# The Straight Dope On ESP. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 26, 2016, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173 "2016-04-26T08:17:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/201 "2016-05-03T01:16:08Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > (This was why Einstein didn’t believe in ESP. Signals, to him, and to most of us, require an energy-based system of transmission.) That is also why he called particle entanglement “[spooky action at a distance](http://www.cnet.com/news/physicists-prove-einsteins-spooky-quantum-entanglement/)” - he observed it and knew that his and others observations of it were totally inexplicable - paranormal if you will, but they certainly weren’t supernatural. > [@](#): > > Physicists prove Einstein’s ‘spooky’ quantum entanglement > Multiple research teams claim to have conclusively demonstrated quantum entanglement, which had been disdainfully dubbed “spooky action at a distance” by Albert Einstein. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/202 "2016-05-03T02:34:35Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > No it doesn’t. It just means outside the normal, or without scientific explanation. > > 1n 1920 or so, continental drift was paranormal. . . . I would very strongly disagree with this characterization. It was certainly believed, by nearly every rational geographer of the era, that “continental drift” was a natural phenomenon. Wegener thought the Moon’s gravity dragged the continents around. (He was dead wrong…but the idea is entirely natural.) As observed by others, if you use this definition, then radioactivity is paranormal, human psychology is paranormal, gravity is paranormal, and the merging of DNA in mammalian conception is paranormal. What a useless word it becomes! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/203 "2016-05-03T02:35:51Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > That is also why he called particle entanglement “[spooky action at a distance](http://www.cnet.com/news/physicists-prove-einsteins-spooky-quantum-entanglement/)” - he observed it and knew that his and others observations of it were totally inexplicable - paranormal if you will, but they certainly weren’t supernatural. “Spooky” is not a scientific term, and Einstein wasn’t using it that way. Many of us consider some of Quantum Mechanics to be “weird” – hell, it is weird! – but that’s not a technical term either. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/204 "2016-05-03T02:54:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > “Spooky” is not a scientific term, and Einstein wasn’t using it that way. > > Many of us consider some of Quantum Mechanics to be “weird” – hell, it is weird! – but that’s not a technical term either. The term he used wasn’t really the intended emphasis of the comment. > [@](#): > > Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen described this in a 1935 paper, concluding that either single-particle quantum entanglement was impossible, or that the quantum-mechanical definition of physical reality still needed some work. It’s an example of what could be called observation of a paranormal activity. You’re the one that brought up Einstein, but as you can see his predictably intelligent response when faced with observations that couldn’t be explained was that either the observations were all incorrect, or his understanding of things was not yet up to speed with them. He left room for both possibilities. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/205 "2016-05-03T03:42:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I would very strongly disagree with this characterization. It was certainly believed, by nearly every rational geographer of the era, that “continental drift” was a natural phenomenon. Cite? That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always heard. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/206 "2016-05-03T04:32:46Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Cite? That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always heard. It was addressed as a scientific phenomenon, and a scientific explanation (wrong as all hell, but perfectly normal) was proposed for it. No one in science ever considered it a “magical” affair. I’d like to ask you for a cite otherwise. I’ve never heard anyone making a “mystical” or “paranormal” claim for continental drift. The idea was totally materialistic: the continents moved over the sea-bottoms. The theory was, of course, demolished. It was quickly demonstrated that the sea-floors were too solid to permit continents to skate across them. It took plate tectonics to explain the real workings of the earth’s surface. [Here is a good overview.](http://www.virtualuppermantle.info/PlateTectonic.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/207 "2016-05-03T05:32:06Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > No it doesn’t. It just means outside the normal… No, that’s abnormal. Paranormal has come to mean something quite different. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/208 "2016-05-03T11:38:58Z")
I agree that ESP does not exist on Earth. I’m confident we would have found some legitimate evidence for it by now, if it did. But, **could** it have evolved on Earth? Not from some totally alien extra-terrestrial species (I suppose all kinds of weird stuff could have evolved out there, what with their advanced anal probing technology and all), but right here on our blue planet, budding off any branch of our phylogenetic tree—let’s say 100-million years ago. Why, and how? I can see an evolutionary advantage: communicating with fellow group members in stealth mode—a good tool for predators and prey alike. But, can you think of any valid pathway and mechanism of action for this to occur? Do you believe brain waves could be organized into actual thoughts, travel a certain distance beyond the individual, be picked up by wave-receptors in other members of the group and deciphered? I don’t know. You? Telekinesis seems an even less likely ability to evolve on our planet, but tackle that, too, if you want. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/209 "2016-05-03T12:42:40Z")
And, is it just me, or does _quantum entanglement_ seem to be the modern go-to explanation for everything not readily explicable? Irate Customer: can you tell me why my brand new microwave oven simply stopped working! Store Manager: quantum entanglement. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2016, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/210 "2016-05-03T13:02:59Z")
