Lol those losers at cern wasted hundreds of millions of dollars to find out that there aren’t frequencies that alter your energy while I only spent 36 dollars.
Get real
“I did my research”
Top tier shitpost
Protection against other crystals lol
I see nothing wrong with this nutritional chart
Pondering my blue apatite rn
The irony of it being a choking hazard, lmao
Attracts badgers, you say?
Old Gum is my jam!
No, but seriously, you can use galena to make a radio that’s powered by the radio waves themselves!
One day at work, I found out a work friend actually believed the whole “crystal energy” thing.
Since she was the first person I had ever met who actually admitted to that, I wanted to know more about what her specific beliefs about them were.
At first she was super bubbly about it, on par with her personality. But then as I asked a couple common sense questions about why science doesnt find anything measurable, and first she got hostile and mad that I would dare question another person’s beliefs, but when I explained I was genuinely curious and had no interest in changing her beliefs she just kind of broke down because nobody ever takes her seriously or believes her about her “personal healing journey”
The way I see it, it’s for adults who like pretty rocks, but can’t come to terms with the fact that they like something “childish” (because for some reason a lot of adults call a rock collection cringe or childish or dumb, but clearly they’ve never met a geologist) so instead of having a pretty rock and mineral collection, they have “healing crystals”, and eventually it just becomes kind of like part of their identity the way a religion is.
I will however, 100% giggle at their expense with my wife, later. Because anyone who buys $50 polished selenite
drink coaster“charging plate”, and a $200 brass pyramid to “recharge” their $50 “healing quartz wand” while refusing to listen to real science deserves to be giggled at.I will however, 100% giggle at their expense with my wife, later. Because anyone who buys $50 polished selenite drink coaster “charging plate”, and a $200 brass pyramid to “recharge” their $50 “healing quartz wand” while refusing to listen to real science deserves to be giggled at.
I mean, humans do all sorts of wierd, irrational, ritualistic things. IMO, whatever floats your boat.
Did you buy your wife a diamond ring? Or at least gold? :P
I think this is the perfect response haha. Ppl find comfort where they can in the world, even if it looks a little whacky. So long as it’s not hurting anyone, let them have their whacky
humans do all sorts of weird, irrational, ritualistic things
lil private giggles about it seem fairly unobjectionable
No, I made the ring from sapphire (birth stone) and silver. Jewelry is easier than you might think when you’ve been doing small metalwork for knife handles, pommels, and guards.
Birth stones huh? More magical woo. No for real that’s awesome.
Lol at least she just thinks they’re pretty instead of thinking it’ll balance her energies.
Wonder if they had a big wedding that cost quite a bit more than 200$
No, because large weddings are a waste of money and stress, neither of which I make enough money to afford.
In many circumstances the placebo effect is superior to common medical environments. I was completely dismissive of homeopathy until I came to understand its actual appeal. Obviously there is no proven physical mechanism of the substance itself; the water is just part of the ritual. The ritual of being cared for and being paid special attention to by another person who cares that you get better and can do nothing for you but give you that attention you need is 100% placebo oriented medicine and 0% drug.
I was dismissive about crystals as well, but the reality is that if you are aware of them they are in some way altering your awareness by being present. The way they alter your awareness could be as simple as noticing an interesting looking stone, a reminder that there is a vast unknown and many others trying to find their way as you are, or a meditation weight and focus. I don’t know about crystal effects on vibrations other than to know that mass is literally energy and different compositions of molecular structures could have effects on the immediate environment beyond our ability to yet measure. I’m most comfortable saying that crystals definitely have some effect, definitely have assisted others in their healing journeys in some form or another, and beyond that I do not know many specifics.
I mean crystals definitely have gravity pulling you towards them.
I understand your reasoning and even the appeal, however I personally just wonder if all of these effects wouldn’t be possible by any other means. Why does it need to be crystals, intentionally overpriced at that. Marketed by capitalistic interests to exploit you. Theoretically, couldn’t you just go out into nature, find a rock you like, and it could have the same effect?
deleted by creator
Wait, so you’re telling that to not feel ashamed of liking rocks for how they look, they believe silly things about them?
That appears to be their hypothesis
I suspect they’re just credulous, and believe in magic
in a young girl’s heart?
How the music can free her whenever it starts
And it’s magic if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I’m pretty sure the anti matter “crystals” it produces can alter one’s “frequencies” quite well. If we had enough of the stuff. In the mean time eating bananas is a good substitute.
