How many GODS do you have?

[Hakurei Reimu]

Correct.  I do not consider consciousness as a material process.  There is no logical reason to.

As I've said in the past, logic without grounding is barren. There may be no "logical reason" to consider it a material process, but there's also no logical reason to not consider it such. That's when you turn to evidence, and the evidence that the world presents us is that consciousness is a material process.

It is an unbounded immaterial complex of intelligent, likely geometric structure which generates the illusion of material reality.

See, everything above you just said? That's mere supposition. What shows ANY of this above is actually the case? That's where speculation ends and investigation begins.

In practice a materialist is necessarily capable of denying all evidence for this understanding of conscious since it by definition does not exist in a material form.

What "evidence"? The reason why I discount your drivel is because it's not evidence. It doesn't discriminate between the two cases. The only thing you've presented that even might count as evidence is easily explainable by the fact that most invention really only takes ideas that are already out there and finding a new use for the parts â€" the solution space is actually rather restrictive, and there are many people seeking solutions to the same problem, so of course you occasionally come up with inventions being hit upon at the same time independently. You present nothing else, so no matter how convincing your rhetoric sounds to you, to me it sounds like someone with nothing to show and less to tell.

However, I adopt this model because it is the most rational, logical and useful.

Yes, that's why people turn to you to solve their issues with brain damage. Oh wait. They go to neurologists and psychologists. Sorry, buddy, your "logic" is ungrounded and flapping in the breeze, it's not rational in the slightest to attribute effects to things you can't observe when there are plenty of things you can observe to attribute them to, and people are helped more by the hard-nosed, materialistic sciences than have ever been helped by your philosophy.

The assumption that there can be no reality other than material reality is irrational, akin to the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe of old.

We think that because the immaterial actually doesn't seem to exist. If you lot found a way to reliably demonstrate the immaterial, then you would have a case that the material is not all that exists. But you can't; whenever anyone tries to find these immaterial components of the universe you seem to think exist, it vanishes into smoke, just like every other fucking time we've looked.

In case you haven't noticed, the assumption that there is something beyond the material and that consciousness is a special thing is what the self-centered belief that was later discarded, like the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe.

You can't rely on the unreliable. Well, you can, but you'll be disappointed.

[Absolute_Agent]

As I've said in the past, logic without grounding is barren. There may be no "logical reason" to consider it a material process, but there's also no logical reason to not consider it such. That's when you turn to evidence, and the evidence that the world presents us is that consciousness is a material process.
See, everything above you just said? That's mere supposition. What shows ANY of this above is actually the case? That's where speculation ends and investigation begins.
What "evidence"? The reason why I discount your drivel is because it's not evidence. It doesn't discriminate between the two cases. The only thing you've presented that even might count as evidence is easily explainable by the fact that most invention really only takes ideas that are already out there and finding a new use for the parts â€" the solution space is actually rather restrictive, and there are many people seeking solutions to the same problem, so of course you occasionally come up with inventions being hit upon at the same time independently. You present nothing else, so no matter how convincing your rhetoric sounds to you, to me it sounds like someone with nothing to show and less to tell.
Yes, that's why people turn to you to solve their issues with brain damage. Oh wait. They go to neurologists and psychologists. Sorry, buddy, your "logic" is ungrounded and flapping in the breeze, it's not rational in the slightest to attribute effects to things you can't observe when there are plenty of things you can observe to attribute them to, and people are helped more by the hard-nosed, materialistic sciences than have ever been helped by your philosophy.
We think that because the immaterial actually doesn't seem to exist. If you lot found a way to reliably demonstrate the immaterial, then you would have a case that the material is not all that exists. But you can't; whenever anyone tries to find these immaterial components of the universe you seem to think exist, it vanishes into smoke, just like every other fucking time we've looked.

In case you haven't noticed, the assumption that there is something beyond the material and that consciousness is a special thing is what the self-centered belief that was later discarded, like the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe.

You can't rely on the unreliable. Well, you can, but you'll be disappointed.

