Cosmic Yak
Philosopher
I think that's a reasonable correction to what I said, and I agree with the rest of what you say here.
Telepathy
- Thread starter King of the Americas
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- telepathy telepathy test
I think that's a reasonable correction to what I said, and I agree with the rest of what you say here.
Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
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- Oct 14, 2009
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- 23,247
Similarly it reminds me of when I was a kid and thought how cool it would be to discover a completely new colour.
Cat Not Included
Critical Thinker
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You probably should. Its fairly significant that a significant prize that could be claimed by demonstrating telepathic powers has never been claimed.
But you concede that it is real?
Nay_Sayer
I say nay!
Fair enough.
Suggestion:
13 random cards are selected from a thoroughly shuffled deck (For full transparency I'd suggest allowing 1 of the jokers into the pack)
Figure out a way to document it and retrieve the order in a secure manner
KOTA does his thing (Is it he can transmit thoughts or read thoughts?)
All 13 cards, Value and suit are named in exact order. ( I went with 13 because there are approx 6,227,020,800 ways to arrange any 13 given cards)
I'm sure more of this can be ironed out, However, I suspect this will be a long a carousel ride of back and forth in just agreeing upon a simple protocol.
Startz
Muse
King of the Americas:
Loss Leader has proposed a test, as you requested. Several people have suggested variants, but why don't you tell us if Loss Leader's idea works for you. Or if you'd like something a little different tell us the details of a test you'd like to do.
Loss Leader has proposed a test, as you requested. Several people have suggested variants, but why don't you tell us if Loss Leader's idea works for you. Or if you'd like something a little different tell us the details of a test you'd like to do.
jrhowell
Muse
Amateurs! you have no idea of how to correctly perform a telepathy test!
First announce a list of four word choices, pick one from the list, mentally broadcast it, and solicit responses.
Now comes the hard part, determining which of the responses were hits. The correct answer is "all of them"! You just need to figure out how.
Any with the correct word are obvious. The rest will take a bit of creativity. For example if the number of words in a response matches the number of letters in the chosen word, that is a hit. Ditto if the number of words matches the position of the chosen word in the list.
Any similarity of anything in a response to the chosen word is also a hit. If nothing pops out, keep trying. Perhaps the respondent's avatar has some vague connection with the chosen word.
If, after carefully trying, you just cannot find even the most vague connection between a response and the chosen word then declare the response as not being serious and so not countable.
Now, some people may object to your methodology. Just ignore them. After all they are likely in on the conspiracy and jealous of your telepathic abilities.
First announce a list of four word choices, pick one from the list, mentally broadcast it, and solicit responses.
Now comes the hard part, determining which of the responses were hits. The correct answer is "all of them"! You just need to figure out how.
Any with the correct word are obvious. The rest will take a bit of creativity. For example if the number of words in a response matches the number of letters in the chosen word, that is a hit. Ditto if the number of words matches the position of the chosen word in the list.
Any similarity of anything in a response to the chosen word is also a hit. If nothing pops out, keep trying. Perhaps the respondent's avatar has some vague connection with the chosen word.
If, after carefully trying, you just cannot find even the most vague connection between a response and the chosen word then declare the response as not being serious and so not countable.
Now, some people may object to your methodology. Just ignore them. After all they are likely in on the conspiracy and jealous of your telepathic abilities.
Instead of a new element, how about a new type of matter, that interacts weakly, massively outnumbers "regular" matter, and stubbornly refuses to be observed? That sounds crazy! And to top it off, how about an unknown type of energy that is 70% of the universe, discovered only 20 years ago, completely revolutionized our view of the universe and also remains a mystery? That would also be crazy, wouldn't it?
Jim_MDP
Philosopher
But those have demonstrable effects, and science is working to understand and explain them.
I'd be hesitant to compare that to telepathy.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
It doesn't refuse to be observed, though. It has a massive gravitational effect. How do you think we know about it? The search for dark matter is the search for the cause of real observations. Your telepathy has never been observed.
Your other examples are no less foolish. The aether was a model proposed to explain real phenomena. When it failed to do so, it was discarded in favor of other, better models. Your telepathy has no model, and explains no phenomena.
At every step, you mistake actual science for superstitious mumbo jumbo, and try to privilege actual mumbo jumbo by association.
In order for telepathy to exist, your unknown (unobserved, un-modelled) process has to interact with the known parts of the brain. All such interactions have been accounted for. No unknown processes have been observed. Checkmate, Fudbucker.
Anecdotally, it certainly has. Anecdotes are weak forms of evidence, but reports of observation of X are usually taken as evidence of X's existence. (e.g., a report of an observation of cloudy skies is taken as evidence of actual cloudy skies, unless the person reporting is blind or a pathological liar). When you think about all the anecdotal reports we get from people throughout the day, we believe almost all of them. This is because they are trivial accounts that are hard to be mistaken about, and the person has no reason to lie. The more outlandish the claim, the greater the disbelief.
