Chaos Magic

[PixyMisa]

Yes PixyMisa, you've caught me! I'm in a losing struggle against all science and reason. I'm so glad I have enlightened omniscient beings, such as yourself, to set me strait in my silly delusions and to instruct me in what I have and have not experienced. Thank you, oh great arbiter of reality and all that encompasses it! How can I ever express my eternal gratitude?

You could try responding to what people actually say.

 

[PixyMisa]

'Confabulation' is a less emotionally loaded term...

And more specific too. Yes, a lot of this is confabulation. Sometimes it's just lies, though.

 

[PixyMisa]

Right. I have a spontaneous lucid experience in which a voice converses with me, physical manipulates my body, and provides me with veridical information I'd hitherto been unaware of and the explanation is "drugs after all'?

Yep.

Also, has been pointed out, it didn't happen the way you report it now. Given the way memory works, that's pretty much guaranteed.

That makes about as much sense as trying to explain the people I'm conversing with on JREF in terms of being mere artifacts of my computer monitor. Its one thing to be skeptical; its quite another thing to rationalize to the point of absurdity.

Nope. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for your experience, based on a vast body of clinical observations and experimental data. The explanation you prefer contradicts the entirety of scientific knowledge, and has no actual evidentiary basis whatsoever.

So we'll stick with our explanation, thanks all the same.

 

[Zanders]

There are some great skeptics out there, James Randi actually goes in to debunk people, Joe Nickell actually goes in to investigate and Susan Blackmore spent 20 years involved with the "paranormal". Most skeptics I find online are just dismissive of anything they don't want to accept.

Oh, and PixyMisa, there have been people who have tested out these things and it takes trying them out and playing by their rules. You just would throw out any research done by somebody the goes against your view of how the world works. There are many connections and patters in these events, such as the buzzing sound, bright lights and the very similar messages given. This type of thing really opens up a can of worms, because everything I have brought up on this forum has only been answered with excuses like "that's impossible, something else must have happened". Also, if these events only happened a couple of years ago, not a long time, why do you assume his memories are twisted up?

If a whole group of people came forward to testify to such an event, they would be labeled as crazy or liars and dismissed, so how can we prove such a thing?

 

[Zanders]

I really have no way of knowing for sure but I don't think is a ghost(spirit of a deceased person) or the product of some secret tech and/or aliens. I've done some independent reading of accounts of those under the effects of DMT who report contacting and interacting with all manner of non-human intelligences and of indigenous interpretations of such things as contact with beings in the "spirit world".

Like I mentioned to Sceptic Tank I think it may be useful to think of the ostensibly 'physical' world we interact in our waking lives as a constrained subset of a much larger reality. 'Incarnated' beings like us could be compared to users tunned into this particular reality frame and these "spirits" would just be beings who are not currently 'logged onto this server', so to speak



Like I said, the "voice" specifically advised me against mentioning the encounter. Whether it was because she knew reporting such things would possibly get me labeled as mentally ill or there is some larger reason why such beings do not wish to be generally known, I can't say for certain. From accounts I've read of people who 'explore' the larger reality [via OBEs, ayahuasca, or some other modality] many of the entities they talk to tend to try and change the subject whenever the topic of their ontological status comes up.

I don't have enough personal experience to give any definitive answers myself. The best I can do is learn as much as I can from similar reported experiences and try to form my own conclusions about it. Whatever is going on here, I don't think it necessarily invalidates our current body of scientific knowledge; it simply means that our current models of reality are woefully incomplete.

Can you tell me about some of your views and beliefs about the spirit world? Does consciousness transcend death? or are these beings just a totally different kind of intelligence? Also, do you use recreational drugs often?

 

[D'rok]

Right. I have a spontaneous lucid experience in which a voice converses with me, physical manipulates my body, and provides me with veridical information I'd hitherto been unaware of and the explanation is "drugs after all'? That makes about as much sense as trying to explain the people I'm conversing with on JREF in terms of being mere artifacts of my computer monitor. Its one thing to be skeptical; its quite another thing to rationalize to the point of absurdity.

It's one thing to have a powerful subjective internal experience. It's quite another to confuse that experience with knowledge about the external universe. You know we exist outside your monitor because you know there is a world outside your head. If the monitor-artifact explanation for my presence is too absurdly solipsistic for you, why do you turn off that critical thinking when it comes to your own consciousness-altering experiences?

 

[tsig]

Like I said, the "voice" alluded to my friend having similar experiences. When I asked my friend a couple weeks later if she'd had any strange experiences she mentioned hearing a male voice speak to her on a few different occasions and a female voice speaking to her atleast once.

