Wondering if anyone tried the proof of principle experiment of magickal/psychokinetic effect I posted back in December 2010 in the "Real Ultimate Power" thread in the fight club and, if so, what are your results?

28 views, no replies. Should I continue or is this thread irrelevant for everyone?

I think those that simply disbelieve - not skeptics, mind you, but those who willfully deny - will not attempt this test, and those that already practice possibly have better things to do. It does seem, though, that no one who has viewed the thread has attempted the experiment.

I for instance don't consider the experiment very useful; I believe in the efficacy of magic and use it on a regular basis.

Did you?

peace

You're correct, but I'm a bit disappointed. Reading through past threads I noticed that every few months the same topic comes up; "can you do anything", "what can you do", "real ultimate power" and so on. These all are questions by those who either haven't tried magick, for some reason haven't gotten repeatable results or, as you said, willfully deny its existence. The test, properly performed, answers the question.

Did I do the test? It's a repeat of my very early experience with psychokinesis. Your mention of headaches from over-training in another thread is familiar and is one reason why the sessions are so short.

I personally think that these threads pop up, sometimes, because someone is waiting to hear someone way "Why yes, just the other day a raised a poor man from the dead, I sleep levitating, and two of my very best friends are ghosts!" There can sometimes be a sense of disappointment in magic itself for the unappreciative and those who don't understand the principle of leverage. They figure doing a spell to make Sally get all moist for you is perhaps exciting, but of little utility, and not entirely impressive in itself.

So, they're looking for someone to confirm for them that vast an incredible acts may be mastered through the practice of magic, without really considering what such things would be really good for. This is because they're constantly assaulted by fantasy magic, and get too much of their magical education from books on "how to do spells", not "how to practice magic" - and then the books on the latter subject require too much discipline so it's better to talk about the theory and practice half-heartedly than to actually spend all the time in single pointed focus, or master their habits, or admit that they are flawed individuals who could do with some real self-improvement. Then there's the getting up at odd hours and cutting this and such a plant at this and such a time, and/or waiting for specific conditions before you can actually get down to the fun part - the spell, of course - and then wonder why magic only seems to work some of the time when logically, it would seem, you should be able to just do the same things and get the same results.

For these people, your test is too complicated, takes too much effort, and ultimately doesn't really grant them anything of true utility but a possible demonstration that weird things can sometimes happen if you want them to, maybe.

There is no simple demonstration of magic that will genuinely show anyone that there is a magical power to be wielded. If you do magic for them, how do they really know you did anything? if you give them instructions, well it's too complicated to really accomplish and probably it's all in my belief that it will work and well... I really don't care to get up at 2am when jupiter is rising after not having eaten much for four days, and geez your magic is really inconvenient, instead I'll just skip to the part with the blue candle, and i'll just draw the funny seal on some copier paper with a marker, and its much easier to just read this psalm off a piece of paper than to try memorizing these verses.

You either have the gumption for magic, or you don't. If you do, it'll work every time, and if you're wise it'll work the way you want. If not, eh, it's probably not worth the already minimal effort, except for girlish entertainment.

peace

Do I detect just a tiny bit of disappointment with the folks you've tried to help? Run into this so many times that I consider it a lesson. The corollary of "when the student is ready the teacher will appear" is "when the student isn't ready the teacher should stop butting his head against a brick wall, go home and chill". You can't teach magick to those not ready to learn. Automatic safety system built into the universe? Maybe.

Most everybody today gets their ideas about magick from Hollywood, so if you don't raise the dead or throw lightning bolts at whim they assume it's all fantasy and delusion on your part. At that point their mental filters kick in and screen out anything else you may say. The desire to learn new things and the understanding that they don't know everything there is to know is essential for a novice in magick. Along with this is a type of quiet courage; the willingness to face their own limitations and to work to transcend them. Add to this is the honesty to admit that they may sometimes be wrong and to find the truth, no matter how it conflicts with their beliefs. And then a dogged determination and willingness to work for a goal that does not show up immediately. All this is unfortunately very rare.

