Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?

[cj.23]

I wrote this for RatSkep, but figured people here might know more on the subject. I have done a fairly cursory overview, and am only part way through, but thought might be of interest?

"OK, we often see alleged round these parts that paranormal believers are prone to be dumb or mentally unwell. Let's take a look at what science tells us on this question. This is what parapsychologists call the Cognitive Deficits Hypothesis Wilson & French look at it in Wilson, Krissy and French, Christopher C.. 2006. The relationship between susceptibility to false memories, dissociativity, and paranormal belief and experience. Personality and Individual Differences, 41(8), pp. 1493-1502. ISSN 01918869 if anyone has access to the Journal by database but I'm going to look at what French et al 2012 have to say in their 2012 book Anomalistic Psychology as the most up to date source. It is excellent and I highly recommend it.


1. Are believers bad at judging probability, prone to misunderstanding randomness?

We see this asserted all the time, so what does the research say? The history of this one is interesting - the excellent Susan Blackmore raised it back in 1985, with two experiments testing if believers in ESP were more likely to be bad at judging randomness in things like the Shared Birthday conundrum than non-believers. One experiment was significant; the other not, but a 1991 replication gave the idea credence and now it is popularly believed by sceptics. Since that time four more studies, including a very large (6000 participant) 1997 study by Blackmore have failed to replicate the effect, showing no difference in the two groups, and it not now considered to be "a robust... or even genuine effect" French (2012) p. 21

Anyway I intend to do ten of these. For those interested in checking it out, you can read the largest experiment here -- Blackmore, Susan (1997) Probability Misjudgment and Belief in the Paranormal: A Newspaper Survey, British Journal of Psychology, 88, 683-689.

2. Are paranormal believers less intelligent than non-believers?

The short answer according to French (2007) is no. Irwin (2009) writes "the cognitive deficits theory appears to be more successful as a polemical device for sceptical commentators than as an empirically grounded theory of paranormal belief." The issue is that some forms of paranormal belief may or may not be related to lower intelligence -- paranormal beliefs cover a wide spectrum -- but generally no correlation can be found, and I was unable to identify any support for the hypothesis for any given aspect of paranormal belief from Cardena et al. (2000)

The claim seems to originate with well known skeptics, as with 1 above. The first paper to propose the link I have seen referenced is Alcock, J & Otis, L.P. (1980) Critical thinking and belief in the paranormal, Psychological Reports, 46, 479-482. However more recent research has failed to find this link: see Irwin (1991) The reasoning skills of paranormal believers, Journal of Parapsychology, 43, 205-220 and Roe, C. A. (1999). Critical Thinking and Belief in the Paranormal: A re-evaluation. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 85-98. The current position appears to be that paranormal believers are no less intelligent than non believers - in fact paranormal belief appears in the USA to be positively correlated with educational achievement, with the higher your level of academic qualification the more likely you are to believe. I think I can explain that very easily indeed, but I'd welcome suggestions!

(Psychologists are also far less likely to believe in ESP than physicists: again, try and explain that. I'm not sure i have the answer to this one!).

However if not less intelligent, or educated, have paranormal believers different reasoning styles? I'll turn to that next once done some work.

[Garrette]

The opinion I am about to express is based almost entirely on personal experience with a little bit of probably poorly remembered scientific reading. In addition, I try to exclude the fringe elements of both believers and non-believers; there are obvious whack jobs on both sides.

With those rather fuzzy qualifiers, here is my answer: No. Paranormal believers are not thick, nuts or daft. I suspect any honest skeptic would admit he knows several believers who are quite intelligent and well grounded, and that observation pertains regardless if the belief is about religion, psychic ability, ghosts, or whatever.

What believers seem to possess in general is an unwillingness to delve deeply into their paranormal beliefs or to examine closely any alternate explanations. They will frequently give the appearance of such delving and examining, but it is rarely that they actually do it. Moreover, in regard to these beliefs believers are far more likely to hold a double standard in regard to what can be discussed, i.e., it is okay to discuss how beliefs are correct; it is verboten to discuss how beliefs may be mistaken.

