sixthcolumn [2016-10-07 09:36:07 +0000 UTC]

Hick.

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Chickun030 [2015-09-22 22:25:37 +0000 UTC]

oiio

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BadlyDrawnTurtle [2015-06-16 01:31:21 +0000 UTC]

“How about when the word was coined? … are all mammals fish?”
This is a long rant that doesn't come close to addressing the text you quote directly beforehand, and it doesn't appear to have a coherent point to it. This is what's known as a non sequitur.

“That's how rational laws like the law of noncontradiction work.”
If you are trying to apply the law of non-contradiction to the coining of words to show that words don't have multiple meanings, you are clearly insane.

“Your argument is ad hoc, the ad populum fallacy.  I know dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.  Coiners are prescriptive however; they make up a word, enforce its meaning, and share both.  Everything that exists has bearing on reality.”
First, the ad populum fallacy is not the same as an ad hoc argument. Remotely.
If you are claiming that me saying words are decided by popular use is an ad populum fallacy, you have proven yourself to stupid to argue with. If you are claiming that pointing to consensus of experts in relevant fields is an ad populum fallacy, you are similarly to stupid to argue with.
A coiner of a word (by the way, there isn't always a clear coiner, in fact that's only rarely the case) puts out an idea. That idea is then either adopted by society or ignored. If it is adopted by society, the word becomes part of the language, at which point the meaning is defined by popular use. The coiner doesn't have any special rights to the word.
Fine, if you want to be exact, everything that exists has a bearing on reality. But words do not govern how reality works. Having a word for “soul” doesn't make a soul exist any more than having a word for “Zeus” makes Zeus exist.

“I don't know whether the McDougall experiment was attempted by other parties and if so their conditions.  I don't know if anyone has published on the sealed seed mass gain settup.  Victor Zammit's web book says the late 1800s spiritualists* ran repeated successful controlled mediumship experiments.”
Making me search for names and guess at what you are referring to is hardly a good way to reference, but at least you gave more names now.
McDougall? You mean Duncan MacDougall? I remember finding his research mentioned a while back. It was so badly done that you could hardly call it an experiment. A sample size of six, no consistency in either protocols or measurements… if you consider this evidence for anything, you don't understand the scientific method. I recommend picking up a high-school science book.
After a few searches on Google, I have to admit that I can't even find what you are referring to with the “sealed seed mass gain”. I assume it has something to do with seeds supposedly violating the conservation of mass as they sprout, but without a source, you have nothing.
As for Zammit, a single man claiming that people did something over a hundred years ago is not even bad evidence. It's an unverified claim of evidence. James Randi says nobody has ever shown mediums to work. I don't put much stock in just sighting an impressive sounding name, but it is interesting to note that Randi has a million dollars in a fund ready for any medium who can prove, under scientific conditions, that they can actually do what they claim. No prominent mediums have ever even taken the challenge.

“Without the extracorporeal soul you must handwave consensual shared dreams to luck: google.com/search?q=%22shared+…. ”
And you give me a link to… a Google search. I had such hopes when I saw a link, but I can type words into Google quite fine, thank you. A Google search isn't a source of anything.
I don't need to hand-wave shared dreams. There is no good evidence that they happen. No, a bunch of people claiming it happened is not evidence. People also claim to have seen Elvis alive. (If you reply that you believe that, there's no hope for you.)

“When statistics are applied to ESP experiments like remote viewing or feeling the future there's a reported harmonic improvement over chance, like 1/4 instead of 1/5 or 1/3 instead of 1/4, each.”
Have you ever heard how 3/4ths of statistics are made up on the spot? Not sighting a source for an experiment is annoying, but not sighting a source for numbers is dishonest.

“There's a current debate on the validity of Dean Radin's work where one side says the results are mixed and the other side says the positive results are significant.”
There is a current debate in the realm of paranormalist circles. In scientific circles, he just gets harshly criticized. Your phrasing gives a false impression of how accepted his work is, and is therefore highly dishonest.

“How convincing something is is subjective however; none of these rates near the 95% or 19/20 confidence level for statistic modelling.  But these are average rates; I don't know how well the best performers do.”
You do realize that anything that doesn't get to the threshold of statistical significance is not a positive result, right? If it is below statistical significance, it isn't some sort of weaker proof. It isn't proof at all: it isn't statistically significant.

