Is there any value in rationality?

I think of rationality as following logic, which I'd distinguish from the materialist/physicalist faith that says magic is impossible?

I suppose that's more what this is about. But these days I find that I will only accept one answer for certain questions of "is it real". Heat death for example, is really stupid, and that's the only basis I need to reject its inevitability. I believe in principle that there's some way to make it not happen. The same for magic, Even if somehow I got irrefutable proof that it couldn't be done, I wouldn't change my stance on it. I'd just go "that's really dumb" and keep pushing for it anyways until I made it real. The list goes on, faster than light travel and teleportation, energy-mass conversion, and so forth. Regardless of what any data shows I will only accept the possibility of them being real since it's better than them not being real. Since my reactions are going to be one sided anyways, what's the point even asking the question in the first place? That's why I'm starting to wonder about the value of rationality at its core. But granted I guess I'm still using it for all these conclusions so I still value it somewhat, or at least in some limited way in some circumstances.

I've been finding myself surprised at just how much I've pulled away from rationality in favor of emotion. I find it hard to see an argument against doing so as I just don't see rationality having any sort of value anymore. I've noticed my ability to effectively talk in an evidence based debate has nosedived because, honestly, I just don't care about evidence anymore. Not for certain things anyways. And I have started wondering if there is any point at all in ever trying to care about what's true when you're just gonna die anyways.

I think it's my sheer hatred of reality that's really fostered this change. Something that I think was at odds with my desire to be correct rather than just believing what made me feel better. Reality is a hellscape as far as I'm concerned. I can't even believe that I ever cared about knowing what was "real" and what wasn't. Now I only care about what I want to be real. Which isn't the same as believing in it. I'm fully capable of recognizing that I can't fly or do any of the magic that I want right now. But I no longer look at that as a product of reality but rather a failing on my part. Or at least an indication that I just haven't figured things out yet.

Traditional rationalism, or at least what passes as it these days, holds that I should have given up on my quest for magic years ago because its simply impossible in the first place. But there's no way I could ever do that because I won't accept a reality without magic. I will, in effect, never believe that it's not possible. Which sometimes makes me wonder how I'm any different than a religious fundamentalist. Which then makes me wonder whether I should even care?

The schism with rationalism for me is that it's a fundamentally submissive way of thinking. You are only allowed to believe what's "real" regardless of your feelings about it. With phrases like "Our beliefs do not shape reality but reality should shape our beliefs." My issue with that is that its nothing but a form of "might makes right". Reality should be listened to because it's stronger than you are. It has the ability to force its arbitrary rules on you and you're too weak to resist.

I don't think I've ever really been an academically smart person. Some people would probably disagree with that, even today, but really I don't think the way my mind works would ever be conducive to academia. Through my transformation, which is necessary for my magic training, I've remembered that my mind is far more geared towards instant results rather than statistics.

Personally I don't think science has made the world any better. sure people live longer and all that but who cares since you're just dead anyways. It's not like "curing death" or uploading your mind into a robot or anything is ever going to change that either. Nor would reincarnation or anything similar. It just makes all finite amounts of time pointless. Or at least not things worth caring too much about, since they will end at some point, so might as well act like they're already over.

My reaction to ideas or even proof that goes against how I want reality to go is increasingly "that's stupid" rather than trying to work with it. It's not that I deny the results, its just that I think they're dumb and should be different. And I don't really see anything wrong with that. I mean, why should I care about the "proper" patterns of reality when those patterns aren't what I want them to be? Why should I care about them especially in cases where they are, allegedly, completely counter to what I want and make achieving my goals potentially impossible? What did rationality do for me? Nothing. It actually made things worse.

My mind at this point only sees one valid reality and increasingly does not care about whether I'm in it or not. I honestly can't see any reason to change this mindset, I don't see what rationality could possibly do to improve things for me.

Rationality definitely has value. Think of people who perform/operate skilled tasks around the world.

Surgeons, Airline Pilots, Divers, Deck Officers on commercial vessels, Engineers of all kinds, Astronauts etc etc

All of these things absolutely require the use of rationality to learn what to do and then perform the task or function. However, you could argue that as a rough approximation of the situation regarding phenomena outwith this resolution of reality, like encounters with Bigfoot, or Aliens or any other paranormal event, then rationality/logic tends to break down, as per the Trickster etc etc. Not always though and there appears to also be an interface area, where our rational consensus reality worldview and the reality of the unknown can merge.

Rationality definitely has value. Think of people who perform/operate skilled tasks around the world.