I don't know the real difference between believer and non-believer, but I don't think it is fundamentally a difference in wiring, at least not primarily so. I'm more a nurture over nature supporter in this regard. There seems to be (remember that I am talking purely my unsupported experience sprinkled with heavy does of speculation) a nearly insurmountable difficulty in discarding paranormal beliefs. Consequently, few manage to do it successfully, but of course some do manage it. The switch from believer-think to skeptic-think is a hard and heavy one, but it appears that--once tripped--it begins a slow cascade to better thinking all around.

I could meander all day, so I'll force myself to cut it short with a final thought: I am in no way suggesting that skeptics are universally better thinkers or that skeptics' opinions should be accorded deference by mere virtue of their skepticness. One need only visit the Political Forum to see a bevy of skeptics engaged in poor thinking. (I don't exclude myself from that category). But in regard to the paranormal and things scientific, the demonstrable casting off of the blinders associated with paranormal belief does seem to indicate an ability to produce more rigorous and reliable conclusions.

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by Garrette

One need only visit the Political Forum to see a bevy of skeptics engaged in poor thinking. (I don't exclude myself from that category)

I don't exclude myself from that category either.

[Resume]

I'll take the other side here: Yes, I know several paranormal enthusiasts that are all three of those things. Of course, I'm acquainted with a few skeptics that fit the profile as well, and have myself entertained a few daft ideas in my life.

[Croydon Bob]

Surely, by definition, people who believe in things that aren't real, that have no evidence, are dafter than people who don't?

if I see a light in the sky and say "I don't know what that was, it might have been a helicopter, or a balloon, or something else." Then I am less daft than the UFOnut who says it was a flying saucer, the "paranormal investigator" who says it was a ghost and the Christian who says it was an angel.

They might not be less "intelligent" on average. If that is what the evidence says then we have to go with that. But most of the believers who turn up on boards such as this one sure do a great impersonation of being thick and crazy.

[cj.23]

I think we have to distinguish between different sorts of believer. Firstly, though a very serious caveat: I'm deeply suspicious of most measures of intelligence. It's a very difficult concept, and I'm not even sure how meaningful it is. Second a further caveat - I have not read all the papers through (some but not all). As such I don;t know what was measured, who by, and where. The USA for cultural reasons as I hinted above will have a very different pattern of paranormal belief to the UK I think: and most of these studies were UK based. (The basic thing is that lack of religious belief correlates with presence of paranormal belief in the USA - I can provide references to the Skeptical Inquirer article and Martin Gardner's piece on this if anyone interested). So if generally a college education in the USA is liable to make you less religious, it is likely to correlate with more belief in ESP, ghosts, etc, etc.)

Right on with business. People who come to post on this forum are probably not representative of paranormal believers in general, just as the atheists who post here are not typical of atheists generally, the Christians ditto, and so forth... Many people who hold a belief system will not be bothered about discussing it, defending it, or advocating it. It is a purely private matter. As such some persons are unlikely to seek out the JREF. I have no evidence for this assertion, but I would argue it is plausible.

I would also speculate, and note this is speculation, that those who do post here are very firmly committed in many cases to some principle, whether paranormal belief, paranormal disbelief, or philosophical skepticism. I do not think JREF posters are representative of any larger community for these reasons.

Next up is what constitutes paranormal belief? I'm guessing Thalbourne's New Australian Sheep/Goat is the most commonly employed measure of paranormal belief in these studies: but the Paranormal Belief Scale Revised and Anomalous Experiences Inventory might have been employed, as well as many other surveys. All rely on self-report: but there can be a huge gap between what I think my beliefs are and my actions. You would have to look at the breakdown by category of paranormal (a term I regard as almost meaningless) belief. Are Bigfoot fans less educated than UFO believers? Ghost believers less so that astologers? And so forth. Note the survey on randomness looked at ESP believers. They may not be typical.

