He's right, but he approaches it from the boring physical materialist perspective. Wrong level of analysis.
Think about the world you see and live in. Someone created the monitor you're looking at that you're reading my comment. Someone created the keyboard you're working on. Someone created the machines to manufacture these things. And so on.
It started with a concept, an idea. It didn't just appear. We, as humans, have the ability to collapse (hint hint, quantum physics) from the ethereal to the physical world the thoughts we have. This applies to everything. What our decisions are. Should I eat McDonalds today or have fish and salad?
We are, in a sense, wizards in this world. We create what we focus our mind on. Where we direct our focus and our intent we can see desired outcome. If your desire is to make a billion dollars, no one is stopping you. You are the only obstacle.
What I'm saying won't resonate with a lot of people, but in my experience, this message isn't for everyone. I'm a software engineer who has learned to appreciate the spiritual world as much as I appreciate the science. The two can live in harmony (as it used to, read about Tesla and Newton's metaphysical works -- they were manifestors as well).
This was a little all over the place, but it's meant to be a sampler platter of metaphysical ideas.
Do thoughts exist in an ethereal world, or are they just arrangements of chemicals and charges in the brain? I've never seen "ether," and nobody's ever found a structure in the human body that interfaces with it. There are no structures causally implicated in quantum wave function collapse, either—the microtubule hypothesis is quite pseudoscientific, I'm afraid. "Do I have McDonalds today, or fish and salad" is a decision made at the cellular level, not the subatomic.
This feels like a very disenchanted worldview, but the missing mystery you're reaching for is phenomenology, not idealistic metaphysics. The evanescent world of thought encoded within the chemicals and charges of our brain has its own self-referential structure which pays dividends to direct experiential analysis, which this article does engage in.
Incidentally, metaphysics is a very broad branch of philosophy which encompasses both materialist and idealist conceptions of the world. You're talking specifically about manifestation/"the law of attraction," which was originally associated with the New Thought religious movement, although it's percolated out into broader pop culture through books like The Secret.
The words I'm using are the best I currently have to describe ideas that have always existed. It's not like a new messiah or philosopher came about with this novelty. It's something innate to all who possess the creative mind. And this is the root of maybe what I'm talking about (I'm still a student to all of this); every human possesses the ability to create.
Is it chemical? Is it God? Is it Tinkerbell's magical dandruff sprinkling into my head? Maybe it's both chemical and God. Maybe all of the above. How it happens is still up for debate, sure. But let me segue for a moment.
If you follow the progress of AI (I'm assuming you must), there is an ongoing debate of AGI/Superintelligence. OpenAI, Google, et al are promising their abilities to invent new medicine or invent some new art form. They will be novelty generators. I feel quite skeptical of this.
Right now, LLMs are incapable of novelty -- ie, it can only compose existing ideas, it cannot invent some new genre of music or new style of art. If it appears new it's only because that's what it was taught and it's more remixing. And sure, there's argument to be made that remixing is a form of creativity. However, it is not the decider of what is creative or not. The human on the other end prompting it makes that decision. THAT is an act of creativity.
Again, arguments to be made that if all it takes is an observer and a set of criteria then that must mean the AI agent we designed to generate and select images for some marketing campaign must be sentient right?
Maybe. Maybe not. As far as I know, these models do not have an internal motivation. They don't spend time replying to other people on forums with their perspective for.. who knows what reason. And if they do, it's because they have a programmed directive to do so.
The human is the one with an internal universe that span the colorful spectrum of experiences that is referred to as "qualia". Our experiences shape us and the world that we know. Our decisions are based on these experiences. Of course, I'm not deluded that the reality of the world we live in doesn't have have constraints: hunger, loneliness, desire, etc. We needed primal instincts to survive.
But once those needs are met, who are you now? Just a series of chemical reactions? Repeating that survival loop? This is where the ethereal comes in.
> I've never seen "ether," and nobody's ever found a structure in the human body that interfaces with it.
Many humans have been interfacing with the "ether" for thousands of years. You interface with it when you practice creativity. Many musicians talk of how sometimes a song just appears to them. I'm sure you'll find ways of explaining this way, but in my opinion, there's a deeper mechanism that we're unaware of or aren't ready to know yet.
TL;DR - practice creativity.
Sure, subconsciousness. No need to invent the whole extra magical worlds.
Self-help books about manifestation tend to nebulously describe the "law of attraction" as a principle that has always existed and which great people throughout history have understood, but the movement associated with it is a modern phenomenon. The Wikipedia page "Law of attraction (New Thought)" [1] is a good starting point, if you're curious.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought...
> And if they do, it's because they have a programmed directive to do so.
Are we not programmed? Our brains were developed through evolution, not engineering, but we still eat when we are hungry. That's a directive that was embedded in us during the process of our development. Why should creativity have a supernatural component when the source of our behaviour, evolution, is anything but?
> The human is the one with an internal universe that span the colorful spectrum of experiences that is referred to as "qualia".
We certainly feel as if they are colourful, but we would, wouldn't we? They have to be, to fulfil their evolutionary purposes. Fear compels us to run and hide. If it didn't feel overwhelming and powerful, it wouldn't work. And if it didn't feel unique, then it would be redundant. Imagine if lust felt like fear: we would either flee reproduction or embrace danger.
Qualia are the abstractions of our senses. They feel present and vivid because they are the fabric of experience, but that doesn't imply anything beyond the physical. If we created an intelligent robot and programmed it to be compelled to flee when it detected danger, how do you think it would describe the experience of detecting danger and feeling its mind transform into a mode that compelled it to flee, that made staying still seem unbearable? Powerful, ineffable, invigorating, unpleasant? It would probably sound something like a person describing fear.
> Many musicians talk of how sometimes a song just appears to them.
Sure, but that's not magic. It's just an idea moving from the unconscious parts of the brain to the conscious. Why shouldn't the "deeper mechanism" simply be the parts of our minds that we are not consciously aware of?