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Author Topic:   Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 204 of 237 (532691)
10-25-2009 6:56 PM
Reply to: Message 203 by onifre
10-25-2009 5:57 PM


Hiding from the evidence
I know enough about telepathy(as I do about witchcraft, magic, ghosts, etc.) to be able to dismiss it as bogus.
And yet you have made no real attempt to show that this is anything but your own a priori determination. You stick to what one website tells you and claim that it's irrelevant or beneath you to look at any evidence to the contrary.
Here is a source that you might try looking at:
Extrasensory Perception
I believe it gives a balanced view of Rhine's experiments, which includes valid criticisms. The door is still left well open for the possibility that the positive results were genuine.
For example, I asked you to look at the protocols for the Pearce experiments where he was in another building from where the cards were being drawn. You have consistently ignored this.
As for the statistical problems cited in your source, this source says:
Many prominent mathematicians in the field of probability who have made a detailed investigation have approved his techniques. In fact, in 1937 the American Institute of Statistical Mathematics issued a statement that Rhine's statistical procedures were not in the least faulty. In most experiments, both significant and chance results were reported and averaged into the data.
Interestingly, your source also insists that laws of probability should explain any anomalous results. The odds may be great at times, but it happens. One problem is that if ESP were a real phenomenon, here is an instant way of dismissing every single experiment by claiming that it is just a normal function of probability.
Let's look at some statistics from these particular experiments:
Between 1880 and 1940, 145 empirical ESP studies were published using 77,796 subjects who made 4,918,186 single trial guesses. These experiments were mostly conducted by psychologists and other scientists. In 106 such studies, the authors arrived at results exceeding chance expectations.
The more trials that occur, the more the statistics ought to average out to pure chance. Are almost 5 million trial guesses not enough for you? I can cite other paranormal experiments besides these where the results were consistently above chance statistically: not equalling chance and not below. Then there's the "Dogs that Know" experiments: in Wiseman's trials, Jaytee was at the window 4% of the time when Pam was not coming home, and 78% of the time when she was. Yet in the experiments where she came home late (after the 4-hour videotaped time period) or not at all, the results agreed with the null hypothesis that Jaytee would be at the window the same amount of time during all the time periods.
It's clear to me, and probably anyone else reading this, that you have gone Straggler's route of denial and bluster. You will not look at the actual evidence and are routinely using logical fallacies as arguments. Unless you have anything new to contribute then I can't see the use of carrying on with this particular discussion. Maybe you could try looking back at some of your comments with a critical eye and consider the thought processes they are reflecting.
Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 203 by onifre, posted 10-25-2009 5:57 PM onifre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 206 by onifre, posted 10-26-2009 12:46 PM Kitsune has replied
 Message 207 by Straggler, posted 10-26-2009 3:33 PM Kitsune has not replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 210 of 237 (532909)
10-27-2009 7:50 AM
Reply to: Message 206 by onifre
10-26-2009 12:46 PM


