Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism

Who said they did? I don't even really know what you mean by this statement. Frankly this statement betrays your deep ignorance.The fact is mathematical models have led to numerous experimentally verified results. In fact modern physics of the sort that the likes of Sheldrake seek to bastardise for their own subjective ends has been led by such theoretical models. Led in a way that was previously unprecedented. How many recent physical discoveries are the result of seeking out those phenomeon predicted by mathematical models? The link between maths and reality is strange but, all the evidence would suggest, "true".I have largely had this same conversation with RAZD previously here Message 64 and here Message 127.The likes of Sheldrake will explain phenomenon in terms of ethereal "fields" and then in a pique of circularity claim that any observation of said phenomenon is evidence of said etheral "field". The flaw in this thinking should be obvious. No predictions of entirely new phenomenon will be made. No meaningful model of said "field" will ever be proposed. Instead said "field" will have whatever irrefutable properties Sheldrake's theories will require it to have.In fact it has already been claimed that Sheldrake's morphic fields are undiminished by space and unhindered by time. As per Message 66. Thus contravening the laws of physics as we understand them currently to be.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Until the interpretation of data is methodologically made independent from knowing the result that one is looking to achieve bias is an indisputable factor in any experiment. This is why randomised double blind trials are so valuable. Why do you deny this fact? An experimental ideal is an experimental ideal for reasons of objectivity not prejudice. We should seek to maximise that objectivity by those methods available whatever the question or experiment at hand. Your ongoing denial of this fact is bewildering.When I was science teacher I would always ask any student from age 11-19 "How can you make this experiment better and more reliable? What is missing? What would you do to make sure that your result is the best and most reliable that can be achieved?"Yet you LindaLou, a teacher so I understand, will not ask this of those whose views you advocate?I remain bewildered by your anti-objectivity stance.

Not just drug trials but basically all of the field of psychology uses double blind standards. One way to do it here would be for multiple people to 'return home' and the people that score the dog's reaction don't know which one is the owner and who is a 'placebo owner' (nor does anybody who is present during the scoring etc). It would also be a good control to measure how the dog's reactions when its owner is out of the country or something. You don't seem particularly open to the possibility that Sheldrake is a fraud or is simply employing experimental protocols that increase the error margin sufficiently to cause apparent confirmations.

You are not accepting telepathy as a valid explanation of the described phenomenon, just one explanation of many. That's the reason why scientists form hypotheses; they think up an explanation and experiment to see how their explanation holds to real world data. But that's what Sheldrake was trying to do - provide a scientific explanation for telepathy. It's the scientists that are derisive of his explanation and many people, including yourself I imagine, claim his methodology is pseudoscience. Instead of attempting to falsify his results through more experimentation, which Sheldrake wants, people either latch on or sneer at his experiments and conclusions. The scientific approach would seem to require neither acceptance or derision, but additional experimentation if only to acknowledge his efforts at trying to scientifically falsify the idea of telepathy. And if mathematical models were all that was required, then all versions of String Theory would have been accepted. So explain to me why there are physicists that scoff at String Theory? They are hypothetical. If they aren't, name the experiments that have shown dark matter and dark energy exist. Dark matter is matter which light doesn't affect, which means we can test for it. Where are the results of those experiments? Dark energy is the energy countering the force of gravity and causing the expansion of the Universe. Where is the data of experiments testing for dark energy?At least gravity has an explanation for its occurrence - warped spacetime. What are the natures of dark matter/energy? What are the explanations for the "forces" of dark matter/energy beyond particles? If the particles aren't detected, what does that mean for dark matter/energy? What about the alternative explanations for dark energy?Notice, those are the same types of questions you ask of Sheldrake and his definition of telepathy. While physicists may speculate since no direct observation has been made, that's all there is: speculation. Peter Woite with a blurb about his book, Lee Smolin and the website for his book, Philip Warren Anderson and an article he wrote in the NYT on String Theory, Sheldon Glashow and his views on String Theory from an interview with NOVA, Lawrence Krauss and a blurb about his book, "Hiding in the Mirror", and Carlo Rovelli and his stuff was a bit harder to find but here's something. The gist of their arguments, from what I gather, is that String Theory is not good science.
Is that enough for you? Is it crap now? Except for the competing theory of loop quantum gravity which doesn't need extra dimensions.

