Autcsrgv.286
net.misc
utzoo!utcsrgv!donald
Thu Apr 15 14:05:18 1982
Re: PSI
Concerning cwruecmp!magill's piece of April 14:
It seems that everybody assumes that the possession of "psionic"
powers is actually an *advantage* for the individual concerned, and
that in a large population of "psipeople" the nonpsi would become
the handicapped minority. Well, if he can cite SF references, so can
I: a story by Poul Anderson, whose title I cannot remember (not being
clairvoyant) describes the miserable life of a telepath who cannot
shut out the flow of garbage from the minds around him, and on finally
meeting a fellow telepath, immediately learns to hate her because all
of her darkest secrets and desires were clearly readable. If we want
to go back to a Darwinian view of things, an organism "adapts" only if
the traits that it has enables it to survive its environment long
enough to have offspring. Period. The current environment (i.e. North
American society) of handicapped people is such that being handicapped
*is* a survival trait (on the other hand, consider Sparta in ancient
Greece...). Now the question is, given that the current population
is overwhelmingly nonpsi, does being psi give an individual sufficient
advantage to reproduce at a rate greater than a nonpsi, so that in
the future the population is overwhelmingly psi? I don't think so.
In fact, the question may be meaningless unless we figure out what we
mean exactly when we say an individual has psi powers, which was not
made clear in previous news.
Back to $10000 prizes and such. I believe Martin Gardner once suggested
a "put up or shut up" experiment for PK: in an evacuated glass chamber
(resting on a heavy solid base) place a torsion balance, such as the
type used to measure the gravitational force experimentally, and have
the PK-practitioner attempt to produce a reading on the balance. This
seems to be a very simple and elegant experiment which has never been
tried. Until then, I suppose James Randi will continue to issue his
annual "Uri" awards.
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