You know, I really want ESP/psychic powers to exist. I really do.
I’m not in the camp that says they can’t exist, never been proven, therefore will never be shown to exist, and anyone who claims that they might possibly be real are obviously deluded/stupid/gullible/what have you. IMO, this is the worst form of skepticism. It blinds the skeptic to some possibilities, while making the skeptic’s opponent less likely to embrace other possibilities. Instead of mutual learning we have mutual antipathy.
That may not seem that important if we’re talking about ESP, but if we are talking about medical issues it gets much more problematic. If a doctor gets in the habit of denying his patients experience when it doesn’t fit into his neat pigeonholes, he is hurting his patient.
OTOH, I’m not in the camp that sees every lucky chance and noteworthy coincidence as proof that ESP/psychic powers/magic exists. People! At least attempt to find a logical explanation before you go all woo-woo. And frankly, the human mind can do things that are subtle enough that you can’t follow how it happened so seem like they come out of thin air. And sometimes not so subtle. Many years ago I did a “Let Madame Zyada tell your fortune”, and did tarot readings for quite a number of people on the board. I expected to see at least some people say “No, that’s not right”. Instead, I was boggled at how people would contort my reading to fit whatever was happening to them.
Frankly, I am seeing the worst of both camps in this thread. The quark argument is as useless at the crackhead returned my keys story. I can’t even tell which side Peter Morris or Princhester is supposed to be supporting.
Peter, I’m not going to attempt to comment on the specifics of some CSICOP astrology study failure without you even providing a link to the study. Broadly however you are assuming equivalencies that don’t exist. There is no equivalency between
[ul]
[li]failing, as a tester, to realise that there is a subtle statistical flaw in your method, or some subtle further control is required, and [/li]
[li]failing to realise that you know so little about your own claimed power that you can agree a testing protocol and then only afterwards “discover” that it was not slightly but fundamentally inappropriate for testing your claimed power (which is what happened to “Pat” in the test linked by the OP)[/li][/ul]
It is this background against which, yes, the fact that testees sign up to tests but afterwards question the protocol they have agreed to is very telling, and, no, the fact that testor’s make methodology mistakes is not.
As to your “the argument never impresses anyone” thing [my emphasis], that isn’t my experience. Fencesitters and sceptics think it is an impressive argument in my experience. Believers don’t. Religious people don’t accept or admit acceptance of any rational argument against their gods either. So what?
What is telling is that when I laid out above my rationale for the significance of testee acceptance of protocols, your response was to say “the argument never convinces anyone”. In other words, you don’t have a rational response. You just want to have a popularity contest.
As to test design, there are plenty of good ones out there and there is plenty of informal peer review. The test designs are so commonplace that if there were peers out there with rational objections the objections would be well known. There are no rational objections. There are just people who say the tests are flawed without being able to say why.
HoneyBadgerDC your last post is either evidence you haven’t looked into this subject, or obfuscation. All the questions you ask have been considered and answered by previous studies or are irrelevant. The consensus of the results of the tests are negative.
Zyada your post is lazy. The “camp” to which you refer in your second paragraph simply doesn’t exist. It’s a strawman much beloved of the non-sceptics who love to pretend sceptics are more close minded than they are, so they can have something to be critical of. You say “The quark argument is as useless at the crackhead returned my keys story” but both of those arguments were arguments put forward by the non-sceptics. And if you have read my first few posts in this thread and can’t tell I’m a skeptic, you just aren’t trying.
I can respect the position that this whole debate isn’t worth worrying about. But I can’t respect an abject failure to make any serious attempt to understand what is being said followed by a glib pretense that this must mean both sides are as bad as the other.
[HoneyBadgerDC your last post is either evidence you haven’t looked into this subject, or obfuscation. All the questions you ask have been considered and answered by previous studies or are irrelevant. The consensus of the results of the tests are negative. ]
You are correct, I have not looked into it much beyond the occassional article I come across. I think the science is far too broad to even know where to start beyond attempting to confirm it’s existence based purely on odds. At some point in the future it may be possible to scan the brain in ways we cannot do now, this may make the subject worthy of further review. From what I have managed to read just today I still haven’t seen anything I would call scientific investigation. At the same time no one has confirmed a phsychic experience. Any time I have ever suspected phsychic activity my mind was always very relaxed and kind of lost in thought.
