And therefore such phenomena needs to be chucked out the window until it can be consistently & verifiably reproduced in labs under tight controls.
You know what happens when controls are loosened and experiments aren’t peer-reviewed? We get things like N-Rays. The story of N-Rays is why we must always insist on safeguards & very tight controls.
Golly!
They don’t. Name a case in which the murderer and body would never have been found without the use of a psychic.
Psychics claim credit for things after the cases are sol;ved by pointing out their weak conncection (i.e “Body will be located near water”) and ignored the misses.
Psychics are leeches and scumbags. They lie out of habit and prey on the weak and desperate. Their claims that they don’t accept money for their services is untrue, they merely refer to it as a “donation” instead.
Another problem with psi is that, as far as I know, nobody’s come up with a plausible (in terms of known science) mechanism by which it could work. Telepathy or clairvoyance are hard enough, and precognition seems really unlikely.
Science fiction writers like to speculate on what a society with real ESP would be like (e.g., the classic novel The Demolished Man). Fascinating idea, but that doesn’t mean it exists in reality.
I moved this thread to Great Debates (or tried to) before the crash, so off it goes.
I knew that.
This forum is ostensibly devoted to combatting ignorance, not spreading it, so let me try to help you with some information.
My expertise relates to magic, the mind-reading part of magic called ‘mentalism’, and specifically the analysis and replication of psychic effects in performance. These are the subjects I’ve studied for 25 years, and I know the material stuff at least well enough to have earned my living as a professional entertainer and performer within this specialised field. Within the trade, my books and knowledge are respected and sought after. I’ve appeared on numerous TV shows, both sides of the pond, demonstrating the truth behind psychic scams, and am the only performer in the world to have demonstrated cold reading on TV under controlled conditions. I know most of the key players in the trade (including Randi and Penn & Teller) and have been cited in at least one of Randi’s books and at least one of Richard Dawkins’ books too. I have lectured on psychic-flavoured scams at the Oxford University Scientific Society, Cambridge university and UCLA, among other places. Good enough for you, pal?
By choice, I’m not a member of the Magic Circle. I have lectured at the Magic Circle by invitation, as I will next year lecture to the British Magical Society, and I have performed by invitation at the Circle’s HQ.
To say you equate Magic Circle membership with ‘expertise’ is laughable, and serves to highlight your ignorance of what the Circle is and how it works. Anyone can join the Magic Circle after an ‘audition’ which anyone could pass with about one week’s training. Until they changed the rules very recently, you could also join as an ‘Associate’ which meant you didn’t even have to perform a single trick to get in! Although there are many great magicians in the Circle, many of whom are my friends, there are also many members of the Circle who have never performed a magic trick, to anyone or for anyone, in their lives. Many Circle members treat the place as merely a social club for eldlerly men on Monday evenings. Conversely, there are many very skilled and talented performers who are not members.
I can’t be absolutely sure without asking for an up-to-date check, but certainly as far as I recall Penn Jillette has never been a member of the Magic Circle (or wanted to be). Teller may have an honorary mebership, but to the best of my knowledge I don’t think he’s a member either.
While on the theme of trying to combat ignorance, in this case yours, it is also relevant to point out that there are as many different specialisations in magic as there are in, say, music. You’d expect a rock star, a jazz sax player and an orchestral violinist to know different things and have different skills, even though it’s all ‘music’. Same thing in magic. You can have one guy with brilliant knowledge of card magic, for example, who knows nothing about mindreading and what we call mentalism, which happens to be my own speciality. This is another reason why Circle membership is not necessarily any qualification for dealing with the OP.
This is an opinion, and a subject of controversial debate, not a simple fact. There are many researchers who think they have observed psi under controlled conditions. Their work is published in books and in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Targ & Puthoff’s work wth Geller appeared in ‘Nature’, one of the two most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world. Yes, I know Randi’s work has illustrated why their experiments were flawed, but that’s not the point at issue. The fact is, in some cases scientists have believed they have observed psi under controlled conditions.
The salient point is whether any of this work has (a) ever been successfully replicated by other researchers and scientists; (b) been accepted as non-controversial by the scientific establishment; © led to any working hypothesis for psi.
