Are dogs and cats the same?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by paqart

Here is where we get to the problem of your level of experience. I don't need to go the same trouble you do, because I've already verified the material for myself. Because I was a first hand witness/participant, I know deception isn't an issue, and was able to focus on other factors. After checking out the possibilities, I'm satisfied. You cannot accept any of this on faith just because I say so, and that is why I think that for any person to overcome their skepticism, they must see psi in their own lives.

I agree that this is probably the first step.

No matter how much documentation is provided, if it supports a claim that is impossible by a skeptical standard, then the skeptic is forced to assume deception, even in the total absence of proof of it. A negative cannot be proven, so at this point no amount of evidence, regardless of quality, will accomplish the job. This is why I think it is pointless to debate with skeptics so long as the goal is to persuade them. If persuasion is not an issue, then it is no longer a debate. Then, it is sharing information, and that is where I think skeptics and believers can have a meaningful dialogue.

No, the skeptic is not forced to assume deception. Other possibilities are self-deception, confirmation bias, lack of checking probabilities, and even insanity. For some reason, people always think the skeptics are accusing them of fraud.

Fighting it out in a "hard-hitting" debate sounds nice, but when the rules are rigged, it isn't much of a debate, even if it looks like one.

What sort of rule rigging do you think goes on?

~~ Paul

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

No, the skeptic is not forced to assume deception. Other possibilities are self-deception, confirmation bias, lack of checking probabilities, and even insanity. For some reason, people always think the skeptics are accusing them of fraud.

Self-deception counts as deception, and the rest are ruled out by the hypothetical of having solid documentary evidence. If the paperwork is solid, of whatever kind it may be, and there is no possible way to attack it from any angle, then all that is left is deception. Ah, but now I see where you're coming from. This may be the way it looks to me, but to someone else, if he doesn't think deception is an issue, then he will find a way to make an issue of something else. It's like a closed bag of fluid. You can squeeze it into any number of shapes, but the volume remains the same. Here, if the constraint is that "psi is impossible", the justification will be found, if not in one area, then another.

What sort of rule rigging do you think goes on?

~~ Paul

Getting back to the Wiseman thread, he did an experiment with Sheldrake that supported Sheldrake's findings. So he changed the criteria, and by that criteria, there was nothing unusual to report. In a debate here, it seems like a fixed contest to me when a skeptic cannot go beyond his own experience. This may be beyond his control, so there isn't anything dishonest about it, but it does mean that any effort to persuade is a waste of time. This is why my position for the last decade or more has been to answer questions but not to make an effort to persuade. This doesn't stop me from initiating a conversation or defending my knowledge on these subjects, but persuasion is, I think, not something that can be done.

A friend of mine once blurted out that he and his girlfriend had become Christian and that I should too. I told him that if G-d was so great, he could find me on his own. That was twenty-five years ago (and I haven't seen him since, I beat it out of there as fast as I could go.) It is still my attitude. I couldn't teach you how to swim by debating with you about it any more than this kind of information can be persuasive when transmitted by words or documents. It's the wrong way to do it, that's all.

AP

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by paqart

Self-deception counts as deception, and the rest are ruled out by the hypothetical of having solid documentary evidence. If the paperwork is solid, of whatever kind it may be, and there is no possible way to attack it from any angle, then all that is left is deception. Ah, but now I see where you're coming from. This may be the way it looks to me, but to someone else, if he doesn't think deception is an issue, then he will find a way to make an issue of something else. It's like a closed bag of fluid. You can squeeze it into any number of shapes, but the volume remains the same. Here, if the constraint is that "psi is impossible", the justification will be found, if not in one area, then another.

That is not the constraint, but apparently you think that if I don't believe you, I must be dismissing something on principle.

Getting back to the Wiseman thread, he did an experiment with Sheldrake that supported Sheldrake's findings. So he changed the criteria, and by that criteria, there was nothing unusual to report. In a debate here, it seems like a fixed contest to me when a skeptic cannot go beyond his own experience. This may be beyond his control, so there isn't anything dishonest about it, but it does mean that any effort to persuade is a waste of time.

