A suspicion I had about the field during my bachelor that turned out to be a big deal

[Bobby_2021]

On 14/9/2023 at 6:34 PM, zurew said:

We have already had a convo about this in the past (I don't want to derail Carl's thread into making this whole thread about an epistemology debate) so I will just ask a few questions and I will let you have the last say in this and then we can potentially pick this debate up later in a different thread. 

1) Do you think relying purely on your own critical thinking and experience is more reliable in general than the current research on the given subject? So for example would you be willing to take a position like your own evaluation of psychology stuff (using your limited knowledge and given all you biases that you are not aware of) will be much more reliable compared to multiple institutions evaluating the same thing and providing evidence?  if your answer is yes, then my next question is how do you know that / how do you evaluate that?

I do not dismiss studies or research. The only thing that I am saying is to not outsource your reasoning to some "expert" out there who might be wearing a white coat. Plus, you are still relying on the mind of someone for your reasoning. You cannot escape critical thinking and reasoning. All the people doing this also have their biases and they are trapped in a system where they can do nothing about it. Studies will never present you with raw data. They will present you data after passing it through their own reasoning, not to mention how hard it is to get pure data.

And logic cannot lie or have variations. It's clean and straightforward. I know that plants need sunlight and water because depriving them would kill them. I can know it from my personal experience.

I trust in the reasoning of my own mind rather than blindly trusting some other mind. It's not like I am stonewalling them. We all can present our observations and reasoning and talk about them. Relying on studies and research is an escape from using and improving your own reasoning which is the only things you ever have had really.

I would require those institutions to be more transparent in what they choose to omit from their finding and present finding that contradict their claims. They simply don't do due diligence. My reasoning is open and transparent, and you are free to find holes in it. 

Quote

Just for clarity sake, notice Im not asking whether they could be corrupt or whether they could be biased or not, Im asking - whether their evaluation is less reliable than yours in general (accounting for bias, incentive and knowledge), so not talking about being wrong a few times, but being consistently more wrong about a given subject compared to you.

You just have to stop taking anyone on trust. You are trusting them to be reliable simply because they are huge and wear white coats. Do not Trust. Verify. Look at their reasoning and check if it's sound.

And you can gradually make your reasoning stronger over time.

23 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Depends entirely on the quality of your mind.

You can increase the quality of your mind by reasoning it over and over again.

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Vaccine science is good enough at this point that I trust that if a new vaccine was gonna kill over a million people via side-effects, the scientific protocols we already have in place will spot it early into testing.

So do you finally agree that vaccine was more or less useless at this point.

You should recommend something if it is found to be useful and prevents the disease it is meant to prevent not because it will not kill you, which you can't even fully guarantee. The biggest vaccination against covid was getting covid itself. 

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

So do you finally agree that vaccine was more or less useless at this point.

I do not agree at all.

By any sane scientific measure the rapid Covid vaccine saved millions of lives.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Danioover9000]

@Bobby_2021

4 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

I do not dismiss studies or research. The only thing that I am saying is to not outsource your reasoning to some "expert" out there who might be wearing a white coat. Plus, you are still relying on the mind of someone for your reasoning. You cannot escape critical thinking and reasoning. All the people doing this also have their biases and they are trapped in a system where they can do nothing about it. Studies will never present you with raw data. They will present you data after passing it through their own reasoning, not to mention how hard it is to get pure data.

And logic cannot lie or have variations. It's clean and straightforward. I know that plants need sunlight and water because depriving them would kill them. I can know it from my personal experience.

I trust in the reasoning of my own mind rather than blindly trusting some other mind. It's not like I am stonewalling them. We all can present our observations and reasoning and talk about them. Relying on studies and research is an escape from using and improving your own reasoning which is the only things you ever have had really.

I would require those institutions to be more transparent in what they choose to omit from their finding and present finding that contradict their claims. They simply don't do due diligence. My reasoning is open and transparent, and you are free to find holes in it. 

