Li supposedly produced over 200 descendants during his life span, surviving 23 wives...

historical fake people thread?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar

Could have been a bureaucratic fuckup.

>surviving 23 wives.
He's lying.

He was just some senile old man

>"No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity," the Guinness editors assert, noting hundreds of claims of people over 100 and some, "insulting to the intelligence," of people living into their third centuries.
articles.latimes.com/1990-01-14/news/mn-337_1_world-s-oldest-person

But without evidence to the contrary, who's to say they're lying?

Fuck, this guy in the OP seems to have evidence saying he IS just that old. There seems to be both documentation and anecdotal reporting.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=RH2Wz9MqqGI

Lazy and bad translation, probably. More likely the original read "seven chi" but some lazy ass translator rendered it "seven feet" instead of actually converting the units.

>Without evidence to the contrary, who's to say they're lying?
Any rational human being. Li Ching-Yeun is the one making a claim, therefore he has to be the one to prove it. You can't prove a negative. The so-called evidence supporting his longevity is totally unsubstaintial.

>Any rational human being.

That's kind of a shite argument, honestly.

>so-called evidence

The reporter interviewed the old men in his neighborhood, and they said they remembered him from when they were boys. The article mentions documents about his longevity. What's so unsubstantial?

It isn't.

The Chinese are known for being complete retards who believe anything, and full of shit to boot.

This sort of thing happens everywhere not just China

Interviews mean absolutely nothing. He could have paid them to say it, hell maybe he just convinced them they had remembered him being around when they were children. In 1917 tens of thousands of people in Portugal claimed the sun zig-zagged acorss the sky before them. Do you believe this event happened? What about the dozens of other supernatural events people used to claim occured all the time?

Funny thing is, now that smartphones and proper documentation are everywhere, such crazy eevnts seem to happen a lot less.

It seems to happen a lot more than usual in China.

>Hey guys, I'm a sorceror, fuck the Han.
Okay.
Que Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

>Hey guys, I'm Jesus' brother, fuck the Manchu.
Okay.
Que 30 million deaths over the fucking Taiping Tianguo.

>Hey guys, we're immune to bullets, fuck the foreigners.
Okay.
Que the Boxer Rebellions.

>In 1917 tens of thousands of people in Portugal claimed the sun zig-zagged acorss the sky before them. Do you believe this event happened?

I am a Catholic, so yes, I do.

>Funny thing is, now that smartphones and proper documentation are everywhere, such crazy eevnts seem to happen a lot less.

They happen enough, still.

>In 1917 tens of thousands of people in Portugal claimed the sun zig-zagged acorss the sky before them. Do you believe this event happened?

I think it's entirely possible something made it appear so

>In 1917 tens of thousands of people in Portugal claimed the sun zig-zagged acorss the sky before them.
Ayy lmao

>people living into their third centuries
Not that extraordinary really. Pic related was born by the end of the 19th century and died at the start of the 21st century.

Speaking of which, what was that fucking book with aliens and it's just a futuristic version of the Boxer Rebellion? I remember it even saying on the back that it was based on it, and the immunity to bullets just reminded me of it since that's in there too.

So all these people that saw it were just experiencing mass hysteria?

None of the things you claimed were the impetus of the following events. The collapse of the Han occured due to discontent with the Han dynasty. The Taiping Rebellion occured because many people hated the Qing by the mid 1800s. The Boxer Rebellion happend because China was angry at foreigners.

The idea that the Boxers believed they were immune to bullets or that the average peasant believed Hong Xiuquan to be Jesus's brother (Even if they did, why would they care? Most Chinese people barely knew who Jesus was at the time) is a ridiculous.

As with any other nation, uprisings occured in China due to discontent. The mythology added surrounding it was to make the action seem divine rather than a mundane human afair.

Europe often did the same thing, justifying wars as executing the will of God. But the real reason for war was the same as China, unrest and tension.

>come the fuck on user, why is it possible that this mass of people had mass hysteria

Living 106 years is nothing compared to what Wrinkles the Chinkles claimed.

I don't know, but it sounds really familiar and now it'll bug me.

>They happen enough, still.
Oh? Do they now?

>Funny thing is, now that smartphones and proper documentation are everywhere, such crazy eevnts seem to happen a lot less.
Oh god I hate smarmy fucking skeptics like you.

