Merged New telepathy test: which number did I write ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
It is sometimes the case that people with high functioning autism or asperger's syndrome have difficulty in understanding sarcasm and dry humour.

It may be that Michel cannot understand humour of this variety. This doesn't mean that he is otherwise impaired. Although his basic ability to put together an experiment is. Michel, please answer my question about your students when you have a moment, I would be most interested to hear your views.
 
While I know that the MDC doesn't care about the HOW of any phenomena and that speculation into the mechanisms of whatever is supposed to be going on is both cart-before-horse and pointless, I can't help thinking that many, if not most, prospective applicants do both care and speculate.

Michel, please forgive me if I've missed it, but have you presented your reasons for the very narrow range of numbers to choose from? You, or indeed anyone, with any education above high-school, should know that the 1-4 range is more misleading than useful.

You say that you "project whole ideas" and not just a number. Would you also say that the idea of 2 compared to the idea of 3 is significantly different from 2048 compared to 4271? Why or why not?

If I were to tell a person not to think about elephants, most would find it hard to remove the idea of "elephant" from their minds. They would not, usually, start thinking about cats (animals) or peanuts (loved by elephants) or even hippos (large gray animals in need of glasses). The idea of "elephant" is pretty specific. Would your "projected whole idea" of a number be similarly specific or would it be more nebulous?

The numbers 1 to 4 are all single-syllable words. A large number, like 842326 (eighthundredfortytwothousandthreehundredtwentysix) is still very specific as a number, but perhaps fraught with difficulties as an idea. If you stick to one-syllable numbers, you still have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12, thus expanding your range significantly. The 10 and 12 can be removed, if you want them both single-syllable and single-digit.

You said you've had difficulties with "projecting" ideas other than numbers. Did you test for any sort of limits to the idea? The idea of a triangle is simple, both mathematically and as an image but has three syllables, a cat is a much more complex idea but a rather simpler word. (Images of cats have, I believe, been forbidden in the forum, so I'm not going there.)

I will now echo something many have already said. The range 1-4 is useless. You know this. If larger ranges or different "ideas" have not given you the results you were hoping for, you should perhaps consider the implication that your "projecting whole ideas" isn't working the way you think or as well as you think.

Method! Isolate causes! Crash-test ideas! Y'know - science!

The above has been sincere enough and without many of the obvious red flags that would give me a low CR. Thus, feeling full of cred, I'll now share my opinion that it is cause for concern when a Ph.D. displays the cognitive dissonance needed to feel that the suggested protocols are useful, appropriate or effective enough to show much of anything.

I want much of the "supernatural" or "paranormal" or "magic" to work! What a fantastic world it would be. (Not to mention deadly and frightening.) That said, if I want to experience it, I'll read a book, watch a film, play a game or listen to a story, where I know it's all fantasy. To be taken for a ride by sloppy thinking and broken methodology just isn't my cuppa.
 
Last edited:
Michel H said:
I think it is in my interest, and in the interest of my scientific project, to give participants of this test an impression they are taking part in a good, scientific, project.
Click to expand...

Now there is your problem. You want to give participants an impression of taking part in a good, scientific, project, while what you need to do is design a real, good, scientific, project for them to participate in.

An impression is not the real thing.
 
Capt.Nemo said:
Michel, please forgive me if I've missed it, but have you presented your reasons for the very narrow range of numbers .
Click to expand...

Yes . He said that the success of the tests decreases with larger ranges.

..........

MH is convinced that everyone or almost everyone receives the transmitted number but many respondents lie and provide a false response instead of the correct response. You are more than welcome to try to explain the flaws in the test, but be prepared for MH to hand wave them away and assert that these test successfully prove his telepathic powers.
 
Last edited:
Ladewig said:
Yes . He said that the success of the tests decreases with larger ranges.

..........

MH is convinced that everyone or almost everyone receives the transmitted number but many respondents lie and provide a false response instead of the correct response. You are more than welcome to try to explain the flaws in the test, but be prepared for MH to hand wave them away and assert that these test successfully prove his telepathic powers.
Click to expand...

It is funny, though, that his test does not really address the fact that he thinks most people will lie. If he can, as he claims, tell how likely a person is to be a liar based on their posts and usernames, he should be a group of people he finds to be credible BEFORE asking them to guess his number. Heck, he should just find one person he trusts to always be honest.

He consistently gets results to his tests that are consistent with people simply guessing. His conclusion is that each person has a 75% chance of lying every time they submit an answer.
 
TheSapient said:
Heck, he should just find one person he trusts to always be honest.
Click to expand...

IIRC, he said elsewhere on this or one of his earlier 1 - 4 threads that he does not know one person whom he would trust enough to participate in such a test, hence his obsession with (over) analysing every written word, where he has shown even less talent than in his telepathy claim.

Norm
 
That's because when his telepathy tests don't work he believes that the participants were lying not that they didn't receive the signal. In other words the only participants that can be trusted are those that admit they received the signal and demonstrate it by getting the number guess right. Oh dear. What an effort all that convoluted thinking must be. Poor Michel.
 
scarlettinlondon said:
That's because when his telepathy tests don't work he believes that the participants were lying not that they didn't receive the signal. In other words the only participants that can be trusted are those that admit they received the signal and demonstrate it by getting the number guess right. Oh dear. What an effort all that convoluted thinking must be. Poor Michel.
Click to expand...


