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A Little Weird

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## Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

October 14th, 2008 by Sean Introduction to Quantum Physics

Not that many people know that a second Scientific Revolution happened in the 1920’s. It was during this time that scientists like Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and others had finally started putting together a deeper understanding of our world on a sub-atomic level. A lot of important discoveries had been made up until that point, but in 1925, a new scientific field of study had emerged out of equations and experiments: Quantum Physics.

It sure sounds cool! “Quantum Physics”. Ooh yeah :-D. But is this just another inaccessible scientific body of knowledge - only privy to those who understand the jargon of the University professors? No! Quantum Physics might sound a little intimidating, but it’s actually pretty easy to gain a basic understanding of what happened in the 1920’s, and how it impacts our understanding of reality.

Prior to this Revolution, humanity had a Newtonian outlook on reality. This world-view was invented in the 1600’s, by Sir Isaac Newton, and stated that things are basically mechanical. When you push something, you are putting a force on it. When you drop something, it falls because the Earth has a gravitational field… pulling objects towards the center. If you throw something up in the air, it will curve in a parabolic arc - eventually falling back to the ground. Things accelerate, and move, and everything behaves according to what math tells us. There is a formula for how everything works. Reality is just one big machine.

When we started to zoom in on things, we expected to see this same mechanical world. We zoomed into the cell, and saw miniature machines. Then zoomed in more, to the molecule, and saw little gears. Then even more: in 1913, Niels Bohr came up with his famous depiction of the atom:

Marbles! Brilliant! Looks like Newton was right - everything is just mechanical. Everything is just a bunch of complicated machines, working in amazing ways - but still just machines.

It’s important to understand this mindset. This is the mindset that a lot of people have about reality today. If you ask someone to draw an atom, they will likely draw the 1913 version above. The only problem is that it isn’t 1913. It’s 2008.

The funny thing is… if you zoom in a little bit more… everything seems to just fall apart. The normal rules about reality - the normal common-sense-Netwonian rules - don’t work. Not only do they fail, but they fail magnificantly.

This is what an atom looks like in 2008:

What, no marbles? My goodness… that almost looks as though it’s some sort ball of energy…

So what happened? What changed our understanding in 1925, that made us re-think everything?

The Uncertainty Principle

Scientists saw those marbles, and thought: “Well gee, if I know exactly where the marble is, and what direction it’s moving in, then I can predict exactly how the atom is going to behave.”

And when they tried to find where the marble was, they couldn’t figure out what direction it was moving in. And when they could figure out the direction, they suddenly couldn’t figure out where it was! No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t figure out both pieces of information (location + direction) at the same time.

So what? It sounds like we just need better equipment, right? The Uncertainty Principle changed that - it stated that it’s physically impossible to know both the location and direction at the same time. It’s a law etched into our reality.

Why was this a fantastic deal in the 1920’s? Because the mechanical world that scientists have grown and loved over the previous 300 years was shattered. Things were no longer machines. There was divine Uncertainty, hard-coded into reality itself. And Uncertainty is scary.

Posted in Science | 9 Comments »

September 20th, 2008 by Sean Self-Replication vs. Truth

I haven’t posted in over a month. I had a revelation, which had the effect of removing a lot of my motivation for expressing myself. In fact, I feel very little drive to make this post… but I feel I should at least get my words on paper for my own sake - and maybe the few reading can provide insight as well.

“Survival of the fitest” describes so much. I’ve obviously read about evolution before… but it never really hit home until recently. Everything we see around us is only there because it self-replicates. The only things that persist are those things that can adapt to their environment, and reproduce. I’m not just talking about biology - ideas and thoughts are the same way. In fact, all of life as we know it is a result of self-replication and adaptation.

Now of course, I’ve thought about evolution in the past, and agreed with it mostly. I’ve known the concept of a “meme” for years. It’s not like I’m talking about any real new idea here. It’s just the level of appreciation that’s changed. In the past, it was an interesting idea that I touched upon every once in a while, that remained in the back of my mind. But recently it’s been thrusted into the forefront, and become a cornerstone of my understanding of what I experience on a day to day basis.

