Reply to: Ouija Board

[EternalOptimist]

Yeah. I have told this story on here before also.
This is why I never trust my senses, I always check stuff, because I have the firm proof that they collude with my brain to lie to me.

I was a soldier, a few days without sleep on guard duty out in the ooloo. I was watching my sector when I saw a soldier approach. He stopped, about 25 30 metres away. He knew I was out there somewhere, his rifle moved in an arc as he sought me out. Pointed right at me, then moved away.
He was too far away for me to issue the challenge, too close for me to call a 'stand-to'. So I waited, and watched. I was freezing cold, it was winter, but I was consoled by the fact that he must be cold too.
We kept still, staring at each other, neither sure what to do. His problem was that he didnt know exactly where I was, my problem was that I didnt want to shoot a friend by mistake. It was a stand off. For an hour I lay there, watching in fear as his weapon moved in an arc, as he sought me out. He cocked his head, I must have made a sound, sheer terror.

Then I saw it. In the east, a faint lightening in the sky. Pretty soon I would know whether to let him have one and call a stand to, or welcome him in for a hot brew and a warm bag.

As it got lighter, my head spun and 'frazzed'. I realised I had been staring through the night at a little bush, a few metres away, with a little gently waving branch that I had taken for a weapon.

BGG is correct. You brain will conjure your worst nightmare, probably for very good evolutionary purposes.

[Board Game Geek]

Your mind plays tricks. I don't think people are always lying, but you can hallucinate and convince each other that all sorts is going on.

The human mind will always try and rationalise an explanation for something, and seek empirical confirmation that is evidence-led to support that rationalisation.

However, throw a spanner in to the works, which results in the brain not being able to produce a scientific conclusion, and the the imagination quickly jumps in to fill the gaps.

In the same way that nature ahbors a vacuum, the brain abhors an unsolvable puzzle, and if the imagination has to jump in to supply an answer, then so be it.

The brain essentially says "this cannot be rationalised, at least not in a way I understand, so therefore what I have just witnessed must be weird and unexplainable, and oh look, here comes the subconsious with a suggestion".

I would suggest that the skeptics ignore the part after "oh look", and recurse back to finding an answer.

The "spiritualists" let the sentence complete.

[Board Game Geek]

Thank RC !

[northernrampage]

I haven't the will nor the inclination to write a diatribe about the very human need to "believe", but trust me, it exists, and it can be manipulated very easily.

.

Yeah, agreed. I just wrote a story about when me and my brothers did ouija boards as kids for one summer.

You find so much "proof" that something really does exist. We'd say "tell us you are really here". Glass would move to the letter "B" and then the blind would fall down.

Obviously, it was one of us fixing it/a big coincidence but at the time we all thought it was so real.

If a spider fell on me that I'd been watching for ages I'd think that was proof too (I was 13 yrs old).

We'd have mates running from the bedroom in terror as they reckoned something had fallen down... again, I didn't see it, it was their word. And another night my brothers heard massive thumps going on in the other room full of junk and cobwebs... and that was definitely a sign that something was haunting us.

Your mind plays tricks. I don't think people are always lying, but you can hallucinate and convince each other that all sorts is going on.

[RichardCranium]

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Ive written about the experience here on CUK before, and I can't be bothered to find the post,

It might be here.

[Board Game Geek]

As Derren Brown says, and others have said before him,

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

As a practicing magician (of the sleight of hand variety, not the pagan variety), it is very easy to convince people who are not scientifically minded (eg, most of the population) that "spookiness" exists all around them.

I haven't the will nor the inclination to write a diatribe about the very human need to "believe", but trust me, it exists, and it can be manipulated very easily.

Some of my tricks rely upon this susceptiblity, and having won that part, the trick itself is easy.

Also, as a magician, I was in the right place and right time to be invited to a ghost tour walkabout with a famous TV psychic, in an old theatre.

Ive written about the experience here on CUK before, and I can't be bothered to find the post, but in summary, he employed the same sort of trickery that I would use, however he spun his as "real" psychic activity.

We had a brief chat along the tour, and I told him what I thought of his "act", and how he manipulated and contrived the situation. To his credit, he did seem genuinely shocked at the criticism, which leads me to believe that he is either a very good actor, or completely delusional.

