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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard

USA
4574 Posts

Posted - 08/09/2012 :  07:53:01   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send H. Humbert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by On fire for Christ

Just because there have been hoaxes it still doens't follow that every incident is a hoax.
True. All that would be needed to falsify the hypothesis is a single validated poltergeist occurrence.


"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman

"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie
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Hawks
SFN Regular

Canada
1383 Posts

Posted - 08/09/2012 :  10:41:18   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Hawks's Homepage Send Hawks a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm
It would be no waste of time unless your just not interested in finding out whats going on.

It would be if there was nothing going on. Spending a whole year "researching" some sounds only to find out that they are ... sounds would be a huge waste of time.

METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden!
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/11/2012 :  13:13:49   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I wouldn't say a troll. just a tall blonde with big boobs but that doesn't mean I don't have a good educated mind. The cottingly faires does not have anything to do with poltergeist activity and of course the Fox sisters went back and forth so many times with true and untrue information. her is something interesting I just read...

Two accomplished living physicists who believe in extrasensory perception are Freeman Dyson and Brian Josephson. As I mentioned in a post last year, Dyson has written that “paranormal phenomena are real but lie outside the limits of science.” No one has produced empirical proof of psi, he suggested, because it tends to occur under conditions of “strong emotion and stress,” which are “inherently incompatible with controlled scientific procedures.” Josephson won a Nobel Prize in 1973, when he was only 33, and since then he has become an aggressive proponent of research on psychic phenomena. “Yes, I think telepathy exists,” he told The Observer, a British newspaper, in 2001, “and I think quantum physics will help us understand its basic properties.”

I never said anything about the cottingly faeries. They are not a deterent to my investigation and thoughts.
But let us say theat possibly strong emotions or trauma effect the environment only later to be recorded and played back to those sensative to it? How would you begin to measure it?
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/11/2012 :  13:14:52   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Brilliant scientists believe in lots of things for which there is no evidence, like multiverses and superstrings and God
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/11/2012 :  13:36:01   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
the discovery of telepathy or telekinesis would blow centuries of accumulated scientific dogma sky high. What could be more thrilling!

I just love science and dogma together.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 08/11/2012 :  20:41:21   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

Brilliant scientists believe in lots of things for which there is no evidence, like multiverses and superstrings and God
People become famous scientists by generally being experts in a single field of study, not all fields of study. A famous scientist speaking outside xir field can oftentimes be wrong.

And brilliance doesn't imply wisdom.
the discovery of telepathy or telekinesis would blow centuries of accumulated scientific dogma sky high.
I don't think you know what the word "dogma" means. If you do, you're using it here to purposefully denigrate science.
What could be more thrilling!
It would be awesome to get hard scientific evidence of strong telepathy or telekinesis, yes. And that's all the more reason to be extremely skeptical of such claims. What better way to believe in falsities than to fail to critically examine that which you really hope to be true?

Our desires are our own worst enemies in this regard. The process of doing unbiased and rigorous science helps to protect us from believing in enticing lies, lies we might even tell ourselves.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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Hal
Skeptic Friend

USA
302 Posts

Posted - 08/12/2012 :  08:12:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Hal a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm


I just love science and dogma together.


Frankly, I think they go together like ketchup and ice cream. But hey, if you've managed to acquire a taste for that, what can we say?
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular

Norway
1273 Posts

Posted - 08/12/2012 :  08:44:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send On fire for Christ a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

I wouldn't say a troll. just a tall blonde with big boobs


Proof now!

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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts

Posted - 08/13/2012 :  08:28:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by HalfMooner

Every time yet another such a poltergeist hoax is revealed (or actual positive evidence again simply fails to materialize), any new claim of poltergeists becomes an even more extraordinary claim, requiring even more extraordinary evidence. So far, I've never even seen "ordinary" evidence for poltergeists.


I don't think hoaxes should have much bearing on how extraordinary the claim is.

For example, the requirement for evidence of human evolution doesn't become more stringent because of Piltdown man, we just reject that piece of information.

Similarly, our rejection of Wakefield's vaccine nonsense doesn't change our standard of evidence for danger in vaccines or medicines.

I think by extraordinary we should mean it in a sense of how different it is from our current understanding of the natural world, which has nothing to do with the fact that people have tried to perpetrate hoaxes.

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus
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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13477 Posts

Posted - 08/13/2012 :  08:48:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Kil's Homepage  Send Kil an AOL message  Send Kil a Yahoo! Message Send Kil a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Machi4velli
I think by extraordinary we should mean it in a sense of how different it is from our current understanding of the natural world, which has nothing to do with the fact that people have tried to perpetrate hoaxes.
I think by extraordinary evidence, the way I understand it, is that it has to be equal to the claim to support the claim. If a claim is extraordinary, the evidence to support it will also have to be extraordinary for the claim to be supported. And that means equal to the claim.

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts

Posted - 08/13/2012 :  18:30:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Kil

Originally posted by Machi4velli
I think by extraordinary we should mean it in a sense of how different it is from our current understanding of the natural world, which has nothing to do with the fact that people have tried to perpetrate hoaxes.
I think by extraordinary evidence, the way I understand it, is that it has to be equal to the claim to support the claim. If a claim is extraordinary, the evidence to support it will also have to be extraordinary for the claim to be supported. And that means equal to the claim.


Agreed, but does the perpetration of hoaxes on the topic make the claim any more extraordinary?

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus
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the_ignored
SFN Addict

2562 Posts

Posted - 08/14/2012 :  00:39:46   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send the_ignored a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Ok, here's something stupid...if such things happen in places with "sad" or bad pasts, has anyone ever heard of any of that shit happening in areas around say...former concentration camps?

>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.

What brought that on? this. Original posting here.

Another example of this guy's lunacy here.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 08/14/2012 :  00:57:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Machi4velli

Originally posted by Kil

Originally posted by Machi4velli
I think by extraordinary we should mean it in a sense of how different it is from our current understanding of the natural world, which has nothing to do with the fact that people have tried to perpetrate hoaxes.
I think by extraordinary evidence, the way I understand it, is that it has to be equal to the claim to support the claim. If a claim is extraordinary, the evidence to support it will also have to be extraordinary for the claim to be supported. And that means equal to the claim.


Agreed, but does the perpetration of hoaxes on the topic make the claim any more extraordinary?
I think that after both the Piltdown Man hoax, and after the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion claims (a maybe-hoax), the bar was raised for evidence in their fields of science. Caution, careful analysis, and disregard for the "authority" of claimants, are things that science has had to learn repeatedly. Certainly the bar for both cold fusion claims and hominid fossil analysis became much stricter after those two fakes were exposed.

Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/14/2012 :  05:17:02   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Oh Dave I am very well aware of what Dogma means.. remember i used to be a fellow Seminarian.. Gettysburg to be exact not only that we had a very long discussion on Dogma in one my past posts.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 08/14/2012 :  05:32:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

Oh Dave I am very well aware of what Dogma means.. remember i used to be a fellow Seminarian.. Gettysburg to be exact not only that we had a very long discussion on Dogma in one my past posts.
Okay, then you're just dismissing science, using loaded words like "dogma." Do you really think you can score rhetorical points like that? Here on SFN? Is that all you've got?

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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