This actually depressed me for quite a while. It was like beating a game… yes, it feels great to be done with it, but at the same time it’s a little bittersweet. I was happy that I understood a lot of my experiences and beliefs… but at the same time, depressed that I could no longer be intellectually honest with myself about holding on to stupid ideas.

My depression was eventually overcome. My subconscious sorted it out for me.

Self-replication explains nearly everything about our human experience. On a biological, psychological, and philosophical level. Self-replication is so powerful because it has persisting power. Everyone has random thoughts, and does random things… but if those things don’t persist, then in the long run, you really won’t notice them. They will eventually fizzle out. For example, how many people believe that the Earth is flat? Not too many. The idea isn’t persistent.

I tried to imagine the most persistent thing. What could adapt and self-replicate the best? I started listing different organisims in my mind, playing out a long term simulation in my head. I listed different religions, and my knowledge about how they persisted and adapted to the populace. Then I thought about just general ideas, and their ability to persist. Mathematics should persist for a long time… math is considered a universal language. What else… what else…

Then it hit me: truth. Truth is the only thing that escapes this need of persistence. What I mean by that is: gravity will last longer than the human race. If something is true, then something is true… permanently. Truth doesn’t adapt… and it doesn’t self-replicate. The things that do adapt and self-replicate are constantly trying to align themselves with truth - for survival - but truth doesn’t really have that problem.

This removed my depression. But it also removed my desire to share my thoughts with the world. Who cares if someone disagrees with me? And who cares if someone agrees with me? Truth transcends persistence. So everything is OK.

In the past I felt a need to get my ideas out… but probably because I was convinced by someone else that it’s good to get your ideas out. Because they were getting their ideas out - to me. The idea of “you need to express yourself” is just a self-replicating thought. If I sit here and preach that everyone needs to get a blog, and tell the world their thoughts… then those who I convince to do so will spread the same idea… telling their readers to get a blog, and tell the world their thoughts. It doesn’t matter what my line of reasoning is for why people should express themselves… just the more effective the reason is, the more the “express yourself” idea will self-replicate.

But none of that matters now. Truth trumps all that. Do I need to convince you that gravity exists? Uh, no. A truth will exist whether the conceptualization of that truth is self-replicating or not. It’s not so much “who gives a shit” as it’s “truth has already won the fight”.

So… with that said… perhaps you can see why I feel no motivation for expressing my thoughts (as much as I used to, at least).

Posted in Note to Self, Philosophy, Belief Systems, Science | 10 Comments »

August 17th, 2008 by Sean Pseudoscience

Parapsychology is commonly regarded as pseudoscience - it is attacked for its lack of adherence to the scientific method. This is a problem - because they are right.

Let’s outline the problem:

We are trying to discover and learn things about reality. We are seeking genuine, reality-based truth.

What are the problems we need to overcome to do that? Wild theories from armchair philosophers. Confirmation bias. Self-deception.

1. Wild theories are easy - let’s focus on personal experience. If you haven’t experienced something, then you have no business in trying to make sense of it. Let’s just throw out the ideas of the world being created on the back of a turtle, since no one actually saw it happen.

2. Confirmation bias is a little harder - let’s develop intelligent tests that can falsify our ideas. If we develop and execute tests that can disprove our idea, then we can be more sure that our idea is true.

3. Self-deception is tough. Well, if something happened, then it should be able to happen again. So, we should tell everyone what we experienced and tested. If other people reproduce our results, then we can be sure we aren’t deceiving ourselves. Or at least, if we are deceiving ourselves, then so is everyone else who is seeing the same thing we are.

Sounds like a plan! Actually, it’s a revolutionary idea that transformed the human race - it’s called the “scientific method”. Start with personal experience, followed by experiments to try and prove our ideas false, followed by peer-review.

So why don’t we use this for researching the paranormal? It turns out that’s very hard. Well… maybe we can simplify things.

What if we just focus on personal experience? Confirmation bias and self-deception is overrated anyways, so just throw that out the window. A lot of online communities take this position - including PsiPog (when it was open)!

