You’re being an ass.

Quiet, I’m not sure if your tongue was firmly planted in your cheek, but do you see the problem with that way of thinking?

No. It’s a sound, skeptical, scientific way of thinking. I have some unusual experiences, but I know they would only be anecdotes to a bunch of strangers, so they are of no value to anyone but me. What exactly is wrong with that? If Barton hadn’t posted I would never have mentioned them.

It flies in the face of rational thought.

It’s the definition of rational thought. Despite my experiences, I know they offer no real proof to anyone else, so I leave it be.

I have no problem with people experiencing something out of the ordinary.

Gee, thanks.

But it does become a problem when they try to build a following out of their experience,

Where did I do that?

or convince others that their experience is true, without allowing others to examine the evidence, and provide alternative explanations.

What evidence? That’s my whole point. I have no evidence to give you other than anecdotes, which I recognize as being useless. I could never really recreate the situations properly with just words or descriptions.

Also, if I had the ability to “see” the future, you’d better believe I’d take advantage of it, even if I only had a less than 50% success rate!

I asked “would you TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT” not “would you use it”. The implication was that anyone who could would use it, but keep quiet about it so as to not attract attention.

GAry 7

[[That just reminded me about the story in the garden of Eden. God told Eve that if she ate of the tree of knowledge, she would surely die. The serpent came along and said, nah, you won’t die, you’ll gain great knowledge. I find it amusing that the “evil” serpent never lied, God did.]]

I find it even more amusing that you claim to understand the Bible when you’ve clearly made no effort to understand the culture that produced it. I take it that, along with the creationists, you think “day” has to always mean a 24-hour day? That if I say something happened “in Lincoln’s day” I must mean a particular individual date?

And note the “great knowledge” that Adam and Eve gained by eating the fruit — that it was shameful to be naked and that they could avoid God by hiding behind trees.

If you don’t know how to read books written for grown-ups, read something else.

[[Yea, shoot, Barton. We’d love to hear it.
Lots of things that folks told me “can’t be explained any other way” can be explained pretty simply.]]

You didn’t read the rest of the post, did you?

Quiet, I’m not sure if your tongue was firmly planted in your cheek, but do you see the problem with that way of thinking? It flies in the face of rational thought. I have no problem with people experiencing something out of the ordinary. But it does become a problem when they try to build a following out of their experience, or convince others that their experience is true, without allowing others to examine the evidence, and provide alternative explanations.

Also, if I had the ability to “see” the future, you’d better believe I’d take advantage of it, even if I only had a less than 50% success rate!

—If these people do have the abilities that they claim, why are they not using their abilities to win lotteries, sporting bets, or reading the stock markets?

If you were, would you tell anyone? Especially if your success rate was anything less than perfect and could fail at a crucial moment? I’d would do as well as I could and just shut up about it. Who knows what sort of attention it would bring, and from what sorts of people?

Don’t you watch Heroes?!

I HATE my life!

I’ve always wanted to see a “Randi challenge” live and I’m not going to make it to TAM, this year. (Fates I CURSE you!!!)

Next year, FOR SURE, but I’m going to hate missing this test.

What’s the fun in being a Skeptic if you can’t make fun of the weirdos (yes, I e-mail Nancy Leider, watch Reverend X and read Richard C. “Hyperdimensional” Hoagland’s webpage, all the time…I confess, it’s a guilty pleasure that has me laughing in no time…and others, when I read it out loud…)

Of course,

He may just do it.

THAT would be cool as well, however, I’m not betting more than a dollar on that, though (and I want insane odds or it’s no deal).

Oh, to be one of those judges…

That would be SO cool,

rod

PS:
Let me practice a little, just in case…: Ummm, ya failed! (Thee end).

But I guess my point is that if it’s there at all, it might be a form of communication resembling body language or pheromones. I.e not something we are usually aware of, or even can be aware of, but works none the less.
Because, thus far, the woo woo has had way too much influence over the experiment protocols. Nothing suggests that the person who experiences telepathy actually knows whats happening and is qualified to make a good test for it.
And given that it obviously does not involve good conscious control in the manner that speech does, physical testing is sort of moot as well.
Behavioral type testing is the way to go I think.

True, but there are other types of information in our heads. If I got to design such an experiment I would try to transmit moods or even levels of excitement without the good/bad label. Emotional energy so to speak.

