I absolutely reject the idea that you should take something as true without true evidence just because it’s too difficult to get that evidence.

So do I.

This idea came from a couple case studies where a heart transplant recipient would seem to gain memories or personality traits from the donor. These cases sounded a lot like the typical “paranormal knowledge” story. Two particular cases were someone liking a food they didn’t like before but the donor did, and a child avoiding a toy that donor had with them when they died.

Being able to accurately describe the location of objects (in or outside the room) or describe specialized medical equipment, the appearance of the doctors in the room (even if the patient hadn’t met them before or after), and so on. This is all very strange stuff. To have hallucinated this stuff perfectly would be remarkable. Forget about being dead, some of these stories would be impressive even if the patient just had their eyes closed (or, in some cases, even if their eyes were wide open). In comparison, someone changing their toy or food preferences to more closely align with those of a particular stranger is, really, not that shocking. So I don’t think this is a fair comparison at all.

Again, we are running into the same issues we had before regarding your statistical noise hypothesis. We don’t know how many NDEs occur, or what percentage of them are reported to have components that require supernatural explanations. So to assert that it’s all just statistical noise is to assume, without any data, that these numbers are going to match what you’re looking for. Despite our data being constrained here, I actually think the absence of certain kinds of data counts strongly against the statistical noise hypothesis.

Because, if the statistical noise hypothesis were correct, it would be extremely common for patients to hallucinate what was going on in the hospital room inaccurately. But all the reports I get are of one of two categories:

• [1] reports of visiting another realm (these are the most common types of cases) or
• [2] reports of staying in the hospital and observing what is going on with surprising accuracy (these are the most interesting cases).

But I am not aware of even a single report of a third category of case,

• [3] reports of staying in the hospital and observing what is going wrong with total inaccuracy.

And I get that cases in the third category would be less likely to be reported on because those cases are less interesting. I see that concern. But we have to appreciate how, given your hypothesis, just how thoroughly these inaccurate accounts would dwarf all these seemingly supernatural ones. Cases in the third category would outnumber cases in the first category by the thousands at least (realistically, it would be more like the millions, due to the sheer level of detail in some cases in the first category, and just how unlikely it would be to hallucinate that detail accurately). If it really were the case that cases in the first category were so common then I would expect at minimum at least one or two of these inaccurate hallucinations to be reported in the medical literature. But I am not aware of a single case like this (is there really not one doctor that would write in their notes, “patient reported this and that occurred in the operating room, but he was wrong”?). So I have a challenge for you: can you identify even a single case that matches the description in (3)? After all, if you’re right, then these types of cases would be extremely plentiful so even if only 0.01% of these cases in the third category are reported on, it should still be fairly easy for you to identify at least one.

So, to sum it up, you’re making a number of assumptions here. The first assumption is that these NDE cases are banal enough that they could be ‘statistical noise’ (which, I think, is demonstrable false; these are not cases where someone changes their food preferences, they are cases where someone has detailed information that they should not have). Then you are assuming that there are an extraordinarily large number of NDE cases where people inaccurately report on what is going on in the hospital when they are going through an NDE (though this second assumption isn’t demonstrably false, it is at least extremely suspect since there doesn’t seem to be any cases like this reported in the medical literature, despite the extreme frequency of their occurrence). So your statistical noise hypothesis relies on these two assumptions, and both of them seem to collapse under scrutiny.

On top of that there are other things going on, too, such as preterminal lucidity, that also point to the possibility that we ‘survive’ our death. If you recall from my earlier comments, I was using NDE as an example from a particular book (Surviving Death by Leslie Kane). I chose NDEs because they are an example that is familiar to a lot of people. But it was only one chapter from the book, and it was one of the least interesting chapters. I’m not saying this because I think this book is the ultimate source of truth on this topic, I’m just saying that there is more than just NDEs to suggest that death is not the end. Unfortunately this stuff is so thoroughly stigmatized that people can’t even bring themselves to look at this data. But any honest person that did would realize, at the very least, that this stigma is unwarranted.

Deflect is also a good alternative. It’s based in Montreal, Quebec. It’s what a lot of Canadian instances in the fediverse are moving too (see here).

Well it’s more than just the accent. The grammar is slightly different too, right?

This is correct. this is what stop signs like in Quebec:

Even outside of Quebec you’ll find stop signs with both Arrêt and Stop in areas with large francaphone populations:

You can bridge it over to Matrix if you feel like thats worth the time and effort

The strongest evidence is the fact that modern equipment can see the actual tracks the A11 astronauts left while hiking and driving on the moon.

The problem with this is that if you’re someone who thinks the moon landing is fake then you’re simply just going to dismiss this as yet another example of NASA propaganda. Because though those tracks are there, no one can actually see it for themselves (unless you happen to have a really high powered telescope, which is unlikely). The moon dust thing though, that’s something you can reason through and examine for yourself

Don’t you think this kind of trivializes what transgender people go through? Saying you can be trans for species sounds like some sort of mockery of transgenderism

and it turns out a lot of furries DON’T like to be animals, they just… pretend to be animals but “oh that’s a character not really me” and they still consider themselves human…?

Do you not consider yourself to be human?