What happens? Eventually, the community fails at discovering genuine truth. When a community’s focus is solely on personal experience, then it rewards confirmation bias and self-deception.

Confirmation bias manifests itself as a bunch of people sitting around, doing nothing. After all, there’s no need to test anything when you have it all figured out. The scientific method states that we should be trying to prove our ideas false, in order to avoid confirmation bias. But if the community throws that idea out the window, then why test anything? We have it figured out, so there’s no need to do anything.

Self-deception manifests itself as varying levels of delusion. Did you just blow a hole in someone’s shield? Better check with the referee! Awesome, you did! You are now level 98. You’ll be flying around and blowing up planets in no time. Welcome to fluff-ville.

Without dealing with confirmation bias and self-deception, we will forever be doomed to apathetic inactivity and fluff bunnies.

So why can’t we just use the scientific method to research parapsychology? To answer that, let’s use our imagination for a second.

We need to deal with wild theories, confirmation bias, and self-deception. We’ve come up with three solutions to these problems, labeled collectively as the “scientific method”. Is it possible that there exists a property about reality that will naturally “evade” discovery based on the three solutions we’ve provided? Phrased another way: do the three solutions guarantee that we will discover every truth about reality? And another way: could a real phenomenon exist that, when the scientific method is applied to it, makes the phenomenon itself go away?

Now, at this point, I’m not saying that these types of “evading phenomenon” exist. I’m just saying, is it possible that they exist? The answer has to be: yes!

With that said, I believe parapsychology has become a grab-bag of these such phenomenon. Telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, DMILs, OBEs, ghosts, aliens, precognition, etc. These are all very strange things, that normally wouldn’t be grouped together. But they share a common thread: they naturally evade discovery when applying the three solutions outlined above.

So, when someone claims that parapsychology is nothing but mere pseudoscience… I have to agree. Except without the condescending attitude :-). I believe that parapsychology is, by definition, the collection of phenomenon that, by their very nature, evade discovery when applying the scientific method. So of course it’s pseudoscience!

Now, after all that, saying something is “pseudoscience” doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. I definitely believe in telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, DMILs, OBEs, “ghosts” (in a sense) and precognition, with some curious skepticism for aliens. The label of “pseudoscience” isn’t an insult.

But just because we are throwing parts of the scientific method out the window, by necessity, doesn’t mean we can just do whatever we want. In order to ensure our pursuit of truth is legitimate, we must create new solutions for the problem of confirmation bias and self-deception - perhaps on a case-by-case basis. If the scientific method’s solution to these problems will cause the phenomenon we are studying to naturally “evade” discovery, then we must come up with new solutions. Not just toss the scientific method out the window and hope things work out.

Posted in Note to Self, Science | 13 Comments »

May 11th, 2008 by Sean Geiger Control Data Analysis

Last week I removed the Geiger Game from the site, in order to collect a weeks worth of “uninfluenced” data. Here is my analysis:

3 May 2008, 00:00 EDT to 10 May 2008, 00:00 EDT

Measurements: 67141
Maximum CPM: 34 on 05/08/08 05:43:33 EDT
Average CPM: 11.575
Median CPM: 11
Mode CPM: 11 (7985 occurrences)

CPM at least | Percent of the time
--- | ---
1 | 100%
2 | 99.9806%
3 | 99.9121%
4 | 99.6827%
5 | 98.9455%
6 | 97.2103%
7 | 94.2285%
8 | 89.1824%
9 | 81.7265%
10 | 72.0558%
11 | 60.8793%
12 | 48.9864%
13 | 37.5895%
14 | 27.3588%
15 | 18.966%
16 | 12.5824%
17 | 7.8908%
18 | 4.6782%
19 | 2.6809%
20 | 1.4625%
21 | 0.7983%
22 | 0.4006%
23 | 0.21%
24 | 0.0863%
25 | 0.0431%
26 | 0.0238%
27 | 0.0134%
28 | 0.0059%
29 | 0.0044%
30 | 0.0029%
31 | 0.0014%
32 | 0.0014%
33 | 0.0014%
34 | 0.0014%
35 | 0%

Probability and statistics are a bitch. It’s a fact of life :-P. I plan on writing a tutorial and how to interpret these numbers correctly, but until then, I just wanted to post the table above, and the raw data for others to analyze.

