seeing the light in skepticism

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

I have seen many skeptics claim there is no evidence of psi, when there is - there is some debate about it, but there is plenty of evidence.

I am starting to think that some people are simply not able to see somethings. I know of skeptics who have bent spoon bowls in the same manner as pk party goers but refused to accept they used excessive force. Even after experiencing a PK event, they only accept it into their reality as a normal physical effect, despite also knowing that it is impossible to use normal physical force without leaving flesh dents bruising etc,.

Frankly, I think this is perfectly normal. Everyone would at some point have to adjust such a dissonant reality into their mind-set. Believers must see these kinds of people in the same strange way that skeptics must view believers. Eventually, the more people who experience it and accept it, it will pass 'critical mass' in terms of belief and become memeticaly 'real'. At that point, we will be able to learn more about what it actually is. But we have to get to that point of acceptance first.

I think we are at a stage with Psi where some events will be real to some and not to others, where both will be right.

[Dr Adequate]

Another stupid psych-101 thread, just what we needed.

* yawn *

SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE!

Don't just keep spamming up the board about how sceptics are too closed-minded to see blah yadda metaphysics blah jabber frightened of the truth wibble paradigms burble mind set spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.

The fact that believers seem to spend more time drivelling out this stuff than talking about evidence for psi has done more than anything else to convince me there's nothing at all in it. Their substitute for any hard evidence is whining about the people who aren't convinced by flimsy, half-baked evidence. Now,

<marquee>SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE</marquee>

[Anders]

*sigh* *sigh* *SIGH*

waiting...............

Nope, still no evidence.

If there is a reference to a certain female researcher at Edinbourg University, I'm outta here....

[Nex]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
I have seen many skeptics claim there is no evidence of psi, when there is - there is some debate about it, but there is plenty of evidence.
There is? Well-documented scientific evidence, you mean? Can you bring some here for us to see?

You sound like someone I know... DTOP, is that you?

Don't mind Dr. A, apparently he's had way too much caffeine. :p


*edited to add* Dr. A., that was hilarious. Poetry truly in motion.

[c4ts]

Show me one real PK event, and by that I mean an event where the PK is real.

[Dr Adequate]

Originally posted by Nex
Don't mind Dr. A, apparently he's had way too much caffeine. :p
I thought you'd given up cold-reading?

[Nex]

Originally posted by Dr Adequate
I thought you'd given up cold-reading?

Are you getting cheeky with me? ;)


That scrolling post of yours just got you a nomination for a language award. You're welcome. :D

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Nex



*edited to add* Dr. A., that was hilarious. Poetry truly in motion. [/B]

It was not hilarious. He is spamming. I've reported it.

[Operaider]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
It was not hilarious. He is spamming. I've reported it. Does that qualify as spamming?
I always thought spamming was more excessive.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Dr. A said:
Don't just keep spamming up the board about how sceptics are too closed-minded to see blah yadda metaphysics blah jabber frightened of the truth wibble paradigms burble mind set spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.
Okay, that was mildly ironic.

~~ Paul

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
It was not hilarious. He is spamming. I've reported it.

That isn't spamming. You really aren't a very likeable person, are you?

[c4ts]

<font style="font size: 100pt"><marquee>EVIDENCE! EVIDENCE! WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE? IS IT IN YOUR POCKET? DID YOU FORGET TO POST IT? SHOW IT! HERE! NOW! GIANT TEXT IS FUN TO SCROLL! WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!</marquee></font>

[Ashles]

Even after experiencing a PK event, they only accept it into their reality as a normal physical effect, despite also knowing that it is impossible to use normal physical force without leaving flesh dents bruising etc
Really? And the research that demonstrates this is... where exactly?

The last report we had of someone at a PK party was entirely different to your claim there. They bent bowls and cutlery an came to the conclusion it was perfectly doable by normal means.

I think we are at a stage with Psi where some events will be real to some and not to others, where both will be right.
Well you are entitled to your opinion and belief. Many others think we are not at that stage at all and you are incorrect in almost every way in your post.

At the moment the (lack of) evidence supports the sceptics position. If things change due to new evidence coming to light then that will be interesting and will change many things. This has not yet happened and your assuming it will does not mean it actually will ever happen.

Here's a test - if PK is so prevalent and obervable, put a piece of metal on a table (doesn't matter how thin - it could be a wire for the purposes of the test) and have someone bend it,
without touching it.
Then I'll believe it exists.
Until then it's just bending with your hands, which isn't particularly paranormal.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Yaotl
That isn't spamming. You really aren't a very likeable person, are you?

{shrugs}

A lot of people dislike me. Inevitably they're the ones that form an instant opinion of people. Those that get to know me think I'm great and that I'm unique.

[hgc]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
{shrugs}

A lot of people dislike me. Inevitably they're the ones that form an instant opinion of people. Those that get to know me think I'm great and that I'm unique. I like you, Ian.

[TruthSeeker]

Originally posted by hgc
I like you, Ian.

So do I.

[Interesting Ian]

Thanks TS & hgc.

Should we just turn this thread into an Interesting Ian appreciation thread? :D ;)

[TLN]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
A lot of people dislike me. Inevitably they're the ones that form an instant opinion of people. Those that get to know me think I'm great and that I'm unique.

It helps that you're instantly dislikable.

[Ashles]

Those that get to know me think I'm great and that I'm unique.
Indeed. Some even think of you as 'special'.

[Operaider]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
{shrugs}

A lot of people dislike me. Inevitably they're the ones that form an instant opinion of people. Those that get to know me think I'm great and that I'm unique. I think you're quite unique

[c4ts]

"Unique" is one way of saying it.

[Soapy Sam]

Uniqueness of course is an abundant commodity.

I see Ian as the mad uncle in the forum attic, who serves as an awful warning to the young, of the dangers of dabbling in the darke arts Philosophicke and Paranormalle.

He may be allowed out for exercise on Saint's Days , so long as kept on a strong leash and dowsed periodically with holy water.

[Diogenes]

I'm sure Linda would let you change your user name to " Unique Ian "...

[Pragmatist]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam

He may be allowed out for exercise on Saint's Days , so long as kept on a strong leash and dowsed periodically with holy water.

Doused. You see what happens when you traffick with the paranormal? Get thee to a skeptical exorcist forthwith, and wash thy mouth out with the soap of righteousness! :D

[Soapy Sam]

I would like to say your irony meter need new batteries.

But I can't.

Mea culpa.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Pragmatist
Doused. You see what happens when you traffick with the paranormal? Get thee to a skeptical exorcist forthwith, and wash thy mouth out with the soap of righteousness! :D

Bretheren, I shall performe the rituel! *beats Soapy over the head with a giant wooden cross made from 2x4's* Out daemon!

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Dr Adequate
Another stupid psych-101 thread, just what we needed.

SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE! SHOW US THE EVIDENCE!
spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam

Please don't waste bandwidth. You will have the courtesy to behave yourself in my thread or you will be reported for breaking the rules of the board. Thankyou.

Wrt the evidence. It has simply not been dubunked and there is too much of it to claim coincidence anymore. My point is that some cannot even accept the reality of its existence, and to those who can, such a state of affairs is as mystifying to them as it is inconceivable to the other. Whichi s perhaps why this thread deteriated so quickly.

[jambo372]

Light in Skepticism - that's a novelty.

[KelvinG]

I suspect this De'Ville's Advocaat person is Lucianarchy.

I have no solid evidence. It's just a hunch.

[nbenami]

Whichi s perhaps why this thread deteriated so quickly.

Nope, this thread was rotten to begin with, since the original post in it was essentially (a) fact-free and (b) the same old tripe about "there is too much evidence to ignore now" with, of course, zero evidence included.

You'd think, for all these claims of evidence, that I wouldn't be able to walk down the street without being hit by half a dozen high speed spoons.

I kind of see this whole thing in a political sense, wherein the republicans (aka political woo-woos) are voting for a fraudulent set of ideas that appeal to their emotions, and the dems (aka political skeptics) vote by issues. Not that that isn't a terrible oversimplification, but it was fun to think about.

Hm, taking this idea farther, I wonder...if we looked at the membership numbers in this forum, or in any skeptical group, I'd be willing to bet real money that the "blue" states have the highest number of skeptics.

[Sanamas]

Can't you guys at least make a token effort to be polite?

De'ville, I am and will remain skeptical of psi until it is readily demonstrated in a self apparent way that rules out mundane causes and trickery.

For example, with the spoon bending you mentioned, it would need to be done in a way that rules out any sort of trickery or bending through normal means. Thus, the bending would have to occur without the spoon being touched, and the spoon can't have been handled before the demonstration began. If it's being bend psychically, then there would be no need to touch the spoon at all, right?

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Sanamas
Can't you guys at least make a token effort to be polite?


I would if I thought this were a serious attempt to prove psi.

[Ashles]

Please don't waste bandwidth. You will have the courtesy to behave yourself in my thread or you will be reported for breaking the rules of the board. Thankyou.
Yes Dr Adequate, Cynical s absolutely right - you very nearly crashed the internet with your post. How selfish you are.

You should be grateful to Cynical. Up until now I didn't know that if you posted a thread you 'owned' it. Cynical has taught me a useful fact.

I'm off now to revisit to some threads I started in order to make empty threats about reporting people who disagree with me and ask me for evidence I can't provide.

It sounds like fun.

[Nex]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
[...]
Wrt the evidence. It has simply not been dubunked...
The evidence I've seen has. Got anything new for us?

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
and there is too much of it to claim coincidence anymore.
No, not unless you've got a peer-reviewed study up your sleeve.

