Spirits real or fake??

[LandsUnknown]

While the pictures are very contested of course, there have been some possible photographs taken of ghosts. Sure, some of them could be fake, but there have been some that haven't been shown to be hoaxes even after analysis. It wasn't proven that it wasn't a hoax obviously, but there was no reason to inherently believe they were a hoax other than the fact that the images would show something far different than what the classical understanding of physics would deem possible.

 

[JessFR]

While the pictures are very contested of course, there have been some possible photographs taken of ghosts. Sure, some of them could be fake, but there have been some that haven't been shown to be hoaxes even after analysis. It wasn't proven that it wasn't a hoax obviously, but there was no reason to inherently believe they were a hoax other than the fact that the images would show something far different than what the classical understanding of physics would deem possible.

It doesn't need to be fake to be false. Like how someone doesn't have to be lying to be wrong

Analog cameras especially are prone to all sorts of artifacts that can be interpreted as ghostly. It need not mean anyone is being deliberately deceptive.

I once saw a show that claimed it saw a ghost, it was clearly and obviously the cameraman being reflected by the glass, making the person look transparent and only faintly there. That and numerous other possibilities can cause what appear to be ghosts or apparitions despite being nothing of the sort.

It is possible, even nearly certain, that they can look like ghosts, be something totally mundane, yet also not be a hoax or have anyone be lying.

 

[Foreigner]

That's the difference between you and me though. I don't trust my own eyes more than science. Something I have seen through depression and drug use and mental illness is that yours eyes, your mind, cant be trusted. I've seen memories be wrong. With what ivr seen, I do trust science over my eyes alone. Science is the practice of many eyes performing many tests and using controls to as best we can eliminate the fallibility of our perceptions.

That's why I don't trust my or anyone else's experiences to reflect objective reality.

You trust your eyes more than science every day, by using them.

To me, the application of mind goes both ways. Not trusting what you saw because there isn't a scientific explanation is just as bad as immediately attributing something to what you saw without backup evidence or relevant experience. Is there some middle ground where the experience can be kept pure without an attachment?

In other words... can we see things without the need to explain them? Like I said I grew up in a haunted house, saw stuff... but to me, this reality is just one big thing like a ticker tape that's never ending. It's capable of producing anything, really.

Explanations are an attempt to ground oneself in an identification practice. It's a form of control, really. I don't see how employing science makes the mind more trustworthy in the face of the flaws you've already mentioned.

 

[GingerjustGinger]

Oh, I believe...

I woke up or came back on July 6, 2016 from a spiritual experience. I saw my body laying belly down from across the room. How can I explain...as I was watching me going out of my body, I felt what was happening as well. As I got out of my body I felt like I was going someplace where there was intense energy, light, lightness, but then I quickly went back to my body (like I was waking from a falling dream) I was scared to go to the intensity. 2 times i saw and felt myself leave my body and return. It was physical bliss. Most of me wanted to go, felt intense euphoria when I woke up, couldn't move and didn't want to. I wanted the feeling to last and it did for days.

There's much more to tell. Later.

 

[Nixiam]

Did you just copy and paste that?

Don't make me fight you.

 

[JessFR]

You trust your eyes more than science every day, by using them.

To me, the application of mind goes both ways. Not trusting what you saw because there isn't a scientific explanation is just as bad as immediately attributing something to what you saw without backup evidence or relevant experience. Is there some middle ground where the experience can be kept pure without an attachment?

In other words... can we see things without the need to explain them? Like I said I grew up in a haunted house, saw stuff... but to me, this reality is just one big thing like a ticker tape that's never ending. It's capable of producing anything, really.

Explanations are an attempt to ground oneself in an identification practice. It's a form of control, really. I don't see how employing science makes the mind more trustworthy in the face of the flaws you've already mentioned.

Like I said before, seeing something weird means you saw something that seemed weird, nothing more. There may not be enough information to form an explanation. I said that already. Employing science doesn't make the mind more trustworthy. It is simply a set of rules and methods to obtain what has the best likelihood of being accurate information, nothing more.

