Ed
1st July 2005, 08:43 PM
I have sorta stopped posting on this forum because it seems to me that over the couple of few years that I have been here nothing much really happens and/or changes.
We get true nuts, people that are so divorced from reality that they can barely string an english sentence together. Talking with them is very unfulfilling because it is never entirely clear that, while they evidentially read posts on their topics, they really absorb anything that is said. They are like a ballistic missel targeted for sharing belief in "vibrations" or some other interchangeable crap and will not be driven off course.
Then there are the reasonable ones. They are nuts too, in my experience, but they engage in rational debate (of sorts). They religiously WANT TO BELIEVE in something that is odd. Maybe it is the intellectual equivilant of being Goth. You do it "because". Luci (for those that remember) was sorta like this. He really popped a woodie when the numbers "911" came up in the NY lottery a year after 911. He had some cockamamie way of computing probabilities that gave a result of 1 in 10^1000000 or some crazy thing. His need to believe was so strong that he refused to even consider that his maths were wrong. Folks like this come down to blind insistance. Again, as much fun as a debate with a fundie (after the first 10 times or so).
Finally there are the believers in drag. The radiation guy was one as I recall. Reasonable sounding guys that cite some real science but, upon probeing, there is a lack of fundimential soundness. There is also, predictably, complete resistance to altering any supposition, conclusion, or consideration one iota.
The topics are pretty predictable too.
-odd critters
-odd sightings
-odd human happenings
-bizarre claims
The point being that there is rarely anything that might, in a sane world, be considered evidence. Some of it is so appalingly bad (The PEAR REG thingie comes to mind) and complex that it requires real work to understand what it is that they are doing, and then it is often not very clear. There are things with fatal flaws that are excused because there "is something there".
All in all it is pretty tedious. Aliens that have nothing more to offer than petty vandelism or rectal probing, statistical anomolies that a first term stats student can see thru, rediculous hopping loons that conjure up some odd and little understood oriental gibberish to clothe, what in one case definately, is a way to pick up babes, intellectual edifices that mask an elemental fear of day to day reality that are based on wisps of smoke. All this clung to for...what?
The paranormal is neither exciting nor challenging. It commits the worst sin (paraphrasing Wilde) it is boring.
We get true nuts, people that are so divorced from reality that they can barely string an english sentence together. Talking with them is very unfulfilling because it is never entirely clear that, while they evidentially read posts on their topics, they really absorb anything that is said. They are like a ballistic missel targeted for sharing belief in "vibrations" or some other interchangeable crap and will not be driven off course.
Then there are the reasonable ones. They are nuts too, in my experience, but they engage in rational debate (of sorts). They religiously WANT TO BELIEVE in something that is odd. Maybe it is the intellectual equivilant of being Goth. You do it "because". Luci (for those that remember) was sorta like this. He really popped a woodie when the numbers "911" came up in the NY lottery a year after 911. He had some cockamamie way of computing probabilities that gave a result of 1 in 10^1000000 or some crazy thing. His need to believe was so strong that he refused to even consider that his maths were wrong. Folks like this come down to blind insistance. Again, as much fun as a debate with a fundie (after the first 10 times or so).
Finally there are the believers in drag. The radiation guy was one as I recall. Reasonable sounding guys that cite some real science but, upon probeing, there is a lack of fundimential soundness. There is also, predictably, complete resistance to altering any supposition, conclusion, or consideration one iota.
The topics are pretty predictable too.
-odd critters
-odd sightings
-odd human happenings
-bizarre claims
The point being that there is rarely anything that might, in a sane world, be considered evidence. Some of it is so appalingly bad (The PEAR REG thingie comes to mind) and complex that it requires real work to understand what it is that they are doing, and then it is often not very clear. There are things with fatal flaws that are excused because there "is something there".
All in all it is pretty tedious. Aliens that have nothing more to offer than petty vandelism or rectal probing, statistical anomolies that a first term stats student can see thru, rediculous hopping loons that conjure up some odd and little understood oriental gibberish to clothe, what in one case definately, is a way to pick up babes, intellectual edifices that mask an elemental fear of day to day reality that are based on wisps of smoke. All this clung to for...what?
The paranormal is neither exciting nor challenging. It commits the worst sin (paraphrasing Wilde) it is boring.