tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) (10/15/86)
> [Paul Schauble] > I CAN think of plausible mechanisms for telepathy. I won't go into them here. > But before you reject the simple one, such as electromagnetic, notice that > * Several animal species can directly sense electrostatic fields. > * Several can directly detect static magnetic fields. > * Several have their behavior affected by low-level VLF radio waves. > * Brain activity does radiate. ------ OK. How about * Many animal species can directly detect electromagnetic (light) waves. -) All your mechanisms are plausible. Speculations about these mechanisms is fine. But what we get in this newsgroup are speculations about undefined "psychic" waves, which are so vague and slippery as to be irrefutable. ------ > Part of the problem is that as soon as a mechanism for telepathy is > established, the hard core sceptics will just say "See, it was just xxxx. > That proves there is no such thing as telepathy. I told you so all along." ------ As long as you fail to give a reasonably precise definition of telepathy, how can you blame them. To a blind man, sight is telepathy. To a deaf man, sound is telepathy. What is telepathy to you? You're the speculator. What are you speculating about? ------ > In summary, speculation about telepathy is just a much a physics topic as > speculation about quarks, magnetic monopoles, cygnets, dark matter, > oscillating neutrinos, negative mass. And, there's more evidence for telepathy > than any of the other. ------ Speculation about telepathy is meaningless unless we have some idea of what we are speculating about. Quarks, magnetic monopoles, and oscillating neutrinos all have a specific theoretical framework. (There is overwhelming reproducible experimental evidence for quarks.) I can't say anything about the evidence for telepathy, because neither you or anyone else (as far as I can tell) have defined what is telepathy and what isn't. -- Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL ihnp4!ihlpg!tan