An example from the video: with testing of telepathy with select subjects, hit rate in an experiment where chance gives your 25%, was up at around 65%! And this is from 3,000 studies... there's no way you can explain away that. With random subjects, it was 32%, still way too high to explain away as statistical error. (More detail after about 23 minutes into the video.)
It's an excellent video! I watched the whole hour and a half of it! It really confirms what we all know, that there's something other than our senses that connects us all! (It really accounts, as far as I'm concerned, for that "unknown" [spiritual] connection.)
ReplyDeleteI'm posting the URL here, for others to watch it, if interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew (please copy & paste, if unable to click on it).
Cheers!
Angelo B., NY City.
Didn't you see my link to the video?
ReplyDeleteYou have to take trickery into account. Hundreds of professional or amateur "magicians" can show you more or less elaborated "telepathy" demonstrations, I've myself seen quite a few that were absolutely confounding. The thing is, a magician/prestidigitator will tell you that there IS a trick, but of course will never reveal what it is; while con men since the dawn of time have claimed it's supernatural powers.
ReplyDeleteI've read extensive reports on scientific study of paranormal powers. Their problem is, the methodology is flawed at the base. For scientists have strict procedures to prevent tricking themselves in many known ways. But they have none to prevent getting tricked by people whose goal is precisely this, and who are very adept at it. It is a human factor that's unaccounted for, since they do not in good faith expect their human subjects/collaborators to deliberately cheat. This makes a core difference with classic scientific fraud, in which results that don't reproduce with other scientists are easily exposed, it's just a matter of time.
The only way to reliably study "paranormal powers", is to prevent trickery by ensuring the collaboration of an expert, namely a reliable and seasoned professional magician. When this prerequisite is met, it appears that the "extra-natural rate of success" always drops dramatically. With the "prodigies" typically complaining that the tricks expert is causing "bad vybes".
Don't get me wrong, I actually do believe in the existence of more than science has explained. It's just that, to my knowledge, there are still no iron-clad scientifically established evidences of these things. Statistics are, too often, conveniently easy to manipulate in order to fit with the expected/desired result.
Too many frauds, too much reliance on belief/faith rather than knowledge. Nobody will deny that charlatans are swarming, creating a guaranteed static over whatever genuine things there are to discover.
Now, a dog or cat knowing the exact moment their master dies miles away while nobody else is the wiser, this I see as proof enough that current scientific knowledge is far from having explained everything.
Also, a success rate that's not around 97% still comprises just too much risks of mistakes to ever be reliably used. "Belief-based frauds" typically never give you any solid result except for motives to go all "Ooh, spooky!".
I've always hated those many X-Files episodes that drowned you with forever unanswered questions. "Conspiracies! Ooh, spooky!" And roll credits.
Conspiracies so convoluted that I soon lost track on who was supposed to be implicated in what.
):-P
Pity, that series had great potential. Several episodes, essentially those which EXPLAINED what had been going on, were quite entertaining.
My verif: "PERSTO"!
ReplyDeleteTalk about fake-o magic!
"Beware of imitations, demand the genuine Presto™. You deserve the best."
Excellent talk. Dean Radin also has a website.
ReplyDeleteIf they can demonstrate a 2-3x better-than-expected success rate in a controlled experiment that they design in conjunction with the fraud-detection experts at the James Randi Educational Foundation, then there's a US$1,000,000 prize waiting for them.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen the whole video, so I don't know whether it is mentioned there or not:
ReplyDeleteHave you ever heard or read about Cleve Backsters telepathic experiments with plants (around mid-sixties last century)? He has written a book, German title "Das geheime Leben der Pflanzen".
A link for that:
ReplyDeletehttp://skepdic.com/plants.html
David L beat me to it: James Randi.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the "telepathic plants" experiment is the only case I've seen of something like this. When I was at school (early 1970s) some of the biology students had read about this stuff and asked me to make up a circuit to measure the conductivity of plants. On one occasion we had a geranium wired up and as a student on the next bench made each of three cuts in a dissection the needle on our meter dipped sharply. We couldn't reproduce the effect.
Haven't noticed anything else of this type in the rest of my fifty-odd years so I don't take it too seriously.
Dou you know about the concept of "Mem"? A Mem is working like a mind-virus spreading in society - if you are not infected, then the content of this Mem will not work on you.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of literature about that, and a very recommendable live speech by Vera F. Birkenbihl can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=XY60DBP4UQk (in German).
Maybe it is a "subjective" effect of this kind?
I've heard about that James Randi guy. He's full of bad vibes, it seems he disturbs any experience merely by his skeptical presence.
ReplyDeleteMore notably, two of his apprentice prestidigitation students, secretly sent by him, demonstrated spectacularly how a whole team of highly competent scientists could be conned into acknowledging "evidence" of paranormal abilities.
