Haunting, explained scientifically

Bruthal

maccored wrote: »

its quite simple in my mind. its a bit obtuse to believe that jsut because you havent experienced something then it doesnt exist. i have never been to australia, but I know its there.

There is strong evidence that australia does exist though. Millions of people have in fact seen it and experienced it, and can bring non believers in it (if there were any) to see it themselves.

If you have no belief in the paranormal, mainly if you have never had a paranormal experience - fine .. no-ones breaking your arm expecting you to believe anything paranormal. still though, dont try to be condesending arseholes to people who may well have had those experiences as most really dont give a flying toss what any of you think.

If you dont give a flying toss, why the agressive post about it then? No one is breaking your arm to become a non believer. I would not even say im a non believer. But not a believer beyond doubt either, but would believe australia exists beyond a reasonable doubt.

maccored

If you dont give a flying toss, why the agressive post about it then? No one is breaking your arm to become a non believer. I would not even say im a non believer. But not a believer beyond doubt either, but would believe australia exists beyond a reasonable doubt.

agressive post? plain and simple post maybe, aggressive - no not really.

Im sure it irks many people to have to listen to a bunch of cynics who call themselves sceptics, trying to talk about the paranormal, when the same people have never experienced anything at all paranormal in the first place.

My point is, if you have such strong beliefs that the paranormal is all balls - then fair dues to you. You are wasting your time on me though and on most people who have had any kind of realistic paranormal experience. we really, genuinely dont care how rubbish you believe it all to be.

And lets be straight here - most of us already know the majority of mediums and psychics are fake - yous have done that one to death. in fact is there any other kind of thread in here?

"im a non believer. But not a believer beyond doubt either" - thats a proper sceptic if you ask me. Pity there arent more like you.

edwinkane

maccored wrote: »

My point is, if you have such strong beliefs that the paranormal is all balls - then fair dues to you. You are wasting your time on me though and on most people who have had any kind of realistic paranormal experience. we really, genuinely dont care how rubbish you believe it all to be.

.

what is curious is that in the last hundreds of years plenty of people have claimed to be psychic, or to have had paranormal experiences and so on. We do know some facts beyond "belief".

We know (i) that the paranormal and psychic worlds contain, and have contained, charlatans who have used trickery and (ii) no one has ever been able to demonstrate their paranormal or psychic powers in any way to demonstrate beyond doubt that they have paranormal or psychic powers.

Bearing in mind that some paranormal claims are made by charlatans, how do you distinguish between those who you think have real paranormal or psychic powers, and those who are tricksters?

maccored

jesus it'd be great if I could speak my mind without someone reporting me - I'd liek to point out that my 'condesending arseholes' quip is not aimed at anyone personally .. but in general describes how one side treats the other in these discussions.

kylith

maccored wrote: »

agressive post? plain and simple post maybe, aggressive - no not really.

Im sure it irks many people to have to listen to a bunch of cynics who call themselves sceptics, trying to talk about the paranormal, when the same people have never experienced anything at all paranormal in the first place.

My point is, if you have such strong beliefs that the paranormal is all balls - then fair dues to you. You are wasting your time on me though and on most people who have had any kind of realistic paranormal experience. we really, genuinely dont care how rubbish you believe it all to be.

And lets be straight here - most of us already know the majority of mediums and psychics are fake - yous have done that one to death. in fact is there any other kind of thread in here?

"im a non believer. But not a believer beyond doubt either" - thats a proper sceptic if you ask me. Pity there arent more like you.

I'll have to disagree with you there. I have personally experienced 4 events which I'm sure that 'believers' would class as ghostly activity. 1) woke up in the night to hear the sound of a flute playing; no-one in my family plays the flute 2) hearing someone downstairs strike keys on the piano when I was alone in the house 3) an electic keyboard started playing by itself 4) smelling the smell of death in my classroom in school at around the time my grandmother died.

I am, however, a rational person and years of thought on these events have led me to believe that 1) was a dream 2) and 4) were probably my imagination and 3) was most likely an electrical fault. All of these; dreams, electrical faults, and imagination, are 9 billion more times more likely than ghosts.

If more people, when faced with unexplained noises, remembered the brain's propensity to play tricks on us and thought about whether it were more likely that the noise was imagined/misheard or were a ghost the world would be a better place.

Standman

Maccored, I think it's quite apparent again that you are being the cynical one here. Nobody on this thread has stated that the paranormal is "all balls", that's just another cynical assumption you have made based on your own prejudices.

For a person who says time and time again that you don't give a toss what we think, you spend an awful lot of time in here labelling anyone who even suggests a natural explanation to something as a cynic. Why do you post so fervently in a forum with people whos' opinions you care so little about?

