37 replies to this topic

[N.T.M.]

*cough cough* Occam's razor *cough*

Really, guys.

How would one go about applying Occam's razor to this series of experiments? It seems to have eluded the reviewers...

While I do suppose that it’s not exactly Occam’s razor, I guess you could regard it as a “derivative.” The question that must be asked is What is needed for precognition to actually exist? Understand that I’m not asking for proof but instead just asking what, if you were to postulate on its accuracy, would the underpinnings look like? Now take what you’ve come up with and contrast that with the possibility that everything in the tests were just a fluke. Which is more likely?
I didn’t read through the experiment (I will), but this logic still stands.

For precognition to exist, the classical conception of the nature of reality that is used by most of us would have to be incomplete. How high a probability do you assign to the completeness and correctness of that model?

Not incomplete, but completely wrong. For precognition to be real it would require us to have the ability to interface with something completely immaterial, and the only reason to postulate something like that, of course, is to account for skewed test results. This leads to questions about its evolution, the origin of whatever immaterial information that our minds must be able to access, etc. And that’s just the simple answer. Really, it’s next to impossible.

So, say, a future event in question had a set of causes that gave rise to it. The same set of causes also gave rise to a variety of smaller events, some of which completed well before the main event in question. As they happen, these smaller events give us a sort of a mini-preview of the future event.

Extrapolation and precognition are two totally different things.
You’re saying that all points in time are superimposed. Where’s your evidence?

Edited by N.T.M., 17 December 2010 - 08:16 AM.

[xEva]

You’re saying that all points in time are superimposed. Where’s your evidence?

I'm not saying anything of the sort. This is just the situation where our usual reductionist approach fails miserably, because it leads to incongruous assumption that info somehow travels backwards in time. I'm saying that we should view the event in question exactly how it occurs: as one of many events that share the same set of causes.

Extrapolation and precognition are two totally different things.

Our goal here is to explain an apparent paradox termed precognition, not to come up with its definition. And yes, strictly speaking, these tests are not precognition proper. They only show that some operators can be so much in the flow of things that they appear to precog.

However, true precognition undoubtedly exists. There are dreams that come true and there is definitely telepathy, especially among relatives and close people. Also, there are various techniques that help amplify the signal, like cards or dice or bones, whatever.

These phenomena exist. To dismiss them as improbable on the grounds that it's difficult to explain them is nothing but intellectual laziness.



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Edited by xEva, 18 December 2010 - 03:39 AM.

[Brafarality]

It is disturbing that the progress-inhibiting naysayers would be SATISFIED if this research was halted, NOT because it was disproven, but because they taunted and whined enough to cause the funding to be cut for fear of ridicule.
They think they are being skeptical, but so did the Roman Catholic Church when opposing Galileo. The church did not think it was being arbitrary and dogmatic, believe it or not.
But, the simple fact is that the naysayers would be happy if the research was stopped due to taunting and not scientific scrutiny. They just want it stopped. It doesn't conform to their classical Newtonian world view and they will never ever accept it. Their loss, of course, that is, unless their taunting is loud enough to impede humanity's progress, then it is everyone's loss.

[FunkOdyssey]

I think this is very interesting, and the debate that is playing out in this thread has already been addressed in the paper if you read it. Essentially, the skeptical position is, "this can't be real because we cannot find a logical/reasonable/feasible mechanism to explain the results."

It takes courage, in my opinion, as a science-minded person to simply accept that these are the results, they are of such statistical power that they are NOT a fluke, and yep, we have no fucking clue how or why it works.

[TelepathicMerg]

I think this is very interesting, and the debate that is playing out in this thread has already been addressed in the paper if you read it. Essentially, the skeptical position is, "this can't be real because we cannot find a logical/reasonable/feasible mechanism to explain the results."

It takes courage, in my opinion, as a science-minded person to simply accept that these are the results, they are of such statistical power that they are NOT a fluke, and yep, we have no fucking clue how or why it works.

I was wondering what are your thoughts on Barabasi, Newman and others.

http://www.amazon.co...92701575&sr=1-2

Review
"In Linked, Barabasi showed us how complex networks unfold in space. In Bursts, he shows us how they unfold in time. Your life may look random to you, but everything from your visits to a web page to your visits to the doctor are predictable, and happen in bursts."
-Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody

"Barabasi is one of the few people in the world who understand the deep structure of empirical reality."
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

"Barabási brings a physicist's penetrating eye to a sweeping range of human activities, from migration to web browsing, from wars to billionaires, from illnesses to letter writing, from the Department of Homeland Security to the Conclave of Cardinals. Barabási shows how a pattern of bursts appears in what has long seemed a random mess. These bursts are both mathematically predictable and beautiful. What a joy it is to read him. You feel like you have emerged to see a new vista that, while it had always been there, you had just never seen."
-Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., coauthor of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

"Bursts is a rich, rewarding read that illuminates a cutting-edge topic: the patterns of human mobility in an era of total surveillance. The narrative structure of Barabási's provocative book mimics the very pattern of bursts, as abrupt jumps through the lives of a post-modern sculptor, a medieval Hungarian revolutionist, and Albert Einstein eventually converge on a single theme: that our unthinking behaviors are governed by a deeper meaning that can only be deciphered through the brave lens of mathematics."
-Ogi Ogas, Ph.D., and Sai Gaddam, Ph.D., Boston University

"Barbasi, a distinguished scientist of complex networks, bravely tests his innovative theories on some historic events, including a sixteenth-century Crusade that went terribly wrong. Whether or not the concept of "burstiness" is the key to unlocking human behavior, it is nonetheless a fascinating new way to think about some very old questions."
-Thomas F. Madden, Ph.D., Professor of Medieval History, Saint Louis University, author of The New Concise History of the Crusades

Product Description
Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudoscientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, amazing new research is revealing that patterns in human behavior, previously thought to be purely random, follow predictable laws.

