DescentBB

It's a boy!!

Congrats, flip.

Spidey wrote:No roid, it’s not up to “you” to test the hypothesis…it’s up to the actual scientific community to test any hypothesis’ that have been proposed. (test…not prove…boy, you really don’t keep up)

All that is said about the person proposing the hypothesis is true, providing evidence and such, it was always my understanding that someone must write an actual paper and submit it to the proper authorities.

That someone is a scientist, and the proper authorities are their peers.
Observing phenomenon ain't like dusting crops boy , part of scientific training is in making accurate and impartial observations. Part of the handy thing about getting your formal qualifications is that it indicates to others that your observations are worth a damn.

So your point is…you don’t believe the people doing these experiments are actual scientists?

no that's not my point. I'm specifically saying the reason why scientists don't bother testing every crack-pot hypothesis under the sun: Because they are too busy testing better hypotheses.

You said: "in a proper “science” environment, any hypothesis should be tested, no matter how far out there, not simply dismissed"
But I'd say: in a proper “science” environment, testing the most promising hypotheses should always be prioritised. "Far out there" hypotheses - ie: ones void of any foundation - should be dismissed outright until a foundation of supporting evidence can be assembled.

Popps seems to be trying to assemble this. I don't think he's there yet, considering some of the "peers" he's keeping.
I don't know, maybe FA Popp's claims are well supported by evidence. I haven't read through much of any of his peer reviewed work, nor do i know how his peers see his work or in what context it's cited. But we're not going to learn the answer from these gullible articles, and neither is flip (nor you i expect) going to do any sort of impartial or rational reading into the matter. This boat is going no-where, the captain is incapable of paddling the oars, and i'm stopping now too, ★■◆● y'all **jumps overboard**.
So this is basically a far-out-there hypothesis that i'm going to ignore, until something sufficiently authoritative comes along to change my mind. Lest i waste even more unproductive hours on it than i already have, and wish i hadn't. Hours which IMHO flip should have spent himself, which is why his "Outrageous claim - PROVE ME WRONG" threads are kindof horrible for me and i should probably stop visiting them all together . But i have no self control, i guess they're slightly better than the valveless vomitorium of partisan political threads we've had going here for... how many years now. Those are easier to ignore, based solely on author

roid wrote:You said: "in a proper “science” environment, any hypothesis should be tested, no matter how far out there, not simply dismissed"
But I'd say: in a proper “science” environment, testing the most promising hypotheses should always be prioritised. "Far out there" hypotheses - ie: ones void of any foundation - should be dismissed outright until a foundation of supporting evidence can be assembled.

roid is correct. Scientists are limited with regard to time and money. Every experiment takes time, and you need people and technology to do it. To have these funds you go to governmental or private funding bodies. You write a big proposal convincing them about the value in what you are undertaking. Only if you are successful, -- trust me, you need to be *very* convincing for that -- you will get the money to do the research. The sad fact is that, of course, these funding bodies favour low-risk high-impact proposals. When I started there were much more opportunities for "blue sky" research, but the more science funding is cut, and the more we have to rely on external funds, the more these opportunities dwindle.

there is typically two ways of how research projects get started. one is the "bottom up" way that I described above. the other is "top down" where some external/or governmental funding body proposes a research question, and then asks for proposals from scientists about how to undertake it. Again, only the most convincing/low-risk proposals win. Nobody wants to spend money that goes nowhere.

For you guys to be so smart, your reading comprehension really suffers. I never made that claim, although bio-luminesence definitely does not put it out of the question. I do suspect though, there is something to it, but "I" would never claim it as fact.

EDIT: Thanks Foil! We are overflowing from excitement.

Aside from that, I posted at least 10 independant sources making such claims, abd you guys want to focus on the one making the most outrageous 'predictions'

The light is invisible to the naked eye, so Hiramatsu and his team used a powerful photon counter to "see"it.

The detector found that fingernails release 60 photons, fingers release 40 and the palms are the dimmest of all, with 20 photons measured.

The findings are published in the current Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

EDIT: My assessment? Most of you are not here for open discussion but mainly just to attack the personal beliefs of others.

Congratulations, Flip! I hope the family is well!

Thanks!!
EDIT: Here's an outrageous prediction. Maybe that's why you can feel people staring at you, or when someone points you, they are actually directing these "photons" at you.

Pandora, don’t take that so literally, it’s more of a choice in regards to how one should approach a new idea…test rather than dismiss. Of course I understand that resources are limited…I don’t even see how that needs to be pointed out.

Note I said “any” not every.

