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.
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