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

xjx388 said:
There is no difference between "intermittant" and "non-existant."

What's important is whether or not the hit ratio is greater than chance. That would be interesting
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I don't think you are saying that something intermittent cannot exist? How am I to read that?

Are you saying that if something falls under the possibility of "chance", that we should automatically deem it as so?
 
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Warp12 said:
I don't think you are saying that something intermittent cannot exist? How am I to read that?



Are you saying that if something falls under the possibility of "chance", that we should automatically deem it as so?
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It sounds like you really need to take some time and understand how statistical models work in science.
 
Warp12 said:
Well, there was a time when our current methodologies pointed to bloodletting as a valid therapy; apparently that went on for over 2000 years.
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Right.If I could go back 2000 years ago and give the patient the medicine they actually need, based on our current understanding, I would look like a God!

Cancer is a problem we currently can't solve. If a future doctor came to us today and was able to cure it like we cure syphillis today, she would be miraculous.

So what's the "Cancer" you are talking about?
 
Warp12 said:
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.
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I think I would think it's probably a fluke, but if I'm in the testing game anyway, I'm going to test more. More card reading seems like a perfectly valid next step.
 
xjx388 said:
Right.If I could go back 2000 years ago and give the patient the medicine they actually need, based on our current understanding, I would look like a God!

Cancer is a problem we currently can't solve. If a future doctor came to us today and was able to cure it like we cure syphillis today, she would be miraculous.

So what's the "Cancer" you are talking about?
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There is no way I could identify one; after all, we have explained most all of them away via our "current understanding".
 
Warp12 said:
The post has been edited to make my point even more obvious:







Hope this helps clarify my meaning.
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It doesn't, because you obviously intended those times to be analogous to ours. The argument doesn't work unless you did.

Two hundred years ago our methods were quite different than they are now. But you've provided no reason for us to agree with you that our methods today are insufficient to test for the reality of psychic phenomena.
 
Warp12 said:
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.
Click to expand...

If someone consistently scored 15 right guesses of 25 Zener cards then yes something is going on. However this doesn't "prove" physic phenomena at all all it "proves" is that something is likely modifying chance. What could that be?

Well if it happens only once I would say chance is most likely. Not some paranormal power which cannot be measured or shown to exist. If it happens again and again then what is more likely some psychic power, we can't detect at all, or something else? Well I would argue that the more likely explanations are outright cheating or unconscious sensory cueing. It only takes a small bit of either one for someone to have results that are millions or billions to one.

Zener cards are particularly notorious in this regard. the ways to cue, cheat etc., when tested this way are legion. Rhine the Parapsychologist who devised them in the 1920s was notorious for his lax standards. He believed that negative results should not be published. Stopped "runs", (A series of tests with the cards.), when the results began to drift towards chance. His subjects tended to lose their powers over time, with more and more tests.

When Rhine found out that more strict experimental protocols led to chance results he concluded that strict conditions "upset" his subjects and thus inhibited psychic powers. And Rhine frequently let his subjects run the experiments. Today his research with these cards is not highly thought of.

Has for ways of cheating. Well sometimes Rhine's Zener cards were so poorly made you could see the symbol, with the right light through the card. The cards could be nicked or otherwise marked according to the symbol on it. If the giver of the test was wearing glasses, sometimes you could see the cards in reflection in the glasses. And sometimes this was possible just looking into someone's eyes! Remember none of these methods has to be perfect; all that is necessary is enough information to bump up your score just above chance and after say 1000 runs you have results that are billions to one!

And of course there are many other ways to do it. And if you are willing to cheat the skies the limit.
 
Pacal said:
If someone consistently scored 15 right guesses of 25 Zener cards then yes something is going on. However this doesn't "prove" physic phenomena at all all it "proves" is that something is likely modifying chance. What could that be?

Well if it happens only once I would say chance is most likely. Not some paranormal power which cannot be measured or shown to exist. If it happens again and again then what is more likely some psychic power, we can't detect at all, or something else? Well I would argue that the more likely explanations are outright cheating or unconscious sensory cueing. It only takes a small bit of either one for someone to have results that are millions or billions to one.

Zener cards are particularly notorious in this regard. the ways to cue, cheat etc., when tested this way are legion. Rhine the Parapsychologist who devised them in the 1920s was notorious for his lax standards. He believed that negative results should not be published. Stopped "runs", (A series of tests with the cards.), when the results began to drift towards chance. His subjects tended to lose their powers over time, with more and more tests.

When Rhine found out that more strict experimental protocols led to chance results he concluded that strict conditions "upset" his subjects and thus inhibited psychic powers. And Rhine frequently let his subjects run the experiments. Today his research with these cards is not highly thought of.

