Knowledge...

[wolven7]

P. Emerson Williams - [Round the Fire]--- Please remember: Everything you do, every day, is based on a near-universally-agreed-upon but essentially foundationless assumption that today is anything like yesterday and that tomorrow will be anything at all like today.

Memory and planning is all we have of yesterday and tomorrow, and either of those can be faked, faulted, and/or erased.

P. Emerson Williams - [At the Gates]--- We lie, to ourselves and each other, we forget, we are mistaken about what happened, and we can't forget things that never did.

There is an essential incompleteness to any system of inference and explanation, because there is always at least one thing that it cannot coherently explain, without a circularity or paradoxical nature: Itself.

Now, I'm generally fine with circularity and paradox, when we accept it and integrate it. (P. Emerson Williams - [CSS - Segment Three]). The problem, as I can see it, occurs when we try to circumvent it, or work around it. In these cases, we either generate, or run up against more paradoxes, or we leave a hole of uncertainty-- an unknowable blank-- upon and around which we then build a structure which we call a system of something.

P. Emerson Williams - [At the TV Studio]--- Now, don't get me wrong, kids: I have said that these systems Can Be Useful, and I stand by that. They allow us to operate, to live lives, to build communities and exist, from day to day. But these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, simply because they propose a system of explanation. When you start at nothing and seek to create something out of an unknownable blank point, then what can you have but any and everything?

P. Emerson Williams - [Serpents]--- Okay, that was a bit wibbly. But think about what you're doing, scientists, magicians, Christians, Chaotes, all: You are positing the knowable Yes as an Answer to a question with no meaning. What exists before everything exists? By what reasoning do you justify your reasoning? What allows your Creator to create? What was the nature of your face, before you were born?

Okay, I stole that last one, but the point still stands.

P. Emerson Williams - [Swampa]--- So, just think about it; ask the question. Because there is no answer which is acceptable, to everyone, there is no knowledge which has the ability to explain its own justifications, without embracing paradox and circularity.

With which I am perfectly okay.

Comments

[plantyhamchuk.livejournal.com]

Paradoxes are only created in circular systems, which are by their very nature inherently flawed. I think the point of a paradox is to require a new way of thinking, allowing one to break out of said circular system. The circular logical system is not open to change unless the paradox of unequal identities is recognized, and the methodology is changed in response.

There are other ways of thinking about the world, that are not inherently circular, that are based on evidence. These systems may at first glance appear to be circular models as well, however they are loose/flexible models that are built to describe evidence. This evidence is the foundation for the model, not the other way around. Because it is evidence-based, it is inherently loose and allows one to transcend paradox. Paradox is no longer necessary nor even present in such a model. And if one discards all evidence as being faulty, untrustworthy, or unreliable due to human failure (memory, etc.) you're discarding all useful material on which to build a system. We've got nothing else.

Science is based on the latter model. Any scientist who says Yes is doing bad science. You never get that level of certainty, because the system is based on evidence, and evidence can change.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Evidence Can change, and does, almost by default, but that doesn't change the idea that, even looking at evidence, we have no reason to believe that evidence to be correct. In fact it adds to the doubt. What reason do we have to even Accept The Evidence, whatever it is?

Which, again, I'm okay with, and you seem to be, as well. But too many people Say they understand and work within this, while still resisting changes based on new evidence, or ignoring the evidence, at all, as an "Outlier."

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

we call those people "young earthers"

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Ba-dum-CHA! Nice.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

okaaay... so what's your point?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Didn't really have one. ;)

But seriously, just noting that too many people don't investigate the potential foundationlessness of all knowledge and belief, and hoping to get people to more honestly assess and approach their own.

Socrates-ing it up, as it were.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"When you start at nothing and seek to create something out of an unknownable blank point, then what can you have but any and everything?"

I had a gut reaction to this, but I'd be overstepping myself if I just jumped in and assumed something...

So...

question 1: Do you assume science to be such a system?
question 2: Do you assume magic to NOT be such a system?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

1) Assume? No, but from everything I've seen, so far, yes.

2) Much like (1), from what I've experienced, Magic IS such a system. But, at least in my usage, it accepts it's foundationlessness, and seeks to use it.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

1. explain how science does not accept this in what you've seen of it, and explain how it, as you said in your comment above, does not accept new evidence (assuming that comment was in any way directed at science)

2. how does magic "seek to use it"?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Science builds, every day, new things, saying all the while "Oh yes, we're just guessing, and we Could Be Wrong *Ker-Wink*." It's the disingenuousness of it that rankles.

