• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

What about this crop circle?

Limbo said:
Those are big questions dude. Can you pick just one or two to start with?
Click to expand...
.
What is "humanity's collective unconscious"?

Where is it stored?

How can it be accessed?

How can it be perceived?

How is this different from someone's using something he's seen/read/heard/felt/smelled as a springboard for something else?

Is "Ode on a Grecian Urn" an example of "humanity's collective unconscious expressing itself" or is it Keats' emotional response to something he found beautiful?

What about Picasso's "Guernica"?

What about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

What about the fact that there are about 8 jillion artistic representations of the Holy Virgin?

Where do you draw the line?
.
Do them one at a time.
We're all a'twitter waiting for -any- answer.
 
Limbo said:
I can't speak for anyone else but I did not premeditate the crafting of excuses so that I could invoke the sheep-goat effect. Your thinly veiled accusation shows exactly where you cross the line into pseudo-skepticism, IMO.
Click to expand...

I don't think that you premeditate the crafting of excuses. I don't think that most believers, and this includes the parapsychologists who have created these excuses, do this in a premeditated fashion. It is a natural consequence of finding ways to rationalize a belief. As you say, you took your own experiences as veridical examples of psi effects. You recognize that not everyone finds 'psi' to be a necessary explanation. This leaves you with the need to rationalize their disbelief and your own belief.

I came across the sheep-goat effect in the literature while investigating my own spontaneous psi experiences. I investigate parapsychology to understand, not to craft a rhetoric device.
Click to expand...

Of course other have gone before you, so of course you will come across these rationalizations once you investigate the literature. And sophisticated and sciency-sounding justifications are particularly attractive.

It should be pointed out that even the literature reporting on the presence of the sheep-goat effect, contradicts itself. It variously means 'psi-missing' (whereby goats perform worse than expected) and 'psi-absent' (whereby goats do not exhibit psi ability (as measured by the guessing success, not by any direct means (for obvious reasons))) in the goats, and 'psi-present' or 'psi-absent' (whereby sheep perform better than goats in either case) in the sheep. The Lawrence meta-analysis (1992) that gets quoted a fair bit actually fails to support the goat effect (whereby goats perform worse than expected). Rather it shows a tiny effect whereby the average for sheep is slightly higher than the average for goats. But this effect can easily be accounted for by the bias that we already see in this research - the taking of unremarkable data and subjecting it to analysis and presentation factors which result in the finding of a 'positive' result. And it is also an effect which would be too small to be noticeable on informal observation - i.e. it could not lead to a noticeable difference between crop circle believers and crop circle skeptics.

Linda
 
carlitos said:
1 - what are you seeing in crop circles that couldn't be done by people?
Click to expand...


It's not that. It's that there is mysticism and mythology involved in the crop circle and UFO phenomenon, which are related. And where there is mysticism and mythology, there are archetypes of the collective unconscious and psi. Including the trickster archetype. And where the trickster goes the paranormal follows, genuine and otherwise. Not enough genuine to push the paranormal out of the margins of society and into the elite, but enough to keep it alive. A balance is preserved. But the balance comes and goes in cycles, it seems.

2 - How is "humanity's collective unconscious" different from someone's using something he's seen/read/heard/felt/smelled as a springboard for something else? (Like me when I subconsciously work other songs into my jazz improvisation, for example)
Click to expand...


I don't know. Maybe it's just a matter of degree.
 
Last edited:
How do ancient world trickster Gods relate to crop circles
am I missing something here, what do Loki or Seth have to do with anything ?
 
Limbo said:
It's not that. It's that there is mysticism and mythology involved in the crop circle and UFO phenomenon, which are related. And where there is mysticism and mythology, there are archetypes of the collective unconscious. Including the trickster. And where the trickster goes the paranormal follows.
Click to expand...
Utter cobblers. Crop circles are made by people. There's nothing paranormal about them. So what is it you want to discuss?
 
I don't know. Maybe it's just a matter of degree.
Click to expand...

In your construction of reality, there still has to be a point at which creativity is simply building on what others have done before and at which "psi" is somehow involved. Where on the continuum does that happen?

Is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies psi or satire?

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" - psi or Keats' thoughts expressed in verse?

A middle-schooler cheating on a test - actual cheating or "psi" working itself out? Or maybe that trickster god messing with a kid's life?
 
Marduk said:
How do ancient world trickster Gods relate to crop circles
am I missing something here, what do Loki or Seth have to do with anything ?
Click to expand...

Loki and Seth do/did not exist so how can they make crop circles?
 
Limbo said:
The unconscious sheep-goat effect is present in the crop circle phenomenon as well, and I think it compromises or disguises the evidence. So I don't think it's as simple as man-made this and physical evidence that. That's why a man-made circle can be "genuine", and a "genuine" circle can turn out to be a "hoax". Reversals and paradox are a tricksters delight, so to speak.
Click to expand...
So bearing in mind all your overly complex explanations for something that I know to be a simple case of people who have a hobby which other people have built a religion around, to what end can your explanation be used?

If there is no way within your explanation to determine which is 'genuine' and which is 'hoaxed' (both of these terms are incorrect, I'm only using them because they are terms you have used because that's what crop circles bleevers call them). Because if there is no way to tell the difference, for all intents and purposes, there is no difference and therefore, why invent an explanation in the first place unless it's some sort of religiously based justification for something mundane that you don't understand because you have been taken in by the biased and blind crop circle researchers who have gone before you?
 
Loki and Seth don't exist, therefore people have to poop, therefore crop circles are made by blimps, therefore the whole thing is one giant gay rodeo.
 
Elizabeth I said:
In your construction of reality, there still has to be a point at which creativity is simply building on what others have done before and at which "psi" is somehow involved. Where on the continuum does that happen?

