[Help] How Should I Approach Magic in a Scientific World?

[Durward]

The problem is your premise. Science doesn't know how consciousness or the placebo effect work, either. But they seem to be repeatable under certain conditions. But we genuinely don't know exactly why some things make people lose consciousness and not others.

Does that invalidate study of those things? Of course not. Science is a process. It's not a collection of settled fact.

Magic is poorly studied, often due to bias on the part of people who study it rarely, and only to "debunk" it, starting with a bias against it. Plenty of studies have happened that prove psi abilities not only exist, but that their effects are statistically significant and repeatable - if you believe in them. That last part is usually the critical factor that scientists neglect when replicating studies, then get null results and claim they did the experiment right (to other people also looking to "debunk" something and ignoring the obvious error) and it's just one more example of bias and subjectivity on the part of scientists.

I can debunk the sun is real by doing experiments meant to observe the sun at midnight every night. Doesn't mean it's correct, it means I have a bias that prevents me from doing the study in a way that is how an expert in the field of knowing how the sun works would also tell me is going to yield observations.

Magic, which is the power of intent to shape our world and experience in it, is very much real. And you don't need to call it magic to see the effects. But not knowing the method by which some people focus and use their intent, science only searches for slight of hand or charlatanism because that's the only thing they know how to observe.

Did you know that 100 scientists signed a scathing letter about the Theory of Relatively, demanding that Einstein retract such a clearly preposterous piece of fantasy? That's the scientific consensus for you - human emotion and subjectivity. They were all prominent researchers who were wrong AF. There's a lit review from which you can start.

Sounds like we actually agree on certain things, and you may have missed my point, which is simply that some people are meant to be dreamwalkers, and not anything else. Others will never be dreamwalkers, they just are not cut out for it. The majority of people are simply bat shit crazy and delusional, or mentally ill. That is a serious fact of this subject matter.
It is about the individual, and the skills of each individual. You can practice some magickal practice your whole life and never have any success, because a bird isn't a turtle, and we don't all have the same skills or energetic configurations. It is as simple as that.

Where you went with the science aspect, yes and no to your statements. I have followed and studied the science aspect of many Psi phenomena experiments that went well, and the huge pile of failures. And it all points to the skilled practitioner as the key ingredient. The very common mental health issues of those who are off kilter is what leads to most of the failed attempts, and poor science results. People who are deranged trying to perform for actual science, when most of what they do is hallucination or imagination. They waste everyone's time and they exist everywhere.
Another failure of science is taking 150 students in a local college to test something. This is a perfect example of scientists not understanding the basic and necessary ingredient, which is someone who actually can do something, a skilled person that has control over their abilities. Even then, the setting has to be correct, since it is now obvious that a solar flare can actually block even a skilled person. So the failure is also not understanding the proper setting, with all the proper ingredients in place.

Psi phenomena will never dance to any other music than it's own, and science has to come to that party to study it.

We have enough proof of multiple Psi events, and human control and influence of multiple things, and most of these things make sense from many different hypothetical and theoretical points of view. Trying to keep this in a secret magical box is coming to an end, perhaps slowly. When we do have explanations, the closet practitioners are usually the first to cry about it. Not updating your common sense and logic is a bad sign that you have lost your ability to use critical thinking. Preferring magical explanations when there are perfectly reasonable physics explanations is another way to feed your own bias. So bias goes both ways, and the losers of that challenge are always the superstitions and fake-believe nonsense followers.

However, my statement is always 'Prove It' for a reason, and that reason is that we have way too many people with mental health issues or delusions that think they, or others, can do things they seriously can't. These people should not be instructing, or writing books, or speaking out like they are authorities, when all most of them need are serious medications.

There are likely other forums for the DND or LARP folks and their fantasy poser roles. I do consider the inability to separate fantasy from reality an illness.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Success in magic is perceived as luck - luck does not cause magic

 

[Durward]

Success in magic is perceived as luck - luck does not cause magic

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[Swampdweller900]

And it all points to the skilled practitioner as the key ingredient.

I think we agree on most points as you say, though certainly not all. Case in point, that the person is key. It seems like you're saying as a sort of natural talent. Psi abilities or magic use can be learned, and while some people have a natural talent or ability, I would guess that the ratios are about the same as people who have a natural propensity towards language or psychical strength or coordination, etc. Some people can learn or be taught without seeming to have a natural strength, and get quite good. Some people might never get good despite a lot of effort.

IMO, it's a bit reversed. We see skilled practitioners that stand out to the point they go on TV and gain media attention.

A skilled practitioner is key to replicability or study the same way that if it was a study to find out what is the absolute maximum weight a human can lift, asking 200 18-25 year old college students will not get you the same result as 50 gym rats, and certainly not the same as looking at the world's top 10 power lifters. The problem is that scientific study of magic or psi seems to chose the first option and throw a gym rat that steps forward into the mix, and can't figure out why they get the results they get.

But let's also recall that a scientific method that is often not sensitive to understanding how magic or psi works doesn't know how to test it. If you watched the Korean show Physical 100, it's looking for the "ideal body" by running people through tests. The guys that lift tons of weight and ended up going fairly far don't do well at the very first task, hanging from a scaffold. Many drop almost immediately because they don't train for THAT exactly, and also their weight works against them. Similarly, scientific studies are the blind leading the blind, and the Amazing Randy leveraged this specifically for his own notoriety. He designed "tests" that only experts would know were guaranteed to fail. Only fools, egotists, and amateurs would attempt them, and always fail. To an unwitting audience, he "tested' the abilities.

Also worth noting is that a skilled practitioner has confidence they can do what they will do. Society does a lot of work to tell most people that what we do doesn't exist, that it's fraud or fake or lies. To the point that IIRC, one experiment on thought affecting a random number generator showed some people negatively affected the outcomes, because those people believed it wouldn't work so hard that they pushed the average down, not up as they were told to do for the experiment.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

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I read that and it is very interesting - some sensible advice. The interesting one is "use your intuition" and then one example he gives is a guy who listened to his intuition and decided not to get on a plane - then the plane crashed. So, Mr. Wiseman, how did you think that worked in your sceptical outlook? Can people subconsciously 'cold read' aeroplanes now?