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If it were merely my brain remapping what I thought was going to happen, then I couldn't already have my phone out, could I? Therefore, it's more than merely an illusion.

Randi's got a million dollars for you if you can demonstrate this.

Or maybe it's a coincidence?

The fascinating part is that the parents themselves fell for it. I can understand how the ideomotor effect makes a simple pendulum swing, but I have a hard time grasping how it works that people actually write meaningful things that way without noticing it.

James Randi has written a comment about the Belgium case, also links to a video clearly showing how its obviously fake.

If you haven't check out this study publicized in Wired, where they detected human emotion activity in the brain of a salmon. A dead salmon.

Just because the fMRI shows some colors, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's really cognition going on. It could just be false detections from imperfect scanning, or it could be scientists seeing patterns in data that don't really exist, or it could be the result of our imperfect understanding of how the brain works, or a whole slew of other things.

This is made worse by things like the Houben case, which used Facilitated Communication to "prove" that Houben had an intact consciousness. FC hasn't passed any rigorous scientific study (i.e. blind tests to prevent the facilitator's motivations/desires from modifying the results), but stories like Houben cause those with loved ones with sever brain damage in PVS to start clamoring that there may still be hope. James Randi has written about FC, and the Houben case in particular.

When Dawkins asserts that evolution disproves God's existence, he's warmly welcomed by science. Nevermind the fact that he can't distinguish between science and philosophy, nor understand the limitations of the former.

I've actually been to a talk by Dawkins and he addressed this. He's not saying that science has proof God does not exist, he's saying the burden of proof shouldn't be on proving the non-existence of God. Given that there are no documented case of paranormal activity of any kind under proper observing conditions (and if you can offer anything like that, feel free to claim the Randi foundation's prize), the burden of proof should be on the religious group to prove that He does exist. After all, very few people bother trying to find proof that Xenu or Zeus don't exist, but many get all defensive when you don't take their religion of choice for granted (the Xenu believers included).

When Behe answers by pointing out that evolution doesn't have answers for some of the most basic questions, he's treated like a moron and shunned.

There are two separate issues here:

1. Often there are actual answers to the 'basic questions' Behe claims there are no answers for. Every example he managed to come up with irreducible complexity has eventually had a counter-example that managed to reduce said complexity into more basic useful forms. Not to mention that the argument is a bit flawed to begin with. If you develop random gene mutations that have absolutely no use, unless there are actual environmental pressures against them there's no reason they would get selected out. If the presence of said useless mutation is in the same population as organisms with a beneficial quality, they're even likely to increase in number. At some point if further mutations occur that make them useful, they need not have had a more basic use in the past, they just needed to have ridden along in the population, acquiring further mutations.

2. Lack of answers, even when they legitimately exist (and they do), is not evidence of the paranormal. You've heard the expression 'god of the gaps.' In the past, people have attributed the hand of God to various natural phenomena we have a perfect model for today.

That, to me, sounds more like religion than science. At least a religion admits when they ask you to believe something on faith.

Actually, science does not claim, nor has any mechanism for proving a theory correct. Every accepted theory is simply the one that currently best fits observations. When observations disagree with a theory's predictions, you either modify your theory to fit them and give better predictions, or you switch to another completely different theory that gives said better predictions. The 'truth' in the way you want it is not the realm of science. The observations are truth, the predictions can be verified with the observations, but if you can't observe it, a model is the best you can do. Here's an example. You see a black box program that you can only analyze by giving it input and observing the output. You notice that when you type '10' you get '8' back. You type '100' you get '98' back. You type '257', you get '255' back. You do this hundreds of times and come up with a model. "The black box subtracts 2 from your input." Now let's say you can actually look at the code, and find out that what's actually happening is that it's adding 25 and subtracting 27. You can't tell the difference between the inputs and your model was 'wrong' as a model for the actual internal operations. You shouldn't care though, because the predictions from your theory will always exactly match observations anyway.

That, by the way, is the crux of Occam's Razor. It's not that the simpler theory is more correct. It's that if you have two theories which give the same predictions, but one of them has more variables, you mi

And what data would you feed into this hypothetical Holodeck simulation that would skew the results in your favor? Virtually all historical examples demonstrate the comparative triumph of Free Market Capitalism over all alternatives every single time! From the anthropogenic analysis of early cavemen tribes to the present-day correlation between economic freedom and prosperity, you will find that hard econometric facts will fall in my favor, precisely because they are the very basis of my philosophy. If economic facts had pointed to communism or fascism as a better solution, then I'd be a communist or a fascist instead.

