missing forums...

seems a tad bit over-dramatic... I think you were around when we lost yrs worth of posts from the old forum... life does go on.

As far as I know, nothing was lost it is still there:
http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/skeptiko-podcast-forums/skeptiko-podcast

If you would restore the deleted forums and just lock them so no new threads or posts are allowed it would show some consideration and appreciation for the members who have made this forum what it is. I think you owe them at lest that much.
 
Last edited:
I kinda get that, but that was never really my intent. I mean, I'm not interested in hosting a forum that I'm not a part of (or all that interested in). I didn't really didn't pay any attention at all to the "vibrant underbelly" until I got a couple of emails about some of the "off-topics" subject being discussed. again, I don't have to judge it in order to say that I'm not interested in hosting it.
Fair enough. Thanks for the good times. ;)
 
Alex,

I am sure this forum has been a thorn in the flesh to many people in academia and in positions of power. I feel the Pizzagate discussion is starting to get at the truth - some members here have contributed a lot of information that tends to confirm the reality of Pizzagate (IMHO). That is why I am seriously wondering if MKULTRA is real, and you are currently the target of some subtle persuasion to push you into destroying your wonderful project.

You seem to have turned against your own forum. There have been trouble makers, and I have got rid of a fair few, but by now the vast majority of people on this forum are interested in exactly what you are interested in. People like Sciborg_S_Patel, who is currently prevented from posting in the forum by your actions, have contributed enormously to the discussion, and indeed, as you acknowledge, forum members have come up with suggestions for guests on your podcasts.

The trouble with a forum that is primarily focused on the podcasts, is that it lacks the in-depth quality that this forum has built up. For example, there is a long thread (in which Sciborg_S_Patel has made great contributions) about the honesty of science. I think that is crucial to what we are talking about, and I think that huge list of dodgy science contributes immeasurably to our (your) case. You need enterprises like that to continue if you want fresh people with new knowledge to join the forum.

We both agreed that controlling the forum by open debate in the forum is a bad idea, but clearly we do need more than one person thinking about changes before they are put in place. I only heard about your plans a few days before you executed them, and I must say, at the time I thought we would exchange messages for some time before anything happened. I would suggest that we form some type of inner group of (say) the top 6 contributors, to discuss potential changes before they happen. I know it is your forum, but a lot of us have contributed a lot to make it what it is today.

I will not stay on the forum (in any capacity) if Sciborg_S_Patel is not restored to full membership. However, I am going to give you a few days to consider all this - hopefully your mind may come to recognise and resist those MKULTRA rays given a little time.

David
 
oh lordy :) this is silly.

Alex, I'm confused? 'This is silly' implies that what Dante & many others here, including me, are feeling, means very little to you, or you don't understand it. So when you talked about 'Christ consciousness' and 'Love being at the heart of things' to your guests, that was all bullshit? Did you just say those things so many times during various podcasts for effect? Or do you just not think about others when you're making decisions about the forum. Is it 'all about you'? So which is it? Has what you've been pushing all been lies, or have you learned nothing?

This forum meant a lot to me and many others, it was a place of healing for me after my stroke, a place where I learned a lot about people. There were many outpouring of emotions and sensitive posts about all sorts of things, some from very fragile people, that you just discarded without any thought except "This is not what _I _
want". If you had taken the time to read some such posts, you might have had second thoughts.

After all, we are NOT just "biological robots in a meaningless universe", are we.

As I often joke with my daughter when she does something silly, "You will here about this in your life review!" :) Who knows? But I have a hunch that you will see, and feel, this decision once again.

Do the right thing Alex.
 
Last edited:
It's clear Alex is less interested, or maybe totally uninterested in the academically respectable end of psi research, which is totally his prerogative. However those topics used to comprise the totality of conversation hereabouts, so it's no surprise people are saddened by the change. I'm not especially interested in the conspiracy end of things, though I took those discussions on board when they were a minor component in the bigger picture.

