Re-Introducing: TWIM’s Power Commenters
Posted in Blogosphere, eBates, Parapsychology, Responses, Skepticism, Thinking Critically on | 10 minutes | 37 Comments →
I know what I said yesterday about not wanting to bore anybody with my arguments with other bloggers, but lately I’ve been thinking about a concept a few of us came up with several months ago, the concept of power commenters. After Deacon Duncan declined to participate in the debate I invited him to have with me, we had one post where we actually attempted the format, then pretty much set the whole idea on the backburner. Yet, as I did then, I think it’s a valid idea that could function as a sort of “intellectual broom” for the blogosphere, especially if we can find a few more qualified participants.
For the uninitiated, the idea of power commenters is an analog from certain programming forums, but in this particular context advised to overcome the intellectual stalemates that often befall (a)theist debates. So I invited a handful of commenters who I esteem as credible, intelligent and non-partisan, as defined by their refusal to descend into ad hominem land, as well as their willingness to go to bat for whoever they think is right, not whoever shares their particular worldview. These were people I’d had a decent amount of experience interacting with, both on this blog and others: Dominic Saltarelli, Lifeguard,
MS Quixote, and a guy named Brad who’s mysteriously dropped out of the blogosphere as far as I know. Brad, if you’re reading this, I miss your input, and hope you’re well.
For a while I’ve interacted with two other people who are both certainly worthy of an invite. The first of which is D, host of She Who Chatters. D, consider this your official invite, and should you accept, by all means jump right in. Somebody else I’d like to invite is Jayman, but I don’t think he reads here. He’s disappeared from Deacon Duncan’s, but as the current lineup is 3 atheists to 1 theist (presuming D accepts), Jayman would be a welcome addition that would up the theist block to 2. So, Jayman, if you’re out there, we’d love to have you on board!
The format we’d previously agreed to follow was that power commenters would critique a post before I posted it, and offer their assessments. I would then post the original, along with the initial round of comments, effectively opening with a pre-existing discussion from which further resonation is possible. This time around, let’s do it a bit more informally: if you’re one of the aforementioned power commenters — provided you’re still into the idea — just go ahead and give us your two cents in the thread here.
Now, I wouldn’t have written this post at all, because quite honestly I’d shaken the dust off my intellectual sandals and accepted the fact that jim will believe what jim will believe, and that’s all there is to it. He’s constantly accusing me of the most heinous intellectual atrocities and doesn’t take me seriously anyways, so I’d concluded further responses at his blog would be futile, perhaps other than to include links back to this post in case any of jim’s readers might be interested in hearing my side of the story. Yet, jim puts me between a rock and a hard place: when pressed, he tells me “don’t respond” and that he doesn’t want to “write another 30,000 words about it,” so I back off, but the next day he vomits out 2,373 words here, followed by 355 more here — nearly 10% of the 30,000 he claimed he wished to avoid — and almost all of which manage to completely misrepresent my conclusion while attempting to belittle me into defeat!
One last thing before we get to it: besides giving the power commenter idea another go, there’s a second reason I want to respond here and stop commenting on jim’s blog entirely: the last thing I want is to put effort into arguments only to have jim to get all pissed off and purge his blog of every comment and post involving me that’s amassed since the last time he purged his blog of every comment and post involving me. This way, at least I can keep a record of my arguments, and not have to worry about being censored. That said, I’ll try to make this as easy and clear as possible.
My claim here is that jim has either misunderstood or distorted two of my recent arguments.
First, I’d like to be absolved from the false dichotomy charge jim’s alleged, and also clarify my conclusion — or more accurately, my lack of any positive conclusion whatsoever — regarding the Video Game Incident, which jim has either misunderstood or distorted. If the former, simple exposition along with some “gentle prodding” from the power commenters may suffice to restore jim to his peak rational abilities, but if the latter, I fully expect further resistance and denigration. Second, I’d like your opinions on whether or not jim has misunderstood or distorted the Argument From The Superiority Of Knowable Claims.
I encourage you to briefly peruse the 3,000 words he didn’t want to write; perhaps you’ll see something of worth that I missed. IMO, the only correct (but unfortunately moot) point he makes is that I did dismiss the natural gravity hypothesis before two subsequent “accidental experiments” disproved it — as did both other witnesses present. jim tries to paint that as sloppy technique, but in reality it’s a testimony to how persuasive this event actually was: enough that three rational adults knew right away that the natural gravity hypothesis could not explain the trajectory or force of the objects, or the distance which they flew, nor could it account for the fact they landed practically as stacked as they were in their initial resting position.
1) I stand by my claim that after two months now, jim has yet to face the video game incident squarely, whereas commenters here had no problem attempting rational explanations that didn’t involve casting doubt on the credibility of the witness, or appeals to the natural gravity hypothesis which are effectively refuted by the evidence (of those Dominic’s is the most viable).
jim and I agree with Koch that “When faced with unsolved problems, there is no justification for recourse to the supernatural as long as we can offer valid possibilities of rational explanation,” but the operative word there is valid. The evidence thoroughly refutes any theory of conventional objects bound by gravity, i.e. a fall. Yet, to simply assert it was a fall in spite of the contradictory evidence is apparently good enough for jim, and we’re supposed to believe that’s rigorous intellectualism. Of course, he also offers claims that I might be lying, or that the three witnesses suffered from group psychosis, or confirmation bias, but I’ve met those objections, and nobody seemed too worried about them in the OP.
I will now prove beyond all reasonable doubt that jim has distorted or misunderstood my conclusion regarding the Video Game Incident, and if anybody agrees, for (?)’s sake, say so! Let’s foster an environment of positive group learning here, not just back-and-forth banter between the same-old same-old that essentially amounts to intellectual stalemate.
From jim’s post,
Somebody makes a claim; say, a stack of video games travels from the top of a piece of furniture to the floor. The possibilities for how this happened boil down to two: They fell, or magic.
Folks, nowhere did I establish any such dichotomy. First off, I think magic is an unlikely explanation, because magic entails a subject actively influencing the objects in question, and that does not appear to be in accord with the evidence. It’s certainly possible that some fourth person was employing magic or some other mechanism we don’t know about, or that perhaps A or L were secretly doing so and fooling me, but why offer new hypotheses with literally zero supporting evidence when we already have an accruing body of spook experiences occurring at this location, each of which are consistent with the literature regarding psychokinetic, spiritual or psi phenomena? So no, I don’t posit that it was magic, nor do I posit that magic is the only viable alternative to falling. Further, I don’t posit any positive conclusion whatsoever; my stance is more akin to “I don’t know” and the only firm conclusion I’ve drawn at all was that it’s 100% reasonable to exclude the natural gravity hypothesis. Both the evidence and witnesses concur, and the three of us will go to our graves knowing what we saw. We still talk about it to this day. In fact, just twenty minutes ago I was over there, and we were talking about tomorrow’s post, another peculiar instance of spook phenomena that occurred just a few days ago.
Point is, as far as the false dichotomy jim attributed to me, I have irrefutable evidence that flatly contradicts jim’s claim, cited from jim’s own blog so we know he’s aware of it, because he’s responded to it. Just two days ago, I reminded him,
..mind you, jim, accusations that I’ve colored the interpretation presume I’ve reached a conclusion. I haven’t. I have no idea what moved those games the way they moved. I don’t necessarily demand that all spook phenomena have spiritual sources. There might be a good rational explanation for this. That’s why I put it out there in the first place.
