Psychic Samurai applies for MDC...apparently...

[remirol]

This is why I am leaning toward a computer program that removes all reasoning. It will simply tell what the voices say. It will be self evident.

This is not going to be acceptable as a solution. Computer voice recognition still has a success rate of only about 97%, and that is using well-enunciated words in a clear voice on a system which has been previously trained to recognize that voice.

Asking a computer to recognize the sort of stuff that is produced by EVP/ITC is simply beyond its capability to do accurately even to the imperfect 97%; it would be a guessing game at best, and thus completely inappropriate to satisfy the "self-evident" portion of your claim.

Also, (as I believe someone else has pointed out), computer voice recognition _always_ attempts to make a word out of a sound, whether or not there was a word there in the first place. This would lead to an unacceptable rate of false positives, making it even more inappropriate.

Voice recognition software is a dead-end path here, Professor. I suggest going down an different avenue.

 

[Marcus]

You're supposed to be negotiating this protocol with JREF, you should simply email them and ask if voice recognition software is going to be acceptable.

 

[Loss Leader]

The Protocol is moving along with the help of NBC's Eric Floyd and the University Scientists here in Central Florida.

Please provide Eric Floyd's position at NBC along with any contact information you may have for him. Please provide the names and contact information for the "university scientists" with whom you are working.

 

[Azrael 5]

Please provide Eric Floyd's position at NBC along with any contact information you may have for him. Please provide the names and contact information for the "university scientists" with whom you are working.

It's remarkable that Eric Floyd and Rozzie Franco(a news reader)are so knowledgable in the creation of EVP/ITC's or in creating a scientifically sound protocol.
No suprise I cannot find a google ref for Eric Floyd(unless he's a sports player!)

 

[not daSkeptic]

It is not common for applicants to have tested themselves with a protocol that is acceptable for the JREF. Most are only realising what controls should be part of protocol when they are advised by the JREF. The Professor is not different from other applicants in this respect.

This too is part of my point. If one is unaware of what a controlled experiment entails, then one's claims must be questioned. As you say, this applies to all applicants, not just the Professor.

I see four possibilities is a situation such as this:

1. The applicant questions their abilities and is sincerely trying to develop a worthy protocol.
2. The applicant does not question their abilities and is a fool.
3. The applicant is lying about their abilities.
4. The applicant is refusing to disclose the protocol of a prior controlled experiment.

 

[The Professor]

It is not common for applicants to have tested themselves with a protocol that is acceptable for the JREF. Most are only realising what controls should be part of protocol when they are advised by the JREF. The Professor is not different from other applicants in this respect. However, after umpteen pages of advice on this forum, he still has not grasped that a protocol is not the same as a test, and apparently he is only now conducting his first test using a protocol that he prefers to keep secret instead of keeping it open so that he could be advised by the very experienced members of this forum.

I offer the explanation that he is not devising the protocol for the JREF but for his own supporters who will be much less critical, and presumably he will present it as a videotaped show after he has dropped out of the MDC negotiations.

Firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON !!!!!!

Edited by Tricky: 

acusations against JREF members edited

I was told to ignore the naysayers early on and I will continue to do so.

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

It removes the Self Evident problem. Seems fair to me.

I have some other good ideas by Charles Fort that I will be exploring this evening.

I also believe that we will be using a "Sniffer" to document the frequency influx.

Thanks for your help!
Dave

 

[remirol]

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

It removes the Self Evident problem.

No, it does not, for reasons that have been explained by at least two people in this thread, one of them myself. It is not satisfactory, and results garnered from it will not be self-evident.

Wilfully ignoring those explanations does nothing for your credibility as far as making an honest effort to produce a protocol.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

Where? With respect to the person who suggested it, it most certainly is not the best idea presented here. For the best ideas, I suggest you review Loss Leader's posts.

It removes the Self Evident problem. Seems fair to me.

It most certainly does not, for reasons outlined in the last 8 or so posts prior to this one.