>herp a derp teh fact nothing bizarre has occured in teh ten years smartphones were around means all weird shit in history is teh bullshit.

How the fuck often do you think these bizarre events occured in "the days before smartphones" that it's "funny" that they don't get caught on camera? There hasn't been a volcano eruption on the scale of Krakatoa now that smartphones and "proper documentation" are everywhere, guess that was bullshit too right? Everything that happened in the past that we can't explain today was CLEARLY a case of ergot poisoning, or swamp gas, or my favorite skeptics cop-out "mass hysteria".

I don't even believe this Chinese bullshit I'm just sick of pseudointellectual faggots like you sucking the fucking life out of everything with your comic book nerd sarcasm.

Yeah. That book is on the tip of my tongue. I remember reading it as a kid.

You just need to poke around a little, user. You'd be amazed at the sort of shit that happens outside of mainstream news coverage.

>You'd be amazed at the sort of shit that happens outside of mainstream news coverage.
t. Buzzfeed

"Mass hysteria" is a shitty meme excuse used by "rational" materialists to cover up the fact that they don't actually have all the answers.

It baffles me how some people think everything was hunky-dory in China and then all of a sudden some guy claimed to be God and millions of people died for him.
The Taiping rebellion grew out of the stirrings of malcontent like every other rebellion and religion was then used to justify it, like most other rebellions throughtout the world have always been.

Damn, son, you seem mad your paranormal garbage is unverifiable. I'm sorry you're really pathetic and only capable of finding /x/-tier garbage interesting.

Or maybe it's necessary to be a skeptic so you don't believe every crank claim that is made. And mass hysteria is a documented thing and far from an asspull answer.

Do weird things happen? Of course. I love researching weird things and wondering. A lot of stuff we can't explain happens all the time. But you have to try to rule out all possible alternatives before you jump on some bandwagon. Because if you rule out all other factors, you have something real interesting on your hands. But sometimes what seems weird has entirely mundane explanations. And the fact is that we won't discover the truth of these things unless we view it with a skeptical lens to differentiate crank ideas or mundane events vs real weird shit we need an answer for.

>And mass hysteria is a documented thing and far from an asspull answer.

I honestly have yet to see a diagnosis of it where a supernatural explanation was not just as likely an answer, skepticism aside.

Kek you're getting too angry over this. I'm just highly skeptical of these kinds of unbelievable events because they never seem to be properly recorded or documented. A volcano eruption is not an unbelievable event.

Moreover, do you not believe in mass hysteria? Even if you're a Catholic and believe in the sun dancing episode in Portugal, what about all the various Pagan groups which claim similar events?They can't all be right, therefore at least some of them are probably instances of mass hysteria occurring. So then how do you decide which ones are legitimate?

And I have an example that proves my point. Go to any creepy list site and select a few random events or monsters, whatever. Now rather than read the synopsis on there, do some real digging and see how many start to suddenly lose that same creepy vibe once you see all the facts rather than a highlight.

Take Roanoke. A lost colony that suddenly vanished. But did it really? As you read more, suddenly there's tension between tribes, then there's an Indian guy who claims to have killed white men before meeting the "first" white men he encountered, then there is a tribe that speaks English and seems white, etc. So we have a good idea that they got the fuck out and blended into local populations rather than just vanishing into thin air.

You're quoting the wrong person, he's not the one who mentioned being Catholic. I am.

And, as a matter of fact, I'm willing to believe in all manner of strange things done by other gods, or at least claiming to have been done by them. I tend to think the world is naturally a pretty spooky place, and that there is a lot going on on earth, below the earth, and above the earth. So some entity being able to perform strange signs in the sky doesn't faze me much.

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if his story is true.

That said, Aubrey de Grey claims the first people to reach 150 years and 200 years respectively, are probably already alive.

"Paranormal" is just another meaningless buzzword used by "skeptics" to soothe their autism and poison the well of inquiry. There's no such thing as "paranormal" or "supernatural". Just shit autists like you haven't been able to measure or gather "proper documentation" on, shit which magically ceases to be "supernatural" the moment someone records it or takes a reading at which ivory tower faggots like proceed to pretend you knew what it was the whole time and that your prior mocking of the "superstitious yokels" who first witnessed the phenomenon prior to it's "proper documentation" never happened.

Your Catholic but you believe in "other gods"? Ugh

Whatever floats your boat.

I just think the sun dancing in the sky is pretty stupid but whatever.

