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Originally Posted by phire  My belief is that we do live in a objective mechanical universe. |
I'm willing to believe that subjective experience can be an ever-receding frontier...constantly giving way to a body of shared knowledge of how systems are interconnected.
But the idea that our present state of established consensus has all the connections right is pretty crazy. There's a 2,400 year old debate on whether people can sense barometric pressure "in their bones"...and the establishment opinion (as of 1997) in the National Academy of Sciences discarded the idea
based on studying 18 people. So don't be surprised if another study comes out which reverses that.
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Originally Posted by phire Watch these videos by Derren Brown and you may find that skepticism coming back. |
Where I personally look in order to keep my mind open is art. As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." So the kind of videos I encourage people to watch are ones like this one, that reminds me of the dizzying array of possibilities:
YouTube - Royksopp - Remind Me
The moon affects the tides, so planets may influence your life in other ways. I don't personally believe in astrology, but it could be the proto-science whose body of evidence leads to a serendipitous discovery on that front. The only way to know is to not be a knee-jerker when someone uses a certain terminology to describe their experience...