People will shit on crystals believers in one breath and tell people to ‘respect other’s religion’ in another or gloat about their MBTI assessment. The cognitive dissonance is unreal.
I don’t believe in either but at least I’m consistent. If you’re not, then you’re just finding an excuse to hate on a hobby that primarily attracts women.
This is the same thing that happens to anything that women likes: pumpkin spice lattes, uggs, horoscopes, tarot cards, rose, etc. It’s seen as trivial and stupid no matter how banal the average person’s interest are regardless of gender.
Pro tip: the difference between faith healers and organized religions and belief systems is that, by and large, priests do not seek out people who are vulnerable, charge them three figures per psychic session, and then try to upsell crystals that do nothing on top of it. You’ll never hear someone say “respect their religion” in regards to Scientology.
Also
anything that women like
Bro, have you seen how much people shit on sports, beer, and other stereotypically masculine interests? People shit on basic things because they’re basic and some people use them as a substitute for a personality, not because women like them.
is that, by and large, priests do not seek out people who are vulnerable
What are you talking about, every organized religion does this. If people weren’t vulnerable to being deceived, there wouldn’t be any religious institutions. And I’ll spare you the longwinded rant about the pressure to tithe other than to say that it exists and it’s extremely aggressive.
Also, you’re very much proving their point unintentionally. Quote from the first sentence in the wikipedia article for the slang term ‘basic’ :
Basic is a slang term in American popular culture used pejoratively to describe middle class white people, especially women, who are perceived to prefer mainstream products, trends, and music.
You’re using a gendered insult to dismiss their claims of bias based on gender lines. I usually try to be more constructive than this but wow are you off the mark here.
Religion panders to the vulnerable, that I’ll grant you. But no major organized religion I’m aware of, apart from scientology, actively tries to soak people. (And before you say it, the collection plate does not count.) We respect people’s beliefs as long as the people who tell them to believe them aren’t doing so because they know the things they’re peddling are total bunk and just want vulnerable people’s money.
Second of all, I wasn’t even aware that “basic” was a gendered insult. What I meant was that people make fun of mainstream things because they’re mainstream, and have since time immemorial, and that people who follow whatever the mainstream believes in lieu of having a personality deserve to be mocked.
But no major organized religion I’m aware of, apart from scientology, actively tries to soak people. (And before you say it, the collection plate does not count.)
We used to call them “tv preachers”. They’d be on all the time with a phone number on the screen to call and donate money. Over time they became “mainstream” that millions now follow and now they’re loosely called “Evangelicals”. They’re nominally “Christian”, functionally “Protestant” but most do not follow a particular established denomination.
Make no mistake, the “soaking” is central to that form of “Christianity”.
Respecting others’ religions and crystals - I’d only recommend not using the fact they believe in things that don’t exist against them. No need to indulge them. No need to do things differently for their benefit.
MBTI - in the workplace it’s pretty low value and low predictive power. Testing is unreliable. It’s easy to hit whatever set of letters you think are desired in your workplace with a little practice. In groups of MBTI fans it seems more useful, but those groups try very hard to place themselves into correct categories, and it does predict useful dynamics in interactions between people of different MBTI types.
Hobbies that attract women - I don’t think that’s pertinent, where you see more women into crystals you see men more likely to believe in magic devices for cars.
Belief in magic is pretty even between the genders and pretty common
Belief in magic is pretty even between the genders and pretty common
I was interested and looked up some studies. There is a gender gap in spiritual believe and women tend to be more spiritual, including believing in magic. So OPs statement in that regards holds.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying everything that op wrote is correct or that I agree, but the starting point they used, that women tend to belive in magical stuff more often, seems to be true.
Wait shiny rocks have a gender now?
Have you considered that there’s more than one person on the internet? One person can say one thing and another person say the opposite and no one has been a hypocrite.
Anyway, I’d say we should respect people’s right to practice what they want, but we can still make fun of it. I probably would say don’t do it to their face, but that’s up to you.
