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

[CrisBrown]

Hi bdk,

Yup, that's what they say on their website. Then read their dismissals of any paranormal claims or reports for which the only evidence is the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses. Their conclusion: this didn't happen.

That's not to say the "right" conclusion is "well, they all say they saw it so it must be true." Rather, in the absence of further evidence, pro or con, the "skeptical" conclusion is "there's no way to say whether this is true or not."

Cris

[PDosterM]

If you go back to my post, you’ll see I didn’t promote or condemn CSICOP, but rather simply identified the source of the information I found in response to youtalkfunny’s original question.

In this case, the referenced article does a good job of describing actual scientifically controlled experiments on the topic and presents the results. So data do exist that support one side of the claim – nothing anecdotal here.

[Kinli]

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Rather, they adopt the attitude of "if you can't prove it happens, in a laboratory, repeatably, beyond and to the exclusion of any shred of doubt, then it doesn't happen."

Cris

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They also commit another cardinal sin in my opinion: They attempt to reproduce an event through ordinary means, and if the replication works, they conclude that these are the only means by which the event could have occurred.

The logical fallacy in that is big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

Kinli

[bdk3clash]

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Hi bdk,

Yup, that's what they say on their website.

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OK

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Then read their dismissals of any paranormal claims or reports for which the only evidence is the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses. Their conclusion: this didn't happen.

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I've read "Skeptical Inquirer" for years, and I haven't read any articles that "conclude" that a given event did or did not happen because of eyewitness statements alone. Do you have any specific instances you'd care to point out? Or should we just take your word for it?

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That's not to say the "right" conclusion is "well, they all say they saw it so it must be true." Rather, in the absence of further evidence, pro or con, the "skeptical" conclusion is "there's no way to say whether this is true or not."

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I think you're deliberately misrepresenting CSICOP as a group of people who have made up their minds about the legitimacy of paranormal claims, which is far from the truth.

Furthermore, it's darn near impossible to prove that something isn't true. It's not really up to anyone to disprove ESP, or the magical healing properties of crystals, or the Easter Bunny.

You make a claim ("ESP exists"), you prove it, or at least give a plausible explanation for why it's true. Absence of disproof ("You can't prove it doesn't exist!") does not count.

All I can say is from my admittedly cursory research, study after study has failed to show the validity of any such phenomenom as ESP, remote viewing, astral projection, etc. in a laboratory setting.

Either ESP and its assorted variants are real but impossible to demonstrate in a controlled setting, or it's a bunch of BS. For me, the evidence points to the latter.

Feel free to persuade me otherwise.

[bdk3clash]

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They also commit another cardinal sin in my opinion: They attempt to reproduce an event through ordinary means, and if the replication works, they conclude that these are the only means by which the event could have occurred.

The logical fallacy in that is big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

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Kinli:

Again, I've read "Skeptical Inquirer" for years, and I haven't found any article that shows how an event can be replicated, and then concludes that the event could only have happened that way.

As a framework, I'm going to include a passage from James Randi's entry on parsimony in "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural."

Parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor, states that:

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...if there exists two answers to a problem or a question, and if, for one answer to be true, well-established laws of logic and science must be re-written, ignored, or suspended in order to allow it to be true, and for the other answer to be true no such accomodation need be made, then the simpler--the second--of the two answers is much more likely to be correct.

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An example:

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The claim: That a person can cause an ordinary spoon to bend merely by looking at it, using psychic powers that have not been established and which would violate many known rules (conservation and transfer of energy, etc.) and cause those basic laws of science to be rewritten.

There are two explanations available: one says that these basic physical laws have been suspended in this case--a unique event never before known in history--and the other says that the performer has employed sleight of hand and/or deceptive optical principles and/or psychological misdirection to provide the illusion of the spoon bending without the use of ordinary physical force.

The seconed of the two explanations is much more likely to be true.


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Note that the skeptical position would generally be that there is a much simpler explanation to someone claiming to have ESP-like powers than ESP actually existing.

[PDosterM]

But perhaps most compelling is the observation that if ESP existed, Las Vegas wouldn't.

