Paranormal detection

[H3LL]

My take is that he believes if he can make up an untestable ability then the JREF will have to pay the million because they can't disprove said claim.

Thus the claimant sees everything up to and including protocol discussions as being off-topic, the thinking being that if we can't create a protocol, he gets the money.

Or something. I foresee a more likely outcome being published in Public Announcements, at the present rate of invective.

That's a whole new level of deluded that I had not properly considered.

Food for thought even though it makes my brain hurt thinking like that.

Thanks - I think.


Personally, I think his motives are far more dishonest and not unfamiliar to many here. Time will tell.
.

 

[fromdownunder]

Thus the claimant sees everything up to and including protocol discussions as being off-topic, the thinking being that if we can't create a protocol, he gets the money.

Well it's not up to us to create a protocol, it is up to him. As I have said, he does not even need to come to this forum to do that. However he does seem resistant to any protocol attempts that actually test his ability, rather than test his prejudices.

But, after this thread, he has to negotiate with JREF, then agree to a protocol, then sign a contract, then do the preliminary test, then do the final test, then get the Million.

At the moment, he has done absolutely nothing, and I expect that this is what the attempt will come to..

Norm

 

[Lrrr]

Reason1 seems to be operating under the idea that his ability could be considered in a similar manner. I am in no way convinced of this. What Reason1 needs to do is actually answer the specific questions several of us have asked including evaluating my suggested protocol and the suggestions others have added to it.

There is no sense arguing about "counting the misses" until such time is there an actual protocol under consideration. Then we can define misses and evaluate their importance.

I agree, but reason1's own words would indicate their protocol will ignore at least some scenarios that would be considered misses. I could be wrong. I guess we just have to wait and see.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Cacakoka!

Cacakoka!

Well, I'm glad we've gotten down to the scientific discussions, man!

I love it! I'm sold!

So you get in a public place and wear a costume from Harry Potter, and every time you perceive this hitherto unknown phenomenon, you shout "Cacakoka"!

You might want to be aware of one of James Randi's favorite sayings, though: Make sure you don't open your mind so much that your brains fall out. 'Round these parts when someone says, "open your mind", it generally means that they can't do what they claim or prove it, but if we only had a little more faith, why we'd just be able to see it.

You're now officially jerking us around. Well, to be fair, though, we don't call it "jerking around", we call it Schloppenfreeful. So, don't schloppenfrfeeful us, man! Get on with it.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Any protocol, test or study that allows the claimant to dismiss the misses is crap. We have seen this before and over a century of experimentation in psychophysics is being ignored here.
A person claims to be able to detect some stimulus that has never been shown to have been detected by any human ever before.
The stimulus is precisely defined and is controlled by the experimenter.
The claimant is given a warning signal when the stimulus may be presented or not on a random basis.
The claimant must respond "yes" or "no" after every warning signal.
The data are then sorted into a 2 X 2 array -
Hits .............. Misses
False Alarms .... Correct rejections
I won't get into the analysis of the data, but Signal Detection Theory would help to decide whether the claimant was correct or not.

 

[VisionFromFeeling]

Cacakoka ... Julunggul ... I just can't keep up as a Paranormal Claimant. I can't make up funny words like this. I just can't do it.

 

[Uncayimmy]

I hear what you are saying but the problem seems to be that, using your analogy, reason1 would claim there were only 10 sixes rolled and not 20 as perceived by others. The missing 10 were not the right kind of sixes.

He doesn't seem to see this and I think you might have missed it too.

What do you think?

ETA: fromdownunder posted above while I was writing and he seems to think the same thing.

Who cares if Reason1 thinks that only 10 sixes were "really" rolled instead of 20? What possible relevance would it have to the overall result, which is statistically very unlikely given no false positives? His "beliefs" about what constitutes a "real" or "fake" six don't change the results in the scenario I described. It would still be an amazing feat correctly predicting half the sixes that were rolled and never predicting a six that didn't come up. You could make a buttload of money in Vegas with that advantage.

