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Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it. Obviously doctors are not perfect, they

Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it. Obviously doctors are not perfect, they are people, but I would still rather have hospitals than not have them. Our point of contention is whether you need something supernatural to have interesting things like consciousness, and although my concise, crude generalizations are certainly not proof in any sense of the world, they should still give you a new look on the possibility. Your supernatural is intentionally not well-defined or falsifiable, so I cannot refute it, but you can refute my arguments. I didn't meant to convince you as much as I wanted to delight you with a new perspective, to make you think about the problem. The perspective is that the hard problem of consciousness can be trivially made easy once you realize that a being experiencing things is an unreliable witness, because their entire experience is manufactured by an organ that evolved to manipulate information, and this evolution is actually supported by physics, namely thermodynamics. > I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior It is superior in all the problem spaces. It's the best approach we have, the only legitimate one. You aren't going to be able to sit on a couch with a bunch of crystals and conjure the truth out of the Universe, you have to work for it, and you have to have a way to filter out your biases, and that's science. The one and only. It doesn't mean that you cannot have things like spirituality, because guess what, science is the way to understand that as well, and it can even help creating practices that enhances those experiences. I myself enjoy spirituality. It's a nice brain thing, everyone should have a spiritual life, just not via organized religion.

mistermann 4y ago
- Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it. What is the source of your omniscience? > Our point of contention is whether you need something supernatural to have interesting things like consciousness That's part of it - another part is that you have no evidence for most of your claims. > Your supernatural is intentionally not well-defined or falsifiable My supernatural what?, so I cannot refute it, but you can refute my arguments. > I didn't meant to convince you as much as I wanted to delight you with a new perspective, to make you think about the problem. I suspect I've done a bit more thinking on the matter than you. > The perspective is that the hard problem of consciousness can be trivially made easy once you realize that a being experiencing things is an unreliable witness, because their entire experience is manufactured by an organ that evolved to manipulate information, and this evolution is actually supported by physics, namely thermodynamics. If you have no concern for, or perhaps knowledge of, logic (ternary) and epistemology. >> I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior > It is superior in all the problem spaces. What is the source of your omniscience? > It's the best approach we have, the only legitimate one. What is the source of your omniscience? > You aren't going to be able to sit on a couch with a bunch of crystals and conjure the truth out of the Universe, you have to work for it Demonstrating your ignorance/delusion on the matter. > and you have to have a way to filter out your biases, and that's science. It seems to have done the opposite for you, like many others I've talked with. > The one and only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_before_me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_... > It doesn't mean that you cannot have things like spirituality, because guess what, science is the way to understand that as well What is the source of your omniscience? > everyone should have a spiritual life, just not via organized religion. The religion of wild guesses might catch on.
- Comevius 4y ago
  Throwing shade is never a productive conversation. I never claimed to be omniscient, I offered my piece. > logic (ternary) and epistemology How do they relate to the problem of consciousness?
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > Throwing shade is never a productive conversation. a) Says the person who just finished saying "Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it" b) "is productive" is yet another claim, and once again I disagree (it is a subjective claim after all, though it may appear objective depending on the frame of reference on is viewing from) - this conversation offers great insight into the behavior of the human mind in general, and the behavior of (an instance of) a mind "captured" by Scientific Materialist Fundamentalism in particular (speaking of "throwing shade", amirite?). I would say that if you observe the behavior of religious fundamentalist compared to what you have demonstrated here, from a perspective of higher abstraction, the two thinking styles are eerily similar (specifically: lack of curiosity about what is true, inability to substantiate ones claims, etc). > I never claimed to be omniscient, I offered my piece. Your claim requires omniscient knowledge. For example: "Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it" Since you have not used qualifying terms to constrain your set, you are thus making an assertion about ALL shamans. There is not database of all shamans, and even if there was, it could not possibly contain an accurate representation of the entirety of the behavior of each shaman. Thus, you are speculating, necessarily. One might think that a "scientific thinker" (or, an arbitrary user on Hacker News) would immediately realize the fundamental logical flaw in such a claim, but as the saying goes: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine". Here I will try an experimental technique: are you able to, within your mind, take a strictly third person perspective on this conversation...can you imagine yourself rising into the air, and the higher you go your mental "connection" to this reality (and yourself as a person living within that reality) gradually separates, until eventually you reach an altitude where you no longer have any connection to yourself or this conversation...as if you had come upon it randomly, rather than being an active participant in it. From this perspective, are you able to see and appreciate the substantial silliness, "the folly of humans" you might say, that is going on here? And thinking more broadly: is this phenomenon not true of a substantial majority of arguments that take place on this planet? Or another we of putting it might be: do you think it is possible that humanity, on Planet Earth in the year 2022, might be "doing it wrong", at least to a "substantial" degree?

