Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Veil of Fire · 07-17-2002, 01:23 PM

Quote:

why don't you do a bit of websearching, and report back what you find?

Primarly because I don't feel I should have to put forth that kind of effort to prove a claim I didn't even make. I do not believe it's my job to do someone else's research for them. If *they* can't back it up themselves, why should I?

That would be just like me saying "Pet psychics are real, and there are studies, now go find them!" If I say something, I should be able to produce my reasoning when asked. I get offended when someone says "I'm right, but I'm going to make YOU go look it up!"

Normally, if they have anything other than their prejudices, they'd be happy to provide it (like Lone Ranger did).

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Veil of Fire ]

Corwin · 07-17-2002, 01:37 PM

Yet you continue to troll in the face of people who have provided you with said studies, simply because you don't like them or you don't think there have been enough of them.

Witness, good people, the species 'trollius annoyingus.' This not nearly reclusive enough beast is the bane of message boards and chat rooms across the entire Internet. Their natrual predators can be quite effective, but t. annoyingus, in spite of its limited intelligence, can be extremely cunning with regards to the use of its environment and terrain to the greatest advantage. Be warned.

Veil of Fire · 07-17-2002, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Yet you continue to troll in the face of people who have provided you with said studies

Oh yes, who can forget your WONDERFUL study supporting the "Appeal to It Just Doesn't Fucking Work You Moron"! Brilliant!

Can you point me to the studies you provided again? I seem to have lost the links.

Corwin · 07-17-2002, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Corwin:
Here.

<a href="http://www.skepdic.com/remotevw.html" target="_blank">http://www.skepdic.com/remotevw.html</a>

That's a start. Rationalizing everything in that should keep you busy for a while.

Now go away.

Being able to scroll is a start. I am also not the only person who has provided such information, nor is mine the most complete.

(I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but I just can't help myself sometimes...)

Veil of Fire · 07-17-2002, 01:45 PM

And then you proceeded to completely ignore my critique of it.

That's ok, all your evidence is 100% accurate, all mine is bogus.

Mageth · 07-17-2002, 02:00 PM

A funny article on <a href="http://www.teevee.org/archive/2002/06/24/" target="_blank">The Pet Psychic</a>.

Corwin · 07-17-2002, 02:09 PM

You didn't make any points worth rebutting... but since you seem to be such a masochist....

Quote:

Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman claim to have done remote viewing of Mercury and Jupiter. Dr. Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff studied Swann and Sherman, and reported that their remote viewing compared favorably to the findings of the Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 research spacecrafts. Isaac Asimov, however, did a similar comparison and found that 46% of the observation claims of the astral travelers were wrong. Also, only one out of 65 claims made by the remote viewers was a fact that either was not obvious or not obtainable from reference books [James Randi].

The original study only looked at two remote viewers, to look at more than the original sample size would have been nice, but would have been a different study altogether. In this case the sample size is their observations, not the number of people making them. And by that study, they flunked. Miserably. Looking at the whole passage, instead of just the little section you posted, paints an entirely different story, no?

Quote:

Targ and Puthoff were not put off by the fact that Swann claimed he saw a 30,000 ft. mountain range on Jupiter on his astral voyage when there is no such thing. It is hard to imagine why anyone would have faith in such claims. If I told you that I had been to your home town and had seen a 30,000 ft. high mountain there, and you knew there was no such mountain, would you think I had really visited your town even if I correctly pointed out that there is a river nearby and it sometimes floods? Swann, in a lovely ad hoc hypothesis, now claims that astral travel is so fast that he probably wasn't seeing Jupiter but another planet in another solar system! There really is a big mountain out there on some planet in some solar system in some galaxy.

Once again Veil.... posting the ENTIRE passage paints a different picture. There's no ad hominem involved here. It's very difficult to understand why anyone would believe claims that have been demonstrated to be false. (There are no 30,000 ft. high mountains on the GAS GIANT planet Jupiter. While Jupiter's core may be solid, at that depth any mountains would be crushed by the atmospheric pressure.)

Quote:

The CIA and the U.S. Army thought enough of remote viewing to spend millions of taxpayers' dollars on research in a program referred to as "Stargate."

Not a fallacy per se, but again, why would the CIA tell us anything about remote viewing successes when it classifies information on things like mundane spy satellites?

Quote:

He also notes that the Stargate program was found to be "unpromising" in the 1970s and was turned over to the Defense Department.

Again, why on earth would they say "Oh yeah, we know what Saddam Hussien had for lunch today thanks to our remote viewers!"? If we had the capability to do that, it'd be Top Secret at the very least.

***

No, the point about 'Stargate' is not a fallacy per se. Unfounded conspiracy theories... backed up with 'well it's the CIA!!!' however, are.

Quote:

McMoneagle was in the army for 16 years, apparently serving some or most of that time as a psychic spy. He claims he helped locate the U.S. hostages taken by Iran during Jimmy Carter's presidency. Now a civilian psychic consultant, McMoneagle has turned his talents to more significant feats, as Dr. Utts demonstrated. She held up a drawing allegedly done by McMoneagle and declared that it was done by remote viewing. Another scientific researcher had gone to the Altamont pass, known for its miles of funny looking windmills on acres of rolling hills. McMoneagle tried to use his psychic powers to "see" what the researcher at Altamont was seeing and then draw what he was seeing. The sum total of the evidence for the value of psychic spying consisted of only one drawing and Dr. Utts's word that it looks like the Altamont pass. I will testify that in fact the drawing did have a strong resemblance to the Altamont pass. It also had a strong resemblance to ships on a stormy sea and to debris in a cloudy, stormy sky.

