My "ESP" experiences

[Mercutio]

This point was then addressed twice inadequately (sp), as there isn't "sufficient prediction time" because Stereolab doesn't even know if or when these events will occur.

How, for example, would you attempt to analyze his experience at work?
[/B]

If you insist that every aspect of the original experience must be involved in the experimental replication of that experience, then I must congratulate you on setting up an impossible task. Every detail any experimenter could set up may be countered with yet another detail that was not the same--after all, any moment of your life is in some ways absolutely impossible to perfectly replicate. Eventually, we get to "it is not the same situation, because he was changed by going through the experience the first time."

Any experiment, any operational definition, is necessarily a compromise. The methodologies suggested do address the major aspects of the experience. The key element is the KNOWN aspect; this is precisely what is addressed in the proposed methodology. Stereolab has said that he gets 10-15 seconds notice, as it were. That is plenty of warning for this, unless you have a specific reason why experimental controls must necessarily prohibit the 10-15 second warning.

 

[plindboe]

"ehBowen" from the Religion and Philosphy Forum has a nice little theory that such contradictory events actually both happened, but God and Satan are arguing over which one will be "the" reality. Just thought you might like to know that both you and your mother may actually have 100% accurate memories, but are simply Satan's play things!

Hehe. Sounds like this person is an entirely logical being, with a not at all confused view of how the world works.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Stereolab has said that he gets 10-15 seconds notice, as it were. That is plenty of warning for this, unless you have a specific reason why experimental controls must necessarily prohibit the 10-15 second warning.

Right, but he doesn't know when the experience will occur.

For your controlled experiment of him, are you going to follow him around all day everyday with a video camera? How exactly does one test his 'ESP'?

 

[thaiboxerken]

Since Stereolab's claims show that his "paranormal" experiences are as random and reliable as coincidence, it is not testable. But, since it has the same properties as coincidence, it should be treated as such. He can remember "knowing" all he wants, but until he can learn to control his superpower to working more than coincidences.. then why even entertain the possibility of it being real?

 

[T'ai Chi]

, but until he can learn to control his superpower to working more than coincidences.. then why even entertain the possibility of it being real?

It might be.

 

[thaiboxerken]

It might be.

I doubt it. There is no reason to entertain the notion without evidence.

 

[T'ai Chi]

I doubt it. There is no reason to entertain the notion without evidence.

Sure there is a reason; the notion is interesting and there might be something to it. True, there might not, but I think the potential benefits outnumber the potential costs.

In this specific case, however, I don't think it is possible to set up a controlled experiment.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Sure there is a reason; the notion is interesting and there might be something to it.

No, interesting fiction doesn't make for a good reason to believe. And no, there is not anything to it.. otherwise there would be evidence associated.

True, there might not, but I think the potential benefits outnumber the potential costs.

There is no benefit in chasing wild geese.


In this specific case, however, I don't think it is possible to set up a controlled experiment.

of course not, it's an unfalsifiable claim. It would be like trying to catch the invisible, blue, intangible smurfs that only I know about.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Sure there is a reason; the notion is interesting and there might be something to it.

No, interesting fiction doesn't make for a good reason to believe. And no, there is not anything to it.. otherwise there would be evidence associated.

You outright state it is fiction. What you keep forgetting is your leader Sagan's mantra that absence of evidence is not evidence of an absense. I'm still willing to explore and see if it belongs in the fiction or the non-fiction category. If there is evidence, we can explore it and make a decision one way or the other. --but just because there is no evidence, you are only justified emotionally in saying it is fiction.

True, there might not, but I think the potential benefits outnumber the potential costs.

There is no benefit in chasing wild geese.

There is if you're a hunter, birdwatcher, biologist, or naturalist.

In this specific case, however, I don't think it is possible to set up a controlled experiment.

of course not, it's an unfalsifiable claim. It would be like trying to catch the invisible, blue, intangible smurfs that only I know about.

No, it wouldn't be like that at all. No one is relating their experience with invisible, blue (how you ascertained invisible and blue I have no idea) intangible Smurfs. Stereolab related some real world experiences, some of which many of us have had. That is levels of reality above your example of Smurfs.

 

[Darat]

...snip...


of course not, it's an unfalsifiable claim. It would be like trying to catch the invisible, blue, intangible smurfs that only I know about.

You can see them as well?!

 

[thaiboxerken]

You outright state it is fiction.

It is.

What you keep forgetting is your leader Sagan's mantra that absence of evidence is not evidence of an absense.

I don't agree with Sagan, and he's not my leader.

I'm still willing to explore and see if it belongs in the fiction or the non-fiction category.

It's unfalsifiable. How do you explore unfalsifiable claims? Unlike you, I don't entertain any extraordinary claims that don't have evidence associated with them.

If there is evidence, we can explore it and make a decision one way or the other.

