Whether an individual is unable or unwilling to think rationally is besides the point when it comes to it being harmful. And it's besides the point when it comes to me calling out their beliefs for what are: embarrassing and, collectively, a detriment to our future.
While we're bravely calling folks out for decisions they never made, damn the handicapped, the poor, and (oh yeah) the Jews!
Are we there yet? Is this proposition ridiculous enough to abandon now? You just let me know because I can never fucking tell.
are you equating a person being paralyzed or born a minority to a person's belief structure, ie a fixed physical state to a changeable mental state?
Can someone point me to a practical guide to meditation? If it's really possible to trick myself into a state of relaxation with a few breathing techniques, I want in on that. It sounds incredibly useful, if it actually works. Is there a guide without any mystical nonsense? I don't want to contemplate the divine or become a vegan. Basically, I want to do this with a minimum amount of pretentiousness.
Can someone point me to a practical guide to meditation? If it's really possible to trick myself into a state of relaxation with a few breathing techniques, I want in on that. It sounds incredibly useful, if it actually works. Is there a guide without any mystical nonsense? I don't want to contemplate the divine or become a vegan. Basically, I want to do this with a minimum amount of pretentiousness.
The simplest method I've come across involves focusing only on the physical sensation of your breath and constantly putting any other thoughts out of your mind as they arise. Still harder than it sounds.
Whether an individual is unable or unwilling to think rationally is besides the point when it comes to it being harmful. And it's besides the point when it comes to me calling out their beliefs for what are: embarrassing and, collectively, a detriment to our future.
While we're bravely calling folks out for decisions they never made, damn the handicapped, the poor, and (oh yeah) the Jews!
Are we there yet? Is this proposition ridiculous enough to abandon now? You just let me know because I can never fucking tell.
are you equating a person being paralyzed or born a minority to a person's belief structure, ie a fixed physical state to a changeable mental state?
Did you read the link? Would it make you a lot happier if I turned up half a dozen more studies from the last couple years supporting the physical, neurological basis of those mental states? I'm not actually going to go dig up any more right this second, but do you think it would matter?
I used to think they were just being stubborn or stupid. Science is starting to tell us otherwise, and I know you like science. This is just one of the many studies over the last few years trending this direction. I don't really expect that this will change your mind. You're only human.
Unfortunately, the amount of sarcasm this article deserves is probably beyond what would be considered appropriate for this forum. So, I will simply state:
This article tells us that conservative-valued people value conservatism, and liberal-valued people value liberalism.
Thanks, article.
If you wanted to prove your point, you'd really need to link to some sort of study that establishes that these personality traits are irrational, unlearned, and immutable.
Can someone point me to a practical guide to meditation? If it's really possible to trick myself into a state of relaxation with a few breathing techniques, I want in on that. It sounds incredibly useful, if it actually works. Is there a guide without any mystical nonsense? I don't want to contemplate the divine or become a vegan. Basically, I want to do this with a minimum amount of pretentiousness.
The simplest method I've come across involves focusing only on the physical sensation of your breath and constantly putting any other thoughts out of your mind as they arise. Still harder than it sounds.
I was hoping for a website or something, but thank you.
I used to think they were just being stubborn or stupid. Science is starting to tell us otherwise, and I know you like science. This is just one of the many studies over the last few years trending this direction. I don't really expect that this will change your mind. You're only human.
Unfortunately, the amount of sarcasm this article deserves is probably beyond what would be considered appropriate for this forum. So, I will simply state:
This article tells us that conservative-valued people value conservatism, and liberal-valued people value liberalism.
Thanks, article.
If you wanted to prove your point, you'd really need to link to some sort of study that establishes that these personality traits are irrational, unlearned, and immutable.
The cute part of the trick is that I don't need to. See, that's the article I could turn up most readily, and it is undeniably some poor journalism because the quotes from the researchers don't line up with the summary at all. Fortunately, I've already read a few stronger ones, so I already know that time is on my side. Hell, I might even luck into having someone with a more professional interest or more than one hand to scour with drop them for me.
Your scenario ends up with you quibbling over what I was able to turn up most quickly only to be forced into backtracking as this inevitably piles up or I just get around to it. The more you struggle in the interim, the better this gets.
voodoospork's response is a red herring. It's possible (maybe even likely) that much of human behavior is, in fact, outside of our control. That fact doesn't preclude us from making value judgments on that behavior.
Maybe humanity is biologically doomed to continually trade one superstition for another forever, but it doesn't make it okay. And it certainly doesn't mean I can't call it what it is: embarrassing and harmful.
Can someone point me to a practical guide to meditation? If it's really possible to trick myself into a state of relaxation with a few breathing techniques, I want in on that. It sounds incredibly useful, if it actually works. Is there a guide without any mystical nonsense? I don't want to contemplate the divine or become a vegan. Basically, I want to do this with a minimum amount of pretentiousness.
The simplest method I've come across involves focusing only on the physical sensation of your breath and constantly putting any other thoughts out of your mind as they arise. Still harder than it sounds.
I was hoping for a website or something, but thank you.
Googling meditation or zen meditation will probably get the best results. Just look for something simple.
It's essentially just being comfortably still while clearing your mind. It's not really a trick and focusing on your breathing is just an aid to help you clear your mind. It's a bit difficult to not think of anything for a set period of time but as with anything else, practice does help. You probably won't be able to do it at first but the best advice is just to calmly remove those thoughts and bring your focus back on the breathing.
