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Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy
Big Ben writes "UK scientists have built a virtual computer world designed to test telepathic ability. Approximately 100 participants will take part in the group gaming experiment at the University of Manchester which aims to test whether telepathy exists between individuals using the system. The project will also look at how telepathic abilities may vary depending on the relationships which exist between participants." Note: for their sakes, I hope they succeed in proving anything paranormal's going on — if they can reproduce such a result, it could earn them the $1 million prize long offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Something tells me this isn't going to work.
You're thinking that nobody will ever win that $1 million. I think I might be on to something...
Now let's invest some more tax money on finding UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and inventing the perpetuum mobile!
I knew they were trying to do that...
Unexpect the expected!
Scanners! How long before Daryl Revok enters?
A thought provoking blog I read at times recently linked to a research thesis on programming with thought.
While we're on the subject, I'll toss out some informal guiding questions and share a thought or two:
If you knew telepathy existed, how exactly would that change your life? What would you be willing to give [up] for that ability? If you were told that the only way you could have an ability such as telapthy would be to eliminate your attachments and improve your moral quality (given a moral standard of course), would you set out in achieving it?
The way I see it, the interesting part of giving up attachments is that, in the process, you wouldn't care anymore if you had an ability such as telepathy. Now consider that you would have transcended a certain part of humanness and would have gained telepathy and much greater abilities and be well on your way to a better you.
Eh, just some thoughts. At any rate, I invite you to point out anything you see wrong with my thoughts and share your own as well, as this sort of stuff interests me.
Falun Dafa is good!
>if they can reproduce such a result, it could earn them the $1 million prize long offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Won't happen. Nope. No chance. Randi's money is as safe as if it were in the bank. Safer really, if you think about banks.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
For a study of this nature, it seems like this kind of testing could help remove the possibility of unintentional cues from the tester that could result in statistically significant false positive results. Of course, I think it's more likely to disprove the existence of telepathy than to reveal evidence of psychic phenomena.
SELECT quote.text AS sig FROM quote NATURAL JOIN attribute WHERE attribute.description = 'witty';
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The ESP Game (http://www.espgame.org) has been on the web for a couple years now. It pairs you up with a random partner, and your goal is to type the same words as your partner in response to a series of pictures. It's a rather fun game that has convinced some users that they really do have ESP. (The real purpose of the ESP Game is not to discover users' latent psychic abilities, but to utilize human processing power to label images on the Web.)
Once inside participants view a random selection of computer-generated objects. These include a telephone, a football and an umbrella.
Do you really need a virtual reality football? Why not use, I dunno, a football? Computers can be useful for this, buy why not have a box of objects, and a computer that does the selection for administrators in both rooms? Double-blind, anyone?
The real question is, can you play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out when you're done?
An hour a day for research, the remaining seven go to World of Warcraft. At least his research grants bought him a nice computer system.
Sounds cool, but I hope they don't come crying to me when one of them gets headcrabbed in the game and gets zombie'd IRL.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
I'd rather not have a paranormal outcome. It is likely that if telepathy is possible, it is not paranormal; rather, certain theories and hypotheses previously thought true would need a little tweaking. If telepathy were possible, and explainable in scientific terms, that would be cool.
That just about sums up the paranormal. It's a cute stage act, but anyone who thinks its anything more is reaching for straws. Randi has had his prize out there for how many years, and not even a dowser has been able to prove they can do better than dumb luck. Look at that faker Sylvia Brown - she's so scared of Randi exposing her that she won't go near his tests.
I guess this is somehow more affective than playing a game of "Pick a number between one and ten"..."Seven".."OMG! You're we're telepathic! Yay!" :p
... a fraud with an agenda. He's no different that a bible-thumping jesus freak, except he beats the "materialist" drum.
But as one "super-psychic" points out, even scientists now say that matter-as-we-know-it only makes up between 4 and 7% of the universe. The rest is labeled as "dark matter" and "dark energy". They don't know what exactly it is, but that plain matter is inadequate to explain the measurements taken by cosmologists.
See Ingo Swann's Telepathy - The Opening Up Of (Part 1 of 3) for more on the new understanding of the biological basis behind telepathy.
I road-tripped to Vegas to hear Ingo's talk earlier this summer. He's a very smart man. "I only work with scientists" (he's now retired). He'd prepared some notes, and held up his copies of Scientific American and other mainstream sources... And pointed out that "dark energy" interpenetrates everything, and is the carrier medium for experiences previously labeled "extra-sensory".
(the basis of his talk was that "we need new words, because there are experiences that don't have a label, and the words we do have limit us to concepts that are 200 years out of date" Or something like that...)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
They've gone to great lengths to keep the first subject from marking the objects in any way to indicate which one was chosen, but this won't completely eliminate false positives.
The first subject still has to make an entirely subjective choice of objects. If the second subject knows the first subject extrememly well, it may still be possible for that person to guess which object was originally chosen just because he or she knows which object would grab the attention of the first subject.
More cynically, there's nothing to stop the subjects from creating some kind of heuristic before the test. For example, always choose the larger object or the one with the name that comes first alphabetically. Of course, I suppose you prevent this by refusing to reveal the details of the study to either participant before they are separated.
Can someone tell me why this isn't as outragious as spending tax money to research "intelligent design"? I mean, there is no real scientific theory that describes how telepathy would work, and virtually all scientific evidence says that telepathy doesn't exist. Telepathy is pretty much to fortune telling what Intelligent Design is to creationism - turning superstition into pseudo-science to make it palatable to the modern audience. I realize that England doesn't have the same strict legal seperation between religion and state as other countries, but even if research into the mystical and supernatural isn't strictly illegal it is certainly a questionable use of taxpayer money, no?
Why are people outraged over Intelligent Design but not this kind of stuff?
Nah, I think the old words work just fine. In fact, we had all the terms we need to describe your post in medieval times. They were used in different contexts, of course -- mostly agricultural.
There are many times where my daughter says something that I am thinking or vice versa, or someone is searching for a word and it pops into my head, or my wife and I thought about something at the same time of day (within minutes of each other) but being miles apart.
Too many times to be coincidence has things like this happened. But trying to force it never has produced any results...
It will be interesting to see if this experiment can "prove" anything...
Okay buddy, I'm not James Randi, I'm some random schmoe. And I think you are absolutely full of shit if you claim you or anyone else has "paranormal" powers.
Prove me wrong then: I don't need a negotiated protocol. Just give me a demonstration that's videotaped by two different cameras. If you doctored it, I'll find out, and if you're for real then I trust you'll be able to reproduce your results.
Prepare to amaze me.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Research into this stuff isn't just for cooks and crazies -- even Princeton has a small lab the goal of which is to experimentally gather a "better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality". It's called the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, and its web page can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ -- Martin
Did you guys ever read that series by Julian May that started with the book "The Many Coloured Land"? Another book in the series called "Intervention" which deals greatly with the moral/social impact of telepathy and other pyschic things. In it, there is are many galactic civilisations that have acheived enlightenment and they are waiting to see how the Earth handles the growing number of cases of psychic abilities. Very interesting read. I personally believe psychic powers are possible and is the next stage in our evolution. Imagine being able to communicate without boundaries, being able to get your point across perfectly and without ambiguity.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Well, there's also the slight difference that he has facts on his side. None of these so-called "people who can" have ever been able to demonstrate their alleged abilities under controlled conditions. Until they can do that, they're nothing more than "people who lie to others", or at best, "people who lie to themselves".
I see. It's a pity that there's no evidence that these experiences actually took place in reality, not just in the participants' imaginations, don't you think? Because if there were evidence, someone would be a million dollars richer.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Quantum Entanglement.*
Of course there's still a great deal we don't know about quantum mechanics. Also biology interfacing with the physical world is quite common. Remember birds have built-in compasses.
My beliefs about the nature of the universe have been shaped by the experiences I've had, the sources I've read, and the people with amazing skills I've encountered. I interpreted them as I do, in a manner that I find constructive, and they allow me to work towards the goals I have.
:)
You have your beliefs, and ask me to prove them wrong for you. Why should I bother? If your beliefs work for you, who am I to challenge them? Good luck to ya.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Please let's not associate the Einstein icon with this crank science garbage.
How about a picture of a perpetual motion machine? Any of the zillions of diagrams out there would suffice. Something like the logo at the top of this page would be pretty good. And for added kicks, this device is actually patented.
Otherwise, I suppose a picture of a hand crank would work about as well.
(and let's tag this article as "crankscience")
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Salute... wait, you knew that already. Didn't you?
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been wide
If telepathy were real and useful, the multi-billion-dollar cell phone industry would not exist.
But if I just go out and hire some mind farmers to play for me, like say Neo, I can totally rule!
There is no spoon.
No, really.
It's a fork.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm sorry but as much as anyone would like it to be, it isn't possible to disprove that something doesn't exist. You can merely point out the continuing lack of credible proof that something does exist.
However one can estimate the likelyhood of the existance of so-called psychic phenomenon sphere by simply testing out if it holds up a test of internally consistent and logical structure. Indeed we do not know exactly how our brain functions and if it can send and receive signals. However such a possibility becomes ever less likely as our understanding of physics deepens. For such phenomenon to exist would mean so many ramifications that it would be highly unlikely that our scientific knowledge and measurement abilities wouldn't have stumbled on atleast a few of them by now...
PS: sorry, no references or links at this time of the night - just my own ramblings...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
i wonder if it is able to detect activity in the dead zone....
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Ron Paul for President 2008 http://www.infowars.com/
Dude, congratulations. That's the best troll I've seen all day.
You're talking about a forum that hates ID. What do you think?
Are you for real?
About 4 years ago, I went to a local music venue for the weekly talk show hosted by musicians and some pathetic psychic was there claiming "quantum physics proves crystals can heal you". Every other claim she made was punctuated with a bunch of keywords about quantum mechanics (esp. strange action at a distance and observability).
I finally got the mic and asked her opinion of Schrodinger's dissent and if she could respond to one of the founder's main gripes, and she had never even heard of Schrodinger. I asked how she could possibly quote QM every other sentence and never had heard of it's primary founder. She brushed it off with some analogy about knowing how to hit a baseball without understanding all that complicated math.
Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Help me Tom Cruise! Use some of your voodoo to get this fire off me!
Whether these 'people who can' are for real or not, I sincerely hope someone *does* win the money from Randi; he's a narcissistic pillock desperate for adoration, perhaps suffering from some kind of Napoleon or Jesus complex. I notice he hasn't tried his debunking methodology on anything that might offend a major religion.
Hey, I have a paranormal skill; I can tell you where Randi's head will be at any given time: up his own backside. Do I win one million USD?
The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.
Of course, when evidence conflicts with beliefs, beliefs usually win, even by those who fancy themselves of a "scientific" mindset. See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
For your consideration, concerning the facts about individuals being "able to demonstrate their alleged abilities under controlled conditions":
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I still would keep those crystals away from cats in boxes.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/
All these quacks and "paranormal" frauds, (chi-gong, etc), include references to advanced physics. This is designed to give them an air of scientific authority, and confuse the uneducated people who fall for their drivel.
By your definition, the difference between kook and scientist is the amount of funding they get.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
i wish my highschool had tought me telepathy
then again they would ban it as a threat to exam security any telepaths would be prohibited from seeing secret documents and we would end up eventually rounding "them" up and putting them in "internment" camps
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.
:)
You might benefit from consideration of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Paradigm Shift, and all that.
People don't pick holes in "scientific understanding". The holes exist, and people just point them out. There is no accepted "theory of everything" yet, and there are many observations that don't make sense when looked at from a materialist overview.
There are good "psychics" and not-so-good "psychics". If you happen to cross paths with a good one, you might have your own paradigm shift.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
If you put the same set of stimuli into two separate functions and they map to the same result, this does not prove or even suggest interprocess communication. It shows that the mapping functions are equivalent.
The mapping functions in this case are trained into large neural networks (brains) by a wide variety of life experiences. Primary in this process is learnt language (otherwise the participants won't know what "pick one of these objects" means), secondary is learnt social values (I am a man, lipstick is a woman thing, I will pick the football or the carkeys but not the lipstick), and tertiary influences include personal preference (I like football more than cars), presentation (people seldom choose the end items) and feedback effects (sceptics will choose items they think others won't choose, believers will choose items they think others will choose, and this is again modified by their knowledge - conscious or otherwise - of primary and secondary influences).
All of this is well known and exploited by (for example) advertisers and card sharks.
We already do have a method for transmitting thoughts between physically separated individuals. It's called "speech" and it certainly does give us profound advantages over the other animals. If you think about it, from a dog's perspectives, humands definitely are telepathic, insofar as we can share complex ideas and emotions at a distance. We can even transmit through time. This is called "writing". Both can be learnt, and both can be technologically enhanced in every respect.
