Here is a true story. See if it rings any bells. Not in the story itself, which you likely won’t know. I mean see if it sounds like anything you hear about daily.
Early psychic research (card guessing and the like) is acknowledged to have been a failure, for a host of reasons, mostly along the lines of inferior test design, sensory leakage (correct guesses using ordinary senses), cheating, bad statistics (wee Ps galore), and so on. (You can see this free! book.)
Every conceivable attempt was made to tighten these early ESP experiments; really quite Herculean efforts were undertaken to design killer experiments to demonstrate paranormal theory was true.
Alas, with nothing but failures as a result. Though these failures were not always evident at first. Often, and too often, some promising result was heralded, only for the effect to fade away with closer scrutiny.
Yet there were still some who believed in the theory in spite of the massive, multifaceted evidence against it.
Which meant that theory believers had to explain how the theory could be true even though the experiments always failed. This was an inescapable logical truth.
The solution theory-holders hit upon was to posit something must be countering genuine ESP powers.
Sheep with genuine psychic powers were being hindered by goats who could psychically cancel sheep powers!
Yes. These were the terms really used. Sheep and goats.
Some goats were said to have malice. They used negative psychic energy to discredit the sheep.
But it was admitted that most goats didn’t even know they were doing this bad thing. It was, if you will, their systemic presence that was blocking sheep from performing, by using some heretofore, and still unidentified power.
Now a lot of the goat’s power was not directed at sheep, but at their own powers. Their negative attitudes stopped their own powers from working. Here’s how PSI Encyclopedia puts it.
The sheep-goat effect refers to the significant paranormal (‘psi’) performance difference between sheep and goats, whereby sheep tend to perform well in psi tasks, scoring above mean chance expectation (MCE), whereas goats tend to perform poorly in psi tasks, scoring at or below MCE.
That goats could suppress not only their own but sheeps’ psychic powers was established early on. They called the goats’ powers a “negative psi effect”; ‘psi’ being shorthand for psychic powers.
Thus was early paranormal theory salvaged. ESP really did work! Sheep really were gifted, even if they couldn’t show their powers at all or consistently. Them damned goats could be blamed for the sheep’s continued failures.
There were some attempts at banishing or separating goats inside experiments, but this could only be done case-by-case, by not allowing skeptics to view or participate in specific experiments, or by considering their goats’ results separately. But this quickly becomes a morass of confusing and contradictory results.
End of story.
This is, of course, a gross simplification of the history of psychic research, which
is still on-going and much richer, a history that I edged toward our Analogy. Perhaps you have already seen it.
If not, as a hint, there are many real-world examples of our Analogy.
Another hint. Suppose it is true that the presence of goats with their surplus “negative” energy is sufficient to block the sheep’s powers. Not in the immediate proximity of the sheep, you understand, but anywhere. After all, psychic powers are not limited by geography.
What then? How would you ever verify that sheep have psi if there is somewhere in the world a goat who can suppress that power?
Another hint. For some powers, like I said, every possible variation in experimentation has been tried, or at least every variation that people could think of, and still the powers sink into the background the closer they are examined.
Is this result because the theory is true but again (inadvertently and without meaning to) suppressed because of skeptical examination? Or is the theory, at least the simple theory of psi, false?
Maybe you have it by now?
I would, of course, say that the simple theory of psychic powers is almost certainly false. Because of its observational failures, but mostly because its causative agent is impossibly vague. But I don’t want us to get distracted by that today (including replacement theories).
Here is out Analogy, with two examples.
The first is the differences in intelligence between men and women, much more ably written about by the late David Stove than myself. Our Analogy is the multiplicity and pervasiveness of experiments, none of which has confirmed the theory of Equality. The link explains this. Read it.
The second example of Our Analogy is “racism”, and in particular “systemic racism”. Despite every major corporation, every branch of the government, including the military, almost every university, every major institution bending over saying “DIE me!”, despite every propagandist in every story pushing anti-whiteness, and despite years of educational indoctrination, in spite of all this, somehow “systemic racism” is what is holding back blacks.
Or “whiteness”. Not individual whites, but “whiteness”. Goats. Goats are suppressing equality.
