At the risk of being a wet blanket, I would like to revisit my request to Peter Morris a few posts back – to design a test for finding water paranormally.
I see nothing wrong with the 10 buckets test; 1 with wet soil, the others with dry (or vice versa – hey, I’m easy). The challenge is for a dowser who is sure of his powers to find the one bucket different from the rest.
He should run the test as many times as necessary, always knowing which bucket is which. He should verify that the ground is not a factor and that he can perform under all conditions and all placements of buckets. (Or specify which conditions must be avoided.)
Then all buckets are covered and randomized. The only parties that know which are which leave the premises and Mr. Applicant is brought in and tested.
But, PM, if this is not the test you want, please suggest another. It should be a simple one (we don’t have any funds for drilling expensive holes) and it should test if a dowser can find what he says he can whether it be gold or H[sub]2[/sub]O; no more, no less. It should be designed so the results are self-evident and don’t require any special training like geology to interpret. And the outcome should be clear, and specified in advance what constitutes success or failure. And agreed upon by all parties.
I know you gave the cite, but you only quoted the bit that suited you. Like I said.
The rest of this post is a straw man since I never said there was no support for your position on the percentage of geography with reachable water, but only that there is some support for Randi’s. You like to paint my views as unreasonable and black and white but actually they are not. I just don’t think that Randi’s comment is as irrational or insupportable as you like to paint it. There is some support for it.
The bit you are missing is “best shot”, Peter.
You tried to turn a rhetorical comment into a test. Which was pretty silly. And you got an appropriate reaction. That you are only able to “create” an example of Randi’s alleged inability to set fair tests by such nonsense only highlights the lack of examples of complaints about such an alleged inability amongst real applicants.
But if I pour a gallon a minute of water over your head, will you be able to towel yourself fast enough that you’d consider yourself dry?
But seriously, I get your point, Peter. You say that dry is a relative term, and compared to the flow rate that you might get from a well, 1 gpm is not that great.
Is it so insignificant that a dowser would consider themselves to have failed if that’s what was found at the spot they’d located by dowsing? Or would they say: “look, see, I found water. Not great water but I found water”?
I think you’re naive if you think the former. And that is Randi’s rhetorical point, which you are refusing to see.
And what is more, you are still ignoring that US government site. And you haven’t commented on Tomndebb’s post , which (amongst others) seems to me to have some force.
It seems to me that as you have said, Randi’s comments about there being some water more or less everywhere are ambiguous.
Similarly that US government site, which says “ground water occurs almost everywhere beneath the land surface” is ambiguous.
Both of these comments could mean that they think that there is at least some water (ie 1 gpm or so) pretty much everywhere. Or they could mean that they think there is sufficient water to run a US household everywhere.
You interpret Randi’s comment in the latter fashion, in which light it is wrong. Do you think that the US government site is also wrong? Or do you choose to interpret it differently? If so, why?
You are right. This is totally wrong. But not for the reason you think. Or to put it another way, cite? I know I won’t get one. I asked for one a couple of posts back in relation to a similar comment.
What it comes down to is that you can only justify your position by strawman-ing Randi.
Are you going to do this test? When? Where? Why don’t you answer the questions that have been put to you about details? Or is this whole thing more in the nature of a rhetorical challenge than a real one?
I have never seen such a thread as this one, in which each side is having its own internal dialogue and not paying attention to the other side.
I pit you all, as being hopeless morons!
(Actually, Peter is the only one with SOME sembalance of order, but still… If they haven’t got it by now, Peter, they never will. Go home. Declare victory. Kiss your wife. Vote! Have a good meal. Those of us who left in disgust get it! The rest aren’t worth it; they’re just baiting you!)
Well, we must allow the wider audience to make their own judgement here.
Personally, I think that this is an utter 60-second storm in a gallon-capacity teacup and that anyone who thinks Randi was literally issuing the $1M challenge in that sentence (which he has subsequently modified) is living in a dreamworld.
(However, some of the audience have trouble distinguishing the dreamworld from the real world, and so perhaps I am indeed in the minority.)
To play devil’s advocate: It could be said that finding dry spots is not how dowsing works. Perhaps it can find the existence of water but can’t prove the absense of it. Dowser’s could argue that you never get a false positive but could get false negatives.
