Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
Just so. In other words, judge it by its results. And people do like a bit of evidence around here so feel free to present any that you think is compelling.
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Merged New telepathy test: which number did I write ?
- Thread starter Michel H
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Just so. In other words, judge it by its results. And people do like a bit of evidence around here so feel free to present any that you think is compelling.
Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
True, but if this thread sticks to discussing how to go about testing that fact, it's probably okay. Don't you think?
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
I've changed the highlighting a bit. Now, please note that if all these statements were not true - for example, if there were in fact other replies including different numbers - any supposed value in your evidence would very quickly evaporate. By highlighting the answers that agree with your hypothesis and ignoring those that disagree, you would be committing the fallacy of cherry-picking. Even if the highlighted statements were true, you would at best have two data points, which could quite easily be spurious.
And this undermines any evidence you choose to present still further, as it is in fact an outright admission that you are biased in favour of discounting evidence against your hypothesis.
Given your hypothetical case, which bears very little resemblance in results to what we've actually seen on the forum (though clearly a strong resemblance in terms of admitted experimenter bias), your evidence is more or less of negligible significance. Evidence at this level would not be strong enough to raise serious interest in anyone, given the overwhelming preponderance of evidence the other way, and the discovery of even a single contrary data point that you had failed to report despite being aware of it would lead anyone rational to conclude that you were either dishonest or in some sense incompetent.
Dave
is falsifiable and NOT "can be falsified"
An experiment done by someone else with Michael as the tester and another RELATED party as the party you communicate with is ideal but not necessary. Telepathy is officially considered as "doesn't exist" but such experiments are also open to tampering using ESP.
Look at the experiments done by neuroscientists that claim no free will. They get the subject to press a button or choose a number and they claim the brain scans can show that the subject's brain made the decision anything from 2 or 3 seconds up to 6 or 7 seconds before them. Really?
If this was the case then there are many activities that we simply could not do. Take driving for instance. If your brain needed 6 seconds to make a decision before you could act then you would only be able to drive on a straight road without any other cars around.
You don't need another party to do an experiment scientifically. You only need to do a control experiment to test all that there are no other conditions giving rise to the effect you observe.
Here is an experiment, which I am going to use for one of my ESP and telepathy videos. It is an experiment anyone can do to test telepathy yourself and do it scientifically.
Use a psychic for your subject. But go there as a genuine customer do not let them know that you’re doing an experiment. I know it will cost some money but it will be worth it to you.
You will need to see them twice. Both must be “cold calls”. Call them each time without telling them you are going to see them again a week later. Tell them nothing. Make the visit short so it doesn’t cost you much money. Even ten minutes is enough.
The first time is the control experiment.
We want to see what happen when you do not deliberately present ideas.
I have found that most of the “mind reading” these people do is done by abusing the relationship and it can even be done over the phone. You are still relating even if you haven’t met the person and you talk to them over the phone. That is not to say there are no genuine psychics. IMO there are, but I found most of them are phoney. They use the same psychic powers that everyone in the world has and they use it against the client.
So what “mind reading” do they do? They first, and cunningly, present you with ideas such as “dead….?? Relative… ah???” When you don’t know this, you perceive the idea but think it is your own thinking. So naturally a name of a dead relative or friend will come to your mind. This triggers your memory. You begin to think of your dead relative or friend or whoever it is and you begin to recall some thing about them. While your memory is working they going on with “oh.. oh.. yes I.. I.. I.. see your grandmother standing next to you.. she is saying… just a minute.. let me connect with her..”, meanwhile you’re thinking. Then, for the reading, cards or whatever it is, they tell you your thoughts! Easy. $50 thank you very much!
So what has happened? You have perceived the thoughts that they presented to you. And they perceive the thoughts that you unwittingly upheld in mind in response to the thought you though you were having.. this means you unwittingly were presenting your ideas back to them. This comes about because of the mental entanglement in relationship.
