parapsychology and the challenge
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: parapsychology and the challenge
I'm too dense to see your point, what has moving my arm got to do with influencing number generatos?
Even if i have a free will and can move my body however way i like, everyday knowledge only implies, that this "free will" can cantrol a part of body reactions directly, a lot or maybe all rest of body reactions indirectly via subconcious, but anything outside the body can only be influenced inside the boundaries of physical laws, e.g. move something by normal applicattion of force ("pushing","pulling",...) or warming things by body heat.
I do not see starting with "i can move my body" in any logical way end up with "maybe i can move the pencil over there".
About my first post here, i did not intend to explain a proven fact.
new drkitten wrote:
"My working assumption, then, would be that any "successful" experiment that has been done outside of the supervision of the JREF or similar group is successful only because the trickery hasn't been caught. Of course, we don't know what sort of trickery was used, because it wasn't caught. But I'm willing to operate on the basis that it was trickery until someone can come up with a more credible hypothesis."
The "any" implies that practicallly all psi researchers are a bunch of tricksters and frauds.
I do not think this is true, mainly based on my naive believe, that most humans do not deliberately lie. (I even belive that lot of politicians do not lie knowingly, you are free to laugh about me). From that i conclude, that it is unlikely that all psi researchers do so. Also i think this implication is close to insulting.
Therefore i had to object and as new drkitten, said he would change his opinion upon seeing a "credible hypothesis", i tried to describe one.
Obviously its problematic to use to explain all positive psi results only on the 1in 20 is successful anyway, but i was just trying to show new drkitten, that probability alone guarantees, that some positive psi results could have been gotten via chance and therefore the assumption there is always trickery is not necssary, to explain all of what is going on in psi reasearch a part can also be caused by honest reseachers, who just got lucky with a few experiments.
The important question of course is there something beside trickery, faulty experiments and self delusion by lucky experiments going on in psi research?
If the answer is "yes", then these experiments are certainly candidates for JREF million.
Do you have links to any possible candidates?
Carn
davidsmith73 said:
I'm too dense to see your point, what has moving my arm got to do with influencing number generatos?
Even if i have a free will and can move my body however way i like, everyday knowledge only implies, that this "free will" can cantrol a part of body reactions directly, a lot or maybe all rest of body reactions indirectly via subconcious, but anything outside the body can only be influenced inside the boundaries of physical laws, e.g. move something by normal applicattion of force ("pushing","pulling",...) or warming things by body heat.
I do not see starting with "i can move my body" in any logical way end up with "maybe i can move the pencil over there".
About my first post here, i did not intend to explain a proven fact.
new drkitten wrote:
"My working assumption, then, would be that any "successful" experiment that has been done outside of the supervision of the JREF or similar group is successful only because the trickery hasn't been caught. Of course, we don't know what sort of trickery was used, because it wasn't caught. But I'm willing to operate on the basis that it was trickery until someone can come up with a more credible hypothesis."
The "any" implies that practicallly all psi researchers are a bunch of tricksters and frauds.
I do not think this is true, mainly based on my naive believe, that most humans do not deliberately lie. (I even belive that lot of politicians do not lie knowingly, you are free to laugh about me). From that i conclude, that it is unlikely that all psi researchers do so. Also i think this implication is close to insulting.
Therefore i had to object and as new drkitten, said he would change his opinion upon seeing a "credible hypothesis", i tried to describe one.
Obviously its problematic to use to explain all positive psi results only on the 1in 20 is successful anyway, but i was just trying to show new drkitten, that probability alone guarantees, that some positive psi results could have been gotten via chance and therefore the assumption there is always trickery is not necssary, to explain all of what is going on in psi reasearch a part can also be caused by honest reseachers, who just got lucky with a few experiments.
The important question of course is there something beside trickery, faulty experiments and self delusion by lucky experiments going on in psi research?
If the answer is "yes", then these experiments are certainly candidates for JREF million.
Do you have links to any possible candidates?
Carn
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: parapsychology and the challenge
Certainly most telikinesis experiments, put the objects inside a enclosed glass container, maybe cooled down to minimize air convections, make objects move twice, go home with a million.
It gets only more complicated, when you have objects, that can be influenced by electromagnetical force of a strength, which can be created by carryable devices.
Telepathy with symbols, that are selected randomly, and receiver only says which symbol is received is also ok(with all the safe guards against trickery)
What i know about the ganzfeld experiments could have problems, because there the definition of a hit would be problematic.
Out of body experinences are pretty straightforward, just tell what is in the next room.
Communing with the dead, is also in principal possible, but only if questions are asked, where the answer is either obviously a hit or a miss(e.g. ask for gender or full name, not something similar).
Carn
davidsmith73 said:
Certainly most telikinesis experiments, put the objects inside a enclosed glass container, maybe cooled down to minimize air convections, make objects move twice, go home with a million.
