Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishGrrl
ok yes..yes I do.
So, about ghosts.
What do you make of EVP's?
Objects moving on thier own? (I have seen this myself in my own house so I know it's not a prank)
Aparitions?
What do you think about the "scientific" meters used to show "proof"?
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So, Electronic Voice Phenomena. I have yet to see an example of EVP that cannot be more economically explained by our brains seeking patterns. Remember that your brain is a pattern-seeking machine. I think that EVP is an example of one of two common brain phenomena:
A) Apophenia--which is seeing meaningful patterns in what is actually random noise
B) Pareidolia--which is really just a special case of apophenia but largely visual.
A good and common example of paraeidolia is seeing shapes in clouds. Is the cloud *actually* shaped like, say, an elephant? No, but our brains perceive it to be.
So why would our brains work that way? Well, our brains evolved to discern meaningful patterns out of a random world. However, the world isn't *completely* random and our brains are nowhere near perfect at what they do. Our brains are prone to two common errors:
1) False positive (seeing a pattern when there is none)
2) False negative (not seeing a pattern when there is one)
Of the two, false positives are the less harmful. To understand why, imagine you are one of our Pleistocene ancestors on the African savannah. You are in the tall grass and you hear a rustling. Is that sound a lion or is it the wind? Well, if it's the wind but you respond as if it is a lion and, say, run for the nearest tree you're out some calories but you'll live long enough to eat and thus gain those back. If, on the other hand, you think it's just the wind and it's actually a lion by the time you realize your error, you're well on your way to being lunch. Needless to say, being eaten drops your reproductive fitness to zero. So our brains have evolved in such a way that they are prone to both Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Since type 1 errors generally don't cost the person making them their life, our brains have not evolved beyond them. Type 2 errors can be more deadly but not necessarily so often as to actually have selective pressure on them.
EVP is a type 1 error--seeing a pattern or subscribing meaning to random noise. Most EVP aren't actually voices it's *literally* noise in the sense that the signal carries no information but we *think* it does.
Objects moving on their own I would have to know the specifics of the event. I can think of any number of reasons one might perceive an object to be moving on its own and without specifics, I just don't have enough information.
Apparitions are interesting. There's a frequency of infrasound that appears to have a very interesting effect on the human brain. While we can't *hear* it, the vibrations cause a physiological reactions that the brain interprets as fear. Our brains then backfill something in to explain why we are afraid. This might explain 'haunted' houses. Old houses as they creak and settle with the change of temperatures from day to night produce infrasound vibrations which are too low for us to hear but would produce a fear reaction.
As far as the scientific meters, again I'd want to know what it is they are supposed to be measuring. Here's the thing, most times people will mention a 'field' of energy and that's what these meters are supposed to measure. The problem with this is that the meters either fluctuate in a random manner or the strength of the meter appears to bear no relationship to the distance from the source. This is a problem.
EVERY field we have encountered so far is subject to what is called the inverse square law. The simplest formulation of it is this:
The strength of a field diminishes as an inverse of the square of the distance. What that means is that the farther away from the source of a field you go, the weaker the field gets. This happens VERY quickly. So if you start at the source of the field and move away from it then when you are, say, 2 feet from the source the field is *four times* as weak. When you are four feet from the source the field is *16 times* as weak. As far as we know (and we know quite a bit about fields) this holds for all forms of fields--this means that all four forces (electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces) plus sound all obey this rule. This is a big problem for these measuring instruments. The signal should fall off as a square of the distance but no matter where the Ghost Hunters are in the house the signal is always random. That simply can't be.
I have to leave the office, I'll return to this question when I get home.
Cheers
Aj