tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011129686562033118.post1436094723239013602..comments2023-06-25T06:16:19.634-04:00Comments on Insane Brain Train: A Skeptical Talk about PowersInsane Brain Trainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04716319361572130128noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011129686562033118.post-1435311274724724052015-02-26T09:58:17.135-05:002015-02-26T09:58:17.135-05:00Thanks for the information about the hot hand phen...Thanks for the information about the hot hand phenomenon. Perhaps it was not a great example. But even if all such materialism were disproved, it would not prove psi phenomenon.<br /><br />My intention was not to "shut out whole fields of activity". Perhaps my editorial was one-sided. It's an editorial. My interest is more along the lines of a call for a pragmatic agnosticism. We're living in a world where we're having measles outbreaks because some mostly intelligent people are engaging in sloppy thinking. We've gone a bit overboard - a certain amount of prudence is in order.<br /><br />If people want to practice Magick, or do concentration practice until they hallucinate, or whatever, that's fine. My desire is simply that when people talk about these kind of phenomenon, that they include some reasonable skepticism and caveats. I can recall theoretical physicist James Gate talking about his work, commenting that it might well amount to nothing. That's it, that is agnosticism, that is a real understanding, a clear seeing.<br /><br />You're absolute correct that I am looking for a certain standard of evidence. As I believe Carl Sagan put it, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I would say that's reasonable. I don't think Bell's Theorem was exactly accepted after the first paper. As a quick shorthand, let's say that if the psi research starts to bubble up to the higher and higher quality journals and we finally get an excellent study published in Nature, that would be something. If what you are saying is true, the findings would be groundbreaking, stunning, paradigm changing. It would be kind of cool.<br /><br />Susan Blackmore's experience is very, very relevant, I'm not going to be able to say it any better than this:<br />http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/Kurtz.htm<br /><br />And, as always, the picture over the fireplace awaits.Insane Brain Trainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04716319361572130128noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011129686562033118.post-63244162868102515472015-02-26T00:08:37.016-05:002015-02-26T00:08:37.016-05:00A) The hot-hand phenomenon is not at all comparabl...A) The hot-hand phenomenon is not at all comparable to my experience with telepathy, in two ways. First, the telepathy cant really be explained as a clumping of events that were bound to happen anyway by chance. Second, my sense of having telepathic intuitions is not a post-hoc belief in a streak of successful guesses about what another person is thinking. Rather it takes the form of a prediction that I know, followed by a testing of that prediction, and a confirmation that my belief was correct.<br /><br />B) New research is showing that there is in fact a real hot hand phenomenon, it is just more complex than single streaks. Here are a few news sources reporting:<br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/research-supports-the-notion-of-the-hot-hand-baseball-players-always-believed-in-it/2014/07/16/5a70653e-0cf9-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html<br />http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/are-hot-hands-in-sports-for-real/<br />http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/stop-denying-hot-hand-basketball-streak-75519<br />(The final link contains links to 4 recent studies demonstrating the existence of a hot hand.)<br />In particular, I would like to bring your attention to this suggestion by one of the researchers quoted in the NYT article "Yes, we probably imagine and desire patterns where they do not exist. But it may be that we also are capable of sensing and responding to some cues within games and activities that are almost too subtle for most collections of numbers to capture." This expresses well my sense about powers, etc. We may have a tendency to exagerate their significance, but paying attention to this kind can bring a useful level of subtlety to our perception. Just from an evolutionary standpoint, humans have been basing their hunting, warfare, and healing practices around powers for the vast majority of our existence. There is probably some useful stuff in there.<br /><br />C) Im quite science literate (thank you very much), being actively engaged in particular with medical research, and the fact is that, outside of perhaps physics, experiment design and research methodolgy always has weak spots. Living systems are just too complex and factors are hard to isolate. This is why we have to do multiple studies on the same subject, instead of doing just one good study and then moving on. See: Hot Hand research, see also: recent findings on the irrepoducibility of most biomedical experiments (http://www.jove.com/blog/2012/05/03/studies-show-only-10-of-published-science-articles-are-reproducible-what-is-happening). And this is going to be doubly true of a field like psi, where we dont even understand what it is, how it works, how to bring it out in its most dramatic or pure expression, or how to control for it. Nevertheless, as I read the field, and, again, as most those working in the field read it, the preponderance of evidence is that some psi has been objectively demonstrated.