Truth, Belief and Necropostism

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by ItzaHexGor, Feb 18, 2011.

Truth, Belief and Necropostism

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by ItzaHexGor, Feb 18, 2011.

  1. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    Between a somewhat half-hearted return to the forums, stumbling across an article in an old scientific magazine, and an old but heavily spirited discussion previously held here many a year ago, I was inclined to somewhat raise the topic again. While the old conversation was focused on Bigfoot and the paranormal, and to avoid practically performing the mother of all necroposts, I thought I'd just type up the article and talk about that.

    Relax though, it's a worthy, and entertaining, read.

    [QUOTE="Mike Archer" - Newton Science Magazine]

    Believing is seeing?

    - - -​

    I saw a Tasmanian devil in Western Australia. Never mind they have been extinct on the mainland of Australia for at least 400 years - I saw, with complete certainty, a Tasmanian devil waddle into the road and into the glare of my headlights.

    I screeched to a halt 10 metres away, breathless with excitement and madly trying to decide what to do. Realising no one would believe me if I didn't bring it back, I floored the accelerator. But as the car closed in, I looked on in horror as the devil that would make me famous became a small, white-spotted pig.

    If I hadn't put my foot down at that moment, I would have been convinced to this day that Tasmanian devils lurked in Western Australia - and that the eyes don't lie.

    Millions of years spent using our eyes to warn of impending danger have taught us to trust sight as the most reliable measure of reality.

    But as our understanding of 'seeing' grows, we are learning that sight is not absolutely infallible - up to 10 per cent of the population claim to have seen a ghost, or some other apparition completely invisible to others.

    Nets of neurons in the brain firing without visual stimulation, like the twitch of a muscle, can superimpose images of things that aren't there on otherwise ordinary scenes. Worse, our brain appears to be programmed to fill in missing bits of things only partly seen. This process, called paraeidolia (other mind), enables the brain to complete the shapes of animals formed by clouds or the face of someone we in fact only glimpsed in the dark.

    So, next time you find yourself listening to someone offer an account of 'sighting' a yeti, the Loch Ness monster or a Tasmanian tiger, and claiming to have "seen it with my own eyes", will you be accepting of the evidence or wanting maybe to 'see' something a little more concrete?

    - - -​

    Mike Archer is a palaeontologist, Director of the Australian Museum and Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of New South Wales.[/QUOTE]

    Just thought it would be worth bringing up, really. And also thought it would be interesting if those who were a part of the original discussion happened to still be here. Other than that, this's probably just served as my most shameless act of staircase wit to date.
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2011
  2. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    Ooh, I remember that discussion. Even I made text-walls in there.


    starting off with a comment on the article: using ten percent of the populace having seen a ghost as apparent proof that eyesight is not reliable because of your own experience with a 'tasmanian devilpig' is not very solid reasoning.
     
  3. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    It isn't in itself, but it's a fairly readable magazine, so you can't expect it to go into too much detail. And personal experience isn't his only evidence, nor is it really anything other than a way of broaching the subject. What he's getting at is the concept of pareidolia, and that because this is the way our brains work, perhaps we shouldn't take what we see as absolute fact.
     
  4. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    I agree that pareidolia is a valid explanation for any number of occurences

    That is however also where the problem lies with the use of this argument in any discussion; you can just dismiss anything as pareidolia without having to bring up any evidence other than 'you are human, ergo you are sometimes mistaken when you claim you saw something'. I mean, I could claim the three percent of the people who ever saw proof of people from Belgium were suffering from pareidolia, with exactly the same arguments as this person uses to dismiss supernatural sightings as pareidolia.

    I must add however that my point is NOT that pareidolia does not exist. My point is that it is impossible to retroactively measure the amount of people that suffered from this at any point based on the fact that they saw an occurence.
     
  5. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    Personally, I didn't get that from the article at all. Rereading it, it really seemed to be presented as two separate points, one being the fact that up to ten per cent of the population claims to have seen a ghost, and the other being that the brain is programmed to make sense out of nonsensical information.

    Also I'm not sure if I should clarify here that pareidolia isn't a condition or disorder, so Mike Archer isn't trying to 'diagnose' ten per cent of the population of 'suffering' from it. It's purely just a term for how our brains try to make sense from nonsense stimulus. For example, instead of just seeing a random assortment of objects or shadows, you'll interpret it as something specific. For example, the face on Mars.
     
  6. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    While I am aware of the fact that pareidolia is not a disorder, but 'merely' the way the human mind works, my grasp of english is not clarify it within the paragraph I wrote.


    Also, usually, when two points appear in the same text, they are linked together. Why else would you put them in the same text? I mean, just look at the text
    Again, I am not claiming that this phenomenon does not exist, I am merely pointing out that it is futile to use it as an argument against the validity of ghost sightings, since the same arguments could also be used to dismiss sightings of Belgians, with very little changes.

    The altered text (altered under the parody exception in international copyright law, with no intention of commercial use) makes the same leap of logic as the original text, only now it is very apparent because it is something that we all generally accept as true. Of course, many of these Belgian sightings could be explained as tricks of the mind, but is that a valid argument against their existence?
     
  7. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    I'd say yes, if there wasn't any physical proof of Belgians. It's the physical proof that's the clincher. We can physically study Belgian people themselves, we have Belgian clothes, Belgian architecture, Belgian foods, even Belgium. If there were only sightings of Belgians, and nothing else to prove that they actually exist, then yes, they most certainly could just be tricks of the mind, or misinterpretations of our senses.

