Endless back and forth things

[gabriel]

Peer review is held up as the gold standard of truth, when what mostly happens is the subject's referees are the handful of people who know what the hell the proposer is talking about and happen to agree with them.

[paqart]

Originally Posted by edragone

I know nothing about the state of UFO evidence and have little interest in the subject, but as a photographer and filmmaker - you would be amazed how many people don't know basic rules on focus and lenses, so photographs of anything rare and elusive turning out fuzzy doesn't surprise me, and I wouldn't use the fact to dismiss the stories around the photos out of hand - or use it as an easy excuse to count the photos as evidence.

I love taking photos, as can be seen on my site, but I have never been able to get a decent shot of something rare and elusive. For example, on a photography expedition to New Mexico, I had to stop my truck in the middle of a highway because of a huge elk standing in the middle of the road. I had my camera sitting right beside me in the passenger seat, but was so fascinated by the elk that I forgot about it at first. After looking at it and discussing the animal with my daughter for about a minute, I remembered the camera. I reached for it, the elk bolted, and I got a fuzzy shot of its tail on the left side of the frame.

AP

[Michael Larkin]

Originally Posted by sparky

Later experiment has a larger effect than an earlier : formative causation.
Earlier experiment has a larger effect than a later one : decline effect.
Experiment has no effect : skeptic conspiracy.

Heads i win, tails you lose.

By "formative causation" are you referring to Sheldrake's Morphic field theory? If so, I think you are comparing apples and pears. The decline effect relates to attempted replications of the results of studies, particularly if they are dependent on statistical analysis.

If you think about something like increased ease of crystallisation of new chemical compounds, the effect doesn't decline. We don't find after a time that the compound starts to become harder to crystallise again.

And some things do stay the same, like the probability of getting very close to 50% heads and 50% tails with a very long sample of fair-coin tosses.

The decline effect is most probably caused by biases of various kinds, not necessarily conscious. Wherever it does not occur, then it's more likely we have a genuine phenomenon, be that of consistency or unexpected (according to accepted paradigms) increase in frequency.

This does not mean that Sheldrake is any less subject to unwitting bias than anyone else. Bias can intrude anywhere, but if there is no demonstrable decline effect, that would indicate to me that it hasn't.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by edragone

I know nothing about the state of UFO evidence and have little interest in the subject, but as a photographer and filmmaker - you would be amazed how many people don't know basic rules on focus and lenses, so photographs of anything rare and elusive turning out fuzzy doesn't surprise me, and I wouldn't use the fact to dismiss the stories around the photos out of hand - or use it as an easy excuse to count the photos as evidence.

You don't need to know the basic rules these days. At least not to get a reasonably decent photo from a digital camera, including the one in your phone. You need to know that the flare is not an orb and the camera strap is not a ghost. And you need to know that the blurred insect is not an alien craft.

Sure, I'd expect a high percentage of alien craft photos to be crappy. But the point is that there are zero in-focus photos of alien craft. No one has managed to catch a break even after 60 years?

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by paqart

I had my camera sitting right beside me in the passenger seat, but was so fascinated by the elk that I forgot about it at first. After looking at it and discussing the animal with my daughter for about a minute, I remembered the camera. I reached for it, the elk bolted, and I got a fuzzy shot of its tail on the left side of the frame.

Yes, but you were not on an bigfoot expedition or a ghost hunt or a UFO investigation. If your intention is to find an elk and get a decent photo, you can do it. Yet no matter how intent all those UFO afficionados are, they cannot get a good photo. Nor has anyone by accident, as we would expect after decades of interest.

That's why I said that UFO never get anywhere. It appears that everyone is a complete hack no matter how interested and focused they are. This leads me to believe that there are no alien craft there.

~~ Paul

[David R]

UFOs seem to me in the same category as bigfoot and those elks mentioned. They aren't physical phenomena but somehow from a different dimension. But as far as i'm concerned Carl Sagan blew the lid off of UFO stuff with his book.

I once saw an alien creature in a hypnagogic state. That's about as much as i know about it and that isn't very persuading, even to me.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Hjortron

Yes, it happens all the time. The skeptics become proponents. Rarely, if ever, does the opposite happen. I was once a skeptic, as was probably every proponent here.

Not me, I've never been a skeptic. I've always known.

[fls]

Originally Posted by Hjortron

Yes, it happens all the time. The skeptics become proponents. Rarely, if ever, does the opposite happen. I was once a skeptic, as was probably every proponent here. It's pretty much the default if you grow up in the modern world.

This evolution roughly looks like this:

Religious -> Atheistic/materialistic/'skeptic' -> Can see the evidence of the paranormal for what it is

I have to agree with Paul. What you see is likely a sampling issue. Hang out with different people or on different forums and you'll see a different sequence.

Linda

[gabriel]

Personally I've never had any doubt about the existence of ghosts, but have never seen a convincing ghost photograph. This suggests that they are subjective, sometimes multi-person manifestations but do not exist independently. If they were objective entities surveillance cameras would be picking them up all the time. That they don't does not mean the thousands of detailed reports are untrue.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by gabriel

Personally I've never had any doubt about the existence of ghosts, but have never seen a convincing ghost photograph. This suggests that they are subjective, sometimes multi-person manifestations but do not exist independently. If they were objective entities surveillance cameras would be picking them up all the time. That they don't does not mean the thousands of detailed reports are untrue.

I doubt they're physical. To quote what I said on facebook yesterday (no comments and no likes!):

Just reading and almost finished the novel "Secret Vengeance" by F.Paul Wilson. One of the characters -- a 15 year old girl -- talks about how ridiculous it is that ghosts should look just the same as when they were alive and "why should it be *dressed*, for God's sake?" (emphasis as in original). Hence they don't exist.

I've heard skeptics express similar sentiments. Indeed the author attends TAM, a yearly meeting of "skeptics" -- or more accurately pop-skeptics -- "to celebrate science, "skepticism" and "critical thinking"" (quotes added).

But what impresses skeptics often leaves me totally unmoved. There are a number of explanations. Even assuming such apparitions are in an appropriate sense "ghosts", the actual perception of the apparition is perhaps a co-creation by the percipient and the deceased person. That which is seen might be a telepathic projection by the deceased person and the mind of the person seeing the apparition shapes and moulds it into a form which she can make sense of. Not too dissimilar from normal perception although in the case of an apparition I doubt there's anything physical out there (nothing which could be captured by a camera). Nevertheless the apparition might have an external origin even though not a physical one (the apparitions I'm talking about are something like crisis apparitions- apparitions found in hauntings might be of a very different type).