This is an interesting controversy in my mind about freedom of speech.  I can understand from TED’s perspective their brand image TEDx and the controversial nature of the ideas but then the thought about freedom of speech comes up for me.  I also reflected on the mindsets of worldviews clashing on what is seen as rationale and reasonable.  Of course these are blurry lines drawn in the sand and if someone is seeing life in an entirely different view then they will not accept conventional or radical responses.

However, what I particularly like about this debate is that all sides are thinking about what is truth? what is proof? what is rational?  what are the lines that define the discussion? what is fair?  what are the rules?  what is freedom?  That is how we open our minds and expand possibilities, so the debate is a good opportunity to expand minds.  There are of course, unlimited possibilities.  Life is fun.

I had a look at the videos, I found Rupert Sheldrake’s talk was reasonable and it raised questions.  He made a clear argument about science as a method of inquiry and science as a belief system or worldview, he saw the worldview inhibit the free inquiry which is the lifeblood of the scientific endeavour. He spoke of his book the Science Delusion. He advised turning the dogma of science and turn it into questions, in his view they didn’t stand up. He saw these as the default worldviews of a mechanical universe and fixed laws of nature. He made the point that the belief is that matter is unconscious. He questioned the philosophy of mind proving that we are not conscious at all. It was a very interesting talk.

The second talk by Graham Hancock was another exponent of consciousness. He has sold over 5 million books. He speaks of the great change of symbolic consciousness expressed on rock and cave art. The emergence into consciousness was encountered by altered states of consciousness using plants. He spoke of mushrooms and other plants. He spoke of his trip to the amazon and sharmanistic cultures and drinking a brew which contained DMT. In the Amazon the indigenous people spoke of spirits helping them use this natural drug. The drug takes people on a journey into extraordinary realms. He said it is a foul tasting brew and he wasn’t drinking for fun but to explore consciousness. So he makes it clear that it is not a recreational drug and he makes the point that psychedelic drugs shouldn’t be used. He points out the creative effects from taking this substance and he speaks of the visions and paintings reproduced. He spoke of a universal experience of encountering entities, he said he made no claims but spoke of Mother Ayahuasca he sees her as the mother goddess of the planet, he said she wants us to be the best we can be and heal the errors in us. He said this substance was useful to get addicts off drugs and they encounter this entity and half become free of their addictions. So he raises an alternative and interesting experience.

He spoke of his own personal experience of a 24 year non stop cannibis experience. He speaks of being permanently stoned and states he enjoyed it. He felt it helped him with his work as a writer. When he tried the Amazonian substance that he received messages that the cannibis was not helping him and was negative behaviour. He stated it is the sovereign right to use cannibis but acknowledged that he had abused the drug and explained what his behaviour was like.

The controversy it seems to me is really around his admission to smoking cannibis which is banned under current laws, unless you are in Canberra you can have 5 joints legally (small amounts) or use it medicinally.  Just added that in for fun.  I suspect his alluding to an entity was also not believed and the mythology he attached to it, he moved into the realm of experiences that couldn’t be proved and whether this is fantasy or fact. It was a fascinating story and I could hear the nervousness in his voice which suggested to me he was afraid and at the same time brave to reveal his story as it is not mainstream. I saw it as a useful contribution and again expanding possibilities. You believe or not as you wish, this is democracy but what I love about democracy is that everyone has a right to their opinion and life experience. I sensed this was honestly spoken and I was glad he gained a platform to express the mystery of his life. Perhaps his ideas spread more now due to the controversy. It is worth exploring. Here is another interesting link http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psycho18.htm

Overall, I found the stories harmless compared to the violent movies I’ve seen on television which show gratuitous violence and no mercy.  I smile at the irony of sex scenes covered up (intimate parts as well for men) unless they are porno, then they are distorted images of human sexuality as primarily male fantasy rather than bonding and mutual respect experiencing the beauty of merging into one as one of the highest human experiences of life.   So my point is I’ve seen far worse in the modern media that can cause harm and distort knowledge than the two videos I looked at.