Speaking personally, I've never been able to separate the likelihood of a particular conspiracy from the paranoia (or otherwise) of its holder. Moreover, the kind of join the dots, Rorschach test, no smoke without fire approach to evil (which I most certainly believe in) promotes uncertainty which undermines the tools at our disposal to separate truth from falsehood. If something promotes paranoia it undermines the core instincts by which people live, and makes them more malleable. It would be naïve to suggest conspiracies do not happen, clearly they do, but whether there is a centralised conspiracy is unprovable and the dots of logic get further apart the more one goes down the route of absolute culpability. Particularly troubling is the accusation that has been aired here, that if one is not part of the solution one is part of the problem. That approach to truth has a vexed history.

Phenomenalists used to talk about "psychic backlash", the idea that getting too close to weird shit produces negative psychic reactions in the researcher. I don't know how much store I set in that as an idea, but the forum seems to have moved from a data lead, falsifiable, confident place, to a wary, suspicious and uncompromising one, and that change has a source. I wish Alex well in his endeavours but it's apparent to me we're in the closing stages of something.
 
People like Sciborg_S_Patel, who is currently prevented from posting in the forum by your actions

Hey? :mad:

Okay, I've been silently following the "events" of the past few days & weeks on this forum with some selfish concern regarding which direction this absolutely brilliant forum would end up taking. Let me be blunt - though I rarely participate in forums myself nowadays, I've been round the online forums block for almost 20 years now, and this forum is without doubt the "best", most informative and populated by intelligent, rational & reasonable people (of all sides of all arguments) I have ever come across and been privileged to be a member of.

I have to be be honest, though not a "debunker" or materialist, I personally was a little concerned at Linda's "banning" several years ago. I personally think this forum only benefited from the sceptical positions & arguments she took (which I entirely disagreed with, btw!). Though I don't really know what caused the "banning" or the deeper context, I thought that a little worrying.....I abhor censorship of any sort, on a personal level (though I can understand how it can potentially cause issues in a wider, social context). Anyways, more recently, the banning trend seems to have got much worse, several long time and respected members banned for who knows what! Very worrying! :(

But, for goodness sake, Sciborg_S_Patel has also been "prevented from posting"? :eek::mad::(:eek: Might as well shut the lights out, I cannot even begin to comprehend who would ever want to post here again if someone like SSP has been banned! It could be absolutely anyone else next!

Re. the removing of sub-forums? Wow. Just, Wow. I don't recall if I personally ever posted stuff there, but I know for sure there are dozens of posters who have contributed hours and hours, tons upon tons of exceptionally interesting, informative & relevant posts, comments & links which I thought would be there for the foreseeable future. To just delete them without consultation, warning or even notification?

Wow.

Anyways, I just wanted to say a very big thank you to all those who did spend hours contributing to those threads. I, for one, really appreciated & enjoyed a lot of the resources there.

But what has gone wrong?

I think the title of the latest podcast - Pizzagate - may be a good indicator of the "mental space" these kind of actions are coming from. Ahh, let's talk "conspiracies", a seeming favourite of many on this forum.....

Pizzagate? I saw all the pieces of art, the "coded emails" several months ago now - something that is collectively and imo humorously called "evidence" by some. This is an example par excellance of pareidolia imo, the reflection of one's own inner mindset upon external reality, a Roscharch test. The art is completely innocuous, imo, strain as I might to project "paedophilia" into it, I just couldn't. The "coded" messages - as at least one other person on this forum has said - can mean absolutely anything and is nothing at all unusual for a group of friends to communicate like that, and my own emails & text messages to friends over the past 25 years could just as easily be interpreted in the same way - despite neither children or sexuality of any sort being the subject of those texts & emails. Yes, people create their own - often very odd - language, phrases & terms within very small social groups that nobody else can recognise or understand.

Btw, before any clichéd responses are made; I am not afraid to look these subjects, I do believe in SOME "conspiracies", I believe it's obvious there are SOME "paedophile rings" (for eg. the most & indeed ONLY shocking thing - for me - about any and ALL of the claims of historic paedophile abuse by Jimmy Saville, pop stars, TV stars & politicians in the UK was just how seemingly surprised and shocked some people were by it!! I thought it was obvious, myself, that these things would be going on. That whole thing was a "cleanse" from society of these terrible historically acceptable - and no doubt widely known - events, not some new revelation....). My point is merely that, in this case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest it's happened here! (PS, as someone who has studied in tremendous depth and practiced occult & tantric practices throughout history and from all across the world for some 30 years - I'd be surprised if there's much if anything in this domain I'm not aware of - I can only smile at the attempted connections between the occult and paedophilia as it's such an uniformed & clichéd perspective with little to zero evidence to support it, Crowley's attempts at bombast aside!)