You just have to stop taking anyone on trust. You are trusting them to be reliable simply because they are huge and wear white coats. Do not Trust. Verify. Look at their reasoning and check if it's sound.

And you can gradually make your reasoning stronger over time.

You can increase the quality of your mind by reasoning it over and over again.

So do you finally agree that vaccine was more or less useless at this point.

You should recommend something if it is found to be useful and prevents the disease it is meant to prevent not because it will not kill you, which you can't even fully guarantee. The biggest vaccination against covid was getting covid itself. 

   Do you believe that critical thinking and the mind is optional?

   Did you know Aristotle discovered and formulized logic, in his mind and from observations? No he didn't see logic grow from trees.

   What would you deem is too little or too much transparency for institutes? What if too much gives their competitors an advantage, and threatens the more honest transparent company?

   The vaccine, for majority of history saved more than killed lives, like the polio outbreak, the vaccines killed off polio. Do you understand?

   What if the assumptions of that reasoning are faulty to begin with?

   IMO, for a vaccine to be useless it would have wiped out the majority of that virus strain. For example, today the polio vaccine would be safely considered useless because that vaccine destroyed all of polio, so unless the Covid-19 virus is wiped out, then vaccination is necessary as part of a healthy lifestyle and part of being a morally upstanding citizen.

   

[Carl-Richard]

@Bobby_2021

The reason why I asked what it would take to change your mind is that, for this type of empirical question ("does x correlate with y?"), the weakness of your approach is that you can almost always find contradictions to your examples. And I can easily do that, so let's do an experiment: do you think I will change your mind or not? And if I don't, what does that say about relying on "your own reasoning" vs. relying on statistics derived from science?

 

On 15.9.2023 at 4:03 PM, Bobby_2021 said:

One question that stroked me the most in the questionnaire is if you are able to do tasks while listening to music. This is the best test of mindfulness. If you can listen to music while studying, then you have low mindfulness. It's basically awareness of external stimuli. If there is multiple sources of stimuli streamed at you and let it pass through your senses without processing them, it's a tell-tale sign of low mindfulness.

Which questionnaire are you talking about? Neither the MAAS, the FFMQ nor the FMI mention "music" in any of their questions.

 

On 15.9.2023 at 4:03 PM, Bobby_2021 said:

Now you can take a look at athletes who have high physical activity. Take Mike Tyson or Hussain Bolt. They have to keep repeating the same set of tasks of over and over again for thousands of hours to be best at what they are doing to be good at it. So, they probably have low awareness, low IQ and low sensitivity.

Chess is repetitive, but people like to associate it with high IQ. Mindfulness meditation, which often involves bringing your attention back to the breath if your mind starts to wander, is repetitive.

 

On 15.9.2023 at 4:03 PM, Bobby_2021 said:

Messi on the other hand has high mindfulness. This is also obvious from the lifestyle he is leading. He also said it in an interview that he experiences the game at an intense level. I doubt if other football players have this trait. Probably not as high as Messi. Messi's high mindfulness has a huge part in why he is such an expert football player.

Mindfulness, Sensitivity and Intelligence are linked and probably eve n highly correlated. High mindfulness translates to high awareness of the external stimuli and process it to make distinctions about a field. Messi has mastered the game due to high intelligence and not his physical abilities which other players have more of.

So I was going to ask "what makes Messi have high mindfulness but not Tyson and Bolt when all of them are professional athletes who engage in "repetitive low-IQ/low-mindfulness behaviors"?", but you seemed to answer it in the second paragraph: it's because he is less physically gifted and therefore has to be more intelligent/mindful by necessity, or else he wouldn't be as successful as he is. So to change your mind, do I need to find an example of a professional football player of comparable success, who is less physically gifted and also less intelligent/mindful? Jack Grealish?

