Sunday, August 5, 2018

Common starling: An initial Wikidata UBI (Universal Basic Income) offering - an IUO ? - and in coding for all 7.5 billion people on planet / Wikipedians in all 7,097 living languages (and for registered / matriculated students with transcripts at World Univ and Sch), Kind of a Friendly / NtF / Quaker witness idea, Non-theist Friends/Quakers and MIT Anthro Prof Heather Paxson - http://web.mit.edu/paxson/www/, She studies "moral beings" in the context of cultural anthropology * * * Attended Stanford Memorial Church service out of curiosity ... Found it a bit too programmed (it's still seems to be a medieval service to me), relative to soaking in the (unprogrammed) Harbin Hot Springs' warm pool, as well as unprogrammed Quaker Meetings, ... would be interesting to hold an unprogrammed Quaker Meeting regularly in the Room behind Stanford Memorial Church ... (have blogged about this), Free Universal School


How about an initial Wikidata UBI (universal basic income) offering - an IUO ? - and in coding for all 7.5 billion people on planet / Wikipedians in all 7,097 living languages (and for registered / matriculated students with transcripts at World Univ and Sch (here's the FB group - (https://www.facebook.com/groups/48753608141/ - where I just posted this), which donated itself to Wikidata in 2015 for co-development, and got a new "front end" WUaS Miraheze Mediawiki in 2017) - via a single cryptocurrency backed by ~200 countries' central banks with blockchain ledger, Jimmy Wales , Lydia and All? (posted this to Andrew Lih's post in reply to Lydia Pintscher on August 4, 2018 here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/)

https://www.facebook.com/macleod

* This IUO (Initial UBI Offering) would be in lieu of an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) re current developments with CryoptoCurrencies with blockchain ledger, (where UBI universal basic income refers to universal basic income).

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Non-theist Friends/Quakers and MIT Anthro Prof Heather Paxson

Hi NtFs, (and Brian Spooner at UPenn),

Was glad to see that Heather Paxson, who's a MIT Anthro Prof, published in Friends Journal (in 1990) and went to Haverford, as well - which suggests to me that she may be Quaker.

I'm a Thee, too - Friends Journal

1990 “‘I’m a Thee, Too’: The Uses and Meaning of Quaker Plain Speech.” Friends Journal 6: 18-20.

http://web.mit.edu/paxson/www/CV/Heather_Paxson_CV.pdf



And she studies "moral beings" in the context of cultural anthropology, interestingly ("I am interested in how people craft a sense of themselves as moral beings in everyday, bodily practices including sex, reproduction, and eating" http://web.mit.edu/paxson/www/ & https://anthropology.mit.edu/people/faculty/heather-paxson). This is language I don't see very often in the anthropological literature, and suggests further that she may be bringing here Friendly understandings together with cultural Anthropological understandings. And having got her Ph.D. from Stanford, who knows, but perhaps she has been to Harbin Hot Springs as well (which is my anthropological field site for my ongoing actual/virtual Harbin Hot Springs' project, which has involved a little (Nt)Friendly inquiry in the process as well). Heather posts actively to Twitter - https://twitter.com/heather_paxson - as you'll see if you click on the HarbinBook link below (soon-ish) since I just re-Tweeted a recent Tweet of hers. Haven't checked yet her Twitter feed to see if she's posted about "moral beings" and Friends yet here or not.

Given anthropology's roots in cultural relativism, I wonder too what is a California / west coast "moral being," Heather, in relation to east coast, or Greek (where Heather has studied motherhood for her Ph.D.), or Vermont - or especially British understandings of "moral being" and in the information age? Heather, are you on this email list ? :)

While I don't think we on the NtF list have yet asked what a "moral being" is NtF-wise, philosophically, anthropologically or otherwise, I think we do have an opportunity to explore this question further in terms of a kind of cultural relativity, and even ask how American NtFs (http://www.nontheistfriends.org/) on this list and otherwise, and British NtFs (https://nontheist-quakers.org.uk/) on this list and other compare and contrast in their understandings of "moral being."

What do you think?


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Re an anthropological reading of "moral being" I'd like to bring into the conversation the work of Chris Boehm (who graduated from Antioch in Ohio in the late1950s, and has a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology from the early 1970s - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54495784e4b07f6735246768/t/54ecf7eae4b021b682d34fa6/1424816106879/boehm-cv-october-2014.pdf), and also studies altruism in terms of primatology. He's also a biological anthropologist, with wide-ranging scholarly interests.

