From: John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Date: Thu May 07 1998 - 00:29:26 MDT
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Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> Wrote:
>the same generic objection [against psi] could be made against
>non-local quantum effects. The difference is that QT has powerful
>theory predicting the observed effects;
There is another huge difference, non-local quantum effects do not transmit
information but ESP, if it exists as the experimentalists claim, does. That
would render most of modern Physics to the trash can.
>the data need to be explained, and at this stage of the game
>fraud and sloppy thinking are not good enough explanations.
If true then science would need to be revolutionized more radically then it
has ever been before, but I'm EXTREMELY skeptical that they have the skill to
detect very subtle statistical effects when most who work in this area can
not detect blatant fraud even when it's screaming in their face.
I'm not familiar with The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research and their
20 year history you speak of, but the general history of this area does not
engender much confidence. "Scientists" routinely wrote learned articles
about miraculous occurrences that later turn out to have been performed by
the same simple tricks amateur magicians use to entertain children at
birthday parties. The most famous of them was J B Rhine and he doesn't seem
to have been very bright.
I certainly don't think more experiments are needed in precognition because
every week a huge experiment on it is conducted under the most rigorous
controls imaginable. Every week in the USA millions of people buy lottery
tickets and have been doing so for many years. On every Saturday 6 numbers
are picked at random, each number can be 1 to 50, if you guess all 6 numbers
you win millions of dollars, if you guess 3 you win about $10. If there were
anything to ESP the number of winners should be larger that what you would
expect from chance, but it is not, and if the effect is too small for even a
huge experiment like the lottery to detect then The Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research sure as hell won't find it.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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