And as an addendum, I see why people get mad at skeptics, because skeptics are the buzzkill who ruins the mental high of a mystery and the desire to figure it out. But sometimes mysteries are solved. And sometimes a mystery isn't really that unexplainable. It sucks, but if we didn't take an even headed examination of things we would be buying into all sorts of bullshit.

And think of it this way: the truth does not have to hide from examination. If anything it is good to be skeptical because you eliminate what it can't be and you eliminate the garbage bullshit claims. Skepticism isn't a bad thing, but many people think so because they kill the thrill of that riddle. When in reality a skeptic likes said riddles too, but has less desire to listen and believe and is more interested in truth.

>But sometimes what seems weird has entirely mundane explanations
The only reason those explanations seem "mundane" to you is because your autism sucks the wonder out of them.

I believe in spirits and beings of power. I wouldn't call them gods, because I don't believe they're worthy of worship. I do believe they can cause effects in the physical world, however. I tend to follow Genesis, Daniel, and some of the apocryphal books, like Enoch, in this.

lol chill out

Seriously though, if all this amazing, divine, otherworldly, stuff happens all the time it really shouldn't be hard to catch on film.

>shit which magically ceases to be "supernatural" the moment someone records it or takes a reading
Do you have an example of this?

Why? It was well documented. What's so stupid about it? The fact that it seems impossible? A Christian would say that all things are possible for God.

>i'm dumb enough to believe things without evidence AND IM VERY ANGRY YOU ARENT THE SAME
thanks for sharing

Hmm, this seems very sacrilegious (especially since books like the Book of Enoch are not recognized as legitimate by the Catholic Church afaik) but whatever. You have a coherent world view and that's what is important I guess

How is it autism? Would it be better to believe in fake bullshit? I already said that I have an interest in the paranormal. But my interest in the paranormal isn't an interest in being gullible. I want to know the truth. Can it be explained? If so how likely is it? Is there any evidence for this claim? Because by applying logic and the scientific method towards claims we can either find out if it's bullshit or if we have a genuine mystery to solve.

If you think of these paranormal events as mere entertainment then fine, but some people like figuring things out rather than just believing in everything someone says.

It's not skepticism I have a problem with, I have a hefty suspicion of bullshit myself. It's the in my opinion nonsensical urge to classify things as "supernatural" and then use that as a justification to dismiss an unexplainable event from the distant past as "mass hysteria" that irritates me, because obviously people in the past were stupid and couldn't be trusted to observe their own surroundings.

But people DO catch it on film, at least every now and then, it just winds up being dismissed as hoaxes.

I feel like the only thing it would be impossible for skeptics to deny is hard physical evidence. This is admittedly harder to come by with these things.

The term supernatural is used by people who believe in it as well. You can't blame skeptics for using a colloquial term. If an event seems to violate previously known physical rules, the bar of evidence required to prove thevent did occur is quie high. What part of this is unreasonable?

People in the past knew a lot less than we do now. They weren't retards, but certain knowledge we take for granted they didn't understand yet.

And it isn't like we have a time machine to go back and see what happened during those events. But mass hysteria happens. We have no real reason to believe otherwise, and they were typically one off events. And it isn't like we have much else to go on besides whatever people wrote at the time.

It's autism because there's no such thing as the "paranormal".

Here's a thought experiment.
Let's pretend ghosts are scientifically proven to be real at some point. Are they still "paranormal"? Does the jolly skeptic come along when something weird happens and say "SIGH this unexplained event you think is supernatural was CLEARLY just a ghost, stop being so guillble GOD."?

That is what I mean by autism (obsessive classification and irrational dismissal of everything outside that focus of classification) , and that it turns the interesting into the mundane.

I would be perfectly willing to consider film evidence if it was not super blurry/grainy/distorted. But it seems like practically all the evidence that arrives supporting the existence of supernatural (I'm sorry for using that word, but I don't know how else to describe it) is either witness testimony (which isn't good for much) or horrible quality video.

I honestly wish neat things like ghosts and magical creatures exist, since that'd be awesome, but I'm not going to believe it without strong evidence.

But people who believ in ghosts refer to them as paranormal as well...

Also, I can only speak for me but if ghosts were proven to exist, I'd still refer to them as paranormal, only now I'd believe in the paranormal.

