Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Worlds and ESP
"Instead of thinking about telepathy from a present perspective, as in 'we have/use it now,' consider it from an evolutionary standpoint.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."
Sesticulus raises a similar idea in a more compact form (it could be called the haven't been slapped" argument): "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."
Reader seanellis writes with his prediction of the experiment's outcome:
"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 statistical 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."
Even more dubious, dpbsmith writes not to "discount the possibility of outright fraud," asking: "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?"
Further, dpbsmith is disappointed that the article "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."
Reader mdkemp took issue with the implication in some readers' comments that this research was disreputable, pointing out that such research is also undertaken "at respected institutions," writing: "Research into this stuff isn't just for [k]ooks 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 princeton.edu/~pear."
This met with an acerbic response from reader aepervius, who calls PEAR "a laughing stock" with "bad hypotheses, bias, bad statistical analysis, etc." He points out critical reports critical of PEAR at skepdic and at the Skeptic Report.
Reader RexRhino expressed a common sentiment:
"Can someone tell me why this isn't as outrageous 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?"
Reader Pyromage provided one answer to that question, writing: "Because it's possible to devise an experiment that could provide scientific evidence in its favor. ... Such an experiment does not — even in theory — exist for [Intelligent Design]."
Other responses to the story show that at least many Slashdot readers are none too happy with research into telepathy being done with tax monies. A long thread on that very topic raised several good points:
Reader denoir kicked off this thread with a sarcastic call to "invest some more tax money on finding UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and inventing the perpetuum mobile!"
To this, reader misleb responded "I'm always been surprised at the kind of reaction anything labeled 'paranormal' gets from rational people. Why exactly couldn't telepathy exist? Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that two people cannot communicate over a distance without sound or visual cues? Obviously, you'd have to identify a mechanism for the communications. If telepathy exists, it isn't magic. ... If you had told someone from 200 years ago that you could communicate with people across the globe in real-time, they'd probably think you were some kind of sorcerer. But since then we've discovered radio waves..."
Reader Alsee has a satirical reponse: "Why exactly couldn't invisible pink unicorns exist? Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that invisible pink unicorns cannot exist? Obviously, you'd have to identify a mechanism for invisible pink unicorns. If invisible pink unicorns exist, it isn't magic. ... Telepathy, invisible pink unicorns, elves, Zeus, telekenesis, Narnia, rain dances, flying potions, the Tooth Fairy, I'm always surprised at the reaction of rational people when they think that these things do not exist."
Wavicle offers another reason for the widespread skepticism about such research:
"While there may be some out there shouting paranormal things couldn't possibly exist, most of us are just pissed. Pissed that for every genuinely deluded person who believed they had witnessed a paranormal event, there are 20 others out there looking at using it to scam people out of money.We have looked, and looked, and looked and come up empty handed EVERY TIME. The vast majority of the people who have said they had special powers were LIARS. The rest were just wrong. Nobody has ever passed muster. There are people out there doing genuine harm to others under the veil of paranormal abilities.
For example EVERY instance of 'psychic surgery' (where someone performs surgery with just their hands, leaving behind no scar or wound) has been a scam for money."
The same corner of the discussion led to a freewheeling exchange of comments on scientific credulity and exotic explanations for telepathy involving quantum mechanics.
Reader kfg writes "I am, at least nominally, a physicist. You wouldn't catch me saying any such thing as 'telepathy can't exist.' However, you first need to demonstrate that it does exist if you expect me to do work on that basis. If and when that happens I will not posit any 'paranormal' event, but rather that there is a quite normal mechanism at work. Then it will be my job to find it, because, at the moment, there is no valid theory of such a mechanism. ('Well, maybe it could be ...' is not a theory.) A theory is model that is concordence with data. ... Which brings us back to the need to show me it exists, particularly since everything I have ever seen so far indicates that the world works just spiffily in accordance with the rules of chance."
Reader Thing 1 asserts "if the human brain works on quantum principles, and one of those principles is communication at a distance, then that tells me that telepathy is possible," and mentions the phenomenon of entanglement as a mechanism for instantaneous communication: "Through a process, two electrons become 'entangled,' and when separated experimentally up to 10 km, when the spin on one is changed, the spin on the other is changed immediately--with no speed-of-light delay."
To this, reader aardvarkjoe responds that "The problem is that, in these 'entanglement experiments,' no information is being transmitted from the first site to the second. By measuring the state of the first electron, you can instantaneously affect the state of the second electron — but according to all of the current theories, there is no way to actually use that to communicate. (If that sounds weird ... it is. Quantum theory is rather unintuitive.)"
Several readers' comments were not about the experiment at issue in this case, but rather about the James Randi Educational Foundation prize I mentioned. Two comments in particular sum up many of the others: Reader nido calls Randi a fraud with an agenda" and says this is how Randi is viewed by "people who can," to which Mr2001 responds "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.' ... 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."
Many thanks to everyone who took part in the discussion, in particular those readers whose comments are quoted above.
As all the discussion about cheats indicates, "telepathy" is a word for some "magical" form of communication between people; given that we have lots of real-life means of communciation between people, and more and better ones coming out every year, it's almost certain that within a few decades humans will be communicating with one another via means that are essentially indistinguishable from classic telepathy.
