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psychics

panchov said:
I do tend to think there is something along the lines of collective memory, I just don't think it's anything mystical. Ideas and social rules do tend to cross societies that have no contact with each other etc. Maybe a better word for it is instinct. I don't know, but I guess it's also what makes some police better at their job than others, they just have better abilties.

You know that dog whisperer guy - he doesn't pretent to be psychic, does he? (I'm not all that familiar with him so I can't swear he doesn't) - he just seems to be very talented at working with animals.

It's a crazy world we live in, that's for sure!

Thanks again for all your responses and welcomes!
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Welcome panchov.

What I wanted to comment on was this notion of "collective memory". One of my interest is modern mythologies. At the root of this is not collective memory or instinct but the essentially universal way in which the human mind processes information. What the human mind is best at is pattern recognition. We can even recognize patterns in the purely random. Then there is the way the mind attempts to assess the truth of a statement. Invariably in a true/false test our minds start with a presumption of truth and then search our knowledge for information to falsify it. Lacking specific knowledge to falsify it we generally presume it's true. This is very bad because the number of all possible false statements about the universe far outnumber all possible true statements.

Now we get to the part about collective memory, archetypes, etc. We develop reality models in our mind that provide our individual framework for cataloging our experiences and judgments and giving us quick ways to judge the novel things around us. Universally at the core of this cataloging system is good/bad. Truth/lie seems easy enough to catalog but I'm sure you can think of circumstances where it's not so easy. What about a concept like 'corporation'? One group may classify it as the most efficient method for creating wealth and well being among the most people. Another may associate it with abuse of power, people, and resources. Denying the truths in either point of view is just as destructive yet the majority of people do just that because of where the corporation falls in their world view. It has never even occurred to many people that it is possible to make money without taking it from someone else. Economic growth would be impossible if this was completely the case.

Given that we in our minds divide everything up into dichotomous parts, good/bad, democrat/republican, skeptic/bleever, etc. we are left with only a limited number of types of dichotomies regardless of culture. As we recognize this emergent pattern we assume its' nature is consistent with our predefined world view and create new myths about collective memories and such.

I didn't get into archetypes per se but my favorite is the Jester. The opposite of all things, including itself. Meet Jester, he's biting my finger in my avatar.

P.S.
The dog whisperer doesn't even hint at making woo claims yet many people still interpret it that way.
 
Apology said:
The problem with this study is that Utts did not gather the data herself. Statisticians don't gather data, they interpret data that is gathered by workers in the field. Utts analyzed the data given to her by SRI and assumed for statistical purposes that they had successes whenever they said they did. The problem is not in the statistical study, but in the data it is based on.

If I told Utts that I was psychic and gave her a list my predictions, including hits or misses, Utts could write a statistical analysis that proved I was psychic too. All she'd have to do is believe me when I said I got a hit, and base her study on my reported successes and failures. I would have still been lying, and fooled her into believing I was psychic.

Statisticians are not supposed to draw conclusions like this; they are there to report the trends that are shown by the data. Often the data comes from laboratory tests and samples rather than from anecdotal evidence, and these types of statistical reports are fairly firm and decisive. Data received from, say, taking a telephone survey or an exit interview at a polling place, is much more unreliable.
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To quote further from http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

"The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."
 
Rodney said:
To quote further from http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

"The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."
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From the referenced document:

The contents of this document are copyright ©1995
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Anything at all (like further research or replication) happen in the intervening 12 years? :confused:
 
Rodney said:
To quote further from http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

"The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."
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I wonder why she failed to mention that many laboratories have been unable to replicate the effects? Or that the huge, glaring, you could drive a truck through it, methodological flaws only ever seem to come to light when non-believers attempt to replicate these oh-so-persuasive studies that 'prove' that skeptics must be close-minded in order to withhold agreement?

Linda
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Anything at all (like further research or replication) happen in the intervening 12 years? :confused:
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Yes. According to p. 120 of Dean Radin's 2006 book Entangled Minds:

"From 1974 through 2004 a total of 88 ganzfeld experiments reporting 1,008 hits in 3,145 trials were conducted. The combined hit rate was 32% as compared to the chance-expected 25% (Figure 6-6). This 7% above-chance effect is associated with odds against chance of 29,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 29 quintillion) to 1."
 
I've started a detailed write-up of the Jessica Utts analysis, but then I realized I'm probably duplicating the work of another skeptic, and also it is too long to post here.
 
Rodney said:
Yes. According to p. 120 of Dean Radin's 2006 book Entangled Minds:

"From 1974 through 2004 a total of 88 ganzfeld experiments reporting 1,008 hits in 3,145 trials were conducted. The combined hit rate was 32% as compared to the chance-expected 25% (Figure 6-6). This 7% above-chance effect is associated with odds against chance of 29,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 29 quintillion) to 1."
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Note that ganzfeld experiments are not conducted the same way as the remote viewing trials at SRI - I would not say that they prove the repeatability of SRI trials.
 