As far as I can see, the only difference between "ESP" and language is inability to detect a medium. As is frequently quoted, any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. Give two people cellphones and they can share thoughts at a distance. If the cellphones had direct neural interfaces, there wouldn't be any practical difference from telepathy as sought by crackpots.
Sorry, like the rest of the sane and semi-sane /. readers I have to call BS. Ok, the brain generates and uses EM and it is probably susceptable to EM interference if the field strength were cranked up enough. So you might someday demonstrate some sort of communication across distances of inches. But anything longer range isn't possible if you assume EM as the transmission method considering the output power of a human brain and the noise floor at the frequencies involved. Period.
That leaves transmission method X. And since nobody can even propose a method X, even a crackpot one, you are left trying to do a bunch of handwaving "by methods unknown". Combine with hundreds of controlled experiments failing to show that any such thing is happening and you have a non-existent effect with no way to propagate even if it did exist. And people are still getting money to do yet another test, even though nobody sane expects results anymore. Gotta love people who can manage to grab onto a public teat on such a bogus justification... wonder who's dick ya suck to get one of those jobs! Why do I have this mental image of Dr. Venkman slacking away in the open of Ghostbusters.
Democrat delenda est
I'll tell you why rational people get upset about "paranormal" activities. By definition, paranormal defies science! In addition, people that believe in paranormal activites usually believe in them stronger than science. Your analogy to radio waves is ridiculous. Technology is much different than special human abilities. After thousands of years of people believing in psychic abilities, with decades of research into the subject, there's still no legitimate scientific evidence.
Two hundred years ago such questions would have made sense. Today we know there isn't any mechanism for that.
This is an argument from ignorance. You're saying that you haven't seen a mechanism, therefore one doesn't exist.
Can you honestly tell me that in a universe where 90% of the matter is, by our best science, missing - there is no possibility that we may have overlooked something?
Remember, less than a hundred years ago we thought radio traveled through the luminiferous ether. And at the time, it made sense.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...to establishing the cultural significance of land rights for gay whales.
Are you saying that if, for example, some priest tries to claim Randis' 1 million with an act of healing then he'll just give up the cash to him, for fear of causing offense to all the bone-headed grotesques in middle America?
If your answer to this question is yes then you're sub-normal in your powers of thinking my boy, not paranormal. Indeed, the fact you "sincerely hope someone wins the money" suggests that you are indeed a little short on grey-matter i'm afraid.
Going back to religion, even those that make falsifiable claims of supernatural power would stay well away from scientific testing; it is too lucrative a scam to risk it.
The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.
Or there is an alternate explanation... Like maybe the researchers involved were scientologists, most of the supposed psychics were too, and this was just a clever project to milk the public for a few million dollars.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
How do I mod down this entire post? And where's the "Crackpot" choice in the moderation OptionMenu pop-up?
|>oug
Although I'm absolutely certain (from personal experience) that some level of psychic ability exists, I'm guessing that since it hasn't been "Proven" yet, it will not be proven now.
I don't know how it's possible that it hasn't been proven in thousands of years of humanity--or at least in the last few hundred where science could actually prove something--but my guess is that either there is a group that profits from telepathy being unproven or there is some law of nature that forbids it (I started thinking of that answer as a joke quite a while ago, but with some of the ramifications of String Theory and Quantum Physics, I really can't be sure it's absolutely impossible any more).
All I can say for sure is it exists and that it's existence isn't common knowledge--so something is going on.
No - we love ID - J. Carmike is cool! :)
I suspect "dark matter" and the like is really just an illustration of human pride...
It seems to me more like a "fudge factor" to make our theories and equations work...
Because the scientific communitiy is not ready to admit that they overlooked/haven't found something that is statistically significant.
"I have the sixth sense," said comedian Red Skelton some years ago, "..I just don't have the other five".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Show me a good psychic. I want names. I want solid, verifiable evidence. Who has made a statisticly significant number of non-vague true predictions?
CAPTCHA: "conjure". Yeah, I bet.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
But as one "super-psychic" points out, even scientists now say that matter-as-we-know-it only makes up between 4 and 7% of the universe. The rest is labeled as "dark matter" and "dark energy". They don't know what exactly it is, but that plain matter is inadequate to explain the measurements taken by cosmologists.
... And pointed out that "dark energy" interpenetrates everything, and is the carrier medium for experiences previously labeled "extra-sensory".
Mua ha ha ha! I bet 300 years ago it was the phlogiston and aether that would explain psychics and the paranormal.
Dark energy, by its nature, is difficult to detect because it does not interact with most of our physical matter, therefore it would not interact with brains, either. Or, if it did, it shouldn't matter if the brain was alive or dead, or from an animal or a person, since no real cellular differences have been observed. Likewise, if brains were somehow connected to dark energy, one would imagine that toenails and arses would likewise be affected, in that perhaps one's toenail would twitch to the tune of another's arse.. Of course, any sort of paranormal activity is highly resistive to any sort of imperical testing. For instance, cars, guns, airplanes, death, taxes, and statistics work for everyone, regardless of what they may personally believe. Generally, the universe is like that, e.g. it depends very little upon the organization of molecules within someone's mind and instead is driven by its own rules and laws. If anything, the paranormal is just a simple proof that most people are stupid when it comes to statistics.
(the basis of his talk was that "we need new words, because there are experiences that don't have a label, and the words we do have limit us to concepts that are 200 years out of date" Or something like that...)
Funny, maybe he should try German... But really folks, after thousands of years of psychics and languages, you'd think *some* word would stick to these vague, untestable experiences. You know, words like "charlatan", "trickster", and "fraud", but without the negative connotations.
If all of the people who are found to be "telepathic" are hot girls, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one.
Wait, gaming? Okay, what I said above probably won't be an issue.
Are they planning to strip-search the participants for hidden transmitters and receivers?
To test and debug the system, have they hired a couple of good magicians skilled at "mentalist" acts, with a promise to pay them well for their time if they can successfully cheat?
Or, like most scientists, are they just protecting against unconscious cheating by honest, good-faith participants?
I find it disappointing that TFA doesn't really discuss the possibility of conscious, clever cheating... or implies that it's impossible because, well, gee, the system is so high-tech.
People have smuggled transmitters and receivers into casinos, where the management is probably far more savvy, cynical, and experienced at detecting cheating... and financially motivated to do so... than these scientists.
I predict that this will have the same outcome as all other parapsychology experiments: a very slightly better-than-chance statistical outcome, and endless ambiguity and debate about whether the statistics were done in a valid way.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Paradigm shift and all that" is irrelevant here i'm afraid.
Its really very simple - if someone suggests that something is true or real, when in fact:
1) there is no evidence for that to be the case
+
2) there is no observable mechanism that would allow for that something to exist
then there is not much reason to believe in that something, whether it be astrology, ghosts, telekinesis...the list goes on.
The fact that scientific disciplines go through developmental stages (as Kuhn observed) does not mean that they should accept pseudo-science as truthful; where did you get that idea from may i ask?
Why the hell do they need virtual reality for this? Why not just have them look at a monitor? Probably to make them seem more important. Apparently virtual reality enhances the fact that somehow there is a transference of brain activity from one room to another containing objects.
Don't we have professional telepaths working for the government somewhere? Where have those rumors gone?
Also there is the possibility that some team will win based on probability alone, if you did this experiment enough times, it will eventually point to telepathy, but it actually just pointed to luck.
What is more is that they have told us what the test is, and it hasn't been run yet. How about I always focus on an object that adheres to a set of rules, which my partner is aware of, though there are decoys you could drastically increase your chances of hitting the jackpot by having a strategy going in.
Also, if these people were telepaths, and not idiots, which they are, they wouldn't give a shit about whether or not other people knew they were telepaths. Could you imagine having the power to send signals to people using your mind, and using that incredible power for some stupid contest. Million dollars my fricken ass, this is officially the stupidest thing I have seen all day.
You take it, I don't want it...
Well, I've already given one. Mr. Swann is known as the 'most tested guinea pig in parapsychology', or something like that.
Allison Dubois (inspiration for NBC's Medium) was tested by Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona.
There are plenty more, but you don't really care. You're just chest-pounding on the superiority of your belief system vs. those who allow for something more.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Just go to console and type:
sv_cheats 1
enable telepathy
duh!
This is just a completely absurd use of technology when a deck of picture cards would suffice. Tape record two different rooms, syncronize with a watch, and whamo - the same thing test sans computers. I love computers but misusing them like this to make a simple thing overly complicated is just plain wrong.
Has anyone maybe considered that maybe this isn't an experiment for testing telepathy, but maybe is a psych study on something else? I mean, wouldn't this kinda taint the group by telling them that they are trying to do telepathy. I think its just a cover for some other expermint.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Silence fool! And please stop ass-fucking yourself with bananas.
Yes, the US government wasted money on "remote viewing" research for twenty years. The spooks actually hated it because it was their funding being poured down the toilet. Twenty years of work never turned up ANYTHING. The only thing that ever came out of it was a whole lot of books designed by crackpots, for crackpots.
Heh. Since you're the kind that likes getting oblique advice, lemme give you some.
I've been around the block a few times, met a lot of people, seen a lot of things. I'm an information worker; I don't depot knowledge, I have to dig up the truth. And I'll tell you something about the truth. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't lift you up, it doesn't make you victorious or vindicated. It doesn't solidify your faith. Because when you tell the truth, it isn't you talking; it's the truth. It isn't your beliefs being defended, it's the truth.
Telling the truth will leave you certain but uninspired. It isn't certainty that propels men; it's excitement, identity, the sense of opportunity and the promise of togetherness. The truth offers none of these things because the truth doesn't care who you are, the truth doesn't promise you anything. The truth is like a stone; it just is. All its virtue is in being.
So when you say things in rage, defending the things you love, ask yourself; does it feel like the truth?
Well, you have to quantify it somehow, don't you? Pick a better metric.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It was common knowledge for educated people at the time of Columbus to know the world was not flat.
See the Wikipedia article on Columbus. He thought the circumference of Earth was 25,255 km (based on some odd theories and weird math), but it's more like 40,000 km, which had been known (modulo some later minor corrections) since Eratosthenes calculated it around 240 BCE.
Now we know where the "intelligence" about WMDs in Iraq really came from and how much it cost.
"Precognition" and "mind reading" are phenomena where natural selection and supernatural design make different predictions. Precognition, even a minor ability to see thirty seconds into the futre, and mind reading, even a minor ability to sense which way a predator or prey animal will jump, would have an enormous selection advantage. A theory of natural selection over long periods predict that if these were possible, they would be nearly universal. The eye evolved several times. Any motile creature of more than a few hundred million cells that lives in the daylight has eyes. So, natural selection predicts that, since precognition and mind reading are not universal, they're impossible. A supernatural designer could add precognition and mind reading to any species ("kind") at any time. Thus, evidence for precognition or mind reading, given that they are nowhere near as universal as vision, falsifies natural selection.
Randi's "silly excuses" are simply science in action. Extraordinary cliams require extraordinary proof, although in this case, I think what he asks adds up to simply ordinary scientific methods. In order to prove that you have paranormal powers, you have to show that what you are doing is not being done by other means. Randi's challenge simply says that the parameters of the test assure that. For example, claims that a person can turn the page of a book by telekinetic powers never work if the book is inside of a clear plastic box. Strangely, the person who claims these powers will claim that this is unfair. If you need more details, check out the rules.
When you get down to the nut cutting with Occam's Razor, the paranormal claims always fade out. They always reappear with the same claims and no evidence. The credulous will always be with us. The good news is that many of them like to play cards for money.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
When the U of Manchester dean catches wind of this I have a feeling they'll be out on their asses.
Well, how's that for irony? Mr. Potts, meet ms. Black. What I would call an argument from ignorance is the fact that people mention this "90% of matter is missing" without any idea of what it means. No, matter isn't "missing". What happens is that *VISIBLE STARS* account for only 10% or so of the matter that *WE KNOW* exists in galaxies.
The most amazing thing isn't that we haven't determined exactly what's the composition of the 90% of matter that isn't in stars. What's really wonderful is that, with scientific methods, we know exactly how much matter is in galaxies, even if we cannot see that matter directly. Through spectrum measurements we know the speed of stars circulating around the galaxies, through orbital calculations we know that the total mass in the galaxies must be ten times larger than the mass of the visible stars.
If scientists say that "90% of matter is not visible" is because they do understand *exactly* the working of celestial mechanics. BTW, you didn't read that link I posted about the "Relativity of Wrong", did you? Because, if you did, try reading it again, you didn't get the point...
