What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi? (opens in new tab)

I know barely enough Greek to sound it out, but "αὐτόματος" is "automatos", which probably gives enough information to anyone not interested in following the link.

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.

> But on the other hand, it's a dangerous claim because it's extremely falsifiable, like in your example.

Making claims that are easy to falsify is good!

“There is no historical record of the deliberate use of psilocybin mushrooms in Europe before 1957”

I had to make this claim recently. There is also a shocking lack of evidence for the use of cannabis in the Greco-Roman period (apart from Herodotus discussing the Scythians—and a reference in Exodus).

The Greek philosopher Euhemerus believed that Gods has originated as humans who was worshiped after their death. So the naturalistic explanations existed, although I don't know how widely accepted they were.

There seems to have been Greeks like Thucydides who did like that and Greeks like Herodotus who enjoyed the opposite (supernatural explanations of the natural), I wouldn't know enough to make a general claim.

Quick quote from Wikipedia (via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#Myth_origins): "In her book The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (2000), Adrienne Mayor argues that some stories of dragons may have been inspired by ancient discoveries of fossils belonging to dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.[19] She argues that the dragon lore of northern India may have been inspired by "observations of oversized, extraordinary bones in the fossilbeds of the Siwalik Hills below the Himalayas"[20] and that ancient Greek artistic depictions of the Monster of Troy may have been influenced by fossils of Samotherium, an extinct species of giraffe whose fossils are common in the Mediterranean region.[20] In China, a region where fossils of large prehistoric animals are common, these remains are frequently identified as "dragon bones"[21] and are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine.[21] Mayor, however, is careful to point out that not all stories of dragons and giants are inspired by fossils[21] and notes that Scandinavia has many stories of dragons and sea monsters, but has long "been considered barren of large fossils."[21] In one of her later books, she states that "Many dragon images around the world were based on folk knowledge or exaggerations of living reptiles, such as Komodo dragons, Gila monsters, iguanas, alligators, or, in California, alligator lizards, though this still fails to account for the Scandinavian legends, as no such animals (historical or otherwise) have ever been found in this region."[22]"

In summary, a historian argues that some, but not all, societies found the fossils of reptiles, and created myths involving dragons using these fossils as inspirations for the dragons' imagery.

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.

I think that's OPs point. It's shoehorned nonsense.

They found bones.

The comment you’re replying to is mocking these theories, not supporting them.

"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.

One of the main functions of the Oracle was to tell people where to settle, move and colonize. This played a major role in the Greek colonization movement from 800-400 BC around the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

One woman and her priests became a central clearing house for the ideas and issues of the entire Greek world. She was almost certainly the most influential person in the world.

The Oracle work was combine with the Panhellenic Pythian games (music, art and sports). In the off season, Apollo went north to the Hyperboreans — and the cult of Dionysus took over. The Oracle was part of a whole cultural complex that played many functional values. I’m not sure what being “just BS” could mean in this context.

Thats what i thought, might al be part of the conception, the make believe show.

Came here to say the same thing, it's either Laurel or Oleander leaves that Pythia (the high priestess) either chewed or inhaled (their fumes). At least that's what I remember from high school and what most Greeks know. It's debated that the whole Oracle of Delphi thing could be a very well organized scam, but that's another discussion.

It's a place worth the visit: https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/central-greece/delphi/

  Also, the ethylene theorists have a rebuttal. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778 ...

This page 404’s - do you have another source?

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.

The predictive power that most people have (at least with normally functioning brains, for some neutral definition of normal being the baseline) is surprisingly good. Executive function requires making many such predictions and forecasts every minute. If I had to give a rough estimate, I’d say slightly greater than a coin flip for future event outcomes.

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.

His entire channel is great. It's one of the only YouTube channels where I can't think of a single bad video he's put out.

> 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.

One of my takeaways from listening to a lot of Telltale (an ex Jehovah's Witness atheist channel on youtube) was that the stereotypical charismatic Christian glossolalia is probably a learned skill. I have heard that people who left these groups are still capable of exhibiting it on command.

I have not actually met an ex-charismatic who could demonstrate this to me, but I would be interested in meeting one. I have never done glossolalia myself, I always thought there was something off about it. I have been at a charismatic church where people were practicing it. I was relieved that they were not extremely loud, they weren't rolling or flailing around, but I admit I found the audible chaos of it somewhat unnerving. I've heard charismatic Christians speak of the presence of God, or of spiritual power as a feeling of "electricity" or tingling. It seems to me that a major aim in that movement is to feel highly energized.

I ended up in a faith tradition that has a difficult but slow, calm, scripted practice, one that evangelicals would be likely to call "vain repetitions". I think the accusation could stick that I badly wanted some beauty and order. I believe that the gift of tongues is experienced as a miraculous automatic translation in the spoken word; we see it as a reversal of what happened at the tower of Babel.

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.

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.

I was referring to "hidden knowledge", see Wikipedia's entry on "esotericism":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism#Esotericis...

There's a lot here in your comment-- Thanks for the reply! I'm actually a practicing, "Hare Krsna Devotee" under Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj in the line of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math.

I think there's so much in different spiritual circles. What seems to unite them all is a kind of concept of, "surrendering wholeheartedly to..." and I think that manifests itself in a huge diversity of ways. I think that what Zen ends up missing is a viable moral concept and an explanation of what, "love" actually is at a metaphysical level. The reversi-logic Koan thing gets really old after awhile but I can appreciate how that might resonate with some people. Zen is very, "interesting" but having sat on the mat for some time that the, "great realization" has always been, "stop holding out for a great realization; it's all a crock of shit including the crock of shit you tell yourself that it's all a crock of shit." I know a lot of old burnout hippy-boomer types that got lost in Zen land and never found their way back. I also know a lot of Hare Krsna devotees that got lost in Prabhupadaland. I think it's worth noting that pretty soon we're both going to be biologically dead forever.

I suppose it's all worth a consider. Hare Krsna Prabhuji!

There are whole classes of things that were "unscientific" before we advanced to the point where they were scientific.

Medicine was VERY unscientific until recent days. Bacteriological theory was unscientific until it wasn't. Psychiatry was, and I'd argue, still unscientific. And machine learning is equal parts of magic and statistical math. Most practitioners in ML/AI area just tweak knobs and hope that some hyperparameter does infinitesimally better.

The key takeaway is that not even knowing the appropriate metrology to engage in makes this a very hard scientific endeavour. But that is the first problem to solve - how do you measure whatever that is. And once you can measure, then you can manipulate.

There's too many of these stories Ive heard from family, friends, myself, and others to think that this area is some sort of a delusion and fake. But what is its nature? Unsure. That's why I explore.

Out of curiosity: if something isn't scientific, does that mean that it doesn't exist?

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.

> 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?

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?

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.

The extra soft version is that verbal languages are interchangeable, but there are differences between verbal languages and nonverbal, like sign language.

> 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.

> 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.

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.”

> 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.