My point is more along the line of…do internet junkies really have the right to dismiss new ideas, without the proper background, even when the people with them have not done peer review.

Do you understand the gist of what I’m getting at?

congratulations, Flip(better late than never, sorry I missed the announcement earier)!!!

Thanks Slick. I think the only time I will be happier is when my other 2 move out :p

flip wrote:Thanks!!
EDIT: Here's an outrageous prediction. Maybe that's why you can feel people staring at you, or when someone points you, they are actually directing these "photons" at you.

I tend to believe that this does more to evidence a spiritual aspect to reality. Technically when someone points at you they would be directing even fewer photons from the tip of a finger than from the ambient "light" being emitted by their whole body. Neither their finger nor their eyes would seem to make any specials difference when turned on you, physically speaking. However, when someone turns their attention on you and considers you, I think there could very well be some unconscious spiritual exchange taking place.

(Congratulations)

Yes I agree. The light we send out is 360 degrees but some points on the body release more light than others.

Back to the topic as it stood a few posts ago:

Spidey wrote:My point is more along the line of…do internet junkies really have the right to dismiss new ideas, without the proper background, even when the people with them have not done peer review.

Do you understand the gist of what I’m getting at?

I do, I think. You're right, people without the knowledge/tools can't dismiss an idea any more than they can confirm it (especially on an internet forum).

That said, I think that internet folks can develop a sense for the "red flags" of junk science, like claims which relate to spiritual/psychic stuff, or which depend on known quackery (e.g. free energy), or which are advertised as "breakthrough" with no real backing or validation.

I think it boils down to this simply. Do humans produce photon's or not? Whatever box you put it in is up to you at that point. Me and Thorne see things in a different perspective, but does this stand? Do humans produce particles of light or not?

Spidey, yes, I do see your point (but had misunderstood you before).

But I also see roid's. It is crucial that people learn to distinguish between what is real science and what just pretends to be science. The level of bullshittery is getting worse and worse. All the crock that is published when it comes to health ("oh noes, vaccines cause autism!!!"), nutrition ("vegeterian raw food is best for you!!!"), neuroscience ("we only use 10% of our brain!!!") and so on. The quacks make millions out of exploiting people like that.

I therefore think also in the public discourse, there should be a healthy level of scepticism, when researchers have not put in the legwork, and have not published at least some of their observations/ideas in proper peer reviewed journals (not books!!!).

I was thinking last night about Thorne's response and I think I know where he was getting at. This is how I see it. You can feel when someone is pissed. You can feel when someone is sad. You can feel when someone hates. I'm just talking about overcoming all that , walking around with good energy. Of course, I believe in the unseen so I have a little more encouragement to do that and I feel like good energy is gonna overcome bad energy, regardless. LOL, I'm not talking about going around and shooting light beams at people, but I do believe you can direct your emotions towards someone, even without them knowing it.

EDIT: I'm not sure about them "not knowing it."

think pheremones, not photons, flip for the phenomena you are observing. Sure the photons may play a small role, but the chemical signals we send are far more potent, and given our physiology, more likely to impact our nervous system(thus, our emotions/senses)

I imagine you know more than your saying.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:

flip wrote:Thanks!!
EDIT: Here's an outrageous prediction. Maybe that's why you can feel people staring at you, or when someone points you, they are actually directing these "photons" at you.

I tend to believe that this does more to evidence a spiritual aspect to reality. Technically when someone points at you they would be directing even fewer photons from the tip of a finger than from the ambient "light" being emitted by their whole body. Neither their finger nor their eyes would seem to make any specials difference when turned on you, physically speaking. However, when someone turns their attention on you and considers you, I think there could very well be some unconscious spiritual exchange taking place.

(Congratulations)

flip wrote:I was thinking last night about Thorne's response and I think I know where he was getting at. This is how I see it. You can feel when someone is pissed. You can feel when someone is sad. You can feel when someone hates. I'm just talking about overcoming all that , walking around with good energy. Of course, I believe in the unseen so I have a little more encouragement to do that and I feel like good energy is gonna overcome bad energy, regardless. LOL, I'm not talking about going around and shooting light beams at people, but I do believe you can direct your emotions towards someone, even without them knowing it.

EDIT: I'm not sure about them "not knowing it."

