Psychics and science

[tumbleweed41]

Well it does tell us something - that Science is governed by those who use her Method - who will only venture where it is convenient.

Tells me that Scientific endeavour is biased towards the pragmatic
Thus Science is limited.

OR in answer to OP - YES the Scientists are to blame for not conducting experiments properly

What would you define as proper research into paranormal abilities?

 

[no-body]

Not a joke... maybe it would be more accurate to say its too dangerous to invest in this kind of research.


It was starting to be proven in the 50s that test subjects on high doses of psychedelic drugs attained various forms of ESP.
But that research was soon stopped and the chemicals made illegal.

What does that say about Science?

The 50's ? What? MkUltra continued up to the 60's. Psychedelics where discontinued by the government because it was hard to use them in combat as a weapon and in interrogation they where like other "truth serum" based drugs, pretty useless.

Drugs where made illegal because the youth culture was causing a stink and getting high 24/7, you can thank Timothy Leary and the hippies for that. It was a political move.

If we use your conspiracy type train of logic we never landed on the moon, reptoids control the earth, etc.

 

[Willamena]

Should science take the blame for not conducting their experiments correctly?

"Blame" for failure? no --more like praise, assuming they conduct experiments properly. Science begins with a hypothesis developed by observation of the phenomenon. The expermiment developed, which serves to test that hypothesis, can only be as good as that hypothesis. But inconclusive results are to the advantage of science, and ultimately all of us, as (if pursued) they will lead to better hypotheses, and ultimately better explanations of what is occuring.

 

[Gunfingers]

And not one of those times and places left us with any reason to believe there is any truth to claims of psychic phenomena.

This isn't some scientific conspiracy to cover up ESP with hand-waving, plenty of people have come forward for experiments and while there have been some interesting cases of people showing better-than-chance identification (a few fraudulent, but most simply not showing positive enough to be indicative of anything) there is really no scientific basis for ESP.

 

[Alceste]

And not one of those times and places left us with any reason to believe there is any truth to claims of psychic phenomena.

This isn't some scientific conspiracy to cover up ESP with hand-waving, plenty of people have come forward for experiments and while there have been some interesting cases of people showing better-than-chance identification (a few fraudulent, but most simply not showing positive enough to be indicative of anything) there is really no scientific basis for ESP.

That's not entirely true, you know. It's one of those things people love to say -"no evidence ever anywhere" despite the fact they haven't ever looked into it. There is about as much evidence as you would expect there to be for phenomena that are unpredictable, passively experienced and extremely rare, where the mechanism causing the experience is not even slightly understood.

I read a study on people who claimed to be good at guessing who was calling where they scored consistently higher that completely random chance, for example. Unglamorous, I know.

The problem is that due to a pretty intense bias against the existence of phenomena we think of as "supernatural" researchers in this field are not taken seriously and don't make headlines. They certainly don't get published in reputable journals. Many of them end up abandoning the subject due to the lack of objectivity of both believers and skeptics.

 

[logician]

Does science prove people have psychic abilities?
Or are psychic abilities just a scam?
Should science take the blame for not conducting their experiments correctly?

:rainbow1:

I don't think there is any real unbiased scientific data supporting psychic ability.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

There is about as much evidence as you would expect there to be for phenomena that are unpredictable, passively experienced and extremely rare, where the mechanism causing the experience is not even slightly understood.

I'm impressed with your breadth of knowledge on the attributes of psychic phenomena, despite the lack of existing evidence. Where did you obtain this knowledge?

 

[Gunfingers]

That's not entirely true, you know. It's one of those things people love to say -"no evidence ever anywhere" despite the fact they haven't ever looked into it. There is about as much evidence as you would expect there to be for phenomena that are unpredictable, passively experienced and extremely rare, where the mechanism causing the experience is not even slightly understood.

I read a study on people who claimed to be good at guessing who was calling where they scored consistently higher that completely random chance, for example. Unglamorous, I know.

The problem is that due to a pretty intense bias against the existence of phenomena we think of as "supernatural" researchers in this field are not taken seriously and don't make headlines. They certainly don't get published in reputable journals. Many of them end up abandoning the subject due to the lack of objectivity of both believers and skeptics.

While i can't claim to be an expert, i spent about two hours preparing for that post by reading articles about the various studies that have been done since the late 19th century. Granted, two hours on wikipedia isn't exactly a master's program, but the articles were clear: the best any study could come up with were people making guesses that were right slightly more often than if they had guessed based on a random number generator. It's interesting, but it's hardly evidence of telepathy or precognition.

