(2023-06-27, 10:00 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]You are not going to get real-time hits on secret, hidden visual targets. The visual target information has to be a fact for you to have any chance of accessing it. It has to be measured. If you remove the real-time constraint, you can get access to something you will see in the future, but it requires the information to have feelings/emotions attached to it. Feelings/emotions seem to be a result of adding up information over what we understand as time. But in addition you've also got to be motivated, as motivation seems to be a result of adding up what we understand as the future. (Bem's best tests seem to confirm this). You can't use repeating patterns in the information, as they get smeared out due to interference. You can't trick it either, you've really got to believe it.
Yeah motivation seems like a big thing.
I'm thinking about a reincarnation case where a phone number is almost perfectly recalled and it seems this is due to emotional motivation:
Quote:At age of thirty-six, Hanan traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to have heart surgery. She tried to telephone her daughter Leila before the operation, but couldn’t get through. Hanan died of complications the day after surgery.
Quote:At 16 months of age, Suzanne pulled the phone off the hook as if she was trying to talk into it and said, over and over, “Hello, Leila?” The family didn’t know who Leila was. When she got older, Suzanne explained that Leila was one of her children and that she was not Suzanne, but Hanan. The family asked, “Hanan what?” Suzanne replied, “My head is still small. Wait until it is bigger, and I might tell you.”
Quote:Before she could read or write, Suzanne scribbled a phone number on a piece of paper. Later, when the family went to the Monsour’s home, they found that the phone number matched the Monsour’s number, except that the last two digits were transposed.
I personally think Bigelow should think twice about giving any money for AWARE type studies, they seem near worthless to me without any consideration on how to increase the chance of a hit.
(2023-06-27, 05:30 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah I think Parnia relayed an NDEr did see something but it wasn't the stickers on the ceiling. So [if I'm right about that,] it isn't a "hit" in the controlled study [setting] but it is another in the witness testimony pile.
Yeah and Kenneth Ring's comment was in 2006, before the Parnia studies.
(2023-06-27, 05:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]The first paragraph does indeed state that controlled studies do consistently show veridical perception in NDEs to be a false claim. The second paragraph does nothing to refute that claim. So there's that.
It's at the very least sloppy writing on Augustine's part to not indicate this is Ring's words (not Holden and company), and he includes mediumship research in there as if that was under discussion in that book chapter (or book period).
I can't pretend to know exactly what Kenneth Ring was meaning to say there (in a personal communication, not in an official statement) but I don't think he is saying what you do. He is saying "under controlled conditions" not controlled
studies. Because there certainly weren't 30 years (!) of controlled studies when he made that remark, and he was very well placed to know that, and as others here are saying it's debatable as to how much control there even is in Parnia's studies (and the number of interviewees in his studies is so incredibly small, despite the ambitious scope of the projects, that it's no wonder there wasn't a precise "hit" - it's hard not to conclude that the lack of proper resources guaranteed such results unfortunately.)
I think Ring was making a loose, off-the-cuff philosophizing statement with his Trickster remark, and not a cool, logically precise claim about decades of "controlled studies". It's either bad reading or dishonesty on Augustine's part to make more out of that remark than what it is (especially in throwing mediumship in there).
(2023-06-27, 08:40 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Certainly, but it much increases the probability of survival, since it demonstrates under very adverse circumstances a certain independence of the human mind from the physical brain.
If you wish to interpret it in that way. On the other hand, I'm reasonably convinced that it is only the sense-of-self which has relocated.
(2023-06-27, 11:21 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Assuming it was a randomly selected timed display, it was indeed measured, by the effects of this information in interacting with some structures of matter and energy, in practice on the random number generator output circuits and on the display electronics. That presumably is all that is required. I don't think it has to actually be measured by human perception. The world doesn't work like that.
Good luck with learning about the results of your experiments if you don't make any observations.
(2023-06-28, 03:03 AM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]I think Ring was making a loose, off-the-cuff philosophizing statement with his Trickster remark, and not a cool, logically precise claim about decades of "controlled studies". It's either bad reading or dishonesty on Augustine's part to make more out of that remark than what it is (especially in throwing mediumship in there).
Again, if you read on in
Augustine's paper, he gives numerous references to survival studies and their failure to make a case for survival. That statement was merely an introduction. We should be discussing the documented failure of the studies to support survival, rather than debating the nuance of the wording of one sentence.