No, if ghosts were proven they would not be paranormal. Paranormal events are things that are on the fringe. They are things we do not fully understand. When we do understand them, it becomes part of our knowledge and the set of things we do know. Your claim that it makes shit boring isn't an argument against it. Because by that logic we should believe rain comes from the rain dance and whims of the gods because that sounds cooler than the water cycle. And personally I find even the stuff we do know pretty fascinating. I don't look at the universe or its laws and get bored, or look at nature and say it's shit because I know biology or the composition of the elements that make it up. That shit is amazing and my interest in the paranormal is to further understand the marvels of the universe, not act like a cynical dickhead.

>The term supernatural is used by people who believe in it as well.
because that is the word naturalists (historical skeptics) used to separate the "natural" world from the "supernatural" world of superstitous peasants and Catholic miracles (I'm not the Catholic guy just to be clear).

>You can't blame skeptics for using a colloquial term
I can and I will as they are the intellectual inheritors of the people responsible for creating this false dichotomy in the firts place.

>and that it turns the interesting into the mundane.
this is probably the most hilarious part of this whole argument
you're clearly admitting you don't actually CARE about what the truth or the answer is, you will just, in a desperate search for something to make life seem interesting, choose whatever answer you think is the kewlest. why not just admit your intentions?

>When we do understand them, it becomes part of our knowledge and the set of things we do know.
That's my point, it's a useless term.
>Your claim that it makes shit boring isn't an argument against it.
I'm saying the opposite the fact that something is "natural" does not detract from the sense of awe it would inspire as a "supernatural" concept unless you mentally abide by that artificial divide and turn life into the mundane.

I don't have a problem with scientists, I have a problem with "skeptics" which are very different group of people.

Way to completely miss the point "smart guy".

>Way to completely miss the point
No, that's the exact point you unintentionally made. You don't care about the truth, you just want to be entertained.

How is it useless? The issue of ghosts is a fringe topic. We don't have any real hard science on it. We call it paranormal to differentiate it from our normal set of knowledge like the laws of physics or biology. It's easier to break them up because it is an easier way to discuss a certain subset of relatively little interest or phenomena. It's for ease and clarity, not because paranormal things are inherently different.

As for your issue with skeptics I'm not sure I understand your point. A scientist is a skeptic (or rather supposed to be). It just seems like the skeptics you met were smug cunts. I don't know how that really invalidates the idea of skeptically examining things. Because all scientists are supposed to do that and you say you have no issues with them.

Making up points that the other guy "unintentionally made" sure is a real easy way to "win" arguments.

You're the one who let your true intentions slip. Blame yourself for being such an idiot.

It's called flat out lying, OP.

Jesus the actual verified oldest person lived to 122. That's like three lifetimes for some people.

>The issue of ghosts is a fringe topic.
So are some areas of mathematics and physics
>We don't have any real hard science on it
Once again so are some areas of mathematics and physics.

Nobody ever labels them as "paranormal" though, just as fringe scientific theories or theoretical mathematics. Just to be clear though I'm not calling ghosts a fringe scientific theory, I'm calling the term "paranormal" a junk-bin people use to easily dismiss whatever gets tossed into it .

> A scientist is a skeptic (or rather supposed to be). It just seems like the skeptics you met were smug cunts

When I say skeptic I mean smug cunt, not skeptical scientist. Very few of the people who leap to supply the "mass hysteria" explanation on the internet are are skeptical scientists, most of them are just smug cunts.

(you)

I'm a different guy. My issue is that there seems to be a point at which skepticism becomes almost pathological. There's a point at which the threshold for evidence gets pushed back too far, for me anyway.

Take ghosts, for example. There's actually a lot more photographic evidence of ghosts than there used to be because people keep capturing them on their smartphones. That pushes ghosts a lot closer to being real, at least for me, because there seems to be some documentation of their existence. But it seems like some skeptics would respond and say that there has to be an error in those photos. Why? I can't think of a good reason why, except because it's a part of someone's creed that ghosts aren't real, and so anything that supports their existence obviously has to be fake.

That's the thing that makes me nervous, that kind of pathological skepticism. It's obviously a good thing to be skeptical and not gullible, but we shouldn't be immune to being convinced, either.

if i was wrong you would have stopped replying already

It only seems pathological because they're right 100% of the time.

a few sit ups and cardio

Okay, so let's say we throw out the term paranormal. How do we then explain the kind of phenomena that falls under the paranormal umbrella? Do we also throw out cryptozoology and just make looking for chupacabra a zoological matter? You'd be mashing together a lot of different ideas and muddle the issue more because when people think zoology Bigfoot doesn't tend to come up a lot. But it does if you refer to paranormal or cryptozoology.