I don’t think standing by and letting people get scammed is the right move either
Not to defend these things, I also don’t think they work, but the simplest argument is that they work on a metaphysical frequency/energy/whatever, so a physical instrument wouldn’t be able to detect it.
what do you mean by metaphysical
“Not real”
Metaphysical means that it’s beyond the bounds of normal physics - stuff like ghosts, spirits, religious stuff, etc. Basically, you can cover a lot of hokey with it.
Metaphysical is a fun woo woo word, because one definition of it is basically as you have said, a synonym for supernatural (ie, physically impossible), whereas the other definition of it relates to metaphysics, the philosophical approaches to understand the rules that govern or give rise to the rules/laws of physics.
So you have one contextual usage that means ‘weird unexplained spooky impossible nonsense’, and another that means, ‘logical structures that seek to explain the nature of reality as understood empirically, often by academics.’
Thus its a perfect word for mystical woo people who love to conflate different contextual meanings of words and pretend they are not doing that.
Metaphysical is a fun woo woo word
It’s also a bedrock concept in philosophy. How-we-know-what-we-know, etc.
I mean, it can be two things, but c’mon.
… You are not understanding me. It seems you stopped reading at the part you quoted and disregarded the rest of what I wrote. Let me expand:
In one context, in one kind of usage, ‘metaphysical’ is an adjective referring to a very technical outline or system of logical reasoning.
In another context, in another kind of usage, it is a vague catch all term for fantastic things that seem to defy logic and reason.
Because these two valid but nearly opposite meanings of the word can be switched out, or conflated, woo woo peddlers love to use this term, as it easily convinces those who do not understand that is what they are doing, and sounds grand, wise or profound.
Its the same with ‘energy’ and ‘frequency’. Both of these terms have valid definitions that are highly specific and empirical in a scientific context, but also have commonly used, colloquial meanings which basically indicate a vague notion of pleasantness or unpleasantness, or maybe enlightened vs unenlightened.
Woo woo peddlers also love to use these words and conflate their two different meanings.
Most people think that the phrase ‘good/bad vibes’ means that you feel good or bad about a person or situation’s attributes, qualities or what not.
But a person who has been listening to too much woo woo peddlers will believe that there is some kind of actual, literally real, energy or frequency surrounding or exuding from a person or situation they find pleasant or unpleasant, because they are so used to the empirical/scientific concept being totally equated to the whimsical concept that they do not understand that there even are two distinct meanings.
The point I am making is not that metaphysical is a woo woo word that means nothing.
The point I am making is that there are many terms with nearly contradictory meanings, where one is associated with objective, ordered, rational, logical, complex concepts that can be studied and meaningfully argued over, and another meaning that is fantastical, defies empiricism or logic, and is highly subjective.
These terms are woo woo terms not because they mean nothing, but because they are often used by woo woo peddlers who jump back and forth between these different meanings to confuse people.
Quantum is another one. So is ‘AI’, at this point.
That makes sense, I get that you’re arguing a word is being misused or appropriated for unhelpful uses.
In one context, in one kind of usage, ‘metaphysical’ is an adjective referring to a very technical outline or system of logical reasoning. In another context, in another kind of usage, it is a vague catch all term for fantastic things that seem to defy logic and reason. Because these two valid but nearly opposite meanings of the word can be switched out, or conflated, woo woo peddlers love to use this term, as it easily convinces those who do not understand that is what they are doing, and sounds grand, wise or profound.
I just disagree that we know what metaphysics is beyond a shared understanding of a basic framework. “It’s what organizes all physical matter” is a terrible definition, but let’s use it for a second.
If I’m Joe Woo Woo and I say “metaphysically, these a-here crystals will affect your monkey chakras beneficially”, you’d argue they’ve misused the word ‘metaphysics’ in that reading. I’m saying that the woo woo brand of crystals is still following “what organizes all physical matter” and we’re not misusing the term.
What we’re really talking about is “there’s no physical evidence that the woo woo crystals beneficializes the monkey chakras”. And we couldn’t find evidence, because it’s pre-physical evidence.
I agree making a “Quantum Fire Pit” or an “‘AI-based’ Sandwich” is a gross misuse of terminology, but those are different from a pre-physical framework. You have to already be in the physical world to have quanta, to have AI.
Maybe another way to say it is “Sometimes, metaphysics is woo woo.”
