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Hello from a non-skeptic

You are all so attached to rhetoric and so quick to dismiss anything that is presented to you.
And you completely fail to supply evidence of your assertions.

Perhaps I should have said "evidence to me personally" rather than "personal evidence".
Evidence should stand up to scrutiny.

At the age of four or five? Hardly...
I can clearly remember events that occured to be at the age of four/five. Teachers, other children, stories and other events.

This is an old argument used by skeptics to counter-argument children's memories and hypnotic regression, but how many of you here have ever undergone a regression to verify for yourselves? Another favorite is that "it is the regressionist that guides you into such memories". In the only regression I have ever done in my entire lifetime, this was not the case. There was absolutely no "guidance" into anything of what I "saw".
The reason this is an "old argument" is because it hasn't be countered.
 
The problem I find with such testing is the following: a "medium" means an "intermediary". To me a "psychic" is something different
I tend to use the term 'psychic' for anyone who claims any sort of powers, replace my use of the word with the more specific 'medium' throughout my last post if you like.

I don't believe any truly serious medium would place himself/herself under such testing conditions
They don't need to "place themselves under such testing conditions", you need to do such an analysis if you're going to make the sort of claims about their abilities that you've been making on this thread. You say you attended sessions with mediums for years and all you've got to show for it is a few anecdotes; if you had been diligently recording all their insights and comparing them with someone's - even your own - best guesses you would actually have some meaningful data for us to examine. As it is the most likely explanation of your data, such as it is, is confirmation bias.
 
You do know that past-life regression therapy has been completely debunked, right? Hypnosis can't even uncover reliable memories about a subject's current life.

Because memory can be very unreliable, of course.

Memories are often not so nearly correct as we imagine. We fill in gaps, the retelling of the story influences us, input from others have an effect, as does our emotions and our understanding of the world at the age we experience them.

Example: When I was 5, I found myself in the ER. I vividly remember another little girl there who had a giant safety pin attached to her hip. I saw the pin--it had a tube of yellow fluid (medicine?) on it.

I grew up in an age before disposable diapers, when pins were used.
It wasn't until I became a veterinarian that I realized what I likely witnessed: it was probably a metal external fixator device, used for certain fractures.

I saw a metal object at her hip--my 5 year brain "remembered" a giant safety pin. While I will never know for sure, I suspect my re-interpretation is accurate--it is certainly logical, and was quite a "eureka" moment.

Yet I can still "see" that giant safety pin...
 
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As I said at the beginning of this now very long thread, whatever may have been "evidenced" to me personally can be easily debunked by you guys, which was I posed the question and made the suggestion concerning the effects of observation upon experimental results, and what kind of interconnection there might be between them and how:

I am not expert in this, but my understanding is that no matter how subtle the measurement instrument attempts to be, no matter how delicate the probe, you will always cause some information (phase, intensity, wavelength, etc) to be lost, and the consequence is that the interference pattern is lost. The real reason is that the photon is really going through both slits, but you cannot confirm this because it is only true if no measurement is made. It is the act of detection that kills the effect of the interference pattern.

How and why does this happen? What kind of interference can the act of observation possibly have upon the results? This is my one and only question here.
 
Concerning what was said to me regarding Lady Di a member of the royal family, perhaps I should be more specific:


Fixed that for you. The prediction made was not as specific as your statement suggests.


For 12 years I took part in a spiritualist center here in Rio. The story as to how and why I came to join one is rather long, so I won't go into the details right now here in this post. The sessions were held on Saturday nights and usually went into the early hours of Sunday. For whatever relevance this may have, though to me it seems rather picky, I could mention that what was said to me was in the early hours of Sunday, so therefore the accident took place within the "one week".


Twelve years is a very, very long time. Did anyone at the spiritualist centre know that you were born in Scotland or that you may have been distantly related to the royal family or that you believed you were a reincarnation of a member of the royal family?

Surely after twelve years, at least some people at the centre knew a lot about you.


Without my having asked or said anything, one of the mediums at the session approached me and said:

"A member of that Royal Family you have associations to is going to die this week. Pay attention to whom it might be..."


Firstly, forgive me if I doubt that you can remember a prediction, word for word, made years ago. As RSLancastr mentioned in his post, memory is fickle and changes over time. It is quite possible that what you now remember as being a reading that included a distant family link may have initially been some added flavour to the prediction knowing you were born in Scotland. Not a link through familial relationship, but a link through nationality.

However, as mentioned above, even if the prediction included a family link, it would not be surprising if, after twelve years, many people knew a lot about you.

Which then brings the prediction back to the death of a member of the royal family, which we have already covered as not being all that extraordinary a prediction for a psychic to make. Good luck for being around for one of the few times that a psychic actually managed to score a hit.


I am also a believer in reincarnation, btw.


I strongly suggest you start another thread on reincarnation (or ask a moderator to split this one). Otherwise this thread will become a mish-mash of multiple beliefs.


I took part in this spiritualist center for twelve years. In all the twelve years I took part in it, why would the medium choose to say what she did precisely on that day and in that week? This was also the case when I was told of my wife's pregnancy. Nothing like that had ever been said to me before, nor was anything similar ever said afterwards, so the chances of a "coincidence" were minimum. Furthermore, I gave these two cases merely as examples and in attempt to make a long story short, but the cases of such "impossible coincidences" that I came to encounter were numerous throughout all the years I took part there.


