Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA02617 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 15 Dec 2000 12:35:45 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745B94@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Message From Sue Blackmore on her Hair Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 12:33:47 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<Considering my interest in Jung, I hould be more familiar with
parapsychology than I am. I have a couple of Sheldrake's books, where there
are some apparent resonances with Jung's notions. I notice that Blackmore's
name comes up in one of the appendices from Sheldrake's _A New Science of
Life_. Did she do a lot of work trying to unravel the popular ideas of
morphic resonannce and formative causation?>
I don't know myself. The work I cited of Blackmore's concentrated
on the theory of probability misjudgement, that people come to believe in
the paranormal because we're not very good at judging the chances of things
like dreaming about a person and then bumping into them the next day.
As far as I know there isn't a huge amount of empirical evidence to
fully substantiate this idea -at least in terms of differences between
believers and non-believers. There is evidence though of things like the
mis-understanding, and thus representation, of risk amongst journalists, and
this has been extrapolated to apply to the general population through
cultivation theory.
<In Jungian circles I have run across the story of the supposed
hundredth monkey phenomenon. I heard vague articulations of this here and
there, but only recently became aware on the debunking of this monkey
business:
> http://www.csicop.org/si/9605/monkey.html
>
> http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC09/Myers.htm
>
> http://www.skepdic.com/monkey.html
>
> http://nhne.com/articles/sahundrethmonkey.html
>
> I'd like to familiarize myself with the story and its debunking to store
> away in my arsenal for later use, but like anything else, it's easier said
> than done.>
>
As far as I know, this was started by Colin Thubron wasn't it? From
these links you've probably got more on it than I know already.
Vincent
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