Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?

[Nonpareil]

Those studies you presented (and the one Pixel42 presented) explicitly refer to the data (the personal observations / reports / experiences / anecdotes) that all of you keep arguing has absolutely no value or validity.

Anecdotes and observation are not and will never be the same thing, no matter how many times you attempt to equivocate between them.

Thus…there IS data and it DOES have some evidentiary value.

There is.

It is unfortunate for you that all of the evidence is against psi.

It is also not the same thing as anecdotes.

Studies that do absolutely no more than (and CAN do absolutely no more than) SUGGEST that SOME of the reports MAY (or may not) be explained by your vague conclusions.

No.

It is established that all anecdotes may be untrue, for whatever reason. Thus, the burden of proof is on you, since you claim that they are evidence for psi.

Since it is indisputable that personal subjective experience takes evidentiary priority

It doesn't.

NOTE TO THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO INSIST THAT I HAVEN’T PROOVED ANYTHING!

I…DON’T …NEED….TO….PROVE….ANYTHING!

Yes. Yes, you do.

What you need to remind yourself of is that science does not represent the primary epistemology in this world.

We've been over this in other threads. Aside from the fact that this is incorrect, it is irrelevant, since science is the only epistemology which can be shown to reliably arrive at the correct conclusion when investigating such subject matter.

 

[jaydeehess]

Since it is indisputable that personal subjective experience takes evidentiary priority (I’m going to assume you at least know what that means)…

Priority over what/
Personal witness testimony is well known to be less compelling than objective physical evidence.

…we are now within spitting distance of finally establishing that psi phenomenon may very well have a probability above that of alien life.

That's some magical Loogey.

NOTE TO THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO INSIST THAT I HAVEN’T PROOVED ANYTHING!

I…DON’T …NEED….TO….PROVE….ANYTHING!

you used a lot of words but said,,,, nothing really.

These points by themselves add up to sufficient data to establish some manner of quantifiable probability for psi.
.

Oh? What then is the quantified value of that probability?

,,, and what is the quantified probability of this universe being capable of producing a locale in which advanced life can and did come about? That would be 1/1. All that remains then is to determine the probability of this one known locale being one-of-a-kind in the entire universe.

Going further, as I mentioned upthread, there is anecdotal evidence of the existence of advanced life other than humans. There exist anecdotes , often very consistent with each other, in which people tell of being examined in a medical fashion, by non-human beings, in advanced alien craft.
By your insistence this is data and of evidentiary value.

 

[jaydeehess]

You want a psychologist to critique statistics performed by a statistician? Oy, is that ever backwards.

Examine a subject that concerns his area of expertise. He took issue with the value of some studies. She assigned value to studies in his area of expertise. She's a statistician evaluating a psychological subject.

 

[jt512]

Examine a subject that concerns his area of expertise. He took issue with the value of some studies. She assigned value to studies in his area of expertise. She's a statistician evaluating a psychological subject.

I don't know what you're talking about. Utts is a statistician. Parapsychologists come to her for assistance analyzing their data.

 

[jaydeehess]

I don't know what you're talking about. Utts is a statistician. Parapsychologists come to her for assistance analyzing their data.

Did you read the article I linked to.

 

[Pixel42]

Those studies you presented (and the one Pixel42 presented) explicitly refer to the data (the personal observations / reports / experiences / anecdotes) that all of you keep arguing has absolutely no value or validity.

Thus…there IS data and it DOES have some evidentiary value.

Reports of remarkable/unusual experiences are evidence that people have and report remarkable/unusual experiences. No one here has ever denied this. What they are not is evidence of the paranormal.

As long as psychologists can account for such reports as the expected consequence of well known and well understood cognitive biases and limitations of human perception and memory there is no reason to postulate the existence of the paranormal.

 

[jt512]

Did you read the article I linked to.

I have read it, though not all that recently. What exactly are you getting at?

 

[Aepervius]

The woos 'have that covered': EnTanGleMenT

Entanglement is misunderstood by woo, but we are not (hopefully) speaking of woo but rather how science/ESP would have to be looked at.

Entanglement does not involve particle interaction, because entanglement is about a full system composed of multiple particle. It is the whole system of 2 particle which collapse and is measured, and not 1 particle measured, and then sending/teleporting a signal to the other.

PS: I am puzzled by the lowercase/uppercase usage. just out of curiosity was it for humorous effect or was it something else (which I missed) ?

 

[Aepervius]

No. Physicists are not going to say "yeah, there's something. Somehow. Dunno how." Physicists are not going to believe there is something until they can figure out the how. ESP would overturn physics almost in its entirety. It would require a new model of everything at our most fundamental levels of understanding.

*again* only if the phenomenon found implies action at distance.

For all we know guys communicating with each others (sender/receiver) are doing it unwittingly using smells.

