User talk:Nobody60/Prahlad Jani

Deletion Request
User:Marshallsumter added a speedy delete request, noting 'appears to be solicitation, all quotes are uncited'.

There is an article at Prahlad Jani with similar content. As I review this article, I don't see the solicitation. The external links appear to be news sources, and we don't have a requirement here that sources be cited. The resource is (correctly) tagged at the top as being an author's 'drama' and opinions.

The article could be moved under some learning project on religion, or supernatural claims, etc., or perhaps moved to user space as a personal essay. But based on Deletions, I don't see criteria for speedy deletion.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for checking this one out! It is hard for me to tell what this is. I wrote "apparent solicitation" as the essay appears to be soliciting for the religion or spiritualism mentioned. The uncited quotes may be a copyright violation or just hype. When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty (I believe it was) disappear, dozens of witnesses were quoted in the show as no longer seeing the Statue. They were all lying, of course, as part of the show. I see no difference between these two except we know nothing about the people supplying the quotes or making the quoted phrases. As 'drama' and opinion it can be a learning resource, but we had a similar problem last year with alleged 'hate speech' regarding India. And, that was deleted, not because it was opinion or drama, but because a group of wikiversitians wanted it deleted and more importantly the content was never developed into a learning or teaching or research resource by the uploader(s). That same test I believe should apply here. If there's no development as a learning, teaching, or research resource in the same length of time, this too should be deleted. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 22:35, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We would probably need to do it as an RFD. You could tag it for Proposed Deletion, but the author is active here and would likely remove the proposal.  I'm not opposed to an RFD, but it's harder to support since there is a corresponding article on Wikipedia with similar content.  That makes this more of a quality / content decision, one the community should make.  Maybe User:Abd has a suggestion on a learning project this could be moved to as a subpage.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:45, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I've read the Wikipedia entry and the entry's history. Like this essay, there's a small group pushing unsupported or poorly supported inquiry. It's clearly a religious phenomenon to them. They would undoubtedly fight against an RFD here. All they would need to succeed is three or four current or about to be current individual's here to defeat an RFD. Unless Abd has an idea, I'm willing to let this essay die in obscurity. I'll spend no more time on it. Thanks for your thoughts. Just FYI, the only test needed of the poor soul was not that by a neurologist but a proctologist. An enema would have exposed him as a fraud from the start. That it was not done exposes all the rest as accomplices or accessaries. End of story. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:08, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Where to put this?
Nils (Nobody60) has created quite a few pages that are not readily categorized. Marshall is not correct, this is not "promotional." However, I don't think it belongs at the top level in mainspace. It could be moved to Nobody60 user space, but I'd think of asking Nils where it should go. This is basically a discussion, from his point of view, of a notable man, the subject of a Wikipedia article. I suppose it could be a paranormal claim, but I wouldn't put it under parapsychology, where we have work going on, it's too different from that study. There are others who have claimed the ability to live without food or water. See Inedia. Inedia is tagged with category Pseudoscience on Wikipedia, but that's an error, because Indedia is testable, in theory. I'm not seeing a scientific claim here. Just something that I and most people would think impossible.

Categorizing this as a religious claim is also problematic. What religion? Nils is a cooperative user, generally. There is no need for an RfD here, because, short of that, we can move this to his user space. I'm thinking, though, of some examination of breatharianism, which is the name I've known for this idea for about fifty years, when I had a friend who was apparently attempting to practice it. He was found, apparently sitting in meditation, out in the open somewhere in the hills, dead. That someone dies trying doesn't prove it's impossible, though! And that somebody believes it's real also doesn't make it real. We avoid these conflicts on Wikiversity, Marshall, we don't delete pages because they have "wrong ideas" on them. Rather, we tag the pages as essays, discussions, or the like. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for commenting on this. Just to be clear I was asking that it be deleted as apparent solicitation, which is different from promotional, not for a "wrong idea". And, the test of development can still be used. I've found so far in this universe that very few things are impossible, and there are usually no absolutes. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Solicitation for what? Basically, Nils writes his opinions, presenting them, and certain controversial claims, as fact. We can warn him about that, or just fix it. He has never resisted fixing it, but is not particularly responsive, see User talk:Nobody60. He does answer minimally.
 * An example was deleted from this page by IP, in May.. Nils does not appear to understand how to distiguish report and conclusion from fact. He reports his own conclusions (not his experience!) as fact. However, reading that, what was said there was not attributed to himself, it was vaguely attributed to an "internet discussion," i.e., copied from somewhere, but not sourced. Copyvio. Clearly, however, Nils believes that Prahlad Jani actually survives without food and water. Yet there is no way to know that from personal experience, if one is not Prahlad Jani. If one is a witness, witness of what? First of all, human beings, this is not controversial, can live for quite a long time without food. The much more urgent supply is water. I have personally gone maybe 40 hours with nothing, no food or water. Not particularly difficult. Observing another person continuously for long periods of time, very difficult. So what exist are reports, sometimes claims. That Prahlad Jani did not eat and drink is generally a claim, unless observation was totally continuous and not subject to what magicians know how to do routinely: distract. Not eating for long periods is not terribly impressive, but not drinking, when the body loses water continually in normal function, that's what would appear to create some high suspicion. Prahlad Jani was allowed to gargle and bathe, for example. How closely was this monitored? Was the water measured with accuracy before and after?
 * Even more, why should we care if he eats or doesn't? There is a story of the Buddha: a sadhu was claiming to be able to walk on water, having spent years in practice, and demonstrated it by walking across a river. And the Buddha gave a ferryman ten cents, to be taken across the river. That's what the feat was worth. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:10, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Nils claims, in the resource, that he is "scientifically minded." No. He's not. He does not understand the foundations of science, he does not know how to distinguish pseudoskepticism from skepticism, the latter being essential to science. Most importantly, a scientific skeptic is skeptical of his or her own opinions. The question is always, when we assert something as knowledge, "how do we know"? and because there are always appearances that present that can be misleading, a scientific skeptic never knows anything with complete certainty. Rather, evidence can accumulate to the point that one, as a practical matter, stops investigating, one cannot, in a single lifetime, investigate everything. Nils asserts "truth," and that it is "true" that Prahlad Jani has gone for seventy years with no food or water. He is obviously asserting what he could not know; rather, he is accepting certain reports, and following circumstantial evidence, of the variety of, "Doctors examined him and found this or that," and did not see him eating or drinking. Except he gargled and bathed. Uh, wait a minute! But I have not researched this case in detail, and see no particular value in it.
 * On the other hand, it would be highly interesting to see what his body temperature is and how that is maintained. It would be interesting to see a continuous record of his weight. It is possible to absorb water through the rectum. So did he gain weight after bathing? How much? There is one matter of possible general interest here: if there is violation of conservation of mass and energy. A human body is like a flame, it continuously burns fuel, giving off water and carbon dioxide. So what is going on with his metabolism? What I'm seeing is that there is not enough belief in the truth of his claims, in India, that this is being seriously investigated.
 * I do not have any reason to assign a very high Bayesian prior to the impossibility of extended fasting, including fasting from water, particularly for long enough to present an appearance of never eating or drinking. Still, 70 years? With someone who is active, moves around? What's the mechanism? It would seem that there are, indeed, violations of the "laws of physics." By definition, that's very much unexpected. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:10, 21 August 2014 (UTC)