Surgeons, Airline Pilots, Divers, Deck Officers on commercial vessels, Engineers of all kinds, Astronauts etc etc

All of these things absolutely require the use of rationality to learn what to do and then perform the task or function. However, you could argue that as a rough approximation of the situation regarding phenomena outwith this resolution of reality, like encounters with Bigfoot, or Aliens or any other paranormal event, then rationality/logic tends to break down, as per the Trickster etc etc. Not always though and there appears to also be an interface area, where our rational consensus reality worldview and the reality of the unknown can merge.

I think what I'm even wondering is whether or not there's value to using rationality as the foundation of living as opposed to emotion. Which is the transition I'm in now which is making me wonder why I was ever the other way to begin with. When rationality was my core I overanalysed everything to such a degree that I eventually spun into a death spiral trying to figure out why I should care about anything at all and if so what specific things I should care about. Which there was no answer to, because nothing objectively matters.

Now that I'm transitioning to an emotional core it makes me wonder what's really changed in the world for the past few thousand years. Has any of the technological progress brought on by rationality really done anything? I don't think it has, because none of this matters or can matter in an objective way. If people were all just plants with no control or awareness or anything, but were happy all the time no matter what, that would ultimately be better than rationality. Since if nothing matters, the only thing that can is your own feelings. It doesn't matter how skilled a surgeon you are or how far things advance If you're not happy.

I think what I'm even wondering is whether or not there's value to using rationality as the foundation of living as opposed to emotion. Which is the transition I'm in now which is making me wonder why I was ever the other way to begin with. When rationality was my core I overanalysed everything to such a degree that I eventually spun into a death spiral trying to figure out why I should care about anything at all and if so what specific things I should care about. Which there was no answer to, because nothing objectively matters.

Now that I'm transitioning to an emotional core it makes me wonder what's really changed in the world for the past few thousand years. Has any of the technological progress brought on by rationality really done anything? I don't think it has, because none of this matters or can matter in an objective way. If people were all just plants with no control or awareness or anything, but were happy all the time no matter what, that would ultimately be better than rationality. Since if nothing matters, the only thing that can is your own feelings. It doesn't matter how skilled a surgeon you are or how far things advance If you're not happy.

Have you thought about utilising both in your life? I initially found this difficult at first, but that was perhaps because of my youthful age at the time (early 20's). At the foundation, I myself am very emotional and intuitive naturally.  

Maybe you can relate, or not, but I compartmentalise my 'self' and being so that I have a strictly rational, no bullshit and honestly, a materialistic working mindset (which is actually needed for my career), but I'm always open minded at the same time. 

And outwith and AWAY from work and amongst people in good cheer and synch, I tend to tap into my core being and gain pleasure from doing so. And also I apparently tend to experience the strange events that I've had in my life at these times of emotional connection and wellbeing. Which makes me think that somehow, it is apart of this whole paranormal thing.

Anyway, I don't mean to be a nosy pest or presumptuous, but are you currently employed? Do you have to make a living to keep a roof under your head type of thing? I say this because I think I was at a place similar to where you are at, until I found something meaningful for me that took all of my attention, and now I don't have time or energy to contemplate all the sillyness us humans actually do on a daily basis like you have noticed. I now enjoy it all, for what it is. Perhaps in the end it is a distraction, but I certainly can now say that I enjoy life and it's challenges etc.

And perhaps in addition from what I'm reading about you, it may be that you need to immerse yourself in either side fully, to appreciate the boundaries between both, and the subtleties of how they interact in life. 

Just as an aside, dude. 

Have you thought about utilising both in your life? I initially found this difficult at first, but that was perhaps because of my youthful age at the time (early 20's). At the foundation, I myself am very emotional and intuitive naturally.  

I was always using both, it was just a matter of which one took precedent and solved conflicts. In the past I would care about whether something was true or real first, and then decide how I felt about it after. And if I didn't like it, I would say that it didn't matter because that's how it is.

Now I'm a decent way through transitioning to the opposite, where I care about how I feel about the idea of something first and then use logic afterwards to make it happen People on multiple planes have been urging, telling and outright demonstrating to me for years that I was going to have to switch to that if I wanted to get my magic back because being overly analytical  generally stifles it. Which at lower levels means that nothing happens at all. Something that, as I've since learned, research and the stories of many other people including you supports. 

Maybe you can relate, or not, but I compartmentalise my 'self' and being so that I have a strictly rational, no bullshit and honestly, a materialistic working mindset (which is actually needed for my career), but I'm always open minded at the same time. 

