Skip Navigation

ageedizzle

@ ageedizzle @piefed.ca

Posts
7
Comments
486
Joined
3 wk. ago

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • How can you dismiss a book you’ve never read? You have to admit thats a bit shoddy. Even if you’re sure that the book is a crock of shit you won’t know why its a crock of shit (and which rebuttals to apply) until after you’ve finished reading at least part of it.

    Regarding the other stuff: I don’t have the time to get into the weeds on the matter with everyone here so I’m considering this comment here to be my official statement.

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • Yes, hi. Heres another comment I made that explains my position better.

    As per the graph. Is not meant to be “inherently useful”. Its literally just a meme. Its meant to be funny.

    Edit for link

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • I don’t want to get bogged down on the stuff about the scientific method because, like I said in my earlier message, I think you actually can make a reasonable scientific case for the existence of the supernatural (and I hope there is more science done on this; unfortunately the social stigma around this makes that kind of a bad career move for most scientists but I’m optimistic that this will improve with time).

    Nevertheless, if you have some decent examples of actual evidence of ghosts, I’m genuinely curious.

    I gave a brief defense of my position in another comment in this thread. I know linking is not great on lemmy but here’s the link to that comment, if you’re interested.

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • Basically, there are reliable, repeatable and measurable effects that are best explained by people ‘surviving’ their own death. A good example of this is near death experiences. People come back from having been clinically dead and can tell you things that they shouldn’t know. For example like where items are placed on the roof of the hospital or events that transpired when they had no brain activity. These people would have no way of having knowing this stuff unless they’ve seen it for themselves, which would have been physically impossible. So this makes their own fist-person accounts of what happened (“I was out of my body and literally floating around”) start to seem more credible.

    The power of the book is the sheer volume of cases it presents for these sorts of events and other related phenomena. It shows you that events like these do occur reliably and repeatably and are quite literally scientific in that people can and do study them scientifically (and more of this study should occur, but that can only happen if we get past the current social stigma).

    The power of the book is that it just inundates you with credible stories (and credible science!) from credible people, all of which is suggestive of the supernatural. It might be possible to talk yourself into dismissing one or two of these cases, but when you have several hundred of them compiled back-to-back-to-back it becomes harder and harder to find the willpower required to muster up a skeptical response. After a while you have to admit “okay, theres something more going on here, and I don’t understand it”. At least, thats what happened to me.

    It’s a great book though, and I’m not doing it justice. I highly recommend giving it a read. 

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • I am familiar with the Gods of the gaps argument. Its not a God of the gaps argument (I’m literally an atheist, if that matters). I don’t know how you can assume that you already know where this book goes wrong without having even read it. Or maybe you got that from my comment? Bur literally no where in my comment did I make any argument, and I certainly didn’t make any Gods of the gaps argument

    This is exactly the problem with this topic, people have an understanding of it based on popular debunkers like Neil Degrasse Tyson or whoever and they think thats all there is left to hear on the topic. They just want to be on the side of science (understandable, I do too!) and see these guys are scientific and think thats it, cased closed. They never actually engage with the subject matter. They acquire a repertoire of buzzwords and debunking strategies that allow them to dismiss everything wholesale, then they never dig any deeper so they never realize the ways in which these skeptical responses are insufficient

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • I’m not referring to the Netflix series

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • I am the friend OP is referring to and I am also an atheist

  • Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?

    Jump

  • Hi, I’m the friend. I don’t want to reveal too much about my identity here but my science education was actually very thorough (I know that sounds arrogant but I just wanted to defend my honour here). Let's not get bogged down with personal detail though like that though because ad hominems like this can often cause a conversation to unravel into personal attacks.

    Regarding what my friend said about my views on the scientific method: This is a bit of a mischaracterization. I don’t have anything against the scientific method. I just think that the set of things we have reason to believe is larger than the set of things that we can provide evidence for scientifically. (Broadly speaking I think this is a fairly standard view of things.)

    Another way to out this is this. The question is not 'is xyz scientific' but 'do we have reason to believe xyz'? It turns out that if we can demonstrate something scientifically it does give us reason to believe that thing. But there are some things we have reason to believe that we cannot demonstrate scientifically. For example I have good reason to believe solipsism is false, or that chocolate tastes more like coffee than soap, even though I cannot strictly speaking demonstrate these things scientifically (examples like this often have something to do with the subjectivity of the mind, which cannot be directly measured but is nonetheless very apparent to us).

    For the ghost stuff, I think you actually could make a reasonable scientific case for the existence of ghosts (very hot take, I know), but that’s not my primary concern. What I’m worried about is do we have good reason to believe in ghosts? As it happens, I believe the answer to that is yes. The details here might be a bit out of scope for a c/nostupidquestions thread but I'm basing my thoughts here on the book Surviving Death by Leslie Kane. I used to have a similar view as most people in this thread (that ghosts were irrational and unscientific etc) until I read this book and it forced me to change my mind. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this topic.

    Edit: for grammar and typos

  • Just vibesinning

    Jump

  • They also did not have ChatGTP back then either.

  • Urine tests confirm alcohol consumption in wild African chimps

    Jump

  • Ah so they can’t plead ignorance. Sneaky fellas

  • AI scanners at Health Sciences Centre detected more than 1,500 potential weapons last year

    Jump

  • Downtown has been looking rough but on the bright side, Osborne Village has really been improving. All those new apartment buildings have been creating a lot of foot traffic. And I know a lot of people on lemmy don’t like cops, but its the increased foot patrol really has been doing a lot to decrease the amount of petty crimes going on

  • they are not wrong

    Jump

  • It always makes me think of this (wait for the end)

  • Do you think "coconut water" is corporate propaganda and it should be called "coconut juice"?

    Jump

  • It also lacks the sugar content characteristic of juice

  • Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs

    Jump

  • Well there you go. Hopefully they get around to overthrowing the mobile webkit overlords soon enough

  • Manitoba issues blanket measles warning for 5 southern RMs, says fans were exposed at Jets game

    Jump

  • AI scanners at Health Sciences Centre detected more than 1,500 potential weapons last year

    Jump

  • I didn’t realize they were using AI scanners. Is that what they are using at the Millennium library also? It always seemed depressing to me to have airport level security just to check out some books

  • Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs

    Jump

  • Depends where you. In some places (I think it was Japan?) Apples practice of not allowing alternative browser engines was deemed anticompetitive and outlawed

  • TIL: Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Was An Anti-Communist CIA Operative who Kept Feminism From Discussing Class

    Jump

  • I’m not old enough to remember the first one and I’m not American so I was never really caught up in the second one, so it is genuinely hard for me to understand why the CIA cared so deeply about Soviet artistic preferences that they conducted psyops to oppose them. I’m not doubting that it happened, it just seems bizarre to me

  • TIL: Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Was An Anti-Communist CIA Operative who Kept Feminism From Discussing Class

    Jump

  • It’s also a stupid strategy because modern art is pretty dumb (I know I might get hate for this but lets be real guys)

  • Urine tests confirm alcohol consumption in wild African chimps

    Jump

  • Poor guys probably don’t even realize what’s going on