6 ms·

While not a celebrity, I recently met a woman whom spent $XX,000 on psychics to try and understand where life comes from. She was raised Christian, started "bra

While not a celebrity, I recently met a woman whom spent $XX,000 on psychics to try and understand where life comes from. She was raised Christian, started "branching out" to find the answer and spent over a year of time in doing so. I asked if she ever found the answer.. her response was "no" and that she returned to Christianity. I was flabbergasted with how casual she was about explaining psychics as her choice to better understand the Universe.

burtonator 8y ago
What's frustrating about these boneheads is that they never consider that 'branching out' should involve an actual education. I guess that's too hard.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  People want easy. They want to take a pill and look like a bikini model. They want to write an app and make $1B. People want easy.
- chasing 8y ago
  It's hard. And science gives really unsatisfying answers to many big questions. What happens after we die? What does it all mean? Does my pain have meaning? Am I special? What is consciousness? Will I ever be able to talk to my dead grandmother again? That's why there have always been predators around willing to take your money in exchange for easy answers to these (and other) questions...
  - duozerk 8y ago
    Science does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions (and one could argue it probably can't).
    - acqq 8y ago
      > Science does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions Of course it does, as its very basis is that there are no supernatural forces influencing anything that the science observes. Or to formulate even simpler: there are no "miracles": if something happened, it was possible to happen. You can't postulate "and then the deity came and intervened" if you are doing scientific inquiry about some event. If you could everything could be simply explained by deities playing around. Therefore, the scientific approach to human history is also very simple: it's the people who invented the gods, and not vice versa. So you can personally believe in deities somehow, but if you try to explain your scientific work with their involvement, your work would immediately not be scientific anymore. To give again a simple example, Newton didn't try to explain the movement of the planets with angels pushing them around, but with the plain physical laws. And it worked. Newton believed in god(s) somehow, but he hasn't let that interfere with the laws. Then he did some other works which involved gods, but these aren't science. It's that simple.
      - jackcosgrove 8y ago
        Newton fit models to data that reliably predict outcomes. What makes his work scientific is its method and reliability, not the nature of the explanation.
    - greiskul 8y ago
      Really? Cause I think most of this we have some pretty definitive answers. What happens after we die? You stop being. The conscious experience of it is the same as before you were born, i.e. nothing. Does my pain have meaning? Not to the universe, yes to the people that care about you? Am I special? Live is special, it's the most amazing phenomenon we appear to have in the universe. But at the same time, the "universe" doesn't care about you. What is consciousness? A physical process happening in your brain. Will I ever be able to talk to my dead grandmother again? No. You might not like these answers, but that doesn't have any bearing on them being true or not.
      - duozerk 8y ago
        I wish I was so sure of all that as yourself. > What happens after we die? You stop being. You don't know that of course, and have no way of knowing that. Although I'll agree that from a modern, rationalist point of view that's the default reasonable assumption. > What is consciousness? A physical process happening in your brain. And same goes for that one; the brain clearly relates to consciousness, but you can't be sure it produces it. Maybe it receives it somehow; maybe it's even more complex than that. I'd even go as far to say that if we were to create a black box AGI tomorrow, the question would still not be solved: the only thing you'd have proven is that a specific arrangement of matter appears to result in consciousness, nothing more. Moreover, reality itself happens - in a very concrete way - in your head, not outside of it. Plato's cave and all that (or for a more technically oriented one, the brain-in-a-jar idea). Your point of view is rational in the extreme, but also extremely reductive. I don't think one should be so quick to reject deeper - and, dare I say, spiritual - ways of considering our universe.
        tombert 8y ago
