That was the question I was asked: how would you prove to a blind man, that photography exists?

I knew what he was getting at. We had been discussing psychics. He was a firm believer in psychic powers, had had psychic experiences, and regularly visited a psychic. His point was, since I had not experienced psychic powers, I would never be able to believe in what he “knew” to be true. You could never prove to a blind man that photography exists, and likewise no one would ever be able to demonstrate to me that psychic powers were real.

It took me about ten seconds to think of a way to show he was wrong. This is what I said. Give the blind man a camera, a tripod and a remote shutter release. (Ideally the camera is a Polaroid, or a digital with an instant picture facility.) Everyone leaves the room but the blind man. He takes a picture of himself, and holds up a number of fingers (1 to 5) at random. The sighted person comes back into the room, looks at the picture and says “you were holding up X fingers”. If he gets the right number, and continues to do so every time this experiment is performed, the blind man will eventually conclude that photography is real. Technically, he will conclude the hypothesis that “a camera can record a visual image”, might be true.

He will want to repeat the experiment with different rooms and different sighted people. He will want to tighten his controls to make sure no one can see through the window or the keyhole. He will want other blind friends of his to do the same experiment successfully. But essentially, he will be convinced by this method.

The believer went quiet. (It must be annoying when your analogy is turned against you.) But I decided to push it further. I wanted to ask him some questions.

My first question was, if you did this 1,000 times, and the sighted person got the correct number of fingers (say) 225 times out of 1,000 (where pure chance would be 200 times), would the blind man believe that this “anomaly” was proof of photography? Wouldn’t he expect nearly 1,000 correct out of 1,000? What if when the controls were tightened, the result was reduced to close to 200 correct – pure chance? What if the sighted person was found to have cheated?

What if the blind man had to do a drawing and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person had to write down what he thought the drawing was of, and then a judge got to grade the description based on the photograph of the drawing? Say the blind man drew a circle and the sighted person thought it was a tree, and the judge rated that 7 out of 10 because a tree is roughly circular? Would the blind man be convinced?

What if the blind man had to select one drawing from four “targets” and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person is shown the four targets and asked to rate the degree to which each matches the one in the photograph. If the sighted person assigns the highest rating to the correct target, it is scored as a "hit." If the sighted person gets a hit, say 35% of the time (when chance would predict 25%), would the blind man be convinced? What if the person running the experiment was in the room when the photo was taken, and prompted the sighted person during the judging process - would the blind man be convinced then? What if numerous other experimental errors were noted?

What if a scientific body spent 25 years researching whether sighted people could guess how many fingers blind people were holding up in front of a camera, but concluded that there is ultimately very little, if any data that support the hypothesis that they can?

What if a conjuror offered one million dollars for any sighted person who could successfully perform the five finger test, but no one was able to do it?

Wouldn’t the blind man say to all this, “why can’t you just tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

The guy didn’t want to answer. He conceded his analogy was about me not having had a psychic experience. But apparently the analogy didn’t apply if I turned it around to his beliefs.

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Cronica de una muerte anunciada

Probably a better question would be "how do you prove to a blind man that a rainbow exists?" Photographs are material things, so even if a blind man cannot see the picture on the photograph he can feel that the photograph feels different than normal paper and smell that it smells different. A rainbow on the other hand is pure light and color. A rainbow cannot be touched (although rain can), it cannot be smelled or heard, therefor it is completely outside the senses of the blind (and aside from Skittles you can't taste rainbows).

I've read a few things on people researching psychic powers and seen two sets of results. One in which the results could be accounted for by standard deviation from a norm (or cheating on the part of the "researchers"), and one where the results showed that, alhtough weak, psychic powers do exist. The former study was on telepathy, which usually involves someone trying to read what someone else is thinking about, this is difficult to prove for obvious reasons (and easilly cheated on for equally obvious reasons), the latter involves telekinesis. Telepathy has the problem that you cannot neccessarilly prove that an open researcher is not manipulating the data (and in fact, so far it seems that they do). Telekinesis however effects the material world and so does leave behind physical proof (or lack thereof). I've read that one study found that yes, humans can have a minute influence on small objects just by thinking about it (so no, you can't get fundies to burst into flame just by wishing it, good thing too, you also can't exert enough force to do the (in)famous spoon bending thing). Seeing ghosts is often seen as a form of psychic phenomina, because whether you see one or not seems to be based on whether you have the ability to percieve them. Those who see ghosts claim to see/feel the same images in the same place. Obviously, just as with nessie and UFOs we can't be sure whether this means there's really something out there or whether each one is simply mimicing the descriptions that came before (and the pendulum swings toward - B, corroborating someone else's story to gain credibility).

When I was in college I hung out with some wiccans and they said that in all cases that they had observed or heard about the person seemed to inherit their power from someone else. That means one of two things: either the trait itself is heritable or the idea was passed from parent to child. In at least a few of the people the idea wasn't passed on from parent to child until the child started bugging the parent about it (in at least one case because the parent's Christian upbringing caused them to distrust their visions). The conclusion that leaves is that whatever trait this is is heritable. Whether you think that trait is for psychic powers, mental illness or the imagination that tends to form new spiritual ideals and proto-religions is up to you.

Man, some of those posts are so funny, they're just so ignorant it's like going to a Fundi board on evolution.

I love this one:

Pollution-free products may well be on the way, but you can bet it's scientists who are working on them.

Polution free products, as in no net polution? Already done. Ride a bike. By the way there's also a town that does something like grow straw, than burn it for energy, combined with solar energy and energy from home grown and brewed ethanol this town has no net polution. Yes, it was science, good for you. Now put that energy to killing big oil and maybe we'll actually get somewhere.

Move my coffee cup from my desk to yours using your mind.

Remote view what I had in an envelope on my tv.

Give me EXACT details on where to find Natalee Halloway.

Tell me my great-grandmother's maiden name.

1) What did I say about small? And if you're asking teleportation, most psychics will tell you that's only in the movies.
2) What you had? What are you testing for, telepathy, clarvoiance or postcognition?
3) Who the fuck is/was that?
4) And what am I suppose to use to tell you that? The internet is awfully convinient, but you have to tell me your name. Even someone professing to be a psychic will tell you you can't just find something with a description as vague as "my grandmother's maiden name" from a nameless poster on the internet.

This basically illustrates one of the subtypes of skeptics with reguard to psychic phenomena (the X-man Skeptic, the one who thinks psychic powers only exist if they have earth-shaking results). I much prefer the skeptic that's willing to admit that maybe psychic ability is weaker than psychics had previously claimed (it's not like it's unusual for humans to turn a minnow into a swordfish) but still wants hard evidence.