Karma vs. Law of Attraction

[Reefs]

Feb 22, 2024 23:55:32 GMT -5 lolly said:

Feb 22, 2024 23:10:56 GMT -5 Reefs said:

If you don't understand Zen, then you have no standard by which to judge if I understand Zen 'comprehensively' enough or not. This is where your Dunning Kruger logic boomerangs. 

When you present Karma theory superficially, but with an air of expertise, that's Dunning Kruger. Since your entire debunk of karma theory is not based on being incorrect (so I don't disagree), but based on shortcomings of understanding, it kinda sounds like a student who has that delightful youthful trait of knowing they are right.

 Why are suddenly hiding behind dummy kruger? Is it because you don't have an actual counter argument? 

[Reefs]

Feb 22, 2024 23:57:23 GMT -5 inavalan said:

Feb 22, 2024 23:35:24 GMT -5 Reefs said:

The crux of the argument is volition. You always bring it back to volition. And volition implies a doer. And doership is deliberate creation. Which means you always bring it back to deliberate creation. What all Advaita traditions teach though, including Buddhism, is that there is no actual doer, there is only the appearance of a doer. ...

Do you agree that "there is no doer?"  If you do, can you explain in a few words?

I make choices, so I am a doer. Even more, I am a gestalt of consciousness, whose elements are gestalts of consciousness, and who is an element in other gestalts of consciousness.

I may not be what I believe I am, but in this "awake" state and in the "dream" state I make choices that determine my experience. Others (to whom I am connected) make choices that I may accept or not, but there is doership. There is action.

There is an apparent doer who makes apparent choices.

[Reefs]

Feb 23, 2024 0:31:26 GMT -5 lolly said:

Feb 22, 2024 23:35:24 GMT -5 Reefs said:

The crux of the argument is volition. You always bring it back to volition. And volition implies a doer. And doership is deliberate creation. Which means you always bring it back to deliberate creation. What all Advaita traditions teach though, including Buddhism, is that there is no actual doer, there is only the appearance of a doer. So there is no karma, there only is the appearance of karma. Karma is just a theory, Lolly. And not even a good one. If you take away time, the karma concept collapses. If you take away volition, the karma concept also collapses. If you take away causation, the karma concept collapses again. That's why, in the NOW, there is no karma and why karma only applies to the SVP and why there is no path. Which is why the way out of that cycle is not by working on your reactivity (that's working in time, on the SVP and assuming causality, i.e. the personal context) but by leaving that context behind altogether. There has to he a quantum leap in perspective from the relative to the absolute context. Which is why liberation is always acausal and instantaneous, never causal or gradual. This is also why there are no levels or degrees of liberation. So forget karma. It's a donkey tethering pole. Zen will tell you exactly that.

Karma literally means volition in Buddhist philosophy. As I said, since volition is a reactive exertion, it's not deliberate or intentional.Because in English intention and volition mean the same thing, it's hard for the brain to see how vilotion is exerted unintentionally, but it almost always if not always is. This means your first premise regarding deliberate creation is not valid. It is also the reason that I have not described deliberate creation in my presentation at all.

The reason volition implies a doer is, volition is the 'energy' that perpetuates rebirth. It's pretty much the same story as the non-dualist SVP, but with more elaboration. 

Of course the whole is the cessation of karma, but it's really not that cut and dried because the primary caveat is, goodwill or metta also influences outcomes without the exertion of volition. Indeed this non-volitional principle underpins the entirety of purification.

Karma theory says, as we experience the 'aggregates' we assume there must be an enduring me that is consistent throughout the changes. That assumption is incorrect.

This is pretty standard, so I'm pretty sure the Zen discourse says the same thing (though I don't know that), and even without delving into the sublime, it shows that every premise you use to debunk is invalid. Not that I disagree, but what you are is,not wrong as such, but a lacking comprehension of what karma theory implies.

The subtext of these established principles is more the sublime nuances that not everyone agrees on, and in that debate I can also see why another person sees it differently to me. Hence I can see how the LOA retelling connects with the Buddhist philosophy rather that contradicts it. LOA is too easy to make fun of and I just can't help myself, but I now realise there is more too it than I was led to think having watched The Secret.

That's dummy kruger with a cherry on top, Lolly.

Obviously, you didn't understand my debunk of LOK at all. It's a debunk by context. TEN destroys LOK, but not LOA. 

Try actually reading what people write for a change. 