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
My point is that some cannot even accept the reality of its existence,
I'd be happy to accept that reality, if it were in fact the reality. But there's nothing to back that particular position up. Should we believe in it for fun?

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
Whichi s perhaps why this thread deteriated so quickly.
Oh no, it's because you've said nothing new, earth-shattering, or thought-provoking. It's quite cliche, really. Judging from the responses, I daresay many here are just sick of hearing the same thing, over and over again...

But that's just a guess.


*edited for typos*

[LotusMegami]

Personally I found Dr. A's spaz attack most amusing. :p

I'm a bit confused about memetic reality and critical mass, but if you understand it, there is a worthwhile cause at onlyloveprevails.com. :confused:

As for things only being real to you if you already believe them - inside the Matrix there is no spoon.

Out here in reality - the spoon doesn't care what you want to believe.

:cs: Smilies are fun

[c4ts]

Originally posted by LotusMegami

As for things only being real to you if you already believe them - inside the Matrix there is no spoon.

Out here in reality - the spoon doesn't care what you want to believe.


Inside the Matrix the spoon counts as real, whether there is one or not. As long as you can hold it in your hand and see it, anyway.

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Sanamas
Can't you guys at least make a token effort to be polite?

De'ville, I am and will remain skeptical of psi until it is readily demonstrated in a self apparent way that rules out mundane causes and trickery.

For example, with the spoon bending you mentioned, it would need to be done in a way that rules out any sort of trickery or bending through normal means. Thus, the bending would have to occur without the spoon being touched, and the spoon can't have been handled before the demonstration began. If it's being bend psychically, then there would be no need to touch the spoon at all, right?

Wrong. You are asking for something which is not being claimed.

With spoon bending the belief is that force bends the spoon, hence I've seen children do just that, they believe that by using their hands to bend the bowl they can therefore crumple the bowl. In fact, scientifically, they can't without damaging their hands. But they do, regardless because they believe they can do it. An arch-skeptic will never do this, because he already believes that the scientific method says that it is impossible to crumple bowls with sheer physical force, not without bruising or bursting the skin that is.

If you need any proof about the belief mind-set, you need only look at the experimenter effect, now called the Wiseman effect. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_67/ai_104657311

I suggest that skeptics are beating their heads against the wall as long as they are not able to accept alternate realities to those which predominate their existing psychological makeup.

[JMA]

Newbie like you are really boring because you bring stuff that have been discuss again and agin on the forum ad nauseam.

Did you even read the topic about PK Party before posting?

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43384

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat If you need any proof about the belief mind-set, you need only look at the experimenter effect, now called the Wiseman effect. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_67/ai_104657311

Same comments. You really think we are dummies if you thought we don't know about the experimenter effect...

There is even a topic about it in the "Skepdic", so probably every single sceptic in the world knows about it:

http://www.skepdic.com/experimentereffect.html

I mean, read a little bit of the forum about posting things like that. Your not really credible for the moment, AT ALL!!!

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Nex
[B]The evidence I've seen has (been debunked). Got anything new for us?


He's talking about the scientific evidence.

[Hawk one]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
He's talking about the scientific evidence.


And no scientific evidence has been provided. Not in this thread, not in any peer-reviewed scientific magazines, and basically nowhere at all. Your point is?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Hawk one
And no scientific evidence has been provided. Not in this thread, not in any peer-reviewed scientific magazines, and generally nowhere at all. Your point is?

A colossal amount of scientific evidence has been provided.

[Hawk one]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
A colossal amount of scientific evidence has been provided.


Gee, and you don't even provide one single link? I mean, with all the amount of scientific evidence around, one would think that the first thing you'd do would be to show all this to us instead of just claiming it. Hell, you should post those links in every single post if they are really worth anything. I mean, you know (or at least should know) that we don't trust claims alone, so if you seriously want to convince us, then put up or shut up. The word "collosal" alone will neither impress nor sway me.

[JMA]

Originally posted by Hawk one
Gee, and you don't even provide one single link? I mean, with all the amount of scientific evidence around, one would think that the first thing you'd do would be to show all this to us instead of just claiming it. Hell, you should post those links in every single post if they are really worth anything. I mean, you know (or at least should know) that we don't trust claims alone, so if you seriously want to convince us, then put up or shut up. The word "collosal" alone will neither impress nor sway me.

Newbie like you are really boring because you bring stuff that have been discuss again and again on the forum ad nauseam. (I have a déja-vu feeling here). :D

Did you even read the topics called "Another attempt to stop Interresting Ian boring spam" before posting?

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47826

For Interresting-ian parapsychological research is evidence. So just go and read Dean Radin "Counscious Universe", Sheldrake "The sense of beeing stare at" and subscribe to the Journal of Parpsychology.

But please don't ask him links! That has been done in every topics about ESP on this forum since Ian is here. No use for him to give more links...

We don't agree with him that these publications provides evidence. But no need to ask him again and again what evidence is thinking of...

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

It only took two clicks and two words on this forum to find a tiny portion of undebunked evidence. This is right under your nose, yet some people still find it hard to accept that it even exists.

"[...]When 10 new studies published after the Milton Wiseman cut off date are added to their database, the overall ganzfeld effect again becomes significant, but the mean effect size is still smaller than those from the original studies. Ratings of all 40 studies by 3 independent raters reveal that the effect size achieved by a replication is significantly correlated with the degree to which it adhered to the standard ganzfeld protocol. Standard replications yield significant effect sizes comparable with those obtained in the past. " Bem, D.J, Palmer, J. and Broughton, R.S. (2001). Updating the Ganzfeld database: a victim of its own success? Journal of Parapsychology, 65, 207-218
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The above was also covered in Science News:


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Since the metanalysis was completed, nine more ganzfeld studies have been published. Milton acknowledges that the psi effect would be statistically significant if the analysis were updated to include these studies." - http://www.sciencenews.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bem's response to Hyman - http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/dbem...e_to_hyman.html


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Ganzfeld experiments at Edinburgh are getting highly
significant results. They appear to be well designed and
if they are carried out as stated, then the results are
very unlikely to be due to chance and therefore may be
evidence of ESP. " - Dr S Blackmore (member of CSICOP)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Bem, D. J. and Honorton, C. (1994). Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer, Psychological Bulletin, 115, 4-18. Here's the article online: psi in the ganzfeld. http://www.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/does_psi_exist.html

Child, I. L. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The question of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230.

Jahn, R. G. and Dunne, B. J. (1986). On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena. Foundations of Physics, 16, 721-772.

Jahn, R. G. (1982). The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective. Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, 136-170.

Radin, D. I. (1989). Searching for "signatures" in anomalous human-machine interaction research: A neural network approach. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3, 185-200.

Radin, D. I. & Nelson, R. D. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514.

Radin, D. I. (1994). On complexity and pragmatism. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8 (4), 523-534.

Rao, K. R. & Palmer, J. (1987). The anomaly called psi: Recent research and criticism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 539-551.

Utts, J. (1991). Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology. Statistical Science, 6, 363-378.

Jessica Utts' Report on Remote Viewing for the US government, critic Ray Hyman's Response to Utts' Report, and her Response to Hyman's Response. http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/response.html

[Diogenes]

The $M is yours!

[kookbreaker]

Originally posted by KelvinG
I suspect this De'Ville's Advocaat person is Lucianarchy.

I have no solid evidence. It's just a hunch.

I'd say your hunch is right. The prim schoolmarm comments point to a Luci sock. Luci loves to play uptight & stuffy before melting down into a boatload of sailor's curses and insults.

Kind of a sock-puppet assembly line.

[dharlow]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat

Bem, D. J. and Honorton, C. (1994). Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer, Psychological Bulletin, 115, 4-18. Here's the article online: psi in the ganzfeld. http://www.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/does_psi_exist.html

Child, I. L. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The question of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230.

Jahn, R. G. and Dunne, B. J. (1986). On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena. Foundations of Physics, 16, 721-772.

Jahn, R. G. (1982). The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective. Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, 136-170.

Radin, D. I. (1989). Searching for "signatures" in anomalous human-machine interaction research: A neural network approach. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3, 185-200.

Radin, D. I. & Nelson, R. D. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514.

Radin, D. I. (1994). On complexity and pragmatism. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8 (4), 523-534.

Rao, K. R. & Palmer, J. (1987). The anomaly called psi: Recent research and criticism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 539-551.

Utts, J. (1991). Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology. Statistical Science, 6, 363-378.

Jessica Utts' Report on Remote Viewing for the US government, critic Ray Hyman's Response to Utts' Report, and her Response to Hyman's Response. http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/response.html

None of these are reports of single experiments. Rather they are summaries of a body of work. While they might be useful to read up on for this forum (in particular the 1987 BBS which contains about 50 commentaries from various out- and insiders), this is not what people are looking for here when they ask for evidence. They are asking for specific experiments that have been replicated to some extend or the other.

[gnome]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
I think we are at a stage with Psi where some events will be real to some and not to others, where both will be right.

Absurd. A psychic and a skeptic are in a room. The psychic knocks over a candle telekenetically. If it's "real" to the psychic and "not real" to the skeptic, then the psychic will burn when the room does, and the skeptic will not notice anything?

Only one of them can be right.

[Anders]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat


[snip]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Ganzfeld experiments at Edinburgh are getting highly
significant results. They appear to be well designed and
if they are carried out as stated, then the results are
very unlikely to be due to chance and therefore may be
evidence of ESP. " - Dr S Blackmore (member of CSICOP)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[snip]


A certain reasearcher at Edinburgh University, K D, did cut and paste the sound tapes from her Ganzfeldt studies. Not that strange than she got nice results. Those studies taken away, the Ganzfeld phenomenon cease to exist.