I have had numerous experiences prior to ever doing any mind bending drugs. WHich to me were unexplainable. Formost which comes to mind is deja vu like experience I had with my mother 2 times both regarding food. she walks out of kitchen and said my name I responded with green beans, She looked shocked and asked me how I knew. I explained it as deja vu. I could feel it like watching a movie. 3-4 years later same thing happened I knew from the placement of me and where she was at what she was going to ask me. I answered before she asked and again Shock. I believe there's a connection there I don't know that we'll ever force it or have it on demand but something in us can read events or enough of life to make extremely educated guesses.Telepathy isn't so far from that. Unfortunately for me I seem to have less of those experiences since I turned 20 and i'm 38 now. I used to dream some awesome stuff too.. but I think some of the drugs I was stupid enough to do may have wiped those away. "Kids DO NOT DO psychedelics!" I still dream but I remember less than 1 dream a week and then it's only a feeling not a clear picture. Meanwhile Xenu trapped all these bad beings on earth that'll cost me 285,000 to clear out of my system. So I gotta go find some moola !!
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
It surprises you that there are kooks and crazies at prestigious institutions?
I'm not saying that telepathy exists, or that I feel that this is a good use of tax money, but some of the "science" being posted here is not only worse, but downright unscientific. Note to everyone, before you bash "pseudo-science", make sure you aren't perpetuating poor scientific practice yourself.
First off, I'd like to address the "all scientific evidence indicates telepathy does not exist" argument. What evidence? There isn't any. The same evidence that is so easily discreditied as for ESP is equally discredited as against it... the fact that false positives have tainted virtually every experiment on the subject simply means that they mean nothing because they were flawed experiments. If I put a rock on a table, and observe that it does not fall, I have not disproven gravity, I've just performed a flawed experiment (insofar as (dis)proving is concerned) and as such it is invalid.
Second, the whole crank/junk/whackjob science thing is patently unscientific. The fact of the matter is that nearly all of our scientific fundamentals have been considered "mainstream" for less than 300 years. Prior to that, virtually all of them were considered "junk science", and research into many of them was likely to result in extremely harsh punishment, up to and including death. Some sciences, such as evolution, are still labeled as "junk science" by a large sector of the population (even larger if you factor in the Third World). To put it simply, this argument is just bad, it's wrong, it is the single greatest obstacle that science has faced since the dawn of humanity; don't use it.
Third, the lack of observable medium means less than nothing. Believe it or not, we still have no idea how gravity works, why it happens, or why it is universally applicable to all matter at all times and states (or to energy under the same, if that's how you prefer to look at it... personally, I like to think of energy as a form of matter rather than vice versa, but I don't see as it makes a difference which is on the right side and which is on the left when there's an '=' in the middle). Under the logic some have applied to ESP, that means gravity does not exist. Obvious fallacy.
Fourth and final, the assumption that an experiment must yield affirmative data to be meaningful is just absurd. If, at the end of this, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that there is no affirmative evidence for ESP, then that conclusion has been drawn, and legitimately doing so may put the idea to rest. Similarly, if an ID research team comes to the conclusion that they are unable to find any evidence specifically supporting their theory and acting as counter evidence to the ToE, then it may also put that idea to rest. That said, unless the research is done, speculation about the value of the results is moot.
Using antiscientific arguments to state that potentially unscientific research shouldn't be done is even worse than letting it just happen.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
There is no need for quantum effects to communicate at a distance. Regular electromagnetic radio waves work just fine for that. The delay due to being bound by speed of light is under 0.1 sec for anywhere on earth.
So what I gather from your comment is that if these people are looking to determine if telepathy exists and quantum mechanics plays a part, they should be testing mothers and their offspring.
I'll follow your comment up with one about excess cells from a womans baby being left inside her body after giving birth. Perhaps that's the opportunity for a preliminary "key exchange" of entangled matter which would permit a woman to communicate with her offspring.
So I would propose two hypothesis. The first, a woman and her child may be capable of telepathy, although a grandmother and grandchild are not, nor are any other relationships. The second, a woman is capable of "monitoring" her child from a distance, but the woman has no communication channel back to the child. So she may know if something is wrong in a distant offsprings life, but not vice versa.
I'm quite the skeptic but I would deny one of these possibilities and rumors of "mother's intuition". A physical explanation of this would be the discovery of a lifetime.
Don't you agree?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Actually, they didn't get results:
In one particular study on remote viewing, the "psychics" scored above the result expected from chance by getting the right answer approximately 33% of the time when there were four choices, which Science News characterized as "a moderate increase over chance." But the judgment of success was determined by the project's director, who rated the similarity of each response to the target display and to other randomly chosen pictures. Hyman argued that these studies offer no insight as to why the scoring is above chance--it's just assumed that it must be psychic ability. He also noted that the accuracy ratings should have been done by independent judges--not the project director--and that none of the studies have yet undergone peer review. In other words, there were severe methodological flaws in those studies that did seem to show a hint of something. Indeed, a former CIA technical director who monitored these programs said on Nightline that he wasn't aware of any significant results from the "psychics."
An interesting note in this regard is that "psychics" interviewed by CIA evaluators said the program worked well as long as it was run by those "who accepted the phenomenon." Sorry, guys, but objective scientific results shouldn't depend on who's running a study! (The Straight Dope)
The only form of "remote viewing" that has been shown to work involves a video camera, a monitor, and a cable or wireless link connecting them.
What a load of bullshit. It'd only take one person who actually has these magical powers, and is willing to demonstrate them, to legitimize the whole thing. If there were visible proof that even a single person is psychic, claims of psychic abilities would be taken far more seriously. The first person to stand up and prove his magical powers would be a hero, vindicating everyone else who has been ridiculed for making such claims. But so far, everyone who has attempted to prove them has failed, and most people who make the claims make no attempt to prove them at all ("it doesn't work when nonbelievers are around", "I'm not in this for fame or money or contributing to human understanding", etc.).
Again, there is no such thing. The success rate of so-called psychics solving crimes is no better than educated guessing.
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I predict precisely a 5% chance for positive results at the 95% level of statistical confidence.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Professor Brian Josephson.
Here is an unformatted link to his webpage at the University of Cambridge. http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
And this has what to do with science?
I think they'll probably wait until they start getting strangely high accuracies, then they'll start in with the cavity searches. Unless you think some psychic is going to cheat to seem normal.
I stumbled across a novel my Scott Adams recently called "God's Debris" (Free e-book found online at http://images.ucomics.com/images/pdfs/sadams/godsd ebris.pdf ) which spoke abit about ESP and it can be mistaken for pattern recognition.
The idea that a person can perform complex calculations to form conclusions based on probability in the subconscience where the outcome feels like a "gut feeling" or "intuition".
Consider how the average person would treat a Sherlock Holmes type person's ability to solve a crime where others fail if he didn't explain his logic. Now let's go a step further and say even he didn't understand how he came to the conclusion he did. Say he just "felt it" and that all the logic was processed in his subconsciene and he was made to believe he solved the crime by some mystic ability. How many times have you gone on a gut feeling but weren't actually aware of what caused you to come to your conclusion?
I find it very interesting that the people here arguing that telepathy exists sound suspiciously like the same people who believe in ID.
First off, we've got the missunderstanding of current scientific theory. ID people talk about how evolution violates the 2nd laws of thermodynamics (they missunderstand thermodynamics). Telepathy people talk about how telepathy is possible because of quantum entanglement (communications is impossible through quantum entanglement). In other words, the argument is that "ID/telepathy must exist because of stuff I don't understand, but heard some guy on the radio talk about one time"
Then we've got the "god/telepathy of the gaps" argument. ID/telepathy must be true because we don't understand everything. That opens up the possibility (and investigation) for telepathy/ID right? It's true that science doesn't provide all the answers. But just making up stuff you like in deference to what we already know isn't science. I don't know what it is exactly. Religion?, superstition?, mysticism?, take your pick. It's just a bad way of understanding the world we live in.
It's kind of sad that for a lot of people out their that science is just another form of mysticism. To these people science is just a collection of facts, and the scientist are just weird witch doctors who gather them. Nevermind that science is a process of seperating truth from fiction. Science is just a way to not fool yourself.
AccountKiller
On a somewhat related note, does anyone else remember the study they were doing with the random number generating or binary switching 'eggs' that seemed to be influenced by world events? I don't remember the specifics, but the devices spiked when major world events happened. I know they reported a spike during the Trade Center event, and when Princess Di died.
Sorry I have no links. I can't remember the name of the experiment.
How else would
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
To continue the trend of linking to Wikipedia to support one's arguement, I'm going to point out that by claiming a mother and child count as particles that can be entangled, you've jumped right into magical thinking.
Which means, yes, you do fail it.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I don't even know why I'm going to bother because of the massive amount of nay-sayers on Slashdot, but I'm going to relate one particular instance that completely freaked me out to the point that I most certainly believe in "paranormal" powers.
A friend of mine was big-time into things like tarot cards and so forth, and at one point he said that to read someone else's dream, wait until late at night, turn off all lights, imagine yourself floating out of your body, across to your "target", and floating into the other person's body. (Mmm... Catherine Zeta Jones... Whoa, sorry. Got sidetracked.) I thought this was a complete lark and paid no attention to it.
About a week later, I figured, "Ah, what the hell" and tried it with a friend who lived a few blocks away. I instantly saw a blue background with knives and other instruments as clear as though I was watching TV. A few seconds later a huge skull formed in front of me at which point I broke off the connection. When I called him the next day, I asked (as non-chalantly as possible) if he had some kind of a dream the previous night of death or dying or something like that.
After a brief pause he said, "Yeah. I was being chased by this big skull. You appeared out of no where. The skull went after you, then you screamed and disappeared." After a few seconds of shock at what he said, that was all that I needed to believe. I too was a paranormal doubter up until that point.
I've also had dozens upon dozens of "same thought" scenarios with my nephew, who I think of more as my little brother consiering how alike we are. I've also had instances when I would play games with random levels and accurately guess the next level up to eight times in a row out of a group of 24 levels that could be picked, sometimes with the same level multiple times in a row. I've also experienced several times a somewhat terrifying experience where I would become semi-conscious while asleep, come to the *realization* that I was dreaming, and have to physically exert myself to wake up. That's not an easy task to do when the muscles are in shut-down mode.
Yeah, yeah. I can't prove any of this. I must have been drunk - wait, I don't drink alcohol - or stoned - no, never taken illicit drugs either - or delusional - no, I was in perfect health. But, it's still just a wild tale as far as everyone here is concerned. Yessir, a story made up purely for everyone's enjoyment and ridicule. {/SARCASM}
Personally, I think the attitude among the people in this thread is more out of fear than anything else. Fear of what, I'm not sure; but to just discount as "irrational" anything paranormal just because it has not yet been definitively proven is an irrational action in and of itself as far as I'm concerned. Science is all about making discoveries - oh, unless it involves paranormal activities because that's just for kooks. I forgot that science is selectively factual. Frankly, the nay-sayers belong back in the dark ages when the world was flat. After all, if it can't be proven, it can't possibly be true -- ever. Funny, that's not what I thought science was all about.
The burden of proof is on the claimant. I do not believe anything until provided with sufficient proof. Doesn't mean I necessiarly disbleieve, but I don't believe. I don't believe string theory, for example. Not enough evidence. Well same goes for anything like ESP or such that you want me to believe in. You don't get to say "well why not?" the answer is "because you've no proof." Prove it to me, scientificly, then I'll believe.
In the case of ESP I actually disbelieve. Why? Well the phenomena actually HAS been studied, quite a bit, for over 50 years. In all that time, nothing has been found. Thus there's enough evidence, for me at least, to believe that nothing will be found because there is indeed nothing to find. You've got to provide me with some good tested, repeatable proof befor I'll give it any creedence.
That's certialy true. My mom has, on more than one occasion, been very worried something horrible has happened to me. Of course by the fact I'm typing this, you can guess that nothing has. It was just her, being herself. She worries a lot about me and my sister. It is her nature. If some day her worries coincide with an actual incident it won't be because she's psychic, but rather because she worries all the time. If I walk around all the time snapping my fingers to make a quarter appear on the pavement, I will eventually happen across a quater. However that one snap did not cause it to appear and pretending like the thousands that didn't weren't there is disengenious.
There is no such thing as "ESP". It is simply the Force. All around you, the Force is. Many things that we as humans cannot explain are quite simple really. Many of us are capable of touching the Force, some moreso than others.
I've never been slapped walking down the street, sitting in a meeting, etc., etc.
Invariably if I'm in a public place, there will be someone I find attractive and I will think "hey now". I've never had someone come up and slap me for thinking rude thoughts, so at the very least, women I find attractive, as a rule, do not have telepathy.
Prehistoric humans with even a little telepathy would have enormous survival advantage. You'd be able to tell whether a predator was hiding behind the next rock, or whether it's an animal you're hunting for food. Or nothing, in which case you go off and hunt somewhere else.
In that case, natural selection would at the same time pressure animals, both predators and prey, to evolve to a form where they could block the effect so that their adversary (human or other) would have no idea where they were hiding.
