Based on physics, what insights do you make about reality?

Post Reply New Topic

Mikeman says:

.
You’ve continued recycling the very same arguments that you’ve been attempting from the start. So, in my most recent replies, I patiently took the time to say my answers more graphically for you, in more detail, with more explanation, with examples.
.
If you don’t have an answer, that’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. If you (for whatever reason) decline to defend your claims that I’ve answered, that’s fine. But of course it means that the discussion is concluded, has reached a conclusion.
.
Your objections have been answered. That’s enough, and there’s no need for more discussion.
.
…nothing more to be said.
.

.
Yes, forgive me for believing that, just because you said that “real” is synonymous with “measurable”
.
But your use of “reality” with two different and mutually-contradictory meanings, in the same sentence, shows that what you say tells us nothing about what you believe. But that’s ok. It doesn’t matter, and anyway a continued conversation isn’t possible, for the reason stated above.
.

.
Yes, and that’s why I said that if you aren’t interested in metaphysics, then maybe you shouldn’t post to a metaphysics thread.
.
You said:
.

.
Nothing is expected of you, other than that you not post to a thread about a topic that you don’t like.
.
You said:
.

.
Skepticism, in common with some other metaphysicses, doesn’t contradict experimental observations.
.
But we’ve already been over that--and, of course, your answer to it (so you needn’t post it again).
.
Metaphysicses aren’t about predicting measurements in a physical world. They’re about what can be said about questions like “Why is there something instead of nothing?” That doesn’t interest you. Fine. You’re only interested in what can be measured. Fine. Take up carpentry, engineering, or physics. …and don’t participate in a topic that you aren’t interested in. Which part of that don’t you understand?
.
Anyway, I’m not going to continue replying to the same already-answered claims.
.
You said:
.

.
Oh, now we’re back to being a Strawman Materialist
.
I don’t care what you believe in. That’s your business only.
.
For example, I don’t care if you believe in the validity of logic..
.
As I said, we’ve been all over those subjects, and there’s no need or reason to keep on repeating this conversation.
.
You said:
.

.
I asked you to specify what, about Skepticism, is speculative. You gave two answers, and I explained what was wrong with your answers. In fact, I explained it again, when you repeated the same arguments. You’re just continuing to obliviously repeat your initial assertion.
.
You call that “debate”
.
You said:
.

.
Measurements within our world aren’t what metaphysics is about. That’s within the province of physics, which studies and describes (as well as currently possible) this physical universe, and the interactions among its parts.
.
As I said, take up carpentry, engineering or physics. We get that you don’t like metaphysics.
.
You said:
.

.
…according to your belief that logic is unknowable. I don’t criticize your beliefs. Keep them. If you don’t like metaphysics, then don’t post to a metaphysics thread. In fact, there’s a different sub-forum that mentions science in its sub-forum title.
.
You said:
.

.
See above. You’re continuing to repeat the same answered statements.
.
You said:
.

.
I’ve been emphasizing that metaphysics and logic don’t fully or accurately describe Reality. Like physics, metaphysics is valid in its range of applicability. It describes metaphysical, discussion-describable reality. Logic, a verbal subject, is valid in metaphysics.
.
You said:
.

.
News-Flash:
.
Your perpetual repetition of the same already-answered claims isn’t debate. …or valid discussion.
.
I can’t believe that you think that, your most recent repetitions of the same unsupported, already-answered and refuted charges qualify for continuing reply.
.
“Discussion” concluded.
.
Last time, I was willing to resume replying to you, because you better clarified your confusions, and there were things that could be said to answer those newly-clarified confusions.
.
This time is different, because you’re doing nothing but re-cycling the same already-answered statements. …probably the most common behavior of the usual typical Internet-abuser.
.
I’m not going to waste time continuing to reply to that.
.
(My non-reply to mikeman’s subsequent posts doesn’t mean that he’s said something irrefutable. It just means that I’ve given up on a non-discussion.)
.
Michael829

Maybe I should conclude that discussion on a more positive, or at least neutral, note, with better clarification and summary of it:
.
mikeman says:
.

