Hello from a non-skeptic

[aggle-rithm]

1. Have you ever read and analysed Dr Ian Stevenson's work concerning children who remember details of lifetimes other than their current one? He purposely directed his studies to children precisely because they are less likely to be influenced by external factors.

They are also more likely to confabulate in order to please an authority figure who is taking them seriously and asking them questions.

And, they are more than capable of convincing themselves that these confabulations are true.

 

[Garrette]

Charles, as others have said in various fashion: there is nothing new here that you have presented. Let us assume that you are being entirely sincere and presenting your story exactly as you recall it happening. Bear in mind that this in itself requires a leap of faith since intentional deception is commonplace. But granting sincerity and honesty does not remove error, misinterpretation, or deceit on the part of someone else.

Let's take the last one first: There were several others at your Ouija seance. You cannot know that none of them engaged in deceit, perhaps for fun and not out of malice. Protest all you like that this cannot be the case and you will be demonstrating a closed-mindedness far beyond any you might accuse us skeptics of having. Still, deceit on their part is not necessary for your experience to have mundane -- and not "mediumnic" -- origins. And remember, the spirit of Luiz Felipe whom you claim came through that evening was the brother of your cousin who was there. So at least two people knew of the brother and the circumstances of his death. Since it was an intimate gathering that had occurred many times previously with roughly the same people, I would wager a large amount that more than two knew.

Next is error. For now, I will restrict this to error of memory. You have claimed that your memory is prodigious and not subject this type of error. You are wrong. Note that I am not saying you are lying; I am saying you are wrong. Memory is fallible, far far more fallible than the average person realizes, and it is especially fallible regarding those memories which are most emotionally charged and most important. If you want studies, we can provide you references, but your memory is not to be trusted. That can be quite difficult to accept, but it is true nonetheless, and its factual nature has nothing whatsoever to do with any supposed closed-mindedness or mean-spiritedness of skeptics who point it out. My personal experience and validation of this involves my time as both a magician and an investigator; I cannot count the number of times someone declared as strongly as you have that their memory is flawless only to have them shown wrong on videotape.

Then there is misinterpretation, though I am perhaps using the incorrect term and also using it to indicate more than one thing. The first is that you misinterpreted vague answers of the board to mean something specific. Without an exact transcript it is impossible to say, but it is likewise impossible for you to deny without that transcript. The second involves the liqueur glass moving in the direction of your cousin after your cousin was asked to change positions while you did not look. Ignoring for the moment the fact that only the cousin changed position and therefore the physical clues to his new location were legion, did the glass stop exactly in front of your cousin – center mass with no room for error – or did it move only in that direction, which happened also to be in the direction of some of the other people present and around the table? You have said there were too many to sit at the table at once.

This does not even get into your vague claims about answers of such sensibility and wisdom that teenagers could not possibly have come up with them. If the answers were of the same sensibility and wisdom as demonstrated in the book you bought and which so impressed you, then they are precisely what teenagers would come up with. Moreover, on the one hand you profess teenage lack of sensibility as proof for this instance but then praise your teenage scientific ability to preclude alternate explanations. You cannot have it both ways, Charles. Were you silly teenagers or not?

Don’t take my last sentence as demeaning or insulting. It is not. It is, rather, an attempt to point out that which is common among believers who come here, certain that they, at long last, are the ones who will show the skeptics what we have long denied. What is common is all the things you have shown in this post:

1. Claiming one thing as proof in one instance (e.g., teenagers without the wisdom or sensibility required) and the opposite in another (e.g., teenagers sensible enough to engage in controls that are proof against error or deceit)

2. Acknowledging that the ideomotor effect is real but insisting it does not apply to you

3. Acknowledging that memories are fallible but not yours

4. Putting some minor controls and safeguards in place against error and fraud but not accepting that they are insufficient


Charles, it is not only that you do not have proof in your story, which I think you accept, but it is also that you do not have evidence in your story, which I think you will find it quite difficult to accept at all.

