One of philosophy's roots is an interest in doing something about snake-oil salesmen and the power of mystery religions. 'Be open-minded, but not so open-minded your brain rolls out.' — Mongrel
Perhaps the gap that separates us from belief in superstitions or what you all call magical thinking is the failure to see a mechanism that produces the results. For instance, to me, the placebo effect is simply a name given to this gap. — TheMadFool
There is a gap for some sorts of physicalism, in that 'belief' here seems an irreducible factor. And this is belief on all sides, including the beliefs of professional practitioners, which certainly influence such outcomes. — mcdoodle
I'm a certified roll-out checker. — Mongrel
Good for you but I'll need to cross-check your certificate.:) — TheMadFool
I just wanted to link my materialism to the spiritual in the most reasonable way I could think of. — TheMadFool
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more ? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why ? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it ? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
― Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
To be scientific using a Popperian meme: this thread will not be the actual cause (nor will it won't be) of me planting a Calotropis in the lower garden because the hypothesis (that it did) is unfalsifiable — Nils Loc
Maybe your lucky shirt backed the other team. See, it does work! If it can affect game outcomes, it can also have a mind of its own. — Bitter Crank
I think this would be better
"it is impossible to calculate the long term effect on the weather of a butterfly flapping its wings". — Jake Tarragon
under a deterministic iterated system, points (or states) that start out very close together may end up with radically different fates. — fishfry
:D I did say I was stretching the theory to its limits. — TheMadFool
Why such a dim view of superstition? Is it because you think it's not rational or is it because, like me, you fear the consequences if it were true? — TheMadFool
We are a fucking spec of dust. Accept it. — TimeLine
Wouldn't be fate if you could.So, can I change the fate of the universe by blinking my eye? — TheMadFool
↪fishfry Small changes making big differences.
So, can I change the fate of the universe by blinking my eye? — TheMadFool
Why are you quoting words I didn't say in my post? — fishfry
Isn't that the gist of your post? — TheMadFool
An eye blink is a small difference from a not-blink. That difference (there is no change here) amplifies. and in the two divergent paths, the weather is totally different in a matter of months, and a different list of people have died from accidents. Accidental death is quite chaotic, but slow death not so much.But you said small changes can magnify as the causal chain moves forward in time. Isn't an eye-blink a small change? Can you absolutely rule out the possibility that it won't magnify its effects down the causal web? — TheMadFool
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