.
…and of course that’s where “debate” and genuine discussion ended.
.
Let me briefly, and without criticism, summarize the discussion:
.
You repeatedly said that Skepticism is speculation.
.
I asked you how, in particular, it’s speculative.
.
You gave two or three answers. I answered them.
------------
1. You said that, in the real world, premises aren’t reliable.
.
I replied that no one’s saying that premises or the resulting conclusions are true.
------------
2. You said that I’m sure that the hypothetical stories I speak of are real.
.
I reminded you that I said such a hypothetical story isn’t real other than in its own local context.
------------
3. You said that logic and mathematics are made up by humans.
.
For one thing, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. If it’s all just made up, then it’s just as valid to say that 2+2=5, as to say that 2=2=4 …but, as I said some time ago, 2+2=4 can be proven, based on natural definitions of the counting-numbers, and based on the additive associative axiom of the real numbers (and of the rational numbers, and of the integers).
.
…and it would be just as valid to say that if all dogs are mammals, and if all mammals are animals, then all dogs are plants instead of animals.
----------------
3a) I replied that I never said that logic, mathematics, metaphysics or physics describe Reality.
.
They’re real and valid in their own overlapping subsets of Reality.
.
But, even combined, they don’t describe Reality.
----------------
3b) I pointed out that Skepticism is a Non-Realism, not a Realism.
.
…meaning that it’s a metaphysics from the point of view of individual experience, not from the systemwide 3rd-person objective point of view.
.
Your “manmade logic and math” criticism might be valid against MUH, but not against Septicism.
.
Tegmark and others have called MUH a Realism. Tegmark said that his starting principle was the “External Reality Hypothesis” (ERH).
.
You might, and likely do, therefore and thereby have a valid criticism against MUH. Tegmark said that his system would be fully real even if there were no observers or experiencers. I suggest that it would then also be quite meaningless, and probably meaningless to even speak of.
.
Skepticism is from the point of view of individual experience. Whatever you feel about a subjective nature of logic and mathematics isn’t a valid criticism of Skepticism.
.
Skepticism emphasizes the primarily subjective nature of your life-experience possibility-story.
.
In fact, MUH overemphasizes mathematics, as part of its (in my opinion) inappropriate objective point of view.
.
Skepticism describes a life-experience possibility-story from the experiencer’s point of view, the only genuinely empirical description. Whatever you know or think you know about science or physical reality comes to you via your experience. …your own physical perceptions, and things that you’ve heard from physicists about their experimental results and their mathematical interpretations of those experimental results.
.
The requirements for a life-experience possibility-story are 1) an experiencer, you the protagonist, the central and essential part of your experience-story; 2) self-consistency.
.
(We can pass-by the objection that this might turn out to be an impossibility-story. I’ve suggested that such would be impossible to prove, even were it so. Anyway, it isn’t a pertinent matter here.)
.
If you physically explore and investigate a bit, by your own experiments, or by finding out about the physicists’ experiments, then you soon encounter the if-thens about the “then” conclusions of the “if “ premises such as physical laws, physical quantity-values, and mathematical axioms, etc.
.
That’s what it comes to, if you investigate matter, its composition, its behavior, and the relations among physical quantities, directly or via physicists’ reports.
.
But of course that’s only part of your experience…a consequence of your experience-story’s consistency, if you investigate matter, its composition and behavior.
.
Obviously that wasn’t the nature of your experience the day you were born, or before that when you were a foetus, both early and late, or in your earliest infancy, etc.
.
But experience, and self-consistency in your experience, in some form, is encountered, from the start.
.
That’s key for a life-experience possibility-story. That’s what a life-experience possibility-story is.
---------------
So, anyway, in summary:
.
You said that Skepticism is speculative.
.
I asked how, in particular it’s speculative.
.
You gave 3 ways in which you think it’s speculative.
.
I answered each of those 3 arguments, and told why (summarized above) none of them is valid.
.
And that’s where it stands.
.
…and there’s nothing wrong with leaving it there. There’s no need for you to reply.
.
Now, for some inline reply:
.
mikeman says:
.