 

On 15.9.2023 at 4:03 PM, Bobby_2021 said:

I have also seen some people who are extremely athletic and physically active but have poor mindfulness. But at the same time there are also physically inactive lazy people who also have low mindfulness.

So there you can see the weakness of the method you're using: you can always bring up counterexamples to any given example that you're using to support your conclusion. So how do you decisively decide that mindfulness is not correlated with physical activity?

Edited September 16, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

Leo , I appreciate the lengthy and thoughtful response.

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Most of my claims are either falsifiable or verifiable, and I give my methods. So that's not the issue. The issue becomes one of initial incredulity and lack of motivation to actually follow the method and do the experiment. If I tell some Harvard psychology to snort 5-MeO-DMT for 30 days straight, he's simply not going to do it. Even though my method is fully scientific and valid, even under current scientific method.

What you are describing there with the snorting of 5meO DMT is about doing spirituality, but you are not describing  doing science. Science (as I understand it) either relies on falsifying things in the relative world (third person pov) or using logic to arrive at conclusions that may or may not be  empirically falsified in the future .

If your claims / insights can only be falsified and grounded in a 1st person pov, then I think there will very serious epistemic problems or limitations with your way of doing your discovery.

(If your claims can be falsified in the relative world [from third person pov] , or can be arrived at by logic, then you can ignore my list below ,because that criticism is not applicable in that case)

1)We cannot directly access your 1st person experience:

We cannot directly access the contents of your mind. So when it comes to your discovery, I can't do anything with it and I cannot really falsify it. You would say here : nonono - you can dummy - just follow my methods. Yeah sure, but the problem is that at max I can first build some conceptual framework about your insight and then use that as a reference point for later when I gain an insight about something.

But obviously, that conceptual image (that I built  from your limited explanation of something complex, using limited language and because I will filter it through my biases and my limited understanding) it will be distorted as fuck. So after using your method and maybe gaining an insight; after that I might be able to convince or bullshit myself that my discovery is the exact same as yours, but I have no way of truly knowing whether your and my insights are the same thing or not.

 

2) Your method is actually unfalsifiable: 

So I don't want to come off pedantic, but the distinction between verification and falsification is really important here. My understanding is that something is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test or in other words: given your claim, Its not  impossible for me to show that the opposite is the case.

If there is no way of demonstrating (implying third person pov)  that the opposite is the case, then your insight/hypothesis will always stay on the table as a possibly true candidate forever. If you claim thats not the case, then my question would be this: There is person A and person B. Both of them used your method but their conclusions are contradictory. Person A says that x is the case , Person B says that the negation of x is the case. How do you ground this problem in a way, where it can be reliably decided whether person A or Person B is right.

3) Your method is epistemically very unreliable:

I have no way of knowing whether you or a person is lying to me or deluded about their insights or not. You could claim that you acquired an insight and then claim forever that "You should try harder" or "you are not following my methods to the tee" or "You should give it more time", but at the end of the day I couldn't not tell whether I am doing something wrong or a person just lied to me about their insight.

So from the first criticism directly follows the second one and from the second one directly follows the third one.

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

So many ways. For example, enormous scientific advances could be made in understanding and helping people with mental illness and mental disorders like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia if the scientists working on these problems realized that these disorders constitute different non-ordinary, non-material realities within consciousness.

..

All of these fields are badly stagnating because the current metaphysical paradigm is deeply flawed.

With what epistemic process can you properly differentiate between those realities? When I say proper - I am saying conceptually distinguishing the layers between those realities.

Just for clarity: Conceptual distinguishing doesn't necessarily imply different metaphysics (I can use the same type of blocks to build completely different things), but its a must to make sense of things.

So, the solution that you suggests here ( if I didn't misunderstand you) is essentially saying: scientist should use a different kind of reductionist metaphysics ( switching from the idea that 'everything could be reduced to some material thing' to reducing everything to consciousness). My problem with that is , that - that doesn't address  the main problems in science, it only blurs the lines between things, but doesn't tell you:

• How to organize things,
• How things and in what way are things interconnected
• Whats the relationship between things
• How to properly differentiate between things (given you example above "how to differentiate between non-ordinary, non-material realities within consciousness")
• How to make sense of things
• How to measure things
• What things have causal power
• .....

