"Falling through your bed"

[BrainMan]

I always thought part of being a scientist was keeping your mind open...

 

 

Nah, there are the freaks in the philosophy departments for that. Scientists are skeptics my friend. Skeptics...

[mossoi]

I would love to believe in the mind having abilities like premonition and such like but while there is no solid evidence I am unable to do anything other than dismiss it.

 

There is a great book called Innumeracy (can't remeber the authors name and I can't find the book at the moment) that discusses the probability of coincidence and how the human mind blows coincidence out of proportion.

 

Two examples:

 

Using America as an example - The probability of any adult that you stop in the street anywhere in the country knowing somebody who knows somebody that you know (ie. two people in between yourself and them) is 0.99.

 

For there to be a 50% chance of any two people in a room having the same birthday there only needs to be 30 people in that room.

 

Coincidence is a lot more common than we think.

[Rasori]

Is MORE common than we think, but there still is a percentage of 'coincidences' that COULD be more. From what I've been taught, you don't dismiss a concept until there's something that disproves it entirely. On the other hand, you don't completely accept a theory until you have sufficient evidence to support it, but the idea stands that you should at least accept the POSSIBILITY of these things.

[YT2095]

I`de agree with that point 100%,

there`s a middle area of total uncertainty on both sides, and at such a point there can be no opinion correct or false, as by nature of the uncertainty ellement it must remain only an opinion.

 

fact is there`s no SOLID infallable evidence either way

[matter]

I'll describe my classic sleep paralysis.

 

One day after I got home from highschool I got on my bed and layed on my back with my hands above my head. It was the afternoon and light was coming in through the windows. One of my family members was in the kitchen right outside my room. I was very tired and dozed off.

 

Next, I was laying in my bed unable to move. The light and time seemed to be exactly the same from when I fell asleep. Someone without a face walked into my room and up along side my bed. They put their "knee on my chest" and pushed down. The feeling was very strange but I wasn't scared. It felt like a strong vibration and that they were pushing me down through the bed. The person walked out of the room backwards and came in and repeated two more times. At that point I knew I was in a paralysis because I had read an article about it. After the person disappeared I layed there looking around the room, trying to move my limbs. Next I heard talking in my ears but couldnt understand what was being said. That continued for a few seconds, and after followed a buzzing noise. At this point I knew the dream was coming to an end, and slightly could move my finger. In a jolt I could move my whole body, and sat up, waking myself from my dream. It was pretty cool.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

THAT WAS WEIRD!

Last night, I had a dream that someone was going around poisoning people, and I was one, so I get up and walk to the door (in my dream). It looks exactly like it normally would. I go to my bed, sit down, and suddenly my hands start going around and walloping my pillow. I sit them on my chest, with this really weird feeling. Soon it happens again, till I wake up and look at my watch. It was 1 AM.

[mossoi]

matter - that's very similar to a lot of experiences people have. The pressure on your chest is believed to come from the fact that your breathing is much slower than usual as you are in a sleep state and you concious mind is unsuccessfully trying to speed it up. The vibrations and buzzing are also commonly linked to astral travel.

 

Interestingly I used to have a very similar dream when I was young but the faceless person was instead a flashing light. That too would come and sit on me 3 times before leaving me in peace to sleep. It became quite a ritual as it happened regularly and I would be waiting when it came.

 

Has anybody experienced somebody close to them calling their name when they are in that state? I get that quite often and I know of other people who do.

 

I'm finding this discussion very interesting - I'm tempted to start a discussion board dedicated to studies of sleep - do you guys think it's worth it?

[psi20]

I think it's worth it. Also, I've had my experience with the faceless one. Haha if that's who you want to call it.

It wasn't a dream though. Might have been a hallucination right after waking up. I don't know the exact term. Is it hypnagogic?

I was a little kid. I called my dad because I needed to use the bathroom and I was scared since it was dark. My dad came. He was standing in the door way of the bedroom since the bathroom was adjacent to the bedroom. I went in. The bathroom door was open so I could make sure my dad was there. I turned the bathroom light on. I peed. I turned to look if my dad was right there. Then I was a shadow of someone my size and height run across the door way out of the bedroom. I was somewhat scared. I thought it could be my sister. Then I flushed the toilet. Strangely, when I went to see if my dad was in the doorway a second later, he was already in bed. And so was my sister.

It could've been a ghost.

[BrainMan]

From what I've been taught, you don't dismiss a concept until there's something that disproves it entirely.

 

 

The problem is that nothing can ever be disproven entirely. The question is: "what is reasonable to believe?" I can make up a million stories of tiny pink unicorns living in my nostrils or magic people controlling my thoughts. But I shouldn't accept this as a reasonable possibility. For something to be reasonable, it needs to explain (ie organize) experience. In addition, to be science at all it needs to be able to make some kind of testable prediction. I am of the opinion that predictive ability is what it means for something to exist.

 

If you can't show predictive ability of what you claim, then you might as well be talking about the magical pink unicorns controlling your thoughts. Even if commonsense explinations organize your own experiences, prediction is what allows objectivity and correction.

[Rasori]

You know about the unicorns too?

 

LOL

 

I'm obviously not experienced enough to carry on a full blown argument, so I'll just end it with that.