Truth poll

[ciphergoth]

I should really post this on a Monday but I might as well do it now. A whole bunch of assertions to do with truth that it occurred to me to poll about...

[Poll #1365485]

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Er, do they suggest anything or don't they?

I'm fortunate enough to suffer (eh?) from occasional lucid dreams, to the point that I sometimes have to ask if a particular conversation or event actually happened. It's perfectly clear to me, therefore, that the brain has an ample capacity for self-delusion.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence of something whose presence would be expected to cause evidence. Of course then we chase down a hole where the characteristics of the supernatural conform to fit the absence of evidence - mysteriously, ghosts never bother to do their thing in front of anyone with a camera - and that's an invisible pink unicorn.

The leap from "sometimes weird shit happens" to "sometimes weird shit happens and it's not just the brain playing brain tricks" is a large one; the leap from "well, it _might_ be ghosts", in the sense that there _might_ be a flying spaghetti monster, to "the ghost hypothesis has any actual evidence for it and is worthy of examination" is a huge one.