Carl-Richard

I read the thing. It seems to feed into the points in my other thread (the replication crisis, etc.).

Your title is misleading. The musicians in the study actually had higher IQs on average than the non-musicians (119.49 IQ ± 7.84 vs. 116.69 IQ ± 7.85). The study specifically looks at "sensation seeking" in relationship to music. This is how they define it: So, assuming that their questionnaire accurately reflects how they define sensation seeking above, it would be more accurate to say that extroverted people who like to go to loud concerts while probably getting drunk and meeting a lot of people is what has been shown to correlate with lower IQ. It's not "high music consumption" that correlates with lower IQ. Based on my personal experience, I do feel that if I've played guitar intensely for a while, sometimes I'll be unable to think clearly for 5-10 minutes afterwards. But the way I generally engage with music is still vastly different from what has been described above, as well as in the questionnaire itself. I wouldn't describe my relationship to music as "music has offered me magnificent experiences; I want to feel the music in my whole body; I want to listen to music that evokes feelings in me". I would describe it as connecting deeply with something beautiful or interesting. And according to the study, this would make sense, as I'm an extreme introvert. So yeah, next time, maybe actually read the study you're referencing and you'll maybe end up not looking like somebody with a low IQ

I would modify your hypothesis to "women might be more sensitive to subtle things". I'll admit, "absolute black" does sound kinda weird. "Isn't that brand the same as your purse?" does sound like it could be funny when said in a certain context. But these are small things. Unless the vibe you're picking up from them is actually evil, just laugh with them: "yeah, that was kind of weird". Don't take yourself too seriously.

@newbee Religion comes in many shapes and sizes.

Either say you're guessing, or say that it's for the sake of the argument (the argument that you made later which actually seems reasonable if you grant the premises). Don't just say "it's 50%".

Bro you're like so confident in your own bullshit

No, that still implies intent Well, then you should be hypercritical of the fact that you haven't read the study and found out which hormones they used

Consider how in school, you'll be assigned to learn multiple subjects "at the same time", yet you should be able to learn all the subjects. Another example: English is my second language. My mother tongue didn't really suffer when I started learning English. However, the thing about languages is that if you don't use it actively, it will not develop very far. So if the time you spend on one language takes up the time you spend on another, then that has an impact.

Nope. You could do a dive on Google Scholar (no pun intended).

That's not lying ? That would be misinformation. Lying implies intent to deceive. But you haven't read the study so you don't know.

Well, addressing the crisis in the field does start with questioning one's methodologies and then making them more rigorous and maybe changing them. We've been given many examples of all of those things. For example, should we move from the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing paradigm to a Bayesian paradigm for our inferential statistics? Should we mostly focus on how we construct our hypotheses (theory-focused) or how we test them (empirically focused)? Should we focus on doing direct replications or conceptual replications? Are there better alternatives to preregistration? The list goes on. I would say there is a mix of all that in this course, maybe not so much politics of science. The beginning parts were mostly philosophy of science and scientific methodology. Again, very Kuhnian of you. Remember, we also had some heavy hitters after Kuhn, e.g. Lakatos, who had a more mixed view on that (Popper was mostly a "good science = progress" guy; Kuhn was again more sociological; Lakatos was in-between). I've had a soft spot for Feyerabend and his anarchism since I first read about him years ago, but we didn't get to read much about him now (he is a bit fringe I guess). I'll think about that.

You awaken to Terrence McKenna asking you if you met the humans.

https://www.metalunderground.com/reviews/details.cfm?releaseid=2285 Cynic is one of my favorite bands, and when I discovered Exivious some years ago, it was a bit too jazzy for me to really understand, but then over the years, as I've listened to more jazz fusion (like Allan Holdsworth, who is in a way beyond jazz if you ask me, but anyways), when I went back to Exivious, I fell in love. The psychedelic atmosphere, the picked jazz chords, the technical metal riffs, the daring tone choices, the musicianship; everything is just

Maybe a weird question, but what do you consider a noble profession or pursuit in life?

Well, then it's a shame that this is exactly what they're doing, at least in my program which is aimed towards research. Our first course has been almost nothing but philosophy of science and questions around the limitations of methodologies, standards of scientific practice, etc. And let me demonstrate that by calling your position "nothing but" a pessimistic take on Kuhn: "just stick to your dusty old paradigm and do normal science; that's what scientists do best, that's how science really progresses" (even though Kuhn didn't think psychology even qualifies as a scientific paradigm... maybe I demonstrated your point for you ?).

