The Dresden bombing was ordered by President Eisenhower, because intelligence suggested there were weapons of mass distructions hidden there. — god must be atheist

I was scared you were serious. And since I've found much weirder stuff on the internet (who hasn't) I don't judge myself to harshly for that reaction.

Yes, the new owners faced with a situation that was obviously going to be there from before their privitization purchase, chose to act immorally. They could not possibly have been surprised by the situation (employment contracts, for example) and of course their creativity and that of some analysts could only come up with one possible solution, which they must have had in advance as their choice to purchase. Coincidentally during the privitization trend the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer and the middle class smaller. All due to the privitization processes advocated and lobbied for and using control of media to make them seem 'obvious' and 'competitive'. So, they helped create a situation, could not possibly have been surprised by it and chose to immorally and in violation of contracts treat their workers in such a terrible fashion that they would leave.

The world is full of assholes. Sooner or later we all have to learn how to deal with that. An asshole boss is an opportunity to either learn how to deal with abuse or grow a spine stiff enough to get yourself out of the situation — frank

That goes for asshole bosses on the wrong end of a judge and jury. Or one in a world where certain kinds of behavior caused by being an asshole lead to certain kinds of societal punishment and censure.
They can grow a hard or get a spine hard enough for prison or be clever enough not to breaks social contracts. They can learn also.

ASsholes are not the weather that the rest of humanity must learn to deal with. They also have to learn to deal. And now a certain kind of French Employer asshole has some new information to learn from or not.

I want to point out that the intentional bombing of civilians almost certainly DID help shorten the war; case in point Nagasaki and Hiroshima. — BitconnectCarlos

I think that's possible, though there are many who think that Nagasaki was in excess and was more of a message for the Russians that Hiroshima was no fluke. I do wonder if there could not have been some way to simply show the Japanese military command without taking down a city or two. And I am not will to simply concede on consequentialist grounds that these were ok civilian attacks, however I think an argument can be presented here because the weapons were utterly new and overwhelmingly powerful. Nothing about Dresden would have suprised the Nazis tecnologically or in the number of bombs, so I don't think it did anything.

That's a lack of social constraints, but there are other constraints, and you can't completely ignore the other constraints, unless you declare a certain context that you wish to arbitrarily limit your scope to. But arbitrarily limiting your scope is just yet another constraint. — god must be atheist

Unconditional love is a social phrase. It's not a claim like some theologians have that God is omniscient. Or a mathematical idea of infinity. It's not like we found this term in the middle of some extremely tight logical analysis of Kant or something. We talking about people who manage to love their sons who are murderers, who turn them in to the police, but visit them in prison and never stop loving them. People who love their drug addict children who steam from them and snarl at them and sometimes never come back from this. It's not math, it may not be perfect in that way. We are using words to convey something that is extreme but not one of CAntor's categories.

One of the most common examples is that of a mother's love for her child, but the first condition is that the child must be hers. — John Days

I think you are moving the idea to nearly mathematical levels. Unconditional in this context means regardless of behavior, regardless of accomplishments, regardless of how the mother, for example, is treated by the child or how the child feels about her, she will love him or her. I think that is meaningful and true in many cases.

r

Moral purists tend to condemn any action that results in harm to civilian, but could the defeat of Nazi Germany or ISIS had been archived wi without the killing of thousands of civilians? — Jacob-B

This, to me hides an important distinction. There is collateral damage and there is intentional targeting of civilian populations, like say in Dresden. I don't think things like this shortened the war. And I don't think the German bombing of civilian London helped their cause and perhaps actually made the British more determined.

There is a qualitative difference between hitting military targets and knowing that civilians in the area will likely be killed and deciding to mass kill civilian targets. And the Allies did both. I don't think one need be a moral purist in the pejorative sense I think you meant above to distinguish these two types of military actions and decide that the latter one is a bad idea. Here I argued from a consequentialist position, since generally those in favor are consequentialists. I think one could also come at it from a deontological standpoint and still not be a 'moral purist' in some negative sense.

And of course with ISIS we could have not made it easy for them to get weapons and not been so Machievellian in relation to our own interests in Syria while pretending to be outraged by the Syrian government. Then we would not have had to deal with ISIS, a phenomenon the West is very culpable in. But that's another type of issue.