9/11? Ahh, here's my own conspiracy theory for you - one that rarely, if ever, is mentioned! On 9/11, 19 Saudi Arabian nationals flew several planes into several US landmark sites killing thousands of innocent people. These Saudi nationals were radicalised by a particularly virulent form of Islam called Wahhabism, extremely popular in Saudi Arabia due to the West's, specifically USA's, unqualified support of an obscenely rich monarchy which does not distribute it's nation's wealth or jobs "fairly", leaving large amount of the population in relative poverty making them far more prone to be "mindwashed" by today's modern, ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabism. Of course, every single aspect of these facts, including bin Laden's involvement, is heavily documented and supported by huge amounts of data.

However, despite this terrorist attack by 19 Saudi nationals, Saudi Arabia is, almost from the very first realisation this was an almost exclusively Saudi attack - bin Laden was also Saudi, of course - not mentioned in context of the attacks ever again. Instead, war is launched on Afghanistan & Iraq (which had no connection to 9/11 whatsoever).

It is a strange "conspiracy theory" that 9/11 wasn't committed by these 19 Saudis or bin Laden & Al Qaeda - because one really has to ask what was the purpose of "pretending" it was a Saudi attack? Bad planning? A typo on the "conspiracy instructions" where 19 Iraqis was replaced with 19 Saudis?

And here's the conspiracy kicker! 16 years later after pretending (by the world's governments, media & "conspiracy theorists") Saudis were not involved in that terrorist attack, along comes a champion of many of those who believed Osama & 19 other Saudis did not commit 9/11 - Donald Trump! And, what is one of the first things he does after becoming president? He goes over to Saudi Arabia making multi-billion (110 billion?!) dollar deals with Saudi Royalty and making exceptionally ironic & absurd inferences about "state sponsored terrorism" in Qatar:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...jared-kushner-uae-rex-tillerson-a7824701.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/07/saudi-arabia-donald-trump-qatar-conflict

Etc etc. As I've always said, conspiracies abound in reality. But very rarely are the ones labelled "conspiracy theories" the REAL ones.......

And, that is one of my points I guess. Imo Alex has killed the value, even historic, of his podcast and certainly the forum, by associating him & itself with, I'm sorry, but what can only be called absurd and ridiculous theories with absolutely no substantiating evidence whatsoever like "pizzagate".

So, what's the point of this post? I dunno. Guess it's my way of saying what the f@#k happened to this podcast and forum!?!?!? And, Goodbye All - with all the recent forum deletions and member bannings, I think it's time for me to move on I guess, I can't even see me checking out the list without posting like I usually do.......it really does seem to have lost it's appeal....so sad.

To all the many great, upstanding posters on this forum who I've learnt so much from over the years - there's many of you on many sides of the debate, and many of you I never even talked to or "liked" or whatever.......I salute you All!!

Cheers, Manjit
 
Good grief! What is happening here? I don't get it.
AFAIK this forum is one of the best there was/is. It contained/contains a hell of a lot of very useful information and opinions, which should be preserved.
As for Sciborg_S_Patel, I agree that he has been an excellent contributor all the time, and thus should be allowed to come back.

Smithy
 
one of the great things about doing this for a while is that I've seen a lot of stuff over the yrs. I've seen many, many forum members come and go. some I really regretted losing contact with, others I did not. but I learned that everyone is kinda doing there own thing... taking what they need at the time.

so, I have a different perspective on people leaving... and I'm almost ALWAYS OPEN TO PEOPLE COMING BACK.

as for Sciborg_S_Patel, his griping and complaining got to be a little too much... I think I gave him quite a bit of leeway. so, he earned a few days in the penalty box. If he makes amends he can come back next week.
 
In my experience... all good things comes to an eventual end. I suppose this forum is no exception. As mostly a lurker ... I've learned a lot here about how the universe may actually work and about myself. The topics were rich and deep where it seem to have very few limits in regards to the subject matter. That has clearly changed now. It was a good ride. Peace out.
 
