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You are making a claim that sounds good to you, but sounding good to you does not substantiate it.
No, I am not.
The double slit experiment has confounded science for 200 years. Wny does it work the way it does? Why do the results change when we peek? What are the conditions of reality that make it do what it does. Many ideas have been proposed and rejected. Thus far, the ONLY hypothesis which renders the results understandable is the VR one. Reality being a VR explains the otherwise nonsensical results. To my knowledge, NO OTHER EXPLANATION has been proposed which does. Ergo, to reject it out of hand is not smart.
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When some actual evidence is presented to support the claim we can talk. Otherwise we are just in the business of trading and dismissing fantasies.
The evidence has been presented. If you would go read the paper I linked, you'd see even more.
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I am not in the business of assumption however and if you want to assume this is all VR in order to make NDEs be what you desperately want them to be then that is great for you.
At the risk of being repetitive, there is evidence that this is a VR. Scientifically proven evidence. Repeatable scientifically proven evidence. If you have an alternative explanation, one that both refutes the VR hypothesis AND explains the science, I'm all ears.
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For example one of the most common experiences cited by NDE patients is that of being outside their own body. By far the vast majority of anecdotes I have heard on the subject cite this experience.
And it is an experience which has been replicated in controlled situations, and can be repeated, by people like VS Ramachandran and Micheal Percinger.
So what? That it can be replicated in a lab means it's not happening in the cited cases? Whether you believe it or not, and as previously noted, I was outside of my body. I observed a conversation that occured 2,500 miles away that was later confirmed to have happened by the participants. You many continue to dismiss that as a lie, but the reality is that it happened.
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A claim you made before and then willfully ignored by request to substantiate it. So I ask you again: Substantiate it. What makes it thusly impossible? What mechanisms are there preventing it? You are making here an explicit positive truth claim and are running away from any request to substantiate it in any way.
When you are dead, you are incapable of creating memories. When you are under general anesthesia you are incapable of creating memories. Those are medical facts and are indisputable.
It remains a gross, New Age Lie that we all, eventually end up at the same destination.
You keep telling yourself that. All paths lead to the same place. Even yours, though your need to adhere to man-made dogma is indicitave of your immaturity.
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The multitude of NDEs report the reality of both Heaven and Hell.
The number of hellish NDEs are exceedingly small, and my theory is that we get pretty much what we expect upon death. Those expecting Christ, get Christ. Those expecting Allah get Allah. And those expecting hell get hell. But most, if not all, of the hellish NDE's that I'm personally familiar with ended on a good note.
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Just as demons exist, so do folks that belong to them.
I've never seen a demon. Are there mischievous spirits? Sure. But nothing like you imagine.
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Why? why are they allowed in human form? We are not God, and we are not given all knowledge, but we see dimly until we, too are in the next realm.
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You admit that we are not given all knowledge, and yet believe that a loving god would condemn one of his children, that he loves, to eternity in torture, for a less than fully informed decision? Does that seem reasonable to you??
Except you are. You are just listing things that confound either you, scientists or both. Then you are dropping in ideas as complete non sequiturs like VR universes.
You are merely talking about the well known wave particle duality and asking questions about it. That is great. That is what science is. You observe something and then ask questions about it and try to answer it.
However using a lack of answers as if this lack of answers means we can just make anything we want up and then apply the things we made up to other things like NDEs is just a nonsense on a par with your cohort above trying to say illusions on television created by magicians prove magic exists and magic proves anything he wants to say about NDEs.
Nor as I said does offering unverifiable and possibly made up anecdotes help either. Let us stick to presentable facts here, not fantasies you invent and write down.
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Originally Posted by DentalFloss
When you are under general anesthesia you are incapable of creating memories. Those are medical facts and are indisputable.
Again: Says you. I keep asking you to adumbrate the mechanisms that establish this impossibility but all you do is repeat the claim. Repeating a claim over and over is not the same as substantiating it. I know it would be massively convenient to you for it to be true, but that does not make it so either.
Then you are dropping in ideas as complete non sequiturs like VR universes.
And there's your problem. You label it a non-sequitur and reject it out of hand with no scientific reason to do so.
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You are merely talking about the well known wave particle duality and asking questions about it.