I think the being good to workers period was very small. And the rights and protections of workers have been eroding. Certainly once Reagan got in. The being nice to workers is fairly local both in time and space. I am not even sure we have enough information to know what the long term consequencs of doing this are. I would love it if there was a causal relationship. I am extremely critical corporate abuse of power. I think right off the bat we need to end corporate personhood and also stop treating being a corporation as a right, but rather treat it as a priviledge, which was precisely the intention of corporate charters: they could be revoked for bad behavior. I am not one who thinks if the founders intended it or said it, it is like the Bible. But they did in fact realize the dangers of corporate power, wrote about it, and tried to ensure that nothing like the East India company and its peers could come along. But they have. i would love it if it neatly created a feedbacks system. Look, Charles, when we treat the workers well, we do better. But I don't think it is neat like that and for long swatches of history labor was not treated well and very large successful by the standards of the elites societies and empires formed. China doesn't even need democracy to thrive along capitalist lines. The powerful benefit from having a somewhat to very desperate worker pool in many ways. And even if------------if it turns out in the long run that this causes them problems, I don't think they can learn that. But actually I think history supports rather than counters their basic urge to not give a shit and take from other classes. And it's not a few companies, there has been five or so decades of decline, in the US for example, of worker rights and treatment. A decline in unions, aided by neocon policies. A destruction of the welfare net, which did give workers some leverage if they knew they could survive outside of a particularly bad employer's grip. And that was carried out to a large degree by Clinton Gore. And the rich are getting richer during these decades. It continued under Obama, for all his supposed 'communism' and he brought in Wall st. right off the bat. I don't think these are stupid people, the warning signs are not warnings about things that matter to them.

IOW according to a different political correctness set of values.

They need the ones they have and those are the ones they are treating poorly. In the current economy workers have less options. Amazon does everything it can to suppress unions. It does need the workers, or it would let them go. But it can replace them easily enough and mistreat the replacements. It's a workable business model.

I would expect that in many cases, overall efficiency of production coincides with worker well-being, because healthy, happy people do better work, and poorer people spend more of their income so paying more to the poor and working classes instead of the upper classes means more demand and higher profits for businesses, and so on. The people on top treating the people on bottom poorly is irrational behavior that fails to look at what a detriment it makes in the big picture, because being rich and powerful doesn't necessarily mean you're a smart, systemic, forward-thinker. — Pfhorrest

Amazon seems to be doing rather well with mistreatment.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/revealed-amazon-employees-suffer-after-workplace-injuries

https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment-robots/

https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-drivers-warehouse-conditions-workers-complains-jeff-bezos-bernie-1118849

https://www.thetriangle.org/opinion/amazon-has-a-history-of-mistreating-its-employees/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazon-warehouse-reports-show-worker-injuries/602530/

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-describe-peak-2019-2?r=US&IR=T

https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/inside-the-hellish-workday-of-an-amazon-warehouse-employee/

Presumably they did not have just cause in whatever government or employment or union related contracts. Obviously they would have done that if they could have. That would have saved them labor. To harrass people took management hours that could have been spent on other things.

Every logical step can be made consciously. If you think intuition is necessary, please demonstrate. — Qmeri

you've read an argument or made one. Have you checked it enough? such that you can now assume it is sound? (intuition will be involved) Is your sense of the scope of meaning of each of the words used in the argument correct, or really, correct enough? (more intuition) Is your memory correct? about the context, about the earlier stages of the argument now that you are reading that later parts? (more intuition) There would be all sorts of qualia in this. Such as the 'I have now checked this enough' quale. There will be intuition, in some form, in the premises. (about the sources, that is that the epistemology is sound (enough) in its specific application here. Is my sense of the probabilities of any portion of the argument being true fairly good or might I be overestimating my own ability to estimate? Might I not be realizing how affected my own analysis of an argument is affected by what I want to believe? IOW intuition about how good one's own introspection is.

We cannot avoid using intuition.

At the very least it would seem like it depends. Will they later figure out they were manipulated? How important is it that they believe X right now or even in the long run? How irrational? (since there is a spectrum of being irrational, not a neat binary split between us and them ((us always thinking they are the rational team))) What is this specific person whose mind we want to change like, likely to do, and so on?

It seems to me that there would likely be a lot of factors, unless one rules out manipulation in all instances or thinks one has a free hand to manipulate.

