Serious question about ESP (I don't mean psychic or anything silly)

[Al Schoonmaker]

My article was originally titled "ESP=BS," but the editor thought some people would be offended. It was retitled "ESP is nonsense."
You can read the article at cardplayer.com. Click on magazine in the top left corner, writers, and my name. If you don't want to look there, I will just summarize the central point. There is absolutely no scientifically acceptable evidence that ESP exists.
Don't waste your time trying to predict or control your cards. Focus all your attention on playing them well.
Regards,
Al

[Kinli]

With all due respect, Al, I've had some inexplicable ESP experiences in my life, and they have witnesses.

But at the card table, to think ESP is playing a role? No way. There are too many cues available, along with one's own ever-growing experience, to make it any more than a "hunch."

Kinli

[naphand]

You sure you don't mean *acceptable to the scientists* rather than *scientifically acceptable*.

There is a considerable body of scientific evidence in support of a wide range of consciousness-based phenomena. If you even bothered to carry out even basic research in this area you would have come across it by now.

The problem is not one of lack of evidence, but of trying to make the evidence *fit* currently acceptable methods of scientific research, which in themselves may be an obstacle to its study. The other big problem is the entrenched attitudes of the much of the scientific community but, although probably the majority, an increasingly vocal minority are beginning to accept that the current world-view (or, more accurately, space-time-consciousness view) is not complete by a very long way. We may be about to see amother revolution in scientific thinking, akin to the one at the end of the 19th century (remember Einstein?).

Given the rate of development and vastly more subtle methods of scientific study available now, compared to even just 50 years ago, who is to say what will be discovered in the next 50-500 years? Science periodically undergoes massive and radical shake-ups when one theoretical basis is replaced by another. What is happening now is the replacement of the classical *hard* view of a mechanistic universe, with a far more fluid, indeterminate and plain wierd view based on quantum theory (which itself may be replaced by a more subtle theory). And a feature of the quantum viewpoint, in addition to its several-magnitude increase in accuracy over classical physics (which is about as far as most people get taught in schools - presumably yourself included), is the need to address the role of the *experimenter* in the experiment - that is, to understand the effects of observation (bit like the *staring* thing again) on the observed: in short, consciousness effects.

Call it ESP or call it what you want, physicists are now increasingly beginning to admit that consciousness may play a very significant part in the structure and nature of our universe. You think you can dismiss the body of research that has been created with your one-liner? You're a fool.

If you want to read a good text which deals with the evidence, try reading a publication from the team at Princeton University (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory): *Margins of Reality*. You want evidence? First of all stop looking the other way.

And yes I agree with you - it wont help your card play one bit. Best just concentrate on your A game.... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]