The Paranormal - A new theory about what is going on

originally posted by: crayzeed
a reply to: Arbitrageur
What is really being said there is if you're not a scientist or mathematician keep your nose out.

It's more like, why do we see people who don't know much physics think they can do physics? But we don't see many people who don't know surgery think they can do surgery. Say, a man comes along who has no formal training as a surgeon who thinks he has some novel ideas about how to remove your diseased appendix. Are you going to let him operate on you? Or are you going to prefer being operated on by someone who has some knowledge in the field, even if he doesn't know everything and doesn't have all the answers?

I wonder if they said that to Tesla or Edison and other non scientists or mathematicians.

Tesla made valuable engineering contributions, but when he dabbled in physics he was in some cases wrong and I suspect some people told him so, until later in his life when he was known to be so wrong that people more or less ignored him. For example:

8 times when Nikola Tesla was wrong

Tesla did not agree with the theory of atoms being composed of smaller subatomic particles. He thought that there was no such thing as an electron creating an electric charge and that it had nothing to do with electricity.

However, not only did the electron get discovered but also its properties and effects were measured by physicist J.J. Thomson at the start of the twentieth century. Without electron, technologies like the television couldn't exist.

None of that is even debated, it's accepted fact that electrons exist and play a mojor role in electricity, and the list goes on of other errors by Tesla, where Tesla refused to accept sound theories like Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic radiation, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc. which have huge amounts of experimental evidence to back them up. Tesla was not only told he was wrong but was eventually shown huge amounts of experimental evidence supporting Einstein's and Maxwell's theories. Lots of evidence in support of relativity had already been presented by 1935 when Tesla said relativity was wrong.

His frustration with advanced mathematics led him to incorrectly conclude that Maxwell's equations and relativity were wrong.

His denial of modern science left him too far behind his contemporaries – Marconi, Braun, Bose – in his ability to contribute to the wireless communication.

Verified descriptions:- Adults, children and animals being taken, verified innumerable times. Besides intensive searches by professionals, beside professional trackers finding no tracks, beside tracker dogs finding no scent, all verified, yet still no person.
Then, verified descriptions of said adults, children and animals being returned to places that they could not possibly be in because Professionals had been there numerous times, that's professionals in their fields just as professional as a scientist or a mathematician.

Verification where? I provided links to my sources, where are yours?

Anyway, it's a perfectly legitimate answer for a scientist to say "I don't know" why something happens, in fact they say it all the time when they don't know. It doesn't mean they are necessarily ignoring it, but isn't it better to say "I don't know" than to make up something like "It's because of leprechauns at the end of the rainbow", or some pseudoscientific claim about energy bleeding out of our universe which appears to conflict with out observations about energy conservation?

This thread starts off by showing a science video and then branches off on an explanation related to that in some way, so it's at least attempting to bring some science into explaining the so far unexplained. But the people best equipped to do that are people who are actually trained in science, just as the people who are trained in surgery are best equipped to perform surgery. Some of these concepts are discussed in this video, about why some physicists get annoyed when non-physicists try to use unrealistic physics-based explanations to explain things they don't understand, using Robert Lanza as an example, but we could make a similar video about Tesla's misconceptions in physics. If you don't really know why something happens, it's better to say that, than to make up some BS when you have no evidence to support the BS, isn't it?

Quantum Physics Woo - Sixty Symbols

A lot of that is griping about Robert Lanza trying to do physics without having any formal training in physics, which really annoys real physicists because so much of what Lanza says is wrong and not supported at all by the real science.

Verification, I said go to Parulides books and videos. Professionals, police, army (involved in the searches), professional search and rescue. professional trackers, are these not as professional as scientists. I did not conclude what or where so no golden unicorns make an appearance. Just like a scientist, which I am not, or allude to, but from the information I assume that there is a phenomena that science either does not want to acknowledge or investigate. Hold on, I'll take that back. A multimillionaire and a government department have spent a huge amount of money and time trying to get to the bottom of this phenomena at the Skinwalker Ranch. But I suppose you would think they were chasing unicorns.
"There are more things in heaven and earth" than scientists and mathematicians know or hopr to know.

originally posted by: crayzeed
Verification, I said go to Parulides books and videos.

