Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[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"?

[dreadgeek]

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"?

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

[Linus]

Ok, Science Geek, answer this one from a oft-flying traveler:

Why does it feel, at times, like the plane "stops" or "slows" down in mid-air? It's the weirdest feeling but I've been on flights and about half-way there I get this sensation like we're slowing down (like a car in rush hour) and then we continue on our merry way.

[amiyesiam]

Dear Apple owner and Linus too!!

I have somehow managed to set my mouse to have to right click and hit open rather than being able to just click (or double click) on something and have it open. Any clue how to fix this? I have tried and failed.

sincerely
I know there is a simple (&(*(* answer for this

[Linus]

Originally Posted by amiyesiam

Dear Apple owner and Linus too!!

I have somehow managed to set my mouse to have to right click and hit open rather than being able to just click (or double click) on something and have it open. Any clue how to fix this? I have tried and failed.

sincerely
I know there is a simple (&(*(* answer for this

Go to System Preferences --> Mouse. Adjust there. Alternatively, if this is a third party mouse, try to re-install the driver.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Ok, Science Geek, answer this one from a oft-flying traveler:

Why does it feel, at times, like the plane "stops" or "slows" down in mid-air? It's the weirdest feeling but I've been on flights and about half-way there I get this sensation like we're slowing down (like a car in rush hour) and then we continue on our merry way.

Okay, this is a really interesting one with two different answers. The reason for the feeling of slowing down is most likely that the pilot deployed the flaps but the feeling of stopping is something else altogether.

Without anything to use as contrast, you cannot tell the difference between constant velocity motion and being at rest. The key here is *constant* velocity. If you change direction then your velocity isn't constant and it doesn't matter what direction that change of direction happens in (up or down, forward or backward, left or right or any combination). This is why, if you are in a car you almost always feel like you are moving because the road surface causes the car to have an up or down motion.

If you're at 30,000 and its at night or over fairly uniform clouds and if the plane is in an area where the atmosphere is being pretty calm you wouldn't have many cues that you are moving for just a moment. Then you hit an air pocket and the plane bounces a few feet--that's all it would take--and suddenly you're aware that you're in motion.

Don't believe me? Right now, you are moving at 17,500 m/h (28,163 k/h) as is everything else on the surface of the Earth. We don't feel like it because the Earth's rotational speed is constant and there is nothing to create drag or turbulence to disturb the smoothness of the ride. The only way we would ever feel it is if the planet suddenly came to a stop. Then everything on the planet not anchored into deep rock would suddenly be moving VERY fast as all of that angular momentum was transferred to us.

*Perfectly* constant velocity motion is not achievable in-atmosphere because of friction but in a vacuum you could certainly achieve it. So why do you have these moments in an airplane? It's because the stall speed of an airliner at cruising altitude is in a very narrow band. How narrow? The difference between level flight and a stall can be as narrow as 20 mph either way at cruising altitude. So at cruising altitude, the pilots try maintain a very stable speed. The motion you detect is from the air current buffeting the plane. If the upper atmosphere were perfectly still and the aircraft maintained an absolutely constant speed, you would not be able to tell that you were in motion at all.


Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by June

Dear Geektastic -

If we are moving at 17,500MPH, how come when I jump up in the air, I don't end up down the block?

Bewildered,
June

Because the Earth isn't *accelerating*. Remember that the Earth's rotation is constant velocity motion so we don't feel it and are perfectly justified in claiming that, at this moment, we are at rest. When you jump into the air while your vertical velocity, relative to the center of the Earth. temporarily exceeds 10 m/square second (temporarily overcoming the force of gravity) your horizontal velocity is 0. Since neither you nor the Earth are accelerating relative to each other, you land in exactly the same place as you started from. From your reference plane (the surface of the Earth) there is no force moving you horizontally and since a body at rest wil stay at rest until acted upon by another force, you jump up (which has a force acting on you vertically) and land in the same place (since no force is pushing you horizontally).


The situation would change if you were accelerating. To see this, let's do a little thought experiment.

You are on a plane, the plane is accelerating. You toss a ball up in the air, the ball will, in fact, land a bit behind you because the aircraft is moving relative to the motion of the ball. If, however, the aircraft is moving at a constant velocity then the ball will land at your feet.

