Sure. Do it live, on multiple occasions, and in front of a group of skeptical scientists and magicians who can interact with you while you are levitating. I realize this might be too much to ask the practitioner, but you asked if there would be a way to do it so that trickery could be ruled out, and this would work for me. I would say the same about PK.
That makes it tough when viewed on YouTube, because as you pointed out, there is the possibility of hiring stooges. Also, I think you have to use open minded sceptics - otherwise they will refuse to admit defeat on principle.
I haven't looked into it at all. I'll try to this weekend.
Since you are an amateur magician, that would be interesting.
I'm quite skeptical about levitation, yes. Also very skeptical about PK. That said, I'm fairly convinced by the ganzfeld data. I'm certainly intrigued by Julie Beischel's work, the aware project and current NDE research, but I'm not convinced yet that consciousness survives death. I don't believe that aliens are physically here, I think humans are partly to blame for global warming, I think Trump is a bigot and a know-nothing narcissist who would be a terrible leader, I don't think crop circles are anything more than hoaxes, don't believe in bigfoot or nessie...trying to think of what else is discussed on skeptiko these days...
Ha! Ha! you seem to have added just about every side issue that has been introduced into Skeptiko in that one paragraph. As you probably know, I am deeply sceptical about global warming (re-branded as climate change, because it was less predictive), but in the context of Skeptiko, it is really just an analogy - a comparison between the science of GW and the science of psychic phenomena!
I know I keep on saying this, but I think the key is never to let yourself be 100% convinced one way or the other. I think that is where the religions go wrong - once you start to believe
100%, you start to distort the evidence as needed to keep that (phoney) certainty.
As to why I'm not convinced about everything discussed here, I think it's simply because the evidence so far hasn't tipped my scales yet. I follow the data and read the scientific papers and popular science books on these subjects, but thus far, other than the ganzfeld, it hasn't led me to any sort of definitive conclusion about the reality of these phenomena. It hasn't helped my journey that the default perspective on this site has become "If you don't agree that this stuff is all 100% proven, you're stuck on stupid or you must think that we're all biological robots." That perspective is so blatantly insecure that it raises red flags for me.
I don't think that is really what Alex is saying, and I know it is not what I am saying. The idea behind biological robots, is that from a wholly materialist viewpoint, we are just very complicated but essentially deterministic (or maybe partially random) structures. The puzzle with that, is that if you take a much simpler structure - say a toy robot - no sane person even suggests that it has an inner life - so why do we assume that a more complex robotic structure would have an inner life?
Don't forget that if - say - the ganzfeld work has impressed you, that should make you more susceptible to the other evidence relating to consciousness, because pure materialism predicts no such effects - not even if you are floating in a bath of warm water with ping pong balls over your eyes!
So I don't think any of this stuff is 100% proven, but I do think there is interesting stuff going on that we don't understand, and that warrants further research and discussion. I also think educating skeptical scientists should be priority number one in terms of pushing the discussion forward, but I know that's not going to happen anymore on skeptiko.
Yes, I think science at the moment is too stuck in grooves to be terrible useful in this area - and honestly I still like science!
In terms of being an amateur magician, what it has really done for me is educate me about how a number of tricks and illusions are performed, and how to use confidence to mislead people into believing that they experienced something they did not. I don't know if it helps much in terms of understanding psi, other than to give me some insight about whether or not magicians like Criss Angel can really levitate :)
I'd like to ask you - do you you feel confident that everything you see in magic circles is done by orthodox means, or do you think some genuine psychics infiltrate magic because they can make a reputation for themselves by doing things by that seem impossible?
David