• 13 Posts
  • 350 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: March 16th, 2024
  • Lumisal@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts?
    22·
    14 hours ago

    I believe in it, but only because things have occurred to me that cannot be explained by science.

    And even those that have occurred to me I doubt some of, but those that happened to me and those with me simultaneously? That I have a harder time explaining.

    Just 2 examples I can think of, out of multiple:

    Tap for spoiler

    First was my computer turning on at night (this was awhile back and that old computer was loud and had a bright blue power light). The first night it didn’t scare me - I thought maybe the power tripped or something and that somehow turned on the computer (it was connected to a power strip with a fuse switch to protect it from surges). I turned off the power strip switch and just went back to sleep. I would just turn it back on in the morning.

    Second night, it happened again. Woke up to it on. Thought maybe Windows had a virus or something (Windows 7 at the time, upgraded recently from Vista) and maybe it wasn’t actually shutting down. Just turned it back off. Next day, take a look, can’t find any malware, shrug.

    Third night, again. Same routine. Except, the monitor was on standby this time too. Just told myself I probably just forgot to switch off the monitor, even though it has a bright orange light that is on when on standby. Thing about me is even as a preteen, I had difficulty sleeping with any lights on. But still, maybe somehow missed it. Next day I reinstall Windows cleanly.

    4th night, same routine. Monitor was also on again. A little eerie but maybe just forgot again.

    5th night, same. Except, when I go turn off the power strip switch, I noticed something I had momentarily forgot: I had completely unplugged the power strip to the wall. There was no power running through it. Yet both it and the monitor were powered on.

    Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s very reasonable at that point in time, to start freaking out a bit, because while my knowledge of physics at 13 wasn’t that great, even to this day I don’t know how a computer and monitor can stay on without being connected to a power source, much less turn on in the first place.

    I did not sleep there that night. But, the next morning, I did investigate. Everything was off by then. I tried pressing the power switches on the computer and monitor. Nothing. The power strip was indeed still disconnected. I even opened up the computer in case someone somehow in my household where only I was tech savvy or the government put a battery inside to remotely turn it on for some reason. Nothing, hardware was normal. I convinced myself I must’ve been dreaming. I turned the monitor screen to face the wall though anyway.

    Except it happened again on the 6th night. And this time the screen wasn’t on standby but on. How did I know? Not only was it emitting a grey light onto the wall it was facing, but the switch light was green. You had to press a button to turn on that monitor. And I had not plugged that computer back. It still had no power.

    I’ll admit, I wasn’t brave enough to turn the monitor around and see what was on the screen. Maybe you would, but again, I had, at that point, other experiences happen to me in the past. This one just had more physical proof.

    I did, however, go wake up my dad and asked if he saw that the computer was on. He did indeed see it was on. Therefore, I now know I’m not just dreaming it. I told him to go unplug it, since he didn’t know it was already unplugged, just to be sure. He went, froze, and said it’s not plugged in. He thought I was messing with him, I told him no, this has been happening and in wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me seeing this. We exited the room.

    Next day we got rid of the computer, and I got a new one.

    Tap for spoiler

    This other example is much shorter, but basically me, my aunt, mom, and 2 cousins were celebrating my cousins birthday. His birthday, coincidentally btw, is on Halloween. After he blew out the candles on the cake the lights began to flicker, and a glass statuette of an angel my aunt had on a shelf flew at us and cut his sister on the face as it exploded against the wall. Then the lights turned off only in the dining room and kitchen. There was a pale woman suddenly in the kitchen wearing a black dress with red high heels, brown hair, and a yellow flower pinned on her dress we all saw and confirmed with each other later. The lights then turned back on.

    They are not the type to play that kind of prank. After that happened, me and my cousins on 3 said at the same time what we saw. My aunt and mom said they saw the same thing. This I also cannot explain. It’d be one thing if we said different things, but we didn’t.

    With all that said, despite everything that’s happened to me, ironically I’ll be the biggest skeptic you’ll meet when something strange does happen, or when watching those ghost videos or such. I think the grand majority of ghostly sightings are probably just hypnogogic hallucinations. I think the huge majority of online videos and photos are faked, and explain how they can be faked easily (helps that I worked in one of those Halloween houses setting things up).

    I don’t think belief in the paranormal is by default irrationality, and I personally cannot state that without being a hypocrite after what has happened to me. I think belief without skepticism is, however, irrational. If anything, my experiences pushed me heavily into the sciences growing, looking for possible explanations for them.

    And therefore to me, it is only logical for someone who has not experienced something unexplainable in any possible way to by default doubt the paranormal. That should be the default. Everyone should be a skeptic until it happens to you.

    But it’s also left me pondering - how do you, rationally, test for these things? If they are actually uncommon - the true paranormal events without explanation - how would you go about setting up an experiment? Nevermind getting enough samples to test for - most of these things just happen suddenly. A lot of events that are actually unexplainable happen without warning, with no ability to control when it might occur. And that’s before adding in that some of these things might have the possibility of human level intelligence and/or be malicious.

    I think something is occurring in regards to the paranormal events. I just don’t think we have the technology yet to figure out what. Sure for now we have names like ghosts and ghouls and so on. But maybe eventually in the future we’ll be able to explain the things even better - particularly the ones without current explanation I’m referring to - and then it’ll just be another thing, much like miasma simply became bacteria and viruses and so on

  • Lumisal@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parentsEnglish
    101·
    5 days ago

    No, what’s messed up education in Finland is that it’s much, much harder now to fail and hold back a student. The semi-equivalent of the USA’s No Child Left Behind policy.

    Schools here in Finland still use plenty of books, and at least they still teach how to use computers, like typing lessons, unlike the USA.

    Here in Masala they even started teaching classes about detecting AI use, it’s usage in propaganda, and privacy on the internet plus usage of AdBlockers in elementary school. My wife gave the lessons - though she changed it up on the second one after seeing that kids don’t really care about this stuff much unless framed differently, like “you can watch YouTube without ads” rather than “it’s your legal right to not have ads as children” and “Linux has many many free games” for example.