Princeton cannot tell you if you personally have ESP or not, they cannot tell me if I have ESP or not, they cannot tell if anyone has ESP or not. All they can do is hide behind a nameless, faceless crowd behind some statistics. If they could test people with ESP, they would follow proper statistical procedures by having a "control" group of people without ESP to test against those who do have ESP. But they can't do it because people with names that have ESP can't be found.

The PEAR report you cited has a very very weak correlation, ie -- the difference between "psychic" and "non-psychic" was very small, so small that it is impossible to tell the difference between a lucky guess and ESP. Furthermore, you are confusing correlation with causation. Just because some people made luckier guesses than others does not prove that ESP was the cause, just that there is a correlation:

"Anthropologists studying a tribe in the South Seas found the natives believing that body lice promoted good health. It turns out that this was not just just superstition. Almost every healthy person had some lice, but many sick people did not. So the percentage of healthy people with lice was clearly higher than the percentage of sick people with lice. Thus there was a clear positive correlation between having lice and being healthy.

The reason for the correlation, however, was not that having lice made you healthy. It was that being sick caused you to not have lice. Lice are not stupid, they prefer healthy bodies to sick ones"

(UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING, Ronald N Giere, pg 188)

There is no proven cause for the very weak correlation listed in the PEAR report, so there are too many unknown variables responsible for the results.

Which brings up another point, namely, did PEAR ever find a person who DIDN'T have any ESP? Why not? If everyone has ESP, why can't anyone demonstrate it on a continual basis, ie -- why can't PEAR reproduce their results using just one person? According to your's and their "theory", there should be absolutely no difference between testing one person and testing hundreds.

The problem with PEAR and every other paranormal "research" facility, is they conduct invalid or inappropriate experiments to try and prove the existence of the paranormal. Statistical experiments are inappropriate to phenomenon that are not statistical by nature. Group behavior is a statistical phenonmenon. Falling apples are not. The average height of an ocean wave is a statistical phenomenon. The freezing point of pure water is not.

Paranormal phenomenon is not a statistical phenomenon and a statistical experiment will not prove anything other than a correlation exists (and correlations are not causes).

No matter how many "references" or "sources" you cite, it still comes down to this: If ESP exists, it obviously is meant to mean it exists in real life people, so unless you can start showing me people with ESP and calling them by name, it is meresay; it is wishful thinking. If ESP is so universal as PEAR would have you believe, why can I walk down the street, go to the Mall, travel across the world, go to a ballgame, and go to work and not ever come across a single solitary person with the slightest hint of a paranormal ability? All I ever come across are people who blindly believe they are psychic, but when you call their bluff, they fall flat on their faces every single time, without exception. If you can't name a name (and please, make it somebody who lives somewhere here locally), you have absolutely no rational, factual ground to stand on in your claim that paranormal abilities 'exist'.

If there are all these people out there than can move dice using mind power alone, then by all means have them roll dice using mind power alone. Don't sit there and roll the dice for them and take a statistical sample of their guesses and call it "psychokinesis" -- that's total stupidity! If there are all these people out there that can read my mind, then please, by all means, read my mind. The fact is that nobody can do it -- or do you want to try it for yourself, unless are you one of the "rare exceptions" that has no ESP abilities?

Have you ever heard of the truth-in-advertising law? Let us try applying that to our conversations here, okay? Instead of calling it 'psychic ability', which you admit it isn't, let's call it 'psychic inability'. And instead of calling it 'psychic power', which you admit it isn't, let's call it 'psychic weakness'. And since, as you further admit, psychic inability/weakness only occurs at random (random meaning unpredictable) therefore it should not and cannot be reproduced because random events, by definition, are not reproducible.

So whose side are you really on? You just admitted that psychic phenomenon is weak, irreproducible, and unpredictable -- in other words, insubstantial. You give better arguments for the skeptics then you do the believers. Thanks!

