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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5429084" data-attributes="member: 4937">Many many times.  And, it always annoys me.  Telekinesis in particular defies the laws of physics.  Where is the conservation of energy?  Where is the equal and opposite reaction?  The presence of TK's or TP's in a sci-fi tends to either reveal that the author knows no science (and may not even care for it), or that he's consciously trying to disguise his fantasy as science fiction by cloaking it in superficial genera trappings like spaceships and rayguns. ???  Pyschic abilities are supernatural.  In fact, they are the definitive supernatural thing.  I was trying to think of something that was equally completely supernatural and I couldn't come up with anything.  Werewolves, ghosts and vampires are more scientifically pluasible than pyschic abilities.  Action at a distance caused by an act of volition alone is definitive magic, and hense definitive fantasy. How is it the fact that it 'mental' make it less supermaterial or supernatural than if it was 'spiritual'?  If anything, the fact that it is supposed to be 'mental' makes it far less scientifically plausible than if it were 'spiritual'.  It's conceivable that we (and most everything else in the universe) might turn out to exist in more than 4 dimensions.   For example, string theory postulates that the reason gravity is so weak (relatively speaking) compared to the other known forces is that gravity acts asymetrically and its force is primarily directed into a universe perpendicular to our own.   So its far more scientific and plausible to believe that there might be some hitherto undetectable 'spiritual' force than it is to believe that the increasingly well understood purely physical lump of grey jelly in our skulls is capable of generating force through previously unknown means without expending energy.  In fact, in the psense you are using it, 'mental' doesn't even make any psense if you'll think about it, and is I think only an attempt to disguise 'pspiritual' behind psuedo-pscientific terms.  Do you really except that a particular pattern of neurons being fired causes action at a distance?  If not, what then do you mean by 'mental'?  What you mean by 'mental' is as far as I can tell only a psynonym for 'magical'.   It's just 80 year old marketing by occult scholars that didn't want to lose their funding and had to think up a more politically correct word for 'magical' and 'spiritual', and back then - when the grey lump was a lot more mysterious - I suppose we can forgive people for being confused by this sleight of hand trick.  Nonetheless, all it was and remains is an attempt to confuse the reader with technobabble.</blockquote>

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