Controversy Analysis and Detection
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Former Disciple and Chauffeur of Guru Maharaji Ji, Prem Rawat, Reveals How and Why He Left the Cult to Reclaim His Life
Former disciple and chauffeur of Guru Maharaji Ji, Prem Rawat, reveals how and why he left the cult to reclaim his life Without the Guru by Michael Finch explores how to face life’s questions without the control of a guru December 7, 2009 – Without the Guru: How I Took my Life Back After Thirty Years by Michael Finch narrates how he broke free of what he felt was a suffocating, rigid belief system and learned to think for himself. Many people are dissatisfied by the religious aspects of spirituality, yet science alone fails to fill that need, claims author Finch. These individuals sometime turn to gurus, as Finch did, with the potentially negative results he chronicles in Without the Guru. In the book, Finch reveals how he gave his total allegiance, love and money to Guru Maharaji Ji as well as to the guru’s organizations, Divine Light Mission and Elan Vital. This included two inheritances, a house and thousands of dollars. As the guru’s former chauffeur, he lived for several years as a renunciate in the ashram and later was authorized to reveal the secret teachings. But gradually, he began to feel more and more trapped, and struggled to find his way out and discover a life of his own making. Both a memoir and a narrative of Finch’s time with the guru, Without the Guru explores the importance of thinking for oneself rather than adhering to anyone else’s belief system. While it examines the popularity of cults and the seductive atmosphere they generate, Finch also champions how to find answers within the context of one’s own life and details the process that led Finch to face life’s main issues on his own terms—and his own two feet. -
Arxiv:1212.0018V2 [Cs.SI] 18 Dec 2012 Etn Ucin Ffe-Akteoois[ Economies Free-Market of Functions Setting E.[ Ref
Evidence for Non-Finite-State Computation in a Human Social System Simon DeDeo∗ Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA (Dated: December 19, 2012) We investigate the computational structure of a paradigmatic example of distributed so- cial interaction: that of the open-source Wikipedia community. The typical computational approach to modeling such a system is to rely on finite-state machines. However, we find strong evidence in this system for the emergence of processing powers over and above the finite-state. Thus, Wikipedia, understood as an information processing system, must have access to (at least one) effectively unbounded resource. The nature of this resource is such that one observes far longer runs of cooperative behavior than one would expect using finite- state models. We provide evidence that the emergence of this non-finite-state computation is driven by collective interaction effects. Social systems—particularly human social systems—process information. From the price- setting functions of free-market economies [1, 2] to resource management in traditional communi- ties [3], from deliberations in large-scale democracies [4, 5] to the formation of opinions and spread of reputational information in organizations [6] and social groups [7, 8], it has been recognized that such groups can perform functions analogous to (and often better than) engineered systems. Such functional roles are found in groups in addition to their contingent historical aspects and, when described mathematically, may be compared across cultures and times. The computational phenomena implicit in social systems are only now, with the advent of large, high-resolution data-sets, coming under systematic, empirical study at large scales. -
Emotions and Activity Profiles of Influential Users in Product Reviews Communities
Research Collection Journal Article Emotions and activity profiles of influential users in product reviews communities Author(s): Tanase, Dorian; Garcia, David; Garas, Antonios; Schweitzer, Frank Publication Date: 2015-11 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000108082 Originally published in: Frontiers in Physics 3, http://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2015.00087 Rights / License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 17 November 2015 doi: 10.3389/fphy.2015.00087 Emotions and Activity Profiles of Influential Users in Product Reviews Communities Dorian Tanase, David Garcia *, Antonios Garas and Frank Schweitzer Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Viral marketing seeks to maximize the spread of a campaign through an online social network, often targeting influential nodes with high centrality. In this article, we analyze behavioral aspects of influential users in trust-based product reviews communities, quantifying emotional expression, helpfulness, and user activity level. We focus on two independent product review communities, Dooyoo and Epinions, in which users can write product reviews and define trust links to filter product recommendations. Following the patterns of social contagion processes, we measure user social influence by means of the k-shell decomposition of trust networks. For each of these users, we apply sentiment analysis to extract their extent of positive, negative, and neutral emotional expression. In addition, we quantify the level of feedback they received in their reviews, the length of their contributions, and their level of activity over their lifetime in the community. -
