Richard Dawkins Facepalms at Deepak Chopra

[Rick O'Shez]

My mountain ash trees have threatened not to produce berries if I listen to any more of him.

 

[gsa]

I don't think this is Chopra alone on an island. What would someone like Rupert Sheldrake say. Many in science recognize a hard problem of consciousness. Why not other hard problems for science to consider?

I don't think that morphogenetic fields is much of an improvement over Chopra, at least if it is simply asserted as opposed to being demonstrated. And there are people working on consciousness that are interested in testing out theories, some of them pretty whacky sounding. I'm not sure that Sheldrake falls in that category these days.

 

[YmirGF]

I came across this excerpt from a debate between Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra:

That was just painful to watch. You could tell exactly how Dawkins felt from the facepalm he gave Chopra while the latter was speaking his nonsense.

What do you personally think of Deepak Chopra's views in general? Do you believe that he has anything worthwhile to say, or do you share Dawkins's view that Chopra uses scientific jargon to make unscientific and baseless claims about consciousness and mystical experiences?

This reminds me with the utterly frustrating dialogue I am attempting to have in another thread. It doesn't matter what you say to this kind of thinking. It seems impervious to reason. It is impervious to reality. I find Chopra's "deep and insightful" viewpoints to be quite tedious or pedestrian.

 

[Revoltingest]

Little known fact:
Chopra once sold retro encabulators & cardinal grahmmeters for Rockwell Int'l.

 

[Baladas]

Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with Mr. Chopra. It seems to me that they are discussing different topics. Dawkins is a Biologist, and is only interested in discussing concrete facts, and Chopra seems to be speaking about theoretical psychics and mysticism.

I am a mystic myself, but I can't understand Chopra's seeming intellectual confidence in something that is for me, almost entirely intuitive.

I can understand the idea of atoms having a very rudimentary form of (for lack of a better word) awareness...but it seems that Chopra was being a least a bit dishonest.

I would actually be interested in watching the full debate for myself.

 

[Baladas]

Little known fact:
Chopra once sold retro encabulators & cardinal grahmmeters for Rockwell Int'l.

I just thought you'd like to know that I just laughed my *** off at this.

 

[outhouse]

I think we have to slow way down to understand what Chopra is really saying

To me, he's nuttier then a 5 year old fruitcake.

I think he makes more sense if you slowed him down to "stop".

 

[outhouse]

. I was just saying Chopra doesn't present his side well in conversation and others could do better.

If his statements were logic or reason, or science based. he wouldn't be so confusing using so much imagination.

 

[Sunstone]

Chopra is smart enough to know how to cash checks. That's almost as smart as you need to be in order to be smarter than your audience in a day and age when about half the population thinks evolution is a scam, and a quarter of them aren't even clear that the earth orbits the sun.

 

[lovemuffin]

I think it would help if I could understand what it means to say that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Is it something like this description of integrated information theory? Or is it something else?

I don't know Chopra's views very well, but probably yes? I'm not sure he's that likely to be attached to anything too specific, but some form of panpsychism/property dualism. Given his predilection for talking about quantum mechanics, he'd probably like Penrose and Hameroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory, which is kind of fun to read about.

 

[Bill Van Fleet]

I came across this excerpt from a debate between Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra:

That was just painful to watch. You could tell exactly how Dawkins felt from the facepalm he gave Chopra while the latter was speaking his nonsense.

What do you personally think of Deepak Chopra's views in general? Do you believe that he has anything worthwhile to say, or do you share Dawkins's view that Chopra uses scientific jargon to make unscientific and baseless claims about consciousness and mystical experiences?

I believe neither of them has read my book on the mind-body problem:
FOR EVERYONE: Mind-Body Problem (& Free Will vs. Determinism)

 

[Revoltingest]

I just thought you'd like to know that I just laughed my *** off at this.

It still kills me every time I see it.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I don't care about either one of them. They're both embarrassing.

 

[Yerda]

He always seems to be almost saying something. There's a stream of words and you're sure they relate to each other in some way but somewhere in the machinery of each sentence something breaks down and the meaning never pops out the end.

 

[Revoltingest]

He always seems to be almost saying something. There's a stream of words and you're sure they relate to each other in some way but somewhere in the machinery of each sentence something breaks down and the meaning never pops out the end.

I remember an old Doctor Science lecture about how words should be strung together with meaningful order. Chopra must've missed that lecture.

 

[outhouse]

I believe neither of them has read my book on the mind-body problem:
FOR EVERYONE: Mind-Body Problem (& Free Will vs. Determinism)

Pretty good job you have done there.

Not sure if I agree or not without reading it all, but I read a few pages and could not find any blindingly apologetic bias.

Nice work.

 

[Bill Van Fleet]

Pretty good job you have done there.

Not sure if I agree or not without reading it all, but I read a few pages and could not find any blindingly apologetic bias.

Nice work.

Thanks! I appreciate that. If you decide to give it a try, I would appreciate your letting me know of the first sentence that seems either incorrect or unclear in its context. The writing of the book was quite difficult, but I was determined not to drift off into ambiguity the way all others have that I have read. I think I have solved the problem, but the acid test is for others to read it and see if it makes sense to them.

 

[Jared Jammer]

The notion that all of existence self-created, self-governed, and self-organized is the height of magical thinking. You are ascribing to nature abilities that would make any alleged magician green with envy.

 

[Skwim]

The notion that all of existence self-created, self-governed, and self-organized is the height of magical thinking. You are ascribing to nature abilities that would make any alleged magician green with envy.

Don't really understand your point, but that's alright.

 

[edwinic]

I came across this excerpt from a debate between Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra:

That was just painful to watch. You could tell exactly how Dawkins felt from the facepalm he gave Chopra while the latter was speaking his nonsense.

What do you personally think of Deepak Chopra's views in general? Do you believe that he has anything worthwhile to say, or do you share Dawkins's view that Chopra uses scientific jargon to make unscientific and baseless claims about consciousness and mystical experiences?

I thought Richard Dawkins refrained from debating non-scientists personalities?