There is of course a huge variation in believers - and even between believers in psi, John Beloff and Bernard Carr are very different to the self-proclaimed psychics I meet on Facebook. There is almost certainly as Resume pointed out equal variation in non-believers. This need not be an issue of intelligence - it is possible that some psychics are brighter in some ways than Beloff, or that Sagan is an idiot in comparison with some very outspoken non-believers on this forum: but in type and sophistication of the beliefs held and ability to articulate and defend them. I don't regard myself as overly bright, but I am educated in specific fields useful on the forum, so can occasionally make a small contribution.

Anyway I had best get on with some work, and if I have time I'll keep pushing through the literature later, but do bear in mind my own doubts on all this

cj x

[LarianLeQuella]

Are deities considered paranormal?

I think the better outlook on this questions is to see how badly people have been led astray from reality by authority figures in their lives, and what sort of tools they have been given to actually figure things out for themselves. And keep in mind the great human capacity towards self deception. You are the easiest person for you to fool.

[Bikewer]

I listen to NPR's Science Friday fairly religiously, and they have had a couple of programs that might be of interest.
One dealt with the general distrust of "science" by folks, especially students. We know that young kids absolutely love science and will participate enthusiastically in all the lower-grade experiments and activities they are exposed to.
By high school, this is not the case. Science classes are avoided or plugged through as horrible tedium by most students.
The program pointed out, or hypothesized, that around that age the kids are exposed to principals that jar with "common sense" thinking and that a large percentage just can't get past it.
They don't trust what they are being taught, as it seems counter-intuitive and also in most cases useless for their lives. Things like the Big Bang and quantum mechanics just don't make sense to them.

Also, they had a show recently on the "anti-vax" movement and distrust of medical science in general. A couple of years previously, they had a female caller on a similar show who expressed that she just "couldn't trust" science and the medical establishment. She was all about "big pharma" and medicine for profit and all that.
They had her back on the show, and questioned her about the recent findings in regards to vaccines that had pretty much shown the "anti" movement to be nonsense.
They asked her if she felt any different. Not at all. She didn't trust anything said by the government or by medical authorities.
Ira and his guest asked what evidence they could present to change her mind. None. She admitted that she simply didn't trust anything whatever in the field. To her way of thinking, it was all some sort of vague plot by the "establishment".

We see this with conspiracy theories as well. At some point, no evidence whatever is acceptable. Even when the "conspiracy" necessarily must involve nearly everyone and the evidence against same is massive... They refuse to believe.

[Arouet]

Most of my contact with proponents is on the skeptiko forum and I must say that the regs there are all seem to be of above average intelligence.

[cj.23]

I actually posted an old TV show about my own experience in the ethics of ghosthunting thread earlier today.

Quote:

The American one? I appeared on the UK one, but never the TAPS thing. It was a long time ago (1996 I think) but may amuse. Ignore the timeslips thing: all that was to tie it in to the earlier account. The bit I am in starts at 13 minutes, if anyone is really bored... It s really quite amusing now to watch my young self - embarrassing but funny!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_5xPCMhAQE

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by cj.23

I actually posted an old TV show about my own experience in the ethics of ghosthunting thread earlier today.

What about the holy ghost? Did you ever come across that elusive little blighter?

[godless dave]

I would say they are daft, but a particular kind of daft - gullible and unable or unwilling to learn from past gullibility.

It is possible to be that gullible and still be intelligent to solve differential equations, learn six different languages, or beat a ranked player at chess - all things I don't quite have the intelligence to do.

Intelligence covers so many things. Someone can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.

[I Ratant]

Been one. And never any of the thick/nuts/daft persuasion.
Just unenlightened.
Lots of investigation and self-education eliminates the belief.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

Been one. And never any of the thick/nuts/daft persuasion.
Just unenlightened.
Lots of investigation and self-education eliminates the belief.

