Mitchell_Porter comments on Two books by Celia Green - Less Wrong

-9 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 13 July 2012 08:43AM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 14 July 2012 12:51:28AM 1 point [-]

I do think chapter 17 is the only one in which psychic powers feature directly as a topic of discussion, and then only to illustrate her psychological technique for attempting impossible things, which boils down to reminding yourself that you don't know them to be impossible because you don't really know anything. I see there are similar incidental remarks elsewhere in the book too, but it's all pretty tangential to the main subject, the "two kinds of psychology".

Actually, her career as a parapsychology researcher is about as slim as Eliezer's career as an A.I. programmer. She produced one serious book of "advocacy", The Decline and Fall of Science, and mostly what it advocates is that her research organization ought to be supported in a broad program of psychophysical investigations, which would also encompass phenomena such as lucid dreams and other hallucinatory experiences, and the potential for physiological self-control arising from altered psychological states. The objective is to learn more about reality, not to shore up a particular belief system. But her group has never managed to establish a lab.

Comment author: gwern 14 July 2012 12:55:31AM 2 points [-]

Did she advocate lucid dreams before LaBerge published? If so, that'd be a point in her favor.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 14 July 2012 01:01:24AM 2 points [-]

She was the pioneer. She published about it in 1968.