From: lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay)
Subject: Re: double blind
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:20:36 GMT


homer@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Homer Smith) writes:
>     Essentially, Gisle has just not provided anyone with enough
>motivation to demonstrate powers, I guess there is no pay in it
>or too much negative pay.

Hah. We've been through this one before. There was Electra, for
instance, a Free Zoner who claimed to be able to move mountains by
mind power. However, Electra had the self control to have never done
it, and the arrogance to boast about something that he insisted he
wasn't petty enough to demonstrate.

After one hears such for the Nth time - psychics are big on this one -
the explanations start sounding like excuses. Thin, thin excuses.

As for pay, Randi offered $10,000 years ago. Nobody has won it:
dowsers have tried: aura viewers have tried: no winners. Am I
supposed to believe that there hasn't been one single Scientologist
out there who could use $10,000 ? I don't think Randi would mind if
the claimant wore a bag over his face, and had a preference for
cash...

Gisle suggested an experimental setup which would allow one to prove
that one's exteriorization was genuine. Actually, it could be kept
simpler than that. But I don't really have high hopes of a positive
outcome.  For one thing, we've had such claimants for a century -
Theosophists and Cayceites and now New Age whatnot. Some of them
tried to produce proof, and failed. And then there was Madame
Blavatsky. You commented that Theosophy lost strength when its
founder died. Ahem. More accurately, the movement lost strength when
Madame Blavatsky's assistant went to the newspapers, and showed them
her written instructions on how to fake the seances.

A second argument is that these others - New Agers and so on - don't
seem to have heard of Xenu or thetans. Gosh, it's almost as if not
everyone who peers beyond the flesh sees the same things! How can
this be? 

A third argument is that if this stuff is true, we would have to
revolutionize science. Unknown modes of information transfer, which
impinge on this universe, and are therefore part of the reality that
physics takes as its turf. My God! That would be bigger than
radioactivity, bigger than relativity. Would an organization of
high-ethics superior-IQ Operating Thetans fail to investigate?  Is it
really believable that they would have their hands on something that
big, and just *do* *nothing* with it? How have they managed to fend
off all the Nobel-hungry researchers who want in on it? This from
an organization that boasts about science and high IQ?

A fourth argument is that Scientologists don't seem to use their
amazing abilities to their own advantage. For example, the man who
was Hubbard's bodyguard at one point, tells about being sent out to
the stores and bookshops, looking for things. He now wonders why, if
Hubbard was such a shark, he hadn't exteriorized, *found* the things,
and just sent the bodyguard to the right place.

A fifth argument is that Scientologist have had failures.
Specifically, Hubbard took a Sea Org ship looking for remembered
treasure - and the best they came up with was an old temple, which is
listed in the tourist guides, hardly a buried secret.
-- 
Don		D.C.Lindsay 	Carnegie Mellon Computer Science