SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post - Modern Sci-Fi - the enslavement of scientific reality to religious delusion

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wrote:

No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.

Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
intelligence or extraterrestrial life.

If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.

Quibble he there are rather strong scientific/laws of physics
reasons for dismissing psychic phenomena, teleportation, and FTL
travel.

For extraterrestrial life, we have only a _statistical_ argument: we
haven't seen any so far. And it's a weak one for non-sentient life.
(After all, _we_ exist, so there is at least some probabilty of life
arising elsewhere, unless you're a creationist).

We don't even have a statistical argument against artificial
intelligence, since we don't have any other history of science than our
own. You can certainly argue artificial intelligence is hard to do -
there's plenty of evidence in that direction - but that it is "magical
thinking" strikes me as dubious unless you think there's something
supernatural about the human brain or that technological advancement is
going to stop dead aaaany day now.

Bruce