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Merged The razor of Hitchens and the Spirits!

Axxman300 said:
No. This isn't about extraordinary evidence, it's about the lack of ANY EVIDENCE of spirits.
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To be fair, @Calderaro seems to have been told by at least some people that he needs extraordinary evidence. And anecdotes are indeed a kind of evidence, one very commonly accepted in courts.

Philosophy discussions that have taken place after Sagan dropped the "extraordinary evidence" nugget have refined how skeptics should properly use it. Simply hurling it into a discussion as a knee-jerk salvo is not good skeptical practice. Avoiding the newly-minted Extraordinary Evidence Fallacy means that the standard of proof imposed on a proposition should not be amplified according to any tenet beyond evidentiary sufficiency, and especially not according to an ideological predisposition.

However, a standard of proof can still include prima facie or a priori factors as long as they do not reduce trivially to mere ideology. There is nothing objectionable about spiritism (in the abstract) from a prima facie standpoint, although many specific claims in spiritism would be suspect. What justifies heightened skepticism for spiritism is a priori reasoning. When evaluating a new claim in spiritism, is it not irrational to consider that prior spiritist claims have been the product of proven fakery, have arisen from known techniques such as cold reading, and have been supported allegedly according to science by questionable methods. This allow us to properly apply the Sagan aphorism and demand a standard of proof consistent with a priori knowledge. But even this comes under scrutiny because it's generally desirable to treat each case purely in isolation.

Lay witness testimony in court is anecdotal. Hence to say that anecdotal evidence is categorically worthless is wrong. To say that skeptics reject it categorically is a straw man. As in court, a skeptical approach to an anecdote requires us to be able to question the witness and ascertain the reliability of the observation attested to. In many cases involving fringe claims, the witnesses are inaccessible; we must rely entirely on a limited preserved record. And most importably, as in court, a lay witness's conclusory statement is inadmissible. This is the basis by which science rejects most anecdotal evidence as evidence in favor of the asserted cause. It doesn't matter how many witnesses speculate on the causes of the thing they observed. If the causation itself is not part of the observation, then it can't be evidence.

it's disappointing how few claimants are willing to debate in good faith what the standard of proof should be. The discussion quickly devolves into attacks on the character of people who are prepared to justify a higher standard of proof than the claimant can satisfy.
 
On that the U in UFO or UAP is a big clue to how much credit is given to a sighting report. Bigfoot isn't much different as the sheer quantity of known fakery is huge.

Those are big claims and it seems all physical evidence gets lost before it can be submitted to scrutiny.
 
It is not about knowing everything, right now.

It is about knowing how to apraise and measure the things you observe.

Leaping to conclusions god did it, or spirits somehow did isn't adequate.

In your own words, no AI help, please tell us what spiritism does to make your life better.
In this case I ask for a personal answer.
What does this belief give you?
 
Calderaro said:
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is not possible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle with absolute precision, implying that reality at the quantum level is fundamentally indeterminate. This challenges the empiricist notion that knowledge is constructed from direct, verifiable observations.
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The Thermal Uncertainty Principle states that it is not possible to understand the relevance of quantum mechanics trivia while discussing the existence of fart ghosts who are also inexplicably pressed for time and have to push their way by you in a doorway.
 
Calderaro said:
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is not possible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle with absolute precision, implying that reality at the quantum level is fundamentally indeterminate. This challenges the empiricist notion that knowledge is constructed from direct, verifiable observations.
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Your AI is wrong.
 
Calderaro said:
why ?
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Asking for a more detailed answer is pointless when you have shown you have no intention of addressing it.

Your questions are all veiled accusations that your critics are irrational. This is not only rude, it's disingenuous when your critics are clearly willing to explain their reasoning and you are not.
 
Calderaro said:
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is not possible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle with absolute precision, implying that reality at the quantum level is fundamentally indeterminate.
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That's correct, but has no relevance to the phenomenology of spiritism, which is expressed at the macro level where quantum electrodynamic uncertainty does not apply.

Calderaro said:
This challenges the empiricist notion that knowledge is constructed from direct, verifiable observations.
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No, it doesn't. It merely expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between the kinds of problems that quantum mechanics is meant to solve and the questions that affect a belief in spiritism and most other scientific pursuits. You are not the first (or even the hundredth) person at this forum to try to claim that quantum mechanics proves the supernatural.

Calderaro said:
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And?
 
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Calderaro said:
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is not possible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle with absolute precision, implying that reality at the quantum level is fundamentally indeterminate. This challenges the empiricist notion that knowledge is constructed from direct, verifiable observations.
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Why?
 
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