Now folks, not to pat myself on the back by any means, but don’t you think my response reflects reasoned and healthy skepticism that remains open to the best explanation? For the sake of my own sanity if nothing else, doesn’t my statement above indicate that I’ve not offered a false dichotomy of falling or magic, which would make jim’s claim wrong?
2) Next, in reference to the Argument From The Superiority Of Knowable Claims, jim offers the following:
The best apologists have to offer are ‘what if’ scenarios, and semantical one-upmanship. “You can’t prove there’s no consciousness after death, because if so you’ll be dead, and won’t be able to prove your claim. However, if there IS life after death, you WILL be able to prove it. Therefore, consciousness after death is the more reasonable claim.”
Besides the fact that he’s presumed he’s heard my best, did any of you who actually read the argument notice how jim replaced my original adjective with an arbitrary one of his own choosing? The criteria which the premises were being evaluated upon was veridic superiority, not reasonableness, and there is a very good reason I specifically chose the phrase I used. Veridic superiority is an objective criteria, measurably determined by the intrinsic properties of each premise and their epistemological usefulness in generating testable hypotheses. Reasonableness is an entirely subjective criteria, as it ultimately remains in the eye of the beholder not to mention wildly vulnerable to bias and assertion. Who’s to say what’s reasonable and on what grounds?
Second, my conclusion isn’t that continuation of consciousness is the more reasonable claim, but the veridically superior claim, in that it retains an intrinsic advantage in generating testable hypotheses.
So what about this one, people? Would any of you agree that jim also misunderstood or distorted my position again?
I love you all.
D
says...As for the Argument from the Superiority of Knowable claims, I see now that your use of “veridically superior” also complicates the matter – if I’m reading it right now, the argument more or less concludes that assuming consciousness can survive the death of a physical brain gives us something to work with, yes? If that’s what you meant, then yes, assuming that phenomenon X occurs is of greater experimental utility than assuming that it cannot possibly occur (though it may end up being “disproven” in the strongest sense possible: experiments that rely on it being true consistently fail, and experiments that rely on it being false consistently succeed). I did not see any response from a Jim, though; I can only say that I myself have had no less than three understandings of the argument, as I see the meanings of terms clarified step by step.
As to the video game incident, I’ll agree that at least I never saw any indication that you claimed it “proves” this or that supernatural bit of knowledge. I read it as, “Something undeniably weird happened. What now?” For my part, I’ve seen some funny things in my time, some of which were later explained by something else, some of which I think I may have imagined or misremembered, and some of which I just don’t care about and have long forgotten. Sure, such an incident could indicate any of a number of things, but I see no reason to endorse any particular indication without a few other things in place (such as repeatability – do the same friends with the same few drinks make it happen again?).
As for power commenters, I’d relish the opportunity to inject my perspective into a discussion from the get-go, and thanks for inviting me! I think getting the input of other writers, especially of contrary viewpoints, will make things more interesting. How would such input be obtained, though? Like, would I need to register somewhere, or submit by e-mail, or what? Just curious as to what I’d have to do to insert my two cents.
cl
says...Thanks D. I’ll get to your reservations about the Argument from the Superiority of Knowable Claims when I catch up with that thread, hopefully later today. As far as,
I believe it is fundamentally unreasonable to expect tester-induced repeatability regarding spook phenomena. Purported phenomena like remote viewing or pyschokinesis, however, better loan themselves to repeatability, because they do not necessarily require a “spiritual critter” to use your own term. Further, the spook phenomena I share here are personal anecdotes, and while in and of themselves they don’t establish that consciousness can survive the death of a brain – they are consistent (coherent, to use your term from your most recent response to me on your own blog) with experiments that certainly confront the cerebro-centric view of consciousness head-on.
As for the power commenter thing, welcome to the bunch. Hopefully the others are still into it. Lifeguard? Dominic? MS?
Well for now, in this case, power commenters were asked to simply insert their two cents in the thread, much like you’ve already begun to do. The only thing I would further inquire of is your direct answers to the questions:
1) Don’t you think my response to jim (the one beginning “mind you, jim..”) reflects reasoned and healthy skepticism that remains open to the best explanation? I basically said, “I don’t know,” as opposed to leaning towards any sort of firm conclusion. All I wanted the guy to do was offer rational explanation that didn’t involve insinuating people are liars and/or hallucinators, or appeals to natural gravity, which clearly don’t fit the data.
2) For the sake of my own sanity if nothing else, doesn’t my statement above indicate that I’ve not offered a false dichotomy of falling or magic, which would make jim’s claim that I offered only two options (falling or magic) false?
3) Do you think the Argument from the Superiority of Knowable Claims was to establish veridic superiority or reasonableness? I noticed in your own post you also switched veridic superiority with reasonableness, 8th paragraph, opening sentence. Do you think it was accurate for either jim or yourself to evaluate the argument on the criteria of reasonableness, when I originally evaluated it on veridic superiority? IOW, I seem to see an objective and relevant difference between the two criteria, whereas you and jim seem to lump them together.
cl
says...**UPDATE**
Here’s the latest from jim:
By all means, somebody answer the man! Does anyone see any evidence to support jim’s claim that I’m a “SUPERSTITIOUS LIAR” or that my brain is in a “distorted position?”
If no, is anyone starting to see what I mean about refusal to confront evidence head on, even for the sake of a friendly discussion? We already know what the cause of the discrepancy is here: I’m a superstitious liar! Or the games fell! Because whatever it was, it can’t be anything “not natural,” because jim’s a naturalist – QED! Right. And I’m the one with insular beliefs.
Also, in response to the words “psychokinetic, spiritual or psi phenomena,” jim replied,
When I said that I didn’t think magic was a valid explanation, what I meant was there is no evidence to support the claim of a fourth subject influencing matter. If jim wants to simply call everything he doesn’t understand magic, even when psychokinetic and psi phenomena have been reliably demonstrated, why can’t jim offer even an attempted rational explanation, like Dominic’s polypsychic suggestion, or nal’s “cookie sheet / convection” hypothesis? I would totally respect that. What I can’t respect is juvenile ranting based off personal distaste. That’s not rationalism, in my opinion.
And as far as my assertion that such phenomena have been “reliably demonstrated,” yes, I intend to back that claim up very thoroughly in upcoming weeks and months. I just gotta get used to posting once daily, to keep the momentum going. I swear, it’s tough.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...Well, regarding 1), I’ll have to look into it some, whenever you and jim go at it, I lose interest. Regarding 2), realize that it looks like everyone who read your “argument” as you put it, came away with the impression that you didn’t intend. All you needed to do was clarify what you meant by “veridically superior”.
MS Quixote
says...“1) Don’t you think my response to jim (the one beginning “mind you, jim..”) reflects reasoned and healthy skepticism that remains open to the best explanation?”
Yes, cl, without a doubt. No offense to Brad, Lifeguard, Dominic, or D–all whom I happen to respect and enjoy reading–but Jim is hiding behind what I term the “atheist shield of faith.” He is appealing to nescience when confronted with your evidence, without plausible, supporting rationale.
Given that you and your friends are not fabricating, cl, and your post asked us to take that as a given, IIRC, and at any rate I believe you–gullable Christian that I am–the most plausible conclusion is a supernatural event. Philosophically, in order to remain rational, one is bound by the most plausible conclusion, until or unless a more plausible discovery is made or conclusion is reached. Appeals to “I just don’t know” or “it could be invisible aliens” do not reach the level of plausibility that other answers do; thus, it’s not rational to hold them, as long as one signs off on the premisses, that is.