No wonder the old-time wizards were always depicted as grumpy and distant. They had reason to be that way.

I wasn't on this forum for a good long time, and I'm glad that now that I visited this is the first thing that jumped out to me.

I've been "out of touch" with not only magick, but pretty much anything spiritual for the past three years - since I started studying physics. I'm guessing it's because it needed a quite different mindset, and I'm looking for little ways to, err, re-validate my past experiences. I've been doing something similar with tarot - thinking of a card, visualising it, what it feels like, and trying to find it in the deck; it usually works for the first few cards. This, or trying to extract the arcana and just the arcana from the deck - which works until about halfway through them.

But the coin exercise is really neat, and really inconspicuous. I'm not yet in a situation where I have any real privacy, but will likely soon be. If everything goes right. Magick isn't going anywhere, but I don't like the idea of mentally moving to a place where I won't find my way back again from.

...sorry for butting into this discussion? Maybe I should have posted elsewhere or waited a week or two to get some actual results.

Not butting in at all. I've always believed that a rational, scientific approach ( see http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues ) is the best way to investigate magickal effects as long as you also realize that magick will always contain aspects of irrationality that must not be ignored.

One bit of advice: never discuss your interest in magick with scientists unless they are already investigating the field on their own. For most scientists science is not really the search for truth, it is their personal version of religion and anyone who expresses an idea that may contradict their view of truth will be severely punished. I speak from experience.

I love Yudkowsky and his blog.

The first virtue he outlines there is what started me in magick. I'm not afraid of knowing myself and the world around me, and I dislike baseless belief - but magick is anything but baseless. If you do a spell and the result happens as was described multiple times and you're honest to yourself about it, then there has to be more to it than confirmation bias. It's true that it's easy to ascribe meaning to coincidences or convince yourself of something, but isn't that the first thing we need to overcome as we learn? In every beginner's book I've read the first thing said is "keep a record". All I did was try to follow the instructions to the letter: if it was true, then that meant the results must also be to the letter, or within reasonable parameters. Physics experiments do the same thing, except with equipment that costs more. It's not hard - I'd say it doesn't take much time either, but I don't remember how long it took for me to start getting serious results out of tarot. Not long, though, or my 13-year old self would surely have abandoned it.

And, lol, yes, I know. As I'm not particularly fond of organized religion so people seem to think I'm an atheist, which is just fine with me. If they outright ask, I say "Pagan" with a cheeky smile which they'll inevitably understand as "not christian". It's hard to blame them though - science right now is doing some amazing things. They've figured out teleportation (for particles, at least) and invisibility, they isolate the part of the genetic structure that causes aging and are making good progress in making robots mimic emotions well enough to fool humans. It was easier at the beginning of the 20th century. The more humanity unravels the building blocks of the universe and themselves, the more it loses sight of the whole.

...yes, I've been having trouble with "as above, so below". Either the "above" resembles quantum mechanics (which would be pretty awesome), or the axiom doesn't universally apply.

...I'm rambling. Um. Anyway.

Results: it's day 5, and so far it went from 'none of the coins?!' to three coins yesterday and today, consistent with my mood and self-confidence improving. I used 5, then 10 flips - 3 coins in 5 flips had 6 coins in 10 flips.

I tried it. I've been meaning to figure out the statistical likelihood of the recorded throws (there is a trend, but is it enough?), so my response can be as complete as possible. The experiment was over a long time ago, but I forgot I was doing this... I'll post back in a few days once I have determined p.


This reminds me of that terrible parable about the magician and the samurai, or whatever. The magician is meditating by a river as the samurai approaches, then suddenly lifts into the air and flies over the river. He stands up and shouts "I have meditated twenty years in order to do that!" The samurai calmly walks over the bridge and says "I walked five minutes to do that." HUR HUR THAT SILLY MAGICIAN!