Most "contemplating the divine" stuff is just like focusing on the breathing. It's an aid to help you reach that state of calmness. That state has been given many religious names but it really isn't anything mystical. Just a state of relaxation and nothingness.
If you catch yourself falling asleep, it's ok to keep your eyes half open or focus on one specific spot. Try and find something simple and pure to focus on, though. Monks use god statues, candles, or something in nature but it really doesn't matter much as long as it isn't too distracting. If breathing doesn't work too well, you can hum softly, which is essentially olms that monks use though that is usually more distracting for most.
Again, most religions are just putting their own views on something very simple or using their own techniques for the same thing. Either it's another word for some simple state of mind or it's a method to help you focus and not get distracted. It's about purity of thought and relaxation and calmness.
That right there is better than the first dozen google results, which tend to come with a heavy doze of mysticism.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
The psychological research into the biological basis for certain personality traits indicates that different groups of people are predisposed to certain kinds of thinking and fallacies.
It does not show that these mental states are immutable.
The psychological research into the biological basis for certain personality traits indicates that different groups of people are predisposed to certain kinds of thinking and fallacies.
It does not show that these mental states are immutable.
QED.
Are you equating mutability with agency?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
No, I am saying there are multiple factors involved in adopting a position, and one's biological tendences are but one of them.
Social censure, rational argument, emotional appeal and a whole range of other factors play greater and lesser roles, depending on the person.
I am saying it's premature to write off the capacity to judge or intervene in a person's failings.
Ill say it here... I don't believe a healthy human's biology has anything to do with their worldview.
That is completely a function of their environment.
Wandering Hero on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
Well, that's not what the research shows Wandering Hero, there seem to be strong commonalities best explained by something more fundamental than environment with regard to how people form ideas and the kind of ideas they form.
It is, however, more nuanced than "People are wired to be conservative, so it's like blaming someone for being disabled."
Well, that's not what the research shows Wandering Hero, there seem to be strong commonalities best explained by something more fundamental than environment with regard to how people form ideas and the kind of ideas they form.
It is, however, more nuanced than "People are wired to be conservative, so it's like blaming someone for being disabled."
How do you research that?
If a certain genetic group has a culture that teaches someone to be more predisposed to certain superstitions or ideologies then how do you tell if it is the genetics that are influencing that or if it is the culture that they were raised in?
Wandering Hero on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
I am not a research psychologist. But a battery of self-report, observational and task related tests, as well as fMRIs.
No, see those would still not explain how genetics influence a predisposition to a certain ideology while removing the possibility that it is their culture that is what influenced that.
Example: Those of chinese descent that grow up in an American family do not grow up with a predisposition to Confucius philosophy.
Maybe you could give an example from this research or link the work you are citing?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
That's not what is being argued.
It's far more basic things like people are predisposed towards conservatism or liberalism, which seems to be bundled with a few other kinds of thinking, conservatives and religious thinking, authoritarian thinking, a belief in a just world, and a few other factors are much higher than their liberal counterparts. They control for education, socio-economic status and a range of other factors.
Likewise, conservatives tend to be far less flexible when confronted by new situations and are far more likely to perform poorly, get flustered and other maladaptive behaviours.
Additionally, we have good reason to believe our modes of thoughts strongly change under a whole range of circumstances - when sexually aroused, for example, our impulse control and judgements are strongly divergence from the "base state". There are a range of factors that strongly impair our rationality and unconcious factors which determine the kinds of thoughts we are prone to.
voodoospork seems to be arguing that given we are predisposed to have certain modes of thought it's pointless/silly/immoral to blame and strongly criticise people for irrational and magical thinking. I am arguing that despite the facts that voodoospork and I agree on, it is not as simple as "X is predisposed towards magical thinking, so it's stupid to express outrage toward their beliefs. You wouldn't blame a handicapped person for not being able to walk, would you?"
It's not enough to prove that genetics causes some predisposition towards/away from irrationality. You must prove that social pressure has no influence on irrationality. We merely need social pressure to have any effect at all in an individual's rationality for our pressuring to make sense.
Lets put it this way, if insulting a dude missing both legs actually let them walk, I would totally do it. Even if it only had, say a 10% effect I would still do it. I would go up to a mentally handicapped person and say, "hey retard, don't you understand it's wrong to be retarded?" It wouldn't be enough for him to be normal, say the 40 IQ points necessary; but if it gave him 4 IQ points I would do it. It would be cruel and negligent not to.
Obviously, that's not how mental retardation or regrowing legs work. But irrational beliefs work that way. Even if you have a predisposition to irrational beliefs, enough social pressure can make you abandon those beliefs or prevent them from taking hold in your children.
One last thing, we know that humanity has gotten significantly more rational in it's beliefs in the last 1000 years. Hell, in the last 50 years even. We have not significantly evolved our genetics in that timeframe. Whatever role genetics plays in conservativism, liberalism, risk taking, etc, it clearly doesn't play that role in rationality. Not significantly compared to cultural and technological advances anyway.
@Voodoospork: First thing first, that's probably the best-reasoned defense of mysticism I have encountered.
Mysticism offers an easy, quick, and powerful way to achieve mental relief - especially in situations you have no way to control. I fully agree with you here. What I disagree about is the lack of a cost.
