Anecdotal experiences: telepathy

[AvalonXQ]

The interesting idea for me is that some real phenomena may nonetheless be difficult to establish using our existing scientific method.

I think in the modern age, most woo has come to live in this space: elusive creatures, capricious entities, ideas hidden by their holders or suppressed by those in power.

It is meaningful to acknowledge that we are not omnipotent, and our evaluative procedures still have practical limitations. Nor is it reasonable to draw a box around these limitations and say "anything outside this box shall be defined as nonexistent".

The real purpose of paranormal investigations - which in my opinion is carried out far better by skeptics than enthusiasts - is to find ways to extend the tools of inquiry into these spaces.

Selective memory seems the most likely culprit here. I just had another idea - I think I should grill my Dad about the precise details of these incidents, then do the same for my grandmother (preferably without the two of them consulting each other). It would be useful to see how much detail remains and how congruent it is.

 

[Akhenaten]

Even if it were a real phenomenon, if it is as intermittent and undependable as you describe, it's much the same thing as if it didn't exist.

That seems like a cop-out to me -- basically trying to redefine "existence" based on only what can be reliably and repeatedly observed.

I don't know that it's either a cop-out or a redefinition. It seems like a pretty decent working definition along the same lines as 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away'.

A real phenomenon is a real phenomenon. A rarefied and sporadic phenomenon is not at all the same as one that doesn't exist; the first can have real (and dramatic) consequences on the world.

Yes, but in the case of alleged paranormal phenomena there aren't any real world consequences and that, coupled with the rarefied and sporadic nature of their alleged occurrence, means they can be safely filed in the 'Might just as well not exist' drawer.

We can't reproduce earthquakes; they're intermittent and undependable. But we certainly know they exist, because their effects are measurable.

Yes, in other words, we can define them as 'existing' because they can be reliably and repeatedly observed.

The requirement of science for repeatabilty is satisfied just as well by repeatability of observation of naturally occurring phenomena as it is by repeatability of artificially produced ones.

I'm not trying to argue that "emergency empathy" is the same as earthquakes, but I don't accept that just because a phenomena is unreliable, it therefore doesn't exist.

Nobody said that it didn't exist because it was unreliable, otherwise the Yugo and Internet Explorer wouldn't exist.

What's been said is that for their rarity, their sporadic nature and their general lack of ability to have ever affected anything at all, they may as well not exist.

 

[kerikiwi]

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Thomas Jefferson said "I'd lief believe a Yankee preacher could lie, than rocks from fall heaven".

By which he meant that he accepted that rocks could fall from heaven

 

[bjornart]

I think in the modern age, most woo has come to live in this space: elusive creatures, capricious entities, ideas hidden by their holders or suppressed by those in power.

I have to disagree. Most woo lives openly in the space of our imperfect thought processes. Alt. med. belief in the face of opposing evidence, belief in psychics in the face of opposing evidence.

It is meaningful to acknowledge that we are not omnipotent, and our evaluative procedures still have practical limitations. Nor is it reasonable to draw a box around these limitations and say "anything outside this box shall be defined as nonexistent".

I agree that that is a poor definition of non-existent, but these purported phenomena tend to fall into the box of "so unlikely based on evidence in several scientific fields as to be most conveniently labelled non-existent".

Selective memory seems the most likely culprit here. I just had another idea - I think I should grill my Dad about the precise details of these incidents, then do the same for my grandmother (preferably without the two of them consulting each other). It would be useful to see how much detail remains and how congruent it is.

But even if everyone's recollection of these events is perfectly accurate, random chance becomes the most likely explanation. It's not necessary for your dad and grandmother to have had similar but "imperfect" incidents, it's enough that many other people do, and that we do know happens.
But while we're examining possible causes apart from random chance. Were the causes of your father's stress known to anyone else before the call and/or was he in contact with his mother between the causes arising and the sleeplessness?

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

The interesting idea for me is that some real phenomena may nonetheless be difficult to establish using our existing scientific method.

But this *can* be tested by the scientific method, and quite easily.

We capture your father in the afternoon, and unbeknownst to you and the rest of your family, we tell him that at two AM we will flip a coin and kill him if it comes up heads. This will surely cause him some stress. If a family member calls during that time, we count a hit.

Do this for a couple of hundred (or thousand) people and you have the data.

So this phenomenon is easy to test. The reason we don't is not because the scientific method won't work, it's because ethics keeps us from subjecting random people to terror for hours at time for a test.

It could also be done with a less stressful situation, but any time you subject someone to "false" stress it would seem to raise ethical issues.

But the scientific method itself is fine for investigating this phenomenon.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

It is meaningful to acknowledge that we are not omnipotent, and our evaluative procedures still have practical limitations. Nor is it reasonable to draw a box around these limitations and say "anything outside this box shall be defined as nonexistent".

