People are so close minded!!!!!! We still dont understand anything.

[Seltiez]

In this world some people think that they already know everything and there is nothing more than this physical world, but is it their fault? NO! In our modern culture we are taught that we know all most everything never spoken of possibilities. In many religion people are told to obey this book or you go to hell this and our educational system is so wrong! When i was younger i used to believe in god and everything and i questioned possibilities but then people used to look me as crazy and little by little i started to see world as jail but then one day i realized how we live in illusion we cant know what is real or is there such thing as reality because we only understand world trought our current senses and we dont know what else there is(This opened my mind again and i realize how stupid i was). Now feel so free because i know there is something more. Now i enjoy life more and because i can still believe and reach out for more. Now whats eating me inside is how i cant share info about lucid dreaming to anyone because i just get the same crazy look. AARRGGHHHHHH!!! F*****g close mindness!

[TimeDragon97]

Firstly, calm the hell down. Secondly, don't expect people to be open to everything. SHOW them what you are talking about. Thirdly... I can barely understand your incoherent post.

[Seltiez]

Just realized what s**t i wrote. I guess you shouldnt post when angry. Here cleaner version: it annoys me how some people are so close minded when it comes to religion its like their mind is in bulletproof safe and in order to get through them you have to remake bible. Then every theory that doesnt come from education or religion is crazy. Its just frustrating that you cant talk about this stuff or teach it other than online or find same intrest people which is hard. I guess this is childish idea.This just is our culture and i might have made mountain out of molehill. Reason why i might sound stupid because english isnt my strongest language.

[Goldenspark]

Just realized what s**t i wrote. I guess you shouldnt post when angry. Here cleaner version: it annoys me how some people are so close minded when it comes to religion its like their mind is in bulletproof safe and in order to get through them you have to remake bible. Then every theory that doesnt come from education or religion is crazy. Its just frustrating that you cant talk about this stuff or teach it other than online or find same intrest people which is hard. I guess this is childish idea.This just is our culture and i might have made mountain out of molehill. Reason why i might sound stupid because english isnt my strongest language. You're not sounding stupid. There are a lot of closed-minded people out there, but also many who are more enlightened. Maybe you need to try to become part of the solution by using gentle persuasion? Education is about leading people out of a dark place and showing them a brighter way. That's the best thing about science - true science - because it always asks questions and challenges the current thinking. There are people out there you can discuss such stuff with - you're doing it now!

[Seltiez]

When i posted this i was full of emotions and just let it flow in text. Its just that you cant speak face to face about this stuff without marking yourself crazy. I just seen so many of my friends turning to heavy drugs to find something out of this world experience just because they cant believe this kind of stuff because it is not normal but astral projection and lucid dreaming is already spreading faster and faster every year. I guess the online is the only way share and speak without sacrificing your social life. Thats where the anger came from but thanks for helping clear my mind just have to keep it inside and share this way of seeing online.

[Voldmer]

Very few are particularly enlightened, and they must learn to accept the fact, that their kindred spirits are few, and far between. Most people have little inner light, and they feel no need for any inner light, so they will likely remain unenlightened. [Zen mode on] There is no problem in this, unless the enlightened cling to the hope, that the people around them will one day understand. Because then they will become frustrated. Enjoy the flowers, and allow the rotting corpses to rot! [Zen mode off]

[006]

Yeah, there were, and will be stupid people, dozens of them. You can't do sh*t about it. Accept it, be polite, obey the rules you have to, and go beyond the limits where it's allowed.

[TimeDragon97]

I am a skeptic. I require proof. Speculating and wondering is all well and good, but I won't really believe anything unless evidence is presented. I am completely open to the idea of things like astral projection, but I have little reason to believe that it is anything more than a dream because there is no proof. Lucid dreaming, on the other hand, is a rather scientifically accepted concept.

