Is Personal Experience Reliable?

[eight bits]

Stubbly

There probably isn't much belief change on an internet forum, but people do try, so it seemed worthwhile to comment on how someone might go about it.

WCF

Does this mean that the non mundane interpretation is ALWAYS wrong?

No, but it does explain why, if you're only going to examine one alternative to "something wonderful happened," then you would do well to choose something ordinary and usual - mundane, if you prefer.

How am I supposed to accept that?

Accept what? You told me it was a dream. Why wouldn't you dream about talking to another dream character?

As for statistical matters, there are many different inferential objectives or concerns. Over-all accuracy (the number of correct guesses compared to the total number of guesses), sensitivity (accuracy when the hypothesis of interest is true), specificity (accuracy when the guess is that the hypothesis of interest is true) ... and more complicated criteria as well.

You seem to be concerned that if we aim for over-all accuracy, then we never guess the unusual, even if it is ever true. OK. That explains why we often aim for other things instead.

Example Real life and mundane. Smoke detector. In many settings, a smoke detector will have more false alarms than detected fires (if any), sometimes many more. To achieve best overall accuracy, I should remove the batteries and keep them out. Why is that a stupid idea? Because I am not trying to achieve best overall accuracy, but rather I am looking for good sensitivity, and will tolerate a less than tip-top specificity to get it. Just about all "error shapings" must come at the expense of lower over-all accuracy, and this example follows suit. Error shaping is typical of real science and engineering.

[Stubbly_Dooright]

Stubbly

There probably isn't much belief change on an internet forum, but people do try, so it seemed worthwhile to comment on how someone might go about it.

Awwwww, got ya!! And yeah, that does make sense pertaining to the topic on hand. Interesting point of view on that. Thanks

[+Sherapy]

At what point is a personal exsperience no longer personal. If we take an event like Fatima. Or let's say 10,000 people around the world without might interact with each other dream of the same figure. Is it really still personal at that point or are we dealing with a different phenominon all together?

What if a personal experience involves material verification?

False memories, sleep issues, congealing circimstances, flase presence. I have seen the studies and stories. The falacy here is to be tempted to assume an event falls into one of these categories because it CAN happen. The other side of the coin is to assume a paranormal or strange event. The cognative bias being that one is a believer (or pron to) so takes a non mundane personal view. While the non believer a mundane one. Both are assumptions, but the mundane view statistically has a much greater chance of being right.

Does this mean that the non mundane interpretation is ALWAYS wrong? Well. I Have seen many of the studies above or at least read about them. Usually mundane interpretations are assumed long before the study or experiment. This creates obvious bias. I can get into details if you like, but when you actually take a critical look at what is happeneing you realize that if indeed there were non mundane explanations for an event they would be baried by mundane speculation, rhetoric, and assumption by mere fact that something non mundan, nearly by definition, cannot be statistically relevant. The irrelevancy of far flung statistical data points cannot fit into scientific interpretation by sheer virtue that scientific interpretation is expressed in statistical relevancy. Those only accepting relevancy can never accept something that does not fit into that relevant box. In way it's a form of fundamentalism, and people can get very creative to find explanations that fit into their own boxes. ---- probably my favorite of all time is the exsplanation that the white light durning NDEs must be a memory of comeing down the birth canal and being exposed to light at the end of the tunnel----- A person that was supposed to actually be a scientist on some program I was watching suggested it as the probable reason for the shared human experience of a "tunnel" ;) then light. It was a milk spitting moment.

The whole flase memory craze thing is pretty silly aswell. Yes some people develop false memories for whatever reason. But by and large most memories are mostly acurate minus a few details especially if they are particularly powerful events.

I remeber being very very small and watching my sister clean my brother's bed sores out by inserting her hand that went underneith the skin in his butt cheeks. I could see the shape of her hand underneith his skin. He was dead not long after that.

No one seems to question this memory i have. Why is that? It's becaue statistically it's plausible. Especially when I tell you my brother was involved in highly covert special forces operations and was shot in the back, was a parapegic for a number of years before succumbing to bed sore infections primarily because of ****ty health care that forced my family to try and nurse him.

