Q: Do you agree with the statement 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'? If not, why not?

Kind of. I guess for some extraordinary claims I would require extraordinary evidence, at least compared to the evidence I would require for a really mundane claim, such as "I'm wearing a blue shirt", which would probably be *no* evidence. Whether I would require evidence or how much depends on what kind of claim it is, even among claims that would be deemed "extraordinary" by the establishment. It depends on how well that claim fits in with my worldview of how things work, what past experiences I've had with the kind of phenomenon claimed, etc. This relates to the issue that I find the maxim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to be problematic because the fact that it's normally used to justify dismissing a claim implies that there's an objective measure to how "extraordinary" a claim is, while that measure actually depends on the the person and his episteme. Also just the fact that it's generally used to dismiss claims and deny the reality of anything unknown, mysterious, mystical, paranormal or surprising makes it a bastard phrase. The kind of people who invoke that phrase tend to be scientistic materialists and the kind that don't give enough credence to *suggestive* evidence and who dismiss anecdotal evidence out-of-hand, without even trying to apply intelligence and discernment to anecdotal claims based on subtle elements of the individual claims or how abundant claims of their particular types are, etc.

Since I implied above that being a scientistic materialist is a bad thing, I'll explain that a bit: materialists/naturalists/physicalists must have lived very limited lives where they have never been put face-to-face with the more "extraordinary" aspects of reality. To have that kind of worldview it seems like they must have experienced virtually nothing compared to what some others, such as myself, have. That or they're dense enough to dismiss them all as "extreme coincidence" or other kinds of explanations that are actually more far-fetched than a reality with (so-called) "supernatural" elements.

They also must lack heart or any intellectual allegiance to their heart or heart-mind integration to believe things like "this electricity I feel in the air is all in my imagination, or based on tactile cues or sensory cues or neurotransmitter levels, or whatever" and "love is all chemical and hormonal effects".

They're also pretty dim not to see what a fantastical claim it is that the singular element of consciousness/experience itself could somehow be an "emergent property" of non-living material. They're two fundamentally different things, categorically incompatible with each other; one cannot reduce to the other. There are many "emergent properties" in nature, but using the idea to explain (actually, to explain away) consciousness is the cognitive equivalent of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It's abuse of reason through objectification of a concept and its subsequent overly licentious use.

It's the desire to feel as though one fundamentally understands *everything*, combined with the naivety of thinking that a few simple concepts could properly assimilate all of reality, that drives people to be materialists. It gives people a false sense of accomplishment (conquering the mystery of nature) and superiority and abolishes the cognitive dissonance of mystery and uncanny things. Another element to it is the overreaction to irrational superstition and charlatans and such; they retract their minds in reaction to such an onslaught in the way that a hermit crab retracts into its shell when touched. They lack the fortitude, insight or nuanced thinking to separate the wheat from the chaff. They also lack the imagination to see how things *could* possibly work in ways that transcend the mundane.

I know I've kind of digressed.. I had to get it off of my chest sometime.