Never quite worked for me. I did not believe any of it till 1987: then after my odd experience threw myself in to the literature; since that time accrued a few degrees (17 years at uni full time,became a lecturer in religion, psychology and cultural studies at different points, then wandered of to study philosophy of science (and currently biology)), joined the SPR in 1992 and ASSAP soon after, read the peer reviewed parapsychological literature from the JSPR and PSPR from 1882 to present (long story - I ended up sleeping on piles of them at one point), the EJP, JoP, and on the other hand the Skeptical Inquirer, Joe Nickell, Ben Radford, and of of curse Shermer, Randi, Wiseman, Blackmore, French et al and got to know the latter three as people: have spent 20 years now investigating claims of haunting, poltergeists and running experiments; have been here for a few years, on RichardDawkins.net for years and then on RatSkep where I was made a moderator twice, kick around and help out with my local Skeptics in the pub -- and still retain my belief that we can not say its all nonsense. In fact nowadays I'd say my beliefs are stronger than in 1987 by a long way. Does not mean anyone else would agree with my conclusion if they followed the same trajectory - Sue Blackmore went exactly the opposite way, as did a few others I have known -- but it does show exposure to more knowledge does not always end in rejection of all paranormal claims. I don't think my experience is at all unusual - plenty of people like me seem to hang around Skeptiko, I just always found this place more amenable. I may not be overly bright but I'm not daft or lazy

cj x

[I Ratant]

Whatever floats yer boat.
Sincerity counts.
There's so much garf about this stuff beginning with our religious upbringing which starts with invisible all-powerful things, we're already inclined to believe the weird stuff.

[Jodie]

Well can you witness a paranormal event, accept the possibility that there are other things at work that you don't understand, but not necessarily attribute it to the standard belief of departed spirits and poltergeist as a cause?

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Jodie

Well can you witness a paranormal event, accept the possibility that there are other things at work that you don't understand, but not necessarily attribute it to the standard belief of departed spirits and poltergeist as a cause?

Absolutely. I'm still no clearer today on what I experienced, or what others experience. I think lots of "believers" are similarly disinclined to just say "it was a dead guy" or whatever? What I don't say is "it was just a trick of the light/ swamp gas reflected off venus/ a shared misperception". It could have been, but I find them unconvincing at the moment as explanations. (The first or third are the most likely though in my own case...)

cj x

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

Whatever floats yer boat.
Sincerity counts.
There's so much garf about this stuff beginning with our religious upbringing which starts with invisible all-powerful things, we're already inclined to believe the weird stuff.

Um, though I was brought up atheist, and only developed any religious belief in my late twenties. I never really got religion as a kid. Still I guess our culture ,even in the UK, is pretty saturated with it.

cj x

[Robrob]

A lot of it is (IMHO) wishful thinking. They hope for something beyond.

[I Ratant]

Ghosts.
Can walk through walls.
How can they be substantial enough to walk up a flight of wooden stairs?
How can they pick up a chain to rattle it?
How can they get -to- the second floor?
Or, are ghosts just garf?

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

Ghosts.
Can walk through walls.
How can they be substantial enough to walk up a flight of wooden stairs?
How can they pick up a chain to rattle it?
How can they get -to- the second floor?
Or, are ghosts just garf?

If you are really really bored, my little piece on ghost theory on my blog might actually suggest a few possible answers -- http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/1...robably-wrong/

You would have to be pretty bored though

cj x

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by cj.23

If you are really really bored, my little piece on ghost theory on my blog might actually suggest a few possible answers -- http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/1...robably-wrong/

You would have to be pretty bored though

cj x

.
More than I want to know about ghosts, but very well done.
I have to go with mental constructs in lieu of physical entities though.
Why do ghosts wear clothes?

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

.
More than I want to know about ghosts, but very well done.
I have to go with mental constructs in lieu of physical entities though.
Why do ghosts wear clothes?

Cheers! I'm always amaze if anyone has the patience to read it. On ghost clothes, that was the subject of a discussion between the excellent skeptic Hayley Stevens (her blog: http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/ ) and myself a while back and led ot another of my interminably dull blog pieces. Rather than link it, and run the risk of the tedium annihilating any discussion, I'll have a go at answering it again here, but my answer may well be different to that I proposed before.

Firstly, there seems to me little doubt that most ghost experiences are misperceptions or hallucinations, or real people mistaken for spooks. In either case the ghost will appear clothed, simply because our expectations rarely run to seeing naked people, unless we work in a strip joint, naturist colony, or similar. This probably covers a huge number of reported ghosts.