Yet you turn around and in the same breath cite Princeton as proof for your blind faith beliefs in ESP, unaware of the blatent contradiction you create by doing so since Princeton claims that ESP is not random and you claim it is random, ie -- did you know that Princeton has had hundreds upon hundreds of people who tested positive for ESP (in fact, Princeton never found one single person who DID NOT have ESP), so it most definitely is not random and the opposite of random is predictable. So why is it neither Princeton nor a whole room full of believers just like yourself, are able to name just one single legitimate person in the whole entire world that actually has ESP? Not a singe solitary one? So yes, I too would have to agree with you that ESP is something weak, irreproducible, and insubstantial.

The problem with PEAR and every other 'paranormal research' facility, is they conduct invalid or inappropriate experiments to try and prove the existence of the 'paranormal'. Statistical experiments are inappropriate to phenomenon that are not statistical by nature. Group behavior is a statistical phenonmenon. Falling apples are not. The average height of an ocean wave is a statistical phenomenon. The freezing point of pure water is not. If there are all these people out there than can move dice using mind power alone, then by all means have them roll dice using mind power alone. Don't sit there and roll the dice for them and take a statistical sample of their guesses and call it 'psychokinesis' -- that's sheer stupidity! If there are all these people out there that can move objects by thought alone, then please, by all means, somebody try and move an object by thought alone instead of pretending to be able to move an object by thought alone. By 'helping' the contestents along instead of just sitting back and letting them actually demonstrate something, I will have to agree with you that ESP is nothing more than a weak, irreproducible, and insubstantial belief.

And I wonder why PEAR cannot reproduce their results using just one single person who passed from a prior test? According to the believers "theory of ESP", there should be absolutely no difference between testing one single person and testing hundreds, so why do all believers refuse to test one person? I'll tell you why, because neither Princeton nor you can tell if anyone has ESP or not, so they have to hide behind a nameless, faceless crowd -- just like you do. If they could test real life people with real life ESP, they would follow proper statistical procedures by having a control-group of people without ESP to test against those who do have ESP. But they can't do that because people with names that have ESP don't exist, as you repeatedly keep proving for us. Obviously you will never be able to name anyone that you have ever personally known that has ESP. It's a case of THE EMPEROR'S NEW ESP -- lots of people like you claiming to be the only ones who can "see" it but not a single one of you nimwits can actually demonstrate it outside of your poorly thought out imagination nor have you ever seen a legitimate demonstration of any ESP ability in your whole life. So yes, once again, I would have to agree with you that ESP is something weak, irreproducible, and insubstantial.

I would ask you to try and demonstrate some that good ol' fashioned ESP that you speak so highly of Altheim, but I figure that you must be on one of those "very extremely rare exceptions" that have no ESP abilities, just like me and everybody else you and I personally know. Afterall, if ESP was as universal as PEAR would have you believe, why can you or I or anyone we know, walk down the street, go to the Mall, travel across the world, go to a ballgame, or go to work and never ever come across a person with the slightest hint of a paranormal ability? All I ever come across are people who blindly believe they are psychic, but when you call their make believe bluff, they fall flat on their faces every single time...without exception! Since you can't name one single solitary name, I will have to agree with you that ESP is therefore something weak, irreproducible, and insubstantial.

Rather than settle this issue once and for all by naming one person with an earth-shaking PSI abilities, you would rather we accept by blind unreasoning faith, as you have, that some person, somewhere -- you don't know exactly who or exactly where -- but someone has this earth-shaking ability? Instead, the best thing you can cite in support of your New Age belief is an ambigious claim to some "data" somewhere, which is an example of incomplete and invalid reasoning because scientifically obtained data isn't just about the end results because it takes data to make data. So what is just as interesting as the results are is what data was responsible for obtaining the end results with? The end results cannot just appear out of thin air like New Age magic, they had to have been extracted from someone or something real. Yet once again, I would have to wholeheartedly agree with you that ESP is something weak, irreproducible, and insubstantial.