“*survival/afterlife resources:
www.cfpf.org.uk
www.ascsi.org”
Ah, resources that I can examine for credibility! Let's see, we have what appears to be a private blog (excellent sources, those. {sarcasm}) that claims to have a scientific outlook, but begins the home page with an admission (though indirect) that scientists, in general, disagree with him, phrased in a conspiracist tone.
Oh, look, it says “In 1874 Sir William Crookes discovered the spiritual part of the universe following repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions. He published the results of his experiments in The Quarterly Journal of Science.” That looks promising! Oh, wait, William Crookes owned that journal, and was the sole editor at the time of that publication. So not only does it not provide a source for the actual article, but it is a self-published article anyway. There was no peer-review, and there is no mention of people actually repeating his experiments, regardless of a claim that they could. It then mentions that “He was later made president of The Royal Society and awarded the Order of Merit.” but fails to mention that this was for other, more notable things, like significant early work on vacuum tubes, radiation, and spectroscopy. Much of the rest of the site involves anecdotes, and is overall rather short on actual proof. Clearly this source is not prominent, scientific, or honest. In other words, it is not a reliable source.
Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies, Inc. The “Inc” is important. It means this is not actually an academy, as it's name would have you believe, but a company. Pretending to be a scholarly institution when they aren't is not something that I would consider trustworthy. let's scroll down and look at the first thing on the front page. A testimony. Yeah, no. Testimonies aren't useful evidence. This is also clearly an unreliable source.

“Gosts and past lives as opposed to what?”
…As opposed to not ghosts and past lives. I'm not sure how that's unclear.

“The meanings of these words are commonly accepted; their properties are distinct from alternate explanations.”
Yes, the words exist. That does not mean that the actual phenomena exist. We can have words for things that don't exist. We write entire novels about things that don't exist.

“If information or motion comes from the unseen and incorporeal without devices, one understands it to come from a gost.”
If information or motion comes from the unseen, then it is not being transmitted by something visible. There are plenty of non-ghost things that aren't visible, like bacteria, radio waves, and really clean windows. Incorporeal is, indeed, a synonym for ghostly. If you could show that information or motion comes from something incorporeal, than yes, you can prove that either ghosts or similar phenomena exist. But that hasn't been done.

“I remember fewer than 10, maybe 8, items had nothing beside them.  When I saw the list in the documentary (can't recall if it was on "The UneXplained" or "Science of the Soul") there were 90-something items; this search says 102 items, Tucker could confirm 55, and the team could confirm 90: www.google.com/search?num=100&….”
Again with the utter lack of sources. Without the complete list, your attempt to use it as evidence for your position is pointless.

“Statistics is needed to define the quality of each claim, but does anyone know how to do that?”
Yes, scientists know how to do that. The people you keep sighting don't.

“Word associations aren't as clear cut as the set size in the birthday paradocs.  The only remedy I can suggest is to compare how well these reporters of past life memories perform with the general population where the latter is divided by age, interest, education, and social contact.  I expect they can't compare.”
Your belief that they would past a rigorous test is irrelevant to whether they would actually pass a rigorous test. If such tests haven't been done, you are standing on nothing.

“I never said anything about the supernatural; in my Quora answer on antitheism I defined natural.  ESP and OoBE are præternatural.”
Supernatural, Google definition, adjective: ‘manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin, such as ghosts.’
noun: ‘(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.’
I used the word first, using this definition. Your definition of natural on that page is neither clear nor relevant. Now praeternatural… I admit I am unfamiliar with that term. It appears that the definition of that word simply places it as a subset of supernatural, stuff that is “beyond nature”. Again, the word you use for it is rather irrelevant. Most people would say that ESP and OoBE are supernatural phenomena.

“Dr. Jim Tucker's work is in kids' reports: google.com/search?q=%22Dr.+Jim…. I'm not sure what he calls them; if you see his Rutherford interview he keeps scepticism about it and doesn't label the source of their information; that is he doesn't say the kids report past lives or reincarnation.”
You don't appear to understand what skepticism means (advocacy for a particular explanation is not skepticism), and again you get stuck on terms. Just because he refrains from using the actual word “reincarnation” doesn't mean anything if he is clearly talking about the concept that the word symbolizes.