A society becomes an oppressive dictatorship (like every society is today to some degree) when there exists a power gap that the tyrants are able to fill. Modern Free Market libertarianism is the only political philosophy (or rather a group of similar but distinct political philosophies) that closes that gap tightly by empowering those who should have rightful power over their lives in the first place - the individuals themselves. Sure, "everybody wants to rule the world", as the song goes, but everyone will encounter billions of well-informed well-armed individuals who don't want to be ruled by others. The various "Bill Gates will take over the world" nonsense scenarios have been debunked ad nausium. Only a centralized government can ever accumulate (i.e. steal) enough capital to build and maintain a legal liability like a nuclear warhead or an aircraft carrier and get away with it! Only the "divine right of governments" delusion makes tyranny possible in the modern age!

Free Market Capitalism doesn't mean "no rules", it is based on very strict and universal rules, but they are grounded on well-established scientific facts, not arbitrary whim of corrupt political demagogues. Natural Rights (life, liberty, property, parents' rights, freedom of contract, etc) are things that haven't been made up by men, but they were discovered as being essential components to a stable human society, and in many cases this discovery has been recognized for thousands of years. Natural Rights come from the principle of competitive advantage: a society that violates Natural Rights the least would have an empirically-observable materialistic advantage over other societies that violate them more. It's almost as clear-cut as penicillin, except of course you can't observe human societies through a microscope, and the lenses of history are blurred by pro-government bias that funds and controls most knowledge-related institutions. Violating Natural Rights is no different than trying to violate the laws of physics - it simply won't work in the long term.

Most specific rules beyond that would come from the legitimate authority of private property owners: your house, your rules. A neighborhood-owned road or a for-profit toll road will likely still have stop signs and speed limits, but it will not be a monopoly - you will have a choice whose roads you drive on and pay for (and in absence of the government-induced artificial energy famine we've had for the last century most people would have flying cars anyway). And whether you are allowed to to "yell fire in a crowded theater" should be entirely up to the owner of that theater - don't like the rules, don't go to the establishment, go somewhere else instead. Modern information technology makes it ever-easier to automatically inform people whose property they are approaching and what their rules happen to be.

Granted the Minarchist / Anarcho-Capitalist debate remains a relevant issue, as it probably will for a very long time, but that disagreement is over whether the government needs to be shrunk by 99% or 100% in the long term. Ayn Rand, a Minarchist, believed that the ideal government should be so small that at peacetime it could be funded entirely

Just apply for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge. With your ability it should be childs play.

As has been mentioned by others, WiFi sensitivity should easily count for paranormal under the James Randi Educational Foundation's $1M paranormal prize. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

( yes, the above post of mine should start with

And why alien life and not something else

...)

And one another thing

Alright if you want it like that, why is finding mars men cool and not ghosts or something else?

Are you sure you're not trolling? Nobody seriously talks about "mars men", at least nobody at SETI. I'd guess you're more likely to find such people in their places of cult in the deserts/etc....

And ghosts...well, some people do research that. With the emphasis on research. As far as we can tell, its bollocks...
http://www.randi.org/
Left at most for psychology, neuroscience or evolutionary origins of religions.

James Randi calls BS too. In the video that was released, the coma guy was shown assisted in his communicating. His caretaker holds his hand while it rapidly types out his messages. Check out This Cruel Farce Has to Stop (http://www.randi.org)

I've never been able to hear the difference but my hearing isn't great and I'm not a music person so I wasn't completely sure. But this isn't that surprising. Note how the audiophile community has so many strange ideas about what sounds better that James Randi has actually bothered to include some of their claims as acceptable for his million dollar challenge (this is a prize if you can demonstrate supernatural or paranormal abilities under controlled conditions- http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html). See for example http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/752-get-real.html. However, a large part of the audiophile community has rejected digital sound as somehow innately inferior and so won't even care about TFA. It is never so surprising how irrational humans can be so much as what they choose to be irrational about.

I've never been able to hear the difference but my hearing isn't great and I'm not a music person so I wasn't completely sure. But this isn't that surprising. Note how the audiophile community has so many strange ideas about what sounds better that James Randi has actually bothered to include some of their claims as acceptable for his million dollar challenge (this is a prize if you can demonstrate supernatural or paranormal abilities under controlled conditions- http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html). See for example http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/752-get-real.html. However, a large part of the audiophile community has rejected digital sound as somehow innately inferior and so won't even care about TFA. It is never so surprising how irrational humans can be so much as what they choose to be irrational about.

