[ExI] LA Times: 'Physics of the Impossible' by Michio Kaku

[BillK]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:
>  That would kill me stone dead if I thought for a moment there was an
>  omnipotent deity behind psi, or behind the effectiveness of aspirin
>  on heart attacks, or any other multifactorial effect with low power.
>

I think Randi's challenge is not meant for the type of statistical
anomalies that you are talking about. He wanted to combat the psychic
charlatans that rip off the gullible and bereaved public. Same as
Houdini used to debunk self-proclaimed psychics and mediums.  He
wanted people like Uri Geller to come in and bend spoons while being
watched by slow-motion cameras from all angles, using spoons supplied
by the testers. But no such luck. These millionaire so-called psychics
are not going to risk their very successful business plans by such a
process. Unfortunately once the challenge was publicised, Randi then
found that he had the problem of people claiming more and more obscure
abilities in an attempt to strike 'lucky' and win the million dollars.
He couldn't just dismiss them out of hand as being not suitable for
testing (which is probably what he should have done), so he was stuck
with trying to devise equally complicated and obscure tests and ended
up wasting everybody's time. So the test has now outlived its'
usefulness and is being scrapped.


On a separate note if esp abilities existed, wouldn't they provide an
evolutionary advantage and increase over time? Surely it would be
handy for a prehistoric hunter to know where the food was in advance,
or to know that a tiger was hiding round the corner?  If such
abilities were beneficial the whole population should have inherited
them after a few thousand years.

BillK