(Reuters) – A high-profile group of global leaders declared the “war on drugs” a failure on Thursday and urged governments to consider decriminalizing drugs in a bid to cut consumption and weaken the power of organized crime gangs

I have always believed this to be true. We need to decriminalize drug possession and make it taxed, and use that money to support rehab and education. Create a drug “food-like-pyramid” and get over the idea that drug-users are a-moral. It is patently false, and we need to make it safer. It is time to admit that prohibition NEVER works.

Read more: Original Document

By leading the Americans in his audience at TEDxPSU step by step through the thought process, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can they understand — not approve of, but understand — the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? And by extension, can anyone truly understand and empathize with another?

Sam Richards is a sociologist and award-winning teacher who has been inspiring undergraduate students at Penn State since 1990. Every semester, 725 students register for his Race and Ethnic Relations course, one of the most popular classes at Penn State and the largest of its kind in the country. Through his natural ability of seeing a subject from many angles, Richards encourages students to engage more fully with the world and to think for themselves — something he did not do until his third year in college. Because of his passion for challenging students to open their minds, an interviewer recently referred to him as “an alarm clock for eighteen-year-olds.”

His career began at the age of 24 when he was hired to teach a cybernetics course — just 15 minutes before the first class meeting. He remembers walking into the room without having had a moment to create a lesson plan and greeting his students, “Welcome to the course. I’m your instructor. And if you have no idea what cybernetics is, you’re not alone — because I don’t either.” This characteristic willingness to be playfully transparent in the classroom, along with a talent for making complex ideas understandable and relevant, is the foundation of his success as a teacher.

Richards is also the co-director of the World in Conversation Project at Penn State (www.worldinconversation.org), whose mission is to create a kind of dialogue about social and cultural issues that invites the unexamined, politically incorrect thoughts of participants to the surface so that those thoughts can be submitted to conscious exploration and inquiry. The conversation topics span a range of cultural issues — from U.S. race relations to gender to faith to international racism. This year, nearly 7,000 University Park students will participate in one of more than 1,300 of these unscripted conversations. Furthermore, the project also sponsors video dialogues between Penn State students and students at other universities around the world.

URL: http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/columns/michael-shermer/stephen-hawking%E2%80%99s-radical-philosophy-of-science

The models generated by biochemical processes in our brains constitute “reality.” None of us can ever be completely sure that the world really is as it appears, or if our minds have unconsciously imposed a misleading pattern on the data. I call this belief-dependent realism. In my forthcoming book, The Believing Brain, I demonstrate the myriad ways that our beliefs shape, influence, and even control everything we think, do, and say about the world. The power of belief is so strong that we typically form our beliefs first, then construct a rationale for holding those beliefs after the fact. I claim that the only escape from this epistemological trap is science. Flawed as it may be because it is conducted by scientists who have their own set of beliefs determining their reality, science itself has a set of methods to bypass the cognitive biases that so cripple our grasp of the reality that really does exist out there. ~ Michael Shermer Author of The Believing Brain.

I am very intrigued by many of the ideas put forth in this article. The beginning ties anyone with a seeking mind in with the beautiful description of how we receive and interpret the environment through our senses and brain.  However, I must disagree with the author slightly in that I do not think our brains have the incredible crippling bias that Shermer references.

Science is extraordinary. Yet what runs science but human minds? When I look at reality I have to think that most of what I see is fairly accurate. From a philosophical standpoint we must come to the conclusion that we can never know exactly what reality is without altering that reality or without some degradation of the information we are getting about it. But I choose to assume that what my senses take in are as close to the truth as I may ever come. And in fact I can rely on my senses pretty well. Things behave in patterns that I have learned over my life. Other people can verify for me that there is in fact a computer screen in front of my eyes!

What I am getting at is that I am not a scientist nor are most people. Yet we can use logic and reason along with our senses and memory to make a pretty good working model of the world and that is what people have been doing for millenia. Observing and comparing notes. I am not trying to go on an attack on science. However, scientists study things that may or may not have a direct impact on our daily lives. Yet you and I can study and observe and make some logical conclusions about the world we live in that might make a vast difference in how we view our own realities. I look to science for guidance but I also consult a whole host of sources in order for me to make a a choice and apply it in my life.

It really all comes down to belief. Beliefs have the power to cloud our view of reality or tune us into it even more deeply. Even science has its doctrine. So I believe that it is even more important than science to focus on our own beliefs and realize that they are what inform our reality most yet that we can choose to have our observations shape them. One can either mold reality to their beliefs or allow reality to inform and inspire their thoughts and beliefs.