Breatharianism Mega-Thread

[Ponder]

Just enjoy some delicious food, man. Missing out on that aspect of life is tragic imo

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

Biology is imaginary 

Try going to outer space without an astronaut suit.

If you have anything that's real in a grounded sense, it is your body, not fantastical concepts.

[UnbornTao]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

There are no "scientific laws", but fasting/breatharianism is a dangerous activity, like spiritual practices are generally.

You can't even go three sleepless days without starting to experience cognitive impairment and mental instability, let alone years. This doesn't include the need for water and food.

Some people have survived without food for a year or so in extreme cases (apparently), but that is not the same as claiming to live without food, water, and sleep for years. What are some of you guys smoking?

Edited 9 hours ago by UnbornTao

[zurew]

24 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

If you have anything that's real in a grounded sense, it is your body, not fantastical concepts.

But you dont want to claim that its impossible, at best you can only say that given your priors its extremely improbable or unlikely to be the case.

None of your thing is grounded in a non-conceptual sense , because you are making inferences about biology based on your and others experience but those inferences can be wrong. Your thing is subject to criticism just as much any other theory about biology.

Even if you are realist about scientific laws, thats compatible with you having a wrong understanding about those laws

Edited 9 hours ago by zurew

[Schizophonia]

33 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Try going to outer space without an astronaut suit.

If you have anything that's real in a grounded sense, it is your body, not fantastical concepts.

I would explode yes but because I’m still not conscious enough space, pressure, astronaut suit and cie are imaginary.

[UnbornTao]

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

But you dont want to claim that its impossible at best you can only say that given your priors its extremely improbably or unlikely to be the case.

None of your thing is grounded in a non-conceptual sense , because you are making inferences about biology based on your and others experience but those inferences can be wrong. Your thing is subject to criticism just as much any other theory about biology.

Even if you are realist about scientific laws, thats compatible with you having a wrong understanding about those laws

Well, from my current point of view, it's basically an impossibility rooted in wishful thinking. Even going a couple of days without sleep is extremely difficult. And it's a scientific fact that humans can't survive more than 3 to 7 days without water. Claiming you can go for years is objectively wrong.

Openness doesn't mean pretentiousness or "anything goes." It's easy to be abstractly impartial, but things work a certain way, not the way we wish they did. Asking to be open to the possibility that 2 + 2 might equal 7 is absurd.

[Eskilon]

25 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Asking to be open to the possibility that 2 + 2 might equal 7 is absurd.

You are just conforming to the collective opinion of 2 + 2 = 4. You didnt even derive this for yourself, you learned from somebody else. Consider that this "fact" doesnt even exist for ants, chimps, horses and so on. It is relative to state and the form you are in. So any claim of realness or objectivity is absolutely bogus. 

2 + 2 = 4 doesnt exist in your dreams also, so this should be ringing some bells in you.

Edited 8 hours ago by Eskilon

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

You can't even go three sleepless days without starting to experience cognitive impairment and mental instability, let alone years. This doesn't include the need for water and food.

Some people have survived without food for a year or so in extreme cases (apparently), but that is not the same as claiming to live without food, water, and sleep for years. What are some of you guys smoking?

"Basic biology" is based on current scientific evidence. Scientific evidence might change in the future. And that's again a problem breatharianism has, because gathering (rigorous) scientific evidence is quite difficult.

Tracking a person for multiple years, in a way that completely rules out any doubt about interfering factors, is really only something you could maybe figure out in theory, but doing it in practice is essentially economically, practically and even ethically insoluable, certainly by any mainstream scientific standards.

Or actually, if you could surgically insert a monitor that can detect when exogenous water or food passes the esophagus, that could maybe work. But that would also require of course substantial funding for technological development and validation trials, granted you even get it past an ethics commitee based on the existing lack of convincing evidence from non-invasive studies (which brings you back to the original problem again).

Edited 8 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

45 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Openness doesn't mean pretentiousness or "anything goes." It's easy to be abstractly impartial, but things work a certain way, not the way we wish they did. Asking to be open to the possibility that 2 + 2 might equal 7 is absurd.

You need to differentiate between different notions of impossible. You can have logical , nomological, metaphysical impossibility. Logical impossibility would be something generally that would violate the laws of logic or generally things that would actually entail a contradiction. Metaphysical impossibility is more blurry and more complicated. Nomological impossibility would be things that would violate the laws of nature.

The math example is logically impossible, but when it comes to nomological laws (anything science related) there are a lot of weird things that are logically possible that you dont even want to entertain and you dont even have the capacity to entertain and at the same time nomologically impossible (where it would violate some scientific law)

You can say that we shouldnt entertain all logically possible things ,and we should only focus on the nomologically possible things and thats fine, but your sense about what is nomologically possible is grounded in your current understanding of the Universe and all of that is subject to be wrong. Almost all of that shit is based on inductive reasoning that is super subject to be wrong - just take a look at how many things we adjusted in the 20 and 21st century about our understanding of science and the Universe.

