, Sports
BOSTON (WHDH) - Massachusetts state officials are warning of a possible measles outbreak after someone may have been exposed earlier this month.Officials say an adultRead More
The first iPhone Fold dummy shows a radical new design for a folding phone
Someone made a model of the rumored iPhone Fold based on leaked CAD files and it's like nothing we've seen before.
The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.
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Science must move from materialism to mystery
Theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that modern science has become trapped in a framework that mistakes matter for the whole of reality. In this wide-ranging interview, Gómez-Marín challenges the foundations of materialism, defends the scientific study of near-death experiences, and calls for a new type of science grounded in mystery and a renewed sense of the sacred. He suggests that abandoning materialism could open the door to a deeper understanding of consciousness, death, and the purpose of human existence. Simon Custer: You are both a theoretical physicist and a neuroscientist, and you have also been fiercely critical of materialist theories of mind and consciousness. What do you think the ultimate nature of reality is?Àlex Gómez-Marín: I don't know what the ultimate nature of reality is, but what I try to first assess is whether the stories that they [mainstream science] have told us about it are right, or maybe whether there are other alternatives. That's why I've been a fierce critic of materialism. As a scientist, I realized that they had sold us this idea that to be a good scientist you also had to subscribe to many other -isms, like materialism, reductionism, and even secularism. And so first I think one needs to unmount these -isms, and then, as is happening today in consciousness studies, we have a huge landscape where there isn't only one game in town, the idea that matter is the only thing that really exists. But because we are studying the hard problem of consciousness, it may be the case that other views of reality, like idealism, or even dualism, or other theories like dual aspect monism... these are philosophical ideas that now, I think, have room in science to be taken seriously. How does something like materialism relate to dualism or idealism? What is materialism in the first place?Well, materialism is the philosophical position that matter is the only really ‘real’ thing in the universe. And I think that worked kind of well because science started 400 years ago and Galileo made that split, I call it the foundational wound. It was a great business move.He said, let's start doing science on that portion of reality that lends itself more easily to mathematization and measurement. So, for some reason, the solidity of this table or the movement of planets lend themselves very well to this foundational idea of science. But as time went on, 400 years later, we realized that we had forgotten the other side, which is what really matters.What really matters is pain, is love, is feelings, sensation, consciousness, which is very hard to define, but very intimate. We all know what it is. It's that thing that disappears when we go into deep sleep and comes back in the morning. SUGGESTED VIEWING On the edges of knowledge With Michael Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Güneş Taylor It's what it is like to be, as Nagel said. It's the feeling of being alive. So, materialism is good to study certain things, but then when it ossifies into this ideology and then is dressed like science, now it's preventing us from understanding these key questions that are really that everybody wants to know.Why are we here? Why do we feel reality? Where do we go when we die? And so we need other ways. We need pluralism. I'm only asking for having more options on the table and taking them seriously. Why does materialism fail to explain consciousness? For example, if you were to lobotomize me, I would not be a functional human being. What do you say to someone who might think that materialism adequately explains the mind?Well, here we could speak about different things. We could talk about physics or about neuroscience. I happen to have training with both.For instance, for neuroscientists, 99% of them, I'm not included in that portion, believe that the brain can only be a productive organ. It's an organ that somehow, somewhere, consciousness emerges. It's like a lamp. And then something happens, magic happens, and then consciousness emerges.That's the position you need to be if you're a materialist because if the only really ‘real’ thing is matter, then you need to say, just give us some more time and money and we'll figure out how mind emerges or is produced from matter. There are many philosophically sophisticated ways of criticizing this.Now there's another option, which is the brain as a permissive organ. This was said by William James more than 100 years ago.Now then the brain wouldn't be like this machine, like for instance, a heat engine whose smoke is consciousness, which is what we would have in the first big model, the productive model. But in the permissive model, the brain would be a kind of a filter. And so the brain would still have a very important role in consciousness, but it wouldn't be a productive role.It would be permissive, much like a filter or much like a prism which would receive light. And - I'm speaking metaphorically - it would receive the light of the mind and then it could reflect it and refract it.Now, with these two big options on the table, I think we can make progress into what I call the edges of consciousness, which are all these experiences, weird experiences that many people have, but we don't talk about enough, like near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, synchronicities. These experiences are very important for humans and they have a place in the permissive hypothesis and they are literally impossible in the productive hypothesis. So that's yet one more reason to explore alternatives to materialism. There may be anecdotal evidence for near-death experiences, but is there robust evidence that would be accepted by the majority of scientists who subscribe to the scientific method?Sure. And the plural of anecdotes, someone said, is data.And there's a lot of data. Actually, this year is the 50th anniversary, half a century, since Dr. Raymond Moody realized that we have two ears and one mouth and started listening to what his patients had to say about their experiences while they were clinically dead.The heart had stopped, breathing had stopped in these patients. These patients would come back and tell him these amazing stories that some people may say are hallucinations, but for the patients were hyper-real, like seeing light at the end of the tunnels, seeing deceased family members waiting for them, feeling bliss.