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Science and Meditation

RE: Scientific proof for fairies

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/15/14 5:14 PM as a reply to _.
Jen Pearly:
As a long-time science editor, I took certain courses in detecting mathematical and other errors in epidemiological research. One of the teachers of one of these courses pointed to an estimate that 80% of peer-reviewed published medical literature is based on bad study design, statistically speaking, and that as consumers of this literature we ought to be extremely skeptical of all of it.

Here is an article explaining common sources of error and their prevalance.
Jen, what are you responding to here? Epidemiological research has flaws....so....fairies are real?

Jen Pearly:
Something, some kind of super subtle energetics must survive death(s) if what we are doing and experiencing as a result of so doing makes any sense at all. 
So either everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology is completely wrong and misguided, or some stuff that some dudes in a bronze-age civilisation made up doesn't quite make sense....gee, it is a tricky one to choose between....

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/15/14 4:51 PM as a reply to Jeff Grove.
Jeff Grove:
Something as foriegn as yin chi is labelled as magic yet if I were to speak of gravity it would be familiar and yet it is as equally unknown

Sawfoot I would be interested if you have expierienced any of the following

precognitive dreams
deja vu
Have you ever picked up the phone to call someone and found them on the other end
Been thinking of someone and found them at your front door or bumped into them in the street
conincidence
syncronicity

How about something as mundane as knowing a storm approaches half a day in advance. This is all about perceiving a subtle change in your enviroment. There are signs in the movement of birds on the horizon, the smell in the wind and the feeling in the air.  Our senses have been deadened by the years of television and the less reliant we are on them for our day to day life the less we notice about the world we live in.
Sure, all of them except the precognitive dreams I suppose. 

To keep it on topic, the question that interests me is why people want to seek magical explantions for phenomena.

So the stuff you are talking about can all be explained in a mundane way. But wouldn't the universe be so dreadfully boring if people didn't have things like their special magic smelly-marker-pen-lid-putting-on mind-control powers....

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/23/14 5:08 PM as a reply to sawfoot _.
sawfoot _:
Jen Pearly:
As a long-time science editor, I took certain courses in detecting mathematical and other errors in epidemiological research. One of the teachers of one of these courses pointed to an estimate that 80% of peer-reviewed published medical literature is based on bad study design, statistically speaking, and that as consumers of this literature we ought to be extremely skeptical of all of it.

Here is an article explaining common sources of error and their prevalance.
Jen, what are you responding to here? Epidemiological research has flaws....so....fairies are real?

Jen Pearly:
Something, some kind of super subtle energetics must survive death(s) if what we are doing and experiencing as a result of so doing makes any sense at all. 
So either everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology is completely wrong and misguided, or some stuff that some dudes in a bronze-age civilisation made up doesn't quite make sense....gee, it is a tricky one to choose between....

Hi, Sawfoot,

I don't know how much sense it makes, ultimately, for me to make a statement of belief or disbelief regarding "fairies." I will go ahead and bite and say that, to date, I haven't believed and don't believe in the existence of fairies; however, this belief/disbelief has nothing to do with the kinds of questions the scientific method can ask and (provisionally) answer. It has  to do with my not having experienced fairies directly myself, immediately. And it has a lot to do with not even knowing of anyone seriously claiming the existence of such things. 

My point in bringing up the seriously flawed state of scientific literature, besides backing up what Daniel said way up the thread about the same topic, is that when you point to modern "science" as some kind of foundationally valid and reliable arbiter of what deserves to be culturally privileged in terms of "truth-value," you are pointing to peer-reviewed journals, which are seriously flawed on those very terms. If you aren't going to "believe" in anything, or even remain agnostically open-minded, until it is published by scientific concensus, then you are going to have a very narrow range of "reality" within which to think, imagine, experience, and play. Very, very narrow. And you (or someone similarly minded) might take Lipitor or hormone replacement therapy and suffer harm because of insufficient sketicism toward there being any "truth" that is reliably foundational. Worse--you may see little "point" in reading Shelley's poetry or attending a Medicine Buddha Puja.