.
There’s no disagreement. I say nothing about what should be taken seriously by you.
.
mikeman says:
.

.
I have nothing to say about what you should believe. That’s none of my business.
.
mikeman says:
.

.
See above. We’ve been over that (again and again).
.
mikeman says:
.

.
You like measurement. So study carpentry, engineering, or physics. (You’ll have to study some physics if you want to study engineering.)
.
mikeman says:
.

.
No, you wouldn’t have to admit that. You’d only have to stop making statements that you can’t support. That would be easy.
.
mikeman says:
.

.
See above.
.
mikeman says:
.

.
…and you’d first have to support what you say.
.
mikeman says:
.

.
It isn’t debate unless you at least try to support what you say.
.
It isn’t successful debate on your part unless you successfully support what you say.
.
I posted a description of Skepticism. You chimed in with your criticisms and charges… and have failed to support them. No problem. Don’t worry about it.
.
That’s where it stands. There’s nothing wrong with leaving it there. There’s no need for you to say any more.
-------------------
By the way, here are 4 differences between Skepticism and MUH:
.
1. Skepticism is from the point of view of individual experience, while MUH is from the objective 3rd-person systemwide point of view.
.
2. I say that Skepticism is a certainty and an inevitability.
.
MUH is offered as a hypothesis.
.
3. I say neither logic, mathematics, metaphysics nor physics (nor all of them combined) describes Reality.
.
MUH is presented as the answer to and description of Reality.
.
4. I say that a computer-simulation can’t create a world.
.
Tegmark says that this world might be a world created by a computer-simulation.
.
Michael829

I'm gong to make a few closing statements as well. Here is how the argument happened from my perspective:


-You made the claim that your brand of metaphysics is inevitable.

-I responded by saying you can't know that.

-You responded by accusing me of abusing empiricism by applying it to things.

-I explained why I make no claims about what's beyond reality.

-You accused me of believing that there is for sure nothing beyond observable reality.

-I explained why I think that metaphysics shouldn't be taken seriously.

-You accused me of debating about something I have no interest in.

-I explained the difference between being interested in a topic and taking a topic seriously.

-As much as I have explained it you still have these accusations and have built a highly detailed strawman.

So yeah, I'm happy to put this discussion behind us because I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here. I have explained many of my objections many times yet you still twist them to be something else and then argue against that. You may have responded to the misrepresented versions many times but I kept repeating myself because the thing you debunked was not my argument.


The definition of "speculation" is "the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence." and I can't think of a better word to describe metaphysics since as you admitted you have no evidence for your hypothesis. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how sure you are of septicism, there is no evidence and it's not real outside of it's own context yet it's inevitable and it's not speculative at all? Call me crazy but that sounds a lot like you are sure of something that you shouldn't be, which is my argument. Either you lied about having no evidence or it's speculative, take your pick.

I do not consider my position to be the inevitable truth, which is why I am debating it. I am prepared to accept an alternative position given enough evidence but you have admitted to having no evidence so that's not going to happen here. For all I know you could be right but the worst case scenario in a debate is exactly what is happening, where both people walk away with unchanged beliefs. Better outcomes would have been one of us becoming more right then we were.

You keep on saying that I am "uninterested in metaphysics" and that I should study science instead. First of all, I'm way ahead of you there and have been studying to get into an IT job, and secondly there is a difference between being uninterested in a topic and not taking a topic seriously. Take Greek mythology for an example, I find it rather fascinating even though I don't consider it a valid description of reality.

The same can be said of metaphysics, it can be very interesting to discuss what might be beyond reality but we should not get ahead of ourselves and start believing something without evidence. If I can accept one thing without evidence then what's to stop me from believing in something even more crazy like magic or a God? The last time I accepted a position without evidence and put aside empiricism just for one topic is when I was religious and I will not make that mistake again. I was hoping to prevent you from making it too.

Forgive the delay in replying. This discussion is at the bottom of my reply-priority list.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
So far so good.
.
\Mikeman says:
.