You want to try to avoid this. Your aim is to keep a blank mind but even if you fail (and remember these people have a lot of experience and make a living from it), it is not important in the experiment. It will still serve as a control. But if you want to give yourself a practice run and still use it as a control experiment, you could do two controls. You could do one in which you just be yourself and let them fish you for information and then a second one, where you are more experienced and can maintain a blank mind. Be kind to yourself, a blank mind is a difficult task.
The actual experiment.
You get another appointment with the psychic. You go there as a genuine customer again but this time well rehearsed.
After the control experiment(s) you dream up a fake problem and a fake dead relative. Or you can use a real dead relative and some phoney info about them and a fake problem.
To develop the fake story start out with a real problem and a real dead relative and write down a composition to yourself about the dead relative and any problem there might have been, eg you didn't get to see them before they died. Just write down what comes into your mind. Automatic writing. Examine your thoughts in the written form and use them as a formulation for the fake story.
When you go to the psychic you can sound worried if you want or composed, it doesn’t matter; Most people, who go to a psychic, go for some reason, looking for some answers, so looking worried won’t sound off any alarm bells.
HOWEVER the alarm bell that you have to avoid is giving them information that you’re cheating. So you don’t have any ideas of “I have….”, that is you don't uphold any conversational ideas if possible. If you’ve done your homework you’ll be fine. You got to sell them on what they know how to do with charm.. cheat. Rehearse before you go to the psychic well enough and you will be okay. And I will also caution you that you DO NOT give any information to anyone else about the experiment, fake problem and fake or real dead relative etc. Be confidential. Be scientific.
So while relating to the psychic you deliberately give information MENTALLY ONLY. Then you will see what they have to say and be astonished. In science there is no proof. Only in mathematics do we talk of proofs. In science we only talk of evidence. So you will have evidence that another person can perceive what you present to them mentally. Same goes for you. You can perceive what they present to you mentally. Everyone has psychic abilities. The only difference between you and a psychic is that they have trained themselves enough to make money using their telepathy.
This experiment shows that a lot of information, the whole fake story that you made up, can be perceived by a near stranger, with whom you are relating. How much more so with someone closely related.
An experiment done by someone else with Michael as the tester and another RELATED party as the party you communicate with is ideal but not necessary. Telepathy is officially considered as "doesn't exist" but such experiments are also open to tampering using ESP.
Look at the experiments done by neuroscientists that claim no free will. They get the subject to press a button or choose a number and they claim the brain scans can show that the subject's brain made the decision anything from 2 or 3 seconds up to 6 or 7 seconds before them. Really?
If this was the case then there are many activities that we simply could not do. Take driving for instance. If your brain needed 6 seconds to make a decision before you could act then you would only be able to drive on a straight road without any other cars around.
You don't need another party to do an experiment scientifically. You only need to do a control experiment to test all that there are no other conditions giving rise to the effect you observe.
Here is an experiment, which I am going to use for one of my ESP and telepathy videos. It is an experiment anyone can do to test telepathy yourself and do it scientifically.
Use a psychic for your subject. But go there as a genuine customer do not let them know that you’re doing an experiment. I know it will cost some money but it will be worth it to you.
You will need to see them twice. Both must be “cold calls”. Call them each time without telling them you are going to see them again a week later. Tell them nothing. Make the visit short so it doesn’t cost you much money. Even ten minutes is enough.
The first time is the control experiment.
We want to see what happen when you do not deliberately present ideas.
I have found that most of the “mind reading” these people do is done by abusing the relationship and it can even be done over the phone. You are still relating even if you haven’t met the person and you talk to them over the phone. That is not to say there are no genuine psychics. IMO there are, but I found most of them are phoney. They use the same psychic powers that everyone in the world has and they use it against the client.
So what “mind reading” do they do? They first, and cunningly, present you with ideas such as “dead….?? Relative… ah???” When you don’t know this, you perceive the idea but think it is your own thinking. So naturally a name of a dead relative or friend will come to your mind. This triggers your memory. You begin to think of your dead relative or friend or whoever it is and you begin to recall some thing about them. While your memory is working they going on with “oh.. oh.. yes I.. I.. I.. see your grandmother standing next to you.. she is saying… just a minute.. let me connect with her..”, meanwhile you’re thinking. Then, for the reading, cards or whatever it is, they tell you your thoughts! Easy. $50 thank you very much!
