Ghosts, hauntings, etc. are not real. Official dakka critical thinking thread.

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**paulson games**

I had an odd experience that I initially thought had been a haunting but later turned out to be of a much more normal origin. At night I'd often hear voices at my work well after the place had been emptied out and locked up. I was the only person there so it was more than a bit creepy and I'd search the whole building each time only to come up empty. After experiencing this multiple times over the years I noticed it was happening most frequently while I was taking a mop bucket out of the utility closet. When I go to pull the bucket out I'd often have to reach in while bracing myself with one hand against the wall, other times I heard voices I was in the hallway and had likewise touched or leaned against the wall, or had been in contact with the light switches.

What I figured out later was that the building had steel studs and that they were picking up radio talk show transmissions from a local AM broadcasting tower that was about a mile away and when I was touching various areas close enough to one of the studs it would complete some sort of a circuit allowing me to hear the radio transmissions but it was always faint enough that I couldn't ever make out what was being said and it sounded distorted and distant. How I made that connection was that I was cleaning one day and touched one of the computer monitors that had a built in speaker system, even though it was powered off if I touched the metal screen the speakers would suddenly start playing the AM talk station. With the speakers construction built to amplify sound it was finally loud and clear enough I could tell it was a radio station and sure enough when I walked around to the different "haunted" spots in the building and placed my hand near a stud or a metal piece of shelving it'd pick up the same station without fail.

It had a fairly mundane explanation but until I figured out what was going on it scared the piss out of me more than once.

One theory that has been proposed about ghosts and haunting (especially with visible apparitions) is that they could be distortions in time and reflecting traces from the past or even future. The core of the theory is that while we perceive time as only being in the now it's actually happening all at once, but for us it's like moving through a coiled hose or the needle on a record player, normally we're only able to see the exact point we're at but under certain situations it might be possible that we are able to see beyond that into neighboring portions of timespace.

There are also people that claim to be psychic and can read the history of objects by touching them, it might be a situation where they are somehow able to use those objects to see other points in time because their senses are functioning at a slightly different wavelength. They might somehow be able to catch glimpses of 4th dimensional time flow that "normal" brains do not register. Not saying I place a lot of faith in that but it does have some interesting aspects to the theory.

**Azreal13**

Strg Alt wrote:
Ghosts and demons are as real as elves and dragons. Anybody in this day and age who think otherwise need their head examined.

A little over a century ago you could have said the same of mountain gorillas.

**Polonius**

epronovost wrote:
Polonius wrote:

It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.

Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).

I don't think we're on the same page in terms of our understanding of terms. Semantics is about what words mean, and yes, science is trying to actually define concepts like "mind" or "consciousness," but the reason a definition eludes us is that we don't really know.

The point is, we all agree on this thing called consciousness or mind, but we really don't know what it is, or even who has it. And it matters a great deal for questions as varied as animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, free will, etc.

To call the question of human consciousness boring and obscure I think does it a massive disservice.

**greatbigtree**

Don’t forget about magic boxes that let you talk to someone nearly anywhere on the earth, that can also play you music and show moving pictures of cats being cute. Like that will ever happen!

**Polonius**

Azreal13 wrote:
Strg Alt wrote:
Ghosts and demons are as real as elves and dragons. Anybody in this day and age who think otherwise need their head examined.

A little over a century ago you could have said the same of mountain gorillas.

There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures. First, undiscovered animals usually have close analogues. Gorillas have been known and documented for years, it just took time to document the specific type in question. Second, undiscovered animals might have unique adaptations, but conform to our understanding of biology. In fact, discovering certain species can actually bolster mainstream scientific concepts. Third, and most importantly, rumored animals are pretty straightforward hypothesis to test. When somebody says "there are gorillas in those mountains," you can go and look for them, or signs they are there.

**epronovost**

Polonius wrote:
I don't think we're on the same page in terms of our understanding of terms. Semantics is about what words mean, and yes, science is trying to actually define concepts like "mind" or "consciousness," but the reason a definition eludes us is that we don't really know.

We really don't know because the usage of terms like mind and cousciousness can vary tremendously are are vague concept themselves. What we are, what are brain produces and does isn't vague. It's precise and, now, fairly well known. Consciousness might actually be very simple to understand, prove and detail provided you give it precise and consice definition. That's where semantic comes into play. When I say consciousness and when you say consciousness and when philosopher X and neurobiologist X use the word consciousness or mind, it might be referring the same vague concept, but each with its own subtle and unmentioned variations because that's how language can be limited. When your doctor tells your mom is conscious after an operation, he means she's awake. When a neurobiologist tells you this thing is conscious it,s because it can perceive, react and interact with its environment. When a procecutor ask you if you were conscious of your actions, he aks if you thought about what you were doing, if it was planned and reasoned. When a philosopher asks "what is consciousness" he might refer to any of those usage or even try to encompass them all hence the semantic nature of the debate.

