I’ll go further. Psychic phenomena have never been definitively observed in humans or any animal or plant on the face of the earth. There are over 6 billion humans, plus all the humans that have ever lived in the last 100 years (to be fair and not include ancient witch doctors and shamen who didn’t know any better), plus all the animals and plants that exist and ever have existed in the last 100 years.

On just people alone, that’s odds lower than 1:7 billion. If you include all life on earth (why should humans be the only ones to exhibit magical powers), the odds stretch into the 1:10^12 or worse.

Can you imagine… Telekinetic whales? Spoon-bending squids? Mind-controlling bacteria?

I do not state the superiority of either position. I am trying to point out the philosophical difference that underlies many arguments around here (such as about the existence of God and what “agnostic” means).

>@ Irishman: your “3rd Position” is not a position at all, it is the refusal to take a position.

No, you are misuing the word “position”. Or rather, using it different than I did. I used “position” such as having a switch that has settings, or positions. You put the switch in 1 and you get off. You put the switch in 3 you get on. You put the switch in 2 you get a dimmer knob. I am differentiating between “position” and “conclusion”. You are taking “position” to mean “conclusion about whether psi is true or false”.

> Looking at the evidence, you can either draw a conclusion that the latter is true, that the former is true, or you can refuse to take a position at all. Phil, looking at the evidence, has drawn a conclusion.

Okay, that appears to be a 3 position viewpoint. But when I read Phil’s statements, I get what appears to be 2 position arguments. He exhibits either/or arguments. A 3 position thinker can accept that there is no strong evidence to support psi, that lots of weak evidence does not equate to strong evidence, that many psi claimers are fakes, and that there are numerous explanations for seeming psi effects (i.e. psychology), and still think that psi is something that is not actively disproven, ergo there is a possibility that it exists. Thus the neutral position.

2 position thinkers get mad at 3 position thinkers for being indicisive, and accuse them (the 3 position thinkers) of being closet (or not so closet) believers in the thing because they (the 2 position thinkers) can’t accept the viewpoint that there is a neutral middle.

3 position thinkers get mad at 2 position thinkers who are skeptics because they (the 3 positino thinkers) feel that they (the 2 position thinkers) are being irrationally dismissive and drawing an unwarranted conclusion while claiming to be open-minded, when to them (the 3 position thinkers) open-minded means allowing the possibility it could exist just that it hasn’t been proven so.

I am not advocating for either. I am attempting to educate that the distinction exists.

To give an example, one person says gravity pulls objects down, another says gravity can pulls objects up. Would it be proper to refuse to draw a conclusion at all on this debate? Of course not, because all evidence indicates that gravity pulls objects down. It is possible that tomorrow someone may find gravity actually pulls objects up as well, but based on the evidence we have right now the first conclusion is the one better supported by the evidence.

Someone saying they refuse to accept that gravity pulls things down simply because no one has conclusively proven gravity can never pull things up is not taking the high ground in the debate, that person is simply refusing to participate. We have to constantly draw conclusions in our everyday life based on incomplete and imperfect evidence. To refuse to do so would mean you couldn’t get out of bed in the morning out of fear that the electromagnetic force will fail you and you will fall through the floor to the center of the Earth.

There is nothing wrong with drawing a conclusion based on the best evidence available to us right now, so long as you are ready at a moment’s notice to change that conclusion should evidence that contradicts that position present itself.

>> Actually, that’s not critical thinking. That’s 800 self-proclaimed non-believers in anything psi. Critical thinking would not rule out that psi could exist *but* would insist on evidence when anyone claims that it does.

Phil Plait said:
> KC: nope, I disagree. If you believe in something you’re not a critical thinker; “believing” in this case means thinking something is true without or despite of evidence. True critical thinkers don’t believe in anything; they wait for evidence (or proof, if you will) before trusting something is correct.

KC said:
> Phil, that’s my point. Your statement comes across that you believe psi doesn’t exist. That doesn’t sound like waiting for evidence.

Phil Plait said:
> Of course I think psi power doesn’t exist.

Here is a perfect example of a different philosophical assumption. The distinction is between 2 position vs 3 position thinking.

2 position thinking says there are 2 states or positions – either you believe in yes, or you do not believe in. It is an on/off relationship, no intermediate states.

3 position thinking syas there are 3 states or positions – you believe in yes, you believe no, or you have a neutral middle position with no belief. Thus you don’t concluse psi is real and you don’t conclude psi is not real, you merely conclude no one has proven psi true but hold psi could be possible.

To a 3 position thinker, a 2 position thinker is making a belief (by Phil’s definition of thinking something without or despite evidence) that something does not exist. The 2 position thinker says there is either affirmative belief for something, or the default position of not accepting as true.

These 2 positions will go around and around and never reach agreement because neither accepts the other’s assumption and most people are unable to see the disagreement is over the assumption, not the status of evidence for psi. Or aliens, or whatever.

