[Jocken300]

King Tiger posted:

Lack of an explation for something is not proof of a paranormal event. It merely means that those who have experienced it so far lack a proper understanding of the event. I canguarantee you that if you were to get a physics expert to evaluate the swinging door or vibrating bed (two of the most common "paranormal experiences"), a real, scientific explanation would be discovered for these happenings.

Adding speculation to the end of your post is irrelevant and unnecessary if you yourself don't even believe it.

I agree, the lack of an explanation of something isn't proof of a paranormal event, nor have I stated that it is. I never claimed to actually believe in ghosts, all I said was that I am unsure where I stand on the matter due to these things that have happened to me. As I can't explain them, and others have experienced similar things, that's when you start speculating.

[DainBramageStudios]

Pierrewithahat posted:

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EVIDENCE WORKS?



I done 2 out of 3 years of a forensics science course, I literally fucking eat, breath and shit evidence and trust me, just because people believe in it, doesn't make it proof.

I'm not sure if you're incapable of understanding what is being said in this thread so I'll strip it to the bare bones and make it as crystal clear as possible.

Faith in the existence of something, does not lend credence to the existence of the idea. This is because the existence of ghosts, faeries and poltergeists etc is not a subjective factor, something can either exist or not, there is no leeway, your belief doesn't make it real or does it become evidence of it's existence.

in the abstract:

If P(H|E) > P(H|E Λ ¬E) then E is evidence for H.

Edited:

Jocken300 posted:

I agree, the lack of an explanation of something isn't proof of a paranormal event, nor have I stated that it is. I never claimed to actually believe in ghosts, all I said was that I am unsure where I stand on the matter due to these things that have happened to me. As I can't explain them, and others have experienced similar things, that's when you start speculating.

the problem is that absence of evidence for ghosts is evidence for the absence for ghosts

if the hypothesis "ghosts exist" leads you to predict X, then you don't observe X to happen, that's a blow for your "ghosts exist" hypothesis

[Pierrewithahat]

Jocken300 posted:

I'm not assuming that it's invisible dead people or creatures from other dimensions. I was simply wildly speculating at the end of my post of what many people experience as dead people could in reality be something completely different and unknown to us.

Considering that the door didn't just merely open and close itself, but that it rather swung open completely, and slammed completely shut, and then opened itself again, it's pretty safe to assume that it was no ordinary draft. Adding onto that, it first opened, and only when I was about to get off the couch did it close. After that it started opening and closing itself at a very fast speed constantly, with no pauses.

I've also experienced other things as I said in my post. Last year I could barely sleep for weeks, because whenever I tried to go to bed, my bed would start shaking a lot, as if someone grabbed a hold of it and shook it. My dad could even hear it shaking from downstairs, and would ask me what was going on in my room.

Again, I'm not directly assuming that this is the result of ghosts (as in dead people or whatever), however I don't have any other explanation for it.

Question.

If you were in the basement, and the door started going all 13 ghosts on your ass, how the hell did you get out of the house?

Edited:

DainBramageStudios posted:

in the abstract:

If P(H|E) > P(H|E Λ ¬E) then E is evidence for H.

Interdasting...

I literally have no idea how to interpret that man, sorry it's been years since I've done any physics.

[pyschomc]

Well
I've been studying the paranormal for a while.
It's pretty hard to find empirical evidence for something that isn't physical.

[Jocken300]

Pierrewithahat posted:

Question.

If you were in the basement, and the door started going all 13 ghosts on your ass, how the hell did you get out of the house?

Edited:



Interdasting...

I literally have no idea how to interpret that man, sorry it's been years since I've done any physics.

The door was next to the stairs leading upstairs. The door didn't actually lead out at all, it lead into an old storage room that we barely used.

[Pierrewithahat]

pyschomc posted:

Well
I've been studying the paranormal for a while.
It's pretty hard to find empirical evidence for something that isn't physical.

How exactly does one study bullshit?

It's up to you what you study, but surely there's better shit you could be studying.

[Boba_Fett]

I personally believe in ghosts because of a strange incident when I was younger.

