Have blogged on this before but revisited cos it much clearer now.
In modern thinking we dismiss the coin flip because the outcome is random. It can be either Heads or Tails with equal probability.
But this is not actually true. For it to be random or equal probability we must assume that there is a large number of coin flips. It can be either Heads or Tails comes from the thinking that given multiple coin flips there is an even chance of it being a Head or a Tail. So that on this particular coin flip it can be either a Head or a Tail.
Statistics starts with the premise that we are studying a population, or multiple events. If we limit it to just a single coin flip we cannot apply statistics or statistical concepts. It can't be a head or a tail because it is just one thing.
We might protest that given a brand new game to play, never played before, we need only enquire what the possible states are and all-other-things-being-equal we can say that the outcome of a single event is evenly between these states. Then we can destroy the game to make sure it is never played again. A single event. But when enquiring about the possible events we enter a solution space which presupposes all the possible outcomes. We are implicitly assuming that the game could be played again even if it isn't.
It means that actually we have no way to think about the outcome of a single coin flip! With emphasis on just this time and space.
Its interesting that this is the crux of Quantum Physics. Particular events start life as a state which occupies all possibilities. You can't think Quantum Reality as just single events, they are always born of all possibilities. I'm arguing here for thinking that turns this world on its head (from its tail). Single events exist by themselves independent of the possibilities.*
*ok arguing with myself here. If we map a binary decision onto a coin flip. Aren't we already presupposing that both possibilities exist. If they didn't then how do we have the dilemma. So possibility precedes actuality. But in Divination and Destiny we are thinking that the decision has already been made, and we are only uncovering the Truth. The thought there is a possibility appears to exist only because we cannot see the Reality truthfully. Solving Dilemma is not a matter of choice, but of discovery.
Now Quantum Physics, the Bell Inequality in particular, has shown that Einstein was wrong and the world is decided and does not await discovery. The fact is that discovery is involved in deciding. So things remain in the state of possibility until discovered. And this is known from the strange phenomenon of entanglement, which in turn exists because of a more fundamental and more familiar law of conservation of energy. To conserve energy when quantum states are split they must produce two particles with opposite character. By measuring these two particles you would expect the counts to be equal and random. But (if I understand correctly) it turns out that deviations from random correlate showing that the counters are influencing each other. #TODO make this clearer.
Anyway Quantum Physics suggests that indeed the coin exists in both states until measured. The single event is indeed plucking a particular coin from the particular pool. But in Divination we want to turn this upside down and imagine there is just one coin there which we are revealing. I guess the issue here is where does the decision actually occur? Does it occur in the measurement and coin flip like in Quantum Physics or does it occur before we even ask the question. The problem with the idea that the coin flip decides it, is that we can just flip again and decide again. We are trying to limit this to an actual result. And to do that we need to limit to coin flips and possibilities to just one, which I'm claiming here is the ancient way of thinking. And we do that before we even flip the coin. Perhaps this may seen a really pedantic and trivial point, but the issue of reality and possibility is actually an ancient and huge issue.
So Tarot Cards and other divining methods use a long forgotten feature of reality. When the Greeks selected a goat, sacrificed it and examined its entrails since it was only done once you can't just say the outcome was luck or not. Since it was done only once, that was the outcome! If the entrails were abnormal then indeed that was what you were stuck with. You can't just pick another one. Thems the rules!
So in actual fact once restricted to a single event, we have no modern way to think about it. I don't know if we can write into that space ideas of cosmic order and destiny, but as a river only flows one way, and there is no turning back, single events are critical to writing actual stories and creating narratives through time.
A film would be rather uninteresting if the protagonist got an infinite number of lives like a computer game. What often happens is that the protagonist survives unbelievably unlikely events, like jumping a car and just happening to have the power to clear the canyon. We can see this retrospectively, that had the protagonist fallen into the ravine the film would never have been made, so we know that the lead makes it - an Anthropic Argument. But that relies upon "infinite worlds." There must be millions of stories being thought about, but the ones where the lead dies in the middle of the story never get written, or published or make it to cinema.
But never-the-less we suspend disbelief and follow the apparent "single events" through the film as our lucky hero appears to have the blessing of the gods guiding him.
Our life is actually "single events" (you don't get to do life again) and we can apply Anthropic Argument in a way, so that when an unlikely event happen we can say that well it happens to millions of people, I was just the lucky or the unlucky one. But when you hear survivors of accidents speak, especially if they survived by some miracle they feel guilty that "they" are the one who survived. You might argue that well someone was always going to survive, so it just happens to have been you, and you shouldn't worry about it.
But the fundamental "attachment" we have to our self means that we take the things that happen to us more seriously and fundamentally than those which happen to other people. "But why me" we keep asking ourselves. This works for bad events too. When an unlikely thing happens to us, like the death of our partner, we can't help thinking (despite knowing this happens a lot) why did it happen to me?
The answer there is attachment to this self. The less attached to this self and existence we are, the easier it is to see what happens to us as just part of the maelstrom of life that engulfs everyone.
