In the proceeding sentence I stipulated that "lying" could be "conscious or unconscious". Is there another word that would be more concise? In 2 out of 3 of those cases where a negative CR was assigned, Michel correctly assessed that the poster was incorrectly relaying the target number. Anyone should be able to do the math here. This is one of the tests I've said you have all failed.
I'm sure we are all crushed by your judgement.
Michel correctly stated that the wrong answers were wrong. That is all that can be said about the wrong answers.
You (and Michel) are adding in the concept of lying (conscious or unconscious), but this could only take place if the participants had in fact received a target number. You appear to be making the same assumption that Michel does in that there is some kind of mechanism whereby Michel's thoughts are transmitted to other people.
do not suggest that you did fiddle the results. I only suggest that it is impossible to know that you didn't. A robust protocol would eliminate the possibility.
Agreed. However, saying that it is impossible to know something is a long way from your accusation that my participation cannot be trusted. In such an informal test as this (and we are not, I remind you, in the MDC forum), you may rely on my word or not, as you choose, but that does not give you the right to call someone else untrustworthy.
Now, what have you got to say about all the posters that have directly accused Michel of cheating? Why have you been quiet on that if you believe such behavior is uncivil?
Provide me with a link of someone accusing Michel of cheating, and I will address it or report it as I see fit. You might prefer to take it up with the accuser(s) themselves, though, as I did.
You still don't understand the test. If telepathy were so easily demonstrated, the ganzfield experiments would have shown it. Michel has come up with a solution to the liars paradox for telepathy.
Assuming that there is a psychic connection between minds but that the unconscious mind will lie so that a test will show the same result as if there were no such connection, if the tester can identify with an accuracy greater than chance which connections are lies and which are the truth, that will show that there is a psychic connection.
It's like quantum entanglement in physics. There is a connection between particles at great distances but it's only the cooralation that shows this connection and it cannot be used directly for faster than light communications.
That's a mighty big assumption. If we assume it to be true, and also assume that Michel can identify the lies correctly, then the blinded credibility ratings would have been positive (or at least higher) for the correct answers and negative for the wrong answers. That is not what the results were.
Of the six answers which were both sent to me and were rated by Michel for credibility, the two correct answers received credibility ratings of -5 and 0 respectively.
The other four (wrong) answers also received credibility ratings of between -5 and 0.
No answers were discarded for violations of the protocol at this stage.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=9597953#post9597953
Michel then threw out three of the incorrect answers for 'violation' of the protocol. I should point out that no new information, other than whether the answers were right or wrong, was revealed between the blinded answers being rated for credibility and the wrong answers being discarded. I posted the exact text of the PM sent to me in all six cases.
Further, an examination of the protocol as set by Michel reveals that only two of the seven answers which he considered followed the protocol exactly - and both of these ended up by being discarded.
Protocol step 1: Send the actual answer to Agatha. Note, it was not part of the protocol to send the MD5 hash to me. It was not made clear in the protocol that participants were supposed to send exactly the same text to me as they posted in the thread, and nothing else. Indeed, this step was only described as "it may be useful" rather than an integral part of the protocol.
Protocol step 2: Post your answer to the thread in a sentence, hiding the chosen number with the digits 'xx'.
Protocol step 3: Add some further unguessable text to your answer and turn the entire answer, using the actual number in place of the xx, into a MD5 hash, and post the hash to the thread. Most participants did not do this.
Protocol step 4: Michel will rate the answers given in the thread for credibility. Michel did not say he would use other posts by that particular member in this thread as part of his credibility rating, but he did appear to take these into account.
Protocol step 5: Agatha will reveal the numbers in place of the xx as sent to her.
Michel considered the answers given by Hokulele, Ladewig, stanfr, Kid Eager, fagin, femke and gabeygoat.
I received PMs from Hokulele, Ladewig, stanfr, Kid Eager, femke, gabeygoat and Naysayer.
I have used the simple code of Y for following each step of the protocol and N for not following that step.
Participant|PM to Agatha|Post blinded guess in the thread|Post MD5 hash|CR rating|Answer|Discarded by Michel after unblinding
Hokulele|Y|Y|N|0|1|N
Ladewig|Y|Y|N|-5|2|N
stanfr|Y|Y|Y|-5|1|Y
Kid Eager|Y|Y|N|-5|4|Y
fagin|N|Y|N|-4|?|Y
femke|Y|Y|N|0|2|N
gabeygoat|Y|Y|Y|0|4|Y
NaySayer|Y|N|N|?|?|Y
The only two people to follow all three steps of the protocol were stanfr and gabeygoat, but Michel discarded their answers because they had sent me different and/or additional words than the words they had posted in the thread, something which was not explicitly spelled out in the protocol as a breach.
fagin and NaySayer's answers had to be discarded as fagin did not PM me so it was not possible to find out what number s/he picked, and NaySayer didn't post a blinded answer to the thread for Michel to assess.
Of the remaining four people who did not follow all three steps of the protocol, three were accepted after the unblinding, and one wasn't.
but surely that makes secret voting pointless. If I were obliged to use the identical form of words then I must have written one of;
