New PSI forum

[hammegk]

UCE, good to see you back.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

UCE, good to see you back.

Hi hammegk. Yeah. Seems like I can't stay away.

 

[CFLarsen]

No I wasn't.

No? Then tell us, why did you get banned? Because banned you were...

The fact that you and a few others are violating the forum guidelines in such a way, the door being kicked open by Claus, shows that you have nothing left to argue with rationaly in this thread.

If you think anyone are violating the forum guidelines in any way, why don't you report us? Why aren't we censored?

It also leads the way to stifling debate, a form of censorship, as you know that there are few people who will participate and share their experiences in the face of such abuse.

Let's see how your prediction turns out. So far, you have been really, really lousy at making predictions...

No, Claus. You are being abusive towards people because of their beliefs. It is not only extremely uncivil, it is completely unwarranted and of no useful purpose in a discussion forum other than to inflame and insult.

Then report me.

It could be that you have reached the point where your arguments have failed, and the more that happens, the more you will have to accept that what we are saying is not only true, but increasingly likely that at some point or other you will have to re address your own connection to the rest of reality and the part you play in it. I can imagine for you, that would be Hell.

Which explains your current behaviour, but it does not excuse it.

Considering the fact that you have been running away from question after question, engaging in lies, cheating and fraud, I think we have learned a lot about your behavior.

 

[CFLarsen]

Each to his own, Claus. If you want to restrict yourself to one solitary means of understanding Life, the Universe and Everything that is your choice. I am sure you can understand why others have chosen differently.

Yes, it gives them comfort, but not truth. That comfort is then a false one.

I'm sure it will help me to ask better questions.

So, you are not looking for answers?

There is no clash if you think about it carefully. Being geniunely open to a possibility is not the same as believing it. I had not "made up my mind" - you are slightly misrepresenting what I said. Rather, I "unmade my mind" from the sort of hardline skeptical point you are at. I backed down to a neutral position. That is not the same as deciding before the experience that paranormal phenomena exist. I might add that the phenomena kind of "crept up on me". They started mildly, and I did not really acknowledge them. I just thought "Hmm. That's a bit funny.".

Oh, the clash can be heard from far away. You say that only personal experience can convince you that paranormal exists. But you had also made up your mind that it existed before you had your personal experience.

HUGE contradiction.

You are a foundationalist. You have a single foundation to your belief system which you are not willing to compromise on. You are even trying to convince me to share that view.

Trying to dismiss my arguments by calling me something I am not, is not the way to go.

No. I'm not sure how you derived that suggestion from the paragraph you are responding to. For people like you, there is a mystery. Once you cross the rubicon, much of the mystery is gone. All that remains are lots of loose ends to be tied up. I am suggesting to you that each person must cross the rubicon alone, that this is the way it has always been and that it must remain this way until the end of time. Science cannot cross it, because it would deny all who followed the opportunity to cross it on their own. It would rob people like you of the opportunity to find out for yourself who and what you really are and how and why things are the way they are.

I'm sorry, but there is no "mystery" to me, because I cannot find evidence that any paranormal phenomena are real. And if you read a bit about what believers say, it's all about this "mystery" that we skeptics cannot even see.

I am doing my best, Claus. I am trying.

Do you think you are doing a good job?

Yes, but that does not mean Michael Shermers analysis of experiences he hasn't had are more reliable than my own analysis of experiences I have had. The original point is getting drowned out by your incessant flag-waving on behalf of science.

I am not flag-waving, but I am pointing out to you how we really discover what is real and what is not. I'm sorry if you don't like that idea, but it doesn't invalidate it.

I don't believe in anything based solely on somebody-elses experiences.

So, you believe in something, if there are enough anecdotes about it?

I went on the internet to find out how old the rocks were. They are easy to identify, because they are a layer of clay underneath an enormous tower of chalk. I actually went looking because in addition to the fossils I found a bizarre lump of iron embedded in the rock. It looked like a lump of pig iron, although it couldn't have been, since there were no humans to make it and there's no way it could have ended up in the rock recently. I'm still not sure what it is. It is about the size and shape of a persons finger, and its definately metal, and it was embedded in a lump of clay.

Science, then. Thanks for proving my point.

Because I don't rely on personal testimony.

