One big problem, as I mentioned here, and elsewhere, with ID as a hypothesis is that it is predicated on the idea that mind is “immaterial” (or at least “non-materialistic”) yet can have an effect on matter. That’s the basis of Beauregard and O’Leary’s book “The Spiritual Brain”, as well as of a number of theories of consciousness and/or free will. And, if true, it makes some kind of sense of ID – if by “intelligence” we mean a “mind” (as opposed to, say, an algorithm, and we have many that can produce output from input that is far beyond anything human beings can manage unaided, and can in some sense be said to be “intelligence”), we are also implicitly talking about something that intends an outcome. Which is why I’ve always thought that ID would make more sense if the I stood for “Intentional” rather than “Intelligence”, but for some reason Dembski thinks that “intention”, together with ethics, aesthetics and the identity of the designer, “are not questions of science”.
I would argue that intention is most definitely a “question of science”, but that’s not my primary point here.
What I’d like to do instead is to unpack the hypothesis (and it’s a perfectly legitimate hypothesis) that there is something that we term “mind”, and which is “immaterial” in the sense that it has no mass, and does not exert a detectable force, but which nonetheless exerts an influence on events.
Beauregard and O’Leary cite Henry Stapp, and say:
According to the model created by H. Stapp and J.M.Schwartz, which is based on the Von Neumann interpretation of quantum physics, conscious effort causes a pattern o neural activity that become a template for action. But the process is not mechanical or material. There are no little cogs and wheels in our brains. There is a series of possibilities; a decision causes a quantum collapse, in which one of them becomes a reality. The cause is the mental focus, in the same way that the cause of the quantum Zeno effect is the physicists continued observation. It is a cause, but not a mechanical or material one. One truly profound change that quantum physics has made is to verify the existence of nonmechanical causes. One of these is the activity of the human mind, which, as we will see, is not identical to the functions of the brain.
Well there is certainly some important unpacking to do here before we go any further. Beauregard and O’Leary appear to be saying that quantum effects are neither “mechanical [n]or material”. OK. In that case, I do not know of a single “materialist”! Nobody I know would claim that quantum effects do not exist. In which case, none of us are “materialists” and Beauregard and O’Leary have a straw man. I would also buy the idea that the brain itself is non-deterministic in a quantum sense – that what we do is not merely direct result of matter put into motion at the beginning of existence, but also fundamentally uncertain.
So I think that Beauregard and O’Leary have drawn their desired line in a very odd place. The difference between the people they dismiss as “materialists” and themselves is not that we “materialists” don’t think that quantum effects exist or are perfectly real. It’s between people who don’t think that these quantum effects have anything to do with intentional behaviour, and people who think that it’s where the leeway for “free” intentional behaviour resides. They go on to say (h/t to William for doing the typing):
In the interpretation of quantum physics created by physicist John Von Neumann (1903-1957), a particle only probably exists in one position or another; these probable positions are said to be “superposed” on each other. Measurement causes a “quantum collapse”, meaning that the experimenter has chosen a position for the particle, thus ruling out the other positions. The Stapp and Schwartz model posits that this is analogous to the way in which attending to (measuring) a thought holds it in place, collapsing the probabilities on one position. This targeted attention strategy, which is used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorders, provides a model for how free will might work in a quantum system. The model assumes the existence of a mind that chooses the subject of attention, just as the quantum collapse assumes the existence of an experimenter who chooses the point of measurement.
Firstly, I find the idea that because doing something intentionally (focusing attention, for instance) has neural correlates demonstrates that intention, and thus mind, has physical effects extraordinarily naive (and their claim that it was not until the nineties that neuroscientists considered that thought could affect brain structure even odder, given that Hebb, their own countryman, died in 1985, is regarded as the “father of neuroscience” and is most famous for “Hebb’s rule” that “what fires together wires together”, and that “Hebbian learning” is fundamental to the notion of neural plasticity). But more to the point, is there any basis for concluding that something that we call an immaterial, non-mechanical but somehow quantum-real mind can “hold” brain patterns “in place” and thus affect the motor output, i.e. the act that implements the final decision?
One source cited is a paper by Schwartz, Stapp and Beauregard, which goes into some detail. There is an interesting critique by Danko Georgiev of the Stapp model here, and a reply by Stapp here (link is to a Word document with tracked changes still turned on!). So I’d be interested to know what the physicists here make of the physics.