I'm a bit suprised Susan Blackmore even talks about those. How old is that quote?

And I said that if those forged studies were referenced, I was outta here, so buy buy...

[dharlow]

Originally posted by Anders
A certain reasearcher at Edinburgh University, K D, did cut and paste the sound tapes from her Ganzfeldt studies.

Do you have a reference to this?

Originally posted by Anders
And I said that if those forged studies were referenced, I was outta here, so buy buy... [/B]

I've never heard anything about Kathy Dalton's studies being "forged". I'm curious as to where you got this from.

[JMA]

Originally posted by Anders
A certain reasearcher at Edinburgh University, K D, did cut and paste the sound tapes from her Ganzfeldt studies. Not that strange than she got nice results. Those studies taken away, the Ganzfeld phenomenon cease to exist.

I would like to know more about that...

[Ashles]

De'Ville's Advocaat:
People can bend spoons in a way which is scientifically impossible

Sceptics:
Do you have any evidence of this?

De'Ville's Advocaat:
Look! Ganzfeld studies!

Sceptics:
Uh, and that has, what, excactly, to do with the spoon bending?

De'Ville's Advocaat:
Anecdotal evidence counts as fact when I present it. My opinion of sceptics and everything is always correct

Sceptics:
Welcome back Luci! How's the new name working out for ya?

[Pragmatist]

Originally posted by gnome
Absurd. A psychic and a skeptic are in a room. The psychic knocks over a candle telekenetically. If it's "real" to the psychic and "not real" to the skeptic, then the psychic will burn when the room does, and the skeptic will not notice anything?

Only one of them can be right.

No, you don't get it, it's quantum mechanics, they are both burned and unburned at the same time! :D

Similarly psychics can always be right...even when they are wrong! :)

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by gnome
Absurd. A psychic and a skeptic are in a room. The psychic knocks over a candle telekenetically. If it's "real" to the psychic and "not real" to the skeptic, then the psychic will burn when the room does, and the skeptic will not notice anything?

Only one of them can be right.



Schroedinger's Skeptic. They are both right, wrong, burned and safe. For each action there is a possible outcome. The skeptic is prepared for the candle to stay upright, and so his observational consciousness remains with that probability. The psychic however, knocks the candle over with PK and continues his focus of observational consciousness on the flow and probable outcomes of that possibility. You are sharing a reality where both types of belief system are in competition for differing outcomes. Your consciousness will choose which is the required outcome and if your are skeptical, it will remain flowing along the lines of that pattern of expectancy and will not be aware of the outcome of the psychic. Of course, there will be an aspect of the psychic's consciousness who will choose to fail, for whatever reason, and they may decide to experience the failure. Likewise, the skeptic will burn in another reality if their consciousness needs this to happen, when the psychic knocks the candle over by PK.

Quantum theory shows that there are an infinite number of outcomes for any one event and that every possibility exists simultaneously. It is also showing that the mind can locate itself at will in any of these existences, although governed by our belief engines we tend to act predictably - which is why spoons do not currently melt in each and every paw and why 3 dimensional images and sound can be transmitted across the world. Our belief in math and physics has shown us that it is possible to transmute living actions into digital signals, whereas such a thought would be complete hokus pokus a mere 500 years ago.

We are at the point in the belief dichotomy where critical mass is being reached in respect of the memetic values which are socially programmed into our way of thinking.

Crowley was wrong in one key area: Believe what you Will, shall be the whole of the law.

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Pragmatist
No, you don't get it, it's quantum mechanics, they are both burned and unburned at the same time! :D

Similarly psychics can always be right...even when they are wrong! :)

You're freakin' psychic is what you are.

[Nex]

So, you're saying people with different beliefs live within different physical realities? This is ridiculous.

And with the quantum now? Oh yes, please. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=317564&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending) That's not been touched on at all.

Do you have any evidence at all that shows belief affects reality?

In the meantime, I believe I'll get a refill on my coffee.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Nex


Do you have any evidence at all that shows belief affects reality?



Yes indeed; just consider the placebo effect.

[gnome]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
Schroedinger's Skeptic. They are both right, wrong, burned and safe. For each action there is a possible outcome. The skeptic is prepared for the candle to stay upright, and so his observational consciousness remains with that probability. The psychic however, knocks the candle over with PK and continues his focus of observational consciousness on the flow and probable outcomes of that possibility. You are sharing a reality where both types of belief system are in competition for differing outcomes. Your consciousness will choose which is the required outcome and if your are skeptical, it will remain flowing along the lines of that pattern of expectancy and will not be aware of the outcome of the psychic. Of course, there will be an aspect of the psychic's consciousness who will choose to fail, for whatever reason, and they may decide to experience the failure. Likewise, the skeptic will burn in another reality if their consciousness needs this to happen, when the psychic knocks the candle over by PK.

Quantum theory shows that there are an infinite number of outcomes for any one event and that every possibility exists simultaneously. It is also showing that the mind can locate itself at will in any of these existences, although governed by our belief engines we tend to act predictably - which is why spoons do not currently melt in each and every paw and why 3 dimensional images and sound can be transmitted across the world. Our belief in math and physics has shown us that it is possible to transmute living actions into digital signals, whereas such a thought would be complete hokus pokus a mere 500 years ago.

We are at the point in the belief dichotomy where critical mass is being reached in respect of the memetic values which are socially programmed into our way of thinking.

Crowley was wrong in one key area: Believe what you Will, shall be the whole of the law.

Babble, babble, babble. Just answer this: what will the skeptic see afterwards? Will the "psychic" still be there, or will he spontaneously burst into flame? If nothing happens at all (because it's not "real" to the skeptic), will the Psychic still be able to speak to him?

[Ashles]

Quantum theory shows that there are an infinite number of outcomes for any one event and that every possibility exists simultaneously. It is also showing that the mind can locate itself at will in any of these existences
Please, firstly show the part of Quantum theory that proposes this theory. I am interested in what you think you know about Quantum Theory other than a few buzzwords and out of context concepts.
Then explain how this is anything other than currently a theory without any evidence.

We are at the point in the belief dichotomy where critical mass is being reached in respect of the memetic values which are socially programmed into our way of thinking.
No we aren't.
This IS fun isn't it.

So let me get this straight - our beliefs affect our reality. Right?
Yet I don't believe in psychic ability and in my reality there are no experiments which show it conclusively exists.
You DO believe in psychic ability but in your reality also there are no experiments which show it conclusively exists.
Is my reality stronger than yours then?
Or do you "choose to fail, for whatever reason, and... decide to experience the failure."?

I like my reality better.

[monkboon]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Yes indeed; just consider the placebo effect.

Not that that's even relevant, but the placebo effect is entirely different - my belief that a placebo will work has no bearing upon how it will work for you.

[Pragmatist]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
Schroedinger's Skeptic. They are both right, wrong, burned and safe. For each action there is a possible outcome. The skeptic is prepared for the candle to stay upright, and so his observational consciousness remains with that probability. The psychic however, knocks the candle over with PK and continues his focus of observational consciousness on the flow and probable outcomes of that possibility. You are sharing a reality where both types of belief system are in competition for differing outcomes. Your consciousness will choose which is the required outcome and if your are skeptical, it will remain flowing along the lines of that pattern of expectancy and will not be aware of the outcome of the psychic. Of course, there will be an aspect of the psychic's consciousness who will choose to fail, for whatever reason, and they may decide to experience the failure. Likewise, the skeptic will burn in another reality if their consciousness needs this to happen, when the psychic knocks the candle over by PK.

Quantum theory shows that there are an infinite number of outcomes for any one event and that every possibility exists simultaneously. It is also showing that the mind can locate itself at will in any of these existences, although governed by our belief engines we tend to act predictably - which is why spoons do not currently melt in each and every paw and why 3 dimensional images and sound can be transmitted across the world. Our belief in math and physics has shown us that it is possible to transmute living actions into digital signals, whereas such a thought would be complete hokus pokus a mere 500 years ago.

We are at the point in the belief dichotomy where critical mass is being reached in respect of the memetic values which are socially programmed into our way of thinking.

Crowley was wrong in one key area: Believe what you Will, shall be the whole of the law.

Male bovine manure!

And there you have it folks, a prima facie demonstration of my magical powers. I utter the magic incantation and the woo materialises:

To reveal the true woo, just mention the "Q"

Pragmatist have heap big powerful magic! :D

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by monkboon
Not that that's even relevant, but the placebo effect is entirely different - my belief that a placebo will work has no bearing upon how it will work for you.

Nonsense. If you're my doctor, then your belief it will work will influence my belief.

Anyway, Nex asked for any evidence for beliefs effecting reality. I have provided that evidence. Our beliefs actually initiate physical change in the world.

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Pragmatist
Male bovine manure!

And there you have it folks, a prima facie demonstration of my magical powers. I utter the magic incantation and the woo materialises:

To reveal the true woo, just mention the "Q"

Pragmatist have heap big powerful magic! :D

You've converted me, I'm a believer in whatever it is you're preaching :D

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Nonsense. If you're my doctor, then your belief it will work will influence my belief.

Anyway, Nex asked for any evidence for beliefs effecting reality. I have provided that evidence. Our beliefs actually initiate physical change in the world.

So if I have this little bottle of liquid that I say can remove rust from iron, then my belief makes this true even if it's just water? The placebo effect is just you believing it works, and that's only in conditions where that would have a bearing. No amount of belief is going to cure cancer just because some doctor is waving a pill around.

