AIBU to believe FIL time slip experience?

[elsiesbonnet]

FIL was round yesterday evening for dinner with his wife. We were talking about the Uncanny podcast & recent TV episode then he told us of two experiences he'd had in the same place a number of years apart. After I went & did some research & asked a couple questions today, he's told us of another experience he had in the same place that was similar to one of the other experiences but that happened when he as a child.

I'm quite sceptical about paranormal type events I guess because I've never witnessed anything myself but am generally quite open minded. I don't believe FIL to be the type to make this sort of thing up & he was almost unwilling to tell us in case we thought he was crazy. He's never told anyone before.

AIBU to think what he experienced could've been real? In one of the instances he interacted with people in the past, his recall was quite genuine & he had some significant detail that you couldn't just make up. Has anyone else experienced a time slip or some other paranormal event they couldn't explain? I'm intrigued!

Not going to answer my questions then @SurprisedWithAHorse? Thought not.

Your "questions" are just deflection to try to distance yourself from the logical conclusions of the daft statement you made.

You said we don't know that there isn't a Scouse time portal, which immediately calls up the concept of proving a negative. And, indeed, by that logic, we don't know that invisible, undetectable mice in teapots aren't circling Mars.

Your response to this is "well I didn't say there WAS a Liverpool time portal!" as if that's the issue.

Your "questions" are just you admitting that your statement was silly by refusing to stand by any of its logical conclusions about false negatives and mice in teapots. And why would you, when they're ridiculous?

My statement that "we don't know..." is factual. We don't know. We don't think there is one. It doesn't make sense that there would be one. But we don't know.

You took that statement and ran with it. Decided I was asking someone to prove a negative. Decided I believe there is a time portal in Liverpool. And when I ask you to point out where I did either of those things you can't. So you go off on a tangent, wittering on about mice.

It looked, to me, that nebulae was actually the one first making the point than you cannot prove a negative, which you repeated with your mice example. Everything seems to have gone of the rails since…

The mice in teapots is equally factual. Just as it's factual that you can't prove a negative. I used the same logic on a different situation to show what else it could be used for. You call that "running with it", well, I call it demonstrating its absurdity.

Your "questions", like I said, are just you admitting in a roundabout and somewhat dishonest way that the statement was ridiculous because you would never actually stand by any of its logical conclusions. Basically, it's this:

"We don't know there isn't a Scouse time portal!"

"We don't know there aren't undetectable mice in teapots around Mars either."

"Well I never said there WAS a Scouse time portal! Did I? Huh? When did I say there was a Scouse time portal?? You can't answer my question, so that means I'm right about... something!"

Honestly, the bloody portal is making more sense by this point. There's no frigging portal.

This has been ridiculous arguments. Have many people claimed that there are invisible mice in a teapots circling mars and truly believed it and believed they had experienced it?

Meanwhile time slips and other paranormal experiences have been claimed by many.

in what way are these things linked.

If we can’t know that someone’s experience is false then it cannot be totally dismissed. If someone actually claims they have seen invisible mice in a teapot are circling mars then we don’t know they aren’t.

yea things might be more or less likely, the decision about this is really subjective and based on one’s philosophy. If you’re a materialist you might conclude it is unlikely. Whereas if you believe in something beyond the material, eg you’re an idealist it is probable that you would consider the presence of a timeslip
more likely.

Yes of course it's ridiculous. That's the point. That's why you can't prove a negative.

The power of suggestion and expectation, however, are very well documented. Several people have provided links to explain some of the most common paranormal experiences. I've experienced sleep paralysis. It's terrifying if you don't know what it is and I can understand why people used to think it was paranormal. But it isn't.

There's no frigging time portal in Liverpool.

But this is what I’m saying, you’re happy with those explanations because they fit your narrative on how the world works. Other peoples explanations work just as we within their narrative.

You cant say there’s no time portal in Liverpool, you can say I don’t believe there’s any time portal or there is no scientific evidence for a time portal in Liverpool.

what’s interesting is why you want to state something as true when you have no way of proving it.

No joke. I used to run a ghost hunting events company for 4 years, and the Galleries is our local, and all the electronics are turned off and it was in the middle of the night. It was the only experience of a time slip as such. Id like to think it was more like stone tape theory, where common sounds and noises (ie footsteps) get absorbed by the fabric of the bulding and every now and again it gets thrown out again.

Yes and no.

I would be happy enough to state, in an every day sense, that there is no time portal in Liverpool, in the same way that I’d feel comfortable saying that Hogwarts is not a real school for wizards in Britain.