What about this memory. A character ( enity?) came to me in a dream just last year. She took me to place filled with people that were sort of in a infermery like place much like a skilled nursing facilty. She guided me through layers of this place until finally in a back room she introduced me to this man a very shriveled and damged man. Through understanding I was supposed to help him. When I told her I don't know what to do she told me to "keep or (was it get) him talking". She sat by some instruments she had on the Side and I tried to find something to relate to him about. I woke up. My phone was lying on my nightstand and I picked it and my first email was from a suicidal young man with Asperger's syndrome. I happen to have a lot of exsperience with people with Aspergers. In my mind the very clear words where anchored in memory on what to do first. Some extremely strange coincidences then emerged in my search for him that helped me to find him and to not stop.

What's the mundane explanation? Just a dream? A coincidence? How am I supposed to accept that? Maybe just some strange event in my life.... But no. There others...many others. Some with personal material wittnesses that remember it with me. False memories? Mundane coincidences? I think not. If you think me not a lier then your options are im completely dellusional, or a fring person. ( out of 7 billion people there is bound to be one or two that encounter a life like mine by sheer coincindence). The other option is simply unacceptable based on assumption and idealogical stance. After all isn't it far more likely that I'm simply an atention seeking lier? Dosnt that fit the bell curve far easier than some far flung data point might?

WCF, can you expand on the "statistically the Mundane view has a greater chance of being right?" How are you defining right. Thank you for both of your posts.

[+Sherapy]

Sheri

Good thread. My opinions:

It's a two-dimensional problem: forming your own beliefs and persuading other people to change theirs. For the latter, there is no substitute for evidence: an actual observation that has relevance to or "bearing" on some uncertain question. Unfortunately, we cannot directly share one another's obervations, and we sometimes disagree about bearing. Personal expereince, something which cannot be shared, is only going to persuade somebody else in special cases.

We aren't wasting our time telling our personal expereinces to others, and under ideal circumstances we aren't wasting our time listening to others'. Exchanging news and ideas about bearing can be useful for everybody involved, and being reminded that things happen which we cannot immediately explain is good for the soul. And who knows? Maybe something practical or uplifting or otherwise good and true will come of it.

The other dimension is forming your own beliefs. Your experiences are your raw material, so you're stuck with them. What you are not stuck with is your estimate of bearing. Making good estimates of bearing (more or less what people call "critical thinking") is largely a teachable, learnable skill. "Largely," because I think that some people are always going to be better at it than others - like playing the piano.

Recently, there was a hoax featuring a non-group "Christians against Dinosaurs" or CAD Everybody watching had almost the same personal experiences (except a few people who knew some of the hoaxers IRL). People who found new information shared it, and were generally believed when they brought forward new facts (like the hoax' chief spokewoman's biography).

(Interestingly, there is a case study here: the "smoking gun," the original of a photo which the hoaxers had 'shopped, was found and tweeted in mid-February, but made no actual dent in the discussion for weeks. Why that happened, IMO, is because the fellow who made the discovery, a professional media-savvy scientist, didn't follow through. Having the true photo in hand was his "personal experience," and even sharing the photo didn't change that. Maybe as the thread develops, we can talk about why that was.)

Anyway, in our own thread here at UM,

http://www.unexplain...howtopic=278264

There was an after-action debriefing, where a heated discussion broke out about how soon people should have seen it was a hoax. I had argued that some people wanting it to be true caused them to overlook many parts of the evidence that should have persuaded them almost immediately that it was false, or at least more heavily tempered their confidence. The incomparable LG, among others, engaged me on that, to an amicable conclusion. But with others, the discussion ended rough.

In my last post (currently the last post in the thread) I explained how I think analysis should have been done. The take-home messge is to consider at least one alternative hypothesis to the hypothesis you want to be true. Usually, there are many such hypotheses available, and the more you consider, the more chances you have to be right. But the more you consider, the more it costs to investigate, so there is a trade-off. BUT there is never a good reson not to consider at least one alternative before pronouncing a conclusion, IMO.

Critical thinking in three words "Compared with what?" Brief worked example:

This evidence (a Christian IRL questionning dinosaurs' existence) supports the reality of CAD!

Compared with what hypothesis? The "leading alternative" is that CAD is satire. Satire is all about things that really happen (like some Christians questionning dinosaurs' existence) - just exaggerated for a laugh (Mel Brooks' song and dance number, "Springtime for Hitler"). The evidence mentioned supports that alternative, too, and just as much as it supports the reality of CAD.

