Time slips

You didn't read my updated post did you?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

So that's a mia culpa?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It's a raising of reasonable doubt. But it's not proof there aren't time slips.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

True.

 

It's not proof that there aren't time slips, but it rules it out as a rational explanation for that case, right? You agree on that, that this case is unlikely to have been a time slip?

 

Yes..I agree after having run across that explanation.

 

Another possible time slip:

"When I was 20 (so just two years ago) my girlfriend and I were spending half of winter break with her family, half with mine. Her family lives right in the heart of the Catskills in upstate New York. It was late December and we had this thing of 'going exploring' (which for those of you who read Maine, I got this from my Father), especially at night. So, at around 7 PM, we got into my truck and went exploring. While she grew up in the area, anyone who has been to that part of New York knows there are *lots* of odd roads. If you don't have a reason to go down one, you usually never do.

Me being me, I picked roads at random as we were driving, assuming that I could find my way back (I always can in PA), but after about 30 minutes, I was seriously lost. Then, it started snowing. A lot.

Now, having heard tons of stories about the Catskills, getting lost, ghosts, and various other paranormal things, I started to panic just a bit. I drove around almost blind (the snow was falling rapidly) for another hour. Then Julia looked down at the gas gauge and started to really freak out. We were almost on empty.

A pretty bad situation, blizzard in the mounatins when I'm lost and we're running out of gas. This is how people die (or so I had heard).

Now, this is where the story takes a sharp turn towards the paranormal.

We finally same some lights up ahead, and realized it was a gas station. The relief I felt was immense. The panic started to fade and I pulled up to the pumps. Only these pumps weren't normal gas pumps, they looked like something out of the 40s. My heart sank, thinking that they were just for show. However, as I stopped, a man walked out from the station (which had a sign saying "General Store") he walked up to me and said "Fancy truck there boy, need a fill up?" I said yes and he proceeded to pump. Julia decided to go inside to look around (she was kinda POed at me for getting us so seriously lost). I asked the man for directions back to Margretville (sorry for the sp) and he gave them readily. So, this was all very good. I decided to go find Julia since the gas was almost done. I hopped out of the truck and noticed 3 cars, all looking brand new, but from the 1940s (roughly). As I walked in, I saw Julia talking to a woman behind the counter of the store. It had the post office boxes up on the wall, big cut glass candy jars, etc etc. I waved hello and took a look around the place. There was no modern food. What I mean by that is, most stores, gas station or other, have doritos etc. Not this place. They had coke and Hershey bars, but the coke was in glass bottles and the Hershey bars were in an odd wrapper. This was true for just about everything in the store.

I finally wrested Julia away from the counter, thanked the lady and went out to pay for the gas. Now, normally when I pay for gas in that truck, it's around 50 dollars. The man said my total was $2.85. I looked at him thinking I had misunderstood or he was joking. Then I asked how much gas was per gallon. "10 cents per. I know it's a little high, but it's the War's fault." I handed him the money in silence, got into the car, rolled down the window to thank him and drove off using the directions he gave me. I tried to keep track of where the place was, but through the snow and dark, I lost my way back to the General Store. We did however (obviously) find out way out. We ended up 45 miles north of the town we wanted to be. Another very odd thing being that while my car clock said we had been gone for well over 4 hours, it was only 9 PM when we got back.

Julia and I went looking for the store two days later, couldn't find it again. While this is not that surprising, it's still odd. No one had heard of the store and we asked *everyone*."===http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=68719

 

Out of curiosity, until you had read the explanation in Wikipedia, why would you not have accepted it as a more likely explanation?

 

I needed some evidence for the party theory. It's not sufficient to merely raise the possibility of it. I need evidence.

 

Evidence for what? The existence of there having been a party? Why would you need evidence of it?
Even without that evidence it remains a possibility, right? So you have two competing theories... two possibilities: one being an extraordinary event, a "time slip"; the other being a themed party.
Which is more likely even, if noone came forward to confirm that there had been a themed party? Remember, absence of proof is not proof of absence. In this case, absence of anyone saying that there was a themed party is not evidence that there was not one.

Both theories / possibilities fit the observations, even without the evidence of the party that you feel you require.
So which is more probable: an extraordinary "time slip", or a themed party?

I struggle to understand why you feel you need evidence to support alternative theories that equally fit the observations? We're not trying to prove that it was that alternative explanation (in which case you would need evidence) only that it is more likely that it is not a "time slip".

 

Right..evidence of the party. A claim needs evidence to back it up. And a mere possibility isn't a claim OR an explanation. I'm surprised you don't know this by now.

 

There is no claim being made, MR, other than it is a possibility that it was a party.
No one is claiming that it definitely was - and if they were they would indeed need the evidence to support that claim.
But the fact that it is a possibility, and it would be a possibility whether or not there was evidence of an actual party taking place, means that one should apply reason and critical thinking to determine which possibility (party or time-slip) is more reasonable to accept as the likelier cause.