 

[SumDood]

Charles,

Is there anything, anything at all, that would convince you that you are mistaken and that there is nothing supernatural about your experiences? Even something crazy like someone secretly took a blood sample from your wife, determined she was pregnant and told a psychic about it. Would that convince you? Please be honest with yourself when answering.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can think of several things that would convince me of the supernatural.

Charles, can you answer this for me? (My apologies if you already did and i missed it.) I am sincerely interested in your response.

 

[Loss Leader]

But as I said, lack of "100% proof" to this present date does not necessarily mean "proof of non-existence".

And, as I explained, there is no way to prove non-existence. It is a meaningless concept. Why do you keep coming back to it?

Also, you have yet to prove that I am not the reincarnation of Bonnie Prince Charles. Since you cannot prove this to be false, you must accept it as true. You must, at least, accept the possibility that I am the reincarnated soul of BPC.

I would rather they believed in the possibility of reincarnation and the evolution of the Soul than a belief in nihilism, which does leave life a bit meaningless, does it not?

What possible use is a belief that is not true? I'd rather belive I'm married to Natalie Portman. However, when I show up at her apartment, she calls the police.

Also, the oposite of spirituality is not nihilism.

So we come, live, love and die and that's it? And if an asteroid should come and end life in this little planet of ours and end civilization, that's it? How sad...

Lots of true things are sad. Why should our feelings about a subject define its truth value? The last episode of Battlestar Galactica was terrible, but no amount of wishing on my part will get them to reshoot it. I also found it sad when my son had surgery. And, yet, I still believed that the doctor was telling the truth about it.

 

[Helen]

Sad? No, it's wonderful, a true marvel. We as individuals are here for a mindnumbingly short space of time, and yet in that time we manage to learn, to form attachments, to discover ever more about the universe, to pass on knowledge to the next generation and most of all have the chance to make a difference to the world we live in, and the world we leave behind.

If our civilisation is one day wiped out by an asteroid, we'll still have been here and we'll still have achieved everything we've done thus far. It's quite likely that some life (cockroaches?) would continue on Earth, and although it would be fascinating to observe what would happen, we won't be here to see it so we have lost nothing.

If, in the distant future, another civilisation arises, it wouldn't be the same and they may dig up remnants of our civilisation and marvel at what we did. On the other hand, they might not. It won't matter to us and it won't matter to the universe.

So yes, we come, live, love and die and that's it, and it's flippin' amazing. It's the absolute pinnacle of existence, and every moment of it should be treasured. We are so incredibly lucky just to be here.

What we do while we're getting on with life, that's what makes the whole thing so much more fascinating than any tales of reincarnation or spirits. Making a positive difference to the world grants a person more immortality than any amount of ghosts. When I die, I want to live again only in the memory and love and appreciation of the people I cared for and who cared for me, and those whose lives I touched for good. I want to leave the world a better place, not hang around it forever.

And, erm *steps off soapbox*, read up on the ideomotor effect.

I am sorry if you felt I was having a go at your spelling, I will endeavour to do so more politely if the need arises in the future. I was trying to be helpful.

Nominated, because that is what should be done to a post like this one.

 

[Jim_MDP]

Maybe they read his book:
http://www.freado.com/read/7923/descendant-of-kings

So many pages... so little credit.

Take one, no two internetz from petty cash. Well done.

(Yes, going to sleep.. having read the entire thread, to date. Sad, it is)

 

[catsmate]

Ah, so the tactic is not to beat a newcomer to exhaustion, but to make use of mockery and sarcasm and be as rude as you possibly can in the hope that he/she will go away. Well done...

If by beating a newcomer to exhaustion you mean asking for evidence of the assertions you make..............

1. Have you ever read and analysed Dr Ian Stevenson's work concerning children who remember details of lifetimes other than their current one? He purposely directed his studies to children precisely because they are less likely to be influenced by external factors.

Analysed to death here and elsewhere. No real evidence and a lot of very dubious "research".

2. In the case of Jacqueline Pool, the medium hit 129 out of 130 details of the murder, and you want to counter-argument this by saying that it was random chance?

This simply isn't true.