[Lucidpotential]

In many religion people are told to obey this book or you go to hell this and our educational system is so wrong! When i was younger i used to believe in god and everything and i questioned possibilities but then people used to look me as crazy Religion is a mental illness that perpetuates itself by altering its follower’s perspective to make all other philosophies incomprehensible. The few who recover build up cognitive defences that actively ward off reinfection by making religion incomprehensible. Religion attempts to punish by threatening eternal damnation, but the new apostate does not fear a hell that only exists for those with faith. He ventures rather to believe that the afterlife is an infinite blank slate of possibilities limited only by his own expectations. But of course this is all incomprehensible, LOL. Cheers. LP

[Seltiez]

The problem with being skeptic that they usually cause people who believe to doubt their believes. I think that everybody should know the facts and be true to itself and not only listen logic but how they feel. We know so much more than we are capable concsiously reach. It doesnt matter if it isnt true. Believing can give people hope and open their mind to more making them wiser and accept new way of thinking. I believe how i feel i lived long enough believing what i know rather how i feel and now im so much more happier and satifised with life. We all should make our own belief system because proof isnt always attainable without you reaching it.

[anderj101]

*Moved to Extended Discussion

[TimeDragon97]

The problem with being skeptic that they usually cause people who believe to doubt their believes. "The problem"? THAT'S THE BLOODY POINT!! It's good to doubt things so you aren't a gullible sheep who believes everything it is told. It's called "rationality". I think that everybody should know the facts and be true to itself and not only listen logic but how they feel. We know so much more than we are capable concsiously reach. It doesnt matter if it isnt true. So, you don't care about truth? Believing can give people hope and open their mind to more making them wiser and accept new way of thinking. It makes them gullible and easily manipulated. You can be open to ideas without accepting them right away. proof isnt always attainable without you reaching it. What does that even mean?

[Marvo]

You are the close minded one, if you believe scientists think they are close to knowing everything.

[TimeDragon97]

You are the close minded one, if you believe scientists think they are close to knowing everything. When did I ever say that?

[Meskhetyw]

Very few are particularly enlightened, and they must learn to accept the fact, that their kindred spirits are few, and far between. Most people have little inner light, and they feel no need for any inner light, so they will likely remain unenlightened. [Zen mode on] There is no problem in this, unless the enlightened cling to the hope, that the people around them will one day understand. Because then they will become frustrated. Enjoy the flowers, and allow the rotting corpses to rot! [Zen mode off] "You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but they'll still go on doing it." "A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires." - Marcus Aurelius

[Marvo]

When did I ever say that? I was responding to the OP, in which exactly that was said.

[Seltiez]

timedragon 97. Im sorry. I didnt ment it that way. I just said that many sckeptics cant believe anything that they cant find proof. I just wanted to say everybody shouldnt just believe in proof but accept all possibilities and make their own theory about everything. No one knows the truth there is so much more that we dont know and you cant never find absolute truth. I have found my own way of thinking and my own belief. I am not 100% sure to the truth but i have chosen to listen my inner voice to be truth to myself and dont let rasionality to blind me anymore. This way i have gained enough proof to believe my intuition. So if you share your way of thinking you should also mention to be open minded so this people could be more open and see more. I just want you to undestand that you cant never undestand everything trust your gut and believe what you feel is truth we all know so much more that we counciosly can reach. This way you will see how little we know about everything we still should make use what we know but accept all possibilities. Im not good with the words and i dont want you to believe me but be open to everything. I cant say enough you will see so much more people have known things that would be impossible to know at ancient times. You will start to see meaning in everything.

[Descensus]

If we as a species want to begin to understand things, accepting everybody's own little hypotheses on how Y works or how X exists is absolutely the wrong way to go. There's no sense in accepting all possibilities. Probabilities matter.

