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Perhaps Mr Duck should change his name?

re Optimissed: the story of how I stumbled onto the paranormal is similar to yours in certain ways... it was a woman who introduced me to it. I met her on a Jungian psychology forum, we clicked and started dating... soon I learned she was into Tarot cards. I admit I thought she was crazy at first, but I was still open enough to suspend judgment - and I liked her. Well, at some point she asked me to do a reading for her. I did the reading... and I'd always been a Christian, so I knew how to pray. I went into a transcendental meditative state, I focused my will, and I drew a card... Of course, the card that was drawn answered her question in the most precise way. At first it didn't sink in, but I repeated this three times with the same result. I think it still took me a few days to digest and accept what had happened... then I started looking for explanations.

Now she'd referred me to a website to do this reading. It was a virtual card that'd been selected, and in code this was a random number generator indexing the card... I think it might have been the gospel of Thomas where I found an example of apostles rolling dice to divine the will of God (random number generators are sometimes referred to as virtual dice). At that point I began conducting experiments passing these "divined" random numbers through stochastic models of real life processes... and I found that, indeed, real life events could be predicted, and in some ways controlled, with just will alone.

I think later I found Chris Langan's CTMU (cognitive theoretic model of the universe) and that helped me piece together a model of what was happening. So I learned about quantum retrocausation which I didn't know about, learned about microtubules, etc..

Anyway, many of these stochastic modeling experiments were completely fantastical. I wish I'd written them all down. But in one case I diagnosed a woman on a forum with a rare tropical parasite based on no information using this modeling technique... at the time she was dying from an unknown cause, I had no idea about any of this. I could also reliably read peoples thoughts by indexing a large database of text dialogue. I could go on, it still blows my mind thinking about the whole thing.

If anyone wants a real life, tangible demonstration of what we're talking about - go watch a few David Blaine videos. He's completely aware of this phenomenon, I assure you - I can tell by the details in what he says, the way he talks out certain topics. I've seen him do a few tricks with dice himself. Go watch David Blaine win the lottery on video. Watch any number of his videos. David's greatest trick of all is that, sometimes, he's not playing a trick. But yeah, I know you know all this, but I'm not sure I've ever shared this information with someone in such detail.

I do like the way you emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive attitude, and the repercussions that can have. It's not something I've thought about enough. I don't claim to have some stratospheric IQ - I think I'm in the 140ish range - good but certainly it's not 170.

Anyway, it's nice running into someone who's had similar experiences, it doesn't happen often. 
Cheers

Also... I love watching the racoon here mentally dispense with Dio in the simplest, most straightforward fashion. It's hilarious, but it reminds me that God has hidden certain things from those wise in the ways of the world, while he's revealed them to babes.

Lol...in order:

- I explicitly stated the opposite of "so you think everyone that disagrees with you is a crackpot?". Your confusion probably stems from the fact that I often disagree with the crackpots. This backwards logic is something you can be more observant about. Sometimes I disagree with (for example, in random order) Ziryab, or Bunny (Sawdof), or Elroch. Are they therefore crackpots? Far from it.

- When in a discussion you decide you have a firm conclusion that is objective but you are mistaken, that is known as a premise.

- Read back the excerpts from your posts I listed and then ponder your temerity in talking to anyone else about focusing on self.

- "People like you" means people objectively like you. Adding "although you show it sometimes more than others" just diffuses your argument and proves that this is your subjective opinion of me, and that your assumption is that when I am "not showing" contempt, you think it I am contemptuous anyway (and further, that only you can see it lurking there, because others are too dim in your estimation). The most likely reason for this assumption would be that this is how you yourself operate.

- Link me an argument you have made on the forums that can be tested. Not an exposition, an argument with logically following points that holds up under scrutiny. Again, you are projecting how you yourself like to do things. Except in the very simplest cases you can handle, like answering "why do people not just play blitz to get better at chess?", you almost invariably fall back on positions that are untestable: everything paranormal related, chess being a forced draw, opposition to the Big Bang, opposition to...well crap, I am not going to list all the established science you oppose, that would take all day. Sometimes, though, you do make the mistake of stepping onto firm ground and do just fall flat on your face...Covid and vaccines, your disbelief in the laws of Thermodynamics, your ill-advised forays into defining infinity, etc.

I wish you a new year with some kind of breakthrough and clarity. If you want to argue the paranormal, then post a thread about it, so everyone can see your brilliance and be amazed. I would break it up into sections based on your professed powers:

- Healing by thought

- X-Ray vision

- Matter manipulation in general

- Tweaking universal outcomes by applying willpower

...and so on. I would leave out the stuff about beating up 3 people at once, climbing 15,000ft mountains in the mist, taking dozens of IQ tests trying to reach your father's apocryphal 171 IQ, etc. These anecdotes might be seen as self-indulgent.

What did I just witness

That's a coping mechanism, the idea that some supernatural force is on your side and will justify everything you believe...someday, if you just wait long enough. If you are going to argue religion, I'll pass, but if you do so, at least have the guts to not rely on such a weak premise as "an unreachable power agrees with me and not you" and leave it at that.