She reported that the male voice that spoke to her was preceded by a high-pitched ringing [at this point I had not filled her in on the details of my experience]. The voice then instructed her to stand in a particular location and do a series of odd hand gestures. She said she was a bit baffled by what was going on but followed the instructions she was given. After she did so she said she had a vivid three part vision. She said the male voice tried to communicate with her again on another occasion but her baby started crying in the other room and the voice simply said "You know what? Now is probably not the best time..."; there was a sound like a monitor being turned off and she felt the 'presence' leave.



TBH, several years ago I'd be making the exact same arguments that Sceptic Tank and others have made here regarding the lack of evidence regarding "spirits" and other 'paranormal' stuff. I'm not gonna go into all the details of my life story but I've had some pretty odd experiences over the passed several years of my life than don't lend themselves very well to conventional explanations. IMO, its much more parsimonious to simply accept that there are many things about reality that our current level of scientific understanding does not encompass.

So rather than conclude that your senses might be fooling you, you decide to throw out our current level of scientific understanding.

 

[PixyMisa]

There are some great skeptics out there, James Randi actually goes in to debunk people, Joe Nickell actually goes in to investigate and Susan Blackmore spent 20 years involved with the "paranormal".

Yes.

Most skeptics I find online are just dismissive of anything they don't want to accept.

No.

Oh, and PixyMisa, there have been people who have tested out these things and it takes trying them out

Done that. These things don't exist.

and playing by their rules.

No. No. You don't get to change the rules. There's only one reality; the only way to find out what is real is to test your ideas against reality.

That's science.

If you change the rules, what you get is garbage.

You just would throw out any research done by somebody the goes against your view of how the world works.

No.

I would throw out reseach that is not properly designed and conducted, whether it agrees with established fact or not.

There are many connections and patters in these events, such as the buzzing sound, bright lights and the very similar messages given.

There are similarities between the reports of the events. Even if those parts of the reports are accurate, buzzing sounds and bright lights are common hallucinatory events.

This type of thing really opens up a can of worms, because everything I have brought up on this forum has only been answered with excuses like "that's impossible, something else must have happened".

The "plural" of anecdote is not "worms".

Also, if these events only happened a couple of years ago, not a long time, why do you assume his memories are twisted up?

Because that's how memory works. Indeed, we can go further, and add: The more often he has told the story, the less likely it is to be accurate; and the more certain he is that the story is accurate, the less likely it is to be accurate.

If a whole group of people came forward to testify to such an event, they would be labeled as crazy or liars and dismissed, so how can we prove such a thing?

Not crazy or liars, necessarily, but certainly wrong.

What you need is evidence. Not stories. Evidence. You are held to the exact same standard as everyone else.

 

[Zanders]

Ok, that makes sense. But what kind of evidence would it take?

 

[PixyMisa]

The best kind is experimental evidence - something that's independently verifiable. If there's a real effect happening, you can reduce some part of it to an experiment.

We've done this, for example, with homeopathy. We get constant anecdotal reports of homeopathy working, but when we conduct controlled experiments we find no effect whatsoever. What's more, epidemiology indicates that homeopath has no effect whatsoever outside of controlled experiments either.

So, isolate some feature; design a controlled experiment; conduct that experiment. And be prepared to take no for an answer. Do not change the design of the experiment mid-way, that just invalidates it. Don't mine the results for an indication of some other effect.

So, even if you can't establish the whole thing, narrow down some aspect of it and try to verify - or falsify - that.

 

[AkuManiMani]

So because you can't explain an incident, no one in the scientific community could? Isn't that a little bit egotistical?

No, I simply trust my own experience and good sense over the opinions and presumptions of others. Are you seriously suggesting to me that I should defer my responsibly to exercise my own judgement to the presumed authority of others? That I'm being 'egotistical' for not trying to rationalize away my own senses and experiences because they don't conform to a consensus of opinion? Are you %^*@ing serious?

 

[AkuManiMani]

Right. I have a spontaneous lucid experience in which a voice converses with me, physical manipulates my body, and provides me with veridical information I'd hitherto been unaware of and the explanation is "drugs after all'? That makes about as much sense as trying to explain the people I'm conversing with on JREF in terms of being mere artifacts of my computer monitor. Its one thing to be skeptical; its quite another thing to rationalize to the point of absurdity.

It's one thing to have a powerful subjective internal experience. It's quite another to confuse that experience with knowledge about the external universe. You know we exist outside your monitor because you know there is a world outside your head. If the monitor-artifact explanation for my presence is too absurdly solipsistic for you, why do you turn off that critical thinking when it comes to your own consciousness-altering experiences?

