Looking for Skeptics

[Jack by the hedge]

I thought scrappy's computer was now "haunted" by flaccon's father, so that every "silent" recording he makes has his voice on it when he plays it back.

Well, it's not entirely clear (as per usual). I think there is now always noise on his recordings, though whether he also always hears voices in the noise, I guess only he can tell us. flaccon seemed a little taken aback at the suggestion that scrappy might be able to produce spirit recordings independently, without her involvement.

 

[Drs_Res]

The best way to test this is to start off with a good high quality silent recording so that any change is obvious. However, this does not seem to work with a good high quality silent recording. She has had one of those and she never heard a change.

 

[hcmom]

This is very old now, but a GREAT example of audio pareidolia...

First listen to it with your eyes closed, then listen again while you watch the words. It's amazing how quickly you can learn Latin...

 

[Scordatura]

In June I sent Flaccon a silent recording that I'd made in January. It was generated using the built-in cyberlink app and built-in mic. The file altered considerably, and now I have voices coming through my PC all the time. Yes good description, a chain reaction occurs according to arrange of wires/equipment used.

They are not in the air, so an external mic blocks their attempts of getting through (tested it with a few people) They told her that they travel thru her fingers and into her PC, and then into into PC's.

She feels that they are not altering the files as such, just adding their words or differences to the files. They are not being recorded no, they speak on playback of a silent-generated recording (no mute)
Youtube. After altering my PC, they asked her to go on to youtube. At first she was hearing words that were familiar to her but she wasn't sure if it was coincidental. So we did that test, I listened in first, so flaccon knew there were no voices, then flaccon listened in. The files I heard for the second time, had altered. There were "extra" noises/voices added. Sometimes vague or sluggish, sometimes clear, but recognisable enough to know that the files had altered. Once a file alters, any copy of that file will alter accordingly.

<snip>

One more mention on Pc's, via the internet (email) she believes has a 60 to 70% success rate (according to equipment) but calibrating by actual touch, remains to be seen. I know she purchased a new PC ready for the contest, but it was voice-affected. She tried another and that too was voice-affected. Also, once the spirits entered into my PC, it has taken several months to get them as clear as they are on the file I sent to Jack. The muffled voice heard, is quite loud depending on speakers used. I know this because I hear it muffly but I made out what it said. On flaccons PC the voice is a lot louder and clearer.

Sorry for the delay in replying, I hope it has made things a bit clearer.

I have a suggestion for scrappy. How about this:



Make a recording. Satisfy yourself there are no voices on it. Don't let flaccon hear it yet.



Share it with anyone who wants to participate, so we can all agree our copies don't have voices on them and we can note their MD5 hash "fingerprint" so we're certain its always the same file.



Then let flaccon hear a copy. If she thinks hers contains voices, we can all check our own copies.



It doesn't have to work first time. It only needs to work once. What do you think?

If I understand correctly, the voices a listener hears are being heard "live" and aren't physically added to the recording itself. In other words, the properties of the file remain unchanged, making before and after comparisons impossible.

Couldn't someone whose computer hasn't been "calibrated" just upload a recording to box.com or wherever, let people download it before flaccon plays it, and store it on a CD/DVD or on a computer that isn't connected to the Internet? The spirits need electric wires and cables, and can't travel through the air, so the isolated recording is beyond their reach. It could be even analyzed, with the resulting data stored offline.

The altered file can then be analyzed and compared to the original. The same could be done with a YouTube video.

Would this work? Not necessarily as a contest-level test but maybe as a way for flaccon (and us) to see if anything at all is happening.

 

[Quinn]

If we're doing subtitles of misheard lyrics, I can't believe no one has posted this classic yet:

 

[Drs_Res]

And I'll repost this from earlier in the thread:

I haven't read the whole thread yet, FSM save me, so forgive me if this has come up already, but my favourite examples of misheard song lyrics come from comedian Peter Kay:

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If I understand correctly, the voices a listener hears are being heard "live" and aren't physically added to the recording itself. In other words, the properties of the file remain unchanged, making before and after comparisons impossible.

Well, it could work either way.

