Autcsrgv.291
net.misc
utzoo!utcsrgv!donald
Fri Apr 16 21:38:44 1982
Yet Another PSI article
Do the parapsychologists *really* postulate a quantum exchange particle
to mediate the "psi" interaction!? This seems like overkill, and also
a bit silly: it would imply that brains, which work at the molecular
level, can generate and detect an elementary particle with weird
properties, via chemical reactions! Enough to throw a quantum electro-
dynamicist (is that a word?) into fits!
I agree with duke!bcw that of all the "psi" phenomena, telepathy is the
least unlikely. Clairvoyance, if you think about it, usually involves
a ridiculously large amount of selective information transfer between
an event and the mind clairvoying (is that a word?) it. PK is perhaps
the least reputable since Uri Geller got through with it and we return
to the "action-at-a-distance" problem, which seems less tractable than
the "information-at-a-distance" problem. As for O.B.E.'s-- no comment!
Now I'll remove my skeptics' hood and plunge into a morass of
amateur speculation ("a bon chat, bon rat", as they say)
Given that telepathy exists (for the sake of argument), there
is nothing wrong with it being instantaneous and all-penetrating.
All we are given is that the states of two minds have through some
mechanism become "correlated". Now if this correlation arose because
of a signal being transmitted, one does not have to investigate far
to realize that the traditional interactions are ruled out, so the
parapsychologists propose the hypothetical "psi" mediator. But
how about using the "correlated space-like separated events" that
quantum mechanics (via Bell's Theorem) seems to predict? This allows
superluminal connections between space-like events which may possibly
turn out to allow the instantaneous transmission of information between
the two events (and hence to correlate the events).
We do know that humans are capable of detecting events which occur at
the level where quantum effects are significant: a dark-adapted eye is
capable of detecting less than six single photons.
Anyway, Gary Zukav describes all this stuff (quantum mechanics, not
telepathy) in his book "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters".
Now all we have to do is take a big leap of faith...
Speaking of which, you'd be surprised at how many Christian
apologists attempt to argue that their faith is really based
on facts and hard scientific evidence! Obviously they haven't
figured out that God was an astronaut and Venus was a comet
emitted by Jupiter. Sigh...
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