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Matt Rouge on Why Skeptics will never accept the existence of psi

BillSkeptic said:
On Michael Prescott's blog one of his friends Matt Rouge wrote a piece "Why Skeptics will never accept the existence of psi".



Michael Prescott apparently bans most skeptics from commenting on his blog. Anyone want to take a stab at refuting Matt Rouge's claims about skeptics?

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/...s-will-never-accept-the-existence-of-psi.html

For those who do not know who Michael Prescott is, he is an author of crime fiction but also known for his credulous acceptance of paranormal and pseudoscience topics.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Prescott

Prescott believes in ectoplasm, demonic possession, "earthbound spirits" and reincarnation and has a history of defending fraudulent spiritualist mediums such as Eusapia Palladino.
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Clearly he is a liar and/or a fraud. A piece of fecal matter just waiting for the toilet handle to be pushed to be flushed down the drain of silliness and greed!!!
 
MuDPhuD said:
...snip,...

The difficulty is that the believers are not willing to consider the role of chance and coincidence in their lives, but prefer to believe fantasy tales of supernatural intervention and spiritual connectedness. It is exactly the same problem which keeps the religious convinced that prayer works. So I would say the author of the above is perhaps not entirely naive, but rather has a poor understanding of the role of chance and coincidence in his, and his psychic friends' lives.

The fact that half of his friends do in fact charge for readings, and that they consider themselves to have consistent and successful psychic powers, would indicate that whatever "spiritual laws" there may be, they do not preclude turning a profit on ones work. They do not consider themselves to be cheating their clients because they actually believe their readings are of value. So, whats to stop someone from using these powers in a casino?
They could make a lot of money and give it to the charity of their choice.
Such powers could certainly be used in law enforcement, if they gave consistent results.
The fact is that psi does not give consistent results because it is based on chance coincidence, and statistical anomalies, and that is why we will not see it used to the advantage of human kind at any time, let alone within the century.

Of course I would be happy to be proven wrong!
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Hawks back to comments I made on this site many, many moons ago. If PSI worked the military would be using it, there is nothing that humanity has ever invented or has any ability to do that hasn't been exploited by our military over the years.

And no it could not be secret as every military, insurgency, terrorist group and so on would be using it.
 
Darat said:
Hawks back to comments I made on this site many, many moons ago. If PSI worked the military would be using it, there is nothing that humanity has ever invented or has any ability to do that hasn't been exploited by our military over the years.

And no it could not be secret as every military, insurgency, terrorist group and so on would be using it.
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Most damning, the military did try it (in the US) and stopped the program when it didn't work.

https://fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm

"I don't want this highly effective and inexpensive intelligence program," said no government ever.
 
Fudbucker said:
"can be tested" doesn't equal "had been tested". It is possible there are people with consistent psychic powers who simply don't want to be tested.
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I'm not sure if this is just semantics but, if so, it may be impossible that people with consistent psychic powers, or indeed any psychic powers, exist all. Where does this get us with regard to assessing reality?
 
Comments from Matt Rouge:

It all starts with recognizing that phenomena exist. Skeptics believe that they can stick their fingers in their ears and go, "Na na NAH na, can't hearrr you," and the phenomena will eventually go away. They won't. If we don't have a theory of psi 100 years ago, we will still be dealing with the phenomena, and the work of understanding them will lie yet ahead of us...

Psi is such a universally experienced phenomenon, in every country and every time period, that there is a kind of burden of proof on those who claim that it does not exist. For example, it would be similar if I claimed that falling in love didn't exist. Hey, it's immaterial, it can't be proven "scientifically," there's no theory on how it works, etc. All the same points could be raised.

If I were to make that claim, it would at least fall on me to explain *why* so many people *think* it exists when it doesn't. And that is true of psi as well. It would be *bad science* to say that people have been fooled since the dawn of history into think that psi is real, yet remain incurious as to why that was the case. Skeptics, however, regularly commit this error. And why is that? Because you are litigators and propagandists and not truth-seekers. You want to discredit psi so that as few people believe in it, and leave it at that. You don't really want to *know* what's going on.
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The burden of proof is on the skeptics to prove psi does not exist...

We are dealing a fundamentalist here folks :rolleyes:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/...he-existence-of-psi/comments/page/4/#comments
 
Matt Rouge is also religious:

Spirituality is a big part of my life. I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic junior high school, high school, and university. Somewhat early in life, however, my views diverted from those of the Church, and now I feel the best label for me is “New Age.” I take my views from many sources and have great respect for Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, paganism, monism, pantheism, and many other religions and philosophies. I believe in a higher power, an afterlife, and the law of karma.
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This would explain his anti-scientific agenda.

http://mattrouge.com/about-2/
 
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Bladesman87 said:
I'm not sure if this is just semantics but, if so, it may be impossible that people with consistent psychic powers, or indeed any psychic powers, exist all. Where does this get us with regard to assessing reality?
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If it is possible consistent psychic powers exist, why should we conclude they don't exist? Are you agnostic about their existence? Most skeptics are convinced they don't exist.
 