People also turn to faith healers, shamans and the like, but your selective focus only allows you to see what you want to see. And there are many things I observe that cannot be attributed to material causes; in fact I conclude that causality itself is an illusion: thus the need for an immaterial point of view.  You concede that simultaneous inventions might be evidence for an immaterial reality, yet explain it away in purely material terms.  So what use would it be for me to pile on more evidence only to be"explained away"? The nature of consciousness is the ability to shut out information we don't wish or have time to see.

So whatever the reasons, you shut out information that does not support a materialistic world view.  However, unlike many materialists and atheists, you do adhere to a self-consistent logical methodology apparently free from prejudice and discrimination.  As such, our interaction could be productive despite not coming to agreement.

I propose that we examine the case of simultaneous inventions more closely and break it down into a more finely-tuned logical discussion, then see where that leads.  What is your opinion?

Sent from my moto e5 play using Tapatalk

[aitm]

Odd how Arik seems to fall out of of coverage just in time for this very similar nut job to chime in.

[Unbeliever]

I have it on good authority that there's one born every minute.

[Hakurei Reimu]

People also turn to faith healers, shamans and the like, but your selective focus only allows you to see what you want to see.

But the only people who actually are helped past the placebo effect are those who go to real doctors. That's because the methodology doctors employ are tested under controlled conditions. You know, to see if they actually are effective in and of themselves.

We've tested witch doctors, faith healers, shamans and the like, and they don't work. In fact, when they seem effective, they turn out to be scammers. This is not a good track record. The reason why we don't go to you for real help is because you have given us no indication that you can do what you say and every reason to doubt what you say.

And there are many things I observe that cannot be attributed to material causes;

Like Mr. Idle, I don't think you know enough about the material world to say what can and cannot be attributed to material causes. Forgive me if I'm skeptical of your claims.

in fact I conclude that causality itself is an illusion: thus the need for an immaterial point of view.  You concede that simultaneous inventions might be evidence for an immaterial reality, yet explain it away in purely material terms.

The purely material terms are the ones we know for certain are in force, and even in a world where the immaterial exists, material terms for these phenomenon still need serious consideration. You have given me no cause to think that the immaterial even behaves the way you describe. It's simply an assumption on your part. While I do acknowledge that it COULD be the case, you have given me no reason to consider it a serious possibility.

That's the difference. We know about material reality and it is something you can work with. We know how people behave and how they think, regardless of the origin of those thoughts. The material world does indeed seem to follow very rigid and universal rules. The immaterial is anybody's guess and will continue to be anybody's guess unless and until it yields to scientific investigation. An immaterial that refuses to be replicated by some means is too fickle to be usable or reliable as an explanation, and indeed in its extreme is indistinguishable from random noise.

So what use would it be for me to pile on more evidence only to be"explained away"? The nature of consciousness is the ability to shut out information we don't wish or have time to see.

In my case, its because it's automatically filtering out low-quality and inconclusive data. It's not my fault that your evidence is too weak to support your claim. You need to get better evidence. If you could reliably detect a disembodied consciousness, then you would blast open the field, because even if you could only detect their presence, then all the consciousness has to do to communicate is leave the detection area and come back in a modulated way.

So whatever the reasons, you shut out information that does not support a materialistic world view.

I refuse to accept the responsibility for your poor data. No scientist whines like you do when their data is rejected as inconclusive, and peer review is a lot rougher than than what you're currently getting. A scientist understands that the most extraordinary of claims requires serious quality evidence. The difference between your posts and a serious research paper is as plain as night and day. The only people who complain about worldviews are people whose own worldview had been smacked down by hard-nosed skeptics. You barely get two answers in before resorting to it, even though I'm bending over backwards telling you exactly what you need to prove your point.

Real research takes work, boyo. It also will result in failure. Piles and piles of failure. Most of your ideas are trash. The secret to success in research is to fail faster â€" learn to quickly recognize and test ideas for quality, for once you recognize a trash idea, you can discard it and move on to the next idea. Once in a while, it won't be complete trash and those result in the actual papers. And when colleagues say your idea is trash after all, accept it and move on. Fail faster.