Thing is, they were the first to tell you they had no clue how or why they could dowse out water, but they could.

Sorry, until you've got a controlled study showing your little "witches" perform better than random chance, I'm gonna remain skeptical. Meanwhile, you should send one over to JREF... if her "powers" are real, she could win a million bucks!

Randi is (was?) an entertainer, not a scientist. His public "debunkings" have included such science as "if I can duplicate the effect through trickery it's fake" regardless of zero evidence that any such trickery was originally used. That's not a "controlled study," he starts with a known result.

I knew Delbert Merrill socially, he was an inventor and engineer who had a long career in industry. He tried dowsing when water couldn't be found on a property, and was successful. He developed a method swinging a pendulum over a map, and it seemed to work for him.

One night we were visiting him, and he showed us his rod. Two nylon rods, about two feet long and 0.1 inch diameter, similar to the nylon rods used to bind computer listings in those days. The business end was bound with non-metalic material, I think fishing line, and the hand grips were 1/4 inch bakelite (or similar) rigid non-conducting tubing, and the ends of the nylon had just been kinked 90 degrees to keep the handles from falling off. There was no way someone holding those bakelite handles could apply bend or torsion to those rods.

He walked across the property, saying that there was a stream in the area, and as he walked along the rods visibly bent. He offered to let us try it, and two of three people felt the tug, including me. The other person who had success was blind, could not have seen where the rods bent, and also got a strong bend at the same spot.

I never tried dowsing again, but Delbert Merrill did locate water on some property I was trying to buy, after three dry wells had been drilled. He predicted slight sulpher in the water, in an area not known for that, and predicted the depth within five feet and the flow within three gal/min.

I see that in upstate NY National Grid finds gas lines by dowsing as well as their little meters, the meters have false positives on any metal, not just gas lines. The sum of these experiences strongly suggests that there is an effect, sensible people like gas companies and engineers seem to find it usefully reliable, I wouldn't discard their experience casually.

Finally, Randi is an entertainer, some of the televised "debunkings" are far from scientific method:
- everyone can't reproduce the effect
- it doesn't work every time
- the effect can be created as an illusion by a professional

If those are valid criteria, they prove that pitchers can't throw a curve. Personally I'll put it in the "there's something there" category, since the people I have met who have produced measureable success make no money at it, don't care if people believe in it, and don't publicize the ability, I find profit, zeal, or fame to be unlikely motivation for trickery.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=29682
-> performed his own double-blind tests only to discover that he had deluded himself

Whoa. That's... that's amazing. Someone actually thought they had magic powers to the point that they wanted to apply for the Randi challenge, then, going against everything I know about people claiming to be magic, rigorously tested themselves just to be sure, and came to the conclusion that oops, no they don't.

That's... wow.

I mean, maybe a lot of people do that and you never hear about it because they never publicize their non-power, but that's still just an amazing breath of fresh air.

Thing is, they were the first to tell you they had no clue how or why they could dowse out water, but they could.

They could, could they? You know, I bet there are psychics and faith healers out there that would shovel you the same bullshit.

Sorry, until you've got a controlled study showing your little "witches" perform better than random chance, I'm gonna remain skeptical. Meanwhile, you should send one over to JREF... if her "powers" are real, she could win a million bucks!

Great. You and your dad can go and apply for the Million Dollar Randi challenge. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html They have a million dollar prize for evidence of the paranormal. If you have anything remotely like what you claim that you can reproduce in controlled conditions you'll be a million dollars richer and the world will have learned a very valuable piece of information.

Presuming that those "tiny ferrite dots being pumped around" are iron in your blood, you're wrong. Blood iron isn't ferrous.

Divining has long been shown to be explained by the ideomotor effect, environmental cues [1], and confirmation bias. It isn't any better than chance.

If you think your abilities are genuine, allow me to introduce you to the 1 Million Dollars that must be waiting for you over at the JREF. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

[1] Cues that anyone can pick up on, nothing that is unique to dowsing or dowsers.

You better call him because the Randi folks would give him a million dollars if he could do that.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

You're selling Dr Mörner short! He's an expert in dowsing as well as an expert on geophysics, and he applies the same rigorous levels of scientific proof to demonstrating his dowsing skills as he does to arguing against sea-level rise.

