I’ve actually had some experiences with things like this as well. I first got into meditation by having someone hypnotize me, as an example.
I think that most things like this have a little bit of truth to them, but that because there’s so much extra attached to the concepts that it’s hard to separate them out.
To use a personal example, the other day I was wiki diving and I discovered chaos magic (link below.) I proceeded to pretty much immediately make a sigil. I don’t believe in chaos magic by any means, I really think this is just an application of the placebo effect/some positive thinking to my wall. An example of the “nugget of truth” that I was talking about.
All this said, I don’t think this type of activity really has a place in EA. It’s just something that I thought was kind of crafty and fun to burn a bored afternoon on. With regards to this forum though I would recommend posting things like this somewhere else. EA is really focused on trying to do our best, which means that people tend to dislike that type of science-adjacent thinking.
I’ve never really gone looking for groups devoted to practicing or debunking ideas like this, really just something I see every now and then in my endless wiki reading. I do think it would be interesting if you could try to pull those “nuggets” out of the ideas though, because it is an interesting way to look at stuff like that.
Typing up and talking about how to use that kind of information might be kind of fun!
Thanks! To clarify, I posted it in the EA forum due to EA’s interest in science policy and infrastructure. I felt it might serve to suggest it might be worth prioritizing higher or looking into further.
I don’t believe ancient spirituality (depending on how it’s defined) is scientific due to wording in the area, but I do believe most concepts in the area seem to be true or have truth to them. There seems to be misinterpretation of what various terms and motifs reference, though.
A good example is a Reddit post titled: TIL Not long after Julius Caesar was assassinated, a comet shone for seven successive days. This signified Julius Caesar’s ascension to Godhood, and propaganda for Caesar’s nephew. The comet was described as: “To make that soul a star that burns forever, Above the Forum and the gates of Rome.” It seems an awful lot like images that appear when “Ida, Pingala, Sushumna” is image searched with seven referencing something with chakras, the comet referencing spirit, the soul referencing the psyche, gates referencing nadis, Godhood referencing Buddhahood or something with enlightenment, and death referencing ego death.
As for alternative medicine, to my surprise, when I looked into it, much or most of it is scientific. It’s just poorly branded, and there appears to be conflict of interest. Some good examples are functional medicine, holistic medicine, and naturopathic medicine. The fields use engineering principles such as whole systems thinking and root cause analysis and tend to use natural products more but are not opposed to using synthetic products if they work best.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Dr. Frank Lipman, the Institute for Functional Medicine, and Dr. Will Cole seem like good sources on the subject. It’s worth noting Wikipedia’s medical pages seem to have strong bias.
I’ve actually had some experiences with things like this as well. I first got into meditation by having someone hypnotize me, as an example.
I think that most things like this have a little bit of truth to them, but that because there’s so much extra attached to the concepts that it’s hard to separate them out.
To use a personal example, the other day I was wiki diving and I discovered chaos magic (link below.) I proceeded to pretty much immediately make a sigil. I don’t believe in chaos magic by any means, I really think this is just an application of the placebo effect/some positive thinking to my wall. An example of the “nugget of truth” that I was talking about.
But it was fun, so I did it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic
All this said, I don’t think this type of activity really has a place in EA. It’s just something that I thought was kind of crafty and fun to burn a bored afternoon on. With regards to this forum though I would recommend posting things like this somewhere else. EA is really focused on trying to do our best, which means that people tend to dislike that type of science-adjacent thinking.
I’ve never really gone looking for groups devoted to practicing or debunking ideas like this, really just something I see every now and then in my endless wiki reading. I do think it would be interesting if you could try to pull those “nuggets” out of the ideas though, because it is an interesting way to look at stuff like that.
Typing up and talking about how to use that kind of information might be kind of fun!
Thanks! To clarify, I posted it in the EA forum due to EA’s interest in science policy and infrastructure. I felt it might serve to suggest it might be worth prioritizing higher or looking into further.
I don’t believe ancient spirituality (depending on how it’s defined) is scientific due to wording in the area, but I do believe most concepts in the area seem to be true or have truth to them. There seems to be misinterpretation of what various terms and motifs reference, though.
A good example is a Reddit post titled: TIL Not long after Julius Caesar was assassinated, a comet shone for seven successive days. This signified Julius Caesar’s ascension to Godhood, and propaganda for Caesar’s nephew. The comet was described as: “To make that soul a star that burns forever, Above the Forum and the gates of Rome.” It seems an awful lot like images that appear when “Ida, Pingala, Sushumna” is image searched with seven referencing something with chakras, the comet referencing spirit, the soul referencing the psyche, gates referencing nadis, Godhood referencing Buddhahood or something with enlightenment, and death referencing ego death.
As for alternative medicine, to my surprise, when I looked into it, much or most of it is scientific. It’s just poorly branded, and there appears to be conflict of interest. Some good examples are functional medicine, holistic medicine, and naturopathic medicine. The fields use engineering principles such as whole systems thinking and root cause analysis and tend to use natural products more but are not opposed to using synthetic products if they work best.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Dr. Frank Lipman, the Institute for Functional Medicine, and Dr. Will Cole seem like good sources on the subject. It’s worth noting Wikipedia’s medical pages seem to have strong bias.