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When do you stop trying to debunk?

MarkinVT

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So I was talking to my roommate today who just got back from a music festival and he said he was freaking out a bit because his dreams were becoming reality here an example. He said that he had a dream he was at a music festival and ran into this girl who was lost and couldn't find her friends and he ended up hanging out with her till she met up with her friends again. Apparently this exact same thing happened to him in real life and he said while we was there he realized that he dreamed this exact event and he started looking around and said that the people around him were also the same people that he dreamed about even though he never actually met them before. he said that these kind of dreams are happening more and more often to him.
I tried to dig a little deeper by saying things like, well it seems pretty likely that when your at a music festival with hundreds of people it wouldn't be uncommon to run into some who had lost their friends. after that I kind of shut up cause he was saying well even if it is all in my head it made me a better person and I'm happier now that it happened. I wanted to keep digging but I didn't feel like being that guy who just undermines whatever someone says. So I guess im wondering is when should you stop trying to point out flaws in peoples believes and when should you just leave them alone or in other words "let them keep believing in santa."
 
MarkinVT said:
So I was talking to my roommate today who just got back from a music festival and he said he was freaking out a bit because his dreams were becoming reality here an example. He said that he had a dream he was at a music festival and ran into this girl who was lost and couldn't find her friends and he ended up hanging out with her till she met up with her friends again. Apparently this exact same thing happened to him in real life and he said while we was there he realized that he dreamed this exact event and he started looking around and said that the people around him were also the same people that he dreamed about even though he never actually met them before. he said that these kind of dreams are happening more and more often to him.
I tried to dig a little deeper by saying things like, well it seems pretty likely that when your at a music festival with hundreds of people it wouldn't be uncommon to run into some who had lost their friends. after that I kind of shut up cause he was saying well even if it is all in my head it made me a better person and I'm happier now that it happened. I wanted to keep digging but I didn't feel like being that guy who just undermines whatever someone says. So I guess im wondering is when should you stop trying to point out flaws in peoples believes and when should you just leave them alone or in other words "let them keep believing in santa."
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It seems much more likely that his probably vague memory of a dream was modified and filled in and replaced by his real experience.
 
When to stop debunking?

I would say it entirely depends on how much effect the bunk is going to have on other people. I am all in favour of individuals being able to believe what ever bunk they choose to believe. The problem comes when they feel a desire to share that bunk with others or in some other way act upon it in a way it effects or influences other people.
 
Scopedog said:
It seems much more likely that his probably vague memory of a dream was modified and filled in and replaced by his real experience.
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I think this is right. Memories of dreams are kind of vague to begin with.

I don't know if you really need to debunk this one.

This could be an example of some sort of false memory. I don't trust my own memory 100%. I believe that false memories are more common than you might expect. It doesn't mean you are stupid or a liar, but our own brains can fool us sometimes.

Study Says People 'Remember' Political Events that Didn't Happen

A new study asks more than 5,000 people about an event that didn’t happen, and nearly half of them “remembered” it.

The study from the University of California at Irvine asked people about their memories of three true and one fabricated event. The made-up event was accompanied by a photograph.

They found that nearly half of the people they talked to had a memory of the false event. Almost a quarter said they saw the false event on the news.
Click to expand...
 
The problems would start when he begins to actively look for such correlations, and builds an overarching web of such events, getting immersed into the world of his psychic predictions... not everything in life turns out so well as it did at this pleasant music festival. If he happens to have a bad dream, and he is already deeply invested in his "harmless" beliefs, he might feel responsible for the outcomes... which could lead to paranoia.

I don't see what makes him feel this anodyne and typical experience at a festival "made him a better person". If he relies on such events to make him feel good about himself, he's probably equally laying himself open to feeling bad about himself through some equally meaningless series of situations or events which he cobbles together in his habitual method of connecting coincidences as if they were meaningful associations.

I'd say that gently discussing the consequences of such a world view, perhaps taking his example and suggesting how it could have turned out otherwise, to try to decouple his feelings of self-worth from the imagined net of events of which he had no volitional control, would be at least a seed to slow his full-hearted plunge into his new naive world of psychic blossoming. At a later date, if a situation turns hairy, that seed might pop up in his thoughts to give him a brake on events, and allow a back door he could make use of.

Or simply saying that feeling good about yourself should come from the actions you take, rather than from receiving ideas about things.

It's tricky. But if you are really his friend, I wouldn't just keep quiet and let the delusion grow unchecked. Alternative explanations about the unreliability and malleability of the memory function of the brain can't go amiss.

In fact, even just dropping the comment "Lucky it turned out well in the end, then!" in response to his saying how it had made him "a better person", could sow that seed of doubt, which if he's not too far gone he could use in his own mind to pull himself back if it does go wrong later.

