21 year old Canadian girl Elisa Lam went missing earlier this month while staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA, and her naked corpse was later found in the hotel's water tank.
Here is the Google Street View of the hotel.
An outbreak of TB has recently started among the street people of downtown LA. "Lam-Elisa" is a treatment for TB.
The Cecil Hotel's guests have included serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger as well as infamous "Black Dahlia" murder victim Elisabeth Short.
A mysterious organisation based at the hotel is "The Invisible Light Agency" which has a most peculiar website. The agency seems to provide special effects for films. Former employee Anthony Vu now works for Raytheon Missile Systems.
The final footage of Elisa Lam before her disappearance and death is the CCTV from the hotel lift, in which she holds the door open for three minutes, repeatedly checks the corridor outside and seems to make sign language at one point.
The notion of synchronicity, whether it exists and how it differs from coincidence is more useful to debate in terms of philosophy rather than statistics. We are moving into religion and away from science, unless you are some kind of superstring quantum physics expert and I'm pretty sure we don't have any on .gs, just wikipedia reading bluffers.
Wasn't there some kind of cunt-off about the existence or otherwise of morphic resonance and how correct those studies of crossword solving may have been a while back? We're in the realm of Lyall Watson books already and only a few steps away from angels and dolphins lunacy, but the interesting thing to me about a story like Elisa Lam's and all the bizarre features is the potential to widen personal reality tunnels and make us question what we hitherto believed to be true or reasonable. The websleuths threads are by far the best resource on the mystery I've found - a true crime/missing persons site frequented by dull and sensible middle-aged women rather than wild-eyed crazies but they are all freaking over the strangeness of it too.
From reading her many internet presences she seemed an extraordinarily good-natured, gifted and intelligent young woman, although highly strung and fragile with it.
I've just noticed that the girl's name contains the letters E, M, I and L, while we're asking "why". I think the universe is trying to tell us something.
The Queen of Apophenia herself recently wrote, possibly in connection with this story "oh and i can also remember now...it had been winnie with grzesiek and agnieszka....at that 'torun observatory base'....she had seen that 'tin man' statue of a rocket and then told them that she was picking up DIAL M FOR MURDER...they all made a run for it...and from her...they figured that they had triggered something within her...."
Well that's all sorted out very clearly.
I am starting to believe Elisa Lam killed herself in a really bizarre and inventive manner while under the influence of the horrible cocktail of drugs she was prescribed for bipolar and ADHD.
Recently all over the world there has been an increase in demonic killings of various sorts. In some cases they are oath bound spirits who have broken loose and are going mental, in other cases it's the local land spirits who are pissed at pollution and other things they see as people messing with their stuff.
The best defence against them is to practice fearlessness and kindness.
I am not saying that is what happened here, but it sounds like there could be a link. The water element suggest a very minor Naga could be involved. And I think there were pre-colonial snake cults in the area.
>>2423 I'm not sure what to make of this post. I mean, it's the internet so my instinct is to not believe anything, but at the same time I know there are people this batshit crazy in the world.
>>2421 I had to look him up and had it explained to me that he's a comedian who enjoys taking the piss out of believers in the paranormal and New Age claptrap and that he self-describes as an atheist and sceptic. Personally I find some atheists as rigidly narrowminded as most species of godbotherers but never mind that.
My own take as OP on why Elisa Lam's story fascinates me: as we get older we lose our sense of wonder. As we get more jaded and believe understand more about the world's workings, nothing much surprises us any more, whether it be acts of grace and kindness or wicked and cruel behaviour - all seem part of the spectrum of humanity. The coincidences and oddness around the Elisa Lam story briefly reignited a sense of wonder and shock at the world - and no, I don't have any kind of preposterous overarching theory that it was the work of reptilian military Illuminati as a symbolic warning to China - there are websites that do have that stuff, the admirably realistic /boo/ tends not to be one. I don't have a clue what it all 'means' and that's the fun part.
The coincidences or synchronicities again:
(i) History of serial killers living in hotel (ii) Advertising on bus in Google street view (iii) Parallel movements from San Diego to downtown LA of EL and the Black Dahlia (iv) Outbreak of drug-resistant TB in area following disappearance, tested for using LAM-ELISA (v) Presence of small special effects company "Invisible Light' with Scientology and military connections traced through linkedin in the hotel (vi) EL's love of computer game L4D with its 'rooftop finale' sequence (vii) Many curious parallels with Japanese horror film Dark Water (viii) EL's bizarre elevator footage taken at 2 AM on February 1st (ix) Mysterious obscene graffiti on water tank which no-one can translate.