___I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain.___And so he and others started taking them seriously and writing their accounts down. And then you can do a science based on that material of experience that people have. Now, on the more objective side, more recently people have started to measure what's going on in the brain when people are clinically dead and brought back. This has opened a proper field of study, which is near-death studies.Evidence is a difficult word, because sometimes people think that when you say evidence, this is just the final proof. Evidence is like in a jury. You bring testimony, you bring pieces of data that point in one direction or another.I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain. When brains are broken or shut off, there can still be mind going on. And that's revolutionary.That would entail that when we die, it's not game over, which, by the way, is the thesis of materialism. If consciousness survives, materialism dies. It's game over for materialism if something of us continues after we die. Do you think that there is mental continuity after death?Well, I think so, and I believe so, and I could also say I may have experienced it myself, because four years ago I had a near-death experience. I was in the hospital, I lost a lot of blood, and I saw those beings at the end of the tunnel, three beings, and there was yellow light. I was in a well, I was looking upwards, and I hadn't read about NDEs by then, but when I came back from this experience, I decided I would try to integrate this also in my professional life. Not just my personal life, of course, but my professional life as a physicist and as a neuroscientist. So I may have had the experience of glimpses of what an afterlife would be, and I'm not ashamed to say it in this way, and then one can do science of it, and then one can do philosophy of it.One can think about what -isms we were discussing, what views on reality would allow those experiences to be really ‘real,’ as opposed to, well, poor guy, the brain was kind of broken, it must have been a hallucination. Do you have a view about whether individuality or “the ego” persists after death, or whether we sort of merge into some sort of cosmic consciousness instead?I don't know, but my view would be along those lines you're suggesting. I think we could speak about a kind of universal mind, and then the problem is not how we emerge from matter, but how we fragment from a more holistic consciousness into these individual eddies and then when we die, this kind of dissipates.But I'm not sure. For instance, idealism would promote that view, but then what would survive of us after these eddies just vanish and become again the big Consciousness, I'm not sure what that would be. I don't know for sure, but I would tell you I believe something of us survives.And there are other lines of research, not just near-death experience, that can address this really hard question of survival. For instance, there are children who remember previous lives. This was studied by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia for more than 50 years.___Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.___It's amazing research. He went all over the world, especially in the East, and collected all these case studies, all these stories. In plural, these were data of kids, very young age, who would describe up to 40 items that then he could go and verify.There was no internet. There was really no way the kid could know. Why would the kid say that when I was living in this other body and I was a woman and that's how my house would look like or that's how I would die, right? Again, there is evidence, not proof, but there's evidence not only that something weird and interesting is happening as we cross the threshold, but also when we come back to this life.Scientists should not be afraid of studying this, but they are because there's stigma. There's usually stigma upon the enigma, and this is so unfortunate. And one of the reasons is because of the ideology of materialism, because those things cannot be possible. What is wrong with the politics of science such that they have generated this stigma?So many things. Science is a human activity to begin with.So it falls prey to all our passions and ego and greed. That's one thing. Science is a job for the good and for the bad.You need to get a salary. You need to get grants. Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.And then, we didn't have time to unpack this, but science for many years become entangled, as I was suggesting before, to other -isms, materialism, secularism. So anything that smells like the afterlife, people may think has to do with God, and then they freak out.Anything that suggests that there's something about the mind that may not need a physical material substrate to exist, it smells like non-materialism. So, all these -isms are ideologically blocking that kind of research, and then there are all these sociopolitical constraints as to what should be studied and what shouldn't be studied.I call it the backstage of science. Sometimes we scientists or science communicators seem to speak as if the data is the only thing that matters. We say, well, data and theory.But then there's a third leg of this stool, which is all the politics that goes behind the scenes. And we often don't speak about this, and it's quite vicious and petty, and it's very real. Why is materialism so attractive to most scientists?Well, an easy answer is because we've grown up with it.It's what the educational system promotes, and that's what you hear when you go to university. So it's like growing in a culture. It feels like the air in which you breathe.So it's very hard to begin with to detect, well, maybe there's another alternative. Maybe there are other ways of doing