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Hello from a non-skeptic

This is a fairly good video that explains the double slit experiment, from a new Bishadi thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6429804#post6429804

A few more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-sccvRatlQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9xM2_MrC2k

They don't mention that the slits must be very close together, and very small in width. Both parameters and the light color affect the pattern seen. There is a very good Java appelet somewhere on the web that permits one to play with these. No time now to look for it.
 
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Charles Boden said:
The reference to my spelling, for a start... "Photon" is spelled "Fóton" in Portuguese. "Futon" is not attacking and attempting to ridicule?

The "one issue at a time" I wish to debate is the asociation between the act of observation influencing experimental results. My own personal cases can easily be discarded. I gave them merely as examples.

I don't have to be a quantum physicist to pose a question based on what has already been verified, so I'll ask the question again:

How can the act of observation have an effect on quantum physics experiments? How does this interaction take place?
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OK which particular verified experiment are you referring to?
 
Charles Boden said:
In the case of Lady Di's death, what was said to me by a "medium" on the previous Saturday (not in a "paid consultation") was that "a member of the Royal Family would die that week". At first I thought it would probably be the Queen Mother, given her age at the time, but upon running through the channels of Cable TV on the following Saturday I crossed CNN at the moment in which they were broadcasting the news of the accident. Even before the official confirmation of her death, I knew what had been said to me had to refer to her.

In any given circumstance, shouldn't all possibilities be considered rather than instantly discarded?
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Yes!

You are correct. So my question to you is after you considered all possibilities for the prediction, how did you decide that every possibility other than "psychic powers" was incorrect?
 
It was actually the fact that such "coincidences" happened more than just the once, but on several occasions. Almost impossible not to at least raise a brow or two.

I am certainly not out to try to convince anyone. Just to raise some food for thought...

As far as I can make out of it, though, the explanations given here do not explain the phenomenon.

I'll pose another question then:

In another experiment, a lie-detector was attached to a plant. The same man would repeatedly come into the room where the plant was with a pair of scissors and snip at it. After some time, it was possible to verify that the lie-detector registered changes within the plant every time the man came into the room with the scissors. Seing as plants have no brain, how could this be possible? What form of "consciousness" could possibly exist in a plant that it might be able to sense the man's presence?

Again, what I am getting at is the possibility of "consciousness" being more than just electro-chemical discharges of the brain, and that such "individual entanglements of thought-consiousness" might indeed retain their existence and individuality even after physical death.

Charles
 
Charles Boden said:
It was actually the fact that such "coincidences" happened more than just the once, but on several occasions. Almost impossible not to at least raise a brow or two.

I am certainly not out to try to convince anyone. Just to raise some food for thought...

As far as I can make out of it, though, the explanations given here do not explain the phenomenon.

I'll pose another question then:

In another experiment, a lie-detector was attached to a plant. The same man would repeatedly come into the room where the plant was with a pair of scissors and snip at it. After some time, it was possible to verify that the lie-detector registered changes within the plant every time the man came into the room with the scissors. Seing as plants have no brain, how could this be possible? What form of "consciousness" could possibly exist in a plant that it might be able to sense the man's presence?

Again, what I am getting at is the possibility of "consciousness" being more than just electro-chemical discharges of the brain, and that such "individual entanglements of thought-consiousness" might indeed retain their existence and individuality even after physical death.

Charles
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Charles, if you are going to talk about experiments we need links to the papers so we can see the experiments ourselves.

This is the third or forth time you have referred to scientific experiments without giving proper references.
 
Charles Boden said:
How can the act of observation have an effect on quantum physics experiments? How does this interaction take place?
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For someone who so desperately wants the answer to this question, you seem to have ignored my last post as well as what others have told you: "Observation" does not mean "observation by a person." It means any probing with any tool, including a photon or a single electron. Nothing can be found in space without something bouncing off it (or emitting something itself). It is the bouncing that collapses the dual state, not the noticing.

Thus, observation by a camera yields the same results as observation in person. Can you explain how "consciousness" can affect the quantum state yet, at the sam time, be indistinguishable from the effect of an inanimate object like a camera or a photographic plate?


Charles Boden said:
Does this discard the fact in itself of what I was told and what happened seven days later?
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The thing is, what you were told is NOT what happened seven days later. You were told a member of the royal family would die, not Princess Diana. If we confine ourselves to just the British royal family, that set contained twenty-two or more people. One of them, the Queen Mother, was 97 years old. A 97 year-old female has a 27% chance of dying within the year. That's a 1/200 chance of dying within the week.

Perhaps the medium was psychic. However, if I were pretending to be psychic, I would give that prediction every week. Usually I'd be wrong, but sometimes I'd be right and those people would be very impressed with me.

Second, a member of the royal family did NOT die within the week. She died seven days later. That is outside the predicted time. The prediction was wrong. You (and you alone) are choosing to give the medium a pass and to accept that the first day of the next week is the same as "within a week." But that's your choice. It is not necessary. The medium failed. Nobody has to count that as a successful prediction, even by chance. The fact that you, a former skeptic, do find that to be compelling says more about your personal definition of "evidence" than it does about the spirit world.

Don't you agree?
 
Charles Boden said:
It was actually the fact that such "coincidences" happened more than just the once, but on several occasions. Almost impossible not to at least raise a brow or two.
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You don't need the quotation marks around the word 'coincidences'. They were most likely either coincidences or cold reading techniques that you fell for.

Nothing about the personal experiences you have related should give reason to raise a brow or two. For most of the people on this forum there is nothing unusual, unique or even all that rare about your anecdotes.
 
The thing about coincidences is that they do happen - that's why we have a word for them. Add the normal human tendency towards confirmation bias (remembering the hits and forgetting the misses) and some coincidences take on meaning for some people. But they are still just coincidences.