But this is also the essence of karma. When we do a good or a bad thing they say that the fruits of that action come back to us, usually many fold. If we give £1 we can expect £10 to come back. If we steal £1 we can expect to lose £10.
This seems like mumbo-jumbo when you first hear it. How if I steal £1 from someone on holiday 1000s of miles away, when I get home will I lose £10? Are they going to track me down?
We forget one thing. You can travel 1000 miles to get away from a crime, but you can't get away from yourself.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is Newton's surprisingly profound and universal 3rd Law.
Whatever drove you to commit the crime has not gone away. And it is this inner motivation which comes back to bite you. That clawing for £1, that need for £1 doesn't go away. £1 can never fix that. And its the remaining hole you were trying to fill that has now only grown, to about £10. You already feel like you have lost £10. This is the real meaning of the saying. But its more dangerous because your greedy actions make you behave in an unwise and reckless way and unless you fix that core greed, you will start losing.
This is how karma works. And ultimately it comes back to that experience of being attached to this person, this life, and this existence. It is that attachment that makes "our" life seem like the only one, that gives weight to the "single" of single events.
We lose the lottery is the classic. We feel like a failure. Except we don't cos we know that there are 10 million other losers out there. Yet someone does win (we hope the lottery is not a fraud, many are). When that person is us, we may find it overwhelming. I am so "lucky" it may change how we feel about our self. It may justify that "single" event attachment to our life. My life is blessed, my life is special. I don't need to think about other people, cos I got it all. I wonder whether this is the thinking that leads to so many people who find sudden wealth, then losing it all. And once it is lost they will be even more impoverished than before, so they cut off the world around them, to become the King at the centre of it all. And now tables are turned and there is bad luck, they are the sole recipient of it. How unlucky they must feel! Such suffering leads us to let go of this self, that is mortal and worthless really, and open up the millions of other lives all playing out around us. That in fact is the true wealth of the world.
But I slightly digress. The single event of a tarot card, or a coin flip, is indeed a single event and you cannot really apply statistics to it as long as you attach to it as "your" event, just for me, and just for now. This is the secret attraction of divination, but it does depend upon the core attachment we have to "our "life. It is probably this which is why it is frowned upon by religions, because it leads to attachment to the self, and not to God.
This is the ancient way of thinking, but with one Essential difference. We always have choice. This is the problem with The Dice Man. We may attribute decisions to the faces of a dice, and we may commit to roll that dice just once so that it is no longer statistical* and so that we remove our choice from the outcome. But actually no we didn't remove choice cos we chose to do this, and we can unchoose to do this. The essence of Dice Man is a sneaky trick to try and get a Past Self to make a contract with a Future Self that the Future Self cannot break. But of course it can break it. It is fooled if it thinks it cannot. We might make a decision to stop smoking, and that become very binding, and so it should; or we might make a decision to be faithful to a married partner, and that can be very binding, and so it should, and we are better for doing both. But if a past self made a silly decision like to play the lottery every week, it is wise for a later self to over rule this no matter how binding it appeared to be. Choice is not an opportunity to be weak willed, but it is an opportunity to review things and make more informed and better decisions. So Dice Man doesn't really work in that the outcomes of the dice are always open to review in the light of the present. No dice, or coin, or tarot or divination has any actual power. But it can be useful as a look into one's own real beliefs and intentions.
*this is beyond Dice Man, this is more the idea of Cosmic Divination where the universe is sending you a message.
(1) We write out some dilemmas we have. And settle on the outcomes that choose these.
(2) We agree to only do this once to remove (a) our influence (b) statistics, so that the outcome is singular and binding
(3) We perform the divination
(4) We look at how we feel about the outcome. It is this information which we really want from the exercise.
e.g.
Shall I get a cat or a dog? Shall I get a pet at all?
Obviously the first question is a leading question for a coin flip. What if the universe doesn't want us to have a cat or a dog!
(1) Heads: get a pet. If Heads then Heads: get a dog. we need maximum of two coin flips.
(2) Make the agreements seriously to our self.
(3) Flip the coins. Say we get Heads and Tails.
(4) The universe wants me to get a Cat. How do I feel about this. If I think excellent I'm so pleased that this is the outcome then we know what we want. If we think, oh dear I was really wishing for a dog, then we know what we think. If we are anxious about the cost of having a cat we know what we think. If we think actually no I don't like this result, maybe I'm not ready for a pet then we know what we think.
Its a tool to be used exactly like this. No more and no less.
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Logical caveat. I've blogged on this I think.
(1) Heads: do not accept the outcome of coin flips.
(2) Make the agreements seriously to our self.
Of course the problem here is that we can't agree to take the coin flip seriously when one outcome is to not accept the outcome. So 2 contradicts 1 and invalidates the flip.
Likewise in the cat/dog example. If we flipped Tails then Head it means don't get a Pet, get a Dog. 2 contradicts 1 again. Tho actually we made 1 clearly say that if the first coin says don't get a pet then don't flip again. So when we did 2 we are sincere.
Suppose we make a mistake:
(1) Heads: Get a 3L Mini Cooper S car. Tails: Don't get this car.
