Looking for Skeptics

[zooterkin]

For Windows there is Checksum Control Portable from portableapps com. This will lay any problems like that to rest as it will be shown on the checksum.

I haven't heard of an MD5 hash checksum, but a quick look at Wikipedia makes me think this is a good idea too.

What would be the advantages of MD5 hash checksum over an Analog Wave graph?

A check sum is a (fairly) simple mathematical operation done on all the bytes in a file (of any kind), and will produce the same result, a single number, every time for the same file (for a particular check sum algorithm). A lot of systems (most flavours of Unix systems, for example) include a check sum program as standard. An Analog Wave graph will only apply to sound files, and requires interpreting the data as sound, representing it as a graph. You then have to compare two graphs to see if they look the same. Much more processing involved, and much harder to compare the results than simply seeing if two numbers are the same.

What program would you use to make an MD5 hash checksum out of flaccon's recordings?

You quoted where tuxcat mentioned one.

 

[pakeha]

^{Hilite by Daylightstar
Hilite by Daylightstar}
Perhaps the one she went to wasn't qualified?

It's not easy to understand what the lady meant by 'a letter of concern'.
What did you mean by that, floccon?

I have bin with this thread for 4 weeks,
I hear very clear words.
I am aware of paredolia.
I sent her a silent recording as she ran it through her laptop,
it altered the original recording on my lap top
you can clearly hear the spirits tuning them selfs in .
once they were tunend,a voice came over said" welcome to the Roberts people"
Also I clearly hear "We don't want trouble,we want to end trouble"
She continues with her GP ,because the bishop has refused to shed light.
How can I possibly call it a delusion when it is not a delusion?
I hope this helps.
How can I

Welcome to the forum, scrappy.
What does the GP say about all this, scrappy?

...And once again, paredolia and delusions are not the same thing. EVERYONE experiences paredolia, NOT EVERYONE has delusions.

Quite right. And then there are those who have delusions about paredolia.

 

[Orphia Nay]

A check sum is a (fairly) simple mathematical operation done on all the bytes in a file (of any kind), and will produce the same result, a single number, every time for the same file (for a particular check sum algorithm). A lot of systems (most flavours of Unix systems, for example) include a check sum program as standard. An Analog Wave graph will only apply to sound files, and requires interpreting the data as sound, representing it as a graph. You then have to compare two graphs to see if they look the same. Much more processing involved, and much harder to compare the results than simply seeing if two numbers are the same.

Thanks!

You quoted where tuxcat mentioned one.

D'oh!

 

[Pixel42]

It's clearly impossible for us to assess, based on the information they have given us, whether the latest example of EVP described by flaccon and scrappy is more convincing evidence of genuine spirit voices than the textbook examples of audio pareidolia that have previously been produced and examined. They must surely understand that, the reasons why assertions of having heard voices in recordings have zero evidential value has been explained multiple times.

We already know that providing recordings for posters to examine, either by transferring them electronically or by inviting someone to listen to them in flaccon's home, has so far demonstrated nothing that can't be explained by audio pareidolia, and that flaccon refuses to accept this. Until flaccon and/or scrappy agree to a simple test protocol that rules out pareidolia and interference as the sources of the voices they think they hear I don't think there is anything more we can do or say to make progress.

 

[asydhouse]

It's clearly impossible for us to assess, based on the information they have given us, whether the latest example of EVP described by flaccon and scrappy is more convincing evidence of genuine spirit voices than the textbook examples of audio pareidolia that have previously been produced and examined. They must surely understand that, the reasons why assertions of having heard voices in recordings have zero evidential value has been explained multiple times.

We already know that providing recordings for posters to examine, either by transferring them electronically or by inviting someone to listen to them in flaccon's home, has so far demonstrated nothing that can't be explained by audio pareidolia, and that flaccon refuses to accept this. Until flaccon and/or scrappy agree to a simple test protocol that rules out pareidolia and interference as the sources of the voices they think they hear I don't think there is anything more we can do or say to make progress.

That's the situation in a nutshell, thank you Pixel42.

In other words, flacon, you are wasting our time, and yours.

Stop wriggling around! Engage! Get a grip!

Too many questions and admonitions to deal with? Work with Pixel and Alderbank to agree a concrete course of action, one step at a time.

That's if you truly honestly want to get this message of the spirits out to the world.

Anything else, any more excited shimmying around, is just proving you are not serious.

To everyone else: let Pixel, Alderbank (and Maurice?) be the committee to settle the discussion and work with flacon. I recommend PM communication with them, and let them be the contact/mouthpiece for the work.

