Regarding the stuff about ontology, I think a good way to understand it is that most people who are into hippie/woo stuff aren’t especially truth seeking and so don’t have mental models that are oriented towards predicting reality. Instead their models are for effecting desirable outcomes. For example, we know there’s no such thing as qi, but your brain is pretty happy to give you the experience of energy moving around your body if you ask, and you can be taught how to use that sensation of moving energy to do things like relax muscles. And there probably is some real thing happening that explains the perception of qi, like activation of nerves that you can feel if you learn to pay attention to the signals coming into your brain, but that’s not as evocative a model that helps you practice with it to relax muscles.
I tend to think of it like the way we have less and more accurate models of physics, and use different models in different situations as appropriate. Any model can be useful; you just have to not forget the bounds of its utility and the limits of what it can accurately explain.
Thanks for sharing your take—I agree with the core of what you say, and appreciate getting your wording.
One thing I react a bit to is the term “truth seeking”—can you specify what you mean when you use this phrase? Maybe taboo “truth” :)
Asking because I think your answer might touch upon something that is at the edge of my reasoning, and I would be delighted to hear your take. In my question, I am trying to take a middle road between providing too little direction (annoying vagueness) and too much direction (anchoring)
Regarding the stuff about ontology, I think a good way to understand it is that most people who are into hippie/woo stuff aren’t especially truth seeking and so don’t have mental models that are oriented towards predicting reality. Instead their models are for effecting desirable outcomes. For example, we know there’s no such thing as qi, but your brain is pretty happy to give you the experience of energy moving around your body if you ask, and you can be taught how to use that sensation of moving energy to do things like relax muscles. And there probably is some real thing happening that explains the perception of qi, like activation of nerves that you can feel if you learn to pay attention to the signals coming into your brain, but that’s not as evocative a model that helps you practice with it to relax muscles.
I tend to think of it like the way we have less and more accurate models of physics, and use different models in different situations as appropriate. Any model can be useful; you just have to not forget the bounds of its utility and the limits of what it can accurately explain.
Thanks for sharing your take—I agree with the core of what you say, and appreciate getting your wording.
One thing I react a bit to is the term “truth seeking”—can you specify what you mean when you use this phrase? Maybe taboo “truth” :)
Asking because I think your answer might touch upon something that is at the edge of my reasoning, and I would be delighted to hear your take. In my question, I am trying to take a middle road between providing too little direction (annoying vagueness) and too much direction (anchoring)
By truth seeking I mean something like trying to make accurate predictions.