[xk_id]

> The only tangible harm is that it annoys people who attempt to apply logical reasoning to every situation and interaction, even where other human faculties are obviously more appropriate.

You are applying logical reasoning at any given time. What varies only are the assumptions you're concsciously or unconsciously making about yourself and the world.

As time passed by, humanity made various conscious and unconscious assumptions about the structure of the world. These assumptions got captured into language, which enabled passing the assumptions from one generation to the next. This is what happened with words like "soul" and "mind" (which assume possibility of absolute separation between elements). But as scientific revolutions occurred, assumptions were revised, and we created new terms, like "network" (a very important term from the semantic pov, as it assumes connectedness). Unlike thousands of years ago, today (year 2013), we know that the impossibility of absolute separation between elements is a fact of the world in which we live. By subscribing to the older systems of thought, you are going against scientifically (i.e publicly) accepted facts in your thought and actions.

>human mind seems to have no trouble at all with combining arbitrary and contradictory concepts into one big mushy whole.

The "mind"? Yes, maybe. The nervous system? Not so sure.

We know from neurology101 that observations are given by impulses received from the senses and processed in the thalamus. The cortex enables more abstract processing of observations (i.e interpretation, ideas, theories, etc.); the impulses reach the cortex after they have been processed by the thalamus. The entire thing is cyclical [1]. As the brain is one connected whole, it is neurologically important that the cortical and thalamic processes remain coordinated. This means it is undesirable that ideas are in a mushy relationship within themselves and with the empirical observations. If they were, this would essentially disconnect the activity of the brain. A very handy example of this is (my Western understanding of) mantras: they are not words, yet they are treated as if they have meaning (i.e, if I start repeating a mantra, I will deal will purely cortical products, instead of starting from observations and facts – that is, starting with thalamic products, and afterwards proceed by processing those cortically).

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7d4ROvZ6I

[fusiongyro]

And people call me crazy.

[xk_id]

My advice is not to dismiss it so easily, and instead try to understand.

[fusiongyro]

"As the brain is one connected whole, it is neurologically important that the cortical and thalamic processes remain coordinated."

You have two things you have to prove. One, that it is neurologically important that these processes remain coordinated. Two, that unscientific thoughts somehow cause them to become uncoordinated. I'd settle for any sort of proof that thinking unscientific thoughts has any sort of detectable physiological effect. From there, I'd want to see that the effect is meaningful.

I expect your definition of "logical" is gerrymandered to include certain kinds of illogical thinking of which you approve and ignore others. People engage in superstitious behavior constantly despite it being illogical, even after having the illogicalness of the behavior explained. This doesn't seem to cause them physical harm. Your allegation that people are always being logical seems incoherent in the face of your allegation that holding inconsistency in the mind is detrimental--either we can do it or we can't.

I'm not especially open to continuing the debate. If you have proof of whatever these effects are bring it, but I'm not otherwise interested in continuing a conversation about your weird pseudo-scientific mysticism. I'm happy you found something that works for you, I guess.