Re 'moral beings,' see his -

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humans-became-moral-beings-80976434/

http://www.christopher-boehm.com/books/moral-origins-the-evolution-of-virtue-altruism-and-shame

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/christopher-boehm/moral-origins/9780465020485/

(http://www.christopher-boehm.com/about and https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-boehm-9b038112/)

(A few of us over the years have touched on evolutionary biology and NtFs in this email list).

In seeking to develop a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs as ethnographic field site for actual-virtual comparison, emerging out of my book about the same topic, it would be great to focus on this question of non-theistic Friendly "moral beings" a little further re west coast, post 1960s, information-age "moral beings" as well. I could imagine Heather loving to be involved in coding such an interactive realistic virtual project ?

What are of your NtF understandings of "moral beings" ?

Friendly cheers,
Scott


Visit Harbin gate at left in Street View-In calling for #RealisticVirtualHarbin in a #RealisticVirtualEarth
beginning w Street View w TIME SLIDER /Maps/Earth/Brain/Translate/TensorFlow+, for
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy?m=0 … in what ways will we be able to wiki-add data w voice/#Brainsets?



https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1022849157126651906




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- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President

- World University and School
- http://worlduniversityandschool.org

- http://scottmacleod.com


- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.


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Quaker Earthcare Witness, meeting at UC Berkeley Sems. in summer 2015
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5gxyYNvLwwNPJZsL9 … Friend Paul Alexander in vid, former business manager at Pendle Hill, Quaker Center for Study & Contemplation near Swarthmore college near Philadelphia PA (when I was a student in 1989)



https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1026175891959738370

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A view on "moral beings" ... and re conscientious objection (a focus of Quakers too)

Methods and perceptions of disobedience: Martha Minow and Ed Boyden in conversation with Joi Ito

MIT Media Lab was live.

Nominations for the 2018 Media Lab Disobedience Award are open through August 15. But what does it mean to be responsibly, ethically disobedient? How does disobedience differ—in philosophy and in action—across different endeavors? Joi Ito moderates a discussion with two members of the Disobedience Award selection committee: Ed Boyden, head of the Lab’s Synthetic Neurobiology research group, on disobedience in science; and Martha Minow, University Professor at Harvard Law School, on disobedience in civics and pol

https://www.facebook.com/mitmedialab/videos/10156872098774739/


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Attended Stanford Memorial Church service out of curiosity ...

Found it a bit too programmed (it's still seems to be a medieval service to me), relative to soaking in the (unprogrammed) Harbin Hot Springs' warm pool, as well as unprogrammed Quaker Meetings.

Also, in searching on Quakers at Stanford,

I found this ...
https://stanford.edu/group/quakers/

and that D. Elton Trueblood was chaplain of Stanford Memorial Church from 1936 to 1946 -

D. Elton Trueblood, a lifelong Quaker, was the church's chaplain from 1936 to 1946.[45][50] Trueblood was also a professor of philosophy of religion at Stanford and established the university's first major in religious studies;[51] his tenure there provided him with "the public visibility and financial freedom that made a national ministry possible".[50] He wrote 33 books, including one about Abraham Lincoln. Trueblood and his wife hosted monthly Friends meetings in their home, and met weekly with Orthodox Jewish students in the vestry of Stanford Memorial Church.[45][50][52] George J. Hall was the church's chaplain from 1946 to 1947, followed by Paul C. Johnson, who served between 1949 and 1950. Robert M. Minto was chaplain twice, in 1947-1948, and again from 1950-1973.[45] Minto, an associate chaplain at Stanford for two years prior, was a pastor in Scotland and a former British naval chaplain during World War II.[53]

... and ...

Stanford did not employ a full-time professor in religion until 1951 and did not establish a religious studies department until 1973, later than most other universities in the U.S. Earlier courses in religion were largely offered by the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church. David Charles Gardner offered a course in Biblical history and literature beginning in 1907, and by 1910, he was teaching New Testament Greek and Bible classes. Gardner's successor, D. Elton Trueblood, whose goal was the establishment of a non-denominational graduate school in religious studies at Stanford, taught classes about the philosophy of religion. In 1941 Trueblood's efforts to expand the study of religion resulted in the creation of a minor in religion, as well as twenty-one courses offered by him and four faculty members. By 1960, the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church no longer had to run the program, which had expanded to allow students the option of majoring in the study of religion.[39] By the mid-1960s, the religious studies program at Stanford was enjoying "enormous success".[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Memorial_Church


... would be interesting to hold an unprogrammed Quaker Meeting regularly in the Room behind Stanford Memorial Church ... (have blogged about this)


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Free Universal School

http://www.northernspiritradio.org/episode/free-universal-school

(accessible too from http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm )




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