So what has happened? You have perceived the thoughts that they presented to you. And they perceive the thoughts that you unwittingly upheld in mind in response to the thought you though you were having.. this means you unwittingly were presenting your ideas back to them. This comes about because of the mental entanglement in relationship.
You want to try to avoid this. Your aim is to keep a blank mind but even if you fail (and remember these people have a lot of experience and make a living from it), it is not important in the experiment. It will still serve as a control. But if you want to give yourself a practice run and still use it as a control experiment, you could do two controls. You could do one in which you just be yourself and let them fish you for information and then a second one, where you are more experienced and can maintain a blank mind. Be kind to yourself, a blank mind is a difficult task.
The actual experiment.
You get another appointment with the psychic. You go there as a genuine customer again but this time well rehearsed.
After the control experiment(s) you dream up a fake problem and a fake dead relative. Or you can use a real dead relative and some phoney info about them and a fake problem.
To develop the fake story start out with a real problem and a real dead relative and write down a composition to yourself about the dead relative and any problem there might have been, eg you didn't get to see them before they died. Just write down what comes into your mind. Automatic writing. Examine your thoughts in the written form and use them as a formulation for the fake story.
When you go to the psychic you can sound worried if you want or composed, it doesn’t matter; Most people, who go to a psychic, go for some reason, looking for some answers, so looking worried won’t sound off any alarm bells.
HOWEVER the alarm bell that you have to avoid is giving them information that you’re cheating. So you don’t have any ideas of “I have….”, that is you don't uphold any conversational ideas if possible. If you’ve done your homework you’ll be fine. You got to sell them on what they know how to do with charm.. cheat. Rehearse before you go to the psychic well enough and you will be okay. And I will also caution you that you DO NOT give any information to anyone else about the experiment, fake problem and fake or real dead relative etc. Be confidential. Be scientific.
So while relating to the psychic you deliberately give information MENTALLY ONLY. Then you will see what they have to say and be astonished. In science there is no proof. Only in mathematics do we talk of proofs. In science we only talk of evidence. So you will have evidence that another person can perceive what you present to them mentally. Same goes for you. You can perceive what they present to you mentally. Everyone has psychic abilities. The only difference between you and a psychic is that they have trained themselves enough to make money using their telepathy.
This experiment shows that a lot of information, the whole fake story that you made up, can be perceived by a near stranger, with whom you are relating. How much more so with someone closely related.
Aepervius
Non credunt, semper verificare
I answered the question indirectly and it is a negative : no you are not entitled to state that your experiments have generated (positive) evidence, you are missing p values, null hypothesis , e.g. comapring to normal conversation and i explained you why.
And the doctor thing is very serious. I am not trying to insult you.
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Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
I guess you're familiar with the concept of 'cold reading'? How does your proposed experiment control for information you might unwittingly give a cold reader that isn't "mentally only"?
Since people regularly go away impressed when a psychic seemed to know about their real life, why should we be surprised if they also went away impressed that the psychic also seemed to know about a fictional life they thought up?
Regarding the problem of being recognised when going back to the same psychic with a different life story, do you think a false beard and glasses would be enough to fool a psychic or would we have to constantly think about being a different person to put them off the scent?
I have a mountain of evidence but it is hard to show an unrelated party the evidence. I am hassled almost round the clock because I have upset a LOT of toxic /psychopathic people. There is a war waged against me. I can stand against them because I can counter the problems they pose. BUT how do I show that evidence to you. You would have to know not only my situation but more importantly whether I overcame the problem I was experiencing or not. It is very difficult to show that evidence. However the party being hassled can see the evidence for themselves because they overcome the problem.
