Goertzel on psi

Much to the chagrin of his readers, AI theorist Ben Goertzel has dared to explore the topic of parapsychology on his blog (or just 'psi'). He argued that the scientific evidence for psi is stronger than we think.

When his readers complained in the comments section, Goertzel came back by saying,

These emails basically present arguments of two forms:

1. You're nuts, don't you know all the psi experiments are fraud and experimental error, everyone knows that...
2. Look, even if there's a tiny chance that some psi phenomena are real, you're a fool to damage your reputation by aligning yourself with the kooks who believe in it

What shocks me (though it shouldn't, as I've been around 41 years and seen a lot of human nature already) about arguments of the first form is the irrational degree of skepticism toward this subject, displayed by otherwise highly rational and reflective individuals...

...What shocks me about arguments of the second form is how often they come from individuals who are publicly aligned with other extremely radical ideas. For instance a few Singularitarians have emailed me and warned me that me talking about psi is bad, because then people will think Singularitarians are kooks.

I'm with Ben on this one. We shouldn't rule anything out at this point or worry about damaging reputations. Science is about falsification. But before you can falsify something you have to throw the theory out there. And as Goertzel noted, there's a ton of research being done in this area with some rather bizarre observations being made.

I've written some articles along these lines in the past:

Does the brain tap into the future?
The Global Consciousness Project
Paul Smith: Reading the Enemy's Mind