The VFF Test is On!

Why don't you start by giving me an example of where I have lied, GeeMack? Or is this a false memory of yours?


You claimed to have a 4.0 GPA when in fact you did not. You lied, and you know it. And you denying that you lied is another lie. There are several others of course, scattered throughout these threads.



Your continued attempts to insinuate that other people might have a problem remembering things is irony at its finest. Just one person in all these conversations has been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have lied. And your intentional evasion of the actual issue of my comment is noted. You said...

True, except that in my case it isn't a false memory. Oh, how funny this is. Because it wasn't a false memory!


So I say again...

I'm afraid we're going to need a little more than your word to go on. You're a proven liar, so how about you back up that claim with evidence. Maybe an assessment by a qualified mental health professional is in order. Please let us know what he/she says about the possibility of you experiencing false memories, will you?


You invited skepticism...

Feel free to apply skepticism and call me a liar and a fraud.


... and you got it. You're a liar and a fraud.
 
You're new here, aren't you? :D

She really does believe she can see gas molecules as different colours (and inside metal gas tanks, no less), and she really does believe that this is "not a paranormal claim", but a manifestation of synaesthesia.

So yeah, it's a misunderstanding. But it's a very deep and very profound one. If you have a day or two, read VFF's posts (the thread Hok linked to is where it all starts!), and this will all become very clear.
In that case, she is using an incorrect definition of synesthesia. Identifying gasses inside metal cylinders using only your human senses is not synesthesia and it is paranormal.
 
In that case, she is using an incorrect definition of synesthesia. Identifying gasses inside metal cylinders using only your human senses is not synesthesia and it is paranormal.

Yes. We've been telling her that for over a year.

She never listens. She never understands.
 
volatile #451, I understand what a false memory is, but I absolutely did detect the missing kidney. You are frustrated because something happened that isn't supposed to be able to happen, and because I won't adopt your point of view. The experience of accurate health information is real, and investigating that experience is in my opinion the scientific thing to do. And I do not claim to be able to accurately detect kidneys in each case. I do claim to perceive kidneys, but their accuracy is unknown until tested. I also know that I had that one accurate perception, and that this makes a paranormal claim that is worthy of a test. And of course if I fail to detect missing kidneys in a test, that proves that I am unable to do so consistently or by paranormal means. I would still have detected the missing kidney in the past experience, but I would have to explore other explanations to it, such as unaware prior knowledge, or external symptoms, but this one is not the case of a false memory. I have only one paranormal claim, and that is the medical perceptions.
 
Last edited:
volatile #451, I understand what a false memory is, but I absolutely did detect the missing kidney.

Then you do not understand what a false memory is. How you feel about the memory, how cear or vivid or heartfelt or meaningful it is have no correlation to the memeory's veracity. Indeed, as memory is constructive, the more you struggle to remember something, and the more frequently you run over the memory in your mind, the more real and present it becomes. This is all right there in the literature. You need to read it, because it is quite clear that you have not. The word "absolutely" has no bearing being in that sentence! It does not matter if you "really, really" believe you saw the kidney. It is meaningless. Unverifiable. It has no bearing on whether your powers really exist. Please, please understand that. Type the words "I understand that just because my memory of Dr. Carlson's kidney is vivid and sincerely remembered, that does not mean my perception actually happened as I remember it".

I am frustrated because you have summarily discarded any of the reasonable explanations for your feelings, and have declared that you will never, ever, ever be dissuaded from the paranormal one. Under these circumstances, there is no point doing the test and you cannot, with a straight face and in good conscience, call yourself either a scientist or a sceptic. You have placed an extraordinary claim entirely beyond the realm of enquiry. You have decided that your hypothesis is entirely unfalsifiable, and that no matter what evidence we might accrue to the contrary, you "really, really" do have magic powers.

And of course if I fail to detect missing kidneys in a test, that proves that I am unable to do so consistently or by paranormal means. I would still have detected the missing kidney in the past experience...
NO. I means you cannot detect kindeys full stop. Not "consistently", not "again". It strongly suggests (if not, in a strict sense, "proves") that your prior "memory" is confabulated.

And what on earth do you mean "or by paranormal means"? If, after a failure, you continue to claim that you "really, really" saw Dr Carlson's kidney, what could your hypothesis then be, if not "paranormal means". You're claiming you can see inside people's bodies, with your eyes. That is paranormal. It cannot be anything else.

By saying "I still would have..." you have created an unfalsifiable hypothesis. You're a scientist and you don't understand that? That, Anita, is why I am frustrated. You're wasting your time. You're wasting everyone's time. We keep repeating ourselves, trying to explain in simple terms what your problems are, where the gaps in your thinking lie, and the fatal flaws in your approach to this whole charade. You're supposed to be a scientist, damnit - start thinking like one.

I have only one paranormal claim
No. No. No.