The point is, we all agree on this thing called consciousness or mind, but we really don't know what it is, or even who has it.

Actually, we don't agree on how to define consciousness or mind. After all, the way I define mind and brain makes one a pointless distinction from the other, yet some people seem to disagree with that definition. We all use those terms and all our definitions share some basic principle in common like the fact its link to thoughts and sensations

And it matters a great deal for questions as varied as animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, free will, etc.

It does indeed to a certain point matter for those ethical questions, but not all that much.

To call the question of human consciousness boring and obscure I think does it a massive disservice.

Semantic is boring and obscur, but important nonetheless. Law is also boring and sometime obscur (have you ever read a civil code? To quote Yoda, a page turner they are not), but terribly important.

**Azreal13**

Polonius wrote:

There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.

Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.

**Jammer87**

Da Boss wrote:

I saw a lot of people talking about energy in the thread. It is one of my pet peeves when people use words like energy incorrectly, so please, if you are going to use something like that to make an argument, at least make sure you have your terms properly defined.

Also, Einstein has nothing to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, if anything his work upended this idea in some respects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26882/

Which part of energy was I using wrong? That I was saying our bodies have energy in them? How do you define energy? Rigid definition of physics? Only the ability to do work? You might need to crack a basic biology book open or something.

I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."

Warm=heat

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.

I am absolutely taking biology and mixing it with physics. It fits the narrative I want to drive for my argument. I could absolutely be wrong in my argument. But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong. No one is even asking the questions.

My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.

I don't want to get banned for posting too much in the OT, so I'm going to have to stop posting. I loved the argument and If you disagree with me or don't like my argument thats fine I take nothing personally.

**Luciferian**

There's a pretty big difference between a materially extant animal and what is presumed to be a non-material, spiritual entity existing after the death of a person.

**epronovost**

Jjohnso11 wrote:
My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies.

What energy would be missing? The one produced by the effect of your cells burning their fuel which they get buy your body transforming food in energy? Of course dead body don't produce this energy anymore. Dead bodies don't eat and can't convert food into energy for biological process one of which is what we call our mind. What happens to this energy once it doesn't have fuel anymore to sustain itself? Well like all chemical reaction, once it runs out of the element sustaining it, stops. All the energy our body gets from food is used to maintain various function in our body and the rest is tranformed into waste. What happens to fire when it runs our of fuel? The chemical reaction we call fire stops.

**Azreal13**

Luciferian wrote:
There's a pretty big difference between a materially extant animal and what is presumed to be a non-material, spiritual entity existing after the death of a person.

Not so much if we're accepting that ghosts exist as a phenomena (but not necessarily as the spirits of the dead.)

Then it's simply a case of observing and recording, and relative levels of difficulty in doing so.

**Kilkrazy**

Alphabet wrote:
epronovost wrote:
Polonius wrote:

It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.

Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).

I think the question of 'What is consciousness?' (Which I feel is essentially the same question) Is far from boring or obscure. Do you personally not care whether we answer the question? It would address some of Humanities longest and greatest thoughts. However, I would agree that the conversation can not be answered sufficiently currently, but this does not mean it is a stupid or boring question.

It is also a question of psychology as well as philosophy.

**Da Boss**

Jjohnso11 wrote:
Da Boss wrote:

I saw a lot of people talking about energy in the thread. It is one of my pet peeves when people use words like energy incorrectly, so please, if you are going to use something like that to make an argument, at least make sure you have your terms properly defined.

Also, Einstein has nothing to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, if anything his work upended this idea in some respects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26882/

Which part of energy was I using wrong? That I was saying our bodies have energy in them? How do you define energy? Rigid definition of physics? Only the ability to do work? You might need to crack a basic biology book open or something.

I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."

Warm=heat

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.

I am absolutely taking biology and mixing it with physics. It fits the narrative I want to drive for my argument. I could absolutely be wrong in my argument. But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong. No one is even asking the questions.

My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.

I don't want to get banned for posting too much in the OT, so I'm going to have to stop posting. I loved the argument and If you disagree with me or don't like my argument thats fine I take nothing personally.

Hey, cool. I am not trying to piss on you or anything. I have a dual degree in Biology and Physics, and teach both to highschool kids. Kinda weird pairing, and I picked all the stuff I liked like Ecology and Thermodynamics rather than going for something that actually synergised like imaging.