I want to *personally* verify for myself that ESP exists outside of your imagination and the only way that is ever going to happen is if one of you out there could actually name someone with ESP for once in your life. What nimwits like you can't seem to grasp, is the simple logical concept of if you can't name one single person with some actual ESP, then what we have here is a case of blind faith belief on your part, instead of logical contemplation of personally verifiable facts. Because of your complete and total inability to name anyone, it is an irrefutable fact that it isn't just me that has never seen anyone with ESP, no one in the world has ever seen anyone with an unambigious legitimately demonstrable ESP ability -- not me, not you, not anyone you know knows of anyone, there is no one posting on the internet that knows...there absolutely no one. If there was someone, they would have been named here already weeks ago when I first asked. They would be famous and well known.

On September 6, 1995, the Public Affairs Bureau of the Central Intelligence Agency released the following statement regarding that agency's role in Remote Viewing:

"As mandated by Congress, CIA is reviewing available information and past research programs concerning parapsychological phenomena, mainly 'Remote Viewing' to determine whether they might have any utility for intelligence collection. - CIA sponsored research on this subject in the 1970s -- At that time, the program, always considered speculative and controversial, was determined to be unpromising" (CIA STATEMENT ON 'REMOTE VIEWING', by the CIA Public Affairs Office, 6 September 1995)

So what the CIA actually said, as determined straight from their mouth instead of via the blind faith believer's method of quoting hearsay, meresay, and make believe is that RV was unpromising.

What else did they say? How about:

"It is unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of the target or some other characteristic of the methods was used. Use of the same remote viewers, the same judge, and the same target photographs makes it impossible to identify their independent effects"

In other words, the experiment was completely flawed. It could prove nor disprove anything. No wonder it was unpromising.

"The information provided was inconsistent, inaccurate with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective interpretation"

In other words, the RV 'data' was determined to be sloppy, vague, and supported only by alot of wishful thinking.

"In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations"

Well right there we have undeniable proof that the RV experiment was a complete flop since the whole entire goal of the RV program was to see if RV had "any utility for intelligence collection". In 22 years of study, it had (and still has) absolutely no utility. None whatsoever.

Case closed!

Psychologists are all very aware of the fact that the mind deceives us. We are especially prone to distorting the details of cause or sequence under stress. The unconscious ignores time and it remembers things in terms of narratives and emotional content and not sequence or logic. Rarely do people ever tell a completely straight story -- any psychology textbook will tell you that. It is in people's nature to confabulate, misperceive, and acquire false memories -- in fact the longer the elapsed time between an event and the time it actually gets documented, the taller the tale becomes. The problem with many people is that they want to incorporate their feelings alongside the facts because many people would rather see reality for what they wish it were instead of what it actually is. Is it any wonder then, that something like 50% of all Americans believe that the earth is approximately 6000 years old merely because a contradictory and contrived mythical storybook called "The Bible" says so?

What this all indicates is that ESP experiences don't happen, they only appear to happen. Take the example of psychic healings and faith healings. Both are placebo effects, and hence the reason why they cannot cure most people, especially people with physically real defects such as deformed limbs, third degree burns, etc. Interestingly, when such healings fail, the failure is always blamed on the client for lacking faith, instead of blaming the practitioner as one would logically do if a ordinary everyday medical doctor failed to treat a patient.

Where did the fairytale of the existence of ESP originate from, if it were not from prior observation or a logical extension of already existing facts (ie -- deduction)? The answer can only be, "From someone's imagination". I can imagine anything I want to imagine but that doesn't make it possible, it makes it irrelevant. I mean if there has never been a single verifiable occurrence of this mythical ESP ability being demonstrated, then what logical and common sense reason do people have for thinking that it could have or must physically exist at all? They have none because all the characteristics of ESP perfectly fit the definition for make believe and not physical reality. If you choose to consider the possibility that ESP exists, then you must also choose to consider the possibility that all science fiction writers are actually modern day historians.

At this point in time, there is no difference between Alchemy and Quantum Mechanics. Many modern day sciences started off as fringe sciences (alchemy led us to the modern day science of chemistry, for example), all of which utilized wild-ass speculations and the unconscious projections of fantasy whenever and wherever possible. That is why psychologists like Jung were so interested in bleeding edge research in physics, not because of what it "proved" in relation between matter and spirit, but what it exposed about the psychology of humans through their projections when faced with the currently unknown and unexplainable.

