rationalskepticism.org

Spearthrower wrote:

ORZIL wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

ORZIL wrote:
I only have anecdotal evidence.
Is there only personal evidence here?
own experience ?

You are perfectly entitled to find your own personal experiences convincing, and you certainly don't need to ask other people permission to believe in the things which you feel you've experienced.

However, you can't expect your personal experiences to be convincing to other people. Other people have no access to your personal experience to independently verify. You can't appeal to your experiences as 'evidence' because your personal experiences just are not at all evident to anyone other than you.

You think you saw a ghost in X place at Y time... but I cannot visit X place at Y time to verify your experience.

Perhaps if I had been there, I would have seen a ghost too, then it would also be my personal experience which I could also find convincing.

But perhaps if I had been there then I wouldn't have seen a ghost at all, or perhaps I'd have seen something quite mundane that you mistook for a ghost.

We will never know because that moment is permanently inaccessible to me; consequently you have to understand that the alleged event isn't convincing for me and cannot be appealed to in order to convince me.


Anecdotes are stories told from one person's perspective - they cannot help to determine the existence of alleged entities. People can lie, people can fail to spot crucial details, people can be mistaken, people can create false memories unconsciously, people can hallucinate, and people are emotional creatures whose brains can sometimes undergo stress, conditioning, or enculturation that make them perceive things in terms of their preloaded suppositions.

The Plural of Anecdote is Data

1) Wrong - it's not in any language.

2) Your refusal to ever engage with substance is looking very suspicious now.

I've responded openly and substantively to you. Show you're capable of doing the same.