This barrage of posts is just too much for anyone to deal with, let alone someone as distracted and excitable as flaccon apparently is.

 

[Foolmewunz]

I'm nothing if not late to the party. When Scrappy showed up after I thought this thread would die, I finally listened. And I, aso, heard nothing.

1 Alderbank
2 Donn
3 Biscuit
4 Orphia Nay
5 Slowvehicle
6 IXP
7 AdMan
8 Drs_Res
9 jsfisher
10 blue sock monkey
11 trustbutverify
12 John Jones
13 Blue Bubble
14 Maurice Ledifficile
15 Abaddon
16 Jack by the Hedge
17 pakeha
18 xterra
19 Quinn
20 Empress
21 tsig
22 Daylightstar
23 Agatha
24 asydhouse
25 Old man
26 Squeegee Beckenheim
27 dlorde
28 Lucian
29 Tuxcat
30 Foolmewunz

So now that we're up to thirty, I think you all need to forward this to five friends. Each of those former friends will be requested to send a five second silent file to the first person on the list, delete that name and put their own name on the bottom, and forward the list to five more soon-to-be-former friends requesting that they follow the highlighted portion, above. Pretty soon, you will have a brazillion seconds of silence and no friends at all. Sort of like how it must be at Brian Wilson's house.

 

[SusanB-M1]

#2306 I put but it came out as characters instead of 'biggrins!

 

[abaddon]

I'm nothing if not late to the party. When Scrappy showed up after I thought this thread would die, I finally listened. And I, aso, heard nothing.

1 Alderbank
2 Donn
3 Biscuit
4 Orphia Nay
5 Slowvehicle
6 IXP
7 AdMan
8 Drs_Res
9 jsfisher
10 blue sock monkey
11 trustbutverify
12 John Jones
13 Blue Bubble
14 Maurice Ledifficile
15 Abaddon
16 Jack by the Hedge
17 pakeha
18 xterra
19 Quinn
20 Empress
21 tsig
22 Daylightstar
23 Agatha
24 asydhouse
25 Old man
26 Squeegee Beckenheim
27 dlorde
28 Lucian
29 Tuxcat
30 Foolmewunz

So now that we're up to thirty, I think you all need to forward this to five friends. Each of those former friends will be requested to send a five second silent file to the first person on the list, delete that name and put their own name on the bottom, and forward the list to five more soon-to-be-former friends requesting that they follow the highlighted portion, above. Pretty soon, you will have a brazillion seconds of silence and no friends at all. Sort of like how it must be at Brian Wilson's house.

Chapeau, sir, chapeau.

 

[Alderbank]

That's the situation in a nutshell, thank you Pixel42.

In other words, flacon, you are wasting our time, and yours.

Stop wriggling around! Engage! Get a grip!

Too many questions and admonitions to deal with? Work with Pixel and Alderbank to agree a concrete course of action, one step at a time.

That's if you truly honestly want to get this message of the spirits out to the world.

Anything else, any more excited shimmying around, is just proving you are not serious.

To everyone else: let Pixel, Alderbank (and Maurice?) be the committee to settle the discussion and work with flacon. I recommend PM communication with them, and let them be the contact/mouthpiece for the work.

This barrage of posts is just too much for anyone to deal with, let alone someone as distracted and excitable as flaccon apparently is.

This thread is generating more heat than light at present and I think asydhouse's proposal would be a great way to move things forward. In an earlier post flaccon told us that the spirits were like a bunch of excited children all shouting at once to be heard. Perhaps she now tells the spirits that she has found the skeptics and they are like a bunch of excited children all shouting at once to be heard?

I'm not too sure about PM communication, not least because it's no fun for all the other followers here.

Could we set up a sub-forum and encourage flaccon and Mr Roberts to post there? We know that flaccon is able to post in other Forums because she has done so (to protest that someone had unjustly accused her of 'jerking us around' in this thread). Mr Roberts is IT challenged but I have the feeling that anything that flaccon can do, scrappy knows how to do as well.

We all continue to use this thread for suggestions, comments, analysis, plus reminiscences of the days of psychedelic India...

 

[dlorde]

You must have a mind as strong as an Afghan's stomach! (All travellers to Afghanistan used to get the diarrhoea if not very careful).
...
Anyway, I hope you are well after your ordeal. I recommend a good walk in the woods, or the hills, or whatever you've got!

Thanks for your concern!

I speed-read through the really slow, tedious bits to avoid getting bogged down.

