Neil comments on Parapsychology: the control group for science - Less Wrong

62 Post author: AllanCrossman 05 December 2009 10:50PM

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Comment author: Blueberry 06 December 2009 08:34:14AM *  5 points [-]

You are going so far as to say that there is no possible way that there are hypotheses which have yet to be described which could be understood through the methodology of this particular subgroup. This exercise seems to me to be rejecting these studies intuitively,(without study) just from the ad hominem approach to rejection - well they are parapsychologists therefore they are wrong. If they are wrong, then proper analysis would indicate that, would it not?

This is exactly the point. Parapsychology is one of the very few things we can reject intuitively, because we understand the world well enough to know that psychic powers just can't exist. We can reject them even when proper analysis doesn't indicate that they're wrong, which tells us something about the limitations of analysis.

ETA: Essentially, if the scientific method can't reject parapsychology, that means the scientific method isn't strong enough, not that parapsychology might be legitimate.

Comment author: Neil 06 December 2009 01:59:55PM 1 point [-]

If parapsychology is studying the patently non-existent, then the fact that parapsychologists don't typically spend their time debunking their own subject might suggest they are not up to par in some way, as a group, with "the rest of" science - unless you concede that other branches of science would also carry on in the face of total collapse in the credibility of their subject.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 December 2009 03:49:00PM 4 points [-]

The nonexistence of psychic powers is less patently obvious than the truth of many-worlds in physics, so there is no proof that parapsychologists are less rational than average physicists. They are studying a widely despised subject, but that if anything should raise our estimate of their level.

That said, it's entirely possible that, in reality, parapsychologists are lower-level. But we should not be so quick to assume this. And it remains that other sciences may also tend to contain some low-level people. Scientific protocols for saying when a theory has been verified are not supposed to rely on such things.

Comment author: alexflint 08 December 2009 10:25:14AM 2 points [-]

What is this "level" attribute you refer to? Does it mean intelligence or something more?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 December 2009 10:31:30AM 18 points [-]

Those little numbers that appear above people's heads. You can't see them?

Comment author: Strange7 05 February 2014 04:20:27AM 0 points [-]

Please record your "level number" observations so that we mere mortals can test whether they correlate with anything independently verifiable.