[extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence

[Max M]

Chris Phoenix wrote:

> The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd
> been trying for a year to forget.  One evening last summer, my wife
> suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain
> before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I
> could rub her back (and this had never happened before either).  When I
> started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there,
> the more I want to cry?"  A few minutes later, the pain went away.  And
> a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a
> motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower
> ribs had been run over.


"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" - "after the fact, therefore because of the 
fact"

It is very ordinary to think like that. When things happens 
simultaniously that they are in some way related.

That is the way our brain naturally reacts, because it has historically 
given us a greater chance of survival. After all you will not be given 
many chances to create a statistical analysis, showing if a predator 
really is dangerous or not.

But it is like a lottery winner saying "I have never played Lotto 
before, but a hunch made me do it. And I won. That must be proof of the 
supernatural."

When enough random events take place, impossible combinations will 
happen. And lotto winners do win.

We are about 6 billion people on the planet. Living about 100 years. So 
I guess that about 60 million people die worldvide every year. Deaths 
are a traumatic experience that we remember well. We also naturally 
think back to "what was I doing when my loved one died?"

And with the minds affinity to link events together, we will try and 
link everything we can with a death.

That is why there are many stories of preminiscence. They are just not 
real. Rather they are examples of random events happening at roughly the 
same time, and then being "connected" by our brains.


regards Max M