3. Concerning my question about the dual-slit experiment and the wave-particle effect brought about by the intent of observation on the part of the observer, have you ever watched a film-documentary called "What the "bleep" do we know?" It is quantum-physicists who point this out, not me.

Perhaps you should visit one of the threads on this very forum where QM is being discussed by actual scientists not just be would be "psychics".


And please, quoting a rehash of an article from the "Screws of the World" do you seriously think this helps your credibility?

 

[AdMan]

When both my friend and his cousin finally managed to calm themselves down, as likewise we all also had to, we proceeded to question Luiz Felipe throughout a night that was to be one of the most memorable moments of our lives. From eleven at night until four in the morning, when he finally said it was time to leave, we spent the entire night asking him several questions, which were answered with such wisdom and sensibility that, even as I remember them today, could not possibly have come from involuntary muscle movements caused by the subconscious minds of a bunch of irresponsible teenagers.

<snip>

Certainly none of us in our small group of immature teenagers would have or could have devised such an interesting symbolism, much less could we have managed to rotate the glass into a spiral at such a speed and smoothness without any of us noticing that another was doing so. There was certainly no skilful magician amongst our small group of friends.

<snip>

All I can say as a fact is that none of my friends, at least not consciously, moved that glass that night. We were all equally shaken, impressed and in awe at all that had happened, at Luiz Felipe’s precision in his answers and at his literally supernatural wisdom, which was totally incompatible with that of a group of young teenagers such as ourselves.

I don't doubt that you (and your friends, if they weren't consciously tricking you) were truly convinced that you had a genuine spiritualist experience. However, I'm not sure how after such a memorable experience at age 15, you became skeptical of any paranormal phenomena for over a decade:

As I said, for a number of years I was also skeptical of anything paranormal or spiritual myself (from around the age of 18 to the age of 30, to be a bit more precise and answer one of the many questions made to me here). It was the events I encountered that changed this, not a pre-tendency to believe in them.

It sounds like a few years after your ouija experience, you rejected any paranormal explanation for it, before coming back to the paranormal explanation, correct?

I'm not saying you are lying about being a skeptic after such "proof," just want to understand your thinking.

 

[wareagle]

Yes that is what I was attempting to say. If a suspected or alleged psychic event happens its irrational to assume that an established order of thought should be entirely rearranged to accommodate what may be a singular event.

This is almost right. In fact, it is almost the same argument many of us have been making in this thread all along. It should read:

"It is perfectly acceptable that someone should expect a psychic to produce or accomplish something before trying to rework consciousness as we know it to fit their world view."

In other words, we need to confirm that the powers claimed by the psychic actually exist before trying to rework physics to fit the belief that psychic powers are real.

The fact is, to date, no psychic has been able to pass properly controlled, objective testing. In the absence of any evidence that a passed test would provide, the default position must be that psychic powers do not exist.

 

[dlorde]

We don't discard evidence. We discard anecdotes. Your claim of astonishing accuracy is as reliable as the claim that Derren Brown achieved 90% accuracy in his very non-psychic experiment.

Or do you believe Derren Brown to be secretly psychic?

As it happens, by giving all participants the same cold reading text, Brown's experiment rendered whether he was secretly psychic irrelevant.

 

[Apology]

Someone here mentioned that they felt sorry for my children if I they came to believe in what I believe. I would rather they believed in the possibility of reincarnation and the evolution of the Soul than a belief in nihilism, which does leave life a bit meaningless, does it not? So we come, live, love and die and that's it? And if an asteroid should come and end life in this little planet of ours and end civilization, that's it? How sad...

Nobody here has advocated a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake. We're simply saying that psychic "phenomena" is explained quite away by trickery, logical fallacies, bias, and simple mistakes. Our lives are no less rich or fulfilling for believing so. In fact, we have more time to spend on our children and loved ones and more money in our pockets because we haven't fallen into the time-consuming money pit that is psychic belief.

Pixel is a better man than I for dealing with you so kindly. I'm still peeved with you for trying to raise publicity for your book by "taking on the skeptics".