Even if we can't tell where animals are hiding, even a little telepathy between humans could be used in group hunting and teaching offspring, or summoning help in a dire emergency. Even a brief feeling which influences your actions based on information from another human would confer enormous advantage.
Some people have reported that they have gotten "feelings" that some loved one is in trouble, but frankly there is an overwhemingly enormous number of dire incidents throughout human history, each one of which would select for having the telepathic trait. Something as simple as children having the ability to alert their parents that they are in trouble would still confer enormous survival advantage.
From an evolutionary perspective, telepathy is a strong survival trait. Since we don't see it in the gene pool, it's unlikely that it's even possible.
Circumstantial I know, but it's hard to prove that something doesn't exist...
One of the basic limitations of the scientific method is that it can only measure objective phenomena which can be reproduced at will. Unfortunately, telepathy et al is subject to the vagaries of human psychology, and like anything psychological, is subjective and varied. This is why there are so many varieties of psychological disciplines. While many different theories exhibit merit, there is no single answer yet as to how the "mind" works. In some ways, psychology is more of an art than a science. It's much easier to measure physical properties against objective, established scales that are proven reliable. Unfortunately we don't have enough tools like this for parapsychology.
If ten people witness a car accident, and they all testify in court, they'll say ten different things. It happens every day, ask any cop or lawyer, no two witnesses *ever* say the exact same things in court. Did they all see the same accident? Of course. Will they all say the same thing? No. Did the car accident actually happen? Yes, but how can you prove the details, in a scientific way, solely based on these different stories? I believe certain parapsychology is like this - valid, but subjective, easily misinterpreted, difficult to reliably reproduce, and presently, nearly impossible to objectively prove.
Quite a lot of parapsychological phenomena is ephemeral. There are places that are said to be haunted, and you can get somewhat reliable, objectively-minded people to go and "witness" some strange phenomena. Unfortunately, you can get just as many reliable people who won't witness anything. To boot, all the people who do experience something will report different things. Is there really "something" going on? Quite possibly, but it's almost impossible to analyze objectively.
Until we find a way to get past the subjective nature of thought and perception - and the subjective nature of the phenomena - we won't be able to objectively measure telepathy. My feeling is that we simply don't have the right methods and tools yet.
I sat this a few months back...I'm stunned to see it on the front page of Slashdot! I did it only to spend a bit of time in VR. They've hardly built a 'world' - it's just a single, plain, badly textured room. One the headset units was horribly calibrated, and viewed everything at an angle. To those who point out that the test could be done just as well without using VR - you're right...but I think part of the test was actually looking at what effect (if any) using VR had.
And any use of the words 'game' or 'gaming' in this story seems a bit...sensationalist.
There are powerful psychics out there that chose not to reveal themselves because as soon as they do the government either recruits them into a top secret organisation or they are "disappeared".
My proof of this is that there are no pyschics who have come forward with evidence of their powers. The government then uses these psychics to mass control the populations of their own and other countries - which is why the war in iraq is going so well.
Keep up the good fight my friend. Don't let the lack of evidence dissuade you from your one true path. Who needs "science" when you've got such a strong belief. Any day now cargo planes will be landing on my air strip on my Melanesian island, I just know it.
but according to all of the current theories, there is no way to actually use that to communicate
The issue is whether quantum entanglement can be a foundation for aligning two information systems. We have a very poor understanding of how the chemical and physical connections between neurons affect conscious thought, let alone the role quantum entanglement may play in the workings of a human mind.
While unlikely, if quantum effects affect perception in the human brain, quantum entanglement between particles in different human brains would have everything to do with giving those different human brains similar perceptions. Such "similar perception" might even be recursive to include not only sense impression but also thought itself. For example, if one brain's perception of its own thoughts is affected by quantum effects occurring within it, a second brain with quantum particles that are entangled with the first brain's might have a similar perception of the first brain's thoughts.
Such quantum effect-influenced perception might even operate in cases of intentional signing--when phrases are constituted volitionally--thus providing a material basis for what is understood as "telepathy." While all of this is conjecture and speculation, it is not difficult to imagine how quantum effect-based telepathy could work even if it is impossible to determine the outcome of quantum effects such as the spin on a quark or the polarization of a photon.
blog
Bad hypothese, bias, bad statistical analysis etc... etc...
skepdic on pear
sceptic report
And tons of other link...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Here's my prediction of what will happen.
This experiment is very poorly controlled (who's to say that two people aren't also on the phone to one another, for example), and some startlingly accurate correlations will occur. These will be debunked as the players come under scrutiny and the communication channels between players are detected.
However, after these have been removed, some correlations between players will still remain, below the level of staistical significance. Rather than being dismissed as insignificant, the woo-woo crowd will seize on these random correlations as "proof of need of more research".
This prediction is not the result of clairvoyance, rather it is an educated guess based on previous observations of this kind of setup.
Sean Ellis
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Telepathy happens spontaneously, and only when the people involved are in a very particular state of mind - one in which they are open to the experience. Many and varied experiments have led me to believe that any attempt at 'proving', in the scientific sense, the existence of telepathy is doomed to failure. I haven't quite come to a stable conclusion as to why this is so, but here is my best shot so far: the act of 'proving' injects the assumption that a negative result is possible. To be more precise, you are actually working from the state where telepathy is not recognised, and trying to prove that it does exist. This state of mind precludes the experience of telepathy.
I will note that there are numerous warnings in the bible and other religious texts not to try to put God 'to the test'.
Perhaps we are hitting a similar barrier to what early quantum mechanics researchers discovered in the uncertainty principle.
Anyway, I salute those who are trying to prove the existence of telepathy. However I fear they won't be getting any positive results. I've seen shared telepathic experiences that others will agree on later, but I've never seen anything that would hold up to a scientist. Everything is wrapped in context a mile thick, and only really takes on meaning to people personally involved in the event. I haven't seen anything a scientist would like, such as transferring data around. I've seen thoughts, feelings, reactios, points of view, and reactions, etc merged into a nice big mess. It sure as hell impresses those who experience it, but it wouldn't 'prove' anything. Perhaps someone has a different experience?
I always find it weird how religious people have so much trouble believing that telepathy can exists while at the same time they have no problem believing that God knows everything and knows what we think.
I'm an atheist myself and I tend to *think* that telepathy doesn't exist. But who am I to claim that I know all there is to know already?
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and how did they choose them?
who the hell are they?
real answers to these two questions will obviously predict the outcome.
for example autohypnosis that you cant walk can and will prevent you from walking.
there are much more factors to deal with when trying to prove something like this.
Doesn't telling the participants what the study is about beforehand invalidate any results? Or is that only for "real" studies?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
That's no text, laddie.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I rather like the work of Anne McCaffrey's 'Talent' series, in which she writes about a future earth where telepathy makes it out of the parlour-room and into the lab. She uses the theory that the 'talented' use their psychic powers by being 'observers' at the quantum level; that is, where a normal observation can change the state of a thing at the quantum level (or so I recall from physics), a Talent can observe what they want to see; literally, seeing is believing. Like the old Shrodingers Cat paradime, they 'believe' the cat is alive, and so when they open the box, causing the change, the cat is alive. What they observe therefore causes a certain change in the state of things, and so they exercise their talent. I think the point she was making, not to get into the heady world of quantum physics was that all of the above is done subconsciously, as is most of the actual talent, and whilst everyone seems to possess the ability for psychic powers, only a few can actually do it, and most of them can only do it subconsciously. Tis an interesting theory, to be sure, although me thinks it's not true, somehow. It would be nice however, and would bring truth to the saying 'no smoke without fire' if telepathy is proven. After all, there are legends and tales going back through every human civilisation that ever lived about telepathy, so there must be some basis for it other than wishful thinking.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
lol
Among other things, Dubois told Schwartz "the deceased was telling me that I must share the following - I don't walk alone," a seemingly innocuous piece of information, but critical to him.
"My friend had been confined to a wheelchair in her last years - there is no way Allison could have known that," he said.
Gosh! That's incredible! Or... not. How about the other example:
According to a summary of the reading done by Schwartz, she told him the deceased person was a man of great stature, extremely handsome, had beautiful women around him, was known to politicians and other well-known people, and was cremated - all accurate, according to Chopra's evaluation.
But she also told him his father was connected to the U.S. oil and steel industry, and there was a small dark terrier dog in his life - not true, Chopra said. Her accuracy score - 77 percent, according to Chopra's scoring, Schwartz said.
Maybe she meant me. I'm tall, handsome, have a beautiful fiance, and I'm known to politicians and other well-known people. Haven't been cremated yet, though.
See? This is goofy - all of the things she got right would apply to just about anyone... "great stature" could mean tall, important, etc. Everyone knows a "well-known" person. Also, the specifics - oil and steel, the terrier - were wrong.
The scoring is also questionable... If I guess that you're "handsome, have great stature, have beautiful women around you, and are a member of the royal family of Greece", did I just score 75 percent? 'Cause if so, I'm psychic too. I'll even say that despite having never met you, I know you're male. Now I'm at 80 percent, beating out Schwartz.
The facts? What facts would you be referring to, the scientific studies have lead the other way, and according to reports by people such as Brian Josephon, Randi is neither scientific nor unbiased. Quoting Brian Josephon: "Let me make the point, that there is actually a difference between a conjuring show and a scientific experiment. Now if James Randi is so certain that it can all be done by conjuring, I think the challenge is now up to him, to go along to a scientific laboratory where this is being investigated and get perfect results in telepathy, instead of about 20% better than you'd expect by chance. "
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I have telepathy. However, everyone I have communicated with have asked me to stop using it. Apparently my telepathic voice sounds like Fran Drescher. :/
Wouldn't it be just as 'impossible' if the participants were in isolated rooms staring at images on a computer screen? While it's an interesting experiment, I am not sure how the VR method is improved over what I have suggested. Except, of course, that the scientists get a fancy new VR system out of the deal.
If you are looking for "a good Psychic" then your approach is fundamentally unscientific as far as looking for evidence of psychic functioning.
Read studies by people in the field of Parapsychology. Look up statisticians such as Jessica Utts. That is where the scientific evidence comes from--not from an arbitrary hunt for a "good psychic" on slashdot.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
... a fraud
Really? Randi's made claims for which he has absolutely no evidence what-so-ever? People have demonstrated categorically that what he claims is false? Wow, there must be a WEALTH of information to support that assertion - I mean, he's THE public skeptic, so surely if he's been discredited you'll be able to provide a link or 3?
My favorite part of your post is:
He's a very smart man. "I only work with scientists" (he's now retired). He'd prepared some notes, and held up his copies of Scientific American and other mainstream sources...
Nothing like a little rented credibility! I can hold up a copy of a magazine and read from notes, too. It doesn't say a thing about my intelligence, nor about the veracity of what I'm saying. If my audience, however, is easily fooled by simple props, it might say something about their intelligence, however...
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Raise my hand if your a telepath.
Except I don't trust him because I witnessed him cooking statistics of those facts on TV.
IIRC Randi was on Artur C Clark's TV show, Mysterious World, watching a dowsing experiments where things were buried in snow, and passers by were enlisted to try finding things. There were two kinds of trials done. I don't recall the exact differences, but it was something like find things buried in snow, vs deterine when boxes were empty or not.
One kind of trial had a better than guessing result. The other was the same as guessing. Randi averaged the two results to minimize them, even though they were really different experiments. Clark complained about this in his afterword.
I find some merit in the criticism of Randi's CSICOP organization impiled by it satirical twin CSICON
Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal
Which according to writer Robert Anton Wilson offers a prize of 1 million irish pounds to anyone who can produce "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."
An example of the difficulty in this has been given: "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolf Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." Ergo if you can find a canadian with exactly 0.96 testicles, you could win the prize.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.
Said by whom? What evidence do those saying it have?
I can say that trillions and trillions of gnomes disassemble me atom by atom, clean the atoms, and then put me back together again a billion times a second, but that doesn't make it true.
The fact that the U.S. government financed something doesn't mean a thing. The government funds a LOT of things that don't pan out - so I've never been persuaded by the argument that they wouldn't fund it if there weren't something there. Sorry, but they flush money down the toilet all the time.
I read the stuff at the end of your post. I've read a lot of similar things in the past, too. People make claims, but they haven't backed it up with any evidence. "It has been circulated" is not "here are empirical results that can be duplicated by anyone else under the same conditions." It's just fluff. You can shake your little fist and insist that scientists are suppressing ideas they disagree with, but until you can back it up with *any* actual evidence - not just some crank calling a talk-show - science will ignore you.
For the record, it has been well circulated that the Trilateral Commision and the Illuminatus and the Stonecutters rule EVERYTHING. I mean, lots of people believe that, so it MUST be true. Also, one time, on the radio, a guy called in and he said he was scared for his life to say things, but he said that he was a high degree Mason and THEY ruled the world TOO! He said it was the only way to explain that Steve Gutenberg had a career, which makes so much sense! So it must be true.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Figure out a test and tell how to prevent my Migraines and I'll give you a million dollars.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!
