Anecdotal experiences: telepathy

[AvalonXQ]

This last week, while I was out to dinner with my dad, I mentioned to him a little bit about skepticism and the MDC - particularly how fun it is to try to find experimental protocols to test various paranormal claims.

Dad has never been into the supernatural, but he also pointed out that all paranormal abilities might not be readily accessible for testing.

He reminded me of a few anecdotal experiences in the family - particularly the "midnight call".

A handful of time in his life when living on the opposite side of the country from his family, when feeling particularly stressed out or upset about something and staying up in the middle of the night thinking about it, his mother has called him on the phone to ask him what was wrong.

According to Dad, there were no "false positives". His mother has not ever called and awoken him in the middle of the night; she has only called a handful of times, and those happen to coincide with times he was lying awake stressed out. This is not normal behavior for my dad.

Also, since moving away from home as an adult, my dad has called me twice in the middle of the night based on a "feeling" that something was wrong. Those two times happened to coincide with very rare bouts of suicidal depression and insomnia (I was having intense emotional reactions keeping me awake). Again, Dad has never woken me up with this feeling that turned out to be a false positive.

Dad's "paranormal" explanation is that a very, very strong emotional reaction in the child can trigger an emotional reaction in the parent at a distance - that is, the emotional connection felt between him and his mom, or him and me, can provide information even hundreds of miles away when the "signal" is strong enough.

My best mundane explanation was on the order of "post hoc" rationalizations - particularly, that the recipient of each of these calls was not originally feeling out of the ordinary until the frantic 3 AM "What's wrong?!?!" phone call caused us to generate memories of sleeplessness and depression. Selective re-remembering from repeated telling does the rest.

Anyway, I said I would relate this to the forums and see what people think.

Two different questions here:

1) What other mundane explanations could reasonably explain our experiences?

2) If there really were a telepathic connection, but only one that has manifested a handful of times over our lives as a result of great emotional strain, how would you propose to test for it? None of us claims the ability to control it, or that it occurs any more than very rarely.

 

[tsig]

This last week, while I was out to dinner with my dad, I mentioned to him a little bit about skepticism and the MDC - particularly how fun it is to try to find experimental protocols to test various paranormal claims.

Dad has never been into the supernatural, but he also pointed out that all paranormal abilities might not be readily accessible for testing.

He reminded me of a few anecdotal experiences in the family - particularly the "midnight call".

A handful of time in his life when living on the opposite side of the country from his family, when feeling particularly stressed out or upset about something and staying up in the middle of the night thinking about it, his mother has called him on the phone to ask him what was wrong.

According to Dad, there were no "false positives". His mother has not ever called and awoken him in the middle of the night; she has only called a handful of times, and those happen to coincide with times he was lying awake stressed out. This is not normal behavior for my dad.

Also, since moving away from home as an adult, my dad has called me twice in the middle of the night based on a "feeling" that something was wrong. Those two times happened to coincide with very rare bouts of suicidal depression and insomnia (I was having intense emotional reactions keeping me awake). Again, Dad has never woken me up with this feeling that turned out to be a false positive.

Dad's "paranormal" explanation is that a very, very strong emotional reaction in the child can trigger an emotional reaction in the parent at a distance - that is, the emotional connection felt between him and his mom, or him and me, can provide information even hundreds of miles away when the "signal" is strong enough.

My best mundane explanation was on the order of "post hoc" rationalizations - particularly, that the recipient of each of these calls was not originally feeling out of the ordinary until the frantic 3 AM "What's wrong?!?!" phone call caused us to generate memories of sleeplessness and depression. Selective re-remembering from repeated telling does the rest.

Anyway, I said I would relate this to the forums and see what people think.

Two different questions here:

1) What other mundane explanations could reasonably explain our experiences?

2) If there really were a telepathic connection, but only one that has manifested a handful of times over our lives as a result of great emotional strain, how would you propose to test for it? None of us claims the ability to control it, or that it occurs any more than very rarely.

You can't control it and it happens vary rarely it's random chance.

 

[RobDegraves]

Two quick points if you don't mind.

1.

Dad's "paranormal" explanation is that a very, very strong emotional reaction in the child can trigger an emotional reaction in the parent at a distance - that is, the emotional connection felt between him and his mom, or him and me, can provide information even hundreds of miles away when the "signal" is strong enough.

That could be very easy to test. More to the point though, what mechanism would carry this signal?

2.

My best mundane explanation was on the order of "post hoc" rationalizations - particularly, that the recipient of each of these calls was not originally feeling out of the ordinary until the frantic 3 AM "What's wrong?!?!" phone call caused us to generate memories of sleeplessness and depression. Selective re-remembering from repeated telling does the rest.