Mysticism, at its heart, is a way to control how you feel. A simple ritual is all it takes, but unless you are the source of distress in the first place you have merely dealt with an occurrence or the sideffects of the problem rather than the problem itself.
If someone sticks a knife in you, you should remove it and treat the wound - convincing yourself it does not hurts will bring your death. In other words, while you may have made yourself feel better, you have not changed what has caused you to feel the undesirable emotions in the first place. You treat the side effects of what amounts to your mind telling you that you must act.
While comforting, sticking your head in the sand can be dangerous. As addicting as any drug, using mysticism in one situation leaves you prone to using it more and more - even in situations where it may be undesirable.
So, while mysticism certainly has its use, it amounts to running away from the problem rather than dealing with it. While this is fine in many situations, it creates a perilous slippery slope unless you are very very careful in remembering that you don't actually believe in any of this and employ it purely for its utility - a thing that gets harder the more you rely on mysticism. This is why I believe it is harmful.
I do not think those who do not engage in rationality are stupid or lazy. I think they were educated to believe it is fine and live in a society that reinforces such views and supports such values. As said previously, rationality can be incredibly difficult and painful, and human beings have a worrying tendency to go for the route of least resistance.
While I try to live a life guided by rationality, I would be lying if I said I never deceive myself either. "I'll work harder tomorrow, I'll exercise more, I'll stop eating all of this harmful sugary junk!" I say to myself, only to find out I have eaten a bag of waffles while writing this post instead of studying . The primary difference is that I, and others who support rationality, keep trying while the mystics have resigned themselves to a dead end in their growth; to the path of escapism.
On a somewhat unrelated sidenote, I do not think free will is a delusion: while the universe is set in its motions, this does not means that we are not the ones who make the choices. Under a given set of conditions a given person will make a given action every time, but this is because each of us have a personality, and we decide on things based on this personality. To decide differently in the same situation would be a far more scary thing because it would imply we make decisions at random, or that our personalities are not the most important factors.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
Elkatas: From what I've read, inborn fears are more numerous than that.
We still don't know why, but basically anything that has a potential phobia is an unlearned fear. Snakes and spiders, for instance, tend to scare both people and apes never before exposed to them.
Also, while I'd agree irrational behavior is default state, rational scientific investigation has been a staple of every culture that doesn't die from eating poison, no matter how much they dress it up.
From what I understood, that is how they thought things were. And two fears makes most sense, because, for example, human beings don't fear fire from the start. Which, I think, should be most logical fear to have from evolutional standpoint. They learnt to avoid it pretty damn quickly after touching fire or given enough warnings from parents, but it still requires external stimuli.
Nonetheless, the point is somewhat moot, because children learn incredibly fast, and don't have critical factor until age of 4. Before that, anything, and I mean anything, that has enough emotional impact, will be recorded as experience, and some kind of guideline. So far as current theories go, subconscious mind doesn't understand time as concept (it can still measure it perfectly) and is completely relative, meaning that experience gained at age 3 is as valid as something learnt at age 40. Based on this, I would think snakes and spiders are scary at first, because they don't match (at that point), acceptable view of what living being should be.
Also, while I'd agree irrational behavior is default state, rational scientific investigation has been a staple of every culture that doesn't die from eating poison, no matter how much they dress it up.
And I'm not really surprised people missed whole point of my critic. The critic was not about scientific method or research. It was about the fact that everyone has behaviours that can be considered irrational and delusional. Like I said, just go to street and try to explain yourself everything you are doing. Lot of it doesn't just make any sense, doesn't it? That doesn't mean anyone is insane. It just means that, as a human beings, while we love to think we are highly rational, we still have incredible amount of irrational behaviour. Conscious mind even tends to think it can predict future events accurately, even when it doesn't have slightest clue what is going to happen. And in my experience, those who are highly analytical have this problem most, mostly because human can rationalize anything to himself, even shitty ideas, and analytical guys are best at this. No offence meant.
But irrational beliefs work that way. Even if you have a predisposition to irrational beliefs, enough social pressure can make you abandon those beliefs or prevent them from taking hold in your children.
Social pressure can also give you thousands of irrational beliefs, like it is common in western culture.
I do not believe mysticism and reason are mutually exclusive. As you say, there are dangers, but I am a leaf on the wind, and I stunt in any direction I choose.
The only rituals I engage in are pretty normed out. Dinner with friends and family, etc. I don't go for ceremony, but rather variations on meditation. I steal from whatever seems useful or just vibes for me, and it ends up being an odd mix of Buddhism and Western occult tradition. I do suspect that there might be an intersection between mysticism and memetics and that this is what Alan Moore is attempting to approach, but this has largely grounded out into a heightened interest (though little facility) in dense and artistic communication.
I don't consider mysticism to be necessarily escapist. It is a tool in my toolbox. It certainly has far less general utility than reason, but this says more about reason than mysticism. I have used it to dull pain before, but this was while a doctor was in the process of mauling my toe after flubbing his application of anesthetic. I prefer ibuprofen. In the end, reason is easier, more direct, and more reliable, but the overlap of applicability is very small. It's hard to reason yourself out of a bad mood, but impossible to change a diaper with your will alone.
I would be wary of calling any form of 'bunk' that does not clashes with reason mysticism. Any act where you control your emotions not through belief but through technique I would call a fruit of reason - meditation, after all, is simply a way to calm the mind, and is little different from other medical tricks. For a ritual to qualify as mysticism I would say that it would need to employ faith and deception of the self - otherwise, what puts mysticism apart from mundane, rational, techniques?
