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Telepathy

King of the Americas said:
Look, I am a grad student. This is an internet message board. I could care less about full citations and holding your hand through the intertubes.

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OMFG! LOOK WHAT YOU WROTE!

A grad student in what discipline? A grad student at what institute of higher learning?
 
Fudbucker said:
But what do you do with someone who is reliable and honest and reports an outlandish claim that would seemingly be impossible to be mistaken about, unless the person was suffering from some disorder? Do you automatically assume they're lying, or have an actual disorder?
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What you do is formulate a means of testing whether their claim has any veracity to it, and carry out that test. If you then carry it out repeatedly for decades and find no evidence that supports the claim, you're perfectly justified in rejecting it until somebody produces evidence more convincing than a series of anecdotes.

Dave
 
Fudbucker said:
But what do you do with someone who is reliable and honest and reports an outlandish claim that would seemingly be impossible to be mistaken about, unless the person was suffering from some disorder? Do you automatically assume they're lying, or have an actual disorder? And if similar people report similar phenomena, does that make the existence of the phenomena more and or less likely? If one eyewitness reports the suspect looked like X,Y,Z, that's one thing. But if all thirty people at the scene report X,Y,Z, that's another.
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Your first sentence contradicts itself. If it is an outlandish claim it is perfectly possible to be mistaken about it: that's what makes it outlandish, and that's why your China example doesn't work.
As for your depiction of skeptics' assumptions, this is a false dichotomy often thrown out by woo-merchants and conspiracy theorists (see MicahJava in the JFK thread, for example). I, for one, do not automatically assume that someone who reports an incidence of whatever woo they are talking about, is insane or lying. They could simply be mistaken. Individuals can make mistakes, and groups can too. We're human: it happens to all of us, and is not uncommon.
It might clarify your point if you could give an example of an outlandish claim about which it would be impossible to be mistaken.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Your first sentence contradicts itself. If it is an outlandish claim it is perfectly possible to be mistaken about it: that's what makes it outlandish, and that's why your China example doesn't work.
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The other reason it's a poor analogy is that a trip to China is not a single experience. It's a whole long chain of events and activities each of which can be recalled and checked against other memories for consistency. Even though you might have a dream about being in China and later be confused about whether you'd really done that, it wouldn't take you long to get round to asking yourself questions like "when did I do that?", "how did I get there?", "why was I there?" etc.

It really doesn't compare with, say, being absolutely convinced you passed uncle Charlie on the bus this morning, even though he died 20 years ago.
 
King of the Americas said:
Look, I am a grad student. This is an internet message board. I could care less about full citations and holding your hand through the intertubes.

What you are discussing is intuition...and ABSOLUTELY, some athletes can "read" setups better than others. The best athletes seem to "predict" better than others.
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Well then if that is the case, then I hope that none of your professors are reading your brilliant postings about the space ships you have seen, the people from Atlantis that you say are real, and how there are a number of people with telepathic powers.
 
Crossbow said:
Well then if that is the case, then I hope that none of your professors are reading your brilliant postings about the space ships you have seen, the people from Atlantis that you say are real, and how there are a number of people with telepathic powers.
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If he's telepathic, why would they need to read the postings?

Dave
 
Crossbow said:
Good point.

Also, if telepathy is real, then why do professors bother to provide the students with written tests?
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Because only special people are blessed with these extra-ordinary gifts.

And unlike those pedestrian intellectuals, KotA is one of the special people.


Oops... I switched definitions mid-post, didn't I? Sorry. :o
 
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