Garbage, all of it.

[cylon]

Just strong emotion. I don't think positive or negative matters. If you're feeling very negative, look out.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

I have problems with all the same things you mention here about inconsistency in results, and then wondering how much really is pure coincidence.

I'm very pleased to hear it, moonrambler. Life doesn't have to be boring without spookiness.

With the example you give about the mice, what's missing is something that is really very weird, weird enough that other people are a bit freaked by it and don't just pass it off as coincidence.

Yes. Those things are very much missing. In fact, the more an experiment in manifestation moves away from 'explainable as coincidence' towards 'absolutely certain to be magic(k)', the less evidence there seems to be, which is to be expected. I suggested to Steve Pavlina that he stop going on about 'manifesting' a million dollars (easy to explain in rational terms, in fact, especially if it's your business making money from doing naff all) and manifest just one single solitary dime, a physical coin, under laboratory conditions (very hard to fake, which is perhaps why no-one has won James Randi's million dollar reward yet, and probably never will).

I have no explanation why these things seem so random. I could be a complete skeptic and say it's because coincidences are bound to happen, and because of my intense curiosity about this subject, I might notice them more. Or, I could be more agnostic like I actually am, and get freaked when the coincidences seem really very weird, but still want to know why these events seem so random and uncontrollable.

I think it's exactly that: we all have a strong tendency to invent significance in random events. Getting excited about LoA just makes you more susceptible to the disease.

I told a story on the forum at some point about handing my girlfriend a birthday present while we were at her parents' house, and they had some wildlife show on the tv, and I had wrapped her gift in paper with hippos and other exotic animals on it, and at the exact moment she started to open it, a hippo appeared on the tv that looked exactly the same as the hippo on top of this present, and I mean exactly the same, it was so strange, I pointed at the tv and went "Look! Look!" and she looked and we were both kinda freaked out by that.

The first step is to let go of this emotional excitement. It can get quite obsessive, and the stress hormones pumping through your body reduce the clarity of your thinking. The dead fish, the chipmunks, chipmonkXXX, (somebody else's "synchronicity" of squirrels)...all these tales get told here with wide eyed wonder and, I'm sorry, very little psychological understanding, mathematical knowledge or even ordinary analysis of situations. Simple questions, like what the hell does it mean that the hippo on the tv looked exactly the same as the hippo on the wrapping paper? All I can say is that's either fancy wrapping paper or a crap tv. I could go on.

Furthermore, when you are obessessing about the mystical meanings of everything, you miss the psychological and realistic meanings. You invented the description 'stinking' to describe thoughts about your friend after finding the fish, I think, and if you analysed the situation you might have recognised that you were having perfectly acceptable, but negative, feelings about a relationship, and you might have concluded that you needed to exercise loving assertive behaviour. Instead, it seems, you felt guilty for feeling irritated sometimes with a friend, saw a fish, and made up a complete fantasy connection between the two, labelling your thoughts 'stinking'. I don't want to offend you, but most doctors would describe this - and most of the 'connections' manufacured and reported here on this site - as insane. Sorry if that offends you, but their text books describe these thinking styles and relate them to all sorts of other problems. It might not be a problem, but it can be. In some classic cases of psychosis the term 'over-inclusivity' is used to describe this thinking style where every event is interpreted as significant (adding to the patient's delusive beliefs - you know the kind of thing, the CIA are trying to kill them, they're Jesus Christ, etc.).

Trying to calculate odds of random events like that is kind of impossible though.

However, in order to shed light on these apparently weird 'synchronicities' in life, scientists have long since developed ways to test them in the laboratory. Now, while it has to be admitted that the clinical evidence concerning very strictly controlled situations does not translate perfectly back to the extreme complexity of human life, and therefore allows some possibility of the reality of synchronicity, it points very squarely towards the conclusion: random coincidences + imaginative human minds. The human brain, in case we forget, has as its number one function pattern recognition - ascertaining or making connections between events - and this has been shown to be so turbo-charged that we can't help seeing all sorts of shapes where there is absolutely random data.

