Heroes of Might and Magic Community
visiting hero! Register | Today's Posts | Games | Search! | FAQ/Rules | AvatarList | MemberList | Profile


Age of Heroes Headlines:  
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
6 Aug 2016: Troubled Heroes VII Expansion Release - read more
26 Apr 2016: Heroes VII XPack - Trial by Fire - Coming out in June! - read more
17 Apr 2016: Global Alternative Creatures MOD for H7 after 1.8 Patch! - read more
7 Mar 2016: Romero launches a Piano Sonata Album Kickstarter! - read more
19 Feb 2016: Heroes 5.5 RC6, Heroes VII patch 1.7 are out! - read more
13 Jan 2016: Horn of the Abyss 1.4 Available for Download! - read more
17 Dec 2015: Heroes 5.5 update, 1.6 out for H7 - read more
23 Nov 2015: H7 1.4 & 1.5 patches Released - read more
31 Oct 2015: First H7 patches are out, End of DoC development - read more
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
[X] Remove Ads
LOGIN:     Username:     Password:         [ Register ]
HOMM1: info forum | HOMM2: info forum | HOMM3: info mods forum | HOMM4: info CTG forum | HOMM5: info mods forum | MMH6: wiki forum | MMH7: wiki forum
Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Supernatural, Paranormal, or ...
Thread: Supernatural, Paranormal, or ... This thread is 12 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 · «PREV / NEXT»
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 19, 2009 04:57 AM

Quote:
Money, for one thing.  Time, for another.  The project hasn't been an embarassment to anyone; I don't know what orifice you pulled that out of.
The Biologists' predictions of how many genes there should be were way off. How is that not embarrassing?

Quote:
And besides - you ask the question as if it's been centuries since the project was completed.  It's like if you spend years and years and millions and millions of dollars on a super rocket ship able to travel to other galaxies, and then seconds after the last heat tile is pasted on, you're like, "Well, we were promised if we built this ship, it'd take us somewhere, but look, we're still standing here on earth."
I didn't mean about how it hasn't done anything, I meant about how no one is talking about it. Whatever happened to <that>? = Whatever happened to <everyone was all excited...>?.

Quote:
Maybe you should try doing a little real science before you criticize it for not immediately having all the answers.  Maybe you'll get a feel for how difficult, time consuming, and expensive it is.  
Enough is enough, Corribus! You've been personally attacking me all week. I won't tolerate any more of it.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 19, 2009 07:26 AM

Interestingly enough I don't get an answer.

That's probably because there is no easy one.

In any case I try to see this as in mathematics:

What happens if you give some guys who never ever have had mathematics, a couple of complicated equations? Taylor-series? Limes determinations? Solutions of problems that involve complex numbers? Integrals? Differential equations? Fractals with their redifining of the term "dimension"?... "Man, that's so freaking complicated, what is all that stuff?"

Still, mathematics have developed rather simple, right? Basically with no more than COUNTING. The question has been, are humans INVENTING mathematics or are they EXPLORING what is there?

Is that really a question? With the basic axioms accepted and agreed upon, mathematicians have EXPLORED what results from them - you might say, the whole body of mathematics is the potential or "emergent properties" of those basic rules. And interestingly enough they seem to be immensely usable to describe reality.

I think, that ultimately this is the same; It's not that different from what Corribus already explained about chemistry.

It makes no sense to pick something up, a couple billion years after a continous development - or to open the Big Book Of Mathematics on page 27691 - and say: MAN, that's so complex! No way may this be the result of a simple process. Impossible!"

But it might very well. It's a question of how many steps have been taken, how many dead ends reached, how many failures suffered. If steps are small enough and numerous enough it's easy.

And isn't that nature's way as well? What DID we wonder about how complicated and fine and all nature is working - but didn't fractals teach us different? That in fact it's just REPEATING  something ad infinitum - with stunning results?

Obviously, in this reality or continuum or universe or however you want to call it, there are emergent properties in the fundamental principles or axioms underlying it that FAVOR what we may call "organic life". While that may seem stunning on first look, on second look it's extremely stunning as well that it is so very difficult to compute the values for a circle - circumference, area - because it's so easy to CONSTRUCT one. See the parallels? Easy to construct - difficult to describe.