 

[Aepervius]

There is no one experiment that could prove that ESP exists,

When i read such sentences I usually rise a big eyebrow. Because that makes the phenomenon verrrry elusive if it can#t be caught by experiment. As in : a good probability of being non existent.

 

[Aepervius]

I don't know what you're talking about. Utts is a statistician. Parapsychologists come to her for assistance analyzing their data.

If parapsychologist assume for example that people will murder if they can get away with it only 1% of the time and this influence the whole protocol but a psychologist come up and told hem "guys there has been many study on that, it is actually 30%" then it does not matter if Utts is a statistician : garbage in (1%) garbage out.

So yes in some cases domain outside of statistic can indeed point out to problem with analysis.

 

[Daylightstar]

I don't know what you're talking about. Utts is a statistician. Parapsychologists come to her for assistance analyzing their data.

Their apparently invalid data

 

[Daylightstar]

Entanglement is misunderstood by woo, but we are not (hopefully) speaking of woo but rather how science/ESP would have to be looked at.

Entanglement does not involve particle interaction, because entanglement is about a full system composed of multiple particle. It is the whole system of 2 particle which collapse and is measured, and not 1 particle measured, and then sending/teleporting a signal to the other.

PS: I am puzzled by the lowercase/uppercase usage. just out of curiosity was it for humorous effect or was it something else (which I missed) ?

Of course the woos misunderstand and misapply entanglement.
They do that to so many things, crazy bunch.

Re the PS, yes, entirely for comical purpose. It was meant to convey pulling funny faces while pronouncing the word entanglement, which then is meant to convey the stupid way woos use the word.

 

[Daylightstar]

If parapsychologist assume for example that people will murder if they can get away with it only 1% of the time and this influence the whole protocol but a psychologist come up and told hem "guys there has been many study on that, it is actually 30%" then it does not matter if Utts is a statistician : garbage in (1%) garbage out.

So yes in some cases domain outside of statistic can indeed point out to problem with analysis.

As far as trying to establish ESP as a reality, Utts as a statistician specifically isn't necessary. She is not even useful.
Garbage in garbage out is correct, Utts in this context is just an unnecessary conveyor belt.

 

[Daylightstar]

I don't know what you're talking about. Utts is a statistician. Parapsychologists come to her for assistance analyzing their data.

Does Utts mention anywhere in her work how according to her the data from the 'parapsychologists' is valid?
If she hasn't, what's her incentive to do this analysis?
If she has, how did she establish this and where can we see this?

 

[Aridas]

No. I stand by my claim that not capable of being demonstrated under any circumstance is equal to not existing.

In other words, you insist on claiming that you have knowledge that you cannot have, even in principle.

Because that's what existing is.

No, that's your redefinition that only works if you mix up subjective and objective.

You are still missing that point. I have not said that you claimed gravity leprechauns exist.

What is honest about claiming that they do? Or even that they might?

What is honest about claiming to have knowledge that you cannot have, even in principle?

Incoherent is precisely the word, though you can also substitute "self-contradictory" with equal validity. Again, it is the p-zombie issue: the definition contradicts itself, and thus the concept is incoherent.

It's not.

Because that's what real means.

Again, you you rather seem to be mixing up the concepts of what's reasonable to believe from a subjective perspective and what's actually the case.

If there is no relevant evidence obtainable, then it's not real.

That's what real means.

Only in your attempt to redefine it and justify yourself by invoking magic. Again, the physical limitations imposed by reality make it so that a lot of things that we could otherwise call real simply have no relevant evidence obtainable. That's certainly true in a larger sense when huge distances are the case. It's also true when it comes to dealing with things that are out of reach because of time effectively removing the data and evidence from being obtainable. The limits don't even remotely stop there, either. Again, the availability of relevant evidence matters for whether we have reason to accept that something is or is not the case. The simple lack of obtainable evidence does not automatically mean that something is not real.

Yes, there is.

There is a perfectly well-supported phenomenon that explains gravity (the curvature of spacetime in the presence of mass). There is no evidence - or any ability to procure evidence, even in theory - for gravity leprechauns.

That is evidence against them.

There is certainly reason to favor the more useful explanation. However, if both explain the phenomena completely, no, the difference in usefulness is not evidence of truth. For that matter, as it stands, at last check, there were definite flaws in the current theories about gravity. Explanations similar to yours can potentially match the data better than the current prevailing theories match the data, in other words. They're simply not useful explanations, though, so they're not favored.

This entire thing was in response to jt512 saying that ESP may not be demonstrable, even in principle, but might still exist.

And that is certainly possible in concept, again, because of the physical limitations that reality imposes upon us. In such a case we would have no good reason to accept that it is the case, certainly.

For clarity's sake: ...to gather relevant information, even in principle.