Meh. Placebos affect people so, I let them have it.
Edit: obviously not to the detriment of real remedies. Calmate
If it “makes me feel better”, fine.
If it “makes it so I’m not contagious and won’t give you Covid”, no.
My mom died of cancer a few months ago because she was convinced that a combination of sunlight’s natural vibrational frequency and some expensive “medical” herbal teas would cure her. Placebos affect people, but if you let them believe that they’re an alternative to actual science and medicine, then they’ll use them as such.
convinced that a combination of sunlight’s natural vibrational frequency
Reading this made my brain hurt. I’m so sorry for your loss.
you really haven’t thought this through, have you?
Not only does this encourage scammers to scam people, which is itself obviously bad, but it also means that some people will buy these things instead of getting actual treatment.
If people are getting their medical advice from a meme post in a meme community on a link aggregator on the Internet, I doubt there is much that actual science, education, and common sense can do to help.
There is scientific evidence that backs crystals, it’s called the placebo effect.
So, you’re wrong.
Science doesn’t back the crystals, it backs the placebo effect.
“Science doesn’t back medical injections, it backs the body’s immune response.”
I forget the YouTube channel name now, but I recall someone testing some of the cleansing bracelets, with “energy” and “healing” powers…
It turned out that the energy was mostly in the form of radioactive materials, and the only thing you would be healed from by wearing it, was your continued life.
Crystals, on the other hand, are mostly just inert and harmless. So if someone wants to keep a “healing” crystal or whatever on them or put it in their office or something, okay sure. It won’t do what it claims to, but it won’t hurt you.
But if I see someone wearing a cleansing bracelet, I’m going to reach for my Hazmat suit (since I don’t own one, I’m just going to keep a safe distance from the person willingly carrying around what is very likely to be radioactive material), and reevaluate my association with anyone willing to buy such nonsense with absolutely no understanding that it’s probably harmful.
I forget the radioactive material used. From what I recall, it’s not “drop and run” dangerous, but prolonged exposure is probably going to have some unpleasant side effects… Kind of like radon (it wasn’t radon… Radon is a gas with an extremely short half life IIRC, but it can be dangerous to have long term exposure - many years, and it’s in most homes… Buy a radon sensor folks, they’re not much more expensive than a good smoke detector).
Maybe it was “The Thought Emporium”? He made two vids on it, one being a follow-up
I looked and that seems right. I watched two videos on it, IIRC, and it was interesting and concerning.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure how much sympathy I can muster for people who are so superstitious that they’ll buy that snake oil, but at the same time, the manufacturer is being incredibly deceptive. So I’m a bit split on the issue. At the end of the day, one thing I’m not uncertain about is that consumer protection should be stronger for such things.
Crystals maybe help in the same way placebos do. That’s the most I would admit about such stuff.
Where it gets dangerous, is giving up actual real working medication in place of a placebo.
slapping…
therapy…
I agree. Placebos can help too.
Fact is, for it to work as a placebo, you need to believe it will work.
I’ve had a few coworkers who had stuff like crystals on their desk because their partner believed in it. I understand why that stuff happens, the believer who (supposedly) cares about your well-being, gets benefit from it, and wants you to have the same or similar benefits from the same. But since they’re doing it to placate their partner and don’t personally believe, it’s just a rock on their desk.
Fact is, for it to work as a placebo, you need to believe it will work.
What’s even wilder is you don’t have to consciously believe it, you can unconsciously believe it and it will still work! Doctors will routinely prescribe placebos and be very open about the fact that it’s just a placebo, that there is no chemical compound in the medication.
And yet, the act of taking a pill from a bottle seems to trigger something. Recent research has actually identified part of this mechanism in rat brains. There really is a part of the brain that can be tricked into releasing a set of chemicals that relieve pain, reduce inflammation and create better moods. Someday we might have a placebo pill that actually has medication in it. Wildly convoluted how the brain works.
Placebos is measurement error, not effectiveness. People that believe something works are more likely to report improvements when taking that medication irrespective of its effectiveness. Placebo effect is just misreporting, noise or unaccounted phenomena. It’s literally how we define something doesn’t work.
And its been proven that placebos work.
So as long as you define life changing energy as a subtle psychological buff…
Placebos don’t work. It’s a common misconception. Placebo effect is the error in measuring not any actual effect. It’s literally the barrier we use to define effective and non effective.