I agree that any effort to persuade is largely a waste of time, but that is not the purpose of these conversations.

Really, just have a conversation without adding all this baggage to it.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by paqart

Personally, I think I could have wiped the floor as a skeptic with anyone,

Then you're wrong. You certainly wouldn't have done so with me. I've made around 15,000 posts on the jref and I've come across just about all the arguments. Even the most intelligent skeptics have wholly unjustified metaphysical suppositions regarding the nature of reality.

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

Then you're wrong. You certainly wouldn't have done so with me. I've made around 15,000 posts on the jref and I've come across just about all the arguments. Even the most intelligent skeptics have wholly unjustified metaphysical suppositions regarding the nature of reality.

I'm not sure if you've misunderstood me, but just to check, I'll clarify. I meant that at one time I was just as abusive a skeptic as anyone else (not that anyone here is abusive) and was just as able to come up with all of the anti-arguments I've seen here and elsewhere. My own personal experience shot those down, but it isn't like I have forgotten them or am so dim that skeptical questions don't occur to me. As a believer, I'm pretty skeptical. This can be very annoying at times. When I say I believe in G-d, it's true, but at times it's like it comes through gritted teeth. I know it's true, so I'll say so, but we're not talking about an experience that is ecstatic, at least not while I'm awake.

The same is slightly less true now about psi, but not completely. I know what I know, and that puts me at odds with a lot of beliefs held by a lot of people. I'd rather possess this knowledge than not, but the skeptical side of me has been humiliated in defeat, and that sometimes makes me groan when I find myself wading into one of these conversations.

I haven't discussed the pk incidents yet, but they are the kind of thing that it makes me blush to repeat because I know how unbelievable they sound, and yet I lived through them and I'm not the only witness, so I put my brave face on and describe them anyway. It is an interesting way to experience life, to say the least.

AP

[larry4444]

The same is slightly less true now about psi, but not completely. I know what I know, and that puts me at odds with a lot of beliefs held by a lot of people. I'd rather possess this knowledge than not, but the skeptical side of me has been humiliated in defeat, and that sometimes makes me groan when I find myself wading into one of these conversations.

AP[/QUOTE]
It's interesting that you have gone through a transition or transformation from being what I assume to be a "hard nosed skeptic" to a "believer" as it were. Was there a time when you would have argued in the vein of the more skeptical proponents at this site?
When you say the skeptical side of you has been humiliated in defeat, does that mean you went through a kind of identity shift (ego death)? I'm curious about the psychological process of people heavily identified with one position that become disillusioned for one reason or another with their belief or as in your case, have experinces that are compelling enough to "defeat" the skeptical view.

[paqart]

It's interesting that you have gone through a transition or transformation from being what I assume to be a "hard nosed skeptic" to a "believer" as it were. Was there a time when you would have argued in the vein of the more skeptical proponents at this site?
When you say the skeptical side of you has been humiliated in defeat, does that mean you went through a kind of identity shift (ego death)? I'm curious about the psychological process of people heavily identified with one position that become disillusioned for one reason or another with their belief or as in your case, have experinces that are compelling enough to "defeat" the skeptical view.

The arguments I formerly used against psi included every argument type I've seen on this site, the JREF site, and a few novel arguments of my own. My attitude was a bit like the Amazing Randi with an extra heaping of scorn. Thinking about it now, it's hard to reconcile with my personality. I am reflexively polite and always have been, except for one thing: in this subject area, I was so sure of myself and so insensitive, that I had no qualms about mounting withering criticism of pro-psi or pro-religious positions.

