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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!
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.
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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?
Of course! Attachments are evil and lead to viruses on your computers.
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.)
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.
Even if this experiment doesn't pan out, there are other viable challengers to The Amazing Randi. Behold, the Power of the Vagina !
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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
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?
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...
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
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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
Funny that you should say that about the Einstein icon. Einstein wrote the preface for Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio which was a book about remote viewing/telepathy.
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.
About equally likely in my opinion.
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)
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!
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.
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Just go to console and type:
sv_cheats 1
enable telepathy
duh!
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
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.
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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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...
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.
Bad hypothese, bias, bad statistical analysis etc... etc...
skepdic on pear
sceptic report
And tons of other link...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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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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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.
... 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.
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
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!
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