Dan Jr. - 05 June 2007 04:04 AM

Uhhh, is the above stuff (by samvado) true and correct?  I have heard no negative news about James Randi, except by ‘psychics’ who rue his attention to their scams, and I have never heard of any ‘studies’ that statistically confirm (what the hell does that mean?) and prove beyond reasonable doubt that psychic phenomena is real.

No, it’s not correct. A lot of people find Randi to be rude or abrassive, but he most certainly hasn’t lost lawsuits of that nature by people who successfully passed his test. He’s won several lawsuits, though.

On Coast To Coast AM, they frequently have on this guy who claims to be a ‘remote viewer’, he supposedly worked for the CIA (but now makes his living selling RV lessons) and there are several ads from people who will teach you the trick for a large unrefundable fee, but for some reason, they cannot locate Osama bin Laden or new oil deposits or anything else where an impartial observer might agree something truly psychic had happened.

Anyway, is anything in samvado’s post true?  I sincerely would like to know!

Of course, after the earthquakes and nuclear war that begins on 6 - 15 - 07, we are all going to feel so stupid!

Dan, so used to feeling stupid that it will be perfectly natural on 6 - 15

No, remote viewing does not work. Neither does psychic prophesy. When people talk about “the government” or “the CIA” using remote viewing, they are either talking about some kook’s claim or, sometimes, Project Stargate (no, not the show! ).  Project Stargate was real, I’ll grant you that. They attempted many things in PS, including remote viewing. But, and most importantly, they shut the program down when it could provide zero usable data. It was a colossal waste of money and provided nothing useful.

As you noted: Why don’t they find Bin Laden, why didn’t they predict 9/11, or the recent college shooting, or any number of other things. They don’t because it doesn’t work. Every single time you hear of a “success” with, say, prophesy, it’s an “after the fact” assessment.  “Oh, this guy said the bird would fly to the land of peace. He was obviously talking about the Eagle landing on the moon at Tranquility base.”

Peter - 05 June 2007 02:19 PM

I suggest you look at this. It’s an article by one of my favourite authors, Dr Karl. He basically says that the concept of the “Psychic Sleuth” as he calls it is not at all what you say it is. He says in his article that Psychic Sleuths are often used as a decoy to hide the real source of information or to make superstitious criminals feel nervous.

There is no evidence to say that so called psychics solve anything with psychic ability.

Peter, thank you for that link. You know, I didn’t actually know about that phenomenon, but I had always secretly hoped.  That is, I have always hoped that police departments weren’t really wasting so much time, money, and effort on psychic detectives. That actually makes me feel better.

Dan Jr. - 05 June 2007 03:52 AM

David B. - 04 June 2007 03:20 PM

Dan, the current (June) issue has a big article on ‘particle cosmology’, but I can’t remember a specific string theory article. What was it called?

Actually, I think I mis-spoke, the actual thing I recalled, if I am remembering properly, was an ad to join a Scientific Book Club, and the first free books dealt with the String controversy, both defending it and questioning it.  I will look for the ad and get the issue number and page number.

Dan, the unreliable witness

Yes, David, it is a large cardboard pull-out ad for SciAm Book Club…...there is some ad copy on it, which I dredged up incorrectly from my memory as an article.

The ad is between pages 48 - 49 in the June Scientific American.

Dan, wiping egg from face

Well I shook my digital edition really hard, but nothing fell out. They must have forgot to include it in my download.

Why is my monitor fuzzy all of a sudden?

Stargazer - 05 June 2007 04:00 PM

Peter - 05 June 2007 02:19 PM

I suggest you look at this. It’s an article by one of my favourite authors, Dr Karl. He basically says that the concept of the “Psychic Sleuth” as he calls it is not at all what you say it is. He says in his article that Psychic Sleuths are often used as a decoy to hide the real source of information or to make superstitious criminals feel nervous.

There is no evidence to say that so called psychics solve anything with psychic ability.

Peter, thank you for that link. You know, I didn’t actually know about that phenomenon, but I had always secretly hoped.  That is, I have always hoped that police departments weren’t really wasting so much time, money, and effort on psychic detectives. That actually makes me feel better.