Anyway, I won't rehash the whole thing here. I'll just summarize:

- Perosnal expereince is of little use in persuding others of anything they aren't already disposed to believe, and should be of little use for that.

- Personal experience shouldn't persuade the person whose experience it is until its bearing has been critically assessed. The MINIMUM critical assessment is to entertain one alternative explanation in light of the experience. If you're only going to do one, then look for one that is an ordinary and usual thing under which the expereince might easily have happened.

I absolutely love how you spotlighted the value in personal experiences, they really do help us connect to others in the moment; I use these a lot with my kids so I can create a bridge of commonality, minimize the seperatness of age for a moment.

Thank you for such a well thought out post.

[+Sherapy]

Here is a nice little article outlining some of the issues with eyewitness account - a subset of 'personal experience'. I'll take one point made in the article as a talking point on this thread...

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This point is relevant, I think, to religious or 'spiritual' experiences. Essentially, our perception of the intent/mindset of someone we describe the experience to biases our recall of it.

Apply this to Paul's vision.

He recounts this vision to others whom he recognises have particular interest in the religious or spiritual aspect of the vision. He then naturally emphasises these aspects of it (or what he perceived as being "religious and/or spiritual") and perhaps exaggerates some detail. Possible facts of his experience that might not corroborate his experience being religious and/or spiritual are not recalled because these are not what his audience want to hear. And so a 'truth' is born.

Unlike a court-room, however, there is no cross-examination of Paul's recollection so we are only left with what may well be a biased recounting.

Great article Leo, what I would like to ask you how does reliabilty hold up when you have personal experience with the one recounting an event. For example: as a parent in some cases all you have is personal testimony of personal experiences and after you hear all sides and have a personal understanding of the people involved can you determine reliability with these factors?

How about the Psychologist who assesses for how well ones perspective lines up with what we know of realtiy. Do you think this has any validity?

Edited March 31, 2015 by Sherapy

[+Sherapy]

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang! What a great question!!!!!

I think it would probably have to do how each person's experience works in a certain context I guess. I don't know if I am a good example in the majority of believers here on UM or in the real life. And that depends on the different aspects of the paranormal experience. And I'm talking about experiences that do not seem to be experienced by everyone in the world that other experiences that have or could be experienced. You know, going to the dentist, getting married, flying a cessna airplane. (yeah, I'm a egomaniacle dolt, I did that last part)

Any how, considering when half of the experiences are grouped up on part of UM, the ghost threads and the UFO threads, and then the other part here, the religious threads, then that seems to each having a different goal in which we view our individual experiences. (And I have noticed that half who believes here, do not believe the experiences there and vice versa)

And then there is the suspension of belief of one over the other. I'm thinking as an example, I think varying individuals would believe your experience of a higher power, when you visit your church as opposed to ritually star gazing alone each night and you spot something you can't identify and it blows your mind.

You know what I always feel what these individual experiences to me(what ever they area, spiritual visits, UFO sightings, next door neighbor who died during the Reagan years coming back to say 'hi ya, how are you doing .......boooooo!') I think that each individual experiences should be at least listened too and taken in as a way add to your interest of the topic the experience is part of and add to your feelings of said topic. Nothing beats what you experienced, and I think that is the one thing that got you believing in the first place. It's just other experiences are just the icing on the cake. ( No one, really, will be able to 'be' the personality of you and vice versa) so, there is no identifiable way to know for sure if it's the truth, only your own experience is what got your through the doorway of your beliefs. (again, religious, paranormal, etc.) It's not really for getting others there, they have their own thing.

In the end, I really don't think we go to these threads, the religious ones, the paranormal ones and expect everyone to take ourselves as credible and make ourselves feel good. I think we go to give of ourselves in a shared environment. If someone else doesn't believe you, or you are the one that doesn't believe, I think that shouldn't be a problem. Each experience is still has an individual element to it and one's self confidence in that should only matter. I think each experience that is spoken about just is there to make one think, and that is all.

In the end, it's what you feel is good enough for you in your individual belief (again, ie: spiritual, paranormal, etc) because I think that there is also a personal and private way you deal with it. Although, now that I can think about it, sometimes a enormous of shared experiences to some of these topics go at least give a perspective on how to deal with them and take them seriously, but just as long as it's still considered something that still isn't viable as definite. Not like something that............................................like a pilot's log book that could show you I FLEW A PLANE!!!!

Ok, there I go again, and probably my experience there probably doesn't really help anyone!

