In the words of Scott Adams, "“I agree with your analysis of your hallucination.”"
You can get a better context for that here:
The Dilbert Blog: My New Favorite Response
I have never said any of those excuses you mentioned, nor do I believe them. However, I realize that you are trying to ridicule the arguments for IM using hyperbole.
You might also enjoy reading this, which does offer some more ammo for you:
The Dilbert Blog: On the Other Hand
On the other hand (
, I've studied economics, too), you do have a good point about hit counting. I thought about that a while ago, too, that I would start making note of the things that I wanted to manifest (and for the sake of keeping things relatively simple, I would only track things that I intended during my meditation sessions). Never did get around to, so perhaps I shall start to do that now and see my results over this year.
There is also a state that supposedly garuntees easy manifestation, and if you're in that state, life is super easy. It is an easy, relaxed state, open to all possibilities and light hearted, with easy detachment. A deep sense of faith and trust in yourself and your ability to do get what you want (whether through LoA or convential action). It is a place where no one can hurt you, but you are open to all. You are free of the "good opinions of other people" as Maslow said. Peak experience, really.
On the other, other hand, Acting like godot has almost two and half years of blog entries where he does keep track of what things he intends, and manifests, especially through non-direct means.
On the other, other, other hand, you've demonstrated that you're no longer interested in seeking any sort of truth, but rather asserting your version of the truth, especially by ignoring anything inconvenient. Therefore, I'm going to spend the rest of this post arguing for your side.
A position is not just a position, it is in fact a chain of links, starting from the person and ending with the position, and it includes things like the person themself, the person's perceptions, the person's interpretation of those perceptions, the context and environment that the person is in, the contexts that certain assumptions that make the position true for that person, the assumptions that person has (including beliefs), the arguments for the position, the evidence for the argument (the perception or interpretation of which can also be attacked), and the various aspects of the position itself (such as truth, scientific testability, and so on).
Now, we reach some problems here. Without an understanding of the other person's position, you can't actually argue against the position. Without a thorough understanding of science (especially the philosophy of science), you can't really argue the scientific testability. Without an understanding of philosophy, you can't really argue for the assumptions that people make about the nature of their reality. You can however, do what you can to expose the other person as a liar, or severely damage the credibility of another person, by questioning the other person's ABILITY to perceive and/or interpret.
And that is the game you've started and it is a good one, probably your best bet. Hit counting is a good start, but that isn't going far enough. You're still doing a good job of ignoring things which are inconvenient to your argument, which works a lot better than trying to answer them, reasoning
here. Have a look at this:
24 Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment
You might also like to read Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini and Quirkology by Dr. Robert Wiseman. Both are psychologists. The first book is on how people are influenced, which you can find here:
Robert Cialdini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You can find a number of these among IM circles.
Wiseman used to be a magician, and talks about how people work, sometimes in contradictory ways. He also makes a case that common superstitions are not as harmless as people think.
For example, some biases you can easily find among IMers are:
- A misunderstanding of the laws of probabilty. You can also talk about how humans perceive what is "likely" or "unlikely" in patently wrong ways.
- Many, if not all of the 24 causes of human misjudgement Munger there puts forward, including pavlovian conditioning and social proof.
- Confirmation bias:
Confirmation bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Correlation does not = causation
- Might like to read Fooled by Randomness, as well, which also talks about how human beings routinely misjudge odds.
- Overinfluence by "big" events. The more clearly a person can imagine an event, the more likely they think it is to happen.
- Other problem with the experimentation idea is that the "scientific observer" in this case is also a member in the experiment, leaving the door open for both the observer expectancy effect as well as the subject expectancy effect (where a subject or observer expects a certain result and unconsciously manipulate the experiment, especially an experiment of this nature. Of course, thare are experiments done by psychologists that were just done on themselves, so it is still empirically valid form of experimentation, just perhaps not in this case.
- In any sample large enough, there will be anomolies, such as with investors that beat hte market over a long period of time. The laws of probability virtually garuntee that there will be some people like that, and you can simply write off people like Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and the like as simply being "lucky" and an inevitable consequence of the large number of players on the market. You could try the same approach with ALG and Paul, who's anecdotal (which is not a very rigourous form of scientific testing, although self-reporting is indeed useful). Of course, the argument against that is:
The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville
Essentially, the argument is about concentrations. Such as this:
"A concentration of winners that simply cannot be explained by chance can be traced to this particular intellectual village."
Of course, the people who do better will self-select themselves to be champions of IM.
- Another thing to keep in mind is the group dynamics on these forums. Dissenters are routinely banned (although usually for reasons other than just disagreeing with the popular opinion on these forums), and that can lead to a very strong groupthink and incestuous thinking patterns, similar to the situation surrounding the bay of pigs disaster.
- There is also Littlewood's Law, which says that you can expect a miracle a day:
Littlewood's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Law of Truly Large Numbers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Let's not forget the perception of control IM creates.
- Let's not also forget that people think that good things are more likely to happen to them than bad things, so when good things happen, they focus on them and simply ignore the bad things.
- Pretty much everything here:
List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Make sure no one mentions that the idea that reality is "objective" has simply become naturalized in our society, and that there is a very strong divide (and irrational) created between the physical world and the mental world, probably influenced heavily by Descartes. Nor let anyone mention that an objective world view is simply a position and has to be proven, not taken as granted simply because it has become super-naturalized in our society and simply seems "common sense".
The denumont would be that given that human beings suffer from so many critical errors, and because it is nearly practically impossible to be sure that all of these biases have been removed, and given Occam's Razor (which I don't agree with) which is probably the right answer?
1. Thoughts affect reality, and thus everything almost the entire population of the world (except for a surprising number of successful people, including olympic gold medalists, revered scientists, celebrities, etc--ie concentrations) know is wrong.
2. Everybody is simply mistaken and simply human.
Now that is an argument to be proud of.