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I know about Rupert, but I havent checked the studies yet, so I have no comments on them. I also know about some of the parapsych experiments that were done by the CIA , but I havent done a quality analysis on them, but they definitely seemed to be interesting back then. The interesting part of these discussions to me isn't necessarily about whether certain things are true or exist, but more about adjusting my epistemic standards and priors so that they can account for more things in a way where they don't lead to absurd categorization/conclusion. And yes, sometimes this can potentially mean that one needs to accept weird things being true/existing. In your case it seems that even if all those studies are bad, you still have independent reason(s) that makes you think that the phenomena is real. What convinced you?

I explcitly stated and implied multiple times that it is compatible with both. Where did I brought up that they need to justify their metaphysics? "its materialists that need to find an explanation" was the statement that made me think that you tried to claim that they have an obligation that idealists don't have. I don't think its unreasonable to interpret your statement that way. The potential pattern I was referring to isn't necessarily picture related in that "whats on the picture" . But looking back I can see the google watermark on the image at different positions (the exact watermark position might be region specific) It could also be about patterns related to the timing of when a sky picture is brought up by the algorithm. Or another one could be related to camera quality that can be different from region to region. You seem to be implying that psychic phenomena is either the best or one of the most reasonable explanations which is a crazy stance in my view. What set of things have you seen that moved your priors so much in favour of psychic phenomena being a probable explanation for things like this? My priors on psychic phenomena must be way different than yours, because I would consider so many other alternative explanations before concluding that "its more than likely that it was a psychic phenomena" or "one of the most reasonable explanation is that it was a psychic phenomena". When there are multiple alternative explanations that doesnt involve any psychic phenomena and you still find it a good explanation that epistemically opens up so much bullshit when it is not necessary. At this point whats stopping anyone from creating any incredibly weird esoteric, ontologically rich explanation for any given set of facts given that "simplicity" is valued this much? We can eliminate all the cringe low chance events and make all of them expected and probable by invoking invisible beings with certain intentions working behind the scenes. Why shouldnt we in principle just eliminate all low chance events and make all of them expected and purposeful under some grand narrative(embracing conspiracy theories)?

I am agnostic on it. I don't see the reason to claim either. What is the seeming that makes you to take the position that there isn't a pattern vs taking the agnostic position of "Im not sure if there is a pattern". Yeah, but presumably simplicity is not the only virtue we care about when it comes to explanations. Again I don't see why materlalists couldn't claim bruteness. The idea that the PSR (Principle of sufficient reason) is somehow necessary for or entailed by physicalism is something that I would ask an argument for if you have one. or I might be misinterpreting and you are trying to say that materialists usually have a norm of asking for or needing to find a further explanation/mechanism for things and you are not claiming that in principle they need to provide one explanation/mechanism for things. If this is the case, then my bad.

I don't see why we would think that, but regardless, that would just mean that the facts in the video are brute (in principle they dont have any explanation) or they are just random (which you understandably had an issue with). Both (bruteness and randomness) are compatible with both physicalism and idealism. But I dont think that psychic thing necessarily opens up a debate about physicalism vs idealism, because I don't see why psychic abilities wouldn't be in principle compatible with physicalism. At the end of the day, it will be about what kind of theoretical virtues you care about more. With respect to the topic at hand about providing a hypothesis that can explain the facts in the video - I think you need to do a lot more work to establish psychic phenomena being the best or even a good explanation and I don't see why after invoking psychic ability you would be freed from needing to provide the patterns/mechanisms of that ability. So there are two claims there, 1 that psychic ability explains the facts and 2 that psychic ability itself is brute. But if you grant bruteness when it comes to that ability, I don't see why a phyiscalist couldnt make the same move and say for example that Rainbolt's subsconscious mind picked up on patterns and thats how he managed to do it (and also claiming that the subconscious mind is brute, and it doesn't have any further explanation). Or they can invoke any other mechanism and then claim that that particular mechanism is brute. But anyway, there seem to be two different discussions. 1 about what explanation can account for the facts in the video and 2 physicalism vs idealism. I think that solving the second isn't needed in order to solve the first one. Also just as a further point, I don't think that all versions of physicalism commited to the idea that only things with physical quantities exist. My understanding is that as long as the mechanisms/things/relations that are invoked are not mind dependent, those can be categorized potentially under physicalism (so that can include things that are outside of time and space that cant be detected , and they can have an existence without a Mind grounding them). So a physicalist in pinciple could invoke weird shit like: things/laws/principles outside of time and space with causal power exist,and their existence isn't grounded/depended on a Mind.

Also if we want to go even further (I am not sure if you want to claim this) Do you have an argument that establish why in principle there cannot be a materialistic explanation?

