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Balance
In looking over this page, I'm happy to see the endorsements OSS has received. Yet I think it would be a good idea to have some sort of balance to this main page. As someone interested in psychical research, coming to this site, I would want to see endorsements from my "side" of things as well. Otherwise, OSS might appear a little one-sided, despite its stated goals.
Are there any endorsements from parapsychologists or those in the parapsychology community that could be added to this page, to emphasize the "bi-partisan" nature of the OSS project?
From an aesthetic standpoint, I think it would also be beneficial to have these endorsements run along the lines of:
Parpasychology Endorsement
Skeptic Endorsement
Parpasychology Endorsement
Skeptic Endorsement
Parpasychology Endorsement
Skeptic Endorsement
(or vice versa - seriously, I'm not attached to the order of who goes first)
It can only help. Presenting only one side right off the bat like this (be it either side of the debate) would only make a newcomer wary, IMHO.
Kev 14:05, 20 May 2007 (CDT)
- Sure. We can ask others for quotes. Alex.Tsakiris 07:45, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
Not sure about this one
And this is where mcromer opens a can of worms. . .
"In the end we have the same goals, design research that is carried out in such a way that it doesn’t matter what you believe, that the results will be valid despite the belief of the researcher..."
I heard Novella say this on the podcast today, and I've heard Alex reflect similar sentiments. However I am not sure how realistic this is. Even clinical research trials in medicine show strong lab and experimenter effects, much less standard psychology experiments. I don't see how you can hope that parapsychology experiments will ever be conducted without experimenter effects. Sheep / goat tendencies rule in parapsychology as in other fields of experimental science. Besides, if the psi hypothesis is true, then psi influence can work both for believers and disbelievers in parapsychology.
So a psi experiment that everyone can conduct successfully? Not sure that is likely to happen, since consciousness is both observer and actor in a psi experiment. The "trickster" and all that. . .
Not to say that we should abandon OSS and testing psi. But I don't think the world where Randi and Sheldrake walk arm in arm is near at hand. . . I don't think we are likely to be able to abandon meta-analysis any time soon, because I can't begin to imagine how you will design a psi experiment (or a medical therapy experiment, or an experimental psychology experiment) that is immune to the experimenter effect. That of course does not suggest that no skeptic experiment will ever be successful, nor the converse of course. I'd also suggest additionally that if one's goal is to "prove" psi and "defeat" materialism once and for all one might find oneself walking down the path tread by Susan Blackmore and Louie Savva, and ending up in the same place. Like Radin said, the "Conscious" universe and all that. What that means is our little ego isn't quite as in charge as it might imagine. "Bending" nature to our will might not be as straightforward as we might like. The universe seems to enjoy creating atheists as well as believers. We can dance the dance of science with the universe and see what observations unfold. But she must be wooed, she will not be forced. A dance, not a wrestling match. Fair warning, ladies and gentlemen. . . Mcromer 21:11, 22 May 2007 (CDT)
- I believe Wiseman got the same results as Sheldrake. He just presented them differently, because he was looking for something else at the time. I speak only for myself here, but I am hoping that dogs are immune to human psi to a greater extent than other humans, and that the experimenter effect may thus be minimized. These dogs also show very large effect size. I think we might also be onto something in getting skeptics and -sheesh- believers together. Their psi might cancel out. Psi wars!