Just half an hour ago, I was chatting with a relative of mine about how anguish and believing in bad stuff "bound to happen" merely served to give it power over you. Belief. That chat reminded me of that series of Disney stories, between Goofy the simpleton and Hazel the witch. Goofy infuriates her, because he stubbornly insists, with the unflinching persistence of idiots (such as GWB), in not believing in magic nor in her being a real witch. Well, she IS, but "magic only has power if you believe in it, so this imbecile is invulnerable to my powers!"
It reminded me also of the Discworld videogame on PS1. The plot: dragons only exist if you believe in them. Alas, a cult of dangerous nuts has decided to meet precisely to believe in them! They endlessly chant: "Dra-gon! Dra-gon!"... and finally a dragon well and truly exists, and starts roasting random citizens. Since the people are likle sheep, they start believing in it more and more, until anti-Harry Potter wizard Rincewind (with your help) has to get assigned to solving the now very real dragon problem. Oy!
Not that I myself believe in dragons (I don't want to take chances!!!), but I'd rather bother believing in nice stuff... and first of all, believing in my own capacity to accomplish it!
"If you believe in telekinesis, raise my hand."
The Randi Foundation is smart: in case such things ended up being RELIABLY proven, they'd be well worth that million!
But I've read that the CIA has conducted thought transmission experiments, for obvious spying purposes (imagine, Pr. Charles Xavier transmitting you all the information of a secret meeting with no need for compromising special equipment!), but the result of it all was that it didn't present any reliable practical interest.
Neeraj,
Telepathy with plants? Do plants even THINK?
I have a relative who's in a vegetative state since more than 10 years now. So basically, he's as active and conscious as a plant, but he still has about 20% of his brain tissue. Anybody care to detect his remaining thoughts?
We'd really like to know the number of his secret Swiss bank account, so we could pay for his maintained treament and daily care...
Another relative of mine (I have a big family...) is deeply convinced of "psychics" and the likes. Except, while she pays them good money, she's never had any solid actual RESULTS from them. Her beloved daughter is still just as disabled after that car accident.
Not to rant, really, I just wanted to point out that I'm rather well placed to know about all the connery and fraud going around.
Of course, as Agent Mulder found out, "the alien cover-up conspiracy was all just a scam to distract people like me from looking into the REAL power-seizing plots!"
Which, as I heard, turned out to be incorrect at the very beginning of the next season. Aliens DO exist after all!
Ooh, spooky! What a tangled web of deceit... Buzz in circles on your back, my little houseflies, BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA!
Hangar,
"We couldn't reproduce the effect." As I said earlier on, that settles it. Could've been anything, including an artefact, or the effect of YOU people being next to the plant and expecting something. Countless possible hypotheses besides telepathy. Mysteries are NOT scientific, anything that's not proven is not established.
Especially when somebody's fame or money income has a lot of interest in people believing something.
Me? A bad-vibing skeptic? Why, what ever gave you that idea?
My official profile page? Um... oopsie! Busted.
Sure, the intrinsic variability in biology makes reproducing results less obvious. But it's also the best opportunity field for scientific frauders. Call me paranoid.
I've vaguely heard about memes. Just like in biological communities and computer networks, ideas in our Age of Communications can be literally infectious, and spread like a contagious epidemic.
The mechanisms are very complex, and therefore remain largely unexplained today. Doesn't mean there are "Dave" aliens manipulating our brain waves to do it. ;-)
"if you are not infected, then the content of this Mem will not work on you."
Sounds to me like you've talked to the man who knows the neighbor of the man who's seen the dragon... :-)
Pascal, you're a scientist. 7% over random in thousands of tests is HUGE.
ReplyDeleteSure. When done seriously and with an iron-clad protocol.
ReplyDeleteLess so if room is left for subjective interpretation. Remember the dilemma of deciding what could be considered "a punched in ballot" in the Y2K Florida recounts? ;-)
Honesty demands I mention that the huge progress in cancer survival was mostly accomplished by nibbling a few percents here and there over time, by testing a great many substances.
Also, to be fully honest, I haven't viewed Dean Radin's video, nor do I even intend to.
No narrow-mindedness there. Just narrow-connectedness. From the comments it seems to be more than an hour long. A few minutes is the limit of what I'll ever bother to download, at 5 minutes wait per megabyte.
So, there would certainly be room for much pertinent discussion "if only", but no, won't happen. Unless I happen to catch it on TV.
Oogle my latest blog post to get a riveting snapshot of my country's giant strides (strides? moon-gravity LEAPS!) on the technology path.
@Pascal
ReplyDeleteTelepathy with plants? Do plants even THINK?
It was not about thinking of plants. The experiments mentioned in that book were about electric responses (conductivity) of the plants.
I had read about it long ago, never conducted any experiments on my own, so I don't know anything more about it. I just wanted to know, whether anybody has heard something new about it.
Concerning Mem: "if you are not infected, then the content of this Mem will not work on you."
Of course oversimplified and a bit provocative, but a useful concept, I think.
For instance, "Newspeek" in Orwells 1984 can be seen as a destroying of subversive Mems ...
oh well, again it's very late - Good Night.