How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[Lusikka]

I'm not familiar with that one; got a link?

Use Google, key: superminds taylor

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Please review post #472 on this thread. I had previously asked Linda: "So do you think there is any objective way to determine whether there is such a thing as synchronicity?" To which, in that post, she began by responding "Yes."

I'm still waiting for her to explain what she has in mind.

And I call shenaningans because. . .
in post #351, you said:

So, given the fact that "equally weird" things seem to happen to just about everyone, why not investigate this phenomenon, as opposed to assuming that all of these weird things are garden variety coincidences?

To which I asked, in post #362,

How do you propose to "investigate this phenomenon"?

And I'm still waiting for your answer.


Additionally, I think even before these you were asked how to distinguish between events that are mere coincidence and synchronicity. At one point you said the distinction is that synchronicity is only when someone attributes meaning or significance to the event, but you took that back (to your credit) when you realized that means the events are inherently meaningless. Since then your only answer has been the low probability. I've pointed out that a great many other low probability events happen all the time that you do not consider to be synchronicity.

So I'm still waiting for that answer. How do you tell the difference between synchronicity and mere (or "garden variety") coincidence?

If you can answer this question, I'm sure the question of how to prove or disprove synchronicity will be possible.

If, as I suspect you simultaneously claim that synchronicity is NOT mere coincidence but it is acausal, then I can prove that it's a logical contradiction and no more possible than a 4-sided triangle.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes, I have the book on my bookshelf. You have interpreted the Taylor case a little wrong. He was not any bright experimenter and because of his gullibility he did not have controls enough stringent. He changed his mind because he thought in the beginning that the mechanism of the bendings was electromagnetic. When it was not so he became utterly disappointed. Martin Gardner has written disinformation about the case.

Now there's a claim in need of evidence. What disinformation has Gardner written about this case?

Aside from that, why should we believe your claim that you know an 8 year old who can exhibit some form of PK at will? (Especially when you said you don't know anyone who can perform PSI powers at will as required by the JREF MDC.) Is this 8 year old someone you have met? Or are you maybe repeating hearsay and taking it as truth?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Have you read about the "Superminds" fiasco? Children have successfully tricked highly intelligent adults into thinking that they had such powers. The fact that they were hoaxing the investigating scientists was revealed only by the use of hidden cameras.

On top of that, it's a false dichotomy wrt the 8 year old Lusikka claims to know of that either the child was cheating or can demonstrate PK powers at will.

I can think of a number of other possibilities, the most likely of which is that this is just a rumor or urban legend. (Since Lusikka also admits that none of the people he or she knows with psychic powers can demonstrate them on command, I'm deducing that he or she doesn't actually know the 8 year old.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Seconded. Thanks in advance.


M.

Here's a quote from Gardner's review of the book:

The book is subtitled, "A scientist looks at the paranormal." It should have been subtitled, "A scientist gapes at Uri Geller," because Geller, the young and handsome Israeli prestidigitator who insists he never prestidigitates, is both the book's immediate cause as well as its superstar.

(The review is available for $3 from here: http://www.nybooks.com/authors/408 see "Paranonsense")

And the following is from a book on my shelf, Gardner's The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (page 16):

The only good trap was set by two scientists at the University of Bath who did not even mean to set it. Puzzled by the fact that no one ever sees metal bend--Taylor called it the "shyness effect"--they put some spoon-bending youngsters in a room, then filmed them through a one-way mirror. The purpose was not to embarrass the children, but to record the shyness effect. To their amazement, they saw the children cheating. Taylor soon because disenchanted, but such revelations had no effect on Hasted's mind-set.

(page 47):

Taylor, by the way, later repudiated his ridiculous book and concluded that Geller is a fraud and that paranormal metal-bending does not exist.

I've also read about these kids elsewhere. IIRC, typical of the level of controls on these "experiments" is that the spoons were sometimes placed in closed cylinders of some sort and actually sent home with the kids who returned them the next day with the spoons bent. I can't remember where I read that--maybe in the original Superminds itself.

ETA: The Skeptic's Dictionary has an entry under "Shyness Effect". That's probably where I read about the sealed tubes:

Taylor put the objects to be bent in tubes that he sealed and then sent the kids home to work their paranormal powers. He naively believed that because he couldn't detect any tampering with the tubes that the kids bent their objects through mental intention. This was not the first nor the last time that children would fool an eminent scientist.

The article says that Randi debunked Superminds in his 1982 book The Truth About Uri Geller.

 

[Lusikka]

I am certain nobody has bent a spoon by "psi power". I have no opinion about an anecdote I didn't see.

Your terms are misleading.
Wikipedia: An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident.
Wikipedia: Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, as evidence that cannot be investigated using the scientific method.

