Originally posted by Brighter

Actually, the real issue is that you're incapable of providing any kind of rational justification for your beliefs. I realize that that's frustrating to come to terms with, but there's no need to lash out with ad hominem attacks. Everyone has to come to terms with this kind of thing eventually, some just weather it more gracefully than others.

In the end, it's pretty clear to anyone that you don't have a rational response to my objection. It's really not a difficult concept at all to grasp, so one can only assume that it's due to a psychological block, as you appear to be heavily invested in the canned explanations of 'popular skepticism'. And as with most consumers, they don't really understand how the product works - they just consume it.

But it's not a reasonable explanation, and that's exactly what I've been describing in some very unambiguous terms. What it is is a superficial explanation that doesn't carry the conceptual leverage to demonstrate that what is being experienced is not real.

This is because you haven't moved the conversation forward. I'm still waiting for you to explain to me how your proposed sleep apnea explanation possesses the necessary conceptual apparatus to prove that what is subjectively experienced is not real. And if it doesn't, we'd all appreciate an independent argument for why this is so. You're the one claiming that it's a sufficient explanation. So prove it.

And try to avoid moving the the goal posts by saying something like: "But the opposite explanation isn't plausible." I'm asking you to independently defend your explanation, and this should be simple, as you seem to have an enormous amount of confidence in it. So the floor's all yours.

Originally posted by Ectoplasm8
Interesting response. You continue to be telling with your defensive, uptight postings. Maybe relax and take it down a notch? That actually would be the "graceful" way to handle it, don't you think?

This is really amusing. It's interesting how whenever someone realizes that they don't have a point to make, that they resort to personal attacks in order to draw attention away from this fact.

Originally posted by Ectoplasm8
Anyway... You seem to be a little confused and addressing me as you were Druscilla. Remember, I'm not the one with the definitive answer of sleep paralysis, just the one commenting on and finding your obvious contempt, strange.

No, actually I'm not confused at all. Let me refresh your memory though:

Originally posted by Ectoplasm8
How is this an "elementary error" to assume Sleep Paralysis as a good possiblity when the entire happening was within the time frame of sleeping?

If this isn't an endorsement of the sleep apnea hypothesis, I don't know what is.

Originally posted by Ectoplasm8
You conveniently try to squirm your way out of giving any explanation, by, giving me the "floor" to defend my stance on sleep paralysis.

That's because this never had anything to do with my explanation, as I never gave one. You did. You were actually the one who made the statement that clearly favored the sleep apnea hypothesis. And, as a general rule in science, if you make the claim, you'd better be able to back it up. In the real world, you can't make public claims and not be expected to be asked to back them up with a rational argument. And so I did just that. I asked for a rational argument to defend your stance, and you haven't made the slightest attempt at one. On the other hand, you have side-tracked the conversation and lashed out with several ad hominem attacks.

So how about instead of consistently bringing this conversation to superficial levels, you either offer a rational argument, or just admit that you don't have one?

This question has been on my mind lately.

Has anyone realized that whenever a person experiences something super natural they seem to pick up on a high pitched tone ?

Even thought the person has no neurological or hearing problems of any sorts, which makes a very interesting debate as to why does this phenomenon occur so much during supernatural experiences.

Just thought I would bring it up

Fascinating post OP thanks for sharing

I think the fear projection could also be a way to control the person overall or maybe just keep them in a state of confusion that comes along with being afraid. I also wanted to point out that Sleep Apnea and Sleep paralysis are completely different medical conditions. I suffer from Sleep Apnea myself which is when you physically stop breathing during your sleep cycle. A lot of the time its wakes me up and I find myself gasping for a breath but there is nothing even remotely close to Sleep Paralysis happening you just wake up trying to catch a breath, which can still be pretty strange but I can only imagine the horrific experience that comes with Paralysis.

Originally posted by Druscilla
When you prove facility for providing alternative data sets contrary to the Psycho-Social model supported as paradigm in detailing a relevant and clinically accepted classification of a presenting sleep disorder, You may have something to say.

I wish there were a 'facepalm' icon. Let me try to explain a few things here.

