--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jr_...@...> wrote:
> You are entitled to your opinion. But I am merely paraphrasing what is > available in the jyotish shastras. When Jyoitish was formalized people had many notions that have been overturned by the growth of human understanding. The religious context and the class system knowledge-power rigidity of that period made it very hard to change people's wrong ideas. Even with the impressive name "shastra" the views expressed are also someone's opinion. Someone who came from a culture that lacked the knowledge we have gained since that time. <Personally, I have kept a diary of my dreams for several months to determine what these dreams mean to my life.> Here is where our intuition and statistics starts to come into conflict. The statistical question is "how many months are actually required to make a solid case?" And how likely is it to find coincidences of the nature you discovered below? This is something our natural minds totally suck at. Our intuition can't grasp this so we have to rely on the field of statistics and probability thoery. <In one of the dreams, there was a sequence where I was taking a bus ride to visit my old alma mater for one reason or the the other. I met some people whom I did not know before. After a few days of this dream, I found out that my neighbor next door to me also graduated from my university through an alumni brochure that was incorrectly delivered into my mail box.> Here is a Wiki description of the birthday paradox: "In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox[1] pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of at least 23 randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will have the same birthday. Such a result is counter-intuitive to many. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, and it reaches 100% when, ignoring leap-years, the number of people reaches 366 (by the pigeonhole principle)." > > To test this theory out yourself, you should keep a diary of your dreams to > see if any of them "preplays" any of the actual occurences in your life. You can understand why I am skeptical that such a test really proves what it FEELS like it should prove. I even suggested the experiment before I started thinking about it more and seeing the problems with the design. It naturally made sense to me! It could be tested in principle, but these elements would have to be a part of the design. 1. We would need to know how many months of recording dreams and how many events would be needed to make it statistically significant. 2. We would need to decide on some parameters of what constitutes a connection. In the kind of open ended personal design we are subject to shaping. Of course we also have the issue of how our perception is going to filter to look for any connections with the dream we just had. We are scanning our experience with a strong bias. I don't know how to get around this because this is self-reported and we have thousands of possible experiences to choose from. It seems to me that this would make the likelihood of finding SOMETHING that seems to relate very high. There are many other variable to control for and I am not an expert in testing design. But in principle it seems like there could be a way to find out if there is something to this thoery. In its current form is appears to be unfalsifiable. But this is unlikely to ever happen because people who view shastras as having authority are not interested in more than personal confirmation of the belief. There is no way to prove it false given this testing procedure. And for hundreds of years humans have been satisfied with their anecdotal evidence and intuitive pseudo-testing. What would be the motive to REALLY find out? This natural tendency of our minds (where have I heard THAT before?) to impose order our of chaos, to put things together and to assign connections or to notice the naturally occurring coincidences and to see patterns is a strength and a weakness of our minds. Depending on the context is either pretty benign (this dream belief) or catastrophic, medical superstitions. Our minds are very susceptible to being convinced of things that we should only be confident about with better testing practices. But REALLY testing things is hard. As a species we are also overfond of easy and quick. I have an experience that happens to me. I will be reading something on the Web and then turn to the radio or TV and the same topic will be being discussed. It feels like it happens a lot. It really does. > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jr_esq@> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shukra69" <shukra69@> wrote: > > > > > > > > so then thats why some consider it a good test of a new gem to judge by > > > > the dreams you get when you put it on , that is telling you how it > > > > affects the 9th (also luck > > > > > > > > > > This is true. Dreams are good indicators of things to come. If the > > > dreams are enjoyable then the near future should be good as well. For > > > example, if you dream of someone just before you wake up, there's a good > > > chance you will meet this person during the same day. > > > > I think this is an example of one of our mind's cognitive pitfalls called > > "shaping." We tend to remember things that fit patterns and forget those > > that do not. Since statistics are not intuitive to our minds we are really > > poor judges of the truthfulness of this sort of claim. We are constantly > > imposing order on randomness as a reflex, you can't avoid it. But knowing > > that our mind has this tendency can help avoid being sure of things that > > don't hold up to a more rigorous test. Glilovich's Book How We Know What > > Isn't So, the Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, studies these > > cognitive errors. > > > > http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266784011&sr=8-1 > > > > > > We have all had thousands of dreams that predicted nothing. When there > > seems to be a connection our mind goes eureka! The world makes sense > > because we are overlaying our pattern on the randomness. We dreamt about a > > person and they called us, or we passed them on the street, or wrote to us, > > or someone mentioned them to us. We remember our dream and overvalue it as > > proof of our belief about the trans-personal nature of our minds. But we > > haven't kept s journal of dreams and connections in our daily life for > > months to really test it. And when we do our mind's shaping tendency is > > right there to interpret the day as good after a pleasant dream. Even bad > > things that turn out as a good thing in the end are counted in evidence for > > our minds magical ability to predict the future. > > > > Dream contents may have creative uses, but I don't believe predicting the > > future is one of them. > > > > You are entitled to your opinion. But I am merely paraphrasing what is > available in the jyotish shastras. Personally, I have kept a diary of my > dreams for several months to determine what these dreams mean to my life. In > one of the dreams, there was a sequence where I was taking a bus ride to > visit my old alma mater for one reason or the the other. I met some people > whom I did not know before. After a few days of this dream, I found out that > my neighbor next door to me also graduated from my university through an > alumni brochure that was incorrectly delivered into my mail box. > > To test this theory out yourself, you should keep a diary of your dreams to > see if any of them "preplays" any of the actual occurences in your life. >
