Carl-Richard

It's funny you say that, because some critique from another paper I've read talked about how most psychology research, partially due to the relative death of behaviorism and birth of cognitive psychology, has shifted away from actually observing behavior and over to trying to explain behavior using some theoretical mechanism and measuring that mechanism using some indirect measurement like a questionnaire. So the question then becomes: is psychology any longer a study of behavior, or is it a study of speculations about mechanisms behind behavior and indirect measurements of said behavior? Mmm. The paper that talks about the "generalization crisis" says that one possible course of action for psychology is to move away from quantitative approaches and embrace qualitative approaches, i.e. approaches that don't rely on inferential statistics for their conclusions. So the field limits itself to descriptive statistics (e.g. "the study looked at 20 women in a school setting"), makes interesting observations and verbal conclusions (e.g. "these people think x, these other people think y"), and avoids conclusions like "the p-value is less than .05, therefore there is a statistically significant correlation between the two variables, and therefore our hypothesis has been corroborated". The problematic part about the latter that causes the generalization crisis is the inferential jump from "there is a significant correlation" to "our hypothesis has been corroborated", because the specific conditions that produced the statistics (the research design; the stimuli, experimenters, measurement instruments, etc.) are usually not mentioned in the hypothesis. Hence there is a tendency to generalize from one research finding to a larger conclusion when that is not actually warranted. But you might say that if we choose to only make highly specific conclusions, e.g. "there was a significant correlation in this setting, given these research parameters, etc.", we can avoid the generalization problem, but this puts the cart before the horse in the sense that we still use these generalized hypotheses to drive our research and focus in on what we think is relevant. If we do continue making research questions around a general hypothesis but only report highly specific conclusions that never actually address the general hypothesis in any satisfying way, then we're never getting what we're after. We're instead fooling ourselves in a way, doing what Feynman called "cargo cult science"; thinking we're doing important work because the cool-looking statistics seem to add up, but it never actually points to any important conclusion. So what both of you said seems to point in that direction of embracing qualitative over quantitative research, i.e. merely inquiring into some behavior or asking somebody for their experiences without relying on any hard statistics for your conclusions, a bit like philosophy. That said, there are attempts at improving the quantitative approach which may help save it somewhat, but I'll maybe save going into that for later.

That is the problem, isn't it? Does it only sound like we're doing science or are we actually doing science?

Have you heard about the concept of top-down and bottom-up processing? It shows how your experience of the world is neither fully explained by discrete sensory inputs nor by a fully dissociated imagination. So your question might involve a false dichotomy (the example I brought up is not the only way to make that case).

Meta-meta-systematic reviews of double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, large-scale registered replication reports — only the highest level of scientific evidence on the matter.

Since Leo seems to be the main source of authority for you, Leo also talks (or used to, or at least alluded to when talking about SD Stage Blue) about the wisdom of tradition. If there is anything you should put authority on (other than yourself), it's the wisdom of a thousand men. Besides, nowhere is it written that spirituality must be practiced alone in your room where the only access to spiritual knowledge and contact with like-minded people is through a computer screen. That is nothing but a highly unfortunate cultural fluke.

@Brandon Nankivell Holy grave digging. Please make your own thread next time. Now people will respond to people who will never respond back. Did he actually say that? It seems like word salad. What outcome is he talking about? Is he concerned about the DMT experience being different for everyone? That's life.

I mean, considering how metaphysics and spirituality aren't exactly science, Actualized.org is at least not very scientific. That said, Leo doesn't present his claims about metaphysics and spirituality as if they were scientific, so it's not pseudoscience. If we're strictly talking about misinformation and inaccurate reporting, that would certainly apply to the forum. As for Leo's videos and blog posts, maybe not so much.

What the fook are you talking about?

I found out the 13 IQ increase guy was practicing using Quad n-back, not Dual n-Back. After getting to 83% success on Quad 2-back, I tried doing Quad 3-Back just now and it's so hard. The jump from 2-Back to 3-Back when you have to remember 4 different chunks of information all at once is aggressive.

I don't see the connection.

What do you mean by that? What concrete things makes you think there will be a clash?