(2) Make the agreements seriously to our self.
It comes up Heads. We go shopping and discover that only a 2L exists. It looks like the universe has let us down. It lied. But we can argue that it got us to do the proper research and find out that 3L doesn't exist. Now we can flip the coin again with proper information.
I mean how could the universe not lie with those options? It's been set up to fail. If the coin came up Tails then it would mean we didn't even go and find out that Heads was impossible. We would just scrap buying Minis all together.
Anyway there are always ways to think about the practice of Divination that make it work. But the one way of thinking that doesn't work is to believe that Divination can replace our Choice. when we do something it is always a choice, and the outcome belongs to us, so we better be happy about the choice before we make it. Divination is a useful way to explore what we think about choices.
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I have been meaning to wrote an app for a long time, incorporating useful Linear Algebra, to help with decision making, but built ultimately on Divination. Some exist in fact, altho it could be made more interesting to not just use the random number, but get some world data like astronomical, stock market and chose based on this. Some existing apps have weighted decision matrices but I was thinking more complete linear algebra to explore variables as well.
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So what of more complicated divination like Ouija. To get a message from a Ouija board is basically a long series of coin flips. You could use a 39 sided dice or 5 coin flips (encoding 32) for each character - that is 0-25 as characters, 26-28 for oct numeral, 29-30 yes/no, 31 goodbye. Obviously what is interesting is if the sequence was meaningful. This is clearly a very sophisticated form of divination. Without doubt the people using the Ouija do more than just supply the physical energy to move the planchette, they are critically involved in creating the message. In most cases messages with come in the language of the users. It would be interesting if anyone ever got a message in a language they did not know. The question is just where this message comes from. Now in the discussion above the question was whether the answer existed before, or was created by the divination (like in Quantum Physics). You would expect a Ouija board to give the same result for the same question, but perhaps not like with multiple coin flips. Obviously this is very involved, but I wanted to bring forward the insight into the correct use of Divination. Even with a Ouija board, regardless the message received, it is just information like with coin flips. The problem perhaps for people is their minds start to go wild wondering what lies behind the message. But do we go wild wondering what is behind the information in the single coin flip? This is where choice is SO important. Even if a "demon" was behind the message, it cannot take over your choice. Some people are susceptible to hypnosis, suggestion and various trance state where they appear to be controlled from outside. But I went to a lecture on the science of this stuff at Imperial College, London University where it was revealed that research into this shows that in reality even under the deepest states of suggestion people are actually "acting." They may not know it, but what is happening is that they are being given ideas which they "go along with" and act out. So someone says "you are a frog" and so they jump around like a child would, perhaps wondering why this seems like so much fun and such a sensible idea. When no longer under suggestion they can't believe they would do it, and it makes no sense. But all along it is "acting", not that acting is a very sophisticated state. The Ancient Greeks thought that the actor absorbed the spirit of the person they were acting, so that the audience actually had that person on stage. Very similar to Transubstantiation in Christianity where the Sacrament comes together into the spirit of Christ within the person. And really this IS what is happening, cos the whole idea is that we start to act like Christ to bring God's will onto the Earth. Quite how you think the metaphysics is not important. But the fundamental difference between the idea of "acting" and "possession" is Choice. The science shows that we always have choice, even in deep trance. A "possession" suggests that we are no longer ourselves, but this does not appear to ever happen. At best we become a channel for a spirit, but we are never that spirit, and we always hold the keys to the gate of who this is. This fits with Buddhist Theory that in essence what we are is a Buddha, and the layers of identity/personality/ignorance are all layered on top. So it means that our Buddha Nature is always in there shining, even in the midst of the greatest confusion and belief we are possessed. So all that said to enhance the role of Choice in Divination. The church is worried about Ouija because of its potential role in bringing "demons" into the world. But actually this is not really possible. However we should not be reckless, that is the theory, but most people do not have the wisdom and strength to see this clearly and things like Ouija are never going to be helpful are seeing the truth so why do it. Its like Heroine. Its true no one needs it, and we can all kick the habit. But some people are not so strong and can end up with serious addictions. Why make your life hard, just avoid it. Same with bad friends. While we are all good at root, being around bad people can be a bad influence. Its hard to stick up for what is right when you have to fight the pressures of the people around us. Life is just easier if we stick to good people. Same with Ouija. Why trouble ourselves with the subtleties of Divination and Choice if we don't need to. So that actually comes back to even coin flips. Choice is the key here, and decisions can only be made with Choice.
The moment the coin starts to decide for us, we have lost it and its no longer helpful to us, and the same for any Divination. This is most absolutely important to realise. But if we ever find that Divination methods, even Astrology Charts and Horoscopes start to make choices for us then that can be seen as Divination itself as we are getting a great insight into our lives and what we need. If we need guidance in life like this, then we have reached a point in life where it has lost its direction. We have become inauthentic and are no longer living. We should simplify and get back to the things that matter to us. Put all the rubbish and distractions on hold, and get back to the simple things that matter. Reorganise, take stock, re-establish and get the compass working again so we can see where we are going. Simple Meditation would without doubt be useful here.
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