That's not a link. Parulides when I looked it up is a plural of parulis, which is a synonym for gumboil.

A multimillionaire and a government department have spent a huge amount of money and time trying to get to the bottom of this phenomena at the Skinwalker Ranch. But I suppose you would think they were chasing unicorns.
"There are more things in heaven and earth" than scientists and mathematicians know or hopr to know.

Worse than chasing unicorns, I think Bigelow was deceived by stories of strange happenings at the ranch when in fact the former resident denied them. This is why when Bigelow tried to document strange happenings, he was unable to do so. I don't take any issue with this description of the Skinwalker Ranch fiasco, I think it's probably very close to the truth if not spot on.

Skinwalker Ranch

According to skeptical author Robert Sheaffer, "the 'phenomenon' at Skinwalker is almost certainly illusory. Not only was the yearslong monitoring of 'Skinwalker' by NIDS unable to obtain proof of anything unusual happening, but the people who owned the property prior to the Shermans, a family whose members lived there 60 years, deny that any mysterious 'phenomena' of any kind occurred there". Sheaffer says "the parsimonious explanation is that the supernatural claims about the ranch were made up by the Sherman family prior to selling it to the gullible Bigelow". Sheaffer wrote that many of the more extraordinary claims originated solely from Terry Sherman, who worked as a caretaker after the ranch was sold to Bigelow.[10]

In 1996, skeptic James Randi awarded Bigelow a Pigasus Award for funding the purchase of the ranch and for supporting John E. Mack's and Budd Hopkins' investigations. The award category designated Bigelow as "the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult".

Bigelow, John Mack, and Budd Hopkins, all a few french fries short of a happy meal, which is not just my opinion, but it's a widely held view of people who need real verification, not just stories, like skinwalker ranch where they set up a lot of instrumentation to try to verify things and nothing was verified, it's almost the oppsite of verification. I think Bigelow was conned by stories of things that were alleged to have happened in the past, that mostly didn't even happen. That's why he couldn't verify anything (see below).

I also think people who believe the skinwalker range hype are largely lacking research skills and/or critical thinking skills. You can find this about the made-up skinwalker Ranch stories, in this thread right here on ATS, so you don't even need to leave this site to read about it:

Bigelow, UFOs, MUFON and ‘DeLonge’ Road to AATIP

James Carrion (pictured), then International Director of MUFON tendered his resignation in January of 2010. He was unhappy at the way things had transpired and felt that MUFON had been manipulated by Bigelow. Carrion sent an email to his fellow MUFON board members...

"...Through Dr. Salisbury, we were able to interview the brother of the original owner of the ranch who sold it to the Shermans who subsequently sold it to Bigelow. The ranch owner’s brother was adamant that there was no UFO or strange activity on the ranch prior to the Sherman’s purchase, contrary to what was discussed in the Skinwalker Book and that he (the owner’s brother) had personally received a call from Bigelow trying to convince him otherwise. I found this to be extremely odd and disturbing..."

Again in a more recent thread:
Breaking BAASS, Assessing AATIP and Doubting Thomas ‘DeLonge’

● Bigelow bought Skinwalker Ranch in 1996 from the Sherman Family. Despite the stories you’ve heard. Nothing much extraordinary happened there whilst the Myers family inhabited the ranch for the majority of the 20th century.

● BAASS security guards at Skinwalker Ranch have claimed [and proved] they had to submit to MRI scans and provide urine samples, as part of their terms of employment. Bigelow’s study group, NIDS, found no hard evidence of paranormal activity.

"There are more things in heaven and earth" than scientists and mathematicians know or hopr to know.