Not having a scientific explanation is not the same as a scientific explanation not existing. The point as you said is not to jump to an explanation that isn't supported by the information. And seeing ghostly sightings or weird happenings means only that you saw something ghostly or unexplained. Jumping to saying it is actually ghosts is unsupported by what you saw. There are various other explanations that are far more likely than ghosts, and not enough information to state a definitive explanation.

 

[belligerent drunk]

You trust your eyes more than science every day, by using them.

To me, the application of mind goes both ways. Not trusting what you saw because there isn't a scientific explanation is just as bad as immediately attributing something to what you saw without backup evidence or relevant experience. Is there some middle ground where the experience can be kept pure without an attachment?

In other words... can we see things without the need to explain them? Like I said I grew up in a haunted house, saw stuff... but to me, this reality is just one big thing like a ticker tape that's never ending. It's capable of producing anything, really.

Explanations are an attempt to ground oneself in an identification practice. It's a form of control, really. I don't see how employing science makes the mind more trustworthy in the face of the flaws you've already mentioned.

Jess means you have to be skeptical of what you see, because your eyes (and other senses) can be deceiving even to the most well-experienced. Yes, I do trust science more than my eyes every day. If I see something that doesn't agree with science, or has not been described by science, I ask myself "did that really happen, or did I just see it?". The scientific method tries to eliminate (not always successfully) these factors from its conclusions. That's why we trust it more. And before coming to a conclusion myself, I would conduct experiments using the scientific method to verify that phenomenon. Only then I can answer the question if I believe either way (yes or no).

 

[tokezu]

I don't really understand the concept of haunted houses. Wouldn't it be the geographical place itself that is haunted, no matter if it's an old spooky looking house or a new apartment complex standing in it's place? It just seems a little too convenient when people claim to see ghosts from the particular era that the building is from. If ghosts exist, wouldn't there be ghosts from every timeperiod in virtually every place? Or do people think that these ghosts are actually tied to a certain building and vanish when that building is demolished?

Not that I'm saying there is nothing going on at all. Something certainly seems to be going on, but I'm just too aware of how easy it is to mistake what we project on something for what it actually is, to take these accounts at face value. Isn't it possible that we are projecting human characteristics onto "ghosts" the same way we do with animals?

 

[Xorkoth]

I believe that if such spirits and hauntings existed, we would have proven it by now.

I don't think you could really say this with any validity. Not having proven it yet proves nothing. People observed lightning all throughout the history of humanity and called it the wrath of Zeus or whatever until quite recently when we discovered what it was. Of course lightning is something much more concrete than ghosts, but my point is that we may be a long way off from being able to understand what ghosts are or if they really exist (maybe they don't), but it doesn't provide any proof of their lack of reality at all just because we haven't proven it by now. There is a tremendous amount we do not understand about the universe. For all that we know, there is much more we do not, and I am confident that some things we do "know", we're incorrect about due to a lack of seeing the full picture. The scientific method provides the most logical explanations based on observations and the currently known facts, but at all times in history we have come to points where we have to redefined our concepts because we encounter something new that makes us realize we were wrong.

 

[Nixiam]

Or just wrong in part^

I am in agreeance, Xorky.

 

[JessFR]

I don't think you could really say this with any validity. Not having proven it yet proves nothing. People observed lightning all throughout the history of humanity and called it the wrath of Zeus or whatever until quite recently when we discovered what it was. Of course lightning is something much more concrete than ghosts, but my point is that we may be a long way off from being able to understand what ghosts are or if they really exist (maybe they don't), but it doesn't provide any proof of their lack of reality at all just because we haven't proven it by now. There is a tremendous amount we do not understand about the universe. For all that we know, there is much more we do not, and I am confident that some things we do "know", we're incorrect about due to a lack of seeing the full picture. The scientific method provides the most logical explanations based on observations and the currently known facts, but at all times in history we have come to points where we have to redefined our concepts because we encounter something new that makes us realize we were wrong.

Perhaps I should rephrase. If it really is as simple as most proponents of the existence ghostly phenomenon describe. As in stuff you can easily see with your bare eyes, I think it should have been discovered by now. And something else to keep in the mind. Unlike lightning were debating the existence of the phenomenon to start with rather than just the cause.

I think there's a legitimate point to be had in your post, but I don't think it amounts to as much as one might want.

