I was on the Rare Candy podcast earlier this week. Fun discussion of the over-seriousness of science, the over-reliance on models, and much more. They tell me that they have done work on remote viewing. I haven’t had time to look into that yet, but they have an article on their Substack about it.
They asked an excellent question at the end, paraphrased as Since you’re Catholic, Briggs, how can you reconcile your interest in psychic phenomena with your religion?
Easy. The “magic” I practice is all fake, in the branch called “mentalism”, which is the art of fooling people into thinking you have psychic powers. Necessary, absolutely necessary, training before you begin the search for any real or genuine effects.
The reason is obvious: there has been a ton of cheating, and of researchers fooling themselves. You’d think it would be difficult for people to be fooled, especially if they are looking for possible paths of “sensory leakage”. You would be wrong. Quite wrong.
It’s easy. I have a small library of books, magazines, and pamphlets discussing a myriad, and more than a myriad, of ways to cheat. The most innocent appearing situation can be loaded against you through more angles than you can look.
Surprising, maybe, is that the easiest way to fool people is to use no “gaffs” at all (no tricks which need some apparatus or gimmicked tool), in something called a “cold reading”. Briefly, it’s a way of using subtle feedback from the victim to convince them that you “revealed” to them what they told you. The more someone wants to believe in your “powers”, the easier this is. But it can work even on those who are hardened skeptics, especially if you can frame demonstrations as “science”.
I think there’s a line about the biggest dupe being the quack himself. Or some such thing. Meaning the easiest person to fool is yourself, especially in areas like psychic research, where, really, few or nobody has any idea what is going on. Which maybe is nothing. We identify patterns that aren’t there with frightening ease.
What’s lacking is a viable metaphysics. Materialism doesn’t work for psychic powers. Which is to say, all the easy paths to convey information, using some form of energy which must be necessary is materialism is true, have been ruled out. One can always claim, like cold fusion people do, that the effect is just a little smaller than thought, that it’s still there, hiding yet. But this convinces no one but true believers.
One thing I’m certain of is that you can trust no result which is touted because of its wee P. You should never believe any study because it has a wee P. These are never evidence for any hypothesis.
I have been thinking of doing a class about this, maybe on line. I want to walk people through experiments that can try themselves. Maybe I write a separate post about this and see if there’s an interest. Let me know.
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