It is fundamental to many of those who are atheists, skeptic, or scientific that there will all be a logical explanation to everything we come across and according to Ahkom's (spelling?) Razor the simplest solution must most likely be the correct answer. Now as I always am thinking of the metaphysical and the psychological nature of things and many time that deals with existence and reality I start asking, "how do we as humans decide what is real or not?" So that leads me to how can I understand what someone calls real and what someone calls fake. What question or scenarion can I come up with that exemplifies this and I come to these scenarios...

Please read and answer 1 scenario at a time...


>>>>>>>>SCENARIO 1<<<<<<<<<<<

You(A) and a friend(B) are alone. There is noone else around you and you have known this friend your entire life. You are both taking a walk and come across a third person(C) who stops and talks to you. Your friend looks baffled as to why you have stopped walking and are now carrying on a new conversation. You ask him what's wrong and he says you are talking to no one. He says there is no one standing there talking to you. In other words he cannot see person C, you can. Person C also tells you that he can see and hear your friend.

What is going on in this scenario?

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>>>>>>>>SCENARIO 2<<<<<<<<<<<

The scenario is the reverse. You and a friend a walking down the street when suddenly he stops and talks to someone(D) you can neither see nor hear, but that person claims they can see and hear you.
What is going on in this scenario?

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>>>>>>>>SCENARIO 3<<<<<<<<<<<
In scenario 3, again, both you and a friend are walking down a street alone. This time someone (E) stops you and begins talking to both you and your friend. All 3 of you can see and hear each other...

What is going on in this scenario?

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>>>>>>>>SCENARIO 4<<<<<<<<<<<

Scenario 4 is the one where it gets tricky. Once again you and your friend are walking down the street alone. This time person C, D, and E all come stop and talk to you and your friend. Assuming all previous statements about who can see and hear what in other scenarios...Or for those who can't keep track...

edited: corrected this >.>
(the implied of the above will also be listed)
You (A) can see and hear = B, D, and E
B can see and hear = A, C, and E
C can see and hear = A, B, D, and E
D can see and hear = A, B, C, and E
E can see and hear = A, B, C, and D

What is going on in this scenario?

Bluetooth.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Notice i said see and hear.

I think scenario 4 is a bit muddled. According to the previous scenarios, C & D can see and hear both A & B, yet you've left out B & A from C & D, respectively

I admit I don't keep up with the latest in phone technology. Do iPhones allow for multi-person video chat?

Cynically I would say an MMO but I don't think that's where Durakken is going with this.

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---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

I can't see anything from the information in your scenarios that indicates how C, D or E interact with each other (I'm assuming that "me" and "my friend" are consistently persons A & B in each scenario, not just the first one).

Also, your summary appears incorrect: in Scenario 1, you say that person C can see and hear 'my friend', who is person B. However, B is not included in your summary for Person C. Likewise, Person D claims to be able to see Person A ('me'), but "I'm" not in his list.


btw - when do I get my cheese?

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

Whoops i got it backwards...i'll edit and correct it...

This is not a technology explaining what is happening.

To get you on the right path...
Imagine if someone told you that they were talking to someone invisible, what would you think?

What is going on? One or more of these people are mentally unstable and are talking to imaginary people.

Or it's the future and marketers have found a way to beam advertisements straight into an individual's head.

And it's Occam's Razor, named after William of Occam (alternative spelling Ockham).

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Maybe it's a virtual reality system with the computer keeping track of who can see who.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

Simplest explanation: the story is fiction. (And it's likely to have originated as a little game by the "faithful" to test how the "evidence-dependent" deal with things that fall outside of their preconceptions.)

Mr. Occam, by the way, didn't say that the simplest explanation (given equal evidence) is the most likely to be right. He said it's the best one to use (until the evidence becomes unequal). It's really just a procedural convenience for humans.

I believe it's not a riddle to find the right technological explanation, but intended to be technology-free: you're all really just standing there (or not), in person, at normal conversational distances from each other, using sight and hearing as you always do, no fancy tricks.

Then there are only a few possibilities left once we figure it's not a technotrick or technoriddle. Either some of the people have selective invisibility and inaudibility, or some of them aren't really there and are being hallucinated.

The possibility of a logical explanation is not the same as being able to explain everything. There are many things that we can't explain. but there always have been, and always will be, and that has nothing to do with being either atheist or skeptical or scientific.

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As above, so below

Maybe some are blind and some are deaf.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Works for me!

I go bed now.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Beware of any thread that starts with a strawman.

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The first 3 are easy to answer...

situation 1. you are dellusional
situation 2. your friend is dellusional
situation 3. there is no problem

It's when we are presented with the 4th situation that it becomes a bit weird.

In this situation, the only logical answer removed for various technological that I can assume is that A, B, C, and D are all not real and E is delusional...

it's either about talking to Jesus (or Buddha or Muhammad or Moses, depending on your affiliation), or it's the mental instability thing that Sticks mentioned.
or, since i've been watching way too many episodes of SG1 on dvd lately and it might cloud my judgement on things like this, maybe someone is talking to an ascended being..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

If so there's some deliberate misdirection going on in the question...
If 'friend' is blind & deaf he wouldn't know you are talking to someone at all. If he's just blind he would hear C talking & realise there was someone there.
EDIT: That's strange - I was sure I was at the bottom of page when I replied to Mike's comment, then when I posted the Durakken & novaderrik posts appeared.

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* Never doubt there is Truth; just doubt that you have it!

This is a product of too much exposure to Messenger and Voice Chat .
People can talk to whoever they want at the same time and apply stealth settings on others and pretend that the person talking to is the only person he is talking to.

Logically speaking, you'd need to get a call from one of these people to go down and see for yourself who is there and who isn't. However, if a couple of the participants were talking to people not present, you'd have to conclude that logic is not the first problem on the list of things to be dealt with.

Or six of them. Especially if that Six is blonde and wearing a red dress.

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