Magic, as I use it, embraces the paradox as the only thing that can actually generate something from the unknowable possibly-nothing. Accepting that the answer to "How did the universe come to be, and what is the foundation of knowledge?" is "The Colour 12," or similar-- embracing and using the paradox of Not Yes and Not Not-Yes, Not Both, and Not Neither-- is the only way to adapt fluidly and readily to anything the universe requires.

It's not... Perfect. But it is a system with built-in adaptability mechanisms.

Hope that made sense.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"Science builds, every day, new things, saying all the while "Oh yes, we're just guessing, and we Could Be Wrong *Ker-Wink*." It's the disingenuousness of it that rankles."

I've pointed something out a number of times, that when we say "Science" we have to differentiate between the scientific method and the scientific community. Since I didn't above, I can't really get on you about it here.

But I guess in the context I was speaking in, I *was* making a statement about the community without really realizing it. Having made my bed, I will lie in it, but I'd like to still elaborate on my thoughts on the matter.

Science as a methodology is what I was intending to discuss, and I would still like answers as to how that methodology disallows new evidence.

If you want to say the scientific community is disallowing new lines of evidence, then you have to show me how. You have given me, again, rhetoric. I asked "how" and you did not tell me. If you want to give an example like Homeopathy or acupuncture or astrology then do so, and I'll gladly tell you exactly why they disallow those lines of evidence as being reasonable.

And when I ask about how magic uses it, you do then tell me about the methodology and not the community, and this switches gears midstream (if I may be so bold as to pull a really shitty metaphor out of my nethers)

"embraces the paradox as the only thing that can actually generate something from the unknowable possibly-nothing"

All that says is that you embrace the unknowable as being the thing that will shed light on new knowledge out of the unknowable. This is a blind-faith assumption built on nothing. You are saying that "what I don't know can tell me something about what I don't know". "x + x = 12, and I need not justify that with evidence".

""How did the universe come to be, and what is the foundation of knowledge?" is "The Colour 12,""

Is a meaningless phrase, meaning NOTHING. This is what I was saying about metaphors. If that metaphor actually was a symbolic placeholder for a concept or hypothesis that had some sort of information that could then be quantified or qualified, then that metaphor could indeed get the point across to someone. But all you have is a metaphor for nothing. That doesn't mean anything. All you're saying is that "because I can't know something for sure I can use a completely incoherent concept like the color 12 as my answer because there's no way to come up with a better answer right now"

"embracing and using the paradox of Not Yes and Not Not-Yes, Not Both, and Not Neither-- is the only way to adapt fluidly and readily to anything the universe requires."

And yet despite this you are more than willing to ignore the fact that that sort of paradox renders your entire system meaningless and useless anyway. Yet you are not in any way hindered in your goals of preaching it from the rooftops as though it will change humanity for the qualitatively better.

---

Coming back to "Oh yes, we're just guessing, and we Could Be Wrong *Ker-Wink*."

How does your methodology itself, the community that supports it, not EXEMPLIFY this statement?

The scientific method of observe, test, repeat, has given us every technological advancement humanity has ever gotten, from agriculture to tool making to quantum computers and laser beams that can obliterate a missile or correct your vision. Does this not warrant a sense of confidence that it as a methodology is in some way useful? Does it not justify confidence that a wide variety of answers are indeed available to it?

And does the fact that it has throughout history discarded numerous wrong answers not at least put SOME weight into the notion that they are genuine in their sentiment of "we could be wrong"?

Meanwhile statements such as this...

[wolven.livejournal.com]

See Below.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"Little known fact: magic spells work. The trick is, always keep your word. If you do that, eventually just saying something makes it happen." - Molly Crabapple

"All this points out the inherent flaws in the binary nature of Scientific Method. Seems tis being noted more oft by the scienticians these days. Some realize that 1 and 0 are a very limited way of seeing the world. Their methods of expanding thought seem to me somewhat limited though. 1,0, and -1 ain't much better. The just don't want to give up the gestalt of Learned Things yet (as they shouldn't), but have not come up with a satifying relief from their banal little views on reality. - A user comment in your journal by someone identifying themselves as "Pallendrome"

"Whoever said you had a closed mind is correct. - sammhain"

(paraphrased)"If you try to apply the methods of science to the gods, which is what we're talking about with astrology, then they're laughing at you... (later) Astrology is both an art and a SCIENCE" - From This talk on "rigor in archetypal astrology" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAx7W5G5_8g) by Rick Tarnas

And then of course there's the case of Sammhain referring to Deepak Chopra as a charlatan, or when you ridiculed that online jewelry seller for not worshipping gods and demons the way you thought it should be done.