You can also think about it this way - go back to the 10th century check what set of things would be rational to accept given the scientific knowledge they had back then and tell me how you wouldnt be the guy back then who would make the exact same argument you are making right now. Think about what sense they had back then about what is nomologically possible.

 

When it comes to your claim about openness, i agree with you in 99.9999% of the cases , but not when it comes to claims about what is logically possible, because none of what you did  shows how those things are logically impossible,  at best it only show that given your current understanding of the Universe some thing might be violated (but even that claim is often times too strong) - and again to be clear, I agree with you that when it comes to appealing epistemic norms - we shouldn't appeal to what is logically possible and we should appeal to our sense of rationality that is grounded in our current understanding of the Universe, but not when it comes to philosophy and not when it comes to claims about impossibility.

It doesnt matter how weird or absurd a given proposition is to you, because that doesnt prove that the proposition is actually false. Its fine to say that we shouldnt entertain it, or that we dont yet a have good reason to entertain it (again an appeal to our current understanding, which is totally fair), but its not fine to say that it is therefore definitely false.

Edited 8 hours ago by zurew

[zurew]

Once you have different notions of impossible, you can make more precise claims like "okay, I say that x thing is bullshit , and by bullshit I mean it violates the law of biology - and by that I mean the biology given our current scientific understanding)

But I dont even think that in most cases one can even spell out the nomological violation, its just some super unexpected thing that is probably even compatible with your current understanding of nomological laws.

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

I would explode yes but because I’m still not conscious enough space, pressure, astronaut suit and cie are imaginary.

If your body is imaginary, then the idea that you could survive for years without water, food, or sleep is a massive hallucination.

[UnbornTao]

54 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

You are just conforming to the collective opinion of 2 + 2 = 4. You didnt even derive this for yourself, you learned from somebody else. Consider that this "fact" doesnt even exist for ants, chimps, horses and so on. It is relative to state and the form you are in. So any claim of realness or objectivity is absolutely bogus. 

2 + 2 = 4 doesnt exist in your dreams also, so this should be ringing some bells in you.

Right. See how long you can go without sleep.

Don't actually do that, by the way.

Edited 7 hours ago by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

"Basic biology" is based on current scientific evidence. Scientific evidence might change in the future. And that's again a problem breatharianism has, because gathering (rigorous) scientific evidence is quite difficult.

Tracking a person for multiple years, in a way that completely rules out any doubt about interfering factors, is really only something you could maybe figure out in theory, but doing it in practice is essentially economically, practically and even ethically insoluable, certainly by any mainstream scientific standards.

Or actually, if you could surgically insert a monitor that can detect when exogenous water or food passes the esophagus, that could maybe work.

Go live with one of those guys for a week and see if they can actually function without sleep. Just a week.

Again, I acknowledge that in some specific cases, one might go without food for quite some time. I have no problem with that, even though I find it unnecessary and dysfunctional. My concern is more with the claims about sleep and water.

Edited 7 hours ago by UnbornTao

[Lyubov]

I remember watching an interview with some guy who called himself a breatharian claim he hadn’t ate or drank any water in a month… no fluid in a month… it was from that day forward I thought this new age label was stupid, dishonest and out of touch. 

Edited 7 hours ago by Lyubov

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Go live with one of those guys for a week and see if they can actually function without sleep. Just a week.

Again, I acknowledge that in some specific cases, one might go without food for quite some time. I have no problem with that, even though I find it unnecessary and dysfunctional. My concern is more with the claims about sleep and water.

Life is more strange than the very limited scope of current materialistic scientific discoveries, with all their cultural, institutional, economic and methodological constraints, being the end-all be-all of reality.

[Oppositionless]

People said Ramakrishna , maybe Ramana maharshi too, both would go long periods without breathing while in samadhi.

Godarianism 😂

 

I don't think you can be a "high functioning" Godarian.

Edited 4 hours ago by Oppositionless

[Ramasta9]

I think its wise to be open to the possibility that there may be somethings we simply don't understand yet, nor have had the direct life-experience to give us a different perspective on what's truly possible in this life. I for one have gone many days without physical nourishment and felt something else entirely. The deeper you grasp the quantum nature of reality, the more such things become, not only possible, but nothing too far from surprising.

For some of us living without food is impossible because we grew up with a different lifestyle, environment and program, for others not so much.

 

 

[TheSomeBody]

 

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

There are no "scientific laws", but fasting/breatharianism is a dangerous activity, like spiritual practices are generally.

 

Everything you said confirmed my points. The study you referenced also seems to have the very methodological issues I pointed out [AI-link].

how do you know if it is dangerous? have you looked at all the methods and teachers?

also how it is confirms your points?