 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 19, 2009 11:56 AM
Edited by Rarensu at 12:07, 19 Jun 2009.

Quote:
What I want to know is, what makes cells, life, human and so on so special

Remember in Jurassic Park, when Dr. Malcolm is arguing with the geneticists in the laboratory?
"John, the kind of control you're attempting is not possible. If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but - well, there it is... All I'm saying is that life finds a way."

Life finds a way. Everyone else just thought: "oh, that's kind of poetic... kewl." But I took it to heart. I really believe that. I don't think that life was an improbable accident, or even a probable one. I think life was inevitable, in the same way that all the water ends up in the sea, or all the free oxygen gets bonded to something. Life, to me, is written into the laws of the universe as fundamentally as gravity is.

Creationists always point to the fact that the universal constants are precisely where they need to be for life to exist. But there's another way to look at it. One could also say that life is perfectly adapted to our set of universal constants. In other universes, then there would be other forms of life, which would completely unable to exist in our universe just as we are completely unable to exist in theirs.

So when people are exclaiming how miraculous life is, I think: well it had to happen eventually; if not us then someone else. Life finds a way. Organic chemistry is not necessarily the only answer. DNA is a tool; it is not the goal in and of itself. There's nothing that special about the chemistry of life. I believe this.

What's special is identity; the idea that something comes in distinct whole units. Organisms come 1 at a time. There's no such thing as 1.5 organisms. Subatomic particles do this, but nowhere else in nature can we observe this phenomenon. Cut a raindrop or a rock or a star in half, and now you have two of them. They don't care if you shatter them or merge them or swap atoms around. Only life cares about identity. Only life walls itself into cells and refuses to share its molecules. Only life builds discreet organisms that become something completely different when try you cut them in half.

It dominates language too. We think in terms of nouns and verbs; objects and actions with discreet identities. But, as many a linguist has argued, nouns and verbs don't really exist in our universe. They assume a property of matter that simply isn't true. Identity only has meaning to living things.

Consider the example of fire. It metabolizes fuel, replicates itself, and eventually dies. But it has no discreet unit of measurement. At any given moment, oxygen molecules are tearing things apart, but they don't see each other. They have no sense of the organized, discreet action we call "burning". Fire has no identity. And so, we do not think of it as alive. (Unless we're doing a personification; but that's got nothing to do with reality)

Life, Cells, and Humans are not special because of the delicacy of biochemistry. It is inevitable that something alive will eventually appear given almost any conditions. What makes life special is identity. This is what I believe.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 19, 2009 12:38 PM
Edited by JollyJoker at 12:40, 19 Jun 2009.

Quote:
Quote:
What I want to know is, what makes cells, life, human and so on so special

Remember in Jurassic Park, when Dr. Malcolm is arguing with the geneticists in the laboratory?
"John, the kind of control you're attempting is not possible. If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but - well, there it is... All I'm saying is that life finds a way."

Life finds a way. Everyone else just thought: "oh, that's kind of poetic... kewl." But I took it to heart. I really believe that. I don't think that life was an improbable accident, or even a probable one. I think life was inevitable, in the same way that all the water ends up in the sea, or all the free oxygen gets bonded to something. Life, to me, is written into the laws of the universe as fundamentally as gravity is.

Creationists always point to the fact that the universal constants are precisely where they need to be for life to exist. But there's another way to look at it. One could also say that life is perfectly adapted to our set of universal constants. In other universes, then there would be other forms of life, which would completely unable to exist in our universe just as we are completely unable to exist in theirs.

So when people are exclaiming how miraculous life is, I think: well it had to happen eventually; if not us then someone else. Life finds a way. Organic chemistry is not necessarily the only answer. DNA is a tool; it is not the goal in and of itself. There's nothing that special about the chemistry of life. I believe this.


