Looking for Skeptics

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Daylightstar said:
It seems to me completely different phenomena, the 'voices' in both situations have a different source, different onset mechanism, different manifestation.
I suspect none of flaccon's family (including flaccon) will be concerned about this in any way whatsoever.
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Could you explain the hilited part, please?
 
Maurice Ledifficile said:
We haven't quite demonstrated that there are voices on her recordings...
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We've established that there are sounds which can be interpreted as voices by someone with a good imagination and/or a predisposition to believe in the supernatural. We understand the cognitive biases which cause these faulty perceptions. Pareidolia (audio and visual) is a very different thing to hearing voices and hallucinating visions for which there are no sensory inputs.
 
Pixel42 said:
We've established that there are sounds which can be interpreted as voices by someone with a good imagination and/or a predisposition to believe in the supernatural. We understand the cognitive biases which cause these faulty perceptions. Pareidolia (audio and visual) is a very different thing to hearing voices and hallucinating visions for which there are no sensory inputs.
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I have to agree. There is a world of difference between Flaccon's situation and the one discussed in the Swift blog. I didn't mean to imply they were the same.

I'ts just that Flaccon, like Lou Gentile, seems to take the pereidolia so far. They don't see a man or a rabbit in the moon. They see a dragon with 17 heads, three of which have hats on, wearing octarine pants and juggling kittens.

Just wondering: Is there a threshold where pareidolia becomes something else? Perhaps not in Flaccon's or Lou's cases, but is there a line to cross from pareidolia to all out hallucinations, even though there is a tangible source, like a noisy recording?
 
Daylightstar said:
Sure, the source in the patient's case is internal (her brain), in flaccon's case the source is external (audio recordings).
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I can't say I agree with you there. I've listened to those recordings don't find anything similar to a voice.
Do you?

Maurice Ledifficile said:
...Just wondering: Is there a threshold where pareidolia becomes something else? Perhaps not in Flaccon's or Lou's cases, but is there a line to cross from pareidolia to all out hallucinations, even though there is a tangible source, like a noisy recording?
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A very good question, Maurice.
It's why I think the lady should consult a qualified physician.
 
Neat question Maurice.

It would be nice to have a kind of sniff-test for these boards. Someone comes along and wants testing for <claim>. Sniff test is applied. Person fails, we focus on urging them to get help. Person passes, we get on with test protocol and such.

I Imagine the above is beyond our powers.
 
trustbutverify said:
It seems strange to me... the OP's claim that the "spirits" are so determined to establish contact with the living world that she is compelled to rent a hall and play their "voices" for crowds of spectators; yet they are offended by any proposed test designed to objectively demonstrate the very communication they so desperately wish to establish.
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And now the voices aren't so clear, you need to listen to them again and again to understand them, everyone here doesn't hear anything, . . . .

Things change, eh?
 
Donn said:
Neat question Maurice.

It would be nice to have a kind of sniff-test for these boards. Someone comes along and wants testing for <claim>. Sniff test is applied. Person fails, we focus on urging them to get help. Person passes, we get on with test protocol and such.

I Imagine the above is beyond our powers.
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The problem is that flaccon has already failed a "sniff-test." (I'm assuming you're using the slang meaning of just a basic investigation into whether there's anything potentially real.) Any rational person not wrapped up in the woo would say there are no voices on the recordings doing any communicating--they're just random noises.
 
Maurice Ledifficile said:
Just wondering: Is there a threshold where pareidolia becomes something else? Perhaps not in Flaccon's or Lou's cases, but is there a line to cross from pareidolia to all out hallucinations, even though there is a tangible source, like a noisy recording?
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That's what I've been wondering about regarding this thread. That's part of why asydhouse's story was so interesting to me, because he seems to have crossed that line in one direction, and then come back. I don't know whether flaccon is able to do the same.
 
pakeha said:
Daylightstar said:
Sure, the source in the patient's case is internal (her brain), in flaccon's case the source is external (audio recordings).
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I can't say I agree with you there. I've listened to those recordings don't find anything similar to a voice.
Do you?
...
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No, like you, I've heard no actual voices whatsoever in those recordings.

My use of the term "source" which you quoted most recently, refers to a section of my earlier post in which I used the term 'voices', which you hilited and was quoted by myself and mentions 'voices' in single quotes because I have not heard actual voices in those recordings.
Which is the explanation I tried to get across with my earlier post:
Daylightstar said:
Hence the '-thingies. ;)
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Hopefully this will make it clear :)
 
pakeha said:
...
It's why I think the lady should consult a qualified physician.
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flaccon said:
... I've been through GP etc, he's heard and wrote me a letter of concern "To whom it may concern.." The letter was aimed at my local Bishop, who still won't help :( I just want to expose the truth whilst I can.
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Hilite by Daylightstar
flaccon said:
Yes sorry, General Practictioner. ...
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Hilite by Daylightstar
Perhaps the one she went to wasn't qualified?
 
iknownothing said:
That's what I've been wondering about regarding this thread. That's part of why asydhouse's story was so interesting to me, because he seems to have crossed that line in one direction, and then come back. I don't know whether flaccon is able to do the same.
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But my pareidolia was a product of my already having "crossed the line" into a psychosis, not the cause of the psychosis. I have never been enamoured of "supernatural" effects, and had a natural bent towards a "realist" or atheist mind set, having been raised in a family that had no religious observances or church-going behaviours, so that I was unaware of such stuff in my childhood (which I am so grateful for, as it made it relatively easy for me to dismiss the outlandish things that others might have readily attributed to demonic forces etc).