So looking into the wider context of the visual information available, the talks in my view were harmless and intelligently shared within the context of expanding ideas and moving us into new ways of seeing.  At the end of the day they are examples of democracy, hearing different voices. I’d rather that than controlled information by people who are perceived as experts telling me what to think and giving the proof, I want to explore life for myself and stare into the mystery.  What I love about some of the new thinking arising these days is that it is not about thought.  Eckhart Tolle speaks of The Power of Now and Stillness Speaks (no thought), Byron Katie encourages people to question their negative thinking and explore 100% projection and what hurts us is fighting with what she terms reality (god), What the Bleep looks at metaphysics and the law of attraction and so on.  It is great to explore the possibilities and I trust my inner feeling over any expert.  I trust what I intuit, so far so good.

From a brand image perspective I see that as the barrier to freedom of speech.  Just create forums for people to speak ensure they are not harmful or deliberate misinformation and allow people to talk and explore ideas and life.  That is my feeling.    I don’t think you can have a panel of scientists in the position of evaluating alternative pseudoscience – a few questions 1) is it unfair to put them in that position? 2) They will seek out evidence, is that possible with the unseen? Values based overviews in my view would be where I would focus.

I have to laugh I met a few older teachers a few days ago.  The wife, a former teacher, is having a creative renaissance in her life and is finding herself exploring the unseen.  She is weaving and creating and allowing herself to just be in the moment.  Her mind is very open.  The husband, a former teacher, was into reading and stated to me that the metaphysical argument has to be proven scientifically for him to believe. I saw his mind shut because his worldview was rationale science not the shifting sands of alternative views of consciousness. We were actually talking about indigenous Australians and how they were spiritual and saw learning in a different way. I mentioned some white Australians who worked as nurse/social worker with indigenous people state to me that there was a story where an elderly indigenous man bi-located outside of a community. In other words one moment he was leaving his home the next minute he was seen in Alice Springs 80km away. The white people I spoke to believed the story. I also believed it as I’ve heard of it in different forums, my mind is open to this possibility. Can we prove it? probably if an indigenous person agrees to be tested. To-date I am not sure anyone has actually considered doing a study, it would be fascinating. I’ve heard of guru’s in India levitating, seen books on ESP and felt it myself, had dejavu in London and felt I received a message as well from what I call source. I’ll share it here for the fun of it. I put it to the retired teacher as I no longer feel uncomfortable talking about it.  This is the story…

I was lying next to a new partner at the time and two thoughts came into my mind, it felt like the thoughts floated in. I thought ‘send me peace’ at the time I felt great peace but that was the thought. The second thought was ‘speak through him’. Again I am not experimenting just my mind  is open and thoughts floating in. The partner wakes up 10 seconds later and he just says spontaneously ‘I send you peace’ and ‘your work was blessed’ and then back to sleep. Now these thoughts were not verbalised and I lay there stunned as it felt to me something unexplainable had happened. I drove him somewhere the next day then emailed him, the scientist in me coming out. I asked what happened. This is what he wrote.

Mon 11/05/2009 12:29 AM

No I was not awake – I woke up to speak to you

I had a very vivid feeling from my dream that your work was blessed

It seemed God was talking to me in my sleep

I woke up, said what I said to you and went straight back to sleep

You later told me that you wanted God to speak through me – I have no doubt that he did

It was not so much a feeling as a message

As you know, I was holding some tensions about the way that you actually undertake your work, so the message was not from me, it was from Omni (god)

I still wish you peace

Love and abundance

Paul

I shared the story and they both said nothing, and I didn’t mind at all.  It is my truth and I am comfortable with it. How can you put that experience up against scientific scrutiny? From my perspective I have no doubt I received a message and it has given me a sense of keep on keeping on with my dream of peace, that my life is moved and I love that. So looking at TED and the controversy over new ideas, we don’t need scientific panels but simply a cross section of people looking at the implications of intent and whether harm is caused from a speech or if information is clearly incorrect.  For example the guy who said the Holocaust didn’t happen (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial), clearly that is erroneous and a denial of history.   I can prove that as I interviewed a concentration camp survivor and she had a tatoo and tears.  She was promoting that we should love each other.  She also reported to me an angel was with her.  How again do we prove that scientifically?  However, we can collect stories and if there is enough of them it is worth exploring.  Can you prove it, sometimes not as we are dealing with the unseen that is not material , we can only go on testimonials or if we are lucky somehow record phenomena.  