I reject wave/particle duality. It's science fiction. It's magic. It's even more rediculous than a VR theory, as it requires sentient wave/particles. It's science saying "We haven't got a f*cking clue what's going on so we'll give it a fancy label and move on to the next question."
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However using a lack of answers as if this lack of answers means we can just make anything we want up and then apply the things we made up to other things like NDEs is just a nonsense on a par with your cohort above trying to say illusions on television created by magicians prove magic exists and magic proves anything he wants to say about NDEs.
Making things up is called a hypothesis. I think _______ may be true. Then you devise tests to see if the hypothesis stands up to scientific scrutiny. Has nothing to do with magic.
As I previously stated, and you have conveniently ignored, the results of the DS experiment MAKE SENSE and are predicted by the VR hypothesis. They MAKE NO SENSE and are NOT predicted by the objective reality hypothesis. The results predicted by that hypothesis are NOT the results shown by the experiment.
At the risk of repetition, if you have an alternative theory that explains the results, I'm all ears.
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Nor as I said does offering unverifiable and possibly made up anecdotes help either. Let us stick to presentable facts here, not fantasies you invent and write down.
That I can't document it to any reasonable standard does not render it a fantasy. I cannot document that 5 minutes ago my nose was itchy, and I scratched it to alleviate the situation, yet it did in fact happen.
And there's your problem. You label it a non-sequitur and reject it out of hand with no scientific reason to do so.
We appear to be going in circles. I will just copy and paste what I put the last time you said this rather than rewrite it another way for someone who clearly won't read it anyway...
Because you are presenting it "out of hand". As the late Christopher Hitchens used to say "That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". You are making a claim that sounds good to you, but sounding good to you does not substantiate it. When some actual evidence is presented to support the claim we can talk. Otherwise we are just in the business of trading and dismissing fantasies.
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Originally Posted by DentalFloss
I reject wave/particle duality.
Thats nice. But the majority of the science community does not. So you have just talked yourself out of the game of talking scientifically and have again just left yourself in the realm of fantasy. And suggesting particles have to be "sentient" really is fantasy and I have literally no idea where you are getting that from.
However what the science community does is much better than what you do. They do not look at something which does not meet their expectations and run away screaming from it. They say instead "Oh that's odd, lets work really hard at explaining that".
That's why they are scientists and can talk science and you are not, and can not. Science is not about running away from anything displeasing to you. It is about working through everything we observe no matter how daunting and no matter how long it takes to get to the explanation.
Really the quality of discourse coming from your side of the NDE conversation is comical at best. One of you is saying NDEs must be magic because an illusionist on TV impressed him. Nonsense and a complete non sequitur. While you are coming on listing areas of science which confound you and acting like their ability to confound you is in itself evidence that they are impossible and must be generated by a massive VR conspiracy in a VR machine being run by.... well you have not even gotten as far as to start suggesting who is running this crap.
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Originally Posted by DentalFloss
That I can't document it to any reasonable standard does not render it a fantasy.
Again I merely ask that we stick to the data we can actually present to each other. If you can not present it then do not claim it. Simple really. So things like made up anecdotes do not really count. Anyone can make up anecdotes to support their position, I would rather therefore keep this as a conversation of data not a conversation of who has the more vivid imagination and can make up the best anecdote.
It is always fun to watch people with entirely unsubstantiated beliefs mock the entirely unsubstantiated beliefs of others as being "ludicrous". Yet they have exactly the same amount of substantiation for their idea there is a hell (none) as you have for your idea there is a god (none).
Even funnier then to watch you all battle it out by playing the "I experience it" card. One user things hell is real because that is how they experience it. You think god is real and all loving and has no use for a hell because when you fell asleep one day during meditation and had a dream that is what you "experienced". And each of your experiences are valid to no one except yourself and those that already agree with you. Conversations between you therefore being about as useful as... and having as much hope of an outcome as.... watching quadriplegics box.
As we can see the best retort you can musture against each other is to "bet" they do not actually experience what they experience. This just adds to the comedy when I know just how aggressively you respond with immature invective to anyone who expresses any doubt in the "experience" you claim to have had, yet you practice that same doubt with impunity towards others.
