News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The World’s Most Innovative Economies. Parent comment

Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by mikeash on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @02:48PM (#13420522)
We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by fsloth on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @04:16PM (#13421286)
Spirituality and myths are different things. Spirituality is about psychological states, thus has a basis in the physical reality.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by mikeash on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @04:27PM (#13421397)
Spirituality seems to have many different meanings. The one you propose may be valid but it's one that's entirely compatible with atheism and materialism, so I don't think that's what the other commenter was thinking of.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by fsloth on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @12:49AM (#13424332)
Well, meditation was one of the spiritual traditions raised there and an offshoot of its zen buddhist form is used as a therapy form as mindfullness - this originated at MIT. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by drzaiusapelord on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @02:52PM (#13420560)
Should we ever be afraid of admitting that science has a limited scope and things like spirituality could be outside its scope? That seems to be an acceptable fear right now.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by mikeash on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @02:59PM (#13420632)
Spirituality does indeed seem to be outside the scope of science, because it's not real. If it were real, it ought to be amenable to scientific investigation. The notion that it's real but can't be scientifically investigated makes no sense to me.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by fsloth on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @01:01AM (#13424398)
Spirituality is not outside of science. We can study humans in the psychological states raised by practices in the spiritual traditions http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama....

The challenge from scientific point of view with human traditions is that they are a mishmash of established techniques affecting measurable outcomes and superstition, and sometimes it's quite hard to tell from the point of view of an outsider which is which.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The World’s Most Innovative Economies by mikeash on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @10:21AM (#13426901)
To the extent that spirituality encompasses aspects of psychology then clearly it can be studied, but it hardly seems useful to call it "spirituality" then.
[ Parent | on HN ]