My Library

my door of perception idea. Obviously, the believers in ESP had some doors open along those lines, while the goats had some doors closed. To me, this was a very simple concept -- since it is quite true that those who cannot or haven’t experienced something usually can’t believe it exists. This, of course, doesn’t make them less of a person -- except possibly in the case where the non-experienciers try to destroy the experiencers. As it was, Schmeidler’s experimental results had caused a humorous brouhaha to erupt among various scientific and psychological circles -- probably not because of the experimental results, but because the results were evidence that skeptical disbelief in ESP somehow stigmatized skeptics as dysfunctional regarding it. This challenged the self-esteem of skeptics for two rather obvious reasons. First, most skeptics based their rejection of ESP not on evidence or experience, but on the basis of "scientific logic and reason" -- THEIR versions of those. So if evidence for ESP seems positive, THEIR logic and reason held that there MUST be something wrong with the experiments via which the "so-called evidence" was obtained. Second, in a major and very brilliant strategy, Schmeidler had subtly changed the rules of the skeptical game by encouraging skeptical disbelievers to take part in ESP testing.