Precognition paper to be published in mainstream journal

In summary: HUGE for the field of parapsychology. It may finally gain the credibility it has long deserved. However, if it is found to be false, then it has also discredited the entire field.
  • #141
nismaratwork said:
I would turn you again towards the fruitless work on remote viewing and more by the first two superpowers, and subsequent investigation. The paucity now, in my view, reflects a lack of new approaches and a lack of anything substantial to find. It's true, you can't prove a negative, but you'll note that (not GR) Aether is not exactly finding a ton of funding either.

Sometimes it's bias, and sometiems it's a storied history of failure, as with ESP.

I don't see a storied history here (of success, or failure).

I don't really know what came of the remote viewing stuff with the government, since the majority of the work is still classified. I'm not saying that points to success, I'm just saying I'm reserving judgement on the matter until I see "all the data".

Once again, I see no research being done, and more importantly published, by the mainstream scientific community. (except, of course, the Bemster).

That doesn't mean anything either, really. You won't find a lot of papers published on General Relativity in the 1700's. It may be that ESP is an emergent phenomenon that appears as consciousness evolves, and we just don't understand it nearly enough yet. It may be that it's nothing but a psychosis. However, there are observations that need to be explained, that haven't been to the extent I would like to see. We'll all disagree on that point though, I'm sure.

In the meantime, I won't dismiss the possibility there is something to ESP. But, that's just me.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #142
nismaratwork said:
By the way, when you say studying, do you mean you're in grad school and this is your focus, that you're reading something by Brian Greene, or something in between? Please, now that you've raised this, in what context are you studying this?

I'm reading a book called The Compete Idiots Guide to String Theory.
 
  • #143
dm4b said:
I'm reading a book called The Compete Idiots Guide to String Theory.

Seriously?! That's the kind of thing I'd say as a gag, but I've been overly literal before...
 
  • #144
dm4b said:
I don't see a storied history here (of success, or failure).

It failed. I was under the impression that was common knowledge?
Once again, I see no research being done, and more importantly published, by the mainstream scientific community. (except, of course, the Bemster).

Published doesn't mean the research isn't getting done. It could very well be that the research is being done but it isn't being done correctly (or whatever other reasons block papers being published, it's your choice).
That doesn't mean anything either, really. You won't find a lot of papers published on General Relativity in the 1700's.

Apples and oranges. Completely ridiculous and fallacious example.
 
  • #145
dm4b said:
I'm reading a book called The Compete Idiots Guide to String Theory.

You're [what birds do on my nice clean car] me?

In that respect I'm studying muggles and gringots bank right now. :rolleyes:

Looking into, maybe. But studying? Really?
 
  • #146
C'mon Jared. At least nismaratwork suspected it was a gag.
 
  • #147
dm4b said:
C'mon Jared. At least nismaratwork suspected it was a gag.

Jared can be quite literal, and you DID do the internet version of a "deadpan" delivery. By the same token, you have to understand that as claims go, studying the "Idiots guide to String theory" is not even CLOSE to weird on this forum.

When you have a few dozen people tell you about death-stars and being fondled by little gray men, you lose your sense of freewheeling fun right-quick.
 
  • #148
dm4b said:
C'mon Jared. At least nismaratwork suspected it was a gag.

I didn't suspect it (and I still don't). :rolleyes:

Perhaps one day I'll see something to change my mind...

(Can't blame me, seeing as your intro here went straight for the kill.)
 
  • #149
nismaratwork said:
Jared can be quite literal

There's no "can be" about it.
 
  • #150
jarednjames said:
There's no "can be" about it.

Heh, it's a fun quirk.
 
  • #151
dm4b said:
In the meantime, I won't dismiss the possibility there is something to ESP. But, that's just me.

Well the way I'm seeing it, since the 1700's (you picked the number, might as well run with it), there's been only a handful of papers published supporting ESP. All the other research has come up with nothing.