In both examples, the theory of Equality is believed contrary to all failures to prove its existence. Yet believers are never shaken, never deterred on their quest to find the occult (hidden) proof of the theory’s truth.
None dare even suppose, let alone think, the theory can be false.
Moral? The need to believe often outweighs Reality.
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For those who Believe, no evidence to the contrary is valid.
For those who Refuse to believe, no evidence in favor is valid.
“Early psychic research (card guessing and the like) is acknowledged to have been a failure”
Acknowledged by what segment of the population?
William Bengston (2000): “Over the past thirty-five years I have successfully treated many types of cancer—bone, pancreatic, breast, brain, rectal, stomach, leukemia—as well as other diseases, all using a hands on technique that is painless, noninvasive, and has no unpleasant side effects. To my knowledge, no person I have ever healed experienced a recurrence. The effectiveness of this treatment has now been proven in ten controlled animal experiments, conducted in five university medical and biological laboratories by trained, sceptical researchers.”
The author continues elaborating that the technique works at a distance, even regardless of distance. By now, twenty years later, he claims that it’s been replicated in controlled experiments some thirty times or so.
What are the flaws of his studies?
I acknowledge that the fascination with the issue made my previous post go partly off-topic, and at this moment, I can’t recall to what extent the said experiments covered healing at a distance, etc.
I knew you were going to write about this Briggs. I had a dream last night; was crossing a foot bridge over a raging river when there came a crazed looking guy coming towards me, wild-eyed and gibbering. I asked him what’s the matter and he sobbed, “Briggs burst my bubble!”, and so saying he turned and leaped into the foaming waters below. Right then I knew Briggs was going to write about how the need to believe often outweighs Reality.
But I can’t believe that. Because if I did it would mean there’s always going to be crazy immoral people. And that would make me feel bad. No, most people are inherently reasonable and moral. Like me. The problem is Briggs, and people like him. We need a world empire to chop off their willies and put potatoes up their patooties and make them wear masks and get injected and kneel before the sacred nogro and eat babies and then put them on a rocket to Mars. That will heal the world by eliminating crazy immoral people. That’s what I believe, in spite of any bubble-bursting ball-busting brain-breaking Briggsian bombast.
OMG! what’s next – you’re going to read Festinger?
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Where are these heavenly places? Other planets perhaps with rulers and powers unknown.
World forces of darkness…how intriguing what precisely do these spiritual forces consist of
than the spell we have seen cast over the entire planet. You could say it’s caused exclusively
by malign human activity but what about that unconscious dread that lurking fear now infecting
billions. That certain something that everyone feels in their bones is not right and beyond rational
comprehension. The dissolution of a way of life and reality itself. Who or what is actually responsible
for this overnight sea change? Why do we seem so defenseless with all our science and philosophy,
our rational approach and store of hubris? Where are all our learned spiritual shepherds to foil this
egregious encroachment? How does one scoff when you can feel those eyes on your back?
(Don’t throw that baby girl out with the bathwater Briggs IQ has little to do with procreation
much less ESP and thank God for that. The lavishly funded disempowerment of men over the
last forty years was not some woman’s idea it was those sectarian Chaldeans with their middle
finger on the dial.)
Do we use the claims in books Marx and Hitler wrote to prove that Marx and Hitler are correct? Then why do we use claims in books written by Christians to prove that Christians are correct? The most cherished belief is that faith, which means belief contrary to evidence, is reasonable.
I read several lines before I realized you were not talking about literal sheep and goats. I need caffeine.
It’s true, all of white society–government, higher academia, public school, media, arts, law enforcement, business, etc.– has been bending over backwards, or forwards, to accommodate, include, encourage, assist, coddle, promote, and celebrate the negro for at least the past sixty years. People who are now young and middle-aged will live to see the phenomenon pass the century mark. I won’t be around then, but I predict nothing will have improved, much will have gotten worse, and white people will still be blamed for black failure.
BRIGGS, YOU FOOL!
It is a known FACT that the negative psychic energies of people standing several meters away from abortion clinics engaged in non-verbal mental prayer, has a tendency to turn potential and determined customers away without them even realizing it!