 

[Nonpareil]

But as I said, lack of "100% proof" to this present date does not necessarily mean "proof of non-existence".

But it does mean "absolutely no logical reason to believe in it".

In my next post I'll mention the episode with the Ouija when I was 15 years old. I have quite a good memory, so the questioning as to details of what I remember being "muddled up" is one that I cannot consider as a "valid" one.

It should be. As Garrette and several other posters have already mentioned, memory is not something that you should trust. It is entirely malleable, and can change drastically without you ever realizing it. This is another reason that your claims here don't carry much weight; we have only your word to go on, and while I don't think you're lying, I'm not just going to take what you say at face value without hard data to back it up.

Memory just doesn't work that way.

And by all means, get four people together whom you know and trust, skeptcis like yourselves perhaps would even be better, experiment for yourselves a few times and see for yourselves if anything of relevance happens. Any reference to previous testing in which you were not present yourselves to me is not counter-evidence but hearsay (sp?).

I'm afraid it's not. Not when it's been repeated under controlled conditions many times by many people in many different documented studies. Do a little research, and you'll find many studies confirming that there is no evidence of paranormal activity in Ouija sessions.

 

[Robert Oz]

So many others have already mentioned everything you need to know about ouija boards and memory, so I won't repeat any of it.

If you wish to show us that we are wrong about the ideomotor effect, I'm sure we can divise some informal tests for you to try. The blind-fold one is good, but you also mentioned that the spirit can answer questions that you couldn't possibly know the answer to.

Properly controlled*, a test that answers questions that you couldn't know the answer to would provide you and us with all the answers we need. It would also mean you could apply for the million dollar challenge with confidence that you would pass it.

*Note: The kid moving around the table with all eyes closed and the shuffled, crumpled pieces of paper are not 'properly controlled' tests.

Had I the means to do so and provide you all with "proof", I'd go for that million-dollar-prize you all keep talking about,

Now you do have the means. Ouija boards have been and can be tested. You would, of course, be the very first to show that it isn't caused by either deception or the ideomotor effect.

but serious mediumnity and serious spirituality would not touch it, and like you all I am instantly suspicious of anyone who makes use of, ok, "alleged mediumnic powers" to make money. In my view this is not what "true spirituality" is all about.

This point is made by many believers and it is weak for two reasons:

1. A medium could do the test for charity. Donate to the third world or cancer research.

2. There are selfish and selfless people everywhere and in all walks of life. To say that every single medium is selfless and not one is selfish is naive. There are even selfish people in the business of charity work. What makes 'mediumnity' so different from absolutely every other aspect of society?

 

[dlorde]

Had I the means to do so and provide you all with "proof", I'd go for that million-dollar-prize you all keep talking about, but serious mediumnity and serious spirituality would not touch it, and like you all I am instantly suspicious of anyone who makes use of, ok, "alleged mediumnic powers" to make money. In my view this is not what "true spirituality" is all about.

I have not once claimed here to have any "special powers", so I don't know where that one came from.

Charles, you did mention earlier on that you could predict lottery numbers better than chance, and although you don't seem to count that as psychic or evidence of special powers, I'm sure many here would feel it is unusual, at least.

This does seem to be an interesting claim, and potentially testable, so would you be prepared to predict some lottery numbers for us? It doesn't matter which lottery, as long as we can see the actual winning numbers and compare them with your prediction. Obviously you would need to state which lottery and which future draw your predicted numbers referred to.

Others here could also attempt to predict the same draw, and we could subsequently check to see the variation in predictions, who did best, who worst, etc. Not very scientific as a single test, but it would be interesting and if you're willing, it could be the first of several trials that would allow for a decent statistical analysis.

How about it?

 

[Robert Oz]

Yes that is what I was attempting to say. If a suspected or alleged psychic event happens its irrational to assume that an established order of thought should be entirely rearranged to accommodate what may be a singular event.

It is also irrational, in the absence of evidence, to accept it happened in the first place or exists at all.

 

[wareagle]

Skeptics are not all-knowing. They are all-doubting. It takes evidence to sway them.