Now on a weighing scale of pro / anti, pro really isn't pulling it's weight in the evidence department.
 
  • #152
nismaratwork said:
... studying the "Idiots guide to String theory" is not even CLOSE to weird on this forum.

well, darn, I'll have to try harder ;-)

jarednjames said:
(Can't blame me, seeing as your intro here went straight for the kill.)

sweet, I love making a good 1st impression.

---------

If you guys must know more, I took QFT in school but did not get to String Theory. I started studying it on my own via Tong's book (more like pamphlet) and Zwiebach's book. I'm currently on Quantizing the Closed String.

So, yeah, I am an amateur at best when it comes to String Theory, but I think it's plenty to attest to the fact that I think it is "valuable".
 
  • #153
dm4b said:
well, darn, I'll have to try harder ;-)



sweet, I love making a good 1st impression.

---------

If you guys must know more, I took QFT in school but did not get to String Theory. I started studying it on my own via Tong's book (more like pamphlet) and Zwiebach's book. I'm currently on Quantizing the Closed String.

So, yeah, I am an amateur at best when it comes to String Theory, but I think it's plenty to attest to the fact that I think it is "valuable".

You can't try harder without taking powerful drugs or being genuinely delusional. Believing in ESP or aliens isn't even a negative here if you stick to the "rules of evidence"... the real crackpots tend to be mopped up very rapidly by our kindly neighborhood Ivan.

By the way, nothing wrong with being an amateur.
 
  • #154
jarednjames said:
Well the way I'm seeing it, since the 1700's (you picked the number, might as well run with it), there's been only a handful of papers published supporting ESP. All the other research has come up with nothing.

Now on a weighing scale of pro / anti, pro really isn't pulling it's weight in the evidence department.

What handful of papers? references please! and from respectable mainstream scientific journals? I know of one - Bem's. I'd like to know of more ... but just don't.

All research has not come up with nothing. At least say it came up with something, but you believe the methods used invalidate the data and therefore the conclusions claiming there was something. Because to say that all other research has come up with nothing is not factually correct.

I follow the work of some organizations like Edgar Mitchell's Institute of Noetic Sciences, and they have done plenty of work along the same lines of and as convincing as Bem's. (But, none of it published in a mainstream scientific journal)

Like, what did Bem get ... a 53.2% chance. So, pretty darn close to nothing ... but not quite ;-)

And you won't get an argument from me on pulling weight ... even if Bem's work gets validated ... I'm still not sure 53.2% (or w/e it was) is enough for me to buy into it.
 
Last edited:
  • #155
I find the most telling test to be the lack of takers for Randi's challenge. You'd think someone would be in for a cool million USD if they weren't just a bit of Geller.
 
  • #156
dm4b said:
What handful of papers? references please! and from respectable mainstream scientific journals? I know of one - Bem's. I'd like to know of more ... but just don't.

Actually I only know of bems, but I put a few because I figured someone would call me on it (saying there's only one). If there is, then it's just the one.
All research has not come up with nothing. At least say, it came up with something, but you believe the methods used invalidate the data and therefore the conclusions claiming there was something. Because to say that all other research has come up with nothing is not factually correct.

If your methodology is flawed, your findings are flawed. AKA, you've come up with nothing.
Like, what did Bem get ... a 53.2% chance. So, pretty darn close to nothing ... but not quite ;-)

Frankly a 3% chance is too low for my liking. There was nothing I saw in the paper that suggested anything psychic (heck one of the tests was recall words).
 
  • #157
jarednjames said:
If your methodology is flawed, your findings are flawed. AKA, you've come up with nothing.

Unfortunately, it never seems to be that black and white. Have you seen the back and forth between Bem and Wagenbacher on the (lack of) use of Bayesian statistics, because it's a good example?

You've got expert statisticians on both sides, one side saying the methodology is sound and the other saying it is flawed. Bem got positive results, but one side says it's nothing, while the other says it's something.

