The nature of precognition cannot be reliably investigated under the physicalist paradigm that dominates contemporary science. That paradigm, for all its strengths, presupposes a model of reality in which linear time, material causality, and measurement-based repeatability are foundational. So the debate becomes ideological. One side defends a closed system where anomalies are statistical noise or experimenter error. The other insists there’s something real behind the veil, however blurry.
And there is a "there" there. Statistically. Experientially. Cross-culturally. But it resists containment. It does not show up reliably under lab conditions, or rather, it may show up but not consistently enough to satisfy a model that demands uniformity over context sensitivity.
This suggests not fraud but paradigm failure.
Still, the gatekeepers of a paradigm are rarely the ones to challenge it. Their careers, epistemologies, and identities are built around its scaffolding. And those who reject other paradigms—often due to real frustrations with superstition, grift, or past trauma—aren’t easily moved. Belief is part of the feedback loop that constructs reality, but that mechanism isn’t clean or linear. It’s messy. Emergent. Interfered with by culture, trauma, technology, language.
Precognition isn’t proof of magic. But it is proof of a boundary. One we do not yet model well. The answer isn’t to dismiss the question but to acknowledge that our frameworks are overdue for reinvention. Better models are needed, and historically, humans have always been late in admitting when their old ones stopped working.
I'm a little confused by the use of the term "materialism"? If the research you discuss is demonstrated experimentally as being robust but we lack an explanation for its mechanism of action, why would that be a reason to attribute it to something "immaterial" (unclear what that even means beyond inexplicable)? If in 50 years new discoveries in physics explain the phenomenon and its mechanism for action, does it slip back into the realm of the "material"?
It's a good question/criticism and there is definitely some hand-waving and equivocation that goes on when most people discuss this. To me and I think most others the distinction is something like this:
Materialism: matter is fundamental, mind/consciousness (somehow) arises from matter
Idealism: mind is fundamental and/or matter itself is (somehow) minded.
There might be a meaningful distinction to be made between precognition and other para-phenomenon (e.g. ESP, non-corporeal intelligences - i.e. spirits), but it seems easier to imagine how these phenomenon would arise in an idealist framework (though it's not impossible there is materialist explanation). There is also a related question of naturalism - are the laws of nature mutable by forces/principles/entities which are (somehow) outside of nature? This speaks to the question you raise. I guess one way of thinking about this is nature = scientifically amenable phenomenon (for example, a transcendent being intervenes in a manner which is not objectively verifiable because its subjective or intrinsically non-repeatable and unpredictable).
"Indeed, after a certain point of tautological criticism of nearly a century of academic ESP research, it becomes difficult to avoid using a strong word that I prefer not to use and that I do not use lightly: suppression."
Another perspective:
We have spent a century researching parapsychology and what we see are experiments with just-barely-significant results, failures to replicate, and effect sizes that shrink as methods improve. This is the absence of a phenomenon, not "suppression". Also, skepticism =/= suppression. Going off the author's own narrative, this all took place out in the open. There were replication attempts and public scrutiny. The failures to confirm Bem's research came despite openness, so the real complaint here is, obviously, about the consensus interpretation of his research, the development of which occurred in plain sight. The author's insistence on censorship is a purely rhetorical move.
Speaking of rhetoric, I agree with the other commenter, Robin, that the introduction to this post is merely obfuscation. I am generally skeptical of people using physics to make tangential positive claims, and I almost hate to address this frantic gesturing towards physics, but here we go:
Relativity concerns duration and does not permit sending information into the past. Trotting out string theory and quantum mechanics is empty speculation *at best*. Then we venture into the realm of vibes and get suspiciously close to the (untestable) hypothesis that this sort of phenomenon only appears when people *believe* in the right way, and certainly not when any skeptics are around.
And how can you have a discussion about Bem these days without even mentioning p-hacking or the garden of forking paths? Anyway, complicated statistical methods are no replacement for sound scientific method.
I'm more inclined to give psi a nonzero prior, and I'm all for people applying the scientific method to it, especially when all they're going to get is disbelieving stares from their peers. But I have to agree that the vague gesturing at quantum physics, relativity and string theory (!) was a strong minus for this article.