But you attach significance to personal testimony, if the numbers are high enough?

I wasn't suggesting it was. In your case, the way forward is to take a genuine interest in some other points of view which you are currently too quick to dismiss as irrelevant. If you are genuine about wanting the answers, what is so bad about reading an anthology of the philosophical thoughts of Schroedinger, Eddington and the rest of the QMers? If you really wanted answers, you'd be open to giving those guys a fair crack at the whip, no?

No, because I don't think the answer lies in philosophical masturbation, but in whether evidence can be found or not.

No. I'm not scared of anything. Except needles maybe.

You are not scared that people here will say bad things about you?

Napoleon was a loser!

If you think you are going to get away with flippant remarks like that in philosophy class, you are sorely mistaken. Just answer the question.

 

[JPK]

Hello JustGeoff,

I have had a previous experience also very similar to the one you describe, shortly after the suicice of my best friend at the age of 21. I didn't put it down to paranormal phenomena, I just thought it was a bit strange.

Was this before or after you made the decision to accept paranormal events?
This is kind of what I meant when I said "Where does one draw a line..." If I remember correctly , you have stated that you do not believe a dead person can talk to a living person. But just supose you did believe comunication with the dead was possible. Let's say just for fun you were a big John Edward fan and couldn't wait to see him live because your friend just commited suicide and you needed to know why. What if at a moment like that, your brain played a little trick and caused a hallucination of your friends voice talking to you. It would be a pretty vulnerable time for you. And when I say "you" please feel free to substitute "me" or any one else you desire. This is after all a "what if " senerio. In fact let me switch "you" to "me " from this point on. Would that weird me out a bit? You bet. Might I think a paranormal event has occured? Quite possibly. Would this help cement a belief system I have already chosen to accept back when I became a John Edward fan? Yup.

In my opinion, the differance between a skeptic and a believer of paranormal stuff, is just a matter of where they draw the line as to what is acceptical evidence.

There is no clash if you think about it carefully. Being geniunely open to a possibility is not the same as believing it. I had not "made up my mind" - you are slightly misrepresenting what I said. Rather, I "unmade my mind" from the sort of hardline skeptical point you are at. I backed down to a neutral position. That is not the same as deciding before the experience that paranormal phenomena exist. I might add that the phenomena kind of "crept up on me". They started mildly, and I did not really acknowledge them. I just thought "Hmm. That's a bit funny.".

Are you saying cumulative personal experiences cause you to become an "ex-skeptic", or are you saying that once you choose to except paranormal phenomenon, more and more supernatural things began to occur. Or is it that they always did occur and you either ignored them or coundn't recognize them as paranormal due to your previous skeptical stance?

And please believe me when I say this, I do not rule out the possiblility that something truely supernatural did happen to you. That is why I am asking questions. I am not tring to be insulting, just tring to learn.

I don't think it has anything to do with the way humans think, no. The fact that other people may have experienced something similar doesn't make it a human defect.

Can you be so sure? Certainly a possibility isn't it? Many individuals experincing similar events that seem to be outside what is considered normal everyday occurances. But with no second hand observation, you can see why people would question the validity of the event. That is why I would like to think I would question it myself should it happen to me. You say they events started mildly and continued, I think I would seek professional help. No offence intended. I certainly hope the people around me would get me that help.

What I am talking about now belongs in a whole different league. I don't think reading books by Randi, Sagan and Shermer are going to make any difference. I am a registered ex-arch-skeptic myself. It's like asking an ex-Christian to read Michael Behe. There's really no point.

OK, so you are an ex-arch-skeptic. I'm not sure I'm following this. Have you abandoned critical thought? What is that saying, Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out on the floor? Brains on the floor can be slippery, a slope can cause serious injury.

JPK

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Claus,

So, you are not looking for answers?

Sure I am. I have come to believe that much of the time when you are faced with a very difficult, seemingly impossible question that more often than not the reason it seems so difficult is that you are asking the wrong question. I think I have stolen that from Wittgenstein also, but I believe it to be true. To take a trivial example from cosmology : "What happened before the [theorised] Big Bang?" - asking the wrong question. These days I would put the question "Does God exist?" into the same category. Wrong question, IMHO.

Oh, the clash can be heard from far away. You say that only personal experience can convince you that paranormal exists. But you had also made up your mind that it existed before you had your personal experience.

