New telepathy test, the sequel.

Michel H said:
No, I think you're wrong again. In a telepathy experiment, it is normal to encourage success, accuracy in the guesses. You want to avoid random, chance results. This does not violate any principle of scientific objectivity.
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Then provide some relevant citations to such experiments, please, from appropriately rigorous journals. If the test is to determine whether telepathy exists, then it is blatantly contrary to scientific objectivity to encourage one outcome over the other.

What would be dishonest would be...
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Straw man. There are many ways to be dishonest in science. And pseudoscientific research into the paranormal has committed most of them. The reason most research into the paranormal is rejected by mainstream science is precisely because it uses flawed methods, not because its practitioners simply lie about the data.

At the end of the experiment, after you've done all you could to motivate your participants, you would normally calculate a p-value (if your sample is large enough).
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The whole point of rewarding participation is to get enough participants to ensure a useful p-value, regardless of outcome. You still haven't explained your intent in creating a greater incentive to provide data that favors your preferred conclusion. In fact, even having a preferred conclusion is contrary to scientific objectivity.
 
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Michel H said:
No, I am defining success in a telepathy experiment in the usual way. For example, if I wrote "1" on my piece of paper, and I tell you that I wrote 1, 2, 3 or 4, you can achieve success by telling me I wrote "1" (same thing for another sender and another percipient, of course).

Success in Science does not mean displaying extreme, systematic and unreasonable aggressivity. Success in Science also doesn't mean using unnecessarily a lot of very complicated words, that some people may find difficult to understand (this is pedantry, as far as I know).
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You've had no success. Ever. Period. Full stop.
 
Nay_Sayer said:
You've had no success. Ever. Period. Full stop.
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Loss Leader said:
... Early on, I used my telepathic powers to see into your weak and ordinary mind and pull out the number you were thinking of. You did not feel aggressively towards me back then so your thoughts were very easy to read and you did not change your answer when you knew I was right. ...
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John said:
I am now a proven psychic!
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(Link: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20191223165542AAdfnoP, basically like Loss Leader)
Ladewig said:
Hurray.

Congratulations on once again proving telepathy.
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So true.
 
Michel H said:
John, of Yahoo Answers, did not say that. He is not a skeptic.
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If what you quoted was correct, John did not say you were a psychic. He said he was a psychic.


"Originally Posted by John, 22% of best answers on Yahoo Answers, one week ago
I am now a proven psychic!"


Can you read?




Norm
 
fromdownunder said:
If what you quoted was correct, John did not say you were a psychic. He said he was a psychic.


"Originally Posted by John, 22% of best answers on Yahoo Answers, one week ago
I am now a proven psychic!"
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Yes, he meant that he did show some psychic abilities. For example, when I write a number on my paper, and when Loss Leader brillantly "reads" it in Florida or in New York, he displays psychic abilities too. I am not the only one who displays psychic abilities. You have "emission" abilities and "perception" abilities.

You, yourself, when you wrote the horribly non-credible answer:
fromdownunder said:
Since this is Friday (6 letters), and I'm watching Oliver on Television (6 letters) and it is around 1:30PM (1+3=4) the answer is obviously 1 as 1 is not a multiple of quirty.

Norm
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you participated in a fairly bright way in my successful test of August 2013 (even though a correct answer would have been better).

The Collins English dictionary defines:
Psychic: (Psychology) a person who is sensitive to parapsychological forces or influences
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The American Heritage dictionary says:
Psychic: Capable of extraordinary mental processes, such as extrasensory perception and mental telepathy.
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Link: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/psychic.
 
JayUtah said:
What does your dictionary have to say about sarcasm?
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sar·casm:
1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to express contempt or ridicule.
2. A form of wit characterized by the use of such remarks: detected a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
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Link: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/sarcasm.

There are some things that some people would prefer to forget, when their mood changes. But it is not so easy.
 
