Ed A call for new open-minded research on psychic phenomena

[JesseCuster]

The premise of this thread seems to be "Why don't we start again and try to test for psychic phenomena nobody's even claimed might exist?".

It's even worse, the premise is "Why don't we use unspecified methods to look for unspecified paranormal phenomena that may or may not exist?"

How do you even start such a search?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

How do you even start such a search?

Well, apparently, if psychics have told you to look for a creature in the ocean, you look in the desert for camels.

 

[Pixel42]

In the esoteric community I mentioned in the OP, I once raised the question of how one might go about holding a "fair" lottery. By "fair" I meant that I wanted the outcome to depend only on random chance, and not be affected by the players' respective karmic statuses, or how anyone's stars aligned that day, or what deities or angels they'd prayed to, or what chronic curses or long-term blessings might be attached to them, or what talismans they were carrying or magical rituals they'd performed, or what spiritual entities had designs on the course of their futures. The clear unanimous answer was that what I was describing was totally impossible, nearly unthinkable. About the same reaction as if I'd asked people here how to design a spacecraft to be unaffected by gravity.

Your post reminded me of the time a few years back when a convicted rapist serving a long prison sentence won the UK lottery. Quite a few people were utterly astonished and outraged. "But that's not supposed to happen!".

 

[sackett]

Which one? The one on hunger strike or the protest singer?

Now he's bugging me about some dude called Aslan. I wish he'd go away. Sucker has always creeped me.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

It's even worse, the premise is "Why don't we use unspecified methods to look for unspecified paranormal phenomena that may or may not exist?"

How do you even start such a search?

Honestly, it looks like just the same old "I'm a better skeptic than you because you won't even consider looking outside the box!" This is without a good understanding of skeptic, looking, outside, and box.

 

[JayUtah]

I would have to ask. do people here think God would create a universe like this one, and a spirit world to which we go to when we die, and not separate the two?
I suggest science will never discover the spirit world because it is beyond the earthy universe and functions on a different level. We are not meant to gain access to it.
Can you imagine the human race getting power over the angels, or invading the spirit world. You can only know the psychic and spiritual by spiritual means not by science.

Every single sentence in this post is just made-up wishes.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Again Scorpion, you can't have your cake and eat it. You cannot say that the spirit world is separate from the physical world on one hand and claim people can communicate with it on the other. If it interacts with the physical world in any way, we can detect it. If we can detect it, we can test it.

 

[autumn1971]

We've looked in all the places we know. If you want us to look somewhere else, then say where. If you can't think of anywhere else, then it's hypocritical to complain that nobody else can either.

Dave

Well duh, a low-rated daytime television production

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

It's even worse, the premise is "Why don't we use unspecified methods to look for unspecified paranormal phenomena that may or may not exist?"

How do you even start such a search?

Ok, looking back at my previous post it seems unnecessarily harsh. I apologize to Warp12.

Warp12 certainly thinks he's making a clear argument. My problem with it is that it seems vague. 'We need to do something different" doesn't get us very far.

However, that's not necessarily unsurmountable. In my job I work with people all the time who want something done but don't describe it very well. It's my job to figure out what they want and if it's doable, or even desirable, and if so to figure out a way to do it.

Can we do that here? I'm probably not the best person to design test protocols for this kind of thing (if we can figure out what this thing is), but there several here who are pretty good at it. Maybe with more information we can do something with this.

Warp12, let's start where I usually start. What is it you want to accomplish? When the dust settles what do you want to have?

This is sincere, let's see if we can figure out where to go from here.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

What is it you want to accomplish?

In the 200+ posts in this topic, that question has been asked at least 100 times..

 

[theprestige]

Let me pose this question, seriously:

We know that any supposed "psychic" activity is, at best, intermittent, right?

Using your example of Zener cards, lets say that someone were to get 15 of 25 guesses correct. That is 1 in 90,000 odds. Lets say they were only able to do it once.

Would you simply attribute that to chance? Or, would you say it warrants further investigation? And, if so, what would your further investigation consist of? More card reading?

I am not an expert on Zener cards, but a reference was made earlier.

Some of your wording is ambiguous, but I'll give this the best serious answer I can.

