[HN Gopher] What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
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What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
Author : mediocregopher
Score : 92 points
Date : 2022-05-30 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| sfvisser wrote:
| Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most
| languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable
| of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their
| negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances,
| etc.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Relatedly, there are known neurological differences in the
| brains of different language speakers impacting how they
| process information and where.
|
| Stokes in the same location can have different impacts based on
| the language of the speaker.
|
| This suggests there are architectural and processing
| differences.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are
| capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts.
|
| Yes, most of them are (or can be, with the addition of a couple
| of neologisms or borrowings). Just like you can do anything
| with any Turing-complete language. Languages and cultures still
| have biases and built-in world views.
|
| For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would need to
| estimate your social rank to properly address someone is
| utterly alien. In the best case, there is a polite form, which
| we also use for people we don't know. So we don't even think
| about social status when we ask someone what time it is. But
| there are languages where that isn't the case at all, and this
| tends to make you constantly aware of the social status of the
| people around you. So it definitely does affect how tou think
| about things.
|
| It does not mean that Europeans are incapable of understanding
| these things, just that it is not something they implicitly
| care about.
| User23 wrote:
| > For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would
| need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone
| is utterly alien.
|
| German is well known for having different pronouns based on
| social rank and familiarity.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would
| need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone
| is utterly alien.
|
| A phenomenon that is, at best, about a century old. Maybe.
|
| That there aren't grammatical forms or special declensions of
| words that signal rank relationships (as there are in, say,
| japanese) does not for an instant mean that we do not
| consciously choose linguistic styles based on social
| structure. Especially in Europe.
| kmonsen wrote:
| In Norwegian you still have to address the king with a more
| polite pronoun, my grandmother would use this pronoun
| generally for richer people.
|
| As I understand in Swedish you still need to know someone's
| progression to address them politely "how would the
| software engineer like his coffee?"
|
| Edit: also in Norway most women would wear head coverings
| when outside 100 years ago. We are not that far from having
| a culture most of us despise today.
| s_dev wrote:
| SQL and HTML/CSS and C and bash are all Turing complete.
| However we can easily see some languages are a better suited to
| expressing certain types of ideas than others.
|
| If this is true for formal languages -- why would wouldn't this
| phenomena be accentuated at the natural language level.
| anbende wrote:
| The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism
| (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to
| discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them
| in your mind. You're thinking in images rather than language.
|
| The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by
| the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very
| HN example, think about the work done in different programming
| languages or stacks. The way you think about a problem and how
| to solve it will be influenced by the language and tools you
| use (and know). You learn to think in a particular language or
| tool set. That doesn't mean that you can't think outside of it,
| but it does mean that there is a tendency to stay inside of it,
| inside the structures you know.
|
| In the same way, some languages lend themselves more readily to
| certain culturally prevalent concepts. More nuanced words for
| snow or love, different color boundaries, different emotion
| words or nuances, etc.
|
| I ran into this often when learning French as an emotion
| researcher. I'd try to express a scientific conception of a
| mood or emotion from English, and the French speaker would
| suggest a translation but it clearly didn't mean exactly what I
| was going for. And the way the French speaker would push back
| was interesting, "we wouldn't say it like that, we'd say it
| like this". But the "this" and "that" were not exactly the
| same. I was watching us both be constrained by our language
| context. It could be pushed through, but the tendency was to
| just move forward as if we'd reached common ground but hadn't
| fully.
| sfvisser wrote:
| The fact that some things are more easily -- or better,
| directly -- expressable in some languages doesn't necessarily
| imply your thinking is changed or that you can't internalize
| the concept without access to that language.
|
| I don't have twenty different words for specific shades of
| green or types of snow, but can still easily recognize them
| and use them in my thinking.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, but think about languages that don't have the concept
| of green, but only a shade of blue that we would call
| green.
|
| This would not stop your ability to describe it, but would
| change how you relate it to other colors.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I tended to agree with the soft version. But I just realized,
| what it's saying is that you need to know about a concept.
| The language is not necessary.
