Why 'believers' don't rely on science.

Nevyn

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Those who believe in the paranormal OUGHT to be seeking to disprove.

Why ?

Son Goku

Thaedydal wrote:

Why ?

The ideas that survive attempts to disprove them are the strongest and the ones eventually accepted by science.

For instance late 19th Century biologists set out to disprove evolution, but couldn't.

It's the reason we accept our current theories, because we can't disprove them.
In science you should set out to find evidence against, rather than evidence to support.

GuanYin

Jackie laughlin wrote:

In the early days of electronic chip manufacture it presented a problem; factory workers were causing damage by proximity.

Can you reference this with a source material?

I was under the impression that this was actually ESD and EMF. ie. static electricity.

pH

Jackie laughlin wrote:

There is an electromagnetic field around all objects.

No there's not!

The electromagnetic field is a physical influence (a field) that permeates through all of space and which arises from electrically charged objects and describes one of the four fundamental forces of nature - electromagnetism. It can be viewed as the combination of an electric field and a magnetic field. The electric field is produced by non-moving charges and the magnetic field by moving charges (currents); these two are often described as the sources of the field. The way in which charges and currents interact with the electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz Force Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field

It is relatively strong around humans.

Really? What's it(the field) measured in, and what's an indicative value for 'strong'?

In the early days of electronic chip manufacture it presented a problem; factory workers were causing damage by proximity.

Link please.

The field can be easily detected and has become very easy to display using computer graphics.

Link please.

Son Goku

stevenmu wrote:

Are you maybe thinking of Ant-Matter (and maybe even been reading some Dan Browne ). I could be wrong but I don't think dark matter's existence has been proven yet. Some experiments claim to have detected it, others have failed, I don't think there's any definitive proof one way or the other yet.

Dark Galaxy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4679220.stm
Dark Matter is probably a mix of galaxies that never turned on and very heavy particles that don't interact much.

Jackie laughlin

PH,
Are you telling me that these energy fields don’t exist or explaining how they exist? Please don’t read this as me being smart. I’m not clear what you are saying and asking a question.

The point I was trying to make was that the “aura brigade” are turning a natural phenomenon into a fetish.

I didn’t expect to have to write a paper or provide references on this. Indeed I can’t as my experience is entirely practical. I worked in development in the electronics industry when Large Scale Integration (LSI) arrived. (How silly that term seems now!) We were trying to replace older circuits with newly designed LSI while keeping the cards (circuit boards) interchangeable. There was very little experience with the new chips and very little practical material published.

We were experiencing high and expensive failure rates. The conventional wisdom at the time, as I recall (though I’m seeing flaws as I write) was that very high input impedances – even without the chip powered and especially before the chip was inserted – somehow became induced with electrical levels high enough to “blow” the device. The first culprit we thought about was static. We attempted to deal with this through various earthing procedures. We even advised that staff not wear nylon or silk!

The incidence of failure was reduced but it seemed that we were still getting failures caused by proximity. We therefore thought about radiation. We conducted crude experiments and found that we could detect lowish frequency radio waves. They were detectable from almost anything but were more pronounced from people. There may have been higher frequency radiation. Indeed it might even have been at greater levels. We never checked as we didn’t have test equipment which would go up towards VHF. (Hardly seems credible these days!) However, we were happy with our results as we had something resembling a problem which we could then take steps to address.

I’m trying to remember but I think the later chips became more stable before we ever sorted the problem.

That’s the story. What’s the aggressive questioning all about?


Th,
The "ought" in Popper is not isolated. Faith for Kirkegaard was the crucifixion of reason. I admire the honesty, humility and doubt of a person who knows that he or she is deciding to believe in the face of little or contradictory evidence. Belief without doubt is unworthy.

pH

Jackie laughlin wrote:

PH,
Are you telling me that these energy fields don’t exist or explaining how they exist? Please don’t read this as me being smart. I’m not clear what you are saying and asking a question.

The point I was trying to make was that the “aura brigade” are turning a natural phenomenon into a fetish.

No they're inventing something that simply is not there.

I didn’t expect to have to write a paper or provide references on this. Indeed I can’t as my experience is entirely practical.
<snip>
We were experiencing high and expensive failure rates. The conventional wisdom at the time, as I recall (though I’m seeing flaws as I write) was that very high input impedances
<snip>
The incidence of failure was reduced but it seemed that we were still getting failures caused by proximity.

This is why it's not sensible to extrapolate from anecdotal/once off results. May I *politely* suggest that that cause of your failures was not an EMF coming from humans, and that a more prosaic explanation would be simply teething problems with new technology.

We therefore thought about radiation. We conducted crude experiments and found that we could detect lowish frequency radio waves. They were detectable from almost anything but were more pronounced from people. There may have been higher frequency radiation. Indeed it might even have been at greater levels. We never checked as we didn’t have test equipment which would go up towards VHF. (Hardly seems credible these days!) However, we were happy with our results as we had something resembling a problem which we could then take steps to address.

Are you claiming that humans are in fact radio transmitters?

I’m trying to remember but I think the later chips became more stable before we ever sorted the problem.

!

That’s the story. What’s the aggressive questioning all about?

The "aura brigade" started off primarily with people claiming they could see auras. Then various technologies came along which purported to make visible to all what these aura viewers said they were seeing.

Kirlian Photography relies on a strong external (to the thing being photographed) electric field being generated. Even then the photograph is not really a picture of 'the field', rather the Corona Discharge

The computer graphics application (I presume you mean winaura) uses an off the shelf webcam! nuff said?

Jackie laughlin

PH,
Thank you for the links.

You may politely suggest anything at all!

These posts are brining me back to my youth. We repeated the experiments often enough to convince ourselves that radio energy associated with human proximity was a problem. True, we were working in development and not research and needed answers ASAP. However, we were not unaware of the danger of jumping to daft conclusions. There were interesting "canteen discussions" about whether the bodies were actually generating the energy, reflecting it more efficiently than other items or even amplifying it from some other source. This had to remain as just talk, typical of the kind in which curious technos without a research budget engage.

Two questions. Do you reject the presence of static fields and/or do they simply not feature in this discussion? Seconly, I've read your links - and thanks again. Am I understanding it correctly that the "aura" appears only when the object is subjected to an external source of energy?

GuanYin

Jackie laughlin wrote:

These posts are brining me back to my youth. We repeated the experiments often enough to convince ourselves that radio energy associated with human proximity was a problem.

Perhaps you should have repeated the experiments with the aim of showing that this wasn't a problem.

Jackie laughlin

PSI,
You tend not to have time for adequate research. If you think you have a likely source for the problem, you take two courses at once. Firstly, behave as if your data are true and attempt to deal with the situation. Secondly, continue to try to disprove the data and find an alternative source/explanation. The latter it is also hoped might even reveal further information about the running hypothesis.

It's the difference between research and development. Most of the staff would love to work in research!

GuanYin

I'm aware of the difference, it just seems to me that you took you took a biased slant to deciding the cause and it wasn't so much research as justification.

Jackie laughlin

PSI,
That's a bit unfair. People in development labs know the limitations. Management want a solution today. The part-formed theories often (No, I think, "usually" would be nearer the truth,) lead to a solution.

Sorry, if I'm leading this off thread.