Independently, my brother, my sister and I described a woman in our house whom we believed was real. We collectively said that she had blonde curly hair and a green dress.

Almost two years later, when I started attending pre-school, my mother met the previous owner of the house whom she hadn't seen since the late 1980s. Turns out we had described his deceased mother-in-law who had died in the house a few years before he sold the house. She had been buried in her wedding dress, which was green.

[Jookia]

pyschomc posted:

It's pretty hard to find empirical evidence for something that isn't physical.

Math isn't physical.

[deaded38]

King Tiger posted:

Well I don't care if you're going to ignore logic and ask for proof of a negative. If you can only come up with a single piece of evidence based on eyewitness accounts, that does not mean you should accept it as true. What it means is that the concept is probably false since you can't find any real evidence. It isn't proof of ghosts existing.

How are eyewitness accounts not evidence? I'm pretty sure all of you are just disregarding them because you want to be right, and quite frankly, can't handle a form of evidence that isn't an online article. I'm not saying eyewitnesses are the best type of evidence - I'm just saying they are a form of evidence whether you want to believe it or not.

Edited:

Pierrewithahat posted:

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EVIDENCE WORKS?

Good question.

DO YOU?

[Lankist]

deaded38 posted:

How are eyewitness accounts not evidence? I'm pretty sure all of you are just disregarding them because you want to be right, and quite frankly, can't handle a form of evidence that isn't an online article. I'm not saying eyewitnesses are the best type of evidence - I'm just saying they are a form of evidence whether you want to believe it or not.

No they aren't. No scientific or rational organization accepts eyewitness testimony as a reliable form of evidence.

[King Tiger]

deaded38 posted:

How are eyewitness accounts not evidence? I'm pretty sure all of you are just disregarding them because you want to be right, and quite frankly, can't handle a form of evidence that isn't an online article. I'm not saying eyewitnesses are the best type of evidence - I'm just saying they are a form of evidence whether you want to believe it or not.

Millions of people have seen witches and dragons in the past. This is evidence of their existence.

[Sobotnik]

King Tiger posted:

Millions of people have seen witches and dragons in the past. This is evidence of their existence.

I want to believe.

[Lilyo]

Evidence is not evidence unless it can be presented as such to an outside party. Eyewitness accounts cannot be presented as real evidence as they are just personal testimonies and can't be provided as evidence to someone who hasn't also experienced the event. They do not directly add proof to the existence of ghost, they simply demonstrate a unifying feature in human psychology. Just because a large number of people believe something doesn't make that thing true or add any truth to the matter.

'No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.' -David Hume

[King Tiger]

Lilyo posted:

'No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.' -David Hume

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[deaded38]

Lankist posted:

No they aren't. No scientific or rational organization accepts eyewitness testimony as a reliable form of evidence.

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Yes, eyewitnesses are evidence. You're just not accepting it as such because it's not solid evidence. I never said it was. Evidence is used to support a claim, and as far as any smart person is concerned, eyewitnesses support claims regardless of if eyewitnesses are the most reliable type of evidence or not.

[Lankist]

deaded38 posted:

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Can you name any others?

[King Tiger]

deaded38 posted:

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Yes, eyewitnesses are evidence. You're just not accepting it as such because it's not solid evidence. I never said it was. Evidence is used to support a claim, and as far as any smart person is concerned, eyewitnesses support claims regardless of if eyewitnesses are the most reliable type of evidence or not.

Even if you are correct, why are you wasting your time arguing for evidence that even you admit is not solid?

[danharibo]

deaded38 posted:

How are eyewitness accounts not evidence? I'm pretty sure all of you are just disregarding them because you want to be right, and quite frankly, can't handle a form of evidence that isn't an online article. I'm not saying eyewitnesses are the best type of evidence - I'm just saying they are a form of evidence whether you want to believe it or not.

Edited:

Good question.

DO YOU?

If science cannot detect the presence of Ghosts, Spirits or Souls then they cannot have an observable effect on the physical world, including your brain.