Certainly, if you follow the logic of quantum mechanics, you can find it easy to accept the belief that things affect one another on a cosmic scale in ways that we are yet incapable of explaining but "incapable of explaining" does not mean it can never be explained, it is only a matter of time before there will be an explanation. What quantum mechanics illustrates for us is that when a particular subject is sufficiently beyond comprehension of an individual, they will tend to think of that subject in terms of being mystical and magical. A little understanding can go along way towards eliminating superstitious thinking like that.

The efforts that some "scientists" make to find room for the operation of a supernatural divinity or magic or metaphysics are as futile to me as the crudest attempt of a witch doctor to make it rain by sprinkling water on the ground. All ESP is pure delusion based on misdirected emotion, and inaccurate and illogical thinking. ESP isn't a matter of physics but of chemistry. People high on chemicals like drugs can see or hear things too, but that doesn't make them physically real things, they still remain what they always were: hallucinations. The current laws of physics AND psychology are adequate to sufficiently explain all paranormal phenomenon and in fact, Jung himself adequately explained much parapsychological phenomena in his research article, ON THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF SO-CALLED OCCULT PHENOMENA.

I see nothing mystical or magical about quantum mechanics. What is truly mystical or magical is when someone tries to imply that what happens on a scale as small as 1e-14 meters is going to have a huge effect on something 200,000,000,000,000 times larger -- instead of the other way around. Scientists like Roger Penrose and Jack Sarfetti have their own pet quantum mechanical theories which can explain (...there's that word again...) consciousness and maybe also PSI but what these people fail to see is the obvious point that the quantum mechanical effects of one tiny electron is hardly going to have any noticeable effect on something containing trillions and trillions of electrons -- especially when you consider the fact that the indeterminateness of one or two electrons is something that only occurs in laboratories under artificial conditions and not under ordinary or natural conditions.

Jung states that,

"Great credit is due to JB Rhine for having established a reliable basis for work in the vast field of these phenomena by his experiments in extrasensory perception, or ESP. He used a pack of 25 cards divided into 5 groups of 5, each with its special sign (star, square, circle, cross, two wavy lines). The experiment was carried out as follows. In each series of experiments the pack is laid out 800 times, in such a way that the subject cannot see the cards. He is then asked to guess the cards as they are turned up. The probability of a correct answer is 1 in 5. The result, computed from very high figures, showed an average of 6.5 hits. The probability of a chance deviation of 1.5 amounts to only 1 in 250,000. Some individuals scored more than twice the probable number of hits. On one occasion all 25 cards were guessed correctly, which gives a probability of 1 in 298,023,223,876,953,125. The spatial distance between experimenter and subject was increased from a few yards to about 4,000 miles, with no effect on the result" (ON SYNCHRONICITY, Carl Jung, Portable Jung, pg 509).

Now note the following facts: Why is it that the only evidence that we supposedly have for ESP is just a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper? Why can't anyone actually demonstrate something for us? Statistics is not proof, it's a way to indicate a trend. If you want to determine a new value for a constant, you resort to statistics to narrow down the margin of error. If you want to know what the weather may be like tomorrow, you resort to statistics. If you want to determine typical behavioral reactions of humans to certain stimuli, you conduct a statistical experiment. But all of the above examples are still prone to unpredictability, and in order to be valid, must be confirmed by independent researchers. What many fail to understand is that the weather is something that happens everyday and is easily observable despite its statistical unpredictability, but on the other hand, ESP is not easily observable and is so unpredictable that so far that no one can even predict if it will happen at all. In the sciences, statistics is not considered as proof but as confirmation. Hard facts are much more useful to science in this regard. Furthermore, the only thing that can be expected from statistics is deviations from the calculated average. Nothing unusual there.

The reasoning of people like Rhine is like saying that if someone wins the lottery, that person won because of ESP and not by chance, as if it were impossible for someone to guess the correct numbers by pure chance alone. But what about the thousands of tickets that person must have bought in previous attempts, before happening across the winning number? Only if everytime a particular person plays the lottery they win, then one could say something out-of-the-ordinary was happening. What's important here is the previous trend and not whether the person got the winning number. Likewise one person guessing all 25 cards in Rhine's experiment is not impossible and should be expected to occur on occasion.