The problem is actually the other way round - in ordinary human life there is so much data pouring in all the time that if we set up a kind of search filter by thinking 'mouse' or whatever, the chances are we'll spot a mouse. This kind of thing has been demonstrated endlessly and, as I said before, is ironically part of the LoA philosophy, but after that it comes to false conclusions, IMO. What's happening is that you're seeing mice all the damn time (relatively speaking, if you took note of everything over a long enough period), you just haven't a clue, because if we noticed everything that came to our minds we'd go nuts. But once you start collecting so-called 'evidence', you notice those random features of your experience that fit. Look what's happening here - I mentioned seeing a mouse on tv, and you're talking about hippos on tv. I just wrote "nuts" (and "insane") and someone mentioned squirrels earlier. Are these significant synchronicities? Psychology and mathematics tells us it is highly unlikely.

What are the odds her parents would have a wildlife show on, and one that would show hippos, and that I would use wildlife paper to wrap her present, and that she would open the present right at the moment a hippo would show up on tv, etc.

I don't know, but the point is that asking these questions rhetorically is useless. It only demonstrates your underlying assumption that it's "weird", and reinforces that impression further. When people conscientiously measure these 'odds', they find that they're not as slim as we like to think. Another interesting point is that so often these significant events, so called, are put forward as if they had messages from the universe for us, when they seem to be utterly useless most of the time, hence all the disappointment and frustration on this site. Did the hippos mean anything? Nope. Did you just waste a load of your life wondering what the message was, what the fish meant, and what to think about in the car in order to win the lottery? Yep.

Events like this can get more and more bizarre as you make the odds wider. Like, if her parents never watched tv, and none of us have any interest in wildlife, but they happened to have the tv on because there was a tornado warning. And they had on a soap opera, but there was an ad for the wildlife show. And the ad showed the hippo. And I never buy wrapping paper with wildlife on it, but happened to get some free in the mail. And then my friend got a card from her son with a hippo on front and it said "Hippo birthday to you!" And so on.

Sure, but that would be speculation. You don't know whether the events would have happened together if her parents had never watched tv, etc. You might as well go further and say it would be really bizarre if all that happened and someone in the room suddenly turned into a hippo. Yes, that would be really bizarre. It hasn't happened. And again you've overestimated the weirdness: I've seen endless hippo birthday cards for a start!

If those psychological processes aren't convincing enough, I've hardly scratched the surface yet.

[cylon]

John, here's a riddle for you--

What's the difference between a born again christian trying to "save the heathens", and what you're doing?

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

John, here's a riddle for you--

What's the difference between a born again christian trying to "save the heathens", and what you're doing?

I imagine that you find born again christians reprehensible because they express their opinions, and, like mine, they differ from yours. I am happy for people to see life differently from me. I like to engage in honest and free debate with my fellow human beings, share my impressions of life so that we might all benefit. You don't need to concern yourself with my evidence. You said so yourself two posts earlier.

[cylon]

Nothing wrong with expressing opinions. It's just this is a forum for people who AGREE with IM. That's my point. It would be the same with me going to a christian website and telling everyone how backwards they were.

Then I'd have to ask myself, what is my motivation. They are just living their lives... why is it so important to me that they change a belief system that brings them comfort? Are they physically threatening me... is my life in danger? No. I just felt it necessary to "crash their party" so to speak.

And usually the things we are so adamant against, reflect things we still have issues with. Meaning, I think you're a closet IM believer.

Post all you want of course. It's a free forum.

[moonrambler]

I like these discussions, personally. I think it's a good idea to shine some light at problems areas of LoA, because certainly IM results are inconsistent. If it exists, then we can get better at it. If it doesn't exist, then we can still achieve the personal development aspects of the process. We also can look at this existentially and say we are imparting our own meaning to these random and insignificant events.

Originally Posted by John Freestone

The first step is to let go of this emotional excitement. It can get quite obsessive, and the stress hormones pumping through your body reduce the clarity of your thinking. The dead fish, the chipmunks, chipmonkXXX, (somebody else's "synchronicity" of squirrels)...all these tales get told here with wide eyed wonder and, I'm sorry, very little psychological understanding, mathematical knowledge or even ordinary analysis of situations. Simple questions, like what the hell does it mean that the hippo on the tv looked exactly the same as the hippo on the wrapping paper? All I can say is that's either fancy wrapping paper or a crap tv. I could go on.