For simplicity's sake, I'd say that I agree with the gist of this part.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:

What's special is identity; the idea that something comes in distinct whole units. Organisms come 1 at a time. There's no such thing as 1.5 organisms. Subatomic particles do this,


Stop right here. This may be the mainstream of physical research, but there are a couple of reasons why it's a lot more likely that they took a wrong turn somewhere at that point, since it just doesn't make sense. Physics - in that regard is at the same point as the Ptolemaic geocentric model of the universe was: it was extremely complicated, in that every celestial body moved in circles round the Earth - but it worked in that it delivered the correct positions. So it was an extremely complicated model that worked for what yould be tested.

Let's just say that the particle inflation and the addition of ratios in there is - for me, at least, an abberation that just goes to show a long way about common sense.

Quote:

but nowhere else in nature can we observe this phenomenon. Cut a raindrop or a rock or a star in half, and now you have two of them. They don't care if you shatter them or merge them or swap atoms around. Only life cares about identity.


Ah, that's a simplification of things. There ARE life forms you can gut in two - worms, for example, and there are enough unanimated objects that will lose their characteristics - or "identity" - if you part them, if they have a "function" or a special effect on something

That said, that doesn't mean, I'd disagree with you about the fact that "identity" IS indeed a property of living organisms. I might call it different and explain it different and I'm not inclined to call it "special", it's just another ("higher") organisational order of things. The Sun, for example - any star, for that matter - has an identity in your sense as well and indeed people talk about the "life span" of stars.

But for the context of this issue I don't think that is important.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted June 19, 2009 08:22 PM
Edited by Corribus at 20:42, 19 Jun 2009.

@Rarensu

Quote:
I didn't mean about how it hasn't done anything, I meant about how no one is talking about it. Whatever happened to <that>? = Whatever happened to <everyone was all excited...>?.

What, you mean the public?  The public - which apparently includes you - has a collective memory of about 5 seconds.  If it doesn't produce immediate results, it's worthless.  If it doesn't instantaneously live up to the overinflated potential, it was a waste of time and effort.  

Let me ask you something.  Do you know, I mean really know, how funding in science works?  Have you ever had to write a research grant?  Do you realize that in order to money to do research, you pretty much have to exaggerate the potential for everything?  Science as an entity has become like everything else: its success depends on acquiring money, and acquiring money depends on advertising, and advertising depends on hype at best and outright misrepresentation at worst.  

It should really be no surprise to you that a project as large as the HGP was overinflated in its potential, and a lot of that inflation didn't come from the scientists, but from the public media that hyped it up for the public to  consume.  "Oh, when this is done, every disease known to mankind will be cured!!!!" Well that's just stupid, and it's amazing that people actually believe that crap.  

The HGP was basic research, nothing more.  Yeah, it will probably, way down the road, lead to new advances in medicine in technology.  But immediately?  No way.  I mean, if I want to propose a project for a new type of battery, I might say in my proposal that it will one day lead to new technology that might yield innovations in propulsion that could one day get a rocket ship to Mars.  Even though my battery really has nothing to do with space travel, I want money from NASA or the Department of Energy, and the only way to do that is to (fictitiously) align my project with their interests. So, my battery-to-mars proposal is far-fetched and very long-distance thinking, but you've got to do it to get money from Washington to even make your battery in the first place.  Of course, the funding agencies love it because they can put in their reports that they're funding mission projects to Mars - looks great from a PR perspective, much better than if they just said they are funding new electrochemical cell research.  Then the stupid news agencies get wind of it and report that the government is funding new battery technology that will finally get us to Mars.  Then the people read the article and tell their friends I'm working on space technology and that we should be on Mars within a decade.  Then I finally make the battery after 6 years of hard work, and it does some cool stuff, and, MAYBE, in a decade the engineers might figure out how to use it to power a new engine - assuming someone figures out how to make the idea economically viable - and then in another decade that engine may be created and debugged, and then maybe another decade we might figure out how to design a spaceship around it, and then maybe 10 years after that we might figure out how to actually fly the damn thing, and then the project is shut down for 10 years because there's no money available because our health care system is broken and we're spending 1 trillion dollars for a single missile to sit on a 40 gazillion dollar battleship in the Red Sea (because in 60 years we're all STILL fighting over that little patch of useless, barren desert we call the Middle East), and THEN some private investor forks the money over to finish the rocket project and 10 years later we finally launch that rocket ship that has my new (now quite old) battery technology in it.

