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[Steven Novella]

PSi

[jeem]

"...Arthur Conan Doyle, who was the infamous author..."

"Infamous" means "well known for some bad quality or deed".  Was Doyle really infamous?

[Trinoc]

"...Arthur Conan Doyle, who was the infamous author..."

"Infamous" means "well known for some bad quality or deed".  Was Doyle really infamous?

That did seem a bit unfair. ACD may have been a bit infamous for his spiritualist stuff, but as an author he wrote some bloody good stories (even if Holmes's reasoning often reads like a primer in logical fallacies).

[stargazer9915]

ACD was only loony in his later years.  Holmes is one of the greatest works of fiction EVER.  Does not matter that he went batshit after writing the good stuff.  Just don't pay attention to it.
(Just for the record, Sherlock Holmes is my 'sacred cow')

[Trinoc]

(Just for the record, Sherlock Holmes is my 'sacred cow')

As a brilliant fictional character, absolutely ... but I wish I had a pound for every time I tried to explain to someone the fallacy in "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"!

[Nose Lavgghin]

As far as I know psi is not an abbreviation of parapsychology, it's just a greek letter that is supposed to denote the "unknown", in this context. I understood that is has been popularized in the parapsycholoy field to get away from the concept of ESP because the latter consists of terms that make you assume things that might not be correct (even if psi exists it might not have anything to do with perception, or work anything like our senses).

More important, how relevant is it to focus on some old card test when clearly parapsychologists have left it behind several decades ago?  It feels like criticizing psychology as a pseudoscience based on the sloppy Hans Effect experiment. Straw man?

[stargazer9915]

but I wish I had a pound for every time I tried to explain to someone the fallacy in "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"!

Apply this quote to CAM, Parapsychology, UFO's, or Cryptozoology and it seems to work quite well.  On the other hand, I do recognize your point and see where it could be skewed by any type of woo-er.  My only point is that I have read every story,  seen every movie, and listened to every radio drama I can get my hands on(by all means it has not been all of them) and my interest is fanatical as any muslim.

Trinoc, your point is, however, well taken.

[Trinoc]

but I wish I had a pound for every time I tried to explain to someone the fallacy in "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"!

Apply this quote to CAM, Parapsychology, UFO's, or Cryptozoology and it seems to work quite well.  On the other hand, I do recognize your point and see where it could be skewed by any type of woo-er.  My only point is that I have read every story,  seen every movie, and listened to every radio drama I can get my hands on(by all means it has not been all of them) and my interest is fanatical as any muslim.

Trinoc, your point is, however, well taken.

The problem, I think, is that the advocates of CAM, Parapsychology, UFO's, or Cryptozoology etc., use it against science. Whenever science does not have an explanation for something you can just about guarantee that some woo-merchant will jump in and say they have the answer. It won't be disprovable, so they will claim that because we don't have an answer then their answer must be correct. They might not actually quote Holmes, but they are using his fallacy in their sophistry.

[stargazer9915]

They might not actually quote Holmes, but they are using his fallacy in their sophistry.

Unfortunatly what you have pointed out is all to true.  The idea or concept itself is sound, although when taken like you have poited out, it can and is taken out of context by the woo-ers to show that thier crap works.

If only we lived in a perfect world...(sigh!)

[Trinoc]

I've just listened to the part of the podcast about Zener cards again. I follow most of the way these can generate false positive results but I don't get the bit about "card counting", where the fact that there are (say) only five of each card means that the guesser would have a better chance of being right by  knowing there are fewer of a particular card left.

Assuming that the guesser is not told whether they are right at each guess, surely they would not gain any advantage. For instance, if they had already guessed the circle 5 times, it's still 20% likely that a particular remaining card is a circle since the some or all of the 5 existing guesses could be wrong.

Can someone better at stats than I am explain whether this is a real issue (and why), or would it only be a problem if the guesser was told the correct card after each guess?