[ExI] few bits per second

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Mon Jun 28 18:37:25 UTC 2010


Damien, just aside from any piffling issues that may have clouded the
atmosphere around these parts recently, wouldn't you agree that the
PEAR record is actually quite disappointing as evidence of psi goes?

I mean, 2 events out of 100,000 is pretty low. Yeah, I know that
particle physicists look at single atomic events against a background
of so many billions of other events that it's not even funny, and
still they claim five sigma confidence in their results but then, they
have a theoretical framework that builds smooth transitions from other
fields of physics, mutually reinforcing their conclusions and
providing occasionally predictions that fit experiments sometimes to
the seventh significant digit. In contrast, the psi work starts with a
strong desire for it to be true (let's not deny it, it would be cool
if it was true, I want it to be true too) but there is no theory
meshing with the rest of our knowledge in a fashion that produces
quantitative predictions - so we have both more reasons for the work
to be derailed by biases and less of a support from the rest of
science. In this situation the absence of really strong, absolutely
unmistakable effects, coupled with lack of predictive theories is a
bit of a problem, no?

As I wrote here about 10 years ago, I wish psi was true, I really do
but so far haven't been forced into believing it by sufficient
evidence. I would express my views as follows: I am about 99% sure I
have not seen credible evidence of any psi phenomena. I am about 85 -
95% percent sure that physics as we know it does not provide a basis
for their existence (my poor understanding of QM being responsible for
the low level of confidence I have in my dismissal of psi). By
comparison, I am > 99.99 % sure the Christian god is a fairy tale, or
that you can't fly an FTL ship by simply pushing it with rockets. What
are your percentages here?

Rafal



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