marplots, dowsers and spoon benders ARE claiming that "they are demonstrating unknown properties of the universe".
Donn
Philosopher
I posed to SaskMick that if I could fly, I'd want to know my limits. What if it turned-out that all I could do was fall in a fancy way?
I don't understand how he cannot be keen to know if he can really dowse or not.
The only way to know is to strictly test yourself by ensuring that you are not "helping" the result along.
I don't understand how he cannot be keen to know if he can really dowse or not.
The only way to know is to strictly test yourself by ensuring that you are not "helping" the result along.
Yes. And I think many wish to preserve the mystery, sensing the amazement will evaporate if an explanation is found.
Science, the great party-pooper.
Yes, we certainly are. You're saying that Dinwar is a "dowser" because he can find fossils.
Donn
Philosopher
I agree. "Because QFT," is not a panacea. We still have to keep talking about ideomotor and bias and company.
The addition that QFT brings is a certainty that backs our mundane explanations. It's a very big gorilla on the door, who says no entry to special pleading.
To me, the remarkable thing about QFT is that we can now say: there can never be such hits.
It has excluded the entire possibility.
Look, I don't pretend to grok it. I'm just trying on the pants.
And no one is claiming he's violating QFT to do so.
There has to be some middle ground here. Otherwise we are just creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by way of definition: Dowsing is something which cannot exist, because everything that can exist is explainable by QFT, and if dowsing were explained that way, it wouldn't be dowsing.
That seems like an exercise in absurdity to me.
Are we evaluating claims here or simply ruling all such claims out of court?
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PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Yes. But the movement of the rods is not dowsing. Dowsing would be if the movement of the rods were an indicator of the presence of whatever was being sought.
Granted. But since there is no evidence supporting the effectiveness dowsing at all, there is no evidence to support this form of dowsing.
But that doesn't require anything to be going on. As has been noted, if you dig anywhere you will likely find water.
There can be bias involved here; for example, if you sincerely believe that water is present you will be willing to dig deeper than if you are just guessing, and that raises the probability that water will be found. But we need to show that dowsing works better than random chance before we accept that there is anything going on at all.
I see. So, I should respond to every Nigerian scam, because this one might be real.
I see. So, I should respond to every Nigerian scam, because this one might be real.
If it interests you, sure.
I am not against adopting heuristics to shape how I spend my time, but neither would I accept the point of view that "most," or "nearly all," or "with a very high probability," or "every one I've checked so far," could ever substitute for "certain."
We do a fairly good job in this forum explaining to people what we know about dowsing and what they should do to test their ability in a way that would be more convincing than simply a tale. But, suppose someone takes these tests and passes - are we then to say, "Nope. Doesn't matter. I cannot be convinced anything is happening here no matter what you do."
That's a valid position to take and it certainly saves effort. It just doesn't seem to be an honest one to me. Why? Because it reminds me of how a believer might approach discussions about God. For the faithful, any argument that suggests there might not be a God can be set aside as irrelevant, since they already know, with 100% certainty, that God exists and any explanations about the world has to include God or the explanation is wrong. That's why it bugs me.
Donn
Philosopher
I think the QFT argument is ruling claims out. Completely. It is saying they are impossible.
We, as sceptics, already know (i.e. strongly suspect) that (say) telekinesis is impossible. We danced around that hard stance, by saying it's possible there are special forces that a brain could generate that could lift rocks up, it's just that they are never detected; but now we can no longer say that. QFT is saying there are no other forces.
It bothers me too. It does sound absolute. I am not qualified to understand it. Come over to the other thread and have a stab.
There is nothing extraordinary in the movement of the rods: they are after held in the hand of a person. Even SaskMick acknowledges that it is his own movements that make the rods move.
The paranormal event that is claimed for dowsing lies in the the use of the rod movement to locate hidden items, and this is what is ruled out by physics. And, as it happens, it is also evident that this paranormal event does not happen in real life. Dowsers fail over and over when all clues to the location of the hidden objects are removed.
Which means that dowsing does not exist, just as predicted by physics.
Not so. The argument is that certain types of claims are impossible - those involving new, long range, strongly interacting forces. (Which is equivalent to saying new particles, since these are just the force carriers.)