[Ashles]

Anyway, Nex asked for any evidence for beliefs effecting reality. I have provided that evidence. Our beliefs actually initiate physical change in the world.
No they don't Ian. You've really gone off on a stupid tangent with this one.
There is no doubt that certain attitudes can make you feel better - expectations of a result or sensation often yield that reslt or sensation when we are talking about physical sensations in a body.

But placebos don't heal bones or cure cancer, or make blind people see. These conditions are real physical conditions and are unaffected by placebos.

Perhaps a placebo might make you feel your broken leg hurt less, but it won't make it heal any differently.

If you think this is you providing evidence then you are rather sadly mistaken.

[monkboon]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Nonsense. If you're my doctor, then your belief it will work will influence my belief.

Again, that's not relevant. Your doctor knows it's a placebo, you don't. His belief isn't that the placebo will do wonders for you, rather his job is to convince you of that belief. But let's say that your doctor hasn't read his reference material, and he really believes it will work on you. Unless you are convinced, it's still not going to have any effect, so your doctor's belief is unimportant.

Besides that, the placebo effect is not belief affecting reality. It's belief affecting the perception of reality, which is undisputed as far as I know. I am unaware of any reliable evidence that a placebo has ever cured any physical ailment. I'll take the mountains of evidence that placebos have led to relief of subjective symptoms as given.

[Dr Adequate]

So, let's check off what just happened. Same ol' same ol'.

(1) De'Ville's Advocaat explains that there's lots of evidence for psi, and produces the standard patronising psych-101 explanation about how the "mind-set" of sceptics blah jabber wibble, you know the thing.

(2) We ask him for the evidence.

(3) He produces a link to a study which used a (definitely) bogus methodolgy on an (allegedly) bogus set of data.

(4) We point out that this is not good evidence for psi.

(5) He shelves the question of evidence and starts talking about how he's right 'cos of "quantum mechanics", a subject of which he obviously knows nothing...

(6) ... and arguing about whether the world really exists.

(7) The entire question of this "evidence" that my "mind-set" prevents me from seeing is quietly shelved.

Seeing this same charade acted out over and over again makes me more and more sceptical daily. If there were any good points to be made, surely the believers would make them. It seems there are none.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Yaotl
So if I have this little bottle of liquid that I say can remove rust from iron, then my belief makes this true even if it's just water? The placebo effect is just you believing it works, and that's only in conditions where that would have a bearing. No amount of belief is going to cure cancer just because some doctor is waving a pill around.

The same tired tactic time after time. The fact that my beliefs effect the world does not entail that my ability has unlimited powers.

Also I would be interested in you backing up your contention that ones mental state can have no bearing on the curing of cancer.

As William G Braud has said



there exists a relatively large literature of reports of experiments in which participants have attempted to influence a wide variety of remote cellular and other biological systems through direct intention. When my colleague Marilyn Schlitz and I surveyed this literature in 1985, we found reports of 149 such experiments, of which 79 experiments (53 percent) yielded significant evidence of direct mental influence effect. The living target systems for these investigations have included bacteria, yeast, fungi, mobile algae, plants, protozoa, larvae, insects, chicks, mice, rats, gerbils, cats, dogs, and dolphins, as well as cellular preparations (blood cells, neurons, cancer cells) and enzyme activities. In human "target persons," eye movements, muscular movements, electrodermal activity, plethysmographic activity, respiration, and brain rhythms have been affected through direct mental influence. Many of these experiments are reviewed in papers by Solfvin (1984) and by Benor (1991).

http://integral-inquiry.com/docs/649/intentions.doc

[c4ts]

For those of you who think belief can change reality, try this experiment:

Lock yourself out of the house (make sure nobody is inside). Stand outside the front door, close your eyes, and believe the door is open. Keep your eyes closed, it is important that you do not see the door. Continue to believe the door is open (without opening your eyes) until you are SURE of it, that you absolutely KNOW it is open. Keep imagining the door as wide open until you are sure it's real. Now, keeping your eyes closed, walk back inside your house through the open door. What happens?

[Dr Adequate]

I don't think anyone seriously wishes to argue that the mind doesn't affect the body. Otherwise, how am I typing? But the idea that my mind can directly affect anything outside my body remains speculation. The further idea that the laws of nature could be determined by popular belief is just... weird.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ashles
No they don't Ian. You've really gone off on a stupid tangent with this one.
There is no doubt that certain attitudes can make you feel better - expectations of a result or sensation often yield that reslt or sensation when we are talking about physical sensations in a body.

But placebos don't heal bones or cure cancer, or make blind people see. These conditions are real physical conditions and are unaffected by placebos.

Perhaps a placebo might make you feel your broken leg hurt less, but it won't make it heal any differently.

If you think this is you providing evidence then you are rather sadly mistaken.

If an ice cube is placed on a hypnotized person's skin, and she's told it is a hot coal, a blister appears. A patient overheard his Doctor tell another Doctor that he (the patient) has a galloping heart. The patient interpreted this as meaning that his heart is fine, where as quite the opposite was the case. Next time the patient goes to the doctor his heart is fine.

Oh I know, I know. These examples are not good enough. You want ones belief to be able to levitate objects, explode stars! etc LOL

Sorry, the contention was that belief cannot affect reality. This is flat out false.

[Ashles]

The fact that my beliefs effect the world does not entail that my ability has unlimited powers.
No Ian. I'm not sure whether you genuinely don't understand or you are just being deliberately stupid.

The example you have given is evidence that we have the ability to alter our physical sensations. Nothing more.
This is not an affect on anything more significant than our own perception of physical sensations.
Rubbing a knocked arm makes the pain subside. It doesn't mean that we didn't knock the arm or it won't still bruise.

Our beliefs affect nothing that would change anyone else's experience. If I believe your broken leg will hurt less, it won't have any effect.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by monkboon
Again, that's not relevant. Your doctor knows it's a placebo, you don't. His belief isn't that the placebo will do wonders for you, rather his job is to convince you of that belief. But let's say that your doctor hasn't read his reference material, and he really believes it will work on you. Unless you are convinced, it's still not going to have any effect, so your doctor's belief is unimportant.

Besides that, the placebo effect is not belief affecting reality. It's belief affecting the perception of reality, which is undisputed as far as I know. I am unaware of any reliable evidence that a placebo has ever cured any physical ailment. I'll take the mountains of evidence that placebos have led to relief of subjective symptoms as given.

Don't be absurd. Placebos are almost as effective as the real thing. And we all know that anxiety can have deleterious effects on the body.

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Don't be absurd. Placebos are almost as effective as the real thing. And we all know that anxiety can have deleterious effects on the body.

Can I come live in your fantasy world? And who the hell is William Braud? I can't find much about him that isn't about that article.

[Ashles]

If an ice cube is placed on a hypnotized person's skin, and she's told it is a hot coal, a blister appears. A patient overheard his Doctor tell another Doctor that he (the patient) has a galloping heart. The patient interpreted this as meaning that his heart is fine, where as quite the opposite was the case. Next time the patient goes to the doctor his heart is fine.
I too have heard these anecdotes.

Is there anything to confirm they are real?

Edited to add: It is already accepted that what you are thinking can affect your body - relaxation and calmness will help to slow the heart, but we know the brain has influence over the body to a certain degree anyway so this isn't about 'belief affecting reality' merely standard accepted physiological responses to mood.

But I realise you are splitting hairs and redefining things to try and prove yourself right. As usual.
You know EXACTLY what we are refering to by beliefs affecting reality, and it's NOT "I believe I can pick up this pen and I then do so, so my belief affected reality" type of statement,which is where you are coming from.
We are talking about external events or those not under the direct influence of our mind, like heart rate, breathing, pain perception etc.

(I am sceptical about the ice cube story anyway, but if it did turn out to be true it wouldn't be inexplicable or outside the bounds of possibility. I just still would like to hear any evidence for it.)

[Dr Adequate]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
If an ice cube is placed on a hypnotized person's skin, and she's told it is a hot coal, a blister appears. A patient overheard his Doctor tell another Doctor that he (the patient) has a galloping heart. The patient interpreted this as meaning that his heart is fine, where as quite the opposite was the case. Next time the patient goes to the doctor his heart is fine.

Oh I know, I know. These examples are not good enough. You want ones belief to be able to levitate objects, explode stars! etc LOL

Sorry, the contention was that belief cannot affect reality. This is flat out false.
WE AGREE THAT THE MIND CAN AFFECT THE BODY.

But it seems that my beliefs can't directly affect anything outside my body. Providing a counter-example would involve proving the existence of some psi effect. By the way, feel free to do so. In your own time.

[c4ts]

So what do you think, Ian? Can the placebo effect cure ebola or restore lost limbs?

[Ashles]

Don't be absurd. Placebos are almost as effective as the real thing.
Placebos are almost as effective as the real thing? Don't be absurd.

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Consider that you are watching a movie, on DVD, and you pause. You are given the option to choose from a variety of 'next scenario'. You chose the one which you want. Eventually your selections arrive at the ending of your choice.

Quantum theory gives consciousness an infinite number of 'next scenario's and those choices are happening at an infinite speed, countless trillions every billionth of a nano-second, and each of those choices has an infinite number of outcomes, and so on.

Here you are reading this now, and everything we share has been so until this point. You may continue to choose to see no evidence, you may build straw structures in order to hide yourself from the evidence, but others are seeing this evidence you are excluding yourself from, and as that memetic virus spreads, the less 'in touch' you will find yourself with in reality. That will only be resolved for your consciousness when you accept a quantum shift in the democratic reality and allow your self to experience the alter-paradigm.