.
I responded by asking you what, in particular is was that I said that you think couldn’t be known. I asked what, in particular, about my metaphysics, is “speculative”.
.
You gave some answers. Each of your answers was incorrect, and I carefully explained to you what was wrong with each of your answers.
.
So what did you do? You just kept on repeating your claim that Skepticism is speculative. You’ve been continuing to repeat an already-answered claim. I pointed that out in my reply before this one, and you’re again repeating your already-answered claim again.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
“Beyone Reality” is nonsense.
.
…but it shows that you’re still implying that this physical world is all of Reality, like a true-believing Strawman-Materialist.
.
But let’s be clear about this: I don’t care what you meant or what you believe. Your beliefs, or your position (assuming that you even know what they are) are none of my business.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
I couldn’t care less what you believe or what you meant. So I retract anything I said about what you believe or believe in.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
What you take seriously is entirely your business. I couldn’t care less what you take seriously.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
Alright, you’re interested in metaphysics. You’re fascinated by metaphysics. But you don’t take it seriously.
.
Well, maybe your not taking a subject seriously could at least partly explain why you’re so sloppy about it.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
Yes, you’ve repeated your objections, the same ones, many, many times. …though they’ve already been answered.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
There are various dictionary definitions of “evidence”, but here are a few that are applicable and relevant here:
.
Houghton-Mifflin New College Dictionary:
.
The data on which a conclusion or judgment may be based.
.
Something that indicates.
.
[end of quoted definitions]
.
There’s no definition of “evidence” that requires it to have been gotten by measuring-instruments.
.
The metaphysics expressed by me (and previously by Arthur Schopenhauer (1818), Ludwig Wittgenstein (early 20th century), and by physicists Michael Faraday (1844), Frank Tippler (1970s or ‘80s), and Max Tegmark (more recently) ) is based on inevitable abstract logical facts. That’s evidence, by the above-quoted definitions.
.
You can say that you don’t believe that those abstract logical facts are “real”, in some sense. Feel free to! “Real” and “Existent” aren’t metaphysically-defined, and anyone is free to have their own opinion about what’s real &/or existent. I don’t question your right to believe as you wish.
.
I acknowledge that the physical world isn’t real as you interpret that word’s meaning.
.
I regard it as real, because it’s the context or our lives.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
It isn’t a hypothesis. It’s an inevitability. And I haven’t admitted that there’s no evidence for it. See above.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
See above.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
Yes. The context of this particular possibility-world universe is the context of our lives.
.
And yes, inevitable, as a complex system of inter-referring inevitable if-then facts about hypotheticals.
.
“Inevitable”, and “real only in its own context” aren’t mutually contradictory. Something can be inevitable and real in its own context, without being real in other contexts.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
You defined “speculative” as “without evidence”. See above for the evidence.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
No, I don’t call you “crazy” unless you think that you’re legitimately discussing this subject. …unless you think that you’re doing other than continually repeating the same already-answered objections.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
Yes, that’s what you’ve been continuing to repeat, though your claim, and its supporting claims, have been answered many times.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
I didn’t say that Skepticism has no evidence.
.
I said that I can’t prove that beliefs, such as Materialism, or Cartesian Dualism, or some form of Spiritualism can’t be superfluously, unverifiably true, as an unfalsifiable proposition.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
I don’t know what your position is. You probably don’t either. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what your metaphysical position is. You don’t take metaphysics seriously, and so there’s no reason to expect you to have a position on it…which is entirely your own business.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
No, you aren’t. You’re endlessly repeating already-answered claims. Not quite the same thing.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
No, I haven’t. See above.
.
Mikeman says:
.