Or we can look at a situation and choose to see how we can work it to our advantage. This is common PD advice, often used in courses on selling. I'm sure you're familiar with the principle -- if you're selling life insurance and you come across a community where nobody has ever bought any life insurance, you can say, "Well, I'll skip this place -- nobody here will ever buy any insurance!" Or you can say, "What a great opportunity! Nobody here has any life insurance and I'm going to make a fortune!"

Why did the platoon of chipmunks show up all of a sudden swarming all over the place? Well, the likely answer is that they were siblings who were born not too long ago and just busted loose from the nest, all full of wide-eyed wonder and energy, crawling up drainpipes and under the deck and everywhere else. I can completely flip out and call an exterminator, or I can spend some time live trapping them and moving them to a park, where they maybe will have a chance at survival since there's a group of them, or else they will be hawk bait. Whatever. In the meantime, my diabetic cat is finally interested in something besides her supper dish.

Furthermore, when you are obessessing about the mystical meanings of everything, you miss the psychological and realistic meanings. You invented the description 'stinking' to describe thoughts about your friend after finding the fish, I think, and if you analysed the situation you might have recognised that you were having perfectly acceptable, but negative, feelings about a relationship, and you might have concluded that you needed to exercise loving assertive behaviour. Instead, it seems, you felt guilty for feeling irritated sometimes with a friend, saw a fish, and made up a complete fantasy connection between the two, labelling your thoughts 'stinking'.

Or I had a good reason for feeling guilty, because I ride this guy's ass all the time about one thing or another thing or another thing, and I should just shut the hell up and be good to him, because he's a good friend. And now last night we had a wonderful time together without any bickering, because I could catch myself whenever I wanted to give him a hard time about something, which he doesn't deserve.

But once you start collecting so-called 'evidence', you notice those random features of your experience that fit. Look what's happening here - I mentioned seeing a mouse on tv, and you're talking about hippos on tv. I just wrote "nuts" (and "insane") and someone mentioned squirrels earlier. Are these significant synchronicities? Psychology and mathematics tells us it is highly unlikely.

Are you saying you believe there are significant synchronicities then?

Another interesting point is that so often these significant events, so called, are put forward as if they had messages from the universe for us, when they seem to be utterly useless most of the time, hence all the disappointment and frustration on this site. Did the hippos mean anything? Nope. Did you just waste a load of your life wondering what the message was, what the fish meant, and what to think about in the car in order to win the lottery? Yep.

I didn't wonder anything about what message the hippo event was sending. It just was funny. I didn't wonder what the fish meant -- I thought of an idea immediately. These events also didn't qualify as Jung's definition of synchronicity, with three related events that are not cause/effect based. Sometimes I do like to wonder if these weird coincidences are signs, or if they are a message from the universe, especially as they get more and more weird and when they do qualify as an actual "synchronicity." Is that a waste of time? Perhaps. But in that case, you are just as likely wasting your time doing all this discussion on this forum.

[cylon]

Even more trippy, what if EVERYTHING is a synchronicity? If you are creating your reality, are attracting everything in your life, then there is nothing that happens that in some way is not a result of your thoughts, present or past.

That's a tough one to digest.

[dali]

Thanks Paul for starting this thread. I have enjoyed every word of it, and for me thats a first. I think it really works. Its almost like what you really want manifests first... at least thats whats happening to me. Here I am busy firing out all my big dreams into THE UNIVERSE and finding my reality getting increasingly uglier BUT something inside is getting stronger at the same time and inner strength the likes of which I have never known before ( and always thought was something other people had, You know...the lucky ones!) but honestly theres a change a blowin in my core and it feels like I might very well BE one of the lucky ones myself after all. And I have to say it all comes directly from giving time and attention to all these things the people on this thread have been talking about.It takes a good deal of suspending your beliefs (for beliefs read conditioning) which can only be achieved if you do the Tolle thing and bring yourself smack into THE NOW while just allowing your thoughts to slip through the net: not hold on to them.Your thoghts sound as rich as mine and when you think about them theyre not really worth hanging onto anyway are they, Theyre so heavy and negative. Honestly. I am a catholic boy so all of this UNIVERSE stuff is alien to me but its just language, a lot of it American and the sales pitch mullarkey is all of it quite hideous I agree. It does though actually work. I take comfort in remembering Mother teresa. Once she wanted to save the lives of a number of orphans caught in the middle of the israeli palestinian conflict. She pleaded for a cease fire for a certain time on a certain day when she could go in and get the children out. Both sides said no. did that deter her? No. She went to the area and waited. Apparenlty at the exact time she had requested ,the fighting stopped. In she went and saved all those kids. As soon as she was out and safe they started blowing each others brains out again. I used to think miracles only happened for Saints but now I realise that we can all tap in to that same power. I am finding my heart changing and my will getting stronger.I expect if you give it a try you will too. Its not just for the lucky ones all this stuff. Its for anyone who is willing to try to make a difference. with your lifestory so far and the deep experience you have had of the not so lucky side of life I can see magnificent things ahead for you. I do not mean to sound patronising and I know I have gone on at some length but its just that your thread said so much to me. Thankyou,Paul. Your doubting has helped me very much .Everything works for the good as my granny used to say!!!