[Arra]

The people in this thread who agree with the OP don't have the proper knowledge necessary to understand why the scientific method works. Their ideas surrounding beliefs, logic, truth, facts, science, etc. are distorted. So it won't really work to argue with them as they've never realized the best way to go about understanding something. So I'm going to try to dissect the possibilities a bit and explain some things. We should try to avoid believing in things that aren't true, because in general our decisions are based on those beliefs. If one of them isn't true, you might try to do something but because you were assuming an incorrect belief, it won't work out how you wanted. A drastic example: Someone believes in unicorns so they dedicate their whole life to hunting them down, and waste their life. In general you want to avoid that kind of thing, so you should strive to know the truth. You could come up with scenarios in which believing something false doesn't negatively impact your life at all... but doesn't it still bother you? I've never understood people who say it doesn't bother them. For example, if you believe in any sort of afterlife and use that belief to comfort yourself when a loved one dies, isn't that a bit sad, if it really isn't true and the person really is gone in all senses? Wouldn't you rather know? Wouldn't you demand to know? I guess if someone just doesn't naturally care about what's true, then it wouldn't bother them. But since that's one of my primary intuitions, pretty much what drives me at a core level.... those people really do creep me out. There's also the possibility that you care about the truth but just don't have a grasp on the real world. Perhaps you're a relativist and believe that everyone has their own truths. Or maybe you aren't but you believe everyone's opinion is equally valid, that if we don't know something for sure, then every possibility is equally likely. Well that simply isn't true. Ex: You have a container filled with 1000 blue beads and 50 red beads. You close your eyes and choose one at random. Are you just as likely to be holding a blue bead as a red bead? Of course not. In this case it's obvious. So let's say you're told you have to guess the color of your bead, and if you guess wrong, something really bad will happen. You would guess that you were holding a blue bead, even though you don't know for sure. This is an analogy for all beliefs that you can hold. What you seem to be saying is that nobody knows what the bead's color is, and people are so closed-minded for assuming it's a blue bead. But really, you're understanding it wrong. I'm sure there are people who just blindly follow science and don't even know why they're doing it, but in general, I for one wouldn't say that we know for sure that you're holding a blue bead. But if you have to make an assumption, you should assume the blue bead because that's what's most likely. Back to science, scientific experiments are all about trying to figure out what these likelihoods are by performing experiments. They aren't saying that their results are definitely true. What they're actually saying is something along the lines of "If the thing we're testing for isn't true, then there would have only been a 5% chance of getting the results we did. So it's probably true." I don't think there's anything wrong with using intuition for some things. Sometimes we'll sort of 'know' something subconsciously before we realize why we know it. But even these intuitions are also based on reason, on a probability assessment that went on subconsciously. But sometimes intuition is just a feeling you get that really isn't based on anything but random brain firings.

[Seltiez]