These ideas are quite testable. And I hope you do, because it'll probably be fun .
I recommend you sort out some questions beforehand though: What sort of results are you looking for that would tell you if it were verified or falsified. ie: what kindof success rate would confirm that you can tell whether or not someone is pointing a finger at you, or thinking about you, etc. Do you expect to get it right all the time, or would say a 90% success rate be close enough? These are just hypothetical examples, you should work out your own criteria. Have fun. I'd wish you luck too, but it might effect your results hehe

Heh, it's easy enough. We are all interconnected. We can 'feel' each other. I'm sure this releasing of energy has something to do with that. Let's say I'm wrong and I live my whole life that way. At least i made my own mind up and my own way and didn't sit around waiting for some journal to make my mind up as to how I perceive the world around me. I could spend a long time laying out the correlation of my beliefs to scientific findings. I see no divide between them now, at all. You can sit in your room Roid and wait for someone else to tell you, but I'm thinking new scientific findings are fixing to antiquate some of your long held beliefs, that weren't really yours in the first place. I'm gonna use my energy to build mankind up, others are using to tear it down. God is going to rule through man, and the people there are gonna be the ones here who consciencely decided to love one another. Even those that hate them. The world is miraculous and amazing. I'm gonna enjoy what God has created, you can believe what you want, until then, the debate continues .

flip wrote:At least i made my own mind up and my own way and didn't sit around waiting for some journal to make my mind up as to how I perceive the world around me.

There is nothing wrong with believing nonsense. I also believe things that can't be proven (though I'm ready to give them up in a heartbeat). The problem comes when people believe nonsense, then use those beliefs to hurt other people. This is why people rally against religion. It's not that someone believes in a skygod. It's because they use their beliefs to isolate, persecute, and even kill others. You can't derive any kind of modern, civilized morality from ancient religious texts. You have to use your brain and your sense of compassion to filter out the garbage in them (which makes them pretty useless). Ultimately, it's the religious people who wait for a book to tell them how to perceive the world, not those who read science journals.

Agreed.

roid wrote:These ideas are quite testable. And I hope you do, because it'll probably be fun .
I recommend you sort out some questions beforehand though: What sort of results are you looking for that would tell you if it were verified or falsified. ie: what kindof success rate would confirm that you can tell whether or not someone is pointing a finger at you, or thinking about you, etc. Do you expect to get it right all the time, or would say a 90% success rate be close enough? These are just hypothetical examples, you should work out your own criteria. Have fun. I'd wish you luck too, but it might effect your results hehe

I know basically where you're coming from, but I think you couldn't be more wrong on "quite testable". I'm a relatively intelligent person, and I can't think of a reliable way to test it. Partly because I have reason to believe that we are less easily emotionally manipulated than physically, but even less easily spiritually manipulated. I would compare what you're imagining to testing for the existence of love by sitting on a bench and trying to love anyone who passes by. There's a lot involved, and even thought the existence and concept of emotions is very widely accepted, people still don't grasp them very well. It certainly is something of an indicator that every once in a while you whip around and someone is indeed watching you, I think. It just doesn't help us understand it. Bring into the equation the Biblical concept that we are not alone in the spiritual realm, and it goes from very difficult to near impossible to perform a reliable scientific test.

I'm not trying to throw you a religious "we can't know so we must believe" bull★■◆● argument, but maybe it's a little like walking up to Edison or Tesla and telling them that electricity is "quite testable", before they spent their respective lifetimes understanding it imperfectly.

vision wrote:You can't derive any kind of modern, civilized morality from ancient religious texts. You have to use your brain and your sense of compassion to filter out the garbage in them (which makes them pretty useless). Ultimately, it's the religious people who wait for a book to tell them how to perceive the world, not those who read science journals.

I challenge your initial statement. I wish you'd be more specific when talking about the Bible, or do we actually have opponents representing Islam, etc present? What aspect of modern "civilized" morality cannot be taken from scripture?

And both sets of people are using their respective books to justify their own warped perception of the world, if you ask me. Someone with a real appreciation for scientific fact, and someone with a real appreciation for truth must be put in a class all their own, because they cannot be represented by a gross generalized statement pitting the whole of "science" against "religion". Even here I believe that should be understood as an epic fail.

flip wrote:I'm gonna use my energy to build mankind up, others are using to tear it down. God is going to rule through man, and the people there are gonna be the ones here who consciencely decided to love one another.