Anyone claiming they have something that provides a placebo effect to help is fraudulent or ignorant.
In the UK it is illegal to proscribe placebos. Because they don’t work.
the only thing you would be healed from by wearing it
not actually definitely true! look up ‘radiation hormesis’
I mean, it’s not what they’re advertising, and I don’t think we know for sure that it’s a thing, but it might be, and this would make it fucking hilarious.
The premise is flawed. The LHC is looking for specific things, and it takes forever-and-a-day just to look much less decide whether the-thing-being-searched-for is there.
The premise here is that the LHC found All That Is, and it didn’t find [magical-rock-mystery-waves] so pfffttthh stupid hippies.
Until we figure out just what dark energy and dark matter is, we can’t throw out there being a fifth force that the LHC isn’t even designed to detect in the first place but if you think that humans are affected by things we only tend to notice on the astronomical scale, you’re putting the cart way before the horse. The whole reason we can’t detect them is because they don’t interact with us.
Yes but how do we know that.
Exactly. LHC also didn’t find that breathing air is good for you. I’m still not going to stop.
Good plan!
Short comment:
Does the LHC explain emotions?Long comment:
Perhaps there are other “forces” in the universe than physical forces. For example what is faith but a non-physical force? And yet it drives people to feel certain ways and do certain things. Same goes for love.Just like the placebo effect there are many things that affect a person internally even though externally they don’t appear to be doing anything.
If something so simple as wearing a bracelet brings balance to someone’s troubled mind then I don’t see the issue nor do I see the reason to argue about it on the internet.
Now, all that being said, these products are just a grift. We lost the plot when we went from
“pretty rock that eases my mind because I get dopamine from looking at it”
to
“this rock has magical powers and you should buy it because of that”.Conclusion: people are allowed to feel spiritual and psychological connections with things and it is wrong to take advantage of those feelings for profit.
Yes. Insofar as our brains are made up of physical matter and interpret electrical signals from our body. Emotions are our meat computers’ interpretations of some of those inputs. If you could know the exact location and velocity of every physical particle, you could know/predict the future based on that information and physics. It’s impossible to get that knowledge currently, but that doesn’t make the underlying principle any less true.
But I do agree that this is a dumb thing to argue abt and to let people enjoy their little thingies.
They recently found evidence that not only was Penrose right all along about quantum effects in the brain but there’s these crystaline things in your brain that do quantum shit, not very specific on all the details… but the first thing I thought was
“Can’t wait for Spirit Science to completely and delibrately misinterpret this to sell more rocks.”
Edit: Maybe I was jumping the gun a bit about claiming Orch-OR itself was proven
Source on “Penrose was right”: https://youtu.be/xa2Kpkksf3k
Next up, Maxwell.
Turns out the secret to defeating entropy was demons all along.
Not familiar with that one and I’m way too high right now to read an explanation.
tl;dr Maxwell’s Demon is a thought experiment where an imaginary demon lets only hot molecules into a hot room and cold into a cold room (from each other), thereby violating thermodynamics.
Maxwell’s demon, a thought experiment of chambers filled with hot and cold gas, connected by a microscopic trapdoor.
Thermodynamics/statistics shows that on average hot particles will go from the hotter side to the colder more than vice versa, gradually evening things out. That’s increase of entropy (increase of ‘disorder’, because there’s less ‘order’ of the separation between hot and cold regions.)
Maxwell’s demon sits at the trapdoor and opens it only for hot particles from the cold side to go to the hot side, and cold ones from the hot side to go to the cold side. So the separation gets more; entropy decreases. But the demon apparently isn’t increasing entropy elsewhere or expending non-negligible energy.
Therefore violating thermodynamics which, I think Einstein famously said, is basically the only physical law you can be completely certain won’t be violated.
I think I’m too dumb to get it in general…
But I do hope that one day we can rewrite all the laws of the universe and invent God, that’s the dream. To one day have a world where anything is possible. Till then we are stuck with the laws of physics.
God is just E=mc^2
If you can attain enough energy to convert it into mass, you are all-powerful.
I think you just did that as there is no experimental evidence at all to support Orch OR.
