What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?(dynomight.net) |
What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?(dynomight.net) |
That a succession of women served as Oracles in the Temple of Apollo (for hundreds of years) is well supported.
Accepting that we won’t know everything (but also accept that there are things we don’t know yet and that will be known in the future, and that it’s ok to change your mind in the face of new evidence).
Actually, it’s not really an alternative to empiricism, but I don’t thing that empiricism has this particular weakness.
That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180:
"When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost." [1]
I'm not a student of the Classics so I can't verify from the original. This source [2] seems to imply that the world choice implies as if the place burnt down on its own.
1: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
2: https://erenow.net/ancient/delphi-a-history-of-the-center-of...
Greek: "ὁ γὰρ πρότερον ἐὼν αὐτόθι αὐτόματος κατεκάη"
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...)
Literal translation: "because the one [= the temple] that previously existed in the same place completely burned down on its own"
The crux here is on "αὐτόματος", for which see LSJ: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29to%2Fmatos&...
Making claims that are easy to falsify is good!
I had to make this claim recently. There is also a shocking lack of evidence for the use of cannabis in the Greco-Roman period (apart from Herodotus discussing the Scythians—and a reference in Exodus).
If anyone is interested in what actual historians think about such theories, read for example this: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.ht... Tl/dr: The oracle speaking cryptic prophetic verses from a trance is a literary construction. So the ethylene theory is a trying to provide a naturalistic explanation for a fiction.
The major theory you hear about this is that the Oracle was ingesting some kind of drug, possibly a psychedelic derived from rye fungi - but who can say with any certainty? Maybe it was just similar to the 'speaking in tounges' religious phenomenon, which has examples from all over the world:
https://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/speaking-in-tongu...
Something the article doesn't seem to consider is the possibilty that there was some kind of (natural or built) chamber where the gas could get trapped and thus concentration be higher.
One woman and her priests became a central clearing house for the ideas and issues of the entire Greek world. She was almost certainly the most influential person in the world.
The Oracle work was combine with the Panhellenic Pythian games (music, art and sports). In the off season, Apollo went north to the Hyperboreans — and the cult of Dionysus took over. The Oracle was part of a whole cultural complex that played many functional values. I’m not sure what being “just BS” could mean in this context.
She would, apparently, listen to the rustle of the leaves— scry into the ripples of water — and feel the resonant vibrations of the tripod. All in order to channel the wisdom of the god Apollo.
Sources of randomness to support creative inspiration. Seems plausible.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-only-surviving-image...
Also, the ethylene theorists have a rebuttal. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778...
It’s funny that neither paper attempted to just try the stuff and, you know, attempt mantic divination.
And there is some evidence for those laurel leaves (which were chewed) to be psychoactive. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/581067/summary
And, finally, that the oracle used lots (dice, basically) for divination. More randomness. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/358831
It's a place worth the visit: https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/central-greece/delphi/
Also, the ethylene theorists have a rebuttal. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778 ...
The flights of birds, the guts of sacrificial offerings. E All sorts of things.
The prophesies were usually very pragmatic and politically conservative (not edgy).
It’s not hard to do. Many modern magicians do the same thing. Fortune cookies, etc.
It’s not hard to do this, but being intoxicated makes it harder not easier.
If you're running an Oracle business, your customers are already locked in. It's a long pilgrimage to get there, so you've probably got something important to ask about. The sales people will know roughly what kind of relational data is precious to you, and your branding makes Oracle a natural choice, despite what the techies of the time might say (it's expensive! There's a free and open source that we can get high at!). Once they're there, you keep the magic going by offering associated services. Maybe a bit if consulting on what the old lady said. Of course the consulting will always include coming back for more prophesies.
Most of the business is knowing what kinds of things people want to hear, and feeding back a few things you found. After all it's only once a month there's a seance, the rest of the time can be spent hanging around finding out what the customers want.
And it is likely that a lot of those prophecies were informed by having a unique amount of access to political and social dealings throughout the Greek world. It helps when all the kings and all the priests come to you and tell you their secrets.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_fr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe_epilepsy#Effects...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind_syndrome#Hyperreligi...