There is no evidence, so I conclude that it's fiction.

--but just because there is no evidence, you are only justified emotionally in saying it is fiction.

No emotions involved, just pure calculated rationality. There is no evidence to support his story and there is no logical reason to believe there is any paranormal.

There is if you're a hunter, birdwatcher, biologist, or naturalist.

You obviously don't understand what the figure of speech was.. or you're being a complete troll and deliberately f(*& with me. I think the latter. But, I will restate. Chasing the nonexistent has no benefit.

No, it wouldn't be like that at all. No one is relating their experience with invisible, blue (how you ascertained invisible and blue I have no idea) intangible Smurfs. Stereolab related some real world experiences, some of which many of us have had. That is levels of reality above your example of Smurfs.

No, maybe my smurfs are real world experiences. Prove me wrong. You cannot, because it is unfalsifiable. Stereo's claims are also unfalsifiable and therefore my smurfs are just as "realistic" as his "esp". You just find the notion of smurfs unbelievable, so you think it's unrealistic and not worth investigating.

 

[Lothian]

There is if you're a hunter, birdwatcher, biologist, or naturalist.

I read that Sheldrake is a biologist by trade.

 

[Mercutio]

Right, but he doesn't know when the experience will occur.

For your controlled experiment of him, are you going to follow him around all day everyday with a video camera? How exactly does one test his 'ESP'?

Read the proposed methodologies again. Nobody said it would absolutely be finished in a week. We are taking advantage of the apparent randomness of the events by performing the test over quite a long period of time--this would, of course, depend on his schedule and life priorities. As our first concern is his testing his own abilities, we need not follow him with a camera; it is enough that he be examining his experience systematically, as opposed to retrospectively analyzing hits and misses. If and when he demonstrates to himself that even when he is keeping track of KNOWN trials and is still batting one thousand, we can take the next step and control the experiment.

 

[T'ai Chi]

You outright state it is fiction.

It is.

Yeah, you believe that, but have yet to show it. You also have yet to provide proof of your claim that 'there is no God.. and that is a fact.', which isn't surprising.

What you keep forgetting is your leader Sagan's mantra that absence of evidence is not evidence of an absense.

I don't agree with Sagan, and he's not my leader.

Do you believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absence??

There is no evidence, so I conclude that it's fiction.

All you can conclude from 'no evidence' is that there is no evidence.

There is if you're a hunter, birdwatcher, biologist, or naturalist.

You obviously don't understand what the figure of speech was.. or you're being a complete troll and deliberately f(*& with me. I think the latter. But, I will restate. Chasing the nonexistent has no benefit.

You assume it is nonexistent so you have already made up your mind. Some here have suggested an experiment to examine Stereolab's future experiences (if he has any). How can you conclude, without an experiment, that it is nonexistent?

No, maybe my smurfs are real world experiences. Prove me wrong. You cannot, because it is unfalsifiable. Stereo's claims are also unfalsifiable and therefore my smurfs are just as "realistic" as his "esp". You just find the notion of smurfs unbelievable, so you think it's unrealistic and not worth investigating.

First, you are violating your skeptic rules and asking me to prove a universal negative.

Second, with the false comparisons to Smurfs, Santa, IPU's, cheese on the moon, etc., that is a tactic many skeptics and atheists use to discredit plausible notions. That type of "reasoning" might work as an analogous position to those who say that a God exists, but not the more day-to-day experiences that most of us have.

In any case, the Smurfs were a concept created in 1958 by Pierre Culliford, made into books in the 1960's, and later made into a television cartoon in the early 1980's, so it's easy to show that they don't belong in the same category as Stereolab's real-world experiences.

 

[epepke]

Anyone else want to jump aboard and tell this poor guy to go for the million bucks?

He (and T'ai Chi I'm assuming) are not saying that there are not tests. They're asking how you expect him to test something he (thinks) happens once every five to ten years. He's claiming to be a witness to it, not to be able to do it on command.

Are people even thinking before they post things like this?

If it happens every five to ten years, and it has happened to him 15 to 17 times, then taking age 5 as a practical minimum for forming clear long-term memories, then he must necessarily be between 75 and 170 years old, in which case there's a good chance he's at least somewhat senile anyway.

Come on, people! Even if it's rare, that's no excuse. The number of times I've run out of gas is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the number of psychic-seeming events I've had in my life. Although conceivably I could run out of gas on command, I am highly motivated not to. And yet I still manage to keep a gas can in my car.

Forget about the Challenge. Personally, my motivation to have evidence for myself that I had psychic abilities would give me such a kick that it is way more important to me than avoiding paying full-service gas prices for one damn tank to borrow a gas can from the station. That's like, what, $5 max on a Chrysler Neon? I've spent more than that on a single glass of beer! It was really good beer, but still... Would it be worth five bucks to me to have evidence of my psychic ability? Hell, yeah!

