Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!ihnp4!cbosgd!dir From: dir@cbosgd.UUCP (Dean Radin) Newsgroups: net.misc Subject: Re: ESP Message-ID: <939@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 17:38:05 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.939 Posted: Tue Feb 7 17:38:05 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 01:40:13 EST References: <595@seismo.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 22 If all you know about psi research is what you read in Martin Gardner's and James Randi's books, then you know very little. The books are entertaining, to be sure, but accurate and dispassionate? Hardly. Randi and Gardner both make handsome livings hawking their books and acting the arch-rivals of psi researchers. They are showmen and magicians, and Randi has stated in public that one of the reasons he's so strongly against psi is pure economics: As a magician, Randi relies on the audience's belief that what he does is NOT psi, but stage illusion, otherwise anyone could do the kind of magic he does using psi, and the mystery would be deflated from his act. Mentalists, on the other hand, for the most part strongly support belief in psi for exactly the opposite reason. It is to their economic benefit to have people believe that psi exists so their mentalist tricks seem real. If you want a more balanced, less suspect approach to psi criticism, try reading a book like "The Psychology of Transcendence" by Andrew Neher or "The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective" by Robert Jahn, in the Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 70, No. 2, Feb. 1982.