Seth and Science

The Seth community, at least the part that I've known, has always had a strange and ambivalent relationship with science. One the one hand, there have been numerous attempts to link Seth's ideas to the ideas of Quantum Mechanics. That seems to be a fruitful line to pursue. Deep in quantum mechanics things get pretty weird and seem very Seth-like. I was just reading an article the other day called "Reality Tests" from Seed magazine about how the Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI, pronounced “ee-ko-kee”) tested the basic tenets of realism and found them wanting.

We want to build a link to quantum mechanics precisely because that will lend legitimacy to Seth's ideas. Quantum mechanics is the most tested and most successful scientific theory ever developed. How did we get quantum mechanics? Via a deep trust in, and allegiance to, the scientific method. Make an hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, do the experiment, record the results, then be ruthlessly honest about whether the results support the hypothesis. And, make sure that your hypothesis is falsifiable. There has to be some conceivable experiment that you could do that would prove the hypothesis wrong.

One of the things I've noticed is that most Seth folks just aren't willing to put Seth's ideas to that kind of test. All of a sudden science is too confining and too linear. The implication is that there's actually something wrong with trying to get reproducible results out of Seth's ideas. I think this timidity has held back our understanding of YCYR. We have to have a lot more courage than we've shown so far. Personally, about 90% of my Seth experiments have been busts. I freely admit that. But, I've learned so much from them.

I'll have a lot more to say about this as time goes on.