Does anyone remember my post from August?:
This is a pretty good example of this, as even though I knew what it was, I still can't explain nor imagine the exact process that produces it. It happened a time or two since, but not as dramatically.
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Ghosts (Real or Bull)
- Thread starter manicmicky
- Start date
Does anyone remember my post from August?:
So please explain. BILLIONS of people have died over the millenia. Why is it that there aren't billions of such images all over the world? This place should be teeming with them, but it's not!
I won't argue that Selena wasn't a terrific performer but, c'mon. What makes HER so special that SHE gets to leave her mark like this, rather than any of the other billions who've died, including the millions and possibly billions who've died tragically and violently like she did.
Sorry, but being a fan of her doesn't automatically elevate her to a status beyond that of any other mortal who walked the earth, no matter how great a performer she was.
I agree. the question was asked if any had a paranormal experience and whether or not it was a "ghostly" image, I don't know. But I was just showing what I caught on film and explaining to some who she was-cause not everybody knew who she was.
I am not as overboard fan as I used to be, but I never said nor meant that just because I was a fan that I she was better than any other who died tragically. I am also a big John Lennon fan and I have never seen or captured his ghost. I don't even know if it was her ghost or not, it's just I found it weird and sort of spooky that's all.
that sounds pretty cool. my guess would be that you discovered in the most creepy way possible how "real" a "real image" can be.
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It's a spirited discussion -- call the Ghost Guard. Tomb-orrow we may have an answer. But the question haunts me, being a phan to mystery.
But ghosts do have some potential for fun. The best victim of a conveivable ghost prank is someone who desperately wants to be a real life ghost chaser (and witness). When I was 17, I conspired with two friends to convince a victim, 22, that we could conjure one specific ghost known to have haunted SoCal back in the day. Pink Lady was (is) her name. All it took was a realistic lady ghost painted on a window screen (without metal frame) and a dim flashlight shined through the screen at midnight (but not hitting anything else but the screen/her).
She changed his life for two years (till he found out eventually it had been a prank). At the time, his ghost chasing resume started with him peeing his pants.
But ghosts do have some potential for fun. The best victim of a conveivable ghost prank is someone who desperately wants to be a real life ghost chaser (and witness). When I was 17, I conspired with two friends to convince a victim, 22, that we could conjure one specific ghost known to have haunted SoCal back in the day. Pink Lady was (is) her name. All it took was a realistic lady ghost painted on a window screen (without metal frame) and a dim flashlight shined through the screen at midnight (but not hitting anything else but the screen/her).
She changed his life for two years (till he found out eventually it had been a prank). At the time, his ghost chasing resume started with him peeing his pants.
First, we've all jumped to a conclusion as soon as the OP asked about ghosts. What is a ghost? Someone said the spirit of a dead person. Is that the only definition?
Second, the world-wide evidence of unseen spirits points to the existence of something beyond the natural world.
Second, the world-wide evidence of unseen spirits points to the existence of something beyond the natural world.
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It was very much like that, only hugely cruder, depending on the angle of the sun producing his moving shadow on a bright white wall opposite my window, a camera obscura image of which was projected onto a dresser mirror which in turn reflected on the shiny surface of the aluminum foil in the window and back into the room.
Apparently all this had to be just right.
The result was a moving image of an indistinct man-shaped shadow appearing and crossing in the middle of the room for about five feet in the opposite direction he was moving.
It was a perfect example of so many "ghostly images" in fiction and popular "true" haint tales.
this sounds like a good general example of the scientific way of thinking.
a good scientist probably "suspects" that the world is round and that the sun will rise tomorrow, and will go with those assumptions only until they're proven wrong. the good scientist tries not to "believe" anything without proof, and even that only provisionally.
sticking with this way of thinking is a good way to filter ghosts, goblins, angels, devils, and other made-up bullcrap out of your brain.
No, the hypothesis of much "scientific spiritualism" of a hundred years ago was that "ghosts" were residuums of energy released in traumatic circumstances.
Much ghost fiction of the time centered around dispersing this energy
There are of course many logical objections to this hypothesis, particularly the recurring point that sites of horrific battlefield carnage are very peaceful, undisturbed places enjoyed by visitors and tourists. If we were to believe a single death in a house could cause a lasting haunting that made it unbearable for its tenants, we would have to assume that Gettysburg or Passchendaele would exude such miasmas of sheer horror that no man nor beast could come near them to this day.