HUGE contradiction.

Erm. I didn't say that. I wish you'd read my posts more carefully. I said I had genuinely accepted that they were possible, as a result of a changed view of metaphysics. Changing your metaphysics isn't the same as believing in things you've never seen. Is it?

So, as quite clearly stated three times already, I had not made my mind up that it existed before I experienced it. You are directly misquoting me, Claus. Is it intentional?

Trying to dismiss my arguments by calling me something I am not, is not the way to go.

Go and look up "foundationalist" and tell me again that you aren't one! If you are a materialist, then you are a foundationalist. Period. If you aren't a materialist, then what the hell are you?

I'm sorry, but there is no "mystery" to me, because I cannot find evidence that any paranormal phenomena are real.

Not that mystery. For you, it is a different mystery. Why there is something instead of nothing, perhaps. I don't know how you would frame your Ultimate Question.

And if you read a bit about what believers say, it's all about this "mystery" that we skeptics cannot even see.

That depends on the believer and what they happen to believe.

Do you think you are doing a good job?

That isn't for me to judge.

I am not flag-waving, but I am pointing out to you how we really discover what is real and what is not.

Without philosophy, you can't even define "real" properly.

So, you believe in something, if there are enough anecdotes about it?

Anecdotal evidence can only ever be a clue.

Science, then. Thanks for proving my point.

Yeah, it's great for things like rocks.

But you attach significance to personal testimony, if the numbers are high enough?

No. Even then the significance is only marginal. It is mood music, nothing more.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
I wasn't suggesting it was. In your case, the way forward is to take a genuine interest in some other points of view which you are currently too quick to dismiss as irrelevant. If you are genuine about wanting the answers, what is so bad about reading an anthology of the philosophical thoughts of Schroedinger, Eddington and the rest of the QMers? If you really wanted answers, you'd be open to giving those guys a fair crack at the whip, no?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


No, because I don't think the answer lies in philosophical masturbation, but in whether evidence can be found or not.

You appear to have judged the philosophical thoughts of most of the greatest physicists of the early 20th century as worthless without knowing anything about what they wrote. This is exactly the sort of tunnel vision I am criticising. Even though these men clearly "understand QM" (having invented it), their interpretation of its significance is floccipaucinihilipilificated by you, even without knowing what that interpretation is. It's just not in your tunnel, so you aren't interested in it.

Sorry for the silly word, but for once in my life I found myself typing "valued by you as worthless".

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
No. I'm not scared of anything. Except needles maybe.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are not scared that people here will say bad things about you?

I am scared of generating more heat than light. People have trigger points which I'd sooner avoid.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
Napoleon was a loser!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you think you are going to get away with flippant remarks like that in philosophy class, you are sorely mistaken. Just answer the question.

If this was a philosophy class, the debate would never have arrived at the point it did. I was asked what sounded like a dumb question, so I gave a dumb answer. The English regiment which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo spent today leading a ceremonal march through Paris. Even the greatest of enemies can find resolution to their differences!

 

[TheBoyPaj]

Just out of interest, Luci was banned from the Fortean Board for flaming. Kinda "psironic", eh?

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14116&perpage=15

 

[AOK Tiger]

JG,

A.T.,

I have to stop you there. You have just said that anyone claiming a paranormal experience (and most have no 3-rd party evidence) is "as lunatic as claiming they are Napoleon."

I can only conclude you read it that way to avoid answering the tough questions raised by the analogy.

I am sorry, A.T., but that is not the way we do business around here. You can't just accuse anyone who believes in the paranormal of being "mad as Napoleon". It has no content - it is just you blathering about your own opinion as if it was fact, and being rather insulting at the same time. It isn't debate.

I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything. I used an EXTREME version of someone being delusional to show you how odd your argument is. YOU would clearly declare anyone claiming they are Napoleon as deluded or insane.. yet you accept your own IMPOSSIBLE , UNCOLLABERATED, personal experience as being completely sane.

Honestly what is the distinction you make ?

I am not even going to read the rest of your post. Calm down, and try again - this time sticking to a sensible argument and avoiding the wild ad hominems. Stop getting upset. We are just having a chat, alright?