And outwith and AWAY from work and amongst people in good cheer and synch, I tend to tap into my core being and gain pleasure from doing so. And also I apparently tend to experience the strange events that I've had in my life at these times of emotional connection and wellbeing. Which makes me think that somehow, it is apart of this whole paranormal thing.

In some sense I can but I purposely try to not compartmentalise things. Largely beacause through training and my own experiments and research I've found that doing that is a large chunk of the problem with not being able to perform at will. IT creates two mentalities, one where magic is real and one where it isn't. By extension this creates two environments, one where magic works, and one where it doesn't. It's why I could semi reliably induce shared dreams and poltergeists via meditation so long as the effect is mentally and emotionally far enough away from me that I could plausibly tell myself that probably it never happened in the first place regardless of the strength of evidence against that. Resulting in strong macro-PK effects that could be reliably replicated 2000+ miles or 2 months away from me but not instantaneously 3 feet from my face. I've been spending the last 2-3 years figuring that out and now working on merging those mindsets together to fix that, which this transition is part of.

Anyway, I don't mean to be a nosy pest or presumptuous, but are you currently employed? Do you have to make a living to keep a roof under your head type of thing? I say this because I think I was at a place similar to where you are at, until I found something meaningful for me that took all of my attention, and now I don't have time or energy to contemplate all the sillyness us humans actually do on a daily basis like you have noticed. I now enjoy it all, for what it is. Perhaps in the end it is a distraction, but I certainly can now say that I enjoy life and it's challenges etc.

I am not employed nor do I need to be to survive, it's a very unique circumstance that I'm trying to take advantage of to give myself the time to develop all this. Short version is I have X-Linked Retinitus Pigmentosa, a rare genetic condition that has made me legally blind and will eventually make me totally blind. As a result I get disability pay from the government. I decided I'd go all in with magic training at teh expense of potential independence and such on September 26 2010

I'd been having an extreme amount of very severe paranormal shit happening to me for about 2 years by that point which had only been getting worse. My whole life up till that point had been very paranormal but I didn't get to really, truly understand that until that period because it was so normal to me. I was in university at the time and the stress and cumulative fatigue of having to deal with it nearly daily was wearing me down and affecting my ability to study. For reference this is the period that Loderunner happened, and then The Dead Space Dream something like 10 days to a month later. Not to mention all the poltergeist activity, people ripping me into projections and other things I've yet to write up assuming I ever have the time. To say it was draining would be an understatement.

But what broke me was a 4 hour ordeal on September 25 that very, VERY nearly killed me. I got ripped and locked into a projection and ended up with some of the strongest kruger effect injuries I've ever gotten, My lungs started to paralyse along with some of the rest of my body, I had blood pooling in my mouth, it was really bad. After I got up the next day I decided I was fucking done with this shit and was going to stop trying to live what felt like a dual life when clearly only one side of it had any chance of actually keeping me fucking alive.

So I dropped out the next semester, having gone from a Dean's List student to withdrawing from or outright failing all my classes because I just couldn't give a shit about them anymore in the face of all that. Then, after two weeks of recovery which was nowhere near enough time, I attempted to force a merge of my spirit and physical body which kinda epicly failed and overloaded my entire system, nearly killing me. I lost my ability to recharge energy and with it alllllllll the real world ability I'd managed to develop by that point in my life slowly atrophied away and I got very depressed.

Dreamsoap urged me to continue with magic because what I had was very clearly not nothing and then when we decided we'd move in together I decided I'd restart my training and use my disability pay to fund it. I have all my past life memory to pull on and test which is ultimately all I've been doing... successfully. Without it I wouldn't've even known where to start and certainly would not be as confident about my goals as I am.


On top of that lots of spirits have also tried to help me and have been instrumental in the progress I've made. And I know they're real too because I've gotten quite a lot of veridical evidence out of them. Like cold remedies that I didn't think existed. I literally could not have done this without them. Having their own varied reasons for helping, like general interest since its not like a lot of people try to do what I do and if they do it's usually with a strong religious or otherwise new age spin which isn't very effective. Others, generally standard dead people, feel that helping me might help create conditions that allow them to more effectively contact their still living loved ones. Some of the more intriguing claims come from those claiming to be what are effectively nature spirits who claim that long ago they used to be able to phase themselves into this reality somewhat and have much stronger and more obvious physical effects on the world and interactions with humanity but they slowly lost that ability partly because of human effort and feel like I could help them bridge that gap again. Others just generally agree with my reasoning behind wanting to teach magic.

