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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

#71

Post by bigfudge »

Eliezer wrote: post #49
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're going to use highly subjective frequentist statistics at all, p minimum gold standard for extraordinary claims. If the phenomenon is real, and not bad statistics, it only requires two and a half times as many subjects to get p < 0.001 instead of p < 0.05. Physicists, who don't want to have to put up with this crap, use p < 0.0001. p < 0.05 is asking for trouble.

Ok, then let's funding psychology like we fund physics. I would love to run 1000+ patient studies to test psychotherapies, and in fact we'd be able to answer some really interesting questions if we did, but there is currently no way of doing this.

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

#73

Post by nwatson »

I e-mailed a link to a related article from a few months ago (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19712-evidence-that-we...) -- I sent it to some co-workers and also copied my wife.

My wife (a psychologist and a Christian) defended the (mostly psychologically oriented) experiments as posed in the paper and the method behind them, whereas several atheist/strictly-causality-believing coworkers and also a conservative Christian with a strong anti-psychology bias dismissed the idea of spooky action from the future outright. The stormy e-mail exchange raged on (and I did not contribute to the discussion). The conservative guy accused me of abandoning my wife in the argument. I believe she's well capable of handling herself.

In any case I wrote this (bad) poem in response:

  My act is mostly mute and unseen,
  I wear no costume, I don’t vent my spleen.
  Spending most time behind the stage,
  Conceiving a plot I prepare the cage.
 
  I have few resources, can’t sponsor M-M-A,
  Must find some other way to while away the day.
  I step out briefly to address the crowd,
  I hope today they’ll surely be wowed.
 
  My mind’s been active, reading Hacker News,
  What’s this I see?  Some interesting views,
  on whether the future can affect our present,
  I’m sure this will stoke plenty of dissent.

  I have my materials for a good time today,
  Setting the stage is just an e-mail away.
  My fingers fly fast, the idea’s not hokey,
  My actors will soon be addressing the spooky.
 
  I press ‘Send’ and my time on stage is done,
  I’ve set the parameters, now it’s time for fun.
  The actors appear to have done my bidding,
  I just hope it doesn’t end in too much bleeding.
 
  Sure, I’ll show up from time to time,
  The audience gets tired of hearing everyone whine.
  They need to see larger schemes at play,
  The actor’s philosophies won’t save the day.
 
  Arguments, screeds, reasoning galore,
  It’s exciting for a time, not yet a bore.
  I’ll step back just about now,
  It’s time for some more.
 
  This audience of one will now sit back,
  Got a few more bugzillas to whack.
  I won’t make it to peer-reviewed journals,
  But empirically it’s great to see what sprouts from a kernel.

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

#74

Post by hammock »

Gianteye wrote: post #46
CWuestefeld wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the more tests you do, the sooner you'll see a fluke on average In other words, if you toss a coin 1,000 times, then it's hideously unlikely that you'll see a run of 100 consecutive heads. But if you toss the coin 100,000,000 times, you shouldn't be too surprised to see that 100-toss run buried in there somewhere, even though the odds of getting 100 in a row are so small. Right?

You've got it. The other half of the problem is that there's a chance that when you start flipping coins the first 100 flips will all turn up heads. Now, does this mean that the universe is bent and has begun preferentially treating Mr. Lincoln's head different than his backside? Does this mean your testing apparatus is biased? Is this an inherent property of coins? If you stop flipping at 100 it'd very tempting to c…

actually you ought to have selected n number of tests beforehand, rather than see the fluke and, after the fact, "continue testing" until it goes away.

the very moment you peek, your data is tainted from future testing.

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

#75

Post by cs_loser »

zdw wrote: post #3

Krulwich's NPR Science pieces has some of the best verbal delivery, storytelling form, and production values - it's worth listening to the audio version of them. Highly recommended if you're thinking about making a podcast.

Krulwich is also the clown who had his ass handed to him by none other than Neil Armstrong last month:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/12/08/131910930/neil-...

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

#76

Post by markkat »

Eliezer wrote: post #49
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're going to use highly subjective frequentist statistics at all, p minimum gold standard for extraordinary claims. If the phenomenon is real, and not bad statistics, it only requires two and a half times as many subjects to get p < 0.001 instead of p < 0.05. Physicists, who don't want to have to put up with this crap, use p < 0.0001. p < 0.05 is asking for trouble.

Having moved from physics to biology, I am amazed with the difference in what the consensus of 'significant' is. Some of the difference is due to necessity, but not all.

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

#77

Post by nl »

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.

Javascript random() isn't a crypto-strong PRNG. Depending on how any PRNG is seeded, guessing it's output may not be very hard at all - especially if you've seen it once before.

Eg, I once had a Poker playing game on an Amstrad that used a PRNG with a very predicable seeding strategy. I could amaze my friends by knowing exactly what cards I would be dealt.

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

#79

Post by yummyfajitas »

markkat wrote: post #76
Eliezer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to use highly subjective frequentist statistics at all, p minimum gold standard for extraordinary claims. If the phenomenon is real, and not bad statistics, it only requires two and a half times as many subjects to get p < 0.001 instead of p < 0.05. Physicists, who don't want to have to put up with this crap, use p < 0.0001. p < 0.05 is asking for trouble.

Having moved from physics to biology, I am amazed with the difference in what the consensus of 'significant' is. Some of the difference is due to necessity, but not all.

There are more reasons to doubt our results, so we lower our standards of evidence?

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

#80

Post by tokenadult »

bigfudge wrote: post #71
Eliezer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to use highly subjective frequentist statistics at all, p minimum gold standard for extraordinary claims. If the phenomenon is real, and not bad statistics, it only requires two and a half times as many subjects to get p < 0.001 instead of p < 0.05. Physicists, who don't want to have to put up with this crap, use p < 0.0001. p < 0.05 is asking for trouble.

Ok, then let's funding psychology like we fund physics. I would love to run 1000+ patient studies to test psychotherapies, and in fact we'd be able to answer some really interesting questions if we did, but there is currently no way of doing this.

Let's fund psychology like that when the psychologists define their hypotheses before the experiment begins as well as physicists do.
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