Chaos Magic

[dlorde]

Come on dlorde, he's just shaking your all-knowing pedestal.

I'm getting used to it

 

[Robin]

Millions of people report having OBE's?

Do you have a source on that, Malerin?

 

[Robin]

Awesome.

A quick question Malerin.

If there are two people who both claim to be experienced and knowledgeable mystics and both claim that the other is ignorant and uninitiated - how would you know which one - if any - to believe?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I thought we were talking about veridical supernatural experiences.

Sure. What is the evidence that the Lancet report is linked to a supernatural experience?

OBEs are fairly common. I saw someone yesterday who has had several. I frequently hear reports of them. We know how to recreate them in the lab. We know many of the conditions in which they occur. They are perfectly natural.

The problem with the account you mention is that you have a nurse who reports that the person was in coma during CPR but with no good support for that interpretation -- that he was in coma. This is much like the report of the person who was placed in ECS during surgery and reported hearing some of what occurred during the operation. She did not report anything from the time that her brain waves were flat but did report hearing some things said from earlier and later in the procedure. We call that inadequate anaesthesia.

 

[dafydd]

Jeeze...Just a little while ago I was getting criticized for not telling enough. Now that I'm sharing more details I'm being accused of "self-aggrandizing". Whatdaya want from me?

Evidence.

 

[dlorde]

I find that very fascinating and await their results. If they actually get some results, this will really change things up quite a bit.

I believe it's the AWARE Study. Bear in mind that the quality of the results will depend on the quality of the experimental design and controls. This is likely to be problematic in an open hospital environment with many people (doctors, nurses, cleaners, technicians, etc.) coming and going.

 

[dlorde]

Actually, unless they were extremely poor researches (or out-and-out dishonest), they wouldn't leave such an account out. Scientists are supposed to report all data and all findings, not just that which supports their conclusion.

Which makes me curious why they chose to include only that anecdotal story, which wasn't really part of their experimental data, without comment. Was it just to liven up a dull report?

 

[dlorde]

...From where I'm standing, the issue doesn't appear to be as cut and dried and you believe it to be.

Are you sure you're standing in the right place?

 

[dlorde]

I wonder why all of this stuff is happening around people you know, where do you live? It must be a hotspot for the paranormal.

Bear in mind these reports all come from one person.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

In the Lancet case I brought up, there are several alternatives to the nurse's account:
-She's lying
-She's deluded
-She's mistaken

It's also possible that the account is true but there is a perfectly natural explaination. There is no reason to assume that just because a patient is unresponsive that none of their senses function, the information could have been gained by normal means. The OBE study mentioned seeks to eliminate this by focussing on information only avaliable from an OBE. I await their results (and details of the methodology) with interest.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

the account is true

Please note, I am refering to the nurse's account rather than the patient's account within it.


ETA: And Ichneumonwasp beat me to it.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I don't understand how a grown person can actually consistently reply over and over again with " I know you are but what am I?", without feeling shame or self loathing.
Barring actually thinking it's a valid response in a conversation. Can he actually think he's being clever?

 

[Nonpareil]

Well, my point isn't that they would be some "final authority", but rather that you would take their word.

And I'm saying that I wouldn't. If someone were to tell me "It's 4:15", I wouldn't be thinking "Oh, now I know what time it is". I'd be thinking "Now I know what time that guy thinks it is, and since he has a watch, I'm pretty sure he's right".

Presumably he has a watch. Otherwise there's no point in asking him the time. So the evidence in favor of his given time being roughly correct is right there.

I generally believe people who tell me the time when I ask them. Maybe I'm gullible that way.

No, not really. You just know that you have a reason to believe them, or you wouldn't be asking. Again, it isn't that the anecdote is the evidence on its own. It's that the anecdote has easily-available supporting evidence.

You would automatically assume that?

But the person who rolled five twenties, like the nurse, is probably misremembering at least slightly. Maybe they only rolled four, but their memory is exaggerating the experience.

I would certainly consider the possibility they were remembering it correctly and weren't lying.

So would I. If you read the rest of my post, you would see that.

In the case of the nurse reporting the veridical account, too many people here won't even consider the possibility she may be correct.

On the contrary. Everyone here recognizes the possibility that she could be correct. We just don't see any reason to believe it.

Skepticism cuts both ways: we don't automatically believe people and we don't automatically disbelieve them, either. Too many people forget the latter.

We don't automatically jump to "Oh, she's wrong". We jump to "without any supporting evidence, there's no reason to believe that she's right". There's a big difference.

Of course it's possible.

Evidence?

I have no information that's it's impossible, do you?

Burden of proof fallacy.

Also a straw man. I didn't say that it was definitely impossible. I just said that it wasn't known to be possible, which is perfectly true. That means that trusting that this is an accurate account of an out-of-body experience requires two baseless assumptions: the first that the account is correct, and the second that out-of-body experiences are possible.

True, I don't automatically believe her. Are you open to the possibility she may be right?

