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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Mystics have been talking about this sort of thing for ages. Perhaps you should look into some of those assertions to develop future investigative paradigms.

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One of the fundamental techniques used by most varieties of mysticism is to make proclamations vague enough that they can be plausibly associated with any fact that is discovered later on. This is how mystics trick gullible people into believing that they have hidden knowledge. The trick is that these proclamations can't be used to make useful predictions; they only fit the data in hindsight.

You might want to look past the Deepak chopra types into the older mystery schools that don't solicit people's attention.

Such as?

Theravada Buddhism.

Hermeticism and derivatives of Egyptian mystery schools make for some interesting reading, and can be approached through academic avenues of archaeological/anthropological studies rather than woo-woo books and blogs. I'm definitely not suggesting it as an alternative to using scientific methods.

I find hermeticim fascinating, but I don't really see the connection. Where is hermeticism talking about genomes and neurons?

If I direct you to particular texts or ideas, then not only would I be falling into the trap of saying 'you should check out this spiritual technology, dude,' you'd be missing out on the exploratory and imaginative process that necessarily precedes discovery and innovation.

I'm saying that people should keep using the scientific method to formalize and test their hypotheses, but that esoteric traditions offer some interesting and under-explored paradigms within which to hypothesize. I'm being deliberately vague here because I don't want to bias you.

I think you are being deliberately vague because you haven't anything except handwaving.

Once the mystics show some reproducible data it might make sense to listen what they have to say.

I'm not much of a mystic myself, but there is something to be said for seeking inspiration from non-scientific sources.

Note that this doesn't (nor should it) prevent actual, hypothesis-driven scientific inquiry. It just means the original idea came from elsewhere. If you look back at the history of scientific discovery, this happens quite often.

Mysticism isn't trying to be a better science, any more than a guttering candle is trying to be a better laser pointer.

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