Tag: Scientism

The Modern-Day Boogeyman

I was recently watching a docuseries in which they talked about the Oracle of Delphi and all the subsequent oracles who were apparently successful until an earthquake brought the temple down where they would perform their prophecies.

According to the docuseries, scholars concluded that it was probably some natural form of gas (I forget the name of it) that emanated from underground that put the oracles into some kind of trance, and the chemical no longer existed for them after the temple was brought down. They didn’t say as much, but one can only assume this was their justification for why nothing paranormal had actually been happening.

Even though this sort of dialogue is extremely typical in academia, two things suddenly occurred to me while watching this. One, if we’re so sure that there can be no paranormal explanation for something/anything, why do we go through so much trouble desperately searching for a mechanistic explanation for anything? Why wouldn’t we just assume there’s some such explanation whether we’re aware of it or not, and leave it at that?

And two, so what if the Oracles of Delphi really were psychic prophets? Why do that and other such considerations bother us so much that we must always “solve the case” and come up with any explanation whatsoever that we can think of other than the paranormal?

These two things point to one thing: we’re playing a game with ourselves. To a mind that sees beyond the spirit of the times of their culture, there are many such societal or psychosocial games we collectively play with ourselves without even realizing it. They always have to do with the tension between what we’re conscious of about ourselves and what we’re not, and with what we are versus what we’re becoming, or perhaps sometimes versus where we’ve come from.

This particular game is rooted in our collective denial of a whole side of reality—indeed, the side that contains all the most beautiful, fascinating, meaningful, and uplifting aspects of life—following the Enlightenment, which is ingrained into us from such an early age and from so many directions that we don’t even realize we have this scientistic/physicalist/mechanicalist bent/bias.

We’re constantly trying to convince ourselves in order to keep up the charade, and we’ve hidden from the light by remaining physicalist for so long that the light of the spiritual has become dangerous and painful to us, and is therefore treated as the modern-day boogeyman.

Related posts: https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/psychism/; https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/

Temperature Isn’t Just Temperature

We’re trained to see heat or temperature as completely measured and encapsulated by a single value, because that’s all science knows how to measure about it, but I’m convinced there’s more to it than that. There’s an entire “texture” or “quality” to the heat in the air, at least.

I think that because I notice that A/C air feels markedly different from naturally cold air, and in ways that can’t simply be accounted for by, say, a difference in humidity or smell, and it’s also too palpable and unexpected to be just due to the power of suggestion of knowing that the source of coldness is unnatural.

The quality of A/C air that I sometimes sense is hard to describe. It’s rather sickly in a sense from a car’s A/C, and from a house’s central A/C it feels kind of “brittle” and evil in a way—like being chilled by it is akin to being preserved in formaldehyde. It’s like you can just feel the time slipping between your fingers, but hey, at least you have more of it.

And hot air from a heater makes me tired, like I want to go to sleep. I lose myself, like I’m engulfed in chaos. Natural heat doesn’t have this effect on me, and I’ve been in both the humid heat of Florida and the dry heat of California, up to 104°F or more, and everywhere in between.

It’s a known scientific fact that warm water freezes more quickly than room temperature water. I think there is a known or theorized explanation as to why, which I forget, but either way, this corroborates my impression that temperature must be more complex than a single value. If it were a single value, warm water would have to take longer to freeze than room temperature water, because in the former case, the value would have to first lower from warm to room temperature and then from room temperature to freezing, and the temperature should lower at the same rate for both waters. Adding more complexity to heat or temperature offers ways around this.

Just think: if we’ve been so brainwashed by The Establishment and the limitations of science about the nature of heat and temperature, what else could we be direly wrong about?

By the way, I also have the feeling that psychic information may be carried from one person to another by an aspect of heat, or something closely related to the notion or physics of heat, that traverses exceptionally quickly. Something about us on an unconscious level just knows how to “decode” the information in this heat or this thing that’s heat-adjacent to get a psychic impression. This is why we feel uncomfortable sitting on a chair that’s still warm from the last person who sat on it: it’s too personal. Perhaps this heat-adjacent thing is spiritual/non-physical heat, while there’s a continuum of “densities” or whatever between the physical aspect of matter/things/beings and the spiritual aspect.

