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AspiringKnitter comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong
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If you can say more about why deliberately induced mystical experiences don't count, but other kinds do, I'd be interested.
For the same reason that if I had a see-an-image-of-Grandpa button, and pushed it, I wouldn't count the fact that I saw him as evidence that he's somehow still alive, but if I saw him right now spontaneously, I would.
Imagine that you have a switch in your home which responds to your touch by turning on a lamp (this probably won't take much imagination). One day this lamp, which was off, suddenly and for no apparent reason turns on. Would you assign supernatural or mundane causes to this event?
Now this isn't absolute proof that the switch wasn't turned on by something otherworldly; perhaps it responds to both mundane and supernatural causes. But, well, if I may be blunt, Occam's Razor. If your best explanations are "the Hand of Zeus" and "Mittens, my cat," then ...
I assume much the same things about this as any other sense: it's there to give information about the world, but trickable. I mean, how tired you feel is a good measure of how long it's been since you've slept, but you can drink coffee and end up feeling more energetic than is merited. So if I want to be able to tell how much sleep I really need, I should avoid caffeine. That doesn't mean the existence of caffeine makes your subjective feelings of your own energy level arbitrary or worthless.
Unfortunately, the example you're drawing the analogy to is just as unclear to me as the original example I'd requested an explanation of.
I mean, I agree that seeing an image of my dead grandfather isn't particularly strong evidence that he's alive. Indeed, I see images of dead relatives on a fairly regular basis, and I continue to believe that they're dead. But I think that's equally true whether I deliberately invoked such an image, or didn't.
I get that you think it is evidence that he's alive when the image isn't deliberately invoked, and I can understand how the reason for that would be the same as the reason for thinking that a mystical experience "counts" when it isn't deliberately invoked, but I am just as unclear about what that reason is as I was to start with.
If I suddenly saw my dead grandpa standing in front of me, that would be sufficiently surprising that I'd want an explanation. It's not sufficiently strong to make me believe by itself, but I'd say hello and see if he answered, and if he sounded like my grandpa, and then tell him he looks like someone I know and see the reaction, and if he reacts like Grandpa, I touch him to ascertain that he's corporeal, then invite him to come chat with me until I wake up, and assuming that everything else seems non-dream-like (I'll eventually have to read something, providing an opportunity to test whether or not I'm dreaming, plus I can try comparing physics to how they should be, perhaps by trying to fly), I'd tell my mom he's here.
Whereas if I had such a button, I'd ignore the image, because it wouldn't be surprising. I suppose looking at photographs is kind of like the button.
Well, wait up. Now you're comparing two conditions with two variables, rather than one.
That is, not only is grandpa spontaneous in case A and button-initiated in case B, but also grandpa is a convincing corporeal fascimile of your grandpa in case A and not any of those things in case B. I totally get how a convincing fascimile of grandpa would "count" where an unconvincing image wouldn't (and, by analogy, how a convincing mystical experience would count where an unconvincing one wouldn't) but that wasn't the claim you started out making.
Suppose you discovered a button that, when pressed, created something standing in front of you that looked like your dead grandpa , sounded and reacted like your grandpa, chatted with you like you believe your grandpa would, etc. Would you ignore that?
It seems like you're claiming that you would, because it wouldn't be surprising... from which I infer that mystical experiences have to be surprising to count (which had been my original question, after all). But I'm not sure I properly understood you.
For my own part, if I'm willing to believe that my dead grandpa can come back to life at all, I can't see why the existence of a button that does this routinely should make me less willing to believe it .
The issue is that there is not a reliable "see-an-image-of-Grandpa button" in existence for mystical experiences. In other words, I'm unaware of any techniques that reliably induce mystical experiences. Since there are no techniques for reliably inducing mystical experiences, there is no basis for rejecting some examples of mystical experience as "unnatural/artificial mystical experiences."
As an aside, if you are still interested in evaluating readings, I would be interested in your take on this one
Now you're aware of one.