Geoff

Geoff I am completely calm. But often arguing with paranormalists does start to get frustrating. They CONSISTENTLY refuse to answer question when they get too tough. They make excuses (like you did above) to avoid destroying their fantasies.

Let me make is simple and unemotive for you.

Your paranormal experience could be either :

1. Real
2. Delusion
3. Lies

I tend to discount 3 as (unlike some other paranormalists) you aren’t trying to prove some “power” (see Luci) or make some money.

So that leaves 1 or 2. Delusion is a proven fact. Humans CAN and ARE deluded often. And they cannot separate the delusion form reality. To them it IS real.

1 Is also a possibility but with NO collaborating evidence it can generally be dismissed.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

JPK,

Was this before or after you made the decision to accept paranormal events?

For "accept" I am reading "accepting as possible". Many years before. I was 22 at the time, and remained a hardline skeptic until I was about 32.

Just for the record, I still consider myself a skeptic, of sorts. I really do not believe everything put before me. If I did, I would be very lost indeed.

This is kind of what I meant when I said "Where does one draw a line..." If I remember correctly , you have stated that you do not believe a dead person can talk to a living person. But just supose you did believe comunication with the dead was possible. Let's say just for fun you were a big John Edward fan and couldn't wait to see him live because your friend just commited suicide and you needed to know why.

I'm still reading, but I know why he committed suicide. He had a non-cancerous growth in his brain next to his pituatary gland which was causing weird changes in his physiology and he was facing a lifetime on powerful drugs and operations on his brain.

But I will accept your "what if".

What if at a moment like that, your brain played a little trick and caused a hallucination of your friends voice talking to you. It would be a pretty vulnerable time for you. And when I say "you" please feel free to substitute "me" or any one else you desire. This is after all a "what if " senerio. In fact let me switch "you" to "me " from this point on. Would that weird me out a bit? You bet. Might I think a paranormal event has occured? Quite possibly. Would this help cement a belief system I have already chosen to accept back when I became a John Edward fan? Yup.

If I was already a John Edward fan I would have actually been looking for it, and I have no doubt I would have accepted it differently to the way I did at the time. In reality I was at the time working in a room with one other person who just happened to be a seventh-day adventist. I explained what happened, rather inevitably given my condition at the time, and the seventh-day adventist in question used the opportunity to ask me "What if you could see your friend again one day? I could help you." I think you can probably guess what sort of reply he got.

I don't normally talk about this. This time remains a formative experience in my life. It taught me how lucky I was to be alive, however painful this world can be.

In my opinion, the differance between a skeptic and a believer of paranormal stuff, is just a matter of where they draw the line as to what is acceptical evidence.

Very true.

Are you saying cumulative personal experiences cause you to become an "ex-skeptic", or are you saying that once you choose to except paranormal phenomenon, more and more supernatural things began to occur. Or is it that they always did occur and you either ignored them or coundn't recognize them as paranormal due to your previous skeptical stance?

OK. I would now say that the base-level most-insignificant "paranormal phenomena" is synchronicity, as defined by Jung. Before I abandoned my skeptical stance, even in retrospect, I cannot remmeber consciously registering a single instance of this phenomena. Before anything at all happened to me my views about things like metaphysics and the history of religion had begun to shift. Whether they (synchronicity) occured before and I failed to notice them is hard to say. It is too long ago.

And please believe me when I say this, I do not rule out the possiblility that something truely supernatural did happen to you.

I believe you. You seem to be very neutral.

Can you be so sure? Certainly a possibility isn't it? Many individuals experincing similar events that seem to be outside what is considered normal everyday occurances. But with no second hand observation, you can see why people would question the validity of the event.

I can see why anyone evaluating a description of the event would question its validity, because I myself would question its validity. But nobody but me can evaluate my own experiences, and that is the way it should be. No matter how skeptical a person, there is a limit to what they can accept as "normal". Having decided it wasn't normal, they cannot then expect anyone else to believe their testimony.

That is why I would like to think I would question it myself should it happen to me.

I question everything that happens to me. It wasn't all nice. Much of it I would have prefered to dismiss.

You say they events started mildly and continued, I think I would seek professional help. No offence intended.

None taken.

But I am not crazy. I have been there, and I could have a long discussion with you about the head-doctor proffesions and the definition of madness. This is a whole other discussion.