First, the expectation for non-psychic subjects such as myself or random number generators, is that their results over several tests should tend towards some statistical average rate of success. The expectation for the psychic claimant is that they can perform better than random chance. Measurably so.

So if the claimant has an anomalously high success rate on the first test, that absolutely warrants further investigation. And yes, more card reading would be exactly where I started.

Second, as you say, "they were only able to do it once". To me, given my experimental methodology, that means they had one anomalously high result, plus a number of other results in subsequent tests, balancing out the anomaly and tending towards a statistical result that's no better than chance. At that point, the anomaly is just that: Exactly what you would expect to see from time to time, given enough non-psychic test subjects and enough tests.

Now, if the subject were able to consistently see cards at better than chance odds, over multiple tests, that would warrant a lot more investigation. And yes, a lot of it would probably still be card reading. If only to clearly establish to other scientists that there was in fact a phenomenon here worth digging into.

After that, it would be a matter of formulating various hypotheses for how the information was getting to the test subject (or if some other effect was at work), and then coming up with experiments to test those hypotheses.

And probably a lot of those would be just card reading with variations in the experimental setup. Is the subject picking up micro changes in air density? Let's try it again with hermetic seals. Is it some sort of radio wave? We've already taken measures to rule out the possibility of accomplices transmitting information to the subject, but now let's really clamp down on EM. Do it in a Faraday cage, or with receivers set up to detect the responsible emissions (if any).

Etc.

The problem has never been, what do we do next if someone actually succeeds at seeing Zener cards better than random chance.

The problem is that every single time the initial data set is produced under controlled conditions, the results are statistically no better than chance. At that point, the claim has already received all the investigation it warrants, and no more investigation is warranted.

---

You want me to come up with a hypothesis and an experiment for something that has never been observed. I don't know how to do that, and frankly I don't see the point. I also don't see why I should be burdened with this expectation. You're the one who says it should be done. If you won't do it, why should I?

 

[theprestige]

The thought process is fine.

But if I am using it to find camels, while focused on the deep sea, it may not work so well. I already looked in the deep sea for camels, a thousand times...and I had no luck...even with the right thought process.

But, I figure, the next time we are looking for camels, we might as well look in the deep sea, again.

The only reason we ever look for camels in the deep sea is to humor some crackpot who keeps telling us that's where they are. You want us to look somewhere else, tell us where you think we should be looking, and what you think we should be looking for.

 

[theprestige]

Unless you have looked for camels in the sea all of your life. Then you would simply be a fool to go through the same exercise again. You might need to more closely examine the next camel you find.

This has already been addressed. We test the claims that are made. If someone claims they can see cards, we do card-seeing tests. We don't invent some arbitrary and unrelated test apparatus to see if maybe card-reading isn't the right approach.

If you want a different test, make a different claim.

 

[theprestige]

So, the premise is:

"Casinos exist, therefore psychic phenomena cannot."

I can't agree with that logic.

You're the one who keeps calling for a different experimental approach. Don't come crying now that arth has obliged.

 

[autumn1971]

It is ridiculous. Someone implying that they would classify it as a natural occurrence...that is even more ridiculous.

In what way, other than the long odds, would it not be natural?

I mean that seriously. I can think of many very unlikely turns of events that would end with Eva Mendes in a random fan’s bed without resorting to the paranormal

There’s actually a thread about coincidences on this very board.

 

[theprestige]

These are your words, not mine:



Your link is just an article that you think justifies such ridiculous assertions that finding a model or actress waiting for me when I get home, one I have thought about during the day, is simply a natural occurrence.

Help me understand. Are you proposing that we come up with an experiment to test hypotheses relating to the as-yet-unobserved phenomenon of a model or actress you've been thinking about during the day waiting for you when you get home?

Okay, sure.

Nobody's ever seen Gal Gadot in Warp12's bedroom, but we can't rule out the possibility I mention Gal Gadot so that Warp12 now has an actress and/or model to think about. Will she appear in his home this evening? Probably not, but we should come up with some hypotheses anyway.

Maybe she's actually good friends with Warp12 in real life. She's aware of the discussion here and thinks taking his spare key and sneaking into his home would be a good prank. I agree with her about that, but we will need to control for it.