All the while people are complaining because my magic battery technology was an "embarrassment" because I promised half a century ago that it would have gotten us to Mars.  Of course, they don't know all this other crap that gets in the way of "progress".  They don't understand the way funding works.  They don't understand the time it takes to create even a small advance in technology.  They don't understand that most scientific results aren't cost-effective enough to be immediately utilized, so they just get reported in a journal somewhere, but we keep using old, less efficient technology because the infrastructure is already there (ask yourself why we are REALLY still using gasoline to power cars), while the capability of new, better technology goes ignored.  They don't understand that the funding process virtually requires you to overexaggerate the potential of scientific research, and they don't understand that the news agencies get more wrong than right in most scientific articles.  This is a public that gets their scientific information from Time Magazine, Wikipedia, and, worse, random websites written by people with no scientific background and an axe to grind, and then pass it off as gospel.  The public is myopic almost to the point of being blind.

So perhaps you can see how a scientist can get a little frustrated when charlatans get online or on TV and start preaching that a massive project that took countless hours of sweat and heart and personal dedication "an embarrassment" just because the project didn't live up to the hype!
 
Quote:
Enough is enough, Corribus! You've been personally attacking me all week. I won't tolerate any more of it.

Telling you that you should experience how professional science works before you start slamming it is attacking you?  Sorry, if you're going to slam my profession and the people who dedicate their lives to it, with almost no working knowledge of how the profession works, then I'm going to call you out on it.  If you don't like that, then maybe you should spend some time investigating the truth, or perhaps talking to professionals before criticizing them.  

@JJ

Quote:
It makes no sense to pick something up, a couple billion years after a continous development - or to open the Big Book Of Mathematics on page 27691 - and say: MAN, that's so complex! No way may this be the result of a simple process. Impossible!"

That's actually a very elegant way of putting it.  I'll have to remember that one.

@Rarensu again

Quote:
Life finds a way. Everyone else just thought: "oh, that's kind of poetic... kewl." But I took it to heart. I really believe that. I don't think that life was an improbable accident, or even a probable one. I think life was inevitable, in the same way that all the water ends up in the sea, or all the free oxygen gets bonded to something. Life, to me, is written into the laws of the universe as fundamentally as gravity is.

That's fine for someone who gets their scientific facts from Hollywood, I guess.  Yeah, that's pretty much most of the problem.  I don't know what I expect, really, from a country that is filled with people who think that "Let there be light!" should be taught alongside evolution in science class.

But anyway, what are you suggesting - that we round up the nation's professional biologists and medical researchers and say, "Hey guys, you all can stop what you're doing.  Lord Spielberg has already found the answer!"  And then shuttle them all into Jurassic Park.

Quote:
Creationists always point to the fact that the universal constants are precisely where they need to be for life to exist. But there's another way to look at it. One could also say that life is perfectly adapted to our set of universal constants.

So what you're saying is that life evolved according to the local conditions?  Hmmm... I wonder if anyone else has thought of that... like perhaps every evolutionary biologist since Darwin.

Quote:
What's special is identity; the idea that something comes in distinct whole units. Organisms come 1 at a time. There's no such thing as 1.5 organisms. Subatomic particles do this, but nowhere else in nature can we observe this phenomenon. Cut a raindrop or a rock or a star in half, and now you have two of them. They don't care if you shatter them or merge them or swap atoms around. Only life cares about identity.

No, that's not right at all.  You're just playing with the difference in size between single repetitive units of the various "stuff" you're comparing.  It's not an honest comparison at all.

