Anyone Do The Test? Options

Wondering if anyone tried the proof of principle experiment of magickal/psychokinetic effect I posted back in December 2010 in the "Real Ultimate Power" thread in the fight club and, if so, what are your results?

Wondering if anyone tried the proof of principle experiment of magickal/psychokinetic effect I posted back in December 2010 in the "Real Ultimate Power" thread in the fight club and, if so, what are your results?

I tried it. I've been meaning to figure out the statistical likelihood of the recorded throws (there is a trend, but is it enough?), so my response can be as complete as possible. The experiment was over a long time ago, but I forgot I was doing this... I'll post back in a few days once I have determined p.

I personally think that these threads pop up, sometimes, because someone is waiting to hear someone way "Why yes, just the other day a raised a poor man from the dead, I sleep levitating, and two of my very best friends are ghosts!" ...
So, they're looking for someone to confirm for them that vast an incredible acts may be mastered through the practice of magic, without really considering what such things would be really good for.

This reminds me of that terrible parable about the magician and the samurai, or whatever. The magician is meditating by a river as the samurai approaches, then suddenly lifts into the air and flies over the river. He stands up and shouts "I have meditated twenty years in order to do that!" The samurai calmly walks over the bridge and says "I walked five minutes to do that." HUR HUR THAT SILLY MAGICIAN!

This tale, and your comment, ignore what something like levitation would mean. For one - the reason I made the real ultimate power thread - this would be evidence that magic exists. While you may feel a good luck spell would be more practical or useful, you can do ten thousand good luck charms and still be uncertain as to whether or not they are actually doing anything. If you levitate, or move a pencil, or shift a speck of dust, there is really only one conclusion to take from it. With that proof in hand, it would be an assurance that your good luck charms are also efficacious.

For two, while there may be a bridge over one river, the magician would have quite the advantage in the wilderness.

There is no simple demonstration of magic that will genuinely show anyone that there is a magical power to be wielded.

If you made a feather move around without touching it or blowing on it, I'd be convinced.

If you do magic for them, how do they really know you did anything? if you give them instructions, well it's too complicated to really accomplish and probably it's all in my belief that it will work and well... I really don't care to get up at 2am when jupiter is rising after not having eaten much for four days, and geez your magic is really inconvenient, instead I'll just skip to the part with the blue candle, and i'll just draw the funny seal on some copier paper with a marker, and its much easier to just read this psalm off a piece of paper than to try memorizing these verses.

As I said in my reputation comment, this like a slap in the face to any genuine seeker: you're telling us that if you aren't an awesome magician, you must just be lazy.

I take by this, though, that there are spells that would certainly convince me? If you give me instructions for such a spell - one that will have some sort of physical effect - and I am able to do so, I promise you I will attempt it.

For most scientists science is not really the search for truth, it is their personal version of religion and anyone who expresses an idea that may contradict their view of truth will be severely punished. I speak from experience.

I don't think so. This has not been my experience at all, and I've been around scientists almost exclusively since I started university. If anyone makes science into a religion, they're not really a scientist.

It's true that it's easy to ascribe meaning to coincidences or convince yourself of something, but isn't that the first thing we need to overcome as we learn? In every beginner's book I've read the first thing said is "keep a record". All I did was try to follow the instructions to the letter: if it was true, then that meant the results must also be to the letter, or within reasonable parameters. Physics experiments do the same thing, except with equipment that costs more.

...

It's hard to blame them though - science right now is doing some amazing things. They've figured out teleportation (for particles, at least) and invisibility, they isolate the part of the genetic structure that causes aging and are making good progress in making robots mimic emotions well enough to fool humans.

Bolded part, and the paragraph following it, are exactly why I've been so busy lately: the procedures outlined in the Hive or my textbook are just like magical procedures... except that the results are clear and unambiguous (mostly). I have not had nearly the same sort of results with magic. Re: your coincidence comment, it's true that statistical analysis will reveal when something is not coincidence, but it's not as easy as you might think. For instance, if you do a good luck spell, then the next day you get a raise, you might write that down. Do it again, and the next day, you discover a great cafe. Again, and you find a quarter on the sidewalk. These would all go into a journal as successes, and might lead one to believe the spell is efficacious - not realizing that this suffers from serious flaws in methodology. The criteria for success should be delineated beforehand, for instance; as it is, any good thing gets remembered as possibly from the spell, while bad things are ignored.

Anyway, keeping this in mind, what sort of results have you had that convinced you of the reality of magic?

The more humanity unravels the building blocks of the universe and themselves, the more it loses sight of the whole.

How so? I don't think we've lost sight of anything. It's easy to think of the people of the past as peaceful, one-with-nature, holistic sort of folks... but it's not true - they were just like us, except more ignorant. (People don't like that, either: "they weren't ignorant, just different!" No, sorry; thinking the thunder is caused by a set of lungs or that the stars are holes in a giant sky-blanket is ignorant by definition.)

This post has been edited by Vilhjalmr: Jul 24 2011, 11:59 PM