21-12-2003 07:32									#91
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

According to one movie (I forget the name, it was sort of a kid movie, with the ghost called Calvin or something), it was people with "unfinished business"

EDIT: it was Casper

Last edited by Kuciwalker on 21-12-2003 at 20:06

	21-12-2003 07:39									#92
	Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov I am an atheist. My argument with Thorn was about his wildly inaccurate assumptions as to why atheists don't believe in ghosts. But as to the camera--when has a camera ever shown definitive proof of a ghost? Take this artile. Nothing in that photo is proof of a ghost--it may be suggestive to one to some people, but all I see is a figure opening a door. Considering the noted problems with a non-corpreal being actually opening a door, I'm inclined to believe that's a living person in the photograph. Camera photos can lie. Besides the obvious of intentional hoaxes, there's a matter of coincidental images. A smudgy shape in a photograph will look like a spectre to some, but until someone can prove to me it isn't a flaw of the photo, trick of light, etc., I don't feel inclined to dismiss the laws of science and physics as we know them and give creedence to superstition. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Actually, I was at first skeptical of this photo, not that there wasn't a person reaching for the door, but whether it was a costumed worker or tourist.
That is why earlier i asked if anyone knew when the pic was taken.

Because if it was taken late at night, my eyebrows would go up farther, since unless the guards are total incompetents, they should know who is walking the grounds in the dead of night...so to speak.

Even during the day, you would think the guards or at least the "keepers" of the place would know if there was a tour with costumed guides going on at that location at that time...etc..

so, i did indeed wonder about all of this type of stuff.

And since this isn't the typical "smudge on a photo ghost" the camera isn't lying...it is indeed a person.

	21-12-2003 07:43									#93
	Remove this text

quote: Originally posted by vee4473 Because if it was taken late at night, my eyebrows would go up farther, since unless the guards are total incompetents, they should know who is walking the grounds in the dead of night...so to speak. Even during the day, you would think the guards or at least the "keepers" of the place would know if there was a tour with costumed guides going on at that location at that time...etc..

But I see this as more proving my point. If someone had snuck into the place at night and did this to play a nice little prank, the guards aren't just going to look foolish--they will look incompetent and like failures in their job. So it's certainly in their best interest to stick to a story that there's no way there was anybody there without them knowing and that it MUST be a ghost, because they're good guards, they are, and nobody could sneak past them, nosirree bob!

I'd certainly rather having people, especially my supervisors, thinking there was a ghost creating mischief rather than there perhaps being some inadequateness in my job performance.

	21-12-2003 07:52									#94
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

true, but how about other cameras and guardposts around the place? I don't know how well guarded the place is, but if it is, the "thing" only appearing on one camera and not one guard seeing it is odd....come on Boris...just admit it..


please?

so i can go to bed?

	21-12-2003 08:12									#95
	Remove this text

Sorry, I tend to live by Occam's Razor in this regard. The simplest answer to this is that whatever is in that photo is a result of human doings, not supernatural ones. I'm not willing to overturn the laws of physics and science based on a hazy photograph and a few spooked guards.

	21-12-2003 10:34									#96
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by OzzyKP I wouldn't be surprized if we find Bigfood and the Loch Ness monster one day.

Bigfood? Wow, sounds yummy indeed!

On a different note, several teams went through Loch Ness with sonars with a fine tooth comb and found nothing.

quote: Originally posted by OzzyKP But ghosts exists. One day there will be proof of it than can satisfy even the most skeptical people here.

People have been looking for ghosts for thousands of years and there's no one shard of evidence that ghosts exist. Sorry.

	21-12-2003 10:39									#97
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov I rest my case. Despite the fact that nobody was attacking anyone here, you come in and start firing off ad hominems and bitter attacks.

Why did you bother to discuss this with EvC/Thorn, who believes that a Nazi ghost entered his bf's body when the latter touched a Nazi battleflag?

	21-12-2003 12:12									#98
	Increase Your PM Length

This thing is stupid. I can very very easily make a similar picture in a couple minutes using photoshop. Or I could dress up in a goofy costume and have someone take a fuzzy picture of it and POOF, there's a ghost.

