THE GHOST POST (1 Viewer)

[Jack Briggs]

Perhaps it's haunted by the memory of November 22, 1963, William. I still am.

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by SWFF


And, I will state unequivocally that it was a ghost that I saw.

It seems to be unequivocal that you believe it was a ghost. It's not, however, unequivocal that anyone else must share that belief or accept your experience as "proof" or even evidence of the paranormal. It's an anecdote, nothing more.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Shawn, RobertR is one of the other skeptics here who places value on critical thinking. And his final sentence says it all. JB

 

[Will_B]

Everything is anecdotal. There's some threshold where masses of anecdotes become reports. Then some threshold where masses of reports become considered facts.


Oddly, the bias the reader has against the material effects where these abstract thresholds are!

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B

Everything is anecdotal.

No, not everything. Observations can be subject to bias controls. Observations can be conducted by different individuals to see if they can be repeated. Variables can be controlled. It's the difference between a scientific observation and an unscientific one.

 

[Will_B]

Or the difference between labwork and "the wild".

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B

Or the difference between labwork and "the wild".

Or the difference between "extraordinary claim" (requiring extraordinary evidence subject to careful scrutiny) and "unextraordinary claim".

 

[Will_B]

Well now there's where we depart. I don't believe in different standards of evidence. Claims, be they extraordinary or ordinary, are ideally subject to the same requirements if the intent is to present a compelling likelihood of accuracy. Different standards introduces bias based on expectations, and that sort of bias should be avoided.


I know Carl made a cute catch-phrase out of saying the opposite, but it was just a catch-phrase, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny as maintaining a dispassionate eye.

 

[BrianW]

Originally Posted by Will_B it doesn't hold up to scrutiny as maintaining a dispassionate eye.

OW! My irony gland!

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B

Well now there's where we depart.

We do indeed. I think it makes perfect sense for a wife to be more skeptical and demand extraordinary evidence if her husband says that he came home late because he was kidnapped by aliens instead of spending time at the pub with his drinking buddies or had car trouble.

 

[Will_B]

I was thinking more of court cases where testimony is used to create a strong likelihood of an event or a sequence of events. If there is a lower standard of proof for some things, then people can go to jail because we allowed our expectations of what is ...expected... to overrule our requirements for proof.

 

[Will_B]

Originally Posted by RobertR

Well now there's where we depart.

We do indeed. I think it makes perfect sense for a wife to be more skeptical and demand extraordinary evidence if her husband says that he came home late because he was kidnapped by aliens instead of spending time at the pub with his drinking buddies or had car trouble.

[/QUOTE]


Plus you're being kind of flippant, aren't you? More realistically, if a husband said he was late because he saw strange lights and heard voices and was lost for an hour, and by your standard the wife should ignore him because there's a different standard of proof for things you don't like, then -- the wife ends up without a husband because he was actually having a stroke (no aliens), but you'd told her not to listen to him unless he brought home a tentacle to prove it.
This is why you can't have different standards of evidence. Because you're essentially asking people not to listen to things that they aren't familiar with. It's a bias based on experience. But experience is irrelevant unless one is omniscient -- otherwise, experience is too limited to be used for anything critical, such as investigation of reality.

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B





you're being kind of flippant, aren't you? More realistically, if a husband said he was late because he saw strange lights and heard voices and was lost for an hour, and by your standard the wife should ignore him because there's a different standard of proof for things you don't like, then -- the wife ends up without a husband because he was actually having a stroke (no aliens), but you'd told her not to listen to him unless he brought home a tentacle to prove it.

People have made the extraordinary claim that they've been kidnapped by aliens (or seen ghosts or some other "paranormal" incident). I'm saying that if someone DOES make such a claim (and not the far more mundane claim of hearing voices and being lost that you changed it to), he must be held to an extraordinary standard of evidence. The fact that you changed the example from "kidnapped by aliens" to "heard voices and was lost" is an implicit admission that the two situations aren't equivalent, and can't be treated as such.

 

[Will_B]

I kept the example the very same.


I only changed it from your illustration in which someone would make a declarative statement of their *interpretation* being an absolute fact (which I think is very unlikely), to an illustration where a person describes what they *experienced* (which I think is typical).


Why?


In a courtroom, would a person say "The defendant is a murderer!" or would a person say "I saw the defendant stick a knife into the person's gut"?


Well ok, granted, a person might say the first statement if they were emotionally charged about what they saw, but the prosecution would object and the judge would instruct the witness to only say what he saw.


I just haven't run into the people you describe, who say "they've been kidnapped by aliens". I've read of people who say they think they've been kidnapped by aliens, or they had experiences which to them seem like they must be aliens, or other "seems like" and "feels like it must be" situations. People with the arrogance to make definitive statements seem few and far between. I have more respect for people who are careful to say they are only offering possible interpretations. I'd imagine that skeptics would also be applauding those people, for being so careful in ensuring that the reader understands that they are only offering possible interpretations. And yet, I see that even those folks are demonized. There's bias aplenty in the skeptical community; skeptics give science a bad name.

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B
I've read of people who say they think they've been kidnapped by aliens, or they had experiences which to them seem like they must be aliens, or other "seems like" and "feels like it must be" situations. People with the arrogance to make definitive statements seem few and far between.

The fact that such definitive claims are "few and far between" only emphasizes how extraordinary they are. You seem to want to focus on the unlikelihood of such a claim, rather than what to do when confronted with one (such as the initial post), which is what I'm discussing.

 

[Will_B]

When confronted with one, I'd say "Well that's just, like, your opinion, man." And be done with it!Wha


What I would NOT do is get on a talk show and say that all such claims are either lies or delusions because they're impossible -- which is what the PR department of a certain group that claims to be an impartial proponent of science and skepticism actively does.


(Point being, declarative statements are wrong from either side!)

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Will_B

When confronted with one, I'd say "Well that's just, like, your opinion, man." And be done with it!Wha


What I would NOT do is get on a talk show and say that all such claims are either lies or delusions because they're impossible -- which is what the PR department of a certain group that claims to be an impartial proponent of science and skepticism actively does.


(Point being, declarative statements are wrong from either side!)

Whether or not some skeptics come across as arrogant or making a priori assumptions about the possibility of paranormal claims doesn't change the fact that those claims can't be rationally accepted unless extraordinary evidence is provided. I'd say that the only difference between you and skeptics is that they take things a step further and critically analyze the claim.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I'm about to challenge the system here, so brace yourself.


Point to this is that proving or disproving the existence of ghosts is a revolving door discussion by which neither side will relent, one which cannot be won by either party so I've learned to not even get into it anymore, particularly on the Internet. But I guess I just did with this post lol.


Do I believe that when we die we sometimes linger as spirits? Yes. Can I prove it to you? No. And if it's all the same to you I don't really care to try.

 

[BrianW]

Originally Posted by Inspector Hammer! /forum/thread/304953/the-ghost-post/30#post_3761487

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Well, what is logical to some, or even most, isn't logical to others, I simply don't agree with it, never have.


Yes it is utterly impossible to prove something doesn't exist and in the case of the paranormal it's pretty damn hard to impossible to prove it does as well so the playing field is level on both sides IMO.


As for talking to the dead I agree, if someone says they can do that than a demonstration would be in order but even then how much demonstrating would it take to convince a hard skeptic?