I probably had my first OOBE when I was about seven or eight years old, followed closely by more, one of which I managed to verify on the day it happened. I thought it was interesting enough to mention to my school friends, but as an amazing coincidence or trick of memory. When, by the age of about twelve I had been given the nickname of "Lucky" and, for related reasons, "Moneybags", because of a weird propensity for getting the rolls I wanted in backgammon and Yahtzee (on top of strange "luck" in other areas also), I chalked it up to an unusual, but explainable random intersection of chance rolls and my desires. My friends, I would not have hesitated to point out, were superstitious, unintelligent, and illogical. When parts of my comic collection were stolen by burglars, I instantly knew who had done it (and was proven right), but this and other incidents like it, were just logical deduction based on available facts. If I'd looked more closely, I may have discovered there were fewer facts than I thought.

When I ran into psi-belief combined with religion, I was very antagonistic, especially if it was a stranger. They were, I thought, as helpless as a frog on a dissection table, but not worth the effort to dissect. Better to flush them down the toilet and be done with the exercise. If pressed, I would attempt to illuminate their rudimentary consciousness by explaining why "G-d is a hopeful fantasy, invented by frightened, superstitious people, for the purpose of providing hope of continuation of consciousness and as a rather poor explanation for some observations of social and moral ills." The Bible, I would say "Is the most successful work of science fiction ever made, a lie from front to back, packed with 'miracles' that are totally impossible and only believable to extremely weak-minded people who are willing to accept domination of their thoughts by someone else, even if long dead." The words "idiots" and "morons" came to mind quickly in these situations, and just as quickly were assigned to anyone displaying the slightest inclination to believe in these things.

I had a couple friends who were religious. One was Paul, a Mormon, and another was a Christian. In their behavior, I noticed a profound level of hypocrisy. They transparently lived as though they were the heathens they were so horrified by, but then wore their assumed cloak of righteousness as if theirs by right, regardless of their own performance of duty. Neither was particularly strong in school, while I was always the number one student at any school I attended (with a brief exception in eighth grade, when my best friend kept beating me by a point or two in math.) I didn't attend just any school either, I went to some of the best magnet schools in California, like Harker/Academy and Lynbrook High School. I liked Science so much that I did seven years of course work in one semester, when I was enrolled in an independent study science program. I subscribed to every science journal I could get my hands on, and read them all the way through more than once. I did experiments of my own devising whenever I could. I had, in other words, an investment in the pro-science/anti-psi position.

Then I predicted a very long string of rolls in a backgammon game (the count is lost to my thirteen year-old self, who didn't write it down) and, though finding it interesting, explained it as an unusual coincidence. Then I dreamed of Porgy. Again, unusual coincidence. Then I dreamed of my future wife when I was 17 (my first and only date) and actually met her at 19. Again, my memory must have been playing tricks on me, she couldn't really be the same. Then a dream of being mugged in Amsterdam was played out only two weeks later (only mugging in my life, hopefully it stays that way). Again, coincidence. After that, a plane crash.

When I was ten or eleven, I had a very weird experience that, although quite fascinating, was so weird that I didn't dare describe it to anyone at the time. I was embarrassed by it to such a degree that it became a dark secret. I don't even mention it in my book for the same reason, and only rarely have mentioned it to friends today. And now that I've built up the mystery, here is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen: At the time, I was attending a summer camp in the Santa Cruz mountains, just outside of Silicon Valley, where I lived.

It was a Christian camp, a fact I didn't like, but I had to live with because otherwise my mother couldn't have afforded the fee. We were charity cases, and it was the only way to give us the experience of a camp, so this is how it was done. They read to the kids from the Bible every night, which I thought was stupid and insulting, so I ignored that bit as much as possible, and ridiculed the others whenever opportunity permitted. On one night, we were camped out in a big clearing. I woke up in the creek about a hundred yards away. I don't know how I got there (probably sleep-walked), just that that is my first experience of consciousness after going to sleep.