OrchOR makes way too many wild claims for there to easily be any evidence for it. Even if we discover quantum effects (in the sense of scalable interference effects which have absolutely not been demonstrated) in the brain that would just demonstrate there are quantum effects in the brain, OrchOR is filled with a lot of assumptions which go far beyond this and would not be anywhere near justified. One of them being its reliance on gravity-induced collapse, which is nonrelativistic, meaning it cannot reproduce the predictions of quantum field theory, our best theory of the natural world.
A theory is ultimately not just a list of facts but a collection of facts under a single philosophical interpretation of how they relate to one another. This is more of a philosophical issue, but even if OrchOR proves there is gravitational induced collapse and that there is quantum effects in the brain, we would still just take these two facts separately. OrchOR tries to unify them under some bizarre philosophical interpretation called the Penrose–Lucas argument that says because humans can believe things that are not proven, therefore human consciousness must be noncomputable, and because human consciousness is not computable, it must be reducible to something that you cannot algorithmically predict its outcome, which would be true of an objective collapse model. Ergo, wave function collapse causes consciousness.
Again, even if they proved that there is scalable quantum interference effects in the brain, even if they proved that there is gravitationally induced collapse, that alone does not demonstrate OrchOR unless you actually think the Penrose-Lucas argument makes sense. They would just be two facts which we would take separately as fact. It would just be a fact that there is gravitionally induced collapse, a fact that there is scalable quantum interference effects in the brain but there would be no reason to adopt any of their claims about “consciousness.”
But even then, there is still no strong evidence that the brain in any way makes use of quantum interference effects, only loose hints that it may or not be possible with microtubules, and there is definitely no evidence of the gravitationally induced collapse.
deleted by creator
Pedant: they did say ‘particle physics experiment’
Not to defend these things, I also don’t think they work, but the simplest argument is that they work on a metaphysical frequency/energy/whatever, so a physical instrument wouldn’t be able to detect it.
Could also be a placebo which has been clinically proven to have some subjective effect. Not worth getting fleeced over, but worth 2 bucks for a nice rock that makes you feel hopeful.
When I was growing up (granola) everyone in my family had a special little crystal that represented them. I remember when we all picked them out from a big bin. Not to say this kind of thinking can’t have a dark side, though…
Nowadays I just find “special” rocks while I’m out on a walk feeling a certain way, and like mentally imbue them whatever feeling I need (stability, remorse, etc). Then I keep them around and think of that whenever I look them, until I eventually forget why I even got them.
Got a nice Jasper that’s flat on one side helping me through some shit with my family atm
I actually really love this. Even as a staunch user of the scientific method and an atheist, I feel that the use of symbolism and ritual is actually quite important for the human psyche.
Have a good one.
what do you mean by metaphysical
“Not real”
Metaphysical means that it’s beyond the bounds of normal physics - stuff like ghosts, spirits, religious stuff, etc. Basically, you can cover a lot of hokey with it.
Metaphysical is a fun woo woo word, because one definition of it is basically as you have said, a synonym for supernatural (ie, physically impossible), whereas the other definition of it relates to metaphysics, the philosophical approaches to understand the rules that govern or give rise to the rules/laws of physics.
So you have one contextual usage that means ‘weird unexplained spooky impossible nonsense’, and another that means, ‘logical structures that seek to explain the nature of reality as understood empirically, often by academics.’
Thus its a perfect word for mystical woo people who love to conflate different contextual meanings of words and pretend they are not doing that.
Metaphysical is a fun woo woo word
It’s also a bedrock concept in philosophy. How-we-know-what-we-know, etc.
I mean, it can be two things, but c’mon.
… You are not understanding me. It seems you stopped reading at the part you quoted and disregarded the rest of what I wrote. Let me expand:
In one context, in one kind of usage, ‘metaphysical’ is an adjective referring to a very technical outline or system of logical reasoning.
In another context, in another kind of usage, it is a vague catch all term for fantastic things that seem to defy logic and reason.
Because these two valid but nearly opposite meanings of the word can be switched out, or conflated, woo woo peddlers love to use this term, as it easily convinces those who do not understand that is what they are doing, and sounds grand, wise or profound.
Its the same with ‘energy’ and ‘frequency’. Both of these terms have valid definitions that are highly specific and empirical in a scientific context, but also have commonly used, colloquial meanings which basically indicate a vague notion of pleasantness or unpleasantness, or maybe enlightened vs unenlightened.
Woo woo peddlers also love to use these words and conflate their two different meanings.
