[continued from previous message]   
      
   > Even ``senses'' is a complicated word.  I met someone at the beach last   
   > Saturday.  It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another   
   > town.  For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on   
   > the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by   
   > chance on that beach.  But, of course, this is just fantasy because it   
   > nearly makes no sense.  So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking   
   > to myself---omg, how weird!  Do the things I imagine come true or is   
   > this imagination a kind of premonition?  (Or just coincidence?)   
      
   My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological   
   filter.   
      
   1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence.   
      
   2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an   
   event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you   
   envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I   
   did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x.   
      
   3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your   
   subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s   
   of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to   
   "trigger" based on what you thought about.   
      
   Those are my 3 theories around why that happens.   
      
   > This is not the first time this happens.  But many of the other past   
   > coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a   
   > special way, which I have been calling long-range planning.  I can spend   
   > years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then)   
   > and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that   
   > imagined situation.  I could then claim to have materialized that   
   > situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the   
   > future.  But I actually call that long-range planning.   
      
   True! No hocus pocus at all! =)   
      
   > But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my   
   > control.  The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I   
   > have been doing lately...  Still...  It still feels totally outside my   
   > control.   
      
   >>> care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and   
   >>> so on.  But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or   
   >>> I'm being fooled by an evil genius?  I think that's excessive thinking.   
   >>> That's when thought escapes from the leash.   
   >>   
   >> Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum   
   >> theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and   
   >> plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation.   
   >   
   > The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though.  Yeah, surely   
   > there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science.   
      
   Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves to   
   motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My main beef   
   is   
   when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what we can or cannot   
   prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to say.   
      
   > Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems.  It's a   
      
   Yes!   
      
   > very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book   
   > by descant.  Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up   
   > our minds about how we want to see the world.  The fun thing is no   
      
   I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily agnostic about   
   the interpretations of QM and I live my life just fine. I am just content to   
   note that some interpretations are absurd, some impossible (in my opinion) some   
   meaningless, and some I do not understand.   
      
   So I wait for more evidence, and for science to march along, and that is about   
   it.   
      
   > matter which perspective we take, they're all problematic.   
   >   
   >>> Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help   
   >>> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really   
   >>> would like to do it.  The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that   
   >>> nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.   
   >>   
   >> I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the   
   >> school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the   
   >> person.   
   >   
   > I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it   
   > makes perfect sense to me.  The inner is the outer.  What a person lives   
   > in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside.  A   
   > therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't   
   > put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you   
   > should be looking.   
      
   Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You have to do   
   the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want peace. Buddha can   
   facilitate, point in the right direction, but you have to do the work to   
   experience the result.   
      
   >>>> Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate   
   >>>> an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you   
   >>>> would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought   
   >>>> experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting   
   >>>> something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be   
   >>>> useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.   
   >>>   
   >>> Oh, I see.  We're in total agreement.  I think counterfactual   
   >>> propositions are useless distractions.   
   >>   
   >> Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;)   
   >   
   > This is the USENET.  We could be yelling at each other for an entire   
   > year.  Instead, we do something completely different.  We're weird.  And   
   > we don't even use our real names.  Our friendship can't leave the   
   > USENET.   
      
   Haha... true. I find that usenet has great power, due to its simplicity!   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)