Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Stops Here

[Slowvehicle]

I thought you skeptics had studied the paranormal, or at least glanced at the work done by scientists in various fringe fields. Why is it my job to teach you? Name a study you're familiar with and tell me what's wrong with it and we can go from there. What's this pompous nonsense about failing to present the evidence. We're on the Internet, mate! Why do you pretend not to be able to find any evidence. What you're saying is "I reject the evidence". So tell me then what evidence it is you're rejecting!

I have yet to see a single piece of "evidence" for the "paranormal" that rises above campfire stories, misstatements, misinterpretations, and "cool story, bro." Why not take your best shot, and present the single case or study you find most convincing? Your claim, your onus.

Here's the damn link again:
http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

Do you find that manly expostulation often furthers discourse?

I have seen your link. I even read one, at random, tonight (did you see that post?).

How many of those studies have you, in fact, read? Which one, specifically, do you find to report the best-designed study, with the most honestly-reported results?

You're painting a picture of scientists that only scientists and skeptics believe in. Everybody else has a different take on reality, believe me. Not just woos, but people in general.

Are you actually making the claim that any scientist who looks at the evidence is dishonestly rejecting claims of the "paranormal"?

Why not prove 'em all wrong? Just present your objective, empirical, practical, pragmatic, physical, testable, congruent, fruitful, and luminous evidence. If you demonstrate something that can be accepted, based upon the evidence, it will be.

37 choruses of Kum Ba Ya need not apply...

"Stupid is as stupid does"?

Um, no. I never called you stupid, and I will accept your apology. Tell you what--you can search for the "boomerang" quote on the web.

This is what it meant: You are the one moving the goalpost, but I don't have a link explaining to you what a "moving goalpost" is. It's a skeptic's favorite, so you probably know anyway. In fact, your reply reveals that you do.

I invite you to demonstrate where I have "moved a goalpost". In the meantime, I will accept your apology for your ad hominem attack.

Again: Show me evidence. Demonstrate ESP or Psi under controlled, repeatable conditions. Present concrete, empirical, practical, objective, non-anecdotal, congruent, fruitful, and luminous evidence that (for instance) grossmutter is either "alive" in the "afterlife" or has already been "recycled". Show me a "soul". Until you do, stop pretending to the right to accuse me of pre-rejecting what you have not presented.

Again, here's a link with studies that make you a liar:http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

Right. The link full of "studies" you have not read; "studies" one of which maintains that the lack of any effect is demonstration that the effect "may" be happening. You admitted you were fornting an opinion dishonestly; I invite you to demonstrate where I have done any such thing.

You know what. I'm gonna need some confirmation now that you have at least some knowledge of the science you so easily dismiss, otherwise I'm starting to think I'm talking to someone who needs to read up on the research first.

You know what? Present your evidence and I will comment upon it. I will not do your research for you, nor am I going to play the "Oh, well, that's not the "study" I was talking about" game.

Your claim, your burden. Show me what I have missed; which "study" I have overlooked.

I read one of the 126 "studies" on your spamlink tonight. I reported on it. (The "research"that claimed that the result that human brain cell cultures "treated" with "healing intentions" showed no difference in growth compared to untreated controls meant that the claimed effect "may" have been happening.)

Please don't be offended, I just need to know I'm talking to someone who is honest about this, because all you're doing now is insulting me over and over.

You have already called me a liar; you have already accused me of intellectual dishonesty; you have already indulged yourself in ad hominem attacks. What possible reason would I have to be offended?[/snarkasm]

As I have been saying all along: why not simply present your best evidence; the evidence that is not anecdotal; the specific evidence that is congruent, fruitful, and luminous; the very best set of practical, pragmatic, empirical, objective evidence that supports any of your claims? With citations.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Why is it useless? I've been asked to offer up evidence over and over and over and over and when I do nobody looks at it more than to throw it in my face. That's fine, but it also means that you are not exactly intellectually honest when it comes to your attitude towards giving fringe studies a fair chance.

