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Autcsrgv.286 net.misc utzoo!utcsrgv!donald Thu Apr 15 14:05:18 1982 Re: PSI

Concerning cwruecmp!magill's piece of April 14: It seems that everybody assumes that the possession of "psionic" powers is actually an *advantage* for the individual concerned, and that in a large population of "psipeople" the nonpsi would become the handicapped minority. Well, if he can cite SF references, so can I: a story by Poul Anderson, whose title I cannot remember (not being clairvoyant) describes the miserable life of a telepath who cannot shut out the flow of garbage from the minds around him, and on finally meeting a fellow telepath, immediately learns to hate her because all of her darkest secrets and desires were clearly readable. If we want to go back to a Darwinian view of things, an organism "adapts" only if the traits that it has enables it to survive its environment long enough to have offspring. Period. The current environment (i.e. North American society) of handicapped people is such that being handicapped *is* a survival trait (on the other hand, consider Sparta in ancient Greece...). Now the question is, given that the current population is overwhelmingly nonpsi, does being psi give an individual sufficient advantage to reproduce at a rate greater than a nonpsi, so that in the future the population is overwhelmingly psi? I don't think so. In fact, the question may be meaningless unless we figure out what we mean exactly when we say an individual has psi powers, which was not made clear in previous news.

Back to $10000 prizes and such. I believe Martin Gardner once suggested a "put up or shut up" experiment for PK: in an evacuated glass chamber (resting on a heavy solid base) place a torsion balance, such as the type used to measure the gravitational force experimentally, and have the PK-practitioner attempt to produce a reading on the balance. This seems to be a very simple and elegant experiment which has never been tried. Until then, I suppose James Randi will continue to issue his annual "Uri" awards.

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