Introduce yourself

[ian hollander]

My name is Ian, and I am a marketing consultant, primarily online - I live just outside of Philadelphia, and have had always had a passion for the mystery of inquiry...especially into areas that are relatively unexplored.

I think I was the only guy in my college dorm house reading Ian Stevenson 15 years ago....and for reason I still can't quite discern, I had an insatiable appetite for just about every thing I could get my hands on across the "paranormal" spectrum. Over the years my ability to devote real time to keeping up has been up and down...but I've stayed interested - stayed somewhat agnostic to most of the research and many of the claims..but hopeful that I'd have an opportunity to look closer when some good stuff popped up.

Serendipitously - Alex and I crossed paths online, and when he explained some of the things he was doing with Skeptico and here, I think he was a bit surprised that I had more than a passing familiarity with a lot of the very same stuff ( although lots is WAY out of my intellectual depth..:-) and after a few quick emails back and forth, I'm jumping in and lending what I hope
is some marketing muscle to the machine!

Have enjoyed all lots of the podcasts already - it's great material - and regardless of what side of the fence you fall - these are great ideas to play with and explore - and I'm glad to pay a small role in helping to get the word out!

Thanks - and look forward to reading your posts!

Ian

[Mark]

Hi I'm Mark.

I come from the Midlands in England and have come across this forum after spending some time listening to the Skeptico podcast. My accademic background is in social science and philosophy - I have an undergraduate degree joint honours (1st) in Sociology and Philosophy (minor in theology/reigious studies). I went on to do an MA in Sociology with a major emphasis on soical research and I have worked for a while carrying out, designing and leading social research projects for local and regional government. I now work in local government but have moved on from research into more senior policy making role.

All of this has left me with a keen interest in research design (although from a soical science rather than natural science position), epistomology, philosophy of science/social science and philosophy/sociology of metanarrative belief systems (including religion).

As a child (10) I was drawn into a fundamentalist Christian church and was very involved in this until around the age of 17. I had some very real and intense spiritual experiences during this time but came to question the explanational context for them provided by Chrisitianity. I suppose you could call this a personal paradigm shift that caused me to leave Christianity behind and inded become very critical of it. I have also come across a number of extraordinary events in my life that I have had to try to understand and make sense of on a personal level. I have been very aware of the problems of making general beliefs about reality from specific individual extraordinary events, but like Alex has said on Skeptico, I have also been blown away by the large number of similair experiences of family and friends. There comes a point when I had to say "there really seems to be something going on here!" and have started to look into the scientific research into psi and related phenomena.

I have some experience of militant skeptics whose views seem to me to be informed by an unshaking faith in natualistic materialism and a 'that can't possibly be true can it' approach to this subject rather than on any knowlegable digestion of the evidence.

So thats me - clearly not a skeptic, but I hope not a dogmatic believer either. I'm interested in the evidence.

Regards

Mark

[gmarie]

I have been reading about all things paranormal for 25 years and am particularly drawn to research studies and well-documented anecdotal experiences in the areas of NDEs, DBVs, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and survival of consciousness.

I have several bookshelves of great books by William James & William Barrettt, Karlis Osis & Erlendur Haraldsson, Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff , Thelma Moss, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Raymond Moody, Bruce Greyson, Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, Carla Wills-Brandon, Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley.

I held on to some great overviews by Jess Stearn, D. Scott Rogo and Brad Steiger, as well.

I have been drawn to this field of study for so long but I am, as I tell my sons, "as psychic as a stone".

In the last few years I've lost my mom, my uncle and my grandma. I helped with each of their care until the end and have several interesting experiences to relate if anyone is interested and would care to share...

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by gmarie

In the last few years I've lost my mom, my uncle and my grandma. I helped with each of their care until the end and have several interesting experiences to relate if anyone is interested and would care to share...

Why not start a new thread - "Personal Experiences", make your contribution and wait to see what others report.