Well, I didn't crash into anyone if that helps!!!!!!

Wonderful thoughts my friend, thank you for them. What I'd like to ask is can you expand on this quote by you "Nothing beats what you experienced, and I think that is the one thing that got you believing in the first place."

What do you mean by nothing beats a personal experience?

[Leonardo]

Great article Leo, what I would like to ask you how does reliabilty hold up when you have personal experience with the one recounting an event. For example: as a parent in some cases all you have is personal testimony of personal experiences and after you hear all sides and have a personal understanding of the people involved can you determine reliability with these factors?

How about the Psychologist who assesses for how well ones perspective lines up with what we know of realtiy. Do you think this has any validity?

Whatever validity you assign to another's recounting of their own personal experience is dependent on your estimation of the 'familiarity' of that experience.

One example: you might meet a young acquaintance of your child and be impressed with their manner. You might meet this young person on more than one occasion, and each time they are polite and apparently well-mannered, so you consider that child a 'good child'. Some time later you are made aware that child has been bullying your own at school. You ask your child and he/she confirms this as true.

Do you base your estimation of that other child now on your own personal experience or your child's?

The judgement values you use are the 'mundanity' of the claim; any 'evidence' or other testimony; and your own 'trust' in each of the people involved - including yourself. Could it be possible you have been fooled? By whom? Who is 'more reliable' in this case? Almost inevitably, we side with what we know best. 'Trust' is higher in what we are familiar with and we make our judgement call of reliability based largely on that.

Another example of a less 'mundane' claim might be of a person who claims they saw a ghost. In this case you might not use the 'trust' you have in the person to make your judgement on their claim dependent on any evidence supplied and the circumstances recounted in the story of the sighting (e.g. a claim of waking from sleep to see a ghost, then going back to sleep.) This is because the extraordinary nature of the claim vastly outweighs whether any 'trust' you have in that person is necessary for consideration of reliability.

We are familiar with the mundane, so 'trust' is the deciding factor (usually) when considering the reliability of those experiences. We are (generally) not familiar with the extraordinary, so 'trust' is far less a factor for ascertaining reliability of those claims. There we tend to use evidence and/or circumstance [of the claimant] to make our determination.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Leonardo

[+Sherapy]

Whatever validity you assign to another's recounting of their own personal experience is dependent on your estimation of the 'familiarity' of that experience.

One example: you might meet a young acquaintance of your child and be impressed with their manner. You might meet this young person on more than one occasion, and each time they are polite and apparently well-mannered, so you consider that child a 'good child'. Some time later you are made aware that child has been bullying your own at school. You ask your child and he/she confirms this as true.

Do you base your estimation of that other child now on your own personal experience or your child's?

The judgement values you use are the 'mundanity' of the claim; any 'evidence' or other testimony; and your own 'trust' in each of the people involved - including yourself. Could it be possible you have been fooled? By whom? Who is 'more reliable' in this case? Almost inevitably, we side with what we know best. 'Trust' is higher in what we are familiar with and we make our judgement call of reliability based largely on that.

Another example of a less 'mundane' claim might be of a person who claims they saw a ghost. In this case you might not use the 'trust' you have in the person to make your judgement on their claim dependent on any evidence supplied and the circumstances recounted in the story of the sighting (e.g. a claim of waking from sleep to see a ghost, then going back to sleep.) This is because the extraordinary nature of the claim vastly outweighs whether any 'trust' you have in that person is necessary for consideration of reliability.

We are familiar with the mundane, so 'trust' is the deciding factor (usually) when considering the reliability of those experiences. We are (generally) not familiar with the extraordinary, so 'trust' is far less a factor for ascertaining reliability of those claims. There we tend to use evidence and/or circumstance [of the claimant] to make our determination.

Are you saying you think that the difference between observing behaviours realistically( in line with reality) and super imposing intents onto the behavior from the perciever is a crucial distinction to make? I work one on one with kids, I base my assessment and course of action based on my personal experience with them. Do you think this is valid? How can we know? What would make me trustworthy?

Edited March 31, 2015 by Sherapy

[Leonardo]

Are you saying you think that the difference between observing behaviours realistically( in line with reality) and super imposing intents onto the behavior from the perciever is a crucial distinction to make? I work one on one with kids, I base my assessment and course of action based on my personal experience with them. Do you think this is valid? How can we know? What would make me trustworthy?