>>2424 Never mind the internet and the small proportion of the overdeveloped world's population who use it and forget about the neocolonial use of science as a substitute for missionary work. Belief in spirits and possession is extremely widespread and exists as a mainstream belief system in every culture on the planet and has done since Time Immemorial.
So assuming you're also >>2416 your argument is that there is a great mind at work and its plan is to tip you a big wink so you can feel a childlike awe at the universe?
You'd rather believe this than Littlewood's law based on a refusal to accept his definition of a miracle?
There's no possible point or method to or for the connection of any of these things, and the argument that it's important to open your mind to other things seems completely redundant. Why would anyone want to open their mind to something completely and utterly impossible? You're projecting patterns of meaning onto random signal noise. You may as well give yourself physical brain damage for all the good it does. "Opening your mind" is only a good thing by virtue of what it can do. Your brain is falling out.
>>2428 I tend to temporarily 'believe' what's useful and what works for me. A good definition of reality is what's still there when you stop believing in it. I enjoy having my paradigms shifted frequently. For some people self-imposed restrictions and certainties seem to work more for them. Feeling childlike awe at the universe can certainly be life-affirming: why do you think people look at the sky at night? How do you think the field of astronomy began?
Opening your mind to something completely and utterly impossible or 'believing seven impossible things before breakfast' is a basic foundation for almost every religious and spiritual path as well as creative work in the visual arts, writing, music. Listen, never mind your Dali or Crowley or your snake handlers, Nagas, fire walkers and exorcists. Something as humdrum and British as the Church of England - as the Head of which the Queen exerts much of her constitutional authority over us all - is based on a story of someone 2000 years ago who may or may not have existed, who died after being tortured then came back to life and we now drink his blood and eat his flesh. In your area there are no doubt Grapevine and Pentacostalist churches. What do you think goes on in these boring looking places? Speaking in tongues, possession of the Holy Spirit, deranged Toronto Blessing laughing and rolling fits is what. The irrational, the messy, the unscientific and people who are happy with all that stuff is everywhere in the world around you. Littlewood's Law is onto a losing game.
That Tim Minchin guy is the most painfully unfunny and piss-poor comedian I've seen since Jimmy Carr came out by the way.
>>2434 >I refuse to believe in Littlewood's theory because he defines the size of his sample before measuring it.
If that's your takeaway, you've very obviously learned the wrong lesson.
>>2430 There's nothing useful about believing that there's any meaningful link between the murder of Elisa Lam, LAM-ELISA or Richard Ramirez having stayed in that hotel. Maybe it "works" for you in the sense that you enjoy it, but you'd probably enjoy heroin too. I bet it feels better than the sky, too.
Your list of all the different walks of life who 'believe seven impossible things before breakfast' is simply untrue, maybe some people in those professions make a habit of it but most generally don't, or at least there's no evidence they do. You're projecting.
I'll admit it's useful to have the capacity to entertain the possibilities of impossible things, but actually believing them serves no purpose other than in getting lied to and taken advantage of.
It's also rather telling that you're so keen to believe in impossible things but dismiss out of hand something concrete that has been studied like Littlewood's Law.
I'm amused that you're levelling insults at Tim Minchin as though his appeal to you is relevant. It's not. I don't like him much either, but "If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out" is entirely pertinent in this case.
P.S. The field of astronomy began when some clever people realised that the conclusions astrology was jumping to, in much the same manner as you are doing now, were ridiculous and they should try and make a science of it instead. Weirdly, they still enjoy a sense of wonder at the universe, without any belief in magic.
>>2434 I believe I just won the argument with you btw, genius.
>>2436 I do not believe there is any meaningful link between Elisa Lam, LAM-ELISA, serial killer history etc - not sure how many times you need to hear me reiterate this. "Belief is the enemy!" I have observed with fascination the unusual connections of the story - what Littlewood would define as an explicable miracle. Not into heroin but along with the majority of other adults in our culture I do enjoy deliberately intoxicating myself with alcohol sometimes - how irrational is that? Oh gosh, maybe that's why my brain fell out.
Littlewood's playful and entertaining conjecture is from the field of mathematics and discounts the nature of consciousness and brain physiology and what we know about how the senses work: somewhere around 90% of the raw information from our senses is filtered out as irrelevant. It's true that this keeps us well and functioning - in conditions like schizophrenia the sensory floodgates open with debilitating results. But for people in creative fields or with a serious interest in religion some access to the raw information becomes a necessity. You accuse me of projecting: I'm going to accuse you of never having spent much time with any painters or poets or giving much thought to serious religious study and what that entails.