The bottom line is that you need to be your own worst critic. Each and every one of my held principles has been through the wringer of scrutiny literally hundreds of times. They're not going to yield to just any philosophical casual.

However, unlike many materialists and atheists, you do adhere to a self-consistent logical methodology apparently free from prejudice and discrimination.  As such, our interaction could be productive despite not coming to agreement.

There will be no productive discussion unless you acknowledge that, however good you think your arguments and evidence is, that they might not actually be that good and may well be terrible. I acknowledge that I might be wrong in thinking that the immaterial doesn't exist, so the least you could do is acknowledge that you might be wrong in thinking the immaterial does. You'll also be well served by asking yourself and researching why the experts of the field don't think as you do, even though they have your evidence and more. There'll be no discussion with an unsinkable rubber duck.

I propose that we examine the case of simultaneous inventions more closely and break it down into a more finely-tuned logical discussion, then see where that leads.  What is your opinion?

The problem I see is that I don't see how simultaneous inventions are even a problem for materialism. In the end, you're trying to advance a statistical argument that there are two many simultaneous inventions for materialism to support. That raises the question of how many simultaneous inventions would you expect in a solely materialistic world? Do you have an answer for that? I don't, and I'm a statistician, and without that control rate, we're nowhere. Until you determine normal, you can't recognize the anomalous.

Instead, I think you need to find a means to detect disembodied consciousnesses. Your theory of consciousness speaks to the very core of reality, and is too much for soft sciences like history and sociology to support. Even if your purported consciousnesses turn out to be not the case, discovering a new phenomenon is always interesting.

[Unbeliever]

Out of body experiences can now be induced in a laboratory setting, but it's only an illusion:


First Out-of-body Experience Induced In Laboratory Setting

[Unbeliever]

Affecting the brain with drugs can induce NDEs:


Drug-Induced Near Death Experience

[Unbeliever]

Then, of course, there's the God helmet

[Blackleaf]

Odd how Arik seems to fall out of of coverage just in time for this very similar nut job to chime in.

Agent may be a nut, but Arik is a whole fruitcake.

[Absolute_Agent]

But the only people who actually are helped past the placebo effect are those who go to real doctors. That's because the methodology doctors employ are tested under controlled conditions. You know, to see if they actually are effective in and of themselves.

We've tested witch doctors, faith healers, shamans and the like, and they don't work. In fact, when they seem effective, they turn out to be scammers. This is not a good track record. The reason why we don't go to you for real help is because you have given us no indication that you can do what you say and every reason to doubt what you say.
Like Mr. Idle, I don't think you know enough about the material world to say what can and cannot be attributed to material causes. Forgive me if I'm skeptical of your claims.
The purely material terms are the ones we know for certain are in force, and even in a world where the immaterial exists, material terms for these phenomenon still need serious consideration. You have given me no cause to think that the immaterial even behaves the way you describe. It's simply an assumption on your part. While I do acknowledge that it COULD be the case, you have given me no reason to consider it a serious possibility.

That's the difference. We know about material reality and it is something you can work with. We know how people behave and how they think, regardless of the origin of those thoughts. The material world does indeed seem to follow very rigid and universal rules. The immaterial is anybody's guess and will continue to be anybody's guess unless and until it yields to scientific investigation. An immaterial that refuses to be replicated by some means is too fickle to be usable or reliable as an explanation, and indeed in its extreme is indistinguishable from random noise.
In my case, its because it's automatically filtering out low-quality and inconclusive data. It's not my fault that your evidence is too weak to support your claim. You need to get better evidence. If you could reliably detect a disembodied consciousness, then you would blast open the field, because even if you could only detect their presence, then all the consciousness has to do to communicate is leave the detection area and come back in a modulated way.
I refuse to accept the responsibility for your poor data. No scientist whines like you do when their data is rejected as inconclusive, and peer review is a lot rougher than than what you're currently getting. A scientist understands that the most extraordinary of claims requires serious quality evidence. The difference between your posts and a serious research paper is as plain as night and day. The only people who complain about worldviews are people whose own worldview had been smacked down by hard-nosed skeptics. You barely get two answers in before resorting to it, even though I'm bending over backwards telling you exactly what you need to prove your point.