Michel H said:
For example, when I write a number on my paper, and when Loss Leader brillantly "reads" it in Florida or in New York, he displays psychic abilities too.
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No. Just, no.

There is so much wrong with this statement I have no idea where even to begin. No, you don't get to conclude he has psychic ability just because he made one trial and guessed it correctly that one time. Your reasoning here does nothing to address that people will guess correctly by chance, with no psychic ability operating at all. Attributing every appearance of success to the operation of the hypothesis is eminently circular reasoning. As Loss Leader himself correctly pointed out, being able to falsify the null hypothesis -- which says he will get it right 25% of the time by chance alone -- requires multiple controlled trials. You can't say from one trial that Loss Leader displays psychic ability.

As I keep saying, you have absolutely no clue how actual scientific study is actually done. Your errors are profound and elementary.
 
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JayUtah said:
Then provide some relevant citations to such experiments, please, from appropriately rigorous journals. If the test is to determine whether telepathy exists, then it is blatantly contrary to scientific objectivity to encourage one outcome over the other.
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In this particular regard, Michel is correct. It is very common in experiments to reward success in order to incentivize participants to make their best efforts. And if you believe that telepathy doesn't work--and that the experiment can be designed without cheating, then the incentive is harmless as the nothing the participants do will enable them to earn the reward.

But to be clear, merely adding in some payments doesn't solve all the many design problems that require attention.
 
Michel H said:
Loss Leader said:
... Early on, I used my telepathic powers to see into your weak and ordinary mind and pull out the number you were thinking of. You did not feel aggressively towards me back then so your thoughts were very easy to read and you did not change your answer when you knew I was right. ...
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You realize, of course, that I called your mind weak and ordinary, right? It was actually the exact opposite of saying you had telepathic powers. I said I had telepathic powers. This is not evidence that you had any success. It's the polar opposite of that.

In any case, please, please, please, please, please stop quoting any of my posts as evidence of anything whatsoever.

I made that post as a joke. I wrote it sarcastically. My intention was to be cruel. My intention was to mock you and make your pretend test look as absolutely foolish as possible. It was part of a string of posts where I took a mirror stance to you in order to show how utterly ridiculous your views about yourself are.

I parrotted your words back at you: pretending I had psychic powers and pretending it mattered whether someone felt hostile or not. In actuality, neither of those things was true. Nothing I wrote was true. I had no idea then that you would so pitifully misunderstand that you were being made fun of. At the time, I believed my simple and obvious contempt for your test was something that you or any adult would understand. I was wrong in that regard. I regret it.

Just like my other posts from so long ago, delete my reply from any argument you make regarding your powers of telepathy. Do not give it any regard in reinforcing your personal beliefs. Never refer to it or consider it again in any way. And please stop quoting it.
 
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Startz said:
In this particular regard, Michel is correct. It is very common in experiments to reward success in order to incentivize participants to make their best efforts.
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We don't, since level-of-effort is rarely part of the research we have done that involves human subjects. Where effort is a factor, we want typical effort, not best effort. We don't want them to do anything special. I concede this is not always what would be wanted in human-subjects research, so I don't dispute your report.

And if you believe that telepathy doesn't work--and that the experiment can be designed without cheating...
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Historically this hasn't been the case for telepathy research. However, that has mostly to do with the cleverness of the subjects, not nefarious intent on the part of the researchers. If, charitably speaking, we grant that Michel believes his experiment doesn't allow for cheating, then I accept the harmless-incentive argument on those grounds, and I withdraw the challenge.

But to be clear, merely adding in some payments doesn't solve all the many design problems that require attention.
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No, not even remotely. I see the value in offering payment as a means to increase the sample sizes and hopefully get close to statistical significance.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Or 'irony', apparently.
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Indeed. [Heavy sigh]

Now why does it even matter? Because Michel is setting himself up to judge responses for their "credibility" from his sole ability to judge the intent of people he's never met using only a few short words they've written. Yes, if you're crowdsourcing answers you may want to prune away obviously ill-intended contributions. But when the snark isn't explicitly spelled out, one has to judge carefully. This creates a problem for scientific inquiry, because that judgment becomes an irreproducible factor in the experiment design.

