The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
In practice you shouldn’t buy fruit that look rotten, so judging fruit by its appearance is evidence-based thinking. At the same time, you know some meat packers use CO packing to artifically improve the freshness-appearance of meat to fool your eyes. So you damn well know you cannot trust what you see. So even when you rely on evidence, you cannot rely on it too much. There is no practical way to close the evidence-gathering process either, because no matter how deeply you have examined something, you can always examine that same thing even deeper, via more methods and under even more circumstances, and so on. So at some arbitrary point you decide to cut off your evidence gathering process and call it “good enough.” So the whole process is essentially fraud, in the final analysis. It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
Non-magickal people don’t need to worry about any of this. What I am talking about with regard to evidence-based thinking being ultimately false is specifically important for anyone who wants to attain to the highest truth and wants to eventually practice heavy magick.
Right so let’s apply this to the healing a headache idea. You decide to expect your headache to go away on its own. Assuming now that you can just automatically easily expect this (which is something on its own I doubt given that this expectation violates for most people deeper beliefs about how headaches usually work)
Of course. All magick becomes better when you don’t have contravening intentionality lurking somewhere in your own mind. The more coherent your mind, the better. This is true for any kind of magick. Spell magick is not special in this regard.
If your mindset is physicalist and you expect the moon to fall, then you can expect until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t fall. That’s because you have a 1000 times stronger expectation that the laws of physics are supreme and are inviolable and there is no likely way you can expect your way against that prior expectation.
This is why magick in the beginning can only be small and “it’s almost possible anyway” kind of stuff. And that’s also why in the long term it’s essential to rid one’s mind of physicalism, if your goal is to lead a heavily magickal life.
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
That said, of course doing the more in-the-moment kind of transformation is also an important practice because it will give you confidence and help you understand your own mind. So it’s not wasted or “wrong” and I don’t think you’d really always want to do this or that style of magick. It’s like saying blue is such a pretty color, I will only paint in blue. That’s not likely. Even if for only aesthetic reasons I find a strong need to practice many different types of magick. Even if I could always do the spell style magick it doesn’t mean I want to.
I think in general it’s a really good idea to operate one’s mind in many different ways, because the more ways you can do things, the more you understand how flexible your mind can really be.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 15:05:03 (dlbgb89)
The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
Unless you want to say that this isn’t true. That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate. That would mean that there are no subconscious complex tendencies to physicalize experience (or to do anything in particular), whether waking or dreaming, to discover. When you’re not conscious of doing you’re not doing it. There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)? You don’t think you can discover your intent?
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it. There is no self-realization in that view. There’s nothing to come to terms with within yourself, it seems. So do you think there can be deep subconscious tendencies that you are unaware of that interfere with your attempts at conscious magic to change your experience?
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
Working in the background? So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities. Or to create and maintain forests. Or to gradually edit the facts of the world when you command it to? So there’s a sort of entity here that is doing the work for you here in the background, your subconscious. I think, if I was to sum up this belief you’re suggesting here myself, I think it must be something like “there’s an aspect of my subconscious that always works to transform the world it automatically manifests according to my desires”. And maybe something else like “I can announce some of my desires loudly to my subconscious and it will work toward those even more than the others.” But the second would imply a kind of intelligence to listen and understand and differentiate and select that the first doesn’t imply. If it can listen and understand, then why wouldn’t it be able to communicate back?
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-10 02:54:15 (dldwoy4)
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
I agree, but this isn’t how the term “evidence” is understood conventionally.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
I agree with this as well, but once again, conventionally people don’t take the experience of the world to be a message from their own subconscious mind to themselves.
When I have spoken before I have used a standard understanding/meaning of the term “evidence.”
That said, even with what you’re saying, evidence doesn’t work as one would typically expect, because while it may reveal something of your own will to you, it doesn’t keep your will there, so it doesn’t actually force meanings into your life. Normally when people think about “evidence” they think some inviolable meaning is forced into their life from appearances. But in this new interpretation it’s not like that anymore. Since it’s your own will, it’s not a meaning that’s inviolable, but rather, it’s a meaning you can change.
That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate.
One’s will can in principle be in a committed or in a flexible state, and anywhere in between. The sky is the limit, so to speak.