[Reefs]

Feb 23, 2024 13:29:00 GMT -5 laughter said:

Feb 22, 2024 19:44:35 GMT -5 lolly said:

It is Buddhism 101.That's why your accounts are Dunning Kruger.

Seems to me, from the outside looking in, that this is why Zen is so different from other Buddhist variants. "Beginner's mind", for example, turns Dunning Kruger inside out. Zen doesn't seem to me to negate or deny "Dunning Kruger", per se, but offers a radically shifted perspective on it. Same with what some might deride as "Neo-Advaita". I'd prefer, "direct path nonduality". It's not about gain or improvement. It's about subtraction. Traditional Advaita Vedanta has the same flavor: neti-neti. It's buried in Christianity as well. And this isn't a critique of scholarship, either. It's just that the existential truth is both sideways to all spiritual cultures and also buried within the "hidden center" of every specific genuine spiritual culture.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real

[Reefs]

Feb 23, 2024 13:48:10 GMT -5 laughter said:

Feb 22, 2024 20:34:57 GMT -5 Reefs said:

That's not a valid objection though, it's a strawman. I agree with the spectrum perspective though, I've mentioned as much to Lolly already. So people tend to go with that logic up to a certain degree, but at some point they stop short and don't want to follow thru all the way, for whatever reason, as Patanjali does. One reason might be attachment to current scientific dogmas.

Speaking from experience, the materialist assumption is embedded pretty deep. Even when it's being questioned, consciously, it's still influential on the overall perspective. The story I tell about debating E' on freewill a year after the bottom dropping out of "I" is a related example. During that time, I knew in my bones there was no intellectual explanation, but still, the existential questions would recur, centered around the interpretation of QM. I would respectfully disagree with the conclusion that noting the charlatans and the alternative rational explanations is a straw man.

Dec 4, 2022 5:14:47 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Below is a quote from the book Anything Can Be Healed by Martin Brofman. It basically describes deliberate creation from a healer's perspective.


@ Inavalan: I think you are going to like this, it should be pretty close to your own model of reality


@ Robert: This is basically what I have been trying to convey in our other conversations. MB presents it in a very logical, easy to understand way. Let me know if that makes some sense to you.


@ Lolly:  This speaks also to the point I made some time ago that in terms of health, diet or the chemical level is the lowest and least effective level of engagement.



Here's the quote:

Alternative Realities


To begin with, we must get away from the idea that there is only one way that things work, just one reality. We will explore here the idea of alternative realities in which things happen in different ways.


We are each a consciousness in a body. We each decide what to think and what to feel. We choose our perceptions, and our perceptions create our reality.


Our perceptions are the subjective way we interpret all of the information coming into our consciousness from the world around us.


It is as if there is a bubble around each of us. Some of the information coming through this bubble is filtered to the surface and presented to our conscious attention to be noticed. The rest does not register consciously, but travels through the bubble and is stored at deeper levels of our consciousness. Our ideas, beliefs, desires, and feelings color the bubble filtering our perceptions; so much so that people with different bubbles looking at the same thing can have totally different perceptions of what they are watching.


A person in a red bubble, for example, will see the world as red, while a person in a blue bubble will see it as blue, and we can imagine the conversation between these two discussing the color of the world. From a certain point of view, they are both correct about what they report, and all of their perceptions affirm their truth. Yet from another point of view, perhaps neither perception represents objective reality. Perhaps the world is neither red nor blue. All that we know to be true for sure is that one person sees it as red and another as blue, so we have a sense of the nature of each of the bubbles, each of the filters. In this way, we have a basis for communication and exchange of ideas.


While we each may see the same events in the outer world, our respective bubbles color our interpretation of these events. Looking at our interpretation can give us an idea of the nature of our own beliefs and perceptions, since it is these that “color” our bubbles. Someone believing that competition and conflict are universal will see only that, while someone else may just as clearly see that the world is full of people motivated by love and expressing it, and sometimes reacting to the perception that it is not there.


It is easy to see how our perceptions can then predispose us to acting in certain ways that not only play into the apparent scenario we perceive, but actually create and continue it. A man insecure about his lover, for example, can actually drive away that lover with his insecurities, justifying his perceptions, proving that he was right, yet at the same time, having created the scenario in the first place.


There’s a story about a man whose car had a flat tire, not far from a farmhouse in a remote farming community. The man thought, “There’s a farmhouse. I’m sure that they have tools that I can use to fix the flat tire.”


As he walked toward the farmhouse, he thought, “It will be really helpful to me to use those tools. I can be generous, and give the farmer ten dollars to use the tools. I’m sure he will appreciate that.”