That's probably true in the heavens, aka the cosmos, but I see no evidence that such a statement applies to skinwalker ranch, where it would be more appropriate to insert a quote dealing with human psychology, gullibility, naivete, greed, storytelling, disinformation, and the lack of anything verifiable. Maybe a few people were primed to see illusions, and thus saw illusions consistent with known psychological science, but independent scientific instruments like cameras failed to provide any scientific evidence, as far as I can tell. There are answers for such events in psychology, where people see things that a camera doesnt, without having to resort to "paranormal".

I've been super busy with work but thought I would answer some of the responses so far.

originally posted by: charlyv

But in this context, there are two outcomes - one where the cat lives, one where the cat dies. The idea is that when we observe a wave or particle the wave function collapses. In the end, you would observe one of two outcomes (not both).

In universe 1 - the cat lives
In universe 2 - the cat dies

No, the Shrodinger equation says the cat is BOTH dead and alive.

This is true in the context of the thought experiment only though - The idea being that in reality, both cannot be true. There is still only one cat that you would see if one were to open the box. The idea is that Superposition breaks down leading to both outcomes occurring just in different universes (referred to as branching in this context).

originally posted by: Lumenari

originally posted by: charlyv

But in this context, there are two outcomes - one where the cat lives, one where the cat dies. The idea is that when we observe a wave or particle the wave function collapses. In the end, you would observe one of two outcomes (not both).

In universe 1 - the cat lives
In universe 2 - the cat dies

He was referring to the MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation) posed by Everett later on. In the MWI, in one universe the cat is dead, in the other it is alive.

The entire post is a thought exercise on the MWI theory to explain paranormal experiences.

Which has both its merits and problems... I have argued both sides of the theory before.

S&F for the OP BlasteR, BTW...

Thanks!
I definitely don't think I'm the only one to consider these possibilities. I only used the schrodinger cat thought experiment as an example because it is easy for one to visualize and understand where my own hypothesizing goes from there. It's always good to consider the possibilities from different angles. Of course, where the paranormal is considered, all goes off the rails while at the same time all possibilities are on the table.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Thanks for that and you're absolutely right.
This isn't like I'm saying it's 100% one thing or the other but just one possible explanation for the phenomenon we observe. It's a hypothetical. Personally, I've always tried to think in these terms of picturing scenarios that fit in somewhat with real science.

In no way is the Schrodinger cat thought experiment purfect - as Einstein pointed out. Is the cat an observer? Who knows.
But it does posit that superposition can apply to not just individual particles, atoms, etc.. It can be something larger like a cat.
This implies that human beings can also be in states of superposition.

If you are into reading science books I hugely recommend checking out an old book called "Who Killed Shrodinger's Cat" because it deep-dives into a wide variety of possibilities/implications.

Per your earlier response - you are also correct in that the many worlds interpretation of this is "unclean" in a way. There are other possibilities and as of current there is no way to 100% prove or disprove the theory. However, we do know that superposition and entanglement are scientifically proven (Superposition is how quantum computing works).

I recommend checking out the double slit experiment as well. For irony's sake, I will post the veritasium vid.



I also have a strong suspicion that time plays a larger role in this paranormal theory than I originally thought.
Mainly for 2 reasons
1 - It is not very well understood
2 - We know that time is not finite and uniform throughout the universe.

If objects in a state of superposition can also be entangled with one another across vast distances, it raises the question as to whether or not we as human individuals can be entangled with other versions of ourselves in different universes.

Is it possible for energy to be entangled with physical matter?

If it is possible for photons to exist in entangled pairs (in a constant state of superposition) might we also exist in a constant state of superposition that splits when we die?

I really would like to thank the creator and posters of this thread for inspiring my name.
Honestly if it wasn't for that flash of inspiration I wouldn't have joined.

Almost danced on the spot. had been trying to think of a name for weeks whilst lurking.
once got my post count up and library is open I'm gonna make a thread myself. "hugs"

a reply to: BlasteR
What if, in an unobserved superposition, the cat is being tormented by it's own ghost?