The criticism that there is no reliably reproducible demonstration of psi

The answer is simple. There exist today the technological tools.
During the previous centuries individual scientists researched with little financial backing or non at all. Einstein changed the way we understood this universe with little money and and a lot of insight. Small scale studies require little money. Who said anything about quitting? 
By the way, it's not a loaded question. It is neither false or controversial, hard evidence is lacking. Scientific investigation started in Britain in 1882 which would make it 135 years old.

You're changing the subject. I told you it's been 300 years since Newton's law of gravity and we've got nothing as regards how it works. By your standards it should be deemed as a failed enterprise. Which of course it isn't.

And yes your question is loaded with the assumption that there is "not one established psi thing". Even critics such as Wiseman has publicly admitted that ESP evidence meets the standards for "normal" claims (and then proposed to move the goal post for phenomana that materialists can't stomach... but that's a different story).

With all due respect Steve I trust more the Radins, Sheldrakes, Braudes and Wisemans that have spent their life researching this stuff than your silly just-so statements.

You have been almost ten years on these psi boards and you keep peddling the same "no evidence" BS. Since you're convinced that there's none why the heck do you keep posting here? Do you go every week to a pizza place to complain that there's no such thing as a delicious pizza?

Cheers

Sorry folks, you will notice that my last post is duplicated. Apparently I stumbled upon a strange glitch/bug with the forum software and I can either keep the two posts or none. It has something to do with an error in how posts are counted, but I don't know all the details. If I remove one of the two copies they both disappear.

Sorry folks, you will notice that my last post is duplicated. Apparently I stumbled upon a strange glitch/bug with the forum software and I can either keep the two posts or none. It has something to do with an error in how posts are counted, but I don't know all the details. If I remove one of the two copies they both disappear.

It sounds like exactly the same problem I had on another thread:
http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-108.html

We hoped it had been fixed by changing a setting, but apparently not.

[Ninshub]

Sorry folks, you will notice that my last post is duplicated. Apparently I stumbled upon a strange glitch/bug with the forum software and I can either keep the two posts or none. It has something to do with an error in how posts are counted, but I don't know all the details. If I remove one of the two copies they both disappear.

I deleted it for you Bucky. (But first I made sure to copy the text of your post in case I made both of your posts vanish!)

I deleted it for you Bucky. (But first I made sure to copy the text of your post in case I made both of your posts vanish!)

Amazing, thanks.

My replies in blue font
"You're changing the subject. I told you it's been 300 years since Newton's law of gravity and we've got nothing as regards how it works. By your standards it should be deemed as a failed enterprise. Which of course it isn't."
Until late 2015 we never had the tool to actually probe gravity. Now there's LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Let's see what it reveals about gravity.

"And yes your question is loaded with the assumption that there is "not one established psi thing". Even critics such as *Wiseman has publicly admitted that ESP evidence meets the standards for "normal" claims (and then proposed to move the goal post for phenomana that materialists can't stomach... but that's a different story)."
Wiseman was refering to ordinary things as you kindly reminded us. It's an old standard. My goal posts has always remained in the same spot.

"With all due respect Steve I trust more the Radins, Sheldrakes, Braudes and Wisemans that have spent their life researching this stuff than your silly just-so statements."
Fine by me.
"You have been almost ten years on these psi boards and you keep peddling the same "no evidence" BS. Since you're convinced that there's none why the heck do you keep posting here? Do you go every week to a pizza place to complain that there's no such thing as a delicious pizza? "
Actually, I've been peddling the same BS for far longer.

Cheers

* As you can see this adage that the evidence should be commensurate with the evidence has been around for sometime. Wiseman has not moved the goalposts.

David Hume wrote in 1748: "A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence", and "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

Laplace writes: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."

The full quote by Richard Wiseman. "

“I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.
“If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.
“But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you’d probably want a lot more evidence.
“Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence."

The answer is simple. There exist today the technological tools. During the previous centuries individual scientists researched with little financial backing or non at all. Einstein changed the way we understood this universe with little money and and a lot of insight. Small scale studies require little money. Who said anything about quitting? 
By the way, it's not a loaded question. It is neither false or controversial, hard evidence is lacking. Scientific investigation started in Britain in 1882 which would make it 135 years old.

I guess I don't know what you consider "hard" evidence. There are lots of statistical confirmations of mediumship and other psi phenomena that have been referenced on the Skeptico site and some here as well. When people like Dean Radin and others run tests that show results that have numbers like billions to one probability of occurring, how is it that this isn't considered "hard"?

Is it because of poor repeatability? Expecting the same level of repeatability as one would find with a physics experiment may simply be unreasonable. It is possible that these things are just too subtle to be as predictable as one would like. But that doesn't make them invalid.

@Steve001

Until late 2015 we never had the tool to actually probe gravity. Now there's LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Let's see what it reveals about gravity.

Okay, so we agree that time is irrelevant in the scientific process. It takes whatever it takes.
This is especially true of a field such as ESP/PSI research where resources and funds are very limited compared to any other field of scientific research.

Wiseman was refering to ordinary things as you kindly reminded us. It's an old standard. My goal posts has always remained in the same spot.

Wait, what? The scientific method doesn't include variable standards depending on some arbitrary definition of "normal" vs "abnormal" phenomena...
If so called "normal" phenomena aren't subject to the same rigour of extraordinary ones we'd have created a dangerously biased system that won't move us an inch forward.

Say, are super-symmetry or the "multi world" interpreation of QM subject to a different definition of the scientific method?!

To be sure, I went back and checked the agreed upon definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

...and nope, there isn't an hidden clause about "special cases" where the method must be replaced by some fuzzy "super scientific method". Sorry, I just think you made that up.

Actually, I've been peddling the same BS for far longer.

I don't doubt it.

@Steve001

Okay, so we agree that time is irrelevant in the scientific process. It takes whatever it takes.
This is especially true of a field such as ESP/PSI research where resources and funds are very limited compared to any other field of scientific research.



Wait, what? The scientific method doesn't include variable standards depending on some arbitrary definition of "normal" vs "abnormal" phenomena...
If so called "normal" phenomena aren't subject to the same rigour of extraordinary ones we'd have created a dangerously biased system that won't move us an inch forward.

Say, are super-symmetry or the "multi world" interpreation of QM subject to a different definition of the scientific method?!

To be sure, I went back and checked the agreed upon definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

...and nope, there isn't an hidden clause about "special cases" where the method must be replaced by some fuzzy "super scientific method". Sorry, I just think you made that up.


I don't doubt it.

How can you misunderstand something as simple as this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's 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?

How can you misunderstand something as simple as this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

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.

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?

Come again?!
What has this to do with anything?