Differing explanations of NDE's

It's a mistake to ban anyone from the forum who fights vigorously for an opposing viewpoint. If Linda is permanently banned it will be a loss for the forum.
Nobody who wishes to honestly support any point of view will be (or has been, to my knowledge) banned from this forum.

If anyone thinks they can extract a reasonable point of view from Linda's writings here, why don't you present the case she wanted to make?

David
 
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C'mon Max. Read those two statements again; they do not contradict each other.

Those two complete sentences which I quoted certainly do contradict each other. I don't understands how you can say they don't. They should create a dissonance in most readers which is uncomfortable, and generally needs to be resolved in some way.

As for 'monstering' Linda, I earlier linked to Linda's provocative 'myths' thread, where I thought I had done just that back in 2014 :D. Lol

But after that vaccine thread where I also caught her making opposing statements... I said I wasn't gonna play anymore... as the dissonance literally made my head hurt.

I don't know whether she's aware of what she's doing or not. But she often creates Dissonance within her posts... you know, she will start her reply with summat like "I agree...", but the rest of the reply often goes on to explain how she doesn't actually agree. That creates a conflict in the reader.

Sometimes she will follow one sentence, with another that contradicts it in some way. Again, it creates dissonance in the reader. We know that dissonance is generally a way that is used/can be used, to force us into change. (Orwell used a similar concept in 1984 - 'doublethink')

I can't remember the exact psychological term, but Linda often uses negatives, rather than positive constructions. IIRC the former are also much harder to process for most people. She will often put several 'negatives' into a single argument.

She will also order sentences in ways that preferentially influence the meaning of her later sentences. The opening "I agree..." is a simple example that lowers a readers barriers to what comes next.

Anyway, Linda is all about dissonance, I honestly don't know if it's done consciously or not. But more recently I've become open minded to the idea that her replies may be deliberately constructed to take advantage of these psychological processing issues.

I'm with David anyway, I've seen sufficient evidence now to say enoughs, enough, can we stop playing this game, and just stop her posting 'permanently' on this forum.
 
These lies !!

Linda said

You are mixing up two quite different types of tasks - explicit and implicit. The imagery found in NDEs and similar experiences seems to be the result of implicit processes. NDEers haven't shown themselves to be able to perform explicit tasks, such as the one you describe above, any better than non-NDEers. They are able to describe their imagery, but they are unable to reconstruct what is out of their field of available sensory information. If you read the accounts Satori recorded, you find that the details of much of what is described is wrong with respect to information which was unavailable. There are phones in the reconstruction, but their colour is wrong. Or the sound of a fan has become a helicopter. Even Pam Reynolds reconstructed a tool which was the general shape of a dental drill from hearing the sound of a dental drill, but the visual details were inaccurate.

Can you back this comment up with some specific links?
And this :

Yeah, Dr. Mobbs is working in the field of neuroscience, and his training and experience are much more relevant to these questions than van Lommel's or Alexander's. And this shows up in the paper by Mobbs and Watts which treats the subject of neurobiological causes with more sophistication and nuance than either of the other authors

I guess this is vaguer, but Alexander is a neurologist, and had a extensive NDE - which should be slightly relevant IMHO!

Let me add one more example of a lie:
Ben Radford could be the biggest liar ever and it would have no bearing on whether psi is true.

While I am sure she would claim in some tortuous way that this statement was true, the fact is that Alex caught out Ben Radford within a podcast. He had deliberately weakened the testimony of two witnesses in a psychic detective case, and he rang them up on the spot and got them to re-state their evidence.

Let's just move on! As I say, anyone is free to discuss any of Linda's ideas. I would actually say, this thread has been more interesting after her departure than it was before.

David
 
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Can you back this comment up with some specific links?


I guess this is vaguer, but Alexander is a neurologist, and had a extensive NDE - which should be slightly relevant IMHO!

Let me add one more example of a lie:


While I am sure she would claim in some tortuous way that this statement was true, the fact is that Alex caught out Ben Radford within a podcast. He had deliberately weakened the testimony of two witnesses in a psychic detective case, and he rang them up on the spot and got them to re-state their evidence.

Let's just move on! As I say, anyone is free to discuss any of Linda's ideas. I would actually say, this thread has been more interesting after her departure than it was before.

David

David said > "Can you back this comment up with some specific links?"

I'll find where I copied it . It is 100 per cent from Linda, categorically. it is on this thread.
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/differing-explanations-of-ndes.2882/page-2
 
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Can you back this comment up with some specific links?