Yeah I agree, we do need to be regularly reminded that the scientific picture is very far from the easy intuition of a "vibe materialist".
One pithy way of putting that is that as far as the scientific picture is concerned, the universe is not made of "things", like bodies or planets or even particles. As far as we know it's comprised of solutions to equations, which have no obligation to behave in the way that we humans, with our evolved cognition, intuitively relate to macroscopic things.
When I read philosophy or metaphysics blogs, I often find that the hidden, unexamined assumption behind it all is that reality is fundamentally made of distinct entities, with their own properties and relationships. And I don't really think modern physics validates that view.
As Nietzsche said over a century ago, "And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom!"
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
I'll admit opening my comment with the rhetorical question of "satire?" was unnecessary, but my response was not meant to "scold" anyone.
1) Sure, anyone with an interest in the philosophy or history of science would know that the 20th century showed us our ideas of scientific progress, proof and even "truth" were not as simple as commonly supposed. But "science works in mystery ways" is just an empty phrase (to me), or, at least, I'm doubtful it is ever helpful in the context of a discussion around a scientific examination of a specific phenomenon.
2) I won't argue the weirdness of our physics theories, but, as I mentioned in my comment, I think it is right to be very skeptical of people who shoehorn them in to make tangential, positive claims, especially when there is no entailment but just vague gesturing at "weirdness". When I open an article about Bem where the subtitle includes "...his data has stood up", I would expect the article to engage with the proposed phenomenon on a certain level, within a specific practice (namely, the scientific practice), one in which bringing up quantum and string theory is nothing but a distraction, and one where I would expect a discussion of p-hacking and the garden of forking paths to feature prominently.
Perhaps you will say that all this is "close minded", but if that be the case then I think one has to be a bit "close minded" to do science -- and not everyone has to do science!
3) The sentiment here is self-contradictory, and I don't know anything about a "comment on the porn images".
I enjoy this blog and would hope my responses (even when they are overzealous) are welcome additions to the discussion.
Edit: I see some particulars of your comment were actually in response to a different commenter, but I'll leave my response as is.
Yeah sorry about the confusion - I read the "satire" part of your response and projected more of the sentiment from the other comment onto yours. Your criticism was much more valid vs. his name-calling the essay as "pseudoscience" (which, like "fringe science", is a meaningless pejorative label. There is science of higher/lower quality and rigor, there are well-supported and unsupported theories, but there is no such thing as a pseudoscientific topic. similarly, I don't even know what fringe science could mean - what is unfringe science, replication?).
1) I think it's pretty clear what I mean by science works in mysterious ways in context so I'm not sure what your point is. Maybe you don't need to hear this, but everyone talks a big game about being open-minded and how the growth of knowledge is intrinsically unpredictable, but when the rubber meets the road they scream heresy (or satire?) and start clutching their pearls.
2) I mean I agree with your basic point, but you can't have it both ways - so many people automatically dismiss phenomenon which don't neatly fit into their materialist framework with hand-wavy anti-scientific arguments, and then dismiss equally hand-wavy stuff on the other side. If there were truly no way to make room for paranormal/parapsychological phenomena with current theories that would be one thing, but that's not even remotely true (and sure that's a much bigger argument and it's not really worth having a few hand-wavy paragraphs about it in this essay, but I see why they feel the need to include it).
This otherwise worthwhile article is drastically weakened by the foolish and nonsensical tour of hot keywords in physics at the beginning. It is not parapsychologists' job to try to explain why physics might permit ESP, only to detect whether ESP is happening. If they're truly wise they will avoid making themselves out to be faulty-minded cranks by avoiding all mention of string theory and multiverses like the plague. When was the last time you saw an ordinary psychologist mention speculative physics as justification of their right to investigate whatever psychological phenomenon they like?
I agree - reposting a comment made elsewhere that speaks to this.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
! OK, don't mind if I do. Sadly I can't imagine there's going to be anything of interest to hear from a project run by such a self-destructive fool. (Next time, I'd consider not blindly copy-pasting a comment where you personally insult and then curse out a commenter who said something wildly different than I did--if you would actually read my comment you might have noted that I'm actively supportive of having shared a parapsychology post, which puts me in probably the 95th percentile of "on your side" among scientifically trained readers. And yet, I will never read you again. Sad.)
