Rupert Sheldrake TED talk

[Avocado]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO4-9l8IWFQ

Pretty cool to see Dr. Sheldrake on TED. The audience seemed to enjoy his talk, as did I.

It's about setting science free and how dogma is taken as science like philosophical materialism.

[Plenum]

everyone loves bashing mainstream science these days, don't they?

hey, don't get me wrong, I loved some of Sheldrake's work; esp Presence of the Past which was something I came across as an 18 year old. Blew my head up at the time along with the Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.

but just like mainstream politics, there seems to be a sense that, hey, if we somehow removed or rejuvenated this institution, then everything would turn around suddenly, we would be living in a 'new paradigm'. Problem is, while these institutional structures do work from the top-down, they are also grown from the bottom up. What I am saying is, if you took a census of the planet and where it's values are, they support these institutional bulkheads.

you can't just change the top and expect the world to change. The top is just an acculturation of what the masses want.

[Avocado]

He's not bashing mainstream science because he's not talking about a belief system. He is asking questions that are supposed to be answered with the rational mind, not belief systems.

He takes 10 dogmas of science, turns them into questions and sees how they stand up if you look at them scientifically. He says this at the beginning.

[zenmaster]

Just because you may have a notion that someone may have a sense that "hey, if we somehow removed or rejuvenated this institution, then everything would turn around suddenly, we would be living in a 'new paradigm', doesn't mean that Sheldrake is promoting such idealistic fantasies.

[Guardian]

I have his book, haven't had time to read it yet.

[native]

Thanks for posting. People are up in arms over this talk unfortunately, where a discussion has started as to whether or not to remove it from TED's archives.

http://www.ted.com/conversations/16894/r..._talk.html

[Avocado]

I think that's kind of cool, it would be sad if he got censored but fortunately the heretics don't get burned anymore.

[native]

It's amusing given his presentation.

[Avocado]

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-...TEDBlog%29

Well TED done it. They censored Sheldrake along with Graham Hancock.

I was angry when I saw this but I'm actually pretty happy it they got exposure to begin with, and this might even bring more attention to them. This has opened my eyes to how much the consensus reality isn't synonymous with the majority worldview. I wonder how many among us are "in the closet non-materialists". In the London Real interview Sheldrake suggested a lot of scientists share non-material worldviews.

On a personal level it helped me see my own defensiveness toward my worldview. I do tend to have a "beef" with materialist science but that's for me to practice spaciousness and forgiveness.

[zenmaster]

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-...TEDBlog%29

Well TED done it. They censored Sheldrake along with Graham Hancock.

I was angry when I saw this but I'm actually pretty happy it they got exposure to begin with, and this might even bring more attention to them. This has opened my eyes to how much the consensus reality isn't synonymous with the majority worldview. I wonder how many among us are "in the closet non-materialists". In the London Real interview Sheldrake suggested a lot of scientists share non-material worldviews.

On a personal level it helped me see my own defensiveness toward my worldview. I do tend to have a "beef" with materialist science but that's for me to practice spaciousness and forgiveness.

Science is not about what you are capable of believing or experiencing. It's about an ability to explain these things. If a person's worldview can't be explained with sufficient rigor, even philosophically, there's really not much to leverage for learning. It's really that simple.

[native]

I was coming here to post that they removed Hancock's interview. Notice that Hancock has offered a rebuttal in the comments section of the link you provided.

[reeay]

these modernist scientist have some catching up to do... we're like in the post-postmodern era already

[native]

http://www.realitysandwich.com/ted_backs_down

"On Monday TED finally publicly retracted their actions, by crossing out their original misleading statements about Sheldrake and me on the Blog Discussion page. They also opened up a new page for further discussion. On this page they honestly concede, that deluged with outraged messages, they: “…felt compelled to accelerate our blog post and used language that in retrospect was clumsy. We suggested that we were flagging the talks because of ‘factual errors’ but some of the specific examples we gave were less than convincing. Instead of the thoughtful conversation we had hoped for, we stirred up angry responses from the speakers and their supporters."

So TED is admitting they made several statements about their talks that weren't true.