Is there any proof to any of this paranormal stuff? I'm agnostic, and look for proof in fucking everything.Don't get me wrong, I WANT to believe but I don't want to start believing in this stuff, and end up making some tulpa based nonsense.
>>17658051
That guys eyes are pretty spoopy. Proof enough?
"Prove [ topic ] is real" threads are troll threads made to cause pointless unending arguments and nothing more.
>>17658083
What? I'm being serious. I have to know man.
[spoiler]I'm actually incredibly concerned with my mortality, and need some comfort.[/spoiler]
>>17658096
God damn it, spoilers don't work here?
>>17658099
Just edit your post
>>17658320
Fuck it. I'm more concerned with an answer than I am spoilers not working.
>>17658099
lol what a faggot
>>17658326
Wait what was the question?
>>17658051
Do you believe the Civil War happened? You weren't there and know nobody that was... how do you know that the Civil War wasn't a play and we are being deceived? The entire Revolutionary war could also be like a massive Shakespearian play taken out of context. ( I know I am begging the question "WHY" and "WHO DUNNIT" but this is just an example ).
My point is, there is plenty already that you take as fact without actually have used your own personal senses to discover the truth. There is always going to be a balance of presumption, conjecture, opinion/bias, intuition and of course... faith.
I don't mean to completely mock you, I kind of am but I will say this - as far as being agnostic goes there is wisdom in knowing that we know nothing.
Most paranormal is probably not testable (UFOs, ghosts, etc). This makes it difficult to prove anything. 98% of the psychics are scam artists or are delusional. Real psychics are not ever 100% accurate 100% of the time. There are a lot of problems, like when they get a vision, is it psychic data, or is it the imagination, or a memory, or anxieties and fears, and so on. It's a subtle signal, and any mental noise at all will greatly diminish the results.
There is research that shows paranormal effects (Dean Radin, Daryl Bem, Rupert Sheldrake, ganzfeld experiments). Mainstream researchers look at these results and say, "well something must have been flawed with the experiments", or "the researchers must have unintentionally instilled bias to create the effect".
The skeptic Richard Wiseman said, "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that psi is proven. That begs the question do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?"
What kind of bullshit is that? Mainstream science is not interested in the truth. They are interested in keeping their jobs. Max Planck said, "science advances one funeral at a time". New ideas are only adopted as the old generation dies out.
Your best bet, if you want to prove it to yourself, is to do it yourself. Everyone has psychic abilities to some degree, the same way every able bodied person can play the piano to some degree. The easiest way is to try remote viewing. The U.S. military renewed the Stargate program for over 20 consecutive years at a cost of over $20 million. An army general doesn't dick around with psychics if it isn't working. That's career suicide. Something was going on there.
Jessica Utts, the chair of the statistics department at UC Irvine, and president of the American Statistics Association, has said (paraphrasing), "psi is proven, and it's time we move past the question of whether it works, and start figuring out how it works".
>>17658351
You are so retarded it's not even funny. If we're talking about the Civil War, it's possible because there have been many examples of other wars. Thinking that a dude just created the Earth in 7 days is delusional and doesn't even make any sense.
>>17658727
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
>>17658051
Yes there is EVIDENCE FOR "paranormal stuff" everywhere.
Particularly, the most well documented might be known as "placebo".
Placebo is basically the title we use for a person healing through faith or to use a term that doesnt excite religion haters - belief.
Belief in the pill, potion, snakeoil, massage, laying of hands, misdirected surgery trick, etc.
Doesnt matter what the BELIEF comes from, just that once the belief is there - self curing can happen that WOULD NOT happen without the belief.
We test this phenomena and observe it daily in medical efficacy studies all over the world and we have seen that just BELIEF (placebo) can do everything from reduce mild swelling to - NO BULLSHIT - cure cancer.
Read that again and really think about it.
In some cancer trials where a new treatment was being tested against placebo to rate its efficacy - it must be more effective than placebo to really make an impact - the groups were basically as follows.
Group 1 - No Treatment
Group 2 - New Treatment
Group 3 - Placebo Treatment
In this trial and trials for almost everything we currently consider able to be treated or cured some of the people - UP TO 30%! - just heal.
They just heal. They were given no medicine, no real treatment, nothing. Nothing new was introduced to their body. No radiation treatments, nothing ingested, nothing topical, NOTHING, except faith.
They were given faith through a lie. If it had been true, or false, would the results be the same? Its higher than actually NO treatment.
We have absolutely proven placebo exists yet we dont really spend much money trying to reproduce it although many treatments and medications we currently use in the US and around the world barely scored higher than placebo.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18415546
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT01973205?sect=X70156#outcome1
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20150906175924.shtml
>>17658923
I get long winded I know but let me continue.