science, other environments in which one could do science. That's one reason.And other reasons maybe are more profound, and I'm not qualified to explain them, but I could say, looking at this 400-year history of science, since it started around 1623 with Galileo's book The Assayer, that science went and coupled with all what's going on in the West.And so the fall of religion, you could say, and science presented us this new alternative that then could be coupled very well with other -isms, and this idea of growth, and then science losing its good twin brother, which was philosophy. There's a whole natural history of science starting as philosophy, kind of emancipating or breaking out from philosophy, and then marrying technology, and then marrying other social systems.From that point of view, materialism is a very convenient idea to propose. There were attempts, like the German idealists tried to do a more romantic science. But no, the idea prevailed, like Francis Bacon said: You should pursue nature through all her corners, he said, and make her spill her secrets.Our attitude towards nature in the science that dominates is very much reflecting how we treat nature in our society, in our culture, like a resource to extract secrets by force and then dominate it. How is materialism related to the notions of growth and progress? What's wrong with having a productive citizenry?This is another very interesting and very difficult question to answer.But there's this recent book coming out by Paul Kingsnorth. In it, he explains this idea of the machine and this idea of progress. And this, again, this conflation of more is better, of we need to go forward always, and convincing us that the way to do that is to continually extract more from nature. But because we don't have the religious context anymore, because God is dead, then what do we have? We have what we can do as humans with our own gadgets.It's kind of the story of the Promethean fire. We will just build anything to make ourselves God.A good example today is transhumanism. Transhumanism is this pseudo-religion dressed in technoscientific language whose goal is very religious. They promise immortality, they promise redemption, they promise transformation of the entire natural world, but it's done by human means through technology. Are you suggesting that we can't have ethics without religion?Well, we should have ethics with or without religion. That's another pruning that has happened in science. We say, forget about aesthetics, although some physicists still think that beautiful means probably true, and forget about politics. We pretend there's no backstage of science, and even let's forget about ethics.___Science needs to be in the service of mankind.___Scientists, when they become more like engineers, they're just thinking how to make things work so that they can go to the moon, go to Mars, make machines that think, but they don't think whether that's a good idea.And also consider metaphysics. Many scientists for a long time pretended, and maybe that comes from the stream of positivisms, that really one doesn't need metaphysics at all, except that materialism is always the metaphysics running the system.You see, it's not just ethics. It's the pruning of all of these, you could say, five main legs of philosophy that just makes a kind of unconscious science, a science that doesn't really know what it's doing. It's doing it very well locally, but it just doesn't know what it's doing globally. Do you think science has to have an ultimate vision and purpose behind it for it to be effective or for it to be meaningful and transformative?Yes, a way I would say that is that science needs to be in the service of mankind. And it hasn't been that. And we can see it through, you know, when we discovered the secrets of the atom, and all of a sudden, the Manhattan Project, and then we create nuclear weapons.And now we're trying to crack how machines may think, and now we're creating this mess, right? So science needs to be in service of mankind, not in service of a few ideas that maybe want to make more money or just dominate upon nature. What about planes, trains, automobiles, and modern medicine? Hasn't science served mankind by helping us develop those technologies?Yes and no. I see where you're going, and it's fair.I came here by plane, and it's a blessing. When I almost died, the surgeons did their job, and they saved my life. But these two forced choices between Luddites and Silicon Valley types, I think, of course, it's a false dichotomy.Progress, in a way, it's good, but we often don't speak about the dark side of the moon. We say the great things that progress has brought, and we don't speak about the disasters, the side effects that it has come with, and the same when we promise new technologies. We tend to think that any technology is great, that email is going to save us so much time because we don't need to write letters and send them anymore.Is that true? I spend so many hours a week writing emails. Let's just say there are great things about it and bad things about it. People like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, for example, argue that we've made moral progress over time because of the Enlightenment. Do you think that's totally wrong-headed?I think he's emphasizing a side of the moon, and he does that very well, and you can find tons of plots where there's a slope going up and say it's great. But I think he should also tell the not-so-friendly story.But if your ideology is just to resist and continue to explain that the Enlightenment is the best thing ever and reason is the best thing ever… this feels to me like you're worshipping these abstractions.I'm very critical of it and also of these, again, science communicators and scientists that say, Oh, science says, in the name of science, experts say. It's like, come on, let's be careful because we can shoot ourselves in the foot by putting forth to the people an image of science that we know is not really true. Recently there's been a resurgence of spirituality and of people who say that they're spiritual but not religious, especially in the United States. If materialism is going away, what is going to fill that gap? Are we going to return to traditional religion? Do you see that being connected with the rise of the political right?I'm not a fortune teller, so