And, this is precisely why so many people fear guns. They want to hide behind the AC tag, and use vulgarity - knowing they are safe. They also expect to be just as safe when they choose to run their mouth on the street. I'll bet my dollar against your penny, if a real man answers his little potty mouth, AC will pick up a rock, a club, a knife, or something because he's AC. When the real man shoots him dead, then that man is in the wrong for having a weapon. Go figure.

Anonymous COWARD.

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/LRB/pubs/ttp/ttp-09-2003.html
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Go, coward, read. The facts are, when the populace is armed, violent crimes go down. When citizens are disarmed, crime goes up.

Since we have already established that you are a coward, allow me to ask a simple question: If/when you ever creep out of your Mama's basement, hoping to drag a female into your den, would you rather face women who are armed, and are able to resist? Or, would you rather face defenseless women? I don't give you much chance in either instance - but I am perfectly happy with armed women. Knowing that she can shoot you dead if you get out of line just helps to keep a guy honest.

I love headlines like these, which you will NEVER read in gaywad anonymous coward magazines:
http://wheelgun.blogspot.com/2005/04/jacksonville-great-grandmother-shoots.html
http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-47396.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20001128/ai_n9979806/

Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin were both gun control proponents. I suppose you would like those individuals, right? Douchebag, yourself.

From the Foundation's FAQ on the challenge ( http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html ):

2.2 What is the definition of "paranormal" in regards to the Challenge?

        Webster's Online Dictionary defines "paranormal" as "not scientifically explainable; supernatural."

        Within the Challenge, this means that at the time your application is submitted and approved, your claim will be considered paranormal for the duration. If, after testing, it is decided that your ability is either scientifically explainable or will be someday, you needn't worry. If the JREF has agreed to test you, then your claim is paranormal.

Many people have already undergone preliminary testing by the Foundation. Their claims have been deemed "paranormal." None of them succeeded in proving the abilities they claimed. I don't have the source handy, but I'm pretty sure that Randi himself has stated in the past that this sort of EM sensitivity would qualify.

A properly scientific proof of this would most likely qualify him for the JREF challenge. If he can physically detect relatively minor electromagnetic radiation on these frequencies, he could win himself a million dollars. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

He should contact the James Randi foundation for their 1M prize for paranormal proof, as they might very well consider "WiFi sensitivity" paranormal behavior.

Spoiler Alert: According to the book, the calorie balance hypothesis is wrong. Numerous studies over the years failed to link high-calorie diet with weight gain, but this fact was overlooked because it challenged nutritional and medical orthodoxy. The real culprit, as the title suggests, is the composition of the diet, not the absolute calories it contains. It's a fascinating read, well researched, and worth the trip to the library.

Uhh... I'm pretty sure if you can burn more calories than you consume, while still gaining/maintaining weight, then you could quite comfortably claim the Randi Challenge prize. And then you could sell your body to science for billions.

Wow, it never occurred to me that everyone on /. needed a lesson on basic thermodynamics!

It has to do with hunger, I don't care what you think you have for willpower or if your spreadsheet says no more calories today, if you're hungry enough you're going to eat. Any weight loss strategy should remember that fact.

Haven't you heard? "Billion" is the new "million."
I don't think million dollar offers fall into the obvious "joke" category any more. James Randi Educational Foundation is offering $1million just for proving some slight paranormal claims. I knew a guy who won a million dollars for hitting a hole in one. Promotions like that are insured and JREF has a financial statement to back it up.

If you can imagine the lawyer telling the jury "my client and I offered a million dollars to anyone who could do what the prosecution claims my client did, but no one claimed it because it is impossible" then you have to think it reasonable that he meant it. If he was joking or speaking in hyperbole, he should have known to say "billion."

The Harrier Jet cost an order of magnitude or two more than the purchase price of the Pepsi Points and was in a commercial aimed at children. It was a fun case to discuss in my only semester of law school before I wised up and went back to computers. As much as it breaks my heart, I do think the attorney will win the case on the grounds that it wasn't a real offer.

My current science heroes are all grass-roots enthusiasts like Brian Dunning, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay & Fraser Cain, The Skeptical Rogues, Derek & Swoopy and the like.