As a minor correction, dowsers have been known to make claims about finding certain precious metals, or lost objects, or oil, or any number of things in addition to water. I don’t know of a case where a dowser claimed he could avoid a substance (I’d kinda like to see an example tried with land mines), but Peter claims that if he can simulate this through simple chance, Randi’s honour-bound to give him a million dollars.
folks, I’ve been absent from this thread for a few days, because the hatred of Randi fanatics left a nasty taste in my mouth.
I have neither the time nor the energy to go through every single one of your posts, answer every line, reiterate stuff that I’ve gone over 100 times already, and which the obsessed WILL NOT understand.
There is a certain type of petty mentality that will claim victory if I leave so much as one line in one single post unanswered. They are just kidding themselves, and will clutch at their little straws come what may.
If I don’t answer your specific attack, it doesn’t mean I’m unable, it just means I no longer have the time and patience to read it, and that I’ve probably answered it before.
I will just answer a couple of points, then no more. I’m done.
Bollocks. That is NOT what you said. You accused me of being unwilling to mention that cite AT ALL.
And the simple fact is, I am looking at the whole of that cite, whereas you are selecting a few words out of context, and giving your own meaning to them that the author clearly did not intend. You claim that this half a sentence in the geologist’s reply supports that couple of words from Randi, and simply ignore th 90% that is in direct contradiction.
Looking at the whole thing :
Randi wrote an article attacking dowsers. To “prove” that dowsing doesn’t work he gave out -a .load of wrong geological information. Lets just review his own words.
**Besides, the “underground river” notion that dowsers maintain is sheer fiction, not supported at all by geological research. … Having a string of successful wells to which one can point, proves nothing. A better test would be to ask the dowser whether he can find a DRY spot within 100 metres of a well he has dowsed. With more than 90% of the world’s land mass above reachable supplies of water, this should be quite difficult. … Though diviners will continue to be hired by believers in such powers, and wells will be dug with great precision on spots located by forked-stick folks, these water supplies will not prove that dowsing works. They will only prove that there is a great deal of water down under the earth, and we do not need silly folks wiggling sticks to tell us that. **
According to Randi:
The “idea” of underground rivers is a fiction. Or as Randi says here “there are no underground streams…There is no naturally flowing water underground except in caves” and anyone that believes in underground rivers is “deluded.”
There is water underground everywhere. Not just some water, but
“a great deal.” Finding a “string of successful wells” by random drilling “proves nothing.” Randi thinks that almost anywhere you dig swill produce vast quantities of water.
Randi laughs at wells being dug “with great precision” on the exact spot selected. To Randi, one spot is just the same as another. He says “find a dry spot within 100 metres of a well” Randi thinks that anywhere within that 100 metres would produce the same quantity of water.
So, I wrote to a geological forum asking about this, asking them to address these three questions.
see here
Is Randi right about underground rivers?
Well, according to the geologist in question
underground rivers exist in Karst formations.
other types of geology have “ancient burried rivers” which is almost the same, but not quite.
water most certainly DOES flow underground.
Just a note here: Princhester disputes the meaning of Randi’s words. He insists that the words “There are no underground streams” means something else. He claims that the true meaning is : “dowsers think underground rivers are common, but actually they are very rare”
to be utterly fair, I gave Randi’s exact words, invited the geologists to interpret it how they saw fit. And by ANY interpretation of those words, Randi is totally wrong.
2) Randi says that there is water in 90% of the Earth. Or 94%. Or whatever figure he pluck out of the air. I asked the geologist about this. His reply: It depends what you mean by water Does a gallon per minute count?
If YES- then Randi is wrong. There is some water everywhere, albeit a tiny trickle in most places. If you count a tiny trickle as being water, then there is water in 100% of places. It would be impossible to find a spot with no water at all.
If NO - then Randi is wrong. If a tiny trickle ISNT water, then almost everywhere is “dry”
TRandi’s 90% claim is hogwash either way. Most places only give minute amounts.
