Ouija Board Experiences

[Kaos]

The math that suggested the bomb was possible predated the bomb itself. There would be no bomb had the mathematics suggested otherwise. (The germans happened to get the math wrong - btw) People didn't spontaneously suggest the atom bomb prior to the mathematics that suggested it was possible. The atomic bomb analogy is not sound. Spontaneously suggesting that ghosts exist without any evidence is staking a claim on nothing. No more significant than guessing whether a coin flipped lands on heads or tails. If you guess heads and it lands on heads, great for you - but putting any significance on that guess is kind of meaningless. Science and Tech are not the end all or be all of existence. Some things are by their very nature subjective. If science ever gets around to proving that ghosts exist for example - it will happen because the method to investigate and test the hypothesis has been developed. Only then will the hypothesis be significant. Prior to that date it is idle speculation and claims staked on the position are not to be ridiculed necessarily but dismissed as idle speculation.

[darth los]

::shakes head:: You've missed the point completely Ned. Also, regarding your improbability = practical impossibility. Wow, I'm sure glad the guys in the Manhattan Project hadn't taken such a view. Hiroshima would still be standing, and given that every military analyst on Earth worth their salt agrees the land invasion of Japan would've cost 300-500,000 American lives. For that matter, the US gov't invested more money than in literally any other venture to date, pretty much on nothing but the strength of some academic reputations. The only hard data related to the Little Boy A-Bomb they had pre-detonation above Japan was the infamous "Blank shot" which *would not have* resulted in a fission reaction. Of course nowadays everyone accepts nuclear fission as just another facet of known science. Back then? It was scientific heresy to most of the scientific community, and even Quantum Theory couldn't do better than give you the probability that out of X million Uranium atoms, Y single digits worth may fission. See what I'm saying? Do you think the Japanese would have been terribly frightened if we'd called them up and said "Surrender or we will drop our barely-tested new bomb on you, the only data we on said bomb saying it will NOT explode". Yet BOOM, BOOM, Japan surrenders. Improbabilities are important. And how many lives were lost because of nuclear weapons and the threat of Nuclear war? (One of which was through the unchecked spread of comminism which this country made it it's business to stop?) Atleast that many. The world would be better off without many things. Nuclear weapons is near the top of the list.

[Wyldwraith]

See it's a difficult situation for me, 7-8yrs ago, I probably would have been right beside you Kaos. I just happen to have first-hand experience that *some form* of malevolent incorporeal entity exists. Can I PROVE IT? Nope. Wish I could. All I can say is that had you seen what I did, it would've made a believer out of you too. This wasn't one of those corner-of-the-eye/late at night/or for just a couple seconds seeing something. What I saw was a free-standing black "anti-light" quasi-humanoid/quasi-gaseous formed apparition for well over a minute, standing where no shadow could possibly be. It even moved *against the wind*. I remember that clearly from the broken ground floor window. The wind was out of the SW, yet this entity, gaseous-seeming though it was, moved consistently east/northwest, then south in a deliberate manner. To tell you the truth, I didn't even believe my friend from highschool when she first told me about the murder(s)-suicide related to the home in her neighborhood. I eventually believed it was possible it was the house (shortly before we went out there), by checking out the microfilm of newspaper entries from the year prior at the local library. The article only gave the street-location of the incident, but it WAS the only clearly abandoned house on the street in the article. So far from being predisposed to believing I would see something, all I had was a common-sense sort of belief that it was probably the right house, based on process of elimination. Plus, and believe me when I say this, I'm not given/predisposed to being startled or tricked by the light. On the contrary, I'm one of those people who looks at one of those posters with a picture hidden amongst millions of dots and sees the concealed image at the first glance. I believe in patterns and probabilities as a rule. So, what am I supposed to do with the evidence of my senses in direct opposition to what is commonly accepted to be "real"? Maybe you can sit there and be certain such a thing doesn't exist, but I don't have that luxury.

[Kaos]

That sounds pretty unsettling. And I am not in any position to tell you that what you experienced did not occur in whatever manner you perceive it to have occurred. How would I know? What I do know is that if it is something whose very nature is unprovable, doubt will be an insurmountable hurdle to convince others of the reality of say demons or ghosts or alien abductions or faster than light transportation. All of which may be (or will be) true but with no current way foreseeable to test and repeat testing to demonstrate this existence or even understand it. In human history many people have been put to death based solely upon anecdotal evidence. It is the very heart of most witch hunts. The requirement of more substantial evidence has served science and humans in general pretty well. And to be clear, I am more than willing to entertain all these ideas... but for only entertainment purposes or for an exercise in understanding my own internal logic. One of reasons I like the original Romero zombie flicks is because it takes a preposterous premise that is then played out as if it really happened. Characters act both rationally and irrationally to the phenomena just like they would in real life. I get a huge kick out of it. The prospect of alien abductions is extremely unsettling when we are the ants in the alien ant farm ... it is also a fantastic exercise in imagination whether it is is believed to be true or not.