Real research takes work, boyo. It also will result in failure. Piles and piles of failure. Most of your ideas are trash. The secret to success in research is to fail faster â€" learn to quickly recognize and test ideas for quality, for once you recognize a trash idea, you can discard it and move on to the next idea. Once in a while, it won't be complete trash and those result in the actual papers. And when colleagues say your idea is trash after all, accept it and move on. Fail faster.

The bottom line is that you need to be your own worst critic. Each and every one of my held principles has been through the wringer of scrutiny literally hundreds of times. They're not going to yield to just any philosophical casual.
There will be no productive discussion unless you acknowledge that, however good you think your arguments and evidence is, that they might not actually be that good and may well be terrible. I acknowledge that I might be wrong in thinking that the immaterial doesn't exist, so the least you could do is acknowledge that you might be wrong in thinking the immaterial does. You'll also be well served by asking yourself and researching why the experts of the field don't think as you do, even though they have your evidence and more. There'll be no discussion with an unsinkable rubber duck.
The problem I see is that I don't see how simultaneous inventions are even a problem for materialism. In the end, you're trying to advance a statistical argument that there are two many simultaneous inventions for materialism to support. That raises the question of how many simultaneous inventions would you expect in a solely materialistic world? Do you have an answer for that? I don't, and I'm a statistician, and without that control rate, we're nowhere. Until you determine normal, you can't recognize the anomalous.

Instead, I think you need to find a means to detect disembodied consciousnesses. Your theory of consciousness speaks to the very core of reality, and is too much for soft sciences like history and sociology to support. Even if your purported consciousnesses turn out to be not the case, discovering a new phenomenon is always interesting.

I wasn't aware we were in a research forum; I thought it was general discussion.  Nonetheless I thank you for taking the time to systematically explain your positions.

The possibility of my being wrong about everything is always a given in my thought process, but it is of little practical value to include this in one's discussions with others.  For your reassurance though: "I could be wrong, there may not in fact exist a separate immaterial reality." However this is unlikely and therefore I don't ordinarily represent what seems unlikely to me.  Note: the recognition of one's own ignorance is a fundamental prerequisite for spirituality.

"But the only people who actually are helped past the placebo effect are those who go to real doctors." = an urban legend bandied about the scientific/medical establishment for the sole purpose of reinforcing their own legitimacy and self-importance.

"An immaterial that refuses to be replicated by some means is too fickle to be usable or reliable as an explanation, and indeed in its extreme is indistinguishable from random noise."

If an immaterial reality exists (it does), then it would by definition be imperceptible in the material realm except through the most delicate of instruments--the brain being a primary example of such.  This would give the illusion of fickleness and uselessness; yet the immaterial reality could be much more solid and permanent in it's own right (it is).  It is the instruments themselves which are fickle, in terms of the material realm, not the reality they connect to.  Thus you sweepingly dismiss evidence from the internal perception of the brain (the subjective, anecdotal as you refer to it), evidence which you claim is unreliable of that very reality the brain is equipped to tap into.  Of course it would seem absurd and unreliable to a materially-focused individuation of consciousness since it functions in a completely different set of rules.  But this is only a matter of perception: that immaterial reality could be (and is by all observations) more "solid" and persistent than the material.  In fact, it generates our material reality. 

