What is "magical thinking"? And other philosphical confusions.
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, June 11, 2026 03:47
VIEWED: 3564
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Reading the many examples of "magical thinking" here, I've come to the conclusion that magical thinkers fail to ask- and answer- one VERY important question:
"How???"
"Saddam poses an immediate threat to the United States!"
OK.... how? (When I checked, he was way over there and his missiles couldn't have made it halfway to Europe.)
"Saddam might have secretly shipped his WMD program to Syria."
OK... how?
"Russia is going to upend western democracy!"
OK... how? It seems to me that the only people who can do that to us is us. And our fearless leaders seem to be doing a pretty good job of it
"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?
"EVs will save the world"
"Industrial carbon capture...carbon trading... fill on your favorite ideology here... will save the world"
Maybe.... somehow...
Yanno, when people see a magic trick their first question is "How did they DO that??". They don't tell themselves that it must be magic! But when people propose something that "maybe... somehow... something will happen" they don't ask or answer the question HOW?
A little more real world thinking in a forum dedicated to real world events would be appropriate.
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Critical thinking is seriously lacking in the modern era.
I don't fault Theodore and Second for this. The US Public School System is designed to destroy this part of the brain before you're even in high school.
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How you do anything is how you do everything.
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Oh yeah, I forgot the example that started this train of thought:
"Ukraine is WINNING!"
OK.... HOW?
*****
There's another thing that confuses people (speaking of critical thinking) - there's a very big difference between asking "why" and asking "how"?
"Why" asks about motivation. There was a comedy skit that went "Why is there air?" and the answer was "To fill up basketballs, of course". Much MUCH easier to answer "HOW is there air?" because then you can describe the processes that we think generated air.
If "how" just doesn't seem to get to what you're trying to ask, then re-phrase the question into "What causes...?" because we often use the question "why?" when looking for a causal relation.
That's a problem with our language because it conflates two entirely separate ideas: motivation (or intention) and cause. Maybe it's a linguistic leftover from the days when we thought things happened "because" the god(s) willed it.
*****
One more source of confusion: "Truth" versus "honesty". Honesty means without the intention to deceive. You might be terriby wrong but painfully honest about something, but your explanation or description might not be "true" ... that is, consistent with reality. Unfortunately, for us the opposite of "lie" is often means "truth" when it should be "honesty". So when people tell me that they're telling me "the truth" all they're trying to say is that they deeply, deeply feel something or are convinced of something and are honestly expressing those deep feelings or thoughts. But deep feelings or convictions aren't a substitute for being correct (consistent with reality) and I think this fundamental confusion doesn't allow people to separate their deeply held feelings and thoughts from what might be "out there", really.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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and maybe if there was less fear of Nuclear they could have invested in Thorium which is almost impossible to make bombs out of or invest in future possibility like 'Fusion'.
6IXSTRING and SIGNYM I will avoid politics because I see it mostly as a web of lies be the news from the British or French or Russian or news from the USA it is mostly a mix of distortion so there is no point to discuss 'the truth' of these propaganda broadcasts.
SIGNYM sometimes you need to learn when you were wrong, for example you got it almost completely wrong with Elon Musk's rockets. I also admit I have got stuff wrong and made bad predictions but we can still learn and admit our own errors or admit when we might have seen something not entirely true. Elon Musk has done something amazing for the Private Spaceflight Commericial Sector even while being politically hated by the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Admin he has shown his value like Ford, Howard Hughes, Alexander Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Wernher von Braun, Mary Anderson, Ann Kiessling, Samuel Morse and so many other free market ideas and thinking people.
If you want to talk logic and wishful ideas and politics then Both you and SECOND agree with each other on Fusion... and when did SECOND and you agree on anything of late?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?
Does it require Faith or Not...maybe Optimistic and Logic thought and not Pessimism and Nihilism
Its not 'magic' and I for one never claimed it would save the world but it can make life easier, but EVs ... I will hold out for now as I'm not sure its good or bad at the moment, the electric car does also give pollution with those nasty acids and mining and batteries but it does offer different energy security than depending on islamist jihadi Saudi.
Sources of power? The Sun is an almost never ending Nuclear bomb, the USA tested some big bombs but Tsar Bomba is the single most physically powerful device ever tested by Soviets the shock wave went around the world three times, the Sun's bomb is much bigger or 1,820,000,000 Tsar Bombas – I guess you could put a station on Mercury and just beam power from the Sun to the Moon or Earth...but that's another complex system to build.
