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Xachariah comments on Personal Evidence - Superstitions as Rational Beliefs - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: OrphanWilde 22 March 2013 05:24PM

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Comment author: Xachariah 23 March 2013 09:26:53PM *  9 points [-]

Woah woah woah, back up here. Why would you want to move out of this goldmine? Lets assume that you're correct and it's a real haunted house and not schizophrenia/people-in-the-walls/mental-abuse-by-your-sister.

You were in a house where objects were repeatedly, purposefully moved without human intervention. Just take a look at the incident where key lime juice got into the oven: either the haunted house teleported it from your fridge to your oven, or the haunting house generated action-without-reaction and floated it from the fridge to the oven.

[*] In case A, you've just broken the Theory of Relativity and can help humans colonize the stars with instant teleportation. Please collect your 100 nobel prizes, 100 billion dollars, and knowledge that you've protected all of humanity from any possible existential risk.

[*] In case B, you've just broken the Laws of Thermodynamics and can help humanity defeat entropy itself. Please collect your 200 nobel prizes, 500 billion dollars, and the knowledge that you've literally saved all of existence for all time.

You've gotten the most valuable thing that has ever existed on this planet living in your house, and you want to give up ownership.

Either that or your sister is crazy and hates key lime juice. 50/50 equally likely.

Comment author: Elithrion 23 March 2013 10:49:17PM 9 points [-]

What if the house merely floated the thing over there with reaction (pushing back on the floors/walls), and its floor rotted slightly (accumulating entropy, losing chemical energy) in proportion to the necessary force? In that case, he's only discovered ghostly energy transfer at small distances, which may be completely impractical (only one or two Nobels).

Comment author: CellBioGuy 29 April 2015 10:54:52PM 0 points [-]

Also possibly cheap (wooden, plaster, concrete) computational substrate.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2013 11:18:43PM 3 points [-]

He explicitly made clear than he's using a broader definition of “haunted” than usual, so I guess someone other than himself or his sister messing with him would count.

Comment author: MugaSofer 24 March 2013 06:42:06PM *  3 points [-]

raises eyebrow

What makes you think the teleportation was superluminal or the telekinesis was reactionless?

Also, the only mechanism mentioned is EMF messing with his head. No magic required.