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albania · 11-10-2007, 03:31 PM

I wrote I have never seen it done repeatedly in a controlled environment. That’s pretty much the only way I would believe ESP was true at this moment and time, if I could see it with my own eyes under stringent conditions.

Now in regards to what you’ve quoted above, I’ll admit I’ve only read about the first half of it. The questions that come to mind are as follows: Where was this research published? Was it published? (The cited sources from your link list 4 or 5 books, and no scholarly articles). There is some mention of methods, but not nearly enough imo. How did they select the people for the tests? What were the people subject to the tests told exactly? There are a myriad of other questions I could come up with, but it all rests on this. Any experiment is about more than quoting the results. The method, especially in something that is nonstandard or controversial, should garner specific attention. Something that in my opinion isn’t outlined to satisfactory degree. Perhaps it is elsewhere.

The article seems also to throw statistics and percentages with no clear explanation as how they got those results. Mathematics can give some pretty non intuitive figures to how likely an event really is. Take for example this math puzzle(reworded by me for this discussion, you can skip it if you like, it sums up to: crazy shit can be explained logically):

In a far away land live a group a people called the espers, they purport to have magical abilities related to clairvoyance and the like. An unscrupulous scientist decides to put their ability to the ultimate test. He rounds up 100 of them at a time numbering them as he does so. Also, they are allowed to talk among themselves in the group. Then he lines up 100 boxes and in each box he puts a piece of paper with the number 1 to 100 (the method with which he does this is up to his liking). Then one by one each of the 100 espers is lead into the room with the boxes. An esper has at most 50 tries to find a box with his number in it, making sure to put the papers back in the box after he’s done. If he doesn’t find his number within 50 tries he is killed otherwise let go. The same holds for the rest of the espers. So in groups of 100 the espers are forced to perform the devilish experiment. In the end the scientist finds that about 1/3 of the time all 100 espers survive. Is there any explanation other than some natural clairvoyant ability of these people?

The answer is yes, the mathematics is complicated enough that very few people would appreciate it (and it would be non trivial for me to recreate). However, there is a strategy that allows for all in a group of 100 to survive about 1/3 of the time. I’m trying to show that there are unexpected and very non-intuitive results that do not require explanations outside mathematics. Regrettably, this is the best example I could come up with. I’m sorry I’ve not given you a detailed proof of the result, but I hope you’ll trust me enough to believe my assertion. The article states that statistics predict x(insert random percentage) but perhaps the people performing the experiments were not clever enough mathematicians to figure out the correct predictions. It all depends on what they did which isn’t outlined clearly enough.

Finally, this business of mainstream science not accepting the “solid” research outlined in the article. I’m a physics guy, so let me relate to you what a professor I respect once told our class. In physics when you publish something that is wrong usually no one ever publishes a paper stating outright that you’re wrong. Instead, all that happens is that what you wrote never gets referenced in other papers and it quietly goes away into obscurity. Though I’m not as familiar with other fields I assume that generally the same thing happens elsewhere. So if scientists are dismissing something as exciting as what’s outlined in the article there are two likely explanations: One it’s not as exciting as is made out to be. That is were getting an incomplete picture of what actually went on. The other possibility is that something similar to what I outlined above(with respect to a wrong physics paper) is happening. In either case my conclusion is that what you’ve posted is not at all a satisfactory proof that such a thing as ESP exists.

11-10-2007, 03:31 PM	#8 (permalink)
albania Psycho	I wrote I have never seen it done repeatedly in a controlled environment. That’s pretty much the only way I would believe ESP was true at this moment and time, if I could see it with my own eyes under stringent conditions. Now in regards to what you’ve quoted above, I’ll admit I’ve only read about the first half of it. The questions that come to mind are as follows: Where was this research published? Was it published? (The cited sources from your link list 4 or 5 books, and no scholarly articles). There is some mention of methods, but not nearly enough imo. How did they select the people for the tests? What were the people subject to the tests told exactly? There are a myriad of other questions I could come up with, but it all rests on this. Any experiment is about more than quoting the results. The method, especially in something that is nonstandard or controversial, should garner specific attention. Something that in my opinion isn’t outlined to satisfactory degree. Perhaps it is elsewhere. The article seems also to throw statistics and percentages with no clear explanation as how they got those results. Mathematics can give some pretty non intuitive figures to how likely an event really is. Take for example this math puzzle(reworded by me for this discussion, you can skip it if you like, it sums up to: crazy shit can be explained logically): In a far away land live a group a people called the espers, they purport to have magical abilities related to clairvoyance and the like. An unscrupulous scientist decides to put their ability to the ultimate test. He rounds up 100 of them at a time numbering them as he does so. Also, they are allowed to talk among themselves in the group. Then he lines up 100 boxes and in each box he puts a piece of paper with the number 1 to 100 (the method with which he does this is up to his liking). Then one by one each of the 100 espers is lead into the room with the boxes. An esper has at most 50 tries to find a box with his number in it, making sure to put the papers back in the box after he’s done. If he doesn’t find his number within 50 tries he is killed otherwise let go. The same holds for the rest of the espers. So in groups of 100 the espers are forced to perform the devilish experiment. In the end the scientist finds that about 1/3 of the time all 100 espers survive. Is there any explanation other than some natural clairvoyant ability of these people? The answer is yes, the mathematics is complicated enough that very few people would appreciate it (and it would be non trivial for me to recreate). However, there is a strategy that allows for all in a group of 100 to survive about 1/3 of the time. I’m trying to show that there are unexpected and very non-intuitive results that do not require explanations outside mathematics. Regrettably, this is the best example I could come up with. I’m sorry I’ve not given you a detailed proof of the result, but I hope you’ll trust me enough to believe my assertion. The article states that statistics predict x(insert random percentage) but perhaps the people performing the experiments were not clever enough mathematicians to figure out the correct predictions. It all depends on what they did which isn’t outlined clearly enough. Finally, this business of mainstream science not accepting the “solid” research outlined in the article. I’m a physics guy, so let me relate to you what a professor I respect once told our class. In physics when you publish something that is wrong usually no one ever publishes a paper stating outright that you’re wrong. Instead, all that happens is that what you wrote never gets referenced in other papers and it quietly goes away into obscurity. Though I’m not as familiar with other fields I assume that generally the same thing happens elsewhere. So if scientists are dismissing something as exciting as what’s outlined in the article there are two likely explanations: One it’s not as exciting as is made out to be. That is were getting an incomplete picture of what actually went on. The other possibility is that something similar to what I outlined above(with respect to a wrong physics paper) is happening. In either case my conclusion is that what you’ve posted is not at all a satisfactory proof that such a thing as ESP exists.