Often it's extremely hard to decide what is the rational thing to believe.

It's extraordinarily difficult for most of us to decide what the truth is on many contentious issues. Will we witness catastrophic climate change in the coming decades? Does psi exist? Is there some type of afterlife? What policies or political system is the most favourable for promoting economic growth, and indeed should such growth necessarily be our aim? Will consuming 5 to 10 portions a day of fruit and vegetables (provided not potatoes) promote health and longevity? Does an objective morality exist, or is what we judge as praiseworthy or heinous behaviour simply a reflection of one's culture? Do we have free will?

At the outset, we should recognise in ourselves the prior propensity to favour a particular side on any given issue. Most often this results in us seeking out those sources that back up our beliefs
whilst at the same time we shun those sources that contradict them. That is, we tend to read or listen to people defending what we are predisposed to believe in the first place, and to ignore, or
even adopt a hostile stance, to the arguments advanced by the opposing side.

To counteract this natural propensity, it therefore might seem sensible to simply listen to both sides of an argument, then attempt to make up our own minds. But arguably this is not ideal. For is it sensible to pay equal attention and give equal time to the arguments of a lone maverick compared to the arguments of the many experts who disagree with that maverick? Perhaps instead, the best strategy is to simply trust what experts say on any particular topic?

It might seem especially wise to listen to scientists. They are, after all, supposedly informed by what the science says and might be expected to be objective and impartial. But even when it comes to scientists there are vested interests in asserting a specific view, and vested interests by others in denying that view. There's groupthink, there's the fear of the impact on their careers for those scientists in voicing a contrarian or unfashionable view. There are positions that seem clearly false, but where no-one dares point it out, that is they are afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes. In short, there are many pressures to conform and simply parrot the mainstream position. However, unfortunately for the mainstream position, many of the alleged discoveries in science cannot be replicated.

And
frequently there are no experts as such. Or at least there are no
people that are especially privileged in having superior knowledge to
the rest of us, even if we are not aware of this. To give one example, the predictions of economists fare little better than flipping a coin.

There is another worry with scientists. The very fact they enjoy a high level of prestige and are respected, means they are listened to and judged by most people to know what they're talking about, even when they pontificate on topics that reside outside their area of expertise. For example, when they derisively dismiss psi, an afterlife, "God", an objective morality, and other contentious issues of a philosophical nature. But, given that most of them have never studied philosophy, or perhaps even given these topics much thought, how seriously ought we take their opinions here?

It's also worth pointing out that there are contentious issues where one personally can be confident in the correctness of a specific stance. This is so despite the fact that the opposing view to one's own might be held with a great deal of conviction and passion. Let's, for example, consider predictions regarding technological progress and, in particular, the so-called technological singularity. There are supposedly informed and respected people that worry that sentient robots will be developed that take over the world and enslave humanity. But, at least to my mind, the very notion of such a technological singularity is preposterous. For a kick-off, it rests on the implicit notion that consciousness or sentience is quite literally merely information processing. This seems to me to be straightforwardly false since information processing simply fails to connote consciousness. Apart from that, we should be very leery of such predictions involving technology since people like Elon Musk and others have vested interests in playing up the rate of technological progress and change. And let's face it, overstating the rate of change in technology is exciting, it's what people like to hear. They don't want to hear someone predicting an unimaginative prosaic future.

We can also be confident of a specific stance if we are informed by having direct
experiences, or experiences reported by those whom we trust. Hence, we
can witness for ourselves the peculiar weather in recent years that
seems to justify our worry about climate change. And many of us have had
direct experience of psi. But on other issues where the answer is not so obvious, how do we decide?

My solution?  First and foremost, think for yourself.  Do your own homework if a topic particularly interests you.  Listen to both sides, but be cynical of people claiming this, that and the other.  Don't be afraid of voicing a minority opinion, or even an opinion that might be uniquely yours.

Our inexplicable existence in a cold dark Universe

What is this world that we inexplicably find ourselves in? Were we placed here by some unknown intelligence for some unfathomable reason? Or is it all just a huge joke, that it's all just meaningless fortuity and happenstance that we find ourselves in existence now and having such thoughts?

