For 3.7 Seconds, I enjoyed A Bit Of Magical Thinking · 9:13am Dec 29th, 2015
Have you ever had a moment of magical thinking? A brief span where your mind enjoyed a happy bit of the suspension of disbelief normally used for fantastic stories, only applied to the real world? It's fun!
And I just recently had one, that I would like to share. It came courtesy of an article from Ars Technica, a semi-regular web destination of mine. To wit -
Mysterious collector opens world’s largest private Apple exhibition in Prague
Apple Museum has some 472 exhibits, with raw vegan cafe to come.
Turns out that some unknown personage has tons of the history of Apple, including all kinds of rare and secret historical stuff. Nobody knows who it is, or how they own the history of Apple, or... why they chose Prague, specifically, to show the collection off. Prague. The place where Franz Kafka is buried, in the cadastral district of Žižkov. There has been no indication of anyone driving a Kubota Mini-Excavator, or any strange, black vans. Yet.
This is something Malus Crown would do, though. Likely as a diversion, and an excuse to ship in black cars and Kubotas. So I thought instantly of 'I.D. - That Indestructible Something.'
What if? For a moment, I experienced Bostrom Alert Purple. It was a very enjoyable woo-woo.
If you've never read 'Injector Doe - That Indestructible Something', now would be a good time.
Just in case.
- Petal
Heh. That is a neat coincidence.
Or, of course, is it? :)
Oh boy trust me Chat, my mind works in very magical ways being a practicing Occultist and all :-P
We should check to see if he owns puppies, or if he visits animal shelters regularly.
I tend to think about my thinking too much to enjoy moments like these, but this is very cool.
Haha, that's a nice bit of synchronicity. You might be interested in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger, which is to a large extent about this sort of thing, and just an excellent and expansive proto-transhumanist read overall. As he says in the book, don't take any of it too seriously and he doesn't really "believe" in anything magical or supernatural himself, but who knows what weird shit non-magical reality still gets up to behind the curtain? It's too easy to fall into the trap of thinking metaphysical naturalism implies a crude, naive physicalism that doesn't give agency to purely abstract phenomena.
I successfully managed to be confused as to why you'd have a museum of apples in a capital city for several seconds there.
I don't know, someone brings up apple museums and "mysterious collectors" and years of hard-wired horror anthology thinking immediately brings me to assume that somewhere, right now, in Prague, there is a very young person having a conversation with an older, wiser person on the nature of apples, and how it is unlikely they are the "Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" even if classical artists chose to depict them as such, and is there anything you want, and would you like a bite of this?
Well, that or somebody finally braved a second voyage to the Hesperides. Mad props for dealing with the guardian hydra.
I've done it a few times, and I admit, it feels like a moment of existential crisis when it happens. It's that same level of one's mind overclocking itself to come to an answer. It's like you feel dizzy, and I assume it's because your mind's eye is scrolling through information so fast that some of that perceived motion transfers to your brain's balance center.
It's that moment when you say "coincidence? Or something more?"
Random Moose ramblings? Or Illuminati confirmation? You be the judge.
Sorry, it's just random ramblings, everypony.
3650433 Confirmation bias?
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One of many mechanisms that can provide the pixie-dust that powers magical thinking. There are many more. But knowing how the trick is done, thankfully, does not spoil the fun.
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Negative, confirmation bias assumes that I'm using inductive reasoning. Which would assume that I'm using reason.
Coincidentally, I recommended the story to Bad Dragon earlier this week.
Well then... wonder how much plane tickets are to Prague!
I wish I could enjoy magical thinking. It takes a certain amount of self confidence to have magical thinking I think, because otherwise as soon as you start seeing mysterious secrets and wondering about them, you immediately conclude that you must just be wrong, again, you'll never get anywhere, everything is sensibly mundane, nothing cares what you think, and it's just your terrible judgement making you see things that aren't there.