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It's just some things you never get over. That's just the way it is. You go on through... best as you can. - Matthew Scott
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Marge, just about everything is a sin. (holds up a Bible) Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we're not supposed to go to the bathroom. - Reverend Lovejoy
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You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. - Marcus Cole

What is dark matter? What is dark energy? What are Strings in string theory? Where are the experiments proving all of those?Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.

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It's just some things you never get over. That's just the way it is. You go on through... best as you can. - Matthew Scott
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Marge, just about everything is a sin. (holds up a Bible) Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we're not supposed to go to the bathroom. - Reverend Lovejoy
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You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. - Marcus Cole

Hi Perdition, It looks to me like the times coincide more with the period in which Pam could be bleeped to come home (indicated by the arrows). There are times when he goes to the window a lot before the 140 minute mark, and times when he goes after. Bear in mind, as well, that there are other sets of data in the paper for times when Pam's absences from home were significantly longer or shorter, and the data agreed for all of these. It's conceivable that they had an interest in lying, but Sheldrake did not include their data with his own from the experiments. It's also highly likely that anticipatory behaviour would be shown when there is a connection between the dog and its owner, so it's hard to see how you would get away from not asking people to offer themselves as subjects because they think this may be a real phenomenon between them and their pets. Nevertheless, I think it's a good idea to do control tests on dogs whose owners claim they don't show anticipatory behaviour as an added control, as you suggest. Please explain how you would do this with this type of experiment. As I said to Straggler, this is how drugs are tested. Sheldrake introduced many controls, the video tapes were analysed blind by non-participants in the experiments, and he had an outside researcher (Dean Radin) do some of the statistical analysis. There were 10 control experiments (as stated in the paper) where Pam came home late, after the 4-hour period of the videotape, or not at all. If you look at the graph of the results from this, you will see that the null hypothesis is clearly illustrated. I disagree, but more to the point you seem to be excluding the results from the other experiments; more than 100 were conducted, and the results are combined and broken down in various ways later in the paper. They are consistent and statistically significant. You seem to be saying that this has to be pure chance. I'd like to remind you at this point that the randomized permutation analysis by Radin showed that the probability of these results differing from the null hypothesis was p=0.000003.I am aware of positive studies done in different paranormal subjects, and the "no positive results in many years of study" claim often betrays an ignorance of the subject and the ways tests are conducted. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, failed experiments have no bearing on new and different experiments, which may produce positive results (as this one did). It seems illogical to condemn them from the start because, well, we know that these things are impossible and that any positive results are simply bad methodology or wishful thinking.I hesitate to get involved in these kinds of threads because I end up having so many posts to reply to, and doing so means I'm neglecting a lot of other things. Looks like there's 5 more posts here since I started typing this one. Will have to take a break for a while.

Is String Theory true? It has a lot of math to support it, but is it true? Because if you think it is, there are some physicists that would disagree with you. Very good ones, I might add. So if I am deeply ignorant when I say that having a mathematical model that supports your hypothesis doesn't make your hypothesis true, then those physicists are also deeply ignorant, am I right? I can give you the list if you want.ABE: The list of physicists, who disagree with String Theory, think it's a failure, and are apparently deeply ignorant for ignoring the math that supports String Theory, is in Message 124.Edited by Izanagi, : No reason given.

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It's just some things you never get over. That's just the way it is. You go on through... best as you can. - Matthew Scott
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Marge, just about everything is a sin. (holds up a Bible) Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we're not supposed to go to the bathroom. - Reverend Lovejoy
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You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. - Marcus Cole

Understood. As others have pointed out, the methods of the study are off topic, the conclusion of vaguely defined, pseudoscientific "morphic fields" is more in line with the topic, so I'll bow out here as well.

Probably not. At least not exactly. Blackholes. Anti-matter. Arguably the entirety of relativity was discovered mathematically. And then experimentally verified.Are mathematical models definitely true reflections of reality? No of course not. Have they proved themselves as valuable tools for uncovering the nature of reality? Yes. Undeniably.What is your point?

I know that EvC is a very topic defined forum and that moderation is the key to good debate here. However I also feel that there are those who abuse the "off-topic" declaration as a means to an end. Off-topic is all too often cited as a reason to deny points or invalidate arguments which are wholly legitimate in the context of the debate.

