Eteponge
Skilled Investigator
Hi all. I've been listening to The Paracast for about a year and a half now, and have been meaning to sign up on the forums for quite awhile, but just now got around to it. (Laziness.) It's my favorite Podcast in regards to a serious approtch to Paranormal Topics, very level-headed and filled with healthy skepticism.
Okay, here's my topic. Lately I've been having discussions with Debunkers on the topic of Veridical Phenomenon. Like, After Death Communications and Death Bed Visions, Etc, where Verifiable Details have taken place. I give many, many such examples from documented cases. (One example I give, is also a personal one where, when I was twelve years old, my great uncle appeared in my room one night, looking fully solid, stared at me, disappeared, and the next morning the phone rang and informed us he had unexpectedly passed away during the night.) My own experience was weak in comparison to some of the better cases I posted that were far more Veridical.
Their reponse? Always coincidence. Nothing more than coincidence, in all recorded cases throughout history, no matter how compelling or convincing they may seem. And pointing out that there are people who witness apparitions with no veridical details associated with the encounters. And that such persons, "may just keep quiet about it if they have nothing verifiable to show for it", to further push the mere coincidence suggestion.
A further argument put forth was, "This is where the law of large numbers comes into play. If a person takes in account the billions of people who have died, there's going to be some strange coincidences. One in a million odds happen a lot when you run the test billions of times."
The other topic I often bring up are many Odd Veridical Accounts of Mother's Intuition (where the mother feels a horrible overwhelming sense of something being wrong, that is overpowering, checks, and the child is in trouble or is dying or is dead at that very moment) the mothers I've *personally* spoken to who have experienced that (including my own mother, who rushed outside to find my brother a ways off in the woods trapped and sinking in a bog after inexplicably knowing something was horribly wrong), it only happened once or twice in their lives, very rarely, and *only* occured during those events, and never any time when something wasn't happening. My mother only experienced it twice, and both times, we were in serious danger.
Their response? Always coincidence. Nothing more than coincidence, in all recorded cases throughout history. And then bring up accounts where someone felt there was, for example, a lost object hidden under a table, and felt so very strongly, and it wasn't there. Or pointing out cases where relatives have had strong "premonition dreams" of something bad happening that never come to pass. And they gave several personal examples of strong dreams not coming to pass, or having the urge to check something, and nothing being there, etc.
Basically, the idea of confirmation bias with all of these cases, that you only remember the times you were right, and ignore all the times you were wrong. Pure coincidence.
But then how do we measure and check whether or not there is something unusual going on, if people can just auto-dismiss and blanket statement the whole lot of Veridical Experiences (some which are very compelling and highly suggestive and appear to be very non-coincidental if people bother to read them) and sweep them all under the rug as "Coincidence"?
You see, that's the problem. Let's say some experiences are unusual veridical happenings, and others are indeed true coincidence. How do we tell them apart? That's the issue.
What I'm saying is, scientifically, how can we measure these experiences if people can just sweep them all away as coincidence and dismiss them all out of hand as such?
Perhaps, what we need, is some way to test the best of the best cases, and see how likely they are, randomly speaking, to be coincidences, giving the overall data, and whether or not the percentage of veridical cases goes above the chance ratio.
This reminds me of something a friend of mine told me, veridical evidence can never be accepted, no matter how compelling, because anyone, even a toddler, can cry "coincidence!", because, there is no way of scientifically telling any individual veridical account apart from coincidence, no matter how convincing and compelling the case appears.
Ah, here it is, by Michael Prescott...
"It is always possible to argue the evidence away on the grounds of coincidence, error, deceit, or "super-psi." These arguments generally do not seem compelling to me, because I'm impressed by the wide scope of the data and the high quality of some of it, as well as by the curious consistency of reports across cultures and eras. But it is impossible to refute such objections absolutely."
Which is, of course, the problem.
