James Randi crosses over

Prescott makes some interesting accusations in Why I Am Not A Skeptic

This new field of study, termed "digital biology," may represent a major breakthrough in our understanding of life. Yet the whole highly promising avenue of research, along with the career of the innovative scientist behind it, was nearly cut short by the presumptuous arrogance of three skeptics, none of whom was trained in chemistry.

If Benveniste's work yields life-saving medical breakthroughs, will the "fraud squad" apologize? Don't count on it. After the reproduction of Benveniste's results in 2001, James Randi quickly organized a counter-experiment, which yielded negative results. On his Web site, Randi reports only the negative findings, which he calls "definitive," and he makes no mention at all of the positive results from Europe (Randi, 2003). As noted in an online article by Rochus Boerner, a search of Randi's site turns up only one reference to Madeleine Ennis, and "it mentions Ennis' name in the context of discussing a disconfirming study, and calls her a 'pharmacist from Belfast.' Relying solely on Randi's site, a reader would never know that the women is a professor of Immunopharmacology at Queen's University, Belfast, and that she and others have produced a ground-breaking replication of Benveniste's work (Boerner, undated)."

An old thread I know but I found this terrible video from 2017 to be an example of how distorted a 'general public's' perception of parapsychology can be at times:

So ignoring the fact some of these topics are rooted more in his personal beliefs than actual consensus opinions, his take on parapsychology (which is less than a minute long-this video in question is under 10 minutes lol) captures the essence of how some skeptics have made people assume parapsychology is 'always' about 'this' and has 'never' produced anything interesting. It's blatantly obvious to me he did nothing but look up the definition on Wikipedia or something and called it a day:

• He says parapsychology has little to do with psychology, which is demonstrably false.
  
• He implies that all parapsychologists hold the same beliefs about the topics of psi, which is also false. 
  
• He says parapsychology implies the existence of telekinesis, which he does not refer to as either macro or micro PK. He also claims it's caused by some 'unknown brain force' and that the only relevant forces in the universe are the 4 fundamental forces. But to my understanding, parapsychology doesn't claim it's a 'brain force' but a mental/mind/consciousness-based one. That's not the same thing. I don't believe in PK myself but that's not hard to look up. 
  
• Typical reference to James Randi's One Million Dollar challenge. 
  
• Asserts that telepathy will be possible thanks to Elon Musk. Needless to say, that frankly hasn't aged very well, and isn't a very scientific thing to say either.
  
• No mention of anything else studied in parapsychology. 
  

(On a brief side not, this guy thinks that people who believe aliens are here/may have visited the Earth are also pseudo-scientific because there is 'no photographic or video evidence of UFOs being anything other than glitches, flares, fakes etc.' Again, sounds incredibly ignorant and uninformed to me.)

Given that he unironically cites the RationalWiki as 'further reading', nobody with their own ability to think critically and do their own research should blindly believe the claims about parapsychology or UFOs in this video. But an issue with YouTube, and YouTuber mindsets in general, is that most commenters (and presumably viewers) rarely question anything the video says regardless if it included cited sources or not. This is especially the case for pop science and religion/atheism-themed channels, the same kinds who make it sound like multiverses are already proven. I think more people need to come to terms with the fact that parapsychology being seen as pseudoscience is more of an opinion.

I've always found it ironic how many of these kinds of channels supposedly champion 'critical thinking' (or rather, their version of it), but then expect their audiences to sit back and let them, the YouTuber, do all the critical thinking for them.

Why don't you believe in PK?

Why don't you believe in PK?

I've just never found the evidence that convincing or compelling, though I find Micro-PK to be the most believable. I just have a hard time understanding how it could possibly be real. No offence of course to anyone who believes in it.

I just have a hard time understanding how it could possibly be real.

Then how does a soul - or whatever you want to call the aspect that survives - interact with the physical body?

Then how does a soul - or whatever you want to call the aspect that survives - interact with the physical body?

Well we don't know for certain. There's the filter theory, radio theory, salt-water theory etc.

Well we don't know for certain. There's the filter theory, radio theory, salt-water theory etc.

I think sci is asking how the mind (being non physical) controls the physical body - ie the actual mechanism, if it isn’t some form of PK (if I’ve understood correctly). The filter theory doesn’t address the mechanism as far as I know, simply that the mind is not produced by the brain. The other two I havent heard of.

I think sci is asking how the mind (being non physical) control the psychical body - ie the actual mechanism, if it isn’t some form of PK (if I’ve understood correctly). The filter theory doesn’t address the mechanism as far as I know, simply that the mind is not produced by the brain. The other two I havent heard of.

There's no salt-water theory, rather in Irreducible Mind they make note that the relationship to the body & soul is akin to that of salt in water.

Of course it isn't exactly like that either, after all there's the varied OBE cases so there's also (partial) separation during this life.

PK is one of those things where formal experiments seem to produce miniscule effects at best but I have to ask how else we might explain such things as poltergeists and apports.

PK is one of those things where formal experiments seem to produce miniscule effects at best but I have to ask how else we might explain such things as poltergeists and apports.

I mean if a soul is perceiving this world then there seems to be causation going from World -> Soul.

So PK would just be traveling along the same "line" of causal connection, from Soul -> World. And since the World is where the Body is, it seems there has to be something like PK to explain how the same Soul that travels to other realms in an NDE is also maneuvering the Body.