princhester said:
In your last post you said you can find some water anywhere you dig, but in the vast majority of places it's only a tiny trickle. You did not qualify this in any way.
What the cite you've given actually says is that you can find *some* water most anywhere, if you drill deep enough and don't need much water [my emphasis].
As I understand the idiom, (and Dictionary.com supports this) when an American says "most anywhere", that is an informal contraction of "almost anywhere".
"Almost anywhere" is of course not a precise term. However, I would have thought that it certainly encompasses "90 to 94% of places".
So your cite supports what Randi says and shows why his usual way of testing dowsers is a valid idea.
Well, I might argue the meaning of 'most' and discuss whether he
really meant "almost" or not, but rather than get into all these word games once again I went and
consulted some geologists on the subject. I posed the following question:
"Would it be possible to locate a spot where there is no water whatsoever, at any reachable depth?
What sort of geology/geography would produce such a spot? What are chances of finding one?"
The detailed response from
expeditious Turtle certainly implies the answer is no. But I wanted an unambiguous answer, so I asked again "is there any such thing as a totally dry spot?"
His response was as follows "Well, this is a very tricky question and it depends on what you consider to be dry. For example you may find a clay formation that is virtually no permeability and thus no free water can be exrtracted from the pore spaces, however there is still water there, it just can't excape."
Another poster added "Yeah, I'm averse to saying that stuff is "impossible" or that it "never" happens. However, I can't readily think of any case where you would encounter zero H2O when boring on earth"
Someone suggested a volcano as a "dry spot." The geologists contradicted this idea, saying that there is water even in magma and lava, and a volcanic erruption is 80% superheated water.
So there we have it, clear aqnd unambiguous, there is no spot anywhere on the planet that would meet Randi's requirements for a "dry spot" I don't think there is any room for misunderstanding or re-interpretation here. There are no dry spots - period.
Now, your next point, as I understand it, is in effect that perhaps a particular dowser can only detect a high yield place for a well, and can't tell the difference between a low yield place and an altogether dry spot.
First, before we bother going any further with this, find me a cite to the effect that this is in fact a limitation that dowsers claim. There's no point in controlling for effects that dowsers themselves don't think will be a problem.
In the first place, it is a moot point, there
are no dry spotsl.
In the second place, you are simply assuming dowsers say they
can find a dry spot, and you are challenging me to prove that they say they can't. In absence of dowsers specificly stating "we can't find a dry spot" you assume they can. This is an obvious case of
argumentium ad ignorantiam.
I think it very unlikely that I will be able to find a dowser who gives an extensive list of all then things he can't do, just on the off chance that someone should challenge him. What if Randi challenges him to flap his arms and fly to the moon, and he has never claimed an inability to do so? Would that be a fair test?
It just seems to me that "I can find an ancient burried streambed" and "I can find a dry spot" are two totally different things, the one does not imply the other. You are entitled to disagree, but the burden of proof is yours.
But given the fact that there
are no dry spots, it's probably not worth spending
too long researching your reply..
