Can you have out of body experiences?

kingius · Mar 11, 2014

There are big million dollar prizes for people who demonstrate paranormal abilities in supervised controlled conditions

These are good points and should be troubling for mediums and psychics and charlatons. What this point of view doesn't include though are all of the times when psychics made predictions that were right, often occuring in dreams and prophecies and so on. It's really cherry picking the data. What it also doesn't take into account is that these kind of abilities - like precognition - come at random. Many ordinary people have had dreams that contain elements that come true on the following day. But that must be written off as mere coincidence because to do otherwise breaks the materialist world view that there is nothing else out there.

However this line of reasoning holds no water to materialists who have already made their minds up without looking at all of the evidence in the first place. Essentially, if a theory sounds reasonable and makes sense, why look? What could be found? This is how they think. It's like when Einstein tried to disprove quantum theory with classical physics, Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'. There can't really be two particles that can affect each other at any distance can there? That would be... paranormal... spooky... it can't be real...

Olgar Shiverstone · Mar 11, 2014

kingius said:
These are good points and should be troubling for mediums and psychics and charlatons. What this point of view doesn't include though are all of the times when psychics made predictions that were right, often occuring in dreams and prophecies and so on. It's really cherry picking the data.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Kramodlog · Mar 11, 2014

Olgar Shiverstone said:
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Even if it lost its needles?

Ragnar_Lodbrok · Mar 11, 2014

kingius said:
What this point of view doesn't include though are all of the times when psychics made predictions that were right, often occuring in dreams and prophecies and so on.

This has a variety of problems. Under controlled conditions, "psychic predictions" have a rate of accuracy about identical to chance, indicating that it's less a "gift" than a guess. Outside of controlled conditions, psychics, mediums, oracles, and the like use a variety of techniques to look accurate, such as vague predictions, cold-reading, and gathering information to make an educated guess. After that, the person who got the prediction tends to employ confirmation bias in determining whether it was accurate.

Arduin's · Mar 11, 2014

I've had 2 in my life that were definitely real. No idea how it happened or what it is other than to know that the explanation is beyond our current scientific knowledge to understand.

Umbran · Mar 12, 2014

kingius said:
In other words: Don't look for yourself, trust us, because only we know the truth...

Nope. "Not an innate talent" does not mean "don't look for yourself."

It means, "if you want to get to the truth, you need to learn how to do analysis," There's a ton of universities that are more than willing to help you learn. If you don't like universities, you can just get the books and learn.

But, if you're not willing to go through the effort of doing it right, no, they won't listen to you. 'Cause your "data" won't be what you think it is.

What society needs is people to engage their critical thinking and not be selective about it. That means critically engaging with science and not accepting it as being blind dogma.

That blade cuts both ways. You have to be willing to engage in critical thinking too. And accepting data *without* the controls that basic science would put on it is not being terribly critical. If the effect is there, it can be seen under proper controlled conditions, so there's no reason to not use basic scientific methods.

It is fine to have an open mind... just no so open that geese wander in and poop all over the place.

Silverblade The Ench · Mar 12, 2014

Carl Sargent...hm?
"Skeptics" are extremists, just as bad as any extreme (note spelling, I do NOT refer to genuine, normal "scepticism" which is quite rational)

there are two kinds of such "out of the body"
one is of the imagination, I also used to imagine images and flash forward faster and faster through them as "tool" a mental exercise.

the other is very different.

As for "extraordinary proof"...I used ot have precogniscent dreams all the damn time, very draining, very unsettling as they do not "fit" like normal "mental objects", since they lack "Causality", they are like spiky Lego bricks your mind juggles with to avoid the spikes

most were completely boringly mundane, like getting milk from fridge etc (always just what I would literally see)
Sometimes things way beyond what I could know/predict, like the Lockerbie Bombing. Used to give my pals the heebie-jeebies with such stuff.
Also, sometimes I could "see" that things are not "fixed". How I went about a task, how I went to a place etc was not fixed, merely my end goal was (or was MOSTLY fixed in result), which throws up interesting questions.