Re: Hiding from the evidence
Hi Onifre,
I wonder why you seem so keen to avoid discussion of successful paranormal experiments? For example, Sheldrake's "Dogs that Know" results, and Wiseman's replication of them, seem clear enough -- but something must have been wrong somewhere, right? And the Duke experiments -- something must have been wrong somewhere?
I'm human, I have a mind, and I lack telepathic abilities. Now, you would have to explain why an entire species is not telepathic but for a few people?
I lack gymnastic abilities. Our entire species seems capable of such things, but I can't do them. Does my lack of ability mean that the ability does not exist, and that people who think it does are guilty of wishful thinking? Well you could tell me to go to a gymnastics meet or watch it on TV. There also is evidence that telepathy is real too. Perhaps some people are better at it than others. What's more, it also seems logical to me that if a person spends their life feeling certain that it does not exist, that also makes it difficult for them to perform the ability. Experimenter bias -- negative as well as positive -- has been known to affect an experiment's results. A skeptic loves to hear that as soon as a fellow skeptic stepped in to help out with a paranormal experiment, it was not a success. The desire for it not to be a success, and the lack of belief in the phenomenon's existence, could conceivably interfere with the production of the phenomenon itself. Sheldrake had reason to believe this was the case in some of his "Sense of Being Stared At" experiments.
But for now, it doesn't seem to be common
I wonder what you are basing this opinion on? You, your friends? Sheldrake has found that many, many people will respond "yes" to the following questions: Does your pet seem to know when its owner is coming home by behaving in a characteristic way? Do you sometimes get the feeling that someone is looking at you, and you turn around and find that this is the case? Have you ever got the feeling when the phone rings that you know who is calling, and it turns out you were right? Of course there could be natural explanations for all of these things, which must be tightly controlled for in experiments. Sheldrake has done so and has had success in all 3 areas. Straggler said earlier that millions, even billions of people claim to have had such experiences, or similar, and then he repeated his old argument that they must simply all be wrong. It's such an obviously biased statement that I've given up trying to debate with him because he just repeats it over and over regardless of what anyone says to him.
their work should be peer-reviewed and an overall concensus should be drawn as to the veracity of the conclusions.
Sheldrake's work is published in peer reviewed journals. So is Dean Radin's and that of many other paranormal researchers.
I wonder where this "overall consensus" would come from. Are we back to the elite group of scientists who run the show, to whom you keep referring? I read a paper recently by a chemist and paranormal researcher who made the point that good science -- science that discovers things and wins awards -- often ends up being done by people who have a clear bias and investment in their work, who use intuition, who "keep at it" even when it looks like they may be wrong; who take a "Let's do this and see what happens" attitude. Those who rigorously follow the scientific method and who are highly skeptical tend to end up producing work which is dry, more or less repeats what has gone before, and lacks innovation. He wasn't saying that scientists should do sloppy work or fly by the seat of their pants, but his point about how your little elite cadre stifles the rest of science was IMO an apt one. If you're interested you can read the paper here -- it's called "What Do We Mean By Scientific?".
Is your best answer that, we have an a priori position of denying it? Doesn't THAT sound like the exact same argument creationist put forth as to why scientist deny god had a hand in creation - because science has a naturalist a priori stance?
Paranormal phenomena such as telepathy are not as demonstrable or physical as a rock or a star. That's one reason. Another is that yes, many people seem to want to actively take the belief that such things can't exist, though the vast majority of them IMO are not aware of their own needs that are involved in these beliefs. Finally, the creationist argument you state above is more of a metaphysical one, since we're not looking at evolution or a 6,000 year old earth but the idea of whether a god created the universe. I think that is unprovable because a god could have set the big bang and abiogenesis in motion.
As a side note, I told my husband, an atheist, about the "Dogs that Know" experiments and asked him what he thought. He said it sounded interesting and he didn't see any reason why it couldn't be a real phenomenon. No further debate, just a statement of open-mindedness which did not conflict with his beliefs. I'm still interested to know why there's so much resistance here to this.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 206 by onifre, posted 10-26-2009 12:46 PM onifre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 212 by onifre, posted 10-27-2009 8:24 AM Kitsune has replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 211 of 237 (532910)
10-27-2009 8:07 AM
Reply to: Message 209 by Perdition
10-26-2009 5:09 PM


Re: Dogs that Know experiments
Hi Perdition, decided to join us again I see
Before you can test for something, you have to define what it is, how it would be different from any case where it doesn't exist, and try to figure out anything that could give you a false positive. If you don't define it, you can't test for it.
Telepathy would be the transfer of information from organism to organism using means other than those which are currently known. You would control for this by taking account of all those other known means plus other natural explanations such as subtle cues, cheating, laws of probability, routine, and so on; I believe Sheldrake used good controls in his "Dogs that Know" experiments and I find it hard to see what else needed controlling in order to rule out all other natural explanations.
What we would then be left with is a gap in our knowledge -- this information was passed along, but we don't know how. Maybe if enough creative telepathy experiments were conducted, and they were increasingly specific, you would be able to rule criteria out until you hit on what seemed to be an answer. Maybe you could find some means to prevent telepathy from happening; maybe there are substances or circumstances that stop it. Maybe there are other substances or circumstances which enhance it. We'd probably need such clues before physicists could investigate what's going on because they need someplace to start. We could guess and say it's morphic fields or whatever, but there's no real way of testing that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by Perdition, posted 10-26-2009 5:09 PM Perdition has not replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 213 of 237 (532919)
10-27-2009 9:15 AM
Reply to: Message 212 by onifre
10-27-2009 8:24 AM