    The thing with ghosts, or yetis, or anything supernatural is that there isn't anything physical to go by. It's all vague sightings or odd noises, and anything found is completely insubstantial or inconclusive. That's why we shouldn't just trust what we see. Our mind can make us see things that aren't there. Physical evidence can't do that.
     
  8. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    It always confuses me that yetis get lobbed in with the supernatural. They're pretty much normal animals, except for their elusiveness, nothing magical about it.

    Again, I don't have a problem with assuming that sightings can be explained by tricks of the mind. I have a problem that that automatically is the explanation for all the sightings, without actually looking at any of them.

    And if I really wanted to become obnoxious, I'd point out that you perceived all this physical evidence with your own frail human senses, therefore, it could just be dismissed under the line of reasoning from the text.
     
  9. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    Counting yeti's as normal animals is like counting griffins as being normal animals. They might not have anything strictly magical about them, but I'd still say they fall into the same category, because they are both beyond nature.

    Personally I'd say that the main point against anything supernatural isn't that it could all be tricks of the eye, but the lack of physical evidence. I can understand you not being happy with just slapping a huge "PAREIDOLIA" label over every case, but there's not exactly any evidence suggesting otherwise. If it's more of a statistics thing though, and because such a large number of people have said to have seen a ghost at least one of them must be true, that's not really the case either. I'd say pretty much one hundred per cent of people living today would have tried to pray to a god at some time in their life, but that doesn't prove that one must exist.

    And I hope you're not trying to suggest that our senses are so fallible that we can't trust anything we've physically observed. Pareidolia refers to the misinterpretation of random stimulus. While the phenomenon can obviously still occur in the lab while scientific tests are underway, it would be more along the lines of seeing a smiley face in the DNA chromatograms than anything else.
     
  10. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    It's not what I'm trying to suggest no, but it is what stapling anything pareidolia could eventually lead to. I'm pretty much suggesting the opposite of that.

    The lack of physical evidence is a much better point than 'I was mistaken once, and ten percent of the people claim they saw ghosts'. Again, I am pointing out a logical fallacy, rather than arguing for the existence of ghosts, yetis, zombies, space-penguins, aliens or Belgians.
     
  11. EatMeReturns

    EatMeReturns Happy Mapper Moderator

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    If this is the entire article, perhaps an examination of the article itself is in order?

    The article is short. The article is friendly. The article starts with a dramatization of a story. It does not read the way a persuasive, argument-presenting essay would read. It seems to really only serve the purpose of informing the reader of paraeidolia in an entertaining way. I doubt Mr. Archer was attempting to disprove or prove points, only to get readers thinking about their senses-especially their vision.

    drie, I don't thank many people would read this article and immediately cite paraeidolia every chance they get. The readers of a science magazine are more intelligent than that. Archer is not stapling paraeidolia to everything. Again, it is only to incite some higher-level thinking in a science community.

    Itza, in what way is a yeti beyond nature?
     
  12. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    Because they aren't a part of nature. There are a few different definitions of 'nature', but even in the broadest sense of simply applying to everything in the physical world, yetis aren't a part of that. In the same way that, I believe, griffins are supernatural, even though they don't possess any magical or other-worldly powers, they aren't a part of nature. They're supernatural.

    I do agree with your examination of the article, and yes, it is the entire article.
     
  13. EatMeReturns

    EatMeReturns Happy Mapper Moderator

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    What about a yeti makes it not a part of nature?
     
  14. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    Its nonexistence.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to their existence. If some form of conclusive evidence was found tomorrow, I'd obviously change my mind. It's just that given the information we have at the moment, I'd say it's quite foolish to believe it is real. There's nothing wrong with believing it could be real, there's just no reason to believe it is.
     
  15. EatMeReturns

    EatMeReturns Happy Mapper Moderator

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    I don't see why one must side with it exists or it doesn't exist. What's wrong with leaving it at "it could exist?" This way, your mind is open to the possibility, but you are unbiased in drawing conclusions regarding any events relating to it. Personally, I am in no position to state one way or the other, and therefore it is simply an unknown to me.
     
  16. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    One doesn't have to take a side. That's exactly what I said. There's nothing wrong with believing it could be real, there's just no reason to believe it actually is real, because nothing conclusive has ever been found.
     
  17. EatMeReturns

    EatMeReturns Happy Mapper Moderator

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    The rest of your response is in deference to this statement. Literally, I read your post as "I don't believe it exists until proven true."
     
  18. ijffdrie

    ijffdrie Lord of Spam

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    There is a reason there is still a difference in terms between supernatural creatures and cryptids.
    The difference between the two is whether our view of the laws of nature is wrong or right, and research in the former often carries a far bigger stigma than research in the latter.
     
  19. ItzaHexGor

    ItzaHexGor Active Member

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    That's because I honestly don't believe it exists and won't until it's proven to be true. As I said, there's nothing wrong with believing it could be real. In other words, I don't have a problem if people think it could be real. I personally don't see the point in that, but I don't have a problem with people who do.

    And I know there are many different definitions of 'supernatural'. What I was referring to was what I said, which is why I most often lob yetis and ghosts in together under the same category. Both of their existences are unconfirmed and as such I hold them to be things that are beyond nature. If that's ever proven otherwise, I'll change my mind, but until then, that's the way I see things.
     
  20. EatMeReturns

    EatMeReturns Happy Mapper Moderator

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    Yes, I understand you don't take issue to people believe in it. I was asking why take a stance at all, which you clearly have done. I personally don't see the point in people thinking it is not real.