[ExI] Psi and gullibility

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/26/2010 3:50 PM, John Clark wrote:

> Damien suppose just for the sake of argument, that psi did not exist,
> don't you think that many and perhaps most members of the human race
> would nevertheless think that it did?

I played around with some other examples of desirable features that 
people wish were true, and even so actually are, but why bother. Of 
course many people wish purely mental communication and action (or 
magic, sorcery etc) are real and/or fear this greatly, but so what? 
That's what scientific protocols are for--to put such wishes under 
pressure, and see if the phenomenon at issue actually is there, and what 
constrains it, and finally to generate a theory able to accommodate it. 
The first is established, the second is somewhat in hand (given the 
astonishingly sparse funding compared to burger advertising or particle 
physics or sports or religion, not bad), the third is hardly begun.