So the hard scientific questions, that would provide progress are not touched/moved at all. You can only answer one thing "what things are made of or what things are?". You being able to provide an answer to that question is only a philosophical/spiritual progress ( in my view), but not a scientific one. Saying "everything is imaginary/ everything is consciousness" doesn't give you any explanatory power for any scientific problem. For what its worth you could change the word imaginary to any other word and it would make no effect on scientific progress at all. Because now that you reduced reality to that one thing, now you still have essentially the same amount of hard scientific work to do(look at my bullet point list above) as before.

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

@zurew Good! You're actually using your mind.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

What you are describing there with the snorting of 5meO DMT is about doing spirituality, but you are not describing  doing science.

A big problem with modern science is this very kind of logic. You are creating a false division between the two. If you want to reach the next paradigm shift in doing science, combine it with spirituality. Without that science is stuck. Especially psychology. How dare you attempt to do psychology -- the study of mind -- without accessing the highest dimensions of MIND?! How fucking dare you!

Do you want revolutionary new science? Or do you want same old, same old? Well, new results require new methods. By definition these new methods must lie outside your comfort zone and outside what you consider "science". If it was within "science" then it wouldn't be new, it would be old. The whole point that everyone is missing is that science is ever-expanding. Not just expanding within your box, but beyond your box. Your box IS the whole problem!

15 hours ago, zurew said:

Science (as I understand it) either relies on falsifying things in the relative world (third person pov) or using logic to arrive at conclusions that may or may not be  empirically falsified in the future.

Science also requires validation and consciousness. The falsification definition of science is wrong and incomplete. Be careful not to limit science to that.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

If your claims / insights can only be falsified and grounded in a 1st person pov, then I think there will very serious epistemic problems or limitations with your way of doing your discovery.

You can design a study to have 1000 people snort 5-MeO-DMT for 30 days and analyze their results.

By your limited logic pharmaceutical science isn't science.

Also, your vision is so limited here. A scientist could use 5-MeO-DMT to generate revolutionary new insights into all kinds of material theories, like physics.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

(If your claims can be falsified in the relative world [from third person pov] , or can be arrived at by logic, then you can ignore my list below ,because that criticism is not applicable in that case)

I make many claims, some od which are too radical for 3rd person validation but many of then not.

For example, I claim that humans can move objects with their minds or read other minds. This is easily verifiable in 3rd person.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

1)We cannot directly access your 1st person experience:

We cannot directly access the contents of your mind. So when it comes to your discovery, I can't do anything with it and I cannot really falsify it. You would say here : nonono - you can dummy - just follow my methods. Yeah sure, but the problem is that at max I can first build some conceptual framework about your insight and then use that as a reference point for later when I gain an insight about something.

But obviously, that conceptual image (that I built  from your limited explanation of something complex, using limited language and because I will filter it through my biases and my limited understanding) it will be distorted as fuck. So after using your method and maybe gaining an insight; after that I might be able to convince or bullshit myself that my discovery is the exact same as yours, but I have no way of truly knowing whether your and my insights are the same thing or not.

Scientists bullshit themselves all the time. Nothing unique there.

I have made plenty of breakthrough insights into the nature of scientific method which you can validate for yourself pretty easily and which in the future will be taught in all future science classes.

There's a lot more to this work than solpisistic 1st personal phenomenon.

For example, there can be a whole new science of relgion and mysticism. You could make a whole new branch of genetic engineering which creates humans with highly mystical genetics and brains. I claim that you could literally genetically engineer a new species of humans who can move rocks with their minds. How's that for 3rd person verifiable. I hope one of them throws a rock are your silly skull!