It's also one of those issues where the consquences, for consequentialists, are very hard to evaluate: What are the indirect effects of having as a guideline that manipulating those one considers irrational is ok? The effects on them? the effects on me? the effects on trust in general? How do we track these results, if we are consequentialists?

Isnt it each person's responsibility to maintain his or her own sanity? — frank

Sure, and for being abuse of power jerks they can take responsibility for their santiy and experiences in prison for a short time, and then likely go back to priviledged lives, where they perhaps will just be bad bosses but not sadistic ones.

They were convicted of harrassing people. Which they did. They were not convicted of causing the suicides. Which would then be some kind of homocide. They were truly terrible people doing things no employer should do with the intent they had. As an employer you have a lot of control of people for a significant part of their week. In a great economy, they can just hop somewhere else. You're responsible if they take their lives, but you are responsible for abusing the position to make people feel like shit and that was their goal. Make people feel like shit, so they quit.

It is a non-scientific vague term for a goal. Using another phrase for it does not hide information. I see that some people have definitions, again vague ones, distinguishing between 'advantage' and 'supremacy'. But neither of these terms is technical, yet, or specific. There is no loss of information using different phrases that mean the same things. We will not hide the fact that quantum computers, if they do things qualitatively different from classic ones, are capable of certain functions if we use different words for this.

I don't agree with the pc monitors that the use of that word is problematic. I don't agree with the defenders that there is any loss of information.

If using a different lable meant that people no longer had access to the research and people, the public, no longer knew that quantum computers could do things classical computers cannot

that would fit the hysteria of the one's defending the term. But that's not the case.

I see two hysterias meeting. The PC people are wildly overreacting to a term. Those on the other side who see this as hiding science from the public and controlling science are also wildly overreacting.

I don't find myself approving of colonialism if I use that term.
I can still understand just as easily with another term that quantum computers can, if they can, do things that classical computers cannot.

No research is concealed or censored. No conclusions are kept out of the public realm.

And, in fact, there are likely clearer terms for this. If I read something about Quantum Supremacy, I would not think I was dealing with a clear scientific term. It sounds like sales terminology or a James Bond movie or a new car.

It also has nothing in it about computing in it.
And it's not on the tip of the tongues of most people.
It does not clearly communicate the information.
No loss if another term is used.
No damage, I think, if it is used, except if a lot of people think there is damage, then that becomes a kind of damage, unfortunately.

It's more like protected from PR from google. There is scientific fact or research being hidden and people are not being protected from findings, research data.

The issue is over whether a term describing a technological advance should have this adjective like noun or this other adjective like noun.

I think advantage is actually more accurate. I think the reaction by the anti-supremacy crowd are overly melodramatic.

No science is being suppressed or hidden, though.

Should Science be politically correct? — NOS4A2

But it's not science. It's a way of describing a technological advance. To ask if science should be politically correct raises ideas like should people publish research results that have politically incorrect implications and the like.

Calling it supremacy or advantage is not a scientific issue. To decide to call it advantage is not damaging science. It is not inhibility research...

in fact it sounds more accurate.

It might be the top computer, in this way, now. But that's temporary.

I do think the reaction is also exaggerated. I don't think it matters much either way, frankly.

But P.C. is not interfering with science, but rather with the wording a company is using about its technological advance. A wording that does not give useful information.

The question is why the observed quantities of the macro world are unaffected by the unpredictability of quantum particles. — GeorgeTheThird


What this post is a reply to was my "explanation".

I think mass and what happens to mass, motion is predictable and mass isn't affected by quantum weirdness. For instance, an electron's position may be a probabilistic wave function but its mass is always whatever it is and this allows us to predict the path an electron will take in, say, a magnetic field although the electron itself is nebulous wave function.

We need to understand what about particles is predictable. As far as I know, their motion is predictable and motion is mass-dependent and mass is independent of any quantum property of particles i.e. it remains fixed at a specific value for each particle. — TheMadFool

Actually the assumption in the question is not the case. Large 'objects' are affected by quantum effects. Birds use strange quantum effects to navigate, plants us a kind of quantum computing to choose how to take in photons. We don't really know if the indeterminate patterns at the quantum level are not affecting especially lifeforms.

Note: I am not saying that these patterns indicate free will. I am just saying that microeffects can affect the movements and actions of macro-organisms.

