JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I gave you the reasons why I don't believe you. Are you able and willing to address them?
New telepathy test, the sequel.
- Thread starter Michel H
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- telepathy telepathy test
I gave you the reasons why I don't believe you. Are you able and willing to address them?
You are free to believe me or not, this is up to you.
I think I am very rigorous in my work. Perhaps you could have suspected I hold a Ph.D. degree in Physics or Math, just from the rigorous way I am handling my tests.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
You're making elementary mistakes in both reasoning and in empirical protocols. You're reasoning in circles, the same way people do who don't understand structured inquiry. From your performance here it's obvious you don't hold multiple PhDs, and at this point I question whether you've even been to college. Every time you are asked to supply rigor, you provide only speculation and paranoia.
Two questions have now been posted in the Alternative category, which deal with a disappearance phenomenon, similar to what I have just experienced on Yahoo Answers, see the question list:
https://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index?sid=396547171.
The questions are:
I am now beginning to think I may have an idea about the member who "reported" my question. Perhaps the person who asked:
She doesn't seem to like "invading pesky extraterrestrials".
Not 100% sure it is her, of course.
https://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index?sid=396547171.
The questions are:
Link: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20200105031027AAPzQDi
Link: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20200105031245AAoAw0M
I am now beginning to think I may have an idea about the member who "reported" my question. Perhaps the person who asked:
Link: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20200104054730AAzhB6Q
She doesn't seem to like "invading pesky extraterrestrials".
Not 100% sure it is her, of course.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
We finally got him to do such a test years ago, the results were (unsurprisingly) negative. He refused to accept them, as you can see:
Note that "inferior quality" here means "not the results I wanted". The more rigorous protocol ensured they were actually of far superior quality.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
I don't know what you're talking about. Your link to your question in Parapsychology works. When I go to your name on Yahoo! Answers, the first two results are your 11 hour old questions in Polls & Surveys and Parapsychology. When I navigate to Parapsychology, I don't see your question. However, the first question is from 4 days ago and the very next question is yours from two weeks ago.
If anyone was persecuting you, your questions shouldn't be accessible by link or by searching your name. People definitely should not have been able to answer your questions (while several already have). And your question from two weeks ago certainly shouldn't be the second result.
If I were to make guesses as to why you're not seeing your most recent question in Parapsychology, they would be:
1. Indexing of questions doesn't happen instantaneously and your questions are just too new to have been categorized.
Or, more likely:
2. The algorithm for showing questions is some combination of recency, upvotes, downvotes, total answers, questioner's level, and other statistics.
I think the second one is more likely because the first question in Polls & Surveys is two days old while the second is only 14 hours old. However, the first one has 243 upvotes and 102 answers, but the second has fewer (41 upvotes and 37 answers). The third is older than the second but newer than the first. It has more upvotes than the second but fewer answers than the second (both trailing far behind the first). Your question in Polls & Surveys, while newer, has only 3 answers and no upvotes.
At the same time as this, the first question in Parapsychology is from a Level 7 user, while you are only at Level 3 (though, once again, your older question is still visible as the second one). Both questions have very few upvotes or answers. Your most recent question in Parapsychology has only 1 answer and no upvotes. Parapsychology in general appears very poorly attended.
I don't think Yahoo! is conspiring against you. I think its algorithm is designed with the goal of showing the most entertaining questions to viewers in order to increase viewer engagement. As to how well the algorithm is achieving that goal or how it could be improved, I cannot say.
Regarding whether the CIA is somehow in league with Yahoo!, I find that much harder to believe. First of all, your 2 week-old question in Parapsychology has a very similar "pacifist" tone as your most recent question - including choices like "no nuclear weapons" and "less military spending." If Yahoo! were scrubbing those sorts of things, that question shouldn't be listed, let alone be at number 2.
Second of all, my sister used to work at Yahoo! and there is no possible way she's CIA because she is an idiot.
Your hypothesis seems unlikely, while mine have actual evidence to back them up. Perhaps you should research how Yahoo! shows results in its Answers section before simply concluding without evidence that they're conspiring against you.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
This.
Social media works very hard on the algorithms that generate feeds. And yes, it's about keeping eyeballs glued to that media provider's screen for as long as possible. These days it's rarely limited to the chronology of contributions. As I said several posts above, the notion that Michel's question isn't where it's expected because of "persecution" is based in part on assumptions that would have to be solidified with actual evidence. One one of those assumptions is how Yahoo's algorithm works.
This presumes that working for the CIA requires someone not to be an idiot.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
You didn't explain anything. You piled speculation on top of speculation and didn't test any of it. You can't even show that the Yahoo member you're accusing of censoring you even knows or cares who you are.
Another "hope" that comes across as a veiled accusation. This is not a healthy amount of paranoia.
Questions aren't upvoted on Yahoo, answers are. You don't seem to have a lot of experience of Yahoo Answers, but I do. Usually, the latest question on on the top of the list (very quickly, and for a long time). My question was, however, quickly and viciously removed, which meant very few answers. Perhaps this does not seem possible in a skeptical mental universe, but, in the real world, this is what happened.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
How does one "viciously" remove an internet posting? You are reaching comical levels of paranoia.
No. You present no evidence that this happened. You simply declare it, and say that it's clear to you what happened. You're blatantly begging the question.
Have I understood this correctly: Michel H has posted a poll on Yahoo Answers with ridiculously few possibilities, and the few replies he got were all mocking him with sarcasm, which he is unable to detect, which means he is seeing this poll as evidence for ESP. The poll has probably been delisted because it is worthless, and he is now thinking that this is further proof that ESP is real, and the evil government is trying to keep it under wraps.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
No, you don't understand. My sister is a huge idiot.