15 hours ago, zurew said:

2) Your method is actually unfalsifiable: 

So I don't want to come off pedantic, but the distinction between verification and falsification is really important here. My understanding is that something is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test or in other words: given your claim, Its not  impossible for me to show that the opposite is the case.

You are too focused on falsification. You should be more focused on validation. That's how most science is actually done.

If you genetically engineer a new type of human who can lift rocks with his mind, you've validated my theory and you don't need to worry about falsification.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

If there is no way of demonstrating (implying third person pov)  that the opposite is the case, then your insight/hypothesis will always stay on the table as a possibly true candidate forever. If you claim thats not the case, then my question would be this: There is person A and person B. Both of them used your method but their conclusions are contradictory. Person A says that x is the case , Person B says that the negation of x is the case. How do you ground this problem in a way, where it can be reliably decided whether person A or Person B is right.

Person A says it's impossible to read other minds. Person B says it's possible. Design an experiment where someone successfully reads another's mind. Case closed.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

3) Your method is epistemically very unreliable:

I have no way of knowing whether you or a person is lying to me or deluded about their insights or not. You could claim that you acquired an insight and then claim forever that "You should try harder" or "you are not following my methods to the tee" or "You should give it more time", but at the end of the day I couldn't not tell whether I am doing something wrong or a person just lied to me about their insight.

Many insights come with real-world consequences. You could come up with predictions and consequences which are objectively verifiable.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

So, the solution that you suggests here ( if I didn't misunderstand you) is essentially saying: scientist should use a different kind of reductionist metaphysics ( switching from the idea that 'everything could be reduced to some material thing' to reducing everything to consciousness). My problem with that is , that - that doesn't address  the main problems in science, it only blurs the lines between things, but doesn't tell you:

• How to organize things,
• How things and in what way are things interconnected
• Whats the relationship between things
• How to properly differentiate between things (given you example above "how to differentiate between non-ordinary, non-material realities within consciousness")
• How to make sense of things
• How to measure things
• What things have causal power
• .....

So the hard scientific questions, that would provide progress are not touched/moved at all.

Well, I made a very broad claim there about metaphysics and it's purpose is to help open scientists' minds in a very broad way to allow them to do better science. I am not doing that science for you since I'm not in the business of science. But, for example, if I wanted to, I could train myself to become a theoretical physicist or experimental psychologist and make new breakthroughs in those fields. Of course that requires years of technical work. But the point is that my breakthroughs would only be possible thanks to my higher quality metaphysics. Again, consider the case of Einstien or Niels Bohr.

15 hours ago, zurew said:

You can only answer one thing "what things are made of or what things are?". You being able to provide an answer to that question is only a philosophical/spiritual progress ( in my view), but not a scientific one. Saying "everything is imaginary/ everything is consciousness" doesn't give you any explanatory power for any scientific problem. For what its worth you could change the word imaginary to any other word and it would make no effect on scientific progress at all. Because now that you reduced reality to that one thing, now you still have essentially the same amount of hard scientific work to do.

Saying everything is imaginary is not very helpful. However, understanding that everything is imaginary gives you a solid foundation from which to do groundbreaking science.

For example, if you understand that space is imaginary perhaps you can discover a teleport from Earth to another planet. Of course this still requires much technical work. But the point is that a materialist scientist wouldn't even believe that such teleporting was possible.

[Yimpa]

As someone who has horridly failed nearly all my science classes growing up, I feel 100000x less stupid now.

How do I scientifically verify this hyperbole?

[zurew]

Leo(I cannot tag you) let me clear up some things,because we agree on things you might think we don't agree on (the reason for that might be that you misread somethings or might be because I phrased myself badly or might be the combination of the two).

Lets start with this: every criticism that I wrote should be evaluated in the context of science and not in the context of spirituality.