At the end of my own performances, I make it clear that whilst what I have done may seem "spooky" and "amazing", in fact, it is all trickery, and I implore the audience to consider this and measure it against other things they have heard or seen on the psychic / religious circuit.

I don't deny that I am an adherent of Derren Brown, and whilst some of his TV stuff makes me cringe, he does have a more serious message to convey, and he is earnest about conveying it.

He positively, absolutely abhors charlatans, and others who manipulate by force of "spookery", spreading false hope and deception in their wake. This reaches to the roots of DB, and is central to his works.

Yes, he employs the very same techniques to perform his entertaintment, but he is trying to create more skeptics this way, and to encourage people not to take things as face value.

As a magician, I have no problem with performing sleight of hand / misdirection and tricks for entertainment value.

I have a very big problem with "spiritualists", and even organised ministers / vicars who employ techniques from the field of magic, deceiving people and falsely changing their point of views and messing with their heads and minds.

Ok, so the "spiritualists" are probably the worst culprits, but that doesn't mean the vicars and ministers are off the hook either. There are just more subtle.

[Zippy]

As soon as you like. Bwana.

Perhaps he has been kidnapped by aliens?

[RichardCranium]

In your own time.

As soon as you like. Bwana.

[RichardCranium]

If it was such a good book, you should be able to explain how the link between the Zero Point Field theory (which refers to an energy-less environment) and the contradictory "cobweb of energy exchange" allows for the existence of God and telecommunications. So off you go.

In your own time.

[Bwana]

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[RichardCranium]

As for your claim that the author was "...going counter to what the scientists say..." - that's not how it was in the book I read. Considering that there are no doubt scientists with opposing views

She's a journalist and an author, not a scientist.

[Bwana]

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[RichardCranium]

I base my opinions on a book I read, called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart.

Is this the Lynne McTaggart that says taking high doses of Vitamin C (and Hydrogen Peroxide) cures cancer?

[RichardCranium]

Oh dear. Is this the best you can do?

I base my opinions on a book I read, called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart. It's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read.

That's nice. Just remember she is a journalist, not a scientist. Do you not think it at all strange that she can write books on such a wide variety of subjects and yet claim to be an expert? And in each of them she is going counter to what the scientists say?

She makes this stuff up to sell books to those who like to believe in conspiracy theories.

I get the impression that you are very closed-minded to the possibility of anything

That old chestnut. Fail.

(scientific phenomena etc)

Aha! Claiming credibility by referring to the "made up" as "scientific phenomena". Fail.

that you don't already know about/understand or that is not already commonly accepted as fact.

So your advice is to believe in everything without questioning it? Occam's Razor says you are promoting made up stuff. Fail.

It's as though you are so scared of believing in something that later turns out to be nonsense, that you shutdown all new possibilities.

That is the personal attack speculation method that is used by quackery-mongers to direct the arguments away from their fallacies and toward the personality of those doing the attacking to put them on the defensive. An old trick. Fail.

Consider this - a few hundred years ago, people would have been put to death for 'wichcraft' if they believed in something that we would now call 'electricity'.

And those doing the putting to death would be numpties whop believe in a made-up sky daddy, not scientists. So that argument didn't work. Fail.

If that's an accurate assesment, then I would say that you are very much at the mercy of your ego.

Again, using a personal attack to avoid a defence because there is none. Fail.

Not saying this to wind you up, but hopefully to enlighten you.

And then the wind-up! Fail.



If it was such a good book, you should be able to explain how the link between the Zero Point Field theory (which refers to an energy-less environment) and the contradictory "cobweb of energy exchange" allows for the existence of God and telecommunications. So off you go.

[EternalOptimist]

Called "Bwana" and going on about ghosts? On a Friday night when it is too wet to go out? Surely not.

I don't care. It's fun. I like trying to work out who it is from the language idiosyncrasies and their general knowledge. I've outed 5 or 6 sockpuppets and I'm always happy to have a go at another.

Anyway, I don't like to see bollocks on the 'net left unchallenged. Some loser who comes along later might believe it.

good get-out

I'll use that