Are there any paranormal phenomena AT ALL??

And I refer you to the earlier answer where I already replied to that.
Yes, but not intelligently, or coherently. You claimed that they only took a small portion of the bias away.

You never once explained why, and as Ethan pointed out, your undefined ( ghostlike ) ' codified ' human behavior sounds a lot like psi. Access to information even when protocol is set into place to prevent that.

For the sake of this thread, give me ONE example of how codified human behavior can alter auto-randomization features.
 
If we could establish the actual existence of such an effect that would be fine, Electrofunk. My problem is that there is no such established effect as exists now. Also, if PK is limited to "the brain" I tjhink that is more likely signifying something unique to the brain than to the notion of "PK" (i.e. the idea that mind can affect the world by direct intent).
http://www.deanradin.com/FOC2014/Radin_Physics_Essays-2013.pdf

WARNING: may have some math
 
You may have answered them, but not in a fashion that was coherent, or intelligible.

Nooo...that's sheer ad hominem. I gave you clear reasons. You just chose to disregard them because you didn't have operationalizable answers to them.

Math, I want math. I provided you equations and formulas used to estimate effect size and statistical significance.

None of which are applicable to this situation, as already explained. Illustrate to me how you would compensate for the fact that you are a human. You cannot. It's impossible.

You provided me this ' ghost like feature ' of human codified behavior.

Why would human nature be "ghost like"?
 
Illustrate to me how you would compensate for the fact that you are a human. You cannot. It's impossible.

Seems to me this sword cuts both ways. If we are limited by our perceptions, we also cannot confidently confirm that we can differentiate between materialism, neutral monism, or idealism.

So those anomalies discovered by paranormal could be artifacts of a system designed to run from tigers rather than suss out the mysteries of creation, or they could be revealing something fundamental about reality works. Which of course takes us back to what personal effort one will employ to seek out whether the Imaginal/Other/God/etc is merely mental or a thing of substance.

Also, regarding Krippner I quoted him and Irvin Child about the interesting findings in his Dream Telepathy experiments in a previous post in this thread. Child noted Krippner's findings were beyond the usual statistical shifts found in research like the kind Radin does.
 
Nooo...that's sheer ad hominem. I gave you clear reasons. You just chose to disregard them because you didn't have operationalizable answers to them.

Care to point these out? Apparently they weren't reasonable, as most people objecting to your assertions claim that they are unfalsifiable.

None of which are applicable to this situation, as already explained. Illustrate to me how you would compensate for the fact that you are a human. You cannot. It's impossible.

How is MATH not applicable to a SCIENTIFIC claim? You've claimed that there is a MEASUREABLE amount of codified human behavior. The reason I'm saying you claimed that it was MEASUREABLE, is because you claimed that ti accounted for the effect size in psi experiments. If thats the case, you MUST have done some math to equate the two. If not, how can it be proven that codified human behavior accounts for ALL the effect size, or ANY of the effect size?

Why would human nature be "ghost like"?

Because you haven't clearly defined how codified human behavior would give us access to knowledge in the instance of carefully controlled environments. I'm still waiting for that.
 
Care to point these out? Apparently they weren't reasonable, as most people objecting to your assertions claim that they are unfalsifiable.

Sure. Just to take one example. Your use of the "we can use computers" argument. I tried to point out to you that computers are extensions of the human interface upon the world. They are, if you like, "human hands" at large in the world. They are made by humans, conceptualized by humans, and extensions of our human specific "tool-forging" and artifact behavior. They are NOT existentially neutral autonomous objects that allow us to see outside our own nature.



How is MATH not applicable to a SCIENTIFIC claim? You've claimed that there is a MEASUREABLE amount of codified human behavior. The reason I'm saying you claimed that it was MEASUREABLE, is because you claimed that ti accounted for the effect size in psi experiments. If thats the case, you MUST have done some math to equate the two. If not, how can it be proven that codified human behavior accounts for ALL the effect size, or ANY of the effect size?

I said no such thing. Where did I say anything about it being "measurable"? I said exactly the opposite...that it is an irreducible background state that it NOT isolatable in any meaningful way. We can discern quantity in the matter only indirectly, by means of the replication problem rearing its head. If this consistently happens beneath a certain magnitude, there is your magnitude.


