Ghosts... are real....

You should send this to CSI ;-) Most likely a hoax by your colleges, it is never a good idea to put people too long on ships

If it is... it is certainly a good one. They want to go ghost hunting this week during night watch but my wife ( who is Filipino ) strongly urges me not to. She says disturbing them will make them angry if they are real.... i am not sure I like the sound of that. ;P

You don't need photoshop any longer, apps are the future, the second example should be your ghostgirl

Hm... now I must know what type of phone he has... to know if he can have that app! I went out searching tonight while on watch and we saw nothing and I felt no spooky feelings. So.. def possible it was a hoax. Thanks for the post.

"Normally can tell when things have been doctored..."

I hate to be Mr Sensible, but I think the fact that there is a ghost in the picture is a pretty clear sign it has been doctored.

"Normally can tell when things have been doctored..."

 

I hate to be Mr Sensible, but I think the fact that there is a ghost in the picture is a pretty clear sign it has been doctored.

You can believe what you like, and I will believe what I like!

It doesn't necessarily have to be doctored. Lights can play crazy tricks on cameras, even more so if its a phone camera, which, no offense to whoever took it, and I'm guessing, is probably not the best quality camera on the market.

In any case, ghosts don't exist, there's something like 60 years of actual research performed by various US organizations into supernatural claims of all sorts, including ghosts, that show that it's bogus.

It doesn't necessarily have to be doctored. Lights can play crazy tricks on cameras, even more so if its a phone camera, which, no offense to whoever took it, and I'm guessing, is probably not the best quality camera on the market.

In any case, ghosts don't exist, there's something like 60 years of actual research performed by various US organizations into supernatural claims of all sorts, including ghosts, that show that it's bogus.

While that is true, there are just as many claims that they are real and there is 60+ years of evidence ( thousands if you take into account old crap ) that suggest otherwise. What is real and what is not real at this point is beyond my understanding. I simply believe that they exist and that is something I choose. You can consider that.... odd or illogical or flawed, but at the end of the day that is what I chose to believe.

I would like to state that science is not and will never be a definite process. We have proven ourselves incorrect countless times throughout our existence as humans. What we know to be true today does not mean that it will be the same 10/15/30 years down the road. If there is any truth, it is that we do not know the real truths yet.

I won't make any assertion one way or another about the existence of ghosts. However, I do believe that if ghosts (or spirits, or the human soul) do exist, they certainly wouldn't be anything that would show up on camera or otherwise be visible to current observation technology. I think that it would be something more along the lines of an energy signature, perhaps some sort of waveform propagating through a space we haven't explored yet, etc... Not something that would show up as a misty white substance on camera. Science may have its flaws, but it is pretty good at being thorough if pursued with rigor, and despite claims to the contrary, I have yet to see any evidence that a departed human soul, tormented or otherwise, can actually be observed through scientific means. I see a lot of bullshit, a lot of desperate people wanting physical proof to validate their un-provable beliefs, a lot of scam artists seeking to deceive the grieving or garner Youtube views. But I don't see any legitimate scientific proof whatsoever.

This really touches on the whole debate about the truth or falsehood of religion. Is a human body just a sack of meat and chemicals, with the brain comprising a highly evolved and yet ultimately meaningless and unimportant chunk of pink-grey flesh? Or is it a marvelous and miraculous thing that acts as a sort of gateway, an interface if you will, through which the intangible and enigmatic "soul" can interact with the physical realm? (In my more airy imaginings, I like to think of the brain as the soul's video game controller pad. ) But airy imaginings and un-fulfilling debate are all that this question is ever going to be, I think, at least until science becomes sufficiently advance that it can reach beyond the mere physical processes of death and into the realms that (if they exist) lie beyond.

In other words: no, that is probably not a picture of an actual spirit, but that doesn't necessarily mean that spirits don't actually exist.

I agree! Well stated.

While that is true, there are just as many claims that they are real and there is 60+ years of evidence ( thousands if you take into account old crap ) that suggest otherwise. What is real and what is not real at this point is beyond my understanding. I simply believe that they exist and that is something I choose. You can consider that.... odd or illogical or flawed, but at the end of the day that is what I chose to believe.

 

I would like to state that science is not and will never be a definite process. We have proven ourselves incorrect countless times throughout our existence as humans. What we know to be true today does not mean that it will be the same 10/15/30 years down the road. If there is any truth, it is that we do not know the real truths yet.

Sure, feel free to believe in what you want, I don't mind.