I think the most convincing evidence that we did go to the moon has to do with the dynamics of the moon dust in the original Apollo footage. If you look at the footage you’ll see the dust gets kicked up pretty high, higher than what you’d expect given Earth’s gravity, and it falls at a slower rate too.

So the question is: if they faked this footage then how did they get the dust to behave like this?

One possible explanation is that the footage was filmed underwater. The issue with this, though, is this is not at all how you’d expect dust to behave underwater. (you can go to the beach, kick up a bunch of sand underneath the water and see for yourself).

Another possibility is suspension cables. I guess you could explain the astronauts perceived lower gravity with suspension cables, but for pieces of dust? You can’t have suspension cables for individual pieces of dust.

So the simplest explanation is that this footage really was actually taken on a lower gravity environment, such as the moon.

There are also fewer heart attacks and car accidents when we gain an hour though, so it cancels out in the end.

I’m sure they do. But when you buy things at a store, genuinely speaking those things were produced because someone is making money by doing so. Please only respond to this if you have something intelligent to add

If you understand that people produce things because people buy those things, and people will produce more of those things if you buy more of those things, then you are profoundly stupid

Either you are so dense that you genuinely cannot comprehend this very simple concept, or you are pretending to be dense so in order to avoid losing a debate on the internet. Either way you’re not someone worth talking to, so I’m going to end this conversation here.

Alright, well if you want to continue living in a fantasy world then I guess that’s your choice. Have a nice life

Hey thank you for this response. This topic often triggers a lot of emotion in people so when I talk about it I’m used to people responding with hostility. So it was very refreshing to get this message.

I hope you find the Peter Singer article interesting. If you any thoughts or questions or what to discuss the article after, then I’m happy to chat. You take care as well.

Okay then I’d live to hear you explain how you think modern agriculture works

Not everyone literally needs to stop buying meat for there to be an effect. I was trying to illustrate how supply and demand works. The people eat meat and other animal products, the more animals will be killed to meet that demand. Do you disagree that by buying a burger you are contributing to that demand? Don’t try to evade the question, give me a yes or no answer.

Is what I said incorrect? Do you disagree that animals are being tortured en masse to satisfy our trivial gustatory preferences?

Please explain to me how you think economics works then. If everyone were to stop buying meat then would these people be slaughtering the cows for free?

Any evaluation of another culture is necessarily done through the lens of the evaluator’s opinions and preferences, which are (by default) a product of their home culture.

If moral evaluation of a culture is necessarily done through the lens of that person’s culture, then how can anyone ever critique their own culture? How can a moral progress be possible? If my culture raised me to believe that killing animals is a-okay then how did I ever come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, not a-okay to kill animals? Because, by your view, my critique of this culture would necessarily stem from my culture. But this doesn’t make any sense because this critique directly contradicts what my culture has taught me. How could I critique what a culture teaches people if I myself have been taught those same things? Do you see the problem here?

Cleary it is possible (albeit, often difficult) to evaluate your and other cultures through an independent standpoint, such as through a process of moral reasoning. That is the only way we can explain how cultures can critique themselves and gradually improve.

I certainly am not arguing that those societies were not abominable places to live, led by awful people.

You are though. You are arguing that your evaluation that these people are awful is something that is only true from your particular cultural standpoint. Someone, from an other culture could say “hey, actually, Hitler was a saint, truly the best of the best” and he would be right from his cultural standpoint. And neither of you would be right or wrong. It would all literally all just be a matter of opinion. I don’t know about you but I think Hitler was a bad guy. And that’s not just a matter of opinion; it’s a fact.

You cannot agree with me on this and also think that morality is just a product of culture. That’s a contradiction.

I feel like these two statements are in contradiction? You state that some traditional cultures are better because they align with your beliefs, which was my argument.

I was trying to show that the way I evaluate the morality of a culture is not itself a product of my culture. If it was, then I would of course always say my culture is the best. But I don’t. So I must be using some other, culturally independent metrics to make these evaluations (i.e. I must be actually engaged in a process of moral reasoning).

So, I do think some traditional cultures are better, and they do better align with my beliefs. But I came to my beliefs not because my culture told me to but rather through a process of moral reasoning.

Again, I’m not saying that those cultures are NOT an improvement over my own in this particular regard, based on my own view of morality, just that my opinion on the subject is my own and not “The Correct Opinion”.

It’s easy to think that there is no objective morality when you are not being oppressed or harmed. Sure we, here, in the first world (I assume) can sit in our Ivory Towers and contemplate these issues. But what about the victims of the holocaust? Do you think the would find comfort in the idea that there is no objective right or wrong? I don’t think it would help much. Because the Nazis were not compassionate people, even if they were the good guys according to their own cultural narratives.

Similarly, I don’t think these issues about subjective/objective morality really matter much to the animals in our factory farms; they just want their suffering to stop.

So we might be able to convince ourselves that morality is subjective, because morality is an abstract concept. But pain and suffering, these are not subjective notions. When you are suffering, the suffering is real, it is acute, and it is concrete, and you want it to stop. Suffering is not culturally dependant.

When a being is suffering, the compassionate thing to do is to help alleviate its suffering or better yet to prevent it in the first place. And to cause a being unnecessary suffering is cruel. This is something that is true in any culture, in any time, and in any place.