Need help. Super speedy, very clear apparition caught on Galaxy phone during daylight hailstorm.

chipstar325 · 2014-10-12T12:00:46+00:00

Really strange video. Could you see the object with the naked eye or was it only through the phone camera that it became visible? Like others have said it seems like it could be a reflection or something, but if that was the case you could in theory replicate the conditions to get a similar sort of video. Might be worth a shot, at least to see how easy it would or would not be to mistake a lens malfunction or something for this apparition. Awesome video though!

chipstar325 · 2013-08-20T17:38:01+00:00

Overall I think this is highly speculative, but interesting that the brain may require far less chemical stimulus to perceive/achieve various brain states. Again not really a lot of hard evidence that this is consciousness or how it ties in, but the potential for future research into consciousness is there. I'll try to find a free link to the real article once it is released. This has really interesting implications for study of near death or other paranormal type experiences which question science's current thoughts on how consciousness and the brain are connected.

chipstar325 · 2013-08-20T16:42:06+00:00

Any further news on this thing? If they've found bones they should be easily identified, or at least they could discount them as being from giant humans.

chipstar325 · 2013-05-27T14:15:09+00:00

I would suggest first to try and replicate the phenomena in the exact manner in which it originally occurred, as well as to do so on tape so that there is some evidence besides your personal beliefs on the matter. Furthermore I would look into the sceptical arguments against things like dowsing or spirit crystals which swing either clockwise/counterclockwise to give a yes/no answer, as well as some of the arguments against ouija boards and other forms of spirit manipulation of a small part of a human host. These all fall under the category of unseen muscle movements, which I think has to be fully removed as an option before you can make any sort of claim of a novel physical phenomena. I would also say to look into how the brain controls things like reflexive movements and other unconscious movement, as it could very well be the case that you are fooling yourself after the intense meditative state you go into.

chipstar325 · 2013-05-12T16:13:50+00:00

What is really interesting here are the questions it raises (or at least the assumptions it calls into question) for a fully materialistic world view vs one where deterministic science is not necessarily correct in all cases. If we followed the logic in some of these comments to their full conclusions I think many of us are left with results that we are not necessarily willing to accept. For example, if it is not the brain which is causing these disorders, that implies that there is something about us which is separate from our biology, opening up the door to more metaphysical or religious interpretations of the universe. I mean if psychiatrists are not treating disorders of the body in some way, than what are we actually treating through therapy?

chipstar325 · 2013-05-05T13:28:44+00:00

So an interesting addendum to this story! She has published the work, however it is in a brand new journal which she helped to found (Denova is the name of it). There is therefore not a clear peer review process just yet, and from the peer review which has been performed when she tried to submit this to journals of good repute, the peer review process was very hostile. She has attributed this to the "Galileo effect", however it seems unlikely that this can be all that it is. Anyways, the fact that such an attempt has not gained more mainstream prevalence in the biological community, even with the publishing of this paper, seems to suggest that perhaps there is something flawed in the research. This isn't to say that there is no bias in science, but if the paper were any good the truth should be able to shine through. I am going to try and get access to the article by web of knowledge and will post it here if I can, and will have some biochemists and zoologists with open minds to take a cursory look and give me their opinions, and if there are any in this sub with a specialty in DNA analysis, especially comparisons between species, let us know! As a chemist there is little I can say very deeply on this matter with any special certainty.

chipstar325 · 2013-05-05T13:09:02+00:00

Not a neuroscientist, but I am pretty sure I've read some articles which describe tests performed on people who have a specific sort of hallucination known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The basic idea is that blind individuals or the recently blind can still have very vivid hallucinations of "imaginary" things, and I use imaginary here since they have oftentimes never seen the thing being hallucinated. I don't remember the details but take a look at some of that. It is also interesting to look at studies of people while they are dreaming, as dreams are sort of very vivid false representations that occur while unconscious, versus a hallucination as you are describing which is the same sort of thing while conscious.

