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CSICOP

                               5/14/2002

CSICOP: The Commitee
for the Skeptical
Inquiry into Claims           They put out the magazine "Skeptical
of the Paranormal.            Inquirer", which I read occasionally,
                              and think about subscribing to often.

CSICOP is evidentally                 Martin Gardner was one of the
loathed by the psychic                founding members of CSICOP.
phenomena freaks...

I once attended a talk by Marion Zimmer
Bradbury at an SF convention in Salt
Lake City.  The title was something
like "Metaphysics in Science Fiction",
and that sounded cool to me, I'd always
had some interest in philosophy.

I suppose I was imagining something
like a comparison between the ideas of
Descartes and Bishop Berkley and
the solipsistic undercurrent of many
Robert Heinlein stories.

I was somewhat distressed to
learn that "metaphysics" is a
code word for "paranormal"
for some folks.


At one point, Bradley asked the crowd
if any of us have *never* had an experience
that can't be explained by a conventional
materialistic/scientific worldview.

Not very many of us put our hands up.

It appeared that of the
hundreds of people in this
hall, I was one of two or
three who were not "true
believers".

   I felt a strong sense of
   something like betrayal:

   There's really
   *supposed* to be a                (For you alt.gothic folks:
   difference between                imagine how you would feel
   Science Fiction fans              if you looked in on
   and saucer freaks...              alt.gothic one day, and
                                     found a bunch of people
                                     posturing like vampires,
                                     chatting about Marilyn
                                     Manson).

Bradley went on to make fun
of one of the guys who stuck
his hand up:

  "They're always the ones in suits!"

I stood up and angrily shook
the floppy lapels of my new         (1980, maybe 1981)
wave shirt.

   She looked at me and said.
   "Yes, okay."

The guy in the suit explained that
the con was having some trouble
with the hotel management, and he
thought he'd wear a suit to help
deal with them.


During Bradley's talk, she stopped to
sneer at Martin Gardner, who she
quoted as saying something like            (Yes, this is a
                                           paraphrase of a
   "This might be enough to                paraphrase, working
   convince me on any other                from a memory
   subject, but in *this*                  two decades old:
   field it is not enough!"                watch it.)

This was evidentally supposed
to be proof that Gardner was
not "open minded" enough to be             I get the sense that "open minded"
bothered with.                             is a code word amongst the newage.

                                               If someone asks "Are you
                                               open-minded?" the correct
                                               response is Run Away.
Having read some Gardner now,
I can say that he does indeed
say some things *like* this,
but most often in the form:

   "Extraordinary claims require
    extraordinary proof."

But I've never seen him use this
to dismiss something that I would
even call "ordinary" proof.

     Maybe it's something of a tactical
     error on his part that he keeps
     bringing up this principle.

        He makes it sound like he
        believes in a double-standard:
        weird ideas that make him
        uncomfortable are supposed to
        jump through special hoops to
        make it into his head.



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