So things we agree on:

1) Any method could be used to generate insights: I am not opposed to this at all, my criticism was specifically targeting insights that cannot be falsified or verified from third person pov. In fact, if you or anyone can build a method that can generate a fuckload amount of insights that could be validated or falsified from third person pov - I am all for it and I would be interested to hear about it, especially if you have some fine-tuned method optimized for generating insight specifically for science .

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

A scientist could use 5-MeO-DMT to generate revolutionary new insights into all kinds of material theories, like physics.

Again , we agree.  My criticism was specifically targeting insights that cannot be falsified or verified from third person pov.

2) You can use verficiation and falsification as well: I didn't say that you can't/shouldn't use verification, I was making a specific critique about instances  where its impossible to falsify things from third person pov . Making the criticism that 'its bad science if your epistemic method make it impossible to falsify things from third person pov' is different from saying that 'you should only do falsification'.

3) We can broaden the definition of doing science: We agree on this as well. So Im totally okay for example with calling 'snorting 5meo to generate insights that could be verified or falsified from third person pov' doing science, and of course you can replace snorting 5meo with any method , I don't really care in the sense , that Im not attached to any kind of method. 

The goal here is to do the method or the collection of methods/practices that are the best for generating insight for science.

John Vervaeke has some good things to say on this topic. He argued in the context of wisdom, but his argument can be applied more broadly than that.

He said that (im going to use your words) doing consciousness work can break the seemingly fixed structure / box that you think in and not just that, but doing consciousness work will make certain things and certain connections between things more salient that you weren't able to see before.

More specificially there are practices that can help you with breaking up your salience network (things that are salient to you) and there are other practices that can help you with reorganizing your salience network so that you can actually see things and connections between things that you haven't seen before in a reorganized way.

I paraphrased a lof of things about Vervaeke's work there - he has a lot better way of conveying it and explaining it and he has a specific model and that model is very good at succinctly conveying this concept.

4) Most scientist are closed minded and the current way of thinking about whats and whats not possible is too limited in the field science: If that was the main point that you wanted to demonstrate (when you argued for a different metaphysics), then sure I can agree and could see how adopting a different kind of metaphysics could potentially be helpful with opening up the scope that scientists will dare to think in and opening up the scope, that they will dare to explore.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So after clearing up what we actually meant about things , I could only think of one last thing that we disagree on: that I would separate science from spirituality and you wouldn't.

 

I would argue that science should be uphold to a different standard than spiritual work(so the verification and falsification and demonstration of facts should be done  from third person pov ), because in my view science is more about how the world works and less about what the world is. Opposite to that spiritual and philosophical work is more about exploring the nature of things and seeing the biggest picture possible.

I wouldn't limit spirituality and philosophy to the same epistemic standard as what I limit science to. The reason for that is because they are aiming for different things.

Now that being said, Im not suggesting at all, that there isn't any set of things that could be both attached to science and spirituality (for example both try to explore whats true) , but still main thing im suggesting here is  that the separation between the two is useful.

Science is more about being practical and exploring what works. Philosophy and spirituality is more about going as abstract as possible and exploring the nature and limitations of things.

Edited September 16, 2023 by zurew

[StarStruck]

Both science and spirituality can be dick measuring if it is done wrong. 

[Leo Gura]

13 hours ago, zurew said:

So after clearing up what we actually meant about things , I could only think of one last thing that we disagree on: that I would separate science from spirituality and you wouldn't.

I seperate them, but not too strictly. There needs to be a revolving door there.

One of the biggest problems in science is the siloing of research. Even just between different branches of science. All the branches need to interpenetrate with each other and spirituality.

Quote

I would argue that science should be uphold to a different standard than spiritual work (so the verification and falsification and demonstration of facts should be done from third person pov),

Science also involves 1st person observation. It always has. You can make 1st person observations more "solid" by cross-referecing with others.

Quote

I wouldn't limit spirituality and philosophy to the same epistemic standard as what I limit science to. The reason for that is because they are aiming for different things.