Woahhh buddy, I thought it was pretty clear I agreed with you - your sentiment was not at all like the comment I responded to (you actually found the article worthwhile). I just shared my comment because I discussed the pros/cons of the physics stuff which you discussed as well.
Re: self-destructive fool - my guy, its a random science blog run by pseudonymous blogger, shit is not that serious. If someone is going to come at us and be an asshole (which, again, you did not), then we are going to give it back, there is no professionalism to maintain here. If you don't want to read the blog anymore then by all means, you can fuck right off too ;)
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mysterious ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects or anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many very live interpretations of current theories (e.g. the Block Universe) and open theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
Thanks for the scolding.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your close-minded, sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
"SoS goes pseudoscience", "disheartening", "gaslighting", "no longer a science blog" - this is not rational argumentation, this is emotional science policing, name-calling, and finger-wagging. I gave various arguments for why your definition of science is excessively narrow and ultimately non-productive and why something like this essay, despite its flaws, has value and is worth publishing in this kind of outlet and you respond with childish sanctimony.
So yes that is not welcome here. You sound like such an idiot, do better.
The nature of precognition cannot be reliably investigated under the physicalist paradigm that dominates contemporary science. That paradigm, for all its strengths, presupposes a model of reality in which linear time, material causality, and measurement-based repeatability are foundational. So the debate becomes ideological. One side defends a closed system where anomalies are statistical noise or experimenter error. The other insists there’s something real behind the veil, however blurry.
And there is a "there" there. Statistically. Experientially. Cross-culturally. But it resists containment. It does not show up reliably under lab conditions, or rather, it may show up but not consistently enough to satisfy a model that demands uniformity over context sensitivity.
This suggests not fraud but paradigm failure.
Still, the gatekeepers of a paradigm are rarely the ones to challenge it. Their careers, epistemologies, and identities are built around its scaffolding. And those who reject other paradigms—often due to real frustrations with superstition, grift, or past trauma—aren’t easily moved. Belief is part of the feedback loop that constructs reality, but that mechanism isn’t clean or linear. It’s messy. Emergent. Interfered with by culture, trauma, technology, language.
Precognition isn’t proof of magic. But it is proof of a boundary. One we do not yet model well. The answer isn’t to dismiss the question but to acknowledge that our frameworks are overdue for reinvention. Better models are needed, and historically, humans have always been late in admitting when their old ones stopped working.
Well said! ;)
I'm a little confused by the use of the term "materialism"? If the research you discuss is demonstrated experimentally as being robust but we lack an explanation for its mechanism of action, why would that be a reason to attribute it to something "immaterial" (unclear what that even means beyond inexplicable)? If in 50 years new discoveries in physics explain the phenomenon and its mechanism for action, does it slip back into the realm of the "material"?
It's a good question/criticism and there is definitely some hand-waving and equivocation that goes on when most people discuss this. To me and I think most others the distinction is something like this:
Materialism: matter is fundamental, mind/consciousness (somehow) arises from matter
Idealism: mind is fundamental and/or matter itself is (somehow) minded.
There might be a meaningful distinction to be made between precognition and other para-phenomenon (e.g. ESP, non-corporeal intelligences - i.e. spirits), but it seems easier to imagine how these phenomenon would arise in an idealist framework (though it's not impossible there is materialist explanation). There is also a related question of naturalism - are the laws of nature mutable by forces/principles/entities which are (somehow) outside of nature? This speaks to the question you raise. I guess one way of thinking about this is nature = scientifically amenable phenomenon (for example, a transcendent being intervenes in a manner which is not objectively verifiable because its subjective or intrinsically non-repeatable and unpredictable).
Satire?
"Indeed, after a certain point of tautological criticism of nearly a century of academic ESP research, it becomes difficult to avoid using a strong word that I prefer not to use and that I do not use lightly: suppression."