But my problem with the argument is more fundamental, and relates to the concept of intention itself. I’m going to define “intention” in the plain-English sense of meaning “a goal that a person has in mind, and acts to try to bring about”. And I will use “quantum mind” to denote the putative non-material, non-mechanical but capable-of-inducing-effects mind apparently postulated by Beauregard and colleagues.
If a person has such a mind, then her intention, according to my definition, resides within it it. Which is fine. And her capacity to act to bring about the intended goal has something to do with the muscles she possesses, and the relationship between her mind and those muscles, which presumably goes via the brain. And let’s suppose that this quantum mind brings about changes in brain state that can “hold in place” a particular neural pattern of firing, possibly until it reaches execution threshold, and outflow to the muscles begins.
This is actually quite a good model of decision-making, and something that my own research deals with specifically – how do we inhibit a response to a stimulus that requires one until we are sure that our response is going to be the appropriate one?
The problem it seems to me is when we try to address the question: how is that goal selected? For example, in many circumstances, the proximal goal (find a pencil) subserves a more distal goal (write down your phone number) which in turn serves an even more distal goal (so that I can call you back when I’ve found the answer to your question) and so on (so that I can help you solve your problem; so that I can feel good about myself; so that I can check “problem solved” on my worksheet; so that you feel good about yourself; so that your children will be able to get home from school; etc). And all these goals require information. Depending on the information, the goals may be different, and in the light of new information, goals may change. In other words, to form an intention, the quantum mind needs a goal, and to form a goal, it needs information.
Where does it get that information? One possibility is the sensory system. In fact it’s hard to know where the information can come from otherwise. In order to solve your problem I have to know what it is, and in order to prioritise my goals I have to know more about your problem. That means I have to listen to what you are saying, and my brain has to react to the vibrations that arrive at my eardrum.
And that information has to get to the quantum mind. What the quantum mind decides must therefore be, in part, an output from the input of my body and brain.
So my very simple question to Beauregard, Stapp, Schwartz, O’Leary et al, is: in what sense is your postulated quantum mind anything more than part of the process by which as a person (an organism) I respond to incoming information with goal-appropriate actions? If the quantum mind is adding something extra to the process, on what basis is it doing so? If on the basis of incoming information, why is it not a result of that input? If on the basis on no information, in what sense are the decisions it makes anything more than a coin toss?
And, to IDers generally: if a divine mind can alter the configuration of a DNA molecule by means of somehow selecting from quantum probabilities those most likely to bring about some goal formed on the basis of information to which we are not privy, how could we tell that the resulting DNA molecule is the result of anything other than probabilities that are perfectly calculable using quantum physics? And if those molecules violate those probabilities – DNA molecules suddenly start to form themselves consistently into configurations highly improbable under the laws of quantum mechanics – on what basis would we invoke quantum mechanics, or even a quantum mind, to “explain” it?
I don’t think you can use “quantum” as an alibi for “anything improbable that we can’t explain”. If Divine intention is smuggled in under the guise of quantum indeterminacy, then how could we detect it? And if your inference is that Cambrian animals must have been intended because they are otherwise unlikely, how do you explain that in terms of quantum mechanics? And if quantum mechanics won’t do the job, we are back to square one:
How does mind move matter?
My comment was in response to this comment of yours:
No mention of “non-local” effects. Your claim was simply that “[blind protocols] are certainly not engineered with the idea that experimenter expectations and mindsets can actually affect the physical nature of that which is being examined.”
This claim is wrong. They are “engineered” with precisely that idea, as I said.
The words “non-local” do not appear in the post of yours I responded to.
forgot to include the link to Dan Dials molecular enhancer for WJM. Here is the link demonstrating how to use the enhancer (as you’ll note it’s no wonder it has achieved the accolades it so justly deserves).
http://dansenhancerweb.com/me_howuse.shtml
and they once laughed at Galileo ……
Joe Newman has something you will like. He will even sell you an exclusive franchise.
Oh my, and shades of a Dr. Bronner’s product label!
I picked it not to “smear you” at all but to try to think of an example that you might have in mind – of “non-local” effects of an experimenter, on, say, metal. You cited Sheldrake’s literature search approvingly, but Sheldrake made no attempt to distinguish between studies that might, or might not be “amenable to blind protocols”. So I assumed you thought that all studies should be so blinded, to guard against these “non-local” effects that you think that “materialist” scientists ignore. But I’m please to hear that you don’t (apparently unlike Sheldrake) expect that all areas of science “are amenable” to blind protocols. In which case, why did you even cite Sheldrake? What was your point? What areas of scientific research DO you think should be blinded, but currently aren’t? Can you give an example?