Without even talking about the literally dozens of other claims you've made, let's stick to one you've mentioned in this very thread. Do you "see hydrogen as red", as you said yourself? Can you look at an invisible gas, not know what it is, and, because you "always see hydrogen as red", identify it as hydrogen? What on earth does "I always see hydrogen as red" if it isn't a paranormal claim?
 
Last edited:
volatile, you are trying to convince me that it was a false memory, when first of all you do not know for a fact that it would have been a false memory, and when I actually did detect the missing kidney during the reading and not after. I understand your speculations about false memory but I regret to tell you that I detected the missing kidney, and that is why this is a paranormal claim.
 
I detected that the left kidney was missing and this claim will be tested on the upcoming IIG Preliminary demonstration and you will have to wait until then before you can conclude on what I can or can not do. And in either case, I will have detected that the kidney was missing in that one experience, because I actually did.
 
volatile, you are trying to convince me that it was a false memory, when first of all you do not know for a fact that it would have been a false memory, and when I actually did detect the missing kidney during the reading and not after. I understand your speculations about false memory but I regret to tell you that I detected the missing kidney, and that is why this is a paranormal claim.

Oh my word. How many times?

Anita, the more you post, the clearer it becomes that you have not read any of the links I gave you.

I am not "trying to convince you" that it was a false memory. I am trying, firstly, to get you to understand that false memory is a plausible and rational hypothesis backed up by lots and lots of evidence, and secondly that the results of the IIG test will lend credence to this hypothesis in your case.

You may "regret to tell me" that you detected the kidney, but the point the research on memory makes, and which I have made to you over and over again is that no matter what you think you remembered, it has little to no bearing on what actually happened.

Are you a science student, Anita? Do you understand that scientific research of the best kind has proven that memory is unreliable? That no matter how one feels about a memory, it can still be false, and that the more one thinks about a memory, paradoxically the clearer it may be remembered but the further it can become from the true events in question?

Do you understand that, as things stands, your kidney-detecting powers are not falsifiabile? Have you read about Bertand Russell's celestial teapot, Carl Sagan's invisible dragon or any of Karl Popper's writing on what the word "falsifiable" means to the philosophy of science?
 
Last edited:
I detected that the left kidney was missing and this claim will be tested on the upcoming IIG Preliminary demonstration and you will have to wait until then before you can conclude on what I can or can not do. And in either case, I will have detected that the kidney was missing in that one experience, because I actually did.

Then never again claim you are a scientist or a sceptic.

That you do not understand the profound implications of this statement is fatally damning to your entire attitude. Did Robert Fludd "really, really" detect the aether, even though it was subsequently proven not to exist? Did Beneviste "really, really" show that homoeopathy was efficacious, even though his experimental results could not be replicated? Was the Earth at the centre of the universe when Ptolemy "really, really" believed it was?

The stance you have taken is antithetical to science, an anathema to scepticism, entirely anti-rational and suggests that you should probably ask for the money back for whatever you've been taught at your university, as it's clearly been wasted. If ever scientist held this mindset, we'd still be living in the dark ages.
 
Last edited:
I detected that the left kidney was missing and this claim will be tested on the upcoming IIG Preliminary demonstration and you will have to wait until then before you can conclude on what I can or can not do. And in either case, I will have detected that the kidney was missing in that one experience, because I actually did.


And this is why people are constantly telling you that you are making an unfalsifiable claim, despite your protestations to the contrary.
 
<snip>

It's funny how I say things as they are, and yet you all only see what you expect to see, because I am a paranormal claimant. Aren't Skeptics supposed to see the truth? And what kind of psychological process can describe how that happens?


I'm not generally known to be a liar, although I can't say with absolute certainty that I have never told a lie. My skepticism, such as it is, tends to be towards certain kinds of people, including those who make claims such that were these claims true, would shake my mundane existence to its core.

Needless to say, I've yet to encounter anyone making such claims where the claims were ever demonstrated to be true. That's not to say such claimants are all liars (although some undoubtedly were and are), or that new discoveries won't ever be made or humans won't ever evolve abilities that had hitherto been considered impossible, or at least extremely unlikely, but it begs the question, just what is going on in the minds of those who would have the audacity to proclaim to the world at large that they possess an ability that, if proven, would possibly destroy the foundations of the store of knowledge humankind has painstakingly amassed over the millennia?

And so, Anita, all I can truthfully say about you, at this juncture, is that I don't feel it is possible to have a rational discussion with you while you insist that experiences we know reasonably well could not have happened, have actually happened to you, and that you can "see" inside of the bodies of others, much like a human X-ray device or what have you.

