Kinda spammy way to join our community but at least on topic.  What the hell...

I have seen the bent AND eventually broken spoon trick in person. I would like to know how it is done, although I damned well know there is no fucking magic to it.

It is the same shit that pisses me off when people go to a magic show and say, "How do you know magic isn't real". And even after illusionists expose the woman sawed in half, and disappearing jet, some dumb asses still buy it as literal.

You cannot move objects with your mind, Ouija boards are a joke and a con, any ghost "reality show" you see on tv is bullshit crap gullible people fall for.

It is the same reason for a long time the WWE Wrestling falsely defended its show as a sport when all it was was acting.

It simply amounts to if you want to believe it badly enough, you will.

But if you want to sound less spammy, how did that guy break the spoon in front of my eyes?

 

 

Jeffrick!!!

I did email Brian but I never got a response, so if the post gets deleted I understand.  However I thought I would come to the forum anyway, I am trying to use all the resources I can.   

Brian37 James Randi openly tells people it is a magic trick and some people still say "no you are using real psychic powers."   

Welcome to the forum.

 

There is even a mental trick where you can guess the number the person is thinking of. I used to briefly know how to do it. The look on their face when you get the number right is priceless. But they don't know that all you are doing is giving them leading questions that you pick up on.

One of my favorite lines in TV history was on a show Moonlighting where the Character Maddy Hayes aksa a magician how they did that, he responds aptly,"If humans didn't have eyes it wouldn't be so easy to fool them".

People do not understand, even with religion, how easy they allow themselves to fall for a gap answer.

You have to be a fool to watch an illusionist and think any of it is real. And even with psychics which is merely a mental mind scam they pull on you.

 

That is because some people have the need to believe this crap.  Perfect example, when I was speaking with James Randi after he exposed Popoff as a fraud, people were thanking Randi and explaining that they now go to another church and they can tell that their new Pastor (who is doing the same crap Peter Popoff does) is the "real deal." 

Hello TheBentSpoon!

I'm the local resident "psychic". I've read through your magazine. Nice job, you cover such classic beliefs... But one thing really got me wondering. How can you ask for tangible evidence of a ghost? Last time I heard, ghosts are intangible. That's like asking for tangible evidence of radio waves, but not through radio. What do you want, a petrified fossil of a ghost? Please, have some considerations for technical diffculties. Not all of ghost hunters have a big blue bar of magenergy reserves over their head like madame Blavatsky, who reputedly could materialize stuff. 

So, I have a question. You're a skeptic. You examine claims. If you find out the claim is flawed, you may write some educative and fun article about it, in your magazine. Let's say there is a guy with an extraordinary claim, which potentially turns a lot of science upside down and positively points at many areas, which were until now thought to be pseudoscience.  But what will you do, if the extraordinary claim turns out to be backed up by an actual scientific experiments, documented, repeatable and peer-reviewed? Will you lend the claim a space in your propagatory medium? Will you contact anyone else? Or will you play a dead beetle? 
James Randi is sworn to give the claimant a million dollar prize. What's your plan for such cases?

In my experience, even skeptics do not react positively when they do not win an argument. Typically, they don't react at all. It seems to me, they even avoid looking at the evidence, if it can't be easily dismissed, because it requires to read through some serious documents. 
I can understand that they're probably tired and busy people. But is there any way to tell which skeptic is fresh, vacant and willing to examine claims?

 

If that person is a woman, they usually think of number 7.
I've read about it in the book by Neil Strauss, the pickup artist. I can say, it really works.

Congratulations! I agree that false and unjustified beliefs should be gradually put down.    All right, so things like E.M.F. readings are not a sufficient evidence. Neither are the "electronic voices" on radio. But you specifically asked for a tangible proof of a fundamentally intangible ghost. I don't see how that's possible, unless someone materializes the ghost or knocks you out of physical body, so your ghost can touch the ghost.
What about a two-way communication with a ghost?
  Actually, I meant it as a real possibility. There is "dark matter" in the universe. (hopefully we can agree there is enough evidence that it is a real matter, not a mathemathical placeholder) So what if this dark matter is not in fact dark, but emits light elsewhere on the EM spectrum, due to its different material properties? There is a lot of EM radiation in the space unaccounted for, such as detected by the ARCADE experiment. 
This is why I would not close my mind to the possibility that there are material, yet intangible ghosts around us, who can possibly emit a microwave or radio EM radiation. I don't claim this is exactly the case, but I see how it may be possible and how radio receivers and transmitters migt one day become an evidence.   Very well. I got the point. People should take into account what we all know that exists. Actually, my "guru" once answered a question that yetti is a rare and yet undiscovered kind of a mountain bear. Nevermind that, but when I was on college last year with my roommate, he left a lot of mystery/science magazines on our dorm toilet. So we both read them a lot. One issue was about newly discovered species. And look, there was this strange kind of a bear, caught by the Chinese near Tibet, with not much fur on the coat. A fitting candidate for Yeti.   My question was actually, is there any visible procedure for recognition of a claim? All this admitting, that can happen inside of your head. What would you do visibly and externally, for all to see? If the claim becomes proven, then you should at least promote it somehow, to reward the claimant for the long line of condescent skepticism he had to go through. What about a credibly-looking article, on which the claimant may post a link, every time another skeptic doubts, but has no time to read through the original documents?
You should also say something publically, for example. If I quote Tim Minchin from the famous Storm video:

...I will change my mind.
I will spin on a fucking dime. 
I will be as embarrassed as hell, yet I will run through the streets yelling "It's a miracle!!!"
...
And when I recover from the shock,
I will take a cutlass(misheard?) and carve 'fancy that' on the side of my cock!


