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My Ghost Story

Jodie said:
I might not completely understand the concept of reality as described by the multiverse theory but I believe I'm on the right track.
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Convince me that you are.

Hans Peter Durr was another one who gave credence to the existence of a soul independent of mind.
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Does he have an empirically-sound, falsifiable, hypothetico-deductively valid argument? No, he doesn't. Therefore it's not science. He may have been a scientist in other respects, but stapling woo to irrelevant science doesn't validate the woo.
 
JayUtah said:
It is if you're using it to support the proposition that your dead mother's ghost appeared to you in a dream and told you the future.
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I have no idea. Identity theft exists in the 4th dimension, I don't see that being something we'ld stop doing just because we don't have bodies anymore.....I'm being facetious, but I hope you get my point.
 
JayUtah said:
Convince me that you are.



Does he have an empirically-sound, falsifiable, hypothetico-deductively valid argument? No, he doesn't. Therefore it's not science. He may have been a scientist in other respects, but stapling woo to irrelevant science doesn't validate the woo.
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If Durr concluded something from physical laws that we know about then it is his hypothesis, a hypothesis grounded in empirical data. Therefore it is a hypothetical argument that does have merit since neither side of the debate regarding whether a soul exists is falsifiable at this time. The existence of other dimensions doesn't fall into the woo category, it's based on mathematics. Neither does the disembodied "I" that makes you who you are depending on what research results you accept. To say these hypotheses/concepts are woo based is inaccurate.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/181284-human-consciousness-is-simply-a-state-of-matter-like-a-solid-or-liquid-but-quantum
 
Jodie said:
In my case, what was said in the dream actually came true. This is why I think it was some kind of genuine communication from either my mother or something that looked like her when she was in her 30's.
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Your own (mostly unconscious) insight, fallible memory/unintentional confabulation and sheer coincidence are all much more plausible explanations than an entity capable of seeing the future communicating with you through your dreams.
 
Jodie said:
I don't know that other entities would be there, that's simply my idea. Actually , I don't think it's "other entities" but an extension of our own consciousness/existence/being or whatever tag you'ld like to use to describe yourself.



I understand the science but the rest is strictly my idea.



If you are working from the premise that consciousness originates in the brain then I would agree with you but if the brain only functions as a type of receiver or lens to enable you to perceive the world here then I would say you were wrong. That's just my opinion.



In my case, what was said in the dream actually came true. This is why I think it was some kind of genuine communication from either my mother or something that looked like her when she was in her 30's. As I said, the future wasn't altered because I had no idea what choices or decisions to warn anyone about to prevent the outcomes. I never had this kind of thing happen again whether or not it was real.



Sad in the sense that I couldn't honor my mother's request but on the other hand it was partly responsible for why I believe the way I do, for that I'm thankful. Even if you don't agree with me I can't see why my belief would inspire pity of any kind.
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Cosmic Yak said:
"It did SO happen! You can't prove it didn't!"
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:rolleyes:
 
Jodie said:
No, if it had been about me, maybe, but she didn't have anything to say about my future.
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Of course not, she wasn't there. You need to learn, on your own, from your situation with your mother while she was still alive and the impossibility to learn from her now.

In some way, you are raping your memory of your mother.
 
Jodie said:
…My interpretation of that might be incorrect but to say it was all a memory or imagination isn't an accurate assessment either if we lack the ability to perceive other dimensions indicated by math and simulations of life.
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If we lack the ability to perceive other dimensions <blah blah> then how do you manage to perceive them?

You want to cross the bridge from here to some endlessly impenetrable mystery but you don't want to think about what the bridge is made of.
 
Donn said:
If we lack the ability to perceive other dimensions <blah blah> then how do you manage to perceive them?
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'Cause we're big mean skeptics and close our minds to the wonders of the world around us.

But yeah I'd like Jodie to explain how she acquired these special mental powers to see ghosts and cougars and remember past lives that the rest of us mere mortals don't possess.
 
Jodie said:
I understand the science but the rest is strictly my idea.
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If you understood the science you wouldn't make such leaps of fantasy. If you want to base your speculations on extrapolations of known science, fine; but this means not making speculative leaps that contradict that science.

