Ex-Stargate Head Ed May Unyielding Re Materialism, Slams Dean Radin |341|

Great throwback old school skeptiko style interview! After the great political rift opened up, it's nice to have a thread where I can like all the same posts Roberta likes and we can all be on the same team again except for Malf who will always be lounging in the bleachers snacking on peanuts and occasionally flicking them at foreheads after a dumb play.

Ed's analogy of psi to a low bandwidth tin can telephone is absurd. Even if it was a matter of bandwidth, with any technology, you develop a proof of concept and then improve on it. A tin can and a string can turn into a telegraph which can turn into a smart phone. Ed exhibits a total lack of imagination by saying... "well the effects are real but sizes are very small so psi is basically a useless pursuit."

Don't have time to comment on the rest, but May sounds like an apologist for a belief system that provides the rigid prickly structure he clings to, an incurious and arrogant person, and a dunce when it comes to philosophy. He is uncomfortable with the Abyss, the Void, and refuses to stare into it - therefore he will always stand safely away from where the sidewalk ends and never be able to expand the boundary of knowledge in a meaningful way.
 
Hurmanetar said:
Great throwback old school skeptiko style interview! After the great political rift opened up, it's nice to have a thread where I can like all the same posts Roberta likes and we can all be on the same team again except for Malf who will always be lounging in the bleachers snacking on peanuts and occasionally flicking them at foreheads after a dumb play.
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Yes, I rather hope we give politics a bit of a rest now the election is over.
David
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

What do you make of Ed's "retrocausation" explanation for near death experience?

This is part of the broader question of why these guys fumble so badly on near death experience. It seems like the natural place to go because medically and physiologically we have an understanding of what's going on in the brain -- that the brain isn't there [I assume Alex means that the brain, generally speaking, can't be operating in near death circumstances] -- so why wouldn't one jump right into that as an answer to this question? Why resort to apologetics to harmonise it with their prior beliefs?
 
Mr.Sandman said:
In fact, his argument apparently was just"Entropy is related to the flow of time, entropy is related to sensory perception. Precognition is related to both sensory perception and time, so precognition "functioning" is related to entropy" (not his actual quote). Ok, right. So what?...

Also, why bother constructing a theory of human precognition? In his paper he spends a lot of time talking about human sensory perception. If precognition is such a natural phenomena, it would be way simpler to just find the "precognition signal" and amplify it. There's no need to involve humans, unless if you think that consciousness is fundamental to precognition (but I'm sure that you believe exactly the opposite)
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I think I can appreciate Ed May's attempt at a possible process model. The linking of perception - to changing entropy in the environment makes sense. And then linked to planned (intentional) functions is logical. My criticism would address denying that it involves sensory perception (where we really do understand afferent signalling), but rather then the process of understanding the available sensory perceptions (where we have only poor models of the signalling).

I think that precog is natural, but a naturally constrained event. Your comment about the precog signal is a home-run. If he thinks its a physical signal, where is the evidence of it?
 
tim said:
His definition of death was novel, too, apparently 'that' is only met when one is reduced to a pile of ashes. Makes you wonder why medics even bother resuscitating anyone, clearly they can't really be dead.. ...
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I truly don't get how otherwise intelligent people can be totally oblivious to the bizarre ideas that come out of there mouth.
 
Yea he did get pretty mad over nothing it was hilarious to me though. I think people need to realize that in the different fields of science there are bad, average, good, and great scientists. Similar to sports players in a way
 
What do I make of "retrocausation" explanations for NDEs? Well, let's see now. What really happens with NDEs is that people make it all up after -- in common parlance -- they "regain consciousness": everything is constructed after the event. One obvious objection to this is that they can, at least sometimes, report veridical information about events that occurred whilst they were clinically dead. Not only that, but report on verifiable things they observed that no one in the operating room could have seen and so couldn't have inadvertently let slip to the patient after recovery -- anyone for tennis shoes on rooftops?

Events like this are black swans, and people like Ed May can only get round them by suggesting anything from inadvertent information leakage all the way through to unconscious or even conscious deception. Forget about how lives are changed after NDEs. Forget about how patients report hyper-real perceptions as having occurred during their NDEs. If they genuinely believe this after the event -- when they are back in a state of normal consciousness -- what a strange process must be going on in their minds. I mean, what could it possibly be that retrospectively creates this powerful illusion? And why wouldn't it happen frequently in people who have never had an NDE? It would be a function of the normal state of consciousness, no?
 
Michael Larkin said:
I mean, what could it possibly be that retrospectively creates this powerful illusion? And why wouldn't it happen frequently in people who have never had an NDE? It would be a function of the normal state of consciousness, no?
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Precisely ! But we have to carry on playing this 'game' with the "objectors" until Parnia nails it. Shame really.
 
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Oh dear....

when talking about access to anomalous information, he appears to think information is physically sent from someone here, to say someone in Bangladesh?

