[extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence

[Mitchell Porter]

Eliezer said

>It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct.  There's no 
>ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons.  It's 
>just us within the laws of physics.

There is no rational necessity for such dogmatism, especially when
(i) today's standard-issue laws of physics already contain a mechanism
for nonlocal correlation, and (ii) anomalous coincidences are a very
common experience. Considerations of human irrationality cut both
ways here.

I recommend the following essay by C.D. Broad:
http://www.ditext.com/broad/rprp.html

... because it spells out just what "paranormal" really means:
a violation of certain "basic limiting principles which, apart from
the findings of psychical research, are commonly accepted either
as self-evident or as established by overwhelming and uniformly
favourable empirical evidence". Broad's principles fall under
these headings:

1. General principles of causation
2. Limitations on the action of mind on matter
3. Dependence of mind on brain
4. Limitations on ways of acquiring knowledge

None of Broad's principles are logical necessities. They are all
hypotheses. Furthermore, we know how to build physical
models which violate the principles in the first category
(quantum nonlocality, closed timelike curves), which means
that we can describe, in the abstract, material cognitive
systems which violate principles from the second and the
fourth categories. Even if a Bayesian reasoner only considered
mathematical models already devised by human beings, it
would have to assign a nonzero probability to the reality of
paranormal phenomena (and not just in the form of a
world-as-simulation hypothesis).

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