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I don’t think the odds of something happening being astonishingly small implies that it is more likely that another reason caused it in the first place, since that reason itself would have to have evidence. The improbability of an outcome given hypothesis A does not imply a higher probability for another being true, especially if no other hypothesis has demonstrative evidence going for it, the kind that which I talked about. But otherwise, I agree on your last point. The word “psychic” really would exist to fill a gap in that case.
– user62907
Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 10:00
Democritus postulated an irreducible substrate of all reality without any plausible mechanism for how this could be possible—indeed, by positing his atoms as irreducible, he basically denied that there was one—and in truly blatant contradiction to nearly all the available evidence. He was right. If someone proposes an irreducible form of knowledge via mind-reading in accordance with all the available evidence, as in the postulated scenario, they are already doing one better.
– Obie 2.0
Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 18:36
I don’t think that works as an analogy here since atoms and how they behave can be observed empirically.
– user62907
Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 21:19
1

Democritus would be unjustified then. It doesn’t matter if he turned out to be right. Also, he was technically wrong. The atom is divisible.
– user62907
Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 1:42
1

@thinkingman - No, we've only proven that we currently have no way to subdivide quarks. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any way to prove that they aren't themselves composed of something else we just aren't capable of detecting, any more than there is a way to prove that there isn't a teapot in orbit around the sun.
– Bobson
Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 12:04

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