This is why the UK Police now arrest these pro-life terrorists for thought-crimes! It directly impacts the GDP! Women and Minorities are most affected!
Much the same for transgender/sodomite suicides – it’s the collectivist moralist negative psychic energies that have been driving them to extinction! Why do you think we need to keep hitting kindergarten children over the head over and over with wee-wee-in-the-bum-bum books? Huh?! Because children like rainbows??? Think, Briggs, think! Children have the largest amount of potential as psychics! Like in Poltergeist and the Shining! They tune into the dark matter frequencies and keep re-emphasizing different behaviors between the XX and the XY dominant persons to the exclusion of the diversified others! This phenomenon is a WAR CRIME! It must be countered with Expert help! And the first decree to addressing the situation is to separate their individual potential from the negative potentiality influences of their biological breeder guardians!
I have psychic powers. I once, for no reason, said I could guess a card before it was pulled from the pack. Someone produced a pack, I guessed right. I never tried again.
Maybe there are 51 people who tried the same trick & failed, but how would you find them?
It’s difficult to prove a negative about something so amazing as psychic powers, but totally reasonable that they should switch themselves off when forced to perform menial tricks for an experimenter.
A more interesting example:
I used to come out of my life drawing class obsessed by the mysterious movements of the female form, and would frequently focus my attention on the lower anatomy of some random lady walking in front of me. Almost invariably, she would make some movement, adjusting her dress of whatever, suggesting that she could feel my gaze. I promise I was yards away, and not breathing heavily.
How to test this? Do I sometimes walk without gazing at her, to see if she still touches her buttocks nervously? Do I hire a sociology postgrad who isn’t interested in female anatomy as a placebo?
Having kept both sheep and goats I can actually believe the study.
But more importantly (but off topic I suppose) I did not realize how true the sheep and goats analogy in the Bible is until acquiring goats after many years of raising sheep.
That’s why I’m content with aspiring to be a sheep.
Anonymous, we use Hitler, Marx, and everyone else’s books alongside reality to prove that the Christian books are always correct and stay winning! We’re just that good!
“If one believes, as I do, that ESP exists but is scientifically untestable, one must believe that the scope of science is limited.” – Freeman Dyson, in a Foreword to a book titled Extraordinary Knowing
Also F. Dyson: “Dogs are much better than humans for such experiments. … What is needed is an experiment conducted entirely by dogs without any participation of humans.”
(https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/too-hard-for-science-freeman-dyson-esp/)
Before I laugh at the poor, deluded fools, I must take a moment to admit that I know, for a fact, the supernatural exists. I have seen the evidence and effects myself too many times to ignore what is really happening. I have been to a place that didn’t exist the next day. I have crossed miles in minutes on foot, ending up on the other side of a lake I didn’t know was there. I have experimentally confirmed poltergeist-style activity, once with a neutral witness. And much more. I cannot deny my own experience.
I used to know one of the men involved in running the CIA’s psychic research project. He said they shut down the project because it became embarrassing and didn’t work reliably enough to be useful. Oddly enough, the Soviets ran a similar project at about the same time. (For background, FDR made national policy based on lucky numbers and his fortune teller’s advice.)
The Amazing Randy has a million dollar prize waiting for anyone who can demonstrate their psychic powers with scientific rigor. The offer has been available for about 50 years now. Many have tried, but no one has claimed the prize. You can find videos of some of the hilariously bad attempts online.
What are the odds a “Magic 8-Ball” will give correct answers over 100 times running? I used to have one that was never, ever wrong. I took it to Iraq and consulted it before every mission outside the wire. It’s accuracy eventually became terrifying. (Do you really want to know the future when life and death hang by random threads, day after day after day?) After I got back home, I put the creepy thing high up on a shelf where the children couldn’t get to it and never touched it again. It eventually leaked and dried out, so my wife threw it away. The blue stain never came out of the bookshelf.
Men, well, mankind in pursuit of anything, and in their daily endeavors and pursuits inevitably experience delays and/or sometime complete failure, and in the aftermath, have always looked to assign or place blame outside, usually outside of oneself, or the organization, or on one of the ‘black sheep’ within the organization, and specifically identified in the final phase as a ——wait of it—— scapegoat …