If ESP exists, it should NOT occur at random times among random individuals within a group but it should be consistently repeatable for any one particular individual. So why is it that ESP can only assert itself when people are in a group and not individually? It is individual odds that are the most important thing to note in ESP research, yet no researcher ever provides individual results.

Case in point, if PEAR or PEER research has proof of ESP, why can't they provide individual evidence as proof ESP? Why does it always have to be a nameless, faceless crowd, where ESP never occurs consistently for any one individual, but instead can only be barely gleaned from extensive data, and even then the bias is extremely small? Maybe it is because one of the nice things about using statistics instead of evidence is that it is easy to fool yourself or lie with statistics; As Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics". Afterall, it is possible by sheer coincidence for a person to go through their entire life and guess every lotto number correctly. It wouldn't be ESP, it would be the law of averages. Trying to prove ESP by washing down the data by submerging individual results in a sea of people is stupid. It proves nothing.

Let me illustrate this point with a perfect example: Go to a casino sometime and visit the bingo parlor. Note how many people come forward each hour to claim their winnings -- the number of winning individuals per hour is quite high (ie -- "proof of ESP"), but pick out a lone individual and note how many times that individual comes forward to claim their winnings -- it is very low (Oops! ESP theory doesn't look too good now!). So what these ESP researchers are really doing is reporting the high number of "winners" each hour but not listing the individual results which is much lower. The drawing line is that paranormal phenomenon have to consistently (not randomly or intermittently) display an ability or it isn't called an "ability" but an "inability". No NFL quarterback can be said to have an "ability" if it were only random or intermittent and no person can be said to have a psychic ability since it has only been displayed randomly and intermittently amongst a group and not for any one particular individual.

Then there is the mystical and magical use of the word "significant", ie -- the results of every paranormal experiment are always "significant". Who decided what is significant or not and how did they objectively determine it was significant? Was it the person conducting the research or an independent and objective observer? The reality is, "significant" is another word for "interesting". It was statistically interesting that one person guessed all 25 cards one time in Rhine's experiment, but since the subject couldn't repeat his performance more than once, it statistically proved nothing.

"The question is not whether parapsychological abilities work, the question is, 'For whom does it work?'. The answer is obvious, for it works for the blind-faith believer. The autosuggestive magic of the paranormal serves to extend the person's will...You may have grand delusions, for example, of being 'psychic' -- of exercising special magic powers of telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience, and so of being 'somebody special'. Yet only when you have abandoned your delusions of 'specialness' are they likely to work at all reliably. Only when you have acquired a total inner conviction of oneness with the world around you will the comprehensive forms of awareness to which ESP belongs start to operate. Yet by then you will no longer be the slightest bit interested in proving your 'specialness' by demonstrating extra-sensory powers. You may be attracted to the idea of acquiring the power to heal others. It all sounds highly admirable. And yet the very fact that you think of them as 'others' reveals what you are really about. The real object of the exercise is to 'do good', to be of value, to inflate yourself in the eyes of yourself and those around you. Your object, in other words, is division, not unity, fragmentation, not healing or wholeness. Once you attain the level of consciousness at which you, the patient and the whole of the universe are one, and the healing takes place of its own accord. The desire to heal others can only be a diversion. Look to your own wholeness, to your identity with all that is, and there is no disease to cure. Wholeness, you could say, is catching" (BEYOND ALL BELIEF, Peter Lemesurier)

The internet is filled with huge rewards for any actual demonstration of psychic abilities, such as the one by James Randi, yet not one of the paranormal "scientific" organizations anyone can think of has ever come forward to claim the reward. Why not? Because they can't demonstrate anything of the sort.

You have to realize that the only reason I have concluded that ESP is pure delusion, etc is because of actually viewing the actual available evidence. My conclusions are not voluntary, they are logically and scientifically mandatory.