Listening to all those podcasts and recommending them to all my friends has brought an interest in science out from purely occuring inside my own head into being a regular dialogue with people I know. It also makes you feel like the human race is actually going somewhere, instead of the general impression you get from the mainstream media that we are perpetually circling a gory hate-filled drain.

And, of course my original inspiration that started me listening to all these podcasts, Micheal Shermer, whose book "Why People Believe Weird Things" should be given to every 13 year old as part of their school education.

If I had 500 quid to get to Las Vegas I would love to have gone to this. Defniately doing it next year.

Uhh... I'm pretty sure if you can burn more calories than you consume, while still gaining/maintaining weight, then you could quite comfortably claim the Randi Challenge prize. And then you could sell your body to science for billions.

The point is that the energy balance equation is way oversimplified for a human biological open system. It leads people to the wrong conclusion. A study found that schoolchildren given less exercise at school, ended up doing more at home. Other studies find that when people eat less, they move less. So you have to look at the whole system, and understand what's going on. The restricted carbohydrate hypothesis is basically that before the invention of agriculture just 10,000 years ago, our bodies were not subjected to huge quantities of carbs like bread, pasta, cereals, rice, and so on. All that stuff is not a natural diet for human type bodies in the last million years. And what they do is they massively increase the amount of sugar in our bodies (carbs turn to sugar) and the hypothesis is that the high sugar raises our insulin and raises the rate at which we put on fat. It is a hormonal control system, like, because your body's hormones are a control system for what your body should be doing, and the carbs increase sugar which send your hormone insulin way out of whack, and your fat cells get told to open up and store more. I call it a hypothesis but since I started using it, I have lost 10% of my weight, and I wasn't fat to start with, just a bit of belly fat. My stomach is flat, my waist has shrunk, and all without making any effort to exercise. The energy balance equation puts too much emphasis on exercise--you don't need any, you just need to not eat processed carbs, and stick to meat and veg and fruit and as it is a more natural diet, the body does well on it.

Spoiler Alert: According to the book, the calorie balance hypothesis is wrong. Numerous studies over the years failed to link high-calorie diet with weight gain, but this fact was overlooked because it challenged nutritional and medical orthodoxy. The real culprit, as the title suggests, is the composition of the diet, not the absolute calories it contains. It's a fascinating read, well researched, and worth the trip to the library.

Uhh... I'm pretty sure if you can burn more calories than you consume, while still gaining/maintaining weight, then you could quite comfortably claim the Randi Challenge prize. And then you could sell your body to science for billions.

Crowley was every bit a genius. He had chunks of guys like L.Ron Hubbard in his stool. His work is very very hard to read, and you always get the sense that he's laughing atyou, the reader, but there's much to learn in what he had to say. His "Magick Without Tears" is still one of the greatest works for young sorcerers.

When he was at his best -- and parts of Magick Without Tears are there -- yes.

When he was deep in the grip of his Aiwass delusions, well, not so much.

Chaos Magick works. I am absolutely convinced that you can change your external reality in significant (even measurable) ways using Magick.

You can certainly change your experience, your own subjective reality, with magic(k).

Of course, you can also do that with LSD.

And since "consensus" reality is a social construct, if you've got a crowd that's susceptible to manipulation, under some circumstances you can change the consensus with magic(k).

But if you think "objective" reality -- that is, consensus reality as observed and experienced under carefully controlled conditions by skeptical observers in a reproducible manner -- can be changed by magic(k) in ways not already accounted for by physics, well, prove it and the JREF has a fortune for you.

The true believer's approach makes claims about the objective universe that don't hold up to controlled experiment and observation. The skeptic's dismissal of all this as hallucination or delusion neglects the fact that most events in the universe occur outside of laboratory controls, and ignores the person to whom the experience is happening, flattening out the subjective dimension. The challenge for the industrial-strength shaman is to move between these models, from reality tunnel to reality tunnel, as needed to be effective in any given situation.

I'm guessing you are still relatively young and that your teachers turned you off the idea of education.

In my day (1960's) the sharp repot of the ruler came from a students knuckles, skull, ears, etc. Even though I have always been interested in science I did not learn much about it until well after I dropped out of HS. The philospophy of science and the associated skill of skepticisim really are worth learning and constantly practising, even if you have to go it alone and educate yourself. It will help you make sense of the competing claims that come from politicians, priests, and others who are constantly trying to manipulate our opinions with credible sounding bullshit.

