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TheOtherDave comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong
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Suppose that the Great Psychicator who imbues all psychics with their amazing powers hates Science and revokes their abilities the moment one decides to systematically study them, so all such experiments lead to a null result. This model "explains" the null results found by the James Randi Educational Foundation.
This might look far-fetched, but recall that "Nature" already behaves like it, say in the double-slit experiment. Replace "psychic abilities" with "interference pattern produced by an electron psychically detecting the other slit" and "systematic study" with "adding detector to one of the slits". The moment you start this "systematic study" the electron's "psychic abilities" to sense the presence of the other slit disappear without a trace.
How would you proceed?
(nods) This is basically (modulo snark) the position of several people I know who believe in such things, and at least one LW contributor.
Faced with that response, I usually pursue a track along the lines of "Ah, I see. That makes sense as far as it goes, but it gets tricky, because it's also true that we frequently perceive patterns that aren't justified by the data at all, but without systematic study it's hard to tell. For example, (examples)."
Followed by a longish discussion to get clear on the idea that some perceived patterns are indeed hallucinatory in this sense, even though your cousin's psychic power isn't necessarily one of those patterns. This sometimes fails... nobody I know actually claims that all perceived patterns are non-hallucinatory, but some people I know reject the path from "not all perceived patterns are non-hallucinatory" to "some perceived patterns are hallucinatory." Which I generally interpret as refusing to have the conversation at all because they don't like where it's headed. a preference I usually respect out of politeness.
If it succeeds, I move on to "OK. So when I see a pattern that goes away when I begin systematic study, there are two possible theories: either the phenomenon is evasive as you describe, or my brain is perceiving patterns that aren't there in the first place. How might I go about telling the difference, so I could be sure which was which? For example, if I wake up in the middle of the night frightened that there's an intruder in my house, what could I do to figure out whether there is one or not?"
Which moves pretty quickly to the realization that an intruder in my house that systematically evades detection becomes increasingly implausible the more failed tests I perform, and at some point the theory that there simply isn't such an intruder becomes more plausible.
I generally consider this a good place to stop with most people. Lather, rinse, repeat. They have one track that supports "I believe X no matter how many experiments fail to provide evidence for it," and another track that supports "the more experiments fail to provide evidence for X, the less I should believe X". They tend to mutually inhibit one another. The more that second track is activated, the less powerful that first track is; eventually it crumbles.
But things keep disappearing from my house at random! Surely it's an evidence for an invisible intruder, not only for my memory going bad! And this never happens in the office, so it can't be my memory! Therefore intruder!
I'm not really interested in role-playing out a whole conversation. If you insist that your invisible intruder, like your cousin's psychic ability, is real and evasive, I look for a different example. If you insist that everything you ever think about, however idly, is real and evasive, I tap out and recommend you seek professional help.
I thought LW was that professional help...
Hmm, my pay slips must be getting lost in the post.
This assume's that the person you are talking to didn't perform any tests that provide them evidence for their belief. If you are facing someone who got his ideas from reading books, that might work. If you are facing someone who does have reference experiences for his belief, things get a bit different. You are basically telling them that they intruder that they found in their house is a hallucination.
The observer could go and study his cousin systematically. The cousin does 1000 trials and no trial shows any evidence that his cousin isn't psychic. If the observer believes "the more experiments fail to provide evidence for X, the less I should believe X", the huge quantity of experiements dictate to himself that he should believe that his cousin is psychic. The idea that the cousin uses a trick is supposed to become increasingly implausible the more failed tests the observer performs.
Some experiements are obviously systematically flawed. Doing more of those experiments shouldn't lead you to increase your belief. The debate is more more about which experiements are systematically flawed than it's about "I believe X no matter how many experiments fail to provide evidence for it," vs "the more experiments fail to provide evidence for X, the less I should believe X".
It doesn't assume this, it infers it about a particular person from the evidence provided by shminux above. The interlocutor shminux is describing rejects the idea that experimental results can be definitive on this question, which is different from the position you describe here. (Anyone who starts out asserting the former, then switches to the latter in mid-stream, is no longer asserting a coherent position at all and requires altogether different techniques for engaging with them.)
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the debate".
Is there only one?
That surprises me; it certainly seems to me that some people adopt the stance shminux described, to which I responded.
All that aside, I certainly agree with you that my response to someone taking the stance you describe here (embracing experimentalism as it applies to psychic phenomena in theory, but implementing experiments in a problematic way) should differ from my response to someone taking the stance shminux describes above (rejecting experimentalism as it applies to psychic phenomena).
That depends on what you mean by "experiment". If you mean doing a proper replicable controlled experiment than there is no experimental evidence. If you mean any evidence based on observation than there is experimental evidence.
In other words, there is evidence for the intruder, just not scientific evidence in the sense of this post.
I don't in fact mean, by "experiment", any evidence based on observation. I agree that there is evidence for (and against) the intruder, and did not say otherwise, although in general I don't endorse using "evidence" in this sense without tagging it in some way (e.g., "Bayesian evidence"), since the alternative is reliably confusing.