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Comment by mnky9800n | Hacker News Reader

I feel like if he's seeing people float around because of any reason at all then he could pull out his phone and make a video

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I must not have made my point very well. People have experiences which aren't material, physical experiences. Is it all in their heads? Most of it. Does that mean it's not real? No, there are things that exist beyond regular everyday predictable reality.

If you’re suggesting that this guy is suffering from some kind of psychological, psychiatric, or neurological condition, then wouldn’t it still be the case that no one is floating around a room? That is, the problem would be with the observer, not the observed.

I'm not suggesting that the observer has a problem or condition. I'm saying that reality isn't just physical, and that we make a mistake when we expect everything to always be physically testable, even if to the observer it might seem at times to involve physical effects.

It’s not fundamentally untestable or unobservable though at the level of brain activity, which we could in theory measure with the right technology. It’s still physical unless you’re a proponent of dualism, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given current neuroscience or philosophy.

That's not quite what I'm getting at. Hallucinations are meaningful if you consider the narrative of life to be more important than the mechanism in which it plays out.

Further to that, the act of testing or observation isn't itself without its effects.

That’s what I would do, but I am not a trained exorcism priest.

Let’s say this is an actual real phenomenon for sake of the discussion. Demonic possession and successful exorcisms would underscore the reality of the faith. The exorcist has a duty to the mission that they are given—the have a job to do recording viral video may not be part of the job description. The Catholic Church may not want evidence of this supernatural moment recorded or being supernatural, perhaps it can’t be for some reason. Maybe just the disclosure of it is enough by a priest to motivate some folks who would be motivated by such a thing to join the faith.

If it’s not real, well that last sentence above serves the same purpose, doesn’t it?

And besides…would you trust any video, audio, or photographic evidence of anything in 2023? I know I wouldn’t. It would be picked apart, ridiculed, and drive more people away from the faith than drive to it.

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