[dali]

Sorry, DAve. Maybe its because you sound like St Paul I called you by his name!!!He had a bit of a bark on him as well.

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I suggested to Steve Pavlina that he stop going on about 'manifesting' a million dollars (easy to explain in rational terms, in fact, especially if it's your business making money from doing naff all) and manifest just one single solitary dime, a physical coin, under laboratory conditions (very hard to fake, which is perhaps why no-one has won James Randi's million dollar reward yet, and probably never will).

Another thing -- I have a possibility for Randi's million dollar experiment, but it would take some work to figure out how to design this experiment, and I don't have much motivation since apparently Randi rejects a lot of applications. He's got a big FAQ set up to explain why various experiments will not be considered. They've got a foundation, and you'd think if this was truly a scientific exploration, he should run one of these investigations on every single application he gets (except for ones that are dangerous), no matter how looney tunes he thinks it sounds, or even if, according to Randi, science has already "proven" that the subject at hand is impossible and/or the people who believe in it are delusional. And since he can just reject applications out of hand, that doesn't tell us much.

He has rejected, for example, applications involving crop circles, UFOs, cloud-busting, Ouija Boards, psychic healing, remote viewing, telepathy, and persons subscribing to Breatharian lifestyle. (I imagine there is a danger component regarding the Breatharian to take the challenge -- Randi might get sued if the person didn't make it.)

[Wax Frog]

From what I've read, the Randi wager is loaded with loopholes, and further has been withdrawn.

[cylon]

If you could manifest a million dollars why would you bother going the Randi Route? That's not how I would do it.

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by cylon

If you could manifest a million dollars why would you bother going the Randi Route? That's not how I would do it.

I'd have another motivation besides the million -- it would be to show him something that can be done paranormally. But the problem is that his mind is locked tight. It's pointless to bother with it.

[cylon]

I used to be a big fan of Randi back in the day.

I don't know what happened, I just stopped being bothered by other people's beliefs. At that point I allowed myself to have some of my own.

[mercuryrising]

Originally Posted by cylon

Even more trippy, what if EVERYTHING is a synchronicity? If you are creating your reality, are attracting everything in your life, then there is nothing that happens that in some way is not a result of your thoughts, present or past.

That's a tough one to digest.

It's a lot easier for me to digest than the world is a bunch of random events and the universe is going no where.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by mercuryrising

It's a lot easier for me to digest than the world is a bunch of random events and the universe is going no where.

But there aren't just two possibilities, random events universe going nowhere versus everything is imagined. There is a whole range of scientific world views. When I talked earlier about random events it would be a mistake to think that I meant that everything is utterly random. When astronauts can calculate how to fly a space probe to a particular spot on the surface of Mars, that is because events are not random, but have predictable patterns of behaviour according to certain physical principles. If their work bonus turns out to be exactly the same as their telephone number, most of them understand that as a random coincidence, as remarkable as it may be.

[John Freestone]

You express these views in the space of a few short paragraphs in the same post, for god's sake:

Originally Posted by cylon

It's just this is a forum for people who AGREE with IM.

...and...

Post all you want of course. It's a free forum.

In case you didn't notice, these are mutually exclusive, unless I haven't understood either of them.

Incidentally, I think your problem is that you really believe the first of these, which is why you bothered to tell me off for posting critical views of IM (and inadvertently insulted 'born again christians' into the bargain). This was a classic piece of projection, I think, by which I mean that it is you who requires others to conform to your beliefs.