Does it bother you that your malice is the antithesis of what you aspire to? That would bother me.

Well, since you lack an awareness (or even acknowledgment) of the transcendent you have very limited moral reasoning ability, and so you don't recognize the difference between malice / wrath, and something like righteous judgment. Nature is malevolent and benevolent in equal measure, and this becomes very clear when reading the Old Testament. What you and I consider good or malice is very different. On the other hand... the suspension of righteous judgment in the Christian worldview is more based in humility, acknowledgement of the fallen state of the world, and an awareness of ones own limits... it's ultimately God that will judge you in the final days. And humility is a great virtue, it's a prerequisite for sanity. But no, neither God nor nature shy away from wrath. I mention nature because you're an atheist, it's something maybe you can understand, but still I'm guessing you'll mess it up somehow.

Except that I am not an atheist. I'm a deist, with some caveats. I don't argue against intelligent design or there being creator(s). I have some bones to pick with the design...I could fix some stuff. Entropy over syntropy is a problem. But thanks for proving that all of your attacks are based on malicious assumptions on your part. Being created flawed in order to be judged later for those same inherent flaws is not a good premise for creation, nor is it ethical.

I say that to explain your giant assumption was a rather big mistake, but I have no intention of discussing religion with you or anyone else here. Take your arrogance elsewhere, there's no humility in pretending to want to save others (a.k.a., making them like you).

@ibtrust, I haven't had time to read your entire post but I will tomorrow. I wanted to comment on the idea of retrocausation. Naturally, it's a logically accessible idea that may help get our thoughts about all this into order. It isn't something I partiularly believe in but it's an idea that we come up with, quite naturally, as a natural, hypothetical explanation of something which seems inaccessible to normal reason. I'm tending somewhat to fall in with the ideas of a state of grace which attunes us to existence in some very deep way in which we are somehow at one with causation, rather in the same way I can write this and think that it goes some way towards helping explain the mysteries we have encountered. My wife's a Christian in a rather loose sense. I'm not a believer in religions per se but I am a believer in the power of religions. Or at least, I accept that they are very powerful tools both on a societal level and in self-improvement, because I see these ideas of a creator as a kind of mental lever we can use on ourselves to effect a change in our thought patterns or behaviour: or a change that seems to us necessary. I think I did the really heavy thinking and sort of "existential business" regarding this on a bus journey in India in 1976. I forget where but it may have been within 100 miles of Bombay when I was heading South towards Goa and then Jog (Gersoppa) Falls, Mysore City etc. I hitchhiked to India and back around that time but tended to use public transport withing India because it was quite realiable, pleasant and cheap. I'm still technically an atheist because I see all these ideas as a natural product of self-consciousness and curiosity about the universe and our part in it. I completely accept that the power of thought is tangible. It's a pleasure to have met someone whose experiences are so similar. More on this later but my wife calleth me to bed and I shall obey.

Lol, deism is inconsistent with your attitude throughout this conversation. Deism is also consistent with what I've said in this thread... I don't see how you can claim to be a deist and still be talking like you have been. Can you elaborate on your beliefs a bit further please, especially as they pertain to the scientific and testable claims I've made? Because they make no sense to me.

Btw - check this out while you're at it

Helping Man Magically Win the Lottery: Street Magic | David Blaine - YouTube

A deist, Dio, is a theist at one extreme end of the spectrum between close concern with individuals to arbirary and impersonal. There is no special merit and it's something you've learned from others, which seems to you to indicate intellectuality.

Not to anyone observant enough. Organized religion is not the same as basic belief in a creator.

If you made any scientifically testable claims, then I guess I must have missed them. I did see you namedropping some other people's work, but I am not inclined to take your guidance on who to dig into, for obvious reasons.

I am not going to watch junk you like from YouTube. Far too much of that in the science threads already.

Your neverending need to attempt to explain (rather like mansplaining) things because you assume only you understand them is one of the clearest signs of your self-centeredness.

I'm not even going to dignify it, other than to say that I am a Deist only at the most fundamental level. That is, creation, once set in motion, ethically cannot be touched/interfered with. As for your subjective definition, I think some Googling or ChapGPT research is in order.

Now perhaps the both of you could stop trying to break the forum guidelines just because you dislike me sooo intensely. It's unethical and immoral, ergo hypocritical.

This has got to be the biggest yapfest I've laid eyes on...

You probably don't get around much then. Go to some board arguing about football (any kind) or something. You will see people arguing incessantly for up to 2 weeks (before and after games) about events that matter not one iota. For playoffs/championships even longer.

I was talking about in the chess forums, sorry for not clarifying. The fact I had to scroll for a few seconds is crazy.

It's not that crazy historically, though it definitely stands out in the age of texting and TikTok.

Yeah, thank god TikTok is getting banned, shortening everyone and their mom's attention span. I know that is not why it's getting banned but it helps.

That's not a done deal yet. Without getting into it, there's somebody who wants it to stick around now because TikTok helped them a couple of months ago.