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