I'm not saying it gets a pass...
This whole thread questions the propriety of the null hypothesis being the default skeptical position on an existential claim.
I'm saying it isn't an extraordinary claim.
Again, that's questioning the standard of proof, not the propriety of the default hypothesis.
I don't think it would take extraordinarily strong evidence to move the needle.
Why does telepathy suggest a lower standard of proof?
I think my own experiences and anecdotal accounts from others are enough to justify an agnostic position.
Not as the default, no. The default position is the null hypothesis. If you want to falsify the null, you must do so to an agreeable standard of proof, then a conclusion can be drawn that is the considered position, not the default position.
Anecdotes bereft of empirical controls don't meet that standard as the skeptics set it.
Remember, though, my view of reality colors all this. As someone with idealist leanings, I don't view the laws of nature as immutable things.
Why should that result in a change in how skeptics see the issue? If you're asking what the skeptical response to a claim should be, you've heard it. If you feel differently and therefore don't want to identify as a skeptic, that's your business.
Yes, the default position, imo, is that telepathy of the sort I'm talking about should be regarded as a bit unlikely, but certainly not impossible.
Straw man. Proposing a default position of non-existence does not draw the conclusion that it's impossible.
The default position should be slightly against telepathy.
That's not how the null hypothesis works. It arises as the reverse of the affirmative claim. You haven't yet said what's so special about telepathy that means skeptics should give it its own particular brand of reasoning.
That means that weak evidence, like anecdotes and personal experiences, are enough to move telepathy from the "probably not" box to the "maybe" box.
The default position is the null hypothesis. It's called the "default" because it's what holds
before you start examining the evidence, and what continues to hold if the evidence cannot unseat it. An examination of the evidence has the potential to falsify the null by producing observations that deductively can't follow from the null (and ideally
must follow only from the affirmative claim). That would be the considered conclusion, which is utterly different than the default position. You haven't even come close to producing those observations. By your own admission the effects you proffer are undetectably confounded and seem to disappear entirely when the confounds are controlled for.
The operative hypothesis is always in the "maybe" box in the hypothetico-deductive model. But "maybe" is not the same as "Telepathy is real." "Maybe" is not knowledge.
It's entirely possible the authors were full of **** or were sloppy or jumped to conclusions.
They were sloppy and jumped to conclusions, and when the full data were available for review, it was shown exactly in what way they were sloppy and exactly what the gaps were that they leaped over in arriving at their conclusions.
Not as expert as their reviewers. Robert Jahn was a retired engineer with little or no training in psychology research or human-subject protocols. While I think he meant well, the PEAR studies suffered from exactly the sorts of ills that would arise from people who weren't used to doing that kind of research. Their critics such as Alcock, Palmer, and others were lifelong researchers in the psychology and parapsychology fields and knew it well. If you are going to respect expertise, you must respect it on both sides of the question.
...they spent a long time doing it...
Irrelevant -- the sunken cost fallacy.
...the study wasn't done at some no-name university, so their conclusions carry some weight.
Their conclusions are not any more correct because they were attached to a major university. The correctness of their conclusions derives from the merits of their efforts, which have been reviewed and found to be in error. While they researched at Princeton, their findings -- save for a few papers -- were all published in fringe journals. They could not meet the standards of research demanded by the more appropriate journals.
...it's Princeton. You have to be phenomenal just to get in.
Dr. Jahn had a very distinguished career
as an aerospace engineer. That gives him a measure of clout by which to pursue personal interests, privately funded, under the auspices of the university to which he belonged for some time and from which he could demand a certain indulgence. That indulgence did not last forever, however. You will hardly find a trace of PEAR in Princeton's public offerings. The general interpretation is that it was an embarrassment to the university.
I think I started this thread because I really wanted to show that how we view reality really colors our view of everything.
That's tautologically correct, but not really where the discussion started or went. You seem to be arguing that skeptics should be more like idealists. That's really not a thing you can ask without engendering some backlash at a skeptics' forum. In any case, you haven't been very persuasive.
I'm more willing to entertain the idea that we might have gotten something fundamental, like a law of nature, wrong.
If you think this distinguishes you from skeptics then you don't understand science at all. Science is predicated on the
certainty that we've gotten something wrong about the laws of nature. Toward that end we have evolved -- and continue to refine -- a stringent, methodical way of gathering observations and drawing parallels and contrasts so that we can do our best to detect wherein we may be in error, or have incomplete knowledge. That process starts with the null hypothesis and proceeds to a considered conclusion. Suggesting that skeptics short-circuit that process for a pet belief is blatantly special pleading.
...today's woo is tomorrow's settled science.
And some of today's woo was yesterday's woo and will be tomorrow's woo. Science is never settled to the point where it can't be unseated by thorough observation and testing. Every conclusion drawn by the hypothetico-deductive model is "forever tentative," in the words of one of our noted philosophers of science.
The problem I see is your impatience with that process where it touches what I assume is a cherished belief. You want to skip the hard part and go right to the triumph. This is something you as an idealist may be comfortable with, but it is completely antithetical to the skeptic philosophy.