You know Veil... you really need to stop doing these discussions on the Internet and do the Kent Hovind route of only doing them face to face, where people don't have time to think and to go back to their documentation.... it works well for him...

Quote:

As a public service, I notified both Channel 10 and Dr. Utts of James Randi's challenge: $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove he or she has psychic powers. I don't think a heartfelt testimonial from Dr. Utts or Mr. McMoneagle will qualify. As far as I know, the Randi money is still unclaimed.

I prefer to avoid using the Randi challenge as a source, simply because it sounds too Hovindish.... but it must be admitted that Randi's is a genuine challenge with easily attainable rules... where Hovind's is nothing more than a publicity stunt. (No I won't go into specifics here, this posting is long enough already... another day... or surf the net. There are several very good articles about both challenges out there... and it's a topic for another thread.)

Again, if you're going to quote something.... I strongly advise you to use the whole quote. If you insist on quote mining to support your claims, I strongly advise you to use a source that's so obscure or hard to get to that your readers can only see the parts you allow them to see.

Writer@Large · 07-17-2002, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mageth:
A funny article on <a href="http://www.teevee.org/archive/2002/06/24/" target="_blank">The Pet Psychic</a>.

From the review:

Quote:

The first observation one makes when watching The Pet Psychic is that animals apparently live in the same Star Trek universe where all the aliens speak English. What is truly amazing is that three-month old puppies can learn the complexities of our language, yet the fundamentals of not crapping on the couch continue to elude them.

Ha ha! snort! giggle! I think that just about sums it all up right there. "Psychic" indeed.

Did anyone catch the one about the llama who "wanted to look pretty"? I swear, I thought I was watching Saturday Night Live ...

--W@L

Corwin · 07-17-2002, 02:24 PM

Ok slightly off topic clarification here...

Aliens in Star Trek actually don't all speak english. The communications system is tied into a translation program that gives a running translation in real time. Also both Star Trek and Babylon 5 make use of a convention from old WWII movies... in scenes with just German soldiers, the actors speak english. Among the viewers it's understood that the CHARACTERS are speaking german, and the wonder of film is providing a 'running translation.' Babylon 5 makes use of this quite a bit. (It's cheaper and easier than creating dialog and putting in subtitles.)

Marduk · 07-17-2002, 02:40 PM

Annunaki asked:
"Hey Marduck,
I thought Art bell went off the air a couple years ago. I used to listen to him all the time when I was in my ancient alien phase. I think the last guest I heard before I stopped listening was Michael Dunn (author of the Giza powerplant.)

He's baaaak! Even in his absence the show went on with others hosting.

Btw,Do know if Dunn ever got that flash animation of his pyramid/power plant mechanics online? It was supposed to show how it all worked,but after 4 months of waiting I forgot all about it. I think Dunn was probably too busy arguing with that woman who claimed the pyramid blocks were poured into place"

I don't know, I read his book but that was it. Oddly skeptic Ian Lawton in his book "Giza: The Truth" Gives Dunn an 'E' for effort, the only 'pyramidiot' to present a good case for his off the wall theory. The only problem he could find was one of context, the theory doesn't fit wiht anything else at that site or period.

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07-17-2002, 01:37 PM	#42
Corwin Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 4,369	Yet you continue to troll in the face of people who have provided you with said studies, simply because you don't like them or you don't think there have been enough of them. Witness, good people, the species 'trollius annoyingus.' This not nearly reclusive enough beast is the bane of message boards and chat rooms across the entire Internet. Their natrual predators can be quite effective, but t. annoyingus, in spite of its limited intelligence, can be extremely cunning with regards to the use of its environment and terrain to the greatest advantage. Be warned.

07-17-2002, 01:45 PM	#45
Veil of Fire Regular Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: South Carolina Posts: 451	And then you proceeded to completely ignore my critique of it. That's ok, all your evidence is 100% accurate, all mine is bogus.

07-17-2002, 02:00 PM	#46
Mageth Contributor Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Deep in the heart of mother-lovin' Texas Posts: 29,689	A funny article on <a href="http://www.teevee.org/archive/2002/06/24/" target="_blank">The Pet Psychic</a>.

07-17-2002, 02:24 PM	#49
Corwin Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 4,369	Ok slightly off topic clarification here... Aliens in Star Trek actually don't all speak english. The communications system is tied into a translation program that gives a running translation in real time. Also both Star Trek and Babylon 5 make use of a convention from old WWII movies... in scenes with just German soldiers, the actors speak english. Among the viewers it's understood that the CHARACTERS are speaking german, and the wonder of film is providing a 'running translation.' Babylon 5 makes use of this quite a bit. (It's cheaper and easier than creating dialog and putting in subtitles.)

07-17-2002, 02:40 PM	#50
Marduk Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: the 10th planet Posts: 5,065	Annunaki asked: "Hey Marduck, I thought Art bell went off the air a couple years ago. I used to listen to him all the time when I was in my ancient alien phase. I think the last guest I heard before I stopped listening was Michael Dunn (author of the Giza powerplant.) He's baaaak! Even in his absence the show went on with others hosting. Btw,Do know if Dunn ever got that flash animation of his pyramid/power plant mechanics online? It was supposed to show how it all worked,but after 4 months of waiting I forgot all about it. I think Dunn was probably too busy arguing with that woman who claimed the pyramid blocks were poured into place" I don't know, I read his book but that was it. Oddly skeptic Ian Lawton in his book "Giza: The Truth" Gives Dunn an 'E' for effort, the only 'pyramidiot' to present a good case for his off the wall theory. The only problem he could find was one of context, the theory doesn't fit wiht anything else at that site or period.

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