Most people think that the phrase ‘good/bad vibes’ means that you feel good or bad about a person or situation’s attributes, qualities or what not.
But a person who has been listening to too much woo woo peddlers will believe that there is some kind of actual, literally real, energy or frequency surrounding or exuding from a person or situation they find pleasant or unpleasant, because they are so used to the empirical/scientific concept being totally equated to the whimsical concept that they do not understand that there even are two distinct meanings.
The point I am making is not that metaphysical is a woo woo word that means nothing.
The point I am making is that there are many terms with nearly contradictory meanings, where one is associated with objective, ordered, rational, logical, complex concepts that can be studied and meaningfully argued over, and another meaning that is fantastical, defies empiricism or logic, and is highly subjective.
These terms are woo woo terms not because they mean nothing, but because they are often used by woo woo peddlers who jump back and forth between these different meanings to confuse people.
Quantum is another one. So is ‘AI’, at this point.
I really enjoyed your comments.
Thanks!
That makes sense, I get that you’re arguing a word is being misused or appropriated for unhelpful uses.
In one context, in one kind of usage, ‘metaphysical’ is an adjective referring to a very technical outline or system of logical reasoning. In another context, in another kind of usage, it is a vague catch all term for fantastic things that seem to defy logic and reason. Because these two valid but nearly opposite meanings of the word can be switched out, or conflated, woo woo peddlers love to use this term, as it easily convinces those who do not understand that is what they are doing, and sounds grand, wise or profound.
I just disagree that we know what metaphysics is beyond a shared understanding of a basic framework. “It’s what organizes all physical matter” is a terrible definition, but let’s use it for a second.
If I’m Joe Woo Woo and I say “metaphysically, these a-here crystals will affect your monkey chakras beneficially”, you’d argue they’ve misused the word ‘metaphysics’ in that reading. I’m saying that the woo woo brand of crystals is still following “what organizes all physical matter” and we’re not misusing the term.
What we’re really talking about is “there’s no physical evidence that the woo woo crystals beneficializes the monkey chakras”. And we couldn’t find evidence, because it’s pre-physical evidence.
I agree making a “Quantum Fire Pit” or an “‘AI-based’ Sandwich” is a gross misuse of terminology, but those are different from a pre-physical framework. You have to already be in the physical world to have quanta, to have AI.
Maybe another way to say it is “Sometimes, metaphysics is woo woo.”
Maybe a more decent definition of a metaphysical theory would be:
The rules which give rise to a world which we can describe in more detail with other, more specific rules.
Or from another angle:
The rules which are followed by all of the rules of physics.
‘What organizes all physical matter’ is just a definition of physics, without the meta.
…
I think you have not had much exposure to more successful woo woo peddlers, and you’re missing still the key point I am making of conflating meanings of a word.
Its more than just using the word in a vacuous or spurious sense, as with your ‘metaphysically’ example.
It doesn’t really add any meaning whatsoever to just throw ‘metaphysically’ in front of the rest of that sentence (with your definition of metaphysically), beyond ‘whoah, fancy word.’
You can just throw on fancy sounding words to a sentence or concept, but I am talking about a different and more insidious manipulation tactic.
…
Repetitive conflation of words with multiple meanings breaks down an ignorant audiences ability to understand that they are being lied to by making it unclear that different definitions are in fact different.
Its using a word with meaning A, in a sentence, then in sentence 3 you use meaning B, then in sentence 4 you use meaning A, so on and so on, such that an uniformed or ignorant person who has only heard this word a few times or didn’t pay attention in school is functionally now being educated by woo woo peddler such that they now think the word has a kind of nebulous melding of meaning A and meaning B, and that this is the singular undifferentiated meaning, when in fact this is not the case, there are two distinct, context and domain specific meanings represented by the same word.
You could conceivably do that with the word ‘nuclear’, by switching between the phrase ‘nuclear family’ and ‘nuclear energy’ to the point that, in a long monologue, you might be able confuse some people into thinking that there is a literal subatomic nuclear strong force holding together families, or that quarks and electrons literally have feelings toward other quarks and electrons in their family/atomic unit.
…
Its basically the kind of phenomenon where you can tell that someone does not actually know what a word means, that they never looked up its definition and instead just read or heard it, assumed its meaning based on context, and just carried on using this word, usually wildly incorrectly, because they do not actually know what it means.