Point to another person who has my goals, mindset, drive, opportunity, and support network. I would have to be insane to drop this and go work a normal job. Especially given the stage I'm at. Besides I'm nearly 32 so I'm pretty sure the normal life ship has sailed even if I wasn't blind. And if for some reason I was forced into a position where I had to go work or die, I'd much rather die. These days at most I'm trying to write a few fiction books to maybe make some money from but I doubt I'll ever put in the time or effort necessary to make it something I could 100% live off of. Especially since I'd much rather put them out for free for everyone to enjoy rather than holding them for ransom.

I'm not accusing you of anything or mad. I'm just pointing out why I'm not keen to go jump into the workforce and act like I'm contributing to society just because I get a paycheck. I'm pretty sure developing real world magic would be a far greater contribution anyways.

I was always using both, it was just a matter of which one took precedent and solved conflicts. In the past I would care about whether something was true or real first, and then decide how I felt about it after. And if I didn't like it, I would say that it didn't matter because that's how it is.

Now I'm a decent way through transitioning to the opposite, where I care about how I feel about the idea of something first and then use logic afterwards to make it happen People on multiple planes have been urging, telling and outright demonstratingto me for years that I was going to have to switch to that if I wanted to get my magic back because being overly analytical  generally stifles it. Which at lower levels means that nothing happens at all. Something that, as I've since learned, research and the stories of many other people including you supports.

That's interesting for sure. It's true that currently, I am in a very analytical period of my life right now and I haven't really experienced anything, except for a few interesting synchronicities. And when I did experience them, it was during a period of connection with someone and having almost like a birds eye view perspective of where I was at in life at the time. But overall, not much, at least with regards as to what I'm used to!

This makes me wonder what modern life does to this 'faculty', if you can call it that. Back in the day as it were, we spent a lot of time around the fire, highly attuned to nature and truly being a part of a community, courting romantically with each other and experiencing the full connection that human beings are built for, roughly speaking. Now in modern day society, we have definitely lost much of that, for good and bad of course, and that is a whole other topic I guess. But we have perhaps also lost our connection to the magical, and just by the way our Western world is built, we are required to be that much more analytical in order to have our society.

In some sense I can but I purposely try to not compartmentalise things. Largely beacause through training and my own experiments and research I've found that doing that is a large chunk of the problem with not being able to perform at will. IT creates two mentalities, one where magic is real and one where it isn't. By extension this creates two environments, one where magic works, and one where it doesn't. It's why I could semi reliably induce shared dreams and poltergeists via meditation so long as the effect is mentally and emotionally far enough away from me that I could plausibly tell myself that probably it never happened in the first place regardless of the strength of evidence against that. Resulting in strong macro-PK effects that could be reliably replicated 2000+ miles or 2 months away from me but not instantaneously 3 feet from my face. I've been spending the last 2-3 years figuring that out and now working on merging those mindsets together to fix that, which this transition is part of.

Interesting. I haven't thought of that before. But I can see how it makes sense and I'd definitely be interested to learn more about your progress! 

I am not employed nor do I need to be to survive, it's a very unique circumstance that I'm trying to take advantage of to give myself the time to develop all this. Short version is I have X-Linked Retinitus Pigmentosa, a rare genetic condition that has made me legally blind and will eventually make me totally blind. As a result I get disability pay from the government. I decided I'd go all in with magic training at teh expense of potential independence and such on September 26 2010

I'd been having an extreme amount of very severe paranormal shit happening to me for about 2 years by that point which had only been getting worse. My whole life up till that point had been very paranormal but I didn't get to really, truly understand that until that period because it was so normal to me. I was in university at the time and the stress and cumulative fatigue of having to deal with it nearly daily was wearing me down and affecting my ability to study. For reference this is the period that Loderunner happened, and then The Dead Space Dream something like 10 days to a month later. Not to mention all the poltergeist activity, people ripping me into projections and other things I've yet to write up assuming I ever have the time. To say it was draining would be an understatement.



But what broke me was a 4 hour ordeal on September 25 that very, VERY nearly killed me. I got ripped and locked into a projection and ended up with some of the strongest kruger effect injuries I've ever gotten, My lungs started to paralyse along with some of the rest of my body, I had blood pooling in my mouth, it was really bad. After I got up the next day I decided I was fucking done with this shit and was going to stop trying to live what felt like a dual life when clearly only one side of it had any chance of actually keeping me fucking alive.