Have you heard of the Lidl and the Aldi? They do exactly that. Limiting their choice. They are the fastest growing supermarket chain at the moment. — ovdtogt

I know lidl. The offer a reduced selection because they snatch products they can, at the moment get cheap. They have reduced labor and cut costs everywhere they can. So people,with their ever lowering salaries go to LIDL not because of the reduced selection, but because of the lower prices. And, as I pointed out earlier, this isn't really a response to the point I made. But it doesn't stand as evidence, as least LIDL doesn't, I don't know the other store.

I would prefer to do away with what seems
to be your sensr of 'justified' because it is too subjective, and say that knowledge is belief in what is true for true reasons. — Janus

Can we ever confidently label something knowledge, by this definition? We can certainly evaluate justifications, but how do we evaluate 'true' if not via justification?

And to understand phlogistan, in the context of the thread, you need to understand what they knew (and then didn't know at the time). To call it simply wrong is confused. But to understand that you have to know the history of science, and in addition, I would say, some knowledge of philosophy of language also. There is an implicit philosophy of language position in his judgment of phlogistan- perhaps also present in the scientists who proposed phlogistan - and it's one that is problematic.

I started to laugh uproarously; i told Paul his utterance imitated that of those people, who are full of self-confidence, and if they don't understand something, they declare it stupid. — god must be atheist

I guess I think there's some good intuitive intelligence around questioning the use of resources and use of experts to send people to the moon, right now at least, and a couple of decades ago also. I am not saying there is no pattern where people reject things simply because they don't understand them. But in the end this seems facile to me when given as a blanket explanation for people's reactions to the language use and projects of the very intelligent. I'd get into specific projects I think are idiotic, carried out by people with extremely high IQs and rapidly changing things 'out there' but that would likely hijack the thread. I see a lot of cleverness posing as intelligence out there. Often with a dangerously narrow focus and often working for corporations or governments with agendas that are seriously problematic. Negative reactions to these projects are dismissed as emotional, when in fact there are emotions and desires driving both sides. At a tree level one side is showing a great deal of intelligence. At a forest level, I think they are a lot dumber than they realize and on those issues much dumber than the people they dismiss. And of course it is ad hom at base.

A sane scientific materialist would never argue what you suggest they would argue. — god must be atheist

Then I've met a good number of scientific materialists who are insane in philosophy forums. Perhaps you will say they are not really scientific materialists. If one pops up here and I remember, I will try to connect you three for that conversation.

In fact, no philosopher would argue that god does not exist. And no philosopher would argue that god exists. — god must be atheist

I guess I disagree with both assessments. This is a bit like when the Republicans say the Democrats have no morals or values. I understand, you think they don't have good epistemological grounds for their conclusions. But then, most philosophers draw different conclusions, about something, and these conclusions will be based on differences, however slight or grand, between epistemologies.

IOW it may be only the religious (I don't know this, actually) — god must be atheist

Oh, I think it is generally used by the religious. It shouldn't be pejorative to scientists, who would tend to be materialists, though some cosmologists and many mathematician scientists are Platonists. Likely other exceptions. I prefer the term physicalists, though this has the same problem as materialists, which is that both physical and material are expanding concepts. They pretty much mean anything real and verified, as far as we can tell, regardless of the qualities. It looks like a claim about substance, but it no longer is.

It is ignorable, unless you are point blank looking to argue with the concept of God. In which case, you are not really a scientific materialist, you are an atheist cum scientific materialist. — Pantagruel

Right, but I rarely meet the other kind, at least in forums like this one. In fact the scientists I know would probably say they are materialists if cornered, but don't seem to give a shit about ontology in these sweeping ways. They have problems to solve, more specfic models to work from, and details to fuss with.

Arguably there are conceptions of God which do not entail intervening in the mechanics of reality. — Pantagruel

Deism, or at least, that's a version where God no longer intervenes after making it all.

So while it is true that science does not provide complete support to scientific materialism, the OP regretfully omitted that scientific materialism does not REQUIRE any such support by science. — god must be atheist

Anyone arguing from scientific materialism, however would require it. IOW if a materialist argues that God does not exist because it would entail a dualism and 'we already know that materialism is the case, or that we know that a dualism cannot be the case' is now using a philosophical that is undemonstrated as if it is a scientific theory..

And then given that what is considered material is an expanding set, and the properties necessary or possible to have and be considered 'material' has been steadily expanding, the term isn't really a metaphysical stand, though it often is used as if it is one, against other positions, in arguments.