I apologise for my bluntness, but that is all it was. William, have you any idea as to the smearing you yourself are doing, in this very thread? You claimed, although you seem to have forgotten it, that psi research is are the ONLY area of science in which stringent blinding is done. That is simply false. Not only is psi research notorious for poor blinding (as in the example I gave, following your own lead) but blinding is, as I’ve pointed out, de rigeur in a huge number of scientific domains including my own. Your allegation is itself a smear (or at the minimum, quite unsupported). You have now apparently backed off that claim by accepting that some areas of science aren’t “amenable” to blinding. No, they aren’t. But rather than make a gracious concession, you accuse me of trying to smear you by using an example of a research protocol that would not be so amenable! Whereas in fact I chose that example precisely because I thought you might be referring to experiments in which observer expectations might physically affect the observed material!
OK. I really do not know what you mean here. Explain what you mean by “mind cannot directly affect non-local matter”. When I though you might mean that mind could affect the mercury in a test tube you thought I was smearing you. When I thought you might mean that an experimenter mind could affect the molecules within the brain of a patient on a placebo (which it can), you said it wasn’t your point and huffed that I did not know what “non-local” meant.
So please explain.
He claims this. He does not “point it out”. Please give an example – any example – of a piece of science that is conducted without setting up protocols to guard against mind-over-matter intrusions, and which should have been, in your view. I certainly accept that sometimes experimenters do not fully guard against experimenter effects, and should. This is as true (and I’d argue truer) of psi research as of any other area of research in which experimenter effects are likely to be a problem. However, good researchers do, and yes, it is taught routinely, and in a few hours I will be teaching it myself. And of course like most researchers in my field, I routinely design my protocols so as minimise experimenter bias.
Well, please explain to me what you mean by non-local, mind-over-matter effects, and give me an example of how such effects might intrude on the research. Also explain to me how “double and triple-blind protocols” would check for this.
When I asked you whether you knew what you were talking about, it was not a smear, it was a genuine question. “Double blind” refers to protocols in studies in which there is a participant and an experimenter, and a randomly allocated manipulated variable (e.g. an active drug versus a placebo). It is “double blind” if neither participant nor experimenter knows who is allocated which condition until after the experiment. It is “single blind” if only one knows (usually the experimenter). “Triple blind” isn’t souped up double blind, it’s simply the word used if there is an additional layer of people – a carer, for example, or a parent, who is also part of the protocol and who also needs to be blind to the experimental allocation. You wouldn’t use the word “single blind” to refer to a protocol in which only one person was involved – it is only used to refer to studies in which double blind would have been possible, but wasn’t used.
What we do use is the term “blind rater”. In my field, one thing we have to do is to examine brain images or EEG traces for movement artefacts. This can be partly automated, but sometimes a visual judgement has to be made. Before doing this I always make sure that the rater does not know what experimental condition the images come from. So for example, if we have traces from one of two experimental conditions within one subject, it’s important to remove the artefacts before segmenting the traces into conditions. Or if we have data from two groups (say patients and controls, or people receiving a drug and people receiving a placebo) we make sure that the files are anonymised and the acquisition order scrambled.
For non-pharmacological interventions it is more difficult, and sometimes double, or even single blinding is impracticable. However, we often devise “placebo” interventions, matched for experimenter time with the subject, to minimise effects that are not specific to the intervention, and indeed it is sometimes possible to do a true double blind study. However, even with the best double blind studies, there is sometimes “contamination” – patients realise they are receiving the active drug because they experience side effects, or experimenters recognise signs of the active drug, or word gets out as to which of two interventions is the novel intervention of interest (this is a particular problem in educational research).
So that’s a start. But it’s probably not what you mean, and until you explain the kinds of “non-local” effects you think we should be guarding against, I cannot tell you whether we guard against them. We certainly guard against experimenter bias in the observations, and that should also take care of experimenter effects on the observed material itself.
I am not trying to misrepresent you, William, and I never do. I am attempting to understand you. But in this thread alone you have accused me of saying that you have said things you did not say, and I have now twice quoted your very own words, which say exactly what I said you said. You have also accused me of not understanding what “non-local” means in my response to a post of yours, even though those words did not appear in your post. I cannot read your mind, William, I can only attempt to read your words. If your words are unclear to me, then you may think I am “misrepresenting” you. But I post always in good faith, and if I don’t understand you properly, you may have to correct me.