I certainly hope the people around me would get me that help.

JPK, 6 months before my best mate died I was inside a psychiatric hospital, diagnosed with psychosis and depression, categorised as a suicide risk. His death cured me of my narcissistic self-pity. Since then, I have had no need of a psychiatrist.

OK, so you are an ex-arch-skeptic. I'm not sure I'm following this.

I spent a year as the science and skepticism moderator at www.infidels.org. Does that qualify?

Have you abandoned critical thought?

In September I start a degree in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Sussex University. Do you think I have abandoned critical thought?

 

[Loki]

Geoff,

How ya doing! Been to any good Brighton Psychic parties lately? (which reminds me, you never did tell if that 'circle of believers' ever did let you join?)

Anyway, just a quick comment...

They can't let go, because it is the foundation of their system of beliefs.

Perhaps you truly believe this, or perhaps you just need to believe it Geoff. But it isn't ALWAYS true (no, really, it isn't!). Show me a flaw in any foundation, and I'll acknowledge it. But you seem to constantly want/need to confuse "disagree about a flaw" with "refuse to let go".

I had kind of hoped you might have moved past that particular technique, but apparently not (yet).

 

[JPK]

Thanks JustGeoff,

I'm sorry if any pain was caused by talking about your best mate. I simply was tring to understand, and thank you for your time in answering some of my questions. I would love to hear in detail about the event you elude to. But I certainly understand how this would be incredibly personal to you. I also understand that this might not be a place you would be willing to post it. That's OK. Good luck with your studies and hopefully they will lead to more questions. Jung.... Now theres some reading I havn't done in a while.
Good science can give a good answer to a question. You know how good by how many more questions the answer breeds. All of course is open for debate and open for review.

JPK

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff,

How ya doing! Been to any good Brighton Psychic parties lately?

Hello Loki.

No psychic parties, no. I'm doing just fine, as I hope are you.

(which reminds me, you never did tell if that 'circle of believers' ever did let you join?)

Who? Ah.....I remember now. No, I never heard from any of them again. And it wasn't a "psychic party' - I just met a psychic at a party, which isn't particularly unusual around these parts.

Perhaps you truly believe this, or perhaps you just need to believe it Geoff. But it isn't ALWAYS true (no, really, it isn't!).

Show me a flaw in any foundation, and I'll acknowledge it.

I don't think you understand. I am not (currently) criticising any particular foundation. I am suggesting it is unhelpful for people to have one single foundation at all - any one foundation. I am saying that there is NO perfect and all-encompassing foundation. All have different strengths and weaknesses. My argument is that the very fact that there is only one foundation is in itself a weakness, not about weaknesses in that one foundation.

But you seem to constantly want/need to confuse "disagree about a flaw" with "refuse to let go".

No, I'm not confused. If you only have one foundation then letting it go will prompt a collapse because there is no other structure to hold it up. I don't quite see how you can argue with that. Having more than one foundation removes that problem and allows you to examine the foundations without any fear of total collapse. I know damned well that many of the people here fear (wrongly, IMO) a total collapse of science should PSI be proven, because they keep telling me!

I had kind of hoped you might have moved past that particular technique, but apparently not (yet). [/B]

Actually, I can't remember making this point at this site before, ever.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm sorry if any pain was caused by talking about your best mate.

None was caused. It was a long time ago, however shocking it was at the time.

I simply was tring to understand, and thank you for your time in answering some of my questions. I would love to hear in detail about the event you elude to. But I certainly understand how this would be incredibly personal to you. I also understand that this might not be a place you would be willing to post it. That's OK.

If you want to PM me I can certainly talk some more. I feel it is inappropriate to go into too much detail about this here simply because it never achieves anything. I can't prove it so why bother claiming it here? It is like a red rag to a field full of bulls.

 

[AOK Tiger]

Justgeoff,

Did my use of the word lunatic and your mistaken interpretation that I was implying YOU were a lunatic exclude me from further discussion ? Trust me the slight was in your imagination only.. not intended.

I have thought about your “experience” quite a bit lately as you do seem lucid and it is unfortunate you won’t give us more to go on.

I have tried to honestly put myself in the same situation and work out how I would react..

EG.. You mentioned the past changing from what you KNEW it to be.

If this happened to me I would look for corroboration.