I do agree that no one ever says it out aloud or even thinks consciously that he distrusts someone because that person is intelligent. — Qmeri

I think there is some distrust, yes. But I also think that often what an educated middle class person would call intelligent a lot of Americans don't consider intelligent. I lived in a rural part of the US where there was a college/townie dynamic. I worked closely with both groups, adult versions, and I can say with strong confidence that the not so educated and also service/working class locals thought that the smart professors and administrators and students had their heads up their behinds. They truly considered them stupid, but not in the way people are stupid who don't know a lot of facts or are not well read or don't do well on tests. They might not have used these words, but they thought the people with college degrees, especially advanced ones used jargon, mystification and complicated language to create all sorts of messes. They recognized that these people were smart in certain ways and even had some useful skills, but I truly believe they thought they were dumb in a number of key ways that the salt of the earth were not. And I have to say I saw some serious truth in that.

I am sure there are undercurrents of jealousy and competition and fear, some of it around identity, some around other possibilities like the one in the OP, but I take their sense that these people were dumb not just as a defense mechanism. And since there were often value disagreements, these people certainly thought that the educated class near them had stupid (and dangerous, if not right out evil) values.

I think part of the reason I am digging in a bit here is because I have a similar critique of the class that tends to score well on IQ tests, though I don't share the same politics as those working class people, certainly around social values.

I think it is within Zen where the word 'clever' is used pejoratively. I don't want to go to far off into analyzing and trying to demonstrate this critique, but I mention it to give part of the context to my reaction to the OP.

And when I think about it... even I found Bush to be quite honest because he seemed to be so simple that he probably wasn't able to create complicated lies even if he tried to... unless he was next level and that was all for show. — Qmeri

I think his lies were simple and context based. He knew he was doing the bidding of powerful people and not being up front about that. He knew he wasn't really making decisions. He must have known many of the real motivations for things like the Iraqi war 2, since I can't imagine Cheney and Rumsfeld bothering to hide their goals and interests around him. His lies were not intricate. His lies were simple and he could handle them. As a good, little front man needs to be able to handle. Of course I am sure that he believed, to some degree, what he was saying also. But this is true of intelligent liars, perhaps even more so. We often convince ourselves first, and if you have better bs skills, and further have a more detached mind, you have an advantage lying to yourself and others.

ps. Everything in the text is oversimplified and too extreme. It's pretty much a rant, but it makes a coherent point. Any thoughts? — Qmeri

I appreciate the contextual disclaimer.

It seems to me people distrust and trust too much intelligence or what seems to be intelligence. Yes, some people like leaders who put things simply, but I don't thnk they also think their leader preferences are less intelligent. Less clever, potentially. Less fancy, sure. Less academic, sure.

But someone who loved Bush and was skeptical about Obama, and based this distrust in part on Obama's clearly more complicated and well organized speech, I think would be very unlikely to say that Obama is more intelligent, especially where it counts: policies and ideas that are good for us and in relation to those that are bad for us.

It is futile to keep on creating more children. — Andrew4Handel

That would depend on what you are doing it for.

They will all die and our species will probably go extinct in the long term. — Andrew4Handel

That makes every act, including your posting, futile and superfluous.

I regard all Marxists professors who live in capitalist states and do not even attempt to move to a place where their world view is in practice to be hypocrites. — Wittgenstein

It would be their job to move whatever society they are in towards a Marxist state. If they all leave, then the chances of this go down. And, again, people living in Marxist societies, or on collectives in other societies, can choose to be hedonists or not. Regardless, of the restrictions in a society, the members of that society could be hedonists. In the former USSR any citizen could focus on experiencing pleasure as much as possible - and have this as a philosophy - or they could have other values. But professed Marxists, wherever they are, tend not to do this. Those who profess Marxism simply to protect themselves, may or may not be ascetic or hedonistic or anything in between, but being a Marxist tends to include a tendency to devalue pleasure. In fact one is supposed to aim at more collective goals. CApitalism on the other hand

definitely

encourages

hedonism.

And people who identify as capitalists are much more likely to be hedonists.