As for “smearing you” – I am not smearing you at all, although you have made me quite cross (mainly because I reacted to your implication that stringent blinding only being done psi research as something of a smear itself). So I apologise for being stroppy. But I was not at all attempting to smear you.
I’ve moved one post to guano as it was over my arbitrary line. I realise things are getting heated. Please everyone (including me): remember that the rules of this site require everyone to make the working assumption that others are posting in good faith.
William, that does include you – I have not moved your post, but your assumption that I was trying to “smear” or “misrepresent” you was a violation of that assumption. We are all capable of feeling smeared (I did, by William’s comments on scientific blinding protocols) but that doesn’t mean that the smear was deliberate. And we are all capable of misunderstanding each other. That does not mean that we are deliberately misrepresenting each other.
Those things are possible, but it is the idiosyncratic rule of this site that we assume that they are not being done in this instance.
Thanks all.
I’m baffled as to why WJM doesn’t confound us all by citing a single adequately controlled and blinded study that unequivocally demonstrated ANY “psi” effect, let alone telekinesis at any scale.
I can’t find any, but my internet searching skills may be inferior to his, and I’m always happy to learn.
No, I did not accuse you of saying that you said I said things I didn’t say. I’ve twice corrected you about why the context of those quotes matters as to whether or not they represent assertions on my part, but apparently you are immune to being corrected on this matter. It’s probably an emotional reaction to feeling smeared by having something you feel an emotional attachment to – the materialist narrative of science – harmed by Sheldrake’s article. Sheldrake’s not here, so you and others take it out on me as if I wrote that article.
Whether or not Sheldrake is correct about his findings on blind protocol practices in science (a point largely irrelevant to the main topic), I haven’t seen anyone here provide any resourced material to the contrary. All I’ve seen so far is apparently a lot of people that apparently feel – for whatever reason – personally smeared by Sheldrake’s article, transferring that to me, and who are insisting otherwise – without providing any material support for their emotional attempts at rebuttal.
And we see basically the same kind of emotionally-charged content when I post information on the subject at hand (mind moving matter) – information about psi research that has been going on for decades, research that has convinced Nobel laureates, many esteemed scientists, and even a couple of staunch psi skeptics.
What we have on display here, IMO, is what occurs when people feel that their religion, or deeply-held ideological beliefs about the world, is being attacked.
I beg to differ, William. What is on display is frustration, pure and simple.
Let’s take your post, paragraph by paragraph:
You said that you had not said that the only area in which stringent blinding was done was psi research. I showed you that you said exactly that.
No, it’s an emotional reaction to being ignored frankly. You say you are attacking not science but “the materialist narrative of science”, but you will not say what you mean by that, and in the same post imply that it is all of science. When asked to say what you mean you ignore the request, meanwhile accusing others of misrepresenting you.
And obviously I’m not blaming you for Sheldrake’s article. But as you seemed to agree with it, or take it as evidence for your argument, I’m calling you on it. If you want to drop it fine, but in that case find some other support for your assertion that psi research is the “only” (or even the most stringent) user of blind protocols. If you want to stick with Sheldrake then point to a study you think should have had blind protocols and didn’t.
No, what I did was to point out that Sheldrake’s own article committed the very error he claimed to investigating in other researchers. I don’t feel “smeared” by it. I did feel “smeared” by your insistence, without any evidence other than Sheldrake’s, which doesn’t even say what you said, that psi research is the only area of science that uses stringent blinding. Sheldrake at least cites his evidence and methods, so that we can evaluate them for what they are. Which is worthless unless he can show that the studies that didn’t uses blinding were, to use your word “amenable” to blinding.
The relevant measure here is the proportion of studies that should be adequately blinded that actually were. That’s not what Sheldrake investigated.
The person posting “emotionally charged content” here, William is you, with your accusations of “materialist ideological narrative” and “misrepresentation” and “smearing”. But let’s both calm down, if we are to continue this conversation.
Yes, psi research has been going on for decades, and some Nobel laureates have been probably persuaded by it. If anything that shows that the idea that scientists have some automatic “materialist narrative” is false. But it doesn’t mean that psi has been demonstrated. Nobel laureates have probably been persuaded by evolution too, I don’t expect you find that very persuasive, do you?
A theory does not become credible because Nobel laureates believe it. It becomes credible if it generates testable hypotheses that can be replicated by independent researchers.