As he walked farther, he thought, “This is really remote, and we’re far from any other civilization. If that farmer wanted to charge me twenty-five dollars to use his tools, I would have to pay it.”


Farther along, he thought, angrily, “We’re really deserted here. If that farmer wanted to charge me fifty dollars to use his tools, I would have no choice but to pay it!”


By the time he reached the farmhouse, knocking on the door, he was really furious, and as the farmer opened the door, the man yelled at the farmer, “So, how much are you going to charge me to use your tools, you thief?”


So we can see how the man, predisposed to acting in certain ways, not only played into the apparent scenario he perceived, but actually created it.


When we talk about our perceptions creating our reality, we are talking not only of our perceptual filters, but also the way things happen. This means that even apparently physical cause-and-effect relationships are different in different realities, in different paradigms.


For example, those wanting to become thinner may believe that to do so, they must be aware of the calories they take in with their food compared to the calories they burn through their activities. If they take in more calories than they burn, they will put on weight, and if they burn more calories than they take in, they will become thinner. One way to become thinner, then, is to eat foods that provide fewer calories than is needed to consume them. Grapefruit is such a food. Within this reality, then, if we eat grape-fruit, we can expect to become thinner.


Within a different reality, calories have little to do with weight, since calories are consumed immediately. We must be aware of carbohydrates since they are stored in the body as fat. If we want to become thinner, we must reduce our intake of carbohydrates. Since grapefruit, like all fruit, contains carbohydrates, within this reality, if we eat a lot of grapefruit, we will put on weight!


Both realities are true, and people believing in each reality can easily prove that they are both right. One reality does not preclude the other. One does not have to be wrong for the other to be right. Both are right, and yet things happen in different ways within each reality.


What will happen when you eat a grapefruit? Will you put on weight, or will you become thinner?


First, it depends on what you believe will happen when you eat the grapefruit. If you believe you will put on weight, you will. If you believe you will become thinner, you will. If you really don’t know what will happen, you must eat the grapefruit to find out. Then you can identify with one reality or the other and know what is true for you. At the same time, you can now know that something else may be true for another person.


Whatever you believe to be true is true—for you!


Where do your beliefs come from?


When you are presented with another person’s beliefs, you are free to accept them or reject them. If you choose to accept somebody else’s beliefs as true for you as well, you then adopt them as yours. You can decide for yourself that since an expert says so, it must be true that eating grapefruit makes you thin. Or fat. As you decide.


Another way to create a belief in your own consciousness is to define it from the way you have interpreted your own experiences. You might start with no idea of what is true for you and no idea what to believe. You begin with an experience: you eat the grapefruit, not knowing what might happen.


Next, you examine the effects of the experience. You interpret your experience in a certain way, describing it to yourself with certain words. In doing so, you create a certain belief. You decide, for example, “Eating grape-fruit makes me thin, because when I ate a lot of grapefruit, I became thinner.”


The words that you use to describe your experience create your beliefs, and therefore your reality.


After your experiences have defined your beliefs, your beliefs define and create your experience, so that you will discover that whatever you believe to be true is true for you. You will attract to yourself, and will have more of a tendency to notice, those experiences that affirm your truth.


Thus, someone believing something different can have something different that is true for them. Also, by changing your beliefs, you can change the way things happen within your paradigm, within your reality. Thus, if something has been not working optimally for you, by exploring different beliefs, you can discover a way to have things work for you in a different way, the way you would like them to. You can find a way to achieve what you want.


Within a reality of the physical sciences, a person might be told that they have a grave illness for which nothing can be done. Within this reality, if nothing changes, they will certainly die. If they choose to explore alternative realities in which there is a way out of their condition, there is a chance that they can continue to live, in health and harmony.


When the healing happens, it may happen in a way that seems to suspend or violate certain physical laws of chemistry, biology, or physics. These laws, though, are not absolute dictates, but just attempts to predict behavior on the basis of past experience and empirical data. They are considered laws only until something happens that makes it necessary to consider additional factors, and modify these laws.


For example, if you throw something into the air, it comes down. No matter how many times you repeat the process, the result is the same. You can decide, as a law, that “What goes up must come down.” This happens until you throw something with such force that it escapes the earth’s gravity, and you are obliged to change the laws to consider other factors.


When we look at the paradigm of healing, even though it may seem that we are breaking the “laws” of biology, chemistry, and physics, no laws are actually being violated. It’s just that other laws are being obeyed, since things happen in different ways within different realities.