The real issue here isn't counting misses. It's counting hits and especially false positives. Though none of us have the data, we're all likely to agree on a few things:

A) In a crowd situation such as a mall eatery, at any given time a solitary person reading a book is likely to have someone looking right at him.

B) This solitary book reader is even more likely to have someone looking in his general direction.

C) If the solitary book reader suddenly turned his head, he would likely be able to spot someone from A or B above and fix his gaze upon that person.

D) The person in D C is likely to turn away upon being singled out that way.

And thus no neutral observer could differentiate between Reason1 reacting to a telepathic connection instigated by "real staring" and some mope like myself just randomly guessing that someone is staring.

What Reason1 seems to be arguing is that my assumptions in A and B are incorrect. This would mean, of course, that it would possible to distinguish between Reason1 and a mope such as myself. Reason1 would get a reaction 100% of the time, and I would get a reaction less than 100% of the time. We, of course, don't know what that "control subject" percentage is, and neither does he, so it's a worthless distinction at this point.

Another issue is the incomplete number of false positives. In assumption B a non-starer (by Reason1's definition) would still react to a head turn. That should not be a hit, but based on what we've heard so far, there's no way to know that. The only false positive would be if Reason1 reacts and finds nobody reacting to his reaction.

Even under this scenario I am not concerned with misses that are failures to detect - yet. I might be at some point, but until I get the hits sorted out, I'll wait. After all, we haven't heard a detection rate yet, have we? Like with the sixes, if he claimed he could do it with 50% accuracy and no false positives, we could verify that.

 

[Jeff Corey]

You have to look at all the data from all the possible outcomes.

 

[Uncayimmy]

Any protocol, test or study that allows the claimant to dismiss the misses is crap. We have seen this before and over a century of experimentation in psychophysics is being ignored here.
A person claims to be able to detect some stimulus that has never been shown to have been detected by any human ever before.
The stimulus is precisely defined and is controlled by the experimenter.
The claimant is given a warning signal when the stimulus may be presented or not on a random basis.
The claimant must respond "yes" or "no" after every warning signal.
The data are then sorted into a 2 X 2 array -
Hits .............. Misses
False Alarms .... Correct rejections
I won't get into the analysis of the data, but Signal Detection Theory would help to decide whether the claimant was correct or not.

I don't disagree with you. If it seems like it, that's only because I am not articulating my point well enough. In the "guessing sixes" scenario the data would be:
10 Hits
10 Misses
0 False Alarms
80 Correct Rejections

That would clearly disprove a claim of being able to detect sixes 100% of the time. At the same time it would lead me to investigate further because it looks like there is some sort of ability there or just very good luck.

 

[Jeff Corey]

I'll have to look at the 6s thing tomorrow, it was a bit confusing. See ya.

 

[Uncayimmy]

The problem is more analogus to the following situation:

The dice will be rolled by him
Reason1 will call not that is it going to be a six or not, but IF it will in fact "roll" where he is the only person who seems to have any comprehension of his definition of "rolling".
In this way and he has an impact on the "rolling" and the defintion of what a "roll" is, AND there is no definition of "not rolling" allowed, so he can never have anything BUT a 100% hit rate.

What you describe is very important, but it does not invalidate my point getting hung up on counting misses.

I think there's a communication issue. In a back-handed way Reason1 seems to have a tiny grasp of signal detection. I base that on this statement:

It's all about the chances that two reflexes which are opposite in direction could happen at the same moment more than certain number of times. testers/observers can easily calculate that , mathematics are objective.

and

I did say that it's impossible for the observers to count any misses because it's not self-evident but irrelevant to success in regard to the test because the hits are actually self-evident .

What he's saying is that if he turns his head reflexively and someone in his new line of sight does so at the same time, this is a rare event. Thus, given a sufficient number of rare events, there must be something there. There's a germ of truth to that, but the problem lies in the assumption that simultaneous reflexes are rare events. What he describes is ordinary and even expected.