I was totally soaked in cold creek water, and, as one might imagine, vividly awake. As I hauled myself out of the creek, with my eyes on the camp I intended rejoining, I saw what looked like hundreds of fairy creatures on the far end of the clearing, walking around and doing things to the trees and plants. I assumed this was a trick of vision, caused by the light, and that they were more likely a bunch of boy scouts or other kids hiking in the woods. But when I checked, I saw that it was a full moon, and there was plenty of light. I was sure they had to be kids of some description though, so I walked back to my camp, keeping my eyes on these creatures as I walked.

Instead of resolving themselves into the forms I expected, the closer I got, the more distinct their strangeness became. They didn't look exactly like what would be found in a book of fairy creatures, but they were very similar. They weren't hiking anywhere, but occupied themselves with some kind of activity related to the vegetation in the area. I watched them continuously for about fifteen minutes, all the while trying to figure out which trick of the imagination was being played on me, and with such success. Then, shivering, I decided that they had to be a bunch of kids, whether they looked like it or not, and I had to change my clothes. And that was that.

Much later, I was in the habit of describing my dreams to my girlfriend (later to be my wife), at the rate of about 5 a year, so when these things happened, she had a habit of pointing them out to me, a habit I didn't appreciate any more than the fact she was Christian. I decided that her religious superstitions forced her to interpret dreams as supernatural, at least sometimes, and reminded her that I didn't want to listen to such ill-advised supernatural religious mumbo-jumbo. If she had those impressions, as long as she kept them to herself, I didn't care, but otherwise, it might be time to reconsider our relationship.

Then, in the same month, I dreamed of some winning lottery numbers (not the full list needed to win, but enough to be intriguing) and the Ramstein airshow disaster. With that, the final straw had been laid upon the proverbial camel's back, and I decided to find out more.

As for your question of "ego death", at first it sounded strange to me, but after writing all this down, yes, it isn't a bad description of what happened. Eventually I realized that I had been wrong all along, and was ashamed at how badly I'd treated certain people when I was younger, and extremely mollified that I could have been so wrong about something that I actually had direct experience of. Of all people, one would have expected me to have understood this much earlier, but it didn't happen this way. I realized, in other words, that I had been unreasonably prejudiced on this subject, to a degree that resembled racism strongly.

AP

[larry4444]

Paqart

What an amazing journey! Thanks for the story. It sheds some light on how some of the skeptics on this site always find some way to discredit any research claim and if unable - resort to changing the standard.

I think that any view of the world that becomes an ideology can create a rigid ego identity which directs ones perception towards anthing that supports it and away from anything that threatens it.
I would imagine you are able to empathize somewhat with the skeptics on this site and maybe also understand what it might take to consider an alternate world view.
It's interesting how you used the term racism to descibe your fromer attitude. I've encountered similar sentiments at this site coming from both sides. It appear to be the human condition to form tribal guilds around our beliefs and see anyone who believes differently as less than.

[paqart]

Originally Posted by larry4444

Paqart

What an amazing journey! Thanks for the story. It sheds some light on how some of the skeptics on this site always find some way to discredit any research claim and if unable - resort to changing the standard.

I think that any view of the world that becomes an ideology can create a rigid ego identity which directs ones perception towards anthing that supports it and away from anything that threatens it.
I would imagine you are able to empathize somewhat with the skeptics on this site and maybe also understand what it might take to consider an alternate world view.
It's interesting how you used the term racism to descibe your fromer attitude. I've encountered similar sentiments at this site coming from both sides. It appear to be the human condition to form tribal guilds around our beliefs and see anyone who believes differently as less than.

Empathisizing with skeptics is possibly the one thing I find to be more frustrating about these encounters than anything else. I know what they are thinking, but to convey how that can exist in the same mind as one that supports the opposing position is very difficult. So far, I'm not sure I've ever succeeded.

AP

[David Bailey]

Paqart,

Wow - and all I had was a probably psychic cat (plus Rupert Sheldrake), some skeptics that weren't being honest, and increasing doubts about a physical basis for consciousness!

I wonder what you think the big picture is that integrates all that.

David