And psi effects are notoriously non-replicable. Either they have glaring holes in their blinding protocols (scientists can be far too trusting), or they are clean but non-replicable. And, most tellingly, suffer from the classic sign of a fluke effect by which the effect size of a finding decreases steadily over time, or with the rigor of the study.
And perhaps most tellingly of all: if psi effects were real, they’d be worth billions, as well as a bunch of Nobels. The reason scientists don’t pay them much attention isn’t because of the “materialist ideological narrative” but because they can’t be replicated. If the “materialist ideological narrative” prevented scientists for investigating stuff that threatened to overturn their view of the world, we wouldn’t have modern physics.
But we do. That’s because it works.
Liz,
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. You can say things like “And psi effects are notoriously non-replicable”, but without any citations or proof, all it comes off as is negative rhetoric against an entire field of research for what appears to be ideological reasons, whether deliberately intended as such or not.
The reaction I get for making a relatively non-controversial statement – that mainstream science doesn’t employ blind protocols of the sort that would be necessary wrt psi effects, thus if psi is true, leaving it wide open to all sorts of problems wrt data interpretation – demonstrates, IMO, that this is mostly an emotional issue for many.
There is what amounts to an entire 2nd scientific industry throughout the world that is not based on Victorian-era materialist assumptions, doing all sorts of research not only into psi, but also other areas dismissed by the western world’s scientific mainstream.
The fact remains, William, that you cannot cite a single properly designed, controlled and blinded experiment that has demonstrated telekinesis or any other “psi” effect.
So you are still believing what you want to believe, rather than what the evidence indicates.
Fair enough, you have always said that that is what you do
OK, fair enough. So does your negative rhetoric about only psi research having stringent blinding, but your request is fair. Here are some good papers that might interest you.
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi.
Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem’s ‘Retroactive Facilitation of Recall’ Effect
Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi
Meta-Analysis That Conceals More Than It Reveals: Comment on Storm et al. (2010)
And, finally, a sympathetic critique, published in the Journal of Parapsychology of the problems in psi research that must be overcome if its results are to be regarded as robust :
Can Parapsychology Move Beyond the Controversies of Retrospective Meta-Analyses?
No, it doesn’t. It demonstrate that what you considered a “non-controversial” statement is at best unsupported, and at worst, simply wrong. Blind protocols, as you can easily find out, and as I have told you, with examples, are de rigeur in many fields of science including my own, and including science with non-human subjects where experimenter bias can affect measurements. You appear to think that some additional blind protocol should be used to guard against experimenter effects on the observed, rather than simply on the observations. In many instances, where observation is known to affect the observed, this is done too. You have yet to give a single example of the kind of study you have in mind, where you think the results could be an artefact of the study not having allowed for observer effects, while claiming that lack of such protocols leaves such studies ” wide open to all sorts of problems wrt data interpretation”.
Until you can actually give an example – a single example will do – then you don’t need to assume that the reaction you are getting is due to any other emotion than frustration. If you are going to make sweeping accusations about the “materialist ideological narrative that is masquerading as science” then back them up, or retract.
And, as far as I can tell, badly. Again, William, your lack of scientific knowledge (not your lack of materialist assumptions) is letting you down here. You don’t seem to understand what makes a scientific argument valid. It isn’t anything to do with whether the phenomenon under discussion is “materialist” or not. It’s to do with whether it can be measured, under what stringent conditions. I do recommend you read that last link I provided, if no other.
psi is perfectly amenable to straightforward scientific testing. And it regularly fails, as you will find out if you pursue my iother links, as well as the more spectacular examples others have given in this thread.
There you go again, demanding someone prove a negative. For a guy who claims to be an expert in logic you sure butcher the basics.
Except that’s not what you claimed. You claimed ONLY psi research used blind testing and the rest of science didn’t. You said something demonstrably wrong and pretty dumb to boot and now are trying to wriggle out of it.
Your claimed “second industry” may be prevalent in the world but it’s not scientific. Snake oil salesmen, con men, and charlatans have been selling their woo to gullible saps like you since the dawn of civilization. P.T. Barnum said it best; “there’s a sucker born every minute”.
No, only fact is that I have provided links – and can provide more – to scientific research that purportedly supports the existence of psi. Some would say, and have said, it proves it. Whether or not it is “properly” designed, controlled and blinded, or whether or not it actually demonstrates psi effects to the satisfaction of any particular reader, is an opinion readers must arrive at on their own and for which I am not responsible nor obligated to change.