But on a more serious note, data-pruning immediately raises the specter of post hoc manipulation. We naturally fear that removing "errant" data is a proxy for removing data that doesn't support the desired conclusion. And what do we see? "I'm now a proven psychic!" from the semi-anonymous John is held up as a genuine response, despite the universal understanding that one success doth not a psychic make. More egregiously, Loss Leader has gone to extraordinary lengths to assure Michel that his prior posts were intended from the start as humor, snark, mockery. He has demanded in firm tone that Michel stop misrepresenting him. The criteria for acceptance is clearly whether the answer favors his claim, regardless of the degree of snark employed.
 
Michel H said:
Yes, he meant that he did show some psychic abilities. For example, when I write a number on my paper, and when Loss Leader brillantly "reads" it in Florida or in New York, he displays psychic abilities too. I am not the only one who displays psychic abilities. You have "emission" abilities and "perception" abilities.
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Show me where either he or Loss Leader said that they thought you had psychic abilities and stop making stuff up that you cannot support.



You can't, can you? So you have to create your own pathetic world where you think that people say or mean something they never actually said or meant.



Norm
 
fromdownunder said:
Show me where either he or Loss Leader said that they thought you had psychic abilities
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It is implicit. When John of Yahoo Answers said:
I am now a proven psychic!
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(https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20191223165542AAdfnoP )
, what this meant is that he had participated in an extra-sensory perception experiment that, with his brain and mind of a scientist, he found significant (see again the definitions of psychic in post #1427). See also John's profile on Yahoo Answers:
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=iUM1h6Yjaa .

You have to realize that, when John took part in this test, he did "feel" certain things (he is not a robot, or a automatic random number generator), and his comments reflect what he felt. In 2013, he also took part in one of my tests, gave the correct answer and, after I gave him the best answer, he said:
Yeah, I knew it was B all along :)
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(this was very similar to the test a week ago).

Now, from a practical standpoint, it seems almost impossible to do such a successful telepathy experiment if, on the other end, the emitter emits nothing. It seems extremely unlikely that it was John's soul, extending over thousands of miles perhaps, which came to Belgium to read my paper, this idea seems terribly unscientific. The same observation can be made about Loss Leader. When this famous telepathy expert said:
Loss Leader said:
I am seeing a 4 very clearly. It's almost as though I had written it myself.
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Loss Leader said:
... Early on, I used my telepathic powers to see into your weak and ordinary mind and pull out the number you were thinking of. You did not feel aggressively towards me back then so your thoughts were very easy to read and you did not change your answer when you knew I was right. ...
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, he used the words "see" and "read". Here again, this should be understood with a grain of salt. Loss Leader's soul did not come to my modest appartment to read my piece of paper. The only way Loss Leader could "see" or "read", in practical terms, was by having probably some telepathic waves coming to him, that his brain could decipher.
 
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Michel H said:
...he used the words "see" and "read". Here again, this should be understood with a grain of salt.
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Don't you think it's eminently arrogant of you to pretend to be the authority on what Loss Leader really meant when he has spent considerable effort assuring you that he was putting you on the entire time? Why are you continuing it take seriously a statement he has thoroughly repudiated? Have you no shame at all?

This only way Loss Leader could "see" or "read", in practical terms, was by having probably some telepathic waves coming to him, that his brain could decipher.
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Or he made a not-so-lucky guess, and then played on your gullibility for some regrettable fun.

Tell us again what a great scientist you are.
 
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Michel H said:
What would be dishonest would be for example to fake the results, and to claim for example that 75% answered correctly when in reality only 25% answered correctly. Or, at a more delicate level in a telepathy experiment, that an obviously absurd answer is credible.
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But obviously sarcastic answers are apparently fine, even after the posters who gave them confirm they meant them sarcastically.
 
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