Viewer 3 said:
> Whatever suits your tastes. You’ll be apart of the group that’s laughed at centuries from now when certain obscure things that were deemed “impossible” suddenly become the subject of serious scientific study. Perhaps not psychic powers, but surely something else that “most people”, as you say, call impossible.

I reserve “impossible” not as a label for things that are merely unexplained, things that we do not have a theory to support, but rather things that also go against existing scientific knowledge – data and theories and laws and such. So how sophisticated is your understanding of the scientific process? I’m fully aware that my judgments of possibility and impossibility are limited by the knowledge we have now, and that future knowledge may unlock in specific cases some feature that contradicts certain portions of what we currently think we know. And if I’m alive when that happens, I will happily admit my ignorance and change my mind. But till then, I can only go by what I know now.

> But I suppose you’re not concerned with what happens centuries from now. And good for you.

How can I possibly worry about what people centuries from now will think of me? I’m too busy wondering what the Billion Chinese think of me. And the Billion Indians. And Africans – I hate that I don’t know what some guy in Botswanna thinks of me. Maybe he thinks I’m a lunatic. I couldn’t stand that.

Maybe some day First graders will be taught that the Universe is a hyperdimensional geodesic and they will laugh at the people of the 21st century for not knowing that. But how can I possibly care?

Even with everything I wrote after what you quoted, you’re not sure I was joking? I mean… *really*? Copernicus and superstrings? Are *you* joking?

but Phil never specified modern physics like QT. Leo made that one up all on his own.

Gosh, I guess that’s why I quoted Leo and you, and not Phil, huh?

Seriously, are you gaming me?

I wonder if these traits can be linked to intelligence or do intelligent people just long to look like this?

I’ve read similar accounts of what you and Daedalus have experienced. Famous author Michael Crichton has an interesting account of the phenomenon as well.

http://www.crichton-official.com/features-spoonbending.html

Are you kidding? Haven’t you read some of the posts in this very thread? There are still lots of people out there who think spoon bending requires psychic powers, and thus people like Uri Geller get to make a living from exploiting gullible people.

Showing up the fakery is an important part of educating people to use their noggins a little more.

It is his blog and he can write about whatever he wants to. You don’t have to read it. If you want to read the posts on astronomy check the tags.

If you did some research about Randi you would find why he is the Grand Old Man of scepticism and rationality. He is an example and hero to many people. He is a cantankerous old bugger too, but as I said, that is part of his appeal. You’re allowed to be a little cantankerous when you’ve been doing this sort of thing for as long as he has.

That being said Randi has everthing to do with astronomy. He is, after all, a star of the reality based community and he has had an asteroid named after him

Maybe you should stop splitting hairs and go back to trying to debunk real mysteries like ghosts and UFOs?

Oh, that’s right: You can’t. Because even shills like you know they’re the real deal.

One of the first times I saw Randi was on Oz TV in 1980 on the Don Lane Show. Don was a believer in in woo and when Randi was getting stuck into, I think, Geller Don got annoyed scattered some of Randi’s props, told Randi to piss off and stormed off. Leaving a rather bemused Randi sitting on the couch. I think the video is available on Youtube somewhere.

Randi has been pissing off the woo heads ever since. Yes, he is old and can be snarky. According to Websters snarky can mean sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner. That comes with the territory and is part of his charm.

I find that last clause intriguing. If the laws of physics allowed for psychic powers, how would that affect our observations of the universe as a whole (e.g. stars, the speed of light, galaxies, what-have-you)?

But even our “known laws” that have been retested over and over may have unforseen loophopes when certain undiscovered forces are introduced to the equation.

There really isn’t much if any leeway for new fundamental forces that biology could use. (And the old ones are known and fail to explain say telepathy in combination with constraints from observations, such as absence of radio emissions.)

And before you raise recent discoveries like dark energy, it was a known possibility in GR. Strictly speaking GR is an effective theory since it doesn’t incorporate QM in the full nonlinear description. OTOH string theory can incorporate all known forces, and AFAIU by entropy observations you can see that this runs out of state space for any smaller structure. (Nature is neat that way, it is a closed and consistent system, and sometimes it shows up. But – aargh! Can’t find the reference today.)

@ amphiox:

It is the valid null hypothesis when evidence is not available.

Indeed. It is also an implicit consequence of theory parsimony. Unless positive evidence shows up, no extraneous objects will be included in later explanations anyway.

Believing in psi is exactly like believing in garden fairies. Except that more people hesitate to claim that they believe in, or are agnostic about, fairies. Special pleading is worse enough within religion, but using it to defend indefensible claptrash is worse. Fairies are also cute ideas, but they don’t get the extra helpings of woo like psi gets. I ask you, is that fair?

James Randi’s website has this info. Least, last I knew.
YouTube videos on Randi also show this.

Besides, the blog post is meant for those familar with the spoon bending claim. You could’ve ASKED, rather than complain about the lack of explaination.