Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

Possessing physics breaking powers somehow is incompatible with being insanely effective at hiding it all?

Be that as it may, the real question is not the philosophical question of the possibility of psionics but how to present it in a way compelling to a reader.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

No, it doesn't. All it does is eliminate a particular mechanism to underlie such effects, i.e. that they derive from the chemical energy consumed by the person controlling/directing them. Other mechanisms might not suffer from that limitation.

That may sound like nit-picking, but it's not. If we don't recognize that distinction, we risk falling into the same trap as the old assertion that the Sun could not be billions of years old because no plausible chemical reaction could power it that long. Which made perfect sense in terms of Daltonian atomic theory, but was still erroneous.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

I think that comment #13 was on the right track.

Rather than measure level of implausibility via physics, measure level of published support. For example, remote viewing (as measured by Targ et al at SRI) got some papers published in "real" journals, so that would be quite plausible. You could easily rate Psionics based on how many papers were published in how main-stream a journal.

Let me add an expansion: that stuff published is science journals is most plausible, stuff published in the New York Times is next most plausible, regular newspapers less plausible, and the national enquirer least plausible. And roll from there.....

Joshua Levy

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

I'd say the ability to "sense" someones presence without the usage of your know senses would rank pretty high up there.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

Hoo boy...I honestly don't know if mentioning the current issues about reproducibility and the reliability of peer review in the various journals would add to the discussion or distract from it.

Suffice it to say that the idea that the NYT is more credible than any other paper is questionable, too. It depends on the subject, the reporter, and some other things too.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

Obviously, sceptics like James Randi, and many of the more clued-in scientists, exude a permanent and very strong Anti-Psi aura...

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

In a hyper advanced society all psi powers are plausible but you may want to place some limitations based on current knowledge of physics.

For example: teleportation is limited to the speed of light, PK requires an external power source, precognition is only a prediction not information travelling back in time and anything spontaneously created is actually drawn from somewhere else to comply with conservation of energy and mass.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

Mindlink. After all there are plenty of people close enough that you would swear that they really did have a mindlink.

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

The thing is, that observation is *correct* - the sun can't run on a chemical reaction and be billions of years old. In order for a psi power to do something that requires more energy than a human can generate, it has to tap an external source of power, at which point it's not a psi power, it's some other kind of power.

Of course it's possible to debate what a psi power is. In a sense I suppose the most plausible ones are the ones people actually have. I can for example unerringly lead you to trees likely to have pecans at certain times of the year, or stand in certain places and recite the words I've never heard that were spoken there by the long dead, or look at a pallet of girl scout cookies and divine exactly how many boxes of them there are for each of an arbitrary number of people. Yes I do those with memory of where they were last year, literacy and historical plaques, and mental multiplication and division, but still amazing exercises of psychic divinatory powers right?

Re: Most plausible Psionic powers?
 

is it? I'm no expert, but does psi specify that the energy comes from the person's body?