.
Yes, that was less than a year ago. You’re still (over)reacting to, rebelling against, your religious upbringing.
.
As I said, there’s really no disagreement here.
.
You don’t deny that there are abstract logical facts. You’re free to say that you feel that, in some way, they aren’t “real”, because “Real” and “Existent” aren’t metaphysically-defined. You’re free to regard as real, unreal, existent, or nonexistent, anything that you want to.
.
But you don’t deny that there are abstract logical facts.
.
…and, therefore, complex inter-referring systems of them. …infinitely-many of them.
…including one that implies the same events and relations as those of this physical world.
.
I point out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical universe is other than that.
.
…but maybe not real as you mean that word. As I said, then maybe this physical world isn’t “real”, as you mean that word.
.
And, likewise, I don’t claim that the entities and things claimed by Materialism, Cartesian Dualism, Spiritualism, etc., don’t exist, superfluously, unverifiably, as the subject of unfalsifiable propositions.
.
So then, where’s the supposed disagreement?
.
Michael Ossipoff





_________________

I just looked through this conversation and saw something quite odd with it : however interesting it might be, I only found there 2 messages that I could qualify as related to its title. By this I mean, the care for ideas and arguments to be Based On Physics.

The first on-topic message was the very first message, except point d. which does not refer to physics but to supersymmetry (which is a mathematical theory with the mere status of speculation for physics, without any beginning of an experimental confirmation at the moment); also I do not see clear how the proposed conclusion, that is the simulation hypothesis, would be actually anything tentatively based on physics. Following the link to the article referenced there, I see it putting forward the opinion of "Moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson". However, looking through his CV I see his scientific qualifications mainly focused on astronomy but I could not see any indication that he ever studied quantum physics to some sufficient level for his possible opinions on the nature of reality to be considered genuinely informed by modern physics. And while when looking at things from far away it may indeed look as if quantum mechanics could have something to do with the simulation hypothesis, namely that they are all about some kinds of information processing with fuzziness and possible randomness with unclear origin, I am not aware of any proper justification of how quantum theory and the simulation hypothesis could actually match when analyzed in more details. When I say more details, I refer to how quantum theory, as is currently known, is not just a fuzzy dream but a very precise theory with very precise predictions of many things which have been experimentally verified with amazing accuracy. The simulation hypothesis does not seem to fit in any reasonable list of candidate interpretations of quantum physics, by lack of a way for these to match mathematically.

The second on-topic message I found is the one from Michael829 on 04 Oct 2017.

Somewhere in the discussion was the phrase "metaphysics is by your definition unobservable and the moment it becomes observable it becomes regular physics"
hmm... the life of Jane Roberts has been quite well observable I think. Yet I'm not aware of it becoming regular physics.

Now I found something puzzling, I mean not something specific to this discussion but something seemingly quite usual among philosophers that keeps puzzling me every time I see it : the sort of discrepancy between the belief in the value of empiricism, which is quite widespread including among philosophers, and the practice of empiricism which, as I could see, most philosophers seem to often forget to actually come to: which sense is there in making a fuss about being an empiricist, and at the same time publicly pushing forward one's views that materialism seems the most plausible and verified view on the nature of reality... despite having visibly never done the work of well studying quantum physics, which seems to be the best currently available (logical synthesis of) empirical information on the observable structure of this physical stuff that is proposed as the core of reality, at least the deepest well-observed level of it ?

I did the work of studying the foundations of maths and physics, including general relativity and some basic concepts of quantum field theory. Then I found a way to write an introduction to quantum theory that is easier than usual courses on the topic, using the language of geometry as another view on what the definitions from Hilbert spaces (which are needed for more in-depth study) could give. The goal was to make it somewhat simpler but still mathematically accurate and insightful for its direct relevance to the measurement problem. Then I wrote a detailed analysis of its interpretations, which main troubles I see in most of them (the naturalistic ones), and explained the interpretation which appeared to me the most natural and well fitting with a clear ontology, that is a mind/mathematics dualism. For meaningful conversations I hope to find people actually familiar with those things. See my site settheory.net/physics for details.

spoirier,

I actually think that would be an incredibly useful conversation if you could shed light on it.

Part of the problem we tend to run into on forums like these is that most ideas get bogged down on politics and identity standoffs. Admittedly the quality of materialists we have here has gone up quite a bit, ie. I'm glad discussions aren't still subject to 'if it sounds weird or abstract it must be crypto-religious woojoo' so we can have meaningful conversations about abstract and complex concepts.