It's not terribly unreasonable - science defines things based on what can be tested all the time.

Basically, your experience might be real, but it's so sporadic that for all intents and purposes we might as well consider it non-existent.

 

[Mojo]

...those happen to coincide with...

...happened to coincide with...

What other mundane explanations could reasonably explain our experiences?

See above, with a little selection bias added.

If there really were a telepathic connection, but only one that has manifested a handful of times over our lives as a result of great emotional strain, how would you propose to test for it? None of us claims the ability to control it, or that it occurs any more than very rarely.

If telepathy existed, it would be an enormous evolutionary advantage. Slightly better telepathic ability would be strongly selected for. We would see something far more useful than this.

 

[AvalonXQ]

It's not terribly unreasonable - science defines things based on what can be tested all the time.

Basically, your experience might be real, but it's so sporadic that for all intents and purposes we might as well consider it non-existent.

As has already been pointed out, if events that affect a single person less than a dozen times in her lifetime are sporadic enough to be considered nonexistent, then meteorites and earthquakes don't exist.

Neither does pregnancy, come to think of it.

Such a definition is unreasonable.

 

[AvalonXQ]

If telepathy existed, it would be an enormous evolutionary advantage. Slightly better telepathic ability would be strongly selected for. We would see something far more useful than this.

I don't buy this argument. First of all, it's not clear to me what great selective advantage this sort of empathy conveys; second, it doesn't negate the possibility of adverse pressures selecting for only weak abilities. For example, any telepathic connection may be a considerable drain on resources; perhaps the telepathic trade off a loss of visual acuity or language skills, or are more likely to suffer in times of war or natural disaster.

 

[Bikewer]

Remarkable coincidences are....Remarkable. However, they are also inevitable. If we consider that each human on the planet has thousands of "incidents" occur each day, and there are billions of us... Some really remarkable coincidences are bound to happen.

A couple of people mentioned confirmation bias... We are predisposed to react strongly to coincidences that reinforce our beliefs, and to disregard coincidences that would seem to go against them.

There are real problems with any sort of "mental powers".... Just trying to quantify what's going on, for instance.

 

[paiute]

1) What other mundane explanations could reasonably explain our experiences?

2) If there really were a telepathic connection, but only one that has manifested a handful of times over our lives as a result of great emotional strain, how would you propose to test for it? None of us claims the ability to control it, or that it occurs any more than very rarely.

1. Mother calls at random. Son answers. Mother hears stress in the Hello, asks what is wrong. Son thinks - how did she know?

My wife often calls me at work and can tell if I am busy or distracted or in a bad mood by how I say hello. Same if I call her.

2. Test: At random times have someone strangle a kitten in front of you and see if anyone calls. (Just kidding. We can substitute someone eating an Eskimo Pie in front of you and not sharing.)

 

[Mojo]

I don't buy this argument. First of all, it's not clear to me what great selective advantage this sort of empathy conveys

Knowing when family members are under stress could enable them to be assisted, or enable the person sensing them to avoid stressful (and dangerous) situations.

second, it doesn't negate the possibility of adverse pressures selecting for only weak abilities. For example, any telepathic connection may be a considerable drain on resources; perhaps the telepathic trade off a loss of visual acuity or language skills, or are more likely to suffer in times of war or natural disaster.

If any telepathic sonnection were selected against, they would tend to be eliminated from the population.

 

[bjornart]

As has already been pointed out, if events that affect a single person less than a dozen times in her lifetime are sporadic enough to be considered nonexistent, then meteorites and earthquakes don't exist.

That's just silly. If you'd at least picked events that are experienced by just one or at most a handful of people you'd at least be in the vicinity, but still wrong. Heart attacks for instance just affect a single person less than a dozen times in his or her lifetime, but like meteorites and earthquakes (which affect a lot more than a single person) they leave good physical evidence behind.

We can compare that evidence to that of similar events and hypothesise on the cause. The problem, in this comparison, for extremely limited telepathy, is that there's no good evidence left behind, and that collecting good evidence is so difficult it will never be undertaken as long as the hypothesis is so unlikely to be true as it is.

Refusing to label such a hypothesised phenomenon non-existent is to coddle believers who often appear to only be interested in science when it confirms their preconceptions.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

As has already been pointed out, if events that affect a single person less than a dozen times in her lifetime are sporadic enough to be considered nonexistent, then meteorites and earthquakes don't exist.

Neither does pregnancy, come to think of it.

Pregnancy might be rare in individuals, but it occurs often enough that we have plenty of evidence for its existence. What evidence do we have that telepathy exists?