Numerous hits after TWELVE YEARS at a spritualist centre?! This is statistically insignificant. How do you think I would do, with no psychic powers whatsoever, if I spent several hours, once a week, for twelve years making predictions? What if a group of JREF posters got together spending several hours, once a week for twelve years making predictions? It would be downright bizarre if we DIDN'T score many hits. Even some real long shots (like the death of a member of a royal family in the coming week).

This, more than anything, tells us that your experiences are nothing out of the ordinary.
 
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How and why does this happen? What kind of interference can the act of observation possibly have upon the results? This is my one and only question here.

To observe something you have to interact with that. You can only see the desk in front of you if there are photons bouncing off it; you can only feel it by touching it; you can only hear if there is a medium (usually air) to carry the sound waves.

To measuring the position, velocity, or spin of a subatomic particle, you have to bounce something else off it.
 
Firstly, forgive me if I doubt that you can remember a prediction, word for word, made years ago. As RSLancastr mentioned in his post, memory is fickle and changes over time. It is quite possible that what you now remember as being a reading that included a distant family link may have initially been some added flavour to the prediction knowing you were born in Scotland. Not a link through familial relationship, but a link through nationality.

The event of Diana's death having happened just seven days after what was said to me was what clearly retained in my memory exactly what had been said, and why I remember to this day the exact words.

May I point out the fact that the future is not set in stone but subject to our free-will? Predictions of the future were not a constant. They were very rarely made, in fact.
 
Hello godless dave (what an unfortunate choice of a user-name),

To observe something you have to interact with that. You can only see the desk in front of you if there are photons bouncing off it; you can only feel it by touching it; you can only hear if there is a medium (usually air) to carry the sound waves.

To measuring the position, velocity, or spin of a subatomic particle, you have to bounce something else off it.

Does this explain how and why the initial results on the sensor determined wave patterns and when put under observation the results began to indicate patterns expected for particles? Forgive my ignorance...
 
As I said at the beginning of this now very long thread, whatever may have been "evidenced" to me personally can be easily debunked by you guys, which was I posed the question and made the suggestion concerning the effects of observation upon experimental results, and what kind of interconnection there might be between them and how:

I am not expert in this, but my understanding is that no matter how subtle the measurement instrument attempts to be, no matter how delicate the probe, you will always cause some information (phase, intensity, wavelength, etc) to be lost, and the consequence is that the interference pattern is lost. The real reason is that the photon is really going through both slits, but you cannot confirm this because it is only true if no measurement is made. It is the act of detection that kills the effect of the interference pattern.

How and why does this happen? What kind of interference can the act of observation possibly have upon the results? This is my one and only question here.

Is that where people are going with this? Trying to use Quantum Mechanics to 'prove' that supernatural powers don't work when being observed by non-believers? How in the world have I missed that, its so obvious.
 
Charles,

Please give these questions some serious consideration:

- If twenty people each made twenty predictions per week for 12 years, (i.e. approximately 250,000 predictions), how many do you think would be successful purely by chance?*

- Is it reasonable to assume that at least a few of these would be long shot predictions? Predictions that, on there own, seem to be quite remarkable?

- If any individual person only got to hear three predictions, what sort of impact would it have on the person who, by chance, happened to hear one of the long shot predictions?




*Rhetorical. I'm not actually asking for a number.
 
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Hello godless dave (what an unfortunate choice of a user-name),

What's unfortunate about it?

Does this explain how and why the initial results on the sensor determined wave patterns and when put under observation the results began to indicate patterns expected for particles? Forgive my ignorance...

It was always under observation. If you're using a sensor, you're observing something, or the sensor is.
 
What's unfortunate about it?
Numerologically Suspect. See here. You lack Essence.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First Name: godless
Middle Name:
Last Name: dave

Birth Name: godless dave


Expression: 41 / 5
Soul Urge: 17 / 8 (Vowels: OEAE)
First Force: 6
Personality: 24 / 6 (Consonants: GDLSSDV)
Cornerstone: 7

Ego

Expression: 27 / 9
Soul Urge: 11 / 2
Personality: 16 / 7


Essence

Expression: 0
Soul Urge: 0
Personality: 0


Inheritance

Expression: 14 / 5
Soul Urge: 6
Personality: 8
 
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Quite frankly I am beginning to think that one of the tactics used here is to beat a newcomer with different views than your own to exhaustion. Most of your counter-argumentations to what I have presented (the predictions, Jacqueline Pool's case, Dr Ian Stevenson's work, etc.) have been feable and biased to say the least. And precipitated. I am quite certain that if I had made use of them you guys would have ripped me to shreds, but it is the sheer volume of replies attempting to contradict what I have been trying to share without giving anything a second thought or even assimilating my replies to them that is extremely tiring. I am having some friends over, so let's take a break, shall we?

Thank you all for your attention and your replies...

Charles
 
Loss Leader, if you will have the patience to let me continue, I believe I will answer your questions in as best as I can. I am not ruling out your argumentations, I am considering them, and this is one of the reasons why I came here.


As you're answering posts that came long after mine, I am beginning to despair of ever seeing you confront my questions head-on.
 
Does this explain how and why the initial results on the sensor determined wave patterns and when put under observation the results began to indicate patterns expected for particles? Forgive my ignorance...

I for one have never heard of such a phenomenon, so no, I don't think real physics would explain it.
 
Sorry, Loss Leader, to answer one of them, my wife wasn't even present when I was told of her pregnancy...

Would it be too much trouble to ask which ones in specific you would like me to reply to? And could others please hold for a moment so that I might?

Thank you.
 

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