I suppose it's handy for you to constantly say you don't give a toss what our opinions are because it allows you to make sweeping statements about posters without even bothering to get involved in any kind of debate, because when taken to task you can just say "well I don't care what you think, you're a cynic". Maybe you could take your axe grinding elsewhere.

Fuzzy Clam

maccored wrote: »

If you have no belief in the paranormal, mainly if you have never had a paranormal experience - fine .. no-ones breaking your arm expecting you to believe anything paranormal. still though, dont try to be condesending arseholes to people who may well have had those experiences as most really dont give a flying toss what any of you think.

Why is it that those who are believers seem to have multiple experiences of "paranormal" activity? Non believers never seem to have any, or at most, just 1 which cannot be explained rationally.
FFS, every time an explanation is offered to these guys, they always have a reason why it must be paranormal and they debunk all other possible causes.

Sometimes I hear "things" here. Banging in the attic, Clanking sounds outside. The letterbox rattles sometimes and there's nobody at the door and it can't be the wind 'cos there's a strong spring on the flap. ****, there's even Banshees at night!

But there's an obvious explanation for all this "activity". Ghosts! I live in a modern house that is built on the site of a Forge or Foundry in which someone died a long time ago.
Well thats the easy explanation.:D

The banging in the attic is just crows on the roof, the clanking was just something hitting off the tv aerial pole and it was the cat rattling the letterbox to let me know she wanted feeding. How ****ing boring is that

And as for the Banshees..........

Dave!

kylith wrote: »

I'll have to disagree with you there. I have personally experienced 4 events which I'm sure that 'believers' would class as ghostly activity. 1) woke up in the night to hear the sound of a flute playing; no-one in my family plays the flute 2) hearing someone downstairs strike keys on the piano when I was alone in the house 3) an electic keyboard started playing by itself 4) smelling the smell of death in my classroom in school at around the time my grandmother died.

I am, however, a rational person and years of thought on these events have led me to believe that 1) was a dream 2) and 4) were probably my imagination and 3) was most likely an electrical fault. All of these; dreams, electrical faults, and imagination, are 9 billion more times more likely than ghosts.

If more people, when faced with unexplained noises, remembered the brain's propensity to play tricks on us and thought about whether it were more likely that the noise was imagined/misheard or were a ghost the world would be a better place.

Indeed! I've had 'paranormal' experiences also. Not arsed going into detail, but...

Once I woke up during the night and saw the shape of an old woman towards the end of my bed. Nearly shít myself. A paranormal believer would probably throw the covers up and try to go asleep, and then tell all their true believer pals about it as evidence of the paranormal. I went to the bother of turning on the lights, and discovered that it was just an article of clothing hanging in a particular way, and being slightly illuminated by light from outside (the moon possibly).

Another time I saw what one could be forgiven for thinking was a bunch of spacecrafts having a dogfight miles up in space! Just looked like dots of light moving around each other randomly. As we turned the corner and looked up, they were gone. My paranormal-loving friend saw it too, and was clearly pleased to see that I had had a paranormal experience. I just said that I didn't know what it was, and left it at that. Saw the same thing the next day on my own, and walked further on, they disappeared again. Forgot about it, until I looked up about 5 minutes down the road, and there were a bunch of seagulls flying around in front of a billboard, being lit up by the lights Showing that (a) humans often confuse 'big but far away' with 'small but close', and (b) just because an explanation is not forthcoming or apparent does not mean it's not something mundane. Seagulls in front of a billboard would be the last thing that I'd consider.

Another recent example, I was cleaning up the sitting room a few weeks ago, and as I was leaving the room the TV came on, seemingly by itself. I wasn't near the remote at the time. Then I remembered that I had moved the remote about 2 minutes earlier, and I also remembered my mother complaining before that this new TV takes ages to come off standby when you press a button!

Of course, believers will say that those weren't paranormal experiences at all. That's because I investigated them.

edwinkane

maccored wrote: »

jesus it'd be great if I could speak my mind without someone reporting me - I'd liek to point out that my 'condesending arseholes' quip is not aimed at anyone personally .. but in general describes how one side treats the other in these discussions.

It's revealing that you think there are "sides", and that those who you think are not on your side you call (rather rude) names.

I don't see it as "sides" but as an attempt to find out the truth. It's interesting that you give here a link to the Leinster Paranormal website which has, as its slogan "common sense, not science". Science is, of course, common sense, and science is just a way we have to try to explain the world around us. No doubt there were many who, in a previous age, invoked "common sense" to "prove" that the earth was flat, and so on. And so it looked with the information available at that time.

I am someone who looks for evidence and proof, and am often astonished that there are those, perhaps like homoeopaths or the paranormalists, who seem to become angry at the prospect that some people need more than just an apparent willingness to believe in such things as homoeopathy or the paranormal.

