jshell
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Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Finally!
Apr 04, 2006, 17:30
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Right,
For all the believers in anything paranormal out there - including dowsing, check this link out:
http://www.randi.org/research/challenge.html
Toddle off and prove it's real and then share the $1Million prize with me...
In the history of this challenge not one single person has demonstrated that they have any tangible level of paranormal capability at all. It's not that the challengers wouldn't actually LOVE to pay out, they would. And, I'd love to see just one person finally and conclusively prove they can communicate with ghosts, move objects using TK or prove the ancient art of dowsing. That's a shit load of money to spend on joss sticks, placards, bent coathangers and planting trees! Sorry, that last bit was a little facecious.... :-)
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TheBear
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:15
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Not only that, you'd probably win a Nobel Prize too for demonstrating a previously unobserved phenomenon completely independent of all known physics... and think of the lecture tours, book & dvd deals, TV appearances etc...
And yet not a single taker... funny that.
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Rhiannon
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Finally!
Apr 05, 2006, 07:23
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James Randi is a very strange man. He's not a 'sceptic' in the true sense of the word. He has made up his mind about the whole spectrum of 'paranormal' things already and consigned them to the bin. I'm not saying various famous psychics etc don't use the same methods Derren Brown does on his tv show. But that doesn't mean to say that everything anomalous (eg earth lights, telepathy, crytozoological animals, whatever) can all be dismissed in a big swathe just because they don't fit into current scientific conceptions of the universe.
Anyway, let's not blow this dowsing lark off finally, if you're bizarrely going to put it in the same category as planting trees. Yes I have risen to the bait.
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TheBear
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:36
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> But that doesn't mean to say that everything anomalous (eg earth lights, telepathy, crytozoological animals, whatever) can all be dismissed in a big swathe just because they don't fit into current scientific conceptions of the universe.
Hi Rhiannon. The "anomolies" you list aren't dismissed because scientists are nasty killjoys who don't like people to believe in such things (I for one would love to be telepathic!). They are dismissed because they aren't amenable to the scientific method. If you cannot test an idea and reproduce its findings repeatedly it isn't in any rigorous sense meaningful :) Sadly dowsing and telepathy come into this category and have long been shown to be untestable and hence (scientifically) meaningless.
Earth lights and cryptozoology, however, perhaps don't belong in the same list as the first may well have a geophysical explanation and the latter may just need some intrepid types to do a bit more exploring :)
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FourWinds
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:43
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>> If you cannot test an idea and reproduce its findings repeatedly
Like the weather for instance. Try reproducing an entire weather system repeatedly :-)
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morfe
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:47
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"Sadly dowsing and telepathy come into this category and have long been shown to be untestable and hence (scientifically) meaningless."
My father works for a firm that uses 'scientific' methods to extract water. Oddly, they have dowsers on the payroll when 'science' fails them.
It amuses me to think that James Randi may indeed have the last laugh as any phenomena replicable under 'scientific' measuring methods would no longer be deemed paranormal or supernatural, and henceforth not eligible for a prize.
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jacksprat
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:48
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I think 'modern science' generally breeds arrogance and ignorance. Everything is benchmarked upon findings that are generally less than 400 years old. I'm not saying that modern science is wrong but it seems to me that anything that doesn't conform or that can't be proved by it's standards is dismissed.
Look at chinese medicine. Practiced for over 2000 years and yet dismissed by scholars of a modern medicine that has only been practiced for a quarter of that time. I think our understanding of the World goes backwards as modern science makes more & more breakthroughs.
I'm not very good at articulating arguments so please don't villify me if you don't agree because I won't fight back! It's just my opinion.
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Wild Wooder
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:53
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Ancient Chinese medicine might work but it's static. Modern medicine ( and hence modern science) are under continual development.
Modern science has a future, other disciplines only have a past!
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jacksprat
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:56
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Illustrating my point exactly....
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TheBear
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Re: Lets Blow this Dowsing Lark off Fina
Apr 05, 2006, 07:56
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Or a driven pendulum for that matter.. both are chaotic systems in that they have unpredictable, non-linear outcomes. But in the simpler case of the pendulum it's behaviour is described by Newtonian mechanics that have a long track record of being tested and reproduced... the fact that the long term behaviour is sensitive to the initial position of the pendulum does not nullify Newtonian mechanics, i.e. small errors in the initial position of the pendulum propagate through over time. The weather just has a hell of a lot more variables.
Yes, chaotic behaviour can arise from deterministic systems but I'm not sure how any of this gets dowsing in the back door?
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