I read the guidelines at least once, and I'd not be posting if I thought they prohibited sceptics from sharing their opinions, but please do tell me if I'm wrong (and try not to tell me I'm right at the same time - it could confuse people).

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Another thing -- I have a possibility for Randi's million dollar experiment, but it would take some work to figure out how to design this experiment, and I don't have much motivation since apparently Randi rejects a lot of applications. He's got a big FAQ set up to explain why various experiments will not be considered. They've got a foundation, and you'd think if this was truly a scientific exploration, he should run one of these investigations on every single application he gets (except for ones that are dangerous), no matter how looney tunes he thinks it sounds, or even if, according to Randi, science has already "proven" that the subject at hand is impossible and/or the people who believe in it are delusional. And since he can just reject applications out of hand, that doesn't tell us much.

He has rejected, for example, applications involving crop circles, UFOs, cloud-busting, Ouija Boards, psychic healing, remote viewing, telepathy, and persons subscribing to Breatharian lifestyle. (I imagine there is a danger component regarding the Breatharian to take the challenge -- Randi might get sued if the person didn't make it.)

It's just possible that this is a sound argument, but I very much doubt it. Randi could be dishonestly rejecting tests that ought to be accepted. He often seems a rather angry and insulting man, which doesn't help us all to trust that he is also a fair-minded sceptic. I can understand you feeling demotivated from the start.

On the other hand, having read in detail quite a number of the reports of progress of applications, which are all public, I feel pretty confident that his reasons for rejecting applications are sound scientific ones. The offer was that the experiments had to be conducted under conditions that the Foundation consider scientifically sound, and that's not just to make it harder than it should be. If it wasn't scientific, we'd not learn anything very significant. If it can be sloppy at all, I could just go into a room with a friend and come out saying I'd levitated, my friend would nod, and that's that.

It seemed to me that time after time people who claimed they could do something psychic got impatient and frustrated by being advised how and why their proposals weren't scientific, and, rather than meet the challenge of developing proper experiments, they realised that they increasingly looked like failing the rational test and quit, giving Randi a ticking off for being closed minded and mean. But James Randi didn't invent the structures of scientific experimentation, double-blind, randomised trials and so forth, he just required people to use them, and spent a good amount of time and energy helping them work towards that.

Some of these failed applications actually looked unbelievably like the con artist being told, no, you must do your magic trick without the audience being blindfolded half the time. Many others, I'm sure, were absolutely convinced of their abilities, but the process of applying logical testing to their belief gradually made them give up, either realising their mistake or, more usually just swearing a lot and going off to preach to the converted (including themselves) again.

The Foundation did not reject applications because the phenomenon in question was already thought to be disproved by science, as you suggest. It was understood that the onus is on someone who claims to have supernatural powers to demonstrate that it is no more than fluke results they are getting. You might say that's the same thing: false until proven true, but if it weren't that way we'd all accept that the moon is made of green cheese, or any old nonsense we feel like (pardon me while I cough). I don't think they ever turned applications down on the grounds that the person was delusional.

Of course, there is another line of argument altogether that LoAers keep saying, about Randi only getting what Randi's looking for, which is precisely what the LoA says he would get. I find that rather weak when the theory says its adherents could manifest all sorts of things, yet they're trying endlessly to work out why they're not succeeding (cylon: If you could manifest a million dollars why would you bother going the Randi Route? That's not how I would do it. - the thing is, cylon, you can't do it!), or why it is that they only get their significant results and synchronicities when they're not trying (UM - Unintention Manifestation - they get things they didn't intend - and still count it as a positive result - wow! hat's off to the universe for its weird trickery).

Funny how sceptics are getting the rational universe we are told we're unconsciously projecting outwards, but believers in LoA can't reliably toss a few more heads than tails if someone's watching. Could it just possibly be because the world isn't as spooky as you'd like it to be? What about considering the idea that sceptics aren't projecting their beliefs, but are actually bothering to discover things about the real world?

(with apologies for ranting as if at you personally, moonrambler, when you are agnostic)

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

Incidentally, I think your problem is that you really believe the first of these, which is why you bothered to tell me off for posting critical views of IM (and inadvertently insulted 'born again christians' into the bargain). This was a classic piece of projection, I think, by which I mean that it is you who requires others to conform to your beliefs.