 

[jj]

I'm a bit puzzled by this thread. The claim, if I understand it, is that you will produce a voice. I've seen some discussions about "what language", and so on, and I've got to wonder just how showing that one can produce a voice is in any fashion paranormal.

I do signal processing for a living, the number of ways that I can produce, trivially, something that "sounds like a voice" are, well, there's too many to list.

If we go all the way back to the 1939 World's Fair, and look at the Voder that Bell Labs showed then, we see something that was certainly mechanical, sounded mechanical, but that could produce a voice. Now, that "voice" had almost nothing, in terms of actual waveform, that actually compared to a voice waveform, but people trivially understood it as voice. The point is that a listener, trying to hear a voice, can and will turn almost anything with a short-term frequency spectrum that's something like a voice into "a voice, I heard a voice". The number of ways to create such things either deliberately or accidentally is legion.

If this is via RF, or more likely RFI, if I take sideband, for instance, and listen on the wrong sideband, I get 'funny sounding voices'. If I put an antenna in the air, even in a decent isolation, the amount of RF in the atmosphere in the USA these days will undoubtedly pick up some radio, AM or FM or what-have-you, and such radios, especially if put through nonlinear kinds of equipment can produce voices, combinations of voices, and we're still talking about ways to get, either deliberately or accidentally, reception of actual voices. There are many more, including a list of ways to do this by less than accident that I won't mention.

Now let us get down to simple issues of noise. If we have a non-flat noise source that varies with a peak in the 300-500Hz range, another peak in the 700-1500Hz range, and a third one from 1200-2000, guess what boys and girls, it's going to sound like a voice. Perhaps a voice speaking a drone (if the peaks don't move) or a voice speaking in a language nobody understands if the peaks do move around. That's just the result of noise sources. Add some "filtering" to "help recover the voice" and you can, purely by accident even, make just about any kind of noise source sound like a whispered voice. You can make just about any kind of pulse-train or strongly harmonic signal sound like voiced speech.

How can the test administrator assure us all that this is not what's happening. I'll be entirely kind and assume that this is all entirely on the up-and-up, sincere, and what-have-you, and still say that there is no way I can imagine, given a few bits of electronic gear in the midst of this, that there is any way at all to verify that the cause is supernatural.

 

[jj]

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

Voice recognition, at this time and place, if you're talking about mechanical recognition, is in a much worse state than human perception. It's completely unsuitable to judge "is that a voice", all it can judge is the question of if, or not, certian spectral paramaters are met, in terms of recognition of voices, phonemes, etc.

I have an entire wall of literature on the subject in my garage from the IEEE. It's not a simple subject, and it doesn't work very well.

 

[steenkh]

Please provide Eric Floyd's position at NBC along with any contact information you may have for him. Please provide the names and contact information for the "university scientists" with whom you are working.

I find this kind of request unhelpful. TP can have assistance from whoever he chooses, and there is no reason why he should should tell who he asks for help, and who he does not ask. He has not said that they are part of the protocol.

We would of course be more impressed if he enlisted the help of people who actually are reputed to know how to construct a protocol, but if he prefers news readers and celebrities, that is his choice.

 

[gdnp]

Professor, if you could provide us a sample with one of the voices you recorded on October 31 this would be most useful in developing a protocol. Even a short transcript of what the voice said would be invaluable. You have many people here who are willing to help, but without this basic information we are wandering in the dark.

 

[Marcus]

Firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON !!!!!!

Edited by Tricky: 

acusations against JREF members edited

I was told to ignore the naysayers early on and I will continue to do so.

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

It removes the Self Evident problem. Seems fair to me.

I have some other good ideas by Charles Fort that I will be exploring this evening.

I also believe that we will be using a "Sniffer" to document the frequency influx.

Thanks for your help!
Dave

Don't take our word for it, a single email to jref will tell you if this idea has legs or not. That's what protocol negotiations are for.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

I taught at a school for kids with learning difficulties. Several of them had problems physically writing, and used voice recognition to write their essays. As I recall, the software took several hours of training to "learn" your voice, and even then was not wholy accurate. And that's for a clear, well-articulated voice, speaking directly into a microphone, reading long passages.

