...this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
Before people did these, all we had was overwhelming anecdotal evidence in favour of parapsychology.
Every culture, nay, every family is chock-full of reliable witnesses that give accounts of how they personally experienced paranormal phenomena.
In the face of such persistent, recurring reports, you can hardly blame people for wanting to investigate.
It is only after you do studies under laboratory conditions that you can begin to show that this anecdotal evidence is a product of selection bias.
While I am personally quite convinced that selection bias is all that is needed to explain the phenomena, this doesn’t take away the immense cultural significance of the phenomena that were selected in this way. In this sense, parapsychology is not “wrong”, it’s just cultural (as opposed to supernatural).
At the end of the day, science doesn’t attach value to anything. It is just capable of describing what arises from what.
Meaning arises from subjective choice alone, and as humans we are much more interested in meaning and made-up patterns than in a full list of all hydrogen atoms in the biosphere, no matter how “objective”.
The consensus belief that parapsychology is nonsense is not a pre-judgment; it is an informed judgment based on overwhelming evidence.
….this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
No, the evidence against precognition comes from overwhelming evidence in favor of a model of physics in which the arrow of time doesn’t reverse. The evidence against telepathy comes from studies of communication channels between remote humans that don’t show anything outside sound waves and visual-frequency electromagnetic radiation.
It’s the constraints imposed by an underlying model we’re extremely certain of; not the direct experiments on the parapsychological theory in question.
...this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
Before people did these, all we had was overwhelming anecdotal evidence in favour of parapsychology. Every culture, nay, every family is chock-full of reliable witnesses that give accounts of how they personally experienced paranormal phenomena. In the face of such persistent, recurring reports, you can hardly blame people for wanting to investigate. It is only after you do studies under laboratory conditions that you can begin to show that this anecdotal evidence is a product of selection bias.
While I am personally quite convinced that selection bias is all that is needed to explain the phenomena, this doesn’t take away the immense cultural significance of the phenomena that were selected in this way. In this sense, parapsychology is not “wrong”, it’s just cultural (as opposed to supernatural). At the end of the day, science doesn’t attach value to anything. It is just capable of describing what arises from what. Meaning arises from subjective choice alone, and as humans we are much more interested in meaning and made-up patterns than in a full list of all hydrogen atoms in the biosphere, no matter how “objective”.
No, the evidence against precognition comes from overwhelming evidence in favor of a model of physics in which the arrow of time doesn’t reverse. The evidence against telepathy comes from studies of communication channels between remote humans that don’t show anything outside sound waves and visual-frequency electromagnetic radiation.
It’s the constraints imposed by an underlying model we’re extremely certain of; not the direct experiments on the parapsychological theory in question.