To illustrate that point, suppose that instead of the "starer" reflexively turning away the "starer" shouted, "The Lord smites me!" and collapsed in a heap. If this happened every time Reason1 reflexively detected a "starer" and "beamed" this subconscious command, we'd all be amazed. Would we be getting hung up on the same things we're hung up on now? I doubt it.

The glaring problems with Reason1's protocol I have outlined already. I believe that it is likely in a crowd situation where I am reading a book that at any given time someone is looking at me or in my general direction. I also believe it is likely that if I turn my head suddenly in their direction that the "starer" will look away reflexively.

Thus there is no "rare event" that is self-evident. This is the real issue at hand.

 

[fromdownunder]

A) In a crowd situation such as a mall eatery, at any given time a solitary person reading a book is likely to have someone looking right at him.

B) This solitary book reader is even more likely to have someone looking in his general direction.

I think we were talking at slightly cross purposes, and I now get what you are saying. Yes, it is always likely that in a large enough passing crowd, somebody will be looking at somebody sitting down reading a book. I often look at people sitting down in our local shopping centres as I am nearing the area - far more interesting than staring at shop windows I have seen 100 times. I imagine most of us are no different.

And when the person with the book makes a sudden movement, the person looking is likely to avert his eyes. Since, as has been pointed out before, the human eye can see at a 160 Degree angle, it would be simple for the challenger to point to the guy in the blue jacket, and say "he was staring at me", and since, as you say, it isa likely to be always happening at any point in time i think both you and I could claim a 100% success rate as well.

How this can be set this up as a controlled protocol is, I suspect, rather difficult, as is how your "false positives" about somebody who was not really looking can be judged is also quite difficult. Good luck to Reason1, and anybody who tries to sensibly develop something out of this.

I look forward to Reason1's "long thread", which I imagine may appear sometime in the forseeable future.

Norm

 

[reason1]

Hi UncaYimmy,
I like your analogies ,they're pretty close

The glaring problems with Reason1's protocol I have outlined already. I believe that it is likely in a crowd situation where I am reading a book that at any given time someone is looking at me or in my general direction. I also believe it is likely that if I turn my head suddenly in their direction that the "starer" will look away reflexively.

Thus there is no "rare event" that is self-evident. This is the real issue at hand.

Yea...this could be a problem only if at any certain moment someone could be staring at me from all possible directions, as i will not be reflexing my face in only one direction.
And this is why I've chosen a public place where many people will be passing/wandering around me in all directions.

added detail:
there will be 4 sensitive microphones around me to record the signals and direction of all the possible sound frequencies .Any hit in that direction at the same moment will be dismissed.

PS:most of the previous posts should be in my detailed promised post ,now i have to invent more ideas

 

[Uncayimmy]

How this can be set this up as a controlled protocol is, I suspect, rather difficult, as is how your "false positives" about somebody who was not really looking can be judged is also quite difficult. Good luck to Reason1, and anybody who tries to sensibly develop something out of this.

If you haven't already, see my post on a possible protocol:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4515443#post4515443

 

[fromdownunder]

UnkaYimmy, I did read your suggested starter protocol earlier, but had (mostly) forgotten it, as there has been a lot of thread drift since then. Thanks for reminding me.

I wonder if it could be simplified a bit, with the funny hats/Shirley Temple outfit (or whatever) being done away with completely. It would also need to be done away from a public crowd.

So, using your basic structure and set up, x people sitting on benches at y metre intervals, All ear plugged and blindfolded. z volunteers, not knowing what the test is about, (one at a time) walking past the benches at random intervals (somehow floor vibrations may have to be eliminated as well, depending on the location of the test), and as soon as Random1 feels somebody looking at him, he raises his hand?

One or more of the other x volunteers could be controls, who are also asked to do what Random1 claims to be able to do, to enable a comparison at the end of the test.