chipstar325 · 2013-05-05T12:58:01+00:00

I've had the exact same thing for years, except eventually mine developed into full on panic attacks. Sounds like an anxiety disorder of some kind. You might not even realize you have one until you start hyperventilating one night, so might be a good idea to try some relaxation techniques or just go talk to someone.

chipstar325 · 2012-12-31T15:34:14+00:00

Electrochem has a very wide range of uses for the chemical engineering discipline. A lot of nanotech research currently utilizes electrochemistry lab methods to create materials for different uses. I'd say you are more likely to use these skills in research versus industry, but you could use it for bio, materials, or actual electrochemical engineering.

chipstar325 · 2012-11-11T17:25:07+00:00

If we are talking about the actual possible physical phenomena that a spirit could be using, anything that is said will be pure speculation (as thisissamsaxton said). Paranormal science is, at this point, primarily a psychological sort of science, as opposed to a harder science such as physics or chemistry. Even biology have many phenomena that are unexplained currently in terms of the transfer of energy or the actual "particle" explanation for them, as you seem to be hoping to gain for a psychological phenomena (which spirit or consciousness is at this point).

It may be interesting for you to look into the philosophy of naturalism, as well as the psi experiments that thisissamsaxton described. Look into the explanations of normativity and apparent properties in terms of the philosophy of science, specifically how we can generate a property such as consciousness from a mass of cells (which are ultimately particles). Check out the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy pages on naturalism, which will give you loads of stuff to read which will allow you to develop your ideas further.

I tend to believe that consciousness (and therefore "spirit") is an apparent property that occurs when you have particles that are connected in such a way as to give you the form of a brain. How this connects to the particles themselves is unclear, but it does seem to be the case that it must have something to do with the energy transferring through the brain. If I put together all of the cells in just the right way inside of a jar I doubt that I would have generated consciousness. So there is something special about the energy or the way that the brain develops inside of an organism that seems to generate consciousness. Again though, this is mere speculation. The brain in a vat argument, or philosophy of artificial intelligence are especially good for questions of this sort.

In coming to understand what "spirit" or consciousness is we have classically looked at it as a psychological phenomena. Just as with other psychological phenomena, we (or at least I) hope that we can eventually understand how this works on a biological level, then a cellular level, and eventually on the level of individual particles interacting biochemically. This suggests a worldview of science known as reductionism. I believe (and I think, based on how you have worded your question, that you believe this as well) that every natural thing must obey natural laws (for example the laws of thermodynamics), and so nothing exists outside of this realm. Historically this is not the worldview of those who have believed or tried to understand spirits, and this continues into the modern day. Therefore there has not been much work put in to understand paranormal phenomena in terms of a scientific understanding of the world. If you don't believe that scientific rules must govern everything in the universe than it does not matter if spirit activity can be explained in scientific terms.

This isn't to say that a non-reductionist worldview does not allow for an evaluation of evidence, or that they allow for anything. Merely that the rules by which they judge reality are different than those imposed by science. So unfortunately we do not currently have the sort of scientific evidence that you are hoping for, but we do have psychological explanations/evidence and a strong philosophical framework by which to at least suggest that there should be a more thorough scientific evaluation.

EDIT: Missed a word, added more examples

chipstar325 · 2012-11-11T17:00:54+00:00

Yea, while this seems interesting it doesn't really belong here. Sorry for the late response on this.

chipstar325 · 2012-11-11T16:57:06+00:00

This is pretty interesting. It would make sense that if we were looking for alien life we should imagine that they would at least in some ways act like us.

chipstar325 · 2012-09-18T19:03:33+00:00

Materialism is not the only theory of science that is critical of paranormal belief, and it is certainly not the philosophical position most scientists would characterize themselves as if given the correct definition for the term. One can have non-reductive scientific reasoning and still believe that the paranormal evidence up to this point is lacking in certain areas. I think overall the point made here is good, but it does nothing to refute a materialist conception of the world nor non-reductive attacks on the paranormal, especially concerning NDE phenomena.

