Is Your Office Haunted?
WormholeFiend writes "You know Halloween is around the corner when websites like Forbes.com releases a story wondering about the supernatural. From the article: 'Maybe the spirits have decided that spooky mansions and creepy battlefields are passé. Maybe they want to cash in on the glamour of corporate life. Maybe they just wanted the sushi.'" Anyone out there have any encounters with a spiritual Milton?
Don't look to the mainstream for anything of value about any subject.
They're just in it to put cash in their pockets.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You wouldn't do it right? Because you know you'd be out $1000.
No, I wouldn't do it because I'd have a bunch of pseudo-scientists clambering over me for my delicious bounty.
Apparently they can arbitrarily set rules and conditions for the preliminary test which most people refuse for some reason.
Yes. And that reason is that they know they'll be proven to be a fraud. Those paranormal dorks only want to perform on their own terms under their own controlled conditions. Never anything scientific. Hey, if you can levitate, do it. Show the world. Show Randi and get rich.
But nah, the Silvia Brown's and Uri Gellars of the world would much rather indulge in fame and fortune on such enlightened outlets such as the Art Bell show and Montel Williams.
If someone could prove to me under controlled scientific conditions that any of these paranormal claims (ghosts, aliens, levitation, ESP, etc) are absolutely real, I'd cut off my left nut and donate 50% of my salary to charity for the rest of my entire life.
But the fact is, nobody ever wants controlled expiriments, because they can't cheat. I mean . . . DUH. And what's hilarious is the same people who are rational enough to call out creationists and other nuts have no problem indulging in little green men, caspers and David Blaine.
If you can't accept the Randi foundation as fair and unbiased in testing the paranormal, what alternatives do you think are better?
.... proving that 99.9% of the claims of having ESP, paranormal "powers" and so forth are fraudulent. If they were only able to find one real psychic after all these years, that wouldn't really change much for them, other than Randi having to admit that he finally found 1 isolated instance of someone having a power he never before believed really existed. That would probably make them look MORE legitimate, as it would heighten everyone's interest in finding out who is a scam and who isn't.
It seems to me this is a group which has given more thought than anyone else to applying science and logic to the whole thing. I don't think they're necessarily less motivated to hand over their prize money than anyone else would be who offered something like that up? I mean, no - nobody probably wants to give away a million bucks that's earning them a tidy sum of interest in a bank account someplace. But the claim that the Randi foundation would just "go away" if they had to give away the prize seems blatantly false. They'd simply be able to continue doing what they've done
Jesus just shut the fuck up and admit you're wrong.
There's a dude out there who will sign a contract and give anyone on the planet $1 million in hard cash if they only demonstrate anything paranormal in a truly correct scientific way. Nobody, not one single person among the innumerable charlatans on this planet, has stepped forward and made a decent effort to obtain the prize. That speaks volumes. Sometimes, abscence of proof really is proof of abscence. At the very least, it is proof that even if there are "paranormal" effects out there that nobody understands, none of the current crop of practicioners are anything but frauds.
I can't believe I'm even having this conversation on this site. Where did rationality go?
11*43+456^2