I told you what I had seen and that is not an anecdote. I took notes. I have noticed that skeptics use the term "anecdotal" in pejorative meaning. Naturally it is possible that the boy cheated or I am a liar. But my claim can be studied scientifically by interviewing all people then present. And then, you are certain but don't have any opinion?

That's a lie and it directly contradicts what you say next:

So either the 8 year old can or can't do it at will. One way or the other, you're telling a fib.

There is something wrong with your logic or you read my post carelessly. I wrote: "There was also an 8-year old boy doing the same trick successfully, at will". If he could do something for more than thirty years ago does not mean he can do it today.

Because all available evidence points me to the conclusion that PK and ESP do not exist.

Logically what you wrote means that you have seen all available evidence. Impossible.

I hold this conclusion provisionally. If you can show me compelling evidence to the contrary, I'm willing to revise my conclusion. (Please note that the compelling evidence has to outweigh the preponderance of accumulated evidence to date. Since such evidence would call into question a great many generally accepted truths in several fields of science, it would have to be. . .extraordinary!)

It is not possible to have "accumulated evidence" that PSI does not exist. But it is possible that you have lack of evidence. I can tell you a secret – you cannot find the evidence in skeptical sources.

I just agreed with you that PSI phenomena, if real, would be causal whereas the claim of "synchronicity" is that it is acausal. The problem with PSI phenomena is a lack of evidence; the problem with synchronicity is a logical problem. That is, if synchronicity is defined as an explanation for something that is acausal but is not mere coincidence, then the idea is self-contradictory.

I agree otherwise, but I have found enormous quantities of evidence for existence of PSI.

Sorry to be so petty, but things must be precise to have something settled.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Your terms are misleading.

Not at all:

Wikipedia: Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, as evidence that cannot be investigated using the scientific method.

I told you what I had seen and that is not an anecdote. I took notes. I have noticed that skeptics use the term "anecdotal" in pejorative meaning.

Yes, what you told me is "anecdotal evidence".

But my claim can be studied scientifically by interviewing all people then present. And then, you are certain but don't have any opinion?

That's not how science works. Getting eyewitness testimony to a past event is not studying the phenomenon scientifically.

There is something wrong with your logic or you read my post carelessly. I wrote: "There was also an 8-year old boy doing the same trick successfully, at will". If he could do something for more than thirty years ago does not mean he can do it today.

Ah, so your "evidence" consists of your story about something that happened 30 years ago?

Logically what you wrote means that you have seen all available evidence. Impossible.

It's not impossible. Do you have any idea what "available" means? Again, the reason I'm certain PSI phenomena do not exist is because there is a huge abundance of evidence that points to that conclusion. Against that there is the "evidence" such as you've provided: hearsay of events that happened in the past and can't be reproduced in controlled conditions. Furthermore, the claim of PSI phenomena would require overturning major portions of several well-established disciplines. I'm not willing to do that without evidence that outweighs the evidence supporting those fields.

It is not possible to have "accumulated evidence" that PSI does not exist. But it is possible that you have lack of evidence. I can tell you a secret – you cannot find the evidence in skeptical sources.

Again you're wrong. Science can falsify hypotheses. The various PSI hypotheses have been falsified again and again.

I agree otherwise, but I have found enormous quantities of evidence for existence of PSI.

Please provide "enormous quantities of evidence for the existence of PSI". (And "enormous quantities" of well controlled scientific evidence is what it would take. I don't think you can provide that because it does not exist.)

 

[Dr Adequate]

Yes, I have the book on my bookshelf. You have interpreted the Taylor case a little wrong. He was not any bright experimenter ...

Anyone who makes it to "professional scientist" status is at least above average in intelligence.

However, his experiments were not good, because he did not design them to take into account the possibility that he was being hoaxed.

... and because of his gullibility he did not have controls enough stringent.

Whereas you, of course, are not that gullible, and had hidden cameras everywhere.

No?

He changed his mind because he thought in the beginning that the mechanism of the bendings was electromagnetic. When it was not so he became utterly disappointed.

He changed his mind because he discovered that a hoax was being practiced on him.

Martin Gardner has written disinformation about the case.

Really? Please cite one false statement he wrote about the subject and prove that it is false.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

And again, when confronted with the fact that the kids were cheating, Taylor changed his stand and renounced the spoon bending foolishness.

 

[Olowkow]

I wonder why no one ever bends (sharp) knives with their mind?

 

[Dr Adequate]

I told you what I had seen and that is not an anecdote. I took notes. I have noticed that skeptics use the term "anecdotal" in pejorative meaning. Naturally it is possible that the boy cheated or I am a liar. But my claim can be studied scientifically by interviewing all people then present.