Secondly, if any of the telepathic theories of ghosts hold true, then the hallucinatory production of the ghost would probably render it naturalistically in line with prior expectations of the percipient, as in the section I wrote on hallucination and misperception above. Of course such a telepathic theory need only be invoked to explain veridical and collective cases, as otherwise simple hallucination/misperception suffices. As you may have gathered while believing that the actual sighting is of the nature of a hallucination, it is the underlying causality that interests me.

It is definitely worth noting at this point that despite my claims re; expectation, some apparitions reported appear very non-naturalistically - a face on a wall, a pair of legs missing the body,the spook appearing much younger than when last seen as a real person by the percipient, the figure glowing with light, and so forth. On the whole however the classic apparition appears physical, solid and lifelike.

OK, so what about if the spook is actually a physical entity, we are seeing with the eyes, reflecting photons and displacing air? There are cases that seem to suggest this (I'm tempted to cite one but might bore anyone still following the thread too much so will leave it for now). In this case I have no idea why spooks where clothes. I assume because they don't want to be seen naked!

IF you are a follower of the Spirit paradigm, and believe ghost are dead guys or gals, then there are large numbers of websites which explain this in terms of the spirits self image etc. Googling should find a few detailed defences of that position. It's not unreasonable if you are an Idealist philosophically, and you could probably make a case for it in Neutral Monist terms too I guess. In fact even a materialist will accept that our normal mundane perceptions are deeply effected by psychological factors and our mental frame: seeing anything is a process of mental construction, the little TV studio in our head editing our sense perceptions. Maybe spirits can externalise this process. I'm afraid I can't really speak sensibly on this, not being a spiritualist!



cj x

[I Ratant]

My pragmatic mind might accept a ghost, but nude..
And limited to moving on solid surfaces, like the ground, or a stone staircase.
With a house with a basement, any ghost would have to pass through the floor above, and land on the basement floor.
And then, kinda get stuck there, basement steps being no more resistant to a ghost than a wall, and the earth surrounding the basement preventing movement out of the basement.
.
.
.
.
A moat!
Construct a moat around your house!
No ghost could get out of it!

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

.
.
A moat!
Construct a moat around your house!
No ghost could get out of it!

Fill it with Holy Water to be sure; and in fact install a lake monster to be doubly certain!

[ExMinister]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Absolutely. I'm still no clearer today on what I experienced, or what others experience. I think lots of "believers" are similarly disinclined to just say "it was a dead guy" or whatever? What I don't say is "it was just a trick of the light/ swamp gas reflected off venus/ a shared misperception". It could have been, but I find them unconvincing at the moment as explanations. (The first or third are the most likely though in my own case...)

cj x

What was your experience, may I ask?

I don't have anything new to add to the discussion, except that in my experience there seems to be a wide range of intelligence and education among paranormal believers. That goes for skeptics, too. The skeptics I have known have ranged from highly educated to less than a high school diploma.

People seem to have such widely varying reasons for believing or not believing. If there is a pattern to it, I don't see it.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by ExMinister

What was your experience, may I ask?

I don't have anything new to add to the discussion, except that in my experience there seems to be a wide range of intelligence and education among paranormal believers. That goes for skeptics, too. The skeptics I have known have ranged from highly educated to less than a high school diploma.

People seem to have such widely varying reasons for believing or not believing. If there is a pattern to it, I don't see it.

Nor me - none at all. Ther eis a thread somewhere, but here is me talking about my experience from 13 mins on this - ignore time slip stuff, that was to make it fit episode -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_5xPCMhAQE

[jdc324]

Originally Posted by cj.23

The current position appears to be that paranormal believers are no less intelligent than non believers - in fact paranormal belief appears in the USA to be positively correlated with educational achievement, with the higher your level of academic qualification the more likely you are to believe. I think I can explain that very easily indeed, but I'd welcome suggestions!