Healing is presented, then, as an alternative bubble to the reality of the traditional medical sciences. Any bubble can be presented and look as if it is the only reality that exists. If we release the idea that there is only one reality, we can then consider alternative realities that can exist either alone or in combination with other realities.


Some people choose to combine the different realities, taking elements of each that work best for them. Others, who have been told by the traditional sciences that nothing can be done for them, might prefer to dedicate themselves totally to the alternative paradigms.


What is of primary importance is doing what works best for you, and not rejecting any idea or method that may help you in some way.


This handbook is the presentation of the truths, dynamics, and cause-and-effect relationships that exist within the bubble that represents the reality, the paradigm, of the Body Mirror System of Healing.


It does not invalidate any other realities, but simply provides an alternative. Within this reality, we hold the perception that anything can be healed.



Martin Brofman, Anything Can Be Healed, Chapter 2

[Reefs]

Feb 23, 2024 14:46:40 GMT -5 tenka said:

Feb 18, 2024 21:24:02 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Yes, eating the right foods does contribute to health, however, it's the chemical level, and that's the lowest level in terms of effectiveness. There are other factors, like intention, mood and state of being which usually get ignored because it's difficult to qualify, quantify and analyze them in scientifically satisfying terms. Nevertheless, those other factors are of a much higher order in terms of effectiveness and therefore have a lot more influence on health. And without considering these factors you cannot explain why some people who eat all the right food and do all the right exercises still get cancer and why some people who do the exact opposite remain healthy.

As the basic rules of deliberate creation state, your actions don't matter much, what matters is your state of being while you perform those actions. Eating only healthy foods but from a state of fear of cancer will still get you cancer in the end (see Moorjani's story). Your mood and state of being is way more powerful, it can override everything, even those seeming  'laws' of physics, chemistry and biology (again, see Moorjani's story).

So while food and exercise are factors to consider, they are not the main factor, or the only factor as some want us to believe.

Butt... you have to somewhat radically depart from the default collective belief system in order to pull that off. And you can't talk to normies about that, not even to spiritually oriented people as we've seen here, because they will make you doubt with their realism and what-is-itis. So I'd say it's not by accident that the Patanjali yogis go into the forest or into the mountains to practice, so that these false belief systems that usually surround one in the company of others, are eliminated. 

My mum used to say that a peep in a certain mind set could consume poison and it wouldn't effect them, same as the yogis that would lower their heart beat enough so to almost be in a hibernated state where one's body temperature could withstand being naked in a blizzard. These are all mind over matter related states and go against the grain of normality for use of a better word.

Ordinarily I am just saying that everything has a signature that reflects their quality, whether it be an orange or a quartz crystal.

Without any mindful intervention such qualities will hit the mark time and time again, just like certain processes will that revolve around diet and fitness will.

I understand the doctrine of signature. And I also accept that each reality system comes with its own particular set of rules. However, those rules are not absolute rules, you can override them. It doesn't mean you should or have to, it just means that it is possible and sometimes maybe even advisable.

[Reefs]

Feb 23, 2024 15:00:26 GMT -5 tenka said:

Feb 22, 2024 6:12:24 GMT -5 Reefs said:

LOA is the larger context. LOK is the smaller context. LOK is limited to the personal context, but does not apply in the impersonal context. LOA, however, does apply both in the personal and impersonal context. As an example, LOK does not apply in the dream state, or to so-called ‘inanimate’ objects, but LOA still does. Which is why LOK, at best, is only a special case of LOA.

.. Well LOK can apply to the personal and the impersonal depending on what one refers too as being both.

There is personal Karma and there is collective Karma and there is Global Karma. Collective Karma can relate to soul groups and it can refer to individual countries. Global reflecting the universe as a whole. That's why what happens on Earth has a knock on effect to everywhere else.

At the end of the day like said a few times without reply, Karma has to stick to something like mud has to stick to something in order to stick.

If the person is just an illusion then LOK is dead in the water with nowhere to go. No foundation that carries any weight.

LOA works in the same vein. Something has to attract something otherwise the illusory peep is just wasting their breath trying to convince another illusory peep that LOA works for them.

Personal context here means subject to time and space and cause and effect. And sure, both LOK and LOA are ideas about What-Is, and as such not the ultimate truth. But in the context of relative truths, LOA trumps LOK for the reasons mentioned. 