The answer to (a) is only very, very rarely. ‘Replication’ in this case is a somewhat debatable concept, given that all demonstrations of ‘psi’ involve an individual, the person alleged to have a psychic ability. Unless the same individual makes himself or herself available for testing by different scientists, then an exact replication is impossible. There are only a few cases where this (same person, different scientists, successful results) has happened. Smith and Blackburn managed it at the back end of the 19th century, in the early experiments of what became the Socierty for Psychical Research. They were tricksters, and their methods were eventually exposed. More recently, some of those people claiming remote viewing capability or ganzfeld test success have also been tesed by more than one team.
The answer to (b) is no. Perhaps this is what you really meant. In every case of an apparently successful demonstration of psi under test conditions, the ‘psi’ hypothesis fares no more successfully than several others, such as: fraud (by the psychic or the scientists or both); error; sloppy experiments; subjective bias; selective reporting of results (constituting either fraud or sloppy procedure); or generating a mass of data so complex, and so hard to analyse, that the statistical meta-analysis used to ‘show’ the successful results is itself a matter of complex controversy among expert statisticans.
The answer to © is also no. Even believers in psi have never generated a single working hypothesis for the mechanics of its operation which can be isolated, tested, measured or analysed.
I don’t for one moment believe there’s any good reason to believe in psi, but this is very poor reasoning. (1) Being unable to do something is not the same as refusing to do it. It would be hypothetically possible to have a psychic gift for precognition which did not work ‘to order’ with sufficient reliability or clarity to prevent tragedies. (2) Many psychics do claim to have helped to avoid tragedies. To give just one example, check out the work of Chris Robinson who believed he could dream future IRA attacks and passed appropriate warnings on to the police. I don’t think he’s correct, but I’m just pointing out that the claim is made, ergo it is not accurate to say they always ‘refuse to do this’. (3) There are many psychic gifts which, by definition, do not involve any precognitive ability. For example, the ability to bend metal would not help to avoid tragic plane crashes.
This isn’t even reasoning, it’s just rather stroppy rhetoric. Nonetheless, let me again try to shed light where there is clearly a need for it. (1) I wasn’t casting any aspersion on the usefulness of scientific method’. I was making the point that in the case of any given test, to detect anything, a ‘negative’ result either tells you something about whatever you are trying to detect or it tells you something about that test. This is just a matter of simple logic. Suppose I try using a metal-detector to see if there’s a coin in the sand, and I get no result. This may mean there’s no coin there. Or it may mean the coin is there but I forgot to change the batteries in the detector. (2) I have never advocated taking the psychic’s word for anything.
I’m pretty sure I know a lot more about Uri Geller than you do. I’ve followed his career intently since Nov 22nd 1973, when he made his breakthrough appearance on a British talk show. I’ve met him, I’ve been threatened with legal action by him, I’ve got a library of books on him, I have tapes of many hours of his TV appearances, and I’ve demonstrated his entire performing repertoire for numerous audiences, including scientists and the media. Your contention, that he is a magician, is one that you are unable to prove. My own view is that there is no reason to suppose he has any psychic powers, since nothing he does requires the psi hypothesis, and some things we have evidence of him doing would seem unnecessary and ill-advised if he did have psi.
See my earlier point. It’s not enough that a magician be present who can detect trickery. He must be qualified in the relevant and specialised area of trickery that is devoted to producing psychic effects. Lance Burton wouldn’t be much use. Banachek would be perfect. (I’m referring to a successful modern-day mentalist called ‘Banachek’ and not the 70s TV detective ‘Banacek’ played by George Peppard.)
I’m not saying the test must be rigged. I’m saying that as a simple matter of logical reasoning, it is possible the test could be flawed or simply insufficient to detect that which it was hoped to detect. In Faraday’s time, there were a huge number of experiments conducted to demonstrate a link between magnetism and electricity which all failed, until Faraday finally managed it. The induction effect was there the whole time, but for a long time the scientific tests were not refined enough to demonstrate its existence.
Incorrect. Again, you’re using terms you don’t understand. ‘Cold reading’ can apply to numerous different kinds of ‘psychic’ readings and demonstrations, not just the specific repertoire of spiritualists and mediums. And there is no reason at all why the cold reading process would necessaruily start with the words you suggest, or words like them. There are countless other options.
