Comment by abritinthebay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abritinthebay | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> 1. Everything is purely physical. When you die, you are worm food, the end. Many people 'believe' this, given no proof of either way.

Other than it's the only thing we have evidence for. You know... that. It's quite rational to 'believe' something when all evidence we have points to it. The reverse is not true.

Which brings me to...

> The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver.

Ok, so test this. If it exists and has an effect it should be measurable. Guess what's good at measuring stuff? Science. So go get that Nobel or something - help design a test and study for it!

OoBE, lucid dreams, and NDE's all have very normal non "energy" explanations when you dive into anything more than a superficial level (and they are fascinating! It's a really cool area of science!)

> The second offers much more

Yes, empty promises with no proof are generally considered to offer plenty but unless you can show me actual evidence then it's just more snake oil.

>> The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver.

> Ok, so test this.

I heartily agree.

I'm approaching this from my own perspectives in working with the occult. For me, I personally know its true, however this stuff must absolutely be not only measurable, but quantifiable and comparable. That's the basis of science. That's the problem with this area, given that you are the only one in the study.

I've highlighted a few areas that seem interesting and possible to detect. I'm working with the basis that when psychics talk of energy, I'm assuming something within Strong/Weak/gravity/EM with regards to energy. EM is probably the easiest to construct sensors, given that Strong/Weak are extremely short range forces, and gravity sensors are... expensive.

The first area I've determined that shouldn't be as hard, is to construct a way to see an aura in a camera system. It's rather easy to train oneself to see it, occult speaking. But there are some significant difficulties in even this. (One difficulty: Some can see the aura of a jpeg of a person, but when the image is cropped significantly, the aura disappears. What's going on?)

I'm keeping an open mind about this, but also trying to incorporate science in quantifiable ways.

> I heartily agree.

Yay \o/ common ground!

> That's the problem with this area, given that you are the only one in the study.

If it's only true to you and not to others then it's a perceptual thing. Therefore subjective. This would tend to indicate it's not actually a real effect but a perceived one.

> The first area I've determined that shouldn't be as hard, is to construct a way to see an aura in a camera system.

Well firstly you're going to have to:

  - define what an aura actually is.
  - prove auras even might exist.
  - prove auras are measurable.
  - find a system that can detect this form of energy.

and.. well... that's been the case for decades. No-one seems to have got much past step 1 because it all seems to fall apart then.

> and.. well... that's been the case for decades. No-one seems to have got much past step 1 because it all seems to fall apart then.

Agreed. And while there's nothing wrong with it (hey, it happens with actual science too!), what's infuriating is people claiming "let's be open-minded, if only we approached this in a scientific way, if only scientists (or skeptics, or whatever) gave us a chance!" as if the discussion was new and people had just started trying to do this. Pseudo-science has been going on for ages and they had their chance, with no success. It's not a new discussion, it's an old discussion occasionally re-framed in new terms.

The absence of evidence is not a proof, in either direction.

If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing.

If you flip a coin, and it lands out of sight, someone may choose to believe it is heads, and you may choose to believe it is tails. Both are choosing to believe something without evidence.

But the burden of proof lies on the side making the extraordinary claim. In the case of flipping coins, there is no extraordinary claim, but there sure is in the case of psychic energy or whatnot.

That's BS. Whether a claim is extraordinary or not is opinion.

Not all opinions are born equal. This is similar to the dodgy assertion of "but it's just a theory!" -- especially when it's a theory for which there is reasonable evidence. There is no reasonable evidence for psychic energy, hence it's an extraordinary claim.

Oh, but you're the arbiter of the equality of opinions and theories?

And I thought I was arrogant.

Of course I'm not the arbiter, but there is a consensus (based on what works and is repeatable and doesn't require simply trusting based on faith) of what consists of reasonable evidence for a phenomenon. There are some gray areas, but psychic energy falls decidedly in the "extraordinary claims with a lack of evidence" camp.

I think "extraordinary" should be replaced with not common knowledge, "earth is flat" is always repeated in some way regarding assumptions on reality, think quantum mechanics.

> The absence of evidence is not a proof, in either direction.

Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. It's key to the criterion of falsifiability.

> If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing.

Also incorrect - the former is taking an unjustifiable position whereas the other is justifiable (and, in most cases, the null position).

Your coin example suggests you don't really grok this topic if you think it applies at all.

> Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. It's key to the criterion of falsifiability.

Ok, you got me. If you expect to find something and don't, it means your expectations were wrong, the experiment was bad, whatever. It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence.

The coin example should clarify your apparent misreading of "If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing."

Rephrasing: the statement "not believe it" means to "believe it to be false." It's a colloquialism. Both stances are choosing to believe something without evidence.

> It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence.

It proves something, though by itself it doesn't actually disprove the phenomenon. Maybe your experiment was flawed; maybe you have to adjust an hypothesis. But when it becomes a combination of many flawed experiments, lack of actual experiments, a field dominated by charlatans who don't know and don't practice the scientific method, it starts to indicate something stronger about the alleged phenomenon itself, doesn't it?

By the way, people do not "believe" a flipped coin landed head or tails in the same way they believe in psychic energy. The equivocation of colloquial and precise terms isn't helpful here. If we're going to pretend we're considering psychic energy as an actual phenomenon, let's stick to precise terms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com