My audio on the tau neutrino:
I am an intangible observer of everything physical, including my body. As an observer, I never become the observed. I create my physical existence by observing it.
My opinion about our freedom to choose is that we have the ability to define ourselves. Everyone has the freedom to define their own awareness from their own point of view.
There might be billions of different ways to define ourselves. Just as there are a billion different stars. There are also billions of ways to define what we observe.
The question for science to answer now seems to be exactly how are physical objects created. Or perhaps, whether what is observed is actually physical or simply perceived to be physical.
This is Graviton Ring.
I call this podcast Free Thought the Sense of Humor.
There are several sources on the web which talk about the reasons behind the human sense of humor.
One key factor is the ability to suspend one's concept of reality temporarily.
Amazingly, as many as half of the people hearing a joke cannot see the humor because they see the imaginary conditions in the joke as real.
Especially if there are some gory details in the joke, the sticklers for reality may actually be offended by the attempt to make them laugh.
During my first attempt to write a science fiction movie script, I consulted many different sources about the story and the proper form for screenplays.
One very credible source with a good track record offered to evaluate my story and possibly offer some of the accepted standards of writing as a service in which they might actually ghostwrite the story and script.
In the evaluation, the reviewer stated that one key aspect in my science fiction story was unbelievable.
My first thought was that the reviewer was joking or perhaps testing my resolve to defend the story under critical analysis.
Whatever the reviewer's reason was for the incredible analysis, fortunately my instructor in screenwriting offered to do the ghost writing and to make sure the industry standards of structuring a professional screenplay were followed.
The reviewer of the incredible analysis charged me about $150.
The ghost writing service arranged by my instructor received $1,500.
My instructor received another $1,500 to review the ghost writing.
The management service which my instructor arranged received an additional fee of $6,000.
Simply believing in my story as it was intended to be a work of fiction was worth about 60 times the unbelief.
My opinion about this phenomena of suspending or not suspending reality temporarily in order to consider something as humorous or fictional is that humans in western culture are often polarized into right or left brain thinking.
In addition, western culture seems to favor either or thinking in any circumstance.
Some documentaries displayed the right brain state, which was confirmed by brain scans, as one in which the person experiencing right brain thinking often rejected any changes in the testing situation.
This seems unusual to me because right brain thinking is often associated with artistic abilities such as music and art.
However, jazz music and abstract art were often criticized during their introduction into the mainstream.
Left brain thinking is often associated with science and logic.
Recently in my experience while communicating with members of the scientific community, I have often encountered a similar disparity.
Some scientists who refused to think about new theories or changes in accepted theories seem to be expressing the same right brain need to resist changes.
Perhaps when part of our time in right brain thinking, such as during a brainstorming session to think about new ideas, and then use logic and science to refine the results of the brain storming.
Whatever happens in general with our thought processes, we also seem to have considerable control over our free thoughts.
Even though there are many similarities, such as predictable dumb creatures in pulp science fiction, there are always new ideas that fascinate fans.
In particular for me, the real science of understanding how many different ways there might be for sentient creatures to gather intelligence, many of which were portrayed on the science
channel, is enlightening and may even provide clues to the past or future developments by nature or nurture in human ways of thinking.
We all drink from the same fountain of wisdom.
I'm Graviton Ring.
Your Most Important Values
Here are the intrinsic values you indicated are most important to you, starting with your very most important value:
1. That I maintain and grow my spirituality, or that I achieve spiritual insight
2. That I achieve inner peace
3. That we protect from harm those who can't easily protect themselves (e.g. children or oppressed groups)
4. That humanity becomes more moral than it is right now
5. That I increase my understanding of reality beyond my current understanding
6. That I forgive other people when they wrong me or make a mistake
7. That I am grateful for what I have
If these intrinsic values are very important to you, it might be worth reflecting on them for a short time to see how you might be able to create more of what you value in the world. This could involve finding other people who share your intrinsic values and working together to pursue them, or deeper research into which endeavors align with the things that you most care about.
At least one of your most important values is a universal value, which means that your values concern the universal state of the world and not just the close circle of your immediate surroundings. You might want to check out our free tool, Leaving Your Mark on the World, which can help you make a plan to have greater impact in your lifetime based on your universal values.
At least one of your most important values is a utilitarian value, which means that you value minimizing suffering and maximizing the good in the world. If you're not familiar with it already, you might be interested in the Effective Altruism community. This is a community of people who use careful reasoning and evidence to identify the most effective ways of doing good. If you think that you share these values, you should check out 80,000 hours, an organization that provides career advice for solving the world's most pressing problems, and GiveWell, a nonprofit that researches the most effective charities to donate to.