 

[Jeff Wagg]

For the record, The Professor and I have not discussed protocol since before Halloween. We did have a recent e-mail exchange, but it was about other matters. At this point, we have a claim, and that is all. We have nothing close to a working protocol.

 

[eirik]

Firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON !!!!!!

Edited by Tricky: 

acusations against JREF members edited

Dave

Hmmm. This is not helping your case, dave.

I was told to ignore the naysayers early on and I will continue to do so.

Don't take this too literally, it is a figure of speech. You should take notice of criticism related to the protocol.

The Voice Recognition Idea was one from the JREF Forum to be used in the Protocol. One of the best Protocol Ideas I've heard so far IMHO.

It removes the Self Evident problem. Seems fair to me.

No, it is not going away. Please read the excellent posts of JJ, ##1509 and 1510, and also NobbyNobbs #1514.

I also believe that we will be using a "Sniffer" to document the frequency influx.

OK: Forgive me for asking about these things:

Will you be using a frequency sniffer? Is that because the spirits communicate in high frequency EM waves?

So, in the prelim, the spirits/entities/(insert what you likes) are going to communicate by radio waves. A radio receiver will modulate and amplify the signal, and a recording device will record. Seems very basic to me.

Am I in the "ballpark"?

The problem with this claim is still that it doesn't demonstrate anything paranormal. The "voices" can be either just noise, interpreted into a voices(parodelia), it could be a third accomplice transmitting voices by radio, or it could be any radio signals from any radio communication in the area.

I can not see how you can rule out either of these problems.

First: You might be able to rule out an accomplice/ordinary radio signals. Problem is, if you buy a radio frequency-proof cage(if one 100 % effective exist) and put the radio receiver in it, does this not stop the entities as well? What did your experience on Halloween tell you? Since this have been addressed earlier, I assume this is not a problem.

Second, and even more difficult: Parodelia. "The Self Evident problem". It is not likely that the JREF will accept judging by neither a scientist, ten scientists, or by computer software. You will have to do without judging.

I have no idea how you are going to resolve this with your current claim. It might very well be untestable. Good luck anyway.

 

[Loss Leader]

Where? With respect to the person who suggested it, it most certainly is not the best idea presented here. For the best ideas, I suggest you review Loss Leader's posts.

Which would be great except for the fact that I'm pretty sure I was the one who suggested voice recognition software.

I was just spitballing at the time. It seemed to me that such software could solve the problem of whether the "voice" was significantly louder than background noise. If Dragon hears a voice, we know that it's not trying to interpret static.

However, I certainly concede to those who know more about this software than I do. I know almost nothing about it. If the general opinion is that it is not a reliable indicator of whether a thing was said, I accept it entirely.

 

[The_Animus]

This entire post is a continuation from:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129364

It was closed and I was told to go here instead.

All EVP recordings I've heard so far are only hissing and moaning interpreted as actual words. I think it's fair to (at the very least) consider the possibility that The Professor's EVP recordings could be just hissing and moaning interpreted as actual words.

As I said before, if it is hissing and moaning it is not clear and intelligible speech.

Please download this 150-KB ZIP file. It contains 6 sound samples. The question is: which of them are "clear and intelligible recordings"? I guess your answer to that question would differ a lot from The Professor's answer to the very same question.
It's very important to have the question "what is considered clear and intelligible?" answered before the test begins. Deciding it after the test would lead to endless discussions.

I did. #1 is clear and intelligible. If you gave that recording to 10 people I highly suspect that all 10 would write down having heard the same thing independent of one another. #2 sounds like it is in spanish so I can't say. For that you'd have to get 10 people who speak spanish. The rest are not clear and intelligible.

Which, of course, you are able to determine by not having read it. Riiiiight. I refer you to my prior paragraph about not being taken seriously; because at this point, I certainly don't.