I don’t know jack about King’s Quest but my quick google turned up King’s Quest pages mentioning Monkey Island and Monkey soldiers. Maybe I was doing it wrong and I can’t say I looked at the pages very closely (hardly at all).
Its so very famous that I thought you’d recognise it. I’ve mentioned it many times before. Look up Gauquelin affair, aka sTarbaby for details.
On the contrary. It is YOU who is using a logical fallacy. I’m sure you are familiar with the term special pleading.
You are saying that Skeptics are permitted to spot mistakes in the protocol AFTER the test, but the claimants aren’t. It is the same situation, and your attempts to
Okay I used the wrong word. I should have said the argument never *convinces *anyone.
Sure, you personally are impressed by the argument. Nobody is ever *convinced *by it.
Let me repeat this point to you. It goes like this:
Somebody start a thread asking something like ‘do psychic powers really exist?’
The person asking the question neither believes in psychic powers, nor disbelieves in them, what you call a ‘fencesitter.’
Some Randi fan replies, citing a test run by Randi, and pointing out that the psychic agreed to the protocol.
Most of the time, in my experience, the fence sitter is not convinced by the test.
On most occasions, the questioner does not respond to the Randi fan at all.
Occasionally, the questioner looks at Randi’s test, and comes to the conclusion that the psychic was treated unfairly.
The questioner then shifts his opinion, and might even become a believer in psychic powers.
Princhester, you claim that fencesitters find it an impressive argument. Can you cite that? Show me one example where a fencesitter found it convincing.
See, that’s the thing. There ARE plenty of objections made by expert scientists. They give detailed analysis of the protocol, pointing out lots of flaws. For example, Arthur C. Clarke and others pointing out various flaws in a test run by Randi. YOU refuse to accept the peer review. You just claim the peer review can be ignored if the testee signed a form.
I can’t be assed reading through volumes of bickering over the Gauquelin thing. But basically it seems some sceptics messed up some statistical methodology or made some wrong assumptions about lack of bias in a dataset. Just as I suspected, there is no comparison at all between that, and (seemingly) being fundamentally clueless about the very basics of the so called pychic ability that one is claiming, as “Pat” was.
Further, you need to read my posts for comprehension [and I’m sure you’ll begin doing so right after hell freezes over]. I know you are desperate to read my posts as making some absolutist statement like that testers are “permitted to spot mistakes in the protocol AFTER the test, but the claimants aren’t” but I’ve never said that. I am making a quantitative, judgment based point, not a qualitative pure logic point, no matter how much you try to strawman me to the contrary.
The point I’m making is that it is meaningful that one side sometimes makes small understandable mistakes, and the other is perpetually making massive, fundamental fuckups of the highest order about the very essence of their own claims. You probably don’t agree that this is what is going on. You probably think the position is reversed. Tell your thoughts to someone who cares.
As to the impress/convinced thing, I perhaps wasn’t clear enough in my last post: I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your ad populum.
Finally, when it comes to test design, if you present actual objections I’ll consider them. I have never said all objections can be ignored if the testee has agreed to the protocol.
Peter Morris, it must be obvious to you but I’ll Spell it out anyway.
The testers aren’t trying to prove the nonexistence of something. They are trying to see if an effect exists.
If a problem in the protocol is spotted after a test was run and an effect was seen then that test and the result should be treated as unreliable. That is a critical feature of good scientific practice.
If the test is run and an effect was seen and the testee spots a flaw in the protocol that tightens up the safeguards then yes, the test should be rerun. If however no effect is seen and they are seeking to weaken the protocol in favour off themselves then, sorry. Not allowed. Not good science.
If they say “oh but I need to wear a blue hat not a red one in order to be successful” or some such trivial amendment then accommodation could be made but in a world of finite resources we can’t retry forever. Not least because by chance alone on one of those retries an effect may be seen and success claimed. That is a reason for the replication often stipulated in a protocol.
