[extropy-chat] Precognition on TV.

[John K Clark]

"Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>

> There is no lack of peer-reviewed papers
> available on the web

Well yea that's true, but then you can find anything on the web. A crappy
researcher you've never heard of can indeed find a peer, that is, another
crappy researcher you've also never heard of, to confirm his original crappy
work.

> I suppose I might as well throw in a few
> pointers [blah blah]

Why on Earth would you do that? If I were to follow your links and read this
stuff it would take hours, be very unpleasant, and at the end of the day I
would not be one bit wiser than I am right now because I would have no way
of knowing if the ASCII sequence I observed had any relationship with how
the universe operated or if it was just pulp fiction.

It's just a website, that's it, a website; there is no chain of trust that
would justify me rethinking my fundamental ideas on how things work. I don't
know if he's a good experimenter or a bad one, I don't know if his data is
correct or made up, I don't know if the experiment was set up as he said it
was, I don't know if it was performed as he said it was, I don't even know
if he did any experiment at all. I do know the man knows how to type, but
that's not enough to alter my worldview.

And I didn't see the TV show (a source almost as reliable as the web) but
I'll tell you one thing, if I could foretell the future I sure as hell
wouldn't be wasting my time making documentaries about myself,
valuable time that I could be spending with my stockbroker and bookie.

  John K Clark