But saying science isn't a definite process is grossly misleading. Science focuses on theories (which start of as hypothesis), which adhere to one very important rule:

A theory must make a number of predictions that can be tested under given conditions, and falsified under those conditions. Theories are constantly tested under new conditions, by a variety of individuals from around the world, so that to make sure they are not false. Most people will take this to mean that theories are weak, but quite the opposite - scientific theories are the strongest statements humans can make because they withstand constant scrutiny, and have been shown to hold true under a large number of tests.

So, when I say there's no evidence that ghosts exist, I'm saying that all the variations of scientific testing that was attempted by people over the past half a century, or more, has failed to produce a single shred of evidence that could withstand scrutiny.

When you say that there's 60+, or a hundred or thousand of years of evidence, you're talking about isolated cases of unverifiable, often shady, origins and unreproducible conditions.

You can believe what you want, but there is no scientific evidence that ghosts exist, and you can't stretch out what 'science' means to somehow make those evidence scientific, because it is a fairly well defined process.

Good talk.

A theory must make a number of predictions that can be tested under given conditions, and falsified under those conditions. Theories are constantly tested under new conditions, by a variety of individuals from around the world, so that to make sure they are not false. Most people will take this to mean that theories are weak, but quite the opposite - scientific theories are the strongest statements humans can make because they withstand constant scrutiny, and have been shown to hold true under a large number of tests.

So if a theory has to be tested over and over again for it to be "proven", and once it has been "proven" over several years and thousands of scientist suggesting that there is no current way to disprove it, what happens when it is? What do you call it then? You simply throw up your arms and say... oh well we were wrong? You have to believe your findings to be true for them to be true.... do you not? If you did not believe your readings or observations to be true than they would not be so.

My argument is that you can not definitively tell me that they do not exist by flaunting the word "science" when your basis for what defines science is the definition that "click here"  clearly suggests anything that is a widely accepted theory can be considered fact. If that were true than religion, aliens, and thousands of other theories could at any point become fact and the basis for all of our believe so long as WE ALL BELIEVED IT TO BE TRUE!

Would you consider math to be one of the most accurate forms of truth? For the better part of a century our very understanding of physics was based off of concepts that were only generated from the theory of a 2d plane. It was only after we started to realize that 3d planes could be possible that we got rid of that theory and moved to another.

When you say that there's 60+, or a hundred or thousand of years of
evidence, you're talking about isolated cases of unverifiable, often
shady, origins and unreproducible conditions.

 

You can believe what you want, but there is no scientific evidence
that ghosts exist, and you can't stretch out what 'science' means to
somehow make those evidence scientific, because it is a fairly well
defined process.

You are correct, I can not nor did I attempt to say that science would be the thing that defines if it is true or not. In fact I wish to make the statement that science does not accurately hold the means to currently address the situation in the positive or the negative. I dont expect you to understand that since your comments clearly suggest that you define science as the end all be all; which is your choice. For me... i will stick with what I know to be true and that is that the possibility for such things DOES exist, and our inability to explain it or define it through science does not disprove it.

Indeed, good chat.

You're going into way abstract things here.

Theories are 'proven' to be correct under a set of conditions, and within error margins (which are really tiny). For example, Newtonian Mechanics were accepted to be true, until Relativity came around and showed that under a new, previously unreachable set of conditions, the theory fell apart.

That doesn't make Newtonian mechanics false, it just means that under certain conditions it won't predict what would happen. 

However, under other conditions, Newtonian mechanics predicts what would happen better than any other theory that has tried to explain it.

Widely accepted by the people of the world, and widely accepted by the scientific community are totally different. 

The main point here is that theories have to be tested, and the results verified by other people. Even results that show a theory wrong must be verified by other people. It's pretty much the way best way to find out which theory models reality the closest - continuously test it and constantly try to disprove it.

Belief has nothing to do with it - the fact is if a theory predicts results correctly, it will be verified.

Anyway, good talk, but I have code to write

The main point here is that theories have to be tested, and the results verified by other people. Even results that show a theory wrong must be verified by other people. It's pretty much the way best way to find out which theory models reality the closest - continuously test it and constantly try to disprove it. Belief has nothing to do with it - the fact is if a theory predicts results correctly, it will be verified.

This couldnt be further from the truth. I love how you feel we can consider something as truth or proven yet you say "error margins". If you conduct an experiment and 50 times out of 48 times you gain the same result. You would write off the 2 times that you did not obtain the same result as randomized error? human inadequacy? At that point you would consider your theory to be proven since 48 tests verified the same result?