 

[Xorkoth]

Lightning wasn't the best example, obviously there are some phenomena that are more readily observable than others. It's easy to see lightning, just go near a storm. As it happens, there are many, many people throughout the world who have witnessed "paranormal" phenomena in sober, fully awake states, and many, many people who have not as well. There are other phenomena on the planet that are like that, too. The Aurora borealis for example... in many parts of the world it isn't observable except in extremely rare cases, while in others, it's regularly observable. Imagine in the old days before global communication and fast travel, someone from the far north traveling to the south and telling tales of the sheets of light in the sky. I bet a lot of people wouldn't believe such a tale, because they've never seen it, and there was no understanding about what it actually was. They wouldn't think, oh, well, we're too far south for that, but it makes sense that this guy would see such a thing because he's from the far north. There would have been no basis to make such judgments because of a lack of understanding. I think that scenario is similar to the one we're discussing if you disregard the minutae of it. Some places seem to present "ghostly" phenomena, and some people seem more able to perceive them as well. For those who haven't happened to experience them, it sounds like a wild tale, but for those who have, it's clear something is going on. We just don't know anything about the nature of it, or what it really is, or how to explain it scientifically. We don't understand the factors that lead some people to experience these things and others to not, so there's nothing to really go by, and those who have not experienced them can easily dismiss those who do as having been tricked or of having an overly active imagination or whatever one might say to someone professing such an experience, since there appears to be no evidence at all.

I mean hey, maybe it's something relatively simple, like exposure to a lot of ambient electromagnetism, which causes the brain to behave in ways that cause perceptual phenomena. It could be something like that. Or it could be something else. I'm just saying, it's something.

 

[JessFR]

Another factor in the way is the lack of a plausible hypothesis or explanation. Misinterpretation by humans is a plausible explanation. Like I said before, the problem with ghosts isn't just lack of evidence, it actually contradicts far more established evidence about the origin and biological mechanisms behind human consciousness.

 

[LandsUnknown]

it actually contradicts far more established evidence about the origin and biological mechanisms behind human consciousness.

That actually is true, except for a limited amount of people that had fMRI scans (some sort of brain scanning device) done that were on the verge of an "out of body experience" induced by deep meditation. The people actually were observed to have some electrical activity outside the machine. Some say that this simply means the machines were faulty, but this was rare as they were calibrated to a very high level of accuracy (not sure of the specific figure but it is very rare for them to give a false reading..... and them just happening to give a false reading at the time it was measuring this phenomena seems unlikely..... yet not impossible). It is possible this study was erroneous in some manner, but it seems like it is something worthy of far more investigation than it's being given in my opinion.

The problem is that ghosts are shied away from by those in the science, because investigating them could endanger their careers. There are these bits and pieces of evidence, despite it essentially flying in the face of classical physics. However, it doesn't fly in the face of quantum physics which allows for numerous things outside of the laws of classical physics..... and some aspects of string theory and alternate dimensions bears a freaky resemblance to the "spirit world" that is often described by those with alleged mediumistic abilities and other psychic abilities. I have read a bit on the subject on my spare time, and while I certainly don't understand all of it as it's pretty heavy stuff to read , I have understood enough to know that it's actually quite clear according to quantum physics that classical physics cannot explain everything in the universe or even anything close to it. So, while I have no direct scientific evidence of ghosts, there are some principles that seem to point to at least the possibility that they could exist. Again, there is no evidence of them other than eyewitness reports (including mine) and debatable photographs..... but quantum physics principles do not rule out their existence unlike the principles of classical physics that do appear to rule them out.

 

[socko]

Physics made a lot of advancements in the 19th and early 20th century but has sort of stalled. A lot of mysteries remain. It doesn't explain some major phenomena like dark matter, consciousNess, what happened before the big bang, undiscovered fundamental forces of nature, etc. I think it's possible many things are not accessible with current technology and the scientific method itself.

Science knows virtually nothing about consciousness. That healthy brains can host consciousness is about the only thing neuroscience knows. Scientists study the brain but not really consciousness itself.

Parapsychology fails but I think it is because
our methods are too primaries.

Attempts to scientifically study the paranormal have been attempted from time to time over the years. The problem is once proper controls are put in place, it fails to find evidence of it's existence. This goes for a wide range of paranormal phenomenon. Mind reading, Astro projection, remote viewing, apparitions and ghosts. That's why I'm so skeptical of their existence.