Essentially, this is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in a nutshell. If you are at constant velocity (what in technical jargon is known as the inertial frame) then you are justified in saying that you are at rest, no matter HOW fast you may be traveling. As long as whatever it is that you are traveling on maintains the same speed and direction, you can treat your environment as being at rest. It is only if you are accelerating that you will be aware of movement. One interesting side-effect of this is that gravity and acceleration turn out to be the same thing. Right now there is 1g of gravity pulling you toward the center of the Earth. We would be completely justified in describing us as falling toward the center of the Earth at 10 meters per square second. The reason we aren't all in the core of the Earth is that the electromagnetic force is MUCH more powerful than the gravitational force and the repulsion of effect of all the electrons in your body trying to keep away from all the electrons in your chair and in the floor is what keeps us from falling through the Earth. But right now, from a physical point of view, you are accelerating toward the center of the Earth. There's just something that prevents you from continuing the fall. If you were in a completely sealed box and were accelerating at 10 meters per sq sec. there is no experiment you could perform that would NOT lead you to conclude that you were not on Earth at 1 g.

Cheers
Aj

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

If you are at constant velocity (what in technical jargon is known as the inertial frame) then you are justified in saying that you are at rest, no matter HOW fast you may be traveling.

Would it therefore be true that if I am accused of sitting on my ass doing nothing, it appropriate to counter that I am actually moving, and that the movement is not obvious to the observer only because said movement is at a constant velocity?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by June

Dear Knower of Ephemera,

This is a Paranormal Question that bugs me a lot:

So, we've been around in our present form about 75,000 years, right? Now granted, in the early days, procreating was harder and there weren't so many of us (Humans). But lets say that since we began as a species, there have been (Conservatively) 50,000,000,000,000 people that have passed away, wouldn't the planet now effectively be overrun with spirits and ghosts to the point where we just couldn't turn around without seeing one?

So, firstly, let's take that number down by an order of magnitude. 50 billion is a more reasonable figure than 50 trillion. However, fifty billion people is still a LOT of people to have passed through this veil of tears. One would think that if ghosts did exist (and I see no reason to accept the proposition that they do) you would barely be able to walk down the street without running into one.

The movies always portray this phenomenon as something that only happens in dark secluded homes and institutions in great disrepair.

Do you think they are trying to lull us into some kind of false sense of security with the moral "Stay out of dark secluded homes and institutions in great disrepair or something bad will happen"?

I think that this fear of ghosts is the confluence of a couple of evolutionary hangovers (as I like to term them) meeting and recombining. The first is our fear of the dark. Compared with a lot of things that were evolving alongside our Primate ancestors we have really poor night vision. Certainly compared to the big cats that were also resident in Africa a few million years ago, we were at a very big disadvantage at night. Imagine two individuals, one of whom is afraid to venture outside of the relative safety of the cave at night and another who isn't. The fearless one is more likely to become a pleasant little late-night meal for some big cat that likes it chimpanzee meat on-the-hoof, as it were. If you are eaten before you can breed, you lose the evolutionary game. So there would be *some* selective pressure to fear the night and, until very recently, lots of good reason to do so. The other thing is our overactive agency detectors.

This is going to take a bit of explaining. By agency I mean ascribing intention to others actions. Let's say that you, I and another person are sitting on your couch. I get up and go to the kitchen and open your fridge. You hear me rummaging around and pulling out a bottle. The other person asks "hey, what is she doing" you are going to use your intuitive psychology to say "Aj is probably thirsty and is getting a beer". You assume (most of the time correctly) that when someone takes an action there is some goal or consequence that they are pursuing. We do this intuitively. In fact our brains can't *help* but do this. The flip-side of this is that we ascribe agency even when agency isn't present.

"Why does it rain."

There have been lots of explanations for the rains, thunder and lightning. Most of them have been *spectacularly* wrong because people ascribed some agent to be behind the scenes causing the rain. So rain was the tears of the gods or was a blessing or curse from the gods. Thunder and lightning were caused by the actions of the sky gods. And our dreams? Why do we see our dearly departed loved ones in our dreams? Because they are spirits who have come back from 'the other side' to impart something to us.

That's all you need for a belief in ghosts to be booted up--a brain that detects agency and patterns enthusiastically, a brain that is capable of dreaming, and one that seeks causal explanations for events that happen in the world.

We have a fear of dark and foreboding places because, until fairly recently, dark and foreboding places either meant caves (someplace that wolves, lions or other apex predators might be hiding), forest primeval or jungle where danger in the form of aforementioned predators could be lurking anywhere. It was absolutely adaptive to have a sense of trepidation about those kinds of places.