Fusion does really require 'Faith' it can be done it it requires investment and optimism
Now let's take for example 2 things in our human history, Iron and Heat/Energy, 'Iron' can be recycled
Re-use of Iron is real
its not some weird magic amazing particle or material you see in a scifi that hits or blasts power and vanishes like a magic spell
but in real life the Element Iron 'Fe' can be recycled and used again however to do this it requires work, energy, heat
Iron is not an exotic scifi particle that vanishes, it is not burnt up and chemically transformed into the air into a another gaseous form.
The Iron we had Greece, Egypt, Europe, spreading Asia it is phase, of three, in the Metal Ages, none of this 'Iron' has truly been used up, it only needs work and heat to reuse it.
We can create heat by burning 4 bags of Wood let's say or one big bag of Coal....
a better way might be to use power from a source of Fission reaction, lets say Salt materials, Granite, silicate minerals, Soil...you can mine stones and take out a percentage of Uranium.
Now let's go back to those Bags of Wood or Bags of Coal or a Big Barrel Oil burning
if you have a good stove and are very efficient in a moderate climate,
maybe some small 'magic' castle with good insulation that is very energy efficient and does not allow heat to escape then that one bag of coal might heat your home for an entire month! Very good heat!
However one bag of natural 'Uranium' is a far better power source than Wood or Oil or Coal – following enrichment and used for power generation corresponds to nearly 10,000 Barrels of oil, yes Ten Thousand or
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Quote:I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 when I was 25 years old. At that time, the Mechanical Engineering Dept. was working on a homopolar generator to provide the spark to ignite a fusion reaction. There are still no fusion energy reactors generating commercial amounts of electricity 46 years later. In opposition to "magical thinking", I suspect fusion energy will be just as insignificant as a source of electricity 46 years in the future.
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
If you want to talk logic and wishful ideas and politics then Both you and SECOND agree with each other on Fusion... and when did SECOND and you agree on anything of late?
https://www.google.com/search?q=homopolar+generator+UT+Austin
By the way, the mechanical engineers were successful at designing and building a homopolar generator. As for the physicists designing a fusion energy reactor, well, their designs show a severe lack of practicality, creativity, and ingenuity, but don't tell them because they think they are the next J. Robert Oppenheimer. You will hurt their delicate feelings and enormous misplaced pride in themselves.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fusion+energy+progress
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Anyways to address the whole magic hypnotic thing...it kind of does exist, tv and radio and magazines are a type of hypnosis mind control propaganda
Many of the elite have an obsession with Symbolism, Tarot, Numerology, Astrology, the Supernatural, they go to pedophile island places where statue symbols exist or go to Bohemia Grove
I don't really believe in 'magic' but others have an obsession
There are 'patterns' out there among the type obsessed with belief...which maybe drove PirateNews types crazy when they go down that rabbit hole
and as hijacking starts, as planes hit and while all was happening
'PLANES – MUST – HIT – STEEL'
or maybe the Universe has a sick sense of humor, its just a Coincidence
Remarkable event of words line up for freak concurrence...making conspiracy type go more crazy
little Bush was not attending a weird super planned Skull and Bones human sacrifice ritual with kids as witness
Others talk about Life part of an illusion a dreamy simularion, in a movie Matrix Neo witnesses a black cat replicate exact behavioral twitches twice down a hallway, making him say, “ Whoa. Déjà vu .”
yet that is a world of fiction
...but there are people who liked to dress up in robes and go to weird islands
Not that I believe in Magic thinking but if you open your mind to other Alt-News and happening and 'Coincidence' and people who are obsessed with dates and planets and numbers you might see how 'Magic' think has not gone away...the Rational Part says its just Coincidence just freak occurrence
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 when I was 25 years old. At that time, the Mechanical Engineering Dept. was working on a homopolar generator to provide the spark to ignite a fusion reaction.
'homopolar motor' might have been the wrong direction it needs more than one technique perhaps or maybe the 70s was too early and today we are on a different path since the 90s, breakthroughs in Japan, Italy, the DOE, US Army and Airforce and NASA with pleas for funding and many people have ignited the spark using a variety of methods.
H + 1H ? 2H + e++ ve (0.42 MeV)
1H + 11H ? 2 1H + e+ + ? (×2)
1H + 2H ? 3He + ? (5.49 MeV)
2He + 3 2He ? 4 2He + 1 1H + 1 1H
3He + 3He ? 4He + 1H + 1H (12.86 MeV)
Less effective 13 6 C + 1 1H ? 14 7 N + ?