I can grant for the sake of the argument that it is the way you outlined it. Im curious whats the response to this:

Its only unlikely if the algorithm is made the way you outlined it. If the algorithm only shows the sky of a handful of countries, then suddenly someone who plays this game for as much as Rainbolt (having thousands of hours behind his back), the task can be very easy. For example, lets entertain the possibility that the algorithm only shows the sky of 5 countries. Now if you have that background knowledge, you have a pretty good chance to pick the correct location even if you are a noob at this game. But lets go with the scenario where the algorithm can actually show the sky of all countries. In this case, if we go with two different hypothesis, one is what you said (psychic) the other one is that his subsconscious mind picked up on certain patterns after playing the game for thousands of hours. Whats the argument that you can provide that would motivate us to pick your hypothesis over the other one?

That sounds just as much of a cope as the victim mindset. One can cope with "im in control of everything and all situations" , when in reality you are not, and there are situations in reality where you cant do anything and where none of your actions will change the outcome. Its a cope, because you want to tell yourself a comforting story that you can always control things and that you are always in control and you can forget the hard unfomfortable truth that there are certain things and events you have no control over. Accepting that one has no control over certain things is partly what maturity is about.

I won't derail this thread, nor I want to argue in favour of Christianity but whatever you are doing there is a very poor attempt at arguing against it. Its unclear why you think that it is necessary for the Adam and Eve story to be literally true in order for Christianity to be true. But regardless, a Christian can just take a non-literalist view and the problem you are talking about is immediately solved, without any need to abandon Christianity. There being myths in the Bible doesn't mean there aren't historical facts in the Bible. But even if there wouldn't be any historical fact in it, from that wouldn't necessarily follow that Christianity is false. You can respond to this, I won't respond so that I won't derail this thread further.

This below doesnt sound like a dude, who thinks that history is a fabrication. Why bother asking for evidence for a fabrication? Did this: ".my spiritual work has revealed to me that the entire history is a fabrication" happen in the past? If so, then it sounds like that you are believing in some sort of a fabrication my dude.

Thats not how research works. For scientists to have the ability to do research there is a fuck ton of things that needs to be in place, that are all done and maintained by non-scientists. You have some set of premises that I would like you to give an argument for or at the very least think about. For one, I would like you to clarify what you mean by intelligent, specifically where would you draw the line, when it comes to the G factor and why specifically there? Second question would be: Whats the argument that a prosperous society requires the amount of intelligence that you are advocating for? You also seem to bake it in, in this whole thought experiment that innovation in and of itself is a good thing and should be optimized for, but its not obvious to me how this is necessary for a prosperous society (maybe less innovation or no innovation is whats needed for a prosperous society). Counter-intuitively the act of innovating creates more problems and more complex problems and it isn't just about solving problems . Its also unclear to me ,whether maximizing for the intelligence that you are advocating for is equivalent to maximizing innovation.

That doesn't necessarily follow, even if chrisitianity is true. For example, you can be a universalist , where they believe everyone will eventually go to heaven no matter what. But, regardless - going to hell or having a negative afterlife can all be true or false regardless of your beliefs about christianity. There is also a weird possibility that if you believe in Jesus, then for some reason you will go to hell. There is also a possibility that whatever happens to you in the afterlife is 100% outside of your control and isn't dependent on any of your beliefs or actions. There is also a possibility, that there is no afterlife at all. I would stop worrying about adopting beliefs about the afterlife and would focus on doing my best with what I have in this current life. Maybe some of my thoughts, actions and beliefs will have horrible and terrifying consequences, but so be it, it is what it is, I will do my best with what I have. I would dial down the smugness a bit. When it comes to claims about history , if you are not a scholar or historian , chances are you have 0 response to what christian scholars offer. You probably also don't have any well-thought out concept of what kind of evidence should be considered good quality or good enough quality, when it comes to historical events or figures. Osho would have been intellectually dumpstered by any serious christian philosopher. You are lucky there is no Christian scholar or debate bro here.

Its about the willingness and opennes to directly meet, acknowledge, and face what is and by that I mean - completely surrendering to whatever is occuring inside you and whatever is happening to you in this particular moment, regardless how horrible or unbearable it seems or feels or how it suppose to be or how it suppose to feel. You have the capacity to surrender (to meet inside you) all the negative emotions and thoughts without getting lost in them and without running away/ignoring them. You check whatever thought or negative emotion is occuring and you consciously give room for yourself and let yourself to fully feel it and experience it without any narrative. One useful question that you can ask yourself at any given moment is "whats here?" and then you do an investigation from stratch without relying on any narrative, belief or memory. The answer is in the form of investigation and not about whats the right thing to say or what you suppose to or should say or how you suppose to feel like or think like, if you are spiritual person. You do a true and honest and open investigation (you directly meet whats inside you at this particular moment, regardless how weird or negative, horrible , despicable it is) from scratch where you don't assume any particular identity or truth about yourself, you just go and check whats true.