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
https://programs.clearerthinking.org/how_to_do_more_good.html
Your Results: Value Clusters
To make this program, we conducted a survey on intrinsic values that collected data from hundreds of people. We found that these intrinsic values naturally clustered together into 5 factors. For example, if one of your intrinsic values is "that people all around the world are happy," you're also more likely to hold the view "that animals all around the world do not suffer much during their lives" as an intrinsic value.
Here are the names we've given to these five types of intrinsic values:
Personal - intrinsic values associated with your own personal welfare, pleasure, and achievements.
Well-Being - intrinsic values that are associated with the well-being, pleasure, and reduction of suffering for humans and animals all over the world.
Equitable - intrinsic values focused on equality and human rights, including fair representation and respectful practices.
Traditional - intrinsic values that place emphasis on adhering to rules (e.g., religious laws) and the preservation of human traits and traditions.
Virtuous - intrinsic values related to making sure that you personally exhibit positive character traits, like honesty, kindness, or courage.
The bar chart below shows what percent of people you got a higher score than for each of these 5 factors. Note that the test takers you are being compared to were based in the U.S., so your scores would be different if compared against people in different countries.
Your Value Cluster Percentiles (what % of other users you are higher than)
Personal 81
Well-Being 79
Equitable 96
Traditional 54
Virtuous 96
Out of these five factors, your highest percentile is in Virtuous. You care more about Virtuous intrinsic values than 96% of people who took this test. Your lowest percentile is in Traditional; you care more about Traditional intrinsic values than 54% of people who took this test. These factors are not mutually exclusive, so it's possible to receive a high score in many of them at the same time.
Your Results: Moral Circle
Some of the intrinsic values we asked you about related to yourself, some of them related to your community, and some were universal, relating to the entire world.
In the graph below, you can see how your answers reflect which moral circle your values are concerned with. You might be most concerned with how you behave, the state of your community, or the universal state of the world.
Your Moral Circle Percentiles (what % of other users you are higher than)
Self 41
Community 58
Universal 54
Out of these three groups, your highest percentile was in Community. You care more about Community intrinsic values than 58% of people who took this test.
This second graph shows your raw scores, which are your scores in each of these categories compared to one another.
Your Moral Circle Raw Scores (each score between 0 and 1)
Self .35
Community .37
Universal .30
Your Results: Philosophy
Another way to group these intrinsic values is by their philosophy. Where do your intrinsic values fall in these five broad groups of thought?
Aristotelian - values that tell us what kind of virtues we should aspire to have, and what vices we should remove from our character. As well as desirable character traits, these virtues include pursuits like aesthetic experiences and knowledge.
Deontological - values that provide us with moral rules as to how we should act in certain situations. These rules determine what actions are permitted, forbidden, and morally required.
Communitarian - values that emphasize the individual's responsibility to the community (family or otherwise), along with values that regard community as a large part of a person's social identity and personality.
Utilitarian - values that focus on minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness. If you have this philosophy, you'll favor actions that will do the most good, whether or not you know the people it will impact.
Libertarian - values that seek to maximize personal autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing freedom of choice, and the importance of individual judgement. Note here that we are talking about values, not political views.
Your Philosophy Percentiles
Aristotelian 42
Deontological 29
Communitarian 35
Utilitarian 68
Libertarian 69
Out of these five groups, your highest percentile was in Libertarian. You care more about Libertarian intrinsic values than 69% of people who took this test. Libertarian values are embodied in the works of philosophers like John Locke and Robert Nozick.
The extent that you care about the 5 philosophies discussed on this page is calculated from the long list of values you ranked for importance earlier, but scoring highly in one category does not mean that this category entirely reflects your worldview. We almost all have values that fall into each of these outlooks.
This second graph shows your raw scores, which are your scores in each of these categories compared to one another.
Your Philosophy Raw Scores (each score between 0 and 1)
Aristotelian .20
Deontological .15
Communitarian .18
Utilitarian .23
Libertarian .23
Your Results: Value Categories
As well as the other kinds of analysis that we showed you, there are 22 different groups that the intrinsic values we asked you about fall into: achievement, legacy, spirituality, longevity, happiness, pleasure, non-suffering, caring, reputation, loyalty, protection, fairness, virtue, purity, justice, respect, diversity, learning, truth, beauty, freedom, and nature. Check out the interactive infographic we made to illustrate these different categories here!
Your Top 5 Intrinsic Value Categories= ALL 100
Achievement
Happiness
Pleasure
Non-suffering
Loyalty
In the U.S., conservatives and liberals differ in their reported intrinsic values. The image below shows the correlation between people's scores in each of these 22 different groups of intrinsic values and how conservative (as opposed to liberal) they said they are. Conservatives (compared to liberals) seem to especially value spirituality, purity, virtue, achievement, and respect, whereas liberals (compared to conservatives) seem to especially value diversity, freedom, nature, beauty, and learning.