2e- + 41H ? 4He + 2ve + 6? (26.7 MeV)
In the Sun total energy released by the process is 24.7 MeV
Do you think some of the highest mechanical engineer minds the French, China, European Union, Russia, Switzerland, the British, Thailand, Australia, Canada India, Japan, South Korea, United States are burning all this money just to feel good about 'magical thinking' if you did graduate in 1977 then maybe science has moved on since those days, when science evolves and moves forward it will be you who is stuck in protoscientific tradition as new science moves forward.
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Quote:I have too much experience with "geniuses" making false claims because of their enormous egos about breakthroughs that are almost, but quite, here. After a few hundred billion dollars of research spending, I'd expect more from the fusion energy community than what they have actually accomplished. Meanwhile, solar energy technology is generating fusion power right now. And battery technology to store the fusion energy is moving along at a reasonable pace. But we live in a world where people are unexcited by real tech that works and the world prefers "magical" tech.
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
'homopolar motor' might have been the wrong direction it needs more than one technique perahps or maybe the 70s was too early and today we are on a different path since the 90s, breakthoughs in Japan, Italy, the DOE, US Army and Airforce and NASA with pleas for funding and many people have ignited the spark using a variety of methods. Do you think some of the highest mechanical engineer minds the French, China, European Union, Russia, Switzerland, the British, Thailand, Australia, Canada India, Japan, South Korea, United States are burning all this money just to feel good about 'magical thinking' if you did graduate in 1977 then science has moved on since those days.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh yeah, I forgot the example that started this train of thought:
"Ukraine is WINNING!"
OK.... HOW?
*****
There's another thing that confuses people (speaking of critical thinking) - there's a very big difference between asking "why" and asking "how"?
"Why" asks about motivation. There was a comedy skit that went "Why is there air?" and the answer was "To fill up basketballs, of course". Much MUCH easier to answer "HOW is there air?" because then you can describe the processes that we think generated air.
If "how" just doesn't seem to get to what you're trying to ask, then re-phrase the question into "What causes...?" because we often use the question "why?" when looking for a causal relation.
That's a problem with our language because it conflates two entirely separate ideas: motivation (or intention) and cause. Maybe it's a linguistic leftover from the days when we thought things happened "because" the god(s) willed it.
*****
One more source of confusion: "Truth" versus "honesty". Honesty means without the intention to deceive. You might be terriby wrong but painfully honest about something, but your explanation or description might not be "true" ... that is, consistent with reality. Unfortunately, for us the opposite of "lie" is often means "truth" when it should be "honesty". So when people tell me that they're telling me "the truth" all they're trying to say is that they deeply, deeply feel something or are convinced of something and are honestly expressing those deep feelings or thoughts. But deep feelings or convictions aren't a substitute for being correct (consistent with reality) and I think this fundamental confusion doesn't allow people to separate their deeply held feelings and thoughts from what might be "out there", really.
One more source of confusion, and one that you may not be aware of since it would have been taught after your time in grade school is how they started teaching the difference between "Fact" and "Opinion".
I'm sure it started on the coasts, but I remember for English we got a new set of books for an entirely new course they were rolling out. God... I wish I remember what it was called. It was very sleek looking with notepad sized workbooks instead of the old hardcover books. They were brightly colored and shiny, with only two colors for each course. They got the kids excited that we could write in the books because they were a ours.
I remember a specific lesson where they taught you that the difference between "Fact" and "Opinion" was simply that if somebody said "I think" before they said something, that was an opinion.
--------------------------------------------------
How you do anything is how you do everything.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Reading the many examples of "magical thinking" here, I've come to the conclusion that magical thinkers fail to ask- and answer- one VERY important question:
"How???"
"Saddam poses an immediate threat to the United States!"
OK.... how? (When I checked, he was way over there and his missiles couldn't have made it halfway to Europe.)
"Saddam might have secretly shipped his WMD program to Syria."
OK... how?
"Russia is going to upend western democracy!"
OK... how? It seems to me that the only people who can do that to us is us. And our fearless leaders seem to be doing a pretty good job of it
"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?
"EVs will save the world"
"Industrial carbon capture...carbon trading... fill on your favorite ideology here... will save the world"
Maybe.... somehow...
Yanno, when people see a magic trick their first question is "How did they DO that??". They don't tell themselves that it must be magic! But when people propose something that "maybe... somehow... something will happen" they don't ask or answer the question HOW?
A little more real world thinking in a forum dedicated to real world events would be appropriate.
T
Ukraine War Update (20230911): Full Frontline Update
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How you do anything is how you do everything.
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