Jan 13, 2011 -- 4:44PM, Erey wrote:

... well that is the problem these kinds of paranormal things don't lend themselves very well to replication.  I think there have been some pretty incredible findings in some studies but it is hard to reproduce those studies

Yeah.

Like, I had this incredible streak of luck once playing a board game.

It's hard to reproduce the next time you throw the dice.

That's all there is to the 'studies' you speak about, by science.

In fact, probability theory and statistics are extremely powerful tools that we humans have developed. I helped us getting rid of worshipping "Fortuna" and other gods and goddesses:
www.businessweek.com/1996/43/b349881.htm

Statisticians, in the telling of Peter L. Bernstein, are nothing less  than Promethean heroes. He argues that the people who mastered the  calculation of probabilities, beginning in 16th century Italy, stole  from the gods something more precious than fire--namely, the  understanding of risk. We can't see the future, of course, Bernstein  writes in Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. But by  calculating probabilities, we can do the next best thing: make  intelligent decisions--and take control of our lives--on the basis of  scientific forecasts. The mastery of risk is the foundation of modern  life, he contends, from insurance to the stock market to engineering,  science, and medicine.

And allow me to re-post this gem of xkcd's:

I'm all for reality. An independent investigation of reality -- detached from emotion and preconceptions -- is at the core of my values and religious faith.

I just think reality is a heck of a lot wider and deeper than some want to acknowledge.

As for extrasensory powers and such, I've heard enough plausible stories from perfectly rational people, and witnessed enough first hand, and even had a couple instances myself, to think they exist.

Not to believe, not to know -- but to think they do.

I don't see any thing magical, weird or supernatural about it. I don't believe in magic. If they do exist, they are simply a part of our existance that we don't fully understand as of yet. As such, they might not be something we could nail with an experiment in a lab, or at least not by the methods we've been trying so far. It might be, say, like trying to cram a whole jar of vasilene into a thimble. It ain't gonna work, and the results are going to be messy.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, but not something I would base any major life decisions on. And if they don't exist -- no big deal.

Got this today from the state epidemiologist:

First it was soccer match predictions by an octopus, now Gambian pouched rats perform laboratory testing. A recent study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (www.ajtmh.org/cgi/content/abstract/83/6/1308 ) described new research that utilized Gambian pouched rats to detect sputum samples that contained Mycobacterium tuberculosis. 

 

The rats achieved a sensitivity of 86.6 percent and specificity of 93 percent, which is good when compared to acid fast bacillus smears. Unfortunately, the sniffing rat test cannot replace traditional TB cultures and sensitivity testing. It also compares poorly to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis test-direct detection method (MTD) performed at the State Hygienic Laboratory by humans.

 

The scientific community has expressed some skepticism; however, the Gambian pouched rats appear to have diverse talents. They have also proven their ability to sniff out land mines

I don't think we need extrasensory perception to explain this stuff. Nonhuman perception will do it.

Jan 14, 2011 -- 11:02AM, mytmouse57 wrote:

I'm all for reality. An independent investigation of reality -- detached from emotion and preconceptions -- is at the core of my values and religious faith.....

If that were true you would not be believing in ESP and such. It's been independently investigated with detached emotions and preconceptions. There's nothing there.

You do know, don't you, that the ancient Greek mathematicians and astronomers proved the earth round, and in fact very closely estimated its actual circumference.