Reading tea leaves? You're just looking at something random. Scrying? It's the same. Nothing about the Oracle of Delphi strikes me as odd enough to demand a deeper explanation than that. It was just a person making nonsensical statements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_tongues#Medical_re...
It's not clear what you mean here, could you give some examples?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism#Esotericis...
tl;dr: She was last holy remnant of the age the Hellenic Greeks idealized about-- The Homeric period before book culture and the Sophists. The time when magic and unadulterated heroism ruled the Earth. Think about Tolkien the next time you trip. The magic isn't in a molecule baby, it's in us!
Interesting that is a form of hallucination itself :)
Jesus. That's a grim insight into the culture of the time, though perhaps it shouldn't have been given Greek legends.
Or lets not get hung up with the word "magic". Lets call it a 5th type of energy. Mechanical detection don't work, but a number of humans can feel it. Hard to measure for sure. Some people are more connected to that energy than others. But again, being human-centric at this time makes verification hard/impossible.
What I would adore is a theorem to connect that energy to the 4 other types of energy (EM, strong, weak, gravity). And then, we can start scientifically describing all of those "weird" human issues of stuff we just shouldn't know (I'm thinking of: past life recollections, feeling someone staring at you, parental intuitions that something's wrong with a child, etc).
In other words, unfalsifiable. That means it's unscientific too.
Medicine was VERY unscientific until recent days. Bacteriological theory was unscientific until it wasn't. Psychiatry was, and I'd argue, still unscientific. And machine learning is equal parts of magic and statistical math. Most practitioners in ML/AI area just tweak knobs and hope that some hyperparameter does infinitesimally better.
The key takeaway is that not even knowing the appropriate metrology to engage in makes this a very hard scientific endeavour. But that is the first problem to solve - how do you measure whatever that is. And once you can measure, then you can manipulate.
There's too many of these stories Ive heard from family, friends, myself, and others to think that this area is some sort of a delusion and fake. But what is its nature? Unsure. That's why I explore.
> Greeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched.
And wonder whether this is also broadly, historically true?
In summary, a historian argues that some, but not all, societies found the fossils of reptiles, and created myths involving dragons using these fossils as inspirations for the dragons' imagery.
.
> Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals
Stating this as a fact is wrong, it's conjecture, and very dubious at that. In fact a few seconds research and common sense would undermine that. There are legends of giants in africa <https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/gigantes/Africa.html> but the range of Neanderthals included that, see "Known Neanderthal range in..." in map here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal>
> The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc.
Ditto, and even less likely if you've done any reading. I think you've badly mixed up two things here.
Baseless but over-confident statements of 'fact' are getting annoying. Please try to elevate the conversation (unless you are, ahem, trolling).
> When a man thinks of any concrete object - a book, a house, a landscape - he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually perceptively affect the man of whom he thinks.
These mental bodies are not considered by the textbook to be bound by time, given they are "astral bodies" for which, under certain conditions, time and space don't matter.
I think the primary problem with positivism is the knowledge about the universe is never fully attained, so it feels more like a confused reasoning process. The assumption the scientific method will explain everything someday is irrational. When is that going to happen? With more work? What positivism really is, is a commitment to a bunch of work in the future to "prove" something is this and not that. The future never arrives.
Mysticism is the flipside of that. A mystical approach builds a metaphor to exist that "makes sense" but can't really be tested or analyzed by scientific methods. Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true. Maybe that includes visualizing something over and over again?
Between these two extremes sits a philosophy that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge, and that both can be used to improve our understanding of the world. This philosophy emphasizes the need for both scientific and spiritual knowledge in order to create a complete picture of reality.
Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved. It's a little like a virus in that regard, growing without bounds or purpose, other than to try to avoid the mystical outlooks at all costs.
The thinking goes: the more, nd better sources of market intelligence you can feed to the oracle, the better predictions it can make.
