Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Terr_ 603 days ago
I have the perfect comic for this.

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/495

On a more practical level, there's a distinction to be made between (A) whether there is something unusual and detectable, versus (B) whether it supports a huge extra set of supernatural baggage.

This distinction is especially important in the related field of UFOs.

1 comments

That's a great comic, and that's where I sit.

Appreciate the comment, but what would (B) involve?

As I see it, it's all EMF (could be picked up from anywhere), no mass spectrometers, no actual science.

Well, I suppose evidence for the trickier (B) would be if the inexplicable EMF signal also had information telling the widow exactly where to dig in order to retrieve her late husband's buried treasure, or it clearly predicted future events, etc.

That would be in contrast to weird measurements that can't be explained with current science... Buuuut it's a sine-wave that only occur when the neighbors are running their microwave oven. A physicist might get an interesting paper out of it, but it wouldn't upend our understanding of life and death.

Yea agree. It's always something. Rays from the sun, a phone mast or something else. But what signals could be sent that are provable? Even if a ghost told you where to find the money. No one would believe you.