David

[Pollux]

Hi
I have read posts on this forum on and off since it started.
I really appreciate Alex work, intrest and dedication to the PSI phenomenon and was initially drawn to the Skeptiko podcast when he did all the NDE-interviews.
So, I thought i sign up on the forum and throw in a post now and then.
I really dont have much time to take part of all discussions but I check back when I have some spare time.

[Duke York]

I just saw this "Introduce yourself" sticky, so I figured I should. I went straight to the Noreen Renier topic and didn't even look at the others! Heh. My bad.

My name is Duke York, or at least that's the name I go by for most of my life. I have a BS in Chemical Engineering and a BA in English Literature, and I think that eclectic spread covers my interests fairly well. I think that words have "weight" and must be used well and correctly. I also think that it's very important that we, as humans, bring our beliefs in line with the real world. I'd love it if that real world contained psi, life after death, immaterial minds, but at this point, it seems to me like the evidence is against it. At this point, I I'd probably say I'm a straight materialist, but I'm open to persuasion.

I enjoy science fiction and fantasy, and I want to write. I'm also a big fan of role-playing games.

Duke York

[Im a Hedge]

I have been posting here for almost a month now, so maybe I should go ahead and introduce myself.
You can probably determine solely from the fact that I post under a pseudonym that I don't want to give out a lot of personal information. Still, I think it's proper that I give a little bit, so people here can have some idea where I am coming from.

When I was younger, I developed something of an interest in psi. I remember being very excited when I learned about ESP. I read a couple books I found in the school library and watched a couple videos. The idea of sharing thoughts with other people seemed so cool. I read a few novels about some kids with various psychic abilities (I don't remember what the book series was, but it has "PSI" in the title). I remember watching baseball games (like little league and high school games) and trying to effect where the ball went. Especially, I would try to make the next pitch be a strike, or make it be a ball. Sometimes I would have a good run where I would get several right in a row, but then it would fall apart and I would be wrong for the next few pitches. Eventually, I decided I wasn't really having any effect. I just got lucky sometimes. I don't remember how it happened - it was nothing dramatic - but I ended up losing interest in ESP and psychic powers.

Many years later, I remember hearing a rumor about some experiment showing that dogs would go wait by the door when their owner was on the way home. At this time, I was in college, working towards a career in veterinary medicine. I volunteered at the local animal shelter, interned at a small animal hospital in town, and worked a part-time job at the after-hours emergency animal clinic. I was almost constantly surrounded by dogs. The idea that dogs were routinely underestimated by most people seemed obvious to me. I spent a lot of time with dogs and found that they had unique personalities and were capable of understanding a lot more than people give them credit for. The idea that they could somehow know when their owner was coming home made sense. I wasn't sure if this meant some kind of ESP, but I didn't think it was a stretch that they would have some way of knowing this.

I ended up not staying with veterinary medicine. By a path I won't bother to completely detail, I ended up in a field related to evolutionary biology. The specifics aren't important to this story, just the fact that it is related to evolutionary biology. I came into contact with creationists. I knew there were such people, as I had been raised in a moderately religious household, but I somehow had assumed that as I outgrew those ideas and learned about reality, the rest of the world had done likewise. That wasn't true, and the fact that there was this entire creationist subculture was an eye-opener for me.

I began looking into their arguments. At every turn there was some new, seemingly bizarre, interpretation of reality. The one point that kept occurring to me was that these people had no understanding of what the theory of evolution actually is. They seemed uninterested in what the theory said and what the evidence was. Almost all of their criticisms could be seen as simple misunderstandings of the theory.
For years, I maintained a curious, but low-key, interest in creationism. I became more interested when I discovered that polls consistently show that approximately half of the US population rejects evolution in favor of some form of creationism. This renewed my interest in creationist claims. (I suppose at this point I should say I live in the US.) I thought that I should be prepared, if the subject arises, to explain to people I meet why the various criticisms of evolution and arguments in support of creationism are not valid.

