Ed A call for new open-minded research on psychic phenomena

[theprestige]

IF...IF...IF there is something, we must not be looking in the right place.

We're looking exactly where the claimants tell us to look. If we're not looking in the right place, neither are the claimants.

The upshot of this is, whatever is being claimed isn't being found. Ghosts, bigfoot, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. None of these exist as claimed. We've pretty much ruled out the entire category of claimed paranormal phenomena.

Your complaint is that nobody has bothered to try to invent a test of something nobody has ever even claimed.

Meanwhile, science continues to find new things all the time. Not by arbitrarily inventing tests of things nobody has even thought of yet, though.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

In a way it is the same thing. If you are saying that "modern science would have found something paranormal by now, if there was such a thing", you are saying that there will be no further scientific discovery that could possibly verify anything paranormal.

Although I personally feel this is actually pretty close to the truth, I think the actual position is more like "every individual instance we have studied has not turned up anything, so the best position right now is that there is nothing to find".

 

[Warp12]

Although I personally feel this is actually pretty close to the truth, I think the actual position is more like "every individual instance we have studied has not turned up anything, so the best position right now is that there is nothing to find".

That is a reasonable statement, but unfortunately not everyone is so reasonable.

 

[lionking]

Warp12, do you realise that if published, peer reviewed and repeatable evidence for any paranormal thing/activity/event was put forward, people here would be turning cartwheels. Why? Because we then would have a new field of science.

This, however is extremely unlikely to happen.

Also, I believe what you see as negativity is a mixture of cynicism and frustration because so many have seen (and rebutted) the points you make countless times.

 

[theprestige]

That is not a primary objection that I have, although it can be a point of contention when people start to convey an arrogance about our current level of understanding.

However, I do object to the idea that "modern science" is the pinnacle of what we can possibly learn or will understand. As I said earlier, we will one day be an "ancient society"; how will our "modern" limiting beliefs be looked upon, then?

I think they'll be looked upon pretty favorably. We don't dismiss Aristotle because he didn't get as far as Galileo. We don't dismiss Galileo because he didn't get as far as Newton. We don't dismiss Newton... Well, you get the idea. We honor these people as pioneers in the investigation of reality, because we see in their work a clear through line of rational thought and scientific inquiry. We see that this through line is distinct from the idiom of the charlatans and demagogues, whom we do dismiss for that reason.

I think a future rational scientific society will look back on Feynman and Hawking and say, yes, these were pioneers of rational thought. They were on the right track, and did good work. We can do better, in part because of what they have already contributed.

Why? What do you think they'll say? "Haha, look at the retards who got as far as relativity and quantum mechanics, but couldn't put together a unified theory! No better than witch doctors, those clowns!" Is that where you think this all ends up?

 

[Warp12]

Also, I believe what you see as negativity is a mixture of cynicism and frustration because so many have seen (and rebutted) the points you make countless times.

And, also a very healthy dose of negativity, in some cases.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

And, also a very healthy dose of negativity, in some cases.

Negative feelings about not testing unknown claims with unknown methods in the face of universally negative results?

 

[xjx388]

In a way it is the same thing. If you are saying that "modern science would have found something paranormal by now, if there was such a thing", you are saying that there will be no further scientific discovery that could possibly verify anything paranormal.

It's nothing like that, though. It's that any paranormal phenomenon has not held up to scrutiny. When you eliminate the possibility of trickery, the claimed effect disappears.

Anything that is purported to cause an observable effect in the real world is subject to testing by existing methodologies. Every time a claimed effect is tested, it turns out there is no effect.

Can you name some parnanormal phenomenon that you feel doesn't lend itself to current testing methodologies?

 

[abaddon]

Actually I brought roads to Narnia into it, and in the books there's Wardrobes, paintings, magic rings and a London Tube train in the books I that I recall (to be fair it's been quite a few decades since I read any of the books and I can't for the life of me remember how Eustice gets to Narnia in The Silver Chair, some kind of incantation?), I think, like psychic powers, routes into Narnia are both infinitely variable and utterly fictional.

Yay. We can all play the magic fanfic game. My copies of the CS Lewis fiction currently reside in Munich. So I do not have hands on the recycled trees right this minute.

But they remain fiction.

Amusing, but still fiction.

The holey babble does not even pretend to be amusing, nor even fiction.

 

[Myriad]

I don't believe we will find anything with current methodologies based upon the level of repetition we have already engaged in.

If I post even an abstract idea, with a disclaimer, I will still have to debate 10 people on it. We can't even agree that doing the same tests over and over, and expecting different results, does not make much sense.

No skeptic should object to someone proposing a test. That's what skeptics do, whether they believe the test would succeed or (far more likely) not.

Many years ago I proposed a system that would not only test astrology, it would put one of its putative claims (that natal astrological charts reliably predict the time and manner of a person's death) to practical use in providing years of forewarning of various possible major disasters. Scroll a few posts down on this page to find post #524. You can follow the subsequent exchanges through the remainder of that thread to see how the idea was received.

