Are there any paranormal phenomena AT ALL??

The mystery is in full view all the time as consciousness. We just don't yet recognise what's right in-front of us. Until we recognise that we process spatially and temporally across spacetime we ain't going anywhere fast.

It would help if a realistic set of expectations were established by the community at large. I know a lot of skeptics are looking for people flying out of windows, veridically identifying specific numbers or data in OBE's, and moving large objects such as basketballs with their minds (or through mediumship with spirits). I'm sure the kneejerk reaction for many proponents will be to scoff at those kinds of expectations, but of course there are countless and constant examples of people reporting/posting/claiming that degree of power all the time. I've often struggled to understand how these things are possible but can't be manifested in a meaningful and structured way.

Kai, it's difficult to understand what might count as good evidence to you. Could you clarify what you're looking for?
 
You are not allowed to bring up police using / not using psychics to help investigations, and then say this:

As to anecdotal tales...they are without value, imo, without corresponding roots in reality that exist outside of those anecdotal tales and independent of them.

Given a significant degree of policework is based on anecdote and following leads, history seems to disagree with you that anecdotal tales are without value. Significant amounts of court cases can often come down to anecdote and whether or not certain witnesses accounts can be trusted or not, sometimes without CERN physics experiments to back up everything they say. Sorry, but you opened yourself up to that by bringing up an anecdote-first-evidence-second (remember how we had police before DNA testing? Before digital security cameras?) profession and then later disclaim anecdotes as worthless.
 
Define ' in statistics '. So you're denying the Higgs Boson as well, which was found ' in statistics '. How much more anti-science can you get?

As I said above, I mean in statistics without any forms of corroborating evidence. Though I think the Higgs Boson claims are not in fact an absolute certainty, which is why it was announced "unofficially," at least these kind of collisions leave objective disintegration traces which must then be interpreted.
 
There are lots of different terms that are supposed to represent the idea that mind can influence the physical world like psi-kappa, mind-matter interaction, anomalous perturbation, and of course PK. Let's not favour one just because it suits a particular argument. And yes, misnaming can occur in science. Some say "quantum mechanics" is misnamed since the theory has little to do with mechanics for example.

I don't favor one. But I do favor evidence in real world specifics. If "remote healing" were possible, then can you provide a good reason why remote killing would not be? And if so, can you provide a plausible reason, if such ability exists, why Hussein or Bin Laden were not taken out that way? I guess it is technically possible that "pk" might be so weak that it isn't discernible at all outside of micro pk statistical readouts, but then I'm afraid I find that kind of circular...the only impact of micro pk in the world is in micro pk printouts.


Like a correlation between mental intention and the output of a stochastic process for example?

If the output has real world effects that extend beyond statistical fluctuations but mysteriously manage to have have no other impact on life or the world.


I don't know what you mean.

Hopefully, the above will help.
 
Kai, I really do not care whether you appreciate my sincerity or not, but please do not misrepresent what I said because I used the word spontaneous. I never suggested it was a "bailing point"--I was simply comparing its nature to that of something else we do not understand--consciousness--and never suggested we bail on trying to understand that. I was simply giving you a very practical suggestion which may help you more than debates on this forum.

Cheers,
Bill

I didn't mean to imply that you *suggested* that we bail, Bill. I'm pointing out that it isn't a plausible bailing point nonetheless. Again, I can't make sense of evidence that perpetually fails to escape the prima facie domain into demonstrable influence.
 
Actually, Bem's 'Feeling the Future' has been well replicated in recent literature. An actual failure to research, and unfactual.

Robinson, Ritchie, Wiseman, French all followed Bem's procedure and failed to encounter an effect.
 
It would help if a realistic set of expectations were established by the community at large. I know a lot of skeptics are looking for people flying out of windows, veridically identifying specific numbers or data in OBE's, and moving large objects such as basketballs with their minds (or through mediumship with spirits). I'm sure the kneejerk reaction for many proponents will be to scoff at those kinds of expectations, but of course there are countless and constant examples of people reporting/posting/claiming that degree of power all the time. I've often struggled to understand how these things are possible but can't be manifested in a meaningful and structured way.

Kai, it's difficult to understand what might count as good evidence to you. Could you clarify what you're looking for?

Well, it depends on the claim Bishop. If the claim is that PK bending of a spoon actually exists, then let's bend a spoon under modern, properly controlled conditions. And let's keep bending them.

