Personal experiences with ghosts

[amead]

Also, for folks that feel they have some psychic-type predictive abilities...

It's really sexy to feel that you have some sort of rare ability to do anything. Unfortunately, you're subconsciously predicting the outcomes of scores of events every day. You, and me, and everyone else. I always used to think that I could "feel" the phone was going to ring before it did. In reality, I probably had a fleeting thought about someone calling thousands of times when the phone didn't ring right after. But the couple times it did...exhilarating.

With all of the predictive chances encountered by the billions of people on earth every day, some people are going to have a really super unbelievably incomprehensibly uncanny streak of success. Those people are going to wholeheartedly believe that they can predict the future. And for that point in time, they could. And maybe they could continue to into the future. Perhaps forever. Good for them, that's got to be a great feeling.

[econophile]

amead,

your answer touches on some important points but is not entirely satisfactory. you are correct that my own sense data (whatever they be) are unquestionably real - they must exist because i am perceiving them.

your response suggests that all sense data are the same because they all exists, but that ignores what the key question: is a particular experience caused by some object in the outside world or is it caused by defects in my sense organs or my own mind? the propostion that i create all of my own sense data cannot be logically rejected, but i have not reason to reject the alternative hypothesis that most of my sense data is caused by objects other than myself.

now we can never be sure that a given experience is caused by an external object, but based on different categories we assign the experience a probability of being caused by an external object. some of the factors that increase this probability are the experience being shared by more than one person (the more the better), the experience taking place during an alert and attentive state, the experience according with some logically consitent theory of how things work, etc.

you say it doesn't make any difference whether experience are real or imaginary. but practically, it makes all the difference in the world. if we base our behavior on mistaken beliefs about what things exist and how thing works, then our actions won't have the desired results.

[BillNye]

The key to "seeing" ghosts is to be thinking about that type of subject.

[amead]

Thought provoking response.

I wasn't so much looking at it from a "you're a lunatic because you barricade yourself in your room because the ghosts are after you" way.

The art in the situation is to either be able to use other data to determine that what you experienced was most likely imaginary (other people around you didn't see it, this sort of thing is too improbable to be likely to have happen, this event violates accepted laws of science, etc.) in order to keep you from acting on figments of your imagination.

But my point was more to say that to you and you alone, the difference between your mind convincing itself that something happened that really did not, and the same event happening in the physical world is nil.

And, who's to say how much of the stuff that you experience in your day to day life actually happened? Probably a really great deal of it, for most mentally healthy folks. But I bet there are a few things that I've experienced and believed as fact to have happened that may not have.

But yeah, I agree. If the imaginary experience prompts you to behave in a way that is socially unacceptable or unhealthy in some way, that does make all the difference in the world.

[Blarg]

Interesting response. We do indeed compose reality, out of the welter of sensations we receive and the filters of our personalities, abilities, and prejudices. Everyone has probably had numerous instances where they took things the wrong way and were stunned to find out that they did so, and that their interpretation of reality, while as real as could possibly be to them, was faulty. We don't just receive information without bias in a sort of sterile process. By the time things even rise to consciousness, they have already been interpreted, formed and perhaps deformed.

[kazana]

[ QUOTE ]
It's really sexy to feel that you have some sort of rare ability to do anything. Unfortunately, you're subconsciously predicting the outcomes of scores of events every day. You, and me, and everyone else. I always used to think that I could "feel" the phone was going to ring before it did. In reality, I probably had a fleeting thought about someone calling thousands of times when the phone didn't ring right after. But the couple times it did...exhilarating.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure if this is a shot at me, but it looks like it so I'll just give a short answer.

If anything, I have an inability to predict things. I haven't been able to control it when or what I'll know. So there's no reason for me to feel "sexy" about it. It just happened. It's not like I'm trying to get into any chicks' pants with that.

And as I've said before, it felt different from subconsciously guessing. And it felt different before the things happened or were confirmed - not only afterwards. I've guessed several results of my home town's soccer matches correctly, but I was well aware that I was merely guesing.

Well, I'm not expecting to make anyone believe it, so I'll leave it at that. I, for my part, just won't categorically deny that there may be intangible things out there that we don't consciously know of.

[Leaky Eye]

[ QUOTE ]
I, for my part, just won't categorically deny that there may be intangible things out there that we don't consciously know of.

[/ QUOTE ]

I too will not categorically deny that there are things unknown in the universe.

I will categorically deny that you, or anyone else is psychic.

These two things are not inconsistent.

[kazana]

[ QUOTE ]
I too will not categorically deny that there are things unknown in the universe.

I will categorically deny that you, or anyone else is psychic.

[/ QUOTE ]
Fair enough.

[ QUOTE ]
These two things are not inconsistent.

[/ QUOTE ]

LDO. You can choose to deny whatever you wish to.

[Blarg]

I keep seeing LDO. What does that mean?

[Klompy]

[ QUOTE ]
I keep seeing LDO. What does that mean?

[/ QUOTE ]

I've wondered this for a few weeks now too, you're not the only one.