From: Richard Loosemore (rpwl@lightlink.com)
Date: Fri Dec 30 2005 - 14:03:07 MST
Michael Vassar wrote:
> For what it's worth, I'm far from convinced that almost everyone wants
> psi/magik to be real. Many people surely do, but others find it
> scary/horrofying. Read the old faerie tales. They don't sound like
> wishful thinking to me. Neither does George R.R. Martin's "Tale of Ice
> and Fire".
Oh, don't be deceived by all the garbage that gets associated with
paranormal research in the tabloid media and in the mouths of the
abusive skeptics: for most of the "serious" scientists involved, there
is no question of this being about magic or demon-haunted worlds. It's
just (as some people, who like to be careful call it) "anomalous
information transfer".
Well, okay, sometimes anomalous physical phenomena (PK, or poltergeist
phenomena). But even the people I know who have experienced the
physical phenomena do not put it down to ghosts or spirits or demons,
they just reckon it to be unusual events caused by thought processes.
And for what it's worth, I actually think that consciousness and thought
processes can appear in a brain or in a machine substrate WITHOUT the
need for paranormal effects. I mean, that's why I am on this list,
after all.
My personal belief is that the psi stuff will emerge as an interesting
side effect of the creation of minds.
Richard Loosemore.
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