You can cut a water droplet in half and get two smaller water droplets because a drop of water is a collection of a large number of identical (on average) units.  In this case, that unit is the "water molecule".  Cut the droplet in half and you have two smaller bodies of water molecules.  Cut each of those droplets in half, and you have four even smaller bodies of water molecules.  In each case the constituent water molecules are the same (well, not really, but we'll assume they are).  You haven't changed the identiy of the water molecules.  Eventually, though, you reach a point where you can no longer cut your droplets in half and have smaller bodies of identical units.  That happens, of course, when your droplet size is a single water molecule.  To use your own phrasing - water molecules come 1 at a time.  There's no such thing as 1.5 water molecules.  If you further reduce the size of a water molecule, it no longer is a water molecule.  Water molecules DO "care" about identity - i.e., there's a certain number of criteria required for water to be water.

Organisms DO care about identity.  You can't take one whole organism, cut it in two, and expect two organisms to result, any more than you can take one whole water molecule and do the same thing.  Unless it's an earthworm, maybe.  Hmm.  Anyway, but what about a school of 1 thousand similar fish, which is analogous to your drop of water.  Well, you can cut that group into two halves and get two smaller schools of fish, divide each group of those into two groups, and etc., down until you get to 1 thousand groups of 1 fish each, at which point you can reduce the group size no more without changing the identity of what's in the group.  A group consisting of half a fish is no longer a gruop of fish.  

Everything has identity.  Organisms are not special at all in this regard.  If you're speaking of "awareness" of one's identity, well then maybe we have something to discuss  But defining self-awareness is not easy, either.

Ok, if you want additional refutation of your "identity" argument, read on.  I have a few more examples.

Your example of cutting "stars" into pieces is wrong.  If you cut a star in half (put half the mass here and half the mass there), you may very well get two new stars, if the mass is sufficient.  However, you may very well NOT get two stars.  If the mass of your two daughter objects is sufficiently small, you will no longer have enough mass to drive fusion; in effect, you'll create, perhaps, two very large gas giant planets.  The identity of a star change change if you cut it into smaller stars.  Is a star a living organism then? And even if you DO get two new stars, they will be very different than your parent star. So, here again your identity argument is bunk.

Here's another one.  Instead of water, let's take a quantity of gold.  Say 1 gram.  Well you can chop gold down into smaller chunks much like you do a water droplet, and still arive at smaller chunks of what you'd call gold, with the same characteristics - the same identity - as the gold you started.  However, if you continue to chop that gold down into smaller and smaller chunks, you will eventually reach a size domain where the characteristics change, where the identity of gold changes.  Nanosized gold particles have very different properties than bulk gold.  This principle is the very basis of the whole field of nanotechnology.  

For instance, if you take a bulk quantity of Cadmium Selenide, a rather boring looking, uninteresting material, and chop it up into smaller and smaller pieces, you get this:



Quantum dots.  Each color results from cadmium selenide particles that have been chopped down to difference sizes (typically 2-6 nm).  The color change results from quantum confinement of electrons (well, excitons actually) that occurs at nanoscale dimensions.  So, what does this mean about the identity of cadmium selenide?  If you chop CdSe down into smaller quantities, much like an organism, you do change the very identity of it.  You don't always just get more of the same thing.  The material in each of those glowy flasks is made of the exact same material, just cut to different dimensions.  So I think you will see that identity is not something that is unique to organisms at all.  Quite the contrary.  Everything has it.

[Note: Quantum dots are pretty much being touted as magical things that will lead to all kinds of revolutions in technology, from lasers to biomedicine.  Will they be?  Maybe. But most of that is just trying to buy funding from the big money-givers like NIH and DOE. QDs have a lot of issues as well, but few people like to focus on those. So, it's sort of the same thing as with the HGP.  In addition, a lot of things we once thought we knew about QDs turned out to be wrong or surprising.  But that said, nanoscience certainly hasn't been an EMBARRASSMENT so far.]

Anyway, the conclusion of all this is that if there's something unique about a living cell, you've got to find something else besides "identity".
____________
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Fauch
Fauch


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 20, 2009 02:40 AM

wow, it went from paranormal to biology?

