Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
And they say there is no evidence for paranormal entities?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke0ZtXYw3QA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke0ZtXYw3QA
The Scole Experiments
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Yeah..video and photographic and audio evidence. Who would ever believe that? lol!
Reported..
Oookay, while I would agree that age isn't something that needs to be discussed, I would hardly call what was said there an insult... and to be fair, the evidence in that video was... well... saying it was "iffy " is putting it mildly.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
You banned me for saying Balerion was acting like a spoiled toddler. Now MY being insulted for being a child isn't enough? I'd say your bias is showing again. And as for the evidence, careful precautions were taken to ensure it wasn't hoaxed. What's your explanation for them?
You have a history of insulting people and several active infractions for doing so... Origin has no active infractions (and never has had any).
However, Origin, kindly refrain from making such insinuations.
As for the evidence - no idea - I can't watch the video with sound right now and the auto-captions for youtube are god awful
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
So whether what someone says is an insult or not depends on their history? That's a strange criteria. I would think the same standard of no insulting would apply to all members equally regardless of history.
You should really watch that video before judging it. That would be the scientific approach anyway.
It isn't so much that it being an insult depends on their history... it's more about how the infraction is handled.
I did watch the video, and from watching it it seems... off... somehow, though I can't place my finger on why. I will watch it again with sound once I am able.
Magical Realist I was really wondering your age. It was not meant as an insult. I personally do think that you are very gullible. I believe I was much more gullible when I was younger (lo those many years ago) and so was wondering your age. If you think it is none of my buisness simply say so and leave it at that!
edit to add: Kittamaru I read your reply and will not ask someone their age. I will assume all poster are middle aged women - asking ages in that case is very dangerous...
edit to add: Kittamaru I read your reply and will not ask someone their age. I will assume all poster are middle aged women - asking ages in that case is very dangerous...
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I took it as a insult. I get this a lot from Read Only whenever I post here. He/she always asking me how much college I have. I have no interest in justifying those kinds of insults with replies. Why would one's age even be relevant to this conversation?
Here is a skeptical take on the Scole Experiments.
From the article:
Unfortunately, the Scole Experiment was tainted by profound investigative failings. In short, the investigators imposed little or no controls or restrictions upon the mediums, and at the same time, agreed to all of the restrictions imposed by the mediums. The mediums were in control of the seances, not the investigators. What the Scole Report authors describe as a scientific investigation of the phenomena, was in fact (by any reasonable interpretation of the scientific method) hampered by a set of rules which explicitly prevented any scientific investigation of the phenomena.
From the article:
Unfortunately, the Scole Experiment was tainted by profound investigative failings. In short, the investigators imposed little or no controls or restrictions upon the mediums, and at the same time, agreed to all of the restrictions imposed by the mediums. The mediums were in control of the seances, not the investigators. What the Scole Report authors describe as a scientific investigation of the phenomena, was in fact (by any reasonable interpretation of the scientific method) hampered by a set of rules which explicitly prevented any scientific investigation of the phenomena.
I think it was more a way for Origin to understand your thought process better - typically speaking, the older one gets, the more critical and analytic they become (to a point) where as younger people (kids, teens, young adults) tend to be more susceptible to suggestive thinking and the like.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Nonsense. Several impartial observers were involved, including a famous magician. The film was contained in special locked boxes designed by a famous British skeptic. As usual skeptics will attempt to impose so many controls that it actually interferes with the manifestation of the entities. Then they can say, "See? No such thing as the paranormal." As if they somehow knew this in advance.
"The aforementioned modern Scole sessions stood out as a new type of physical mediumship in two significant ways. First, they employed an "energy" based production of phenomena instead of the ectoplasm-based phenomena of old. Robin Foy led the Scole group and is a veteran of decades of physical mediumship research. According to Foy, the energy-based physical phenomena production is far less taxing to the medium, more efficient and more productive than the older ectoplasm-based approach. Nevertheless, one can still find ectoplasm-based work in physical mediumship today. One modern example is the Fritz Experimental Group in Germany.
Skeptics Disagree
But skeptics have their doubts as they did in the 19th century. Drawing on a rich history of debunking claims of the psychic general and of physical mediumship in particular, most skeptics deride and denounce all such claims and their practitioners.
