What Should the Default Skeptical Position on Telepathy Be?

On Quora, we get frequent questions about “universal consciousness”, another popular idea in the woo community.
I point out that despite our diversity, we are all of a single species, with certain hard-wired traits, characteristics, and behaviors and that our brains are all “wired” in similar fashion.

We have similar responses to similar conditions... Startle reflexes, various other responses to various stimuli, etc.
No universal consciousness need be invoked. Much the same with telepathy... Consider how much information a good “cold reader” can glean.
 
kellyb said:
Have you ever looked into the cold war studies which have been declassified? The US and Soviets were looking at this stuff as an alternative to radio and satellite coms using horrifying animal experiments. They really, really tried to find it. If it existed, I'm pretty sure they would have. Anything real can be weaponized or used for defense.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/us-and-soviet-spooks-studied-parano-2008-10-29/

The soviets looked into it as "biocommunications" :)

https://archive.org/stream/CIA-RDP96-00787R000500420001-2/CIA-RDP96-00787R000500420001-2_djvu.txt

They all really left no stone unturned. I honestly wish they'd found something. I still consider it slightly possible that there's something like telepathy happening, but it's just not terribly likely. Heh.
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Yeah, I've read up on that a bit. I remember reading years ago a group of statisticians from UCLA thought there might have been something interesting going on in some of the military's tests, but again, an ability like I'm talking about would be incredibly difficult to test for. Maybe if you did enough remote viewing experiments something should show up, but if something did, it would be an anomaly unless it could be replicated.

And look at the trouble we're having detecting dark matter particles. If you throw a bunch of money at something and run tests for decades, you still might not find it, even though you suspect (or are convinced) it's there.
 
How do you distinguish a coincidence from a super infrequently occurring unreliable 'ability'?

And why should skepticism err on the side of 'unverifiable superpower that doesn't work most of the time' rather than 'no evidence, so probably not'?

You understand what skepticism means, what a null hypothesis is, and what 'burden of proof' means.
Why the special pleading?
 
Fudbucker said:
Yeah, I've read up on that a bit. I remember reading years ago a group of statisticians from UCLA thought there might have been something interesting going on in some of the military's tests, but again, an ability like I'm talking about would be incredibly difficult to test for. Maybe if you did enough remote viewing experiments something should show up, but if something did, it would be an anomaly unless it could be replicated.
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It sounds like that dragon I've got in my garage. Of course, some so-called skeptics think the default position should be that there is no dragon in my garage, but of course that's just how it would look given that it is only intermittently there.
 
Fudbucker said:
I'm taking the reports of such activity (and my own experiences) as being honest and not all mistaken. The fact that there's no apparent biological explanation doesn't make me think otherwise. There's no apparent biological explanation for abiogenesis. We're even farther away from figuring out how consciousness arises from matter. That doesn't make abiogensis and consciousness paranormal. There are a lot of things that happen that we can't explain. That's what science is all about: explaining things.
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Absolutely. But there are a lot of things we can explain and from that we know that telepathy - as a direct brain to brain transfer of information doesn't exist as there is no force/field/particle (describe it as you want) that could be used to transmit/receive the information.
 
Fudbucker said:
That's a possible explanation. You'll have to argue further to establish it should be the default explanation.

Kellyb has said we should have found something by now. Possibly. It's disconfirming a little that we haven't. But outside of a few groups like PEAR, which shut down awhile ago, this stuff doesn't really get studied much. If a low-grade ability like I described exists, I can see it getting lost in the noise, or an anamolous result getting dismissed because it's so hard to replicate. And there are people who have claimed to have gotten some results on the margins (again, the PEAR group), but you have to wade through tons of stats to evaluate their claims, and there are other experts who claim they're wrong.
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Whatever PEAR were trying to investigate it had nothing to do with the generally used meaning of the words telepathy or telekinesis.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
How do you distinguish a coincidence from a super infrequently occurring unreliable 'ability'?

And why should skepticism err on the side of 'unverifiable superpower that doesn't work most of the time' rather than 'no evidence, so probably not'?

You understand what skepticism means, what a null hypothesis is, and what 'burden of proof' means.
Why the special pleading?
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Because he wants to believe we are more than what we appear to be i.e. some additional supernatural element. He will deny this and blather on about "because we don't understand X it could be Y" but it all boils down to wanting magic to be real.
 
Darat said:
Because he wants to believe we are more than what we appear to be i.e. some additional supernatural element. He will deny this and blather on about "because we don't understand X it could be Y" but it all boils down to wanting magic to be real.
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If I've understood him correctly in the past, he believes we are not at all what we appear to be, and that only minds are real. All of the rest is an illusion.
 
Fudbucker said:
Other than us typing at each other and being total strangers and complete lack of body language and people moderating the conversation and other people lurking in the background listening to what we say and the conversation having strict parameters about being on topic,

It's totally the same thing as an ordindary conversation.

