Why I Think Magic Is Real

[Basman]

8 hours ago, cetus said:

@Basman .Be careful of what you wish for.

 

That's only once a month. Manageable.

[AtmanIsBrahman]

As a quick update:

I'm still trying to manifest various things. I have to admit that so far I haven't had any results.

I did get some results from a more psychological manifestation, but haven't been able to manifest anything physical so far. 

Due to the theoretical reasons for thinking this should be possible, I'm not going to be giving up for a while. Expect more updates.

 

[Nercohype]

These two are great! Highly recommend to study with them if you are interested in Magic.

This one is also great! I Love her! (Platonically) 

Personally I have tried magic and had some success but i don't really care about powers. I am more curious to use it for spiritual growth. 

[gengar]

@Leo Gura You said in this blog post:

"I was wrong about the metaphysics of the law of attraction. I no longer believe the law of attraction merely works through brute mechanical means."

Did you change your mind again? Or is law of attraction actually affecting the universe through the human mind?

I believe you also said something akin to "Prayer works because you are drilling a portal to God"

[Leo Gura]

@gengar I think there are very subtle aspects to manifestation. But they are subtle. They are not as brute as imagining a million dollars and it appears in your bank account.

Spiritual effects of the mind are subtle. The human mind has a very subtle pull on the material world. New Agers love to exaggerate this pull and invent all sorts of fantasies around it.

Edited 20 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Oppositionless]

sometimes when you're at a point of absolute desperation and misery, on the verge of giving up, something will come up, it might feel like a sign, to get you to keep going. that to me is the essence of manifestation. Most of the really big "manifestations" I've had , have been when I was at rock bottom . Lol.

Edited 20 hours ago by Oppositionless

[gengar]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

@gengar I think there are very subtle aspects to manifestation. But they subtle. They are no as brute as imagining a million dollars and it appears in your bank account.

Ok. So even though the effects are marginal, magic does exist according to you.

There might be beings in the universe who can manifest at a much larger potential.

Have you ever read any occult rapport or source where you thought, this might be real? 

I've been researching occult stuff with a large skeptical razor and the only thing that I can't "dismiss" are where people remember past lives and the content of their memories was verified, such as a house they lived in.

[gengar]

3 minutes ago, Oppositionless said:

sometimes when you're at a point of absolute desperation and misery, on the verge of giving up, something will come up, it might feel like a sign, to get you to keep going. that to me is the essence of manifestation. Most of the really big "manifestations" I've had , have been when I was at rock bottom . Lol.

Yet there have been people in Gaza at the verge of giving up who get their limbs blown off the next day.

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Spiritual effects of the mind are subtle. The human mind has a very subtle pull on the material world. New Agers love to exaggerate this pull and invent all sorts of fantasies around it.

And that exaggerated image is what critics get stuck on, same as critics of psychic phenomena more generally. "If manifestation is real, manifest a Lamborghini at this instant". "If psychic phenomena is real, predict the next million dollar lottery number". The antidote is of course "the statistical worldview" (being aware of statistics, subtlety, partiality).

Even if a baseballer doesn't hit a home run 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that home runs are not real. The 108 studies on the Ganzfeld effect showing a 32% hit rate vs 25% expected by chance, with astronomical significance (p < .00001), granted the studies are not confounded, that's suggestive of a real phenomena.

Edited 10 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

8 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Even if a baseballer doesn't hit a home run 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that home runs are not real. The 108 studies on the Ganzfeld effect showing a 32% hit rate vs 25% expected by chance, with astronomical significance (p < .00001), granted the studies are not confounded, that's suggestive of a real phenomena.

I do not deny parapsychology science.

But at the same time, I have no idea how sound their research was. We are taking their word for it.

Edited 16 hours ago by Leo Gura

[gengar]

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

And that exaggerated image is what critics get stuck on, same as critics of psychic phenomena more generally. "If manifestation is real, manifest a Lamborghini at this instant". "If psychic phenomena is real, predict the next million dollar lottery number". The antidote is of course "the statistical worldview" (being aware of statistics, subtlety, partiality).

Even if a baseballer doesn't hit a home run 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that home runs are not real. The 108 studies on the Ganzfeld effect showing a 32% hit rate vs 25% expected by chance, with astronomical significance (p < .00001), granted the studies are not confounded, that's suggestive of a real phenomena.

Could you link me those studies?

Why does scientific consensus still deny it when a 7% point increase is huge?

[Carl-Richard]

10 hours ago, gengar said:

Could you link me those studies?

Storm et al. (2010) or Cardeña's 2018 paper.

 

10 hours ago, gengar said:

Why does scientific consensus still deny it when a 7% point increase is huge?

What you're calling "scientific consensus" is people who don't read the studies and who explain why they don't read them using metaphysical propositions like "we don't need to read them because we know the laws of physics doesn't make it possible" (Sean Carroll) or complete sophism like "my Bayesian priors means the probability is essentially zero and therefore it would be a waste of time for me to read them" (Steven Pinker).

These are the pop science "thought leaders" and it encapsulates the overall view of psi phenomena for both pop sci laymen and materialist scientists. The running assumption (that you're displaying) and of these people is that everything that is scientifically defensible has been embraced and throughly investigated by the mainstream. Which is of course as far from the truth as you can get, any knowledge of the history of science supports this (just read Kuhn); e.g. 20 years ago, mindfulness was fringe. Today it's staple in psychological practice.

And of course, it's entirely antithetical to their own approach to science and the scientific process; they are looking for new stuff, they do think there are new things to discover. It's only the stuff they think is interesting.

Edited 1 hour ago by Carl-Richard

[Oppositionless]

A thought I had last night . People will shit on mainstream music while taking mainstream science at face value .

[Jirh]

You can depend on science to launch a rocket into outer space.

You can't depend on magic to make you a sandwich.

I think this settles it.

[LastThursday]

@Nercohype watching that first video now. Man it's a Leo length monster will get popcorn. The second I've come across before! Good recommendations.