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I have a religious story that pattern matches similarly
12:20 AM
First off, I'm a mormon by birth, not active currently, and as you know, currently disaffected in part because of Tulpas.
12:20 AM
But
12:21 AM
There's these experiences that I had, which were, nearly miraculous
12:21 AM
Every so often, I would go to church
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And be asked to teach a lesson
12:22 AM
And what would happen is I'd do the study and the reading
12:22 AM
And I'd write up an outline of what I was going to say, and then I would read it out loud several times and, pray to god to help me say the words the people needed to hear
12:23 AM
okay
12:23 AM
And then sunday, church rolls around
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I get up on the pulpit in front of the crowd
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And something just switches in my brain
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And the words that come out are not mine
12:24 AM
I didn't write them, I didn't have some of these insights
12:24 AM
The whole speech I wrote would get ignored and all that would happen is I'd cover the broad topics as requested by the bishop/church leaders
12:25 AM
And like
12:25 AM
People in the crowd 3-4 times this happend
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Would come up to me after the talk
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They'd say things like "Wow, that was exactly what I needed to hear, I thought you were speaking directly to me"
12:26 AM
I'm not exaggerating
12:26 AM
And for the longest time, in my head, I've had this dissonance between "Well if God doesn't exist, how do events like that happen?"
12:27 AM
What I've learned though, is that from Dr. Luhrmann's research is that events like that ARE COMMON.
12:28 AM
And it wasn't unique to the mormon church
12:29 AM
In any coherent religion, when you're teaching some topic, there's some base principle where you simply have a high random chance of covering a topic that person is already open to hearing(edited)
12:29 AM
Of 300 mormons going to church each week, what are the chances someone hadn't had prayer, or faith, or charity on their mind?
12:30 AM
Pretty damn low
12:31 AM
There's simply a statistics game going on here where we'll just "connect" with people in these unique and interesting ways(edited)
12:32 AM
Two people talking about magic and tulpas and other shit?
12:33 AM
For Donovan, assuming there's no bullshitting and still some decent-ish rigor?
There's still a statistical chance that you'll both come up with the same things simply because you're both thinking about the same things, in the same way, similar to my religious experiences.
okay. I guess that does explain it, though the explanation you gave does still feel more metaphysical than not. Thinking about it, everything I've experienced with this has either required that I have cooperation from the person or something similar.
The answer is "There is a scientific explanation for this and yes we are making it more likely to have this happen simply by talking to each other and co-operating in any form"
Placebo effect is simply that nothing is supposed to happen, you tell the other person they're going to get these effects. It doesn't care about doubt in the person.
Also, side note, I was always confused how 'placebo effect' is used to 'disprove' metaphysical experiences, when it actually proves it more than not since it implies the brain has power over reality, not just perception.
wait... wait... if placebo effect ONLY effect's my body, how come things still happen where my girlfriend will notice some effects from nothing being said or implied and those effects being consistent with my perception?
Though I'm honestly not satisfied with the idea that it's not really consistent and that the consistency was fabricated, since I tried to even trick that a bunch of times and it still was consistent.
Well, the implication placebo has is that the effect is purely percieved, which I tried explaining how that's not true. if that were true, then where does the consistency between me and my girlfriend come from? It wasn't ever expressed and there was lots that wasn't implied, but that was still guessed right. someone else said it was confirmation bias(edited)
Is that your point? That chance does not equal rate, and that pertains to my experience? Or are you arguing that chance equals rate for my situation?(edited)
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