Your need to see evidence that it was a possible alternative before considering it as such seems to be the cause of your bias toward the paranormal. Rather all one needs to do is show how the observations could be explained by a more likely alternative, and this should then result in that more likely alternative being rationally accepted as the likeliest explanation.
But you take the paranormal explanation as given until it can be proven that it was (not just could be but was) an explanation that is usually considered far more mundane.

Your thinking thus lacks being sufficiently critical.

 

I must say I continue to believe this is all a pose on MR's part. I don't believe he is really so stupid as to think a "timeslip" is more likely than a themed party. He's just got some sort of antirational agenda, in my view.

 

The way he works seems to be:
1. Observation of phenomenon.
2. Initial interpretation as paranormal taken as the default position.
3. Alternative explanations must be proven to be the result before they can replace the default interpretation.

Whereas most would adopt the following:
1. Observation of phenomenon.
2. Initial interpretation as paranormal noted.
3. Other interpretations collected.
4. All interpretations considered and the most likely one that fits the observations accepted as being the most rational, until such time as a more likely interpretation arises.

It seems MR takes the initial observation as evidence only for the paranormal, when in actuality the initial observation is merely the evidence that the interpretation then has to fit, and the paranormal is but one interpretation.

 

Yes. Which is an artificial pose, in my opinion.

 

But a mere possibility is not sufficient to establish what happened. I could counter your party possibility with the possibility of a time slip. Boom. We are back at square one. What I maintain is that if you are going to counter my claim that it is a time slip based on the the evidence of the two women's account with a claim of it being a party, you need to provide evidence for that. And that is exactly what I did. Why you would complain about that is strange to me, like you are opposing objective evidence for claims.

You don't know which is more likely in this case. For all we know this may be the one time a time slip occurred out of billions of people and places. Again, it's like if you encountered someone who claimed to have won the lottery. By your logic that person is lying because it is more likely they are lying than that they won the lottery. But you would be wrong. People DO win lotteries, despite the unlikelihood of them doing so.

Right. I take the explanation to be a time slip based on the evidence of the account. If someone provides evidence of an alternative explanation, then I'll reconsider. But not on the basis of something just being more plausible. Plausibility is not adequate to even make a claim, much less provide an explanation.

 

I guess my thread wouldn't be complete without exchemist swooping in once with his typical personal insult.

 

"Begging the Question is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. This sort of "reasoning" typically has the following form.

1. Premises in which the truth of the conclusion is claimed or the truth of the conclusion is assumed (either directly or indirectly).
2. Claim C (the conclusion) is true.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion. Obviously, simply assuming a claim is true does not serve as evidence for that claim. This is especially clear in particularly blatant cases: "X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true."===http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
====================================================================
This is your fallacy Sarkus:

1. It is more probable that B happened than that A happened.

2. Why is it more probable that B happened?

3. Because it is more improbable that A happened.

 

Indeed - nor is a mere interpretation, such as "time slip".
One has to look at what explanations can fit the observations. All such things are possibilities. Then the rational person considers which of those possibilities is the more rational. Note that what is deemed rational is not necessarily correct, but should be accepted as the default explanation until such time as further observation / evidence comes to light that does not fit the current most likely explanation.

We are at square one in terms of defining what the possibilities are. The next step is to establish which is more likely, as this will determine the rational interpretation.

I'm not claiming that it was a party - only that it could possibly have been.
You claimed it was a time slip, interpreting the women's observations as such. There is otherwise zero evidence of it being so - just the observations that the time slip theory fits.
There need likewise be zero evidence of there having been a party - only for the theory (that it was a party) to fit the observations.

Thus we have two theories, and from that we determine which is more likely.

I am merely highlighting that you have come to the right conclusion by following entirely the wrong thought process that rational people would follow. And yours is a thought process that leads to you reaching irrational conclusions.

A time-slip that has never been verified to occur, versus a themed party... hmmm... which do you think is more likely?
That you think it could be "the one time a time slip occurred out of billions of people and places" shows how unlikely you think the time slip actually is, yet you can't seem to join the dots.

If a given person claimed to win the lottery then I would not accuse them of lying (I would have no evidence to support it) but I would indeed initially think it a possibility.
The difference with the lottery wins is that they can be verified - and thus we do know they happen. Not only that but we know the exact maths behind it such that we can predict with near certainty the odds of it happening.

Evidence that also fits with the theory of it being a themed party whether or not someone provides confirmation of such a party in the vicinity.
The fact that someone subsequently did confirm that a party was going on merely makes it increasingly likely that this was the cause of the observations.

All that is required to provide an explanation is possibility. Once you have multiple possibilities the rational person looks at which would be the most likely.

 

Lol!
Replace step 3 with: because A has never once been verified to have actually occurred, while B is not only a verified phenomenon but actually quite common in the grand scheme of things - or are you going to claim you've never experienced a themed party?