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Post by biglin on Mar 8, 2011 10:07:07 GMT -5
Well, it already HAS been. (And I've hardly started posting) The trouble is, you can no more persuade someone who insists on keeping their eyes and ears tightly shut in case they might be forced to revise their prejudices than you can persuade someone who is allergic to a particular food to change their diet to include it. Basically you guys have made up your own minds on dogmatic first principles and no amount of evidence will make you change them because you prefer to believe your own certainties. I've read a lot of what you gave links for, and I've asked you to pick out the most convincing bits and let us know what they are. I'll suspend disbelief at least until I've seen what it is that makes you believe so sincerely. But the trouble is, you guys have made up your own minds and nothing will make you change them or revise your prejudices. It's hard to have a sensible discussion with someone who would rather swallow any old paranormal story than give it some thought first. Summary: You so desperately want to believe. No, Talisman, that's not it. In the first place I've had personal experience so I'm not just talking out of thin air. Secondly, you say I've got a desperate wish to believe. I don't think that (even if that was true which I'm not so sure about) it makes any difference. If a thing is true it doesn't matter whether or not you want it to be true. I might just as well say that you have a desperate desire NOT to believe.
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Post by sadie on Mar 8, 2011 11:33:32 GMT -5
Oh.......sometimes it is good for you to take a chance. Don't say that, sadie. You may be giving some people ideas. Regards. Prashna Oh.....sometimes it is fun to walk on the wild side...........it's no fun to always draw inside the lines.
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Post by talisman on Mar 8, 2011 13:51:01 GMT -5
I might just as well say that you have a desperate desire NOT to believe. But you'd be wrong. I do have a desperate desire to be convinced.
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Post by biglin on Mar 8, 2011 19:38:19 GMT -5
I might just as well say that you have a desperate desire NOT to believe. But you'd be wrong. I do have a desperate desire to be convinced. You give completely the opposite impression, Talisman.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on Mar 8, 2011 19:47:55 GMT -5
In a sense An Experiment with Time by JW Dunne is the authoritative speculation here, if that's not a contradiction in terms. The arrow of time always has been a pain for physicists because nothing accounts for it except common sense. The past does not exist but could be said that it has existed, so should be fixed, while the future has not been brought into being, so does not exist. Since the present is a continuously moving awareness, there is a sense that it cannot be said to exist either, or that only consciousness truly exists. The physics problems arise by treating time as a dimension as if it did exist. Following Einstein with time as variable and only known by the fact of change, it might make better logic to consider that change is fundamental but time has no real existence outside of awareness of change. I don't go for Dunne's infinite regression of meta-times, though Stephen Hawking uses something similar to show how the universe can both have a beginning (in time) and not have a beginning (in meta-time), and we've come a long way since Dunne was writing and it's tempting to match his meta-time dimensions (which may not be infinite) with the 11 dimensions required of some String Theory. I have a different idea, which I think lies at the heart of a lot of 'religious' teaching, but is reduced (or inverted) by simple religious believers to imply divine omniscience. It works that every 'awareness' interprets its own 'world'. The Universe as accepted at any moment is the aggregate of interpretations most probable for the awareness doing the interpreting. On its fringes are the UFO and ghost encounters that can't be dismissed as pure delusion, however improbably they may seem. We may think that there is one certain universe but physics tells us otherwise, that nothing is certain until observed. It is possible then that extremes of observation conflict and the classic test whereby we replace Schroedinger's Cat with film (because as somebody pointed out, The Cat knows!), the universe splits with each awareness behaving like a wave faced with a junction: it travels both paths, not one or the other (reminiscent of the particle-wave duality!) However, the 'I' in each alternate world is unaware of the other. It may also be that some 'I's do not split and hive off down one or the other potential - we can never know. When conscious reaction to the world around us is turned off, possibly those 'I's can communicate their different experiences; possibly too, any 'I' can foresee a possible future of strong significance