Graph:

Data: Geiger Counter Week-Long Data

Posted in Science | 5 Comments »

April 5th, 2008 by Sean Beliefs, Reality, and Questions Galore

Ernesto e-mailed me a question:

> “As of now, I have just finished reading your incomplete sequel to your first E-Book. It left me feeling empty as your new website does not talk about all of the “Psi” phenomenon discussed in your first. I wish you could publish a blog in which you finish expressing the ideas of your sequel. Do you still practice Telekinesis and Psi Balls? Do you have any new ideas about how they function with this new broader outlook?”

One reason why I don’t talk about some of my current beliefs is because they sound insane :-P. Part of me would rather quietly hold on to my bizarre beliefs, and work on them in private, than to express them for everyone to read and criticize. Keep in mind that a lot of my friends in real life and co-workers read this blog, and my name is attached to every post, so I feel an increased burden to tone things down :-P.

Another reason I don’t talk about my current understanding is because it’s not clear. I don’t see it clearly in my mind, so I have a hard time explaining it. I’ll start to write a sentence, but it won’t feel correct, so I’ll try again. And again. Ultimately, the problem is that I haven’t “figured it out” in my own head, so I won’t write about it.

But for this post - sure, I’ll give it a shot:

The biggest belief that I struggle with is that it is my understanding that reality is a dream of some sort. And I hate saying that because it’s very cliché, but I’ve yet to find any other explanation for what I’ve observed.

I’ve outlined this belief in past posts: Everything is Meaningful, and I am Probably Insane.

The basic idea is that the things we experience in reality have deeper meaning. Just like in dreams, where certain metaphors drive the experience, these same metaphors are also the driving forces for what we experience in reality.

The reason why I believe this is because I’ve been tracking it in my own life. I have these experiences which are too bizarre to be labeled “coincidence”. I see the metaphors, sometimes while the experience is happening, other times after the fact. I can predict what’s going to happen by looking at what the metaphor requires. A lot of the time I’m correct (though I will be honest, I am not 100% :-P).

Now of course, the same old arguments can be brought up, that I am biased because I’m looking for meaning, or that I’m a sucker, or whatever. Those arguments don’t really bother me, because I know I am very honest with myself, and that no one is more critical of my own thoughts than me. But, from an outsider’s perspective, they do seem like legitimate complaints. One reason I don’t like discussing my beliefs is because I’ll have to argue these worn out positions with people who don’t care as much as I do. I’ve put years of blood sweat and tears into my current beliefs, constantly challenging them from every perspective I can think of, testing reality, forcing myself to drop incorrect beliefs (at the expense of my ego and pride), etc. It’s very frustrating to argue with someone who is just trolling around because they have nothing better to do.

Now, the question that I’ve yet to answer, is how deep do these metaphors go? On the surface, it might seem like I’m just arguing in favor of basic psychology. I’ve observed these metaphors manifesting themselves in reality - not just in my own head - so at a minimum I’m talking about something more than psychology.

Right now I’m divided between three basic explanations:

#1. Reality itself is governed by these metaphors. Reality is a dream. Science is derived from this dream. Examples of this theory are cited in the above links: Everything is Meaningful, and I am Probably Insane.

#2. There is an underlying physical reality that is governed by science, but there is a mental reality governed by these metaphors that co-exists with this physical reality. This would mean that the metaphors are a result of the mind, but that we see manifestations of these metaphors in reality because of large scale unconscious telepathy. I talk about this idea here: Current Understanding of Intention Manifestation.

#3. Something I haven’t thought of.

If explanation #1 is correct, then reality is a free for all. There are no rules. Psionics, and all belief structures, are now easily explained. This sounds a little outlandish, so I tend to side with #2.

If explanation #2 is correct, then there is a very large question. How does this “mental reality” affect the physical reality? In this explanation, macro-psychokinesis is not explained.

Most likely, explanation #3 is correct. But since I’ve yet to think of it, I don’t know how it works :-).

