> Hey, all --
>
> As long as we're throwing around the idea, why not set up some tests?
> E-mail readings would seem the perfect means for eliminating verbal or
> non-verbal feedback (which most "psychics" use as a guide for their
> interpretations...).
> If the tests fail, we may be able to decisively bring an end to this
> thread.... (Question is, who wants to say that it works? My previous post
> should have made my views on that point clear enough. :b )
1) As long as we're considering tests:
a) One CRITICAL variable is whether the reader/querent pair are
different persons [the above would test this fine], or the SAME person.
The latter is highly untraditional, but the coarse statistics I've kept
[not enough basis to generalize, for several reasons] suggest that there
are differences between the two modes. Unfortunately,
cross-generalization also is harder.
b) There should be some sort of analysis for specificity, and some
method of measuring reinforcements. [There's a huge difference between
predicting the temperature to within 5 degrees F and 1 degree F. The
former is routine, the latter amazing in the US for a 12-hour forecast.]
> BTW, Wade:
> I agree with your comment that religious texts are intended for
> obfuscation -- in the main. But some are also intended to set up immutable
> codes of conduct and law (the Qur'an comes to mind as an example), and
> others are intended to usurp recognition for historical acts (I & II
> Judges, for example). Obfuscatory texts are better represented by such
> books as the Dhammapada (Bhuddist), the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu), and the
> Zohar (Qabbalistic Judaic). All of these share the trait of having been
> written by the "enlightened," rather than by "historians" or prophets.
I haven't read the Dhammapada itself, but the Diamond and Heart Sutras
[also Buddhist texts] are obfuscatory--UNLESS read with intuitionistic
logic as the underlying background! That logic renders them highly
lucid. Unfortunately, this logic was unknown until the 1930's. It is
best used to detect nonconstructive mathematical reasoning; such
reasoning, valid in conventional logic, is invalid under intuitionistic
logic. [The term is TECHNICAL, and has very little to do with 'intuition'.]
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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