to it. Again, there are some observations that seem to show results ahead of the test, both in physics and with human subjects. So far, these are in microtime only made possible in the last few years by actually accounting for how long signals take to propagate over a few feet of connection and beating them to it. they are closely linked to entanglement experiments with the objection from some quarters, that to be absolutely certain that variations in the measuring system itself may not always be erring in the same direction needs something like a 30,000 km separation - amounting to 0·1 second of light transmission. Yet it could be that traumatic experiences follow pure physics free from the arrow time, yet at the same time are not 100% certain because they are only one of a number of outcomes. The future may be in one sense fixed, but at the same time, it is many, not one future that will happen, and maybe for observers when it does not happen, they are on a (for them) higher probability, while others (including other versions of themselves) do experience the prediction because they are on a branch where that is the higher probability. This is where the religious aspect falls apart until modern concepts of many probability worlds. Mystics and philosophers may have tried to say that the many futures are still less than infinite and could in theory be known to Awareness unrestricted to a physical interpretation of any of them. Instead of liberating readers to understand that it implies many potential futures, each of its own 'universe', believers in the here-&-now rock-solid this world interpret it to mean that the single future they cannot question must be pre-known, thus pre-ordained. There is not necessarily one single future at all, but an aggregate of futures that right down from the quantum level up vary slightly from observer to observer, just witness interpretations do, because the Ultimate Observer is the mentality that makes sense of it. Taken that way, physics right back to the Copenhagen Convention rejects the Enlightenment Newtonian concept of an independent reality for traditional mysticism of whatever may be 'really real', you cannot know it, and for you in this world, only your own subjective experience defines 'reality' for you
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Post by mouse on Mar 9, 2011 3:50:49 GMT -5
Don't say that, sadie. You may be giving some people ideas. Regards. Prashna Oh.....sometimes it is fun to walk on the wild side...........it's no fun to always draw inside the lines. 100% correct....the wildside is sssssssooooo unpredictable ;D
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Post by talisman on Mar 9, 2011 5:28:09 GMT -5
But you'd be wrong. I do have a desperate desire to be convinced. You give completely the opposite impression, Talisman. To you, perhaps, but that'll be because you're not being very convincing. Anyone else here been convinced yet? Any sceptical types on the brink of believing now? Go on — give us your favourite piece of proof and/or evidence in the paranormal department.
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Post by peterf on Mar 9, 2011 6:08:15 GMT -5
You give completely the opposite impression, Talisman. To you, perhaps, but that'll be because you're not being very convincing. Anyone else here been convinced yet? Any sceptical types on the brink of believing now? Go on — give us your favourite piece of proof and/or evidence in the paranormal department. Its no good Talisman. You and I know that many, perhaps even most, people believe in whatever they wish. It's called blind faith. Reason, logic, evidence? Just not their cup of tea.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2011 13:27:44 GMT -5
You give completely the opposite impression, Talisman. To you, perhaps, but that'll be because you're not being very convincing. Anyone else here been convinced yet? Any sceptical types on the brink of believing now? Go on — give us your favourite piece of proof and/or evidence in the paranormal department. There is, Talisman a simple enough test. Let's assume that LL is truly psychic and can predict the future through dreams. Start off with a kitty of £10,000 say, made up half by LL and the rest by a consortium. LL is provided with a subscription to the Investor's chronicle and the FT for the period. She is free to read the FT and IC all day every day and dream as much as she likes. But based on the dreams she has to invest the total amount within the first 3 weeks. At the end of the 10 weeks the entire portfolio is liquidated. The consortium gets their £5,000 back with due interest (@ BoE base rate + a suitable margin). LL takes the rest. That would be conclusive proof as well as a money spinner for LL.Don't you think? Regards. Prashna ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ P.S. On second thoughts, LL does not even need a consortium. Even in these days, there may be some credit card operators who would provide £5,000 credit interest-free for 3 months or longer.