I'm not certain what it is you mean here?

I said we assess reliability using different criteria based on our 'familiarity' with either the experience or the claimant (or both).

If our assessment is based on 'trust', is that reliable? Generally, yes - unless we are being deceived.

I'm not sure I understand why you ask what would make you trustworthy? Unless that is in relation to self-assessment of your own experiences? In which case there is no difference in assessing those to assessing the experiences of others - except that we are more casually biased/deceived by ourselves.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Leonardo

[Davros of Skaro]

There're many personal experiences that I now except as explained due to educating myself in Neurology and sharpening my critical thinking skills.The experiences I now consider unexplained go through much more scrutiny but since I cannot prove them I would not hold them as absolute.

One value to my experiences are the ones with witnesses that shared the event.There's one event with witnesses that no longer holds value to me because we did not actively debunk the experience.When I was a Teen a group of us went into an old House in the Woods at night.We heard scratching coming through the Walls and it subsided when we became still, but we left soon afterwards.We where looking at it as an expected spooky encounter and did not check the Walls (that used Hay as insulation) for Critters that probably were more spooked than us.More recently I went into another old House to hear something moving up Stairs. I ran up the Steps to find evidence that it was a huge Bird that made residence thanks to a gaping hole in the Roof.If I treated it like the previous encounter it would have been the House with the Ghost upStairs.

All of us should be more critical and let go of what we want to believe to get to the truth even if it's mundane.Ancient people did not know what we know now and the thing is people today want to hold onto fantasy when there're actual fantastic things to explore.

Are there strange and unexplained things? I say yes but my estimation is that over 95% of what you hear people talk about is Bullocks.We are evolved mutated crazy Apes first before anything else while we are here despite who may protest such a notion.

[KariW]

Almost inevitably, we side with what we know best. 'Trust' is higher in what we are familiar with and we make our judgement call of reliability based largely on that.

Very insightful, and I couldn't agree more. IMO, there is a tendency to trust those whose experiences we may be "familiar" with on some level, i.e "That's happened to me or I've experienced something similiar, so it seems plausible." If you haven't had a similar experience, it may be a little harder to accept what another person is claiming. This is why when I post, I don't try to change peoples minds...as everyone has had different experiences, which affects their point of view.

Edited March 31, 2015 by KariW

[Grandpa Greenman]

LQ, brought up a great question on another thread, he asked how reliable are personal experiences when it comes: to Aliens, or God(s), or religious experiences, such as Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, or Joesph Smith the Mormon founder? I think it is a great question and I'd love to explore this with the UM posters; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the reliablity of personal experiences. All comments are valued and welcomed.

I have practiced a spiritual mystery religion for 12 years. From my experience I say no they are not reliable. The difference is between revealed religions, those with founders or a sacred book as a single source of guidance (such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism.) and mystery religions which have no single source and use personal experiences and multiple sources as a source of guidance (Earth base, some aboriginal, Druidry, most neo Pagan paths.) In revealed religions you are dependent on your source to be correct even as society changes over time and new ideals come into light. It is someone elses spiritual experience right or wrong. In mystery religions, the goal is to have the experience yourself. It too has its pitfalls. You can end up going down the wrong path if you're not careful. That is where sharing and research comes in. But your experience is your own. I am always surprised how often the experiences can end with same conclusions in different people.

[Border Collie]

I have practiced a spiritual mystery religion for 12 years. From my experience I say no they are not reliable. The difference is between revealed religions, those with founders or a sacred book as a single source of guidance (such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism.) and mystery religions which have no single source and use personal experiences and multiple sources as a source of guidance (Earth base, some aboriginal, Druidry, most neo Pagan paths.) In revealed religions you are dependent on your source to be correct even as society changes over time and new ideals come into light. It is someone elses spiritual experience right or wrong. In mystery religions, the goal is to have the experience yourself. It too has its pitfalls. You can end up going down the wrong path if you're not careful. That is where sharing and research comes in. But your experience is your own. I am always surprised how often the experiences can end with same conclusions in different people.

Like it. Entirely agree although of late I am coming to the conclusion that linking Buddhism with the Abrahamic religions, and indeed calling it a religion, is doing it no favours.

All paths will eventually lead to the same destination.

[White Crane Feather]

Stubbly

There probably isn't much belief change on an internet forum, but people do try, so it seemed worthwhile to comment on how someone might go about it.