I can spend another 10 minutes combing through links and comments if you want more, because that's all it took for this little group.

So if you want to say each community has a sense of arrogant superiority, then fine. Have at it.

The difference is the methodologies. One has given us everything and one has yet to give us anything other than a warm fuzzy feeling and sense of accomplishment that gives people the confidence to dictate to scientists that their worldview is "banal" and that people like me are "closedminded".

I don't defend the people on my side that ridicule the people on your side, but I do defend the method by which they came to the conclusion that you lack evidence, and as has become apparent, your colleagues lack it as well. You can spin a web of metaphor that is a meta-level explanation of an incoherent concept which you can neither back logically or with observable evidence.

I fully admit that the utterly basic foundation of all knowledge is the singular assumption, which cannot be proven, but by all accounts appears to be true, that we are capable of observing and understanding the universe. Upon that it appears that it acts by way of laws, and the study of those laws has taken us out of the cave and put us in front of computers arguing about it.

You personal brand of magic has not given us technological, philosophical, or sociological advancement. Your mindset, which is more akin to that shared by our warring tribal ancestors has not prevented the numerous religious wars or bigoted viewpoints and atrocities committed by people that were absolutely sure that they had divine reason to kill blacks, jews, protestants, catholics, gays, or anyone else. That includes the scientISTS, the people who, while using the scientific method to find information about the world, ignored the philosophical obviousness of their non-right to harm others and went about their divine business of genocide and bigotry.

And I still say that the only people that have benefited from your collective's concept of magic are the people going on book tours selling it to housewives who need to feel empowered and are willing to give some bald guy parading a burn victim around on stage lots of money to empower himself with.

Because as of yet neither you nor your comrades have managed to use this method alone to achieve any level of success beyond the very materialistic level of convincing other meatbags that your meatbag philosophy is a better meatbag philosophy.

And chickens can do that without a fucking head.

*Ker-Wink*

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That's my point: The majority of almost Every group tips in the wink, at the end. Why not just say, "We think we have the best answer, and all other answers are crap," if that's what you really feel?

I Think I have a pretty good, but incomplete answer, and all other answers have the potential to be pretty good, if incomplete.

Actually I know a few people who have specifically used their magical practice to aid them in their day-to-day lives, to heal other people, to find and assess personal psychological problems, and to change the world.

But those aren't my stories to tell.

I say that magic allows direct contact with a structure of resonance and symbolism, within all conscious minds and, from there, out into the world. You say that the scientific methods of testing and falsifiability don't bear this out.

I tell you that I've seen it happen, that I've watched the seeming cause-and-effect correlations, as telling as any other, fall into place with the intent, planning, and will of the individual to allocate a particular kind of work to a particular kind of outcome, on individual levels, at various times. You ask me to repeat the situation, or offer a model in which they can happen, all the time.

I never said that. I said that magic works, operates in the mind and the world, but it requires a shifting combination of intention and attention that I've seen perform work, and generate understandings of the world which allow people to Better operate, within it. And they're not trying to sell books, or go on glad-handing tours, because of it.

They're trying to live their lives and open up the world to more people living their lives, too. Maybe they create a game, or a novel, or an album, or talk about futurism, now and again, but, for the most part, the magicians I know don't feel the need to try to sell anyone anything about How To Do Teh Magicks™. Because they tend to think that the results should speak for themselves, without having to Buy a damned thing..

They also don't think that their system will work for everyone. Magic is a personal system, it is one which requires time and investment and internal associative analysis, at least as I've come to understand it. Even initiate orders require personal study.

But I think I've addressed your concerns, and I have to go to work.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

Why not just say, "We think we have the best answer, and all other answers are crap," if that's what you really feel?

When Dawkins does it, I don't hear people on the opposing side take it very seriously.

But as far as I can remember I have always stated it essentially as such; That I have reason to believe, and do believe, that the answer I am positing is correct or at the very least has more explanatory power than the alternative viewpoint, in this case, the one posited by you, which I think I lack reason to believe in part due to a lack of evidence, and also due to a lack of explanatory power.

I almost said "logical coherence" but honestly the more I probe the more I don't think there's anything to even coherent or incoherent. I don't think there's a framework to speak of.

