And what about extra-rational thinking? I’m extra rational. The rationalist.
Anyone can do surgery, “i am a qualified licensed surgeon” might get you in less trouble. 
gosh darn it all, turns out i’ve been reading about fake magic this whole time, should have bought the book about the real stuff. is this the 8th or 9th book about hogwarts?
I’ve read many of his books in my younger years and while i find some of his ideas intriguing, i find his oversimplification of right and wrongness and attempts to unify various fields to be very much like magical thinking. or how a christian might describe other religions in the framework of their own misinterpreting everything from their initial bias. might sound nice, and i can see how people convince themselves of such things, but they don’t reflect reality or really get one anywhere.
If a single one of these books was legitimate, it would be the final book ever on the subject and change the entire world and throw out the balance of economies and nations. fortunately wistful thinking has no such power.
personally i don’t fantasize about such a reality, where any greedy entitled person can get anything with zero effort or work or deserving, i fantasize about the opposite where the deserving are rewarded. alas, all such thoughts are fantasies, reality is much more about random then that and our starting conditions and environment play a much larger factor. we don’t control the waves we just choose how to surf them.
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Possibly NSFW.
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You just made me think of something: ‘positive thinking has a real influence on the world’ is more or less the same as ‘praying has an influence on the world’. So maybe they just mean praying, but not coupled to a certain religion?
(but that would make sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ a bit redundant … 
)
God I miss Eurotrash so fucking much…
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Well, prayer has been scientifically shown to have a positive effect on stuff - just ask any Xtian apologist worth his salt. Have heard it so many times that it is all but a demonstrated fact.
“All but demonstrated” because of course, it isn’t a fact. There are no double-blind studies that show this effect. Lots and lots of anecdotal evidence - which is exactly as valuable and scientific as Porky Pig’s opinion.
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I am reminded of the book; I am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter.
Well worth the read and touches on of how the brain even influences reality. For example, where does the action of deciding to pick up a glass of water begin? He does a deep dive in an accecible way and it’s very interesting if you’re into this sort of thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
An interview: http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview
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What’s great is that we don’t know how William of Ockham died … but there were no more historical writings, civil documents, death certificate, or attributions found to him after 1347 … which is when the Plague was ravaging his homeland.
So using Occcam’s razor we can estimate what killed William of Ockham.
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I have to wonder if certain things may be true, but fail to meet scientific standards. Perhaps an example: Penicillin works on a large percentage of people - but not all 100%. If a drug/technique/prayer only works for >10% of the people that try it in a lab, it would fail and be considered false. But is it not possible that some of the woowoo out there works for a small percentage of the population and is just not statistically provable? A sort of subjective proof would then be quite valuable because while yeah, it’s garbage for 99% of the population, if it works for you, then great.
From the Wiki- a 9 year devised a blind experiment for her science fair that showed practicioners of “Therapeutic Touch” did no better than random guessing to determine if their hand was ‘feeling the energy’ of a person.
Emily Rosa (born February 6, 1987) is the youngest person to have a research paper published in a peer reviewed medical journal. At age nine Rosa conceived and executed a scientific study of therapeutic touch which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998.
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I’ve always felt that this kind of new agey wishful thinking is simply religion repackaged. It has about as much basis in reality.
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Maybe. The question here is who were you before you were born? Maybe you decided to take life in that family? Why would you do that? Why are you hitting yourself?
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Indeed, overgeneralization is the problem here. It is true and important to realize that thoughts precede actions, and actions do affect reality. This is the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is one of the most studied and effective means of psychological therapy.
One of the most important events in my life was realizing that I don’t have to identify with my thoughts, and that challenging them can unlock new, positive directions for my life.
The problem is that people who believe in law of attraction identify too much with their thoughts. Rather than learning the secret of changing their thinking to produce the actions that produce the results they want, they stay trapped in their wishful thinking and magnify it, ensuring that they won’t take right actions.
My favorite example, I think from “the Secret”, was that if you want to become rich, you should imagine not caring about money. They have a visual image of someone stereotypically leaning out of the sunroof of a limousine in a big city and throwing dollar bills away with joyous abandon. That is exactly the opposite of what causes people to be rich. That image mirrors the surface level of analysis in which the trappings of success are confused with success itself.
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I’ve never been born.
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eh - then you just need to get a bunch of the people it does work for and test them. likely for midichlorians.
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That’s a more useful (and fun) book to read indeed.
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If it’s not statistically provable, how could you ever know it’s not just down to chance? “Statistically provable” doesn’t have to mean a big effect – if someone could make an otherwise fair coin come up heads 51% of the time on a large enough number of flips, that would be statistical proof of something weird going on (absent any trickery, of course).
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No, there’s no mistake. We recognize that New Age bullshit is its own thing.
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This is how placebos function. Scientific studies need to do BETTER than the placebo effect to be valid.
Literally any ludicrous thing will help a certain (not insignificant) percentage of people.
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