From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 15:18:53 MDT
> (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>):
>
>> Well, then, he should go claim his Randi prize and wouldn't have
>> to worry about the sales of his book. <http://www.randi.org/>.
>
> I used to say that.
> I've gone over some of the exchanges between Dennis Rawlins and Paul
> Kurtz, after Rawlins resigned from CSICOP over the Gauquelin incident, and
> I no longer consider the Randi Prize to be evidence.
>
> Mind you, I feel confident enough in my understanding of the workings of
> the universe to say that psi definitely does not exist(!). But, I no
> longer take the unclaimed Randi Prize into account in saying so.
Even if the starbaby affair does reveal a certain naivite and
pig-headedness of Randi himself and others in CSICOP (who I am the
first to admit are a bit pathologically skeptical for my taste),
I think the unclaimed prize is still evidence that no psi claim
has yet met Hume's criterion (that we should not accept a miraculous
claim unless evidence forces us to conclude that /not/ accepting it
would be even more miraculous) and that it would even fail the more
relaxed criterion of an American civil jury.
Gauquelin could easily force the issue by taking Randi and CSICOP to
court, and a million bucks on the line would make it worthwhile for
him to do so (and for some pro-psi lawyer to help). The fact that he
can't even meet /that/ test is significant, regardless of any personal
pecadillos of Randi and gang.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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