[KelvinG]

Originally posted by kookbreaker
I'd say your hunch is right. The prim schoolmarm comments point to a Luci sock. Luci loves to play uptight & stuffy before melting down into a boatload of sailor's curses and insults.

Kind of a sock-puppet assembly line.

The more I read, the more I'm convinced. De'Ville's Advocaat is Lucianarchy.

The condescending, arrogant style is the same. The way he lists his "evidence" with references is the same.

It sure didn't take him long to come back and start singing the same old tune!

[Dr Adequate]

Originally posted by Ashles
Placebos are almost as effective as the real thing? Don't be absurd.
Well of course they are, you ignoramus. That's why a piece of paper with ABRACADABRA written on it provided almost as much protection from the Black Death in the fourteenth century as penicillin does today.

[Nex]

Could a moderator please check De'Ville's Advocaat's IP address and see if it's Lucianarchy?

Odd, that mystery is more compelling to me than anything he's said thus far. :D

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Nex
Could a moderator please check De'Ville's Advocaat's IP address and see if it's Lucianarchy?

Odd, that mystery is more compelling to me than anything he's said thus far. :D

Probably because what he's said thus far is complete rubbish.

[The Don]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
Consider that you are watching a movie, on DVD, and you pause. You are given the option to choose from a variety of 'next scenario'. You chose the one which you want. Eventually your selections arrive at the ending of your choice.

Quantum theory gives consciousness an infinite number of 'next scenario's and those choices are happening at an infinite speed, countless trillions every billionth of a nano-second, and each of those choices has an infinite number of outcomes, and so on.

Here you are reading this now, and everything we share has been so until this point. You may continue to choose to see no evidence, you may build straw structures in order to hide yourself from the evidence, but others are seeing this evidence you are excluding yourself from, and as that memetic virus spreads, the less 'in touch' you will find yourself with in reality. That will only be resolved for your consciousness when you accept a quantum shift in the democratic reality and allow your self to experience the alter-paradigm.
A few points:

Firstly, it's clear from your post that you really don't understand Quantum Mechanics.

Secondly, despite being asked to do so, you have failed to provide any credible evidence

Thirdly, appealing to people to experience an alter-paradigm will not really further your argument in this company


To stand a chance of changing minds round here you will need to provide links to expeimental evidence of PSI which is

- Not anecdotal
- Peer reviewed
- Replicated by independent researchers
- Not already compromised
- Published in reliable scientific journals

[KelvinG]

Originally posted by Nex
Could a moderator please check De'Ville's Advocaat's IP address and see if it's Lucianarchy?

Odd, that mystery is more compelling to me than anything he's said thus far. :D

Trouble is, disguising IP addresses isn't that hard. In fact, I would be surprised if someone (even someone as dense as Luci) would return to this board after being banned without taking measures to disguise his identity.

But, I agree, might as well check.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ashles
I too have heard these anecdotes.

Is there anything to confirm they are real?

Edited to add: It is already accepted that what you are thinking can affect your body - relaxation and calmness will help to slow the heart, but we know the brain has influence over the body to a certain degree anyway so this isn't about 'belief affecting reality' merely standard accepted physiological responses to mood.

But I realise you are splitting hairs and redefining things to try and prove yourself right. As usual.
You know EXACTLY what we are refering to by beliefs affecting reality, and it's NOT "I believe I can pick up this pen and I then do so, so my belief affected reality" type of statement,which is where you are coming from.
We are talking about external events or those not under the direct influence of our mind, like heart rate, breathing, pain perception etc.

(I am sceptical about the ice cube story anyway, but if it did turn out to be true it wouldn't be inexplicable or outside the bounds of possibility. I just still would like to hear any evidence for it.)

I don't have any references, but I believe it's quite common knowledge. And of course certain people are able to alter their heart rate, pain perception etc.

I agree that the contention that our beliefs can effect events outside our bodies, that are not precipitated by bodily movements, is more controversial. We're talking about psychokiesis and DMILS (Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems) here. Go look up the evidence.

[Dr Adequate]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
You may continue to choose to see no evidence, you may build straw structures in order to hide yourself from the evidence, but others are seeing this evidence you are excluding yourself from...
Hey, I tell you what. Instead of whining about us and lying about us, why don't you
<marquee>SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE</marquee>
instead of hiding away from the lack of evidence with this pathetic smokescreen of insults, fantasy, and, frankly, gibberish. Nothing will change my mind but evidence that I'm wrong. At the moment, with every post you make, you validate the idea that I'm right and that there is no psi, for as I've pointed out, the fact that believers have to spam out worthless arguments like this in a continual stream of pointless gibble, instead of referring us to evidence, shows how pathetically weak your case is.
and as that memetic virus spreads, the less 'in touch' you will find yourself with in reality. That will only be resolved for your consciousness when you accept a quantum shift in the democratic reality and allow your self to experience the alter-paradigm.
:dl:
It's like listening to a fundie fantasise about the Rapture. One day, one glorious day, he'll be proved right, and everyone will realise how right he was. Do you realise that people have been writing this sort of deluded wish-fulfillment fantasy about psi for decades before you were even born? (As with the second coming, for that matter). And the Great Day hath not dawnethed. Dream on.

[Ashles]

Could a moderator please check De'Ville's Advocaat's IP address and see if it's Lucianarchy?

Odd, that mystery is more compelling to me than anything he's said thus far.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probably because what he's said thus far is complete rubbish.
Are you sure we need to bother checking the IP address.



Or perhaps De'Ville's Advocaat could point us to the sections of Quantum Theory that back up his 'DVD menu' analogy.

Or is this all just how he reckons Quantum Theory should work based on a good 3 minutes guesswork?

That will only be resolved for your consciousness when you accept a quantum shift in the democratic reality
And where in the much-abused Quantum Theory does it state that reality is decided by what the majority believe?

Honestly, stick to talking about this to drunk students at closing time. Your understanding of the subject is clearly non-existent.

[Ashles]

I don't have any references, but I believe it's quite common knowledge
Ian - I can't believe you of all people have resorted to that to back up your theory.

If it's that well known there should be numerous examples where this phenomena has been researched.

Or maybe it's one of those things that people believe, but isn't actually true.

We're talking about psychokiesis and DMILS (Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems) here. Go look up the evidence.
Oh have you given up providing evidence for your claims now?
It's up to me to hunt around for evidence for something I don't believe exists?
Well that certainly sounds like a productive use of my time.

Tell you what Ian - reality is unaffected by belief. There's loads of evidence to support this.
Go and find it.

[Anders]

Originally posted by JMA
I would like to know more about that...
Quoting a pair of reasearchers at the Gothenburg unversity in Sweden : "I will never again trust her, K.D. regarding any reasearch around parapsycology".

This was after they had K.D sound tapes analyzied by sound engineers.

The quote in swedish is the following, C.F and a few more can read this: "- Jag kommer aldrig någonsin att fästa minsta tilltro till någonting som hon påstår om hennes parapsykologiska forskning, säger han. "

And due to swedish law I can't write the researchers names but this is the link to the news paper interview:

Para Fraud (http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=164585)

[alfaniner]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
... A patient overheard his Doctor tell another Doctor that he (the patient) has a galloping heart. The patient interpreted this as meaning that his heart is fine, where as quite the opposite was the case. Next time the patient goes to the doctor his heart is fine.

Sorry, the contention was that belief cannot affect reality. This is flat out false.

Would this have the same effect if the patient had not heard the doctor?

Belief does not affect reality. Belief affects perception.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ashles
Ian - I can't believe you of all people have resorted to that to back up your theory.

If it's that well known there should be numerous examples where this phenomena has been researched.

Or maybe it's one of those things that people believe, but isn't actually true.


Oh have you given up providing evidence for your claims now?
It's up to me to hunt around for evidence for something I don't believe exists?
Well that certainly sounds like a productive use of my time.

Tell you what Ian - reality is unaffected by belief. There's loads of evidence to support this.
Go and find it.

Ashles,

Nex implied that she thinks beliefs cannot affect reality. I refuted this using the example of placebos (I agree that some studies show that they are only 55% as effective as the real thing, but other evidence suggests higher than this).

OK, people claim she wasn't talking about processes within our bodies, but if so, she should have made this clear. We need to be precise in our utterances.

There is plenty of evidence of micro-psychokinesis and DMILS, although I am not particularly cognizant of the quality of this evidence. The point that I was going to make though is that if ones mind can cure you of ailments, produce blisters, speed or slow down ones heart rate etc, then the notion that we can also affect the external environment becomes a prima facie more reasonable one. If my mind can affect my own body, then what is the conceptual difficulty in supposing it can't also affect yours? Consider the starring effect or praying. Why are they prima facie so unreasonable?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by alfaniner
Would this have the same effect if the patient had not heard the doctor?

Belief does not affect reality. Belief affects perception.

No, clearly it affects reality. Consider placebos!

Honestly!

[Anders]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

There is plenty of evidence of micro-psychokinesis and DMILS, although I am not particularly cognizant of the quality of this evidence. The point that I was going to make though is that if ones mind can cure you of ailments, produce blisters, speed or slow down ones heart rate etc, then the notion that we can also affect the external environment becomes a prima facie more reasonable one. If my mind can affect my own body, then what is the conceptual difficulty in supposing it can't also affect yours? Consider the starring effect or praying. Why are they prima facie so unreasonable?
This is really interesting! If there are plenty of evidence of micro-psychokinesis and DMILS I sure have missed that outrihght. Acctualy, in no one of the articles on molecular biology I've read, there has never been a word on micro-psychokinesis. Funny thing to be sure, because, as I see it, shouldn't cells and the molecules in them be the first objects to be affected by micro-psychokinesis.

