Normal and paranormal:

[jupiviv]

I read a bit of the discussion between Diebert and guestoflogic about supernatural/paranormal events, and I thought I'd expand a bit on a post I made on that thread.

What guestoflogic(whose real name is Laird apparently) calls the paranormal basically seems to be ideas or experiences which he considers "fantastic" or "new." This is precisely what disqualifies those things from being paranormal in any way. Doesn't Laird remember anything from his childhood? In our earliest infancy, anything we see appears fantastic and new to us. But as we grow up those very things become "normal" to us.

Also, hasn't he ever read any fairy tales? In almost every good fairy tale, the characters treat ghosts, elves, imps and dragons as being a perfectly normal part of their lives. Jack the giant killer(to use an example familiar to westerners) goes around killing giants without for a moment pondering about how fantastic their existence is. The incredible power of the pied piper is used to the end of ridding a city of its rats.

It should be obvious to anyone who has pondered on the topic of the supernatural for more than a five minutes, that what is called the paranormal is essentially no different from that which is held to be normal. It is only our limited knowledge and/or exposure to it that leads us to be more in awe or fear of it, and regard it as "special", as divine or hellish or fantastical. Similarly, our substantial knowledge and exposure to the "normal" makes it appear more, shall we say "homely" to us; or conversely, as being incredibly mundane or boring. But the paranormal is not special, and the normal is not mundane. Despite all our knowledge about the normal world, there is infinitely more we do not know about it. And despite our ignorance of the unknown, our knowledge of it is infinite.

[Dan Rowden]

There's a reason physicists don't call much of Quantum Physics "paranormal", even though it's full of weird shit we don't fully understand.

[cousinbasil]

There's a reason physicists don't call much of Quantum Physics "paranormal", even though it's full of weird shit we don't fully understand.

In a nutshell. Despite the antipathy I have seen at GF toward hard science - which is after all not philosophy - it remains true that those engaged in the hard sciences are asking the same fundamental questions. What is motion? What is space? What is time? And so on.

[jupiviv]

There's a reason physicists don't call much of Quantum Physics "paranormal", even though it's full of weird shit we don't fully understand.

Maybe not physicists, but other people(the authors of science articles for e.g) do treat the "quantum realm" like it's paranormal. Every new-age spiritual guide or guru will tie in some of their ideas with quantum physics(energy fields and what not.) Actually, scientists themselves treat it like the paranormal when they take a more "philosophical" approach to it, like in the Schrodinger's cat scenario, or saying that some events in the quantum realm are completely/partially acausal.

I once heard a philosophy professor saying that scientists believe that sometimes 2 and 2 may not equal 4 in the quantum realm.

[cousinbasil]

There's a reason physicists don't call much of Quantum Physics "paranormal", even though it's full of weird shit we don't fully understand.

Maybe not physicists, but other people(the authors of science articles for e.g) do treat the "quantum realm" like it's paranormal. Every new-age spiritual guide or guru will tie in some of their ideas with quantum physics(energy fields and what not.) Actually, scientists themselves treat it like the paranormal when they take a more "philosophical" approach to it, like in the Schrodinger's cat scenario, or saying that some events in the quantum realm are completely/partially acausal.

I once heard a philosophy professor saying that scientists believe that sometimes 2 and 2 may not equal 4 in the quantum realm.

Again that vapid term "paranormal." The paranormal is as common as paramedics or paralegals. It's giving some kind of special status to either extreme of any bell-shaped (Gaussian) curve.

The "2 and 2 may not equal 4" quote has to be understood in context. The fact is 2 and 2 always equals 4; QM has its own involved mathematical structure which includes imaginary or complex numbers, the algebra of which is every bit as rigorous and well understood as 2 plus 2. The quote means simply that the results of complex number manipulation are often not what one would expect, many times they are startling. The effects they predict are then observed.

In the quantum realm, since there are complimentary pairs of observables that obey the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, certain anomalous physical situations cannot be ruled out. The most commonly discussed pair is position and momentum. Entirely equivalent is the pair energy and time. A consequence is that for sufficiently short periods of time, the physical principle of energy conservation might fail. In fact, many argue that for sufficiently short periods of time, it must fail.

If it must fail, then going into an event, 2 ergs plus 2 ergs will briefly not equal 4 ergs.

As always, in physics it is important to consider units (in this case, ergs). There would be no point in even studying physics or nature if sometimes 2 plus 2 did not equal 4 in principle and without units.

[jupiviv]

If it must fail, then going into an event, 2 ergs plus 2 ergs will briefly not equal 4 ergs.

That means there has been a change somewhere, even if we have chosen to let the quantity remain the same for whatever reason. If I change the definition of the first "2" in 2+2=4 to "1", but still want to call it "2" for whatever reason, then 2+2 will be 3.

[DimWitted]

The word "Paranormal" is kind of like "Super Natural." Obviously nothing that exists can be super natural. For if it exists then it is part of "nature" and therefore is "natural" not "supernatural."

In my experience, when someone describes an event as "Paranormal" they mean that something has occurred that seems to defy our current collective understanding of what is possible. Unfortunately, more often than not, the person describing a paranormal event has a crackpot theory to explain the phenomenon that they support using the following logical fallacy:

The event A cannot be explained using humanities current rules of what can and cannot occur / exist.
I can explain event A with argument B.
Since no one has postulated an argument C that explains event A, only argument B exists.
(Here comes the fallacy) Since argument B is the only explanation, it must be correct.

The assumption that the lack of an alternative explanation provides credence to an existing explanation is pure poppycock.