It’s possible to start out with a heavily structured and steady commitment in one’s will and then to gradually relax that commitment later. So one’s condition of will can start with what you appear to have assumed it to be, and then end up with this latter description through your own purpose, if that is your purpose, of course.
Whatever you can conceive of, you can act on. You can intend whatever you conceive of.
Since you’re able to conceive of will this way, you can make your will resemble that conception.
There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
I once had a mystical experience where I was suffocating and couldn’t breathe, and then it felt like my breathing snapped like a dry twig, like it broke as if it were a thing that could break, and then I felt no urge to breathe anymore. I wasn’t breathing and felt no need to breathe either. That experience is very much in line with what you describe here.
The important thing to remember is to not think “it’s like this because it isn’t like that.” All the possibilities should be included. If you can conceive of it, it’s possible and it should be included in one’s ultimate consideration, but one shouldn’t think of it as an “is.” It can be, but not is.
It’s precisely because appearances tell us of what can be and not what is that they cannot function as evidence in the conventional sense of “evidence.” Remember your post about appearances being purely hypothetical?
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)?
Because whatever I discover is conditioned on my ongoing consent, it isn’t self-so, so not a thing-in-itself, no. “Thing-in-itself” is a thing on thing’s own terms, but that doesn’t exist and cannot be. I can only ever, even in principle, know things on my terms, and not on “thing’s” terms.
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
It is, but it is neither objective nor fixated despite itself. If there is a fixation it can only exist so long as I consent to it. Once I become aware of my own fixations I can change them. What’s missing is a guarantee of stability. Stability is an option, but not a guarantee. However evidence-based thinking, as it is conventionally understood, leads one to believe one lives in a world with heavy guarantees that operate despite oneself, whether one likes these guarantees or not.
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
If you say so. :) I mean, if you don’t see flaws in evidence-based thinking, then keep using it.
For me, personally, I see how evidence-based thinking is getting in the way of my most powerful magick. So I use evidence-based thinking as a kind of a game, without buying into it too much. I know “evidence” is a convention of the world, but I don’t let that convention stick very strongly to my heart and I always leave myself plenty of room to question the meanings of any and all appearances. This gives my own will much more room to work than it would otherwise have.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it.
I can be temporarily overlooking something I am doing/intending. So I can be engaged in something and not realize I am engaged in that way, because it’s a matter of course, it is tacit. However, this condition isn’t permanent or inflexible or unintentional. Once I decide I don’t want to have dark subconscious areas in my mind, they gradually “float” (not literally) back up to conscious awareness.
So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities.
That “something” is ultimately you. Othering is not real in the final analysis. It’s only nominal. You can relate to that “something” as not you, but it cannot be anything else, because there isn’t anything else like that and couldn’t be, even in principle. If there were something truly foreign (as opposed to nominally foreign), there’d be no way to gather information about it and interact with it.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-10 09:39:28 (dlej59r)
The reason why evidence-based thinking is ultimately false, is because it doesn’t deliver on its promise. The promise of evidence is that it will relay some information about an external state of affairs. But how can this happen? How can a state of affairs be truly external and yet puncture the boundary of your mind with evidence? If you look into the problems associated with thinking that information arrives from outside one’s mind, you’ll realize such a scenario is impossible.
The lie of evidence is that behind appearances there are true and enduring objects that are self-so, and that you’re merely discovering them instead of creating them on the go, or instead of meddling with the very thing you’re trying to perceive, thus not actually perceiving the thing-in-itself at all.
If you try to take any bit of information and look for some sturdy objective ground from which this information might emanate, upon final analysis there can be no such ground even in principle, because if such a ground existed, it would contradict the way the world actually works. Namely such a ground would prevent fluidity and change.
In practice you shouldn’t buy fruit that look rotten, so judging fruit by its appearance is evidence-based thinking. At the same time, you know some meat packers use CO packing to artifically improve the freshness-appearance of meat to fool your eyes. So you damn well know you cannot trust what you see. So even when you rely on evidence, you cannot rely on it too much. There is no practical way to close the evidence-gathering process either, because no matter how deeply you have examined something, you can always examine that same thing even deeper, via more methods and under even more circumstances, and so on. So at some arbitrary point you decide to cut off your evidence gathering process and call it “good enough.” So the whole process is essentially fraud, in the final analysis. It’s arbitrary and it stands upon a tall heap of air. It doesn’t mean you won’t do it, but from SI POV, it’s important to recognize any evidence-type thinking as in-game thinking that is not strictly true or best all-around type of thinking.