Ian, any comments?

[Ashles]

The point that I was going to make though is that if ones mind can cure you of ailments, produce blisters, speed or slow down ones heart rate etc, then the notion that we can also affect the external environment becomes a prima facie more reasonable one
No it doesn't at all. The brain and the body are part of the same organism. They are designed over millions of years of evolution to work together and the body requires a controlling centre, which is the brain.
They are physically connected in known and understood ways and the signal transmission and effect is a known and studied area of science with masses of observable data.

Your extension of this to external objects and events that are not part of the body is totally unjustified and is not in any way a reasonable assumption.

This is like saying because my computer can cause the CD tray to open a prima facie it must be able to move other things too.

You are using faulty logic Ian.

(Plus you are still quoting blister evidence that is, at the moment, entirely something you think you heard somewhere, which is hardly convincing.)

[Ashles]

No, clearly it affects reality. Consider placebos!

Honestly!
No it doesn't.

Really!

Trust me on this!

Seriously!

I wouldn't kid you!

Scout's honour!

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ashles
No it doesn't at all. The brain and the body are part of the same organism. They are designed over millions of years of evolution to work together and the body requires a controlling centre, which is the brain.
They are physically connected in known and understood ways and the signal transmission and effect is a known and studied area of science with masses of observable data.

Your extension of this to external objects and events that are not part of the body is totally unjustified and is not in any way a reasonable assumption.

This is like saying because my computer can cause the CD tray to open a prima facie it must be able to move other things too.

You are using faulty logic Ian.



No, you're presupposing materialism here. Placebos strongly suggest that it is ones conscious states per se which initiate (or help to initiate) certain physical processes in the brain. Now, if something non-physical can inititate physical processes in the body, then conceptually there is no difficult in supposing it can affect processes outside the body too. They stand together; if one is explicable, then so is the other. If one is inexplicable (the option materialists go for), then so is the other.

So you need to maintain the mind/consciousness per se (rather than their neural correlates) does not affect the body whatsoever. The examples of placebos, anxiety, blisters froming from ice cubes, all strongly suggest this is wrong.


(Plus you are still quoting blister evidence that is, at the moment, entirely something you think you heard somewhere, which is hardly convincing.)

Let's not nitpick. You know that hypnosis can produce cures for various skin complaints, for example, don't you? I don't know if the ice cube producing blisters is correct, but I've heard a lot of very similar stuff, so I think you're being a bit desperate here.

Give it up Ashles, admit the world is not what you think it is.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ashles
No it doesn't.

Really!

Trust me on this!

Seriously!

I wouldn't kid you!

Scout's honour!

Placebos don't affect reality??? :confused:

I'm sorry? Are you being truly serious??

Please please please, look at the evidence, speak to your doctor, or whatever.

Dear me!

[Yaotl]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Placebos don't affect reality??? :confused:

I'm sorry? Are you being truly serious??

Please please please, look at the evidence, speak to your doctor, or whatever.

Dear me!

Please define reality and perception as you see them. I don't understand how you don't differentiate the two.

[Ashles]

You know that hypnosis can produce cures for various skin complaints, for example, don't you?
Have you even looked into this? Or is this another thing you remember hearing sometime?
It is once again an example of the mind controlling moods. Eczma can be very resultant on moods. The link is not a direct "hypnosis gets rid of Eczma" but again is a result of the brains' ability to control its own moods which nobody is disputing.

I don't know if the ice cube producing blisters is correct, but I've heard a lot of very similar stuff, so I think you're being a bit desperate here.
You may have heard a lot of this stuff - that doesn't make it real Ian.
The point I am making is that the brain's effect on moods, concentrate here, is not disputed by anyone here. Some physiological changes can be noted as a result of this (heart rate, skin conditions etc.)
However you seem to be implying a more direct causal link to reality - belief directly changing it.
Firstly the blister story sounds reasonable even to those who don't think belief can affect anything extrnal to the body - it is, after all, a body reaction and the brain directly controls those.

However I have heard this story a few times but never read anything showing that this has ever been done.
This isn't nitpicking as this would be a more direct effect than just the mood control - this would involve someone actually triggering the skin's burn response.

However there does not appear to be any evidence for even this.

So we are left with no evidence of any belief effect on anything apart from our own moods (and indirectly things that result from us being relaxed, agitated etc. like heart rate, blood pressure, skin complaints, perspiration etc.)

You assume all this evidence is out there backing you up Ian, but it doesn't appear to be.

Give it up Ashles, admit the world is not what you think it is.
What, just on your say so? Sorry Ian you'll have to do a little bit better than that.

Placebos don't affect reality???

I'm sorry? Are you being truly serious??

Please please please, look at the evidence, speak to your doctor, or whatever.

Dear me!?
I was actually gently mocking your use of the 'Honestly!' at the end of your earlier post, as though a post is more convincing with that at the end.:)

I know placebos work.

But as we have shown, this does not show any evidence that belief affects reality outside of our own emotions (and any subsequent affect emotional change may produce).

[dharlow]

Originally posted by Anders
Quoting a pair of reasearchers at the Gothenburg unversity in Sweden : "I will never again trust her, K.D. regarding any reasearch around parapsycology".

This was after they had K.D sound tapes analyzied by sound engineers.

The quote in swedish is the following, C.F and a few more can read this: "- Jag kommer aldrig någonsin att fästa minsta tilltro till någonting som hon påstår om hennes parapsykologiska forskning, säger han. "

And due to swedish law I can't write the researchers names but this is the link to the news paper interview:

Para Fraud (http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=164585)

Thank you for that Anders. Very interesting. Does the researcher state what it was about the sound tapes that led him to doubt her research?

[Anders]

Originally posted by dharlow
Thank you for that Anders. Very interesting. Does the researcher state what it was about the sound tapes that led him to doubt her research?
Not much, but in the article he says that he after an analysis of the tape they found that it hade been edited to match the video that was played during the ganzfeld trial. The original tapes, are lost, I should think, or destroyed. But we can't tell as long as KD dosen't say anything.

[Beleth]

Originally posted by gnome
Absurd. A psychic and a skeptic are in a room. The psychic knocks over a candle telekenetically. If it's "real" to the psychic and "not real" to the skeptic, then the psychic will burn when the room does, and the skeptic will not notice anything?

Only one of them can be right. There are plenty of ways for a psychic to knock over a candle without telekinetically knocking over a candle.

[JMA]

Originally posted by Anders
Not much, but in the article he says that he after an analysis of the tape they found that it hade been edited to match the video that was played during the ganzfeld trial. The original tapes, are lost, I should think, or destroyed. But we can't tell as long as KD dosen't say anything.

That's really interresting, but my sweedish is not that good ;) (probably because I'm french). Is there any paper in english about that (on the web or on a scientific newspaper)?

Thanks,

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Beleth
There are plenty of ways for a psychic to knock over a candle without telekinetically knocking over a candle.

But if he does so telekinetically, it's not like the room won't catch fire because the skeptic doesn't see it.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Anders
Not much, but in the article he says that he after an analysis of the tape they found that it hade been edited to match the video that was played during the ganzfeld trial. The original tapes, are lost, I should think, or destroyed. But we can't tell as long as KD dosen't say anything.
What do you mean by "sound tapes?" Are you talking about the recordings made of the receivers mentations? If so, I don't see how fraud could have occurred since the judging is done by the receiver immediatly after the session. Also, the experimenter is completely blind as to what the correct target is until the judging has been made, and so wouldn't be able to alter the tape to match the target until after the fact anyway. Can you try to better explain what exactly it is you think Dalton is being accused of?

amherst

[Anders]

Originally posted by amherst
What do you mean by "sound tapes?" Are you talking about the recordings made of the receivers mentations? If so, I don't see how fraud could have occured since the judging is done by the receiver immediatly after the session and without listening to his own tape. Also, the experimenter is completely blind as to what the correct target is until the judging has been made, and so wouldn't be able to alter the tape to match the target until after the fact anyway. Can you try to better explain what exactly it is you think Dalton is being accused of?

amherst
Ok, lets take this slowly.

We have a sender and a reciver, right?

The sender watches a short film, correct?

The reciever talks and what he says is recorded on tape.

If the movie and the reciever's voice match, for instance:

- The voice on the sound tape says; "I see a speeding car"
- The film shows a speeding car.

Thast would be a match. Kathty's studies showed a lot of the matches. The Gothenburg researchers reacted with a healty portion of skepticism, and looked at the sound tape, which showed signs of having been altered.

In the example above:

Perhaps the sound tape originly said:

- I see a forest.
- The film still shows a speeding car.

But when the tape reaches the public, the correct sound tape has been replaced witha faulty one, thus making it a perfect ganzfeld hit!

Is that clear enough? Sorry for beeing unclear.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Anders
Ok, lets take this slowly.

We have a sender and a reciver, right?

The sender watches a short film, correct?

The reciever talks and what he says is recorded on tape.

If the movie and the reciever's voice match, for instance:

- The voice on the sound tape says; "I see a speeding car"
- The film shows a speeding car.

Thast would be a match. Kathty's studies showed a lot of the matches. The Gothenburg researchers reacted with a healty portion of skepticism, and looked at the sound tape, which showed signs of having been altered.

In the example above:

Perhaps the sound tape originly said:

- I see a forest.
- The film still shows a speeding car.

But when the tape reaches the public, the correct sound tape has been replaced witha faulty one, thus making it a perfect ganzfeld hit!

