How should scientists approach their research while being truth oriented

[Nahm]

@Thanatos13 It really can be as simple as stating what you want in life, and opening up about the obstacles that arise within and circumstantially. Talking it through. Meditating every morning. Taking care of ourselves, maintaining good health. Getting to a balanced place. Some inner peace. THEN, just consider psychedelics. Maybe read from a few authors on their experience. It will always, always boil down to your own though. 

[Thanatos13]

6 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Thanatos13 It really can be as simple as stating what you want in life, and opening up about the obstacles that arise within and circumstantially. Talking it through. Meditating every morning. Taking care of ourselves, maintaining good health. Getting to a balanced place. Some inner peace. THEN, just consider psychedelics. Maybe read from a few authors on their experience. It will always, always boil down to your own though. 

Or not. It’s funny how people assume that because an experience is powerful that it means anything. Human bias at work. 

You should know that meditation can cause mental scars for people, this sort of disproved that meditation is a total good.

stating what you want in life does nothing, because there isn’t a guarantee you’ll get it. Even maintaining good health doesn’t mean you’ll not get a heart attack next day, or hit by a car. 

Sorry, but life is NEVER that simple

[Staples]

34 minutes ago, Thanatos13 said:

Spiritual experiences don’t prove anything, they just reinforce preconceived notions. 

Do science and materialism prove anything either in your worldview?

34 minutes ago, Thanatos13 said:

Your first paragraph is exactly the reason I doubt enlightenment exists. “I can’t explain it or prove it, you’ll just have to see it yourself”. That’s the line for either the stupid or gullible. It’s used to avoid critical examination of our experience and wonder whether it was true or not. Time and again people have said “see for yourself” and time and again they don’t stand under questioning. 

I can see why you think that. It makes sense to me too, and it is a little irk I have towards spiritual work too. But it can't really be any other way, it's literally the only topic I can think of that can't be explained because by definition in a sense it can't be explained. A common defence of it still remaining true even though it can't be explained is "spiritual experiences feel more real than real", I can't comment on that, but can you? Have you ever had an experience that feels more real than real? Are you willing to be wrong? Would you rather be wrong for the rest of your life and not know it because you never tried to test your assumptions? You say the line is used to avoid criticism, perhaps, but you're also avoiding the possibility of being wrong because you don't seem to want to open up to it just a tiny bit. You can't ever have the correct and unbiased viewpoint here until you dive into the unknown, then come back with your findings.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Staples

[Leo Gura]

If you guys aren't open to learning, why are you here?

I've told you things which are extremely nuanced and profound. This stuff requires years of work to understand. Coming here and acting cocky and flippant is not going to cut it.

It's extremely obvious that you have not glimpsed the Absolute or thought deeply about the nature of science or epistemology. Yet here you are trying to advance some position.

Be careful not to underestimate reality. It does not work the way you think.

[Thanatos13]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

If you guys aren't open to learning, why are you here?

I've told you things which are extremely nuanced and profound. This stuff requires years of work to understand. Coming here and acting cocky and flippant is not going to cut it.

It's extremely obvious that you have not glimpsed the Absolute or thought deeply about the nature of science or epistemology. Yet here you are trying to advance some position.

Be careful not to underestimate reality. It does not work the way you think.

It’s funny hearing you say that considering the amount of errors I find in your videos. I can post them anywhere else and people can see through them.

You haven’t said anything nauanced or profound, at least what hasn’t been repeated over and over for hundreds of years.

You haven’t studied epistemology or science as in depth as you claim for you don’t know how either work. Let alone skepticism.

That whole “years of work” is just a cop out for when any philosophy 101 student can see the flaws. The length of the videos doesn’t make them deep or correct, just tedious (especially without a transcript). 

I doubt the existence of the Absolute and anyone who says they have. Because that’s what skeptics do, they doubt. But spirituality hides behind “ego” and “mind” to avoid giving an answer. Direct experience doesn’t affirm their case either. Plenty of people have had experiences that had alternate explanations. 

Im open to learning, but when the reason you have for knowing something is “because i just do” or “because I say so” then it’s belief. You cannot say all claims are ultimately groundless and then begin to make claims as though they were truth. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

So far Science has worked out rather well for me and my life and spirituality has done jack. But at least science has the honesty to admit it doesn’t have perfect knowledge and that it doesn’t know, Karl Popper knew that. It’s been wrong but also right at times. It’s not perfect but it works. That’s all I need to know. 

I have spoken to plenty of people who did psychedelics or claimed to experience “truth” and none of them have the ego or sense of certainty that you do. But I’m sure you still have your echo chamber to tell you you’re great. It’s laughable. 

[SOUL]

4 minutes ago, Thanatos13 said:

So far Science has worked out rather well for me and my life

I guess if you mean being a self suffering misery monger openly whining about life being worthless and meaningless so why prolong it at all is "worked out rather well" then yea..... so be it.

[SOUL]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

inner peace.

this

[Thanatos13]

17 minutes ago, SOUL said:

I guess if you mean being a self suffering misery monger openly whining about life being worthless and meaningless so why prolong it at all is "worked out rather well" then yea..... so be it.

Actually that was nihilism and antinatalism. 

