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Rhiannon wrote:
If you're interested in getting some evidence for her skill it would be so so easy, you could blindfold her before you get there and then lead her randomly round the stones (or much better still, get someone else to, who doesn't know which is the particular stone). You'd not think a blindfold would prevent detection of whatever emanations they're supposed to be?

Would that not be brilliant? (and I'm not denying I'm sceptical about these sorts of things. But what's wrong with a bit of evidence? I would really like fairies and thylacines to exist. But a worldful of hoping doesn't make them real unfortunately. It's easy to convince yourself about things, the mind's a powerful thing. But surely there's nothing wrong with a bit of hard evidence to convince other people?)

I'm as sceptical as you are Rhiannon about most of these things but you can't experience what another person feels within them. They don't have to prove anything as they are already experiencing it but it doesn't mean you are going to. We all seem to be tuned in on different wavelengths with the exception of a 'chosen' few who see or detect something nobody else does. I can't explain it in any other way, maybe there is someone else here that can.

We all seem to be tuned in on different wavelengths with the exception of a 'chosen' few who see or detect something nobody else does.
“...Dürr's calculation shows that QCD describes quark-based particles accurately, and tells us that most of our mass comes from virtual quarks and gluons fizzing away in the quantum vacuum. The Higgs field is also thought to make a small contribution, giving mass to individual quarks as well as to electrons and some other particles. The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual.” (New Scientist).

All reality is virtual - I like it ;-)

True I don't have to experience what she feels - but then I don't have to be able to experience it myself for it to be proved real. She may well be able to detect something somehow. The test would prove she was genuinely picking up something. Unless, as Nigel suggests, she wouldn't be able to do it with the encumberence of a blindfold.

I feel a bit like James Randi, I end up feeling a bit sorry for the people who come on his show because some of them are so earnest, it's not really that he wants to make them look foolish so much as make a point about scientific evidence. It makes me feel bad for insisting on evidence. But that's science for you. So I still want it. Otherwise how can I make an informed decision whether to believe such things or not? Or does it not matter and everyone should just believe whatever they like. See I just can't go for that.