You're quite right that it was suggested long ago by flaccon that the spirits are not actually part of the recording but that they speak while the recording plays. But both flaccon and scrappy seem to think that the spirits say the same thing every time the file is played, indeed they do so every time any copy of the file is played.

So if it were the case that "spirit voices" were not part of the recording, but rather the spirits somehow "haunt" the recording, it would not change the MD5 hash but you could still objectively see that the sound waveform was changed by using an application like Audacity which will let you display the audio waveform. The difference will be visible there, as Daylightstar demonstrated in post #5371, where you can distinctly see the waveform of the sounds which scrappy says is a spirit voice.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

scrappy and flaccon seem to have disappeared again, which is a shame since I think this test idea can produce some actual evidence:

1) scrappy makes a recording and checks it has no voices on it.
2) scrappy emails it to someone who can post it on box.com
3) Everyone who wants to take part downloads it and checks their copy, maybe noting its MD5 hash and printing a picture of its audio waveform
4) When we agree it contains no voices, scrappy emails the file to flaccon who listens to it to see if it now contains voices
5) If it does have voices, everyone else checks their own copies

If everyone else's MD5 hash has changed, then I believe that would be accepted as a good initial demonstration of a paranormal effect. If the MD5 hash has not changed but the waveform image has changed then similarly that would be a good demo of a paranormal effect. If neither has changed but we can now hear voices in the recording which we couldn't hear before then that would still be a pretty impressive subjective demo of a paranormal effect. If nothing changes and we can't hear voices which flaccon says she hears, then that would tend to suggest it's just her imagination.

It doesn't have to work first time. Steps 1-4 could be repeated until the spirits intervene or the cows come home or everyone just gets bored.

 

[Daylightstar]

scrappy and flaccon seem to have disappeared again, which is a shame since I think this test idea can produce some actual evidence:

1) scrappy makes a recording and checks it has no voices on it.
2) scrappy emails it to someone who can post it on box.com
3) Everyone who wants to take part downloads it and checks their copy, maybe noting its MD5 hash and printing a picture of its audio waveform
4) When we agree it contains no voices, scrappy emails the file to flaccon who listens to it to see if it now contains voices
5) If it does have voices, everyone else checks their own copies

If everyone else's MD5 hash has changed, then I believe that would be accepted as a good initial demonstration of a paranormal effect. If the MD5 hash has not changed but the waveform image has changed then similarly that would be a good demo of a paranormal effect. If neither has changed but we can now hear voices in the recording which we couldn't hear before then that would still be a pretty impressive subjective demo of a paranormal effect. If nothing changes and we can't hear voices which flaccon says she hears, then that would tend to suggest it's just her imagination.

It doesn't have to work first time. Steps 1-4 could be repeated until the spirits intervene or the cows come home or everyone just gets bored.

That's a fun idea.
In my opinion, Scrappy would also have to generate a hash plus screenshot or printout of the waveform and bundle those with the audio file (confirmed by him to contain no voice or voice like artifacts) in a zip file he emails to a box.com poster.
Any subsequent handling of the audio file needs to be accompanied by a check of the hash and waveform.

 

[Dissolution]

scrappy and flaccon seem to have disappeared again, which is a shame since I think this test idea can produce some actual evidence:

Perhaps A isn't unconnected to B?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Perhaps A isn't unconnected to B?

If I said I had no thought whatever that you might make that inference, that would be a tiny bit of a fib.



On the other had I'd really like them to give this a try.

 

[abaddon]

If I said I had no thought whatever that you might make that inference, that would be a tiny bit of a fib.

On the other had I'd really like them to give this a try.

Worth a whirl if scrappy/flaccon will agree to a solid protocol.

 

[Drs_Res]

scrappy and flaccon seem to have disappeared again, which is a shame since I think this test idea can produce some actual evidence:

Not going to happen.

1) scrappy makes a recording and checks it has no voices on it.

He claims that his computer produces voices on all recordings since it has been "calibrated". This means you don't even get to steps 2 thru 5.

