You can't very well engage in that process without at least implying that the claimant might be planning to cheat.
ImOne answered that very nicely. In my own question to him I suggested he might have found a way to cheat that is unique, interesting, and unconcscious.
Bear in mind also that nobody has ever given a successful demonstration of paranormal abilities to an audience of skeptics without later being discovered as a fraud.
I am extremely well aware of that. My point is that this is the
first time I have ever seen someone propose to give a demonstration in a lucid and rational way. All the rest of them are gibbering lunatics.
It's MP's sheer reasonableness that I think deserves to be respected. He sounds like someone who is rational, just wrong. It does us no harm - and potentially much good - to act as if this is the case.
After this demonstration fails, MP might actually be willing to consider that he was wrong. And the kind of treatment he recieves from us now might have some emotional impact on how he deals with that knowledge.
We can hope that Mental Professor will not follow in their footsteps, but it is not unreasonable to expect that he will.
Not at all unreasonable - just unnecessary. At this point.
When I watch cop shows, I always wonder why the cops are a little more polite when they are arresting the prime suspect. Don't they know they are on TV, there is 30 minutes left in the episode, and therefore they almost certainly have the wrong guy? And of course you never see them apologize for arresting and verbally abusing the wrong guy. (Well, once I did see that). You can imagine the experience doesn't leave a lot of good will on the part of the victim - which is bad, because the system is absolutely necessary and needs everyone's support.
I can understand a police officer saying, "We have strong evidence that you did it, so we have to arrest you." I can forgive him for doing his job. But convicting me before the trial, calling me a scumbag, bouncing my head off the squad car as he puts me in because he thinks he's got a real Bad Guy? That's not acceptable, necessary, or helpful.
We don't have to assume MP is dishonest, even while we explain to him the necessity of making sure dishonesty is impossible. We can appreciate his rational and polite discourse without conceeding his claim. We can be friendly with someone who has not yet irrevocably branded themselves as the enemy of all light and truth.
How do you know you can trust someone? Because they trust you. I know it is expensive and difficult to keep being the ones who first offer the olive branch of trust, and keep getting smacked with it; but that's our job, as skeptics, as "brights," as decent human beings.
Of course it's not polite. It's not polite to suggest that someone is delusional either, but that is what you have done by assuming he will fail.
But if you have noticed, MP has taken our polite suggestions that he is delusional in a polite way. He understands we think he is delusional, and he can talk rationally about the possibility. All I am asking for is that we can do the same, without becoming unduly viscious.
But what I meant was that simply discussing the ways in which it is possible to cheat, and ways to close those loopholes, will unavoidably imply suspicion.
Not necessarily. MP can understand we have to protect ourselves from others without necessarily infering we are protecting ourself from him.
Indeed, his willingness to accept the need for this protocol is the best possible proof that he actually believes what he says.
He is acting rationally. Whether he is or not, it behooves us to act rationally too. We can up-front state that we are certain he is wrong, and even that he is "cheating" in some unconscious way, without accusing him of conspiracy to commit theft.
But I see SirPhillip has covered all this in many fewer sentences.
), have you already included the affidavits in your application, or will you have to spend time hunting those when your claim is received?
