Draw a Venn Diagram, with “things that are causes” and “things that are effects” (get-caused-by-other things). The intersection in the middle is “reality”
Consciousness, in this model, is “effect, but not cause”—it doesn’t change any of our anticipations about the rest of the universe, and is therefor meaningless (but not intrinsically impossible)
Psionics, in this model, is being asserted as “cause, without effect”—either it actually is effected by the state of reality, and thus correlates with reality (in which case it is part of “reality”), or else it is not correlated to reality and thus cannot produce useful information on the state of said reality.
Note that “cause, without effect” does include the possibility of “a particle and anti-particle spontaneously enter the universe AND have a measurable effect on said universe before vanishing”. I can’t think of any reason to conclude that this is impossible, and it would certainly be meaningful. The point still stands that such events would by necessity be random processes, not ones that correlate with the world—you can’t gain actual information on what card someone drew this way.
Draw a Venn Diagram, with “things that are causes” and “things that are effects” (get-caused-by-other things). The intersection in the middle is “reality”
Consciousness, in this model, is “effect, but not cause”—it doesn’t change any of our anticipations about the rest of the universe, and is therefor meaningless (but not intrinsically impossible)
Psionics, in this model, is being asserted as “cause, without effect”—either it actually is effected by the state of reality, and thus correlates with reality (in which case it is part of “reality”), or else it is not correlated to reality and thus cannot produce useful information on the state of said reality.
Note that “cause, without effect” does include the possibility of “a particle and anti-particle spontaneously enter the universe AND have a measurable effect on said universe before vanishing”. I can’t think of any reason to conclude that this is impossible, and it would certainly be meaningful. The point still stands that such events would by necessity be random processes, not ones that correlate with the world—you can’t gain actual information on what card someone drew this way.