[extropy-chat] Movie: WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW!?

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 03:15 PM 11/25/2004 -0800, Adrian wrote:
> > > Preferably,
> > > find and assess more complete accounts of the
> trials
> > > on Suitbert's site.
> >
> >Or better yet, on some independent sites whose
> >maintainers not only have practice in reviewing
> >claims of this nature, but who also dedicate their
> >time to reviewing them so the rest of us can spend
> our
> >time the way we wish to.
> 
> This is very nearly impossible to achieve, I think.
> `Independent' in such a 
> vexed topic means `as yet unpersuaded'.

No.  I meant "independent" as in "trying to get to the
truth regardless of which side the truth happens to be
on".  One can be persuaded of one side or the other at
the moment, but still be willing to analyze new
evidence that might support the side one is not
currently on.  (Note that I'm not claiming this for
myself.  Again, I'm leaving this role to those who do
choose to use their time this way.)

> If this 
> did happen, and was filmed, and I affirmed upon my
> life that it was not 
> fraudulent, would you, Adrian, take this testimony
> as evidence of anything 
> other than my credulity or bogosity?

I'd take it as testimony.  I'd also look for testimony
of how - or if - you looked for ways you might have
been intentionally or unintentionally tricked.  If I
saw no such efforts, I would want said efforts to be
made before ascribing a non-low level of confidence
that the testimony accurately described anything more
than merely what appeared to happen (as opposed to
what really happened).

I recall a thread, not that many months ago, where
people were abuzz about a "psi experiment" where you
would mentally select one card out of six on a Web
site, click a button (that had nothing to do with
which card you selected), and the card you had
selected disappeared.  People wondered if this was
"proof" of psi potential, until the trick was
explained: all six cards were replaced with five
others, so whichever specific one you chose would be
missing as well (and you didn't pay as much attention
to the other five, so you didn't notice the other five
being replaced).  Given the high number of such
incidents, merely observing something that seems on
first glance to be psi is far more likely to be a
false positive than a true positive.

> What *would* it
> take? A theory that 
> explains it, perhaps.

That too.  A theory that leads to other, testable
experiments that can be conducted without the original
forumlator's knowledge.  (The laws of physics are the
laws of physics, and don't care who knows them.  But
someone perpetuating a hoax - including to oneself,
unconsciously - usually has to be at least aware of
all aspects of the hoax to prevent it from being
unraveled quickly.)

> I don't know, it's very
> unsettling. If I ever do see 
> people I trust bending metal by pure force of
> personality (rather than just 
> being told about it), and if I learn how to do it
> myself, I'll be very 
> tempted to shut up about it.

I wouldn't.  If psi really did exist, the world could
be radically improved, and some of that would come
back to benefit me.  Indeed, the amount of that
benefit if the whole world knew how to do it would
seemingly likely exceed the personal benefit I could
get from keeping the knowledge restricted.  So it'd be
in my own interests to make sure many people knew how
to do this.  And then there's the separate issue of
having good confidence that I actually had what I
thought I had.