Who me? Yes, I've played soccer actively in my early youth. The goal of the conversation above was not to make the case that soccer players are less mindful or intelligent (or the opposite). The goal was to deconstruct Bobby's addiction to the availability heuristic and allergy to quantitative science.

I haven't made a claim yet. Like I stated earlier, my goal with engaging with your points and providing counterexamples was to demonstrate the fact that you can always bring up counterexamples or competing hypotheses. And I can continue doing that, or I can just restate my point: I think it's generally OK to make some observations on a topic and present a hypothesis without doing an in-depth empirical investigation. That is just what we do as humans. That said, if you want to do an actual serious investigation into a question like "does x correlate with y?", you should probably want to rigorously test your hypothesis at some point. And at that point, it makes little sense to only confine yourself to a small amount of observations. Instead, you probably want to survey a large sample of observations and see if there is a pattern there. That way you can also more easily get a measurement of how strong or weak the supposed correlation is. And that is what quantitative science does. So my critique to you is that, sure, what you're saying could be a good hypothesis, but are you willing to test it to see if it matches up to reality? (and this topic is about the degree to which our attempts to do that are commendable or even possible).

Like I said, there is no mention of "music" in the MAAS. Whatever "repetitive" means in this case is so incredibly vague. For example, what is the defining level of analysis for "action"? Is a punch really just one action, or does it involve a huge set of actions? A successful punch will depend on a lot of factors (timing, speed, precision, force, stance, movement of the opponent, movement of yourself, etc.), which are all factors that constantly change in a fight. No two fights are the same, and no two punches are the same. From that perspective, boxing cannot be repetitive. But again, unless you have a good way of quantifying it, it's meaningless to try to draw any sharp distinctions. If you "ignore" stimuli while running (any style; long-distance, sprint), you'll not be a good runner. If anything, your ability to run maps on perfectly with your ability to enter a flow state, which overlaps conceptually with mindfulness. Same with boxing. You can't "ignore" anything. If you do, you'll get bopped on the head. Why is mindfulness so often associated with martial arts? Shaolin monks? Bruce Lee? ("Be like water"). Even Joe Rogan talks about it. Why not? So is your position unfalsifiable then?: you cannot be as good as Messi if you're less mindful than Messi, so you can't find a counterexample of somebody who is as good as Messi who is less mindful than Messi. So again, what would it take for you to change your mind? So far, it doesn't seem like anything can change your mind.

Sure, we need more vision and investment, but this really applies to all research (not just spirituality). For example, 10 years ago, everybody was talking about the disturbing lack of replication studies, but nobody had the balls to actually perform a large-scale replication study to assess the problem (because contrary to what some might think, scientists don't actually like to do replication studies). Then the Open Science Collaboration did such a study, and then we got some numbers about the replication crisis. So even in the most mainstream parts of science, we need more vision, more investment, more science. Spirituality is a bit more affected because it's a niche topic, but still, people are studying it. Speaking of something that needs more research: when I read or think about methods of science (especially while imagining some experimental design), my mind consistently brings up images of a particular stadium I used to go to in my youth, often with our school in some gym classes. Why?! Does my brain just happen to use the same parts for those two things? Did my mind just randomly use that place as a template for imagining complicated processes one time and kept rolling with it? Or is it because I've usually associated that place with complicated processes involving people, like different sports where you have to follow rules, or long-distance running with x amounts of laps, or sprints where you have to wait for the gunshot and use a particular technique, etc.? Or maybe it's just a failure of introspection and I'm misrepresenting what is actually happening? (and how can you test that?)

Ok, so you're not suggesting any radical new methodologies, just existing methodologies aimed at investigating spirituality? Well, science is already doing that (and has done so for over a century e.g. William James). These are the first three results when you look up "neural correlates of spirituality" in Google Scholar: Neural correlates of personalized spiritual experiences. Classic Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phenomenology and Neural Correlates Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns

Give me an example of a study involving spirituality that science doesn't already do.

The vibes and the feels of especially the later parts.

I see.

Wut