4 ms·

There's a surprising amount of people in the US who believe in variations of witchcraft, things like tarot cards, horoscopes, and talking to the dead. Much of t

by kodah 5y ago

There's a surprising amount of people in the US who believe in variations of witchcraft, things like tarot cards, horoscopes, and talking to the dead. Much of this actually comes from secular society.

inasmuch 5y ago
Yeah. I think this is a good example, because it's similar to the juju in the article in that the belief often seems more aspirational or preferential than necessarily defensible or provable in some sense. My impression from people I've known who were into, say, astrology, isn't that they would put it up against gravity in a facts-or-not evaluation, but rather that they like the idea of a world organized thusly, or that they find it benefits them to frame things thusly, and therefor 'believe' in it. The shopkeeper wasn't prepared to demonstrate the good things his pouch of talismans were doing for him, but he certainly preferred to believe that his day would go better with them in hand. Who wouldn't? What an easy way to ward off misfortune. It's like a belief in Myers-Briggs personality types, too, in that it's easily bolstered by a confirmation bias and, arguably, can serve a broader function in metaphor. The same of course can be said for much religious dogma and many faith-oriented parables. I think most people would agree that the world would be a better place if more people behaved as Christians believe Jesus did.
- inasmuch 5y ago
  Continuing to think about this, it's occurred to me that I've spent so much time digging into Galen's and Empedocles's framings of the world, and the grander notion of the integrated universe, that they have, in some abstract way, had an impact on the way I think about things. I don't believe that an excess of something called black bile, which relates to autumn, Earth, etc. makes me feel melancholy, but I have, numerous times, described my girlfriend as 'sanguine' to people who've not met her, and then, when I was rightly mocked for saying that instead of something more colloquial, proceeded to attempt to justify my word choice with an approximate characterization of her based on a humorist framework. Perhaps this is just a product of insufferable douchiness and self-satisfaction, and is little more than analogizing, but that's kind of all beliefs are, anyway.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ronald_raygun 5y ago
I saw a talk about this one time and the lecturer said that 50-60% of people believe in ghosts (iirc). But I don't think this as crazy as it sounds. If you read William James' on the varieties of religious experience, he talks a lot about peoples experiences feeling entities and stuff like that. Also if you read a bunch of psychedelic trip reports people say similar things like feeling spirits. So I think the more reasonable take is there is a part of the human brain whose function generates these weird paranormal feelings of presence. Some people have brains that do it more, some people less, and some chemicals can change that
- sdenton4 5y ago
  The boom in late-19th century haunted house stories can be attributed to CO poisoning from dicey gas lighting systems... https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide-hauntings-co-furnace-safety/ https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide...
krapp 5y ago
I'm no anthropologist but I would bet "talking to the dead" is a near universal human cultural constant.
splitstud 5y ago
mjbeswick 5y ago
From a US survey completed in 2020, 88% of people claimed to believe some religion. These beliefs aren't really any different from those featured in the article. Western religious beliefs are just as absurd; they are just more acceptable as they are part of our culture.

by kodah 5y ago

inasmuch 5y ago

Yeah. I think this is a good example, because it's similar to the juju in the article in that the belief often seems more aspirational or preferential than necessarily defensible or provable in some sense. My impression from people I've known who were into, say, astrology, isn't that they would put it up against gravity in a facts-or-not evaluation, but rather that they like the idea of a world organized thusly, or that they find it benefits them to frame things thusly, and therefor 'believe' in it. The shopkeeper wasn't prepared to demonstrate the good things his pouch of talismans were doing for him, but he certainly preferred to believe that his day would go better with them in hand. Who wouldn't? What an easy way to ward off misfortune. It's like a belief in Myers-Briggs personality types, too, in that it's easily bolstered by a confirmation bias and, arguably, can serve a broader function in metaphor. The same of course can be said for much religious dogma and many faith-oriented parables. I think most people would agree that the world would be a better place if more people behaved as Christians believe Jesus did.

inasmuch 5y ago
Continuing to think about this, it's occurred to me that I've spent so much time digging into Galen's and Empedocles's framings of the world, and the grander notion of the integrated universe, that they have, in some abstract way, had an impact on the way I think about things. I don't believe that an excess of something called black bile, which relates to autumn, Earth, etc. makes me feel melancholy, but I have, numerous times, described my girlfriend as 'sanguine' to people who've not met her, and then, when I was rightly mocked for saying that instead of something more colloquial, proceeded to attempt to justify my word choice with an approximate characterization of her based on a humorist framework. Perhaps this is just a product of insufferable douchiness and self-satisfaction, and is little more than analogizing, but that's kind of all beliefs are, anyway.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ronald_raygun 5y ago

I saw a talk about this one time and the lecturer said that 50-60% of people believe in ghosts (iirc). But I don't think this as crazy as it sounds. If you read William James' on the varieties of religious experience, he talks a lot about peoples experiences feeling entities and stuff like that. Also if you read a bunch of psychedelic trip reports people say similar things like feeling spirits. So I think the more reasonable take is there is a part of the human brain whose function generates these weird paranormal feelings of presence. Some people have brains that do it more, some people less, and some chemicals can change that

sdenton4 5y ago
The boom in late-19th century haunted house stories can be attributed to CO poisoning from dicey gas lighting systems... https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide-hauntings-co-furnace-safety/ https://pacificheatingcooling.com/2018/12/27/carbon-monoxide...

krapp 5y ago

I'm no anthropologist but I would bet "talking to the dead" is a near universal human cultural constant.

splitstud 5y ago

mjbeswick 5y ago

From a US survey completed in 2020, 88% of people claimed to believe some religion. These beliefs aren't really any different from those featured in the article. Western religious beliefs are just as absurd; they are just more acceptable as they are part of our culture.