Another perspective:
We have spent a century researching parapsychology and what we see are experiments with just-barely-significant results, failures to replicate, and effect sizes that shrink as methods improve. This is the absence of a phenomenon, not "suppression". Also, skepticism =/= suppression. Going off the author's own narrative, this all took place out in the open. There were replication attempts and public scrutiny. The failures to confirm Bem's research came despite openness, so the real complaint here is, obviously, about the consensus interpretation of his research, the development of which occurred in plain sight. The author's insistence on censorship is a purely rhetorical move.
Speaking of rhetoric, I agree with the other commenter, Robin, that the introduction to this post is merely obfuscation. I am generally skeptical of people using physics to make tangential positive claims, and I almost hate to address this frantic gesturing towards physics, but here we go:
Relativity concerns duration and does not permit sending information into the past. Trotting out string theory and quantum mechanics is empty speculation *at best*. Then we venture into the realm of vibes and get suspiciously close to the (untestable) hypothesis that this sort of phenomenon only appears when people *believe* in the right way, and certainly not when any skeptics are around.
And how can you have a discussion about Bem these days without even mentioning p-hacking or the garden of forking paths? Anyway, complicated statistical methods are no replacement for sound scientific method.
I'm more inclined to give psi a nonzero prior, and I'm all for people applying the scientific method to it, especially when all they're going to get is disbelieving stares from their peers. But I have to agree that the vague gesturing at quantum physics, relativity and string theory (!) was a strong minus for this article.
agreed but see comment above
> see comment above
Yeah I agree, we do need to be regularly reminded that the scientific picture is very far from the easy intuition of a "vibe materialist".
One pithy way of putting that is that as far as the scientific picture is concerned, the universe is not made of "things", like bodies or planets or even particles. As far as we know it's comprised of solutions to equations, which have no obligation to behave in the way that we humans, with our evolved cognition, intuitively relate to macroscopic things.
When I read philosophy or metaphysics blogs, I often find that the hidden, unexamined assumption behind it all is that reality is fundamentally made of distinct entities, with their own properties and relationships. And I don't really think modern physics validates that view.
As Nietzsche said over a century ago, "And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom!"
love this framing, well said
Thanks for the scolding.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
I'll admit opening my comment with the rhetorical question of "satire?" was unnecessary, but my response was not meant to "scold" anyone.
1) Sure, anyone with an interest in the philosophy or history of science would know that the 20th century showed us our ideas of scientific progress, proof and even "truth" were not as simple as commonly supposed. But "science works in mystery ways" is just an empty phrase (to me), or, at least, I'm doubtful it is ever helpful in the context of a discussion around a scientific examination of a specific phenomenon.
2) I won't argue the weirdness of our physics theories, but, as I mentioned in my comment, I think it is right to be very skeptical of people who shoehorn them in to make tangential, positive claims, especially when there is no entailment but just vague gesturing at "weirdness". When I open an article about Bem where the subtitle includes "...his data has stood up", I would expect the article to engage with the proposed phenomenon on a certain level, within a specific practice (namely, the scientific practice), one in which bringing up quantum and string theory is nothing but a distraction, and one where I would expect a discussion of p-hacking and the garden of forking paths to feature prominently.
Perhaps you will say that all this is "close minded", but if that be the case then I think one has to be a bit "close minded" to do science -- and not everyone has to do science!
3) The sentiment here is self-contradictory, and I don't know anything about a "comment on the porn images".
I enjoy this blog and would hope my responses (even when they are overzealous) are welcome additions to the discussion.
Edit: I see some particulars of your comment were actually in response to a different commenter, but I'll leave my response as is.
Yeah sorry about the confusion - I read the "satire" part of your response and projected more of the sentiment from the other comment onto yours. Your criticism was much more valid vs. his name-calling the essay as "pseudoscience" (which, like "fringe science", is a meaningless pejorative label. There is science of higher/lower quality and rigor, there are well-supported and unsupported theories, but there is no such thing as a pseudoscientific topic. similarly, I don't even know what fringe science could mean - what is unfringe science, replication?).
1) I think it's pretty clear what I mean by science works in mysterious ways in context so I'm not sure what your point is. Maybe you don't need to hear this, but everyone talks a big game about being open-minded and how the growth of knowledge is intrinsically unpredictable, but when the rubber meets the road they scream heresy (or satire?) and start clutching their pearls.
