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From: ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: ESP as evolutionary disadvantage (was: none)
Message-ID: <626@zen.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 17:41:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.626
Posted: Thu Oct 16 17:41:33 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 23:37:03 EDT
References: <217@sri-arpa.ARPA> <3598@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <2530@ihlpg.UUCP> <498@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> <2556@ihlpg.UUCP>
Sender: news@zen.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 38

In article <2556@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
>> [I wrote]
>< it.  We can imagine that the production of overpowering psychic distraction
>< requires little more resources than does thought.  
					    ^^^^^^^
>You can imagine whatever you want.  That's precisely the problem with "psychic"
>power.  Since no one knows what it is, one can imagine that psychic powers
>have exactly those properties that overcome whatever objection anyone puts
>to them.  How convenient.  Like the omnipotent God, the existence of such
>undefined powers is eminently not disprovable.

I could imagine that psychic powers are powered by tiny nuclear reactors
in the pituitary gland.  However, I instead imagined that they are related
to the process of _thought_, which is not an unreasonable assumption to
make.  Now, (I can't resist this:) for MOST OF US, the process of thought 
does not consume great amounts of resources.  For instance, I can believe
six impossible things BEFORE breakfast.

Summary: if telepathy exists, its mechanism is related to that of thought.
If its mechanism is related to that of thought, then its resource consumption
is related to that of thought.  If the resource consumption of thought is
low, then the resource consumption of telepathy is low.

><<  the development of these senses was highly favorable evolutionary.
   [I wrote]
>< So was the development of the skunk's scent.  But biological limits make
>< it hard to create a really effective , permanent, unconscious sensory
>< distraction.
>Of course, "psychic" power alone knows no biological limits!

In the same sense that thought and reasoning knows no biological limits.
You might as well argue that thought is impossible. (hmm.  Not a bad idea...)


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 "Irrationality is the square root of all evil" - Douglas Hofstadter