If you are working from the premise that consciousness originates in the brain then I would agree with you but if the brain only functions as a type of receiver or lens to enable you to perceive the world here then I would say you were wrong.
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It doesn't, and it can't, and if you understood the science you'd know this.

That's just my opinion.
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Scientifically it's incorrect. You can't have it both ways - either drop the pretence at science and go with the magical fantasy, or base your speculation on scientific foundations.

In my case, what was said in the dream actually came true. This is why I think it was some kind of genuine communication from either my mother or something that looked like her when she was in her 30's.
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You think you had a real communication from something that looked like your mother in her late 30's - in a dream... Seriously, listen to what you're saying; in the real world, your mother is dead and she's not in her late 30's.

As I said, the future wasn't altered because I had no idea what choices or decisions to warn anyone about to prevent the outcomes. I never had this kind of thing happen again whether or not it was real.
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I've had dreams where what I dreamed later came true; it's no big deal. There are two obvious ways it can happen, one is partly what makes us such a successful species - anticipating and predicting the future by modeling possible scenarios; the other, not so beneficial, involves priming, confirmation bias, and memory distortion.

I don't know what your dream prediction involved, so I can't assess which seems the more likely explanation, but on past performance here, I suspect the latter.

Even if you don't agree with me I can't see why my belief would inspire pity of any kind.
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I didn't say I pitied you; I think it's sad that you could think that science might support your belief in any way. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large.
 
Jodie said:
I might not completely understand the concept of reality as described by the multiverse theory but I believe I'm on the right track. I'm not the only one.

http://www.robertlanza.com/do-we-have-a-soul-a-scientific-answer/

Hans Peter Durr was another one who gave credence to the existence of a soul independent of mind.

http://www.nuclear-free-future.com/en/home/news/102-peacemaker-physicist/
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The first link is pure quantum woo. Quantum mechanics provides no support whatsoever for the idea of a soul. Robert Lanza is a woo merchant.

The second link doesn't even mention a soul. Professor Dürr seems to have had a rather new-agey outlook, and what he says about his death (at the end of the article), "When I die, I have no more consciousness, but all that I have thought has been added to the background. As information it has mixed with the world mind, has influenced the whole and become part of it", is a rather romantic view, but not unreasonable if you take 'world mind' as a metaphor. It's quite a stretch to suggest it means he thought he had a soul.
 
dlorde said:
So please explain how Tegmark's mathematical model of consciousness based on the mathematics of quantum mechanics and information theory, has anything to do with concepts of a soul?
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It's the Deepak Chopra Theorem.

Woo Slinger's love quantum mechanics because no matter how well explained to them it is all they can hear is "Hey this part of science says weird and/or unlikely events can happen, therefore I can say any weird and/or unlikely event is quantum mechanics!"
 
Jodie said:
If Durr concluded something from physical laws that we know about then it is his hypothesis, a hypothesis grounded in empirical data.
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No. He speculated something. That's a hypothesis. A hypothesis becomes a theory (i.e., a useful thing) when it is tested empirically and shown by that means to be the best predictor. None of that happened. But thanks for confirming you really don't know at all how science works.

Therefore it is a hypothetical argument that does have merit since neither side of the debate regarding whether a soul exists is falsifiable at this time.
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Nonsense. You can falsify the dream hypothesis by showing evidence inconsistent with a dream. Such as proof of the alleged prescience of the ghost. There's a difference between something that is falsifiable and something you can't falsify because the evidence doesn't swing that way.
 
If anybody cares, this thread is a prime example of why I don't waste time investigating ghosts or the paranormal any more.

In my experience, people who've seen a ghost fall into one of two categories:

1. I saw something weird that freaked me out. Don't know what it was, don't want to see it again.

2. I saw something weird that confirms my personal beliefs about the afterlife, and I will ignore all evidence to the contrary.

The second group is larger than the first. There is no point in talking to them, they feed off of each other's delusions - and that is really what they are.

The first group is open to rational explanations, and most of the time the thing(s) they saw can be explained, and they're happy to be a little wiser about how their 5 senses work in conjunction with the world outside.