Some may seek to deliberately distort truth, that is where you draw the line in my view, allow people their whacky ideas, who knows they may be right.  Perhaps it is you that is whacky, so keep the ideas coming so we can choose.

So here is the response by the TED people about these two talks and there are links to access their talks for you to determine whether you think they should be removed from TED or not.

TED Blog

UPDATE: Please see our new blog post Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake, a fresh take, which replaces the x-ed out text below.

To discuss the talks, view them here:

The debate about Rupert Sheldrake’s talk
The debate about Graham Hancock’s talk

After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.

All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

UPDATE: Please find Rupert Sheldrake’s response below the video window.

According to our science board, Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk. For example, he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.

He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example. But, in truth, there has been a great deal of inquiry into the nature of scientific constants, including published, peer-reviewed research investigating whether certain constants – including the speed of light – might actually vary over time or distance. Scientists are constantly questioning these assumptions. For example, just this year Scientific American published a feature on the state of research into exactly this question. (“Are physical constants really constant?: Do the inner workings of nature change over time?”) Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.

In addition, Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.

Response to the TED Scientific Board’s Statement

Rupert Sheldrake
March 18, 2013

I would like to respond to TED’s claims that my TEDx talk “crossed the line into pseudoscience”, contains ”serious factual errors” and makes “many misleading statements.”

This discussion is taking place because the militant atheist bloggers Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers denounced me, and attacked TED for giving my talk a platform. I was invited to give my talk as part of a TEDx event in Whitechapel, London, called “Challenging Existing Paradigms.” That’s where the problem lies: my talk explicitly challenges the materialist belief system. It summarized some of the main themes of my recent book Science Set Free (in the UK called The Science Delusion). Unfortunately, the TED administrators have publically aligned themselves with the old paradigm of materialism, which has dominated science since the late nineteenth century.

TED say they removed my talk from their website on the advice of their Scientific Board, who also condemned Graham Hancock’s talk. Hancock and I are now facing anonymous accusations made by a body on whose authority TED relies, on whose advice they act, and behind whom they shelter, but whose names they have not revealed.

TED’s anonymous Scientific Board made three specific accusations:

Accusation 1:
“he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.”

I characterized the materialist dogma as follows: “Matter is unconscious: the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There’s no consciousness in stars in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants and there ought not to be any in us either, if this theory’s true. So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last 100 years has been trying to prove that we are not really conscious at all.” Certainly some biologists, including myself, accept that animals are conscious. In August, 2012, a group of scientists came out with an endorsement of animal consciousness in “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness”. As Discovery News reported, “While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it’s the open acknowledgement that’s the big news here.” (http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/animals-consciousness-mammals-birds-octopus-120824.htm)

But materialist philosophers and scientists are still in the majority, and they argue that consciousness does nothing – it is either an illusion or an ”epiphenomenon” of brain activity. It might as well not exist in animals – or even in humans. That is why in the philosophy of mind, the very existence of consciousness is often called “the hard problem”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Accusation 2:
“He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example.… Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.”

TED’s Scientific Board refers to a Scientific American article that makes my point very clearly: “Physicists routinely assume that quantities such as the speed of light are constant.”

In my talk I said that the published values of the speed of light dropped by about 20 km/sec between 1928 and 1945. Carroll’s “careful rebuttal” consisted of a table copied from Wikipedia showing the speed of light at different dates, with a gap between 1926 and 1950, omitting the very period I referred to. His other reference (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html) does indeed give two values for the speed of light in this period, in 1928 and 1932-35, and sure enough, they were 20 and 24km/sec lower than the previous value, and 14 and 18 km/sec lower than the value from 1947 onwards.

1926: 299,798
1928: 299,778
1932-5: 299,774
1947: 299,792

In my talk I suggest how a re-examination of existing data could resolve whether large continuing variations in the Universal Gravitational Constant, G, are merely errors, as usually assumed, or whether they show correlations between different labs that might have important scientific implications hitherto ignored. Jerry Coyne and TED’s Scientific Board regard this as an exercise in pseudoscience. I think their attitude reveals a remarkable lack of curiosity.

Accusation 3:
“Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.”

