Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism

Hi Straggler, don't want to take you off-topic, but this caused my brain to almost explode. Wouldn't the person arriving in 2010, meet his future self who, since he goes back to 2009, should have the information that was aquired in 2010...?Wouldn't that confirm if the events happened the same?- Oni

Hi Linda Lou,Sorry to interrupt yours and Stragglers discussion, but I wanted to comment on this: I fail to see where science has declared that there is an actual phenomenon concerning dogs?It seems like the phenomenon is founded on assertions by some dog owners who feel there is something going on. Are these assertions really something science needs to delve into?Have I missed something?- Oni

Thanks, Linda.I did read that message, including the link that you provided. That's how my question came up.Your link states:

quote:

---

Rupert Sheldrake set out to test the idea that some dogs seem to anticipate the arrival home of their owners.

​

Random household surveys in the UK and US showed that 45-52% of dog owners believe their pets demonstrate this ability.

---

What I gathered from that, and the paper, is that dog owners believe their pets demonstate this ability.IOW, dog owners believe there is a phenomenon that should be looked into.But I asked if science has made any declarations about this phenomenon, or is this just something dog owners feel is happening?The reason I ask is because you said:

quote:

---

What I do know is that there is currently no scientific explanation for the "Dogs that Know" results.

---

Well, how can there be a scientific explanation to something science isn't asking a question for?- Oni

No, not at all. They seem honestly conducted.My only issue is with your comment that science, as of yet, didn't have an answer for it.My question is: Is there an actual phenomenon that science should be looking into?You said science had no answer. I submit that science doesn't know there's a question.- Oni

I gave you a personal opinion on the expirement. My opinion is irrelevant to science.Do you think science has a question they should be answering?You said science, in it's entirety, had no answer - I again state that science has not claimed there's a question to answer.What I see is an experiement conducted due to assertions from dog owners. Are there people in science claiming the same as the dog owners, that there is a phenomenon to look into?If there aren't any scientist claiming that there might be a phenomenon, then how could science even have an answer for it? Your claim that science, as of yet, doesn't have an answer, seems to be an unnecessary claim.Again, science has not claimed there's a question to have an answer for, unless you can cite something from scientist that claims there's a phenomenon...?- Oni

This may be a side note to what I'm saying, but my point is that you have no reason to claim: "What I do know is that there is currently no scientific explanation for the "Dogs that Know" results."What I'm saying is that there is currently no investigation into the assertion that dogs have telepathy, therefore it is unnecessary to say that there exists no scientific evidence to explain those results. Maybe many of them are aware of it. Probably a number of them dismissed it having looked into it. Well, I would say that that's up to the person(s) doing the experiment to establish the seriousness of what they're doing via the scientific method. To include peer-review, etc. Why? Because you (or a handful of people) feel they should?That's not how one establishes credibility for assertions, Linda. We aren't doing anything. I looked at it, as you asked. What more could we do?One person conducted an experiment based on the belief that dogs are telepathic...now what?Have you looked into Dolphins ability to cure humans via sonar?I started a thread on it Dolphin assisted therapy, and I provided some research on it. Not enough to conclude that they do, but enough to at least say that science has looked into it. Now, what I feel is going on is different to what the evidence points to, is it not? And I'm even more amazed (by my standards of judging amazement) that you feel it should done just because some dog owners believe their dogs are telepathic.It's up to the one doing the experimenting to provide substantial evidence to turn heads onto any phenomenon they claim exists. Investigate away. Just don't be upset if no one pays any attention to it.It's up to the one doing the experimenting to provide substantial evidence to turn heads onto any phenomenon they claim exists.- Oni

Do they? Well, I'll inform them, but I don't think I'll do much with my request.As long as you concede that "science has no explanation for this phenomenon" was an unnecessary comment to make, my original question to you has been answered. Linda, while I think some of this stuff can be interesting, I also feel you approach this similar to how Christians approach miracles. You want it to be real and a single experiment that sort of gives YOU some convincing results helps settle the questions of "can it be real."But if it had any merit, science would be looking into it, just like they look into everything else in our world. I mean, they built the LHC to look for sub-atomic, almost non-existent, particles. Telepathy in dogs would be nothing to investigate.Telepathy has been researched, and sadly there's not much there. You take that how you like, as for me, I'm cool knowing it's science fiction. Or, maybe you need to see it for what it really is and allow for the possibility that there is really no phenomenon, just humans looking for patterns.That's just my opinion though. My main issue was settled.Thanks,- Oni

