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Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

npr.org

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Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#61

Post by Fargren »

endtime wrote: post #60
Fargren wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's pseudorandom, that means there's some form of pattern in the numbers it generates. It's impossible (or at least unreasonably hard) to know whether the person doing the test may subconciously guess or estimate the pattern. That invalidates the whole test.

I suppose that's true, though if someone can intuit a crypto-strong PRNG then that's an interesting and significant result in itself.

Sure, but when it's only being used to pick from between to picture sets, maybe it's not as impossible as it would seem.

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#62

Post by jfager »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #31
nostromo wrote: post #19

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -- and I wouldn't count these small studies as extraordinary. Unfortunatley, publishing these kind of claims prematurely help the more gullible among us to fall for ridiculous claims from psychics and others who would take advantage of them. (The authors of "The Secret", I'm looking at you.) Commenters on NPR's website (not exactly the dumbest audience online) hav…

Unfortunatley, publishing these kind of claims prematurely help the more gullible among us to fall for ridiculous claims from psychics and others who would take advantage of them. True. But on the other hand, publishing ridiculous claims and incorrect results is a necessary part of science. When we publish only results we know to be correct, because they agree with mainstream beliefs, we introduce a bias into the sci…

This is why I'm an advocate of accepting/rejecting scientific papers based solely on methodology, with referees being given no information about the conclusions and with authors being forbidden from post-hoc tweaks.

A million times yes. Also: no publication without the experiment's methodology and criteria for success having been registered prior to the experiment's commencement.

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#63

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

forensic wrote: post #26
Qz wrote: post #20

Wow, the word retyping test seems like a total scam. Of course you're better able to recall words after a test in which you were already better able to recall those words. It's called memory. Correlation, not causation, as the maxim goes.

I think you missed the point. 1. People recalled as many as possible. 2. People were divided into two groups, control and experimental. 3. Experimental group was asked to retype the words. 4. Control group was asked to go home. 5. Experimental group found to score better on initial test.

I have not red the original article so maybe I am mistaken, but the post submitted here seems to suggest that there was one group only not two groups. There was one group and they retyped only half or so of the words and not the other half and were found to remember the retyped words better.

I do not know if that makes a difference, but I think it might and could. The retyped words might have whatever quality or for whatever reason might have been easier to rememmber than the non retyped words.

Unless in the original article it suggests that the experiement was carried out in the way you suggest, I do not think there was much control of variables.

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#65

Post by JeremyBanks »

Fargren wrote: post #61
endtime wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that's true, though if someone can intuit a crypto-strong PRNG then that's an interesting and significant result in itself.

Sure, but when it's only being used to pick from between to picture sets, maybe it's not as impossible as it would seem.

It seems pretty impossible. Unless you're using a horribly flawed PRNG, patterns in the data should require analysis much deeper than human intuition could manage. This analysis would also probably require much more information than you would get from this experiment.

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#67

Post by jfager »

utunga wrote: post #39
garyrob wrote: post #4

See http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Wag... ("Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi".) It demolishes the study referred to in the npr article.

This counter-paper reads to me like spitefulness couched in scientific terms. Wagenmakers is, of course, on the very comfortable ground of defending the status quo from someone who is in all probability wrong. But to be fair, we should take things on their merits. Contrasting the two papers, Bem's paper sticks very closely to the standard form and 'rules of engagement' (if you will) of published academic research. Th…

Contrasting the two papers, Bem's paper sticks very closely to the standard form and 'rules of engagement' (if you will) of published academic research.

That's kind of the problem: published academic research is broken in a lot of ways. If you haven't read it yet, the New Yorker's recent article on the decline effect touches on several of the reasons why: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_... And some prominent medical journals started fighting against publication bias a few years ago: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/09/1094530773888.html

I think you're holding this response to a much higher burden of proof than it needs to meet to be a proper refutation of Bem's claims. You're right that the response doesn't appear to use the "proper scientific method". But that's because it doesn't use it at all, and it doesn't need to. There's no hypothesis to test and no experiment to run in order to point out flaws in a paper that does claim to be the result of the scientific method.

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#68

Post by lwhi »

Fargren wrote: post #40
maxklein wrote: post #33

This is trivial software to write. Why does someone not quickly whip up a web app that does the picture thing as described in the experiment, then we can personally test if we have ESP senses or not? Specs: Two buttons - ESP mode or non-ESP mode. In non-ESP mode, 60 random pictures are shown and we are to guess. Then it gives the correct one. In ESP mode, add some porn. If the results are different, then we have ESP.…

Javascript random is only pseudoalleatory. I think you need a true random number generator to truly test this.

Use a lava lamp and a webcam.

EDIT: or http://www.lavarnd.org/

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#69

Post by [deleted] »

Fargren wrote: post #40
maxklein wrote: post #33

This is trivial software to write. Why does someone not quickly whip up a web app that does the picture thing as described in the experiment, then we can personally test if we have ESP senses or not? Specs: Two buttons - ESP mode or non-ESP mode. In non-ESP mode, 60 random pictures are shown and we are to guess. Then it gives the correct one. In ESP mode, add some porn. If the results are different, then we have ESP.…

Javascript random is only pseudoalleatory. I think you need a true random number generator to truly test this.

[deleted]

Re: Could It Be? Spooky Experiments That 'See' The Future

#70

Post by Encosia »

maxklein wrote: post #33

This is trivial software to write. Why does someone not quickly whip up a web app that does the picture thing as described in the experiment, then we can personally test if we have ESP senses or not? Specs: Two buttons - ESP mode or non-ESP mode. In non-ESP mode, 60 random pictures are shown and we are to guess. Then it gives the correct one. In ESP mode, add some porn. If the results are different, then we have ESP.…

If we repeated the experiment here, publicly, we'd all know whether we were in the control or experiment group just about immediately. The results wouldn't be valid, would they?
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