I would love it if precognition were possible. It'd be like living in a Phillip K. Dick novel. But i feel confident based on what little i've read that it's little more than magic powers being ascribed to luck and intuition.

 

[Willamena]

Granted, two hours on wikipedia isn't exactly a master's program, but the articles were clear: the best any study could come up with were people making guesses that were right slightly more often than if they had guessed based on a random number generator. It's interesting, but it's hardly evidence of telepathy or precognition.

Perhaps, though, the tests, as designed, entirely failed to test for telepathy or precognition. Alceste's point is that the mechanism of these things is not defined --with no defined mechanism, then perhaps they entirely failed to test for it.

 

[Gunfingers]

Perhaps, though, the tests, as designed, entirely failed to test for telepathy or precognition. Alceste's point is that the mechanism of these things is not defined --with no defined mechanism, then perhaps they entirely failed to test for it.

Can't test the mechanism, sure, but you can test for the results. Granted, not understanding the mechanism can make getting results difficult. It's entirely possible that telepathy works perfectly, but only on the third Tuesday of March when it's raining over the Rhine valley and not knowing the mechanics behind it we would falsely declare it disproven because we didn't do our tests at that time.

That doesn't change the fact that what we're dealing with is an unsupported hypothesis at best and an unscientific hypothesis (claiming there is a mechanism by which it will work without proposing an actual mechanism is unfalsifiable, after all) at worst.

If a real testable hypothesis can ever be proposed then i'll get behind investigating it, but until then telepathy remains in the realm of pseudoscience and myth and isn't much better than the creationism i spend so much time on here disproving.

 

[HonestJoe]

That's not entirely true, you know. It's one of those things people love to say -"no evidence ever anywhere" despite the fact they haven't ever looked into it. There is about as much evidence as you would expect there to be for phenomena that are unpredictable, passively experienced and extremely rare, where the mechanism causing the experience is not even slightly understood.

Of course it's almost as much evidence as you'd expect for a phenomena that doesn't actually exist.

You bring up another issue too. If we're talking about phenomena for which the actual mechanism isn't known, we're not necessarily talking about psychics because that implies a specific mechanism. All we're really talking about is evidence of people somehow being able to predict things. Scientific evidence of psychics wouldn't only have to demonstrate the effects but also (at least something about) the cause.

I read a study on people who claimed to be good at guessing who was calling where they scored consistently higher that completely random chance, for example. Unglamorous, I know.

This is a good example of what I've just said. We've all had the "I knew it was you!" feeling answering the phone but that could be down to perfectly mundane subconscious knowledge. Only a certain subset of people are going to phone you and there will be times or circumstances where they're more or less likely to call.

It could be a result of some kind of psychic energy moving through the ether but in the absence of any evidence (even any consistent hypothesis for that matter) suggesting that is even possible, there is no logical reason to suspect this is the case.

The problem is that due to a pretty intense bias against the existence of phenomena we think of as "supernatural" researchers in this field are not taken seriously and don't make headlines. They certainly don't get published in reputable journals. Many of them end up abandoning the subject due to the lack of objectivity of both believers and skeptics.

To put it bluntly, tough! Lots of fields of study suffer all sorts of different problems and restrictions. That's no reason to treat them differently on the principals of burden of proof and evidence.

 

[Alceste]

I'm impressed with your breadth of knowledge on the attributes of psychic phenomena, despite the lack of existing evidence. Where did you obtain this knowledge?

Personal experience, and anecdotal evidence that appears to affirm my experience from several friends of mine. Also, from reading summaries of a few studies here and there that affirm my impression that without any inkling of the mechanism that causes these experiences, results from attempts to research them are erratic and inconclusive. I`ve read interviews and statements made by scientists who delved into such phenomena only to discover that by even betraying an interest, let alone attempting actual research, they were ridiculed and ostracised by their peers. IMO, many of the people who call themselves 'skeptics' these days are anything but. They are heavily and passionately invested in a particular technological-materialist world view and just as susceptible to all the cognitive bias that results from such attachments as any tin hat wearing conspiracy theorist.