Dr Karl’s got some really interesting articles including one on how the Earth’s core is a mirror image of the Earth’s surface and it’s so hot it has it’s own weather system with rain storms of molten iron.

Peter - 06 June 2007 03:03 AM

Stargazer - 05 June 2007 04:00 PM

Peter - 05 June 2007 02:19 PM

I suggest you look at this. It’s an article by one of my favourite authors, Dr Karl. He basically says that the concept of the “Psychic Sleuth” as he calls it is not at all what you say it is. He says in his article that Psychic Sleuths are often used as a decoy to hide the real source of information or to make superstitious criminals feel nervous.

There is no evidence to say that so called psychics solve anything with psychic ability.

Peter, thank you for that link. You know, I didn’t actually know about that phenomenon, but I had always secretly hoped.  That is, I have always hoped that police departments weren’t really wasting so much time, money, and effort on psychic detectives. That actually makes me feel better.

Dr Karl’s got some really interesting articles including one on how the Earth’s core is a mirror image of the Earth’s surface and it’s so hot it has it’s own weather system with rain storms of molten iron.

Some form of hat would be useful then. Or an asbestos umbrella.

Hey now there’s a business. Someone get us down to the centre of the earth and hope they have some form of valuables down there to purchase our asbesgtos umbrellas

Stargazer - 05 June 2007 03:58 PM

Project Stargate was real, I’ll grant you that. They attempted many things in PS, including remote viewing. But, and most importantly, they shut the program down when it could provide zero usable data. It was a colossal waste of money and provided nothing useful.

That a government project had X million dollars and Y years of work lavished on it is no indication that the taxpayers got anything in the least bit worthwhile for their money.

For example:

The Strategic Defense Initiative.
The XM2001 self-propelled gun.
The Comanche attack helicopter.
The Rapier and Super Sabre aircraft.
The OICW assault rifle.
The YB-49 flying wing.
The ADATS missile system.

Notice a trend? Not that the military has a monopoly on burning through hugh chunks of money:

The Superconducting Super Collider particle accelerator.

But, of course, samvado would maintain that this last one was just a “purely financial pocket filler for professors” not a complete-value-for-money investigation into the ‘universal truths’ like ‘Stargate’.

I think what really gets to me is that they spent years and millions of dollars on something that could be proven false in 30 minutes with, say, 10 bucks worth of supplies.

Dan Jr. - 05 June 2007 06:06 PM

Dan Jr. - 05 June 2007 03:52 AM

David B. - 04 June 2007 03:20 PM

Dan, the current (June) issue has a big article on ‘particle cosmology’, but I can’t remember a specific string theory article. What was it called?

Actually, I think I mis-spoke, the actual thing I recalled, if I am remembering properly, was an ad to join a Scientific Book Club, and the first free books dealt with the String controversy, both defending it and questioning it.  I will look for the ad and get the issue number and page number.

Dan, the unreliable witness

Yes, David, it is a large cardboard pull-out ad for SciAm Book Club…...there is some ad copy on it, which I dredged up incorrectly from my memory as an article.

The ad is between pages 48 - 49 in the June Scientific American.

Dan, wiping egg from face

Yah, I’m an idiot, that’s where I read it too.  Plus, I got confused between the May and June issues because I never bought the May issue, but I got the June one in middle of may.  I think I’m more confused than you.

You know what makes me want to punch a puppy? (Not really! I love puppies!) When magazines run advertisements that are disguised as articles and then in 2-point font at the very bottom somewhere it says “paid advertisement”. Usually they are easy to spot but sometimes they can be pretty annoying.

This has actually been shown to be beneficial to the reader.

Readers will commonly skip over advertisements even when the contents would have been useful to them. As a consequence many opportunities are being lost by both the reader and the advertiser, mainly do to a ‘inattentional blindness’ (c.f. the “Gorillas in Our Midst” experiment). Richard Wiseman (he of the recent MOH frontpage ‘card trick’ ) once conducted an experiment where participants were asked to count the number of pictures in a newspaper. Only about half the subjects noticed a full-page add saying “Tell the examiner you saw this advert and he will give you