Looking for Skeptics

[Maurice Ledifficile]

Follow my line of logic, if you will, through this chain of posts:

Thank you, abaddon! Putting the above clues together, what appears (to me) to be happening is that flaccon/Tracey -- who holds with her fingers onto the wires that connect her laptop(s) to the speakers -- is producing the sounds herself in the same way that abaddon used to do.

Tracey is hearing the amplified noise of the speaker wire's metal end-piece, rubbing against the metal computer port into which the wire has been inserted. As she listens to otherwise silent or ambient-noise-only audio files, Tracey hears these amplified "fidget" noises because she is manipulating the speaker wire with her fingers.

She then applies audio pareidolia in the usual, normal, human way.

This explains what Tracey has meant when she says she only hears the "voices" during playback of the silent files. It explains why she can hear the noises on "older records" and on a different laptop. It also explains why none of us on this end can hear them: we're not finger-manipulating the speaker wires.


Snap. Or Eureka, as the case may be.

 

[pakeha]

Could it really be so simple?
Alderbank, was flaccon twitching the cables when you and your nephew visited the lady?

And some more.
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=49&pictureid=223[/qimg]

(a pair of doilies)

That's as loopy an example as ever I've seen to date!

 

[abaddon]

Could it really be so simple?
Alderbank, was flaccon twitching the cables when you and your nephew visited the lady?




That's as loopy an example as ever I've seen to date!

LOL, I don't know. flaccon's magic fingers just resonated with me due to that far off memory. IIRC, I suggested the oddity of causing noise by digital manipulation and one of the other geniuses went that extra mile of suggesting we could make music. I think it was Axel F we ended up playing in a very strange way.

However, just like flaccon, maxing out the volume was a requirement to achieve the effect.

 

[Daylightstar]

...
As far as I had time to check it out the docs qualifications match those on flaccon's letter, so...

Except for the discrepancy with the second partner.

The "Our Team" link on their website gets you to the qualifications of the various partners and salaried GPs.
Of one of the partners the GP's letter gives a D.F.F.P. qualification, where the website gives a D.F.S.R.H. qualification instead.
Not sure what to think of this discrepancy.

There appear to be some (more) discrepancies in this listing also.

The body of the letter remains at (extreme) odds what would one expect from a health care professional.

 

[Alderbank]

Twitching the cables was not something I was watching for. I'm not a magician and I didn't go looking for any kind of trickery. However at that stage of the game it was supposed to be essential to listen with speakers held to the ear (I notice that scrappy doesn't bother with any of that and it is no longer mentioned in connection with jsfisher's uploads). The wires, including the signal input cables to the amplified speakers, were tangled and had to be handled and untangled at various times.

flaccon did not attempt as far as I can recall to create any new voices while I was there. She was very genuine, quite determined about what she heard and surprised that I could not hear the same. She might also have felt that I was being obtuse denying what I could actually hear. She did say beforehand that I would hear the spirits say my own voice. I'm sure that did happen for many of her listeners.

For me the mystery was largely solved when jsf carried out his recent experiments with files and it was shown that files were never actually changed. I went back and re-read how flaccon and scrappy described what they heard. I now believe that when they talk about a file changing they mean that where there was gobbledygook, faint but increasingly clear words have appeared in the background. What you or I call pareidolia. So for example when scrappy got his new laptop floccan sent him a new recording of 'silence'. She had played it through and heard nothing of note. When scrappy listened however he was amazed to hear new sounds - voices saying 'welcome to the Roberts people'. Excitedly he phoned flaccon to explain what he heard and exactly where it was on the recording. When flaccon listened carefully at that spot, her copy of the file had changed and she too could now hear these new voices. scrappy struggled to explain to us what it sounded like by saying that the voices might not be in the recording but were separate and on top of the recording. That could be a good description of the pareidolic words assembled from the random noise

This did not explain the conversations with the spirits described by flaccon which seemed to happen more in the early days. It was something like she would ask a question, make a recording and the answer was inside the recording when it was replayed. I'm sure now that they could be explained by Paheka's theory about twitching the wires while fiddling with the speakers

 

[Pixel42]

I don't think we're going to make any progress until flaccon and scrappy grasp what pareidolia actually is, which they still show no sign of doing after numerous attempts to explain it to them.

 

[Mojo]

Twitching the cables was not something I was watching for.

It wouldn't necessarily be deliberate. The sort of small involuntary movements everyone makes would probably be enough.

 

[Alderbank]

The "Our Team" link on their website gets you to the qualifications of the various partners and salaried GPs.
Of one of the partners the GP's letter gives a D.F.F.P. qualification, where the website gives a D.F.S.R.H. qualification instead.
Not sure what to think of this discrepancy.