It creates an unconscious cognitive dissonance that collapses painfully if one tries to actually suss out what the word actually means, which heavily biases the woo afflicted person toward not attempting to do that.
Woo woo peddlers are successful when they can basically brainwash a person into believing an entire alternate worldview, and basically always this worldview is incoherent, contradictory, that ultimately relies on any cognitive dissonance being reconciled by the woo woo peddler.
The point is to basically brainwash ignorant or desperate people into a whole lifestyle of mystical nonsense where the ultimate authority, source of comfort, who you become dependent on, answerer of questions, arbitrator of disputes, is the woo woo peddler.
materialism > metaphysics
Many of them are also dangerously radioactive.
Wait a minute, how radioactive? Better or worse than collecting old smoke detectors, “Radioactive Boy Scout”-style?
https://youtu.be/3BA5bw1EV5I?si=sWF9f_LJB24QfI2O
Some of them are just shy of a spicy fiestaware plate, but also contain powdered thorium.
If they worked at all it would be possible to measure the effects indirectly in a double-blind study even if we couldn’t measure the energy directly.
Now I’m just a humble weed farmer but I’ve seen “A Boy and His Atom” and it looks an awful lot like waves/vibrations to me. And I’m pretty sure some researchers have seen Lithium atoms collapse into waves near absolute zero. And we know that these waves and particles are effected by observation. And I’ve also smoked a bunch of DMT and eaten mysterious varieties of mushroom. That’s why I believe in m⛤gick.
I’ve smoked DMT and eaten plenty of mushrooms, and I don’t believe there’s anything supernatural. And if I did, saying it’s because of drugs would be a terrible argument for it being true.
Yeah! It’s a fun experiment to ask why a certain molecule dancing on a serotonin receptor makes such a crazy experience occur, but by no means does it indicate magic to exist or anything like that.
I’ve eaten pounds of cubensis (in total) and smoked DMT until I couldn’t physically move my arm to take another hit. I’ve been on incredible, wonderful trips. But, just like you, I know it’s happening inside my brain. Truth is stranger than fiction for real.
deleted by creator
I’m pretty sure you’re responding seriously to satire :)
As a chaote, it honestly didn’t register as satire. But if it is, it’s spot on.
It’s not, I’m a Chaote myself. Let these guys be content with the shadows on the wall. 93/93
Crowing about how you have special knowledge everyone else is too dumb to see is a sure sign of a crackpot.
Are they though?
If not satire I think they are fully aware they are crackpot, hence why it sounds like sarcasm.
Some kind of belief in absurdism? Like a “i 100% know this doesn’t make sense and i don’t care cause neither do you make sense and were both close enough to stay living” is a vibe i get
I know similar views do exist but i cant actually tell with this guy.
That’s the sweetest thing anybody’s ever said about me 🥲
People will shit on crystals believers in one breath and tell people to ‘respect other’s religion’ in another or gloat about their MBTI assessment. The cognitive dissonance is unreal.
I don’t believe in either but at least I’m consistent. If you’re not, then you’re just finding an excuse to hate on a hobby that primarily attracts women.
This is the same thing that happens to anything that women likes: pumpkin spice lattes, uggs, horoscopes, tarot cards, rose, etc. It’s seen as trivial and stupid no matter how banal the average person’s interest are regardless of gender.
Pro tip: the difference between faith healers and organized religions and belief systems is that, by and large, priests do not seek out people who are vulnerable, charge them three figures per psychic session, and then try to upsell crystals that do nothing on top of it. You’ll never hear someone say “respect their religion” in regards to Scientology.
Also
anything that women like
Bro, have you seen how much people shit on sports, beer, and other stereotypically masculine interests? People shit on basic things because they’re basic and some people use them as a substitute for a personality, not because women like them.
is that, by and large, priests do not seek out people who are vulnerable
What are you talking about, every organized religion does this. If people weren’t vulnerable to being deceived, there wouldn’t be any religious institutions. And I’ll spare you the longwinded rant about the pressure to tithe other than to say that it exists and it’s extremely aggressive.
Also, you’re very much proving their point unintentionally. Quote from the first sentence in the wikipedia article for the slang term ‘basic’ :
Basic is a slang term in American popular culture used pejoratively to describe middle class white people, especially women, who are perceived to prefer mainstream products, trends, and music.
You’re using a gendered insult to dismiss their claims of bias based on gender lines. I usually try to be more constructive than this but wow are you off the mark here.
is that, by and large, priests do not seek out people who are vulnerable
What are you talking about, every organized religion does this.