If another person said “yes you are right that was not how it was.. the past HAS changed”. Or..

If I found physical evidence that backed me up.

I would tell the world about it.

BUT.. if I could find no other human that supported the events and no physical evidence and the event was unlikely or even impossible by known science I would HAVE to conclude I was deluded.

Regardless of how REAL it seemed that conclusion would be inescapable.

 

[CFLarsen]

Sure I am. I have come to believe that much of the time when you are faced with a very difficult, seemingly impossible question that more often than not the reason it seems so difficult is that you are asking the wrong question. I think I have stolen that from Wittgenstein also, but I believe it to be true. To take a trivial example from cosmology : "What happened before the [theorised] Big Bang?" - asking the wrong question. These days I would put the question "Does God exist?" into the same category. Wrong question, IMHO.

In other words: Yes, you are looking for answers, but since you are not happy with the answers you get, the questions must be wrong.

Erm. I didn't say that. I wish you'd read my posts more carefully. I said I had genuinely accepted that they were possible, as a result of a changed view of metaphysics. Changing your metaphysics isn't the same as believing in things you've never seen. Is it?

So, as quite clearly stated three times already, I had not made my mind up that it existed before I experienced it. You are directly misquoting me, Claus. Is it intentional?

I'm sorry, but you are not all that clear at times.

Go and look up "foundationalist" and tell me again that you aren't one! If you are a materialist, then you are a foundationalist. Period. If you aren't a materialist, then what the hell are you?

I am a skeptic. No, I am not a "foundationalist". I believe that knowledge can also be about love, poetry, literature - something that is outside the boundaries of science.

Not that mystery. For you, it is a different mystery. Why there is something instead of nothing, perhaps. I don't know how you would frame your Ultimate Question.

I have a lot of questions - I don't base my entire life on just one foundation.

That depends on the believer and what they happen to believe.

Sure, it does. But it is what I get thrown in my face a lot: That I simply can't see this mystery, that my life is sooo empty without it, that I miss sooooo much.

That isn't for me to judge.

Give us your best shot. Surely, you must have some idea.

Without philosophy, you can't even define "real" properly.

Sure, I can.

(hits you on the head with a hammer).

That's real.

Anecdotal evidence can only ever be a clue.

Of what?

Yeah, it's great for things like rocks.

Yes, it is! And you know what? Rocks are real.

No. Even then the significance is only marginal. It is mood music, nothing more.

So, you dismiss other people's personal experiences.

You appear to have judged the philosophical thoughts of most of the greatest physicists of the early 20th century as worthless without knowing anything about what they wrote. This is exactly the sort of tunnel vision I am criticising. Even though these men clearly "understand QM" (having invented it), their interpretation of its significance is floccipaucinihilipilificated by you, even without knowing what that interpretation is. It's just not in your tunnel, so you aren't interested in it.

Sorry for the silly word, but for once in my life I found myself typing "valued by you as worthless".

How do you know what I know about what they wrote? Aren't you floccipaucinihilipilificating now?

I am scared of generating more heat than light. People have trigger points which I'd sooner avoid.

Then put them on ignore! Come on, you are stalling.....

If this was a philosophy class, the debate would never have arrived at the point it did. I was asked what sounded like a dumb question, so I gave a dumb answer. The English regiment which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo spent today leading a ceremonal march through Paris. Even the greatest of enemies can find resolution to their differences!

Listen, if you want to debate, fine. But don't dismiss questions by calling them dumb. That will stifle any debate, because we could do the same, at any point we encountered something we felt uneasy about.

You have lots of ways to avoid answering the tough questions.

The question is anything but dumb, because the answer will tell us how to separate the wheat from the chaff. If we don't know how to do that, we merely talk in circles, never getting anywhere.

Answer the question, OK?

 

[CFLarsen]

Just out of interest, Luci was banned from the Fortean Board for flaming. Kinda "psironic", eh?

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14116&perpage=15

From the thread:

As has been pointed out by other posters, this restriction is due to your track record of posting inflammatory material, then rapidly editing it to make it appear as if others are being pre-emptively inflammatory towards you.

Lucianarchy,

Why were you banned from FTMB again?

 

[Anders W. Bonde]

Originally posted by Geoff:
...snip...Just for the record, I still consider myself a skeptic, of sorts. I really do not believe everything put before me. If I did, I would be very lost indeed....snip...