What is not impossible is unknown properties that arise from existing forces. My go-to example is high temperature superconductivity - it was surprising, unforeseen, and puzzling - but not a violation of QFT. Certain claims are definitely ruled out, but this doesn't eliminate new phenomena.
And that's true. So any explanation has to use the known forces. We can say, with authority, that inventing magical stuff like "morphic fields" is bogus.
The problem is when a new phenomenon is demonstrated (if it is, which was the working hypothetical) - can it ever be proper to deny the phenomenon exists on this basis? No, I don't think so. What is required is an approach that narrows the realm of possible explanations without claiming something cannot occur because we haven't yet figured out how to fit it into QFT.
The onus is always on the theory to fit the world; the world has no duty to follow the theory.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
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Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
SaskMick -
It bothers me that there are many, many simple tests you could do today, yet you seem not to care to. Instead, you post stories about things you knew to be true(like gas lines) or things that cannot be proven (like the well). You tell us that you personally are making the rods point to you and that a woman made the rods point where you showed her, yet you continue to claim this is dowsing.
Why not do a very simple experiment today? Have your wife put six empty glasses under some towels or boxes. Let her roll a die and fill the corresponding glass with water. See how often you can find it. It should take about fifteen minutes.
However new you are to dowsing, I'm sure you have six glasses, some towels and fifteen minutes.
Test yourself and report the results.
It bothers me that there are many, many simple tests you could do today, yet you seem not to care to. Instead, you post stories about things you knew to be true(like gas lines) or things that cannot be proven (like the well). You tell us that you personally are making the rods point to you and that a woman made the rods point where you showed her, yet you continue to claim this is dowsing.
Why not do a very simple experiment today? Have your wife put six empty glasses under some towels or boxes. Let her roll a die and fill the corresponding glass with water. See how often you can find it. It should take about fifteen minutes.
However new you are to dowsing, I'm sure you have six glasses, some towels and fifteen minutes.
Test yourself and report the results.
Donn
Philosopher
Okay, I hear you. QFT may have closed many gaps, but there are still surprises and permutations within the forces that are left.
I am not sure to what extent this is useful for woos. Look at dowsing, the claim to be able to locate X sans any foreknowledge; the implication is that there is some broadcast from X to the diviner, some connection between their minds and the hidden X.
This is an engaging of fuzzy fields. A handshake between the fields from X and the fields from the mind. Or something. All kind of iffy.
I think we can say that QFT trounces these kinds of fields.
Dowsing might work because low temp superfluids can leak through solid matter and thus up your legs and into your brain, which causes the ideomotor effect.. But really?
Still, slippery slope. I agree. It's still worth keeping the old tools. I'm just interested in learning how the new tools might contribute.
Olowkow
Philosopher
- Joined
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Actually it is the inverse cube law with a dipole source. As far as I know, all permanent magnets are dipoles.
- Magnetic field drops off as the cube of the distance from a dipole source. These examples attempt to make the measuring point clear, usually the surface of the item mentioned.
We don't have to be that mysterious. We could say that the regular EM field does it with photons. The "handshake" would then be between the eye and whatever clues they are picking up about water. It's how I'd explain it if the experiment weren't blinded at all and they merely walked around where there were a few puddles.
But anything that differentiated between water and the surrounding soil is a possibility - sound waves, ground penetrating radar, differences in electrical conductivity. I wouldn't advocate any of those, but there are plenty of ways to sense things without having to go down the "magical" route.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Yes, but we know that dowsers aren't doing any of those things.
They're also not bathing in liquid nitrogen.
It is not a physical impossibility that they are subconsciously picking up cues from visible features of the landscape, translating that through the ideomotor effect, and then consciously picking up on the movement of the dowsing thingies and deciding that water is present.
But there is no evidence that they are doing anything at all, so such speculation is premature.
Olowkow
Philosopher
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A good illustration of the idiomotor effect is the Chevreul Pendulum. The video is short, and shows how suggestion can cause involuntary movements. This test can be done alone just as easily. Imagine the pendulum swinging, and it will, although the person will not be consciously aware of causing the motion. This is how dowsing captures the imagination of those who practice it.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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