Looking for Skeptics

[pakeha]

....Then there is the business with he fingers, which was never clarified in any way:

Flaccon:

Being within, they get through to the electric wires through my fingers.

THinking it over, that's possibly just as well.

I think that rather than a troll, we are dealing with a very disturbed individual.

I've said the same earlier on.

Then the only explanation is a hallucination. And my hashes are exactly the same as they were - as I always knew they would be. The latest recording of silence is unlikely to inspire paredolia.

^
This.

 

[AdMan]

Hello i am dblue 54 "mr bulger i will not reply to anyone in this thread . i saw wot happened to tracey i saw wot happened to tracey ;i know voices when i hear them; and i have the spirit voice on my laptop now .thank you ;dblue.

Dblue54 / Mr Bulger, I too saw wot happened to Tracey when she pressed her face to the speakers and inserted her fingers into the audio-sockets after calibrating her hands-on machine. I was the disembodied spirit whose voice speaks to you on your laptop, but like Tracey's brother I am still alive ! i bin a spirt; for very looooong time . When tracey went up a mountain because she has 2 weeks to get in shape (,)I was the spirit who bin burdening her because she is not yet ready yet to share our Very Important Message with the world . We are sensitive with delicate feelings and an overpowering compulsion to type spaces before but not necessarily after punctuation marks.thank you; Vortigern99

I just realized that the spirit voice that dblue54/Mr Bulger has on his laptop is his very own voice!

The most important witnesses are, immediate family member's, who can without doubt recognise their Father's voice, and a Mr Bulger, who is alive and well (thankfully) who can confirm his very own voice, calling out amongst the entanglement of speech.

 

[Mojo]

As you can see from all the different posts, yes we believe it is deliberate.

He's saying that you're deliberately misunderstanding flaccon. He never bothers to quote the post he's replying to but this was your last post:

Tux, come down to earth. You are addressing this to someone who makes an audio file by sticking a blob of chewing gum over the webcam

So he seems to be saying that flaccon has never said this is how she makes her recordings. I can't be bothered to go back and look, but I'm pretty sure she's confirmed this is how she makes them on this thread.

Here it is:

To keep file size down, the audio component of WMV is lossy and highly compressed. WMV is a strange format to use for audio recording (flaccon covers the laptop webcam when recording these). Perhaps she tried more usual audio formats (MP3, WMA, WAV) and found that WMV gave the 'best' results

Wishing I could add my thoughts here regarding audio technology. I haven't tried any other formats, but willing to follow instruction.

Yes I cover the lens so I don't see myself all the time.

 

[Vortigern99]

Mr Bulger i am your own voice . i speak through user Vortigern99 who accidentally capitalized the first letter of his nickname, a very un-spirit thing to do . So when you hear your own voice speaking in entangled spirit cuddle-puddles on tracey's calibrated machine strongly recommending that you read The DaVinci Code , that's actually Vortigern99's living spirit ventriloquizing perfectly sensible information that he personally finds ridiculous but which his spirit thinks is hands-on calibrated for quantum mountain climbing .

 

[asydhouse]

Dblue54 / Mr Bulger, I too saw wot happened to Tracey when she pressed her face to the speakers and inserted her fingers into the audio-sockets after calibrating her hands-on machine. I was the disembodied spirit whose voice speaks to you on your laptop, but like Tracey's brother I am still alive ! i bin a spirt; for very looooong time . When tracey went up a mountain because she has 2 weeks to get in shape (,)I was the spirit who bin burdening her because she is not yet ready yet to share our Very Important Message with the world . We are sensitive with delicate feelings and an overpowering compulsion to type spaces before but not necessarily after punctuation marks.thank you; Vortigern99

Ha! I made a post a short while ago drawing attention to precisely this quirk, but that post has disappeared from this thread!

How ironic, considering this is all about messages being altered by mysterious and faceless entities!

