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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Is it possible to know too much?
    #2581424 -

I think we all would probably agree that knowledge is generally a good thing.

But what if you knew too much? Is there even such a thing as knowing too much?
And if so, how would you define it and how would you avoid it?


--------------------
I am what Willis was talkin' bout.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2581447 -

Wisdom is infinite...

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2581454 -

I think its possible to get to a point where u know to much, but not enough. I think im there. In the last 2 years ive had alot of realizations, experiences, and i feel now that for the most part i know how things are, but i dont understand how they are this way, what it means that they are this way, or exactly what to do since things are this way. i had an experience that seems to have been very much like satori or kensho is supposed to be, and for awhile i was on cloud 9, it completely altered my perception of reality, i mean things literally look different now. But I havent integrated the experience i guess, or something because now i feel as if im stuck in limbo. I've ran out of questions, and questions were what drove me. Now, no new questions, no new answers, i am left with only trying to be ok with how things are, and that the only thing that is certain, is uncertainy. I know how it is, i just dont fully understand it i guess. Its like knowing 2+2=4 but not understanding fully why that is so. For one brief moment i accidently let go, and everything was pefect, and it changed me, then it left me. Left me changed, but left me all the same, and now all i want is for it to come back. But i cant let go again, or fully or something. Hell i cant even get to the place i used to get while meditating anymore. GRRR

Sincerely,
That which is, and has no choice but to be.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2581496 -

knowledge is power, you should absorb all the knowledge you can in life, there is no so such thing as too much knowledge ,

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: ZenGecko]
    #2581503 -

I've followed some of your posts concerning free-will and agree for the most part that if we have an itch we will scratch it.

Whether we scratch or not may be in the realm of 'free-will'-------But not to scratch is to embrace discomfort, so to speak.
So we are really just following the desire for pleasure.

Some deny pleasure on the grounds of 'free-will' and embrace suffering-----------we could say we deny the 'influence' towards pleasing ourselves-----------so we may have Free-will when it comes to denying an influence.

I agree that we are puppets for the most part, dancing to the tune of our emotions and desires, and in questioning the validity of our responses we can attain a higher awareness of our choices.

But in denying one set of influences we can become subjected to another set, equally influential....and so free-will may not be a reality after all--- untill we recognize that there ARE more than one set of influences and we have the CHOICE of which to follow---and in recognizing the patterns of influence (sacred geometry) we can try to perceive how many sets there are, of what different magnitudes and of what different aims.

I don't know if there is a free-will beyond self-awareness of our position caught up in the scheme of things, and so the scheme of things becomes the focus of attention .....Am I making any sense?

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2581532 -

The knowledge that is usually attainable by study is infinitely finite. But it's not absolutely infinite. What IS absolutely infinite, is the unknown.

I would also like to add that I've come across the same mental terrain of whether it is possible to know 'too much'. I've come to the yielding belief that most, if not all negative effects from acquiring knowledge is NOT from the knowledge acquisition itself; but simply the perspective through which the knowledge was acquired. Therefore, if an individual maintains a healthy and optimistic perspective on what new knowledge enters his pysche, then that individual may never truly know 'too much.'

Of course, there's also another issue regarding the actual storage capacity of the human brain. From what I've learned, the normal brain's capacity for memory is comparable to that of beyond 4 terrabytes. One terrabyte is 1 thousand gigabytes. The largest amount of Gigabytes I've seen in a PC was 500, which isn't common.
It is highly doubtful that most people have already used beyond 4 terrabytes of knowledge by the time their Death arrives, in old age.



--------------------
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: castaway]
    #2581546 -

Ya, i dont believe in free will, but maybe if we have free will it works like this...., At any given moment we will always do what we want to do given the choices. i have a choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream, well damn i'm allergic to chocolate, and at this moment i dont want to endure the consequences of eating it even though i like it more then the vanilla, so i choose to have vanilla. Now in truth i really think that u just had the illusion of choice and in that moment you could not of chosen chocolate, but this is hypethtical. So maybe u have free will but you will always choose the option that you want the most, or you will choose the option u dislike the least, either way u always do what u want if u have free will, and u always do what u had to have done if u dont. So maybe we have free will but we are slaves to desire, and fear, so we always do what we want the most, or dislike the least. Really its semantics but anyway u cut it, you still had to do what you did, or atleast u will always make that same choice given the same circumstances. Maybe tomorrow my desire will overwhelm my fear of allergic reaction, but i wont know till presented with the "choice" and then i'll always choose what i want the most, or dislike the least. If thats free will, sounds shitty to me, but oh well.

Someone might argue that you could do something that u dont wanna do, and thats true, but your going to do it because you like the consequences of the other choices even less. I defy anyone to PURPOSELY AND HONESTLY do something they dont desire at all, or to make a "choice" that isnt what they wanted the most, or feared the least. I'd also argue there are no truely altruistic acts. everything is selfishly motivated. You help someone or do something good because it makes u feel good, and u want that feeling, or you do it because you wouldnt like yourself as much if you didnt, in a sense not doing it would make u feel bad. Or u wouldnt like how other people viewed you, or you would like it, so i guess if i had free will i could theoretically will myself not to feel anything, or could will myself to do something that would make me feel worse then all the other options, while still having no desire to feel bad.... but i've never seen anyone knowingly make a choice like that. Even people who might do something to purposely make themselves feel bad because they think they deserve it, will enevitably get some satisfaction out of it, because they will think they are getting what they deserve, and be glad because of that. We may not always admit, or be aware that the choice we made is the one we liked best, or that we did something because it made us feel good, or we did something that made us feel bad because really it made us feel good in some other way, but that is how it is, or atleast ive never seen things happen any other way to my knowledge. And like i said i defy anyone to actually demonstrate it here, purposely and honestly. if its an accident then u didnt will it, or choose it, and if it isnt honest then you either arent aware of exactly how it made u feel good, or exactly why u desired it, or why u feared it least out of the options. So can anyone willingly do something they want least out of their options, and convincingly explain how it didnt make them feel good in any way, not even in make them feel good that they pulled it off and proved me wrong? Oh and nothing can cause them to do it or else it isnt a choice, its what they were caused to do, unless someone can explain to me how something can be caused and chosen at the same time.