A story my mother told me as a child was about a group of blind women. Everyone they ever knew was blind. But one of them had just partial peripheral vision in one eye. She would tell the others, "Sometimes I just seem to know something is there, it is blurry and off to the side, but I just know it is there." The other blind women would mock her and make fun of her. The whole idea that someone could "see" was simply ludicrous.
Imagine if there are senses most people are "blind" to. The people who have them, even mild versions would seem, well ludicrous.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Real psychics must exist. Have you ever seen an employment listing for a psychic?
That proves it, right?
Ask me about my sig!
The best the so-called psychics have been able to do is 15% better than chance. If Randi knows enough of their tricks to get 20%, he's better than them.
In the human-machine interaction experiments, a high quality source of randomness, either a radio-isotope hooked to a geiger counter, a pachinko-like machine which drops balls down a triangular array of pins into slot, or a radio tuned to static is measured and a baseline is determined for that source. Three trials take place, in which the subject is asked to skew the results higher, keep them the same, and skew them lower. Then the results are measured and compared to the baseline.
Their conclusions, as listed on the wiki page are as follows:
This is Princeton we're talking about. From what I've read, they have done their experiments right. The effect is measurable. People's thoughts impact the world, through some unexplained mechanism. The really weird thing is, it doesn't matter how far away the subject is from the experiment, either in space or in time. Forwards or backwards. They have done experiments where the apparatus is in a locked room, the trial is run but the results not measured, and some time later the subject asked to skew the results. When measured, the results are the same as if the subject had been asked to change them before-hand.
So all you naysayers out there can go shove your skepticism where the sun don't shine. Paranormal phenomenon exist and have been scientifically demonstrated in the laboratory of one of the world's best universities. James Randi, Princeton is expecting your check for (pinkie to mouth) One Million Dollars! Mwahahaha!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lets hope they don't run a-foul of these guys ...
To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education".
While Kuhn was right to emphasize the risk of myopia imposed by a conceptual scheme, he is wrong in his sweeping statements of this kind. I'm not aware of people doing "normal science" ever suppressing novelties. They may under-weight them, but no one pretended, for example, that the ultra-violet catastrophe or the photo-electric effect didn't exist (although Einstein was famously denigrated for his support of the photon concept to explain it.) Likewise, hardly anyone challenged the quality of Michaelson and Morley's results, stellar abberation or the precession of the orbit of Mercury.
Furthermore, while the rate of scientific change varies, and the creation of a whole new dynamics is a once-per-few-centuries event, the distinction between "normal science" and "revolutionary science" is not that great. In the back of most people's minds in physics is a thin thread of awareness that with any experiment they could find something inexplicable, reproducible, and crucial to our future understanding of the universe. We don't expect it to happen, but we are aware that it could. So are we doing "normal science" or not?
In the fuzzier subjects, like geophysics and biology, there has been more resistance to change because the evidence is more observational than experimental and therefore more subject to interpretation and not capable of experimental replication. But even in cases like continental drift and the bacterial cause of ulcers, it took at most a few decades to resolve, and once the evidence became undisputable people doing science changed their minds.
In no other field of human endeavour does anything like this go on. I know philosophers who still think that Leibniz's Law is more than a historical curiousity with no relevance to the real world. Religious people are obviously still hung up on the utterances of people like Mohammed and Jesus from thousands of years ago, and the subsequent and equally questionable moral and factual teachings of their interpreters.
So the facts indicate that scientists are open to discovering new phenomena. That is, after all, how you become famous and successful. The facts also indicate that physicists in particular are the most easily fooled when investigating "paranormal" phenomena, as the past few decades have multiple examples of physicists who failed to indentify cases of poor experimental design and outright fraud in the investigation of "psychic" phenomena.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm surprised no one has asked this. What about these experiments requires simulation? Why couldn't they just use physical objects?
So, where is this "scientific laboratory where this is being investigated and get perfect results in telepathy"?!???!! What have they published?
You've got my attention - now where are the details?
This book seems to be on topic http://tinyurl.com/jjb4g
Here's a teaser; some of those telepathic theories involve imparting some kind of imprint onto the object being viewed. I wonder are they using the same instance of the Object, for the chooser and the viewer, in this experiment.
:)
Stupid I know, but I really wish I could do a phd like that
To test and debug the system, have they hired a couple of good magicians skilled at "mentalist" acts, with a promise to pay them well for their time if they can successfully cheat?
In fact, it has happened that magicians have been used to fool psychic researchers, so it's a reasonable way to "test the test."
Of course, James Randi is a magician himself, and was behind the perpetrators of the Project Alpha fraud, so it's reasonable to think he would be aware of possible deceptive methods.
Geoff
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
--Further, and perhaps more importantly, none of the participants I've ever met care to prove to the world the existence of forces which exist beyond the bounds of orthodox science. Their own experiences are enough for themselves, and it was for them that they are meant. Other people's belief and knowledge structures are the domain of each individual and should not be abridged or forced upon. The search and growth of the soul is a personal journey, and the recognizing of such forces and energies as are linked to telepathy are signposts upon that personal journey. In simple terms, not everybody is ready at the same time. When you are ready, when you ask and seek in earnest and without fear, you will be shown. James Randi and his ilk are not seeking; they are erecting walls of safety against things which frighten them.
That's my take on it, anyway.
Oh yeah, I know this is pointless. I myself am a big fan of James Randi. Really, I just wanted to see what he came up with.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
How can it exist but be unprovable?
My guess is there maybe certain variables that exist, that due to their inconsistency, make it hard to provide for controlled tests.
For instance, there have been occasions where I would be thinking of a random song, and then suddenly my sister would start singing it. Or when one day I got a knack for calling a friend that I haven't spoken to in months, only to find out that they were out of the country and were just getting off the plane in the States the minute I called. Or when my friend's mom got a strange sick feeling; called home (Ghana - Africa) and was told that her brother died a few hours ago. Maybe it's coincidence, but even if it's 100% real; (in the examples I gave) it certainly can't be tested to be proven true.
Has anyone maybe considered that maybe this isn't an experiment for testing telepathy, but maybe is a psych study on something else? I mean, wouldn't this kinda taint the group by telling them that they are trying to do telepathy. I think its just a cover for some other expermint.
I thought about it, but I don't thik that's what's going on. No scientist would do something like that...
That reminds me, I hope no one catches me surfing slashdot on this microcomputer... I'm not supposed to use it for anything else than my repetitive data entry assignement.
You can't take the sky from me...
My belief system is based on science. To be true, things have to be demonstratably true. Theories must have predictive power. Conclusions falsifiable, all that jazz. Science is the art of getting at the actual, unbiased truth - and when examined by science, the psychics have failed every time.
I'll leave you with this thought: in the past hundreds of years, science has given us cheap energy, life-saving drugs, and the ability to get a little bit closer to the stars. The psychics have given nothing but false hope and (perhaps) amusement.
"allow for something more"
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
When this is the best criticism you can come up with, it's time to throw in the towel. If there really was any truth behind dowsing, you wouldn't have to point to a solitary trial; there would be reams of evidence for dowsing, and Randi wouldn't be able to hide it with such trifling statistical tricks.
Interesting... I find that it has no merit at all. The comparison is invalid. What Randi is asking for proof of really isn't that sneaky or complicated. One might argue about the definition of "average" or "normal", but dowsing and ESP are pretty clear-cut: either you can find buried water or you can't.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Right. And in addition this works only once per pair. After the first measurement on either side the state is no longer coherent.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
note you are come at this from a completely western European perspective, and not paying any attention to the wide variety of other cultures or belief systems that have and do exist out there. Very comfortable perspective.
No I think he is coming from a perspective that provides a framework that has a track record of purging false beliefs/superstitions and is accumulating knowledge that can be communicated and extended and tested in a measurable fashion.
Yes, there are a wide variety of other cultures and belief systems out there but all have failed at providing insight and understanding that results in for instance a vaccine, a subatomic model, or an airliner (and unfortunately ICBM's).
So I think his perspective is justified.
Here's a case in point which suggests a medium through which ESP communication might function. . .
I sometimes experience an odd phenomenon; I will be walking about during my day and then notice in the center of my vision a strange visual distortion. --It looks like a piece of clear crystal with a crack in it and the light being refracted in odd ways. The distortion pulsates and objects on the other side of it are obscured. The phenomenon will start out small and then grow, filling more and more of my vision. (This is usually accompanied by a feeling of nausea.) Then after a while, a clear spot will appear in the center of this big pulsating crystalline chaos. The distortion at this point will start to look like a big fat doughnut. The ring of distortion will grow until it reaches the edges of my peripheral vision, and then eventually vanish off to the sides, whereupon my vision return to normal. The whole process takes about an hour or two, and by the end, I'm usually flat on my back hoping I don't die.
This happens to me once or twice every few years. Not a regular thing by any means. I often wondered if I was about to have a brain hemorrhage or something, but once it passes I generally forget about it.
Okay. That's the background.
So one time I was on my way to visit a friend of mine who teaches Kung Fu and who is very energy aware, and on the bus ride ride over, the weird phenomenon starts up again. When I arrived at the apartment, my friend blinked at me.
"What is that?" he asked, looking at a spot about three feet to the left of my head as I entered.
"You're aware of this?" I asked, incredulous, vaguely indicating the space in front of my eyes.
"Wow. That's really weird. I've never seen anything like that before. One of your threads has a knot in it. Hold on."
He reached out to the spot he was looking at and tugged and brushed lightly at the air. Almost instantly the distortion vanished and my vision cleared up. The nausea was gone and I felt clear and normal again. The whole change took place in less than ten seconds.
I can tell you a dozen stories like that one, and they all point to an energetic reality which doesn't fit with the standard reality as posited by orthodox science.
-FL
An interesting note in this regard is that "psychics" interviewed by CIA evaluators said the program worked well as long as it was run by those "who accepted the phenomenon." Sorry, guys, but objective scientific results shouldn't depend on who's running a study!
So you mean a study into the powers of the mind worked better when the mind accepted those powers? How peculiar...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I like this woman's (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/openletters/10ran di.html) plan to win the James Randi paranormal prize better.
Originally, I heard it about it on the radio (medical newstalk on KGO, with Dr. Dean Edell) about this one lady who hypothesized that she can control men's minds with her vagina and described a possible way that she can test this theory.
Can't wait until they do a double-blind test...ahahah
Case in point. . .
I was in love with this girl who was quite powerful in these matters. She didn't love me back. I saw her maybe once a week. One time, in the middle of my work day, I decided to try to write a poem about her, and through this found myself thinking about her very, very intensely. I was overcome with feelings of love so powerful that my head was swimming; I had never emoted with so much amor regarding her before that time. As my soaring affections were reaching their mile-high crescendo, the phone rang. It was her, calling from across town. She never called me, so I was totally surprised.
"Wow. Hi! I was just-"
"I KNOW! What the heck are you doing?!"
"What?"
"I'm trying to write an essay and you're screwing up my concentration. You think your thoughts are quiet? Holy shit! Your thoughts are usually obnoxiously loud, but this is just ridiculous! Listen to me; you have GOT to start training yourself in this area. I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but you have GOT to learn how to reign in your energy. You Westerners are so totally ignorant about this stuff! In China people have the common decency to keep their energy from getting so sloppy."
Ouch. (This was a particularly hard part of my life; a period of two and a half years where I had to really deal with the fact that thoughts are not private to everybody.)
Now was this a hit among a sea of misses? Was this a matter of statistics? Hardly. This was like getting kicked in the head, and it was far from the first time. This sort of thing manifested regularly in many different ways, involving several different people. I can tell many more (and far weirder) stories all which suggest similar conclusions; that the world is far more interesting than the orthodox scientists would have us believe.
I can understand, though, if people use the tools available, (ie, statistics, etc.) to explain things which they have not experienced. Extended perception only arrives to those who are either A) wired for it from birth, or B) who are ready spiritually and who deliberately ask to start learning in those directions.
You get exactly what you ask for in life.
-FL
True science is not biased, and Randi is about as biased, (and downright rude), as you can get.
-FL
Read Dean Radin's Conscious Universe to start.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Perhaps you should work on your english parsing skills.
I use that incident to form an opinion on James Randi, not on dowsing. My opinion on dowsing is still "I've never seen it, show me"
Yes, one incident of Mr Randi acting unscientific in a situation where they were trying to be scientific is enough to form such an opinion. I continue to hold that opinion in absence of him doing something like apologizing after he'd realized he'd commited a statistcal error. Mr Clark failed to mention any such action on Mr Randi's part.
One might argue about the definition of "average" or "normal", but dowsing and ESP are pretty clear-cut: either you can find buried water or you can't.
