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Re: Still waiting...

May,

Thanks for your thoughtful message. Because I don't have much time, I'm intentionally engaging just a couple of points here.

First--because it's the most important point, IMO--I must take issue with this statement:

>>This dismissing of people's experiences denies them their intelligence - intelligence to be able to think about and then make a judgement as to whether what they had heard could be "Suggestion etc. Etc. Etc.".<<

I think this is exactly wrong--and this difference of interpretation probably lies at the root of our disagreement. To me there is nothing demeaning about the notion that our perceptions are fallible. It is a scientific fact that has been demonstrated repeatedly in the most rigorous way. It's true of me and it's true of you. I do not understand this reverence for (what amounts to subjective) perception. I do not know why you (and, certainly, others) would put what we perceive, or believe we perceive, on such a high pedestal. If this is an issue of human or individual dignity, then none of us have it.

Moving on...

Interestingly, I suspect there may be evidence one way or another about how species react to environments they have not adapted to, but I don't know the evolutionary literature well enough to know with certainty what the answer is. How do creatures respond to threats/influences they have not been evolutionarily programmed to deal with? (there is of course the whole separate issue of learned behavior...).

I BELIEVE the answer is that they ignore them and (if they are threats indeed) they--the oblivious prey--are eaten. This is one of the reasons why isolated populations are so vulnerable--they do not know enough to fear their new predators. But my understanding of this is anecdotal and incomplete. This remains an open--but, I suspect, answerable--question.

Finally, there really must be a mechanism for influencing the mind. It's true that we wouldn't necessarily have discovered it yet. But there are a couple of reasons, intellectually, to be wary of such a proposition. The first--and this is what I meant when I said before that the "threat field" you propose (though the phrase is mine) is "ethical"--is that it's nonspecific. The potential threats are diverse. What mode of influence--what mechanism--would work the same way for an electromagnetic field as it does for floor polish or carpet fibers? This would be unlike anything known to science in its ability to communicate.

The second reason for skepticism is that such things--hidden fields, hidden mass, hidden deities--have been proposed repeatedly in the history of science, and have consistently proven to be wrong. "Hidden mass" or energy theories have a logical defect in that they can explain any observation by putting the right mass or energy in the right place. They can explain anything and so therefore they explain nothing. (The phrase "hidden mass" refers to an alternative to Einstein's general relativity theory--I think it was from Ernst Mach but I could be wrong--that explained the anomalous precession of the perihelion by hypothesizing a massive object hidden behind the sun. Such a theory could explain anything if you set the amount and position of the mass just right. Einstein's theory, in contrast, made one very specific prediction, which happened to compare remarkably well with rigorous, quantitative observation. I think the agreement was to the 8th decimal place.).

The key fact remains, however, that no one has established that there are any anomalies to explain--unless you have undue faith in people's perceptions.

Best,
Jim

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