        > > What happens after we die? You stop being. > You don't know that of course, and have no way of knowing that. I'm a little surprised how many threads here "OMG YOU CAN'T KNOW FOR SURE SO HERE'S THIS OTHER STUFF YOU SHOULD CONSIDER LIKE SPIRITUALITY!!!". When you turn off your computer, does its essence float away to computer heaven? When your car breaks down, does its soul get sent to automotive hell? I accidentally stepped on and broke my HP Calculator a few years ago, it won't turn on anymore, so is it in computation limbo? These questions are (purposefully) absurd, but where do you draw the line in "attributing spiritual crap to machinations?"
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Most of these questions can be replied with a "No" or "Nothing", without contradicting the scientific view of the world. Agreeing to such answers at the emotional level is an entirely different enterprise, quite hard for many people. Many people would rather feel content than learn a bit of uncomfortable truth, and I'm not going to judge them.
    - chasing 8y ago
      Okay, but I'll happily judge the people who exploit that desire to feel content by lying to people for money.
- setr 8y ago
  Education is a cult in and of itself — most follow its scriptures in just as similar a fashion as they would a priest. People just don’t think that hard about things outside of their specialization (and often enough, not even then), and end up trapped in all sorts of belief systems, including “education” and “science” (have you ever taken a look at “I fucking love science” fb pages? Its called science, and its followers believe in science, but that group has nothing to do with it. Its just a bunch of rituals that eventualy produce an effect, with any arbitrary reason given) Its not a fix on its own, just accidentally more (likely to be) correct than psychics, from the perspective of the believer.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Look at it that way and pretty much anything is a cult, at which point I’m not sure the label means anything anymore.
    - noobiemcfoob 8y ago
      I'd agree with the first part of your statement. Though what it means is that anyone's worldview is a flawed model from the start better described as a cult than as the truth.
    - setr 8y ago
      All a cult is in this view is an unwavering, unthinking group following over some belief system; in that sense, any form of education (of which the bible, and schooling, are just one of) can turn into a cult. Its not surprising that students are just as susceptible as some midwestern hick. Its also not that surprising that people take those teachings differently, and some treat that knowledge in cultish fashion, and others don’t. And its not that surprising that people don’t realize this occurs, and spreads the word blindly, with unwavering faith in its problem-solving ability
  - Jedd 8y ago
    Luckily this is almost totally wrong. Claims that education, or atheism, are cult-like or religion-like are common enough, but they require ignoring what an education actually means and instead assuming it's just deferring to a (different) bunch of books. An education gives you critical thinking, the ability to rationally consider, deduce, conclude, the willingness to discover, to be wrong, etc. I guess gp was describing someone who was eager to discover, but certainly lacked an understanding or developed abilities around critical thinking.
nostromo 8y ago
There are scores of mormons that tithe hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes in order to become gods of other planets after they die. In my view they're just as silly as the person who uses psychics. And it's not just mormons -- plenty of catholics, jews, and others do as well. It's easy to pick on people that use psychics -- but really it's not any more or less silly than a bunch of mainstream spiritual beliefs.
- 1zee 8y ago
  I'm not going to defend Mormon beliefs, but I will play devil's advocate. Many Mormons view tithe as giving back to the community of which they're a part. And that community, they believe, will provide value to them, in turn. And generally, it does... as far as I can tell from the outside.
  - nostromo 8y ago
    That's totally fair. I'll also play devil's advocate and suggest that perhaps some people also get value from their psychics. As far as I can tell from the outside, some psychics essentially serve as life coaches for their clients. And just as some people find religion comforting with regards to their passed relatives ("I know Grandma is in heaven!") others may find similar comfort talking to Grandma via a psychic -- even if both are total fabrications.
    - richeyrw 8y ago
      One additional difference is that the psychic is being personally enriched by the money, whereas the Mormon leaders are not being personally enriched. (At the highest levels they get a stipend, of around 120k/year last I checked). Now this is not true of other churches necessarily, but it is true of the Mormons.

