Looking for Skeptics

[Pup]

Yes I understand, Paredolia is not something "suffered" I imagine the suffering to be, when one cannot accept Paredolia as the only answer. Therefore it becoming a mental state, in this case, "Severely Delusioned"

But it wouldn't bother you if paredolia was the answer? Seems that possibility is what's making you defensive and afraid.

Personally, I'd think it would be very cool if dead people could communicate with living people, but so far, everyone who's claimed they've experienced it has not been able to offer any evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

Every witness so far, with hands-on approach, clarifies my conclusion, that it is without doubt "communication" from the spirit-world.

Just as every witness without a ruler, would confirm that the lines in the optical illusion are different lengths. The next step is, metaphorically, to measure them with a ruler.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Actually, I'll PM that instead, so as not to give clues...

 

[truethat]

You think I would feel upset if this wasn't real? Disappointed in the fact that my loved ones really are at rest? Either way is jubilation for me.

The point is you are saying we are "dismissing it as pareidolia" when instead you are saying it is "magic!"

This is where it gets a little tedious with us. Pareidolia is so obvious.

The same way "UFOs" are always these vague blurry pictures.

Why would you reject the answer to something to go for "magic" instead?

 

[wardenclyffe]

Oh cool. If were doing it this way. I have a legit request. One of my friends good friend suddenly died the other day. This woman died two days after the father she had been taking care of died. They are at this minute preparing the body. I have literally just spoken to the woman who was helping to prepare the body of her friend.

So just see if you can get the name of the woman who died, and the name of the friend.

This is a "brand new death" so to speak, so it should be quite easy I think? No?

I don't necessarily think it's fair to just bombard the spirits with trivia questions. In the case of Pixel42's real name, the spirits acknowledged that they were aware of Pixel42's interest in their existence and commented P42's attitude. That suggests that they have information about that individual. It doesn't mean they know everything about everyone in this world or the next. If we can just jump this one hurdle we will have accomplished something.

Ward

 

[Biscuit]

I would prefer it if you stuck around and tried to learn something. Many of our most valuable posters came here labouring under one misapprehension or another, just as it seems likely you are.

I completely agree! Stick around no matter what! I find something interesting almost every day on this forum.

 

[marplots]

Pareidolia seems like a "too pat" answer.
If I got a phone call and the connection was bad, but I told you it was my father calling and he wanted me to pick up some cabbage at the farmer's market, no one would think it strange that I could pick up his voice and his intent. And yet, doing the same thing with an image or a sound file is automatically labelled pareidolia?

The answer, if there is one, is in what the spirits say, not whether or not someone can hear them saying it.

 

[Alderbank]

If Alderbank reports that there is nothing worthy of an investigation, I will apologise to you all, and respectfully leave this site.

Flaccon, I have no authority here. It is clear to me from reading the thread that we all agree there is plenty here worthy of investigation. However if it helps you I am happy to confirm personally that there is plenty here worthy of investigation.

In post #315 I asked you a simple question. Essentially I said Pixel and I are willing to visit your venue at a time and date of your choice to help you carry out whatever demonstrations you choose to substantiate your claim - what exactly would you like to do? You ignored that post but have found time to develop several complex philosophical ideas which must have required some soul searching.

You have posted in a section of the forum reserved for serious applicants for the MDC. You seem to respect my authority so before the mods move this thread could I respectfully ask you answer my post and get the thread back on topic of investigation of your claims?

 

[Pixel42]

Pareidolia seems like a "too pat" answer.
If I got a phone call and the connection was bad, but I told you it was my father calling and he wanted me to pick up some cabbage at the farmer's market, no one would think it strange that I could pick up his voice and his intent. And yet, doing the same thing with an image or a sound file is automatically labelled pareidolia?

It's precisely that ability to identify a signal that really is buried in the noise that is the root cause of pareidolia. We are so good at it that we will sometimes think we've found a signal where there is, in fact, only noise. False positives are not as potentially dangerous as false negatives, so our perceptions are tuned to be more likely to find a signal that isn't really there than miss one that is.

The answer, if there is one, is in what the spirits say, not whether or not someone can hear them saying it.

There we agree.

 

[truethat]

Pareidolia seems like a "too pat" answer.
If I got a phone call and the connection was bad, but I told you it was my father calling and he wanted me to pick up some cabbage at the farmer's market, no one would think it strange that I could pick up his voice and his intent. And yet, doing the same thing with an image or a sound file is automatically labelled pareidolia?

The answer, if there is one, is in what the spirits say, not whether or not someone can hear them saying it.

The issue is that it's not a matter of actual evidence, but in twisting something into some personalized interpretation. To the point of ridiculousness. There's a huge difference between saying something sounded like your father and saying it "was' your father.