I said, “There is in fact good evidence that new compounds get easier to crystallize all around the world.” For example, turanose, a kind of sugar, was considered to be a liquid for decades, until it first crystallized in the 1920s. Thereafter it formed crystals everyehere. (Woodard and McCrone Journal of Applied Crystallography (1975). 8, 342). The American chemist C. P. Saylor, remarked it was as though “the seeds of crystallization, as dust, were carried upon the winds from end to end of the earth” (quoted by Woodard and McCrone).

The research on rat behavior I referred to was carried out at Harvard and the Universities of Melbourne and Edinburgh and was published in peer-reviewed journals, including the British Journal of Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Biology. For a fuller account and detailed references see Chapter 11 of my book Morphic Resonance (in the US) / A New Science of Life (in the UK). The relevant passage is online here: http://sciencesetfree.tumblr.com/

The TED Scientific Board refers to ”attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work” on morphic resonance. I would be happy to work with these eager scientists if the Scientific Board can reveal who they are.

This is a good opportunity to correct an oversimplification in my talk. In relation to the dogma that mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works, I said, “that’s why governments only fund mechanistic medicine and ignore complementary and alternative therapies.” This is true of most governments, but the US is a notable exception. The US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine receives about $130 million a year, about 0.4% of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) total annual budget of $31 billion.

Obviously I could not spell out all the details of my arguments in an 18-minute talk, but TED’s claims that it contains “serious factual errors,” “many misleading statements” and that it crosses the line into “pseudoscience” are defamatory and false.

UPDATE: Please find Graham Hancock’s response below the video window.

HANCOCK
Graham Hancock’s talk, again, shares a compelling and unorthodox worldview, but one that strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science. While attempting to critique the scientific worldview, he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.

In addition, Hancock makes statements about psychotropic drugs that seem both nonscientific and reckless. He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture. He seems to offer a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.

TED respects and supports the exploration of unorthodox ideas, but the many misleading statements in both Sheldrake’s and Hancock’s talks, whether made deliberately or in error, have led our scientific advisors to conclude that our name and platform should not be associated with these talks.

Response to the TED Scientific Board’s Statement

Graham Hancock
March 18, 2013

(1) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “…he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.”

The only passage I can find in my presentation that has any relevance at all to this allegation is between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds. But nowhere in that passage or anywhere else in my presentation do I make the suggestion you attribute to me in your allegation, namely that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.” Rather I address the mystery of life after death and state that “if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all.” That statement cannot possibly be construed as my suggesting that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness,” or of “misrepresenting” what materialist, reductionist scientists actually think. I am simply stating the fact, surely not controversial, that materialist, reductionist scientists have nothing to say on the matter of life after death because their paradigm does not allow them to believe in the possibility of life after death; they believe rather that nothing follows death. Here is the full transcript of what I say in my presentation between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds: “What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter. Materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies, so when the brain is dead that’s the end of consciousness. There is no life after death. There is no soul. We just rot and are gone. But actually any honest scientist should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain’s involved in it in some way, but we’re not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity. If you hold to that paradigm then of course you can’t believe in life after death. When the generator’s broken consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship – and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions – that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop. And really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all. Let’s go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for three thousand years on the problem of death and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death…”

(2) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “… Hancock makes statements about psychotropic drugs that seem both non-scientific and reckless.”

I profoundly disagree. In my presentation I speak honestly and openly about my own damaging and destructive 24-year cannabis habit and about how experiences under the influence of Ayahuasca were the key to breaking this habit. I also say ( 3 min 46 seconds to 3 min 50 seconds) that “I don’t think any of the psychedelics should be used for recreation.”

(3) TED says of my presentation: “He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

Nowhere in my talk do I state as a fact that psychotropic drug use is “essential” for an “emergence into consciousness.” Nowhere in my talk do I state that “one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

(4) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “He offers a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), which just doesn’t hold up.”

I refute this. What I say (between 1 min 06 seconds and 1 min 54 seconds) is that some scientists in the last thirty years have raised an intriguing possibility — emphasis on POSSIBILITY — which is that the exploration of altered states of consciousness, in which psychedelic plants have been implicated, was fundamental to the emergence into fully symbolic consciousness witnessed by the great cave art.

(5) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “… it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.”

Of what possible relevance is this remark? Many different people have characterised my work in many different ways but at issue here is not what people have said about my work over the years but the actual content of this specific TEDx presentation.

Here is an UPDATE from the previous blog by TED…

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/