Not really , unless you pressupose a set of things about God's preferences. If God has the ability to create any kind of Universe in any particular way, then you need to explain why he would create the Universe this particular way. If the explanation for God's preference is randomness or if there is no explanation at all, then you won't have any upperhand over any atheist on this one. If you are allowed to just pressupose things, an atheist the exact same way could just pressupose a principle (involving no mind) that creates the Universe's constants. This is not about the multiverse ,because thats not the only alternative option, this is about an explanation involving a creator vs an explanation involving no creator. Also the multiverse is compatible with both option (both creator and no creator) The challenge is giving an answer to this question - What set of characteristics can you attach to a creator mind (that explains the Universe's constants), that you couldn't attach to a non-mind?

I have two approaches: 1) Is a more intellectual combined with empirical investigation, where I search for the best arguments and I try different methods to investigate truths about myself and the world. 2) Practice of surrender. You live your life as an endless, bottomless opennes and you directly meet what is occuring outside and within you. You surrender every single day to the possibility that you can be wrong about any given conclusion about yourself or the world and you surrender to it completely with your whole being. You acknowledge, that you can be wrong and you surrender to not-knowing and dont try to run away from it with philosophical or spiritual fluff. You leave completely open all possibilities - including negative and positive . You surrender to both hopelessness and hopefulness, you surrender to both clarity and confusion. You let go of all the narratives about how things and you suppose to be and you directly meet what is.

I dont really understand how this argument shows that theism is more probable than atheism ( or how it is an argument in favour of theism ). As far as I understand it, this is used to push atheists for an explanation for the existence of mentioned the constants. If the constants were created by random chance, then the universe existing this particular way would be very improbable ( I dont think that randomness is necessarily entailed by atheism, there are other alternatives). But I dont see how theism or the fine tuning argument solves the explanation problem, because it just seems to push the problem 1 step further. Did God create these constants? If yes, then we get into the problem of searching for an explanation why he would create these constants this particular way and not in any other way. If God has the ability to define from scratch what supports life and freely choose contants for a given universe, then that leaves us with a scenario where this universe existing this particular way, with these constants is just one scenario from infinite other scenarios (making the existence of this universe just as improbable under theism as under the random chance atheism). If the answer is no (God didn't create these constants), then the existence of God doesn't help with solving this problem at all.

Yeah, the scary thing is that once you have easy access to it, you can sort of use it to run away from the work that you would need to do on your ego otherwise (mostly refering to trauma work, but there is more than "just" that). Some of the techniques are very fucking effective in making you cope with life and with yourself, but the underlying root issue in some cases will stay in place. In certain cases, its probably irresponsible to teach these techniques, because even though they might make you a functioning individual, they will make it harder for you to do the hard work to address the root issue.

Random question: Do you have any comments/opinion on spiritual awakening making therapy redundant or is that a huge cope and it is just spiritual bypassing? Because imo, just because someone has the realization that they are not the ego, its not clear whether the problems and the maladaptive habits/behaviors of the injured ego will go away.

It seems that you already baked in your hypothetical that you can get away with it, so appealing to practicality is redundant. So in this case we cant even appeal to things like karma or hell or punishment from society or suffering caused by your conscience. If we rule those things out, we are left with looking for objective morality. Even if there is a case to be made for objective morality, I don't think it would change anything (because if there is no punishment for not abiding by those objective moral laws, then why should you care about it)? Maybe we can appeal to certain traits that you may or may not care about like rationality and if we pressupose that there is such a thing as objective morality, then being perfectly rational would mean abiding by those objective moral rules. Or we can appeal to consciousness, where we pressupose that the more conscious you are, the less evil you are , but both of these cases (being perfectly rational or highly conscious) , what we are essentially doing has little to do with objective morality and more to do with appealing to your own subjective preferences (caring about being rational and or being highly conscious). So basically as far as I see it , no matter what line of thought we go down when it comes to your hypothetical, we end up with "yeah you dont have any good reason to be moral" (granted, that you wont be externally punished for it and granted that your conscience wont fuck you up) There is more to be said about you possibly deluding yourself about your own subjective morals and preferences but this is a different question and we can bake it in your hypothetical that you are not deluded.

