Recent content by electricfunk

Presumably, the first research question they are asking is whether the subject can explicitly perceive a image placed on a shelf during an NDE/OBE. If nobody reported an experience of perceiving an image on a shelf, they should regard the study as null in this respect (because they didn't manage...

I would decline to say either way. There is no objective means to declare the trial a success and you don’t know the probability that the trial would be “successful” by chance. As I mentioned earlier (and see below), these problems might be easier for you to recognise if the subject says “I saw...

What I'm zeroing in on is whether the protocol that Linda is describing has reasonable validity and reliability. I am arguing that is does not.

All of them It would not be a valid measure of whether the subject is able to perceive the target because of the problems I've pointed out. I can see we are just not going to progress on this point. In which case, you run into the problems I've mentioned before. I think you need to put...

In that case, you are drawing conclusions from subjective judgements and run into the problems I've mentioned before. You are appealing to subjective judgements again. Claiming that the subject's description "could not be anything else" does not represent an objective method for assessing...

Agreed. Although, at this point, you can't judge (subjectively or objectively) whether the target has been spotted or not (you are blind to the target). That is a subjective judgement - some might not think it is as remarkable as others to imagine an NDE/OBEer “looking down and seeing a...

There is no over-riding of the forced choice procedure. Rather, I recognise that the context of the response is inappropriate in Scenario B. Unless I have misunderstood what you meant by Scenario B, the patient was talking about an experience where he/she heard voices and someone took off...

Not really. If you push your required effect size to such extremes and reject any response that does not conform to those subjective expectations, you will fail to detect an effect that is, in fact, below those expectations. It certainly appears as if the effect size suggested by naturalistic...

You would need to know the operating characteristics of the phenomenon to say either way. It seems like the patient in scenario A has had the type of experience you want to study so you could include these 'trials' and exclude the ones like scenario B where it seems like the patient hasn't made...

I think calling that "macro psi" is the understatement of the year. However, this wouldn't avoid the statistics issue. You are still making a judgement about how likely the result would be by chance. It's just that the method you are using to arrive at that judgement is subjective and intuitive...

Well, it kind of always was. Ostensible extrasensory experiences (precognitive dreams for example) are defined by perceptuo-cognitive correspondences that seem to go beyond coincidence.

Can you explain why you disagree that it is unreliable to subjectively declare the outcome of a trial a "success"? Oh, I assumed you were randomly selecting the target. If you do not randomly select the target from the alternatives, you will have no objective way to know the probability that a...

What, you disagree that it is unreliable to subjectively declare the outcome of a trial a "success"? Ah, I must have misread what you wrote. Yes, using a forced choice procedure on the data is an objective means to assess the outcome and we have to use statistical inference to reject the null...

Kai, I wonder if you could suggest a valid and reliable experimental protocol to test for ESP that does not involve statistical inference?

That would involve making subjective judgements as to whether the responses given by your dozen participants were "correct" or not, which you have agreed is an unreliable approach. Correct. The AWARE protocol does not allow us to have an objective handle on whether a particular response is...