"If you could reliably detect a disembodied consciousness, then you would blast open the field"

This is already occurring on a mass scale and soon the force of its impact will rock the scientific establishment to the core. The reason you don't know about it yet is the research findings are being suppressed (including physicists being taken out).  Why?  Like all revolutionary ideas, the existing establishment correctly perceives their livelihoods threatened.  But like all revolutionary ideas, it's advent is inevitable.   Consider dark matter.  It cannot be directly perceived (hence the term "dark"), yet astrophysicists know it must exist, because of its observed effects.  Similarly, we are approaching a threshold of universal awareness in which it will become widely accepted that a unified immaterial super-conscious source field not only exists, but powers our collective material reality. This will be established through the observation of its effects in material reality.

If [material] causality were a real law, and not a figment of materially focused consciousness, the entire universe would have reached entropic equilibrium long ago--if there had been any energy to begin with.  It would be an indescript mass of static nothingness.  In a purely material world, even one invention would be an anomaly, let alone multiple simultaneous ones.  You see the problem is not getting data and evidence, my focus is on achieving a truly rational evaluation of the existing data.  If we don't understand our data we're just so many rats in a maze blindly looking for cheese.

Sent from my moto e5 play using Tapatalk

[Baruch]

On NDE ... per conventional epistemology, it is non-scientific.  But that can never be the last word, since it is an assumption, though a good working one, that we need to pay closer attention to the scientific (objective).  The non-scientific is alway at best, subjective.  And that beggars the question regarding what to do with subjectivity.

[Hakurei Reimu]

I wasn't aware we were in a research forum; I thought it was general discussion.  Nonetheless I thank you for taking the time to systematically explain your positions.

It's not a research forum, but when dealing with the extraordinary claims of the immaterial, unless you are adhering to the scientific consensus, or presenting evidence of quality equal to the claim, you're talking out of your ass.

The possibility of my being wrong about everything is always a given in my thought process, but it is of little practical value to include this in one's discussions with others.  For your reassurance though: "I could be wrong, there may not in fact exist a separate immaterial reality." However this is unlikely and therefore I don't ordinarily represent what seems unlikely to me.  Note: the recognition of one's own ignorance is a fundamental prerequisite for spirituality.

I note that the recognition of one's own ignorance is general good advice, spirituality or no. The problem is that ignorance is just that: ignorance. It is not a substitute for knowledge.

"But the only people who actually are helped past the placebo effect are those who go to real doctors." = an urban legend bandied about the scientific/medical establishment for the sole purpose of reinforcing their own legitimacy and self-importance.

You are talking out of your ass. When alternative medicine proves itself to actually be effective, it becomes medicine, unqualified. Techniques and medicines that prove themselves to be effective are taken in and added to the whole of medical knowledge. That's the strength of the scientific method, and science-based medicine.

This notion that mainstream medicine doesn't want to cure people is itself an urban legend bandied about by alternative woo, and they milk it so much that any ethical person ought to be ashamed of himself. I personally wouldn't care if good medicines were powered by woo, because I want to get well. But I do care about getting a real, effective treatment instead of being taken for a ride. As it turns out, the real, effective treatments do turn out to be based on materialistic principles.

And yes, the placebo effect does in fact exist. We see it all the time in placebo controlled studies, where you split up the patents into the control group (no treatment), a placebo group (a sham treatment), and a treatment group (the real deal). You very often find that the placebo group does better than the control group. If your treatment works, then the treatment group will do best of all.

Administering a placebo instead of real treatment in hopes of eliciting a placebo effect is fraud, by the way. If we could deliberately leverage the mechanisms of the placebo effect to consistent effect, then it would be very interesting and powerful, but we can't. The placebo effect is quite delicate and just suspecting that you're getting a placebo ruins the effect â€" hence, double blinding.

"An immaterial that refuses to be replicated by some means is too fickle to be usable or reliable as an explanation, and indeed in its extreme is indistinguishable from random noise."

If an immaterial reality exists (it does), then it would by definition be imperceptible in the material realm except through the most delicate of instruments--the brain being a primary example of such.

The brain?

The most delicate of instruments?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!

