allisthemoist

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

The data downloaded from the ALS is calibrated and creates a 3D model of the information captured during the flights. In order to negate tree foliage and manmade obstacles from the data, any sudden and radical changes in ground height are mapped out, with technicians who have models of the terrain fine-tuning the thresholds in processing these data points. Once completed, the final 3D model is handed over to the archaeologists for analysis, which can take months to process into maps.

It's so interesting that technology advancements must often precede discovery and thus are part and parcel (imo) of the discovery process. The same can very much also be said for medical and biological science - e.g., MRI and associated analytic techniques.

Interestingly, someone has to purchase the goods that these systems create. Thus, giving people the funds to do so, regardless of where they come from, seems like a necessity.

The following passage from Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind:

Before the Buddha attained full realization of the path, for example, he tried various methods to suppress his mind, and they did not work. In one discourse (the Mahasaccaka Sutta), he recounted:

I thought, Why don't I grit my teeth, press my tongue against my palate, and use my mind to repress my mind? Then, as a wrestler might take hold of the head or the shoulders of someone weaker than he, and, in order to restrain and coerce that person, he has to hold him down constantly without letting go for a moment, so I gritted my teeth, pressed my tongue against my palate, and used my mind to suppress my mind. As I did this, I was bathed in sweat. Although I was not lacking in strength, although I maintained mindfulness and did not fall from mindfulness, my body and my mind were not at peace, and I was exhausted by these efforts, This practice caused other feelings of pain to arise in me besides the pain associated with the austerities, and I was not able to tame my mind.

Overall, what I got out of this article was that in some cases, problems can arise from engaging in contemplative practice. But these instances are rare and usually come about due to existing mental illness.

This sounds to me like the beginnings of psychosis. I don't doubt that these feelings could be induced by meditation, but I do doubt that they would not have emerged in some other way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83u-i73ppr8

Long story short, the gut-brain axis is a compelling area of study, but based on the fact that nearly all studies have been in murine models coupled with the relative paucity of human trials, the jury in the medical community is still largely out.

It is written by two of the most intelligent people I think I've ever come across, Eric Smith, who is an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute, and Harold Morowitz, who founded the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason. Both men work in very disparate fields. Morowitz was a specialist of biology, origin of life scenarios, and biochemistry while Smith is a (brilliant) physicist and chemist. However, together they have assembled an encompassing theoretical structure that I am confident will lead science for several decades, once it is gradually integrated into other fields of research - e.g., Jeremy England at MIT has looked at some of the same thermodynamic phenomena using statistical physics (great article on his work - https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory...)

Eric Smith actually did a video describing this work while at Sante Fe that is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElMqwgkXguw

This is the first paragraph of the paper mentioned above:

Life is universally understood to require a source of free energy and mechanisms with which to harness it. Re- markably, the converse may also be true: the continuous generation of sources of free energy by abiotic processes may have forced life into existence as a means to alleviate the buildup of free energy stresses. This assertion – for which there is precedent in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and growing empirical evidence from chemistry – would imply that life had to emerge on the earth, that at least the early steps would occur in the same way on any similar planet, and that we should be able to predict many of these steps from first principles of chemistry and physics together with an accurate understanding of geochemical conditions on the early earth. A deterministic emergence of life would reflect an essential continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. It would show that a part of the order we recognize as living is thermodynamic order inherent in the geosphere, and that some aspects of Darwinian selection are expressions of the likely simpler statistical mechanics of physical and chemical self-organization.

A mere fine for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

However, as data analysis techniques have become more powerful and data more easy to produce thanks to advances in the scientific methodologies we use to access information about the matter we are studying, the datasets are getting bigger but also easier to manage.