Tom_McCabe comments on Update Yourself Incrementally - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 August 2007 02:56PM

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Comment author: Tom_McCabe 15 August 2007 03:13:03AM 8 points [-]

"Got protocol? Yes or no?"

If there was any actual evidence, somebody would have claimed Randi's million-dollar prize years ago. I wasn't able to find a copy of "The Irreducible Mind" online; it doesn't have a Wikipedia article and apparently isn't that popular. A quick Google of the authors reveals that only one (Bruce Greyson) has a Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Greyson). The lead author, Edward F. Kelly, is employed as a professor of "Perceptual Studies" at the University of Virginia Health System (http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/Edbio.cfm) and has a PhD. from Harvard in "Psycholinguistics/Cognitive Science". The authors seem to work mainly within the field of psychology, asserting that it has "no explanation" for the human mind (http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/customer-reviews/0742547922).

As for the other two links, the first one sounds like nonsense; the "research" was not peer-reviewed, replicated or verified and was "released exclusively to the Daily Mail", a well-known London tabloid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail). The article he linked is from The Evening Standard, another British tabloid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evening_Standard), and asserts that "Virtually all the great scientific formulae which explain how the world works allow information to flow backwards and forwards through time - they can work either way, regardless.", as well as a great deal of other obvious nonsense. The second one lists a number of anecdotes, none of which have sources, identifying references or even names.