“2) For the sake of my own sanity if nothing else, doesn’t my statement above indicate that I’ve not offered a false dichotomy of falling or magic, which would make jim’s claim that I offered only two options (falling or magic) false?”
Yes.
3) From Jim as quoted: “The best apologists have to offer are ‘what if’ scenarios, and semantical one-upmanship. “You can’t prove there’s no consciousness after death, because if so you’ll be dead, and won’t be able to prove your claim. However, if there IS life after death, you WILL be able to prove it. Therefore, consciousness after death is the more reasonable claim.”
In Jim’s defense, cl, you have the admirable quality of attempting to be logically precise. If he read your post quickly, he may have simply missed the distinction between veridicality and reasonableness. At any rate, your charge here is sound in my view.
In my mind, what your argument here demonstrates is not the uber-reasonableness of consciousness surviving death, but rather it’s yet another a defeater for the more verificationist brands of atheist thought. There’s a subset of atheist thinkers who elect to not believe anything unless it is scientifically demonstrable. Your argument here, in my view, requires agnosticism on their part as theism is actually the potentially demonstrable belief, not atheism. In fact, I can’t imagine a scenario by which atheism may be scientifically demonstrated.
Furthermore, I’ve not encountered any reasonably sound deductive proofs for atheism, except with respect to specific conceptions or definitions of God. Atheism as a comprehensive worldview, contrary to theism, inhabits the nether world of induction. Imagine how a theist could run with this state of affairs if she were given over to such argumentation as displayed in #3.
Two cents for now…
cl
says...Dominic,
I don’t blame you.
Nice quotes. You really didn’t like that one too much! I thought it was decent, albeit supporting or supplementary at best.
MS Quixote,
Check this out: jim claims I’m a “SUPERSTITIOUS LIAR” but the very definition of superstition is “..belief or notion, not based on reason, knowledge, or experience,” which is exactly the unfortunate position jim’s claims find themselves in. He has no evidentiary reason, knowledge, or experience to support his claims that the games fell, or that I’m a liar.
How funny though. He calls me superstitious, when I’ve provisionally neglected to proffer a positive conclusion – precisely because I concede my limitations of reason, knowledge, and experience – but jim offers all sorts of wild assertions with no reason, knowledge, or experience to sustain them. And he’s got a picture of some guy faceplanting off a skateboard that’s supposed to be me, not to mention the standard cursing and invective. Good stuff!
I thought so, too.
See, that’s where we split off a bit. I haven’t really drawn any conclusion other than that natural gravity can be effectively ruled out. What I say is that the incident is consistent or coherent with one or more supernatural hypotheses. I’m also interested in biomental, polypsychic or psychokinetic hypotheses, too. I really don’t know what happened, but I’m open to the evidence wherever it leads, and right now I’m combing through old stuff to see what sort of things I can find that are similar. Tomorrow’s post will tell a milder – albeit equally interesting sequence of events – that took place at the same house last week.
I agree, although I hold a certain respect for “I don’t know.” For example, that’s essentially my answer to age-of-the-earth questions. Still, regarding the video game incident as it stands today, I think the strongest conclusion we could ever possibly hope to draw would be that it’s consistent or coherent with X, where X represents some feasible explanation.
Perhaps. He wasn’t the only one who missed it. I’ll take that into consideration, and I agree my charge was sound.
Hence the inherently contradictory nature of the position, and why I have no idea on Earth why anybody would ever believe it. And no offense to my atheist readers by any means, but it’s true. On one hand, the standard atheist mantra is “that which is scientifically demonstrable, damnit!” But the very position they default to is itself not scientifically demonstrable. It’s the ultimate irony: atheists can only be proven wrong, believers can only be proven right.
Nobody really liked my Superiority Of Knowable Claims argument on the atheist side, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back in any way, but the argument along with the aforementioned observations are simple and forceful motivators for theism, IMO.
cl
says...**UPDATE**
In his most recent addendum, jim struck directly at the issue that I seek to eliminate with power commenters:
Right. It’s not that MS Quixote has any valid points, it’s just that he’s protecting me because we both believe in God. This is why I gave myself a disadvantage by stacking my power commenters in favor of atheism. As it stands, we have one theist to three atheists – problem is only the theist has pronounced any firm judgments. Dominic? Lifeguard? D? If any or all of you are willing to give jim anything from the “gentle prodding” suggested to the lashing invective deserved, I promise I’ll never call on you to moderate a disagreement I have with jim again. Likewise, if any or all of you think I’m being irrational here, I need to know that so I can see the error. Group moderation is a form of “checkability” that we can apply to apprehend the truth. We’ve all got bigger and better things to talk about, so let’s blow this one out of the water and move on. I’m losing patience here, so I know that means most of you lost them long ago.
That said, jim has amplified his tendencies to ignore stated information by pulling something from today’s post in order to smear me:
Power commenters: did I ever once say or even imply that “a supernatural explanation 100% trumps a natural one in the video game incident?” If yes, where? If no, is jim simply incorrect? Regarding the “ghosts causing the laceration,” perhaps jim didn’t realize that was the setup to actually discredit the very sort of extraordinary belief jim charges me with holding? Remember, I said,
That “certainly not” means I’m not justified to say a demon or ghost or spirit followed me home and made me cut my thumb. Nor do I believe any of those things happened. I believe it’s most likely that I was excited, hungry and rushing to get the beans on the stove, and I believe this precisely because “When faced with unsolved problems, there is no justification for recourse to the supernatural as long as we can offer valid possibilities of rational explanation.” My position is 100% consistent and rational here, my friends.
Regarding Quixote’s position that a supernatural occurence best explains the data (which is a position I currently do not share), jim distorts things again:
He makes it sound like Quixote arbitrarily tosses gravity and sound vibration out the window in favor of his own preferred supernatural hypothesis. It’s not that; it’s just that if we are to be honest, we must admit that the natural gravity / sound waves hypothesis is completely contradicted by all evidence. Further, it’s been perfunctorily disproved: since the incident, all three witnesses present have observed sound vibrations rattling the games off the television – and the results were drastically different, as recorded in the original post. For reasons undisclosed, jim sees fit to simply ignore all that. If he could at least say, “Damn, presuming you’re telling the truth, that is a blatant violation of natural gravity. I was wrong to simply assert they fell.” That would be all I need to take him seriously.
Now we’re talking. I’ve never said they couldn’t or didn’t, and that’s an explanation I’d be willing to consider if he could flesh it out a bit. Why would they be there? What would they be hoping to accomplish that couldn’t be accomplished without flinging games around the house? You know, the same sorts of questions we’d have to ask almost regardless of what we posit.
Really, that single “invisible aliens” comment could’ve saved all this grief. Why couldn’t jim have just said that 2 months ago? Isn’t it a poor place we’re in when our intellectual curiosity only comes after 10,000 words of denial and insult?
Anonymous
says...jim
cl: Curiosity question, and unrelated to the subject at hand. Exactly what function do your ‘power commenters’ serve? I’m not participating in any kind of formal debate with you, whereby they can serve as arbiters in ruling on this or that kind of procedural question, nor are any of their opinions as to the substance of what’s said binding in any way, shape or form that I can see. Whether they agree or disagree with what I’ve said is no skin off my nose, and if they happen to push their disagreements too far with you, well…that’ll be interesting, I’ll admit.