It is very difficult to reason yourself out of a bad mood for the first time, much like it is difficult to meditate successfully on the first attempt. I suspect the underlying technique is actually very similar, with the message being different ('I am calm, I am calm, I am calm...' as opposed to 'I should not be angry, there is no reason for me to be angry, I should stop being angry'..).
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
It is very difficult to reason yourself out of a bad mood for the first time, much like it is difficult to meditate successfully on the first attempt. I suspect the underlying technique is actually very similar, with the message being different ('I am calm, I am calm, I am calm...' as opposed to 'I should not be angry, there is no reason for me to be angry, I should stop being angry'..).
Well, anyone can change his emotional state any time he wants, it is just that people don't allow it to themselves. What both of you guys are doing is just plain self-hypnosis. You bypass your own critical factor, allowing mind to do what is possible, not what conscious mind excepts to be possible. The thing is, however, that while you can change your emotional state like that, it will take some time (up to 30 mins) before your body can pump out all those chemicals. It is very peculiar feeling. You have this adrenaline rush, feel anxious, but still feel very calm mentally. In my opinion, it is more important start to learn recognize what makes you pissed off and prevent feeling from expanding than shut down after it has already happened.
Long thread there.
So has anyone brought up dualism and how it's possible by viewing the brain as a receptor for a soul to interact in the physical realm instead of an entity that is the soul metaphorically speaking?
I've been encountering this view quite a lot lately and I wonder how old it is.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Which reminds me of reincarnation.
I lot of people seem to derive some sort of satisfaction or comfort from it which I simply cannot understand.
If you lose your memories and everything that makes you, you; then what's so great about it when you still die every time you reincarnate?
It was the cutting-edge science in the late middle ages, towards the beginning of the renaissance.
As to reincarnation, its about karma ("The wicked are punished, the good are rewarded. The world is just!") as much as it is about avoiding death.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
Yeah, as I alluded to way earlier in the thread, placebo and suggestivity are largely theater. It's just mentally hiding one hand from the other. In fact, a positive experience with auto-hypnosis greatly influenced my eventual synthesis.
That said, one of the neurological quirks that is the most satisfying to me as an atheist is manufacturing the spiritual ectsasy of "feeling God" or whatever form they're pitching as they're attempting to pass this off as evidence of whatever. It's this pretty rad feeling of connectedness and control that just sets me on fire. It shows you how thoroughly your own mind can be coopted into deceiving you, and, for myself, left me a great deal more sympathetic toward those who got snookered into really believing this shit before they could defend themselves.
Edit: Part of the fun of the hobby for me is to create secular rationales for various dogmas. Reincarnation and Karma are some of the easier ones. Reincarnation is the dissolution of self but the preservation of essential substance. Sounds like decom-motherfucking-posing to me. In the most literal sense, you become much as you were before your birth, oblivion, component elements, etc. Karma is a pretty straightforward observation on the social consequences of being a jerk. Obviously, it doesn't pan out so universally as it says on the label, but take a long view and cultivate patience.
That said, one of the neurological quirks that is the most satisfying to me as an atheist is manufacturing the spiritual ectsasy of "feeling God" or whatever form they're pitching as they're attempting to pass this off as evidence of whatever.
Yeah. Churches and religious gatherings have so many rituals that cause light trance that it is hilarious. For example, you can actually achieve light trance just by giving people steady, natural rhytm to follow (i.e. 60 beats per minute). Just think about it:
Give to god
*clap* Give to god
*clap* Give to god
*clap* Give to god
Long thread there.
So has anyone brought up dualism and how it's possible by viewing the brain as a receptor for a soul to interact in the physical realm instead of an entity that is the soul metaphorically speaking?
I've been encountering this view quite a lot lately and I wonder how old it is.
Wikipedia says that the oldest documented examples of dualist philosophy are from ancient Egypt, so pretty old.
It's not exactly a problem-free view. If the soul is non-physical then how does it interact with the physical brain? Any strictly non-physical thing is, by definition, beyond the reach of measurement, but if it is interacting with the meat-brain (which it clearly is since we have things like EEG-based computer interfaces and active MRI) the non-physical soul must have some physical dongle on it that interoperates with the regular universe. And if such a thing exists, we should be able to find and measure it. So where is it? What is it? How does it work? Where does it come from? How does it get attached to your brain? If you undergo radical hemispherectomy, is there a chance of losing your soul because it was attached to the other half? What makes human brains special that souls are attached to them? Are they attached to all brains? If I made a perfect analog of a human brain in a jar, would a soul show up to go with it? What if I ran a perfectly accurate simulation of a brain at a cellular level on a computer?
If the soul is a non-physical adjunct to the brain, what exactly does it do? It is clearly not responsible for most stimulus responses since they happen faster than thought and are mostly traceable to specific chunks of the meat brain. If it's responsible for your internal dialouge then why is your mental state so heavily influenced by your physical state? If you do your thinking in a non-phyiscal adjunct facility, as it were, why do chemicals alter your mood or your ability to think? Why do hormones alter your mental state if you're not thinking in your meat? If the soul isn't responsible for actual thoughts but is the seat of emotion, why are emotional states so closely linked to biochemical states? Why do drugs induce euphoria? Why does a sufficiently strong magnetic field cause you to feel the presence of the divine?
