If two people live together for a long time, you'll often hear stories about how they've "read" each other's minds, that the experience goes beyond just coincidence. Even some skeptics here have talked about some uncanny experiences (I forget the particular posters). I've been married for 20 years. I've had maybe a couple dozen experiences like that.
So effing what? I've been married for over thirty years, in the course of which my wife and I have amassed a wealth of information, both consciously and subconsciously, about how each other will react to a broad variety of different situations, informed and backed up by conversations after the fact where we've communicated to each other what our thoughts and reactions were. Based on such a solid footing of empirical data, it would be extraordinary if, at times, we
didn't each have a very good idea what the other is thinking, because we both know what the other was thinking last time something like that happened. And, of course, we remember the times we got it right, and forget - sometimes conveniently, because nobody wants to be cast in the role of the insensitive spouse who doesn't really understand his partner - the times we got it wrong.
So the skeptical position when investigating incidents like this is, do we have any compelling reason to invoke telepathy, a hypothetical phenomenon with no known mechanism which categorically violates the entire framework of physical laws by which we, as a species, have achieved an extraordinary level of control of the world around us; or do we accept that it can be explained by a main course of mutual knowledge and understanding with a side order of coincidence and a topping of confirmation bias?
If someone claims to have gone to China, is the null position, "No you didn't"? You don't go around doubting everything everyone says.
Context, of course, is crucial. If someone who works for a Chinese company and makes frequent business trips abroad says "I was in China last week," most reasonable people would accept for the moment that she probably was. If a homeless drug addict stops you on the street and says, "Give me a fiver, mate, I spent all my money on a holiday in China last week and I just got back," a more dispherical reply is appropriate. So, if something that I know happens all the time is claimed to have happened, I'll probably accept it where there aren't any consequences involved. And, of course, if someone nicked my bike last week and I see said drug addict riding one that looks exactly like it, but he says "It can't have been me because I was in China last week," I'm not going to let that stop me mentioning it to the local rozzers, because in this case there's good reason for me to exercise the mechanisms of skepticism.
So, since it actually matters whether or not telepathy is real - because it would be so damned useful if it did - then let's exercise skepticism; define your hypothesis and state the evidence for it, and if you can't define a hypothesis or provide convincing evidence then it's probably not real.
Dave