Thats rather simplistic. Like Tiger Woods can always hit a hole in one? So if he misses one, then you can say he he's incapible? If the interpretor is cooking the stats, he can always spin to keep his claims safe. Like if someone were to claim the could control the flip of a coin, they either could or not, Right? Lets say someone made that claim, and under controlled conditions with a normal coin was able to produce Heads, Heads, Heads, Heads,Heads, Heads, Heads, Heads, Heads, Heads. My expectation of Randi would be that he's the kind of guy who would claim that HHHHHHHHHH is just a likely a sequence as any other sequence of 10 flips, ergo its not paranormal. Just my opinion.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
Thank you for your dose of good sense, I usually hate reading these kind of stories nevermind participating in the discussion, because of the mindless folk who have to defend an entrenched position. I could go on and on, but you said it so well, I don't have to.
Then it will be just like many haunted house movies. Cheap dramatics, suspenseful music, shallow character development, gullible audience.
Those boys over at SETI could point their antennas at this experiment and still nothing will be found.
These experiments were carried out by a number of researchers, but perhaps gained the most support from the involvement of reknowned researcher Daryl Bem. Bem performed a meta-analysis of many of their results which showed a weak positive result for psi. As well, he analyzed and critiqued the methodology of numerous Ganzfeld studies.
Now before anyone starts saying that Bem is simply just another nutjob, he's well known for his rock-solid methodology and is in fact required reading for the Psychology GRE.
Bem also never claimed that these experiments were necessarily solid evidence for psi, but they definitely show an anomolous result that can't simply be dismissed. Something funny is going on in these exeperiments, even if psi does not exist. That fact alone means more research along these lines is warranted as there is something there that warrants an explanation.
It sounds like these new researchers are trying to replicate the Ganzfeld studies but eliminate some of the possible confounds that could have existed in the earlier experiments. I say good job.
I will only give one reference here to the appropriate wikipedia article, as it contains links to relevant papers written by Bem and others. Additionally, information on Daryl Bem and his work is easily found by simply googling his name.
Gather two psychics that claim they can communicate with telepathy. Place each in a separate, isolated room. Generate a random number and hand it to one of the psychics. Then tell one of the psychics to communicate it to the other. Hell, make sure they get to know each other before the experiement.
Even if this worked, I would still be skeptical.
It sounds like "Clever Hans" syndrome to me.
Hey, here's an idea that will blow your mind.
Assume with me for a moment that people have spirits which exist before birth and after death. (Stay with me here, a significant portion of the world's population believes this!)
As spirit entities, we didn't have physical mouths or ears or sound-transmitting media, but we communicate in "some other way". If this "some other way" is via a mechanism which the world has not yet identified or measured, then we may see a couple of effects:
* Many people occasionally experience "communication" but don't understand why since there were no radios involved.
* Many other people who haven't experienced it themselves still WANT to believe it happens. A sort of a wait-that-rings-a-bell gut reaction.
Now, if this were fact instead of fiction, doesn't it follow that we are all telepathic? But as an inherent capability, one we don't know how to use, a lot of noise is transmitted. Like a newborn trying out his lungs, we bellow and wail a lot.
So now we have a situation where we're all telepathic, some people notice it, make some claims, and those who find the idea preposterous start shutting them down. The feedback isn't just verbal though, they are inadvertantly shouting them down telepathically as well.
From your comments: An interesting note in this regard is that "psychics" interviewed by CIA evaluators said the program worked well as long as it was run by those "who accepted the phenomenon." Sorry, guys, but objective scientific results shouldn't depend on who's running a study!
Perhaps it DOES depend on who's running the study... and who's in the building, in the city, etc. Perhaps the biggest reason that claimants can't demonstrate their ability scientifically, is because we've made a dramatic blundering assumption, that it only depends on the one or two people being tested!
If they are going to claim "it doesn't work when nonbelievers are around", why not take that challenge and perform an experiment to see if it's a factor or not? I would really like to see this experiment repeated off-planet. Send one of them up to the space station to see if getting away from the "noise" of 6.2 billion people makes a difference. Better yet, on a moon mission. A much cheaper alternative that may still produce results would be to conduct it down in a deep mine.
Or maybe the world just isn't ready to be telepathic yet?
"We think people rightly feel that once they buy something, it stays bought," --Suw Charman, Open Rights Grp
The fascinating thing is go and read the message board at the Randi Foundation http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=43
The applications range anywhere from looney to quite competent and reasonable. The one thing they all have in common is that none of them have ever made it past the preliminary testing phase(a simpler test to show whether or not something unusual is happening and therefore warranting a full challenge test)
Most of the applicants can't even qualify for the preliminary test because they can't(or won't) follow the relatively straightforward and easy steps.
If I could demonstrate the slightest paranormal power, I'd be a million dollar richer.
However, I look at this kind of research as a way of satisfying our inate human curiosity. It would be wrong to dismiss this research for reasons like "it sounds stupid" or "if it were true, why haven't we seen these phenomena before"
Lots of people like to believe in magic, look at the overwhelming number of churches and mystical based groups.
Rational & logical scientists have little chance of understanding things like telepathy, because they limit themselves to studying physical aspects of the Universe with physical tools. In doing this, they ignore 2/3rds of reality, where things like Telepathy operate. You can not understand things that occur in another "dimension", when the tools & 'eyes' being used are in this dimension.
One might argue that telepathy could be verified in relatively simple experiments of a subject with telepathic powers consistently reading another person's mind, and might I add, that this has been done many times, yet the results of such successful experiments (and yes there have been many unsuccessful as well) rarely fall into public domain because:
a) While it can be verified, it can not be understood, as there are no scientifc theories confirmed or otherwise that can explain the phenomenon.
b) It is still considered a taboo subject for Scientific study, and the scientist would likely lose credibility amongst his peers, so many stay away from it.
c) The possibility of such a faculty may be far too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands, and so it is best for large governments to deny its existance and to debunk scientists who strive to understand it. The reality is that mysteries such as Telepathy are self-veiling, and can only be abused by those whom already have the capability. The real evil one's lack the basic requirements to ever develop such capabilities on their own had they had the knowledge. So the fear here is mostly misplaced.
d) The vast majority of humanity is not ready to accept such concepts as reality, and it may be too shocking for too many people, and fear may be widespread as to the rumoured but ignorant possibilities.
Yet despite all this, there have been many numerous books written on the subject (likely in the hundreds) which actually explain how one might attain such a faculty (no, it is not genetic, although it is common place that if parents have such abilities, a child may be born with strong tendencies to develop this faculty without much effort - but still this has nothing to do with genetics and it may be developed by a person from non-telepathic parents).
Anybody who is seriously interested in the subject, could within a few months or at most, within a couple of years have a strong understanding of how telepathy works simply by reading the numerous books written about it. Unfortunately, there are many crappy books as well, and the challenge is actually finding and knowing when one is in possessin of the right material. But only one or two good ones are necessary.
Concepts such as telepathy have actually been understood & practiced for milenia, and evidence of this is written in many a scripture of many different religions. Today, of the surviving texts, the study of Yoga offers the best & clearest instruction on attaining such faculties, and any good contemporary books on the subject have their roots in Yogic instruction. But most skeptical western intelectual men have egos far too big & have been too conditioned by their social & cultural surroundings to realize that such possibilities in fact exist, so they rarely venture into this area.
An open minded scientist lucky enough to find a person with such capability (which by the way can vary hugely in degree of accuracy & frequency of being able to engage the faculty), could at best, perform tests that verify some unknown law is at play with enough frequency of occurance that can not be ignored, dismissed or be explained by some other already known factor/phenomenon.
That said, the scientist, by means of his physical tools, will be at a loss to explain HOW this concept works; "How" being the traditional job of a scientist, let alone even having a chance to answer the "WHY" of the philosophers.
Often, the persons exhibiting this faculty, much like some well known public paranormal he
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
I watched it on TV. The owner and the parrot were in different rooms. The owner just looked at an image for a couple of minutes, and the parrot in the other room said something related to what the owner was seeing. This was repeated for several images.
Er, um... radio waves. Not visible to the human eye or any other 4 senses, yet someone with the proper abilities can transmit information to someone across the world!
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
What about the 100th monkey? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey
Randi isn't a con-man. He's a skeptic (an atheist one, btw), and has debunked numerous scams who pretended to be psychics. The purpose of his foundation isn't to promote psychics with the million dollar prize, but to prove that there is no such thing as psychics.
As I pointed out, it's all available on file, and the applicants can go public with any complains they have.
Oh yes, to the parapsychology review board. If the public are randi's peers, you have made my point most eloquently; unqualified, hysterical, and prone to knee jerk reactionism. Not unlike most of the responses here.
You yourself pointed to the rules about a mutually agreed upon test protocol. That's not a standard?
Not when you claim to adhere to scientific method. That sets its own standards, which you sadly are not familiar with. What you are talking about is an agreement.
Everybody carries some sort of bias.
Everybody except science. The laws of nature couldn't give a crap, and any honest researcher admitting he has a bias one way or the other is not worth a crap.
So, you have publicly avaialable results, clearly stated and mutually agreed upon test protocols, and objective criteria for success and failure.
No, you really don't. What you have is james randi with no credibility, no scientific method, running his own half assed three ring media circus and making a damn good living from it.
I think it's an apt comparison. Show us the bias. Where have the results been unfair? Who has come up with a reasonable test protocol and had it rejected? Can you describe even a hypothetical case where they could act unfairly and not be called on it, given the documentation trail they leave? If I had a reasonable claim to the million dollars and documented proof that they had cheated me out of it, you can bet that I would go public with it. Seriously, do you give any creedence to the creationists who claim that they're shut out of journals but who never produce any rejected submissions as proof?
This discussion really has brought some wild ass and weird characters out of the woodwork. Not that this would include yourself, but I admit to being quite surprised by the level of vehemence on the part of many of the posters here. However, without fail, they have all raised the same objection: show me proof that randi has turned down genuine psychics, as though there was a vast catalogue of injured parties by the wayside while randi cackles over his booty.
So I'm going to use this post as a focal point rather than responding to each of them with the same response and receiving the same tired old shrill bawling from _each_and_every_one_of_them.
You are asking for proof that randi turns down valid applications. My point is that hes running a three ring circus (look at the front page) to his own profit (and STFU about the million already, his running costs don't come out of that, so don't get all pious on me). So heres you, asking for evidence from the foundation that the foundation doesn't really give a crap. Nice one. Added to that, their methods are opaque, unscientific, arbitrary (and if you don't like them, you can get lost, but hey, no blame or damages, remember?), and their results are dubious in the extreme, as well as being tainted by gutter press tactics. None of which makes the balanced mind any more likely to view them as anything more than an entertaining sideshow. Which in turn leads me to believe there are as many unbalanced minds on the anti-psychic side as on the pro-psychic side. Not that I fall into either, I prefer to acknowledge my own ignorance and actually try to further the sum of knowledge of mankind.
Fear is exactly what tasty pastry products of the half bakery like "psychics" and the amazing randi play upon, and make plenty of bank on. And a whole lot of people here reek of it.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Randi doesn't have to get perfect results in telepathy, since he doesn't believe it is possible. That's his whole point. Randi can, however, confound ordinary scientists using ordinary conjuring methods. They don't know how to spot them.
Randi doesn't attend the tests, but does send someone trained in conjuring along to identify obvious conjuring tricks. Scientists are not trained in recognizing these. Between the scientists and conjurer examiners, no one has ever made it past even the screening phase.
No proper scientific study of telepathy has ever produced significant results. Those that claim to produce significant results have major holes in them; controlling for these gives you a negative result. Scientific results must be repeatable; no positive result on telepathy has ever been repeated.
The sheer willingness to accept the belief in telepathy and other magical powers would make a significant result ring out like a nuclear blast through the scientific community, and would make the headlines of every newspaper in the world. It's guaranteed Nobel prize material; proving it would put you in the ranks of Einstein and Newton, your name would be immortalized for the rest of human history. Furthermore, you would become absurdly rich. And yet, no one has done it. But this willingness also makes most laymen hopelessly gullible on the subject. The money that has been pissed away on this bullshit runs in the billions. In the hands of legitimate researchers, we might now have a cure for cancer by now instead of an endless stream of pseudo-scientific, pseudo-religious tripe, so treasured by those who couldn't tell a significant result from a fairy tale if their life depended on it.
Other posters mentioned remote viewing and Khun. As for remote viewing, the Soviet Union was the worldwide distributor of woo-woo pseudo-science, and there were plenty of muscle heads in the military and intelligence community who were all too willing to lap up this delusional vodka-fuelled piss. So they threw money at it, and more money, and more money, because the soviets, as is the custom of religious fanatics, swore up and down that the glory of communism had given their people miraculous powers. This is not something to be quoted and celebrated, but something to be ignored and feel embarrassed about.
