rationalskepticism.org

UndercoverElephant wrote:No. I came out of it having concluded that actually it is the world (the human world) that is mad, and not me. I was trying to be sane in a mad world.

Some might call that "externalising." A trope is to talk about the "system."

I suspect people connotate "system" and "rational", which is precisely what you shouldn't do, if you know anything about non-linear systems. Sometimes the reason that shit happened was because of a flunctuation smaller than a measurement error. Nothing you can do about it. It's a lesson about not passing blame but at the same time, holding back on congratulation.

However, the point I'm making is that there are no methods available to test this sort of phenomena (if it is real). It either happens or it doesn't, and you can't go back and try it again.

So in what context do we talk about it? If you have to add in, even parenthetically, the hypothesis of "if it is real", to a phenomena, then I'd say we're squarely in the world of fiction. Hence, my reference to Philip K Dick. The great advantage in writing a novel is that you don't need to constantly remind the reader that the events depicted are fictional.