burtonator 8y ago

What's frustrating about these boneheads is that they never consider that 'branching out' should involve an actual education. I guess that's too hard.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
People want easy. They want to take a pill and look like a bikini model. They want to write an app and make $1B. People want easy.
chasing 8y ago
It's hard. And science gives really unsatisfying answers to many big questions. What happens after we die? What does it all mean? Does my pain have meaning? Am I special? What is consciousness? Will I ever be able to talk to my dead grandmother again? That's why there have always been predators around willing to take your money in exchange for easy answers to these (and other) questions...
- duozerk 8y ago
  Science does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions (and one could argue it probably can't).
  - acqq 8y ago
    > Science does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions Of course it does, as its very basis is that there are no supernatural forces influencing anything that the science observes. Or to formulate even simpler: there are no "miracles": if something happened, it was possible to happen. You can't postulate "and then the deity came and intervened" if you are doing scientific inquiry about some event. If you could everything could be simply explained by deities playing around. Therefore, the scientific approach to human history is also very simple: it's the people who invented the gods, and not vice versa. So you can personally believe in deities somehow, but if you try to explain your scientific work with their involvement, your work would immediately not be scientific anymore. To give again a simple example, Newton didn't try to explain the movement of the planets with angels pushing them around, but with the plain physical laws. And it worked. Newton believed in god(s) somehow, but he hasn't let that interfere with the laws. Then he did some other works which involved gods, but these aren't science. It's that simple.
    - jackcosgrove 8y ago
      Newton fit models to data that reliably predict outcomes. What makes his work scientific is its method and reliability, not the nature of the explanation.
  - greiskul 8y ago
    Really? Cause I think most of this we have some pretty definitive answers. What happens after we die? You stop being. The conscious experience of it is the same as before you were born, i.e. nothing. Does my pain have meaning? Not to the universe, yes to the people that care about you? Am I special? Live is special, it's the most amazing phenomenon we appear to have in the universe. But at the same time, the "universe" doesn't care about you. What is consciousness? A physical process happening in your brain. Will I ever be able to talk to my dead grandmother again? No. You might not like these answers, but that doesn't have any bearing on them being true or not.
    - duozerk 8y ago
      I wish I was so sure of all that as yourself. > What happens after we die? You stop being. You don't know that of course, and have no way of knowing that. Although I'll agree that from a modern, rationalist point of view that's the default reasonable assumption. > What is consciousness? A physical process happening in your brain. And same goes for that one; the brain clearly relates to consciousness, but you can't be sure it produces it. Maybe it receives it somehow; maybe it's even more complex than that. I'd even go as far to say that if we were to create a black box AGI tomorrow, the question would still not be solved: the only thing you'd have proven is that a specific arrangement of matter appears to result in consciousness, nothing more. Moreover, reality itself happens - in a very concrete way - in your head, not outside of it. Plato's cave and all that (or for a more technically oriented one, the brain-in-a-jar idea). Your point of view is rational in the extreme, but also extremely reductive. I don't think one should be so quick to reject deeper - and, dare I say, spiritual - ways of considering our universe.
      - tombert 8y ago
        > > What happens after we die? You stop being. > You don't know that of course, and have no way of knowing that. I'm a little surprised how many threads here "OMG YOU CAN'T KNOW FOR SURE SO HERE'S THIS OTHER STUFF YOU SHOULD CONSIDER LIKE SPIRITUALITY!!!". When you turn off your computer, does its essence float away to computer heaven? When your car breaks down, does its soul get sent to automotive hell? I accidentally stepped on and broke my HP Calculator a few years ago, it won't turn on anymore, so is it in computation limbo? These questions are (purposefully) absurd, but where do you draw the line in "attributing spiritual crap to machinations?"
- nine_k 8y ago
  Most of these questions can be replied with a "No" or "Nothing", without contradicting the scientific view of the world. Agreeing to such answers at the emotional level is an entirely different enterprise, quite hard for many people. Many people would rather feel content than learn a bit of uncomfortable truth, and I'm not going to judge them.
  - chasing 8y ago
    Okay, but I'll happily judge the people who exploit that desire to feel content by lying to people for money.
setr 8y ago
Education is a cult in and of itself — most follow its scriptures in just as similar a fashion as they would a priest. People just don’t think that hard about things outside of their specialization (and often enough, not even then), and end up trapped in all sorts of belief systems, including “education” and “science” (have you ever taken a look at “I fucking love science” fb pages? Its called science, and its followers believe in science, but that group has nothing to do with it. Its just a bunch of rituals that eventualy produce an effect, with any arbitrary reason given) Its not a fix on its own, just accidentally more (likely to be) correct than psychics, from the perspective of the believer.
- simonh 8y ago
  Look at it that way and pretty much anything is a cult, at which point I’m not sure the label means anything anymore.
  - noobiemcfoob 8y ago
    I'd agree with the first part of your statement. Though what it means is that anyone's worldview is a flawed model from the start better described as a cult than as the truth.
  - setr 8y ago
    All a cult is in this view is an unwavering, unthinking group following over some belief system; in that sense, any form of education (of which the bible, and schooling, are just one of) can turn into a cult. Its not surprising that students are just as susceptible as some midwestern hick. Its also not that surprising that people take those teachings differently, and some treat that knowledge in cultish fashion, and others don’t. And its not that surprising that people don’t realize this occurs, and spreads the word blindly, with unwavering faith in its problem-solving ability
- Jedd 8y ago
  Luckily this is almost totally wrong. Claims that education, or atheism, are cult-like or religion-like are common enough, but they require ignoring what an education actually means and instead assuming it's just deferring to a (different) bunch of books. An education gives you critical thinking, the ability to rationally consider, deduce, conclude, the willingness to discover, to be wrong, etc. I guess gp was describing someone who was eager to discover, but certainly lacked an understanding or developed abilities around critical thinking.

nostromo 8y ago

There are scores of mormons that tithe hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes in order to become gods of other planets after they die. In my view they're just as silly as the person who uses psychics. And it's not just mormons -- plenty of catholics, jews, and others do as well. It's easy to pick on people that use psychics -- but really it's not any more or less silly than a bunch of mainstream spiritual beliefs.

1zee 8y ago
I'm not going to defend Mormon beliefs, but I will play devil's advocate. Many Mormons view tithe as giving back to the community of which they're a part. And that community, they believe, will provide value to them, in turn. And generally, it does... as far as I can tell from the outside.
- nostromo 8y ago
  That's totally fair. I'll also play devil's advocate and suggest that perhaps some people also get value from their psychics. As far as I can tell from the outside, some psychics essentially serve as life coaches for their clients. And just as some people find religion comforting with regards to their passed relatives ("I know Grandma is in heaven!") others may find similar comfort talking to Grandma via a psychic -- even if both are total fabrications.
  - richeyrw 8y ago
    One additional difference is that the psychic is being personally enriched by the money, whereas the Mormon leaders are not being personally enriched. (At the highest levels they get a stipend, of around 120k/year last I checked). Now this is not true of other churches necessarily, but it is true of the Mormons.