In an August 2012 "Coast to Coast" program, host George Noory interviewed professional mentalist and skeptic Mark Edward who was promoting his new book. Edward claimed he had reproduced the Scole phenomena purely by trickery. And he said he was troubled by the lack of apparent controls in the Scole sessions. It is unclear to what degree Edward actually produced the Scole phenomena. It is unlikely, for example, that Edward was able to reproduce detailed knowledgable discourses that took place between respected living scientists and purported "spirit scientists" during some of the Scole sessions.
The so-called "lack of controls" that troubled Edward is a very questionable criticism in the context of the events. Any professional entertainer who works as a seance medium knows it is incredibly difficult to perform these sorts of effects in a wide variety of venues. The Scole phenomena was produced on three continents over a period of a decade. Trickery is not a given in these cases in my professional opinion. This is not analogous to taking a magic show on the road. Nor is it a mentalism act. There are some significant props, equipment, and potentially people that would have to be employed in the production of these effects. There would have to be a way to secret these things.
But there are some holes in the Scole story. For example there was a second cellar room in the Foy home at Scole that was apparently checked only once at the outset of the phenomena and never again. If this room were where the props were stored and where assistants that might have been part of the "act" hidden, the Foys would almost had to have been implicated.
What most lay people don't know is that to fake the reported phenomena would have probably required a cast of characters. This was done back in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And similar things are going on today in some entertainment venues. Mediums of the period have openly admitted to having done these things. This is not a "might have happened" scenario - this is a "did happen" scenario, at least in those specific cases.
Mark Edward and his fellow skeptics seem to have forgotten that English ultra-skeptic Prof. Richard Wiseman built oen of the test boxes that was used at Scole to contain film artifacts. Unexplained writings and drawings appeared on these rolls of controlled and undeveloped film. Wiseman was convinced this box was a satisfactory control. He never attended a Scole seance, but that didn't prevent him from making derogatory comments about Scole with no personal experience to draw upon.
Even if these devices had been compromised, the sophistication needed to fabricate the messages in toto would have required scholarly knowlege which none of the four regular sitters possessed. So other scholars would had to have been involved. Difficulties keeping secrets grow exponentially with the number of people who know those secrets. The explanations must fit the facts. In contrast, the skeptics routinely reduce the data to what they can explain and reject everything else. This tactic is often employed when skeptics "review" psi research, for example.
Of course, it makes great headlines to say "Scole Debunked Says Professional Medium" - film at eleven. And it is very true that skeptics do understand the value of sound bites to the media, ever-hungry for stories that appeal to the lowest common audience denominator and play to ratings. In fact, the key criticism of professionals working in psi research is their relative inability, until recently, to package their results for the lay audience. Psi researchers still don't market to that audience as skeptics do. So it is no surprise skeptics can freely say anything to the media that advances their agenda, almost without hindrance."---http://phenomenallife.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-scole-experiments-fact-or-faked.html
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The implication being that being younger and therefore suggestible explains my belief in this phenomena. That's an insult. I analyze phenomena like this all the time, screening out the fakery and the illusional before buying into it. It's ridiculous that my age should even come up here. As if there is something predisposing me towards being deceived.
Such an inquiry could be made as an insult, or as a way of understanding where you are coming from; you have to remember, over the veil of the internet, a large part of conversational context (body language, visual appraisal, eye contact, vocal inflection, etc) is lost. Having looked at Origin's methods in the past, it makes sense that he would want to try to understand as much about the person supporting the claim as he would about the claim itself... truth be told, I would appreciate the same information, but I personally feel something like that is information to be volunteered rather than asked for.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Nope. It's just an insult. He should've known that when he said it. Hey, maybe it's his old age that's making him be this way. A cynical old curmudgeon who has lost all sense of social etiquette in conversation. See how that works?
Yes... but apparently you don't.
See, his comment was simple: "I really am interested - how old are you?" The only part of the entire post even possible insulting was that he was making fun of how a single video was apparently enough to sway you, even though you could not personally validate the contents of said video.
Now, you said: Nope. It's just an insult. He should've known that when he said it. Hey, maybe it's his old age that's making him be this way. A cynical old curmudgeon who has lost all sense of social etiquette in conversation. See how that works?
The difference here being that you are using insulting words and knowingly attempting to gain his ire... not to mention claiming he has no notion of social etiquette.
That is a mighty big difference...
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
No..there is no difference in him using my age as a qualifier to my credibility and my using his age as qualifier for his manners. It is the same thing. I can't believe you don't see this.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The assumption that one is somehow defined or even disabled by their age is the same. He made the insult. We've come to terms over him not knowing it was. It's over with. Why are you belaboring this?
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