h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

well when our understanding of aerodynamics wasnt quite as good as now people thought bee "shouldnt" be able to fly, bees carried on flying regardles of our understanding of the "laws" of aerodynamics.

Like I have tried to say there isn't much science behind my opinion but there is common or garden observation of the blatantly obvious.

Do you know *any* reliable psychics. Are you psychic?

I know lots of good singers I cant sing for toffee, but my singing does improve with practice and coaching.

A simple human ability in both cases one is rarer than hens teeth and the other can be found fairly easily.

Why?


As I have said sharks and also baths amongst many other animals have what we would regard as ESP.

"My dogs got no nose" is a joke for reason because it is a vanishingly rare occurrence, generally in nature if one animal of a certain species has a faculty they all have it.


You are right about looking for unicorn eggs being ludicrous and so would testing every alleged psychic but that isnt what I was asking.

I was asking after testing how many psychics and finding not one to be the real deal would a reasonable person conclude it was all a hoax?

Well as some of us understand it but just wide when you say:
"Until it can be shown that eletronic impluses and chemical reactions can develop social skills and have preferences for soft furnishingti

but that's exactly what our brains are.

We are just about at a level where we can understand and synthesise viruses entities so simple some people are unsure that they even constitute life.

What we do know is what viruses cant do and they can no more drive tractors than we can read each others thoughts by detecting brain waves. We can do it through by listening to wavers in the voice or the choice of body language.

Other apes can use language they cant *speak* because they dont have the physical capacity.

We can dream about flying, telekinesis, teleportation and mind reading. I have regular comforting dreams where my grandparents visit and talk to me doesnt make any of it real.

Like the other apes we simply don't have the capacity.

How do you know it is not real.

The same reason I know that dream catchers dont work.

The same reason I know that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The same reason I know that Allah does not tell people to blow up underground trains.

The same reason I know that Santa does not deliver presents from a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.



Do you need me to go on?


People who speak to the dead are just the imagined solution to a perceived problem taken on by people too naive or desperate to believe that they are putting faith in what amounts to a fairy story.


Ask yourself why little children believe in Santa Claus?

It means you get free presents, stuff that is nice to have and all you have to do is buy into the whole thing by being good when you are reminded too by your parents.

Speaking to the dead means you can talk with the dearly departed people who you desperately miss and all you have to do is listen to some fraud serving up platitudes and general information. Then just smile, nod or cry to let them know when tye have hit the pay dirt then they stick with that subject.


Go and take a look at todays stars in the paper and see how many of them could easily be applied to your day today or yesterday or last week.Keep the same paper for a week and it will still be as applicable.


It's all hogwash.

one love

Didn't you read my post?

When people with 'real' psychic ability only appear AFTER some people with NO real psychic ability but create the illusion via trickery doesn't that suggest something to you?

@rse my last post was for oldrusty not Blicky!

'Quantum mechanics is indeed very weird, but it can be tested. If we could do that to your other weird ideas, I would also accept those. However saying the brain is not enough and declaring there must be a soul, is not much better than saying there is a small pixie inside your head controlling things. I find the idea of morphogenic fields interesting, but so far I don´t think it can really help explain that much'

How many weird ideas do I have? I didn't say the brain was not enough and I most certainly did not declare that there must be a soul. How many times do I have to make it clear that I am not making definitive statments, I am merely trying to point out that the definitive statements made by other people are opinions. They are, admittedly, very reasonable opinions but they are not definite fact, they just seem pretty likely right now. Much as the idea that the heart generated blood probably seemed at the time.

'well when our understanding of aerodynamics wasnt quite as good as now people thought bee "shouldnt" be able to fly, bees carried on flying regardles of our understanding of the "laws" of aerodynamics'

An interesting point. The physics of flight are explained by a series of rules which have, as you rightly point out, been proven to be wrong in the past. Quite clearly they could be proven wrong again and it may prove that humans can fly, if they only knew how. However your point also underlines the fact that science has never yet been entirely right, even when it thinks it is. In the instance of the human brain I think it is probably fair to say that science does not presume to have anything like a complete set of facts, in which case it would seem stupid of us to go aorund making definite statements about what the brain can and cannot do. Disregard the Fox sisters for a moment. Since I haven't heard of them I have very little choice. I presume the point of that argument is that all claims by anyone to be able to communicate with the dead stems back to this embryonic, and fake, pair of mediums. Well I don't know about that but I do know that all over the world it had, centuries ago, seemed perfectly reasonable to our ancestors to imagine that they could communicate with the dead.It seems fairly obvious to us to discard much of what they thought as being nonsense since there was a whole load of stuff they didn't understand, but I think recent discoveries in areas such as medicine have shown that in many ways our ancestors weren't as dim as we'd like to imagine. Therefore my point is ignore the hype of the media psychic, accept the fact that me don't understand the workings of the human mind remotely and keep an open mind. As long as people decide that what they 'know' is true what they presume to false is not, we wills struggle to make progress in our knowledge and understanding of the world.