Is that clear enough? Sorry for beeing unclear.
Again, if Dalton had somehow edited a receiver's mentatation tape, it would had to have been after the session had already been completed, with the recevier's guess recorded by a computer. This altering of the tape could not change her ganzfeld data. So the only reason for her to do it would be if she was asked by a magazine, or TV show, to present striking instances of receiver mentations matching the targets. Was she ever asked to do this? And how exactly would she edit the tapes to make it seem like a receiver was strikingly accurate? It seems that there would of had to have been a lot of mismatching between different receivers (with different voices) to even come close to making it falsely seem (word wise) that there was a striking hit. It just wouldn't make any sense. In any case, if something such as this had even a kernel of truth to it, don't you think someone like Wiseman or Hyman would have jumped all over it by now ?---I notice that the article was published well over a year ago.

amherst

[Anders]

Originally posted by amherst
Again, if Dalton had somehow edited a receiver's mentatation tape, it would had to have been after the session had already been completed, with the recevier's guess recorded by a computer. This altering of the tape could not change her ganzfeld data. So the only reason for her to do it would be if she was asked by a magazine, or TV show, to present striking instances of receiver mentations matching the targets. Was she ever asked to do this? And how exactly would she edit the tapes to make it seem like a receiver was strikingly accurate? It seems that there would of had to have been a lot of mismatching between different receivers (with different voices) to even come close to making it falsely seem (word wise) that there was a striking hit. It just wouldn't make any sense. In any case, if something such as this had even a kernel of truth to it, don't you think someone like Wiseman or Hyman would have jumped all over it by now ?---I notice that the article was published well over a year ago.

amherst
Eh, digital ganzfeld studied are a quite new approach. I really don't think Dalton used that.

How hard can it be to see what happened. Dalton didn't get any positive results, she got frustrated and altered the tape so it looked(sounded) like a hit. She could have altered the tape at any time.

How would it be done? She edit together parts of the sound tape that corespondes to the moving pictures.

Ofcourse we don't know much. What we know is:
1) The sound tapes has been altred according to swedish researchers.
2) Daltons results show that there are a Ganzfeld effect.
3) Without Daltons result, no Ganzfeld effect have been seen, not even in meta-studies.

I'm not drawing any conclusions. I just theorizing a bit and trying to see what is the most simple explanation.

A year old! Well, at least half a decade newer than most positive Ganzfeld studies.

[Ersby]

In “Security measures in an automated ganzfeld system” the set-up of Koestler’s autoganzfeld set-up is described. (It’s on the findarticles.com site. Look for Journal of Parapsychology, June 1996)


At completion of the sending/mentation period, the computer signals the experimenter to fade out the white noise to the receiver and to review the session mentation with him or her. After review, the receiver then takes off the eye shields and prepares to review the four target possibilities. […]When the judging sequence is completed, the computer saves the data and then instructs the sender to return to the receiver's room and reveal the target.

So if Dalton’s work is forged, it would require a number of entirely fabricated ganzfeld tests, and for the original data to be deleted and the printouts to be trashed since there seems to be no time for the editing to take place. This is, of course, assuming that Dalton’s experiment followed that protocol. If the experiment was judged by external judges, though, then Dalton would have the opportunity to edit things favourably (let’s not forget that the mentation lasted half an hour, while the target was a repeated one minute video clip, so I think there’d be enough material that things could be juggled around to get a decent match).

This is certainly very interesting, though. A sound engineer saying that the tapes were tampered with (how many tapes were examined? Any chance of somebody knocking up a translation of the article?) is strong evidence against. If his/her analysis is correct then there’s something mighty peculiar going on. I’m not swayed by the theory that the tape was a demonstration tape for media purposes, but it’s something that should be looked into.

I’d like to hear what Koestler has to say about this before I get carried away. When something looks too good to be true, it’s usually because it is. The removal of this experiment would seriously weaken the case for anomolous cognition which would, for my world view, simply be too convenient. So I’m skeptical about this claim. For now, at least.

[Anders]

Originally posted by Ersby
In “Security measures in an automated ganzfeld system” the set-up of Koestler’s autoganzfeld set-up is described. (It’s on the findarticles.com site. Look for Journal of Parapsychology, June 1996)



So if Dalton’s work is forged, it would require a number of entirely fabricated ganzfeld tests, and for the original data to be deleted and the printouts to be trashed since there seems to be no time for the editing to take place. This is, of course, assuming that Dalton’s experiment followed that protocol. If the experiment was judged by external judges, though, then Dalton would have the opportunity to edit things favourably (let’s not forget that the mentation lasted half an hour, while the target was a repeated one minute video clip, so I think there’d be enough material that things could be juggled around to get a decent match).

This is certainly very interesting, though. A sound engineer saying that the tapes were tampered with (how many tapes were examined? Any chance of somebody knocking up a translation of the article?) is strong evidence against. If his/her analysis is correct then there’s something mighty peculiar going on. I’m not swayed by the theory that the tape was a demonstration tape for media purposes, but it’s something that should be looked into.

I’d like to hear what Koestler has to say about this before I get carried away. When something looks too good to be true, it’s usually because it is. The removal of this experiment would seriously weaken the case for anomolous cognition which would, for my world view, simply be too convenient. So I’m skeptical about this claim. For now, at least.
I'm not going to comment on details. Details are not interesting, or even relevant. If anyone whant s to alter data, they can do that, in a number of ways. All scientists know that, so if some strange results come up, all other scientists rush to repeat the study or experiment, to see for themselfs that the results are correct.

This did not happen in the Dalton case. No one has ever after showed any positive Ganzfeld results that has been published in a peer reviewed magazine.

If Daltons result where true and correct, wow, that would be truly amazing , and a chance for Dalton or Edinbourgh University to win a million dollar!

What are you skeptical of, that a serious psychology and statistics PhD researcher is correct? These guys are trying to find out if there is any truth to the Ganzfeld claims. As far as I know, they’ve haven’t seen any, and they are OK with that. Any researcher knows that sometime the theory is wrong and the hypothesis false.

It is time that parapsychologists recognize that, but they don’t.

And who knows, some day we might see a positive study that irrefutable shows an ESP effect!

[Ersby]

Well, personally, I find details pretty interesting, but that's just me. Sure scientists can fake data. But if I'm going to trust people in nanotechnology who say they've written a birthday greeting on the side of an electron (which I personally have no way of replicating) then why shouldn't I trust a parapsychologist who gets a result this high? And you're right, Dalton's work hasn't been followed by anything as impressive, but it is not alone in the history ganzfeld as a whole. True, the best results belong to the earliest ganzfeld experiments when the protocols hadn't been properly established, but there are other experiments out there with a similar success rate.

Anyway, I just found this, from the paper "Remarkable Correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and target content" by Westerlund, Parker, Dalkvist, Goulding (a search on the title on google should get you a link to the pdf, which I recommend since I think it may pertain to the discussion) which has no date, but must have been written in the last year, judging by the references. I don’t know how this impacts on the discussion. It may be that this is the tape that was given to the sound engineer? Maybe the "Exploring the Links" experiment wasn’t involved at all? But it implies that the distrust of Kathy Dalton goes back a few years.

One example is a videotape, compiled by Kathy Dalton, that shows some of the correspondences between receiver mentation and target content that appeared in the Sender- No sender study conducted in Edinburgh in 1994 (Morris, Dalton, Delanoy & Watt, 1995). On this tape, the target video clip is shown and at the same time the mentation of the receiver can be heard. One of the most remarkable excerpts shows a man who is running through a forest; it seems that he is being hunted (at the same time, the receiver says: .Trees. People running. Fleeing..). Suddenly, the man falls down in a deep muddy pool (at the same time, the receiver says: .Falling. Muddy..). The camera zooms in on the man's face (at the same time, the receiver says: .Blond hair. 70´s hairstyle. Curly-ish. White face.. . all the utterances appear to describe exactly what is being shown on the film). The next thing that happens in the clip is that the man can no longer keep his head above the surface, so he disappears into the mud (at the same time, the receiver says: .Dead man in the water..). Unfortunately, the synchronization between the video clip and the tape with the receiver's mentation was not done automatically. Kathy Dalton (personal communication, August 1997) matched the mentation tape with the video clip according to her memory of the session (in which she was one of the experimenters).

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Anders


And who knows, some day we might see a positive study that irrefutable shows an ESP effect!

We have passed that day a long time ago. What happens is that those who do not want to see, or are not prepared to see the evidence will construct straw barriers or invoke unproven fantasies about fraud. This has happened over and over. Each time we have evidence, the same old tired cliches are repeated, yet none are never proven to exist. Fraud, loopholes etc. Those who are not yet prepared quite naturally construct these straw barriers in order to protect their remains of their belief system. If you consider the denialist theory seriously, you realise that each and every bit of positive evidence should be due to undetected fraud or non-identified flaw. After all these years, no such fraud or flaw has been shown whoich could account for all the evidence and we are left with the simplest explanation. They can't all, each and every last piece of scientific evidence simply be false claims.
I can tell you that should someone even win $1m, there will be a certain remant of skeptics who will construct straw barriers about Randi being in on the deal. For some, the reality never changes, no matter what happens. For those that have seen the new reality, it is very odd seeing people deny something so blatantly obvious. As strange as the arch-skeptic trying to comprehend why a believer believes. The reality paradigm has shifted so far that the arch-skeptic is in in danger of becoming the 'woo-woo'.