I was a member of an atheist board for several years (basically saying many of the things you say here) and often christians would come in and tell us we were all backwards. Now of course, I knew of atheists there who would crash christian sites as well, so I guess it evens out.

I never did it myself though.

But in retrospect, I think for both sides, it was a case of people not being completely sure of their own beliefs needing to hash it out with others to confirm for themselves they really believed what they said they did.

[cylon]

Just caught this

Originally Posted by John Freestone

Of course, there is another line of argument altogether that LoAers keep saying, about Randi only getting what Randi's looking for, which is precisely what the LoA says he would get.

Right. He's expecting to never get any evidence of "psychic stuff", so he doesn't get it.

His intention is to "debunk", not find evidence of "spooky".

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by Wax Frog

"Don't give up on IM, Moonie... it's still worth one... more try... Did you just see that car go by... "

Sorry, couldn't help myself

My results with this were less than stunning. It took me 10 days before I heard the song. I did also see, however, a David Soul album last weekend (not in a store), and was taken aback that it didn't have that song on there . . . because then I realized he has had at least two albums released LOL

[moonrambler]

JF -- Another problem with the Randi challenge is he's treating parapsychology as though it's a hard science, which I don't think it is. It's a social science, which is much more difficult to measure. And you know some aspects of social science simply cannot be measured in the lab -- they need to be observed in the field -- and it's possible parapsychological events are of that nature, even though many of us really would like a way to "prove" it more definitively.

[Wax Frog]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

My results with this were less than stunning. It took me 10 days before I heard the song. I did also see, however, a David Soul album last weekend (not in a store), and was taken aback that it didn't have that song on there . . . because then I realized he has had at least two albums released LOL

Ah, my humor is now infecting the IMs of others (yeah, yeah, I know, you're all me anyway) - I guess this makes me an official member!

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

Just caught this

Right. He's expecting to never get any evidence of "psychic stuff", so he doesn't get it.

His intention is to "debunk", not find evidence of "spooky".

If you just caught that, maybe you failed to read my objection to that tired old argument, which followed directly the bit you quoted. Just how many posts at this forum follow the basic formula: LoA is real yeah and its really cool yeah and I can't get it to work (much/at all/the way it's supposed to) what am I doing wrong?

Sceptics are getting normality; believers are getting normality. Believers just refuse to believe in normality.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

JF -- Another problem with the Randi challenge is he's treating parapsychology as though it's a hard science, which I don't think it is. It's a social science, which is much more difficult to measure. And you know some aspects of social science simply cannot be measured in the lab -- they need to be observed in the field -- and it's possible parapsychological events are of that nature, even though many of us really would like a way to "prove" it more definitively.

Ok, fair point. The problem with that is that if it were actually useful, or, let's say, if it were really impressive with how often it happens, or how powerful its effects are, or if it were more predictable so we could use it, then it would be predictable enough and powerful enough to show up in hard scientific tests as well.

Constantly the claim of psychics whose experiments don't show a positive result is that 'it' (the effect, their power) doesn't perform on cue. It's not a performing monkey, but a spiritual thing to be respected. Ok. So what this means is that even if it is a real effect, it is virtually useless. It is so unpredictable (literally) that it can't be measured. Yet the psychic is giving the impression that this is a really important thing.

I've agreed elsewhere on this forum that it is perfectly feasible that you're the only consciousness, dreaming everything in your world, and your social-science argument could fit somewhere along the line between that and material realism. However, if it's not provable, nor demonstrable, nor reliable, then I see little point in making it a central point of my philosophy. I could choose any number of arbitrary cosmologies that can't be proven and have no use. Like I kept saying to ALG, if I'm just a figment of your imagination, what's the point in talking to me, and why send me off to read bad research? We have to choose - reality or makebelieve. There's not much middle ground. And IM is literally makebelieve. Do you actually CARE whether there are ACTUAL fairies at the bottom of the garden? Because whether there are or are not is, IMHO, a question of what is real. Do you mind if you believe in them and they're not really there? Because that's fine too if you want to live like that, in a world of deliberate renunciation of rationality and reality-testing. Is there any belief you'd consider silly and misguided? Do you know that Santa Claus isn't real, or is that a matter of opinion, of imagination?

[moonrambler]

There is an entire social service industry built up for counseling those people who want to talk to psychologists. How do we prove that counseling works?