My psychosis was triggered by the war on drug users (ie fear of police) combined with prolonged periods of lack of food and sleep. Had I simply talked to the police (undercover) that triggered my running away, I would have avoided the whole thing (I had lost my passport, so they weren't sure who I was, and that was their primary interest in me, but I'd been in India so long by then that I forgot that such things were important). I'd left Mumbai before my new passport was ready, and gone up into the mountains looking for charas to bring back to Goa for the winter. Hadn't succeeded in getting any, so my paranoia was more on principle than practical, and I refused to talk with these undercover amateurish police that were peppering me with repetitive questions about where I was from... it was a farce, and I was a fool who got myself into deeper and deeper paranoia by running away, and being a focus of interest from everyone around me... I hadn't seen any other westerners for weeks...

Anyway, several weeks of auditory hallucinations and fantasies becoming reality (meeting aliens was thrilling and exciting! Also I thought the Indians were teaching me to trip, and I realised that I should think positively and keep my loving heart to the fore, and the hallucinations responded positively... I actually don't regret the whole experience! But don't recommend it...), devolved eventually to someone planting the idea that it was the devil doing all this... at which point I knew it was all false, because I had no affinity for that myth, and I just knew that that old crap was bs.

As described before, I had to work hard to free myself of the fear that I was being deeply manipulated by some sort of afterlife gods, but it was fairly easy to do... for me with my predilections and intelligence... if I'd have been a catholic though, I'd never have freed myself.

Anyway, the pareidolia was a side-effect of the rest, and stayed with me for decades... even now I would be struck deeply with the fear if I hadn't lived it down for so long by now, and actively devoted myself to disowning all parapsychology and supernatural, and actively adopted science as my world view and philosophy... along with art and related pursuits ;)

The pathways in my brain were deeply etched... I still hear the words in the birds' noises, but I simply disregard them. It simply got old!

Whereas I am still proudly young at heart (and rave culture has put me or kept me in touch with the youthful ecstacy of dancing and partying! ;):D)


ETA PS If anyone would like to read more of my thoughts relating to my time in India (about partying with the freaks in Goa in the 70s) and how I balance that with my evolved understanding of these issues, I've just posted a blog post on my website introducing my latest psychedelic movie here: http://www.asydhouse.co.uk/asydhouse.co.uk/blog/Entries/2013/6/18_a_visual_poem.html
 
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Donn said:
Neat question Maurice.

It would be nice to have a kind of sniff-test for these boards. Someone comes along and wants testing for <claim>. Sniff test is applied. Person fails, we focus on urging them to get help. Person passes, we get on with test protocol and such.

I Imagine the above is beyond our powers.
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I don't think there's any way to diagnose anybody with anything over the internet. We'd be fools to try.

I believe it's likely that flaccon has some kind of mental issue that is making her take this so seriously, but I'm not medically qualified to make a diagnosis such as that and haven't even met her. In other words, I don't have the first clue what I'm talking about. Maybe she's in perfect mental health. Her beliefs aren't the strangest I've ever heard, and strange beliefs are not, in and of themselves, a sign of mental illness.

As far as different courses of action go, I'd say that testing someone's claims in an empirical manner is likely to have a better effect than some random people on the internet saying "see a doctor" would.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I don't think there's any way to diagnose anybody with anything over the internet. We'd be fools to try.
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Truth. It simply is not possible. People often assume personae on the web that are not reflective of their real personality. Diagnosis by web is doomed to fail and doesn't really help anyone. At best, one might glean a hint of something amiss, but no more than that. And I freely admit to leaping to armchair diagnoses on occassion, but I autocorrect as best I can.

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I believe it's likely that flaccon has some kind of mental issue that is making her take this so seriously, but I'm not medically qualified to make a diagnosis such as that and haven't even met her. In other words, I don't have the first clue what I'm talking about. Maybe she's in perfect mental health. Her beliefs aren't the strangest I've ever heard, and strange beliefs are not, in and of themselves, a sign of mental illness.

As far as different courses of action go, I'd say that testing someone's claims in an empirical manner is likely to have a better effect than some random people on the internet saying "see a doctor" would.
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Actually, I am kicking myself right now. Yesterday, I watched a youtube of some dude playing COD. The background noise was exactly the compression artefacts that flaccon claims are spirit voices. I had a go through my history, but I lost the will to live after a while.
 
Yarr, I hear ye on the Internet Diagnosis thing. I be not muchly level of the grey-matter, meself. Also, it seems I doth desire to text like a Pirate. Yarr, go figure.
 
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