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From: howard@metheus.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci,net.misc
Subject: Re: Mind and Brain
Message-ID: <259@metheus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 19:00:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: metheus.259
Posted: Wed Aug  8 19:00:30 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Aug-84 02:17:22 EDT
References: <1564@sun.UUCP>
Organization: Metheus, Portland Oregon
Lines: 49

I have to agree with Sunny that some PSI is real.  When I was in high school
I had a girlfriend who was moderately talented in this regard.  She used to
be able to read (some aspects of) my mind with reasonable accuracy.  The
two incidents that stick in my mind most:

(1) I was pretty skeptical about all of this at first, and one day she and
a friend were talking to me on the phone (they were about 10 miles away).
We had been talking for a while about PSI, them believing, me doubting,
when I (quietly) picked up a knife from the table and said something like
"O.K., if you're so psychic, what am I holding in my hand?"  Without any
hesitation, she said "a pencil" and her friend said "a knife".  I was
about to retort that one out of two wasn't statistically very meaningful
when I realized that I had been holding a pencil in my other hand for
several minutes, unconsciously doodling on the newspaper.  At that point
I screamed.

(2) She was also very good at identifying cards that I was looking at.  The
only time I have statistics for is the time that a skeptical friend of mine
challenged us to demonstrate.  We attempted 25 cards from a standard pack of
52 playing cards (no jokers), without replacement.  The score was:
	5 cards exactly right (suit and rank)
	5 cards rank right but suit wrong
	5 cards suit right but rank wrong
	10 cards completely wrong
(I know these numbers look made up, but the reason we stopped at 25 is that I
had been keeping a running tally and everything came out so even then.)
The statisticians among you may find it desirable to calculate the odds against
doing this well by random luck.  I remember doing so, and I think the answer
was more than 1,000,000,000 to 1, but it's been 15 years.  You may assume that
after each guess the card was exposed for all to see; at any rate some of them
were, and she was always told whether she was right or not.

So, does this make me a believer in PSI?  Well, yes and no.  For myself, I
never really saw any UTILITY in any of this.  For example, we tried once to
have her play blackjack, but the effect (if any) wasn't strong enough to
enable her to win money.  And it always felt unreliable; sometimes she had it,
sometimes she didn't, and there wasn't any way to control or enhance it.

So, mostly, I live as though PSI was nonsense, because I don't see what I could
do differently if I was absolutely convinced that it wasn't.  But I won't ever
say I'm certain there's nothing to it (who could *prove* that, anyway?).  And
sometimes, when I get a certain sort of hunch about something, I'll let my
heart lead instead of my head.

	Howard A. Landman
	ogcvax!metheus!howard (till August 14th)

	"Everybody's bragging and drinking that wine.
	 I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shine."