After finding out about the philosophy of science for myself (ironically from reading a book written by a magician), I went to uni at age 30 and turned my passion for fiddling with my Apple II into a well paid job. That was in the late 80's and I can assure you nobody at uni tried bouncing erasers off my head, in fact most lecturer's don't give a flying fuck if your listening or not, they quite rightly figure your a grown up and it's your loss if you don't take advantage of the knowledge and skills they offer.

Of course - that's why I invoked the bullshit filter. Also known as the baloney detection kit. Everyone's got perspective, from statisticians and pollsters, to respected scientists and doctors. The BBC has a lot of biased voices - and many I disagree with, such as with most of the issues you mentioned. That doesn't make them a bad news source.

Whatever your take on their perspective, they DO tend to do their homework at the BBC, and tend to avoid drawing unnecessary conclusions outside their editorials.

In addition to the BBC, I also tend to visit James Randi's site a lot.

Bullshit filters don't always work, but they do help you see data closer to its actual worth. I find a healthy dose of perspectives you can respect with even if you occasionally disagree to be healthy both for keeping your bullshit filter active.

Ryan Fenton

So I guess the JREF blog will be illegal, because it could cause "substantial emotional distress" to hard-working snake-oil salespeople like Matthias Rath?

- RG>

I'm not a scientist, unless computer scientist counts. If scientists follow the scientific method then by default "group think" is minimised as much as humanly possible. Many scientists take it for granted that people undersatnd this but I tend to agree with Sagan, Dawkins and others in that the philosophy of science is not mentioned at school let alone taught. As a personal anecdote I dropped out of HS in '76 and gained a BSc in '91, in both cases science was taught as if it were a dictionary of factoids that we can pick and choose from to suit our needs. Oddly enough the way I became aware of skepticisims central role in science was by reading a small book written by a magician in the early 80's. Of course the problem with communicating this to the public is that you can end up looking like a humourless obsessive compulsive (re: Dawkins and Randi).

"I remain skeptic but the only thing I know is that I do not know."

Yep, the Universe is mainly hydrogen and ignorance, and we can't be certain about the hydrogen.

Remedies has been around of thousands of years, we tested it all and the stuff which works was called "medicine"

The point I'm trying to make here is that these people that believe modern science is some how inferior to their new age hocus pocus need to be hit with the clue stick.

This goes especially for those idiots that believe in Homoeopathy.

"This is an unfortunate shortcoming of science at the moment."

I agree with most of your post but disagree with your conclusion.

Contrary to the GP's claim there is no requirement in science for a "suggested mechanisim", the results of the experiment are far more important than the explaination. For example, nobody has yet explained gravity but few doubt it exists and that we can acurately predict it's behaviour via models.

However it is common practice for papers to offer (clearly labelled) speculation in the hope that "someone else" will look for evidence and cite your paper if they find it. A failure to understand the difference between clearly labeled speculation and repeatable experimental results is definitely a "shortcoming" but it is not a "shortcoming of science". Worse still the "shortcoming" of which you speak is often indistingushable from willfull ignorance.

"A tested result is rejected until there is a suggested mechanism" - This is simply false.

IMHO the "unfortunate shortcoming of science" is the apparent inability of it's philosophy to rate a mention in high school science classes. This is not due to a lack of trying, see: Sagan, Dawkins and Randi. My own SPECULATION as to why is it so, is that most people ( including the majority of educators ) simply want certainty and cannot accept a philosophy that shuns it, so the philosophy part is ignored and science becomes a library of factiods that are discovered via inspiration, rather than found via critical thinking.

Bermuda triangle has been debunked.

http://www.randi.org/

I almost universally tend to agree that speculation about ID adds nothing to the knowledge of our own universe. Whether there is any interesting (though perhaps of no practical value, notwithstanding fruitful linguistic consequences of David Lewis's many-worlds modal realism (a distinct beast from the quantum many-worlds interpretation and cosmological multiverse theories, be careful here!)) information to be garnered from philosophical exploration of any members of the general class of things that we can never actually determine by observation and measurement of the natural world is another question outside of the scope of this discussion. (It's a lot more than just theology, if you've never checked into it; for example, one of the more interesting modern developments in ontology is Saul Kripke's lectures on the subject.)

However, humans have a natural propensity for spirituality, and it does seem to make them happy. I don't see any point in deceiving yourself about the nature of the universe by pursuing many of the popular theological fallacies currently prevailing, but certain types of panentheism are rather fun (see Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon for an introduction to lots of things outside of the modern major religions; also, many slashdotters or Douglas Adams readers would probably enjoy the Principia Discordia as reading material).