Has for ways of cheating. Well sometimes Rhine's Zener cards were so poorly made you could see the symbol, with the right light through the card. The cards could be nicked or otherwise marked according to the symbol on it. If the giver of the test was wearing glasses, sometimes you could see the cards in reflection in the glasses. And sometimes this was possible just looking into someone's eyes! Remember none of these methods has to be perfect; all that is necessary is enough information to bump up your score just above chance and after say 1000 runs you have results that are billions to one!

And of course there are many other ways to do it. And if you are willing to cheat the skies the limit.
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I don’t understand the use of Zenner cards. Why not just a regular poker deck? 52 unique cards. Put six decks in a casino shuffler. If you can beat chance through even one or two runs under those conditions, I will be amazed.

If psychic powers were real, casinos would be wiped out even if there were only a few genuine psychics.
 
Warp12 said:
The post has been edited to make my point even more obvious:

Well, there was a time when our current methodologies for the time pointed to bloodletting as a valid therapy; apparently that went on for over 2000 years.
Click to expand...

Hope this helps clarify my meaning.
Click to expand...

The history of medicine has actually been pretty messy and insane. For thousands of years well trained Doctors in all the most "advanced" knowledge of medicine were very often serious threats to the health and life of their victims, sorry patients. Why?

Well because much medicine was based on cracked, foolish mystical notions. In the case of bloodletting it was based not on anything empirical but on a supersititous belief in the "Four Humours", and the fantasy belief that illness was caused by a lack of balance of those "Humours" and the way to restore the balance was to bleed the patient!! And yes sometimes a treatment for blood loss was bleeding!!!

The source of these beliefs was not study or observation but by "rational" and "reasonable" inference from the notion of the 4, sometimes 5, "Humours". The fact it's empirical basis was basically zero didn't matter. The amount of observation and experimentation in medicine for thousands of years was minimal to put it mildly. Not very often, for example, was the taboo on dissecting bodies breached so that the inside of the human body could be studied in detail. The result was lots of nonsense.

In fact right into the late 18th century many Doctors believed in the primacy of theory over observation and attacked those who valued observation more.

The result was that in 1800, for many, if not most illnesses, you would likely be better off consulting a Witch Doctor or a Wise Women than a up to date Medical Doctor. At least they wouldn't bleed you!

It was only in the 19th century that Medicine became truly scientific and broke away from it's serious case of woo infatuation. In the meanwhile who knows how many people were bleed to death by Doctors who believed in a nonsensical theory.
 
Warp12 said:
They would be asked to leave before that happened, just like card counters sometimes are.
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A technique that only works for a small handful of card games. Can you cite to an example of someone asked to leave a casino for winning at, say, roulette or craps under the belief that they were employing psychic powers?
 
JayUtah said:
A technique that only works for a small handful of card games. Can you cite to an example of someone asked to leave a casino for winning at, say, roulette or craps under the belief that they were employing psychic powers?
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The whole Zener fiasco was hilarious. OP is edging toward some wild claim but has not yet worked up the bottle to make it. The Zener thing is merely a distraction to the punchline.

If there were a punchline he would have started with it. A build up to nowhere leads, well nowhere.

OP is scared by that because,,,,why? I do not know why that is somehow scary to some people. This is a post mortem conversation I have had with my kids. Put me in a cardboard box and light a match. Goodbye.

It matters not a whit what anyone believes, my imaginary soul is not in the corpse. All the major religions agree on that point and most of the minor ones as well. My soul is no longer in the body.

The religious will expend any amount of effort trying to convince you that the physical body is a mere vessel for the disembodied souls. Right up until one pops one's clogs. At that point, the soul can get right lost. The corpse is far more important.
 
Warp12 said:
That is not a primary objection that I have, although it can be a point of contention when people start to convey an arrogance about our current level of understanding.

However, I do object to the idea that "modern science" is the pinnacle of what we can possibly learn or will understand. As I said earlier, we will one day be an "ancient society"; how will our "modern" limiting beliefs be looked upon, then?
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Again:

Steven Novella said:
What do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?
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Warp12 said:
I don't see where there is a point of contention between the two quotes?
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You clearly think that science is inadequate - that there is something wrong with it, and that there may be phenomena that science is not equipped to examine. In what way is science deficient, in your eyes?
 
arthwollipot said:
You clearly think that science is inadequate - that there is something wrong with it, and that there may be phenomena that science is not equipped to examine. In what way is science deficient, in your eyes?
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Science is an ever-expanding field. We are learning new things, and methods, constantly. I don't feel it is "deficient", just not finite.
 
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