(2023-06-27, 11:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I would need people to stop reporting NDEs & OOBEs.
And do you also need people to stop making claims about the Loch Ness Monster before you acknowledge the evidence indicates it is not real?
Do you also need people to stop believing in Mormonism before you acknowledge there probably never were golden plates with the Book of Mormon written on them that were given to Joseph Smith?
Decades of research into survival have shown that there is no there there, at least not in the ways it has been tested. Is it possible that it exists in some way that has not yet been tested? Sure. But, by the same logic, one could argue that you created the universe, and that the failure of any test to verify that you are God is simply because we have not yet tried the right test!
Maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies survival. And maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies that you are God
Maybe not.
(2023-06-27, 11:12 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]As noted above by Sam Harris in End of Faith, reincarnation research hasn't been completely negative.
I would agree, however, that there has been no definitive confirmation which is why I've said weeks ago that I think it's reasonable to hold that there is no afterlife.
By saying that reincarnation research "hasn't been completely negative" you seem to imply that the majority of the volume of research in reincarnation studies has been negative. What's your reason to make this sort of judgement?
I'm somewhat surprised by this comment, Sci, and I disagree completely. I think that cases of the reincarnation type constitute the strongest evidence for survival. Research has produced quite positive results.
You can claim that survival research hasn't been conclusive because of the rareness of the phenomena. But the number of strong cases (especially CORT) which have resisted normal explanations are enough to make a fairly strong case in favor of survival.
The idea that after we die we cease to exist is an assumption that lacks empirical support; it's based on the unfounded belief that mental function is entirely dependent on brain function.
(2023-06-28, 12:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]And do you also need people to stop making claims about the Loch Ness Monster before you acknowledge the evidence indicates it is not real?
Do you also need people to stop believing in Mormonism before you acknowledge there probably never were golden plates with the Book of Mormon written on them that were given to Joseph Smith?
Decades of research into survival have shown that there is no there there, at least not in the ways it has been tested. Is it possible that it exists in some way that has not yet been tested? Sure. But, by the same logic, one could argue that you created the universe, and that the failure of any test to verify that you are God is simply because we have not yet tried the right test!
Maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies survival. And maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies that you are God
Maybe not.
Comparing case studies of these kind of phenomena to sightings of the Loch Ness Monster reported by unreliable sources is a very flimsy comparison, a false equivalence which quite frankly casts doubt your credibility as a skeptical commentator on paranormal phenomena.
The fact that you keep repeating this same claim, that investigation of phenomena suggestive of survival has supposedly not had any positive results, and that your only source for your claim is a third hand source, shows that your statement has no informed credibility and should not be taken seriously.
Instead of relying on statements made by Keith Augustine, how about you become more familiar with the kind of topics we are discussing here?
Until then, expect your flimsy and doubtful remarks to be met with the same kind of skepticism that you claim to profess. Any informed reader on the paranormal, which you apparently are not, will notice that is not as black and white as people seem to think it is.
(2023-06-28, 12:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]And do you also need people to stop making claims about the Loch Ness Monster before you acknowledge the evidence indicates it is not real?
Do you also need people to stop believing in Mormonism before you acknowledge there probably never were golden plates with the Book of Mormon written on them that were given to Joseph Smith?
Decades of research into survival have shown that there is no there there, at least not in the ways it has been tested. Is it possible that it exists in some way that has not yet been tested? Sure. But, by the same logic, one could argue that you created the universe, and that the failure of any test to verify that you are God is simply because we have not yet tried the right test!
Maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies survival. And maybe someday somebody will come up with a test that strongly verifies that you are God
Maybe not.
Are you this afraid of Hell that you want to stop the investigation for the [true] nature of reality?
I thought you said you wanted to know the Truth.
You seem to have ignored the fact that Parnia did note a "hit" in AWARE, just not the stickers in particular.
If we should stop NDE research, we should definitely stop trying to prove theories that suggest consciousness is produced by a brain consisting of non-conscious constituents as it's been millennia since Democritus noted the Hard Problem. Additionally, as Harris notes:
Quote:The idea that brains produce consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientists at present, and there are many reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or disprove it.