If I disappear for awhile, it will be because I've been suspended, folks. I wonder if that would invalidate any votes for my post in the language award thread here?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261462

 

[jsfisher]

If I disappear for awhile, it will be because I've been suspended, folks. I wonder if that would invalidate any votes for my post in the language award thread here?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261462

Such shameless pandering for votes. You should be ashamed. Besides, if you had taken the time to look past your own name in the list, you would have noticed others, far more worthy of The Language Award honor. The last one named in the list is clearly the most deserving.

 

[tsig]

Not only that, but flaccon has told us that even the spirits of people who are alive can be out there floating around. So I'm guessing space is not a problem.

How many spirits can dance on the head of a hard drive.

 

[Alderbank]

Mr Bulger i am your own voice . i speak through user Vortigern99 who accidentally capitalized the first letter of his nickname, a very un-spirit thing to do . So when you hear your own voice speaking in entangled spirit cuddle-puddles on tracey's calibrated machine strongly recommending that you read The DaVinci Code , that's actually Vortigern99's living spirit ventriloquizing perfectly sensible information that he personally finds ridiculous but which his spirit thinks is hands-on calibrated for quantum mountain climbing .

Good try but zero marks for the apostrophes

 

[Alderbank]

jsfisher, no point in me asking scrappy because he ignores my questions so I'll ask you if I may:

My understanding is that you prepare a 'silent' file, take a hash and send it to scrappy. scrappy and floccan confirm that the spirits have changed it by 'transference' so that it sounds different to them. scrappy sends the file back to you and you confirm that it sounds the same to your mortal ears and the hash is unchanged so no tampering.

Is this correct? If so I can see the basis of a simple test here. You are in possession of tranferenced and untransferenced versions of the file. You play versions randomly to flaccon down the phone line. You hear no differences but flaccon can. If she can distinguish which is which significantly more times than 50% it is a long way from proving the existence of spirits but it would suggest that there might be something there worth investigating.

What does anyone else think?

 

[Pixel42]

Hello i am dblue 54 "mr bulger i will not reply to anyone in this thread .

That's very rude of you.

i saw wot happened to tracey

You saw her being listened to politely, despite the outrageousness of her claims, and given much useful information and advice? Then why are you being so rude?

i know voices when i hear them; and i have the spirit voice on my laptop now

Anyone can be fooled by pareidolia. Until you have ruled that out as the explanation of what you think you're hearing you know nothing.

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

Ha! I made a post a short while ago drawing attention to precisely this quirk, but that post has disappeared from this thread!

How ironic, considering this is all about messages being altered by mysterious and faceless entities!

If I disappear for awhile, it will be because I've been suspended, folks. I wonder if that would invalidate any votes for my post in the language award thread here?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261462

I don't see how it could affect the voting. I do believe that sending posts to AAH without further action is common practice. If you had a yellow card, I think you would know, assuming you check your PM's. Cheers.

 

[Vortigern99]

Good try but zero marks for the apostrophes

My spirit apostrophes are calibrated hands-on. Are you using your fingers correctly in the input sockets or are you just up a mountain?

 

[jsfisher]

jsfisher, no point in me asking scrappy because he ignores my questions so I'll ask you if I may:

My understanding is that you prepare a 'silent' file, take a hash and send it to scrappy. scrappy and floccan confirm that the spirits have changed it by 'transference' so that it sounds different to them. scrappy sends the file back to you and you confirm that it sounds the same to your mortal ears and the hash is unchanged so no tampering.

Is this correct? If so I can see the basis of a simple test here. You are in possession of tranferenced and untransferenced versions of the file. You play versions randomly to flaccon down the phone line. You hear no differences but flaccon can. If she can distinguish which is which significantly more times than 50% it is a long way from proving the existence of spirits but it would suggest that there might be something there worth investigating.

What does anyone else think?

Alas, that is not correct. Neither scrappy nor flaccon sent back the spirit-transformed files, so my rechecking was of my own originals.

If you recall, scrappy introduced a new claim, one in which a benign file on his computer could be copied to her computer where it would be transformed by spirits on playback--both copies on both computers, not just on flaccon's.