Frequency Illusion

“The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as ‘frequency illusion,’ occurs when something you’ve recently noticed or learned suddenly seems to appear more frequently, creating the illusion that its occurrence has increased.”

It’s unfortunate that the assumption that it’s merely an illusion is baked right into the name for it. The assumption is due to the deep-seated mechanicalism of our current culture which must deny synchronicity.

It’s merely an assumption, as there is no way to objectively quantify the likelihood of seeing something X number of times in Y timespan, nor the likelihood that the lack of memory of having seen it before is incorrect. (See https://myiachromat.wordpres.com/2020/10/30/how-many-coincidences-are-enough and https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Bias.)

The assumption is incorrect and denies one of the more prevalent signs of the magic and amazingness of life.

And the fact that it’s included right in the name for the effect makes the take seem much more authoritative to the undiscerning mind. We’re linguistic creatures, and names mean everything to us. Consider, for example, the child who asks his mom, “mom, what’s that thing in the sky?”, to which his mom replies, “that’s a rainbow,” and suddenly the child’s curiosity is satiated, even though all she did was give him an arbitrary name!

Particularly in politics, names of things, especially policies, are heavily designed to sound either more innocuous or more sinister. I’ve seen some good examples of this but don’t remember them off-hand. We need to be both more vigilant in seeing past the names of things and also more responsible in how we use the power of words and maybe inject our own biases when we name things, such as the “frequency illusion.”

Calling it the “frequency illusion” has a much stronger influence on one’s thinking that it’s an illusion than would calling it something more neutral and then mentioning the popular theory (or rather, speculation—it’s not even a “theory”) that it’s merely an illusion…

On Evolution

Somebody in a Facebook group says this:

I don’t believe in evolution.

Rather, I accept the overwhelming evidence that supports evolution. It’s not a belief. It’s science.
The theory of evolution stands as one of the most well-supported scientific principles, backed by an overwhelming abundance of evidence. Fossil records and genetic studies all reinforce the fact that species evolve over time.

We can also literally observe evolution. We see it in fruit flies and many other short-lived creatures. It’s not something one has to “believe in.” You can literally watch it happen.

Despite this, the term “missing link” persists, often misused to suggest that evolution is riddled with gaps or unresolved mysteries.

In reality, scientists have discovered numerous transitional fossils, including early human ancestors such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis (6–7 million years old), Ardipithecus ramidus (4.5 million years old), and Australopithecus sediba (1.9 million years old). These fossils, among many many others, vividly illustrate the gradual development of species over time.

What’s more, no fossil has ever contradicted the theory of evolution. Among the vast number of fossils we’ve discovered (and there are many), not a single one has provided evidence that challenges evolutionary principles.

In fact, every fossil can be considered a transitional form, exhibiting traits shared with other species, further illustrating the gradual changes that occur over time.
We can debate how or why species evolve — natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, etc. — but we know species evolve

Here’s my response:

I’m so weary of people constantly denouncing belief or saying that the things they know/believe aren’t beliefs. Evolution may have overwhelming support behind it, and it may be true, but it’s still a belief. All we have are beliefs; some we just hold with certainty, which we call knowledge or truth, and they can also be more or less well-justified.

And your belief in evolution could be wrong, just like any of our beliefs. For example, can you prove you’re not a brain in a vat somewhere being fed a simulated reality that’s similar to some real external world except that it misleads you into thinking evolution is how species came to be? No, you can’t.

Furthermore, your belief in evolution is likely mostly true but false or misleading in certain crucial ways that make you closed to more-profound and beautiful truths about the world. For example, science can’t prove that the principles of random mutation and recombination, natural selection, etc. are sufficient to explain the fitness, diversity, and beauty of all the beings around us, or even the existence of consciousness. It’s possible, and I’d say likely, that there are more transcendental forces involved in addition to the principles we understand.

The refusal to accept the utility of beliefs or that one holds them is just hubris; people are just afraid to be associated with the possibility of being wrong.

See also https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/knowledge-belief-doubt/.