Re: [TSCM-L] {3097} Re: Electronic Harrasement

From: James M. Atkinson <j..._at_tscm.com>
Subj= ect: [TSCM-L] {3097} Re: Electronic Harrasement
To: TSCM-..._at_googlegroup= s.com
Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 6:14 PM

Ted,

The information which you are finding that 
supports your delusions is either deeply flawed 
and not scientific, or you are so desperate to 
prove your point that you are taking weak 
information that you may not realize is flawed or fraudulent.

I would recommend that list subscribers read the 
following article: 
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/348-gnome-hunters.html

If you need to find gnomes to prove to other that 
you are not suffering from mental health issue 
then it is very easy to consider that even the 
weakest of information, or unscientific methods supports gnomes being found=
.

You need to find some better information.

-jma




Gnome Hunters
Swift
Written by Alison Smith
Thursday, 18 December 2008 18:12
GNOME HUNTERS: A Demonstration

I was recently asked to write an article for a 
group of paranormal investigators about how 
skeptics view believers. I pointed out that, not 
being psychic, I cannot possibly know what all 
skeptics think of all believers. But I did come 
up with the following example, which I think 
helps demonstrate the skeptical position. 
Skeptics, you might find this example eerily 
familiar. I hope that you enjoy it, and that if 
you come across any Gnome Hunters in the future, 
you might be able to use it to illustrate why 
certain claims are difficult to believe.

One day, you are hanging out in a book store. You 
bump into a man who is buying some books, and 
wind up talking to him for a while. You find out 
that the man has a hobby – every time he visits a 
new place, he scans the area with a special Gnome 
Finder that he has designed himself. In reality, 
the Gnome Finder is a calculator. When the man 
finds out about a place that is rumored to be 
full of gnomes (which are, of course, invisible), 
the man takes his calculator/Gnome Finder to the 
location and puts in a simple math problem; like 
2+2. Every time the man gets a wrong answer, he 
knows that gnomes are around because gnomes hate 
math and they block all right answers to illustrate that fact.



The man ignores all other possible explanations 
for the wrong answer; like perhaps his finger 
slipped on the button or the batteries in the 
calculator were low. He knows there are gnomes 
because texts dating back to ancient times have 
reports of them, and because there are so many 
reports still. He even, when he was a child, saw 
a gnome, and that experience has stayed with him ever since.

You abruptly begin backing away because the man is clearly insane.

Let's examine this example a little more closely.

The man believes in something you have never 
personally seen, and for which there is no 
scientific evidence. The man uses equipment to 
gauge whether or not this thing you have never 
seen is present in a location even though it is 
not designed for the purpose, is not accurate, 
and has never been shown to do anything beyond 
one particular thing, which is not searching for 
gnomes. The man does not account for other 
possibilities for his anomalous readings. The man 
depends upon the mythology of a civilization for 
proof. The man also depends on a memory from when 
he was a young child, despite evidence that childhood memories are unreliab=
le.

Let me know when that sounds familiar.

Assume you keep talking to this man because you 
have no regard for your own safety.

You bring up the points in the above paragraph. 
To each of these points, the man has a response. 
He says that it doesn't matter if you personally 
have not seen gnomes. He has. And yes, it was 
when he was a child, but obviously that just 
means children are more open to the possibility 
that gnomes exist, and that the rules that are 
hammered into us in school have made adults blind 
to the presence of gnomes. The man says that it 
doesn't matter what the calculator was designed 
to do – he has evidence, from his many gnome 
hunting expeditions, that there is a correlation 
between wrong readings and reports of gnome 
activity. And the man insists that he does 
account for other possibilities for the readings 
because he changes his batteries often and is 
very careful when putting in the numbers. And 
anyway, the man can prove it. He has photos.

You ask to see the photos of the gnomes. The man 
presents you with a series of photographs from 
different locations. Some of the photos look like 
smoke. Some look like lens flares. Some look like 
motion blurs. Some look like bugs caught in the flash of the camera.

You point this out, and the man tells you that he 
is sure no one in the photos was ever smoking. He 
knows how to photograph things because he has 
taken a photography course, so they aren't lens 
flares. He would know what those looked like. No 
one in the photos was in motion, and neither was 
the camera. There were no bugs out that night because it was winter.