Oh, no! The brain is not a delicate instrument at all! You just have to attach EEG probes to see that the brain is a noisy place. Any given signal is actually driven by dozens if not hundreds of individual neurons firing. The propagation of an action potential is driven mostly by heat; the ion channels in the membrane of a neuron work by harnessing thermodynamic noise. A transcranial magnetic stimulation coil takes about half a joule to get a response from the cortex. That may not mean anything to you, except what I would call "a most delicate of instruments" has a sensitivity on the order of femtojoules (10^-15 J) â€" to such an instrument, half a joule would be a sledgehammer.

This notion that the immaterial is something that only the brain could pick up on is simply nonsensical, given that stimulating that kind of action by other means reveals quite the opposite: as a sensor, the brain is rather poor. Then again, its job isn't to sense, but to process, and as such it would need to be robust to outside interference.

So, yes, I do "sweepingly dismiss" the notion that the brain is some sort of antenna for the immaterial, given it's complete insensitivity in other respects. If you knock a neuron hard enough to fire, it's gonna fire, regardless of the source. Any immaterial that could affect the brain in such a way would easily be detectable by some means by our instruments, given what the immaterial would have to overcome. That, and the brain will cheerfully work without a hitch even in an MRI scanner, which has a magnet capable of attracting a gas cylinder to respectable speed from a few meters away (such an accident caused the death of a 6 year old boy). And all this is not even touching upon the intricacies of signal theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg
YIKES!

No, ignorance will not serve you in this discussion. It is simply not credible to characterize the brain as a "most sensitive of instruments."

But this is only a matter of perception: that immaterial reality could be (and is by all observations) more "solid" and persistent than the material.  In fact, it generates our material reality. 

Supposition. You've already made an error characterizing the brain as a "sensitive instrument" (it's not), and the above contention is based upon no evidence put forward. "By all observations?" What observations? Name the observations, and what about them leads you to believe that the immaterial is more solid and persistent, and generates our reality? The reasoning is important, Absolute.

"If you could reliably detect a disembodied consciousness, then you would blast open the field"

This is already occurring on a mass scale and soon the force of its impact will rock the scientific establishment to the core.

Promises, promises. Your camp has been trying to prove the immaterial for centuries, and you're actually further from your goal now than you've ever been. Science still chips away at the hiding spots for the immaterial.

The reason you don't know about it yet is the research findings are being suppressed (including physicists being taken out).  Why?  Like all revolutionary ideas, the existing establishment correctly perceives their livelihoods threatened.  But like all revolutionary ideas, it's advent is inevitable.

No, I'm not going to buy any grand conspiracy on the part of the scientific establishment bullshit. It is anathema to the entire dicipline to suppress knowledge like this. And the notion that their "livelihoods" would be "threatened?" Total poppycock! On the contrary, it would represent a whole new superfield of science where a scientist could make a name for himself, and there would be many, many Nobel prizes waiting for significant discoveries. Grants couldn't be issued fast enough to keep up with demand of new research proposals.

Nah, I think your papers are rejected for the same reason all other scientific papers are rejected: flawed methodology, sloppy experiments, inadequate controls, studies too small, and questionable analysis, among other ills.

Consider dark matter.  It cannot be directly perceived (hence the term "dark"), yet astrophysicists know it must exist, because of its observed effects.

It's the observed and well-documented effects that separates it from woo. The evidence is plain and clear, unfiltered by human folley. Even so, it took a lot of work and much more than anecdotes to establish.

Similarly, we are approaching a threshold of universal awareness in which it will become widely accepted that a unified immaterial super-conscious source field not only exists, but powers our collective material reality. This will be established through the observation of its effects in material reality.

Or it'll be more N-rays. Confidence is fine and all, but I wouldn't be so boastful about finding something that has turned out to be smoke when men smarter than you tried to find it. Most people, even most scientists, are doomed to relative obscurity with only the most minor accomplishments to their name. Even the ones that are as starry eyed as you.

You seriously sound like every apocalyptic preacher, ever. They have a poor track record for predicting the end of the world.