This would be a lot simpler, and easier to control, and the potential starers would not have a clue what or who they are supposed to be looking at, which overcomes the definition problem of active/passive staring. Since Random1 can sense that they are looking at him in the proper manner, there is no need for him to even turn around and catch them in the act, He Knows that they are staring at him without looking back at them, so the results of the test becomes self evident for everybody viewing.

Could this be the start for developing a protocol? Feel free to criticise away, and add, subtract or throw out the window. If it is, I am sure that somebody will do the necessary Maths for the "1000/1" to be met.

Norm

 

[Miss_Kitt]

reason1, please look at this specific question

reason1 -- I have a basic question for you. On the question of your reported difference on your ability of "staring" versus "passive staring":

How do you know what the mental state/intent of the starers you have previously detected was?

If you did not talk to them or question them; if you only turned towards a direction in which you 'felt a starer', how do you know that they were staring and not just disinterestedly looking?

These are serious questions, and unless you can answer them, you don't have any evidence that there is a stare/passive stare issue at all. You seem to be assuming that the starers you feel are somehow different, and you ascribe an emotional content to their gaze; but if you have never been able to ask them, how do you know what their emotional or intent state was?

If you have not done such inquiries, why do you believe that such an emotional state (or intention) on the starer's part is required?

If you have answered this somewhere, I have not seen it.

Thank you for clarifying this, Miss Kitt

 

[reason1]

Staring contest with an ugly guy.

get out right now

i wasn't that mad

...These are serious questions, and unless you can answer them, you don't have any evidence that there is a stare/passive stare issue at all. You seem to be assuming that the starers you feel are somehow different, and you ascribe an emotional content to their gaze; but if you have never been able to ask them, how do you know what their emotional or intent state was?

Hi,
i don't know if you are following the thread but here is the question again for you :
Give me an example of a situation in which you looked at something intensively for 10 seconds while you didn't have any interest in looking at that thing.

If you have not done such inquiries, why do you believe that such an emotional state (or intention) on the starer's part is required?

because this is how I've always experienced my ability

May I remind you good people that reason1 exhibits many patterns of a True Believer?

1. No submission of his claims to proper testing.
2. Invention of own nomenclature.
3. Strawmen, staggering ignorance, absurdity, infallibility, etc. etc.

One can't have an intellectually honest discussion with a True Believer.

Oh really!!!... what about the following post of yours :

...your deduction abilities seem to work quite well, given from what I read in your posts...

...
There is no confirmation bias in the outcome results of experiments that involve self-evident hits and non self-evident misses, because the odds are against that the results shows 20 hits, while those experiments were done under random but scientifically acceptable controlled settings.
...

I haven't had a laugh this good since Paul Carey left.

could you please explain what is so funny about my arguement regarding confirmation bias, that you made you make it your own signature ??
True critical thinkers can explain jokes can't they ?

Also tell us why you removed the following 2 posts yours regarding confirmation bias :

---

---

C'mon man...don't be selfish...share the joke with your friends...i don't think anyone here gets it.

 

[chillzero]

because this is how I've always experienced my ability

but how do you know this is true, if you haven't made those inquiries? You seem to be making an .... 'assumption' of sorts - one that allows you a lot of wiggle room when confirmation bias is shown to be at play.

 

[GzuzKryzt]

Reason1, I have explained why a discussion with you does not make sense any more. I will restate it:

You do not seem to be interested in finding out about the nature of what you have observed.



I made my sig because I find it amusing - and quite enlightning - to observe what lengths a believer will go to in proving to himself that his perception is true.

 

[Akhenaten]

Give me an example of a situation in which you looked at something intensively for 10 seconds while you didn't have any interest in looking at that thing.

Television, whenever I see one that's switched on. I'll stare at them intensively for far longer than 10 seconds and on looking away I'd be unable to tell you what brand, or even what colour the set was.