Well, to be fair, there are a number of RNG experiments that have been published that show statistically “significant” effects, and some meta-analyses.
The problem is, as my links show, that they are all problematic, either methodologically, because of failure to replicate, or because of statistical problems such as the “file drawer” effect. That’s why that last, sympathetic, paper is so valuable, both for psi researchers and for those who want an overview on just how good (and how poor) the evidence is so far.
FTFY William.
And I’m not even a skeptic here. Well, no more than I would be about any anomalous finding. I think it’s interesting. If it were real it would be really exciting.
The reason I’m not excited is because the evidence always turns out to be so disappointing.
Like cold fusion.
No, you didn’t. You provided links to many of your woo woo websites claiming to have scientific evidence for psi. Everyone else here understands the difference even if you don’t.
Your standard of evidence seems to be quite a bit lower that most everyone else, and certainly way below that required of scientific research. “I read it in the National Inquirer while waiting in line at the Mini-Mart” just doesn’t cut it.
Interestingly enough, materialism was strongly disapproved of during the Victorian era, because it was widely perceived to be a threat to religion and thereby to social stability and order. The far more preferable position was phenomenalism, which was upheld by John Stuart Mill and Thomas Huxley (Huxley’s agnosticism is based on his phenomenalism), and also there was a flourishing of British Idealism. Positivism also flourished during this period with Auguste Comte (in France) and Ernst Mach (in Germany).
This isn’t to deny that there were materialists during the Victorian period, but that it would be a serious mistake to say that materialism was a dominant philosophical position during this time. If anything, materialism is probably better respected, as a philosophical option, these days than it was then.
Liz,
Thanks for providing those references. At first blush they appear to be very interesting reading and good additional info wrt the field of ongoing psi research. It’s good to see more scientists taking the time and effort to contribute to the field, even if that work is critical – critical challenges are necessary to refine the research in any scientific field.
Then it’s a good thing I didn’t say, nor even imply, that it was a dominant philosophical position during that time.
Have you ever said anything?
For example, can you point to a verifiable instance of Psi (or whatever it’s called)? When you were asked before your links led to Uri Geller and a couple of physicists he managed to con. One of your physicists learned remote viewing from scientologists.
William, stage magic and con artistry are not evidence. Double and triple blind doesn’t mean anything when the investigators are dishonest. You probably have no problem understanding this with regard to Piltdown. But magic is 100 percent smoke and mirrors. The honest practitioners call what they do illusion.
Actually, in this case, I believe what my experience demonstrates. As I have said, I believe what I want to as long as it doesn’t contradict my actual experience. Not believing in psi would contradict my actual experience, so I’m obligated (by my own system of how I choose what to believe) to believe it regardless of any evidence I read about pro or con on the subject.
My personal experience always comes first in my belief structure. After that, I can believe whatever I want that serves my purposes.
I’m sorry, but what? What matters is your experiences and your purposes — is there no role left over for the experiences of other people, let alone their purposes? If there isn’t, how does this not amount to an admission of being a narcissist?
I’m beginning to understand why WJM wants to persuade us that accepting an absolute standard of truth and rightness is all that distinguishes normal folk from sociopaths.
Perhaps a brief description of your personal experience of Psi. A general description. No need to name names.
My dad – a very rational bloke – was haunted by the number 37. A piece of paper blowing down the street had 37 written on it. ’37’ was chalked under every leaf of a folding table he looked at in an antique shop. Then he found it in telephone numbers, on lampposts. And so on. Once he started to notice it, he really started to notice it. I wish I could report he was run over by a Number 37 bus!
Well 37 would be 41 in base 9, so he just missed the meaning of everything.
Unless he was a programmer, in which case, 41 is really 42.
Aye, and I’ve felt that way about my da on occasion.
petrushka,
If by “magic” you mean “psi phenomena”, my personal experience unequivocally demonstrates your claim about it to be wrong. I cannot prove it to you, but I can no more deny that psi phenomena exist than I could deny the monitor in front of me exists – I’ve experienced it repeatedly first hand, both from myself and from others, in an ongoing fashion over the course of decades. In my experience, psi phenomena is an irrefutable, ongoing fact of life.
The only question for me is, what does it mean that these events happen? How do I interpret them? How can they best suit my purposes? That’s where my capacity to choose beliefs comes in.
I didn’t say “what matters is ..” I said “what comes first is …” Meaning, first in relation to how I organize my view of reality.
