most people can get behind parental control. that is why bad actors are pushing for age verification everywhere nowadays.

i think the issue many people have with that field is, that it enables bad actors to do things. all the while, it does not really do the thing it is supposed to do: if i trust my kid with sudo, the field can easily be altered. if i do not trust my kid with sudo, it cannot install anything either way.

with your last paragraph i (and probably most people) agree. but we already have those tools, right? at least until i knew computers better than my parents, there was no way i could install anything without them being OK with it. even when i was admin on my very own desktop, i was heavily reliant on the parents for everything costing money. yes, even my dumb ass figured out how to pirate stuff. but to do that while being afraid to brick your precious device with some virus - you need some tech literacy, which is for sure beyond changing one value.

who and what is your threat model? as @macros@feddit.org pointed out this article was probably rather accurate.

if you just want to browse anonymously - it is likely, that even the biggest tech corpos can’t de-anonymise you.

if you do small time crime, like buying and selling contraband - likely law enforcement would try to catch you in the real world. you have more vertices and vulnerabilities there, different enforcement agencies are experienced exploiting these.

if you paint a big ass target on your back and get the interest of the CIA or similar - you are probably fucked one way or the other. they may have the ability to de-anonymise you. but if you listen to people that did get caught or do the catching (e.g: darknet diaries), most of the times it is a small mistake. if you only ever play defence, that is enough to loose the game. but what are your options if your adversary is a national agency?

why would anyone spend time to disprove mediums (if not for the fun of it)? like anything in science I have to prove MY hypothesis. so if a medium wants to claim what they are doing is actually ghosts, the burden of prove is on them.

i would claim, that a reasonable person would attribute the medium (not a ghost summoned by the medium), if they are seeing things, hearing things, whatever a medium does… while they are in the room with that medium person. again, the medium needs to prove anything happening is not just them messing around. i guess they could put some LSD into my coffee before leaving and make me see things alone. but i am pretty sure the LSD would be detectable and the person responsible for drugging me arrested.

a medium and other trickery cannot be used as explanation for those people who experienced the third man factor. while it is totally OK for you or anybody to say “{…}, and that’s where I would stop, I can’t explain it, I don’t know what this is.”. the scientific approach would be to form a hypothesis, and start doing experiments to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. the problem is, that i cannot think of an ethical way to do such experiments. which is why, i don’t believe we will be able to prove or disprove such a thing. so let’s go with Occam’s razor and prefer the explanation where people hallucinate things, due to body and mind being pushed beyond limits.

mediums are a completely different thing, as they peddle a ‘wonder product’. claiming things without proof and asking for money. but that modus operandi is not restricted to non-science. radioactive underware was a thing…

i am talking about people who did experience something and how they choose to interprete that experience for themselves. if you ask me, it was most likely their body and mind being pushed across certain borders - which made them feel things that where not actually there. if you asked me about my grandfather, i would tell you that he is most likely not here or there and it is just my imagination. but it gives me a little bit of comfort to at least allow the possibility that he is somewhere.

those are all personal choices about personal experiences, which do not affect anybody. but if someone start selling a product or even a religion. they crossed a line and are (trying) to affect other people.

it is not irrational, to observe (or experience) something and not being able to explain it.

i do not have any reason to assume my friend is a liar. so she heard her fathers voice. how or why she heard it we will never know, as she was not hooked up to a brainwave scanner or similar.

apparently we have different people from different times having experienced similar things. thanks @Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works for pointing to the Third Man Factor! so i would say it is quite reasonable to believe something can happen to us humans in extreme situations. is it just our imagination? quite possible! especially considering the more extreme stories mentioned in the wikipedia page surely drove those people to or past their individual limits. but that brings me back to my last paragraph: it doesn’t change anything or even matter. those voices, or whatever they where helped those people survive extreme situations and live to tell the tale. whether it was a deceased loved one, a valkyrie from norse mythology, friendly tree spirit, their subconsciousness wanting to survive, … or just hallucination due to thirst/starvation/exhaustion.

the effects didn’t change. so whatever the cause is, shouldn’t change my, your, or anybody else’s life

thanks! didn’t know there is a name for it

ghosts are like religion: can neither be proven nor disprofen. what do you even consider a ghost? i do faintly believe in spirits:

when i am sitting at the grave of my grandfather, it does feel as he is around somehow. is that because i miss him and wish he is still with us? likely…

a friend of mine recently lost her father. they are both accomplished mountaineers. on a solo tour, she told me, she heared her father’s voice reminding her to be careful - while not paying attention during a dangerous passage. was it her father reaching out? was it her subconsciousness taking the persona of the father? we will never know…

in the end it doesn’t matter in the slightest, what these feelings of ghosts or spirits really are. if our ancestors keep watching out for us, that is great. if our subconsciousness keeps watching out for us, while taking on different personas, that is great. life goes on the same - even if it all was just imagination.