If [material] causality were a real law, and not a figment of materially focused consciousness, the entire universe would have reached entropic equilibrium long ago--

Nonsense. Do you even know how to perform an entropy calculation? So long as there are stars shining, the universe will not be in thermal equilibrium, and the red dwarf stars will burn for trillions of years.

Seriously, who taught you this, because whoever it is taught you wrong.

if there had been any energy to begin with.

The total energy content of the universe is actually very close to zero. The positive forms of energy are balanced out to great precision by the negative forms.

It would be an indescript mass of static nothingness.

Supposition born of ignorance. The laws of physics are such that the universe cannot be static. Full stop. Einstein tried to enforce a global static-ness, but failed.

In a purely material world, even one invention would be an anomaly, let alone multiple simultaneous ones.

Supposition born of ignorance. Inventions are created to fulfill needs, and humans are clever little monkeys.

You see the problem is not getting data and evidence, my focus is on achieving a truly rational evaluation of the existing data.  If we don't understand our data we're just so many rats in a maze blindly looking for cheese.

Well, they do say that it takes competence to recognize competence. The problem is not not understanding data, it's thinking you understand the data when in fact you don't. Being that this is what I do, I think I have a better grasp on how to do that than you do.

[Absolute_Agent]

It's not a research forum, but when dealing with the extraordinary claims of the immaterial, unless you are adhering to the scientific consensus, or presenting evidence of quality equal to the claim, you're talking out of your ass.
I note that the recognition of one's own ignorance is general good advice, spirituality or no. The problem is that ignorance is just that: ignorance. It is not a substitute for knowledge.
You are talking out of your ass. When alternative medicine proves itself to actually be effective, it becomes medicine, unqualified. Techniques and medicines that prove themselves to be effective are taken in and added to the whole of medical knowledge. That's the strength of the scientific method, and science-based medicine.

This notion that mainstream medicine doesn't want to cure people is itself an urban legend bandied about by alternative woo, and they milk it so much that any ethical person ought to be ashamed of himself. I personally wouldn't care if good medicines were powered by woo, because I want to get well. But I do care about getting a real, effective treatment instead of being taken for a ride. As it turns out, the real, effective treatments do turn out to be based on materialistic principles.

And yes, the placebo effect does in fact exist. We see it all the time in placebo controlled studies, where you split up the patents into the control group (no treatment), a placebo group (a sham treatment), and a treatment group (the real deal). You very often find that the placebo group does better than the control group. If your treatment works, then the treatment group will do best of all.

Administering a placebo instead of real treatment in hopes of eliciting a placebo effect is fraud, by the way. If we could deliberately leverage the mechanisms of the placebo effect to consistent effect, then it would be very interesting and powerful, but we can't. The placebo effect is quite delicate and just suspecting that you're getting a placebo ruins the effect â€" hence, double blinding.
The brain?

The most delicate of instruments?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!

Oh, no! The brain is not a delicate instrument at all! You just have to attach EEG probes to see that the brain is a noisy place. Any given signal is actually driven by dozens if not hundreds of individual neurons firing. The propagation of an action potential is driven mostly by heat; the ion channels in the membrane of a neuron work by harnessing thermodynamic noise. A transcranial magnetic stimulation coil takes about half a joule to get a response from the cortex. That may not mean anything to you, except what I would call "a most delicate of instruments" has a sensitivity on the order of femtojoules (10^-15 J) â€" to such an instrument, half a joule would be a sledgehammer.

This notion that the immaterial is something that only the brain could pick up on is simply nonsensical, given that stimulating that kind of action by other means reveals quite the opposite: as a sensor, the brain is rather poor. Then again, its job isn't to sense, but to process, and as such it would need to be robust to outside interference.

So, yes, I do "sweepingly dismiss" the notion that the brain is some sort of antenna for the immaterial, given it's complete insensitivity in other respects. If you knock a neuron hard enough to fire, it's gonna fire, regardless of the source. Any immaterial that could affect the brain in such a way would easily be detectable by some means by our instruments, given what the immaterial would have to overcome. That, and the brain will cheerfully work without a hitch even in an MRI scanner, which has a magnet capable of attracting a gas cylinder to respectable speed from a few meters away (such an accident caused the death of a 6 year old boy). And all this is not even touching upon the intricacies of signal theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg
YIKES!