Oh wait i forgot we have free will because of some illogical and magical mechanism, that no one can locate, define, or explain how it came to be, or how it works. Well hell there is no arguing with that i guess, sounds like a perfectly reasonable belief to hold. *Cough BULLSHIT *Cough.

Sincerely,
That which is, and has no choice but to be, or will always choose to be what i am because thats what i want the most, or fear the least, so either way, i'll be... and i'll never be other then that which i am.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: SkorpivoMusterion]
    #2582099 -

"For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

That quote got me to thinking more about the subject, and I think there is some truth to it. I don't know about all of you, but in my case I think the difficulty comes when my knowledge dramatically outstrips my ability to act on that knowledge.

A kind of frustration can build up over time. The gap between what you know and where humanity is now is large. You want to get everyone you can over that gap partly so that you yourself can move on to new frontiers and new challenges instead of always being bogged down in centuries of human ignorance.

Therefore, if an individual maintains a healthy and optimistic perspective on what new knowledge enters his pysche, then that individual may never truly know 'too much.'

Yes, I think that is probably the key. Harder to do than it sounds though!


--------------------
I am what Willis was talkin' bout.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2583026 -

The only thing you can truly know is that you don't know anything at all.


--------------------


"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2583074 -

And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

True. The more we find out about the Bush Administration; the more painful it gets.


--------------------



The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Swami]
    #2583135 -

:lol:  :headbang:


--------------------
I am what Willis was talkin' bout.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: silversoul7]
    #2583237 -

Quote:
The only thing you can truly know is that you don't know anything at all.


I agree. Almost everything we think we know is based on human imagination, and on the human experience. Even science. As for the reality out there, it can only be observed and never truly known.


--------------------
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

- Aristotle

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2583709 -

Well, I also believe generally that knowledge is power and it is very useful and good to be curious.

However, I think it is possible that knowledge hurts and it is possible to be too much sometimes. When one finds out something new and his old way of thinking becomes obsolete, until he has a new model , his new knowledge actually makes his world more confusing.

To illustrate what I mean: imagine u are a scientist who believes firmly in Newtonian mechanics and this is a clear model of the world for him. But one day he finds out experimentally about some of the paradoxes described by Einstein and suddenly his nice all-explaining theory collapses. Until he finds out the next knowledge system, lets say theory of relativity, to fit all the experimental data, he will feel probably very miserably and unhappy that his world view just collapsed, and he may wish that the "bad" data does not exist at all.

And in general, ignorant people sometimes are so by choice. They have a simple model that fits their world and they don't want to change it. New knowledge would only confuse them , so they may just ignore it. This is so from the "drug war" to real military conflicts.

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: SkorpivoMusterion]
    #2584249 -

Quote:
From what I've learned, the normal brain's capacity for memory is comparable to that of beyond 4 terrabytes. One terrabyte is 1 thousand gigabytes. 


Where did you 'learn' this?  I think this is completely off base because I don't believe memory is stored locally.  In fact, I don't believe "brain function" is a local phenomenon.  It appears to be since we are "with our brain" when we are thinking, but I see the brain more like an antenna than a hard drive.  Our brain is a grounding station for the swirling multiverse of data we have access to. 

Experiments have been done where maze-trained rodents had small parts of their brain removed to see if they could still remember how to exit the maze.  More and more of the animals brains were removed until little more than the stem remained and the rodents could still find their way.  There have been case studies of humans who lost much of their memory as a result of permanent brain damage.  However, over time, memories begin to return.

I like the idea of the holographic universe.  If you take a piece of holographic film with an image stored on it and cut it in half, both halves will project the same full image.  In fact, you can cut it up into as many pieces as possible and each little piece will display the whole image.  This is the idea of non-locality represented in a very down to earth way. 

Back to the idea of the brain having a 4 terrabyte (4000 gigabyte) limit.....that's only 4,000,000 megabytes if i did the conversion correctly.  If one film on DVD is about 3 or 4 gigs in size, then that means that the human brain, at best could only remember, in detail, about 1000 movies and nothing else.  No language, no memories, no quaint landscapes, no conversations, sensations, smells.....nada.  This seems very silly.  I think the brain works in such a dynamic way that no one can really dictate what its limits are with a straight face.

I'd like to talk about this more but i have to get to my German class.  (gotta work on fillin up that ol' noodle 'fore i die

:wink:)

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Re: Is it possible to know too much? [Re: Jellric]
    #2584788 -

My friends and I have had this arguement about if you knew everything, would you kill yourself? I think you would because you would know how everything was going to play out and there would be no risks in anything and you would have no point of living.


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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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