And anyway, that's alright, he has audio too.

You ask to hear the audio, and the man pulls a 
voice recorder from his pocket. He plays you an 
audio clip. It is full of static. You hear 
something that might be a voice, but you aren't 
really sure because the quality is kind of poor, 
and there is no context for the clip – it starts 
up right in the middle of what the man refers to 
as Gnome Voice Phenomenon, or GVP. If you think 
about it, it does sort of sound like a voice in 
the same way that if you drag a chair across the 
floor it might sound similar to a human voice if 
it was played back through a voice recorder, 
which is designed to filter audio in search of 
patterns like human voices. If you think about 
it, the sound could almost practically be saying 
“Paul is dead,” or “Cranberry sauce,” or “Toaster pastry.”

The man tells you it says “I am Gnome.”

You ask to hear the recording again, and he plays 
it back to you, this time with you listening 
specifically for a sound that is close to “I am 
Gnome.” And, after he plays it again, you can 
sort of hear it that way. You know, however, that 
humans search for patterns in noise, and that if 
someone tells you specifically what pattern to 
look for, you'll be able to find it. In fact, you 
have tested this phenomenon at home by recording 
the sound of a glass being scooted across the 
surface of a table and later telling your good 
friend that it was a secret special recording of 
Marilyn Monroe, and he could swear he heard part 
of the happy birthday song in it. And even if it 
really is a voice, and even if it really is 
saying “I am Gnome” in some of the most garbled 
language you've ever heard, you can't see 
anything. Audio is only audio. Even if the voice 
was perfectly clear, there could be a human being 
standing right next to the recorder saying it.

You point this out, and the man tells you there 
absolutely was not anyone doing any such thing.

In fact, he has a television show on the Sci-Fi 
Network on Wednesdays at 9/8 Central with the 
rest of his group, called GAPS (Gnome Activity 
Pursuing Society). You go home, glad to be rid of 
the man in the bookstore. Luckily, it is 
Wednesday, so you sit down and turn on the Sci-Fi channel and watch the sho=
w.

The show contains everything you feared. A group 
of individuals walking around, searching for 
gnomes with equipment that doesn't actually prove 
anything about gnomes. A series of anomalous 
calculator readings that don't illustrate 
anything at all. The group says that they are 
skeptical, but they sure as heck aren't called 
“We Are Going To Go Figure Out Whether Or Not 
There Is Something Society.” They are GAPS. They even have t-shirts.

At one point in the show, something passes in 
front of the camera. It looks like it might be 
mist. The GAPS team is very excited about this, 
as gnomes are known to appear in a mist-like 
form. They run around for a few minutes, trying 
to capture more mist. They also try to replicate 
the mist. They cannot replicate the mist. It must 
be real Gnome-Mist. Of course, you realize from 
your seat at home that this means nothing except 
that there is no more mist around, but GAPS disagrees.

They never actually call the location “Gnomed,” 
but many of the members argue about whether or 
not it is. There is one, who you assume is always 
the hard-sell, who is very against using the word 
“Gnomed” at all. He prefers the term “anomalous 
activity.” Then he calls himself a skeptic, even 
though the logo on his web site contains, you 
guessed it, a gnome, and his show is called Gnome Hunters (GH for short).

You still aren't really sure what the mist was, 
so you get online on your computer. You discover two things:

GAPS has a giant fanbase.

There are groups out there that have replicated 
the mist you saw in the episode.

  After all this, do you believe in gnomes?


http://www.skepticalanalysis.com

http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com



At 06:23 PM 12/19/2008, TedMc wrote:

>I am not a doctor nor am I a TSCM expert, however I do know that
>something exists that all the information I can find backs up, but the
>experts laugh off.    I have a good family who is very supportive and
>wants the best for me so of course I have been evalutated by doctors.
>I do not have time to debate information that is available to everyone
>because right now there is someone out there who is not as lucky as I
>am and is going to lose everything  because those he asks for help
>will ridicule him.  Maybe I can learn enough to help that person
>before this happens.  Good day and please at least check into what I
>am saying for that person when they call, because I can bet they will
>say the same thing that I did, and as you say it is deadly serious.
>Understand that although I thank you for saying not to spend my money
>on something that will not help, please understand that the very
>reasons you say this makes what they do possible.

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