A great deal of problem lies in the scientific paradigm that materialism is all that there is. This denies a non-physical reality, which is part and parcel of the physical reality. Without the non-physical (Universal Mind or Mind of God of Great Void or whatever we call it) then the connection through relationship, the mental entanglement cannot be explored. And not only on the personal level, the level of people's lives. It also prevents an exploration in physics. Physicists see energy popping into and out of existing within a vacuum, within nothingness but they are calling it physical nothingness. This thinking goes nowhere.
Cold reading relies on explaining away the reading by the physical cues given or yes or no answers or any other bits of information given. However if your fake story is complex enough, then you have a large volume of information that cannot be perceived by someone else by physical cues or agreeing when they get it right etc.
I recall one psychic in Sydney, who I realized was a fake. I had been to her a couple of times for fun with some people and she told us little because we were determined not to think of anything and not give her any verbal information. Then one day I went alone and saw her. At the time there were some enormous problems going on at work and everyone was affected so I was worried. I was taken aback when she told me in considerable detail what was going on at work and how I was affected and also about one of my friends there that I was worried about. It was then that I realized that she had fished me for information but not by asking much. She fished me by mentally presenting me with ideas and getting my mental response. It was easy to do that day because I was already thinking about all this stuff and I was worried. So any thoughts that came to mind I had responded to not realizing the mental connection of relating to another and thus the other person being able to perceive. I was in a mental dialogue with her and never appreciated it until later.
Regarding the second visit to the psychic, you don't need to fool them that you are a different person. All psychics have "regular customers". It doesn't sound off any alarm bells. But if you have such concerns then go to another psychic or go to another psychic as well as the first one.
corrected to:
Are you sure you cannot calculate (easily) a p-value from these two data points, Aepervius? How about p = (1/10)*(1/10) = 0.01 for example? Wouldn't that be acceptable, if one considers all numbers written in the answers? (one can assume that the person conducting the test has already noted a tendency in the answers to mention the correct target number, but without saying clearly this number is an answer to the test, and is therefore on the lookout for all numbers).
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Note that this assumption is incompatible with the scenario you outline in which two, and only two, answers have ever been given that contain a number. So, no, in the scenario you outline you most definitely cannot assume any such tendency.
Dave
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Absolutely not. Aside from the fact that your experiment has serious methodological flaws, you just don't have enough data. If you and whomever you think best received you repeated a properly constructed 1 to 10 test a hundred times, I'd be interested in the results. The smaller the effect you're testing for, the greater your sample size needs to be. If you claim a weak effect only slightly better than chance, you'll need a very large sample before any difference from chance becomes interesting.
Look at it this way: I'm a lawyer. If I got out of school and won my first two cases, would I be justified in saying that I was absolutely unbeatable in the courtroom? How many trials would I have to win until other lawyers would recognize me as a great litigator? And what type of trials would they have to be? If I win a case in traffic court, should it count the same as winning an environmental case for $5 billion against Exxon?
In any event, I'm happy to see the thread. Your curiosity about proper testing is a huge leap in the right direction.
I changed the scenario a little (since it is hypothetical, I can always make some minor changes, which in addition may bring the scenario closer to my observed reality).
One can assume that, before doing the two 1-10 tests, the investigator actually did a 1-5 test, the target was a 5, and he noticed that one of the members had replied: "I got up at 5:00 today", apparently out of context.
Then he started to think:"Well, well, what is this now?, why did he say "5"?? What do I care, that this guy got up at 5:00?" This may have started his reflections.
This kind of stuff seemed to be occurring in my actual research (this is what it seems to me, at least).
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
You're seriously wondering if other human beings say strange and enigmatic things? Have you seen who's running for President?
This is exactly the point where you leave scientific rigor behind. If the researcher is exercising any judgment whatsoever about whether a data point does or doesn't exist, it is no longer a valid test. The only thing it's measuring anymore is the breadth of the researcher's imagination.
You must clearly define exactly what constitutes a positive hit before you begin collecting data and you must not deviate from that definition.
If you ask for a simple number from 1 to 10, "I saw four dogs" is not a valid answer. It's not simply a number from 1 to 10. It's a statement about dogs. You then imagine that a sentence that clearly isn't a direct answer to your test actually is.