	21-12-2003 12:41									#99
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov Just because someone decides they want to BS their way through to a doctorate degree in something doesn't mean they're studying something that's real. We have entire philosophy departments as proof of this.

And you can go **** yourself too, you superficial singing cowboy.

The fact that scientists think they are studying something real is just evidence of their utter failure to appreciate the nuances of Dummettian anti-realism and it's implications for linguistic competence. If they had realised said implications they would have understood that the verificationism or one of its variants offers the most plausible method of establishing scientific discourse as the only properly meaningful medium for making empirical claims, and moreover that warranted assertability is a more scientifically useful concept than the hoary old realist bugbear "truth".

	21-12-2003 12:48									#100
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

* A tumbleweed rolls by, in a hurried sort of fashion*

	21-12-2003 17:58									#101
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Fox News had the full film sequence. It show the figure appear, grab the door handles and close the doors.

The film is not on Fox's site. But it would be interesting if someone would find a link.

According to one tourist who was there at the time, they saw a ghost in the castle. (I now suspect that maybe a "tourist" may be the culprit.)

	21-12-2003 20:55									#102
	Inflate your Upload Space

Another perspective is thinking of ghosts as afterimages of people from the past. Not real things you can talk to and interact with, but an afterimage. A space-time distortion. I dunno.

Note this is not a theory, its just a unsupported conjecture. I do not know the true nature of ghosts, nor do I claim to. I am not a scientist. Though I have seen enough to make me believe.

	21-12-2003 21:25									#103
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

OTOH, I have seen enough to make me leap from skeptical to extremely skeptical.

For example, there are a few local locales that were supposedly haunted. There is this place where the IJA executed people during WWII and there's this other place where it's a mass grave. These places were supposedly haunted with lots and lots of ghosts. Well, what happened was they built buildings on top of them, and nobody in these buildings have ever seen any ghosts. If somebody did, we know - this place is staggeringly superstitous, with both Chinese and Western superstitions all mixed in this whole big ridiculous mess.

There was another incident that some self-proclaimed "psychic" said he saw a "ghost claw" in a TV commercial where there was a bunch of kids play. Rumours then started about how these kids died one after another in mysterious circumstances. Lo and behold, somebody managed to locate all of them to decisively refute this bunkum.

There's a local scientist who is very good at debunking this sort of thing. I saw him on TV doing his stuff - excellent work.

	21-12-2003 21:48									#104
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

UR, have you read Michael Shermer's Skeptic column in Scientific American? It's wonderful for that kind of stuff.

	21-12-2003 22:21									#105
	Inflate your Upload Space

Isn't it possible that someone could reasonably believe they'd seen a ghost? That being so, even if they were fooled into believing it.

I mean, I don't believe in them, but I can imagine chemically induced situations where someone might believe they'd seen one.

	21-12-2003 23:01									#106
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

damn straight.

	21-12-2003 23:17									#107
	Inflate your Upload Space

The point is that ridiculing people for strange or false beliefs is sometimes unfair. There can sometimes exist good reasons for believing falsehoods - that's the price we pay for not being omniscient.

	21-12-2003 23:34									#108
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Agathon And you can go **** yourself too, you superficial singing cowboy.

Hook, line, sinker.

	21-12-2003 23:35									#109
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by Agathon The point is that ridiculing people for strange or false beliefs is sometimes unfair. There can sometimes exist good reasons for believing falsehoods - that's the price we pay for not being omniscient.

This is precisely the point I made. I don't see anyone here ridiculing folks who believe in ghosts. Disagreement, yes, but not ridicule. The only ridicule so far has come from a believer against those who don't believe.

	21-12-2003 23:39									#110
	Got spare money?

quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov Hook, line, sinker.

Actually, what you said was pretty funny to me as in my experience most science students who do Phil end up supporting some form of verificationist anti-realism (like logical positvism) so they can use it to argue against religious belief.