That's not valid logic, as it's just as much a convincing argument for the basic credulity and self-delusion of humans, something for which I need no further evidence after reading for years of daft tone quests on TB which frequently violate every facet of reason or common sense.
This could equally "prove" that grief and loss lead to exceptional delusion.
Human psychology only proves itself, not its projected beliefs.
None of this "proves" ghosts don't exist, however.
So what would be your definition?
I'm yet to see any 'evidence' of 'unsen spirits' which can't be explained rationally. Any examples of what you think may point "to the existence of something beyond the natural world"?
ha!...I need no further evidence after reading for years of daft tone quests on TB which frequently violate every facet of reason or common sense.
so you're saying my tone doesn't change when i turn my cables around?
(my smartass way of agreeing with you
)
Nothing exists beyond the natural world. If it exists, it is perfectly natural.
Have you hung out with scientists, or observed them at work?
You've chosen a branch of science (medicine) that is fraught with issues, particularly: 1) It's hard to carry out ideal controlled studies due to ethics. We can't do to humans what we can do to electrons in the lab. 2) There's an immediacy of wanting to treat people who are suffering right now, rather than waiting decades for conclusive evidence. 3) Medicine and public policy are intertwined.
But if you consider the bulk of work that is carried out using the scientific method, most of it is pretty mundane, but also pretty solid.
I think Feynman estimated 90% of "scientific" research was bunk. I think that's conservative.
Most experimental research and/or the interpretation of its resulting data are flawed, even when the research is conducted in open good faith, which it usually isn't.
Doing pure, disinterested, valid scientific research is incredibly expensive in terms of time and money and resources.
The prime effort in research is therefore securing funding, and the source of clean disinterested funding is very limited.
When you see some news article that says, "scientists at UCLA have discovered..." people ignorantly assume that this research was done in an ivory tower funded by the university and by extension the taxpayers. It rarely is. It's almost always funded by a corporate third party with a deep financial interest in the outcome, and if your conclusions don't come out the way they want them to, you won't receive funding from them next time around. Find the "right" results and you'll see more money.
Find the right result and their publicists will see that "news" of your discovery will get in the media and you'll other career-enhancing benefits. Who funded the "study" will rarely be honestly revealed.
And that's the short explanation.
It's a system so full of corruption, conflict of interest and effective non-disclosure that it wouldn't be tolerated even in politics. Never mind the professional rivalries, nest-feathering, empire-building, intellectual dishonesties, insecurities and consuming ego of the scientists themselves before the bagman even arrives.
Scientific research -- which occasionally does produce scraps of wonderful advances in human knowledge -- is predominantly a system of prostitution.
A simple example -- I have tendinosis, a condition for which there's little medical treatment. A friend of mine suggested I take lots of gelatin. I said that as far as I knew, this wouldn't work due to the way the body supposedly deals with ingested scleroprotein, but he said, no, "research" had shown it worked to strengthen connective tissue and repair injuries to it.
Being curious, I eventually found the fairly obscure study from a fairly minor university. It was funded by (wait for it!) the parent corporation then owning Knox gelatin, who then saw much expensive general publicity for the results in popular sports medicine media. The impression was that there was more funding in publicizing the results than doing the research.
Does this mean that the results were necessarily false or deceptive? No, but it shows that the integrity of the research is hopelessly tainted.
This is the rule rather than the exception.
Another disgraceful example is the current public and professional advocacy of (immensely profitable) psychiatric drugs by those in the medical and academic research communities, each of whom are receiving money or other benefits from the companies making the drugs. Never mind that there is no clean research showing them to be safe or effective, or even good scientific evidence for the hypothesis upon which psychiatric drugs have accomplished their staggeringly profitable dominance in the treatment of mental illness. [vide Whitaker]
There are immense ethical problems in current scientific research.
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The former, yeah. They tend to be about as cynical as I am, though they try hard to get with the program and not think critically about the process.
How could you have omitted the staggering profits at stake and the tainted funding?
No matter how mundane, even significant research within so-called "pure science" is subject to deforming pressures, if nothing worse than wishful thinking, flawed protocol or misinterpretation of resulting data.
It's extraordinarily hard, unglamorous, tedious and stressful to do really clean science, and science has to be really clean to be valid at all. It takes tremendous attention, dedication and courage to do it -- never mind strenuous self-honesty. That was Feynman's point, and it should be obvious.
I think he actually meant "evidence of belief," so I gave him a pass on that.
Prolly shouldn't have.
