Ghosts

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
d00df00d, great post, but it's not a proof.

It's virtually impossible to prove the null argument, and proof that the first 20 occurences are normal brain activity isn't proof that the 21st is as well.

Not virtually impossible, it IS impossible as far as we know. What's your point?

 

[Win]

Originally Posted By: buster
I'd like to hear peoples stories on this topic. I've never personally experience any ghosts.


A man was lured into, and murdered, in a building I now own. When I work late in the evening sometimes I will hear a person walking around upstairs, in an area where a person cannot be, unless he / she has the keys that are in my desk. It's a 150ish year old building, and the wood floors are such that walking, footsteps, etc., are distict. Sometimes this can happen four or five times in a year, and sometimes I can go more than a year without it happening.

I always investigate, and there is never a person there, or any means for a person to have gotten in.

This phenomenon has persisted for twenty five years of my own experience, and a two year take apart / restoration of the building didn't alter it.

Many of the people associated with him are still alive. Several of the alleged conspirators in his murder were acquitted. One person was convicted twice, and twice reversed on appeal. It was an ugly high profile event.

Is it the murdered man coming back to the place of his sudden demise? Don't know, but I know it's not an artifact of my imagination.

 

[PandaBear]

I hear the same "man in the attic walking" sound almost weekly except there is no attic, and it is not my imagination either. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is thermal expansion, contraction of the wood structure causes the crackles of different joints.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: Shannow
d00df00d, great post, but it's not a proof.

It's virtually impossible to prove the null argument, and proof that the first 20 occurences are normal brain activity isn't proof that the 21st is as well.

Not virtually impossible, it IS impossible as far as we know. What's your point?


Your post was good, however, it was not a proof that there is no such activity...

Certainly not proof enough to lampooon the OP, and other respondents with claims of ignorance.

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
This whole thread should be a forum no-no -- not in terms of being against the rules, but in terms of people laughing so hard at the OP that they can't even bring themselves to post.


Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Although, maybe this explains a lot about the quality of discussions in general here, as well as what passes for fact...


Originally Posted By: d00df00d
All "evidence" of ghosts comes from subjective experience, and fits very neatly with what you would expect from the flaws we know we have.

 

[d00df00d]

I never said there's no such thing. What I said was that there's no reason to believe that there IS such a thing, and thus the belief in ghosts is unjustified.

The ignorance lies in calling something supernatural when it is fully explicable in terms of well-attested facts about the human mind.

 

[Shannow]

IMO, ignorance is totally discounting a phenomenon because it's too "out there" compared to "known" science.

Wireless transmission of information and energy and flight would have been considered supernatural to people only a few generations ago, but are now part of our standard knowledge base.

Some of the results that Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ investigated at the Stanford Research Institute through the 70s and early 80s have some pretty mind blowing implications about consciousness (and the military spent quite a bit of effort on it also).

The Global Consciousness project is showing some statistical evidence (certainly not proof at this stage) that the universe becomes less random at major historical events.

Abandon these avenues of research because "we already know what we know" ???

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
IMO, ignorance is totally discounting a phenomenon because it's too "out there" compared to "known" science.

Never said that.


Originally Posted By: Shannow
Wireless transmission of information and energy and flight would have been considered supernatural to people only a few generations ago, but are now part of our standard knowledge base.

Exactly. Which means the notion that they are supernatural doesn't help.


Originally Posted By: Shannow
Some of the results that Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ investigated at the Stanford Research Institute through the 70s and early 80s have some pretty mind blowing implications about consciousness (and the military spent quite a bit of effort on it also).

The Global Consciousness project is showing some statistical evidence (certainly not proof at this stage) that the universe becomes less random at major historical events.

Abandon these avenues of research because "we already know what we know" ???

Mysterious does not mean supernatural. Likewise, rejecting the idea that something is supernatural doesn't mean ignoring it entirely.



I'm not saying people aren't seeing things. I'm saying that what they're seeing aren't ghosts.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
The ignorance lies in calling something supernatural when it is fully explicable in terms of well-attested facts about the human mind.


(hmm - trying to avoid ..ah skip it) So a researcher should assign the easiest explanation for that which has not experienced, observed, or tested?

No comment on the validity of ghosts one way or the other. I do most certainly believe in other planes of existence that may or may not be corporeal.

 

[mechtech2]

Of course there are active imaginations.
And frauds galore.
But I won't throw my money away because there is counterfeit money out there!
Eat the fish, and thrown away the bones, in other words.

The same with supernatural activity.
It takes very little time to find very real events that are not explainable by fakes , fears, and imaginations.
Percentages do not matter - they exist or they do not.
Like being 1/2 pregnant- you are or you are not.

 

[PandaBear]

The only thing I don't understand is, why not put up security camera all over the place and record what's actually going on objectively? That's how software bugs are found and criminal prosecuted. Why not apply this to ghosts? One way or another you'll know what's going on.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
The only thing I don't understand is, why not put up security camera all over the place and record what's actually going on objectively? That's how software bugs are found and criminal prosecuted. Why not apply this to ghosts? One way or another you'll know what's going on.

Because, for one reason or another (I can think of several possibilities), they aren't actually interested in knowing the truth.

 

[John_Corey]

Hi d00df00d,

I am unsure who "they"are, but I presume they are scientists. Please consider that scientists are searching for facts and not for truth. Truth is a philosophical concept.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," Mthat is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-Keats

Cheers,
-J

Originally Posted By: d00df00d

Because, for one reason or another (I can think of several possibilities), they aren't actually interested in knowing the truth.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: John_Corey
I am unsure who "they"are, but I presume they are scientists.