Now, the next question might be: how can we determine which is correct? What would be a wonderful test that would clear a lot of this up?

Well, winning the lottery.

The lottery is void of mind. If this “mental reality” exists, then the lottery would not be a part of it. Therefore, intention manifestation wouldn’t work on the lottery (which is my experience). So, according to my experiences so far, #2 looks like it might be correct.

However, the problem with #2 is the question of macro-psychokinesis - i.e., how does the “mental reality” affect the physical reality? Is the physical reality deterministic? Where does free-will fit into this?

If #2 was completely correct, then you couldn’t use psychic abilities to win the lottery. Yet I have already succeeding in breaking the mathematical odds, and other psychics have won the lottery as well. See: Psychic Wins Lottery, I Won, I Won… Again.

So, #1 doesn’t feel correct, and my experiences back it up because I failed to win the lottery using intention manifestation.

But, #2 is also incorrect to some extent, because I have succeeded a little bit in winning the lottery, and others have done better than I have.

So, in conclusion…

In my last eBook, I talked about belief systems, and how we can succeed with psychic abilities using drastically different belief systems. The question that I had at the end of that eBook was basically: how can that be?

My answer to that question is that reality is some form of dream. I haven’t posted a lot on this subject because a lot of the revelations have been very personal as I inspect the metaphors driving my own life.

The next question is: to what extent do these metaphors affect reality? Either reality is a dream, and physical reality is derived from that dream (#1), OR there is a physical reality, and a mental reality, each governed by different rules (#2).

Judging from my experiences, and my intuition, I believe that #2 is probably more correct. However, then the question becomes: how is macro-psychokinesis possible? I.e., how does the mental reality affect the physical reality?

At that point, a good test is to attempt to win the lottery (something completely physical), using mental means (psychic abilities). This will get me lots of money, play into my own life metaphor, and help answer these glaring questions about how reality works.

Any questions?

Posted in Lottery, Philosophy, Belief Systems, Science | 12 Comments »

March 9th, 2008 by Sean Hacking Works Cited

Recently I got into an argument about whether out of body experiences were real or not. Whenever I get into such an argument, I always force myself to be as scientific and logical as possible. This usually pisses skeptics off, because they are used to being the scientific guy, and the other person being the religious nut job.

I insisted that scientific evidence - if studied without bias - actually supports the theory that OBEs are real. The skeptic was quick to jump on that claim. He stated that OBEs (and their close cousin, near death experiences) were nothing more than a brain going crazy from the chemistry. He presented me with recent scientific studies and articles as proof:

1. Scientists Induce OBEs in the Lab - A scientist used virtual reality goggles to trick the brain into thinking it was out of body.

2. Extreme Gravity Triggers OBEs/NDEs - A report stating that extreme G-Forces will induce an OBE because of the lack of blood flowing to the brain.

3. People have NDEs While Brain Dead

Seems a little daunting at first - I mean, how could I call myself a scientific guy, when there is scientific evidence that OBEs/NDEs aren’t real?

It turns out it was pretty easy:

1. Did the scientists really induce an OBE? No. The virtual reality goggles gave a creepy illusion of being out of body, but the OBE state of mind wasn’t actually induced. It’s an optical illusion. Just because you can fake it, doesn’t mean that the original isn’t real. I can create a fake video of me walking - that doesn’t mean I can’t walk.

2. All the report states is that lack of blood flowing to the brain can induce a near death experience. Well, that doesn’t really say either way whether the experience is real or not. It just says that when you do things that might kill you, you might have a near death experience. Which is actually pretty obvious :-P. I can induce a gun shot wound by shooting someone in the leg. Does that mean gun shot wounds aren’t real? Of course not.

3. The third piece of evidence was the best. How many of you read the page? Probably not that many. It turns out that article is in favor of NDEs being real. The person I was arguing against only read the title. I read the article.

I want to point out two things: 1. I am right about the evidence supporting OBEs being real. I may make a separate post with a list of evidence in the future. But more importantly, 2. skeptics are full of shit.