Knowing that a friend has firm alternate views of things could be all he needs to help him deal with it turning sour later. But he has to know your views for that to help.
 
Why not have the roommate start a dream-log. When he wakes up each morning, he writes down his dreams. Then you look for them to come true.

This can be done as prep for one of the paranormal prizes that offers a finder's fee.

You tell your roommate that he might be able to win the IIG's $50K prize if his dreams really do come true. You can win $5K by bringing him to the IIG. That way, he recognizes that there's something in it for you and you're not just messing with him.

This way you can work on the project together and it shouldn't be long before he debunks himself.

Ward

P.S. Oh, here's a link to the IIG prize with the finder's fee: http://www.iigwest.org/challenge.html
 
Ward's post! Brilliant!

And more effective than my suggestion, which can come in after it starts to become clear that his results are not impressive. As he begins to wonder why it's not working, you can steer him towards the knowledge of how memory works, and isn't reliable, so he doesn't start rationalising that the recording of the dreams is interfering with their predictive powers.... something all woo start claiming when their tests fail.
 
Hi everyone.
I have almost completely stopped debunking the alt-med brigade. Why? (I hear you ask).

I know a (lovely) lady who is a homeopath - she has spent three hard years studying and paid a small fortune (in relation to her income) to some 'college' of homeopathy. Without provocation, she will explain how anyone who rubbishes homeopathy is 'brainwashed' by big pharma, etc, etc, et flipping cetera. No chance of convincing her otherwise – and you BETTER NOT try, matey!

And a (nice) chap who once took alternative medicine (some seeds he bought from, and recommended by, a 'health food' shop) which 'cured' his bad back. Now, it does NOT matter what you say, ALL alternative remedies are unquestionably effective against all ailments - and don't you EVER try and tell him different, buddy!

This is just two (of many) examples and you are familiar with similar. My point is that I find it impossible to educate these misguided souls. I have attempted in the past but – well, you all know what I’m saying.

The only people who listen to me are the choir of sceptics and thinkers.

Unfortunately, these (nice and lovely) people seem quite skilled at educating and converting others to their beliefs. How’s that work?

Hmmm, maybe it is because they are nice and lovely (but gullible) that they easily influence the other nice and lovely (but gullible).

And we sceptics and thinkers are arrogant bar stewards.
 
Bastable said:
Hi everyone.
I have almost completely stopped debunking the alt-med brigade. Why? (I hear you ask).

I know a (lovely) lady who is a homeopath - she has spent three hard years studying and paid a small fortune (in relation to her income) to some 'college' of homeopathy. Without provocation, she will explain how anyone who rubbishes homeopathy is 'brainwashed' by big pharma, etc, etc, et flipping cetera. No chance of convincing her otherwise – and you BETTER NOT try, matey!

And a (nice) chap who once took alternative medicine (some seeds he bought from, and recommended by, a 'health food' shop) which 'cured' his bad back. Now, it does NOT matter what you say, ALL alternative remedies are unquestionably effective against all ailments - and don't you EVER try and tell him different, buddy!

This is just two (of many) examples and you are familiar with similar. My point is that I find it impossible to educate these misguided souls. I have attempted in the past but – well, you all know what I’m saying.

The only people who listen to me are the choir of sceptics and thinkers.

Unfortunately, these (nice and lovely) people seem quite skilled at educating and converting others to their beliefs. How’s that work?

Hmmm, maybe it is because they are nice and lovely (but gullible) that they easily influence the other nice and lovely (but gullible).

And we sceptics and thinkers are arrogant bar stewards.
Click to expand...

Some of us are. Others like Robert Lancaster seem to do fairly well, though. Links to his posts and websites here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=190

Ward
 
wardenclyffe said:
Why not have the roommate start a dream-log. When he wakes up each morning, he writes down his dreams. Then you look for them to come true.

This can be done as prep for one of the paranormal prizes that offers a finder's fee.

You tell your roommate that he might be able to win the IIG's $50K prize if his dreams really do come true. You can win $5K by bringing him to the IIG. That way, he recognizes that there's something in it for you and you're not just messing with him.

This way you can work on the project together and it shouldn't be long before he debunks himself.

Ward

P.S. Oh, here's a link to the IIG prize with the finder's fee: http://www.iigwest.org/challenge.html
Click to expand...

I would add: No editing the dream log after the fact to make it more "accurate".
 
The feeling of remembrance and recognition is controlled by the brain, in present time of course.

Do you know if your friend was ingesting any recreational substances? Hallucinogens especially can cause this sense of deja vu.

But it can happen on its own.

If your brain tells you "I remember this" then it feels exactly as though you remember it, whether you do or not.