I would assume the oracle at delphi was being fed the most / best market intelligence to then prophesize from
If you're curious, I can see that you will die.
If you're scared, I can help you avoid death for only $4.99/day or a war against Lichtenstein, your choice.
Do as I say, or do you really want to risk dying tomorrow?
Lisa: Then zot them into oblivion darling
Oracle: Your groveling is unacceptable! I shall ZOT THEE!
You have been zotted!
I think it's more likely they get really caught up in the moment or something among those lines. I am interested in what in what it would be like to go to a concert of a bar with one of these people.
No, they do, and are usually pushed into it by prayer retreats and a forced lack of sleep (in the stories I've heard.) It's after they fake it once in order to sleep, then get into the habit of faking it, that they decide that they were never actually faking it, retconning the first incident into an awakening.
It was once only tiny pentecostal sects that did this (speak in tongues), but evangelical churches grew out of that tradition and took over the world. Literally didn't exist 100 years ago. It's also where we got faith healing and snake-handling.
edit: Again, barely older than Scientology or the Nation of Islam.
I have not actually met an ex-charismatic who could demonstrate this to me, but I would be interested in meeting one. I have never done glossolalia myself, I always thought there was something off about it. I have been at a charismatic church where people were practicing it. I was relieved that they were not extremely loud, they weren't rolling or flailing around, but I admit I found the audible chaos of it somewhat unnerving. I've heard charismatic Christians speak of the presence of God, or of spiritual power as a feeling of "electricity" or tingling. It seems to me that a major aim in that movement is to feel highly energized.
I ended up in a faith tradition that has a difficult but slow, calm, scripted practice, one that evangelicals would be likely to call "vain repetitions". I think the accusation could stick that I badly wanted some beauty and order. I believe that the gift of tongues is experienced as a miraculous automatic translation in the spoken word; we see it as a reversal of what happened at the tower of Babel.
A bit later I went over to the Zen booth and talked to a young monk. They had no materials in the booth, only a piece of paper with the swooshed circle symbol. After talking to him briefly I asked, "Do you visualize?". He looked at me calmly for just a moment and then replied, "I practice Zen." I then repeated myself, asking " Yes, but do you visualize?". Immediately he replied, "I practice Zen."
Later I would joke it was at the moment I became enlightened, but understanding this from a fundamental standpoint is both a choice of faith and a logical conclusion done by the mind.
People do visualize, but some people don't. Practicing Zen is about not adding to things, but living in the moment and being aware of your surroundings. The monk may have been able to visualize, but he knew that doing so would pull him out of the moment so he didn't.
Conversely, the Hari Krishna visualized at will, by his own admission when I was asking about it, and allowed it to be a thing he was aware of in the few moments we spoke.
I think there's so much in different spiritual circles. What seems to unite them all is a kind of concept of, "surrendering wholeheartedly to..." and I think that manifests itself in a huge diversity of ways. I think that what Zen ends up missing is a viable moral concept and an explanation of what, "love" actually is at a metaphysical level. The reversi-logic Koan thing gets really old after awhile but I can appreciate how that might resonate with some people. Zen is very, "interesting" but having sat on the mat for some time that the, "great realization" has always been, "stop holding out for a great realization; it's all a crock of shit including the crock of shit you tell yourself that it's all a crock of shit." I know a lot of old burnout hippy-boomer types that got lost in Zen land and never found their way back. I also know a lot of Hare Krsna devotees that got lost in Prabhupadaland. I think it's worth noting that pretty soon we're both going to be biologically dead forever.
I suppose it's all worth a consider. Hare Krsna Prabhuji!
The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different programming languages or stacks. The way you think about a problem and how to solve it will be influenced by the language and tools you use (and know). You learn to think in a particular language or tool set. That doesn’t mean that you can’t think outside of it, but it does mean that there is a tendency to stay inside of it, inside the structures you know.
In the same way, some languages lend themselves more readily to certain culturally prevalent concepts. More nuanced words for snow or love, different color boundaries, different emotion words or nuances, etc.
