not to say that i think this sort of thing is always going to be 100% accurate, perceptions and inferences never are, but probably more so than most anti-woo people are willing to acknowledge as a real possibility. in any case it’s not as if ordinary perceptions are that accurate
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there’s an entire universe of experiences like this that people have been having for millennia, that a kind of “i fucking love science” devotion to scientific materialism dismisses out of hand because it is the *wrong genre*. this is, frankly, deeply unscientific
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among other things this is part of why i’m very critical of cultural constructs related to “insanity.” sometimes an “insane” person is someone who genuinely senses something that the people around them don’t. it’s a terrifying and lonely position to be in
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the meta-gaslighting that enables other forms of gaslighting is the undermining of direct perception, the idea that you are not allowed to perceive something unless it is on the list of Socially Approved Perceptions
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this is important shit and i'm gonna keep being mad about it. the undermining of direct perception is one of the biggest tools of social control. it is the meta-gaslighting that enables other forms of gaslighting. it's one of the worst parts of the "i fucking love science" meme
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at the most basic level the "minimal but respectful take" for me is just about respecting people i know and the experiences and perceptions i know they've had. i see no reason to believe that they're any less reliable than my own experiences and perceptions
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the next level up from the minimal but respectful take involves just not caring particularly one way or the other whether known physics can explain anything. i am not all the way there yet but i occasionally try to meme myself in that direction
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magic has nothing to do with violating the laws of physics. it has much to do with violating *expectations*, and we can reflect on what in our society causes us to conflate the two
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ah no this was a better QT from that thread
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"the laws of physics" *should* refer to your experience of pushing and pulling and bending and breaking and grasping and stretching but it *actually* refers to a specific kind of propaganda that was shoved down your throat in grade school
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okay, fine, i will own up to it because i get annoyed when other people don't do that: this is a subtweet, but i have tried to mostly focus on what i want to see more of and hopefully i mostly succeeded
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Ppl who are real into astrology/conspiracies/woo beliefs *really* trigger me, but it's not because of the beliefs themselves, it's what it indicates about the person.
To me, it implies a profound lack of curiosity in checking to see if their beliefs are true. 1/
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as you can see my pov is almost the exact opposite of the above: "aren't you *curious* what's going on with all this woo stuff, which has been happening uninterrupted to our species this whole-ass time we've been around, several times longer than science has?"
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i really like this question because it seems genuinely curious. i replied with five possibilities: wind currents, electrical / magnetic currents, smells, facial expression, body language. there’s a lot of information potentially available if you learn how to sift it
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wind currents is maybe surprising but go into a building (say a gym) where there are people moving around but no windows open or AC so the air is still by default. close your eyes and see if you can notice changes in the air currents produced by other people’s movements
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this is relevant to understanding experiences like knowing somebody is behind you even if they haven’t made any obvious sounds. we are probably sensitive to movements of the air below the level of conscious auditory perception. very sensible thing for an animal to be capable of
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followup thread
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right, so i did not talk about this at all, lemme lay out some stories that seem plausible to me. in more detail, the “minimal but respectful take” here seems to me psychological: that tarot and astrology are two different scaffolds on which to hang intuitive psych reads twitter.com/laughinghan/st…
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also some super interesting historical context
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Since the idea of astrology being “irrational” is rearing its head again, let's explore how such criticisms are in fact nothing new, but reflect ancient debates. In fact, any sharp “rational” vs. “irrational” dichotomy is ahistorical, unempirical, & fallacious. 1/thread
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I buy all of that as explanations for “sensing” that someone is behind you or looking at you and so on, but what would any of that have to do with an astrologist writing a horoscope for thousands of strangers based on the position of the planets?
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You lead with the physics-compatibility of tarot and astrology, and I would love to hear a plausible story about that. Genuinely trying to be curious and open-minded about it
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TLDR humans actually can echolocate, even normally sighted ones: you're probably better at hearing where "silent" objects like walls are than you think you are.
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I find attractive (and have no evidence for) the idea that we have a sensory input that detects magnetic fields
My proposed mechanism would be some sort of distributed antenna, maybe like six or so feet of electrical cabling and feeling the subtle variations therein
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Apparently we just started narrowing down how birds do it
And I don't know if anyone's even been checking for magnetic sensory input in humans
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There's also kind of the exact opposite end of making a big leap of intuition across very different far away pieces of info and connecting that to past memories and generalizations. Archetypal thinking?
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Also I think there is a kind of stereotyped idea of the scientists sense of causation, and it's never been made clear to me why this should capture every sense of the meaning of "cause"
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