[Reefs]

Feb 24, 2024 0:09:00 GMT -5 inavalan said:

Feb 23, 2024 23:44:41 GMT -5 lolly said:

blah blah

I don't understand why you're so dismissive based only on your impression and the establishment's opinion that agrees with that, and don't look at some data, like the links I've posted today. I realize that you don't understand the phenomenon, and even less you have a hypothesis how it might work. That's the "beginner's mind", and its definition was only a search away, but you just stated you don't know what that is, just to dismiss it, and to throw a baseless shadow of doubt, like in the case of placebo, LOA, Jesus, ... everything that doesn't agree with your beliefs

Feb 24, 2024 3:16:03 GMT -5 andrew said:

Feb 24, 2024 3:05:37 GMT -5 lolly said:

blah blah

Oddly, I'm getting the impression that you aren't reading what I'm saying. In the other message, I assumed it was my fault, but now....I'm not sure you are reading what I'm saying.

Feb 24, 2024 10:27:02 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 23, 2024 0:31:26 GMT -5 lolly said:

blah blah

Obviously, you didn't understand my debunk of LOK at all. It's a debunk by context. TEN destroys LOK, but not LOA. 

Try actually reading what people write for a change. 

Anybody (except Lolly) notice something?

[inavalan]

Feb 24, 2024 10:40:37 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 23, 2024 13:48:10 GMT -5 laughter said:

Speaking from experience, the materialist assumption is embedded pretty deep. Even when it's being questioned, consciously, it's still influential on the overall perspective. The story I tell about debating E' on freewill a year after the bottom dropping out of "I" is a related example. During that time, I knew in my bones there was no intellectual explanation, but still, the existential questions would recur, centered around the interpretation of QM. I would respectfully disagree with the conclusion that noting the charlatans and the alternative rational explanations is a straw man.

Dec 4, 2022 5:14:47 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Below is a quote from the book Anything Can Be Healed by Martin Brofman. It basically describes deliberate creation from a healer's perspective.


@ Inavalan: I think you are going to like this, it should be pretty close to your own model of reality


@ Robert: This is basically what I have been trying to convey in our other conversations. MB presents it in a very logical, easy to understand way. Let me know if that makes some sense to you.


@ Lolly:  This speaks also to the point I made some time ago that in terms of health, diet or the chemical level is the lowest and least effective level of engagement.



Here's the quote:

I am more radical than him on the alternate realities concept.   

[laughter]

Feb 23, 2024 23:15:26 GMT -5 lolly said:

Feb 23, 2024 13:29:00 GMT -5 laughter said:

Seems to me, from the outside looking in, that this is why Zen is so different from other Buddhist variants. "Beginner's mind", for example, turns Dunning Kruger inside out. Zen doesn't seem to me to negate or deny "Dunning Kruger", per se, but offers a radically shifted perspective on it. Same with what some might deride as "Neo-Advaita". I'd prefer, "direct path nonduality". It's not about gain or improvement. It's about subtraction. Traditional Advaita Vedanta has the same flavor: neti-neti. It's buried in Christianity as well. And this isn't a critique of scholarship, either. It's just that the existential truth is both sideways to all spiritual cultures and also buried within the "hidden center" of every specific genuine spiritual culture.

I've heard of it, of course, but I don't really know what Beginner's Mind refers to. Jesus dude, you'd have to dig a deep hole and close your eyes in the dark to find Neti buried in Christianity, but seek and ye shall find, right...... Right?

yeah, I'd get why you'd say that .. but, ever hear of "Lent"?

I'm talking about practitioners, people who pray, look inward and try their best to live up to the ideal. It's not a path of insight, no, but all roads lead to the same .. well, .. you know ... (also, note the presentation .. yes, I had to "dig" it out)

[laughter]

Feb 23, 2024 7:01:32 GMT -5 lolly said:

C'mon guys, scientists document inexplicable things all the time. The placebo effect is a metric in every study for a start (how's that even a thing?) but over time the odds play out and we report comparisons, means, averages and degrees of statistical significance having accounted for variances between individuals and the area under the bell curve. I mean there are many different methodologies and statistical models, but generally speaking, that's how scientific inquiry goes.

Unlike miracle workers, I approach from a science based perspective and adjust according to an individual's response to stimulus. It's pretty deft, and I dare say my record of bringing long-term benefit and reversing chronic conditions outstrips that of any faith healer, but of course I also believe in faith healings, though they are quite rare and the factors are complex, so I can't pontificate from a paranormal place since the ideal isn't the same as the reality on the ground.

Extend your vigil for flowers to the possibility of noticing "whoa, that was weird! " for a few months, then get back to me.