2) scrappy emails it to someone who can post it on box.com
3) Everyone who wants to take part downloads it and checks their copy, maybe noting its MD5 hash and printing a picture of its audio waveform
4) When we agree it contains no voices, scrappy emails the file to flaccon who listens to it to see if it now contains voices
5) If it does have voices, everyone else checks their own copies

If everyone else's MD5 hash has changed, then I believe that would be accepted as a good initial demonstration of a paranormal effect. If the MD5 hash has not changed but the waveform image has changed then similarly that would be a good demo of a paranormal effect. If neither has changed but we can now hear voices in the recording which we couldn't hear before then that would still be a pretty impressive subjective demo of a paranormal effect. If nothing changes and we can't hear voices which flaccon says she hears, then that would tend to suggest it's just her imagination.

It doesn't have to work first time. Steps 1-4 could be repeated until the spirits intervene or the cows come home or everyone just gets bored.

They have already discounted MD5 hashes.

The real test is a high quality silent recording where any added audio would be very obvious. But that does not work, so that pretty much rules out the "spirits" adding anything to every recording she listens to.

If flaccon would be willing to go with a high quality recording, I would do the following:

1. Make a silent sound file.
2. Upload the file to a password protected directory on the web.
3. Post a link to the file here.
4. Anyone interested could PM me for the password.
5. After any interested parties have the file and listened to it:
   • I will remove the password from the directory
   • Repost the link to the file
   • At this point flacon and scrappy would have access to the file and could download it and listen to it.
   • flacon and scrappy can tell us where any voice has been added.
   • We can all check our recordings

This would ensure that everyone got a clean copy of the file before flacon or scrappy had a chance to play the thing. Of course, we will never get to the first point because a high quality silent recording is pretty much off the table.

 

[abaddon]

This would ensure that everyone got a clean copy of the file before flacon or scrappy had a chance to play the thing. Of course, we will never get to the first point because a high quality silent recording is pretty much off the table.

^^^This.

It is a scrappy/flaccon prerequisite that a noisy file be used.

 

[IXP]

Does death have a deleterious effect on the intellect?

Yes, I believe that I can state, quite unequivocally, that it does.

IXP

 

[Drs_Res]

This would ensure that everyone got a clean copy of the file before flacon or scrappy had a chance to play the thing. Of course, we will never get to the first point because a high quality silent recording is pretty much off the table.

^^^This.

It is a scrappy/flaccon prerequisite that a noisy file be used.

Which means that we just repeat what we have been doing for the last few pages, and round and round it goes.

 

[abaddon]

Yes, I believe that I can state, quite unequivocally, that it does.

IXP

Oh, tried it, have you?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I wonder if it must be ambient noise, or if other types of noise would do? I could easily generate tones, drones, white noise, effected tones, effected drones, effected white noise, etc.

Might be an interesting experiment whether flaccon can hear anything in those things, and it'd be trivially easy to tell if the files had been altered. Not just through looking at the waveform, but I could easily generate a new file which is 100% identical to the original.

 

[abaddon]

Which means that we just repeat what we have been doing for the last few pages, and round and round it goes.

Maybe. We have done this already in this thread.

But..

Such a protocol could be made to work regardless of the initial state of the file had we willing participants. So long as the initial state can be agreed by all participants before any "spirit" intervention, we should be all good.

1. scrappy generates a noisy file on his PC, plus an MD5, plus a waveform. Maybe 20-30 seconds long.

2. scrappy sends to a nominated individual who verifies file, MD5 and waveform

3. nominated individual uploads to a host and any interested parties can download and verify voiceless audio, MD5 and waveform.

At this point we would have scrappy and interested parties in agreement that there are no voices, MD5 and waveform agree.

4. Audio is sent to flacon.

5. flaccon verifies MD5 and waveform.

6. flaccon interprets and provides new MD5

7. Everyone else checks their copies for content and MD5 and waveform.

Or something like that.

 

[abaddon]

I wonder if it must be ambient noise, or if other types of noise would do? I could easily generate tones, drones, white noise, effected tones, effected drones, effected white noise, etc.

Might be an interesting experiment whether flaccon can hear anything in those things, and it'd be trivially easy to tell if the files had been altered. Not just through looking at the waveform, but I could easily generate a new file which is 100% identical to the original.

Last time I checked, silence was rejected. Some form of noise was required. All I got out of it was crosstalk from other mobo components.