Good on you doing your DD. His official count (counting all cases known to him, not only ones he investigated) is around 1700, which probably means that my collective estimate is on the way low side—there’s just a lot of unpublished material to try to account for (file drawer effect) - but I would definitely say that a great deal of the advancement in the field after Stevenson has been of a conceptual and theoretical nature rather than collecting large amounts of additional data. In general, researchers have pivoted to allowing cases to come to their attention organically (the internet has helped) rather than seeking out as many as possible. On the other hand, Stevenson hardly knew anything about what he was really studying until late in his career (and admitted as much), while his successors have been able to form much more cohesive models of what is going on. I would say that Stevenson is a role model to me as Eliezer is to a great deal of LW, but on the other hand, I find appeal to authority counterproductive, because the fact of the matter is that we today have access to better resources than he had and are able to do stronger and more confident work as a result. He, of course, supplied us with many of those resources, so respect is absolutely in order, but if we don’t move forward at a reasonable pace from just gathering the same stuff over and over, the whole endeavor is no better than an NFL quarterback compiling 5000 passing yards for a 4-12 team.
In general, researchers have pivoted to allowing cases to come to their attention organically (the internet has helped) rather than seeking out as many as possible.
How do you go about validating a case that comes to your attention via the internet? It seems to me like it’s very hard to have access to information that the person in question has no way of knowing for cases that reach you via the internet.
Disclaimer, I’m not someone who personally investigates cases. What you’ve raised has actually been a massive problem for researchers since the beginning, and has little to do with the internet—Stevenson himself often learned of his cases many years after they were in their strongest phase, and sometimes after connections had already been made to a possible previous identity. In general, the earlier a researcher can get on a case and in contact with the subject, the better. As a result, cases in which important statements given by the subject are documented, and corroborated by a researcher, before any attempt at verification has been made are considered some of the best. In that regard, the internet has actually helped researchers get informed of cases earlier, when subjects are typically still giving a lot of information and no independent searches have been conducted. Pertaining to problems specifically presented by online communication, whenever a potebtially important case comes to their attention, I would say that researchers try to take the process offline as soon as the situation allows.
As a result, cases in which important statements given by the subject are documented, and corroborated by a researcher, before any attempt at verification has been made are considered some of the best.
Where do you think the most convincing information about those cases is published?
Unfortunate to say I haven’t kept a neat record of where exactly each case is published, so I asked my industry connections and was directed to the following article. Having reviewed it, it would of course be presumptuous of me to say I endorse everything stated therein, since I have not read the primary source for every case described. But those sources are referenced at bottom, many with links. It should suffice as a compilation of information pertaining to your question, and you can judge what meets your standards.
Epoch Times in 2015 said Stevenson’s successor Jim Tucker has brought the total up to “about 2000 cases”.
Anyway, I will come out and say I don’t believe it. Reincarnation may be logically possible—many things are logically possible—but the ascertainable facts don’t provide sufficient reason to think it’s actually happening. Adults consistently underestimate the imagination and intuition of children, and scientists regularly convince themselves of things that are false (and then there’s the level of discussion present e.g. in cable TV documentaries, which is far more characteristic of ordinary thinking on the subject, and which cannot be counted on to have any respect for truth at all).
Also, our current understanding of neural networks, suggests that individual brains develop idiosyncratic representations for anything complex, a problem for the idea that memories of other lives, formed in other brains, get downloaded into them. This is not a decisive objection, but it’s definitely an issue for anyone seeking a mechanism.
It means very little evidentially, but I will report one thing that happened when I looked into this. In the opinion of some, Stevenson’s most convincing case was a boy from Lebanon. I thought: Lebanon is a Muslim country, and one doesn’t associate Islam with belief in reincarnation. Then I remembered the Druze sect—and indeed, on further study by myself, the boy turned out to be from a Druze family.
Reincarnation studies may be of interest from the perspective of “anomalistic psychology”—belief in reincarnation, after all, is part of some of the world’s major belief systems; and understanding why people believe in it, and how that belief is reinforced in new generations, may shed light on how those cultures work.
That’s definitely the proper naïve reaction to assume in my opinion. I would say with extremely high confidence that this is one of those things that takes dozens of hours of reading to overcome one’s priors toward, if your priors are well-defined. It took every bit of that for me. The reason for this is that there’s always a solid-sounding objection to any one case—it takes knowing tons of them by heart to see how the common challenges fail to hold up. So, in my experience and that of many I know, the degree which one is inclined to buy into it is a direct correlation of how determined one is to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise, I have to agree with you that there’s no really compelling reason to be convinced based on what a casual search will show you. That, as well, seems to be the experience of most. Those who really care tend to get it, but it is inherently time-and-effort prohibitive. I really don’t feel like asking anyone to undertake that unless they’re heavily motivated.
Stevenson’s greatest flaw as a researcher was that he didn’t look terribly hard for American and otherwise Western cases, and the few he stumbled into were often mediocre at best. Therefore, he was repeatedly subjected to justified criticism of the nature “you can’t isolate your data from the cultural environment it develops in”. However, this issue has been entirely dissolved by successors who have rectidfied his error and found that they’re just as common in non-believer Western families as anywhere, including arguably stronger ones than anything he found. This is definitely the most important data-collection development in the field during the 21st century.