If that were not enough, this world, this reality we find ourselves in, is highly strange. Consider our situation. We exist, apparently, on the surface of a small sphere that is suspended in the midst of an effective eternal, cold, dark, nothingness. An effective nothingness, utterly inhospitable and even possibly entirely bereft of any complex life apart from on this one tiny planet. When we gaze up in wonder and forlorn hope seeking to understand why we're here, what it all means, what our role might be, whether there is other life out there, the stars merely gaze back down at us with cold pitiless indifference.

I find our situation to be highly peculiar. Certainly not something I thought about as a child, but the weirdness of our situation has slowly dawned on me the older and older I get. And even at my relatively advanced age, the feeling of weirdness continues to grow.

Perhaps we will eventually find out the answer to such questions in some unknown reality after we die, perhaps we won't. Personally, I feel that we will.

An article on near-death experiences

I read the following skeptical article on NDE's:

The Afterlife Is in Our Heads

These so-called scientific explanations of NDEs assume that it is entirely unproblematic that brains produce consciousness, and given this assumption, they advance speculative hypotheses about how the brain creates such experiences.



Incidentally, I wouldn't claim that NDEs give anything like proof of an afterlife. Clearly, one's mind and implicit expectations very much influences what one actually experiences. But this certainly doesn't mean that one isn't encountering some afterlife realm that one's implicit expectations and beliefs are moulding and shaping. Indeed, this to a certain extent even happens with our everyday embodied vision, as demonstrated by perceptual "illusions".

Just consider that dress.

Just a few comments on various quoted parts:

The idea that near-death experiences, also known as NDEs, offer proof of an afterlife for the soul has been remarkably persistent, despite an accumulation of scientific evidence to the contrary.

 …



NDEs are … explained by physiological processes, [neuroscientists] said, which have been pieced together over the past 50 years.

I’ve never come across any of this evidence. As I said above, at best, they are speculative hypotheses.

[A] wealth of neuroscience research describes how OBE-like experiences—a loss of the sense of self and disturbed body perception or ownership—can be triggered by brain damage, epilepsy, and migraine,7 as well as by stimulation of the part of the brain where the right temporal and parietal lobes meet.

Which, as I have continually explained on countless occasions e.g here, has no implications either way, since this would be precisely what we would expect regardless of whether NDEs are a glimpse of some external reality or not.

The “dissociative anesthetic ketamine can reproduce all aspects of the near-death experience,” Jansen wrote. That includes a sense of ineffability, timelessness, that what is experienced is “real,” that one is actually dead, a perception of separation from the body, vivid hallucination, rapid movement through a tunnel, and emerging “into the light.”

So this assumes that ketamine induced experiences are produced by the brain rather than modifying the brain to allow access to other realities. So this argument only works for those that draw a distinction between the ultimate origin of NDEs on the one hand, and psychedelic experiences on the other.

The article reports Anil Seth as saying:

“If somebody with no brain activity were able to experience something and remember it later, then pretty much everything we know about the brain, about science, about physics is wrong.”

This is just nonsense on stilts. Obviously, since the physical sciences wholly leave out consciousness in their description of reality, then necessarily they can have nothing to say about the abilities of consciousness.

Average per day I spend on food.

In my previous post I calculated that the price of food has increased very roughly by 26% over the previous 12 months (and contradicting the claimed 10.6%).  I decided to calculate the average daily cost of food for myself. Chart is below. It ends in mid-August as the average is calculated over a rolling 100 day average and mid-August is now 50 days ago.

 

The average per day I have spent on food over the previous 538 days is £4.88.  Incidentally, this is just food and exclusively bought from supermarkets -- namely Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco. It doesn't include any non-food products such as cleaning products and whatever.

Looking at the chart, the steep decline in the price I
pay from the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022 is accounted for by
my decision to try to decrease the amount I spend on food in the face of
the humongous increase in the price of energy.  But, since near the beginning of this year, despite continuing to buy cheaper food, the price I'm paying has steadily increased. This will be purely down to the fact that the price of food has steadily increased since that time. Indeed, I believe that most of the 26% inflation increase in the price of food has occurred since the beginning of this year (2022).