<br /><br />D) Your view seems to be that you are willing to see psi proven, but until it is proven (to some undefined standard), one should not belief in it. My view is that in my mind it is already proven, but I accept that it is a very tricky and slippery subject (see: The Trickster and the Paranormal), and may never find wide acceptance. That doesnt bother me too much. But there seems to be a bigger question here, and that has to do with how to sort through or make ones way through information and fields that are not widely understood, respected, demarcated, and acclaimed. My answer is that this has to be done with intelligence and discernment, rather than trying to eliminate the problem by shutting out whole fields of activity just to avoid the risk of fraud. All kinds of fields have fraud.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08704351773472086040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011129686562033118.post-72389077295217486732015-02-25T10:17:38.911-05:002015-02-25T10:17:38.911-05:00Thanks. You feel what you feel, and that's yo...Thanks. You feel what you feel, and that's your experience. Like when a basketball player feels they have a "hot hand". Statistics show that these "hot hands" are exactly what you would expect based on a series of random events. One of our primary biases is to see patterns, and thus we tend to see more patterns than actually exist. In order to see reality for what it is, we have to take this bias fully into account.<br /><br />I do have some familiarity with the body of psi research. A lot of people believe that if a scientific looking paper is published somewhere then that is as good as gold. That is a misunderstanding of science. There's way too much to go into here, but basically the design and methodology of a study needs to be airtight, and then we need a couple of independent studies to validate that research. In psi research we just don't quite have that kind of thing, but who knows, perhaps it's just around the corner.<br /><br />There is a certain logical amount of materialistic pushback to things that fall outside what is currently known, but this has been true of many things, such as plate tectonics. But plate tectonics is now accepted because they proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Psi research could plausibly do this, but it hasn't happened yet.<br /><br />There is certainly a level where we don't really know what *this* is, living here in Plato's cave, so yes, this is very interesting stuff. But there's a certain level where you have to understand, for example, that theoretical physics is theoretical. Many people believe in things like string theory or whatever, as it is part of popular culture. But there's nothing really there yet. Maybe it will be proven experimentally, maybe not. We'll see.<br /><br />I do think that the general direction of an openness to possibility and a flexible view of our world is useful. I take it as possible that some kind of psi effect might eventually be proven. The picture over the fireplace awaits. Do you take it as possible that such things may never be proven?Insane Brain Trainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04716319361572130128noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4011129686562033118.post-86039225148207572642015-02-25T00:22:25.313-05:002015-02-25T00:22:25.313-05:00A) You'll never convince me, not after some of...A) You'll never convince me, not after some of the insanely precise experiences of telepathy I have had. Things on the level of being able to describe the art in your home. This isnt reliable, in the sense that I cant always manage it, but when I feel it is working, my accuracy is very high. Also, some people are much better at this than others. Some people can barely shoot a basket; other people are Michael Jordan. Just because you dont have much in the way of siddhi doesnt mean that it doesnt exist.<br /><br />B) Youre right that a lot of the coincidence that occur after attempting to exercise powers dont really add up to proof, since we cant be sure that we arent choosing only to pay attention to those that support our view of powers, on the other hand that doesnt add up to disproof either. The only way to get objective about that kind of thing is in a controlled environment: so, are you familiar with the body of laboratory psi research? I wish there were a good, impartial primer or guide to the field, but I dont think there is. My reading of the data, and it seems the reading of most people involved in the field, is that some amount of psi is objectively established, but there are some materialist die-hards who do manage to find weaknesses in the methodology of all the experiments with postive psi results. Dean Radin has a pretty extensive list of studies, including both those with positive and negative results.<br /><br />C) Probably the most intellectually interesting issue that this post raises is the question of objective-and-subjective in the matter of interpreting sensory experience and life experience, and finding meaning in all that. You raise this issue through the question of cognitive bias. You speak as though there is (1) a background of objective facts and entities through which moves (2) your finite sensory system, selecting which of those factual beings to notice and experience and then (3) ascribe a meaning to those experiences, making a story out of it, or something. This is a pretty common-sensical attitude, and it works well in general, but it is not really how things are. All experience emerges through a complex interaction of sensory field and sensory system, and intentionality is an inherent part of this process. Meaning, selectivity, and delimited entities are fundamentally interwoven in the emergence of experience. Since experience is already a field of meaning, I dont see why we would dismiss certain higher-order meanings that emerge from it as erroneous.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08704351773472086040noreply@blogger.com