Brain & Cognitive Science 2016
Brain & Cognitive Science 2016 press.princeton.edu Contents 1 general interest 3 psychology New New 6 Phishing for Phools How to Clone a The Economics of Mammoth social science Manipulation and Deception The Science of De-Extinction George A. Akerlof & Beth Shapiro Robert J. Shiller 9 “[A] fascinating book. A great biology & “This fun but serious book tells popular science title, and one neuroscience how the standard story about that makes it clear that a future free markets often gets it wrong. you may have imagined is already 11 Indeed, Akerlof and Shiller suggest underway.” that we should drop the view —Library Journal, starred review philosophy of markets as generally benign “As a researcher who is shaping institutions. The argument is laid this eld, Shapiro is the perfect out with the help of fascinating 12 guide to the ongoing discussion anecdotes, the language is con- best of the backlist about de-extinction. While many versational, and the book is easy news items and conference to read.” presentations have focused on 13 —Dani Rodrik, author of The the technology required to create index | order form Globalization Paradox extinct life, Shapiro carefully “Phishing for Phools is a coherent considers every step along the and highly plausible explanation journey to de-extinction, from of why markets—although usually choosing a species to revive to bene cial—can lead to undesir- making sure they don’t become able outcomes. The book takes extinct all over again. Whether an intriguing approach and gives you’re all for de-extinction or many interesting examples.” against it, Shapiro’s sharp, witty, —Diane Coyle, author of GDP: A and impeccably-argued book is Brief but A ectionate History essential for informing those who Ever since Adam Smith, the central will decide what life will become.” teaching of economics has been —Brian Switek, NationalGeo- that free markets provide us with graphic.com’s Laelaps blog material well-being, as if by an in- “Beth Shapiro. -
Why I Became a Hindu
Why I became a Hindu Parama Karuna Devi published by Jagannatha Vallabha Vedic Research Center Copyright © 2018 Parama Karuna Devi All rights reserved Title ID: 8916295 ISBN-13: 978-1724611147 ISBN-10: 1724611143 published by: Jagannatha Vallabha Vedic Research Center Website: www.jagannathavallabha.com Anyone wishing to submit questions, observations, objections or further information, useful in improving the contents of this book, is welcome to contact the author: E-mail: [email protected] phone: +91 (India) 94373 00906 Please note: direct contact data such as email and phone numbers may change due to events of force majeure, so please keep an eye on the updated information on the website. Table of contents Preface 7 My work 9 My experience 12 Why Hinduism is better 18 Fundamental teachings of Hinduism 21 A definition of Hinduism 29 The problem of castes 31 The importance of Bhakti 34 The need for a Guru 39 Can someone become a Hindu? 43 Historical examples 45 Hinduism in the world 52 Conversions in modern times 56 Individuals who embraced Hindu beliefs 61 Hindu revival 68 Dayananda Saraswati and Arya Samaj 73 Shraddhananda Swami 75 Sarla Bedi 75 Pandurang Shastri Athavale 75 Chattampi Swamikal 76 Narayana Guru 77 Navajyothi Sree Karunakara Guru 78 Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha 79 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 79 Sarada Devi 80 Golap Ma 81 Rama Tirtha Swami 81 Niranjanananda Swami 81 Vireshwarananda Swami 82 Rudrananda Swami 82 Swahananda Swami 82 Narayanananda Swami 83 Vivekananda Swami and Ramakrishna Math 83 Sister Nivedita -
22. MEL PATRICK the Author of This Site and the Book "Egocentricity and Spirituality"
22. MEL PATRICK The author of this site and the book "Egocentricity and spirituality" is not a guru, an enlightened being, a Jivanmukti or a Jnani (a realized person who holds sacred knowledge). He teaches nothing nor organizes sessions of meditation and Satsang (talks about spirituality and non-duality). He isn’t more or less "awakened" than anybody else when he doesn’t sleep in the arms of Morpheus. He doesn’t claim to be free from anything and doesn’t think to have realized the Self. He doesn’t live in Nirvana or in a world of non-duality, and even less in a fourth dimension of pure consciousness or in heaven, but on earth as all other human beings. He’s actually a very normal and ordinary human being and not God, the Self, the universal consciousness, stillness or an ocean of bliss. He writes to share his experience with other seekers of truth and what is according to him good for humanity. As a matter of fact, he is a seeker of truth and that’s why he doesn’t hesitate to denounce the delirious abuses of spirituality (especially in the non-duality circles) that we can witness today in the West. His initiation with Swami Girdanandaji from Uttarkashi and study of Advaita Vedanta with Mr. Brahma Chaitanya from Gangotri enable him to have a relatively clear idea of what is meant by the term "non-duality". And it’s precisely this subject that he wishes to introduce to the reader, subject based on an experience he has lived and very clearly described in the section "Experience" dated the 4/2/2012. -
