From: utzoo!dciem!mmt Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: Food for thought about ESP and etc Article-I.D.: dciem.193 Posted: Sat Feb 26 17:49:08 1983 Received: Sat Feb 26 18:20:53 1983 References: unc.4669 Subjects like subjective vs scientific facts belong in net.philosophy only in the sense that all science is natural philosophy. There is a very significant statistical point about subjective ``facts''; there is only one of ME and billions of YOU, so that an event that happens to ME has to be taken more seriously (statistically) than one that happens to YOU. If you take a Bayesian approach to statistics (which I happen to think is the only realistic approach), then this matters. So, my evidence about the way the world works CANNOT be the same as yours, if anything has happened to me that is different from what happened to you. In this sense, there are no ``scientific'' facts, just facts that are well enough supported that they can be (with a reasonably good chance) repeated by ME if I get the right equipment and learn the right things to do the experiment right. It is quite reasonable, statistically, if ESP works only for some people, and for those people when not under testing boredom (for that's what the ``scientific method'' entails), for the results to be acceptable ``subjectively'' but not ``scientifically''. But I don't know what you do about that, as a scientist. Martin Taylor