What would you suggest classifying it as?I think the problem starts when someone assumes they have been witness to an unnatural, or paranormal, or miraculous, event. In this particular case, she (Linda) is suggesting people assumed the dogs had telepathy, and an experiment showed what seems to be anomalous patterns.Is that enough to conclude this should be classified as a paranormal phenomenon? In my opinion (and this is only my opinion) it is not. However, for those who feel it does, well, the skies the limit as far as the research you can do. Enjoy, have fun, and let the rest of the natural world know when you found something substantial. If one of the experts wishes to weigh in on this issue then they'll trump whatever I'm about to say. But as far as I've read, multiverse systems, multi-dimensional theories, string/M-theory, has plenty of math to support it. In fact, string theory predicts gravity which, if it can make predictions that can be verified, seems to be much more substantial than "I think this dog knows when I get home."- Oni

---

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
~George Carlin

Yes, they have assumed they've been witness to a paranormal phenomenon explainable only by telepathy.If you conclude that it's possible (telepathy) then you've accepted telepathy as something valid.However, no one has any idea what telepathy is, how it works, what forces it works on, fields it may use to function, so how the F does anyone know that some animal or human could be telepathic? Wouldn't you need to first establish what telepathy is, and how it works, before you can run a test on a dog for telepathy? Making a hypothesis true? I don't get it.Mathematical models support the hypothesis, especially in cosmology and questions of origin where mathematical model are not only needed but required. Sorry, but that's incorrect. Dark matter/energy represent the "force" behind the current accelerated expansion of the universe, which is observed. There's nothing hypothetical about it.What you may be thinking about is "what they're made of" not being known; they're a hypothetical particle WIMPS and MACHOS.Read the links, are you comparing this to telepathy for real? That's a load of crap, sorry. And they have. Not that I'm an expert or anything close, but for Dark Energy/Matter there is observed effects (accelerated expansion), for String Theory/M theory, it predicts gravity within it's equations, so it's made real world predictions.What does telepathy have to support it, a dog that goes to the window? Once again, this is a load of crap, sorry. Note: Relativity is just a mathematical theory, what makes it true is that it makes predictions that can be tested, observed, etc. String predicted gravity in it's equations; gravity is a pretty well observed thing.- Oni

Hi Linda Lou, The same as I require for all theories that try to explain a phenomenon.My suggestion: first, define telepathy by means of a force, a particle, a wave, something. Show that something is actually happening, before you make a hypothesis which includes it as the answer.It's similar to the god answer:How did existence come about? God did it.What is god? I don't know.Then how do you know he could do it? If that's the bar being set too high, then fine, it's high. There's enough garbage passing for actual science these days, maybe we need a higher standard. At least for me, I don't accept someones work based on their name, I accept it on the quality of the work itself. If Steven Hawking, tomorrow, claimed he thinks a dog may be telepathic, and he gave the work that Sheldrake gave, I wouldn't believe he is right anymore than I don't think Sheldrake is right. Sure, how does telepathy work, how does it function, what is it? Is it a particle, a wave, an energy field... what exactly is it that the dog is doing?I think the rest of your questions fall under the above as well.No one even knows what telepathy is/works/functions/etc. They just claim "it's the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals." But there is no mechanism by which telepathy can work, so what people are claiming is being transfered has no means by which to transfer.Telepathy needs to be explain BEFORE any experiment (such as Shelrdrake's) can be considered. He explained what the dog did, when it did it, the times it did it, and that's fine. I have no problem with how he did that. That's why I said he seems to have done honest work. But when he claims "this may be telepathy," I have to stop it there and ask, "what's telepathy?"Sure, it's commonly used and thrown around in anecdotes, in sci-fi, in books and movies, etc. So it's a word that we know. But, what it actually is and how it works, and what mechanism it uses to do it all with, is anyone's guess.Further, due to this lack of description, how could anyone claim they've just witness a phenomenon that may have happened due to telepathy?I think it's bogus.- Oni

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:

---

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".

---

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

It seems to you? Does it? Well fuck, ok then, lets shut down the theoretical physics departments around the world.You missed the point. I don't care if QLT (which I actually like too) predicts gravity. The point here is that String MAKES A PREDICTION, telepathy does not. Why on earth did you introduce QLT into this? Yes, and as I suspected, NOT ONE OF THEM calls it pseudoscience as you claimed.Thanks for proving me right. Energy and matter are both well understood, and are both capable of forcing the universe to expand. Are you being thrown off by the mysterious use of the word "dark"?It's matter and energy. Now, what's telepathy? Oh, OK. Then tell me at least what the field that telepathy uses is? Or, just tell me ANYTHING about how it works. I am not qualified to accept or reject those theories. The math is way to advanced for me. Personally, I thought QLT was easier to understand. There is NO concept for telepathy equal to that of M-theory, incomplete or otherwise. Matter and energy...do you not recognize those 2 things in the name? It's not describing something supernatural. - Do you even know what you're asking for at this point?What "mechanism" do neutrinos use? Here, I'll give you the definition of neutrinos and see if you could tell me what mechanism they use: They are elementary particles that often travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a minuscule, but nonzero mass.Any clue yet? I hope you're going with the conclusion that asking what mechanism neutrinos use is a nonsensical question.Likewise, asking what mechanism dark matter/energy use is also a nonsensical question.- Oni

