Quote:
Originally Posted by David Bailey  This is not entirely true, Sheldrake's work with dogs anticipating the return of their owners is not a weak effect - in fact it is strong enough to show up even in informal settings.
David |
Good point David but the only way to get the skeptics to look at the data fairly is to consider weak effects first
If they don't, they set the bar too high in a short experiments and most experiments can be rejected and stamped 'failure' even if somewhat successful e.g. Demkina
I'm sure someone like Steven Novella would counter that fortune tellers are ripping people off (I agree most are) and that Demkina is making a dangerous claim if she thinks she can diagnose medical conditions (yes she is less reliable than a medical scan for sure) so they use political arguments to raise the bar as high as they can. They aren't interested in weaker psi, they don't believe it by default and every claim of a stronger effect is 'nothing but something else' unless it constantly repeats but these seem rare and erratic.
Yes I do think Sheldrake could be right and animals have stronger telepathy.
Sheldrake says somewhere that he might expect telepathy to be stronger within groups, pack of animals, flocks, social insects, etc. but he goes further suggests telepathy works best between friends and a key element might be the love between the dog and the owner. So perhaps telepathy is like a group effect in ways, if ones introduces more skeptics or hostile competitive environments, perhaps this weakens the effect ....... so lets keep the bar set not too high.
If dogs can produce stronger telepathy consistently , I fear for Randi's modesty
Yes, I do think stronger psi exists (very rarely or at least noticeably) it is almost impossible to read some of the reports over 130 years of psychical research and conclude it was all fraud or error, it also almost impossible to get a skeptic to read it before they read the biased 'skeptic dictionary' version.