If you make an assertion, an hypothesis, etc., then you are obliged to back it up with a rational argument, and should be prepared to respond to any reasonable requests for criticism. Yet even though you certainly seem to have convinced yourself of the sleep apnea hypothesis, any form of actual argument has been oddly absent.

Your sleep apnea explanation was shown to have an enormous conceptual shortcoming in explaining away the reality of this person's experience, yet you either 1) don't grasp the criticism or 2) grasp the criticism but can't formulate a response. Giving you the benefit of the doubt and ignoring 1), one can only assume that you're unable to formulate a proper defense of the conceptual foundations of the sleep apnea hypothesis, which doesn't surprise me, as it wasn't intended for such purposes to begin with, and all you've done so far really is copy and paste someone else's sleep apnea study without 1) understanding the theoretical ramifications of such a study and 2) providing the further necessary arguments to prove what you seem to think it proves, which would admittedly require some original thought and for which not many articles exist that you can conveniently copy and paste and consider the entire issue settled.

It's a simple category error to think such medical conditions work at the level of deep conceptual claims that would be required to do the work that you intend it to, yet most pseudo-skeptics, more concerned with defending a materialist view of reality (and without possessing the necessary tools to do so), continue to misrepresent and misinterpret evidence as being in their favor, in the same way that the serial 'believer' misinterprets every Youtube video to be of a genuine UFO.

This is all to say something that we all knew all along: That the pseudo-skeptic and true believer just sit on opposite poles of the same spectrum, sharing many of the same basic errors in thought and investigation, with the true skeptic at the center.

Originally posted by Druscilla
Your argument, otherwise. lacks a single leg to stand on.

As always, you're heavy on the assertions and short on the actual explanations. You seem to be of this habit of thinking that you've proven something when you actually haven't said anything of substance. In fact, all you've done in this post is to restate your original hypothesis while providing no defense of it.

Originally posted by Druscilla
Provide some acceptable data sets giving indication that sleep paralysis is not sleep paralysis, and/or OPs description can't be attributable to Sleep paralysis, then you may have something to say.

Here you've just assumed that your hypothesis is correct, without rationally defending it. You're forgetting that you're the one who's made the assertion, and therefore you must provide a rational defense of it. It's also a basic logical error to assume that, because there is insufficient data for one hypothesis, that some other hypothesis is automatically true.

Originally posted by Druscilla
The current model classifies experiences similar in description to OP as entirely attributable to Sleep Paralysis.

Again, you're just assuming that the model is intended to do something that it wasn't intended to do. In other words, you're misunderstanding the proper bounds of empirical science. Another category error.

And even assuming that sleep apnea can produce hallucinations of aliens, that doesn't prove that all experiences of aliens are hallucinations, in the same way that my dreaming of a hamburger doesn't imply that hamburgers aren't real.

Originally posted by Druscilla

The premise stands.
Sleep paralysis.

You keep making the same proclamation over and over again without providing any justification.

In any case, here's the bottom line: The fact that some people see grey aliens while dreaming doesn't prove the not-existence of grey aliens any more than people having vivid dreams of hamburgers proves the non-existence of hamburgers.

And furthermore, if one were to perform a sleep study whereby the participant reports that they saw a grey alien, and no grey alien was, say, recorded on video, even in that case, you couldn't conclude that there was no grey alien unless you provided a further argument for why an entity experienced subjectively is not real.

Now, obviously, I don't think that every time a person dreams of a grey alien that it's a real experience. I'm not even saying that people really are having real experiences in any of these cases. All I am saying is that none of the standard arguments typically offered against the non-reality of all of these experiences holds up to close scrutiny. And while sleep apnea may be able to explain some of these experiences, there is nothing about the sleep apnea explanation that proves that all such experiences are non-real.

The sleep apnea hypothesis is also extremely weak in that, in a significant percentage of abduction reports, the victim wasn't even sleeping - they were outside in a park or driving a car. In other words, they weren't tired at all, and certainly weren't about to go to bed. And not only that, but there are cases where multiple people that were together report being abducted at the same time, and they both report an eerily similar series of events.

So in conclusion, there is very little in the sleep apnea hypothesis that is convincing to someone looking at this objectively. To be convinced by it requires a significant amount of 'filling in' in order to make it work, in addition to ignoring all of the additional cases of abductions where the victims were not falling asleep.