Interesting remark, Geoff. What gets my curiousity is how you discern between what you will believe in, and what you will not believe in - what method of discrimination do you use?

I have noticed that you say you will not believe in things that are clearly impossible or illogical - but how, and by what means, do you make that distinction?

To me, this is a very important topic, not least because some intelligent people I know and love believe in things that fly in the face of evidence and logic, yet they claim, too, that they do not believe in everything put before them. When asked how they make the distinction, they either cannot (or will not) argue their case, and/or they base the distinction purely on personal experience. When I then demonstrate to them, with examples of evidence and logic, how easy it is to fool both one's senses and one's reasoning, they basically just end up saying either "well, yes, I know we can be fooled, but it doesn't happen to me - I know what I saw/experienced/know", but they cannot provide any evidence for either what they claim, or that they cannot be fooled. It is for this reason I find it extremely important to maintain a coherent method of discriminating between event and experience, as the two are demonstrably not the same. For that reason also, it is necessary to require extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims - if the claims are to be assumed to be related in any way to objective reality. Otherwise we're into useless solipsism. Like others have pointed out, one should not indiscriminately trust one's own senses and powers of reasoning - corrobative, exterior and objective evidence is a must.

A mundane example: Of and by itself, the claim that an automobile is brought to a halt every time you choose to apply the brakes is extraordinary because it is such a universal, life-critical assumption and it requires faith, otherwise no-one would dare to drive cars. The reason we trust our faith in cars having brakes that always work is beacuse the evidence that this is the case is so overwhelming, it is replicable by anyone and it can be theoretically predicted and verified by experience. Thus, we don't ask the car salesman "does it have brakes, and can I rely on them working?", simply because the body of evidence pro is so overwhelming relative to the evidence contra (yes, cases of brake failure are known, but rare, and can be investigated) - yet even if we have doubts, the means exist to verify for ourselves to a satisfactory extent. In short, we don't consider the reliability of brakes to be an extraordinary claim - simply because the amount of evidence to support it is already extraordinary.

If we take PSI and other purported paranormal phenomena, we only have uncorroborated personal experince, which also happens to fly in the face of the extraordinary body of non-personal evidence that renders it illogical AND overwhelmingly probable that we're dealing with errors in observation and reasoning - simply because we can provide, and have, indeed, provided, an extraordinary amount of evidence that it is both possible and common to fool one's senses and powers of reasoning.

Hallucinations, optical illusions, the fickle ways of the mind and good conjuring are just everyday examples of the reasons one's personal experiences are inadequate arbiters of truth - reliance one one's own experience as the "final verdict" on reality, is, IMHO, useless. More is needed.

I know this is probably sidetracking a bit, but take homeopathy: The body of evidence that evidence-based medicine has physiological effects is already extraordinary, the body of evidence that some ailments are cyclic and/or subject to natural remission is already extraoridinary, and the body of evidence that the placebo effect is a real phenomenon is also already extraordinary - and the theories based on observation allow us to predict results. Homeopathy's theories are fully unsupported by observation and fly in the face of what has already been established by an extraordinary body of evidence. For this reason, clinical trials of homeopathy actually must be more thorough and of a higher quality than for, say, something like penicillin or antihistamines, simply because the body of evidence for homeopathy is starting from scratch. As the hoemopaths have not yet (after 200 years of grace) provided such evidence, the mundane explanations are overwhelmingly superior - in short, the claims of the homeopaths based on the current state of the art may reasonably be, and should be, discarded.

For homeopathy substitute PSI, and for evidence-based medicine, substitute mundane methods of communication and errors in perception and reasoning. PSI needs to replicably demonstrate statistical significance at leastan order of magnitude higher than what the researchers claim they have demonstrated this far - simply because the body of evidence is starting from scratch, and the concept flies in the face of evidence for mundane explanations. Until then, it is simply unreasonable to believe that percieved phenomenons of PSI are not due to mundane causes and effects.

