[ExI] Psi (no need to read this post you already knowwhatitsays )

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/7/2010 11:08 PM, spike wrote:
> I am not asking anyone to actually believe that there are
> midichlorians or that we are software with intentionally programmed
> strange-loops, but rather I am asking you to dig deep within your creative
> minds to propose some kind of wildly implausible but theoretically possible
> explanations for supernatural phenomena.

How did "supernatural" get into the discussion? Ah yes, recall my 
earlier speculation about anaphylactic shock triggered by suspicions of 
religion?

There's no shortage of weird ideas to explain the weird phenomena 
labeled "psi"--my OUTSIDE THE GATE book canvases quite a few--but they 
do tend to be built out of handwavium at the moment, just as continental 
drift was before plate tectonics. Observed nonlocality in time 
(information exchanges outside the light cone) is a challenge to any 
routine explanation except maybe the simulation narrative. But there are 
physicists with ideas on that, such as Richard Shoup of the Boundary 
Institute.** My bottom line *isn't* the absence of a theory; it's 
whether there's any solid evidence for the weirdness. And there is.

**see for example <http://www.boundaryinstitute.org/bi/spacetime.htm> 
(Nobody will, I expect.)

Damien Broderick