I'm curious how science actually explains the placebo effect.
What is it? How does it work? What is the exact biological mechanism that let's you get better "for real" on pretend drugs or treatments?
Does micro-biology/physics give us insight into this phenomenon?
Can it work on unconscious people?
It's the power of positive thinking. Our knowledge of the brain is fairly limited, but it obviously has a strong effect on the function of your body. If you think you're getting better, to some extent, you will. The degree to which that is possible varies, but you're not going to get rid of a tumor with happy thoughts or sugar pills.
Most of the time placebo effects are in reference to subjective things. Accupuncture is good at relieving chronic pain because people think it will do so and your ability to ignore pain is significantly better, physiologically, than your day-to-day pain tolerance. In one of the studies someone quoted it mentioned that subjectively people felt less out of breath after running "due to" their placebo treatments. Actual measurements of their respiration showed that there was no change; they just thought they felt better.
There's nothing micro-biological going on. Your body is not reacting to the placebo, whatever it is. You're convincing yourself (or being convinced) that something is making you feel better.
It doesn't work on unconscious people. A key component of the whole thing is that you have to believe that whatever is going on is doing something.
Edit: It's also the exact opposite of things like phantom limb problems. Your mind has convinced itself that your missing foot should hurt, so it does, even though physiologically there is no pain signal coming into the brain.
I wasn't aware that the placebo effect correlated to a "positive mental attitude" so cite that please.
I can see the mind overcoming pain, but how does that work on cancer? "Positive thinking" seems incredibly vague considering how long we have known of the existence of this phenomenon. What then is the mechanism by which the mind effects that control?
I can see the mind overcoming pain, but how does that work on cancer?
It doesn't, which is what I just said regarding tumors and sugar pills. You can't get rid of cancer with a placebo treatment any more than you can set a broken bone with it or remove a ruptured appendix. Sometimes cancers go into remission spontaneously, and it only takes a handful of cases where that happens coincident with someone getting accupuncture or reiki or whatever to end up with books published about how crystal power heals cancer. There are no headlines for the thousands and thousands of cases where it would be "Man with cancer gets accupuncture instead of chemo and dies".
I can see the mind overcoming pain, but how does that work on cancer?
"Positive thinking" is really almost no explanation at all.
What then is the mechanism by which the mind effects that control?
Besides, I wasn't aware that the placebo effect correlated to a "positive mental attitude" so cite that please.
That was the one sentence explanation. You believe it will work, so it does. Positive thinking. If you would like to read a longer explanation, the wikipedia article is a click away: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Mechanism_of_the_effect
As to the mechanism of action, it varies. Generally it involves dopamine release that makes you feel better. Sometimes it's activation of sections of the brain associated with the action of actual drugs that would do the same thing that the placebo is making happen.
I'm curious how science actually explains the placebo effect.
What is it? How does it work? What is the exact biological mechanism that let's you get better "for real" on pretend drugs or treatments?
I mean seriously, how do sugar pills treat any percentage of people tested?
Does micro-biology/physics give us insight into this phenomenon?
Can it work on unconscious people?
There is whole field, neuroimmunology, decided to it. It looks like subconscious mind seems to be able to change / arrange things even on cellular level (even affecting cancer in some rare cases, although this might be just coincidence), we don't yet have any idea what actually causes it. It's fascinating topic certainly, but field is still very young, and research is kind of sketchy. Let see how things turn out in 20 years.
But I do know that subconscious mind is always listening what goes around. There has been several well-recorded cases, where subject was put into somnabulism*, and he could recall complete discussions from his surgery. And while it hasn't been officially proven, you can actually hypnotize subject that is in deep sleep.
* Deep trance. Term is more than little stupid, as it also means sleepwalking. Back then when term was coined, they actually thought trance had something to do with sleep.
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are you equating a person being paralyzed or born a minority to a person's belief structure, ie a fixed physical state to a changeable mental state?
Can someone point me to a practical guide to meditation? If it's really possible to trick myself into a state of relaxation with a few breathing techniques, I want in on that. It sounds incredibly useful, if it actually works. Is there a guide without any mystical nonsense? I don't want to contemplate the divine or become a vegan. Basically, I want to do this with a minimum amount of pretentiousness.
The simplest method I've come across involves focusing only on the physical sensation of your breath and constantly putting any other thoughts out of your mind as they arise. Still harder than it sounds.
Did you read the link? Would it make you a lot happier if I turned up half a dozen more studies from the last couple years supporting the physical, neurological basis of those mental states? I'm not actually going to go dig up any more right this second, but do you think it would matter?
Unfortunately, the amount of sarcasm this article deserves is probably beyond what would be considered appropriate for this forum. So, I will simply state:
This article tells us that conservative-valued people value conservatism, and liberal-valued people value liberalism.
Thanks, article.
If you wanted to prove your point, you'd really need to link to some sort of study that establishes that these personality traits are irrational, unlearned, and immutable.
I was hoping for a website or something, but thank you.
The cute part of the trick is that I don't need to. See, that's the article I could turn up most readily, and it is undeniably some poor journalism because the quotes from the researchers don't line up with the summary at all. Fortunately, I've already read a few stronger ones, so I already know that time is on my side. Hell, I might even luck into having someone with a more professional interest or more than one hand to scour with drop them for me.