You could receive a phone call of someone who starts talking to you and you think you recognize it as your father but it turns out that it wasn't at all. It was your brother or uncle and you misunderstood.

Not only does this claim make it sound like a person but it totally personalizes it.

 

[Pup]

Pareidolia seems like a "too pat" answer.
If I got a phone call and the connection was bad, but I told you it was my father calling and he wanted me to pick up some cabbage at the farmer's market, no one would think it strange that I could pick up his voice and his intent. And yet, doing the same thing with an image or a sound file is automatically labelled pareidolia?

Because he's dead and his voice was presumably not recorded on the file before he died. Makes a bit of difference as to the probability of it being actually his voice or something else.

Kinda like the photo of the squirrel on Mars. If that were in my backyard, I'd say no big deal, obviously a real squirrel. Because it's on Mars, I say pareidolia.

 

[marplots]

It's precisely that ability to identify a signal that really is buried in the noise that is the root cause of pareidolia. We are so good at it that we will sometimes think we've found a signal where there is, in fact, only noise. False positives are not as potentially dangerous as false negatives, so our perceptions are tuned to be more likely to find a signal that isn't really there than miss one that is.

The issue is that it's not a matter of actual evidence, but in twisting something into some personalized interpretation. To the point of ridiculousness. There's a huge difference between saying something sounded like your father and saying it "was' your father.

You could receive a phone call of someone who starts talking to you and you think you recognize it as your father but it turns out that it wasn't at all. It was your brother or uncle and you misunderstood.

Not only does this claim make it sound like a person but it totally personalizes it.

Agree with all this. My point is that the only real way we decide if it's just something extracted from random noise and actual perception is whether the information we get makes sense in some context. One hallmark of EVP seems to be the twisting that goes on post detection to fit some phrase to the question asked so that the interaction has the form of meaningful communication.

Even if only flaccon can detect the voices, I'm still left thinking maybe flaccon is just better at detecting voices. I haven't done anything to claim the voices are there or not.

We are almost in the position of listening to a translator telling us what someone speaking another language is saying. If we don't speak that language, how would we ever know the translation is correct?

My idea is that we would only know by matching the meaning of the communication to an external reality. And that brings us right back to square one. How do you get capricious spirits to participate so that we can get information the translator couldn't know?

There is one other thing that could be done. Take some recordings and retest later. Does the translator give the same translation or does it differ? What about playing just a short segment of a longer piece: do they come up with a consistent translation?

Let's say I have an ear-bud in and I'm picking up some FM "bleed." You can't hear it. How might I ever convince you that I am hearing what I claim? Seems tough.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Agree with all this. My point is that the only real way we decide if it's just something extracted from random noise and actual perception is whether the information we get makes sense in some context. One hallmark of EVP seems to be the twisting that goes on post detection to fit some phrase to the question asked so that the interaction has the form of meaningful communication.

Even if only flaccon can detect the voices, I'm still left thinking maybe flaccon is just better at detecting voices. I haven't done anything to claim the voices are there or not.

We are almost in the position of listening to a translator telling us what someone speaking another language is saying. If we don't speak that language, how would we ever know the translation is correct?

My idea is that we would only know by matching the meaning of the communication to an external reality. And that brings us right back to square one. How do you get capricious spirits to participate so that we can get information the translator couldn't know?

There is one other thing that could be done. Take some recordings and retest later. Does the translator give the same translation or does it differ? What about playing just a short segment of a longer piece: do they come up with a consistent translation?

Let's say I have an ear-bud in and I'm picking up some FM "bleed." You can't hear it. How might I ever convince you that I am hearing what I claim? Seems tough.

Some very simple test protocols have already been proposed in this thread. I think we are all waiting for flaccon to say, "Perfect. That's exactly what we'll do."

She did say that she would try to get Pixel42's real name from the spirits. That would be a good start.

Ward

 

[marplots]

Some very simple test protocols have already been proposed in this thread. I think we are all waiting for flaccon to say, "Perfect. That's exactly what we'll do."

She did say that she would try to get Pixel42's real name from the spirits. That would be a good start.

Ward

What conclusions would you draw from the following results?
1) Spirits get name right.
2) Spirits get name wrong.
3) Spirits decline to answer.

And how do you distinguish that set from this set?
1) Flaccon gets the name right.
2) Flaccon gets the name wrong.
3) Flaccon declines to answer.

I don't see this moving the matter forward much, although it's interesting.

 

[AdMan]

I'm also interested in flaccon's claim that the spirits "can create future". First, in better understanding exactly what that means, and second seeing if we can come up with a protocol to test it, which sounds doable given how I interpret the statement (i.e., an ability to influence future events).