Anyhow. Energy in biology is exactly the same concept as it is in physics, there is no difference. So what happens to the energy stored in cells when someone dies? Well, the heat dissapates into the environment until the corpse reaches equilibrium with it's surroundings. That solves where the heat goes. I am not sure that precise calorimetry experiments have been done to determine whether all the heat energy available in a corpse tranfers into the environment or not, but we have no reason to suspect it does not. Certainly we can observe that the corpse cools down to the same temperature of the surroundings, same as every other body. It would be pretty trivial to conduct an experiment to test this, and I wonder if anyone has. People do all sorts of weird experiments like that.

On the chemical energy, once the body stops respiring it pretty quickly starts to decompose. The micro-organisms in your gut and those crawling all over every surface of your body as well as a bunch of colonizers will begin to digest your tissues, releasing the energy inside as more heat and using it to carry out their own lives. If your body is preserved somehow, this energy will be stored in the tissues until it stops being preserved and begins to decay. As far as I am aware, there is no discrepency between the amount of energy stored in the bonds in a dead organism and the energy used by micro-organisms and other decomposers in breaking it down. Because this process is fairly chaotic and deteriming the EXACT amount of energy in a body is pretty difficult (maybe impossible right now), then I suppose it is possible that some of this energy is not used in the way I am describing.

So your thesis is that this unused energy somehow causes the phenomena people ascribe to hauntings. I mean, okay maybe there is some unused energy. That would be pretty weird and without any evidence to suggest that it is true I am disinclined to accept it. But even if there is, how exactly does it manifest in this way and how does it cause these things to happen? If this is how it works then it should be reproducable and to an extent predictable. This theory is relying on a fair few assumptions without any evidence, and that is why I tend to dismiss it and think that the explanation which is most likely and most easy to explain (people hallucinate, imagine things, or are lying) and does not require us to revise our understanding is the correct one. If someone does an experiment to prove this wrong and the experiment can be repeated by other people I am happy to accept that there is more going on, but I am not aware of any such experiments.

**nou**

Regarding consciousness, in the most brief fashion I can: it is not a question of neither psychology (by definition, psychology deals with minds disregarding brains and assumes either perfect dualism or invoke complexity to defend it's position. People often conflate or even merge psychology with psychiatry, which is quite a different beast) nor philosophy (which disregards anything but logic and it's own toolkit and thus is not a field of science and has produced a whole libraries of useless mumble over the last century, rapidly made obsolete by advancing fields of actual science). Instead, it is a question of cognitive neuroscience and in the last 30 years (since the invention of fMRI) we have done a great progress on this subject. The main reason why this whole topic is treated as a "controversy" is that all findings undermine the very ideas of free will and agency and people just don't want to let those go, so they invent such "counterarguments" as qualia or p-zombies... The main axis in modern discussion about consciousness are as follows: is it dualistic in nature or is it emergent on the brain; if it is emergent on the brain is there any meaningfull difference between reductionistic description of neural processes and qualia; if it is non-dualistic is it compatible with libertarian free will; is consciousness a property of biological neural networks, or is it a property of all complex information processing constructs, or is it a property of any system and is a spectrum.

@epronovost: from your list of varied meanings of consciousness only philosophical one is exclusive to philosophy, while medical, neurobiological and prosecutive you mention are all just different scopes of the same consciousness phenomena studied by cognitive neurosciences (for the link into prosecutive I recommend watching few Sapolsky lectures on affective neuroscience).

**Voss**

Jjohnso11 wrote:
The counter argument is stating an absolute.

No it isn't. The counterargument is your proposition about energy being somehow missing and magically forming ghosts is false and a baseless assumption with neither rhyme nor reason to suggest it, let alone actual science. It doesn't even have the commercial value of ghost chasers or cliche-ridden gothic literature. You might as well be stating 'ghosts aren't unprovable because turtles in tight trousers.'

**Howard A Treesong**

Jjohnso11 wrote:

I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."

Warm=heat

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.

You don’t need to spell out anything, you’re talking to several people who have decent qualifications. One chap here has a biology/physics degree, I have biology degrees and teach chemistry to A-level.

Simply what you’ve said adds nothing. You’re right, energy can’t be destroyed and only converted, the heat generated in a body is transferred to the surroundings. You sort of declare “warm=heat” as if to go “ah ha! I’ve proven something”

But all you’re doing is spelling out basic science, there’s nothing in that that even starts to suggest that any of the energy in a living organism is converted into a form currently unaccounted for.

My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument.