WCF

No, but it does explain why, if you're only going to examine one alternative to "something wonderful happened," then you would do well to choose something ordinary and usual - mundane, if you prefer.

Accept what? You told me it was a dream. Why wouldn't you dream about talking to another dream character?

As for statistical matters, there are many different inferential objectives or concerns. Over-all accuracy (the number of correct guesses compared to the total number of guesses), sensitivity (accuracy when the hypothesis of interest is true), specificity (accuracy when the guess is that the hypothesis of interest is true) ... and more complicated criteria as well.

You seem to be concerned that if we aim for over-all accuracy, then we never guess the unusual, even if it is ever true. OK. That explains why we often aim for other things instead.

Example Real life and mundane. Smoke detector. In many settings, a smoke detector will have more false alarms than detected fires (if any), sometimes many more. To achieve best overall accuracy, I should remove the batteries and keep them out. Why is that a stupid idea? Because I am not trying to achieve best overall accuracy, but rather I am looking for good sensitivity, and will tolerate a less than tip-top specificity to get it. Just about all "error shapings" must come at the expense of lower over-all accuracy, and this example follows suit. Error shaping is typical of real science and engineering.

Exactly my point. You might do well in most circumstances but not all.

Accept that it wasn't simply a normal dream. Trivializing and marginalizing it is exactly the sort of behaviour in people I was discussing.

I'm not concerned about it, I'm observing it. Even in your own example. When the fire alarm goes off in the morning, you either get up to go see if there is a fire or recognize that your wife cooks breakfast every morning at this hour and will probably be waving a towl in front of it to stop it. If you smell burnt bacon you may just go back to sleep. Well one day your wife may have passed out on the floor, you smelled the bacon went back to sleep, and there is a very real fire ensuing.

You are Makeing the leap that statistical anomoleis are errors, they might actualy be results of somethis as of yet unknown. Infact many things have been discovered this way. . Now in a specific experiment they might be, but that is not what we are discussing is it? We are talking about human exsperinces.

Edited March 31, 2015 by White Crane Feather

[White Crane Feather]

WCF, can you expand on the "statistically the Mundane view has a greater chance of being right?" How are you defining right. Thank you for both of your posts.

In this case mundan would be non transcendent or non paranormal if you will, though I don't like the term much. I don't think anything is supernatural just not understood.

It does. I frealy admit most of the time things that seem non mundane do in fact have a material and easy exsplanation. It's simply a mistake, a bit like eight bits said, to take the batteries out of the fire alarm becuse it always goes off. We don't stop thinking critically just because we make an assumption abkut something. What goes up dosn't always come down.

[Grandpa Greenman]

Like it. Entirely agree although of late I am coming to the conclusion that linking Buddhism with the Abrahamic religions, and indeed calling it a religion, is doing it no favours.

All paths will eventually lead to the same destination.

A revealed religion is one based on information communicated from the spiritual world to humanity through some sort of medium, most commonly through prophets. Thus, spiritual truth is revealed to believers because it is not something inherently obvious or something one could naturally conclude.

http://altreligion.a...ed-Religion.htm

Under that definition Buddhism would I think be classified as a revealed religion, . But as usual, I might be wrong.

From what I have seen of the worlds religions, I don't believe all paths lead to the same destination. My path leads to my destination.

Edited March 31, 2015 by GreenmansGod

[Aftermath]

LQ, brought up a great question on another thread, he asked how reliable are personal experiences when it comes: to Aliens, or God(s), or religious experiences, such as Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, or Joesph Smith the Mormon founder? I think it is a great question and I'd love to explore this with the UM posters; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the reliablity of personal experiences. All comments are valued and welcomed.

I personally believe, based on my personal & work experience (ironic), as well as education (M.S. in Psychology), we must be very careful when it comes to believing someone's personal experience. I agree with another UM poster that said we must come with ignorance, not skepticism nor acceptance, right out of the gate - because our personal experience is not reliable at all.

Edited to protect the circus freaks.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Oops Monkey

[Stubbly_Dooright]

Wonderful thoughts my friend, thank you for them. What I'd like to ask is can you expand on this quote by you "Nothing beats what you experienced, and I think that is the one thing that got you believing in the first place."

What do you mean by nothing beats a personal experience?