Maybe a more decent definition of a metaphysical theory would be:
The rules which give rise to a world which we can describe in more detail with other, more specific rules.
Or from another angle:
The rules which are followed by all of the rules of physics.
‘What organizes all physical matter’ is just a definition of physics, without the meta.
…
I think you have not had much exposure to more successful woo woo peddlers, and you’re missing still the key point I am making of conflating meanings of a word.
Its more than just using the word in a vacuous or spurious sense, as with your ‘metaphysically’ example.
It doesn’t really add any meaning whatsoever to just throw ‘metaphysically’ in front of the rest of that sentence (with your definition of metaphysically), beyond ‘whoah, fancy word.’
You can just throw on fancy sounding words to a sentence or concept, but I am talking about a different and more insidious manipulation tactic.
…
Repetitive conflation of words with multiple meanings breaks down an ignorant audiences ability to understand that they are being lied to by making it unclear that different definitions are in fact different.
Its using a word with meaning A, in a sentence, then in sentence 3 you use meaning B, then in sentence 4 you use meaning A, so on and so on, such that an uniformed or ignorant person who has only heard this word a few times or didn’t pay attention in school is functionally now being educated by woo woo peddler such that they now think the word has a kind of nebulous melding of meaning A and meaning B, and that this is the singular undifferentiated meaning, when in fact this is not the case, there are two distinct, context and domain specific meanings represented by the same word.
You could conceivably do that with the word ‘nuclear’, by switching between the phrase ‘nuclear family’ and ‘nuclear energy’ to the point that, in a long monologue, you might be able confuse some people into thinking that there is a literal subatomic nuclear strong force holding together families, or that quarks and electrons literally have feelings toward other quarks and electrons in their family/atomic unit.
…
Its basically the kind of phenomenon where you can tell that someone does not actually know what a word means, that they never looked up its definition and instead just read or heard it, assumed its meaning based on context, and just carried on using this word, usually wildly incorrectly, because they do not actually know what it means.
It creates an unconscious cognitive dissonance that collapses painfully if one tries to actually suss out what the word actually means, which heavily biases the woo afflicted person toward not attempting to do that.
Woo woo peddlers are successful when they can basically brainwash a person into believing an entire alternate worldview, and basically always this worldview is incoherent, contradictory, that ultimately relies on any cognitive dissonance being reconciled by the woo woo peddler.
The point is to basically brainwash ignorant or desperate people into a whole lifestyle of mystical nonsense where the ultimate authority, source of comfort, who you become dependent on, answerer of questions, arbitrator of disputes, is the woo woo peddler.
I really enjoyed your comments.
materialism > metaphysics
If they worked at all it would be possible to measure the effects indirectly in a double-blind study even if we couldn’t measure the energy directly.
Many of them are also dangerously radioactive.
Wait a minute, how radioactive? Better or worse than collecting old smoke detectors, “Radioactive Boy Scout”-style?
https://youtu.be/3BA5bw1EV5I?si=sWF9f_LJB24QfI2O
Some of them are just shy of a spicy fiestaware plate, but also contain powdered thorium.
Could also be a placebo which has been clinically proven to have some subjective effect. Not worth getting fleeced over, but worth 2 bucks for a nice rock that makes you feel hopeful.
When I was growing up (granola) everyone in my family had a special little crystal that represented them. I remember when we all picked them out from a big bin. Not to say this kind of thinking can’t have a dark side, though…
Nowadays I just find “special” rocks while I’m out on a walk feeling a certain way, and like mentally imbue them whatever feeling I need (stability, remorse, etc). Then I keep them around and think of that whenever I look them, until I eventually forget why I even got them.
Got a nice Jasper that’s flat on one side helping me through some shit with my family atm
I actually really love this. Even as a staunch user of the scientific method and an atheist, I feel that the use of symbolism and ritual is actually quite important for the human psyche.
Have a good one.
Meh. Placebos affect people so, I let them have it.
I feel like with all this placebo stuff you get like 10% increase in perceived well-being vs. a good 10% of the population just going full woo woo about this stuff
you really haven’t thought this through, have you?