A few years ago, I got an iPod. I discovered podcasts. One of the topics I searched for in podcast directories was evolution/creation. I found a few christian apologetics programs, some of which I still listen to regularly. I also found a podcast called The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I almost gave up on them after a couple of listens, because the audio quality was so poor. Fortunately, their quality began to improve and I continued to listen. I found the show informative and entertaining. They cover a wide array of topics, only occasionally touching on evolution/creation. In one show they mentioned another podcast, called Skeptiko. They were critical of it, if I recall correctly, but it sounded interesting (I think they may have even recommended people check it out, despite their opinion of it's contents). So, I started listening to Skeptiko. By this time, I had basically accepted the idea that most of the topics discussed on Skeptiko were not true, but here was this guy (Alex) claiming a large body of evidence actually supported some of these things. One of them was the psychic dog thing. This was very exciting for me, because I remembered this story from years before. However, I was pretty sure it wasn't true, as I didn't think any kind of ESP was likely to be true. I also remembered hearing something about a follow-up experiment showing that it wasn't actually true.

Then Alex appeared as a guest on the Skeptics Guide. One of the topics that came up was the psychic dogs. I remember a comment by one of the SGU panel, I think it was Jay Novella. I don't have a transcript here, and it was a while ago, so I may get this a bit wrong, but he said something along the lines of:

"But Alex, we're talking about psychic dogs here. Isn't it more likely that Sheldrake is just full of ****?"

This comment really rubbed me the wrong way. Was that really his argument? I considered my own view of the question, and I wondered if I was doing the same thing the creationists do. Was I dismissing ideas without even looking at the evidence? The uncomfortable answer was "yes".

I kept listening to both programs, trying to be more understanding of Alex's perspective (and the perspective of many of his pro-psi guests). I still didn't get around to looking up the research until Alex and SGU got together again and Alex had a program with Julie Bieschel. From her presentation, it sounded like she was doing some careful research on the question of mediums. I finally decided to start digging into the research. Part of this decision included registering at this forum and starting to participate in discussions. My purpose being to leverage the knowledge of people in this forum, helping guide my investigations into the most fruitful areas. I don't have much time to devote to this, so I want to make the most effective use of my time. Another purpose is having a community of interested people with whom to discuss the research.

I've now read a few research papers, and posted informal reviews of them on the forum. I've had some good discussions, and I hope this continues. I try to be upfront about my perspective. I am not convinced that there is such a thing as telepathy. I am not convinced that there is a consciousness that survives our physical death. However, I would not consider myself a "committed materialist". I currently tilt (pretty strongly) towards materialism, but I don't think it's a sure thing. I am a committed scientist. By that I mean, I think every natural phenomenon is knowable in principle. I think the methods of science are our best way of gaining such knowledge. I am encouraged that there are people engaged in the scientific pursuit of knowledge of psi. I agree with Rupert Sheldrake when he says that if telepathy exists, it is natural - not supernatural. (I would go so far as to say that I find the term "supernatural" to be meaningless). As such, these are scientific questions.

Unfortunately, it seems I have already made a couple enemies here, despite my best efforts to be polite and respectful. I attempt to be polite and respectful, but I may fail sometimes. I sincerely hope that we have only had temporary misunderstandings, and that we will not remain enemies. The good news is, there seems to be at least a few regular participants on the forum that seem willing, even eager, for productive interactions with someone who is skeptical of psi, but willing to evaluate the evidence and go where it leads. I look forward to learning more about the research, and to many productive discussions with the other commenters here.


I am a Hedge

[Perig]

I am mostly concerned by pain (injustice) in the world and by the moral immaturity of scientists and leading thinkers. My interest in parapsychology comes from encounters with the sublime, especially when I was a child and when I left my teenage years.
I believe in cooperation and I hate most forms of self adoration that are popular today. Science is a political business and the current leaders are Asperger-type cripples. I care for cripples, as my own ex-child used to be one (not autistic at all, however: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1_posture2.jpg).
But if we care for truth, we need to realize that the scientific method, Occam's razor, the Enlightenment (hey, I have my French passport!), the quest for genomic answers to life, reductionism in general, are games that teenagers/nerds have turned into rules of scientific achievement and endeavor.
The century and a half of research on parapsycology proves my point: pseudoskeptics will demand all our energies, exhaust our resources, until we remember our primary impulse.

