@Regenbogen
I understand it through the lens of psychology, and I'm partial to Jung. But I'm very heterodox in my approach. I do use religious and spiritual belief systems as well, but I'm translating them to the modern skeptic paradigm. Religion just being an early form of psychology/sociology, imo.
It works super well.
The branching layout you just gave me is exactly a narrative. You describing the conditions for your if/thens was a branching narrative structure. Choose Your Own Adventure style, with pre-scripted solutions and exceptions.
That's your personal belief system, the how's and why's you do what you do.
If you wrote it all down, which would take you years, I could translate... idk, what do you not believe in. Taoism? I could make Taoism make, like, 85% sense to you. Or whatever else, so long as I've learned that one too.
If someone is completely consumed by a publicly known belief system, like being a super hard-core christian, I can speak their language too. Instead of memes and complex systems causing environmental influences that trigger mental illness, I would use much simpler words like "possession," or "demon." That's what the ancient folks were pointing at when they tried to explain what was going on.
They were wrong about... basically everything? But it is a real thing. Environmental pathology is a hot topic these days. It's just a mouthful in the modern paradigm, which makes it hard to conceptualize and understand. That's the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, if you want a wiki walk that will blow your mind.
If you can just say "demon," and still understand it in perfectly grounded, scientific terms, you can hack Sapir-Whorf. That's my little trick. Hyper-fast contextual reframing that doesn't get shut down by autonomic function, particularly the sympathetic nervous system.
Doing that is why I can do "enlightenment," or Positive Disintegration in modern terms, while staying balanced. Not too lost in the sauce, not overfitting my personal worldview as the only valid interpretation of events. If I lean too hard in one direction, I just reframe and test hypotheses to see what I'm doing wrong, and correct that way.
I'm drawing a *ton* from the philosophy around Artificial Intelligence to do that. It's been a personal fascination of mine since I was a teenager, and I'm in my 30s now. I'm about as well read on the topic as one can possibly be, without devolving into, in my opinion, highly questionable esoteric subjects of debatable relevance.
You can tell how deep into it I am, because I can't even talk about it without bringing up some nerd fights, lol.
Personally, I just prefer to put it in more poetic terms at first. At least until someone asks questions. It lets people keep the concept at arms length more comfortably, if it conflicts with their personal understanding of the world.
@Dina
That's a good point, actually. If you assume the "magic" is mostly trickery and exaggeration, it would make a ton of cognitive tricks (like dancing with lions instead of becoming lunch) make a ton more sense.
I hope all the builders in the world treat you both like common clay. (They overcharge royalty for subpar work.)
I'll be back with more later. I'm taking an axe to cryptography at the moment. It's a *very* useful cognitive trick.