For example; I take a lot of prescribed painkillers and some of them give me very vivid, colourful dreams, often with a lot of blue and silver. I regularly dream of plane crashes, explosions, famous (and not so famous) people dying, marrying, visiting me, all sorts of weird stuff. Sometimes some of these dreams seem to be predictive in that what I dream about then happens. Maybe one in a hundred, maybe fewer (I get bored of writing them down after a few weeks), but it's not anything paranormal, it's just a coincidence.

Lots of things happen every day, I dream of lots of things. The two things are bound to overlap once in a while.

I assume you are referring to the Backster experiment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Backster which was debunked on Mythbusters?
 
Charles Boden said:
I'll pose another question then:

In another experiment, a lie-detector was attached to a plant. The same man would repeatedly come into the room where the plant was with a pair of scissors and snip at it. After some time, it was possible to verify that the lie-detector registered changes within the plant every time the man came into the room with the scissors. Seing as plants have no brain, how could this be possible? What form of "consciousness" could possibly exist in a plant that it might be able to sense the man's presence?
Charles
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Read this article on plant percetion (aka The Backster effect).

ETA: Agatha beat me to it.
 
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Charles Boden said:
And btw, attacking me or attempting to ridicule me
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Oh dear, victim complex already. That didn't take long... nobody attacked you at all, this is dishonest.

Robert Oz said:
So the 'medium' didn't predict Lady Di's death. The 'medium' predicted the death of 'a member of the Royal Family'. Isn't it possible that, due to age, the 'medium' also had the Queen Mother in mind? I'm sure many mediums all over the world were making regular 'death of a member of the Royal Family' predictions with baited breath, eagerly anticipating the keeling over of the old bat.
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Not to mention, did the medium specify which royal family? The British one is certainly the most well-known, but hardly the only one on the planet. Would they have claimed a hit if a member of Swedish, Belgian, Saudi, etc. royal family had died?
 
Agatha said:
<snip>
I assume you are referring to the Backster experiment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Backster which was debunked on Mythbusters?
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Be fair to Charles:); if you go to reference #3 in the Wikipedia article, you can get to a Stanford Research Institute study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Fontes#Organic_Biofield_Sensor:
Thus, although we must reject the hypothesis that subject GSR and plant potential fluctuations of a nearby electrically shielded plant are in general correlated, there is evidence for a degree of correlation beyond that expected by chance."

Subject S-3: p < 4.2 X 10-4; p < 0.024, replication experiment.
Subject S-4: p < 0.038.

This Report supports the possibility that plants may respond to human consciousness as contended by Cleve Backster.
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Charles:

(1) How do you know your predictions couldn't have happened by chance only?
(2) Does every occurrence of somebody predicting a future event necessarily imply that they are clairvoyant?
(3) Should the events that we can significantly influence be considered?

Any hypothesis that is potentially influential or can be depended upon, requires scientific scrutiny. You seem to be charging that because we don't consider your experience as "evidence", that we are closed-minded. Please watch this video on open-mindedness. It will explain what I consider to be the only valid definition of being open-minded.
 
I'm reading all these posts by very reasonable sounding and rational appearing members, in keeping with what has been said literally hundreds of times to people coming here presenting their anecdotal exposure to the paranormal, and I know somewhere in the back of my mind that eventually the OP will feel he is being attacked, become angry and leave. It is the pattern we have all seen all too often. I really hope this does not happen though.

I cannot understand what it is that causes the paranormal believer to persist, to the degree we all have witnessed, in untenable beliefs in the face of real world logical thought showing the absurdity of such claims. Life is so much more fun when we don't have to worry that our dreams have predicted our fate.
 
Olowkow, you have been very kind and I knew what to expect when I first posted, so needn't worry about my getting angry and upset and leaving.

You all may think you have answered my question, but that is not how I see it, as I also do not see that the comments on Jacqueline Pool's case answered the issue either. But right now I have to go and fetch my wife at the dentist, so I'll have to get back to replying to some other of your posts here later.

In the meantime, take care all...

Charles
 
Loss Leader said:
The thing is, what you were told is NOT what happened seven days later. You were told a member of the royal family would die, not Princess Diana.
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Come to think of it, Diana was not a member of the royal family when she died. She hadn't been since her divorce. I don't think 'Princess Diana' was even her official title any more, though most people continued to call her that.
 
She was still considered to be a member of the Royal family (according to Wiki, anyway), but her correct title was then Diana, Princess of Wales. That still doesn't give any credence to Charles Boden's anecdote, though.

Buckingham Palace stated Diana was still a member of the Royal Family, as she was the mother of the second- and third-in-line to the thrones, which was confirmed by the Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household, Baroness Butler-Sloss, after a pre-hearing on 8 January 2007: "I am satisfied that at her death, Diana, Princess of Wales continued to be considered as a member of the Royal Household."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Diana
 
Olowkow said:
Generally, no one here points out spelling errors, since we all make them, but once in a great while an error is just humorous, and it is turned into a joke. This was no attack, it was just poking fun at the whole idea of photons having something to do with mediums.
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Thanks Olowkow. It was a joke for Sledge really, he being a stalwart of long-running UFO debates so I thought he'd appreciate it*, and not a dig at Charles Boden at all. Just lightening up the conversation. :)

*and I fancy his avatar so I guess I was flirting ;)

Do go on, everyone.
 
Pixel42 said:
Come to think of it, Diana was not a member of the royal family when she died. She hadn't been since her divorce. I don't think 'Princess Diana' was even her official title any more, though most people continued to call her that.
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As said, she actually got to keep the title "Princess" as part of her divorce settlement.

In a completely unrelated development, people I know from high school still call me Butt Monster.
 
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