I'm not sure, but this does have parallels with the MMR scare where it seemed to be the case that a higher level of education was correlated with likelihood to refuse MMR. There's a PDF of a paper here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/umte/234/mmrv14.pdf and the authors refer to the theory that "more educated individuals more quickly absorb new information about health technology". (I wonder if the subject they were highly educated in might be relevant - there might be differences between those highly educated in science subjects and those with high attainment in other subjects?) Perhaps people who are highly educated simply think of themselves as being generally more intelligent and assume they're clever enough to make good decisions about healthcare (even if they've never studied any relevant subject) or smart enough to know whether what they've experienced was paranormal (even if they know nothing of how the human mind works). I suppose it could be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect? People may be unskilled in these areas and unaware of it?

Originally Posted by cj.23

(Psychologists are also far less likely to believe in ESP than physicists: again, try and explain that. I'm not sure i have the answer to this one!).

Because psychologists are more familiar with cognitive biases that help to explain why people come to erroneous conclusions, perhaps? Maybe understanding the limits of the human brain, the filtering of ideas, and the mental short-cuts people take is more likely to lead someone to be skeptical?

I think that's enough waffly speculation for now, so I'll stop there.

[JJM 777]

Hopeful thinking is not dumb. Putting much practical trust on unproven claims is, especially if a proven alternative exists. In some cases it doesn´t, for example no proven treatment exists for some health conditions, in which case it cannot be a dumb choice to try an unproven treatment vs. trying a treatment which is proven not to help.

[bookitty]

Originally Posted by cj.23

If you are really really bored, my little piece on ghost theory on my blog might actually suggest a few possible answers -- http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/1...robably-wrong/

You would have to be pretty bored though

cj x

Not bored at all. That was fascinating, although I wish I could have read it back when I was trying to be a ghost-hunter. (No worries, I've since out grown that.)

Here's an odd thing - my weirdest, as yet unexplained, event would have countered point ii on properties of hallucinations and somewhat infringed on iii. But that was nearly 20 years ago. Memory is too flawed and my state of mind at the time was too influenced for it to be of interest now. Like I said, I do wish I had read this at the time and examined what happened in light of that information.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by jdc324

I suppose it could be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect? People may be unskilled in these areas and unaware of it?

Hey JDC, yes quite possibly! That's a good hypothesis. My thoughts were as follows -- higher educational level in the states may correlate to lower levels of religiosity, and hence increased paranormal belief. Martin Gardner wrote in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983) on the increase in paranormal belief in the USA

"As always with such manias, causes are multiple: the decline of traditional religious beliefs among the better educated, the resurgence of Protestant Fundamentalism, disenchantment with science for creating a technology that is damaging the environment and building horrendous war weapons, increasingly poor quality of science instruction on all levels of schooling, and many other factors"

Gardner gives his source, the article Superstitions Old and New by William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark in The Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 4, Summer 1980. He says they

"…reported on their surveys of how beliefs in certain aspects of the current occult mania correlated with religious faith. They found people with no professed religion were the most inclined to believe in ESP and extraterrestrial UFOs. Paranormal cults were strongest in areas where the traditional churches were weakest."

The claim that higher education correlates with more belief in ghosts incidentally also comes from the Skeptical Inquirer (January/February 2006): article on it here from LiveScience. http://www.livescience.com/564-highe...ef-ghosts.html

I thought I'd better establish my sources. So two possibilities.

1. I put on my tinfoil hat and argue CSI(COP) (http://www.csicop.org/si/) are a covert fundie Christian group trying to convince us all that education and atheism are the enemies of reason. This strikes me s highly likely; as likely that James Randi is in fact a covert Vatican agent designed to bring us all in to the fold of Holy Mother Church.

or

2. Loss of religious belief and education alone do not necessarily make you a sceptic. In which case this recent JREF article is even more interesting and important I guess : http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/...isconnect.html

Finally, just as an aside when Richard Dawkins did his documentary The Enemies of Reason I did make my case that actually education and atheism appeared to in the USA at least correlate with paranormal beliefs, and he as an advocate of both was therefore directly responsible for a huge amount of crystalgazing-wandwaving-spoonbending lunacy. This was in the day when he still posted on his forum, but he never replied to my carefully reasoned (and based on the small samples in the above study) correct argument.

