Hi Thomas,

> Over thousands of years, human nature hasn't
> changed much.

> What amazes me is that in a so-called modern
> society, how superstition prevails.

> A survey in the US showed that 50% of the
> population believed in psychic
> phenomena--even tho there has NEVER been one
> proven documented case.
> Never let the facts get in the way of a good
> story.

It's true, there is a lot of superstition in modern society.... I don't think this will ever change. But -- what exactly is superstition?

I personally think psychic effects are an open question....

What guides me in this is partly the history of hypnosis.... In fact, I just wrote a brief post about hypnosis (here http://www.sowpub.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl?read=5082 )....
If you go back about a hundred years, you'll find some people talking about "mesmerism" and "animal magnetism". This was dismissed as "superstition" by most of the scientific and medical establishment back then.... And actually, a lot of it was (it had nothing to do with magnets or magnetism, for example)....

BUT, there was a reality to it. "Mesmerism" and "Animal magnetism" was in reality what we call "hypnosis" today.... And although it's taken about a century, hypnosis is now known to be a real phenomenon. (See the Scientific American article on this I linked to in the other post....)

What I'm getting at is that I think often the best approach is to keep an open mind regarding these things.... We don't always know all the answers. Psychic effects may be myth and superstition, but I also think there is a possibility they could be real.... But I don't really know which it is.

The majority of scientists do not take the possibility of psychic phenomena seriously. However, there are a few highly eminent scientists who do take the study of these things very seriously.

One which springs to my mind is Hal Puthoff, who headed the US Army study on "Remote Viewing". If you do a search online for "Hal Puthoff" and "Remote viewing" you'll find some info. Hal Puthoff is a very eminent theoretical physicist -- more recently he's published papers in respectable physics journals like Physical Review A on possible connections between the zero-point energy and gravity....

The other eminent physicist which springs to my mind is Brian Josephson, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for what's now called the Josephson effect. Josephson has spent quite a lot of the past couple decades seriously investigating psychic phenomena. Here is his home page from Cambridge University. Josephson is derided to a degree in the physics community for this research (despite his Nobel Prize), but I think someone of his achievements should be respected. It doesn't mean I believe in psychic phenomena (I'm non-commital on the issue) -- instead, I just try to keep an open mind.

Just like "mesmerism" and "animal magnetism" turned out to have strong elements of truth to them, who knows how the research on psychic phenomena will turn out? I find nature is much stranger than any fiction you could dream up -- so I prefer not to second-guess nature's ways. :)

Anyhow, this is really neither here nor there, but I thought I'd just chime in.... :)

Regarding the site that Simon posted about, I think there are psychological reasons why it could work, so the effect could be real for that reason....

- Dien Rice