I noticed through this conversation they assume co dependency as quickly as religious and psychic 'supporters" Which rather dismayed me. When co dependency is present there is no evidence in the world that will sway anyone believer, skeptic, or debunker. I mean that is true in every day life.

I would do far better with a skeptic who did not go into those parameters and that is just common sense, everyone does better in relationships that dont' go into co dependency.


Yes! The claims made by psychics certainly are testable.

They are testable but only within the parameters of the psychics ability. The psychic must and hopefully define their ability to themselves (god one would hope so but they don't) before attempting to prove. them to someone else. If a psychic is not all knowing or a mind reader but many of the test parameters are set up to test for that. That's fine if the psychic is all knowing and a mind reader. A psychic must first completely define the extent of their abilities to themselves. There are things done consistently, there things done not consistently. No one proves anything through inconsistency.

Also I've noticed psychic test subjects are often not rational or logical people. On tv shows anyway, the testers seem to pick the most bizarre woo woo weirdo's to test on. People who before the tests even began exhibited lack of credibility to an incredulous and I personally believe this is an act that one puts on, they are fake acting in personality. The lose credibility right off the bat simply because of their weird forced behavior.

Ghost hunting shows. Will sit and coax and cojole a ghost out of a closet as 'proof'. As soon as the ghost SEEMS to start to manifest they freak out and start screaming for the ghost to go away. lol.

Okay so they seemed to have begun to garner some evidence there and then shouted it away. Those aren't skeptics those those are people afraid of ghosts. And they must believe in ghosts before hand in order to have assumed that fear. One has to surmise most of these searches for answers are searches for good ratings.

All these psychic shows and ghost hunting shows exhibit some really bizarre behavior on the part of the psychics.

Also psychism is confused for instantaneous. Some psychic tests take months to validate or invalidate. Predictive events don't happen within moments of the prediction.


AT: Charles I would suggest to validate your predictions journal them, date stamp them and put them in a public place. We only validate predictions in doing so other wise the term 'prediction' becomes meaningless after the fact. You can't argue validation into existence after the fact. Alos predicting something sometimes alters the outcome so the predicted event doesn't occur. Which is in most cases desirable if the outcome doesn't seem very cheery.

Also I'd caution you about publicly announcing negative event sequences. We still don't know how much of this is psych ism or implanting subconscious suggestion. I'd prefer it to be the latter but I don't run the world. The power of people's belief is powerful in mind expression even skeptics and debunkers.

Especially on a individual level. Psychism may or may not exist for everyone regardless there is certain responsibility to it. IF you remain within that responsibility you have more effective communication. If they step out of skeptic mode, that's their problem.

 

[dlorde]

At the age of fifteen, my teenage friends and I went through a fad phase of doing the “Ouija Board” at each others’ homes...

Charles, did the Ouija Board ever tell you anything that none of the people using it were aware of at the time? That is, something that could not reasonably have been known to them, something that you had to confirm subsequently?

e.g. something useful.

 

[Olowkow]

Quote:
All I can say as a fact is that none of my friends, at least not consciously, moved that glass that night.

The effect is quite convincing, no question about it. In college, we used a formica dorm table with nylon feet, on a terrazzo tile floor. The thing would zip around with just 4 guys' fingers on the table. I was definitely not pushing it, and everyone else swore they were not moving it either. None of us even suggested ghosts, we merely chalked it up to a cool thing to do. We also did the trick where four guys can lift a seated man using just 2 fingers each. Astonishing effect also.

 

[Agatha]

Nominated, because that is what should be done to a post like this one.

Thank you.

 

[Robert Oz]

I am instantly suspicious of anyone who makes use of, ok, "alleged mediumnic powers" to make money.

But what if the accuracy attributed by sitters to the person doing it for money, the person doing it for free and the person doing it as a part of a demonstration of cold reading is the same?

How do you determine that one has 'mediumnic powers' while the others do not?

This is a problem that requires serious consideration. You have acknowledged that in the above example two are faking it, but one is real. However, sitters give, say, 85% to 95% accuracy scores to all three. How do you conclude that one has powers that the other two lack?