Posted: May 05, 2013 1:52 am
VK-machine wrote:But, of course, as you point out, scientific progress will continue and then, maybe the unpredictable will become predictable? But wait, this is happening continuously. Our ability to predict the future gets better constantly, so at what point do we decide that we are dealing with psi?
I do not actually care.
It doesn't actually matter if you call something "psi" or "psionics" or "potato-headed Bobby."
There is this spiritual component.
Nor does that even matter.
Psi is a lot like god in many ways. It is objectively a vague and unclear concept but highly concrete in the minds of believers and many are quite open about it being part of some spiritual belief system for them. It is not something you can ever nail down or falsify. I struggle to think of any possible scientific discovery that would ever live up to that spiritual component that is part of "god" or "psi".
No, that doesn't even matter either. Really. The point is simple. If you say you're doing science, then you either do science, or it's pseudoscience. That's it.
If you want to do something other than science, fine. Just because something isn't science doesn't mean that it's bad. Love is not a science. Art is not a science.
But if you are pretending to do science so that people will trust you because of "Ooh, Science!" and you're not, then it's pseudoscience. That's what the PEAR people were doing.