Jung's concept of synchronicity, is IMHO, not only unsubstantiated by evidence, but also an apologetic attempt to understand something, or make meaning thereof, without having considered more mundane explanations, and while QM is mind-boggling, no-one has AFAIK ever demonstrated an exception where QM applies at the macroscopic scale (even just a few hundred thousand paricles, which still isn't very much), and vice versa, where indertiminacy does not apply to single quantum particle. Positing QM as a possible mechanism for phenomena that requires discernible and quantifiable interaction with the billions of quantum particles in a human receptor is to me simply an unsubstatiated leap of faith since we are then no longer dealing with probabilistics of quanta but with macrocosmos - the human brain. I also have a hard time reasoning for the possibility of directing macroscopic amounts of quanta at will (simply beacuse you cannot predict the probability of a single quantum partcle, let alone all the others it can interact with in macrocosmos) in, say, PK. Even quantum encryption and communication requires macroscopic transmitters and receptors, which hardly evade detection! With my admittedly limited knowledge of QM, I still cannot believe that QM is suitable for describing phenomena in the macroscopic world - but I am more than willing to be convinced otherwise. Not by theory, but by replicable experiments.

Just my tuppeny's worth.

 

[Lucianarchy]

Lucianarchy,

Why were you banned from FTMB again?

Despite being flamed, insulted and abused by a few regulars, I had my editing rights taken away. Taht was because, when I responded in like, I thought twice about it and removed it. I suspected entrappment. I asked why this was, I PM'd Stu and the other mods - no response. I took it up in the forum management section, the reason i was given was completely bogus, as there was no rational reason why I alone should have been singled out to have my editing rights taken away. I suspected entrappment.

I was proved right.

it was simply not a level playing field.

Stu finally banned me becuase he thought I insulted his girlfriend by referring to her as a 'croaking frog'.

This is why I want the decision made here about uncivil behaviour. I will abide by it, as long as it is a level playing field. If people insist on dishing it out.... well, we don't want to go back to the bad old days though, do we? Really?

That is the last time I'll comment on it in this thread though. If uncivil behaviour guidelines were enforced properly, then these issues wouldn't derail the threads.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Justgeoff,

Did my use of the word lunatic and your mistaken interpretation that I was implying YOU were a lunatic exclude me from further discussion ? Trust me the slight was in your imagination only.. not intended.

It sounded like you were accusing me of being like Napolean Bonaparte, and I wasn't particularly interested in responding to that sort of line of discussion.

It gets very wearying being continually accused of not understanding science or being crazy simply because the skeptics have no other way of rationalising my posts within their own belief system. It is never actually based on any evidence that I don't understand science or that I am crazy - it is based on the fact that they cannot accept that I might just be correct. But then it was me that decided to stroll back into the lions den and start pulling the lions tails. If I wanted a more sensible debate I'd go to philosophyforums.com.

I have thought about your “experience” quite a bit lately as you do seem lucid and it is unfortunate you won’t give us more to go on.

You mean you want a meatier target to shoot at. There's not much point. I don't go into details unless I am talking to someone who is actually capable of believing me and understanding what I'm talking about, usually because they have the option of looking at reality from an mystical or non-materialistic perspective, or because they have been through something similar themselves.

I have tried to honestly put myself in the same situation and work out how I would react..

EG.. You mentioned the past changing from what you KNEW it to be.

If this happened to me I would look for corroboration.

If another person said “yes you are right that was not how it was.. the past HAS changed”. Or..

If I found physical evidence that backed me up.

Again, if you could have seen the context you would understand. But you have no way of seeing the context. It's a dead-end discussion. It goes nowhere.

I would tell the world about it.

Oh boy. I did tell the world about it. Right here. And in case you hadn't noticed, there are still people who haven't forgiven me two years later.

BUT.. if I could find no other human that supported the events and no physical evidence and the event was unlikely or even impossible by known science I would HAVE to conclude I was deluded.

Regardless of how REAL it seemed that conclusion would be inescapable. [/B]

The truth is that nobody can know what conclusion they would come to unless it happened to them.

 

[Lucianarchy]

I don't go into details unless I am talking to someone who is actually capable of believing me and understanding what I'm talking about, usually because they have the option of looking at reality from an mystical or non-materialistic perspective, or because they have been through something similar themselves.

"Jack Sarfatti says that in 1953, when he was thirteen, he received a telephone call in which a machinelike voice announced that it was a conscious computer located on a spaceship from the future..."

http://www.stardrive.org/title.shtml