WHich of those 126 :studies: have you, personally, actually read?

Which one do you, personally, think presents the best-designed test; the best analysis of data; the strongest argument?

Which one do you think overreaches, or cuts corners?

 

[ehcks]

People do keep telling me I'm stupid. It's quite hurtful. Well, I don't have to tell you what that's like!

I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. Thank you for your insightful of cumments.

The "we" was quite intentional. Especially for my ability to understand the topic of this thread. All through highschool and college I'd been good at math. Then I thought I'd take calculus because it was the next level up. It wasn't necessary for me, but sure. Then I got my first F in a math class ever.

Without calculus, I can't study quantum mechanics at any useful level, not that I particularly want to. I just can't. So I leave it up to the experts, and sometimes try to read along.

I suppose I can say I'm disappointed that things like Vancian magic and dragons don't exist - can't exist - but I can't just believe them into existence.

 

[PixyMisa]

You are saying that people who study things like mediumship, ESP and other woo areas don't use proper scientific methods.

Yes. When we examine research papers that suggest positive evidence for ESP and other woo, we ALWAYS find that they didn't use proper scientific methods.

Every. Single. Time.

They never, ever, ever get it right. Not once.

Why is that?

Now, how can I know if they're using proper scientific methods when I, not being a scientist or versed in science, am in no position to judge that?

Easy. Come here, post a link the the paper you're interested in, and we will tear it to pieces for you, explaining in layman's terms every single error.

Well, I can only put my faith in other people and their assessment. Since I don't find skeptics to be neutral and having a good understanding, beyond recognizing purely logical errors, of how their own inner workings can lead them astray, I've tried to find more neutral informants to help me out.

If a scientific paper suffers from a purely logical error, it is purely worthless. There are no neutral informants in logic; you're either right or wrong.

But it's not just that. I don't think science can answer every question, unless you allow for the method to adapt to situations and possibilities that require special treatment, just like some children have special needs.

You don't seem to understand what science is. Science is simply the process of rigorously checking your ideas about the world against the available evidence.

That is the only way to answer such questions. If you're not doing that, you're just making stuff up.

 

[PixyMisa]

Look, there are (regression) cases where people have discovered buried stuff, where whole villages have remembered the same thing independently, where a group of people have tested each other to see if they can trick each other into remembering the wrong thing, where people have drawn maps of places they've never even heard of, but...

Name one.

 

[Aridas]

That is a tough one. I'm still struggling with it. I have - well, I can't call it evidence without you freaking out. I have studied history and found things that connect certain things with certain other things and it doesn't seem to be something one can reasonably explain away as chance occurences.

Since I know it has to work in harmony with evolution, the Big Bang theory, quantum fields and a lot of other scientific certainties, I'm working hard to find a way to make that happen.

Good luck!

It's extremely difficult, though. Perhaps it's impossible, in which case I have to present something that will be hard to accept even for the kind of people who believe in such things, which would be a shame.

Why would you have to present something as the case when you know that it's impossible to properly support it?

 

[PixyMisa]

You're assuming that consciousness exists as a result of brain activity. Without that assumption, it's not self-evident why the experience of being should cease.

Once again, IT IS NOT AN ASSUMPTION.

It is a conclusion, based on mountains of evidence.

You don't get to reclassify established science as "assumptions" just because it invalidates your beliefs. That's dishonest.

 

[PixyMisa]

WHich of those 126 :studies: have you, personally, actually read?

Which one do you, personally, think presents the best-designed test; the best analysis of data; the strongest argument?

Which one do you think overreaches, or cuts corners?

This.

Ed, if you think that one of these papers presents good evidence, tell us which one, and we will tear it to pieces carefully examine it for methodological errors.

In fact, given how long this forum has been around, it's quite likely that we already have.

Just posting the link does nothing. We are familiar with Radin's work, and the best thing we can say about him is that he is deeply incompetent.

