4 ms·

>Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. Yes, stories like this one are reasonably common. >There is no evidence that any of these

>Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. Yes, stories like this one are reasonably common. >There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. This topic is fraught with pseudoscience and charlatans exploiting people, so I do understand your intense skepticism and desire for hard evidence. What evidence would you require for proof of these spirits? Is there a minimum number of independent testimonies you need, which all claim the same event happened? I've found most people have never given those questions serious thought. The most common initial answer is "I'd need to see these spirits for myself," but this answer is unscientific, as published research articles must automatically be dismissed (Have you ever seen CRISPR work in person? How do you know it's real?). I'm genuinely curious as to what evidence you would need.

uh_uh 5y ago
I have an idea: how about a spirit telling me a piece of information that I have no way of knowing myself? It can be a specific prediction of the future, location of an undiscovered artefact, or simply a sentence written on a piece of paper that I couldn't have seen. As far as I know, nothing of this sort happened, ever.
- throwawaygal7 5y ago
  So solipsism basically?
- tigen 5y ago
  Exactly. Why are these spirits completely irrelevant, and "communicate" only thoughts one could already have? The basic premise of minds as being independent from physical brains is desperate fantasy in any case.
  - throwawaygal7 5y ago
    The traditional pre modern formula in the west was that they were necessarily linked, in a union that was separable only death.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- waterheater 5y ago
  Your answer still focuses on something that happens to YOU. If that happens to another person, and they claim it occurred, you are implying that experience wouldn't hold weight to you. From this, I must conclude you believe it is impossible to utilize the scientific method to demonstrate their existence. Is this correct? I recognize the following example is extreme, but it does fit the bill: in the past years, we've had many people come forward claiming they were sexually assaulted by various powerful people decades prior. Now, I have not been sexually assaulted, but I understand that a certain portion of the population has been. While you and I did not observe those assaults, we still accept as true what these people are claiming without dismissing or disbelieving them. My point is: society accepts testimony as evidence for things the judge and jury has not seen. Testimony from one witness is the minimum, and corroborating evidence from multiple sources will indicate something is occurring. I am generally inclined to dismiss claims of conspiracy in these cases, so I must accept their claims as true. Of both the original scenario and the one above, from a purely scientific perspective, it's difficult to lend credence to one and not the other.
  - uh_uh 5y ago
    > Your answer still focuses on something that happens to YOU. If that happens to another person, and they claim it occurred, you are implying that experience wouldn't hold weight to you. From this, I must conclude you believe it is impossible to utilize the scientific method to demonstrate their existence. Is this correct? No. I'd believe another person if they _credibly_ demonstrate that useful information was conveyed to them from sprits. The more people demonstrate this, the more I'll believe it. In general, the more extreme the claim is, the better evidence I require to believe it. To put it in concrete terms: Given N reports of 2 different kinds of claims, I'd sooner believe that Harvey Weinstein is a sex pest than we made contact with interdimensional spirit entities.
  - neonological 5y ago
    You accept testimony from one man whose judgement is compromised by psychedelics and whose testimony will be inconsistent with others who believe in gods and spirits and do drugs and get high? We cannot confirm which reality is real. The drug induced experiences or the reality you experience while sober. However when you talk to sober people they describe a reality that is consistent. A shared consistent reality with concreteness. All other descriptions are inconsistent. This man's experience is inexact and will no doubt be very different from what another man experiences when high on some drug. Bet on the shared consistent experience. Science and logic and common sense is the shared and consistent reality and these things point to man whose brain cells and judgement have been compromised by drugs. You don't even trust a man high in drugs to drive, you gonna trust his judgement about reality itself? Don't be stupid.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  Entities revealing previously unknown information is actually a very, very common experience under psychedelics. Now, whether such revelations would have satisfied the Skeptical Inquirer crowd is another question. It would be interesting if that crowd actually did some serious studies of psychedelic revelations, and doubly interesting if they themselves took strong doses psychedelics as part of the study, as psychedelics have a habit of making true believers even out of skeptics, and I suspect many of these skeptics would be a lot less skeptical after taking them... though that'll probably never happen on a large scale as many of them are really not as open-minded as they like to pretend, or are afraid of either losing their "objectivity" or their mind (not completely unfounded fears).
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Great short story about this idea: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...
kolinko 5y ago
The evidence is very simple - a spirit telling someone something that they couldn't possibly know.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
I think basically the same evidence as telepathy. The spirit would tell me "I'm going to tell you a story you have never heard before, and I'm simultaneously going to tell it to 50 people around the earth, and I'm going to tell you the phone numbers of those people so when the trip is over you can call them and ask if they were just told a story by a spirit and if so what it was. Something like that. Then we would need to somehow verify that those 50 people never communicated with each other before. But spirits, I don't think they are interested in doing that, at least from what we've seen so far. And that gives credence to the idea that they don't exist because if they care about suffering there would surely be something they could tell us, how to prevent it from happening. Don't go out tonight, there's going to be a fight. It goes back to the old question if there is God, why is there so much suffering in the world?
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "But spirits, I don't think they are interested in doing that, at least from what we've seen so far. And that gives credence to the idea that they don't exist because if they care about suffering there would surely be something they could tell us, how to prevent it from happening. Don't go out tonight, there's going to be a fight." Some cosmologies (in the religious sense of the term) posit that there is a variety of spirits in the world, with a variety of natures and motivations, some benevolent, some malevolent, others indifferent. So some may want to help you out, others might want to trick you, yet others might hurt you or use you. Such a view is common, for example, in shamanistic religions, which frequently deal with what they understand as the spirit realm, often with the use of psychedelics. Pertinent to this article, such a view is common in ayahuasca shamanism. This is why the shaman uses all sorts of techniques to communicate with, appease, and direct the spirits. They're not, in the common view, spirits that would necessarily be benevolent and helpful were it not for the intervention and skill of the shaman... and there are dangers in the spirit world too, or so it is believed.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    Right, there are bad trips and a good shaman can help you avoid them.