2) I mean I agree with your basic point, but you can't have it both ways - so many people automatically dismiss phenomenon which don't neatly fit into their materialist framework with hand-wavy anti-scientific arguments, and then dismiss equally hand-wavy stuff on the other side. If there were truly no way to make room for paranormal/parapsychological phenomena with current theories that would be one thing, but that's not even remotely true (and sure that's a much bigger argument and it's not really worth having a few hand-wavy paragraphs about it in this essay, but I see why they feel the need to include it).
This otherwise worthwhile article is drastically weakened by the foolish and nonsensical tour of hot keywords in physics at the beginning. It is not parapsychologists' job to try to explain why physics might permit ESP, only to detect whether ESP is happening. If they're truly wise they will avoid making themselves out to be faulty-minded cranks by avoiding all mention of string theory and multiverses like the plague. When was the last time you saw an ordinary psychologist mention speculative physics as justification of their right to investigate whatever psychological phenomenon they like?
I agree - reposting a comment made elsewhere that speaks to this.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
! OK, don't mind if I do. Sadly I can't imagine there's going to be anything of interest to hear from a project run by such a self-destructive fool. (Next time, I'd consider not blindly copy-pasting a comment where you personally insult and then curse out a commenter who said something wildly different than I did--if you would actually read my comment you might have noted that I'm actively supportive of having shared a parapsychology post, which puts me in probably the 95th percentile of "on your side" among scientifically trained readers. And yet, I will never read you again. Sad.)
Woahhh buddy, I thought it was pretty clear I agreed with you - your sentiment was not at all like the comment I responded to (you actually found the article worthwhile). I just shared my comment because I discussed the pros/cons of the physics stuff which you discussed as well.
Re: self-destructive fool - my guy, its a random science blog run by pseudonymous blogger, shit is not that serious. If someone is going to come at us and be an asshole (which, again, you did not), then we are going to give it back, there is no professionalism to maintain here. If you don't want to read the blog anymore then by all means, you can fuck right off too ;)
What, if any, is the relation to the recent Mossbridge experiment?
https://www.earth.com/news/can-the-future-affect-the-past-unsettling-new-physics-of-time-research-says-maybe/
Thanks for the scolding.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mysterious ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects or anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many very live interpretations of current theories (e.g. the Block Universe) and open theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
Thanks for the scolding.
1) This isn't Science or Nature, or a peer-reviewed journal. Our stated mission is to promote greater creativity/diversity of thought in science and give a platform for the more exploratory/speculative side of research. Science works in mystery ways, as even the most cursory understanding of its history shows - false findings, incorrect hypotheses, and dead-ends often drive progress in surprising ways, closed debates become re-opened, ideas appear ahead of their time and are dismissed because of it, small effects of anomalies lead to big breakthroughs, etc. etc. Mysticism, the paranormal and the supernatural have informed, inspired, and challenged science/technology since time immemorial.
2) Yeah I don't love the quantum woo stuff either, but we would all do well to remember how deeply weird/woo our current physics is and how it will likely only get weirder still ("the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose..."). When so many scientists take materialism as dogma, we probably do need reminders of how little we know and how tentative our knowledge is - everything is still on the table and there are many live interpretation of current theories and theoretical possibilities in which precog, ESP, etc. are plausible and would exist in a manner that would make them highly difficult to study in a laboratory to large, predictable effect three. There is also tons and tons of well-supported anecdotal data that informs the study of parapsychology, but you seem like the kind of person who dismisses anecdotal evidence out of hand that doesn't fit with their preconceived notion of how reality works.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
3) Criticism is always welcome here (your comment on the porn images is valuable in this regard), but kindly go fuck off and take your close-minded, sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere. Clearly, this isn't the science blog for you.
"SoS goes pseudoscience", "disheartening", "gaslighting", "no longer a science blog" - this is not rational argumentation, this is emotional science policing, name-calling, and finger-wagging. I gave various arguments for why your definition of science is excessively narrow and ultimately non-productive and why something like this essay, despite its flaws, has value and is worth publishing in this kind of outlet and you respond with childish sanctimony.
So yes that is not welcome here. You sound like such an idiot, do better.