Albert-László Barabási, already the world's preeminent researcher on the science of networks, describes his work on this profound mystery in Bursts, a stunningly original investigation into human behavior. His approach relies on the way our lives have become digital. Mobile phones, the Internet, and e-mail have made human activities more accessible to quantitative analysis, turning our society into a huge research laboratory. All those electronic trails of time- stamped texts, voice mails, and searches add up to a previously unavailable massive data set that tracks our movements, our decisions, our lives. Analysis of these trails is offering deep insights into the rhythm of how we do everything. His finding? We work and fight and play in short flourishes of activity followed by next to nothing. Our daily pattern isn't random, it's "bursty." Bursts uncovers an astonishing deep order in our actions that makes us far more predictable than we like to think.

Illustrating this revolutionary science, Barabási artfully weaves together the story of a sixteenth-century burst of human activity-a bloody medieval crusade launched in his homeland, Transylvania-with the modern tale of a contemporary artist hunted by the FBI through our post-9/11 surveillance society. These narratives illustrate how predicting human behavior has long been the obsession, sometimes the duty, of those in power. Barabási's wide range of examples from seemingly unrelated areas includes how dollar bills move around the United States, the pattern everyone follows in writing e-mail, the spread of epidemics, and even the flight patterns of albatross. In all these phenomena a virtually identical bursty pattern emerges, a reflection of the universality of human behavior.

Bursts reveals where individual spontaneity ends and predictability in human behavior begins. The way you think about your own potential to do something truly extraordinary will never be the same

[TelepathicMerg]

also:

http://www.amazon.co...d=2XT4JMTN6WY8D

http://www.amazon.co...d=2XT4JMTN6WY8D

[N.T.M.]

It is disturbing that the progress-inhibiting naysayers would be SATISFIED if this research was halted, NOT because it was disproven, but because they taunted and whined enough to cause the funding to be cut for fear of ridicule.
They think they are being skeptical, but so did the Roman Catholic Church when opposing Galileo. The church did not think it was being arbitrary and dogmatic, believe it or not.
But, the simple fact is that the naysayers would be happy if the research was stopped due to taunting and not scientific scrutiny. They just want it stopped. It doesn't conform to their classical Newtonian world view and they will never ever accept it. Their loss, of course, that is, unless their taunting is loud enough to impede humanity's progress, then it is everyone's loss.

In such a case, those people wouldn't be scientists, but dogmatists. It's a rather repulsive thought: parochialness in the guise of critical thinking. How truly revolting!!

If it's unclear by this point I'd like to clarify: I certainly want research here to carry on.

However, true precognition undoubtedly exists. There are dreams that come true and there is definitely telepathy, especially among relatives and close people. Also, there are various techniques that help amplify the signal, like cards or dice or bones, whatever.

These phenomena exist. To dismiss them as improbable on the grounds that it's difficult to explain them is nothing but intellectual laziness.



.

I read a book that covered the psychological underpinnings pertaining to precognition. It was interesting. To adduce things anecdotal in support of precognition is true laziness. It likely doesn't exist, but if it does I'd like very much to learn about it. Obviously it exists independent of my view of the world, but I of course want the two as close as possible; I'll amend whatever view of mine necessary to ensure its compatibility with reality.

We have no explanation for it. Fine. But let's first ascertain whether or not an explanation is needed (is anything going on?). My point is that I'm totally objective and will do the logical thing.

[mia22]

*cough cough* Occam's razor *cough*

Really, guys.

How would one go about applying Occam's razor to this series of experiments? It seems to have eluded the reviewers...

While I do suppose that it’s not exactly Occam’s razor, I guess you could regard it as a “derivative.” The question that must be asked is What is needed for precognition to actually exist? Understand that I’m not asking for proof but instead just asking what, if you were to postulate on its accuracy, would the underpinnings look like? Now take what you’ve come up with and contrast that with the possibility that everything in the tests were just a fluke. Which is more likely?
I didn’t read through the experiment (I will), but this logic still stands.

For precognition to exist, the classical conception of the nature of reality that is used by most of us would have to be incomplete. How high a probability do you assign to the completeness and correctness of that model?

Our classic conception of reality is incomplete though. There is no question about that.
FWIW my mother had three out of body experiences as a child. This was in the late 1940s early 1950s and she had absolutely no exposure to those concepts. The third time freaked her out so bad she prayed for it to never happen again and it didn't.
When I was young she had a friend she had gone to college with. One night her annd my father had dinner at his house. She was helping him put away the dishes after dinner and turned around to ask him where something went. She told me the strangest feeling she's ever felt came over her and she knew that that was the last time she would see him. He died a week later.
Was her out of body experience some rogue magnetic field screwing with some part of her brain as some scientists have hypothesized for OBEs? Was the other incident some strange coincidental thought as we all are prone to having throughout the day? I don't know but I do know she wouldn't lie to me about her experience.
My dad also saw a HUGE triangular shaped UFO when he was a kid camping out on his balcony in Texas. It flew over him slowly and completely silently. He's an electrical engineer with a PHD whatever credence that lends to it all.
I unfortunately haven't had those luxuries in my life although I did have the beginning of an OBE in a dream when I was around 14. It was a tugging sensation I think from my head like I was lifting up. It was a really strange feeling and it freaked me out and I instantly woke up. My mom was in the dream as well which is kind of odd.
I still remain skeptical though. But it's kind of fun to think/talk about. Don't share that much though was just in the mood.