(2017-08-28, 02:57 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]How can you misunderstand something as simple as this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It known to Hume, Laplace, Wiseman and a whole bunch of others too, but not you. Which is requires better evidence. A hot stove will burn your fingers if touched? Or there's this mysterious stuff we know is there but which does not interact with ordinary matter or itself, but only interacts through gravity?
I'll just weigh in by saying that I always thought the whole "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" a bunch of hogwash. It is one of the few things Carl Sagan ever said that I thought was total BS.
It feels like an extra (higher) bar that some would put in place to make particular (not so desirable to some?) things harder to prove. If such super duper proof is not required for other non-psi claims it has no place here.
All that said: this extraordinary level of proof isn't even defined by anyone, so it is a standard that is impossible to meet even if one WERE to endeavor to do so,, which I will not.
(2017-08-28, 06:25 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]I assume you've include Hume, Laplace and Sagan. At least I'm in good company.
Actually no, Steve. This instead would be a nice opportunity to use the beloved critical thinking that Sagan et al. were so keen to promote.
If there exist a better standard of scientific evidence that allows us not to fool ourselves with things such as ESP/PSI, why the heck are we using an inferior one for things like finding cures to deadly illnesses, sending people in space or finding out how the cosmos work?
Postulating that such higher standard exists is admitting that most of our scientific knowledge stands on pretty shaky grounds.
Cheers
(2017-08-28, 06:03 PM)jkmac Wrote: [ -> ]I'll just weigh in by saying that I always thought the whole "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" a bunch of hogwash. It is one of the few things Carl Sagan ever said that I thought was total BS.
It feels like an extra (higher) bar that some would put in place to make particular (not so desirable to some?) things harder to prove. If such super duper proof is not required for other non-psi claims it has no place here.
All that said: this extraordinary level of proof isn't even defined by anyone, so it is a standard that is impossible to meet even if one WERE to endeavor to do so,, which I will not.
He wasn't by far the first to say that.
(2017-08-28, 07:02 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]He wasn't by far the first to say that.
That may be true, but he always comes to mind when I hear that lame line.
(2017-08-28, 07:07 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Well if we're talking about "I had no need of that hypothesis", the Laplace story is apocryphal.
I'm less convinced about Sagan and Hume are such vaunted figures in terms of skepticism of the paranormal. They arguably have admirable qualities in other matters though.
Hume’s Syndrome: Irrational Resistance to the Paranormal
Quote:One of the obstacles to progress in psychical research is irrational resistance to the phenomena. Among eighteenth-century Enlightenment writers, one type of resistance was evident that has persisted until present times. To illustrate, the present paper looks at David Hume’s discussion of miracles in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748/1955). Hume’s essay actually lays out a good case for some extraordinary events reported about the death of the Jansenist Francois de Paris—phenomena produced by the so-called ‘‘convulsionaries of St. Medard.’’ The contradiction is resolved by Hume himself, who naively reveals what motivates him to deny the overwhelming testimony he reviews: namely, his fear of validating religion.
This paper notes the same pressure to deny ‘‘miracles’’ in another eighteenth-century writer, Edward Gibbon; Gibbon, however, unlike Hume, yields to the pressure of evidence and admits one startling instance of a well-documented preternatural event.
A third figure from the same century is cited, a rationalistic Promotor Fidei of the Catholic Church, Prosper Lambertini, who, ironically, may be cited as having advanced the cause of the scientific investigation of psychic phenomena. The lesson from history is not to be seduced by stereotypes: an empiricist can deny and distort facts; a religious believer can be critical and objective.
See also:
When Science Becomes Scientism: Carl Sagan and His Demon-Haunted World
There's some stuff R.A.Wilson also noted questioning Sagan's integrity that I'll dig up.
(2017-08-28, 08:05 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]I guess my exaggerated example didn't work. I assume you've include Hume, Laplace and Sagan. At least I'm in good company.
I'm sure you can think of at least one extraordinary claim. I'll start with two, the heliocentric universe, the germ theory of disease. Your turn.
I said extraordinary evidence, not extraordinary claim, so this is irrelevant. Nonetheless, I would say the multiverse and string theory.
(2017-08-28, 11:28 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Hume’s Syndrome: Irrational Resistance to the Paranormal
See also:
When Science Becomes Scientism: Carl Sagan and His Demon-Haunted World
There's some stuff R.A.Wilson also noted questioning Sagan's integrity that I'll dig up.
I can't help but think that if the great scientific thinkers of our time were to be unshackled from:
- their fear of being ostracized by their peers
- their need to pay the mortgage with the money that xyz foundation pays them
and they had the time to really look closely at all the evidence,
they would reach the conclusion that there is something undeniable going on here, and they would get down to the work of figuring it out.
In this dream world of mine, I imagine uncovering the truth in relatively short order.
Well,,, as much of the truth as we are capable of understanding that is...
(2017-08-28, 04:06 PM)Bucky Wrote: [ -> ]"That's an aphorism made popular by Carl Sagan but it's not a principle of the scientific method, as per the agreed upon definition linked in my previous post.
Just parroting the above adage doesn't make it true. Also the "extraordinary" qualifier is very arbitrary and based on your assumptions of what goest out of the "ordinary"."
The usual example is that the claim "there's a red car in my yard" is more likely than the claim "a UFO landed in my yard" therefore the latter would require extraordinary evidence. In reality, if we had to apply the scientific method there wouldn't be any difference. If you think you can make your experiment less rigorous when testing for a "red car in my yard" then you're just making bad science.
Other than that every step of the scientific method wouldn't change an inch, regardless of wether you're looking for a red car, a UFO or the mighty spaghetti monster.
"Also anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty would question the idea that ESP/PSI is an "extraordinary claim". ESP is tightly related to consciousness which in turn is the biggest mystery in the universe. It has no place in our standard model, it doesn't even have a place in the philosophy that drives most of our sciences, and top it all off
there isn't a decent theory out there that can explain what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.
To claim that ESP is an "extraordinary" phenomena we would need to at least have figured out what consciousness is, and be sure that that the two are at odds."
Come again?! 
What has this to do with anything? 
Do you really comprehend what you've written? Your description is a fine example why psi is extraordinary.
Quote:If there exist a better standard of scientific evidence that allows us not to fool ourselves with things such as ESP/PSI, why the heck are we using an inferior one for things like finding cures to deadly illnesses, sending people in space or finding out how the cosmos work?
Postulating that such higher standard exists is admitting that most of our scientific knowledge stands on pretty shaky grounds.
What the adage means is be cautious before making grand claims. Did you hear about the faster than light neutrinos that weren't?