Oh I see, ok, here I go:

Me:

You know what I always feel what these individual experiences to me(what ever they area, spiritual visits, UFO sightings, next door neighbor who died during the Reagan years coming back to say 'hi ya, how are you doing .......boooooo!') I think that each individual experiences should be at least listened too and taken in as a way add to your interest of the topic the experience is part of and add to your feelings of said topic. Nothing beats what you experienced, and I think that is the one thing that got you believing in the first place. It's just other experiences are just the icing on the cake. ( No one, really, will be able to 'be' the personality of you and vice versa) so, there is no identifiable way to know for sure if it's the truth, only your own experience is what got your through the doorway of your beliefs. (again, religious, paranormal, etc.) It's not really for getting others there, they have their own thing.

Sorry, about that Sheri. I should have elaborated more on my point there. What I was trying to say, is actually geared to what each individual believes themselves, and thus their own experiences are the clinchers in their own beliefs. Meaning, someone's belief came to be, more than likely from something that experienced to get them there. If we are talking about the paranormal, I think of Zac Baggins's words in the theme of "Ghost Adventures" in which he came to believe and be fascinated in ghosts in his own experience in facing one face to face. He believes in ghosts because an experience in such triggered it. I feel the same thing in spirituality and belief systems, there were experiences that triggered belief in a certain religion or such. Me, for example, despite being an Atheist for only a short time in my life, because of how I was secular raised, there have been moments in my life that triggered my belief in varying New Age beliefs. Whether it was from happenstance or my pursuit of it, I think is irrelevant. That the fact, I myself, experienced it makes me believe, and me only. That is my shield from anyone trying to get me to think differently. Maybe it is irrelevant to debate on whether one can say they have a right to believe what they want to believe for themselves, because I think that is evident from the beginning. I don't think you could take your beliefs and experiences and try to hammer it into someone else. Because more than likely, they have their own triggers (experiences) that brought on their own beliefs.

In how I was using this to explain my thoughts to your OP Sheri, I think is someone with their positive beliefs will always be alone in that, no matter how similar someone else's might be. I like to cherish the unique beliefs and non-beliefs everyone besides me have. I don't think it's important to get others to believe what I believe, my beliefs are what sustains me. I think what I'm trying to say, everyone will have their experiences and reasons for their beliefs, and being happy for their individual outlook is just as important as I am happy in mine. Maybe in a nutshell, no one will successfully change your mind, if you are sure of it in the first place, and your experiences that took you there is just a good example how that is. (Oh dear, I hope I am making sense. )

I guess the only time when experiences should be used in convincing others of your belief or such, is probably when you have a question about it and hope someone else has an understanding of it and answering those questions for you.

I think it's all good to want to share in something, to feel part of the situation, but different outlooks, when how things happen will have different results. I don't think anyone can escape that.

(Again, I hope I made sense )

.........................am also wondering if I ended up blubbering! ................................................Oh well..............

[Stubbly_Dooright]

Whatever validity you assign to another's recounting of their own personal experience is dependent on your estimation of the 'familiarity' of that experience.

One example: you might meet a young acquaintance of your child and be impressed with their manner. You might meet this young person on more than one occasion, and each time they are polite and apparently well-mannered, so you consider that child a 'good child'. Some time later you are made aware that child has been bullying your own at school. You ask your child and he/she confirms this as true.

Do you base your estimation of that other child now on your own personal experience or your child's?

The judgement values you use are the 'mundanity' of the claim; any 'evidence' or other testimony; and your own 'trust' in each of the people involved - including yourself. Could it be possible you have been fooled? By whom? Who is 'more reliable' in this case? Almost inevitably, we side with what we know best. 'Trust' is higher in what we are familiar with and we make our judgement call of reliability based largely on that.

May we call this the 'Eddie haskell' syndrome?!?!? :D And man, what a thing to debate and reflect on!

Another example of a less 'mundane' claim might be of a person who claims they saw a ghost. In this case you might not use the 'trust' you have in the person to make your judgement on their claim dependent on any evidence supplied and the circumstances recounted in the story of the sighting (e.g. a claim of waking from sleep to see a ghost, then going back to sleep.) This is because the extraordinary nature of the claim vastly outweighs whether any 'trust' you have in that person is necessary for consideration of reliability.