Which reminds me,

You don't know that dream catches don't work, you just presume they don't.

Is'nt the bees can't fly story an urban myth ? No scientist would suggest they defy the laws of physics when they obviously dont .
Pointing out , to the ghost/god/psychic believers , that none of there beliefs hold an ounce of water is a waste of time . They are not rational people . Common sense and reality mean nothing to them . They only see and believe what they want to see and believe . Scientific method and proof are not in their vocablary .

best fishes..tod

Well, yes, because they can fly therefore, they can't defy the laws of physics.

>> How many times do I have to make it clear that I am not making definitive statments, I am merely trying to point out that the definitive statements made by other people are opinions. They are, admittedly, very reasonable opinions but they are not definite fact<<

Yes benjamin, you are stating the bleedin' obvious. All of science is predicated on the notion of 'falsifiability', as most notably elucidated by the philosopher of science, Karl Popper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

There are no absolutes in science, only probabilities. No scientist can make a definitive statement; that wouldn't be 'science'. But for reasons of practicality it is reasonable to presume the certain things are highly unlikely, such as unicorn bones, father christmas and talking to dead people, not to mention the flying ant spaghetti monster, not to mention old big daddy in the sky and having a chit chat with dead people.

If you do a gazillion experiments and they all show the same result, any normally sane person can presume such results are trueish and are good reliable evidence, that such and such a theory is probably true within the parameters of the hypothesis examined.

The flying ant spaghetti monster is _so_ real!

Blasphemer!

Eh long time no chat, Taleisin. You're not dead are you?

Happy New Year!

Ouija not required

HNY

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That's a very bizarrely sweeping statement! You're lumping thousands of different people in with each other, and assuming they and their experiences are all the same.

Vicky

Yes, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real but are you a member of the original church or of the new breakaway church? Yes, some people have actually broken away from the original CHurch of the FSM!!!!

Oh yes when we flying ant spaghetti monsterists broke away from the flying spaghetti monsterists, there was the most horrific period of blood letting, rape, murder, and pillage. But an uneasy peace has now prevailed. Shrub sent in some negotiators who sorted things out by getting us to do a deal with Israelis. The palestinians sided with the heretics, so we came out on top.

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Yea i know , it's just that they all get on my 's !

best fishes...tod

See a thing in front of you and you know its real but when the wind blows on your face you can't see it but it is real there things we can and can't see does not mean what we can't is not re al .

Effers, are you a member of the Reformed Church of the Flying Ant Spaghetti Monster , or the New Reformed Church of the Flying Ant Spaghetti Monster ?

This is why I hate discussing things with people who belive in woo woo stuff.

Yes wind is real, I can explain it: air is a gas which when there is a pressure gradient in the atmosphere the bulk of that air moves from the high pressure to the low pressure region...this moves the gas particles which hit people and transfers the kinetic energy from the gas to the surface of the person or to clothing which then moves.

An alternative explanation could be that we all have invisible fairies following us around with fans who waft them at us from time to time to make the wind. This is obviously rubbish...I can't prove it's rubbish because I can't prove invisible fairies don't exist. However, before we knew about the make up of air and pressure gradints etc then why shouldn't it be a reasonable explanation?

Now pyschics: The ORIGINAL explanation is that the Fox Sisters conned thousands of people into believing they could talk to spirits by clicking toe joints. This is documented and can be proven.

The alternative explanation is that some people can really speak to spirits however this explanation came AFTER the Fox Sisters. Prior to the Fox Sisters people did not do this pyschic stuff. Therefore, one can come to a ratinal conclusion that the people who are saying they can are just making it up to earn a living by conning people like the Fox Sisters did.



Now, once

Taliesin I belong to the New Old New Reformed Church of the Flying Ant Spaghetti Monster. It's the only rational choice.