The reason for people to believe someone else is if they had proof to back it up, or they already had reason to believe. Humans aren’t stupid, and I don’t think we’ve become radically more intelligent in the last couple thousand years. Why then is belief in the supernatural* everywhere? Is it something in our makeup, how we think? I have heard such a thing discounted by both sides.
I don’t think you’ll find such a thing readily discounted here. There are plenty of well established cognitive biases that come to play in assessment of supernatural claims. The sequences discuss this to some degree, but you might also be interested in reading this book which discusses some of the mechanisms which contribute to supernatural belief which are not commonly discussed here.
We don’t even need to raise the issue of the supernatural to examine whether people are likely to pass down beliefs and rituals when they don’t really work. We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests. In fact, there is an abundance of such.
We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests.
Point.
though I would point out that not all of them are wrong either. Just the good majority. That’s neither here nor there though.
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble? My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them. One of those calls was to me and it helped me greatly. While she has missed calling people that were in trouble, she has never once called someone with that intent and been wrong.She told me that it feels like someone is telling her to call them because they are in trouble. I can’t know if that is true or not, but I can’t think of her ever lying to me. This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
I know that she isn’t the only person that does this, because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god, but that might be because I played to many role-playing games.
Sorry if this seems odd, it was just something that came to mind as I was thinking about supernatural* things.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble?
I don’t know if this is something that has been explained, or even if it’s something that needs to be explained. It could be that you’re operating under an unrepresentative dataset. Keep in mind that if you hadn’t experienced a number of phone calls where the caller’s intuition that something was wrong was correct, you wouldn’t treat it as a phenomenon in need of explanation, but if you had experienced some other set of improbable occurrences, simply by chance, then that would look like a phenomenon in need of explanation. I personally have no experiences with acquaintances making phone calls on an intuition that something is wrong and being right, although I have experience with acquaintances getting worried and making phone calls and finding out there was really nothing to worry about. There’s a significant danger of selection bias in dealing with claims like this, because people who experience, say, a sudden premonition that something has happened to their loved on across the sea at war, and then find out a couple weeks later that they’re still alive and well, are probably not going to record the experience for posterity.
I’ve encountered plenty of claims of improbable events before which were attributed to supernatural causes. If I consistently encountered ones that took the form of people correctly intuiting that a distant loved one was in trouble and calling them, I would definitely start to suspect that this was a real phenomenon in need of explanation, although I would also be interested in seeing how often people intuited that a distant loved one was in trouble, called them, found out they were wrong, and didn’t think it was worth remembering. Maybe some of the improbable events I’ve heard about really are the result of more than chance, and have some underlying explanation that I’m not aware of, but I don’t have the evidence to strongly suspect this.
If you multiply a day times the population experiencing it, that’s about 82,000 years of human experience in America alone. That’s a lot of time for improbable stuff to happen in, and people tend to remember the improbable stuff and forget the ordinary, and draw patterns erroneously. So I don’t treat seeming patterns of unusual events as needing explanation unless I have reliable reason to conclude that they’re actually going on.
My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them.
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
If your loved one is fighting in WWII, it’s very likely that he or she would die, sadly...
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god...
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
Not that I remember. My memory could be faulty, but thinking long and hard about it I don’t remember it happening.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
She predicted they were in trouble. I think the phrase she used was “I think XXXX is in trouble and needs help.” I could be misremembering though.
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
It’s a close call honestly, but if god exists, which I believe he does from other evidence listed in this over-sized thread, then adding psionics on top would be added complexity for no gain. If you already know that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, why bother coming up with an alternate explanation for why Saturn goes around the sun? It might have another reason, but the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
Oh yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking.
Anyway, as the others on this thread have pointed out, there could be many explanations for why you remember events the way you do. Among them, are things like “my mother has supernatural powers”, “a god exists and he is using his powers on my mother”, “aliens exist and are using their power on my mother”, etc. The most probable explanation, though, is “my memory is faulty due to a cognitive bias that is well understood by modern psychologists”.
That said, I must acknowledge that if you have already determined, for some other unrelated reason, that the probability of psionic powers / gods / aliens existing is quite high; then it would be perfectly rational of you to assign a much higher probability to one of these other explanations.
My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization, you must take note of the many other people who have those feelings and no one was in trouble. You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization
I did state that she predicted one in advance to me. Also when my mother called me the first thing she asked was “are you alright?”
You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
As far as my mother goes I have never once seen her mistake a prediction. Now 2 predictions (and 2 more that she told me about) sounds small, but consider the amount of times that she didn’t mistakenly call the probability that something is going on is quite high. For example if you have a deck with 996 blue cards in it, and 4 red cards in it, and you call a red card before it flips once, but never call it before a blue card flips, the chances of you succeeding on are… Um… Do you guys want me to do the math? It’s pretty small.
And just because some people think that they can do it and can’t, doesn’t mean that a person can’t do it. Look at all the people who think they are wonderful singers.
