Moderated Is the Telekinesis Real?

halleyscomet said:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan

The PEAR study does not qualify as "Extraordinary evidence," no mater how much you diddle the statistics. The fact that the baseline is borked, something even the original study's author admits, means the study isn't evidence at all!
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At this point we need Fudbucker to wade in and claim that, since we cannot define precisely what is meant by consciousness and therefore may all be brains in a vat, the claim of telekinesis is in fact a mundane one and requires only the flimsiest of evidence. It would at least be on topic.

Dave
 
Buddha said:
However, in Jay’s case I have clearly stated that I am much more intelligent than he is.
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You do understand that clearly stating something doesn't magically make it true, right?

Right?

Try clearly stating that you are the Queen of Sheba.

See what I mean?

My Maths degree may be 40 years old, but I remember enough to be able to appreciate the spectacle of Jay wiping the floor with you.
 
Buddha said:
However, in Jay’s case I have clearly stated that I am much more intelligent than he is.
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I find it helps to imagine "Buddha"s posts being read by Wally Wingert who voices The Riddler in the Arkham games (among other media).

Jay, you may now close your posts with the words "I'm Batman!"
 
Buddha said:
Couple of members jumped to conclusion that my remark about the knowledge of mathematical statistics is a thinly veiled attempt to disguise my assertion about my “intellectual superiority” over all board members. ... snipped for inanity ...

However, in Jay’s case I have clearly stated that I am much more intelligent than he is.
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So what if you clearly state one thing or another?

After all, if you do not provide supporting any facts to backup a declarative statement, then it is difficult to consider your statement to be a valid statement.

For example, I could clearly state that I always sleep with several beautiful women on a giant bed of money, but simply making such a statement clear does not automatically mean that such a statement is actually a true.
 
JayUtah said:
It's slightly alarming to consider that the most parsimonious explanation for Buddha's last few rounds of posts is that he really does not distinguish between facts and his own declarations.
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It's literally the the underlying, as often as not openly admitted, mental framework of about 1/4th of this board right now.

We really need to stop being surprised by it.
 
Crossbow said:
So what if you clearly state one thing or another?

After all, if you do not provide supporting any facts to backup a declarative statement, then it is difficult to consider your statement to be a valid statement.

For example, I could clearly state that I always sleep with several beautiful women on a giant bed of money, but simply making such a statement clear does not automatically mean that such a statement is actually a true.
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,Pshaw. We all know it's only a regular-sized bed of money.
 
I'm dead serious there is a legit push to de-legitimatize the very concept of "knowing something" at a lot of different levels in our society right now.
 
"""Buddha"""" said:
“Occasionally during the course of the research the electrodes which had
* been mounted for the purpose of detecting touches by the subject responded
in the apparent absence of touch. It was subsequently found that North
continued to be able to produce such artifacts without touch when a low impedance operational amplifier supposedly immune to such effects was
attached to the electrode. Only North seemed able to affect the apparatus
in this way (Hasted & Robertson, 1981).”Palmer, page 185

I am not sure where Palmer is going with this – even if North affected the apparatus differently than anyone else, this doesn’t mean that the metal bending didn’t occur. Once again, Palmer didn’t draw a conclusion based on this “anomaly”.

“To further test for electrical effects, North participated in a series
of seven sessions using two metal bars in a radial configuration. Both the
electrodes and strain gauges were utilized as sensors. Almost half the
signals (44%) registered exclusively on the electrodes, with 24% exclusively
on the strain gauges and 32% on both. The proportion of electrode
activations increased over sessions. Hasted speculated that North's
awareness of the increasing interest in the electrode effects contributed to
their increased prevalence. “ Palmer, page 185

As Palmer said, Hasted speculated about the subjects awareness. But this speculation is irrelevant to the research; it seems strange that Palmer brought it up without addressing real issues. Maybe, there were no issues with the experiment.

I"n a subsequent series of ten sessions with North, an attempt was made
to determine whether the effect was on the electrodes themselves or on the
surrounding atmosphere. Two electrodes separated by distances ranging from
0.4 to 6.2 cm were given charges of +9V and -9V, respectively, the - potentials being reversed every 11 seconds. Their hypothesis predicted that
under the conditions of their experiment, if the signals were associated
with atmospheric ionization charge bursts would appear uniformly at the
oppositely charged electrode, whereas no such correlation would be found if
the signals originated from the electrodes directly. It was found that
95.1% of the 1123 recorded signals behaved in accordance with their
atmosphere-ionization hypothesis.
However, this conclusion was contradicted in yet another experiment
(Hasted & Robertson, 1981). Hasted came to realize that previous results
could be accounted for by assuming the origin of the charge to be on the
subject's body and that it travelled through the atmosphere to the target
along what he called a "temporary 'paranormal conduction' path" (p. 181). He
reasoned that the atmosphere-ionization hypothesis would be refuted if it
could be shown that a high-frequency signal could be transferred from a
subject's body to the target. Such a signal could not be transmitted by drift or diffusion, the base for the atmospheric-ionization hypothesis.
Thus, a 10 kHz potential was transferred to Stephen North's body by placing
close to him a 10 kHz oscillator connected to a metal plate or "antenna." As
* predicted by the "conduction path" hypothesis, the 10 kHz signal was also
momentarily transferred to or induced on a partially screened electrode in
the vicinity of North. This effect was not obtained with control subjects.” Palmer, page 186

Palmer is not a scientist, so he doesn’t see the difference between two experiments that were run under different conditions. It appears that Hasted’s prediction regarding the first experiment was correct, but under the new conditions the old explanation didn’t work, so Hasted found a new one.