This just all seems like your subtle way of stacking the deck; although like I said, since I’m not formally participating I’m not sure what good it does you, other than the usual egoistic things, I guess. It’s kind of weird, actually. Not that there’s anything wrong with how their opinions ultimately come down, if they choose to participate in this…whatever it is. Quixote’s opinions are the most predictable from this end; I could practically write them verbatim myself. No offense meant there, but it’s easy to see where he’s coming from, and your positions are similar across many fronts from what I’ve seen.
By the way, the ‘I love you all’ thing was choice!
cl
says...**UPDATE**
Well, despite my knowing better, I commented at jim’s because he was attributing positions to me that were not mine, and I KNEW I should’ve both saved a copy and taken a screenshot of my comment, because he deleted it. On top of that, now jim offers a post in which he says I’m “welcomed” to comment at his blog, literally minutes after deleting said comment. Right. I get it.
I’ll have to try from memory to reproduce the comment jim deleted. To his own readers, I responded to jim’s,
..with something to the effect of,
I then proceeded to cite the part of D’s comment (#1 in this thread) that says, “I’ll agree that at least I never saw any indication that [cl] claimed it “proves” this or that supernatural bit of knowledge.”
Of course, jim can’t leave a comment up on his own blog that actually proves that even other atheists agree with me, right? In the comment he deleted, I also challenged jim to provide the evidence for the claim he attributes to me, and he offered the following statement of mine:
That’s actually correct: I did say that, exactly as jim worded it. I’m glad he quoted my position verbatim this time, too, because it hangs him out to dry. I’ve also taken screenshots this time, so if he decides to change or delete anything else, I’ll have some ground to stand on.
Now for the refutation: jim equates “~natural gravity” with “supernatural” when there is no logical reason to do so. Folks, this is textbook false dichotomy – again. Will somebody, anybody, please explain to jim that excluding a fall from natural gravity DOES NOT entail a positive claim of supernatural causality?
MS Quixote
says...“No offense meant there, but it’s easy to see where he’s coming from,”
None taken, Jim. That’s actually a compliment of non-obscurantism as I see it. Likewise to you, no offense intended. I’d like to respond to a couple of your comments from your blog, but to make certain I’m seeing things clearly here, I need cl to clarify a couple of assumptions from his account:
1. Because of our distance fron the actual event, we were to take as given that you guys were not hoaxing, and that no outside hoaxers were involved, right?
2. Given the distance the items crossed and 1 above, no known natural causes are adequate to explain the event, right? In fact, natural laws preclude the event, correct?
D
says...cl, I read your comment directly beneath mine, and here’s my opinion of jim so far, in free verse poetry:
Everybody’s got a gris-gris
Some are bigger than others
Liars aren’t worth arguing
jim’s probably wasting his time
I think he may be frustrated
Maybe he has sandpaper palms?
In all seriousness, I don’t know who jim is, and I freely admit that anything I could glean from but a single post is probably a hasty generalization. Still, I just don’t see the point in calling someone a liar – what are they gonna do, admit it? It doesn’t sound like you two are having a productive debate, and no matter whether the blame falls squarely upon one of you or somewhere in the middle, I frankly don’t give a shit.
As for the video game incident, I’m just going to act like I believe it happened as you say, because that’s the only way to move the argument forward and that’s precisely what I’m interested in doing. As it happens, I don’t actually believe you – sorry, I don’t think you’re trying to deliberately deceive me or anything like that, I just can’t make myself believe it (strictly business, nothing personal – dig?). My real question, assuming that your story is 100% tru fax, is as to how you get to some kind of consciousness from it? And I have this question whether your story is true or not, because the important part is that you honestly believe that it is, so I want to confront and work with that belief. What if it was a completely unconscious phenomenon, such as a “bug” in gravity or some noise? (I’m making things up now, just saying that an infinite number of explanations are possible – what does bodiless consciousness have to do with this, though?)
cl
says...MS,
1. That we weren’t hoaxing, yes. That someone else wasn’t cannot be ruled out. The whole idea was, “given this thing went as the three witnesses testify it did, how do we parse this?” What I was essentially interested in was having a thought experiment, not a shouting match.
I don’t know if you saw / recall the OP, but two people threw out various attempts at explanations that didn’t involve the idea of consciousness existing outside a body: Dominic offered polypsychism (which ironically is consciousness *extending outside a body); nal offered an interesting sort of “convection” hypothesis, etc.
jim, Philly, Evo, and SI – on the other hand – each came with atheist shields of faith in hand, and proceeded to either outright reject, misunderstand or inappropriately respond to the incident: Evo rejected it outright; SI rejected it for literally hundreds of comments over a six-week period, come to find out he never even understood the details (see halfway down linked comment); Philly was just Philly and didn’t have much to say other than ‘douche’; and jim is claiming I’ve concluded positive towards the supernatural when I’ve said no such thing, and having a field day mocking me for it. He doesn’t seem to care or feel the need for either accuracy or apology, either, yet maintains that in fact he is a rationalist, who’s “tried to deal with it through logic, by factual correction, with humor, in anger… even.. embarrassment.” I just don’t get it. Even if a damned ghost moved the games it doesn’t mean jim has to become a Christian again, so what’s the big deal?
2. Well, first a quibble: you mention ‘natural’ laws but I reject the natural-supernatural dichotomy because it tends to completely destroy resolution of otherwise intelligent debate. The terms are both loaded and subjective; supernatural simply doubles as a euphemism for that which we cannot currently understand, and by assuming that psychokinesis (PK) or psi phenomena are inherently supernatural and/or magic, jim is making the same silly mistake as the ancients who jumped to the conclusion that lightning was supernatural and/or magic. Yet, he’s asking everyone to believe I’m the one being irrational, and superstitious, and unable to logically parse reality, while he merely repeats the same unfounded claims that I’m “intellectually dishonest” in between hitting the “delete” button to remove comments that voice atheist support for my position from his blog.
For if PK and psi are reasonably demonstrable – and I will make my best case to show that they or something analogous to them are – then it is reasonable to assume they are ‘naturally occurring’. Science doesn’t stop, you know.
**To answer your question: given the distance (did you see the diagram?) and all other pertinent details – yes – I do believe no known natural causes are adequate, and that all known laws concerning objects in motion preclude the event. Guaranteed, my friend. Guaranteed.
[META] I think it just came to me: the situation I mentioned to you the other day in our single-exchange discussion about deconverts. Do you think that might be at play? [META]
cl
says...You know, I never write poetry. I’m’a give it a try:
“Liars aren’t worth arguing”
says She Who Chatters D,
and if you think but for a beat
you’ll see it’s true indeed.
For if I thought a man would lie,
I’d only sit and wonder why.
Since I can’t know the ties that bind,
who am I, mere man, to know his mind?
But alas the sting of pain is real,
making even giants kneel.
Yet with great loss can come great gain,
if we can recover, from that sting of pain,
so fortuit us not to incur great cost,
as oppor-tun-it-y for truth be lost.
*****************
Actually, I believe we are, although I’m unsure if jim knows it yet. As for me, I just experimented with poetry. That’s new.
Hey that’s cool. That was the whole idea in the first place. I also respect your disbelief, because you state it without attaching a laundry list of insults. What – if anything – could help convince you that it happened exactly the way we say it did?
Well, I don’t get to immaterial consciousness just by that step, you see. I offer the incident in counter to those who say, “There’s no evidence that consciousness can exist outside a body.” That’s completely false. My little anecdote is just the beginning of some stuff that you’re going to find truly remarkable in upcoming weeks. However, the point is that the incident has coherence with the immaterial consciousness hypothesis. The problem is that it also has coherence with a few other hypotheses as well. When we look at other phenomena in the literature though, we’ll be confronted with some cases that aren’t as “blurry.” We’ve also got to take into consideration the larger context of events that occurs at this house, as well as past inhabitants.