Of course I could be misremembering. I could go ask my mother, and my father and see what they say if you like. (Yes I am close to my parents. We have a tight nit family even though I am 24). Of course we could all be misremembering, or lying. Again, you have no way to know, and you really shouldn’t even consider taking my word for this.
I don’t think you’ll find such a thing readily discounted here. There are plenty of well established cognitive biases that come to play in assessment of supernatural claims. The sequences discuss this to some degree, but you might also be interested in reading this book which discusses some of the mechanisms which contribute to supernatural belief which are not commonly discussed here.
We don’t even need to raise the issue of the supernatural to examine whether people are likely to pass down beliefs and rituals when they don’t really work. We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests. In fact, there is an abundance of such.
Point.
though I would point out that not all of them are wrong either. Just the good majority. That’s neither here nor there though.
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble? My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them. One of those calls was to me and it helped me greatly. While she has missed calling people that were in trouble, she has never once called someone with that intent and been wrong.She told me that it feels like someone is telling her to call them because they are in trouble. I can’t know if that is true or not, but I can’t think of her ever lying to me. This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
I know that she isn’t the only person that does this, because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god, but that might be because I played to many role-playing games.
Sorry if this seems odd, it was just something that came to mind as I was thinking about supernatural* things.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
I don’t know if this is something that has been explained, or even if it’s something that needs to be explained. It could be that you’re operating under an unrepresentative dataset. Keep in mind that if you hadn’t experienced a number of phone calls where the caller’s intuition that something was wrong was correct, you wouldn’t treat it as a phenomenon in need of explanation, but if you had experienced some other set of improbable occurrences, simply by chance, then that would look like a phenomenon in need of explanation. I personally have no experiences with acquaintances making phone calls on an intuition that something is wrong and being right, although I have experience with acquaintances getting worried and making phone calls and finding out there was really nothing to worry about. There’s a significant danger of selection bias in dealing with claims like this, because people who experience, say, a sudden premonition that something has happened to their loved on across the sea at war, and then find out a couple weeks later that they’re still alive and well, are probably not going to record the experience for posterity.
I’ve encountered plenty of claims of improbable events before which were attributed to supernatural causes. If I consistently encountered ones that took the form of people correctly intuiting that a distant loved one was in trouble and calling them, I would definitely start to suspect that this was a real phenomenon in need of explanation, although I would also be interested in seeing how often people intuited that a distant loved one was in trouble, called them, found out they were wrong, and didn’t think it was worth remembering. Maybe some of the improbable events I’ve heard about really are the result of more than chance, and have some underlying explanation that I’m not aware of, but I don’t have the evidence to strongly suspect this.
If you multiply a day times the population experiencing it, that’s about 82,000 years of human experience in America alone. That’s a lot of time for improbable stuff to happen in, and people tend to remember the improbable stuff and forget the ordinary, and draw patterns erroneously. So I don’t treat seeming patterns of unusual events as needing explanation unless I have reliable reason to conclude that they’re actually going on.
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
If your loved one is fighting in WWII, it’s very likely that he or she would die, sadly...
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
Not that I remember. My memory could be faulty, but thinking long and hard about it I don’t remember it happening.
She predicted they were in trouble. I think the phrase she used was “I think XXXX is in trouble and needs help.” I could be misremembering though.
It’s a close call honestly, but if god exists, which I believe he does from other evidence listed in this over-sized thread, then adding psionics on top would be added complexity for no gain. If you already know that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, why bother coming up with an alternate explanation for why Saturn goes around the sun? It might have another reason, but the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
Oh yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking.
Anyway, as the others on this thread have pointed out, there could be many explanations for why you remember events the way you do. Among them, are things like “my mother has supernatural powers”, “a god exists and he is using his powers on my mother”, “aliens exist and are using their power on my mother”, etc. The most probable explanation, though, is “my memory is faulty due to a cognitive bias that is well understood by modern psychologists”.
That said, I must acknowledge that if you have already determined, for some other unrelated reason, that the probability of psionic powers / gods / aliens existing is quite high; then it would be perfectly rational of you to assign a much higher probability to one of these other explanations.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization, you must take note of the many other people who have those feelings and no one was in trouble. You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
I did state that she predicted one in advance to me. Also when my mother called me the first thing she asked was “are you alright?”
As far as my mother goes I have never once seen her mistake a prediction. Now 2 predictions (and 2 more that she told me about) sounds small, but consider the amount of times that she didn’t mistakenly call the probability that something is going on is quite high. For example if you have a deck with 996 blue cards in it, and 4 red cards in it, and you call a red card before it flips once, but never call it before a blue card flips, the chances of you succeeding on are… Um… Do you guys want me to do the math? It’s pretty small.
And just because some people think that they can do it and can’t, doesn’t mean that a person can’t do it. Look at all the people who think they are wonderful singers.
Of course I could be misremembering. I could go ask my mother, and my father and see what they say if you like. (Yes I am close to my parents. We have a tight nit family even though I am 24). Of course we could all be misremembering, or lying. Again, you have no way to know, and you really shouldn’t even consider taking my word for this.