That doesn't mean it was likely to have evolved naturally though. There does seem to be a whiff of real "irreducible complexity" in an iPod...
Energy: time to change the picture.
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But I wish it were less centralized. Slashdot is better than newspapers because it's mainly "letters to the editor", sparked by editors' published stories. Because those LoE's are letters to each other. Maybe the top 5% by moderated points, weighted by metamoderation and negative comments (also metamoderated), of posters to each day's top story or two (by comment count), could be autoinvited to a Backslash discussion among themselves, summarizing and highlighting comments. That competition might also encourage better comments.
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make install -not war
When I was in high school I ran ESP tests on the kids in my psychology class. I had twenty five cards with five different symbols on them. I shuffled the deck and looked at each card and each student wrote down which symbol he/she though I was looking at. The cards were behind a bind so they would not be visible in any way to the class. I ran the test three times and collected the forms.
Everyone scored between four to six right answers except for one kid who on all three tests scored between twelve to fifteen correct answers.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The reason it stands out so much is that it was the first and last time it has happened and it was once in a lifetime kind of news. If I had such feeligns all the time then I think coincidence makes far more sense. But, as it is, I can count on one hand with no thumb the number of times I've had a "feeling" that I needed to call someone and it was accurate both times.
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If we make the relatively trivial assumption that telepathy would require a relatively high level of brain function (both as a matter of technical requirement, and also of being able to process and understand the information) then suddenly the point in our evolution it would be most possible for these traits to begin to appear we have already began stagnating our gene pool by artificially protecting those of weaker traits, thus significantly reducing any evolution.
If we look through recorded time, and due to our nature likely much before recorded time as well, people who can 'hear voices' or otherwise know things they should not be able to know are typically regarded as crazy, devilspawn, witches, or some other name in which heavy medication, stoning, or burning at the stake would be prescribed. I would pose that because of this, not only would telepathy not be a survival advantage, any marked ability would indeed be a disadvantage.
IMO it's also very realistic to assume telepathy would be like other ability, and require some practice and training before it would be any more than rare and involuntary flashes of thoughts.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
What if telepathy is real, but the experiments are wrong? I wonder if telepathy actually works differently than one usually thinks. After sorting out the clear frauds and hoaxes, one can see that most psychics seem to be very intuitive. If telepathy is some sort of enhanced intuition, then maybe the ability depends heavily on the environment and situation. For example, being in a very familiar room triggering telepathic abilities. Unfortunately, this would render telepathy unprovable.
It goes further than that, though. This touches the question whether there are phenomena that cannot be described by current scientific practices or not. If true, then telepathy may well be unproved for a very long time.
Also, if someone is REALLY capable of telepathy, chances are high that this person keeps it a secret. Reading thoughts allow revealing true motives. If one reads the minds of ESP-interested people, one may well find some rather sinister motives (like, abusing it for stealing, blackmail, military applications..) Also, reading other's minds could be quite scary and disturbing, so it would not surprise me to find lots of insane people among the real psychics.....
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...
Some "coincidences" do occur for many people often everyday mainly because of our own intuitive processes and subconscious processes picking up a lot more subtleties than our conscious minds are aware of - is this "telepathy" per se? Probably not, but many people make a very good business out of reading others almost as good as the real thing. Even then, our subconscious minds pick up so much of what we don't that often we'll get excited about something bad that happens because it might have affected a loved one - sometimes nothing happens, yet other times, you're glad you checked. Sometimes a last-minute reflex saves your ass from death - I'm pretty sure everyone has at least one of those stories, and I'm positive that most people have a lot more than one. Think about that! We evolved through unspoken communication and split-second deductive logic. ESP, or just good heuristic hypotheses generation in our brains? Both? Who knows, but think about the fact that we're able to communicate complex ideas to each other through small chunks of black-on-white markings.
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Consider this scenario: You're in the public place. You see the woman. You look her up-and-down and think, "Hey now." The woman turns around and sees you looking her over and thinks, "Gads. What a jerk." Well, obviously, there was no telepathy involved here. She saw you looking at her like a hungry dog at a piece of meat and immediately knew what you were thinking. But what made her turn around at that moment? Was it just a coincidence? Obviously, it had to be. There's no way she could have known what you were thinking.
Or, her "sixth sense" told her there was a potential mate/threat/whatever. Automatic reaction was to look around for it. When she saw you looking her over, she figured she'd found the target of the problem (since the feelings went away) and the rest of her senses allowed her to form a better picture of what was happening and since she never really knew why she was looking around (lower brain function caused the reaction), she wouldn't chalk it up to telepathy.
Remember, there are tons of things that we do that we don't consciously do. A simple example is we pull our hands away from hot things. There's no conscious decision there. We know why we did it, sure, but there was no higher-brain decision process involved.
Actually, psychology has demonstrated evidence that clinically depressed individuals have a more objective view of the world than normal people. Have you heard of the "rose-colored glasses effect", aka "depressive realism"? Normally, people have a slightly inflated sense of optimism which affects their outlook. It causes people to place extra value on positive things in life, and tend to discount negative things. It's sort of a psychological survival mechanism. It's also pretty much transparent because everyone has it and everyone is used to it. Depressed individuals are missing this, and in this sense, have a slightly more objective outlook.