All science involves a lot of theory, which is never itself empirical. The epistemology I propose involves a lot of deconstructing and reconfiguration of the theoretical aspects of science. You can still continue to gather 3rd person data as usual.

Quote

Now that being said, Im not suggesting at all, that there isn't any set of things that could be both attached to science and spirituality (for example both try to explore whats true) , but still main thing im suggesting here is  that the separation between the two is useful.

Science is more about being practical and exploring what works. Philosophy and spirituality is more about going as abstract as possible and exploring the nature and limitations of things.

At this point our discussion has become too abstract and vague to be useful. Use specific examples if you want a productive discussion. Speaking of science and spirituality as these gross abstractions doesn't get you far. I don't see what you even want to know at this point. It is undeniable that science is held back by poor metaphysics, poor epistemology, poor theorizing, lack of spirituality, and materialism.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Leo Gura

[TheAlchemist]

Bernardo is a serious scientist and philosopher who doesn't shy away from mysticism or even psychedelics; here he talks about how it was obvious to him that having his own high dose psychedelic experiences was totally relevant for him in studying the nature of consciousness, death and reality.

I think Bernardo is a refreshing signal of what future scientists and methodology might be like, regardless of if one agrees with his views or not.

Edited September 17, 2023 by TheAlchemist

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

At this point our discussion has become too abstract and vague to be useful. Use specific examples if you want a productive discussion.

Give me an example of a study involving spirituality that science doesn't already do.

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Give me an example of a study involving spirituality that science doesn't already do.

Has any genetic scientist tried to splice the human genome to produce spiritually gifted babies?

Why hasn't it occurred to any scientist to spawn a baby Jesus?

Edited September 17, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Carl-Richard]

55 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Has any genetic scientist tried to splice the human genome to produce spiritually gifted babies?

Why hasn't it occurred to any scientist to spawn a baby Jesus?

Ok, so you're not suggesting any radical new methodologies, just existing methodologies aimed at investigating spirituality? Well, science is already doing that (and has done so for over a century e.g. William James). These are the first three results when you look up "neural correlates of spirituality" in Google Scholar:

Neural correlates of personalized spiritual experiences.

Classic Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phenomenology and Neural Correlates

Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns

[Leo Gura]

33 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

These are the first three results when you look up "neural correlates of spirituality"

That's not what I said!

Show me a study that tried to genetically engineer a baby Jesus!

One of the problems with all you scientists is that you have neither vision nor balls. That's one important thing spirituality can add to your science.

Do you understand how much vision and balls it would take to genetically engineer a baby Jesus? No. You scientists think like robots on an assembly line. No art in your mind.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

That's not what I said!

Show me a study that tried to genetically engineer a baby Jesus!

One of the problems with all you scientists is that you have neither vision nor balls. That's one important thing spirituality can add to your science.

Do you understand how much vision and balls it would take to genetically engineer a baby Jesus? No. You scientists think like robots on an assembly line. No art in your mind.

Sure, we need more vision and investment, but this really applies to all research (not just spirituality). For example, 10 years ago, everybody was talking about the disturbing lack of replication studies, but nobody had the balls to actually perform a large-scale replication study to assess the problem (because contrary to what some might think, scientists don't actually like to do replication studies). Then the Open Science Collaboration did such a study, and then we got some numbers about the replication crisis. So even in the most mainstream parts of science, we need more vision, more investment, more science. Spirituality is a bit more affected because it's a niche topic, but still, people are studying it.

Speaking of something that needs more research: when I read or think about methods of science (especially while imagining some experimental design), my mind consistently brings up images of a particular stadium I used to go to in my youth, often with our school in some gym classes. Why?! Does my brain just happen to use the same parts for those two things? Did my mind just randomly use that place as a template for imagining complicated processes one time and kept rolling with it? Or is it because I've usually associated that place with complicated processes involving people, like different sports where you have to follow rules, or long-distance running with x amounts of laps, or sprints where you have to wait for the gunshot and use a particular technique, etc.? Or maybe it's just a failure of introspection and I'm misrepresenting what is actually happening? (and how can you test that?)

