Alderbank
Critical Thinker
I called round on Saturday to see flaccon amd meet scrappy. Every one of your points above is correct. Well deduced!
Looking for Skeptics
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I called round on Saturday to see flaccon amd meet scrappy. Every one of your points above is correct. Well deduced!
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Did you glean any understanding of the GP actual position, and why the GP letter was so heavily redacted?
wardenclyffe
Master Poster
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Thank you Alderbank. I've always encouraged face to face meetings with flaccon and scrappy. Communication through this forum has not been particularly effective. That's one of the reasons I (mostly) stay away from this thread. I hope it's easier in person. It would almost have to be.
Ward
Well, I, for one, am glad we have so many interpreters of their attempts to write their thoughts. This requires a team!
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Vortigern99
Sorcerer Supreme
Yeah, hey Alderbank, give up the goods already! What happened at your most recent meeting with the Pareidolia Twins?
Ampulla of Vater
Illuminator
I know, the suspense is killing me. I don't know why Alderbank went all quiet. Maybe he is convinced the spirits exist and he doesn't want to tell us.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
AFAIK Scrappy was suddenly called away and was not present.
Alderbank
Critical Thinker
Sorry I've not replied sooner but real life gets in the way sometimes. There’s not a lot to add to Pixel’s summing up, really.
Scrappy is a nice guy to talk with. He found it a huge culture shock when he began posting here and said he has worked really hard on his style and presentation, which I think we have all noticed. He spent a few days in Cheshire last week and he and flaccon have been climbing the North Wales mountains, eventually reaching the summit of Snowdon. They are both much fitter as a result. All good news.
I asked flaccon why she believes that spirits are putting voices into computers as opposed to our conclusion that the sounds are caused by electrical noise and recording artifacts. She said that the sounds have appeared now on four different computers so she can’t believe this would be caused every time by noise and artifacts. That would be an unlikely coincidence. She considers that the simplest and most obvious explanation is discarnate spirits.
flaccon and scrappy insist that the recordings change but they could not explain what the change was, just that it was not a change like MD5 or file size or format which I would be able to see. I asked if they each thought they could independently distinguish between changed and unchanged files because that might be testable and paranormal. They thought they probably could but were not interested in any tests.
The process they use to hear voices is as follows. They listen over and over until they make out fragments of speech, flaccon gave the example of hearing ‘f’ and ‘t’ of ‘footsteps’ then hearing the other sounds fit in to make a word. scrappy said he might distinguish a couple of words in a phrase then tell flaccon who would try to pick out the missing words. I said this is exactly what EVP hearers do when listening to Raudive voices. They didn’t disagree. It sounds like a pleasant social activity not unlike how I sit down with a friend sometimes to solve the Guardian crossword together.
flaccon now has a growing collection of hundreds of words. Each clip of words or phrases stands alone, they do not link up into a narrative.
I said that all the evidence in this thread, and there is now a lot, points in the same direction which is that the voices are entirely in their heads. This is a common phenomenon and not paranormal. The Hearing Voices Network http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/H/hearing-voices/ says that up to 10% of the population regularly hears voices and unless the hearer is being told to harm himself or others, this is not nowadays considered a mental illness and needs no treatment. flaccon agreed that she has nothing else to show apart from the words on the recordings, which not everyone else can hear. She would like more testimonials from people who say they can hear the voices. She has Mr Bulger, who says he can hear his own voice, and about four others who can hear these words too, particularly their own voices. She finds it difficult to get the press or the church to take much interest and she feels this is because she does not have much to show them. She is trying to persuade two Anglican priests to visit and listen. She says other clergy say they are too busy or make other excuses for not turning up. I have agreed to go along and observe if she succeeds in getting the pair to show up to listen to the recordings.
I was treated to several more recordings including, when I insisted, those scary ones I was ‘afraid’ to hear before. All I could hear were those pops and squeaks. flaccon explained that I would have been frightened if I could have understood what they were saying to me.
Finally, flaccon and scrappy made friends with a couple of holidaymakers up the mountain. flaccon asked them if they could possibly email her some silent files for her experiments. While I was visiting, they phoned to say they were having difficulty with that. flaccon said ‘I recommend YouCam. I’ll tell you how to find it…
Scrappy is a nice guy to talk with. He found it a huge culture shock when he began posting here and said he has worked really hard on his style and presentation, which I think we have all noticed. He spent a few days in Cheshire last week and he and flaccon have been climbing the North Wales mountains, eventually reaching the summit of Snowdon. They are both much fitter as a result. All good news.