Again, the "to gather" is the point which we seem to be having significant disagreement with here. If we cannot, even in principle, make the tools that would be required to gather that relevant information because of the limitations imposed by reality, we're not going to be able to gather that information. You've repeatedly tried to invoke magic to get around the point that reality imposes limitations on what can actually be done in a number of ways, but have been rather inconsistent about what you want to allow your magic to be applied to.

Yes, it is.

Something that is not true is false.

Sure, something that is not true can be considered false. The complete lack of relevant information means that one simply doesn't know which it is, though. You're trying really, really hard to claim to have knowledge that you cannot have, even in principle. Do you, in fact, think that claiming to have information that you do not have is honest behavior?

No, I didn't.

An empty denial.

1) X exists.
2) X doesn't exist.

No valid chain of logic in between. That sure sounds like contradictory assertion to me.

 

[Dinwar]

*again* only if the phenomenon found implies action at distance.

For all we know guys communicating with each others (sender/receiver) are doing it unwittingly using smells.

Exactly--oak trees do precisely this, in fact. Biologists are trained in how their taxon of interest communicates, and can rule out mundane but previously unknown means of communication.

A psychologist is also necessary because they know how the human mind works. Most people don't realize just how much communication is done nonverbally, for example. A physicist may not realize that subconcious communication is occurring. A psychologist is also trained in finding the errors a human mind commits--our brains are hard-wired to take shortcuts, and psychologists can identify them more readily than physicists, for the same reason a physicist can identify the forces in a mechanical system more readily than a pscyhologist.

You may want to think about whether the principles guiding strong inference always apply in practice.

They certainly do in this case. We have two mutually exclusive working hypotheses. We can easily set up a test such that the results confirm one and disprove the other. Granted, the test may have to be on a larger scale than most SI tests, but the principle is identical.

 

[Dancing David]

But the ganzfeld meta-analysis I posted links to didn't have a null result, It found an effect that was both highly statistically significant and strong evidence by Bayesian standards. How can you possibly say that the ganzfeld results are at best null. That's flat-out wrong.

So how did the ganzfeld researchers sort the match potentials to make sure that each picture is a set did not have multiple words across pictures that they matched.

This is huge methodological error , if say you have three pictures in a set of four that all match the word 'round', then you can not say that the results are valid. This totally blows the way that the ganzfeld claims to have 'hits'. To have good method, you would need to determine which match word are 'hits' for each picture and then cross reference the sets so that there were not two pictures that had the same 'match' word in each set.

this is one of the many methodological errors in ganzfeld research, and a meta analysis requires they all be run the same way with the same methods and demographics, does it not?

 

[Dancing David]

Saying that the meta-analysis is irrelevant is simply ignoring evidence. Of course the meta-analysis is relevant to the ESP hypothesis. It's data from ESP studies, studies that were at least as high in quality as typical studies in experimental psychology (not that that exactly sets the bar high). I don't believe the results myself, but I admit they're relevant.

Meta analysis has a large number of caveats in its use, should we discuss the perils of meta-analysis?

The main one being the methodology of each study put into the meta-analysis. If you have error potential and bias in the base studies then this just messes up the meta analysis.

And then if Storm's paper even addresses them?

 

[Nonpareil]

In other words, you insist on claiming that you have knowledge that you cannot have, even in principle.

No, I don't. I have no idea what you are getting this from. Again, I am stating definitions.

No, that's your redefinition that only works if you mix up subjective and objective.

No.

Only in your attempt to redefine it and justify yourself by invoking magic.

I have not invoked magic at any point.

Again, the availability of relevant evidence matters for whether we have reason to accept that something is or is not the case. The simple lack of obtainable evidence does not automatically mean that something is not real.

Again, you are failing to appreciate the difference between practical and theoretical availability.

There is certainly reason to favor the more useful explanation. However, if both explain the phenomena completely, no, the difference in usefulness is not evidence of truth.

It isn't about usefulness. Usefulness is a useful side-effect. It is about having a meaningful definition of the word "real".

For that matter, as it stands, at last check, there were definite flaws in the current theories about gravity.

Which is not the point.

And that is certainly possible in concept, again, because of the physical limitations that reality imposes upon us.

Theoretical limitations, not practical.

They are not equivalent.

If we cannot, even in principle, make the tools that would be required to gather that relevant information because of the limitations imposed by reality, we're not going to be able to gather that information.

And you are again equivocating between practical and theoretical limitations. If that information cannot be gathered by any means, then it does not exist. That is what existing means.

Sure, something that is not true can be considered false.

Something that is not true is false. That is what false means.

An empty denial.

1) X exists.
2) X doesn't exist.

No valid chain of logic in between.

The chain of logic is the simple observation that "X exists" is an invalid statement, because X does not meet the criteria for existence. It is equivalent to pointing to a blue ball and saying "this is red".