I fail to see the relevance, but the answer is no.
Okay, let’s try this for the third damn time. Off to Great Debates (and I really mean it this time).
Heh, thanks for the informative replies, ianzin; as someone stated, this is why I like the Doper boards. People passionate about or proffesionals in given fields dishing out the dope in elephant-sized scoops 
But you could stand to lose those ianzin-loving quotes you have in your signature, unless they express some sort of irony that I wouldn’t know about, of course 
An excellent CV!
As it happens, I do accept your skills (based on your intelligent postings).
My problem is that all sorts of people claim that they have earnt a living, published books, appeared on TV, given lectures etc. Unlike you, some of them are frauds.
I also wanted to make it clear to new posters that you are not an expert psychic!
I therefore prefer some sort of professional organisation that gives recognition through peer evaluation. At least joining the Magic Circle requires some sort of training.
To give an example from my field (chess problems), there is an annual award for best chess problems, where problemists vote using established criteria.
Some problemists refuse to put their work up for such judging, but still claim they are ‘the best in the world’.
While trying to combat rudeness, in this case yours, that is clearly what I intended by ‘having controlled conditions’ during a test of psychic abilities. If spoonbending requires misdirection, let’s have a misdirection expert (which most scientists are not).
I don’t want researchers who think they have observed psi.
I don’t want researchers who use flawed methods to observe psi.
Absolutely.
Look I realise we’re on the same side, and that you’re a serious professional with a lot to contribute.
But the above is why I challenge you.
You can’t logically say:
‘There are only a few cases where this (same person, different scientists, successful results) has happened. Smith and Blackburn managed it at the back end of the 19th century, in the early experiments of what became the Socierty for Psychical Research.’
followed by:
‘They were tricksters, and their methods were eventually exposed.’
This is not a ‘successful result’!
Fine. But did they succeed either time?
Quite so. Which is why I said no psychic ability has ever been observed under controlled conditions. It is surely the duty of someone claiming a new scientific breakthrough to eliminate any possibility of using current science to achieve their ‘proof’.
I suppose one could be charitable, and say we don’t know why gravity (through the attraction of masses) works. But we can observe it.
Obviously I was using an extreme case. I get fed up with psychics who say 'my powers won’t work if:
Some psychics do claim they can predict the future. They don’t say ‘my gift doesn’t work with tragedies’.
Surely your points 1 + 2 are contradictory?
Fair point - how about ‘refuse to do this successfully’.
This is poor reasoning. As you just said, some psychics do claim to have helped to avoid tragedies.
I agree that scientific tools should be carefully calibrated. I take that as a given in using ‘controlled conditions’.
You originally said:
‘If you take the latter view, the outcome suggests that ESP is so subtle and elusive that the scientific test was not fine enough to detect it. There are hypothetical sub-atomic particles that scientific tests try to find and can’t.’
But hypothetical sub-atomic particles don’t earn money claiming they have obvious powers.
Psychics claim their powers work superbly. Therefore a test should find them.
The rhetoric belongs to the psychic who can’t perform when tested.
I’m sure you do.
Therefore Geller is a magician.
Excellently phrased.
So do you agree he’s a magician?
I’m sorry (again) if you’re narked at me. This really is excellent stuff, and credulous people should take note.
Yes, but as before, the psychic usually claims a fantastically high level of accuracy.
We are not talking about measuring atomic effects, which require precision instruments.
If a man achieves 100% success in dowsing when he can see the target, then 0% a few minutes later when he can’t see the target, what conclusion do we draw?
Oh, so ‘Is there anyone here who has lost a loved one whose name begins with a J?’ isn’t an example of cold reading?
Look, you know that we post when we can, and there is a massive difference in knowledge and credulity between posters (even here!). So please try to work with me!
We were discussing John Edward, who has appeared on TV. Isn’t the above a typical example of how he works?
I’m well aware that a spiritualist giving a private reading would operate differently.
I mentioned dowsing, because:
To me this is therefore a completely unproven power (and dangerously close to fraud).
I wanted your opinion (and am relieved you don’t accept it either).
If you honestly think that this conclusion follows from these premises, then I can’t help you and it’s hard to have any sort of dialogue. Maybe a textbook on logic and syllogisms will help you to see that the conclusion doesn’t follow. That’s all I can say.
