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> just I am always skeptical of instances of normal consciousness that claim to know the unknowable. Like how could one even conclusively fact check such a th

> just I am always skeptical of instances of normal consciousness that claim to know the unknowable. Like how could one even conclusively fact check such a thing? Do people even try?

bubblyworld 2y ago
I think if you're curious about this sort of thing you have to go the route of the gnostic and try to experience it for yourself (the bidirectional link between your actions and your mental state, I mean). Meditation is one approach, drugs another. Perhaps in the future we'll have the tools to study this stuff more quantitatively, but for now the mind seems to be mostly mystery to science?
- mistermann 2y ago
  I'm interested in why it's become normalized for people to know the unknowable, and a lot of those afflicted are scientists. Plus, I don't see science making a lot of progress on the front.
  - bubblyworld 2y ago
    Hmm, maybe I'm not sure what you mean about people knowing the unknowable? To me, whether something is unknowable or not is a property that can change over time as technology/epistemology develops. On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain. Getting at some sort of truth is an uncommon goal for monkeys =). No disagreement from me about science making progress on the mind.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      > On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain. Here's how it works: "Oh, that is just...". Ignore billions of these per day in the system, and you get what we constantly complain about but don't know how it came to be. Science developed a method to deal with this phenomenon that works quite well, but it is only applied in very narrow domains. At certain scale, systems no longer appear as systems.

> just I am always skeptical of instances of normal consciousness that claim to know the unknowable. Like how could one even conclusively fact check such a thing? Do people even try?

bubblyworld 2y ago

I think if you're curious about this sort of thing you have to go the route of the gnostic and try to experience it for yourself (the bidirectional link between your actions and your mental state, I mean). Meditation is one approach, drugs another. Perhaps in the future we'll have the tools to study this stuff more quantitatively, but for now the mind seems to be mostly mystery to science?

mistermann 2y ago
I'm interested in why it's become normalized for people to know the unknowable, and a lot of those afflicted are scientists. Plus, I don't see science making a lot of progress on the front.
- bubblyworld 2y ago
  Hmm, maybe I'm not sure what you mean about people knowing the unknowable? To me, whether something is unknowable or not is a property that can change over time as technology/epistemology develops. On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain. Getting at some sort of truth is an uncommon goal for monkeys =). No disagreement from me about science making progress on the mind.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain. Here's how it works: "Oh, that is just...". Ignore billions of these per day in the system, and you get what we constantly complain about but don't know how it came to be. Science developed a method to deal with this phenomenon that works quite well, but it is only applied in very narrow domains. At certain scale, systems no longer appear as systems.