But you could say that of the Superminds hoax, or of the Geller hoax, or of any trick ever pulled by any magician. And you'd be wrong in every case. You do not study a magic trick scientifically by interviewing the eyewitnesses to the trick, otherwise we'd have scientific proof that Harry Houdini could make elephants disappear.

By the way, doesn't the Geller thing worry you a bit? If you believe in psychic spoonbending, you've got to believe that certain people with psychic gifts have the ability to bend metal using only the power of their minds --- but that no-one noticed this until a man whom we now know to be a charlatan fraudulently claimed to be a psychic spoonbender --- after which we discovered that there were real spoonbenders. That power had apparently been latent in humanity all along, but we never noticed this until a professional magician falsely claimed to have this power.

Doesn't that sequence of events set off a few alarm bells in your head?

 

[cyborg]

Doesn't that sequence of events set off a few alarm bells in your head?

No; it's like the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she enables all the latent Slayers to become full Slayers. Clearly Uri Geller is some sort of chosen magical nexus.

 

[aggle-rithm]

And that happened, in ten minutes, when the boy had the bowl of the spoon between the tips of thumb and index finger of his left hand and he had the shaft of the spoon between the tips of thumb and index finger of his right hand.

So he could bend a spoon using only the power of his mind, plus his fingers.

I can also do this, because my mind is CONNECTED to my fingers. This is actually true of most people.

 

[Moochie]

Here's a quote from Gardner's review of the book:


(The review is available for $3 from here: http://www.nybooks.com/authors/408 see "Paranonsense")

And the following is from a book on my shelf, Gardner's The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (page 16):


(page 47):

<snip>

Thanks for that.


M.

 

[Moochie]

So he could bend a spoon using only the power of his mind, plus his fingers.

I can also do this, because my mind is CONNECTED to my fingers. This is actually true of most people.

I've successfully bent various spoons here during our southern summers. I don't fully understand why it appears to be seasonal, but it usually happens when I am attempting to dislodge almost frozen ice cream from its container.

It's a strange world.


M.

 

[Careyp74]

What is so special about spoons that these hoaxers only bend THEM, and not other objects? Oh yeah, the TRICK can only be done with spoons.

 

[Elizabeth I]

What is so special about spoons that these hoaxers only bend THEM, and not other objects? Oh yeah, the TRICK can only be done with spoons.

I understand some people can do the trick with keys. I think maybe Randi even did it once.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Imagine if PK were real! You actually have the power to manipulate objects with PSI power alone. What would you do with this incredible ability?

Definitely bend spoons. . . and keys.

(So should we ask the mods to split off all this PK and PSI stuff from the synchronicity thread?)

 

[Lusikka]

Really? Please cite one false statement he [Gardner] wrote about the subject and prove that it is false.

Martin Gardner (1981/1989), 'Science; Good, Bad and Bogus':
"Oddly, Taylor never _sees_ anything bend, …" [italics/MG]. (p. 93)

John Taylor (1975), 'Superminds':
"I saw a strip of silver bend up and flop over on being rubbed gently by one subject". (p. 74)

 

[Dr H]

It does seem a bit circular. Synchronicity is more or less defined (when one looks at the usage of the word) as that force which causes things that look like they're coincidences but aren't really, 'cos they're caused by synchronicity.

However, one might test for this effect. Take a couple of people (let's say a pair of identical twins, since there are a number of anecdotes suggesting synchronicity between such people) and get them to make repeated simultaneous coin tosses. By chance alone, we expect the coins to come down the same way 50% of the time. Any statistically significant excess over that might be called an example of synchronization, even if we don't know what this underlying force of "synchronicity" is.

While that might be an interesting experiment in its own right, I don't see that it really tests for synchronicity. What "meaning" is being asserted between the two sets of coin tosses, even should there happen to be more coincidental results than expected? Can meaning be externally imposed on such coincidences? And if so, aren't we then really defining the causal connections in the system, and therefore superceding any synchronicity?

It seems like synchonicity as used in this sense is simply a word being used to say "here is a causal connection that we hadn't discovered before." It's not clear to me that this test can verify that synchronicity exists as a separate and distinct phenomenon from either coincidence or causality.

However, the people who tout synchronicity don't do this. Instead, they produce a set of anecdotes where we have no way of calculating whether there is any excess of apparent coincidences over the number of coincidences we should expect to be produced by chance. Their data set is chosen (indeed, cherry-picked) in such a way as to make their hypothesis untestable with reference to their data.

I think the term itself practically requires that they do that.

To me, this seems to be a classic case of the many alleged paranormalisms in which researchers do a great deal of hand-waving about searching for mechanisms to explain an alleged phenomenon for which they haven't actually established the existence. (E.g., proposed quantum mechanical "explanations" for "telepathy".)

"Synchronicity" is a term coined to describe a phenomenon that hasn't actually been demonstrated.