1 00:00:05,459 --> 00:00:10,359 The philosophy of science, like any philosophy, is about the assumptions 2 00:00:10,359 --> 00:00:12,599 of viewing reality. 3 00:00:12,599 --> 00:00:17,199 Within the academic world today, the assumption is that consciousness, we don't 4 00:00:17,199 --> 00:00:21,519 what it is, but it's probably something produced by the brain, in which case it's 5 00:00:21,519 --> 00:00:23,839 limited to your ordinary senses. 6 00:00:30,559 --> 00:00:33,119 and all the rest not possible. 7 00:00:33,119 --> 00:00:37,920 But since we know that it is possible, that means that some elements of our world view 8 00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:41,359 today, based on materialism, are simply wrong. 9 00:00:41,359 --> 00:00:45,920 And so the reason why I wrote the book "Supernormal" and then wrote the book "Rea... 10 00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:50,600 to look at other world views that have been around for tens of thousands of years, we 11 00:00:54,359 --> 00:00:59,000 And within the esoteric world views, all of these phenomena we're talking about now 12 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:03,759 are easy to understand, because that's the way the world is. 13 00:01:03,759 --> 00:01:09,280 So I think what's happening is science as a method is really powerful. 14 00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:14,560 And it's slowly moving in the direction of saying, "Oh, well, okay, the world is not 15 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:17,280 the way that Newton was describing. 16 00:01:21,040 --> 00:01:25,959 But over the course from the 20th, over that hundred year period, our understanding of 17 00:01:25,959 --> 00:01:32,560 what material meant radically changed, as did our understanding of space and time and 18 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:38,000 all of these very fundamental things, they're totally different than they were a hundred 19 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:39,000 years ago. 20 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:43,000 And more importantly, they're different in the direction that make them more and more 21 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:46,359 compatible with the experiences that we're talking about. 22 00:01:49,599 --> 00:01:55,760 And if you keep going on that arrow, I think we'll eventually begin to converge more and 23 00:01:55,760 --> 00:02:00,200 more with some elements of the esoteric traditions. 24 00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:03,400 And the way we're going to do that, I would predict then is that there's something about 25 00:02:03,400 --> 00:02:08,599 consciousness, which is way more important than we had previously thought. 26 00:02:08,599 --> 00:02:12,439 It is not part of physics today, but I think in the future it will be. 27 00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:22,479 you alluded to in, and I'm not sure which book it was, with the evidence that we have 28 00:02:22,479 --> 00:02:27,159 for paranormal abilities and comparing it to, I believe, smoking. 29 00:02:27,159 --> 00:02:28,680 Am I remembering this correctly? 30 00:02:28,680 --> 00:02:32,120 Or for the dangers of smoking, am I citing that correctly? 31 00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:35,560 Something along the lines of the evidence or the amount of knowledge that we now have 32 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:41,240 based on what you've found, the studies that have been run, we have so much more evidence 33 00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:52,879 how bad smoking is for us. 34 00:02:52,879 --> 00:02:58,360 You might be referring to a comparison of the effect sizes in the experiments that we 35 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:03,280 do now as compared to the effect size of aspirin. 36 00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:09,360 So with aspirin, we know that if you take an aspirin, it will help prevent the second 37 00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:10,360 heart attack. 38 00:03:15,860 --> 00:03:17,759 The effect is real. 39 00:03:17,759 --> 00:03:18,759 It's really small. 40 00:03:18,759 --> 00:03:20,780 It's a tiny little effect. 41 00:03:20,780 --> 00:03:25,599 So it won't help everybody, but on average, over a long term, yeah, it does something. 42 00:03:25,599 --> 00:03:31,840 So by comparison, then one of my books I mentioned that the effect size for what we 43 00:03:31,840 --> 00:03:38,759 the laboratory in terms of telepathy is way bigger than what we accept with aspirin, even 44 00:03:41,800 --> 00:03:47,599 Well, now we do, but it took 100 years after people were using aspirin to figure out why 45 00:03:47,599 --> 00:03:49,759 does this thing actually work? 46 00:03:49,759 --> 00:03:55,879 Well, it's similar then to we don't exactly know why any of these psychic phenomena work, 47 00:03:55,879 --> 00:03:57,800 but we can demonstrate that they do work.