Leslie Kean's new Netflix documentary

It's just such a shame to me that some people will, wrongly, dismiss the academics like the UVA for having their two most notable members in this documentary because a medium channeling a little boy sounded/looked silly. 

It's going to be difficult for me to just move on when these people are mocking, ridiculing or shaming my beliefs and people I look up to, knowing that a documentary featuring some I have even spoken to may have their reputations unfairly weakened because some people can't be bothered to do any further research.

I'm sure the researchers involved knew what they might be getting into. Not everyone wrings their hands worrying how someone on the internet will mock their beliefs.

Best to buck up, not cry about every negative review, and just hope the positive exposure helps the field. If you think the opposite is happening put some effort into helping to advance acceptance of parapsychology by properly understanding cases, philosophy of mind, quantum & magnetobiology, etc.

I haven't watched it yet either - at the moment, my Netflix evenings are taken up with His Dark Materials from that arch-atheist, Philip Pullman. Good TV though - 20 years since I read the books.

Seriously though, I used to get so activated by the inevitable pseudo-sceptical response to anything remotely approaching a challenge to the materialist orthodoxy that it quite affected my health. I would go into depressions because I could see no hope of convincing these people. These days I realise and accept that there really is no hope of that so why worry about it? Nothing will ever be enough. You can see that by the discussions here between sceptics and proponents. The very same gap exists between us that existed when I first posted on the Skeptiko forum almost 10 years ago. 

All I can say, without watching the series, is that the most encouraging thing about research is that, if done with an open mind, it tends to convince the scientists doing the research. I'm sure that people like Greyson or Peter Fenwick didn't start out believing this stuff. In fact I know that Fenwick didn't because I asked him personally when I met him.

I haven't watched it yet either - at the moment, my Netflix evenings are taken up with His Dark Materials from that arch-atheist, Philip Pullman. Good TV though - 20 years since I read the books.

Seriously though, I used to get so activated by the inevitable pseudo-sceptical response to anything remotely approaching a challenge to the materialist orthodoxy that it quite affected my health. I would go into depressions because I could see no hope of convincing these people. These days I realise and accept that there really is no hope of that so why worry about it? Nothing will ever be enough. You can see that by the discussions here between sceptics and proponents. The very same gap exists between us that existed when I first posted on the Skeptiko forum almost 10 years ago. 

All I can say, without watching the series, is that the most encouraging thing about research is that, if done with an open mind, it tends to convince the scientists doing the research. I'm sure that people like Greyson or Peter Fenwick didn't start out believing this stuff. In fact I know that Fenwick didn't because I asked him personally when I met him.

I mean 10 years ago the situation did look close to hopeless.

Who could predict Scientific American would be hosting essays advocating for Idealism, that the American Psychology Association would publish Transcendent Mind, or the BBC would have even a short piece on precognitive dreams and materialist bias?

That Michael Shermer and Sam Harris would back away from the extreme Physicalism position?

Still IMO the big mistake is trying to convince skeptics, letting them set themselves up as judge & jury. Meanwhile there are billions of people who believe in the afterlife, in Psi, spirits, etc - they just don't have knowledge about the philosophy and science that can support at least some aspect of their belief.

The general consensus so far seems to be everything except the mediumship and ghost hunting stuff was fine, even good. So how that justifies 1 and 2 star reviews from those who implicitly or explicitly admit to not watching the rest of the series is beyond me. IMDB reviewers, in my experience, do have a tendency though of being very extreme and at times insulting with their opinions. I won't be surprised if several of the critics didn't even watch the show and are just going by either a) the summaries on Netflix or other articles or b) that despicable rant of a review I linked to. I swear more than half of the people I've seen giving it negative reviews on it so far on social media act like the shoddy mediumship episodes somehow invalidate everything else and so one shoudl just 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' so to speak.

The general consensus so far seems to be everything except the mediumship and ghost hunting stuff was fine, even good. So how that justifies 1 and 2 star reviews from those who implicitly or explicitly admit to not watching the rest of the series is beyond me. IMDB reviewers, in my experience, do have a tendency though of being very extreme and at times insulting with their opinions. I won't be surprised if several of the critics didn't even watch the show and are just going by either a) the summaries on Netflix or other articles or b) that despicable rant of a review I linked to. I swear more than half of the people I've seen giving it negative reviews on it so far on social media act like the shoddy mediumship episodes somehow invalidate everything else and so one shoudl just 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' so to speak.

I have my own misgivings about mediumship (especially physical mediumship) and ghost hunting. Maybe it is because those are the two areas which are most prone to sensationalism - especially in the kind of media which thrives on sensationalism. I've had a few sessions with mediums and have never been entirely convinced. I have been convinced that at least one was out to fleece me, however. 