“But what does he contrast the reports with?  What is his null hýpothesis?”
Why are you asking me? If he doesn't have a clear null hypothesis, that's his own problem.

“This dolt creatively injects his assertions to counter kids', but he doesn't name these kids or test his explanations: www.dailydot.com/opinion/ryan-….”
bringing up an article I didn't sight and saying it is wrong is almost certainly a fallacy of some sort, but I don't feel like looking up the particular name. A brief scan of the article sighted does show him naming actual kids and pointing out such things as one kid admitting that he made it up. It seems you are cherry-picking the article for specific quotes you don't like, but not even bothering to take them out of context like a good quote-miner would. I'm not going to read the article in full, but as a blind defense, he likely pointed out reasonable alternative explanations that weren't ruled out. He doesn't have to prove that his particular explanation is right, all that is needed is to show that there are things that haven't been ruled out, which makes an argument that any one explanation is true (such as past lives) hollow.

“The report quality is addressed at comesitaspell.weebly.com/reinc…. Some of the kids researched by Ian Stevenson, Tucker's mentor, had no access to TV or spent their life in remote villages.  Their families would not notice the reports were odd if they were already familiar with those details.”
Addressed in what sense? It is just a repetition of anecdotal claims. I'm not sure what the part about families of the reseacher's mentor's subjects is supposed to have to do with anything. Again you show a lack of paragraph-cohesion.

“Back to Stevenson: google.com/search?q=birthmarks….”
Again, Google isn't a source. This: www.sinor.ru/~che/birthmarks.h… would be a source. I presume this is what you were trying to point to. But a cursory look shows that it fails to address the point I made. It, in fact, admits that his method was almost entirely interviews after the fact. So the most plausible explanation is as follows: A family has a child who claims a bunch of details about a past life. They then hunt through the literally billions of people who have lived on this planet to find one who's life more-or-less fits with the description. Think of it this way: if the odds were a million to one that another person matches the description, then you will get a few thousand recently dead candidates that match the description. Probability does funny things when large numbers are involved.

“Your claim was not whether I provided scientific proof but whether scientific proof exists.”
I both claimed that no proof exists (which I think is a reasonable position to hold if both looking for it and talking to people like you who try to present such proofs has turned up nothing), and that you didn't provide any proof, which you haven't despite your attempts to do so.

“Besides, truth is the resultative of true, what is trusted, subjective and worse than sooth, the resultative of so, what exists.”
Yes, I already know that you are deluded into thinking that the origins of words have special importance. Again, it is utterly irrelevant.

“It doesn't matter what you believe; if you didn't do the research yourself on both sides you may not say what is so or not.”
So, if I don't attempt to prove something true, I can't assert that it is false? Is that what you mean by researching ‘both sides’? Because usually you only need to research the actual thing, and choosing a ‘side’ comes afterward, with your conclusion. And you're right, my beliefs don't change reality. Neither do yours. This is why I rely on the scientific method and reasoning to the greatest extent that I can. I can't conform reality to my beliefs, so I try to conform my beliefs to reality.
You are also right that not being an expert on a subject means I can't make deep claims about it. I can, however, point to the claims made by people who are experts in the subject. You are also trying to do that, so why you think I can't is beyond me.

“What is "good"?”
Conforming to a rigorous scientific approach in the case of experiments, and lacking holes in the case of logical statements.

“So ready descriptions of operations and special tools don't matter?”
That depends on how detailed the descriptions are and whether there was a rigorous protocol in place to be sure that the patients couldn't know about the tools or operations and couldn't reasonably guess them.

“The report where shoes were seen on a ledge?  Maybe they got lucky?”
Ah, that report. That was one of the ‘best cases’ that I looked into. There is literally nothing to it. It consists entirely of hearsay from a nurse who only started talking about it years after it supposedly happened.

Honestly, you are too stupid to argue with. I could reply to all of your points, but I know you're not going to understand, so it's a waste of time. I hope you're young, and you grow out of this. Otherwise, there's no hope for you.

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