Mod+ Moderation rulings on specific questions

Craig Weiler

Associate
I should mention that I'm going to slap mod+ on everything I post. I've dealt with so much round-and-round-we-go skepticism over the years that I just don't want to deal with it anymore.
 
A reminder to the skeptics on this thread. This is MOD+. As such, I'm going to ask you to leave if you persist in bringing doubt about the reality of psi to this thread.

I specifically chose MOD+ to prevent just this sort of discussion. You are welcome to disbelieve whatever you want, just take it someplace else.
 
Were you referring to my post? I didn't mention the reality of psi at all.
Yes, I was referring to your post. You didn't have to mention the reality of psi. It's implicit in your statement that people who claim psychic experiences are either frauds or delusional or mistaken. That directly implies that psi doesn't exist.

So please stop this line of inquiry.
 
My statement was general and applies whether psi is true or not. I applied my comments equally to the two characters in the dialogue you linked to. Your OP provided no context to where you wanted the conversation to go.
 
My statement was general and applies whether psi is true or not. I applied my comments equally to the two characters in the dialogue you linked to. Your OP provided no context to where you wanted the conversation to go.
I flagged your original post not to harass you, but rather to get a ruling from the mods on this. I think this is a good test case for MOD+. We all need to know because obviously we're interpreting this differently.
 
My understanding is that the mod+ designation was implemented to protect threads from "is it real" type discussions in order to promote more discussions that move beyond "is it real?". You make a thread about a hypothetical "is it real" type discussion. I think before a mod rules you should clarify what your intentions with this thread were.
 
My understanding is that the mod+ designation was implemented to protect threads from "is it real" type discussions in order to promote more discussions that move beyond "is it real?". You make a thread about a hypothetical "is it real" type discussion. I think before a mod rules you should clarify what your intentions with this thread were.
I think that the MOD+ designation makes my intentions clear enough.
 
Your post brings up something important. You do something here that is very common on this forum and is at the heart of many of the debates that go on around here: that is you conflate the having of the experience and the understanding of the experience. They are not the same thing.

In this little story we've got two experiences that have been raised: one: the experience of having a dream of a famous person and the experience of seeing a ghost. Frank, for both of those I think we can reliably and scientifically demonstrate that people have these experiences generally and you are right that for both we can less reliably know about the little details about each experience (ie: both are going to forget details in relating the experience).

The second part of each experience is whether the experiencer correctly understands what's going on. In both cases I don't think there is any reason to assume that either experiencer does based only on the experience itself. That is: the skeptic does not understand the underlying mechanics of his dream, why he had the dream, what exactly he was perceiving - neither does the ghost experiencer. In both cases we are limited to their recollection with little ability to reliably analyse what had happened (with the ghost one we have a bit more oppotunity because we could at least go back to to scene and investigate but there's no guaranty that will tell us much.

In both cases the best we can probably do is speculate as to what was going on behind the experience.
Arouet,

I was asked to take a look at your post and see if it violates the Mod+ spirit of this thread. In my opinion it does not. The reason is that the original post invites a debate between skeptics and proponents by drawing attention to the silly arguments skeptics frequently use to dismiss psi claims. It is hardly fair to bring that up and then shut the door to any responses to that criticism. This does not mean it isn't possible to cross the line in this thread, but I don't think you have crossed it.

AP
 
A reminder to the skeptics on this thread. This is MOD+. As such, I'm going to ask you to leave if you persist in bringing doubt about the reality of psi to this thread.

I specifically chose MOD+ to prevent just this sort of discussion. You are welcome to disbelieve whatever you want, just take it someplace else.
Craig,

I'd like to suggest that if you want to do this, then please do not start threads that are explicitly designed to discuss skeptics, particularly pseudo-skeptics. If you want to do that, you'll have to leave those discussions open. I do not want to encourage the creation of threads where skeptics can be made fun of, especially if they cannot respond. If you stick to discussing cases rather than discussing the critics of those cases, you'll find that Mod+ is more effective.

AP
 
Craig,

I'd like to suggest that if you want to do this, then please do not start threads that are explicitly designed to discuss skeptics, particularly pseudo-skeptics. If you want to do that, you'll have to leave those discussions open. I do not want to encourage the creation of threads where skeptics can be made fun of, especially if they cannot respond. If you stick to discussing cases rather than discussing the critics of those cases, you'll find that Mod+ is more effective.