I asked flaccon why she believes that spirits are putting voices into computers as opposed to our conclusion that the sounds are caused by electrical noise and recording artifacts. She said that the sounds have appeared now on four different computers so she can’t believe this would be caused every time by noise and artifacts. That would be an unlikely coincidence. She considers that the simplest and most obvious explanation is discarnate spirits.
flaccon and scrappy insist that the recordings change but they could not explain what the change was, just that it was not a change like MD5 or file size or format which I would be able to see. I asked if they each thought they could independently distinguish between changed and unchanged files because that might be testable and paranormal. They thought they probably could but were not interested in any tests.
The process they use to hear voices is as follows. They listen over and over until they make out fragments of speech, flaccon gave the example of hearing ‘f’ and ‘t’ of ‘footsteps’ then hearing the other sounds fit in to make a word. scrappy said he might distinguish a couple of words in a phrase then tell flaccon who would try to pick out the missing words. I said this is exactly what EVP hearers do when listening to Raudive voices. They didn’t disagree. It sounds like a pleasant social activity not unlike how I sit down with a friend sometimes to solve the Guardian crossword together.
flaccon now has a growing collection of hundreds of words. Each clip of words or phrases stands alone, they do not link up into a narrative.
I said that all the evidence in this thread, and there is now a lot, points in the same direction which is that the voices are entirely in their heads. This is a common phenomenon and not paranormal. The Hearing Voices Network http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/H/hearing-voices/ says that up to 10% of the population regularly hears voices and unless the hearer is being told to harm himself or others, this is not nowadays considered a mental illness and needs no treatment. flaccon agreed that she has nothing else to show apart from the words on the recordings, which not everyone else can hear. She would like more testimonials from people who say they can hear the voices. She has Mr Bulger, who says he can hear his own voice, and about four others who can hear these words too, particularly their own voices. She finds it difficult to get the press or the church to take much interest and she feels this is because she does not have much to show them. She is trying to persuade two Anglican priests to visit and listen. She says other clergy say they are too busy or make other excuses for not turning up. I have agreed to go along and observe if she succeeds in getting the pair to show up to listen to the recordings.
I was treated to several more recordings including, when I insisted, those scary ones I was ‘afraid’ to hear before. All I could hear were those pops and squeaks. flaccon explained that I would have been frightened if I could have understood what they were saying to me.
Finally, flaccon and scrappy made friends with a couple of holidaymakers up the mountain. flaccon asked them if they could possibly email her some silent files for her experiments. While I was visiting, they phoned to say they were having difficulty with that. flaccon said ‘I recommend YouCam. I’ll tell you how to find it…
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wardenclyffe
Master Poster
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Thank you Alderbank.
Ward
Ward
Thanks for the write up!
One point:
I don't think that's the same thing as pareidolia at all. They're listening to recordings, and hearing words in them, and once they hear them, they hear the same ones again (which is pretty much the definition of pareidolia). Not the same thing as hearing voices without any input.
One point:
I don't think that's the same thing as pareidolia at all. They're listening to recordings, and hearing words in them, and once they hear them, they hear the same ones again (which is pretty much the definition of pareidolia). Not the same thing as hearing voices without any input.
SusanB-M1
Incurable Optimist
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Alderbank
Thank youfor posting that. It seems to have rounded things off quite nicely; not satisfactorily of course, since they are still trapped by their belief in spirits. Do you think they have accepted that there really is not an important message to the world?
Thank youfor posting that. It seems to have rounded things off quite nicely; not satisfactorily of course, since they are still trapped by their belief in spirits. Do you think they have accepted that there really is not an important message to the world?
trustbutverify
Penultimate Amazing
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Their current claims have almost no resemblance to flaccon's original claim, and neither has any interest in testing. I think that finishes things off.
IXP
Graduate Poster
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No wonder she was reluctant to describe exactly how she listens to the spirit voices. When we were asked to listen, she never once suggested that we would need to listen over and over again until we convinced ourselves that we were hearing something. This is spite of the fact that I posted exactly that when I listened to the first recording. What ever happened to unmistakable full sentences?
IXP
IXP
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