It gets only more complicated, when you have objects, that can be influenced by electromagnetical force of a strength, which can be created by carryable devices.
Telepathy with symbols, that are selected randomly, and receiver only says which symbol is received is also ok(with all the safe guards against trickery)
What i know about the ganzfeld experiments could have problems, because there the definition of a hit would be problematic.
Out of body experinences are pretty straightforward, just tell what is in the next room.
Communing with the dead, is also in principal possible, but only if questions are asked, where the answer is either obviously a hit or a miss(e.g. ask for gender or full name, not something similar).
Carn
Sort of.davidsmith73 said:
The original scoring methodology left a lot to be desired initially. By way of explanation, if an RVer said they saw "flowers", if there were flowers anywhere in the sent scene, it was scored as a hit - in a vase on the table, in a picture in the room, on the wallpaper, outside the window, a bunch on a hill in the far distance, etc. In short, it was hard NOT to score hits, especially under such subjective evaluation. And this was how the tests were scored initially, and it's hardly surprising that there were indeed positive results for RVers.
The changes they made, in response to the howls of derison from the critics, were basically to re-score the original results, gradually removing the subjectivity (i.e. made more objective). Hits were scored a higher ranking if they were more exact, and lower if they were vague (your list is an intermediate form of this method). They clearly expected to highlight even more clearly the RV results this way - sweep all objections away.
However the final result, as honestly written in that paper, indicated the RVers did no better than if they had simply guessed, i.e. no RV ability used at all. Just like any average Joe, or even like an n-sided dice.
That's all well and good - the analysis was pretty thorough. The PROBLEM came at the end with all the ducking-and-weaving in trying to explain away this lack of results. They appealed to feng shui and ancient seers...and even Freud as an argument from authority (apparently, Sigmund "believed"!). It makes startling reading...
[edit: myspacebarisnotworkingsometimes]
davidsmith73
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davidsmith73
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: parapsychology and the challenge
This is my reasoning for doing the research, but it may be by no means the reasoning of the actual experimenters.
The activity of the brain is based on stochastic processes courtesy of ion channels. If the ion channels are affected in a substantial way then you have a basis for causing a whole manner of neural events, such as movement or various cognitive processes. Hence, if the feeling of free will is "acting" at the site of ion channel activity then perhaps this could be demonstrated in principle by attempting to affect a stochastic process outside the confines of the cascade of neural activity that occurs in the brain. In fact it might be a better demonstrattion to perform an experiment where the operator tries to influence a remote biological REG such as a single cell with a dense concentration of ion channels. You could simply measure the change in ionic concentration inside or outside the cell during influence/no influence periods. This would demonstrate that free will is not such an illusion as we thought. But in principle the cell experiment is no different than a regular REG experiment. Interestingly PK acting on ion channels might provide a mechanism for how ESP works since perception would rely on a change in brain activity. I know that is just replacing one unknown with another but it would be a step towards describing a unitary phenomena. Just my thoughts.
Carn said:
This is my reasoning for doing the research, but it may be by no means the reasoning of the actual experimenters.
The activity of the brain is based on stochastic processes courtesy of ion channels. If the ion channels are affected in a substantial way then you have a basis for causing a whole manner of neural events, such as movement or various cognitive processes. Hence, if the feeling of free will is "acting" at the site of ion channel activity then perhaps this could be demonstrated in principle by attempting to affect a stochastic process outside the confines of the cascade of neural activity that occurs in the brain. In fact it might be a better demonstrattion to perform an experiment where the operator tries to influence a remote biological REG such as a single cell with a dense concentration of ion channels. You could simply measure the change in ionic concentration inside or outside the cell during influence/no influence periods. This would demonstrate that free will is not such an illusion as we thought. But in principle the cell experiment is no different than a regular REG experiment. Interestingly PK acting on ion channels might provide a mechanism for how ESP works since perception would rely on a change in brain activity. I know that is just replacing one unknown with another but it would be a step towards describing a unitary phenomena. Just my thoughts.
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"then you have a basis for causing a whole manner of neural events"
Who or what is the you in this case? You are proposing some detached entity that influences the iron channels, but what if "you" simply equals the functions of the brain, the total of neural events?
Hans
Who or what is the you in this case? You are proposing some detached entity that influences the iron channels, but what if "you" simply equals the functions of the brain, the total of neural events?
Hans
davidsmith73
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MRC_Hans said:
If free will equals the functions of the brain, the total of neural events, then we would expect that attempting to influence a remote REG will have no effect. Alternatively, if free will is able to reach beyond the processes that occur in the brain and effect a remote system then that suggests free will is not equal to such neural activity. The difficult part would be defining what free will is under the alternative. I don't think that it necessarily has to be some kind of "detached entity". Instead, I think the identity or boundary between the observation of a system and the outcome of the system itelf will have to merge so that they are described as part of the same process. That's why I put the word "acting" in inverted commas. Free will would encompass the observation and the observed state of the system with the two being linked (in some way!). No separated detached entity floating around exterting PK wherever it feels.