Or maybe someone on this forum knows her. They've reached out to Gal, and helped her doxx Warp12 in order to set up the prank. We'll need to control for that as well.

What about multiverse crosstalk mediated by a well-trained consciousness? There's got to be a point somewhere in the Hemn configuration space of all cosmi, that describes Gal Gadot in Warp12's bedroom. Even if that point has no valid world track leading up to it, it might still be possible for a dedicated encanter to achieve the crossover anyway.

Or it could be some sort of elaborate kidnapping scheme, using vans and lockpicks.

Or it could be some sort of elaborate kidnapping scheme, using teleportation or matter-phasing effects.

Or it could be a cocktail party, and Gal only showed up because Warp12 sent her an invite as a joke, once this discussion put her in his mind.

Or maybe she was riding a camel that got lost on its way to the sea.

Or maybe it was one of those wacky mix-ups where she was supposed to be visiting someone else on another floor of the building, and the whole thing is really just a coincidence. Gal Gadot is much talked about these days. It's likely someone, somewhere, right now, is experiencing a Gal Gadot event that just so happens to coincide with my mention of her here. Or does it coincide? Maybe my mention caused the event, somehow. Or maybe the event somehow triggered my mention. We'll need to look into that possibility as well.

Or maybe Gal is stuck in a stable time loop, and for whatever reason, passing through Warp12's bedroom is an important part of her working on her perfect speedrun through the day.

And that's about as far as I'm interested in taking this idea of experimental tests of things which haven't actually been observed. Show me conclusive evidence of Gal Gadot in your bedroom tonight, and I will happily work on any and every experimental setup you care to suggest, for how she got there.

Though, to be honest, I'd probably start with some very intense interrogation methods. Since she's almost certainly got more information than anyone else about how she ended up there. It might end up being less a matter of me testing arbitrary hypotheses, and more a matter of me checking out whatever story she gives, under duress.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

First, the expectation for non-psychic subjects such as myself or random number generators, is that their results over several tests should tend towards some statistical average rate of success. The expectation for the psychic claimant is that they can perform better than random chance. Measurably so.

I think one of the problems here might be that 'claimants' think that if an 'actual' effect was smaller than chance it would be hidden by the chance result rather than added to it (& hence detectable). It adds a false belief in an undetectable effect.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

The only reason we ever look for camels in the deep sea is to humor some crackpot who keeps telling us that's where they are. You want us to look somewhere else, tell us where you think we should be looking, and what you think we should be looking for.

The missing part of this analogy is that if the "skeptic scientists" were looking for camels in the deep sea it would be because the people who claimed to know about camels had described them as sea creatures. So whatever they were calling 'camels' obviously weren't.

ETA: So claiming that not finding 'not-Camels' is an invalid conclusion because 'camels' exist is a false conclusion.

 

[Warp12]

I mean that seriously. I can think of many very unlikely turns of events that would end with Eva Mendes in a random fan’s bed without resorting to the paranormal

I like where this is headed.

But seriously, I see people here talking about numbers, and using their relatively precise nature to justify a conclusion. "We didn't see anything outside of chance in the tests, based on our math". Which is very reasonable.

But, when it comes to a coincidence, some are saying, in essence, "no matter how long the odds, or how bizarre the scenario, we'll just attribute that to chance. They are all the same...because in a large test group some random zany stuff is going to happen". That way of thinking doesn't work for me, and it never will.

So, I think we can put the debate to rest. At least my involvement. I won’t be discussing “coincidence” anymore, in this thread.

 

[Meadmaker]

I like where this is headed.

But seriously, I see people here talking about numbers, and using their relatively precise nature to justify a conclusion. "We didn't see anything outside of chance in the tests, based on our math". Which is very reasonable.

But, when it comes to a coincidence, some are saying, in essence, "no matter how long the odds, or how bizarre the scenario, we'll just attribute that to chance. They are all the same...because in a large test group some random zany stuff is going to happen". That way of thinking doesn't work for me, and it never will.

So, I think we can put the debate to rest. At least my involvement. I won’t be discussing “coincidence” anymore, in this thread.

Did you ever post your lengthy reply you referred to on page 1? If not, do you still intend to?