R. Miller writes:
>The arguments here seem to assume a consensus experience, i.e. "Can't we
>all just agree on this set of evidence?" What if reality experienced by
>one in a closed room is fundamentally different that when experienced as a
>dyad, triad, or mob? No one (to my knowledge) has been able to refute the
>Schmidt <<retro-pk>> experiments, and there's serious research that
>suggests prayer *works* (subsequent events "occur* commensurate with
>consensus desires expressed in prayer). And, the evidence cited by the
>author of the book "The Wisdom of Crowds" seems to suggest that more than
>simple statistics is at play. So, in our infamous (but interesting!)
>gedanken experiments should we consider whether there is an individual
>observing something vs a group observation?
>
>More to the point, can reality "differ" based upon the number of people
><<linking>> in the experience?
We discuss some pretty weird ideas on this list, including thought
experiments which may not ever be physically possible. I think that it is
crucially important that, as far as possible, only the one weird idea be
discussed at a time: suppose there are 10^100 copies of you all running in
lockstep, *but* that every other fact about the universe is in accordance
with generally accepted scientific theory. So although it's not impossible
that minds can somehow act as a group, that is something in need of *real*
experimental evidence. Stacking a controversial theory on a weird idea
balancing on an impossible situation is asking for trouble!
--Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Fri Jun 24 2005 - 07:46:10 PDT