Your scenario ends up with you quibbling over what I was able to turn up most quickly only to be forced into backtracking as this inevitably piles up or I just get around to it. The more you struggle in the interim, the better this gets.
Maybe humanity is biologically doomed to continually trade one superstition for another forever, but it doesn't make it okay. And it certainly doesn't mean I can't call it what it is: embarrassing and harmful.
Googling meditation or zen meditation will probably get the best results. Just look for something simple.
It's essentially just being comfortably still while clearing your mind. It's not really a trick and focusing on your breathing is just an aid to help you clear your mind. It's a bit difficult to not think of anything for a set period of time but as with anything else, practice does help. You probably won't be able to do it at first but the best advice is just to calmly remove those thoughts and bring your focus back on the breathing.
Most "contemplating the divine" stuff is just like focusing on the breathing. It's an aid to help you reach that state of calmness. That state has been given many religious names but it really isn't anything mystical. Just a state of relaxation and nothingness.
If you catch yourself falling asleep, it's ok to keep your eyes half open or focus on one specific spot. Try and find something simple and pure to focus on, though. Monks use god statues, candles, or something in nature but it really doesn't matter much as long as it isn't too distracting. If breathing doesn't work too well, you can hum softly, which is essentially olms that monks use though that is usually more distracting for most.
Again, most religions are just putting their own views on something very simple or using their own techniques for the same thing. Either it's another word for some simple state of mind or it's a method to help you focus and not get distracted. It's about purity of thought and relaxation and calmness.
It does not show that these mental states are immutable.
QED.
Are you equating mutability with agency?
Social censure, rational argument, emotional appeal and a whole range of other factors play greater and lesser roles, depending on the person.
I am saying it's premature to write off the capacity to judge or intervene in a person's failings.
That is completely a function of their environment.
It is, however, more nuanced than "People are wired to be conservative, so it's like blaming someone for being disabled."
How do you research that?
If a certain genetic group has a culture that teaches someone to be more predisposed to certain superstitions or ideologies then how do you tell if it is the genetics that are influencing that or if it is the culture that they were raised in?
Example: Those of chinese descent that grow up in an American family do not grow up with a predisposition to Confucius philosophy.
Maybe you could give an example from this research or link the work you are citing?
It's far more basic things like people are predisposed towards conservatism or liberalism, which seems to be bundled with a few other kinds of thinking, conservatives and religious thinking, authoritarian thinking, a belief in a just world, and a few other factors are much higher than their liberal counterparts. They control for education, socio-economic status and a range of other factors.
Likewise, conservatives tend to be far less flexible when confronted by new situations and are far more likely to perform poorly, get flustered and other maladaptive behaviours.
Additionally, we have good reason to believe our modes of thoughts strongly change under a whole range of circumstances - when sexually aroused, for example, our impulse control and judgements are strongly divergence from the "base state". There are a range of factors that strongly impair our rationality and unconcious factors which determine the kinds of thoughts we are prone to.
voodoospork seems to be arguing that given we are predisposed to have certain modes of thought it's pointless/silly/immoral to blame and strongly criticise people for irrational and magical thinking. I am arguing that despite the facts that voodoospork and I agree on, it is not as simple as "X is predisposed towards magical thinking, so it's stupid to express outrage toward their beliefs. You wouldn't blame a handicapped person for not being able to walk, would you?"
Lets put it this way, if insulting a dude missing both legs actually let them walk, I would totally do it. Even if it only had, say a 10% effect I would still do it. I would go up to a mentally handicapped person and say, "hey retard, don't you understand it's wrong to be retarded?" It wouldn't be enough for him to be normal, say the 40 IQ points necessary; but if it gave him 4 IQ points I would do it. It would be cruel and negligent not to.
Obviously, that's not how mental retardation or regrowing legs work. But irrational beliefs work that way. Even if you have a predisposition to irrational beliefs, enough social pressure can make you abandon those beliefs or prevent them from taking hold in your children.
One last thing, we know that humanity has gotten significantly more rational in it's beliefs in the last 1000 years. Hell, in the last 50 years even. We have not significantly evolved our genetics in that timeframe. Whatever role genetics plays in conservativism, liberalism, risk taking, etc, it clearly doesn't play that role in rationality. Not significantly compared to cultural and technological advances anyway.
Mysticism offers an easy, quick, and powerful way to achieve mental relief - especially in situations you have no way to control. I fully agree with you here. What I disagree about is the lack of a cost.
Mysticism, at its heart, is a way to control how you feel. A simple ritual is all it takes, but unless you are the source of distress in the first place you have merely dealt with an occurrence or the sideffects of the problem rather than the problem itself.
If someone sticks a knife in you, you should remove it and treat the wound - convincing yourself it does not hurts will bring your death. In other words, while you may have made yourself feel better, you have not changed what has caused you to feel the undesirable emotions in the first place. You treat the side effects of what amounts to your mind telling you that you must act.
While comforting, sticking your head in the sand can be dangerous. As addicting as any drug, using mysticism in one situation leaves you prone to using it more and more - even in situations where it may be undesirable.
So, while mysticism certainly has its use, it amounts to running away from the problem rather than dealing with it. While this is fine in many situations, it creates a perilous slippery slope unless you are very very careful in remembering that you don't actually believe in any of this and employ it purely for its utility - a thing that gets harder the more you rely on mysticism. This is why I believe it is harmful.