@Gidiot We're not very good at predicting the weather, but we still have different names for different types of weather. An umbrella is only a symptomatic suppressant for rainy weather, but we still prefer using it when it's rainy. Nobody really starts speculating about metaphysics when the weatherman diagnoses the weather, and nobody really thinks that much about whether or not to take meteorology seriously. Again, I think people tend to get fixated on a critical view of something when it affects them personally. For people with mental illnesses being critical of psychiatry, it can be social stigma. For spiritual people being critical of say science, it can be scientists pushing back against their worldview. In both cases, the response is understandable, but it's largely driven by an emotional investment and sometimes plain ignorance of the facts. On the note of metaphysical speculation, the times people do invoke metaphysical speculations about the weather is more often when it affects them personally. For example, some Americans might think that God wanted to punish them when the tornado destroyed their house and nobody else's. But most people who observe that from the outside will think that it's of course primarily an emotional response rather than a logical one.

Like you, Leo apologized. Other moderators are still able to see the posts.

I looked at the article some more, and quite ironically, virtually all the points she brings up, I've heard been brought up from within the scientific establishment (or at least the education side of it). I feel there is a tendency for laymen to latch onto a critical view of some field they know very little about when it affects them personally (which is understandable) and to also think that they're the only ones to see what they're seeing. As I got futher into my education, I also started seeing Leo falling into this pattern to some degree. People give little credit to the actual scientists who try to provide solutions to these problems and want to go by rough extrinsic appearances that are 20 years behind the current frontier and tear down a strawman. But hey, sometimes the best critiques come from outside a paradigm. You still have to be realistic though.

But if you can't eliminate existing bullshit, you should try to polish it. And we can't eliminate the need to classify people as psychologically unwell, at least not in our current society.

@Danioover9000 My guy, my dude, buddy, we're not talking about waking up in the morning. Razard thinks saying "autism is just a theory" is a sign of mysticism and spiritual awakening

If you want my personal experience with the side effects of nofap (after several weeks and months): oversensitivity to sounds and textures muscle stiffness and aches trouble with falling asleep a feeling of being psychologically ungrounded and "on edge" emotional flatness and numbness zero sex drive ("flat line") but also overstimulation from just looking at a girl lack of social and physical finesse Some confounding factors might be that I was meditating at least 1 hour every day at that time, and that I had recently discontinued a long period of drug use.

Well, I don't believe you're literally Jesus Christ, and I don't think you will ever convince anybody on here that you are.

If you insist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Diagnostic manuals for psychiatric diseases do have legitimate issues that are valid to question, and it basically boils down to the fact that it's hard to measure something psychological using quantitative measurements (the things that make us think physical sciences are more scientific). I won't disagree with that. I could've through this gone point by point, but I think this one quote is sufficient: But not the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)? The existence of many of these concepts predate both the DCM and the ICD. Maybe the better way to put it is that the DSM and the ICD help us define better what we mean by these terms and how we should diagnose and treat them, because what existed before was not better (i.e. some paternalistic psychoanalyst merely making the authoritative decision that based on their expertise and clinical experience with the patient, the patient has x disease). We should appreciate that there are attempts at making universalized systems for classifying diseases that holds the practitioners to at least some standards other than their own. But again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be better.

NO WAY! He did the solo in Konnakol: 1:56 Insane.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Why?: 1. "Scientific knowledge is purely the product of social forces, power struggles, and politics. The natural world has no role in the construction of scientific knowledge". 2. "There is no absolute truth; true or false is always relative to someone's perspective, it's just a preference to believe certain things". 3. "Physical reality is a social and linguistic construct". 4. "The science of one society is no more valid than that of another".

But what is the message that Christ wishes to send humanity? (and can you say it in a way that does not invoke the image of Christ?) Are you using Christ as a metaphor or are you implying that you're literally Jesus Christ and that there is nothing else you're trying to say?

And the truth is?

If you read my elaboration above, the author was actually presenting arguments for why the bolded statements are unreasonable. My problem with him was not his arguments per se, but his overall conclusion (i.e. that you should adopt a realist language game: "theories are pointing at truth!"). My frustration is partially that I feel less and less that there is just one true way to talk about things, but also that I value the relativist language game a bit more. I do like to think of theories as "useful fictions", because it keeps our feet to the fire of the truth that we're inextricably intertwined with our theories, and the alternative makes you more prone to the worst kinds of self-deception.

He has one thread where he sometimes speaks from the absolute perspective. He doesn't seem to be shoving it in people's faces.