It’s one thing to believe something or to have an opinion. It’s quite another to needlessly make a statement, in a public forum, which might be considered defamatory, and which could get either you or the SDMB into some legal trouble. A smart move is to avoid making controversial and possibly actionable statements about public figures, especially those known to be litigious where their reputation is concerned.
Remember, according to UK law, it’s not enough to feel you could prove the truth of your assertion. That’s not necessarily a full defence. A provably true statement can still be declared defamatory if it damages that person’s ability to trade and receive income based on his name and reputation. Also, even if you think you could win a court case, it’s possible the other person can simply make the case so expensive that your funds run out before his.
As someone who has received a warning letter from Geller’s legal drones (copies of which can be supplied for your dartboard if you wish, or to be printed onto your toilet paper), I stand by my statement as quoted above.
Thanks for the full explanation.
I was certainly not trying to get you to make any sort of actionable statement.
I am not a lawyer, but one phrase above caught my eye:
‘A provably true statement can still be declared defamatory if it damages that person’s ability to trade and receive income based on his name and reputation.’
So if I expose, say, that a TV personality (e.g. a chef or gardener) in fact knows nothing about his craft, I can be sued?
Seems jolly unfair to me.
Thanks for the full explanation.
I was certainly not trying to get you to make any sort of actionable statement.
I am not a lawyer, but one phrase above caught my eye:
‘A provably true statement can still be declared defamatory if it damages that person’s ability to trade and receive income based on his name and reputation.’
So if I expose, say, that a TV personality (e.g. a chef or gardener) in fact knows nothing about his craft, I can be sued?
Seems jolly unfair to me.
It may not follow deductively, but I think it follows inductively with a high likelihood of being true. (Well, it might have to be modified slightly, but overall the structure of the argument that was intended is pretty clear.)
I don’t see how it’s possible to lose that million dollars;
once (if) the phenomenon comes to light, it becomes completely natural. I personally lean on a holographic field of determinism expressed in reality. If someone’s sub-conscious happens to have an algorithm which processes ‘hits’ consistently better than chance; there is still no rational reason to assume super-natural phenomenon. Even if there is not a holographic aspect to the entirety of reality (I believe the estamite is 50 billion bits per second flooding in through all the sensory organs, that get discarded for about 2, in terms of thought), it stands to reason that chance itself will yeild acausal people who perform better than chance; assuming no determinism. I cannot fathom how it’s possible to lose the million dollars…
-Justhink
Well up to your usual standard of incomprehensibility. 
Basically, the guy is asking for a scientific proof of how to access data through a mathematical holo-matrix. He’s offering a million dollars for it. It’s laughable. Unless it is specifically THAT, everything will be regarded as ‘supernatural’.
Nobody is going to first call up James Randi and take a million bucks for that proof! He’ll be an insignificant spec in the process.
Unless such a proof is provided, the demonstration; to whatever degree is considered ‘supernatural’.
He’s making a point, without actually making it. Supernatural does not exist. To the degree that these mechanisms are determined reproducibly; consistently, James Randi will be one of the last to know. It’s basically a joke.
-Justhink
What I’m saying; is that James Randi is betting his money on the proof of a resource which collapses the need or desire for the money.
-Justhink
I’ve mentioned repeatedly that my expertise is in creating and decompiling and collapsing religions. This is a perfect example of how to craft a religion for resource. Realizing the truth negates the value being offered. It’s a tecnique of misdirection.
-Justhink
I would argue that, by definition, nothing “supernatural” exists.
It doesn’t follow that, say, ghosts don’t exist… but if they exist, they’re not supernatural.
In that sense, I think one could make the case that Randi’s money would never be given out.
I suspect that Randi means the word to refer to things currently considered beyond the realm of science, and would therefore pay out the money appropriately. He seems like a fairly straightforward and consistent fellow, after all.
(I think this is also basically what Justhink is saying, but now my head hurts, so I’ll stick with TVAA’s post.)
I’ve seen this line of argument before, but I don’t think it’s correct. I think it would be possible–in the sense of there are no logical contradictions to the idea–to be able to demonstrate a phenomenon exists, without ever being able to explain how it operates.
