Esoterics // Superstition

[devnulljp]

+1-1=0 (and the 0 is Dao, the middle path, the best energy consumption, the optimal way; philosophy is different from mysticism thank you.)
And what you said is +1-1=-1

huh? What I said was halfway between +1 and IamtheverymodelofamodernMajor-General,I'veinformationvegetable,animal,andmineral is not a reasonable position.

You still didn't comment on Wim Hof. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof oops, seems that he didn't climb mt Everest all the way, Cracked, I am dissapoint)

Didn't have to did I?

Seeing as you mentioned Everest though ... read a nice article years ago about a Sherpa who acts as a guide taking people up and down the mountain. He does it without oxygen and fancy gear, not because he's superman but because he has a mutation in his haemoglobin (wonder how they figured that out ) common to populations living at such high altitudes that gives it higher affinity for O2. The bar-headed goose has a bunch of similar mutations that allow it to migrate over those mountains, whereas if greylag geese tried they'd die.
He noted that if a white guy did what he did, he'd be famous, but because he's 'just some local guide' no-one gives a toss.
Maybe we should sequence Wim Hof's genome. There are all sorts of interesting things at the genetic level that can result in anomalous salt/heat/cold/pressure/drought tolerance (and the converse too of course). It's not surprising you'd find a few outliers, especially in a population of 7 billion. Still has nothing to do with magic.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVVKAKWXcg[/youtube]

[alexa.]

Whenever these are not the same thing, they are either pseudo-science or mysticism, both of which should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism in my opinion.

The only difference between the science and philosophical side (it you ask me) is how and how much you apply your skepticism.
I apply it to everything equally, but my general skepticism rate is a bit lower yeah. (that doesn't mean I'll believe bullshit, it just means I'll play with everything, even if it's possibly wrong, I like first hand experience)

What's your strata for levels of fluffheadery, though?

If you asked me, please redefine the question, I don't know THAT much english

+1-1=0 (and the 0 is Dao, the middle path, the best energy consumption, the optimal way; philosophy is different from mysticism thank you.)
And what you said is +1-1=-1

huh?

The point was that we were talking about different things, but I kind of worded it badly, sry.
And I explained the Dao part of it to jfrey.

You still didn't comment on Wim Hof. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof oops, seems that he didn't climb mt Everest all the way, Cracked, I am dissapoint)

Didn't have to did I?

The burden on proof is not on you , but the testing he went through was legit
And I didn't say anything about how he does it, just that extraordinary things do happen. (And he's not the only one either, but buddhist monks don't really care about recognition of any kind really; there are amazing tehniques that involve using your mind in ways you can't even imagine. Isao Machii talks about it, Bruce Lee talks about it. I could go on for a while.)

There are all sorts of interesting things at the genetic level that can result in anomalous salt/heat/cold/pressure/drought tolerance (and the converse too of course). It's not surprising you'd find a few outliers, especially in a population of 7 billion. Still has nothing to do with magic.

Again with the magic part although I've stated my standings about the subject many times.

[devnulljp]

extraordinary things do happen.

Of course. And they require extraordinary evidence. As in this case.

[alexa.]

extraordinary things do happen.

Of course. And they require extraordinary evidence. As in this case.

Evidence that he can retain his body temperature?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 090203.htm
Probably not good enough, but will have to do on such short notice -.-

[jfrey]

I don't know anything about this person, but it's been well known and documented that people can consciously affect their autonomic systems to some degree. It isn't really in the realm of anything mystical. It's science.

Another person that does things that seem so crazy as to be superhuman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Karna ... highlights

Just because something is extraordinary or not understood doesn't make it supernatural or mystical.

[alexa.]

Just because something is extraordinary or not understood doesn't make it supernatural or mystical.

Did I say anything about anything being supernatural or mystical?

[jfrey]

It seemed implied.

On a separate note, about what you posted before:

"... imagine an infant lying in its cradle, and the window is open, and into the room comes something, marvelous, mysterious, glittering, shedding light of many colors, movement, sound, a tranformative hierophany of integrated perception and the child is enthralled and then the mother comes into the room and she says to the child, "that's a bird, baby, that's a bird," instantly the complex wave of the angel peacock irridescent transformative mystery is collapsed, into the word. All mystery is gone, the child learns this is a bird, this is a bird, and by the time we're five or six years old all the mystery of reality has been carefully tiled over with words. This is a bird, this is a house, this is the sky, and we seal ourselves in within a linguistic shell of disempowered perception, and what the psychedelics do is they burst apart this cultural envelope of confinement and return us really to the legacy and birthright of the organism." - Terence McKenna

I've always actually thought the opposite. Something so amazing being real and concrete and understandable I think makes it more incredible than if it were somehow unknown and magical.

[alexa.]