I guess this is vaguer, but Alexander is a neurologist, and had a extensive NDE - which should be slightly relevant IMHO!

Let me add one more example of a lie:


While I am sure she would claim in some tortuous way that this statement was true, the fact is that Alex caught out Ben Radford within a podcast. He had deliberately weakened the testimony of two witnesses in a psychic detective case, and he rang them up on the spot and got them to re-state their evidence.

Let's just move on! As I say, anyone is free to discuss any of Linda's ideas. I would actually say, this thread has been more interesting after her departure than it was before.

David

This is the CD forum! If you wanted a debate without Linda you could have taken it to one of the proponent-only haunts.
 
Can you back this comment up with some specific links?


I guess this is vaguer, but Alexander is a neurologist, and had a extensive NDE - which should be slightly relevant IMHO!

She didn't say that his view was irrelevant. She pointed out that with regard to the particular neuroscientific issues being discussed that the knowledge and experience of a neuroscientists would be more relevant than the knowledge and experience of a neurosurgeon.

People made the uncharitable conclusion that that statement was somehow disrespectful of neurosurgeons. The charitable approach is to recognize that it was saying that different specialities focus on different elements, and that it is not disrespectful to point out that certain questions hit more on the expertise of one subspeciality than the other.

It seems bizarre to not acknowledge the point, otherwise one is effectively saying that one should expect neuroscientists and neurosurgeons to do the exact same research and have the exact same focus with this cannot possibly be true.

Let me add one more example of a lie:


While I am sure she would claim in some tortuous way that this statement was true, the fact is that Alex caught out Ben Radford within a podcast. He had deliberately weakened the testimony of two witnesses in a psychic detective case, and he rang them up on the spot and got them to re-state their evidence.

You gave the example of Ben Radford lying as somehow supportive of the proposition of psi. Here, all she was saying is that even if it is true that Ben Radford lied, that is a separate question from whether psi is true. Again, I'm not sure why this needs explaining or why it should be controversial. You don't need tortuous logic. If anything, perhaps you could explain the logic of how arguing that person A lied about a discussion he had is relevant as to the proposition of whether psi is true. (This isn't even getting into whether it is accurate about whether he lied - but I'm not getting back into that discussion).

Your examples of deception and lies are paper thin David.

Let's just move on! As I say, anyone is free to discuss any of Linda's ideas. I would actually say, this thread has been more interesting after her departure than it was before.

To you. Finally we were starting a discussion of a proposition that I've been wanting to discuss forever: that of the importance of examing NDEs within the larger context of all experiences in similar situations. You seem to have unilaterally decided that the idea is nefarious and shut down that line of reasoning.

If you want to point to lies I suggest you examine whether your repeating comment that views won't be banned for content qualifies! (I won't say its a lie, because I think you believe it to be true - but it certainly quatlifies as a falsehood, because in practice it is not).
 
This is the CD forum! If you wanted a debate without Linda you could have taken it to one of the proponent-only haunts.

It's even worse. He trapped her. He invited her to propose the experiment she would want to see, then banned her for posting it. (he did the same in another thread, where he asked her her view on something and then banned her for making off-topic posts).
 
This is the CD forum! If you wanted a debate without Linda you could have taken it to one of the proponent-only haunts.
It's not her being a skeptic that causes people to get annoyed with her. She goes out of her way to annoy people and really seems to get a laugh out of causing trouble. She's one of those people that shows up at a party and everyone leaves. The NARS rule applies to Linda.
 
For what it's worth - I don't see that anyone did anything in this thread worth a permanent ban, but it's extremely frustrating to have thread after thread on this forum descent into squabbles over personalities or semantics - and that's on all of us, not one or two posters.
 
This is the CD forum! If you wanted a debate without Linda you could have taken it to one of the proponent-only haunts.
You mean it is OK to deliberately deceive if it is in the CD forum!

I think the CD vs MOD+ characterisation rather misses the point. There is such a thing as calm polite discussion that doesn't involve trickery of one kind or another, and there is the opposite - people who want to trash the discussion, or impose their view by whatever means present themselves.
For what it's worth - I don't see that anyone did anything in this thread worth a permanent ban, but it's extremely frustrating to have thread after thread on this forum descent into squabbles over personalities or semantics - and that's on all of us, not one or two posters.
If a poster get a permanent ban - particularly a regular one, it is invariably because of persistent unreasonable behaviour.

