Love that it was at the Darwin Center 
Pan, I knew him well
Pan is dead, Long Live Pan
It is a learning process, it is also very different then what we as humans know as a learning process. The best way I can describe it is learning to use one’s heart, but it’s just not that, but learning that your heart can connect with other hearts and you heart can read the other person’s heart, so it is just not acting blindly, just not giving money to any homeless person with a sob story, but very coordinated effort where you know the condition of their heart, you know if they are just selling you a bill of goods or are genuinely in need of your specific help. It is very targeted love.
What a steaming pile of manure. The next time you want to make incredibly unscientific woo claims, either back them up or have the guts to back off.
Did you sleep well last night?
I’m not talking for him, but, just to be clear; I do think that anyone claiming that they have physic powers is just creating a lot of bull crap. And it is worse when they claim that they got their “powers” from god IMHO.
I have no issue with you, go in peace.
Even Neil DeGrasse Tyson?
:smack: 
Stupid spelling tool, I meant *Psychic *powers.
I got curious and wondered what Mr. Tyson thought about the issue:
I don’t think that is any of your business, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you repeatly making claims then refusing to back them up.
This doesn’t have anything to do with Psychic powers …
It’s gambling and that is the plain truth and should not be allowed at the college level.
Just plain numbers with a sharp mind of Buffet knowing full well the numbers were on his side.
Lots of free publicity for his investment company is all.
Even Las Vegas knows that zero or double zero will come up every so often.
Buffet should be punished for his fan flare … (whoops no smiley’s in quick reply)
I know some math and was about to post something similar to, but less thorough than, yours. As a minor arithmetic point, note that conditional probabilities should be used for 2nd and subsequent rounds.
It would be interesting to know what premium was paid for the insurance policy. Was it written by Buffett personally, or by one of his companies?
I don’t know if that’s true or not. No one is a 100% free throw shooter in the NBA, right? But even if we concede this point, does one go-around of Buffett’s challenge prove anything? Let’s assume there are psychics who have a 60% accuracy, a better-than-guessing performance. How likely one of those guys wins?
It would depend on how many psychics there are, wouldn’t it? If there was just a thousand psychics out there with 60% accuracy, what are the chances of all of them losing?
Yes, and I’ll rely on the prior math that says a 50% accuracy rate would be 1 in 9 quintillion. I haven’t done the math, but I suspect the existence of a 60% accuracy rate would suggest that one iteration of the Buffett challenge doesn’t disprove anything. Or make it 55%, some statistically significant percentage (relative to guessing).
To reiterate, in case it got lost, I don’t believe there are psychics. I’m just responding to the OP’s asserting that the Buffett challenge proves that no psychics exist. I think it strongly suggests that no one exists with the psychic power to meet the Buffett challenge, assuming at least one such person was aware of it. That’s not the same thing.
Anyone who can read the seeding numbers in the bracket can get a prediction rate over 60% (top seeds usually win). A 72% mean* prediction rate will give you 1 chance in a billion of winning.
(* - geometric mean)
Okay. Then how about a consistent 65%, or whatever percentage that would cross the line from educated guessing? Or what if we constructed some random code for each team in the tourney, gave them to the psychic without their seeds, just a bunch of match-ups in random order (“Team A is playing Team B in the first round–who will win, Mr. Geller?”). The psychic picks the first round winners just based on the vibrations he detects in the ether, then continues through all the rounds, and he’s 75% accurate.
Or what if psychic powers aren’t like free throw shooting, where a 75% shooter sometimes shoots 100% in a game, sometimes 50%. What if it’s more like reading a page, with no real skill required, but it’s always a hazy vision, never completely clear. The psychic can see about 75% of the words, never all of them. But he can’t try harder or get lucky and see everything, because psychic vision (the type I’m inventing, not the type the OP invented) is limited by the human brain and it just doesn’t work that way. You could run as many Buffett challenges as you’d like, and the psychics are still enormously likely to lose, just a bit less likely than we mere normals.
My point is that the flavor of psychic power the OP conjured up may well not exist in any sufficient number, as evidenced by the results of the Buffett challenge. But you or I could just as easily conjure up a different type of power that we’d all likely agree was astounding and beyond mere chance, but that wouldn’t win the challenge either. The OP is wrong not because there are psychics in the world (I don’t think there are) but because the premise of his syllogism is false.
What if I were an anti-psychic, someone with a 0% chance of picking any winners?
If I could prove it, would I be required to pay Warren Buffet a billion dollars?
I was only commenting on a matter of arithmetic.
Many studies of ESP prediction powers have been conducted throughout the 20th century. I won’t link to a summary except to note that studies conducted by people who believe in ESP often contradict the beliefs of non-believers … and vice versa! :rolleyes:
Kancibird’s argument can’t be refuted because it’s not even wrong. Nor is it intended to be. It’s religion, based on faith, and isn’t scientific.
It’s simply a case where the OP’s hypothesis would be wrong. No doubt we can make up lots of similar cases (like, psychic powers only work when people believe in them … lol … but it’s a case in point.)
It’s been pretty clearly demonstrated that there is no scientifically measurable basis for a belief in psychic powers. That leaves psychic powers to live in the margins where scientific measurement doesn’t apply. An omnipotent being bent on frustrating scientists about the truth is clearly a case in point, as are many other possibilities.
You can’t disprove something that’s inherently immune to objective measurement.
So, as someone mentioned early on, the Buffett bet proves that certain kinds of powers are proven wrong. Those in control of a higher power who dislikes such bets would not be one of those certain kinds of powers.
Personally, I go with the evidence. People who don’t aren’t likely to convince those who do, and vice versa.
Wait…kanic has an actual argument?
I thought his posts were just a bunch of random words stitched together. 