Selling Sex: What Determines Rates and Popularity? an Analysis of 11,500 Online Profiles, Culture, Health & Sexuality
This is an authors’ copy of: Alicia Mergenthaler & Taha Yasseri (2021) Selling sex: what determines rates and popularity? An analysis of 11,500 online profiles, Culture, Health & Sexuality. DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2021.1901145 Selling sex: what determines rates and popularity? An analysis of 11,500 online profiles Alicia Mergenthalera, Taha Yasseri*abc aOxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; bSchool of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; cGeary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland *Corresponding Author: Taha Yasseri: [email protected] Abstract Sex work, or the exchange of sexual services for money or goods, is ubiquitous across eras and cultures. However, the practice of selling sex is often hidden due to stigma and the varying legal status of sex work. Online platforms that sex workers use to advertise services have become an increasingly important means of studying a market that is largely hidden. Although prior literature has primarily shed light on sex work from a public health or policy perspective (focusing largely on female sex workers), there are few studies that empirically research patterns of service provision in online sex work. This study investigated the determinants of pricing and popularity in the market for commercial sexual services online by using data from the largest UK network of online sexual services, a platform that is the industry-standard for sex workers. While the size of these influences varies across genders, nationality, age and the services provided are shown to be primary drivers of rates and popularity in sex work. Keywords: sex work, popularity dynamics, gender, online marketplace, UK Introduction In this article, we analyse a dataset from AdultWork.com, a UK-based online platform to determine drivers behind pricing and popularity in the market for sex work. -
Taha Yasseri
Curriculum Vitae TAHA YASSERI Personal Address Birth: 06. Sep. 1984 (27), Tehran Department of Theoretical Physics Nationality: Iranian Budapest University of Technology and Economics Marital status: single Budafoki ´ut8. http://www.phy.bme.hu/∼yasseri H1111 Budapest, Hungary CURRENT POSITION Post-doctoral fellow in European Commission project ICTeCollective, Research Group of Prof. J´anos Kert´esz. Department of Theoretical Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary. Since September 2010 WORK EXPERIENCES • Assistant Scientist, Institute for theoretical Physics, Georg-August-Universit¨at G¨ottingen,Germany. January 2009 - July 2010 • Researcher, SFB 602, Complex Structures in Condensed Matter from Atomic to Mesoscopic Scales, Georg-August-Universit¨atG¨ottingen,Germany. January 2007 - January 2009 • Member of Scientific Committee of the First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics National Competition, Young Scholars Club, Tehran, Iran. November 2003 - March 2005 • Teacher of Physics, Farzanegan and Allame Helli High Schools under the supervision of National Or- ganization for Developing Exceptional Talents, Tehran, Iran. September 2002 - April 2004 • Teacher of Physics Laboratory, Young Scholars Club, Tehran, Iran. April 2002 - September 2005 EDUCATION PhD, Physics, Faculty of Physics, Georg-August-Universit¨at G¨ottingen,Germany. January 2007 - January 2010 TOPIC: Pattern formation at ion-sputtered surfaces. (Adviser: Prof. Dr. R. Kree, Co-adviser: Prof. Dr. A.K. Hartmann) Secondary topics: Computational Neuroscience and Physics of Polymers. Master of Science, Physics, Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology Tehran, Iran. September 2005 - September 2006 THESIS - Localization in scale free networks. (Adviser: Prof. Dr. M. Reza Rahimi Tabar) Bachelor of Science, Physics, Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology Tehran, Iran. -
Modeling the Rise in Internet-Based Petitions Taha Yasseri, Scott A
Yasseri et al. RESEARCH Modeling the rise in Internet-based petitions Taha Yasseri, Scott A. Hale and Helen Z. Margetts Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, OX1 3JS Oxford, UK Abstract Contemporary collective action, much of which involves social media and other Internet-based platforms, leaves a digital imprint which may be harvested to better understand the dynamics of mobilization. Petition signing is an example of collective action which has gained in popularity with rising use of social media and provides such data for the whole population of petition signatories for a given platform. This paper tracks the growth curves of all 20,000 petitions to the UK government over 18 months, analyzing the rate of growth and outreach mechanism. Previous research has suggested the importance of the first day to the ultimate success of a petition, but has not examined early growth within that day, made possible here through hourly resolution in the data. The analysis shows that the vast majority of petitions do not achieve any measure of success; over 99 percent fail to get the 10,000 signatures required for an official response and only 0.1 percent attain the 100,000 required for a parliamentary debate. We analyze the data through a multiplicative process model framework to explain the heterogeneous growth of signatures at the population level. We define and measure an average outreach factor for petitions and show that it decays very fast (reducing to 0.1% after 10 hours). After 24 hours, a petition's fate is virtually set. The findings seem to challenge conventional analyses of collective action from economics and political science, where the production function has been assumed to follow an S-shaped curve. -
