h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shorthand that is not so short, anhaga.

What, since you mentioned it is a "regular supernatural power" ? and how is it distinguished from the irregular?

Not being able to satisfy the arrangement is part of the test. - A pre-filter if you will for nonsense that can't in fact be demonstrated.

I confess I only dimly recall the conversation on Earthquakes remind me what was the issue again?

Here, Clive (and others, I suppose):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpfbcXTeo8

Don't anybody call Randi if you predicted this (not too difficult).

To the charge of incompetance I confess it's all true! The list off stuff I'm crap at is lobger than the list of things I'm not bad at!

"Shorthand that is not so short, anhaga."


Perhaps a coinage would be in order.

Seriously, I expect all would agree to accept a well defined coinage to replace "supernatural" where ever you've been using it.

Wouldn't we?



And the youtube link doesn't work.

Well, I don't understand Youtube, maybe. They make it so that you have to be joined to link? Pretty sure I did URL right. Just a moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLpfbcXTeo8&ob=av2e

Last try.

Nicely done, Julzes!

'quasi-supernatural' works for me, meaning that finding a scientific explanation requires very extreme mental backflips for whatever it is. It does matter, I have to say. This discussion of 'supernatural' never does go anywhere.

"By "more stringent...", what I mean is they want proof on certain specified terms even if proof is available otherwise and scientifically. "

The problem you have is that what you (and naive scientists) think is a "fair", "scientific" test, is in fact riddled with the possibility of cheating or coincidence being responsible for the result. If your training is in, say, physics, and someone tells you they can do something that your training says is impossible, it is reasonable for you to control the variables you understand. You (not unreasonably, perhaps) omit to control for variables you're not aware of, like the possibility the person before you is able to fake the effect they claim by sleight of hand.

If you can't perform under conditions which eliminate the possibility of cheating or coincidence, then it is reasonable for me (and everyone else) to assume that in order to achieve the effect you claim you are either relying on coincidence or cheating. Furthermore, I'd say that if you're not cheating, you're deluded.

"It is a specific arrangement, and I don't see how I could satisfy that arrangement. "

It's desperately simple: describe clearly the effect you say you can produce. Produce the effect under conditions which eliminate the possibility you've cheated or the effect was just a coincidence. Arrangement satisfied. Not too hard, is it? (Note: I've not read the backlog - I have no idea what it is you say you can do. Which SINGLE post in the backlog describes what you told the Randi foundation you're capable of?)

"There are no circumstances under which what I have done personally will fit a standard of beyond having possibly cheated"

You admit you've achieved the effect by cheating, then?

"All one has to do to assert cheating as a reasonable possibility is a few people working in secret with a supercomputer somewhere rather than my doing it "

I should think such a thing could easily be excluded from a test protocol.



Since I can't bothered trawling the backlog for the description of the effect under discussion, could you please point me to ONE post in the backlog that sums it up, OR describe it in a single paragraph.

Thanks

Yeah, cheated by being born. Get off it if you are new, because this is not new to me. What I am saying is that mediating mathematical results could be argued as possibly having them in advance. That they appear new is not evidence they are under any circumstances, but, I argue, it is just incredibly more likely I have done what it is I say than that there is a cabal of mathematicians working on a supercomputer allowing me to take credit for discovering stuff. Now, please refer to the video already posted.

Do you even know my claim of a birth-date coincidence and the similar claims including the thread and phone number coincidence, Hoovooloo?

I do not mean to be rude, Hoovooloo, but I have to treat all negative responses to me at this point as some kind of obstructionism or rhetorical prompting rather than honest debate. The alternative, to me, makes everybody here seem stupider than I can really believe. New people excluded. If nobody here feels an obligation to present a fair review on my behalf of what I am saying, then you will have to do without. I already referred to other places to find what I have been saying. If we are to assume you are too busy to gather it all up yourself, perhaps somebody who is not as busy as either of us will do an honest job of summary (but I doubt it). Otherwise, you will have to wait for publication by me or somebody either exploiting or faithfully representing what I have said after my demise.

I have never, by the way, claimed or believed in some kind of unlimited capacity for whatever this mediation I claim has existed is. In my own mind, even, about the strongest sense I have ever had has been something along the lines of "Well, it looks like this will go on for at least another week or so." I wouldn't characterize it as an ability so much as a sequence of strange events in which I am only somewhat incidentally a participant. It has felt like an ability when it has happened, but it does not amount to more than me following some kind of programming my own self (from my perspective). Perhaps a debate will always be possible that I have cheated somehow. I do not think it is very likely that serious people with competence and time to look at it could ever call it just coincidence any more than biologists worth there weight would characterize Evolution by Natural Selection just a theory. And no matter how offensive the comparison may seem to some, this is not a false analogy and what I have experienced is not a trivial matter in comparison to the underpinnings of biological science. I have participated in a proof that God defined in a bit of a strange way exists. Like it or not, whether it is absolutely a completed, fully organized and published proof as of this date or not, that is the fact, and I would not have chosen it for myself. I would much rather be one of you all looking at me than myself right now, but this desire always is pointless. We don't choose our ultimate identities any more than we choose our universe except in fiction. I have to work around it and settle for choosing those parts of my identity that are not my absolute essence, the same as anybody else has to deal with not being able to substitute somebody else's parents for their own.

OK, I'm going to post this just one more time, in response to a lot of what is, to me, gibberish that assumes you've already answered my question - which you haven't.

EITHER, explain in a single short paragraph what it is you think you can do that's paranormal/supernatural, OR point to a post in the backlog that does so.

Pick one. Either is fine. If you can't do either in the very next post, I'm not going to waste any more time talking to you.

Okay, bye then sweetheart. If anybody is interested in seeing a strange numerical result from the strange idea of me marrying Edward van Halen, let me know.

And you say the James Randi foundation *didn't* write back to you? I wonder why?

Oh, hang on, no, I don't.

Sorry if he was useful here, but apparently we are too busy for each other's tastes.

Hoo, I'll try.

In so far as I can claim to understand Julzes (I don't) his position is, I think, if you take some really complex mathematics you can detect patterns in the numbers. These patterns are significant.

My problems with this would be

1.) humans are pattern seeking as well as pattern
-imposing. I think there is a lot of obsever bias in that he seems fixated on trivialities like birthdates and telephone numbers. If you suceed in getting him to state simply (and in less than four consecutive after-thoughts) what the relationship is: first of all tell us how but secondly prepare to be underwhelmed and/or being accused of being too stupid to perceive his brilliance.

2.) Separately, I'm fairly sure there is a legitimate version of what Julzes is doing trying to calculate primes or understanding natural patterns in matematical form. I'm also pretty certain that this is not what Julzes is doing even if he thinks he is.

See his "other thread"

F19585?thread=6922123&skip=0&show=20

The opening exchange on might be useful to you.