Since the OP was about floor boards I'll share with you guys a strange incident I experienced this week at work. A guest came to the front desk asking to be moved to a different room due to a strange noise. I went to his room and heard what sounded like an electrical conduit on the verge of overload - a nasty hum. From where I stood it seemed to come from behind the bed, so I went to pull it away from the wall, but when I moved the sound shifted to the opposite wall. I go over there and the sound concentrated on the first wall behind the bed again.
I moved the guest out of the room so I could investigate (thinking I had an electrical problem). I was unable to pinpoint the sound's origin. When I went outside I noticed that a man was putting air in his tires at the gas station about 30 meters away.

That was the source of the hum.

Perfect atmospherics, low traffic flow, and an unobstructed fetch from the pump to the air conditioner intake grill of the effected room. When the air pump shut down I returned to the room and all was quiet. Case solved.

Sound is weird.

I think before ghost hunters and paranormal investigators can start talking about other dimensions they should learn more about this one because it's amazing to me.

Thanks for letting me rant.
 
JayUtah said:
It is if you're using it to support the proposition that your dead mother's ghost appeared to you in a dream and told you the future.
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No, I'm simply trying to figure out how it might be possible. There are a lot "if's" and "maybe's" before I could state that it was true such as:

1. If the mathematics is correct and other dimensions exist.
2. If they exist, would they function the way we think they would.
3. If these other dimensions do function the way we anticipate how does that affect our existence.
4. Does our consciousness reside in these other dimensions?
5. Is our conscious simply a function of the brain or does the brain exist because our consciousness needs a lens to focus on 4th dimensional reality?

I choose to believe that we exist in all dimensions at the same time and that our brain provides the focus to process our existence here on Earth. I also choose to believe that physical life and death have little meaning in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a type of phase of existence.

Seeing ghosts is definitely all in our heads because without our brain, assuming the person actually experienced something, the "ghost" couldn't manifest without the person being there to observe it's presence IMO. Belief that such things exist would probably have to play a part in ghost sightings because you probably wouldn't see the manifestation without it. Seeing what you want to believe probably determines who you see if these sightings actually happen. So if the prophetic dream wasn't my mother, it was definitely something IMO, simply because what she/he/it said came true, but there wasn't enough information given to avoid the outcome.

That plays into the theory of mind and how we understand consciousness from a psychological point of view. You have the superego, the ego, and the id. The id is concrete, it needs to see to believe, which might explain why the placebo effect works for a short while. The person believes that the fake treatment will help, so the body co-operates. Religion probably functions in the same role, to propagate belief so that individual's id will be convinced that there is more to reality than what we see. My guess is that the more we learn about the universe, and our place in it, the less we will need formal religion to cultivate a belief that we are more than just these material bodies relying on the chemical reactions in our brains to make sense of our reality.
 
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Jodie said:
No, I'm simply trying to figure out how it might be possible.
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So you've already given up wondering whether your preferred explanation is the right one. You're simply dumping various concepts and speculation into a nonsensical mulligan stew and pretending that "somehow" it means you get to keep believing what you want to believe, and that "somehow" science shouldn't have any qualm with it. I say again, you have absolutely no idea how science works. By all means believe what you want, but don't pretend it's rational.
 
Jodie cooks her woo stew with no heed to complaints about its sickly taint. She knows exactly how it goes down here, and enjoys stinking the place up.
 
Jodie said:
My guess is that the more we learn about the universe, and our place in it, the less we will need formal religion to cultivate a belief that we are more than just these material bodies relying on the chemical reactions in our brains to make sense of our reality.
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This has been pointed out before, but I think it's worth saying again.
Your basic assumption is that science is wrong, and that some day it will "catch up" with whichever of your numerous and contradictory beliefs you are espousing today.
Every step science has made so far has led more to the realisation that we really are just material bodies relying on electro-chemical reactions in our brains. Consciousness has been shown to be an emergent property of brains. There is no consciousness outside of our brains. The more we discover, the more evidence we have for this. If what you are saying is true, this would involve throwing out every single one of these steps- steps which have been thoroughly tested and validated. How could this possibly happen?
You have this apparently unshakeable belief that science is wrong, and your speculative beliefs are right and will one day be validated by science. Given that this is highly unlikely, have you considered revising your assumptions? Do you not think that is is just faintly possible that what you saw was just a dream?
 
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