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Comment by ochronus | Hacker News Reader

Oh no, this will feed the "aura" BSers

God forbid we take something "magical" and extract the real Truth from it? Like, if this is a piece of evidence, aren't you happy to update your assumptions?

Sadly, that's not how it works. Those nutheads are twisting everything to their convenience, and sell it to idiots, even at the cost of someone's live. And any "proof" of their BS is just solidifying all the other BS.

You have a one-dimensional view of your "opponents". Not everybody who is into spiritual BS is preying on suckers, or a sucker being preyed upon.

The thinking that preceded our current understanding of physical elements was very loose and woo-woo(Water, Earth, Wind, Fire), but we refined.

I never claimed that everyone is doing this. Are you reflecting?

You did though. You said "those nutheads". Not "some of those nutheads"

Yes, those nutheads who are twisting it, not all nutheads who are in spiritual stuff. There are many old and ancient creeds which are barely changing for decades and centuries. Those can be also problematic, but usually their believers are more pragmatic and won't tell you how you can cure cancer by just praying hard enough while sipping the 200 dollar tea they sell you.

Sorry, I muddled together your reply and the one I originally replied to in my head and seem to have arrived at the strawman "Auras are bs and people who take this article as a hint to them are grifters/victims".

I guess it's a charged topic for me (badumm-tss).

Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma fit the woo-woo explanation of earth, water, air, and fire quite well though. It's actually eerie how well it fits.

Hey, never thought of it like that!

We have discovered way more exotic states of matter though. And for a preindustrial society there are only three phenomena that involve plasma: the sun, the aurora borealis, and lightning.

Fire is not a state of matter, it's a process. Sadly, my prog rock band "Solid Gas and a Process that Creates Heat and Light" never really took off.

Liquid is not literally only water either, so I don't think it contradicts the comparison.

I don't believe in auras, but perhaps some of these photons are picked up by human brains unconsciously, even though it can not be seen "directly". Those that sense it feel special because it is not common, and may use supernatural explanations, when it is really just a natural phenomenon.

Yup, could be! My problem is not with that, but rather the things they seem to "derive" from this.

That one has to use a throwaway to avoid losing HN good boy points from the bitter fedora-posters is a shame.

No one ever claimed that auras weren't natural, just frequencies that most people can't see. Everything vibrates, even physical matter, we've just agreed to experience some frequencies differently.

If humans could detect this light then we could see living things in otherwise complete darkness. But we cannot. So it stands to reason that these photons do not explain "auras", and "It's just your imagination" remains the best explanation for auras. Perhaps they are based on simple after-images: if you stare at something long enough the color detecting cells in your eyes get tired and you start seeing weird visual effects that seem to match how people describe "auras".

Corollary: it'll give the materialism jerks something to think about.

such as?

Such as, maybe there's more to life than just chemical reactions.

Are you implying the light discussed in the paper is supernatural?

Where is the indication that this light (which is barely visible to instruments, let alone humans) does not come from "just chemical reactions"?

This finding is certainly interesting, but it does not at all contribute to "spiritual thinking".

More, how? Come on, be more exact.

You be more exact; I’ve spent plenty of time in internet woo-woo ideas and I don’t think I’ve heard of auras since the nineties, reading about Kirlian photographs from a hundred years before that.

Here you are saying that some unspecified group is deriving some unspecified ideas which are, you claim, life riskingly serious.

Just for the sake of making HN interesting to read, can you stop with the one sentence comments that vaguely imply you know something we don’t, and be more exact, explanatory and specific?

no ;)

Bioluminescence IS a natural chemical reaction, though.

That perhaps the people who claim to see auras were in fact telling the truth due to having the right genetics to be able to observe this light.

They don't. It's normal visible light spectrum, just extremely weak. Nobody can see it with their eyes.

Supposedly the human eye can detect a single photon under the right conditions though.

Not really... https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/08/08/105518/the-thorn...

Or, yes, under ideal conditions, maybe sometimes. 51.6% chance of being right in a yes/no question will not help in this case.

Nobody is a pretty strong claim.

Human bodies are different in many ways.

This is like saying: "Nobody can jump over this 200m wall. - Nobody is a pretty strong claim." It's really beyond the scope of human vision overall, rather than "really hard".

Those are ... two different things?

People can pick up single photons, this is definitely within the realm of possibility.

Btw, your level zero snark can be defeated by the "on which planet?" argument.

Or perhaps there just happened to be an overlap between the nonsense they believe in and some shred of truth that you have to squint really hard to make work.

That's not even the "BS" part (for me), but what they "derive" from all of that.

Yes, "how will scammers use this information to trick people into woowoo?"

But we already have plenty to think about.

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