If you want to label that as "I'm right and you're stupid" then I'd like to simply state that I don't think you're stupid. If anything, I think it takes someone quite brilliant to actually formulate arguments to justify something that lacks any supporting evidence. I suppose I might as well go out on a limb here and be a dick by saying that I think the concept itself is pretty stupid.

When you say things like "help in their day to day lives" or "assess personal psychological problems" and you call it magic, then you're just taking something that is already readily explained by another method (chiefly, neurology, psychology, biology, chemistry, sociology, all of the things that such things encompass) which is borne out by the evidence and has a framework which can bet studied, and you're just calling it something else and, as I think this debacle with your PHD has shown, much to your own detriment, and for no reason.

I realize that for you, calling these things magic puts your head in a state of mind that encourages you to get things done, like some sort of mnemonic device, like that whole thing about remembering the planets with that phrase about mom getting us pizza (of course that doesn't work anymore now that pluto isn't a planet)

But that very mnemonic device has a materialistic neurological explanation.

Healing people? Yeah I doubt that when it comes to viral or bacterial infection. You didn't fare any better than I did this winter in that regards. And that's something you COULD test in a lab.

"I say that magic allows direct contact with a structure of resonance and symbolism, within all conscious minds and, from there, out into the world. You say that the scientific methods of testing and falsifiability don't bear this out."

And here's one of those things where you are saying "magic" and what you're meaning is one aspect of magic that has to do with psychological matters, and when you say "allows direct contact with a structure of resonance and symbolism" you're meaning that people can connect by again, essentially using psychological effects and techniques to communicate, which is something that 4 billion years of biological evolution has given almost every creature to some extent or another. And I don't say the scientific method of testing and falsifiability don't bear that concept out, I say it DOES bear that concept out, but you're calling it magic for no reason other than to fit it into your own semantic preference.

"I tell you that I've seen it happen, that I've watched the seeming cause-and-effect correlations, as telling as any other, fall into place with the intent, planning, and will of the individual to allocate a particular kind of work to a particular kind of outcome, on individual levels, at various times."

On the INDIVIDUAL level... Meaning that it happens between two people, to subjective entities meddling with their own subjective experiences that work in a framework of neurophysiology and the resulting framework of psychology.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"...and generate understandings of the world which allow people to Better operate, within it."

I have no doubt that people can use a tool such as this or any other blind faith tool to occasionally reach a desirable outcome. There's going to be an occasion where someone says "I believe God wants me to move to Alabama" where that decision did have a beneficial outcome regardless of the truth of the original statement.

Flipping a coin works too. Sometimes...

But that's my point. You've given what is essentially flipping a coin with a lot of pomp and circumstance, called it magic.

You've taken "assessing and exploiting the operations of human neurophysiology and the resulting psychological processes to guide the actions of another human towards a desired end" and called it magic.

You've taken sitting in a room and thinking about the weather getting better and then validating it after the fact in the event the weather DOES actually get better (by a completely different framework of physical actions) and called it magic.

I read your thesis three times. I've read every post you've made since I befriended you on LJ and a few of your posts from before that time. I've read the posts and comments of your LJ colleagues, watched numerous persons on YouTube, lectures on YouTube, and what amounted to infomercials on PBS and the internet for books by guys like Wayne Dyer.

As far as I can tell you're all selling the same thing, and there's nothing to it other than taking what is already a well studied materialistic phenomena, calling it something else, and asserting that you have explained it without explaining anything.

You haven't addressed my concerns, you've just said that same thing over and over. It works. No explanation why, just it works. It isn't subject to scrutiny, it just works. It's different somehow from psychology, neurology, sociology, or physics, and with no explanation, it is, and it works.

What am I missing and should I continue this line of questioning with you or have we reached the limits of what is useful discussion and simply move on? At this point I don't even understand how you can formulate this in your own mind to make any sense other than just a blind assertion based on completely anecdotal evidence of the social aspects of it, and then asserting that the telekinetic "healing" aspects also work. I'm at a loss.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Find in it whatever you want. Magic, as I've posited and seen it, follows rules of resonance, symbolism, and similarity. There are aspects of psychology, neurology, sociology, physics, philosophy, religion, and other fields, in its operations, but it is not singularly any one of these. It's what happens in the place where they overlap. You don't see there being an overlap, or at least not one where these things function, in concert, while I do and have, so... I don't know.