I ran into this often when learning French as an emotion researcher. I’d try to express a scientific conception of a mood or emotion from English, and the French speaker would suggest a translation but it clearly didn’t mean exactly what I was going for. And the way the French speaker would push back was interesting, “we wouldn’t say it like that, we’d say it like this”. But the “this” and “that” were not exactly the same. I was watching us both be constrained by our language context. It could be pushed through, but the tendency was to just move forward as if we’d reached common ground but hadn’t fully.
I don’t have twenty different words for specific shades of green or types of snow, but can still easily recognize them and use them in my thinking.
How is this demonstrating anything? Can someone do the same who doesn't know what a gear is?
In theory you can imagine a concept, not give it a name, and still use it. You can't communicate it through, which severely limits it's use. And somehow I suspect that naming the concept makes it easier to manipulate, so perhaps that is a 'weak' version of the theory?
Can you conceive of a thought experiment that is impossible to put into words? Yes or no is acceptable, but if the answer is yes I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.
Yes, most of them are (or can be, with the addition of a couple of neologisms or borrowings). Just like you can do anything with any Turing-complete language. Languages and cultures still have biases and built-in world views.
For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone is utterly alien. In the best case, there is a polite form, which we also use for people we don’t know. So we don’t even think about social status when we ask someone what time it is. But there are languages where that isn’t the case at all, and this tends to make you constantly aware of the social status of the people around you. So it definitely does affect how tou think about things.
It does not mean that Europeans are incapable of understanding these things, just that it is not something they implicitly care about.
A phenomenon that is, at best, about a century old. Maybe.
That there aren’t grammatical forms or special declensions of words that signal rank relationships (as there are in, say, japanese) does not for an instant mean that we do not consciously choose linguistic styles based on social structure. Especially in Europe.
German is well known for having different pronouns based on social rank and familiarity.
If this is true for formal languages -- why would wouldn't this phenomena be accentuated at the natural language level.
Stokes in the same location can have different impacts based on the language of the speaker.
This suggests there are architectural and processing differences.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778...
I’ve experienced tingling strongly one time. It was sort of like a non-localized internal “buzzing”, kind of like if you’d drunk a lot of coffee but without the tightening of the muscles. I’ve also experienced kind of an internal itch, where it’s just easier to shake my hands.
The charismatics I’ve been a part of are more of the love flavor, though. (e.g. “but we do not have a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and [wisdom]”) This feels like a warmth in the chest, and if you partner with it tends to lead either to feeling very relaxed and happy, or more energetic and happy.
It took me quite a while to be able to sense it, though, similar to how it took me a long time be able to taste the flavor of an individual herb in a dish of food. And there’s an element of partnering, too. If you’re resistant to the whole idea, or mad at God/the Church/people/life you’re a lot less likely to experience it. There are times where I missed the experience because I was resistant. Also, it seems like some people are quicker to be affected; by the time I sense something strongly, everyone else is likely to be on the floor. I’m not sure if it’s something about how I’m made or just a resistance to being out of control.
Of course, when you deal with real language your language itself is constrained. If you need to invent a bunch of new words does that count?
This would not stop your ability to describe it, but would change how you relate it to other colors.
Is it then logical to conclude that in the general area of the topic of discussion, there is in fact no noteworthy difference between Japanese and other cultures? There is nothing that exists in reality within this domain that has escaped the gaze of science?
As I understand in Swedish you still need to know someone’s progression to address them politely “how would the software engineer like his coffee?”
Edit: also in Norway most women would wear head coverings when outside 100 years ago. We are not that far from having a culture most of us despise today.
Possibly, yes. And I'm not the one calling it "energy". That's the nomenclature of MANY occult groups. What that type of energy that is, I do not know.
Just like anything in the sphere of how our universe works, I think that there is enough interesting phenomenon to warrant further study.
> physics is as scientific as modern medicine or machine learning?
Why not? Those subjects were too "shrouded in mystery" until they weren't. And even without a rigorous scientific theory, we can still do experiments and attempt to discern this "energy" and come up with ways to accurately detect it. From detection, we can then start making accurate models to be able to manipulate. This is no different than other types of physics.