- As to your warning about the perversity of the universe, and "defeating materialism," we aren't here to defeat materialism. Materialism went out when we discovered the atom could be split. What we're into here is expanding materialism, or finding out it doesn't need to be expanded. Nothing more. I'm a total "materialist," and I believe psi may very well exist. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 01:17, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
- What would you do Martin if the end result of this investigation made it clear to you that the "material" aspect of the universe was contained within the "mental" aspect. Would you still call yourself a total materialist? Also I do not believe that the universe is "perverse" in the sense of being unfriendly, but rather that the universe enjoys being interesting. In fact I would submit that our own apparent individuality is a key part of that "being interesting" aspect. In any event this is quite off topic. I only bring this up as a potential theory -- that perhaps the universe does not wish to "convert" all skeptics to psi belief in the immediate future, and that attempts to do so may fail for reasons that might be surprising to some. You might even say the universe appears to be "fine tuned" for a balance of positions from disbelief in psi to uncritical acceptance of psi. That is a somewhat surprising state of affairs, all things told. . . Mcromer 02:07, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
- Yes. Material is what exists. We cannot objectively say anything but some sort of experience -which can never be pinned down- exists. And then only if there is truth and logic=truth. So saying one is a materialist is really only saying that one thinks -believes, feels- that current science is right as far as it goes. And yeah, your mode in the second half above is way beyond the scope of this site (;
- Well if what you mean by "materialism" is that "current science is right as far as it goes" I'd agree with you -- if we are talking about the usefulness of the predictive models of science that generate high-quality predictions. For example, the schrodinger equation, the periodic table of the elements, the DNA -> RNA -> protein process, natural selection to explain antibiotic resistance, etc. Mcromer 10:21, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
- Well, it isn't really materialism to say that psi, or even spirit, does not exist. Spirit, if it exists, might be a different kind of matter or energy. Maybe "materialism" as sometimes used is not really materialism, but denial that we are ignorant. Martinphi (Talk Ψ Contribs) 17:46, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
- Going back to Mcromer's original idea: I think we should keep in mind that a "successful" (i.e. finding a psi effect) experiment is not equal to an informative experiment. It's been established scientifically that sheep get more pro-psi results than goats in psi experiments. If we run a dog study with a goat and find no result, that's an informative experiment that fits exactly with the predictions based on past research. It would be MORE perplexing if a goat found stronger results than a sheep. Also, for the record, I agree with Martinphi here; it's my belief that there is something to this psi stuff, but it has nothing to do with materialism. I don't even know what it would MEAN to defeat materialism. If we discover that psi indeed exists, and figure out how it works, I have no doubt that it will fit just fine with everything else we know about the universe, whether you label that as a materialist viewpoint or not. Phronk 08:52, 12 June 2007 (CDT)
- You mean, that finding a positive effect isn't the only informative result. We should probably make a list of expectations, and we should probably find out whether we're dealing with sheep or goats beforehand, so we can make formal predictions. However, Wiseman got the same results as Sheldrake. It's my own personal hypothesis that dogs aren't as susceptible to human expectations as other humans- especially when there is no normal influence. For instance, a goat -like Wiseman- might get a positive result, and especially so if he wasn't in the room with the dog. Now a dog owner who is a goat, I don't know about that.
- My view of materialism is "What exists is material and interactions between material." Therefore, whatever exists falls into that category- it's kind of self-fulfilling. But it might also be that we could make discoveries which don't seem at first to fit with what we know- and that gap might be persistent, because it might be possible to make (as an example) an Einsteinian discovery when science is at the level of Aristotle. Some psi discoveries may be in that category. By what physics or logic do you overcome time paradox?
Experiments
I wanted to add my voice to the above discussion:
- Despite all, science seems to work pretty darn well... I think there is much to be learned using the scientific methods to explore human consciousness.
- Randi and Sheldrake may not walk arm-and-arm, but science does change minds. It just sometimes takes a lot longer than it should.
- We need more experiments in this area. One one hand, the Sheldrake experiments SHOULD have advanced this area of research forward. There SHOULD be researchers crawling all over this to figure out exactly what's going on. There SHOULD be more acceptance. On the other hand, this is great opportunity. These are simple experiments and we have everything we need to replicate them... how exciting! Alex.Tsakiris 07:43, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
- Agreed. Mcromer 08:45, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
There is no short circuit of the real discussion!
(Moved to Carp section. More appropriate I think!) --Dave Smith 12:48, 23 May 2007 (CDT)
Dick Bierman?
There was an interesting report on a UK website about the work of Dick Bierman in Amsterdam the other day - the article was cautionsly "pro" psi and the source seemed reliable enough. Some of it was about the planes going to New York on Sept 11 2001 being unusally empty, suggesting a case of mass presentiment - digging into this one would make an excellent project, pinning it down to actual figures would be awesome. Anyone know how one would go about it though?? Marco :) ––––
- Somebody has done a similar study. Jessica Utts, I think. I'll see if I can find the exact ref. --Annalisa Ventola 11:09, 8 June 2007 (CDT)