And I've flipped a quarter 28 times in a row and called it right, every time. I would have gone for a hundred, but I freaked the person out. I won the quarter.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"...follows rules of resonance, symbolism, and similarity."

Rules which you can't explain.

"It's what happens in the place where they overlap."

Which for some reason you can't describe.

"You don't see there being an overlap, or at least not one where these things function, in concert, while I do and have, so... I don't know."

Seeing where neurology overlaps into psychology, into sociology, I see. The reason I don't call it magic is because I can still study it with science and get the answers to the questions I ask.

And you still have to explain changing the weather.

And I've been to a Casino, and children's parties. I've seen lots of things happen with a quarter. Explain how it either wasn't a trick (in the Penn and Teller sense) or explain what forces of the universe allowed you to do that.

And then explain what you can't do it again, or why you are able to do it again, whatever.

What is so impossible about straight answers with this?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yes, I will do that, when you explain to me how gravity works.

You ask me to explain rules that, at base, simply Work. I've seen them work, I've used them to do work, and I know they work, in that fashion. How or why do they work? How does entropy work? Why do photons move so fast? That fundamentally, we Do Not Know, is the entire point of this post.

Explain changing the weather? I thought about rain. On a day when it wasn't supposed to rain, and when the existing conditions didn't lead to a reasonable expectation of rain, myself and some other people thought about rain Really Hard, and a thunderstorm happened.

A guy flipped a coin. I called what side it was on, 28 times in a row. Maybe I could do it, again, haven't really tried, recently.

But I'm angry, so let's try a different tactic: Explain to me what magic would have to to do to be real, for you.

To put it another way, beg the question of the "validity" of these experiences (knowing, as you do, my problem with seeking to verify or validate experience); start with the assumption that YOU have experienced all of these things. Being of a scientific mind, you seek to explain them by way of existing scientific means, but find them lacking. What do you do? Provide me with an explanation of magical experience, that would satisfy the you, asking these questions.

Because maybe I'm just not sure what the shape of what you're looking for is, so I don't know how to frame it, for you. That's what I'm willing to think, right now, rather than finding this whole exercise to be intractable.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

I'm fully aware that I am unable to explain why there's something rather than nothing or why mass tends to attract other mass, and I'm aware that it "simply does".

But you aren't talking about fundamental laws like these most of the time. You're talking about various things, from simple interactions between two people being magical, to telekinesis.

As I've stated, when it's those things that are already explained thoroughly by science, or at the very least, much more thoroughly explained by science than by any other means, such as neurology, or physics, then I am not disputing "magic" because there's nothing there to dispute. There's nothing for magic TO explain there, and there's nothing that it ATTEMPTS to explain. You have just asserted that there's something there that it answers.

When it's changing the weather, you're talking about a neural network inside your brain creating an energetic force that can change the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere on a grand scale, and rather than assume that in a 5 cubic mile area of atmosphere things occurred that were not accurately witnessed by your local meteorologist, or that there were things happening in the 100 cubic miles of atmosphere OUTSIDE your local that caused it, you would rather assume that you and your friends were able to defy every known law of physics with your will.

You have to understand that it is not because I refuse to accept evidence that I DOUBT this (not deny, DOUBT) or that I am unwilling to accept the possibility that there are forces beyond my understanding, it is because the evidence provided is so shoddy and completely inadequate to even posit a LOOSE corelation that I would not take that sort of thing as evidence that you and your friends were able to change the temperature in your attic 3 degrees ferenheit by rubbing two sticks together in your basement, even when there is actually a known framework within that could work what with friction and the observed laws of physics that would support that as a possibility.

But that would be testable, quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable, and...

Yet the answer to why you can't do this sort of thing again?

"it simply is such"

If I told you gravity only worked 1% of the time, could never predict it, could not provide you with a framework for why, when, where, or any other information... You'd be justified in not believing in gravity.

And if you can do the coin trick again, and again, I'll believe it. I'll take it into a lab and I'll hook your brain up to imaging devices and I will praise the day I met you because you'll have shown proof of something that I would love to think it possible: that there are recepters in the brain that receive data beyond simple neural transmission, allowing the brain to somehow either compute much more complex predictions about physical actions, or somehow image the three dimensional space much better than previously thought.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

If I told you gravity only worked 1% of the time, could never predict it, could not provide you with a framework for why, when, where, or any other information... You'd be justified in not believing in gravity.