Like, the transmitter could listen to an audio track with calm nice music, and (assuming the transmitter is a rationalist) interrupt it with a couple of choice snippets of Kent Howind. The receiver should be in an adjoining room and every 30sec make a note of his own emotional state, and what he thinks the transmitters emotional state is. Then check for correlation.

However, this raises an interesting point. Could we be witnessing an evolutionary step? It would be highly advantageous to have this form of communication. Also didn’t one of the Lunar astronauts do some kind of ESP test from the lunar surface. (I seem to remember Mitchell being interested in this type of phenomena.)

And if something detectable has to move the information, then it should be possible to eavesdrop on the information flow, and it should be detectable with instrumentation.

More importantly, even if the technology does not yet exist to detect the information flow, it should be a simple matter to test for information transfer – show person A a simple image, have him telepathically transmit it to B, and have person B state what it is. This test has been done many times without results that differ from chance.

It’s entirely possible that the phenomenon is so unreliable so as to be very hard to distinguish from chance, yet still exit, and become apparent under very particular circumstances. This would explain why so many people become convinced of psychic events being real.

Also, I would throw in that in the context of woo woo, telepathy is the one most likely to exist (at least if you assume that it is some kind of radiation) because all examples of all necessary components can already be found in nature, plus the evolutionary advantage for pack animals is obvious.

If these people do have the abilities that they claim, why are they not using their abilities to win lotteries, sporting bets, or reading the stock markets?

This really is the least loaded test possible. A guy comes along and says he can do this psychic ability with 96%+ accuracy. He agrees to a test under conditions that are completely fair, that have little to no chance of cheating and would require incredibly amazing luck to ‘win’ without actually performing the task as he claims he can. I don’t see what else one could ask for.

I’m sure when the guy fails, he will say “I wasn’t feeling right” or that the moon is in the wrong position or some crap… they always do.

That just reminded me about the story in the garden of Eden. God told Eve that if she ate of the tree of knowledge, she would surely die. The serpent came along and said, nah, you won’t die, you’ll gain great knowledge. I find it amusing that the “evil” serpent never lied, God did.

http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/media/videoclips/Precog/precog.html

Has anyone ever seen any documentation that indicates his ability was not legit?

GAry 7

The very first SciFi story I ever read was a post WWIII story that was placed in Labrador, about telepathic mutants in a society trying to rebuild and delete all those nuclear mutants. The essence of the story was that the telepathic mutants could only communicate with each other and could not be distinguished from “norms”. A very scary idea, to the “norms”.

In 1987, while working at E.F. Industries in El Segundo, Calif, I was talking with my manager and one of my employees, one Mike King. Our discussion was about the emasculation management offt times imposes on employees and I clearly “heard” Mike say, “Yeah, and then they cut off your balls,,,” I was startled to hear Mike say that and repeated it back to him as a question. Mikes eyes expanded(metaphorically), he took three steps back and said,”Hey, I was thinking that, but I didn’t say it,,,”

Anecdotal stories could be just a poor memory(not one of MY problems) or an out and out lie(but I’m too lazy to keep such in order) or a misinterpretation of a mundane event(probable) however, when we have no external observer to keep track of our lives, we’re sometimes left with peculiar events for which we have no other explanation than “It musta been a real thingy,,,” however, I would like to note that Mike thought it was a real, transnormal event and it scared the heck out of him,,,he left our employment shortly there after.
Which is exactly how most people would behave in similar circumstances(skeptics excepted). So I expect if there are “real” teeps around, they would be silent about their ability, even to passing up a shot at big bucks. It’s one thing to be able to (telepathically)pick up Bill Gates pin number, something else entirely for Bill to find out what you’ve done,,,

Gary 7

Comparing to dreams for example, I can remember dreaming of a tree or a lake, but if I see a flock of geese I have no idea of how many there are.

Also there are many ways for the brain to form such images, from the properties of the object itself, as well as context and cultural tie in like Christmas trees or the tree or knowledge.
But you can’t really describe a number without using numbers.

You can mime a tree by standing on one leg an waving you hands above your head. How would you mime the value of 4?

I don’t know if the analogies apply, but then again, neither does anyone else. It just seems to me they are making it unnecessarily hard.