On a person note – I rather have debates with Palmer, Jeffers and Alcock than with Jay with his pseudo-scientific ideas. I know that the trio is not on this board. But this website is one of the top websites dedicated to science, if not the top one. I hope that the trio can hear me, and they come to defense of their idiotic articles.
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-"Blah, blah! blah, blah! blah-blah-blah-bláaah!!!"
-Aha. Very interesting :rolleyes:

«When Steven North, a wonder-child metal-bender whom Hasted declared genuine, was undergoing tests at Birkbeck College that were attended by Granada TV, a young woman who was with the crew peeked in at Steven during one of the tests in which he was -as usual- left unattended and unobserved except by recorders hooked up to the metal samples. This a favorite Hasted method of testing children. She distinctively saw him bending a sample with his bare hands and hastened to tell Hasted. But the scientist shrugged it off as an error on her part. Smiling, he said "Steven may cheat in the next world, but not in this!". It is typically Hasteadian.»

James Randi, in Flim, Flam!


But Hasted was a well known clown in all these matters already. A few years earlier

«... rather detailed accounts of the conditions of some experiments led me to suspect that the sharp "spike" tracings he got in his chart recorder connected to the electronic circuitry, might be due to static electricity, not paranormal influence. He said the subject squirmed about and held his hands out to the dangling key occasionally, whereupon a result was recorded on the chart. But the very sharp spike is typical of a static discharge registration, so I sent off the circuit diagrams, which were kindly supplied by Professor Hasted, to Dr. Paul Horowitz of Harvard University*** for comments.

Dr. Horowitz replied, "you are, of course, right in your interpretation ... If that 'experiment' convinces anyone of anything, then they typify the utmost in gullibility. What's happening is that common-mode (extraneous) signals, not being rejected owing to a disastrous choice of amplifier configurations, are driving the subsequent amplifiers into non-linearities. This is a classic problem with strain gauges, since the genuine (normal-mode) signal is typically very small ...[It would be] better for Hasted to do the things right, which means among other things, to use one of those channels to display the common-mode signal, while the rest are busy displaying normal-mode signals. The absence of such a channel shows that he hasn't been careful, and effectively nullifies any result he claims...»

James Randi, in Flim, Flam!

*** Mentioned in Laboratory Manual for the Art of Electronics. by Horowitz and Robinson. Also The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill.

So Hasted has been a well known clown, who has been defended, in a span of almost 50 years, even today, by a ceaseless stream of other clowns emerging from the same tiny car: the size of their winding understanding.

So, "All Quiet in the Western Front".
 
Buddha said:
This happened at another board: a member started debate requiring considerable knowledge of immunology. Immunology is not my forte, so I didn’t participate in the discussion. Apparently the opposition was weak, and a week later the OP announced that he ends the debate because his opponents lack basic knowledge of immunology. I didn’t find his remark offensive because it was true, although I wished that he had provided more printed data about immunology and continued the debate. Apparently, no one thought that his remark was offensive because there were no complains.
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Care to link to that imaginary b:rolleyes:ard?. Don't be afraid, for what you've told. we won't be able to spot you among so many people lacking basic knowledge. Here, you stick out like a sore thumb.
 
""""Buddha"""" said:
I am also known for being politically incorrect when I speak about hot button topics such as gay marriage (although I recently dropped my opposition to it, I still see it as completely useless), profiling of potential terrorists based on their countries of origin but not on their race, and many more.
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To complete the arch, what do you think of inter-racial marriage? ;)
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Pixel42 said:
You do understand that clearly stating something doesn't magically make it true, right?
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No I literally don't think he does. I think a lot of people don't understand that.
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It's more like this imaginary dialogue in the Sanatorium:

Psychiatrist (a psychopath in disguise) - "You're a psychopath!"
Psychopath (a psychiatrist incognito) - "No, I'm not!"
Psychiatrist - "You're a psychopath!"
Psychopath - "No, I'm not!"
Psychiatrist - "You're a psychopath!"
Psychopath - "No, I'm not!"
Psychiatrist - "You're a psychopath!"
Psychopath - "No, I'm not!"
Psychiatrist - "You're a psychopath!"
Psychopath - "No, I'm not!"
....
 
JayUtah said:
It's slightly alarming to consider that the most parsimonious explanation for Buddha's last few rounds of posts is that he really does not distinguish between facts and his own declarations.
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Why alarming? It's 100% consistent with other perceptions from his. He's not dangerous to himself and others, if that's what you say.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm dead serious there is a legit push to de-legitimatize the very concept of "knowing something" at a lot of different levels in our society right now.
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Don't be alarmed. It's about the same amount of ignorant people there ever were. The difference is that they have "media" to their disposal and we have to get used to that. Otherwise we wouldn't have """"Buddha"""" available for our amusement.
 
JayUtah said:
It's slightly alarming to consider that the most parsimonious explanation for Buddha's last few rounds of posts is that he really does not distinguish between facts and his own declarations.
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Thanks much. You are quite correct.

By an unhappy coincidence, 'Buddah' often reminds me of someone like Trump who often uses strong denials as strong statements of fact.
 
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