Well she did bring up some semi-legitimate evidence. Photographs and personal/family experiences. But I found her conclusions premature and anthropomorphic. I think a lot of what I suffer from right now is availability bias.
Do you think this might merit a post in and of itself? I can talk about some of the things that helped me stay sane and the things i had to fight against. If there’s enough support, I’ll do it.
But some examples: I was accused of not having an open mind for rejecting certain things outright. For example, no matter how many videos or sightings there are of ufo’s even by high level officials, I don’t believe that aliens would invent faster than light travel or suspended animation and then come here and flash their blinkers at us.
My inability to explain an event implied I had to accept her explanation for it. Simply saying, no I can’t explain that but I don’t think your explanation is likely was not acceptable. I wasn’t being open-minded.
Wishful thinking was abundant. Inexplicable photographic anomalies were ghosts, specifically her grandfather protecting her. Clairvoyance explained her difficulties controlling her emotions and the bad things that had happened to her in her life.
Evidence was anthropomorphized. If there was evidence for something did happen, it was immediately assumed it had a human-like origin such as a ghost or demon.
You’ve got my sympathy—borderline is strong stuff.
I’m still digging my way out from childhood emotional abuse of a different variety, so my advice is tentative, but here are a couple of things I think are helpful. One is what I call moving back behind my own eyes. Even though it’s based on homunculus beliefs, the general idea is to check on whether I’m in my own relatively direct view of the universe, or if my focus is on what other people might be thinking of me.
This seems to be a special case of something I’ve been using lately—asking myself what I’m doing, with the intent of looking at a fairly small chunk. For example, if the answer is “I’m playing a video game while thinking about what an awful person I am”, there might be a clue in there somewhere. Recent surprise: You know, it might be a mistake to beat myself up because someone else is making money from the same business idea that I had twenty years ago and never did anything with.
I think you’re up against emotional habits of thinking it was urgent to accommodate her as much as specific issues about the occult.
Thank you for the advice. And I’m willing to agree about the occult being the minimal issue. I guess the rest of my issues feel off-topic. Still, I am really thinking about writing a post about this and what rationality skills helped, it would be a good case study. Perhaps I shouldn’t limit it to just the supernatural stuff. Any thoughts on if it’d be of enough value to people?
Well she did bring up some semi-legitimate evidence. Photographs and personal/family experiences. But I found her conclusions premature and anthropomorphic. I think a lot of what I suffer from right now is availability bias.
Do you think this might merit a post in and of itself? I can talk about some of the things that helped me stay sane and the things i had to fight against. If there’s enough support, I’ll do it.
But some examples: I was accused of not having an open mind for rejecting certain things outright. For example, no matter how many videos or sightings there are of ufo’s even by high level officials, I don’t believe that aliens would invent faster than light travel or suspended animation and then come here and flash their blinkers at us.
My inability to explain an event implied I had to accept her explanation for it. Simply saying, no I can’t explain that but I don’t think your explanation is likely was not acceptable. I wasn’t being open-minded.
Wishful thinking was abundant. Inexplicable photographic anomalies were ghosts, specifically her grandfather protecting her. Clairvoyance explained her difficulties controlling her emotions and the bad things that had happened to her in her life.
Evidence was anthropomorphized. If there was evidence for something did happen, it was immediately assumed it had a human-like origin such as a ghost or demon.
It goes on.
You’ve got my sympathy—borderline is strong stuff.
I’m still digging my way out from childhood emotional abuse of a different variety, so my advice is tentative, but here are a couple of things I think are helpful. One is what I call moving back behind my own eyes. Even though it’s based on homunculus beliefs, the general idea is to check on whether I’m in my own relatively direct view of the universe, or if my focus is on what other people might be thinking of me.
This seems to be a special case of something I’ve been using lately—asking myself what I’m doing, with the intent of looking at a fairly small chunk. For example, if the answer is “I’m playing a video game while thinking about what an awful person I am”, there might be a clue in there somewhere. Recent surprise: You know, it might be a mistake to beat myself up because someone else is making money from the same business idea that I had twenty years ago and never did anything with.
I think you’re up against emotional habits of thinking it was urgent to accommodate her as much as specific issues about the occult.
Thank you for the advice. And I’m willing to agree about the occult being the minimal issue. I guess the rest of my issues feel off-topic. Still, I am really thinking about writing a post about this and what rationality skills helped, it would be a good case study. Perhaps I shouldn’t limit it to just the supernatural stuff. Any thoughts on if it’d be of enough value to people?
I think it would be valuable, though it may just mean that I think it would be valuable for me.
Instrumental rationality includes all aspects of how one can live better and/or more in accordance with one’s goals by thinking more clearly.
Alright, as a motivational technique, I publicly commit to complete it within the next two weeks. Would you be willing to do some copyediting?
Yes.