There appear to be some (more) discrepancies in this listing also.

The body of the letter remains at (extreme) odds what would one expect from a health care professional.

Some neat detective work to track this practice down. One of the health centres is actually in the village where flaccon lives.

Daylightstar, I don't know which part of the UK you are familiar with but I agree with other posters that this letter and group practice are absolutely typical and certainly not at extreme odds. The practice will buy headed paper several reams at a time and use it until it is gone. They will not trash it every time there is a change at the practice. Similarly the website might not be updated often. The website of my local group practice is very out of date. Either one of the practice GPs has acquired another qualification (GPs are often studying part-time) or there has been a practice change and a similarly qualified GP has replaced a leaver.

I agree it is illogical why certain parts were redacted and not others. I like to think that flaccon was setting a little puzzle for us.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of twitching cables explaining much, though I did notice in the box.com collection of files, the ones called "VolumeNormInt" do have sounds I associate with an intermittent mic connection. The start of the recording is fairly clean, with the general ambient noise of a quiet room and a rather noisy microphone turned up to high gain. Within a few seconds the mic output starts to come and go rapidly as if there was a bad connection. At about 20s there is a bang (sounds acoustic rather than electronic, like something hard hitting a tabletop) and that loud sound makes the gain of the mic duck down significantly so the ambience in the rest of the recording is quieter. In the rest of the recording there's still a gritty fluttering sound which might be the continuation of the same poor connection as before though it's also rather like the sound you get by twiddling the input jack of an external microphone if the connections are a bit grubby.

Nothing supernatural reveals itself.

 

[malicus]

Twitching the cables was not something I was watching for. I'm not a magician and I didn't go looking for any kind of trickery. However at that stage of the game it was supposed to be essential to listen with speakers held to the ear (I notice that scrappy doesn't bother with any of that and it is no longer mentioned in connection with jsfisher's uploads). The wires, including the signal input cables to the amplified speakers, were tangled and had to be handled and untangled at various times.

flaccon did not attempt as far as I can recall to create any new voices while I was there. She was very genuine, quite determined about what she heard and surprised that I could not hear the same. She might also have felt that I was being obtuse denying what I could actually hear. She did say beforehand that I would hear the spirits say my own voice. I'm sure that did happen for many of her listeners.

For me the mystery was largely solved when jsf carried out his recent experiments with files and it was shown that files were never actually changed. I went back and re-read how flaccon and scrappy described what they heard. I now believe that when they talk about a file changing they mean that where there was gobbledygook, faint but increasingly clear words have appeared in the background. What you or I call pareidolia. So for example when scrappy got his new laptop floccan sent him a new recording of 'silence'. She had played it through and heard nothing of note. When scrappy listened however he was amazed to hear new sounds - voices saying 'welcome to the Roberts people'. Excitedly he phoned flaccon to explain what he heard and exactly where it was on the recording. When flaccon listened carefully at that spot, her copy of the file had changed and she too could now hear these new voices. scrappy struggled to explain to us what it sounded like by saying that the voices might not be in the recording but were separate and on top of the recording. That could be a good description of the pareidolic words assembled from the random noise

This did not explain the conversations with the spirits described by flaccon which seemed to happen more in the early days. It was something like she would ask a question, make a recording and the answer was inside the recording when it was replayed. I'm sure now that they could be explained by Paheka's theory about twitching the wires while fiddling with the speakers

Nice summation.

My highlighting confirms at each stage the listener is told what to expect to hear. Even asking the spirits a question contains foreknowledge of anticipated answers.

So. Pareidolia.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I like to think that flaccon was setting a little puzzle for us.

I wonder if that's why she sent jsfisher a video with pictures of herself not speaking but with a soundtrack which to me appears to be a budgie chirping and a (Brummie?) woman's voice trying to explain something to a man who isn't taking it in, perhaps because he's distracted by the TV in the background. It's a very odd recording. Simultanously completely mundane and utterly baffling in purpose.

 

[Daylightstar]

Some neat detective work to track this practice down. One of the health centres is actually in the village where flaccon lives.

Daylightstar, I don't know which part of the UK you are familiar with but I agree with other posters that this letter and group practice are absolutely typical and certainly not at extreme odds. ...

As far as the quality of the letter's template is concerned, it's not too implausible that it really is the way it looks. From a group practice I'd have expected a more professional look, which is why I still brought it up as suspicious.

It is the content of the body of the letter, which I'd say is at extreme odds with what one would expect from a health care professional.

...
I agree it is illogical why certain parts were redacted and not others. I like to think that flaccon was setting a little puzzle for us.

Let her just show the unknwon redacted parts.

