woo

this idea that divination is real, but that it has little to do with what system you use. Some people will prefer tarot, others astrology, others the I Ching, or cracked tortoise shells, or bird signs or dice or just about anything else. All of it works, not because there’s anything inherent to the images of the tarot, or the position of the stars ... See more

So, while we don’t have any scientifically valid theory about what such “energy” could be—all traditional explanations of it make no sense to the modern understanding of physiology—we can bring a certain empirical sensibility to our experiences anyway. We can become spiritual pragmatists. We can accept “energy” and its various traditional maps in a... See more

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”

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.