They do not have to live an extravagant life and extravagance is really hard to quantify. For some ascetics, eating food twice in a day and sleeping for 8 hours is already extravagant. According to science, death is defined as the death of the brain. Hence, those who believe in scientism have a firm ground for themselves to engage in seeking the pleasures of the carnal self, simply cause they believe it is all there is to a human being besides intelligence. — Wittgenstein

No,this does not follow. They can still value simplicity, discipline, social relations, collective achievements, stoicism, and so on. And, in fact, many scientists do. i don't know what your 'it' is in the last sentence, but obviously scientists believe in all sorts of things beyond intelligence and pleasure.

In my understanding of the morality given to us by Abrahamic religions. A lot of the matters that involve morality are in fact left to our own consciousness. — Wittgenstein

Sure, but then, I was talking about religious societies. Perhaps they misinterpreted the scriptures, but they did this, and those that are this now still do this, as a rule. There were all sorts of prohibitions.

The books do present certain moral codes but they are not enforced robotically but with keen self evaluation — Wittgenstein

Unless a society brings them into the law, which was the rule everywhere and still is in many countries.

For example, slavery wasn't explicitly prohibited by any Abrahamic religion yet it is now universally adopted to be morally reprehensible — Wittgenstein

I am not sure what this demonstrates. Yes, people have gone beyond the implicit acceptance of slavery in the Bible. And this paralleled a reduction in those societies being religious societies. IOW as they got more secular. But, of course, even before this societies made secular laws. But my point was that religious ideologies, just like secular ones, end up restricting people's freedoms and choices.

And a religious society, at least the ones we've had, demand sacrfices of individual will to moral systems determined by scripture and religious authority. The Abrahamic religions have managed to make really rather incredibly repressive societies to the individual will.

Marxists do not favour hedonism but they cannot be in any way ascetic as they lack the element of freedom despite refraining from sensual pleasures. — Wittgenstein

Well, sure they can. They can spend money on vodka and go swimming or they can have consciousness raising meetings. Marxists in Western societies can choose between all the options their peers do. Marxist professors for example. There is always a way to aim for as much pleasure as possible or to aim for something else, regardless of income and circumstances.

l will not say all those who favour scientism are marxists but those who are marxists need to believe in scientism. — Wittgenstein

Wow. Scientism, which is the idea that the only route to knowledge can come via science, is a position that could be held quite easily by ascetics. In fact most of the people who claim to that epistemology that I know tend towards a rather disciplined life and certainly not an extravagant one. And when I use the word 'discipline' I am not being complimentary. I am using the word neutrally. I am a theist and do not adhere to scientism, but I don't recognize the materialists you are talking about, not as a rule or even as tendencies.

ve t I get what you mean and I think there are ways they work together, but there are a number of materialisms that are often if not usually couples with anti-hedonism. Dialectical materialism (marxism, say). Scientific materialism (in the sub culture of scientists). Now a marxist can be a hedonist and so can a scientist, but the first culture disapproves and the personality types drawn to the second tend to be more abstemious. But I'll drop this tangent here. I don't want to hijack.

Just to be fussy, we should make it clear what we mean by materialism, since a philosophical materialist could be an ascetic. One can believe that there is only one substance, matter, but think that the right relationship with material things is quite the opposite of hedonism, for example.

OK

assuming arguendo? perhaps
Those participants can easily just avoid the topic, or join in the thought experiment. Given that it is the assumption, it is not as if they are be cornered into chaning their minds or seeming to.

↪Tzeentch I don’t have any professional research on hand to share, but for myself personally I have had sober experiences that match the descriptions I’ve read of “mystical” experiences, and friends who have done LSD say that when I am having those experiences I seem like someone on a “really good trip”, and that their experiences while on LSD also match the descriptions they’ve read of “mystical experiences”. — Pfhorrest

Which doesn't add up to either you or your friends knowing what is going on in you and has very little to do with knowing what is happening in non-drug induced religious experiences in other people. IOW your argument is coming down to a

I have had that experience you had (which is a kind of psychic claim)
and I know it wasn't caused by God (in this instance) when I had it
so I know that other people are not experiencing God.

Yes, the so-called "religious experience" or "mystical experience" is a neurochemical phenomenon that can be induced with drugs, and occurs (without drugs) even in strong atheists like me. — Pfhorrest

We can induce people hearing things with drugs also, this doesn't mean when they are hearing things at other times, there is no thing they are hearing. You didn't say that since we can induce the feeling with drugs this means that when it happens without the drugs it is really just an internal chemical thing with no actual object of sensing or stimulation, but often this is used as an argument demonstrating, supposedly, that therefore it isn't God when people feel this feeling.