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CSICOP

                               5/14/2002
   
CSICOP: The Commitee for
the Skeptical Inquiry                                    
into Claims of the            They put out the magazine       
Paranormal.                   "Skeptical Inquirer",      
                              which I read occasionally,       
                              and think about subscribing       
                              to often.                  
                                                         

                                      Martin Gardner was one of the
                                      founding members of CSICOP.


CSICOP is evidentally
loathed by the psychic
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 hadn't thought it through, but
I supposed 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 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
difference between
Science Fiction fans
and saucer freaks...

(For you alt.gothic folks:
imagine how you would feel
if you looked in on
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     
bothered with.                             "open minded" is a   
                                           code word amongst the     
                                           newage.  If someone  
                                           asks you "Are you    
                                           open-minded?" the    
                                           recommended response 
                                           is 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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