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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26021 Posts

Posted - 08/25/2012 :  15:24:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

What specific laws am I violating and why?

According to the law of conservation of energy, the total energy of a system remains constant, though energy may transform into another form. Two billiard balls colliding, for example, may come to rest, with the resulting energy becoming sound and perhaps a bit of heat at the point of collision.

Perhaps if we replace the billard balls with a tragic or sad situation the energy from the troubled event gets transformed into ghostly phenomena. now the billiard balls energy will not last long the sound the heat..but perhaps somehow the ghosts stay in the environment.
You're specifically saying that "perhaps somehow" there's either a completely natural storage mechanism for "ghostly" energy that we know absolutely nothing about, or that "perhaps somehow" that alleged "ghostly" energy violates the laws of thermodynamics.

By the way, your examples of science changing are actually examples of technological advances. There hasn't been a fundamental change in our understanding of energy for over a century. The change from walkie-talkies to pocket-sized cellphones (for example) has been led primarily by improvements in manufacturing techniques and infrastructure, not by discoveries in physics.

- 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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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie

USA
4826 Posts

Posted - 08/27/2012 :  05:58:03   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Valiant Dancer's Homepage Send Valiant Dancer a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

Dave thats what I am asking you guys or any type scientists where and how does the enrgy get stored... and then replayed so people throught sight, noise, smell.

Let us remember I am not talking of your 19th century sitttings with horns flying around and table tipping and ecto plasma from old ladys vaginal area. Wrack your scientific brains...think..outside the box for just a moment...

Well Valiant what do you know it was... A ghost...conjecture or not what is your definition of a ghost or of the phenomena you experienced? Off the record.


So you value conjecture and opinion over scientific study.

I do think outside the "box". However, one must have an idea of how to test "conjecture". You don't even have that.

How do we test something that causes auditory, visual, and orintaleptical phenomenon? (I think orintaleptical relates to taste through smells)

Dave's question is a valid one. You posit that energy is somehow stored by inanimate objects for playback. Yet you don't know what energy this is nor methodology of storage. As the second law of thermodynamics requires that "energy" to disappate rather rapidly (law of entropy) you have an issue with a short duration event imprinting long lasting energy into inanimate objects.

Unless you are suggesting that during a trajic event that humans produce some radioactive isotope that has a half life measured in years (like Cobalt 40).


guessing or suggesting possibilities is a start to hypothesis..you cannot tell me it is not...

Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils

Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion
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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13476 Posts

Posted - 08/27/2012 :  08:39:48   [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
Storm:
guessing or suggesting possibilities is a start to hypothesis..you cannot tell me it is not...

Sure. But the guess has to be presented as a hypothesis to become one. Anyone can imagine/guess at anything. Anything at all. There are many inventors working on perpetual motion machines that will not work, because they can't work. Physical realities have not stopped them. So they fail over and over again. And what they are trying, even though impossible, is still more coherent than your guess about the cause of ghosts. What they share with you is the idea that anything is possible. If you want to be scientific about this, you should drop your belief and investigate ALL possibilities, even if they don't confirm your bias. That would include taking a hard look at alternative possibilities, one of which is that the explanation of ghosts are much more mundane than that the one you insist on, which is that they actually exist. How is that belief different from creationists trying to prove that Genesis accurately describes the origins of everything? "True belief" is not scientific.

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict

2830 Posts

Posted - 08/28/2012 :  16:31:02   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send sailingsoul a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Storm:
guessing or suggesting possibilities is a start to hypothesis..you cannot tell me it is not...
I think I can (sort of) but let me explain.
Words have meaning Storm, I'm sure you'll agree. There is no equating a "hypothesis" as you use the word above def's 3 & 4, with a "scientific hypothesis", def #1.
For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the available scientific theories. Link
There is a big diference between the two. Which I don't see that you fully appreciate. If you do appreciate the difference than you should see that your hypothesis are very different than scientific hypothesis, if I understand your position. If your not being scientific these "things" can be explained by any hypothesis that can be dreamt up no mattter how crazy and be a hypothesis. Which is the case for you and others out there so inclined of which there are millions. However if your going to be arguing scientifically than it's not proper to take any fantastical explanation to explain for example "percieved foot step sounds" and formulate a scientific hypothesis that can not be tested. That is junk science or sudoscience. That's not doing science at all.

Science does not ignore looking into these matters as you suggested because it is lock into assuming there is nothing there, as you suggested. Science does not get to do that. Science is a METHOD, a method cannot direct scientists from exploring what they choose to investigate. If anyone wants to try to examing/explore these "happenings" they must use established, time tested and modified methods, called the "scientific method". A scientific hypothesis must be testable or it's not scientific but mearly a "hypothesis".