If admission that my fundamental (first thing) building block towards any conceptual model is my experience makes me a narcissist in your book, then I suspect you are using a non-standard definition of the word “narcissist”.
Why on earth would I do that?
You brought it up. You presented is a form of evidence.
I don’t have any desire to invade your personal life, but you seem to have had experieces denied to most people.
I’m not interested in personal details. I’d just like to know the general nature of your experience.
That’s interesting William. If psi is really like that – strongly present in some people, but not in the vast majority, then it’s unlikely to be readily detectable by the kind of methodology used in a lot of psi research, which essentially tries to find low-grade psi in most people.
And if it doesn’t come when bidden, single-subject studies are unlikely to detect it either.
And I’m not denying it happens to you. I believe something does.
My skepticism, such as it is, derives from my view (supported by evidence) that perception is a process of model making, and that we make those models “on the fly” – how I model yesterday now, and thus experience yesterday in retrospect is not necessarily how I modeled it at the time, and experienced it then.
So while I think all first person experience is perfectly real, qua experience, I don’t think personal experience is a 100% reliable guide to what gave rise to that experience.
Fortunately, most of the time we can cross-check, and from that we know that memories are more or less reliable (sometimes less rather than more) and perception usually accurate. But not always, and lots of illusions are possible, including temporal order illusions. And we know that many experiences of foresight turn out not to be – either the predicted event didn’t happen, or the claimed prediction wasn’t one.
So, given that foreknowledge would overthrow models that currently work extremely well, while temporal order illusions can be explained within our current models, my priors are for the latter.
But I certainly don’t rule foreknowledge out.
Lizzie, the history of Psi is full of fraud and deception. Scientists generally trust each other. they do not immediately trust revolutionary findings, but they trust the finders to be truthful.
But the world is full of scammers, cheats, and self deceived people. Even as we speak, people are trying to sell engines that run on water, cures for all kinds of diseases, oddball religions, and so forth. These people are not like you and me. they have no shame. They will say anything.
They will say that Psi is shy. It won’t show itself in the presence of skeptics. It can’t work when encumbered by blind test protocols.
I have no idea what William’s personal experience is, but the fact that his very first reference includes a well-known fraud does not speak well of his judgement. It’s as if I put Piltdown Man up as evidence for evolution.
You have to be able to learn from others to do science. I hate the word collective, but it is a collective enterprise. Personal experience can be a jumping off point, but it isn’t evidence. At best it’s a source of conjecture.
I put very little faith in William’s sources. I put considerably more in William’s own experience, even though I think that a non-psi model probably fits the data OK, and we don’t need to dismantle the direction of causality just yet.
And I do think it’s reasonable that those who have personal experience of what they sincerely believe to be some kind of “psi” phenomena are more likely to find other people’s report credible.
I guess what I’m saying is: let’s suppose psi is real, and really was “shy” and really was fairly rare – how would we detect it?
And I actually disagree that personal experience isn’t evidence. It is. It’s just not evidence that can be readily corroborated.
William and others:
Check this video of Ben Goldacre’s TED talk on drug trials, taking in psi on the way.
This is why blinding, and double blinding, is only a small part of the story.
Rhine spent twenty years at Duke looking for the shy phenomenon. He was generally regarded as inclined to believe, and he initially reported some positive results.
The results disappeared as he employed better controls.
He was rather infamous for suggesting that improbably negative results indicated negative ESP.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Psi talent is rare, shy and hidden by the possessor. We could call this the Harry Potter conjecture; wizard talent is hidden from muggles because it causes trouble. Perhaps wizards secretly use their talents for their own purposes. Perhaps they are unable to turn them to advantage because they are unreliable, or perhaps the nature of the talent is that it cannot be used for profit.
We could go on and on, and in fact many people have turned a profit going on and on, in the form of books and movies.
I’m not disputing this at all, Petrushka! But I am very aware that your own experience feels more real than any amount of second hand info. And so if your own experience conforms with denigrated anecdote, you are likely to wonder whether the denigration is valid.
Like you, I think the answer is evidence-based science, even if, following the evidence where it leads, you conclude that your own experience is itself not a reliable guide to What Really Happened.
That’s where I think William is making a strategic error, in putting his own subjective experience first, then evaluating objective evidence by its fit to the subjective.
But it’s hard to deny the evidence of your own eyes. When I was told the explanation for the moon illusion I simply I didn’t believe it until I borrowed my father’s sextant.