Non-magickal people don’t need to worry about any of this. What I am talking about with regard to evidence-based thinking being ultimately false is specifically important for anyone who wants to attain to the highest truth and wants to eventually practice heavy magick.
Of course. All magick becomes better when you don’t have contravening intentionality lurking somewhere in your own mind. The more coherent your mind, the better. This is true for any kind of magick. Spell magick is not special in this regard.
If your mindset is physicalist and you expect the moon to fall, then you can expect until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t fall. That’s because you have a 1000 times stronger expectation that the laws of physics are supreme and are inviolable and there is no likely way you can expect your way against that prior expectation.
This is why magick in the beginning can only be small and “it’s almost possible anyway” kind of stuff. And that’s also why in the long term it’s essential to rid one’s mind of physicalism, if your goal is to lead a heavily magickal life.
But there is also a difference allowing expectations to work over a long period of time and trying to “fix” some experience in the moment. This also has to do with prior expectations. In physics we would say power is work done over some time. So time is an important aspect in generating power at least in physicalist thinking. Then as you’re coming off physicalism, as an ex-physicalist, it will still be important for some time. So having something work over time in the background is advantageous and is sometimes superior to in-the-moment imagining.
That said, of course doing the more in-the-moment kind of transformation is also an important practice because it will give you confidence and help you understand your own mind. So it’s not wasted or “wrong” and I don’t think you’d really always want to do this or that style of magick. It’s like saying blue is such a pretty color, I will only paint in blue. That’s not likely. Even if for only aesthetic reasons I find a strong need to practice many different types of magick. Even if I could always do the spell style magick it doesn’t mean I want to.
I think in general it’s a really good idea to operate one’s mind in many different ways, because the more ways you can do things, the more you understand how flexible your mind can really be.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-08 15:05:03 (dlbgb89)
Unless we take evidence-based thinking to mean that we take an appearance and narrow our expectations of future appearances based on that appearance. Not because this is a true or right way to do things, but just as an approach.
Further, there is certainly some sense in the idea that we have mostly subconscious habits in our mind and that by observing the appearances we can become more conscious of how our subconscious habits are working (which we have the choice to change or not – but if we aren’t sure we want to throw the whole thing away then this evidentialist approach to our own subconscious habits can be beneficial). There is some sense in saying that we don’t fully understand our own intent and that by paying attention we can become more conscious of it.
Unless you want to say that this isn’t true. That our own intent is actually itself a probability-possibility-cloud whenever we aren’t conscious of it and that there are no ‘actual’ automatic subconscious habits and tendencies to discover or become conscious of, only ones we generate. That would mean that there are no subconscious complex tendencies to physicalize experience (or to do anything in particular), whether waking or dreaming, to discover. When you’re not conscious of doing you’re not doing it. There’s not automation or othering, just a vague cloud of what-you-might-be-doing, which is really just how-things-will-look-and-act-when-I-am-looking. Normally we think that breathing is usually unconscious and you can reprogram it by making it conscious and practicing new ways of breathing. This anti-subconscious view would suggest that ‘unconscious-breathing’ is non-breathing. It’s a blank to be filled in later when you go looking for it. But then how unconscious breathing habits could impact your life seems like nonsense. This is just one example. Most of life is lived subconsciously/habitually and edited with conscious practice when necessary.
So you don’t think there’s a thing-in-itself that is your intent (especially your subconscious intent)? You don’t think you can discover your intent?
So the mind isn’t the ground of your reality/experience in your view?
As long as you think you can be wildly surprised in your experiences because you may or may not fully understand their causes (i.e. the full subconscious complexity of your intent), then it’s definitely a good way of thinking imo.
Do you think there’s a way you are that’s deeper than your conscious understanding of yourself that you can discover, or is that deeper (habitual/subconscious) self just a possibility cloud that you generate when you go looking? If the latter, then why go looking instead of just changing everything to the way you want it. There is no self-realization in that view. There’s nothing to come to terms with within yourself, it seems. So do you think there can be deep subconscious tendencies that you are unaware of that interfere with your attempts at conscious magic to change your experience?