Tesla tried to broadcast power from a distance. His ideas were, and still are (to my knowledge) considered impossible or at least impractical. But I don’t think anyone considers the concept “paranormal”. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/211 "2016-05-05T06:21:27Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > Tesla tried to broadcast power from a distance. His ideas were, and still are (to my knowledge) considered impossible or at least impractical. But I don’t think anyone considers the concept “paranormal”. Indeed: Broadcast power the way Tesla meant it fails on the simple inverse-square law. That is, the strength of the broadcast decays proportional to the square of the distance: If you’re one unit away from the tower, you see full-strength, if you go two units away, it’s at a quarter strength, at three units away it’s down to one-ninth strength, and so on. You’re wasting the vast majority of the power you pump into the tower. We know perfectly well how it works, which is why we also know it’s too inefficient to take seriously. Anyway, a question for **Crazyhorse** : If this ESP stuff worked, why isn’t anyone using it to make money? If you can communicate at a distance without any equipment, you can steal all sorts of sensitive information with nobody being the wiser, and that’s a great way to practice industrial espionage. If you can use remote viewing, you can remote-view some promising oil fields and cut your discovery budget to being a nice salary for one esper, as opposed to being a nice salary for a small platoon of geologists. [This XKCD strip has more examples.](https://xkcd.com/808/) Don’t tell me that the scientists are holding back profits. I know damned well that it doesn’t work like that, and I suspect you do as well. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/212 "2016-05-05T09:05:44Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Anyway, a question for **Crazyhorse** : If this ESP stuff worked, why isn’t anyone using it to make money? If you can communicate at a distance without any equipment, you can steal all sorts of sensitive information with nobody being the wiser, and that’s a great way to practice industrial espionage. If you can use remote viewing, you can remote-view some promising oil fields and cut your discovery budget to being a nice salary for one esper, as opposed to being a nice salary for a small platoon of geologists. [This XKCD strip has more examples.](https://xkcd.com/808/) > > Don’t tell me that the scientists are holding back profits. I know damned well that it doesn’t work like that, and I suspect you do as well. Why are you asking me? I don’t claim to have ever seen any evidence that suggests this ESP stuff works. From my own personal anecdotal experience, nobody I’ve ever heard of who claimed to have controllable, at-will, psychic powers of some kind has ever demonstrated it. All I’ve argued in this thread is that history provides us with countless examples of things that people observed yet were thought to be impossible based on what we knew about the nature of the world at the time. And many of those things turned out to have simple and natural explanations that just weren’t within our ability to understand until we reached a new level of knowledge. Sometimes hundreds of years after people first observed them. Some of these were really big, obvious, physical things going on right in front of our eyes and we still believed them to be magic or thought people who claimed to observe them were nutballs and frauds for centuries until we figured out there was a simple natural explanation. The mind and consciousness are really obscure, difficult things to understand or study. How many centuries might it take before we can explain some of the most basic things about consciousness? Being in favor of more research into possible explanations for the millions of claims of unusual psychic phenomenon isn’t synonymous with having some belief in any one particular claim among them, it’s just good judgement based on a knowledge of history. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/213 "2016-05-05T11:25:40Z")
When it comes to ESP and it’s kin, what history is filled with is millions of crappy claims that have lead nowhere, riddled with bad remembrances, fraud and sloppy investigation, none of them leading anywhere. _Again I ask, at what point would you have us quit digging through this humongous pile of horseshit looking for your pony?_ ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/214 "2016-05-05T12:29:46Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > Being in favor of more research into possible explanations for the millions of claims of unusual psychic phenomenon isn’t synonymous with having some belief in any one particular claim among them, it’s just good judgement based on a knowledge of history. No, history would suggest not wasting time on fruitless investigations for things that have solid alternative explanations. Good judgement would be to spend time and money on research that is likely to produce useful results. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/215 "2016-05-05T21:40:17Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > I agree that ESP does not exist on Earth. . . . > > But, **could** it have evolved on Earth? . . . Pretty much, no. A sensory means of communication did evolve: speech. Other forms of communication could have evolved, as they exist in other living things. We humans have a very, very slight scent-communication ability; that certainly could have evolved into a system with a higher bandwidth. We might have evolved skin that can display colored messages, sort of the way octopuses (octopi…oh, you know, squid…) do. Even an electric sense, like electric eels and some other fish. We’re amazingly good at non-verbal communication, as in body language. I can tell you, “I want to tear your head off” solely by stance and posture. But not brain waves, and not thought directly to thought. There just isn’t enough energy there. Communication requires some kind of carrier, and even with high-tech electronics, we can’t detect brain-waves at any significant distance. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/216 "2016-05-05T21:41:25Z")
I guess time will tell, since the research will go on regardless of the protests by this esteemed panel of scientific judges. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/217 "2016-05-05T21:44:38Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > I guess time will tell, since the research will go on regardless of the protests by this esteemed panel of scientific judges. More than enough time has already told. Will you answer this one question for us: What would it take to convince you that any more research into ESP would just be a wasted effort? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/218 "2016-05-05T21:51:09Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > I guess time will tell, since the research will go on regardless of the protests by this esteemed panel of scientific judges. Using this “logic”, is there any reason not to continue looking for Atlantis or the Fountain of Youth? People still talk about those, don’t they? ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/219 "2016-05-05T21:55:16Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > More than enough time has already told. Will you answer this one question for us: What would it take to convince you that any more research into ESP would just be a wasted effort? That’s what I want to know, too. > [@Crazyhorse](#): > > How many centuries might it take before we can explain some of the most basic things about consciousness? It isn’t comparable to Atlantis or a fountain of youth (or a belief in the Easter bunny as you spun it previously) there aren’t tens of millions of people who claim that they personally have been to Atlantis, or have seen an Easter bunny. These are myths that few people claimed and then lots of people believed. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173/220 "2016-05-05T21:58:11Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > I guess time will tell, since the research will go on regardless of the protests by this esteemed panel of scientific judges. As I posted earlier: > [@glee](#): > > Look - after decades of investigation and millions of dollars spent no evidence of ESP has been found. > At this point anyone discussing ESP investigation without having any evidence is either deluded, fanatical or going for publicity (and sponsorship.) Since there’s as much evidence for phlogiston, witches and a Flat Earth as there is for ESP, presumably you’d like to see money spent investigating those too. :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-esp/753173.md?page=12)