Perhaps I just have superhuman foresight combined with the superhuman math abilities that allow me to multiply 5 by 15. But I still don't see how the concept is so gob-smacking.

Or perhaps that is the distinguishing characteristic of psychic phenomena. Perhaps that, while ordinary people have no problem preparing for the possibility of ordinary events, however rare, they'll go to almost comical lengths, up to and including forgetting 3rd grade math, to keep psychic phenomena untestable. If so, there must be a motivation.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Yeah, you believe that, but have yet to show it.

No need to, until he can show that there is something real there.. it is fictional. Why do you insist on shifting the burden of evidence to those that doubt claims? When I claim it's fiction, I'm simply stating that I don't believe him.

Do you believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absence??

Yes.

All you can conclude from 'no evidence' is that there is no evidence.

That's a rather redundant and useless position. If there is no evidence, one can conclude that there is nothing there. Until there is evidence, it's pointless to entertain such extraordinary claims.

You assume it is nonexistent so you have already made up your mind. Some here have suggested an experiment to examine Stereolab's future experiences (if he has any). How can you conclude, without an experiment, that it is nonexistent?

Because there is no evidence. I need no experiments to figure out BS when I hear it. The burden of evidence is upon the claimee, not the doubters.

First, you are violating your skeptic rules and asking me to prove a universal negative.

Exactly, do you understand now? You are claiming that this "ESP" must be proven false. You are doing the same damn thing. You can see the false logic when I give the argument, but you can't see it in your own.......... interesting.

Second, with the false comparisons to Smurfs, Santa, IPU's, cheese on the moon, etc., that is a tactic many skeptics and atheists use to discredit plausible notions.

It is not a false comparison because those claims are exactly like his "ESP" claim, they are unfalsifiable and are based on the same "logic" and evidence as his "ESP" claim.

That type of "reasoning" might work as an analogous position to those who say that a God exists, but not the more day-to-day experiences that most of us have.

What "experiences" are you talking about? Oh.. ESP? Where are your statistics that show that ESP even exists and that most people experience it? You are adding more claims upon claims. Many people experience "god" as well, this "ESP" claim is just as analogous.

In any case, the Smurfs were a concept created in 1958 by Pierre Culliford, made into books in the 1960's, and later made into a television cartoon in the early 1980's, so it's easy to show that they don't belong in the same category as Stereolab's real-world experiences.

ESP is the concept that is used in many sci-fi and other fictional novels. It's in the same category as Smurfs.

 

[Darwin'sGoat]

Are people even thinking before they post things like this?

If it happens every five to ten years, and it has happened to him 15 to 17 times, then taking age 5 as a practical minimum for forming clear long-term memories, then he must necessarily be between 75 and 170 years old, in which case there's a good chance he's at least somewhat senile anyway.

Yep, I never stop. I am assuming that I have somehow missed his post where he said he had more than 2 experiences. All I saw was the Wizard of Oz story, the phone call story, and a list of things he said were, to him, obviously coincidences. Am I somehow reading this post incorrectly, or is the rest of the world?

"In case this makes my case just a little bit, as to how I don't just write off every coincidence as paranormal, here are some weird "coincidences" and explainable things that I've never considered anything special:"

 

[Darwin'sGoat]

All you can conclude from 'no evidence' is that there is no evidence.

You assume it is nonexistent so you have already made up your mind. Some here have suggested an experiment to examine Stereolab's future experiences (if he has any). How can you conclude, without an experiment, that it is nonexistent?

You're missing a very critical step in this, I hope you're not doing it on purpose.

If verifiable, repeatable, scientific proof suddenly shows up (true) skeptics will change their views.

We are not just "assuming" that it doesn't exist. We're stating that 100% of the previous claims have been proved false. This case may very well prove us wrong, but I would say the odds lie very heavily in our favor.

The moment you can come to me with evidence and prove the claim, I will believe you. Until you do that work, I will be skeptical. I will not believe in something that has been, to this date, verifiably non-existant. That just doesn't make sense.

 

[renata]

Does anyone find it funny that Stereolab seems to have disappeared, but you guys are still arguing?

Where did he go, anyway? I hoped he would respond to my Wheel of Fortune information....hmmmm

 

[Stereolab]

I'm still here. Just enjoying the debate.

It AMAZES me how half of the people in this thread claim to be such critical thinkers, and yet QUITE OBVIOUSLY have not taken the time to read and comprehend my posts. I am no Pulitzer Prize winner, but I think I'm able to write intelligently enough that people should understand what I am saying. How can you tell me that I am jumping to conclusions, which I'm not, when you are jumping to conclusions about me based on things I haven't said?

I will respond to your post, Renata, after I have looked into it further. (And by the way, I was never on the Atkins Diet, nor did my post imply that.)