AP

Ok. I appreciate that, but my argument here is that he is debating from the standpoint that psi doesn't exist and we all know that this is going to lead exactly nowhere. My interpretation is that MOD+ means that the skeptics have to argue from the position that psi exists. If he can argue from that position, great, if not, get off the thread. No one is putting a gun to his head and making him comment here. The fact that the thread is about skeptics is irrelevant to that point. You're giving him a get out of jail free card.

I don't see what the point is of having MOD+, but then carving it up like this.
 
Ok. I appreciate that, but my argument here is that he is debating from the standpoint that psi doesn't exist and we all know that this is going to lead exactly nowhere. My interpretation is that MOD+ means that the skeptics have to argue from the position that psi exists. If he can argue from that position, great, if not, get off the thread. No one is putting a gun to his head and making him comment here. The fact that the thread is about skeptics is irrelevant to that point. You're giving him a get out of jail free card.

I don't see what the point is of having MOD+, but then carving it up like this.
I'm going to move these posts to the thread on forum rules, because they are o/t for the thread.

As for your points, I appreciate why it looks like a "get out of jail free" card to you, but I do not see it that way. To me, it is not fair to start a thread that pokes fun at skeptics without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, and that is essentially what is happening here. Mod+ is for discussions about psi-related evidence, not for jabbing the other side in the ribs, which is approximately what this thread seems designed to do.

I also do not see how this specific thread could be moderated as Mod+ because your O/P really doesn't offer a topic for discussion beyond complaining about skeptics. Robert McLuhan wrote "Randi's Prize" and Chris Carter wrote several books when they wanted to complain about skeptic tactics. What they did though, was to present specific cases. They described the data as far as it is known, then the skeptical response and how well or poorly it matched the data. Stanley Krippner edited a book like this. All of those approaches would work fine as Mod+, but this specific thread needs something more to raise it to that level, sorry.

AP
 
Ok. I appreciate that, but my argument here is that he is debating from the standpoint that psi doesn't exist and we all know that this is going to lead exactly nowhere. My interpretation is that MOD+ means that the skeptics have to argue from the position that psi exists. If he can argue from that position, great, if not, get off the thread. No one is putting a gun to his head and making him comment here. The fact that the thread is about skeptics is irrelevant to that point. You're giving him a get out of jail free card.
That is my understanding of the Mod+ tag, too, although I thought it was mind /= brain. Either way, I don't understand what that has to do with the subject of your thread.

Edited to add: As paqart has noted.

~~ Paul
 
I'm going to move these posts to the thread on forum rules, because they are o/t for the thread.

As for your points, I appreciate why it looks like a "get out of jail free" card to you, but I do not see it that way. To me, it is not fair to start a thread that pokes fun at skeptics without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, and that is essentially what is happening here. Mod+ is for discussions about psi-related evidence, not for jabbing the other side in the ribs, which is approximately what this thread seems designed to do.

I also do not see how this specific thread could be moderated as Mod+ because your O/P really doesn't offer a topic for discussion beyond complaining about skeptics. Robert McLuhan wrote "Randi's Prize" and Chris Carter wrote several books when they wanted to complain about skeptic tactics. What they did though, was to present specific cases. They described the data as far as it is known, then the skeptical response and how well or poorly it matched the data. Stanley Krippner edited a book like this. All of those approaches would work fine as Mod+, but this specific thread needs something more to raise it to that level, sorry.

AP

Okey dokey. Well, since they can use all their materialist assumptions here and pull out all the stops to create an endless and fruitless debate, I'm going to have to use the ignore list. I have to say, this doesn't give me much confidence in the application of the MOD+. But we'll see.
 
There also seems to be general agreement that, regardless of the existence of psi, sometimes people are mistaken about whether a specific instance involves psi. It looked like Arouet was directing his comments more towards that possibility. This seems to be the kind of discussion which can be had under the mind /=brain assumption.

However, I think non-proponents should really consider stepping very lightly or staying away from Mod+ threads regardless, and leave a comfortable space for proponents.

Linda
 
This is skeptical nonsense. Once you accept the reality of psi, everything has to be psi.
I'm just repeating what Craig Weiler and Frank Matero and many others have said about the legitimacy of most mediums. There is a general recognition that even though mediumship and survival may be legitimate, not all who claim to be mediums are really tapping into this. This also shows up in the mediumship studies.

Linda
 
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