 

 Well Lumy, the thing is that proof has to be more than you telling me stuff. It has to be something that can be quantified and written up. So even if I think that you have shown me something real, it then becomes my job to tell other people about it. Basically, I would have to show them what I found out and do so in a way that meets a certain standard of reason.

 

For example, take ghosts. In order to prove that they exist, the ghost must touch the physical world in some way. Two way communication would not be enough to convince anyone else.

 

Really, if you were to somehow put me in touch with a real ghost and we had a conversation, what kind of credibility would I have by telling people that I had a conversation with a real ghost? About as much as any of the other people who claim to talk to the dead and we all know what that is worth.

 

Really, the ghost has to be able to touch the world in some tangible way which is subject to further investigation by other people. But really, what is a ghost anyway? If we go with the definition of not being able to affect the physical world in any way, then that lets out the idea of my talking to one. In fact, it lets out the idea of anyone ever doing anything real that establishes the existence of “real” ghosts.

 

What if a ghost is not what you think it is? Perhaps there are real physical phenomenon which are subject to study but it just happens that nobody has done a proper investigation on them just yet. Would you be open minded enough to admit that what you think to be a ghost might turn out to be something real and measurable but not a dead guy wandering around?

 

As far as Yeti/Bigfoot/Lochness monster type creatures, there might be another problem to consider.

 

The size of a population is directly connected to it's genetic stability. We see this in evolutionary biology all the time. Large populations tend to show very little genetic drift and small populations have larger genetic drift. So if a cryptid species is going to remain concealed in a well traveled area, then it would have to have a generally small population.

 

Granted, the region where the yeti supposedly live might be able to hide a respectable population but the bigfoot supposedly lives in an area which is well enough populated that the size of the population that could possibly still be concealed would be too small for them to survive.

 

Ditto the Loch Ness monster. There could be at most a couple of creatures that large in that particular lake. There is no way that they could survive breeding to siblings for millions of years.

 

On the other hand, we do know of a good number of isolated populations of larger species. The Key Deer in Florida is a good example. They are a subspecies of the North American White tail and in only the last few thousand years, they have developed to the point where they stand half as tall and a quarter of the weight of a typical white tail. They are very real and very well known.

Opening my mind to that possibility would be a real challenge. In my worldview things are interconnected. You can't take away the concept of ghosts as dead guys walking around, because many other concepts would stop making sense. A replacement for the ghost concept would have to fulfill multiple roles, for example, it would have to be created when someone dies. Then of course reincarnation. Almost everything would stop making sense without the concept of reincarnation. And what about the books written by astral explorers? Robert Allan Monroe, among the most notable.

Yes, this all can be falsified some day, but it must be falsified by something that really makes sense in context of people's experiences. I've had the questionable honor to experience things that support more the notion of a densely inhabited astral realm, than some trivial physical phenomenon which causes creaking of wooden floors.

 

I remember now. The yetti was described as a species of a bear, who walks often on hind legs. It might be a suitable way of moving around on mountain slopes, for all I know. But I am not really sure that this is the animal involved.

As for the other mythical monsters, it's hard to tell. There is a general word on that in esoteric community that could explain a lot, but unless I see some evidence, there's no need to mention it. I must ask dad about some videos on youtube he told me about earlier.

For a clear definition of a ghost we would have to define many new concepts, more than my favorite (etheric) dark matter. We must begin with the 7 extra dimensions of string theory, which are also described by esotericism. Each dimension has 7 sub-divisions for basic states of matter under what we call normal temperature. (4 of which in physical dimension make the dark or etheric matter)

A human is a being composed of multiple bodies or vehicles of consciousness, at least in the 3 lowest dimensions. One or two vehicles per dimension to cover all the sub-divisions of matter. Thanks to this principle, of having multi-dimensional existence, we can react to energy on let's say astral level as to energy of emotions or thoughts. This is where the objective and the subjective meet.
And when the physical body dies, (and etheric soon after) the consciousness wakes into the astral vehicle, in the 2nd dimension from below. 

Unfortunately, due to several problems (among others, a great fear of death or intense materialism) many ghosts keep a rudimentary component of etheric substance, to stay focused on the physical world. This could be regarded as a form of environmental pollution or parasitism, one of many astral problems of today.

Fortunately, we usually do not encounter ghosts, not even if they occupy the same space with us, although not the same material quality, that is called a dimension. The ability to contact a ghost is erratic, it is an atrophied part of our animal heritage. It doesn't have anything to do with higher brain functions, it's rather the primitive nerve system controlling adrenal glands and emotionality. For normal people, seeing a ghost is practically a coincidence. Either that, or the ghost must have a coarse quality of low astral sub-levels and the person must be high on something, for these two to meet. Either way, it's usually nothing useful, except for these New Age types.

Some authors describe, that under some circumstances a ghost (or a living guy during astral projection) may solidify a momentary etheric vehicle (or just a hand) to act upon physical world or even move objects as a poltergeist. I can certainly vouch for that, although it's a creepy practice.

The point is, the science should better focus on the search for etheric matter in living organisms and world around. Not only it is much more solid and related to our dense physical matter. It may even serve as a preliminary evidence of ghosts, because human etheric body is somewhat detachable. To me it is almost unthinkable, that astral world should be scientifically discovered before the etheric levels of physical matter. And I think it's much better that way.