Regarding these phenomenon in perticular, are there any type of indepth peer-reviewed research studies, or empirical evidence beyond personal anecdotes? Because if they aren't, "coincidence" ridicule reigns supreme.
Okay, here's my topic. Lately I've been having discussions with Debunkers on the topic of Veridical Phenomenon. Like, After Death Communications and Death Bed Visions, Etc, where Verifiable Details have taken place. I give many, many such examples from documented cases. (One example I give, is also a personal one where, when I was twelve years old, my great uncle appeared in my room one night, looking fully solid, stared at me, disappeared, and the next morning the phone rang and informed us he had unexpectedly passed away during the night.) My own experience was weak in comparison to some of the better cases I posted that were far more Veridical.
Their reponse? Always coincidence. Nothing more than coincidence, in all recorded cases throughout history, no matter how compelling or convincing they may seem. And pointing out that there are people who witness apparitions with no veridical details associated with the encounters. And that such persons, "may just keep quiet about it if they have nothing verifiable to show for it", to further push the mere coincidence suggestion.
A further argument put forth was, "This is where the law of large numbers comes into play. If a person takes in account the billions of people who have died, there's going to be some strange coincidences. One in a million odds happen a lot when you run the test billions of times."
The other topic I often bring up are many Odd Veridical Accounts of Mother's Intuition (where the mother feels a horrible overwhelming sense of something being wrong, that is overpowering, checks, and the child is in trouble or is dying or is dead at that very moment) the mothers I've *personally* spoken to who have experienced that (including my own mother, who rushed outside to find my brother a ways off in the woods trapped and sinking in a bog after inexplicably knowing something was horribly wrong), it only happened once or twice in their lives, very rarely, and *only* occured during those events, and never any time when something wasn't happening. My mother only experienced it twice, and both times, we were in serious danger.
Their response? Always coincidence. Nothing more than coincidence, in all recorded cases throughout history. And then bring up accounts where someone felt there was, for example, a lost object hidden under a table, and felt so very strongly, and it wasn't there. Or pointing out cases where relatives have had strong "premonition dreams" of something bad happening that never come to pass. And they gave several personal examples of strong dreams not coming to pass, or having the urge to check something, and nothing being there, etc.
Basically, the idea of confirmation bias with all of these cases, that you only remember the times you were right, and ignore all the times you were wrong. Pure coincidence.
But then how do we measure and check whether or not there is something unusual going on, if people can just auto-dismiss and blanket statement the whole lot of Veridical Experiences (some which are very compelling and highly suggestive and appear to be very non-coincidental if people bother to read them) and sweep them all under the rug as "Coincidence"?
You see, that's the problem. Let's say some experiences are unusual veridical happenings, and others are indeed true coincidence. How do we tell them apart? That's the issue.
What I'm saying is, scientifically, how can we measure these experiences if people can just sweep them all away as coincidence and dismiss them all out of hand as such?
Perhaps, what we need, is some way to test the best of the best cases, and see how likely they are, randomly speaking, to be coincidences, giving the overall data, and whether or not the percentage of veridical cases goes above the chance ratio.
This reminds me of something a friend of mine told me, veridical evidence can never be accepted, no matter how compelling, because anyone, even a toddler, can cry "coincidence!", because, there is no way of scientifically telling any individual veridical account apart from coincidence, no matter how convincing and compelling the case appears.
Ah, here it is, by Michael Prescott...
"It is always possible to argue the evidence away on the grounds of coincidence, error, deceit, or "super-psi." These arguments generally do not seem compelling to me, because I'm impressed by the wide scope of the data and the high quality of some of it, as well as by the curious consistency of reports across cultures and eras. But it is impossible to refute such objections absolutely."
Which is, of course, the problem.
Regarding these phenomenon in perticular, are there any type of indepth peer-reviewed research studies, or empirical evidence beyond personal anecdotes? Because if they aren't, "coincidence" ridicule reigns supreme.