IXP
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davidsmith73 said:
Davidsmith,
If you have not read "Consciosness Explained" by Daniel Dennet, or "How The Mind Works" by Stephen Pinker, I stronly suggest that you do. Both give very strong arguments for why Cartesian dualism, as you are espousing, fails in light of what we know about brain physiology.
IXP
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: parapsychology and the challenge
Only "close to insulting"? I think you're misreading me.
I do not believe that practically all psi researchers are a bunch of tricksters and frauds.
I believe that allpsi researchers who claim positive results are either incompetent orthey are tricksters and frauds.
I also believe that a competent researcher would a) be familiar with the higher standards for an alpha cutoff that usually hold when presenting extremely unusual results and b) replicate his results to make sure that they're not a 5% fluke. But given the sort of statistical results trumpeted by a typical "successful" psi-researcher, the results are rarely at or near the 5% cutoff. This does not imply mere incompetence, but outright trickery, either on the part of the subject (which the researchers are incompetent to detect, pace Geller) or outright research fraud.
Given the reported distribution of results, I don't consider this to be a particularly credible hypothesis. I have not yet seen any evidence to suggest that there is a single honest, competent psi researcher who has claimed positive results out there.
Carn said:
Only "close to insulting"? I think you're misreading me.
I do not believe that practically all psi researchers are a bunch of tricksters and frauds.
I believe that allpsi researchers who claim positive results are either incompetent orthey are tricksters and frauds.
I also believe that a competent researcher would a) be familiar with the higher standards for an alpha cutoff that usually hold when presenting extremely unusual results and b) replicate his results to make sure that they're not a 5% fluke. But given the sort of statistical results trumpeted by a typical "successful" psi-researcher, the results are rarely at or near the 5% cutoff. This does not imply mere incompetence, but outright trickery, either on the part of the subject (which the researchers are incompetent to detect, pace Geller) or outright research fraud.
Given the reported distribution of results, I don't consider this to be a particularly credible hypothesis. I have not yet seen any evidence to suggest that there is a single honest, competent psi researcher who has claimed positive results out there.
davidsmith73 said:
You miss a third alternativ:
The fre will does not equal the functions of the brain, but still can only influence what is happening in the brain.
We could have a "soul", but still be unable to do any psi or communing with the dead or whatever. You cannot argue that in case of free will more than brain function, there is any conclusion, because you have no way to tell, what "more" is in that case.
The other way round, if psi is proven, then you still do not know, if we have a free will, you would only know, that something in humans is defying today known natural laws.
So why do you look at psi research, when you're real interest is whether there is a free will or not?
Psi will help you neither way, you will be as clever as before about the question.
Carn
davidsmith73
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MRC_Hans said:
I'm not so sure. The most recent meta-analysis shows this (taken from http://www.psy.gu.se/EJP/EJP ULT AP GB.pdf) :
A further data search by Fiona Steinkamp and co-workers was made for experiments using a concurrent output of the RNG for
the control series; this gave 357 experimental studies and 142 control studies. The Stouffer Z for the experimental studies was 13.09 but when weighted for study size became 2.70, p = .004, with a very small effect size of ð = .50003. A significant negative curvilinear relationship was found between study size and effect size indicating the effect came from smaller studies. Moreover it was the selected participants who performed significantly better:
Steinkamp, F., Boller, E., & Bösch, H. (2002) Experiments
examining the possibility of human intention interacting with random number generators: A preliminary meta-analysis.
Proceedings of the 45thConvention of the Parapsychological Association, Paris. Pp. 256- 272.
We may well be observing it on a daily basis whenever we volitionally move our body, imagine, recall a memory etc. Also, if the effect is as small as the experiments suggest then any real effect that occurs outside of the brain would probably go unnoticed, except when we are specifically looking for it in an experiment.
"apparently" being the operative word.
Different from brain function yes, but I would prefer to call it a discrete process rather than entity. There doesn't have to be a notion of an aethereous medium that injects mindfull free will into the physical system. Free will could be a process where the definition includes the observation and the observed system directly interacting in a way that produces the phenomena we call PK. I agree that if it is not able to function independently of the brain then we should assume it is defined as brain function in the normal way. However, we disagree on the results of PK experiments so I suppose we're not going to get any further here!
My suggestion, and probably the suggestion of others, is that conscious experience is able to interact directly with a physical system. Indeed, they may be part of the same system. I know this is a very underdeveloped hypothesis but materialism does not describe such an interaction.
Just getting back to my original point, I think it's clear that people going round performing PK experiments is not in the same category as dowsing because PK experiments are an empirical attempt to answer issues that have been around in philosophy for centuries. Is the mind caused or causal etc.