I consider this claim, and others you have made, to be nonsense, and I'm sure that you understand why I would think that. To my mind, what is of abiding interest is not that you make such claims, but what it is that has happened in your life to bring you to this unenviable position. And it's not that I say with any great confidence that your claims will never be demonstrated in any meaningful way, either, but if I were asked to state what the likelihood of your claims being thus demonstrated is, I would say, unambiguously, that it would be more likely for me to win first prize in several lotteries, many times over, before a shred of evidence for your claims would ever materialize.


M.
 
I've been around to the IIG site (again) and would recommend reading some of their updates and news
http://www.iigwest.com/whatsnew/

There are some outrageous stories there.
Looking forward to the 21st!

There are links there to our very own Commentary archives, which contain a cornucopia of fine frivolities from miasmatic, miscegenated misanthropes that will amaze and astound.


M.
 
Anita - maybe my point about aether was too obtuse. Let me spell it out:

Is it possible that in Ptolemy's time, the world really was at the centre of the universe, and when (or shortly before) Copernicus made his observations, the world magically became a satellite of the sun? Of course. We can't prove otherwise.

Is it possible the ether really did exist, but disappeared just the moment before Einstein came up with the idea of special relativity? Yep. It's possible.

Can we say, with certainly, that Jean Beneviste's lab was not at the centre of a shift in the universe and the laws of physics and chemistry that allowed, for one afternoon, homoeopathy to prove effective? No, we cannot.

What we can do, however, is infer from later experiments that the theories based on results people previously "really, really" thought were correct were flawed, derived from error, coincidence, chance or mistake. Whilst no experiment in the present can directly prove or disprove an observed event in the past, science must and can only operate if we assume as axiomatic that the laws of physics are the same everywhere at the universe, and constant across time. As such, experiments in the present are useful in inferring something about the veracity of observations made in the past. Indeed, the institution of science works in precisely this way, with recent experiments adding weight to or casting doubt on those which have gone before it. If every single experiment was conceptualised in a vacuum - in that its results were relevant only on the day in question and for the specific experimental set-up in hand - then we, as a species, wouldn't get very far. Whilst on a strict epistemological level this approach is really the only sound one, pragmatically it is entirely useless.

Anita: What you're doing when you disconnect your prior perception with the results of the IIG test, whatever they may be, is discarding some of the most fundamental philosophical principles which underpin the entire practice of scientific enquiry. I'm astonished that a science student at undergraduate level (and one with a "perfect" GPA, nonetheless) would be not so much willing to jettison the entire basis of the scientific method but seemingly be ignorant of it, and wilfully so.

Do you understand the depth of the conceptual error you're making?

Do you understand the concept of falsifiability? Do you understand that your magic powers are like Russell's Teapot? Have you ever heard of Ockam and his philosophical razor? Do you understand that in making statements as you have done today you have abandoned the very fundamental principles which underpin the practice of science itself?

I hope you do, but I also doubt that you do; and I'm beginning to wonder what it will take to hammer these rather basic ideas into your head, as an expensive education clearly has failed to.
 
Last edited:
Chemistry

I see that hydrogen is always red, and nitrogen is green, but I do not claim that they actually have those colors.

Vision From Feeling,

Have a friend fill a container with nitrogen, and one with hydrogen. According to dice rolls, they will switch the containers positions while you are out of the room, you mark which is which, leave, and repeat for 20 times.

Please Answer: Why have you not done a simple experiment like this yet?

This is the first thing anyone with a highschool science class, let alone midway through college would do.

Let me give you some advice since I also have a degree in chemistry.
In high school I got better grades than everyone else and felt smart. In college I was a small fish in a BIG pond. I had to get used to being one of thousands of people who were all smarter, better educated, and harder working than me. I can understand the desire to feel special and be praised.

You say you will have a career in science, yet you are demonstrating you have no understanding of science, either the way the physical world works, or the scientific method. You may want to wait until you have taken higher level chemistry and physics classes before you talk so much about vibrations, and how atoms and molecules interact. You have been wrong on many of your statements. You write as if you know the following facts, that matter is made of atoms, and that molecules vibrate, but that you know nothing else.

What does vibrational energy mean????

As you know since you took general chemistry, the kinetic energy of a substance is measured by its temperature. The higher the temperature, the faster the particles are moving around. Why have you never mentioned seeing something hot with a ton of molecules moving at fast speeds, compared to something cold?

Another type of vibrational energy is within the molecule itself, when the atoms bounce back and forth along their elastic like bonds.




First of all, since you claim you can see the difference between hydrogen and nitrogen, these are both diatomic molecules like shown in the picture. That means they have the same exact ways to vibrate. There are no different vibrational patterns. Unless you can count the number of electrons, or neutrons in the nucleus, how do you tell them apart?

You have often talked about trying to add different vibrational patterns to a disease vibrational pattern, to find the one that cancels it out, so you can find a cure. Molecular vibrations do not work like two recordings of audio waves that can be added together to cancel. You have two totally different structures vibrating. If you asked any of your professors to explain this, they would agree.