Has not one scientist died, become a ghost, and tried to make it easier for us to detect their existence?

Let's say we go to a haunted house and try and scientifically validate the haunting. We set up an array of monitoring devices, and in the end find nothing.

And we already have an explanation of peoples perceptions of ghosts. Studies have shown how with certain brain stimuli we can even induce in subjects the perception of experiencing the paranormal, like ghosts or out of body experiences. We can induce in people the perception that god has spoken to them. The brain is an amazing thing but it's far from an accurate observer of reality.

We know how the brain can be fooled. In the face of that, and the absence of scientific evidence of the existence of a range of paranormal phenomena. It has to be concluded on a balance of evidence that likely it does not exist. However for people who have experienced such phenomena. They have a cognitive bias and invested reason to not believe the evidence. That's not being open minded, that's the definition of being closed minded. Believers in psychics are some of the most close minded people I've met.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, psychics are a sham. I've had the misfortune of meeting a lot of psychics and watched in awe at how peope totally fail to notice their mistakes but continually are impressed with their vaguely lucky guesses.

And then there's the especially bs stuff like tarot card reading. Tarot cards history is well known and they originated as a regular card game, they were only appropriated by psychics in very recent history.

I'd love to believe in all sorts of paranormal phenomena, it could revolutionize our understanding of the world, it would be a whole new unexplored field of inquiry. I'd be ecstatic if it were real. But I gotta deal with the evidence as a whole and it's very disappointing.

Is it simply a coincidence that so many experiences only happen when we're children? Supposedly children are more able to perceive the paranormal, but we also know for a fact that they're especially prone to their minds playing tricks on them. It's simply that children's brains have a far reduced disconnect between imagination and reality. It's the same reason our imaginations tend to be far better as children. That same ability also causes us as children, at a time when we're less aware lf what's a regular occurrence and what's highly unusual. To be much more likely to see paranormal activity as a plausible likely event and by extension have our minds trick us into seeing things.

I used to see all sorts of things as a little girl, I saw my dead pets out of the corner of my eye, chairs move without being touched, inanimate objects moving. But always in a blink and you miss it fashion. As an adult I now see how those experiences are exactly what you'd expect in an overactive Childs imagination. They didn't really happen. They don't happen to me anymore.

Our memories are also highly unreliable. I've seen objectively first hand how my memory and the memories of others have been show to be highly inconsistent with what actually happened. That too adds to these sorts of experiences. Turning far more explainable occurrences into far more than what really happened at the time.

 

[swilow]

People often think quantum physics is like magic. It is true that it is very bizarre but it does not apply to large scale phenomena.

 

[LandsUnknown]

People often think quantum physics is like magic. It is true that it is very bizarre but it does not apply to large scale phenomena.

It theoretically could, but given the fact that so little is known about ghosts, whose to say it truly is a "large scale phenomena". The principles responsible for their existence could be happening on the level of quarks through some mysterious principle that has yet to be discovered by science.

 

[swilow]

The people actually were observed to have some electrical activity outside the machine.

All people generate a small electrical field, it is one reason we can use touchscreens. Did you actually mean 'outside the body' because outside the machine would be an area an MRI does not actually measure.

However, it doesn't fly in the face of quantum physics which allows for numerous things outside of the laws of classical physics.....

It may not be directly opposed by quantum mechanics, but that is not the same as it being supported. You'd have to provide some kind of source here I think. Quantum mechanics still governs the physical processes of our world. Ghosts, under this hypothesis, are not supernatural or paranormal, but are a simple extension of the physical universe.

 

[Xorkoth]

^^This is what I think any and all unexplained phenomena are, and anything you might use the term "magic" to describe. Certainly not all such things actually exist, but those that do are governed by the same laws as we are, it's just that we do not understand them yet.

 

[swilow]

^^This is what I think any and all unexplained phenomena are, and anything you might use the term "magic" to describe. Certainly not all such things actually exist, but those that do are governed by the same laws as we are, it's just that we do not understand them yet.

That is true of my opinion too. And, I do not think the physicality of nature diminishes such matters. If anything, it heightens my appreciation of the mystery we stride through in the here and now.