There are several studies that have been sitting around for a while, that have not been this heavily scrutinized. So, I don't think enough has been done to say the methodology is definitely flawed on these past studies. Bem cites some of them in his paper.

Maybe the attention Bem has drawn will put these old cases to rest too, one way or the other.

jarednjames said:
There was nothing I saw in the paper that suggested anything psychic (heck one of the tests was recall words).

Well, it dealt with retrocausality though, so it wasn't simple recall
 
  • #158
i do a little mixed martial arts. there's times when i "know" what's coming upwards of around a full second ahead of time. i can percieve, process, and react to the danger in about a third of a second. the thing is i can have a knee in some ones guts for about a second before they even realize that their punch never connected. some of it seems like precognition, and some reflex delay. perhaps i only suspect the strike. there are also times when i "know" i am going to take a hit. i don't even bother reacting to avoid it anymore, it seems futile. is this precognition? i know not. i wish it worked for the lotto though.
 
  • #159
Darken-Sol said:
i do a little mixed martial arts. there's times when i "know" what's coming upwards of around a full second ahead of time. i can percieve, process, and react to the danger in about a third of a second. the thing is i can have a knee in some ones guts for about a second before they even realize that their punch never connected. some of it seems like precognition, and some reflex delay. perhaps i only suspect the strike. there are also times when i "know" i am going to take a hit. i don't even bother reacting to avoid it anymore, it seems futile. is this precognition? i know not. i wish it worked for the lotto though.

No, you are simply using your knowledge to make decisions.

You are pre-empting a strike and taking action or choosing not to.

Weighing up all factors involved, generating in your head what you consider to be the "best" solution giving what you consider to be the outcome of choice.

Put simply, once you have enough experience in a subject, you can apply that knowledge and make judgements. Nothing mystical or precognitive, just knowing your field well.

Please note, this thread isn't about discussing precognition.
 
  • #160
Our brains, and especially our visual system, specialize in prediction. They're not always right though, and if you know the mechanisms, you can easily trick it (optical illusions are such an example).

As for martial arts, there's telegraphing; opponent generally reveal their next move up to a second ahead of time with facial expressions and muscle tensing. If you've spent long enough sparring, you may "subconsciously" be able to predict motion from these cues.

But there's no magic here, your brain is making predictions from sensory input based on previous experiences with those sensory patterns.
 
  • #161
i wasn't trying to hijack the thread. i figured in the case of fighting i was just thinking faster. back to the paper, i think if the tests were set to show pics at a certain interval, then with a fraction of a second delay the results could be faked.
 
  • #163
so what's the latest on this?
 
  • #164
Ygggdrasil said:
...

Edit: Also, here is a peer-reviewed paper that discusses many of the flaws in study design and bias discussed in this thread:
Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
I see that 2005 paper has 597 cites now, with downloads the highest in PLoS history. Ioannidis has really turned the lights on.
 
  • #165
I see only 2 possible explanations for precognition (which I have experienced). The first is the future is fixed and we can occasionally glimpse it, the Akashic records. The second is that the future is in outline but isn't fixed, it can be seen but can also be changed.

The problem with the first alternative is that free will is an illusion and that our lives run a set course and we are just actors reading the lines. I don't like that possibility even though it would appear to us as if we do have free will because we don't know the future.

The second possibility is much more likely because almost any explicit prediction can either be changed or brought about. Some have. This is why real psychics, if they exist, don't give out explicit predictions as often as unclear ones. If predictions were always explicit they could be thwarted or made to come about, as the Jews did creating Israel.

What good would it be if Nostradamus was explicit? When he predicted that the king would be killed by a lance it wasn't explicit. If it was and the king decided not to joust the prophesy would not have come true, no one would have known that it would have and Nostradamus would be a footnote instead of a celebrated psychic.
 

Similar threads

A review of dowsing: Evidence for and against
Replies
11
Views
26K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top