3) As for Randi’s challenge to “find a dry spot within 100 metres of a well” I asked the geologist about that. His reply: "very easily possible
He went on to describe how a well that taps into one of those “ancient burried rivers” and gets 800 GPM, but within 20 metres from that spot it drops to 10 GPM.
Yep, 10GPM is a “dry spot” (relatively speaking) according to this geologist.
Reading and understanding the messages as a whole:
Randi claims that there is such a lot of water underground that you are certain to hit large supplies anywhere you dig.
The geologist says, by contrast, that adequate supplies of water are hard to find, the supply changes within a short distance, and that random digging will probably not result in a good water supply.
Only by taking a few words here and there and ignoring the majority does Princhester turn this into support for Randi’s statement.
No, there is none.
Princhester, you have this habit of citing people that explicitly disagree with Randi, and claiming that they show support. You keep ignoring what they wrote, because you cannot accept that Randi is in error.
Now, folks, this is interesting. Princhester has totally changed his tune. In an earlier thread on Randi’s forum a few months ago Princhester was defending the test as sensible, fair and well-designed.
I was offering this test as evidence of Randi’s inability to design a proper test. I said back then that a genuine dowser could not possibly pass the “find me a dry spot” test. I made the point that there is some water everywhere, albeit only trivial amounts in most spots. Nowhere is completely devoid of water. Most places only have a tiny amount. A few places have a lot. Nowhere at all has zero water. Finding a spot with zero water is impossible. Hence Randi’s test is unfair.
Up jumps Princhester to Randi’s defence. According to Princhester - back then - Randi is a sensible fellow, who will surely accept 1GPM as being “dry.”
Long debate followed. Princhester insisting that everyone would regard 1GPM as a dry spot, and me expressing doubt that Randi would accept it.
After a while I decided to write to Randi direct to ask him. Does a tiny little trickle of water satisfy your definition of “dry spot” ? An amount far too small to be useful?
Upon receiving an abusive reply, I told him I was interested in apply for the test. I had three reasons for doing this.
I thought I might get a direct answer to my question.
I wanted to see for myself the process of applying for Randi’s tests.
If he actually accepted the definition, and honoured the test, as Princhester insisted he would, then I could pick up an easy $1 Million. I didn’t think that was likely though.
oh, and:
His rudeness had really P.O.'d me.
So, through my correspondence with Randi, attempting to discuss a protocol, I was trying to establish the meaning of “dry spot”
I offered him a working definition of “dry” and asked whether he would accept. He refused to answer, either yes or no. Instead, he kept replying with helpful comments such as “read a dictionary”
After I had asked him NINE TIMES if he would accept my definition, he eventually responded :
He will not accept my definition.
He will not supply a definition that he finds acceptable.
From there, I considered no further correspondence possible.
There are at least two morals to all this.
Randi talks a load of hogwash. “Scientific” information he gives is likely to be wrong. He tells of offering tests to dowsers and the dowsers refuse. Such stories are sometimes works of fiction, figures of speech, or utter lies.
Somebody applying for a test, with a genuine ability, willing to show it, is likely to find Randi unwilling to test it fairly. Negotiating a protocol with Randi is well-nigh impossible. Randi deliberately obstructs the matter at every turn.
That’s it. I’m done with geological arguments. I’m all dry-spotted out. For the moment anyway. I’m sure Randi fans will return to it in future threads.
However, Princhester, I’m going to respond in a day or two to a legal point you made earlier. I’ll talk the law with you. That’s one subject where I’ll accept that you know what you’re talking about. Which makes it unique.
No. I’ve never claimed that Randi somehow cheated me out of my million. What I am claiming is this: Randi is highly aggressive. Somebody with a genuine paranormal claim that they wished to demonstrate would be unable to negotiate a test with Randi. This whole business is about showing that failing Randi’s test, or refusing the test Randi offers proves precisely nothing.
Its not just Princhester. In the first thread you participated in on the SDMB people called your interpetation of that phrase dead wrong.
That is not what they said. This is the first reply:
That Peter comes to such a vastly anti-Randi conclusion from these very neutral comments shows his nature. It matters not what was said, only what Peter wanted you to say. That Peter failed to follow up on this geologists comments with further clarification is another failing. ‘Consulted’ indeed.