Looking for Skeptics

Status
Not open for further replies.
desertgal said:
No kidding. As chillzero pointed out, this lady believes spirit voices are contacting her through her cell phone, and threatening to invade her television in the future. She doesn't need further experiments. It's possible what she really needs is psychiatric attention, and continuing this thread is not only pointless, but harmful to her.

I know this forum sees this kind of thing a lot, and it's hard to resist trying to get ones like flaccon and scrappy to see logic, but wouldn't it be better to let this one go?
Click to expand...

That is crazy talk. Any phenomena is bizarre, and there should be no levels to bizarreness. It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability, and that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
 
flaccon said:
It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability, and that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
Click to expand...

How so? Calebprime has supplied you with the requested file. I have posted what I hear before it is altered by the spirits. The only step remaining is for you to download the file and listen to it. At that point, I will listen again and see if I detect any change.

IXP
 
Biscuit said:
I disagree. I think a hands on dmeostration of pareidolia would be good for flaccon to experience and I am not alone in this.
Click to expand...

And I don't believe I am alone in believing flaccon will continue to deny paredolia, especially since she has so far. How many times will she have to do it before it becomes obvious she doesn't accept it as an explanation?

If you think this thread has reached it's peak for you then leave it be.
Click to expand...

"It's peak for" me? I don't understand what that means. I'm pretty sure I'm just as entitled to state my opinion here as you are.
 
flaccon said:
That is crazy talk. Any phenomena is bizarre, and there should be no levels to bizarreness. It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability, and that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
Click to expand...


You need to state what this new-found ability is and in what way it may be objectively demonstrated. you haven't done that, yet.

If the file (and all its copies) are truly changed (is that your claim?), how can we detect the change? Having you and maybe scrappy tell us that it sounds different from before is (1) subjective to begin with and (2) not at all convincing. A mismatch of MD5 hashes, on the other hand, now that would be convincing.
 
flaccon said:
That is crazy talk.
Click to expand...

No.

It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability…
Click to expand...

That's crazy talk. You aren't being forbidden anything by anyone here. All you have to do is click on "DOWNLOAD", which you repeatedly refuse to do.

…And that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
Click to expand...

You aren't qualified to make that call, sorry.
 
Last edited:
flaccon,

Just in case you do continue with the test of calebprime's file, here is the MD5 hash I get for the copy on my laptop.

d0ec70d757902a3e77e9b878a9290c1b

I have also written this on paper, just in case the sprits can alter the MD5 hash on this forum. Can they also alter one on a slip of paper on my desk?

ETA: Again, referring to this file of white noise created by calebprime https://app.box.com/s/5e2m272jsdrf89dvxzxy All you need to do is click to download it, and let me know when you have listened to it.

IXP
 
Last edited:
flaccon said:
... It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability, and that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
Click to expand...

With psychiatry you would indeed not be able to prove any abilities of any spirits.
Psychiatry would serve another purpose ....
 
Another test (if we needed one) to see whether two files are identical is to invert the phase of one and mix it with the original.

If the two files are identical, absolute silence results.

I just did this with the ambient noise2 file I created, using Audacity and some other software. Easy to do, and it actually works: A roaring white-noise waterfall becomes completely silent.

None of these new-fangled hashbrowns whatayoucallem needed.
 
calebprime said:
Another test (if we needed one) to see whether two files are identical is to invert the phase of one and mix it with the original.

If the two files are identical, absolute silence results.

I just did this with the ambient noise2 file I created, using Audacity and some other software. Easy to do, and it actually works: A roaring white-noise waterfall becomes completely silent.

None of these new-fangled hashbrowns whatayoucallem needed.
Click to expand...
Great idea. I like it. When flaccon listens to your file you can re-check it as another check on whether the file was changed.

IXP
 
Flaccon, you need to click the "Remember me" box when logging in, otherwise you get logged out after fairly short periods reading.
 
flaccon said:
That is crazy talk. Any phenomena is bizarre, and there should be no levels to bizarreness. It appears that I am not being allowed to prove the spirits new found ability, and that is ok, there ae other routes to go down, and seriously psychiatry isn't one of them.
Click to expand...


No one is talking about "proving" anything. The point is to use proper testing methodology to produce useful data, from which to draw reasonable conclusions and possibly design new tests to address more specific aspects of the activity under question ... if it's called for.

A properly designed test requires an objective mechanism to yield result data. (For example: if you designed an exam for students, the essay portion would be subjective, since the result would depend on the interpretation of the exam scorer. The multiple choice portion would be objective, since a machine could score it-no interpretation needed.) It requires control factors to narrow the focus onto only what the test is attempting to measure. It needs to have the capability to falsify; that is, the hypothesis must make certain testable predictions of what would be observed if the hypothesis (the proposed theory) was, in fact, true. The test needs to be able to nullify the hypothesis if the predicted observations don't occur.