[Tor]

I just realized that I hadn't introduced myself in this thread. I think I wrote a short hello in one of my first posts about a year ago, but let me do it properly.

I have a master degree in physics, and have been working as a scientist in an industrial research institution for the last two years.

My interest in science came as a life long passion to understand the universe, our place in it, the nature of my being etc. For short, trying to answer some of the existential questions. Since physics was the basis for the other sciences, it seemed to be the right subject to study.
I encountered the mysteries of quantum mechanics early on in my studies, not because I was introduced to them in lectures (nobody told us about them), but because I actively studied about it myself. When I started my master degree, I was beginning to read about the different approaches to quantum consciousness (Penrose&Hamerhoff, Stapp etc.) as I felt the traditional approach was unsatisfactory.

I slowly realized that this subject was a kind of taboo in the physics community. Many reacted quite emotionally if I brought the subject up. There was no solid argument behind people's opinions, just plain old dismissal or denial.

The last year before my graduation I began reading about psi. I had always been fascinated by the possibility of psi phenomena, but didn't believe there was any scientific evidence for it. I was surprised when I discovered that I had been wrong. Before I knew what to read to get some solid information, I did a lot of online searching. There I mostly encountered skeptics which to me seemed to be really anti-scientific in their attitudes and opinions. After reading some random articles form both sides I eventually encountered Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe, which gave me a lot more references to dig through.

After all this digging I understood how difficult it could be to make an informed opinion in the field of parapsychology. Many of the skeptics could at first glance seem to be correct. But as I kept going deeper into their arguments, reading reply after reply to critiques (from both sides), I felt that the skeptic side was seriously overstepping the boundary for what they had any reason to claim. Some even seemed to be down right dishonest (or perhaps just grossly ignorant). And almost none of them did any research themselves.

That final university year I studied just as much about consciousness and psi as I worked on my degree. I came out of it all feeling that there was solid evidence for some psi phenomena. I also felt that it was too similar to many of the mysteries of QM for this similarity just to be a fluke.

Apart from the scientific side, I also feel that the deep question of our true nature can be approached through self development techniques like meditation, as long as one is just as critical to one's own inner experiences as one would be in a scientific experiment. This is why I feel we should not ignore the ancient wisdom traditions, and the views held in some eastern cultures. Many of them are based on insights gained from inner development which might just hold some truth to them. But for me it is not about believing an ancient saying, but about trying and experiencing for myself.

[FallingLeaf]

Hello all,

I'm not a scientist but some would call what I do 'social science'. I've been interested in science for a very long time (the whole paternal side of my family are scientists and mathematicians) but especially in the philosophy and history of science. My interest wasn't in the finer details of the science per se but rather in the history of scientific thought and what the science told us about the world. My interest in psi has been around since I was a kid but I had no idea that there was any evidence for such a thing. Then I read an article denigrating the militant atheist Sam Harris for thinking there's something to psi and reincarnation through the works of Dean Radin and Ian Stevenson, which I had never heard of. I immediately bought Entangled Minds and was fascinated by the amount of work but also by the thoroughness of quite a lot of it.

Since then, consciousness has been my primary interest, more so than my own degree to the point where I'm trying to arrange a degree in neuroscience with a friend who's a neuropsychologist and to whom I also introduced to such work. It took time to move from his skeptical position but I'm very persuasive! That and the evidence is (I think) pretty compelling though not entirely conclusive of what's going on.

I came on to skeptiko because of Alex's very fair-minded treatment of work in the area of consciousness and because I think this is a very important area.

I'm generally nice and polite, occasionally a bit antagonistic but never - I hope - mean-spirited. Though a couple of posts on this forum have nearly driven me to that!

Some might recognise me from Dean Radin's blog.

Merry Christmas all!