We are familiar with the mundane, so 'trust' is the deciding factor (usually) when considering the reliability of those experiences. We are (generally) not familiar with the extraordinary, so 'trust' is far less a factor for ascertaining reliability of those claims. There we tend to use evidence and/or circumstance [of the claimant] to make our determination.

I see this very well, and I think I use this, when perusing the ghost forums.

[Border Collie]

Under that definition Buddhism would I think be classified as a revealed religion, . But as usual, I might be wrong.

From what I have seen of the worlds religions, I don't believe all paths lead to the same destination. My path leads to my destination.

We'll have to pick this up sometime!

[+Liquid Gardens]

In this case mundan would be non transcendent or non paranormal if you will, though I don't like the term much. I don't think anything is supernatural just not understood.

It does. I frealy admit most of the time things that seem non mundane do in fact have a material and easy exsplanation.

How then does the statement that most of the time things that seem non-mundane do in fact have an easy material explanation, which I agree with, balance with your earlier statement on the other thread that personal experience is very, very reliable? If you just meant all personal experience, including the mundane experiences we the physical world, that would make more sense to me, but I had thought you were mainly referring to personal experience concerning the non-mundane given what was being discussed.

[eight bits]

WCF

Exactly my point. You might do well in most circumstances but not all.

Kumbaya. Unfortunately, what we're agreeing on is the nature of the human condition, and not how we can climb out of the well of ignorance we're born into.

Accept that it wasn't simply a normal dream. Trivializing and marginalizing it is exactly the sort of behaviour in people I was discussing.

I wasn't trivializing or marginalizing it. I was asking you what it was that you were complaining about being asked to accept. It was not clear to me from your description of the dream, so I asked you.

You are Makeing the leap that statistical anomoleis are errors, ...

Where did I do that? Smoke alarms will make errors, that's just a fact about them. All physically realized detectors do (including us).

they might actualy be results of somethis as of yet unknown.

Fascinating to be sure, but the example was chosen to have a definite purpose, a definite "reading," and a definite determination (in principle) for when the reading is correct and when it is incorrect. I don't complain that the smoke detector doesn't detect fairy dust, and I do complain if it mistakes fairy dust for smoke. If I really care about fairy dust, then I need a different approach altogether to study it.

Edited March 31, 2015 by eight bits

[+Sherapy]

I personally believe, based on my personal & work experience (ironic), as well as education (M.S. in Psychology), we must be very careful when it comes to believing someone's personal experience. I agree with another UM poster that said we must come with ignorance, not skepticism nor acceptance, right out of the gate - because our personal experience is not reliable at all.

Edited to protect the circus freaks.

Indeed, I love this post, geez, I almost always get expert advice on top of my own personal conclusions based in experience, I approach any new situation with a student in ignorance ( aka-coming as unbiased as possible). My Educational Psychology mentor has taught me this and most teachers that I know ( especially college professors strongly advise this). I know my subject (for instance math or literature), but how to proceed depends on who I work with, because my personal experinces are not reliable in and of themselves for the person/situation at hand, the experience often follows from the dynamic of those invovled, whether it's real time or ideological. I think sometimes exeprience can serve as a spring board for things to consider as 8ty already pointed out. Great points!

Edited March 31, 2015 by Sherapy

[+Sherapy]

How then does the statement that most of the time things that seem non-mundane do in fact have an easy material explanation, which I agree with, balance with your earlier statement on the other thread that personal experience is very, very reliable? If you just meant all personal experience, including the mundane experiences we the physical world, that would make more sense to me, but I had thought you were mainly referring to personal experience concerning the non-mundane given what was being discussed.

Another great question, LQ one I ask too. There are a small number of posters who weight personal experience as superior to all else.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Sherapy

[+Sherapy]

I'm not certain what it is you mean here?

I said we assess reliability using different criteria based on our 'familiarity' with either the experience or the claimant (or both).

If our assessment is based on 'trust', is that reliable? Generally, yes - unless we are being deceived.

I'm not sure I understand why you ask what would make you trustworthy? Unless that is in relation to self-assessment of your own experiences? In which case there is no difference in assessing those to assessing the experiences of others - except that we are more casually biased/deceived by ourselves.

You didn't mention academic knowledge in your criteria for making claims was this an oversight or intentional. What place does academic knowledge have in making claims (coming from personal experience)?

I am just asking your thoughts in general as I like the perspective you bring; I agree we are incredibly prone to self bias and self deception when it comes to our experiences.