This tale, and your comment, ignore what something like levitation would mean. For one - the reason I made the real ultimate power thread - this would be evidence that magic exists. While you may feel a good luck spell would be more practical or useful, you can do ten thousand good luck charms and still be uncertain as to whether or not they are actually doing anything. If you levitate, or move a pencil, or shift a speck of dust, there is really only one conclusion to take from it. With that proof in hand, it would be an assurance that your good luck charms are also efficacious.

For two, while there may be a bridge over one river, the magician would have quite the advantage in the wilderness.


If you made a feather move around without touching it or blowing on it, I'd be convinced.


As I said in my reputation comment, this like a slap in the face to any genuine seeker: you're telling us that if you aren't an awesome magician, you must just be lazy.

I take by this, though, that there are spells that would certainly convince me? If you give me instructions for such a spell - one that will have some sort of physical effect - and I am able to do so, I promise you I will attempt it.


I don't think so. This has not been my experience at all, and I've been around scientists almost exclusively since I started university. If anyone makes science into a religion, they're not really a scientist.


Bolded part, and the paragraph following it, are exactly why I've been so busy lately: the procedures outlined in the Hive or my textbook are just like magical procedures... except that the results are clear and unambiguous (mostly). I have not had nearly the same sort of results with magic. Re: your coincidence comment, it's true that statistical analysis will reveal when something is not coincidence, but it's not as easy as you might think. For instance, if you do a good luck spell, then the next day you get a raise, you might write that down. Do it again, and the next day, you discover a great cafe. Again, and you find a quarter on the sidewalk. These would all go into a journal as successes, and might lead one to believe the spell is efficacious - not realizing that this suffers from serious flaws in methodology. The criteria for success should be delineated beforehand, for instance; as it is, any good thing gets remembered as possibly from the spell, while bad things are ignored.

Anyway, keeping this in mind, what sort of results have you had that convinced you of the reality of magic?


How so? I don't think we've lost sight of anything. It's easy to think of the people of the past as peaceful, one-with-nature, holistic sort of folks... but it's not true - they were just like us, except more ignorant. (People don't like that, either: "they weren't ignorant, just different!" No, sorry; thinking the thunder is caused by a set of lungs or that the stars are holes in a giant sky-blanket is ignorant by definition.)

This post has been edited by Vilhjalmr: Jul 24 2011, 11:59 PM

Vilhjalmr said:
The statistics should be easy to determine, given the described protocol. Did you alter the procedure in any way, no matter how small? Changing the procedure will probably give you a statistical result similar to J.B.Rhine's; a very small bias only noticeable over thousands of trials.


You've either associating with a better class of scientists than I've met or you haven't yet expressed an opinion that's outside of accepted theory. Please be careful; reputations and futures have been destroyed for "scientific heresy".


As I said in another thread, magick appears to follow the "least effort" principle. If an unusual "coincidence" will give the result worked for it is what you'll see happen, not Hollywood-type special effects.

I've been reading the recent psionics thread and noticed the serious error in the magickal process that everyone seems to do when trying telekinesis. Vagrant Dreamer even described what happened when it was accidentally done right. Anyone else notice? (Hint: concentrate on a spell for hours. Keep it in your attention. Go ahead; try harder. Darn, it didn't work. Hmm... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )

I've been having this debate with a friend of mine for years an years.
It's a shit because i respect his diligence to the truth but he fails to see the effect of his learning on his subsequent learning.

It's simply quite hard to perform magic on him or things he is perceiving
I resent him for not seeing the true effects of his very being and all the beings around him.
All the spiritual aspects to our history an evolution are ignored due to the weight of his learning upon his narrowed perception, something most of us suffer.