 

[Innocuous]

It is unfortunate that QFT isn't as approachable as, for example, evolution. The concepts of evolution are pretty easy to wrap your head around, without even delving into genes. But complex stuff be complex.

There are a number of extraordinary powers we could invent or claim that have explanations within the realm of QFT. I don't mean magic powers - extraordinary. Rarely seen in humans. Not obvious within our current knowledge of biology and chemistry, but not impossible either. I caution us to be careful about using QFT to exclude effects because we can't think of ways they can work. That might just be our own limitations. Think harder. Or ask someone smarter - they will think up a mechanism. Ask yourself: have I really considered every possible explanation? Then ask yourself: how do I prove there are no other possible explanations?

When you slap someone with a "not possible - see QFT", make sure it is something that QFT actually shows, directly. If it is a conclusion you are drawing for yourself, don't skip the intermediate steps - show your work!

Disclaimer: I don't believe people have extraordinary powers. There are no X-men. My argument is that we need to be careful about prematurely excluding possibilities just because we can't think of explanations for them. There are a LOT of possibilities still within the constraints of QFT.

 

[Donn]

Yeah, I have a similar problem with the QFT argument: I'd be a hypocrite to use it because I do not understand even the smallest part of it. It's definitely not as easy as the basics of evolution.

 

[JoeMorgue]

So sadly the title of this thread should be "Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Doesn't Even Slow Down Here."

 

[Aridas]

So sadly the title of this thread should be "Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Doesn't Even Slow Down Here."

A real question, I would think, is why one would seriously think that it actually would? Quite a bit of "woo" is based on fundamentally or functionally unfalsifiable propositions and beliefs that are propped up with emotional attachments and poor logic. Falsifying those ones is not going to happen, regardless. Other bits are propped up with various claims that tend to be simply false, but superficially sound appealing. There might be a chance of impacting the frequency of those claims, but, generally speaking, that would have been doable already.

 

[PixyMisa]

There are a number of extraordinary powers we could invent or claim that have explanations within the realm of QFT. I don't mean magic powers - extraordinary. Rarely seen in humans. Not obvious within our current knowledge of biology and chemistry, but not impossible either. I caution us to be careful about using QFT to exclude effects because we can't think of ways they can work. That might just be our own limitations. Think harder. Or ask someone smarter - they will think up a mechanism. Ask yourself: have I really considered every possible explanation? Then ask yourself: how do I prove there are no other possible explanations?

Yes. So it's appropriate in the case of homeopathy, which is conclusively ruled out by chemistry and atomic physics already. QFT tells us that we're not missing anything; homeopathy can't possibly work.

If something is physically possible but has never been observed to happen, or if we don't know whether it's physically possible or not, QFT doesn't tell us anything new.

 

[PixyMisa]

Where I frowned a little was the strong implication that the Standard Model is "complete" and has all interactions in the bag. He qualifies, but it still seems that "Standard Model" becomes one rule to ring them all.

That's what the diagram at the 41:00 mark is about.

We can systematically map interactions according to strength and distance to particles of a given energy level. When we run a particle accelerator experiment, we get blips in the output where new particles exist. (In some cases, we can see the specific decay tracks.)

What QFT tells us is that every interaction on the scale of our everyday world, without exception, will map to a particle with an energy level within the reach of existing particle accelerators. If there was something there, we would have found it already. Even if we didn't yet know what it was, we would know that it existed.

We haven't found anything like that, just the Standard Model.

That doesn't mean that there's nothing left to discover; it just means that it happens at very small scales (smaller than an atom) or over very large distances (intergalactic) or at extreme temperatures (colliding neutron stars). And that means that it doesn't matter to our day-to-day lives.

And that means that all that woo is known to be false.

It doesn't seem to me that physics really has such an overconfidence about it.

iPhones exist. That means that QFT is correct. Not complete, but correct. In the areas that it covers, it gives the right answer.

There's still lots of physics we don't know, but none of it applies to our everyday lives.