No, ignorance will not serve you in this discussion. It is simply not credible to characterize the brain as a "most sensitive of instruments."
Supposition. You've already made an error characterizing the brain as a "sensitive instrument" (it's not), and the above contention is based upon no evidence put forward. "By all observations?" What observations? Name the observations, and what about them leads you to believe that the immaterial is more solid and persistent, and generates our reality? The reasoning is important, Absolute.
Promises, promises. Your camp has been trying to prove the immaterial for centuries, and you're actually further from your goal now than you've ever been. Science still chips away at the hiding spots for the immaterial.
No, I'm not going to buy any grand conspiracy on the part of the scientific establishment bullshit. It is anathema to the entire dicipline to suppress knowledge like this. And the notion that their "livelihoods" would be "threatened?" Total poppycock! On the contrary, it would represent a whole new superfield of science where a scientist could make a name for himself, and there would be many, many Nobel prizes waiting for significant discoveries. Grants couldn't be issued fast enough to keep up with demand of new research proposals.

Nah, I think your papers are rejected for the same reason all other scientific papers are rejected: flawed methodology, sloppy experiments, inadequate controls, studies too small, and questionable analysis, among other ills.
It's the observed and well-documented effects that separates it from woo. The evidence is plain and clear, unfiltered by human folley. Even so, it took a lot of work and much more than anecdotes to establish.
Or it'll be more N-rays. Confidence is fine and all, but I wouldn't be so boastful about finding something that has turned out to be smoke when men smarter than you tried to find it. Most people, even most scientists, are doomed to relative obscurity with only the most minor accomplishments to their name. Even the ones that are as starry eyed as you.

You seriously sound like every apocalyptic preacher, ever. They have a poor track record for predicting the end of the world.
Nonsense. Do you even know how to perform an entropy calculation? So long as there are stars shining, the universe will not be in thermal equilibrium, and the red dwarf stars will burn for trillions of years.

Seriously, who taught you this, because whoever it is taught you wrong.
The total energy content of the universe is actually very close to zero. The positive forms of energy are balanced out to great precision by the negative forms.
Supposition born of ignorance. The laws of physics are such that the universe cannot be static. Full stop. Einstein tried to enforce a global static-ness, but failed.
Supposition born of ignorance. Inventions are created to fulfill needs, and humans are clever little monkeys.
Well, they do say that it takes competence to recognize competence. The problem is not not understanding data, it's thinking you understand the data when in fact you don't. Being that this is what I do, I think I have a better grasp on how to do that than you do.

I don't doubt you are skilled at analyzing data; if that weren't the case I wouldn't have invested the time bouncing my ideas off you. My suggestion is take a step back and look at the big picture.  Just think about it: if the total energy in the universe is near zero, what exactly was it that initiated the huge differentials creating all these stars that burn for ages?  The intricate life forms? Was it just a poof random event?  Why is there so much order in the midst of chaos?  It simply can't be explained by mere material causality.  Ignorance is not a virtue but recognizing it is the foundation of true knowledge.

Sent from my moto e5 play using Tapatalk

[Baruch]

Hakurei is a professional statistician.  But I don't trust facile manipulation of statistics either.

[Arik]

Affecting the brain with drugs can induce NDEs:


Drug-Induced Near Death Experience

Also a masturbation induce an ejaculation so what?

Would you be so frivolous to compare a masturbation with making love?

A chemical masturbation with drugs also open to a certain degree what is inside the pineal gland which lies at the border between the finite and the infinity but there is a limit how far a chemical masturbation can go.

With drugs you force your consciousness to get closer to the infinity but the consequences are dreadful because it seem obvious to me that God doesn't like to be forced to give bliss so what you get are only sparks of bliss and the price that people pay is very very high indeed and this exercise has very little to do with a real experience with God such as a real NDE.