I'll ignore your insults and assume they come because I did not properly explain to you why that information is irrelevant. I do not care about the professor, or what he has said in this entire thread. I am concerned with this thread http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122607. More specifically I am concerned solely with whether or not it is fair to reject, as objective evidence of the supernatural, clear, intelligible speech not from a living person. Notice that this topic can be completely independent of the professor? What he said or did not say has no bearing on this. He does not own the scenario. You could just as well consider it as if I had made the claim that I could communicate with the dead in a clear, intelligible manner. Not that I ever would seeing as I don't believe in ghosts or entities or anything of that sort. To avoid any continuing confusion further discussion of my specific topic will be as if I made the claim and the protocol.

Two out of three of my above examples do not qualify as "clear and intelligible" to me; I can understand no dialects of Chinese, and voice disguisers operate by inherently making a voice unclear. However, someone who was a Chinese native might well understand the second example and consider it perfectly intelligible. How do you expect to resolve such disagreements between listeners? (Answer: you can't, and this is why it's a bad idea; see below).

I like how you answer your own question lol. First of all I don't think the different languages issue would be a problem. If I speak to an entity in English, why would it respond in another language? It would make no sense at all that an entity would comprehend the English language and decide to communicate back to this English speaker by then speaking in a different language. Even so, if it is clear and intelligible the language it is in will be able to be determined. At this point a number of independent people who speak that language can conduct the procedure I outline later in this post. As for a voice disguiser why would an entity have a voice disguiser? That's just weird. Even so, a disguiser does not make what is said unclear, it alters the pitch or tone of the voice. Thus what is said is still identifiable while the voice of the person who says it is not.

At this point you are simply repeating yourself without either putting any thought into what you're saying, or reading what people are saying to you. Specifically, you did not answer this:

There are a number of variants of this question, all of which are possible sources of contention over what was actually said. The 8-out-of-10 thing has been brought up before, and the obvious problem is: how do you know the 2 aren't right, and the 8 aren't wrong?

More insults. You can discuss things respectfully or you will be ignored. Either is fine by me.

To answer, you can't know the 2 aren't right. You cannot know anything with absolute certainty. Science never has and never will deal in the realm of absolute certainty. If that was what was demanded for the $million challenge then the challenge would rightly be called a sham. Science is based on probability or likelihood that a law or study is true. For many studies significance is based on a p<.05 or p<.01. Even with a 5% or 1% chance of type I error these studies are considered very likely to show a real relationship. I'm not certain but I thought the JREF required something like .001 for the preliminary test and final test. How do you know that each time that 1/1000 chance didn't happen? (And now to answer my own question!) You don't. It's just extremely unlikely.

So let me lay it out like this.
Assume for the sake of this hypothetical situation, that measures have been taken to ensure that no cheating is going on. Also assume for the purpose of simplicity that the entity speaks English. I go to a spot where I claim I can communicate with otherworldly entities or something of that nature. I don't really know anything about EVP recordings so I don't know if it would also record the questions I ask. If they don't then in addition to the EVP recording would be a tape recorder started at the same time as the EVP. After I say I'm done communicating with the entity the EVP is given to 100 independent people who are told absolutely nothing about this other than they are needed for a study and need to listen to this recording and do their best to transcribe what they hear. They will all do this in separate rooms or at separate times to ensure they don't influence one another.

Let's say that 95 out of 100 people wrote down having heard the same words and phrases.

What would be the odds of the EVP, picking up words and phrases, the words and phrases are answers to my questions, they are answered in correct order and always after I ask the question, and were understood clearly and intelligibly by 95 out of 100 independent listeners?

 

[Robaato]

Please show where the JREF agreed to 6pm.

Actually, please show me where the JREF has agreed to anything protocol related at all.

Seriously, has there been any communication, much less agreement, lately?

 

[RoboTimbo]

<snip>
What would be the odds of the EVP, picking up words and phrases, the words and phrases are answers to my questions, they are answered in correct order and always after I ask the question, and were understood clearly and intelligibly by 95 out of 100 independent listeners?

I would suggest that you submit a tentative protocol so that it can be examined bit by bit. This may be a great help in developing a protocol for The Professor, you standing in as proxy for him. We might be able to actually have a conversation about it.