Don’t try to play the victim card, like you’re being unfairly ignored or your argument is being distracted from. You refuse to address several basic points that have been made head on with your argument.

1. What evidence is there to suggest that there exists unaccounted for energy released from a dying organism?

2. If you can point to some observation that would lead to accept there is a deficit in energy stores released from the body, what reasoning do you have that it is more likely to be an as yet unknown form of energy, as opposed to a conventional form of energy that hasn’t been taken into account?

Saying “but science hasn’t utterly disproven that energy doesn’t have other forms” isn’t an acceptable answer. It’s very difficult to absolutely disprove everything possible. If you’re proposing something as radical as a new form of energy the onus is on you have to show that the theory is needed, meaning you have to show there’s 1. an energy deficit that needs to be addressed and 2. that your explanation has more merit than any other nonsense.

The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.

Nice try. I’m sure you feel clever that you can ‘poke holes’ in our argument because we’re the dogmatic ones.

What questions can’t currently be answered? I feel you’ll move the goalposts because you’ll always say that the explanation given isn’t sufficient. You don’t think gravity can be explained, yet based on observations explanations are at least proposed.

You however are proposing something that has no basis in demonstrable reality, and attempts to make an explanation of something for which no observation has been made. The reason ‘holes can’t be poked’ in your argument is because it’s so woolly that there’s nothing to address, you haven’t based it on anything evidenced. Any argument you don’t like, you’ll move the goalposts and say that it’s just else beyond science. That’s what your “flexibility” amounts to, and it is not a postive attribute of your argument that it can’t be scientific tested.

You’re just making a typical Russell’s Teapot type argument that can go something like...

“There’s a teapot floating around the sun”
“We built a telescope and can’t see it”
“Ah, it’s a very small teapot”
“We’ve built a more powerful telescope and still can’t see it”
“It’s transparent”
“Sigh”

**Peregrine**

Jjohnso11 wrote:
Which part of energy was I using wrong?

Everything. You're just not understanding how energy is stored and transferred. For example, if you're sitting on the top floor of your house you have potential energy, when you go down the stairs you lose that potential energy. If you go back up again your body converts chemical energy (obtained from food) into kinetic energy (movement), which is converted into potential energy again (your position higher up in the planetary gravity well). There is no mysterious "energy" that disappears when death occurs (and death isn't really a single point in time, it's a process), the body's energy state is effectively the same as it is immediately before death.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.

The first law of thermodynamics is not sufficient to understand the situation with heat energy, you also need to understand the concept of entropy. Your body contains energy in the form of heat (largely a product of chemical reactions), but that heat dissipates into the environment constantly and reaches a higher entropy state that effectively makes it useless (though still present). While you are alive you are constantly converting stored chemical energy from food into more heat, maintaining a stable body temperature. When your metabolism shuts down in death the supply of new heat stops, and the constant equalizing flow of heat brings your body to equilibrium temperature with the surrounding environment. There is no mystical "soul" or whatever involved, it's the exact same thing that happens if you put a cup of coffee on the table and wait for it to cool off.

Same thing with other forms of energy. The stored chemical energy in your body just sits there continuing to exist until the process of decomposition consumes those molecules and releases their energy. Gravitational potential energy goes on existing unchanged until your corpse is moved to a lower elevation. Etc. There is no missing energy to account for.

But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong.

That's not how it works. You can't just post a bunch of word salad and yell PROVE ME WRONG OR I WIN, the burden of proof is on you to provide more than an absence of disproof in support of your theory. And you haven't.

Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument.

No, it's a fundamental problem with your argument. If you aren't using the term "energy" correctly then you can't make an argument about what happens with energy.

**Desubot**

Jjohnso11 wrote:

My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.

Im really lost here are you talking about Energy as a physical thing or is this more of a spiritual thing.

Physically after death and your cells stop producing heat energy from chemical energy, any residual heat energy is transferred into the surrounding area.

any remaining cells becomes chemical energy for all sorts of lifeforms from all over as your body decays over time.

This isnt an attempt to poke holes in an argument but the words need to be defined fully otherwise you cannot actually attempt to have a meaningful discussion. also i may have missed something as i dont quite understand where you are going with this. because from what i understand you can know of where all the energy from your body goes after death. it can be measured and im sure some scientists some where must of done it at one point.

if the hypothesis is some of the energy in a fresh corpse some how converts into non heat energy like some kinda lingering electromechanical energy then there has to be a mechanic to allow that to happen. maybe its quantum mechanics. but its something that should be completely testable. but would probably be "unethical" to test(?)

**Iron_Captain**

epronovost wrote:
Polonius wrote:

It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.

Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).

It may be boring, but it is fundamental to science. Without clarity on the semantics, you can't really do proper science. Every scientific field has a massive theoretical framework, and a lot of this theoretical work deals with issues of semantics and epistemology.

**thekingofkings**

Azreal13 wrote:
Polonius wrote:

There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.

Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.

It took almost 200 years to prove the existence of the colossal squid. Elves were proven right after one was named attorney general (though he prefers to be called jeff sessions)

**Voss**

Marco Polo found unicorns in his travels.
Surprise, they were Rhinoceroses all along.

Columbus thought manatees were mermaids (and the Earth was pear shaped, thanks to the outflow of the Amazon; he thought he was sailing 'uphill' near the stem. Which is where the Monty Python & the Holy Grail joke about he Earth being banana shaped comes from)

The Cyclops was probably based on someone misunderstanding a mammoth skull (mistaking the centrally located nasal cavity for an eye socket, and such skulls have been found on Crete and other areas in the region), and dinosaur bones probably inspired dragon stories.

Fantastical elements might be entertaining, but the reasons for the stories are mostly ignorance.

**epronovost**

Iron_Captain wrote:
epronovost wrote:
Polonius wrote:

It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.

Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).

It may be boring, but it is fundamental to science. Without clarity on the semantics, you can't really do proper science. Every scientific field has a massive theoretical framework, and a lot of this theoretical work deals with issues of semantics and epistemology.

On that we both agree.

**Dreadwinter**

Prestor Jon wrote:
Ghosts may not exist but the machine elves definitely do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine#Reported_encounters_with_external_entities

Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]

I always thought those were called Grimlins. Did old cartoons teach me wrong?

Azreal13 wrote:
Polonius wrote:

There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.

Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.

Absolutely spot on! Remember when we hadn't discovered Mountain Gorillas? lol, we thought they could totally possess a human and consume their soul. BOY WERE WE WRONG!

Your argument is hilariously bad.

**Azreal13**

Really? Perhaps you could explain why you think that, so I can make an informed counter, rather than attacking it in a manner that suggests you don't understand it?

Because while you appear to be trying to be funny, attributing mythical abilities to little known or understood real animals is exactly where many mythical animals have their origins. Hence my point.

**BuFFo**

Existence exists and A is A.

There are on contradictions in reality.

There are no supernatural anythings from gods to gremlins to karma to wishes to miracles to luck to ghosts. That would constitute a contradiction and the reality doesn't allow that.

This isn't skepticism either. It's an axiom of reality.

**Azreal13**

Once we understand the totality of what constitutes an objective reality, that argument will be bullet proof.

**Iron_Captain**

BuFFo wrote:
Existence exists and A is A.

There are on contradictions in reality.

There are no supernatural anythings from gods to gremlins to karma to wishes to miracles to luck to ghosts. That would constitute a contradiction and the reality doesn't allow that.

This isn't skepticism either. It's an axiom of reality.

That is a nonsensical statement. We don't fully understand reality, so how could we claim such a grand thing as knowing what reality allows and what not? We know some things are real because we can prove them. We know other things are not real because we can disprove them. But many things we can neither proof nor disproof and are therefore unknowable. Many supernatural things fall within this category. And furthermore, we don't even have the slightest idea of all the things we have yet to discover. We are tiny, insignificant specks in a unmeasurably vast cosmos, it is utter hubris to claim we know it all.

When we find the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, we will be able to draw conclusions as to what are axioms of reality and what not. But we aren't anywhere near close to finding the answer. The more answers we find, the more questions we get.

**Dreadwinter**

Azreal13 wrote:
Really? Perhaps you could explain why you think that, so I can make an informed counter, rather than attacking it in a manner that suggests you don't understand it?

Because while you appear to be trying to be funny, attributing mythical abilities to little known or understood real animals is exactly where many mythical animals have their origins. Hence my point.

Do any past cryptids have crazy, mystical powers now that they have been found?

Do you really need me to spell it out for you or can you get it from this?

**Azreal13**

It appears if there's anything needs spelling out, it would be by me.

Unknown Things = Crazy Weird mystical things with powers.
Known Things = None of those things.

Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things. My assertion is that once the science behind whatever causes these things is understood, ghosts will lose their mystery and paranormal tag in the same way.

I believe that ghosts exist, I just don't believe they're the spirits of dead people, but some hitherto unknown but perfectly rational aspect of the world that will ultimately lose all mystery.

Just like unicorns.

**Dreadwinter**

Azreal13 wrote:
Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things.

Ghosts are currently non-existent. There is no reason to believe they are real.