But such are the vagaries of religion in that it pits people with baseless worldviews against each other with no basis to ever evaluate and reconcile those world views. Comical at times, maybe, but massively dangerous in others and we can see in people like you exactly why as you very quickly descend into frustration, anger, invective and lose all sense of maturity and perspective. Explode that to a global view and you see why people like myself work so hard against theistic thought. It is a conversation stopper, a barrier to reason and the evaluation of ideas. Really our species has two options: Conversation or violence and your baseless world views are so divorced from reality as to almost ensure conversation will fail as the above exchange demonstrates.
Despite all my years learning how to better articulate myself and my ideas, I literally can not indict religion as completely as the people espousing it do themselves. If you ever wonder why I keep talking to people like yourself it is simply because of the massive utility to my cause in simply keeping people like you talking.
Moderator cut: attacking/rude Our brain has capabilities to sense our reality and respond to it. Each capacity it has exists for a reason. Discovering that the optic nerve and the occipital lobe are responsible for our experiencing the "simulation" of sight does not mean that sight is merely a function of our brain and what we see does not really exist. Alternate brain states exist for a reason and we are naturally supposed to invoke them to experience more of our reality than we do through our five senses. Finding the parts of the brain responsible for this and artificially stimulating them does not in any way invalidate the reality of what we experience through these alternate channels when they are not artificially stimulated. OF course you are free to try to explain why our brain would need the capability to experience out-of-body sensations, or "oneness" with all life Moderator cut: deleted
I recently had the need to try an alternate prescription pain management method and subsequent biochemistry situation, all due to some severe, persistent and unresponsive lower, central and upper back pain! What fun, eh?
My doc prescribed me some methadone, but also advised me that new users can often have very imaginative hallucinations with methadone (this is not, btw, the illegal and often dangerous "meth" as is described in the popular press. That stuff is homemade Crystal Meth, an entirely different substance!). And so, dutifully, I took my prescribed meds.
Later that evening, I attended a musical concert (I was quite relaxed by then!) where, to my considerable astonishment, a full size BNSF locomotive appeared on stage and began to talk to me. I'm quite a railroad history buff, and we have the BNSF nearby, so it was natural that my brain could access a suitable visual memory.
So yep, the human brain is quite capable of generating all sorts of imaginary things. This in no way validates, I sure hope, that an EMD SD90MAC locomotive was rolling out on that concert stage, nor that it could talk to me. Or that MaCaw parrots can re-appear 35 years later, seemingly from their own NDE experiences. "Polly Want A God-Entity!"
The mind does make a lot of things up, like, apparently, NDEs. No Rx methadone required, apparently. Just a sincere wish for the imagery to be real. It would also lend some sort of credibility to the idea of an afterlife, so natch, it's gotta be true!
For some inexplicable reason there always seem to be people who are so consistently obnoxious and offensive that I am tempted to wish they would have an NDE that is not merely Near.
Thanks for proving so perfectly something I just said. As soon as someone questions you you turn instantly to anger and invective. Straight away. Nearly every time. Here we have a wonderful combination of name calling (obnoxious, offensive) and actually wishing people dead.
Which also proves my point about conversation between unsubstantiated worldviews leading to either conversation or violence. When questioned you start wishing the opposition dead.
Really in around 30 words you have made nearly ALL of my points for me better than I did. Thanks. You really are a piece of work and I repeat that there is real utility in keeping you talking and having you write this way.
I hope everyone sees this post from you. Someone dares disagree with you and you start name calling and wishing them dead. Wonderful stuff. Truly wonderful. How very Christian of you.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
artificially stimulating them does not in any way invalidate the reality of what we experience through these alternate channels when they are not artificially stimulated.
Nor did I claim it does. My point has not quite reached you. You are seeing only half of it and attacking it in isolation. I will put my point into bullet form for you and even bold the bit you have just mentioned, and leave all the stuff you missed unbolded. I am being extra helpful today.
1) There are many natural things the brain can experience.
2) We know they are natural because we can artificially stimulate those experiences and prove they come from the brain.
3) In non artificual scenarions the same experiences happen.
