Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?

Jango said:
There's over 7,000,000,000 of us on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that ESP remains at zero, you are assuming that because you do not know it for a fact whatsoever.
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ESP, remains at zero, no matter how much you wish for it to be true.
Yes, I will say again, ESP remains at zero - which of the billions of people will you test first... Maybe you have some ESP to help you select it. Did you see a movie with real ESP.

The 7,000,000,000 becomes evidence for life... not ESP.

Oops, I can say. My finger say so. I saw Columbo do ESP...
 
Jango said:
Can we get definitions out of the way first then? All I need to know is how you define/view ESP, and we shall continue.
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Any standard definition will do. Mind reading, telekinesis, predicting the future, etc.. without using our 5 standard senses. For that I am not too picky.

There would potentially be one of two ways to establish the possibility, after which you could potentially assign it a non-zero probability.

1) Find a single example.
2) Hypothesize a legit mode of operation (a sixth sense) using known laws of physics, chemistry and/or biology.

Until then I stand by my initial nit pik. The difference between Esp and advanced alien life is one has a probability (as the possibility is already established with us as the example), while ESP only has a remote possibility that has yet to be established. (and only because we don't know everything, but no known physics, chemistry and/or biology permits it.)
 
Jango said:
Advanced Alien Life = It's a really big place (our observable universe) in all directions with an unknown quantity of **** inside of it.

ESP = I suppose would be akin to what my cold weather instructor told me, Clear Thoughted Determination, along with be it deformity or biochemical improvement to the regions of the brain that are responsible for what you're doing right now as you read this through your mind that little voice, your internal voice, is talkin', where that comes from in the brain, I would suppose. The **** that's being done to brains nowadays makes this more of a reality than just a possibility -- like the way the movie the Bourne Legacy portrays the black project of pharmaceutically altering soldiers. I had never really given it a second thought until I happened upon some articles about the writer/director and his exploration of very interesting concepts -- and then I found this: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html

The rest was elementary, researching the Pentagon & DARPA's interest in the brain and if pharmaceutical companies are working with the security services.
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..."ESP"...?
 
Jango said:
There's over 7,000,000,000 of us on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that ESP remains at zero, you are assuming that because you do not know it for a fact whatsoever.
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Not exactly. I, and others, keep pointing out that there has yet to be the slightest evidence for "perception by modes other than the senses"; "perception without a force or carrier particle"; "perception in violation of what we understand about the laws of physics"; That is "Extra-sensory" perception.

Never been demonstrated to exist. No assumption involved.

If you have tangible, empirical, objective, non-anecdotal, demonstrable, reproducible evidence, attested to and supported with actual science, to the contrary; by all means, bring it on. Support it here. Provide your links, your double-blind studies, your controlled demonstrations. Explain the potential mechanisms (or link to those that so so).

I'd be fascinated.

Until then, you're going to need to face the fact that your claims have exactky the same validity as the fantasy of tapir-pulled mesoamerican war chariots, "advanced alien technology", or "intelligent design" creationism.
 
Jango said:
There's over 7,000,000,000 of us on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that ESP remains at zero, you are assuming that because you do not know it for a fact whatsoever.
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No it is no longer an assumption. We have now fully explored the scales at which "classic" ESP would have to interact and there is simply no longer a gap in which we could squeeze in a last "possible".
 
Darat said:
No it is no longer an assumption. We have now fully explored the scales at which "classic" ESP would have to interact and there is simply no longer a gap in which we could squeeze in a last "possible".
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Well, you do need to include the error bars. I make out the probability of ESP existing to be 0.00 +/- 5%.

Seems only fair.
 
Come on now. Define ESP? Doesn't the term define itself?
The ability to perceive something without input from any of our known five senses.

I have a book on my desk with no front picture, only the title and author's name. Its non-fiction and a paperback. Having described the book if someone can tell me what the first paragraph of page 17 says without knowing who I am or where I live, THAT would be one example of ESP.
In a lab setting I sit in a room and select various random pictures from a pile of paper. Another person sits in another room nearby or in another country, and writes down a description of the pictures I select. THAT is an example of ESP.

This type of ability has been claimed by some. However neither lab experiment nor a $million incentive has managed to discover anyone who can demonstrate this.
Other similar non-sensory perceptions have been claimed with similar zero veracity.

OTOH the claim that advanced life is known is a given. We exist.
 