Anyway, my own experiences have persuaded me that, experientially and subjectively, psychic phenomena occur, for the most part, just as described. I expect there is a totally naturalistic explanation for this, but none I have so far heard (mostly that people who claim to have these experiences must be liars, charlatans, deluded, etc) can explain my own experience or the experiences of my friends. Wampus mentioned that researchers are making some inroads into the possibility that a certain wavelength of natural magnetism might be prevalent in areas where people tend to 'see ghosts', and it seems to cause that type of experience when artificially recreated. That sounds reasonable, but of course like any genuine skeptic I'll wait until the evidence is conclusive before making up my mind.

 

[Willamena]

Can't test the mechanism, sure, but you can test for the results. Granted, not understanding the mechanism can make getting results difficult. It's entirely possible that telepathy works perfectly, but only on the third Tuesday of March when it's raining over the Rhine valley and not knowing the mechanics behind it we would falsely declare it disproven because we didn't do our tests at that time.

That doesn't change the fact that what we're dealing with is an unsupported hypothesis at best and an unscientific hypothesis (claiming there is a mechanism by which it will work without proposing an actual mechanism is unfalsifiable, after all) at worst.

If a real testable hypothesis can ever be proposed then i'll get behind investigating it, but until then telepathy remains in the realm of pseudoscience and myth and isn't much better than the creationism i spend so much time on here disproving.

But the "results" that you test for, in this case, could be misinterpreted because the mechanism is unknown. For instance, is the "result" that thoughts are "transmitted from one person to another"? That's an interpretation of what is apparently observed that implies a mechanism.

 

[Alceste]

While i can't claim to be an expert, i spent about two hours preparing for that post by reading articles about the various studies that have been done since the late 19th century. Granted, two hours on wikipedia isn't exactly a master's program, but the articles were clear: the best any study could come up with were people making guesses that were right slightly more often than if they had guessed based on a random number generator. It's interesting, but it's hardly evidence of telepathy or precognition.

I would love it if precognition were possible. It'd be like living in a Phillip K. Dick novel. But i feel confident based on what little i've read that it's little more than magic powers being ascribed to luck and intuition.

Yes, I've also read that people making guesses were right slightly more often than if they had guessed completely randomly. The question is whether the difference is statistically significant, and in a couple of the studies I read, it was. (And one other, it wasn't).

I don't know what people are expecting, really. 100% accuracy about every event at all times seems to be what "skeptics" want to see, but such expectations are unrealistic. Even the most "psychic" people I've ever known experience it passively, unpredictably and rarely. A little bit right about a few unknowable things once in a while is what it's like. Not absolute unshakeable certainty of all future events.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I don't know what people are expecting, really. 100% accuracy about every event at all times seems to be what "skeptics" want to see, but such expectations are unrealistic. Even the most "psychic" people I've ever known experience it passively, unpredictably and rarely. A little bit right about a few unknowable things once in a while is what it's like. Not absolute unshakeable certainty of all future events.

A supposed ability with such limited scope and efficaciousness is hardly worth studying anyway. Coincidence combined with cognitive bias, seems to be equally, if not more, accurate. Hmm.

 

[Engyo]

A supposed ability with such limited scope and efficaciousness is hardly worth studying anyway. Coincidence combined with cognitive bias, seems to be equally, if not more, accurate. Hmm.

You mean, like forecasting the weather?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

You mean, like forecasting the weather?

Do you think psychics are as accurate in their predictions of the weather as meteorologists?

 

[Alceste]

But the "results" that you test for, in this case, could be misinterpreted because the mechanism is unknown. For instance, is the "result" that thoughts are "transmitted from one person to another"? That's an interpretation of what is apparently observed that implies a mechanism.

I've got some vague notions about a natural mechanism, but they depend on a conception of spacetime which is not linear and discrete, and a conception of consciousness that is not strictly materialistic (i.e. one that includes the electrical aspect of synaptic activity as a mode of trasmitting information). Advances in physics - for example the holographic principle - seem to have the potential to reconcile the known universe with my impressions and experience, but frankly I don't understand physics so it's probably a hopeless cause for me, at least.

 

[Alceste]

A supposed ability with such limited scope and efficaciousness is hardly worth studying anyway. Coincidence combined with cognitive bias, seems to be equally, if not more, accurate. Hmm.

You going to cite a study backing up your proposed mechanism for experiences such as knowing who is calling before you pick up the phone, or just make a claim like that and leave it dangling?

Very skeptical and empirical of you.

 

[Engyo]

Do you think psychics are as accurate in their predictions of the weather as meteorologists?

I've never really asked a psychic what the weather was going to be, so I have no way to judge.