Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?

[Daylightstar]

At least the question quoted below:

As I had directly said, yet again, the possibilities that fit the description can be dismissed on practical grounds. Again, that's different from saying that it's definitely not the case.

What would you require to be able to say that ESP does not exist, ESP conclusively proven to be non existent?

..... was later answered indirectly:

... I do agree that it's reasonable to call something false if it has solid evidence against it and no solid evidence for it. ...

You require absolute proof against a proposition for you to accept that proposition as not existing.
Which essentially is a reversal of the burden of proof

 

[Daylightstar]

...
404 not found, 404 not found, book review by the college student that authored the blog post he was previously parading around.
...

Same issue as described here:

No it didn't. The page file name for the link you gave read:
"rationallyspeaking.blogspot.c...ke-on-esp"
You had simply copied an optically shortened version and pasted that in your post.

I googled some of the text and found the article that way.

Why annnnoid needs to make the same mistake again is anybody's guess

 

[Daylightstar]

... Pretty little snowflakes.

Nice that you like snowflakes.
What did you do in the interim, annnnoid?

 

[Nonpareil]

On the subject of the contents of the "evidence" annnnoid has supplied us with.

Let's start with the blindingly obvious: it all comes from the Max Derakhshani guy, with a side of Johann Baptista. Max Derakhshani, as we have already established, is a college student in physics. Johann Baptista, as it turns out, is an undergraduate in the same field.

Doubtful credentials of the authors aside, the articles, such as they are, cite primarily themselves. When they are not citing themselves, they cite articles which have already been discussed in this thread and shown to be lacking - for example, Storm et al 2010 and Utts 1991. Basically, their sources are questionable at best.

The contents of the articles are also uninspiring. They primarily consist of dodging the actual issues raised by Hyman's critique. For example, when Hyman states that psi researchers often ignore null results entirely and only pay attention to the handful of studies which do result in positives, the authors "respond" by saying "It's important to figure out what null results are actually important - but instead of doing that, here's a long rant on ganzfeld study results which have been widely criticized".

Really, this is just sad, and it certainly isn't any sort of evidence for psi.

 

[Dinwar]

I think the improper credentials is something we should eventually explore. Physicists may THINK they know everything about the universe and all fields of science, but the reality is that physics is a specialized field, just like all the rest. A physicist is no more likely to be familiar with proper evaluation of reported claims about ESP than an ornithologist or a geologist. Pretty much everyone who's ever written a bologna detection kit (to borrow Sagan's term, and to get the Oscar Meyer song stuck in my head....) agrees that experts speaking outside their area of expertise are at best no more experts than any other random person on the street, and at worst are WORSE than a random person because experts can more easily fool themselves about their level of knowledge. For example, a physicist may convince himself that his understanding of statistical analysis compensates for his lack of understanding of psychology in these ESP studies--a very serious error that leads inevitably to confirmation bias creeping in.

So the fact that annnnoid's best evidence comes from people completely unqualified to evaluate the claims is a very, VERY damning datum for his side.

 

[jhunter1163]

Folks, the topic of this thread is ESP and/or alien life, not each other. Do not personalize your arguments and remain civil and polite. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jhunter1163

 

[jt512]

This entire thing was in response to jt512 saying that ESP may not be demonstrable, even in principle, but might still exist.

BTW, I think my "in principle" was a bit weaker than yours. What I had in mind was something like, if for any ESP experiment that showed an effect you would consider experimental error to be a more likely explanation for the results than ESP. Then ESP would be, for you, not demonstrable by experiment. That's actually close to my own position.

 

[Nonpareil]

BTW, I think my "in principle" was a bit weaker than yours. What I had in mind was something like, if for any ESP experiment that showed an effect you would consider experimental error to be a more likely explanation for the results than ESP. Then ESP would be, for you, not demonstrable by experiment.

That's a practical limitation, not a theoretical one. So yes, yours was weaker.

 

[jt512]

Super luminal neutrinos do not exists except within the very tight bounds of HIP, you can cite p values if you want...

I have no idea what HIP is. The findings that I was referring to were eventually determined to be due to a bad clock and a loose cable connection.

...show the actual research that demonstrates ESP and we can discuss the methodology.

I have, in three separate posts, linked to what I think is the best research parapsychologists have.

 

[Nonpareil]

I have, in three separate posts, linked to what I think is the best research parapsychologists have.

And we have responded.

Even the Autoganzfeld II experiments, the ones with purportedly tighter controls, turned up nothing. They had a hit rate indistinguishable from chance. Your own links state this.

 

[jt512]

Doubtful credentials of the authors aside, the articles, such as they are, cite primarily themselves. When they are not citing themselves, they cite articles which have already been discussed in this thread and shown to be lacking - for example, Storm et al 2010 and Utts 1991. Basically, their sources are questionable at best.

No one in this thread has found anything wrong with either the Storm 2010 meta-analysis or the studies included in the paper. They've only made claims that the one or the other are "flawed."

Somebody criticized the paper. Therefore the paper is invalid. Deep.