And of course, it’s how magicians make their living – by relying on the fact that we believe our experience in preference to objective evidence. And fake psychics too, unfortunately.
But that leaves the problem – if subjective experience of strange phenomena IS real – how would we know?
There has to be a healthy mixture of engagement with a community and engagement with the natural world.
Total engagement with a social group or ideological group is extremely unhealthy. All input and “analyses” degenerate into self-perpetuating echo chambers that become impervious to outside influences.
On the other hand, if one doesn’t get input from the experiences that others have with the natural world, then one can become locked into early misconceptions about one’s own experiences and interpretations of those experiences.
And being a loner is probably the most unhealthy state one can be in because the only input and interpretations of experience come from within one’s own mind. Whatever interpretations get started early in life become ossified, self-reinforcing, and impossible to change later.
This proper balance isn’t restricted to science. Such influences apply to the arts, to history, and to the rules for governance and mutual cooperation of populations.
Some of the unhealthiest communities are those that meet regularly to reinforce their beliefs and solidify their self-identity and exclusivity while demonizing outsiders.
There is at least one advantage that scientific communities have that ideological communities do not have, and that is the rather “harsh” feedback from nature. Nature isn’t ideological and doesn’t care about ideology or human “interpretation.” If scientists get it wrong, eventually nature intrudes, embarrasses, and corrects.
Theorists who isolate themselves from experimental groups do themselves no good. Eventually they become divorced from reality; and as their “theories become more “sophisticated,” the creators of these theories become more resistant to input and correction from nature and others.
Understanding and learning to use the protocols of scientific research is a far more sophisticated and mature level of intellectual and emotional development than simply “winging it” with an unshakable belief in one’s own “wisdom” and infallibility. Rigid ideologies frequently become dangerous and self-destructive.
Well, the fact is that I have had a few creepy personal experiences. One of the reasons I asked William to discuss his.
One rather simple thing that happened to me as a kid was picking up the phone to call a friend and finding him already on the line. I picked up in the moment before the phone rang. The creepyness factor augmented by the fact that I almost never initiated the calls.
I have seen a person who wasn’t there. There’s a reason why this happened, but it doesn’t diminish the fact that I saw for a couple seconds, a full three dimensional moving person.
So I don’t have to doubt people’s personal honesty or even their sanity. I am just curious about the nature of their experience. I do not consider my experiences to be evidence for anything paranormal, but they have similarities to things that have been considered evidence.
According to you there is no limit to evidence-based science?
Where do you think the limit would be?
There’s no limit, but that’s because there’s no limit to what we don’t know either. We aren’t ever going to run out of stuff we don’t know, which is why all scientific conclusions are intrinsically provisional.
I think Stapp is a committed dualist who is trying to make that commitment consistent with his physics: He accepts that no good science supports psi, so he needs the mind to control only its brain. He understands determinism in everyday physics but wants libertarian freedom which is consistent with that physics. He understands conservation of energy and thinks his QZE takes care of that objection to dualism (he has more detailed reasoning in his paper for this).
Of course, since the whole purpose of his science is to justify dualism, rather than make new scientific claims, I would expect that most scientists don’t have time to look at it in detail.
Anyway, this thread seems to have spun off in a new direction. I’m actually surprised no one has brought up the editorial and associated story in the latest Economist on the state of science .
I’m more than happy to get back to the OP! And do you have a link to the piece in the Economist?
Jerry C links to both in his discussion.
Coyne on Economist Articles
It is a good appraisal of the state of science and discusses some of the issues in this thread. Its points will not be a surprise to most here.
Many of the bloggers I read have linked to it and agreed with it, which I think shows that valid criticism is well-received in “western” science (which is of course world wide science).
I mean that if you think that all the reality can be studied by evidence based science.
I don’t there’s any substitute for empirical science when it comes to the question of whether the world actually is as one’s initial experience shows it to be. That doesn’t mean that all the questions that are worth asking are empirical ones.
For one thing, empirical science is silent on how the world must or could be; for another, empirical science is silent on everything normative — including the norms of rationality on which science depends.
Empirical science supports invention. Both physical and social. I lean conservative when it comes to large scale social experiments, but my reasons are pragmatic and utilitarian rather than partisan.
I really can’t think of any substitute for cut and try, even in the arenas of morals and ethics. In the real world laws and policies are fiddled with daily. I can’t see any global principle behind this. A lot of lip service gets paid to principles, but from my viewpoint, this results in the worst policies.