Fudbucker said:
Skeptics should be more open-minded.
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Open mindedness is the very essence of scepticism. Open to evidence, open to argument. If neither is forthcoming then a sceptic's working assumption is that the claim is false, but must be revisited should either ever be produced. That is being open minded.

Believers, however, are apt to wilfully ignore any and all evidence or argument which suggests that their beliefs are mistaken. That is being close minded.
 
Pixel42 said:
Open mindedness is the very essence of scepticism. Open to evidence, open to argument. If neither is forthcoming then a sceptic's working assumption is that the claim is false, but must be revisited should either ever be produced. That is being open minded.

Believers, however, are apt to wilfully ignore any and all evidence or argument which suggests that their beliefs are mistaken. That is being close minded.
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If I claim that when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he did it before noon, are you going to assume that claim is false? After all, what argument or evidence could I present to back up such a claim?
 
Fudbucker said:
If I claim that when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he did it before noon, are you going to assume that claim is false? After all, what argument or evidence could I present to back up such a claim?
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It all depends on the nature of the claim and the pwoer of the evidence. A simple report from a soldat in its army , or a civilian report, would suffice as evidence in this case. Because the claim is not that big.

OTOH psy is claiming RIGHT NOW, to have effect. Therefore the evidence should be able to be gotten RIGHT NOW. Emphasis on right now. Furthermore the claim are not simple and local, they are wide ranging and very impacting fundemmentally changing a lot of understanding in physic and biology. Therefore a simple "report" from an average joe "I heard that the step brother of the cousin of my butcher can do psy" does not suffice. You need pretty solid evidence.

And that is the problem. We are not speaking of a single historical event "caesar cross the rubicoN" but something pretending to be repeatable and happen on regular basis (note that I did not say often, jsut that however rare, it is pretended to happen to quite a lot of people). The claim is more akin to "caesar is crossing the rubicon daily, even today as a visible, sighteable ghost".

And YES, when such fundemmental claim on the physical word, that is not historical, are made, the default should ALWAYS be the null : "nothing happens the claim is false - basic physic and biology applies".

You are asking pretty much to reverse the null and the bruder of proof.

No. Open minded of new evidence, yes, but the burden, is still on the claim side, and until the claim is evidenced properly, the null should be the default explanation.
 
And to be clear the analogy stinks because you are comparing an event which is pretended to be repeatable right now and big group of different people - and an event which go against what we could up to now measure from nature and human, with an historical single event long past - and to boot an event which is not even beyond natural. Now "caesar is flying and living today" would be a step better but you would be called upon it.
 
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Fudbucker said:
If I claim that when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he did it before noon, are you going to assume that claim is false?
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No, I'm going to assume that you are deliberately misunderstanding the point that I am making, as in the context of the thread it is perfectly clear to which type of claim I am referring, and the Rubicon claim is not of that type.
 
Pixel42 said:
No, I'm going to assume that you are deliberately misunderstanding the point that I am making, as in the context of the thread it is perfectly clear to which type of claim I am referring, and the Rubicon claim is not of that type.
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I was making a point, but you're right. Claims about psi powers are different than claims about history. Let's try a different claim:

"Aliens with psi powers exist somewhere in the universe."

What do you think? Definitely false? Probably false? Probably true? 50/50?
 
Fudbucker said:
I was making a point, but you're right. Claims about psi powers are different than claims about history. Let's try a different claim:

"Aliens with psi powers exist somewhere in the universe."

What do you think? Definitely false? Probably false? Probably true? 50/50?
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Assumed false until and unless evidence offered to support it.
 
To put what I'm arguing another way: where we have sufficient knowledge and understanding to create a null hypothesis, any positive claim which contradicts that null hypothesis has the burden of proof. The disagreement between sceptic and believer usually boils down to whether or not the sceptic is justified in creating a null hypothesis, and hence putting the burden of proof on the believer.
 
Pixel42 said:
Open mindedness is the very essence of scepticism. Open to evidence, open to argument. If neither is forthcoming then a sceptic's working assumption is that the claim is false, but must be revisited should either ever be produced. That is being open minded.

Believers, however, are apt to wilfully ignore any and all evidence or argument which suggests that their beliefs are mistaken. That is being close minded.
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Nope. A skeptic's working assumption is that we don't know whether the claim is true or false. You're just doing the believer thing but from the other side.

A: "psi does not exist."
Skeptic: "is there evidence of that claim?"
A: "no."
Skeptic: "then the claim is assumed to be false, ie psi is assumed to exist."

See the problem?
 
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