This is my point: More than mathematical models, experimental verification, or observational data, is needed. Science explains reality; reality does not bend to the dictates of science.The fact that you dismiss out of hand an experiment that could falsify a paranormal explanation suggests you have preconceived notions of the paranormal. No one is arguing that the paranormal are true. What is being argued is that if there is a way to test for it, then shouldn't the experiment at least be born out, even if we can't fully understand the concept. At the very least, we can perform the experiment and attempt to eliminate the paranormal explanation. Doesn't that, at least, count as good science? And if the natural explanations are, in fact, eliminated, wouldn't that suggest more experimentation, perhaps through more rigorous methods?What you don't seem to realize, and what Linda mentioned, is that you suffer from a similar cognitive dissonance that creationists suffer from, except at the other end. It may not be as bad as the creationists, but it's there. So when a scientist attempts to hypothesize a paranormal explanation, you scoff and deride it and complain at how people are using science to explain paranormal concepts. What you seemed to have failed to recognize is the attempt at using science to falsify the paranormal explanation. And isn't falsification the cornerstone of science?Of course, it's fine to be skeptical. But skepticism means that you are more rigorous with the experimentation and you close gaps that other experimenters may have missed. Skepticism doesn't mean you can say it's foolish and laugh at anyone who believes such things.

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It's just some things you never get over. That's just the way it is. You go on through... best as you can. - Matthew Scott
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Marge, just about everything is a sin. (holds up a Bible) Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we're not supposed to go to the bathroom. - Reverend Lovejoy
----------------------------------------
You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. - Marcus Cole

One of many? Sure, like fairies are carring the information between the individual minds? There's another one.Izanagi, what's "telepathy"? What mechanism does it use? No he's not, and that's the problem.He's conducting an experiement for why the dog goes to the window when the owner is about to get home. He CHOSE telepathy as one of the answers. But the problem is, what's telepathy and how does it work?Once you answer that, THEN let's see if a dog has all those necessary tools to do it.Lets find out what it is first and how it operates BEFORE we claim it's the reason for why a dog goes to the window at curious times. And again, you are wrong. You're about 15 years behind in your knowledge of String Theory. It's now known as ONE theory called M-Theory. source

quote:

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In the early 1990s, it was shown that the various superstring theories were related by dualities, which allow physicists to relate the description of an object in one super string theory to the description of a different object in another super string theory. These relationships imply that each of the super string theories is a different aspect of a single underlying theory, proposed by Witten, and named "M-theory".

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And there are other unified theories as well. The observed accelerated expansion of the universe.I just want to inform you that there are a shit load of threads which you can get involved in to discuss this with experts such as cavediver and SonGoku. We are getting way off-topic. You are talking out of your ass, dude. I suggest you go find a thread on Dark matter/energy and read it, propose your questions there, and have it explained properly to you.The Discovery Channel can really misrepresent this stuff. Bare links are worthless. Please provide the quotes with the links of each of them calling it pseudoscience. I don't know what your reply is supposed to mean.- Oni

I don't dismiss anything out of hand and I made fun of nothing. If you want to accuse me of such practises please quote me. Well exactly. And I have proposed something different where?Izanagi you seem intent on an argument where there is none to be had. Feel free to quote me otherwise.Edited by Straggler, : spelling

As I understand it, the topic was started with the intention of discussing pseudoscientific explanations for things, such as "morphic fields" or "quantum chanelling" that use scientific language to say exactly nothing of substance while sounding like they explain everything.I probably shouldn't have gotten into discussion with Linda about the methodology of the Jaytee experiment in the first place, and with her saying she needed time off, it seemed like the perfec ttime for me to bow out as well and let the discussion of the actual topic continue.

This is the crux. What does paranormal mean? If it's paranormal, can we actually falsify it? If we can conduct experiments and confirm or deny conclusions, doesn't that mean it's not paranoraml and is, in fact, merely normal?The problem is, as the OP says, the people who profess these things offer nothing concrete to test. They give vague explanations using scientific words that end up saying nothing. What the hell is a "morphic field" and how would you go about testing it? What is telepathy, and how does it work? We use these words, but they're placeholders for things we don't understand, and until we fully define them and have something concrete to test and predictions to refute or confirm, we have nothing to do.If the proposed mechanism is, as Sheldrake claims, undetectable, then what, exactly, are we supposed to do to test it? All we can do is look at effects, and as has been said, effects can come from many causes or even causes you haven't considered, so claiming the undetectable cause is jumping the gun at best, and fraud at worst.