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Comment by kefka | Hacker News Reader

What about cases where young children recount experiences from what seems to be a previous life? Even though the only evidence are memories, yet in the cases they are recorded there have been some confirmed as true.

Or what about children who talk of ghosts and deceased relatives: are they fabricated?

There are things we have no clue about, mainly pertaining to whatever this consciousness and mind is. And our science is too early to be able to adequately describe them, so we dismiss it as "unscientific".

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Just as with adults when billions of children with vivid imaginations keep making things up, a few of them are bound to stumble upon the truth by coincidence.

Perhaps, with someone who is trying to forecast the future, some people are going to get it right.

But what about 3-5 year olds who accurately say they are a person from a previous life, and go into details that only the person would remember? Are they just making "lucky guesses"? How many correct guesses does it take before its something more?

How many correct guesses does it take before its something more?

No amount of lucky guesses can result in a proof, due to things like confirmation bias. The plural of anecdote is not data, as they say.

People underestimate the intelligence, imagination, and most importantly memory of 3-5 year olds. The presumption that these things must be true because children are too young to have made them up or heard them elsewhere is unsupportable. It's entirely possible that the child overheard others talking about all of the things they are describing, and/or that those who want to believe will mentally fill in the gaps[0].

One would have to rule out all potential contamination from people, media, etc., provide a testable, repeatable experiment, and provide a real mechanism behind the effect, before any scientific credibility could be given to ideas of supernatural revelations to children.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

I'm completely in agreement with you. There are very real experiences that people go through, that have similar outcomes including permanent changes in perception but we lack the common scientific concepts and language to discuss them seriously within that particular domain of knowledge.

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