Where I think philosophy gets bogged down is that I think there's a herding mechanism by which you're pushed to 'pick a team', then be intellectually vested in that team's outcome, and by the time that happens most of what will come out the other end - whether you really want it or not - is your way of selling yourself, which unfortunately means also being fully identified with your ideas. I think this can happen in the sciences as well and it's part of why almost any professional layer of society can get a bit rancid as human animals do what they do best which is use their knowledge and egotism to climb the human pyramid of status in their relative domain.

I got a kick of your mentioning my Jane Roberts comment. I might have had a typo in there in that I should have said 'the life work of', ie. meaning she's known for the whole Seth Speaks corpus. Also I don't necessarily think reductive materialism is 'true', it's more like we have a really tough time building intuitions that in some way don't include it and culturally speaking we have a very tough time trusting anything that hasn't been vetted by the scientific community because there is still such a thick layer of white noise. The point I might have been making is that ideas cut muster once they're checked against reality and pass all of the right falsifiability checks and I don't know that it would be a problem whether hypotheses came from a physicist brainstorming in a bathtub, channeled messages from Pleiadians, or Habib's cave chats with the archangel Gabriel. If the later two sources were continuously turning out accurate predictions that could have some very interesting implications but I don't think a hypothesis, if it turns out to be true, is necessarily in and of itself tainted by the nature of its origin - which is one of the big cognitive errors that I think a lot of people tend to make these days.

The other thing is I can tell your sitting on top of a pretty big body of knowledge that you've put in great pains to accrue and sort out. One thing that might be helpful as you talk to people here - you may need to in some way consider how you'd index that information, discuss it at the 50,000 foot level, and when a particular topic comes up which a piece of that is particularly germaine to you'll be able to encapsulate that idea, what it means, and further contextualize it within the proofs that you've assembled.

I just say all of that because I've learned the hard way that if I can't dumb it down no one listens and it's a shame because a lot of times what gets ignored is of very high value but given to people undigested its very difficult for them to process or connect with. It'll probably be a similar exercise to what you might have employed when you wrote the book you mentioned - ie. figuring out how to wrap the deliverables and their implications, appendix the math so it's only a black box for those who don't have the education or know-how to check in with it, and your website might be a good appendix in that sense to the conversations you have here.

If I didn't say it before welcome and its always great to have new people on board who are thinking critically about the big issues.

I noticed this topic contained a lot of ...

"accusations of making fallacies" and "I'm right not you" juvenile arguments

Perhaps there is a better way to express our ideas, and appreciate other people's ideas.

Unfortunately we're human, and what you're talking about is a level of attained mutual respect that often times doesn't happen until we get the ugly stuff out of the way.

My suggestion, if you see that kind of thing and want to take a hand in steering, is interject and try to steer the conversation in more positive directions in real time. By the time we're conducting a post-mortem analysis its too late.

No I was making my own comment about Jane Roberts independently of yours. I first stumbled on some Seth writings, starting with "Now - and this will seem like a contradiction in terms - there is nonbeing" last winter and found it fascinating, as I found there a lot in common with the view I already had, and so well formulated. Then I started commenting it there but it remains very incomplete.

TY for the clarification.

Also, if your into looking at this side of things - if you haven't heard of them already - you'd probably get a kick out of Mark Stavish and Gordon White.

On a separate note, after reading Seth Speaks and the Nature of Personal Reality (late 2012) I ended up taking a brief break to go back through the bible before I landed on Rudolph Steiner's work which then spun off to Manly P Hall and eventually the Golden Dawn diaspora authors. I keep hearing debates between magicians who think that Samuel MacGregor Mathers innovation to the Tree of Life and major trumps of the tarot were critical or that the Cypher Manuscript (apparently smuggled Elus Cohen material) was a major step forward in making the Tree of Life workable, others who say the opposite - ie. that really after 19th century Rosicrucianism and Martinism the trail goes a bit cold in terms of results. Apparently Franz Bardon still gets spoken well of on all sides even being mid 20th century. Still trying to hash out what I think but at this point I'm really guessing it has more to do with the person and how well they can operate on themselves, ie. that the symbols would have to be 'way' off not to feed intuition at all.