But what do you do with someone who is reliable and honest and reports an outlandish claim that would seemingly be impossible to be mistaken about, unless the person was suffering from some disorder? Do you automatically assume they're lying, or have an actual disorder? And if similar people report similar phenomena, does that make the existence of the phenomena more and or less likely? If one eyewitness reports the suspect looked like X,Y,Z, that's one thing. But if all thirty people at the scene report X,Y,Z, that's another.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
If they are reporting a 15 year old memory, I don't trust it much at all, regardless of how sincere or honest that person is. Without any sort of concrete documentation, it is almost completely unreliable, due to how memory works. Also, the person reporting it may be accurately reporting what they think happened, but it isn't necessarily what happened. For example, you may have 50 people report sighting a ghost, when upon closer examination, it turns out what they were seeing was a cow.
(Remind me to dig up the link to the post where that exact thing happened to a forum member.)
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
It's very easy to be mistaken about telepathy. You just have to underestimate how likely coincidences are to occur, which is something almost everybody does. And, of course, believing that people can hear your thoughts is indeed a symptom of a common mental illness. So anecdotal reports of telepathy can be easily explained without positing its existence. Which is why you need more than anecdotal evidence before you start to seriously consider it to be a real phenomenon. Such additional evidence would be easy to obtain if it was a real phenomenon, yet is not. The conclusion is inescapable.
Arguing about this is trivial, though. A real skeptic isn't wedded to any particular kind of reality. The reports from our senses are equally consistent with countless models of reality. Suppose this is all a simulation. Would it be any different than what we're experiencing now? How could we know the difference? We can't step outside our observations to look at the true nature of things- they just appear to us as they do. For what reason do we assume we're not in a simulation? There is no reason, and there are probabilistic arguments in favor of simulation-theory and serious people take them seriously- it's not a lunatic fringe. If we're in a simulation, then anything goes.
The simulators may want to simulate a world where reports of paranormal activity are true and simultaneously impossible to observe under controlled conditions. The motives of simulation-creators, if they exist, are impossible to determine. Even if they revealed themselves to us (spelled out "this is a simulation" with the stars one night), we still would have no reason to believe anything they say about their motives. It might be their motive to lie about everything, or lie about nothing, or some things.
This is why I'm not certain about anything. It doesn't have to be simulation-theory, either. Similar stories can be told assuming idealism, dualism, and theism. It's impossible to weigh the odds on any one being true.
The simulators may want to simulate a world where reports of paranormal activity are true and simultaneously impossible to observe under controlled conditions. The motives of simulation-creators, if they exist, are impossible to determine. Even if they revealed themselves to us (spelled out "this is a simulation" with the stars one night), we still would have no reason to believe anything they say about their motives. It might be their motive to lie about everything, or lie about nothing, or some things.
This is why I'm not certain about anything. It doesn't have to be simulation-theory, either. Similar stories can be told assuming idealism, dualism, and theism. It's impossible to weigh the odds on any one being true.
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See, this is not true. If a group of thirty people all reported going to china together, 20 years ago, you would believe them. Why would you not? The odds that they're all lying, or mistaken about how long ago it was, or idiots, is too fantastical to take seriously.
The rest of your post continues in that vein.
How is that relevant to claims of supernatural telepathy here on Earth?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
No. Not "usually". Reports are accepted as true in situations where the claim is mundane or the stakes are low, or both. You're equivocating. Remember this anecdote? It wasn't taken as evidence. It was taken as a claim to be investigated, tested, and ultimately disproven. Or what about this anecdote? A claim. Tested. Investigated. Disproven.
Your telepathy doesn't even rise to the level of those anecdotes. Unlike the aether, it models no phenomena. Unlike dark matter and dark energy, it explains no observations--because there are none. In every case where claims of telepathy have been tested, no measurable effect has been observed. Your telepathy thrives only wherever it is not tested.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Because the consilience of evidence is in their favor.
The odds that China doesn't really exist, and that people don't really go there? Yeah, pretty fantastical.
If telepathy were a real thing, that had actually been observed, and that actually had a wealth of evidence from multiple different sources spanning thousands of years, and thirty people told me they'd practiced it 20 years ago, I'd believe them, too. Why not?
I'll make you a deal: When you can show me as much evidence for telepathy as there exists for China, then I'll believe even a single anecdote, from someone who remembers practicing telepathy yesterday, without question.
gabeygoat
Master Poster
Holy crap
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
The problem with all the tests proposed, and the reason why none of them will be accepted, is that KotA knows that they are controlled sufficiently to rule out chance results, and that therefore they will be unable to demonstrate any telepathic ability.
Any of these tests ought to be easy to pass if telepathy is a real phenomenon. But if it is not, they will be extraordinarily difficult. That's the point. They are designed to interrogate reality.
If the phenomenon of telepathy exists, any one of these proposed tests will demonstrate it. None of them ever have in any of the times they have been tried in good faith.
But perhaps telepathy doesn't work in such a way that these tests will demonstrate it, despite being claimed in such a way by many people in the past. Perhaps all those people were simply wrong about how it works. Perhaps King of the Americas has a better way to demonstrate telepathy's reality. I for one would be eager to hear of such a demonstration.