You do provide one possible explanation but not the only one. It's also possible that mundane information was passed via telephone or whatever previously and long association provided a subconscious deduction resulting in the phone call. After which, the previous passage of info was forgotten. Or it could have been a combination of both ideas or even something else entirely.


The big problem is that you have neither repeatability nor a credible mechanism for telepathy. Until then, it's not even really a phenomena.

 

[Elizabeth I]

I know your father said there were "NO false positives," but I'm still inclined to suspect confirmation bias.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Dad's point was that there may be certain phenomena that occur rarely enough to elude scientific testing, which generally requires reproducibility.

 

[AdMan]

I know your father said there were "NO false positives," but I'm still inclined to suspect confirmation bias.

Exactly this--combine the fallibility of human memory with the fact that AvalonXQ and his dad would tend to remember those calls that coincided with emotional situations while forgetting those that didn't and you get precisely this type of "phenomena".

 

[Roger Ramjets]

1) What other mundane explanations could reasonably explain our experiences?

1. Confirmation bias. You and your dad have simply forgotten about those other times when there was a phone call but you weren't 'stressed out', and/or there were other stressful times when no phone call was forthcoming. Or it could be false memories - you remember both being 'stressed out' and phone calls, but they didn't always coincide.

2. People who live together are better able to guess what the other one might be up to in a particular situation. When your father was living 'on the opposite side of the country', his mother may have had a 'feeling' that he was stressed or upset, but that 'feeling' was actually a subconscious guess based on her knowledge of his personality and habits.

2) If there really were a telepathic connection, but only one that has manifested a handful of times over our lives as a result of great emotional strain, how would you propose to test for it? None of us claims the ability to control it, or that it occurs any more than very rarely.

Even if you assume a paranormal explanation, how do you know it was telepathy? Perhaps it was some other kind of 'mind-power' such as clairvoyance or telekinesis, or synchronicity, or fate, or God was messing with you, or it's all just a dream created by your own mind!

How rarely a phenomena occurs is not so important as having robust statistical information. Without knowing how many 'misses' there were and how likely they are to occur, you cannot know whether the few 'hits' are significant or not. But if there is something there then it shouldn't be hard to test. Put yourself in stressful situations and see what happens! Even if the number of 'hits' is small, if you can bring them on at will then that is something worth looking into. OTOH, if all you get are 'misses'...

 

[xtifr]

Confirmation bias does seem like the most likely explanation, but there could be other factors as well. Perhaps certain dates are associated with bad memories at a subconscious level, or maybe it has something to do with the weather. Or common knowledge of what's on TV that night. There's just so many possibilities that jumping to "it's magic" seems unwarranted. Especially with two people who know each other as well as parent and child often do.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Dad's point was that there may be certain phenomena that occur rarely enough to elude scientific testing, which generally requires reproducibility.

Reproducibility is not essential. We knew that evolution existed even when we only had historical evidence, and were unable to reproduce it in the lab.

If incidences of telepathy had been documented to the extent that its occurrence was undeniable, then science would have something to investigate. In practice though, all we ever get is unverifiable anecdotes. Whenever telepathy has been tested under properly controlled conditions, it has not been detected. There is only one reasonable explanation for that finding...

 

[Mycroft]

Quantum entanglement.

 

[Explorer]

Surely the question that should be asked is how many occasions was there when no phone calls in the middle of the night were received in similar circumstances?

Over the course of any given year, how many times have each of us woken up in the middle of the night worrying about a current situation that adversely affects our well being, or the well being of someone close to us?

 

[Elizabeth I]

Dad's point was that there may be certain phenomena that occur rarely enough to elude scientific testing, which generally requires reproducibility.

For a discussion of this speculation, and a pretty complete analysis and refutation of it, go here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217492.

Even if it were a real phenomenon, if it is as intermittent and undependable as you describe, it's much the same thing as if it didn't exist.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Surely the question that should be asked is how many occasions was there when no phone calls in the middle of the night were received in similar circumstances?

We determined that the answer would be at least several -- that is, there are plenty of "false negatives" (the event does not occur reliably).

 

[AvalonXQ]

Even if it were a real phenomenon, if it is as intermittent and undependable as you describe, it's much the same thing as if it didn't exist.

That seems like a cop-out to me -- basically trying to redefine "existence" based on only what can be reliably and repeatedly observed.

A real phenomenon is a real phenomenon. A rarefied and sporadic phenomenon is not at all the same as one that doesn't exist; the first can have real (and dramatic) consequences on the world.

