I’ve become a skeptic of late, which actually kind of sucks, because I used to take great pleasure in supposedly-true ghostly stuff. Now every “ghost caught on camera” video or photo I see is almost immediately dismissed in my mind as a hoax, pareidolia, camera artifacts, or whatever.
So is there anything that you’ve seen that makes you question your skepticism? As in, a supposed ghost video or photo that you can’t dismiss? Ever had a personal experience that you can’t chalk up to natural phenomena?
No, I’m open minded and would be willing to consider evidence (plus the law of large numbers really messes with your mind when it comes to coincidences and remarkable occurrences) but overall, no. I’ve seen nothing in this world that rational explanation won’t cover.
There’s an epistemological approach that really moved me into skepticism: it’s the idea that the supernatural isn’t just impossible, it’s incoherent. That is, if something happens, it’s part of the world, and therefore natural. Chalking something up to supernatural phenomena doesn’t make sense to me.
That may be a semantic game, however.
I know three things:
The lack of evidence for phenomena like ghosts is overwhelming.
The evidence for skilled fraudsters who make convincing fakes of phenomena like ghosts is overwhelming.
The evidence that humans–including me–are super duper easy to fool is overwhelming.
Given these three things, it’d be incredibly difficult for a single piece of evidence to sway me into believing that, say, ghosts exist. Even if I were confronted in my home with a swirling phantasm, I’d be likelier to believe either that it was a prank, or that I was dreaming, or that I’d undergone a psychotic break, than that the essence of a human could survive in nonmaterial form after their death and appear as a moaning mist.
I could still be persuaded, but it’d take a lot more than a single piece of evidence.
Nope. I know about some of the causes of Déjà vu, I understand confirmation bias, and I am willing to say “I don’t know” instead of “I can’t prove that wasn’t a ghost!”. I know that bad lighting can play tricks on the eyes, old houses can creak and whistle, and shadows can lie more than a cat standing over a broken fishbowl. Photoshop exists, as do pieplates and Frisbees. It is much more logical to assume that some event was faked than to assume that something supernatural happened…and if you don’t know this, you can’t possibly enjoy a decent magic act for what it is.
If you come across something that you can’t chalk up to natural phenomena, then you should just say to yourself, “I guess I don’t know as much about natural phenomena as I thought I did!”…because most of us really don’t.
Skepticism isn’t something you believe in. It’s not something that’s right or wrong. As such, there’s nothing that would make me question it. If something happens that can’t be explained by our current understanding of science, it just means our current understanding of science isn’t complete. And I already know that. As a scientist, every day I study things that science can’t explain, that’s how we expand our knowledge and understanding.
In my youth I was into UFOs, paranomal phenomena, etc. I outgrew that stuff in my early 20s. Since then, I have not had a single moment where I thought, “Okay, maybe this one is for real.” I’ve seen a few things I can’t explain, but that’s all they are—things I can’t explain. In each case I assume that there’s some mundane explanation that I haven’t figured out.
It’s impossible to question ‘skepticism in general’ - one can only question skepticism about specific things. In which case I could present some trivial examples - I was skeptical when my niece claimed to have finished all her chores, but then my brother said she had. My skepticism decreased as a result.
If you’re talking about skepticism about outrageous things -ghosts, gods, psychic powers, cryptozoologic creatures, honest politicians- then no, I haven’t had my skepticism shaken on those things. Reality continues to be real.
Which in a couple of cases is a damned shame - I really really really want telekinesis. I wanna levitate cars with my mind, dammit! Oh, and honest politicians would be cool too. The rest - no thank you.
I’m deeply skeptical about the paranormal, but I love reading and watching ghost shit – I halfway hope incontrovertible evidence will surface someday.
A few years ago I got out of bed for a night pee run. I don’t turn on the light because I know the path so well. I shuffled down the hall and saw, standing at the head of the staircase, a little girl dressed in a white dress. She looked solid, not see through. I shot back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. Wifey asked what the hell was going on, I said “nuthin” and told her in the morning what I saw. It really did scare the crap outta me.
It was, of course, a weird blend of ambient light from the windows, my half-asleep brain, and/or priming to see something. The previous owner was adamant that a ghostly little girl haunts the house.
So still a skeptic, but ever since that night I turn on the hall light for night bathroom trips. Just in case. Mwahahahahaha (ghostly laughter).
Nope, but even if I did see something I think I’d believe that I was deluded rather than all of science breaks down.
As for reading stuff, I don’t trust reports of supernatural phenomena - both for fraud and for people being mistaken.
I good antidote to nonskeptical thought is the spate of airship sightings in the 1890s. Not aliens - close encounters were with someone from New England who secretly built the airship and was flying it all over the United States. The reports of sightings were far more convincing than any UFO sighting - but we know for sure there was nothing to them.
And then there is this. Decades ago, there were, at any given time, a few hundred, maybe a thousand people standing around with movie cameras. Among them, they managed to get film of UFOs, maybe about one every year or two. Also a few still pictures on chemical black and white film. Now, the number of people in the world who at this moment have a very high quality video camera in their hands is probably a billion, why is there no increase in the number of supposed pictures of UFOs?
A very large number of people, maybe even a majority of the educated ones, believed that the reports of UFOs were numerous and convincing enough that it would be premature to dispel the explanation that they are actually controlled physical objects. It now seems that they were not, or if they were, their occupants have said “Oh-oh, they’ve seen us”.