To use an arbitrary, off-the-top-of-my-head analogy (likely needing solid refinement in order to avoid easy refutation (exercise for the interested reader?)): Humans have to eat food. We could just take a handful of vitamins and supplements with a bucket of flavorless carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and fiber in the proper proportions, but I think most people find exercising their senses in the process of eating to be far more enjoyable. We don't have to deceive ourselves about what foods are detrimental to us in the process of receiving the natural enjoyment of eating, so I don't see a similar situation can't exist with spirituality (note, spirituality can be a very different thing from organized religion if one so chooses).

The tendency for humans to come up with the "I can't explain it, therefore God did it" argument time and again has many possible origins. Brain systems that evolved to do one thing often have other odd effects in situations very different from those in which they evolved (I linked to the 3rd page in that atricle, but the rest of it is also relevant and informative). There's a lot of interesting speculation among neurologists on the various direct evolutionary advantages of animism for our ancient ancestors, and we've all heard the somewhat misunderstood Karl Marx quote about religion and opium. Human culture tends to be memetic, with its own form of "DNA" for concepts and ideas. It's no surprise that the phenomenon is still so persistent, especially when people will stubbornly cling on to ideas (beyond the point of healthy promotion of short-term stability required for any idea to mature; rather, into the territory of irrational tenacity), finding curious ways to interpret reality so they don't have to re-evaluate their own beliefs nor find solutions to their own problems rather than hoping some mysterious, transcendental, benevolent thingamagod is going to fix everything for them.

[Grammar nazis: go to town! I don't feel like fixing my run-on sentences or horrible paragraph structures right now, but you're welcome to do so. *g*]

It's just a stick of wax. Literally. It has a lower percentage of active ingredients than your average breath of fresh air has toxic chemicals.

This gadget is exactly the sort of thing that James Randi likes to put to the test for his million-dollar paranormal challenge ( http://www.randi.org/ ).

There are all sorts of "wine aging" gadgets, using magnets, crystals and all sorts of other magic, and this sounds like is yet another in a long line of scams.

If challenged, it would be amusing to hear the excuses the creator comes up with to avoid putting this silly machine to a proper test.

What's the next doomsday fantasy after the 2012 one, anyway? Saying "I told you so" to the credulous has been a fine tradition for all of history and I'm happy to continue the practise. I need to be prepared!

A million dollars is not worth that kind of publicity

Why is it that every American wants nothing more than to be famous, except for these "psychics"?

Second, Randi's tests are usually slanted to the point where the burden of proof becomes unreasonable. Telekinetics, most of whom have never tried anything bigger or heavier than a pinwheel, are required to levitate multiple pieces of furniture? Tough call.

Stuff and nonsense. This applicant, for example, was merely asked to move a key on a string with her "telekinetic" powers, which she claimed she could do. But it turns out she did it by bumping the table.

I challenge you to cite a case where a claimant who claimed a small "telekinetic" power was challenged by the JREF to demonstrate it by levitating multiple pieces of furniture.

Please excuse the technical problems with the parent.

Actually if you bothered to JFG, to would find that the One Million Dollars is in an endowment fund account administered by Goldman Sachs, so bar the bank collapsing or it getting embezzeled, the money is real qand is going nowhere.

See http://www.randi.org/joom/challenge-info.html [randi.org] for further info

Actually if you bothered to JFG, to would find that the $1,000,00.00 is in an endownent fund account administered by Golman Sachs, so bar the bank collapsing or it getting embezzeled, the money is real qand is going nowhere.

See http://www.randi.org/joom/challenge-info.html for further info

The doomsayers don't notice anything that might interfere with their precious doom and gloom. That's probably why they have such a great track record...

So, do you belong to 16 systems?

What about PRACTICAL data recovery? If it takes an electron microscope to recover the data, I think the challenge's main point is already sufficiently demonstrated.

Nope -- the data could be accurately recoverable 90% of the time, but it's still not worth it for a data recovery company to risk their reputation on this being one of those 10% cases, failing, and having their name dragged through the mud.

I'm not saying that's the case -- but that's all this challenge is proving: there's no data recovery company willing to risk their reputation trying it. There's not much to gain, so all we learn is that it's not guaranteed to recover the *filenames* as required to win the challenge.