[Joseph Maynor]

I don't see why a Scientist could not also be Enlightened.  They would be watching themselves play the Science game.  There's much worse ways to make a living, I can tell you.  Scientists are just explicit theorists.  Most people keep their ideas to themselves.  Science tries to shove theirs down everyone's throat.  They attempt to do this by proving their hypotheses.  That's the only difference.  But we are all dogmatists.  At least Scientists are basing their beliefs on testability -- much of the time.  But Scientists are theorists about reality and about the truth.  Science could be thought of as Natural Philosophy, which it used to be.  I believe Physics was still called Natural Philosophy in Isaac Newton's day if my memory serves me well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

Edited February 1, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Joseph Maynor]

On 1/30/2018 at 3:26 AM, Leo Gura said:

The biggest irony is that science is subjective whereas spirituality is objective.

Bingo!  Science is a tool not the truth.  Science is more accurately Natural Philosophy, as it used to be known as.  Scientists are theorists about reality and about truth.  They are totally bought into the paradigm of conceptual truth.  Scientists are philosophers.  They are totally beholden to beliefs.  And that's fine as long as you don't bring that shit home with you.  It's like a lawyer bring the lawyer home to the wife.  Not good.  Leave that at work.  Put the tool back into the toolbox when you no longer need it.  The problem is people equate Science with Knowledge.  This issue is addressed in Philosophy, ironically, and not in Science.  People are very confused about beliefs.  You can go Meta on beliefs though and kind of look under the hood of what's going on there by practicing Mindfulness.  You can get out of the nest of beliefs and then look at the nest as a whole.  That's possible.  That's called going Meta or Awareness or Atman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy

Edited February 1, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[thehero]

Give up guys. 

"Wisdom looks foolish to the fool" 

and 

"Aruging with a foolish person proves there are 2" 

[d0ornokey]

I'm curious. do we actually try to help people like this? I see it as a waste of time in my opinion. It took me 6 years to break my atheist paradigm and it only happened because of extremely specific circumstances. Nothing would have convinced me otherwise, I was in wayyy too deep. Just like this guy. 

 

he's just using circular reasoning and random arguments to defend a position. 

 

12 hours ago, Thanatos13 said:

You haven’t studied epistemology or science as in depth as you claim for you don’t know how either work. Let alone skepticism.

 

 ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

the fucking irony hahahahahah

 

Edited February 1, 2018 by d0ornokey

[Extreme Z7]

21 hours ago, Thanatos13 said:

Or not. It’s funny how people assume that because an experience is powerful that it means anything. Human bias at work. 

You should know that meditation can cause mental scars for people, this sort of disproved that meditation is a total good.

So what? You can get injuries by exercising. You can fall into dogma through studying science or by becoming a 'skeptic'. You can commit evil by trying to do good.

You can cherry-pick whatever stories you like to prove a point but the fact remains that meditation is overwhelmingly beneficial but ONLY when you're open-minded enough to take it seriously and achieve direct experience of what's possible. But of course when you haven't taken it seriously, when you don't even want to take it seriously, what your mind will like to do is latch onto stories that already confirm your preconceived notions of what the reality is. Human bias at work.

20 hours ago, Thanatos13 said:

It’s funny hearing you say that considering the amount of errors I find in your videos. I can post them anywhere else and people can see through them.

You haven’t said anything nauanced or profound, at least what hasn’t been repeated over and over for hundreds of years.

You haven’t studied epistemology or science as in depth as you claim for you don’t know how either work. Let alone skepticism.

That whole “years of work” is just a cop out for when any philosophy 101 student can see the flaws. The length of the videos doesn’t make them deep or correct, just tedious (especially without a transcript). 

I doubt the existence of the Absolute and anyone who says they have. Because that’s what skeptics do, they doubt. But spirituality hides behind “ego” and “mind” to avoid giving an answer. Direct experience doesn’t affirm their case either. Plenty of people have had experiences that had alternate explanations. 

Im open to learning, but when the reason you have for knowing something is “because i just do” or “because I say so” then it’s belief. You cannot say all claims are ultimately groundless and then begin to make claims as though they were truth. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

So far Science has worked out rather well for me and my life and spirituality has done jack. But at least science has the honesty to admit it doesn’t have perfect knowledge and that it doesn’t know, Karl Popper knew that. It’s been wrong but also right at times. It’s not perfect but it works. That’s all I need to know. 

I have spoken to plenty of people who did psychedelics or claimed to experience “truth” and none of them have the ego or sense of certainty that you do. But I’m sure you still have your echo chamber to tell you you’re great. It’s laughable. 

Classic closed-minded dogmatic ramblings. Clearly you're more interested in pushing your beliefs rather than breaking them down for yourself.

[Forestluv]

On 1/31/2018 at 10:52 PM, Thanatos13 said:

 

I call them drugs because that’s what they are, plus it’s easier to spell. Those don’t revel any truth or insight, people only think they do because the experience is so powerful. But since you are ingesting something that alters your senses from normal functioning it would be reasonable to assume it isn’t truth. It’s just a biological reaction to a foreign substance. 

Hmmmm, what qualifies as “normal functioning” and “foreign substances”?

I’ve experienced altered states of consciousness and hallucinations during the end of ultra marathons without ingesting a “foreign substance”. Would this be considered “normal functioning”?  A drug?

Some foods can alter the gut microbiota composition, which in turn can significantly alter brain chemistry, sensations and emotions. Would this be considered “normal functioning”? Would food be considered a foreign substance?  A drug?