Now you take that same theory and apply it to a new set of rules that you more recently discovered and your theory becomes false because it was inaccurate for the situation that is being presented. Right?

So, following this example... right now through every test that we have available to us we have found that ghosts are not able to be scientifically proven. There are inconsistencies that possibly occur due to randomized measures, but the commonly accepted theory is that they are not scientifically proven. Five years from now a new method is discovered that when tested using those parameters shows the viable possibility of such things. Wouldnt that be the same scenario as previously stated above?

Your discounting the possibility because of your limited knowledge of this state in time. I am making the claim that I can not define that which I do not fully understand yet. I chose to believe because I have evidence of my own ( not the picture ) that unexplained events have occurred. My observations would be taken in science as a hypothesis. Once presented others would have to attempt the same experiment the only problem is that we have a substance ( ghosts ) that is not defined or proven thus the test to find out is very much defined by the presence or this X ingredient. Is that silly? Sure.... but you cant simply say that your way of doing things is more accurate. Its the same process I simply chose to believe that there is something out there that we do not understand or comprehend and that because of this it is MORE viable to actually exist. Conjecture? Sure....

Enjoy your code

I simply believe that they exist and that is something I choose.

I think that this sums it up quite nicely. The society, at least the western, is changing, going away from traditional religion to, let's call it, personalized belief. I know a lot of people who do not really believe in one of the major religions any longer, or never had, but choose to pick other things to believe in (reiki, traditional traditional chinese medicine, Homeopathy, aliens, ghosts, tarot, in general esoteric etc.), science is kind of a belief too, the belief of that mankind will be able to explain everything with science someday.

Everybody should have the freedom to belief in whatever he wants and should accept that others belief in other things ...

Something being true within error margins: Basically it means that under current testing capabilities, the tests are shown that to be true. Same works for showing something false.

If you have 50 tests and 2 gave different results, you would need to a) either explain how those results can come from variations in condition or user error - and this has to be within reasonable variation or b) if such explanation is not possible, then you must modify the theory so that it will explain why under those different conditions the results were different. This is usually done by performing another 50, or 500 tests.

If at some future point, someone discovers a new method of detecting ghosts, shows that it is reliable, unbiased (And obviously is not a cheat), this method will STILL have to explain why our current methods fail (i.e. it can't just say "the previous science was totally wrong" - because the previous science WASN'T totally wrong - it has been shown to be correct under a lot of tests!)

And if this new method explains why our past experience was wrong, holds up to scrutiny, and is consistent, then yes, I'll lean towards your side, and say ghosts may exist.

The point is, for over half a century, people HAVE been doing just that -  trying new methods and testing methodologies to detect ghosts. And yet, none have given evidence that ghosts exist. So its a pretty safe bet that they don't exist.

Homeopathy, aliens, ghosts, tarot, in general esoteric etc.), science is kind of a belief too, the belief of that mankind will be able to explain everything with science someday.

Everybody should have the freedom to belief in whatever he wants and should accept that others belief in other things ...

First, Science is NOT a belief. It's observation and testing. No one says something is scientific because they believe its true. They show results of tests, and say that "this theory reliably predicts those results". Then other people perform the exact same tests to confirm that the person isn't lying, or inadvertently mistaken about the results.

Belief has no testing - you don't 'test' whether you believe in something - you just chose to. It's almost the exact opposite of science. 

Also, science doesn't claim to 'explain everything'. Some people may CHOOSE to believe that science may one day explain everything, but there's no evidence to support that - but their belief that it may explain everything is completely separate from science itself

You can believe all you want, but some things are provably false  - such as homeopathy. 

That's the other thing - beliefs can just ignore results and tests. Science doesn't. Every single result and test must be explained in some way, or failing that, continuously investigated until its explained or the theory modified to explain it.

I'm just going to be repeating this, but at the end, science is just about observation, making theories, testing the predictive power of your theories, and if necessary modifying them. For a long time, modern science has developed this methodology, and has build up a very consistent understanding of the world. The fact that this understanding is correct can be verified by pretty much everything you and I use every day.

you have to belive what you see to be true, simple as that. Argue all day... argue all you want. The FACT is still the same my friend.

So everything I see has to be believed to be true? Then how come you talk about "FACT"?

But yes, at least that I agree with you - reality will continue to do its own thing, whether you believe it or not.

That was actually a sarcastic tone, sadly there is no such way to convey that properly through text.

I simply believe that they exist and that is something I choose.

Everybody should have the freedom to belief in whatever he wants and should accept that others belief in other things ...

Sure. Until they want to teach an unsubstatiated belief in schools as scientific fact.