What fascinates me is the surprising consistency in the development of these 'paranormal abilities' threads - part of what keeps me interested is the faint hope that something different will happen this time. The unexpected visit to flaccon, though fairly predictable in its outcome, was one of those differences; but for the most part, the progression followed the usual theme of strong claims and willingness to be tested becoming weaker and vaguer the sharper the focus of skeptical attention on them. The psychology of the claimant posts is also oddly consistent from thread to thread. The evasiveness, distractions, and diversions when faced with unambiguous questions, the almost willful inability to grasp the requirements and implications of a controlled test, etc.

The opportunity to catch a glimpse of the thought processes of a mind that seems to work so differently is strangely compelling

 

[John Jones]

I have a couple of questions:

Why not use a proper microphone? Webcam mics are utter rubbish. As are internal mics - my Lenovo G580 is great at transmitting fan, HDD and keyboard noises across Google Talk or Skype but not my voice. Same with webcams.

Why not record the files in Audacity using a proper mic and store them as losslessly compressed FLAC files; high quality with no data loss?

Because the spirit voices don't like stuff like proper electronics and high quality recordings!

Duh!

 

[scrappy]

Flaccon explained the voices are not recorded and appear distorted after transference .
.

 

[scrappy]

Tracy has bin trying since last night to get 5 mins on line without success. If you forward those silent recordings to my inbox , It may be possible to achieve the same results from my computer. I will PM you my email addy .

 

[scrappy]

She only requires one 15 second silent recording .

 

[Pixel42]

Flaccon explained the voices are not recorded and appear distorted after transference

That wasn't what she originally claimed, it was a conclusion she later came to when no-one else could hear what she thought she heard.

However even when Alderbank and his nephew went to her house and listened to her best examples they still heard nothing that couldn't be explained by audio pareidolia.

If you forward those silent recordings to my inbox , It may be possible to achieve the same results from my computer. I will PM you my email addy .

I assume this is addressed to jsfisher. Please state explicitly what you mean by "the same results", i.e. exactly what jsfisher should expect to hear if this works.

 

[Alderbank]

Flaccon explained the voices are not recorded and appear distorted after transference .
.

No. Simply not true. At her home flaccon played me many recordings and explained that the voices were recorded. She was surprised and disappointed that I could not hear the voices recorded on those clips and she played them over and over to me. She copied some clips onto my pendrive, played them back and agreed they were recordings of the voices and the copies were the same as the recordings on her computer. With her permission I posted those recordings for people here to listen to.

What is transference?

 

[tuxcat]

No. Simply not true. At her home flaccon played me many recordings and explained that the voices were recorded. She was surprised and disappointed that I could not hear the voices recorded on those clips and she played them over and over to me. She copied some clips onto my pendrive, played them back and agreed they were recordings of the voices and the copies were the same as the recordings on her computer. With her permission I posted those recordings for people here to listen to.

What is transference?

A fancy term for goalpost shifting by the looks of it!

 

[asydhouse]

Sheesh, it's like herding cats!

I had the same thought as Alderbank that this thread must resemble the 1000 spirits all jostling to talk to flaccon at once.

I like the idea of starting an alternate thread instead of trying to pm the small committee that we should elect to act as intermediaries with flacon, so that some headway could be made. But moving flaccon to another thread might be difficult to organise, given her slippery response to all requests so far.

Perhaps we should start a companion thread through which we can all communicate with our committee, and this thread can remain for flaccon to come in and deal with whoever is in here?

So we can all read here, and then go to the companion thread to comment and make suggestions and answer technical points etc for the benefit of the committee, who would then be the only ones posting in here to manage communications with flacon?

Could we all agree on this? Can we skeptics focus on this as the first stage in setting up a test protocol for flacon? We are demanding this sort of focussing of energy and attention from her, after all... shouldn't we set an example?

ANSWER ME! (That's an obscure reference to a comedy show I saw on telly many years ago... sorry )

 

[aggle-rithm]

I, for one, am astonished at the technological expertise of the spirits. I wonder if they alter the bytes of data directly on the hard drive, or if they hack the operating system. I would be interested to know if the "modified date" value gets changed on the file.

If they do a direct modification, they would have to know not only the file structure of a wav file, but also the file system on the hard drive so they can use the file allocation table to properly distinguish the bytes belonging to that file from others.

If they hack the operating system, then they have some very specialized knowledge of the software involved. They would have to open a file stream, which would mean activating the hard drive, memory, and CPU of the system.

All in all, it sounds like it would be far easier to communicate some other way.

 

[scrappy]

To Pixel42 I have absolutely no idea as to why alderbank did not hear the clear sentences , albeit low volume . Her GP appointment was excellent . Pixel42, Tracy is willing to travel to where you are ,to save you from travelling .Please understand that they are more than just voices on computer .