Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Yeah saw it after I submitted my post, you replied whilst I was writing mine, the problems of being distracted while replying eh

Drunken Bungle Whore

Just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Brain surgeons have been tinkering around inside peoples heads for years and they've still never seen a dream or a thought. We believe they exist because the vast majority of people experience them. Just because a minority of people experience something doesn't make it any less valid.


ajm could be right, B2Z could be right - or they could both be wrong. Our perceptions of this world are largely based on our own experiences.

Still, it's always amusing to watch them fight!

boxst

Hello

Mostly photography tricks http://www.prairieghosts.com/museum.html



Steve.

OllyK

That's odd so it must be something hitherto un-observed and outside the realms of possibility as we know it, so it must be that?

A bit of critical thinking never hurt anybody and will do you more good than "faith", being able to admit "you don't know" is not a failing. I don't admit to be able to provide an explanation for every peculiar going on and I am happy to accept that. Many of the oddities relating to the paranormal / supernatural that I have looked in to don't hold water and generally do have a perfectly normal real world explanation.

If there was any (and I do mean any) concrete evidence to the contrary physicists and biologists would be very busy re-writing the physical laws to accommodate the new observations. Sadly what there is amounts to anecdotes, personal experiences (which are always very real and important to the person that has them, but worthless to science) and a lot of chicanery, lying and cheating.

There are believers, cynics and sceptics out there. The believers will accept with nothing more than a "story" they require no evidence to accept, just faith. The cynics are at the other end, no ammount of evidence will convince them and us sceptics are in the middle and the only ones with an open mind. We await to be convinced, we just need the evidence, the others will not change their minds no matter how much evidence there is or isn't to support something.

OllyK

Oh dear how wrong you are I am afraid - you have comitted the falacies of appeal to popular belief and appeal to numbers. Just because lots of people believe something does not make it so, look back through history to see how many times the popular belief has been shown to be incorrect through the use of scientific observation.

"Dream" is the term given to a period of sleep time know as REM (Rapid Eye Movement). We know very well what dreams are, likewise we know what air is as well although we can't see that either.

Drunken Bungle Whore

No **** Sherlock - guess that's me put in my place........

(And how exactly is REM 'seeing' dreams?)

ajm

Yup... it sure is!

Go Olly!

OllyK

The same way that litmus paper turning bue is "seeing" an acid.

Your claim was:
and

and you cited dreams as an example. We do not "believe" dreams exist because lots of people agree about it. We know (scientific) they exist through observation and testing, which confirmed popular belief, there are many cases where science does not confirm the popular belief and to claim "popularity through numbers" is not a strong standpoint.

To prove something exists you do not have to "see" it, it can be tested in other ways (We know air exists but we can't see that either).

However, if you are making a claim that something new does exist then the scientific standpoint is that is does not exist until you can provide proof that it does. The burden of proof lies with the claimant.

If you unfamiliar with it, I can explain the process of scientific proof. Once something has been tested many times and the results are consistent then it becomes scientific fact (this is not absolute fact), by which we mean we are very confident of something, and we can now formulate other hypotheses based on it. However, it also allows for self correction that if new evidence comes along then we may have to review our standpoint. This is what happened to Newtonion physics when Einstein came along. He didn't shatter it, but he did show it was incorrect under some circumstances and refined the theory accordingly.

ajm

(pssst.... red )

OllyK

I can feel a case of IPU coming on

Drunken Bungle Whore

Actually - I'm unfamiliar with the phrase 'Patronising Git' too - could you help me there as well...?

OllyK

Glad to see you picked up the deliberate mistake

ajm

IPU?

OllyK

Sure you'll find it here in Dictionary.com.

Amazing how quickly some people resort to ad hominem attacks when they don't have a leg to stand on

OllyK

Invisible Pink Unicorn. A common retort on the JREF forums when people try to shift the burden of proof. It usually takes the form "and I have a pink unicorn in my garage, prove I don't"

Drunken Bungle Whore

And amazing how others resort to using long words to appear more intelligent than they actually are....

I don't feel the need to prove I'm right or anyone else is wrong - that was the whole point of my original post.....

ajm

LOL! That's a new one on me. Nice one!

OllyK

There you go again, rather than try to make a point on the subject you bring my intellect in to the equation when it isn't relevant to the subject. My scientific background may be, feel free to try and discredit that if you feel it will help. Or alternatively you could back your claim up and try to show that I am trying to appear more intelligent than I actually am.

Which as I said was flawed, you were suggesting that "because lots of people think it is right, it must be right". That's wrong, period. It's a logical fallacy and is used frequently in discussions of the paranormal to try and give weight to a statement that is worthless.

OllyK

Have a look at http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/ sometime, I think you may find it of interest.

Drunken Bungle Whore

I poke fun at your intellect because it's fun to see how much it winds you up (which appears to be quite a lot!) and frankly I'm a bit bored this afternoon and...

Is not what I actully originally said. My original post said (when refering to dreams and ideas) "we believe they exist because a vast majority of people experience them" (To prove your point - lots of people thought Labour were right at the last election.....)

And my only argument about the paranormal was to say anyone could be right, but just because only a minority of people exerience something doesn't mean it doesn't exist and just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it isn't there.

If you want to fight at least quote me correctly...... (copy of original post below just to help)

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

http://members.aol.com/venkie/rgb/rgb.htm

OllyK

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, as I say, give it your best shot, preferably backed up with evidence. It just amuses me that you resort to the irrelevant when you have nothing to support your position.