Hey skeptics i will show you close minded you really are and if you still dont understand. The people in this thread who agree with the OP don't have the proper knowledge necessary to understand why the scientific method works. Their ideas surrounding beliefs, logic, truth, facts, science, etc. are distorted. So it won't really work to argue with them as they've never realized the best way to go about understanding something. So I'm going to try to dissect the possibilities a bit and explain some things. We should try to avoid believing in things that aren't true, because in general our decisions are based on those beliefs. If one of them isn't true, you might try to do something but because you were assuming an incorrect belief, it won't work out how you wanted. A drastic example: Someone believes in unicorns so they dedicate their whole life to hunting them down, and waste their life. In general you want to avoid that kind of thing, so you should strive to know the truth. You could come up with scenarios in which believing something false doesn't negatively impact your life at all... but doesn't it still bother you? I've never understood people who say it doesn't bother them. For example, if you believe in any sort of afterlife and use that belief to comfort yourself when a loved one dies, isn't that a bit sad, if it really isn't true and the person really is gone in all senses? Wouldn't you rather know? Wouldn't you demand to know? I guess if someone just doesn't naturally care about what's true, then it wouldn't bother them. But since that's one of my primary intuitions, pretty much what drives me at a core level.... those people really do creep me out. There's also the possibility that you care about the truth but just don't have a grasp on the real world. Perhaps you're a relativist and believe that everyone has their own truths. Or maybe you aren't but you believe everyone's opinion is equally valid, that if we don't know something for sure, then every possibility is equally likely. Well that simply isn't true. Ex: You have a container filled with 1000 blue beads and 50 red beads. You close your eyes and choose one at random. Are you just as likely to be holding a blue bead as a red bead? Of course not. In this case it's obvious. So let's say you're told you have to guess the color of your bead, and if you guess wrong, something really bad will happen. You would guess that you were holding a blue bead, even though you don't know for sure. This is an analogy for all beliefs that you can hold. What you seem to be saying is that nobody knows what the bead's color is, and people are so closed-minded for assuming it's a blue bead. But really, you're understanding it wrong. I'm sure there are people who just blindly follow science and don't even know why they're doing it, but in general, I for one wouldn't say that we know for sure that you're holding a blue bead. But if you have to make an assumption, you should assume the blue bead because that's what's most likely. Back to science, scientific experiments are all about trying to figure out what these likelihoods are by performing experiments. They aren't saying that their results are definitely true. What they're actually saying is something along the lines of "If the thing we're testing for isn't true, then there would have only been a 5% chance of getting the results we did. So it's probably true." I don't think there's anything wrong with using intuition for some things. Sometimes we'll sort of 'know' something subconsciously before we realize why we know it. But even these intuitions are also based on reason, on a probability assessment that went on subconsciously. But sometimes intuition is just a feeling you get that really isn't based on anything but random brain firings. If we as a species want to begin to understand things, accepting everybody's own little hypotheses on how Y works or how X exists is absolutely the wrong way to go. There's no sense in accepting all possibilities. Probabilities matter. "The problem"? THAT'S THE BLOODY POINT!! It's good to doubt things so you aren't a gullible sheep who believes everything it is told. It's called "rationality". So, you don't care about truth? It makes them gullible and easily manipulated. You can be open to ideas without accepting them right away. What does that even mean? I wish i could speak english better so that you would understand!!! I just mean people are so close minded that they dont even know how they feel because we are thought to only listen logic and fuck everything else. It is totally different when it comes to physics, math and that kind of shit. Lets make this really simple. We still dont know anything about our body we just know we have muscles and bones.....but have you thought we dont have the sensory system to sense everything. Have you ever thought we might have more than just 5 sense? We might just know they exist or there might be millions different senses and we just have 5 of them so we dont know that there might be other life than phycical. When we are born sync out senses with our brain and create our own reality but what if you had different senses? How would you then see the world. This is example what we miss and without being open to anything you will never notice anything. We human dont know anything so we should stop thinking that we know everything at just be aware!!!! I might sound stupid to you but maybe every stupid people is misunderstood because she/he thinks differenly we should be allowed to think and understand world more freely. Do you see how close minded you are. I believe heart is like brain it can control us or our brain can stop it but why we never think that feeling are more than just a feeling? Maybe our heart is trying to us something in different situation but we never bothered to learn what they mean? This is what open mindness mean. You need to understand this in order to become wiser without any limits. !!!! And i might be the only one here who cares about the truth but we never can find the truth. Truth is illusion there is only knowleadge.!!!! Can you see my point!! Think about the first man who started experiment electricity think about man who started learning to handle fire. Back then they saw infinite possibilities unlike us and do you see how much those few thing s that they discovered change our world. Who can say there isnt more is it because that only with knowleadge we can act. People who think they are wise are so blind because of their ego. We know everything we now know because people who thought more openly and experimentent and discovered new things. People looked probably at them like crazy when they tried to create something like car. World is still so mysterious we just made this simple because we didnt allow people to think freely. If this isnt enough to proof you way of thinking with only logic i give up.

[Voldmer]