After all those posts you really thought that? Why?
I would like how to learn to express myself better, but I've found myself in the situation that I don't really know if it's me badly expressing myself, or other people seeing things that haven't been said. It's been bugging me for a while now. I do slip up from time to time, but I thought that I put out my general idea rather solidly. Did I? :/

[jfrey]

After all those posts you really thought that? Why?
I would like how to learn to express myself better, but I've found myself in the situation that I don't really know if it's me badly expressing myself, or other people seeing things that haven't been said. It's been bugging me for a while now. I do slip up from time to time, but I thought that I put out my general idea rather solidly. :/

It's part of the difficulty with communicating purely through type I think. I read a lot into body language, word choice (it's different in speech than in type, although it is something worth noting in either), the cadence of the voice, etc. I sometimes find it hard to follow conversation without those things. This doesn't for some reason carry over into reading novels or works of nonfiction - but I think that is because of the planned nature of those in how they are conveying story or information, unlike the fluid exchange of dialogue.

[devnulljp]

I've always actually thought the opposite. Something so amazing being real and concrete and understandable I think makes it more incredible than if it were somehow unknown and magical.

Me too. Just the fact that our little ape brains can understand so much is amazing. And knowing how stuff works, or trying to find out, is so much more interesting than just giving up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIZhgLKSBaY[/youtube]

[D.o.S.]

What's your strata for levels of fluffheadery, though?

If you asked me, please redefine the question, I don't know THAT much english

Wasn't actually asked of you, but sure, I'll rephrase:

Since Jfrey brought up a spectrum of thought which, for him, ranges from concrete (science) to abstract (philosophy), and in his words--whatever's left is to be regarded with a highly critical eye.

So I asked him if he had any sort of stratification process, kind of a "more right, less right" scale for what he considers wrong. Fluffhead is a colloquialism for fuzzy thinking.

Something like "I'd probably say Jung's theories are more correct than the Urantia Book." You know, taking into account explanation, rationale, things like that.

The worldview that something is right until it is proven wrong (and is subsequently discarded post-haste) is a very interesting notion, and can lead to a whole lot of fluidity in things like personal ethics, aesthetics and philosophies, which are "abstract" things that I'm more interested in.

[jfrey]

The worldview that something is right until it is proven wrong (and is subsequently discarded post-haste)

My views are pretty opposite to this. I'm more of: If something is not logically impossible, it is still likely wrong until and unless it is proven right (View the video I posted on "The Burden of Proof").

To use religion as an example, it has never occurred to me in my life, even as a child (who went to church every Sunday), that god - or any other supernatural being - might exist. I can academically say that it is possible, but I have never seen anything that would prompt me to think that there may be a god, or that any such being might be the cause of anything. To be honest - and I'm sure this will offend, which isn't my intention, but so be it - I think that belief in god is a kind of insanity.

As to the question about stratification, it is very black and white (although at the same time fluid - new information can always change where something falls) for me. It goes like this:

Right (unless disproven by new information)
Logically probable (but not yet proven conclusively, nor disproven by new information - should be studied and tested)
Logically improbable (not enough evidence or study to suggest the possibility of validity - effectively wrong but may warrant study)
Wrong (any of the above now disproven)
Wrong (logically impossible)

[D.o.S.]

Full disclosure: Haven't been able to watch youtube videos all afternoon.

Re: the god thing. It depends on how you take it. I don't actively believe in any kind of supernatural deity bro/broette/gender-neutral bro, because I'm pretty sure that anything like that is completely beyond my perception, either natural or augmented. An amoeba will probably never know that a human being (in our view of a "human being") exists, but I'm perfectly willing to entertain the idea that there are things that make us the amoeba in that equation.

Which, of course, makes me leery about people who claim to have any kind of answer whatsoever. I don't think it's the giant floaty space bro, but I'm not sure that empiricism is the end all be all either.

Don't know, can't know. There's no such thing as omniscience.

[D.o.S.]

Oh, and:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaJ_2uEs10I[/youtube]

[phantasmagorovich]

Which, of course, makes me leery about people who claim to have any kind of answer whatsoever. I don't think it's the giant floaty space bro, but I'm not sure that empiricism is the end all be all either.

Thanks, dude, this was getting a little preachy.

Take this for example:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88dnutV9ROM[/youtube]

It is definitely an act of magic to amplify a voice in that way. It is more than just amplification the way a microphone would. It is a transformation in meaning and power, not only the amplitude of a waveform.
Take homeopathy for example. Now that is something I personally find ridiculous, I am more inclined towards the big pills when it comes to fighting illness. But, as Dev stated before, there is no proof that homeopathic stuff works better than a placebo administered under similar circumstances. And that's where it's at: the circumstances. Some dude in China ages ago found out that a drop of sugar in a bucket of water will work wonders if you give it to the patient with a little bit of mumbo-jumbo. Now that might not be a very renaissance way of thinking, but I think that's awesome in it's own right.

The longer I read through this thread the more it seems to me that everybody is really itchy and defensive about their worldview even though noone is trying to take anything away from them.
Of course empirical, deductive thought is the way to explain the world as good as we manage to, but it seems to me that line of thinking is no good when humans are involved in the equation.





Edit: Please let's not discuss the Occupy movement. I have only posted that because it was a chance find and something I could use as an example.