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 have a memory from a few years back of someone in an atheist group I’m in. He was researching divination, the mechanisms by which it might work. He was talking to me in hushed tones, like he was afraid he’d get found out. He wasn’t even gonna do a talk about it, just curious.
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This was documented during Vietnam.
The US Army quickly found that when they cut the natives hair to reg length they seemed to become less alert/skillful at spotting unseen enemies.
Turns out long hair has a real sensory purpose...
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When I did martial arts in high school one of the things we practiced was getting out of the way of a (wooden) sword strike by someone standing behind you by detecting their ‘intent’. It didn’t take all that much training to be decent at it!
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in clown school we did an exercise where we were blindfolded and they threw a foam block a random distance across the room, and the instruction was to stop walking when you felt like you were next to the block.
I think the point was about "feeling the audience"
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in case it wasn't clear, the sort of inquiry you describe sounds great to me; the astrologers swamping my mentions almost entirely are approaching this from a "no the planets literally physically predict things and I actually believe this" direction unfortunately
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i mean i didn't really make explicit what i thought the plausible mechanism of astrology is from this pov but that is consistent with it. a thing can predict another thing without a direct causal relationship between the two
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People have reported having premonitions of tragic events such as explosions well before they get the news. In many cases the best explanation for their ability is not clairvoyance, but an ability to detect small shock waves.
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