I must say I’m not at all interested in belief systems as an object of study, though—my goal is more or less to eradicate them. They’re nothing but epistemic pollution.
Good on you doing your DD. His official count (counting all cases known to him, not only ones he investigated) is around 1700, which probably means that my collective estimate is on the way low side—there’s just a lot of unpublished material to try to account for (file drawer effect) - but I would definitely say that a great deal of the advancement in the field after Stevenson has been of a conceptual and theoretical nature rather than collecting large amounts of additional data. In general, researchers have pivoted to allowing cases to come to their attention organically (the internet has helped) rather than seeking out as many as possible. On the other hand, Stevenson hardly knew anything about what he was really studying until late in his career (and admitted as much), while his successors have been able to form much more cohesive models of what is going on. I would say that Stevenson is a role model to me as Eliezer is to a great deal of LW, but on the other hand, I find appeal to authority counterproductive, because the fact of the matter is that we today have access to better resources than he had and are able to do stronger and more confident work as a result. He, of course, supplied us with many of those resources, so respect is absolutely in order, but if we don’t move forward at a reasonable pace from just gathering the same stuff over and over, the whole endeavor is no better than an NFL quarterback compiling 5000 passing yards for a 4-12 team.
How do you go about validating a case that comes to your attention via the internet? It seems to me like it’s very hard to have access to information that the person in question has no way of knowing for cases that reach you via the internet.
Disclaimer, I’m not someone who personally investigates cases. What you’ve raised has actually been a massive problem for researchers since the beginning, and has little to do with the internet—Stevenson himself often learned of his cases many years after they were in their strongest phase, and sometimes after connections had already been made to a possible previous identity. In general, the earlier a researcher can get on a case and in contact with the subject, the better. As a result, cases in which important statements given by the subject are documented, and corroborated by a researcher, before any attempt at verification has been made are considered some of the best. In that regard, the internet has actually helped researchers get informed of cases earlier, when subjects are typically still giving a lot of information and no independent searches have been conducted. Pertaining to problems specifically presented by online communication, whenever a potebtially important case comes to their attention, I would say that researchers try to take the process offline as soon as the situation allows.
Where do you think the most convincing information about those cases is published?
Unfortunate to say I haven’t kept a neat record of where exactly each case is published, so I asked my industry connections and was directed to the following article. Having reviewed it, it would of course be presumptuous of me to say I endorse everything stated therein, since I have not read the primary source for every case described. But those sources are referenced at bottom, many with links. It should suffice as a compilation of information pertaining to your question, and you can judge what meets your standards.
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/reincarnation-cases-records-made-verifications
Epoch Times in 2015 said Stevenson’s successor Jim Tucker has brought the total up to “about 2000 cases”.
Anyway, I will come out and say I don’t believe it. Reincarnation may be logically possible—many things are logically possible—but the ascertainable facts don’t provide sufficient reason to think it’s actually happening. Adults consistently underestimate the imagination and intuition of children, and scientists regularly convince themselves of things that are false (and then there’s the level of discussion present e.g. in cable TV documentaries, which is far more characteristic of ordinary thinking on the subject, and which cannot be counted on to have any respect for truth at all).
Also, our current understanding of neural networks, suggests that individual brains develop idiosyncratic representations for anything complex, a problem for the idea that memories of other lives, formed in other brains, get downloaded into them. This is not a decisive objection, but it’s definitely an issue for anyone seeking a mechanism.
It means very little evidentially, but I will report one thing that happened when I looked into this. In the opinion of some, Stevenson’s most convincing case was a boy from Lebanon. I thought: Lebanon is a Muslim country, and one doesn’t associate Islam with belief in reincarnation. Then I remembered the Druze sect—and indeed, on further study by myself, the boy turned out to be from a Druze family.
Reincarnation studies may be of interest from the perspective of “anomalistic psychology”—belief in reincarnation, after all, is part of some of the world’s major belief systems; and understanding why people believe in it, and how that belief is reinforced in new generations, may shed light on how those cultures work.
That’s definitely the proper naïve reaction to assume in my opinion. I would say with extremely high confidence that this is one of those things that takes dozens of hours of reading to overcome one’s priors toward, if your priors are well-defined. It took every bit of that for me. The reason for this is that there’s always a solid-sounding objection to any one case—it takes knowing tons of them by heart to see how the common challenges fail to hold up. So, in my experience and that of many I know, the degree which one is inclined to buy into it is a direct correlation of how determined one is to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise, I have to agree with you that there’s no really compelling reason to be convinced based on what a casual search will show you. That, as well, seems to be the experience of most. Those who really care tend to get it, but it is inherently time-and-effort prohibitive. I really don’t feel like asking anyone to undertake that unless they’re heavily motivated.
Stevenson’s greatest flaw as a researcher was that he didn’t look terribly hard for American and otherwise Western cases, and the few he stumbled into were often mediocre at best. Therefore, he was repeatedly subjected to justified criticism of the nature “you can’t isolate your data from the cultural environment it develops in”. However, this issue has been entirely dissolved by successors who have rectidfied his error and found that they’re just as common in non-believer Western families as anywhere, including arguably stronger ones than anything he found. This is definitely the most important data-collection development in the field during the 21st century.
I must say I’m not at all interested in belief systems as an object of study, though—my goal is more or less to eradicate them. They’re nothing but epistemic pollution.