Because you haven't clearly defined how codified human behavior would give us access to knowledge in the instance of carefully controlled environments. I'm still waiting for that.

Recall the horizontal array problem. If one is not aware of this codified behavior, how did subjects mysteriously get "access to the knowledge" that allowed them to choose the second entity from the left?
 
If we could establish the actual existence of such an effect that would be fine, Electrofunk. My problem is that there is no such established effect as exists now.

Which effect are you talking about? micro-PK in the brain or micro-PK per se?

Look, we can talk about the methodology of micro-PK experiments and all that (actually, I don't want to!) and whether such an effect has been established in the experimental literature. However, I was under the impression that part of your scepticism towards the idea of micro-PK was directed at whether such a thing could have any effects in the "real world" so to speak. I turns out that we could imagine quite a few potential effects. My point is not that such "real world" effects exist, but that they are conceivable. And it would not be immediately obvious that these real world consequences are overtly paranormal. For example, it may turn out that volitional control of movement contains a micro-PK component underlying process. We don't need to see people move upturned bits of paper or remote kill.

Also, if PK is limited to "the brain" I tjhink that is more likely signifying something unique to the brain than to the notion of "PK" (i.e. the idea that mind can affect the world by direct intent).

Yes, the brain is unique. It's highly complex object capable of generating order from chaos. It seems like fertile ground for a small micro-PK effect to gain traction.
 
Sure. Just to take one example. Your use of the "we can use computers" argument. I tried to point out to you that computers are extensions of the human interface upon the world. They are, if you like, "human hands" at large in the world. They are made by humans, conceptualized by humans, and extensions of our human specific "tool-forging" and artifact behavior. They are NOT existentially neutral autonomous objects that allow us to see outside our own nature.

No, you are absolutely wrong in this statement. Most randomization processes are done observing atomic decay and using radiation counters. This, in effect, is a function of PHYSICS, not of human cognition ( or by extent, computer oriented cognition ). So yes, they ARE existentially neutral autonomous objects.

AR said:
These processes are, in theory, completely unpredictable, and the theory's assertions of unpredictability are subject to experimental test. A hardware random number generator typically consists of a transducer to convert some aspect of the physical phenomena to an electrical signal, an amplifier and other electronic circuitry to increase the amplitude of the random fluctuations to a macroscopic level, and some type of analog to digital converter to convert the output into a digital number, often a simple binary digit 0 or 1. By repeatedly sampling the randomly varying signal, a series of random numbers is obtained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator

I said no such thing. Where did I say anything about it being "measurable"? I said exactly the opposite...that it is an irreducible background state that it NOT isolatable in any meaningful way. We can discern quantity in the matter only indirectly, by means of the replication problem rearing its head. If this consistently happens beneath a certain magnitude, there is your magnitude.

Because you are equating the effect observed in psi research to innate human bias. In effect, you are CLAIMING that the VALUE of human bias is EQUAL to the OBSERVED EFFECT. How is this lost on you? This is a mathematical statement, but you're now claiming that the value of innate human bias is unknown.

Recall the horizontal array problem. If one is not aware of this codified behavior, how did subjects mysteriously get "access to the knowledge" that allowed them to choose the second entity from the left?

When proper blinding and auto-randomization are in effect? You still didn't answer my question as to HOW. Here is my question:

Me said:
Because you haven't clearly defined how codified human behavior would give us access to knowledge in the instance of carefully controlled environments. I'm still waiting for that.

Here is your answer

You said:
Recall the horizontal array problem. If one is not aware of this codified behavior, how did subjects mysteriously get "access to the knowledge" that allowed them to choose the second entity from the left?

Nowhere in there did you answer my question, or provide a MECHANISM. You've simply responded to my question by begging another question.
 
Which effect are you talking about? micro-PK in the brain or micro-PK per se?

Well, really, PK at all.

Look, we can talk about the methodology of micro-PK experiments and all that (actually, I don't want to!) and whether such an effect has been established in the experimental literature. However, I was under the impression that part of your scepticism towards the idea of micro-PK was directed at whether such a thing could have any effects in the "real world" so to speak. I turns out that we could imagine quite a few potential effects. My point is not that such "real world" effects exist, but that they are conceivable. And it would not be immediately obvious that these real world consequences are overtly paranormal. For example, it may turn out that volitional control of movement contains a micro-PK component underlying process. We don't need to see people move upturned bits of paper or remote kill.