uh_uh 5y ago

I have an idea: how about a spirit telling me a piece of information that I have no way of knowing myself? It can be a specific prediction of the future, location of an undiscovered artefact, or simply a sentence written on a piece of paper that I couldn't have seen. As far as I know, nothing of this sort happened, ever.

throwawaygal7 5y ago
So solipsism basically?
tigen 5y ago
Exactly. Why are these spirits completely irrelevant, and "communicate" only thoughts one could already have? The basic premise of minds as being independent from physical brains is desperate fantasy in any case.
- throwawaygal7 5y ago
  The traditional pre modern formula in the west was that they were necessarily linked, in a union that was separable only death.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
waterheater 5y ago
Your answer still focuses on something that happens to YOU. If that happens to another person, and they claim it occurred, you are implying that experience wouldn't hold weight to you. From this, I must conclude you believe it is impossible to utilize the scientific method to demonstrate their existence. Is this correct? I recognize the following example is extreme, but it does fit the bill: in the past years, we've had many people come forward claiming they were sexually assaulted by various powerful people decades prior. Now, I have not been sexually assaulted, but I understand that a certain portion of the population has been. While you and I did not observe those assaults, we still accept as true what these people are claiming without dismissing or disbelieving them. My point is: society accepts testimony as evidence for things the judge and jury has not seen. Testimony from one witness is the minimum, and corroborating evidence from multiple sources will indicate something is occurring. I am generally inclined to dismiss claims of conspiracy in these cases, so I must accept their claims as true. Of both the original scenario and the one above, from a purely scientific perspective, it's difficult to lend credence to one and not the other.
- uh_uh 5y ago
  > Your answer still focuses on something that happens to YOU. If that happens to another person, and they claim it occurred, you are implying that experience wouldn't hold weight to you. From this, I must conclude you believe it is impossible to utilize the scientific method to demonstrate their existence. Is this correct? No. I'd believe another person if they _credibly_ demonstrate that useful information was conveyed to them from sprits. The more people demonstrate this, the more I'll believe it. In general, the more extreme the claim is, the better evidence I require to believe it. To put it in concrete terms: Given N reports of 2 different kinds of claims, I'd sooner believe that Harvey Weinstein is a sex pest than we made contact with interdimensional spirit entities.
- neonological 5y ago
  You accept testimony from one man whose judgement is compromised by psychedelics and whose testimony will be inconsistent with others who believe in gods and spirits and do drugs and get high? We cannot confirm which reality is real. The drug induced experiences or the reality you experience while sober. However when you talk to sober people they describe a reality that is consistent. A shared consistent reality with concreteness. All other descriptions are inconsistent. This man's experience is inexact and will no doubt be very different from what another man experiences when high on some drug. Bet on the shared consistent experience. Science and logic and common sense is the shared and consistent reality and these things point to man whose brain cells and judgement have been compromised by drugs. You don't even trust a man high in drugs to drive, you gonna trust his judgement about reality itself? Don't be stupid.
pmoriarty 5y ago
Entities revealing previously unknown information is actually a very, very common experience under psychedelics. Now, whether such revelations would have satisfied the Skeptical Inquirer crowd is another question. It would be interesting if that crowd actually did some serious studies of psychedelic revelations, and doubly interesting if they themselves took strong doses psychedelics as part of the study, as psychedelics have a habit of making true believers even out of skeptics, and I suspect many of these skeptics would be a lot less skeptical after taking them... though that'll probably never happen on a large scale as many of them are really not as open-minded as they like to pretend, or are afraid of either losing their "objectivity" or their mind (not completely unfounded fears).
cwkoss 5y ago
Great short story about this idea: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...

kolinko 5y ago

The evidence is very simple - a spirit telling someone something that they couldn't possibly know.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

I think basically the same evidence as telepathy. The spirit would tell me "I'm going to tell you a story you have never heard before, and I'm simultaneously going to tell it to 50 people around the earth, and I'm going to tell you the phone numbers of those people so when the trip is over you can call them and ask if they were just told a story by a spirit and if so what it was. Something like that. Then we would need to somehow verify that those 50 people never communicated with each other before. But spirits, I don't think they are interested in doing that, at least from what we've seen so far. And that gives credence to the idea that they don't exist because if they care about suffering there would surely be something they could tell us, how to prevent it from happening. Don't go out tonight, there's going to be a fight. It goes back to the old question if there is God, why is there so much suffering in the world?

pmoriarty 5y ago
"But spirits, I don't think they are interested in doing that, at least from what we've seen so far. And that gives credence to the idea that they don't exist because if they care about suffering there would surely be something they could tell us, how to prevent it from happening. Don't go out tonight, there's going to be a fight." Some cosmologies (in the religious sense of the term) posit that there is a variety of spirits in the world, with a variety of natures and motivations, some benevolent, some malevolent, others indifferent. So some may want to help you out, others might want to trick you, yet others might hurt you or use you. Such a view is common, for example, in shamanistic religions, which frequently deal with what they understand as the spirit realm, often with the use of psychedelics. Pertinent to this article, such a view is common in ayahuasca shamanism. This is why the shaman uses all sorts of techniques to communicate with, appease, and direct the spirits. They're not, in the common view, spirits that would necessarily be benevolent and helpful were it not for the intervention and skill of the shaman... and there are dangers in the spirit world too, or so it is believed.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  Right, there are bad trips and a good shaman can help you avoid them.