Yes.

Not the "tea cup orbitting Jupiter" possibility, but maybe something appraoching a 5% or 10% chance her story is true?

No. I would place the probability of her account being an accurate account of a true out-of-body experience at somewhere well below one percent. Without any evidence supporting the possibility of such an event, or the truth of the account itself, I have no reason whatsoever to believe that it may be true except for the fact that I can't prove it to be false.

I've given you two examples already: directions and time.

Neither of which are without any supporting evidence. In the former example, presumably I am asking someone who is from around there, and I know that most locals know the area where they live fairly well, and most people don't lie for no reason. In the latter, the man presumably has a watch.

A third would be a psychologist who meets a patient for the first time.

This falls under the other case, wherein an anecdote counts as evidence in a situation where the anecdote is the thing being examined.

A doctor who asks a patient where it hurts.

We know pain exists, we know that people don't come into a doctor's office for no reason, and we know that the patient is probably going to give an accurate account because they want the pain to stop.

Three people you've just met who tell you they just saw a shooting star.

We know shooting stars exist, we know it's night, and we know that shooting stars occasionally show up in this area.

Someone you meet on a cruise talking about their trip to Africa.

Africa exists, most people don't lie, yadda, yadda, yadda. This is getting silly.

We don't go around demanding corroborating evidence when people we don't know tell us something. We accept most of it at face value.

No, we don't. We accept it because we already have the supporting evidence. It's right there, so obvious that we don't even think about it. In any of the above cases, are we one hundred percent certain that the person is telling the truth? No. Are we reasonably certain? Yes, because of the above evidence.

Think about what you know about the world and how little of the world you've directly experienced and how little of the information you've been able to confirm yourself. 99....9999% of what we know about the world depends on a web of anecdotal information.

And the vast majority of it I consider rather unreliable. The rest falls under the same category as scientific studies: official information which has been checked and re-checked many times by many people.

 

[AkuManiMani]

So you asked her things like who she was, what she was, where she was and so on and she gave evasive and/or cryptic answers?

Did you ask her why she was being evasive or cryptic?

One of the few strait-forward answers she even bothered to give me was ---

"And, yes. This is real, all of this is real... "

I assume she had her own reasons for not revealing certain information. At some point I quit worrying about it and just rolled with the weirdness of the situation.

 

[PixyMisa]

Just on probabilities - I had a one in a quadrillion (according to manufacturer's specs) event happen to me late last year. Supernatural, or at least remarkable? Not at all. I'd done at least 300 trillion operations on that piece of equipment, so the probability of it happening at some point was pretty high. The actual timing was lousy, but the event itself was no great surprise, and something I'd prepared for.

If one in a quadrillion events are something engineers are paid to prevent (the latest models push it out to 1 in 100 quadrillion), what probability can we assign to something when there is no verifiable evidence that it has ever happened - or even could?

I suggest that 1 in 10 is not the correct answer. 1 in 10 is not a probability we associate with the supernatural. 1 in 10 is the chance that it will rain tomorrow.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Jeeze...Just a little while ago I was getting criticized for not telling enough. Now that I'm sharing more details I'm being accused of "self-aggrandizing". Whatdaya want from me?

Evidence.

Right. I'm not sure you've noticed this but I got a newsflash for ya: any and all evidence I could give here would be purely anecdotal. Or maybe you expect me to just conjure up some physical evidence on a web forum?

Assuming that you're not a complete idiot, I'd have to conclude that you're just attempting to string me along with the "prove it" game. I make a claim that you disagree with which you imperiously dismiss, demanding further "evidence". Being the silly desperate "woo-woo" that I am, I scramble to post more claims and links in hopes of appeasing the authoritative "skeptic's" demands for still harder evidence. But no such luck; the all wise, all knowing "skeptic's" insatiable demands for "evidence" cannot be met as everything that I, the silly hapless "woo-woo", can present is anecdotal and/or otherwise not up to some unspoken standard of "evidence".

Being as how I don't really give a crap either way what you believe, such an exercise would be a tedious waste of time. Oh, I know! Maybe you could present ME with "evidence" that none of what I experienced is true, reliable, or sound? Whadaya think? Sound like fun?

 

[carlitos]

Burden of proof

 

[roger]

Plus we're still waiting for the rat.

It's a sinking ship - he's left.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Burden of proof

I wasn't aware that I was required to prove anything to you. Seems to me like you're the one with somethin' to prove, buddy

 

[Mirrorglass]

Aku, why do you keep this up? Sharing anecdotes is fine, but it's pretty obvious that your goal here is to troll and ridicule others. It's not strictly against forum rules (although several of your more insulting posts are), but it's something I really don't like seeing in the forum. There are many intelligent people here, and there is ample opportunity for intelligent discussion. If you want to discuss your experiences or your views on the paranormal civilly, it can be done (although your claims will be challenged). So why do you insist on just annoying people for the sake of annoying?