Yes, I can "imagine" such effects as well. The point arises as to whether there actually are any phenomena in nature that illustrate the action of "micro PK." Without that, it's a floating notion. Sure, I could say that "evolution" might represent a miniscule influence of intent on the arrangement of matter over epochal timescale. But as things stand at the moment, there is no established connection between animal intent, conscious or unconscious, and the biological production of body shapes.


Yes, the brain is unique. It's highly complex object capable of generating order from chaos. It seems like fertile ground for a small micro-PK effect to gain traction.

But "gain traction" implies that this is also happening elsewhere. Where? What ARE those phenomena? This isn't an unreasonable question.
 
No, you are absolutely wrong in this statement. Most randomization processes are done observing atomic decay and using radiation counters. This, in effect, is a function of PHYSICS, not of human cognition ( or by extent, computer oriented cognition ). So yes, they ARE existentially neutral autonomous objects.

Well, first of all you were talking about computers. Now you’ve changed to RNG’s (another human technological tool) or (it would seem) to the bare natural process of atomic decay. The pseudo-random processes of computers and their logical behavior are human constructs extended into the world. The very concept “random” is human. Atomic decay is a feature of nature. Even if we accept that as truly “random” (according to our human concept) we cannot eliminate the influence of humans in the architecture of any experiment we are involved in.

Because you are equating the effect observed in psi research to innate human bias. In effect, you are CLAIMING that the VALUE of human bias is EQUAL to the OBSERVED EFFECT. How is this lost on you? This is a mathematical statement, but you're now claiming that the value of innate human bias is unknown.

No, I’ve always said that it’s of the same order of magnitude as the effects discernible in psi experiments.

Nowhere in there did you answer my question, or provide a MECHANISM. You've simply responded to my question by begging another question.


I have not claimed that one can “provide a mechanism” for human bias. You are the one who appears to be claiming that this is possible (I do not think it is…in fact, I’m damn sure it isn’t). My response to you was about “mysterious acquisition of knowledge” and how the array problem shows clearly enough that “mysterious” can actually have its roots in unsuspected human bias…in this case a very SIMPLE, LARGE EFFECT of human bias.
 
Yes, I can "imagine" such effects as well. The point arises as to whether there actually are any phenomena in nature that illustrate the action of "micro PK." Without that, it's a floating notion. Sure, I could say that "evolution" might represent a miniscule influence of intent on the arrangement of matter over epochal timescale. But as things stand at the moment, there is no established connection between animal intent, conscious or unconscious, and the biological production of body shapes.

Yes, withhold judgement because of lack of evidence. I'm all for that. But it wouldn't be logically sound to doubt the veracity of the current experimental evidence for micro-PK just because there are, to date, no "real world" phenomena that have been proven to be due to micro-PK (is that what you are saying? To be honest I'm beginning to lose the thrust of your argument).

But "gain traction" implies that this is also happening elsewhere. Where? What ARE those phenomena? This isn't an unreasonable question.

How did I imply such a thing? You mean elsewhere in the brain? I don't know what you're getting at.
 
Well, first of all you were talking about computers. Now you’ve changed to RNG’s (another human technological tool) or (it would seem) to the bare natural process of atomic decay. The pseudo-random processes of computers and their logical behavior are human constructs extended into the world. The very concept “random” is human. Atomic decay is a feature of nature. Even if we accept that as truly “random” (according to our human concept) we cannot eliminate the influence of humans in the architecture of any experiment we are involved in.

....what? Computers USE RNG hardware to output a tangible value to randomization.

I said:
Because you are equating the effect observed in psi research to innate human bias. In effect, you are CLAIMING that the VALUE of human bias is EQUAL to the OBSERVED EFFECT. How is this lost on you? This is a mathematical statement, but you're now claiming that the VALUE of innate human bias is unknown.
You said:
No, I’ve always said that it’s of the SAME order of MAGNITITUDE as the effects discernible in psi experiments.