We can't reproduce earthquakes; they're intermittent and undependable. But we certainly know they exist, because their effects are measurable.

I'm not trying to argue that "emergency empathy" is the same as earthquakes, but I don't accept that just because a phenomena is unreliable, it therefore doesn't exist.

 

[TjW]

That seems like a cop-out to me -- basically trying to redefine "existence" based on only what can be reliably and repeatedly observed.

A real phenomenon is a real phenomenon. A rarefied and sporadic phenomenon is not at all the same as one that doesn't exist; the first can have real (and dramatic) consequences on the world.

We can't reproduce earthquakes; they're intermittent and undependable. But we certainly know they exist, because their effects are measurable.

I'm not trying to argue that "emergency empathy" is the same as earthquakes, but I don't accept that just because a phenomena is unreliable, it therefore doesn't exist.

Sure. I'm willing to grant that phone calls occurred. That's objectively measurable.
But the claim is about why they occurred. That isn't.

 

[7th sextile]

That seems like a cop-out to me -- basically trying to redefine "existence" based on only what can be reliably and repeatedly observed.

A real phenomenon is a real phenomenon. A rarefied and sporadic phenomenon is not at all the same as one that doesn't exist; the first can have real (and dramatic) consequences on the world.

We can't reproduce earthquakes; they're intermittent and undependable. But we certainly know they exist, because their effects are measurable.

I'm not trying to argue that "emergency empathy" is the same as earthquakes, but I don't accept that just because a phenomena is unreliable, it therefore doesn't exist.

Or another occasionally cited phenomenon :meteor/ites.

It took a while to get a scientific handle on these strange visitors,the first published claim that they were space rocks didn't appear till the late eighteenth century.They were rare : "few" and far between,and perhaps more importantly,"unaccountable" in the current scientific paradigm.
I've read that the sky-rock theory was derided and resisted by the "establishment"(but can't cite anything and one has to be cautious about such claims) though it was accepted in about a decade.

Could "em-em" be an analogous phenomenon?IMO,maybe.The difference I guess is in the data set "to be explained". A largish rock in the desert or an ice field with no mineralogical relationship to the area and not otherwise explainable (erratic,e.g.) is literally and figuratively a bit more substantive than most reports of psychic phenomena.

 

[I Ratant]

Dad's point was that there may be certain phenomena that occur rarely enough to elude scientific testing, which generally requires reproducibility.

.
That these are unpredictable make them extremely difficult to test.
I have lots of "flashes" on celebrities, many of them obscure or out of the public view for long time, until one scampers through my mind, and the -very next day-!!!!! there will a note about -that- celebrity in the paper or on tv.
Totally useless a feat, in that the number of "unverified" events with all the celebrities I might think on during the day lack those "next day" verifications.
As for family, never had a one.

 

[I Ratant]

Surely the question that should be asked is how many occasions was there when no phone calls in the middle of the night were received in similar circumstances?

Over the course of any given year, how many times have each of us woken up in the middle of the night worrying about a current situation that adversely affects our well being, or the well being of someone close to us?

.
Never, if the criteria is there was a subordinate event to consider, like an accident to a family member.

 

[I Ratant]

Or another occasionally cited phenomenon :meteor/ites.

It took a while to get a scientific handle on these strange visitors,the first published claim that they were space rocks didn't appear till the late eighteenth century.They were rare : "few" and far between,and perhaps more importantly,"unaccountable" in the current scientific paradigm.
I've read that the sky-rock theory was derided and resisted by the "establishment"(but can't cite anything and one has to be cautious about such claims) though it was accepted in about a decade.

...

.
Thomas Jefferson said "I'd lief believe a Yankee preacher could lie, than rocks from fall heaven".

 

[Jeff Corey]

Or another occasionally cited phenomenon :meteor/ites.

It took a while to get a scientific handle on these strange visitors,the first published claim that they were space rocks didn't appear till the late eighteenth century.They were rare : "few" and far between,and perhaps more importantly,"unaccountable" in the current scientific paradigm.
I've read that the sky-rock theory was derided and resisted by the "establishment"(but can't cite anything and one has to be cautious about such claims) though it was accepted in about a decade.

Could "em-em" be an analogous phenomenon?IMO,maybe.The difference I guess is in the data set "to be explained". A largish rock in the desert or an ice field with no mineralogical relationship to the area and not otherwise explainable (erratic,e.g.) is literally and figuratively a bit more substantive than most reports of psychic phenomena.

Good history here: www.meteorite.fr/en/basics/meteoritics.htm