|
| In theory you can imagine a concept, not give it a name, and
| still use it. You can't communicate it through, which
| severely limits it's use. And somehow I suspect that naming
| the concept makes it easier to manipulate, so perhaps that is
| a 'weak' version of the theory?
| kergonath wrote:
| It also would not be propagated along with the culture,
| which is the hypothesis at its core: not that people of one
| given language are incapable of understanding some
| concepts, but rather that their cultural bagage tends to
| bias them and shape their way of thinking (which I would
| think is obviously true to anyone who's ever lived in a
| foreign country or read literature or news articles in a
| foreign language).
| Retric wrote:
| The constant creation of new words for new things and
| concepts seems to limit that idea.
|
| Only dead languages are static, otherwise they can all
| adapt to new ideas as long as their sufficiently useful.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in
| your mind. You're thinking in images rather than language.
|
| How is this demonstrating anything? Can someone do the same
| who doesn't know what a gear is?
| mcphage wrote:
| The idea is that it an example of explicitly non-linguistic
| thinking--hence not all thinking can be defined or limited
| by linguistic structures.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| a counterpoint is that this example begs the question; it
| assumes a priori that "thinking about gears" is not a
| language itself.
|
| which, who knows, it might be!
| JackFr wrote:
| Extra points for a rare completely appropriate use of
| "begs the question."
| JackFr wrote:
| I see your point but I feel it's a little bit weakened by the
| fact that you're limited to using words to describe it.
|
| Can you conceive of a thought experiment that is impossible
| to put into words? Yes or no is acceptable, but if the answer
| is yes I guess I'll have to take your word for it.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "conceive" and "thought
| experiment." If the thought experiment can be expressed,
| you can come up with a word to describe the expression of
| the idea. I think I could imagine some inexpressible ideas
| (this seems like it would logically follow from the proof
| that some things are not computable.)
|
| Of course, when you deal with real language your language
| itself is constrained. If you need to invent a bunch of new
| words does that count?
| krisoft wrote:
| > Moreover, ethylene in the concentrations that cause trances is
| extremely flammable, and there's no historical record of any
| explosions or fires.
|
| That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180:
|
| "When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the
| temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was
| formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot
| to pay a fourth of the cost." [1]
|
| I'm not a student of the Classics so I can't verify from the
| original. This source [2] seems to imply that the world choice
| implies as if the place burnt down on its own.
|
| 1:
| http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
|
| 2: https://erenow.net/ancient/delphi-a-history-of-the-center-
| of...
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| With apologies for hastiness, rushed day -
|
| Greek: "o gar proteron eon autothi automatos katekae"
|
| (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%..
| .)
|
| Literal translation: "because the one [= the temple] that
| previously existed in the same place completely burned down on
| its own"
|
| The crux here is on "automatos", for which see LSJ:
| http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29to%2Fmatos&...
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| "There is no historical record of..." is an interesting
| assertion. On the one hand, it's easy to make and sort of
| requires no citation because there wouldn't be one. "There is
| no historical record of Caesar's fondness for juggling." But on
| the other hand, it's a dangerous claim because it's extremely
| falsifiable, like in your example. But I suppose it's easy to
| say "whoops, I read all of the historical records but forgot
| about Histories book 2, good find!"
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| A stronger claim is to limit yourself to some sources: "There
| is no record of X in A's history of B or C's history of D."
| If you read the sources it is unlikely to be falsified, and
| the reader who wants to debate you at least knows where not
| to look.
| benibela wrote:
| Too much pressure?
| goto11 wrote:
| The final point about positivism is important. Geeks love
| naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far
| fetched. Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals.
| Dragons are dinosaurs. The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning
| etc.
|
| If anyone is interested in what _actual_ historians think about
| such theories, read for example this:
| https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.ht...
| Tl/dr: The oracle speaking cryptic prophetic verses from a trance
| is a literary construction. So the ethylene theory is a trying to
| provide a naturalistic explanation for a fiction.
