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Rupert Sheldrake has a theory of morphic resonance. He used rats who's task was to learn to escape from a specially constructed tank of water by swimming to one of two gangways that led out of the water. Successive generations of rats leaned how to escape the water in far less time than the first generation of rats. His theory is that the knowledge of how to escape the tank was somehow carried from generation to generation. https://www.sheldrake.org/abou...

I wonder if this helps to explain "The sense of being stared at".

Sheldrake

(yes I am aware of Sheldrake's reputation, however occasionally in science the message is more important than the messenger)

Sheldrake reported something like a 40% success rate on a test of esp using phone calls, which is higher than the expected 33% chance value [...].

And also almost certainly bullshit. This stuff isn't real. We've been testing it for decades, and it's come to nothing, because there's nothing there.

You can't prove a negative. We can assert that we have so far been unable to detect any such effects, which merely puts telepathy on a par with the Higgs boson and gravitational waves.

Sheldrake reported something like a 40% success rate on a test of esp using phone calls, which is higher than the expected 33% chance value [...].

And also almost certainly bullshit. This stuff isn't real. We've been testing it for decades, and it's come to nothing, because there's nothing there.

"in ten years we will be moving away from technology and into the realm of latent psychic abilities."

Technology is likely more reliable. Sheldrake reported something like a 40% success rate on a test of esp using phone calls, which is higher than the expected 33% chance value, but not as good as the 90%? rate of caller ID...

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has a very interesting answer to the question of where the laws of nature come from. He suggests that what we think of as "laws" is actually better described as "habits" of nature. This is the essence of a very controversial, but entirely scientific, hypothesis called morphic resonance.

According to this hypothesis, the laws of nature do in fact evolve. For things like how atoms behave and cosmological stuff we wouldn't be able to observe any such change, since the "habits" that control them have been engrained for literally billions of years.

But for instance in the biological realm, the change would be observable. This makes the hypothesis testable in a scientific way. So far, a number of experiments have been carried out, and while it is far to early to say that the results conclusively prove the hypothesis of morphic fields, results are very encouraging. It appears that the laws of nature do in fact evolve over time.

If you are at all interested in the questions of how self organizing systems evolve and where the laws of nature may come from, I strongly recommend that you visit the sheldrake.org website to get a first overview of the hypothesis. The next step would be to get hold of and read Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past for a more detailed description of the hypothesis and the experimental data that suggests it.

Personally, I regard this as the most interesting book I have ever read in my life. Your mileage may of course vary.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has a very interesting answer to the question of where the laws of nature come from. He suggests that what we think of as "laws" is actually better described as "habits" of nature. This is the essence of a very controversial, but entirely scientific, hypothesis called morphic resonance.

According to this hypothesis, the laws of nature do in fact evolve. For things like how atoms behave and cosmological stuff we wouldn't be able to observe any such change, since the "habits" that control them have been engrained for literally billions of years.

But for instance in the biological realm, the change would be observable. This makes the hypothesis testable in a scientific way. So far, a number of experiments have been carried out, and while it is far to early to say that the results conclusively prove the hypothesis of morphic fields, results are very encouraging. It appears that the laws of nature do in fact evolve over time.

If you are at all interested in the questions of how self organizing systems evolve and where the laws of nature may come from, I strongly recommend that you visit the sheldrake.org website to get a first overview of the hypothesis. The next step would be to get hold of and read Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past for a more detailed description of the hypothesis and the experimental data that suggests it.

Personally, I regard this as the most interesting book I have ever read in my life. Your mileage may of course vary.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has a very interesting answer to the question of where the laws of nature come from. He suggests that what we think of as "laws" is actually better described as "habits" of nature. This is the essence of a very controversial, but entirely scientific, hypothesis called morphic resonance.

According to this hypothesis, the laws of nature do in fact evolve. For things like how atoms behave and cosmological stuff we wouldn't be able to observe any such change, since the "habits" that control them have been engrained for literally billions of years.