Not only does this encourage scammers to scam people, which is itself obviously bad, but it also means that some people will buy these things instead of getting actual treatment.
If people are getting their medical advice from a meme post in a meme community on a link aggregator on the Internet, I doubt there is much that actual science, education, and common sense can do to help.
My mom died of cancer a few months ago because she was convinced that a combination of sunlight’s natural vibrational frequency and some expensive “medical” herbal teas would cure her. Placebos affect people, but if you let them believe that they’re an alternative to actual science and medicine, then they’ll use them as such.
convinced that a combination of sunlight’s natural vibrational frequency
Reading this made my brain hurt. I’m so sorry for your loss.
Selling people fake remedies is always going to be to the detriment of real remedies unless they are targeted exclusively at conditions for which there are no real remedies.
Furthermore, the real issue isn’t about “letting people have their crystals”, it’s about letting people sell fake remedies, something that should be banned unconditionally. Profiting off of pretending to help people while not helping them is socially malignant.
OP is phrased in terms of attacking consumers because the poster is an idiot, as made evident by their absurd and pandering rhetorical tact.
If it “makes me feel better”, fine.
If it “makes it so I’m not contagious and won’t give you Covid”, no.
Also, all the scientists “accidentally” making the same mistake as the BBC proves that intelligence doesn’t necessitate maturity 😉
What’s immature about it? Penis fencing is a respectable mating ritual among flat worms.
I thought this thumbnail was two pugs at first…
I didn’t mean it in a disparaging way, I love some immature humor myself, having a mental age of anywhere between 8 and 69 depending on my mood and the situation 😁
I mean maturity is a social construct
Old Gum is my jam!
Top tier shitpost
Attracts badgers, you say?
Pondering my blue apatite rn
The irony of it being a choking hazard, lmao
Protection against other crystals lol
No, but seriously, you can use galena to make a radio that’s powered by the radio waves themselves!
I see nothing wrong with this nutritional chart
This concept is just as dangerous as the right wing claiming LHC will open black holes. There’s an implication here that just as soon as LHC was turned on it suddenly gathered information about every unknown Force, particle, and energy in the universe.
The Large hadron collider took 4 years to confirm the higgs boson; as of today it is only on its third data collection run. LHC is hardly a silver bullet.
Speak for yourself. My JO crystal is so supercharged I can levitate up to 6 cm from the ground and yell louder than a police siren.
I have won several fights by blinding my opponent with the flash of the JO crystal as I crank my hog with one hand and swing my crystal with the other.
My seed has become so powerful, I’m banned from donating semen in 17 countries, including Papua New Guinea and the Pharoe Island.
I have channeled the unholy energies from my magnetic wristbands and wooden bracelets to erect a dark labyrinth to contain me so I won’t accidentally break reality apart when I crank my hawg too hard.
Do not underestimate the power of crystals.
Lol those losers at cern wasted hundreds of millions of dollars to find out that there aren’t frequencies that alter your energy while I only spent 36 dollars.
Get real
“I did my research”
Is the LHC experimenting on crystals?
One day at work, I found out a work friend actually believed the whole “crystal energy” thing.
Since she was the first person I had ever met who actually admitted to that, I wanted to know more about what her specific beliefs about them were.
At first she was super bubbly about it, on par with her personality. But then as I asked a couple common sense questions about why science doesnt find anything measurable, and first she got hostile and mad that I would dare question another person’s beliefs, but when I explained I was genuinely curious and had no interest in changing her beliefs she just kind of broke down because nobody ever takes her seriously or believes her about her “personal healing journey”
The way I see it, it’s for adults who like pretty rocks, but can’t come to terms with the fact that they like something “childish” (because for some reason a lot of adults call a rock collection cringe or childish or dumb, but clearly they’ve never met a geologist) so instead of having a pretty rock and mineral collection, they have “healing crystals”, and eventually it just becomes kind of like part of their identity the way a religion is.
I will however, 100% giggle at their expense with my wife, later. Because anyone who buys $50 polished selenite
drink coaster“charging plate”, and a $200 brass pyramid to “recharge” their $50 “healing quartz wand” while refusing to listen to real science deserves to be giggled at.I will however, 100% giggle at their expense with my wife, later. Because anyone who buys $50 polished selenite drink coaster “charging plate”, and a $200 brass pyramid to “recharge” their $50 “healing quartz wand” while refusing to listen to real science deserves to be giggled at.
I mean, humans do all sorts of wierd, irrational, ritualistic things. IMO, whatever floats your boat.
Did you buy your wife a diamond ring? Or at least gold? :P
Wonder if they had a big wedding that cost quite a bit more than 200$
No, because large weddings are a waste of money and stress, neither of which I make enough money to afford.
I think this is the perfect response haha. Ppl find comfort where they can in the world, even if it looks a little whacky. So long as it’s not hurting anyone, let them have their whacky
humans do all sorts of weird, irrational, ritualistic things
lil private giggles about it seem fairly unobjectionable
No, I made the ring from sapphire (birth stone) and silver. Jewelry is easier than you might think when you’ve been doing small metalwork for knife handles, pommels, and guards.
Birth stones huh? More magical woo. No for real that’s awesome.
Lol at least she just thinks they’re pretty instead of thinking it’ll balance her energies.
In many circumstances the placebo effect is superior to common medical environments. I was completely dismissive of homeopathy until I came to understand its actual appeal. Obviously there is no proven physical mechanism of the substance itself; the water is just part of the ritual. The ritual of being cared for and being paid special attention to by another person who cares that you get better and can do nothing for you but give you that attention you need is 100% placebo oriented medicine and 0% drug.
I was dismissive about crystals as well, but the reality is that if you are aware of them they are in some way altering your awareness by being present. The way they alter your awareness could be as simple as noticing an interesting looking stone, a reminder that there is a vast unknown and many others trying to find their way as you are, or a meditation weight and focus. I don’t know about crystal effects on vibrations other than to know that mass is literally energy and different compositions of molecular structures could have effects on the immediate environment beyond our ability to yet measure. I’m most comfortable saying that crystals definitely have some effect, definitely have assisted others in their healing journeys in some form or another, and beyond that I do not know many specifics.
I mean crystals definitely have gravity pulling you towards them.
I understand your reasoning and even the appeal, however I personally just wonder if all of these effects wouldn’t be possible by any other means. Why does it need to be crystals, intentionally overpriced at that. Marketed by capitalistic interests to exploit you. Theoretically, couldn’t you just go out into nature, find a rock you like, and it could have the same effect?
You absolutley could use any item for the same purpose as long as there is some importance attached to it by the user. There’s a degree of exploitation present when the profit motive squeezes people looking for options. That being said, psychologically the more something costs the more the purchaser tends to value the thing so that could be a benefit. If someone couldn’t have faith in a $5 crystal but could have faith in the same crystal priced at $50 then it could be useful.
Wait, so you’re telling that to not feel ashamed of liking rocks for how they look, they believe silly things about them?
That appears to be their hypothesis
I suspect they’re just credulous, and believe in magic
in a young girl’s heart?
How the music can free her whenever it starts
And it’s magic if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
The premise is flawed. The LHC is looking for specific things, and it takes forever-and-a-day just to look much less decide whether the-thing-being-searched-for is there.
The premise here is that the LHC found All That Is, and it didn’t find [magical-rock-mystery-waves] so pfffttthh stupid hippies.
Exactly. LHC also didn’t find that breathing air is good for you. I’m still not going to stop.
Good plan!
Until we figure out just what dark energy and dark matter is, we can’t throw out there being a fifth force that the LHC isn’t even designed to detect in the first place but if you think that humans are affected by things we only tend to notice on the astronomical scale, you’re putting the cart way before the horse. The whole reason we can’t detect them is because they don’t interact with us.
Yes but how do we know that.
Don’t let Big Particle fool you! Invest in Light Matter today
everything is energy, prove me wrong
The person with the crystals has already concluded, by faith or by doing large logical leaps, that those contain new energy.
The scientists behind the LHC have to meticulously find evidence along the way before they can make a conclusion.
They are not the same.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the most complex and sensitive particle physics experiment ever constructed. If it hasn’t found evidence for “dark matter” or “cosmic strings”, some billion-dollar camera you stick in space is not gonna do it either.