I don't know what's going to happen. But, yeah, we could say we're in this post-materialist age and even post-secular age. One cannot come back to the past, but maybe just to contact with the roots is a good idea.What do I mean by that? I think we need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method. We need to do so in a culture where we realize humans cannot thrive in a vacuum where there's this idea that the sacred has to be removed.Now, how do we do that without bringing in back all the vices of religion? I don't know. I'm from a Catholic country.Here we are in England, so there are differences and interreligious dialogue has always been a challenge. But I think maybe a way of putting it is: after all these conflicts and branchings I was quickly alluding to, science from philosophy and then also from religion, now there's a time of reconciliation perhaps and maybe debates in the proper sense, like exchange of ideas in service of learning and getting into something higher than both poles. We need science to talk to religious people and it's interesting when people say they're spiritual and not religious.I think this is just a way of saying, no, I don't want to go back, I want to go forward. But at the end of the day, religions have offered us practices and grounding that we now desperately need. Everybody can and should just meditate or pray or do whatever they want, but we're in a crisis and it's time for reconciliation. What do you say to critics that say you are merely projecting our need for meaning onto a fundamentally indifferent universe?Yeah, I know that the typical science communicator says something like this. But we're not projecting. Human beings feed on meaning.It's the other way around. If you're a materialist, because the only thing that there is is matter, all that comes next, free will, consciousness, meaning, this is a kind of illusion that we need to explain.They're just craving for meaning, but there isn't really for them. I would also like to remind my materialist friends that for decades, if not centuries, they've said in the name of science, we know that this and this and this doesn't really exist. I think now they sense they're forced to say, well, actually, we don't know. We've been saying, for instance, that there's nothing after you die, and now probably they need to admit that they don't know the answer.___We need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method.___So it's a moment to open up possibilities and also to gently but fiercely critique these claims that I think harm society. If you say in the name of science, get on with it, when your father dies, you'll never see him again. Well, what the F do you know about it? You haven't studied the literature, you haven't had any of those experiences, and basically what you're doing is you're just doing marketing on ideology. This needs to stop. Do you think that it's scarier for some people to entertain the thought that there might be life after death, compared to a materialist worldview where you just die, given that there might be consequences for unsavory behaviour?Well, death and dying is scary. It's maybe the ultimate ending. It's a limit on life, and when we're in this conquest mode, we don't like limits.And it also has, there's a shockwave backwards, so I think if you change your notion of what death is or may be, you live differently. It also has consequences, as you're saying, for the future because this is not our only goal here and we come back in whatever form. And again, different religions would say different things. I the East, they are more happy with the idea of reincarnation, and here in the West, there are other preferences. But in any case, it changes how we live, and that's really what matters.It's not about just projecting or imagining what we'll be after, but how we live now and also how we treat those who are dying. So it goes from the individual to the families, to the hospitals.Now in the near-death research I do, this has ramifications at all these levels, all the way to society.But our society is thanatophobic. It has a phobia of death. We don't want to hear about death, and this is another thing we need to put on the table and be willing to talk about it. Do you think that we might get closer to answering ultimate questions like why is there anything at all if we jettison materialism?That’s an excellent question, Simon. Two things: we should stop treating reality, I believe, as a great sudoku, as an enigma, as something that with intelligence, money, and time that we will crack and instead treat reality more like a mystery. And what you do for in front of a mystery is not to be the clever guy in a class and say “I’ll solve you” but more like “I will bow and you will transform me.”I know this sounds a bit like a scientist speaking like a mystic. But I think this reorientation is needed. In the end, we won’t crack the big questions, but they will transform us. If we free ourselves from this prison of materialism, the way we will explore these questions will be freer, more creative, and in service of mankind. Do you think exploring mystery is the reason why we are here?I think we are here because, and this pseudo-theological argument I’m making off the cuff, But the One, the Absolute, if there is such a thing, had everything except limitation. We are that absolute experiencing that contingency. It’s like an act of divine proprioception. It’s a wonderful adventure, it’s just incredible to be alive. Perhaps we have forgotten why we are here and the whole point is to experience the flesh.Let me end by saying this. I criticize materialism harshly. I bang on this dead horse, because I think it’s dead. But matter is a great mystery. So maybe my invitation is as follows: hey materialist friends, come here, let’s work on materialism 2.0! Consciousness is a mystery, but matter is also a mystery. The fact that we can have an intersubjective experience consensus, the fact that we can apply mathematics, that we can measure things... the physical world we take for granted, but it is a great mystery too.Maybe that’s related to your last question: why are we here? Why did spirit decide to incarnate? Being in the flesh may be a great thing if spirit decided to do so.Àlex Gómez-Marín, thank you very much.My pleasure.
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