 

[Biscuit]

Pareidolia seems like a "too pat" answer.
If I got a phone call and the connection was bad, but I told you it was my father calling and he wanted me to pick up some cabbage at the farmer's market, no one would think it strange that I could pick up his voice and his intent. And yet, doing the same thing with an image or a sound file is automatically labelled pareidolia?

The answer, if there is one, is in what the spirits say, not whether or not someone can hear them saying it.

It's not the medium its the fact that dead people are talking to you.


ETA: pun intended

 

[wardenclyffe]

What conclusions would you draw from the following results?
1) Spirits get name right.
2) Spirits get name wrong.
3) Spirits decline to answer.

And how do you distinguish that set from this set?
1) Flaccon gets the name right.
2) Flaccon gets the name wrong.
3) Flaccon declines to answer.

I don't see this moving the matter forward much, although it's interesting.

At this point, your two sets are indistinguishable from one another.

If number three occurs, it suggests we might be pretty much finished.
If number two occurs, we'll listen to explanations about why it occured.
If number one occurs, it will generate a lot more investigation.

It will move things forward in that it will demonstrate how seriously flaccon takes this and how seriously we should take flaccon---and it's interesting.

Ward

 

[Pup]

What conclusions would you draw from the following results?
1) Spirits get name right.
2) Spirits get name wrong.
3) Spirits decline to answer.

And how do you distinguish that set from this set?
1) Flaccon gets the name right.
2) Flaccon gets the name wrong.
3) Flaccon declines to answer.

I don't see this moving the matter forward much, although it's interesting.

As usual, the first step is identifying that there is an unexplained event occurring, before hypothesizing what's causing it. Assuming that it would be difficult for Flaccon to get Pixel42's name right on her own, it would show that there's a probability Flaccon actually does have a way of getting information that one wouldn't expert her to get.

That would be a step forward toward showing there even is a phenomenon that needs any explanation other than pareidolia. If it's a real phenomenon, gathering enough evidence to show it's actual spirits of the dead, rather than mischievous living aliens impersonating them with advanced technology, would take years of experiments.

 

[truethat]

Ok for the purposes of this test I have created a gmail account bouyed on the back of another fake account. So there is no worry about finding out information about the email origins (hopefully anyway)

The email account is this

flaccon4test@gmail.com


and the password is

randijref

there, everyone should now be able to access the information without posting it publicly.

Tahdah


ETA flaccon if that doesn't work for you, simply sign in and change the password to a different one and then PM the people you want to have access to it.

Hope this helps.

Everyone please be mature and don't get stupid.

 

[marplots]

As usual, the first step is identifying that there is an unexplained event occurring, before hypothesizing what's causing it. Assuming that it would be difficult for Flaccon to get Pixel42's name right on her own, it would show that there's a probability Flaccon actually does have a way of getting information that one wouldn't expert her to get.

That would be a step forward toward showing there even is a phenomenon that needs any explanation other than pareidolia. If it's a real phenomenon, gathering enough evidence to show it's actual spirits of the dead, rather than mischievous living aliens impersonating them with advanced technology, would take years of experiments.

The problem is that pareidolia explains too much. If I observe a painting and say it's an image of a woman, how am I to distinguish art from pareidolia? I think I'm reading what you wrote as it appears on my screen, but I'm not sure I could defend against a claim that I am just reconstructing random dots.

If an explanation is to be the default, we need some clear way to tell that our explanation is incorrect when it is incorrect. And this method may run afoul of the human/spirit attribute of agency.

I think we've all accepted there is a phenomenon here. There's a "something," even if that something turns out to be outright trolling and prevarication. I was suggesting another method to try. Provisionally accept all the claims as stated and participate in the experience, relying on, at some point, an inability to sustain belief. I want to use the Bible to disprove the Bible by first granting everything in the Bible as true.

 

[AdMan]

The problem is that pareidolia explains too much. If I observe a painting and say it's an image of a woman, how am I to distinguish art from pareidolia? I think I'm reading what you wrote as it appears on my screen, but I'm not sure I could defend against a claim that I am just reconstructing random dots.

If an explanation is to be the default, we need some clear way to tell that our explanation is incorrect when it is incorrect. And this method may run afoul of the human/spirit attribute of agency.

I think we've all accepted there is a phenomenon here. There's a "something," even if that something turns out to be outright trolling and prevarication. I was suggesting another method to try. Provisionally accept all the claims as stated and participate in the experience, relying on, at some point, an inability to sustain belief. I want to use the Bible to disprove the Bible by first granting everything in the Bible as true.

You have an interesting understanding of the null hypothesis.