Skeptics hide behind citing work, and long articles, and scientific studies - but they can only get away with it because it’s very rare for them to actually be challenged. It’s a game of intimidation - not one of pursuing truth. The strategy is simple: argue the skeptical position, and when someone challenges you, just google the topic and paste a bunch of links to scientific documents. No real effort required, and you look smart in the process, and feel good about bitch slapping some “moron”.

And for the most part, science has figured a lot of stuff out, so this strategy actually works really well. For example, if you were to get in an argument about evolution vs. creationism, you could just google it, and find enough links on the internet that supports evolution, and throw them in the religious guys face. You win.

But the reality of the situation is that science hasn’t figured everything out. And when it comes to the subject of parapsychology, they are light years behind.

The down side to this is that you have to know your stuff if you want to challenge a skeptic. The skeptic won’t put in the effort, so if you want to sound credible, you have to put in the effort for both of you. It is an uphill battle, and I’ve yet to see a skeptic change their mind, but it’s an important battle because it teaches us that science is far from perfect, and suffers from the same fundamentalism as any other system of beliefs.

Posted in Belief Systems, Science, Dream Phenomenon | 9 Comments »

December 5th, 2007 by Sean Interesting Link

AndPious sent me the following link: http://www.haloorbital.com/.

The story goes that the owner of the site, Stan Deyo, has created a propulsion vehicle that basically functions like the sci-fi UFOs. Apparently his site will open in 2008, which is just around the corner.

Now, of course we’ve seen things like this in the past. Steorn immediately comes to mind. I would love for it to be true, but part of me just says: I’ll believe it when I see it. Nonetheless, my curiosity is certainly piqued :-). I’ll be checking out the site regularly until 2008, to see the status. If I notice anything significant, ALW will be the first to know.

Posted in Science | 14 Comments »

October 28th, 2007 by Sean The Lottery Reloaded

Oh goodie!

I took a month off from the lottery, due to the low jackpot amounts over the course of October. And it couldn’t have come at a better time - October has been especially stressful for me for many reasons. Changing jobs, changing shifts, changing apartments, and in general just changing my whole day-to-day activities. But that stress is finally equalizing itself, and life is starting to get back into a pattern, so I’m free to experiment with more fun ideas on reality. And it just so happens that the lottery jackpot has gotten within my acceptable range :-).

I played on Friday, but didn’t get any numbers, unfortunately. But that’s ok.

I’ve come to accept that I’ve failed over the summer (in terms of the lottery). If you remember… the lottery motivated me to start living my ideal life right now (instead of waiting around for a huge jackpot). That meant learning more about music, exercising and eating healthy, investing, and thinking about tough subjects like value, choice, faith, etc. So the lottery was a success in terms of motivation and life-stuff, but the act of winning was a failure. I didn’t win the jackpot.

However, I now think that it was better that way. I’ve come to reject the ideas of personal development and intention manifestation. And I think that it’s important to reject those ideas. They served me well for quite a while, but now it’s time to move on. Had I won the lottery in the summer, it would have validated the ideas of personal development and intention manifestation… which would have been incorrect, and messed with my head. So it’s better this way. Or at least - that’s how I currently rationalize my failure at the moment ;-).

Now that I have finished my rejection, I feel more free to win the lottery without all the intellectual baggage associated with it. During the summer, success of the lottery project was directly linked to correctness of my belief structure. That’s a wonderful way to inject emotional stress into a situation :-). However, now I feel like my success with the lottery is independent of my beliefs. So I can relax. I feel more playful and curious, as opposed to forceful and frustrated :-P.

We’ll see how long this lasts ;-P.

Either way, I want to do more experiments, and gather actual EVIDENCE to figure out how I can pull off this win. I most definitely believe it’s possible and plausible to win the jackpot. I stand by my rejection of modern statistics and probability, and my rejection of randomness. That’s sound logic right there - and the evidence supports it. Now I just need to keep reminding myself to focus on the evidence, and not any willy nilly emotion or philosophical idea that flutters across my creative mind.

Hurray :-).

