Aresearch.236 net.misc utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnss!houxi!npois!alice!research!rtm Fri Apr 16 18:28:55 1982 Re PSI (Rationality Vs Mysticism) I once knew (in a manner of speaking) a guy who was firmly convinced of the existence of "hard science" (you know, magnetism and electricity and all that). He even had the audacity to try to prove his beliefs, and invited some important friends of his (including the well known Mr. Renedrag) to a demonstration. Of course he was pretty confident of his ability to pull off a proof, even though he had never before demonstrated his unique abilities with these "hard sciences" to anyone but himself. Equally of course, the audience laughed when he started, but much to his dismay, he wasn't able to make them stop by revealing them as the provincial blockheads he knew them to be. Nothing he did worked; in fact, when he said his apparatus would do X, it invariably did not-X. Even worse, the good Mr. Renedrag stepped down and repeated our hero's demonstration for him, and it all worked as predicted. Renedrag proceeded to produce a very biting speech about how "hard science" was really by definition unprovable, because nothing it claimed to be able to do couldn't be done by normal means - psychokinesis, for instance. To back this up, he revealed the not very surprising news that he had psychically tampered with the demonstration. The news just reported it as another example of Mr. Renedrag and rationality triumphing over unprovable mysticism. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.