Brainwave patterns that do what, travel to someone elses brain? They do. Brainwaves are contained in your head. Is telepathy "travelling brainwaves"...?- Oni

Woooh, I was not mocking at all. But if you think me question sounded like mocking, then they should tell you something about what we're discussing. You haven't told me what to look for yet.Are they brainwaves that travel in some sort of field, or, are they brainwaves that stay in the brain?These questions are important, and will also show that when people use the word 'telepathy" they have no clue what the word means or what they are describing.Which again makes me ask, are they witnessed a paranormal phenomenon at all.- Oni

The problem with this line of thinking is that you are assuming that brain waves can travel in a "field," when in fact they cannot. Brain waves are simply the firing of neurons, which travel down axons and release chemicals at the synapse. So in no way can these brain waves be doing anything but working in your brain.Here's a good read on telepathy - source - complete with studies on it and the results.Here's an excerpt from it, since Linda Lou feels no one looks into this stuff.

quote:

---

Telepathy research in the U.S.A.

​

In 1885, the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research was established at Harvard University in Boston by Dr. Richard Hodgson (1855-1905), professor of legal studies at Cambridge University, and astronomer Simon Newcomb. But the first American to publish a monograph (Experiments in Psychical Research) on his experiments with card guessing was John Coover.

​

Coover was Stanford University’s first Fellow in Psychical Research. By 1917, he had done four large studies (trials of 10,000 or more) and reported that he had found nothing to support belief in ESP. The main experiment involved 100 pairs of subjects in 100 trials. Roughly half of these were for telepathy (experimental) and half were for clairvoyance (control). That is, in half the trials a sender looked at the card before trying to send a telepathic communication to a receiver. In the other half, the sender looked at the card after the receiver made his or her guess.

​

Others examined Coover’s data and found more than Coover did. Dean Radin writes that the receivers’ ability to guess the right cards rated 160 to 1 against chance (1997: 65). F. C. S. Schiller found the data showed odds greater than 50,000 to 1 against chance, but he used only the data from the fourteen highest-scoring subjects. Coover replied that he could find all kinds of interesting antichance events if he were selective in his use of the data (Hansel 1989: 28). In 1939, psychologist Robert Thouless found that if the data were lumped together from the main experiment, there were 44 more hits than expected by chance. Thouless suggested that the data supported some slight psychic effect. He calculated the odds of this happening by chance to be about 200 to 1. Coover attributed the excess hits to recording errors on the part of the experimenter (Hansel 1989: 26). Neither Schiller, Richet, nor Thouless, however, attempted to repeat Coover’s experiment. That would have to wait until J. B. Rhine set up shop at Duke University. Radin says that Coover may have been more pessimistic about his data than others because of disapproving pressure from his peers at Stanford (1997: 65). However, Radin also notes that several studies have shown that a 1% error rate in recording is typical. Thus, Coover’s suspicion might well have been justified.

​

Richet was particularly vocal in his criticism of Coover’s work. Coover responded by proclaiming that it can’t be denied that fraud is frequent, general, and well known in psychical research. The witnessing of psychic phenomena by astute and eminent men, he said, has had a negative effect on the studies because it has led them to discount contrary interpretations of the same phenomena, ignore the lack of controls during those psychic experiences, and rely on the corroboratory testimony of others to such an extent that it has weakened the rigor with which the researcher should be expected to guard against fraud. Coover noted that in the other sciences the experimenter controls the conditions; but in testing psychical powers, the medium controls the conditions.

​

While few remember John Coover, everybody knowledgeable of the history of psi research remembers Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980). In 1925, Rhine and his wife, Louisa, both with doctorates in biology (plant physiology) from the University of Chicago arrived at Harvard to study psychology, philosophy, and what Rhine would come to call extra-sensory perception. Both heard Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lecture on spiritualism and were impressed not only with his message but his serene demeanor. The possibility that spirits might be communicating with the living, said Rhine, was the most exhilarating thought he’d had in years. The Rhines sat in on a number of sances but were not completely taken in by their experiences. They were quick to claim that famed medium Margery (Mina, wife of Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon, a respected surgeon) was guilty of brazen trickery. Yet, when they went to Duke in 1927 to work with William McDougall, their first investigation was of an alleged telepathic horse called Lady Wonder. They declared that they could detect no trickery and that the horse was genuinely telepathic. In a follow-up study, the horse couldn’t perform and the Rhines declared that Lady Wonder had lost her psychic ability. A similarly clever horse had been studied by Oskar Pfungst in 1904 and it was found that the horse was responding to subtle visual cues. Had the Rhines been so inclined, they might have found the same thing with Lady Wonder. It turns out humans are as clever as horses and the phenomenon of unconsciously responding to sensory cues is now known as the clever Hans phenomenon. In any case, the Rhines took over the Duke lab from Dr. McDougall and ran it until Rhine’s retirement in 1966. What did Rhine have after nearly forty years of scientific research on ESP and psychokinesis? He had a lot of data, a number of followers, but there was no Noble Prize on the horizon.