So, according your line of 'reasoning', drugs (which I had not taken) caused me to have an auditory hallucination which had a sufficient level of intelligence to carry on a lucid conversation, inform me about things I had no prior knowledge of, and possessed enough force to physically manipulate my body...?

Never-minding whatever mangled logic possessed you think that solipsism has anything to do with with the monitor analogy I drew -- just where do you come off on lecturing me about how to apply my critical thinking??

 

[AkuManiMani]

Ok, that makes sense. But what kind of evidence would it take?

His favorite authority figures telling him it is so.

 

[Zanders]

The best kind is experimental evidence - something that's independently verifiable. If there's a real effect happening, you can reduce some part of it to an experiment.

We've done this, for example, with homeopathy. We get constant anecdotal reports of homeopathy working, but when we conduct controlled experiments we find no effect whatsoever. What's more, epidemiology indicates that homeopath has no effect whatsoever outside of controlled experiments either.

So, isolate some feature; design a controlled experiment; conduct that experiment. And be prepared to take no for an answer. Do not change the design of the experiment mid-way, that just invalidates it. Don't mine the results for an indication of some other effect.

So, even if you can't establish the whole thing, narrow down some aspect of it and try to verify - or falsify - that.

Wouldn't being able to tell somebody else something you shouldn't have known be verifying it independently? Your standards seem impossible to meet with such a concept, how could you test a being or consciousness that doesn't want to be known to others or can't be contacted by just anyone in a lab? You are closing off the possibilities by saying that only things you can test a certain way are possible. How do you know?

 

[Craig4]

I blame this on the near impossibility of finding a nubile virgin to sacrifice. The sole remaining source, university Computer Science schools, has been over-hunted and is no longer viable. (And, of course, the Obama administration will not allow hunting in the still-fecund computer gaming areas. His opposition to hunting them in "mom's basement" is just another socialist apology and a sign that the Muslims are, indeed, winning this war. *pant, pant, pant*)

I need a lie down.

... and we're out of Osmonds.

 

[Craig4]

Limbo, over in the thread in the paranormal section we came up with a pretty good experiment to test your remote viewing capabilities. Is it just coincidence that you stopped posting in that thread when we started that conversation?

 

[PixyMisa]

Wouldn't being able to tell somebody else something you shouldn't have known be verifying it independently?

That depends. You have to properly control the conditions for the evidence to be convincing. Under properly controlled conditions, no such experiment has ever succeeded beyond random chance.

Your standards seem impossible to meet with such a concept, how could you test a being or consciousness that doesn't want to be known to others or can't be contacted by just anyone in a lab?

No, wrong. What reason do you have to believe such a being exists?

If it does something, we can test that.

You are closing off the possibilities by saying that only things you can test a certain way are possible.

No, that's completely wrong.

If it is real, it can be tested. This is always true.

We know that neutrinos are real, and they are fantastically difficult to detect. They have no direct affect on human life at all, unlike your proposed supernatural whatsits. And yet, we know that neutrinos are real, we can detect them and measure them and quantify them and classify them.

If we can detect neutrinos, we can detect your whatevers. You just have to actually do the work.

As I said earlier, we've done exactly this with homeopathy. There are two problems with homepathy; the first of which is that physics and chemistry and biology tell us that it can't possibly work.

Now, if we tested it and found that it did work, well, that would be a transcendent scientific breakthrough. But when we test it under controlled conditions - and here's the second problem - it has absolutely no effect whatsoever.

This doesn't mean that our experiments are wrong and we need to try again. This means that the anecdotal reports that homepathy is effective are inaccurate, which is what you expect of anecdotal reports.

What you have to do is define what you are talking about, form a hypothesis, do the experiment, and accept the results. Stop looking for excuses and do the work.

Or - and this is probably quicker, easier, and more educational - listen the the MIT Introduction to Psychology lecture series.

 

[Zanders]

Well, the original intent of this thread was to have people experiment and try to find their own proof with "chaos magic".

 

[PixyMisa]

The experiments have been done. There is no such thing as Chaos Magic. None of the things Limbo refers to exist.

 

[AkuManiMani]

You know I find it almost funny that certain someones are taking conclusions and opinions they've heard in lectures and read in books on absolute faith and presume that any and all first-hand experience that seems to go counter to that must be in error. Then they come on to a web forum to lecture and sermonize to other people about how to use critical thinking.

Its like being in church with the fundies I grew up with all over again -- except this time the fanatics have made a religion out of their conception of what constitutes science. Its absolutely sickening.