this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
34 points (80.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35727 readers
916 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

When I was a teen I was pretty much like Silent Bob in Mallrats but now my spirit is broken.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

May the cosmos revitalize that spirit of yours.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Weekly. If there's ever a time for magical thinking, its during TTRPG sessions. Those funny math rocks will obey me one of these days, then its gonna be nothing but nat 20s until the end of time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But that'll get boring after a while. Plus people will call you a cheater.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

i appreciate your confidence in my ability to actually wizard up some d20 rolls

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Every time I try, I swear I only rolls 1s. In a sense, that's a pretty special ability too. 🤪

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

A few times a year

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I practice Chaos Magick. Since beginning my practice, I've noticed that things usually go my way. Not always, but I get what I want so often- and in such unlikely circumstances- that it's hard for me to just call it random chance.

The thing about it, though, is that there is no empirical evidence for it. Some people, like myself, have no problem accepting that we can't explain everything with science and data and math. Other people like to call themselves superior because they only believe what they can see for themselves.

It's arrogant to the point of hubris to think there's nothing beyond our physical reality. And, frankly, when all reality really is is a bunch of randomly vibrating particles, I don't think that inducing a change in conformity with one's will is that far fetched.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Do you know about confirmation bias? That our brain is looking for positive example for something, and actively ignores the negative examples or gives them less weight?

What would interest me is, if there theoretically was absolute proof that there is no such thing as Chaos Magick, would you stop doing it? Or would you dismiss such proof?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Your senses take in more data that you could possibly consciously process. There is an unconscious portion of the mind that does a first pass on the raw data (excitations of the rods and cones in your eyes, of your eardrums, chemical receptors in your nose, etc), and processes it into concepts that your conscious mind can process (images, sounds, smells, etc), and that you personally find significance in (your friend's face, your favorite song, your partner's perfume).

Confirmation bias isn't proof against Chaos Magick, it's precisely the mechanism that makes it work. The raw data is the chaos, training your subconscious to attach value to particular concepts is the magick. It's nothing more than repeatedly assigning value to something in a ritualistic way, to train the raw-data-processing part of your mind to trigger the conscious part when the object of value is present in a large batch of data.

It's like recognizing your friend's face in a crowd out of the corner of your eye, or when you notice every car on the road that's the same make and model as your own. Chaos Magick isn't about creating something from nothing, it's about training your subconscious to recognize and alert you to what's already there, hidden in the chaos.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do know about confirmation bias. Maybe that's what is going on, but from my own perspective I don't think so. Course if it was I guess I'd still feel that way 🤔

If there was absolute proof that it was a waste of time I'd probably keep my decor because it's all black pentagrams and shit and it's metal as fuck, but Bizzle don't dismiss evidence just because it disagrees with my worldview. I'm a weirdo, not a conservative 😂 Fortunately for my practice it's pretty hard to prove that something doesn't exist.

As a counterpoint, if there was absolute proof of things beyond our physical reality- whether it's Chaos Magick or the Universal Consciousness/God or even something as mundane as higher spacial dimensions, would you accept it? Or would you keep your eyes closed to the truth? Honestly the more we find out about the fundamental nature of reality the more convinced I am of the supernatural.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Just regarding your use of the word "counterpoint", I mean if your (or anyone's) beliefs/actions have basis in your own conclusions, be it whatever they may, instead of just blindly following what other people said, I'm not about to try to change anyone really :) I was just inquiring about your state of mind really :D

If any kind of evidence is presented, I would consider it in my reasoning/belief process. I used "absolute proof" a bit tongue in cheek because there's no such thing, but there's nothing I believe that couldn't be changed by enough evidence. The base laws of logic/reasoning/math would be hardest, but even those might be possible to change :) which would then trigger a fun cascade of further changes, lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

And yet people will ignore you just because it challenges their stagnant world view.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just because a change can be made to your worldview, that doesn't mean that it should be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

That is a very deep statement. I partly agree. And it greatly depends on the individual and many other factors we humans mostly don't have the capability to understand or conceive of.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This is a mischaracterization of both the scientific method and of scientists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

When did they characterize either?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Scientists:

Other people like to call themselves superior because they only believe what they can see for themselves.

Scientific method: They implied that science has rejected mystical phenomena altogether (and due to arrogance no less!) when in reality they're tested fairly often. Experiments DON'T assert that "there’s nothing beyond our physical reality"; that's a misunderstanding of what an experiment does. Experiments only confirm that if there is something beyond our physical reality, it has no statistically significant measurable effect on that physical reality, for whatever combination of mystical effect and physical effect were being tested.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They only say "other people". They never said "scientists", that's your own extrapolation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can you not extrapolate from what's been explicitly typed? It's a pretty common skill

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I certainly can, that doesn't make the extrapolation correct. It's particularly ironic that you've chosen to infer these conclusions in a conversation about the rigor of empirical study.

At no point did they characterize either science or scientists, the latter they never even mention. Their only mention of science is:

Some people, like myself, have no problem accepting that we can't explain everything with science and data and math.

Which not a characterization of the scientific method. The characterization is a non-empirical, unscientific inference based on your own assumptions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You're a mischaracterization of the scientific method but I don't go around saying it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I often try to pull things toward me or send out damaging rays but it has literally never worked

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Only in moments of extreme crisis.

please don't die please don't die please don't die

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Taking a cat bowl full of water back to its spot on the floor. I remember I am the water, and it gets delivered without spilling.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Pulling my dad's finger always made him fart. Definitely not normal to have your finger connected to a pressure relief valve in your ass.

load more comments
view more: next ›