If the claim is that people can glean real information when out of body, then let's track that under conditions when the source of that information is formally and not just informally closed. Etc.
 
You are not allowed to bring up police using / not using psychics to help investigations, and then say this:



Given a significant degree of policework is based on anecdote and following leads, history seems to disagree with you that anecdotal tales are without value. Significant amounts of court cases can often come down to anecdote and whether or not certain witnesses accounts can be trusted or not, sometimes without CERN physics experiments to back up everything they say. Sorry, but you opened yourself up to that by bringing up an anecdote-first-evidence-second (remember how we had police before DNA testing? Before digital security cameras?) profession and then later disclaim anecdotes as worthless.

I notice you didn't bold the clause that came immediately after in the sentence that I wrote. As objective evidence of phenomena which by their independent nature (separate from belief in them) cause actual changes in the structure of the world, or knowledge pertaining to it, anecdotes are without value without that kind of corroboration. And this is no shocking statement. We all of us intuitively know that this is true. "Your car has exploded" has no value if I check my garage and in fact, it's still there.
 
Again, I can't make sense of evidence that perpetually fails to escape the prima facie domain into demonstrable influence.
I wouldn't expect you to be able to. For you, it hasn't even reached the prima facie domain. I'm suggesting that be your starting point.

Cheers,
Bill
 
Robinson, Ritchie, Wiseman, French all followed Bem's procedure and failed to encounter an effect.
And of the multiple dozens of countries who have conducted thousands of trials since then? You're apparently not very up to date on your research, as you'll also note that these werent pure replication attempts. Wiseman/French's were online, and didnt have ANY of the same priming protocol that Bem's did.
 
And of the multiple dozens of countries who have conducted thousands of trials since then? You're apparently not very up to date on your research, as you'll also note that these werent pure replication attempts. Wiseman/French's were online, and didnt have ANY of the same priming protocol that Bem's did.

Nonsense. They were carried out in laboratories in Edinburgh, London, Hertfordshire, and the software was provided to the researchers by Bem himself.
 
Well, it depends on the claim Bishop. If the claim is that PK bending of a spoon actually exists, then let's bend a spoon under modern, properly controlled conditions. And let's keep bending them.

If the claim is that people can glean real information when out of body, then let's track that under conditions when the source of that information is formally and not just informally closed. Etc.

Ok. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you've delved into established psi research. Does none of it seem compelling to you?
 
It would hel.p if a realistic set of expectations were established by the community at large. I know a lot of skeptics are looking for people flying out of windows, veridically identifying specific numbers or data in OBE's, and moving large objects such as basketballs with their minds (or through mediumship with spirits). I'm sure the kneejerk reaction for many proponents will be to scoff at those kinds of expectations, but of course there are countless and constant examples of people reporting/posting/claiming that degree of power all the time. I've often struggled to understand how these things are possible but can't be manifested in a meaningful and structured way.

Kai, it's difficult to understand what might count as good evidence to you. Could you clarify what you're looking for?
That is an accurate accounting of reported claims and something of a conundrum that you have recognized, but others seem not to acknowledge. Why I wonder?
I am not Kai, but any of those things would be a good starting demonstration.
 
Nonsense. They were carried out in laboratories in Edinburgh, London, Hertfordshire, and the software was provided to the researchers by Bem himself.
What of the other 82 experiments you've conveniently left out of your replication pool?
 
Ok. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you've delved into established psi research. Does none of it seem compelling to you?

Compelling? No. Extremely tentative, possibly.

But I'm left with the severe doubt that it's a kind of mirage rooted in statistical noise and minor variations in procedure.
 
Can you list the publication sources for these "82 experiments" Iyace?

We should have a thread on this. Here's one study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2388097

I'd really like to get some group discussion on it. The effect size is so small that I'm not sure how they draw conclusions on it. Plus there were some other issues that I saw such as multiple scoring and not always determining the number of trials in advance. Also, some of the experiments were in the opposite direction.

They do discuss power issues - perhaps someone more knowledgeable than myself could comment on the methods they used.

For example, on experiment 1 there were 111 participants with a hit rate of 48.81% (the hypothesis is that it should be below 50%). Putting aside the optional stopping issues (which in this case didn't change much from one calculation to the next but one wonders why they chose to do it that way - not determining the number of trials in advance seems to be a significant risk of bias.

It would be interesting to have a thread on this where we try and discuss these studies without acrimony and just see if we can better understand these studies.
 
Back
Top