| andi999 wrote:
| How can dragons be memories of dinosaurs? Or do you think some
| skeletons were found?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| They found bones.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| The identification of dinosaurs as dragons is a common theory
| but I believe the historical evidence for it is extremely
| sparse. Still, it is really strange to me that dinosaur bones
| were only officially discovered in 1841.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think that's OPs point. It's shoehorned nonsense.
| [deleted]
| Alex3917 wrote:
| There is a good Religion for Breakfast episode about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IJfmaGs72c
| cassepipe wrote:
| Thank you for that. This is an excellent review of the original
| theory and its rebuttals.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Cynical me thinks the simplest explanation is it was all just a
| big show they put on. Similar to when my aunt went to a fortune
| teller who guessed she had six kids. The fortune teller was
| probably just well informed about the local environment.
|
| If you're running an Oracle business, your customers are already
| locked in. It's a long pilgrimage to get there, so you've
| probably got something important to ask about. The sales people
| will know roughly what kind of relational data is precious to
| you, and your branding makes Oracle a natural choice, despite
| what the techies of the time might say (it's expensive! There's a
| free and open source that we can get high at!). Once they're
| there, you keep the magic going by offering associated services.
| Maybe a bit if consulting on what the old lady said. Of course
| the consulting will always include coming back for more
| prophesies.
|
| Most of the business is knowing what kinds of things people want
| to hear, and feeding back a few things you found. After all it's
| only once a month there's a seance, the rest of the time can be
| spent hanging around finding out what the customers want.
| krapp wrote:
| If you look into the examples of oracular statements from
| Delphi[0], and assume them to be an accurate representation,
| many of them are vague enough that a "true" interpretation can
| be found in hindsight from various outcomes.
|
| And it is likely that a lot of those prophecies were informed
| by having a unique amount of access to political and social
| dealings throughout the Greek world. It helps when all the
| kings and all the priests come to you and tell you their
| secrets.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_fr
| ...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Prophesying was a common function for ancient priests.
|
| The flights of birds, the guts of sacrificial offerings. E All
| sorts of things.
|
| The prophesies were usually very pragmatic and politically
| conservative (not edgy).
|
| It's not hard to do. Many modern magicians do the same thing.
| Fortune cookies, etc.
|
| It's not hard to do this, but being intoxicated makes it harder
| not easier.
| kogus wrote:
| TL;DR: We have no idea if they were real, and if they were what
| caused them, and it's ok to be unsure and inconclusive sometimes.
| Hayvok wrote:
| Clarification: We have no idea if the _hallucinogenic effects_
| of the place were real, if they were mere theater, or something
| else altogether.
|
| That a succession of women served as Oracles in the Temple of
| Apollo (for hundreds of years) is well supported.
| [deleted]
| martimarkov wrote:
| That's such a good summary. I should have started with reading
| the comments
| peatmoss wrote:
| I'm not sure I read the same thing. I think this misses the
| late point, that if empiricism can have weakness, what is its
| alternative?
| phdelightful wrote:
| Maybe the positivists' antipositivism should just be "not
| everything demands an empirical explanation in order for us
| to continue functioning well in day-to-day life, and that's
| just fine."
| kergonath wrote:
| > what is its alternative?
|
| Accepting that we won't know everything (but also accept that
| there are things we don't know yet and that will be known in
| the future, and that it's ok to change your mind in the face
| of new evidence).
|
| Actually, it's not really an alternative to empiricism, but I
| don't thing that empiricism has this particular weakness.
| mef wrote:
| In this comment section: a hundred people either missing the
| point, proving the point, or both!
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| I think it's worth noting-- there's some serious work exploring
| these kinds of things in the ancient world (Temple of Kykeon,
| Soma of the Rg Veda, Amrta, Cintamani) and it's still an open
| subject. Terence McKenna theorized that Psilocybin mushrooms
| might be responsible for, "mystical visions through substance"
| but as a practicing, "Hindu" (Chaitanya follower) I've come to
| find that in the case of the mystical substances of ancient India
| that there's actually a very involved and very profound
| philosophical tradition(s) surrounding Amrta (Love of Godhead;
| Bhakti) Soma (Moon Juice for The God of Heaven) and Cintamani
| (Puranic equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone) that really
| doesn't have anything to do with, "psychedelic culture" outside
| of being generally mind expanding.