[Anders]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
We have passed that day a long time ago. What happens is that those who do not want to see, or are not prepared to see the evidence will construct straw barriers or invoke unproven fantasies about fraud. This has happened over and over. Each time we have evidence, the same old tired cliches are repeated, yet none are never proven to exist. Fraud, loopholes etc. Those who are not yet prepared quite naturally construct these straw barriers in order to protect their remains of their belief system. If you consider the denialist theory seriously, you realise that each and every bit of positive evidence should be due to undetected fraud or non-identified flaw. After all these years, no such fraud or flaw has been shown whoich could account for all the evidence and we are left with the simplest explanation. They can't all, each and every last piece of scientific evidence simply be false claims.
I can tell you that should someone even win $1m, there will be a certain remant of skeptics who will construct straw barriers about Randi being in on the deal. For some, the reality never changes, no matter what happens. For those that have seen the new reality, it is very odd seeing people deny something so blatantly obvious. As strange as the arch-skeptic trying to comprehend why a believer believes. The reality paradigm has shifted so far that the arch-skeptic is in in danger of becoming the 'woo-woo'.
:D Quite funny post! To bad is not funny funny, but stupid funny. Ah well, I still see no peer reviewed articles on ESP in Nature or Science. When I do....I'll let you know. Until then, why don't you just send me the envidence using Ganzfeld sending.

[Ashles]

We have passed that day a long time ago. What happens is that those who do not want to see, or are not prepared to see the evidence will construct straw barriers or invoke unproven fantasies about fraud. This has happened over and over. Each time we have evidence, the same old tired cliches are repeated, yet none are never proven to exist. Fraud, loopholes etc. Those who are not yet prepared quite naturally construct these straw barriers in order to protect their remains of their belief system. If you consider the denialist theory seriously, you realise that each and every bit of positive evidence should be due to undetected fraud or non-identified flaw. After all these years, no such fraud or flaw has been shown whoich could account for all the evidence and we are left with the simplest explanation. They can't all, each and every last piece of scientific evidence simply be false claims.
I can tell you that should someone even win $1m, there will be a certain remant of skeptics who will construct straw barriers about Randi being in on the deal. For some, the reality never changes, no matter what happens. For those that have seen the new reality, it is very odd seeing people deny something so blatantly obvious. As strange as the arch-skeptic trying to comprehend why a believer believes. The reality paradigm has shifted so far that the arch-skeptic is in in danger of becoming the 'woo-woo'.
It's interesting that you think your opinions are in some way reality.
Tell us, have you had these delusions long?

No study has ever irrefutably shown ESP - any psychic researcher, no matter what his bias, will admit that.

You accuse sceptics of using strawman arguments then proceed to do exactly the same yourself. Very amusing.

And we are still eagerly awaiting evidence of your understanding of Quantum Theory that you so liberally toss into your theories.

Or are all your theories just poorly-researched opinion peices which you attempt to pass off as fact?
Certainly looks that way.

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Ashles
It's interesting that you think your opinions are in some way reality.
Tell us, have you had these delusions long?



It's interesting that you think another person's beliefs and experiences are delusions. It would be easy to point out that your opinion is delusional, but I think that you are entitled to believe what ever you want. I do think it is a shame that you should choose to be so mean-sprited towards another person for expressing their thoughts on a forum though. Whereas your opinion is built presumably entirely on your understanding of scientific theory, it is a fact that there many others who base theirs on that and experiences which conflict with such surrent theory. Perhaps you would be at least able to respect that? No one has provided a constructive rebuttall to the fact that the currrent state of evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of these expereinces and events being not a result of known scientific mechanisms. Am I saying that you are delusional, stupid or mad for not accepting the evidence which has not been debunked? Do I say that you are lying for claiming that all the evidence has been debunked? Do I say that you are insane for not looking at the collective evidence and realsing that the probability and simplest explanation is that it can't feasibly or rationaly be due to unproved fraud or un detected flaw? No, but I find extremely interesting that some people cling to old beliefs which are entirely dependant on the dogmatic scientism, just as some arch-skeptics will do doubt find the opposite set of affairs just as baffling. You are free to believe what you want. I know through experience that your beliefs are currently not in touch with current reality, but I respect you enough to not fault you for that.

[Anders]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
It's interesting that you think another person's beliefs and experiences are delusions.
[snip]
-remote viewing
-homeopathy
-aliens on earth
-tarot card predictions of the future
-magnetic coasters alters water
-ESP
-Atlantis
-Magic in general
-the christian/muslim/judean/indian/norse/chines gods
-etc
-etc

As you see, ESP in just one belief on a long row of delusional ideas.

[Ashles]

Whereas your opinion is built presumably entirely on your understanding of scientific theory, it is a fact that there many others who base theirs on that and experiences which conflict with such surrent theory. Perhaps you would be at least able to respect that? No one has provided a constructive rebuttall to the fact that the currrent state of evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of these expereinces and events being not a result of known scientific mechanisms.
My opinion is not based on my "understanding" of scientific theory (unlike yours), it is based on where we currently actually are in scientific research.
Regardless of whether Psi may, or may not be demonstrated to definitely exist some time in the future, at this moment in time it is not generally scientifically accepted as existing.
Whether you like this or not, or agree with this is entirely irrelevant. That is currently where we are.

Those who base their theories on their experiences may very well be mistaken as to what they have perceived, or think they have perceived. Human perception and memory are very unreliable.
I have spoken to people who claim to have had these experiences and after several questions either the story has changed, or they agree they might have been mistaken, or they get quite defenive and cross and don't want to talk about it.

No one has provided a constructive rebuttall to the fact that the currrent state of evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of these expereinces
Why would anyone created a constructive rebuttall to something which is a flat-out lie.
The evidence is absolutely NOTHING like overwhelmingly in favour. The best study that anyone can ever quote is the Ganzfeld which involves meta analysis and statistical manipulation.
Different people get different conclusions from the same data!
If you consider that overwhelming evidence it's a god job you are not in any form of research.

I know through experience that your beliefs are currently not in touch with current reality, but I respect you enough to not fault you for that.
Please don't insult my intelligence with the wide-eyed innocent plea for respect.
The first part of the sentence implies you think I'm out of touch with reality then you pretend mutual respect! Luci you are still transparent.

Anyway I'm not faulting you for having an opinion, I am faulting what you claim are facts.
They aren't.

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Anders
-remote viewing
-homeopathy
-aliens on earth
-tarot cards predictions of the future
-magnetic coasters alters water
-ESP
-Atlantis
-Magic in general
-the christian/muslim/judean/indian/norse/chines gods
-etc
-etc

As you see, ESP in just one belief on a long row of delusional ideas.

Delusion is a false impression due to madness. Non of those issues have been proven to be false and given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world's population at believe in at least one of many things which conflicts with known science, whether that be afterlife or ESP, then it can't rationally be seen as madness. It is more rational to assume that scientific knowledge is, as usual, growing and changing as we evolve and experience more and that, as usual, there will always be more things outside of scientific knowledge than within. There are more people accepting new realities than denying them and looking at our history it is safe to assume that such progress is indicative of the eventual establishment of applications which work on these newly discovered, currently anomalous, effects.

[Anders]

Originally posted by De'Ville's Advocaat
Delusion is a false impression due to madness. Non of those issues have been proven to be false and given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world's population at believe in at least one of many things which conflicts with known science, whether that be afterlife or ESP, then it can't rationally be seen as madness. It is more rational to assume that scientific knowledge is, as usual, growing and changing as we evolve and experience more and that, as usual, there will always be more things outside of scientific knowledge than within. There are more people accepting new realities than denying them and looking at our history it is safe to assume that such progress is indicative of the eventual establishment of applications which work on these newly discovered, currently anomalous, effects.
Please excuse my wrong use of the word 'Delusion'. However, all of the ideas on the list has never ever been proven to exist or to work. What people belive is not important.

There can be nothing outside science! Why? Science is the quest for knowledge, the knowledge that is accesible for all, not just the few. An aspirin works the same for nearly all, and for the few exceptions there is, we know why aspirin don't work. It is not the same with ESP, we know nothing about ESP because we have never been able to observe the phenomena. If you can show that ESP works the same way for all, and it is a repetable result, than, but not before, the scientific community would accept ESP as a true phenonmena.

There has always been anomalous effects in different areas of physics, chemistry, psycology, geology, astronomy, etc. There are even more so knowadays. There is a lot we don't know: What happend before Big Band? Why does proteins fold the way they do? Why do some people become criminal and some not? Why does an earthquake happen. etc etc.

[Ashles]

Delusion is actually a false 'belief'.
Madness does not enter into it (and isn't a particularly useful psychological term).

Muslims believe in Allah. Christians believe in God. They can't both be right so millions of people are definitely deluded.

And you can't say "Oh really they believe in the same God, it just has different names" because if you ask most Christians or Muslims, they will definitely NOT believe they are worshipping the same God.

So we can logically deduce that millions of people ARE deluded.

In fact their probably isn't one person on the planet who doesn't have some mistaken beliefs.

But delusion as an actual condition is related to how seriously the beliefs are taken and how it impacts someone's life.

We used to have a poster here called Lucianarchy who was convinced he could predict the future and went on many different websites making these ourageous claims. He even started his own forum to talk about it more.
Eventually his behaviour became so antisocial he had to be banned from these forums for personal abuse.

He was a good example of a deluded person.

[De'Ville's Advocaat]

Originally posted by Ashles


Those who base their theories on their experiences may very well be mistaken as to what they have perceived, or think they have perceived. Human perception and memory are very unreliable.


It is extraordinary to suggest that everyone who experiences something which you can't accept as existing must be mistaken. It is not an argument against the experience either, as the same argument is applicable to the argument proponent and holds that they have also sometimes been mistaken in respect of what ever their belief system dictates as being 'true'.

Most people believe in something th