​

The Lady Wonder fiasco was just one of several blunders made by America’s most preeminent name in parapsychology. His early results were similar to Coover’s. He did a thousand trials of a card guessing experiment without finding any signs of ESP. He and Dr. Karl E. Zener did more experiments with numbers or letters of the alphabet sealed in opaque envelopes with the same non-results. Unlike Coover, however, Rhine did not give up. He and Zener changed the procedure to use what are now known as Zener or ESP cards, which gives the guesser a 1 in 5 chance of guessing a card correctly. They settled on a deck of 25 cards. Rhine believed that when someone was found who could do significantly better that 20% in guessing, that would be evidence for telepathy or clairvoyance. Some were so phenomenal (Adam J. Linzmayer, George Zirkle, Sara Ownbey, Hubert E. Pearce, Jr.), skeptics assume there must have been cheating. Rhine denied it. In any case, he described in detail the protocols and conditions under which his tests were made. Nobody thought Rhine was cheating, but many thought he had been duped by his subjects several times. According to Milbourne Christopher there are at least a dozen ways a subject who wished to cheat under the conditions Rhine described could deceive the investigator (Christopher 1970: 24-25). Rhine did use a magician to observe one of his ESP phenoms, Hubert Pearce. When Wallace Lee (a.k.a. Wallace the Magician) was observing young Pearce, he performed at chance levels. Otherwise his scores were significantly higher.

​

Rhine was, and most working parapsychologists are, sensitive to the charge of cheating, since their whole enterprise would go down the tubes if the general perception were that dishonesty reigned in the laboratory. When Rhine was informed that his assistant Walter J. Levy Jr. had manipulated machinery and falsified data in an experiment, he confronted his heir apparent who ended up resigning. Levy said he’d been under tremendous pressure to produce positive results. He swore that this was the only time he'd falsified data.*

​

Rather than admit that when controls are tightened it becomes more difficult to deceive investigators, Rhine and other psi researchers have often concluded that the controls have interfered with the paranormal realm. Some even claim that tight controls make the exercise of psychic power so difficult that it extinguishes it altogether in cases of severe scrutiny, such as when a trained expert in detecting deception is brought in. Experimenter control destroys trust and trust seems necessary for psychic powers to work, according to many psi researchers.

​

Rhine was undaunted by the criticism. In fact, he claimed in his first book (Extra-Sensory Perception, 1934) that he’d done over 90,000 trials and could justifiably conclude that ESP is an actual and demonstrable occurrence. However, there were attempts to duplicate these trials at Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Colgate, Southern Methodist, and Brown, all without success. Critics could not find evidence in Rhine’s report that he was as systematic and careful as one would expect a scientist to be making such an extraordinary claim. There was no evidence, for example, that Rhine realized how important it was to discuss how the cards were shuffled when doing the tests. He showed no awareness that the 1 in 5 odds that represent pure chance with the Zener deck could change if the cards were not perfect (which they weren’t) and since certain strings of guesses would be ruled out with a universe of only twenty-five entities. For example, no one would guess six or more circles in a row because the deck only contains 5, but in a truly random distribution of circles, 6 or more items of the same kind would be expected to come up occasionally. In fact, given the small size of the deck, the actual odds of guessing any given item might be different from the theoretical odds which are based on the assumption of extremely large numbers of trials where each item always has exactly the same chance of coming up. Even if verbal feedback is not given, which it often was, non-verbal signs might indicate to the subject that a guess was right or wrong and that would affect the next guess.

​

One indication that Rhine and his colleagues had little understanding of how theoretical statistics should be applied in the real world is revealed by their being puzzled how some subjects would do better than chance when they started off but their successes would taper off the longer they were tested. That is, the longer a successful subject was tested, the more his scores tended toward a chance distribution. Rather than take this as natural regression toward the mean (over time, all subjects should move toward chance if nothing paranormal is happening), Rhine, Radin, and some other parapsychologists explain it away by saying that it is due to the boring nature of the testing. They even have a name for it: the decline effect.

---