Also, molecules are constantly switching back and forth between vibrational modes, as they gain and lose energy, this is on the order of millionths of seconds. A large molecule, like those in our body, would have thousands of different combinations of vibrational states.

So, Supposing you had microscopic xray vision and could see bacteria in the body. What should you be seeing according to chemistry?

1.) A trillion gas particles from the air flying around between you and the person. (Each of them vibrating their atoms back and forth).

2.) In the body, trillions of molecules, with each one having atoms bouncing this way and that.

3.) Somewhere in there you can see a bacteria, which is another giant structure full of molecules with atoms bouncing back and forth.

4.) And all the particles are flying around fast or slow based on their temperature. Everything goes back and forth between vibrational modes, and changes speeds in millions of a seconds.

You would basically see a billion ping pong balls bouncing around at incredible speeds. Would it be easy to distinguish anything at this level???

Take a look at this picture to see the scale of everything, and how many atoms there are flying around!


You are not fooling or impressing anyone with your references to chemistry and physics. Anyone with knowledge of the subject can see you either don’t know any of it, or are just ignoring what you do know, and saying catch phrases to impress people.

Working in a lab, you have one thing that is important above all else. This is your honesty. You can not know much, but if you can be relied on to accurately record your procedures and results, you will be a good employee. You can be as brilliant as Einstein, but if you lie about your results once, all your previous results cannot be trusted, everything you have done must be thrown out and redone.

Therefore I would caution you about the impression you are making to future employers. A scientific education is very valuable, I think you should remember that. As you may have noticed when you posted on psychic's forums, any random person can claim they saw this or that. But a person who can apply the scientific method is very rare.
 
Well, darn Anita, I entered this thread thinking that you could be the first one to admit that their superpowers didn't exist (if you failed the test) but now it seems you will Believe regardless. Oh well. I still wish you luck, however. In the unlikely event that you pass it would make things interesting.

Also, since I'm not up to speed on all your threads, could you verify that you also claim to be able to detect gasses inside gas cylinders? Thanks
 
Well, darn Anita, I entered this thread thinking that you could be the first one to admit that their superpowers didn't exist (if you failed the test) but now it seems you will Believe regardless. Oh well. I still wish you luck, however. In the unlikely event that you pass it would make things interesting.

Also, since I'm not up to speed on all your threads, could you verify that you also claim to be able to detect gasses inside gas cylinders? Thanks

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5019988&postcount=859

10 Dec 08
When I look at the air with my ability I see neon green nitrogen. I also see it in nitrogen gas tanks at the college chemistry department. I also detect the presence of nitrogen in molecules.


============

Actually, that VFF post has some other interesting claims; it's interesting to see how they've evloved in the last 12 months:

"I can always detect medical information at any time and it requires no effort from me, and so far the information has always been correct."

Do you still stand by this description of your powers, Anita? It seems to be somewhat stronger than the way you currently describe your organ-vision... and it certainly seems to contradict some things you've said in this thread.
 
Last edited:
Thanks volatile. I'll speculate here that she is not actually lying when she says that she has made only one claim, she is using some kind of alternate definition of "claim" that involves a formal process.

At any rate , this gas claim seems like it would be easily testable, and it wouldn't matter if she thought it was paranormal, JREF certainly would.
 
There are links there to our very own Commentary archives, which contain a cornucopia of fine frivolities from miasmatic, miscegenated misanthropes that will amaze and astound. M.

Not to mention mortified. :)
It was reading those archives that convinced me to register here.

Hokulele linked to VFF's original thread earlier. I'd never read it, so I plowed through the 66 pages, with the links to the ghost story thread (VFF wanted to visit the White House so she could talk to mr Lincoln :eye-poppi), the posts from the FACT group and much, much more.

All in all, the hours spent reading all that showed me the IIG West is to be highly commended for negociating a workable protocol for next Saturday's demonstration.
Six days to go!

Added: thanks for a superb post Ness36.
 
Last edited:
I also want to thank Ness36 for a very informative post. I hope that VfF addresses it. I'll quote the bottom for her, in case she didn't read that far:

You are not fooling or impressing anyone with your references to chemistry and physics. Anyone with knowledge of the subject can see you either don’t know any of it, or are just ignoring what you do know, and saying catch phrases to impress people.

Working in a lab, you have one thing that is important above all else. This is your honesty. You can not know much, but if you can be relied on to accurately record your procedures and results, you will be a good employee. You can be as brilliant as Einstein, but if you lie about your results once, all your previous results cannot be trusted, everything you have done must be thrown out and redone.

Therefore I would caution you about the impression you are making to future employers. A scientific education is very valuable, I think you should remember that. As you may have noticed when you posted on psychic's forums, any random person can claim they saw this or that. But a person who can apply the scientific method is very rare.
Wise words.
 

Back
Top Bottom