Carinthium comments on Study shows existence of psychic powers. - Less Wrong

3 Post author: bentarm 12 November 2010 01:46AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (26)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ata 12 November 2010 10:16:03PM *  9 points [-]

To rip off Steven Kaas for a moment, I wonder if rather than saying "Study shows existence of psychic powers" it might be better to say "Nonexistence of psychic powers shows a study was wrong".

Comment author: Carinthium 13 November 2010 11:18:10PM 2 points [-]

What sort of hypothetical evidence would convince you that psychic powers existed?

Comment author: orthonormal 15 November 2010 01:42:50AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Vaniver 13 November 2010 11:25:00PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure I can actually come up with any, because I know how frail human minds can be. My prior that I'm insane is higher than my prior that magic exists, and I can't think of any evidence for the second that isn't at least as strong evidence for the first.

(Here, I am assuming that by psychic powers we're talking about magic, rather than unarticulated intuition, which I believe can exist; I also expect I would adapt to being insane pretty quickly, and would react as if it were reality, but would expect it more likely that I'm gibbering in a mental institution than that I've been transported to Narnia.)