You will know when we have made real progress because an informed, responsible adult will be able to make their own decisions about what to put in their own body. Medical progress in psychedelic theory is a altruistic slippery slope. It clearly bends attitudes towards acceptance in the general public, slowly at first.
Cognitive Liberty and Religious Liberty FTW. Medicalization implicitly promotes the idea that you should need a "medical issue" in order to have the government's permission to ingest plants and fungi that spring out of the ground spontaneously.
The idea that cognitive liberty should be a global constant for all humans — seems self-evident to my mind. The freedom of the individual should be placed above everything else, as long as it's not hurting anybody.
Astonishingly enough, quite a huge part of the population don't seem to think this as important. This honestly shocks me.
This is not a problem. It is vitally important that people are allowed to believe batshit things. Yes, most of them will be nonsense, but countless times throughout history, things that were formerly considered batshit became obvious truths, and things that were considered obvious truths turned out to be batshit.
If they're not hurting anyone else, people can believe whatever they want. It's by having people try out large amounts of disparate beliefs that we can best figure out what works and what doesn't. Homogeneity is death.
this is completely irrelevant. conformity does not represent knowledge. the majority of doctors in the u. s. believe a divine being rules the universe and pray to this diety regularly. are they too ill-informed and irresponsible to give you medical advice?
I personally think so. I avoid religious doctors (just like I avoid homeopathy) because I don’t think magical thinking results in better outcomes. I’m worried that this magical thinking gets in the way of treatment and outcomes.
To illustrate this, I started drawing recently starting from scratch. It’s distressing to realize how much my own brain intercepts and modify what my actual eyes see, to show me a picture that isn’t reality (proportions are changed for instance, we tend to naturally draw faces without forehead when the forehead is actually half the face).
The point I’m trying to make is that the brain is very weird and biased already to make all kinds of mistakes or overlook things without adding magical thinking on top. Believing things like “it’s gods will” or “it can be prayed away” would seriously bias and interfere with treatment or available evidence, I feel.
You do realize that it's not black and white, right? Just because someone for eg prays in their personal life doesn't mean that they're untrustworthy doctors. Or do you ask if your doctor is an atheist before the appointment?
I'm being charitable in that I don't think you mean to go to this extreme, but your comment allows the interpretation that the State should dictate everyone belief. What if I don't believe in the Big Bang due to evidence provided by the Webb telescope? What if I concur with the minority opinion that the telescope shows such properties as to remove various assumed affects of the Big Bang? Should I, or better yet, those who put forth the alternative theory be censored in our discussions of such? Should those astrophysicists not be allowed to publish papers, with their evidence, to Journals in an effort to make their case?
As someone who believes completely in Astrology (having studied the discipline at great length) I would hardly call myself ill-informed in scientific matters, or irresponsible. These kinds of comparisons are absurd and miss the obvious fact that people hold contradictory perspectives all the time.
It's not scientific, it's an archetypal divinatory system. Ptolemy attempted to cast astrology into a scientific model, but underneath it is something different.
Astrology is vastly more sophisticated than where the sun was when you were born, contrary to popular understanding. It is a system that has been intricately developed over thousands of years, akin to a very ancient computer program with rules that could fill thousands of books. Some rules are more important than others and thus rise into popular culture (eg, sun sign astrology); that is not real astrology, but rather a single facet of the craft which is typically used incorrectly.
Without the time of birth one can say very little, because the time of birth configures all of the 12 houses of the chart. The houses reflect ones experience in material reality. The sun in the 1st house in Libra is vastly different than the sun in the 12th house in Libra, to use a simplistic example.
But yes, a careful analysis of a natal chart that includes an accurate birth time and place of birth would very precisely determine someones personality. It could also determine the personalities of the parents, indicate the nature of partners and friends, health, the home and work environment and just about anything else you can think of. Not in precise specific detail (though one _can_ get specific), but thematically. And further, one can project this chart forward through time to determine future events involving said themes, also with great accuracy.
Unfortunately however, the weakest link in astrology is the astrologer, as has been said time and again. It requires extraordinary skill and learning gained through years of study, like any technical craft.
You are talking about natal astrology, which isn’t the only kind. I could see astrology being used as a personal growth/psychological exploration tool, like tarot is sometimes used.
I group astrology with personality tests like Myers-Briggs. They're harmless unless taken authoritatively, and they can provide the benefit of a framework to guide discussion of touchy topics like personality and interpersonal conflict.