To me, this relates more to LoA/IM, than lab experiments. We look for an improvement in the majority (or a significant minority) of people's lives who go in for counseling. And I don't think perusing this forum and seeing how many people are griping about the poor results they are getting, is a scientific observation. Many of the most talkative people on this forum are actively searching for answers, as opposed to providing answers.

We aren't looking to change somebody into a hippo. We're looking for a way that a person who really wants to have his very own hippo can get one. Or can realize that having a hippo wasn't what he really wanted, what really would make him happy is to become an exotic wildlife specialist and conduct safari tours. And once he realizes that, then he can work on manifesting that dream.

P.S. Another thing about gauging the success of LoA by reading postings on this forum -- you get someone like ALG who has said that things were already going swimmingly for him when he started working with LoA, and afterward, things got noticeably better in quick and unusual ways. But many people show up here when they are at the end of their rope and nothing else has seemed to work.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

We aren't looking to change somebody into a hippo. We're looking for a way that a person who really wants to have his very own hippo can get one. Or can realize that having a hippo wasn't what he really wanted, what really would make him happy is to become an exotic wildlife specialist and conduct safari tours. And once he realizes that, then he can work on manifesting that dream.

Which is closer to the way I "use" the law of attraction -- deliberately thinking thoughts that feel good when I think them -- to manifest ways of being, rather than things 'n stuff. And this tool works 100% of the time I use it. Every single time so far, without fail. Generating a way of being is not something that can be proven to the Amazing Randi, but if he were here with me, I think it would be very easy for him to *get* when I do it -- to see the authenticity of it, I mean. It's not scientific, it's just experiential, and my experience is that it is reliable, it works, and it's fun. I got the impression that was ALG's experience, too, and he was more in the Stuff School.

@JohnFreestone, the answer to this question:

Like I kept saying to ALG, if I'm just a figment of your imagination, what's the point in talking to me..?

is, "Because it's fun."

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

If you just caught that, maybe you failed to read my objection to that tired old argument, which followed directly the bit you quoted. Just how many posts at this forum follow the basic formula: LoA is real yeah and its really cool yeah and I can't get it to work (much/at all/the way it's supposed to) what am I doing wrong?

Sceptics are getting normality; believers are getting normality. Believers just refuse to believe in normality.

No I read the whole thing. Your point was that he was looking for evidence of spooky, so he should have found it by now. My point is in fact he's a debunker, his motivation is to not find evidence of spooky. I doubt anyone who is familiar with James Randi (and I am very familiar) would say he's an open-minded guy who has a fond wish in his heart to discover psychic phenomena. He probably believes he is doing a service by debunking. Fair enough. When I was a skeptic I was a big fan of his. I didn't think he had cruel intentions. Just doing what he thinks is right.

But, his overall intention is to debunk spooky. And that's what he's getting, his desire to at least not give away that million dollars is manifesting.

[John Freestone]

I'll respond to these three posts together. I have to say that I agree with a good portion of what you're saying, particuarly moonrambler and Angela, but that these weren't quite the points I was arguing.

This is a problem that keeps occuring for me here. I try to argue the case for the unlikeliness of the supernatural - to debunk all the nonsense I hear about psychic readings and channeling spooks and stuff, which I consider as infantile as most of the new age claptrap from crystal skulls to crop circles - because all that mystical stuff is, for some, a central part of LoA and IM. When the objections I get back are that other things like counselling can't be proved to work objectively either, or LoA is fun and gives you a 'way of being', it's not quite the same subject at all.

I'm a great believer in the value of positive thinking, I just don't think it will move objects across tables. I'm a great beliver in making psychological meanings out of experiences (like finding dead fish and assessing your behaviour towards a friend because of it), but I don't think the universe puts these things in our way to teach us spiritual lessons, we choose to contemplate them and think about them.

I think we make meaning out of these things rather than discover meaning in them, which is actually a more empowering position, making more use of the subjective process than many interpretations of LoA, where you try to read hidden spiritual messages in events, almost like you're a rather stupid child trying to understand the mind of God, who can't be straight with us but has to leave clues.

This is actually one of the things I'm trying to bring attention to here - the way many different beliefs - with very different implications and levels of spookery - seem to get lumped together under the banner of LoA or IM or SR.