Posted in Lottery, Personal Development, Science | 11 Comments »

October 20th, 2007 by Sean Return to Science

Science is great. And I’m not just saying that.

I used to consider myself very scientific… but really I never understood why science was correct. I just knew that it was suppose to be the best system of discovery, so I should trust it. It came down to trust.

When I discovered that psychic abilities were actually real, I felt like my trust was betrayed. I felt like science had led me down a faulty path, and that path had turned out to be incorrect. Science had failed me. My trust was broken. So I started to look towards other things to trust in.

Nothing really grabbed my eye, though I did try a lot of belief structures over the years. I would always end up rejecting it because it wasn’t scientific enough :-). Eventually I did settle somewhat on the idea of personal development. It was scientific to a point, but there was a lot of intuition and psychic ideas in it as well. Sounds perfect :-).

But lately, I’ve come to discover that the personal development mentality is flawed as well. The flaws are very clever and creative, and very hard to detect. Ideas like meta-beliefs can really screw your mind over… Intention manifestation is a very clever idea as well. Ultimately, I do not believe in intention manifestation, and the things that are incorrect with the intention manifestation model can be detected by being scientific.

Which is why I feel that science is the best method for discovery. At this point, it doesn’t feel like before - I don’t feel like I “trust” science, instead I feel like I’ve derived the scientific method by trial and error. Every other belief system I’ve tried out has failed because there are gaping holes that are easily prevented using logic, reason, experimentation, and evidence.

I can disprove intention manifestation pretty quickly. Let’s make an experiment. Intend to win the lottery for a month straight. And if you win, then intention manifestation has some evidence to support it. And if you fail, then intention manifestation has some evidence to disprove it.

It just so happens I did that exact experiment :-). I believed 100%. I visualized. I intended. I put my heart into it. I got my emotions going. I did this religiously for a month. And I got zero results.

Now before everyone flips a lid, let me make something clear: there is evidence that the process of intention manifestation actually does affect reality. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, with different intentions. However! It is NOT as simple as “placing your order” with the universe. The universe is not a genie. Or at least - that’s not what the evidence suggests.

In the future I may delve further into the raw evidence, and look for alternate explanations. However, the point of this post is to express the simple point of view that: science produces the most accurate observations about reality.

Period.

The best way to learn about reality is to actually play around with reality and see what happens. I know this seems obvious. But that’s not what a lot of us do. A lot of us form our opinion of how reality should function - and then we play around with reality until we notice the results that confirm our opinion.

Or we play around with reality until we form an opinion on something… then we only do things to confirm our premature assumptions. There is actually an amazing idea in psychology that looks into this phenomenon - it’s called confirmation bias. I recommend reading about the experiments they did to observe this phenomenon - it’s very interesting.

-

It’s hard for me to express why science is important while in the same breath say that psychic abilities and intention manifestation do produce results. But here I am :-P.

I think it’s important to separate skepticism from science. The scientific method says nothing about skepticism. The scientific method can be executed by a computer program. But in the real world, we are humans, with emotions and opinions - and it’s very very hard to remain objective and judge the outcome of something fairly. Especially once we start investing a lot of emotional energy into one outcome or another. The skeptical person usually displays a heavy emotional tendency towards evading admittance of ignorance, among other obsessions. But hey - no ones perfect :-P.

The scientific method - the idea that we need to objectively play around with reality to understand reality - and that we need to constantly change and evolve our understanding fairly and without bias - is a beautiful goal. It might be impossible to be 100% scientific, but putting our focus on evidence, experimentation, playfulness, and objectivity (even if objectivity is inherently impossible), is the most rewarding belief structure for learning about reality.

Posted in Note to Self, Personal Development, Belief Systems, Science | 11 Comments »

October 8th, 2007 by Sean Berkeley on YouTube

I have to pass this link along… it’s totally sweet.

It seems the Berkeley, the University of California, is posting lectures on YouTube. Full lessons, ranging from biology, physics, and search engine technology. Right now I’m watching the quantum physics series. The link is here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley

Here’s one of the 200+ videos on their directory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsnEUApVHgI

Enjoy, science nerds!

Posted in Video, Science | 8 Comments »

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