He serms to be saying the QM wave-function is an actual wave... can't go through a wall, can't goes that far? Eh, it's not an actual physical wave, it's just about calculating a probability?

He seemed to say he assumed access to anomalous information should go away during an ERD?

I gave up after 35 minutes... when he started swearing... lol...

The only thing I agreed with was that persons who recall an NDE were not actually dead.
 
Michael Larkin said:
What do I make of "retrocausation" explanations for NDEs? Well, let's see now. What really happens with NDEs is that people make it all up after -- in common parlance -- they "regain consciousness": everything is constructed after the event. One obvious objection to this is that they can, at least sometimes, report veridical information about events that occurred whilst they were clinically dead. Not only that, but report on verifiable things they observed that no one in the operating room could have seen and so couldn't have inadvertently let slip to the patient after recovery -- anyone for tennis shoes on rooftops?

Events like this are black swans, and people like Ed May can only get round them by suggesting anything from inadvertent information leakage all the way through to unconscious or even conscious deception. Forget about how lives are changed after NDEs. Forget about how patients report hyper-real perceptions as having occurred during their NDEs. If they genuinely believe this after the event -- when they are back in a state of normal consciousness -- what a strange process must be going on in their minds. I mean, what could it possibly be that retrospectively creates this powerful illusion? And why wouldn't it happen frequently in people who have never had an NDE? It would be a function of the normal state of consciousness, no?
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Eric Wargo (remember his Skeptiko interview?) would probably explain this like that: the veridical information about the events during the clinical death - including the ones which were happening far enough from the experiencer - is gathered from the emotionally charged, intellectually significant moment of verification of the information retrieved from the transpersonal state by the others; the verification which were, in turn, made possible by the manifestation of prescience. So, the precognition and verification are forming a kind of a Möbius strip: they are causing each other.

Eric would also likely add that precognition can explain the similiarities between the NDEs and fear-death expeiences (FDEs) - in both cases, we are dealing with the existential horror of dying, either our own or of the person to whom we feel a deep attachment and affinity (which is very close in effecting, since by losing a deeply loved one we are losing a part of ourselves which were relecting and maintaining an important realationship with someone beyond yourself whom you value). This ultimate horror is what drives us to a ecstatic (read: excessive, unrestrained) joy of transpersonal consciousness-altering - the mind-breaking enjoyment of existence multiplied to infinity by the grim and chilling perspective of witnessing its final. It is also produces a confirmation of survival, of the chance to proceed after the encounter with a mortal danger, by precognitiely revealed veridical information from the future where (or, more correctly, WHEN) one (or someone with whom one have an affective bond) still lives. It is also provides you with a sense of meaning stong enough not just to live, but to achieve and to develop - to regret you former cruel deeds and strart preaching global peace, for example - because now you feel that your life have a purpose beyond everydayness; a meaning and purpose which are confirmed by paranormally acquired information which are verified by others.

While I don't think Eric's theory explains it all - in my opinion, precognition can't account for everything anomalous observed in NDE cases - it is both coherent and parsimonious, that's why I'm so intersted in it. With all my disagreement with Eric, I consider him to be one of the best thinkers in the area of the psychic research and anomalistics in general.
 
tim said:
Just curious, Max. Why did they have to resuscitate them then ? Why not just leave them as they are.... not dead ?
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Personally I don't want anyone resuscitating me... and I can't answer why they have to resuscitate them... I think there is something really strange about it.

But I guess your asking why bother... that's I guess because they are dying, but not yet dead... without intervention the patient would die... so they intervene because it's possible to reverse the dying process at an earlier stage when there is less risk of cellular damage.
 
While I think it might be worth looking at Decision Augmentation Theory because it may represent a part of the larger reality, I think scientists such as May or Persinger fall into a logical trap.

The 'official' line is that ψ phenomena don't exist don't exist. On that basis they turn somersaults to reject all the evidence pointing the other way. The logical error is to recognise one strand of ψ data as valid, but go on turning somersaults to reject other strands of evidence that seem just as valid.

When May requires that people reporting their NDE's would have to be cremated before he would consider them dead ....... talk about coming up with a theory that isn't falsifiable!

David
 
Vortex said:
While I don't think Eric's theory explains it all - in my opinion, precognition can't account for everything anomalous observed in NDE cases - it is both coherent and parsimonious, that's why I'm so intersted in it. With all my disagreement with Eric, I consider him to be one of the best thinkers in the area of the psychic research and anomalistics in general.
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I remain deeply skeptical of Eric's theory even though I like the guy as a person. Seems like he needs closed time curves to be real phenomenon to get away from the infinite regression his ideas imply...though CTCs themselves seem to suggest an illogical infinite regression?

I'm not opposed to the possibility that Eric Wargo and/or Ed May may be right that there are materialist explanations for some, maybe all, aspects of Psi. But when people invoke retrocausation it begins to smell a little desperate?
 
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