|
| tl;dr: She was last holy remnant of the age the Hellenic Greeks
| idealized about-- The Homeric period before book culture and the
| Sophists. The time when magic and unadulterated heroism ruled the
| Earth. Think about Tolkien the next time you trip. The magic
| isn't in a molecule baby, it's in us!
| kordlessagain wrote:
| There was a World Day fair at UC Davis a few years back. One
| tent had Hari Krishnas in it. I asked one of the Hari Krishnas,
| "Do you visualize?", and he replied with a beam, "Oh, yes. I do
| visualize and I love it! I see all sorts of wonderful things."
| He then pushed a colorful copy of the Rig Veda in my hands and
| ran off smiling.
|
| A bit later I went over to the Zen booth and talked to a young
| monk. They had no materials in the booth, only a piece of paper
| with the swooshed circle symbol. After talking to him briefly I
| asked, "Do you visualize?". He looked at me calmly for just a
| moment and then replied, "I practice Zen." I then repeated
| myself, asking " Yes, but do you visualize?". Immediately he
| replied, "I practice Zen."
|
| Later I would joke it was at the moment I became enlightened,
| but understanding this from a fundamental standpoint is both a
| choice of faith and a logical conclusion done by the mind.
|
| People do visualize, but some people don't. Practicing Zen is
| about not adding to things, but living in the moment and being
| aware of your surroundings. The monk may have been able to
| visualize, but he knew that doing so would pull him out of the
| moment so he didn't.
|
| Conversely, the Hari Krishna visualized at will, by his own
| admission when I was asking about it, and allowed it to be a
| thing he was aware of in the few moments we spoke.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| Fumes. This has been what is assumed for years.
| krapp wrote:
| Watch the Religion for Breakfast video linked in this thread,
| or RTFA. The ethylene fume theory has been pretty thoroughly
| debunked.
| boxed wrote:
| The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
| Mind has a very interesting answer to this question.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Which is...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Such a fun theory, we will probably never know how rocks
| started thinking...
| noasaservice wrote:
| I know that magic is poo-pooed and all, but, have you considered
| that answer as well? Or perhaps they weren't hallucinations, and
| instead divinations. Calling what the Oracle of Delphi had
| "hallucinations" puts a bad spin on it from the onset.
|
| Or lets not get hung up with the word "magic". Lets call it a 5th
| type of energy. Mechanical detection don't work, but a number of
| humans can feel it. Hard to measure for sure. Some people are
| more connected to that energy than others. But again, being
| human-centric at this time makes verification hard/impossible.
|
| What I would adore is a theorem to connect that energy to the 4
| other types of energy (EM, strong, weak, gravity). And then, we
| can start scientifically describing all of those "weird" human
| issues of stuff we just shouldn't know (I'm thinking of: past
| life recollections, feeling someone staring at you, parental
| intuitions that something's wrong with a child, etc).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The only picture of the Pythian priestess is a red figure
| drinking cup from around 430 BC. She sits on a bronze tripod,
| holds laurel leaves and a bowl or water or wine.
|
| She would, apparently, listen to the rustle of the leaves-- scry
| into the ripples of water -- and feel the resonant vibrations of
| the tripod. All in order to channel the wisdom of the god Apollo.
|
| Sources of randomness to support creative inspiration. Seems
| plausible.
| durpleDrank wrote:
| I read a long time ago in a book that it was from the steam/vapor
| of the pit that they would hang out around. I forget what
| substance was floating out of it but it made them "high".
| kingkawn wrote:
| The voice of the Gods
| itronitron wrote:
| >> _Positivist dispositions can lead to the acceptance of claims
| because they have a scientific form, not because they are
| grounded in robust evidence and sound argument._
|
| Interesting that is a form of hallucination itself :)
| murbard2 wrote:
| This isn't asking the hard question though: how did the oracle
| see the future?
| quinnjh wrote:
| Probably the same way you can construct a data oracle to
| project out guesses for what a time series will do?