mistermann 4y ago

- Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it. What is the source of your omniscience? > Our point of contention is whether you need something supernatural to have interesting things like consciousness That's part of it - another part is that you have no evidence for most of your claims. > Your supernatural is intentionally not well-defined or falsifiable My supernatural what?, so I cannot refute it, but you can refute my arguments. > I didn't meant to convince you as much as I wanted to delight you with a new perspective, to make you think about the problem. I suspect I've done a bit more thinking on the matter than you. > The perspective is that the hard problem of consciousness can be trivially made easy once you realize that a being experiencing things is an unreliable witness, because their entire experience is manufactured by an organ that evolved to manipulate information, and this evolution is actually supported by physics, namely thermodynamics. If you have no concern for, or perhaps knowledge of, logic (ternary) and epistemology. >> I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior > It is superior in all the problem spaces. What is the source of your omniscience? > It's the best approach we have, the only legitimate one. What is the source of your omniscience? > You aren't going to be able to sit on a couch with a bunch of crystals and conjure the truth out of the Universe, you have to work for it Demonstrating your ignorance/delusion on the matter. > and you have to have a way to filter out your biases, and that's science. It seems to have done the opposite for you, like many others I've talked with. > The one and only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_before_me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_... > It doesn't mean that you cannot have things like spirituality, because guess what, science is the way to understand that as well What is the source of your omniscience? > everyone should have a spiritual life, just not via organized religion. The religion of wild guesses might catch on.

Comevius 4y ago
Throwing shade is never a productive conversation. I never claimed to be omniscient, I offered my piece. > logic (ternary) and epistemology How do they relate to the problem of consciousness?
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Throwing shade is never a productive conversation. a) Says the person who just finished saying "Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it" b) "is productive" is yet another claim, and once again I disagree (it is a subjective claim after all, though it may appear objective depending on the frame of reference on is viewing from) - this conversation offers great insight into the behavior of the human mind in general, and the behavior of (an instance of) a mind "captured" by Scientific Materialist Fundamentalism in particular (speaking of "throwing shade", amirite?). I would say that if you observe the behavior of religious fundamentalist compared to what you have demonstrated here, from a perspective of higher abstraction, the two thinking styles are eerily similar (specifically: lack of curiosity about what is true, inability to substantiate ones claims, etc). > I never claimed to be omniscient, I offered my piece. Your claim requires omniscient knowledge. For example: "Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it" Since you have not used qualifying terms to constrain your set, you are thus making an assertion about ALL shamans. There is not database of all shamans, and even if there was, it could not possibly contain an accurate representation of the entirety of the behavior of each shaman. Thus, you are speculating, necessarily. One might think that a "scientific thinker" (or, an arbitrary user on Hacker News) would immediately realize the fundamental logical flaw in such a claim, but as the saying goes: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine". Here I will try an experimental technique: are you able to, within your mind, take a strictly third person perspective on this conversation...can you imagine yourself rising into the air, and the higher you go your mental "connection" to this reality (and yourself as a person living within that reality) gradually separates, until eventually you reach an altitude where you no longer have any connection to yourself or this conversation...as if you had come upon it randomly, rather than being an active participant in it. From this perspective, are you able to see and appreciate the substantial silliness, "the folly of humans" you might say, that is going on here? And thinking more broadly: is this phenomenon not true of a substantial majority of arguments that take place on this planet? Or another we of putting it might be: do you think it is possible that humanity, on Planet Earth in the year 2022, might be "doing it wrong", at least to a "substantial" degree?