Heron's beard: the long-lost counterpart of Occam's razor

Luminon
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Heron's beard: the long-lost counterpart of Occam's razor

I was always thinking about what is missing from the typical rational thinking. I didn't knew what it is, only that it's missing. And finally I found someone who expressed it in words.
It's Heron's beard!

You guys are more than familiar with Occam's razor. Now it's the time to learn about the Heron's beard. I must emphasize, it is necessary to use both, not one instead of another. Credit for this method of thought and research goes to South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry.

You can go directly to the article, or read a few excerpts first. For the record, the researcheress divides the reality on two worlds, physical and non-physical. For the purpose of her research, that's fine.

Quote:
Because of all this, I hold to one cardinal principle: if you are aware of an ambiguous experience in which it is as if there are other world components, then it is a good thing to foster and elaborate the ambiguity, rather than try to reduce it and eliminate it sceptically.
...
My opposite principle is that it is wise to encourage an ambiguous experience to acquire luxurious growth in the direction of the complex and the occult, rather than rigorously cut it down to an awareness of the simple and the obvious.  I will call this new principle Heron's beard
.
...
If you are too committed to the use of Occam's razor, you will cut an ambiguous experience short,and rush into a premature,usually reductionist, explanation.  Better to indulge the experience a bit, nurture it and foster it with your attention.  Postpone explanation until the experience declares itself more fully.  Go with what seems, let the immediate phenomena unfold. Elaborate its content, and notice carefully what is going on before explaining it.

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Luminon wrote:Anonymouse

Luminon wrote:

Anonymouse wrote:

Sensei ! Oshiete kure !! Teach me, oh wise one !

How can I teach you? I was already born like that. If you want to learn, go to PsiPog.net and try it.  And the community forum is a good source of seeing people's joys and worries from the practice. This is probably as close as you can get to the psionics, unless you become one or find their lair in your city. Hopefully you won't think that everyone there are attention cravers, liars or madmen Smiling A forum of learning to play musical instruments would be not that different.

 

 

 

Maybe you could video it and upload it to youtube.

 

I imagine you have a reason why that is impossible Smiling

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


Anonymouse
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Luminon wrote:....or find

Luminon wrote:

....or find their lair in your city.

That would be the local comicbook shop.

Heh, sorry, absolutely not taking the piss, since you seem like a good sport and a friendly fellow. Thanks for the links.

Btw, I notice you're in the OBE thread as well. Since you had one, you might enjoy watching Shinreigari, aka Ghosthound, (which is an anime series produced by the guy who made Ghost in the Shell) which is all about OBEs and takes them completely seriously (There are huge infodumps in there where they quote extensively from real OBE research). On top of that, it's quite a good story, brilliantly told, with many downright awesome character moments. (You can watch the whole thing for free here : http://www.animeboy.org/anime/347/ghost-hound.html )


Answers in Gene...
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Razor>beardEOF So what is

Razor>beard

EOF

 

So what is the actual question here?

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

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mellestad wrote:But the

mellestad wrote:


But the example you use first...come on.  You should know as well as anyone that if something cannot be done reliably and consistently then it is probably a lie.  You should be able to demonstrate a reliable way to show woo-woo.  When you say things like, "requires specific training that not everyone can learn" you make it hard to swallow, because that is exactly what a huckster would say, isn't it?
People often see and do things which they can not reproduce reliably and consistently, but that doesn't make them liars. Usually, they gain no positive publicity or influenceby saying that, quite opposite. They have nothing to gain by lying.
I believe that everyone can learn a basic form of ESP, like psi-sphere or 'feeling the energies', but the time needed for it may vary. It can work almost immediately, or it can take years. It's individual. As for demonstrating it, that's a different problem. It's simple if you produce the woo-woo, then you can observe it easier, but showing it to someone who has not trained perception is diffcult and possibly requires a cooperation of another at least a bit clairvoyant person. In that case, a skeptic will still not see the woo-woo, but he may see (for example) how signals are by some mysterious way transferred from one person to the other.

mellestad wrote:
In my example though, I am trying to point out that things we see always have a "natural" explanation...or at least they have so far.  It is more rational to investigate all "normal" explanations for an event before you dig into woo-woo, because you will find a "normal" answer every time.  At least, we have so far. 
I think, what I and people I know investigate, is far from any possible normal explanation. We make sure of it. For a real example, if there is a UFO in the night sky which performs maneuvers and light effects according to our mental commands and then disappears,then we go and check the International Space Station flight schedule on the internet. I hope you see the irony Smiling

mellestad wrote:
If something totally defies existing convention, then you can try woo-woo.  When you approach it like the beard, backwards, you will naturally find that there is a woo-woo explanation for any ambiguous event because your definition of woo-woo is horribly nebulous.  Using the beard, you would find that it was indeed woo-woo even even though there was also a physical explanation (which you obviously do, because you claim things like OOBE which are explainable using 'normal' methods.).  I don't see how a 'normal', reproducible/testable event can coexist with a woo-woo explanation that is not consistently reproducible/testable.  Your entire outlook on this stuff is designed to make sure it is ambiguous enough to accept anything you can dream of as a valid explanation.
You're right that the stuff we usually investigate is not reproducible according to our will or testable by technical devices. And if yes, it's diffcult to detect, or it's a bit controversial. This is why this area of research is pretty much untouched by science. The detectors are too crude to be reliable, the phenomena which we investigate are extremely fine and subtle. Let's say, a detector of electromagnetic waves which could photograph them several octaves into ultraviolet light would be a good start. (octave = n*2) One day the technics will surely allow this to happen, but it would be good to direct the development in this way.

