I am curious about the occult. I’ve read a bit on r/occult on Reddit and a few other places, and one thing that strikes me as very interesting is that many of these magicians (practitioners of magic or magick) consider themselves empiricists. They claim to keep good records of their spells and what effects they produce, and they claim to have found methods that consistently produce measurable paranormal results for them.
If we assume that magic does not exist, then I find it puzzling why significant numbers of intelligent-seeming people claim to have strong evidence that magic does exist. This does not prove that “magic exists”, of course, but it is, as I said, puzzling.
The explanations I can think of include (and the answer might be a combination of several of these):
There could be some genuinely useful psychology involved. There is reason to believe that the “law of attraction” does work to some extent in some contexts for reasons that are psychological rather than parapsychological. (An obvious example is romantic and sexual relationships, where cheer and confidence can be extremely important.)
The number of self-proclaimed successful empirical magicians may be smaller than I think. I may just have seen 5 people on Reddit make a certain claim and mistakenly assume that these 5 represent “many” people.
Survivorship bias (or evaporative cooling) is probably a big factor. Any would-be magician who fails to accomplish anything with his magic will soon drop out of the community. The ones remaining in the community will only be those who—for one reason or other—are able to convince themselves that their magic works.
Some occult books are full of vague concepts and vague predictions along with strong admonitions to follow the practices diligently. This can exacerbate the evaporative cooling and weed out all but those who desperately want their magic to be real.
It is conceivable that there genuinely is something parapsychological going on—i.e., (some) magic might be real. I am skeptical about this, but I would need to read way more before I can be certain either way.
Has anyone else looked into the occult community and their claims?
(You don’t need to reply with the standard objections like “why aren’t they rich yet?” or “go win the Randi prize”. I can come up with those myself.)
[Question] Has anyone here investigated the occult community? It is curious to me that many magicians consider themselves empiricists.
I am curious about the occult. I’ve read a bit on r/occult on Reddit and a few other places, and one thing that strikes me as very interesting is that many of these magicians (practitioners of magic or magick) consider themselves empiricists. They claim to keep good records of their spells and what effects they produce, and they claim to have found methods that consistently produce measurable paranormal results for them.
If we assume that magic does not exist, then I find it puzzling why significant numbers of intelligent-seeming people claim to have strong evidence that magic does exist. This does not prove that “magic exists”, of course, but it is, as I said, puzzling.
The explanations I can think of include (and the answer might be a combination of several of these):
There could be some genuinely useful psychology involved. There is reason to believe that the “law of attraction” does work to some extent in some contexts for reasons that are psychological rather than parapsychological. (An obvious example is romantic and sexual relationships, where cheer and confidence can be extremely important.)
The number of self-proclaimed successful empirical magicians may be smaller than I think. I may just have seen 5 people on Reddit make a certain claim and mistakenly assume that these 5 represent “many” people.
Survivorship bias (or evaporative cooling) is probably a big factor. Any would-be magician who fails to accomplish anything with his magic will soon drop out of the community. The ones remaining in the community will only be those who—for one reason or other—are able to convince themselves that their magic works.
Some occult books are full of vague concepts and vague predictions along with strong admonitions to follow the practices diligently. This can exacerbate the evaporative cooling and weed out all but those who desperately want their magic to be real.
It is conceivable that there genuinely is something parapsychological going on—i.e., (some) magic might be real. I am skeptical about this, but I would need to read way more before I can be certain either way.
Has anyone else looked into the occult community and their claims?
(You don’t need to reply with the standard objections like “why aren’t they rich yet?” or “go win the Randi prize”. I can come up with those myself.)