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The arrogance of this post is that it assumes that people into "woo" don't check for other explanations when in reality this person was never curious or interested in actually figuring out if woo models are a better explanation for certain phenomena. I converted from atheism.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

Dec 23, 2021

I don't get this! How could you not be curious about other theories, when you *know* other people in the world deeply believe stuff that is clearly wrong? It *must* feel convincing to them, so "feeling convincing" to you shouldn't be sufficient criteria. 3/

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If you have good evidence woo models are true i am open to hearing them. I can think of a few experiments that would give results that would change my mind!

mage_of_aquarius@pagan.plus

@AquariusMage

Dec 23, 2021

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@Aella_Girl

You actually have to participate in esoteric practices for an extended period of time and see if you can separate your own confirmation bias from reality or if you're just doing Western atheist psychological/scientific gaslighting on yourself. Try a chaos magic crash course.

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yeaaaahhhh calling science 'gaslighting' isnt really what im into. If you have beliefs, they're predictive; (as in, you believe you can affect reality). If you think you can affect reality, we can think of tests that would see if this is true! This is really basic stuff here.

mage_of_aquarius@pagan.plus

@AquariusMage

Dec 23, 2021

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@Aella_Girl

I am saying that you need to do it. You can't read a paper or test somebody else about their ability to affect reality, you need to try it yourself, and attempt to remain objective about your results.

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yeah this is exactly what i mean - a complete lack of curiosity in actually running tests on it. If your beliefs fail all the tests you run but it still feels true, then probably you should have a model that something's going on inside your head that explains your experience

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and

actually practicing both astrology and mystic stuff is running these tests all the time. like... that's literally what we do. and that same curiosity you're saying we lack is the driving force behind much of it.

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and

has some pretty good resources for this!

@Aella_Girl

I originally got into astrology with a similar perspective. much of what one would find objective is non repeatable, would take many years for a transit to repeat, the conditions wouldn’t be quite the same, etc.

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and

this is probably my best intro-for-skeptics thread (of which I used to be one), should spider out to the rest of my writing on this topic

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ꙮ sadals

@sadalsvvd

Nov 29, 2021

I am generally uninterested in "proving" astrology to skeptics, and will refer you to good books or threads and ask you to come to your own conclusions, of which "you're crazy/stupid" is perfectly acceptable to me

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and

Im trying to think of a test that i could run, based off this. You say a trained astrologist can point out correlation; would it be possible for me to ask an astrologist to make predictions about a specific sphere in any way that makes sense and i can measure?

9:16 PM · Dec 23, 2021

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and

definitely--I am not the best but I have a note I keep track of for my own public predictions (middling but above chance), though my hit rate with clients is really high (obviously subjective). generally we're looking for unlikeliness of the event to go 💥

publish.obsidian.md

Predictions Track Record - Sadalsvvd's Knowledge - Obsidian Publish