I actually couldn’t prove either of the statements so, if pushed, I would have to ultimately revert to one of the softer statements you suggest. Still, it would be incredibly tiresome on a day to day basis by having to qualify every simple statement of fact with a recognition of the possibility that the world may not be as they see it.

Otherwise, we should all take some time to recognize the possibility that Liverpool might not even exist. If the rest of you posting actually exist yourselves, of course.

I actually feel quite comforted that there are other people out there having premonitions, but like me don't tell anybody!
When I was younger I had a premonition of a really tragic, unexpected event many times before it happened. For a long time, I felt like I'd made it happen because I'd visualised it.
Now I'm older, I know this isnt true as I get them all the time. Sometimes about people I don't even know personally and often of no importance at all. I can't read people or make myself have them on command. It's of no use to me and is actually quite scary, because I don't want to see a tragedy before it happens again.
I know it sounds insane and like there must be a rational explanation. But me and DH have tried to explain them away with logic many times. Lots of times though, there is just no reason we can find. It's good to talk about it here, because we'd be laughed at irl.

But, again an example is being used to compare that no one is claiming to be true in an effort to undermine rather than examine peoples claimed experiences.

Now solipsism - that is something that arises in various spiritual and philosophical systems and beliefs throughout time annd place (if either exist) and is certainly worthy of exploration.

Thinking further about this we could look at many different ideas around time travel Maldacena’s holographic universe theory allows the possibility of time travel. Slightly different but somewhat connected would be the possibility of multiverses.

is time actually even linea? We could be experiencing simultaneous events rather than time travel.

I feel like I was aware of Nigella Lawson in the 1990s - she was regularly on TV talking about newspapers and books. You've likely just mingled and conflated various things and produced a false memory. My brain has certainly done that to me. How to Eat came out in 1998 so perhaps you made recipes from that. She was on Nigel Slater's programme before her own too.

Nigella Lawson’s late journalist husband was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. I remember watching a tv series about the family around this time with a very young and the beautiful Nigella cooking in their kitchen while talking about the impact on John Diamond and his family.

Nigella wasn’t well known, I hadn’t realised her dad had been CotE under Thatcher, but John was really famous as the first(?) person to document his cancer journey publicly in a newspaper column.

The programme made quite an impact on me as a young person- never heard of throat cancer before then.

That was for @SylvieB74 as I was confused when she brought out a cookbook and tv programme… she looked so familiar… but knew I’d seen her before and only remembered much later she was JDs wife

I actually feel quite comforted that there are other people out there having premonitions, but like me don't tell anybody!

Not a premonition but a false memory - we went on holiday to UK seaside town and I was convinced bone deep I'd been there before and knew the town well.

I assumed must have been a childhood memory of UK holiday that no-one mentioned when we booked - but upon asking my parents nether had been there and as far as they were aware it was my first trip there - it's some distance from all my family.

I nodded along with explanation that it has period characteristics with other UK holiday seaside towns I had been to before and I may have seen documentaries/you tube video about cliff railways and hotel and IL had occasionally talked about their few holidays there and it was all that coming together in my subconscious- but never felt it really fitted the very definite feelings that lasted entire time we were there and layout knowledge I had.

Well then ignore the Harry Potter example, if you like, and focus on the Liverpool one (although there certainly seem to be a at least a few people on the internet who do claim to believe that Hogwarts is or may be real…)

In an everyday sense, if someone (presumably not from the UK) asked me if Liverpool is a real place, I would say yes. Technically I should be accounting for the possibility that it is not, per solipsism, but in an every day sense I don’t think that is necessary. I feel the same about the PP’s statement about there being no time portal in Liverpool.

Yes - I do agree that a holographic universe would resolve some of the issues that would seemingly make time travel impossible, like the spatial problem.

I guess that is where our perspectives differ. Why do you think there’s a PP maybe this whole thread is in your mind😀.

There's lots we don't know about the time continuum and how it works. Read about cosmic inflation and multiverse theory. Much of what we understand about time is based on theories. Theories can be wrong. I think there have been so many incidences of time slips to suggest that perhaps time works in a more complex way than we currently think. If the multiverse theory is partly correct, it way go some way to explain what people consider to be paranormal activity. Its quite fascinating and I don't think there's any harm in taking your FIL's account seriously.

Yes absolutely this. There’s so many gaps in our understanding only a fool would dismiss these possibilities. It’s nearly always done in such a derogatory way too.

"Theory" in scientific terms doesn't mean "theory" in colloquial parlance. To say our understanding of physics is likely wrong because it's "only a theory" is a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific theory.

But of course there are several scientific theories most notably in theoretical physics which would allow for experiences we would call time slips.

Scouse time portal would be a good cocktail