[ChipWrecked]

I know this is going back in time a bit, but I'm still catching up.

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...when you ask someone a question they have to think about or remember, they look to the right when remembering, to the left for a new answer, up when pondering how to say it, and a quick look down and away when lying.


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This is an example of NLP, the subject of several threads here. It's a completely different critter from ESP.

[CrisBrown]

Hi bdk,

Actually, quite a lot of "remote viewing" is claimed to have been done in a controlled setting. Not a laboratory setting, but a controlled setting nonetheless. Now, you can say you don't believe those reports, because scientists haven't been able to reproduce the phenomenon in a lab. But that is a statement of belief, not a conclusion based on evidence.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Cris

[bdk3clash]

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Actually, quite a lot of "remote viewing" is claimed to have been done in a controlled setting.

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You say "actually" as if I disputed that people claimed that remote viewing has been done in a controlled setting. I never said that such claims have not been made.

I certainly question (and doubt) the validity of these claims.

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Not a laboratory setting, but a controlled setting nonetheless.

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Uh oh. Could you be a little more specific about this "controlled setting" and the observed instance of "remote viewing"? Or should I just take your word for it?

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Now, you can say you don't believe those reports, because scientists haven't been able to reproduce the phenomenon in a lab. But that is a statement of belief, not a conclusion based on evidence.

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Let's put aside the issue of "does remote viewing exist?" for a moment, and address your claim that my rejection of the validity (and I do reject its validity) of a group of people claiming to have demonstrated "remote viewing" in a "controlled setting" is "a statement of belief" and not "a conclusion based on evidence."

Two possibilities exist: either the claim is true, and "remote viewing" did take place in a "controlled setting," or the claim is false, and "remote viewing" did not take place. I'll assume that you accept that one of these statements is true, and the other is false.

You yourself stated that "scientists haven't been able to reproduce the phenomenon in a lab."

What conclusion would you expect a rational person to make in this instance?

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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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Look, let's cut to the chase. You seem to be claiming that ESP and now "remote viewing" exist. You also seem to think that because I cannot disprove their existence, they must exist. Correct me if I am wrong.

Let's turn the tables: I say the Easter Bunny exists. I challenge you to disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny. If you can't, you can't really say he doesn't exist, right?

Aha! So your "belief" that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist is just as valid as my "belief" that he does!

Of course, given that you believe in ESP and remote viewing, you may actually believe in the Easter Bunny, so this may be a bad example for you.

The real kicker about this is that I picked "remote viewing" because it seemed to be such a completely ludicrious belief that it would make my point.

I urge you (and all 2+2ers) to read Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark." It may open your eyes to other possible explanations for the phenomenon you perceive as supernatural/psychic/whatever.

Pick it up at Amazon here.

[CrisBrown]

Hi bdk,

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Look, let's cut to the chase. You seem to be claiming that ESP and now "remote viewing" exist. You also seem to think that because I cannot disprove their existence, they must exist. Correct me if I am wrong.

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You're wrong. I'm saying, simply, there is insufficient evidence to form a conclusion one way or the other. I don't know whether the remote viewing claims are true or not. They might be. They might not be. I haven't seen enough to prove it, but neither have I seen their specific claims exposed as proven hoaxes. So I don't know.

I've read a tiny handful of UFO reports (out of thousands) that are compelling, yet still not convincing. These are reports with multiple eyewitnesses, and even radar tracks that correlate to the eyewitnesses' claims. For me, that's not enough to say "That was a UFO." But neither can I just dismiss the evidence. So my only reasoned conclusion is "I don't know."

My complaint with CSICOP is their rejection of "I don't know" as an answer. They treat these claims as Boolean logic problems, where the only possible answers are "true" or "false." But life isn't a Boolean logic problem, and a lot of the time we're left with "I don't know" as the only answer we can really support with the evidence.

Do I believe in ESP, UFOs, ghosts, remote viewing, astral projection, telekinesis, etc.? No. But neither do I have enough evidence to rule out their possibility. There is a great deal we don't know, and I'm not willing to conclude or concede that our current understanding is so complete as to rule out phenomena which right now seem "impossible." I just don't know.

Cris