Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

...what we are primarily concerned with as parapsychologists is understanding the levitation of an ordinary table in an ordinary room on this earth. Here even the microscopic non locality of wave functions of the atoms (which every physicist accepts) will not help us much...

"...Thornless takes over the surface of Kuhn's discussion of paradigm shift while ignoring the core of Kuhn's treatment. The pressure toward a paradigm shift from a current theory to a brand new theory lies within the current theory itself." - straight or crooked thinking?

...people have the capacity to think correlationally, but neither the training nor the inclination to do so. - to what extent is objectivity determined by our training. Still prefer inter-subjectivity .

...associations which are built up on the basis of a single emotionally charged pairing are not undone by a single or even several non-pairings.

- Piaget's phases in the development of the concept of causality

The Monte Carlo fallacy and regression towards the mean are but two examples of how events in everyday life can be misinterpreted because of a lack of statistical acumen. - WTF are these?

This rather obviously contrived example is simply meant to illustrate that an initial stimulus can lead two different people to arrive at identical points in their thinking, and the realisation that they are thinking about the same thing...may be interpreted as...telepathy.

The 'deautomatized' brain allows into consciousness stimuli which might otherwise have been excluded because they were not salient. - my telepathic experiences explained.

In summary, the recall of an event depends on much more than the event that was originally perceived. Subsequent information, the effects of attitudes and values, the reactions of other people to the account, and even the individual's level of arousal can alter the recall and representation in memory.

"Now my hour draws near. I will take it." - So, Aragon is not in the Fellowship of the Ring for his skills alone; claiming the throne of Gondor is a side project Gandalf and him have going. Didn't catch that the first time round - or in the film.

"[Adults] cannot recall most of their own experiences as an infant probably because the very structures used to organise memories, to classify perceptions, we're not fully developed until later in childhood"

:It is the verbal language system which seems to be the essence of consciousness"

"...when people are asked to report on how a particular stimulus influenced a particular response, they do not do so by consulting a memory of the mediating process, but by applying or generating causal theories about the effects of that type of response." - as if their experience was of no value in their explanation.

"The fifth of March in the Shire reckoning" - interesting that Tolkien didn't change the calendar.

Wasn't expecting a story about the Inuit. 😮

"The whole process of civilisation depends almost entirely on a number of people being born in each new generation who have important new beliefs and ideas, and hold on to them with obsessional tenacity"

These scientists were able to identify three 'types' of scientists.

"...the believer in the paranormal appears to be more open towards novel and unsubstantiated evidence which may involve transcendental forces than he is towards novel but non-transcendental material, suggesting through use of evidence from two different belief systems." - and how did that play out in the spread of Christianity?

"The modern individual, surrounded by amazing products of science and technology which are incomprehensible to those without specialised knowledge, may find it extremely difficult to know when to be sceptical." - written in 1981, but it's never been truer

"People are taught not to question certain kinds of beliefs at the same time that they are taught to be logically consistent with respect to others." - The split varies culture by culture

Any social group normally attempts, often quite unconsciously, to standardise the beliefs of its members.

Unaware of the limitations of their sensory perceptual, memory, and judgemental processes, they cannot offer explanations based on normal psychological processes, and thus see no possible normal explanation.

Of all Tolkien's creations I think ents are the most wonderful, and did so when I read this first in 1980.

"While Frankel's "irrationalists' blame science for existential anxiety, for some people, including no less a man than Albert Einstein, the pursuit of scientific inquiry maybe a SOLUTION to it" - known also for dogmatism about quantum mechanics.

"Traditional Christian thought is based on the concept of 'moral theism'...one should abide by this moral code because one wants to do God's will" - independently of divine retribution?

"Some beliefs win out, not necessarily because of their inherent appeal, but because of the power of those who advocate them."

"...when a human being accepts, even partially, the belief that the soul survives after death, anxiety about death may be reduced..."

"....increasing knowledge of nature and of man makes it increasingly difficult for people to maintain their naive anthropomorphic conception of a god of God's, and that the believer is forced to embrace a more and more abstract concept of his deities to maintain any belief in them."