Moreover, science is defined by its method, the scientific method. Science is this method, not any specific conclusion drawn by means of employing it, conclusions which are always provisional and frequently reversed anyway. This method, the scientific method, is based on axioms--axioms that operate elegantly and fairly consistently as a closed system of inquiry, but axioms nonethess, which is to say beliefs. 

With regard to your second quotation of my words, I was saying that what we are doing in trying to get enlightened doesn't make much sense if this life is "all there is." It doesn't make logical sense, unless one thinks that there are just immediate benefits of meditation and these outweight all the trouble it costs. But, more important, perhaps is that biology, physics, and chemistry have not proven anything at all, for science doesn't "prove" things; in fact, you can tell a scientific expert from a novice by his or her propensity to use the word "prove" at all: No pro will ever use that word in a scientic paper. The data "suggest," never "prove"--so at least professional science is honest, which is wholly admirable. But even if such a thing as energetic phenomena or afterlife could be disproven, science hasn't done so or even attempted to. Science doesn't undertake questions beyond accessible material sense data; it doesn't even ask the existence of such things as a research question. It can't and still be "science."

Jenny

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/15/14 6:06 PM as a reply to sawfoot _.
What is magic and what is mundane are both one and the same.  Everything that occurs has both a spiritual explanation and physical one.  There should be no separation.  If there is a separation for you, you have more to learn.  All physical phenomena are manifestations of spiritual phenomena. 

I know everything.  I'd like you to know everything as well.

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/15/14 6:29 PM as a reply to Jeremy May.
Fairies are real you guys! I've seen them and so have some other people
People have written whole books about them. A genre of books even
Didn't you see sawfoot's pictures?! And the one his gf took? jeez louise!!

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/17/14 2:28 AM as a reply to _.
Jen Pearly:
sawfoot _:
Jen Pearly:
As a long-time science editor, I took certain courses in detecting mathematical and other errors in epidemiological research. One of the teachers of one of these courses pointed to an estimate that 80% of peer-reviewed published medical literature is based on bad study design, statistically speaking, and that as consumers of this literature we ought to be extremely skeptical of all of it.

Here is an article explaining common sources of error and their prevalance.
Jen, what are you responding to here? Epidemiological research has flaws....so....fairies are real?

Jen Pearly:
Something, some kind of super subtle energetics must survive death(s) if what we are doing and experiencing as a result of so doing makes any sense at all. 
So either everything we know about physics, chemistry and biology is completely wrong and misguided, or some stuff that some dudes in a bronze-age civilisation made up doesn't quite make sense....gee, it is a tricky one to choose between....

Hi, Sawfoot,

I don't know how much sense it makes, ultimately, for me to make a statement of belief or disbelief regarding "fairies." I will go ahead and bite and say that, to date, I haven't believed and don't believe in the existence of fairies; however, this belief/disbelief has nothing to do with the kinds of questions the scientific method can ask and (provisionally) answer. It has  to do with my not having experienced fairies directly myself, immediately. And it has a lot to do with not even knowing of anyone seriously claiming the existence of such things. 

My point in bringing up the seriously flawed state of scientific literature, besides backing up what Daniel said way up the thread about the same topic, is that when you point to modern "science" as some kind of foundationally valid and reliable arbiter of what deserves to be culturally privileged in terms of "truth-value," you are pointing to peer-reviewed journals, which are seriously flawed on those very terms. If you aren't going to "believe" in anything, or even remain agnostically open-minded, until it is published by scientific concensus, then you are going to have a very narrow range of "reality" within which to think, imagine, experience, and play. Very, very narrow. And you (or someone similarly minded) might take Lipitor or hormone replacement therapy and suffer harm because of insufficient sketicism toward there being any "truth" that is reliably foundational. Worse--you may see little "point" in reading Shelley's poetry or attending a Medicine Buddha Puja.

Moreover, science is defined by its method, the scientific method. Science is this method, not any specific conclusion drawn by means of employing it, conclusions which are always provisional and frequently reversed anyway. This method, the scientific method, is based on axioms--axioms that operate elegantly and fairly consistently as a closed system of inquiry, but axioms nonethess, which is to say beliefs. 