And that, I think, is the fundamental difference, here. Because I wouldn't disbelieve in gravity. I would seek to figure out what was different about those 1% occurrences.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

And I swear to the entire magical and scientific community that I would shake your hand and say "yes you've shown me something I've never seen, thought not possible under my current understanding of neurophysiology"

But when that happens you'll have proven that one aspect of your magic was correct. One. And as always I'll be telling you that you can, if you so choose, call it whatever the hell you want to fit your semantic preferences.

As I have said, if you want to prove magic to be real to me, then prove the individual claims to be real. I've already told you I think the evidence bears out that you can manipulate people's minds through exploiting weaknesses in their psychological state, and that you can engineer social situations. I've just said "that's already understood as a materialistic process, and you're just calling it magic for no reason" or "if you define that as magic then you define magic as the action of exploiting psychological opportunity" which then does NOT fit with calling it "the ability to telekinetically alter the physical universe".

If you want magic to be both the psychological aspect AS WELL as telekinesis, then you have to prove that you have these telekinetic powers, something which by all rights you should be able to do in a lab setting, with witnesses, on situations more controlled than near-infinite variable "the weather".

At the very least I'd like to hear some sort of reasoning that actually is worded as logical arguments and not just waxing poetic about what you assert to be true.

And as to what would I do if I had these experiences? Stop to think that maybe I HAVE had experiences that were difficult to explain, but did not find the scientific method lacking because I did not quit at "the weather changed when I wanted it to, and the local weather man was wrong, therefore the logical conclusion must be magic".

I AM impressed by the coin thing. But I didn't see it, I don't know anything else that was going on, and if I did see it myself, you can bet that I would have tried it a billion more times to see if it was an ability I had or just, as you say, "an outlier", an anomaly of chance that happens on occasion, and is well within the bounds of rational thought, if not highly unlikely to happen on more than ONE occasion in a given amount of time.

Let's remember that just because something is unlikely to happen, does not mean it CAN'T happen, and just because it DID happen, does not mean the laws of physics have been broken by what is the evolutionary end result of 4 billion years of DNA based creatures that have lacked this ability until you and your circle of friends.

Why shouldn't I be skeptical? Why Shouldn't I want evidence beyond the vague assertions and poetic rhetoric?

You bring up things like gravity and photons, things that happen the same way every day, day in day out everywhere that we can find and everywhere we search it's the same everywhere. And you equate that to one freak occurrence of rain? Or guessing right 28 times? You equate those as being equally with or without justification for belief as being fundamentally existent laws?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You should want the evidence, sure, but there is a difference between wanting it and demanding it in such a way as to imply that it must be impossible. And, frankly, I think that's what all the people you mentioned, earlier, felt was happening.

I don't equate them, in anything other than the sense that the multiple experiences I've had, and which I've investigated, personally, and which corroborate with reportage from others, cannot, at base, be explained by anything other than their Having Happened.

I also didn't say that any of these (except the coin thing) only happened once. I could list other occurrences of each, slightly different, but all tokens of a type which break down to the basics of what I've said, here.

And you're right about the statistical outlier thing, and that the possibility of that happening is there. What I am saying, and have said, is that I am interested in what makes those things the "outliers" rather than the norm, and how to understand and use them.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

As though when faced with the problem that I don't know how gravity works that's going to force me into a corner where I can no longer doubt a singular freak occurrence for which I have only anecdotal evidence of a situation so lacking in data that I can only judge it by either saying "I take this as true and obviously of magical origin" or I am left only to question the very sanity or credibility of you yourself, which I don't want to do, I am NOT doing, but you've put me in that position. I can't go back in time to test every inch of sky for the meteorological explanation, nor can I test your brain over the internet for metaphysical abilities, so by default I can't give you an answer.

So you win that one by default.

But to compare that to gravity is ridiculous. That's the same as comparing a belief in Cthulu to the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. 10,000 years of recorded human history report the phenomenon, and I'll be happy to take pictures of it for the next year. But based on the information given to me by you, you didn't have the information required to make the assumptions that you did with any certainty.

It's a big sky, and the weather changes all the time.

Every once in awhile the roulette table hits 00 twice in a row, and I've played enough roulette to see someone bet wrong on black/red 20 times in a row, and I've seen it hit red 10 or more times in a row.

And one time I played rock paper scissors with a 10 year old and matched her every play like 20 times in a row.

I've gotten 1 in 10 drops in Warcraft two or three times in a row.

That's how math works. That's how the weather works. It "simply is so"

What do I want for magic to be real? For something in your vision of magic to be real that isn't already explained by at least one other field of research that has already cataloged and defined it for some 50 or more years of academic research.

