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From: cooper@pbsvax.DEC (Topher Cooper HLO2-3/M08 DTN225-5819)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Geller
Message-ID: <2699@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Jun-85 19:22:44 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jun 14 19:22:44 1985
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This is the first of several postings I plan to make.  In this one I will
present my general feelings about the evidence for Geller's legitimacy, without
responding directly to previous postings.  In later postings I will comment
on what has already been said (and to whatever responses this elicits).

    1.	If you believe that Geller is "strictly legit", never resorting
	to trickery, you are a fool.

    2.	If you have concluded, only on the basis of the publicly available
	reports of Geller's activities, that PK (psychokinesis) is real
	and that Geller practices it, you are naive.

    3.  If you don't have a fair amount of knowledge about the techniques of
	prestidigitation you should hesitate to base a positive evaluation of
	Geller's abilities on personal observation, particularly under
	"uncontrolled" conditions.

    4.  You should be very sure of the knowledge (and honesty, of course) of
	anyone who's testimony you rely on to reach a positive verdict about
	Geller.

With that out of the way, I will further say that I believe that Uri Geller
probably at times accomplishes his feats by means of PK.

The publicly available reports of Geller's activities are no where near enough
evidence to overcome the VERY low A PRIORI probability I would attach to
the existence of PK.  There exists, however,  a large body of experimental
evidence, ranging in quality from moderate to high, that PK exists.  Although
some people who have examined this evidence disagree, I think that as a whole
it provides overwhelming evidence for the existence of PK.

Since I do not consider PK next to impossible to start with, I feel that the
relatively modest evidence of Geller's abilities is sufficient to conclude that
it is more likely than not that Geller can at times use it.  I would not be
shocked, however, to learn he was a complete fake.

One problem I have with the question of Geller's legitimacy, is that he
demonstrates a "rare" form of PK.  There is much less evidence for this type
of PK.  I am speaking of "static-PK" or "directly-observable PK".  Most of
the evidence for PK comes from experiments where small effects are detected
by statistical techniques applied to many observations of a system with a
high degree of indeterminacy (randomness).  Geller seems to demonstrate
a level of PK which does not require such techniques.  My feeling, however,
is that directly-observable PK is just an extreme form of the same phenomenon
found in statistical PK experiments and that we should expect a few exceptional
individuals who can occasionally exhibit it.  There is a fair amount of
evidence (independent of Geller) for the existence of directly observable PK
and so this aspect only slightly lowers the probability I assign to Geller's
legitimacy.

Geller's favorite trick, PK-MB (psychokinetic metal-bending, a.k.a. the "Geller
effect") had not been studied, to the best of my knowledge, before Geller
arrived on the scene.  Once again, given (in the conditional probability sense
of the term) the existence of PK, I think that the probability of PK-MB is
pretty high.  Furthermore, experiments done since Geller seem to have
demonstrated fairly well the reality of PK-MB (as well as having demonstrated
that if you advertise for "psychics" you will get a lot of frauds.).

		Topher Cooper

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Disclaimer:  This contains my own opinions, and I am solely responsible for
them.