I'm married to someone just like you with regard to this debate, so I'll continue to think fondly of you even if I've just wasted my digital breath.

With regard to your second quotation of my words, I was saying that what we are doing in trying to get enlightened doesn't make much sense if this life is "all there is." It doesn't make logical sense, unless one thinks that there are just immediate benefits of meditation and these outweight all the trouble it costs. But, more important, perhaps is that biology, physics, and chemistry have not proven anything at all, for science doesn't "prove" things; in fact, you can tell a scientific expert from a novice by his or her propensity to use the word "prove" at all: No pro will ever use that word in a scientic paper. The data "suggest," never "prove"--so at least professional science is honest, which is wholly admirable. But even if such a thing as energetic phenomena or afterlife could be disproven, science hasn't done so or even attempted to. Science doesn't undertake questions beyond accessible material sense data; it doesn't even ask the existence of such things as a research question. It can't and still be "science."

Jenny
Ok, thanks Jenny having a go. 

One question is, what is it that we are debating? For me, the debate on whether magic powers and fairies exist, at one level, is not so interesting. We have over a hundred years of parapsychology research, the sum of which is that parapsychology is essentially a failed research enterprise, the main benefit of which I can see is giving us a better understanding of how pseudoscience works. We may not have disproved magic powers, but I think there are good grounds to think they are impossible.  So if you want to provide an argument that there is scientific evidence for the powers you probably are wasting your breath, based on the evidence and theoretical frameworks we have at this point at time. 

The more interesting debate is what should I choose to believe, and why. So, in your opinion, science is seriously flawed, it is provisional and constantly being revised and updated, and it cannot ever proove anything. Therefore, I do not use it as a basis for my belief system. If see a fairy at the bottom of my garden, and my friends bob and linda think there are fairies living in the bottom of their garden, then I will believe in fairies, science be damned. Oh, and if I believe in science, I can't enjoy poetry (!?!!?!) so that is bad, and believing one thing means I can't get the benefits of other things which counteract those beliefs.

If you want to believe in fairies, go believe in fairies, if believing in fairies is consistent with your goals (I am a pragmatist, after all). The question I think it all ultimately boils down to is what you think enlightenment is all about. I quite like the old fashioned idea about it.

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/17/14 9:56 PM as a reply to sawfoot _.
Sawfoot_ (Why is there an underscore at the end of your fake name?):
The more interesting debate is what should I choose to believe, and why. So, in your opinion, science is seriously flawed, it is provisional and constantly being revised and updated, and it cannot ever proove anything. Therefore, I do not use it as a basis for my belief system. 

Yes, so now you are broadening out to the question the discipline of philosophy can undertake and has undertaken, although without coming to any manner of consensus. Philosophy is a branch of the humanities, like American literature, which was my field. I'm influenced by the post-structuralist schools of literary theory, meaning deconstruction, or close reading. The whole impulse in deconstructive reading is to take apart whatever is reified. It is sort of the existentialism of sign systems. 

Now, within a college English composition and rhetoric program, I used to teach scientific writing. It was my favorite discourse to teach. And what I taught students first was that, "Truth" aside, "truth-value" is a matter of cultural consensus-building. It is a cultural construct. So, scientists ask questions, and they gather data in a controlled way, and they have others in the community replicate the study to see if the results are reliable. Then there is always the matter of interpreting results. Able scientists interpret cautiously, and they painstakingly search for and discuss possible sources of error in their study setup or data analysis. Ultimately, when agreement on an interpretation is widespread enough among those with the credentials (a whole other subject), an interpretation becomes a theory or even a law. So, as with any other discipline, truth-value is, at bottom, a matter of convincing others. It is rhetorical, and it aims to change people's minds. This is why scientists must learn the rhetoric of scientific discourse, practice it well, pass muster with the gatekeepers, and get published to succeed as scientists.