Re: Hiding from the evidence
Well one, as I understand it, the point is not to discuss the details of the experiment, but to discuss Sheldrake's conclusion.
It seems to me that the details are very important. Sheldrake took care to make sure that there were sufficient controls in place to rule out natural explanations.
Is there an anomaly? - yes. Is it telepathy? - what's telepathy?
OK so you'll take the step of admitting that there's an "anomaly." It seems to me like you are unwilling to take any further steps to suggest what caused it. The data shows that the dog knew when its owner had decided to come home, and from that point showed anticipatory behaviour by waiting at the window. This fits the definition of telepathy I gave, which is the transfer of information from organism to organism which is not explained by known means. Would you like to make any suggestions about what else the "anomaly" could be?
Show me. One video, that's all I ask for.
Why a video? I've already given you several examples of experiments that no one can find fault with. You seem to be very keen to avoid getting into any of their details even though I posted them a long while back.
While you appear not to have been interested in reading the link I gave you, I watched your video. I'd listened to one or two appearances by Shermer on the Skeptico podcast and I had no idea he was such a showman; he reminds me of Kent Hovind with his absurd examples and adoring audience. I'm not saying that anything in the video is wrong; what disturbs me is the fact that he happily declares himself a "debunker" and seems to want to have a laugh at all paranormal claims in general by picking one particular fallacy, which is to see patterns where there are none. This is a known human tendency and good experiments avoid it. Would you like to explain how the Duke or the "Dogs that Know" experiments are seeing patterns where there are none? It's interesting that you make this claim about phone calls too, when experiments will control for it. Everybody knows that if your experiments have results equivalent to chance, they do not show the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, and that the more trials you do the more likely it is that you will end up with chance results when no phenomenon actually exists. Do you think the scientists who design paranormal experiments are not aware of this?
A skeptic loves to hear that as soon as a fellow skeptic stepped in to help out with a paranormal experiment, it was not a success.
-----------
I'm sorry Linda, but this sounds like the same BS I hear when playing with a Ouija board, or when someone is trying to talk to the dead. They claim skeptics ruin it with their skepticism. To me that's a load of BS, and more importantly, that's NOT science.
I see. So every time the presence of a skeptic seems to affect an experiment, it must mean that there was cheating or some other skullduggery going on and that people had to stop doing it when they knew they'd get caught. This has been known to happen sometimes and I'm sure it still does.
There is also the possibility that if a skeptic is involved with a paranormal experiment, the skepticism itself may help negate the effects. I take it that you deny that this could ever be so. I would ask you why, since it seems plausible enough. Since telepathy, ESP, precognition and so forth appear to be phenomena that involve the mind, do you not think that someone's state of mind might have some bearing on their expression?
Maybe you agree with Shermer that "it's all nonsense"? Interestingly, like others here, he seems keen to preserve this belief by ignoring evidence to the contrary. In 2003 he was quoted as saying about Sheldrake's book "The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind" (which I've read myself): "The events Sheldrake describes don't require a theory and are perfectly explicable by normal means". It turned out he could not substantiate this claim, and had not even seen the book. Sheldrake proposed an online debate. He accepted this challenge in March 2003, and said he would "get to it soon". In May he told Rupert, "I have not gotten to your book yet". After repeated enquiries, he has still not responded.
It only takes a few minutes to make an evidence-free claim to a journalist. Dogmatism is easy.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 212 by onifre, posted 10-27-2009 8:24 AM onifre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 214 by Straggler, posted 10-27-2009 12:58 PM Kitsune has not replied
 Message 215 by onifre, posted 10-27-2009 4:22 PM Kitsune has replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 220 of 237 (533663)
11-02-2009 7:03 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by onifre
10-27-2009 4:22 PM


Re: Hiding from the evidence
Hi Onifre,
I'll do my best to reply to your post, though I'm going to have to curtail this kind of thing for a while; I started a new job last week and am on an evening course, and looking after my little girl besides -- not much time to spare now.
And yet he concluded that it was telepathy, something for which no evidence exists to support.
Well you looked at the controls that Sheldrake put in place. We seem to be left with the dog knowing that its owner was coming home, though the means by which it obtained that knowledge is unknown. You seem to want to define this as an "anomaly" but by no means will you consider the possibility of telepathy. Would you like to suggest what else could be operating here? It sounds to me like you're saying, "This can be explained by natural means. We don't know what they are yet but at some point someone will work it out." That sounds to me a bit like other paranormal skeptics saying, "This can be explained by flaws in the design of the experiment. We don't know what they are yet but at some point someone will work it out." And throw in the claim from the Skeptic's Dictionary that any results that are statistically significant are simply an unlikely natural result of probability. There you go, 3 handy get-out clauses with which one can avoid ever having to consider a paranormal explanation for anything. Safe and rational-sounding, no matter what the real truth is.
the PROCESS (ie. telepathy) must be explained. It does NOTHING to simply say, "it's telepathy" ... OK, "what's telepathy?"
I think we're going round in circles with this, because in response I've said a number of times that experiments can be designed to show the existence of telepathy, and I offered a definition of it. Those experiments could become more and more specific, depending on past results, and may lead to understanding of the means by which telepathy occurs. I don't believe you explained to me why you find this approach unsatisfactory. I suggested that saying we should understand what it is first, is like saying that you need to know what a photon is before you can establish the existence of electromagnetism. We both know that's not how it happened.
How many dogs have been tested to see if they do the same thing as the one in the experiement? Where is the data that shows the dogs that DON'T react the same? Shermer explains that science -->isn't --> about showing the times it does happen, science is about showing the times it DOESN'T happen - then, making a complete analysis of the entire thing.
Sheldrake tested the null hypothesis that Jaytee would spend equal amounts of time at the window during each time period when Pam came home late (after the 4-hour videotaped period) or not at all. His graph clearly shows that this was the case. Don't you think it would be odd if someone said their dog showed no anticipatory behaviour when it was actually going to the window (or lying near the door thumping its tail, or whatever) more often when its owner was coming home? I'm not sure I would see a need to test for this being a null hypothesis because it seems rather nonsensical, but in further tests I wouldn't be against including controls of dogs whose owners feel sure don't show anticipation. It would then be interesting to explore reasons why this may not be so, if the data bears out Sheldrake's survey results that say half of dog owners experience it and half don't.
What I'm saying is that anyone you claims their experiment was ruined by the presence of a skeptic is full of BS.
What I suggested was that this may not be so clear-cut as you think. Now I know that during the heyday of spiritualism there were a lot of fake mediums who were caught this way. And there are always going to be people faking and hoaxing, and I agree that they ought to be exposed too. But if something like telepathy is real, I'd say it's odds-against a skeptic being able to participate in such an experiment with success because his/her mind is set against the possibility. They are actually hoping for a negative result to bear out their belief. Experimenter bias is a recognised phenomenon so why is it impossible for it to be a factor here? I think we ought to be open to such a possibility.
I wonder if you have any fresh ideas to add to this? I'm still thinking that like Straggler, you want to keep repeating the same points in the hopes that they'll be drilled into me. What I actually see is both of you coming up with as many excuses as possible as to why telepathy, ESP or similar phenomena can't possible be real, and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. But there's no point in me continuing to repeat that either if you can't see it for yourselves.
Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.
Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.
Edited by Kitsune, : Trying to get signature to look right.