Noise vibration can be safely excluded. As far as a “bug” in gravity, I’d need more to work with before I could start to consider..
I don’t know, but in terms of potency, do you think the incident could be consistent with the idea of a God that wants to verify the existence of the unseen?
jim
says...cl: I just got home from bringing my daughter back from school (college music major), and saw your accusation. I don’t know what to say. I haven’t deleted anything of yours. What I think might have happened is you dropped your comment into my moderation JUST before I switched off the moderation function…LOL! I noticed all the comments I had in queue were gone. Just bad timing. Sorry.
Or, maybe it was the government! I’ll get Gideon right on it!
MS Quixote
says...“The whole idea was, “given this thing went as the three witnesses testify it did, how do we parse this?”
This was my understanding…thanks. IOW, assume hoax as a non-factor, with the exception of invisible aliens and the like.
” don’t know if you saw / recall the OP,”
Yes, and, alleged tag-teamer that I am, and notwithstanding that such tag-teaming is false, and if it were true, 2 versus all comers is not exactly overwhelming odds, I think your representation of the OP and commentary is accurate.
“you mention ‘natural’ laws but I reject the natural-supernatural dichotomy because it tends to completely destroy resolution of otherwise intelligent debate.”
I’m happy to proceed along these lines.
“The terms are both loaded and subjective; supernatural simply doubles as a euphemism for that which we cannot currently understand,”
When misused or misapplied, that is…
“For if PK and psi are reasonably demonstrable – and I will make my best case to show that they or something analogous to them are – then it is reasonable to assume they are ‘naturally occurring’.”
Fine with this, and in so doing, you would refute my contention that a “not in any sense natural” explanation is the most plausible, given your assumptions. I’ll be looking forward to that.
“I do believe no known natural causes are adequate, and that all known laws concerning objects in motion preclude the event.”
That was my reading as well. Given this, it’s difficult to see how other than currently scientifically explainable forces can be discounted or eliminated without some presuppositional bias. In fact, whether you believe the account or not, given the assumptions, an irregular force which is not equivalent to magic is logically required. The interesting question, then, is which, if any, is the most plausible, and, I think, secondarily, who’s got the moxy to admit it.
META: It certainly could be.
jim
says...You have to admit, it IS ironic. LOL!
D:
Jim IS frustrated, it’s plain to see,
but since you’re new to this locality
he won’t bore you with bygone news.
Instead, I think he just might choose
to wave hello, then bid adieu
until tomorrow breaks anew.
(Oh, and please feel free to post and surf,
but regarding the poetry? Stay off my turf!)
LOL! Niters, one and all.
cl
says...jim,
So you’re saying it just got “blocked out” and you never saw it? Could be. If that’s the case I have no problem apologizing, and I’ll have to take your word for it, because I’m not going to accuse you of lying. This particular instance doesn’t matter anyway, because that you censor those you dislike is already known fact.
Let’s get to the point though: you claimed my conclusion was that “a supernatural explanation 100% trumps a natural one,” when I claimed no such thing. Then, after the fact that I said no such thing had been pointed out to you by 2 believers and 1 atheist, you made a “late minute addition” that denounced objection as “obfuscation” although the objection is actually supported by undeniable fact.
It’s straight-answer time, jim, else move on: does my claim that natural gravity can be excluded necessarily exclude all other natural explanations? If yes, you are saying that gravity is the only possible natural explanation that could account for the phenomena. If no, you concede that you attribute claims to me I didn’t make. Neither of those claims are logically coherent, so you’re gonna have to lose some face either way. If you can’t admit when you are wrong, then what’s the point of talking?
MS Quixote,
Not necessarily. I can’t or haven’t refuted anything except the natural gravity hypothesis. For me right now, there’s simply not enough total evidence about the house, nor is the existing evidence corroborated with the literature. I’ll get to both of those in time.
I agree completely.
Unfortunately though, I won’t be going that route. “Most plausible” is another one of those subject terms like “reasonable” in that it lays in the eye of the beholder. I’m looking for something objective. I want to frame this such that it boils down to more than which hypothesis we think is most plausible. Everyone will inevitably define what’s most plausible through their own biases. IOW, I want to show what is the most plausible! Maybe it would be smart to write up my own definition of “most plausible” and get everyone to sign off before we proceed?
jim
says...cl: I just checked my mail, hoping your lost post might be in the email notification loop, but no such luck. It probably got wiped before blogspot had a chance to send it through. It’s notoriously slow, at times. Again, apologies.
cl
says...That’s fine, and like I said, my apologies if you didn’t delete it. It’s not like the comment contained information that’s not on the table here. I was just trying to offer a balanced consensus to the false claim you were asking your readers to believe. What do you say to that, BTW? Was it fair of you to claim I’d concluded that “supernatural trumps natural” when in fact all I’d really concluded was that “natural gravity may be excluded?”
jim
says...cl: To tell you the truth, I wasn’t planning on talking about it anymore. As for the censoring, I’ve made it an open fact that I censor those who have nothing to say, NOT those I dislike (though the two certainly aren’t mutually exclusive), from the beginning. And as you see from my last post, I’m easing up on that (though regretting it already).
As for the gnat you seem to be straining at at the moment…
‘It’s straight-answer time, jim, else move on: does my claim that natural gravity can be excluded necessarily exclude all other natural explanations?”
Yes it does; other than obvious things like that someone actually picked them up and placed them on the floor. And excluding the ridiculously exotic stuff like invisible tractor beams, et al. Naturalistically speaking, how did the tapes move from the higher place to the lower one? Gravity. Straight enough for you?
As for the ‘last minute addition’? Well, I saw your denial over here, and so added YOUR OWN QUOTE, which I had also placed elsewhere previously, just to back up my claim, with the added footnote as commentary…properly asterisked, of course. :) The footnote was added in anticipation of just such an empty challenge as this one has turned out to be.
Nothing’s changed here. I’m offered an anecdote about an incident perceived to be unusual. An anecdote I cannot check the details of. An anecdote about a particular interpretation of events i.e. it could not have been vibration/gravity. An anecdote which reflects the standard ‘telling or seeing more than was actually there’ scenario which is a proven staple of human psychology. Am I simply supposed to accept an unnatural/speculatively exotic agency, then, and proceed from there? Why should I? Why would I? Like someone above said, then it’s basically a ‘sky’s the limit’ situation, and we could all sit and mind fuck ’til the cows come home. Not interested, but you have fun with that. I know where it’s all headed, anyway. Your arguments always seem to flow down the same culvert.
Enjoy!
jim
says...Btw, feel free to post something my way, even if it’s only ‘test’. This has me wondering now. Maybe I did something wrong in setting the parameters, or something.
jim
says...cl: One more thing. I just picked up on your note about psi/pk/etc possibly being defined as ‘natural’ occurrences. Since it hasn’t been established to my satisfaction that these things exist, I still stand by my statement, and quite comfortable tyvm. Of course, since you seem to want to wipe away distinctions between the terms ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ anyway, then the whole question becomes moot anyway, doesn’t it?
cl
says...Why regretting it? I’m not coming to your blog to comment. It literally makes no difference whether you have moderation on or off if nothing’s incoming, right?