No, but I’m an empiricist, not a skeptic. I may not understand a phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a logical explanation for it, and thus far, no obtained explanation has been supernatural.
I’ve had a few experiences that could easily be dressed up as decent tales of the paranormal. I however consider them evidence of the human mind being rather good at seeing what isn’t there and massaging memories to make them more memorable.
I may have mentioned this on the Dope once before.
Years ago, I was out on a drive with Mrs. J. on a Saturday, and decided to stop at a used furniture place which was advertised as being open at that hour. I went in what turned out to be the wrong entrance, up a flight of stairs and opened a door to what obviously was not the store.
Instead, it appeared to be the entrance to someone’s office or dwelling, in a state of extreme clutter to the point of looking ransacked. I had the disturbing feeling that if I went in any further, I’d come across a body lying on the floor. So I left and went back to the car, having ascertained on the way that the store was actually closed.
Mrs. J. greeted my subdued self, before I had the chance to say anything, with “Well, did you find someone dead in there?”
She had no way of seeing what I saw, but somehow sensed it anyway.
Not exactly proof of Psychic Powers, but a kind of sensitivity not easily explainable. It hasn’t stopped me from being a hardcore skeptic.
Good point. When that meteorite fell in Russia a few years ago, there were multiple movies and pictures of it, which shows that very little in the skies will go unnoticed and unfilmed.
Here’s the right way to approach any extraordinary claim (something supernatural like ghosts, UFOs, psychic ability, and the like), in my opinion:
As with any claim of extraordinary events, there are a few possibilities:
Those making the claim are lying (hoax).
Those making the claim are not lying, but are mistaken (hallucination, etc.) or were deceived by others (a 3rd party hoax).
Those making the claim are not lying, but the phenomenon has a natural explanation.
Those making the claim are not lying and the phenomenon is real and extraordinary in nature.
In any randomly selected extraordinary claim, it’s reasonable to assume that 1, 2, or 3 are far, far more likely than 4.
This goes even when you yourself are the witness – you know if you’re lying or not, but you may have been deceived by a hoax, you may have hallucinated it, or you may have witnessed a natural occurrence that you mistook for something supernatural or alien. In general, for any given claim, there are many other explanations that seem far, far more likely than “ghosts exist and were here”.
It doesn’t 100% rule out the possibility, but I think that’s the right way to approach this.
No, but I a recent experience has made me rethink the gullibility of (some of) those who claim to have seen ghosts, auras, etc.
Late in the evening I wandered past our security camera display and had a “WT-freaking-F?” moment. I was watching a pretty good likeness of a robed, hooded, wispy figure hovering in front of the camera. It immediately swirled around and became an amorphous cloud, which I watched for a few seconds. Then it dawned on me that the security cameras had switched to infrared and were picking up heat and mist from the (apparently) uncovered hot tub. Due to a trick of temp, humidity, and randomness I was seeing the likeness of a ghostly figure.
I’ve been wondering ever since if some part of the population’s eyesight might range just a tiny bit into the infrared. I know there are animals whose visible spectrum doesn’t match ours, so it seems at least possible. IANABiologist, so I can’t be sure though.
Asking if people question their own skepticism makes no sense, because skepticism IS questioning. If you’re questioning your questioningness to see if you’re still questioning, then I’m going to report you to the Department of Redundancy Department.
A little physics and biology easily discounts this hypothesis. The things you need to know are the following:
The infrared radiation from objects in the 10s to a few hundred degrees is far infrared. Animals that do detect that radiation all have specialized organs, other than their eyes, that do that detection.
The light detectors in your eyes do not have a sharp cut off point, so what is visible red light to some are not visible to others. But to send out significant near infrared radiation things have to be so warm they are also likely go glow very dully red, since heat radiation follows a planck curve. And your eyes are full of the kind of heat radiation that comes off objects around body temperature, because the eye itself is at that temperature. So even if your eyes had some extra sensors that somehow detected a completely different range of wavelengths than the other components, they wouldn’t be able to separate far infrared coming from outside the eye from far infrared just coming from the vitreous fluid.
Their is a show on Netflix about the Loch Ness monster and it showed how even its strongest supporters have come to admit their is nothing there.
Now what IS interesting is how one man (who has been living on the loch for decades and at one time truly believed)) came to this conclusion by going back and analyzing evidence of the past 100 years and figuring out what was fake or misinterpreted and in once case, a mis-identification of a somewhat different “monster”. He found out about 100 years ago they released some giant river catfish into the Loch Ness which can live for 50 years and grow to be maybe 12 feet long. These big catfish were probably the source of some of the early encounters. Heck who wouldnt be scared seeing a 12 foot giant fish coming up under their boat!
Which brings up how a true skeptic will keep searching for answers.
I see a version of this argument in just about every thread we have on this topic, and (while I do understand what you’re trying to say) as it’s worded, it’s simply wrong.
There has been an increase in the number of supposed pictures of UFOs (and ghosts etc) — a huge one. And it’s exactly the increase you’d expect when many more people have cameras to hand and habitually take photos, if you assume that most supposed pictures of UFOs are:
[ol]
[li]Misidentified natural or man-made objects or phenomena (It’s a bird! It’s a plane!)[/li][li]Photographic artifacts[/li][li]Fairly obvious fakes[/li][/ol]
What we don’t have is any convincing pictures that clearly support the idea that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft piloted by aliens.