I do not think those who do not engage in rationality are stupid or lazy. I think they were educated to believe it is fine and live in a society that reinforces such views and supports such values. As said previously, rationality can be incredibly difficult and painful, and human beings have a worrying tendency to go for the route of least resistance.
While I try to live a life guided by rationality, I would be lying if I said I never deceive myself either. "I'll work harder tomorrow, I'll exercise more, I'll stop eating all of this harmful sugary junk!" I say to myself, only to find out I have eaten a bag of waffles while writing this post instead of studying
On a somewhat unrelated sidenote, I do not think free will is a delusion: while the universe is set in its motions, this does not means that we are not the ones who make the choices. Under a given set of conditions a given person will make a given action every time, but this is because each of us have a personality, and we decide on things based on this personality. To decide differently in the same situation would be a far more scary thing because it would imply we make decisions at random, or that our personalities are not the most important factors.
From what I understood, that is how they thought things were. And two fears makes most sense, because, for example, human beings don't fear fire from the start. Which, I think, should be most logical fear to have from evolutional standpoint. They learnt to avoid it pretty damn quickly after touching fire or given enough warnings from parents, but it still requires external stimuli.
Nonetheless, the point is somewhat moot, because children learn incredibly fast, and don't have critical factor until age of 4. Before that, anything, and I mean anything, that has enough emotional impact, will be recorded as experience, and some kind of guideline. So far as current theories go, subconscious mind doesn't understand time as concept (it can still measure it perfectly) and is completely relative, meaning that experience gained at age 3 is as valid as something learnt at age 40. Based on this, I would think snakes and spiders are scary at first, because they don't match (at that point), acceptable view of what living being should be.
And I'm not really surprised people missed whole point of my critic. The critic was not about scientific method or research. It was about the fact that everyone has behaviours that can be considered irrational and delusional. Like I said, just go to street and try to explain yourself everything you are doing. Lot of it doesn't just make any sense, doesn't it? That doesn't mean anyone is insane. It just means that, as a human beings, while we love to think we are highly rational, we still have incredible amount of irrational behaviour. Conscious mind even tends to think it can predict future events accurately, even when it doesn't have slightest clue what is going to happen. And in my experience, those who are highly analytical have this problem most, mostly because human can rationalize anything to himself, even shitty ideas, and analytical guys are best at this. No offence meant.
Social pressure can also give you thousands of irrational beliefs, like it is common in western culture.
The only rituals I engage in are pretty normed out. Dinner with friends and family, etc. I don't go for ceremony, but rather variations on meditation. I steal from whatever seems useful or just vibes for me, and it ends up being an odd mix of Buddhism and Western occult tradition. I do suspect that there might be an intersection between mysticism and memetics and that this is what Alan Moore is attempting to approach, but this has largely grounded out into a heightened interest (though little facility) in dense and artistic communication.
I don't consider mysticism to be necessarily escapist. It is a tool in my toolbox. It certainly has far less general utility than reason, but this says more about reason than mysticism. I have used it to dull pain before, but this was while a doctor was in the process of mauling my toe after flubbing his application of anesthetic. I prefer ibuprofen. In the end, reason is easier, more direct, and more reliable, but the overlap of applicability is very small. It's hard to reason yourself out of a bad mood, but impossible to change a diaper with your will alone.
It is very difficult to reason yourself out of a bad mood for the first time, much like it is difficult to meditate successfully on the first attempt. I suspect the underlying technique is actually very similar, with the message being different ('I am calm, I am calm, I am calm...' as opposed to 'I should not be angry, there is no reason for me to be angry, I should stop being angry'..).
Well, anyone can change his emotional state any time he wants, it is just that people don't allow it to themselves. What both of you guys are doing is just plain self-hypnosis. You bypass your own critical factor, allowing mind to do what is possible, not what conscious mind excepts to be possible. The thing is, however, that while you can change your emotional state like that, it will take some time (up to 30 mins) before your body can pump out all those chemicals. It is very peculiar feeling. You have this adrenaline rush, feel anxious, but still feel very calm mentally. In my opinion, it is more important start to learn recognize what makes you pissed off and prevent feeling from expanding than shut down after it has already happened.
So has anyone brought up dualism and how it's possible by viewing the brain as a receptor for a soul to interact in the physical realm instead of an entity that is the soul metaphorically speaking?
I've been encountering this view quite a lot lately and I wonder how old it is.
It is not a not dumb view.
I lot of people seem to derive some sort of satisfaction or comfort from it which I simply cannot understand.
If you lose your memories and everything that makes you, you; then what's so great about it when you still die every time you reincarnate?
As to reincarnation, its about karma ("The wicked are punished, the good are rewarded. The world is just!") as much as it is about avoiding death.
That said, one of the neurological quirks that is the most satisfying to me as an atheist is manufacturing the spiritual ectsasy of "feeling God" or whatever form they're pitching as they're attempting to pass this off as evidence of whatever. It's this pretty rad feeling of connectedness and control that just sets me on fire. It shows you how thoroughly your own mind can be coopted into deceiving you, and, for myself, left me a great deal more sympathetic toward those who got snookered into really believing this shit before they could defend themselves.