Interestingly, the astrologers in the thread objected just as strongly to the proposed concept as the skeptics did. The skeptics not expecting such a system to work makes sense, because they don't think astrology works, based on the available evidence. But the astrologers didn't give the thought experiment any chance of succeeding either. The astrological indications of the time and place of individuals' deaths, necessary to the scheme, which earlier had been claimed to be distinct and reliable, were suddenly claimed to be too subtle and varied for such a systematic approach to work. More complex progressed charts, which change constantly, would be needed instead of the fixed birth charts that had earlier been claimed to be sufficient to foretell death. (Which wouldn't invalidate my proposed system anyhow, just make it more complex to program.) Taking claims that had been phrased as objective facts and treating them as objective facts whose logical implications could be followed through and acted upon, even just hypothetically, was not something they expected or particularly welcomed.

The skeptics understood what I was talking about and why. None of them gave me any grief for taking astrology seriously (again, it was the astrologers who seemed to object more to that) by saying essentially, "if this phenomenon actually happens as described, then we should be able to..." That's how testable hypotheses are formed from paranormal claims or experiences.

 

[Warp12]

It's nothing like that, though. It's that any paranormal phenomenon has not held up to scrutiny. When you eliminate the possibility of trickery, the claimed effect disappears.

Anything that is purported to cause an observable effect in the real world is subject to testing by existing methodologies. Every time a claimed effect is tested, it turns out there is no effect.

Can you name some parnanormal phenomenon that you feel doesn't lend itself to current testing methodologies?

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

What do you mean "unravel"? That implies we've found it now but don't understand it. We have found no phenomena to unravel at this point.

We will, of course, discover new stuff.

 

[JayUtah]

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

That completely dodged an important question.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

Not at all. If evidence comes to light, people using the scientific method will study it and try to verify or disprove it using the best processes they can come up with.

 

[theprestige]

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

I'll say it. Everything we today consider to be paranormal consists of claims of phenomena that do not manifest under controlled conditions. Thus, there is nothing for science to unravel, now or in the future.

I do, however, concede that there may yet be observed an inexplicable phenomenon, that will be considered "paranormal" by some, that future scientists will ultimately unravel.

In fact, cosmology is already a fertile ground for this kind of thing. When we saw our first pulsar, a "paranormal" explanation was considered:

When observations with another telescope confirmed the emission, it eliminated any sort of instrumental effects. At this point, Bell Burnell said of herself and Hewish that "we did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem—if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe, how does one announce the results responsibly?"[7] Even so, they nicknamed the signal LGM-1, for "little green men" (a playful name for intelligent beings of extraterrestrial origin).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#Discovery​

Cosmologists are often finding weird new observations and then have to figure out what they're really seeing. I've already alluded to dark matter. The expanding universe is another good example. Scientists don't usually shy away from weird new observations that can't yet be explained. The problem with most paranormal claims is that there are no observations.

 

[xjx388]

Can you say that science will not, in the future, unravel something that we today would consider to be paranormal?

Well . . . if I could travel back in time, I bet I could take some tech with me that would look like paranormal miracles to people of an earlier time. So I have no doubt that if I could travel forward in time sufficiently enough, some of their tech would appear paranormal.

What I'm getting at is that you will need to give me a concrete example of something happening right now, that we can't currently explain with our methodologies, that a future generation might unravel. If you can't do that, I totally get it; but, absent that example I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Warp12]

But this scientific unraveling has to start with an observation of something to be unraveled. The problem with all the paranormal claims to date is that we never get an observation. Kind of hard to unravel something that never shows up in the first place.

Let me pose this question, seriously:

We know that any supposed "psychic" activity is, at best, intermittent, right?

Using your example of Zener cards, lets say that someone were to get 15 of 25 guesses correct. That is 1 in 90,000 odds. Lets say they were only able to do it once.

Would you simply attribute that to chance? Or, would you say it warrants further investigation? And, if so, what would your further investigation consist of? More card reading?

I am not an expert on Zener cards, but a reference was made earlier.

 

[Warp12]

What I'm getting at is that you will need to give me a concrete example of something happening right now, that we can't currently explain with our methodologies, that a future generation might unravel.

Well, there was a time when our current methodologies for the time pointed to bloodletting as a valid therapy; apparently that went on for over 2000 years.

 

[xjx388]

Let me pose this question, seriously:

We know that any supposed "psychic" activity is, at best, intermittent, right?

Using your example of Zener cards, lets say that someone were to get 15 of 25 guesses correct. That is 1 in 90,000 odds. Lets say they were only able to do it once.

Would you simply attribute that to chance? Or, would you say it warrants further investigation? And, if so, what would your further investigation consist of? More card reading?

I am not an expert on Zener cards, but a reference was made earlier.

There is no difference between "intermittant" and "non-existant."

What's important is whether or not the hit ratio is greater than chance. That would be interesting.

 

[JayUtah]

Well, there was a time when our current methodologies pointed to bloodletting as a valid therapy; apparently that went on for over 2000 years.

No that's not an example of current methodology.