My definition of woo-woo is not horribly nebulous. It is basically simple, but has an enormous number of implications in the natural world, and a great explanatory power. It is basically about the idea of less or more material worlds existing on a different so-called "vibration" - composed of elementary particles which have a different wave characteristics and different orbitals, and that difference in "vibration" is gradually scaled in an octave-like way. Each "octave" is therefore like another dimension of the universe, with different physical laws. Surprisingly, the higher the "vibration" is, the easier it is for life to exist there.

 
mellestad wrote:
In the case of someone disappearing in the middle of the day...well geeze.  If stuff like this really happened, skeptics would see it and it could be tested.  But again, you make up a situation where you can explain why your hallucination/gullibility (no offense) can be validated, but something like a video camera would spoil it, or not record the woo-woo because it is on a non-material plane of existence or something.  It is the very definition of the pink unicorn idea, it is designed to be non-falsifiable.
As for the skeptics, I'd like to know where they have been, when David Copperfield and Criss Angel did their disappearing tricks. I mean, Criss stood on two plastic tables, there was just an empty space everywhere around and below him (it was in a city, not studio), he threw a rag over him and then just disappeared.
Of course they say it is just an illusion - they don't lie, this world itself is an illusion. And they're safe from skeptics, because it's a professional secret, you know.

By the way, I'm definitely not satisfied with the pink unicorn idea. If I couldn't see and touch these things by myself, then I wouldn't even think about them being possible. But I can, unfortunately that's only me and relatively few individuals. And you should understand, that proving things is not so easy. If a skeptic is not trained, then I'd need at least one more person gifted with woo-woo preferably better than me, so we can learn together a magic trick to show, that something mysterious is going on. And I'm sure that I don't want such a kind of publicity, definitely not in the beginning.
I have once personally cooperated with an experienced mage to show a few tricks to a skeptical woman, and we were pretty much succesful, because that woman could do the tricks as well. But it still needs someone really good at woo-woo, better than me,  but not too good, these people usually already have their own business and a shitload of money, just like that mage. (by business, I mean stuff like industry or software, not woo-woo)
BTW, if you want I could tell you about the one trick we did, it's quite interesting.

mellestad wrote:
Although, I imagine I have not said anything you have not heard from anyone else here.  You know you can't prove anything, otherwise you would have.  And I imagine you have plenty of objections to the scientific method, otherwise you would be on meds instead of going to woo-woo meetings.
Since it's not that simple to prove anything, I'm here rather to inspire people to prove things by themselves. Scientific method is fine, but it's just a method. You have merged it with the scientific institutions and technologies so you don't recognize that we here use this method as well, just in very different circumstances and means. Our observing possibilities are entirely different. They're mostly subjective, but so numerous, synchronized and identic, that they are statistically significant and becoming obviously objective.
And there is a problem with external proof. If something is detectable mainly subjectively, then wanting an external proof is diffcult. To quote one wise man's poem,
I AM... like a sugar in coffee. You can not see me. But you can taste me.

mellestad wrote:
(Edit: And if you even find yourself able to control an object telekenetically again even 1% of the time, please let us know because it doesn't get much easier to test than that!)
Well, sure. But don't rely just on me, my way is a bit different. What about these guys from PsiPog, they've moved things like a book, coin, watch or cell phone, they have recorded it and published on the internet for everyone to see.
My woo-woo efforts will have a bit different results, and if there will be any telekinesis, then probably as a side-effect.


mellestad wrote:


Maybe you could video it and upload it to youtube.

 

I imagine you have a reason why that is impossible Smiling
I could, but I don't know why. If you mean psi-wheel, then it works with me some days, some days not. And there are already such a videos, and some are pretty impressive. If you mean psi-ball, then I haven't yet tried to photograph it, but it's worth trying. For that I'd probably need an assistance, to photograph me in a total darkness...
In this city's meditation group there's a guy a bit younger than me, who's a bit like me - a clairvoyant kid of parents having the esotericism as a hobby. Possibly he's more talented than me and migth offer some assistance. Too bad that I can't go there this week.


Anonymouse wrote:


Luminon wrote:


....or find their lair in your city.
Btw, I notice you're in the OBE thread as well. Since you had one, you might enjoy watching Shinreigari, aka Ghosthound, (which is an anime series produced by the guy who made Ghost in the Shell) which is all about OBEs and takes them completely seriously (There are huge infodumps in there where they quote extensively from real OBE research). On top of that, it's quite a good story, brilliantly told, with many downright awesome character moments. (You can watch the whole thing for free here : http://www.animeboy.org/anime/347/ghost-hound.html )

  Wow, I decided to continue with my anime education and I need some quality pieces, like Fullmetal Alchemist and Haibane Renmei. This seems to be like what I'm searching for. Arigato gozaimas Smiling I'll see if the serial is as good as Robert Allan Monroe's books, they're awesome as well.


Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:


Razor>beard

EOF

So what is the actual question here?
How to investigate an observation, which possibly is, isn't, was, will be or might be a paranormal phenomenon. The author has this as a part of a greater paper, which is about the existence of spiritual worlds.



 

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.