 

[Apathia]

It's a very comprehensive model that does a great job or we wouldn't use it.
With it we know what we can expect of natural behavior and what we can rule out. especially in terms of the model's own language of particles and forces.

Woo-woo forces, fields, and particles come to grief not primarily because they have no place to fit on the map (like trying to jigsaw them on the middle of an existing continent or cram a continent in the North Sea), but because there aren't and never were any such phenomenon we could correctly call forces, fields, or particles. For me the buck stops with the actual behavior of reality.
Homeopathy sucks because it doesn't work, not merely because it has no place in my model of reality.

Ectoplasm never existed. But since it was claimed to have causal connections with ordinary events (It could blow trumpets!), then we must call it into accountability according to the way things interact. But it never got into that game, because there never was an ectoplasmic interaction except in garbled and bogus speak.

Biology rules out astral bodies and astral travel, but the main point is that under intelligent observation there are no actual astral bodies.
But yes, I get the utility of being able to say, "Biological science shows us that astral bodies are impossible."

BTW. Newtonian Physics and Nineteenth Century atomic theory were correct in their scope. It was just as correct then to say that the supernatural was excluded by the constraints of the theories.
There was nevertheless woo-woo talk of mysterious "forces." But none of these "forces" behaved as forces.

Now the darling words of New Age carpetbaggers are "fields" and "quantum."
Yes, the fields they want are ruled out by the model. But you can't get them to see that. Their Fields have the remarkable property of only being a field when it's convenient. And the even more remarkable property of being there when there is no evidence that they are.

 

[Apathia]

Why I'm squeamish about using the Standard Model to rap knuckles in one word:

"Graviton."

 

[tsig]

Well, there's no consistent correlation, I guess, but there's movement of planets and there's actions and events concerning humans on earth, and they take place at the same time. Do you see what I'm saying? Yes, I'm crazy, but do you see what I'm getting at?

You look at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, get a sudden premonition, and call your friend and tell her that her runaway dog is coming back in twenty minutes, which it does. What was the connection between the Mona Lisa and the dog coming back? Was there even one?

Was there a connection between the premonition and the dog coming back?

 

[PixyMisa]

Why I'm squeamish about using the Standard Model to rap knuckles in one word:

"Graviton."

What about 'em?

Gravity is incredibly weak, and cannot possibly account for any of the types of woo we see on these forums. Quantum gravity is not going to behave any differently, except on the level of individual particles, which, again, cannot account for any of those types of woo.

So as Dr Carroll said, there's plenty we don't know, but we do know that it can't matter to discussions of our everyday world.

 

[Apathia]

It's one of my pet peeves:
When Physics is used as a prop for any sort of metaphysical position.
I'm an Empiricist among other inexcusable things.

 

[snoop_doxie]

You are saying that people who study things like mediumship, ESP and other woo areas don't use proper scientific methods. I disagree.

Now, how can I know if they're using proper scientific methods when I, not being a scientist or versed in science, am in no position to judge that? Well, I can only put my faith in other people and their assessment. Since I don't find skeptics to be neutral and having a good understanding, beyond recognizing purely logical errors, of how their own inner workings can lead them astray, I've tried to find more neutral informants to help me out.

But it's not just that. I don't think science can answer every question, unless you allow for the method to adapt to situations and possibilities that require special treatment, just like some children have special needs.

It's still a great video. It gave me a lot to think about.

PS But if you were going to follow up my 'yes' with a tangible suggestion, I'd still like to hear it, if I didn't just blow my chances...

I am not a scientist, so I listen to people who have more knowledge.

I read one of the papers that was in your repeated link.

Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of
Information Transfer
http://deanradin.com/evidence/Milton1999Ganzfeld.pdf

I am not sure, but I think the writers (scientists) are saying that most psi tests using a certain well known method, should be replicated with another method.

Maybe there are more papers like this ("paper" might be the wrong term, too)
in your list of evidence of the paranormal.

Aridas mentioned it in an earlier post.