(As a note, the term "energy" is used by many occult groups. If anything, it appears to be a form of mental concentration. I've seen numerous cases where someone was envisioning a 3d shape, and I or others could see it. There are no good explanations to accurately describe this in existing science. And we know science is ever-growing, since what we know is incomplete.)
Only dead languages are static, otherwise they can all adapt to new ideas as long as their sufficiently useful.
Sure some ideas might spread more easily as say an obvious and catchy campaign slogan, there is a maximum benefit to such advantages. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” is longer say “No taxation without representation” but number of works doesn’t seem to be a major limitation here. People just encode such ideas into otherwise meaningless slogans like “Promises Kept.” Soon people don’t wonder what “The wage gap” or “Pro life” is referring to.
Isn’t this a bit like how America was only officially “discovered” in 1492? To the general surprise of everyone already living there :)
There are descriptions from the 4th century China which can be read to imply that they found dinosaur bones. The area indicated by these writings is known in the present to have such fossils.
Can we say for certain that what they had were dinosaur bones? No, of course not. They didn’t describe their findings in detail and the actual bones were lost since then.
The ancient chinese description clearly correctly understood that what they are seeing are the bones of some long ago lived creature with large bodies. The same text also made incorrect assumptions (for example that they died because they could not fly up to heaven).
But it is not like suddenly in whenever you says dinosaurs were discovered they understood everything about them correctly. Just to note a few earlier mistakes: the lack of feathers in depictions, and the famous nose horn of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs.
What might be confusing is that the word “dinosaur” is used in scientific literature while the world “dragon” is associated with fantasy and legends. But this is just a linguistic difference. The world dinosaur is a portmanteau from two greek words, coined by a western scientist. Obviously the ancient chinese sources could not have used it before that.
In short: Are we now more knowledgeable about these once lived animals than the scholars of the 4th century China? Massively, without a doubt. Is there some bright line where we can delineate “correctly understood” from not correctly understood? I would say no, discovery is more of an incremental process.
http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2021/03/dinosaur-fossils-...
which, who knows, it might be!
Is all of psychology falsifiable?
Just how many cultures had things that may be called deities talk to them? As far as I can tell, almost all Earth cultures have had that. We're talking about the Oracle of Delphi in here - and according to lore, was divinations (as in Divine messages). So, again, I ask - what's really going on? And this wasn't the only one.
And what's more curious and interesting is how durable groups that do occult stuff are. John Dee was Queen Elizabeth's court magister, and created the whole Enochian system in the 1570s. Of course, this can be glossed over due to them not really understanding science. But we have a magical heritage even way before Dee to now.
And infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley, even said that "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." Those are certainly things to inquire - can we see effects? How do they work? How do they not work? Can others sense them? How do we go about sensing it?
Long story short, I see that there's something there. And a whole lot of other people do as well. Enough anecdotes starts to equal a study. And what's the worst that will happen? That I fail? (And even if I fail, still provides more data that wasn't done before; hence a success.)
Can you pull of this same trick with humans, across all their behaviors?
Take prophecy its much like crystal ball gazing, where the crystal ball reader gives a vague report which is open to interpretation for people who are looking for hope can get something to cling onto. A good example is left handed people have historically been seen as wrong 'uns in the bible so right handed people can be prejudiced in much the same way as the rich look down at the poor or white Americans generally view non whites as inferior.
When looking at "spiritual" experiences sometimes the experience can give a clue to what sort of drug may be involved.
For example DMT aka Dimethyltryptamine often generates fractal machine elves hallucinations. https://tripsitter.com/dmt/machine-elves/
Calea zacatechichi however you pronounce it gives you vivid dreams https://tripsitter.com/calea-zacatechichi/
LSD is reportedly fuzzy visuals if Timothy Leary's book is anything to go by.
Hallucinogens suggest to me the parts of the brain they affect.