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Rodney said:
Yes. According to p. 120 of Dean Radin's 2006 book Entangled Minds:

"From 1974 through 2004 a total of 88 ganzfeld experiments reporting 1,008 hits in 3,145 trials were conducted. The combined hit rate was 32% as compared to the chance-expected 25% (Figure 6-6). This 7% above-chance effect is associated with odds against chance of 29,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 29 quintillion) to 1."
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I don't think anyone would argue that those results were achieved through chance. But considering that mundane explanations serve to explain the results (bias for one), I'm not sure why we are supposed to default to 'psi' as the explanation. Since self-serving statements like "methodological flaws have been refuted" coming from parapsychologists have been consistently demonstrated to be false, why should they be believed this time?

Linda
 
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Apology said:
In addition, if I believe that cats are not conscious and self-aware in any way, that means my cat couldn't possibly love me the way I think she does. Who wants to believe that? :( Unfortunately it's probably true. I'm about 99% sure she's just in it for the catfood.
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It's more than that - they're in it for the affection, warmth, and expertly-simulated mouse-play too! It's not "love" in a human emotional sense, but it's close enough for me. :) They might be a bit mercenary at times, but they clearly form some sort of bond with humans along the lines of dogs (but less dependently), or they wouldn't return to the same house day-in, day-out.
 
Rodney said:
To quote further from http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

"The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."
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A refusal to accept criticism does not constitute meaningful evidence.
If these experiments did not contain flaws, they would be accepted by the wider scientific community, and would not have faced heavy criticism.
If the results gained were meaningful, then the results would be replicable in an experiment which did not contain the flawed methodology. This is not the case.

Accepting the incompetent Ms Utts experiments as truth, while ignoring the vast majority of other scientific evidence is simply cherry picking, and refusing to see the flaws for the sake of satisfying desire for this phenomena to be true.
 
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Here's a brief summary of Jeff Corey's link, for Rodney:

6. Professor Utts and the investigators point to what they see as consistencies between the outcome of contemporary ganzfeld experiments and the SAIC results. The major consistency is similarity of average effect sizes across experiments. Such consistency is problematical because these average effect sizes, in each case, are the result of arbitrary combinations from different investigators and conditions. None of these averages can be justified as estimating a meaningful parameter. Effect size, by itself, says nothing about its origin. Where parapsychologists see consistency, I see inconsistency. The ganzfeld studies are premised on the idea that viewers must be in altered state for successful results. The remote viewing studies use viewers in a normal state. The ganzfeld experimenters believe that the viewers should judge the match between their ideation and the target for best results; the remote viewers believe that independent judges provide better evidence for psi than viewers judging their own responses. The recent autoganzfeld studies found successful hitting only with dynamic targets and only chance results with static targets. The SAIC investigators, in one study, found hitting with static targets and not with dynamic ones. In a subsequent study they found hitting for both types of targets. They suggest that they may have solution to this apparent inconsistency in terms of their concept of bandwidth. At this time, this is only suggestive.

7. The challenge to parapsychology, if it hopes to convincingly claim the discovery of anomalous cognition, is to go beyond the demonstration of significant effects. The parapsychologists need to achieve the ability to specify conditions under which one can reliably witness their alleged phenomenon. They have to show that they can generate lawful relationships between attributes of this alleged phenomenon and independent variables. They have to be able to specify boundary conditions that will enable us to detect when anomalous cognition is and is not present.
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Rodney said:
To quote further from http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

"The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."
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It doesn't change the fact that her data came from SRI and SAIC, who have a vested interest in saying that their predictions are right. Her data is wrong, ergo her report is wrong. It happens all the time and is one of the slippery slopes of statistics.
 
Rodney said:
Yes. According to p. 120 of Dean Radin's 2006 book Entangled Minds:

"From 1974 through 2004 a total of 88 ganzfeld experiments reporting 1,008 hits in 3,145 trials were conducted. The combined hit rate was 32% as compared to the chance-expected 25% (Figure 6-6). This 7% above-chance effect is associated with odds against chance of 29,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 29 quintillion) to 1."
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Published where? Other than the Journal of Noetic Research I mean.
 
sthomson said:
Here's a brief summary of Jeff Corey's link, for Rodney:
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Here is an even more brief summary for the rest of you: "Although, I cannot point to any obvious flaws in the experiments, the experimental program is too recent and insufficiently evaluated to be sure that flaws and biases have been eliminated." So, have any flaws and biases in the experiments been identified since Hyman wrote that in 1995? If so, what are they?
 
Big Les said:
It's more than that - they're in it for the affection, warmth, and expertly-simulated mouse-play too! It's not "love" in a human emotional sense, but it's close enough for me. :) They might be a bit mercenary at times, but they clearly form some sort of bond with humans along the lines of dogs (but less dependently), or they wouldn't return to the same house day-in, day-out.
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I agree. We have 2 dogs and 3 cats and they all solicit attention, rubs, and food when the dishes are empty. They even engage in cross-species grooming.
 
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