The Darkness that Comes Before

"Miracles to the unbelieving create awe, and sometimes obedience for a little space; then they are forgotten. They are reasoned away and man forgets... or else he becomes superstitious and seeks after signs to prove and to test..."

Every time I hear skeptics whine (you heard me, I said it) that there is no good controlled laboratory evidence for psi phenomena (you know, mind-reading, and so on), I roll my eyes. (Read the literature. Seriously.) Then I wonder what would happen if a 'psychic' gave a skeptic a personal demonstration/ass-kicking. Would the skeptic have the courage to embrace/acknowledge the experience?

Evidence suggests that the answer is 'no'. (Although some skeptics will change their responses if they think they will get something in so doing. I hate lying.)

"But controlled replication is the hallmark of science!" No - logic applied to experience to form and test hypotheses is the hallmark of science. If the evidence indicates that psi exists in everyday experience, yet fades under laboratory conditions, the correct question to ask is WHY does it fade under laboratory conditions? Not surprisingly, that question HAS been asked by parapsychological researchers. (Read the literature. Seriously. If I cared at this point, I'd give you a reference. I suspect though that you only feign ignorance to see what kind of a response you can get. See previous comment.)

I respect the role of the skeptic, I really do. It's just so damn hard to find a good one. (If you were really a good skeptic, you would do a controlled lab test with the psychic. ESP is a fairly significant issue (hell, you people keep writing about it) and one that not going to go away until science can explain the experience of ESP in one way or another. But if we can't trust you to tell the truth about what happened in the experiment... You see how that works? No pressure though. You have more important things to think about. Would've been fun though.)

Yes, there's a part of me that knows that I shouldn't care about 'proving' anything. There's plenty of data out there that supports the existence of psi. One more set of data wouldn't change anything. What's (mostly) missing is a model that explains psi results and makes testable predictions. But then you're not dealing with an enlightened being; you're dealing with a human being who is competitive and likes to win. [And at this point my computer froze and I had to unplug it from the wall. No joke. I spend several minutes wondering whether this was a sign from the universe reminding me that I really do know better. Really, I do.]

I spent all day assessing where, how, if, and to whom I wanted to keep communicating about my experiences and my ideas. (My job is boring and leaves me plenty of time for obsessive thought.) In the end, I conclude this - for the person I used to be, who desperately wanted information and not New-Age mumbo-jumbo, and who wanted to know that she was not alone in what she was experiencing... For that person, I'll leave a searchable record of my experiences and thoughts, freely accessible on the Internet. For now.

And I'll write some damn good science fiction. (A girl's gotta eat. ;)