I'd also rather we could all avoid squabbles over personalities or semantics. Most people want to present an honest case, and I think it might help if people gave a little thought sometimes - am I presenting my point of view in a clear unambiguous and honest way?

David
 
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She didn't say that his view was irrelevant. She pointed out that with regard to the particular neuroscientific issues being discussed that the knowledge and experience of a neuroscientists would be more relevant than the knowledge and experience of a neurosurgeon.

People made the uncharitable conclusion that that statement was somehow disrespectful of neurosurgeons. The charitable approach is to recognize that it was saying that different specialities focus on different elements, and that it is not disrespectful to point out that certain questions hit more on the expertise of one subspeciality than the other.

It seems bizarre to not acknowledge the point, otherwise one is effectively saying that one should expect neuroscientists and neurosurgeons to do the exact same research and have the exact same focus with this cannot possibly be true.



You gave the example of Ben Radford lying as somehow supportive of the proposition of psi. Here, all she was saying is that even if it is true that Ben Radford lied, that is a separate question from whether psi is true. Again, I'm not sure why this needs explaining or why it should be controversial. You don't need tortuous logic. If anything, perhaps you could explain the logic of how arguing that person A lied about a discussion he had is relevant as to the proposition of whether psi is true. (This isn't even getting into whether it is accurate about whether he lied - but I'm not getting back into that discussion).

Your examples of deception and lies are paper thin David.



To you. Finally we were starting a discussion of a proposition that I've been wanting to discuss forever: that of the importance of examing NDEs within the larger context of all experiences in similar situations. You seem to have unilaterally decided that the idea is nefarious and shut down that line of reasoning.

If you want to point to lies I suggest you examine whether your repeating comment that views won't be banned for content qualifies! (I won't say its a lie, because I think you believe it to be true - but it certainly quatlifies as a falsehood, because in practice it is not).

Why are you so upset ?
 
It's not her being a skeptic that causes people to get annoyed with her. She goes out of her way to annoy people and really seems to get a laugh out of causing trouble. She's one of those people that shows up at a party and everyone leaves. The NARS rule applies to Linda.

"She goes out of her way to annoy people and really seems to get a laugh out of causing trouble."

That's the way I interpreted her "input" the very first time I saw the mind energy forum. So true !
 
This is the CD forum! If you wanted a debate without Linda you could have taken it to one of the proponent-only haunts.

So, where's your comeback, Malf. You asked what lies and I posted them and now you've bounded off.
 
This Knoblauch paper is in English and seems similar in content to the German one referenced earlier by IrGie:

The Different Experience: A Report on a Survey of Near-Death Experiences in Germany


5. Discussion

The results of the survey allow some quite clear answers to the problems posed. First, NDE seem to be a widespread phenomenon in contemporary societies, i.e. in Germany. This finding involves that a large part of the population knows the category of NDE. Despite the common knowledge of this category, the experiences people reported differed quite substantially. One may, of course, argue that this finding depends on the subjective definition of NDE. Yet, on the other hand, all notions of near-death experience depend on subjective evidences, so that one could argue that every reasonable definition of NDE must be based on a subjective definition.

In fact, the results indicate that a series of commonly held assumptions should be reconsidered. These include the assumption that NDE is linked to biological death (and the knowledge of being declared dead), the ineffability of the experience, the consequentiality of the experience or its religious meaning. More critically, the results suggest that NDEs do not exhibit a common structure. Although following certain patterns, these patterns can hardly be subsumed under one structure. For this reason, also the assumption that NDEs are a universal phenomenon seems to be at stake.

As the data indicate, NDEs do not only differ significantly between different experiencers according to several types; there are strong indications for cultural influences on NDEs. In this respect, the difference between East-German and West-German subjects would allow for the hypothesis that socio-cultural background not only affects the interpretation of NDEs but also the very content of what is being experienced. To say it in other words: the content of NDE is culturally constructed. There are further evidences for this assumption. If we scrutinise the reports on Indian (Salteaux) NDEs we find obvious differences in motives, i.e. tipi (HALLOWELL 1940); also the interpretations differ clearly, as. e.g. a comparison between American and (Marxist) Chinese NDEs shows (KELLEHEAR 1996). In addition, it has been shown that also Mormon NDEs differ in substantial ways from those described by Moody, Ring et. al. (LUNDAHL 1981-82).