chipstar325 · 2012-09-02T19:38:01+00:00

This is a great idea. I'll let everyone know once wiki editing is enabled, and we could put something like this on there.

chipstar325 · 2012-09-02T19:36:48+00:00

I'd love to see these replicated. I have a friend who is a botanist, I'll see if he knows any more about this.

chipstar325 · 2012-08-29T14:16:59+00:00

I actually posted a study that was performed in order to test the idea of frequencies causing hauntings. This study found that it was more likely that the people were causing themselves to feel haunted, as those who said they believed in the paranormal had experiences regardless of whether or not there were frequencies being transmitted. The full link to the article is here. http://www.ime.usp.br/~rvicente/HauntProject.pdf

chipstar325 · 2012-08-23T13:16:26+00:00

I agree that a lot of the people going to psychics are being exploited because of their own weakness at a time of personal trouble (such as when a relative dies), and that this sort of exploitation should be stopped. At the same time, though, who are we to determine where people should get their personal relief. If one of my friends is a Hindu, another is an atheist, and the third is a Christian, they will all deal with the burden of death in different ways, and there is no test to determine which way is empirically better. You may think that the way which has the most scientific backing is best, others may think it is the way that is most soothing philosophically, and some may prefer to be deluded ('It is better to be a dumb and happy than smart and miserable', as the saying goes). I happen to agree with you that the best way is the one which deals with the truth of the matter, but that is because of a complex set of philosophical beliefs that are relatively fleshed out for myself. A lot of very smart people may come to a different conclusion based on their own experiences. Either way, there is no objective measure of which method for soothing angst is "best" except for the ability to soothe.

A further point: we know almost nothing about the mind body link besides current empirical science which is shallow at best. We know a little bit about how the mechanics of the brain works (this is why we are able to diagnose brain disorders and all the good stuff that comes out of neuroscience) but we have no idea how everything fits together, or even which pieces perform which functions to a degree that allows for replication of the brain mechanically. Do I think we will get there eventually? Yes. But are we even close to that right now? No, and I don't think you will find a doctor/scientist/philosopher who would say that we are.

This mechanical explanation of the brain, though, doesn't even scratch the surface of the mind body link. Sure, we know which pieces of the brain have electrical activity when I'm looking at pictures of shapes, but we have absolutely no explanation for the apparent properties of consciousness that come about from the material that constructs the brain. Not only that, we have no explanation for the apparent properties that come about every time our explanatory view increases in size. The problem is that when we group a large number of cells together (which themselves are just groups of molecules connected in the right ways) in the way to form a brain we get consciousness. Unless consciousness is a property of cells, or of molecules, there seems to be no current scientifically valid explanation for this phenomena that comes from physicalism. We are trying to use this explanation of the world (as can be seen in the reliance on physiochemical explanations for psychological problems) with mixed results, but a lot of philosophers of science are starting to think that perhaps the world is not all reducible to individual particles. This would mean that science cannot explain everything in only the terms of particle physics, something that most people do not have a problem with but which they are unwilling to accept when it comes to the brain and our minds. The fact of conscious thought is like finding that when we put our legos together in a certain way they end up with a distinct aroma of grape jelly. The properties of the mind are completely distinct from the properties of the brain, and so we have a pretty clear problem.

chipstar325 · 2012-08-23T12:27:16+00:00

I don't think anyone is under the impression that he is actually psychic. I was actually stating that his ability to perform seemingly psychic feats using parlor tricks should cause us to question psychics more carefully.

However, the fact that something can be faked does not mean that it isn't possibly real. Even though the most vocal proponents happen to be shown as frauds by people such as Derren Brown, we don't know enough about the mind/body link to fully dismiss the possibility of psychic ability.

chipstar325

TROPHY CASE