Interesting. In your mind, then, science must be all done finding natural causes that can explain the sudden movement of objects at rest. If that’s what you think, isn’t that presumptuous? If that’s not what you think, on what grounds do you claim no currently undiscovered natural processes can explain the motion of objects?
Also, you contradict yourself because you’ve already supplied another potentially valid natural hypothesis that is not natural gravity: aliens. So you undermine your own attempted defense here.
Sure, if you want to CONTINUE to COMPLETELY IGNORE the data, but how scientific is that?
Denial? You mean correction? My quote does not permit your claim, jim, and D was quick to tell you, too: you said I said “supernatural trumps natural” when I said no such thing. Why can’t you just say, “you know cl, you’re right, I took your comment out of scope leading to a false dichotomy where one was not. You didn’t say “supernatural trumps natural.” What’s so hard about that?
Which is why I asked people for rational explanations: so we could cut through the hypotheses. Like I said, I’ll just note when I get to Pt. II that your best explanation was two words: invisible aliens. No further explanation or connection even so much as proffered: just, “invisible aliens.”
You can’t check the details of Big Bang Cosmology, either, so I see that you pick and choose which “uncheckable anecdotes” to believe. Can science reliably proceed by such arbitrary whims?
No, and I never asked you too, and frankly, why do you have to be such a hardhead? The point of the whole thing was a thought experiment, a simple question to encourage intellectual work: presuming the data correct, what is the most reasonable natural explanation you can come up with? That’s it. That’s all it was. The other atheists here were all able to meet the challenge in five minutes without a laundry list of insults or even a lick of difficulty. Here we are two months later, and aside from 10,000 words worth of insults and avoiding the original point, you still have nothing besides two words: “invisible aliens.”
And you know what? That’s fine. I’ll take that as your answer. At least my curiosity is now satiated, to answer the question of motive you first asked in this thread.
My original claim from the OP stands: regardless of the evidence, jim will believe what jim will believe – period.
jim
says...cl:
“If that’s not what you think, on what grounds do you claim no currently undiscovered natural processes can explain the motion of objects?”
Typical ‘gaps’ reasoning. It’s always back to the N.O. place with you, isn’t it? Unbased speculation can win any argument, cl. That’s why you go there so often.
“Also, you contradict yourself because you’ve already supplied another potentially valid natural hypothesis that is not natural gravity: aliens. So you undermine your own attempted defense here.”
No, I’m working off valid natural hypotheses, not exotic, speculative ones. Just another silly attempt by you to muddy the waters. The whole reason I brought up ‘invisible aliens’ was to dismiss it as a credible alternative. Do you understand the term ‘context’ at all?
“My quote does not permit your claim, jim, and D was quick to tell you, too: you said I said “supernatural trumps natural” when I said no such thing.”
Yes it does. Also, I’ve not used ‘supernatural trumps natural’ as a direct quotation by you, but as a description of the logical consequence of your position. This is one of your main tools in avoiding the undesired implications of what you say, claiming you never said a thing verbatim, then continuing on in terms of the thing said. More shoddy sophistry.
“You can’t check the details of Big Bang Cosmology, either, so I see that you pick and choose which “uncheckable anecdotes” to believe. Can science reliably proceed by such arbitrary whims?”
I started to write a long, rather complex paragraph here, then thought, “what’s the use?” If you don’t understand the difference between inductive reasoning vis-a-vis the scientific enterprise as a whole, and a personal anecdote on the internet, then you are lost to anything resembling rationality. Then again, look who I’m talking to.
As for the rest of your comment, not much there. More empty rhetoric and misconstruction of data. That you think this all boils down to ‘jim will believe what jim will believe’ just goes to show how obtuse you are when it comes to these matters. I will address one more point, though…
“…presuming the data correct, what is the most reasonable natural explanation you can come up with?”
If I am to bypass the evidentiary questions themselves, and simply accept the bare bones of the story, what am I left with? Some video games left the surface they were resting on, and wound up on the floor some 5 feet away, in an unlikely, though surely not impossible, configuration. You ask, “what is the most reasonable natural explanation” I can come up with? I’ve offered it: music vibration/gravity. There are plenty of hypothetical alternatives I could come up with, especially if I start redefining speculative supernatural premises as natural ones. But in my book, that’s not reasonable at all; rather, it is unreasonable conjecture. And when you ask for the MOST reasonable natural explanation I can think of, it comes back to music vibration/gravity to me. The music vibration, of course, to set things off, and the gravity to deliver them to the floor.
Thus ends another bizarre conversation with cl.
jim
says...cl: One more thing. So, you whine and you whine and you whine about my moderation, then when I lift it, with you specifically in mind, you give me this childish “Well, I’m not comin’ over to your house anyway!” sort of response. What next? Stick out your tongue, and chant “Jim ain’t got no friends! Jim ain’t got no friends!” Keerist! Give a baby its bottle, and it throws it on the floor. And you wonder why you’re insulted and banned or otherwise constricted all over the net. Must be ’cause of your salience and winning personality. LOLOLOLOL!
cl
says...I’ll address comment #25 first.
You’re right. I did whine about your moderation. I freely admit it. However, I didn’t whine about it because I felt denied of the glorious privilege of commenting at your blog. I whined about it because censorship, moderation and the deleting of comments does nothing for resolution of intellectual disagreement.
Can you keep things in scope please? “All over the net” really means, “on the blogs of select atheist bloggers who can’t handle the heat.” Besides, there’s never a justification for cursing at people and calling them “liars” in a public medium, period.
As far as comment #24 goes,
No, it’s not: the ability to just posit “anything that’s possible” is exactly what I’m trying to get away from by asking people for explanations. Now, look at your strategy for comparison: “it’s possible that cl and his other two witnesses are simply lying to deceive me… it’s possible that cl and his two witnesses misremembered the event… it’s possible that invisible aliens did it.”
And yet, the only thing myself and the other two witnesses have firmly claimed is that rejection of the natural gravity hypothesis is 100% warranted in this case.
So jim, who’s really arguing from N.O. and unjustified possibility here?
jim
says...“Can you keep things in scope please? “All over the net” really means, “on the blogs of select atheist bloggers who can’t handle the heat.”
Wow, you really walked into that one!
“Although the original exchange occurred over a month ago, and I’m unsure why I’m responding to a guy who banned me from his blog for an unspecified “breach of honesty” while he apparently has no problem calling me names like “mealy-mouthed prick” ALL OVER THE INTERNET…”
You might want to look into having your ‘scope’ recalibrated; looks like you’re firing about 180 degrees to the right.
Wow. I mean, I saw it coming. Was even chuckling about it a bit when I was out walking the dog. But still! Is this reasonably explainable by natural means? Surely a person can’t be this predictable! It’s got to be something else. Psi, maybe? On the other hand…LOLOL!
Wow.
jim
says...Oh, and lest I let your main point about the ‘invisible aliens’ slip past, let me quote from what I JUST posted, but you chose to ignore…again…
“The whole reason I brought up ‘invisible aliens’ was to dismiss it as a credible alternative. Do you understand the term ‘context’ at all?”
cl, you speaka da english? Sometimes your comprehension level seems to resemble that of a fungus. And not a smart fungus! One of those dumb ones that keeps getting kept back in school. On the other hand, maybe you’re just being disingenuous, and arguing in bad faith. You know, like pretty much always? That’s my bet.
jim
says...This isn’t my usual thing, but maybe I could take a page from your book for once, and offer a patronizing suggestion as to what you should do on your own blog. Move on, cl. You’ve got no chance here, and everybody’s on pins and needles waiting for your next scintillating ‘why Christianity RULES!’ formula.