|
| The thinking goes: the more, nd better sources of market
| intelligence you can feed to the oracle, the better predictions
| it can make.
|
| I would assume the oracle at delphi was being fed the most /
| best market intelligence to then prophesize from
| jotm wrote:
| Same way I can see the future of everyone commenting here with
| near 100% accuracy.
|
| If you're curious, I can see that you will die.
|
| If you're scared, I can help you avoid death for only $4.99/day
| or a war against Lichtenstein, your choice.
|
| Do as I say, or do you really want to risk dying tomorrow?
| asiachick wrote:
| Oracle: Lisa, this supplicant has not groveled in the least
|
| Lisa: Then zot them into oblivion darling
|
| Oracle: Your groveling is unacceptable! I shall ZOT THEE!
|
| You have been zotted!
| kordlessagain wrote:
| According to mystical based beliefs described in _A Textbook of
| Theosophy_ by C.W. Leadbeater:
|
| > _When a man thinks of any concrete object - a book, a house,
| a landscape - he builds a tiny image of the object in the
| matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part
| of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at
| about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the
| man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time
| afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and
| the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and
| can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the
| sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he
| creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is
| merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection
| or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the
| thought does not usually perceptively affect the man of whom he
| thinks._
|
| These mental bodies are not considered by the textbook to be
| bound by time, given they are "astral bodies" for which, under
| certain conditions, time and space don't matter.
| mcphage wrote:
| I think first it would need to be established that she did in
| fact see the future.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yes. The explanation "it was all made up by one or more
| writers" sufficiently covers not just the precognition, but
| also the hallucinations and even the existence of the oracle.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| This is an example of Positivism.
|
| I think the primary problem with positivism is the knowledge
| about the universe is never fully attained, so it feels more
| like a confused reasoning process. The assumption the
| scientific method will explain everything someday is
| irrational. When is that going to happen? With more work?
| What positivism really is, is a commitment to a bunch of work
| in the future to "prove" something is this and not that. The
| future never arrives.
|
| Mysticism is the flipside of that. A mystical approach builds
| a metaphor to exist that "makes sense" but can't really be
| tested or analyzed by scientific methods. Faith takes over
| there, where just believing something irrational to be true,
| makes it true. Maybe that includes visualizing something over
| and over again?
|
| Between these two extremes sits a philosophy that holds that
| there is value in both kinds of knowledge, and that both can
| be used to improve our understanding of the world. This
| philosophy emphasizes the need for both scientific and
| spiritual knowledge in order to create a complete picture of
| reality.
|
| Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying
| sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be
| disproved. It's a little like a virus in that regard, growing
| without bounds or purpose, other than to try to avoid the
| mystical outlooks at all costs.
| coeneedell wrote:
| Well okay, but when the scientific method produces
| knowledge, the voracity of that knowledge can be checked by
| an observer. When a mystic convinces a large number of
| people that their opinions are in fact, truths, that is not
| a process that can be checked by an observer, and the
| "knowledge" produced has nothing tying itself back to
| reality.
| quinnjh wrote:
| How do corporations forecast the future?
| shkkmo wrote:
| Mysticism is a not an "understanding of the world" but a
| way of framing our knowledge of the world and coping with
| the unknown and the unknowable.
|
| The realm of the unknown and the unknowable shrinks as our
| tools advance but there are very good reasons to think it
| will never disappear as there are both provably unknowable
| truths amd facts that are practicaly impossible to learn.
|
| > Faith takes over there, where just believing something
| irrational to be true, makes it true.
|
| This only applies to a limited set of things (the
| unknowable), getting enough people to believe the world is
| flat won't make that a true belief, no matter how many
| people have how much faith.
|
| The types of things that faith can make true are
| subjective, sociocultural or related to our inner lives.
|
| > Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying
| sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be
| disproved.
|
| In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest
| this, let alone insist on it.