I was talking about the people who refuse or neglect to put up cameras to try to investigate their ghost stories.

I was using the word "truth" in a lay sense; more like what I think you mean by "fact."

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
The only thing I don't understand is, why not put up security camera all over the place and record what's actually going on objectively?


I guess ghosts are shy. I have also heard, third hand, of recording technology breaking/batteries dying at the most inopportune time. IDK how someone "prepared" would handle it, ie, if the scatterbrained "feelers" are also scatterbrained about equipment maintenance. My "ghost" (see a few pages back) presented itself when no cameras were out because noone was looking for it.

Some cultures (indigineous species mostly) think a camera steals your spirit.

In ghost hunting, "Orbs" are supposedly "proof". But the ones I see are out of focus dust in the air, caught by flash. Ghost hunters always seem to use point and shoots with auto-flash.

 

[bigmike]

I think there are 3 views here:

1. People believe SOME.
2. People do not believe AT ALL.
3. People think that you are all idiots from category #1 or #2.

Personally, I have the ability to feel neutral on all aspects. I wish more people, and I suspect there are already many here, that could feel neutral on things that are polarizing.

That said, the only thing that bothers me is the post-modernism posts. The thought that something is true to me doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the truth. I think people have bought too far into the view that everything can be explained. The problem with that view is that you would need to be more than a man to explain the thoughts of man. Most of these discussions lead straight into philosophy regardless of how much scientific facts you want to portray into them. This borders religious discussion and I think these kinds of topics show too many respectful people here in a light that many of us want to keep dark.

And remember, just call these guys when you get scared:

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
The only thing I don't understand is, why not put up security camera all over the place and record what's actually going on objectively? That's how software bugs are found and criminal prosecuted. Why not apply this to ghosts? One way or another you'll know what's going on.


Throughout 10 years of us living in our house, I have seen it only once. I have not asked how many times my wife has seen it.

Plus, I do not see the need to try to escalate anything. Up until the time I saw it I thought the talk about ghosts was crock and a result of overactive imagination or simple fraud. But now that I have seen it, I am open to the stories of their effects on our physical world. I do not want to do anything that may suggest that I am trying to affect their life. Maybe they are as freaked out about humans as humans are about them.

 

[Schmoe]

There's just too many times a "supernatural" event has happened to blantly say that it doesn't exist. Sure, some are going to be hoax and some can be explained, but to say that ALL events are explainable and the supernatural, whether it be ghosts, spirits, dreams, etc. etc., doesn't exist is not logical. You just can't deny them all across the board. There is no right or wrong here, just a lot of inbetween that we, as of yet, can't perceive.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: Schmoe
There's just too many times a "supernatural" event has happened to blantly say that it doesn't exist. Sure, some are going to be hoax and some can be explained, but to say that ALL events are explainable and the supernatural, whether it be ghosts, spirits, dreams, etc. etc., doesn't exist is not logical. You just can't deny them all across the board. There is no right or wrong here, just a lot of inbetween that we, as of yet, can't perceive.

Again, there's no denying that people are seeing things. Those experiences are real, important, and mysterious. They cry out for some kind of explanation.

The problem is when people think it's supernatural. There is just no reason to believe that. Even if there were no other explanation (of which there are plenty), that doesn't in any way mean that people have a window into a world that reason and science conveniently can't see.

By the way, on the "explanation" thing: this isn't about calling ghost sightings hoaxes, or people being insane, or any of that. Never mind those cases; they're obvious frauds and neither side cares about them. The idea is this: if you add up all the tricks that we know our brains can play on us, it's easy to see how we might have vivid and convincing ghost sightings. It's also easy to see how two people can have the same hallucination even if they never even met before. Those explanations fit so well that we have to rule them out BEFORE we believe that ghosts are real, and no one has managed to do so. And once again, even if we could rule out every available explanation, that still wouldn't mean that ghosts exist. It would simply mean we have no good way to explain what people are seeing.

Lastly, I'm not sure why but you are repeating the utter falsehood that people say ghosts don't exist. No reasonable person claims that. What they claim is that there's no reason to believe that they DO exist. There's a big difference there.

Remember: it's not up to anyone to disprove the existence of ghosts. It's up to the people who see ghosts to prove their existence, or at least provide a good argument for acting on the assumption that they exist.

 

[eljefino]

I have no dog in the fight of people believing if I experienced a ghost. I won't say see, because I did not see a face/humanoid, but the poltergeist activity (knocking a painting off the wall) capped a supernatural evening.

I do like grabbing some popcorn and reading ghost stories. If they exist, they're fairly clever beings, and I like being around intelligence and cleverness like a fly on the wall.

 

[PandaBear]

One of the first classes I took in college was Introductory to Psychology, and it really opens my eyes to how human brain thinks. What I didn't realize was that hypnotize work because of the one being hypnotized, and not the one performing the hypnotize. Also there are people who can and cannot be hypnotized no matter how hard they try.

If this is the case, that's very possible that depends on who you are and how your brain works, you may or may not be able to see ghosts, regardless of whether they are real or not, because of your brain.

I'm agnostic about whether they really exist or not, my religion is there just in case there is heaven and [censored], and I want to stay away from any possible action that can cause spiritual beings to stick around me. (i.e. according to my parents' believe, wigi board can trade your life expectancy with connection to the ghosts near by) Fortunately, I'm blessed with a thick skull that has a pretty good spiritual shield.