So when looking at religious texts like some listed here https://www.openbible.info/topics/prophecy_visions_and_dream... how much of the bible is really just accounts of people who have knowingly or otherwise ingested some drugs? They didnt have science like we have it today so like we see with some scientific studies, we see a level of explanation projected onto the results that sometimes causes the tail to wag the dog, aka becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
Whats scary is that even today the sky fairies aka god(s) still control much of this planets population through govt, religions or just generally superstitious people. Like alcohol, its a way for people to blame anyone but themselves for their actions, whilst also offering a form of very cheap psychological therapy.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7969-gamblers-are-a-s...
I think people generally recognise that AI is good at spotting what humans can not as this article suggests. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61609689 ""AI can sniff out areas of significances. Humans do a very bad job at layering data, whereas AI can do it in seconds," says Mr O'Shannessy."
Its quite likely AI will probably end up killing religion, prophecy, superstition and erratic behaviour in general, unless drug taking increases through the relaxation of cannabis and other drugs.
A deus ex machina, if you will.
The realm of the unknown and the unknowable shrinks as our tools advance but there are very good reasons to think it will never disappear as there are both provably unknowable truths amd facts that are practicaly impossible to learn.
> Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.
This only applies to a limited set of things (the unknowable), getting enough people to believe the world is flat won't make that a true belief, no matter how many people have how much faith.
The types of things that faith can make true are subjective, sociocultural or related to our inner lives.
> Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved.
In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.
There is a long history of faith pairing quite productively with the scientific method. The network of scientific knowledge is primarily drive by one thing: curiosity, not any sort of animus against the mystical.
> In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.
You are right about this. The scientific method doesn't insist things are disproved. It makes a practice of disproving things until there is faith that it isn't disprovable. It doesn't continue forever, but the practice of doing it with another thing continues after, doesn't it?
Yes, there are things that are unknowable, even with the tools of empiricism.
But pointing out this issue, in no way supports the idea of using a non-sense ideology in its place, or even ascribing any value to such a thing.
> that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge
No, there is no knowledge in mysticism. And is it a bad argument to point out a supposed problem in empiricism, as a justification for a different system, when that other system doesn't deal with the problem any better.
> believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.
Believing something to be true, does not make it true, unless you redefine the word "true" to a nonsense definition of "Well a true thing, is whatever we believe to be true. Gotcha, I win! I just created a self-consistent tautology, by playing word games, and making up a new definition! You can't call me wrong, because it's a consistent, self referential belief! That intro to philosophy class sure was useful!"
This is where the term “leap of faith” was coined. That illustration shows that, at least where self-confidence is concerned, belief in one’s own capabilities can greatly influence the outcome. Do not read this as a rebuttal to your last point; it’s a nuance, and may be limited to one’s own self-conception.
That essay also discusses the circumstances where it makes sense to respect non-rational[1] beliefs:
> Genuine option – "we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind"[0]
All of those terms are precisely defined in the essay, and the Wikipedia article has a decent lightning summary. The point is, when you are faced with coming up with a personal philosophy or set of guiding principles, you are forced to figure it out, and science is not (yet or possibly ever) capable of providing answers to those questions for most people.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe#Sections...
[1] I prefer the term “non-rational” here because “irrational” has connotations of “going against rational thought” whereas “non-rational” implies “areas which are not covered by rational thought.”
That's over my pay grade, but yes, I understand what you are saying.
I think that "knowledge" in the case of mysticism is just "knowing" something to be true or not, but not having the rational understanding of it. Maybe that's still off, so thank you for helping define it better.
Regarding the last comment, I was saying that some believe that believing something to be true makes it true, but I'm not so sure about that for myself.
So as AI can show Judges are biased and there is different times of the day people seeking parole should go before the judge to seek a favourable outcome, like just after lunch, science is slowly stealing everyone's privacy and there is no where to hide!
How can science study magic without knowing whether it is falsifiable first? Would that require them to do potentially unscientific/pseudoscientific things not becoming of a proper scientist? If we allowed that, next thing they'd be thinking without dogmatic constraints!