Sorry I did not know about Mark Stavish and Gordon White and still now quickly looking at them (while it does not seem easy to get a clear introduction to their works) I still can't find an interest in looking further.
The only meaningful info I found is this.

You may be surprised but I felt pretty much repelled by the topic of The Nature of Personal Reality (looking at the table of contents and a few quick things at random) which sounded to me of the sort "Hey come on I have some super mega BS to tell you so you can win the lottery" which prevented me from looking further. So my impression on Seth is very mixed : I love some of his writings so I agree he must have really explored other realities to be able to tell that but other parts I regard as crap.
The bible ? I was Evangelical Christian in the past until my faith crashed very badly and I discovered how full of BS is the Christian doctrine (thus also the Bible). Generally I loved reading testimonies of NDE and some OBE but outside that I don't expect much from the esoteric literature, as I think most of it is crap, in particular I wrote the criticism of Neale Donald Walsch which appears among the top google results on his name or "conversations with God", so it was a surprise to me to recently see those amazing excerpts from Seth... which have been long forgotten since the time of writing, in favor of lots of worse stuff.
To have an idea of how different from this is my philosophy, look at some texts of mine, for example here, there, there, there, there and there. You can also see how I logically combine my spiritualist metaphysics with my endorsement of scientism against "spiritual" philosophies of life, by the way I conclude my text of metaphysics.

Mark has a way of blowing a lot of the dross off of esoteric practicise and Gordon, being one of the sharpest and clearest proponents of chaos magic out there right now, takes a similarly practical approach to an open-source exploration of the issue.

As far as taking a 'spiritual' approach though - I can't quite say this is that. Mark's lectures are Institute for Hermetic Studies on Youtube, Gordon hosts the Rune Soup podcast. Understandably they may not be your think from what you said above because they're more about sinking into the practice and results rather than trying to figure out what particular forms of science match it (well... Gordon might do that a little bit more than Mark but neither of them are super-heavy in that regard, rather I like them more for being skeptical inquires and practitioners simultaneously).

We only see reality on our terms. Because of that we will never know what's truly real.

To this day I really don't know what to make of it.

I remember Rudolph Steiner having similar strapping large cosmologies but they fell apart the more of his books I read (Max Hiendel's Cosmo Conception was just another iteration of the same ideas Steiner had in Outline of the Occult Sciences).

One of the things things that sort of turned me out with the Seth material was the same thing that turned me out with people like Michael Newton - ie. it's a really nihilistic story of the human endeavor, something I saw from certain NDE'ers as well, and it's a bit like there's something pathologically capricious about the approach supposed higher entities, or released human souls, have toward this essentially being a pile of things murdering each other to survive. It gets even more perverse when they allege that such violence and suffering is pre-planned for the joy of experiencing it. It could just be a bit of stoicism on their part but there's a certain nonchalance that grates on me.

As for the new age and 'Secret' type stuff though - yeah, IMHO it's these explorations and ideas getting turned into megachurch Santa-Christianity. I've been in and studying monographs from BOTA and AMORC now for a little over four years, for as much as I love Paul Foster Case's insights he has a way of jumping off on this stuff as well, but I do think that if our mental choices do alter reality on deeper levels than what we externally interact with it has much more to do with the balance of our internal content getting turned in one direction or another.


I felt the need to mainly that I was seeing the depravity and bulk of BS that was in all of the new age from the pop stuff all the way up to Seth and Theosophy. I grew up Catholic, started seeing odd bits where new age writings and predictions were looking an awful lot like a cheap knockoff on Revelations, and so I decided to finally wade into the bible both to see what's really in the Old Testament but also to try and figure out if there was anything to the narratives that I needed to make sense of. When I did read it a few times through I came to a particular conclusion and I found that Manly P Hall had taken the same conclusion, ie. Astrotheology and a polyglot of various high-pagan philosophies, and had a wealth of lectures on this as well as his Secret Teachings of All Ages and Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, both of which were very good reads even if he might have gotten a few things wrong like suggesting Egyptian origin of the tarot.