Science DOSE have quite a religious quality, people learn loads of stuff an build their ego's upon it's back, then get vicious when their life's knowledge is undermined.
where it differs is that the 'scientific principles' are all focused to know things that apply universally.
while the magical equivalents of the 'scientific principles' are equally concerned with knowing things that apply individuality (maybe more so)
the individualistic science and the existential science are meant to be equal, i think a lot of scientist types fail to see how un-empowering their 'existential' side is on their 'individualistic' side when they put so much faith in what they learn from other peoples
experiences at he expense of their own.
Scientists crave discovering something new but they are still reliant on an amalgamation of all the perceptions of their piers, it's not the right vibe for miracles but works quite well for partial accelerators.

Vilhjalmr it seem's this is really frustrating you so i suggest you find a very haunted house or an obviously enchanted forest and conditionally bless the heck out of whatever spirits are present for a decent weird thing to occur.
enough to convince you.
alone.
Unless you are afraid that your application of intent would corrupt your own perceptions an thus be invalid evidence?

I've said it before. Everyone can do magic, it is easy and simple. Doing it well, and with efficiency, is the difference between being able to run, and being able to win a foot race.

It isn't laziness, it's a matter of discipline, and there is more to it than hard work. But, in those people who have asked for rituals and spells from me in the past - surprisingly a significant number - and those people who have generally complained or lamented that their magic doesn't seem to be giving them anything, the failings generally fall into those categories. There's not enough or not the right kind of preparation, there isn't enough study, when there is it is superficially memorizing correspondences and chants without making a meaningful connection to them. They figure the day and hour is easy enough since it the hour usually comes at least a couple of times a day and one of them is bound to be convenient, but unfortunately they have work at the most beneficial times. They want a magical object that is beautiful, but don't have the skill to make it themselves and don't want to settle for something simple and symbolic. There are a million complaints that range from circumstantial to personal, and when they don't get results by lighting some candles before bed and burning some paper they start losing their belief in magic.

What you're asking for is something "physical". You don't NEED that. And, when you do, you might very well get it. But if you don't, you're going to have a hard time mustering the will, the desire, the intention, and the spiritual force to make anything happen.

The day that my magic started to work for me, every time, the way that I wanted it to happen, was the day when I stopped doing magic just to do magic, and the day I started using it as a tool to accomplish something. I had a goal, I positioned myself in the right direction, I used magic to remove the obstacles, and walked the path to my goal without impediment.

I can't give you a spell that will light a candle, or lift a pencil, or turn your eyes green. If you have a genuine goal currently, and have some idea what obstacles are between you and that goal, I will give you step by step specific instructions which will overcome those obstacles if you follow them to the letter. It may require some meditation and study if you aren't familiar with the principles - I can only give you detailed instructions according to my working paradigm - but if you carry them out you will get exactly what you ask for. I'll even help you suss out what the obstacles are if it's a realistic Goal - not a passing fancy that you have no personal investment in, but something that you genuinely want to accomplish.

You may think that this is not 'magic' as you hope it will be for you. It's not fireballs, or floating pencils, though it very well may involve dream visions and such or telepathy depending on what you need and how you get it; but it will be the power to direct your destiny, to take control over your life and accomplish your goals on your time.

You can PM me if you want, if this is magical enough for you.

peace

Well I do keep a dream log mostly for data I can use to write fiction when I get like 70. Occasionally I write things like:

12-25-04
Above the towers began to collapse. Stones fell from above. The ground began to open up. I fled to take refuge under the other towers, but could not. I retreated to a place where the waters had enveloped the shoreline. I flew above the waters with wings. People were in the waters below. I pulled 2 people out and tried to take others out of the water, but they turned into lifeless dolls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_2004

2-18-10
I'm in what appears to be a tall government building or housing. There is a big chunk missing out of the building like a terrorist bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_plane_crash

1-14-11
As the water was taller than the mountain, we climb up trees to keep above the wall of water headed to us. The wave of water hit us, but we were high above the trees as the water doused us and the tree waves, he made for taller trees.

http://framework.latimes.com/2011/03/11/ea...hits-japan/#/18


which actually correlates to real events in the future. I can't control my dreams, nor do I seek to.