Merged New telepathy test: which number did I write ?

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dlorde said:
The OP repeats one of the choices (4) at least eleven times in describing the test. This alone is sufficient to introduce enough potential bias to invalidate the test (if it wasn't bad enough already).
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dlorde, meaningful and reliable answers to this telepathy test should in principle not depend upon the number of "1"s, "2"s,"3"s and "4"s in the opening post. Counting these number of "1"s, "2"s,"3"s and "4"s in the initial post will not help you finding the number I wrote and circled on my sheet of paper, which was produced by a random number generator. And answering in this way will not lead to an average "hit rate" different from 25% (with no telepathy involved).

It is true that there was an error in the initial post, but it was promptly corrected after being pointed out, and it never prevented you answering in a meaningful way in this test. Good scientist aren't those who never make mistakes (those probably do not exist), they're (more) those who acknowledge their errors, and correct them, so as to constantly make headway. If you, or others find another error, or have suggestions for improvement, don't hesitate to let me know, I'll make the necessary changes.
 
Kid Eager said:
Why only four choices? This alone invalidates the test.
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Kid Eager, Zener cards are sometimes used to conduct telepathy experiments, there are five of them. In ganzfeld telepathy research, there are usually also four possibilities of choice (to my knowledge).
One thing which would be wrong would be to conclude that telepathy has been proved, just because one person has answered correctly when there are four choices, and there is a 25% probability of answering correctly, even with no telepathy at all. Keep in mind that (tentative) conclusions are (usually) drawn only after many answers have been given, after a statistical analysis has been done for the large collection of answers.
 
I don't get what this test is supposed to find. Are you testing to see if anybody who responds is telepathic, or is this a test of your own ability to project some sort of vision to potential telepaths?

My answer is I don't know.
 
Michel H said:
Kid Eager, Zener cards are sometimes used to conduct telepathy experiments, there are five of them. In ganzfeld telepathy research, there are usually also four possibilities of choice (to my knowledge).
One thing which would be wrong would be to conclude that telepathy has been proved, just because one person has answered correctly when there are four choices, and there is a 25% probability of answering correctly, even with no telepathy at all. Keep in mind that (tentative) conclusions are (usually) drawn only after many answers have been given, after a statistical analysis has been done for the large collection of answers.
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My point exactly - the cards are not the methodology.

The methodology you propose limits everybody to 4 choices, and the distribution of the results within those four choices will be indistinguishable from random distribution, even if there were some telepathy involved.

Now if you wrote one number per hour, and had people respond to that number within the hour, and repeat for several days, a meaningful set of data may emerge.
 
I concentrated on the assigned task and an image of a brightly lit piece of paper appeared, the circled number on it was xx.



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I am not encrypting it, I will just send it to Agatha
 
The problem with applying rigor to telepathy is that the telepathy then tends to disappear.

ETA: Fortunately for telepathy, not much rigor proposed here.
 
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Ladewig said:
I concentrated on the assigned task and an image of a brightly lit piece of paper appeared, the circled number on it was xx.



.
I am not encrypting it, I will just send it to Agatha
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Good, Ladewig, thank you for your essentially valid answer. You are only the second person (after Hokulele) who gave a correctly "masked" (with "xx") answer in this more controlled and rigorous test. I am still a little frustrated, however, because I saw no MD5 hash, neither from you, nor from Hokulele, but I don't think this is really a major problem.
 
kid meatball said:
I don't get what this test is supposed to find. Are you testing to see if anybody who responds is telepathic, or is this a test of your own ability to project some sort of vision to potential telepaths?

My answer is I don't know.
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^ Yeah, what the kid said.

Any coincidental "correct" answers can be claimed as "proof" that Michael and/or the guesser are telepathic.

This test fails IMHO.
 
Orphia Nay said:
^ Yeah, what the kid said.

Any coincidental "correct" answers can be claimed as "proof" that Michael and/or the guesser are telepathic.

This test fails IMHO.
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Yes, it fails because the OP has only the most basic understanding of the scientific method, and if he has that much it is only because members here have pointed out huge holes in his earlier "experiments".

These "experiments" are a nonsensical waste of time.
 
I'm getting equally strong impressions of "2" and "4" so should I submit something like xx,xx or should I split it into separate posts?

Also, when will my hash be delivered?
 
Right to get this right, he wrote down 4 numbers? Assuming all guesses are even (which they aren't) 25% of people are going to be right by chance alone. Even a computer will have a 1/4 in chance of guessing correctly. It's a good way to DISPROVE telepathy completely.

Another thing: double-blind it. Don't tell the other person what they are working with.
 
tuxcat said:
Right to get this right, he wrote down 4 numbers? Assuming all guesses are even (which they aren't) 25% of people are going to be right by chance alone.
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The OPer is hoping to demonstrate that the test results will be significantly higher than 25%.
 
Ladewig said:
The OPer is hoping to demonstrate that the test results will be significantly higher than 25%.
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Right I see. It's still not very rigorous though and due to the small sample size flukes will result in a large scale error anyway. And people don't choose numbers randomly either which is a bit of a problem but that's the way the cookie crumbles unfortunately. I would advise the OP to use something like a number between 0 and infinity to reduce the odds of flukes causing a large error.

Those well-versed in statistics might want to clear that up a bit as I'm not very succinct at explaining it, sorry.
 
tuxcat said:
Right to get this right, he wrote down 4 numbers? Assuming all guesses are even (which they aren't) 25% of people are going to be right by chance alone. Even a computer will have a 1/4 in chance of guessing correctly. It's a good way to DISPROVE telepathy completely.

Another thing: double-blind it. Don't tell the other person what they are working with.
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I am not sure I understand you very well, tuxcat, but I think you gave me an idea ;) Since neither Hokulele, nor Ladewig (they are the two answerers who have provided essentially valid answers, until now) have posted MD5 hashes of their properly "complexified" full answer, I think I should post myself a MD5 hash of a complicated sentence containing my number to "guess" , in order to give sufficient security to this test (similar to, for example: "The number I wrote and circled for this test is 5 .... f4315d 3b1fcd81 rdtiuguyf zqreiudler", but with "5" replaced by "1", or "2", or "3", or "4").
This hash is:
4f956837e6022c4eb5a30fc05c52c7a4
At the end of the test, I should reveal the sentence (containing my number to "guess") which corresponds and leads to the hash above. From now on, it would be virtually impossible for me to change the "target" number I wrote, and I ask you to write here.
 
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Michel H said:
<something>

At the end of the test, I should reveal the sentence (containing my number to "guess") which corresponds and leads to the hash above. From now on, it would be virtually impossible for me to change the "target" number I wrote, and I ask you to write here.
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It's not much use coming up with these various methods to create an illusion of integrity when all you're going to do is use that idiotic "credibility scale" to declare invalid anyone's guesses that you don't like.

Why would we even be bothered with the possibility of you tampering with your chosen number when we already consider it most likely that there will be an even spread between all four numbers anyway?

There's no need for you to resort to subterfuge when it's just as easy and far more effective for you to blatantly reject all the misses and just count the hits.
 
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