Working in the background? So there is a background where something is unconsciously working to create and maintain people’s personalities. Or to create and maintain forests. Or to gradually edit the facts of the world when you command it to? So there’s a sort of entity here that is doing the work for you here in the background, your subconscious. I think, if I was to sum up this belief you’re suggesting here myself, I think it must be something like “there’s an aspect of my subconscious that always works to transform the world it automatically manifests according to my desires”. And maybe something else like “I can announce some of my desires loudly to my subconscious and it will work toward those even more than the others.” But the second would imply a kind of intelligence to listen and understand and differentiate and select that the first doesn’t imply. If it can listen and understand, then why wouldn’t it be able to communicate back?
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-08-10 02:54:15 (dldwoy4)
I agree, but this isn’t how the term “evidence” is understood conventionally.
I agree with this as well, but once again, conventionally people don’t take the experience of the world to be a message from their own subconscious mind to themselves.
When I have spoken before I have used a standard understanding/meaning of the term “evidence.”
That said, even with what you’re saying, evidence doesn’t work as one would typically expect, because while it may reveal something of your own will to you, it doesn’t keep your will there, so it doesn’t actually force meanings into your life. Normally when people think about “evidence” they think some inviolable meaning is forced into their life from appearances. But in this new interpretation it’s not like that anymore. Since it’s your own will, it’s not a meaning that’s inviolable, but rather, it’s a meaning you can change.
One’s will can in principle be in a committed or in a flexible state, and anywhere in between. The sky is the limit, so to speak.
It’s possible to start out with a heavily structured and steady commitment in one’s will and then to gradually relax that commitment later. So one’s condition of will can start with what you appear to have assumed it to be, and then end up with this latter description through your own purpose, if that is your purpose, of course.
Whatever you can conceive of, you can act on. You can intend whatever you conceive of.
Since you’re able to conceive of will this way, you can make your will resemble that conception.
I once had a mystical experience where I was suffocating and couldn’t breathe, and then it felt like my breathing snapped like a dry twig, like it broke as if it were a thing that could break, and then I felt no urge to breathe anymore. I wasn’t breathing and felt no need to breathe either. That experience is very much in line with what you describe here.
The important thing to remember is to not think “it’s like this because it isn’t like that.” All the possibilities should be included. If you can conceive of it, it’s possible and it should be included in one’s ultimate consideration, but one shouldn’t think of it as an “is.” It can be, but not is.
It’s precisely because appearances tell us of what can be and not what is that they cannot function as evidence in the conventional sense of “evidence.” Remember your post about appearances being purely hypothetical?
Because whatever I discover is conditioned on my ongoing consent, it isn’t self-so, so not a thing-in-itself, no. “Thing-in-itself” is a thing on thing’s own terms, but that doesn’t exist and cannot be. I can only ever, even in principle, know things on my terms, and not on “thing’s” terms.
It is, but it is neither objective nor fixated despite itself. If there is a fixation it can only exist so long as I consent to it. Once I become aware of my own fixations I can change them. What’s missing is a guarantee of stability. Stability is an option, but not a guarantee. However evidence-based thinking, as it is conventionally understood, leads one to believe one lives in a world with heavy guarantees that operate despite oneself, whether one likes these guarantees or not.
If you say so. :) I mean, if you don’t see flaws in evidence-based thinking, then keep using it.
For me, personally, I see how evidence-based thinking is getting in the way of my most powerful magick. So I use evidence-based thinking as a kind of a game, without buying into it too much. I know “evidence” is a convention of the world, but I don’t let that convention stick very strongly to my heart and I always leave myself plenty of room to question the meanings of any and all appearances. This gives my own will much more room to work than it would otherwise have.
I can be temporarily overlooking something I am doing/intending. So I can be engaged in something and not realize I am engaged in that way, because it’s a matter of course, it is tacit. However, this condition isn’t permanent or inflexible or unintentional. Once I decide I don’t want to have dark subconscious areas in my mind, they gradually “float” (not literally) back up to conscious awareness.
That “something” is ultimately you. Othering is not real in the final analysis. It’s only nominal. You can relate to that “something” as not you, but it cannot be anything else, because there isn’t anything else like that and couldn’t be, even in principle. If there were something truly foreign (as opposed to nominally foreign), there’d be no way to gather information about it and interact with it.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-08-10 09:39:28 (dlej59r)
Originally commented by u/ on 2023-06-29 12:55:05.015987 (_)