Sceptic/John said:

"The great danger, when you know the Answer first is that the contradictory evidence is simply ignored. Its also a lot easier that way."

This sums up what I feel when being told (by the not-so-better class of sceptic - *grin*) that the psychic phenomena I have experienced but cannot yet prove does not exist because the most effective and scientifically controlled experiments to prove them have not yet been developed - *because* there are many scientists who don't believe in psychic phenomena in the first place and therefore don't see the point in *wasting their time* in proving what probably doesn't exist anyway.

I said in the Explaining the Unexplained thread that I would be prepared to submit to well designed, scientifically controlled experiments, conducted by scinetists or sceptics who are prepared to work proactively and positively with me to do it properly - not to try to impose the wiring/nuts & bolts methodologies onto what is essentially a very-hard-to-pin-down process.

And one of the reasons it is so hard to pin down is that psychic abilities link very much to ethics, principles, values, emotional feelings and other human fundamentals. Teasing out the process from such close connections will never be easy. The military uses of psychic powers e.g. remote viewing have shown a method which had some outcomes - whether they will be proven with scientifically controlled experiments is another matter - but over the period of time that those experiments/procedures were conducted a set of conditions and processes were developed which may provide a good starting point for designing and developing experimental methods which are conducive to getting closer to real evidence, one way or the other.

I admit to feeling extremely frustrated, personally, with myself because I cannot express what I have experienced in the same scientific terminology that you and Amos are using. I am following the discussion very closely, though, and I tend to agree with what Amos is saying, but I can also see that we are all having trouble seeing from each other's perspectives. Luckily for me, I think differences of perspective are what makes the world go around, but it is frustrating for me, knowing what I have experienced, and not being able to translate it into the same language as the sceptics & scientists. I have been submitted to what someone in the other thread referred to as "analytical disdain" - a thoroughly painful experience because I too believe that "ideally" that should be a contradiction of terms. That's why I laughed out loud, John, when I read your comment about finding myself a better class of sceptic.

Part of the personal differences in perspectives and the related translation/communication challenges which I have been thinking about (this is not thread creep, and we don't really need to start it up here, IMO) is the different ways of thinking/perceiving/relating etc as put forward by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator etc. I'm ENTP, if that means anything to you, which means I'm intuitive, a thinker and a perceiver - therefore I am not likely to only look for cold hard evidence to explain my reality, but an ESTJ or ISTJ is more likely to rely on cold, hard evidence.

Helen