So I dropped out the next semester, having gone from a Dean's List student to withdrawing from or outright failing all my classes because I just couldn't give a shit about them anymore in the face of all that. Then, after two weeks of recovery which was nowhere near enough time, I attempted to force a merge of my spirit and physical body which kinda epicly failed and overloaded my entire system, nearly killing me. I lost my ability to recharge energy and with it alllllllll the real world ability I'd managed to develop by that point in my life slowly atrophied away and I got very depressed.



Dreamsoap urged me to continue with magic because what I had was very clearly not nothing and then when we decided we'd move in together I decided I'd restart my training and use my disability pay to fund it. I have all my past life memory to pull on and test which is ultimately all I've been doing... successfully. Without it I wouldn't've even known where to start and certainly would not be as confident about my goals as I am.





On top of that lots of spirits have also tried to help me and have been instrumental in the progress I've made. And I know they're real too because I've gotten quite a lot of veridical evidence out of them. Like cold remedies that I didn't think existed. I literally could not have done this without them. Having their own varied reasons for helping, like general interest since its not like a lot of people try to do what I do and if they do it's usually with a strong religious or otherwise new age spin which isn't very effective. Others, generally standard dead people, feel that helping me might help create conditions that allow them to more effectively contact their still living loved ones. Some of the more intriguing claims come from those claiming to be what are effectively nature spirits who claim that long ago they used to be able to phase themselves into this reality somewhat and have much stronger and more obvious physical effects on the world and interactions with humanity but they slowly lost that ability partly because of human effort and feel like I could help them bridge that gap again. Others just generally agree with my reasoning behind wanting to teach magic.



Point to another person who has my goals, mindset, drive, opportunity, and support network. I would have to be insane to drop this and go work a normal job. Especially given the stage I'm at. Besides I'm nearly 32 so I'm pretty sure the normal life ship has sailed even if I wasn't blind. And if for some reason I was forced into a position where I had to go work or die, I'd much rather die. These days at most I'm trying to write a few fiction books to maybe make some money from but I doubt I'll ever put in the time or effort necessary to make it something I could 100% live off of. Especially since I'd much rather put them out for free for everyone to enjoy rather than holding them for ransom.


I'm not accusing you of anything or mad. I'm just pointing out why I'm not keen to go jump into the workforce and act like I'm contributing to society just because I get a paycheck. I'm pretty sure developing real world magic would be a far greater contribution anyways.

Hay, not at all. It's always a tricky one when you don't know what circumstances the person on the other side are in. I guess my 'suggestion' was tailored to those that are in the traditional path of life. 

I get the feeling you are onto something with your experiences. Because I can recognise certain elements that I have also experienced, like this seeming schism between rationality and magic, and what the hell is actually going on. It is indeed perplexing to say the least.

I look forward to hearing more about your adventures and what you find out. 

I get the feeling you are onto something with your experiences. Because I can recognise certain elements that I have also experienced, like this seeming schism between rationality and magic, and what the hell is actually going on. It is indeed perplexing to say the least.

So far I've found it's not actually a schism, it's just that things work better when applied in a certain order. Which is equally true for normal physical feats. Athletes don't perform as well when they're depressed or lack confidence in their abilities or overanalyse what they're doing, It's just that the substance used in magic, which is a physical substance, is a fluid type thing that is consumed to pay physics the joules needed to have whatever physical effect you coded in. Being fluidic it's extra sensitive to mental states because it's not made of and doesn't have conveniently solid foundations like muscle or bone. I talked about some of this in my Energy Explanation and Psychological difficulties of psi techniques though there's always more to say.

I started questioning the value of rationality because this way of doing things is SO effective I can't even understand why people would use the other one in the first place. Certainly I don't see why I used it, beyond emotional trauma.

I look forward to hearing more about your adventures and what you find out.   

In that case, If you haven't, I do recommend checking out my links. And if you have any insights, questions, or things you think I should try then leave a comment. Except for The Dead Space Dream which I'm going to be eventually moving to PQ along with other things still on Skeptiko just to have everything in one place. So don't comment on it there if you feel like you want to. I write my stuff up in the hopes that other people might be able to use it for their own training and because it helps me with mine. Though I admit I spend far more time actually doing the training than writing about it so there's lots of holes and things I've yet to explain on here.

Rationality is what got the human race so far into discovery of the world. Science is rational.

Even parapsychology is based on rationality, just researching fringe topics.

Rationality is what got the human race so far into discovery of the world. Science is rational.

Even parapsychology is based on rationality, just researching fringe topics.

I think the whole position for some can be boiled down to this. It's better "for me" to believe something is true rather than knowing something is true.