Is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies psi or satire?

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" - psi or Keats' thoughts expressed in verse?

A middle-schooler cheating on a test - actual cheating or "psi" working itself out? Or maybe that trickster god messing with a kid's life?
Click to expand...

Oh great, now the plagiarists are going to have another excuse: "I didn't copy and paste the article from Wikipedia--it was unconscious psi!"
 
Stray Cat said:
It is Peter's opinion, you'd have to ask him how much he thinks is truth. I imagine he'd say all of it.
Click to expand...

Heck I could agree with all of it, it's ambivalent enough that you can read it any way you want.

e.g. for muse: read imagination, spirit, god or aliens.
 
Rewind

These findings have not been found in crop circles either claimed and witnessed as being done by human mechanical means or by control
groups trying to duplicate these findings by mechanical means:

1. abnormal enlargement of cell wall pits in bract tissue
2. enlarged (both laterally and longitudinally) plant stem nodes
3. 25 to 45 degree bending in conjunction with marked elongation of plant nodes from apical 2nd 3rd and fourth nodes seperately or together not due
to phototropism or gravitropism
4. expulsion cavities ( holes blown out at the plant stem nodes)
5. stunted malformed seeds from young crops and growth rates 5 times
that of control seeds in fully mature seeds grown in the lab
6. precise manner of node lenghth changes decreasing from center to
perimeter coinciding with the Beer-Lambert principle
7. highly magnetic semi molton meteoric iron adhering to soil and plant
samples sometimes in the same precise Beer-Lambert principle layout
8. increased crystallinity in clay minerals of soil indicitive of atom ordering

Since I am a newbie I cant post links but the above research was conducted
by Dr. W.C. Levengood Biophysicist Michigan, and his team of accredited scientists, for 10 years from 250 individual crop formations world wide.
*someone used the analogy of the knuckle to describe the plant stem node
without describing the other purpose of the knuckle..support.The plant node
is quite strong which is why plants bent by mechanical means usually bend
along the stem and leave forensic evidence.
I would also like to see crop artists create a crop circle in canola, which
they have NEVER acknowledged doing .(muuuhhaahaaahaa)
 
Marduk said:
How do ancient world trickster Gods relate to crop circles
am I missing something here, what do Loki or Seth have to do with anything ?
Click to expand...

It's like this: once upon a time an undercover frost-giant fetched up in Aasgaard, went up to Odin and said, "Hey, I can make a really elaborate crop circle in some guy's field in a single night, using only a board, some string and my trusty steed Svadilfaeri. AND we won't leave behind any horse poop or frost-giant circle-maker poop. We can even do it if it's raining."

Odin said, "No way," and the circle-maker said, "Way!" So Odin asked, "Well what do you want in return for this kind of unnecessary accomplishment?" The circle-maker said, "I want the sun and the moon and Freyja to come and live with me in Giantland my home."

The gods got together and decided that this all seemed reasonable. So the circle-maker and his horse got working, and--oh noes--it became clear that he would be successful. So the gods started threatening Loki because it was all his fault somehow, and Loki promised to take care of it.

As the circle-maker was close to finishing, a mare appeared from the unstomped crops and whinnied provocatively and then ran back into the field. Svadilfaeri ran after "her," the circle was never completed and in the fullness of time, Loki gave birth to Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged steed, who joys in producing mysterious crop formations.

Wait, that doesn't sound quite right.
 
supergreen said:
These findings have not been found in crop circles either claimed and witnessed as being done by human mechanical means or by control
groups trying to duplicate these findings by mechanical means:

1. abnormal enlargement of cell wall pits in bract tissue
2. enlarged (both laterally and longitudinally) plant stem nodes
3. 25 to 45 degree bending in conjunction with marked elongation of plant nodes from apical 2nd 3rd and fourth nodes seperately or together not due
to phototropism or gravitropism
4. expulsion cavities ( holes blown out at the plant stem nodes)
5. stunted malformed seeds from young crops and growth rates 5 times
that of control seeds in fully mature seeds grown in the lab
6. precise manner of node lenghth changes decreasing from center to
perimeter coinciding with the Beer-Lambert principle
7. highly magnetic semi molton meteoric iron adhering to soil and plant
samples sometimes in the same precise Beer-Lambert principle layout
8. increased crystallinity in clay minerals of soil indicitive of atom ordering
Click to expand...
All explained and debunked in one of my previous posts here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5640316&postcount=570
and here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5640333&postcount=572

supergreen said:
Since I am a newbie I cant post links but the above research was conducted
by Dr. W.C. Levengood Biophysicist Michigan, and his team of accredited scientists, for 10 years from 250 individual crop formations world wide.
Click to expand...
Mr Levengoode is NOT and has never been a Dr. he used to use that title until it was discovered that he wasn't entitled to use it. you are obviously someone else who has been taken in by the charlatans.

supergreen said:
*someone used the analogy of the knuckle to describe the plant stem node
without describing the other purpose of the knuckle..support.The plant node
is quite strong which is why plants bent by mechanical means usually bend
along the stem and leave forensic evidence.
Click to expand...
Should we get into a discussion of why these magical bent nodes only appear in crop which is still in it's immature growth stage?
Perhaps we could explore why or how a plant can be bent over using normal force in this stage and then phototropism allows it recover.

supergreen said:
I would also like to see crop artists create a crop circle in canola, which
they have NEVER acknowledged doing .(muuuhhaahaaahaa)
Click to expand...
Have they not?
The Circlemakers documentary that was cited by Limbo contains an admission by circlemaker Paul Randles.

You will also notice that for the last few years a new strain of canola (OSR) has been introduced into UK fields, it is a much smaller "dwarf" variety and is easier to work with, hence last year saw a rapid increase in the amount and complexity of crop circles in OSR.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom