Kai
New
It seems an unsatisfactory and frankly, kind of arrogant, intolerant and inhuman response to people’s innocent experiences of the paranormal, down through the decades, and the centuries, to claim that they must all somehow be “confused” or “epileptic” or “fantasy prone” or (insert whatever you wish into that space). It’s not exactly a comforting observation about our species to see one group of human beings treating another group of human beings in that way.
On the other hand, and here is the complicating factor, there is little doubt…no doubt, actually, if truth be told, that the long attempt to procure what might be called indisputable evidence for the paranormal, or absolutely secure evidence, has never succeeded at any turn. As I have floated before, one can’t just ignore that elephant. Either something deliberately withholds that information or else a natural principle precludes it. But what could that natural principle be?
I have put forward the suggestion that consciousness is a phenomenon (actually, noumenon) that straddles possibilities. All “paranormal” phenomena seem strongly associated with consciousness. But then, so are some phenomena usually taken to be non-paranormal like “memory,” “intention” etc.
Simple or naïve realism could be described as the idea that there is a single, absolutely definable “world” or “truth” out there. As I have tried to illustrate in my recent related threads, the belief in such a simple realism dies reluctantly, because it is a creature friendly to our “common sense” experience of the world.
And we can, or at any rate we think we can, procure evidence about normal phenomena which are absolutely determinating in terms of simple realism. Is this man an amputee or is he not? To answer this question we make a determinating observation. We (medically) examine his leg below the knee. No human tissue is there. The man is an amputee. End of story. And by all normal accounts, it is reasonable enough, in such a case, to take that as the end of the story.
But as soon as we press observation into phenomena problematic for simple realism, we begin to run into problems. One such phenomenon is quantum superposition or world line interference (depending on which language you want to use). It’s really just a way of speaking that doesn’t label such a thing “paranormal.” That is exactly what it *IS* in terms of a world conceived by naïve realism. When we examine the interference pattern on a double slit experiment, we tell ourselves we have evidence for this “paranormal phenomenon” and we do, after a fashion, but that fashion is not the fashion of simple realism. We do not observe the superposition directly. We infer its existence by back-reckoning.
To have absolute, unequivocal evidence for a thing in terms of naïve realism, what we are used to calling “proof,” we would need to make a determinating observation. When we alter the apparatus so that we actually find out which slit the electron went through, we are indeed making such a determinating observation. Except that now we have no “paranormal phenomeon” to discuss. Why? Because a determinating observation is an action that has to take place within one world line. In alternative words, it coerces the system to behave according to the assumptions of naïve realism.
In alternative words again…one cannot have unequivocal, determinated, unproblematic evidence of world-line-straddling phenomena from within one world line.
And here again, broadening this out, we have the problem with “proving” the paranormal. It may one day be possible to ‘prove’ these things…but if so, it will not be by protocols of naïve realism. If consciousness *(as per my claim) is space-time-possibility nonlocal, then attempts to observe it or coerce it to naïve realism are always going to fail. Conversely, attempts to find “evidence” for world-line straddling phenomena or knowledge, by means of measurements made from within a particular world line, will fail.
And this is why Aware Protocols can’t and don’t work. The assumption people are making is WRONG! And that assumption is that if NDERs “really are” gaining “paranormal” information during their NDEs or OOBEs, then if we set up a *careful enough* real-world measurement of those events, then they will be discovered to be true.
Except they won’t. Because, secretly, behind the scenes, you are coercing the cosmos in such experiments to (artificially) render itself in terms of space-time-possibility local (STP-local) behavior…and the cosmos just *isn’t* that in its deeper descriptions.
To put a specific on this. An NDER overhears a conversation that a doctor has along the corridor. Did they really overhear it? *YES*. Does it really have a “mundane explanation”: sensitive hearing, acoustic qualities of a long corridor, etc, etc. NO. They really did hear it by STP-nonlocal aptitude of consciousness. Can this fact be demonstrated by STP-local investigation? NO. That aptitude actually requires the ambiguity or cosmic behavior of there not being a “single, absolute, determinstic truth or world” out there as assumed in naïve realism, and if this is so then there is going to be no getting away from that, no matter how we protest or torture the attempt. As soon as it can be said with *absolute certainty* within World-Line-Parnia (or whatever) that the subject either DID **OR** DID NOT perceive the symbol on the card to be “X” you have collapsed the situation to a formal experimental description entirely within the terms of a naïve realism assumed to be operating from World-Line-Parnia, and (in terms of the “DID” declaration) that’s a paradox. It can’t happen. This is why simple attempts to obtain proof of the paranormal do not…and cannot, and *will not*…succeed.
The paranormal is there. But it is nested in a deeper showing forth of the nature of being than is ever going to be containable within the assumptions (and hence the experimental “tools” and information structures) of naïve realism.
Is there a solution?