You are just defining what is already known with flowery prose and lumping a group of barely related fields under one heading and slapping on an aesthetic that fits your personal preferences. And I don't even criticize that action in and of itself if the person isn't deluding themselves that it somehow explains all those things more thoroughly than the umpteen billion text books already written on those subjects.

But SERIOUSLY, and I mean this with all due respect that I can possibly give, and without malice in my heart, I think you are deluding yourself if you think any of this fits outside of scientific materialistic non-magical reality, and I think I have serious reason to believe that half of this shit that you are seeing isn't there at all. Not because of some failing of perception or fault in your cognitive faculties, but because you PREFER it that way.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I don't think it explains them More Thoroughly. I think that it's a useful term and rubric under which to "lump" the areas of overlap and points of view. I think that it provides a window onto what happens, there, in a way that is useful, and from which we actually gain a method of working in the world.

I am not now claiming, nor Have I Ever Claimed that magic is the Best way of looking at the whole world. But I do believe that there are conjunctions of experience, perception, symbolism, biological and physical reaction, behaviour, and outcome are better understood, and more fruitfully utilised, when they are called "Magic," than when they're called anything else.

I also never said anything about non-materialistic views. I just said that it's possible that we don't understand the materials with which we're working, anywhere near enough to be making negative claims about what is or is not a Part of that material, and what it can and can't do.

Like you said, you read my thesis, three times. A major portion of it is to say that All that Exists is Necessarily Natural. Therefore, magic, if it can be said to exist, must, itself, be natural. I just didn't really have the time to go into the kinds of things I think natural can mean.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"And that, I think, is the fundamental difference, here. Because I wouldn't disbelieve in gravity. I would seek to figure out what was different about those 1% occurrences."

That is, in essence, what I'm trying to do. I am trying to find the function of those things that are outliers. But having not found the answer scientifically, and having no other framework to work in (and having yet to have a *framework* laid out to inquire using magic as the method) I am left doubting. Not necessarily outright disbelieving, or asserting that it is impossible, I am assessing the observable information, computing the data, and either getting answers of "highly improbable" or "logically incoherent", and in the case of logically incoherent, such as round squares or married bachelors, I seek clarification so that I can actually get data with which to work.

This is a generalization, obviously, and for that I apologize.

"You should want the evidence, sure, but there is a difference between wanting it and demanding it in such a way as to imply that it must be impossible. And, frankly, I think that's what all the people you mentioned, earlier, felt was happening."

I am quite sure that, especially in the case of Sammhain, that this has been the perception of your LJ colleagues.

But if I could step away from my normally logic-only approach and embrace the frustration that I am feeling with a great deal of this, I'd say that the one thing that I am truly sick of beyond words is that we are all discussing the legitimacy of a concept, and the only criticism that I have received is not against the concepts that I am presenting, but rather in the tone of voice I use when presenting them.

This is of course not a one sided problem in the religious/philosophical debate in general, but I don't condone it on either side.

Instead of explaining where I'm wrong, I'm just hit with "you're being smug and condescending". I made all possible attempts to avoid any and all references to personal feelings and emotional motivations when assessing your concepts, as to not turn it into one big meta-ad-hominem against the magical community instead of against the concepts themselves.

Where I have faultered I do feel remorse.

But addressing the actual point of demanding evidence and implying it to be impossible...

By now I would think I have made it clear that that is not my intent or stance. I have always approached this as being a situation that entails not only your concepts lacking supporting evidence, but also that there is evidence that in some cases precludes them from being possible under the currently known factors. And at every turn I have given you the opportunity to fill in the unknown data factors, and time and time again it is simply shot down on the grounds that it is for no apparent reason untestable.

It is your side, not mine, claiming that things are impossible to test, not I that am claiming the actions are impossible, merely unsupported by evidence, and yes, in some cases, shown to either be impossible or highly improbable due to currently available data either suggesting impossibility, which is possibly due to incomplete data.

I've watched enough astrophysics lectures/documentaries to know that new maths are found every time someone looks up at the sky, and the models change radically. I'm not clinging to a model so much as I'm asking for the information that will change the model, and a few outliers which you say are not ours to test can't do that unless actually studied and tested.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

"But I do believe that there are conjunctions of experience, perception, symbolism, biological and physical reaction, behaviour, and outcome are better understood, and more fruitfully utilised, when they are called "Magic," than when they're called anything else."