Hey? :mad:

Okay, I've been silently following the "events" of the past few days & weeks on this forum with some selfish concern regarding which direction this absolutely brilliant forum would end up taking. Let me be blunt - though I rarely participate in forums myself nowadays, I've been round the online forums block for almost 20 years now, and this forum is without doubt the "best", most informative and populated by intelligent, rational & reasonable people (of all sides of all arguments) I have ever come across and been privileged to be a member of.

I have to be be honest, though not a "debunker" or materialist, I personally was a little concerned at Linda's "banning" several years ago. I personally think this forum only benefited from the sceptical positions & arguments she took (which I entirely disagreed with, btw!). Though I don't really know what caused the "banning" or the deeper context, I thought that a little worrying.....I abhor censorship of any sort, on a personal level (though I can understand how it can potentially cause issues in a wider, social context). Anyways, more recently, the banning trend seems to have got much worse, several long time and respected members banned for who knows what! Very worrying! :(

But, for goodness sake, Sciborg_S_Patel has also been "prevented from posting"? :eek::mad::(:eek: Might as well shut the lights out, I cannot even begin to comprehend who would ever want to post here again if someone like SSP has been banned! It could be absolutely anyone else next!

Re. the removing of sub-forums? Wow. Just, Wow. I don't recall if I personally ever posted stuff there, but I know for sure there are dozens of posters who have contributed hours and hours, tons upon tons of exceptionally interesting, informative & relevant posts, comments & links which I thought would be there for the foreseeable future. To just delete them without consultation, warning or even notification?

Wow.

Anyways, I just wanted to say a very big thank you to all those who did spend hours contributing to those threads. I, for one, really appreciated & enjoyed a lot of the resources there.

But what has gone wrong?

I think the title of the latest podcast - Pizzagate - may be a good indicator of the "mental space" these kind of actions are coming from. Ahh, let's talk "conspiracies", a seeming favourite of many on this forum.....

Pizzagate? I saw all the pieces of art, the "coded emails" several months ago now - something that is collectively and imo humorously called "evidence" by some. This is an example par excellance of pareidolia imo, the reflection of one's own inner mindset upon external reality, a Roscharch test. The art is completely innocuous, imo, strain as I might to project "paedophilia" into it, I just couldn't. The "coded" messages - as at least one other person on this forum has said - can mean absolutely anything and is nothing at all unusual for a group of friends to communicate like that, and my own emails & text messages to friends over the past 25 years could just as easily be interpreted in the same way - despite neither children or sexuality of any sort being the subject of those texts & emails. Yes, people create their own - often very odd - language, phrases & terms within very small social groups that nobody else can recognise or understand.

Btw, before any clichéd responses are made; I am not afraid to look these subjects, I do believe in SOME "conspiracies", I believe it's obvious there are SOME "paedophile rings" (for eg. the most & indeed ONLY shocking thing - for me - about any and ALL of the claims of historic paedophile abuse by Jimmy Saville, pop stars, TV stars & politicians in the UK was just how seemingly surprised and shocked some people were by it!! I thought it was obvious, myself, that these things would be going on. That whole thing was a "cleanse" from society of these terrible historically acceptable - and no doubt widely known - events, not some new revelation....). My point is merely that, in this case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest it's happened here! (PS, as someone who has studied in tremendous depth and practiced occult & tantric practices throughout history and from all across the world for some 30 years - I'd be surprised if there's much if anything in this domain I'm not aware of - I can only smile at the attempted connections between the occult and paedophilia as it's such an uniformed & clichéd perspective with little to zero evidence to support it, Crowley's attempts at bombast aside!)

9/11? Ahh, here's my own conspiracy theory for you - one that rarely, if ever, is mentioned! On 9/11, 19 Saudi Arabian nationals flew several planes into several US landmark sites killing thousands of innocent people. These Saudi nationals were radicalised by a particularly virulent form of Islam called Wahhabism, extremely popular in Saudi Arabia due to the West's, specifically USA's, unqualified support of an obscenely rich monarchy which does not distribute it's nation's wealth or jobs "fairly", leaving large amount of the population in relative poverty making them far more prone to be "mindwashed" by today's modern, ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabism. Of course, every single aspect of these facts, including bin Laden's involvement, is heavily documented and supported by huge amounts of data.