|
| There is a long history of faith pairing quite productively
| with the scientific method. The network of scientific
| knowledge is primarily drive by one thing: curiosity, not
| any sort of animus against the mystical.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| Seems like the author is neglecting the possibility of human
| intervention. The priests and priestesses may have found a way to
| collect ethylene gas from the stream and released it
| intentionally at the right time. A trade secret so to speak.
| Hidden secrets in religion are not uncommon.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| > Hidden secrets in religion are not uncommon. //
|
| It's not clear what you mean here, could you give some
| examples?
| coeneedell wrote:
| Not the person you replied to of course, but when I saw this
| the concept of mystery religions comes to mind for me.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries They
| were even widespread in the same region at the same time.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| _Our question is: Why did the Pythia go into a frenzy?_
|
| The major theory you hear about this is that the Oracle was
| ingesting some kind of drug, possibly a psychedelic derived from
| rye fungi - but who can say with any certainty? Maybe it was just
| similar to the 'speaking in tounges' religious phenomenon, which
| has examples from all over the world:
|
| https://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/speaking-in-tongu...
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| Maybe it was just BS. Don't write off the simplest explanation.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Thats what i thought, might al be part of the conception, the
| make believe show.
| narag wrote:
| "Drugs" is simple enough. Actually training naked virgins to
| go bananas without some chemical help seems a little more
| complicated.
|
| Something the article doesn't seem to consider is the
| possibilty that there was some kind of (natural or built)
| chamber where the gas could get trapped and thus
| concentration be higher.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| Not training. Maybe she figured out that making up bullshit
| gave her power. Seems a lot simpler than "drugs".
| t_mann wrote:
| The role must have been filled by dozens of different
| individuals over the centuries, it seems reasonable to
| assume that there was some kind of induction process for
| new recruits.
| krapp wrote:
| I think this is too cynical. This was all religious
| practice for the time, and the Oracle probably believed
| she was actually receiving visions from Apollo just as
| many modern churchgoers believe in visions and prophecies
| from God.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| People speak in tongues at church because they are expected to,
| have seen it before, and they lie about it. It seems that should
| be the presumption in the case of Delphi, too, rather than a
| biochemical mechanism or "antipositivism".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_tongues#Medical_re...
| jhap wrote:
| I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not
| intentionally.
|
| I think it's more likely they get really caught up in the
| moment or something among those lines. I am interested in what
| in what it would be like to go to a concert of a bar with one
| of these people.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I really don't care what it would be like to go to a social
| event with one of those people, nor do I care to deeply plumb
| the depths of the distinction between a lie and untruth.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| _cues hardcore hip-hop_
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not
| intentionally.
|
| No, they do, and are usually pushed into it by prayer
| retreats and a forced lack of sleep (in the stories I've
| heard.) It's after they fake it once in order to sleep, then
| get into the habit of faking it, that they decide that they
| were never actually faking it, retconning the first incident
| into an awakening.
|
| It was once only tiny pentecostal sects that did this (speak
| in tongues), but evangelical churches grew out of that
| tradition and took over the world. Literally didn't exist 100
| years ago. It's also where we got faith healing and snake-
| handling.
|
| edit: Again, barely older than Scientology or the Nation of
| Islam.
| cgio wrote:
| So they don't lie about it. From their perspective they
| reinterpret sleep deprivation as metaphysical labour to
| culminate in ecstatic mystical experience. Especially in
| puritanical, austere contexts the power to shape an
| experienced story, such that there is a communal acceptance
| of a form of pleasure, is valuable, and the more
| unintentional the reinterpretation the more profound its
| influence and expression.
| gfody wrote:
| our minds are perfectly capable of frenzied hallucinations
| without any external substance, especially one trained
| specifically for this purpose probably only had to meditate or
| chant or indulge some trigger for a moment.
| dahlem wrote:
| I remember the most exciting book on this topic that I read, was
| the book on Constantin (the great) by Jacob Burkhardt. While
| maybe being a bit speculative, at least partly, I had the
| impression of highly plausible puzzle-solving by someone who
| actually read and understood the ancient sources. You will find a
| lot of details on questions like this. I find it most
| recommendable for anyone who is interested in (the making of)
| politics and religion now and then.
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