What The Psychic Theory Of Sheep & Goats Tells Us About Our Most Cherished Belief

Here is a true story. See if it rings any bells. Not in the story itself, which you likely won’t know. I mean see if it sounds like anything you hear about daily.

Early psychic research (card guessing and the like) is acknowledged to have been a failure, for a host of reasons, mostly along the lines of inferior test design, sensory leakage (correct guesses using ordinary senses), cheating, bad statistics (wee Ps galore), and so on. (You can see this free! book.)

Every conceivable attempt was made to tighten these early ESP experiments; really quite Herculean efforts were undertaken to design killer experiments to demonstrate paranormal theory was true.

Alas, with nothing but failures as a result. Though these failures were not always evident at first. Often, and too often, some promising result was heralded, only for the effect to fade away with closer scrutiny.

Yet there were still some who believed in the theory in spite of the massive, multifaceted evidence against it.

Which meant that theory believers had to explain how the theory could be true even though the experiments always failed. This was an inescapable logical truth.

The solution theory-holders hit upon was to posit something must be countering genuine ESP powers.

Sheep with genuine psychic powers were being hindered by goats who could psychically cancel sheep powers!

Yes. These were the terms really used. Sheep and goats.

Some goats were said to have malice. They used negative psychic energy to discredit the sheep.

But it was admitted that most goats didn’t even know they were doing this bad thing. It was, if you will, their systemic presence that was blocking sheep from performing, by using some heretofore, and still unidentified power.

Now a lot of the goat’s power was not directed at sheep, but at their own powers. Their negative attitudes stopped their own powers from working. Here’s how PSI Encyclopedia puts it.

The sheep-goat effect refers to the significant paranormal (‘psi’) performance difference between sheep and goats, whereby sheep tend to perform well in psi tasks, scoring above mean chance expectation (MCE), whereas goats tend to perform poorly in psi tasks, scoring at or below MCE.

That goats could suppress not only their own but sheeps’ psychic powers was established early on. They called the goats’ powers a “negative psi effect”; ‘psi’ being shorthand for psychic powers.

Thus was early paranormal theory salvaged. ESP really did work! Sheep really were gifted, even if they couldn’t show their powers at all or consistently. Them damned goats could be blamed for the sheep’s continued failures.

There were some attempts at banishing or separating goats inside experiments, but this could only be done case-by-case, by not allowing skeptics to view or participate in specific experiments, or by considering their goats’ results separately. But this quickly becomes a morass of confusing and contradictory results.

End of story.

This is, of course, a gross simplification of the history of psychic research, which
is still on-going and much richer, a history that I edged toward our Analogy. Perhaps you have already seen it.

If not, as a hint, there are many real-world examples of our Analogy.

Another hint. Suppose it is true that the presence of goats with their surplus “negative” energy is sufficient to block the sheep’s powers. Not in the immediate proximity of the sheep, you understand, but anywhere. After all, psychic powers are not limited by geography.

What then? How would you ever verify that sheep have psi if there is somewhere in the world a goat who can suppress that power?

Another hint. For some powers, like I said, every possible variation in experimentation has been tried, or at least every variation that people could think of, and still the powers sink into the background the closer they are examined.

Is this result because the theory is true but again (inadvertently and without meaning to) suppressed because of skeptical examination? Or is the theory, at least the simple theory of psi, false?

Maybe you have it by now?

I would, of course, say that the simple theory of psychic powers is almost certainly false. Because of its observational failures, but mostly because its causative agent is impossibly vague. But I don’t want us to get distracted by that today (including replacement theories).

Here is out Analogy, with two examples.

The first is the differences in intelligence between men and women, much more ably written about by the late David Stove than myself. Our Analogy is the multiplicity and pervasiveness of experiments, none of which has confirmed the theory of Equality. The link explains this. Read it.

The second example of Our Analogy is “racism”, and in particular “systemic racism”. Despite every major corporation, every branch of the government, including the military, almost every university, every major institution bending over saying “DIE me!”, despite every propagandist in every story pushing anti-whiteness, and despite years of educational indoctrination, in spite of all this, somehow “systemic racism” is what is holding back blacks.

Or “whiteness”. Not individual whites, but “whiteness”. Goats. Goats are suppressing equality.

In both examples, the theory of Equality is believed contrary to all failures to prove its existence. Yet believers are never shaken, never deterred on their quest to find the occult (hidden) proof of the theory’s truth.

None dare even suppose, let alone think, the theory can be false.

Moral? The need to believe often outweighs Reality.

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