As for me, I see a couple rums and coke in my very immediate future. Enjoy the day, doofis! :)
cl
says...Why not formulate a response that omits your opinion of me and/or my arguments? Not as much fun?
To date, I’ve been banned or censored from 5 blogs: Daylight Atheism, Evangelical Realism, Greta Christina’s, Why I Hate Jesus, and Defending / Contending – that’s 4 atheist, 1 theist – respectively. I don’t agree that such is synonymous with, “all over the internet,” especially when I’m a regular commenter on over two dozen blogs.
Would you mind addressing the question from comment #26? On what evidence do you claim I appeal to N.O. (non-omniscience, i.e., anything’s possible), when your own strategy has been,
“it’s possible that cl and his other two witnesses are simply lying… it’s possible that cl and his two witnesses misremembered the event… it’s possible that invisible aliens did it… aliens using tractor beams, a strain of mutant cockroach, an invisible magnet, a ghost jumping rope, suicidal video games, an alternate dimension, cl’s residence mysteriously tilting..” (when in fact the incident didn’t even occur at my residence.)
An intelligent individual can plainly see you’re appealing to “whatever’s possible” here. To contrast, my only firm claim is that natural gravity and sound waves cannot account for what happened. That’s it.
Which approach seems more scientific to you? If we were actual scientists in a laboratory, which approach do you think would be more conducive to discovering the truth? Excluding that which we know cannot account for the data, and searching for the most plausible explanation from multiple hypotheses? Or just making stuff up with what apparently looks like zero regard for the data? Honestly.
jim
says...“You might want to look into having your ‘scope’ recalibrated; looks like you’re firing about 180 degrees to the right.”
To date, I’ve been banned or censored from 5 blogs: Daylight Atheism, Evangelical Realism, Greta Christina’s, Why I Hate Jesus, and Defending / Contending – that’s 4 atheist, 1 theist – respectively. I don’t agree that such is synonymous with, “all over the internet,” especially when I’m a regular commenter on over two dozen blogs.”
And to date, how many blogs have I called you a ‘mealy-mouthed prick’ on? Which was the context, AND the point.
“An intelligent individual can plainly see you’re appealing to “whatever’s possible” here. To contrast, my only firm claim is that natural gravity and sound waves cannot account for what happened. That’s it.”
No, an individual with even a semblance of intelligence can see that I’m not ‘appealing to whatever’s out there’, but that I’m demonstrating the results of your open-ended appeal to seek something beyond the most reasonable explanation. Your limitation only speaks to what you perceive the cause cannot be, i.e.”my only firm claim is that natural gravity and sound waves cannot account for what happened. That’s it.”
“Which approach seems more scientific to you? If we were actual scientists in a laboratory, which approach do you think would be more conducive to discovering the truth?”
(I’m scientist A, you’re scientist B)…
Scientist A- Well, from what I see, the games fell on the floor, and some superstitious, suggestible people are making more of it than what it is.
Scientist B- No! I’ve already ruled out gravity!
Scientist A- B, what is this? A ghosthunt?
Scientist B- No! I’ve simply ruled out gravity. It could be a ghost, or psychic powers, or any number of things. I’m not really saying what it is. I just know gravity doesn’t account for it.
Scientist A- Wait a minute! You’re no scientist! Where the hell’d you get that lab coat? Security! Security!
Scientist B was shot be security while trying to escape. In the pockets of his stolen labcoat were found a bible, a crudely drawn map of Area 51, and a piece of what he’d wrongly identified to be the true cross (later identified as a popsicle stick…cherry, we think).
cl
says...Yes: in reference to you I said, “..I’m unsure why I’m responding to a guy who banned me from his blog for an unspecified “breach of honesty” while he apparently has no problem calling me names like “mealy-mouthed prick” all over the internet,” and in that sentence, “all over the internet” is an out-of-scope descriptive. I can give you that, and allow me to put the claim in proper scope: you actually only insult / cuss at / accost / mock me here on my own blog, at your blog, at SI’s blog, at DD’s blog, at Ebonmuse’s blog, and possibly some others I’m forgetting at the moment. Yet, I don’t really see what difference it makes in your case, because whether a person insults / cusses at / accosts / mocks others on 6 blogs or 6,000 is just a difference of frequency, not character. IOW, the number of blogs you *actually* insult me on doesn’t subtract from the jerkiness of those insults.
Getting back to it:
1) You offered over a dozen possibilities each anywhere from “totally laughable” to “almost able to be taken seriously” on the credibility scale; how is that NOT “appealing to whatever’s out there”?
2) If you’re not appealing to whatever’s out there, what are you appealing to? Seriously. What rational explanation would you either provisionally accept and/or investigate further if the same thing happened to you and two friends?
3) How did you get from my position of, “It’s safe to rule out natural gravity, now what?” to the position of, “..open-ended appeal to seek something beyond the most reasonable explanation,” that you attribute to me?
4) What is the evidence for your claim that I “seek something beyond the most reasonable explanation?”
Yet, doesn’t sound science proceed by a process of elimination, where we eliminate hypotheses that don’t fit the data? If yes, why am I “not within reason” to exclude natural gravity, if that’s what you claim?
jim
says...cl:
“IOW, the number of blogs you *actually* insult me on doesn’t subtract from the jerkiness of those insults.”
And the precise number of blogs you *actually* get banned from or restricted on doesn’t subtract from your own ‘jerkiness’ either, cl. I’ll also note that you changed the criteria from ‘mealy-mouthed prick’ to more inclusive and more vaguely defined ‘cusses at/accosts/mocks’ to up the number. Of course, my actual point is the hypocrisy with which you nit-pick language, chiding me for using the exact same phrase you use, which is why I used it in the first place. As an object lesson. I was almost certain you’d take the bait, and you did. You’re a sucker for the opportunity to take a cheap shot.
What am I appealing to? As far as agency is concerned, vibration/gravity. Since the beginning. But I’m mostly concerned with the nature of the evidence itself, which is simply your anecdote. From the first, that’s what I’ve tried to emphasize, but to no avail. In the very first paragraph of my first post concerning all this (at least, this round; there may have been something previously, though I think that was away from my own blog), I said this:
“I’d like to start off by reminding everyone that statements about supposed facts are not the same as the facts themselves. This might seem painfully obvious, but I think it’s a truth apologists often tend to overlook. Or at least, to gloss over.”
This is also why I titled that first post ‘Jim’s First Rule of Induction- Consider the Source’. Until that first hurdle is passed, the rest of the stuff is mostly inconsequential. And this isn’t merely about what I think of your personal credibility vis-a-vis character. Anecdotes regarding possible usurpations of known natural laws are always highly suspect, and for good reason. I’ve already gone over some of those reasons, so I won’t repeat myself.
” What is the evidence for your claim that I “seek something beyond the most reasonable explanation?”
Because you’ve already categorically eliminated the most reasonable explanation, IMO. Again, we’ve gone over this already.
“Yet, doesn’t sound science proceed by a process of elimination, where we eliminate hypotheses that don’t fit the data?”
Yes, and your hypothesis (it wasn’t vibration/gravity) doesn’t fit the data concerning how the world is known to operate thus far. Thus, it would be eliminated in short order. This is exactly why I included that cut-and-paste concerning ‘higher induction’ in my post, so you could hear it from some besides me. That’s not to say that vibration/gravity has been categorically proven to be the answer in your specific case. However, your anecdote falls far short
from moving ANY credible scientist away from basic naturalistic assumptions, and in fact fits nicely into accepted scientific/psychological profiles concerning misapprehension of facts, due to a number of aspects of faulty human perception and reasoning.
