Telepathy and Others - True or False?

Great Debates
41

I’m sure we can all name half a dozen situations where we made psychic predicitons, but how many of them actually mean something. At least with the TV thing, I think it’s entirely possible that we have passing thoughts about many episodes but we latch onto the ones that hit and not the ones that don’t, but there are always ones that are a lot more difficult to explain. I’m happy to name a few of mine.

I have one friend specifically where I not only got good or bad feelings but could often even pin down exactly what happened and when. I remember one where I had a particularly intense feeling, noted the time since I couldn’t call and see what was up then, but when I finally did get a chance to talk, exactly what I’d thought had happened pretty much exactly when I got the feeling. In fact, it happened often enough that that friend had picked up on it and thought it was weird, particularly as that friend didn’t believe in that sort of thing but felt like somehow we still had that sort of connection. I had had a few times where I’ve gotten intense notions related to that friend and didn’t get a hit. Maybe it was confirmation bias, maybe it was from someone else and I just assumed it was that person, who knows. But it’s impossible to rule out non-mystical possibilities like just random chance and confirmation bias.

Or a few times I’ve casually predicted major world events without even thinking about it. I’ve posted about this before, but the night before 9/11 as my friends and I were chatting about stuff, I mentioned that thousands would die and I’d get 2 days out of class, and that’s exactly what happened and my college closed for two days as a result. I made a similar statement before the earthquake/tsunami in japan, again when conversing with the same friends. Or, again, when talking to the same friends, I predicted the nature of, duration, and reason for it ending of my next relationship. Of course, none of them were real attempts to predict things, they were just things sort of said off the cuff but seemed a little out of place and then turned out to be true. So is that any sort of real psychic connection, perhaps as part of being with that set of friends maybe magnifying each others’ powers or is it just demonstrative of those particular friends and I having bizarre conversations and confirmation bias making it easy to remember the bizarre hits?

Regardless, if it is something that exists, I think it’s probably something that is extraordinarily subtle, just the sort of thing that might influence a fairly random conversation or affect a generally random emotional responses, and that the vast majority of people that make any attempt to have it be more specific are likely inadvertantly fooling themselves, though I’m sure some are deliberate. If it is real, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some sort of prodigy, but even still, I wouldn’t expect it to be at that sort of level.

There’s also the possibility that there’s a lot of information that we don’t really consciously pick up on, but our minds still soak in and try to make sense of. Like the idea in the OP about the morning of 9-11. Maybe there were some words overheard in passing about people dying or whatever that didn’t really capture his attention. Maybe he sort of picked up that a lot more people around him than usual seemed to have sad facial expressions, again, something that we may not think about consciously but other parts of our brains pick up on quickly. I could see that sort of thing happen, getting bits and pieces but nothing complete and somehow subconsciouly knowing something was wrong but not exactly what and having an emotional response to it.

42

There’s no science here; there’s nothing to prove.

You may as well be looking for proof of ghosts or leprechauns.

43

For how long? You do realize there have been literally thousands of experiments done on telepathy, ESP, psychic prediction, etc. It’s not a matter of science not understanding how they work - science has pretty reliably demonstrated that they DON’T work, even for the people who believe in them. In all those experiments, nobody’s been able to reproduce any of these phenomena at a level above chance.

Science exists to measure, quantify, and–if we’re lucky–explain the events of natural world. But “explain” is a later step, and in order to get to it, you’ve got to be able to demonstrate that these events even happen at all. Until there’s something to measure, there’s nothing to “do science” on.

There are plenty of interesting phenomena that haven’t been proven yet; those are getting active study, and not being dismissed as “woo.” But asking scientists to keep doing the same pointless tests (or new pointless tests on non-existent phenomena) over and over and over again is unrealistic.

First, let the practitioners provide some evidence beyond “I know it works” and anecdotes. Do a couple proper double-blind studies and find out that your phenomenon is real. Get a few uninterested parties to reproduce your findings and evaluate your methods for flaws. Show a reproducible, measurable effect at above levels expected by chance. THEN come back and the scientists will be happy to look into it (but don’t be upset when they discover that your methodology was allowing you to deceive yourself all along – that’s usually the case in “exciting” discoveries, psuedoscience or otherwise.)

44

That’s not why it’s being dismissed. It’s being dismissed because it’s usually easily explained through other means, completely open to interpretation, and generally ridiculous.