Normal "scepticism" ends when you've had your ass bit

Umbran · Mar 12, 2014

kingius said:
These are good points and should be troubling for mediums and psychics and charlatons. What this point of view doesn't include though are all of the times when psychics made predictions that were right, often occuring in dreams and prophecies and so on. It's really cherry picking the data. What it also doesn't take into account is that these kind of abilities - like precognition - come at random. Many ordinary people have had dreams that contain elements that come true on the following day. But that must be written off as mere coincidence because to do otherwise breaks the materialist world view that there is nothing else out there.

There's this thing about numbers. Consider how many things we'd say are a one-in-a-million chance (say, of having a dream that is almost exactly what happens the next day). Now, remember that there are 300 million Americans. And 365 nights a year for them to have dreams. So, there's lots and lots of chances for those low-probability events to happen. It turns out, then, that one-in-a-million events should be (and are) happening all the time! We can expect three hundred one-in-a-million dreams every night, and thus nearly 110,000 of them every year, in the USA alone!

And, with modern communication, we hear about them! But we forget how many of those one-in-a-million things *didn't* happen, because we don't hear about them. So, we give a lot of credit to the things we do hear about - and that's a form of confirmation bias - giving great weight to the events that happen to confirm our suspicions, and meanwhile ignoring how just shy of 300 million people had perfectly normal days.

The measure isn't whether it happens at all - we should expect thousands of weirdly coincidental things happening in the country each day - but whether it happens with a frequency greater than that which can be explained by just random chance.

Zombie_Babies · Mar 12, 2014

kingius said:
In other words: Don't look for yourself, trust us, because only we know the truth... except if you do look you find the theories can be wrong. But don't whatever you do trust your own findings, trust the original sources, trust the evidence, trust your own senses. It's a familiar story. Once it was the church saying this. Now it is science.

Umbran already covered this but, hey, I gotsta gets me mines, right?!

This is a Strawman. I never said that people shouldn't look for themselves. Nothing I said indicated that people couldn't learn analysis - in fact, what I said clearly points to the opposite. If some people learn it, more can, right? So what's stopping them? Oh yeah, nothing.

What society needs is people to engage their critical thinking and not be selective about it. That means critically engaging with science and not accepting it as being blind dogma. I'm sorry if you don't like that because it means the truth of things you would like covered up comes out but that's how it has to be if we are to continue to progress as a society, as a race, into the future.

So, in other words, don't selectively quote someone and respond with your immediate reaction instead of looking deeper at the presented text? It's ... interesting you'd say that.

kingius said:
These are good points and should be troubling for mediums and psychics and charlatons. What this point of view doesn't include though are all of the times when psychics made predictions that were right, often occuring in dreams and prophecies and so on. It's really cherry picking the data. What it also doesn't take into account is that these kind of abilities - like precognition - come at random. Many ordinary people have had dreams that contain elements that come true on the following day. But that must be written off as mere coincidence because to do otherwise breaks the materialist world view that there is nothing else out there.

Umm ... if the results cannot be replicated in a controlled environment but folks swear that they do happen, well, if you choose to look at what folks say and also dismiss what happens in a controlled environment, what you're doing is cherry picking the results you like best. You've got a data set of sorts here - happens X times outside of lab + happens 0 times inside of lab. You're choosing to only accept the first part of the set.

And I feel a little dirty adding the 'it happens cuz people say it does' to the data set thing I mentioned. Please, nobody take it as an endorsement of anecdotal evidence.

Arduin's · Mar 12, 2014

Zombie_Babies said:
what you're doing is cherry picking the results you like best. You've got a data set of sorts here - happens X times outside of lab + happens 0 times inside of lab. You're choosing to only accept the first part of the set.

Considering MILLIONS of people who CAN'T control this type of thing. And, the extremely small % of humanity that it RARELY happens to (according to the people saying it happens to them) AND, the insignificant number of controlled lab experiments on this. To state that since it hasn't been replicated in a lab it reflects on the probability that it does or, doesn't happen, is unscientific in the EXTREME.

Can you have out of body experiences?

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