[laughter]

Feb 24, 2024 0:13:46 GMT -5 lolly said:

Feb 23, 2024 23:54:43 GMT -5 inavalan said:

duckduckgo.com/"Beginner%27s+mind"

• Shoshin (Japanese: 初心) is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning beginner's mind. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying, even at an advanced level, just as a beginner would. The term is especially used in the study of Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts, and was popularized outside of Japan by Shunryū Suzuki's 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
  
  The practice of shoshin acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking of oneself as an expert. This includes the Einstellung effect, where a person becomes so accustomed to a certain way of doing things that they do not consider or acknowledge new ideas or approaches. The word shoshin is a combination of sho (Japanese: 初), meaning "beginner" or "initial", and shin (Japanese: 心), meaning "mind".
  
  --- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin

Ok, I can google wiki probably even better than you can (no one googles better than me), and I would have done that faster and more proficiency myself, but my logic is, if a "beginner's" mind is good, a "haven't even started yet" mind must be much better, so in order to retain my clearly superior position, I did not google "Beginner's mind", even though I'm definitely the best googler that will ever live.

.. what can happen is that meditation can get into a rut eventually. Also, some people seem to experience some seriously deep shifts in perspective when they first start. It's a wonderfully "fractal" process, because what is discovered by "beginner's mind" .. "later" .. is not the same as what was discovered the first time ...

[lolly]

Feb 24, 2024 21:21:26 GMT -5 laughter said:

Feb 23, 2024 23:15:26 GMT -5 lolly said:

I've heard of it, of course, but I don't really know what Beginner's Mind refers to. Jesus dude, you'd have to dig a deep hole and close your eyes in the dark to find Neti buried in Christianity, but seek and ye shall find, right...... Right?

yeah, I'd get why you'd say that .. but, ever hear of "Lent"?

I'm talking about practitioners, people who pray, look inward and try their best to live up to the ideal. It's not a path of insight, no, but all roads lead to the same .. well, .. you know ... (also, note the presentation .. yes, I had to "dig" it out)

I was raised Christian, not so much at first, but it intensified as time went on, and after I was an adult, it went right off the rails. It almost stuck, but when I was a year out of home aged 19 the whole thing came tumbling down when I realised the whole belief I was brought up on was laughable. No gradual dissection or deconstruction, but a sudden and total collapse of all faith.

[lolly]

Feb 24, 2024 21:28:09 GMT -5 laughter said:

Feb 23, 2024 7:01:32 GMT -5 lolly said:

C'mon guys, scientists document inexplicable things all the time. The placebo effect is a metric in every study for a start (how's that even a thing?) but over time the odds play out and we report comparisons, means, averages and degrees of statistical significance having accounted for variances between individuals and the area under the bell curve. I mean there are many different methodologies and statistical models, but generally speaking, that's how scientific inquiry goes.

Unlike miracle workers, I approach from a science based perspective and adjust according to an individual's response to stimulus. It's pretty deft, and I dare say my record of bringing long-term benefit and reversing chronic conditions outstrips that of any faith healer, but of course I also believe in faith healings, though they are quite rare and the factors are complex, so I can't pontificate from a paranormal place since the ideal isn't the same as the reality on the ground.

Extend your vigil for flowers to the possibility of noticing "whoa, that was weird! " for a few months, then get back to me.

I'll do it.

[laughter]

Feb 24, 2024 10:34:32 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 23, 2024 13:29:00 GMT -5 laughter said:

Seems to me, from the outside looking in, that this is why Zen is so different from other Buddhist variants. "Beginner's mind", for example, turns Dunning Kruger inside out. Zen doesn't seem to me to negate or deny "Dunning Kruger", per se, but offers a radically shifted perspective on it. Same with what some might deride as "Neo-Advaita". I'd prefer, "direct path nonduality". It's not about gain or improvement. It's about subtraction. Traditional Advaita Vedanta has the same flavor: neti-neti. It's buried in Christianity as well. And this isn't a critique of scholarship, either. It's just that the existential truth is both sideways to all spiritual cultures and also buried within the "hidden center" of every specific genuine spiritual culture.

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real

Irony all the way 'round. I skimmed the article. It might be an example of stats lying to themselves. My intuition is that the effect seems to make sense because many of us have experienced failing at something we thought we were good at, and it's easy to notice someone who's both inexperienced and overconfident. So the effect is likely a thing, but rather, particularized, rather than generally applicable to everyone involved in every learning curve.