NDE'ers are such a mixed bag that I lost my interest there pretty quickly. There are some people in the OBE community, like Robert Bruce, who have interesting perspectives but - unless you can do it yourself it's really tough to do much with or buy in too far.

The esotericism that I do find worth reading falls into a couple categories. The one deals really with a train of philosophic and religious thought that flows from people like Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Jacob Boehme, and a lot of people who had a particular kind of experience that Jung called Individuation and which The Golden Dawn and Crowley's A.'.A.'. both refer to as 'Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel' and which they set as the central focus of their systems (typically aimed for when the initiate gets to their Adeptus Minor or Tiphareth degree). It's actually deeply fascinating, when I read Ascent of Mt Carmel, that John of the Cross drew something like a three-tiered diagram that showed two gulfs or 'dark nights of the soul' which seemed to fit a couple noteable abysses on the Tree of life that occur between the three triads on the tree - the major one being between Binah and Chesed but a slightly smaller one between Netzach and Tiphareth. There seems to be something to that and also something to what the Renaissance alchemists refer to as salt, sulfur, and mercury or what the Hindus referred to as well by the three gunas.

The occult world is a pretty blurry place, I mostly got pulled in because I had a set of particular experiences over the course of a year that I couldn't ignore. I don't fully know what to make of them, just that I do strongly get the impression there's much more in 'here' than just me and it's difficult to escape the sense that the universe we live in is quite haunted by all kinds of beings. For the anguish and travails of Darwinian evolution I really have a tough time that this was masterminded by anything self-aware, IMHO much more likely that all of this evolved alongside us, but it seems to me like something really important to know - for having a better handle on life and what can be done with it but also I figure if there's any chance that I'll still be conscious after I'm dead I'd really rather have some friends in that space, archangels or whatever else, rather than be something's lunch or find out that enough unlearned lessons was going to cause my structure to attract me to abject suffering again.

I took a look at the topic titled 'goodness is evil' because it sounded interesting and I was curious what angle of that you were pursuing. I'd actually agree with some aspects of the title premise but I go more the Jordan Peterson route - ie. that when people define themselves as 'good', hold their self esteem in being seen as 'good', or worse - see morality and harmlessness as the same thing, they end up being both a danger to themselves and in some instances others. On one hand people who'd really want to abuse them can see this from a mile away and can and will turn their world upside down all the while doing everything for that person to chase their approval. Also when you give other people the power to say whether you're good or not, and that means the same thing as being worthwhile in general, you're liable to be swept up in pathologies of the crowd if the people around you are unanimously doing something pathological you're likely to have very little internal resource to stand up to it and say no.

A whole other layer of that is neurosis. I noticed that somehow, as a kid, I had the idea injected into my life that my 'goodness' was in a way something like a list of things I hadn't done, that I was already better than people who'd done those things, and that I would be blemished by the things I did do. The most obvious problem with that is spiritual entitelment - ie. not really feeling like you need to do much to help others, then comes the internal psychology and its effects on how you hold your bearings when you actually do face malevolence or corruption in the proper sense of the word. Not only does such an outlook straight-jacket you in terms of being able to mobilized to deal with it but you end up in a fight with your own nervous system that just doesn't work, ie. the more you try to - say - push down or manually fight an intrusive thought the more you give that thought power and the stronger comes back. Sometimes you're really better off, with a thought that makes you uncomfortable, going whole-hog on it in your own mind, fantasizing it out, etc. because it seems like these sort of animalistic or subhuman shards of ourselves only wise up when they're neurally connected to our frontal lobes, get merged with the logic and reasoning circuits, and from there they have a way of rapidly vanishing if they truly are impractical or unhealthy pulls. A lot of Crowley's work revolves around that - ie. setting up ordeals in your own mind to face your own fears head-on, and I found it fascinating the depth to which he went into setting up rituals along those lines - well after I'd been sort of testing the waters with similar ideas already.