But for instance in the biological realm, the change would be observable. This makes the hypothesis testable in a scientific way. So far, a number of experiments have been carried out, and while it is far to early to say that the results conclusively prove the hypothesis of morphic fields, results are very encouraging. It appears that the laws of nature do in fact evolve over time.

If you are at all interested in the questions of how self organizing systems evolve and where the laws of nature may come from, I strongly recommend that you visit the sheldrake.org website to get a first overview of the hypothesis. The next step would be to get hold of and read Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past for a more detailed description of the hypothesis and the experimental data that suggests it.

Personally, I regard this as the most interesting book I have ever read in my life. Your mileage may of course vary.

Not specific flaws in his debunking of homeopathy, but some skeptical reports on other claims Randi's made:

http://www.sheldrake.org/controversies/randi.html
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Presco tt_Randi.htm

Thanks for wasting my time with that shit. You could have mentioned that despite the names of those sites, they are in fact written by a bunch of whackjobs with no evidence to offer beyond, "Boohoo! He's sooooo mean to our ESP believing, homeopathy shovelling friends. PS. Buy these books."

In order to show my appreciation, I modded both your posts "troll". If you think this is unfair, just pray you never meet me in real life.

Regards,
Slashcrap (869349)

"Could you point out some specific flaws?"

Not specific flaws in his debunking of homeopathy, but some skeptical reports on other claims Randi's made:

http://www.sheldrake.org/controversies/randi.html
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Presco tt_Randi.htm

I'm all for skeptical inquiry, but fudging figures and inventing facts to support a skeptical viewpoint is in principle no more justifiable than claiming that "quantum science proves the existence of a universal field vibration consciousness frequency oscillation harmonic and that means we're surrounded by ascended pleadian spirit aliens from atlantis".

Just because someone calls himself a skeptic doesn't mean that everything he says is immediately and undeniably true. One of the reasons I think skepticism is important is that blind faith is dangerous. Blind faith in skepticism (or, for that matter, individual skeptics) isn't just dangerous, it's an oxymoron. YMMV, of course.

You're referring to the "sense of being stared at". People have actually done experiments to test this; most scientists are skeptical that it exists, but some people claim that they have evidence that it does.

http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/

... thinks most of the so-called "laws of nature" are more like habits. Here's his essay on The Variability of Fundamental Constants.

According to the hypothesis, this would apply to complex systems on every level, from the formation of galaxies down to quantum mechanics, and everything in between. So Quantum Darwinism, if you want to call it that, would be a special case of the hypothesis.

I strongly recommend his book "The Presence of the Past" to anybody with half an interest these kinds on philosophical questions. If nothing else, it's a relief to read a book that verges on the metaphysical, but is still argued in a calm and scientific manner.

Extract from an interwiew with Dr. Sheldrake:

Q: Just so that everyone is familiar with your theoretical work, can you briefly define for us the basic intention behind, and the basic elements of, the theory of formative causation?

Sheldrake: The theory of formative causation is concerned with how things take up their forms, or patterns, or organization. So it covers the formation of galaxies, atoms, crystals, molecules, plants, animals, cells, societies. It covers all kinds of things that have forms, patterns, structures, or selforganizing properties. You see, all these things organize themselves. An atom doesn't have to be put together by some external agency. It organizes itself. A molecule and a crystal are not assembled by human beings bit by bit, they spontaneously crystalize. Animals spontaneously grow. All these things are different from machines, which are artificially put together by human beings. So, what my theory is concerned with is self-organizing natural systems, and it deals with the cause of form. And the cause of all these forms I take to be organizing fields, form-shaping fields, which I call morphic fields, from the Greek word for form. The original feature of what I'm saying is that the forms of societies, ideas, crystals and molecules depend on the way that previous ones of that kind have been organized. There's a kind of built-in memory in the morphic fields of each kind of thing. So the regularities of nature I think of as more like habits, than as things governed by eternal mathematical laws that somehow exist outside nature.

More links available through Google, unsurprisingly enough.

thought of it first!

http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/