Point me to one scientific paper showing a means of detecting and interacting with any of those and successfully determining that they exist, then I'll gladly accept that ghosts or what not exist.

Until then, they are just another folk tale.

[deaded38]

King Tiger posted:

Even if you are correct, why are you wasting your time arguing for evidence that even you admit is not solid?

Because it's still evidence regardless of it being solid or not.

Edited:

danharibo posted:

If science cannot detect the presence of Ghosts, Spirits or Souls then they cannot have an observable effect on the physical world, including your brain.

Point me to one scientific paper showing a means of detecting and interacting with any of those and successfully determining that they exist, then I'll gladly accept that ghosts or what not exist.

Until then, they are just another folk tale.

Which leads me to my previous statement that science doesn't always make something true or false.

[Megafan]

deaded38 posted:

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Yes, eyewitnesses are evidence. You're just not accepting it as such because it's not solid evidence. I never said it was. Evidence is used to support a claim, and as far as any smart person is concerned, eyewitnesses support claims regardless of if eyewitnesses are the most reliable type of evidence or not.

I'll say this right now, that eyewitnesses are not considered evidence. It's not up for debate.

[King Tiger]

deaded38 posted:

Which leads me to my previous statement that science doesn't always make something true or false.

What the hell? Please explain this.

[Kopimi]

deaded38 posted:

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Yes, eyewitnesses are evidence. You're just not accepting it as such because it's not solid evidence. I never said it was. Evidence is used to support a claim, and as far as any smart person is concerned, eyewitnesses support claims regardless of if eyewitnesses are the most reliable type of evidence or not.

"even if the evidence is total bullshit its still evidence and therefore my argument has value!!"

[danharibo]

deaded38 posted:

Which leads me to my previous statement that science doesn't always make something true or false.

What are you even talking about.

[Pierrewithahat]

deaded38 posted:

How are eyewitness accounts not evidence? I'm pretty sure all of you are just disregarding them because you want to be right, and quite frankly, can't handle a form of evidence that isn't an online article. I'm not saying eyewitnesses are the best type of evidence - I'm just saying they are a form of evidence whether you want to believe it or not.

Edited:



Good question.

DO YOU?

Yes, and my two years of forensic sciences studies ensured that, we are told to take eye witness accounts with a pinch of salt for the simple reason that the human mind is absolutely shit at working out what happened if it even slightly out of the ordinary, without tools.

Going into a court room and saying you believe the defendant is innocent doesn't mean a fucking thing unless you are an expert in the relevant field.

For example, if you found some blood at a crime scene and didn't test it and said "this proves the defendant was at the crime scene" it would mean absolutely fuck all, where as a lab tech who actually tested the blood could say with absolute certainty that it was indeed the victims blood, that person would be believed cause he actually knows his shit.

Dude seriously, leave this debate you clearly have no idea what the criteria for evidence is.

Fuck if I convinced 100 people that I was Jesus, would that mean I'm Jesus?

[Lankist]

danharibo posted:

What are you even talking about.

metaphysical bullshit.

[Pierrewithahat]

deaded38 posted:

And I'm assuming the only rational organizations are ones of science, in your mind.

Yes, eyewitnesses are evidence. You're just not accepting it as such because it's not solid evidence. I never said it was. Evidence is used to support a claim, and as far as any smart person is concerned, eyewitnesses support claims regardless of if eyewitnesses are the most reliable type of evidence or not.

You're embarassing yourself dude, eye witness statements are not taken as evidence unless they can be corroborated.

[Lankist]

Pierrewithahat posted:

You're embarassing yourself dude, eye witness statements are not taken as evidence unless they can be corroborated.

Not even then, dude.

Eye-witness testimony is completely irrelevant. If there is no real evidence, then they're useless. If there is, then you don't need them.

[Pierrewithahat]

Yeah that's what I'm saying, the eye witness testimony gives you avenues of investigation but the evidence itself takes precedence.

[DainBramageStudios]

There is a distinction between rational evidence and legal evidence. Eyewitness evidence is still rational evidence, it's just extremely weak.