It's nothing to be ashamed of. Confirmation bias has taken down far greater people than you or I. That's why any trace of it must be rigorously avoided.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
If your minor change makes the scenario self-contradictory, then anything you deduce from it is worthless. And bringing it closer to your observed reality would ideally include admitting the existence of many responses containing numbers that don't match your target, as this is what has actually been observed.
Dave
Well, I have found in my telepathy research that people like to tease the investigator a little bit, and that it is better to show a little flexibility. For example, your famous 2013 answer:
is what I call a "high quality answer" (though you later denied it had any scientific value). The same is true (and perhaps even more so) for Tiktaalik's answer:
But, these are rare; recently, for example, I did a test on Yahoo Answers where the responder answered the letter I, instead of answering the number 1, and I felt a friendly element in his answer. So I felt (and still feel) that this should be considered as evidence, because I resembles 1. It is important to understand that the participants' goal is not necessarily to make the life of the researcher easy. A lot of the evidence seems to be relatively low quality one, and it is important to learn to interpret this kind of evidence, while still hoping of course that "relatively low quality evidence" won't mean "very low quality evidence". When the target is 5, and somebody says unexpectedly "I got up at 5:00 this morning", I don't think we are dealing with very low quality evidence, perhaps more with something like "medium quality evidence", because we understand human psychology. People are not robots, human psychology factors are essential, and have to be included, this is Human Sciences, not Computer Sciences. I believe the human mind has an ability to understand this "proximity factor", qualitative stuff, but it may be very hard to teach to a computer. When you want to transform a human being into a computer, you're not making progress, you're actually moving backwards.
In the example of the opening post, strange (in view of context) sentences containing the target number were given twice. But, if this had happened, say, 10 times, without any disagreement, the evidence would have been (very) good (with a good p-value), even though it's not really "high quality".
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Ron Swanson
Illuminator
This reminds me of one of the Million Dollar Challenge participants ... who had the power to make people "itch" themselves ... even from miles away while they were on TV.
I'm sure he meant "scratch" but used the term "itch" multiple times.
I'm sure he meant "scratch" but used the term "itch" multiple times.
Daylightstar
Philosopher
You'll first have to serve the pudding. Without pudding no eating of said pudding can occur.
You have no pudding.
Aepervius
Non credunt, semper verificare
No, because you are not taking into account the natural occurrence of the words like "four" in a random conversation. Therefore your probability value is valid for a random draw, but not for a correlated/non random functions.
To give you an absurd example this would be like asking art student a random color , and be astonished that the color you chose was mentioned by one of the student.
See what i meant ? You would need to be able to compare without and with broadcasting, but by choosing such an easy and often occuring word, you are artificially adding random "hit".
no. the only way to go would be to have something which a very very low probability be randomly guessed. A 6 digits numbers. A made up word like juzaeropoikule.
Wanna bet you fill find out no "broadcasting" occurs in such condition ?
The reason for that is simple : what you think is a broadcast , is with almost certainty not. It is you recognizing hit on random naturally occurs stuff.
I checked how often came the word vier (four in german) in our conversation this midday. It cames up two time. that's jsut random.
basically what you are calculating and correlating is not broadcasting, but the probability of you choosing a random number appearing in a conversation. And that anybody can do even using a dice (a D10 dice AD&D for example) and get the same number of hits as you.
But, Aepervius, while "four" or "4" may naturally and randomly occur in a conversation, the same is true about "one" or "1", about "two" and "2", and so on. I have tried to read you carefully, and I am not sure you got this; that's how you get the rough probability p = 1/10 = 0.1 for the first test, and another p = .1 for the second test, with a joint probability for the two events equal to 0.1*0.1 = 0.01. You must surely understand that "something unusual" happened in the tests I described in the opening post, because there were these two coincidences, first for 4, and then for 8.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
That is where your notion fails. You only ascribe meaning to your desired result and reject any other result as frivolous for reasons which you fail to cogently express. This is the very antithesis of science.
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