Timeline for Does telepathy exist?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 3, 2012 at 21:26 | comment | added | Michael | Not to dismiss the likelihood that skeptical analysis is correct, but here is a counter-example to consider: dark matter. "According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a new, not yet characterized, type of subatomic particle" (wikipedia). Estimated to comprise 86% of the mass of the universe, yet we know almost nothing about it. For all we know there are entire civilizations made of dark matter. If so, how would they communicate? | |
| Sep 16, 2011 at 6:56 | vote | accept | Joseph Weissman | ||
| Dec 26, 2012 at 20:58 | |||||
| Jul 28, 2011 at 3:49 | vote | accept | Joseph Weissman | ||
| Jul 30, 2011 at 3:35 | |||||
| Jul 19, 2011 at 17:16 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @DavidThornley let us continue this discussion in chat | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 17:16 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David “I haven't missed QED, I just don't know how it applies here.” – QED unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity. Didn’t you say that this was missing? | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 17:02 | comment | added | David Thornley | @Konrad: I haven't missed QED, I just don't know how it applies here. If you want to refer to changes in the electrons and photons in the brain, instead of the leptons and quarks, that's fine with me. However, the everyday life of people working on the Fukushima reactor complex cannot be explained in terms of electron-photon interactions; you need to account for nuclear events, still not entirely understood. QED is a superb model of everyday physics until it isn't anymore because something else has stepped in. | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 16:03 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David You seem to have missed quantum electrodynamics. This is why Carroll and others have noted that we have “completely understood” everyday physics for 50 years: 50 years ago, QED was formulated. | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 15:50 | comment | added | David Thornley | @Konrad: Except that the currently accepted laws of physics are wrong, unless I've missed a reconciliation of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Starting with the observation that the laws are wrong, an attempt at a scientific explanation of telepathy would have to be more specific on how the laws were wrong (and ideally should pass the laugh test better than all other scientific "explanations" I've seen of occult ideas). | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 7:09 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David It’s not that those laws don’t require telepathy. It’s that they positively don’t allow for it to exist. Postulating that telepathy exists is therefore equivalent to postulating that these laws are wrong. This is of course still possible, but it makes the burden of proof much more evident. | |
| Jul 19, 2011 at 1:45 | comment | added | David Thornley | @Konrad: No, I'm not postulating a new weak force. I'm just refusing to say there's no such thing. It is reasonable to say that there is no scientific basis for telepathy, and that if there was one we'd very likely have some idea of it. I don't think it's as reasonable to claim that we know science well enough to completely rule things out on the basis that we have no idea why it could possibly work, given laws that appear fairly complete. | |
| Jul 18, 2011 at 6:46 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David That’s no carte blanche. In particular, it doesn’t invalidate what we know about exchange of energy, especially about the largely macromolecular world of biochemistry. You are essentially postulating a new weak force not captured by Dirac’s equation which our minds are able to manipulate and sense directly. | |
| Jul 17, 2011 at 22:23 | comment | added | David Thornley | @Konrad: Last I looked, we don't have a complete and satisfactory theory about how quarks and leptons work, since relativity and quantum theory were incompatible. This means that quantum mechanics is insufficient to predict quark and lepton movement under certain circumstances (e.g., when present in extremely large quantities). The theory isn't even solid enough to predict individual interactions, or physicists would not be so excited about the Large Hadron Collider. It's a great theory, with tons of important successful predictions, but it still doesn't cover everything. | |
| Jul 17, 2011 at 10:29 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David See also Sean Carroll: Physics and the Immortality of the Soul, which uses an analogous argument for the existence of a soul. In particular, he stresses that, surprising discoveries notwithstanding, “the laws underlying the physics of everyday life really are completely understood” – whatever future physics has in store for us, it won’t overturn our everyday understanding of physics, just like Einstein hasn’t overturned Newton on a normal scale. | |
| Jul 17, 2011 at 10:24 | comment | added | Konrad Rudolph | @David That’s not true. Rather, it depends on the specific assumption that our current models, in particular the Dirac equation, capture reality accurately. And all experiments until now show that they do, with an extremely high degree of precision. Telekinesis necessarily postulates that Dirac’s equation is wrong. And not just a bit wrong but completely wrong. Essentially it’s missing a very important term that should have been noticeable in other experiments. It hasn’t, and this is very strong evidence that Dirac’s equation is an accurate model. | |
| Mar 6, 2011 at 21:39 | comment | added | David Thornley | That depends on the assumption that we now understand everything, which is not the case. This reasoning also implies that we're very unlikely to be surprised by new developments in physics, which strikes me as unlikely. | |
| Mar 6, 2011 at 20:31 | history | edited | David Gerard | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 54 characters in body
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| Mar 6, 2011 at 10:55 | history | answered | David Gerard | CC BY-SA 2.5 |