And one can be a skeptic and not a smug cunt. The term has just been abused to hell and back lately. Even the reverse. I've been called a smug cunt on /x/ for simply being skeptical and even trying to propose the idea that the OP isn't actually a vampire, that maybe some cryptozoological beings are misidentifications, etc. But the term is still useful to represent certain values. It doesn't lose value because a bunch of idiots abuse the term and think they are skeptics (on either side) when they are both closed off to alternative viewpoints and really just mean "I'm skeptical of YOUR side of things, not mine".

What a fucking moron.

Yes. That kind of skepticism does exist, but they have a fair point. Because orbs by themselves don't prove much and can be due to any number of natural things rather than a ghosts. Then there are things like frauds, pareidolia, and even some genuine cases where it does seem like a spirit. The problem is that a single picture or series of pictures is hard evidence. Does it hint that something is going on? Yeah. But until we know more about just what those things are or their nature it is hard to say for a fact that these are spirits or really say anything about them.

Yes, there will always be skeptics, but for every skeptic who is a try hard, there is a believer who is just a little too eager to believe in these kinds of things.

Do you actually believe that? I mean Transubstantiation?

Sorry, meant a picture or series isn't hard evidence. Especially due to these other factors.

Of course I do. I believe everything the Church teaches. It's amazing to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Christ.

>I'm a Catholic
No one cares. Doesn't prove anything.

>How do we then explain the kind of phenomena that falls under the paranormal umbrella?
We don't.
We maintain a healthy agnostic stance and dismiss the obvious hacky hoax bullshit when it pops up but remain open to the idea that we don't know everything and treat things on a case by case basis. Obviously I don't expect zoologists to spend much time thinking about stuff like chupacabra and bigfoot, but if some wacky non-fraud zoologist wants to spend his time chasing them that's his business and he can present his findings when he finds them.

>And one can be a skeptic and not a smug cunt.
I'm not going to disagree with you, I'm just skeptical of anyone who self identifies as a skeptic.

So your proposed solution is to wipe out the entire classification and just shove it all under whatever relevant branch of science it would apply to? Because I don't think that does much unless you see very little interest in these topics. Because a lot of people do, hence the classification and people who spend time trying to research it.

And for certain paranormal events, I don't think there is even a relevant branch of research. Aliens, Cryptozoology, and things of that nature could go under different categories, but things like ghosts don't really fall under any category of science. The lines can get pretty blurry.

I see your point here, but I don't see how you can take "mainstream" science and just try to throw in fringe theories about unknown or unexplained phenomena and expect them to mesh very well together. These fringe ideas need to kinda play out. Just like shit that would seem crazy such as germ theory had to really wait until different advances in science made it possible to see said germs. A lot of these unexplained events could be in the same vein.

It isn't. Tofu trying to deceive us again.

>Pic related was born by the end of the 19th century and died at the start of the 21st century.

smart-alec autist, they don't mean "living within three centuries of our lord", they mean personally living to three centuries (3x100) years of age. Most of us here were born pre-2000, does that mean we're 2 centuries old?

It's called pseudoscience moron. The scientific method is objectively defined: if you don't follow it, it's not science.

Deal with it butthurt crpytidfaggots and learn to apply yourselves. Nobody would have any issue accepting your beliefs if you didn't just retreat to conspiracy accusations or philosophfag wankery whenever anybody asks for evidence.

Or continue being crystal worshipers, lmao who cares in the post-modern post truth world rite? XD

I mean there's absolutely no shortage of charlatans in the modern day, especially in China with all of its reverence for traditional or "magical" practices. There's really nothing for skeptics to disprove given the fantastic nature of these claims, unless you are somehow stupid enough to believe that people were somehow less full of shit in the past than they are now.

Especially since according to the article, when authorities actually came to pay him a visit, his family claimed he had just barely died "in nature" and had no body to produce.

no fap

your average person wouldn't last two weeks in the neolithic backwoods, just because people know *different* things than you doesn't mean they know less or are somehow incapable of accurate reporting.

this is an example of DOGMA

>I LOVE SCIENCE

>pseudoscience

lol

He had the Tao