Seriously, what are you trying to claim? That you don't believe what the vast majority of people tell you? I know that's not true. The discussion has moved on. It's about whether claims of occasional telepathy are extraordinary. Someone will soon give a reason why such claims should be considered extraordinary.
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Since we aren't having a casual conversation about it in person, I disbelieve your claim that telepathy is real.

Am I doing this right?
 
Fudbucker said:
That's not how it works when people report anecdotal accounts.
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That's exactly how it works. Anecdotes are not magic. A claim doesn't become evidence for itself just because you claim it happened to you.

If someone claims to have gone to China, is the null position, "No you didn't"?
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Yes, pretty much by definition.

You don't go around doubting everything everyone says.
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I don't go around giving much thought to claims that don't matter. Are you taking the position that claims about telepathy don't matter? If that's the case, I'll take the default human position of not caring much about them. But if you press me to give you a default skeptical position, then the null hypothesis applies, and your task is clear: Falsify the null hypothesis of your claim.
 
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Once there was a man who bet $10.000.000 on telepathy not existing. He did not lose. God (the non-existing one) bless his soul (the non-existing one).
 
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Darat said:
Whatever PEAR were trying to investigate it had nothing to do with the generally used meaning of the words telepathy or telekinesis.
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Right. What I want telepathy to be is the ability to think "We're out of milk," and my spouse gets the message and picks up milk on the way home from work. What I want psychokinesis to be is the ability to levitate my car so that I can change the oil without having to crawl underneath it on my back.

This whole equivocation of "Well, it's probably a tiny effect that may exist but is practically undetectable when you look for it," really sticks in my craw. Yes, it's special pleading. But inherently it's just blatant double-speak. Something either has an observable effect or it doesn't. Things that are real generally don't have an observable effect for the purposes of marveling at it and then stop having an observable effect when the purpose turns to careful observation. "Science is powerless to refute me" seems like a problematic and self-serving way to pursue knowledge.
 
theprestige said:
That's exactly how it works. Anecdotes are not magic. A claim doesn't become evidence for itself just because you claim it happened to you.
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Anecdotes are a form of evidence. They're just the weakest form, as a general rule.

Yes, pretty much by definition.
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Where are you getting that from?

If someone is generally truthful and there's no discernable motive for lying about this, the null hypothesis would be that they're telling the truth about going to China, too, and it's the "No, you didn't" that would be the alternative hypothesis.
 
JayUtah said:
This whole equivocation of "Well, it's probably a tiny effect that may exist but is practically undetectable when you look for it," really sticks in my craw. Yes, it's special pleading. But inherently it's just blatant double-speak. Something either has an observable effect or it doesn't. Things that are real generally don't have an observable effect for the purposes of marveling at it and then stop having an observable effect when the purpose turns to careful observation. "Science is powerless to refute me" seems like a problematic and self-serving way to pursue knowledge.
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I don't think Fud is coming at it for self-serving reasons like that. I think he'd be thrilled if parapsychology departments started getting a lot more funding to keep searching for the proof that telepathy is real. He really believes it can be found, but that it would take "searching for proof of dark matter" levels of dedication and funding.
 
JayUtah said:
What I want telepathy to be is the ability to think "We're out of milk," and my spouse gets the message and picks up milk on the way home from work.
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And, if it doesn't go without saying, for this to be somehow distinguishable from you thinking "We're out of milk," and then simply finding out that your spouse picked some up on the way home. It seems to me that Fudbucker would like to suggest that telepathy is a feasible explanation for this which has to be given equal credence to the possibility that your spouse also realised you were out of milk.

Dave
 
kellyb said:
Anecdotes are a form of evidence. They're just the weakest form, as a general rule.
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Depends on the context. Courts admit eyewitness testimony, but that's a practical consideration, not an epistemological one.



Where are you getting that from?

If someone is generally truthful and there's no discernable motive for lying about this, the null hypothesis would be that they're telling the truth about going to China, too, and it's the "No, you didn't" that would be the alternative hypothesis.
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No. The null hypothesis is a specific thing, with a specific relationship to a proffered claim. The null hypothesis is the proposition that must be falsified, in order to prove the claim. It sets the starting point for proving the claim, and properly locates the burden of proof with the claimant.

If you claim that you went to China, then falsifying the null hypothesis is what proves the claim. The null in this case being, you didn't go to China. And then you produce passport visas and other cromulent documentation, falsify the null thereby, and Robert's your mother's brother.

Fudbucker and you are both trying to end-run around this, by inventing additional factors that affect the null. But that's not how nulls work. They are brought into existence by a positive claim, and reflect the nature of that claim and nothing more.
 
theprestige said:
If you claim that you went to China, then falsifying the null hypothesis is what proves the claim. The null in this case being, you didn't go to China.
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No, the null hypothesis in a basic, non-extraordinary anecdote will presume that the person is honest and therefore went to China.

Do you agree with this?

http://lucalongo.eu/courses/2017-20...material/developing_a_research_hypothesis.pdf

The null hypothesis (H0) is the commonly accepted fact.

Researchers and scientists work to reject, disprove or nullify the null hypothesis.
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The word ‘null’ means that it is a commonly accepted fact that researchers work to ‘nullify’
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