Once again I would implore you to forget about the reactions of those who will never accept any of it. Remember that they are as much invested in promoting and defending their worldview as you are for yours. No doubt if they read some of your posts here they would be quoting you on another forum as a prime example of gullibility. With that in mind, I have always wondered why someone like Steve001 spends his time arguing with us here. I suspect he does exactly that: quotes us on sceptic forums. At least Paul makes us think and malf makes us smile.

Once again I would implore you to forget about the reactions of those who will never accept any of it. Remember that they are as much invested in promoting and defending their worldview as you are for yours. No doubt if they read some of your posts here they would be quoting you on another forum as a prime example of gullibility. 

Yikes, that's set off my anxiety a bit 

Well if they are quoting me, I won't be surprised if its cherry-picking and ignoring my own skeptical thoughts at times. 

I do hope pseudo-skeptics do not resort to spamming negative reviews or ratings of this documentary solely because of the medium stuff. 

I'd stumbled onto the Reddit forums on these topics (even including the r/medium subreddit) and they didn't enjoy that stuff in the documentary either, saying it felt like a completely different series lumping better NDE evidence with dubious ghost hunters and psychics. This certainly didn't do the Forever Family Foundation any favours.

Most of us, if not all of us, will be dead by the time STEM academia has a majority view that there is an afterlife.

That said I think we'll see a general acceptance of Psi data by...say, 2040.

Once again I would implore you to forget about the reactions of those who will never accept any of it.

Yup. As per the Serbian proverb, "The man who wants to beat a dog always finds his stick."

Hopefully there will be those open-minded enough to actually watch more than one episode, which seems to be a trend wuth the negative reviews. I don't understand how you can give the entire documentary 1 star after only having watched 1 and 1/2 episodes, as this IMDB and Rotten Tomato critic did:

Disappointing, instead of focusing on the Scientific aspects of possible Life after Death, they mostly showed the Pseudo-Scientific aspects of it with Pseudo-Scientific Organizations. Too much focus on Stories and Subjective Experience, in fact the Series had that feel you usually see with "New Age" type of Shows. And "Mediums"? Really? If Mediums are real, why don't they go and do more useful stuff, like go after unsolved Murders, for example. There are still a lot of those around so there must be a lot of these supposed Spirits looking for closure, and yet that rarely gets tackled. I stayed until 1 1/2 Episodes and quit. Just skip this one unless you want waste your time and Bandwidth.

First of all, what are he 'scientific aspects'? Secondly, what's wrong with having stories and subjective experiences? The show never claims to be providing definitive evidence or proof. 

The teasers for this series suggest there would be some form of scientific argument and/or study, however that is NOT the case. What it is, just a collection of people who claimed to have had near death experiences and a bunch of clips from the 60s, talking about books in the subject, written 70 years ago. The entire series can be explained away by the chemicals released by the brain during dying. Listen to someone describe a DMT trio and it will sound exactly the same. Take enough drugs, and anyone will claim to have some big cosmic trip. Most of the ppl interviewed in this series are already the foil-hat type, so it's impossible to take them serious. This was another big miss by Netflix, in an attempt to justify their latest price increase. I suggest that instead of watching this, take some dmt and have your own trip, it will be a much better use of your time!!!

There are literally scientists in two of the episodes, including ones who explain why the 'chemicals in the brain' explanation is crap. And stop it with this DMT bullsh*it already. And no, you can't just give the entire documentary one star because one episode wasn't up to your 'standards' of not mentioning some overblown sensationalised theory.

Look, it's fine if you don't like the show because that's completely understandable. But this is literally misinformation from people who blatantly didn't pay attention and haven't done any research.

Just noticed on Twitter that someone from the SPR is featured in the documentary giving a brief description of parapsychology:
https://twitter.com/theUL/status/1347124935366479872

Unfortunately I also found on Twitter the response from neuroscientist materialist/physicalist Anil Seth (who's been mentioned here before): https://twitter.com/anilkseth/status/134...0170772482

His response is basically: "My outdated and flawed article on NDEs from 2013 doesn't match with what the actual experts on NDEs say, so therefore it's nonsense."
Like what does he even mean by "wafer-thin sciencey gloss with no substance". And how exactly is it 'exploitative' when these NDErs are giving their testimonies?

There was this largely positive review from an agnostic who I sympathised with. She makes some good points: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter...83962.html

And here's a post from blogger Ian Wardell refuting the claims in that terrible Daily Beast 'review': https://ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2021/01...N2po7MteuE