Dave!

edwinkane wrote: »

its slogan "common sense, not science".

Wow, didn't see that... Unbelieveable! :eek: Can't believe they'd be so proud to advertise their contempt for the scientific method.

edwinkane

edwinkane wrote: »

Science is, of course, common sense, and science is just a way we have to try to explain the world around us. No doubt there were many who, in a previous age, invoked "common sense" to "prove" that the earth was flat, and so on. And so it looked with the information available at that time.

Poor galileo ,he was killed by Skeptics

Zombrex

maccored wrote: »

a cynic is whats called a doubting thomas - someone who will only believe something when theres irrefutable proof - "I do not accept paranormal as real unless there is proof" - which is a category I think you fall into.

A sceptic at least keeps an open mind until theres proof either way

No that isn't what a skeptic is, as has been explained to you already many times. A skeptic is someone who is skeptical of claims, and thus requires evidence to support such claims to a particular standard.

A skeptic is far closer to what you, inaccurately, call a cynic.

I've no idea why you are still going on about this. It seems to just piss you off that some people think the reasoning behind paranormal explanations are flawed and unsupported.

edwinkane

Wicknight wrote: »

It seems to just piss you off that some people think the reasoning behind paranormal explanations are flawed and unsupported.

Facts are stubborn things, and the facts show that there is, as yet, no evidence which is credible. If anyone here thinks there is credible evidence, let them point us towards it.

edwinkane

edwinkane wrote: »

Facts are stubborn things, and the facts show that there is, as yet, no evidence which is credible. If anyone here thinks there is credible evidence, let them point us towards it.

Point us to your facts ?

Zombrex

Deleted User wrote: »

Point us to your facts ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics

Wicknight

Wicknight wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics

your getting there but your not a skeptic yet !

RGDATA!

idea is interesting, somewhat plausible even, but the experiment referenced seems a bit hoakey on investigation (at least as described in the linked article)

they played an audience "four pieces of contempary music" and mixed in the inaudible freqencies at some points, then measured a 22% increase in uneasiness when they were playing the low frequencies.
it's not really clear exactly how this played out, but to jump to the conclusion that the 22% is meaningful and attributable to the frequencies, you have to assume that different pieces of music don't affect people different ways.

also the reference to the experiment is from 2003, the blog post is from 2010, you'd have thought if they were on to something they'd have tested it more rigorously since then.

maccored

Dave! wrote: »

Wow, didn't see that... Unbelieveable! :eek: Can't believe they'd be so proud to advertise their contempt for the scientific method.

Common sense is the foundation of science. Paranormal research is more about common sense than scientific method.

maccored

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Why is it that those who are believers seem to have multiple experiences of "paranormal" activity? Non believers never seem to have any, or at most, just 1 which cannot be explained rationally.
FFS, every time an explanation is offered to these guys, they always have a reason why it must be paranormal and they debunk all other possible causes.

Sometimes I hear "things" here. Banging in the attic, Clanking sounds outside. The letterbox rattles sometimes and there's nobody at the door and it can't be the wind 'cos there's a strong spring on the flap. ****, there's even Banshees at night!

But there's an obvious explanation for all this "activity". Ghosts! I live in a modern house that is built on the site of a Forge or Foundry in which someone died a long time ago.
Well thats the easy explanation.:D

The banging in the attic is just crows on the roof, the clanking was just something hitting off the tv aerial pole and it was the cat rattling the letterbox to let me know she wanted feeding. How ****ing boring is that

And as for the Banshees..........

Im sorry, but what is your point? Are you A) being stereotypical in your outlook on a 'believer' (whatever that is) or are you saying that 'FFS, every time an explanation is offered to [maccored] they always have a reason why it must be paranormal and they debunk all other possible causes.'

Because if its then you are so far off the mark. If you are going to berate someone, at least have an idea of what they do and do not believe in.

This in fact goes out to more than one poster, since I can only assume from the posts directed at me, that some think I actually completely believe in ghosts or something. try being sceptical the odd time. usually works a treat.

Dave!

maccored wrote: »

Common sense is the foundation of science. Paranormal research is more about common sense than scientific method.

err, no... Structured, methodical prediction and testing is the foundation of science.

Paranormal 'research' is more about giving yourself a little fright and perpetuating stories and myths that you took an interest in when you were a child.

easychair

maccored wrote: »

Common sense is the foundation of science. Paranormal research is more about common sense than scientific method.

How can you show how something works, when no one has yet been able to prove that it even exists?

Antikythera

maccored wrote: »

just because certain aspects of anything can be repeated naturally, does not mean that is the only reasoning and explaination behind it.

That is exactly what it means.

Ghosts lol.