Hasn’t been claimed. If I had “psychic abilities” I’d get off my ass and collect my money.
[QUOTE=JREF staff]
The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims.
At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the “applicant” becomes a “claimant.”
So I take it you agree that as no psychic abilities have passed peer review one can say that at the moment it seems that psychic abilities do not exist? As with all science we add the caveat that future data may change our opinion at some point.
My psychic story- about 10 years ago, in class (actually military classroom training) our instructor came in Monday morning, and he was talking about his weekend. His story was about singing karaoke, and he said he sang this one song that got him a bunch of attention from the girls in the bar. All he said was “It’s that song, you know, that song… from that movie…”, and I blurted out “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and he said “That’s the one!”
And every head turned, and for a moment I was king of the classroom.
So I think the moral of the story is that I have psychic powers- as long as you’re talking about a karaoke song that you can’t think of the name of, and as long as that song is “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
Mea culpa on the argument comparison. You are correct that those are both on the same side, so I will point out that telling someone they won the “Dumbest thing posted on the internet today, 10/31/2012” award is as useless as the crackhead story to prove the skeptics side.
As far as there not being a “camp” of “can’t possibly be real” skeptics? Maybe not, but I see at least three or four people on the skeptical side in this thread using ad hominems and at least one or two absolutist statements. Both of these are counter-productive for any side of any argument, and they exist for every side of every argument. And by calling it a “strawman argument” right off the bat, you’re saying that I am going to mis-represent your open-mindedness, or lack thereof - so that I can have something to be critical of? You’re making a judgement of what I am going to do without any data except that I made a statement that others have made.
As far as not being lazy about not catching which side you are on … well, I usually don’t read names when I’m reading a thread unless the posters start addressing one another in thread.
And frankly, by the second page, you and Peter were effectively saying nothing but “I’m right and you’re wrong”, “No, I’m right and you’re wrong”. Maybe I should have gone back and figured out where you were coming from… but maybe you also should consider how effective your later posts were.
So where do I stand? Psychic powers could exist; however, since there is at least thirty years worth of paranormal research and I’ve never seen anyone pull out one study that showed any psychic powers being displayed, it’s doubtful.
Doesn’t mean I can’t want ESP to exist. After all, it would be cool. But if you say that you’ve seen it happen, I want good objective evidence. And so far, everything I’ve seen as “evidence” I could poke a hole in.
Back to the OP - it is a poorly conducted research study. Because, frankly, it gives the true believers too much wiggle room. As far as your focus on the protocol agreement - that just means that the psychics themselves are true believers, and they don’t know how they do what they do. I.e. it sheds light on the mindset of the psychics, not on how good or bad the experiment is.
And unlike Peter, I’m willing to come up with an alternative methodology.
Hypothesis: psychics are basically people who are good cold readers, who may or may not realize that is what they are doing.
Set up - 5 psychics, 5 people who are good at cold reading.
A group of normal volunteers. A group volunteers who are good actors of the same size.
The actors are challenged to come up with a single persona that is significantly different from their own. The other volunteers are asked to be as honest as they can.
Double blind assignment between volunteers and psychics/readers. Each volunteer sees one psychic and one reader; order is randomized. (This would be best stretched over 2-3 days, so the psychics don’t get to claim an “off day”)
At the end, comparison is made between psychics ability to determine specifics about each volunteer and cold readers. Statements about the volunteers should be weighted based on probabilities and a mathematical comparison between the psychics’ and the readers’ accuracy of assessment created.
I don’t get the point of this step. If the actors are not seen nor heard, how will they display that persona? If they are seen and heard, is the psychic supposed to see beyond the persona?
I see I missed something - during the study, the psychics and cold readers would be doing their normal method of face-to-face reading. (With cameras rolling)
If the psychic can truly read minds, she/he should see beyond the facade. My conjecture would be that the psychic and the cold reader would read the actors persona and be equally accurate.
A cold reader would see the set-up in the OP’s experiment and say, “yeah, right, not gonna happen”.
But if you say that you’ve seen it happen, I want good objective evidence. And so far, everything I’ve seen as “evidence” I could poke a hole in.