You perposed hypothesis as possible explanations but they are not scientific hypothesis that I can see, unless you also provide or suggest some method of testing you hypothesis.


There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS
Edited by - sailingsoul on 08/28/2012 16:33:27
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  13:37:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
well how would we test my hypothesis. If I am proposing and I am proposing through science, not pseudoscience or table toppers that tragic or sad emotions get stored in the atmosphere and replayed to certain people as what I call a ghost. This is what I am asking how would we test it

You say I violate the second law of thermodynamics..that it happens pretty quick this disappation. So after a the tragic event the energy disappates. But how do we know it does not get stored for periods of time .if no one has asked the question before Or even tested it how do we know it is not possible.

Sailing soul I appreciate the scientific method, I am no pseudiscience person or bias. And there have been observations of millions of ghost phenomena. what happens is that science as a whole still carries the ball and chain of Spiritualism, Fraud, and souls of the dead returning to loved ones. Ghost hunters and Science cannot get away from those things. I look beyond them. I AM!!!!! looking for a scientific explanation to these phenomena.
valiant knows what he saw but hides behind conjecture as his reason not to believe what he saw.
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Hal
Skeptic Friend

USA
302 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  14:16:37   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Hal a Private Message  Reply with Quote
What would be the null hypothesis, in accounting for these millions of "observations"?
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26021 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  14:33:37   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

You say I violate the second law of thermodynamics..that it happens pretty quick this disappation. So after a the tragic event the energy disappates. But how do we know it does not get stored for periods of time .if no one has asked the question before Or even tested it how do we know it is not possible.
We know it's not possible without a storage mechanism because of the Laws of Thermodynamics. We've never seen them be "broken," and there are good reasons for thinking that they simply cannot be violated.

So, it's up to you - the person proposing that a storage mechanism might exist - to give us a testable description of how that mechanism might work. How does a person's energy get stored in such a way that at later times (sometimes centuries past) it can be released in ways that project a visible image or form, or an audible sound, or a fluctuation in temperature, etc.?

It's not up to anyone else to do this for you, simply because our current scientific understanding of the world suggests that it cannot happen. Here's a quote for you:
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
— Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1915), chapter 4
Sailing soul I appreciate the scientific method, I am no pseudiscience person or bias. And there have been observations of millions of ghost phenomena. what happens is that science as a whole still carries the ball and chain of Spiritualism, Fraud, and souls of the dead returning to loved ones. Ghost hunters and Science cannot get away from those things. I look beyond them. I AM!!!!! looking for a scientific explanation to these phenomena.
The most obvious explanations are psychological. Why reject them and insist on continuing to look for explanations?

- 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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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13476 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  15:20:51   [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
Val:
I know what I experienced. I also know the criteria for empirical evidence. It is why I regard those experiences as suspect. No exhaustive investigation was done to exclude natural phenomenon.

Storm:
valiant knows what he saw but hides behind conjecture as his reason not to believe what he saw.

But see, Val isn't hiding behind anything as a reason to not believe what he saw. What Val is doing is withholding a conclusion, because the data suggests that he must. There are several possibilities for what he saw, and only one of them is a ghost, which from a scientific standpoint, is the least likely. Val is approaching the problem correctly. Unfortunately, you, Storm, have already drawn a conclusion without the benefit of supporting evidence. That is a very unscientific approach. Yet you keep saying you want to be scientific about this. You can't have it both ways.

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  15:45:06   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message  Reply with Quote
How do we know the laws are being broken? Perhaps it is something that we just never looked into. Remember for centuries people believed ghosts were actual conscious souls of the dead. then Spiritualism fucked it all up with fraud. So who could take any of this phenomena seriously. You ever see these ghost hunters on T.V. they are not serious. Like the Haunted Collector...telling people the antique items are haunted and removing them from their house... only to be put in his basement on display. And these people believe him. I am not saying the phenomena is not real its his ideals. This is why science will not take it seriously.

Well Dave I am not a scientist. How about some of you intellects try to help. You guys are engineers, physicists,etc. Help out.

I agree to a point that some phenomena are psychological..in fact its one of the first things I think of when I investigate phenomena. Was valiants vision psychological? And how about this maybe its in the mind but not as you think. Whats his name said there are not haunted places only haunted people. But perhaps its not as he thinks. Oh yeah..Joe Nikkel
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular

USA
854 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  16:24:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

How do we know the laws are being broken? Perhaps it is something that we just never looked into.