Couldn't he solve this by blinding the study - employing a surrogate to ask people the number they are receiving without them knowing that he is the one sending it?
 
Loss Leader said:
Couldn't he solve this by blinding the study - employing a surrogate to ask people the number they are receiving without them knowing that he is the one sending it?
Click to expand...

Yes, but that will give him the "wrong" answer. He has to be able to re-evaluate the results to "make them work." This last time, he proposed to blind himself by evaluating the reliability first, and only reading the number afterward, which would work okay. But even the fact that no one selected the correct hit this last time was not enough- he had to interpret the numbers further ("42 is two plus two plus two").

So yes, you have a logical idea, as would the idea of selecting a big number to eliminate the need to have reliability rankings at all, but however the result would be obtained, Michel H would need to see the result as proof. So good scientific ideas for a neutral test are worth proposing, but are not the goal.
 
scarlettinlondon said:
That's because when his telepathy tests don't work he believes that the participants were lying not that they didn't receive the signal. In other words the only participants that can be trusted are those that admit they received the signal and demonstrate it by getting the number guess right. Oh dear. What an effort all that convoluted thinking must be. Poor Michel.
Click to expand...

And those participants are ONLY trustworthy when giving the correct answer. They are no more likely to be honest the next time around as anyone else.
 
Loss Leader said:
Couldn't he solve this by blinding the study - employing a surrogate to ask people the number they are receiving without them knowing that he is the one sending it?
Click to expand...

This can easily be solved programmatically.

The Receiver can look at a web page with numbers 1-4 (or 1-9 or whatever.) They are instructed to click on whichever number they are thinking of.

The Sender looks at a different screen with the same numbers, and told to click on whichever number he/she wants to transmit.

The values of the numbers clicked can be stored (with timestamps) and compared for matches.

I would be shocked if something like this hasn't already been done.

:cool:
 
Here is another idea for a telepathy test for Michel:

Randomly pick a letter, A to Z. Send it. Ask people to report it. Then do it again twice more with the successes 1 in 26 odds the first time and much longer odds total for all three for random chance. Not a perfect test, but too bad. Qs don't count as almost Os, etc., and no evavluation. Lying will disappear in the noise. L is not twice A so less possible post hoc interpretation compared to numbers.
 
Last edited:
Giordano said:
Qs don't count as almost Os, etc., and no evaluation. Lying will disappear in the noise. L is not twice A so less possible post hoc interpretation compared to numbers.
Click to expand...

Given the way Michael turned '42' into a hit on '2', I doubt those rule's will stop him post hocizing. Let's have a go now:

Aa -- a is a rotated e
Bb -- B is 2 D's on top of each other, b is a mirrored d or q or rotated p
Cc -- C and c are half O and o, or partial d, mirrored b or q or rotated p ...
Dd -- D is half a B (Eric), a squished O. d as for b.
Ee -- e is a rotated a
Ff -- F is a partial E
Gg -- G is a broken O or broken & rotated Q, g is a q
Hh -- H is a rotated I with big serifs. h is a broken b
Ii -- I is l, i is j
Jj -- j is i
Kk --
Ll -- l is I
Mm -- M is a rotated W or a double rotated V. m is double rotated u
Nn -- N is rotated Z or S. n is rotated u
Oo -- O is closed C
Pp -- p as for b/d/q
Qq -- Q is closed G, deformed O, q is closed y
Rr --
Ss -- S is rotated N/Z
Tt -- t is rotated x
Uu -- u is rotated n
Vv -- V is half W, M
Ww -- W is mirrored M
Xx - X rotated t
Yy -- y is open q
Zz -- Z is rotated N, S

I admit I stopped looking very hard about halfway through, and I've not considered the phonics (in different languages). So there's going to be a whole ton of possibilities!
 
Akhenaten said:
For the next game, I pick "kr".

By the way, why are the results from the previous game taking so long?
Click to expand...

Because nobody answered "2" and the best Michel could come up with was "42" equals "two twos and a two" while entirely failing to recognise the cultural significance of the answer "42".
 
Akhenaten said:
...

By the way, why are the results from the previous game taking so long?
Click to expand...
In my view, this was not a game, but, rather, a telepathy test.
Unfortunately, nobody answered validly in this test: fromdownunder answered 42 (not in the 1-4 range), Nay_Sayer and scarlettinlondon were unable to post the character string they used to produce their MD5 hashes, and Snorkio never came back to tell us his guessed number.
 
Michel H said:
In my view, this was not a game, but, rather, a telepathy test.
Unfortunately, nobody answered validly in this test: fromdownunder answered 42 (not in the 1-4 range), Nay_Sayer and scarlettinlondon were unable to post the character string they used to produce their MD5 hashes, and Snorkio never came back to tell us his guessed number.
Click to expand...


But it's not a game?

It appears that you are the only one who holds that view.
 
Michel H said:
In my view, this was not a game, but, rather, a telepathy test.
Click to expand...

Do you understand that you are the only person on this entire forum that holds that view?

Please be sure to let us know when you realize this forum is not a good place to run psychic tests the way you want to run them.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom