woo

Quick thread on coincidences, synchronicity and magic. I think it was Gordon White who defined magical practice as working to maximize the number of meaningful coincidences in life. Coincidences are powerful, in a way that's hard to understand at first.

my go-to definition, that comfortably dismisses much the nonsense that often gets caught up in ‘woo’, is “experiences that cannot be articulated by the part of the mind that can only understand experiences by articulating them”

The hippie world & the science world can be reconciled, here's how to do it: 1. Take a break from arguing over mechanism/metaphysical assumptions (HIPPIE: It works because of mystical energy! RATIONALIST: There's no such thing!) 2. Empirically test whether there are... See more

Woo from people who take phenomenology, cognitive science, machine learning, and epistemology seriously of course will hit different. It's vastly more capable of self-articulation, development, testing, and consistency-checks. It's the good stuff.

chakras in the west is funny because you have so many disbelievers who have no experience with it and so many professed believers who also have no investment, knowledge, or experience with it

right, so i did not talk about this at all, lemme lay out some stories that seem plausible to me. in more detail, the “minimal but respectful take” here seems to me psychological: that tarot and astrology are two different scaffolds on which to hang intuitive psych reads