Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

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This was due to John W Campbell, editor of Analog Science Fiction (which he renamed from Astounding SF), the premier hard SF magazine of the time (and now too?).

Campbell was one of the most influential figures in science fiction history who cultivated a 'stable' of authors; Asimov was his most famous protégé. Campbell's interest in psi was inflamed further by SF luminaries H Ron Hubbard and A E Van Vogt, who started the Dianetic movement a while before Scientology became a 'thing'. (Since Scientology turned into such a cult, it must be pointed out that Van Vogt had nothing to do with its development).

But I'm counter-intrigued: why are so many people in this discussion (and in the article's comments) so vehemently opposed to psi? It's been comprehensively debunked, but Campbell had a neat (and plausible) explanation for that, which no one ever addresses. And many of the most striking anecdotes of psi phenomena have never been adequately explained. This is reminiscent of a consensus reality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_reality), which SF readers in particular should be less susceptible to...

What was Campbell’s explanation if I may ask?

Being a big fan of Aldous Huxley I was pretty astonished but none the less entertained by his apparent believe in the supernatural which might have been due to him having lost most of his eyesight when he was in his teens.

In case you are interested, there is a lecture where he talks about this stuff over at the psychedelic salon:

https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-578-1-enemies-of-freedo...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bates_eye_method#Aldous_Huxley

Campbell said that psi powers (which are natural, and inherent in everyone), can be nullified by another party's strongly opposed belief in their non-existence.

Thus in any demonstration, there's usually someone in the audience who is more than a 'non-believer': strongly opposed to psi, who has the effect of damping or negating the demonstrator.

The other thing that's rarely mentioned is that most psi phenomena manifest themselves in moments of extreme peril or emotion, which (by their very nature) cannot be replicated in a laboratory situation.

Campbell also pointed out that, throughout human history, psi has been misunderstood, and ultimately maligned by religion, that most contagious of memes. So it's a subconsciously suppressed ability, and its suppression (and repression) is the cause of many human ills...

He believed that psi is an emergent phenomenon (like consciousness and intelligence), and - foreshadowing Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" - that the explanation for psionic phenomena lay in quantum physics and information theory. I've highlighted those last few words, because current information theory does not adequately cover phenomena such as complexity, synergetics and emergence. For a taster of what a new extended information physics should look like, check out Tom Stonier's "Information And The Internal Structure Of The Universe".

If you remove the requirement for "strongly opposed belief", this explanation neatly dodges the standard objection to psi that if something so obviously evolutionarily adaptive is possible, why doesn't everyone have it? In this explanation everybody does have psychic power, it's just that some are aimed purely at shutting down other powers. In a zero sum competition, preventing your opponent from gaining an advantage is the same as gaining an advantage for yourself. Does anybody know of any fiction where humanity is split into a stable equilibrium of psi and anti-psi?

That sounds like something Phillip Dick would write. Closest that I can think of off the top of my head is Ubik, where the protagonist runs an anti-psychic agency that companies hire for security purposes.

That's about as boring arguments as I expected. You're giving a standard way out that religions use, which is to base your claim on an unfalsifiable mechanism: if you believe it unconditionally it'll work, if you don't it won't, etc. I could replace your instances of "psi powers" with "Gnomic magic", "fairy dust", or the most absurd thing you could come up with, and you likewise couldn't prove me wrong. Nevermind that there are literally billions of cameras and microphones around the world those days waiting to capture something like this.

> He believed that psi is an emergent phenomenon (like consciousness and intelligence)

I find usually those people tend to avoid the actually really weird/provoking questions staring right at us -- like how does a bunch of neurons firing electrical signals produce our consciousness and all personal experiences, why is our universe and lives like this in particular, or how to reconcile with death and finiteness -- in favor of comfortable wishful thinking, mysticisms and obscurantism (Penrose lately seems to have fallen into this modus).

In the context of SF, Philip K. Dick's claim "It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane" comes to mind (which I deeply disagree with, but understand).

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