"Neeum Zawan" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message
news:4b0f6445$1@news.povray.org...
> On 11/26/09 20:20, somebody wrote:

> >> Also if the potential benefits are high enough then even things with a
> > tiny
> >> chance of being successful should be studied.

> > That's a fallacy, at least without quantifying that "tiny" (and it's
next to
> > impossible to quantify tiny in most such contexts since the "hypothesis"
is
> > irrational/non-scientific anyway). There's a tiny chance that my house
is

> I fail to see how the hypothesis is irrational and non-scientific. At
> least not any more than communicating via radio would have been to some
> scientist 500 years ago.

Just because one (*) thing that was beyond reason 500 years ago turned out
to be true, anything that is beyond reason today has nonzero probability of
being true one day. Right.

(*) OK, I am sure you can list hundereds of such projections. But that would
still be a finite set. On the other hand, nonsensical projections is
practically an unbounded (infinite) set. As a result "they laughed at
Newton, they laughed at Einstein..." doesn't work. There are millions of
"Bozo the Clowns" for each Newton or Einstein.

> > built right on a diamond mine worth a "billions and billions" of
dollars,
> > which nobody knows about. Should I start digging?

> You've set up a strawman.

How so?

> > Probabiliy of so called psychic phenomena being "real" is, for all
practical
> > purposes and by all intelligent accounts, is between 0 and 0. Any single

> Would that have been obvious to you 150 years ago?

I was not alive 150 years ago. And even if I were, it wouldn't be relevant
to what we are talking about today or a couple of decades ago. In fact, I
might have been extremely stupid and gullible just last year, but that
itself doesn't detract what I am saying right now, or excuse others,
especially those in positions of power and influence, to act gullibly or
stupidly.

> You're suggesting that some decades ago, when numerous people continued
> to make claims, at times with witnesses, that it wasn't worthy of
> investigation?

No. I don't even think that the number of people making claims has declined
appreciably, or at all. It might have even increased. Number of outlandish
claims in general, definitely has increased dramatically - just check your
junk mail folder. Numbers mean absolutely nothing in this context,
especially if certain motives are easily visible behind those numbers.

> > cent wasted on such research is, well, wasted, and the only reasons for
an
> > intelligent human to bother  to do such research is employement and
> > publishing.

> It seems you're merely redefining "intelligent" to be someone who
> doesn't "fall for x", where x is to your choosing.

Could be. Or maybe you are jumping to conclusions.

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