MAG·NI·TUDE
ˈmagnəˌto͞od/

  1. 2.
    size.
    "electorates of less than average magnitude"
    • A NUMERICAL QUANTITY OR VALUE.
      plural noun: magnitudes
      "the magnitudes of all the economic variables could be determined"
SAME
sām/
adjective
adjective: same
  1. 1.
    identical; not different.
    "she was saying the same thing over and over"
    synonyms:identical, selfsame, very same, one and the same More
    antonyms:another, different
    • not having changed; unchanged.
      "he's worked at the same place for quite a few years"
    • used to emphasize that one is referring to a particular, unique person or thing.
      "people will always notice if you wear the same shirt two days running"
    • referring to a person or thing just mentioned.
      "that same year I went to Boston"
      synonyms:selfsame; More
  2. 2.
    of an identical type; exactly similar.
    "they all wore the same clothes"
    synonyms:matching, identical, alike, duplicate, carbon copy, twin;
    indistinguishable, interchangeable, corresponding, EQUIVALENT, parallel,like, comparable, similar, congruent, concordant, consonant
    "they had the same symptoms"


I have not claimed that one can “provide a mechanism” for human bias. You are the one who appears to be claiming that this is possible (I do not think it is…in fact, I’m damn sure it isn’t). My response to you was about “mysterious acquisition of knowledge” and how the array problem shows clearly enough that “mysterious” can actually have its roots in unsuspected human bias…in this case a very SIMPLE, LARGE EFFECT of human bias.

Oh yes, I forgot. Human bias, the mechanismless, value-less, un-detectable entity that conveniently explains away parapsychology.

I fixed your last sentence, by the way, to make it scientific:

The better version said:
and how the array problem shows clearly enough that “mysterious” can actually have its roots in unsuspected human bias IN THE ABSENCE OF PROPER CONTROLS
 
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Well, first of all you were talking about computers. Now you’ve changed to RNG’s (another human technological tool) or (it would seem) to the bare natural process of atomic decay. The pseudo-random processes of computers and their logical behavior are human constructs extended into the world. The very concept “random” is human. Atomic decay is a feature of nature. Even if we accept that as truly “random” (according to our human concept) we cannot eliminate the influence of humans in the architecture of any experiment we are involved in.
.

If I may jump in to the fray here!

I don't get it. Lets say we are dealing with a simple forced choice precognition study. Everything is automated and above board on the methodology front. You have one experimenter who consistently gets positive results and another who consistently gets null.

Kai seems be saying that this difference in results is likely due to the psychological disposition of the experimenters. However, this explanation must contain a paranormal component because one of the experimenters is getting positive results (assuming that the combined results of both are still positive).

Kai, what am I missing in your argument?
 
If I may jump in to the fray here!

I don't get it. Lets say we are dealing with a simple forced choice precognition study. Everything is automated and above board on the methodology front. You have one experimenter who consistently gets positive results and another who consistently gets null.

Kai seems be saying that this difference in results is likely due to the psychological disposition of the experimenters. However, this explanation must contain a paranormal component because one of the experimenters is getting positive results (assuming that the combined results of both are still positive).

Kai, what am I missing in your argument?
EXACTLY! That's been my question all along. If the randomization of the targets does NOT contain human codified elements ( E.G perfectly random ), then how can human codified elements sway the hit ratings to produce a false positive.

I don't get it?
 
EXACTLY! That's been my question all along. If the randomization of the targets does NOT contain human codified elements ( E.G perfectly random ), then how can human codified elements sway the hit ratings to produce a false positive.

I don't get it?

Well, yeah, I was wondering if it could really boil down to such a simple claim but it seems so. Unfortunately, Kai's claim is completely baseless unless I've misunderstood.
 
I think Kai is talking about Interface Perception, which does suggest there are aspects of our sensory interface to reality that we likely cannot get around.

How this manages to explain away all paranormal phenomenon rather than leaving the question up for grabs in unclear to me. In that paper it even mentions that the possibility of Idealism is something that hasn't been put to bed.
 
Beats me, but apparently Linda understands his claim. Which is odd, considering she worked in medicine and understands study protocol...
 
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Beats me, but apparently Linda understands his claim. Which is odd, considering she worked in medicine and understands study protocol...