This hypothesis seems also to hold with respect to religious affiliation. However, the most obvious cultural influence becomes salient if one compares the German data in toto with previously published studies, particularly on data from the U.S. (on which most of our literature review drew). Compared to American NDEs, the NDEs we found in Germany are significantly different. This difference in experience refers to:

(1) the content in terms of motives, sequences and emotional quality. Whereas American NDEs include a certain number of elements which seem to follow one another and are typically experienced as emotionally positive, the majority of German NDEs consists of one element or scene without any sequences. 50 % of all NDEers reported positive emotions, 43% negative emotions. Nevertheless there were salient differences between the population of the former two German states: in West Germany NDEs were predominantly positive (59,5 % positive vs. 28.6% negative) whereas negative NDEs prevailed in East Germany (60% negative vs.40% positive).

(2) the consequences, in terms of effects for later life. American NDEs obviously affect experiencers’ morality and lead to more or less serious changes in life. German NDE, on the other hand, only affect something like the general outlook on life without having moral consequences.

(3) their interpretation with respect to world view. Whereas American NDEs seem to strengthen religiosity and support existing religious beliefs, German NDEs are hardly considered religious at all.

Although these results indicate the importance of cultural influences, further research must try to investigate these factors in more detail. Yet, despite the importance of cultural influences, we shall not argue that NDEs are but cultural constructions. To the very contrary, it seemed rather surprising to find a large number of these experiences in a society where people had few access to knowledge about these experiences — such as the former German Democratic Republic. One could, therefore, conclude that it is not the occurrence of the NDE which is influences by culture, but its content and its interpretation.

Doug
This study seems more relevant than the Sartori one, so maybe we could focus on that? I've not had a chance to read it yet, but it sounds interesting. I have encountered some write-ups that suggests culture influences the interpretation of the imagery, but some of the core Greyson elements still occur across boarders.
 
This study seems more relevant than the Sartori one, so maybe we could focus on that? I've not had a chance to read it yet, but it sounds interesting. I have encountered some write-ups that suggests culture influences the interpretation of the imagery, but some of the core Greyson elements still occur across boarders.

I read it, but unfortunately the English version appears to be little more than a summary of the original German paper. Without more raw data, it's hard for me to understand the experiences, or how the responses were categorised etc.

The most which I can take from it is that there is some effect present within the NDE due either to the beliefs of the experient, the beliefs within their surrounding environment at the time of the NDE, as well as perhaps the relationship between both of these things.

This is why Penny's study is so good, she published most of her raw data collected during her 5 year study.
 
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This study seems more relevant than the Sartori one, so maybe we could focus on that? I've not had a chance to read it yet, but it sounds interesting. I have encountered some write-ups that suggests culture influences the interpretation of the imagery, but some of the core Greyson elements still occur across boarders.
My only problem is that I am not quite sure if the short English translation that IrGie mentioned, was just the abstract, which seems a bit vague:
The essay treats near-death experiences (ndes) form the vantage point of sociology and cultural analysis. In contrast to common hypotheses of near-death research (which claims the universality and structural identity of reported near-death experiences), the investigation of a representative sample of Germans indicates that more than 4% of the population toes report a near-death experiences. There is no exclusive link between these experiences and clinical death to be observed. Instead, we found systematic cultural differences, particularly between East- and West-Germany. In order to explain the nde, the essay proposes a holistic anthropological model which allows to integrate subjective experiences (i.e. provinces of meaning) and biological as well as cultural processes.
Can someone translate some relevant samples of the paper?

(Unfortunately we anglophones are mostly incredibly lazy about learning other languages. I think part of this is that wherever we go abroad, the locals can speak English far better than we can speak their language, and we feel a bit foolish struggling on!)

David
 
My only problem is that I am not quite sure if the short English translation that IrGie mentioned, was just the abstract, which seems a bit vague:

Can someone translate some relevant samples of the paper?

(Unfortunately we anglophones are mostly incredibly lazy about learning other languages. I think part of this is that wherever we go abroad, the locals can speak English far better than we can speak their language, and we feel a bit foolish struggling on!)

David

I tried to speak Italian to a bus conductor in Italy last year, after struggling for about 30 secs he became exasperated, and asked me in perfect English "Where do you want to go?"
 
All I see is someone lacking the ability to process alternate nuanced interpretations.

Talking bollocks, Malf is not going to help you. I stuck up the facts and you've got nothing to come back with, obviously. Your avatar may indicate a certain tendency to defend your "owner ?" (owner in the way of someone you admire)
 
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