Comment by occultist_throw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by occultist_throw | Hacker News Reader

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occultist_throw

Well, there's 3 avenues to this.

1. Divination is real, and they are consulting whatever they called. Could be the victim. Could be someone/something else. Could be a deity. Long and short, unless you're practiced in this realm, you can't know. And there's no empirical proof.

2. It's a link to their subconscious. Nothing mysterious. But it's a way they can interrogate their own ideas about a situation without personally owning said ideas. Think of this akin to a couch and therapist.

3. Someone is playing with them and controlling a weak-willed person. In other words, they're choosing what's being divined in order to exert influence over someone else. This is not only a bad situation, it's likely illegal.

The tough part, is when divination is integral to someones' religion. What's to say that your reading verses with a bible is any less than me relying on the tarot? If you're allowed your religious expression, why not I? And speaking of such, isn't it common still to "swear to tell the truth, the only truth, so help you god"? My first question to that is, "Which God?"

1 would appear protected, 2 isn't, and 3 looks illegal. Hard call.

> unless you're practiced in this realm, you can't know.

I disagree, because...

> there's no empirical proof.

We have been trying very hard for centuries to contact any kind of afterlife, spirits or gods, and failed. Even if we cannot perfectly rule it out in principal we can rule out anything we have conceived and tested thus far.

That and Ouija boards are made by Parker Bros [1]. Unless you believe that a group of people with a reliable channel to the afterlife chose to keep making Scrabble and Monopoly games with their super powers, then we really should just discount it as an obvious money grab, because it is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Parker_Brothers_games

> We have been trying very hard for centuries to contact any kind of afterlife, spirits or gods, and failed.

I'd suppose you haven't tried spending time with people who do practice and do this, do you?

> Even if we cannot perfectly rule it out in principal we can rule out anything we have conceived and tested thus far.

Simply put, you can't. "Absence of proof" does not equal "proof of absence".

> That and Ouija boards are made by Parker Bros [1]. Unless you believe that a group of people with a reliable channel to the afterlife chose to keep making Scrabble and Monopoly games with their super powers, then we really should just discount it as an obvious money grab, because it is.

Not at all. The Ouigi boards are just a tool. There's usually nothing in them that would be manifest to a specific entity or emotion. Not even that, but they are made by machine, so there would be very likely no emotion in contact with them.

Since you seem unlearned in this area, divination can use any sort of tools. Tarot, pendulum, sand, tea, coffee grounds, bones, compass (luao-pen), ruler, entrails, fire, water.. Any of these can be learned and used. Or some are versed in doing divination using no instruments at all - although even in the occult and esoteric areas, this is considered very difficult.

And then it comes full circle with religion. These are religious practices. If you're thinking of Miss Cleo, you're further from the truth. Those are advertisement services ; whereas what I talk of are honestly held beliefs. And when understood from the occult mindset, do give valid answers.

It's one area where I work in regularly, is divination. Sometimes, it doesn't work. In that case, I say as such. Usually, it does.

> Usually, it does

No, honestly, it doesn't.

I should probably have said something about Confirmation Bias which I suspect is what is at work here. Note that you say the times it doesn't work, you dismiss as being due to circumstances beyond control; when it does seem to work, due to random chance, you seize on that as proof, confirming that there is a hidden occult mechanism at work. Even a really low success rate -- maybe only 5-10% of your guesses are correct -- is still enough to generate the illusion, particularly if you are able to dismiss the failures as unimportant, so the successes stick out more.

> I should probably have said something about Confirmation Bias which I suspect is what is at work here.

Indeed. I know well about the confirmation bias. I've considered it early on as a likely candidate. I've ruled it out by too many extremely improbable events, many which include other people unawares about anything that I do.

(In 'unrelated' computer science, do you consider a zero knowledge proof to be 0% likely even after 100 iterations? How many iterations would you need as proof?)

> Note that you say the times it doesn't work, you dismiss as being due to circumstances beyond control; when it does seem to work, due to random chance, you seize on that as proof, confirming that there is a hidden occult mechanism at work.

You misunderstand. I do not classify them as failures, because they are not. I can tell when a divination won't work. Call it a little message in the back of my mind. Something. Doesn't happen often.

> Even a really low success rate -- maybe only 5-10% of your guesses are correct -- is still enough to generate the illusion, particularly if you are able to dismiss the failures as unimportant, so the successes stick out more.

Id say much higher than that. But you've already dismissed this as some self-inflicted mental health issue. If you've read any of my meager posting history, you'd know that I'm trying to blend both this mysticism and science, and bring it so all may use and benefit.

How come there has never been a person with both supernatural abilities and a want for a million dollars?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_...

> I know well about the confirmation bias. I've considered it early on as a likely candidate. I've ruled it out by too many extremely improbable events, many which include other people unawares about anything that I do.

Document you processes and methods and let others duplicate them. If you have a process that works it could change the world.

Until you have something I can duplicate I will disregard it with active hostile because this kind of mental has killed too many.

Oh, I find your comments interesting and well thought out, just wrong... But I do think you deserve better than just my glib throwaway dismissal, so I added the follow up comment to explain more/better.

Please do not clutter up this board with drivel.

> honestly held beliefs

Honestly held beliefs can be wrong. In this case divination of the sorts you have described fly in the face of empirical testing. Please stop presuming my level of knowledge, I am fairly certain I have more than none in this regard and would not have commented otherwise.

> Usually, it does.

Then publish a paper and pick up your Nobel prize. Or start a business and guarantee results. Or do one of a million other things people do with technologies that work do and go be successful.

Except you can't because the ranks of fortune tellers, prophets, mystics and yogis is filled with charlatans. Some honest but wrong and some liars deceiving, but it doesn't matter both are wrong or their practices would have spread as far as success took other ideas like modern agriculture, engineering or math.

You simply cannot get knowledge without working for it. These "revealed" sources don't stand up to experimentation because they are quite literally made up, and experimentation is how we work for it.

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