So, anyway, at the present time, it seems I'm spending about an average £5 per day on food. That will only continue to increase whilst food prices keep steeply increasing. 

 

Food Inflation in the UK: Why is an incorrect figure being quoted?

I talked about the increase in the price of food a few weeks ago. I found that the price of food for the products I buy if I were to continue buying those precise same products had roughly increased by 15% from July 2021 to July 2022.  

I was astonished to read a few days ago this article claiming that food prices have only increased by 10.6% in the past year.  Astonished, since the price of food has only been accelerating in the 2 months since I wrote that other blog post in late July.  So it seemed to me that the price inflation of food would be even higher than it was in July i.e higher even than 15%. So I decided to check the prices out by comparing some of the food prices I bought back in September and October 2021 from Morrisons and Sainsburys, and comparing to what the current prices are now on the 30th September 2022.  In the below table I’ve mainly included the more common foods that many people frequently buy e.g. bread, potatoes, milk, cheese etc.

Obviously, a lot of food cycles up and down in price all the time, with the low end of the cycle being labelled "offers". I always use prices at the low end of the cycle.

Weight (kg) Product 2021 2022 % Increase 4 pints Fresh Milk £1.09 £1.55 42% 0.4 Cheddar Cheese £2.00 £2.75 38% 0.2 Pecans £2.50 £2.83 13% 0.2 Walnuts £2.00 £2.22 11% 0.4 Warbs Wholemeal Bread £0.85 £0.90 6% 0.2 Morrisons Plain Yogurt £0.50 £0.75 50% 0.15 Walkers Crisps 6x25g £1.25 £1.50 20% 0.4 Jacob's Cream Crackers 2x200g £1.60 £1.80 13% 0.095 Nescafé Gold Blend Espresso Instant Coffee £3.00 £3.50 17% 850ml Ribena Squash £1.50 £1.50 0% 1 Fresh Chicken Drumsticks £1.35 £2.25 67% 1.35 Fresh Whole Chicken £3.00 £3.50 17% 0.3 Morrisons 10 Haddock Fish Fingers £1.75 £1.99 14% 0.5 Morrisons Chunky Battered Haddock £2.99 £5.25 76% 0.4 Bassetts Jelly Babies Sweets Carton £2.00 £2.00 0% 0.2 Morrisons Fruit Jellies £0.90 £1.25 39% 2.5 King Edward Potatoes £1.50 £1.75 17% 2.5 Morrisons Baking Potatoes £1.25 £1.85 48% All Products £31.03 £39.14 26%
There are 18 food products, and as an average they've increased by 26% (highlighted in yellow). Out of the 18 food products listed, only 3 of them have increased by less than 10.6%. It seems to me to be unrealistic to see how that figure could be dragged down to 10.6% by considering more foods. So how on earth is this 10.6% figure being derived? Incidentally, note how much cheaper the haddock fish fingers are to the chunky battered haddock.  And yet they have a very similar percentage of haddock fillet per unit weight (64% and 65% respectively). Fish fingers are significantly the cheapest way to eat fish, more so if one just buys pollock fish fingers (they don't label them as pollock, of course, since they want customers to assume they're cod.  They use names like omega 3 fish fillet etc, even though the omega 3 content is only a small fraction of fish like mackerel and salmon). Original screenshot of spreadsheet below (I couldn't put it in the middle without messing up all the formatting).

What can we do about being stuck in a miserable and futile existence?

 

The following article, I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence, quotes someone who laments:

I see a therapist once a week. But I have a shameful and persistent feeling of despair. I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence. I don’t like work. I hate being trapped within someone else’s schedule, sending pointless emails, attending pointless meetings. I hate the nine-to-five, the long commute, asking permission to take leave – it’s just sleep, work, sleep, work.


I have no garden, and noisy neighbours. I won’t starve or lose the roof over my head but I can neither afford to go away on holiday nor to dine out or buy clothes and books.