I think Kai has made his position clear (whether you agree with him or not). I'm still not clear on your position. Do you consider the MA Ganzfeld results a slam dunk proof of psi? You're arguing the maths strongly as if you do, and I'm not sure that was your position previously...
 
I think Kai has made his position clear (whether you agree with him or not). I'm still not clear on your position. Do you consider the MA Ganzfeld results a slam dunk proof of psi? You're arguing the maths strongly as if you do, and I'm not sure that was your position previously...
Never once did I say it was a slam dunk, in any of this discussion. I said it was effect that demanded an explanation. An unfalsifiable, amorphous, and frankly unintelligent dismissal of the effect is not such an explanation.

I understand his position as well. That's what electricfunk and I were musing about. I think I was spending too long trying to understand Kais position, not understanding how it could be so simple and fundamentally flawed.

But it is that: simple and fundamentally flawed.
 
A small point of contention with Kai: statistics don't break down when effect sizes become small; it is in such situations, rather, where the real power and beauty of statistics is made manifest. For by the clarity they afford us, we can scrutinize the liminal, and do, uncovering unexpected relationships and effects that we could never know otherwise (with incredible precision too—provided we observe a couple laws of good scientific practice).

----------------------------------------------------------------

As I have mentioned before, many psi experiments are basically Bell's theorem-type physics experiments; the goal is to demonstrate a correlation across barriers, where the correlated objects are separated in such a way as to make conventional or classical information transfer impossible between. And for both experiments the effect size is relatively small, with similar results.

Now, I won't try to convince you that parapsychology has made a case for psi as convincing as these Bell-type experiments have made for non-local influence. It has not. Psi effects do not reproduce with equal ease—they vary as humans vary. Nor can they be predicted to occur by some mathematically elegant mechanics (though I hope that in the future they will lend themselves to physical interpretation); rather, psi phenomena are entirely divorced from explanatory theories, floating in the vacuum of the unknown.

That does endow them with a certain appeal, though, don't you think?

From a personal perspective, after several years examining various strands of evidence for psi—a fascinating journey that has chartered a new course for my life—I have come to the conclusion that the psi signal is strong enough to be distinguishable from the noise. Let me be clear: I did not come to parapsychology as a skeptic. Parapsychology made me a skeptic. By its conceptual rigor, scientific integrity, and investigative mindset, I discovered a different way to think about the paranormal. No beliefs. Just ideas. Ideas that can be tested.

Why do I think psi research probably has detected a real effect? I can only give the short answer here (you will find the longer one in either of the papers I co-authored with Maaneli, in publication). The effects, simply put, just don't seem to go away. Experiments get better, the statistics gets better, but the signal remains. The studies have also proved resistant to criticism; as we (purport) to show in our future JP paper, for every proposed conventional explanation, there is a preferable counter-explanation that better describes the data. File-drawer effects can be shown to be negligible in the best MAs. Ganzfeld investigators get better results with higher quality experiments. Selected subjects perform far better than unselected subjects in every database we have examined so far (these being Gz, forced-choice, RV, and Dream-ESP). To me, the combined weight of these facts (and others which I omit) suggests strongly that we are not dealing with an artifact of experimental design. But I am presenting you only my perspective.

One of the problems that parapsychology confronts today is that an impartial investigator, making only a cursory overview of the literature, would not have access to this information. They might be in doubt, and rightfully so, about whether artifacts could explain the small effects they saw in meta-analyses. In other words, psi is evident, but not self-evident. We need better, stronger data to convince those scientists (most) who cannot spare the time to examine the various proposed explanations and counter-explanation for parapsychological results. And we won't get that until more experiments succeed, and their effect sizes get larger, making them more credible prima facie. Maaneli and I have proposed methods for doing this in the forthcoming edition of The Handbook of Parapsychology. Simply put, the solution we recommend is to raise power in several areas of research, utilizing for this purpose the key findings of previous meta-analyses (e.g. Storm et al, 2010; Bosch et al, 2004; Utts et al, 1996; etc). In total, we predict that if ganzfeld experiments adopt our suggestions, they should achieve a reproducibility rate of approximately 60-70% (rather than the 20-30% they have now). Forced-choice studies would also jump to 70-80% power. This would constitute significant progress.

Just my two cents.
 
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