A woman might tell you that she is pregnant, and you might be skeptical, but it's certainly possible. Now imagine a man tells you that he is pregnant. Should you believe it's possible just because he says so? Or, since you know that it is impossible for a man to get pregnant, do you expect a little more evidence than just his word? Telepathy is that pregnant man.

One woman might not get pregnant very often, but we have plenty of reliable evidence that it does happen, we know how and why it happens, and we know how to cause it. Pregnant men? Nada. Don't exist, can't exist. Why not? They don't have the equipment to be pregnant. Now apply that criteria to telepathy. We have no reliable evidence for it, we don't know how or why it could occur, and we cannot cause it to happen. And we know that the mind exists only in and as part of the brain, a biological organ which communicates via electrochemical signals in the body. It doesn't have the equipment to send or receive those signals through empty space.

You could argue that anything's possible, and Science cannot say something doesn't exist just because no evidence has so far been found for it. But that is a useless argument. There has to be point where we can safely dismiss certain 'possibilities' because they are ludicrously unlikely. Telepathy is one of those ludicrously unlikely things. Everything we know about the universe is at odds with how telepathy is supposed to work. So why do people consider it a likely possibility?

People are only inclined to believe in telepathy because they don't realize the limitations of their own minds. They think that if they can perceive of something, no matter how unlikely it may be in reality, it could exist. But of course that's nonsense. Plenty of things that we can imagine are in reality quite impossible. Pregnant men, time travel, square circles, telepathy.

Your mind knows that it has control over your body, and that it receives information from outside, but it does not understand how that occurs. It doesn't appreciate the electrochemical nature of its existence. Therefore, it is very easy to fall into the trap of believing that you can directly communicate with other minds. But of course we know that this is actually quite impossible. The mind just doesn't work that way. So what about these 'coincidences' that seem to suggest direct mind-to-mind communication? Well, since it is physically impossible for minds to directly communicate because they just don't work that way, the 'possibility' of telepathy is off the table. What's left are the usual mundane explanations.

 

[Elizabeth I]

For a discussion of this speculation, and a pretty complete analysis and refutation of it, go here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217492.

Even if it were a real phenomenon, if it is as intermittent and undependable as you describe, it's much the same thing as if it didn't exist.

I don't know that it's either a cop-out or a redefinition. It seems like a pretty decent working definition along the same lines as 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away'.

...in the case of alleged paranormal phenomena there aren't any real world consequences and that, coupled with the rarefied and sporadic nature of their alleged occurrence, means they can be safely filed in the 'Might just as well not exist' drawer.

Nobody said that it didn't exist because it was unreliable, otherwise the Yugo and Internet Explorer wouldn't exist.

What's been said is that for their rarity, their sporadic nature and their general lack of ability to have ever affected anything at all, they may as well not exist.

Basically, your experience might be real, but it's so sporadic that for all intents and purposes we might as well consider it non-existent.

Yep.

 

[I Ratant]

Remarkable coincidences are....Remarkable. However, they are also inevitable. If we consider that each human on the planet has thousands of "incidents" occur each day, and there are billions of us... Some really remarkable coincidences are bound to happen.

A couple of people mentioned confirmation bias... We are predisposed to react strongly to coincidences that reinforce our beliefs, and to disregard coincidences that would seem to go against them.

There are real problems with any sort of "mental powers".... Just trying to quantify what's going on, for instance.

.
This type of telepathy runs only in families. I have never had a premonition or feeling of unease about your Aunt Maude, for instance. Her incident with the cheese dicer has never made itself known to me.

 

[Akhenaten]

As has already been pointed out, if events that affect a single person less than a dozen times in her lifetime are sporadic enough to be considered nonexistent, then meteorites and earthquakes don't exist.

Neither does pregnancy, come to think of it.

I think you've made up a new definition for 'sporadic'.

Such a definition is unreasonable.

I concur. Perhaps you should avoid using it.

 

[tsig]

I don't buy this argument. First of all, it's not clear to me what great selective advantage this sort of empathy conveys; second, it doesn't negate the possibility of adverse pressures selecting for only weak abilities. For example, any telepathic connection may be a considerable drain on resources; perhaps the telepathic trade off a loss of visual acuity or language skills, or are more likely to suffer in times of war or natural disaster.

You're just making stuff up.

 

[Akhenaten]

You're just making stuff up.

This seems to be one of the more consistent aspects of all paranormal claims: the desire to bypass demonstrating that the phenomenon actually exists and go straight to the explanations of how it might work.

It's exactly like wanting to discuss the finer points of the dietary requirements of invisible garage dragons.

 

[kerikiwi]

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Her incident with the cheese dicer has never made itself known to me.

That could be because even she knows that some things are best kept to oneself.