My family and friends are wonderful. I have a partner who loves me. But I am just desperately unhappy. How can I say any of this out loud to the people close to me? I feel like a petulant child: stuck, wailing. I don’t know how to be alive in this world and be happy. 

The rise of modern capitalism and the introduction of the division of labour to maximise profits has resulted in most people living their lives as wage slaves, obliged to do work that is dull and repetitious. For many people, this is partially offset by the meeting up with people in the workplace, making friends, having a laugh with them. But for others who are not so gregarious, and maybe find it awkward to get on with others, going to work is often then just a daily grind that is unfulfilling and simply lacks any personal meaning. It is surely not how we are meant to live. Many of us are simply existing, not living.

It is true that we can get temporary distractions from the “toys” we can buy; the latest smartphone, or TV, or whatever. Or going on holiday. But even here, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, feeling a failure as many others seem to be able to afford more than we can, or go on holiday more frequently. They can afford the latest and most expensive smartphone, and we can’t. But even when we do have enough money to buy all the latest gadgets’, this most often only temporarily ameliorates any feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and despair.



Nor, for many of us, is it helpful if we didn’t work at all. Many people find it profoundly boring not being in a full-time job as an employee. That they have nothing to do all day. Indeed, many people claim that when they were unemployed they were sleeping 12 hours a day and were just depressed.



I suggest that, ideally, we need to have a job, find work, which engages our interest. One needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product we're creating or the service we're providing. To produce something, or provide some service, that other people really appreciate together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do likewise. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will encourage a sense of purpose and enjoyment in the work.



That’s the ideal, but in reality not the sort of work that most of us will ever obtain since modern industrial capitalist society creates precisely the type of work that is dull and repetitious. This is compounded by the fact that most of us work for 40 or more hours a week, hence leaving us less time for more purposeful activity. Incidentally, this is particularly vexing since it is my suspicion, and indeed some evidence suggests, that we could be just as productive, if not more so, if we worked fewer hours.



It seems to me that for a meaningful, fulfilling life, what we really need, what we really yearn, is a feeling of being alive. A feeling of life being an adventure. That life is a journey with ongoing meaningful experiences. But our modern industrial capitalist world forces us into meaningless soulless work and also conveys the message that we are just mere meat robots with no free-will destined to cease to exist when we die. All of which is antithetical to our yearning souls.



To be honest, I suspect we were all much happier in the Stone Age. Life won’t have been insipid, bland and boring back then. Yes, it might have been a hard life. A life full of many close brushes with death. But the comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs and the collective outpouring of emotions with the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw, more than compensates. As would the implicit feeling that death is just another journey and all will come right in the end.



But I am not here to exclusively rail against all the failings of our modern world (I’ve done that elsewhere). To coin a phrase, it is what it is. The question is, for those who live bleak unfulfilling lives, what can we do about it?

If we cannot find work that is fulfilling, perhaps we can at least find work that has shorter hours, or where we interact with those with a similar mind-set to our own.



But I think the best course of action is to develop goals that we can strive towards. Develop an interest on some topic and read extensively about it. Or learn some new skill. It’s the striving towards a goal of some nature, even if it’s only a short term goal, which creates meaning and direction in our lives. But not unrealistic goals, rather something that you feel you can genuinely attain with some dedication and effort.

More on the Truss Government.

Following on from my last post.  As I mentioned there, I've made numerous Facebook posts in the past 2 months voicing my fears should Truss become PM. Any other Tory leader candidate would have been infinitely better. Why the hell did Tory party members vote for her? We could have had Rishi Sunak for God's sake! Yeah, he’s fairly clueless in certain respects, e.g. understanding the plight of the poor. But at least he's competent, level-headed and knows what he's doing. So at least the economy would have been in capable hands.



What the hell were Tory party members thinking of? I was watching Tory party members being interviewed before she became PM. They all seemed to prefer her to Sunak. I was just groaning, thinking, 'Oh my Gawd, she's going to become PM, and we're all screwed!' But I was screaming in the wilderness, a forlorn Cassandra figure.