However, despite this terrorist attack by 19 Saudi nationals, Saudi Arabia is, almost from the very first realisation this was an almost exclusively Saudi attack - bin Laden was also Saudi, of course - not mentioned in context of the attacks ever again. Instead, war is launched on Afghanistan & Iraq (which had no connection to 9/11 whatsoever).

It is a strange "conspiracy theory" that 9/11 wasn't committed by these 19 Saudis or bin Laden & Al Qaeda - because one really has to ask what was the purpose of "pretending" it was a Saudi attack? Bad planning? A typo on the "conspiracy instructions" where 19 Iraqis was replaced with 19 Saudis?

And here's the conspiracy kicker! 16 years later after pretending (by the world's governments, media & "conspiracy theorists") Saudis were not involved in that terrorist attack, along comes a champion of many of those who believed Osama & 19 other Saudis did not commit 9/11 - Donald Trump! And, what is one of the first things he does after becoming president? He goes over to Saudi Arabia making multi-billion (110 billion?!) dollar deals with Saudi Royalty and making exceptionally ironic & absurd inferences about "state sponsored terrorism" in Qatar:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...jared-kushner-uae-rex-tillerson-a7824701.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/07/saudi-arabia-donald-trump-qatar-conflict

Etc etc. As I've always said, conspiracies abound in reality. But very rarely are the ones labelled "conspiracy theories" the REAL ones.......

And, that is one of my points I guess. Imo Alex has killed the value, even historic, of his podcast and certainly the forum, by associating him & itself with, I'm sorry, but what can only be called absurd and ridiculous theories with absolutely no substantiating evidence whatsoever like "pizzagate".

So, what's the point of this post? I dunno. Guess it's my way of saying what the f@#k happened to this podcast and forum!?!?!? And, Goodbye All - with all the recent forum deletions and member bannings, I think it's time for me to move on I guess, I can't even see me checking out the list without posting like I usually do.......it really does seem to have lost it's appeal....so sad.

To all the many great, upstanding posters on this forum who I've learnt so much from over the years - there's many of you on many sides of the debate, and many of you I never even talked to or "liked" or whatever.......I salute you All!!

Cheers, Manjit

Try Liberaparolado - some Skeptiko members (including me) are already here. Maybe there is something good in this new project. Time will show.

I, personally, will for foreseeable future live a double forum life, simultaneously posting on the old (Skeptiko) forum and the new (Liberaparolado) one.
 
some of you have been asking about the shut down of some of the sub-forums...
1. I think most of it is still there, but it might be a pain to go back and try to restore. If someone has a really, really compelling reason I might try.
2. as to why... well, since I have don't have much personal interest in those threads, and since I'm not trying to create/maintain some huge wide-ranging community, I decided to bring the focus back to the stuff I care about. It's a big, big internet... lots of places to discuss stuff... doesn't have to be here.

Alex, for you: if I understood correctly, deleted subforums are not erased totally - there is, with some proper effort, a possibility to restore them. So, please restore them fully. And issue a well-deserved apology for the community members whom you've wronged substantially. What you've done dealt a horrible, devastating blow to one of the best "alternative" communities on the Web. You have just turned against yourself many people with whom you had a positive and productive relationship, even if a distant one, for many years - and, sad to say, they turned against you for a reason. If it still hasn't dawned on you, I don't know what else can be said.

Just in January we celebrated Skeptiko's 10th anniversary, looking with hope to our community's future. Now these hopes are shattered. But there is still a small chance to renew them.

Alex, please, do what is right. Restore the subforums, no matter how difficult it's going to be, and pubish an apology.
 
@Alex I really think the "debate between skeptics & proponents" section should be brought back. To me the main purpose of this forum is rigorous debate between skeptics and believers, I know of no other forum that's not either full of bigotted pseudoskeptics, or new age woo believers.
My hope had been that all debate should be rigorous, and that serious sceptics should have had access to any discussion. I think the CD forum was obsolete in the sense that I did not enforce that distinction, as I told people on many occasions. However, the fact that the top level classification was obsolete, did not mean that it didn't contain valuable contents. Pruning the forum at the top level is impossibly wasteful and arbitrary.

I gradually discovered that there are very few serious sceptics, and the few that do exist on the forum mostly seem to avoid detailed debate.

I agree with Alex that the CD forum is obsolete, and ideally we need a better classification system for the various sub-forums, but with most or all of the exiting material distributed within the new system.