 

[jt512]

I think the improper credentials is something we should eventually explore. Physicists may THINK they know everything about the universe and all fields of science, but the reality is that physics is a specialized field, just like all the rest. A physicist is no more likely to be familiar with proper evaluation of reported claims about ESP than an ornithologist or a geologist. Pretty much everyone who's ever written a bologna detection kit (to borrow Sagan's term, and to get the Oscar Meyer song stuck in my head....) agrees that experts speaking outside their area of expertise are at best no more experts than any other random person on the street, and at worst are WORSE than a random person because experts can more easily fool themselves about their level of knowledge. For example, a physicist may convince himself that his understanding of statistical analysis compensates for his lack of understanding of psychology in these ESP studies--a very serious error that leads inevitably to confirmation bias creeping in.

First, note that Johann and Maaneli Max have only written review papers. They're not doing any original research. Secondly, worrying about their credentials is really just ad hominem. The question is whether the work itself is valid.

 

[Daylightstar]

No one in this thread has found anything wrong with either the Storm 2010 meta-analysis or the studies included in the paper. They've only made claims that the one or the other are "flawed."

Somebody criticized the paper. Therefore the paper is invalid. Deep.

Does, according to you, any of the studies you linked to demonstrate or establish ESP as a reality?

 

[Nonpareil]

No one in this thread has found anything wrong with either the Storm 2010 meta-analysis or the studies included in the paper. They've only made claims that the one or the other are "flawed."

Somebody criticized the paper. Therefore the paper is invalid. Deep.

Ignoring my posts doesn't make them go away.

And no. Pointing out that the authors are not well-qualified to offer appropriate commentary on the subject matter in hand is not ad hominem. You seem to be extremely confused as to what that phrase actually means.

 

[Dinwar]

First, note that Johann and Maaneli Max have only written review papers. They're not doing any original research. Secondly, worrying about their credentials is really just ad hominem. The question is whether the work itself is valid.

It's not an ad hom--I'm questioning their capacity to review the papers. If they have no greater capacity than anyone else, their reviews aren't worth spit. This isn't attacking them, but rather their methods.

There's a common pseudoscience tactic of trying to smuggle experts in. Velikovski got a lot of engineers to agree with him. They're engineers--they HAVE to know what they're talking about, right?! Same with Creationists--they get people with impressive-looking credentials to agree with their nonsense, and attempt to pass them off as experts.

I will grant you that it's not proof that they're wrong, not by a long shot. However, it IS a methodological argument, NOT an ad hom, and it does deminish the credibility of these papers.

We're talking parapsychology here. Show me papers by a psychologist that supports ESP, and we can talk. Blog posts by physicists are too poor-quality evidence to be worth considering, because they lack the capacity to fully evaluate them by the standards necessitated by the data.

 

[Sideroxylon]

If ESP was as noticeable in daily lives as many claim, why does it only show up in dodgy meta-analysis and not simple experiments?

 

[jaydeehess]

What was not?

Are you referring to words I typed or those contained in the link I posted? If mine then quote back the offending bits.
If the author's then note that he managed to collaborate with Honorton. Cannot envision that would take place if the later considered the author to be insulting.

 

[Dinwar]

If ESP was as noticeable in daily lives as many claim, why does it only show up in dodgy meta-analysis and not simple experiments?

Part of it is confirmation bias. To a lot of people, it DOES show up. The issue is, once you account for misses as well as hits and remove the potential for contamination, the signal goes away very quickly.

 

[jaydeehess]

. We know of no person or race that has developed an evolutionary advantage over the rest of us plebes by being able to know our thoughts, or know the course of future events, or have the capability of manipulating tools without having to touch or be physically connected to them. Imagine the hunter gatherer community that has remote viewing capabilities. They waste less energy searching for food by being able to scout the countryside. They avoid predators easily. They find prey animal populations with little effort, etc.

Me, I could swing an ability to know the exact weather any location will experience, into my becoming a billionaire. Put those duffers at the weather channel right out of business. The State of Idaho itself would pay me millions for perfect forecasting of potato crop watering and temperatures.

If ESP was as noticeable in daily lives as many claim, why does it only show up in dodgy meta-analysis and not simple experiments?

It would appear to be greatly advantageous and therefore should be noticeable.

 

[jt512]

Does, according to you, any of the studies you linked to demonstrate or establish ESP as a reality?

No. But no amount of experimental evidence from parapsychologists could convince me that ESP is real, because, in my opinion, the probability that any positive finding from such an experiment is due to systematic error is vastly greater than the probability that it is due to ESP. Now, if investigators hostile to the hypothesis, started to consistently get such results, I think I'd start to pay attention. However, without a viable mechanism that physicists agree on, I think I'd still be skeptical. I don't see why the ESP hypothesis should be held to a lower standard than, say, the Higgs boson hypothesis was.

What ESP proponents complain about is that skeptics deny that the proponents have evidence, and that skeptics have fallacious criticisms of that evidence. I'm convinced that those complaints are justified based on what I've seen in this thread: lack of awareness of the most recent research; application of criticisms of older research, were it was valid, to subsequent research, were it is not; and failure to critically examine the potentially valid criticisms themselves.