Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
So, not statistically significant unless you reject the answers that are wrong
It's the Monty Hall problem, except that he gets two doors opened.
Dave
Merged New telepathy test: which number did I write ?
- Thread starter Michel H
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It's the Monty Hall problem, except that he gets two doors opened.
Dave
TheSapient, I believe my "powers" are not really "magic", and they are not really "powers", but this doesn't matter much, I think I still understand your question.
Why would anyone bother to deny "my telepathy"?
I think of three reasons:
Reason 1: a matter of pride. Many people like it when they feel important, but they like it much less when the other guy might seem sometimes more "important" than them. So, when you deny a real phenomenon that seems to make another person "special", you keep that person at a "low level", which is something which may seem desirable to many.
Reason 2: to protect their mental health, their mental balance. Some people might be worried about their mental health if it turned out that they know a lot about the private and personal thoughts of an obscure individual speaking (usually) a different language, and located thousand of miles away. They may ask: how is this going to interfere with my own thoughts? Am I gonna get crazy? The answer, however, seems to be "no", this (apparent) phenomenon seems to be very well tolerated.
Reason 3: political persecution. I frankly don't like some of the decisions made by the important political leaders of Europe and the US. This may generate some short term insecurity (but, also, perhaps some longer term security).
To be sure, I have actually looked in the dictionary.
(from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pardon)
SezMe
post-pre-born
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Reason 4: There is no such thing as telepathy, and this is a discussion forum dedicated to sceptical examination of unusual claims.
Dave
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Sorry, but you are barking up the wrong tree. Common usage is not the same as dictionary definition.
In the case of p+ = 21% (near the text you highlighted), I just calculated the binomial probability of getting 5 hits (or more) after 10 trials, the hit probability being equal to 1/3 = 0.33333333 for each trial. So I just entered the numbers 0.33333333, 10 and 5 on this page: http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx , and clicked "Calculate".So, not statistically significant unless you reject the answers that are wrong
p.s. please show your working for the statistical calculations and the confidence level.
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Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
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Well, that seems a bit weak when you consider how obsessed so many people appear to be with celebrities. So it's not credible that everyone in the world is too insecure to admit that anyone else might be more special than themselves. In fact, since you imagine yourself to be something akin to the living embodiment of the hero of The Truman Show, we ought to expect you would have a massive international fan club. Don't you think?
It does seem to be well tolerated, doesn't it? People take it so casually that nobody ever bothers to mention it. In all of culture, in all drama, poetry, song, cinema or TV, nobody who writes on any aspect of human existence ever, ever mentions "Oh, and what about that guy in Belgium whose thoughts everybody hears? Weird, right?" Think about that: Nobody. Ever.
You know that you are not the only person who "frankly doesn't like some of the decisions made by the important political leaders of Europe and the US", right? Why would you imagine that people who disagree with your politics would not want to mention that they heard your thoughts? Wouldn't they be the ones who would be most annoyed about it?
Daylightstar
Philosopher
You are simply calculating probability of numerical outcome, not the probability of or degree to which it involves the claimed phenomenon of telepathy, nor does is demonstrate such claimed phenomenon, that is entirely your own irrationally wishful addition.
Pathetically, you massage the numbers with your emotionally motivated credibility ratings, which, as you'll probably understand but will reject anyway, still does nothing whatsoever to demonstrate your claimed phenomenon of being telepathic.
What you clearly do demonstrate, is a wish to be telepathic, but that's all you can demonstrate.
Daylightstar
Philosopher
Michel H, you appear to be just a guy with empty hands. You are not the only one trying to sell something you can not actually deliver.
Find something you actually can do.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
According to your reasoning, the more confident a person is, the more likely it is for the person to be lying. An individual with little confidence shows that he or she has very little stake in the results and should be MORE likely to give a correct answer.
Thus, when you say:
Those who said they were without confidence or neutral were the ones going in with the clearest heads and the least preconceptions. Their answers sound more credible than any of the others.
Of course, none of this matters because you have yet to show that confidence level has anything to do with how truthful people are being about your telepathy. The only way to do that is to either first prove or take as given that you have telepathy.
You are assuming your conclusion to be true in order to apply rules to these guesses that show that your conclusion is true.
This is very, very poor science by any definition.
Also, you continue not to understand english. "Pardon me" and "Excuse me" are common phrases of politeness, which was actually one of the definitions you quoted but then simply ignored.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Heh that sounds like an old TV commercial. "4 out of 5 dentists recommend ........... ".
Nay_Sayer
I say nay!
I'm going to say this is spot on but ultimately a moot effort, I consider Michel to be, tragically,
severely delusional, Nothing anyone says will matter.
I wish that wasn't the case.
fromdownunder
Philosopher
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Actually people are asking for evidence of telepathy which your posts and retrospective "analysis" (if that's the word I am groping for) only indicate that you somehow twist correct answers into your failed belief, and reject incorrect answers out of hand as being not genuine.
I can assure you that I do not feel important in any way. I spent the last three weeks wearing a home ureteral catheter, and was so utterly dependant on my kids to get me around so I could do anything at all that importance was the last thing on my mind. Whatever pride I may have had simply turned into gratitude towards the kids helping me out in my time of need. And you have not demonstrated a real phenomenon. All you have demonstrated is a capacity to lie to yourself by pretending that your failed tests are somehow meaningful. That, as others have said, are truly the sad results of your failures.