Let me help you:
"we know they exist because they have been the subject of significant scientific research and the hypothesis for their existence has stood up to repeated testing

Because "a vast majority" (as an aside, how can you have more than 1 majority?) thinks, believes or experiences something is irrelevant and anecdotal for the most part. It may be the basis for an observation which is the start of the process, but it proves nothing. I'm sorry to keep banging on about this, but this misconception about lots of people seeing, feeling, experiencing something being scientific evidence is just plain wrong.

Indeed - all they need to do is provide scientific evidence to prove their case. Nobody has yet. What does that tell you? (Please tell me you are not a government suppression conspiracy theorist)

Until they can prove it does exist, that's exactly what it means. You can prove something's existence without having to explain the hows and whys. If you can repeatably show I have an Invisible Pink Unicorn in my garage (ajm: I told ya) then they exist. We don't know how or why yet, just that they do.

You are working from the opposite end in that you believe I have an IPU in my garage, even if it can't be proved, because someday somebody may (or may not) be able to to prove the existence of an IPU. That is not how science works, it is how the woo-woo fraternity work, it allows them to say everything the want to believe is real and true as science hasn't dis-proved it yet (another fallacy there for you).

InvisibleMan

OllyK

Lol - I liked Ade Edmundson and Rick Mayle's (sp) take on green projectile vomiting!

Drunken Bungle Whore

All it tells me is that no one has proved it yet. Not that it can't be proven. Which is (and has been) my argument all along. The best scientific minds are the ones that remain open to posibilities of things not yet proven. At different points in time science has told us that we'd die if we travelled at over 30mph (and did the equations to prove it) and that travelling at the speed of sound was impossible (again - they had the maths to back that up). Einstein and Hawkin must be fully paid up members of your 'woo woo fraternity'. Long held scientific beliefs are being challenged every single day - and so they should be!

Of course I'm no scientist but surely experiements have to be seen, felt or experienced by more than one person to prove them? They usually then have to be repeatable in front of other people who would either see, feel or experience them....?

I'm not suggesting that ghosts and ghouls (or IPUs ) and the like do exist - maybe someone will prove them all to be a hoax or to have some rational explanation. I'm open minded either way - which is something I believe you were arguing in favour of in an earlier post.....

OllyK

Sure but you have to have a starting point, which is usually an observation, and that doesn't mean "see with your own eyes", it may include detection by other means. If the "thing" is not observable / detectable, then why waste time trying to prove its existence?

Science would be spend all its time trying to prove (fruitlessly I expect) the existence of Pink, Yellow, Green and any other colour of Unicorn because up until that point nobody had managed to disprove their existence (which you can't do anyway). If you start from that premise everything is possible, it may fuel the imagination but it doesn't lead to very focused research on how to prove any of it.

So science starts from the basis that until you can prove it, it doesn't exist. Lots of people "suspect" things exist, don't know what they are but they can observe them indirectly possibly or as a result of some effect they have on other things (You can't see XRays but you can detect them by the effect they have on photographic film. Consider Gravity, air, bacteria before microscopes etc)

Yes but that's "an open mind to new evidence", not "an open mind to everything even with no evidence" They all observe phenomena and then try to propose a hypothesis that can be tested. They don't just sit there and think, "what doesn't exist that I can test for today"

An experiment has to be repeatable yes, but random uncontrolled events do not constitute good testing. If you had said that "lots have people have been tested under scientically controlled conditions and they all showed the same result" I wouldn't be posting this. People just experiencing stuff "in the wild" doesn't count for much. It is often the starting point for scientific investigation, but it isn't even close to a proof.

I appreciate I am nit picking but I hope you can now see the difference between "a belief based on a number of people saying / experiencing something in an uncontrolled manner" and "something being known as a result of controlled repeatable scientific testing" It's a subtle point but it's the difference between evidence and anecdotes! One has scientific value the other doesn't.

You can't disprove anything, however, it only takes somebody to turn up with just 1 real ghost or goul to prove they do exist!

Those there are plenty of, most of them are rather boring and mundane and nothing like as romantic as a supernatural explanation.

Yes that is what I advocate, but as I said, keep and open mind to the evidence, if there is no evidence then what are you keeping an open mind about? Once the evidence is presented, you can change your world view (as does science), that's the beauty of it, always be prepared to change your view in light of new evidence but don't believe stuff for which there is no evidence at all.

scoob_babe

give it a rest! It's almost like having Claudius back and every last post has got a quote and nit-pick in!

Any results of experiments anyway B2Z - has W69 been trampled in the night?!?!?!

CoobyS

Mate, there must be a logical explantion. Not one credible scientific observation on record to suggest existance of ghosts etc.

E.g. One place to check would be the area of tsunami - sure one would find ghosts there. Didley-Squat.

All in the mind, if not in viable physical explantion (e.g. floor board expansion). Plus if you are convinced there is something there you are more likely to over-react to something minor but explanable...

Abdabz

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee, I was in this place in June last year - Ive just been reading the "most haunted" thread again for posterity... A good thread indeed...
Whatever you type on this subject Olly will have a 1000 word essay in reply that doesnt really take you anywhere...
Olly good sir - when I pass, I shall hunt you down through the interweb (a la lawnmowerman) and haunt your house - heavy footsteps, bad bad bad smells, crockery flying and maybe even a bit of levitation - as long as you arent as heavy as your posts and see what ya think then