The encrypted picture containing the filenames has already been published, using PGP public-key encryption. When the contest is over, all they have to do is publish the public key, and any member of the public can decrypt the file and determine FOR THEMSELVES whether the names matched. There is no possibility of cheating this way.

Huh? It's trivial to cheat:
* Drive A has files "one" and "two". Take a screenshot of the files, encrypt it, etc.
* Drive B is new & blank. Write it with 0's.
* Send out drive B.
* ALTERNATE: Overwrite drive A with 13 passes of random data, then with 0's. Send out drive A.

Encrypting the filenames beforehand, etc. doesn't protect anything... the trick is guaranteeing what was done with the hardware itself.

Unless -- as you seem to suggest -- they are "in on" some kind of publicity scheme? If so, they would (and would be able to) put more money into it than this! Also -- sorry to break the news to you -- but you are arguing against yourself! How could this be some kind of publicity stunt if, as you claim, this would not get sufficient publicity to make any money? You can't have that both ways!

Er.. it could be a poorly-conceived publicity scheme. Personally, I think they're actually trying to make a point, but didn't think this through.

But as for "prize money", THERE is where you miss the point. I have been using the analogy of the X prize. [...]

I've addressed this elsewhere, but in short -- it's not a valid analogy. The X Prize garnered a ton of publicity (because of the large prize and first hobbyist forays), and the money & publicity helped lower the risk for a very high-risk investment (but with a possibly enormous payoff), creating an entire new market.

Something more comparable -- the James Randi prize offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate scientifically valid paranormal abilities. Obviously, they *want* to prove it's impossible, as much as possible -- more like the 16 servers contest. In spite of the danger of loss of reputation and business, the prize is big enough that lots of people try to win it... so that contest does a much better job of proving that something may well be impossible.

Many people are watchful of some proof of god existing. Many have found a proof, but where are those proofs? I don't see any definite. If you can find a proof of something supernatural, there's One million dollars waiting for you.

"After all, we barely use 10% of our brains and if you take into consideration people with telepathy and telekinesis and other "psychic" abilities."

Just think, if people with "psychic abilities" used 11% of their brain they could be millionaires. /sarcasm

Read this book, understanding it's message will change your life. /unsolicited_advice

In The New York Times of June 22, 1971, he verified that rumor, and reported that his experiment had produced results "far exceeding anything expected" but in almost the same breath, he described those results as only "moderately significant."

Mitchell told the Times that he had made arrangements that four persons stationed in different cities would attempt to determine through ESP the order of a home-made deck of standard Zener cards. These are the familiar symbol-cards (circle, plus mark, wavy lines, square, five-pointed star) that are used by parapsychologists. Astronaut Mitchell said that 51 out of 200 of the guesses made by the four subjects, were successful. Chance would call for 40 correct.

In among all the enthusiastic statements made by Mitchell to the reporters, we discover that the experimental conditions through no fault of his had turned out to be less than ideal. He had intended to perform these experiments every day during the Apollo mission, but changes in the schedules meant that he could only work on four of those days, two on the way to the Moon, and two on the way back. But and this is very significant the psychics back on Earth, it turned out, since they were not aware of the schedule change, had written down their impressions of what Edgar Mitchell was thinking about, the40 minutes before he had begun! So, any apparent success in the experiments must be attributed to precognition, not to telepathy.

From: http://www.randi.org/jr/05-31-2000.html

James Randi: http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-09/092807reply.html#i4

When challenged, Pear cables chickened out.

I checked. Pear cables did not go out of business.

But you have to find someone who wants to live in a rational, logical world first. That's a lot harder than you might think, and probably explains why computer-saavy people tend to be more skeptical because logic is such a dominating facet of computing. "Normal" people, on the other hand, like their fairy tales and myths and "magic remedies" and so forth and tend to not appreciate it when you point out that what they're doing either doesn't work or has some other, more mundane, explanation...especially if that mundane explanation means they can't charge money for tours or Jesus-shaped bread.

Back to the question though, I find a healthy dose of skepticism from reading the various newsletters out there to be quite useful.

The James Randi Education Foundation (JREF) at http://www.randi.org/ has a weekly column they put out that is usually a good read discussing various "woo-woo" ideas and why, rationally, they fail as well as links to other such things. It's a decent enough starting point I suppose.

I know I "see" something like a flash of light whenever someone turns on a fluorescent light with magnetic ballast in another room - so I don't think the idea of additional senses is completely crazy.