The laws of thermodynamics say left-over energy should dissipate. The claim that left-over energy forms ghosts instead of dissipating directly contradicts it. Of course the laws might be wrong in this case, but the burden of proof rests with those making the claim challenging scientific consensus.

Remember for centuries people believed ghosts were actual conscious souls of the dead. then Spiritualism fucked it all up with fraud. So who could take any of this phenomena seriously. You ever see these ghost hunters on T.V. they are not serious. Like the Haunted Collector...telling people the antique items are haunted and removing them from their house... only to be put in his basement on display. And these people believe him. I am not saying the phenomena is not real its his ideals. This is why science will not take it seriously.


It's not taken seriously because none of the folks claiming ghosts exist have been able to offer evidence of how it happens, or even proven that it happens at all.

"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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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26021 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2012 :  20:56:41   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Storm

How do we know the laws are being broken? Perhaps it is something that we just never looked into.
How energy behaves is the primary thing physicists do these days. The subject has been looked into by millions of people over the past centuries. Just because you are ignorant of a field of study doesn't mean that everyone else is, too.
Remember for centuries people believed ghosts were actual conscious souls of the dead.
Most people still believe that.
then Spiritualism fucked it all up with fraud. So who could take any of this phenomena seriously. You ever see these ghost hunters on T.V. they are not serious. Like the Haunted Collector...telling people the antique items are haunted and removing them from their house... only to be put in his basement on display. And these people believe him. I am not saying the phenomena is not real its his ideals. This is why science will not take it seriously.
No, science won't take it seriously because it generally contradicts what we know already through science. It isn't a PR or marketing problem.
Well Dave I am not a scientist. How about some of you intellects try to help. You guys are engineers, physicists,etc. Help out.
Telling you to find something better to do with your time is trying to help you out. Just because you reject the help we're offering doesn't mean we're not offering any. We've been trying to teach you some basic physics facts, and you effectively say "maybe that's wrong." Is that how you treated your teachers in school, too? Did you try to object that "perhaps somehow" two plus two might really equal five? "Perhaps somehow" Ahab kills the whale and lives happily ever after? "Perhaps somehow" the Japanese got lost in a cloudbank and missed Pearl Harbor by miles? How much patience do you expect other people to have with this sort of behavior?
I agree to a point that some phenomena are psychological..in fact its one of the first things I think of when I investigate phenomena. Was valiants vision psychological? And how about this maybe its in the mind but not as you think. Whats his name said there are not haunted places only haunted people. But perhaps its not as he thinks. Oh yeah..Joe Nikkel
How about this, Storm: maybe things aren't as you think.

- 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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sailingsoul
SFN Addict

2830 Posts

Posted - 08/31/2012 :  22:13:23   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send sailingsoul a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Storm,I am not that surprised that a great many people buy into believing Ghosts, spirits and can't imagine it's all in their head. Even you can see that at times people are mistaken but you hang on to the belief that with all the "sightings" and "experiences" reported that they all can't be unfounded but that's what I think it is, not real and in their heads. All of it. I read an interesting book last year called "Sleights of Mind" by Stephen L. Macknik: it's about,,,
What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions.
It explained how the brain interpets inputs from our different senses and how the brain wrongly at times interpetes them. Magicians uses their understanding of these different processes of our senses to get their deceptions accross with great sucess. They actually use our brains to decieve ourselves. For me it made it clear how we see, hear, feel, etc. the world around us and how it can percieved how it's anything but what is really out there, sometime.
For one thing, our past experiences has a lot to do with how each one processes the inputs. Magicians, they can both make your brain think it sees what is not there and not see what is there. It's easy if you know how. With vision it went into the process of how a person sees starting with the resolution of a human eye which is way less that you might imagine, how that information gets for the eye into the brain (which has nothing to do with light at this point) and what the brain does with this information (how it's processed). Let me tell you human vision is very fallible. Here just one example and color, not just shades of gray, is not what we think either. Some researchers believe that the same colors are not seen by everyone the same but that's something else.

If one could take a brain out of a body, keep it alive and stimulate the brain appropiately, the brain would never know is was no longer in a body or not in reality in the world it would be percieving. It would have no clue. All our senses are only percieved by the brain. Brains cannot see, hear or feel anything. And our eyes ears etc. do no processing at all. You know people don't have to be mentally ill to be experience what is only in their mind and not happening in reallity. People can hear what is not "herd" from the ears and can see what is not in front of our eyes but is in their brain.. People can really be 100% certain that what they swear just happened and be wrong, it happens to everyone more often than you might think.

If there was one thing I came away from the book was life is really an illusion. A whole lot more than I could have believed before I read that book. You might see if your library has it. I think that you would really get a lot form it.

There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS
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