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 | | From: | Luna | | Subject: | The untestability of ESP | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 06:14:12 GMT |
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 | I believe in the possibility of some forms of ESP. When you think "I
should call my sister" and the phone rings, and it's her. When you meet
someone new and ask them "What do you do for a living?" and you just _know_
what they're going to say, and you're right. When you're driving, and you
know the guy in the next lane wants to get over in your lane, even though
he's not drifting over and he doesn't have his signal on. So you slow
down, and sure enough, there he goes, zip right in front of you. I don't
think these things are always just coincidences.
I don't think this ability is reliable enough to ever be scientifically
tested though. I liken it to a novice making a really good complicated
shot in billiards. You concentrate, you're in the zone, you can see the
shot perfectly in your head, everything feels right, and you make the shot,
but if someone resets the balls and asks you to do it again, it's not gonna
happen.
--
Michelle Levin
http://www.mindspring.com/~lunachick
I have only 3 flaws. My first flaw is thinking that I only have 3 flaws.
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| | From: | John M Price PhD | | Subject: | Re: The untestability of ESP | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 18:19:06 GMT |
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| In sci.skeptic article Luna wrote:
>I believe in the possibility of some forms of ESP. When you think "I
>should call my sister" and the phone rings, and it's her. When you meet
You need to start counting things - all things, not just the ones that
fit.
How many times have you thought 'I should call my sister', and the next
call was to come to work early the next day, or some 'unrelated to your
sister' call? How many dreams of folk dying (and all of us die, so that's
gotta hot some time!) are followed by a nondeath?
Count it up, run it through a goodness of fit test.
(c) 2004. Copyright, John M. Price, PhD. All Rights Reserved.
Contents may not be republished in any form or medium without prior
written consent of the author with the express and only exception of
followup postings limited to and within usenet.
--
John M. Price, PhD jmprice@calweb.com
Life: Chemistry, but with feeling! | PGP Key on request or FTP!
Email responses to my Usenet articles will be posted at my discretion.
Comoderator: sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated Atheist# 683
Therapist to patient:
"First, we'll look for repressed memories of malpractice suits."
- Frank Cotham, p 77, Dec 1, The New Yorker
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| | From: | Luna | | Subject: | Re: The untestability of ESP | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:45:28 GMT |
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| In article <41f3ea9a$0$66680$d368eab@news.calweb.com>,
John M Price PhD wrote:
> In sci.skeptic article
> Luna
> wrote:
> >I believe in the possibility of some forms of ESP. When you think "I
> >should call my sister" and the phone rings, and it's her. When you meet
>
> You need to start counting things - all things, not just the ones that
> fit.
>
> How many times have you thought 'I should call my sister', and the next
> call was to come to work early the next day, or some 'unrelated to your
> sister' call? How many dreams of folk dying (and all of us die, so that's
> gotta hot some time!) are followed by a nondeath?
>
> Count it up, run it through a goodness of fit test.
>
>
I'm not saying it's always ESP, I just think it's not always chance either.
I also don't think what we call ESP is anything "paranormal." Thought and
senses are on a continuum. There's the very obvious, i.e. someone tells
you something. There's the not so obvious, like picking up nonverbal clues
when someone is talking. Then there's the mysterious "sixth sense" when
you apparently know something that is "impossible" to know. My point is
that _none_ of these ways of gathering and interpreting information are
100% reliable. You can mishear someone's actual words, you can misread
their body language.
The reason I'm less skeptical about ESP than I am about a lot of other
things is that even the most expert scientists in the world don't know
exactly how thought and consciousness actually work. My hypothesis is that
there is something going on in the brain, something completely natural,
which allows quantum interactions with the "outside" universe to
occasionally be picked up by the conscious mind as "ESP" while bypassing
the normal sensory inputs. It's totally random and mostly useless, but
interesting when it happens.
--
Michelle Levin
http://www.mindspring.com/~lunachick
I have only 3 flaws. My first flaw is thinking that I only have 3 flaws.
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| | From: | |-|erc | | Subject: | Re: The untestability of ESP | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 15:29:49 +1000 |
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| "Luna" wrote in
> > >I believe in the possibility of some forms of ESP. When you think "I
> > >should call my sister" and the phone rings, and it's her. When you meet
> >
> > You need to start counting things - all things, not just the ones that
> > fit.
> >
> > How many times have you thought 'I should call my sister', and the next
> > call was to come to work early the next day, or some 'unrelated to your
> > sister' call? How many dreams of folk dying (and all of us die, so that's
> > gotta hot some time!) are followed by a nondeath?
> >
> > Count it up, run it through a goodness of fit test.
> >
> >
>
> I'm not saying it's always ESP, I just think it's not always chance either.
> I also don't think what we call ESP is anything "paranormal." Thought and
> senses are on a continuum. There's the very obvious, i.e. someone tells
> you something. There's the not so obvious, like picking up nonverbal clues
> when someone is talking. Then there's the mysterious "sixth sense" when
> you apparently know something that is "impossible" to know. My point is
> that _none_ of these ways of gathering and interpreting information are
> 100% reliable. You can mishear someone's actual words, you can misread
> their body language.
No problem. the point was just get some stats anyway, any stats. If you
think the phones about to ring grab a notetaker and say 'time x:xx
preminition of phone'. Then when the phone rings put "time x:xx call from
sister'. You can tell if its linked or random! Actually you can tell
"within 0.01% of error" there is a correlation. The more data, and the more
hits you get, the higher your confidence interval of ESP. 99.99999% certain!
Of course you have to eliminate external influences to ensure it was ESP
making the correlation. Your sister could be listening in to you making
the notes and phoning you every time you predict it!
>
> The reason I'm less skeptical about ESP than I am about a lot of other
> things is that even the most expert scientists in the world don't know
> exactly how thought and consciousness actually work. My hypothesis is that
Yes but you don't say that. That's like Defcon 1, we lower the playing
field to Defcon 3 or 4 where science is certain of nearly all things and it
opens up the topic to investigation using the tools we do have.
> there is something going on in the brain, something completely natural,
> which allows quantum interactions with the "outside" universe to
> occasionally be picked up by the conscious mind as "ESP" while bypassing
> the normal sensory inputs. It's totally random and mostly useless, but
> interesting when it happens.
>
Right! Want to see my ESP experiment? It proves the quantum interactions
can be statistically collected, that I can interact with people on the other side of
the world at a *higher level* than usenet messages.
I had a preminition of catastrophe on Dec 14, and the message 'dark day monday',
I posted it up to sci.skeptic and 2 mondays later was the 1st day of mourning of the tsunami!
Of course everyone here just told me to fuck off but...
http://tinyurl.com/6q86b Tsunami 14 Dec to 26 Dec
Herc
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