4) Therefore there is no reason to think the same thing happening in 1 and 2 is not essentially the same thing happening in 3 yet people such as yourself want to act like it is for reasons unknown to me and based on data you never offer but use invective and wishing people dead to get out of presenting.
In essence what I am saying is this: Certain brain states which we can create cause certain experiences. In NDE situations the brain is being subjected to all kinds of inputs and stresses. Therefore it is entirely opaque to me why you need to invoke fantasy things like gods and spirits in order to explain those already explained experiences.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
OF course you are free to try to explain why our brain would need the capability to experience out-of-body sensations, or "oneness" with all life
And we are in fact doing just that. Whether you like it or not. You miss the point though by saying the brain "needs" the capacity. It does not.
Take coca cola. We have no need for it but we respond to it massively because it hyper stimulates something we do need.... sugar detection in our taste. We evolved to like sugars such as in fruit. Coca cola hyper stimulates that and so we go mad for it.
Similarly VS Ramachandran has discovered a part in the brain dedicated to feeling certain things are "significant" to us. When you look at a stone this part does nothing. When you look at your mother, it kicks in and gives you "significance".
If VS hyper stimulates this part of the brain then the subject feels everything is "one" and everything is "significant".
It is not that the brain "needs" to do this. It IS that the brain needs to do SOMETHING and certain things hyper stimulate that something giving unexpected results that have nothing to do what the brain "needs" or "wants".
None of this is magic, none of it woo, none of it requires assuming anything on insufficient evidence. It is all there, documented, tested, repeatable, real, and explained. You just do not like it because it makes real and natural and normal things you desperately.... ever so desperately.... want kept mystical, magical and unexplained because they are the fields of play for the woo you want to tout on these fora.
Out of hand?? The results of the experiment are consistent with the VR hypothesis being true. There are no explanations that I am aware of that explain the results in conjunction with the objective reality hypothesis.
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And suggesting particles have to be "sentient" really is fantasy and I have literally no idea where you are getting that from.
If you had read the article that I repeatedly have pointed to, you would. Lacking sentience, how does an electron "know" we're monitoring which slit it passed through, and "choose" to modify it's behavior because of said monitoring? Laking sentience, how does a photon know which path is the shortest time between it's source and destination?
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They do not look at something which does not meet their expectations and run away screaming from it. They say instead "Oh that's odd, lets work really hard at explaining that".
Indeed. And they've had 100 years to explain why the experiment works the way it does and have not come up with a single theory that explains it. Mine (and I use the term loosely, as I'm not the only one who thinks reality is virtual) does.
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Really the quality of discourse coming from your side of the NDE conversation is comical at best.
Really? I've presented you with a hypothesis that elegantly explains one of sciences biggest mysteries, and you act as though it's so preposterous that you don't even make points against it, rather you simply dismiss it. Who's the one being comical?
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generated by a massive VR conspiracy in a VR machine being run by.... well you have not even gotten as far as to start suggesting who is running this crap.
Well, as he/her/it/them/whatever exists outside our space and time, unless they choose to announce and explain themselves, there's no way to know unless and until we ourselves can get "out there".
Again I merely ask that we stick to the data we can actually present to each other. If you can not present it then do not claim it. Simple really. So things like made up anecdotes do not really count. Anyone can make up anecdotes to support their position, I would rather therefore keep this as a conversation of data not a conversation of who has the more vivid imagination and can make up the best anecdote.[/quote]
Out of hand?? The results of the experiment are consistent with the VR hypothesis being true.
The results of the experiment are also consistent with me saying that there are tiny invisible imps who magically jump around your eyes making it look like the results are as they are. They are consistent with the idea there is a god with infinite ability that just makes the experiment come out that way every time.
I think you miss the point of prediction in science. Merely making something up that fits one single experiment is pointless, especially when the thing you made up is itself entirely unsubstantiated.
When you substantiate a hypothesis then you can start testing the predictions of it. Making things up out of nowhere to retrospectively explain prediction is a bit poor to say the very, very least.
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Originally Posted by DentalFloss
how does an electron "know" we're monitoring which slit it passed through, and "choose" to modify it's behavior because of said monitoring?
"know"? Who ever claimed it did???? You are trying to explain things that no one is actually claiming now.
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