Okay, I'm taking the bait, and I'll come down rather hard on it, because the concepts of science and reasoning are being abused in Dianevas interesting (but infuriating) post. I'll give you a bit of my background, in order that you can understand, where I'm coming from. I'm an electrical engineer with a Ph.d in physics. In my daily work I function as a mathematician - particularly focusing on statistical modelling and probability theory (Bayesian, to be specific). I sympathize with the sentiment of Seltiez' originals post, not despite the fact that I am completely accepting of the most hard core of scientific principles: the Bayesian theorem, but because of it. This theorem states (actually it follows from it) that unless you know something with certainty - before looking at the evidence - then you can NEVER attain certainty later! And if you do know, prior to looking at the evidence, then you are God - and not simply a mere human being. We human beings must always await the evidence, and even if this evidence piles up on one side, we can never reach complete certainty. But we can of course be compelled to pick the more probable side. As a good scientist you will never be sidetracked from looking at the probabilities and - hopefully - you will gradually move towards the one side or the other, of whatever question you are concerning yourself with. Good science progresses like that. However, when we are talking about the concept of an afterlife, or of unicorns, or of alien abductions, or any other controversial matter of this nature, then we have not yet gotten much evidence on either side. For any given person, who may never have seen a unicorn, it may seem compelling to believe that unicorns never existed. But that does not allow the person to rule out completely, that unicorns have at one time existed - or indeed that they still do. A simple example should elucidate the point: presumably none of us here on DreamViews have ever seen Emperor Napoleon. Should we therefore assume, that he never existed? We do have some evidence pointing in the direction that he was real: lots of people have been writing about him and his actions. This should increase the probability, that he actually existed. But lots has also been written about the afterlife, unicorns, and alien abductions ... My point in all of this is: don't rule anything out, until you have conclusive (not merely compelling) evidence to support that it cannot be! A few further comments to some of the points raised (merely because I got annoyed by them - not because they are all that important): A drastic example: Someone believes in unicorns so they dedicate their whole life to hunting them down, and waste their life. In general you want to avoid that kind of thing, so you should strive to know the truth. This is not a good example, because they might have a wonderful time hunting down those unicorns - irrespective of never finding them! For example, if you believe in any sort of afterlife and use that belief to comfort yourself when a loved one dies, isn't that a bit sad, if it really isn't true and the person really is gone in all senses? Why would that be sad? Look at it this way: a person, who believes in the afterlife, can never discover for sure, that (s)he was wrong. But a person, who does not believe in an afterlife, can never discover to be right! Who has got the nicer end of that stick? Ex: You have a container filled with 1000 blue beads and 50 red beads. You close your eyes and choose one at random. Are you just as likely to be holding a blue bead as a red bead? This example is inappropriate, because you start with knowledge of the number of blue and red beads. In reality, we start without any knowledge at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with using intuition for some things. Sometimes we'll sort of 'know' something subconsciously before we realize why we know it. But even these intuitions are also based on reason, on a probability assessment that went on subconsciously. This is pure speculation on your part. No discovery of the link between intuition and reasoning has ever been proven correct (nor, unless I am mistaken, has it ever been attempted to establish such a link). I am sorry, if my post seems unfairly harsh. But over my life I have seen so much pseudo-science being promoted as the real thing, and it gets me every time. One last thing, which sort of negates everything said above by me or anyone else: who are we, to believe that we know or understand anything at all? How would any person prove - even just to him or her self - that (s)he is not simply a thought in another persons dream? Really - think about that one!

[Seltiez]

You are right. If we dont choose the to path learn more about the the stuff that we know is true we will never progress as a humankind. The point of my post is that we should just be more open minded about everything. Because if we just choose the few of the categories and think that that is all there is we are blocking ourself to experience more. I dont mean that anybody should do ufo hunting, ghost hunting or anything stupid like that because it might be waste of time just let it happen if it happens and observe. I just see everything as neutral dont let anything force me to think certain way. I dont believe in anything and i dont have to it is just way we were raised to choose everything to know the one truth to act certain way to judge certain people but we dont even know how controlled we are before you start to question everything. This way of thinking can only make us wiser and happier because you will be completely free from restrictions of mind and you start to feel inner calmness. This is my last post and only thing i wanted to tell everybody open your mind to more try think as freely as you can without any boundries because it is just stupid you dont have to choose what is truth.