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 20, 2009 05:06 AM

This is nothing compared to what happened in "If I hire mostly black women, then I'm trying to improve the lives of the downtrodden"

racism
inheritance of blood money
murder & guilt
nazis
the big bang
off-topicness of the big bang

racism to whether the big bang is off-topic in 4 pages.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
TheDeath
TheDeath


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
posted June 20, 2009 05:12 AM

Quote:
wow, it went from paranormal to biology?
You know I always see people complain, but no one actually has anything to add to a thread, they just want to destroy the conversation. Either that, or repeat the same stuff that has been said before.

And biology has a lot to do with paranormal mind you, after all, it is the study of "life" (well whatever lol) and most paranormal things are based on that.
____________
The above post is subject to SIRIOUSness.
No jokes were harmed during the making of this signature.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted June 20, 2009 06:24 AM

Hmm exactly when did this thread turn into "Science information"? .  That is what I would like to know.  I have no problems with people giving information on various aspects of science, but maybe start another thread about it?

Now, back to the original topic, and my question.  Most people here (who posted) answered yes. Although some dismissed it with a basic "Why should I think it was anything other then X".  Which is a very valid and good question.  One should never assume that there is not a rational explination, even if one is not immediately available.  That vast majority of the time there is a very valid and reasonable explination.

It is that .001% that interests me however.  The very low percent of times when logic and reason seems to fly out the window.  Like, for instance, when a seemingly solid person walks through you.  Now there are explinations.  Hallucinations, impared facilities (drugs, alcohol, etc), psychotic break, or any number of possible explinations.

When the person is not prone to Hallucinations, had no impared facilities, and (at least I am pretty sure) didn't have a psychotic break...a famous person once said (Paraphrase) "When you have eliminated every other possible explination, whatever remains, however improbable, is most likely the explination."

We rationalise everything, for we can not handle the unknown.  It needs to be marked, labeled, and clearly defined or our minds refuse to accept it.  Somepeople go as far to if they are confronted with the unknown to forget it or deny it ever happened.  When it is not the unknown we should fear, but the complacency that we seem to have developed.
____________
Message received.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | PP | Quote Reply | Link
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 20, 2009 09:05 AM

Quote:
"When you have eliminated every other possible explination, whatever remains, however improbable, is most likely the explination."



I see that a bit different. When you have eliminated EVERY POSSIBLE explanation, you cannot just concoct one. See it this way:

To solve an equation unambigously there cannot be more than one variable. If you decide to introduce the variable "G(host)", the explanation of it (what is on the other side of the =) MUST BE KNOWN VALUES.
Otherwise it's no explanation.

If that is impossible (that is, if you cannot explain the G without introducing other variables), you must have a look at the OTHER variables in your equation, whether you can define THEM unambigously. If that is not possible you may have some thoughts about a problem, but you do NOT have an explanation.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted June 20, 2009 09:24 AM

Again I say with that type of thinking (no offense) we might have never gotten airplanes or even left the caves.  We'd still be clubbing each other over the head and grunting.  While I agree just creating an explination is the wrong approach, dismissing it just because we don't yet understand it is just as wrong.  As with any problem, you start with the most rational explination, and work your way to the more improbable explinations.

Again, however, we are outside the current realm of science.  In the future such things as 'ghosts' (In this case meaning the soul or spirit or 'whatever' you want to classify it as of a once living human) are mundane and no longer classified as paranormal or supernatural.  Lets not speculate on that, as we do not know what the future will bring.

Now, I know it is hypothetical and feel free to not answer if you dislike hypothetical situations..but what would convice YOU that there were spirits (or ghosts, or salkfjs, or whatever you wish to call them) short of being able to run tests on them?
____________
Message received.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | PP | Quote Reply | Link
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted June 20, 2009 09:57 AM

That is a good question, because my answer will show what the actual problem FOR ME is.
You see, I don't have a problem with the ASSUMPTION there may be ghosts or spirits or however you call them. But at that point that is just a NAME for a certain phenomenon.
The obvious FIRST question is, for me, at least: What IS a ghost?
The maybe not so obvious second question (the decisive one for me) is this: If I define (or explain or describe) this ghost in a certain way, what are the implications for the world or reality I live in and are they likely or at least in accordance?

