[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Well, Mrs Cogan, let me put it this way.

Further discussion is rather pointless because your current perceptions won't allow you to see what I am saying. That's just the way the LOA works for you.

I see what you are saying very well. I just don't buy it.

For example, you claim to be a scientific person, yet when I say:

"refer to this book "The Intention Expeirment" and see the bibliography which will give you a few hundred references to scientific papers and scientific journals and scientific experiments done by different scientists all over the world over the past 30 years, each touching on some aspect of how thought affects reality"

none of what I say can be received by your mind. Instead you start referring to some experiment on some website which is not what I was talking about at all and of which neither you or I know enough to comment about.

I went to a website put up by the authors of the book describing their "experiments" and their "results." What I end up seeing is nothing. They don't bother to explain their experimental design or actually present their data. Real scientists are very eager to do both. Scam artists are not. You make it pretty clear you are not the slightest bit interested in science. You just want some authoritative backing for your magical thinking. Our culture admires science so you want to use science. If our culture admired religion you'd claim God whispered it to you. If our culture was preChristian, you'd claim a great mamma-jamma Guru taught it to you.

You say that you believe only in science. Yet when I mention a few examples of science experiments relating to thought/reality, which have been done at leading universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton,

again this eludes your perception.

I work for a university so an experiment done on university property doesn't impress me. Only the experimental design and the data produced will impress me. So far I haven't seen any of that.

You say that unlike science or chicken stew recipes, LOA is not testable. I then give many examples of how LOA is testable. I offer examples of experiments that have already been done, and I offer examples of experiments that could be done;

and once again this eludes your perception.

I haven't thoroughly investigated each of the references you have given me but it all looks like pseudoscience. When someone isn't upfront about their experimental design or their actual data that usually means their experimental design was such that you could not possibly get any results but the ones desired. Saying data was "significant" but avoiding explaining how significant or what that might mean means the data was just barely above chance.

If you flip a coin 100 times you will not get exactly 50/50 heads and tails. You'll get (for example) 48 heads and 52 tails. For a pseudoscientist that's a significant result. If you do the 100-flip trial again you might get 52 heads and 48 tails. If you do the 100-flip trial a dozen times eventually you're going to get 25 heads and 75 tails. Now we're talking! That's when you build a website, write a book and start having seminars at $700 a pop. It's easy. There are hundreds of thousands of people who will NOT ask for your data and will NOT question your experimental design. If you're lazy you don't even have to do the coin flips. Yes, James Randi or Michael Shermer will expose you as a cynical fraud. But nobody who matters is going to care as long as the people with the cash in their pockets are hearing what they want to hear.

Effectively, if there are any points which challenge or threaten the way you currently perceive reality, you will either:

(1) simply fail to perceive them; or
(2) succeed in bringing yourself to ignore them

you forgot (3) laugh at your sheep-like credulity

So further discussion is basically pointless, you see? For those whose minds are closed, nothing further will happen until they succeed in opening their minds a little.

I'm open to evidence, not "we did something I'm not going to tell you about and got results I'm not going to share. Trust me, the results were significant so buy my book and take my seminar."

I've asked you twice now for the paper on the water experiment. I've read several versions of it on the web and none of them were double blinded. Nothing but evidence is going to "attract my attention." How about coming up with some?