Those studies show that placebo can even relieve the general pain of a migraine headache and other general pains.
This is just PAIN. Some studies show placebo lowering rates of blood loss, encouraging clotting, boosting the immune system, increasing athletic performance, etc.
I know you might say "but the power of the mind is not PARANORMAL!"
Curing cancer with your mind while another person eats radiation, loses all their hair, and generally withers away is a big fucking deal.
Naming it placebo does not make it any less of a miracle or 'magical' or 'paranormal' event.
It is not currently main stream textbook fact that cancer, headaches, or infections can be treated effectively with just the mind.
If it disagrees with the mainstream textbook narrative then yeah, its 'paranormal' by most estimates.
Just call it amazing, who cares what you call it?
Bottom line, 2,000 years ago when a village shaman cured a little girls ailment and her parents got to keep their daughter they knew it was a miracle, they knew it was magic. Didnt need to name it, they went home with their daughter and got on with their life.
The shaman believed, they believed, the girl believed, the treatment worked. Magic, placebo, medicine, paranormal, shamanism, psychic surgery, WHATEVER, its well documented and I hope it gives you the "proof" you were looking for tonight.
>>17658756
I think his point is more about the epistemological argument that you need to make some amount of assumption in order to have knowledge.
I think a better example than a war is the assumption you have to make in everyday life that your senses are relaying accurate information to you, or at the very least consistent information.
>>17658833
Let's look at the idiocy of your reply. It matches the idiocy of mainstream science's irrational view on this topic. Daryl Bem's experiment showing evidence for precognition was done over 90 experiments, in 33 labs, in 14 countries, and showed the odds against chance of about 1 in 12 BILLION. We sentence people to death based on DNA evidence that is far less extraordinary.
>>17658833
No they don't. Let's say I claim to have a friend who's an alien. Extraordinary claim, sure. But the evidence required to prove the claim - meeting the alien in person, doing DNA tests to make sure the alien isn't human, or whatever - is entirely ordinary.
>>17658727
>There is research that shows paranormal effects (Dean Radin, Daryl Bem, Rupert Sheldrake, ganzfeld experiments). Mainstream researchers look at these results and say, "well something must have been flawed with the experiments", or "the researchers must have unintentionally instilled bias to create the effect".
I once listened to an interview with Sheldrake where he talked about this. An amusing quote he brought up was something like "So-called 'skeptics' believe ESP stands for Error Some Place."
>The U.S. military renewed the Stargate program for over 20 consecutive years at a cost of over $20 million. An army general doesn't dick around with psychics if it isn't working. That's career suicide. Something was going on there.
Apparently Jimmy Carter himself admitted that the government used remote viewing to find a crashed plane that they couldn't find through any other means.
>>17658756
>Thinking that a dude just created the Earth in 7 days is delusional and doesn't even make any sense.
Good thing no one except American Christian fundamentalists believes that.
>>17658051
Hello. I used to be agnostic as fuck. I can relate.
You do not want a paranormal experience. Its very unpleasant most of the time. I've only had 2 experiences, in the same place and both were fucked up to the point where I could not sleep for a few days after.
Yes actually.
In the 60s both the US and the USSR put quite some cash into researching paranormal stuff, especially telepathy. Some of their research teams came up with some pretty solid results. However all these programs were cancelled eventually when it became apparent the military uses are limited.
Russkis have published most of their stuff afaik.
>>17658351
based empiricism bro
TROLL THREAD IGNORE
TROLL THREAD IGNORE
TROLL THREAD IGNORE
>>17658096
>I'm actually incredibly concerned with my mortality, and need some comfort.
You will die, buried in the ground and eaten by worms.
Does it sound comforting enough?
Paranormal stuff probably doesn't exist and we are making shit up about reptilians, ghosts and gods because we are afraid of our deaths and unknown.
If you want to test it, go to some spooky place at night and sit there for few hours and then tell us if some skinwalker did wreck your shit.
There are, scientifically, a lot of coincidences but none of them imply causality.
Also, don't forget you live in United States of America where a lot of people from sensationalist and racist old people still live. Sensationalism they learned in keeping to a war that was waged against satanic nazis and then against eastern philosophy.
>>17659601
It's not, I assure you. And I'm glad that people are actually contributing. I thought this would be pruned over night.
>>17658051
>I WANT to believe but I don't want to start believing in this stuff
The fuck?
>>17659778
Exactly. I mean.
>>17658051
Try some ketamine. It will allow you to look into the spirit realm; well it'll allow you to see through the peak hole. You can't completely break the tether from this world as long as you are alive. I will say one thing; there are slivers from the other side of the wall that leak through the cracks. These things are labeled as natural by the general public. It's only when you look at them from the right angel that
>>17660139
Ah. A toddler.