So, suggesting that somebody half way around the world from you, possibly hearing or seeing a number between one and three and doing nothing else whatsoever is supposed to worry me? I really do have more important things to do. Get a haircut, buy a nice bottle of wine, cook meals, watch Movies and sport on Foxtel, take my medication (something that you would do well to emulate). I can assure you I have never ever heard any of your thoughts, in English, French, Dutch or German. Live with it.
And yet you have already flatly stated on this thread that sending thoughts other than numbers is difficult, and that is why you stick to (a whole three) numbers. Post #1440, 27 April 2014:
So, if you are incapable of "sending" a single word why are you worried about sending more complex concepts that might result is some (totally paranoid) thoughts of political persecution? And again, are you assuming that everybody hears everything you think about? Think again.
You are just a small, small man in a big, big world wanting to pretend that you have some importance. Get over yourself. You are not important, so stop thinking that you are.
(I posted this during half time of the Geelong v Fremantle AFL gamefor want of anything better to do. But watching THAT is important. It's all relative.
Norm
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TheSapient
Critical Thinker
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Michel,
I asked you a series of questions that provided context between them. Cutting out one while ignoring the others so as to avoid the larger issue is dishonest. Why would you stoop to that?
I see.
Makes sense. You do create absurd tests you know are deeply flawed and even then refuse to accept the results, all to make yourself feel special.
Or, at least, you are want to protect your belief that you don't need help.
Really? I don't feel persecuted. I mostly feel badly for you.
Now, if you want to go back and answer my questions honestly, I am willing to listen.
I asked you a series of questions that provided context between them. Cutting out one while ignoring the others so as to avoid the larger issue is dishonest. Why would you stoop to that?
I see.
Makes sense. You do create absurd tests you know are deeply flawed and even then refuse to accept the results, all to make yourself feel special.
Or, at least, you are want to protect your belief that you don't need help.
Really? I don't feel persecuted. I mostly feel badly for you.
Now, if you want to go back and answer my questions honestly, I am willing to listen.
Perhaps I should explain better what the quantity p+, which I have used in post #2216 exactly means.
I got four credible answers (or, at least, four answers that I found myself credible), and all were correct (i.e. gave the correct number, 3 in this test). If there is no such thing as telepathy, this is a (very) unlikely event: since there was a 1/3 probability of giving the correct answer, one would expect people the give the correct answer about 33% of the time. So, for a target equal to 3, one would expect for example the answers 2 1 3 2, or 3 3 1 2, but probably not the sequence 3 3 3 3, which was obtained in my test.
The p+ quantity I have used tells us exactly how unlikely such an event is, in mathematical terms. So, in this case, the probability p of obtaining a sequence of four (consecutive) correct answers (with no incorrect answer) is equal to p = 1/(34) = 1/81 = 1.23%.
Now, you might say:"why is this important?", "this doesn't prove telepathy, does it?", "I don't care!" (or worse). Suppose I had gotten many more answers, and that the answers had been (after a brief credibility analysis to eliminate the bad quality answers) 3333333333...333333 (many 3's, seems to indicate strong telepathy) instead of a more random sequence 1332112311...312. The probability of the series 3333333333...333333 is extremely small (in the absence of telepathy); in other words, the event 3333333333...333333 is nearly impossible, in the absence of telepathy. Lets us say, to simplify, that this event is impossible if there is no telepathy. It is "impossible", but it has occurred! So the assumption that telepathy does not exist must be wrong, and telepathy must exist. In other words, you can "prove" telepathy in this way.
For further explanations, I invite you to read section 2.2.1 of professor Jessica Utts' excellent text AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf (Ms. Utts is both a statistics professor at the University of California, and a parapsychologist - note that there is no incompatibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Utts )
Nay_Sayer
I say nay!
dlorde
Philosopher
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Yeah, but you didn't get 3333333333...333333. You selected four answers that matched your choice.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Wrong.
It is a very, very likely event. You discarded answers for "credibility" only after you knew whether they matched your number. You chose your own hits and found reasons to disqualify the misses.
Under those circumstances, it is certain you will find a correlation.
As I said before, I personally think the person with low confidence has the highest credibility under your rating system. That person has the most open mind and is not actively wrestling with their thoughts. But you discarded those people.
However, there is no event where you can call your test valid even with a million answers and no credibility scale whatsoever. Why? Because the choice of numbers is so small that psychological factors come into play. It may be that, asked to choose a number between 1 and 3, most people pick 3. You would at the very least have to run a test to see whether people, in the absence of telepathy, favor one number over others.
A larger pool of numbers, a word, a series of letters, or virtually anything else would produce more easily readable results.
You won't run a better test, though. You know it will show that you have no special powers.
Daylightstar
Philosopher
However, you have your idiotic credibility ratings, which would make such an event in your case rather likely and completely negates the need for 'any' never before demonstrated reality of telepathy claims.
Your massaging of 'results' with your idiotic credibility ratings is a demonstrated and confirmed phenomenon, in this way, you yourself negate the need for telepathy claims in your silly nonsensical 'tests'.
Telepathy claims do not even enter the picture.
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