Nobody has said we are.

Can you please explain what frequency you feel would be explained by chance, and why? (Less difficult question: do you think that keeping your radio tuned to stations that play stuff you like might have anything to do with it?)

You can be mistaken without being a liar.

No, it would mean the person reporting the event misunderstood it.

45

I would love to believe in these things (and probably still do at some level) but I just don’t see how any of it’s possible.

Taking just telepathy… how would that even work? Sending a thought? If I say “blue” do you think of the color blue? The Ocean, the sky? A pair of blue eyes? How do I make someone understand I mean “blue” as in “sad” without some kind of context around it? My facial expressions… sound of my voice?

And if you think telepathy is just “talking” how would my brain interpret sound without an eardrum?? Just doesn’t make sense…

46

Fair enough. Let’s test Lizzyerd’s claim here and now.

Lizzyerd, next time you feel you are having some sort of premonition, write it here, in this thread. That will get rid of the confirmation bias, since it will be written down. If you can guess, I don’t know, the next devastating earthquake or something before it happens, we can start figuring out what’s going on.

47

Ah, you see science still hasn’t caught up with the exceptional power that is the human brain. Because, after all, we only use 10% of our brain. I mean everyone knows that. And, dogs can tell if you’re scared and know when earthquakes are coming, so there must be some hidden ability in our giant cerebral cortex.

If only science could find a way to unleash this mystical power. After all they laughed at Marie Curie at first, didn’t they? Oh. I thought they did.

48

No one has done that. We dismiss it because there’s nothing to explain. No one has ever showed any psychic phenomenon that needs an explanation, other than our current materialist models of the natural world.

No one has done that.

It’s just that in the case of psychic phenomena, we’ve all seen literally hundreds of different claims, and when they’re looked into more, the claims are baseless. If someone would ever actually show that people guess shapes on cards better than chance would allow, then we’d have something to look for an explanation to, but right now, there’s just nothing to explain.

Oh? Can you show us your process for figuring this out, with numbers?

You see, people have made claims like this before, and every single time when someone goes to the trouble to see if it’s really true that it happens way too often for chance to be an adequate explanation, it turns out that that’s not true.

Why don’t you set a higher standard for yourself? Science is just a formalized system to keep you from fooling yourself (and you, as Feynman said, are the easiest person to fool).

49

Is it me, or does this very annoying strawman argument pop up in every single thread that involves purportedly superatural experience in any way?

50

A few weeks ago, I thought it was rather peculiar that Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards in an “unwinnable” game. “No way,” I thought, “that this was mere chance. I mean, what are the odds?”

So I did science. I looked up the stats, and it turns out someone throws for 316 yards about every three weeks, more if you count 315 and 317 as ‘close enough’, which woo-believers undoubtedly would.

Ya see? Another mystery proved to be “not magic.”

51

Fair enough. What is not fair is to specify exactly which “woo” notion definitely will be accepted some day in the future as science.

I readily agree that there are ideas, dismissed today, which will be accepted tomorrow.

I frostily reject the notion that you, or anyone, can tell us which ideas those are.

Agreed. What you’re overlooking is that proper scientists say exactly that. They don’t say, “There is no such thing as telepathy.” They say, instead, and properly, “There isn’t enough evidence for telepathy for me to take the idea seriously.” They don’t reject it; they put it on the table for someone else, later, to pick up if the evidence accrues.

Isaac Asimov gives the example of Icelandic Spar Crystal, the transparent mineral that produces double images when you look through it. Lliikkee Tthhiiss, sort of. Very pretty. For centuries, science had no idea why this happened. No clue. Scientists didn’t dismiss the phenomenon; they simply frowned, wondered, played around with it, and set it back on the shelf. It was a mystery. They didn’t say, “This doesn’t happen.” They said, “Huh. Isn’t that something. Maybe some day we’ll learn why.”

Then someone discovered polarized light, and, voila, the mystery was solved.

Telepathy might follow that path. It also might follow the path of Astrology.

Sherlock Holmes had the best of it: “It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.”

52

Who knows is the correct response but I too think that there has been no real-world evidence to allow me to take the theory of ESP seriously, but I would be delighted to see anything more than supposition based on confirmation bias.