As an aside, the Jewish religion specifically discourages this.
Religion panders to the vulnerable, that I’ll grant you. But no major organized religion I’m aware of, apart from scientology, actively tries to soak people. (And before you say it, the collection plate does not count.) We respect people’s beliefs as long as the people who tell them to believe them aren’t doing so because they know the things they’re peddling are total bunk and just want vulnerable people’s money.
Second of all, I wasn’t even aware that “basic” was a gendered insult. What I meant was that people make fun of mainstream things because they’re mainstream, and have since time immemorial, and that people who follow whatever the mainstream believes in lieu of having a personality deserve to be mocked.
But no major organized religion I’m aware of, apart from scientology, actively tries to soak people. (And before you say it, the collection plate does not count.)
We used to call them “tv preachers”. They’d be on all the time with a phone number on the screen to call and donate money. Over time they became “mainstream” that millions now follow and now they’re loosely called “Evangelicals”. They’re nominally “Christian”, functionally “Protestant” but most do not follow a particular established denomination.
Make no mistake, the “soaking” is central to that form of “Christianity”.
And I would not ask anyone to “respect the beliefs” of someone whose only religion comes in the form of televangelism. There is a big difference between a religious leader and a charlatan, and it is our duty as friends and family members to try to help get people out from under the thumb of the latter.
Have you considered that there’s more than one person on the internet? One person can say one thing and another person say the opposite and no one has been a hypocrite.
Anyway, I’d say we should respect people’s right to practice what they want, but we can still make fun of it. I probably would say don’t do it to their face, but that’s up to you.
I don’t think standing by and letting people get scammed is the right move either
Wait shiny rocks have a gender now?
In a lot of the Romance languages. ;)
Respecting others’ religions and crystals - I’d only recommend not using the fact they believe in things that don’t exist against them. No need to indulge them. No need to do things differently for their benefit.
MBTI - in the workplace it’s pretty low value and low predictive power. Testing is unreliable. It’s easy to hit whatever set of letters you think are desired in your workplace with a little practice. In groups of MBTI fans it seems more useful, but those groups try very hard to place themselves into correct categories, and it does predict useful dynamics in interactions between people of different MBTI types.
Hobbies that attract women - I don’t think that’s pertinent, where you see more women into crystals you see men more likely to believe in magic devices for cars.
Belief in magic is pretty even between the genders and pretty common
Belief in magic is pretty even between the genders and pretty common
I was interested and looked up some studies. There is a gender gap in spiritual believe and women tend to be more spiritual, including believing in magic. So OPs statement in that regards holds.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying everything that op wrote is correct or that I agree, but the starting point they used, that women tend to belive in magical stuff more often, seems to be true.
Honestly though?
At least it keeps the gullible from causing real trouble elsewhere.
I see where you are coming from, but if we lived in a world that literally had no scammers, grifters, or corruption, those people might find a hobby that actually helps society as a whole rather than spinning in place.
I’m talking only about the folks that have a belief in “energy work”, nothing else.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Once someone believes one thing without evidence, they are likely to believe more things without evidence and people act on their beliefs. That’s the fundamental problem, believing things without evidence. Once you are comfortable with having that door open, it doesn’t stop at one thing and nothing else.
Then you might as well write off anyone with any religious beliefs at all. Which is fine by me, but I think it important to note that there’s no fundamental difference between the energy working “spiritual” folks and any other belief in the unprovable.
And, by that metric, I agree that such thinking opens the door to other forms of non empiric beliefs and practices, including the scammy ones. Religious folks will buy into whatever line of bunkum that’s linked to their religion of choice, same as the crystal power and herbs-are-magic crowd.
If anything, the woowoo spiritual folks tend to be way less invasive with their snake oil, so I mind them less by this criteria.
Not that everyone professing to only rely on empirical evidence for their decisions actually does. There’s plenty of faith about “science” as some kind of immutable thing that can be taken at face value. Doesn’t much matter what the information is, if the person just accepts something as truth because it is a published paper saying so, it’s the same end result, just with a lower chance of the information being completely imaginary as opposed to just wrong.
I dunno if it does.
A lot of these people go around smashing random rocks to uncover stuff they clearly plan to sell.
To sell them, they’ll likely promote crystal healing and such and anti science, and of course be anti vax