Honestly, cl, we’ve been over all this several times. Slow down, read more carefully, and give it a rest for awhile, ok?
Goodnight.
cl
says...[META] Apparently you think persistence and sticking to one’s guns is as equally “jerky” as calling people “superstitious liar,” “fucker,” “troll,” “sophist,” “mealy-mouthed prick,” etc. I disagree. If I had a list of all the cheap shots I’ve refrained from taking, it would be greater than the list of those you and Philly have made combined, and that’s a pretty big list. Funny thing is, I freely admitted that “all over the internet” was an out-of-scope descriptive on my behalf, apologized, and moved on. I was wrong: you don’t call me a mealy-mouthed prick “all over the internet.” You called me a mealy-mouthed prick at DD’s, one time. [META]
*********************
Okay, so I’ll change your answer from “invisible aliens” back to “they just rattled off the TV and fell.” Question: do stacks of games “fall” at 45-degree angles to land still stacked 4-5 feet away from their initial resting position? Or, given everything we know about physics, in the absence of lateral force, isn’t it a more accurate prediction that they would “fall” perpendicular to the Earth’s surface and most likely scatter on impact – just like they did the two times I witnessed the music actually vibrate them off?
No, you made that point quite clear actually. From the beginning, I’ve understood that you don’t believe me and that you think it’s more likely that three people shared the same hallucination for no apparent reason, or that we “just can’t remember right.” You made that perfectly clear weeks ago, to be honest. I have no idea why you kept repeating it; I heard you the first time.
Cool. Now that I know you’ll reject them a priori **and** ad hominem, I won’t ever ask for your reasoned opinion of a perplexing anecdote again.
See, the problem here is that you merely assert that “they fell” is more reasonable, but you don’t give any justification for your claim whatsoever. If you can actually do the heavy lifting and show or explain WHY “they just fell” is “more reasonable,” I might be willing to hear you out. That you simply assert A as “more reasonable” than B is your opinion. Surely a tough and surly skeptic of your caliber can respect my hesitancy to accept mere opinion, right?
Boo hoo! Did Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection fit the data concerning how the world was known to operate in 1859? Where would science and biology be if young Charles had adopted this peculiar position of refusing to consider hypotheses that don’t neatly conform to pre-existing paradigms?
jim
says...cl:
“If you can actually do the heavy lifting and show or explain WHY “they just fell” is “more reasonable,” I might be willing to hear you out. That you simply assert A as “more reasonable” than B is your opinion. Surely a tough and surly skeptic of your caliber can respect my hesitancy to accept mere opinion, right?”
Mere opinion? I think not. What is the known universal agent behind pulling things towards Earth? The answer, of course, is gravity. There are plenty of naturalistic exceptions, of course, such as a person carrying something to the floor. Or something can be propelled downward, or winched, or whatever. Yes, it’s my best opinion, but under the circumstances, it’s far from arbitrary. And I don’t reject the idea that your ‘event’ COULD be the result of something other than gravity. However, with the data I have, I see no reason to budge from the conclusion that gravity has worked its universal magic, and you and your friends have simply misinterpreted.
I look back through this thread, cl, and what I see is a guy willing to do a lot of misconstruction to support the point he’s pushing. It’s taken much effort on my part, pushing you into a corner step by step, to make you slow down enough to even begin to back off on your bad faith argumentation. Is it any wonder you piss off me and so many others? You see it as “persistence and sticking to one’s guns”, but I see it as just another theist with terrible arguments who lashes out, but only sees the return volley coming his way.
So be it. Enjoy your blogging efforts, cl. I’m off to work.
cl
says...First, an analog:
Imagine a young Charles, peering with awe out over the Galapagos from the deck of the HMS Beagle. Upon observing the vast and intricate system of sedimentary layers meandering through the rock formations, Charles suddenly finds himself persuaded by Lyell’s idea that, “Hey, maybe the Earth is really old, and maybe these layers resulted from natural processes over large amounts of time?”
Now, at that time, God was believed to be “the universal agent behind the formation of rocks” – not plate tectonics and time – and it was believed that the Earth was young. Now, if Charles had adopted your position regarding when we’re allowed to think outside the box, he might have just shrugged his shoulders and said, “But, old-Earth and plate tectonics can’t possibly be the most reasonable explanation, because the most reasonable explanation has always been that God is the universal agent behind the formation of the Earth and all that’s in it, and the Bible says God did it in six days.”
Somehow, I just knew you’d avoid answering my last comment’s closing questions, so I’ll include my own answers in parentheses: Did Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection fit the data concerning how the world was “known to operate” in 1859? (No) Where would science and biology be if young Charles had adopted this peculiar position of refusing to consider hypotheses that don’t neatly conform to pre-existing opinions of reasonableness? (stuck in 1859)
Lacking a clear definition we agree on, proclamations of what’s “most reasonable” don’t accomplish anything except the expression of an opinion. Accordingly, people used to think God(s) were the “most reasonable” explanation for lightning. Do you now see the foolishness of blind faith in what you think is the “most reasonable” explanation, despite the fact that it cannot account for the evidence?
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jim, I understand that gravity is the “known universal agent behind pulling things towards Earth.” If the data were different, I would not denounce your explanation as “mere opinion,” but since you have completely failed to offer even so much as a single definition or any sort of equation or demonstration that would establish the plausibility of the natural gravity hypothesis, what am I supposed to do? Concede to a superior hypothesis that doesn’t exist?
OTOH, I’m beginning to become more accepting of your “strong skepticism.” I really do believe that if you’d personally witnessed the incident, it would make a much more forceful impression upon you, such that you – being the rational and intelligent person that you are – would immediately have known that natural gravity and sound waves cannot account for the data.
Now, it may be that natural gravity and sound waves actually can account for the data, but if that’s what you believe, that’s what you have to show: your job is to actually demonstrate why gravity should be considered the “most reasonable” explanation – given the details of THIS CASE – not via mere appeal to every other case. That’s the “intellectual lifting” I refer to. Merely asserting that, “Well, gravity is the cause of every other falling object, so I say it’s the most reasonable explanation here,” – doesn’t cut the mustard. At least, not with me.
So, you’re telling me that gravity + sound waves can propel stacks of video games at rest to travel along 45-degree trajectories and land 4-5 feet away – still stacked? There’s a reason nobody else is clinging to natural gravity here, jim: because that idea cannot account for the evidence.
Apparently, you actually have great faith – in “naturalism” and gravity, that is. More so even than myself, whom you decry as a “SUPERSTITIOUS LIAR.”
As for me, I don’t know what moved those games,
but I know how gravity works – which is not like that. Worse, in order to maintain your position here, you have to completely ignore the instances where I documented what happens when gravity + sound waves actually was at work: each time, the games fell along a trajectory that was roughly perpendicular to Earth’s surface – and each time, one or more games came unstacked. Not once did all the games land stacked, and not once was their initial landing position more than 6-8 inches from the base of the television.
Then quit looking in the damn mirror and address the evidence.
So, other people’s inability and/or unwillingness to control their negative emotions and pubescent speech is my fault? IOW, you allow “sophists”, “fuckers” and “superstitious liars” to easily topple your emotional equilibrium?
I’d say break the cycle and take responsibility for your own mind, instead of blaming others.
jim
says...cl:
You may have the last word here. I’m done.