The dreams can really make a fortune for her, then.
What a chance! ;D ;D ;D
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Post by fretslider on Mar 9, 2011 13:36:35 GMT -5
To you, perhaps, but that'll be because you're not being very convincing. Anyone else here been convinced yet? Any sceptical types on the brink of believing now? Go on — give us your favourite piece of proof and/or evidence in the paranormal department. There is, Talisman a simple enough test. Let's assume that LL is truly psychic and can predict the future through dreams. Start off with a kitty of £10,000 say, made up half by LL and the rest by a consortium. LL is provided with a subscription to the Investor's chronicle and the FT for the period. She is free to read the FT and IC all day every day and dream as much as she likes. But based on the dreams she has to invest the total amount within the first 3 weeks. At the end of the 10 weeks the entire portfolio is liquidated. The consortium gets their £5,000 back with due interest (@ BoE base rate + a suitable margin). LL takes the rest. That would be conclusive proof as well as a money spinner for LL.Don't you think? Regards. Prashna I once dreamed that I won the lottery. I didn't actually win the lottery, that's proof enough for me
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Post by talisman on Mar 9, 2011 13:54:15 GMT -5
To you, perhaps, but that'll be because you're not being very convincing. Anyone else here been convinced yet? Any sceptical types on the brink of believing now? Go on — give us your favourite piece of proof and/or evidence in the paranormal department. There is, Talisman a simple enough test. Let's assume that LL is truly psychic and can predict the future through dreams. Start off with a kitty of £10,000 say, made up half by LL and the rest by a consortium. LL is provided with a subscription to the Investor's chronicle and the FT for the period. She is free to read the FT and IC all day every day and dream as much as she likes. But based on the dreams she has to invest the total amount within the first 3 weeks. At the end of the 10 weeks the entire portfolio is liquidated. The consortium gets their £5,000 back with due interest (@ BoE base rate + a suitable margin). LL takes the rest. That would be conclusive proof as well as a money spinner for LL.Don't you think? Regards. Prashna ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ P.S. On second thoughts, LL does not even need a consortium. Even in these days, there may be some credit card operators who would provide £5,000 credit interest-free for 3 months or longer.
The dreams can really make a fortune for her, then.
What a chance! ;D ;D ;D I might agree, Prashna, but only if the events to be predicted were of an unmanipulable nature. Obviously not the stock market, horse racing, or cricket, then. I know — let the Psychic choose the events, which must be beyond their control, and if we agree to them, it's a deal. Must be precise. One obvious advantage is that they can do the predicting thing at their leisure before they suggest them, just as long as the events are still in the future and checkable. One thing, though. Did Lin or Mike ever claim they had psychic powers?
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Post by maggie on Mar 9, 2011 14:05:30 GMT -5
I must confess that if I ever dreamed the lottery results before the draw, I would just have to put a quid on. Years ago, a cousin of mine who did the lottery every week, didn't have any spare cash to do it one Saturday, even though only a £1. Her young child (aged about 7) filled in the ticket anyway, but she didn't put it on. If she had, she would have won with 5 numbers.
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Post by pipsqueak on Mar 9, 2011 14:12:17 GMT -5
I must confess that if I ever dreamed the lottery results before the draw, I would just have to put a quid on. Years ago, a cousin of mine who did the lottery every week, didn't have any spare cash to do it one Saturday, even though only a £1. Her young child (aged about 7) filled in the ticket anyway, but she didn't put it on. If she had, she would have won with 5 numbers. ouch !!!
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Post by sadie on Mar 9, 2011 14:24:46 GMT -5
I once dreamed that I won the lottery. I didn't actually win the lottery, that's proof enough for me I dreamed I could hear my alarm clock going off and that I needed to wake up......and I did...........so is that proof?
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Post by maggie on Mar 9, 2011 14:28:03 GMT -5
After my mum died, I woke suddenly after hearing her calling my name very loudly. That was weird.
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