I'd really like this forum to go on to great things - nobody has suggested to me an alternative forum quite like it, but this can't happen by almost deliberately antagonising people. Most of the other podcast forums seem to have a scrappy comment section, but nothing like the depth of ideas we have here.

Imagine if you had contributed great swathes of material to a forum - only to find it vanish overnight. It would be like you waking up one morning and discovering that SKEPTIKO had been banned in some way, and your project was terminated!

David
 
Last edited:
as for Sciborg_S_Patel, his griping and complaining got to be a little too much... I think I gave him quite a bit of leeway. so, he earned a few days in the penalty box. If he makes amends he can come back next week.
I'm not sure he is any mood to come and ask to be let back in, and if he continues to be blocked, I have already said that I will go too. Whatever gripes he may have had (none come to mind) he has contributed swathes of stuff to this forum - which mean that people come here and can immerse themselves in a mass of content - not just listen to a podcast and view a few 3-line comments.

Maybe I'd go as far as suggest that Max_B, who was quite unreasonably rude to me, also be allowed back unconditionally. We aren't running a military camp here - we are a group of probably rather quirky individuals who can share some great ideas.

David
 
I'm not sure he is any mood to come and ask to be let back in, and if he continues to be blocked, I have already said that I will go too. Whatever gripes he may have had (none come to mind) he has contributed swathes of stuff to this forum - which mean that people come here and can immerse themselves in a mass of content - not just listen to a podcast and view a few 3-line comments.

Maybe I'd go as far as suggest that Max_B, who was quite unreasonably rude to me, also be allowed back unconditionally. We aren't running a military camp here - we are a group of probably rather quirky individuals who can share some great ideas.

David
It seems when politics and ideology are active in a discussion people loose their good manners and become uncivil. When I read SSP's comments toward Alex in the PG thread I thought he had crossed the line and was disrespectful and would probably get some reaction from Alex. Unfortunately Alexes response was quite patronizing and infantilizing. It seems to me that if we could state our opinions how ever strongly without attacking the other at a personal level it would go along way toward keeping the discourse civil. You seem to have a very good sense of that. Perhaps part of moderation could be to help clarify where people cross that line and suggest alternate ways of saying something without breaking some ones balls.

Larry
 
It seems when politics and ideology are active in a discussion people loose their good manners and become uncivil. When I read SSP's comments toward Alex in the PG thread I thought he had crossed the line and was disrespectful and would probably get some reaction from Alex. Unfortunately Alexes response was quite patronizing and infantilizing. It seems to me that if we could state our opinions how ever strongly without attacking the other at a personal level it would go along way toward keeping the discourse civil. You seem to have a very good sense of that. Perhaps part of moderation could be to help clarify where people cross that line and suggest alternate ways of saying something without breaking some ones balls.

Larry
Can you give me a link to what he actually said?

I think the point is that we do discuss a lot of emotional subjects - death, religion, pedophilia, paranormal phenomena, God, politics. We break all the rules of conversation as a matter of course - so you can't expect everything to be smooth.

I know I would say that, but I think I have tried to do exactly what you suggest! Nobody sees the various PM's that I have used to smooth over some of the rows on here!

David
 
I feel like I'm repeating myself... but here goes... y'all are bemoaning the loss of a community I wasn't a part of. I wish you all well. I wish the new forum well. I'm not all that interested in psi research (except for what is it represents in a larger sense... actually have a really cool show on that coming up). I'm not all that interested in the other discussions going on in those forums. It therefore makes no sense for me to host them and have folks email me and ask me questions about stuff that's going on there (IYKWIMAITYD).

As far as anyone who has wound up in the penalty box (like Sciborg and others)... well, this like a dinner party of sorts. I think I'm pretty tolerant of everyone's stuff (including personal snipes and disparaging comments about the show... much more so than most forums of this kind), but when it piles up day after day I ask folks to reexamine why they're here. If they come around, great... if not... well, like I said, people come and go for all sorts for reasons.