Suppose someone claiming to be God incarnate agrees to turn water into wine in the laboratory. It should be pretty easy to set up conditions for demonstrating this alleged ability that would satisfy James Randi as to whether it was actually happening or not (i.e., we don’t let the guy walk in with really big billowing robes which could have a couple of cases of chianti hidden in there and then spend fifteen minutes in the room with the bottle of water in it all by himself “meditating”). Afterwards, we run assorted tests to demonstrate that the new substance really is wine, and not water with a little red food coloring dumped in it while everyone was looking out the window. (“Yea, verily, I am the very Son of God and will now turn this water into wine. Hey, look, is that a herd of zebras on the lawn?” Or have your lovely assistant Mary Magdalene do something distracting while wearing a bikini.)
Now, at this point, we’ve shown that this individual can turn water into wine by some unknown method. But maybe he’s not really the Messiah, maybe he’s just an alien from outer space with really advanced technology, and he’s using his pocket atomic transmutation device to do it. But, if he’s willing to repeat the experiment, we can continue to run tests on the water, the wine, and the process, and if it’s happening by some hitherto natural means which we just haven’t discovered yet, I think we’d have a good chance of starting to get a handle on the phenomenon, even if it took us a very long time to get to the point where we could actually reproduce it. Physicists were able to figure out radiation, which they didn’t understand at all when it was first discovered, to the point where we can now use radiation and related phenomena to treat cancers and power (or vaporize) cities. Is there any radiation flux associated with turning water into wine? Is waste heat generated? Does the process take any time interval? Is there an intermediate state where the liquid is partly water and partly wine (i.e., watered down or diluted wine)? Does the wine have some odd isotope ratio? Does putting the water behind a lead-lined wall affect the outcome in any way?
On the other hand, if he’s really God, and not just a bored space alien, and he can turn water into wine because he can simply alter the structure of the universe by his will in essentially any way he pleases, then I think we wouldn’t see anything about the phenomenon that we could ever get a handle on as far as explaining how it happens, even though we could verify it happened to as high a degree of certainity as any scientist could ask for. No radiation, no waste heat, no sound, no infrasound, no excess neutrinos, just water–zap!–wine. At one instant, it’s all 100% pure distilled water (or tap water, or Perrier, or ditch water–it shouldn’t make any difference at all), then a nanosecond later (or a Planck interval later, for that matter), it’s wine, totally indistinguishable from that nice bottle of '97 Chateau d’Snooty (from the southeast corner of the vinyard) by every test anyone can come up with, from an expert wine tester sniffing it and swilling it around and spitting it back out again and so forth, to running it through some mass spectrometer or gas chromatograph or whatever.
(Note that one could still argue that we haven’t strictly proven that this individual is in fact God incarnate, only that he can turn water into wine by a completely inexplicable process.)
As far as telepathy goes–if telepathy is some hitherto undiscovered natural phenomenon, then yes, eventually psychic research could become a science, and we’d develop laws governing it (does psychic powers drop off according to the inverse square law, or what?), and we’d be able to do fetal amniotic tests for the telepathy gene or develop a vaccine against midichlorions and wipe out all the Jedi or whatever. But, if telepathyor other psychic powers are just a gift God gives some of his prophets (or the Goddess gives some of her prophets, or the Gods give some of their prophets, or that the Devil is permitted by God to give to some of his prophets), we’d have no assurance of ever understanding how they worked.
Of course, the first step is demonstrating that these phenomena exist, which no one has done yet. You could also argue that everyone has a natural psychic ability/God-given miraculous ability to correctly guess which card the researcher is holding up, but that ability only functions precisely once in every person’s lifetime, but then there’s no way to ever distinguish that from coincidence (just guessing right), so unless the alleged phenomenon is reasonably replicable, it becomes sort of a moot point. (If the purported Messiah will only do the water-into-wine trick under laboratory conditions the one time, we might be able to verify he did it, but we may not be able to gather enough data to resolve the ensuing debate over whether or not he’s just a space alien with a pocker atomic transmutation device. If he’ll only do it once, at a party where everyone is already drunk, then even if it’s real people like me will probably think it was just prestidigitation and he had a bottle of wine up his sleeve or something.)