You know, the old "Santa Claus exists" is meaningful, but false; but "God exists" is simply meaningless, since there is no possibility of verification.

	22-12-2003 02:02									#111
	Tired of ads?

quote: But there's absolutely nothing empiric about this distinction. Why on earth should I believe something that has absolutely no scientific evidence in its favor just because a whole bunch of other people believe it? I'm not one for bandwagons.

If a person dismisses every bit of evidence for a belief as silly, superstitious, or a fraud, then of *course* there isn't going to be any evidence for the belief.

Take, for example, meteorites. During the 18th and 19th centuries, respectable scientists were virtually unanimous in believing there was no such thing as meteorites because they didn't fit in with scientific theories (the sky does not have rocks in it, therefore, rocks do not fall out of the sky). People saw meteorites and occasionally got them and took them to scientists. They were told that either they were drunk, they were crazy, or they were liars. Occasionally some crackpot in search of attention would fake a meteorite and get caught at it and scientists would trumpet this as proof that all meteorites were fakes. Then when people made scientific theories about asteroid belts and how maybe there *were* rocks in the sky, they were told that there was "no evidence at all to support them".

Something like a third of the American population claims to have seen ghosts at some point. I would call that at least slightly suggestive (but usually it is just said that they're hallucinating or dreaming). There are tape records and pictures of ghosts. I would call that evidence (but usually it's said that they are fakes). Certainly a lot of them probably are, although there are very few that we can prove to be faked, but that still leaves a whole lot of them unaccounted for. To say there's no evidence for ghosts is absurd - it's simply that we refuse to accept any evidence.

As for this picture, my money's on it being fake. The door bit is suspicious, and it's too cliched.

	22-12-2003 03:53									#112
	Got spare money?

Good post Giant Squid, one of the more sensible ones in this thread.

	22-12-2003 08:59									#113
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by skywalker UR, have you read Michael Shermer's Skeptic column in Scientific American? It's wonderful for that kind of stuff.

I got his book Why People Believe in Weird Things. Good read. Carl Sagan's A Demon Haunted World is also excellent.

	22-12-2003 09:19									#114
	Support Apolyton

quote: Originally posted by Giant_Squid Take, for example, meteorites. During the 18th and 19th centuries, respectable scientists were virtually unanimous in believing there was no such thing as meteorites because they didn't fit in with scientific theories (the sky does not have rocks in it, therefore, rocks do not fall out of the sky). People saw meteorites and occasionally got them and took them to scientists. They were told that either they were drunk, they were crazy, or they were liars.

I don't believe that is the case. Ever since the overthrow of the Geocentric system, astronomy was in quite a state of flux because of the rapid advances. Ceres, the biggest asteroid we found so far in the Asteroid Belt was discovered in 1801. So we knew there are rocks in the sky for more than 200 years.

Furthermore, I can't remember the prevailing theory of the time forbidding rocks in the sky. Afterall, we knew the planets were rocks already. Just because Newton added aether didn't mean you couldn't have rocks all the same.

quote: Originally posted by Giant_Squid Something like a third of the American population claims to have seen ghosts at some point. I would call that at least slightly suggestive (but usually it is just said that they're hallucinating or dreaming).

Yet there is never any mass witnessing AFAIK. I can't recall any instances where many people saw the same ghost at the same time, which was later verified true.

UFOs got you beat. There were times where a whole bunch of people saw the same aerial phenomenon, they even have photos of them. Sure enough, so far, all of them turned out to be various rare natural phenomena.

quote: Originally posted by Giant_Squid There are tape records and pictures of ghosts. I would call that evidence (but usually it's said that they are fakes). Certainly a lot of them probably are, although there are very few that we can prove to be faked, but that still leaves a whole lot of them unaccounted for. To say there's no evidence for ghosts is absurd - it's simply that we refuse to accept any evidence.

Lots and lots of people asserted that they have seen aliens and some even asserted abductions. Before this century, there were loads of people asserted they saw demons. Many people were very positive that they saw Nessie.

None of that could be substantiated.