A friend and I are arguing over ghosts.
I think it’s akin to astrology, homeopathy and palm reading. He says there’s “convincing “ evidence for its existence. He also took up company time to make a meme to illustrate our relative positions. (See image)
(To be fair, I’m also on the clock right now)
What do you think?
Physics can explain helium balloons really well. There’s no mystery here. And they’re certainly not disproving gravity.
Einstein had no easily repeated experiments to show off. You’re claiming ghosts are measurable in a repeatable way - simple enough to be explained in a book for laypeople . At least after the third or fourth study with robust methodology the scientific community would be talking about nothing else. And I know that because I am surrounded by the kind of researchers you’re thinking of when you say “scientists”. They’re a bunch of nerds, they love that stuff. And they research ominous stuff all the time, a biology professor here spent 3 years studying healing crystals in drinking water. Disappointingly they found nothing.
Well to be fair we’re talking about a claim that such research exist, which is miles off from discussing actual research, which would be done by scientists in order to validate it’s operationalisation and discuss their findings.
The thing is: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A book simply isn’t that. It’s way too easily faked, isn’t subject to the scientific method, peer review, any form of control or critical oversight and at the end of the day profits not from the truth but from being sold. And you are here doing advertising for them, so it seems like they are succeeding at that.
I’m not trying to persuade you. I believe that would be hard to do at this point. What I’m trying to say here, referring to the thread and OP’s question: It’s not unreasonable to think that you, and everyone else being convinced by a very entertaining and captivating book outside of the actual scientific method, are unreasonable.
One book simply shouldn’t be this convincing.
Okay, I revise my request. Please just read the books bibliography and read the peer-reviewed research that it cites.
Out of curiosity I just checked if I could find it. I couldn’t, which isn’t surprising - a book isn’t a scientific publication, so sources are rarely of great interest.
But in general: It would take hours, maybe days of work to cross reference the sources of a whole book with what the author claims they prove. Obviously I won’t do that. How many papers from the bibliography have you read? If you own the book, at least you should have easy access to it’s sources.
I am familiar with the sources, yes.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Do you want me to send you links to some of the research from the bibliography? If so then I can do that when I get home from work
I’m trying to show you that your case isn’t convincing.
If your book could logically prove something, or at least argue convincingly (logically!) in favor of it, maybe it would in fact be interesting. Then you could repeat the arguments here (and elsewhere, and scientists would be doing just that) and we’d actually have some kind of discussion with something to gain for both of us. Anecdotes are, scientifically speaking, basically worthless. At best they’re used to create hypotheses, never to test them or to prove something. And even a great sum of them simply aren’t science.
And I’m sorry to say but this very much reminds me of conspiracy theories, e.g. flat earth theory, were science is really clear about something while a few laypeople on youtube think to themselves “I bet all those researchers just didn’t think of this, which to me on the other hand is completely obvious”.
Your claim is absolutely extraordinary. You would have to present an absolutely powerful, convincing logical argument in order to even begin to support it. “Someone claimed it happened to them” simply isn’t that, no matter how well it’s written.
You seem to be mistaking a logical arguments for an empirical argument (you don’t “prove” things in science the same way you prove things in math or logic). I’m making an empirical argument, not a logical argument. But in order for an empirical argument to be convincing you need to actually look at the data. This seems to be something that you’re very adverse to doing. You don’t want to read the book. You don’t want to review its bibliography. And you turned down my offer for me to literally send you sources here in this chat for us to discuss. So I really don’t know how else I can help you at this point. If you’re really so sure that you can prove (logically?) that this data is not worth looking at then there is really nothing further for us to talk about.
Who’s the one literally refusing to look at the data here? Me or you?
My patience with you here is running thin. I offering to send you peer-reviewed research and now you’re dismissing it all wholesale as just anecdotes? Note that (a) this is simply false and (b) case studies are an important part of all research in psychology and medicine (which are the subject matters we are dealing with here). I don’t have the patience to get into the weeds on this with you, so if you’re actually interested and not just trying to save face then please refer to this comment I made here.
Please do not respond to this message unless you have something actually intelligent to contribute to the conversation.