You dont need to help anyone other than yourself. Right now you feel completely hopeless, because your mind is working overtime to create heavily negative narratives. But those are thoughts and narratives created by your ego mind and they are not reality. Your recurring negative thoughts and self judgements can be stopped. You are overwhelmed by thoughts and future predictions that are generated by your limited ego mind. Dont let your ego mind to win over your higher self. Why would you believe in the predictions and judgements and narratives of your limited ego mind? Your higher self doesn't run away from problems, it faces them head on. Professionals can help you with disentangling your negative narratives and with showing your mind that your situation is much more hopeful than what you think. Let people help you, give them a chance.

WLC argument doesnt make that much sense if you start to deconstruct things. Under his view God is all good and omnipotent, and by omnipotent some philosophers usually mean that God can do anything that doesnt entail a contradiciton (I believe this is how WLC use the word omnipotent). Now, the question comes up - could God create a world where there is no suffering and where there is no need to play horrific survival games? If the answer is yes, then he needs to bite the bullet that God cant have the following two properties simultaneously (all good and omnipotent) , unless he is using such a definition for "all good", that goes againt all our moral intuitions.So under this, the Christian God is either omnipotent but not all morally good or it is all good, but it is not omnipotent. Christians usually don't like to bite this bullet. If the answer is no (meaning that it is actually necessary to create a world ,where there is suffering) then I would like to see the argument that shows the entailed contradicition. There is also a question about heaven (where usually the claim is that there is no suffering and evil). If he wants to play a wordgame where being all good is compatible with there being a world where there is as much torture , suffering, rape and other atrocious acts as in this world, then sure he can say that, but then he will need to bite other bullets. So for example, under this view you need to say that the holocaust, ww1, ww2, all other wars, all torture, all rape and all other evil acts were necessary (to maximize good) and even though God could have stopped those events from happening, he had to let them happen. This is usually backed up by saying some things about free will (that creating moral agents that can choose to do bad things is morally overall better than creating a world where there is no evil at all) , but I don't think those arguments make sense. Firstly, free will is compatible with there being no evil at all (you still have the ability to choose, but you only choose from a set of good things). But even if we go with a definition where the ability to do evil is necessary , the argument still doesnt make much sense. Using our normal moral intuitions we wouldn't ever say that we ought to value a moral agent's ability to do evil things over stopping those things from happening. Note that we arent talking about flawed and powerless humans stopping things from happening, we are talking about an all knowing and omnipotent God , who can stop all evil from happening at any given moment with 0 struggle. Imagine watching your family members getting tortured and raped and God saying, "well it would be immoral for me to stop the torturer". Some other questions come up - 1) what about respecting the free will of the victims? If God values free will over everything, then how come he let one bad actor to kill and do things that go against multiple other moral agents wants? 2) What about kids who die before they are even born? Where is the ability for them to choose things or to do things? Some unborn kids get a free way ticket to heaven and others are given a life full of suffering and an almost a guaranteed path to hell? It seems like that WLC's God doesn't really care that much about free will at all and that his God likes to give other people such a life where they are almost guaranteed to go to hell (give them a set of life experiences and give them a preference structure and moral intuitions that all go against God's morals). There are some other interesting things under WLC view of Christianity: If he would be honest and would have normal moral intuitions, he would conclude, that given that his view is true - It is immoral to have children, because there is a non-zero chance that your kid will go to hell forever, so why gamble with that ?(even if you hardcore indoctrinate your kid, its not guaranteed that he/she wont change their view later). The other is that if you do have children , then there is an argument to be made that you are morally obligated or at the very least, it would be considered virtuous for you to kill your loved ones (given the assumption that they at that particular moment meet all the necessary requirements to go to heaven). Basically you sacrifice your ability to go to heaven in order to guarantee all your loved ones to go there. Also to directly respond to the short, WLC sounds very psychopathic when he frames an unnecessary mass slaughter as a charitable thing . God has the ability to teleport all those people out of existence or to instantly kill them in a way where they don't experience any pain or suffering at all, but WLC's God didn't do any of that. There are ways to reconcile these objections, but for that his view would need to change or he can go ahead and bite all the heavy bullets and maintain his view. There can be more said about the problem of evil and about all the different pathways how it can be cashed out , but I already overshoot on length, no more rambling.

I dont think character limit is the main issue. You dont need to ramble a book amount to give some specifics about your reasoning and to show your deduction.

A straightforward way to prove this (even in a context, where AI gives you a correct answer) , is by asking it to walk you through step by step on its reasoning. I think this forum downplays how bad we are when it comes to deduction. I wouldn't label that "simple", but I might be strawmanning you there.

This is to the folks who for some reason thought Trump will handle the I/P conflict differently.