Thomas Khun has become the darling of postmodernists, and conspiracy nuts who think that SCIENTISTS ARE A CABAL WHO ARE SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH (they always speak in caps, a trait they share with schizophrenics.) He has become a great ally to fundamentalists of all stripes, who would like to claim that all beliefs are equal (but, of course, theirs are equaller than others.) So you have Hindu computers and Christian reactors.. oh, that's right, you don't. No religion has ever made a single contribution to science and technology. How about that? Apparently, despite all claims, they haven't a clue about how the world really works.
The belief in telepathy has never contributed anything to science either. Stop wasting our time.
... Better yet, on a moon mission.
I seem to recall that The Field mentioned experiences that Edgar Mitchell had while on the Apollo 14 mission (sorry, don't remember specifics). The astronaut later founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences, which studies metaphysical topics...
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
"Randi doesn't have to get perfect results in telepathy, since he doesn't believe it is possible. That's his whole point." ...and that is why I call him a fraud and why Josephon's point about his challenge is valid.
Quoting Marcello Truzzi, one of the founders of CSICOP:
"In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis -- saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact -- he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof." -- Truzzi, Zetetic Scholar, #12-13, 1987
Randi does not keep an open mind, Randi is not interested in proof, he does not say "maybe, but we need more evidence." He, as you put it, "does not believe it is possible."
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More specifically, the study was more likely to reach outcome X when it was run by people who expected outcome X. That's why well-run studies use independent judges, double blinds, etc.
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I'll try to stay with you, but 95% of my brain is screaming "NO! THERE IS NO RATIONAL EXPLANATION AND NOT ONE SCRAP OF EVIDENCE FOR THIS! A BILLION SUPERSTITIOUS SHEEP CAN ALL BE WRONG!"
A lot of people also want to believe they can make $75,000 a month by filling out surveys, or avoid paying taxes by claiming that they're "sovereign citizens" and pointing to the yellow fringes on the courtroom flag. It's just wishful thinking.
OK. This is what we call a hypothesis. The next step, if you want to advance it any further, is to find evidence supporting it. Come up with an experiment that would have one outcome if your hypothesis is true, and a different outcome if it's false.
I mean, we can all sit back and make wild, unprovable claims: "Dude, what if our whole universe is just a grain of sand in some alien's sandbox?" It's fun to think about, especially if you're high, but if it can't be proved one way or the other then it's just mental masturbation.
The problem with that logic is we already have a well-known, widely accepted explanation for this kind of result: when faced with ambiguous or random information, people are naturally inclined to find the result they're looking for.
You know those pictures that are like two heads facing each other if you look at it one way, or a candlestick if you look at it the other way? If you hand that to someone and say "Hey, check out this candlestick", they'll see the candlestick.
That was the problem with the CIA study. You hand an ambiguous drawing made by a "psychic" to a guy who's trying to match it against one of four master pictures, and if he knows which one is correct and expects the psychic to find the correct picture, he'll be more likely to think it really does match that one.
You can't run a scientific study that way. That's why studies on new medicines use double blinds, for example, where neither the patients nor the doctors know who is receiving the new drug or a placebo until the study is over. If patients know they're receiving the new drug, they tend to report that they're feeling better, whether it really has any effect or not; and if doctors know which patients are receiving the new drug, they'll tend to report the same symptoms differently in those patients.
What that boils down to is that even if psychic powers really do work better when the psychic is surrounded by believers, you can't just take an study that was run by a bunch of believe
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(I'm chiming in late on this, but it's better late than never.)
I can understand why a lot of people cannot believe that telepathy exists. It's only human
nature to think that way. It's just like the people in the cave.
If you really want hard proof, take DMT. Then wait several days and read the Bhagavad Gita.
From that point on there will never be any doubt in your mind about its existence or how
it all works. You will be presented with evidence that normal cognition, even by the brightest
minds, cannot conjure or fathom.
If you don't want to take the route of smoking DMT, then you'll have to wait, for possibly several
million lifetimes, until your proof is supplied. Until then, do not doubt. It's fine if you don't want to believe,
but do not doubt.
Of course not. That's a stupid analogy, because these dowsers don't just claim "I went in my back yard and found water once". They claim they can do it on command, reliably, which is why they charge for their service.
Except it's not as likely as any other sequence, so Alternate Universe Randi would be wrong.
It's possible for that sequence to come up by chance, though. So the next step would be to say, "OK, that was cool, now let's see you do it again. You can come back tomorrow or next week if your powers need time to recharge." If he can influence the coin reliably, we can conclude he has paranormal powers and give him the million dollars. If not, we can conclude that he just got really, really lucky on the first attempt.
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That doesn't undermine his offer, though. If you can prove that you have paranormal powers, you win a million bucks; one man's disbelief isn't going to get in the way of objective evidence, especially since James Randi isn't running the show all by himself. If you can't prove it, you don't win the million bucks. Whether Randi says "It has not been proved that you have magic powers" in his rejection letter instead of "You don't have magic powers" is pretty irrelevant.
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There is an energy equivalent to information, and thus a mass equivalent.
Information can neither be created nor destroyed, and it "behaves" much like light does. In one sense, any force carriers are carrying information, as it were (they relay it as kinetic->potential energy interactions and the "information" is stored as a configuration of potential energy).
Thoughts are simply an emergent phenomenon of the interchange of information (in the case of humans, primarily between nerve synapses in the form of electrical charge and neurotransmitters).
The propogation of thought is limited by the propogation of information that embodies the thoughts.
But you can't make a thought appear somewhere else using action at a distance. Because the propogation and configuration of energies in matter that ultimately form "knowledge" or "a thought" necessitates the movement of force carriers, which are limited by C.
The action at a distance stuff does not allow reading and writing, you can effect one side, but by reading the other side you "destroy" the original. It isn't very useful in this sense.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I "smelled" it on her breath.
It was like she was getting her period at the wrong time, and it was different.
If you pay attention you can pick up pheremones and hormones.
It feels like smell, but it isn't really.
It's the same feeling when you can tell a loved one or close friend has been a room and left recently. It's the pheremones.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
As I believe Randi himself has pointed out, "it doesn't work when nonbelievers are around" is a testable paranormal claim. You could make $1M just for showing that your special powers don't work while doubters are nearby!
Well, since I am the only one I need to convince in order to further my own understanding of the universe, it hardly matters. Of course, my experiences are just stories to anybody but me; I can only share them in hopes that they might prove useful to others who are also seeking.
It sounds like you have "floaters" in your vitreous humour, or possibly migraine headaches (due the nausea).
Actually, I read your link and it doesn't sound like 'floaters' even a tiny bit. Please re-read both descriptions and then do a comparison. Sheesh. Next thing you'll tell me is that I was seeing Venus!
If I were you, I'd go to the doctor and get it checked out.
Thankfully, you are not me. --And as I explained, the phenomenon promptly vanished with the application of a little energy manipulation. Try to read more carefully in the future.
-FL
Well now. That's quite the assumption. You do realize that to make and believe in such a bold statement about me requires faith, don't you? (Unless, of course, you have some impirical evidence for your theory about the events transpiring around me.)
To date, despite decades of research, there is not a scintilla of evidence for telepathy.
Really now? Is that taken on faith as well, or can you back that up? Actually, I know you can't. Heck, my own experiments offer several 'scintillas', so you're already wrong before I even start pulling books off the shelf. --Or did you only mean 'experiments' which you saw on the TeeVee? Perhaps you ought to do some of your own research on the subject sometime rather than trust in stage magicians with careers and huge egos (and a million dollars) to protect. I somehow suspect you won't. And what does that say about you?
You fit the stereotype, I'm afraid. Time and again, those who are most afraid to look generally commit the very offenses they charge others with.
-FL
But will the doctor be able to make a diagnosis the instant I walk in the door without me having to open my mouth, and then wave his hands and make it go away?
I find it ironic that we're talking about vision problems and the first two people who have responded to my post seemed to have had trouble seeing the full text!
-FL
And here was me thinking that the expectation was a part of the study... how silly of me...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
It might be cool checking out. Not in space, but in the desert.
Brief both contestants seperately, lock them both up in seperate rooms, evacuate the area and monitor everything with microphones and camera's.
How on earth could a candidate protest that with "doesn't work with non-believers around"? There'd be more static from his neighbours where he's usually doing his "magic".
The brains that are telepathic are using a specific signal between them. If we can debug this signals, then we will be able to benefit from this signal and use it as a way of Input for the computer commands in the future.
Best regards, HimaTech
So if they hypothetically only had a success rate of (pull number from air) 85%, they wouldn't be worth hiring just on the fair odds that their assay would be helpful?
I think you oversimplify how the world works. At some fee that level of accuracy would be worthwhile. The world is not binary.
I don't think a guy who could guess 50 cards right in a shuffled deck is that much less spooky than the guy who could guess a whole 52 card deck? A little maybe, but not much. I sure wouldn't play poker with him! :)
Except [10 coin flips resulting in heads in a row] not as likely as any other sequence, so Alternate Universe Randi would be wrong.
Dude, go back to school. There are 2 to the tenth power possible sequences of 10 coin flips. Think of it as a 10 bit binary number. if the coin is truly 50%/50% then every sequence of 10 tosses has the exact same probablity: 1 out of 1024. That includes the all heads 10 coin sequence.
So the next step would be to say, "OK, that was cool, now let's see you do it again.
Aren't Randi's contracts very yodaish? "Do or Do not, there is no try". Thats what his FAQ says (without using Yoda as a adjective) If the feat Randi contracted for was to be 10 controlled flips, a reasonable person would expect Randi to pay then an there. No 'OK! one more time!'.
Your performance as one of Randi's fans, with statistics bobbles and welching on contracts if your expectations are not met sure doesn't lead me to be changing my mind on Randi's character anytime soon. Basicallly your worldview is unscientific, with 'experiments' biased by the observer, spinning the results.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
It is really quite irrelevant whether *I* have paranormal powers.
The question is whether they exist, period. That is being researched under the name "Psi." These challenges prove nothing (much like the "hack this box" challenges) and Brian Josephson has already recorded cases that make Randi's bias and unwilling to entertain the possibility.
For example, http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/%7Ebdj10/propaganda/
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Wow. For somebody who is convinced that they hold the superior and more rational view point, your arguments are amazingly rude, immature and void of logic. --Further, rather than deal with the points offered, you instead fall back on cheap ridicule and highly biased dogma.
It's interesting that you use irrational behavior to make the case for your rationality.
Did they laugh at you a lot during school? Bad experiences with women while growing up? Was the only real acceptance you ever had found in high test scores and pats on the head during high school science class?
I'm guessing you have a lot of internal work to do, and it's not getting done by using emotional arguments to lose debates on Slashdot.
Good luck.
-FL
Of course. That was the indefinite "you".
Not true. A successful attempt would, by definition, prove that paranormal powers exist. The fact that no one has been successful doesn't prove that they don't exist, but it does suggest that such powers are unlikely to exist.
Whether Mr. Randi himself is willing to believe in paranormal powers is irrelevant. He isn't the only person behind this challenge, and in any case there's no evidence that his personal beliefs have interfered with any attempts to complete the challenge or caused him to cover up successful results.
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You will note that I said that he doesn't believe it is possible. This is not the same as saying that he believes it is impossible, only that he has not seen any evidence to support the belief that some people can read other's minds. If he did believe that psi were possible, then that would be a positive claim, and he would have to prove that, wouldn't he? The onus of proof is on him only if he provides an alternative explanation for a positive result, as the CSICOP quote says, and this is the point he keeps trying to make, and people like you keep missing--there are no positive results. Please reread your own post, carefully this time.
And since Randi isn't even involved in the tests, as I have already mentioned, I fail to see how your claim is relevant, even if it were true.
An open mind should be open at both ends--it should excrete as well as consume. Theories which have a history of empirical failure are not on an equal footing with other theories. If it's wrong every time over a thousand trials, it's probably going to be wrong forever. After a certain number of negative results, we consider them false. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This is why creationists encouraging schools to "teach the controversy" are lying. This is also why people arguing that we should keep an open mind towards telepathy are 99.99% likely to be wasting our time.
You're reading something into my posts that isn't there. I agree that an 85% success rate would be impressive and convincing. One test, however, is not, which is why the agreed terms include a number of challenges.
You're right, I was thinking of the total head count instead of the possible sequences, but the point stands: ten out of ten heads is less likely than any other outcome (except ten tails).
If you flip the coin ten times, it's less likely that all ten will be heads than that nine will, which is less likely than eight, and so on (down to five). This is because there's only one sequence of 10 heads, but there are 10 sequences of 9 heads, 10*9 sequences of 8 heads, etc.
