Joseph Smith, Tucker Carlson and Elder Finster

[Kishkumen]

I don't know whether anyone has properly studied this, and I'm not even sure how one would go about doing that, but it seems plausible to me that human brains are kind of always spring-loaded to recognize another human presence in whatever is happening. We have evolved as social animals, with other humans around us most of the time, doing things. So a lot of the time the explanation for anything unusual in our environment is going to be that some other human did something to cause it.

One of the leading causes of faint noises we hear is going to be human whispering. One of the leading causes of any moving glow or shadow is going to be some human moving around. So after millions of years of hominids living with that, I reckon there must be some part of our brains that is always ready to fling up its hand like the keener in class and shout, "I know, I know—it's a person!"

When we're wide awake, we're probably getting enough clear information about things around us that we don't have to guess much about what is happening. If the light is dim and we're sleepy, however, then maybe guesswork steps into the informational void, and that ancient keener part of our brain shouts its guess that a person is there, or at least something person-ish. That's my hypothesis, anyway. It amounts to a version of the "undigested potato" theory, except that it doesn't rely on any particular food items, digested or not.

I think it is true that we are hard wired to assume human/anthropomorphic agency first.

[huckelberry]

I saw a pale transparent figure more like a geometric totem than like Patrick (name slipping my memory at the moment). I am unsure why I felt it was a conscious human like awareness. I thought that and told it to leave my room. It did.

Semi dream experiences like this are pretty common.

You mean common for you, right?

Well it happened to me one time not more.

[dantana]

And so anybody who claims to have had an encounter with a disembodied spirit is making it all up, and should prob. have their knuts cut. Just on general principle.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=154480

Just a wee follow up to this. I'd say that, by and large, interactions with dead people, spirits and the like occurs through NDE's, or the viewer is in an altered state. That, interactions where a person claims to actually shake hands with a dead guy in person is pretty rare. In fact, the only instances of this I can think of off the top of my head is Joseph, Ollie, David Koresh and that super special AP guy on my mission. With all of these being for self-promotion.

So, that then is the reason for the rather harsh penalty I recommended. Obviously this isn't a one size fits all scenario, as I'm sure there are guys like Huck, et al. who are not making up their experience for self promotion purposes.

How does one tell who is lying and who isn't you ask - Well, if the next words out of his mouth right after - I talked to god last night, are - here is what he told me to tell you: turn over your wife to me and trot yourself of to Toppenish for a ten year mission else it's the everlasting napalm drip for you.

[malkie]

I don't know whether anyone has properly studied this, and I'm not even sure how one would go about doing that, but it seems plausible to me that human brains are kind of always spring-loaded to recognize another human presence in whatever is happening. We have evolved as social animals, with other humans around us most of the time, doing things. So a lot of the time the explanation for anything unusual in our environment is going to be that some other human did something to cause it.

One of the leading causes of faint noises we hear is going to be human whispering. One of the leading causes of any moving glow or shadow is going to be some human moving around. So after millions of years of hominids living with that, I reckon there must be some part of our brains that is always ready to fling up its hand like the keener in class and shout, "I know, I know—it's a person!"

When we're wide awake, we're probably getting enough clear information about things around us that we don't have to guess much about what is happening. If the light is dim and we're sleepy, however, then maybe guesswork steps into the informational void, and that ancient keener part of our brain shouts its guess that a person is there, or at least something person-ish. That's my hypothesis, anyway. It amounts to a version of the "undigested potato" theory, except that it doesn't rely on any particular food items, digested or not.

During a couple of summer vacations from university I drove a tractor/tanker combo in an explosives factory.

It was fairly common, in the afternoons especially, for the sound of the tractor engine to "play" music by The (New) Seekers.

However, I doubt that my teenage crush on Judith Durham had anything to do with this phenomenon.