This in no way dimishes the beauty and importance of science. Euclidean geometry also proceeds according to axioms, "givens" assumed; that in no way dimishes the beauty and utility of geometry. Everything is "culture"; everything is rhetoric; everything is a matter of convincingness. We use science and math to build bridges, which are beautiful and useful, which are pretty convincing.

So, if you are asking me personally how I decide what to believe, I say, well . . . I don't really decide things in terms of "Truth." From long habit in the humanities, which has dozens of methods, not just one, my practice is to "play" with sign systems, play with texts and discourses purporting to be unassailable Truth, to work freely with the perceived opposites of Truth until I convince my reader to open to a broader consideration of what backs our decision-making in general.

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
9/19/14 8:16 AM as a reply to _.
Jen Pearly:
Sawfoot_ (Why is there an underscore at the end of your fake name?):
The more interesting debate is what should I choose to believe, and why. So, in your opinion, science is seriously flawed, it is provisional and constantly being revised and updated, and it cannot ever proove anything. Therefore, I do not use it as a basis for my belief system. 

Yes, so now you are broadening out to the question the discipline of philosophy can undertake and has undertaken, although without coming to any manner of consensus. Philosophy is a branch of the humanities, like American literature, which was my field. I'm influenced by the post-structuralist schools of literary theory, meaning deconstruction, or close reading. The whole impulse in deconstructive reading is to take apart whatever is reified. It is sort of the existentialism of sign systems. 

Now, within a college English composition and rhetoric program, I used to teach scientific writing. It was my favorite discourse to teach. And what I taught students first was that, "Truth" aside, "truth-value" is a matter of cultural consensus-building. It is a cultural construct. So, scientists ask questions, and they gather data in a controlled way, and they have others in the community replicate the study to see if the results are reliable. Then there is always the matter of interpreting results. Able scientists interpret cautiously, and they painstakingly search for and discuss possible sources of error in their study setup or data analysis. Ultimately, when agreement on an interpretation is widespread enough among those with the credentials (a whole other subject), an interpretation becomes a theory or even a law. So, as with any other discipline, truth-value is, at bottom, a matter of convincing others. It is rhetorical, and it aims to change people's minds. This is why scientists must learn the rhetoric of scientific discourse, practice it well, pass muster with the gatekeepers, and get published to succeed as scientists.

This in no way dimishes the beauty and importance of science. Euclidean geometry also proceeds according to axioms, "givens" assumed; that in no way dimishes the beauty and utility of geometry. Everything is "culture"; everything is rhetoric; everything is a matter of convincingness. We use science and math to build bridges, which are beautiful and useful, which are pretty convincing.

So, if you are asking me personally how I decide what to believe, I say, well . . . I don't really decide things in terms of "Truth." From long habit in the humanities, which has dozens of methods, not just one, my practice is to "play" with sign systems, play with texts and discourses purporting to be unassailable Truth, to work freely with the perceived opposites of Truth until I convince my reader to open to a broader consideration of what backs our decision-making in general.
Ok, so that makes a lot more sense, thanks. I am scientist, in that I think truth comes from us learning about the outside world; Daniel is a mystic, in which he thinks truth comes from his inner world, and you are post-structuralist, in which which you can't find truth anywhere. 

Fake name...hmmm..has a rather negative connotation, doesn't it? I rather prefer the term pseudonym. 

RE: Scientific proof for fairies
Answer
10/8/14 12:27 AM as a reply to sawfoot _.
A being is an intertwined collection of events.

By being interconnected, these action-chains appear to the scientist as electromagnetic fields.

A body, being created by events that connect over time, has so much electromagnectic energy that it has a large field.

Without a body, the energy, or rather the events that are in motion, with momentum, continue to be connected events that appear to the scientists as an electromagnetic field without an apparent cause, or in other words, as a field with no visible body.

In what ways can these kinds of energy bodies(event-strings) manifest themselves to the ignorant and superstitious when it has been proven that the body detects electromagnetic fields/waves/leptons?

They can be percieved with intruments.

Everything observed must be explained if it can be said that we truly Understand the nature of Maya, if we want to claim that we Understand our Science.