[Pierrewithahat]

It shouldn't be used as evidence scientifically because the brain can have multiple interpretations of many situations, it doesn't deal with data empirically when it is involved in the situation.

Besides eye witness statements are almost always wrong, there have been a fair few studies that have shown just how flimsy human memory is and how easily they can be altered.

Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory.4 Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. In the initial part of the experiment, subjects also viewed a slide showing a car accident. Some subjects were later asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "hit" each other, others were asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "smashed" into each other. Those subjects questioned using the word "smashed" were more likely to report having seen broken glass in the original slide. The introduction of false cues altered participants’ memories.

http://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue...er&tversky.htm

If eye witness testimony is allowed then I worry about the credibility of the data used in such studies.

[Lankist]

DainBramageStudios posted:

There is a distinction between rational evidence and legal evidence. Eyewitness evidence is still rational evidence, it's just extremely weak.

No it seriously isn't. Not even weak. Inadmissible.

[DainBramageStudios]

Lankist posted:

No it seriously isn't. Not even weak. Inadmissible.

i'm not talking about courts

if there was zero correspondence between that which is spoken and that which is real, the complex evolutionary adaption known as "speech" would never have developed.

[deaded38]

Megafan posted:

I'll say this right now, that eyewitnesses are not considered evidence. It's not up for debate.

I guess that I can say online articles are just as unreliable. After all, it's just a bunch of people saying things!

Edited:

DainBramageStudios posted:

There is a distinction between rational evidence and legal evidence. Eyewitness evidence is still rational evidence, it's just extremely weak.

This. Yes, eyewitnesses aren't exactly the most reliable, but they're still evidence nonetheless.

[DainBramageStudios]

deaded38 posted:

This. Yes, eyewitnesses aren't exactly the most reliable, but they're still evidence nonetheless.

Though as Lankist correctly notes, not in courts of law.

[deaded38]

Pierrewithahat posted:

Dude seriously, leave this debate you clearly have no idea what the criteria for evidence is.

I won't leave this debate until I am provided with better evidence than the eyewitnesses, which you should have since clearly ghosts aren't real.

[Levithan]

deaded38 posted:

I won't leave this debate until I am provided with better evidence than the eyewitnesses, which you should have since clearly ghosts aren't real.

It's up to YOU to provide evidence for magical flying shades that are immortal and that exist in every living being ever.

[Chrille]

You can't disprove them anyway, if they are supernatural. Supernatural beings are infallible, which are in turn unfalsifiable. If something is unfalsifiable it's bullshit.

[King Tiger]

deaded38 posted:

I won't leave this debate until I am provided with better evidence than the eyewitnesses, which you should have since clearly ghosts aren't real.

I saw a ghost once but it wasn't a ghost it was a warlock. My testimony is evidence of warlocks.

[Lankist]

DainBramageStudios posted:

i'm not talking about courts

if there was zero correspondence between that which is spoken and that which is real, the complex evolutionary adaption known as "speech" would never have developed.

Yeah, I know.

Eye-witness testimony is completely inadmissible in SCIENCE.

Edited:

Find ONE reputable scientific theory which is supported by eye-witness testimony.

Edited:

Hell, not even GRAVITY, as a theory, recognizes eye-witness testimony. It is supported by objective, reproducible, EMPIRICAL evidence. The mathematical proofs which explained previously unobserved phenomenon (black holes) were later observed out here in reality. Not once did any scientist say "I saw X happen so it's true." (And before you say it, Netwon's Apple is about as true as Franklin's kite or Washington's cherry tree.)

Edited:

deaded38 posted:

I won't leave this debate until I am provided with better evidence than the eyewitnesses, which you should have since clearly ghosts aren't real.

I won't leave this discussion until I am provided better evidence for the nonexistence of Russel's Teapot.

[Pierrewithahat]

deaded38 posted:

I won't leave this debate until I am provided with better evidence than the eyewitnesses, which you should have since clearly ghosts aren't real.

Here's the kicker, you made the positive comment that ghosts exist first, the burden of proof lies with you since you are trying to prove the existence.