I'm surely not the first person you've ever come across who suggests that science has become secular humanism's branch of religion over the last century. "Real and provable" facts based on empirical research and study were once that the earth is flat and that the sun circumnavigates the earth. Science is as messy and chaotic as most other ways of interpreting the world. Littlewood's inability to correlate mathematics and consciousness studies shows the limitations.
>>2437 >"Real and provable" facts based on empirical research and study were once that the earth is flat and that the sun circumnavigates the earth. Science is as messy and chaotic as most other ways of interpreting the world.
Except that science constantly adjusts its views in light of new evidence. More importantly, it's not just about interpreting what we observe. Scientific theories make predictions that can be falsified.
Take cosmic background radiation. Scientists calculate the amount of radiation that should be expected if the Big Bang theory was correct. They send up a satellite to measure it, and the data matches perfectly. How is that messy or chaotic?
>>2437 >not sure how many times you need to hear me reiterate this.
That's the first time, if you'd care to re-read the conversation so far.
Alcohol generally serves a social purpose, but the point you've missed here is that you're taking open-mindedness to the point where it can have an extremely negative impact on your life. That is possible with alcohol, but heroin is a better example.
>playful and entertaining conjecture
Nice rhetoric. Disagree with something? Imply it's not proper science unlike all this conjecture of meaningful pattern in coincidence.
>in conditions like schizophrenia the sensory floodgates open
Do you have any evidence of this? Or would evidence relegate it to "playful and entertaining conjecture" ?
>I'm going to accuse you of some things
You'd be very wrong. Again, you're projecting:
>since I assume successful people have the same behaviours as me, anyone who disagrees therefore has never met any of those people.
What tosh.
>>2438 and >>2439 seem to cover that last section quite nicely.
>Hail Eris and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
>Shit, they got me! Errr ... I was just trolling! Honest! I'm not really that thick!
>>2440 >>in conditions like schizophrenia the sensory floodgates open
Do you have any evidence of this? Or would evidence relegate it to "playful and entertaining conjecture" ?
>>2440 >>Hail Eris and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
>Shit, they got me! Errr ... I was just trolling! Honest! I'm not really that thick!
The person you are debating and entertaining is in fact a card-carrying Pope of the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric. Take a seat and have an apple.
"Neurobiological studies of sensory gating in schizophrenia" is a term you should search for. I don't disagree at all that open-mindedness can have a profoundly negative impact on some people's lives: we only have to observe the everyday tragicomedy of truthers and conspiracy freaks posting their paranoiac samizdat screeds online.
Now do tell me how Littlewood's no doubt magnificent grasp of mathematics and ability to sell pop-maths to the masses enabled him to define what awake and alert mean. Did he study people experiencing the condition of hypervigilance for his research, for instance?
>>2437 >Littlewood's playful and entertaining conjecture is from the field of mathematics and discounts the nature of consciousness and brain physiology and what we know about how the senses work
Yet again, if that's what you think you've learned the wrong lesson.
>>2442 >Now do tell me how Littlewood's no doubt magnificent grasp of mathematics and ability to sell pop-maths to the masses enabled him to define what awake and alert mean.
Why? What have these got to do with the law of truly large numbers?
>>2441 Excess dopaminergic neurotransmission particularly in striatal brain regions, along with dopaminergic deficits in prefrontal brain regions is not a corroboration of what you were saying.
>>2442 He defined it in terms of his trials, that's fairly standard practice for psychological studies. "X number of people met Y criteria which we refer to as [term]".
Now tell me how that's relevant? In what manner does your low yet uninformed opinion of his work falsify it but legitimate your own anecdotal synchronicity?
>>2445 My opinion of Littlewood's work is certainly uninformed - like Minchin, I'd never heard of him before this thread yet unlike Minchin I don't have a low opinion of him. Mathematics is certainly not my field and I'm not sure how 'the law of truly large numbers' whatever that is disproves beyond all doubt what millions of living people believe to have been spiritual and religious experiences. I do have scepticism and suspicion of the efficacy and reliability of 'standard practise' in any kind of research study and awareness of how observers effect outcome in experiments - not necessarily through quantum mechanics but through a desire to have one's own prejudices confirmed, and sadly all too often through what their financial backers and the political power base behind them want to be proved true.