Exactly, and if the challenge were met, I would expect him to pay too. That's the whole point of drawing up an agreement beforehand. Are you claiming that someone has met the challenge and Randi has still refused to pay, breaking the agreement?
Ridiculous. If you want an example of results biased by the observer, look at the CIA's remote viewing experiments.
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It is possible, in theory, to transmit information in this manner. Although you cannot choose the result of the measurement of the first electron, you can choose the axis along which you measure it. The second electron then has a defined spin along that same axis, but of course in the opposite direction. Since we can choose the axis to be any one we want, we can transfer information that way.
The proviso "in theory" here refers to the fact that this is possible under quantum mechanics and its relativistic modification, but we can intuit that these theories are not perfectly true, which leaves a little wiggle room so that the above may not be the case.
Thats not how Randi's FAQ portrays it. The example given is "Spoon bends or not", not "You have 10 tries to bend the spoon"
but the point stands: ten out of ten heads is less likely than any other outcome (except ten tails).
No, you are still showing a lack of grasp on how probability works. The chance of HHHHHHHHHH is exactly the same as HHHHHHHHHT. This should be obvious because the chance of the 9 heads in both series is the same (identical), so if the 10th flip if 50% one way 50% the other, so the chances of either are still the same.
For the probablities to be different, flips would have to be influenced somehow by previous tosses. Like somehow the coin is thinking 'hmmm, thats a lot of heads in a row, I better toss in a tail to mix it up!". Thats not the way things work.
Are you claiming that someone has met the challenge and Randi has still refused to pay, breaking the agreement? No, but your description of how to conduct a challenge was bogus that way when you said "now let's see you do it again."
From reading his FAQ, it seems that Randi never really proceeds into the official challenge. Instead he does somekind of preliminary test, or declares a claim dangerious or inherently spurious. Some of the examples given seem spurious to me. If a dowser claims they can detect X underground, why does the preliminary test have to be detecting X under a teacup. That implies the ability works in a particular sort of way, that the dowser has a connection to X. But what if alleged ability really workded and it stemmed from detecting distortions in some sort of field charateristic of the earth. The preliminary test would exclude that possibility, ergo Randi is insisting preliminary tests that test something other than the claim.
Randi flat out refused to test a Bretharian claiming that the withholding of food endangered the testee. Now Bretharians are amusingly silly. I recall in the book High Wierdness by Mail how the founder got caught with food wrappers in his room. But is it really so difficult to do a non dangerious test of it. All sorts of body chemestry goes funny when you fast. Just make sure the guy doesn't secretly eat for a few days, and plot things like his blood glucose level. If the values stay level, then the guy is not starving himself, if they go skewed, then he is. You could tell long before there was any danger. The 'too dangerious to test' ruling by Randi just seems like a cop out.
It all smacks of Randi trying to avoid actual tests, not because he would lose, but because they would be a pain in the ass to administer. That may be human nature, but you can't claim its scientific.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
You are making an error. You are confusing the medium with the message. If your statement was correct then the mass of a film in a can could be correctly calculated by measuring the the mass pressing on a movie screen. I do not think this is what you are intending to claim. Your statement would also give more mas to the words of Steven Hawking then to those of a preschooler. Now, while we do consider Mr Hawkings words to carry more 'weight', it is figurative and not literal. Thought does not have mass nor does it have speed. The /medium/ that it propagates in can have those restrictions, but the thought it self does not. From this is it a rather short step to the 'spooky effect' where by things do seem to effect each other despite the distance. It has also been shown in a number of stories posted here and in scientific journals that we have managed to not only send information faster then light, but even to propagate it backwards in time. The back in time I'm still not convinced of, but the results do seem to show it even if I am suspecting a wrong interpretation of those results. Now granted, most of this has been on a micro scale, but quantum encryption has been used successfully over many kilometers and is an example of this sort of data transfer on a macro scale. Also keep in mind the lessens of history. Far too many times in history people have stated what is and is not possible and gone on to 'prove' it with the science and accepted wisdom of the time, only to be laughed at by later generations that have taken the science farther and found new wisdom.
Question reality.
The real problem is that none of the people involved in the tests are on LSD or Mushrooms at the time...
The number of challenges in that example is 1. With a challenge like bending a spoon with your mind, that's probably fine - you can't do that by accident. For dowsing and remote viewing, however, you need to distinguish a lucky guess from a successful demonstration of paranormal powers.
I'm afraid you're the one who doesn't understand. What you just said is true: any two sequences are equally likely. If someone claims that he can flip HHHHHHHHHT on cue, that's just as impressive as flipping HHHHHHHHHH on cue.
But that's not what I'm talking about. What I said is flipping 10 heads in a row is less likely than flipping 9 heads out of 10.
There's only one sequence of 10 flips that has 10 heads in it:
HHHHHHHHHH
But there are 10 sequences that have nine heads:
THHHHHHHHH
HTHHHHHHHH
HHTHHHHHHH
HHHTHHHHHH
HHHHTHHHHH
HHHHHTHHHH
HHHHHHTHHH
HHHHHHHTHH
HHHHHHHHTH
HHHHHHHHHT
Therefore, flipping nine heads in ten tries is 10x as likely as flipping all ten heads. You can test this yourself with the following perl program:What that means is if someone comes into your office, says "I have the power to flip a coin 10 times and have it come up heads 5 times", and then he does just that, there's a whopping 1 in 4 chance that he just got lucky. OTOH, if he says he can flip 10 heads in a row, and he does it, there's only a 1 in 1000 chance that it was luck.
Of course, if you don't want to just give your million bucks to the thousandth guy who comes in making that claim, you'd be wise to devise a better test.
And in that case, the alleged dowser could say "my powers only work for water in the earth," and he could work with Randi to come up with a better demonstration. Randi doesn't just invent tests out of thin air with no input from the applicant.
Sure I can: being scientific doesn't mean performing every possible test. Researchers rule out all kinds of experiments due to ethical concerns. Randi is under no obligation to humor applicants whose demonstrations would put them at risk; I suppose he could even be held liable if they harm themselves, even if that is unlikely.
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So, how much do you charge?
Stick Men
If particles can be entangled, isn't it more reasonable to assume that most particles are entangled (assuming the Big Bang thingy holds), and the observer happens to observe things as they are because the observer and the object are entangled in a way that allows for that particular "reasonably consistent" observation, and not because the object magically "collapses" states just because the observer happens to look.
Maybe my view involves less magical thinking than you think.
Take the two slit light beam interference experiment. Why should the observer hold such a special place assuming the observer is also part of the same universe?
Basically I suggest that the math and laws should include the observer and not just the beams, and on fairly equal footing too!
Not true (well yes, he was a 1th century monk), Occam's razor cannot be used to prove any point you like depending on your starting belief.
.
Actually, it really can. Belief is all powerful in this regard. --That is, if you happen to believe in God, like old William did, and if you don't happen to believe in evolution and big bangs, etc., then you are not breaking the rules of the razor. This is not contested; Occam wasn't breaking his own rule when he 'proved' the existence of God. And today there are lots of people who still don't believe in evolution or big bangs, and nobody can provide total proof of anything, evolution or otherwise; (re: 'the brain floating in the tank', example), so any accepted points are done so entirely based on what people believe. Occam's razor is simply not an objective comparison method; it merely reflects the subject's prior beliefs. Luckily, Occam didn't mention "Burden of Proof." That's an additional piece people tack on, I believe, due to our cultural programming via the oft televised court-room drama.
If you have two possible explanations for a given phenomenon (your visual disturbances) and one of them involves physiological processes and another involves physiological processes + psychic phenomenon, which is more likely to be correct?
Your logic is fine. But it's that word 'Likely' which I take exception to. It's entirely subjective.
Example: Back when the invention of the telephone was announced, the world went into an uproar, and many respected people of science scoffed in disbelief. One newspaper ran a full page explanation provided with extensive research illustrating the impossibility of a telephone device. --They showed using the best maths and physics known at the time that sound simply could not travel any appreciable distance down thin wire tubes. (Like those 'talking-tubes' found in old ships.)
Bell's sceptics posited that either A), Bell had discovered a way to cheat the laws of physics regarding sound waves, or B) He was lying. Based on what the sceptics knew and believed, according to Occam, they were correct in making the assumption that Bell was most probably a liar.
The point of the matter is that unexpected things do happen, and the logical host of possible explanations we currently have available to make sense of our reality, no matter how good they sound or how cleverly they are arranged, are only correct if they are really correct.
But if we must use Occam to some good, let's try it this way. .
Matter, I think we can agree, doesn't really exist as it appears. --As I understand it, one of the more popular theories in physics today tells us that matter is reducible to a series of sub particles, the bottom layer of which are made up from what are theorized to be little string-like standing wave forms, which finally are not particles but behave as though they were. --What medium exactly these little wave forms vibrate in seems to be up for debate, but the point is that there is no matter; there is only energy.
This makes our perceived reality much like an illusion or holographic projection of sorts. We are made up of nothing but little wave forms in an energetic medium. --Now according to the current state of my belief system, this fundamental energetic medium is good for more than just playing host to little standing waves which make up atoms; it can transmit waves which are not involved in the maintaining of all the sub-particles of atomic matter. It is, I believe, the medium through which fundamental 'energy' may be transmitted.
Now, let's say that the little standing waves from which all atoms are constructed are not alone. I think it is reasonable to assume, given the nature of mediums, that there might exist other little wave forms of a different frequency. And like waves on an ocean which are observable from a ship, microwaves being transmitted through the same ocean water would be able to co-exist in the medium but w
Reading comprehension. You aren't talking about the same thing.
HHHHHHHHHH is as likely as any other combination. This can be confirmed by modeling it as a series of bernoulli trials and using conditional probability. Remeber that in what the parent is talking about, order matters.
The question of "how many heads" you get is a binomial distribution. P(H=9) = 10C9* 0.5^9 * 0.5 = 10C9 * 0.5^10.
10C9 = 10! / ( ( 10 - 9 )! 9! ) = 10.
The probability of getting HHHHHHHHHH is equal to the probability of getting HHHHHHHHHT, that's what the parent poster was asserting. This is very different from the probability of getting 1 tail and 9 heads, which is what you are talking about.
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Yes, and I pointed that out in my post. "Reading comprehension" yourself.
Indeed.
The point is, if you claim you have the power to influence a coin, flipping ten heads in a row is a pretty convincing way to show it. The convincing part isn't the sequence itself, but the fact that you predicted it.
Let's go back to Jon Luckey's original statement:
While Mr. Luckey is, of course, entitled to hold whatever opinion he likes, no matter how foolish, this one is ridiculous. HHHHHHHHHH may be just as likely a sequence as any other, but flipping HHHHHHHHHH after promising to do just that is not as likely an outcome as any other. 1023 times out of 1024, a person with no magic abilities will flip something other than what he promised. Randi would have to be insane to dismiss that result, and I've seen no evidence that he is (although the million dollar challenge would probably have to be more rigorous, to avoid paying off one out of every 1024 fraudsters who applies for it).
Let's take the coin out of the scenario. Suppose you have a spinner wheel evenly divided into 1000 spaces. You say "I have the power to influence this wheel. I'm going to spin it and it will land on 69." You spin it and sure enough, it lands on 69. The chance of landing on 69 randomly is the same as the chance of landing on any other number, but that doesn't mean the experiment was useless: there's a 99.9% chance that you've just demonstrated paranormal powers (or very precise motor control). Do it twice in a row and the probability is 99.9999%.
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IMHO this unlikely juxtaposition is a PR move by Randi himself to disguise and/or market his agenda. You can safely ignore it.
Randi has been called a "professional debunker," though I think that term is a bit generous, but even as such he would have a specific agenda. This is not the same kind of healthy agnosticism we would expect from a true skeptic. James Randi has gone so far as to offer the Smithsonian $20,000 to NOT screen a movie that he didn't happen to like, and directly or indirectly has on occasion even compared a faith healer to Al Capone.
How can I say this? Earth to Randi: faith healers don't use machine guns!
But that's nothing. Randi has even stooped so low as to similarly compare Uri Geller (an Israeli) to Adolf Hitler. Since Randi earned his fame substantially through imitating by illusion some of what Geller claims to do without illusion, you'd think he'd show a little more courtesy.
In my opinion if "The Amazing Randi" were the slightest bit objective, humanly decent OR eager to pay out on that million dollar challenge, he'd browse to the website of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR Lab) promptly sign his mythical cheque for seven figures and go away.
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This lab at Princeton has been producing loads of concrete proof of what could only be called psychic phenomena for something like 20+ years, and they have never EVER been successfully debunked. PEAR Lab represents a serious black eye to ALL debunkers or professional skeptics, so as you may have noticed, debunkers tend not to talk about this lab!
There's an interesting quote out there, from the television program PM Magazine on 1 July 1982: "I'm a charlatan, a liar, a thief and a fake altogether. There's no question of it." -James Randi