As for debunking, if a friendship is involved, I'd only step in if it seems like these beliefs are causing a problem in his life.
 
Bastable said:
This is just two (of many) examples and you are familiar with similar. My point is that I find it impossible to educate these misguided souls. I have attempted in the past but – well, you all know what I’m saying.
Click to expand...
Yes, unfortunately.

Then I have tried reverse psychology, trying to elicit some critical reaction from them, without any success.
 
Piggy said:
The feeling of remembrance and recognition is controlled by the brain, in present time of course.
Click to expand...

One of the most helpful things I've heard to help me understand memory is: Imagine a hard drive where every read is also a write (the data is constantly being corrupted).
 
wardenclyffe said:
Why not have the roommate start a dream-log. When he wakes up each morning, he writes down his dreams. Then you look for them to come true.

This can be done as prep for one of the paranormal prizes that offers a finder's fee.

You tell your roommate that he might be able to win the IIG's $50K prize if his dreams really do come true. You can win $5K by bringing him to the IIG. That way, he recognizes that there's something in it for you and you're not just messing with him.

This way you can work on the project together and it shouldn't be long before he debunks himself.

Ward

P.S. Oh, here's a link to the IIG prize with the finder's fee: http://www.iigwest.org/challenge.html
Click to expand...

The dream log is a very good idea. I wouldn't have him do it with an eye on the prize though. I'd have him do it so he could keep an accurate record of all these magnificent prophetic dreams :rolleyes: so he doesn't miss any details. It's important that he write them down at the moment of awakening so he doesn't forget any parts. He may want to do a dream experiment in which he purposefully wakes himself up two or three times a night and writes down whatever dream he's having at the moment for say, two or three weeks.

If there's any hope of swaying him from this belief, he should note within a month or two that his dreams are actually gibberish and that the hits are either insignificant (I dreamed I talked to Mary, and she was wearing a red shirt in the dream. Then the next day, I ran into Mary, and she was wearing a red shirt! Amazing!) or not real hits at all (I ran into red-shirt Mary. In the dream we talked about the secret lies of the New World Order, but irl we talked about Justin Bieber's new girlfriend). If there's no hope of swaying him, he'll disregard the fact that red-shirt Mary was juggling bunny rabbits and chain-saws while she talked in the dream, but he'll still count the red shirt as a hit.

I had a similar belief about my dreams when I was very young. Writing down all my dreams like this made it clear to me that I wasn't having prophetic dreams, I was only remembering the parts that matched with reality and forgetting about the parts that didn't. Classic confirmation bias. Reading my own accounts of a number of truly wild and outrageous dreams that had no possibility of coming true was the reality check I needed. We really remember very little detail about our dreams in the morning.
 
I once got a private message on YouTube regarding 'psychic' sally. It was along the lines of "ok Mr skeptic tell me this: if she is such a fraud how was she able to tell me so much about my darling baby boy who died when he was only 1"

I hadn't been conversing directly with this lady, she had just read some critical comments I had made on some video. I felt awful. Needless to say I didn't reply. What on earth could I say to that. To this lady people like sally are wonderful whereas we will always be the bad guys. It's heart breaking.
 
Sceptics can be crashing bores, just like anyone else with a hobbyhorse. Stop when to go on would annoy your company, unless the person concerned has either sought your opinion or openly asked for debate. Even then, it can be better to take the discussion to another time and place where it will not annoy innocent bystanders.

In short, "Don't be a dick without good reason."
 
MarkinVT said:
So I was talking to my roommate today who just got back from a music festival and he said he was freaking out a bit because his dreams were becoming reality here an example. He said that he had a dream he was at a music festival and ran into this girl who was lost and couldn't find her friends and he ended up hanging out with her till she met up with her friends again. Apparently this exact same thing happened to him in real life and he said while we was there he realized that he dreamed this exact event and he started looking around and said that the people around him were also the same people that he dreamed about even though he never actually met them before. he said that these kind of dreams are happening more and more often to him.
I tried to dig a little deeper by saying things like, well it seems pretty likely that when your at a music festival with hundreds of people it wouldn't be uncommon to run into some who had lost their friends. after that I kind of shut up cause he was saying well even if it is all in my head it made me a better person and I'm happier now that it happened. I wanted to keep digging but I didn't feel like being that guy who just undermines whatever someone says. So I guess im wondering is when should you stop trying to point out flaws in peoples believes and when should you just leave them alone or in other words "let them keep believing in santa."
Click to expand...

I've had a few dreams (maybe five in my life, and I'm 49) that have subsequently come true. I've had many, many more that didn't. You're bound to get a few hits on statistical grounds alone, no?
 
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