Ultimately, I think only one: to create and move within new, shared probabillity swarms. A mode of investigation where certainty is going to have to be relinquished and possibility accepted. We literally have to release the octopus grip that desires control of a situation we can never fully control.
On the other hand, and here is the complicating factor, there is little doubt…no doubt, actually, if truth be told, that the long attempt to procure what might be called indisputable evidence for the paranormal, or absolutely secure evidence, has never succeeded at any turn. As I have floated before, one can’t just ignore that elephant. Either something deliberately withholds that information or else a natural principle precludes it. But what could that natural principle be?
I have put forward the suggestion that consciousness is a phenomenon (actually, noumenon) that straddles possibilities. All “paranormal” phenomena seem strongly associated with consciousness. But then, so are some phenomena usually taken to be non-paranormal like “memory,” “intention” etc.
Simple or naïve realism could be described as the idea that there is a single, absolutely definable “world” or “truth” out there. As I have tried to illustrate in my recent related threads, the belief in such a simple realism dies reluctantly, because it is a creature friendly to our “common sense” experience of the world.
And we can, or at any rate we think we can, procure evidence about normal phenomena which are absolutely determinating in terms of simple realism. Is this man an amputee or is he not? To answer this question we make a determinating observation. We (medically) examine his leg below the knee. No human tissue is there. The man is an amputee. End of story. And by all normal accounts, it is reasonable enough, in such a case, to take that as the end of the story.
But as soon as we press observation into phenomena problematic for simple realism, we begin to run into problems. One such phenomenon is quantum superposition or world line interference (depending on which language you want to use). It’s really just a way of speaking that doesn’t label such a thing “paranormal.” That is exactly what it *IS* in terms of a world conceived by naïve realism. When we examine the interference pattern on a double slit experiment, we tell ourselves we have evidence for this “paranormal phenomenon” and we do, after a fashion, but that fashion is not the fashion of simple realism. We do not observe the superposition directly. We infer its existence by back-reckoning.
To have absolute, unequivocal evidence for a thing in terms of naïve realism, what we are used to calling “proof,” we would need to make a determinating observation. When we alter the apparatus so that we actually find out which slit the electron went through, we are indeed making such a determinating observation. Except that now we have no “paranormal phenomeon” to discuss. Why? Because a determinating observation is an action that has to take place within one world line. In alternative words, it coerces the system to behave according to the assumptions of naïve realism.
In alternative words again…one cannot have unequivocal, determinated, unproblematic evidence of world-line-straddling phenomena from within one world line.
And here again, broadening this out, we have the problem with “proving” the paranormal. It may one day be possible to ‘prove’ these things…but if so, it will not be by protocols of naïve realism. If consciousness *(as per my claim) is space-time-possibility nonlocal, then attempts to observe it or coerce it to naïve realism are always going to fail. Conversely, attempts to find “evidence” for world-line straddling phenomena or knowledge, by means of measurements made from within a particular world line, will fail.
And this is why Aware Protocols can’t and don’t work. The assumption people are making is WRONG! And that assumption is that if NDERs “really are” gaining “paranormal” information during their NDEs or OOBEs, then if we set up a *careful enough* real-world measurement of those events, then they will be discovered to be true.
Except they won’t. Because, secretly, behind the scenes, you are coercing the cosmos in such experiments to (artificially) render itself in terms of space-time-possibility local (STP-local) behavior…and the cosmos just *isn’t* that in its deeper descriptions.
To put a specific on this. An NDER overhears a conversation that a doctor has along the corridor. Did they really overhear it? *YES*. Does it really have a “mundane explanation”: sensitive hearing, acoustic qualities of a long corridor, etc, etc. NO. They really did hear it by STP-nonlocal aptitude of consciousness. Can this fact be demonstrated by STP-local investigation? NO. That aptitude actually requires the ambiguity or cosmic behavior of there not being a “single, absolute, determinstic truth or world” out there as assumed in naïve realism, and if this is so then there is going to be no getting away from that, no matter how we protest or torture the attempt. As soon as it can be said with *absolute certainty* within World-Line-Parnia (or whatever) that the subject either DID **OR** DID NOT perceive the symbol on the card to be “X” you have collapsed the situation to a formal experimental description entirely within the terms of a naïve realism assumed to be operating from World-Line-Parnia, and (in terms of the “DID” declaration) that’s a paradox. It can’t happen. This is why simple attempts to obtain proof of the paranormal do not…and cannot, and *will not*…succeed.
The paranormal is there. But it is nested in a deeper showing forth of the nature of being than is ever going to be containable within the assumptions (and hence the experimental “tools” and information structures) of naïve realism.
Is there a solution?
Ultimately, I think only one: to create and move within new, shared probabillity swarms. A mode of investigation where certainty is going to have to be relinquished and possibility accepted. We literally have to release the octopus grip that desires control of a situation we can never fully control.
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