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thereās a take i think of internally as the āminimal but respectful takeā on astrology, tarot, magic, etc. which is that nothing is happening that violates known physics, but that the human mind is capable of discerning real signal from more info than the west assumes
i see the human mind as an exquisitely delicate and powerful learning machine, sifting through vast reams of sensory data constantly looking to make sense of the world and guide action through it. most of this data is filtered out of consciousness but itās still there. storytime:
at burning man a friend of mine took an unfortunate mix of psychedelics and prescription drugs, and for the rest of the day he lost much of his ability to sensory gate. he became extremely sensitive to light and sound, asked us to speak softly without hard consonants
he asked us all to do this, even though some people were maybe 20 feet away and quiet already. he requested that someone hold his hand while staying grounded and when that personās posture was ungrounded he could feel it through the hand and he asked them to shift it
through the hand, he could tell how grounded someoneās posture was in their *hips* this isnāt the only story i have of someone exhibiting high levels of sensitivity but itās one of the most extreme. gave me a visceral sense of how much raw sense data is being filtered
another story: another friend of mine told me that once when he was a teenager he had a very unusual day (i forget if it was triggered by drugs again) where he felt like he knew what people were going to say a few seconds before they said it. never happened again
heās not a woo or hippie guy, if you met him you might think he was a trucker or an ex-football player, iirc military background. i have no reason to believe he was lying or even exaggerating this story for effect. at the very least i believe this is how he remembers it
but actually iām pretty inclined to just take him at his word, that for a day he could, in a limited way, see a few seconds into the future. i believe the raw sensory data is there to permit this level of inference, under conditions, in a totally physics-compatible way
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 itās not as if ordinary perceptions are that accurate
thereās an entire universe of experiences like this that people have been having for millennia, that a kind of āi fucking love scienceā devotion to scientific materialism dismisses out of hand because it is the *wrong genre*. this is, frankly, deeply unscientific
among other things this is part of why iām very critical of cultural constructs related to āinsanity.ā sometimes an āinsaneā person is someone who genuinely senses something that the people around them donāt. itās a terrifying and lonely position to be in
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 https://t.co/k6s9q8RYxo
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
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
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 https://t.co/j843MKqp3g
ah no this was a better QT from that thread https://t.co/8uUscKR2MN
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 https://t.co/1LQWm1Z5Ry
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?"
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. thereās a lot of information potentially available if you learn how to sift it https://t.co/q9p5FHhf8B
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 peopleās movements
this is relevant to understanding experiences like knowing somebody is behind you even if they havenāt 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
followup thread https://t.co/yXV6fiWUrK
right, so i did not talk about this at all, lemme lay out some stories that seem plausible to me. in more detail, the āminimal but respectful takeā here seems to me psychological: that tarot and astrology are two different scaffolds on which to hang intuitive psych reads https://t.co/JvYXWWGEGF
also some super interesting historical context https://t.co/f41jFRpZwA
@QiaochuYuan 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 https://t.co/71aPPjMGW7
@QiaochuYuan 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 https://t.co/wBiJNoInHA
@QiaochuYuan Even if you dismiss it as bunk, aren't you curious why *these specific rituals* have seemed to persist over centuries? What is the material/rational mechanism behind their memetic coherence? https://t.co/vws35fVjY5
@QiaochuYuan I once met a guy having his first ever manic episode and he was curiously (not aggressively) pointing out a bunch of really subtle shit about social reality & power dynamics that most people were some combination of ignoring, denying, or unable to perceive. it was impressive
@QiaochuYuan most of the people in the scene were like "what is this guy talking about" but I was able to translate it sufficiently to look where he was pointing and go "oh shit, yeah, there's totally a thing there" I couldn't explain it to anyone else but I let him knew I saw what he saw
@QiaochuYuan I myself could only see it due to having spent a bunch of time getting that shit pointed out to me over and over by spending a bunch of time with the folks chaos is talking about here: https://t.co/didIkMjdSe
@Malcolm_Ocean @QiaochuYuan Recently talked to a person having an episode of delusion and like, I couldn't find a way to communicate simultaneously that some of what he was detecting was real wrt adversarial dynamics even though it had nothing to do with CIA drones or w/e. Unfortunate bind.
@RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan Not suggesting I think this would likely work, but my approach in situations like this one is to start by fixing the "<something>" that is being seen, that's in your shared awareness, before any interpretation or frame. (related but diff š) https://t.co/CFr6lnwOPd
Instead of saying "you're doing/being xyz", say "you're doing š¤·āāļøsomethingš¤·āāļø that in my internal language I'm inclined to call 'xyz'." It's impossible to refute, which in this case is not a psy-op but actually helpful for both people, because it *needs* no refutation!