[EvilNed]

Improbabilities are important. You do realize that splitting the atom was suggested by Albert Einstein as early as 1907, right? When the Manhattan Project got rolling, the scientists had worked up the numbers and it had a high probability of success. Maybe you can sit there and be certain such a thing doesn't exist, but I don't have that luxury. I think you saw something. And I think there's a reasonable explanation behind it. Believe me, I've seen some crazy shit myself. Stuff I couldn't explain. But weeks, months or even years later I sat down and analyzed the situations. I figured out what it could have been. And realized that even if it wasn't that thing it could have been, the odds were still 9 billion to one it was just something completely random, rather than a ghost. If you believe it was an apparition, then nothing is going to change that. But I've seen similar stuff myself, and they weren't apparitions.

[darth los]

unexplainable scientific phenomena has been given supernatural origins since the beginning of recorded history. again, just because something is beyond our comprehension doesn't mean god did it. 2500 years ago when there were lightning bolts in the sky and man couldn't explain it they attributed it to Zues hurling them down from olympus. There are plenty of other examples i could give but you get my drift. Perhaps in 2,500 more years they'll be saying the same about "ghosts" and how ignorant and in the dark we savages must have been to believe in something so silly, you know kinda like lightning bolt dude and rain dances.

[EvilNed]

Very good point. And still, given human history (as you pointed out) this is still all very much more likely than it being supernatural and unexplainable. sooooo, if the believers out there are so convinced that there is "evidence" of the supernatural, then someone should get to proving it in order to claim the prize. I read somewhere that some people who claim to be able to prove the supernatural simply passed on it because they didn't "need the money". Now there's something else I won't believe.

[darth los]

Very good point. And still, given human history (as you pointed out) this is still all very much more likely than it being supernatural and unexplainable. I read somewhere that some people who claim to be able to prove the supernatural simply passed on it because they didn't "need the money". Now there's something else I won't believe. There always seems to be a covienient enough excuse doesn't there?

[Danny]

There always seems to be a covienient enough excuse doesn't there? yes. for both arguments there is always a convenient excuse. Welcome to humanity. contradiction, self loathing and obsession with boobs and dat ass aisle 1

[Wyldwraith]

On a sheer philosophical level, I find the idea of a universe that's even .1% understood by a species as primitive and flawed as humanity repugnant in the extreme. And again, I do believe there are reasonable explanations for every aspect of the "supernatural"...I just don't believe that trivial things like IF waves, ELPs and ELFs begin to address the sum of experienced phenomena. People don't abandon homes including all personal possessions because they refuse to even enter the house for 5-10 minutes with company in broad daylight because of tricks of the light or sound waves.

[clanglee]

Really? Over onehundred posts in 2 days on the subject of Oija Boards? I leave for a couple of days and this place becomes a madhouse.

[AcesandEights]

It's all been quite cordial, Clang. I assure you. Mmmm, cordials.

[Danny]

People don't abandon homes including all personal possessions because they refuse to even enter the house for 5-10 minutes with company in broad daylight because of tricks of the light or sound waves. Actually you'd be surprised on this one. Ive seen tons of stories online, in tv shows, hell occasionally i'll buy one of those paranormal magazines in wh smiths just because its an interesting read and plenty are something simple like ventilation carrying lights and sounds to some more radical things like nearby power cables or a gas leak. I'm not arguing peoples spiritual beliefs because lets face it, if the fact that a dead persons brian shuts down and all electrical impulses dissipate counts for nothing then it IS belief and arguing it is pointless. However instead of using the paranormal as the first unusual port of call theres plenty of logical, albiet uncommon possibilities to explain just about anything paranormal or unusual. Hell, we live on a floating rock around a burning mass of hydrogen, we are hairless apes driving around on wheeled combustion engines, we can find turtles with two heads, it can rain frogs after a tornado, we can observe bolts of lightning that for a second are hotter than the sun, we've seen chickens survive with there heads cut off, we are 70% water, but 97% of water on the planet is undrinkable! The world is amazing, the cosmos is amazing. its spectacular, surprising and impossibly brilliant in exponential measure. Just because theres a perfectly explainable, no matter how unlikely or uncommon explanation for things doesnt make them less special. In fact it probably makes them more so because there "normal" and not governed by this unexplainable other-dues-science called magic. -but to the topic of the ouiji boards, fuck them. believe in anything you want but that is still a goddam piece of wood with alphanumeric characters on it. there not magic, never where, never will be.

[MikePizzoff]

there not magic, never where, never will be. they're* were*

[Danny]

they're* were* its like fucking from and form i will never type them out right. ever. i need self facepalm.