I feel like a broken record at this point, but this isn't an explanation so much as a mission statement. You've stated the goal, but not the method of utilization, or the exact conjuctions, and then simply saying that you understand planetary alignment better when you call it "cheese" doesn't have "more thorough" explanatory power, it doesn't have "any explanatory power".

"I also never said anything about non-materialistic views. I just said that it's possible that we don't understand the materials with which we're working, anywhere near enough to be making negative claims about what is or is not a Part of that material, and what it can and can't do."

Understood, this is just a semantic thing... If you talk about something like telepathy and all evidence shows that it is not within the observable framework of the physical universe and can't be studied by the methods of testing and observing than I need something to call that. If you prefer the term "preternatural", just being currently outside our understanding, then I suppose that's fine, but for something like God or Heaven or a dualistic concept of the soul I don't feel "supernatural" "non-material" is a necessarily bad word to use, at least in the sense that it is commonly understood, even if not the etymologically best fitting word.

But understood.

"Like you said, you read my thesis, three times. A major portion of it is to say that All that Exists is Necessarily Natural. Therefore, magic, if it can be said to exist, must, itself, be natural. I just didn't really have the time to go into the kinds of things I think natural can mean."

Likewise, understood, and agreed.

The part that screws it up is how you explicitly say that magic and science seek to explain different things, not explain the same things differently.

If that was merely a syntax error or vagueness on your part, then fine, but if science seeks to explain the observable, the physical, the material, the measurable and quantifiable, then magic has nothing left to explain really.

You haven't stated that it offers philosophical certainties about existence or morality, and to say it explains aspects of human experience is also erroneous as those things are also explained by scientific fields, though they are admittedly in their infancy.

So you say it explains conjunctions of existing fields, meaning that it does explain the same things differently, and you have yet to give an example of how it illuminates information in any field. The only examples given are things that, as you say, can only be validated by virtue of that they "have happened".

And much like your question about gravity, that's a "it just exists" answer, but without the ability to measure, test, describe the nature of, or observe the effects of in any useful way.

And I was going to bring this up before but I forgot, but you and your friends have told me numerous times that "correlation does not necessarily equal causation" and in the case of the weather or the more commonly reported by others in the field and related fields (such as astrology or tarot reading) those correlations are related to things that are ever shifting and difficult to pin down given all pertinent data, and the magical fields of study make no attempts to utilize the vast majority of the available data.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

If you watch that video I posted of the astrology lecture, Rick Tarnas made it very clear that to include all possible factors, such as tilt and shift of moons and magnetic fields and whatnot, was to be the OPPOSITE of rigorous, that you could "explain anything if you do that" and his idea of rigor what to choose only those things that correlated in... I think he said meaningful way, or relevant way... I'll have to watch it again...

But essentially his idea of rigor was to just throw out the information he didn't feel was important, and just focus on what he did think was important.

But let's take for example the bowling ball going down the alley. You want to test trajectory. Something like photons could be thrown out on the basis of having insufficient mass to affect the bowling ball in a way relevant to the test, but I'd have to actually show that was the case first.

In astrology and tarot or the examples you have given, there's no reason given as to why certain data is being thrown out as irrelevant. It is just asserted that it is, and it is thrown out.

That is the opposite of rigor. That is doing what, as your colleagues have accused the scientific community and me of doing on countless occasions, "assuming the answer before asking the question."

And I thought about posting this next part in your new post but it's not really appropriate there...

But your explanation of magic is just a mission statement, not an explanation. The equivalent explanation of science would be "science seeks to explain the nature of nature" and explains nothing about science or how it operates. But I can go on to say "science does this by observing, creating a hypothesis, testing the observation, building the data into a theory, and continually testing the accuracy of the predictions made by that theory in order to better understand the measurable forces at work in the universe."

"magic... reads between the lines... How? It just does. You can't test it, but it works. Magically."

I don't mean to poke fun there, but just for emphasis, that's how it appears on the other end of the field. No jab intended, it's just how it appears.

I understand that people think I'm demanding or rude, and I'm not offended by the fact that they do, I'm only offended that they take me for some kind of moron by assuming that pointing out how rude I am somehow hurts my arguments, and thinking I'm going to cave based on emotional reactions.

So please just take that as an assessment of the appearance of your explanations, and not a critique on either the concept or on you personally.

[necrophonic.livejournal.com]

And seriously, I do apologize for my hyper verbosity... I'm sure it's just as tiring to read as it is to type.