ESP

I had a discussion recently with members of my writer’s club. A small group of us meet regularly to exchange critiques of our developing novels. Two involved forms of ESP. In one, a character had the ability to picture previous inhabitants of a house and, specifically, “feel” terrifying experiences that happened to others. Another novel featured a scene in which a character was awakened in the night at a crucial time via a “signal” from her distant mother.

I’m a physics teacher and sceptical of the these phenomena. No, I’ll be honest, I’m not just sceptical, I don’t believe ESP exists. I’m careful not to let this disbelief affect my critiques of the novels. After all, my novel-in-progress uses parallel universes, a concept no less dubius.

I made the mistake, at the end of the evening, of mentioning my scepticism. Jim, one of the authors, was incredulous. “You don’t believe in ESP?” he remarked.
Me: No. There’s no good evidence that ESP exists.
Jim: You don’t think people can read minds?”
Me: Of course not. Nobody has been able to demonstrate that ability when examined carefully.
Jim: How about Edgar Cayce?
Me: Are you kidding? Magicians can do that stuff.
By this time Jim was laughing. At first I thought he was just having fun. But he was laughing with disbelief that I could be so mistaken.
Jim: How about astral projection?
Me: For heaven’s sake. There’s no evidence for that.
Jim: [laughing harder] Uri Geller bending spoons?
Me: URI GELLER!!! He couldn’t do it on Johnny Carson. Magicians can bend spoons. They aren’t using any special powers.
Jim: Astrology?
Me: Jim, astrology and horoscopes are demonstrably false.
Jim: [laughing uproariously at my ignorance] Alien abductions?
Me: No way. There’s no evidence for that.
Jim: Have you read about Betty and Barney Hill.
Me: I’ve read about them, and am satisfied that alien abduction is not the explanation for Barney’s drawing.
Jim: Well, they’re my aunt and uncle. They believe it.

At this point, the teacher of our little group spoke up passionately.

Lynda: What about when a little girl at home sees her Dad in the doorway waving goodbye when he was actually in the hospital, and her Mom next to her in bed awakens and says “You just saw your Dad, didn’t you?” and the Mom telephones the hospital to find out that he just died?

I wanted to respond with some more old saws (like “when my grandmother died, her picture fell off the wall”) but bit my tongue, for Lynda was talking from personal experience.

Me: I accept that you experienced what you say, but my explanation might be different from yours.

Suffice it to say that I took quite a roasting for expressing strong doubts about ESP and its kin. There is not much you can say when honest, intelligent people give testimonials. When I related this story to my friend Bruce, he pointed out that my disbelief in ESP’s existence is a belief in its non-existence. So I’m expressing a belief just as ESP’s proponents are.

Me: But there’s evidence that supports my position.
Bruce: But believers consider anecdotal evidence to be of equal value to scientific testing.
Me: But it’s not.
Bruce: That’s your BELIEF. You believe that the scientific method is the only way to truth. They believe that there are other ways to truth for some phenomenon that science just can’t catch reliably.

Bruce was not necessarily defending ESP’s existence, only arguing for the equality of belief for and against, given different background beliefs in the validity of the scientific method for determining truth. Interesting.

More on that in the next article.