Differences Across French, German, UK, and US GDPR Media Discourse
The Kaleidoscope of Privacy: Differences across French, German, UK, and US GDPR Media Discourse Mary Sanford1 and Taha Yasseri1,2,3,4 Abstract Conceptions of privacy differ by culture. In the Internet age, digital tools continuously challenge the way users, technologists, and governments define, value, and protect privacy. National and supranational entities attempt to regulate privacy and protect data managed online. The European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect on 25 May 2018. The research presented here draws on two years of media reporting on GDPR from French, German, UK, and US sources. We use the unsupervised machine learning method of topic modelling to compare the thematic structure of the news articles across time and geographic regions. Our work emphasises the relevance of regional differences regarding valuations of privacy and potential obstacles to the implementation of unilateral data protection regulation such as GDPR. We find that the topics and trends over time in GDPR media coverage of the four countries reflect the differences found across their traditional privacy cultures. Keywords GDPR, Privacy, Discourse, Topic Modelling, Cambridge Analytica The digital revolution in our societies and particularly the Internet-based technologies have complicated how individual users, business owners, and governments handle complex issues such as privacy. The ways in which many people use these technologies generate copious amounts of data that require varying degrees of protection. As such, -
Soft Facts and Digital Behavioural Influencing After the 2017 Terror Attacks Full Report
FEBRUARY 2020 SOFT FACTS AND DIGITAL BEHAVIOURAL INFLUENCING AFTER THE 2017 TERROR ATTACKS FULL REPORT Martin Innes Crime and Security Research Institute, Cardiff University This is the full report from the Soft Facts And Digital Behavioural Influencing project, funded by CREST. To find out more about this project, and to see other outputs from the team, visit: www.crestresearch.ac.uk/projects/soft-facts-digital-behavioural-influencing This project reflects a growing awareness and concern amongst policymakers and practitioners about how the community impacts of terrorism and other major crime events are frequently amplified as a result of rumours, deliberately generated ‘false news’ and conspiracy theories. There is interest also in how such effects can be countered through deploying artfully constructed counter-narratives. About CREST The Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) is a national hub for maximising behavioural and social science research into understanding, countering and mitigating security threats. It is an independent centre, commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and funded in part by the UK security and intelligence agencies (ESRC Award: ES/N009614/1). www.crestresearch.ac.uk ©2020 CREST Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC-SA licence. www.crestresearch.ac.uk/copyright TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................5 2. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................7 -
Researching New Religious Movements
Researching New Religious Movements ‘The most important “first” that this book achieves is its bold questioning of the whole intellectual apparatus of the sociology of religion as it has been applied to the understanding of the new religious movements. I am confident that Elisabeth Arweck’s study will quickly become required reading in the sociology of new religious movements.’ Professor David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics, University of London ‘Powerful and original . it succeeds triumphantly in being at the same time an important, high-quality academic study and a book for our times.’ Professor David Marsland, Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Buckingham New religious movements such as Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church (Moonies) are now well established in mainstream cul- tural consciousness. However, responses to these ‘cult’ groups still tend to be overwhelmingly negative, characterized by the furious reactions that they evoke from majority interests. Modern societies need to learn how to respond to such movements and how to interpret their benefits and dangers. Researching New Religious Movements provides a fresh look at the history and development of ‘anti-cult’ groups and the response of main- stream churches to these new movements. In this unique reception study, Elisabeth Arweck traces the path of scholarship of new religious move- ments, exploring the development of research in this growing field. She con- siders academic and media interventions on both sides, with special emphasis on the problems of objectivity inherent in terminologies of ‘sects’, ‘cults’, and ‘brainwashing’. Ideal for students and researchers, this much- needed book takes the debate over new religious movements to a more sophisticated level.