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Jango said:
There's over 7,000,000,000 of us on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that ESP remains at zero, you are assuming that because you do not know it for a fact whatsoever.
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The very opposite conclusion is the obvious one. If there are so many human beings, and if ESP has not reliably been observed in even one of these myriads of people, then the chances of its being real must be vanishingly small.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
Any standard definition will do. Mind reading, telekinesis, predicting the future, etc.. without using our 5 standard senses. For that I am not too picky.

There would potentially be one of two ways to establish the possibility, after which you could potentially assign it a non-zero probability.

1) Find a single example.
2) Hypothesize a legit mode of operation (a sixth sense) using known laws of physics, chemistry and/or biology.

Until then I stand by my initial nit pik. The difference between Esp and advanced alien life is one has a probability (as the possibility is already established with us as the example), while ESP only has a remote possibility that has yet to be established. (and only because we don't know everything, but no known physics, chemistry and/or biology permits it.)
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I agree, although I would replace the word "Hypothesize" with the word "Establish" or "demonstrate" in context of mechanism or part thereof.
But perhaps you intended the term "legit" to cover similar or same.
 
Jango said:
Advanced Alien Life = It's a really big place (our observable universe) in all directions with an unknown quantity of **** inside of it.

ESP = I suppose would be akin to what my cold weather instructor told me, Clear Thoughted Determination, along with be it deformity or biochemical improvement to the regions of the brain that are responsible for what you're doing right now as you read this through your mind that little voice, your internal voice, is talkin', where that comes from in the brain, I would suppose. The **** that's being done to brains nowadays makes this more of a reality than just a possibility -- like the way the movie the Bourne Legacy portrays the black project of pharmaceutically altering soldiers. I had never really given it a second thought until I happened upon some articles about the writer/director and his exploration of very interesting concepts -- and then I found this: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html

The rest was elementary, researching the Pentagon & DARPA's interest in the brain and if pharmaceutical companies are working with the security services.
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Thanks. At least this is a coherent response completely consistent with your earlier remark :)

However, as far as ESP is concerned, unfortunately we have only claims from many different sources, many claims.
The one more elaborate than the other and some put in such wording as to create a sense of "must be true" to which some people my be more and others less susceptible.

But never the real thing.
 
Slowvehicle said:
A bit OT, but how many posts on an athiest's[sic] forum are required for "extra credit" in a "Witnessing and Outreach" class, anyway?
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Hard to say. There are just too many over-achievers skewing the statistics.
 
Aridas said:
A bit belatedly, thank you for the implied invitation. However, with so very many of the points that I made in this thread left completely unaddressed or only addressed with the invocation of fallacies, is there any reason that I should seek out the thread in question?
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There are 700 posts in this thread and I bet at least 100 are mine.

The best lesson I learned from debating is knowing when to stop debating.
 
Jango said:
There's over 7,000,000,000 of us on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that ESP remains at zero, you are assuming that because you do not know it for a fact whatsoever.
Click to expand...

There's over 7 billion people on this planet, you cannot absolutely say that none of them can flap their arms hard enough to maintain flight.
 
zengirl said:
science is very slow at learning what ancient mystics knew thousands of years ago
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Can you please provide one example of knowledge that scientists have only discovered in say the past 50 years or so, that ancient mystics knew about thousands of years ago and back it up with evidence?

And please no silly or vague nostredamus style hindsight bias examples, expecting something solid here.
 
thenigotoffthebus said:
Can you please provide one example of knowledge that scientists have only discovered in say the past 50 years or so, that ancient mystics knew about thousands of years ago and back it up with evidence?

And please no silly or vague nostredamus style hindsight bias examples, expecting something solid here.
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That the universe has a beginning, the universe is fine tuned for humans, it's mathematically impossible for life to arise without outside help,/woo off
 
Darat said:
No it is no longer an assumption. We have now fully explored the scales at which "classic" ESP would have to interact and there is simply no longer a gap in which we could squeeze in a last "possible".
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Sadly, there are some possibles involved that can't even conceptually be removed via science, so your last "possible" statement is in error. What science actually has done is demonstrate far beyond current reasonable doubt that it's not the case.
 
jaydeehess said:
Come on now. Define ESP? Doesn't the term define itself?
The ability to perceive something without input from any of our known five senses.
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No, ESP is the ability to perceive something without any senses.

We already have a lot more than 5 senses. If even more were discovered it wouldn't make ESP any more possible, but simply reduce the number of abilities that are misattributed to it.

ESP is logically impossible because perception is defined as gaining information via the senses. No sensory input, no perception!
 
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