former username "LindaLou"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by onifre, posted 10-27-2009 4:22 PM onifre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 221 by Stile, posted 11-02-2009 10:56 AM Kitsune has replied
 Message 224 by onifre, posted 11-02-2009 4:30 PM Kitsune has not replied
 Message 225 by Straggler, posted 11-02-2009 6:49 PM Kitsune has replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 222 of 237 (533685)
11-02-2009 11:11 AM
Reply to: Message 221 by Stile
11-02-2009 10:56 AM


Re: The point of skepticism
Hi Stile,
I'm being too loose with my terminology I think. As you probably know, I define true skepticism as being open-minded and critical. It also involves being neutral about an issue unless there is evidence to support a specific position. When I've referred to skeptics in my recent posts here, I'm thinking of people who join an experiment with the preconceived belief that the results should be negative. This is unhelpful in experiments where a person's state of mind may have an influence on the results.

former username "LindaLou"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 221 by Stile, posted 11-02-2009 10:56 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 223 by Stile, posted 11-02-2009 11:31 AM Kitsune has not replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 226 of 237 (533810)
11-03-2009 2:33 AM
Reply to: Message 225 by Straggler
11-02-2009 6:49 PM


Re: Hiding from the evidence
Straggler, if you could manage to rise above ad hom and general raving, I'd be more willing to take the time to reply to your posts.
As for your brilliant analysis of the "obvious" errors in Sheldrake's "Dogs that Know" experiments,
Rather than applying the proposed causal relationship under investigation to take one set of the data (e.g. the behaviour of the dog) and predict the other (i.e. the time the owner set off home) a pile of data was simply collected and then criteria and statistics applied post-hoc to achieve whatever result the researcher in question wanted to claim.
The simplicity of the experiments means that this is not a problem. You look at the amount of time the dog spent at the window during each time block. You look at when Pam began her journey home. There is data from more than 100 experiments, including controls where she came home after the 4-hour videotaped period, or not at all. There are clear correlations and it's hard to see how any degree of wishful thinking or chicanery would skew these results. Your claim above is another ad hoc attempt to explain it all away, and claims about ID are red herrings. Best wishes.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 225 by Straggler, posted 11-02-2009 6:49 PM Straggler has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 227 by Straggler, posted 11-04-2009 2:00 PM Kitsune has not replied
 Message 230 by petrophysics1, posted 11-07-2009 6:14 PM Kitsune has replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 232 of 237 (534421)
11-08-2009 3:28 AM
Reply to: Message 230 by petrophysics1
11-07-2009 6:14 PM


Re: Hiding from the evidence
Hi Petrophysics,
Interesting post, but I'm wondering what your proposed method of telepathy actually is? I'm up on basic physics like the electromagnetic spectrum but are you saying that this is how telepathy would operate? Some sort of frequency produced by the brain? I'm not aware of anyone who has tested for this, but the problem here is that having read some literature on the subject, it seems that it is a phenomenon which occurs instantaneously regardless of distance, hence the proposals that it has something to do with quantum entanglement. Thanks for your input here; it's nice to encounter some open-mindedness

former username "LindaLou"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 230 by petrophysics1, posted 11-07-2009 6:14 PM petrophysics1 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 233 by Straggler, posted 11-09-2009 1:39 PM Kitsune has not replied

  
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