You proposals lack all 3 of these essential components . Therefore, no actual evidence in either direction can result from them, because your protocols aren't actually testing anything. They lack the basic requirements needed for usable results and valid conclusions.

No one is demanding (at this point) strict, double blind, PhD supervised, laboratory controlled conditions. Just the minimum adherence to experimental standards.

Here is a fantastic example of a non-scientist designing and running a test of a paranormal claim. The test is simple, direct, elegant and brutally effective. It includes all 3 elements essential for validity. The test designer was named Emily Rosa. She was nine years old.

In 1996, Rosa saw a video of Therapeutic Touch (TT) practitioners claiming they could feel a "Human Energy Field" (HEF) emanating from a human body and could use their hands to manipulate the HEF in order to diagnose and treat disease. She heard Dolores Krieger, the co-inventor of Therapeutic Touch, claim that everyone had the ability to feel the HEF, and Rosa heard other nurses say the HEF felt to them "warm as Jell-O" and "tactile as taffy." Rosa was impressed by how certain these nurses were about their abilities. She said, "I wanted to see if they really could feel something.
Click to expand...
 
carlitos said:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
Click to expand...

I was just thinking of posting this.:eye-poppi
 
flaccon said:
Like I keep suggesting, if we stop concentrating on voices and images, we can immediately rule out paredolia.
Click to expand...

This makes no sense whatsoever.

I am reminded of this:

Massimo Pigliucci, "Whose Burden of Proof?", Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2013

"One more contribution from philosophy concerning the burden of proof. It, like pretty much everything we discuss, is an example of what Wittgenstein famously called a "language game". The idea is that people need a shared language to engage in a meaningful discussion, i.e., to play the same (semantic) game. Wittgenstein wasn't making the trivial point that people better be speaking the same natural language (e.g., English or Italian), on penalty of literally not understanding each other. The idea was that to "play" a certain language "game" we need to agree on the background rules and conditions. In our case, this means that skeptics and proponents of a given controversial notion have to agree on what counts as evidence, accepted background scientific knowledge, and so on. If they don't [...] then the problem isn't one of logic or burden of proof but a much more fundamental one of speaking a "private" language that your interlocutor does not understand. It is a major challenge for scientific skepticism to get people to simply accept the rules of the game before they can even begin to play."​
 
Orphia Nay said:
This makes no sense whatsoever.
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't, but I think she's now locked into her latest revelation of what the spirits can do. Namely, change files.

All along, flaccon has been convinced that if we will just listen to what she has we will all be convinced. She has not yet comprehended what objectivity really means, and so the latest "files change" is just her latest self-convincing proof to her. Why cannot we all not just see that?

So, we should just send her files with sufficiently loud silence, she'll listen to them, tell us they have changed, and we will all be convinced. Of course, we have been over this loop before. We did, she did, they weren't, and we aren't.

I am reminded of this:

Massimo Pigliucci, "Whose Burden of Proof?", Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2013

"One more contribution from philosophy concerning the burden of proof. It, like pretty much everything we discuss, is an example of what Wittgenstein famously called a "language game". The idea is that people need a shared language to engage in a meaningful discussion, i.e., to play the same (semantic) game. Wittgenstein wasn't making the trivial point that people better be speaking the same natural language (e.g., English or Italian), on penalty of literally not understanding each other. The idea was that to "play" a certain language "game" we need to agree on the background rules and conditions. In our case, this means that skeptics and proponents of a given controversial notion have to agree on what counts as evidence, accepted background scientific knowledge, and so on. If they don't [...] then the problem isn't one of logic or burden of proof but a much more fundamental one of speaking a "private" language that your interlocutor does not understand. It is a major challenge for scientific skepticism to get people to simply accept the rules of the game before they can even begin to play."​
Click to expand...

Interesting, but flaccon doesn't understand "claim", so "evidence of the claim" is still a distant step.
 
desertgal said:
No, you have an obsession. Significantly different. And you're right, there isn't't anything evil about this. Just sad and disturbing.

Here's an idea: stop spending hours listening for spirit voices that don't exist, and do something else. Find a charitable cause. Take long nature walks. Bowl. Whatever, just something productive and fulfilling.

Chill Zero is right.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think that sums the whole thing up very neatly. It seems to me that flaccom's continued avoidance of requests to quote any 'important message' from the 'spirits' is not likely to change.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom