I’m Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, introducing myself. I have six grandchildren, from five biological children, and I have two adopted girls, age 11 from China, and age 9 from Ethiopia.
Born in 1944, Abd ul-Rahman is not my birth name, I accepted Islam in 1970. Not being willing to accept pale substitutes, I learned to read the Qur’an in Arabic by reading the Qur’an in Arabic.
Back to my teenage years, I was at Cal Tech for a couple of years, being in Richard P. Feynman’s two years of undergraduate physics classes, the ones made into the textbook. I had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, as well. Both of them helped create how I think.
I left Cal Tech to pursue a realm other than “science,” but was always interested in direct experience rather than becoming stuffed with tradition, though I later came to respect tradition (and memorization) far more than at the outset. I became a leader of a “spiritual community,” and a successor to a well-known teacher, Samuel L. Lewis, but was led to pursue many other interests.
I delivered babies (starting with my own) and founded a school of midwifery that trained midwives for licensing in Arizona.
Self-taught, I started an electronics design consulting business, still going with a designer in Brazil.
I became known as one of the many independent inventors of delegable proxy as a method of creating hierarchical communication structure from the bottom up. Social structure, and particularly how to facilitate collective intelligence, has been a long-term interest.
I was a Muslim chaplain at San Quentin State Prison, serving an almost entirely Black community. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not black. I loved it. People are people.
So much I’m not saying yet.… I became interested in wikis early on, but didn’t get to Wikipedia until 2005, becoming seriously active in 2007. Eventually, I came across an abusive blacklisting of a web site, a well-known archive of scientific papers on cold fusion. I’d been very aware of the 1989 announcement and some of the ensuing flap, but had assumed, like most people with enough knowledge to know what it was about, that the work had not been replicated.
When I looked, I became interested enough to buy a number of major works in the area (including almost all of the skeptical literature).
Among those who have become familiar, cold fusion (a bit of a misnomer; at the least it was prematurely named), is an ultimately clear example of how pseudoskepticism came to dominate a whole field, for over fifteen years. The situation flipped in the peer-reviewed journals beginning about eight years ago, but that’s not widely recognized, it is merely obvious if one looks at what has been published in that period of time..
Showing this is way beyond the scope of this introduction, but I assume it will come up. I’m just asserting what I reasonably conclude, having become familiar with the evidence, (and I’m working with the scientists in the field now, in many ways).
As to rational skepticism, I was known to Martin Gardner, who quoted a study of mine on the so-called Miracle of the Nineteen in the Qur’an, the work of Rashad Khalifa, whom I knew personally.
I naively thought, for a couple of days, that a rational-skeptic approach to cold fusion might be welcome on RationalWiki. Definitely not. Again, that’s another story. However, I’m not banned there and have sysop privileges (like most users).
On RationalWiki, however, I came across the work of Yudkowsky, and this blog. Wow! In some of the circles in which I’ve moved, I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness, with only a few echoes here and there. Here, I’m reluctant to say anything, so commonly cogent is comment in this community. I know I’m likely to stick my foot in my mouth.
However, that’s never stopped me, and learning to recognize the taste of my foot, with the help of my friends, is one way in which I’ve kept my growth alive. The fastest way to learn is generally to make mistakes.
I’m also likely to comment, eventually, on the practical ontology and present reality of Landmark Education, with which I’ve become quite familiar, as well as on the myths and facts which widely circulate about Landmark. To start, they do let you go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, I’ve caught up with HPMOR, and am starting to read the sequences. Great stuff, folks.
I’m Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, introducing myself. I have six grandchildren, from five biological children, and I have two adopted girls, age 11 from China, and age 9 from Ethiopia.
Born in 1944, Abd ul-Rahman is not my birth name, I accepted Islam in 1970. Not being willing to accept pale substitutes, I learned to read the Qur’an in Arabic by reading the Qur’an in Arabic.
Back to my teenage years, I was at Cal Tech for a couple of years, being in Richard P. Feynman’s two years of undergraduate physics classes, the ones made into the textbook. I had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, as well. Both of them helped create how I think.
I left Cal Tech to pursue a realm other than “science,” but was always interested in direct experience rather than becoming stuffed with tradition, though I later came to respect tradition (and memorization) far more than at the outset. I became a leader of a “spiritual community,” and a successor to a well-known teacher, Samuel L. Lewis, but was led to pursue many other interests.
I delivered babies (starting with my own) and founded a school of midwifery that trained midwives for licensing in Arizona.
Self-taught, I started an electronics design consulting business, still going with a designer in Brazil.
I became known as one of the many independent inventors of delegable proxy as a method of creating hierarchical communication structure from the bottom up. Social structure, and particularly how to facilitate collective intelligence, has been a long-term interest.
I was a Muslim chaplain at San Quentin State Prison, serving an almost entirely Black community. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not black. I loved it. People are people.
So much I’m not saying yet.… I became interested in wikis early on, but didn’t get to Wikipedia until 2005, becoming seriously active in 2007. Eventually, I came across an abusive blacklisting of a web site, a well-known archive of scientific papers on cold fusion. I’d been very aware of the 1989 announcement and some of the ensuing flap, but had assumed, like most people with enough knowledge to know what it was about, that the work had not been replicated.
When I looked, I became interested enough to buy a number of major works in the area (including almost all of the skeptical literature).
Among those who have become familiar, cold fusion (a bit of a misnomer; at the least it was prematurely named), is an ultimately clear example of how pseudoskepticism came to dominate a whole field, for over fifteen years. The situation flipped in the peer-reviewed journals beginning about eight years ago, but that’s not widely recognized, it is merely obvious if one looks at what has been published in that period of time..
Showing this is way beyond the scope of this introduction, but I assume it will come up. I’m just asserting what I reasonably conclude, having become familiar with the evidence, (and I’m working with the scientists in the field now, in many ways).
As to rational skepticism, I was known to Martin Gardner, who quoted a study of mine on the so-called Miracle of the Nineteen in the Qur’an, the work of Rashad Khalifa, whom I knew personally.
I naively thought, for a couple of days, that a rational-skeptic approach to cold fusion might be welcome on RationalWiki. Definitely not. Again, that’s another story. However, I’m not banned there and have sysop privileges (like most users).
On RationalWiki, however, I came across the work of Yudkowsky, and this blog. Wow! In some of the circles in which I’ve moved, I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness, with only a few echoes here and there. Here, I’m reluctant to say anything, so commonly cogent is comment in this community. I know I’m likely to stick my foot in my mouth.
However, that’s never stopped me, and learning to recognize the taste of my foot, with the help of my friends, is one way in which I’ve kept my growth alive. The fastest way to learn is generally to make mistakes.
I’m also likely to comment, eventually, on the practical ontology and present reality of Landmark Education, with which I’ve become quite familiar, as well as on the myths and facts which widely circulate about Landmark. To start, they do let you go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, I’ve caught up with HPMOR, and am starting to read the sequences. Great stuff, folks.
Welcome! That’s a fascinating biography.
I have been to one introductory Landmark seminar and wrote about the experience here.