Well, my originals did not undergo any transformation to match. So, all we have is scrappy claiming (1) he played the files I sent on his computer, noting nothing unusual, (2) flaccon played them on her computer and noted 6 seconds without the usual background noise 21 seconds into the recording and the word, "Robin", at 38 seconds, and finally (3) upon the second playing of the file from me on scrappy's computer, he noted exactly the same as flaccon did.

I can email the files to you if you like. All I hear (and Audacity confirms) is expected sorts of background noise. There is a noise spike just past the 21 second mark -- I found the coincidence curious.

 

[pakeha]

Mr Bulger i am your own voice . i speak through user Vortigern99 who accidentally capitalized the first letter of his nickname, a very un-spirit thing to do . So when you hear your own voice speaking in entangled spirit cuddle-puddles on tracey's calibrated machine strongly recommending that you read The DaVinci Code , that's actually Vortigern99's living spirit ventriloquizing perfectly sensible information that he personally finds ridiculous but which his spirit thinks is hands-on calibrated for quantum mountain climbing .

Naughty!

How many spirits can dance on the head of a hard drive.

Nommed.

 

[asydhouse]

I don't see how it could affect the voting. I do believe that sending posts to AAH without further action is common practice. If you had a yellow card, I think you would know, assuming you check your PM's. Cheers.

Well the thing is, I was given a yellow card just a few days ago for arguing with another poster's absurd and misleading analogies in another thread. Abaddon was there, and he reckons it was grossly unfair and I should appeal, but I just couldn't be bothered in the end.

The post from this thread was simply moved, but when I clicked on the link it said I wasn't allowed access, and there's some notice that further action may be under consideration.

So I posted that last post to see whether or not I could still post.

I'm off to bed now, so we'll see what happens tomorrow. In the mean time, I'm only 5 votes behind the leading contender in the language award thread, so if anyone wants to ignore js fisher's disingenuous and underhanded attempt to hijack votes by misdirecting voters towards his own contending post here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261462 and tick my box instead of his, I will send you genuine spirit messages through the ether in gratitude!

 

[trustbutverify]

I think that rather than a troll, we are dealing with a very disturbed individual.

This seems like a much more likely explanation... however flaccon/scrappy/dblue do seem to be balanced enough to give a wide berth to any test with even a hint of objectivity.

It seems to me most paranormal claims boil down to the terror some folk feel at the prospect of being regular, ordinary people.

 

[Pixel42]

If flaccon or scrappy think they can tell the difference between two files on two different computers which have the same hash then we definitely have the basis for an objective test.

 

[Alderbank]

Alas, that is not correct. Neither scrappy nor flaccon sent back the spirit-transformed files, so my rechecking was of my own originals.

If you recall, scrappy introduced a new claim, one in which a benign file on his computer could be copied to her computer where it would be transformed by spirits on playback--both copies on both computers, not just on flaccon's.

Well, my originals did not undergo any transformation to match. So, all we have is scrappy claiming (1) he played the files I sent on his computer, noting nothing unusual, (2) flaccon played them on her computer and noted 6 seconds without the usual background noise 21 seconds into the recording and the word, "Robin", at 38 seconds, and finally (3) upon the second playing of the file from me on scrappy's computer, he noted exactly the same as flaccon did.

Thanks for a very clear explanation. You confirm what I thought - that scrappy's contribution so far is entirely unsupported declarations with no actual evidence of any kind.

No point in me asking but do you think could you ask him to share any of the transferenced recordings with you (or us)? That would be interesting

 

[trustbutverify]

If flaccon or scrappy think they can tell the difference between two files on two different computers which have the same hash then we definitely have the basis for an objective test.

Agreed, but I'd put the odds of such a properly run and documented test actually taking place pretty darn low.

And if, somehow, that event were to take place, I'd put the odds of the participants actually accepting the results of a test fail at approximately zero.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Agreed, but I'd put the odds of such a properly run and documented test actually taking place pretty darn low.

And if, somehow, that event were to take place, I'd put the odds of the participants actually accepting the results of a test fail at approximately zero.

ftfy