Oh well! I have a fairly well developed sense of the absurd, perhaps he has lost his dealing with Creationists.

cj x

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by JJM 777

Hopeful thinking is not dumb. Putting much practical trust on unproven claims is, especially if a proven alternative exists. In some cases it doesn´t, for example no proven treatment exists for some health conditions, in which case it cannot be a dumb choice to try an unproven treatment vs. trying a treatment which is proven not to help.

Agree totally. If you have nothing to lose why not? After all the psychological effects of trying something and attempting to take control could be beneficial I guess, even if the treatment fails. I still would balance the risks of giving scam artists money and credibility, but if a treatment seems plausible and you have nowt else left to try, then why ever not? Hope is a wonderful thing.
cj x

[Dipayan]

Apologies in advance since I have not read the complete thread, but I had to respond to the provocative title.

Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?

No, I think human beings are thick, nuts and daft. Some of us tend to believe in a god, some of us tend to not. This default sense of 'intelligence' just because one does not believe in god/s that one thinks is made up, is thick, nuts and daft in itself.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by bookitty

Not bored at all. That was fascinating, although I wish I could have read it back when I was trying to be a ghost-hunter. (No worries, I've since out grown that.)

You are very kind about my very dull article. I'm presenting my follow up paper at Skeptics in the Pub Cheltenham next Thursday during the science Festival here. It's entitled The science of Ghosts, and hopefully is marginally less dull If anyone can make it I'd be delighted to say hi!

Originally Posted by bookitty

Here's an odd thing - my weirdest, as yet unexplained, event would have countered point ii on properties of hallucinations and somewhat infringed on iii. But that was nearly 20 years ago. Memory is too flawed and my state of mind at the time was too influenced for it to be of interest now. Like I said, I do wish I had read this at the time and examined what happened in light of that information.

I'd be very interested to hear it, despite your caveats. If you wanted to PM me rather than share it on here though I'd understand, but I also understand you are probably very busy. Still, sounds fascinating!

cj x

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Dipayan

Apologies in advance since I have not read the complete thread, but I had to respond to the provocative title.

Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?

No, I think human beings are thick, nuts and daft. Some of us tend to believe in a god, some of us tend to not. This default sense of 'intelligence' just because one does not believe in god/s that one thinks is made up, is thick, nuts and daft in itself.

Yep. agreed. As I say further down, 'intelligence ' is a hard concept anyway. Then again I may just be too thick to understand it -- that's probably a strong possibility! (And yes I may get back on topic and finish the original plan eventually)

cj x

[Dipayan]

Originally Posted by Garrette

What believers seem to possess in general is an unwillingness to delve deeply into their paranormal beliefs or to examine closely any alternate explanations. They will frequently give the appearance of such delving and examining, but it is rarely that they actually do it.

I think your are describing human beings here. Look at self-professed skeptics here in JREF, and you will see that there are hot button topics that people will take their positions and refuse to accept that there is another point of view.

I am counting yourself and myself in this group. So every time you propose an argument against my point, I'll take that as strengthening my point. And every time I say something for my side of the argument, I'll take that as weakening my point. You might as well call a truce

[I Ratant]

Just keep any exchanges "lively and friendly", and you'll get along well.

[Garrette]

Originally Posted by Dipayan

I think your are describing human beings here. Look at self-professed skeptics here in JREF, and you will see that there are hot button topics that people will take their positions and refuse to accept that there is another point of view.

I am counting yourself and myself in this group. So every time you propose an argument against my point, I'll take that as strengthening my point. And every time I say something for my side of the argument, I'll take that as weakening my point. You might as well call a truce

You are SO wrong.

And closed-minded.

[Dipayan]

Originally Posted by Garrette

You are SO wrong.

And closed-minded.

I'm going to hide in my box.

[Mehdimentio]

They are simply people who have fallen prey to the deeply human fallacy that believing that something is true something makes it so. Another way to put it is that they are naïve.