Edited September 17, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

28 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

but still, people are studying it.

They are studying it like a gay man studies a vagina.

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

They are studying it like a gay man studies a vagina.

[zurew]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

All science involves a lot of theory, which is never itself empirical. The epistemology I propose involves a lot of deconstructing and reconfiguration of the theoretical aspects of science.

what do you mean by "deconstructing and reconfiguration of the theoretical aspects of science"? Do you mean something like focusing hardcore on empirically verifying everything(each claim separately) and toning down certain parts of science ,where you almost only use logic to reach a conclusion?

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

One of the biggest problems in science is the siloing of research. Even just between different branches of science. All the branches need to interpenetrate with each other and spirituality.

Do you have any specific change in mind that could change this? Im not asking in terms of social or political stucture change; Im asking specifically how could a random scientist implement and integrate things  in to their work so that  the 'siloing of research' becomes a non-existent problem or at the very least becomes a lot better than it is now?

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Science also involves 1st person observation. It always has. You can make 1st person observations more "solid" by cross-referecing with others.

Sure.  As I have suggested before, imo one root problem when it comes to social sciences is that a lot of data is not reliable - mostly you have to to ask questions to people and gather information that way ( so there is a lot information reduction by them trying to introspect and them trying to narrate their 1st person pov/experience/feelings to you) 

Do you have any specific epistemology or any other idea that could improve the collection of and the quality of data in social sciences?

[Bobby_2021]

On 9/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Carl-Richard said:

Which questionnaire are you talking about? Neither the MAAS, the FFMQ nor the FMI mention "music" in any of their questions

I have linked the pdf above in my replies. 

On 9/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Carl-Richard said:

Chess is repetitive, but people like to associate it with high IQ. Mindfulness meditation, which often involves bringing your attention back to the breath if your mind starts to wander, is repetitive.

Chess is not repetitive. Boxing & running is the most repetitive sport. There is only a limited set of actions you can do in such sports. There huge variability in chess and football. More your mindfulness, the more variations you can master which is in the case of Messi who does not posses the best of capabilities if you ask me. 

Mindfulness, when meditating is a seperate thing as opposed to "General Mindfulness of an individual". That's a huge distinction. But you cannot measure real time mindfulness as some quantity. They cannot be giving answers while meditating. 

On 9/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Carl-Richard said:

So I was going to ask "what makes Messi have high mindfulness but not Tyson and Bolt when all of them are professional athletes who engage in "repetitive low-IQ/low-mindfulness behaviors"?",

No you cannot club all them together. They all engage in activities that requires different levels of mindfulness.

Boxing and running has the lowest mindfulness requirements.

You simply need to keep running fast while learning to ignore all the stimuli ==Mindless ness. 

Chess/football is the being aware of the entire football ground/chess board while cooking up strategies/tactics. You need to be open to all stimuli as much as possible to increase your chances of success. 

== Super high mindfulness. 

On 9/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Carl-Richard said:

So to change your mind, do I need to find an example of a professional football player of comparable success, who is less physically gifted and also less intelligent/mindful? Jack Grealish?

How can you compare this kid with Messi? ?

On 9/16/2023 at 1:06 AM, Carl-Richard said:

So there you can see the weakness of the method you're using: you can always bring up counterexamples to any given example that you're using to support your conclusion. So how do you decisively decide that mindfulness is not correlated with physical activity?

I don't think you have come up with a valid counter example to be honest.

It's very harder to play football smarter than Messi. Messi is clearly the best football player of all time. Maradona might come second. 

1. Some Ace of a kind greek demi God will not play footballer better than Messi if he is less mindful than Messi. 

2. If some player is better than Messi, he for sure has higher mindfulness than Messi. If you can compete with Messi in mindfulness levels, then you have a solid chance of beating him. But there are many other factors of course.