Man, you just dismissed a solid hour of research on my part with an unsupported allegation. Questions are chosen by a mathematical program that tries to weigh what it thinks viewers will want to see. Show evidence of removing your questions (they're both still available by link and by searching your name). Show evidence that such removal, if it occurred at all, was vicious.
I've got numbers (though I appear to have misunderstood upvoting somewhat). My numbers still work. Questions whose answers have lots of upvotes are favored over those whose answers have fewer (accounting also for recency, total answers, and maybe the level of the questioner).
No, no, questions are just listed chronologically when you choose the Answer option, as opposed to Discover, next to "Customize feed" (by the way, I respect your work if you have really spent time on this). For example, click on this link: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/dir/index/answer?sid=396547171 . Do you see that all questions are just listed chronologically?
For example, if you asked in Polls & Surveys:
,
after clicking "Submit", you would see your new question listed on top of the list. However, somebody might think your question violates the Yahoo Answers Community Guidelines, and report it, and have it deleted. There may exist also a lesser level of "sanction", for which questions are "just" removed from the list, but the question webpage continues to exist. This is actually very annoying and serious because many potential answerers won't see your question any longer (this is what I faced, with no explanation given).
A few years ago, questions were also strangely "oscillating", sometimes showing up, sometimes not, but this odd behavior seems to have stopped now.
Nay_Sayer
I say nay!
Not just one, multiple tests.
The first one was 1-10 and when that failed it got trimmed to 1-4
Despite the best efforts of everyone involved trying to explain that a 1 in 4 guesses =/= telepathy Michel fixated on the hits and ignored everything else.
Obviously, all attempts to set up proper protocol were and likely always will be rejected by him.
But sabotaging your test wouldn't stop your ability to influence the world.
If the American authorities were concerned about you influencing the world they have much more effective methods to stop you influencing the world than making a test of yours harder to find.
Startz
Muse
Hi Michel, you can see the evidence here that a couple of well-respected posters believe you will never accept a proper protocol. I’m afraid that the fact that you decline to engage on designing a test acceptable to others as well as yourself is evidence that they are correct.
Given these facts, I really don’t see why you are here.
Please do not discuss the mental health or any possible illnesses, diagnosed or not, or any poster unless they themselves choose to disclose them and discuss them. This means that Michel H's mental health is NOT the subject of this thread, as has been made clear on several occasions.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: Agatha
Startz
Muse
From my personal point of view, the most wonderful outcome would be serious evidence that Michel H is telepathic. I suppose we aren’t ever going to have a test that provides serious evidence, but I do find the question of how to design such a test interesting. (This isn’t the area of statistics I know, so it’s an opportunity for me to learn something.)
One problem is that Michel feels there is no reason for participants to tell the truth. Here’s an idea for an incentive. We put together a modest pool of money. (I’d be happy to kick in ten bucks. Perhaps Loss Leader would hold the money.) After the test, one name is drawn from those who have submitted the correct answer and that person takes the whole pot. That gives participants an incentive to try hard to hear Michel and to tell the truth.
Another problem is that Michel doesn’t want to do a real test. How about a second pot (I’m good for another $10.) that goes to Michel if the test is successful and goes to charity otherwise.
Any thoughts? Michel?
One problem is that Michel feels there is no reason for participants to tell the truth. Here’s an idea for an incentive. We put together a modest pool of money. (I’d be happy to kick in ten bucks. Perhaps Loss Leader would hold the money.) After the test, one name is drawn from those who have submitted the correct answer and that person takes the whole pot. That gives participants an incentive to try hard to hear Michel and to tell the truth.
Another problem is that Michel doesn’t want to do a real test. How about a second pot (I’m good for another $10.) that goes to Michel if the test is successful and goes to charity otherwise.
Any thoughts? Michel?
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Yes, I see that in the Parapsychology Answer option, questions are listed chronologically. However, I also see that the Answer option shows far, far fewer questions than the Discover option. In Parapsychology, the Answer tab shows only seven questions. The Discover tab shows over a hundred when I stopped counting. Your questions, from 2 weeks to 2 years ago, show up in that list.
In Polls & Surveys, both the Discover and the Answer tabs show hundreds of questions. The Answer tab is appears to be in chronological order. Your question (about 21 hours ago) doesn't seem to appear, though it would be well over a hundred down chronologically.
Yahoo! may be using two separate algorithms. However, Polls & Surveys is so very much better attended than Parapsychology that the algorithm may just work differently when there are hundreds of questions. Polls & Surveys is averaging something like 20 questions an hour (that's 28,800 a month), while Parapsychology is averaging something like 7 questions a month.
Given the huge difference in attendance in the two sections, I am not surprised the same algorithm might be creating very different results.
This is borne out when you view All Categories. The Answer tab generally lists all questions chronologically but not all. It is favoring some questions from some others. It's getting so many questions a minute that the algorithm probably doesn't have time to amass any meaningful statistic other than recency unless there's some stat that really makes a question stand out.
This, to me, is evidence that the Yahoo! team was testing different algorithms and finally settled on one that they thought maximized viewer engagement.
The idea of a sanction that includes delisting a question but allowing it to remain up on the public server seems odd to me. If Yahoo! doesn't think something should be seen, it should remove it from all ways to view it. Seeing the huge number of questions Yahoo! Answers gets a minute in all its categories, I would imagine that human moderation in real time is not possible.
All I see is one or more mathematical formulas at work. I don't see persecution.