One thing we have to keep in mind is that our brains did not evolve to deal with the modern technological world. There's nothing in our brains that *prevent us from dealing with it but this is not a natural environment for our brains. No matter how much education you have, no matter where you are from, what you believe, you are carrying around on your shoulders a brain that is, for all practical purposes, unchanged since about 50K years ago. We're stuck with these formerly adaptive features because the vast majority of them simply do not have the power to reduce reproductive fitness in a modern context.

Cheers
Aj

I'm not sure if answered your question or not, June. If I didn't let me know.

[Linus]

To tag to June's question I was just reading this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_810936.html

Since humans are known to contain "energy" (about 20 watts) and since energy cannot be destroyed or created but altered, then when we die where does that 20 watts go?

Robert Lanza, M.D.

Scientist, Theoretician
Posted: January 20, 2011 08:55 AM




Five Reasons You Won't Die



We've been taught we're just a collection of cells, and that we die when our bodies wear out. End of story. I've written textbooks showing how cells can be engineered into virtually all the tissues and organs of the human body. But a long list of scientific experiments suggests our belief in death is based on a false premise, that the world exists independent of us − the great observer.

Here are five reasons you won't die.



Reason One. You're not an object, you're a special being. According to biocentrism, nothing could exist without consciousness. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain. Space and time aren't objects, but rather the tools our mind uses to weave everything together.
"It will remain remarkable," said Eugene Wigner, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality."


Consider the uncertainty principle, one of the most famous and important aspects of quantum mechanics. Experiments confirm it's built into the fabric of reality, but it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. If there's really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But we can't. Why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure? Consider the double-slit experiment: if one "watches" a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness.


The two-slit experiment is an example of quantum effects, but experiments involving Buckyballs and KHCO3 crystals show that observer-dependent behavior extends into the world of ordinary human-scale objects. In fact, researchers recently showed (Nature 2009) that pairs of ions could be coaxed to entangle so their physical properties remained bound together even when separated by large distances, as if there was no space or time between them. Why? Because space and time aren't hard, cold objects. They're merely tools of our understanding.


Death doesn't exist in a timeless, spaceless world. After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In truth, your mind transcends space and time.



Reason Two. Conservation of energy is a fundamental axiom of science. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. Although bodies self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just a 20-watt cloud of energy in your head. But this energy doesn't go away at death. A few years ago scientists showed they could retroactively change something that happened in the past. Particles had to "decide" how to behave when they passed a fork in an apparatus. Later on, the experimenter could flip a switch. The results showed that what the observer decided at that point determined how the particle behaved at the fork in the past.



Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply powering a projector. Whether you flip a switch in an experiment on or off, it's still the same battery responsible for the projection. Like in the two-slit experiment, you collapse physical reality. At death, this energy doesn't just dissipate into the environment as the old mechanical worldview suggests. It has no reality independent of you. As Einstein's esteemed colleague John Wheeler stated "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Each person creates their own sphere of reality - we carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which energy just dissipates.
Reason Three. Although we generally reject parallel universes as fiction, there's more than a morsel of scientific truth to this genre. A well-known aspect of quantum physics is that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation is the 'many-worlds' interpretation, which states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). There are an infinite number of universes (including our universe), which together comprise all of physical reality. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Like flipping the switch in the experiment above, you're the agent who experiences them.


Reason Four. You will live on through your children, friends, and all who you touch during your life, not only as part of them, but through the histories you collapse with every action you take. "According to quantum physics," said theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, "the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities." There's more uncertainty in bio-physical systems than anyone ever imagined. Reality isn't fully determined until we actually investigate (like in the Schrödinger's cat experiment). There are whole areas of history you determine during your life. When you interact with someone, you collapse more and more reality (that is, the spatio-temporal events that define your consciousness). When you're gone, your presence will continue like a ghost puppeteer in the universes of those you know.



Reason Five. It's not an accident that you happen to have the fortune of being alive now on the top of all infinity. Although it could be a one-in-a-jillion chance, perhaps it's not just dumb luck, but rather must be that way. While you'll eventually exit this reality, you, the observer, will forever continue to collapse more and more 'nows.' Your consciousness will always be in the present -- balanced between the infinite past and the indefinite future -- moving intermittently between realities along the edge of time, having new adventures and meeting new (and rejoining old) friends.


"Biocentrism" (BenBella Books) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.

I highlighted the relevant part in red.