Which means, I would believe in Ghosts if the explanation of what they are would be a solid and rational one and the explanation of how they would "fit" into our reality (or would even redefine our reality) in a rational and understandable way.

That's for example the reason why I don't believe in that God the Bible talks about - that god is irrational. The world I live in is definitely not, at least not in that way. That's why it's pretty obvious that this god is not existing.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Aculias
Aculias


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Pretty Boy Angel Sacraficer
posted June 20, 2009 10:10 AM

I have seen Shiat that would turn you white. Dreams & stories as well as Juija boards lol.

I dont mean those Juija boards you buy at toy stores. I mean making them by hand. Making it precise.

Be careful about bloody Mary in the mirror in the dark as well
____________
Dreaming of a Better World

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted June 20, 2009 10:21 AM
Edited by Mytical at 10:22, 20 Jun 2009.

I've had a run in with a Ouiji board.  I know somebody was not moving it, as I was the sole user at the time.  It is NOT something to be taken lightly.  Though only a small fraction are authentic and the rest are mere toys.

Be careful when using them.  I believe you Aculias..I've seen things that would turn people's hair white also.  

Edit : About Bloody Mary.  Tested it, nothing happened.  Was a huge disapointment.
____________
Message received.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | PP | Quote Reply | Link
Aculias
Aculias


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Pretty Boy Angel Sacraficer
posted June 20, 2009 10:32 AM

Yea some of us tried it also. I am scared of the dark so I did not try it. As far as i know it is just a myth.

There are ways you can make your house haunted. You have to be extremely careful with real Juija boards.

Do not piss the spirit off. Dont ask stupid questions like when are you going to die & most important. Make sure you say goodbye correctly!!!
____________
Dreaming of a Better World

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 21, 2009 11:01 AM

There is a concept called the ideomotor effect. It has several subcategories, including automatic writing. The basic idea is that one's muscles can be controlled subconsciously in addition to consciously.

It is a good explanation for non-fraudulent Ouija board experiences.

If this is the case, then the planchette is not being controlled by a spirit - it is being controlled by your subconscious. You're asking yourself questions and then answering yourself by moving the planchette - all without your conscious knowledge.

Most experiments support this theory.

If this is the case, then a Ouija board is a possible substitute for hypnosis memory retrieval.

____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted June 21, 2009 11:20 AM
Edited by Mytical at 11:23, 21 Jun 2009.

That is indeed a rational explination of what occured.  One I can not possibly refute, especially after this long of a period of time.  The only caveat I have to that is, however, explain how at one point when I was not touching it at all the pointer moved?  No, no earthquake.  Of course there is always the possibility I just imagined it.

Edit : Believe it or not I am a realist.  I am perfectly aware that there might be 'rational' explinations for everything that has occured to me.  What they might be I have absolutely no clue, but it IS possible.
____________
Message received.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | PP | Quote Reply | Link
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 21, 2009 12:19 PM

Planchette moved without physical contact?

Ideomotor Effect still covers that, if you believe in psychokinesis (the new name for telekinesis). You just subconsciously moved it with your mind instead of with your hand.

But, lol, that doesn't really solve the problem of "needs moar rational explanation".
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted June 21, 2009 12:23 PM

Actually that would not be outside the realm of possibility I guess.  After all I have had dreams that came true, knew things I could not have possibly known, and predicted things with an eerie success rate (man I just wish I could control it, could use a couple million from the lotto).  Since sporotic ESP is something I experienced, TK is indeed a possibility.  Now..how do I consciously make it happen?
____________
Message received.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | PP | Quote Reply | Link
Rarensu
Rarensu


Known Hero
Formerly known as RTI
posted June 21, 2009 12:42 PM

Hypnosis fixes everything. Under trance, suggest to yourself that you really want to use your PK consciously.
____________
Sincerely,
A Proponent of Spelling, Grammar, Punctuation, and Courtesy.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Jump To: « Prev Thread . . . Next Thread » This thread is 12 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 · «PREV / NEXT»
Post New Poll    Post New Topic    Post New Reply

Page compiled in 0.1992 seconds