Cylon, apparently you believe in psi. Again, I think it's worth noting the differences. You can believe in messages in events (passive) which we can try to interpret without necessarily believing we can levitate (active) or predict the roll of a die (view at a distance, timewarp, or whatever).

And it's important, I think, to distinguish between what is measurable by science and what is not. You can say that a dead fish has significance in a human-spiritual-psychological realm (say, like a message from God or the universe), and it is almost impossible for anyone to prove otherwise (or prove correct) by objective science. If, on the other hand, someone says they can predict the roll of a die, then that can be established fairly convincingly through science. Now, for people to agree on the meanings of the outcome, they must also agree on the terms, the rules of the experiment.

What, for instance, does it mean in terms of accuracy: is the person saying they do their predicting and get it right every time, or almost every time, or more than you'd expect by chance? Science, bless it, doesn't even demand that if someone says they can do such a thing they must be able to do it every time (and you might argue that if someone has a genuine gift, what's to stop them getting it right every time?), but uses one of the least demanding measures - you have to get it right enough of the time to be considered statistically or experimentally significant, i.e. a reasonable amount more than chance would predict if you were absolutely totally un-psychic and just guessed. Surely that's reasonable enough? Surely it's objective enough (even though, theoretically, nothing is completely objective - you can always appeal to multiple universes and say that the person is getting great results in another, or to quantum effects making the measured effect much smaller than the mathematics being used, etc., etc.)?

Surely it's pathetic to complain that there was a sceptic in the building at the time? I disagree that Randi failed to find psychic phenomena because he was trying to debunk. People have been trying to find evidence for psi for centuries, a great many of them utterly convinced of its reality, and a great many being converted in the process, whereupon some of them had an epiphany and commented on something very profound in the psychological realm: we are extremely gullible, every one of us, and tend to believe there's a pattern emerging from our hits and misses despite a lack of real evidence. Even when we are convinced of it in a particular run and then analyse the playback, we can see how we love it to be true so much that we unconsciously convince ourselves it is.

I haven't counted, but I know there are more than a few scientists who devoted years of their lives to demonstrating what they genuinely believed must be true, risked their reputation in the scientific community, and finally gave up trying or announced to the world that they were almost certainly wrong.

By way of example, this First Person - Into the Unknown is Dr Susan Blackmore, who spent a career in parapsychological research after an out-of-body experience, struggling with her addiction to spookiness. And this article Dr. Susan Blackmore (also linked from the other) gives a more detailed account of why she stopped banging her head against the lab wall. Finally, when one more paranormal case came to her for investigation, she reaslised she'd had enough.

I think the fact that she still thinks of it as an addiction and struggled to throw a load of old papers away demonstrates just how the mind desires these things and will ignore science, common sense, endless failure to find evidence, to either keep believing it or, in her case later on, keep keeping an open mind. In fact, I think the way she describes trying to throw those papers away demonstrates that she wasn't even a dutiful sceptic - a part of her, like everyone, gets off on thinking it might just be there in front of me ready to be discovered. I imagine her waiting for a sign, a paper hanging there in her hand a moment longer, falling outside the bin instead of inside it...

Yeah, Angela, it's fun. Yeah, moonrambler, it can be very instructive if we take it the right way. No, cylon, there is no such thing as magick. And it is at least potentially risky - and perhaps seriously dangerous - to live with superstitions and nurture them. Testing our beliefs against reality is the main feature differentiating us from the first humans. Shall we continue to bow and offer sacrifices to the local volcano? If it's because it's fun, postmodern, keeping ancient traditions alive because they're precious to us on a human level, ok. If we value humility and use this as a way of paying respects to the earth, fine. If we think it's going to stop the volcano errupting, we are superstitious idiots who deserve to be petrified in superheated pummice.

[cylon]

I was responding to you saying by IM Randi should have given away a lot of money by now. IM says we get the result of our thoughts, and we get evidence of what we focus on. He gets evidence of no spooky.

"I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date." --James Randi.

As far as crop circles, ufos, and all the other stuff you're lumping together, this is the IM board. My personal interest is in things like Law of Attraction, and consciousness.

As far as dancing on volcanoes and things like that, you don't seem to get what we are about here. It's about living our own lives. Most of us believe that when we are happy, relaxed, and focus on the things we want in life, things tend to happen. For every study or book you can come up with, each of us has had plenty of experiences that have happened to us personally, and that's enough.