[Lucidpotential]

Excellent post Voldmer. One of the best overviews on the subject I have read. I would love to hear your thoughts on belief/expectation verses skepticism in regard to Lucid Dreaming. It has been my experience that if you don’t belief/expect something is possible in a LD then it is near impossible to make it happen in the dream. For example I find it hard to fly in a LD if I don’t already have the expectation (with out prior evidence) that I can fly. Thanks in advance. LP

[Arra]

Hey skeptics i will show you close minded you really are and if you still dont understand.... You're misunderstanding a lot of what everyone said, and I'm sorry for that. I don't think it's a language barrier, because I've seen a lot of English-speaking people react the same. You think 'skeptics' are these harsh narrow-minded people who refuse to believe in anything that isn't backed up by mainstream science. That is not the case at all. I don't think I'm being closed-minded in the way you seem to think. First, logic does not have to mean the stuff we know. If something supernatural were true, then it would be logical. Maybe there are things about the world we haven't discovered yet. Maybe we have supernatural senses. Nobody is saying that those things are impossible. It's just that we shouldn't assume they're true until we have good evidence. I agree that it's good to be open to new ideas. But you can't go around believing every idea you hear, or you will end up believing in false things. There needs to be some way to tell the difference between true and false ideas. That's where the scientific method and reason come in. To tell us how likely it is that something is true based on the evidence we have so far. However, when we are talking about the concept of an afterlife, or of unicorns, or of alien abductions, or any other controversial matter of this nature, then we have not yet gotten much evidence on either side. .... A simple example should elucidate the point: presumably none of us here on DreamViews have ever seen Emperor Napoleon. Should we therefore assume, that he never existed? We do have some evidence pointing in the direction that he was real: lots of people have been writing about him and his actions. This should increase the probability, that he actually existed. But lots has also been written about the afterlife, unicorns, and alien abductions ... Yeah, it would be just as unreasonable to believe a "X does not exist" claim as it would be to believe an "X does exist" claim, if there is no evidence for either. But the default position is to assume the thing does not exist while carrying out your daily life and thoughts. If we were to do otherwise, we would be forced to seriously consider every idea that came at us. The fact that nobody here has seen Napoleon shouldn't matter. Seeing is just one of the many forms of evidence. As for writings about alien abductions, etc., extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We should not require as much evidence before believing a figure like Napoleon existed, because it's realistic. It's the kind of thing that you'd expect to hear. But it would be profoundly world-view-altering if it were discovered that any of those other things were true. We would need some pretty hard evidence before accepting that. It would be like if someone claimed to reverse the direction of gravity, and sent an object 'falling' upward. You wouldn't suddenly disbelieve in gravity. You would think that something odd was going on in this particular instance that was defying it. That's about how stupid it would be to suddenly flip your entire world-view upside down to believe in an afterlife after reading accounts of near-death experiences or something. It should be considered, but the evidence should be weighed, you should try to figure out what else might be going on before accepting the extraordinary claim. This is not a good example, because they might have a wonderful time hunting down those unicorns - irrespective of never finding them! Irrelevant that that could happen. If you know the truth, you're in general better able to plan your own future. We all have certain desires we're striving for in life, states of mind we want to achieve. When we know more true things, we have a clearer understanding of how to achieve those states of mind. Why would that be sad? Look at it this way: a person, who believes in the afterlife, can never discover for sure, that (s)he was wrong. But a person, who does not believe in an afterlife, can never discover to be right! Who has got the nicer end of that stick? The sadness of it is a subjective thing. Perhaps you don't care about the truth. I do. I'd rather know a sad truth than a happy lie. That's just the way I am. That's just a subjective disagreement, so it doesn't really matter. I thought that the desire for truth might be a universal human desire, but I suppose I was mistaken. This example is inappropriate, because you start with knowledge of the number of blue and red beads. In reality, we start without any knowledge at all. You might be misunderstanding the point of this example. I said after that the scientific method is what we use to determine the probabilities. In reality, the blue beads would be the "chance that the claim is true." (based on evidence, reason, experience, etc.) This is pure speculation on your part. No discovery of the link between intuition and reasoning has ever been proven correct (nor, unless I am mistaken, has it ever been attempted to establish such a link). Yeah, you're right about that one, I just suspect it and shouldn't have asserted it like it was a known fact.

[Seltiez]

This whole thread is one big misunderstanding and i guess its my fault for making it that way everybody is speaking the truth but i just wanted to say being open minded can only help you thats it. Nothing more. I interpreted some of the post and replied with no reason sharing my thoughts which was the wrong way just think for yourself. The language barrier is problem for me because i interpreted some of the posts.