notes-cog-mindAndMagic

people used to have all sorts of 'magic' idea about the way the world works, eg "as above so below". I hypothesize that although these don't apply in physical reality, they are good rules of thumb when dealing with psychological matters; i don't mean to say that magic is 'real' or that the mind 'runs on' a platform of magic (by 'platform' i mean the way that a computer program runs on a platform of an ISA (instruction set architecture) (i think the mind 'runs of' a platform of physics), but just that these 'magical' sorts of 'laws' tend to be good heuristics for high-level models of human psychology.