Yes I have too had little things that have happened to me that give me goosebumps, one that comes to mind is when my grandpa died in Finland and my mum in Australia came into my room at the exact time of his death to see if I was OK. I am the spitting image of him. Now mum never did that to my recollection so I could say it was physic or just a coincidence. At this stage I think that it was probably a coincidence but sometimes I do let my mind wander…

53

David42, first of all nobody is saying it can’t possibly exist. However, we are saying there is no evidence that it exists so there is no reason to think it does. It’s not just that nobody understands how these things work, it’s that nobody has ever demonstrated that they work at all. If you believe that something exists when there is no evidence, then you are talking about faith and the supernatural instead of science. You are free to believe (and you might even be right) but you can’t call it science.

Let’s take gravity. Gravity exists. It can be scientifically demonstrated that any two objects with mass are affected by the force of gravity. That force can be precisely measured and predicted with 100% reliability. Yet nobody knows what gravity is or how it works. That is science. Scientists don’t deny gravity just because they don’t know how it works. It has physical properties and we have a model that describes those properties with great precision.

Now let’s take the ability foretell the future. Nobody has ever demonstrated that ability, other than either by fakery or by generating so many predictions that are so vague that some fraction of them are bound to come true, or can be claimed as true under liberal interpretation. Scientists don’t say that prescience can’t possibly exist, they just say that there is no evidence that it does. The claim is not falsifiable–there is no experiment you could design that could prove that ESP is not possible.

Bob Toben wrote about possible physical bases to certain paranormal phenomena in his book Space-Time and Beyond, 1975, E.P. Dutton & Co., New York. The author references “conversation” with physicists Jack Sarfatti and Fred Wolf. This book doesn’t claim to prove that any of this exists, just providing food for thought as to how it might be possible.

There is extensive commentary in an appendix by Sarfatti. Some of this commentary sounds like hand-waving to me, such as, “The possibility of psychokinesis flows immediately from the postulate that consciousness controls the biogravitational field…” [p. 151, note T]. The biogravitational field is never defined here in physical scientific terms (or anywhere else I could find).

Wolf was described by Newsweek Magazine as being “on the fringes of mainstream science.” Much of Sarfatti’s work was also outside mainstream science; he initially thought that Uri Geller’s spoon-bending act was real but according to a Wikipedia article later retracted that view. My personal opinion is that Sarfatti was doing 'shrooms.

Another description of experiments regarding Geller can be found in this video starting at 23:22. The video is a lecture given by MIT physicist David Kaiser who gives a historical perspective to some past events in the physics world.

54

Correct link for video

this video

55

Too many people think so, and it’s a serious problem.

A stupendously high percentage of people believe in angels. An even higher believe in all kinds of supernatural entities.

Every single one of the believers pretends they have an insight to the divine and the supernatural, and they are eager to report on a special event, experience or other happening that truly shows their special ability to be in direct contact with the supernatural.

Thankfully we can explain such false and absurd claims. Reason has prevailed over superstition but it has a long way to go to become a standard.

56

Serious problem? Really? Seems harmless to me.

57

It may seem harmless in many cases. But accepting superstitious claims without reasonable examination is always to the detriment of society.

We don’t see the fallout as clearly and in large scale in our times, but humans have suffered a lot and for a very long time because of superstitious beliefs.

Maybe now we don’t punch holes in people’s skulls to let the evil spirits escape when they have a strong headache, but by promoting and supporting superstition on a social scale - not only a personal one - people put hurdles on progress that are difficult to overcome.

See: religion.

58

This really veers off in another direction, but the effects of people believing in telekinesis, clairvoyance, and mind-reading (in the vein of the OP) are a completely different category than people being manipulated to wreak violence in the name of a supernatural being. I don’t think it is to the detriment of society that some people avoid walking under ladders, or that many office buildings don’t have a 13th floor.

59

But they’re all aspects of the same root cause: magical thinking. I, and I think Paralogic, view magical thinking as harmful to society. It leads to religion, homeopathy, all kinds of other quackery, astrology, etc. The fact that some of these are worse than the others is beside the point.

60

For that particular example you mention, no.

But people who fall for this, fall for more insidious superstitious claims and become unwilling or willing participants in massive scale of abuse.

We have written historical records about this.

Someone walking around a ladder is not a problem. The problem is that if they are so superstitious about ladders, they will likely be flippant about more serious issues affecting society.

There’s a track record on such abuse due to belief to the superstitious.