A quick look at the reams of genuine and serious research that took place into phrenology and which fed into eugenics a century ago is as enlightening as learning how the 'surveys' and 'opinion polls' served up in our daily press work and what lobbies lay behind them. Newton's work on alchemy meant more to him than all that gravity conjecture too.
>>2445 > Excess dopaminergic neurotransmission particularly in striatal brain regions, along with dopaminergic deficits in prefrontal brain regions is not a corroboration of what you were saying.
If you can say that, then you don't understand how NMDA and Glutamate mediate sensory phenomena within the brain / consciousness.
>>2444 >>Now do tell me how Littlewood's no doubt magnificent grasp of mathematics and ability to sell pop-maths to the masses enabled him to define what awake and alert mean.
>Why? What have these got to do with the law of truly large numbers?
Because if he defined his sample incorrectly (by confounding what events an awake and alert human may 'observe') then his statistics are meaningless.
>>2446 >yet unlike Minchin I don't have a low opinion of him.
So why do you keep implying his work is not worthwhile by your use of language?
>Mathematics is certainly not my field
See above. Are you honestly not aware of the contradictions and cheap rhetoric you keep turning to?
>I do have scepticism and suspicion of the efficacy and reliability of 'standard practise' in any kind of research ...
That's fine, up until the point where you decide that means your own anecdotal synchronicity is more likely to be accurate.
>The conclusion you jump to may be your own.
It may be, but then again all the evidence in the thread so far is against that being the case.
>>2447 Or maybe I understand that the fact that they mediate sensory phenomena does not necessitate that the phenomena are reflections of reality. Hallucinogenic drugs have a fairly similar effect on the brain but hallucinations are not reality. A schizophrenic may experience many things, but that does not mean those things are coming in through the senses.
Must leave now and more later, but quickly (i) Any use of derogatory language towards Littlewood you've found seems to be you perceiving your own shadow. Was he your grandad or something? You are very protective. I have no doubt at all that his grasp of mathematics was brilliant as I've already stated (ii) Not only schizophrenics but modern mystics ranging from Gurdieff through to Richard Bandler can be brought into the debate over the meaning of 'awake and alert' (iii) Anthropological studies of cave paintings and ritual suggest the presence and reality of 'spirit world' archetypes in disparate cultures which could not have met, including our own - see also the concept of liminality, rise in modern voodoo as a way of fighting against neo-colonialism etc
(i) Uhuh, sure it is.
(ii) That's not really relevant.
There's nothing very impressive about dropping classical references into a debate when you're only aware of them via a deliberately nonsensical religion. No one cares, it doesn't make you knowledgeable on the matter at hand. All it does is demonstrate that your position on the matter is second-hand.
One of the most pointed things about this thread is that some people who seem to be arguing against the use of logic, are doing so in a way that apes logical debate.
The line appears to be that if Littlewoods is wrong then logically, logic doesn't matter.
>>2452 If I told you of my own frequent and bizarre direct contact with Erisian currents and how the Law of Fives seems very real to me, that would be a delusional misreading of the entirely logical way of interpreting miracles under your grandad's wonderful law according to your unified theory of dullness and wall-building.
As by insulting and misinterpreting my religion you are clearly looking for a Bunch of Fives on the full moon, perhaps a classical allusion to her good sister Nemesis would be more suitable. Incidentally, Elisa Lam writes somewhere of wanting the word HUBRIS tattooed on her left wrist.
>>2449 >Because if he defined his sample incorrectly (by confounding what events an awake and alert human may 'observe') then his statistics are meaningless.
If you're questioning the sample rather than the substance of his argument, you're doing it very badly wrong.
>>2456 There are many millions of us out here in the swimming pool of human craziness enjoying our psychoses to the full. What's your problem with that, Mr Logic?
>>2457 The substance depends on the sample, Einstein. Still awaiting your response on definitions of 'awake and alert' in conjunction with what you've learned here about sensory gating and schizophrenia and perhaps with reference to Gurdjieff and NLP.
>>2459 This Littewood dude didn't know about sensory gating research - it came after his 'law'. He is no doubt rolling in his grave for being remembered for a frivolous short and entertaining piece of popular maths rather than his real work.
Funny in a way that we seem to be in a genuine and 4 REAL 'liminal phase' as the anthropologists would have it in the UK right now with a plethora of persons willing to assassinate Cameron and IDS and increasingly openly talking about it without fear even on failbook. SOON COME as they say.
Sage for confusion about how this relates to the mysterious death of Elisa Lam.
