Whew!

[mdlbear]

I'm not sure it was sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, but the demo worked (after we found and danced carefully around some interference between my demo and finagler's other demo).

There may conceivably be another demo next week, but anything after that should be using the next round of software, held together by baling wire and duct tape rather than cobwebs and wishful thinking.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"Any sufficiently advanced magick is indistinguishable from technology..."
;-)

[mdlbear]

I've always favored "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." If I'd done a demo album, the title would have been "Sufficiently Advanced?"

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of James Randi's comments about how the fraudulent "psychic" Uri Geller managed to convince a number of scientists that there were things going on which could not be explained by science. Geller used some fairly simple, almost cheesy, sleight-of-hand... but the scientists weren't expecting to be tricked so obviously, so their experiments weren't designed to rule that out. A little knowledge of stage magic can be very useful...

[mdlbear]

Indeed. The same researchers had previously done studies of telepathy and "remote viewing"...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Well, it turns out that there is some scientific data supporting the existence of certain forms of psi. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/) project, a/k/a PEAR, produced many years' worth of extremely thought-provoking data. (Here (http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=fLLIkTo4KLc) is a lecture by the head of the PEAR lab, York Dobyns. (I happen to know him, and in fact took part in a laypersons' Q&A session he gave quite recently.) As I understand it, there's definite evidence that there's something that doesn't obey the usual laws of physics, but they don't know what it is, or how it works, or why. Yet.

[mdlbear]

I believe I've heard a talk on that one, and I'm not convinced by any means. Random data plus human selection of what looks "interesting" can be very convincing.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a life-long user of psi, I feel that there is just far too much anecdotal evidence for me to accept that there isn't a scientific explanation for it. As Dobyns pointed out, the prevailing opinion is that any research into psi is "junk science", so experiments that seek to study it don't get any funding. Then there isn't any experimental evidence to indicate that it needs further study. Lather, rinse, repeat. In the end, of course, the phenomena wind up not getting studied at all. (Although there are a few related experiments being done.)

[johno.livejournal.com]

One of the best demos I ever saw (and had helped with some setup) involved introducing the presenters "Lovely Assistant" who was a one our best engineers who just happened to be a cute nerd girl.

Despite the obvious introduction, she spent the entire time on stage manually restarting the various processes. Not a single customer in the room noticed.