Flip i really don't like your insinuation that i'm lacking in love and empathy. Where did THAT come from dude .
I like you man, i really do. There really is not enough curious people in this world. I don't want to tear that down, i guess i'm... trying to steer your energy towards something useful. You've got a good motor and wheels, i'm trying to give you the option of a steering wheel and brakes so you don't just crash straight into the first pretty lit-up christmas tree you see in someone's front yard.

flip wrote:but I'm thinking new scientific findings are fixing to antiquate some of your long held beliefs,

Actually flip i would absolutely love it if that happened.

to quote Tim Minchin:

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I will spin on a ★■◆●ing dime
I'll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It's a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works
And when I've recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve "Fancy That" on the side of my cock.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:

roid wrote:These ideas are quite testable. And I hope you do, because it'll probably be fun .
I recommend you sort out some questions beforehand though: What sort of results are you looking for that would tell you if it were verified or falsified. ie: what kindof success rate would confirm that you can tell whether or not someone is pointing a finger at you, or thinking about you, etc. Do you expect to get it right all the time, or would say a 90% success rate be close enough? These are just hypothetical examples, you should work out your own criteria. Have fun. I'd wish you luck too, but it might effect your results hehe

I know basically where you're coming from, but I think you couldn't be more wrong on "quite testable". I'm a relatively intelligent person, and I can't think of a reliable way to test it. Partly because I have reason to believe that we are less easily emotionally manipulated than physically, but even less easily spiritually manipulated. I would compare what you're imagining to testing for the existence of love by sitting on a bench and trying to love anyone who passes by. There's a lot involved, and even thought the existence and concept of emotions is very widely accepted, people still don't grasp them very well. It certainly is something of an indicator that every once in a while you whip around and someone is indeed watching you, I think. It just doesn't help us understand it. Bring into the equation the Biblical concept that we are not alone in the spiritual realm, and it goes from very difficult to near impossible to perform a reliable scientific test.

I'm not trying to throw you a religious "we can't know so we must believe" bull★■◆● argument, but maybe it's a little like walking up to Edison or Tesla and telling them that electricity is "quite testable", before they spent their respective lifetimes understanding it imperfectly.

If it's a reliable enough phenomenon for you to even believe that it exists in the first place, then it'll show up in tests no problem.
The same problems you'd have with a formal test, would also exist in real life everytime you think you feel one of these phenomenon (in a non-test situation). So why not just discount your non-test experiences, just as you would discount the test results?

Take your spirit realm as an example. If the spirit realm can disrupt a formal study, why couldn't they also be at work everytime you think you have psychic powers? Maybe psychic powers don't exist and it's just the spirit realm messing with you every time.
If something is untestable, it doesn't make it "probably correct" by default, actually it's better to assume it's "probably incorrect" by default. If you can't test for psychic powers for whatever reason, the default position i think is to just assume that it's caused by other benign things that have been proven to exist (like a gust of wind, a light shadow subconsciously seen in the corner of your eye, a subtle change in audio echos of the room, a subconscious picking up on the direction of gaze of others nearby, etcetc, there are so many things that would do it). This is kinda what Occam's Razor is.

My point is that if you're willing to discount the results of tests because we didn't account for enough variables, then you should also be willing to discount your own experience/s which lead to your belief in the first place (where there are even MORE unaccounted-for variables that can confuse us).

No Roid, you misunderstand, that was not directed at you at all. I can tell you are a loving person and have good light. I just think you got misdirected by the mean and hateful.

so, who's mean and hateful?

Sergeant Thorne wrote:

vision wrote:You can't derive any kind of modern, civilized morality from ancient religious texts. You have to use your brain and your sense of compassion to filter out the garbage in them (which makes them pretty useless).

I challenge your initial statement. I wish you'd be more specific when talking about the Bible, or do we actually have opponents representing Islam, etc present? What aspect of modern "civilized" morality cannot be taken from scripture?

Challenge accepted. Modern, civilized people don't condemn or kill people for being homosexual or having extramarital sex. These things are explicitly forbidden in the bible. If we lived out lives as God demanded in the book of Deuteronomy, man we would be in bad shape. And before you make the ludicrous claim that the Torah, New Testament, and the Quran are all "different books," remember that they are interdependent and cannot be separated from each other. The later ones require the previous.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:And both sets of people are using their respective books to justify their own warped perception of the world, if you ask me.

You condemn your own beliefs as warped? Interesting. Just so you know, I don't use science to justify morality. I use compassion. I use science to battle wacky religious claims that are easily dis-proven. And I'm not sure how science books are warped. Scientific claims are based on observations. If reality is warped, science will show us.

I'm not gonna play that game Roid.

Yes the game of mean & hateful strawmen rarely ends well.

Heh, agreed, I'm just suggesting you don't throw the baby out with the unholy water

This is disturbing. This means that devices inside of light bulbs could interact with computers through a "back door."