 

[Pixel42]

It is the content of the body of the letter, which I'd say is at extreme odds with what one would expect from a health care professional.

You are a busy GP who has a patient who sees the supernatural everywhere, and explains all sorts of everyday occurrences by it. Her latest imaginary experience has resulted in an improvement in her (obviously psychosomatic) physical symptoms, and you would like to preserve this placebo effect. There's nothing you can do to help the patient directly because there's nothing physically wrong with her. The patient believes she is being directed to bring this latest supernatural experience to the attention of the church, and wants you to write an introductory letter to her bishop. What would you do?

 

[Alderbank]

You are a busy GP who has a patient who sees the supernatural everywhere, and explains all sorts of everyday occurrences by it. Her latest imaginary experience has resulted in an improvement in her (obviously psychosomatic) physical symptoms, and you would like to preserve this placebo effect. There's nothing you can do to help the patient directly because there's nothing physically wrong with her. The patient believes she is being directed to bring this latest supernatural experience to the attention of the church, and wants you to write an introductory letter to her bishop. What would you do?

Also this patient loves to talk and to play you things. The practice allows you an average of six minutes per patient. You have a waiting room full of people outside your office...

 

[Jack by the hedge]

You are a busy GP who has a patient who sees the supernatural everywhere, and explains all sorts of everyday occurrences by it. Her latest imaginary experience has resulted in an improvement in her (obviously psychosomatic) physical symptoms, and you would like to preserve this placebo effect. There's nothing you can do to help the patient directly because there's nothing physically wrong with her. The patient believes she is being directed to bring this latest supernatural experience to the attention of the church, and wants you to write an introductory letter to her bishop. What would you do?

I'd write the letter much as presented here. I wouldn't write as though to another doctor, describing symptoms the patient presented with, as someone suggested they expected to see.

I'd be brief, neutral, keep to the facts and avoid offering any opinions on what whoever reads the letter to ought to do.

In short, I think the letter is real and I don't for a moment think it means the doctor believes flaccon is really hearing spirit voices.

 

[Alderbank]

I wonder if that's why she sent jsfisher a video with pictures of herself not speaking but with a soundtrack which to me appears to be a budgie chirping and a (Brummie?) woman's voice trying to explain something to a man who isn't taking it in, perhaps because he's distracted by the TV in the background. It's a very odd recording. Simultanously completely mundane and utterly baffling in purpose.

...and (to me) completely different from anything else so far. What is it supposed to be evidence of?

 

[Pixel42]

In short, I think the letter is real and I don't for a moment think it means the doctor believes flaccon is really hearing spirit voices.

That was what I thought when flaccon first mentioned her GP's involvement and letter. The contents of the letter, when finally revealed, were pretty much what I expected.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...and (to me) completely different from anything else so far. What is it supposed to be evidence of?

Completely different.

Perhaps it's an experiment. A control to see if we can tell when a recording really does have voices on it, or if we'll just keep denying there's anything on any of the recordings.

 

[pakeha]

Twitching the cables was not something I was watching for. I'm not a magician and I didn't go looking for any kind of trickery. However at that stage of the game it was supposed to be essential to listen with speakers held to the ear (I notice that scrappy doesn't bother with any of that and it is no longer mentioned in connection with jsfisher's uploads). The wires, including the signal input cables to the amplified speakers, were tangled and had to be handled and untangled at various times.

...This did not explain the conversations with the spirits described by flaccon which seemed to happen more in the early days. It was something like she would ask a question, make a recording and the answer was inside the recording when it was replayed. I'm sure now that they could be explained by Paheka's theory about twitching the wires while fiddling with the speakers

Please don't take credit from the parent of the twitching cables idea, Alderbank.
'Twas Maurice Ledifficile, I swear it was!

I don't think we're going to make any progress until flaccon and scrappy grasp what pareidolia actually is, which they still show no sign of doing after numerous attempts to explain it to them.

Hmm.
I wonder if having them listen to 'false lyrics' clips or even the infamous 'Paul is deadl' would help.

Here's an example of 'false lyrics'


And the Beatles

It wouldn't necessarily be deliberate. The sort of small involuntary movements everyone makes would probably be enough.

I agree. Cables are daunting creatures, full of surprises for the unwary.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of twitching cables explaining much, though I did notice in the box.com collection of files, the ones called "VolumeNormInt" do have sounds I associate with an intermittent mic connection. ...Nothing supernatural reveals itself.

Thanks for your take on that. I'm quite impressed by the amount of good-will and patience so many knowledgeable members of the forum are showing in this thread.

 

[Pixel42]

I wonder if having them listen to 'false lyrics' clips or even the infamous 'Paul is deadl' would help.

Tried that weeks ago. It was completely ignored, like so much else.