Edit: Part of the fun of the hobby for me is to create secular rationales for various dogmas. Reincarnation and Karma are some of the easier ones. Reincarnation is the dissolution of self but the preservation of essential substance. Sounds like decom-motherfucking-posing to me. In the most literal sense, you become much as you were before your birth, oblivion, component elements, etc. Karma is a pretty straightforward observation on the social consequences of being a jerk. Obviously, it doesn't pan out so universally as it says on the label, but take a long view and cultivate patience.
Yeah. Churches and religious gatherings have so many rituals that cause light trance that it is hilarious. For example, you can actually achieve light trance just by giving people steady, natural rhytm to follow (i.e. 60 beats per minute). Just think about it:
Give to god
*clap*
Give to god
*clap*
Give to god
*clap*
Give to god
Oh look, donation rates are going up!
So, do exactly the same as religions do?
Wikipedia says that the oldest documented examples of dualist philosophy are from ancient Egypt, so pretty old.
It's not exactly a problem-free view. If the soul is non-physical then how does it interact with the physical brain? Any strictly non-physical thing is, by definition, beyond the reach of measurement, but if it is interacting with the meat-brain (which it clearly is since we have things like EEG-based computer interfaces and active MRI) the non-physical soul must have some physical dongle on it that interoperates with the regular universe. And if such a thing exists, we should be able to find and measure it. So where is it? What is it? How does it work? Where does it come from? How does it get attached to your brain? If you undergo radical hemispherectomy, is there a chance of losing your soul because it was attached to the other half? What makes human brains special that souls are attached to them? Are they attached to all brains? If I made a perfect analog of a human brain in a jar, would a soul show up to go with it? What if I ran a perfectly accurate simulation of a brain at a cellular level on a computer?
If the soul is a non-physical adjunct to the brain, what exactly does it do? It is clearly not responsible for most stimulus responses since they happen faster than thought and are mostly traceable to specific chunks of the meat brain. If it's responsible for your internal dialouge then why is your mental state so heavily influenced by your physical state? If you do your thinking in a non-phyiscal adjunct facility, as it were, why do chemicals alter your mood or your ability to think? Why do hormones alter your mental state if you're not thinking in your meat? If the soul isn't responsible for actual thoughts but is the seat of emotion, why are emotional states so closely linked to biochemical states? Why do drugs induce euphoria? Why does a sufficiently strong magnetic field cause you to feel the presence of the divine?
What is it? How does it work? What is the exact biological mechanism that let's you get better "for real" on pretend drugs or treatments?
I mean seriously, how do sugar pills treat any percentage of people tested?
Does micro-biology/physics give us insight into this phenomenon?
Can it work on unconscious people?
It's the power of positive thinking. Our knowledge of the brain is fairly limited, but it obviously has a strong effect on the function of your body. If you think you're getting better, to some extent, you will. The degree to which that is possible varies, but you're not going to get rid of a tumor with happy thoughts or sugar pills.
Most of the time placebo effects are in reference to subjective things. Accupuncture is good at relieving chronic pain because people think it will do so and your ability to ignore pain is significantly better, physiologically, than your day-to-day pain tolerance. In one of the studies someone quoted it mentioned that subjectively people felt less out of breath after running "due to" their placebo treatments. Actual measurements of their respiration showed that there was no change; they just thought they felt better.
There's nothing micro-biological going on. Your body is not reacting to the placebo, whatever it is. You're convincing yourself (or being convinced) that something is making you feel better.
It doesn't work on unconscious people. A key component of the whole thing is that you have to believe that whatever is going on is doing something.
Edit: It's also the exact opposite of things like phantom limb problems. Your mind has convinced itself that your missing foot should hurt, so it does, even though physiologically there is no pain signal coming into the brain.
I can see the mind overcoming pain, but how does that work on cancer? "Positive thinking" seems incredibly vague considering how long we have known of the existence of this phenomenon. What then is the mechanism by which the mind effects that control?
It doesn't, which is what I just said regarding tumors and sugar pills. You can't get rid of cancer with a placebo treatment any more than you can set a broken bone with it or remove a ruptured appendix. Sometimes cancers go into remission spontaneously, and it only takes a handful of cases where that happens coincident with someone getting accupuncture or reiki or whatever to end up with books published about how crystal power heals cancer. There are no headlines for the thousands and thousands of cases where it would be "Man with cancer gets accupuncture instead of chemo and dies".
That was the one sentence explanation. You believe it will work, so it does. Positive thinking. If you would like to read a longer explanation, the wikipedia article is a click away:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Mechanism_of_the_effect
As to the mechanism of action, it varies. Generally it involves dopamine release that makes you feel better. Sometimes it's activation of sections of the brain associated with the action of actual drugs that would do the same thing that the placebo is making happen.
So there are no cases of recovery from an illness due to placebo effect then?
There is whole field, neuroimmunology, decided to it. It looks like subconscious mind seems to be able to change / arrange things even on cellular level (even affecting cancer in some rare cases, although this might be just coincidence), we don't yet have any idea what actually causes it. It's fascinating topic certainly, but field is still very young, and research is kind of sketchy. Let see how things turn out in 20 years.
But I do know that subconscious mind is always listening what goes around. There has been several well-recorded cases, where subject was put into somnabulism*, and he could recall complete discussions from his surgery. And while it hasn't been officially proven, you can actually hypnotize subject that is in deep sleep.
* Deep trance. Term is more than little stupid, as it also means sleepwalking. Back then when term was coined, they actually thought trance had something to do with sleep.