I'm reminded of a post from many yrs ago, by a very stubborn and somewhat nasty skeptic. he didn't like the mod+ system and decided, on his own, to leave. of course, he had to make a dramatic announcement like some do :). anyway, a lot of his skeptical buddies were all up in arms about how their space had been compromised and all. and he said (paraphrasing) "look, this is a small forum, on almost unnoticeable podcast, who cares." ouch... but kinda true :)
 
Last edited:
I feel like I'm repeating myself... but here goes... y'all are bemoaning to loss of a community I wasn't a part of. I wish you all well. I wish the new forum well. I'm not all that interested in psi research (except for what is it represents in a larger sense... actually have a really cool show on that coming up). I'm not all that interested in the other discussions going on in those forums. It therefore makes no sense for me to host them and have folks email me and ask me questions about stuff that's going on there (IYKWIMAITYD).

As far as anyone who has wound up in the penalty box (like Sciborg and others)... well, this like a dinner party of sorts. I think I'm pretty tolerant of everyone's stuff (including personal snipes and disparaging comments about the show... much more so than most forums of this kind), but when it piles up day after day I ask folks to reexamine why they're here. If they come around, great... if not... well, like I said, people come and go for all sorts for reasons.

I'm reminded of a post from many yrs ago, but a very stubborn and somewhat nasty skeptic. he didn't like the mod+ system and decided, on his own, to leave. but, of course, had to make a dramatic announce like some do :). anyway, a lot of his skeptical buddies were all up in arms about how their space had been compromised and all. and he said (paraphrasing) "look, this is a small forum, on almost unnoticeable podcast, who cares." ouch... but kinda true :)
It seems to me that you really, truly just don't get it. You can reopen the sub forums, lock them, and not allow posting... you would have no conversations, emails, PMs, or threads to worry about; no moderation to worry about; the information would just be accessible for those interested to read, indefinitely.

"Who cares?" Oh, I don't know, the people who've spilled hours into these forums with time, energy and thought, who don't love the idea of their work and resources just disappearing and only coming back for a few days or something, if that.
 
I feel like I'm repeating myself... but here goes... y'all are bemoaning the loss of a community I wasn't a part of. I wish you all well. I wish the new forum well. I'm not all that interested in psi research (except for what is it represents in a larger sense... actually have a really cool show on that coming up). I'm not all that interested in the other discussions going on in those forums. It therefore makes no sense for me to host them and have folks email me and ask me questions about stuff that's going on there (IYKWIMAITYD).
Everyone who is interested in ψ value it because of the larger picture it reveals. Now, you may feel that this research is old hat now after umpteen replications of presentiment and Ganzfelt experiments have been performed, but it is still the key for many newcomers - they want to tie their suspicions to a concrete scientific fact.
As far as anyone who has wound up in the penalty box (like Sciborg and others)... well, this like a dinner party of sorts. I think I'm pretty tolerant of everyone's stuff (including personal snipes and disparaging comments about the show... much more so than most forums of this kind), but when it piles up day after day I ask folks to reexamine why they're here. If they come around, great... if not... well, like I said, people come and go for all sorts for reasons.
Well dinner parties don't have penalty boxes :) Also, if you get a chance to get Gödel, Sheldrake, or Nagel to your dinner party, you are probably a little more tolerant of their foibles than someone who contributes much less.
I'm reminded of a post from many yrs ago, by a very stubborn and somewhat nasty skeptic. he didn't like the mod+ system and decided, on his own, to leave. of course, he had to make a dramatic announcement like some do :). anyway, a lot of his skeptical buddies were all up in arms about how their space had been compromised and all. and he said (paraphrasing) "look, this is a small forum, on almost unnoticeable podcast, who cares." ouch... but kinda true :)

The thing is, I think these were better described as pseudo-sceptics, and we have gradually eliminated them. Actually I don't think this is a small forum (but I can't quantify that), and it has built up its content over years - maybe it is the best in its field - someone can come here in an attempt to understand their NDE (say), and even if the current podcast is about Pizzagate, they can find tons of discussion about NDE's and videos of others describing their NDE's, discussion of Hellish NDE's, links to Eban Alexander, etc. etc.. Maybe that person is also a scientist, in which case they can turn to various scientific discussions about the phenomenon - full of links of all descriptions. They may also be amazed by our expose of bad science - and your book - the whole content builds on itself. The range of subjects we cover also makes us prominent in GOOGLE.

I'd be just as sorry to see this go, as I am sure others would be delighted to see us fade!

David
 
Last edited:
Back
Top