Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Coral reef spawning time is apparently phase-locked in some way, using a
signal we had not previously identified. There is, however, nothing
especially mysterious about phase-locking to an (as yet unidentified)
external signal: evolutionarily, it's presumably an advantage for
particular corals to spawn when the main group does, so once some signal
has been "chosen" coral across the ocean will remain locked to it indefinitely.
It has to be moonlight plus one or more signal. Moonlight alone is not
reliable enough (because of bad weather and so on), and it does not vary
with the seasons enough to tell the coral that it is now November rather
than February. I do not know what other signals are involved. I think water
temperature and/or pheromones have been suggested.
Now, consider cellular reproduction. In 1950, it was already clear that
the nucleus controlled the cell through a chemical process of some
sort. It wasn't known how that worked, or what molecules were actually
involved, but no completely new physics, no totally new theory of fields,
in short, no _miracle_ was needed to explain it.
Actually, many serious people, including scientists, thought it was
miraculous. That is to say, supernatural, or one of these things "man is
not meant to know." Furthermore, in The Double Helix James Watson said that
the theories then being developed were hopelessly complex, incomprehensible
(to him), and they all turned out to be wrong. But -- as it turned out --
that did not indicate a need for radically new physics or chemistry. Just
because something seems miraculous or impossible, that does not mean we
need a revolutionary breakthrough to understand it. DNA was actually more
of an un-revolution: it was a simplification, that reduced complexity and
cut away great thickets of burgeoning new speculative theory. If a simple
explanation for CF or ESP emerges tomorrow, a lot of empty speculation will
bite the dust. No one can say for sure that ESP does *not* have a simple
explanation. (Simple in retrospect.)
But now consider ESP of _any_ sort. It requires, at a minimum,
brain-to-brain communication at a distance. What could the mechanism
be? We can rule out gravity waves, I think, and just about anything else
we know of except EM waves. But human brains seem singularly short on
radio reception gear -- and nobody's ever so much as suggested that all
the radio hash in the aether today makes a difference to the results of
ESP experiments. . . .
Yes, on the surface, based on what we know now, it does seem to call for
something revolutionary. But so did reproduction. Many other astounding
biological phenomena turned out to have prosaic causes. Bat echolocation in
the dark, for example. People used to think that was "second sight" or some
kind of ESP.
And if we take the jump from mind-to-mind communication, which just
requires some sort of information transmission which we haven't yet
stumbled on, to the ability to predict the future or the outcome of a
random process, as the remote viewing websites I just googled seem to
claim, then we get into a realm where there is absolutely no hint of a
possible explanation that doesn't totally nuke all we currently think we
know about physics. Once you violate causality . . .
I have to agree. But perhaps the causality violation experiments are
incorrect, but some of the ESP ones are correct. They do not all stand or
fall together, any more than the effusion of CF results all stand or fall
together. Some are right and some are way wrong, in my opinion.
Granted, evidence always trumps theory, but none the less I think it's
misleading to assert "remote viewing" is no harder to swallow now than the
examples you gave were for people back in 1945.
It is harder, I agree. But you have to read books from before 1952 to get a
sense of how mysterious reproduction was, and how lost in the woods people
were. It wasn't a matter of "swallowing" it, because everyone could see
that cells reproduce. There was no question the phenomenon was real. That
is the main difference between reproduction and remote viewing. If remote
viewing were as common as reproduction, no one would doubt it exists even
though we cannot explain it.
If remote viewing actually exists, it must have a naturalistic explanation.
I disagree completely with your use of the word "must", and I assert that
you are stating an article of faith rather than a logical necessity.
Perhaps it is an article of faith! But it is based on the last 400 years of
history, to wit:
1. Everything so far has had a naturalistic explanation, including many
things that people used to claim must be supernatural.
2. If it isn't naturalistic, we will never understand it. So the
possibility will always remain that it is actually natural but we just
haven't found the mechanism yet. In other words, it is impossible to
distinguish between a miracle and human stupidity.
We are talking about some kind of clairvoyance here. Any such ability
would be so far outside the science we know that I would claim we are
forced to view it with a "clean slate" . . .
Not necessarily! That sounds like an article of faith. People used to say
that radioactivity, x-rays, the energy of the sun, and cellular
reproduction are "far outside science as we know it." They say that about
cold fusion today. Of course x-rays and fission did require some broad
changes to physics, but perhaps it was not such a "clean slate" in retrospect.
It could be natural, it could be "supernatural"; it could be the first
hard evidence of a "soul" and a world beyond the world we currently know.
Nothing can be supernatural, by definition. It will not be hard evidence
until we capture it with instruments, elucidate the physics, and reproduce
it at will. That will make it part of the present world-as-we-know-it.
Radio waves and x-rays seemed otherworldly at first, but now they are
prosaic. That's the trouble with science: it takes the romance out of life
and makes things utilitarian. By the time it finishes dissecting ESP and
remote viewing, they will used to sell pantyhose.
It could be a miracle every time it occurs.
There is no such thing. Everything that can happen is a product of natural
laws, and everything can -- in principle -- be explained. Call that "faith"
if you want, but remember: there have been thousands of different "faiths"
over the last 10,000 years, but science is the only magic that works. All
the others have been noise and wishful thinking.
It could be the dungeonmaster playing games with the feedback circuit in
the Matrix. We have not one single shred of a notion as to how it might
work . . .
We had not a single shred of a notion how reproduction worked in 1950, and
I doubt anyone really knows how CF works today, but there was never any
reason to think they are miraculous. It is *far* more likely we are still
ignorant. No one has the slightest idea how African termites coordinate to
build nests, or how they keep the outer layers of the nests impermeable to
rain and predators, but there is no reason to think it calls for a miracle.
. . . so to say "it must be natural" or "it cannot be supernatural in
origin" is to confuse one's _expectation_ with what one actually knows.
It is an expectation based on the most powerful precedents in human
history. Nothing else even comes close to the success of this paradigm.
That is NOT mind-to-mind communication, unless you care to postulate the
existence of intellects on Mercury and Jupiter which are "on the same
wavelength" as the folks here on Earth!
Yes, if remote viewing of Mars works, that sure does rule out mind-to-mind
communication. However, it could be that the Mars results are invalid, but
the terrestrial results are correct. I wouldn't know, but I doubt the Mars
results have been replicated enough at high sigma to draw firm conclusions.
If remote viewing is real, however, it may be a very different kettle of fish.
May be. I would say it *may well* be. But we will not know until we
understand it. Many things in the past that seemed very different turned
out to come out of the same kettle of fish. Actually, it has been kind of a
disappointment.
- Jed
